The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Premature Obituary?

Posted on | March 20, 2014 | 20 Comments

Josh Kraushaar at National Journal argues that the Tea Party is dead, while at The Federalist, Ben Domenech says that what Kraushaar interprets as rigor mortis is actually evidence of the Tea Party’s success. My own opinion on the subject is nuanced. Having been immersed in the Tea Party movement from its inception, I considered it effectively “dead” the moment in early 2012 when it became apparent that Mitt Romney would be the 2012 GOP nominee. Exactly why and how that happened has been much discussed, and nobody’s paying me to explain it all over again, so I won’t bore you.

 

Category: Tea Party

In The Mailbox: 03.20.14

Posted on | March 20, 2014 | 4 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho


OVER THE TRANSOM
Blackmailers Don’t Shoot: Lena Dunham and the Hipster Golf Clap; also, Worldwide Heavy Metal.
Proof Positive: Able To Leap Tall Conclusions In A Single Bound! Also, Bait And Switch, and Others May Have Reservations.
First Street Journal: We Told You So! and A Canary In The Coal Mine – York County Pennsylvania
Michelle Malkin: Revolt Against The Testing Tyrants
Doug Powers: Donate To Abortion Fund, Get Coast Hanger Pendant “Token Of Appreciation”
Twitchy: Dana Loesch Schooling Meghan McCain Is A Thing Of Beauty


RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Power: UCSB Police Department Releases Report On Professor Mirielle Miller-Young
American Thinker: The Devious Secret Of Obamacare
Blackfive: You Are Invited!
Conservatives4Palin: “Surrendering Control Of The Internet Is A Colossal Foreign Policy Error”
Don Surber: Daily Scoreboard, March 19; also, Aborting Fatherhood
Jammie Wearing Fools: The Neo-Porn Feminists
Joe For America: Crack Smoking Mayor Has Higher Approval Rating Than Obama
JustOneMinute: The Mandate Lives, Subject Only To Its Demise
Pat Dollard: Texas Principal Fired For Telling Kids To Speak English
Protein Wisdom: Obama Wants People To Quit Bashing His Jeans
Shot In The Dark: The Star Chamber
Stump: Obamacare Watch – Individual Mandate Gone, Sub Rosa
The Jawa Report: Democratic AG Says Corruption Investigation Racist Because Only Black Democrats Accepted Bribes
The Lonely Conservative: We Get To Pay For Another Michelle Obama Vacation (Updated)
This Ain’t Hell: Starbucks Gives $30 Million For TBI/PTS Research
Megan McArdle: Young Invincibles Are Killing Obamacare


Category: Linkagery

Australia Says Debris in Ocean May Be Missing Malaysian Airliner

Posted on | March 20, 2014 | 13 Comments

Fox News:

Military planes from Australia, the U.S. and New Zealand are searching for two objects spotted by satellite in the southern Indian Ocean that could be related to the missing Malaysia Airlines flight, Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott said Thursday.
Abott told Parliament in Canberra that an Orion and three additional aircraft, including a U.S. P-8 are involved in the search. Abbott cautioned, however, that the task of locating these objects will be difficult and “it may turn out that they are not related to the search for flight MH370.”
An Australian search and rescue official said the planes have been sent to check on two objects that could be debris from the Boeing 777 jetliner that were spotted on satellite imagery in the Indian Ocean about 1,550 miles southwest of Perth.

CNN:

Authorities have spotted two objects in the Indian Ocean that are possibly related to the search for missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott said Thursday.
“New and credible information has come to light in relation to the search for Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 in the southern Indian Ocean,” Abbott said in the the Australian House of Representatives in Canberra. “The Australian Maritime Safety Authority has received information based on satellite imagery of objects possibly related to the search.
“Following specialist analysis of this satellite imagery, two possible objects related to the search have been identified,” he said. “I can inform the House that a Royal Australian Air Force Orion has been diverted to attempt to locate the objects.”
Three other planes will carry out a “more intensive follow-up search,” he said.

It’s been 12 days now. We may be near the end of unsubstantiated cable-TV news speculation about the missing plane. Thank God.

 

Category: Uncategorized

Picking Up The Signal

Posted on | March 19, 2014 | 11 Comments

— by Wombat-socho


A pox on Verizon for taking nearly a week to repair/replace the stone knives and bearskins that deliver the Intertubes to my humble burrow in the Virginia suburbs, after said high-tech devices were blown down during the windstorms last week. (As an aside, what kind of crappy 21st century infrastructure gets blown out of service by a wind storm that isn’t a tornado?) The normal cure for this problem – lugging my netbook to the nearest McDonald’s and getting my blog on – was unavailable since the netbook is currently hooked up to a Plugable Universal Laptop Docking Station until I can replace the hard drive in my desktop computer, which died the real death a couple of weeks ago. Also, since we’re into the early stages of the Death March to April 15 at the tax mines, I haven’t had the energy to do much when I get home but poke listlessly at Facebook and the e-mail on my phone.


All that kvetching aside, apologies to those of you who sent links last week, and I’m going to have one heck of an In The Mailbox post tomorrow morning to use all of them. The FMJRA will be hitting the ‘tubes tomorrow as well (better late than never, nyet?), but Rule 5 Sunday is going to have to wait for the weekend; to compensate, I’ll be serving up a double-scoop in a variety of B, C, D and double-D cups.


Also worth mentioning is Chris Nuttall’s Ark Royal. Nuttall is an expat Brit living in Malaysia who’s got eighteen novels up on Amazon, and if the rest of them are anything like this, he’s going to be living pretty comfortably for a while down there. Ark Royal is a space opera about an obsolescent carrier used as a dumping ground for the sick, lame, lazy and alcoholic members of the Royal (Space) Navy which suddenly finds itself Earth’s last hope after aliens trash the more modern ships of the several starfaring nations in a series of one-sided battles. Staffed with stock characters last seen in a number of 1950s WW2 movies, Ark Royal leaves on what may be her last cruise, and delivers the goods in terms of action. Nobody would ever confuse this with John Ringo’s Live Free or Die or the classic The Mote in God’s Eye, but it’s decent enough brain candy, especially if you pick it up for free through the Amazon Prime Lending Library. I’ll be forking out the $3 to keep my copy around, I think, and keeping an eye out for the sequel (The Nelson Touch) when it comes out as well.


Shop Amazon – Hot New Releases in Books

Category: Blogging, Books

‘Pervasive Culture of Sexual Violence’

Posted on | March 19, 2014 | 46 Comments

No, that’s not a description of the Republican Party. It’s about one of the most famous bastions of liberalism in America:

Thirty-one current and former UC Berkeley students filed two federal complaints against the university [Feb. 26] alleging a decades-long pattern of mishandling sexual assault investigations by campus administrators.
The complaints allege that officials for years have discouraged victims from reporting assaults, failed to inform them of their rights and led a biased judicial process that favored assailants’ rights over those of their victims.
The reports were filed with the U.S. Department of Education, which investigates violations of Title IX, the federal anti-discrimination law, and the Clery Act, a federal law that requires campuses to accurately report incidents of serious crimes, including sexual assault. . . .
“Neither the Department of Education nor UC Berkeley have made the efforts necessary to address the pervasive culture of sexual violence on our campus,” said Sofie Karasek, a third-year student who is among those named in the complaints. “This is not only disappointing; it is also dangerous for the students who attend college here, and is representative of a larger problem: the federal government is not adequately enforcing its own laws.”

Is this elite liberal institution really Rape City, U.S.A.? Far be it from me to defend Berkeley, but K.C. Johnson is skeptical:

Anyone who follows the contemporary media closely is doubtless familiar with the suddenly ubiquitous phrase “rape culture.” In the context of higher education, the phrase implies two interlocking beliefs. First: despite crime statistics showing sexual assault (as well as all violent crimes) to be very uncommon on campus, colleges and universities are, in fact, hotbeds of rape (but not, it appears, of all other violent crimes). Second: despite the fact that most college faculties and nearly all administrations are extraordinarily sympathetic to the activists’ position on gender issues, the campus culture over which these figures preside nonetheless–somehow–actually encourages the prevalence of rape at college.
That little, if any, evidence exists to sustain either of these beliefs has not deterred the “rape culture” believers; if anything, the lack of evidence for their claims appears to have emboldened them.

(Hat-tip: Donald Douglas at American Power.) This touches on a point I made last year about “Slut Walk”:

What people used to mean by the word “rape” has been revised in recent decades because of college women complaining about date rape. The rhetoric of SlutWalk activists — “No means no!” — is obviously not directed at the lurking sociopath, the knife-wielding career criminal who pounces from ambush in darkened alleys. Rather, feminist harangues about the meaning and importance of consent are directed at otherwise law-abiding men who don’t cope appropriately with sexual rejection.
Nowhere is this problem more widely decried than at America’s colleges and universities. Date rape is an apparently common campus crime that usually involves two drunk young people, one of whom has an erect penis, and the other of whom is unable to avert what the erect penis typically does. In addition to drunkenness and erect penises, college campuses are also the natural habitat of feminists, who control Women’s Studies departments. The rhetoric of the SlutWalk movement is familiar to anyone who has paid any attention to the rhetoric of campus feminists about date rape, which has now become official dogma.

If you subtract alcohol from the equation, you’d have a lot less of this problem, but the simple fact is that morning-after regrets about drunken sex almost always involve a he-said/she-said situation where it is practically impossible to prove rape. Yet if you offer the best possible advice to prevent such occurrences — “Stay sober and keep your britches on, darling” — this is denounced as “slut-shaming” and “victim-blaming,” and you’re a hateful misogynist.

“Rape culture” hysteria is “mostly man-hating agitation . . . the forefront of the radical feminist agenda,” as Donald Douglas notes, pointing out that a Ms. magazine article on the topic is written by two lesbian professors at Occidental College, Caroline Heldman and Danielle Dirks. Are lesbians really best qualified to advise us on rape prevention? Aren’t they against all PIV? Oh, wait . . .

 

Category: Crime, Education, Feminism, Sex

Ukraine Concedes Crimea to Russia

Posted on | March 19, 2014 | 83 Comments

Putin scores an easy victory:

Bowing to the reality of the Russian military occupation of Crimea a day after Russia announced it was annexing the disputed peninsula, the Ukrainian government said on Wednesday that it had drawn up plans to evacuate all of its military personnel and their families and was prepared to relocate as many as 25,000 of them to mainland Ukraine.
Thousands of Ukrainian soldiers and sailors have been trapped on military bases and other installations here for more than two weeks, surrounded by heavily armed Russian military forces and loosely organized local militia.
While the provisional government in Kiev has insisted that Russia’s annexation of Crimea is illegal and has appealed to international supporters for help, the evacuation announcement by the head of the national security council, Andriy Parubiy, effectively amounted to a surrender of Crimea, at least from a military standpoint.

The “crisis” is over, and we now have the fait accompli.

 

Category: Russia, Ukraine

On ‘The View,’ @Belle_Knox Says ‘Most People’ Start Watching Porn at Age 12

Posted on | March 19, 2014 | 73 Comments

 

Three weeks ago, when I first started blogging about Duke University freshman Miriam Weeks — a/k/a “Belle Knox,” the teenage porn star — some readers probably thought, “Yeah, there he goes again, on a weird marginal tangent.” But then she was interviewed by Piers Morgan on CNN and just Monday she appeared on ABC’s The View and, as weird as it may be, this story isn’t really so “marginal” anymore, is it?

Here’s your Belle Knox money quote from The View:

“Well, I, like most other people, have been watching
porn since I was 12 years old. . . . I watched it alone
and, like most other females, there’s a stigma
against watching pornography, so I was not
open about watching pornography.”

This quote occurs at about the 2-minute mark of the video clip:

A few obvious problems with this quote:

  • Are “most” 12-year-olds watching porn? Really?
  • Does the “stigma against watching porn” apply only to females? Isn’t the creepy guy wanking to porn also stigmatized?
  • Is the problem with 12-year-olds watching porn that they are “not open” about it because of the “stigma”? Or does Miriam Weeks want us to believe it’s healthy for kids to watch porn?

Isn’t there something profoundly disturbing about the idea that your typical seventh-grade classroom is full of porn freaks? But never mind that, says Miriam Weeks/”Belle Knox” — one of The View ladies made her feel “judged”!

‘Belle Knox’, the Duke student-turned-porn-star, claimed today that Sherri Shepherd was very condescending to her during her appearance on The View on Monday.
Knox — whose real name is Miriam Weeks — said that Shepherd refused to accept her decision to star in pornographic films to fund her tutition at the prestigious college — leaving her feeling judged.
Speaking out [Tuesday] on HuffPost Live, the 18-year-old star of some 30 adult movies also revealed that she does in fact regret one particular sex scene she starred in because it was too rough.
Appearing on Monday’s The View, Weeks said that all the women on the panel of the long running topical show made her feel they were scornful of her porn-career, but in particular Shepherd.
‘Sherri Shephered — was incredibly condescending and totally ignored by sexual autonomy,’ said Weeks to HuffPost Live.
Discussing the reaction to her outing by a fellow student as a porn-star with the all-female panel, Weeks said that at least Whoopi Goldberg left her feeling that she wasn’t alone.
‘Whoopi gave me a hug afterwards,’ said Weeks about her appearance on the show in which she revealed she had been watching porn since she was 12-years-old.
Indeed, Weeks also gave details of her regrets in the industry — namely an appearance in a rough sex scene which she filmed in New York City.
‘I regret doing the rough sex scene,’ said Weeks to HuffPost Live’s Ricky Camilleri.
‘But when I did the scene, I was comfortable.’ . . .
‘I love rough sex — and I can do this. That’s what I saw the choice as being.’

The fact that one of her first porn videos showed Miriam Weeks getting slapped around and raped is one of those “empowering” things only a Duke University Women’s Studies major can understand.

Guys who enjoy watching a teenage girl being sexually brutalized on video? Well, certainly we wouldn’t want to them to have a sense of stigma, because they might feel judged or something.

Here’s The View on Tuesday, talking about “feedback”:




 

PREVIOUSLY:

 

Category: Sex

Gay Pedophile Elementary School Teacher Sentenced to 40 Years in Florida Prison

Posted on | March 19, 2014 | 66 Comments

Robert Bacca, convicted sex offender.

Last night when I used the phrase “gay pedophiles” in a headline about a child pornography ring, somebody on Twitter complained that it is politically incorrect to use “gay” and “pedophile” in the same headline, so I went hunting for another reason to do it again:

A former Teacher of the Year semifinalist for Duval County was sentenced to 40 years in prison [March 12] after pleading guilty to two counts of sexually assaulting one of his students.
Christopher Robert Bacca, 27, pleaded guilty to charges of attempted sexual battery on a child younger than 12 and lewd or lascivious molestation. . . .
Six other criminal charges against Bacca, a former Windy Hill Elementary Teacher of the Year, were dropped as part of the plea deal.
The victim told police he “showered with the suspect on more than one occasion while staying the night at his residence,” according to the fourth-grade teacher’s arrest report.
The report said the suspect touched the boy’s private parts repeatedly and performed oral sex on the boy more than once. . . .
Bacca has been in jail since he was arrested in July 2012. . . .
Bacca had been moved from his former school, Long Branch Elementary School, on recommendations by the state Department of Children and Families after the agency, along with police, investigated claims in 2009 that he had kissed a boy on the lips and had slept in the same bed with him.
[An attorney for the second victim’s family] said had the boy’s mother known about the 2009 investigation, she would not have allowed her son to be in contact with Bacca.

In order to be Fair and Balanced, however, I’ll now highlight recent reports of sex crimes by heterosexual school teachers:

• Emily Nesbit, Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania —  An 11th grade English teacher resigned last week after she was accused of having sexual relations with a student at a Pennsylvania high school.
Emily Nesbit, 31, was charged with institutional sex assault, a third-degree felony, on Friday. Police said Nesbit admitted meeting an 18-year-old male student for sex in a classroom after hours at Cumberland Valley High School in Mechanicsburg.
Nesbit is charged based on her position as a teacher, without regard to the age of the student. If convicted she could face up to seven years in prison, prosecutors told ABC 27 News.

• Tanikka Queen, Las Vegas, Nevada — A substitute teacher is facing a laundry list of charges after allegedly having a sexual relationship with a teenage boy.
Ultimately a hickey on the boy’s neck and not keeping a secret, led to their undoing.
Now, 22-year-old Tanikka Queen is charged with multiple counts for allegedly having a sexual affair with the 15-year-old student
Queen faces a whopping 29 charges following her arrest last week. She is the Hyde Park Middle School substitute teacher accused of having a relationship with a teen.
She is facing multiple counts of kidnapping, statutory sexual conduct and luring a child with technology, along with one count of sexual conduct between an employee and a student. . . .
The arrest follows a relationship that police said began around Valentine’s Day and lasted more than two weeks.
During that time, there were 2,400 text messages from Queen’s cellphone and more than 100 phone calls and photos exchanged.
In one message, she wrote about her true feelings for the boy, “I’m serous. I’m putting my job on the line talking to you so how can I not be serious.”

• Amanda Brennan, Las Vegas, Nevada — A former high school English teacher was sentenced Tuesday in Las Vegas to five years of probation for an inappropriate relationship with a teenage student almost a year ago.
Amanda Nicole Brennan, 25, has a chance to reduce her felony conviction to a misdemeanor if she stays out of trouble. But she also faces one to four years in prison if she slips and violates the sentence imposed after her Oct. 31 guilty plea to felony charge of luring a child with intent to engage in sexual conduct.
She also has to register as a sex offender. . . .
Police had said the former Foothill High School teacher told investigators she knew it was wrong to date the boy, who was 15 years old at the time, but she did it anyway.
The boy’s parents reported that Brennan picked up the teen against their wishes and returned him home past curfew. The teen’s mother learned Brennan’s name and age from the security guard at their gated Henderson community, where Brennan had come to pick up the boy.
The teen told police that he and Brennan loved each other and had kissed twice, but only cuddled in the back of her car the night he went out without his parents’ permission.
Officials also found about 1,000 text messages between Brennan and the boy in a nine-day period before Brennan’s arrest last May 10.

• David Thompson, Dade City, Florida — A Pasco County teacher is under arrest in Miami after investigators say he booked a plane trip to Belize to have sex with two underage girls.
David Wendel Thompson, 48, is a social studies teacher at Centennial Middle School in Dade City.
According to a criminal complaint, Thompson used Facebook to contact and have sexually explicit conversations with a 13-year-old and 15-year-old female.
Investigators say he booked a flight to Belize City with a layover in Miami. They say he was refused entry to Belize and arrested at the airport.
Thompson has worked for Pasco schools since 1994, according to district spokesperson Linda Cobbe.
He is charged with enticing minors, and made his first appearance in court Monday morning.

Far be it from me to suggest that gay pedophiles are more common or more dangerous than heterosexual pedophiles.

 

Category: Crime, Education, Gays, Sex
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