The Other McCain

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

Hollywood Actress Urges Hollywood to Create More Jobs for Actresses

Posted on | March 3, 2014 | 35 Comments

If any misogynist is looking for evidence of female mental inferiority, the Huffington Post’s “Women” category is a treasure trove, with dumb writers and dumber topics (e.g., “Why I Hate Wearing Bras” and “I Was On Reality TV — Here’s What It’s Like To Fake ‘Real Life‘”), suggesting that there are two basic ideas behind the category:

  1. Women are too stupid to be interested in actual news, and require their own special kind of non-news reading;
    and
  2. The only people who can write this kind of meaningless drek without embarrassment are untalented women.

Bad women writers producing stupid articles for dumb women readers — that’s the “Huffington Post Women” category in a nutshell. And as if we needed more evidence of HuffPo’s belief in female inferiority, this was a feature article in the section Monday:

Cate Blanchett Lets Hollywood Know
Women Are Not A ‘Niche’ Audience

Cate Blanchett has done it again.
As if there weren’t already enough reasons for us to love Blanchett, last night she stole our hearts all over again with a gracious yet enlightening acceptance speech for Best Actress at the Academy Awards.
Our favorite moment? When she called out Hollywood’s sexist tendencies and reminded everyone that people really do want to see films with female leads:

And thank you to… those of us in the industry who are still foolishly clinging to the idea that female films, with women at the center, are niche experiences. They are not — audiences want to see them and, in fact, they earn money. The world is round, people.

Far be it from my purpose to defend “the industry” from any of its critics. If Cate Blanchett wants the world to believe that Hollywood is run by a bunch of sexist swine whose misogyny is so powerful as to transcend their notorious greed, she’ll get no argument from me. But everybody who follows the movie business knows that the economic challenge in the age of instant-download video and home-theater giant screens is how to create an “event” that will get people to leave home and take the kids to the multiplex. The Top 10 U.S. box-office films of 2013 were:

1. The Hunger Games: Catching Fire
2. Iron Man 3
3. Frozen
4. Despicable Me 2
5. Man of Steel
6. Gravity
7. Monsters University
8. The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug –
9. Fast & Furious 6
10. Oz The Great and Powerful

I don’t pay much attention to movies, so I can’t say if any of those are “female films, with women at the center,” but most of them clearly are not. Cate Blanchett keeps working as Galadriel in the Lord of the Rings series, so she got a spot in the Top 10, but it’s hard to argue for The Hobbit as a movie “with women at the center.”

Why is it, however, that there is something inherently righteous about actresses demanding more work for actresses? Would we applaud Clint Eastwood if he gave an Oscar speech demanding that Hollywood create more roles for geriatric geezers?

But if you’re looking for thoughtful criticism of the self-serving inanities uttered by movie stars — or thoughtful discussion of anything, really — don’t look for it in HuffPo’s “Women” category.

 

British Group Claimed ‘Research’ Showed ‘No Identifiable Damage’ of Child Sex

Posted on | March 3, 2014 | 14 Comments

Last week, we reported on the controversy about British Labour Party officials’ ties to a group that lobbied on behalf of pedophiles in the 1970s (“The UK Left’s Pro-Pedophile Past“). The controversy has continued, as the dishonest excuses of officials are exposed:

Evidence has emerged that the views of the Paedophile Information Exchange influenced policy-making at the National Council for Civil Liberties when it was run by former Labour Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt.
PIE members were lobbying NCCL officials for the age of consent to be reduced and campaigning for “paedophile love”.
Their view that children were not harmed by having sex with adults appears to have been adopted by those at the top of the civil liberties group.
Today we publish extracts from an NCCL report written for the Criminal Law Revision Committee in 1976 when Mrs Hewitt was general secretary.
It says: “Where both partners are aged 10 or over, but under 14, a consenting sexual act should not be an offence. As the age of consent is arbitrary, we propose an overlap of two years on either side of 14.
“Childhood sexual experiences, willingly engaged in, with an adult result in no identifiable damage.
“The Criminal Law Commission should be prepared to accept the evidence from follow-up research on child ‘victims’ which show there is little subsequent effect after a child has been ‘molested’.
“The real need is a change in the attitude which assumes that all cases of paedophilia result in lasting damage.
“The present legal penalties are too high and reinforce the misinformation and prejudice. The duty of the court should be to inquire into all the relevant circumstances with the intention, not of meting out severe punishment, but of determining the best solution in the interests of both child and paedophile.”

When people put words like “victims” and “molested” in scare-quotes, when they complain that “the age of consent is arbitrary” and talk about “misinformation and prejudice” against pedophiles, it is not unfair to say such people are pro-pedophile. Labour Party officials tried to cover up their shocking record:

Explosive documents in Patricia Hewitt’s name arguing for the age of sexual consent to be lowered and that incest should be legalised have forced the former Labour minister into a humbling apology.
The former Health Secretary finally said sorry after more official paperwork laid bare the disturbing links between National Council for Civil Liberties and the vile paedophile group that campaigned to allow sex with children.
Miss Hewitt finally apologised when doubt was cast on her claims she had never ‘condoned’ child abusers from the Paedophile Information Exchange (PIE).
The Labour minister was the sole name on an NCCL press release issued in March 1976 which says ‘NCCL proposes that the age of consent should be lowered to 14 with special provisions for situations where the partners are close in age’.
The press release came out as NCCL issued a report on sexual law reforms, The Sun said.
In further remarks, Miss Hewitt added: ‘The report argues that the crime of incest should be abolished. In our view, no benefit accrues to anyone by making incest a crime when committed between mutually consenting persons over the age of consent.’
The minutes of a meeting held at the Mother Red Cap pub in north London in January 1976 showed further close links between senior Labour figures and calls to legalise sex with children.
The meeting was attended by 27 people — including Miss Hewitt and her lawyer husband Nicholas Birtles, Jack Dromey and Sir Henry Hodge, the husband of former Labour minister Margaret Hodge until his death in 2009.

This has led to damaging headlines in the UK:

Senior Labour figures
in new paedophile link

The Sunday Times

Labour MPs’ child sex link row deepens
Telegraph

Home Office ‘gave Paedophile Information
Exchange £70,000′: Group allegedly given
taxpayers’ money between 1977 and 1980

Daily Mail

It would have been a tenable defense — probably not popular, but tenable as an argument — if these Labour officials had admitted the truth and said, in effect, “Hey, it was the Seventies. We were a bunch of callow 20-something radicals. Ideas about ‘sexual liberation’ were quite fashionable. When pedophiles came along and made claims that lined up with other popular ideas about ‘rights’ and ‘freedom’ and ‘equality,’ we were sympathetic, and really didn’t think through these arguments very well. Obviously, in retrospect, we can see we were wrong. Also, everybody was doing a lot of drugs at the time.”

Such an explanation would not exculpate them, but at least it would be honest. What they did instead was dishonest, and this raises questions not only about their judgment, but also their integrity. Of course, if they had any integrity, they wouldn’t be in Labour, would they?

 

 

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Something For The Evangelical Atheists To Contemplate

Posted on | March 3, 2014 | 23 Comments

— by Wombat-socho


One of the most annoying things about the new crop of evangelical atheists – the people who not only don’t believe in God but are insistent that you shouldn’t either – is their ingrained belief that no intelligent person could possibly believe in God, and therefore anybody who does is stupid. This says more about their smug ignorance of history than anything else; the history of Western Civilization is rife with learned men who were also men of God, Roger Bacon and Gregor Mendel being merely two of the most prominent. The landscape is also studded with universities founded by Catholics and Protestants alike, many of them ranked among the greatest in the world, while one can search in vain for colleges founded by atheists that have accomplished anything of note.


This came to mind over the weekend when I was visiting Smitty in search of relief from the drudgery that the FMJRA had become, as he had a copy of Donald Knuth’s Things a Computer Scientist Rarely Talks About. For those of you that don’t recognize the name, Dr. Knuth is one of the foremost computer scientists; he holds a doctorate in mathematics, is a professor emeritus at Stanford, and has a list of accomplishments as long as both my arms. He is not, by any sensible definition of the word, stupid; rather, the man is a genius, and a humble, humorous one at that. He is also a Wisconsin Synod Lutheran, which came as a shock to me since the Wisconsin Synod Lutherans are more than slightly hardcore, and precisely the sort of people the atheists tend to mock as being dumb Christer sheeples.


Perhaps another useful example of the type is the famous science fiction writer (and scientist in his own right) Isaac Asimov. Dr. A saw no conflict between science and religion, and in fact published a well-regarded guide to the Bible despite being an avowed atheist and humanist. His ire was reserved for superstition and pseudoscience, as opposed to organized religion and its adherents. There are many others like Knuth and Asimov, but I just wanted to throw a couple of examples out there to illustrate the type rather than provide an exhaustive list.


Asimov’s Guide to the Bible: The Old Testament
Things a Computer Scientist Rarely Talks About
Asimov’s Guide to the Bible: The New Testament

Kim Novak’s Oscar Appearance Sparks Remarks About Age, Plastic Surgery

Posted on | March 3, 2014 | 20 Comments

People say disrespectful things on Twitter every day, but when 81-year-old Kim Novak showed up on Sunday’s Oscar broadcast to present the Best Animated Feature award to Frozen, the sarcasm about Novak’s surgically altered face was cruel: “Harsh critics took to social media to analyze her possible overuse of anti-aging interventions.”

This was unfortunate because (a) Kim Novak is a recent breast cancer survivor, and (b) Novak was one of Hollywood’s legendary beauties of the 1950s and ’60s.

For younger readers who don’t remember, there was time when Kim Novak’s name was mentioned along with Marilyn Monroe’s as the most desirable of movie stars. She twice starred with Frank Sinatra, in The Man With the Golden Arm (1955) and Pal Joey (1957). While her film career was uneven — she never matched the sensation she caused starring opposite Jimmy Stewart in Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo (1958) — Novak continued to be a sought-after leading lady, cast in starring roles in the film adaptations of Somerset Maugham’s Of Human Bondage (1964) and Daniel Defoe’s Moll Flanders (1965). According to People magazine, Novak “gave up the Hollywood limelight for a quiet life on a 240-acre ranch in Oregon with her veterinarian husband Bob Malloy, whom she married in 1976.”

As unfortunate as her most recent plastic surgery may have been, it was wrong of the Oscar producers to make Kim Novak an object of ridicule, deliberately creating a cruel visual pun by having her announce the Academy Award to Frozen.

Don’t tell me that was unintentional, assholes.

 


In The Mailbox, 03.03.14

Posted on | March 3, 2014 | 1 Comment

— compiled by Wombat-socho


OVER THE TRANSOM
First Street Journal: The Feminism I Support
Proof Positive: Chicago Fireman
Michelle Malkin: When Will America End The Cash-For-Visas Racket?
Twitchy: Has Laura Ingraham Discovered Kerry’s Secret Plan For Russia?
Susannah Breslin: What The Duke Porn Star Reveals About Privacy


RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Power: Governor Jerry Brown Asks, “How Many People Can Get Stoned And Still Have A Great State?”
American Thinker: Dangerous Times – Putin Slaps Down Euro-American Fantasyland
Blackfive: On The Ukraine
Conservatives4Palin: Governor Palin – Yes, I Could See This From Alaska
Jammie Wearing Fools: Two Americas – DC Elite Have Escape Hatch From Obamacare
Joe For America: Drugged Up, Whored Out Screwups – 2014 Oscars Recap
JustOneMinute: The “Gravitas” Gap Continues To Widen
Pat Dollard: Jerusalem Post Columnist Tells Obama “You’re Not Scaring Us”
Protein Wisdom: Double Facepalm Moment From The White House
Shot In The Dark: DFL – “Peasants! Continue Rendering Tribute!”
The Jawa Report: Sandcrawler PSA – The A-10 Was Designed For Use Against Columns Of Soviet Tanks And APCs
The Lonely Conservative: Russia Takes Complete Control Of Crimean Peninsula, John Kerry Asks “What Reset?”
This Ain’t Hell: 6000 Russian Troops In The Crimea
Megan McArdle: Busted State Obamacare Sites Have Silver Lining


Our Worthless Media

Posted on | March 3, 2014 | 72 Comments

Ace highlighted this Saturday, but in case you missed it, here’s Walter Russell Mead at the Public Interest:

Politico report calls it “a crisis that no one anticipated.” The Daily Beastreporting on Friday’s US intelligence assessment that “Vladimir Putin’s military would not invade Ukraine,” quotes a Senate aide claiming that “no one really saw this kind of thing coming.”
Op-eds from all over the legacy press this week helped explained why. Through the rose tinted lenses of a media community deeply convinced that President Obama and his dovish team are the masters of foreign relations, nothing poor Putin did could possibly derail the stately progress of our genius president. . . . Headlines like “Why Russia Won’t Invade Ukraine,” “No, Russia Will Not Intervene in Ukraine,” and “5 Reasons for Everyone to Calm Down About Crimea” weren’t hard to find in our most eminent publications. . . .
American experts and academics assume that smart people everywhere must want the same things and reach the same conclusions about the way the world works.
How many times did foolishly confident American experts and officials come out with some variant of the phrase “We all share a common interest in a stable and prosperous Ukraine.” We may think that’s true, but Putin doesn’t.

One hates to wear out the Munich analogies by overuse, but this was in fact exactly the attitude of British supporters of appeasement in the 1930s: Reasonable civilized people simply cannot get it through their heads that there are people in the world who are neither reasonable nor civilized, and who can only be deterred by force.

The elites who run our government and the elites who run our media share the same kind of blindness, an acquired blindness that one can only obtain by attending the finest universities.

 

LIVE AT FIVE: 03.04.14

Posted on | March 3, 2014 | 2 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho


TOP NEWS
Russia Tightens Hold On Crimea With 16,000 Troops

“Steel” in his spine? Yeah, suuuure.

Russia Tells UN Yanukovych Asked For Intervention


Rumsfeld on Ukraine: It Is U.S. Weakness That Has Shaken The World



Blade Runner Trial Underway
Live broadcasts miss bizarre off-camera turns

Train Station Rampage Further Strains Ethnic Tensions In PRC
Authorities blame Uighur separatists for attack



POLITICS
Obama Budget Seeks To Unify Democrats Rather Than Compromise With Republicans

Paul Ryan is not surprised by the massive giveaways

$4 trillion budget likely dead on arrival

South Carolina Drops Effort To Enforce Immigration Law

Christian Alternative To Obamacare Growing Fast As Deadline Nears


All 50 Governors Oppose Administration’s Proposed National Guard Cuts

Supremes Refuse To Rule on City’s Illegal Immigration Ordinance

Gov. Kitzhaber Pessimistic About Cover Oregon Website

Tea Party Losing Steam In Primaries?

Is Petraeus Being Silenced By Ongoing Probe?

Boehner Snubbed By CPAC



THE ECONOMY, STUPID
Asian Crude Mixed As Traders Eye Ukraine Crisis: NYMEX $104.79, Brent $111.22
Gold Holds Near Four-Month High On Ukraine Crisis
Asian Stocks Mixed As Ukraine Tensions Continue
High Heating Bills Distort Spending Data
Buffett: Keystone Pipeline Would Be Good For Country
Wheat Retreats With Corn As Ukraine Shipments Avoid Disruption
Apple’s New Car System Turns Your Dashboard Into An iPhone Accessory
Kickstarter Surges Past $1 Billion Mark
Zynga Reboots Three Of Its Biggest Franchises For Mobile
Samsung Announces New ARM-Powered Chromebooks
OUYA Everywhere Is Bringing The Android Game Platform To Other Devices



SPORTS
LeBron James Tops 60 Points For First Time; Heat Burn Bobcats

Who was that masked man?

Sets personal and team record as Heat top Bobcats 124-107


Ruff Gets 600th NHL Coaching Win As Stars Down Sabres



Umpires Vindicated In First Tests Of MLB Instant Replay System

Timbermutts Outlast Nuggets, 132-128

#1 Lady Huskies Rout #3 Louisville 68-48

Blue Jackets Edge Maple Leafs 2-1

Detwiler And Roark Get Work As Nats Fall To Yankees 4-2



FAMOUS FOR BEING FAMOUS
Leah Remini: I Left Co$ For My Daughter

“[My friends] didn’t care about doing the right thing. That showed me everything the Church taught me was a lie.”


Abandoned cult to protect daughter


Lady Gaga, Sharon Osbourne End Feud, Strangle Each Other At Elton John’s Oscar Viewing Party

Scarlett Johansson Pregnant, Expecting First Child


Ellen Flops In Long, Boring, Self-Involved Oscars Show

Backlash Against Kim Novak Snark On Twitter Is Immediate And Harsh

Most Tweeted About During Oscars? Jennifer Lawrence

50 Cent Backs Off Suggestion That Diddy, Rick Ross Are Gay Lovers

Taylor Swift Stalker Threatens To Kill Anyone That Comes Between Him And His “Bride”

Mary-Kate Olsen Shows Off Massive Engagement Ring



FOREIGNERS
Netanyahu Rallies U.S. Supporters After Obama Pushes For Compromise With Palestinians
Nepal Orders Climbers To Clean Up Garbage On Everest
Crimean Tatars Denounce Russian Incursion
India Puts All Rolls-Royce Deals On Hold Pending Bribery Probe
Emirates Jail Three Jihadis For Up To Seven Years
India Condemns Terrorist Attack In PRC
Venezuelan Opposition Maintains Protests Despite Carnival Season



BLOGS & STUFF
First Street Journal: Western Intellectuals And The Misunderstanding Of Power
Proof Positive: There’s Still A Bear In The Woods
Doug Powers: Kerry – “That Re-Set Thing With Russia Was A Long Time Ago”
Twitchy: The New Republic Admits Romney Was “Exactly Right” About Russia
American Power: What “Free Palestine” Really Means
American Thinker: Banning The American Flag And Reconquista
Blackfive: Kramer And Putin
Conservatives4Palin: Governor Palin’s Interview On Hannity
Don Surber: Daily Scoreboard, March 3
Jammie Wearing Fools: Iran Executes Two For Homosexuality, Iowahawk Wonders Why “U.S. Wedding Cake Activists” Silent
Joe For America: Muslim Barber Refuses to Cut Lesbian’s Hair – Whose Rights Trump Whose?
JustOneMinute: You Go To Peace With The President You Have
Pat Dollard: Code Pink Founder Jailed In Egypt – Her Jail Phone # Posted If You Want To Call
Protein Wisdom: Di Blasio Kicks 700 Kids Out Of High-Performing Charter Schools
Shot In The Dark: Palin 1, Obama 0
The Jawa Report: Surenos Gangbangers In…Syria?
The Lonely Conservative: Another Costly EPA Regulation Unleashed On The Economy
This Ain’t Hell: Ninth Circuit Says Not Safe For Students To Wear U.S. Flag T-Shirts On May 5
Megan McArdle: Can Lipitor Save Big Pharma?


Kevin Zeese, Neal Rauhauser and the ‘Occupy Infiltrator’ Frame-Up

Posted on | March 2, 2014 | 10 Comments

The first “SWATting” generally mentioned in connection with Brett Kimberlin involved a man who had never heard of Kimberlin at the time. Mike Stack of New Jersey was targeted in June 2011 because of his connection to exposing the “WeinerGate” scandal:

Neal Rauhauser’s involvement with Brett Kimberlin apparently began in 2011. In February [2012], Rauhauser published a bizarre eight-page document (“Andrew Breitbart’s ISR Cell?”) expressing the belief that he and Kimberlin were targets of a conspiracy involving Andrew Breitbart and many others, including Mike Stack, who played a key role in exposing Democrat Rep. Anthony Weiner’s online sexcapades.
Rauhauser is a fanatical “Weiner Truther,” believing in a conspiracy theory version of the WeinerGate scandal in which the congressman was the victim of a “set up” hoax perpetrated by Andrew Breitbart and/or shadowy Republican operatives. This left-wing tinfoil-hat stuff doesn’t really interest me, but it explains Rauhauser’s apparent obsession with Mike Stack . . .
What do “SWATting” victims Patterico and Mike Stack have in common, other than the fact that, as Patterico himself notes, Rauhauser hates their guts?

You can read the whole thing to refresh your memory. Because the federal RICO lawsuit (“Kimberlin v. the Universe, al.“) makes much of the claim that bloggers have accused — or “imputed” — Kimberlin of SWATting, it’s important to point out that my most in-depth article about this whole complex situation makes clear that Neal Rauhauser was a far more likely suspect. And, of course, it was Rauhauser’s status as Brett Kimberlin’s self-described “associate” that drew my attention to Kimberlin in the first place.

What about Kevin Zeese? In May 2012, on the letterhead of Kimberlin’s 501(c)4 group Velvet Revolution US, Zeese wrote a letter threatening legal action against Ali Akbar. In his lawsuit, Kimberlin doesn’t even mention his role with Velvet Revolution, just as he does not mention his associates Rauhauser and Zeese. This is interesting, because Rauhauser and Zeese were connected in a February 2012 episode in which Zeese and his partner Margaret Flowers wrongly accused Mike Stack of “infiltrating” Occupy protests:

A few days later we uncovered the second infiltrator, Michael Stack, when he was urging people on Freedom Plaza [in Washington, D.C.] to resist police with force. We later learned he was from the Leadership Institute which trains youth in right wing ideology and tactics. We were told he had also been at Occupy Wall Street provoking violence.

This was false. Mike Stack never set foot at either the “Occupy DC” or “Occupy Wall Street” protests, and Mike Stack never had anything to do with the Leadership Institute. Zeese and Flowers repeated this smear even after Mike Stack had already debunked it, and the acknowledged source of this smear was Neal Rauhauser.

Keep in mind: This happened in February 2012.

Three months before I had ever written a word about Brett Kimberlin, SWATting target Mike Stack was being smeared by Kimberlin’s associates Neal Rauhauser and Kevin Zeese. The only reason Stack had been targeted by Rauhauser was the same reason Rauhauser targeted Patrick Frey — i.e., both played a role in exposing the 2011 “WeinerGate” scandal. And pay close attention to what Rauhauser (“Stranded Wind”) did at Daily Kos:

By July 27, 2011, Rauhauser declared that Patterico “looks to be a pretty good candidate for the planner/operator behind Weinergate.”
Patterico had been one of Kimberlin’s prime targets since October 2010, and by late July 2011, Rauhauser was using his DailyKos diary to attack Patterico every other day. If you’ll read Rauhauser’s July 4 post, you’ll find that this isn’t exactly a coincidence:

Who has been in sight, frantically flogging explanations that don’t add up, is Los Angeles County Deputy District Attorney John Patrick Frey . . .
And when someone forwarded me the complaint regarding Frey running a cyberstalking campaign in conjunction with South Easton, Massachusetts resident Seth L. Allen, well, maybe this whole situation is about to become much clearer. . . .

Three days later, on July 7, Rauhauser announces on DKos his plan to move from Illinois to Washington, D.C., for a job that would “provide for me more in a week than I make for a whole month at my part time day job here in Illinois.” And in October 2011, Rauhauser described himself as doing “protective service work” for a client who is “the head of a Washington D.C. NGO.”
This description fits Kimberlin, whose 501(c)3 Justice Through Music Project has collected about $1.8 million in contributions since its founding in 2005. In December 20, 2011, Seth Allen himself made that connection in a post titled, “Sadistic Cybersmearing and the Roots of Blogging Fascism.”

If you’ll follow that Seth Allen link, you’ll notice Rauhauser invoking “an annoyed FBI agent who will confirm the back story” of what Rauhauser called “a credible death threat” by Allen against Rauhauser’s self-described “client,” Brett Kimberlin. And, as Allen said, Kimberlin in December 2011 was “attempting to have [Allen] imprisoned for contempt of court.”

So here you have Neal Rauhauser and Kevin Zeese, both known associates of Kimberlin, involved in the smearing of Mike Stack, while Rauhauser was separately involved in the harassment of Seth Allen and Patrick Frey. Yet Kimberlin’s federal lawsuit says nothing about Rauhauser or Zeese, nor does Kimberlin’s lawsuit mention Velvet Revolution US, the organization that brought him to the attention of the bloggers he’s suing in federal court for allegedly “creating false narratives” about Kimberlin. But by omitting the involvement of Rauhauser, Zeese and Velvet Revolution from his version of events, it is Kimberlin who is creating a “false narrative.”

Quod erat demonstrandum.



 

 

 

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