The Other McCain

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

VIDEO: Harry Reid’s Koch Rant

Posted on | March 15, 2014 | 14 Comments

In a Senate floor speech Thursday, the Senate Majority Leader used the word “radical” 21 times in attacking the Left’s bogeymen:

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) on Thursday accused Republicans of holding up crucial assistance to Ukraine in order to protect the Koch brothers.
Reid tied the billionaire brothers who have bankrolled conservative causes to GOP demands that language delaying the Internal Revenue Service’s regulation of non-profit political advocacy groups be added to the Ukraine package. . . .
“It’s hard for me to comprehend how with a clear conscience they could say, ‘Ukrainians, we probably can’t help you because we’re trying to protect the Koch brothers,’” he said on Thursday. “And not only that, they’re saying to the American people that protecting the Koch brothers is more important than helping our country.”

 

Of the top 10 political contributors for the 2014 campaign cycle, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, five represent Big Labor: The National Education Association (#2), the Carpenters and Joiners Union (#4), the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (#5), AFL-CIO (#6) and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (#10). Combined with the #1 donor — the Democratic Governors Association — these groups have contributed $21,717,266 to Democrats so far. By comparison, Koch Industries (#45) has spent $963,250, according to the same source.

So what’s with the Koch obsession? Allahpundit professed that he was mystified, but as Chris Good of ABC News explained, the Kochs are believed to have contributed to the Americans for Prosperity TV ad campaign targeting vulnerable Senate Democrats for their ObamaCare votes. I say the Kochs are “believed” to have done this because AFP is a 501(c)4 group and, as such, isn’t required to make its donors public. This drives Democrats nuts, because . . . well, because Democrats hate free speech, I guess.

Anyway, what Harry Reid and the other Koch-mongering Democrats are doing is (a) trying to justify the administration’s crackdown on 501(c)4 groups, (b) hoping to fire up Democrat donors, (c) seeking media sympathy, and (d) trying to establish a narrative that the reason they’re about to get their asses kicked in the mid-terms is because of “shadowy” right-wing mega-funders.

It’s an excuse, in other words — a scapegoat rationalization intended to shift the blame for Democrat political failures onto pre-demonized right-wing villains, so that when Republicans take over the Senate after the 2014 elections, Democrats can claim they were cheated, and assert that the new GOP majority is illegitimate.

 

Category: Harry Reid

Two Sluts Do ‘Empowering’ Podcast

Posted on | March 14, 2014 | 52 Comments

The headline at progressive blog Alternet:

“Guys We Fucked:” The Anti Slut-Shaming
Podcast That Everyone’s Talking About

Everybody is talking about this? Really? It’s a podcast, for crying out loud. But never mind that. Here’s the background:

Corinne Fisher and Krystyna Hutchinson have had a lot of sex — and they’re not afraid to talk about it.
After Fisher went through a rough breakup, the two New York-based stand-up comedians, both in their mid-20s, decided to pool their collective un-shame about sex and create a podcast in which they interviewed men they’d slept with. The first episode of “Guys We F**ked, The Anti Slut-Shaming Podcast” was released in December. Since then, their audience has grown quickly, and the show now has over 200,000 subscribers on SoundCloud.
“We’re saying, have a lot of sex and be proud of it,” Hutchinson explains at the beginning of the debut episode.

Here’s Fisher:

I was going through a really tough breakup and I was trying to think of different ways I could better myself as a human being. I had this John Cusack-like idea that if I went back and talked to different people I had slept with or had relationships with, I could figure out if I was doing something wrong. That progressed into Krystyna and I making it into something a little more empowering and a little less personal.

Here’s Hutchinson:

Hate stems from fear and I think [people who engage in “slut-shaming” are] just afraid of a woman who is empowered and sexually in charge and in control of her own body. And I also think that some people were raised to feel this way because the people in their lives didn’t have a positive attitude towards women, and they don’t realize that it’s messed up.

How many reiterations of this claim — that men who disapprove of promiscuity are afraid of “empowered” women — must we endure, before the voice of reason gets a chance to interrupt?

If sex is merely a source of recreational pleasure — always this, and never anything more — then the only argument against promiscuity is the risk of venereal disease or unwanted pregnancy. As serious as those risks may be, the stronger argument against promiscuity requires us to understand sex in its natural function, as the means of prcreation, in the context of discussing the need to form enduring pair-bonds to provide secure upbringing for children.

Promiscuous people become habituated to having a variety of sexual partners, beginning and ending “relationships” as soon as they or their partner get bored with it. A person in their 20s who has been sexually active since their mid-teens, who has gone through a half-dozen “relationships,” as well as a number of casual short-term “hook-ups,” will have difficulty adjusting to married life, because the habit of continually seeking new partners is ingrained in their personality.

So a promiscuous person — however desirable they may be as a partner for recreational sex — is undesirable as a spouse, because of the likelihood that they will be adulterous. A guy doesn’t want to marry a slut because he figures she’ll become bored with monogamy and cheat on him. The prospect of marriage to such a woman entails a high risk that the unlucky guy’s future will include child-support payments and weekend visitation. Married women — and single women who would like to get married — disdain sluts because promiscuous women make unencumbered sex readily available, thus reducing the incentives for men to get married and stay married.

The dignity of all women, and the security of their children, is impaired by the shameless promiscuity of sluts. Sure, “it takes two to tango,” and men are responsible for their own actions, but women whose behavior fosters an expectation of the easy availability of sexual “hook-ups” are harming other women’s prospects for happiness.

Corinne Fisher and Krystyna Hutchinson probably don’t discuss that perspective on “Guys We Fucked,” and I’ll also guess that amid all their chatter about how “empowering” it is to sleep around, they never discuss promiscuity as symptomatic of low self-esteem.

The correlation between promiscuity and emotional disorders is not random. You hear young single guys talking about this problem a lot: “Hey, I met this girl at a party and we hooked up right away. The sex was awesome at first, but we broke up after a couple of weeks because she turned out to be The Psycho Bitch From Hell.”

Gee, do you think that’s a coincidence?

Crazy women often have “issues” with substance abuse and difficulty maintaining relationships, so when you meet a drunk chick at a party or in a bar, and she’s eager to hook up with you, there is a non-zero chance that she’s The Psycho Bitch From Hell.

Women who use sex as a way of dealing with self-esteem problems usually wind up getting dumped by a series of users and losers, experiences that only reinforce their self-esteem deficits. They can talk all they want about how “empowered” they are. They’re not.

Feminism: The Ideology of Insanity.

 

Category: Feminism, Sex

Why Does Ezra Klein Hate Gays?

Posted on | March 14, 2014 | 91 Comments

It’s a silly question, but his fellow liberals are trying to tell Klein he can’t hire who he wants at Vox.com:

Hipster Homophobia: Ezra Klein’s Vox
hires Falwell-loving gay-bashing “gay”
— John Aravosis

Ezra Klein’s Queer New Hire
— American Prospect

Vox’s Unbelievably Terrible New Hire
— Slate

Since when did having the “correct” opinion about homosexuality become a necessary qualification for a reporter?

 

Category: Gays

Death at SXSW

Posted on | March 14, 2014 | 12 Comments

Madness:

Rashad Charjuan Owens, 21, the driver in a deadly downtown wreck who police suspected of driving drunk, will be charged with two counts of capital murder and 23 counts of aggravated assault with a vehicle after the car plowed through a crowded street full of people waiting for a South by Southwest concert, according to police.
An Austin woman riding on the back of a moped and a man from the Netherlands on a bicycle were killed when the car hit a crowd of people outside Mohawk. More than 20 others taken to the hospital.
The Travis County Medical Examiner’s Office said 27-year-old Jamie West of Austin was killed after Owens’ car slammed into a moped she was riding on.
According to a post on MassiveMusic.com, one of the victim’s was 35-year-old Steven Craenmehr. “This is an irreplaceable loss for the MassiveMusic family and we are grateful for the years we spent with him,” the statement said. Craenmehr was on a bicycle at the time of the crash.
Two people remained in critical condition, and three others had serious injuries and were being treated at area hospitals, Austin-Travis County EMS Chief of Staff James Shamard said.

Category: Crime

‘I’d Had Enough of the Insanity’

Posted on | March 13, 2014 | 77 Comments

Inside the madhouse of Kremlin-funded Russia Today:

Staci Bivens knew something was seriously wrong when her bosses at Russia Today asked her to put together a story alleging that Germany — Europe’s economic powerhouse — was a failed state.
“It was me and two managers and they had already discussed what they wanted,” Bivens, an American who worked in RT’s Moscow headquarters from 2009 through 2011, said of a meeting she’d had to discuss the segment before a planned reporting trip to Germany. “They called me in and it was really surreal. One of the managers said, ‘The story is that the West is failing, Germany is a failed state.’”
Bivens, who had spent time in Germany, told the managers the story wasn’t true — the term “failed state” is reserved for countries that fail to provide basic government services, like Somalia or Congo, not for economically advanced, industrialized nations like Germany. They insisted. Bivens refused. RT flew a crew to Germany ahead of Bivens, who was flown in later to do a few standups and interviews about racism in Germany. It was the beginning of the end of her RT career.
“At that point I’d been there for a little bit and I’d had enough of the insanity,” Bivens said. She stayed until the end of her contract in 2011 and didn’t make an effort to renew it.
Judging by interviews with seven former and current employees, Bivens’ story is typical. RT, the global English-language news network funded by the Russian government, has come into the spotlight since the Russian invasion of Crimea, which the network has defended tooth-and-nail. The invasion has led to two high-profile rebellions within the ranks: first, an on-air condemnation of the invasion by RT America host Abby Martin, followed days later by the live resignation of another host, Liz Wahl. Martin, who hosts an opinion show, said that Russia’s actions were wrong; Wahl, a news anchor, went one step further, saying that she could not work at a network that found Russia’s actions acceptable.
The public shake-up and skewed coverage of Ukraine has pulled aside RT’s curtain, exposing the network’s propaganda apparatus, which relies on a number of Western reporters and producers. . . .

Read the rest by Rosie Gray at BuzzFeed. (Yes, I know — everybody hates BuzzFeed, but this is a good story.)

 

Category: Media Bias, Russia

‘An Honest Mistake?’ Has Brett Kimberlin Ever Done Anything ‘Honest’ in His Life?

Posted on | March 12, 2014 | 39 Comments

U.S. District Judge Paul W. Grimm has been thrown onto the horns of a legal dilemma by the extraordinary procedural misconduct of pro se plaintiff Brett Kimberlin. As the attorney for Michelle Malkin and Twitchy has pointed out, this is unprecedented:

Mr. Kimberlin’s conduct has taken this Court into uncharted waters. Twitchy’s research has not found a single case, Federal or State, involving a party’s forgery of a court summons — much less, the subsequent sending of it through the U.S. Mail with the intent to deceive. This is a serious matter, and obviously one that calls for a severe sanction. . . . [D]ismissal with prejudice and a significant award of fees against Mr. Kimberlin is warranted. . . .
[T]he questions raised to date regarding Mr. Kimberlin’s “summons” to Twitchy and other certifications to the court, against the backdrop of his many crimen falsi convictions, make this lack of authentication central. Neither the defendants nor this Court can have any confidence that anything Mr. Kimberlin attaches to his filings, is what it purports to be.

Now, Kimberlin has filed a Second Amended Complaint, even while overwhelming arguments against his First Amended Complaint have yet to be ruled on by Judge Grimm. Kimberlin’s heinous abuse of the court process has already damaged the defendants’ ability to get justice in this case and now, after the fatal legal flaws in his First Amended Complaint have been thoroughly exposed, we are confronted with the Second Amended Complaint that in many ways amounts to an entirely different lawsuit. We are left hanging in limbo, wondering whether (a) Judge Grimm will require us to reply to the Second Amended Complaint, or (b) Judge Grimm now has enough evidence of Kimberlin’s mala fides to dismiss the whole thing in toto.

Obviously, I hope and pray that it is (b), but Judge Grimm must consider the likelihood that if he dismisses Kimberlin’s (entirely meritless) lawsuit, this will mean that the Fourth Circuit will have to deal with Kimberlin’s (equally meritless) appeal. Alternatively, then, Judge Grimm — who must be laughing his ass off at the absurdity of the crackpot paranoia evident in Kimberlin’s Second Amended Complaint — can let the big-dollar lawyers rip it to tatters, which will impose a near-term burden on the defendants, but which almost certainly guarantees that when Judge Grimm does dismiss the Second Amended Complaint, it will be gone for good, with no hope that Kimberlin could ever succeed on appeal.

Meanwhile, we have Kimberlin’s answer to Judge Grimm’s “show cause” order in regard to the forged Twitchy summons:

Plaintiff has apologized to counsel for Defendant Twitchy on several occasions for the mistake he made when serving Twitchy. Plaintiff explained to counsel that the mistake was not in any way done with an intent to mislead. Instead, it was a misunderstanding of the process, which Plaintiff as a pro se litigant did not understand, but now understands full well.
Plaintiff did include Defendant Twitchy in the Complaint in several paragraphs as a named Defendant but Plaintiff inadvertently left Twitchy off the caption.
When the Clerk initially sent Plaintiff 21 summons, Plaintiff spent hours compiling them with the Complaints, the envelopes and certified cards only to discover that the summons for Twitchy was missing. At the time, Plaintiff assumed that the Clerk had inadvertently forgotten to include that summons since Twitchy was named as a Defendant in the Complaint and Twitchy’s address was listed in paragraph 25 of the Complaint. Therefore, Plaintiff typed the address on a summons and included it with the Complaint to Defendant Twitchy and sent it certified to that address. . . .
Plaintiff apologizes once again to Defendant Twitchy and counsel, and to the Court for this misunderstanding. Plaintiff assures the Court that this will not occur again. . . .
Plaintiff urges this Court not to impose sanctions on Plaintiff since this was an honest mistake, he is proceeding pro se and was unaware of the proper procedure, he has learned from the mistake, he has apologized to all parties, and Defendant Twitchy was not prejudiced.

Twitter reaction to these excuses was rather amusing:

Joking aside, the problem is that Kimberlin’s habitual dishonesty and procedural misconduct in his previous pro se court cases is so thoroughly documented — as several of the defendants have pointed out in their filings — that it strains credulity for him now to claim he made an “honest mistake” because he “was unaware of the proper procedure.” Hell, no. Brett Kimberlin deliberately falsified a court document, thinking he was so clever that the defendants wouldn’t notice his clumsy forgery. This is analogous to how Kimberlin got caught in 1978, brazenly trying to forge documents while driving a car with evidence of his bombings in the trunk. Kimberlin has spent the past 35 years blaming others for his own stupidity, trying to convince people that his conviction was the result of a corrupt government conspiracy, never once expressing regret for blowing off Carl DeLong’s leg, while presenting himself to naive “progressive” donors as a former “political prisoner.” But I digress . . .

The Perjuring Pro Se Pipsqueak continues trying to get Ace of Spades’ lawyer Paul Alan Levy thrown off the case, and it is mordantly amusing to watch the notorious felon Brett Kimberlin present himself as a self-appointed Arbiter of Legal Ethics.

 

Category: The Kimberlin Files

Feminist Professors Gone Wild

Posted on | March 12, 2014 | 40 Comments

Evidently, “pro-choice” is a synonym for “shut up” on our nation’s campuses, Jennifer Kabbany reports at The College Fix:

A department of feminist studies professor [at University of California Santa Barbara] has been accused of going berserk after coming across a campus prolife demonstration that used extremely graphic displays, leading a small mob of students to chant “tear down the sign” before grabbing one of the signs, storming off with it, then allegedly engaging in an altercation with a 16-year-old prolife protestor who had followed the educator to retrieve it.
Much of the scuffle was recorded on a smartphone by the 16-year-old, Thrin Short. The yet-to-be-released video is now in the custody of Santa Barbara law enforcement officials, who are investigating the March 4 incident.
The professor at the heart of the controversy is Mireille Miller-Young, an associate professor whose area of emphasis is black cultural studies, pornography and sex work, according to her faculty webpage. . . .
Most of the prolife demonstrators attend Thomas Aquinas College, a private, Catholic institution nearby, and none are enrolled at UCSB, [said Kristina Garza, a spokeswoman for Riverside-based Survivors of the Abortion Holocaust ].
As the prolife demonstrators tried to engage students one-on-one in conversation during a lull in the chanting, that’s when Miller-Young allegedly grabbed one of their signs and stormed off, followed by two UCSB students, Garza said, adding Thrin followed the threesome with her older sister, Joan, in tow and calling 9-1-1. . . .
According to the Santa Barbara Independent,which first reported the story, Miller-Young declined to comment and has retained an attorney, who stated on her client’s behalf that “it is a pending matter, so it is not appropriate to comment at this time. … We will let the process take its course. I am confident that it will become clear that the events did not unfold as the anti-choice demonstrators say they did.”
The Santa Barbara Independent also attempted numerous times to obtain a statement from local law enforcement, but they did not return the newspaper’s repeated request for comment.
Garza said her group is eager to publish the video, and will post updates on their website as they become available.
Joan Short, 21, also published her version of events.
“Although we were interrupted, we reached a lot of students,” she stated. “Many of them will not be able to think complacently about abortion ever again. … With babies dying every day, we know that we have to use even our spare time to do something to end abortion. We will continue to bring the truth about abortion to UCSB.”

Hat-tip: Jim Treacher at the Daily Caller.

 


Category: Abortion, Education, Feminism

E-Mail to a Friend: Are We Being Too Judgmental About the Duke Porn Star?

Posted on | March 12, 2014 | 115 Comments

@Belle_Knox is Duke freshman Women’s Studies major Miriam Weeks.

If nothing else, the controversy over Miriam Weeks, a/k/a “Belle Knox,” is proving the truth of Rule 5 (“Everybody Loves a Pretty Girl“), as the most popular posts here in recent days have been the ones about the Duke University freshman’s pornography career. And the second-most popular story Tuesday at the New York Daily News had this headline:

Duke University porn star
Belle Knox denies report that
her parents are heartbroken
The Duke University coed who turned to porn to pay tuition claimed Monday that her parents are not upset with her X-rated off-campus activities.
Miriam Weeks, 18, denied a report that her dad, an Army doctor, was heartbroken when he learned of her moonlighting gig upon returning from deployment in Afghanistan.
“My parents aren’t upset,” Weeks told the Daily News Monday in between filming scenes for an upcoming adult film.
“I want my family left out of it. If people criticize me that’s one thing, but leave my family alone,” Weeks said.
She said she was “really, really upset” over an online article Monday in The Daily Mail that identified her parents as Dr. Kevin and Harcharan Weeks, devout Catholics from Spokane, Wash.

Except, of course, that in earlier interviews conducted behind a pseudonym, she conveyed the idea that her parents’ inability (or unwillingness) to pay her tuition at prestigious Duke was responsible for her decision to do porn. In other words, her family was relevant, as long as Miriam Weeks could tell stories about them without anybody being able to fact-check her. However, once journalists started doing some actual reporting — rather than just acting as stenographers for the privileged prep-school graduate — suddenly her family is off-limits, because their version of the story doesn’t exactly match her version.

Considering that Miriam Weeks told Real Clear Education that she started watching porn when she was 11, maybe there is something about the story between her and her family worth examining, but I rather doubt her Catholic parents are overjoyed that their daughter was the No. 1 most-viewed video on PornHub Sunday. “Oh, look! Our daughter’s bisexual female co-star described Miriam as ‘quite the little freak.’ Isn’t it wonderful? Her teachers at Gonzaga Prep will be so proud.”

Controversy requires disagreement and conflict, and one friendly reader e-mailed to say I was “out of line” using the plain English word “whore” to describe Miriam Weeks. But why play word games? You can call her a “sex worker” or “adult entertainer,” and your preference for politically correct language doesn’t change the reality of what she does. So I sent my friend the following e-mail reply:

We can agree to disagree on porn and sluts. Remember: I’m a father of six, including two daughters. My oldest daughter graduated high school at 16, worked her way through community college and state university, and graduated summa cum laude, debt-free.
What we are being asked to believe in the case of Miriam Weeks, the youngest daughter of an affluent doctor — his reported income is $200,000 a year, and his home is valued at nearly $500,000 — is that it was so important for her to attend Duke (ranked #7 nationally) that she turned down a full scholarship to Vanderbilt (ranked #17) and, poor pitiful thing, she was practically compelled to do porn to pay the bills.
What originally irritated me about this (as with so many stories I report about) was the way the media handled the story, trying to tell us what to think, and just flat-out lying:

  • First, the Duke Chronicle and other outlets tried to pretend that “Lauren”/”Aurora” was still anonymous, when (a) evidently everybody on campus at Duke had known for weeks that her name is Miriam Weeks and that her porn name is “Belle Knox”; and (b) anybody with Google could find this out.
  • Second, tasteful euphemism was deployed to disguise what Miriam Weeks actually gets paid for — e.g., sucking c**k on camera — and we were told that her career was “empowering,” so that Belle Knox was presented as a sort of feminist hero role-model. Would you want that message conveyed to your daughters? I think not.
  • Third, the media tried to sneak a sort of clever reversal of morality past us, telling us that while (a) there was nothing shameful about an 18-year-old girl getting paid for sucking c**k on camera, on the other hand (b) there is something deeply shameful about disapproving of Miriam Weeks’s choice of careers.

While I am a social conservative, I am not a prude, nor am I ignorant of the ways of the world. Remember, I used to be a Democrat, and in my hedonistic hellbound youth, I worked briefly as a strip-club DJ and dated a few dancers. However, as a DJ, it was my job to remind patrons of the club’s “touch-and-go” rule:

“Gentlemen, all of our lovely Kelly’s Girls are here for your viewing pleasure, but let me call your attention to the large man beside the door. Say hello to Bruno. You can look all you want, but if you decide to touch, our friend Bruno is in charge of enforcing our touch-and-go policy here at Kelly’s and, trust me, you don’t want to argue with Bruno. All right, now, guys, put your hands together for the beautiful Shondra, coming up on the main stage!”

Dancers are not hookers, in other words. There is a difference between being nude — live on stage, or posing on camera — and getting paid to have sex. The admiration of beauty is one thing, and hired fornication is another. Perhaps many people, whether they generally approve of porn or not, don’t see the real distinction between the two, but it is important to keep it in mind.
Would I approve of my daughter posing in Playboy? No, of course not. But merely posing nude would not be as so objectionably sinful and morally corrupting as being paid to have sex on camera (or off-camera, for that matter).
If you would disapprove of your daughter or sister doing porn — as I think most men would — isn’t it in some sense hypocritical to say that it’s OK for other women and girls to do it? Let’s grant that there have always been prostitutes in the world, and some women are going to do it, no matter how much anyone may disapprove. But what the enthusiastic admirers of Miriam Weeks are trying to tell us is that we do not have the right to disapprove, that anyone who disapproves is somehow less “enlightened” than those who approve of porn, so that in effect we are being bullied into the “enlightened” view that there is nothing wrong with an 18-year-old girl getting paid to do bisexual three-ways on camera.
And hey, what about the bondage-and-rape scenes Miriam Weeks was doing? Are you telling me that having this petite, innocent-looking teenager enact the sadistic rape fantasies of perverts is harmless? Is it really “empowering” to send a message to weirdos that young girls enjoy having sex imposed on them violently? Excuse my skepticism.
The story of Miriam Weeks isn’t really about Miriam Weeks. I have no personal animosity toward her. How could I? I don’t even know her. And I wish her no harm. No, this is a story about the elite intelligentsia and their enlightened friends in the liberal media trying to tell us what to think, trying to impose their nihilistic amoral secularism on allegedly benighted Americans who, in Our President’s memorable phrase, are clinging to their guns and Bibles. But I’d rather my daughter go to a state college and maintain her dignity, than to have her go to some elite university and become an “empowered” feminist whore.
Ultimately, I believe, dignity and honor are more valuable than any prestigious credential. And I hope most Americans agree.
Respectfully yours,
— RSM

The elite are free to enjoy their prestige, but they have no right to tell us how to think. We are still free to disagree with them. We are doomed, if we lose our liberty to call sin by its right name.

 


 

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Category: Education, Feminism, Sex
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