The Other McCain

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

LIVE AT FIVE: 02.26.14

Posted on | February 26, 2014 | 4 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho


TOP NEWS
Joe Biden: Hillary Clinton Won’t Affect My Decision About 2016

“I just truly haven’t made up my mind.”

Sees experience in administration as an advantage

Venezuela’s Maduro To Meet Opposition Leader
Meeting with Capriles hoped to calm bloody rioting


Obama Tells Karzai US Planning Full Withdrawal From Afghanistan
Pakistan Official Warns “Zero Option” Could Lead To Afghan Civil War



POLITICS
Obama Eases Penalties For Businesses Hiring Illegals

Analysts say the illegal immigration problem would be eased if businesses would comply with the law

Homeland Security audits shows businesses hiring illegals get fines reduced an average of 40%

Senate Moves Forward With Veterans Policy Rewrite

House Passes Bill To Allow Phone Unlocking

Holder Gives Nod To State AGs To Drop Defense Of Gay Marriage Laws

CBO Suggests Increased Domestic Spending Is Behind Military Cuts

House Dems Push Ahead On Minimum Wage Even As Reid Delays Senate Vote

Foreign Service Professionals Want Administration To Nominate Diplomats Who Actually Know Something About The Countries They’re Going To



THE ECONOMY, STUPID
Asian Crude Edges Higher After Drop Ahead Of US Stockpiles Report: NYMEX $101.86, Brent $109.56
Aussie Falls With Iron Ore As Yuan Touches 7-Month Low On PBOC
Wall Street Slips The Day After S&P Sets Record
Macy’s Shakes Off January Storms To Ring Up Big Quarter
Tesla Battery Jolts Shares Higher While Upending Power Grid
New Taco Bell Breakfast Menu Aims Waffle Tacos At McMuffins
BlackBerry Goes Back To Basics In Quest To Regain Customers
Apple’s Security Fail Needs A Culture Change To Fix
What The Upcoming XBox One Dashboard Update Looks Like
TiVo Founders Launch QPlay, A Chromecast-Like Video Curation Service
San Francisco Woman Allegedly Assaulted, Robbed After Wearing Google Glass In Bar



SPORTS
Sabres Top Hurricanes As NHL Returns From Sochi

Ryan Miller in the net for the Sabres

Ehrhoff scores two as Buffalo snaps four-game skid


Gasol Explodes About Lakers Lack Of Discipline After 118-98 Loss To Pacers

Ovechkin Apologizes For Russia’s Poor Performance At Sochi


NBA Dismisses Rumors About 4-Point Shot Line, Bigger Courts

Shockers Make History By Going 30-0 In Regular Season

Braves Sign 19 Players To One-Year Deals

Hollins’ Career-High 27 Lifts Golden Rats Over Iowa

McCatty Talks Strasburg On The Radio



FAMOUS FOR BEING FAMOUS
Lindsay Lohan Tops Nanny In Court

Victorious in hit & run case

Plaintiff folds like cheap suit, drops lawsuit


Bill Murray Remembers Harold Ramis: “He Earned His Keep On This Planet”


Justin Bieber Going To Trial In DUI Case

Dreamworks Animation CEO Hints At Another “Shrek” Movie

For Those Of You Still Watching SNL, Fair Warning: Lena Dunham To Make Host Debut March 8 

“Entourage” Movie Gets Release Date

Jenna Fischer Pregnant, Expecting Second Child



FOREIGNERS
What The Government Isn’t Telling You About Bangkok
Iraqi Ambassador Denies There’s An Arms Deal With Iran
A Humiliated Putin Plans His Next Move In Ukraine
Cracks Starting To Show In Maduro’s Backing?
Israeli Air Strike On Hezbollah Missile Convoy Kills Four
Stormy Debate In Knesset Over Temple Mount Sovreignty
Turkish PM Under Investigation For Corruption
Boko Haram Jihadis Kill 59 In School Attack
Old Bailey Trial Of Hyde Park Bombing Suspect Collapses



BLOGS & STUFF
First Street Journal: Kim Jong-Un’s New Weapon
Blackmailers Don’t Shoot: Dear Alec Baldwin, L.A.’s Douchebag Quota Is Full
Proof Positive: High Pressure Redefined
Doug Powers: Global Warming Causing “Settled Science” Crowd To Attempt Suppression Of Dissent
Twitchy: Megyn Kelly Rips Cowardly Obamacare Bully Rep. Peters For “Attacking A Leukemia Patient”
American Power: How Our Founding Father Used To Pound The Booze
American Thinker: How To Handle Voter Fraud
Conservatives4Palin: Cheney – Obama Would Rather Spend Money On Food Stamps Than Defend The Country
Don Surber: Taking Celebrities To The Dry Cleaners
Jammie Wearing Fools: Black Pastors Call For Holder’s Impeachment
Joe For America: Veterans Affairs Employees Destroyed Veterans’ Medical Records To Cancel Backlogged Exam Requests
JustOneMinute: Science Comes To The Supremes
Pat Dollard: Leftist Soldier Hides To Avoid Saluting Flag, Brags About It On Instagram
Protein Wisdom: “Sometimes You Think You Know Someone, But You Don’t Have The Slightest”
Shot In The Dark: No Retreat. No Surrender.
The Jawa Report: Joooos! Is There Anything They Can’t Do?
The Lonely Conservative: Geithner Met With Obama Five Minutes Before Threatening S&P
This Ain’t Hell: Obama Has A Hissy When Governors Address NG Cuts
Megan McArdle: Mt. Gox Meltdown Spells Doom For Bitcoin


Category: Live at Five

If Porn Is Not Shameful, Why Doesn’t Miriam Weeks Use Her Real Name?

Posted on | February 25, 2014 | 151 Comments

A Duke University freshman is offering the world a textbook lesson in what not to do if your college classmates find out you’re doing porn. Miriam Weeks attempted to “un-out” herself, giving an interview to the Duke Chronicle, which agreed to protect her anonymity despite the fact that word was out all over campus that she was getting boned on camera as “Belle Knox.” Then she wrote a confessional piece (as “Lauren A.”) for a feminist Web site that included this:

I am not ashamed of porn. On the contrary, doing pornography fulfills me. That said, I vehemently want to have my privacy respected — and I ask that anyone who knows my real name respect the fact that I am only discussing this publicly because it was made a public matter when I was confronted by a fraternity member who chose to tell hundreds of other men in the Greek scene.

Do you want to have your cake or eat it, Ms. Weeks? Because you cannot be “famous” as the Duke University porn star, claiming that you are unashamed to do what you do, and then demand that the world never mention your real name which — as you yourself say — is already known to hundreds of your fellow Duke University students, to say nothing of Google: Miriam Weeks is “Belle Knox.”

One cannot impose amnesia on the Internet by force of will.

The feminist sisterhood, however, has never cared much for facts or logic, and so Emily Shire at the Daily Beast stubbornly pretends that nobody knows who “Lauren” actually is:

Lauren’s challenge against her harassment as a porn actress reveals how pointless and shameful our stigmatization of adult film performers are. It hurts sex workers who love their careers and want to enjoy full lives outside of pornography. Worse, it may further hurt the sex workers who are subjugated and are too afraid to ask for help.
Lauren’s openness with her porn career raises many questions, but I fear people will only think to ask the wrong ones. We shouldn’t be wondering why a smart young woman with her whole life ahead of her would choose a career in porn. Instead, we should be wondering why it should preclude her from doing anything else she so chooses.

You see? It is not pornography which is “shameful,” Emily Shire tells us, rather it is “our stigmatization of adult film performers.” But what would Emily Shire (or, for that matter, Miriam Weeks) say about the “adult film” consumers? Shouldn’t we stigmatize guys who wank to porn? Does Emily Shire have any respect for those on the demand side of the porn industry’s supply-and-demand equation?

What about the commercial producers of pornography, who profit by commodifying sex on a worldwide scale?

Don’t get me wrong: I’m not advocating censorship, but I am advocating honesty about what manner of commerce is being transacted by Miriam Weeks. Legal though it may be, it is shameful from start to finish, and we ought not pretend otherwise.

You don’t see guys publicly declaring that they wank to porn. As shameless as he was, Anthony Weiner never claimed to be waging a courageous fight against the “stigmatization” of wanking. And you didn’t see anyone praise his “openness,” did you?

So, Duke University freshman Miriam Weeks from Spokane, Washington, is unashamed to be a “sex worker,” and evidently expects to be praised for this by her feminist comrades, because getting boned on camera is so empowering, you see:

 I am a women’s studies major. I hope to be a lawyer — my dream is to be a women’s rights, civil rights lawyer. I’m really into writing, journalism. I’m kind of a creative person, which is a lot of the reason I like doing porn. I really am a person who values my family and my friends, and I am also really into spirituality. I like astrology, Zen, all of that.

I’m sure her fellow alumni of Gonzaga Prep are proud of how Miriam Weeks is representing her “spirituality.” And how else is a prep school girl supposed to afford $58,00 a year tuition at Duke?

The porn-star-student was outed by fellow freshman Thomas Bagley . . .
Bagley told The Daily Caller that the starlet divulged her secret to him . . .
Bagley said she swore him to secrecy. Naturally, then, he went and told a bunch of people at a fraternity rush event almost immediately.

Stupid is as stupid does. Why are “smart” kids so stupid these days?

“I feel like girls at Duke have to hide their sexuality
. . . We’re caught in this virgin-whore dichotomy.”

Eh, you’re not “caught” anymore. That “dichotomy” is over for you.

 

Category: Education, Feminism, Sex

Alec Baldwin Hates Fox News, Breitbart.com and His Own Children

Posted on | February 25, 2014 | 18 Comments

As far as I’m concerned, it was the “rude, thoughtless, little pig” episode — the angry voicemail message he left for his 12-year-old daughter Ireland in 2007 — that ruined Alec Baldwin’s reputation.

What kind of father talks that way to his daughter? It’s one thing for a father to chew out his son (“D in biology? Are you on drugs? Get a haircut! And clean up your room!”) but who ever heard of a father berating his 12-year-old daughter like Baldwin did?

Despite his reputation as a sadistic self-absorbed bully, however, Baldwin seems more worried about the “homophobe” label:

I flew to Hawaii recently to shoot a film, fresh on the heels of being labeled a homophobic bigot by Andrew Sullivan, Anderson Cooper, and others in the Gay Department of Justice.

He goes on for a while in this vein and doesn’t help himself when, in the seventh paragraph, he uses the word “tranny.”

Baldwin recounts a previous episode:

In my rage, however, I called him a “toxic little queen,” and, thus, Anderson Cooper, the self-appointed Jack Valenti of gay media culture, suggested I should be “vilified,” in his words. I didn’t feel bad about the incident. He lied about my wife. They say this is what comes with stardom — I don’t agree with you. A journalist isn’t supposed to write a lie about you. If he was in New York, I might have had the impulse to beat the shit out of the guy. At the time, I didn’t view “toxic little queen” as a homophobic statement. I didn’t realize how those words could give offense, and I’m sorry for that.

“I didn’t view ‘toxic little queen’ as a homophobic statement”?

You’re kidding me, right? Here’s the thing: Suppose I get angry at a guy and call him the first random cuss words that pop into my angry mind, for example, “Goddamned son of a bitch.” Now, this is a very rude thing to say, and conveys the sense of my anger.

But a phrase like “toxic little queen” is rather specific, isn’t it? To come up with a phrase as specific as that requires a lot more premeditation than does “Goddamned son of a bitch.”

No, “toxic little queen” insinuates weak, effeminate homosexuality. And the quick resort to such a label tells us more about Alec Baldwin than it does about the target of the slur: Alec has “issues.”

Ace called attention to this part of Baldwin’s latest rant:

There is a core of outlets that are pushing these stories out. Breitbart clutters the blogosphere with “Alec Baldwin, he’s the Devil, he’s Fidel Baldwin.” . . .
The heart, the arteries of the country are now clogged with hate. The fuel of American political life is hatred. Who would ever dream that Obama would deserve to be treated the way he has been? The birth-certificate bullshit, which is just Obama’s version of Swiftboating. And all for the electoral nullification that seems like a cancer on the American system. But this is Roger Ailes. And Fox. And Breitbart. And this is all about hate. It’s Hate Incorporated. But the liberals have taken the bait and run in the same direction—and it’s just as corrosive. MSNBC, in its own way, is as full of shit, as redundant and as superfluous, as Fox.

OK, so what’s really going on here? Narcissism.

Nothing is ever the narcissist’s fault. Protecting a fragile, damaged ego requires a scapegoat for every failure. A hallmark of narcissism is the desire to be seen as the victim in every conflict — sending out invitations to your pity party. This is the flip side, the psychological obverse, to the domineering impulse that takes pleasure in humiliating a 12-year-old girl as a “thoughtless little pig.”

Anybody can lose their temper. Anybody can unintentionally offend people. But a narcissist like Alec Baldwin can never accept that he is responsible for his own problems and failures, and so he must blame, inter alia, “a cancer on the American system.”

TheWire.com offers,”A List of the People Alec Baldwin Blames For His Personal Failures.” It’s a long list.

 

Category: Celebrities

What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

Posted on | February 25, 2014 | 11 Comments

Lots, I’m afraid:

Since Gov. Jerry Brown assumed office in January 2011, a record number of inmates with life sentences are winning parole. Brown has allowed the release of nearly 1,400 lifers, while going along with the parole board about 82 percent of the time. . . .
More than 80 percent of lifers are in prison for murder, while the remaining are mostly rapists and kidnappers.

Turning loose murderers, rapists and kidnappers in California — well, the state’s already been overrun by Democrats anyway . . .

(Hat-tip: Ed Morrissey at Hot Air.)

 


Category: California, Crime

The UK Left’s Pro-Pedophile Past

Posted on | February 25, 2014 | 18 Comments

You might think polyester bell-bottoms, disco music and shag haircuts were the worst thing about the 1970s. WRONG!

The links that left Harriet Harman being forced to deny support for paedophiles date back nearly four decades when the Labour deputy leader was an official in the National Council for Civil Liberties.
Miss Harman, along with her husband Jack Dromey — now a frontbench Labour MP — and Patricia Hewitt, a former Labour Cabinet minister under Tony Blair, all worked for the council in the 1970s.
In 1975, the campaign group — which lives on today as human rights watchdog Liberty — controversially granted official “affiliate” status to the Paedophile Information Exchange (PIE), a body which lobbied openly for child sex.
Tom O’Carroll, PIE’s founder and described as a “sexually predatory” paedophile, was put one of the Council’s working groups, and in spring 1977 he was allowed to make a speech at the Council’s spring conference.
During this period, the Council stepped in to defend paedophiles against “hysterical and inaccurate” newspaper attacks.
One leaflet sent by PIE to MPs claimed: “Paedophiles are ordinary, decent, sensible human beings, no more sexually depraved than yourself, and with a capacity for loving and helping children which is at present being repressed.”
The organisation also submitted a report to MPs claiming that “girls as young as four months can achieve orgasm”, and that four-year-old children can “communicate verbally their consent to sex”. . . .

You can read the whole thing at the Daily Telegraph.

Harman has expressed “regret,” which isn’t exactly an apology — the Daily Mail has been all over this story — nor has the deputy Labour leader bothered to explain how it was that pedophile “liberation” became the sort of cause sophisticated left-wingers were expected to support (or, at least, not condemn) in the 1970s.

Having written about this subject before (see for example, “She Blinded Me With Pseudo-Science,” June 8, 2013), what is obvious is this: After the “Sexual Revolution” of the 1960s, after the success of “Women’s Liberation” and “Gay Rights,” at a time when pornographic movies like Deep Throat and Behind the Green Door were the subject of controversy, and when magazines like Playboy, Penthouse and Hustler were widely available, it was rather unsurprising that the search for the next taboo to transgress brought the Cultural Left to arguing for legalized “consensual” sex with children. So widespread was this idea that, during discussions of the screenplay for Raiders of the Lost Ark, George Lucas suggested a back story in which Indiana Jones first had sex with his love interest Marian when she was only 11. As I said of that revelation:

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot? The best explanation I can think of: It was 1978, the same year that Brooke Shields starred in Pretty Baby, and so this theme might have been considered “edgy” in Hollywood at the time. Also, maybe they were snorting up lots of coke and just got crazy.

Drugs can make people crazy, and back in the 1970s, there were lots of people getting high and indulging in trendy radical talk about the need to overcome sexual “repression.” Quite naturally, some of those people turned out to be creepy perverts.

The Creepy Perverts Rights Movement was a logical extension of the same arguments made for other “liberation” movements. The 1970s were a time when praising Ho Chi Minh and quoting Chairman Mao were commonplace among leftists. Are we supposed to be surprised that common sense and basic moral decency did not restrain young radical Harriet Harman? No more than we are surprised by her refusal to apologize now:

‘I’m not going to apologise because I’ve got nothing to apologise for. I very much regret that this vile organisation, PIE, ever existed and that it ever had anything to do with NCCL, but it did not affect my work at NCCL,’ she said today.

Except, of course, Harriet Harman is lying about that:

Miss Harman — the Council’s legal officer in 1978 until 1982 — wrote a briefing paper on the Protection of Children Bill, which sought to ban child pornography.
Miss Harman had claimed such a law would “increase censorship” and argued that a pornographic picture of a naked child should not be considered indecent unless it could be proven that the subject had suffered.

So, the Council’s official affiliation with a pro-pedophile group “did not affect” Harman’s work at the Council when she was arguing against a law to ban child pornography? It’s just a coincidence that Harman’s Council gave “predatory” pedophile Tom O’Carroll a speaking gig at their 1977 conference? The same Tom O’Carroll who pleaded guilty to child pornography charges in 2006?

Nothing to see here. Move along . . .

By the way, one of the oft-heard claims of the Creepy Perverts Rights Movement is that children having sex — consensually, of course! — suffer no psychological harm as a result.

The other day, I saw a TV documentary about serial killer Aileen Wuornos: She started having incestuous sex with her brother when she was 9 and he was 10. By age 11, Aileen was selling sex to neighborhood boys for pocket change and cigarettes. She got pregnant at 13 and gave the baby up for adoption.

At 15, Aileen’s behavior was so out of control that her grandparents kicked her out of their home and thereafter she supported herself as a prostitute, while also accumulating a criminal rap sheet that included charges like DUI, disorderly conduct, car theft, assault, forgery, armed robbery and resisting arrest. Somewhere along the way, she also became a lesbian and by 1987 she was living with her lover, Tyria Moore.

By then in her early 30s, Wuornos supported the couple by prostitution. In 1989, Wuornos and Moore went on a murder spree, killing seven Florida men in less than a year. Moore agreed to testify against Wuornos in exchange for immunity from prosecution.

So, yeah, if pedophiles want to argue that “consensual” child sex is harmless, maybe they should ask Aileen Wuornos about that. Except she’s been dead for nearly a dozen years. She was 46 in October 2002, when the state of Florida put her down like a dog.

Nothing to see here. Move along . . .

 

Category: Crime, Great Britain, Sex

Quota-Mongers Never Satisfied

Posted on | February 25, 2014 | 26 Comments

Nose-counting diversity fetishists:

On Wednesday, the Women’s Media Center released its annual Status of Women in U.S. Media Report, which tracks how many women are being hired, seen, and heard in American journalism and entertainment. . . .
According to the report, women made up 36.3 percent of newsroom staffers atAmerican newspapers in 2013, a figure that’s decreased slightly since the American Society of Newspaper Editors Newsroom Census started its gender count in 1999. They made up just 27 percent of opinion columnists in the major U.S. newspapers andcontent syndication services last year.

Let’s expose the hidden premises of this familiar liberal syllogism:

  1. If women are less than 50% of employees in any profession, the only explanation is sexist discrimination.
  2. Working as a journalist is a career opportunity that women seek out as often as do men.
  3. It is not possible that women are rejecting journalism, rather than the other way around.

The false premises of “diversity” arguments are something I’ve grown tired of noticing, much less refuting. Many years ago, the American Society of Newspaper Editors (ASNE) began featuring panel discussions at their annual conventions on how to promote “diversity” in newsrooms. This was never really the main problem in the industry, and the ASNE should have had annual panel discussions like, “How Can Newspapers Stop Losing Subscribers and Advertisers, Bleeding Red Ink, and Being Forced to Lay Off Reporters?”

For the benefit of ASNE douchebags or anyone else who cares, let me clue you in on a “secret” that should be obvious to anyone with a lick of common sense: The same basic aptitude necessary to be a newspaper reporter — i.e., skill in verbal reasoning and written communication — is also an aptitude highly valued in the legal profession.

If a young person has very high SAT scores in this area, why would they want to pursue a crappy low-paying career as a reporter, when they could go to law school and get rich?

If there is any shortage of females or ethnic minorities in America’s newsrooms, this can be explained to a great extent by affirmative action programs at America’s law schools. Imagine — just as a hypothetical — that some random jug-eared kid from Hawaii whose father happened to be Kenyan had a choice between (a) going to work at a newspaper, or (b) attending Harvard Law.

We might wish he would have pursued journalism, but . . .

Just as a kicker, there’s this:

 In the 100 most profitable films released in 2012, only 28.4 percent of speaking characters were women, the lowest percentage registered in the five years that the USC Annenberg School has been counting them up. (Women were also disproportionately portrayed as children and teenagers compared to men.) And behind the scenes, women’s representation hasn’t increased in 15 years—they made up 16 percent of writers, directors, editors, and producers in the 250 top domestic-grossing films in 2013, compared to 17 percent in 1998. From 1998 to 2013, the percentage of female film writers dropped from 13 percent to 10; the percentage of female directors dropped from 9 to 6.

Hollywood’s War on Women!

 

Category: Journalism, Media Bias

Heh: @DaveWeigel Dismantles @PiersMorgan, But Good

Posted on | February 25, 2014 | 26 Comments

 Deft, but also delightfully brutal:

Sunday night, after David Carr broke the news that Piers Morgan would be ending his CNN show, I searched Twitter to find how his fans were taking it. This was a mistake. Really, who was a Piers Morgan fan? Have you ever met one? No, reaction to CNN’s scheduling news ran the gamut from suppressed glee to running-naked-through-the-streets glee, from gun lovers declaring victory over the “Brit” to nonpartisan journalists reminiscing about Morgan’s finest ethical lapses. . . .
The live broadcast of Morgan’s show drew around half the viewers that MSNBC did, and a fifth as many as Fox News. Morgan welcomed Fox’s Megyn Kelly to 9 p.m. by telling her (on Twitter) to “bring it on.” She did.
In fact, Morgan’s humiliation was so total that he’s at risk of becoming a martyr for True Journalism. . . . Were we wrong about the guy?
We were not. Morgan was the beneficiary of a curious American habit. We assign 20 extra IQ points to anyone who speaks with a British accent, redistributing them from the people who speak with Southern accents. . . .

It goes on from there. Having known Weigel since 2006, when he worked at the libertarian magazine Reason, I understand that conservatives hate Weigel for his relentless sarcasm, which is usually aimed at Republicans. His sarcasm is much more enjoyable when aimed at somebody you hate, and everybody hates Piers Morgan.

 

Category: CNN, Dave Weigel

House GOP Thinks Small

Posted on | February 25, 2014 | 13 Comments

by Smitty

Dear Peasant Scum:

We have heard heard your complaints about the IRS pig rooting up all of your property, and have graciously afforded it some fresh lipstick. You’re welcome.

The GOP

More fun:

Even many Republicans have grown leery of Camp’s proposal, worried that any simplification plan would have to trim popular tax breaks such as the deduction for home mortgage interest — a disadvantage in an election year.

Republican leaders have not ruled out the possibility of bringing Camp’s legislation to a vote before the full House if it gains momentum — but they haven’t made any promises, either.

To which the base offers a tired “Whoop de doo”:

Revisiting the crappy election turnout and general lack of enthusiasm from the base, why doesn’t the GOP consider representing the American people, and not the greater DC homo bureaucratus infestation?

via Instapundit

Category: Taxes
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