The Other McCain

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

Ukraine Unravels

Posted on | February 20, 2014 | 24 Comments

The news out of Kiev is troubling: At least 50 protesters reported killed, and the protesters say the number of dead is actually more than 100. The conflict is essentially one between Ukrainian nationalism and Russian imperialism. The current government in Ukraine is pro-Moscow and, unfortunately, Russian president Vladimir Putin holds the geopolitical trump cards. George Will observes:

Marx, whose prophesies were perversely predictive because they were almost invariably wrong, predicted the end of nationalism. Economic forces, he said, determine political, cultural and psychological realities. So capitalism, with its borders-leaping cosmopolitanism, would dilute to the point of disappearance all emotional attachments to nations. Ukraine’s ferment is an emphatic, albeit redundant, refutation of Marxism.

Read the whole thing.

 

Category: Russia, Ukraine

In The Mailbox, 02.20.12

Posted on | February 20, 2014 | 3 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho


Apologies for the lack of posting this week; having made the mistake of going to Katsucon this past weekend and contracted some kind of vile respiratory ailment, I’ve barely had the energy to make it to the tax mines this week, much less do blogging. Today being my day off, I’ll see what I can do to play catch-up.


OVER THE TRANSOM
Proof Positive: If You Like Your Cherry Tree, You Can Keep It
First Street Journal: The Delusions Of The Progressives
EBL: White Girls Cause Coral Bleaching
The Looking Spoon: Putting Palpatine’s Eyes On Liberals Is (Not So Surprisingly) Natural
Blackmailers Don’t Shoot: LA’s Out Of Touch Teachers Union
Michelle Malkin: Obamacare – Con Artists And Criminals In Charge
Twitchy: Garry Kasparov Shreds Obama And His “Red Lines” As Bloodbath Continues In Ukraine


RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Power: Venezuelan Beauty Queen Genesis Carmona Shot, Killed In Anti-Government Protests
American Thinker: GOP Leaders Won’t Escape Conservative Voters’ Wrath
Blackfive: From Petty Officer To Pinup
The Necropolitan Sentinel: Obamacare Watch – Obamacare Is For Lovers (Whom Nobody Actually Loves)
Conservatives4Palin: Palin Calls For Buzzfeed Boycott After Its Hit Piece On Trump
Don Surber: Daily Scoreboard, February 19
Jammie Wearing Fools: What Could Go Wrong? FCC Wants To Police Content In Newsrooms
Joe For America: Five Interesting Things About Joe The Plumber Getting A Union Job
JustOneMinute: Raise The Minimum Wage, Because – Rodeo Clowns!
Pat Dollard: Ron Paul Says Ukrainians Don’t Want US Involved
Protein Wisdom: University Textbook Claims Reagan Was Sexist, Conservatives View People As Incapable Of Charity, Lazy
Shot In The Dark: Our Idiot Elite
The Jawa Report: Islamic Cleric Issues Fatwa Against Rescuing Princess Leia
The Lonely Conservative: HHS Wants Full Access To All Your Social Media
This Ain’t Hell: Wisconsin NG Soldier Suspended For Funeral Detail Antics
Megan McArdle: Go Ahead, Let Your Kids Fail


Evidently I was confused when I said the next Rule 5 Sunday wouldn’t be until March; it will in fact be this Sunday, February 25. Deadline to submit links to the Rule 5 Wombat mailbox for the Father Of His Country Edition is midnight Saturday, February 22.


Category: Linkagery

Open Letter To Mike Church, aka @TheKingDude On The Military

Posted on | February 20, 2014 | 33 Comments

by Smitty

Dear Mike Church,

I enjoyed your remarks earlier this week on the U.S. military. I’m a retired Navy Reservist, and find your ideas in keeping with the main strain of historical American thought, at least up to the passing of the National Security Act of 1947. While Teddy Roosevelt’s early 20th-century Great White Fleet is an exception, the U.S. pretty much never maintained substantial standing forces between wars, until WWII. I’d like to offer some feedback from someone who drank the Kool-Aid, and is coming down off of it. Read more

Category: Military

Missouri Killer Grabbed Hailey Owens ‘Like a Rag Doll,’ Witnesses Tell Police

Posted on | February 19, 2014 | 83 Comments

Craig Michael Wood, 45, has been charged with first-degree murder and kidnapping in the death of 10-year-old Hailey Owens, whose abduction Tuesday led to an “Amber Alert” that rallied the community of Springfield, Missouri:

According to the probable cause statement in the case, Carlos and Michelle Edwards were in the open garage of their home Tuesday afternoon about 4:45 when they saw a young girl with a cellphone in her hand walk by, westbound on Lombard.
The couple witnessed a tan Ford Ranger driving eastbound stop near the girl, and heard the driver ask where “Springfield Street” was.
Michelle Edwards said the girl . . . turned to walk away from the vehicle before the driver opened the door to the vehicle and said, “Hey come here a minute.”
Owens took a step or two toward the truck before “the male then lunged out of the vehicle, grabbed the girl with his left hand and threw her into the truck ‘like a rag doll,’” the probable cause statement said.
The suspect then fled the scene quickly.

With a description of the vehicle and a tag number, police moved quickly, but not quickly enough to save Hailey:

Authorities believe Wood . . . abducted her from a Springfield street in the daylight hours Tuesday, took her to the basement of his home and shot her in the back of her head.
There was also evidence that her wrists had been tied, according to the probable cause statement used to file charges. . . .
Authorities said Owens, 10, was found in two garbage bags inside a plastic storage tote. The entire basement allegedly smelled of bleach.
Also found in the basement, the statement says, was a spent .22 caliber shell casing.

The scariest part of the story? The girl’s killer had been employed by the Springfield public school system since 1998.

 

Category: Crime, Missouri

German Union Threatens U.S. Jobs

Posted on | February 19, 2014 | 25 Comments

After workers at a Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga voted to reject a United Auto Workers contract, most friends of free labor breathed a sigh of relief, but a deal that gives German workers a seat on the VW board may threaten the Tennessee workers’ jobs:

A Volkswagen board member is threatening to withhold future investments in its Tennessee facility if the workers do not unionize, according to Reuters.

“I can imagine fairly well that another VW factory in theUnited States, provided that one more should still be set up there, does not necessarily have to be assigned to the south again,” said Bernd Osterloh, head of VW’s works council.
“If co-determination isn’t guaranteed in the first place, we as workers will hardly be able to vote in favor” of potentially building another plant in the U.S. south, Osterloh, who is also on VW’s supervisory board, said.

A weird side-effect of globalization.

 

Category: Labor Unions

‘Feminist Dogma’

Posted on | February 19, 2014 | 25 Comments

The claim by radical feminists that heterosexuality is a form of oppression imposed on women by male violence — “PIV is always rape, OK?” — has shocked many people who don’t pay attention to trends among intellectuals in academia. Yet this extreme anti-male view has been “mainstream” among feminists for many years:

The [1998] Houghton Mifflin Reader’s Companion to U.S. Women’s History contains an entry by E. Kay Trimberger on “Heterosexuality,” which . . . summarizes feminist dogma unproblematically:

Sexuality is not private, but is political and related to power. “Compulsive heterosexuality” is part of a power structure benefiting heterosexual males at the expense of women and homosexuals. This inequity is justified by an ideology that sees heterosexuality as natural, universal, and biologically necessary, and homosexuality as the opposite. The system also is reinforced by legal sanctions and violence against women (rape, battering, incest, and murder) and against lesbians, gays and transgendered persons (verbal harassment, physical assault, and murder).

So, “heteronormativity” is imposed by “a power structure” and a “system” whose means of enforcement are rape, assault and murder. Feminism teaches women that the only way they can escape the patriarchy’s violent oppression is to become lesbians.

If you’re not a lesbian feminist, you are pro-rape and pro-murder.

Quod erat demonstrandum.

 

 


Category: Feminism

Olympic Pussy Riot

Posted on | February 19, 2014 | 22 Comments

Some days, the news is like an acid hallucination or a scene from a science fiction dystopia, and you feel as if you’re a Jeopardy contestant in an alternative-universe: “I’ll take ‘Headlines That Sound Like Sideshow Acts‘ for $400, Alex.” You have to ask, if Russia bans Pussy Riot, how about a peaceful Pudenda Protest? Or maybe a Scrotum Mob counter-demonstration?

 

Category: Russia

In Which @AceOfSpadesHQ Becomes a First Amendment Cause Célèbre

Posted on | February 19, 2014 | 33 Comments

One June 4, 2012, Ace published a blog post that began, “I’m writing a post about what’s happened to Ali Akbar.”

That post was cited by Brett Kimberlin as “evidence” that Ace was part of a vast conspiracy. Now, it’s like a latter-day Dreyfuss case:

Convicted bomber Brett Kimberlin’s federal lawsuit against bloggers and journalists is “an attack on free speech,” a prominent First Amendment attorney said Tuesday, announcing that he would represent an anonymous blogger who is a defendant in the case.
Paul Alan Levy of the non-profit group Public Citizen noted that he had once represented Kimberlin, at the time a federal prison inmate, in a case where Kimberlin’s First Amendment rights were at stake. However, Levy said, Kimberlin is now threatening the rights of others in his attempt to use his current federal lawsuit to obtain the identity of the popular conservative blogger known as Ace of Spades: “Among the defendants in the action is an anonymous blogger whom Kimberlin sued for allegedly ‘imputing’ that Kimberlin was involved in SWATting. . . . Because the blog post said nothing of the kind, I agreed to represent defendant ‘Ace of Spades’ in opposing Kimberlin’s request for judicial permission to pursue discovery to identify Ace of Spades.” . . .
In his court motion on behalf of Ace of Spades — whose defense is also supported by the Maryland chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) — Levy argues: “Protection for the right to engage in anonymous communication is fundamental to a free society. … Not only his conservative adversaries but other bloggers attentive to free speech issues have taken Kimberlin to task for improperly using the courts as a weapon against his critics, a technique that they call ‘lawfare.’ … For example, several bloggers have taken Kimberlin to task for using a subpoena to identify one Aaron Walker, which resulted in Walker’s being terminated from his employment, and then pursuing a series of peace orders in Maryland state court which led to Walker’s arrest because a state trial judge believed that Walker’s having blogged about Kimberlin was a violation of a previous peace order.”

Read the whole thing at The American Spectator. I doubt Kimberlin v. Ace of Spades will ever become a landmark Supreme Court ruling, something your grandchildren will read about in histor4y books, but crazier things have happened, so you never know.

 

Category: Ace of Spades, Constitution, The Kimberlin Files
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