The Other McCain

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

On Da Tech Guy’s Radio Show

Posted on | January 25, 2014 | 2 Comments

by Smitty

Check out Da Tech Guy’s radio show. I’m due on in about an hour (1:15PM EST). Pete is a champ, and it’s a privilege to call him friend.

What a blast that was! The liberal guest was Mike Hummell of Stop Brownback, who was articulate and pleasant and I’d debate again with pleasure, and His Badness, Ladd Ehlinger, and I thought that the three of us had excellent chemistry. Good times.

Category: Da Tech Guy

Famous Gay Rights Activist Now Also Famous for Child Pornography Habits

Posted on | January 25, 2014 | 65 Comments

 

It’s possible to be quite specific about Larry Brinkin’s pornographic preferences, but “forcible sodomy of infant boys” is perhaps about as specific as we need to get. Oh, and also this: Larry Brinkin enjoyed interracial child pornography, and used the “n-word” when expressing his erotic enjoyment of these images and videos.

You stay classy, “veteran gay rights advocate“!

Veteran gay rights advocate and former San Francisco Human Rights Commission staffer Larry Brinkin pleaded guilty Tuesday to possessing child pornography.
Brinkin, 67, changed his plea in a deal with the district attorney’s office that will result in a sentencing recommendation of six months in county jail, six months of home detention, five years of probation and lifetime registration as a sex offender.
Brinkin, who worked as a senior contract compliance officer with the rights commission until his 2010 retirement, was arrested in June 2012. Authorities said e-mail attachments were found on his America Online subscriber’s account that contained images of toddlers engaged in sex acts with men.
Prosecutors originally charged him with six felony counts of possessing and distributing child pornography, but dropped all but one felony count of possession as part of the plea bargain.

Such is the character of a “Human Rights Commission staffer,” and Zombie points out that the baby-rape enthusiast Larry Brinkin will still be eligible for his taxpayer-funded pension:

A former high-ranking San Francisco government employee convicted of felony possession of child pornography will continue to receive his government pension because, according to city regulations, evidence of “moral turpitude” is required to revoke a pension yet viewing violent kiddie porn does not qualify as moral turpitude. . . .
A recent law defining which type of actions count as “moral turpitude” required to nullify municipal pension benefits does not include sex crimes involving children, and only refers to financial crimes . . .

You can read the whole thing, and remember that under this plea deal, Larry Brinkin will serve only six months in county jail.

Also, in case you have forgotten: A gay couple “sexually molested a boy for six years, providing video of their crimes — and even paid sexual encounters with the boy — to an ‘international syndicate’ of pedophiles called the Boy Lovers Network”:

Mark Newton, 42, was sentenced to 40 years in federal prison [in June 2013] . . . Authorities say Newton and his partner, Peter Truong, 36, paid a Russian woman $8,000 to give birth to a boy they said was conceived using artificial insemination with Newton’s sperm. The men began sexually abusing the boy before he was two weeks old, recording the acts on video they shared online with other pedophiles. . . .
Two U.S. men, John R. Powell, 41, of Florida; and Jason Bettuo, 36, of Illinois, also face federal charges in connection with the case. Police say they believe Newton and Truong created the boy “for the sole purpose of exploitation” . . .

A boy created “for the sole purpose of exploitation.” And there is no “moral turpitude” for the San Francisco consumer.

 

 

Category: Crime, Gays

Hard To Remember The Last Time I Was Excited By A Privacy Policy

Posted on | January 24, 2014 | 23 Comments

by Smitty

The colonoscopy went well enough today, which you may not care about too much. After the week of intestinal issues around Thanksgiving time, it seemed prudent. Especially given that you never know where the ObamaCare wrecking ball will swing next.

Typically, reading a software license or a privacy policy is right up there with a colonoscopy on the “Thanks, no thanks” scale. The advent of the word processor seems to have given us the idea of chaining ourselves up, rather than liberating ourselves.

So, when you see something like this, if you’re me, you’re genuinely cheered:

Your browser also gives us your IP address, which could identify you, but we don’t use it to do that. For real. When you use the network, we also collect potentially personally identifying information in the form of Internet Protocol (IP) addresses. But we don’t use that information to identify you, and we handle and disclose these addresses in the same way we handle other potentially personally identifying information as described below.

The notion of using communication to reveal, rather than hide, is stunning these days. The idea that all those hellish legal requirements are met in the right column, while something humanly legible is there in the left, is just. . .sane.

It’s like putting C code in the left column, with the bare assembly code in the right. StackExchange is probably violating some law in communicating directly with users like that, rather than burying them in gibberish.

What if the American people were to return to a day when a reasonably educated, non-specialist could read and comprehend our laws? Have I snorted too much Drano, or not enough?

Category: Culture, Uncategorized

He Liked ‘Young Nude Boys’

Posted on | January 24, 2014 | 29 Comments

The quoted phrase occurred in a Justice Department description of videos that Republican congressional aide Ryan Loskarn purchased. He was also caught with “hundreds of videos depicting underage boys . . . in sexually explicit conduct.”

Formerly Tennessee Sen. Lamar Alexander’s chief of staff, Loskarn was arrested last month on child pornography charges and, as I say, Loskarn liked young nude boys . . . past tense:

”At approximately 12pm yesterday, Carroll County Sheriff’s Deputies responded to a private residence in the 6900 block of Kenmar Lane for a report of an unconscious male, believed to be deceased,” said a statement from Colonel Phil Kasten of the Carroll County Sheriff’s office. “Family members reported finding 35 year old Jesse Ryan Loskarn unresponsive in his basement where he’d been residing with family since this past December. The preliminary investigation indicates that Loskarn may have taken his own life . . .
In a brief statement, Alexander said: “For everyone involved, this is a sad and tragic story from beginning to end.”

Young nude boys could not be reached for comment.

 

Category: Crime, Gays, Republicans, Scandal, Senate, Sex

The Dahlia Lithwick Theory Fails

Posted on | January 24, 2014 | 49 Comments

“Pick up the nearest book to you, turn to page 45.
The first sentence explains your love life.”

Does that make any sense at all? Of course not. She writes for Slate.

OK, so the nearest book — atop a stack of books on my desk, to the right of my laptop — was Fred Siegel’s analysis of liberal urban policy failures, The Future Once Happened Here. Page 45 occurs in Siegel’s chapter recounting the 1960s Ocean Hill-Brownsville school battle, one faction of which was the African American Teachers Asssociation (ATA). Here is the first sentence on that page:

“The ATA’s mixture of Marxism and racial nationalism
was far less contradictory than it appears.”

Patterico is the consigliere. We RICO racketeers must obey him.

 

Category: Books

‘Helpless and Hopeless Creatures’

Posted on | January 24, 2014 | 108 Comments

“Nobody cares about ‘social issues’ anymore, we have been told. Democrats have become the Pervert Party . . . and Republicans are now the Party That Dare Not Disagree. Morality is no longer a matter of the divine ‘thou shalt not’ that Jehovah declared to the Israelites at Mount Sinai. Nowadays, moral authority is determined by Hollywood, Harvard University and the New York Times. In post-Christian America, we have reverted to a sort of neo-heathenism, depending on guidance from secular wizards and a priestly caste of experts who gaze at poll numbers the way ancient astrologers looked for omens in the stars.”
— Robert Stacy McCain, “The New Abnormal,” The American Spectator, July 31, 2013

Mike Huckabee gave a speech yesterday at the Republican National Committee’s winter meeting that has been treated as scandalously controversial. Chris Moody of Yahoo News provided the full context of Huckabee’s remarks:

“I think it’s time for Republicans to no longer accept listening to Democrats talk about a war on women. Because the fact is, the Republicans don’t have a war on women. They have a war for women. For them to be empowered; to be something other than victims of their gender.
“Women I know are outraged that Democrats think that women are nothing more than helpless and hopeless creatures whose only goal in life is to have a government provide for them birth control medication.
“Women I know are smart, educated, intelligent, capable of doing anything anyone else can do. Our party stands for the recognition of the equality of women and the capacity of women. That’s not a war on women, it’s a war for them. And if the Democrats want to insult the women of America by making them believe that they are helpless without Uncle Sugar coming in and providing for them a prescription each month for birth control because they cannot control their libido or their reproductive system without the help of government, then so be it — let’s take that discussion all across America, because women are far more than Democrats have made them to be. And women across America have to stand up and say, enough of that nonsense.”

Huckabee’s use of the word “libido” — a quaintly Freudian term for “sex drive” — was the specific button-pusher here, but let’s face reality: No one can say anything about women that deviates from Official Feminist Dogma without committing Thought Crime and, because Democrats control the terms of what is accepted as Official Feminist Dogma, the Thought Police are always more vigilant in scrutinizing Republicans for deviations from the script. Allahpundit:

Does it really matter what he said? The liberal thought process on this works this way, I think: “Known social conservative + something about women + something about sex and birth control = outrage.” Right? It’s basically Pavlovian.

Allah links Ace’s rant against social conservatives:

The elevation of strictly personal decisions . . . into a major political issue is childish and tribalist.
Yes we all have a preferred mode of living. News at 11. The law is not about preferred modes of living, and neither should we make “political issues” about it.

The problem, of course, is that it was feminists and their Democrat allies who decided that “the personal is political,” so that radical messages about How We Should Live are the constant theme of propaganda from the news media, Hollywood and academia.

Children are being indoctrinated in public schools, at taxpayer expense, about How We Should Live. If you are a parent who doesn’t want your daughters living the Disney Starlet Lifestyle — or if you don’t want your sons performing in “bareback orgy” videos — who is on your side?

Well, certainly not the Republican Party, I guess, because if any Republican so much as mentions the Culture War nowadays, he or she will be denounced not only by the Left, but also by conservative pundits who insist that the GOP must cede the field to Democrats on social issues and never say a word about how The Pervert Party benefits from America’s descent into decadence.

This position of pre-emptive surrender in the Culture War seems to have begun in 1992, when the GOP ran for cover rather than to defend Dan Quayle’s critique of “Murphy Brown.” It seems to have escaped the notice of most Republicans when, a year after that controversy, Dr. Barbara Dafoe Whitehead declared in the pages of The Atlantic Monthly, “Dan Quayle Was Right.”

Whitehead developed that article into a fascinating book, The Divorce Culture, but apparently I’m the only conservative blogger who read that book, because I never see Ace or Allah or anyone else acknowledge Whitehead’s critique of the “Love Family” ideology which “liberates sexual, compassionate, and parental love from its institutional and cultural moorings in marriage.” For that matter, have you ever seen any conservative blogger mention Carolyn Graglia’s Domestic Tranquility: A Brief Against Feminism or Dana Mack’s The Assault on Parenthood?

My point is that social conservatism is more intellectually respectable than most people imagine, but for 20 years, those who are serious about fighting the Culture War have been shunted aside and told to be quiet, lest they cause Republicans to lose elections.

Oddly, however, the GOP’s active suppression of social conservatism has not translated to Republican electoral dominance. The nomination of John McCain — whose profound contempt for social conservatives is no secret — did not produce a GOP triumph, nor was the Massachusetts moderate Mitt Romney able to dodge the remarkably counterfactual Democrat propaganda that painted him as an extremist Trojan Horse, an agent of the Republican Taliban.

The fundamental problem here is probably too large to be reduced to a blog post, and I’m not in a mood to tackle the whole problem today, but let’s say this: Systemic incentives encourage conservative writers to devote themselves to the day-to-day political headlines, and to identify as “important” only those issues which directly and immediately affect the Republican Party.

Meanwhile, liberals — who comprise 80%-90% of journalists and academics — are writing about Everything Else, including sexuality, marriage and parenthood. So it is that, outside of whatever issues bear directly on the daily R-vs.-D political battle, nearly everything you read is written by liberals. This explains how the cultural “mainstream” is dragged steadily leftward, and most people don’t even notice the shift until Phil Robertson creates a firestorm by quoting the Bible, or one day you click an Internet link and find people arguing that high-school boys getting bareback butt-humped in porn videos is no cause for concern.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that, says Glenn Beck.

Almost unnoticed, a posture of enlightened non-judgmentalism has become compulsory, because liberal dominance of the intelligentsia means that nearly every articulate person has been indoctrinated in the Egalitarian Orthodoxy, and no critic of the Left’s social agenda has access to a vocabulary of rational dissent.

One afternoon last August, I found myself amid a crowd of feminists marching down the street and chanting about rape, and I was denounced as a misogynist for noticing that several of the marchers were displaying their bare breasts during this political parade.

“Nice tits” is now hate speech, even if the aforesaid tits are brandished naked in broad daylight in downtown D.C. By the same token, a Republican may not suggest a connection between “libido” and the demand for taxpayer-funded contraception.

What we are witnessing is the abolition of common sense and its replacement by a political ideology. Common sense tells us that it is unusual — indeed, the word abnormal is appropriate — for women to parade bare-breasted through the streets. Common sense likewise tells us that the Contraceptive Culture is directly related to the prevalence of licentiousness and promiscuity in society.

Has it been only 10 years since Lawrence v. Texas? Has it been only 15 years since Nina Burleigh said she would cheerfully give Bill Clinton a blow job to thank him for keeping abortion legal?

Am I the only one who has noticed how rapidly the “Emerging Awareness” doctrine has gained a death-grip on our culture?

Huckabee’s use of the word “libido” caught my attention for reasons entirely different than the reasons that made him the object of a leftist Two-Minute Hate. Huckabee is 58 years old. He graduated from Ouchita State University in the mid-1970s, and is therefore old enough to remember when Freudian ideas about “libido” were entirely respectable. Nowadays, Freud’s categories are mocked as obsolete, and neurobiology is made to explain what was once attributed to “Oedipal complexes,” repressed impulses and so forth. Whatever way you are, we’re now told, you were Born That Way, and never mind if this biological determinism is vaguely redolent of Nazi race doctrine.

This is Science with a capital “s,” and Progress with a capital “p,” and no enlightened person is ever supposed to question whether today’s ideas of Scientific Progress are really any more valid than the discarded ideas of yesterday’s Scientific Progress.

Lost somewhere in all this is the old-fashioned understanding that humans are creatures of habit, and that if one gets into the habit of indulging certain unruly appetites, those habits may become the shackles of lifelong slavery, impairing the individual’s capacity for happiness, and inflicting various forms of misery on society at large.

Where did Kathryn Camille Murray get the idea that having sex with a 15-year-old boy was a pleasant and harmless amusement?

Perhaps the answer is to be found somewhere among the penumbras and emanations where Justice Douglas found a “right to privacy” in Griswold v. Connecticut, a few decades before Justice Kennedy invoked the hitherto unknown doctrine of “emerging awareness” in striking down the Texas sodomy statute. And who knows whither the emerging awareness shall henceforth emerge?

 

 


Category: Abortion, Contraceptive Culture, Mike Huckabee, Republicans, Sex

She Killed Three Men for ‘Fun’

Posted on | January 24, 2014 | 66 Comments

My first idea was to headline this story “Crazier Than Selena Gomez,” but even an ex-Disney starlet would probably never go as far off the rails as British serial killer Joanna Dennehy:

Joanna Dennehy, 31, pleaded guilty in November to murdering three men by stabbing them in the heart and dumping their bodies in ditches in Cambridgeshire.
Her alleged accomplices, Leslie Layton, 36, and 7-foot-2-inch Gary “Stretch” Richards, 47, are now on trial. Providing evidence against them, Dennehy’s friend Georgina Page described how the confessed killer likened herself and Richards to Bonnie and Clyde, and “jumped around like a schoolgirl” when she learned of news reports about the murders, according to the BBC.
New photos of Dennehy, Richards and Layton, which portray the confessed killer and her alleged accomplices in various poses, were shown in court Monday. . . .
Witness Mark Lloyd was in the same car as Dennehy and Richards when they allegedly pulled over and attacked two men on the street in April of last year. The pair was already wanted for the murder of three men.
Lloyd said Dennehy, a mother of two, flirted with him before he got in the car. Once there, she admitted to killing three men, and Lloyd said he had no choice but to join them in their quest for what Dennehy called her “fun.”
Dennehy told Richards “I want my fun. I need you to get my fun,” as her alleged accomplice drove the car, Lloyd said in court Monday.
Denehy’s victims include her landlord and two other men. . . .
According to the Mirror, the woman allegedly bragged to her accomplices that she’d killed eight people, glibly remarking, “Oops, I did it again.”

Wait a minute — “Oops, I did it again”?

Wasn’t that a song by ex-Disney starlet Britney Spears? But I doubt even Britney would do anything this crazy.

Miley Cyrus maybe, but not Britney.

 

Category: Crime

LIVE AT FIVESEVEN: 01.10.14

Posted on | January 24, 2014 | 6 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho


TOP NEWS
Fragile Ukraine Cease-Fire Tested By Reports Of Police Brutality

Protesters clashed with police in central Kiev yesterday.

Unrest spreads to Lvov, Rovno, Cherkassy


Majority Indifferent To Christie Bridge “Scandal”
CBS poll shows 53% of Republicans and independents’ views unchanged



Thailand Awaits Crunch Court Ruling On Election
Can administration proceed with scheduled election despite opposition’s threat to boycott?



POLITICS
Fox News Poll: Obamacare Support Hits Record Low

Larger chunk of public solidly opposes PPACA

Even Democrats’ opposition increases to 30%


Senate Intel Committee Rips Gen. Dempsey Over Benghazi Disaster



Boehner Rejects Leno’s Suggestion Of White House Run

Dinesh D’Souza Indicted For Violating Election Law

Moody’s Downgrades Health Insurers, Citing Obamacare

Judge Rules Kansas Sperm Donor Owes Child Support To Lesbian Couple



THE ECONOMY, STUPID
Asian Crude Higher As US Distillate Stockpiles Drop: NYMEX $97.51, Brent $107.69
Emerging Markets Selloff Accelerates On PRC, Fed Concerns
Microsoft Posts Better Than Expected Earnings
Senator Markey (D-MA) Calls For Investigation Into Herbalife
VW Labor Chief Terms US Operations A Disaster
Pentagon Denies Ordering 80,000 New Blackberry Phones
Samsung Posts First Profit Drop In Two Years As Smartphone Sales Stall
Qualcomm Acquires Mobile Patents From HP
Syrian Electronic Army Hacks CNN Social Media Accounts
Facebook Strikes Back – Predicts Princeton U Won’t Exist By 2021
Korg Resurrects Iconic RK-100 Keytar After Thirty Years



SPORTS
Balfour Returns As Rays Closer

Balfour speaks to press as Rays principal owner Sternberg looks on

Signs for two years, $36 million after passing physical


Blue Jackets Win Team Record Eighth Straight, Batter Flyers 5-2

NBA All-Star Starters Announced


Predators Score Twice In Third To Upset Canucks

Lester: Staying With Red Sox A Priority

Nicushkin’s Goals Help Spark Stars Rout Of Leafs

Garza Not A Brewer Yet

Giolito, Cole Make MLB.Com’s Top 100 Prospects List



FAMOUS FOR BEING FAMOUS
Cate Blanchett Enjoying The Acclaim “Indecently”

Cate with her Golden Globe

The Telegraph interview

Viewers Abandoning Unspeakable Armenians: Lowest Ratings In Three Years

Bieber Makes Bail, Mugs For Miami Fans


Dean McDermott Enters Rehab After Cheating On Tori Spelling

Garrett Hedlund Offered Captain Hook Role In “Pan”

Ann Hathaway Explains Low Post-Oscars Profile: “People Needed A Break From Me”

“Wonder Woman” Gal Gadot Signs Three-Picture Deal With Warner Bros.

Soapy Drama From David Russell, Susannah Grant Gets Order From ABC



FOREIGNERS
Cairo Rocked By Bombs, Five Killed
French President Hollande Meets With Pope Francis Amid Rumors Of Affair
South Sudan Rebels, Government Sign Ceasefire
As Iran Declares Victory, The West Averts Its Eyes
Indian Supreme Court Orders Investigation Into Village Gang Rape
David Cameron: Europe Obsessed With Bureaucratic Bumpf
Norks Call For End To Hostilities In Letter To ROK
Hazara Bus Bombing Victims Finally Laid To Rest



BLOGS & STUFF
American Power: Unhinged Leftists Escalate Google Bus Protests To Home Of Driverless Car Designer
Proof Positive: Pope And Change
Valley Of The Shadow: Liberty Caucus’ Paulbots Refuse To Work With Los Angeles GOP
Doug Powers: Subway & Michelle Obama Announce Partnership To Make Kids Hate Lunch At Other Places Than Schools
Twitchy: Obamacare Propaganda Training Session For TV & Film Industry Creeps Out Actor Allen Covert
American Power: Leftists Freak Out Over Huckabee’s Totally Accurate Comments On Dems’ View Of Women
American Thinker: Schumer’s Plan To Abolish The Tea Party
Blackfive: Admiral Mullen Addresses CVA, Weekly Standard, Gets Healthy Dose Of Skepticism
Blackmailers Don’t Shoot: Rule 5 Thursday, Selena Gomez Is Single Edition
The Necropolitan Sentinel: No Place For The Luxury Of Living In NY
Conservatives4Palin: Enthusiasm On The Left Like A Bubble About To Burst
Don Surber: Daily Scoreboard, January 23
Jammie Wearing Fools: Of Course – Conservative Actors’ Group Being Harassed By The IRS
Joe For America: Ted Nugent – Politicians Check Their Scrotums At The Door, Even Hillary
JustOneMinute: US Economic Mobility Not Declining?
Pat Dollard: After Years Of Decline, Number Of Aliens Apprehended By Border Patrol Up For Second Year In A Row
Protein Wisdom: This Is Your America Now
Shot In The Dark: The Left’s Koch Habit
The Jawa Report: Liberals Caught On Video Mocking Wheelchaired Greg Abbott, Labeling Disability A Liability
The Lonely Conservative: Jay Carney Claims Millions Of Americans Desire Obamacare
This Ain’t Hell: Michael Reagan And The Fallen Heroes Project
Megan McArdle: The Mirage Behind Brazil’s Economic Miracle


Deadline to submit links for the FMJRA is noon tomorrow.
DO IT.
Deadline to submit links for Rule 5 Sunday is midnight tomorrow.
DO THAT TOO.



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I really appreciate it!

Category: Live at Five
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