The Other McCain

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

‘Revenge Porn’ Mogul Busted by FBI in Computer Hacking Conspiracy

Posted on | January 23, 2014 | 35 Comments

Remember a couple years ago when “revenge porn” created a controversy with unauthorized nude photos of women being posted online? Turns out the guys didn’t get all those sexy pictures from embittered ex-boyfriends. Instead, according to a federal grand jury indictment, IsAnyoneUp.com founder Hunter Moore paid cash to a hacker who illegally gained access to online accounts where several of his female victims had uploaded their own photos:

Time is reporting that revenge porn magnate Hunter Moore has been arrested by FBI agents. Moore is the founder of Is Anyone Up, a now-defunct site infamous for posting nude pictures uploaded without the subject’s consent. The site has been accused of extortion multiple times, and Moore himself recently lost a quarter-million-dollar defamation suit over work connected with the project.
According to Time‘s Jessica Roy, the indictment names Moore and an accomplice named Charles Evens in a conspiracy to “access a protected computer without authorization to obtain information for private financial gain,” alongside other counts. The arrests were made in California, which recently passed a strict law specifically targeting revenge porn sites. There has also been a crackdown in prosecutions associated with the law. In December, 27-year-old Kevin Bolleart was charged with 31 felony counts for work on a similar site.

So the great “revenge porn” bubble has gone bust. Advice to women: No naked pictures, period. You think your boyfriend can be trusted to keep your naked selfies strictly private? You’re stupid.

 

Category: Crime

Suspect in Custody After Lockdown at Southern Adventist University

Posted on | January 23, 2014 | 10 Comments

Reports are still kind of sketchy, but a suspect has reportedly been arrested after a “security procedure . . . for an unknown potential threat” at Southern Adventist University in Collegedale, Tennessee.

Will update when more details become available.

UPDATE: The Chattanooga Times Free Press provides this photo of multiple police cars at the entrance to the university campus:

At this point, details of the incident are still sketchy.

UPDATE II: Images and reports via Twitter:

 


Category: Crime

Available: Girlfriend, Slightly Used

Posted on | January 23, 2014 | 97 Comments

Wombat featured this story in his “Live at Five” roundup this morning: Pop starlet Selena Gomez, 21, is on the rebound, looking for a new boyfriend after being dumped by Justin Bieber:

“I actually talked to Katy Perry about guys who are intimidated by strong girls. I haven’t found someone yet who could understand my lifestyle, support it, love me through it, and not be threatened by it,” Gomez says. “It’s hard. I do think I might scare some guys, because I’m like, ‘I want to change the world! I have dreams! What do you want to do?’ But I only know how to be me.”

My Army son is 21 and single. Girls don’t scare him. He might be able to understand Selena’s lifestyle and uh, love her through it.

My son is trained to jump out of planes and kill people, so obviously he is not “intimidated by strong girls,” but I’m not sure that’s really what Selena’s problem is.

Does anyone believe that Justin Bieber — not exactly an unsuccessful person — was “intimidated” and “threatened” by Selena?

No, I figure it this way: Justin Bieber isn’t hurting for female companionship and can get plenty of girls as hot as, or hotter than, Selena Gomez. From his perspective, Selena is just another girl who wants to get Bieberized, and he doesn’t have to compromise or put up with a lot of “relationship” hassles to get what he wants.

If guys aren’t “intimidated” by Selena Gomez, what’s her problem? The ex-Disney starlet gave us a hint when she canceled her Australian tour and issued a statement saying, “I need to spend some time on myself in order to be the best person I can be.”

Translation: “I’m the Psycho Bitch From Hell.”

This is generally true of any woman who claims that she can’t get a boyfriend because men are “intimidated by strong girls.”

No, sweetheart, you’re the source of your own problems. Projecting your insecurities onto guys and making a sour-grapes rationalization for why they reject you — “He’s too weak to cope with my strength” — may serve as an adequate defense mechanism to protect your fragile ego, but it does not actually explain your problems, nor will it help solve those problems.

If you’re the Psycho Bitch From Hell, the kind of emotionally unstable woman who creates unnecessary drama, any explanation for your lack of a steady boyfriend must begin with you. There are plenty of attractive, high-achieving women who are as successful in their personal relationships as they are in their careers. Why aren’t you one of those women, Selena? Hint: It ain’t Justin Bieber’s fault.

The latest Justin-Selena drama suggests that Justin has his own problems, but that’s typical: Who gets mixed up with the Psycho Bitch From Hell? Crazy guys, that’s who.

Did I mention my Army son is trained to jump out of planes and kill people? That’s the kind high-risk gig that crazy guys naturally go for, but my son’s on-duty risks don’t worry me nearly as much as the danger he’ll get mixed up with the Psycho Bitch From Hell.

If Selena Gomez shows up at Fort Bragg, son, watch out.

UPDATE: Speak of the Devil, Justin Bieber got arrested in Miami for drunk driving, drag racing and resisting arrest. He should plead insanity: “Your honor, my client dated Selena Gomez.”

 

Category: Celebrities

LIVE AT FIVE: 01.23.14

Posted on | January 23, 2014 | 12 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho


TOP NEWS
“Thousands” Brave Cold To Join March For Life

Pro-life demonstrators march down Pennsylvania Avenue


Annual protest of Roe v. Wade adds adoption to the mix

Texas Executes Mexican Cop-Killer Despite State Dept. Whining, Foreign Protests
Executed for 1994 murder of Houston policeman


Treasury Secretary To Congress: My Bad
December estimate too optimistic; now says Congress needs to raise debt limit by late February



POLITICS
Former EPA Official Briefs Congress On EPA’s Project To “Modify The DNA” Of Capitalism

Former EPA official & convicted fraudster John Beale

Institute For Energy Research seizes on “smoking gun”; e-mails show cozy relationship between EPA, green groups

Conservative Super PAC To Fund Secretary Of State Hopefuls

Christie Drawing Increased Hispanic Support Despite Scandals

Obama Comments Not Meant To Endorse Weed Legalization, White House Claims

Independent Review Board Condemns NSA Phone Data Collection As Illegal, Calls For Its End

Energy Secretary Brushes Aside Speculation On Ending Oil Export Ban

Virginia’s New Attorney General Won’t Defend Gay Marriage Ban

Pentagon Relaxes Rules On Religious Apparel, Facial Hair



THE ECONOMY, STUPID
Profit-Taking Pulls Asian Crude Down From US Highs: NYMEX $96.42, Brent $107.95
Asian Shares Lower After Weak PRC Data
Icahn Increases Pressure On Apple, Raises Stake To $3 Billion
IBM Drags On Dow, But Stocks Mostly Rise
Target To Drop Health Insurance For Part-Timers
Hyundai Profit Misses Estimates On Strong Won, ROK Slowdown
Descent Of Man: How Texting Stops Us Walking Tall
Google Dismisses Eavesdropping Threat In Chrome Feature
PRC Blames Hackers For Internet Disruption; Experts Say It Was Probably Censors
Valve Releases SteamOS Beta
Microsoft Offers To Store Foreign Users’ Data Outside US



SPORTS
Tanaka Of The Yankees

Japanese ace joins Yankees’ rotation

Signs seven-year, $155 million deal

Flames Edge Coyotes, Stop Seven-Game Home Slump

Jefferson Outduels Griffin As Bobcats Beat Clippers

Jokinen Scores Two As Pens Rally To Crush Canadiens

Grady Sizemore Returns To The Majors With The Red Sox

Wings Edge Blackhawks In Shootout 5-4

Federal Baseball Lexicon, 2014 Edition



FAMOUS FOR BEING FAMOUS
Selena Gomez On “Really Bad Split”

Needs a boyfriend who’s not threatened by her success

The Seventeen cover girl’s interview. No loss of IQ required.

Patti LaBelle On “Little Heifers Who Can’t Sing”, Why She’s Not A Diva

Love Won’t Keep Them Together: Captain & Tennille Divorcing

Bill Cosby Returning To NBC, Will Star In Family Comedy

Tension On “Fifty Shades Of Grey” Set As Director, Author Clash


Vanessa Paradis “Not Bitter” Over Johnny Depp’s Engagement To Amber Heard

It’s A Girl For Jenni “JWoww” Farley

Leah Messer To Reveal Daughter’s Muscular Dystrophy On “Teen Mom 2” Premiere

Jonah Hill Took Just $60K For “Wolf Of Wall Street” So He Could Work With Scorsese

Shia LeBeouf Claims Recent Bizarre Behavior Was “Performance Art”

Lorde Texts Taylor Swift For Advice

Lena Dunham Helps Man Sell Couch On Craigslist

“I’m Not Your Daddy, So Back Off!” Eddie Murphy On The Attack

NBC Shelves “Murder She Wrote” Reboot



FOREIGNERS
Ukraine Opposition Gives President Election Ultimatum
Defiant Rob Ford Attacks Toronto Council On Drinking, Tax Hikes
ROK Economic Growth Slows
India Police Accuse Village Elders Of Ordering Woman’s Gang-Rape
Israel Busts Al-Qaeda Plot To Bomb US Embassy In Tel Aviv
Abe: No Heroes Buried At Yasukuni Shrine
Pakistani Shiites Rally For Third Day Of Protests, Refuse To Bury Dead From Bus Bombing
Putin Spokesman: Russia Won’t Intervene In Ukraine Protests
South Sudan Blasts Calls To Put Country Under UN Trusteeship
PRC Dissident Rejects Court’s Authority, Refuses To Defend Himself
Syrian Peace Talks Open With Vitriol



BLOGS & STUFF
Proof Positive: Showdown At The AC Corral
First Street Journal: More Foreign Policy Brilliance From John Francois Kerry
The Looking Spoon: It’s A Good Thing Liberals Think Gender Is An Artificial Construct, So This Shouldn’t Offend Them
Blackmailers Don’t Shoot: Meet The Obama Voter Running As A Republican In California
Michelle Malkin: Lessons For Shove Guv Andrew Cuomo
Twitchy: “So Full Of Sh!t” – Wisconsin Lawmaker Slammed For “Profane” Reaction During Scott Walker Speech
American Power: Older Americans Finding Community At McDonald’s
American Thinker: Obama The Ingrate
The Necropolitan Sentinel: Obamacare Watch – Congrats To Cover Oregon, The Worst State Exchange!
Conservatives4Palin: Governor Palin – NAACP Leader Shows True Colors
Don Surber: Daily Scoreboard, January 22
Jammie Wearing Fools: Another Obamacare Success Story – Disabled CA Woman Signs Up For Obamacare, Can’t Find Doctor
Joe For America: Scott Walker Tells Wisconsin, Here’s An $800 Million Tax Cut – It’s Your Money
JustOneMinute: The Ten Thousand
Pat Dollard: Obama Celebrates 41 Years Of Abortion – An “Opportunity To Fulfill Dreams”
Protein Wisdom: Planned Parenthood Claims Healthcare Inequality Undeniably Tied To Racism
Shot In The Dark: 14:59
The Jawa Report: Guy Who Got Stuck In Antarctic Ice Gets Award For Super-Accurate Global Warming Model
The Lonely Conservative: GOP Senators Tell Sebelius To Stop Calling Medicare Benefits Free
This Ain’t Hell: Jay Kerwin Meets Don Shipley
Megan McArdle: Better Isn’t Happening At Sears


Category: Live at Five

Glenn Beck’s #LGBT Agenda?

Posted on | January 22, 2014 | 91 Comments

My brother Kirby called this afternoon and began the conversation by saying, “You know if that kid in Florida kills himself . . .”

Yeah, they’ll blame me.

Volunteer Official Scapegoat™ of the Hate Olympics.

Someone has to be the conservative who notices things you’re not supposed to notice and says things you’re not supposed to say.

The chief qualifications for this gig are (a) scorn for popularity and (b) disregard for the short-term goals of the Republican Party. If your goal is to become the Popular Person Embraced by the Official GOP, you can never speak the kind of truth that makes people uncomfortable, you can never risk anything in a fight, and you are ultimately doomed to a defensive strategy of retreat.

Glenn Beck said on his Monday show that anti-gay people “have no place in this country.” . . .
“Anybody within the sound of my voice that hates a gay person because they’re gay, you have no place calling yourself a fan of mine,” Beck said. “You have no place in this country.”
Beck has spoken out in support of gay marriage several times before. Earlier in January, he voiced his opposition against Russia’s anti-gay laws and announced that he would stand by the LGBT advocacy group GLAAD in their fight against “hetero-fascism.”
“You are not a fan of mine — you have no friendship here — if you hate people because they’re gay,” Beck also added. “You have no place claiming that you’re a fan of this show. . . . If that’s who you are, I don’t want to have anything to do with you.”

Of course, the problem with Beck’s rhetoric here is that it conflates political opposition to a certain policy agenda (or religious objections to homosexual behavior) with “hate,” which is an assertion so absurd that I hesitate to dignify it with a response.

Look, my religious beliefs condemn premarital sex and re-marriage after divorce. Do I “hate” people who don’t live up to those biblical standards of behavior? No one has ever accused me of such a hate, because there is no recognized Promiscuity Lobby trying to mobilize an identity politics constituency to vote Democrat by labeling Republicans a hate group on such a basis. Once you get past the irrational bullying tactics of the Left and look at the actual data, you recognize that the gay agenda represents an effort to re-order social norms on behalf of an extremely small (but quite vocal and well-funded) minority:

The Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law, a gay and lesbian think tank, released a study in April 2011 estimating based on its research that just 1.7 percent of Americans between 18 and 44 identify as gay or lesbian, while another 1.8 percent — predominantly women — identify as bisexual. Far from underestimating the ranks of gay people because of homophobia, these figures included a substantial number of people who remained deeply closeted, such as a quarter of the bisexuals. A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention survey of women between 22 and 44 that questioned more than 13,500 respondents between 2006 and 2008 found very similar numbers: Only 1 percent of the women identified themselves as gay, while 4 percent identified as bisexual.

So the LGBT coalition encompasses 3.5 percent of the population, max, to whom the other 96.5 percent are expected to kowtow?

Never has such a large majority dog been so easily wagged by such a small minority tail, led by radicals who habitually impugn all opposition in the most vituperative language imaginable. Dana Pico at First Street Journal notes the implicit insistence “that homosexual relationships are just as good, just as wholesome, just as normal, as heterosexual ones,” i.e., compulsory approval. As I explained more than five years ago (“Gay Rights, Gay Rage,” The American Spectator, Nov.  17, 2008), those who speak of homosexuality in the language of “rights” are not about liberty, but rather about equality in the most radical sense and, as Richard Weaver famously warned, Ideas Have Consequences.

This is how we reach the point at which people believe they have the “right” to make you bake them a lesbian wedding cake. This is how we reach the point where no one is supposed to object to teenage boys getting paid for a six-way “bareback orgy” on video.

Do you think this kind of stuff is worth discussing? “You have no place in this country.” Ace says Glenn Beck is now “all about attempting to get TimeWarner and ComCast to pick up his cable channel.”

Yeah, because MSNBC needs more competition.

 

Category: Gays, Glenn Beck

The Real Problem With the American Left: Tedious Douchebags Like Brian Beutler

Posted on | January 22, 2014 | 14 Comments

Don’t really have an argument to offer here, but neither does Brian Beutler in publishing a Salon blog post with this headline:

The real problem with the American
right: Aging, white radicals

Saw that headline at Memeorandum, and instinctively knew what I’d find at the link: A humdrum rehash of the Republican Party obituaries that liberals write every day — “The GOP is doomed! Hopelessly doomed! Out-of-touch! On the wrong side of history!” — except when Republicans win elections, in which case liberals dust off their “How Republicans Exploited America’s Latent Racism” argument.

Notice that Beutler is writing this at time when the Democrats are afflicted by ginormous policy failures (persistent high unemployment and the disaster of ObamaCare) as well as unmistakable omens of impending political failure (the Wendy Davis meltdown, bad mojo in the polls), so that we could be just 10 months away from a decisive mid-term victory for the GOP. Such a result — ending Harry Reid’s tenure as Senate Majority Leader and crushing Nancy Pelosi’s hope of recapturing the House Speaker’s gavel — would do a lot to re-set perceptions going into the 2016 presidential campaign. And then what?

Well, it won’t make any difference in terms of Brian Beutler’s formula of offering partisan cheerleading as “political analysis,” nor will it make any difference at Salon.com, an obsolete liberal “webzine” that has been bleeding red ink since the days when dial-up modems were standard and people used words like “webzine.”

By now, Salon.com has probably lost $30 million in the process of proving that a site whose top-tier talent is Joan Walsh isn’t really interested in top-tier talent, which is how they ended up with Brian Beutler, the dimmest light in the “Juice Box Mafia” firmament. Beutler wakes up each morning and spends all day writing the same thing again:

Does anyone else notice the repetitive nature of Beutler’s work? Only if you pay attention to Salon.com, which most people don’t, in part because their D.C.-based “political writer” never publishes anything that couldn’t have been written by a Cleveland-based DailyKos diarist.

 

Category: Journalism

You May Be Right. I May Be Crazy.

Posted on | January 22, 2014 | 21 Comments

But it just may be a lunatic you’re looking for.

James Fallon, an emeritus professor of neuroscience at the University of California-Irvine, accidentally discovered that his brain scan shows traits associated with psychopaths. This led him to examine his own personal history and write a book called The Psychopath Inside: A Neuroscientist’s Personal Journey into the Dark Side of the Brain. In an interview with Judith Ohikuare of The Atlantic Monthly, Professor Fallon made this observation:

The jump from being a “prosocial” psychopath or somebody on the edge who doesn’t act out violently, to someone who really is a real, criminal predator is not clear. For me, I think I was protected because I was brought up in an upper-middle-class, educated environment with very supportive men and women in my family. So there may be a mass convergence of genetics and environment over a long period of time. But what would happen if I lost my family or lost my job; what would I then become? That’s the test.
For people who have the fundamental biology — the genetics, the brain patterns, and that early existence of trauma—first of all, if they’re abused they’re going to be pissed off and have a sense of revenge: I don’t care what happens to the world because I’m getting even. But a real, primary psychopath doesn’t need that. They’re just predators who don’t need to be angry at all; they do these things because of some fundamental lack of connection with the human race, and with individuals, and so on.
Someone who has money, and sex, and rock and roll, and everything they want may still be psychopathic — but they may just manipulate people, or use people, and not kill them. They may hurt others, but not in a violent way. Most people care about violence — that’s the thing. People may say, “Oh, this very bad investment counselor was a psychopath” — but the essential difference in criminality between that and murder is something we all hate and we all fear. It just isn’t known if there is some ultimate trigger.

You should read the whole thing. Nature-vs.-nurture arguments about deviant or criminal behavioral tendencies are, on the one hand, endlessly fascinating and, on the other hand, to a large degree ultimately irrelevant. That is to say, by the point in time when someone commits a crime, their behavioral traits are already well-developed and — while we may wish to understand the “why” of this — developmental issues aren’t germane to law enforcement, the object of which is public safety.

We may wish to do a background investigation of a criminal to determine whether he is an otherwise productive and law-abiding person who strayed off-course, or whether he has the type of deformed antisocial personality that makes him a high risk for recidivism. But the criminal is punished for his criminal acts, not for being a bad person, so there are limits to the utility of such background information.

The use of psychological profiling as an investigative tool is another aspect of this, but “profiling” isn’t really the kind of exciting stuff that crime-thriller movies and TV shows make it out to be.

At any rate, by the time a psychopath’s behavior brings him to the attention of authorities, his personality defects are already sufficiently developed that talk of rehabilitation is absurd. Nor can you say, “Well, it’s not his fault. He’s got a rotten brain.”

If you start trying to absolve criminals of responsibility on such a basis, you’re opening the door to endless efforts by clever crooks (and their lawyers) to game the system. In fact, that’s really what happened in the 1960s in a series of court decisions that had the effect of hindering law enforcement and empowering criminals, so that the legal system’s concern for the “rights” of criminals tended to supercede any concern for the public-safety rights of ordinary citizens. It took two or three decades for courts, legislatures and law enforcement to reverse the 1960s shift toward leniency, which unleashed an unprecedented surge in crime.

It cannot be the case that, in the mid-1960s, there was a sudden increase in the number of psychopaths in the general population. Whatever caused the upsurge of criminal violence and anti-social deviancy was an environmental influence, and social critics then and since have tended to point to permissive parenting and the cultural collapse of authority as the key factors. Christopher Lasch wrote in 1979:

Arnold Rogow argues . . . that American parents, alternately “permissive and evasive” in dealing with the young, “find it easier to achieve conformity by the use of bribery than by facing the emotional turmoil of suppressing the child’s demands.” In this way, they undermine the child’s initiative and make it impossible for him to develop self-restraint or self-discipline; but since American society no longer values these traits anyway, the abdication of parental authority itself instills in the young the character traits demanded by a corrupt, permissive, hedonistic culture.

Of course, the violent psychopath is more likely to come from a background of abuse than of permissiveness, but our society’s unwillingness to confront anti-social behavior with deterrent force reflects the “permissive, hedonistic culture.” Psychopathic personality types — and Professor Fallon recognizes these traits in himself — are more likely to engage in anti-social behavior if they think they can get away with it, and they’re more likely to think they can get away with it if authorities (parents, teachers, police, judges) aren’t serious about enforcing laws and social norms. Criminals are not so stupid that they can’t respond to cues about risks and incentives.

The difference between a psychopath and a neuroscientist may be less than we think. And the difference between a psychopath and a blogger may in some cases be almost imperceptible.

 

 

Category: Fear. Loathing.

ObamaCare Is Doomed

Posted on | January 22, 2014 | 30 Comments

Megan McArdle recounts the basic case:

In a nutshell, Obamacare has so far fallen dramatically short of what was expected — technically, and in almost every other way. Enrollment is below expectations: According to the data we have so far, more than half of the much-touted Medicaid expansion came from people who were already eligible before the health-care law passed, and this weekend, the Wall Street Journal reported that the overwhelming majority of people buying insurance through the exchanges seem to be folks who already had insurance. Coverage is less generous than many people expected, with narrower provider networks and higher deductibles. The promised $2,500 that the average family was told they could save on premiums has predictably failed to materialize. And of course, we now know that if you like your doctor and plan, there is no reason to think you can keep them. Which is one reason the law has not gotten any more popular since it passed.
The administration and its supporters have been counting on the coverage expansion to put Obamacare beyond repeal. So what if the coverage expansion is anemic, the plans bare-bones, the website sort of a disaster? It’s a foundation upon which we can build — and now that so many people have coverage, the thinking goes, Republicans will never dare to touch it. The inevitable problems can be fixed down the road.
But it’s far from clear that this is true . . .

Read the whole thing.

 

Category: Barack Obama, Health Care
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