The Other McCain

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

Let the Paul Walker Death Crash Conspiracy Theories Begin!

Posted on | December 2, 2013 | 63 Comments

Basically, all celebrity news is on hold until further notice, because the actor famous for starring in movies about high-speed street racing got killed while — wait for it — high-speed street racing.

I know, right?

Anyway, if you’re paranoid, this might seem suspicious:

Paul Walker may not have ever gotten into the car that took him to his death if it hadn’t been acting up moments before the crash … TMZ has learned.
Paul showed up Saturday for a fundraiser at Always Evolving — Roger Rodas’ high end auto shop that specializes in exotic cars. Paul had a stake in the shop.
Sources connected to Roger tell TMZ when Paul arrived … Roger was watching one of his employees try in vain to back the Carrera GT into the shop, but it kept stalling. Roger decided to take matters into his own hands … told the worker to get out and took the wheel himself.
As Roger began to back into the garage … Paul came up and said he hadn’t driven in the Porsche yet — so he jumped in the passenger seat and they took a 20 minute drive.

Did somebody say “suspicious“?

The exotic sports car in which Paul Walker violently died, crashed as a result of mechanical failure — very possibly a steering fluid leak … this according to sources closely tied to the auto shop where the vehicle was stored and maintained.
Sources connected to Always Evolving — the shop co-owned by Walker and the Porsche driver Roger Rodas — tell TMZ they saw evidence of a fluid burst and subsequent fluid trail before the skid marks at the accident scene.
The AE sources point to the fact there is a noticeable absence of skid marks until just before the point of impact. They say if Roger had lost control the skid marks would show swerving, but instead the marks were in a straight line. They feel this cements the theory the driver didn’t have steering control.

Probably the CIA or the Mossad or maybe . . . right-wing nutjobs outraged to learn that Paul Walker was a cradle-robbing creepazoid:

Paul Walker’s girlfriend is ‘broken up’ over his death as the couple were hoping for a ‘bright future’ together, MailOnline can reveal.
Jasmine Pilchard-Gosnell, 23, is being comforted by her mother Julie as she struggles to cope with the ‘horrible’ news, relatives said.
She has reportedly been dating Walker since 2006 when she was just 16 and he was 33 — but the 17-year age gap has been no barrier to them both finding love. . . .
Jasmine, a college student who lives in Santa Barbara, California, was supposedly beginning to become the step-mother to Walker’s daughter Meadow, 15, even though she is only eight years older than her.

Kaitlyn Hunt could not be reached for comment.

 

 


Category: Celebrities, Conspiracy Theories

Your Tax Dollars at Work: PETA Protests Weird Animal Sex Research Projects

Posted on | December 2, 2013 | 20 Comments

Apparently, if you’re an official NIH-funded scientist, you can get paid to do things that sadistic serial killers do in their spare time:

1. Mice and rats electrically stimulated after penises mutilated and injected with chemicals
Location: Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland
Experiments: Experimenters cut all the skin off the penises of live mice and rats, electrically stimulated their penises with electrodes for up to five minutes, and injected their penises with various chemicals to see if they’d sustain an erection. The animals were then killed, and their penises were cut apart.
Cost to taxpayers: $2,792,144

2. Mice’s sex drive tested after brains burned
Location: Boston University, Boston, Massachusetts
Experiments: Experimenters locked female mice into restraint devices, drilled holes into their skulls, and burned lesions into their brains. The females were then presented with urine samples from castrated and intact males, and the amount of time they spent sniffing each urine sample was recorded. In a subsequent experiment, the females were placed with males and the females’ sexual receptivity as indicated by their back-arching behavior was observed and rated. All of the mice were killed and dissected.
Cost to taxpayers: $1,505,173

3. Rats’ sex drive tested following Prozac injections and removal of ovaries
Location: Texas Woman’s University, Denton, Texas
Experiments: Experimenters injected female rats with antidepressant drugs and placed them with male hamsters. The females’ sexual receptivity, as indicated by the downward arching of their backs, was observed and measured. The experimenters then manipulated the female rats, surgically removing their ovaries and injecting sex hormones, and again observed the rats’ sexual behavior.
Cost to taxpayers: $2,024,949

4. Hamsters’ sex drive tested following brain damage
Location: University of California–Berkeley, Berkeley, California
Experiments: Experimenters cut into the skulls of female hamsters and implanted tubes into their brains and pumps into their scalps. Saline or hormones related to sexual behavior were pumped into the females’ brains, and the animals were videotaped as they were able to see, smell, and hear—but not touch—a male hamster. The sexual receptivity of the females to male hamsters was measured through their vaginal scent markings. Experimenters used brushes to stimulate the female hamsters, and the extent of sexual receptivity as indicated by their back-arching behavior was observed and rated. The animals were then killed, and their brains were dissected.
Cost to taxpayers: $1,817,502

While I’m not a supporter of the animal-rights movement, I’d probably be opposed to taxpayer funding for these evil experiments even if they were performed using Amanda Marcotte as a research subject.

 

Category: Science

But If They’re ‘Born That Way’ …

Posted on | December 2, 2013 | 88 Comments

. . . why are there more lesbians than ever?

More women than ever are having same-sex experiences — or at least more women than ever are reporting it.
This week, a long-term British survey found a fourfold increase over the past two decades in women reporting at least one sapphic fling. Self-reported same-sex behavior among men, however, has remained somewhat constant. Now “the proportion of women reporting sexual experience with same-sex partners . . . exceeds that of men, at least at younger ages,” says the survey. Neither this increase nor the gender difference can be explained by a change in sexual self-identity, according to the study.
This isn’t just a British thing, either. Indiana University sex researcher Debby Herbenick tells me that her U.S. research has yielded similar results: 8 percent of men and 15 percent of women report same-sex sexual behavior in their lifetime. . . .
Why the gender difference, and why the increase?
Meredith Chivers, a sex researcher at Queen’s University, says, “Women have a greater capacity for gender-fluid sexual expression than men do. This might relate to women’s capacity to become sexually aroused by a broader range of sexual stimuli, including images of women.”

What we’re seeing here is the opportunistic quality of radical arguments. Never mind the contradictions. As long as the conclusion serves to encourage immoral perversion, logical consistency is optional.

Feminist writer Tracy Clark Flory of Salon happily discards the genetic-destiny “gay DNA” argument that was essential to the egalitarian “civil rights” claims of gay-rights activists in the 1990s. At the same time, however, she also abandons the androgyny-as-equality arguments of feminists, who insist that there are no meaningful differences between men and women. Now we must believe:

  1. Sexuality is culturally influenced, so that decades of social change can produce an increase in the incidence of lesbianism;
    and
  2. Women are so different from men that their “gender-fluid sexual expression” makes them more susceptible to social influence.

Of course, most of the “women reporting at least one sapphic fling” are not exclusively lesbian, but would properly be classified as bisexual (at least, on a temporary or experimental basis) and, if you think about it, promoting this kind of opportunistic bisexuality is entirely acceptable to the gay community if their interest is primarily in obtaining a greater number of more attractive sex partners.

WHAT? Did I just suggest that some people may be less interested in “gay rights” as an abstract political concept than they are in increasing their chances of getting it on with a hottie? Holy cynicism, Batman!

Consider the implications: If homosexuality is so widely accepted that it is considered hateful to disapprove of it, then no one would dare take offense at being propositioned for gay sex, lest they be accused of homophobia and discrimination. Thus the childish peer-pressure claim that “Everybody’s doing it” (or at least, everyone is open to doing it, except haters) cloaks itself in “civil rights” rhetoric, and anyone who would refuse the offer of gay sex is a bigot.

Stigmatizing heterosexuality as a sort of prejudice is thus exposed as the next stage in the progress of radicalism, and if the arguments made tomorrow are inconsistent with the arguments made 10 or 15 years ago — when the claim of sexual identity as hard-wired from birth was crucial to the radical movement’s immediate goals — the only people who would call attention to this inconsistency are haters.

The gay-rights “argument” is therefore ultimately a coin-flip: Heads, they win; tails, SHUT UP, YOU THEOCRATIC HOMOPHOBES!

 

Category: Culture, Feminism, Gays, Science, Sex

Cyber Monday: Thanks to the Reader Who Bought the $200 Lego Set From Amazon!

Posted on | December 2, 2013 | 31 Comments

 

Today is “Cyber Monday,” the biggest online shopping day of the year, when people who didn’t find what they wanted on Black Friday go on the Internet and order from my Amazon Associates links. This has become such a phenomenon, “60 Minutes” reported about it:

If you have ever wondered what happens after you’ve clicked and placed an order on Amazon, take a look. If there is such a thing as Santa’s workshop, this would be it.
A 1.2 million square foot distribution center, the size of more than 20 football fields, gearing up for the holiday shopping season.
There are 96 of these warehouses worldwide, what Amazon calls fulfillment centers. Tomorrow, on what is known as Cyber Monday, it’s expected that more than 300 items a second will be ordered on Amazon.

Of course, not everyone who shops at Amazon does so through the links on this blog, but lots of readers do, and one of those readers bought  the “LEGO Creator Town Hall,” which has 2,766 pieces and costs $199.95. This is yet another example of those “Things You Can Buy at Amazon That I Didn’t Even Know Existed.”

Lego Creator series includes other projects like the Palace Cinema (2,196 pieces) and the Grand Emporium (2,182 pieces), so that you could build an entire Lego village. And here are a few other examples of items recently purchased via our Amazon links:

  • Keurig K-Cup Home Brewer — This is the single-cup brewing system where each cup is always fresh and there’s never a mess, because the coffee comes in pre-packaged K-cups. If you order this for someone special, you may also want to order the K-Cup Carousel and a 35-cup variety sampler of coffees and teas.
  • The Day The Universe Changed — A five-disk nine-hour documentary series in which BBC historian James Burke “looks at times when new knowledge or discoveries has altered that thinking and explores the cultural changes those discoveries effected.”

 

 

The vast selection at Amazon offers endless gift opportunities. Just click a link and shop around. You get free shipping on most orders over $35, and we get a small commission at no cost to you.

 

Category: Amazon

Ask NY Times Who Deserves More Pay: America’s Troops or Fast-Food Workers?

Posted on | December 2, 2013 | 76 Comments

In an editorial Sunday, the New York York Times argued that America’s troops are being paid too much:

Big-ticket weapons like aircraft carriers and the F-35 fighter jet have to be part of any conversation about cutting Pentagon spending to satisfy the mandatory budget reductions known as the sequester. But compensation for military personnel has to be on the table, too . . .
[T]he Pentagon is obliged to find nearly $1 trillion in savings over 10 years. Tough choices will be required in all parts of the budget. Compensation includes pay, retirement benefits, health care and housing allowances.

Got that, troops? “Tough choices,” your compensation is “on the table,” because defending your nation isn’t really anything special.

On the other hand, says New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, something must be done for America’s real heroes, retail clerks:

The last few decades have been tough for many American workers, but especially hard on those employed in retail trade — a category that includes both the sales clerks at your local Walmart and the staff at your local McDonald’s. Despite the lingering effects of the financial crisis, America is a much richer country than it was 40 years ago. But the inflation-adjusted wages of nonsupervisory workers in retail trade — who weren’t particularly well paid to begin with — have fallen almost 30 percent since 1973.
So can anything be done to help these workers, many of whom depend on food stamps — if they can get them — to feed their families, and who depend on Medicaid — again, if they can get it — to provide essential health care? Yes. We can preserve and expand food stamps, not slash the program the way Republicans want. We can make health reform work, despite right-wing efforts to undermine the program.
And we can raise the minimum wage.

The slack-jawed teenager serving french fries and the hipster grad student serving latte at your local Starbucks — we must increase their pay, says the New York Times, whereas the men and women who take an oath to serve their nation . . . “Tough choices.”

Meanwhile, the New York Times reports:

Seeking to increase pressure on McDonald’s, Wendy’s and other fast-food restaurants, organizers of a movement demanding a $15-an-hour wage for fast-food workers say they will sponsor one-day strikes in 100 cities on Thursday and protest activities in 100 additional cities. . . .
The movement, which includes the groups Fast Food Forward and Fight for 15, is part of a growing union-backed effort by low-paid workers — including many Walmart workers and workers for federal contractors — that seeks to focus attention on what the groups say are inadequate wages.
The fast-food effort is backed by the Service Employees International Union and is also demanding that restaurants allow workers to unionize without the threat of retaliation.

So there you have the New York Times worldview in a nutshell: The SEIU and the AFL-CIO, good. American troops, bad.

 

Category: Military, New York Times

LIVE AT FIVE: 12.02.13

Posted on | December 2, 2013 | 14 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho


TOP NEWS
Healthcare.gov “Night And Day” From October, Feds Claim

Insurers still unhappy with data flow

O RLY? Crucial Weekend Begins With A Shutdown



Goa Court Remands Tarun Tejpal To Police Custody
Bail rejected for magazine founder accused of rape


Four Dead As Mob Forces Thai PM To Flee
Security forces fight running battles with 30,000 protesters



POLITICS
Cardinal Dolan Affirms Catholic Church’s Opposition To Obamacare

The Cardinal speaks after celebrating Mass at St. Patrick’s in NYC

Warns of backlash

Broken Promise Of Obamacare To Haunt Dems’ Congressional Campaigns

Illinois Public Unions Target Illinois Democrats In Battle Over Pensions

Obama Hints At Staying In D.C. After Leaving Office

Congressmen Seek Medal For OSS

Obamacare Expected To Add 300K New Yorkers To Medicaid Rolls

Media Attacks Obama’s “Soviet-Style” Publicity Policy



THE ECONOMY, STUPID
Asian Crude Rises On PRC Manufacturing Data: NYMEX $93.24, Brent $110.26
Black Friday Spending Drop Pressures Retailers
Amazon Testing Delivery By Drone
“12 Days Of Christmas” Items Top $114K
Stocks Up For Third Month; S&P Tallies Longest Win Streak Since 2004
Venezuela Takes Over Smurfit Plant
Apple Snubs Discounts, Sprays Black Friday Zombies With Gift Cards
Google’s Schmidt Calls NSA Spying “Outrageous”
Sailfish-Based Jolla Phone Debuts; Will Its New OS Fly?
Restaurant Boots Google Glass-Wearing Customer
Nintendo, Southwest Airlines Give Passengers Free Wii U Consoles



SPORTS
Patriots Rally For 34-31 Win Against Texans

Brady: 371 yards, 2 TDs

Texans’ skid reaches ten games

Giants Eliminate Redskins From Contention With 24-17 Win

Pacers 16-1 After Beating Clippers 105-100

Blazers Hold Off Furious Lakers Rally, 114-108

Phil Hughes Leaves Yankees, Inks 3-Year Deal With Twins

Stars Fall 3-2 To Oilers In Shootout

Nationals Rumors: From Cano To Furcal



FAMOUS FOR BEING FAMOUS
“Fast & Furious” Star Paul Walker Dead In SoCal Crash

Good night, sweet prince

Paul Walker, 1973-2013 RIP

“Fast And Furious 7” Delayed But Won’t Be Scrapped



Maria Bello Comes Out As Gay In NYT Column

Lindsay Lohan Goes After “Grand Theft Auto V” For Image Theft

Michael Jordan & Wife Yvette Expecting First Child

My Life As A Jonas Brother



“Catching Fire”, “Frozen” Serve Up Massive Thanksgiving Feast

Orlando Bloom, Miranda Kerr Reunite In NYC With Son Flynn

Sharon Osbourne’s Plastic Surgery Confession

What’s The One Thing Carla Hall Hates Cooking?

Pamela Anderson’s New Nude Shoot

“Betrayal” Cast Faces Tech Problems

Hamptons High Flyers Screen “Saving Mr. Banks”

“Anchorman” Ferrell Hosts News Show

Secret Service Agent Dan Bongino’s Book Hits NYT Best-Seller List

My Life As A Call Girl



FOREIGNERS
Thai PM Rejects Resignation Demand
Feinstein Blasts Karzai Over Refusal To Sign Pact
Ukrainians Blockade Government Buildings After Clashes
Iran FM Urges Saudis To Work Together For “Stability”
Chicoms Launch First Moon Rover Mission
RCMP Charge Ontario Man With Spying For PRC
Police Clash With Morsi Supporters In Tahrir Square
Karzai Accuses US Of Cutting Military Supplies



BLOGS & STUFF
Dead Republican Party: Obamacare Advent Hymn – Required Usage
Blackmailers Don’t Shoot: Another Lefty Viral Story Turns Out To Be Fake
American Power: Ted Rall Is RAAAAACIST!
American Thinker: New PRC Study Proves Abortion-Breast Cancer Link
Don Surber: Daily Scoreboard, December 2
Jammie Wearing Fools: Dissent Is The Highest Form Of Tax Bracket
JustOneMinute: Declaring Victory!
Pat Dollard: Obamacare Website Designer Also Runs Failed Army Program
Protein Wisdom: Palate Cleanser – Having That Talk At Thanksgiving
Shot In The Dark: The Real Roots Of Gun Control
The Jawa Report: HuffPo Newspeak – “Terrorists” Out, “Activists” In
The Lonely Conservative: Get Ready For The Democrat Party To Move Farther Left


Category: Live at Five

Guardian Losing $50 Million a Year?

Posted on | December 1, 2013 | 37 Comments

These numbers are mind-boggling:

Guardian News & Media has lost nearly £200m in the past six years as it pursues its ambition of being the “world’s leading liberal voice”.
GMG already enjoys advantages over some of its commercial media rivals. Ownership by the Scott Trust means it does not have to answer to shareholders. The group has a cash and investment fund of £254m. Those other assets such as its 50 per cent stake in Trader Media Group and a 33 per cent share in Top Right are security for the loss-making news business. . . .
Two years ago, as he committed GMG to a “digital-first strategy”, Mr Miller warned staff the newspaper’s losses were so great it could run out of money in “three to five years”. The latest losses of £31m for the year to the end of March were an improvement on the £44m of the previous 12 months and he took succour from a 28.9 per cent rise in digital revenues.

Converting pounds to dollars (£1 = $1.64), you find £200 million equals about $325 million. Divide that by six and you find that they’re losing money at a rate in excess of $50 million a year. The £31 million the Guardian group lost in the most recent year is more than $50 million. The £44 million they lost in the previous year was $72 million.

Seventy-two million dollars in losses in a single year!

This is not a business strategy. It’s insanity.

 

Category: Journalism

Administration Says ObamaCare Site Is Working; CNN Finds Otherwise

Posted on | December 1, 2013 | 58 Comments

Elise Viebeck at The Hill reports:

The Obama administration claimed victory Sunday for making HealthCare.gov workable for the vast majority of users, a standard that will be tested as millions of people flood the site in the next three weeks.

Uh, do you really think “millions of people” will “flood the site”?

Or is that just what the administration is claiming? You might want to double-check, because claims by the Obama administration have a predictable way of turning out to be false:

ALISON KOSIK, CNN BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: So tell me about what happened, because we’re getting another error message here, and it’s supposed to be running smoothly. . . .
MATT SLOANE, CNN MEDICAL PRODUCER: I got through. I picked my state. I put in all of my information and I got through the whole process in eight minutes. And then it said my status was in progress. So I went to refresh it and I got the error message.

The Lonely Conservative:

Noel Sheppard at NewsBusters wonders how many other news outlets didn’t bother to test the site and simply took the administration’s word that it’s now working just fine.

Honesty has never been a requirement for employment with the Obama administration — or with most of the media, either.

 

Category: CNN, Health Care
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