The Other McCain

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

Losers on the Romantic Demand Side

Posted on | August 9, 2013 | 79 Comments

One of the worst things a guy can do — women can do the same thing, but in a different way and, trust me, there’s a reason I’m making this about guys — is to overestimate their own attractiveness, or to fixate on an “ideal” of beauty in a partner. This isn’t really an either/or, because the two mistakes tend to run in tandem.

The Barbie doll/Playboy centerfold dream-woman “ideal” is quite a rare commodity, and the potential demand is practically infinite, so any woman who remotely approximates that ideal can pretty much name her own price, so to speak, in the dating market. As a result, such beauties are seldom without companionship.

Quod erat demonstrandum.

From high school onward, a girl who rates as an “8” or above is nearly always going to have a boyfriend or a husband, and if you ever meet a really attractive woman over 21 who doesn’t have a boyfriend or husband, the explanation is one of two things:

  1. She very recently broke up with a guy;
    or
  2. She’s crazy.

Sometimes, of course, it’s both. If a girl is really good-looking, but crazy, she tends to leave a trail of ex-boyfriends in her wake, but the next guy she lures into her crazy-beautiful trap is going to be too impressed by her looks to notice the crazy. What you often find is that the crazy-beautiful types — the only 8+ type women you ever meet “single” out on the scene — are helplessly attracted to Bad Boys. Despite their good looks, crazy-beautiful women have some kind of damaged ego issue, so that if a guy treats her nice, she loses interest:

“Gosh, he really likes me — there must be something
wrong with him, because I deserve to be treated like crap.”

Some guys never quite figure this out, because they have never really evaluated themselves or women objectively. These guys psychologically separate women into two categories:

  1. Super-attractive women they really want to hump;
    and
  2. Normal women they might actually have a chance with.

Unrealistic expectations — and particularly the Barbie-doll fixation — inevitably produce disappointment, and guys who fall into that pattern tend to end up pathetically alone.

Before proceeding to our example of this phenomenon, let me explain something basic: By the time you are 25 or so, you have probably already dated the best-looking person you’ll ever date. True, there are late bloomers, people who were high-school losers who get their act together by the time they graduate college and suddenly discover that they are more attractive than they were as teenagers, but this late-bloomer effect is very unlikely to occur after age 25. So by the time a guy is in his mid-20s, if he has never dated an 8+, he’s a damned fool to keep dreaming that Cinderella/Barbie/Playboy model will stumble into his life.

Ain’t gonna happen, Jack. Get over it. Life is not fair.

OK, so social media consultant Marc Ensign went to a networking event and exchanged business cards with a guy who didn’t make much of an impression. Afterwards, this guy spammed out an e-mail to everyone he met at the event:

my situation is somewhat unusual in that i am the #1 surgeon of my type in the northeastern US by volume, and have performed nearly 20,000 procedures over the last 15 years, so i really don’t need additional income (which is the unusual part). i’m actually so successful that most of the reason i attend networking events these days is for personal networking, not business networking — i’m trying to meet the right woman to fall in love with, marry, and start a family with (i’m single, never married, and really want kids before i’m old!)
i’ve hired some professional matchmakers over the years, with OK results (eg i’ve dated 2 of the matches for 6 months each, which is pretty good). the services vary enormously in quality and price (with an imperfect correlation). . . .

(Here’s your first clue, see: The guy has been a top surgeon for 15 years, which means he is in his 40s. Why would such a highly paid professional still be single at that age?)

These are my Hard (Objective) Dating Parameters which are NOT Flexible:
(this means I am only willing to pay for introductions if ALL these criteria are met)
(if you want to set me up w someone missing 1 of these criteria, I may accept, but will not pay for that)

  1. Age 27-35 (ideally 28-34)
  2. No kids, wants kids in the next 1-2 years
  3. College graduate, doesn’t have to be a great school, but needs to have finished the degree
  4. Skinny (i.e. dress size 0-2, if you don’t know what that means (many men don’t) it means very skinny)
  5. Caucasian (not black, not Hispanic, not Asian)
  6. Healthy lifestyle (defined as no smoking, no drugs, good diet, no hard drinking,

(OK, this isn’t too much, is it? Skinny non-smoking, healthy college graduate, white ages 28-34. Probably several hundred thousand single women in the U.S. could fit this description and might be interested in marrying a successful surgeon. But . . .)

These are things that I would ideally prefer, but don’t require (i.e. I am flexible about these criteria)

  1. Christian (any denomination is fine, I’m Catholic but not very religious, prefer any religion over none, must be religiously tolerant, will not be compatible with someone who thinks everyone else is damned)
  2. Graduate degree or very good undergraduate school (more compatible since I went to 3 Ivy League schools i.e. Dartmouth, Columbia & Harvard, as well as Emory and my MBA from NYU)
  3. Spent significant time in another country other than the US (either born somewhere else or lived out of the US for a total of a 6 months or more, not on a vacation, doing something like school or work)
  4. Spent significant time (>1 yr) living in a city of 1 million or more (so can live in NYC if moves here)
  5. Likes animals and pets, particularly dogs (because I plan to have a dog for the rest of my life)

These are the Soft (Objective) Criteria I require, but are difficult to match (because they’re qualitative)

  1. Attractive (like an 8 out of the 1-10 scale, 9-10 is actually bad as it comes with a lot of downside)
  2. Nice, normal, sweet, kind, altruistic, selfless, not entitled, bitchy, materialistic, selfish, self-centered
  3. Stylish, fashionable, polished, confident but not vain, superficial, overly concerned about looks
  4. Hard-working, real career, full-time job (unless in graduate school), achievement-oriented
  5. Highly functional Type B (not a Type A because too similar, not a Type B who can’t get stuff done)
  6. Easy-going, sense of humor, doesn’t take life or things too seriously, gets along well with everyone
  7. Good person, follows the Golden Rule, nice and kind to others, never does bad things because of values
  8. Good family, good role models, ideally good nuclear family so can emulate good patterns of behavior

You see the basic problem here? Whatever his accomplishments as a surgeon, this guy can’t be very good-looking — and his social skills are probably minimal to non-existent — or else he wouldn’t still be single. He’s a perfectionist and a control freak, and is apparently embittered by his past relationships (or lack thereof).

When a man seems to be demanding an 8+ woman, but pejoratively remarks about women who are “vain, superficial, overly concerned about looks,” it’s like a red flag. This guy has serious personality problems. Likewise, when a guy boasts about his multiple Ivy League degrees and his career success, and then disparages women who are “materialistic, selfish, self-centered” (note the redundancy), you know he’s got painful broken relationships in his past.  He’s been burned before, see, and he’s not going to get burned again.

In a phrase, this guy is damaged goods. Maybe if he had married one of his college classmates, or some woman he dated in his late 20s or early 30s, whatever his underlying personality flaws, he would have been all right. Instead, his relationships didn’t work out for some reason, and when I say “for some reason” of course I mean, because this guy is a desperately neurotic basket case.

Mama’s Precious Little Boy, eh?

Hate to go all Freudian on this guy, but c’mon — that e-mail is practically a Valentine to his mother: “Nice, normal, sweet, kind, altruistic, selfless . . . gets along well with everyone . . . nice and kind to others.” In other words, he wants complete acceptance, no criticism or disagreement — a mother’s idealized love, in a college-educated non-smoking size-zero package of 8+ Barbie-doll beauty.

This guy is doomed and hopeless, and if he somehow did manage to find and marry a woman who met his criteria, that wouldn’t actually solve his problem, because he is the problem.

Guys: Don’t be this guy. Accept who you are and don’t imagine that your romantic problems can be blamed on women being too “superficial” to appreciate how wonderful you are. If you were really so wonderful, you’d already be married to a wonderful woman.

The fact that you’re still out there looking means you ain’t all that, no matter how precious your mother thinks you are.

UPDATE: It appears that the author of the detailed “demand” e-mail is Manhattan eye surgeon Dr. William Chen, whose rants about a dilapidated property in his Greenwich Village neighborhood went viral in 2010. The question of why Dr. Chen is insistent on having a wife who is “Caucasian (not black, not Hispanic, not Asian)” immediately comes to mind. Is this some kind of “trophy” thing? Or just another aspect of his generally bizarre personality?

 

Category: Marriage

On This Day In 1945…

Posted on | August 9, 2013 | 57 Comments

— Wombat-socho


…the United States Army Air Force dropped an atomic bomb on Nagasaki, and six days after that the Japanese agreed to an unconditional surrender. Ever since then, all manner of intellectualloids have been moaning about the inhumanity of it all, how it didn’t need to happen, and 31 other flavors of morally superior nonsense. Ace has a really excellent post which he admits is nothing more than an extended tease to get people reading Paul Fussell’s Thank God for the Atom Bomb and Other Essays, which he generously excerpts in the post.


I’m not going to rehash Fussell’s arguments, especially since I’ve seen them before in George MacDonald Fraser’s Quartered Safe Out Here; the TL;DR version is that some sorry whiners think Japanese lives were more important than the lives of American men in uniform*. Strange but true. I don’t have a lot of sympathy for that argument, and think that anyone holding that opinion ought to consider getting a brain implant. One look at how the landings would have gone is in Alfred Coppel’s The Burning Mountain; if you enjoy reading about bloodbaths and slaughterhouses, this will be right up your alley. Sweet dreams. I for one am grateful we had the bomb, because the alternative would have been a lot worse for all concerned.

*Also Australian, British, Chinese, Dutch, Filipino, French and Indian soldiers, sailors, and airmen, to say nothing of civilians in the war zones.


Category: Ace of Spades, History, Intellectuals

21 Books – Conclusion

Posted on | August 9, 2013 | 8 Comments

— Wombat-socho


Von Ryan’s Express, David Westheimer
” …if only one man gets out, it’s a victory.”
I have to admit, I like the movie version of this book a lot better, even though the book does a better job of explaining why Ryan is such a martinet and also has a sequel, which the movie can’t. Still, the book is excellent, quite the period piece and an interesting counterpoint to Hogan’s Heroes. Sorry, no deep meanings here, just a book that spawned an excellent movie…and made me aware of Westheimer’s Lighter than a Feather, one of the two novels spawned by the stillborn Operation Downfall.


Ranma 1/2, Rumiko Takahashi
“I’m Ranma Saotome. Sorry about the mess.”
I started reading this while I was getting into anime and manga and the associated fandom, and despite the failure to wrap the series up with a happy ending I still think this is some of Takahashi’s best work. Martial arts death machines tied up in love triangles, rhombuses and polygons, complicated by the title character’s involuntary gender switching and his utter retard of a father…it’s the soap opera to end all soap operas, and has spawned a million fanfics.


American Caesar, William Manchester
Love him or hate him, General of the Army Douglas MacArthur was one of America’s great generals, perhaps its greatest, and Manchester gives this incredibly complicated man his due justice in a wonderful biography. American Caesar delves into MacArthur’s ancestry and family ties, studies his suicidal bravery, and carefully unravels the complicated, incendiary issue of his relief by President Truman during the Korean War. There is no better book on the subject, period.


The Coming Fury , Bruce Catton
The first volume of Catton’s Centennial History Of The Civil War, and it’s good to see that it’s back in print. Catton was a magnificent writer who made the Civil War his life’s work, and it shows in this account of how well-meaning politicians stumbled their way into the bloodiest war ever fought by these United States. There are many books about the Civil War, but this one is mine, and it should be yours, too.


Hell In A Very Small Place, Bernard Fall
The definitive account of Dien Bien Phu, the disastrous battle that cost France her empire in Indochina, and eventually (as Jean Larteguy’s The Centurions showed) Algeria as well. Goes well with Street Without Joy, Fall’s account of the battles that led up to the debacle at Dien Bien Phu. Both are really necessary if you want to understand the mistakes that we made in Vietnam a little more than a decade after the final bunkers fell in that miserable Laotian valley.


To Lose a Battle, Alistair Horne
The final volume in Horne’s superb trilogy covering the Franco-Prussian Wars from 1870 to 1940. I don’t think it’s possible to overstate what a shock the French campaign was to the world; certainly nobody expected the German Wehrmacht to rip through the largest army in Europe like a chainsaw through rotten cheese, drive England from the Continent, and bring France to its knees in a mere sixty days – but it happened, and Horne goes back to the Victory Parade in 1919 to expose all the reasons why.


The 13th Valley, John Del Vecchio
More than just another novel about Vietnam; it’s a close study of the men who fought that war that avoids the facile cliches that so much Vietnam War fiction suffers from. I think this may be a better book than James Webb’s Fields of Fire; at any rate, it deals with the Army’s airmobile infantry instead of the Marines and the highlands of the II Corps zone instead of the wretched lowlands of the I Corps area.


Category: Books

‘Science Falsely So Called’: How Can You Prove Your Innocence, Professor Krauss?

Posted on | August 9, 2013 | 102 Comments

Professor Lawrence Krauss on Australian TV, February 2013.

“O Timothy, keep that which is committed to thy trust, avoiding profane and vain babblings, and oppositions of science falsely so called: Which some professing have erred concerning the faith. Grace be with thee. Amen.”
— I Timothy 6:20-21 (KJV)

“Jeffrey Epstein is the infamous media mogul who was jailed in 2008 for paying underage prostitutes who said they were recruited by his aides. . . .
“One of the friends defending Epstein is none other than Professor Lawrence Krauss . . . he’s invoking the name of science to do it.”
— Rebecca Watson

“When women come to me to warn me about what speakers to avoid at conferences or confide in me sexual harassment they’ve experienced, Lawrence Krauss is by far the most common name I hear.”
— Jen McCreight

“One is almost tempted to pray that God might have mercy on these poor fellows, but why should we trouble scientific types with our primitive superstitions?”
— Robert Stacy McCain, “No Love for the Godless”

Have you ever heard of Lawrence Krauss? I had not, but then again, I’d never heard of Ben Radford until Karen Stollznow accused him of being a sexual “predator.” Frankly, I’ve paid no attention to the New Atheist movement that has flourished in the past decade or so.

The “profane and vain babblings” of these people are tedious. My attitude toward all such people has always been, “OK, we get it. You’re a scientific super-genius, and Christians are all idiots for believing the Bible, and you’re going to write another article ‘proving’ how much smarter you are than everybody else. Thanks.”

However knowledgeable and articulate the god-haters are, their logic is always backward. They begin with the conclusion that there is no God, then hunt around for “evidence” to prove the negative. “Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools” (Roman 1:22).

“Science is based on telling the truth, which is a really important ethical boundary. It’s one that I don’t think religion shares, in fact. . . . I think that science can offer a better world.”
— Lawrence Krauss

God proves His existence by the truth of His word, and we see prophecy fulfilled every day when we behold the fate of arrogant fools.

Lawrence Krauss is a 59-year-old professor at Arizona State University whose curriculum vitae runs to 32 pages. The nature of academic tenure is such that nothing in the world could get him fired from his job. Lawrence Krauss is invulnerable — absolutely bulletproof — and so when atheist blogger Jen McCreight had the temerity to repeat what she said women told her about Krauss’s behavior, she had to delete those stories because Krauss tried to intimidate her:

Well, Famous Skeptic is vaguely threatening to sue me. Since Famous Skeptic is rich and I am poor, and since my two sources are too terrified to openly speak out again him (I wonder why), I have removed the part of my previous post that refers to him so I don’t go bankrupt with legal fees.

Such a tactic may seem rather familiar to regular readers of this blog. “Science is based on telling the truth,” Professor Krauss tells us, and if these women are lying about him, perhaps he can prove their accusations false, just as he claims to prove God does not exist.

Philosophy majors or attorneys may see that Professor Krauss has been presented with a more difficult problem than he imagines. If the case comes down to testimony and evidence, Jen McCreight’s sources may have less reason to be “terrified” than does Krauss.

Perhaps my good friend Herman Cain could explain to the professor how hard it is for a man to prove his innocence in these cases.

For years, however, it seems the terroristic intimidation of atheist women has kept them silent, as Rebecca Watson says:

I’ve heard of several other “big name” skeptics who loudly argue online against any and all anti-harassment measures who are known for actually sexually harassing women in the meatspace. I’m hesitant to name them for legal reasons . . .

But there is strength in numbers, and if it is true that Professor Krauss’s behavior has long been the subject of private complaints, then the current climate of public accusations — the Floodgate Effect, we might call it — has suddenly shifted the balance of terror. Every man in the atheist movement who has ever told an off-color joke in mixed company is a vulnerable target now, and Professor Krauss has the context of his own public record to deal with:

“Jeffrey [Epstein] has surrounded himself with beautiful women and young women but they’re not as young as the ones that were claimed. As a scientist I always judge things on empirical evidence and he always has women ages 19 to 23 around him, but I’ve never seen anything else, so as a scientist, my presumption is that whatever the problems were I would believe him over other people. . . . I don’t feel tarnished in any way by my relationship with Jeffrey; I feel raised by it.”

Professor Krauss defending a convicted sex offender? Professor Krauss defending Jeffrey Espstein, billionaire pedophile?

Victims alleged that Epstein molested underage girls from South America, Europe, and the former Soviet republics, including three 12-year-old girls brought over from France as a birthday gift.

Certainly, Professor Krauss’s friendship with a pedophile sex offender cannot be considered relevant evidence as to whether Professor Krauss mistreated women who attended atheist events, but when the shadow of suspicion looms over a man accused of harassment, the relevance of evidence has a strange way of eluding strict rules of logic.

Lawrence Krauss and Michael Shermer celebrate their
victory, after debating against the existence of God.

Let’s talk about Professor Krauss’s good friend Michael Shermer:

At a conference, Mr. Shermer coerced me into a position where I could not consent, and then had sex with me. . . . I am very scared that he will come after me in some way. . . . I reached out to one organization that was involved in the event at which I was raped, and they refused to take my concerns seriously. Ever since, I’ve heard stories about him doing things . . .

Well, guilt by association is a terribly unfair thing, but if Michael Shermer is a rapist, and Jeffrey Epstein is a pedophile, one must ask if Professor Krauss has any friends who are not sex offenders. And if he habitually associates himself with such perverts, what does this tell us about his claims to “judge things on empirical evidence”? Or is the problem that all atheist men are lecherous creeps?

Professor Krauss is a man so brilliant that he believes he can prove that the universe is an accident created from nothing, by nothing:

A critic might reasonably question the arguments for a divine first cause of the cosmos. But to ask “What caused God?” misses the whole reason classical philosophers thought his existence necessary in the first place. So when physicist Lawrence Krauss begins his new book by suggesting that to ask “Who created the creator?” suffices to dispatch traditional philosophical theology, we know it isn’t going to end well.

No, I don’t think this will end well at all for the pedophile-defending, accused-rapist-befriending Lawrence Krauss. Remember that I said he is a tenured professor at Arizona State University, which means it is impossible that Lawrence Krauss could be fired. Yet seemingly impossible things have happened before, although only ignorant and superstitious people believe in miracles:

By what standard do atheists judge right and wrong? Other than religion, is there anything that an atheist is obliged to regard as evil and, if so, why? To say that science and reason can be our only guide in every circumstance — that we should be as coldly logical asStar Trek’s fictional Spock — may seem an obvious enough answer, but at times the evidence is ambiguous and not every situation can be easily reduced to a clear syllogism. This is not a moot discussion, nor is it a matter of mere hypothetical speculation what science says about sexual equality, at least not for Benjamin Radford.
Radford is the deputy editor of Skeptical Inquirer magazine and was until quite recently among the most respected members of the so-called “skeptic community,” who esteem science above everything and regard all religious belief as ignorant superstition. So there is no one to whom Radford may pray for deliverance, now that he finds himself accused of sexual harassment, condemned as a “predator” and exposed to the wrath of feminists.
Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, but atheists don’t believe in Hell and, although some scientists have suggested an anthropological utility for mercy, feminists don’t seem prone to heed such talk when a man stands accused of doing what Radford allegedly did. . . .

Please read the whole thing at The American Spectator.

Did I mention that Jen McCreight has solicited the aid of Popehat?

“Grace be with thee. Amen.”

 

 

UPDATE: The floodgates having opened, there are more and more people describing “creepy” incidents with Professor Krauss, such as a 2011 cruise sponsored by the Center for Inquiry (CFI) during which Professor Krauss reportedly brought along a female companion. Professor Krauss “was a bit rambunctious the whole time” and at some point, “propositioned” a woman on the cruise “to join him and his guest in his hotel room, an offer the woman turned down.” And if you’ll read down in the comments here, at #244 you’ll find P.Z. Myers saying: “I have now heard directly from someone I trust that she was sexually assaulted by Lawrence Krauss. Shit.”

These are not accusations I am making. The accusers are not intolerant right-wing Christians, but rather Professor Krauss’s philosophical allies in the atheist/scientific/skeptic movement.

 

Category: Religion, Scandal, Science, Sex

LIVE AT FIVE: 08.09.13

Posted on | August 9, 2013 | 8 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho
TOP NEWS
US Orders Most Diplomats Out Of Lahore, Pakistan

US consulate in Lahore

Americans warned against traveling to Pakistan; not related to Eid embassy shutdown

Plane Full Of Weapons Crashes At Mogadishu Airport
Ethiopian Air Force plane in flames


Clinton, Oprah, Fourteen Others To Receive Medal Of Freedom
Others honored include Gloria Steinem, Ernie Banks



POLITICS
Boston Bomber’s Buddies From College Indicted

Dias Kadrbayev (L), Azamat Tazhayakov (C) accused of obstructing justice

Pair threw out evidence from Tsarnayev’s room

Protected Plates Give Growing Number Of Officials Green Light To Avoid Fines

Trent Lott Hospitalized


GAO Opens Investigation Of Planned Parenthood’s Use Of Taxpayer Money

Obama, Family Going On Eight-Day Martha’s Vineyard Vacation

NSA To Slash System Admins By 90 Percent To Limit Data Access

US Spending $772 Million On Aircraft Afghans Can’t Fly Or Maintain



THE ECONOMY, STUPID
Oil Rebounds After Sell-Off Sparked By Fed: NYMEX $104.19, Brent $107.15
PRC July Consumer Inflation Holds Steady
House Regulator Mulls Action On “Eminent Domain” Mortgage Seizures
Amex, Wells Fargo Team Up On Credit Card
Detroit Stymies Muni Bond Sales
McDonald’s July Sales Rise On New Menu Items
Just A Couple Of Quarters Left For J.C. Penney?
Silent Circle Follows Lavabit In Shuttering Encrypted E-Mail Service
Apple Turns Tables, Seeks Samsung Phone Ban
Bill Gates Throws Cold Water On Google’s Dream Of Connecting The World
How Facebook Is Already Profiting From Instagram
Amazon Says Oops, Chromecast Not Delayed After All



SPORTS
Max Scherzer First To 17 Wins As Tigers Rout Tribe

Tigers outfielders do the bump after Thursday’s rout of the Indians

Scherzer now 17-1; first Tiger to win 17 of his first 18 decisions

Peers Say Jim Leyland Best Manager In AL

Deal to Buy NJ Devils Expected To Close Before NHL Season Starts

Johnny Manziel Could Be Turning The Tide Toward Student Athletes, Not The NCAA

Tony Stewart Undergoes Second Surgery On Broken Leg

NCAA Gets Out Of The Jersey-Selling Business

Chen Gives Red Sox The Pops, Royals Win 5-1

Pirates Sweep Marlins With Extra-Inning Win

Phillies Rout Cubs 12-1

Blister Keeps Lincecum From Complete Game, Giants Win Anyway 4-1

Mets Edge Rockies 2-1

As Davey Johnson Nears The Exit, Mike Rizzo Has Decisions To Make



FAMOUS FOR BEING FAMOUS
Leah Remini’s Not Done With The Co$ Yet

Sticking it to the cult

Files missing person report with police on cult leader’s wife

Hello Sexy! Kate Upton On Becoming This Generation’s Bombshell

“Real World” Star, AIDS Activist Sean Sasser Dies, 44

Lily Collins, Jamie Bower Officially Broken Up

Inside Queen Latifah’s Empire

Amanda Bynes’ Parents Hoping Judge Extends Hospitalization


Katherine Heigl Eyeing Return To TV

Bruce Willis Allegedly Leaves “Expendables 3” After Not Getting $1 Million Per Day

Milla Jovovich From “Resident Evil” Joins Shakespeare Update “Cymbeline”

Kit Harrington Talks “Game Of Thrones” Season 4: “There’s A Lot Of Blood”

Farrah Abraham’s New Reality Show Axed Before It Even Begins

Check Out Matt Damon And George Clooney In “The Monuments Men” Trailer

Lady Gaga: Full Frontal In Weird Yoga Forest



FOREIGNERS
Nagasaki Marks 68th Anniversary Of A-Bombing
Burma Marks 25th Anniversary Of Peoples’ Uprising
British Charity Workers Rushed Home From Zanzibar After Acid Attack
Israel Shuts Eilat Airport After Egyptian Rocket Warning
Saudi Arabia Arrests Two Aspiring Suicide Bombers
Pope Francis Beefs Up Supervision Of Vatican Bank
ANC Youth League: Tutu Doesn’t Represent Views of South Africans
One Of Mafia’s Most Wanted Bosses Found Living Quietly In England
Chicoms Sack Top Economic Official; Expelled From Party, Will Be Prosecuted For Graft
Indian Defense Minister Antony Withdraws Remarks On LoC Killings, Pacifies Opposition


BLOGS & STUFF
First Street Journal: Economics 101 – A Bigger Story Than It Seems
Twitchy: Lapdogs Fess Up – AP Admits “Wrongly” Inserting Words To Cover Obama Gaffe
Legal Insurrection: MAD About Him
Weekly Standard Blog: McConnell Campaign Manager – “I’m Holding My Nose” Until Rand Paul Campaign
Hit & Run: Jesse Benton Responds To Taped Fonecon Questioning His Loyalty To McConnell
Gateway Pundit: Fox News Shakeup – Megyn Kelly Moves To Primetime
Andrew Stuttaford: Talking To Putin (Or Not)
Ed Driscoll: At Last, MSNBC Finds Suitable Replacement For Keith Olbermann
Atlas Shrugs: Federal Reserve Jihad Plotter Blames Plot On Childhood Stammer, Unfaithful Girlfriend
Allahpundit: Slate Won’t Use Redskins’ Name Any More, Nobody Cares
American Thinker: Destroying Football Is The Left’s Endgame
Rush Limbaugh: ObamaCare Cannot Work (By Design)
Paul Bedard: IRS Agent Says Agency Still Targeting Tea Party Groups
Megan McArdle: We Are All Going To Pension Hell
Jihad Watch: Fort Hood Shooter Allowed to Represent Himself
JustOneMinute: CNN Joins The Choom Gang
The Jawa Report: Some Really Cool UK Muslims Rip Anjem Choudhary A New One


Deadline to submit links for tomorrow’s FMJRA is midnight tonight.
DO IT.


Category: Live at Five

Bill Nye the Science Guy: Harasser?

Posted on | August 8, 2013 | 148 Comments

In the wake of the atheist sex scandal we reported Tuesday, someone in the “skeptic” community (as these soi-dissant rationalists refer to themselves) created a Tumblr blog called “More Will Be Named” that expanded the list of accused harassers beyond Skeptical Inquirer deputy editor Ben Radford. Before that Tumblr was deleted (for reasons unknown) former children’s TV host Bill Nye “The Science Guy” was among those named, as referenced in Tweets here, here and here.

Is there anything to such accusations? I have no idea, but if it seems wildly improbable that Nye could be suspected of such behavior, remember that no one outside the “skeptic” community (and relatively few insiders), had any reason to suspect Ben Radford before Karen Stoltznow went public with her account this week.

Now more women are coming forward to testify that the “hostile climate” for women in the atheist movement is not limited to the Radford situation. Atheist podcaster Stephanie Svan described a case involving Jim Frenkel, while Carrie Poppy describes her problems at the James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF), which hosted the conference where Stoltznow claims she was sexually assaulted by Radford.

The most interesting aspect of Carrie Poppy’s accusation is the finger she points at JREF President D.J. Grothe, whom she denounces for “constant duplicity, dishonesty, and manipulation.” See if you don’t notice something in this sentence:

I was assured on more than one occasion by James Randi that D.J. Grothe would be fired (I hear Randi denies this now, though he repeatedly promised it to another staff member as well, and that staff member and I represented the entirety of JREF full-time staff other than D.J. and his husband, Thomas), but after several months of waiting and being asked to wait, it became clear that D.J. was not going to be fired.

WHOA! D.J. Grothe is a gay man and an atheist and (according to Carrie Poppy) complicit in this kind of foul misogyny?

Damn, I’m gonna need more popcorn. Meanwhile, feminist maniac Amanda Marcotte has weighed in to say that the answer to this problem — you guessed, didn’t you? — is more feminism.

OK, forget the popcorn. One of you ladies fix me a sammich.

 

Category: Feminism, Religion, Scandal, Science, Sex

Diana West Dissed by David Horowitz?

Posted on | August 8, 2013 | 72 Comments

Regular readers will remember the shocking revelation — “‘A Conspiracy So Immense’ — Was FDR Aide Harry Hopkins a Soviet Agent?” — from Diana West’s new book, American Betrayal. Now comes disturbing news from Diana that David Horowitz’s FrontPage Magazine has removed a favorable review of her book from that site and replaced it with what she calls a “massive hit piece” by Ron Radosh.

Radosh and Horowitz are friends from way back, and I’m sure this influenced the decision, but . . . c’mon, really?

It’s not the first time Radosh has slammed conservative authors. Years ago, Thomas Woods’ Politically Incorrect Guide to American History came under similar assault, and I know Woods was furious about that. But that was one of those typical neo-vs.-paleo dust-ups, and I chalked up that episode as mere sectarian infighting.

Radosh’s hostility to West is more difficult to fathom, because she is a Movement Conservative in good standing. One might think that Horowitz would have looked at Radosh’s savage review of West’s book and said, “Ron, could you tone it down a bit? Do we really need to have this fight?” This could turn into an damaging feud.

And just to make clear, I’m on Diana West’s side all the way in this one, because I remember how Diana stood up for Pamela Geller when Charles Johnson went on the warpath against Pamela.

There’s more that friendship involved, however. American Betrayal demands a conservative re-appraisal of our understanding of FDR’s foreign policy, and indeed to re-examine many basic assumptions about mid-20th-century history. If Harry Hopkins was a Soviet agent . . . Well, finish that sentence however you will.

The very fact that there could be any suspicion about the loyalty of such a key presidential aide is mind-boggling.

Please read Diana’s article at Breitbart.com, “Did the Roosevelt Administration Send Uranium and Other Atomic Materials to Stalin?”

 

Category: Books, Culture, History

LIVE AT FIVE: 08.08.13

Posted on | August 8, 2013 | 8 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho


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