LIVE AT FIVE: 05.03.13

For 11 years, police in Pennsylvania searched for a woman who had disappeared. It’s easy now to understand why they could find her. She had hitchhiked to Florida, and the photo on the “missing” posters didn’t look anything like her after 11 years of hard living:

People thought Brenda Heist had been murdered. Her ex-husband was viewed as a suspect. In 2008, a cold-case unit revived the investigation, but none of their leads led anywhere. And the least-likely explanation turned out to be true.
“When the investigation first began, after interviewing all of her family and friends, neighbors, co -workers, the one consistent thing they all said was that she would never leave on her own. She would never leave her children behind,”Detective Schofield told CNN. ”The fact that she left on her own was one of the theories, but it was at the bottom of the list.”

Read the whole thing at Viral Read.

Category: Crime, Florida, Pennsylvania

The Burqa as Crime Accessory: Woman Indicted for Kidnap, Rape of Girl

Posted on | May 2, 2013 | 22 Comments

This is one of the most strange and horrible crimes imaginable:

A 19-year-old woman has been indicted for the January kidnapping and rape of a 5-year-old Philadelphia girl. Prosecutors say Christina Regusters wore an Islamic veil and pretended to be the mother of Nailla Robinson when she checked the kindergartner out of school in January. The girl was taken to a nearby house and sexually assaulted, then abandoned nearly naked at a playground, where she was rescued. . . .

Read the whole thing at Viral Read.

Category: Crime

The Dreaded Wyoming GOP Facebook ‘Hatef–k’ Rapist Has Been Apprehended

Posted on | May 1, 2013 | 224 Comments

The university campus in Laramie was gripped by fear last week:

“I want to hatef–k Meg Lanker Simons so hard. That chick that runs her liberal mouth all the time and doesn’t care who knows it. I think its hot and it makes me angry. One night with me and shes gonna be a good Republican b–ch.”

The victim of this Facebook threat cited it as “an example of rape culture,” and who could doubt she was an object of twisted GOP lust?

All over campus, plus-sized Women’s Studies majors hid themselves behind dead-bolted doors, while University of Wyoming officials launched an investigation to find the hateful misogynist responsible for this crime. Fortunately, investigators didn’t have to look far:

A student at the University of Wyoming who claimed she was targeted for a Facebook rape threat because she “runs her liberal mouth all the time” faked the threat against herself, police say. Meg Lanker-Simons, 26, has been charged with interference with a police investigation by giving false statement. . . .
UW police . . . interviewed Lanker-Simons and searched her computer, and ”obtained substantial evidence verifying that the offending Facebook post came from Lanker-Simons’ computer.” Lanker-Simons “admitted to making a controversial post on UW Crushes webpage and then lied about not doing it,” according to the citation for a misdemeanor, which can be punished by up to a year in jail.

She threatened to “hatef–k” herself and “lied about not doing it”? Well, who can blame her? Obviously, anybody would be embarrassed to admit they wanted to “hatef–k” themselves, because our oppressive patriarchal society is so judgmental about auto-hate-eroticism:

“I wonder what would cause someone to be so filled with fury and lunacy, that such an odious method of drawing attention to oneself seems acceptable?”

We’re all mystified, Ace: Rush Limbaugh, Dan Riehl, Jim Hoft — even Professor Reynolds is unable to understand why Ms. Lanker-Simons would “be so filled with fury and lunacy.” Perhaps more mysterious is why some of her allies are silent about this suffering victim:

Lanker-Simons’s “Cognitive Dissonance” site was recognized for an award last year by the Center for American Progress’s Think Progress site.

And what is their reaction to the victimization of this liberal blogger whose award-winning excellence they recognized?

Hey, @thinkprogress: Any comment on the fake rape threat by your 2012 award winner, Meg Lanker-Simons? viralread.com/2013/05/01/rap…

— Robert Stacy McCain (@rsmccain) May 1, 2013

Checking @thinkprogress feed again … No. Not a word today about their 2012 blog honoree Meg Lanker-Simons viralread.com/2013/05/01/rap… #tcot #p2

— Robert Stacy McCain (@rsmccain) May 1, 2013

This silence is so . . . mysterious.

UPDATE: A portrait in liberal intellectual integrity:

To members of the press, et al. contacting me through this site
In regards to recent allegations, I’ve retained counsel and entered a plea of not guilty.
Any further questions can be directed to my attorney of record, Charles Pelkey of Laramie.
Thank you,
Meg

Ah, yes — the presumption of innocence! Quite interesting, coming from someone who organized a protest based on the presumed guilt of the imaginary online misogynists who threatened her. And the protest sign — “Rape Threats Are Not a Joke” — needs to be updated: “Fake Rape Threats Are Not a Real Joke,” or something.

But we should be grateful that Ms. Lanker-Simons has finally decided to exercise her constitutional right to be silent.

UPDATE II: Welcome, Instapundit readers! I was just perusing the reports of Monday’s protest at University of Wyoming before police exposed Ms. Lanker-Simons’s fraud:

The caption on Elizabeth Holder’s photo for the student newspaper:

UW students and Laramie community members take part of a protest against the UW Crushes website’s post on Monday afternoon in Simpson’s Plaza to raise awareness of the “rape culture” issue.

Let’s ask a simple question: What is “the ‘rape culture’ issue,” and why was it necessary to “raise awareness” about it? I mean, other than the fake threat Meg Lanker-Simons made against herself, allegedly.

Rape is a crime, punishable as a felony in Wyoming and in every other state of the Union. We know what rape is, but what is “rape culture”?

Furthermore, who is this Meg Lanker-Simons and why was she invested with so much credibility among “UW students and Laramie community members” that five days after she claimed someone said something rude about her on Facebook, people show up on campus for a protest rally on her behalf?

“It doesn’t just affect me. It affects everyone on campus,” Lanker-Simons said. “There are people who are scared because of this.”

This remark is rather ironic in the wake of subsequent events, but the question remains: Why should this one perpetually aggrieved misfit be able to garner so much publicity and support?

UPDATE III: Bill Quick adds his own observations:

Personally, after seeing the widescreen HD version of this lovely flower, I think her phony post was real wish-projection. She probably figured that hate-rapists didn’t give a rat’s ass who — or what — they screwed.
Which would at least give her a running chance at a sexual relationship.

Perhaps true, but unfortunate. I mean, as one of the commenters below remarks, the entire message of Ms. Lanker-Simons’s behavior can be summarized in five words: “Please pay attention to me!” Yet her desperate bid to become a famous victim has only exposed her to worldwide ridicule, while quite likely destroying whatever credibility she had as a “student activist” in Wyoming.

So now, instead of being a politically relevant lonely fat girl, she’s just a lonely fat girl, who will be ostracized as an embarrassment to her political allies. Maybe she should ask Neal Rauhauser, leader of the “Weiner Truthers,” how to convince the world she was framed.

Category: Crime, Education, Feminism, Wyoming

Liberal Media Bias and Self-Selection

Posted on | May 1, 2013 | 32 Comments

C’mon, @aceofspadeshq: “Something Faranze-Gupta or whatever”?@thegarance is no Max Blumenwhatever! minx.cc/?post=339613

— Robert Stacy McCain (@rsmccain) May 1, 2013

Some years ago — when our daughter, now 23, was in kindergarten, to be specific — I gave up on the public school system. It’s doomed beyond all hope of redemption, and conservatives who think otherwise are deluding themselves. Paul Weyrich explained this in 1999, and yet you occasionally hear conservatives talk about the need to “take back our schools.” To this, my answer is two-fold:

What do you mean, “our schools”? They’re the government’s schools, not our schools, and if you still think the government is “us,” you need to seek psychiatric help immediately.
With whom do you propose to “take back” the schools? Where do you plan to find the conservative teachers and principals and superintendents and textbook writers with whom to replace the liberals who now dominate those positions within the system? What colleges of education will train these conservative teachers, and what agencies will credential them?

That is to say, the reason we do not have conservative public schools is because the people who run the schools are not conservative.

Quod erat demonstrandum.

It’s a problem of personnel, and the idiots babbling about “taking back” the schools never have any proposal to solve the actual problem, which is that liberals enjoy teaching school, whereas conservatives prefer private-sector jobs where they can make money.

Something quite similar is true in regard to the problem of liberal bias in the media. Journalism is the only career field typically requiring a college diploma in which the average salary is lower than the average salary of school teachers. People talk about the “media elite” as if the average reporter was making network TV megabucks, when in fact most journalists earn less than a long-haul trucker.

Conservatives don’t become journalists because most conservatives are smart enough to pay attention to their high-school guidance counselors who advise any student who will listen to stay the hell away from this miserable low-paying racket. (My excuse? I was stoned most of the time in high school, and stayed drunk half the time in college, besides which, I was a Democrat back then anyway.) So young conservatives generally don’t become reporters, and instead go to law school or get MBAs or do something else where they might actually hope to make a living. And liberals become journalists because they want to Make a Difference and Change the World.

So the Koch Brothers are reportedly thinking about buying the Los Angeles Times, liberals are predictably having hissy fits about it, and Megan McArdle wrote about it at The Daily Beast:

Garance Franke-Ruta, writes that the Kochs effort is doomed. Newspapers are liberal because their audience is liberal, she says. And they’re staffed by the people who live in cities, who are also liberal.

Well, the woman whom Ace calls “Something Faranze-Gupta or whatever” may be right about most of that. With the education system in the iron grip of liberals (which we’ve already demonstrated), it is probably true that the mass readership is also largely liberal. And no one can doubt that major cities like New York, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., are crammed full of liberals.

Ask yourself this: Why don’t conservatives live in cities?

Answer: Because conservatives want to get married and have children, and cities are horrible places to raise children.

This is why cities are occupied by single people, gay people and poor people who can’t afford to move to the suburbs. All of these demographic groups are reliable constituencies of the Democratic Party — as are journalists, about 90 percent of whom would never vote for a Republican under any circumstances whatsoever.

As in most situations involving what social scientists call “selection effects,” there is a complex causation issue at work, and once any institution becomes truly dominated by liberalism, it’s difficult to say how much of this dominance is natural and organic, and how much of it is the result of conservatives getting blackballed or other forms of deliberate viewpoint discrimination.

Obviously, both factors are at work to some extent, but the point I’m trying to make is that the hegemony of liberalism in journalism — as in academia and in Hollywood — is so complete that it’s probably useless to argue about it. And the liberals who are worrying themselves sick about the Koch brothers buying the L.A. Times can relax, because the Kochs couldn’t possibly find enough conservative newspaper editors and reporters in the entire state of California with which to staff the paper.

Notice something, incidentally: Ace of Spades links and quotes Megan McArdle, but Megan McArdle — who links and quotes her former Atlantic colleague “Something Faranze-Gupta or whatever” — never links and quotes Ace.

Why is Megan link-starving Ace? And it’s not just Ace, either. I’ve noticed this for years about Megan: Although a professed libertarian, and a frequent recipient of linky-love from the Right side of the Web, she’s never linked any conservative blogger, as far as I can recall.

Don’t know what it means, but I do notice things like that.

UPDATE: It is important, I think, to distinguish between (a) liberal bias, and (b) journalism per se. A few years ago, I risked angering Melissa Clouthier to make that point: Some conservatives have spent so many years complaining about The Media that their rhetoric is no longer aimed at unfair political bias and instead seems to be an expression of hostility toward an entire profession. If “journalism” is considered a dirty word among conservatives, we should scarcely be surprised that “conservative” is considered a dirty word among journalists.

“I hate you back twice as much” may be an emotionally satisfying response to prejudice, but it is unlikely to remedy the problem.

Category: Ace of Spades, Intellectuals, Media Bias, Megan McArdle

Does UMass-Dartmouth Have a Department of Crazy Foreigners?

Posted on | May 1, 2013 | 9 Comments

What kind of university would enroll Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the marijuana-smoking terrorist who grinned after placing a bomb next to an eight-year-old boy? The University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth, which also enrolled Dzhokhar’s buddies Dias Kadyrbayev, Azamat Tazhayakov and Robel Phillipos, who perhaps deserve recognition as the Three Stooges of Terrorism:

A month before the April 15 attack on the Boston Marathon, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev told college friends Azamat Tazhayakov and Dias Kadyrbayev over a meal that he “knew how to make a bomb,” Tazhayakov said. When Kadyrbaev texted Tsarnaev on April 18 to say that he looked like one of the suspects in video just released by the FBI, the 19-year-old responded with messages including: “lol,” “you better not text me” and “come to my room and take whatever you want.”

Right: “LOL” — three people dead — “LOL” — more than 260 people injured. Madcap hijinx ensue! Headlines via Memeorandum:

Two Kazakh men, Cambridge man, face
charges they disposed of laptop, backpack
to help Boston Marathon bombing suspect
— Boston Globe

Three arrested for allegedly
helping suspect after Boston bombings
— Washington Post

3 Friends Of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev Arrested
In Boston Marathon Bombings Case
— CBS Boston

Lots of blog commentary from Jihad Watch, Hot Air, The Lonely Conservative, PJ Tatler, Gateway Pundit, and The Jawa Report.

You can read the federal criminal complaint here.

I’m wondering how long before somebody analyzes this case in the context of the Higher Education Bubble. Did these guys qualify for student loans? Good luck getting repayment from them.

Category: Education, Terrorism

Just When You Think Democrats Couldn’t Possibly Get Any Crazier …

Posted on | May 1, 2013 | 41 Comments

. . . they somehow manage to surprise you:

Several House Democrats are calling on Congress to recognize that climate change is hurting women more than men, and could even drive poor women to “transactional sex” for survival.
The resolution, from Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) and a dozen other Democrats, says the results of climate change include drought and reduced agricultural output. It says these changes can be particularly harmful for women.
“[F]ood insecure women with limited socioeconomic resources may be vulnerable to situations such as sex work, transactional sex, and early marriage that put them at risk for HIV, STIs, unplanned pregnancy, and poor reproductive health,” it says.

Lance Burri points out the oddity of “early marriage” — an evil as bad as HIV, according to Democrats — being listed among the harmful effects attributed to global warming.

Category: Democrats, Global Warming

The Internet Never Forgets

Posted on | April 29, 2013 | 21 Comments

And by “the Internet,” of course, I mean, Ed Driscoll:

Politico has numerous journalists who during the campaign in 2008 were on the infamous “JournoList,” which dubbed itself the “non-official campaign” for Obama’s election bid. The JournoList was created by Ezra Klein, who is now with the Washington Post. . . .
Another self-admitted member of the JournoList is Ben Smith, who is now with Buzzfeed; there’s a reason why John Nolte has singlehandedly made “BenSmithing” a verb to describe new media doing Obama’s bidding. . . .
The terrorist attack on Benghazi on September 11th 2012, and the eventual feckless “What difference does it make?” response to the Senate by Obama’s Secretary of State — the same Hillary Clinton his election campaign repeated denigrated would eventually turn the message of Obama’s earlier Orwell-inspired video in on itself. Not the least of which because the man responsible for the piece of social media that the Obama administration initially tried to pin the attack on, during their initial modified limited hangout, is still rotting in jail. . . .

Read the whole thing.

Category: Ed Driscoll, Media Bias

« go back — keep looking »

About

This is an area on your website where you can add text. This will serve as an informative location on your website, where you can talk about your site.

The Other McCain

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

LIVE AT FIVE: 05.03.13

No Wonder They Couldn’t Find Her

The Burqa as Crime Accessory: Woman Indicted for Kidnap, Rape of Girl

The Dreaded Wyoming GOP Facebook ‘Hatef–k’ Rapist Has Been Apprehended

Liberal Media Bias and Self-Selection

Does UMass-Dartmouth Have a Department of Crazy Foreigners?

Just When You Think Democrats Couldn’t Possibly Get Any Crazier …

The Internet Never Forgets

THE FULL METAL JACKET REACH-AROUND AWARD

HIT THE FREAKING TIP JAR!

Search

Recent Posts

RSS reader subscription

MEMEORANDUM

Recent Comments

THE AMAZING GONZO FEED

Major Leagues

Archives

Free Agents

SHAMELESS CAPITALISM

Triple-A Franchises

Blogroll

About

Subscribe to our feed

Search

Admin