The Other McCain

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

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?

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

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:

  1. 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.
  2. 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

Obama’s Syrian Dilemma

Posted on | April 29, 2013 | 20 Comments

“Obama: Anatomy of a World Leader,” by Alex Gray (detail)

President Gutsy Call promised serious consequences if Syria’s Assad regime crossed a “red line” by using chemical weapons against anti-government rebels. Now that there is clear evidence that Assad used chemical weapons? Well, it’s nuanced, Chuck Todd explains:

“I can tell you there is regret about that red line comment … I mean, they meant it. They do mean it on the chemical weapons. But saying it creates this political conversation. They didn’t want to go public last week that they had this early evidence yet. They weren’t ready. And yet they knew Congress was going to get this briefing and it was all going to get out, so they decided to go public with it last week because they felt they had no choice, that it was all going to start leaking out … But they’re not ready. There is no good answer.”

Frank J. assesses Obama’s miscalculation:

I guess he never actually thought Syria would use chemical weapons, thus he could sound tough threatening them and then never actually have to do anything.

Ed Morrissey rounds up the latest Syria news and weighs the options for the administration, but as I explained yesterday, there are no good options in Syria, unless you count as “good” the likelihood that Obama will suffer further disastrous embarrassments.

 

Category: Barack Obama, Syria

‘A History of Psychiatric Problems’

Posted on | April 29, 2013 | 41 Comments

The California math teacher was arrested last summer:

The charges against 36-year-old Amber Lee Failla include unlawful sexual intercourse, oral copulation with minors and contacting a minor with the intent to commit a sexual offense, according to Kern County Superior Court records. . . .
California City police said their investigation into Failla began when school officials heard about “alleged sexual misconduct” involving a teacher. Three male students, ranging in age from 14 to 17 years old, reported to police Failla had sexual encounters with them and “sexted” them nude photos, the department reported.
The students told investigators Failla would text them at different times to meet in her classroom when there was no class in session and engage in sex acts with, according to police.

Female teachers having sex with male students seems increasingly commonplace: The Mary Kay Letourneau Syndrome, we might call it. And as my friend Pete Da Tech Guy would say, it’s a good thing they aren’t Catholic priests, or this might be a real scandal.

The average high-school teacher salary in California is $66,197, so that “oral copulation with minors” is apparently a skill that taxpayers are willing to compensate quite well, at least when such services are provided by credentialed professionals.

And you’ll be glad to know that the California court system understands that Amber Lee Failla is the real victim here:

A high school teacher charged with eight felonies in connection with engaging in sex acts with students pleaded no contest Friday to a charge of unlawful sexual intercourse.
Amber Lee Failla faces a maximum of 16 months in prison at her May 7 sentencing, but prosecutor Marcus Cuper said the judge indicated Failla will be sentenced to a year in jail. . . .
Defense attorney Timothy Lemucchi said he also believes the plea deal is fair, especially in light of his client’s background.
“She has a history of psychiatric problems,” Lemucchi said.
Failla is bipolar, and Lemucchi said she was given a drug that has a side effect of making a person “hyperactively sexual.” Lemucchi said Failla was the recipient of poor medical treatment in that she wasn’t given a second drug to counteract those effects. . . .
“She’s pretty emotionally distraught,” Lemucchi said. “Fortunately her husband is her biggest supporter and is staying with her.”

In other words: She’s crazy and, in California, the rights of crazy people take precedence over every other consideration. The entire state “has a history of psychiatric problems” — I mean, they elected Jerry Brown governor, OK? — and if Amber Lee Failla’s particular brand of craziness involved “oral copulation with minors,” well, who are we to judge?

Isn’t this just an alternative lifestyle? And, hey, “her husband is her biggest supporter,” so if he doesn’t mind his wife providing blowjobs to teenage boys, why should we object?

Isn’t this covered by those “penumbras formed by emanations“? Couldn’t Justice Kennedy explain it as an “emerging awareness“?

Why are some people so judgmental?

I’m guessing a male teacher would have gotten a much stiffer sentence. And why was someone with a ‘history of psychiatric problems’ hired as a teacher?

More judgmentalism:

Who thought it was a good idea to put a ‘sexually hyperactive’ person around children?

The mentally ill are a protected category, and the teachers union that donated millions to elect Gov. Jerry Brown would never tolerate any teacher being forced out of her job merely because she had “a history of psychiatric problems.”

Amber Lee Failla is a victim. And she probably voted for Obama.

 

Category: California, Crime, Education, Labor Unions, Scandal, Sex

Have You Heard the One About the President Who Was a Miserable Failure?

Posted on | April 28, 2013 | 31 Comments

We could laugh at the jokes, but of course, the joke is really on us: This incompetent bumbler is in fact President of the United States!

Ba-dah-BOOM!

 

 


Category: Barack Obama
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