The Other McCain

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

Can We Ever Forget the Tattoo-Covered, Mentally Ill Ex-Stripper Whose Real Name Is Chelsea Van Valkenburg?

Posted on | January 29, 2020 | 3 Comments

 

Alas, we can never forget. #GamerGate is newsworthy again. Over the weekend, without warning, I noticed a surge of traffic to one of my posts about “Zoe Quinn,” whom I’ve described thus:

“Zoe Quinn” was Patient Zero of the #GamerGate controversy. A tattoo-covered, mentally ill ex-stripper whose real name is Chelsea Van Valkenburg, Quinn was the creator of a tediously dull game called “Depression Quest.” She broke up with her boyfriend, a software geek named Eron Gjoni, and allegedly became intimate with a videogame journalist named Nathan Grayson. In August 2014, Gjoni published a nearly 10,000-word article exposing Quinn’s alleged misconduct. . . .
Quinn was accused of gaining favorable coverage of her work — which is allegedly useless and awful — by providing Grayson and others access to her nasty poontang. And when these allegations of quid pro quo were published by one of Quinn’s embittered ex-lovers, Quinn’s defenders accused her critics of misogyny.
There were all kinds of background factors involved, but liberals decided that the narrative was about “misogyny” within the male-dominated videogame industry, and also about women being “harassed” online.

When that controversy erupted in late August 2014, I paid intermittent attention to it — I haven’t played a videogame since the Pac Man era — until, in October 2014, a friend urged me to give it more coverage. I placed a call to Adam Baldwin, the man who named #GamerGate, and he explained to me that this was an important battle in the Culture War, and that it transcended the usual right/left divide. Many of those who supported #GamerGate were sincere liberals who simply had gotten fed up with the sanctimony of so-called “Social Justice Warriors” (SJWs) who were trying to take over the multi-billion-dollar videogame industry.

 

It was arguably as a result of #GamerGate that Twitter in 2016 created its infamous “Trust and Safety Council,” including arch-SJW Anita Sarkeesian, whose first action was to ban my @rsmccain account. The wave of banishments that subsequently swept across social media platforms — not just Twitter, but also Facebook and YouTube, not to mention the James Damore incident at Google — exposed the extent to which SJWs have consolidated their power in Big Tech. According to the SJW narrative, anyone who complains about this kind of censorship is defending “hate speech” and “harassment.” The larger issue, however, is that social media, once viewed as an alternative to the establishment media, has been taken over by people with the same biases and control-freak conformity that made establishment media so untrustworthy. And the controversy over #GamerGate highlighted how leftist ideologues operate to obtain and exercise their control. Differences of opinion are turned into moral crusades against “hate,” and the result is that there is an ever-growing list of Things You Can’t Say, Even If They’re True.

So, why has #GamerGate become newsworthy again? Well, last week, Aja Romano wrote an article at Vox-dot-com with the headline, “What we still haven’t learned from Gamergate,” asserting that the rebellion against SJWs in videogames “ultimately coalesced into the larger alt-right movement that helped fuel the election of President Trump.”

That article is more than 4,500 words long, and I don’t know that anyone here will click the link and read the whole thing. Romano, who evidently considers any non-“woke” opinion to be white supremacy or some other species of “hate,” operates from the premise that there was never any legitimate basis for #GamerGate, so that her story is about how hate and harassment became a problem, and what needs to be done to stop it:

Robert Evans, a journalist who specializes in extremist communities . . . described Gamergate to me as partly organic and partly born out of decades-long campaigns by white supremacists and extremists to recruit heavily from online forums. “Part of why Gamergate happened in the first place was because you had these people online preaching to these groups of disaffected young men,” he said. But what Gamergate had that those previous movements didn’t was an organized strategy, made public, cloaking itself as a political movement with a flimsy philosophical stance, its goals and targets amplified by the power of Twitter and a hashtag.
Again and again, throughout 2014 and afterward — and, really, well before that, as women in online subcultures withstood years of targeted harassment — many failed to understand and assess what Gamergate was. The media, tech platforms, the niche internet communities these reactionaries came from (places with marginally obscure names like 4chan, 8chan, and Voat, for instance), the corporations they easily manipulated, and the general public, who seemed to take it in as nebulous online noise; no one properly identified Gamergate as a major turning point for the internet. The hate campaign, we would later learn, was the moment when our ability to repress toxic communities and write them off as just “trolls” began to crumble. Gamergate ultimately gave way to something deeper, more violent, and more uncontrollable.

Wait — “more violent”? How many people did #GamerGate kill? The only death I’m aware of is when “Zoe Quinn” accused an ex-boyfriend of sexual abuse, thus driving him to suicide, but that’s obviously not what Aja Romano has in mind. No, what she has done is to assert (rather than prove) that #GamerGate was and is connected to every incident of “right-wing extremist” violence since 2014.  You would have to read the whole thing (and again, I doubt that many of you will do so) to see how she makes this connect-the-dots narrative seem plausible, but this is standard-issue media smear tactics: Ever since Trump was elected, online “hate speech” (i.e., disagreeing with liberals) is automatically implicated whenever a frustrated “incel” goes on a murder rampage.

Notice the clever prestidigitation Aja Romano achieves here:

Gamergate ultimately made us all much more aware of the potential real-world impact of online extremism. Yet, years after Gamergate, despite increasing evidence suggesting a connection between online violence against women and real-world violence — including mass shootings — many corporations and social media platforms still struggle to identify and eradicate extreme forms of violence against women from online spaces.
Despite all of its algorithmic tweaking, Twitter is still abysmal at identifying and taking action against rape and death threats on its website. The 2019 murder of 17-year-old Bianca Devins, a well-known Instagram user, carried a disturbing online component that involved her killer posting graphic online photos of her death. The photos rapidly went viral, including on Instagram and Twitter, which were both largely ineffective at curbing their spread. . . .
This failure to act has serious consequences, because many of the perpetrators of real-world violence are radicalized online first. In 2018, the International Center for Research on Women identified online gender-based violence as “an emerging public health and human rights concern” and linked it to a growing number of mass shootings, noting, “Failing to detect and deter technology-facilitated GBV is a missed opportunity to prevent deadly consequences offline.” Other research has found that more than half of the US’s mass shootings involve the targeting of an intimate partner or ex-partner, and many of the most recent mass attacks involve a perpetrator who displayed or threatened violent behavior toward one woman or multiple women, either online or off. In the past year alone, multiple mass shootings have had an element of misogynistic or domestic violence targeted at women.

It goes without saying that I disapprove of murder (“Teenage Girl Nearly Decapitated by Jealous Loser She Met on Internet,” July 15, 2019), but exactly how is #GamerGate to blame for what happened to Bianca Devins? (Answer: Not at all.) But if you create a category as large as “online extremism” and then assert that this is connected to a category as large as “gender-based violence,” you are free to pick and choose the most egregious examples to illustrate your argument that (a) mass murder is caused by (b) people saying mean things on the Internet, and therefore (c) #GamerGate is like The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zionism, the all-purpose conspiracy theory that explains everything.

Repetition is a basic tactic of propaganda. If the Big Lie is to triumph over truth, it must be repeated until people internalize the false belief with which you wish to indoctrinate them. And so the liberal narrative — about “gender-based violence” and everything else — must be consistently reinforced by retelling the same biased version of events, and also opposing viewpoints must be silenced. It is especially important to totalitarian ideologues (which is what SJWs actually are) that their authority as truth-tellers never be subjected to criticism. This is why the media hate Trump so much — every time he mocks them as purveyors of “fake news,” the President demonstrates that we do not have to passively accept whatever narrative the people on CNN are telling us.

OK, so why did Aja Romano and her Vox-dot-com editors decide that January 2020 was a good time to revisit #GamerGate to the tune of 4,500 words? We may suppose that that they fear liberals might forget the narrative about the menace of online “hate,” so as to lower their guard against it. But the question is: Why now? It’s not about the off chance that some extremist kook is going to go berserk with an AR-15 next week or next month. It’s really about politics, as Aja Romano herself emphasized in concluding her article last week:

The public’s failure to understand and accept that the alt-right’s misogyny, racism, and violent rhetoric is serious goes hand in hand with its failure to understand and accept that such rhetoric is identical to that of President Trump. . . .
As described by Vox’s Ezra Klein, Trump’s willingness to engage in incendiary racist rhetoric is similar to the tactics that have led many journalists to dismiss his followers as trolls: “He chooses his enemies based on who he thinks will rile up his base. He uses outrageous, offensive insults to get the media to take notice. And then he feeds off the energy unleashed by the confrontation.” In other words, he and his followers — many of whom, again, are members of the extreme online right-wing that got its momentum from Gamergate — are using the strategy Gamergate codified: deploying offensive behavior behind a guise of mock outrage, irony, trolling, and outright misrepresentation, in order to mask the sincere extremism behind the message.

#GamerGate is still relevant because Trump is still president. And in fact, Aja Romano has previously made #GamerGate the explanation of why Trump was elected. In December 2016, she published “How the alt-right’s sexism lures men into white supremacy” at Vox:

In the wake of the election, perhaps no topic has been more widely discussed and debated than the self-described “alt-right” — the racist, sexist, meme-happy, mostly internet-based movement associated with radical white supremacy that has unexpectedly taken center stage in US politics after the election of Donald Trump. The recent disruptive violence of incels — a shortened form of “involuntary celibates” that refers to an online enclave of extreme misogynists — may seem like a lone outlier with little connection to the racialized politics of white supremacists. But in fact incel culture, the “men’s rights” movement, and their focus on what they perceive as belittled masculinity have more in common with the broader alt-right than you might think. . . .
In the wake of Trump’s victory, many have pointed to Gamergate’s sexist assault on feminism as a harbinger of things to come. Far more than the “fringe” components of the alt-right, the Gamergate movement drew mainstream attention from its beginnings in August 2014 and gained extensive coverage from popular geek media outlets as well as international news organizations as it grew. . . .
The ease with which the alt-right channels male insecurity around women’s rights into an ideology of white supremacy ultimately illustrates that the paths by which men wander into the alt-right movement are deceptive. While many of the movement’s male-centered online communities may seem to offer something of value to the men who join them, the alt-right movement has never been about helping men cope with low self-esteem, relationship problems, or their personal pain and insecurity. In fact, it’s never particularly concerned itself with building up men as individuals at all. Instead, it’s about maintaining a sense of power at all costs over an ever-expanding list of designated targets.
And with Trump’s victory, the movement now has more power than ever.

Even if we stipulate, for the sake of argument, that both #GamerGate in 2014 and Trump’s election in 2016 reflected some larger Zeitgeist, including forces of sexism and racism, this still does not mean that the cause-and-effect relationship is what Aja Romano says it is. Does anyone believe that American voters were more racist and sexist in 2016 than they had been eight years earlier when they elected Obama president? Is identity politics the only possible explanation for Hillary Clinton’s defeat? Could it not be that voters — including those crucial working-class white voters in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin who swung into the GOP column in 2016 — had other reasons to prefer Trump over Hillary?

If a hammer is the only tool you’ve got, every problem looks like a nail, and if “intersectionality” is the only tool you’ve got, every problem looks like misogyny, white supremacy and homophobia. By ruling out every explanation of the 2016 election that is not identity politics, Aja Romano is able to conclude it must be identity politics. This is similar to the sophistry by which an anti-Semite blames everything on Jews.

Still, why now? Why resurrect #GamerGate in January 2020? Consider what has happened in the Democratic presidential primary campaign: All of the non-white candidates except Andrew Yang (at single digits in the polls) have now dropped out, so that the choice is which white candidate Democrats like best. And look at the numbers in Iowa: Bernie Sanders leads the field with 24.2% in the Real Clear Politics average of Iowa polls, with Joe Biden at 21%, Pete Buttigieg at 16.8% and Elizabeth Warren at 14.7%. If the most formidable female Democratic candidate can do no better than a fourth-place finish in Iowa, with three white guys leading the field, how can progressives explain this except as the result of racism and sexism? And this is why #GamerGate is suddenly newsworthy again: The Left must hype up the threat of right-wing extremism — angry Trump-supporting “incel” terrorists — in order to distract from the unbearable whiteness of their own candidates.

Also (and you have to pay close attention to the intra-party squabbling among Democrats to notice this), the feminists supporting Elizabeth Warren are all still angry about how “Bernie bros” fought against Hillary’s nomination in 2016. Lots of the guys who back Bernie have glaring misogyny issues of their own, according to the women who support Warren, and thus reviving #GamerGate becomes a way of trashing Sanders supporters and making a preemptive excuse for Warren’s ultimate defeat. So we must endure this #GamerGate revival for a few more weeks, until Liz finally quits or perhaps until some demented “incel” goes on a shooting rampage, which would give Aja Romano her see-I-told-you-so moment. Meanwhile, back in the real world, establishment Democrats are panicking over the possibility that Bernie Sanders could actually win the nomination.

Everything is proceeding as I have foreseen . . .


 

Category: Sex Trouble

In The Mailbox: 01.29.20

Posted on | January 29, 2020 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 01.29.20

– compiled by Wombat-socho

OVER THE TRANSOM
Knowledge Buffet: How to Humble the Kritarchy
Locomotive Breath: CBS Van Towed As Massive Pro-Trump Crowd Swarms Wildwood NJ
Ninety Miles From Tyranny: The 90 Miles Mystery Box Episode #880
357 Magnum: Another Illinois Politician Charged With Corruption
EBL: Chinese New Year
Twitchy: Jay Sekulow Drops Self-Awareness Nuke On Schiff
Louder With Crowder: Uh-Oh – Here’s Video Of John Bolton Saying Trump’s Call With Zelensky Was “Warm & Cordial”

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: Fear No Twitter
American Conservative: The Talented Mr. Epstein
American Greatness: As Red China Carries Disease, Elites Carry Their Water
American Power: Trump’s Digital Advantage
American Thinker: Impeach Pelosi, Nadler, & Schiff For Abuse Of Power
Animal Magnetism: Animal’s Hump Day News
Babalu Blog: Three Young Cuban Girls Die In Old Havana After Balcony Collapses On Them
Baldilocks: January 2020 Post Digest For DaTechGuy Blog
BattleSwarm: Trump Offers Bold New Peace Plan For Palestinians To Reject
Cafe Hayek: “To Vote Or Not To Vote?”
Da Tech Guy: A Comrade Bernie Crib Sheet, also, Justice Thomas Documentary – Not On Netflix
Don Surber: A Bernie Supporter Explains Why
First Street Journal: The Only Solution To The Arab-Israeli Struggle Is Another War
The Geller Report: Sanders Staffer – “After We Abolish Landlords, We Don’t Have To Kill Them”, also, Kapo Soros Announces New Billion-Dollar University To Advance Leftist Values
Hogewash: Team Kimberlin Post Of The Day, also, Sometimes I Feel Like A Bowl Of Petunias
Hollywood In Toto: Fourteen Killer Pop Songs You’ve Never Heard Before, also, Bombshell‘s Theron – “Fox News Does Incredible Damage”
Joe For America: Pam Bondi Hangs Dems & Biden Corruption Out To Dry On Senate Floor – Burisma Scandal Explodes
JustOneMinute: Freaking Democrats
Legal Insurrection: Bolton’s Manuscript Lands In NYT Three Days After NSC Warns Book Has “Significant Amounts Of Classified Information”, also, Fauxcahontas Sinks To Fourth Place In Iowa, Behind Amy Klobuchar
Michelle Malkin: Red China’s Infection Of American Classrooms
The PanAm Post: Exiled Caracas Mayor, Former UN Rep Ready To Return To Venezuela With Guaido, also, Spanish Minister Violates EU Sanctions Against Maduro Government
Power Line: Segregation Forever! also, Green Weenie Of The Week – Climate Crime Wave?
Shark Tank: Fried Accuses DeSantis Of Trying To Gut Her Department
Shot In The Dark: The Gaslighting Of America
STUMP: Revisiting Actuarial Standards – ASOP 14 Has Second Exposure Draft
The Political Hat: The War of Words
This Ain’t Hell: Family Says Fake Medals Of War Hero Being Sold At Auction, also, Former SEAL Eddie Gallagher Attacks His Accusers In Online Video
Victory Girls: Professor Arrested for Nondisclosure Of Red China Ties
Volokh Conspiracy: There Is No Epidemic Of Antisemitism In The U.S. 
Weasel Zippers: Mike Bloomberg Takes Scoop Of “Big Gay Ice Cream” In Latest Ad, also, Biden Dumps All Over Iowa Voter, Tells Him To Vote for Someone Else
Mark Steyn: Witless Ape Postscript, also, Rick Picks Hick Shtick

Amazon Warehouse Deals




Category: Linkagery

Republicans ‘Punch Back Twice as Hard’ With Ad Targeting CNN Elitists

Posted on | January 28, 2020 | Comments Off on Republicans ‘Punch Back Twice as Hard’ With Ad Targeting CNN Elitists

 

In 2009, when the Obama administration was trying to ram its agenda through Congress, White House chief of staff Jim Messina told nervous Democrats not to worry about criticism: “If you get hit, we will punch back twice as hard.” That line has since become a regular meme at Instapundit — Democrats can’t stand it when we “punch back” — and apparently the folks at GOP headquarters are paying attention:

The Republican National Committee (RNC) launched a new digital campaign ad and a fundraiser on Tuesday in response to CNN’s Don Lemon mocking Trump supporters during a segment on his show that went viral on Monday night. . . .
The segment featured Lemon, far-left op-ed writer Wajahat Ali, and anti-Trump establishment Republican Rick Wilson who mocked Trump supporters as being uneducated rednecks who could not read, spell, or use maps.
“CNN anchor Don Lemon, The New York Times’ Wajahat Ali and winless carnival barker and scam PAC artist Rick Wilson let everyday Americans know what the establishment thinks about them: President Trump’s supporters are just a bunch of illiterate idiots deserving of the elites’ smug derision,” RNC Spokesman Steve Guest told The Daily Wire in a statement. “In a matter of seconds, CNN summed up the elite left’s disdain for half of America.”
Guest added, “Reminder for voters: As Joe Biden, Michael Bloomberg, Elizabeth Warren, Pete Buttigieg and Bernie Sanders campaign across the South for your vote, Lemon, Ali, and Wilson just summarized what these candidates really think of you as they shake your hand and pose for selfies.”

 

(Hat-tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.) Meanwhile, the “let’s mock 62.9 million Republican voters as retards” gang took to Twitter to pose as victims — climb up on that cross, Rick! — and their pathetic crybaby routine even got retweeted by anti-American Rep. Ilhan Omar.

Evidently envious of the attention being showered on Rick Wilson, his bloated soulmate Tom “The Expert” Nichols had some thoughts to share.


 

Category: CNN, Donald Trump

In The Mailbox: 01.28.20

Posted on | January 28, 2020 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 01.28.20

– compiled by Wombat-socho

OVER THE TRANSOM
357 Magnum: Gunfire In Gun Free UK
EBL: #SoWokeSoBroke – Felicia Sonmez Gets Suspended From WaPo For Koe #MeToo Tweet
Twitchy: Tweeter Holds Up Damning Mirror To #NeverTrump Hacks Like Rick Wilson
Louder With Crowder: Don Lemon & CNN Panel Mock Trump Voters As Stupid Dumb Hicks

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: Monaco, Baby
American Conservative: Another One Bites The Dust Of “Cultural Appropriation”
American Greatness: Pam Bondi Blows A Gaping Hole In Democrats’ First Article Of Impeachment
American Thinker: The Democrats And Their Prophetic Failure. Again
Animal Magnetism: Animal’s Daily Work Incentive News
Babalu Blog: On This Day, Jose Marti Was Born
BattleSwarm: The Twitter Primary For January 2020
Cafe Hayek: Some Links
Camp Of The Saints: On Perpetuating The False Narrative Of The GOP & The Conservative Establishments
CDR Salamander: Playing The India Card In AFG, also, Vietnam’s Sound Foreign Policy Stance
Da Tech Guy: How Left-Wing Hackery Killed Doctor Who, also, Report From Louisiana – Why No Tort Reform?
Don Surber: Democrats Enter Anybody But Bernie Phase, also, Trump Makes Palestine An Offer Too Good To Refuse
First Street Journal: At Least Some Of The #Davos Elites Understand That Carbon Taxes Make Working People Poorer
The Geller Report: Watch “Palestinians” Violently Riot When Offered Their Own State & Peace Deal, also, New Swedish Islamic Party Wants Special Status For Muslims
Hogewash: Team Kimberlin Post Of The Day, also, High Crimes, Misdemeanors, & Felonies
Hollywood In Toto: How I Learned To Stop Worrying & Love Local Cover Bands, also, Monochrome Doc Gives Police Officers Their Due
Joe For America: NY Post Bombshell – Giuliani To Go Public With Biden Corruption Evidence
JustOneMinute: Andrew McCarthy On Bolton & Surprises
Legal Insurrection: Lawrence O’Donnell Draws Insane Connection Between Bolton, Soleimani, & Impeachment, also, CNN Panel Mocks Trump Voters As Uneducated, Ignorant Hillbillies
Megan McArdle: The Economic System We’ve Built Is A Superhighway For Viruses
The PanAm Post: How Israel, Poland, & Taiwan Can Help Defeat Maduro, also, On The Brink Of Default, Buenos Aires Launches Gender Inclusiveness Project
Power Line: Joltin’ Bolton & Reckless Romney, also, Insuring Trump’s Re-Election
Shark Tank: Pam Bondi’s Impeachment Argument Blacked Out By ABC, CBS, & NBC
Shot In The Dark: Connecticut Department Of Thoughtcrime
STUMP: Taxing Tuesday Special – State Of The Cities From Truth In Accounting
The Political Hat: Historic Scientific Achievement In The Quest To Create Catgirls
This Ain’t Hell: Tuesday FGS, also, Does Not Bear Close Scrutiny
Victory Girls: HR2474 Kills Right To Work, Takes California’s AB5 Nationwide
Volokh Conspiracy: “To Death They Would Go Alone, Yet With All Mankind For Company”
Weasel Zippers: Ted Cruz Goes Beast Mode When Reporter Defends Hunter Biden By Going After Cruz’ Kids, also, Gallup Poll Shows Race Relations Better Under Trump Than Under Obama
Mark Steyn: I Honestly Love You, also, Going Ape, Four Years On

Amazon Warehouse Deals




Category: Linkagery

‘Credulous Boomer Rube Demo’

Posted on | January 28, 2020 | Comments Off on ‘Credulous Boomer Rube Demo’

 

The word “demo” is, of course, short for demographic:

CNN’S DON LEMON: Oh as I said, NPR is standing by their reporter after Secretary of State Mike Pompeo accused her of lying. It is the latest in a growing list of incidents involving Pompeo and journalists.
Joining me now to discuss, CNN Contributor Wajahat Ali and Rick Wilson. . . .
So, Rick, who do you think is a liar here?
RICK WILSON, REPUBLICAN STRATEGIST: Look, Mike Pompeo has become one of the high priests of Trumpism. In the core of Trumpism is a war on the media. And so I think Mike Pompeo is trying to cast himself as this hero and to please Donald Trump. This isn’t about whether or not she could correctly identify Ukraine on a map, this is part of their performative, you know, media hatred that they engaged on the daily.
LEMON: Wajahat, I want to bring you in. Mary Louise Kelly told NPR, an NPR co-host that before ending the interview, Pompeo, quote, leaned in and glared at her and then he tried to give her a pop quiz. I mean, what is with this intimidation mode?
WAJAHAT ALI, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: Yes, this is the pathetic insecurity of the spineless amoebas of men such as Mike Pompeo and the other men in Trump’s administration, right? . . .
WILSON: Of course. Of course. It’s — he’s just trying to demean her, and obviously it’s false. And look, he also knows deep in his heart that Donald Trump couldn’t find Ukraine on a map if you had the letter U and a picture of an actual physical crane next to it. He knows that this is, you know, an administration defined by ignorance of the world, and so that’s partly him playing to their base and playing to their audience, you know, credulous boomer rube demo that back Donald Trump, that wants to think that Donald Trump’s a smart one, and y’all — y’all elitists are dumb.
ALI: You elitists with your geography and your maps and your spelling even though —
WILSON: Your math, your reading.
ALI: Yes, your reading, you know. Your geography knowing other countries. Sipping your latte.
WILSON: All those lines on the map.
ALI: Only them elitists know where Ukraine is. . . .

(Hat-tip: Ace of Spades.) Here we have “Republican strategist” Rick Wilson laughing it up with his two left-wing buddies about how only illiterate and uneducated people voted Republican in 2016. Rick and his CNN friends didn’t vote for Trump, thereby proving that they are so much smarter than the 62.9 million “credulous boomer rubes” who did.

Notice that Wajahat Ali uses the phrase “spineless amoeba” to describe Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, a West Point alumnus who served five years as an Army officer in the 7th Cavalry Regiment. Oh, what excellent people “Republican strategist” Rick Wilson chooses as his friends.


 

Category: CNN

Hunter Biden Settles Child-Support Arrangement With Arkansas Stripper

Posted on | January 28, 2020 | Comments Off on Hunter Biden Settles Child-Support Arrangement With Arkansas Stripper

 

We have previously discussed Lunden Alexis Roberts, the 29-year-old Arkansas woman who worked (under the stage name “Dallas”) at a D.C. strip club, where she met Joe Biden’s son, who fathered a bastard child with her. Now comes the news that Hunter Biden, 49, has agreed to pay his baby mama child support retroactive to November 2018, with monthly payments thereafter, and also to pay her court costs and attorneys’ fees. The amount of the settlement is undisclosed, but it is almost certainly a few hundred thousands dollars, lump sum, and three or four thousand a month thereafter. You might suppose that this would be considered big news, coming as it does during the impeachment trial of President Trump, whose alleged “high crimes and misdemeanors” were related to his desire to have Ukraine investigate Hunter Biden’s corrupt deal with the natural gas firm Burisma.

Here is one tiny snippet of the story:

Biden, who is a lawyer, originally denied having sex with Roberts.
But a DNA showed that the child was almost certainly his, and he stopped contesting paternity in the case.

So . . . Biden lied. He did not merely lie, but he lied to a court, and what happens to lawyers who lie in court? Isn’t disbarment appropriate? Perhaps there is some loophole for lying about sex, but whatever the case may be in terms of legal ethics, it is now established as a fact that you can never trust a Biden to tell the truth. Dishonesty is a hereditary trait, and yet every “mainstream” (i.e., liberal) news organization thinks we should just accept Joe Biden’s word that Hunter didn’t do anything wrong in accepting an $83,000-a-month “job” with Burisma:

A defense attorney for President Trump’s Senate impeachment trial slammed Hunter Biden’s employment with Ukrainian gas company Burisma Holdings, saying the former vice president’s son lacked the experience necessary to land the job and its salary.
“Hunter Biden is paid over $83,000 a month, while the average American family of four during that time, each year, made less than $54,000, and that’s according to U.S. Census Bureau during that time,” said Pam Bondi.
Bondi, 54, submitted a list of articles she said shows Biden did not have the background required to sit on the board of Burisma. She suggested it was his connection to his father that helped secure the lucrative gig and shield him from legal and congressional inquiries.
“When speaking with ABC News about his qualifications to be on Burisma’s board, Hunter Biden didn’t point to any of the usual qualifications of a board member,” she said. “Hunter Biden had no experience in natural gas, no experience in the energy sector, no experience with Ukrainian regulatory affairs. As far as we know, he doesn’t speak Ukrainian.”
She added, “So, naturally, the media has asked questions about his board membership. Why was Hunter Biden on this board?”

But there’s no corruption worth investigating when Democrats do it. Just the cocaine-addicted son of the former vice president, impregnating strippers while on the payroll of Ukrainian kleptocrats — you’re promoting a “right-wing conspiracy theory” if you want to investigate.


 

Category: Corruption, Joe Biden, Ukraine

In The Mailbox: 01.27.20

Posted on | January 27, 2020 | 1 Comment

– compiled by Wombat-socho

OVER THE TRANSOM
357 Magnum: So What Happens When Engineers Get It Wrong?
Ammo.com: The Oregon Standoff
EBL: Kobe & Gianna Bryant, RIP
Twitchy: Mollie Hemingway, Sean Davis Notice What ISN’T In John Bolton & Publisher’s “Oddly Limited Statement” About NYT Story
Louder With Crowder: Wuhan Whistleblower Indicates Coronavirus Is Much Worse Than We Think

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: Podcast #132 – The Intelligent Women Episode
American Conservative: “Impossible Whopper” Shouldn’t Replace Your Hamburger
American Greatness: The Grubby Corruption Of Our Power Elite, also, Pete Buttigieg Tells Pro-Life Democrat She Doesn’t Belong In The Democrat Party
American Power: Joe Rogan Endorses Bernie Sanders, Chaos Ensues
American Thinker: The Deep State Tapestry Of Deceit Is Beginning To Unravel
Animal Magnetism: Goodbye, Blue Monday
Babalu Blog: Spain’s Socialists Working With Castro Regime To Destroy Democracy In Latin America
BattleSwarm: Coronavirus Pandemic Update, also, Democratic Presidential Clown Car Update
Cafe Hayek: Proponents Of Industrial Policy & Protectionism Know No Economics
CDR Salamander: Watching The Surface Force With David Larter – On Midrats
Da Tech Guy: House Democrats Are Trying To Californicate The Country, also, Illinois Red-Light Camera Probe Provides Convincing Evidence Why They Should Be Banned
Don Surber: The Lightness Of Being Peggy Noonan, also, Writing Off Gun Owners
First Street Journal: How The Media Are Ignoring The Truth
Fred On Everything: Sexbots, Robots, Neural Networks, Weird Oriental Games, & The Spores Of Skynet
The Geller Report: Young Muslim Boy Executes Nigerian Christian In Horrifying Video, also, Ilhan Omar Now Being Investigated By FBI For Marrying Her Brother
Hogewash: Team Kimberlin Post Of The Day, also, A First Class Villain?
Hollywood In Toto: Critics Go Ga Ga Over Taylor Swift’s Miss Americana, also, Why Joe Rogan Must Fight Cancel Culture Smears
Joe For America: Motion Drafted To Subpoena Schiff, The “Whistleblower”, & The Bidens 
JustOneMinute: Meanwhile, Back In Australia
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Category: Linkagery

The Basketball World Mourns ‘Mamba’

Posted on | January 27, 2020 | 1 Comment

 

It’s been years since I paid attention to the NBA, or to basketball generally. When I was a sports editor in the 1980s, of course, I followed the game, but in my mind, the Golden Age of Basketball was when Larry Bird’s Celtics battled Magic Johnson’s Lakers back in the 1980s. Still, when the news flashed Sunday that Kobe Bryant had been killed in a helicopter crash, I knew that this was a great tragedy.

The son of a former NBA player (his dad played with Dr. J), Bryant was a high-school sensation who turned down college scholarships to go directly into the NBA, and became the youngest player ever to play in a professional game. His second season with the Lakers, he became the youngest All-Star in league history, and his third season — when he was still only 20 years old — “marked Bryant’s emergence as a premier guard in the league.” Imagine being a two-time NBA All-Star before your peers have reached their senior year in college, and yet Bryant was only beginning to astonish the basketball world. In the next three seasons, the Lakers won three consecutive NBA championships, with Shaquille O’Neal and Bryant forming an indomitable scoring duo in the historic “three-peat.” Later, in 2009-2010, Bryant again led the Lakers to back-to-back titles. How many players have ever had five NBA championship rings? Nicknamed “Mamba” by fans, Kobe retired after the 2016 season with a career scoring average of 25 points per game over 20 seasons, having led the league in scoring twice and played in 12 All-Star games.

 

Bryant was married nearly 20 years to his wife Vanessa, whom he first met in 1999, and they had four daughters; the oldest — Gigi, 13 — was killed in Sunday’s helicopter crash with her father. Fans built a makeshift shrine to their hero outside the Staples Center arena in L.A.

While fans were mourning, and as President Trump was paying tribute to the NBA legend, a writer for the Washington Post had other ideas:

A Washington Post journalist has been suspended by the newspaper after she tweeted a link on Sunday to a years-old story about the Kobe Bryant rape case just hours after the basketball legend and his daughter were killed in a helicopter crash.
Felicia Sonmez, who covers national politics for the Post, took to Twitter shortly after the world learned of Bryant’s death along with eight others aboard his private helicopter which crashed outside of Los Angeles.
She posted a link to an April 2016 story from the news site The Daily Beast which carried the headline: ‘Kobe Bryant’s Disturbing Rape Case: The DNA Evidence, the Accuser’s Story, and the Half-Confession.’ . . .
Sonmez deleted the tweets due to the overwhelming backlash, but others on Twitter screengrabbed the posts and responded with disgust.

 

She got the ratio from hell — more than 20,000 negative reactions — on Twitter, and continued digging until she nearly lost her job. I’m sure she’ll be reinstated after her suspension, but what shall we say about this? I remember that 2003 case, and my attitude at the time was that when an NBA player invites a woman to his hotel room, she should know what her acceptance of the invitation implies. I mean, c’mon — when NBA players leave the arena after a game, they are thronged by women desperate to be their companions for the night, and Kobe was an All-Star who had just won three consecutive championships. The fact that Kobe was married, of course, should have restrained his advances, but many high-status married men (famously including former President Bill Clinton) seem to regard their marital vows as non-binding.

The story linked by the Washington Post reporter includes details that highlight the way these “he-said/she-said” incidents so often develop: Kobe was obviously a man who had seldom been rejected. She kissed him and, well, where did she expect this to lead? She’s a 19-year-old Colorado hotel clerk, and he’s a multimillionaire athletic superstar, and certainly we can imagine that Kobe thought any display of reluctance on her part was just “playing hard to get.” Also, we must factor into this equation the matter of race: His accuser was white, and while she evidently was not a racist (she told police she was initially “excited” when she learned the NBA star was staying at the hotel, and apparently didn’t mind kissing him), but what did Kobe think? Did the NBA superstar imagine that this teenage hotel clerk was rejecting his advances merely because he was black? I don’t mean to defend Kobe insofar as what happened was clearly wrong (as he himself later admitted), but rather to explain How Things Really Are, as opposed to How Some People Wish Things Were.

It’s all fine and good to avow “color-blindness,” and to denounce as racism — there are five A’s in “RAAAAACIST!” — any deviation from such an ideal, but not everyone thinks that way. Even people who disavow racism will often behave in ways that are race-conscious. This is true of people of every race, and if Kobe felt he was being disrespected because a white woman spurned his romantic advances, he would certainly not be the first black man to feel that way. What we need, as a society, is more license to discuss our feelings on such subjects without fear of being swarmed by a mob of Social Justice Warriors if we deviate from whatever the official “progressive” attitude is supposed to be.

Live long enough, and you’ll see liberals do a 180-degree turn on many issues, and the way Kobe was treated in the aftermath of that 2003 rape accusation is certainly such a case. Once upon a time, liberals would have defended a black man accused in any similar circumstance, but nowadays the feminists have decided that lynch mobs are “progressive” and defending due process of law makes you a right-wing extremist. Liberals have also done a 180-degree turn on free speech. I’m old enough to remember when liberals adamantly defended all manner of things — including Communist professors and federal grants for pornographic art — on First Amendment grounds. Today’s progressives, however, act like the Thought Police, vigilantly on the lookout for any evidence of racism, sexism or homophobia. Even I, who laugh at being hate-listed by the SPLC, must carefully weigh my words when writing about these issues, lest I offend some of my conservative friends who are eager to avoid any guilt-by-association with a Thought Criminal.

We should remember Kobe Bryant for what he accomplished as one of the greatest basketball players in the history of the game. I loathe the tendency to inject politics into every aspect of our lives, and if Felicia Sonmez learns anything from her experience, let us hope she learns that sports fans don’t want her “woke” attitude anywhere near their games.

Hey, Felicia: Why do you think we elected Donald Trump, anyway?


 

Category: Racism, Sports
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