The Other McCain

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

In The Mailbox: 05.16.19

Posted on | May 16, 2019 | 1 Comment

— compiled by Wombat-socho

OVER THE TRANSOM
EBL: Tim Conway, RIP
Twitchy: Jim Acosta Shredded For Deliberately Misquoting & Spinning Trump’s Remarks About Asylum Seekers
Louder With Crowder: Ted Cruz Exposes Twitter’s Conservative Bias With Just One Tweet

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: Actions Have Consequences, also, James Charles & Bursting The Gay Bubble
American Greatness: A Full Presidential Pardon, also, The FISA Footnote That Could Doom Collusion Hoaxsters
American Power: Rick Atkinson, The British Are Coming
American Thinker: No Wonder The Post Hid Obama’s Red Mentor
Animal Magnetism: Animal’s Daily Random Notes News
Babalu Blog: Charlie Crist’s “Secret” Trip To Chum Around With The Castros Finally Exposed, also, How The Castro Dictatorship Strangled Democracy In Veezuela
BattleSwarm: The Man Nobody Wants Running For President Is Running For President
CDR Salamander: Diversity Thursday
Da Tech Guy: Mother Angelica Strikes In Alabama, also, Microsoft Introduces The First Newspeak-compliant Word Processor
Don Surber: J. Edgar Comey Tried To Blackmail Trump
Dustbury: Let’s Rob Someone With No Money
The Geller Report: Rep. Ilhan Omar Target Of Immigration Fraud Lawsuit, also, Geraldo Rivera Defends Rep. Tlaib, Claims She’s Being Taken Out Of Context
Hogewash: Team Kimberlin Post Of The Day, also, Beresheet Impact Site
Hollywood In Toto: Powerful New Tool Lets Conservative Artists Shine
Joe For America: Brian Sims’ Office & Social Media Go Dark As He Hides From Backlash Of Harassing Constituents
JustOneMinute: All In Good Fun
Legal Insurrection: College Student Shocked At Being Arrested For Stealing Pro-Life Sign, also, Who’s Going To Cut A Deal First In Spygate?
The PanAm Post: Did Venezuela’s Relationship With Hezbollah Prompt US Suspension Of Flights?
Power Line: Straight Talk About Red China & Corporate America, also, The Infantile, Superficial Left
Shot In The Dark: What if You Declared A “Sex Strike” And Nobo…Er, Let Me Try That Again
The Political Hat: Gender Pronouns – Policy, Lawsuits, & Neutered
This Ain’t Hell: Top IN Department Of Veterans Affairs Staffs Resign After Scandal, also, Get The Ginsu Missile!
Victory Girls: Abortion Stories That Will Make Your Head Hurt
Volokh Conspiracy: The Crazy Verdicts Against Bayer/Monsanto In The Roundup Litigation
Weasel Zippers: Occasional Cortex Caught Lying About AL Abortion Law, also, Reporter Asks AL Gov About Money For Childre
Megan McArdle: SCOTUS Should Never Have Intervened On Abortion
Mark Steyn: Universal Exports Is Hiring

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Elizabeth Warren Is Over

Posted on | May 16, 2019 | Comments Off on Elizabeth Warren Is Over

 

Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s presidential campaign is doomed. Anyone can look at the Real Clear Politics average of national polls and see that Warren — currently in third place, with an 8.3% average — is flat-lining. Although two recent polls (Quinnipiac in April and Emerson last week) show her in double digits, the Emerson poll shows her tied for third with California Sen. Kamala Harris. It is obvious that Warren and Harris are vying for the “Not a Man 2020” vote, to use feminist Jessica Valenti’s phrase. Warren is essentially a female Bernie Sanders, combining socialist economics with an identity-politics appeal to her fellow vagina-owners, and this will predictably fail. Why? First, because nearly every second- and third-tier candidate in the Democratic primary campaign is running to the Left, trying to compete for the Bernie vote, and second, because many of those candidates are also women. When the first Democrat debates happen next month, there will likely be six women — Warren, Harris, New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar and author Marianne Williamson — among the 20 candidates on stage for the two-night debates. This will dilute the “Not a Man 2020” advantage for Warren, who benefits from having more name-recognition. My guess would be that, after the first round of debates, Warren will fade and Harris will rise, because Harris is black and is obviously better qualified than the other black candidate, New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker. Such is the logic of identity politics, in which Democrats are heavily invested.

By the way, don’t discount Williamson’s potential impact. Everybody thought I was crazy when I went down to South Carolina to cover her campaign in March — I was the only reporter covering her on that trip — but she is now making headlines regularly. As I noted last week, she’s hit the 65,000-donor threshold needed to qualify for the DNC debates. That landed Williamson an eight-minute appearance on MSNBC Sunday, and she also scored an interview with The Hill, with the headline, “Don’t tell Marianne Williamson she can’t win,” which got linked by Drudge. And, meanwhile, Elizabeth Warren is dissing Fox News:

 

This tantrum is both counter-factual and self-destructive. Warren’s screed reads like it was written by an SPLC staffer.

Your ears must be tuned to a very high dog-whistle frequency to believe Fox News is “a mix of bigotry, racism, and outright lies” and “profits from racism and hate.” If any Democrats are reading this, trust me — it’s possible to click your remote and watch an hour or two of Fox News without becoming a Nazi, just like I can watch a few hours of CNN without becoming gay. The self-destructive aspect of Warren’s anti-Fox stance is obvious to Meagan Day of the left-wing magazine Jacobin:

When Sanders participated in the network’s town hall event, I explained why that was a good idea. Fox News is the most-watched cable news network in the country, and its viewers have the lowest average income of any major news network or outlet. Sanders’s campaign is centered around demands for ambitious redistributive reforms that will directly and materially improve life for all working-class people — some of whom, unfortunately, watch Fox News and currently vote for Republicans.

Obviously, I disagree with Day about whether the “reforms” advocated by Democrats will “materially improve life” for the working class, but her point about the Fox News audience deserves consideration:

Fox’s audience has one of the lowest average incomes of any major news source. Seventy-seven percent of Fox viewers make less than $75,000 a year, compared to 62 percent for the New York Times and 57 percent for NPR. A third of Fox News viewers make less than $30,000 a year. More than half are over the age of 50 and a quarter are over 65, which means a good number are subsisting primarily on Social Security.
Since Fox is the most-watched cable news network in the country, we can surmise that millions of its viewers are facing exactly the issues addressed in Sanders’ platform — like pension cuts, medical debt, job insecurity, and unaffordable housing and eldercare.

Most Democrats don’t understand why lower-income voters — the “deplorables,” as Hillary Clinton called them — are watching Fox News. The fact is quite simple: Small-town and rural voters are the heart of the Republican grassroots, while Democrats appeal to wealthy urban elites.

You have to spend some time digging around in Census data and exit polls to understand this, and Elizabeth Warren, the former Harvard professor, is so out-of-touch she can’t fathom it. You don’t have to be rich to live a happy life in small-town America. It is only in the big metro areas, where only the wealthy can afford housing prices in good neighborhoods, that an income under $75,000 dooms you to living in squalor. Earlier this month, I visited a friend in Valdosta, Georgia, where the median household income is $31,701. If a married couple earned $75,000 between them, they’d be more than twice the median household income there — “rich” folks, by local standards. The quality-of-life advantages of small-town living are best understood by looking at real-estate prices. The median value of a single-family home in Valdosta is $116,000; by contrast, in the affluent Boston suburb of Brookline, the median home value is $829,300. Only the rich can afford to buy a house in a place like Brookline, whereas the working class have no problems finding affordable homes in Valdosta. There is more actual equality in rural South Georgia than in the posh Boston suburbs, and guess what? The population of Valdosta is 51% black, whereas the population of Brookline is only 3.3% black. Who are the real “racists,” the rural Georgians or Elizabeth Warren’s liberal voters in Brookline?

Elizabeth Warren will not win the Democratic nomination, but even if she did somehow emerge as the winner in the “clown car” primary, she would be certain to lose to Trump in November 2020. Even though Trump is a billionaire from New York, he still relates better to working-class voters than does the Harvard Law professor Warren. Right now, Joe Biden is riding atop the Democrat poll numbers and, while I don’t expect Biden to go the distance, the question is which of the other Democrats might beat him in the primaries. Bet money it won’t be Warren.

UPDATE: Although Warren is third in the national RCP poll average, she fares worse when we look at polls for the early caucus and primary states. In Iowa, she’s in fifth place, behind Biden, Sanders, Mayor Pete Buttigieg, and Harris. In New Hampshire, she’s fourth behind Biden, Sanders and Buttigieg. In Nevada, she’s fourth behind Biden, Sanders and Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke. In South Carolina, she’s in fourth, behind Biden, Sanders, Harris and Booker. In other words, despite having high national name recognition, Warren doesn’t appear likely to do better than fourth place in any of the early states, and therefore doesn’t appear to have a path to the nomination.

We are still nearly nine months away from the first votes (the Iowa caucus is Feb. 3), and a lot can change in that time, but does it seem likely that Warren’s candidacy will grow stronger between now and then? No. She’s doomed. She’s “pining for the fjords.”



 

Crazy People Are Dangerous: #JamesCharlesIsCancelled Edition

Posted on | May 15, 2019 | 1 Comment

 

“What were they thinking?”

After I stumbled across the story of James Charles, the teenage makeup wizard whose career got torched last week, I was perplexed by the question of why people enabled this adolescent psycho’s bizarre ascent to social-media stardom. Why would CoverGirl sign a 17-year-old boy as the first male “ambassador” for their brand? It’s not as if there were no warning signs. Consider the backstory of his “coming out”:

He came out as gay at the age of 12 and regularly posts online about his personal life, but does not appear to be dating anyone.
He told his followers: ‘When I was younger, I think in around sixth grade, I was 12 years old at the time, I was hormonal.
‘I had just gone through puberty, and just like every other boy I was going through that stage of life. . . .
He explained how he joined internet chatrooms to talk to other bloggers, but found it was being used for sexual conversations.
He claims his father walked in on him in a state of undress talking to a boy online once.
The following day his parents asked to see his internet history, inadvertently revealing his sexuality.
He added: ‘There it was. The closet door was flung open and outran me. Unintentionally.’

Uh, you’re hanging out in gay chat rooms at age 12? But this being the 21st century, his parents, Ken and Christie Dickinson, were “supportive” of their son’s homosexuality. If you go to his mother’s Instagram page, you find her enthusiastically promoting her gay son’s career.

While I’m hesitant to get all psychological here — it is offensive to offer any one-size-fits-all theory about the etiology of homosexuality — I can tell you that old-fashioned Freudians describe a familial pattern known colloquially as the “smother mother.” Many gay boys have mothers who are too affectionate and over-protective of their sons. In many such cases, the father is absent or perceived as hostile. This Freudian perspective has been criticized on many grounds, especially because it is associated with so-called “reparative therapy,” a/k/a “conversion therapy.” Beyond that, however, I think the emphasis on parental influence fails to understand how peer interactions and cultural influence may contribute to the development of homosexual tendencies. It is very important in a boy’s development that he become “one of the guys,” i.e., that he feel accepted by his male peers as a valuable member in the male-bonding rituals of boyhood. One of the common threads you’ll see in gay coming-out narratives — and this is true in both gay men and lesbians — is that, as a child, they felt somehow different from other kids. Long before they were old enough to have any idea of sexuality, they suffered from a sense of isolation or alienation, and somehow didn’t “fit in” with their peers.

Parents sometimes don’t notice their kids going “off-course” in early childhood, or lack the objectivity to admit to themselves that their child’s development is abnormal. Even if they do notice their child becoming a misfit, parents are often at a loss to find any effective way to help correct whatever the problem is. And if the parents themselves are a source of the problem, how can they be expected to offer a solution? I once watched a documentary about the serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer, which included home video of a holiday visit he had with his parents, and you could see there was something wrong in the family dynamic. Not that his parents were bad people, but there was just a sort of emotionless quality about their interactions that seemed off-key. But I digress . . .

The ultra-flamboyant aspect of James Charles’s personality helped him become a YouTube celebrity, but his flamboyance could also be interpreted as symptomatic of psychopathic tendencies. Why, then, were so many people willing to enable him? Anyone who paid attention could see he was a predator hiding in plain sight.

Oh, but you don’t want to be homophobic, see? Here he was openly bragging — on a YouTube channel with millions of subscribers — that he considers it “winning” to seduce heterosexual men, and yet no one would call him out on it, because you’re a hater if you find this offensive. You bigots need to get “woke” and realize that homosexuals have a right to pursue any partner who strikes their fancy. What? You never heard of such a right? It’s there in the Fourteenth Amendment, between the penumbras and emanations, next to the “emerging awareness.”

There was psychopathic pattern in James Charles’s behavior, but nobody around him was willing to say anything about it, because (a) any criticism of a gay person’s behavior is considered homophobic, and (b) he was an extraordinarily important rising star in the social-media world. His influence had cash value, and he knew it, wielding that power in a ruthless and selfish manner. When it all finally blew up — because he backstabbed his friend and mentor Tati Westbrook — some people said, “Give him a break, he’s just a kid.” True, and God knows what wickedness I’d have gotten into if I’d been a millionaire by age 19, but with great power comes great responsibility, and the question is, how did this psychopath get so much power? There are other questions involved:

What does a gay teenage beauty guru have to do with “Russian collusion”? More than you might think, and the scandal that has wrecked the reputation of YouTube celebrity James Charles tells us a lot about how the 21st-century media environment creates echo chambers that give rise to a cult mentality. In a world where all the information in the world seems to be just a click away, many people are drawn to obscure niches where their preferences are indulged and their biases are never challenged. We live in an age when an androgynous 19-year-old can become a multimillionaire by uploading video makeup tutorials to the Internet, building an audience larger than all three major cable-news networks combined. And within that celebrity bubble, James Charles was as sheltered from reality as any CNN viewer dismayed to learn that the Mueller investigation found no evidence that President Trump is a Kremlin puppet. . . .

Read the rest of my column at The American Spectator.



 

In The Mailbox: 05.15.19

Posted on | May 15, 2019 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 05.15.19

— compiled by Wombat-socho

OVER THE TRANSOM
Ninety Miles From Tyranny: The 90 Miles Mystery Box – Episode #621
EBL: Good Advice
Twitchy: Alyssa Milano Wants Media Covering Abortion Debate TO Use This Term Instead Of Heartbeat
Louder With Crowder: Dan Crenshaw Exposes The Left’s Radical Climate Agenda

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: Sorry, Christian Woman Age 32, Nobody Wants You
American Greatness: The U.S. Doesn’t Need China To Prosper, also, Our Tech Slave Power
American Thinker: Masculinity In Menopause – The Emasculating Effects Of Fatherlessness & Feminism
Animal Magnetism: Animal’s Hump Day News
Babalu Blog: Cuba’s “Doctor Diplomacy ” Just A Cover For The Castro Regime’s Slave Trade In Medical Personnel, also, Slave Trade In Doctors, Other Professionals Exposed – Criminal Complaint Filed In The Hague
BattleSwarm: Blogroll Updates
CDR Salamander: Tomorrow’s Air Wing Needs To Be My Father’s Air Wing, also, Gibbeting Mike Mullen’s Almost Dead Theory
Da Tech Guy: The Left’s Latest Attack Against Women, also, Five 2020 Election Thoughts Under The Fedora
Don Surber: Obama Spied On Many Others
Dustbury: The Post-Gaylord Era
First Street Journal:
The Geller Report: Nigerian Archbishop Says Muslims Are Slaughtering Christians “Like Chickens”, also, Fox News’ Juan Williams  – “You Can’t Trust The Zionists [When They Go After] Tlaib
Hogewash: Team Kimberlin Post of The Day, also, Today’s Talking Point
Hollywood In Toto: Revealed – Why There’s No Conservative Late Night Shows
Joe For America: Democrats In Serious Trouble As AG Barr Includes CIA, National Intelligence In Investigation Of Coup Against President
Legal Insurrection: Dershowitz Slams “McCarthyism” Behind Removal Of Harvard Law Prof Sullivan As Residential Dean, also, Top Democrats’ Defense Of Tlaib’s Holocaust Inversion & Revisionism Is Unforgivable
The PanAm Post: Piracy & Hijacking – Maduro’s New Strategy To Evade Sanctions, Ship Oil
Power Line: Today’s Good News, also, White House Sacks Top Aide To Alex Acosta
Shot In The Dark: This Is What “90% Support” Looks Like
STUMP: Judgment In Moscow By Vladimir Bukovsky Now Out!
The Political Hat: Abortion As Genocide
Victory Girls: Adma Schiff Sinks Deeper Into Trump Derangement Syndrome
Volokh Conspiracy: Antitrust Standing & Gorsuch v. Kavanaugh Textualism
Weasel Zippers: Watch As Feminist Steals Pro-Life Sign – Then The Police Show Up, also, Rubio Renews Push To Investigate Whether Kerry Violated The Logan Act
Megan McArdle: In Israel, I Heard Eerie Echoes Of An Old Irish Joke About Religion
Mark Steyn: The Deep State Goes Dangling, also, Live Around The Planet


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The Championship Mentality

Posted on | May 14, 2019 | 1 Comment

My friend Jeff Quinton is a Clemson fan and, as such, I hate him. Jeff and I became friends online more than 20 years ago, when I was still living in Georgia and he was involved in South Carolina politics. Little did I know, when we connected in those dial-up modem days, that Clemson would one day beat the previously undefeated Alabama Crimson Tide on a Day That Will Live in Infamy, a shame and disgrace that is painful to recall.

How could that possibly happen? More than four months later, I still struggle to understand how the Tide could have played so badly. Unforced errors and failure to execute — Alabama did not merely lose to Clemson, they were embarrassed. In a word, it was dishonorable.

“The agony of defeat,” to employ a once-famous phrase, is something that everyone who ever played the game must learn to endure. Even the greatest athletic champions do not always win. The best hitters in baseball sometimes strike out, the All-Pro quarterback occasionally throws an interception, and Tiger Woods went 11 years without winning a major tournament. If the legends of professional sports can accept the pain of losing, and yet continue playing the game, what is the lesson for the rest of us, who never got past youth league or high-school competition? And what do the lessons of sports teach us about life?

Recall a point I made last week:

“Be excellent,” I tell my sons. In a ruthlessly competitive world, being merely good won’t cut it. You have to be excellent to win. There is no substitute for direct experience, learning through trial and error, so to become excellent you cannot be too risk-averse. You have to be willing to roll the dice and take your chances. You win some, you lose some, but you’re always learning, always improving yourself.

One of the big lies that is promoted in the name of “social justice” is that equality is the natural order of human life, which implies that we are not responsible for our own failures: Alabama was equally entitled to win the national championship, but Clemson unfairly oppressed them.

What we learn from sports is that competition produces hierarchy, and the people at the top — the champions — do not owe an apology to the losers down at the bottom of the league standings. It’s not Clemson’s fault that Alabama played a lousy game, and it’s not Alabama’s fault that Tennessee’s football program has become an SEC laughingstock.

SEC football fans engage in some of the most brutal trash-talking in the world of sports, exceeded perhaps only by British soccer hooligans. The more you love your team, the more you hate your team’s rivals, and regard the rival team’s fans as subhuman, deserving nothing but contempt. For an Alabama fan, of course, Auburn is that enemy, but Tennessee once ranked quite high on the list of the Tide’s most hated rivals. My father, who was class of 1950 at Tuscaloosa, explained that one year when the Tide was having a disappointing season, and Tennessee was coached by the legendary General Neyland, the Volunteers ran up the score against us (25-0 in Knoxville, 1931) and every ’Bama fan swore that day to avenge this insult to their honor. You might expect the memory to have faded after more than 80 years, but this ancient grudge was passed down from generation to generation, in the manner of tribal custom, so that the Third Saturday in October is an annual ritual in vengeance for ’Bama fans. The Tide has now beaten Tennessee 12 years in a row, and you might think that would be enough to quench the appetite for revenge, but it’s never enough. My dad was only 7 years old in 1931, but he never forgot the pain of listening to the radio broadcast of that Knoxville game, and he hated Tennessee the rest of his life, a hatred I inherited the same way I inherited my blue eyes.

Alabama’s recent oppression of Tennessee, as the “social justice” crowd might call it, has a specific history, but it does no good to remind Tennessee fans why we hate them so much, because you can be sure that the loser hates the winner even more than the winner hates the loser.

Whose fault is it that Tennessee’s football team sucks? Not mine. And if somehow they managed to turn their program around, so that the Volunteers could beat the Tide as regularly as they once did (e.g., winning 7 in a row, 1995-2001), no ’Bama fan could expect mercy from them. Soon, there will be no one alive who remembers that 1931 game, but there will never be any mercy on the Third Saturday in October, because even if Tennessee never won another game all season, they’d be celebrated like champions if only they could beat the Crimson Tide.

Winners must learn to handle the hatred they get from envious losers. If you succeed in life, you will discover that there are some people who will hate you for your success, who believe that your success is somehow unfair. This is a rationalization, a psychological defense mechanism with which the loser protects his wounded ego. The “social justice” mentality is simply this kind of peevish envy turned into a political worldview.

Because the “social justice” agenda is a manifestation of envy, it is incompatible with Christianity. As individuals, we should strive to be merciful and charitable in our actions, but government power and taxpayer money are not acceptable substitutes for charity. Nor is it mercy to tolerate the kind of dishonest bullying behavior we see from so many of those who claim to act in the name of “social justice.” Decent law-abiding citizens are being silenced on the Internet for daring to tell the truth, rather than to echo the deceptive narratives of the Left.

It is a terrible thing to endure the daily slander — “sexist!” “racist!” “homophobe!” — directed at those who disrupt the Left’s narratives. Yet if you think you are suffering unjustly for telling the truth, think about what President Trump has had to endure. Prior to the day in June 2015 when he came down that escalator, Donald Trump was widely admired. He was even praised by many in the liberal media, until his presidential candidacy turned out not to be a fluke, as most liberals had initially hoped. In the early months of the Republican primary campaign, the media pundits were happy to celebrate Trump’s success against his GOP rivals, thinking that this would somehow work to the advantage of the media’s chosen candidate, Hillary Clinton. Yet the fluke was not a fluke, and by the spring of 2016, Democrats began to worry that perhaps they had underestimated Trump’s campaign. This was how it came to be that a conspiracy to sabotage Trump was launched, involving Fusion GPS and, eventually, the surveillance of Trump’s campaign by the FBI and other federal agencies. As a result of that anti-Trump conspiracy, many people have been prosecuted for the crime of being associated with Trump, whose own reputation has been badly damaged by these bogus accusations of “Russian collusion” and obstruction of justice.

Whatever else you might say about Trump, he hates losing. His victory in 2016 was one of the greatest upsets in political history, and do you think that he’s planning to lose in 2020? Not just “no” — hell, no.

When I think about the “Never Trump” Republicans, who ruined their careers by betting against him, I think about all those fans of inferior football teams who despise Alabama’s mighty Crimson Tide. Something my dad always said was that ’Bama never has an easy game, because everybody wants to beat ’Bama so bad. The weakest team on Alabama’s schedule will play as hard as they can in hopes of being able to say they beat ’Bama. To play for the Crimson Tide, therefore, means that you can never take victory for granted. And I think Donald Trump must understand how that feels. Oh, how the “Never Trump” crowd would gloat if he were to lose next year! What satisfaction Bill Kristol and Nicolle Wallace and all those other losers would feel if the Democrats beat Trump! Do you think he plans to give them that satisfaction?

Not just “no” — hell, no.

The Democrats and their media allies will pull out all the stops between now and November 2020 in their effort to beat Trump, but he has that championship mentality, and anyone who bets against him is a fool.



 

In The Mailbox: 05.14.19

Posted on | May 14, 2019 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 05.14.19

— compiled by Wombat-socho

OVER THE TRANSOM
EBL: Trade War Rule 5
Twitchy: Trey Gowdy Drops A Whole Lotta Steele Dossier Truth On John Brennan & James Comey
Louder With Crowder: This Rapper Exposes The Agenda Of The Democratic Party

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: Ladies, Your Youth & Beauty Lives On In Your Children
American Greatness: Democrats Look At South Africa, And They Like What They See
American Thinker: MAGA Vs. The U.S. Chamber Of Commerce
Animal Magnetism: Travel Day Totty II
Babalu Blog: Democrats Silent On Castro’s Violent Repression Of Cuban Gay Rights Groups
BattleSwarm: Prosecutor Appointed To Investigate Spying On Trump
CDR Salamander: Three Cheers For Forward Presence & Aircraft Carriers
Da Tech Guy: Did Kavanaugh Just Punk The Left On Roe? also, Is A College Degree Worth It?
Don Surber: FBI Spies Are Toast
Dustbury: That Don’t Oppress Me Much
First Street Journal: The Credentialed Media Ignore The Facts In The STEM School Shooting
The Geller Report: Top House Dems Demand Apologies From House GOP For Criticism Of Rep. Tlaib’s Vile Remarks, also, Ramadan Killathon 2019 – The Score So Far
Hogewash: Team Kimberlin Post of The Day, also, Alinsky’s Rule Five Squared
Hollywood In Toto: Why Woke Gender Swap Remakes Are A Bad Bet
JustOneMinute: Send Better Apologists!
Legal Insurrection: Kirsten Gillibrand Blames Campaign’s Poor Showing On “Gender Bias”, also, Rosenstein Unleashes Fury On Comey, Defends Handling Of Mueller Probe
The PanAm Post: Cuba is No Workers’ Dream…More Like Workers’ Nightmare
Power Line: Sacred Duty – A Soldier’s Tour At Arlington, also, Rashida Tlaib’s Latest Isn’t Antisemitic, Just Blatantly False
Shot In The Dark: Listening To You, I Feel The Music
STUMP: Teachers Appreciation Week – Public School Teacher Mortality
The Political Hat: North Korea On The Caribbean
Victory Girls: Biden Defends ’94 Crime Law, Says Illegals Deserve Free Healthcare
Volokh Conspiracy: CT AG Opinion On Repealing Religious Exemption From Vaccination Rules
Weasel Zippers: Hunter Biden’s China Deal Partners Include Mobster Whitey Bulger’s Nephew & John Kerry’s Stepson, also, Code Pink Idiots Get Raided, Tossed Out Of Venezuelan Embassy
Mark Steyn: Every Dog Should Have His Day, also, Alyssistrata

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In The Mailbox: 05.13.19

Posted on | May 13, 2019 | 1 Comment

— compiled by Wombat-socho

OVER THE TRANSOM
EBL: Doris Day, RIP, also, Peggy Lipton, RIP
Twitchy: AG Barr Appoints US Attorney To Dig Into Russia Probe Origins
Louder With Crowder: Chips Ahoy Uses Mother’s Day To Promote Drag Queens

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: Podcast #107 – The Sex Strike Episode, also, The Sheer Awfulness Of Game Of Thrones
American Greatness: Journalism Is Dead – Long Live The Media! also, Mayor DeBlasio’s Green New Deal Rally Inside Trump Tower Backfires Badly
American Thinker: Why The Media Suddenly Lost Interest In The Latest School Shooting
Animal Magnetism: Travel Day Totty
Babalu Blog: Hackers Break Into Website Of Cuba’s State-Run Newspaper On Mother’s Day, Hilarity Ensues, also, Violent Repression Of Cuba’s Gay Activists Reveals Socialism’s Deep-Seated Homophobia
BattleSwarm: Message To Tories – Brexit Or Exit, also, Democratic Presidential Clown Car Update
CDR Salamander: Fullbore Friday
Da Tech Guy: Heartbeat, also, Pfleger Will Continue To Do What He Wants At St. Sabina
Don Surber: I’m Glad They Won’t Have Sex With Men, also, The Media Must Pay
Dustbury: Strange Search Engine Queries, also, 50% More Socks
First Street Journal: Amanda Marcotte, The Professional Media, & The Left On Antisemitism – Pfft!
The Geller Report: Dem Rep Rashida Tlaib – “When I Think About The Holocaust I Get A Warm Feeling”, also, UK Muslim Gang – “We’re Going To Rape The Whole F*cking Country”
Hogewash: As Green Fades To Black, also, Team Kimberlin Post of The Day
Hollywood In Toto: The Crow At 25
Joe For America: Occasional Cortex Claims She Was Kidding About The World Ending In Twelve Years
JustOneMinute: AG Barr Taps A Not-So-Special Counsel To Investigate Trump Investigation
Legal Insurrection: Amid Cratering Poll Numbers, Sanders Gloms Onto Occasional Cortex, also, Rep. Tlaib Falsely Claims Arabs Created “Safe Haven” For Jews During & After Holocaust
The PanAm Post: Immigration – Duty Or Favor? also, Gen. Ramon Rangel’s Defection Key To Expelling Cuba From Venezuela
Power Line: “Diversity” And The Welfare State, also, Google’s Bias, Quantified
Shot In The Dark: Absolute Moral Authority
STUMP: Taxing Tuesday Falls On A Monday This Week
The Jawa Report: French Rescue Four Hostages, Lose Two Soldiers
The Political Hat: News Of The Week
Victory Girls: Democrat Leaders Want GOP Apology To Rep. Tlaib, also, Yankees Fans Boycotting Over Kate Smith “God Bless America” Ban
Volokh Conspiracy: SCOTUS Majority Speaks Against “Ahistorical Literalism”
Weasel Zippers: Rep. Schiff – Trump Shouldn’t Be Allowed To Investigate Biden Ties To Ukraine, also, Empire Cancelled Amid Ongoing Smollett Turmoil
Mark Steyn: It Takes A Village Idiot, also, Changing His Tune


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Crazy People Are Dangerous

Posted on | May 13, 2019 | Comments Off on Crazy People Are Dangerous

Hailey Burns (left); Michael Wysolovski (right).

On May 23, 2016, Anthony and Shauna Burns discovered that their 16-year-old daughter Hailey was missing from their home near Charlotte, N.C. The front door was unlocked and the teenager, who had been diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome, left behind a diary that detailed her plans to run away with a man she had met in an online forum:

“He gradually wormed his way into her good graces, he coerced her into listening to him and not following our directions and the next thing I knew my daughter wasn’t communicating with me,” her father told WBTV. . . .
“My daughter was troubled and had psychological problems that were diagnosed and clouded her judgment. I was working very closely with her to get her on track spending evenings trying to bond with her and feeling as if I was making some progress . . .”
Speaking to WSOC-TV, Anthony Burns said one of his daughter’s friends had heard about the man prior to her disappearance.
“He told me that my daughter had been talking to a 30-year-old man for over six months who was trying to convince her to talk to him, and saying that he would be her friend and she could come to him,” her father alleged.

For more than a year, Hailey’s whereabouts remained unknown, until a woman in Romania who had been chatting online with Hailey contacted her parents, sharing a photo the girl had sent her. The family passed the information to the FBI, and the next day, June 25, 2017, agents found Hailey in the Duluth, Georgia, home of Michael Wysolovski, 31:

Investigators said he met Hailey Burns online, then kept her locked inside an upstairs bedroom and controlled every aspect of her life, down to the number of calories she ate each day.
“He manipulated me heavily, taking advantage of my mental illness to push me closer to his desires,” Hailey said.
Wysolovski sat without emotion as Hailey described how she was abused, starved at times as part of his twisted sexual fantasies.
“He lowered my self-esteem greatly and led me to believe I’d never be loved or have a proper life if I gained any weight,” Hailey said. . . .
Wysolovski targeted Hailey through an eating disorder website and eventually lured her away from her home in Ballantyne just after she turned 16 years old.
Channel 9 learned Hailey was given a fake ID and told to lie about who she really was.
The state attorney struck a plea deal in the case that the family agreed to, saying a trial would not have brought a guaranteed conviction.

Many people were outraged that prosecutors gave Wysolovski a deal that let him off with time served — he spent eight months in jail before making bond — but the relevant laws as applied to the circumstances of the case could have made it difficult to convict him at trial. Age of consent is 16, and Hailey had initially consented to the relationship:

The victim and Wysolovski agreed to enter a “consensual non-consensual” sexual relationship, a type of BDSM (bondage, domination, submission, masochism) relationship in which the partners agree to simulate non-consensual sex acts, prosecutor Michael DeTardo said during the plea hearing. Over time, Wysolovski violated the set boundaries for this arrangement, refusing to use “safe words” and using “excessive force” including biting and physical violence. The victim, who was anorexic, initially encouraged Wysolovski to control her eating habits and kept journals detailing her desire to lose weight, DeTardo said. Wysolovski later used food to punish the victim or force her to perform sexual acts.

He kept her locked in a dog cage for much of her captivity. She repeatedly attempted suicide after she was rescued. In her statement at his sentencing, Hailey described herself as “irreparably broken,” having suffered “psychological damage . . . beyond imagination.”

One of the most disturbing aspects of this story is that the perpetrator is a blank slate, with no previous criminal record, and none of the news stories provides any background to explain how or why this guy turned into a sadistic monster. Were I the prosecutor in such a case, I would require as part of any plea bargain that the perpetrator undergo extensive psychological evaluation. A report of this evaluation would become part of the public record, not only to function as a sort of warning notice to the public after the criminal was released from custody, but also to help increase awareness of the psychological causes of such deviant behavior.

People who engage in BDSM behavior, either as sadist “masters” or as masochist “submissives,” are pathologically perverted, and the fact that this perversion was the subject of a bestselling book and hit movie, 50 Shades of Grey, should be interpreted as evidence that our culture has entered a disturbing condition of degeneracy and decadence. When you get to the point where a freak seeking a perfect victim for his sick fantasies is lurking on an Internet forum for girls with eating disorders, and he seems to have no trouble finding a volunteer for this arrangement, you have to worry about the size of the submerged iceberg of craziness, of which this case is merely the visible tip.

It’s sort of like the NXIVM sex cult case: How is it that so many women, including heiress Clare Bronfman and actress Allison Mack, could willingly participate in the sadistic fantasies of Keith Raniere, which involved among other things forcibly branding the cult’s sex slaves? What could explain such behavior? Why do so many women evidently get off on being used and degraded this way? How did they get so twisted?

Here’s a possible hint from Rollo Tomassi:

Women reward not goodness, but strength. And strength is amoral, meaning it can be either just or unjust, good or bad. The guy with strength can either be the villain or the hero — it makes no difference to women. They can’t tell the difference and in truth don’t care anyway.

(The Rational Male: Positive Masculinity, p. 249.)

Honestly, I don’t want to believe that, but there is so much evidence supporting this “red pill” perspective that it’s difficult to ignore. If women are just naturally turned on by strength — forcefulness, aggression, power — and if their hard-wired psychosexual response to this is indifferent to whether a man’s strength is used for good or evil, what influence will women’s “empowerment” have on our culture? On our politics?

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

(Hat-tip: Kirby McCain on Twitter.)



 

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