The Other McCain

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

Harvard-Educated Sociology Professor Charged With Brooklyn Hate Crime

Posted on | November 7, 2019 | 1 Comment

 

Michael Gould-Wartofsky graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University in 2007 and is the author of the 2015 book The Occupiers: The Making of the 99 Percent Movement. He had been an adjunct professor at New York University, where he was pursuing a Ph.D. in Sociology, but that was before he was caught vandalizing a Catholic church:

A former professor at NYU has been arrested and charged with hate crime after he allegedly uprooted plants outside a Brooklyn church, throwing them at the door and damaging a $5,000 statue.
The whole incident was caught on security camera at Our Lady of Mt. Carmel in Williamsburg early Sunday. The church’s pastor, Monsignor Jamie Gigantiello, tells NBC New York that police told him 34-year-old Michael Gould Wartofsky was drunk when he vandalized the church’s property.
Wartofsky is seen on video with two other men, walking down 8th Street. He stopped in front of the church and started pulling plants from the garden, throwing it at the door but two other men didn’t participate, according to the church.
The ex-Sociology professor also yelled something at the security camera. He then dragged a heavy resin statue of St. Jude to the middle of the street, repeatedly kicking it and then leaving it there.
Gigantiello says he believes Wartofsky was making a statement. “This exhibition of violence, anger, and hatred is very disturbing. This is definitely an attack on the Catholic Church,” Gigantiello said.
Police charged Wartofsky with hate crime criminal mischief but no charges of public intoxication were filed.
An NYU spokesperson tells NBC New York that Wartofsky has no fall term assignment as an adjunct professor at NYU, and that he’s not currently an NYU employee.

My guess — and it’s only a guess — is that (a) Gould-Wartofsky is gay and (b) he’s a trust-funder who wasn’t “currently” working at NYU because he doesn’t actually need to work for a living. As to guess (a), why else would a man be walking down a street drunk, with two other men, and feel such overwhelming animosity toward a Catholic church that he’d take vengeance on a statue of St. Jude? And as evidence for guess (b), he doesn’t seem to have published anything since 2015 and the last public event listed<> on his personal website was in 2017. If you’re a “progressive” young academic living in the Trump Age, you could be publishing essays and op-eds every day, to feed the limitless demand for anti-Trump opinions. So the fact that Gould-Wartofsky apparently hasn’t been publishing much of anything lately, and isn’t currently teaching, suggests to me that he possesses independent wealth, i.e., he’s a trust fund baby.

As I say, these are only guesses, and if I’ve guessed wrong about Gould-Wartofsky — if he’s a working-class heterosexual — he would not have proper grounds for a libel suit, because you can’t sue for mere speculation, if it’s clearly labeled as such. But I don’t expect to get any cease-and-desist letters from Gould-Wartofsky’s attorneys, because if your client’s charged with a hate crime, it will keep you pretty busy.


 

Category: Catholics, Crime, New York

Anti-Trump Book Is Spectacular Flop

Posted on | November 7, 2019 | 1 Comment

 

Book sales nowadays are often a reflection of celebrity: If you’ve got a hit TV show, a publisher will pay you big bucks in advance for a book and hire a ghostwriter to put it together for you, on the theory that your fans will all pay $24.95 for anything with your picture on the cover. So what happens after a celebrity loses their TV platform?

Disgraced former MSNBC analyst Mark Halperin’s book How to Beat Trump: America’s Top Political Strategists On What It Will Take sold 502 copies during its first week, according to NPD BookScan’s Wednesday report.
Not many Americans purchased Halperin’s book this week despite the description on Amazon that claims, “more than 100 million anxious Americans want to know: how can Donald Trump be beaten in 2020 and evicted from the White House?”
Just six reviews of the book have been posted to Amazon, one of which is titled “Write what you know, Mark.” In it, user Ball Student wrote, “He’d be better off avoiding speculation and sticking to areas he has extensive experience in: groping female employees.”
Halperin has faced numerous allegations of sexual harassment and assault, and the news of his book contract with Regan Arts has drawn a substantial backlash. CNN reported that 12 women came forward publicly to accuse Halperin of sexual harassment or assault, which he denied.
Journalist Emily Miller, who worked with Halperin at ABC News, criticized anyone aiding him because she said it undermines the victims who came forward.
“Every person who’s helping him regain power and a public platform is complicit in re-traumatizing all the victims,” Miller said.
“Men like him don’t change,” she said. “He spent decades using his position of power in the media to sexually assault women. He hasn’t even apologized to his victims.”
Former CNN producer Eleanor McManus, who also said she was victimized by Halperin, criticized Regan Arts for signing him to a book deal despite his refusal to apologize.
“He has yet to take responsibility for his actions by apologizing to his victims or demonstrating genuine contrition,” McManus said. “Giving him a book once again puts him in a position of authority and that is a slap to all the women that he has victimized.”
NBC News terminated Halperin in light of the allegations. He has since started his own political blog.

Do you think a big New York publisher would give me a book deal? I’ve never been on MSNBC, but at the same time, I haven’t been accused of groping a dozen women. Not yet, anyway. But I digress . . .

My point, however, is that when Mark Halperin became a New York Times bestselling author in 2010, he was a member in good standing of the liberal media and a regular guest on Morning Joe. Then the #MeToo movement destroyed his reputation and now? Welcome to Flop City.

Sic transit gloria mundi.


 

Category: Books, Celebrities, Scandal

‘Crimes Against Nature’

Posted on | November 7, 2019 | Comments Off on ‘Crimes Against Nature’

 

Say hello to Emma Ogle, a North Carolina teacher who was suspended Oct. 31 from her job teaching at Garinger High School:

She was charged on Halloween with three felony counts, including having sex with a student, indecent liberties with a student, and crimes against nature with a student.
The 63-year-old educator supposedly began a relationship with a 17-year-old student in spring, which became sexual over the summer, according to WSOC-TV. The teen allegedly reported Ogle to school staff on Thursday, hours before she was booked. The alleged sexual encounters didn’t occur on campus, district officials for Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools stated.

Notice that the report does not specify whether Ms. Ogle’s teenage victim was male or female, but “crimes against nature”? Someone might have to research the relevant North Carolina statute, but I’m under the impression that “crimes against nature” suggests homosexuality, which as a criminal offense ought to have been rendered void by the 2003 Lawrence v. Texas decision. But this case will not go to trial, because Ms. Ross will now be judged by a much higher court, so to speak:

A North Carolina teacher who was accused last week of having sex with a high school student was found dead in her home, along with her husband, on Wednesday morning in what appears to have been a murder-suicide.
Police, paramedics, and crisis negotiators descended on Emma and Michael Ogle’s home early Wednesday morning following reports of an active shooting incident. Shortly before 10 a.m., authorities confirmed they had located the bodies of the married couple, who had sustained fatal gunshot wounds.
Only last week, Emma Neil Ogle, 63, a Charlotte teacher, had been arrested and charged for allegedly having sex with a high school student, according to online court records. She had bonded out and been released on Nov. 1.
But police said that when her husband Michael Ogle, 59, didn’t show up to work at his hardwood flooring company in Huntersville, North Carolina on Wednesday, a family member went to check on him. When the relative arrived, Michael was dead and Emma was holed up inside with a pistol, according to police.
“She noticed 63-old Emma Ogle inside with a gun,” said officer Odette Saglimbeni, a Huntersville Police spokesperson, during a press conference Wednesday. “She was still alive when the family member got there and her husband was not.” . . .
“Once our SWAT team was able to make entry into the home they did locate two deceased parties inside the residence and they were of Emma Ogle and Michael Ogle,” Saglimbeni also said. “And they did suffer from gunshot wounds.”

What happened to Emma Ogle? What could inspire a 63-year-old teacher to commit “crimes against nature” with a 17-year-old? She had been a teacher for many years. Had she previously done things like this and gotten away with it? Had she spent decades restraining her unnatural desires, secretly lusting for teenage flesh, until finally — as she neared retirement age — old Emma just said, “Time to go for it”? YOLO.

One suspects that the police and school officials don’t want to get into the lurid details of Ms. Ogle’s crime, but under the circumstances, this case seems to be a permanent mystery. Ms. Ogle won’t go to trial, and she killed her husband before killing herself, so it’s unlikely we will ever have any explanation of how her life went so wrong.

(Hat-tip: Kirby McCain.)


 

Category: Crime, Education, North Carolina

In The Mailbox: 11.05.19 (Evening Edition)

Posted on | November 5, 2019 | 3 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho

OVER THE TRANSOM
357 Magnum: But The Left Tells Me I Can’t Use An AR-15 For Self-Defense
Bacon Time: Near Disaster
Locomotive Breath: Amid Record Stock Gains, The Trump Economy Is Raising All Boats
EBL: Alan Moore Discusses V for Vendetta
Twitchy:  NYT Triggered By Sean Spicer’s “Untruthful” Dancing, Which Betrays A “Cold Brutality”
Louder With Crowder: Hot Mic Catches ABC Anchor Saying Higher-Ups Made Her Ditch The Epstein Story

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: This Analog Life
American Greatness: Retired Officer Remembers LTC Vindman As Partisan Democrat Who Ridiculed America
American Power: Trump’s Campaign Says The Election Is His To Lose
American Thinker: The “What Ifs” Of The Trump Presidency
Animal Magnetism: Animal’s Daily Rights Or No Rights News
Babalu Blog: Administration Cuts Off Funding For Cultural & Educational Programs With Castro Regime
BattleSwarm: Democratic Presidential Clown Car Update
Cafe Hayek: Comparative Advantage – An Introduction
Camp of the Saints: The Left Is All About Grooming – In All Senses Of The Word
CDR Salamander: The Mighty Hercules
Da Tech Guy: Joe Walsh Should Absolutely Not Be Taken Seriously, also, Baseball & Game-Playing
Don Surber: Mexican Blood Is On Liberal Hands
The Geller Report: Islamic State Tells Muslims To Set Forest Fires In US, Europe, also, Yazidi Refugees Outraged That ISIS Women Want To Return To Europe – “They Were The Worst!”
Hogewash: Team Kimberlin Post Of The Day, also, Hercules A
Hollywood In Toto: How Arnold Schwartzenegger Became Box Office Poison
Joe For America: “How Can We Win In 2020 If We Can’t Even Vote Sean Spicer Off DWTS?”
JustOneMinute: South Of The Border
Legal Insurrection: While You Focused On Impeachment, Trump Transformed The Federal Judiciary, also, I’m An Indian Immigrant – I Was Accosted In Bonn Because I Was Mistaken For A Jew
Michelle Malkin:
The PanAm Post: “Chavez Has Already Given Venezuelans What Chileans Want Today”
Power Line: Emails Reveal Biden/Burisma Influence At State Department, also, Nats Visit White House, Kurt Suzuki Wears MAGA Hat
Shark Tank: GOP Mayor Of Miami, Who Voted For Hillary, Considers Congressional Run
Shot In The Dark: Who Has Two Thumbs…
The Political Hat: Science On The Verge Of Creating Synthetic Cyborg Catgirls
This Ain’t Hell: Nothing To See Here, Move Along, also, Trump Makes SEAL Gallagher A Chief Again
Victory Girls: Mexico Ambush Murder Proves Why We Need A Wall
Volokh Conspiracy: Impressions From The Oral Argument In Kansas v. Glover
Weasel Zippers: Rand Paul Shuts Down Reporter Who Claims It’s Illegal To Out A Whistleblower, also, #FakeNews About Nats Visit To White House Nailed By MVP Pitcher
Megan McArdle: Uber Can’t Keep Bleeding Money, Can It?
Mark Steyn: You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet, also, Internal Contradictions Of The Multicultural Utopia

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Category: Linkagery

UPDATE: Beshear Claims Victory in Kentucky; Bevin Refuses to Concede

Posted on | November 5, 2019 | Comments Off on UPDATE: Beshear Claims Victory in Kentucky; Bevin Refuses to Concede

UPDATE 10:40 p.m. ET: With 100% of precincts reporting:

Andy Beshear (Dem) ……. 711,955 …… 49.2%
Matthew Bevin (GOP) ….. 707,297 …… 48.8%
John Hicks (Lib) …………… 28,307 …….. 2.0%

I asked earlier, and there is apparently no runoff provision for elections in Kentucky. WHAS-TV reports the latest:

In a hotly contested race for Kentucky governor, Democratic challenger Andy Beshear is claiming victory while current Governor Matt Bevin refuses to concede.
The race has been too close to call for the Associated Press.
Before making a speech to his supporters, the attorney general tweeted “Thank you Kentucky.”
“After tonight, we move forward with every citizen in Kentucky,” Beshear said to thunderous applause.
He says he is committed to every citizen of the Commonwealth regardless of whether they’re Democrat or Republican.
“I will work hard to earn your trust,” Beshear said.
Beshear was joined by his family and his father, former Governor Steve Beshear.
With 100 percent of precincts reporting, Beshear has a lead of 4,658 votes out of more than 1.4 million counted, or a margin of 0.3 percentage points.
“This is a close, close race, we are not conceding by any stretch. Not a chance,” Bevin told his supporters at the Galt House. . . .
There is no mandatory recount law in Kentucky. Bevin may request counties recanvass their results, which is not a recount, but rather a check of the vote count to ensure the results were added correctly.
Bevin would need to seek and win a court’s approval for a recount, the process for which would be dictated by the court.

9:05 p.m. ET: With about 97% of precincts reporting the Kentucky governor’s race, these are the numbers:

Andy Beshear (Dem) ……. 687,014 …… 49.4%
Matthew Bevin (GOP) ….. 676,677 …… 48.6%
John Hicks (Lib) …………… 27,448 …….. 2.0%


 

Category: Election, Kentucky

In The Mailbox: 11.05.19 (Morning Edition)

Posted on | November 5, 2019 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 11.05.19 (Morning Edition)

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Yesterday’s linkagery fell victim to a flaky internet connection and exhaustion from packing.
Here’s the makeup.

OVER THE TRANSOM
Locomotive Breath: I’m Donald Trump, And I Approved This Message
357 Magnum: “A Small, Mobile City With A Buzzsaw Attached To The Front End”
EBL: Democrat Depravity, The Spruce Goose, and Harriet
Twitchy: NBC’s Kelly O’Donnell Won’t Apologize For Showing Respect To President Trump
Louder With Crowder: New NYT/Siena Poll Shows Good News For President Trump

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: Scotland Reveals The Lie At The Heart Of Civic Nationalism, also, Podcast #124 – The Beatles Suck Episode
American Greatness: A Great Awakening To The Fight Is Upon Us, also, The Military-Intelligence Complex
American Power: Can California Save Itself? also, One Year Out, A Nation Divided
American Thinker: Trump Redeeming America From The Sins Of The Fed, also, Gavin Newsom, Your Carbon Offsets Are Burning
Animal Magnetism: Goodbye, Blue Monday
Babalu Blog: New Poll Shows Millennials Still Have No Idea What Socialism Is, also, Sanders Defended The Castro Dictatorship, Honeymooned In USSR, But Claims He’s Not Far Left
BattleSwarm: Gutfeld Reminds Millennials Communism Doesn’t Work, also, Texas Reminder – Vote Today!
Cafe Hayek: “Let The Market Handle It”
CDR Salamander: Naval Aviation With Kevin Miller – On Midrats, also, What Do Old People Fight Over?
Da Tech Guy: Open Skies & Comcast Cable – Both Things That Need To Be Cut, also, Milo Counts
Don Surber: DC Is The Rocky Horror Picture Show, also, Suppose They Gave An Impeachment & Nobody Cared?
The Geller Report: Muslims Running Slave Markets On Instagram, Apple & Google Apps, also, Muslim “International Students” Convicted Of Gang Rape Walk Out Of Court, Leave Canada, Whereabouts Unknown
Hogewash: Team Kimberlin Post of The Day, also, “Those People”
Hollywood In Toto: Daily Beast Slams Bill Maher For Letting Dennis Prager Speak
Joe For America: Occasional Cortex Backs Anti-Cop Protesters Who Stormed Subway Station
Legal Insurrection: 2020 Democrat Presidential Candidates Too Far Left, Says…Nancy Pelosi? also, Fauxcahontas Promises IRS Will Have “Super Duper” Enforcement Powers If She Wins
The PanAm Post: US Could Sanction Spain Over Maduro Support, also, Mexican Economy Shows Zero Growth Under AMLO
Power Line: Warren Loses The Lawyers, also, Thin Lizzie’s Wedge
Shark Tank: Succeeding Marco Rubio In 2022
Shot In The Dark: Have You Ever Noticed, also, Just Remember, There Is No Voting Fraud
The Political Hat: Kentucky Unqueers The Shirt
This Ain’t Hell: Another Ten Return, also, Retired Navy SEAL, Survivor Favorite, Passes
Victory Girls: Katie Hill & The Mythical Double Standard, also, The Grand Lie Of Elizabeth Warren’s Healthcare Plan
Volokh Conspiracy: Administration Loses Another Sanctuary City Case
Weasel Zippers: Steny Hoyer Says “Truth & Facts Are Constraining Us” From Moving Forward With Impeachment, also, Laugh Of The Day – Former SEAL Gives PSA On Watters World
Megan McArdle: The Math For Warren’s Health Care Plan Adds Up – If You Accept Its Ludicrous Premises
Mark Steyn: Playmate Of The Half-Century, also, Judy

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Category: Linkagery

The Covington Boys Election

Posted on | November 5, 2019 | Comments Off on The Covington Boys Election

 

Kentucky’s Republican Gov. Matt Bevin faces a tough re-election contest today. Bevin is personally unpopular in the Bluegrass State, a problem exacerbated by a falling out with Lt. Gov. Jenean Hampton, and polls indicate a surprising tight race in a state that Trump won by a landslide in 2016. Liberals view Bevin’s problems as a harbinger of difficulties for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s re-election next year, but this may be one of those red-to-blue pipe dreams like when Democrats got all excited for Wendy Davis and Beto O’Rourke for statewide office in Texas.

At any rate, Trump held a rally Monday night in Lexington to rally support for Bevin ahead of today’s election, and hit hard on the cultural issues that define the Left-Right divide:

President Trump invoked the Covington Catholic High School incident and protests against Confederate statues Monday night in Kentucky as examples of his liberal opponents’ dangerous “authoritarian ideology.”
Speaking at a campaign rally in Lexington, Kentucky, Mr. Trump cited the infamous confrontation of the high school boys from Kentucky at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington in January as proof of leftists’ values run amok.
“They want to indoctrinate your children [and] destroy anyone who holds traditional American values,” Mr. Trump said. “All you have to do is ask the boys from Covington, Catholic high school, some of whom are here tonight.”
Critics on the left accused the high school students of intolerance in a confrontation with a leftist activist and a black supremacist group at the Lincoln Memorial in January. An independent investigation found the students, some of whom were wearing “Make America Great” hats, were blameless in the encounter.
Mr. Trump said it was an example that “the far left wants to impose their authoritarian ideology on the nation, telling you what to think what to believe and how you should live.”
“They want to erase our traditions, our culture, our history and our heroes,” Mr. Trump said in an apparent reference to the movement to take down statues of prominent Confederates.
The president said the left won’t win.
“Kentucky will never be broken,” he said. “Kentucky can’t be broken — you’re too strong and you’re too smart.”

Remember how Trump stood by those kids in January:

 

You have to understand how the Covington Catholic School fiasco — where boys in MAGA hats were falsely accused of racism — plays out in the context of Kentucky’s demographics. It is a largely rural state where 88% of the population is white. The five largest counties in Kentucky are:

  1. Jefferson County (Louisville) ………………. 770,517
  2. Fayette County (Lexington) ………………… 323,780
  3. Kenton County (suburban Cincinnati) …. 166,051
  4. Boone County (suburban Cincinnati) …… 131,533
  5. Warren County (Bowling Green) …………. 131,264

If the anti-white/anti-Christian bias expressed in the Covington Catholic incident is on the minds of voter in Kenton and Boone counties and elsewhere in Kentucky today, that could help shift toward the Republican column many Trump voters who might not like Matt Bevin very much.


 

Category: Election, Kentucky

New ‘Terminator’ Flops at Box Office

Posted on | November 5, 2019 | 4 Comments

 

Hasta la vista, “wokeness”:

According to a new report, Skydance Media, Paramount Pictures and 20th Century Fox stand to lose around $120 million in total, given the long-term prospects of Terminator: Dark Fate bombing at the box office. The movie, directed by Tim Miller (Deadpool) and produced by franchise creator James Cameron, made just $29 million in its domestic debut, which was far below industry estimates, which had it taking in around $40 million. Even that number wasn’t great, but it gave Sarah Connor and the gang a fighting chance.
The biggest issue here is that the movie is said to have cost $185 million to produce, with each of the aforementioned companies putting up 30 percent of the budget. It’s also worth mentioning that figure doesn’t account for marketing, which estimates peg at $100 million.

Ace of Spades writes:

This might be the final wake-up alarm that alerts Hollywood to the notion of Get Woke, Go Broke. They’ve had ten alarms already, but they kept hitting snooze. This one will finally get their attention, I think.
It might also be the end of “dark marketing,” which is a term some give to the practice of trying to gin up controversy — and get #Woke movie reviewers and “journalists” to write clickbait articles in your favor — by choosing sides in the Civil War 2.0.

The plot of Terminator: Dark Fate seems to have been concocted by a committee of Gender Studies majors and DNC consultants. Director Tim Miller went out of his way to emphasize the “progressive” ideas symbolized by the character played by Mackenzie Davis:

Miller, who broke out in Hollywood after directing “Deadpool,” recently spoke with Variety ahead of bringing “Terminator: Dark Fate” to Comic-Con later this month. The filmmaker said Mackenzie’s cyborg character Grace will be enough to get misogynistic internet trolls shaking in their boots.
“If you’re at all enlightened, she’ll play like gangbusters. If you’re a closet misogynist, she’ll scare the f–k out of you, because she’s tough and strong but very feminine,” Miller said. “We did not trade certain gender traits for others; she’s just very strong, and that frightens some dudes. You can see online the responses to some of the early s–t that’s out there, trolls on the internet. I don’t give a f–k.”

So, this auteur tells us, the world is divided into “enlightened” people, on the one hand, and “misogynistic Internet trolls” on the other. Anyone who doesn’t want to pay $12.50 to be insulted by a two-hour cinematic Gender Studies lecture is therefore a misogynist. As I explained in July (“SJWs Ruin New ‘Terminator’ Sequel”), the reason hit movies become hits is because they usually follow classic formulas, expressing themes with a timeless appeal. The original 1984 Terminator was formulaic in that it was a damsel-in-distress story — the female lead threatened by sinister forces from which the hero must rescue her. Kyle Reese (played by Michael Biehn) the soldier sent back from the future to rescue Sarah from the Terminator, heroically sacrifices himself in the rescue attempt, leaving Sarah to finally escape on her own. And yet the whole point of this drama is that Sarah’s live is worth saving because she is destined to give birth to John Connor, the future hero who will lead the resistance against Skynet. So, in one sense, Sarah is analogous to the Virgin Mary, and the Terminator represents the persecution of Herod.

The idea of a woman who is most valuable as a potential mother is, of course, anathema to the kind of androgynous feminist ideology that Tim Miller sought to celebrate in Dark Fate, and the fact that this box-office bomb might lose more than $100 million for the studio ought to cause the money men in Hollywood to rethink their “woke” investments.


 

Category: Movies
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