The Other McCain

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

Hitler, the ‘Intersectional’ Führer

Posted on | October 3, 2018 | 3 Comments

 

Last night I nearly died laughing about the hoax perpetrated by three scholars who tricked academic journals into publishing shoddy nonsense crammed with “social justice” rhetoric and postmodern jargon. Among other things, they re-wrote a 3,000-word section of Mein Kampf and turned it into “Our Struggle Is My Struggle: Solidarity Feminism as an Intersectional Reply to Neoliberal and Choice Feminism,” which was published by the peer-reviewed feminist journal Affilia. It gets worse:

Since August, 2017 the academics — James Lindsay, a math doctorate, Peter Boghossian, an assistant professor of philosophy at Portland State University, and Helen Pluckrose, a London-based scholar of English literature and history — submitted 20 papers to various peer-reviewed journals under pseudonyms and seven were accepted.
In one particularly telling example, the academics submitted a paper to the feminist geography journal Gender, Place & Culture detailing the “rape culture” supposedly prevalent within dog parks.

Yes, feminists consider sex between animals to be rape culture:

“Dog parks are microcosms where hegemonic masculinist norms governing queering behavior and compulsory heterosexuality can be observed in a cross-species environment.”

How do you know determine “consent” in dogs? But this absurdity was published in a peer-reviewed academic journal, and among the scholars who address the underlying problem is Neema Parvini:

The news that these journals are nakedly ideological will not surprise many of those who work within the disciplines of the humanities in the modern academy. Now the ticking off of buzzwords seems to stand in for checking the quality of scholarship or the coherence of arguments. The battle was lost around 1991. . . .
In literary studies, the radical feminist Hélène Cixous argued that the ideology of patriarchy was all around us: “a kind of vast membrane enveloping everything”, a “skin” that “encloses us like a net or like closed eyelids”. How could anyone lay claim to “objectivity” in such conditions? By 1991, such thinking had become de rigueur. . . .
Thus, the competing systems of knowledge that came out of the Enlightenment — rationalism and empiricism — are both always-already tainted as “products of the patriarchy.” It has been the explicit goal of post-modernity to reject reason and evidence: they want a “new paradigm” of knowledge. 

(Hat-tip: Instapundit.)

UPDATE: Welcome, Instapundit readers! You’ll find no “social justice” jargon here, where we favor blunt words and capitalism, including The Five Most Important Words in the English Language:

HIT THE FREAKING TIP JAR!



 

 

Category: Education

The Accuser Is a Liar

Posted on | October 3, 2018 | Comments Off on The Accuser Is a Liar

 

Something was wrong with Christine Blasey Ford’s story, and I couldn’t put my finger on it, but I pointed to a possible source:

[W]hile at Pepperdine University, she dated a man named Brian Merrick, who told the Wall Street Journal that “at no point in their relationship did she mention… any case of sexual assault,” nor the name of Brett Kavanaugh: “It strikes me as odd it never came up in our relationship.” Merrick, however, mentioned that his ex-girlfriend was liberal, while her father was staunchly conservative — a fact apparently corroborated by her husband Russell Ford, who told the Post: “She didn’t always get along with her parents because of differing political views.”

That was just a stab in the dark in my American Spectator column Tuesday, but lo and behold! Guess who came forward later that day?

In a written declaration released Tuesday and obtained by Fox News, an ex-boyfriend of Christine Blasey Ford, the California professor accusing Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault, directly contradicts her testimony under oath last week that she had never helped anyone prepare for a polygraph examination.
The former boyfriend, whose name was redacted in the declaration, also said Ford neither mentioned Kavanaugh nor said she was a victim of sexual misconduct during the time they were dating from about 1992 to 1998. He said he saw Ford helping a woman he believed was her “life-long best friend” prepare for a potential polygraph test. He added that the woman had been interviewing for jobs with the FBI and U.S. Attorney’s office.
He also claimed Ford never voiced any fear of flying (even while aboard a propeller plane) and seemingly had no problem living in a small, 500 sq. ft. apartment with one door — apparently contradicting her claims that she could not testify promptly in D.C. because she felt uncomfortable traveling on planes, as well as her suggestion that her memories of Kavanuagh’s alleged assault prompted her to feel unsafe living in a closed space or one without a second front door.
Ford “never expressed a fear of closed quarters, tight spaces, or places with only one exit,” the former boyfriend wrote.

Why would she lie about something like being afraid to fly? Because she was trying to delay her testimony to the Senate. Once you know that someone has a motive to lie, and then you can demonstrate clear evidence that they have testified falsely, they are no longer “credible,” no matter how persuasive their story may otherwise seem. My hunch that Brian Merrick might have knowledge helpful to the investigation was just a hunch, but it was a pretty doggone good hunch. Oh, and guess what else Merrick said? He broke up with her because she cheated on him.

So she’s a cheater and a liar, and she’s withholding evidence:

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) is giving Christine Blasey Ford and her legal team one more chance to turn over material evidence supporting her allegation that Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her . . .
“Your continued withholding of material evidence despite multiple requests is unacceptable as the Senate exercises its constitutional responsibility of advice and consent for a judicial nomination,” Grassley wrote. “I urge you to comply promptly with my requests.” . . .
“First, I renew my request for the notes from therapy sessions in which Dr. Ford discussed the alleged assault by Judge Kavanaugh,” Grassley wrote. “The Washington Post reported that some notes were provided to The Post, and Dr. Ford’s testimony indicated that these notes were highly relevant to her allegation.”
The letter also calls for any audio or video recording of Ford’s polygraph test, which she took in August. There was a notable exchange between Ford and Rachel Mitchell, the outside prosecutor hired by the GOP to question her, in which Ford eventually admitted that she assumed her polygraph session was recorded.
“It’s unfair to rely on the results of a polygraph examination while withholding the materials necessary to assess the accuracy of the results,” Grassley wrote.

We have already established that Professor Ford is a liar — she’s not afraid to fly — and we know she also lied under oath when asked about whether she’d ever counseled anyone about taking a polygraph.

I think we’re done here. Good-bye, Professor Ford.

‘It Never Happened. Confirm Kavanaugh.’

UPDATE: Charles Cooke at National Review points out that Rachel Mitchell, the sex-crimes prosecutor brought in by Senate Republicans to question Professor Ford, was probably aware of this information from Brian Merrick, because Mitchell asked two key questions:

MITCHELL: Had — have you ever given tips or advice to somebody who was looking to take a polygraph test?
FORD: Never.

And:

MITCHELL: Have you ever had discussions with anyone, beside your attorneys, on how to take a polygraph?
FORD: Never.

This is a basic police interrogation method to assess if someone is telling the truth: Ask them a question to which you already know the answer and see how they answer it. Senate investigators had almost certainly interviewed Merrick and gotten this information about Ford advising a friend on how to take a polygraph, so they instructed Mitchell to ask a question about this. And then after the FBI questioned Merrick, he decided to send this letter to the Judiciary Committee.



 

Category: Senate, Supreme Court

Et Tu, George Mason U?

Posted on | October 2, 2018 | Comments Off on Et Tu, George Mason U?

by Smitty


Maybe they employ Sandra Fluke. . .

Category: Uncategorized

In The Mailbox: 10.02.18

Posted on | October 2, 2018 | 1 Comment

— compiled by Wombat-socho

OVER THE TRANSOM
EBL: Let’s Confirm Kavanaugh
Twitchy: More Goalpost Moving – Sen. Booker Admits It’s Not About Judge Kavanaugh’s Guilt Or Innocence
Louder With Crowder: Tim Allen Skewers Perpetually Negative Cable News On Last Man Standing

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: Traveling
American Power: Have Democrats Any Decency? also, Out Today – Tucker Carlson, Ship of Fools
American Thinker: The Three Lies of Christine Blasey Ford
Animal Magnetism: Animal’s Daily Confirmation Vote News
BattleSwarm: [INSERT SNAPPY TITLE TO SOMEHOW ACTUALLY MAKE PEOPLE WANT TO READ ABOUT A TRADE PACT HERE]
CDR Salamander: Keep Your Eye On The Sky And Move Indoors
Da Tech Guy: Guilty Until Proven Innocent, also, Why Christine Ford Can’t Be Trusted In One Sentence For Young People
Don Surber: WaPo Swings At Trump, Hits Obama, also, Feinstein May Cost Manchin His Seat
Dustbury: And Yes, a Fine Girl
First Street Journal: What The Left Has Done In New Zealand, The Democrats Would Do Here
The Geller Report: Christine Ford Published 2008 Article On Self-Hypnosis Used To Retrieve And “Create Artificial Situations”, also, London & Birmingham Experience Multiple Knife Rampages #WarZone
Hogewash: The Lesser Of Two Weasels, also, Team Kimberlin Post of The Day
Legal Insurrection: Two Hospitalized After Exposure To White Powder In Ted Cruz’ Houston Campaign Office, also, GOP Rep Andy Harris Assaulted In His Office By Pro-Cannabis Group
The PanAm Post: Choice Between Bolsonaro & Haddad Like Choice Between Trump & Clinton
Power Line: The Case Against Ellison, also, Will the Democrats’ Shameful Treatment Of Judge Kavanaugh Increase Their Senate Majority?
Shark Tank: CVAA Backs DeSantis For Governor
Shot In The Dark: Get Woke, Go Broke
STUMP: Taxing Tuesday – Where Are The Highest Taxes?
The Jawa Report: Sandcrawler BOLO – Cows!
The Political Hat: The European Digital Panopticon & The Silencing Of Dissent
This Ain’t Hell: SSG Ron Shurer II Receives The Medal Of Honor, also, Da Nang Blumenthal
Victory Girls: Bradley Manning – Still Delusional After All These Years
Volokh Conspiracy: Thoughts On The “Judicial Temperament” Criticism Of Judge Kavanaugh
Weasel Zippers: Rape Charges Against 4 CA Dentists Dismissed After Video Contradicts Woman’s Story, also, Marine Vet Responds To Call For Inclusion Of SJWs In “Veteran” Category
Mark Steyn: A Rattlesnake & A Bird, also, Ship Of Fools

Also out today:

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Category: Linkagery

‘It Never Happened. Confirm Kavanaugh.’

Posted on | October 2, 2018 | 1 Comment

The last couple of days, liberals on Twitter have been raging because these pro-Kavanaugh ads from the Judicial Crisis Network have been airing on CNN and MSNBC:

 

“The accusations against Brett Kavanaugh are a smear. . . . It never happened. Confirm Kavanaugh.”

Liberals are used to living inside a media-created partisan bubble. Yesterday, I turned over and watched a few hours of CNN, and it was basically just a parade of Democrat senators and anti-Kavanaugh “experts” repeating the same talking points. Most conservatives watch Fox News, and have no idea how one-sided CNN’s coverage of this issue (and every other issue) has been. When people talk about how divided the country has become, it is in large measure because of this cable-news factor, where two networks (CNN and MSNBC) believe they have a patriotic duty to protect their viewers from any facts that might contradict the liberal narrative. Are viewers of Fox News similarly insulated? No, because they are seeing all the accusations made against Kavanaugh — including the pathetic liar Julie Swetnick, whose charges NBC frankly admits cannot be corroborated — even while they’re hearing the common-sense interpretation of these accusations, i.e., it’s all part of a flimsy partisan smear-job. Front page of the New York Times:

Kavanaugh Was Questioned by Police After Bar Fight in 1985

Democrats and their media propagandists have been reduced to this: Yale kids get rowdy in a New Haven bar — front page news!

Does anyone remember 2008? It was reported that Barack Obama had launched his political career in the home of Bill Ayers, who had notoriously led the terrorist Weather Underground in the 1970s. Oh, this was old news and irrelevant, we were assured by the liberal media — the same liberal media that now insists we should be alarmed that Brett Kavanaugh threw ice at some guy in a New Haven bar in 1985.

Back in the day, journalists were taught to be skeptical:

Something is wrong with Christine Blasey Ford’s story, and not just the fact that none of the people she named as witnesses to her alleged 1982 encounter with Brett Kavanaugh remember any such incident. There is a conspicuous hole in Professor Ford’s biography — some important details seem to be missing — and we don’t know what the missing elements might be. The FBI has been assigned to conduct an investigation, which may or may not fill in this unexplained void in Professor Ford’s biography, which has been bothering me ever since I read a Sept. 22 Washington Post article with the headline, “Kavanaugh accuser Christine Blasey Ford moved 3,000 miles to reinvent her life. It wasn’t far enough.”
The implied premise of the Post article was that the reason young Miss Blasey left the D.C. area after high school and never returned, except to visit her family, because she was traumatized by the experience of being assaulted by Kavanaugh at a house party. But this doesn’t make sense at all. By the time she started her senior year at Holton-Arms School, Kavanaugh was a freshman at Yale University, some 300 miles away in Connecticut. Even if young Miss Blasey were eager to leave the D.C. region, why would she choose to attend the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill? UNC is a fine school, but there were and are many other equally good schools she could have chosen, and she’s never explained what it was specifically that led her to Chapel Hill. Of course, this choice may have no special significance or relevance to her recent accusations against Judge Kavanaugh, but if the explanation we’ve been given doesn’t make sense, shouldn’t we be curious what the real explanation is? And there are many similar questions that might cross the minds of Americans trying to figure out why she would tell this story which no one so far has been able to verify. . . .

Read the rest of my latest column at The American Spectator.



 

Category: Media Bias, Senate, Supreme Court

In The Mailbox: 10.01.18

Posted on | October 2, 2018 | 1 Comment

— compiled by Wombat-socho

OVER THE TRANSOM
EBL: #MeToo – Bob Menendez May Be Too Corrupt Even For Hudson County NJ
Twitchy: Alyssa Milano’s Wish For Kanye Is Pretty Damn Racist
Louder With Crowder: EXPOSED – YouTube’s Latest Censorship Plot, also, Tim Allen’s Last Man Standing Returns With very Strong Ratings
The Camp Of The Saints: The Command Of The Totalitarians Was “Thou Shalt”

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: SJWs Always Double Down
American Power: David Horowitz, The Politics Of Bad Faith, also, Brigitte Gabriel, Rise
American Thinker: Should Professor Ford Be Applauded Or Prosecuted?
Animal Magnetism: Goodbye, Blue Monday!
BattleSwarm: SDF Fight Against The Islamic State Update
CDR Salamander: European Naval Power With Jeffrey Stoehs On Midrats
Da Tech Guy: To My Liberal Friends – Yes, Conservatives Are Decent People, also, True Nature Of The War On Men
Don Surber: Kanye Wears MAGA Cap On SNL, also, Republicans Go On The Attack
Dustbury: Strange Search Engine Queries, also, SEC Scores Pound of Flesh
Fausta: Ashamed
First Street Journal: “Stolen Valor” Senator Blumenthal Claims Judge Kavanaugh’s A Liar
Fred On Everything: Kavanaugh Gang-Rapes Collie In Satanic Ritual; College Boys In Klan Robes Chant “Hitler! Hitler! Hitler!”
The Geller Report: Kavanaugh Accuser Referred For Prosecution For Lying About Allegations, also, Senator Feinstein To Be Investigated Over Leaked Ford Letter
Hogewash: Team Kimberlin Post Of The Weekend, also, The New Rules, also also, Team Kimberlin Post Of The Day
JustOneMinute: Ready For The Weekend
Legal Insurrection: Senator Flake Now Wants More Thorough FBI Investigation Of Kavanaugh, also, Julie Swetnick’s Rape Train Allegations Against Judge Kavanaugh Crash & Burn In NBC Interview
The PanAm Post: A Frank & Sober Look At The Brazilian Presidential Election, also, Venezuela’s Lost 13% Of Its Population In The Mass Exodus From Socialism
Power Line: I’ll Drink To Confirmation, also, How Low Can They Go? [Updated]
Shark Tank: Bondi Blasts Democrats For Honoring Aramis Ayala
Shot In The Dark: Believe Accusers (Of Republicans)
STUMP: Actuarial Stuff – Mergers & Bootings & Secrecy, Oh My! also, Memory Monday – September/October 1918, The Spanish Flu Arrives 
The Jawa Report: Israeli Student Claims Harassment At Columbia U
The Political Hat: Censoring The Law?
This Ain’t Hell: Even Skunks Have Better Manners, also, Not Sure What The Packers Were Thinking Here
Victory Girls: Facebook Blackout – I’m A Traitor To My Gender Because I Won’t Participate In The Virtual Burka Protest
Volokh Conspiracy: Why Supreme Court Confirmation Hearings Should Be Treated As Job Interviews
Weasel Zippers: Dems Move Goalposts, Now Say FBI Investigation Not Enough, also, Internal Democrat Investigation Finds Ellison Accusations “Unsubstantiated”, also also, Senator McCaskill Falls Behind GOP Challenger After Coming Out Against Kavanaugh
Mark Steyn: The Turning Point, also, King Arthur


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Category: Linkagery

Mitch: Kavanaugh Vote ‘This Week’

Posted on | October 1, 2018 | 1 Comment

The clock is officially ticking:

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said the Senate will hold a vote on Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court nomination this week.
“The time for endless delay and obstruction has come to a close. Judge Kavanaugh’s nomination is out of committee. We’re considering it here on the floor and … we’ll be voting this week,” McConnell said.
McConnell’s comments, made during a Senate floor speech, comes as the FBI has to wrap up its investigation into multiple sexual misconduct allegations against Kavanaugh by Friday.

OK, and Steve Bannon says it’s an all-or-nothing battle: “There’s no walking this thing back… You get Kavanaugh, you’re going to get turnout. You get turnout, you’re going to get victory. This is march or die.” As I previously reported, White House staff had said from the start Trump won’t back down, and if Senate Republicans can’t confirm Kavanaugh, there’s no saving the GOP in the midterms:

“[Kavanaugh is] too big to fail now,” said a senior source involved in the confirmation process. “Our base, our voters, our side, people are so mad,” the source continued. “There’s nowhere to go. We’re gonna make them f—ing vote.[Joe] Manchin in West Virginia, in those red states. Joe Donnelly? He said he’s a no? Fine, we’ll see how that goes. There will be a vote on him [Kavanaugh]. … It will be a slugfest of a week.”
“There’s no time before the [midterm] election to put up a new person,” a White House official close to the process told me.

(Via Allahpundit at Hot Air.)

Democrats spent two weeks begging for an FBI investigation of the sex accusation against Kavanaugh but, as soon as they flipped Jeff Flake on Friday and got what they’d been asking for, Democrats instantly began saying this wasn’t enough:

In the last 48 hours, immediately after Senate Republicans and President Trump agreed to Democratic demands that the FBI investigate the 1982 incident, the Kavanaugh goalposts have moved dramatically. Now, a key issue is Kavanaugh’s teenage drinking, and whether he testified truthfully to Congress about the amount of beer he consumed in high school and college more than three decades ago, and the effect it had on him. . . .

They’re moving the goal posts so far and so fast that they’re a distant blur, no longer visible with the naked eye.

To repeat: Never negotiate with sociopaths.



 

Category: Senate, Supreme Court

Scientist Offers Evidence That Men and Women Are Different, Gets Banned

Posted on | October 1, 2018 | 3 Comments

Professor Alessandro Strumia gives a presentation in 2013.

The European nuclear research center known as CERN has banned Professor Alessandro Strumia of Pisa University after he gave a slide presentation at a conference that discussed male/female differences in career outcomes in the field of physics. Professor Strumia’s presentation — which is archived here — was removed from CERN’s website, and the center issued a statement calling it “highly offensive” and “unacceptable.”

Professor Strumia had been invited to speak at the conference last week, which focused on “issues of gender and equal opportunities in the field” of “theoretical high energy physics and cosmology.”

“[E]ach day talks and panel discussions will be dedicated to research on gender in academia, with an aim to further the development and implementation of action plans to support women and other minorities in physics,” CERN said in announcing the conference. “Since any positive change needs the support of the whole community we encourage everyone, men and women, junior and senior scientists, to participate in this workshop.” Professor Strumia’s presentation, however, was apparently not what CERN officials had expected when they invited him.

Professor Strumia criticized the “mainstream” theory — i.e., that the lack of equality (“symmetry”) between men and women in the field of physics is due to sexist bias — calling it “cultural Marxism.” He cited evidence that, in attempting to create greater opportunities for women, the field has in recent years begun discriminating against male scientists. He cited research showing that apparently natural differences between men and women’s interests “play a critical role in gendered occupational choices and gender disparity in the STEM fields.”

The controversy surrounding the presentation was first noted by former Harvard professor Luboš Motl, who didn’t name Professor Strumia, but it has now been reported by the BBC:

A senior scientist has given what has been described as a “highly offensive” presentation about the role of women in physics, the BBC has learned.
At a workshop organised by Cern, Prof Alessandro Strumia of Pisa University said that “physics was invented and built by men, it’s not by invitation”. . . .
The centre, which discovered the Higgs Boson in 2012, has removed slides used in the talk from its website “in line with a code of conduct that does not tolerate personal attacks and insults”.
Prof Strumia, who regularly works at Cern, presented the results of a study of published research papers from an online library.
He told his audience of young, predominantly female physicists that his results “proved” that “physics is not sexist against women. However the truth does not matter, because it is part of a political battle coming from outside”. . . .
Dr Jessica Wade, a physicist at Imperial College London who was at the meeting, told BBC News that Prof Strumia’s analysis was simplistic, drawing on ideas that had “long been discredited”.
“It was really upsetting to those at the workshop,” she said.
“There were young women and men exchanging ideas and their experiences on how to encourage more women into the subject and to combat discrimination in their careers. Then this man gets up, saying all this horrible stuff.”
She added: “I don’t understand how such a forward thinking organisation like Cern, which does so much to promote diversity in research, could have invited him to speak to young people just starting off in their research careers when his ideas are so well known.”

Dr. Wade’s comments highlight the problem. Evidence of innate behavioral differences between men and women (i.e., in terms of group averages) has certainly not been “discredited.” Herrnstein and Murray have explained in The Bell Curve that average group differences are not predictive of any individual’s ability. However, when institutions start implementing “diversity” formulae based on numerical representation of groups, we discover that these differences matter very much. When activists complain that certain groups are “underrepresented” in some area, and turn this into a political grievance, the result is likely to be an erosion of standards and the use of deliberate discrimination to achieve a more “diverse” outcome. Institutions are hijacked for a political agenda, so that CERN — which presumably should be devoted to pursuing advancements in nuclear physics — is now instead expected to “encourage women” and “promote diversity.” This is similar to the mentality that produced the Atlanta public school cheating scandal.

It is not yet known what penalties Professor Strumia will suffer for publicly questioning the dogma of male/female “symmetry.” Professor Motl has compared Professor Strumia to Galileo, whose heliocentric “heresy” made him a target of the Inquisition. Why are these Italian scientists always causing so much trouble by questioning religious dogma? Because let’s face it, “gender equality” is a cult ideology.

By the way, I was tipped to this story by a Ph.D. physicist who wishes to remain anonymous. Heretics everywhere fear the Inquisition.



 

Category: Science, Sex Trouble
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