The Other McCain

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

Trump Derangement Syndrome

Posted on | September 4, 2018 | Comments Off on Trump Derangement Syndrome

 

Democrats are turning the confirmation hearings for Judge Kavanaugh into a circus. They don’t have the votes to block him from the Supreme Court, and they know it, so they attempted to obstruct the confirmation hearing with motions to adjourned (which they knew would be overruled) as a means of suggesting that there is something illegitimate about the process. Meanwhile, left-wing protesters (including Women’s March leader Linda Sarsour) keep getting themselves arrested for disruptive outbursts, and the obvious question is: Why?

This is all a staged theatrical show, a propaganda spectacle aimed at the MSNBC-viewing extreme-left grassroots base of the Democrat Party intended to mobilize voters for the midterm elections. As Liz Shields says: “Brett Kavanaugh, the president’s selection to replace retiring Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, is facing confirmation hearings this week. There’s really no way to stop him from getting confirmed, but the left will do as much collateral damage as possible.”

They’ve gone mad with Trump Derangement Syndrome, reminding me of what Melissa MacKenzie said about a certain recent unpleasantness: “It’s so strange to make Donald Trump the center of one’s orbit when you hate him. Why? Why give him that power?” They can’t help it.



 

Category: Donald Trump

‘The Truth About Who Kills Women’

Posted on | September 4, 2018 | 1 Comment

 

It is probably unwise for a feminist to employ the word “truth,” which may provoke someone familiar with the relevant facts:

Jessica Valenti is a feminist and a liar, but I repeat myself. A couple of weeks ago, Valenti invited scrutiny of her truthfulness by responding to the murder of a young woman in Iowa. On Aug. 22, the White House issued this statement on Twitter: “For 34 days, investigators searched for 20-year-old Mollie Tibbetts. Yesterday, an illegal alien, now charged with first-degree murder, led police to the cornfield where her body was found. The Tibbetts family has been permanently separated. They are not alone.” That message included a brief video of parents whose children were also killed by illegal aliens.
Ms. Valenti, a columnist for the Guardian and author of several feminist books, responded with an obscenity, calling the White House message “f—king disgraceful,” and then added this remarkable statement: “The deadliest demographic for American women isn’t immigrants — it’s husbands & boyfriends. But the truth about who kills women in this country isn’t politically useful for the White House.”
Well, since Ms. Valenti has invited an examination of the demographics of murder, let us ask: Who is killing whom in America?
It so happens that I’ve previously researched this question, and can say with certainty that Ms. Valenti’s insinuation — that the typical American woman is in danger of being murdered by her boyfriend or husband — is absolutely false. . . .

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

 

Category: American Spectator, Sex Trouble

‘Mattress Girl’ Is Now Mattress ‘They’? The Queer Feminism of Emma Sulkowicz

Posted on | September 3, 2018 | 1 Comment

One of the things about choosing feminism as a subject matter is that you never run out of craziness to write about. No one could ever hope to provide the final, complete, definitive account of how crazy feminists are; the supply of evidence is infinite, and grows larger every day.

A curse befalls anyone who undertakes to chronicle this craziness. You’re confronted daily with new tales of feminist insanity, and if you told every story, you’d never be able to write about anything else. So I’ve learned to filter out many of these cases, to prevent myself from being sucked into the whirling vortex of “gender” lunacy by every new example that emerges from this bottomless abyss of chaotic madness.

 

Damn you, “Mattress Girl,” for refusing to recognize when your 15 minutes of fame had expired! What the actual f–k is this?

Back in 2014, Emma Sulkowicz was a senior undergraduate student at Columbia University studying the visual arts. Having long-struggled against the university’s Title IX policies that failed to hold accountable the man Sulkowicz accused of rape, they decide on “Mattress Performance” as a thesis project — an endurance piece of sorts that would involve Sulkowicz carrying a 50-pound mattress across campus for the entire academic year until graduation. (Disclosure: Emma and I were in the same year at Columbia and were acquaintances during our time at school.)
Almost immediately, Sulkowicz became a central figure in a nationwide fight to reform lax university guidelines that often failed to adequately investigate cases of sexual misconduct. Reactions in the media were fierce: journalists on one end of the spectrum referred to the young artist with glowing respect, while the other end vilified Sulkowicz as a dishonest “Mattress Girl.”
But Emma Sulkowicz is not a “Mattress Girl.” They aren’t even a girl.
Despite the many articles and Wikipedia pages that refer to Sulkowicz as a woman, they actually identify as gender non-conforming and use the pronouns they/them. The omission — or dare I say the erasure — of Sulkowicz’s queer identity indicates the public’s continued unwillingness to reckon with the notion that queer people can be victims of sexual violence. . . .

Let me catch my breath here. Calm down. Try to resist the temptation to shift to CAPS-LOCK MODE AND SHOUT OBSCENITIES!

OK, hang on . . . Yes, I can handle this. It’s gonna be all right.

This unwelcome reminder of Emma Sulkowicz’s existence was provided by her Columbia University classmate Zachary Small who, if I were forced to guess, I’d say is probably a male, although you never can be sure with Ivy League kids these days. Zachary also goes by “they/them” pronouns. This has become the hallmark of hipster elites who feel they are entitled to impose their Gender Theory nonsense on the rest of us.

So now, unable to endure their relative obscurity, these two genderqueer hipster alumni of Columbia  ($80,826 a year, including room and board) have joined forces to remind us of Mattress Girl’s existence. We all had hoped we could forget the name Emma Sulkowicz, that the memory of her attention-whoring stunt would fade away, but the narcissistic sociopath insists on forcing us to remember her (or “them,” as we’d be forced to call her/“them,” if she/“they” had her/“their” way).

BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR, YOU EVIL BITCH!

Excuse me for the caps-lock obscenities. I’m trying hard to maintain a calm and reasonable demeanor, but it’s not easy. And if I’m going to be forced to pay attention Emma Sulkowicz, I’m going to do my best to make sure that she regrets this attempt to return to the spotlight.

Emma Sulkowicz is a liar. And she is also crazy.

There are three of kinds of people in the world:

  1. People who hate Emma Sulkowicz;
  2. People who have never heard of Emma Sulkowicz;
    and
  3. Fools.

Insofar as anyone is aware of Emma Sulkowicz’s existence, they should hate her for being a liar, who engaged in a libelous publicity stunt intended to call attention to her false accusation of rape against a fellow student, Paul Nungesser. Every investigation of Sulkowicz’s claims exonerated Nungesser, and yet her vindictive crusade to defame her ex-boyfriend was given lavish and laudatory coverage in the media. Why? Because the media were at the time engaged in a carefully organized propaganda campaign, intended to boost feminism as a “mainstream” concern, in order to help Hillary Clinton become president.

Let me quote a July 2017 news item from the Columbia Spectator:

Columbia and Paul Nungesser, CC ’15, have agreed to settle a lawsuit that he filed against the University in 2015.
Nungesser was at the center of a gender-based misconduct investigation after Emma Sulkowicz, CC ’15, accused him of assault in 2012. He was later found not guilty by a University investigation.
Sulkowicz protested that finding in her senior art thesis, “Mattress Performance (Carry That Weight),” in which she carried a mattress with her at all times in a critique of the University’s decision not to discipline Nungesser. . . .
Nungesser’s suit charged that the University failed to protect him from — and even encouraged — sustained protest by Sulkowicz, which Nungesser initially argued was a violation of Title IX.
The University announced that it had settled the suit . . . in a conciliatory statement released Thursday.
The statement reaffirmed that Columbia’s investigation had found Nungesser not responsible and expressed regret that his time after the investigation was “very difficult for him and not what Columbia would want any of its students to experience.”
The statement also said the University will reform its gender based misconduct policies to make sure all students, “accuser and accused, including those like Paul who are found not responsible,” are treated with “respect.”

After Hillary lost, everybody forgot about the campus “rape culture” hysteria that the media had helped feminists and Democrats to manufacture in the years leading up to the 2016 election. Contrary to what feminists claimed, there was not an “epidemic” of sexual assault on campus and it was not true that 1-in-5 female students were rape victims. These fictitious claims were part of an anti-male propaganda campaign intended to help elect Hillary, and Paul Nungesser became collateral damage in this War Against Men. Although he had been cleared by the university’s investigation — he produced text messages that showed Sulkowicz was a willing participant in their hook-ups — she decided to revive these discredited accusations as her senior thesis, a project for which she received academic credit from this Ivy League university, and which earned her a seat at the 2015 State of the Union address as the guest of Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.). Imagine what this must have been like for Nungesser, watching powerful figures in politics, in media, and at his own university celebrating Sulikowicz as a symbol of heroic courage when, in fact, she was just a LYING SPOILED ROTTEN RICH BITCH WHO COULDN’T GET OVER BEING DUMPED.

Forgive me for that outburst. Sometimes I lose control.

The point I’m trying to make is that Emma Sulkowicz is a well-known type — the upper-class girl who goes off to college and expects to receive the kind of deferential treatment she has gotten throughout the entirety of her over-privileged young life. She became fixated on Paul Nungesser, a handsome and athletic student, as the object of her desire, and he was willing to be “friends with benefits” with Sulkowicz. They hooked up a few times, and then he moved on. This rejection caused the rich girl (who had hoped for a romantic commitment from Nungesser) to decide she was a victim, and she made up the rape accusation as a means of revenge.

This is why I say Sulkowicz deserves to be hated by anyone who knows who she is. There are too many innocent people in the world suffering from real hardship for anyone to extend sympathy to someone like Emma Sulkowicz, a vindictive liar who tried to destroy an ex-boyfriend just because she couldn’t cope with being a “pump-and-dump.”

Let me hasten to add that Paul Nungesser was a fool ever to get involved with Emma Sulkowicz. Any wise person would avoid associating with her type, but young men are often unwise in such matters. It would be a misfortune for any man to encounter Sulkowicz at any time, but it was Nungesser’s singular misfortune to encounter her on a university campus in an age when feminism has empowered crazy lying bitches like her.

Did I mention she’s crazy? She’s an Ivy League feminist, so you can take it for granted that she’s a few fries short of a Happy Meal, but Sulkowicz is even crazier than you might expect. Let’s quote from the transcript of her former classmate’s podcast interview with her:

[Zachary Small]: While listeners might remember you for “Mattress Performance,” what they likely don’t know about you is that you identify as a queer person and use the pronouns they/them. For the public, if the concept of a female victim of sexual violence was already controversial, then the notion that the drama surrounding your endurance piece occurred around a queer person of color was simply “too much” to digest. How has the erasure of your queer identity in the media profiles affected you?
[Emma Sulkowicz]: Another victim of my attacker identifies as transfeminine. I remember when they were going through their sexual assault hearings that one of my rapist’s defenses was, “I’m not gay, I would never sexually assault this man.” It completely obliterated the victim’s gender identity and denied any queerness on the attacker’s part. But of course, he had assaulted multiple gender non-conforming people. I see this as his way of expressing his own violent queer sexuality.
Being the victim of assault helped me realize that I was gender non-conforming. I think it’s important to talk about the slippage of [identifying as] in-between. On one level, identifying as “they” is gendered, but it is also ontological. For me, I became aware of my gender fluidity through the experience of receiving The New York Times with my photo on the front cover. This was an object dropped on my doorstep every morning of my childhood. I always saw the characters on its cover as flat or unreal. Seeing myself turned into an object in that way helped recontextualize all the time I had been physically turned into an object through sexual assault, and all the times that men had seen me as nothing more than a fleshlight, a sex doll, or a means-to-an-end. “They” evokes my slippage between man and woman, but it also evokes the way that I see the slippage between human and object. Sometimes that feeling of being objectified happens through acts of violence. “They” is about reclaiming that feeling and turning it into something powerful and politically important. . . .
Society has a lot of difficult believing that queer people can be victims, but it also cannot believe that queer people can be assailants. This is something so important to me because one of my attacker’s defenses at Columbia was that he could have never attacked a genderqueer person because he wasn’t gay — whatever the f–k that means. There is a societal resistance to believing that two things can happen simultaneously.

This is insane. Not content merely to reiterate her libelous accusations against her ex-boyfriend Nungesser (“my attacker . . . my rapist”), she now accuses him of homosexuality, asserting that he “assaulted multiple gender non-conforming people . . . expressing his own violent queer sexuality.” Beyond adding this defamatory accusation to her obsessive quest for revenge, Sulkowicz also deploys Third Wave gender theory to interpret her experience of “being objectified.” (This is feminism as paranoia: “That man looked at me! Help! I’ve been objectified! I’m a victim of the heteropatriarchal male gaze!”)

Let me make something clear here: If you ever encounter someone who insists on using the pronoun “they,” get as far away from them as possible, as quickly as you can. Although it’s probably best to avoid drawing their attention by sprinting in the opposite direction, don’t delay your exit as soon as they identify themselves as genderqueer. Err on the side of caution in such cases; don’t make the mistake of imagining you can safely navigate the hazards of Third Wave craziness. That’s what happened to Paul Nungesser, who committed the error of thinking it was possible to have sex with the kind of girl who attends an $80,826-a-year “elite” university. Wake up! This is the 21st century! The Ivy League Is Depraved and Decadent. The campus of Columbia University is crawling with genderqueer feminists who are so crazy they don’t even know whether they’re female or not. No man with any regard for his own personal safety would ever speak to a girl on the Columbia campus.

Emma Sulkowicz’s 15 minutes have expired, but her disgrace is eternal.



 

Category: Sex Trouble, The Ivy League Is Depraved and Decadent

Played for a Chump

Posted on | September 3, 2018 | Comments Off on Played for a Chump

Life is a team sport, and teamwork requires loyalty. You’re never going to win if your teammates aren’t committed enough to put aside their selfish interests and focus on achieving victory for the team. Often, the worst things that happen to people are not caused by the malice of their enemies, but rather because they are betrayed by disloyal “friends.” This is why conservatives so loathed “Every Liberal’s Favorite Republican,” whose vanity and ambition made him an untrustworthy teammate.

You could ask Maxim Anokhin about the pain of betrayal:

A Russian man has sued an IVF clinic after his wife admitted that she had swapped his sperm for her lover’s during treatment.
Maxim Anokhin only found that his one-year-old son was not his biological child when their relationship turned sour and his wife admitted to the swap.
Yana Anokhina, 38, had reportedly told the clinic she wanted the man she loved to be the father, but had let her husband pay for the treatment and kept him in the dark for the child’s first year.
Mr Anokhin successfully sued the Moscow clinic which allowed the swap and was awarded £4,600 in compensation for his moral and financial damages.
‘I trusted my wife,’ he said. ‘I believed her and trusted her, 100 per cent.’ . . .
The court found that he had paid for the IVF treatment and had provided his sperm believing that he would be the father of the baby.
Ms Anokhina has not spoken about the swap but reports say she wanted the father of her baby to be the man she loved — not her husband.
But for a year Mr Anokhin believed the child to be his and ‘loved and supported’ the boy, called Timofey.
Later the couple split and are now both in new relationships, the court was told. Mr Anokhin said his wife revealed the truth to him when they broke up. . . .
‘Allegedly, she wanted to give birth to a child by a man with whom she was in love, and her husband was the one who paid the costs.’
DNA tests proved that Mr Anokhin was not the father prompting him to sue Kulakov Medical Centre which provided the IVF treatment.

This kind of selfish and dishonest behavior by women is what inspires misogyny, in the same way that male misbehavior inspires feminism.

It was Rational Male author Rollo Tomassi who called my attention to this story, and he’s interpreting it through the Alpha-male/Beta-male discourse of evolutionary psychology that is lingua franca of the Red Pill “manosphere.” As much as I dislike this framework of discussing sexual behavior, a case like this is evidence that cannot easily be ignored. While the circumstances in this Russian cases are unusual, it reflects a known pattern of behavior by unscrupulous women, who will take shameless advantage of so-called “Beta males,” exploiting them financially while betraying them in pursuit of more desirable “Alpha males.”

Why do men put themselves at the mercy of such women? Desperation and naïvete, mainly, and an appetite for flattery. To quote Johnny Rivers, “A pretty face can hide an evil mind,” but some men simply can’t get past the superficial level to assess a woman’s character objectively. If a man has a good income and is willing to spend it on a woman without considering the value-added terms of the deal, he puts himself at risk of becoming the kind of sucker who never deserves an even break.

Sometimes, it helps to remind ourselves why Romeo and Juliet is a tragedy. The “star-crossed lovers” pursued love without the counsel and approval of their elders. A young person’s idea of “love” is typically a bundle of nonsense, assembled from novels, pop music, TV shows and movies, and many parents have forfeited their rightful role as tutors and supervisors of their offspring in the courtship process. Too often, parents embrace a sort of fatalistic attitude toward their children’s dating lives, assuming that there is nothing they can do to prevent their offspring from suffering broken hearts (or inflicting them, as the case may be).

Grant that sometimes kids will rebel and run wild, but in most cases, young people desire to please their parents and make them proud, in terms of their choice of mates. Therefore, responsible parents should not hesitate to voice their own preferences, both general and specific, about who their children date. “Stay away from weirdos” is the kind of general advice I’ve offered my kids. The so-called “alternative” look (bizarre hairstyles, piercings, etc.) may just be harmless fashion trends, but on the other hand, there’s Chanty Binx. Could you imagine the parental mortification if their son hooked up with that aposematic SJW?

In an Age of Decadence, the availability of “safe” choices is decreasing, and finding a sane, normal partner can be difficult for young people in a society full of broken minds and damaged personalities. God forbid any of my children should ever make themselves such a fool as Maxim Anokhin has done. His was an avoidable error; certainly, once he discovered how his ex-wife had cuckolded him, Anokhin must have gone through his memory and recognized the warning signs. There is seldom such a case where any fool goes roaring toward disaster without ignoring the obvious flashing yellow lights and clanging bells.

“Experience keeps a dear school, but fools will learn in no other.”

 

Category: Sex Trouble

Fake News, Real Hate

Posted on | September 2, 2018 | Comments Off on Fake News, Real Hate

 

When President Trump attacks the liberal media as “fake news,” this is treated by the media as a threat to freedom of the press. However, it is the press itself which, by its deliberately one-sided partisan approach to news, is destroying its own credibility. The transparent biases of the media — e.g., CNN’s role as the “Clinton News Network” in 2016 — are not merely harmful to their own journalistic integrity; they are a threat to democracy itself. “Fake news” is bad for America.

Consider the case of a Washington Post article about efforts by U.S. immigration officials to prevent illegal entry into the country by those using fraudulent documents. This article by Kevin Sieff claims that “U.S. citizens are increasingly being swept up by immigration enforcement agencies.” State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert denounced the Post article as “dishonest,” and declared: “This is an irresponsible attempt to create division and stoke fear among American citizens while attempting to inflame tensions over immigration.”

The central claim of Sieff’s article — that there is a “surging” number of people being denied U.S. passports as part of a Trump administration “crackdown” — is false. According to State Department figures, the approval rate for passport applications involving disputed birth certificates has actually increased, from 64.1% in 2014 to 74.2% so far in 2018. Obviously, passport denials cannot be “surging,” if the approval rate is increasing; Seiff’s article is therefore “fake news” — partisan propaganda, an anti-Trump hit job disguised as journalism.

Sieff constructed a textbook example of fraudulent “reporting.” For example, he treats as authoritative the claims of two immigration lawyers in Texas, one of whom says that cases of denied passports are “skyrocketing,” and another who asserts that he is aware of “probably 20 people” who are U.S. citizens that have been sent to “detention centers” by the Trump administration. These anecdotal claims were accepted as fact by Sieff, who nevertheless was unable to identify even one such case by name, so it is impossible to verify if any such cases actually exist.

What is the truth? State Department spokeswoman Nauert explained:

For decades, some midwives and physicians along the Mexico-U.S. border provided United States birth certificates to babies actually born in Mexico. Many questions related to fraudulent birth certificates . . . were documented during the 2009 proceedings of Castelano v. Clinton, in which midwives admitted to issuing fraudulent birth documents.
Midwives falsely reporting births in exchange for compensation is an old problem that is not unique to the Trump administration. In fact, thie administrations of Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama denied passports in these cases as a result.

As evidence, Nauert was able to cite the trustworthy journalism of (wait for it) the Washington Post, which in September 2008 reported:

The federal government won convictions against dozens of South Texas midwives from 1967 through 1997 for fraudulently registering births that they did not deliver, a U.S. official said, with most convictions coming after 1980.
An INS list last updated in October 2002 identifies at least 65 midwives who have been convicted of fraud since the 1960s. U.S. officials previously said cases in the 1990s uncovered forgeries for about 15,000 people born in Mexico.

So the fake birth certificate problem dates back at least to the 1960s, and this issue was covered by the Post a decade ago.  Yet somehow, in 2018, editors at the Post apparently didn’t bother to check their own archives, nor did they give the State Department adequate opportunity to respond to the “reporting” of Seiff, who constructed a bogus tale of “surging” passport denials, based on anecdotes by immigration lawyers.

The legal case mentioned by Nauert involved a class-action lawsuit against the federal government when Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State, which is why it was called Castelano v. Clinton. (Read the final 2009 settlement here.) The fact is that there were many thousands of people who were born in Mexico, but their parents bribed midwives and doctors in Texas to provide these Mexican babies with phony U.S. birth certificates. Obviously, most of these fake birth certificate cases would have been steadily weeded out over the years, so that common sense tells us that such cases cannot be suddenly “surging” in 2018. Yet facts and common sense play no part in the kind of “journalism” now produced by the anti-Trump “fake news” industry, which will resort to any means necessary to manufacture libels against the President.

The phony Post story quickly ricocheted around the Internet. It was promoted on Twitter by MSNBC’s Chris Hayes and, in turn, this prompted a threat by Arizona Democrat Rep. Reuben Gallegos:

If you are a US government official and you are deporting Americans be warned. When the worm turns you will not be safe because you were just following orders. You do not have to take part in illegal acts ordered by this President’s administration.

This is startling: Federal officials being threatened with some kind of reprisal by a member of Congress who has been led to believe, by a misleading story from the “fake news” media, that “this President’s administration” is engaged in deporting American citizens. Officials who are “following orders” in the Trump administration “will not be safe,” according to Gallegos, because they are engaged in “illegal acts.”

The dishonest “journalism” of the Washington Post has thereby yielded exactly what it was intended to produce: Hatred.

What will be consequences for America if, for the purposes of partisan politics, journalists continue producing this kind of hate propaganda, false stories intended to incite hatred of Republicans?

No honest person can blame Trump or his supporters for this sad state of affairs. In 2016, the liberal media went “all-in” betting on Hillary Clinton to win the White House and, when 63 million voters answered, “Hell, no,” this led the media to double-down on their lost wager. Having failed to prevent Trump’s election, now the “fake news” media are seeking to sabotage his presidency, which they regard as illegitimate.

Nothing good can come of this, either for the media or for the Democrats, and “fake news” is a danger to America as a nation. We shall become divided against each other, with those who believe the media’s lies on one side, and those who defend the truth on the other side.

“Truth is great and will prevail.” Never doubt it.

(Hat-tip: Instapundit.)



 

Category: Immigration, Media Bias

FMJRA 2.0: Synthwave & The End of Summer

Posted on | September 1, 2018 | 1 Comment

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Rule 5 Sunday: Mariya Takeuchi
Animal Magnetism
Ninety Miles From Tyranny
A View From The Beach
Proof Positive
EBL

A Fake Jew in the Identity-Politics Age
EBL

Fake Hate (Because It’s an Election Year)
EBL

RIP, Senator John McCain
A View From The Beach
EBL

Trey Gowdy Is Well Worth Your Time
EBL

Every Liberal’s Favorite Republican, and the Problem With ‘Bipartisan Reform’
EBL

FMJRA 2.0: Day Late & A Dollar Short
A View From The Beach
EBL

Fake Jew Update: SJW Julia Salazar Accuses Truth-Tellers of Racism
EBL

Crazy People Are Dangerous: Transgender Activist and ‘Her’ Pedophile Dad
EBL

In The Mailbox: 08.27.18
Proof Positive

Support Higher Education (UPDATE)
EBL

Russia! Russia! Russia!
A View From The Beach

In The Mailbox: 08.28.18
A View From The Beach
Proof Positive

Paul Gottfried vs. Neocon Mythology
EBL

Paging Captain Obvious
Adam Piggott
A View From The Beach
EBL

In The Mailbox: 08.29.18
A View From The Beach
Proof Positive

The Subjectivity of ‘Harassment’
Adam Piggott
EBL

In The Mailbox: 08.30.18
A View From The Beach
Proof Positive

The Back To School Labor Day Book Post
EBL

The Church of Fear: Desperate Democrats Have Become the Prophets of Doom
EBL

In The Mailbox: 08.31.18
357 Magnum
Proof Positive
EBL

Bonus Black Hole Book Post (It Has Rivets)
EBL

Top linkers for the week ending 8/31:

  1.  EBL (16)
  2.  A View From The Beach (8)
  3.  Proof Positive (6)

Thanks to everyone for all the linkagery!



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Category: FMJRA Award

Bad Gamblers and Bisexuality

Posted on | September 1, 2018 | 2 Comments

 

Have you ever heard of the TV show Brooklyn Nine-Nine? It’s a comedy. Anyway, this was the news in People magazine last October:

Wedding bells will be ringing soon for Stephanie Beatriz — the Brooklyn Nine-Nine actress got engaged to Brad Hoss over the weekend.
“Brad and I hosted our first party together this weekend: his friends, my friends and my sister all came,” the actress, 36, tells PEOPLE exclusively about the surprise proposal. “During the party, Brad pulled me aside. I’m thinking he’s going to tell me how great the party is going, that we make a great team … the usual lovely supportive thoughts he shares with me and really everyone who knows him.”
However, Hoss’s words were a bit sweeter than usual.
“He starts to pull something out of his pocket. My initial thoughts as a member of Bachelor nation is, ‘Oh my goodness, is this the moment where he asks me to marry him in front of a bunch of people?’”
Indeed, Hoss popped the question, and “the words were barely out of his mouth” before Beatriz said ‘yes,’” she adds. “I then started laughing … a lot!”

What would you estimate the odds of success of this marriage to be? Well, how about if I informed you of some more recent news?

 

Brooklyn Nine-Nine star Stephanie Beatriz, who plays Rosa Diaz on the show, says she’s “still bi”, even if she’s marrying a man.
She’s written about her experience of not feeling “gay enough”, feeling like an “outsider” and having her sexuality “misjudged”, in an article for GQ.
“In October, I will marry a heterosexual man… but I’ll be bi till the day I die,” she says. . . .
Stephanie describes her frustrations with having her sexuality defined by “who we’re partnered with at any given moment,” but says she wants to speak publicly about her experience.
“I’ve chosen to use that platform to speak openly about my bi-ness, because of other people who may feel invisible and unsure of whether or not to come out as bisexual.” . . .
Expanding on her experience in the essay, Stephanie says it “feels good to be out”, even though “it’s still scary sometimes”.
“I feel like an outsider so often. But those moments of discomfort are worth it.
“Living authentically gives me so much joy and feels so honest and good.”

Well, good luck with that. Because here’s an obvious question: How gay do you have to be before you feel compelled to come out as “bisexual”?

That is to say, if Ms. Beatriz just had a youthful fling or a mere speculative interest in homosexual behavior — a matter she perhaps considered, hypothetically, and didn’t feel she could rule it out — would she feel an urge to declare herself “bi till the day I die”? Doesn’t such a declaration imply a house divided against itself, that her husband-to-be cannot presume she is wholly satisfied with his companionship?

When I was young, this would not have occurred to me. The recent boom in “bisexual” identification, especially among young women, is unprecedented, and its potential consequences are unknown. According to the CDC, 7.8% (about 1-in-13) of U.S. women ages 18-24 identify as bisexual, whereas only 1.8% (about 1-in-55) identify as lesbian. By contrast, among males 18-24, more identify as homosexual (2.8%) than bisexual (2.5%). Overall, young men are more likely to identify as strictly heterosexual (94%) compared to women (89.5%), but that differential is explained entirely by the larger percentage of bisexual women.

Or, I should say, “bisexual” women? This term has become so elastic it could be claimed by almost anyone, and one suspects that many young women identifying as “bisexual” are probably more interested in making a political statement of their support for gay rights than they are in actually engaging in homosexual relationships. Because that’s the thing, see? When a celebrity like Stephanie Beatriz comes out as “bisexual,” despite her intent to marry a man, we must ask, “How gay is she?”

Shouldn’t we presume her interest in homosexual behavior is rather obsessive and persistent for her to say she is “bi till the day I die”? And if this is the case, doesn’t it suggest that she is unlikely to find happiness with her husband-to-be? Isn’t her marriage likely to end in divorce?

Perhaps my own knowledge in this regard is obsolete. It’s been nearly 30 years since I married; my observations and experiences of the dating scene from more than three decades ago might not be very useful in judging behavior in the post-Lewinsky/post-Obergefell era. However, I think that if I were a young bachelor now, I’d make a point of avoiding women who gave any hint of harboring a “bisexual” tendency.

Like, you’re a college boy and you meet a girl on campus and she’s got a lot of “friends” who play varsity softball? Don’t waste your time. Or you’re at a keg party and start talking to a girl with facial piercings, then she tells you she’s a Gender Studies major? Skip it, pal.

Consider the fate of celebrity guys who married bisexual women. Angelina Jolie wrecked Brad Pitt’s life, and Johnny Depp was riding high until he made the mistake of marrying Amber Heard. It doesn’t matter who you blame for those Hollywood divorces; the point is that there is a negative correlation between bisexuality and marital permanence. The odds are clearly against long-term success, and if Stephanie Beatriz’s fiancé thinks he can beat those odds, well, good luck with that.

How many previous lesbian lovers has Stephanie Beatriz had? If her attraction to women is so persistent that she’s “bi till the day I die,” why didn’t she end up with a woman? Shouldn’t we suspect that Brad Hoss is marrying a woman so crazy that no lesbian wanted her? Like, the only woman he can get is one from the “Rejected by Lesbians” pile?

It’s like a bad gambler, shoving all-in on a pair of threes.

On the other hand, he’s 36 and bald, and his acting career hasn’t been very successful. If you’re an unsuccessful actor in Hollywood, probably you don’t have a lot of options, but I can’t imagine that being a desperate bald guy improves the odds of your marriage succeeding.



 

Category: Gays

Speedway Bomber: 40th Anniversary of Brett Kimberlin’s Notorious Crimes

Posted on | September 1, 2018 | Comments Off on Speedway Bomber: 40th Anniversary of Brett Kimberlin’s Notorious Crimes

‘Speedway Bomber’ Brett Kimberlin was sentenced to 50 years in 1981

My podcast colleague John Hoge reminds me that this weekend marks the 40th anniversary of the Indiana crime spree that made Brett Kimberlin notorious. Two videos from WRTV:

 

 

 

The summary of Kimberlin’s crimes:

A six-day bombing spree rocked the town of Speedway, Indiana in September 1978. The bombings began the evening of Sept. 1 and did not end until Sept. 6.
A total of eight bombs exploded. Two people were seriously injured in the final bombing. 
The first explosions rocked three different locations in Speedway on Sept. 1. The bombs hidden inside of trashcans caused damage, but nobody was seriously injured. One witness said the explosion, “…moved me back about a foot and it felt like I guess like you were shelled like a bomb just went off.” 
The bombings continued into the next week.
The tactics of the Speedway Bomber escalated on Sept. 5 when a parked Speedway Police cruiser was targeted. Again, nobody was injured in the bombing, but that would soon change. 
On Sept. 6, 1978, an abandoned gym bag blew up in the parking lot of Speedway High School. Multiple people were injured, including Carl DeLong. DeLong’s injuries were so severe that doctors had to amputate his right leg.  
Authorities soon offered a $2,500 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the person responsible for the eight explosions.  
Later that month, a former Broad Ripple ‘Businessman of the Year’ named Brett Kimberlin was arrested on unrelated charges. Police executed a search warrant but did not immediately charge Kimberlin in the Speedway bombings. 
Kimberlin was eventually charged in the bombings and went to trial in 1981. He was convicted by a jury of 12 and sentenced to 50 years in prison. 
Kimberlin was released after serving 15 years. He continues to deny any involvement in the Speedway bombings.  

Never mind that Kimberlin was also a major drug trafficker, and let’s not even mention that little girl, Debbie Barton, who was called “Jessica” in Mark Singer’s 1996 biography of Kimberlin, Citizen K:

From the beginning of his friendship with Sandi [Barton], Kimberlin said, her younger daughter developed an attachment to him. Sandi would come to Eagle Creek, to tend his horses and ride her own; Jessica would tag along, and “she used to hang on me, she didn’t want to let me go.” Jessica was ten years old and Kimberlin was twenty. . . .
For three consecutive summers, 1974 through 1976, they took vacations of a week or longer in Disney World, Mexico, and Hawaii. Sandi couldn’t get time off from work, so on these summer trips it was just the two of them — Brett and Jessica.
Eyebrows levitated. A drug-dealing colleague had memories of conversations with Kimberlin that struck him as odd: “We’d see a girl, who was pubescent or prepubescent, and Brett would get this smile and say, ‘Hey, what do you think? Isn’t she great?’ It made me very uncomfortable.” Another recalled Kimberlin introducing Jessica as “my girlfriend,” and if irony was intended, it was too subtle to register. To a coworker . . . Sandi confided that Kimberlin was “grooming Jessica to be his wife.” . . .

Just coincidentally, the girl’s grandmother was the victim of an unsolved murder, and when police began investigating, the bombings started.

“Sue Me Again, You Evil Liar.”



 

 

Category: Crime, The Kimberlin Files
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