SHOCKER: THIS STORY IS NOT ABOUT OBAMA. Accused White House Fence Jumper Ruled Incompetent.
Archive for 2014
October 28, 2014
IRA STOLL: Beware Obama’s Post-Election Surprises. “The ‘post-election surprises’ issue generates passion because of the way it inverts the traditional civics class consent-of-the-governed democratic theory. Our textbook ideal of a president would do what he wants, then let voters pass judgment; or at the very least, say publicly what he wants, and hope voters ratify those goals in an election. Obama, by contrast, cloaks his agenda in some mystery. He also appears prepared to go ahead and do what he wants to do anyway, even if the voters in the congressional elections reject the agenda he has disclosed.”
He has contempt for the electorate. And, considering that it elected him, he has reason.
TEACH WOMEN NOT TO RAPE! (CONT’D): Police Say Dance Teacher Admitted Lesbian Sex With 15-Year-Old Student. “Sabrina Antoinette Epps, 19, was arrested Sunday and is facing a charge of statutory rape by an authority figure. According to the Hendersonville Police Department, the 15-year-old victim was a student at the dance studio.”
October 27, 2014
HILLARY CLARIFIES, BUT ANN ALTHOUSE IS UNAMUSED: “Like it’s our fault we don’t know what she meant. How many times does she have to tell us? She’s been talking so long — for a couple of decades — that we ought to know everything she has to say. We should be completing sentences for her… like a doting, faithful old husband.” Well, she certainly doesn’t have anyone to fill that role at home.
AT AMAZON, Kindle Daily Deals.
KURT SCHLICHTER: Psssst, Here’s What We Do When We Win (Don’t Tell The Liberals). I like copyright reform. And the Uber Freedom Act.
IF THE GOVERNMENT CAN PLANT EVIDENCE ON SHARYL ATTKISSON’S COMPUTER, then they can plant evidence on yours. Which means I’m going to view a lot of computer-crime prosecutions with a jaundiced eye.
Related: USA Today’s Susan Page: Obama administration most ‘dangerous’ to media in history.
RICHARD FERNANDEZ: Rear Window.
HE’S NOT THE SECOND LEAKER. I THINK HE’S #4 OR #5. FBI Raids House Of ‘Second Leaker’ Who Provided Terrorist Watchlist Documents To The Intercept.
POPULAR MECHANICS: How Iron Dome is Changing Warfare.
GET A HEADSTART ON CHRISTMAS WITH the Amazon Holiday Toy List.
WELL, IT’S KILLED A LOT MORE PEOPLE, AND SPREAD A LOT FARTHER: What makes this Ebola outbreak different from prior ones? Plus: “Our health care authorities are guilty of a combination of stupidity and hubris. They indicate that they believe they know everything there is to know about the science of the way this disease is transmitted, and are arrogant about it. But they don’t even know what they don’t know.”
Meanwhile, here’s how things are polling among Today Show viewers, a pretty Obama-friendly demographic. 94% in favor of quarantine.
UPDATE: I guess Mary Landrieu saw this poll: “We should institute a mandatory 21-day quarantine so anyone traveling between the affected countries & US does not unknowingly spread Ebola.”
FASTER, PLEASE: Synthetic Biologists Create Paper-Based Diagnostic for Ebola.
NEW YORK TIMES: SHOULD WE BE TESTING all arrivals from West Africa for Ebola?
TEST DRIVE: The 2015 Subaru WRX STI.
EX-CBS REPORTER SHARYL ATTKISSON: Government agency bugged my computer:
She speculates that the motive was to lay the groundwork for possible charges against her or her sources.
Attkisson says the source, who’s “connected to government three-letter agencies,” told her the computer was hacked into by “a sophisticated entity that used commercial, nonattributable spyware that’s proprietary to a government agency: either the CIA, FBI, the Defense Intelligence Agency or the National Security Agency.”
The breach was accomplished through an “otherwise innocuous e-mail” that Attkisson says she got in February 2012, then twice “redone” and “refreshed” through a satellite hookup and a Wi-Fi connection at a Ritz-Carlton hotel.
The spyware included programs that Attkisson says monitored her every keystroke and gave the snoops access to all her e-mails and the passwords to her financial accounts.
“The intruders discovered my Skype account handle, stole the password, activated the audio, and made heavy use of it, presumably as a listening tool,” she wrote in “Stonewalled: My Fight for Truth Against the Forces of Obstruction, Intimidation, and Harassment in Obama’s Washington.”
Read the whole thing.
PAUL RAHE: Ebola: Preventing Its Spread Here.
PORLA WRIGHT: GamerGate: The Players And The Played.
What makes people angry with Sarkeesian (anger is allowed, abuse is not), is that she is unaccountable. Her videos on sexism and toxic masculinity are used as educational aids in schools, yet they are based on ideology not evidence. Sarkeesian has no academic credentials. She has legitimate critics, I am one of them, but she refuses to engage in open debate and instead directs attention to the abusive minority. That’s cowardly and manipulative. There is no logic that dictates that women are any less corruptible by power than men. To suggest otherwise, in fact, would be sexist.
This is not to excuse threats or suggest that such harassment isn’t traumatic. What reasonable person would not condemn the criminal harassment of women, (or men), in any industry? That is surely moot. What is less moot, is who is actually responsible for these threats.
Sarkeesian is adamant that the culprits are the supporters of #GamerGate. Yet the evidence points to third-party mischief-makers and anonymous trolls being equally vicious to both sides. Journalists are disseminating the radical feminist narrative uncritically, but they themselves are implicated in the scandal, so their impartiality cannot be taken for granted. The involvement of the notorious hacking/trolling group GNAA (who are experts at tricking the media into panic-mode) should also send alarm bells ringing.
Absent further evidence, claims about the identity of the anonymous trolls are pure speculation. There have been no arrests. People on either side of the barricades have been subject to abuse, although coverage has focused mostly on one, photogenic side. In a story about games and players, it’s difficult to discern just who is the player and who is the played.
It’s let a lot of social justice warrior types feel good about themselves, though.
UPDATE: From the comments:
I was just thinking how SJWs behave like malicious little girls and how the tools of social media are perfectly suited to the tactics of mean little girls.
Remember back in grade school when girls learn to join a clique and to ostracize and bully any girls who aren’t in their in-group, anyone who doesn’t flatter them and conform to their selfish standards. And they use backstabbing whispers and make up rumors and anonymous accusations to poison the environment and punish their enemies-de-jour. And girls do this all through grade school to High school.
And it never, never ends. Because the In-Group must have an enemy so they can constantly enforce conformity in the in-group.
This also describes every SJW and most Progressive Liberlals. It’s sort of on target for socialist revolutionaries as well.
Thus was a nation of men turned into a feminist brave new world. Men can’t even retreat into the fantasy world of games without malicious little girls trying to coerce them into conformity. And it will never end because SJWs always need an enemy to punish.
Indeed.
MY USA TODAY COLUMN: How We Won In Vietnam, And How We’re Losing At Home.
IN THE MAIL: From Ward Farnsworth, Restitution: Civil Liability for Unjust Enrichment. Farnsworth is also the author of the popular book Farnsworth’s Classical English Rhetoric, which many Instapundit readers liked.
Plus, today only at Amazon: Save over 30% on Select Celestron Telescopes.
And, also today only: 60% Off Sweaters for Men & Women. Winter is coming. And Fall is here!
TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 536.