Archive for 2014
December 24, 2014
BLUE MODEL COLLAPSE: Florida Passes NY in Population: Power of Low Taxes, Spending, Less Regulation.
ACE OF SPADES: Why Feminists Are Obsessed With Rape:
You may wonder why feminists never stop writing about rape.
The answer is simple: Minus rape, feminism stands exposed as a trivial lists of complaints — women not “empowered” enough in TV shows, Liz Lemon selling out the sisterhood on 30 Rock, Negative Body Image You Guys in the media, etc.
Minus rape, feminism is rather too obviously a list of trivial complaints by comfortable yet hysterical semi-affluent white women.
So they always are struggling to bring rape up as a topic, because it’s obviously more serious than the six millionth whine that Men Expect Too Much Regarding Make-Up and Beauty Myth You Guys.
And that’s it. It’s the “serious” veneer slapped upon a very silly and trivial channeling of personal anxieties and hysterias into an alleged “politics.”
Indeed. Related thoughts here. “One notices that feminists seldom debate or engage in dialogue with their critics. We may take this as evidence that feminist rhetoric and ideology cannot withstand careful scrutiny.”
WHEN YOU USE SOCIAL MEDIA TO ORGANIZE THESE THINGS, IT MAKES THE RICO SUIT EASIER: ‘Black Lives Matter’ protest organizers to face charges for Mall of America shutdown. “On one of the busiest shopping days of the year, management was forced to shut down the stores on one side of the mall. Officials are reportedly gathering estimates of how much money the stores lost.”
JUSTICE: Feds conceding Greeneville couple wrongfully convicted. “The move is extraordinary on a number of fronts. It comes after the Sens were publicly accused, tried and sentenced in a case deemed so important U.S. Attorney Bill Killian announced the couple’s indictment and, later, their conviction via news releases. The action to drop the case is being undertaken by the Justice Department’s civil division in Washington, D.C., although it was Killian’s staff who prosecuted the case and normally would have handled the appeal. And, Brinkman wrote in the motion the Justice Department plans to dismiss the case ‘with prejudice,’ meaning it can never be resurrected. . . . Now, it appears the couple will be vindicated. But court records show it may be too little, too late. Yarbrough said when news of the pair’s arrest went public, insurance companies cut ties with them and hospitals sought to revoke Dr. Sen’s medical privileges to treat patients at those facilities. Dr. Sen suffered a stroke during the prosecution process. Although he has recovered and many patients have remained loyal, Little wrote in a court memorandum the Sens have been ‘ruined’ personally and professionally.”
CHARLES C.W. COOKE: The Left’s “Climate Of Hate” Hypocrisy.
Consider, if you will, the recent behavior of Salon’s Joan Walsh, who yesterday suggested in earnest that the conservative-led condemnation of the “climate” that supposedly provoked the shootings in New York City represented the unconscionable “politicization” of murder. “To blame the peaceful movement against police brutality that’s emerged nationwide,” Walsh wrote, is “the worst in demagoguery.” “Right wingers,” she added, “are using a terrible tragedy to make sure that no one can find middle ground.” Prima facie, I concur with Walsh, of course. But what, we might ask, has finally led her to this conclusion? After the shooting of Gabby Giffords in 2011, Walsh fretted dramatically about “the rhetoric of violence”; asked aloud, “Will any prominent conservatives denounce ‘reload’ and ‘crosshairs’ imagery?”; inquired dishonestly, “Is it really controversial to suggest that the overheated anti-government rhetoric of the last two years, with its often violent imagery, ought to be toned down?”; described Sarah Palin’s pretty standard political-campaign map as “unconscionable”; hoped that Republicans would find it in their hearts to “listen to Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik, who denounced ‘the vitriol that comes out of certain mouths about the government’ at a Saturday night press conference”; played a remarkably dishonest game of “But Anyway . . . ,” repeatedly noting that there was “no evidence” that Jared Loughner had reacted to any right-wing rhetoric before insinuating in the next breath that he must have; and, when her well was running dry, went so far as to suggest without any attestation at all that the shooter was a registered Republican.
Later, talking characteristically out of both sides of her mouth, Walsh proposed that “even if Tuscon exists in a vacuum,” it would still be the case that the “Tea Party’s violent rhetoric is dangerous.” Naturally, these accusations were part of a trend. Two years earlier, Walsh had cynically blamed conservative talk-radio for a shooting at the National Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. The perpetrator turned out to be a neo-Nazi.
If it weren’t for double standards the left would have no standards at all.
Related: The Monsters Who Screamed For Dead Cops.
A little over a week ago, a group of people marched down the streets of Manhattan and called for police to be killed. But exactly who cried out for violence has been something of a mystery as New York goes through its most tense moment in more than a decade.
Evidence from photos, videos, social-media posts and interviews suggest that a group—the New York chapter of the Trayvon Martin Organizing Committee, or TMOC—might have been involved. There is no definitive proof that TMOC led the call for dead cops, but there is a web of circumstantial ties with the group at its center.
TMOC’s own social-media posts put them near the scene of the cry for police blood. Some of the slogans used that night—including “arms up, shoot back!”—are the same as the ones used by TMOC. And recently TMOC has been soliciting money for the legal defense of people it calls its “comrades” who were arrested for allegedly assaulting police officers on the Brooklyn Bridge, just hours after the “dead cops” chant was recorded.
The bedrock of TMOC’s politics, judged by their social-media output, is hatred for police and endorsement of violence against them. The group seems to blend “black bloc” anarchist street violence with social-media campaigns. Keeping their organizing online, members can plan and incite without coming out from behind their digital masks until they hit the streets. (The group did not respond to repeated requests for comment.)
Finding TMOC started with an interview of the man who shot the video showing marchers chanting, “What do we want? Dead cops! When do we want it? Now!” . . . It would be interesting to find out more about the radicals whose slogan is “shoot back.” What we know now is that, out of the people arrested on the bridge, one is a Harvard-educated poet and another was making more than $100,000 a year working for one of the most the most powerful unions in New York City.
I think further inquiry is worthwhile. And if this were a Tea Party event, every journalist in New York would be tracing all the connections. But the Tea Party famously leaves places cleaner than it finds them. The left, not so much.
JESSE WALKER: Amanda Marcotte Is Confused. An evergreen headline!
“Amanda Marcotte has a history of misrepresenting the views of the people she criticizes. Today her strawman shares a name with me.”
JONATHAN FARLEY: It’s Time For A New Standard On Judging Rape Accusers.
December 23, 2014
WORKING TOWARD A WARP DRIVE in a Nebraska garage.
CULTURE OF CORRUPTION: How a Top Obama Crony Moved From Idaho To a $2 Million Washington Estate.
IF A.N.S.W.E.R DOESN’T START A LEFTY PROTEST, IT TRIES TO TAKE IT OVER: Communists Are Behind the Anti-Police Protests In New York. “A.N.S.W.E.R. is close to unique, in that it advocates for pretty much every form of evil in the world.” Communists are on the same moral plane as Nazis, just with better press relations.
The anti-war protests of the Bush era were also A.N.S.W.E.R productions, as David Corn and Christopher Hitchens noted. The Corn piece will be particularly informative to those who don’t follow hard-left agitators. ‘They’re Maoists.’ But they’re the only game in town, and I’ve got to admit they’re good organizers. They remembered everything but the Porta-Johns.”
NOEMIE EMERY: A Bad Couple of Weeks for the Liberal Narrative.
TO BE FAIR, THAT’S NOT DIFFICULT THESE DAYS: German Protestants Put America’s Mainline to Shame.
THEY SEEM TO HAVE A MANAGEMENT PROBLEM: Audit: UVA cuts corners with purchases, student fees.
THE PERILS OF the office candy bowl.
AT AMAZON, New Year, New You: Fitness, Diet & More.
Plus, year-end deals on Musical Instruments.
And you can still get things in time for Christmas if you order in the next few hours.
ASHE SCHOW: Huffington Post suddenly doesn’t care about sexual assault statistics. “The claim that one in five women will be raped during their time in college was all the rage this year — until it became indefensible. Now, suddenly, statistics don’t matter.”
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Walter Russell Mead: Living Large In A Shrinking Cocoon. “Never have liberal ideas been so firmly entrenched within America’s core elite institutions. Never have those institutions been so weak and uninfluential.”
SO BLOGGING HAS BEEN LIGHTER THAN I’D HAVE LIKED; I’d wanted to put up some longer posts on various events, but I’ve been kind of busy — the Insta-Dad was in the hospital over the weekend, and I had grades to turn in, and well, I could post links but nothing longer. He’s out now and doing okay. Sorry for the distraction, but life comes first.