Monthly Archives: May 2014

Slate – Monica Lewinsky returns: How Maureen Dowd caricatured Bill Clinton’s mistress as a crazy bimbo.

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When the scandal broke in January of that year, Dowd was initially sympathetic to Lewinsky and damning of an administration that rushed to smear her in a bid to cover its own ass. “Inside the White House, the debate goes on about the best way to destroy That Woman, as the President called Monica Lewinsky,” Dowd wrote. “Should they paint her as a friendly fantasist or a malicious stalker? … At least some of the veteran Clinton shooters feel a little nauseated this time around, after smearing so many women who were probably telling the truth as trashy bimbos. … It is probably just a matter of moments before we hear that Ms. Lewinsky is a little nutty and a little slutty.” Dowd also had words for feminists who were eager to throw Lewinsky under the bus to save their Democratic overlord: “[O]nce you decide it’s O.K. to sacrifice individual women for the greater good, you set a dangerous precedent,” Dowd wrote. “The revolution always eats its own.”

And how! It didn’t take long for Dowd to buckle under the power of the Clinton narrative and join the pile-on herself. By February, she was calling Lewinsky “a ditsy, predatory White House intern who might have lied under oath for a job at Revlon” and “the girl who was too tubby to be in the high school ‘in’ crowd.” At first, Dowd attempted to pass this nastiness off as a sly, satirical commentary on the caricature of Lewinsky that the Clinton administration had painted in the press. But soon, the artifice disappeared, and Dowd devoted her column to arguing that, come to think of it, Lewinsky was both nutty and slutty.

via Monica Lewinsky returns: How Maureen Dowd caricatured Bill Clinton’s mistress as a crazy bimbo..

Via Guns Save Lives: Why I Carry: Georgia Man Beheaded, Wife Feared Abducted

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While most of the crime stories I report here are defensive gun uses, sometimes we need to point out crimes that didn’t result in a defensive gun use as a reminder to why we carry.

In this case an elderly man, Russell Dermond, in Georgia was beheaded inside his own home and it is thought that his wife, Shirley Dermond was abducted.

The Dermonds lived on a lake front property and authorities say that it is possible the suspect entered the property from the lake.

Russel Dermond’s head has still not been located.

Based on evidence at the scene, police do not currently believe Shirley Dermond is a suspect and believe she was most likely abducted.

via [Video] Why I Carry: Georgia Man Beheaded, Wife Feared Abducted.

House Republicans find 10% of tea party donors audited by IRS – Washington Times

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I’m sure this is just a coincidence:

Despite assurances to the contrary, the IRS didn’t destroy all of the donor lists scooped up in its tea party targeting — and a check of those lists reveals that the tax agency audited 10 percent of those donors, much higher than the audit rate for average Americans, House Republicans revealed Wednesday.

Republicans argue that the Internal Revenue Service still hasn’t come clean about the full extent of its targeting, which swept up dozens of conservative groups.

via House Republicans find 10% of tea party donors audited by IRS – Washington Times.

How Much Porn Does It Take to Get Fired at EPA? – Fox Nation

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I can only assume he’s a member of the AFGE.

“So this guy is making $125,000, spending two to six hours a day looking at porno,” said Rep. John Mica (R-FL), who was told by officials that the worker had been given performance awards – despite one time spending four straight hours on a website called, “Sadism is Beautiful.”

“How much pornography would it take for an EPA employee to lose their job?” asked a frustrated Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA).

There was no concrete response from officials, given the lengthy process that it takes for the federal government to “separate” an employee from the civil service.

via How Much Porn Does It Take to Get Fired at EPA? – Fox Nation.

Hillary’s State Department Refused to Brand Boko Haram as Terrorists – The Daily Beast

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On Wednesday, Clinton said that the abduction of the girls by Boko Haram was “abominable, it’s criminal, it’s an act of terrorism and it really merits the fullest response possible, first and foremost from the government of Nigeria.” Clinton said that as Secretary of State she had numerous meetings with Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan and had urged the Nigerian government to do more on counterterrorism.

What Clinton didn’t mention was that her own State Department refused to place Boko Haram on the list of foreign terrorist organizations in 2011, after the group bombed the U.N. headquarters in Abuja. The refusal came despite the urging of the Justice Department, the FBI, the CIA, and over a dozen senators and congressmen.

“The one thing she could have done, the one tool she had at her disposal, she didn’t use. And nobody can say she wasn’t urged to do it. It’s gross hypocrisy,” said a former senior U.S. official who was involved in the debate. “The FBI, the CIA, and the Justice Department really wanted Boko Haram designated, they wanted the authorities that would provide to go after them, and they voiced that repeatedly to elected officials.”

via Hillary’s State Department Refused to Brand Boko Haram as Terrorists – The Daily Beast.

Overregulation Is Killing America’s Can-Do Spirit | The Fiscal Times

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What happened? Hathaway and Litan shrug their shoulders after finding that these trends held steady across all states and metropolitan areas. Clearly, “business dynamism and entrepreneurship are experiencing a troubling secular decline,” they conclude, but “our findings stop short of demonstrating why these trends are occurring, and perhaps more importantly, what can be done about it.” However, the chart itself suggests one answer in particular. The decades involved in this study saw a significant and accelerating expansion of federal regulatory power, which only had one period of significant reversal – the Reagan era. That period shows the only significant return to a higher rate of business births in the last thirty-five years. The consistency of the decline across regions and states also bolsters this interpretation. Some states and regions have better economic growth rates than others; Texas Governor Rick Perry has recruited major employers from California on that basis, most recently Toyota’s US headquarters and its 5,000 jobs. Despite a friendlier tax and economic climate, though, Texas still has a lower business birth rate than it did thirty years ago, and so does every other state, and every metropolitan area save one unnamed.

via Overregulation Is Killing America’s Can-Do Spirit | The Fiscal Times.

GROSSU: Margaret Sanger, racist eugenicist extraordinaire – Washington Times

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I’ve seen estimates putting the number of aborted black babies at 16 million. To put that in perspective, there are probably around 40 million black people alive in the country. If this isn’t genocide, I’m not sure what is.

Sanger shaped the eugenics movement in America and beyond in the 1930s and 1940s. Her views and those of her peers in the movement contributed to compulsory sterilization laws in 30 U.S. states that resulted in more than 60,000 sterilizations of vulnerable people, including people she considered “feeble-minded,” “idiots” and “morons.”

She even presented at a Ku Klux Klan rally in 1926 in Silver Lake, N.J. She recounted this event in her autobiography: “I accepted an invitation to talk to the women’s branch of the Ku Klux Klan … I saw through the door dim figures parading with banners and illuminated crosses … I was escorted to the platform, was introduced, and began to speak … In the end, through simple illustrations I believed I had accomplished my purpose. A dozen invitations to speak to similar groups were proffered” (Margaret Sanger, “An Autobiography,” Page 366). That she generated enthusiasm among some of America’s leading racists says something about the content and tone of her remarks.

In a letter to Clarence Gable in 1939, Sanger wrote: “We do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population, and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members” (Margaret Sanger commenting on the ‘Negro Project’ in a letter to Gamble, Dec. 10, 1939).

via GROSSU: Margaret Sanger, racist eugenicist extraordinaire – Washington Times.

Vegetative patient communicates with doctors for first time | News.com.au

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Be VERY careful before you pull the plug.

MORE than a decade after a car crash left him in an apparently vegetative state, Scott Routley has been able to tell scientists he is not in pain.

Researchers have recorded the Canadian man’s responses to “yes” and “no” questions, as an MRI machined scanned his brain activity.

It’s the first time someone who is uncommunicative and severely brain damaged has been able to give answers related to their care and treatment.

Professor Adrian Owen, the study’s lead researcher at Canada’s University of Western Ontario, said 39-year-old Routley was clearly not vegetative and the text books needed rewriting.

Vegetative patients emerge from a coma into an “awake” state in which their eyes are open, but lack any perception of themselves or the outside world.

Technological advancement … researchers recorded Routley’s brain activity with fMRI scanners. Picture: BBC News Source: Supplied

“Scott has been able to show he has a conscious, thinking mind. We have scanned him several times and his pattern of brain activity shows he is clearly choosing to answer our questions. We believe he knows who and where he is,” Prof Owen told BBC News.

“Asking a patient something important to them has been our aim for many years. In future we could ask what we could do to improve their quality of life. It could be simple things like the entertainment we provide or the times of day they are washed and fed.”

via Vegetative patient communicates with doctors for first time | News.com.au.

Captain Barnes and the Wilderness – NYTimes.com

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The Wilderness was particularly awful in several ways; it covered some of the same ground of the battle of Chancellorsville, so often there was fighting among the bones of the dead from that battle. There were also wildfires in the forests which killed a number of men.

My great-great-great-grandfather Norman DeFord Corser fought with the Fighting Fifth New Hampshire. They weren’t in the first two major battles of the Overland Campaign, but they were moved up for Cold Harbor, where Norman Corser was wounded for the second time (a wound sustained at Seven Pines kept him out of the fighting at Antietam, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, and Gettysburg, where so many of his fellow soldering in the Fighting Fifth were killed).

Anyway, this is a good account of that first battle in the Overland Campaign:

Gen. Robert E. Lee, who commanded the Southern forces, attacked Grant’s forces on May 5, setting off two days of bloody fighting that left some 26,000 total casualties, making the Battle of the Wilderness one of the costliest engagements of the war. Many of the wounded, especially on that first day, were stuck in the underbrush, too far from the front lines to rescue. And so they moaned through the night.

Suddenly the haunting voice of a man in prayer rose above the cries of the wounded. One Union soldier who had nodded off to sleep after that first day of hellish fighting awoke to the sound with a start.

“I never before nor since heard such a prayer,” he noted years later. “It seemed, lying there in the darkness of the night in the woods, that his deep, sympathetic voice, mingled with the voices and groans of the dying ones, sounded as from some other world.”

The soldier recognized the voice. It belonged to Dennis Barnes, his captain, a square-shouldered, six-foot lumberman from New York who was on a self-appointed mission to rescue the wounded from his company after the day’s desperate fighting. Barnes was picking his way across the densely wooded landscape, exhausted and pained from an injury he had suffered to his hand. It was near midnight when he found a corporal who had succumbed to the gaping wound in his belly.

via Captain Barnes and the Wilderness – NYTimes.com.

To Have or to Be? by Theodore Dalrymple, City Journal Spring 2014

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I hesitate to quote Karl Marx, but he was surely right when, in “The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon,” he wrote: “Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past.”

This truth, however, which is so obvious that it ought to be, if it is not, a cliché, does not mean that choice does not exist. The inevitable existence of circumstances does not mean absence or abrogation of choice. To know the circumstances of a man is not also to know his future actions.

via To Have or to Be? by Theodore Dalrymple, City Journal Spring 2014.