The Definition of Cyberstalking

Robert Stacy McCain's dealing with the deranged troll rights harassment freak Bill Schmalfeldt again.

See: "Harassment Is Not Journalism."

CYBERSTALKER (noun) -- Person who obsessively follows someone online, for purposes of harassment. See: Bill Schmalfeldt.
— Robert Stacy McCain (@rsmccain) April 7, 2013

And here's this in Schmalfeldt's timeline:

When you write a column about me, but don't allow me to comment in the comment section, that IS the DEFINITION of soliciting tweets, Stace!
— Bill Schmalfeldt (@LiberalGrouch) April 7, 2013

We MAY be handing out the home addresses and phone numbers of the various Breitbots who are pimping this dumbass "Everybody bother the...
— Bill Schmalfeldt (@LiberalGrouch) April 7, 2013

I have troll rights harassers obsessed with me and this blog, although so far none of them has released my home address and phone number. Knock on wood. I should be careful about giving these ghouls any ideas, the idiots.

More at The Other McCain, "Bill Schmalfeldt’s Very Bad Idea --- UPDATE: Maryland Resident Brandishes AR-15, Recently Banned in Maryland UPDATE: Schmalfeldt’s Gun Is a Toy UPDATE: No, Says Schmalfeldt, He’s Actually Armed; Dangerous? Maybe."

Despicable Leftist Fearmongers

From Charlotte Allen, at the Weekly Standard, "King of Fearmongers: Morris Dees and the Southern Poverty Law Center, scaring donors since 1971" (via Memeorandum).

Also at Legal Insurrection, "SPLC — milking old northern liberals for decades."

Ruby the Heart Stealer

At London's Daily Mail, "I have never been a prostitute: Bunga Bunga girl Ruby the Heartstealer denies her past as a friend says she 'did half of Milan in six months'."

Also, "'I'm not a prostitute': Silvio Berlusconi's 'bunga bunga' teenager 'Ruby the Heartstealer' stages protest at sex-for-hire trial demanding she be allowed to testify."

Clayton Kershaw Blasts Momentum for DH Rule in NL

At the Los Angeles Times, "There's no need for a designated hitter in the National League — ever":

The memories could last a lifetime. You could tell the kids, and the grandkids, about the tingles in the Dodgers' season opener.

Sandy Koufax shyly emerged from the dugout to throw out the first pitch, serenaded and beloved. Clayton Kershaw dominated on the mound, as unhittable today as Koufax was in his day.

Yet, Dodger Stadium did not erupt into bedlam until the eighth inning, when Kershaw ended a scoreless tie by launching a home run that instantly became part of Dodgers lore.

"Pretty stirring," Dodgers General Manager Ned Colletti said.

Here come the killjoys, lobbying to eliminate the possibility of any such magic ever again. The start of the season, the first with interleague play every day, brought forth a new wave of calls for the National League to surrender its tradition and adopt the designated hitter.

Should the NL confiscate the bats of its pitchers so both leagues can play by the same rules? We'll take up that issue in a moment, but first: among those who could change the rules, there is no momentum to do so.

Joe Torre, the executive vice president who handles on-field matters for Commissioner Bud Selig, said the issue has not come up in the commissioner's office. Angels Manager Mike Scioscia, who serves on the Major League Baseball committee that would discuss the issue, said it has not come before the committee.

Colletti said the general managers have not debated the issue. Neither has the players' union, according to Executive Director Michael Weiner.

The current collective bargaining agreement, in force through the 2016 season, calls for up to 20 interleague games per year. The agreement specifies that the designated hitter "shall be used" for interleague games in American League ballparks and "shall not be used" for interleague games in NL parks.

In the bargaining talks, Weiner said, the players were much more interested in minimizing the number of interleague games than they were in standardizing the rules. At one point, the owners had proposed about 30 interleague games.

The greater the number of games between the leagues, the greater the potential effect on teams assembled under the rules of their own league.

The Angels, for instance, put together a fly-ball pitching staff, under the premise that Mike Trout and Peter Bourjos could run down just about any fly ball. Then they opened the season in Cincinnati, where Scioscia benched Bourjos so the Angels could keep Mark Trumbo's bat in the lineup.

If owners and players were to agree on one set of rules, the designated hitter would come to the NL, just as it has to the minor leagues and to virtually every other professional league in the world.

"For the baseball purists who say, 'Just get rid of the DH,' I don't see that happening," Scioscia said.

Continue reading.

France Getting Sucked Into Mali Quagmire

Well, France knows as much about strategic quagmires as anyone, I guess.

From John Irish, at Reuters, "Analysis: Mali insurgency endangers French pull-out plan."

And here's video that says France will stick to withdrawal plans:

If Only I Had a Tiger Mom or Started a Fake Charity...

From Suzy Lee Weiss, at WSJ, "To (All) the Colleges That Rejected Me":

Like me, millions of high-school seniors with sour grapes are asking themselves this week how they failed to get into the colleges of their dreams. It's simple: For years, they—we—were lied to.

Colleges tell you, "Just be yourself." That is great advice, as long as yourself has nine extracurriculars, six leadership positions, three varsity sports, killer SAT scores and two moms. Then by all means, be yourself! If you work at a local pizza shop and are the slowest person on the cross-country team, consider taking your business elsewhere.

What could I have done differently over the past years?

For starters, had I known two years ago what I know now, I would have gladly worn a headdress to school. Show me to any closet, and I would've happily come out of it. "Diversity!" I offer about as much diversity as a saltine cracker. If it were up to me, I would've been any of the diversities: Navajo, Pacific Islander, anything. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, I salute you and your 1/32 Cherokee heritage.

I also probably should have started a fake charity. Providing veterinary services for homeless people's pets. Collecting donations for the underprivileged chimpanzees of the Congo. Raising awareness for Chapped-Lips-in-the-Winter Syndrome. Fun-runs, dance-a-thons, bake sales—as long as you're using someone else's misfortunes to try to propel yourself into the Ivy League, you're golden.

Having a tiger mom helps, too. As the youngest of four daughters, I noticed long ago that my parents gave up on parenting me. It has been great in certain ways: Instead of "Be home by 11," it's "Don't wake us up when you come through the door, we're trying to sleep." But my parents also left me with a dearth of hobbies that make admissions committees salivate. I've never sat down at a piano, never plucked a violin. Karate lasted about a week and the swim team didn't last past the first lap. Why couldn't Amy Chua have adopted me as one of her cubs?

Then there was summer camp...

She's hilarious ---- but so true!

I love the "two moms" part. Yeah, that'll get you right in! Overcoming the bigotry and oppression straight to Harvard Yard!

Continue reading.

Sears Portrait Studio Closes Down

When my oldest son was born, we had Sears portraits done at 3 months, 6 months, 9 months, and one year. The prices were reasonable and we got to know the staff in the portrait studio. My second son just wouldn't sit long enough to really do the portraits, so I think we only took him a couple of times.

Now a tradition has ended, at the Wall Street Journal, "Lasting Memories? The Sears Portrait Studio Shuts Down: Photographer Had Been Experiencing Financial Troubles":

The lights have gone off on another American tradition.

The photographer that ran the portrait studios at Sears Holdings Corp., Wal-Mart Stores Inc. WMT and Babies "R" Us abruptly closed its business, at least temporarily ending a longtime retail tradition at those stores.

CPI Corp., CPIC -13.04% in a statement on its website, said it closed all of its U.S. studios "after many years of providing family portrait photography." The St. Louis-based company didn't explain the hasty closure, and calls to CPI went unanswered. However, the company has struggled financially, hurt by the rise of digital photography.

The news came suddenly to the retailers. "We were notified Thursday that CPI is ceasing its U.S. operations at retailers across the country immediately," Sears spokesman Howard Riefs said. CPI has provided photo services for Sears's customers since 1959 and has been the store's only portrait studio operator since 1986, currently located in all 788 Sears stores in the U.S. and Puerto Rico.

Sears "is exploring all options" to potentially provide portrait services as soon as possible, Mr. Riefs said.

The look and feel of the photographs—cloth backdrops, wide smiles and subjects looking slightly off-camera—became part of the visual dictionary of creative artists, being re-appropriated for everything from a band photo by the Red Hot Chili Peppers to the film poster for "The 40-Year-Old Virgin."

One former customer, Becky Schaaf, used to take her 4-year-old son to a Sears Portrait Studio every three months during the first year of his life, until she decided she could get the same result, or better, on her own or by finding local professionals.

"We started to realize that with a decent camera we could be taking strong photos," said Ms. Schaaf, now a mother of two in Ashland, Ohio. "I just got an iPhone…[and] for the day to day, we're just as happy with that."

Actually, I'm surprised the company didn't fold sooner. It's not like photography is just now changing or anything.

More at that top link.

Six Americans Killed in Afghanistan Attacks

At the Washington Post, "Six Americans, including three civilians, killed in attacks in Afghanistan."

Three American civilians and three U.S. troops were killed in two attacks in Afghanistan on Saturday, officials said, including a powerful blast that struck officials traveling to a school to donate books. Among the dead was the first State Department diplomat to be killed in the country since the war began.

The bloodshed Saturday, the deadliest day this year for Americans in Afghanistan, underscored how dangerous the country remains as the United States proceeds with the withdrawal of its remaining troops over the next 20 months, leaving security in the hands of Afghanistan’s fledgling army.

The attacks suggested that even as the military coalition’s focus shifts to managing the drawdown, the United States appears likely to face an intense “fighting season,” the springtime period in Afghanistan during which violence typically in­creases.

More at that top link, and at Long War Journal, "Taliban suicide bomber kills 5 ISAF personnel in southeastern Afghanistan."

Mean Tweets Are Mean!

This is hilarious!

The main solution? Just block the f-kers. Toxic. Hate-filled progressive idiots. Just block the losers.

Government Agencies Respond to 'Sovereign Citizens'

I consider people like this crackpots, although the Los Angeles Times is leaning toward the "right wing terrorist" meme with this piece.

See, "Police teach tactics for handling 'sovereign citizens'":

GREENSBORO, N.C. — With his shaggy hair, bushy mustache and obstinate ways, Jeffrey Allen Wright was well known to sheriff's deputies in Santa Rosa County, Fla.

Wright, 55, drove around with a phony license plate. When stopped, he refused to produce a driver's license. Once he threatened to sue a deputy who pulled him over.

After he was fined for traffic offenses in September, Wright paid with counterfeit money orders. When deputies served warrants for felony counterfeiting March 8, Wright barricaded himself in his garage and declared that he would not be "a servant of the king."

He broke out windows with a handgun, then pointed the weapon at officers, police said. Three deputies fired, killing Wright.

When Det. Rob Finch of the Greensboro police department heard about the incident, two words came to mind: sovereign citizen.

Finch teaches police and public officials around the country how to deal with self-described "sovereign citizens" like Wright. Finch and his partner, Det. Kory Flowers, have trained nearly 15,000 police and 5,000 public officials to combat sovereigns, zealots who refuse to recognize government authority in virtually any form.

Violent confrontations are rare, but the FBI says at least six police officers have been killed by sovereigns since 2000. A man tied to the movement shot and killed a California Highway Patrol officer who stopped him in Contra Costa County last year. A responding officer shot and killed the assailant.

The agency calls sovereigns — who number between 100,000 and 300,000 — a "domestic terrorist movement."...

Continue reading.

Amazing how Occupy Wall Street, a group that claimed anarchism as a founding tenet, was rarely described like this in the press. Well, not amazing, actually. We don't have an objective press anymore, if we ever did.

MSNBC's Melissa Harris-Perry: Children Are Collective Responsibility

Folks on the right are pretty shocked at this new "Lean Forward" ad featuring Melissa Harris-Perry at MSNBC.

Here's William Jacobson's post, "MSNBC — All your children are belong to us":

There is something wrong at MSNBC.

Terrifying-->MSNBC Host Melissa Harris-Perry » All Your Kids Belong To Us: youtu.be/N3qtpdSQox0 via @youtube
— Anna Maria Hoffman (@AM_Hoffman) April 6, 2013

Actually, I don't think there's anything wrong at MSNBC.

Remember, this is who they are. This is what they do.

Harris-Perry is perfectly comfortable spouting party propaganda, complete with all its Orwellian lies (that we don't spend enough on education, for example, a fact belied by comparative U.S. public and educational spending among the Western industrial democracies).

But that's okay. I think we're reaching a point in American politics where members of the progressive left are badly overreaching due to a perception of total liberation from the normal constraints of politics. As we saw with Krystal Ball, the left has no problem using 4-year-old children to spread homosexual marriage propaganda. In Ball's case, as least she was using her own child. But with Harris-Perry, the implication is that families are selfishly hoarding their children, denying to the state privately-minded generational capital that should instead be a proper public resource. For if children belong to the collective --- as in communal ownership --- then everyone is legally responsible for their education and well being, and political leaders can forcibly extract even more revenues for financing their education and welfare. This is socialist collectivism at its finest. And it's clearly un-American in the U.S. historical context. This country prizes individualism. Even a public educational system like ours promotes individualism because we see formal schooling as the means of promoting individual self-sufficiency and upward mobility. And schools have always been under the authority of local communities, since that way families can better control political leaders charged with their administration. It has never been true that children were seen as social capital subject to collective responsibility, much less that of a national collective of the sort that Harris-Perry envisions. That's a Marxist notion, or a Maoist one, as other blogs have noted. See Weasel Zippers, "MSNBC’s Melissa Harris-Perry Advocates Maoist “Collective” Child Raising, America’s “Kids Belong to Their Communities”…"

Also at Moonbattery, "MSNBC’s Melissa Harris-Perry: Children Are Communal Property":

To a moonbat, the community = the government. The voice of the community is the voice of the government, which is becoming increasingly synonymous with the establishment media.

Anyone still think it is hyperbole to call these people totalitarian?

Actually, it's not hyperbole at all. Harris-Perry sounds fascist even, in the sense of European interwar fascism of the individual being folded into a superior essence of the all-powerful state. Again, it's bizarre in the American experience, but progressives are really taking their political capital and running with it. The downside for them is that flyover America isn't at all in tune with this kind of collectivist fascist intellectualism. There will be a reckoning around election time. Indeed, I expect that MSNBC might have bitten off more that it's able to chew. We might be hearing more about "Lean Forward" very soon, and not in a good way.

Added: A great discussion, at Patheos, "All Your Children Are Belong to Us…"

Child Development Experts 'Stunned' by Supreme Court's Doubts on Homosexual Parenting

This piece is a riot, at the Los Angeles Times, "Three justices' concern over gay parenting surprises experts."

The depraved leftists have been desperately trying to normalize same-sex parenting, and have recently been bullying anyone who defects from the approved narrative on how children with same-sex parents fare "as well" as children with biological, mom and dad parents. The justices were right: There isn't enough data to know the effects of same-sex marriages on the well-being of children. And note this part from the Times' piece, buried way down toward the end of the article:

Not all of the academic experts find this research [on same-sex parenting] convincing.

Douglas W. Allen, a Canadian economist, says the many positive research reports on gay parents and their children were questionable. "The samples are small and biased. The people are self-selected," he said. "If you start with a biased sample, you can't make a statement about the population as a whole."

He published data from a Canadian census survey in 2006 that found children with lesbian or gay parents were less likely to graduate from high school.

You don't say? Wouldn't want to promote those findings too much, or anything.

Small samples, political and ideologically biased. That's going to be the case on this kind of research for a long time.

But we'll see how the Court rules in June. This is going to be something else.

Hollywood Glorifies Communists, Leftists, and Marxists

I guess there's another leftist whitewashing communist movie out, "Free Angela and All Political Prisoners."

Communist Angela Davis is still around, making the lecture circuit last I checked. I met her years ago when she was teaching at San Francisco State. My older sister fell under her wing for a bit. Amazing how times change. Greg Gutfeld just rips into to these people at the clip:

Lucy Pinder Photoshoot for Nuts Magazine April 2013

I got some Rule 5 requests landing in my inbox. I'll get to those ASAP.

Meanwhile, here's some lovely British hotness to hold folks over, at Egotastic!, "Thank God It’s Funbags! Lucy Pinder’s Perfect Play Plays Our Friday Song."

Ms. Pinder's on the cover of the April edition of Nuts, so you know what that means.

Hey, I Thought Those Muslima Wenches Were Supposed to Be Hip Swingers?

I guess not.

Muslim women apparently don't want hot liberated Western women interfering with their battle against the patriarchy. Good luck with that.

At BCF, "Pseudo-Feminists Agree: Islam Just Peachy- Femen Bad":

"FEMEN needs to recognize that Muslim women do in fact have agency, and the idea that Muslim women are helpless, passively indoctrinated by the alleged evils of Islam, and desperately need of Western feminist help is oppressive and orientalist.

"Agency." That's a big word, right? Click through for the full article.

#Femen #muslimahpride #toplessjihadday "I do not need patriarchal states or eurocentric feminists to dictate to me!" twitter.com/sofiaahmed1/st…

— Sofia Ahmed (@sofiaahmed1) April 4, 2013

MSNBC: A Televised Blog for Really Dumb People

Well said, from AoSHQ, "MSNBC, Kindergarten for Bored, Angry Unemployed People":

The MSNBC Messaging Machine finds new ways to be stupid just about every day.

MSNBC is a televised blog. I keep saying this because it's true: part of blogs' charm, at least initially, was that they gleefully ignored any standards of professionalism. The honesty about the slapdash nature of them was bracing. And the honesty about agenda -- to wit, we have one -- was liberating.

But that upside of blogs also comes with a downside. Blogs speak relentlessly to one side of the aisle (are there any actual centrist blogs out there? It's a business model I don't think can actually work). We look for new ways to provoke -- because it's fun and profitable. And I don't mean that in the cliched joke way; I mean, it's literally both fun and profitable (at least in the sense of hit-whoring) to find exciting new manners of juvenile tweaking of one's political enemies.

The medium tends towards two things: emotional hotness and intellectual dumbness. Those aren't cast-iron rules, of course. (Present company excepted!)

MSNBC has fully embraced the blogger ethos of hit-whoring provocation first, second, last, and always. As well as exploring all the new and inventive ways to call people you don't like Nazis.

There simply is no professionalism at MSNBC, no aspiration to any kind of standards at all. It's Dumb By Design (TM), because Dumb is Easy and Easy is Holy.

Dumb, and morally bankrupt.

PREVIOUSLY: "Call Child Protective Services: MSNBC's Krystal Ball Pimps Out Daughter in Depraved Homosexual Marriage Segment."

Pam Bondi Hotter Than Kamala Harris? The Debate

Well, I'll tell you. Kamala Harris was freakin' smokin' the cables on MSNBC a couple of weeks back. The lady his hot.

But no doubt it's a tough match-up going against Florida AG Pam Bondi, as pointed out by Chris Joseph, at the Daily Pulp, "Obama Got It All Wrong With California Attorney General; Florida Attorney General Is Way Hotter." (Honestly though, by politics alone Pam Bondi smokes the competition. As beautiful is Kamala Harris, the leftist ideology she spews will make you puke sooner or later.)

BONUS: Additional commentary at The Other McCain, "If Obama Has Lost Garance …"  And Power Line (via Memeorandum).

The Tolerance Enforcers Will Not Tolerate Dissent

From Mark Steyn, at National Review, "The ‘Vigilance’ Vigilantes":

He who controls the language shapes the debate: In the same week the Associated Press announced that it would no longer describe illegal immigrants as “illegal immigrants,” the star columnist of the New York Times fretted that the Supreme Court seemed to have misplaced the style book on another fashionable minority. “I am worried,” wrote Maureen Dowd, “about how the justices can properly debate same-sex marriage when some don’t even seem to realize that most Americans use the word ‘gay’ now instead of ‘homosexual.’” She quoted her friend Max Mutchnick, creator of Will & Grace:

“Scalia uses the word ‘homosexual’ the way George Wallace used the word ‘Negro.’ There’s a tone to it. It’s humiliating and hurtful. I don’t think I’m being overly sensitive, merely vigilant.”

For younger readers, George Wallace was a powerful segregationist Democrat. Whoa, don’t be overly sensitive. There’s no “tone” to my use of the word “Democrat”; I don’t mean to be humiliating and hurtful: It’s just what, in pre-sensitive times, we used to call a “fact.” Likewise, I didn’t detect any “tone” in the way Justice Scalia used the word “homosexual.” He may have thought this was an appropriately neutral term, judiciously poised midway between “gay” and “Godless sodomite.” Who knows? He’s supposed to be a judge, and a certain inscrutability used to be part of what we regarded as a judicial temperament. By comparison, back in 1986, the year Scalia joined the Supreme Court, the chief justice, Warren Burger, declared “there is no such thing as a fundamental right to commit homosexual sodomy.” I don’t want to be overly sensitive, but I think even I, if I rewound the cassette often enough, might be able to detect a certain tone to that.

Nonetheless, Max Mutchnick’s “vigilance” is a revealing glimpse of where we’re headed. Canada, being far more enlightened than the hotbed of homophobes to its south, has had gay marriage coast to coast for a decade. Statistically speaking, one-third of 1 percent of all Canadian nuptials are same-sex, and, of that nought-point-three-three, many this last decade have been American gays heading north for a marriage license they’re denied in their own country. So gay marriage will provide an important legal recognition for an extremely small number of persons who do not currently enjoy it. But, putting aside arguments over the nature of marital union, the legalization of gay marriage will empower a lot more “vigilance” from all the right-thinking people over everybody else.

Mr. Mutchnick’s comparison of the word “homosexual” with “Negro” gives the game away: Just as everything any conservative says about anything is racist, so now it will also be homophobic. It will not be enough to be clinically neutral (“homosexual”) on the subject — or tolerant, bored, mildly amused, utterly indifferent...

No, they don't tolerate much, do they. See College Insurrection for just one more quick example that comes to mind: "Gay Students Seek Campus Chaplain’s Removal from George Washington U."

'Merchants of Despair'

I spent the day reading Robert Zubrin's book, Merchants of Despair: Radical Environmentalists, Criminal Pseudo-Scientists, and the Fatal Cult of Antihumanism. I haven't been reading many books cover to cover recently, but I made it a point to blow this one out yesterday. What a great read. I expect to have more later, but the chapters on the eugenics movement were jaw dropping. American eugenicist Margaret Sanger founded Planned Parenthood, and Zubrin's quotes from Sanger and her henchmen were literally beyond shocking. Racist, anti-human, and totalitarian --- chilling, to put it mildly. And after seeing the video of Planned Parenthood lobbyist Alisa LaPolt Snow unable to denounce botched late-term abortions during that Florida legislative hearing, it's a reminder that this stuff ain't ancient history, despite the despicable denials of the death-cult baby killer progressives.

More on Zubrin's book later...

Leftists Attack New York Community Activist Majora Carter for 'Selling Out' to Corporate Interests

Well, it looks like the lady's holding up pretty well. Is she hypocritical? Perhaps. She won some big money grants and started livin' large, but she's savvy and expanded her consulting firm to help maintain business access to the Bronx community. Sounds like she's gonna help folks a lot more than the progressive NIMBY freaks.

At NYT, "Hero of the Bronx Is Now Accused of Betraying It."