Links - 14th September 2018 (1)

Firebrand: Phyllis Schlafly and the Right-Wing Revolution - "“I just don’t see why some people don’t hit Phyllis Schlafly in the mouth,” a well-known feminist lawyer, Florence Kennedy, told a Miami radio station. “I’d like to burn you at the stake,” Betty Friedan blurted out during a debate with Schlafly in Bloomington, Illinois. “I consider you a traitor to your sex. I consider you an Aunt Tom.”... Schlafly once said that the pro-E.R.A. [Equal Rights Amendment] movement had “sealed its own doom,” and to a certain extent she was right. Feminist groups had fought off efforts to add a provision to the amendment that would have exempted women from the draft. Though it was unclear whether passage of the E.R.A. would have meant women could be sent into combat, advocates found themselves arguing that this would be a desirable outcome. (When Alan Alda, a vocal E.R.A. proponent, was asked whether he would support his daughters’ being drafted, he answered emphatically “Yes,” only to add that his daughters would be conscientious objectors.) Meanwhile, as the ratification battle dragged on, the nation’s most prominent pro-E.R.A. group, the National Organization for Women, became increasingly associated with radical feminist politics. In a 1977 book, “The Power of the Positive Woman,” Schlafly reprinted in its entirety one of the organization’s pamphlets, “Revolution: Tomorrow Is NOW,” which proposed, among other things, “an end to militarism, narcissism and sexually stereotyped advertising” for children’s toys and a public veil-burning to “protest the second class status of women in all churches.”"
Feminists have been nasty for a long time

The Confusion About Pets - "an increasing number of your neighbors have been keeping company with their pets in human-only establishments, cohabiting with them in animal-unfriendly apartment buildings and dormitories, and taking them (free!) onto airplanes—simply by claiming that the creatures are their licensed companion animals and are necessary to their mental well-being. No government agency keeps track of such figures, but in 2011 the National Service Animal Registry, a commercial enterprise that sells certificates, vests, and badges for helper animals, signed up twenty-four hundred emotional-support animals. Last year, it registered eleven thousand. What about the mental well-being of everyone else? One person’s emotional support can be another person’s emotional trauma... The Americans with Disabilities Act allows you to ask someone with a service animal only two questions: Is the animal required because of a disability? What work or task has the animal been trained to perform? Specific questions about a person’s disability are off limits, and, as I mentioned, people are baffled by the distinction between service animals and emotional-support animals. Len Kain, the editor-in-chief of dogfriendly.com, a Web site that features pet-travel tips, said, “The law is fuzzy. If you ask one too many questions, you’re in legal trouble for violating the Americans with Disabilities Act and could face fines of up to a hundred thousand dollars. But, if you ask one too few questions, you’re probably not in trouble, and at worst will be given a slap on the wrist.”"

That One Time The Pope Banned Cats And It Caused The Black Plague - "Gregory lived from 1145 to 1241, AD. He was born Ugolino di Conti but took the name Gregory when he became the pope... It was his distaste for cats that penned the Vox in Rama. That was the first church document condemning black cats as instruments of satan. By Gregory’s decree, there was a target on the head of every black cat."

Humans Walked Differently Before AD 1500, Research Shows - "in Medieval times, people had to be much more careful about where and how they stepped. As such, they had a completely different gait that was based much more on the balls of the feet. This allows you to feel out potential dangers and obstacles before completely bearing your bodyweight on that foot…and possibly on a snake or hidden rock."

No Time - "Ann Burnett, has collected five decades’ worth of holiday letters and found that they’ve come to dwell less and less on the blessings of the season and more and more on how jam-packed the previous year has been. Based on this archive, Burnett has concluded that keeping up with the Joneses now means trying to outschedule them. (In one recent letter, a mother boasts of schlepping her kids to so many activities that she drives “a hundred miles a day.”) “There’s a real ‘busier than thou’ attitude,” Burnett says. A second theory that Schulte considers is that “the overwhelm” is a function not so much of how many things Americans have to do but of how much time they spend thinking about how many things they have to do... As the income gap in the U.S. has widened, it’s actually lower-wage workers who have ended up with the most leisure. And it’s high earners who report feeling the most time pressure. This is true even for couples in which only one spouse works outside the home"

Top Dem candidate gave millions to groups advocating for taxing families 'to the hilt' for 'irresponsible breeding' - "Scott Wallace, a liberal millionaire candidate running for Congress in Pennsylvania, has given millions of dollars to so-called population control groups. Such groups have advocated for taxing parents “to the hilt” for having more than two children, calling it “irresponsible breeding,” and said abortion is “a highly effective weapon” to combat overpopulation."
It's only bad when the Koch brothers do it

Better Research Through Video Games - "The medium’s greatest threat, they concluded, is not that it turns people into vicious killers, or that it dulls their communication skills, or that it sunders their minds from reality. No, the problem is that, in providing players with a sense of accomplishment, games may distract our species from genuine achievement... for the rote tasks that are the bread and butter of most scientific research, gamification can be a natural complement—especially since so many video games already simulate labor"

Can Reading Make You Happier? - "a long-held belief among both writers and readers that books are the best kinds of friends; they give us a chance to rehearse for interactions with others in the world, without doing any lasting damage"

Trevor Noah's World Cup joke shows how the world misunderstands the French - "what Noah, Beydoun, and others may not realize is that the soccer players themselves don’t want to be seen as anything other than French, for reasons that go back to the founding of the French Republic. Before the French Revolution, a person’s “Frenchness” was typically seen as deriving from their Gallo-Roman ancestry. But the changing demographics and evolving mentality of French people during the politically tumultuous 18th century meant that French people had to be defined, and united, by more than just a common ancestry. The future of the French nation-state was at stake... That’s where the difference between multiculturalist states like the US and assimilationist states like France really comes in. The Jacobin universalist definition of the French national identity promises to allow people freedom from differences; if everyone is French first, then everyone is equal. The “melting-pot,” multiculturalist American model allows people the freedom to be different, but still be American... “Unlike the United States of America, France does not refer to their citizens based on their race, religion or origin. To us, there is no hyphenated identity, roots are an individual reality. By calling them an African team, it seems you are denying their Frenchness. This, even in jest, legitimizes the ideology which claims whiteness as the only definition of being French.”... In imposing the identity of “African” on these players, Noah also ignored the wishes of professional athletes themselves, some of whom have responded directly to this controversy. Benjamin Mendy, who is on the French national soccer team, responded to a tweet by a French sports publication of each player’s non-French family origin with a series of French flags and the word “fixed”"

Robbery on the go: Moving bus looted during World Cup celebrations in Grenoble (VIDEO)
Maybe this kind of thing is worth a World Cup win

Can the French Talk About Race? - "race and ethnicity seem too explosive to discuss frankly. In developing its alternative to affirmative action, France has developed its own euphemistic language: neighborhoods with a high percentage of descendants of immigrants are often referred to as quartiers sensibles, or sensitive neighborhoods, and their school districts are called zones d’éducation prioritaire"
Given that liberals are crowing that "Africans" won France the World Cup (when 21/23 of them were born in France)...

Fifa World Cup: Trevor Noah accused of racism by France fans as Daily Show host jokes ‘Africa won’ Russia 2018 final - "Is this what you want to deliver to all African-Americans also?"

Trevor Noah slammed for stand-up about Aboriginal women - "COMEDIAN Trevor Noah is under fire after footage from a 2013 stand-up special resurfaced, showing the comic making crude and derogatory jokes about Aboriginal women."
Live by liberalism...

Shipwrecks Under Istanbul - "sorting the contents into three groups: display quality, study quality, and uninteresting. The first two groups would be sent to the museum; the third would be put into sacks and reburied. Contemporary Turkish coins would also be put in the sacks, as a message to future archeologists that the materials had been reburied in the twenty-first century."

Report: After Kicking Out Customer Over Jawbreakers - Lost Souls, Magic Mirror Comics Closes - "The news of Magic Mirror Comics going out of business comes less than two months after Heather Harris McFarlane, who works at the shop, promised to to “drag and dunk” Antarctic Press for publishing Diversity & Comics, Jon Malin, and Brett R. Smith’s Jawbreaker – Lost Souls graphic novel. She would go on to promise that “whoever publishes it is losing my business, and my customers will know why.” Not only did Magic Mirror Comics promise to go after the publisher, but she also decided to target her own customers. A customer by the name of Dylan who makes YouTube videos on his channel TheRealComicBookGamer claims he was kicked out of the store for supporting Jawbreakers – Lost Souls."
SJW comic store shuts down

Mobs on the Menu: Restaurateurs and the Culture War - "it shows how reflexively (and often baselessly) terms such as ‘Nazi’ and ‘white supremacy’ get thrown around. The leadership of the L.A. chapter of Proud Boys is headed by an Asian president and a queer V.P. (they asked that they not be named). Several of the Proud Boys in attendance that night included men of color. Edwin Arthur, a 44 year-old black Proud Boy who was at The Griffin tells me he was shocked to see white protesters calling him a white supremacist and Nazi sympathizer... relatively small groups of activists can now leverage their power on social media to enlist otherwise apolitical businesses into their mission to shame and marginalize political actors with unpopular opinions. In March, Kachka, a Russian eatery in Portland, Oregon, was smeared online as a hub for Nazi sympathizers after the owner refused to eject a patron accused of wearing a Nazi shirt. Deavon Snoke, one of the offended patrons, had shared her experience online with a photo of the man. “Remember his face. Memorize the symbolism on his shirt. Yell as loud as you can,” she wrote in the viral post. The business was soon bombarded with calls and hysterical accusations that it had acted in solidarity with Nazis. It didn’t matter that the business was Jewish-owned, or that one of the owner’s grandmothers escaped the Nazis in Belarus. As for the shirt, it actually just displayed a variant of the contemporary German Air Force logo (the German word for air force—Luftwaffe—is unchanged from that used during the Nazi era). Last month, The Green Dragon Tavern in Boston was similarly accused of hosting Nazis when a group of patrons dined there following an entirely legal gun rights and free speech rally at the State House. They were followed by counter-protesters who demanded that management kick them out. When The Green Dragon declined to do so, an online campaign mobilized hundreds of people to attack the family-owned business with vicious reviews. In what now seems like a predictable development, some trolls spread the claim the group was tolerated even as its members openly wore swastikas and white supremacist symbols (the tavern released security footage showing this claim was false)... Calling all right-wing ideologues Nazis and white supremacists diminishes the horror of actual Nazi crimes and chattel slavery—doubly so when such libels are hurled at Jews and blacks. Online activists such as Androsky claim they are looking out for the vulnerable. But the main effect of their campaigns is to drive away customers from small businesses that provide jobs for those in the community"

Men Legally Allowed to Finish Sex Even If Woman Revokes Consent, NC Law States - "While North Carolina may be the only state where women explicitly can't withdraw consent after sexual intercourse has begun, most other states see this as a gray area. Only South Dakota, Connecticut, California, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Kansas, and Minnesota affirmatively recognize that consent can be withdrawn at any time during sex; Illinois is the only one that's made it law."

Gallup Shows How Much Americans Really Care About The "Situation With Russia" - "when asked what the most important problem facing the nation is, Russia did not even warrant a 1% - and worse still, it is declining in importance from there... with all that energy expended on pinning the Russia collusion tail on Trump's campaign donkey, let alone former FBI Director Comey's insistence that 'anyone voting Republican is anti-American', we are reminded of the blinkered view of the world so many suffer from and what Steve Bannon said yesterday at CNBC's "Delivering Alpha" conference: The Democrats abandoned the American worker."

Jack Posobiec🇺🇸 on Twitter: "Every US president before Trump has been friendly with Putin. This outrage machine is confusing as hell… "

Trump isn’t the first president to embarrass himself by cozying up to Putin - The Washington Post - "as cringeworthy as Trump’s news conference was, unlike Obama, he didn’t throw U.S. allies under the bus to appease Putin or take any of the actions many feared — such as lifting sanctions or recognizing Putin’s annexation of Crimea. Unlike his rhetoric, Trump’s Russia policy has actually been a dramatic improvement over that of his predecessor... If Putin was looking for a more pro-Moscow policies from the United States, his election interference backfired in a big way. Critics say that words matter — and they are right. But if words matter, then Trump’s critics should be careful what they say. In many cases, their responses to Trump’s news conference have matched the president in absurdity... As always, Trump’s critics bail him out by overplaying their hands. A news conference, however humiliating, is not an impeachable offense. And conspiracy theories aside, there is a simple explanation for Trump’s performance in Helsinki: He is deeply wrong on Russia. He thinks he can charm Putin into behaving like a normal leader. Trump will learn that Putin is KGB to his core, just as those before Trump learned. When should we be worried? When Trump’s actions match his rhetoric. Until then, Trump’s summit was simply an embarrassment, not a disaster."
More proof that words speak louder than actions
Looks like democracy has died in darkness when they agree with the Pizzagate guy