The Greatest President

The 114th Congress of the United States will be sworn in tomorrow. The GOP will control both houses. In the spirit of conciliation, President Obama will blow them off and hit the road. Instead of scheduling meetings with lawmakers, and sketching out a legislative agenda, he is going back on the campaign trail. Starting Wednesday, he will be in Detroit, Phoenix and Tennessee for the rest of the week.

President Obama has decided that he doesn't need Congress, except to fund the government. He has decided to govern by fiat instead of by pluralism. Whatever he wants can be accomplished either with agencies like E.P.A. issuing new regulations, or by executive whim.

Ronald Reagan used to go on television to ask the American people to support a particular piece of legislation, and the people would badger their representatives. He believed that true power derived from a mandate from the people. Barack Obama will make a speech in front of college students and announce an edict that will subsidize more college enrollment. And the liberal arts majors on the road to indentured servitude will cheer in jubilation.

Obama will also talk about his favorite subject, himself. He will swagger and claim credit for the economic recovery. Missing from his rhetoric will be the fact that this recovery has been paid for with trillions of borrowed dollars, and trillions more injected by the Federal Reserve. The reason the American economy is getting traction now is lower gas prices and the wealth effect from the stock market. The economy is recovering in spite of his endeavors.

This President claimed he was unaware of the VA scandal until he read it in the newspaper. This President said he found out about the IRS targeting the Tea Party from the media. Yes, this President will claim he has steered the ship of state away from the shoals.

When I was little, my mother took me to St. George's Episcopal Church. Among other entreaties, Father Lathrop would always ask the congregation to pray for President Nixon and the nation. I found that stunning as an eight-year-old. I had been taught that Richard Nixon was evil. Every authority figure who influenced me, had made me swallow the same lesson, that he was malevolent and responsible for killing innocent Vietnamese people. Father Lathrop had helped me see the truth, that Nixon was a human being that deserved our love and support.

I pray for God to bless President Obama and the United States of America.

Bucks vs. Ducks

Long after I retired to bed on New Year's Day, the Ohio State Buckeyes' football squad finished an improbable come-from-behind victory over Alabama's Crimson Tide. They will play for the National Championship in a rematch of a game I attended, the 2010 Rose Bowl victory over Oregon. I came away from that game supremely impressed in the graciousness and good sportsmanship of the Duck faithful.

The Buckeye-Alabama game was televised on ESPN but I didn't watch it. Subscribing to ESPN seems a frivolous expense to me, the games themselves offering continually diminishing returns of enjoyment.

If my father were still alive, we would have watched the game together. Watching sports of all kinds, but especially baseball and football, were essential adhesives of our relationship. Now that he is gone, the desire to invest my attention to the events has steadily attenuated. I tried to watch the Steelers-Ravens game last night, and it was a bit too homoerotic for me, alleged rapist Ben Roethlisberger strolling to the line with his exaggerated shoulders and tiny buttocks.

This depreciation actually started when the L.A. Rams moved out of Southern California. I identified with many of the personalities in their heyday, like Fred Dryer, Jack Youngblood, and Deacon Jones. Jackie Slater spoke to my high school. When Kurt Warner took the St. Louis Rams to the Super Bowl, I got back on the bandwagon, but I don't follow them any more.

I used to have a fantasy football team, but that was when Dan Marino was still in the league. I used to press my younger brother to let me into his league, but he always refused, saying there were too many teams. It saddens me that this chance to maintain a relationship with him was so easily dismissed.

The relationships that I do have are mostly maintained through Facebook. I intensely detest Mark Zuckerberg, so I spend very little time in that medium.

I used to believe that sports could serve as a bridge between dissimilar cultures and classes. If there was one thing that a black man and I could agree on, or at least discuss, was how marvelous Michael Jordan was. But sports today have been taken over by social justice warriors.

Jim Rome used to be edgy, but now he takes pains to be politically correct, with unqualified support for athletes coming out of the closet and declaring their homosexuality, like Michael Sam. It's very easy for someone with a liberal arts indoctrination, who has never played professional sports, to wave away concerns about open homosexuals in communal locker and shower rooms. Would he have the same dismissive attitude if a male reporter insisted on covering women's sporting events, including locker room interviews, with partially clothed women on display?

Feminists unleashed a twitter shit-storm when a woman wrote an article on how men can talk to women about sports for Men's Health.

When I am at the gym using the cardio equipment, I am likely to see Ray Lewis during football season, as he is a commentator for ESPN. And that makes my blood boil. Where is the justice for Richard Lollar and Jacinth Baker?

Thorstein Veblen remarked that, "the addiction to sports, therefore, in a peculiar degree marks an arrested development in man's moral nature.

Hooray Nicki!

Nicki Minaj has exposed her soul to the world. The glitter and gloss have all been stripped off. Everything appealing about her, extruded from without into a consumable pop confection, has given way to her humanity within. I have been allowed to see past the veneer into her spirit self, and I am proud to think of her as my sister.

I am not a consumer of Nicki's oeuvre. I am aware of her song, Anaconda. Sometimes I see her on TMZ so I know who she is. But that makes me the cultural outlier. She has nearly nineteen million Twitter followers, more than LeBron James. These people listen to and obsess over every single word she utters.

Minaj granted an interview to Rolling Stone Magazine, and shared the story about the abortion she had as a teenager. She said, "it was the hardest thing I'd ever gone through," and that the decision has "haunted me all my life." She adds, "It'd be contradictory if I said I wasn't pro-choice."

I will leave aside my fear whether or not her "pro-choice" comment and the deed itself will provide justification to other women and girls to seek abortions. Just googling "Nicki Minaj Rolling Stone" yields a search result from the New Pittsburgh Courier,summarizing her interview with "Nicki Minaj speaks about break-up, being pro-choice." For now I want to amplify what she is saying about her "choice."

On her song, All Things Go, she writes "My child with Aaron, would've have been sixteen, any minute." Men and women who have committed abortion often commemorate the imaginary birthdays of the children they turned their backs on, as if what they had was a stillborn childbirth or miscarriage.

On her song, Autobiography, she writes,

Please baby forgive me, mommy was young, mommy was to busy tryna have fun
and now I don't pat myself on the back for sending you back
'cause god knows I was better than that to conceive then leave you the concept alone seems evil I'm trapped in my conscience
I adhere to the nonsense listened to people who told me I wasn't ready for you
But how the fuck would they know what I was ready to do
And of course it wasn't your fault
It's like I feel it in the air, I hear you saying mommy don't cry
can't you see I'm right here I gotta let you know what you mean to me
when I'm sleeping I see you in my dreams with me wish I could touch your little face
or just hold your little hand if it's part of gods plan, maybe we can meet again

That doesn't sound like she believes a clump of cells were aspirated from her uterus. That sounds like she realizes that a human life in a very vulnerable stage of development was ripped from her body, because she herself adhered to the nonsense, the propaganda being fed to her by the smiley-faced killers in the abortion factories.

If last year was the year of the abortion selfie, may this year be the year of more honest post-abortion self-examination, and hopefully, fewer procedures. There is nothing gained by shaming Nicki or Emily, yet we gain our souls by preventing them in the future.

Obama's Bill of Attainder

"He who pays the piper, calls the tune" - popular idiom

The Department of Education has instructed Harvard Law to suspend due process for complaints of sexual harassment and assault. This was in spite of the efforts of President Obama's mentor, Charles Ogletree. He was among twenty-eight Harvard Law professors, including seven women, who wrote a letter to the Boston Globe claiming that the school's sexual harassment policy lacks “the most basic elements of fairness and due process.”

The Department of Education has its own Office for Civil Rights, whose main responsibility seems to be installing Title IX coordinators in institutions across the country who will then adjudicate cases of alleged sexual violence. And OCR can do this because Harvard accepts hundreds of millions of dollars from the federal government every year.

The professors' main concerns include the inability for the accused to present evidence and cross-examine witnesses; putting the investigation, prosecution and appellate review in the hands of one office that is aligned with Title IX compliance instead of an impartial entity; and denying the accused counsel.

Now Harvard Law must adopt a "preponderance of evidence" standard for deciding cases of rape, sexual assault and sexual harassment. This means that a faculty member, who would represent the jury, only needs to determine that it was more likely than not that the offense occurred. This stands in stark contrast to the criminal justice system, whose standard is more stringent, and requires evidence beyond a reasonable doubt.

Harvard Law must also review any complaints of sexual harassment filed during the 2012-13 and 2013-14 school years to carefully scrutinize whether the Law School investigated the complaints consistent with Title IX and provide any additional remedies necessary for the complainants.

What are they going to do, strip a graduate of his law degree? This trial by executive fiat and reaching into the past amount to unconstitutional bills of attainder. Funny that many people voted for Obama because they thought they were electing a Constitutional Law professor.

Helpfully, the OCR has directed Harvard Law to "notify complainants of their right...to pursue the criminal process in cases of sexual assault or other sexual violence." Nice of them to notice that sexual violence is a criminal matter. It's not the analogue of cheating on an exam.

A Cast Of Hawks

The hawk is awake before I am. He has taken up residence in our tree, and built a roomy nest. My senses have yet to become truly engaged. Then I hear him, the morning crier heralding the new day as I prepare my coffee. His cool eyes survey the pre-dawn landscape, while he searches for worthy prey. I harness the dogs for our walk, and discern the signal-and-response between him and his mate.

The dogs and I tread over well-worn ground. Their noses twitch as they drink in the scents borne on morning breezes, or that linger on the ground. When we pass by certain houses, the dogs that live there notify us pointedly that we do not belong. We venture more than a mile from our house, establishing that these areas are, to us, an extension of our territory. At this great distance from home, I can still hear the hawk, his exclamations cleaving the air.

All the birds have been awakened, and their song fills my ears. Crows murder the calm with throaty wheezing, and hummingbirds chirp in a language like morse-code. My thoughts flitter and drift, accepting of subjects capricious and incidental. I actively hope our hawks find the pocket gophers that infest the underworld on our little plot. I hope they swoop down and tear their limbs off.

Our pocket gophers have developed a keen taste for flowering plants. The blue wildflowers I sowed near the fence. The sunflowers that were destined to greet us through our bedroom window. And the California poppies, white ones and orange ones and a sea of yellow ones. I am tormented by their loss.

As I type this, the Tournament of Roses Parade is promenading down Colorado Blvd in Pasadena. The floats are mechanized, yet every bit on display is from a living thing. All sorts of crushed seeds, ground up leaves, and flowers of every variety, plucked in peak bloom. I always considered The Rose Parade to be "my" parade, since La Canada is one town over. Girls from our high school were always in the Royal Court, and several of the Queens were classmates of mine.

After the parade has passed, the floats are driven to a lot where they can be viewed. As the blooms wilt and fall off, they stand monument to a parade all their own, a parade of those would drink in their startling visual beauty and inhale their fading redolence.

Tropes Vs Women - Damsels in Distress

Anita Sarkeesian's Youtube video Damsel in Distress: Part 1 - Tropes vs Women in Video Games has been viewed 2.27 million times. The central theme of the video is how portrayals of damsels in distress is "pernicious" and harmful to women, because it strips them of their power. This video is the product of flawed reasoning and a damaged psyche, and for these reasons, comments are disabled. A viewer cannot even vote 'like' or 'dislike' on any of her videos.

Sarkeesian claims that the damsel construct "disempowers female characters and robs them of the chance to be heroes in their own right." The narrative focus is on the male character, but the female character is not 'disempowered,' rather she becomes the inspiration for the quest, literally breathing life into the story.

Sarkeesian does acknowledge that this plot device is ancient, by relating the tale of Perseus. Another classic story employing this synecdoche is Homer's Odyssey. According to Wiki, "The poem [Odyssey] is fundamental to the modern Western canon and is the second oldest extant work of Western literature, the Iliad being the oldest." In addition, "many scholars believe that the original poem was composed in an oral tradition."

These are stories that are as old as Western Civilization, and fit comfortably within the linear heroic narrative that most video games employ. Even the very first video game console was called the Magnavox Odyssey.

Perhaps what most bothers Sarkeesian is human nature itself. When a woman becomes pregnant, she becomes imprisoned by her pregnancy. To employ a common idiom, a girl who gets pregnant is often said to be "in trouble." Thus the damsel in distress is not just a quick plot device, it is part of feminine nature.

Sarkeesian went back to 1980's video games to bolster her rhetoric, but she completely ignored some very popular titles produced since then, that fully empower female characters. Perfect Dark, released in 2000, sold more than 3.2 million copies, and had several spinoffs. Tomb Raider has sold more than 42 million units, and inspired ten iterations and two major motion pictures. And today's RPG's all feature the option of selecting a male or female protagonist.

Maybe Sarkeesian should produce a Youtube video complaining about the damsel device in major motion pictures. Movies like Raiders of the Lost Ark, Superman, and Star Wars are continually made and deliver the highest grosses. They get rebooted constantly, because it is easier than coming up with new ideas, and nobody with any credibility calls them "regressive crap."

Anita Sarkeesian, Welfare Queen

Wikipedia defines welfare queen as a pejorative phrase used in the United States to refer to people, usually women, who are accused of collecting excessive welfare payments through fraud or manipulation. I wouldn't describe Anita's efforts as fraud, but they are certainly manipulative. Since her organization, Feminist Frequency, is a 501(c)3 non profit charity, she can draw a salary and pay employees out of donations.

And all those donations are tax exempt, thanks to the tax code.

I'm not faulting Sarkeesian here, only noting that she is responding to incentives. Just like the mythical welfare queen who isn't legally married, yet keeps popping out kids, because it pays well. Sarkeesian keeps popping out videos, because they pay well. They pay well because the government considers her organization educational, and worthy of tax subsidies.

Somebody once said it you want less of something, tax it, and if you want more of something, subsidize it. Therefore, Feminist Frequency videos complaining about sexist LEGO toys and misogynist video games will never end.

All of this 'spending through the tax code' creates distortions in the economy. Every single one should be torn down and done away with. The mortgage tax deduction mostly benefits upper-income taxpayers and owners of multiple properties. I'm in favor of encouraging deductions for charitable spending, but outside of the tax code. And the deduction for health insurance purchases by corporations is how we got Obamacare in the first place.

Feminist Frequency can say whatever they want to say. What they do is protected speech. Same goes for Planned Parenthood and their 501(c)3, Planned Parenthood Action Fund. They can say whatever they want, but please don't tell me it's not political. They have been saying for years that the "personal is political." The modes of production for FemFreq and PPAF are similar. They both produce abortions. Let them pay their own way.

The Gift That Keeps Giving

Feminism, also know as conviction of female supremacy, and its dogma, is openly misandrist. If feminism were purely concerned with equality of opportunity regardless of gender, then it would be called egalitarianism.

Much of current feminism can be dismissed as an affectation of youth. A college student who has been exposed to new information may feel that they have got it all figured out. Yet they remain in a sheltered bubble, insulated from the demands of the real world. A lot of youthful affectations fade away when people take on responsibilities.

I attempt to approach feminist screeds with a light heart. At the same time, they do produce and reinforce a sense of wariness. For example, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand is one of those in favor of affirmative consent laws going nationwide. These 'only yes means yes' guidelines are in place at California colleges, and hold that an "individual commits sexual assault if he or she does not receive explicit prior consent for each sexual act committed with another person."

Now consider this hostility toward men masquerading as comedy. It's called the basic bitch gift guide. The word 'bitch' is the feminist equivalent of the "N" word. It's okay if they use it, but do not dare to do so if you are an outsider.

The video shows three young women in Santa hats giggling while they advise what kinds of gifts to give a bitch, like a "mani-pedi from her favorite salon." While the video rolls, a message in large block letters flashes on the screen, like "men's interests are often stupid," and "men denied loans." The first seems a playful acknowledgement that men often view women's interests with bewilderment. The second is a reference to the past, in which women were prevented from experiencing independent economic opportunities.

The messages continue to devolve, with one demanding "keep colleges women-only," "no male judges," "all men denied healthcare," "women are the new majority," and "Jesus died for women's rights." Some are just plain silly, like "men only used for sex," but they lose comedy points at the end with the request for "all men kept in cages in 2015."

This is clearly intended to be funny, with some trolling, but I have never found feminist scolds to be all that funny. Maybe because the joke is supposed to be on me (Kli Tik askes "is your girlfriend, friend, sister or mother a basic "b" ? And Christmas is just around the corner?? Let us help you find her the perfect gift, you man, you!"). Enjoy your spinster-hood, hags. In twenty years, the type of gifts that people will be buying for you will probably be cat-related.

The Fevered Dreams of Zoe Quinn

The #Gamergate story getting a lot of traction recently is the 11-page novella pulled from Amazon, entitled "Roughed Up By #GamerGape." This has been described as a thinly-veiled rape fantasy about Zoe Quinn.

The Overwatch has credulously reported that this novella proves #Gamergate's misogyny, even though it was #Gamergate supporters that reported the book as being in violation of Amazon's TOS, and helped to get it pulled. Radfem site Jezebel reported that Quinn found the book on Amazon this morning herself.

Found it herself, did she? I will go so far as to hypothesize that she probably wrote, or more likely commissioned it, herself. It arose from her borderline personality disorder, with only the names changed to protect the misogynists.

I can't find a copy of the novella, so I have to make inferences from the blurb. First, the blurb describes her as a "controversial video game designer." Only Quinn and her champions would describe her in this way. Depression Quest is not a video game. It is a text adventure that no one would ever consider entertainment.

"...when her latest game offends the nation..." Depression Quest certainly has the potential to offend the nation.

"...five men unleash their pent up anger on poor Zada." Five men, five men, now where have I heard that before? Were their names Xanthan Gayson, Knobbin Areuanut, Boshua Joggs, Christian Grey, and a guy just named NPC #1? Why not title it, Fifty Shades of Zoe Quinn?

The phrase, "pent up anger," is the tell. I see that phrase time and time again used by the anti-#Gamergate Overwatch. It is pure projection. And yet another false flag.

Let me guess, Zada is about to release a new "game," and goes over to Boshua's house to have his friends help her beta-test the thing. The "game," called Eternal Sunshine of the Pimply-Faced Gamer, is plagued by crashes, invisible walls, slow load times and crappy AI. Even Mountain Dew can't keep the boys awake. Suddenly, Knobbin finds a rapey easter egg, and everyone dog-piles "poor Zada." It's a pure bodice-ripper.

Does Regret Nullify Consent?

I have been following the moral panic over sexual assault at San Diego State very closely. Events there are a mirror of those at the University of Virginia in the wake of the Rolling Stone Magazine Great Rape Hoax. Both universities have suspended fraternity events indefinitely.

Campus Police at SDSU have reported that there have been seventeen sexual assaults involving students since the beginning of 2014, and thirteen just this semester. They further report that "six of those reported assaults occurred at fraternities." A correction at the bottom of the page states that, "...an earlier version of this story, based on information from SDSU police, said the assault occurred at the Theta Chi House. Police later said that was in error."

A correction like that is enough for anyone to question the veracity of the entire story, especially the startling number of reported sexual assaults. If there really were seventeen sexual assaults, and six at fraternities, why have there been no arrests? Why haven't any fraternities been kicked off campus, or had their charters revoked?

The lone case that did produce an arrest may be falling apart. Francisco Paiva Sousa was arrested on suspicion of forced oral copulation and false imprisonment on December 9. He was supposed to be arraigned yesterday, but his case has been removed from the court calendar, and "remained under review."

I wasn't at the house where the sexual contact occurred, so I don't know what happened. All I can do is speculate. The police have interviewed people at the party, and Sousa, and the unidentified woman. I believe that the charges will be quietly dropped, because witnesses told police that the woman went willing to the room with Sousa, and the false imprisonment charge is bogus.

I'm going to further speculate that there is enough testimony from bystanders or the participants themselves that the sex act was mutually consensual. Maybe she didn't want him to ejaculate in her mouth, but he did, and using her mouth as a semen receptacle is what she is really complaining about.

Even if the charges are dropped, Sousa's reputation has been irreparably harmed by this accusation. There were people on social media expressing glee in his arrest, with student Joana Alex saying, "A lot of people are saying they're excited he's going to jail. They're saying karma's going to come." Very telling that what they want isn't justice, or due process. I would recommend that the Title IX coordinators at universities stop telling students that regret equals rape. Sexual discrimination lawsuits cut both ways, and if the university acts on Sousa absent a criminal charge, I will happily contribute to his legal defense.

Tropes VS Women - Women As Background Decoration

Deconstructing Women as Background Decoration: Part 2 - Tropes vs Women in Video Games. First of all, I will readily concede a major point of hers, in that depictions of violence toward women can be upsetting to some people. These people should not purchase such a game. If they buy it by mistake, they should request a refund or exchange.

"In the game of Patriarchy, women are not the opposing team, they're actually the ball." Actually, they're the trophy.

"These women are brought on stage for the express purpose of being victimized in front of the player." It's also called atmosphere, a recurring theme that enhances and drives the storyline.

In Red Dead Redemption, "players are treated to randomly triggered events, in which female prostitutes are assaulted and murdered by johns...players are presented with a choice to either intervene and save the woman for a small cash reward, or simply watch the attack play out in front of them as part of the entertainment."

The character in Red Dead Redemption is a classic anti-hero. This trope is common to the western, in which the main character lacks conventional heroic attributes like morality. The anti-hero archetype is very common in video games, whether the setting is the old west, or today's equivalent, the naked city. Also, characterizing the assault as entertainment is a stretch.

"If the player sticks around long enough, or leaves and re-enters the same location, the scene will eventually repeat itself again and again, very much like the animatronic vignettes in the Pirates Of The Caribbean ride at Disneyland." Funny you should mention that. Pirates Of The Caribbean was Walt's favorite ride, and will always be mine. There used to be three animatronic scenes of pirates chasing wenches in continuous circles. Two were changed, and now depict women with brooms, chasing the men. The other one was changed, and now the wench is carrying a platter of food. Thanks, feminists!

"Sexual and domestic violence is at epidemic levels in the real world. One out of five women in the United States will be raped in their lifetimes." The F.B.I. helpfully provides statistics, which are nowhere near that number. They reported that "the rate of forcible rapes in 2012 was estimated at 52.9 per 100,000 female inhabitants." Using that number, I calculate one out of twenty-five will be, in a lifetime that has eighty years. Still too many, but nowhere near her fabricated number.

Video game violence against women, "reinforces a popular misconception about gendered violence by framing it as something abnormal...in reality, however, violence against women, and sexual violence in particular, is a common, everyday occurrence, often perpetrated by normal men." In other words, all men are rapists, and all are suspect. Anita has evidently spent much time reading radfem scholars like Catharine MacKinnon, who wrote, "In a patriarchal society all heterosexual intercourse is rape because women, as a group, are not strong enough to give meaningful consent."

"The pattern of utilizing women as background decoration works to reinforce the myth that women are naturally fated to be objectified, vulnerable and perpetually victimized by male violence." In your opinion. In my opinion, it's a fantasy, wish fulfillment, entertainment. It's fun because it's not real. I also like to play around in fantasy worlds that are infested by zombies. That doesn't mean that a world in which zombies actually gambol is inevitable, or even desirable.