That is cool to hear. I think the book is terrific. I really don't think she's like other opinion news anchors. She does her research and really presents compelling arguments with how she interprets the news. It certainly ends up leaning towards what I usually think, but not always and it always makes me rethink my position on something. She's not caustic, she always asks her guests if she 'got that right', and whoever she has helping her research finds some incredible stuff.

Noted Rape Expert George Will wrote this piece of shit article.

Some very well supported things he states as facts:

Colleges and universities are being educated by Washington and are finding the experience excruciating. They are learning that when they say campus victimizations are ubiquitous (“micro-aggressions,” often not discernible to the untutored eye, are everywhere), and that when they make victimhood a coveted status that confers privileges, victims proliferate.

Yes, all of these kids in high school and college are lining up to be the next mentally ill person who shoots up their school. Or the next rape victim who has to live with the trauma for the rest of their lives. If they're lucky they can even receive death threats or have their house burned down! How fun!

Consider the supposed campus epidemic of rape, a.k.a. “sexual assault.”

L O fucking L

Herewith, a Philadelphia magazine report about Swarthmore College, where in 2013 a student “was in her room with a guy with whom she’d been hooking up for three months”:

“They’d now decided — mutually, she thought — just to be friends. When he ended up falling asleep on her bed, she changed into pajamas and climbed in next to him. Soon, he was putting his arm around her and taking off her clothes. ‘I basically said, “No, I don’t want to have sex with you.” And then he said, “OK, that’s fine” and stopped. . . . And then he started again a few minutes later, taking off my panties, taking off his boxers. I just kind of laid there and didn’t do anything — I had already said no. I was just tired and wanted to go to bed. I let him finish. I pulled my panties back on and went to sleep.’”

One dubious rape claim makes them all dubious, right?

The administration’s crucial and contradictory statistics are validated the usual way, by official repetition; Joe Biden has been heard from. The statistics are: One in five women is sexually assaulted while in college, and only 12 percent of assaults are reported. Simple arithmetic demonstrates that if the 12 percent reporting rate is correct, the 20 percent assault rate is preposterous. Mark Perry of the American Enterprise Institute notes, for example, that in the four years 2009 to 2012 there were 98 reported sexual assaults at Ohio State. That would be 12 percent of 817 total out of a female student population of approximately 28,000, for a sexual assault rate of approximately 2.9 percent — too high but nowhere near 20 percent.

I'm not sure what point he's trying to make, but it seems like he's saying there is only 2.9% cases reported when 20% have said that they have been assaulted. Somehow this is good in his mind? I really have no clue?

Education Department lawyers disregard pesky arithmetic and elementary due process. Threatening to withdraw federal funding, the department mandates adoption of a minimal “preponderance of the evidence” standard when adjudicating sexual assault charges between males and the female “survivors” — note the language of prejudgment.

How dare they assume the person being raped is a "survivor". The dude was there, too! Lets not mention, hell, lets completely ignore the fact that most reported sexual assaults never get prosecuted!

Then add the doctrine that the consent of a female who has been drinking might not protect a male from being found guilty of rape.

Surely a crime against humanity. Lets gloss over that this may be just a precautionary measure because rapists are fucking scumbags who need to feel like they own a women's body and they might lie that their victim was drunk. You'd have to be pretty damn petty to lament the fact that you can't get a girl blackout drunk and push her for sex without being at risk for being accused of rape if it helps even one rapist gets put behind bars.

Meanwhile, the newest campus idea for preventing victimizations — an idea certain to multiply claims of them — is “trigger warnings.” They would be placed on assigned readings or announced before lectures. Otherwise, traumas could be triggered in students whose tender sensibilities would be lacerated by unexpected encounters with racism, sexism, violence (dammit, Hamlet, put down that sword!) or any other facet of reality that might violate a student’s entitlement to serenity. This entitlement has already bred campus speech codes that punish unpopular speech. Now the codes are begetting the soft censorship of trigger warnings to swaddle students in a “safe,” “supportive,” “unthreatening” environment, intellectual comfort for the intellectually dormant.

Can't believe we're coddling these kids by trying not to offend them after they had a traumatic experience, what is the world coming to now? oldmanyellsatcloud.gif

Can old, white males please stop it with this fucking nonsense?

SK790 wrote:
Can old, white males please stop it with this fucking nonsense?

I'm betting it's that last quoted paragraph that really gets him.

Keep in mind this stuff was written by a fellow who has never in his 7+ decades had sexual congress with any person/thing (the official record has him twice married, and with children, but c'mon, there's really no chance of that)

Will with what is basically a hot take, and he gets paid handsomely for it. must buy some sweet rugs with all that cheese. he's a bro nerd. he seems to think rape only happened if the guy said 'im gonna rape you now' then got charged by the cops. he should probably stick to writing about 1960s baseball

Barring a data entry error on these AP results, Eric Cantor looks like he's gonna lose his primary

Fucking hell

yeah twitter is aflutter

@Nate_Cohn
Brat is winning *more* precincts in the Richmond burbs, and winning them *by* more

This is crushing. Fucking hell.

@JuddLegum
Cantor released a poll on June 6 claiming he had a 34 point lead. goo.gl/EDpaZz

wow

i wasn't following this race at all so i'm curious, did other polling agree with cantor's internal polling?

Most house primaries don't have public polling. There was one last week that had him up 52-39%.

Virginia has open primaries/no registration by parties, and the Democrats don't have a candidate in the district. I'm seeing on Twitter that there was some degree of pushing the idea of supporting the challenger, thinking this Brat guy might be beatable in 2 years I guess. That plus low turnout plus a push from talk radio folks to beat Cantor because he was talking up immigration reform and you get a shocker.

This seems like grist for my theory that anybody in congressional leadership has a potentially huge disadvantage. I think the logic is pretty sound. You're a face of an absurdly unpopular institution. Partisans of the other party loathe you because you're the embodiment of the enemy. Your own partisans probably consider you a spineless squish because you can't singlehandedly enact your side's agenda. Add in the variance of low turnout and I don't think a result like this is shocking.

Data points... Reid would have lost the last time he was up except that the Nevada Rs nominated someone more repulsive than him. Daschle lost when he was minority leader (not a great case considering the red trend of the state, I guess). McConnell is barely ahead of his D opponent in a solid R state. Maybe I'm wrong, but I would guess it's possible to assign a "prominence penalty" to members of congressional leadership on both sides.

Probably no surprise that I find Cantor pretty vile. That said, not unlike when someone hateful dies on Game of Thrones, you've always got to figure the next guy coming up is even worse.

Crazy news.

Remember those tea party rip articles?

Guess cantor shouldn't have welcomed these loons with open arms.

There is a Democrat for November, but wasn't a Democratic primary today. Got that wrong above. And turnout seems pretty solid for a primary anyway, so Cantor's internal polling should've seen this coming or at least had an inkling this might happen. The congressional leadership theory seems pretty sound. This is brutal. House GOP is gonna go into full bunker mode now.

Murdoch, Ailes and the Kochs should have quite a blaze going for themselves come November

It couldn't have happened to a bigger dick. Good riddance.

It's cliche but true that revolutionary movements tend to eat their own. I do assume that whoever replaces Cantor as majority leader will be worse than him--even more radical and confrontational.

It's hard to see how Congress becomes more functional. I'm not even talking about addressing big policy issues, where I understand that Republicans are much more okay than I am with slow/no action; we can't even pass budgets or fill positions. As someone once said, the whole freaking system is out of order.

Doll Is Mine wrote:It couldn't have happened to a bigger dick. Good riddance.

Lol, you'll really enjoy Speaker Jeb Hensarling

Meanwhile Lindsey freaking Graham is strolling to renomination. Fucking politics how do they work.

jerseyhoya wrote:

Doll Is Mine wrote:It couldn't have happened to a bigger dick. Good riddance.

Lol, you'll really enjoy Speaker Jeb Hensarling

Dingdingding... that guy is a fucking psycho. The usually mild-mannered Joe Nocera reamed him but good today.

I'd really be alright with keeping all Texans out of any important political job for a generation or two.