Archive for 2014

TRIGGER WARNING: Stacy McCain: The Indecent Mind Of Andrea Dworkin. “Just as Blanche Du Bois was a type, so also was Andrea Dworkin a type — the fanatical self-righteous loudmouth type, who never once in her life admitted to any error, any fault or failure. Everybody in the world was always wrong, unless they agreed with her. Here we have a woman whose anger at half the human race was her professional raison d’etre, for whom hatred of men was a litmus test of one’s moral worth: If you did not hate men as much as she did, you were her inferior. And because nobody could ever hate men more than Andrea Dworkin did, this meant she was the most moral person on Earth. Conveniently, then, her worldview had the effect of making her better than everybody else, in her own mind.”

IT’S ALWAYS NICE to make Twitchy.

THE COUNTRY’S IN THE VERY BEST OF HANDS: U.S. lacks a single standard for Ebola response. “As Thomas Eric Duncan’s family mourns the USA’s first Ebola death in Dallas, one question reverberates over a series of apparent missteps in the case: Who is in charge of the response to Ebola? The answer seems to be — there really isn’t one person or agency. There is not a single national response.”

So, pretty much like everything else under this administration.

BOSTON: Suspected Ebola case being tested at Beth Israel hospital. “A man claiming to have recently traveled to Liberia in West Africa who turned up at the Harvard Vanguard Medical Associates urgent-care offices in Braintree this afternoon complaining of a headache, muscle aches and other Ebola-like symptoms was quarantined and has been brought to one of Boston’s top hospitals under police escort.” As I’ve said before, most of these cases — all of them, if we’re lucky — will turn out to be false alarms.

TEACH WOMEN NOT TO RAPE! (CONT’D): A look at female #rapeculture. “Notice that the script simply does not allow any other role for the male in authority except ‘predator’ – and that the script also does not allow the female to take on the role of ‘predator’ even under the exact same circumstances. The social narrative implies that she did nothing truly wrong in seducing male students even if she’s brought up on charges.”

SCIENCE MARCHES ON: Fecal Transplants, Now In Pill Form. “Taking them for just two days can cure a dangerous bacterial infection that has defied antibiotics and kills 14,000 Americans each year, researchers said Saturday. . . . Their study was small and preliminary, but results were striking: 19 of 20 patients with C. difficile infections were cured of diarrhea and related symptoms.”

WASHINGTON POST: 5 Myths About Ebola. “Until nurse Teresa Romero Ramos contracted Ebola in Madrid, the wealthy countries of Europe, North America and Asia seemed confident that the virus could be contained in advanced medical facilities. . . . Hubris is the greatest danger in wealthy countries — a sort of smug assumption that advanced technologies and emergency-preparedness plans guarantee that Ebola and other germs will not spread. It was hubris that left Toronto’s top hospitals battling SARS in 2003, long after the virus was conquered in poorer Vietnam. It was hubris that led the World Health Assembly in 2013 to cut the WHO’s outbreak-response budget in favor of more programs to treat cancer and heart disease.”

THIS VIDEO OF THE INSTAWIFE ON FOX WAS TAKEN DOWN FROM YOUTUBE, but now it’s back up.

She’s talking about her book.

WHAT IT’S LIKE TO CARRY A NOBEL PRIZE THROUGH AIRPORT SECURITY.

“They’re like, ‘Sir, there’s something in your bag.’
I said, ‘Yes, I think it’s this box.’
They said, ‘What’s in the box?’
I said, ‘a large gold medal,’ as one does.
So they opened it up and they said, ‘What’s it made out of?’
I said, ‘gold.’
And they’re like, ‘Uhhhh. Who gave this to you?’
‘The King of Sweden.’
‘Why did he give this to you?’
‘Because I helped discover the expansion rate of the universe was accelerating.’
At which point, they were beginning to lose their sense of humor. I explained to them it was a Nobel Prize, and their main question was, ‘Why were you in Fargo?’”

To visit James Lileks’ birthplace shrine, I presume.

K-12 IMPLOSION UPDATE: Colton Teacher Arrested On Suspicion Of Heroin Possession. “A 29-year-old middle school teacher accused of possessing heroin was arrested Tuesday at a Colton school on drug charges, authorities said. Colton police told CBS2’s Tom Wait that a district employee had noticed suspicious behavior from the teacher in question before classes began on Tuesday, and alerted authorities.”

DHS CHIEF: “Porous” Border Is A Myth.

Ebola Doctor: “Nobody Cared” That I Was Coming From Nigeria.

Fusion’s Jorge Ramos spoke to one of the doctors, Dr. Aileen Marty, who recently returned home to Miami after spending 31 days in Nigeria. She says she was surprised what happened when she arrived at Miami International Airport.

“I get to the kiosk…mark the fact that I’ve been in Nigeria and nobody cares, nobody stopped me,” Marty said.

“Not a single test?” Ramos asked her, surprised.

“Nothing,” Marty answered.

The country’s in the very best of hands.

DRUG WAR UPDATE: How The DEA Ditched An Informant.

The case is SGS-92-X003 v. United States, with the plaintiff identified only by her DEA informant number. Around the agency, however, she wasn’t called SGS-92. She was known as the Princess.

Over a four-year period in the 1990s, the Princess traveled repeatedly to Colombia at the behest of the DEA, and brought in solid information. Her work also took her elsewhere in Latin America and Europe. Then, in 1995, she was kidnapped by one of the drug cartels, and held for three and a half months until a ransom was paid. (The source of the ransom isn’t clear.)

So far, just another infiltration gone bad. It happens. But here is where the case grows particularly dismaying — and how it wound up in court. According to the Princess, it was the DEA’s repeated bungling that essentially blew her cover. Then, after her release, she developed a chronic medical condition that would require increasingly expensive care. The DEA refused to help out. She therefore brought an action claiming breach of contract. In particular, she argued that the DEA, in hiring her as an informant, had agreed to protect her.

It broke that promise.

The opinion is well worth reading, and many of the details are appalling. In 1994, the Princess returned from Colombia with a handwritten note from one drug dealer to another, warning that the Princess worked for the DEA. She turned it over to her handlers. The agency sent her back anyway. On her next trip, she was warned by a source that there were many dealers who would no longer meet with her. The agency sent her back anyway.

The state is not your friend, even when you work for it.