A new ad campaign that suggests milk may help alleviate the symptoms of PMS has some feminists acting like it’s that time of the month. My first post for Pajamas Media covers their hysterical accusations of sexism and “sexploitation.” I can only excerpt 100 words, so here’s a quick taste of how one feminist reacted to the ads.

The feminist reaction devolved into true absurdity with the milk boycott proposed by a Feministing blogger. She suggests five PMS-soothing calcium sources “that don’t involve milk.” Topping her list of ideas: “Eat other kinds of dairy products, like yogurt and cheese (mozzarella is particularly high in calcium).” Way to strike a blow against Big Milk by consuming products made from … milk.

Please visit Pajamas Media to read the whole thing.

Originally published at Frontpage Magazine
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“My name is Anthony Weiner and I stand for women!”

That’s not just a tailor-made caption for the indiscreet photo sent from the New York congressman’s Twitter account. Weiner proudly delivered that line twice during a rah-rah sisterhood speech to adoring fans at Planned Parenthood’s Stand Up for Women’s Health Rally in February. The only thing missing from his feminist cheerleading was a set of speculum-handled pom-poms.

But Weiner’s feminist rhetoric is far more tumid than the underwear-clad package he “can’t say with certitude” isn’t his — and just as susceptible to shrinkage. So here’s the cold water:

While the intended recipient of the lewd photo, 21-year-old Gennette Cordova, drowns in a raging media maelstrom, Anthony Weiner is using the only life preserver in sight as a hula hoop. Instead of ending the speculation about their relationship by asking law enforcement to investigate the alleged hacking of his Twitter account, Weiner spent the week tossing cagey Clintonian statements and erection puns to an increasingly suspicious press.

This is how Anthony Weiner stands for women.

Cordova and her family have been subjected to the kind of scrutiny, mockery, and even harassment normally reserved for public figures (and private citizens who vote Republican). Her candid party photos and off-the-cuff tweets are now front page news as bloggers and reporters rifle through cached social media accounts, hoping to shake out the single breadcrumb that might lead to a scoop on the young woman who denies “any inappropriate exchanges” with Weiner.

Continue reading at Frontpage Magazine.

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Editor’s note: The following is a guest post by Ben Stein. Stein is a writer, actor, economist, and lawyer living in Beverly Hills and Malibu.

Like the distinguished public servant Dominique Strauss-Kahn, I am a friend to all women, even the ones who didn’t fully appreciate my American Spectator column on the scurrilous charges filed against the former IMF chief. I’d like to extend an olive branch to those misguided members of the fairer sex by sharing some advice on the proper way to go about getting raped if you expect public intellectuals to take your charges seriously.

Ladies, my humble thoughts:

1.) Ensure that your rapist has a criminal history.

Should you find yourself being raped by a man with a long history of sexual abuse, take a moment to perform a criminal background check. This can be done with most modern smartphones as long as your hands are free.

No criminal record? In all likelihood, his sexually violent past is mere gossip and he is not a threat. You are engaged in a consensual sex act. Carry on.

2.) Find out your rapist’s profession.

Is your rapist an economist? If so, you are not being raped. As I asked in my last column, “Can anyone tell me any economists who have been convicted of violent sex crimes? Can anyone tell me of any heads of nonprofit international economic entities who have ever been charged and convicted of violent sexual crimes?”

As an economist, I can personally attest to the fact that economists do not rape. In fact, if I were to slip on a ski mask and surprise you in the dark alley by my house that I happen to know is rarely patrolled by police, rest assured, you’d be completely safe in my gloved hands.

3.) Choose a tall, muscular rapist with a weapon.

An unarmed fat man over the age of 50 cannot rape. Sure, some will try, but it beggars belief to suggest a gentleman like Dominique Strauss-Kahn could succeed at orally raping a feisty young chambermaid.

If you intend to report a rape, ensure that the perpetrator is armed with a knife or gun. He should also be fairly young and strikingly tall with lean, powerful muscles and rock hard abs. If he is short and pudgy, it is likely that you have consented to sex.

4.) Your rapist must not have travel plans.

Do not bother reporting your “rapist” unless his intention is to remain within the general vicinity of your encounter. If he has booked a flight scheduled to take off just a few hours after your tryst, his alibi is nearly unimpeachable. It is doubtful that you have been raped.

5.) Ensure that your rapist is no one noteworthy.

Accomplished men with recognizable faces–men like me–do not deserve to be treated like common criminals when a mere pleb makes allegations of sexual misconduct. Generally speaking, the allegations should not be made at all when men of great import are involved. Take a moment to consider whether you’re misinterpreting a consensual rendezvous as something more unsavory.

6.) Be an economist.

If you intend to be raped, make certain you are a professional working in a field populated exclusively by people of unassailable character and credibility. Housekeeping is not such a field. As I explained earlier this week, “I have had hotel maids that were complete lunatics, stealing airline tickets from me, stealing money from me, throwing away important papers, stealing medications from me.”

Play it safe and study to become an economist.

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Editor’s note: GFY, Ben Stein. And yes, this is obviously satire.

Originally published at NewsReal

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The size of her breasts, the shape of her backside, and of course, her name. These are some of the details Le Monde, the French “journal de référence,” and its subsidiary Le Post published about the woman who says IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn groped her genitals and forced her to perform oral sex on him in a room at the Sofitel near Times Square.

France-Soir described the cut of her hotel maid uniform and how good she looks for a woman in her thirties, while France’s RMC radio reported that Strauss-Kahn’s attorneys were surprised by how “unattractive” she is.

And a bevy of friends and supporters rallied to the defense of Strauss-Kahn, a leading figure in the French Socialist Party, hoping to discredit his accuser lest she derail their plans for him to oust Sarkozy in the 2012 presidential elections.

A photo of the alleged victim is all over Twitter, and a Facebook profile in her supposed name was deleted shortly after links to it began to appear on blogs and social media sites. It’s unclear whether the Facebook profile was hers or a hoax account set up to smear her name. Today, another name and photo are circulating in the French media. It doesn’t matter if they get it right–the effect is the same. Just as they did to the accusers in the Julian Assange rape case, the “pro-woman” Left has launched a vicious campaign to terrorize and shame this woman into silence.

The despicable Bernard-Henri Lévy, author of the “Free Roman Polanski” petition, called Strauss-Kahn “a friend to women” who “bears no resemblance to this monster, this caveman, this insatiable and malevolent beast.” Henri-Levy tapped into his own inner monster by assailing the accuser on his blog and at the Daily Beast:

I do not know—but, on the other hand, it would be nice to know, and without delay—how a chambermaid could have walked in alone, contrary to the habitual practice of most of New York’s grand hotels of sending a “cleaning brigade” of two people, into the room of one of the most closely watched figures on the planet.

“Bernard-Henri is scandalized that a mere chambermaid can get a ‘great’ man like Strauss-Kahn in trouble with the law merely by credibly accusing him of sexual assault,” writes Jonah Goldberg. Decades of carefully constructed class narratives are tossed out the window in the service of the Left’s political goals. The downtrodden worker is exalted only so long as it’s convenient, only so long as she remembers her place in the power structure.

Commenters at the American “feminist” blog Jezebel smell a “honey trap.”

Why would someone throw away a decades long career and reputation for something they had no chance of getting away with.

Well, if the Sarko campaign offered the maid $100k, she might lie about it at the station and then disappear to live someplace else.

This almost NEVER happens. You almost NEVER hear tales of high level politicians sexually assaulting and raping random women like maids, waitresses .

An accusation does not a conviction make, and I’d argue it’s important to see every angle before making some snap judgment about anyone here. Especially when political powers are involved. There’s nothing wrong with saying, “This smells fishy.” Especially when, well, it does.

Meanwhile, French politicos are in full damage control mode:

Socialist Party MP Jean-Marie Le Guen:

Seduction, yes, but no way would he use constraint or violence. A certain number of facts, and certain aspects of the story we are hearing from the press, make this not credible.

Michelle Sabban, Strauss-Kahn supporter and senior councilor for the greater Paris region:

I am convinced it is an international conspiracy … It’s not like him. Everyone knows that his weakness is seduction, women. That’s how they got him.

Socialist MEP Gilles Savary:

“Everyone knows it’s true to say that Dominique Strauss-Kahn is a hedonist (libertin), who is distinguished from others in that he doesn’t try to hide it.” The problem, wrote Savary, is American prudery. “In puritanical America, where everything is shaped by unforgiving Protestantism, they tolerate white-collar crime more than they do pleasures of the flesh.” Mind you, this is DSK’s flesh, not that of the chambermaid whom he allegedly assaulted. Maybe she was just too Protestant to enjoy M. Savary’s idea of pleasure.

Even Christine Boutin, head of France’s Christian Democratic party weighed in (perhaps fearing similar scandals in her own party):

I really believe that somebody set a trap for Dominique Strauss-Kahn to fall into… That he could be taken in like that seems astounding, so he must have been trapped.

And on it goes as Strauss-Kahn’s allies in the media and political world scramble to paint him as a ladies man snared by an international conspiracy, the “Great Seducer” rather than a sexual predator. They will chip away at his accuser’s credibility and dignity, doing whatever it takes to rescue their anointed Socialist savior from what the New York Times called “tawdry allegations.” She is nothing to them when her accusations mean everything to the their political future. Strauss-Kahn’s abusive sexual history and forensic evidence be damned.

Socialists: for the women, for the underdog, for the worker … until one of them gets in the way.

Cross-posted at NewsReal.

Originally published at NewsReal’s That’s What She Said

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Four Afghan women have achieved something that would have been unimaginable a decade ago: they are training alongside male recruits to become pilots in the Afghan Air Force. Amidst headlines about poverty, illiteracy, and breathtaking levels of violence against women, their accomplishments are beyond heartening.

Second Lt. Sourya Saleh hopes to serve as a role model for other Afghan women after completing her aviation training in the United States.

“We are very happy to be going to open these doors for the other women to come and join the military, to show them you can do this and make our country proud,” she said. “We want for all Afghan girls to know they can do anything.”

Another newly minted officer, Second Lt. Mary Sharifzada, told the Air Force Times that becoming a pilot has been her dream since she was a little girl:

“I want to show the people of Afghanistan that women are strong,” Sharifzada said. “We want to show the people of the world that the women of Afghanistan are strong and they can do anything they want.”

“They said I’m as brave as a man,” said Second Lt. Masooma Hussaini.

As brave as men, and according to Lt. Col. John Howard of the Thunder Lab training program, as capable as their male counterparts. But these women and future recruits may not get the chance to prove “they can do anything they want” if the United States selects Brazilian aircraft manufacturer Embraer to supply turboprop planes for the counterinsurgency effort in Afghanistan.

In the April 2011 issue of Smart Girl Nation, my friend Ashley Sewell explains how the Brazilian plane would bar skilled female pilots from flying Light Air Support (LAS) and light attack and armed reconnaissance (LAAR) missions:

The front-runners are the American-made Hawker Beechcraft AT-6 (a plane like the T-6 training aircraft that would accommodate 95% of women pilots) and the Brazilian-made Embraer EMB-314 (a plane that sticks to older standards thus eliminating the possibility of being flown by a woman).

Those older standards exclude more than 80 percent of women (and small men) from safely flying the planes that will be used to train and equip the Afghan Air Force.

There’s no question that operational performance and pilot safety should be the primary criteria in choosing between the Embraer and Hawker Beechcraft planes. But if the two aircraft perform comparably, can we afford to indulge the Commander-in-Chief‘s childish love affair with Brazil, forcing the struggling Afghan Air Force to sideline much needed talent?

That’s not the only reason the Hawker Beechcraft proposal is superior. The assembly of the Hawker Beechcraft AT-6 planes would result in an estimated 1,400 American jobs, while the Embraer proposal will create a comparatively paltry 50 assembly line positions in the U.S.

And even more compelling are the risks of contracting with a company controlled by Brazil, a country that doesn’t have especially warm and fuzzy feelings about American foreign policy. Embraer’s corporate by-laws give Brazil a controlling interest known as the “Golden Share.”

The Golden Share allows the Brazilian government to maintain direct control and veto rights over the “creation and/or alteration of military programs, whether or not involving the Federative Republic of Brazil” as well as the “interruption of the supply of maintenance and replacement parts for military aircraft.”

Next month, the Department of Defense will make its decision. Will we put the Afghan Air Force at the mercy of a foreign government that has, at times, been hostile to the War on Terror? Will President Obama exchange friendship bracelets with Brazil as he promises them even more American jobs? And will the ambitious and capable women of the Afghan Air Force be relegated to second-class status before they’re given a chance to shine?

These are the women whose dreams of flying could be crushed by the “most feminist administration ever” before they even leave the ground:

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In 1989, the offices of my neighborhood newspaper were firebombed by a terrorist. Molotov cocktails ignited a blaze that gutted the first floor of the building, incinerated furniture, and left computers and telephones all but vaporized.

A short time later, a man called 911 and said, in an accent the FBI later identified as Pakistani, “Can you please listen to my message very carefully. Very very important. You know that British author who wrote the book The Satanic Verses. For to protest I throw the bomb. I’m sorry but we got to do more bombs pretty soon if they don’t stop from publish that book. That’s it.”

Two weeks earlier, the novelist Salman Rushdie had gone into hiding when Iran’s “supreme leader” Ayatollah Khomeini pronounced a death sentence on him for writing a novel that questions the founding myth of Islam. Khomeini’s fatwa offered a bounty of more than $5 million to anyone who could kill the author. It also threatened “all those involved in its publication.

The bombing of The Riverdale Press occurred shortly after the editors published “The Tyrant and His Chains,” a scathing criticism of America’s largest bookstore chains for responding to the Ayatollah’s threat by pulling all copies of The Satanic Verses from their shelves.

The chain store executives excuse their surrender to the Ayatollah by expressing concern for the wellbeing of their employees, but by knuckling under they’ve put others at risk. If a threat can knock the books from the shelves of the Big Three, terrorists may reason, think what a bomb in an uncompliant bookstore could do.

Moreover, terrorism feeds on its successes. What will Waldenbooks do when a homegrown would-be tyrant demands the removal of a politically controversial book from its shelves? And how will it handle the next step, a demand that stores stock a particular book?

The day after the firebombing, the Press published its weekly issue on schedule. Headlining the front page was an editorial titled “We Will Not Be Silenced.”

Mayoral candidates Ed Koch, David Dinkins and Rudy Giuliani gathered with hundreds of community residents to offer their support for the Press, and newspapers around the country reprinted “The Tyrant and His Chains.” As “a statement of solidarity with the publishers of the Riverdale Press,” Democratic Senator Daniel Moynihan asked that the editorial be printed in the Congressional Record alongside a resolution “condemning the threats against the author and publishers of the Satanic Verses.”

Speaking on the Senate floor just before the resolution passed, Republican Senator Bob Dole said:

Terrorism is terrorism. It is abhorrent. It must be condemned. There is no justification for it, period.

That is the policy of this country, and of civilized countries everywhere. That is the essence of this resolution.

Let us underscore our continuing commitment to this policy, this strong and necessary policy, by passing this resolution. And let that act be encouragement to those who refuse to buckle under to the threats of terrorists, and a rebuke to the Khomeinis of the world, who care not a whit for anyone’s rights or beliefs but their own.

If the Senate voted on that resolution today, would Lindsey Graham, Harry Reid, and President Obama give it the full-throated, bipartisan support it received in 1989?  Who would today’s leaders hold responsible for the attack on The Riverdale Press?

Would Graham call Rushdie’s novel “a terrible thing” that “put our troops at risk”? Would he say, “Freedom of speech is a great idea, but we’re in a war”?

Would Reid kowtow to Khomeini as he did to Karzai? Would he promise to “look at” passing a resolution to censure the editors of The Riverdale Press and Rushdie for exercising their First Amendment rights?

Would the president denounce Rushdie for blasphemy against Islam and call the publication of his book “an act of extreme intolerance and bigotry“?

These are the words Graham, Reid, and Obama used to criticize the Florida pastor who burned a copy of the Koran. Rather than blame Afghan President Hamid Karzai for igniting hostilities or a barbaric culture in which violence is often the default setting, they are holding one law-abiding demagogue in Florida responsible for deadly riots in Afghanistan.

22 years after Democrats and Republicans came together to support freedom of expression and condemn the terror attack on a Bronx newspaper, we are watching the formation of a new bipartisan coalition, one that advocates wartime suspension of First Amendment rights and submission to the demands of Islamist street thugs and leaders. 22 years later, we’re announcing to the world that our Constitutional rights are fragile enough to crumble in the face of threats, intimidation, and unspeakable acts of violence abroad.

First they came for the Koran burner …

Runnin’ Scared notes that Arianna’s April Fools’ Day jab at the New York Times is awfully similar to a post that appeared at The Monkey Cage … on March 20. In a fairly lame attempt to razz the Times for its new paywall, she announced:

Today marks a significant transition for The Huffington Post Media Group, as we introduce digital subscriptions for employees of The New York Times.

Yeah, yeah. In other news, she just flew in from the coast and BOY are her arms tired. Hardy har har. Here’s a snippet from the earlier post at The Monkey Cage:

Starting on March 28th (and immediately for any Canadian NY Times employees), we will begin charging employees of the NY Times $29.99/month to access the electronic version of The Monkey Cage.

The similarities don’t end there.

Not only did the blog Monkey Cage make the same joke two weeks ago — “Monkey Cage to Begin Charging NY Times Employees for Access,” as pointed out on Twitter — but even the bullet-pointed formatting of the joke is the same, complete with wild and crazy caveats. For instance:

From Monkey Cage: “Times employees who wish to leave comments on posts will be permitted to do so without charge, but only if the comments are essentially positive and invoke the words ‘insightful’ or ‘counter-intuitive.’”

From Arianna: “If you come in through Digg, you’ll be able to read for free all stories that refer to TV’s Erik Estrada.”

Now sure, it could be that the comedy stylings of Arianna Huffington were something she thought up on her own, perhaps during a late night coffee klatch with Van Jones and Nora Ephron. But this is hardly the first time The Huffington Post has been on the receiving end of content theft and idea theft allegations. And when she’s not stealing, she’s “aggregating,” or as Stephen Colbert recently explained, “HuffPo is famous for its extensive, comprehensive coverage of things other people produce and put on the Internet.” In his best Arianna accent, he asked:

Darling, I happened to cruise by your $300 million website and you know what I find? A whole lotta me, including clips from my show on your site’s dedicated Stephen Colbert page. You have achieved the impossible. You made me feel angry while looking at pictures of myself. Where’s my money, Arianna?

If even Stephen Colbert is mocking her reputation as a content thief with The Colbuffington Re-Post, is it beyond belief that she’d swipe her April Fools’ Day “joke”? Runnin’ Scared suggests she’s not a thief, it’s just that her ideas are “played out.” I’m not so sure.

There was actually a different “f” word that sprang to mind when I read about this at Verum Serum:

A $600,000 frog sculpture that lights up, gurgles “sounds of nature” and carries a 10-foot fairy girl on its back could soon be greeting Defense Department employees who plan to start working at the $700 million Mark Center in Alexandria, Va. this fall. That is unless a new controversy over the price tag of the public art doesn’t torpedo the idea.

Decried as wasteful spending that will be seen by just a couple thousand of daily workers who arrive on bus shuttles, foes have tried to delay the decision, expected tomorrow, April 1. But in an E-mail, an Army Corps of Engineers official said that the decision can’t be held up because it would impact completion of the huge project.

With a decision deadline of April 1, I figured this had to be an April Fools’ Day gag. No such luck. The proposal by artist Cheryl Foster is proudly displayed on the City of Alexandria website, along with equally absurd wastes of taxpayer dollars like a magnolia sculpture (pretty sure you can grow a magnolia for under six figures) and a “robust, maintenance free, colorful and uplifting” bench. Yes, a bench. An uplifting bench.

A member of the advisory committee overseeing the project says just 2,500 people will pass by the sculpture each day.

$600,000 for a giant toad the artist says will “magically radiate” light? I wonder how much she’ll knock off the price tag if we’re willing to forgo whatever dark enchantments she uses to produce that “magical” amphibian glow.

Check out the photo of the proposed sculpture at Verum Serum, and get ready to wish this out-of-control government spending was just an April Fools’ hoax.

Originally posted at NewsReal’s That’s What She Said

Every time news coverage of actress Anne Hathaway spikes, so does Berkshire Hathaway stock. At least, that’s the fantasy Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman promoted on his New York Times blog this weekend.

Why? The claim is that it’s the fault of robotrading algorithms, which now account for most of the market, and which sometimes rely among other things on trends in news coverage.

That’s the kind of dumb mistake human traders wouldn’t make. Unfortunately, they’d make other kinds of dumb mistakes.

“I, For One, Do Not Welcome Our Dumb Robot Overlords,” writes Krugman.

Where’s the evidence that Berkshire Hathaway shareholders are at the mercy of a half-baked fleet of starstruck retard-o-bots? Krugman cites The Financial Times, but the original source of this bizarre story is Huffington Post blogger Dan Mirvish, a media hoaxer the New York Times once called “a senior fellow at the Institute of Nonexistence.” On March 2, Mirvish wrote:

On the Friday before the Oscars, Berkshire shares rose a whopping 2.02%. And on the Monday just after the Academy Awards, they rose again, this time 2.94%. But it’s not just an Oscar bounce, or something Warren Buffett may have said in the newspaper, or even necessarily something the company itself is doing (i.e. rumors afoot to buy Costco). Just look back at some other landmark dates in Anne Hathaway’s still young career:

Oct. 3, 2008 – Rachel Getting Married opens: BRK.A up .44%
Jan. 5, 2009 – Bride Wars opens: BRK.A up 2.61%
Feb. 8, 2010 – Valentine’s Day opens: BRK.A up 1.01%
March 5, 2010 – Alice in Wonderland opens: BRK.A up .74%
Nov. 24, 2010 – Love and Other Drugs opens: BRK.A up 1.62%
Nov. 29, 2010 – Anne announced as co-host of the Oscars: BRK.A up .25%

Yes, the fearsome Hathaway Effect is based on eight dates in a two-year period analyzed by a professional media manipulator. But … but … studies show! Yeah, one “study” of a handful of data points.

I know, Paul. Markets are confusing, and math is hard. It’s been a while since you had to memorize all that information about sample sizes and correlation vs. causation for Stats 101. And it sure can be a hassle to RTFG. Fortunately, The Motley Fool cleared this up nearly three weeks ago:

Berkshire’s stock most certainly was up on Oct. 3, 2008, but there was more than an opening for Anne going on. Just two days prior, the stock had jumped almost 5% after Buffett got a dandy deal on perpetual preferred stock from General Electric (NYSE: GE ) .Meanwhile, on Feb. 8, 2010, did Anne Hathaway’s movie push up Berkshire’s stock? Or were investors anticipating the heavy buying from index funds that would be forced to add Berkshire to their holdings after it replaced Burlington Northern Santa Fe in the S&P 500?

The March 5, 2010 gain we can write off even more quickly, since the S&P gained nearly double Berkshire’s jump that day. What good is the Anne Hathaway signal if the stock still underperforms the rest of the market?

And of course, all good Fools know that the weekend of Feb. 27, 2011 something happened that was much more important than the Oscars — the Berkshire Hathaway annual shareholder letter was released. My wild guess is that the stock gains that Friday reflected anticipation about the letter, while Monday’s pop was due to Buffett’s bullish outlook in the letter.

Now run along, Paul, and check the inside of the fridge to see if a tiny Anne Hathaway turns the light on when you open the door.

Originally posted at NewsReal’s That’s What She Said

I always thought there was something a little off about Ina Garten. The woman substitutes basil for cilantro in her chili recipe. What kind of animal does such a thing?

This kind:

The “Barefoot Contessa” star allegedly turned down a request from the Make-A-Wish Foundation.

The foundation reportedly tried to contact the celebrity chef twice on behalf of a six-year-old boy suffering from leukemia who wanted to cook with her. And twice they were rebuffed.

Garten reportedly blew off the first request due to her busy book tour schedule. But 6-year-old Enzo decided to wait, skipping the chance to have another wish granted by the foundation. Bad choice, kid:

We’re told the organization went back to Ina this year … but her team responded with a “definite no” … once again, citing scheduling conflicts.

A member of Enzo’s family says the 6-year-old is heartbroken … and asked parents, “Why doesn’t she want to meet me?”

Ina Garten can’t spare 10 minutes to teach a dying kid how to stick Nilla Wafers in a dish of banana pudding? Maybe whip up a little guacamole? (Hold the cilantro!)

Of course, The Contessa has been swamped for ages, what with entertaining celebrity friends like Alec “my daughter is a ‘pig’” Baldwin, writing checks to Obama for America, and hosting Planned Parenthood Benefits at her home.