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Jon Stewart Announces He's Leaving The Daily Show

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Jon Stewart Announces He's Leaving The Daily Show

After 16 years as host of The Daily Show, Jon Stewart announced at a live-taping on Tuesday that he would be retiring from the show, The A.V. Club reports. In a statement to Entertainment Weekly, Comedy Central president Michele Ganeless said that Stewart will stay with The Daily Show "until later this year":

For the better part of the last two decades, I have had the incredible honor and privilege of working with Jon Stewart. His comedic brilliance is second to none. Jon has been at the heart of Comedy Central, championing and nurturing the best talent in the industry, in front of and behind the camera. Through his unique voice and vision,The Daily Show has become a cultural touchstone for millions of fans and an unparalleled platform for political comedy that will endure for years to come. Jon will remain at the helm of The Daily Show until later this year. He is a comic genius, generous with his time and talent, and will always be a part of the Comedy Central family.

Calling The Daily Show "a cultural touchstone" that will "endure for years to come," Ganeless' statement suggests the network will continue to produce the show after Stewart's retirement.

News of Stewart's announcement first came out via social media through members of The Daily Show's studio audience.

Unsurprisingly, The Daily Show played the news for laughs:

[Image via Comedy Central]


NBC News Suspends Brian Williams for 6 Months Without Pay

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NBC News Suspends Brian Williams for 6 Months Without Pay

NBC News has suspended Nightly News anchor Brian Williams for six months without pay, effective immediately. The punishment follows revelations that, over the past decade, Williams misrepresented several details about his experience reporting in Baghdad, Iraq. Most significantly, Williams said a formation of helicopters in which he was flying encountered enemy fire and was eventually forced to land—a story that eyewitnesses have strongly challenged. Under his new contract, Williams would have been paid $10 million per year.

NBC spokesperson Maggie Steenland forwarded us the following memo, in which NBC News President Deborah Turness explains Williams’ suspension. Lester Holt will replace Williams in the interim.

From: Deborah Turness (NBCUniversal)
Sent: Tuesday, February 10, 2015 7:47 PM
To: NBC Universal, NBC News All
Subject: Brian Williams

All,

We have decided today to suspend Brian Williams as Managing Editor and Anchor of NBC Nightly News for six months. The suspension will be without pay and is effective immediately. We let Brian know of our decision earlier today. Lester Holt will continue to substitute anchor the NBC Nightly News.

Our review, which is being led by Richard Esposito working closely with NBCUniversal General Counsel Kim Harris, is ongoing, but I think it is important to take you through our thought process in coming to this decision.

While on Nightly News on Friday, January 30, 2015, Brian misrepresented events which occurred while he was covering the Iraq War in 2003. It then became clear that on other occasions Brian had done the same while telling that story in other venues. This was wrong and completely inappropriate for someone in Brian’s position.

In addition, we have concerns about comments that occurred outside NBC News while Brian was talking about his experiences in the field.

As Managing Editor and Anchor of Nightly News, Brian has a responsibility to be truthful and to uphold the high standards of the news division at all times.

Steve Burke, Pat Fili and I came to this decision together. We felt it would have been wrong to disregard the good work Brian has done and the special relationship he has forged with our viewers over 22 years. Millions of Americans have turned to him every day, and he has been an important and well-respected part of our organization.

As I’m sure you understand, this was a very hard decision. Certainly there will be those who disagree. But we believe this suspension is the appropriate and proportionate action.

This has been a difficult time. But NBC News is bigger than this moment. You work so hard and dedicate yourselves each and every day to the important work of bringing trusted, credible news to our audience. Because of you, your loyalty, your dedication, NBC News is an organization we can—and should—all be proud of. We will get through this together.

Steve Burke asked me to share the following message.

“This has been a painful period for all concerned and we appreciate your patience while we gathered the available facts. By his actions, Brian has jeopardized the trust millions of Americans place in NBC News. His actions are inexcusable and this suspension is severe and appropriate. Brian’s life’s work is delivering the news. I know Brian loves his country, NBC News and his colleagues. He deserves a second chance and we are rooting for him. Brian has shared his deep remorse with me and he is committed to winning back everyone's trust.”

Deborah

[Image via Getty Images]

Jeb Bush Staffer Ousted Over Sexist Tweets, Racist Blog Post

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Jeb Bush Staffer Ousted Over Sexist Tweets, Racist Blog Post

Just one day after Time announced his appointment as Jeb Bush's Chief Technology Officer, Hipster.com co-founder Ethan Czahor resigned from the position over ugly comments about "sluts" and black parents.

Today, a Bush spokesperson announced that the technologically-impaired tech chief had stepped down, saying Czahor's dumb words were "regrettable and insensitive" and "do not reflect the views of Governor Bush."

Presumably, that means the former governor does not believe that "female art majors are sluts" or that gay guys don't burp, as Czahor asserted in a series of bad tweets he raced to delete yesterday.

Jeb Bush Staffer Ousted Over Sexist Tweets, Racist Blog Post

Jeb Bush Staffer Ousted Over Sexist Tweets, Racist Blog Post

Jeb Bush Staffer Ousted Over Sexist Tweets, Racist Blog Post

Jeb Bush Staffer Ousted Over Sexist Tweets, Racist Blog Post

However, it seems that what ultimately sealed Czahor's fate was a 2008 blog post uncovered by The Huffington Post. In it, Czahor praises Martin Luther King, Jr. for not sagging his pants and says "black parents need to get their sh@# together."

Tuesday evening, Czahor followed up his non-apology from yesterday with some parting advice for other bigoted tech bros interested in politics: Hang in there!

[Images via Getty Images/Twitter/Buzzfeed]

Police Search for Gunman Who Shot TV Anchor in "Targeted" Attack

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Police Search for Gunman Who Shot TV Anchor in "Targeted" Attack

On Tuesday afternoon, KFMB-TV sports anchor Kyle Kraska was shot outside his suburban San Diego home, CBS News reports. Police say the suspected gunman, Mike Montana, is armed and still at large.

At around 3 p.m., police received reports of shots fired near the newscaster's Scripps Ranch home. From KFMB-TV:

The incident began when shots were fired into the rear window of Kraska's Mercedes. His car then appeared to pull out of his driveway and the confrontation spilled into the street in front of Kraska's home. At that time, another round of gunshots were heard.

A neighbor told CBS News 8 that he saw Kraska face-down in the street after being shot.

Kraska was then rushed to surgery with multiple gunshot wounds to his leg and side. As of Tuesday evening, Kraska's prognosis was reportedly good.

Asked about a possible motive behind the shooting, a police spokesperson told KTLA, "I suppose you could say it was targeted."

In a darkly surreal twist, Kraska's colleagues found themselves covering their coworker's shooting.

[Images via KFMB-TV/KABC-TV]

Kevin Gates Is Mad That Women Won't Blow His Dog

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Kevin Gates Is Mad That Women Won't Blow His Dog

Louisiana-born rapper and cousin-fucker Kevin Gates took to Instagram to discuss his problems with women on Tuesday, namely, their steadfast refusal to fellate his literal (as in "woof woof") dog.

"I hope you didn't think I got in bed with you just to lay down with you," said Gates, presumably addressing one dog dick-abstainer in particular. "Bitch, you can call Uber for all I care. Ho talkin' about, 'I'm not about to suck no dog dick, that's a dog!'"

"Ho, you can call him what you want, but he loyal," continued Gates, adding, "I don't get tired," the title of his 2014 single that, it now seems, might secretly be about convincing women to suck off dogs.

Gates wan't done, however, offering this message to his bestiality-averse critics: "I wouldn't even let my dog smell your pussy."

Of course, it's possible Gates was joking about the whole dog-fucking business, which—would be better, I guess?

[Image via YouTube]

Watch Jon Stewart Tell A Shocked Audience He's Leaving The Daily Show

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Jon Stewart's plans to end his long run as host of Comedy Central's The Daily Show emerged earlier today—he even acknowledged that viewers already knew something his live audience at the taping didn't—but watching him make the announcement really makes the news seem real. Here's how Stewart delivered the news.

[Comedy Central]

Three Muslim College Students Slain in Shooting Near UNC Chapel Hill 

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Three Muslim College Students Slain in Shooting Near UNC Chapel Hill 

Craig Stephen Hicks, 46, has been charged by Chapel Hill, NC police with three counts of first-degree murder for the deaths of three Muslim college students, who were all shot in the head at an apartment complex near the University of North Carolina campus. All three were pronounced dead at the scene.

According to WRAL, Hicks turned himself to police Tuesday night. Hicks is accused of shooting and killing Deah Shaddy Barakat, 23; Barakat's wife, Yusor Mohammad, 21; and her sister, Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha, 19.

Barakat, the Charlotte Observer reports, was a doctoral student at UNC-Chapel Hill's School of Dentistry; his wife and sister were students at North Carolina State University.

While a motive for the killings has yet to have been established by police, speculation swirls on social media that the shootings were motivated by religion (filtered through #MuslimLivesMatter).

The Independent found a Facebook page appearing to belong to Hicks:

Hicks' pictures largely consist of images with text mocking religion and supporting atheism, but include images of himself and his wife at Disneyland, what he describes as his "loaded 38 revovler", and himself separately on a quad bike and wearing a suit.

In one Facebook post found by CNN and purportedly written by Hicks, he writes, "When it comes to insults, your religion started this, not me. If your religion kept its big mouth shut, so would I."

Update, 11:44 a.m.: According to a statement released by Chapel Hill police, a "preliminary investigation indicates that the crime was motivated by an ongoing neighbor dispute over parking." Police, however, are continuing to investigate whether the shooting was a hate crime and say that Hicks is cooperating.

[Image via AP]

Leonardo DiCaprio Spotted Making Out With Molecular Biologist—JK, Model

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Leonardo DiCaprio Spotted Making Out With Molecular Biologist—JK, Model

You might be aware that over the past few months Leonardo DiCaprio, actor and founding member of the Pussy Posse, has allegedly been hanging out, texting, and hooking up with MAC Cosmetics VIVA GLAM Rihanna™ model Rihanna. Well, he's not anymore, says somebody.

An insider tells Radar Online that DiCaprio, whose model percentage has lately been holding at a steady 50 percent after dipping to 33.3 percent in January, was spotted at 1Oak in Los Angeles "making out" with a blonde model.

Not only was he spotted making out with a model after reportedly hooking up with Rihanna for months—right under our noses—he was spotted making out with a model mere feet from Rihanna herself. Incredible—just incredible. From Radar:

"Rihanna was at the owner, Richie Akiva's table, downstairs," an insider tells Radar exclusively. "Leo was at a separate table. He had his own by the DJ booth."

Oh, Leo, you dog, you. At least you don't have to get that six pack anymore.

50% model.

[image via Getty/me/the model]


The Lesbian Jewish Leftist Conspiracy Tearing Reddit Apart, Untangled

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The Lesbian Jewish Leftist Conspiracy Tearing Reddit Apart, Untangled

A specter is haunting Reddit: The specter of SJWs.

Almost overnight, the venture-backed link-sharing behemoth has been plunged into a bizarre, wide-ranging conspiracy scare—complete with accusations of shady cabals, corruption, radical feminist infiltration, and scheming of all sorts—that makes PrisonPlanet.com look like BuzzFeed. It is one of the least sane things I have read on this internet, and I've spent the last day trying to untangle it.

Reddit and the huge community that calls the site home have always been wary of meddling from outsiders attempting to game the system—whether it's webmasters or promoters looking for a traffic boost, or ideologues trying to push an agenda. Is an article being upvoted because it's good, or because some hidden force has decided to promote it? Were you banned because you broke the rules, or because you expressed the wrong opinion?

This is a real and common concern for virtual villages everywhere, but because Reddit happens to have a large population of teenaged racists, basement-bound reactionaries, and general morons, it's not uncommon for that wariness to spill into outright conspiracy theory—and consequent message board drama.

The Lesbian Jewish Leftist Conspiracy Tearing Reddit Apart, Untangled


The latest set of conspiracy theories is rippling across Reddit, creating a minor schism between the site and its farthest right fans. In essence, the story holds that feminists have consolidated control of "moderator" positions across the site, and are censoring discussions to fit their worldview. If you're a Reddit zealot, this is as frightening as your life can get.

While it's true that small cliques of users have subverted the democratic functions of community sites in the past—Digg is a notorious example—there's very little evidence for this theory. As one Redditor puts it,

But as for my question of why SJW stuff would be on the agenda for Conde Nast, and then pushed down to the mods, beyond the fact that it has been their agenda in the past through print media, I still don't fully understand other than it being understood as feminism being used as yet another tool of the elites to cause infighting amongst the plebs.

This here might be just another ephemeral Reddit loon, were it not for the fact that the people speaking out against the "conspiracy" are being banned by the site. A coverup? A thread with this rambling title currently has almost 4,000 upvotes:

Guy exposed a cabal of users taking over reddit yesterday, spawned a watchdog subreddit of 2500 subscribers overnight, was then banned by reddit's admins, all the subreddit's mods then banned, admins won't say why, and now they're handing the subreddit to the corrupt cabal of users who were exposed.

According to a user going by "metaredditcancer," the Reddit "cabal" has been working for years, under direction of a subreddit called "ShitRedditSays"—a Reddit community dedicated to identifying the site's most reactionary posts and comments and gleefully mocking them:

The worst thing about Shitredditsays, however, isn't that they have their own shitty subreddit that makes zero sense to the outside world and to those who are sane and don't believe in the views of social justice warriors and radical feminists. The worst thing about SRS is that they and their friends from other like-minded subreddits on reddit - with the cooperation and unspoken support of a few reddit administrators - have managed to turn reddit into Digg 2.0 where a clique of users who are chummy and friendly with each other have managed to take over a very large portion of this website. The users who have turned reddit into Digg 2.0 and who threaten to ruin the site are what I and some others who understand the situation have come to know as and refer to as "metareddit cancer." I have taken it upon myself to go ahead and create the subreddit/r/metaredditcancer to act as a watchdog that chronicles everything that this cabal of reddit users are doing to turn reddit into Digg 2.0 and - in particular - to turn the site into a place run by social justice warrior and feminist moderators who tolerate no deviation from their beliefs in the numerous subreddits that they have come to control as moderators.

ShitRedditSays' dedication to making fun of Reddit makes it just like the rest of the internet—but if you're onboard with metaredditcancer, you believe there's more afoot here, a political plot to subvert the entire website. It's hard to read something this crazy without slowly becoming crazy yourself, but the Reddit Cabal Conspiracy has a few main components:

Reddit has been infiltrated by a "cabal" of "social justice warrior" (SJW) moderators

The perpetual bogey(wo)man of the right wing internet fringe is the SJW, a nonsense composite character of vaguely progressive ideals that's seen as a threat to the free practice of cherished internet traditions like hate-mongering and jerking off to Tomb Raider fan art. Reddit's conspiracy theorists allege that a group of "SJWs" have become moderators across a constellation of subreddits, in order to...push a progressive agenda? Block people? Do something sinister? I don't know.

The SJW agenda is being pushed on some of Reddit's most popular sections

The SJW Cabal includes moderators of popular Reddit destinations like "World News" and "Explain Like I'm 5." No matter how much conspiracy theorists try to explain why anyone would bother doing this, it still ends up sounding like this:

They organize subreddit request attempts in private subreddits where they plan out their agenda and they do the same in their internet relay chat rooms as well. I can say with total confidence that there is no other reddit clique and group operating on this website that looks to take over and control as many subreddits as they can in a clear and indisputable attempt to control the flow of conversation so that conversations in any given subreddit always lean and kowtow to radical feminism and a perverted form of social justice. NO OTHER GROUP EXISTS that is looking to take over as much of this site as possible.

The SJWs have teamed up with The Gays to form this Cabal

From a 1,700 word description of the Cabal's plot (which has received many thousands of upvotes in support):

Maybe the worst example of their way of worming into moderator positions and destroying subreddits is that of /r/LGBT and how 2 transsexual radfem SRS trolls - one of which has become infamous on reddit and other chan websites - managed to take control of the subreddit in 2012 and then acted like dictators and abused their power so badly that reddit's administrators had to be called into the drama.

Conde Nast is in on it, too

Reddit user IceDagger316 is cracking the case:

Advance Publications (reddit's majority shareholder and parent company of former sole owner Condé Nast, bastion of such weighty, free thinking publications as Vogue, Details, Glamour, Vanity Fair, and W, whose president sits on reddit's board) has a social agenda to push. The admins are under orders to "encourage" the hivemind of the SJW/SRS subs by the majority shareholder, represented by one person on the board. Hell, they may not even need to be encouraged to do so. They may know the agenda by heart and support it wholly.

There's an anti-semitic angle here, of course

From a discussion of this batshit convention on 8chan, which generally makes Reddit look like Plato's academy:

The Lesbian Jewish Leftist Conspiracy Tearing Reddit Apart, Untangled

Some Redditors are so alarmed, they're leaving for another site

Voat.co, which is pretty much just a functional clone of Reddit, is the destination of choice for users who fear the vast Zionist-SJW specter. Many have made the jump already—though I noticed one Redditor say he'd stick around for the /r/CoonTown subreddit, a white supremacist and general racism discussion zone.

This is fucking crazy of course, but it sort of matters

There was a time when the fringe truly existed on the fringes of society, where they could be insulated from the non-fringe and egg each other on into new and more brazen forms of fringedom. But today, conspiracies as manifestly deranged as this one rocket in popularity, empowered by the simple software behind sites like Reddit and 8chan. There have always and will always be right-wing lunatics who think creeping "transexual feminism" is an existential threat; but now those same people share real estate with all the rest of us. They are just one click away.

Image by Jim Cooke

Local Jails Are Insatiable Monsters

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Local Jails Are Insatiable Monsters

It has become increasingly clear to mainstream America that our nation's decades-long experiment with mass incarceration is fundamentally a bad idea. And though state prisons loom large in the public mind, it's actually local jails where most of the (bad) action happens.

Today, the Vera Institute for Justice released a report that attempts to take stock of the situation in America's local jails—institutions that, remember, hold either people serving very short sentences, or people awaiting trial who have not been convicted of any crime at all (often there because they are too poor to make bail). The majority of people in jail have not been convicted of a crime. Jails are by far the most common point of contact between citizens and the prison industrial complex. And their scale is staggering. A few key facts from the report:

  • "There are more than 3,000 jails in the United States, holding 731,000 people on any given day."
  • In a year, there are almost 12 million individual admissions to jails in America, which is "nearly 19 times the annual admissions to state and federal prisons." The number of annual jail admissions has nearly doubled in the past 30 years, although crime rates have fallen significantly since the early 1990s.
  • The average length of a jail stay "increased from an average of 14 days in 1983 to 23 days in 2013." During that same period, the percentage of jail inmates who were being held before trial (as opposed to after conviction and sentencing) rose from 40% to 62%.
  • The vast majority of people in jail are not there for violent crimes: "nearly 75 percent of the population of both sentenced offenders and pretrial detainees are in jail for nonviolent traffic, property, drug, or public order offenses." Close to a quarter of people in jail are there for drug-related crimes.

The report also makes clear the extent to which local jails are being disproportionately used to house minorities, the poor, and the mentally ill. It is a thoroughly depressing picture.

A jail is not a social safety net. Quite the opposite.

[The full report. Photo via AP]

A Chat with Malcolm Brenner, Man Famous for Having Sex with a Dolphin

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A Chat with Malcolm Brenner, Man Famous for Having Sex with a Dolphin

Malcolm Brenner is the only man on Earth to achieve international fame for having sex with a dolphin. A former investigative journalist who covered the American Southwest, he remains best known for his 1970's love affair—mostly romantic, briefly sexual—with a bottlenose dolphin named Dolly. Their "courtship," which Brenner sees as dolphin-initiated and also transcendently romantic, took place in a theme park in Florida, the state where Brenner, now 63, currently lives. He chronicled these events in his autobiographical novel Wet Goddess, and Brenner's story is the subject of a new short documentary called Dolphin Lover.

Watching Dolphin Lover, I was struck by the sincere, troubled and complicated intimacy with which Brenner recalls these events, which took place when he was only 19. About his first contact with Dolly, he says:

I started rubbing her forehead—she seemed to enjoy that—so I started rubbing her back, working my way down towards her tail, and as I was rubbing her, moving my hand towards her tail, Dolly started slowly rolling around her long axis. By the time I got midway down her body I was rubbing her belly instead of her back, and she swam forward so that I was rubbing her genital slit, and then she stopped moving. I thought, 'This is embarrassing.'

About their eventual open-water sexual consummation—the dolphin had to be horizontal, him vertical; the CGI rendering in the film is really something—Brenner said it felt like he was "merging with her" into "one creature that was making love with himself."

Here, he describes Dolly's tactics:

Filmmakers Joey Daoud and Kareem Tabsch tracked Brenner down after reading his story on the internet, then his novel. I asked them if Brenner seemed concerned about turning over his story to outsiders for this documentary, and they admitted he'd had his concerns: "no Flipper jokes" and whatnot. But neither Daoud nor Tabsch was interested in being any more sensationalistic than the story is already.

Daoud talked about his initial reaction to reading the "Man Has Sex with Dolphin" headline. "You imagine that the guy got into a shallow pen with a dolphin and chased it around," he said. "But then I realized it was more detailed, more nuanced." Tabsch added that he was taken by Brenner's openness, and that the aspect of the story he found most surprising was "that he views his zoophilia as a product of nurture instead of nature, which is controversial, as many zoophiles and people of non-normative sexualities really feel that nature is the cause." More specifically: Brenner attributes his zoophilia to a protracted period of molestation at the hands of his childhood psychiatrist, now linked to many such crimes. (He also compares zoophilia to interracial dating, hoping that one day, the former may be as acceptable as the latter.)

As an non-shockable person interested in the point where the unimaginable becomes mundane, I sought out Malcolm myself for an interview. We talked on the phone yesterday, and at the beginning of the call, discovered we both own collie mixes. I asked him, awkwardly, if it was confusing to own a dog and be a zoophile. "I'm not indiscriminately attracted to animals," Brenner said, "in the same way that I'm not indiscriminately attracted to women."

Is that a common misconception about zoophilia?

Sure. Also, people often assume you're attracted to children, which is not at all true in my case.

In the documentary, you talk about figuring out that you were attracted to animals early, with a Disney cartoon at age five, then with your family dog Miss Clavel at age 11. But Miss Clavel wasn't interested.

Pretty much, no. My mom bred her, but I didn't have what it takes.

And during this period, you were being physically and sexually abused by a psychiatrist.

It's a rather strange field called orgonomy. The founder is a man named Wilhelm Reich, and it was one of his students that molested me. Reich had this school of psychotherapy in which everything was sexualized, where sexuality was the life force of the universe, responsible for gravity and light. Treatment involved a very harsh kind of physical therapy.

The particular physical therapist that I was treated by was—it turns out now—someone who mistreated literally hundreds of children and adult patients. My brother, who still follows this field of therapy, has done research and become really horrified at the guy's misdeeds.

Since this field of psychotherapy revolves around sexuality, would patients generally come to these therapists with issues related to sex?

I was taken to my therapist because I had a difficult birth. In orgonomy, when something happens to you and you repress your feelings about it, it shows up in the form of tension in your body—and you investigate these neuroses and treat them through the body. But this was done in very painful and invasive ways. It was not a pleasant experience.

When did you start linking your zoophilia to this experience of abuse?

Not until much later on, not until I became skeptical of Reich's theories in my thirties, when there was just an overwhelming amount of evidence that he wasn't right, not the hero I'd thought he was.

And that was after your relationship with Dolly, right?

Yes, that happened when I was 19, 20. Have you seen the movie?

Yeah. I thought it was great. I was wondering if you were apprehensive about it.

I really was. Joey and Kareem had only done one movie together before, and I wasn't sure if they would have the right tone for Dolphin Lover. But we met, had some talks prior. Kareem won me over when he told me he believed I was truly in love with the dolphin.

Oh, for what it's worth, I always thought that was obvious. Why would someone devote such a large part of themselves to the memory of someone they didn't love?

Judging from a lot of the comments sections, people haven't thought that to be true.

Do you read the comments?

I started to, at first. But now, I don't so much.

That's good. So, I have a general question. What is attractive to you, in animals? Is it a type of animal, or a type of personality, or a situation, or a combination of these things?

I'm attracted to animals that have a rather independent streak in them. Animals that think for themselves. In addition to the dolphin, the only animal I ever had any sexual experience with is canines.

What was it about Dolly that attracted you? In the documentary, you talk about how she seemed attracted to you: initiating physical contact, running her teeth gently down your arms and legs, rubbing her genitals on your body.

That didn't happen initially. The water was too cold when I first got to the park.

But Dolly was a very unique dolphin, because she was allowed to perform with a riverboat. She was the only dolphin outside the US navy who could do open water work. She could have left the amusement park any time she wanted to, but she kept coming back. So I started wondering, what was the big draw? I really don't have a satisfactory answer, but I really think she was studying human behavior. I really do.

I think I missed it in the documentary that she would perform in open water.

Yes. The riverboat was refitted to look old-timey, and she'd swim alongside it, and jump about 11 feet in the air and take the fish out of the trainer's hand. It was something. It was really beautiful.

You were in this park for a photography project, right?

Yes, I was taking pictures for a writer's book. That first physical contact happened probably three months after I got there, so probably from November to late January.

How did it feel after she touched you? Did you immediately start thinking about initiating a sexual relationship with her?

I felt very embarrassed. I was not comfortable with my own zoosexuality—I didn't want to be a zoophile. I was trying to do everything I could to avoid this animal, who seemed to know what my secret was. It took her literally about 3 or 4 months to begin to win me over and convince me that she was intellectually pretty much my equal.

And at that point, I had to start asking myself—well, if I have this high of a regard for her, and if this was a woman who was being so forward with me, would I hold out on her? The answer I came up with was, no I wouldn't. And so I felt my sort of inhibitions just eroding.

Dolly actually changed her courtship tactics through the course of the relationship. At first she was gentle and forward, as you noted, but after that she became very aggressive. She would throw herself on me and rub her vulva against my knees. Any protruding part of my body was fair game for her. She would masturbate on me, essentially. I had to watch out that no one was around to witness this.

I was going to ask you if anyone in the park noticed.

Nobody picked up on it. I was slow to pick up on it, to be honest. I was not a virgin, but basically one. I wasn't either sexually very experienced, or emotionally very experienced. That, I think, was the downfall of the relationship.

In what way?

I'd made plans to go to college out of state, at Evergreen, in Washington State. I'd been going to New College of Florida, and I was dissatisfied, and Evergreen looked like an exciting and innovative type of place. But I was also frankly freaked out by the intensity of my involvement with the dolphin. I was having telepathic connections with the dolphin.

Was the act of intercourse you talk about in the documentary the only one?

Yes. But the telepathic connection was much more intense than the documentary represents, and it started earlier. I was getting high a lot back then, and it began while I was high one night. The voice did not immediately announce itself to be a dolphin trying to communicate with me—it was a voice that wanted to play games, 20 Questions, that kind of thing.

I was skeptical but intrigued. And I couldn't make it go away. I could tell it to shut up, but not to go away. I wondered if I was going schizophrenic, but most schizophrenics have voices that are violent, tell them to hurt themselves. This voice was playful and benevolent, and gradually, I came to the conclusion that it was the dolphin.

The voice had the personality you perceived from Dolly.

Yes, it did. And the thing was, I could go to see the real dolphin, and I might have a very puzzling and challenging experience with her. Once I took a girl I wanted to impress down there, and she thought swimming with the dolphins would be a wonderful idea. Dolly was the dolphin you could swim with at this park—the other ones were males, who are supposed to be more rambunctious. So I took this young woman down to see Dolly, who basically towed her to the side of the far pool and tossed her out of the water.

The dolphin was acting like a girlfriend.

Yeah, she sussed what was up. And I saw, she is appropriating me like this.

What was it like when you were finally had sex with her?

It felt like I was making love with the ocean itself. It felt like, first of all, that I had forgiven myself—gotten over my hesitations about finally giving her what she wanted. When I had that realization, then it just seemed there was this energy surging between us, growing more intense, bringing us both to orgasm. Some scientists say that female animals don't have orgasms, but I know she did. She vocalized it.

Would you describe this as the greatest intimacy you've ever felt with anyone?

Yeah, it stepped right over the species line. The dolphin, I know, was just as aware. She'd had to elude a male dolphin to get to me.

Does it feel lonely to you now that this height of intimacy in your life happened so long ago, and with a dolphin?

Yeah, it does. But I had a very strong sense of intimacy with my second wife, also. It was some physical thing that happened when we were close together—her smell, or her electrical field. I thought that that intimacy would sustain our relationship. In the long run it did not, and I've always felt cheated by intimacy, ever since.

You've been married twice—was either of your wives ever jealous of Dolly?

I don't think jealousy was a big part of what caused this relationship to founder. There were other circumstances.

I read in your bio that your first wife introduced you to Wicca, which was a belief system that allows for your sexual relationship with Dolly.

In Wicca, all acts of love and pleasure are rituals to the gods. That's a pretty open statement for sexuality, and it seemed to encompass my experience. I practiced Wicca for 20 years.

Recently, you told Vice that your atheism presents a larger problem in dating than your sexual history.

Frankly, I think that after all of this publicity, my dating life is shot.

I want to ask you again about what you said about wishing you'd been able to handle your relationship with Dolly differently. What would you have changed?

I wish I had stayed closer to her, not gone clear across the country. She was moved to an aquarium in Mississippi, kept in very poor conditions, put in a concrete pen with a view of open water. For a dolphin like her, that must have been torturous.

Her trainer told me that he came out one morning and she was just dead on the bottom of the tank.

I had forgotten that about dolphins, until the documentary—that they don't breathe automatically, but consciously. You also talk about a dream you had sort of forecasting her death. I can imagine how awful that must have been for you.

It took me about five years to work myself out of an immediate sense of depression. It wasn't only that Dolly was separated from me. She had developed a fondness for the male dolphin, too, the one in Florida that she had to avoid so that we could make love. She was separated from him, too. And the other dolphins in the new aquarium did not take up with her. They have their pecking order and that's that.

It's really sad to imagine anyone you love being lonely when they die.

Yeah. And that's why I'm trying to get the message out. That's not how we should treat animals.

I wanted to ask you about that—the idea of getting a message out. The phrase "zoophilia advocate" gets attached to your name a lot, and I'm wondering what that means to you.

If I could have told this story without coming out of the closet about being a zoophile, I would have, but there was just no way. I am not advocating for zoophilia at all. I would advocate that the government quit prosecuting us for loving who we love. But I'm not advocating for it.

Okay, yeah. Because it seems clear to me that you're very interested in establishing whatever consent can be established between people and animals, but that seems impossible to legally regulate or verify.

Yes, I'm not advocating for it.

You differentiate zoophilia from bestiality in the documentary in a way that I interpreted as drawing a certain line: that bestiality draws on the fact that the animal can't give explicit consent—like, the consent-breaching quality of the act is part of the appeal in bestiality. But zoophilia draws on the desire to elicit consent nonverbally from the animal, as much as a person can.

Yeah, I would say so. A zoophile is as concerned with his or her partner's consent and pleasure as any other person would be. Animals do consent to each other—that's what the process of courtship is about. And if you approach an animal from the animal's point of view, you can obtain consent the same way another animal would.

It's not necessarily a difficult thing to do. You're approaching a female animal; she'd better be in heat. If you don't do this correctly, you can get seriously hurt. animals have no compunction about letting you know that what you're doing is not acceptable. People accuse me of having raped the dolphin, but one man in the water could never rape a dolphin.

It could just swim away from you at 20 miles per hour.

Navy SEALs have told me that they would be helpless against a dolphin.

I read that you haven't had sex with any other animals since Dolly. Is this out of respect to her, or lack of the right circumstances?

Except for one very brief sexual encounter, I haven't had any partners for the last 10 years.

Would you trade your sexuality for a "normal" one?

I don't know. That's a difficult question to answer. I would give anything to get the dolphin back. Almost anything. And for a long time in my life, the answer to your question would have been easier. But at this age, I've accepted myself as a zoophile, indelibly.

Have you connected with other zoophiles? Considered dating them?

Zoophiles tend to gather in chat rooms that I don't spend a lot of time in. According to Kinsey, female zoophiles are about half as common as male zoophiles. I haven't really met any or had any approach me.

Do you ever get tired of talking about Dolly?

I find the publicity I'm getting right now rather stressful. I'm not a public person. I wrote the book so I wouldn't have to tell the story, but here I am, telling it.

Do you think about her every day?

At least. Yes, every day.

For more about Malcolm Brenner, visit his website or buy Wet Goddess. Next from Miami-based documentary filmmakers Kareem Tabsch and Joey Daoud is the award-winning short documentary Cherry Pop: The Story of the World's Fanciest Cat, which will be making its online debut soon. You can find out more about Dolphin Lover and stay updated as to the film's release at its website.

Jamie Dornan Pretends to Put His Penis Into Dakota Johnson in Sepia

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Jamie Dornan Pretends to Put His Penis Into Dakota Johnson in Sepia

It would be much easier for 50 Shades of Grey stars Jamie Dornan and Dakota Johnson to openly despise each other if the exact nature of their film did not require the publication of highly ridiculous photos like this upcoming spread in W, in which they show off one of the film's legendarily kinky sex positions: man on top.

The photo set features 10 behind the scenes images from the movie, captured by director Sam Taylor-Johnson who also provides captions. For the above photo (which is cropped to PG-13 dimensions on the W website), Taylor-Johnson notes that "there were probably 10 to 15 people in the room. It's an incredibly intimate shot in an unintimate setting." Have you heard that Dornan and Johnson had to simulate sex in front of strangers, who were there to shoot a major motion picture, whereas normally when you have sex, there are no strangers in the room watching you? The situations are different, and that is why the actors are uncomfortable.

Here is a shot of Dornan and Johnson "relaxing" on set:

Says Taylor-Johnson: "[This] is the best of my stills. Dakota holds all the power."

Let's all pretend that this photo of the movie's stars staring off into the distance as if they're mentally organizing exactly what they'll do the second they get to leave the set is, as intended, a ringing endorsement for the mysterious seduction of 50 Shades of Grey.

And here is perhaps a perfect encapsulation of the chemistry between the new faces of erotica: naked Johnson on the floor and, also, the verge of falling asleep; Dornan gazing out of a window, perhaps wondering, once and for all, what it would feel like to finally just... jump.

We share their unbridled excitement at the prospect of more simulated sex the next two films.

[Images via Getty // Sam Taylor-Johnson/W Magazine // Twitter]

Plagiarist of the Day: Mic News Director Jared Keller

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Plagiarist of the Day: Mic News Director Jared Keller

Mic.com, the news and opinion website aimed at millennials, has a very millennial problem: Its director of news, Jared Keller, appears to have plagiarized at least 20 passages from at least eight different news sources over the past several months.

Keller was hired in April of last year as Mic’s director of programming. “Jared will lead our efforts to reach young people in the places we get news,” co-founder Jake Horowitz wrote in a memo announcing Keller’s new title. Horowitz highlighted Keller’s “wealth of experience” from previous gigs at The Atlantic, Bloomberg, and Al-Jazeera America. Besides writing, Keller is in charge of hiring other writers for Mic’s news division.

Keller’s title would appear to require understanding that plagiarism violates the standard norms of newsgathering. But in at least three articles published under his byline, Keller used the text of others, including The Atlantic, without any attribution. In several other cases, Keller lifted text from sources that he credits and links to in the post itself, but without setting that text in quotation marks or block quotes, and without noting anywhere on the page that the text was not his own.

The following is a breakdown of the instances of plagiarism we’re aware of. Seven examples were highlighted by an anonymous tipster; the rest we found using Google.

No Attribution

In the three examples that follow, Keller used words written elsewhere without linking to or crediting their author. They bear the signs of classic plagiarism: Taking the work of others and concealing the original source.

1.

The Atlantic (January 26, 2015):

Tuesday is International Holocaust Remembrance Day, marking the passage of 70 years since the January 27, 1945, liberation of Auschwitz by Soviet soldiers. Auschwitz was a network of concentration camps built and operated in occupied Poland by Nazi Germany during the Second World War. Auschwitz I and nearby Auschwitz II-Birkenau were the extermination camps where an estimated 1.1 million people—mostly Jews from across Europe, but also political opponents, prisoners of war, homosexuals, and Roma—were killed in gas chambers or by systematic starvation, forced labor, disease, or medical experiments.

Keller (January 27, 2015):

Tuesday is International Holocaust Remembrance Day, marking the passage of 70 years since the Jan. 27, 1945, liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camps built and operated in occupied Poland by Nazi Germany. As many as 1.1 million people, mostly Jews from across Europe, were killed there in gas chambers or by systematic starvation, forced labor and disease.

2.

The Independent (December 26, 2014, 3:00 a.m.):

Shahab Ali Shah, head of police administration in Khyber, claimed that Saddam helped plan the Peshawar school attack and was also involved in attacks on health workers giving out polio vaccinations in the Peshawar valley.

Keller (December 26, 2014, 7:52 a.m.):

Shah said Saddam helped plan the Peshawar school attack and was also involved in attacks on health workers giving polio vaccinations in the Peshawar valley.

3.

The Belfast Telegraph (July 9, 2014):

The Al-Quds Brigade, the armed wing of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), released a video on July 9 which they say shows the launch of rockets from the Gaza Strip on southern Israel. The video shows a vehicle-mounted rocket launcher firing a number of rockets, though it is not possible to establish the date nor location of capture. The vehicle’s door is emblazoned with the Al-Quds Brigade's distinctive logo.

Keller (July 10, 2014):

The Al-Quds Brigade, the armed wing of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), released a video Wednesday that purports to show the launch of rockets from the Gaza Strip on southern Israel. The video shows a vehicle-mounted rocket launcher firing a number of rockets, though it is not possible to establish the date nor location of capture. The vehicle’s door is emblazoned with the Al-Quds Brigade's distinctive logo.


Credit, But No Quotation Marks

Elsewhere, Keller committed a different sin: Either copying or very lightly rewriting passages (mostly from AP or Reuters wire stories) that are credited in the same post, usually with an inline link and in a few cases with a hat-tip at the very bottom. (It’s unclear whether Mic subscribes to those wire services. News organizations that incorporate wire reporting into their articles are expected to credit those services in their bylines or a note.)

Below are 16 examples of Keller directly lifting text, without immediate attribution, from sources he later cites or links to in the posts written under his byline.

4.

Vox (January 26):

The awful truth of the anti-vaccine movement is that it puts the most vulnerable populations at risk: infants under 12 months of age, who can’t get vaccinated...

Keller (January 28, 2014):

The sad truth of the anti-vaccine movement is that it puts the most vulnerable populations at risk, including children under the age of 12 [sic] who simply can't get vaccinated...

(Update: TPM’s Brendan James points out that Keller appears to have edited the passage we quoted above. It now reads: “The sad truth of the anti-vaccine movement is that it puts the most vulnerable populations at risk, including young children who simply can't get vaccinated.” However the post’s original language is preserved in Google’s results for “children under the age of 12 who simply,” in which the second link points to an CDN server used by PolicyMic. That server’s copy of Keller’s post has since been updated, but the preview text under the link indicates that it used to contain “children under the age of 12 who simply.”)

5.

Reuters (February 6):

Thousands of Jordanians packed the streets of the capital Amman on Friday, urging their monarch to step up air strikes on Islamic State to avenge its killing of pilot Mouath al-Kasaesbeh.

Keller (February 6):

Thousands of Jordanians packed the streets of the capital Amman on Friday, urging their monarch to step up air strikes on IS to avenge its killing of pilot Mouath al-Kasaesbeh.

6.

The Washington Post (January 16):

The 218-page report, commissioned as a result of a May law, explores every aspect, option and pathway to legalization...

Each of the 12 paths offers different benefits and risks to public health, government control of the industry, the ability to generate revenue and the level of conflict with federal law.

Keller (January 19):

The 218-page report, commissioned as a result of a May 2014 law directing Vermont's Secretary of Administration to analyze consequences of legalizing marijuana, explores every aspect, option and pathway to legalization in the Green Mountain State...

Each of the 12 paths offers different benefits and risks to public health, government control of the industry, the ability to generate revenue and the level of conflict with federal law.

7.

Associated Press (January 16):

In Ireland, police arrested a suspected French-Algerian militant at Dublin Airport as he tried to enter the country using a false passport.

Keller (January 17):

In Ireland, police arrested a suspected French-Algerian militant on a European watch list at Dublin Airport as he tried to enter the country using a false passport.

8.

AP (January 16):

In more than a dozen raids Friday, Belgian forces found four military-style weapons including Kalashnikov assault rifles and several police uniforms, Van der Sypt said.

Keller (January 17; same article as No. 5):

And in more than a dozen raids Friday, Belgian forces found four military-style weapons, including Kalashnikov assault rifles, as well as several police uniforms, in the possession of suspected extremists.

9.

Reuters (January 17):

Churches were burned, Christian homes looted and the French cultural centre attacked during the violence in Zinder on Friday, residents said.

Keller (January 17):

On Friday, churches were burned, Christian homes looted and the French cultural center attacked during the violence in Zinder, Reuters reports.

10.

AP (January 25):

At the same time the insurgents continued scorched-earth attacks on villages some 125 miles to the south in Adamawa state, slitting throats of residents, looting and burning homes and abducting dozens of trapped women and children, according to Vandu Kainu and other escaping survivors.

Keller (January 26):

The insurgents also continued their “scorched-earth attacks” on villages some 125 miles to the south, “slitting throats of residents, looting and burning homes and abducting dozens of trapped women and children,” survivors told the AP.

11.

AP (January 26):

Jubilant Kurdish fighters ousted Islamic State militants from the key Syrian border town of Kobani on Monday after a four-month battle — a significant victory for both the Kurds and the U.S.-led coalition.

Keller (January 27):

After a brutal four-month battle against the Islamic State, jubilant Kurdish fighters ousted the militants from the key Syrian border town of Kobani on Monday — a significant victory for both the Kurds and the U.S.-led coalition.

12.

Reuters (January 14):

Tomas Zeron, director of criminal investigations at the federal Attorney General's office, said that prosecutors had obtained an arrest warrant for former mayor Jose Luis Abarca and 44 others on charges of kidnapping the 43 students.

Keller (January 14):

Tomas Zeron, director of criminal investigations at the federal Attorney General's office, told Reuters that prosecutors had obtained an arrest warrant for former Mayor José Luis Abarca and 44 others on charges of kidnapping the students.

13.

Reuters (January 17):

A day after five people were killed in Niger in protests over the cartoons, protesters in Niamey attacked a police station and burned at least two police cars near the main mosque after authorities banned a meeting called by local Muslim leaders.

Keller (January 17):

A day after five people were killed in Niger, protesters attacked a police station in the capital city of Niamey. They burned at least two police cars near the main mosque after authorities banned a meeting called by local Muslim leaders, Reuters reports.

14.

AP (January 7):

French brothers Said and Cherif Kouachi, in their early 30s, should be considered armed and dangerous, according to a police bulletin released early Thursday

Keller (January 8):

French brothers Said and Cherif Kouachi, in their early 30s, should be considered armed and dangerous, according to a police bulletin released early Thursday.

15.

AP photo caption (November 16):

The Islamic State group released a graphic video on Sunday, Nov. 16, 2014, in which a black-clad militant claimed to have beheaded U.S. aid worker Peter Kassig.

AP article (November 16):

The Islamic State group released a graphic video Sunday in which a black-clad militant claims to have beheaded Kassig, who was captured last year.

Keller (November 16):

The Islamic State released a graphic video Sunday morning in which a black-clad militant claims to have beheaded Peter Kassig, a U.S. aid worker who was captured in Syria in 2013.

16.

AP (January 7):

France raised its terror alert system to the maximum — Attack Alert — and bolstered security with more than 800 extra soldiers to guard media offices, places of worship, transport and other sensitive areas. Fears had been running high in France and elsewhere in Europe that jihadis trained in warfare abroad would stage attacks at home.

Keller (January 8):

The Associated Press reports that France raised its terror alert system to the maximum — Attack Alert — and bolstered security with more than 800 extra soldiers to guard media offices, places of worship, transport and other sensitive areas. Fears had been running high in France and elsewhere in Europe that jihadis trained in warfare abroad would stage attacks at home.

17.

AP (January 7):

Powerful currents and murky water continue to hinder the operation, but searchers managed to get a photograph of the debris - nearly 6 miles from where Flight 8501 lost contact Dec. 28 - after it was detected by an Indonesian survey ship, National Search and Rescue chief Henry Bambang Soelistyo told reporters.

Keller (January 7):

Soelistyo told reporters that while unfavorable weather conditions and murky water continue to hinder the operation. Divers managed to get a photograph of the debris after it was detected by an Indonesian survey ship.

18.

Storyful, via Yahoo (July 6, linked in Keller’s post):

Israel’s Iron Dome defense system intercepted dozens of rockets fired by Hamas militants on July 7. The bombardment was reportedly triggered by IDF air strikes in the Gaza Strip, which killed nine militants in the early hours of Monday morning. Seven rockets were intercepted over Ashod and five over Netivot on Monday evening, according to local media reports. This footage captures air raid sirens sounding over Rehovot, where interceptions and explosions could be seen overhead.

Keller (July 10, 2014):

Israel’s Iron Dome defense system intercepted dozens of rockets fired by Hamas militants from on Wednesday and into the early hours Thursday. The bombardment followed Israel Defense Forces (IDF) airstrikes in the Gaza Strip throughout Wednesday. The uploader has described this footage as have been captured in southern Israel, showing rockets bound for Israel being intercepted by the Iron Dome.

19.

AP (December 31, 2014):

Park, a North Korean defector, said he's partnering with the U.S.-based nonprofit Human Rights Foundation, which is financing the making of the DVDs and USB memory sticks of the movie with Korean subtitles.

Keller (December 31, 2014):

Park said he's partnering with the U.S.-based nonprofit Human Rights Foundation, which is financing the making of the DVDs and USB memory sticks of the movie with Korean subtitles.

20.

AP (December 25, 2014):

The pope also thanked those courageously helping people infected with Ebola in Africa.

Keller (December 25, 2014):

The pope also thanked those courageously helping people infected with Ebola in West Africa.


This does not appear to be the first case of plagiarism committed by a Mic employee. In July of last year, the site placed editor’s notes on several dozen articles written by Chris Miles, the site’s Managing Editor of News. One such note reads:

Editor’s Note: This story has been updated to remove language that was used without attribution to CBS News and Forbes. We apologize to our readers for this violation of our basic editorial standards. Mic has put in place new mechanisms, including plagiarism detection software, to ensure that this does not happen in the future.

It is not clear when Miles left Mic, but he did not publish any articles for them after July 30, 2014. His author profile is programmed to redirect to Mic’s homepage. Five days ago, he joined the financial news website Marketwatch as a Viral News Editor.

Asked for comment on Keller’s case, Mic spokesperson James Allen emailed the following statement to Gawker:

Plagiarism is unacceptable. We have strict editorial standards and conduct ethics trainings for new employees. Using detection software, our copy editing team also checks articles for plagiarism prior to publication. Mic takes any allegations of plagiarism seriously and will conduct an internal review to determine the appropriate next steps.

Additional reporting by Jordan Sargent, Taylor Berman, Leah Finnegan, and Adam Weinstein.

A Roof Without Snow Means Reefer Will Grow

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A Roof Without Snow Means Reefer Will Grow

Police in the Netherlands raided an otherwise normal-looking house in the city of Haarlem last week when they surmised from the lack of snow on its roof that there was some suspicious activity going on within. The house was full of sweet, sticky reefer. Go figure.

The Telegraph reports that when the police arrived at the house, which was the only one on the street not covered with a light dusting of snow, they discovered an "industrial-scale cultivation of cannabis" and all kinds of heat lamps to nurture the owner's little baby buds.

While the Netherlands has lax laws regarding weed consumption (spring break, babyyy), it is illegal to grow more than five cannabis plants at home. As a warning to other growhouses in the Netherlands, Dutch police tweeted out a photo of the snowless house asking house owners to snitch on their neighbors. Very unchill.

[Image via Twitter]

Obama Calls for War: "ISIL Is Going to Lose"

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Obama Calls for War: "ISIL Is Going to Lose"

President Obama issued a proposal to Congress today seeking authorization for a three-year military operation that would ramp up the United States' fight against Islamic State forces in Syria and Iraq, primarily through "a systematic and sustained campaign of airstrikes."

Speaking from the White House today, Obama reaffirmed that the proposed military action "does not call for the deployment of U.S. ground combat forces to Iraq or Syria."

But in a letter addressed to Congress included with his formal proposal, Obama says ground forces might be deployed "in other, more limited circumstances, such as rescue operations involving U.S. or coalition personnel or the use of special operations forces to take military action against ISIL leadership." The letter goes on:

It would also authorize the use of U.S. forces in situations where ground combat operations are not expected or intended, such as intelligence collection and sharing, missions to enable kinetic strikes, or the provision of operational planning and other forms of advice and assistance to partner forces.

Obama's proposal follows news that Kayla Mueller, the last American hostage being held by ISIS, was apparently killed during an airstrike on Raqqa, Jordan. Three other American hostages—James Foley, Steven J. Sotloff, and Peter Kassig—have also been killed by the terrorist group.

As the New York Times notes, the last time Congress was asked to approve an authorization of military force was by President Bush in 2002 to invade Iraq.

[Image via AP]


Right-Wing Dicks Offer a Primer on How Not to Mourn a Terror Victim

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Right-Wing Dicks Offer a Primer on How Not to Mourn a Terror Victim

Amid all the slights and grievances, real and perceived, between conservatives and liberals in America, you might imagine some common baseline moral sentiments—like, say, mourning a young American woman killed in ISIS custody. But to some well-compensated mavens of the right, she's just a dead "bitch."

The family of Kayla Mueller confirmed this week that she was dead, after a year and a half in captivity, held by the Islamic State in Raqqa, Iraq. The 26-year-old Arizonan had accompanied a friend to Syria on a job for Doctors Without Borders when she was taken. Western news outlets, out of respect for the family and concern for her safety, had observed a media blackout of her identity until last weekend, when her death was first suspected.

You'd think that the plight of a young American woman held by gnarly Islamist guerrillas considered too extreme for Al Qaeda would evoke sympathy from all corners. But among hardcore right-wingers who are more pro-Israel than thou, Mueller was a treasonous terror-lover who got what she deserved. Because, you see, she had sympathy for Palestinians.

There was this from "Writer, Dad, Husband, Editor of Breitbart California" Joel Pollak:

If Pollak was going out on a limb, it must have been a strong one, capable of carrying a motley assortment of conservatives eager to cackle over Mueller's demise. Noted racist dickbag Jim Hoft, aka "The Gateway Pundit," intoned simply: "Mueller protested Jews." To caption a photo of the young woman at a Kiwanis Club meeting, he derisively labeled her "a peace and justice activist."

They were joined by the well-known anti-Muslim blog Barenaked Islam (motto: "It isn't Islamophobia when they really ARE trying to kill you"), which observed Mueller's death thus:

Right-Wing Dicks Offer a Primer on How Not to Mourn a Terror Victim

The post continued:

Just as with Rachel Corrie, the press tries to paint Kayla as a selfless volunteer helping poor Arab refugees. But she was working to support the goals of Palestinian terrorists and to interfere with the IDF on behalf of terrorist groups. As an ISM activist she was a tool for the worldwide jihad.

No wonder Barack Hussein Obama called her "The Best of America."

In fact, most of that post was bogarted from a psychotic 1,500-plus-word jeremiad for "Israel National News" by an activist against the controversial pro-Palestine group Mueller once volunteered for:

She may have helped injured Arabs in "refugee" camps, but she was working to support the goals of Palestinian irredentists and to interfere with the IDF on behalf of terrorist groups.

As an ISM activist she was a tool for the worldwide jihad...

Kayla admitted to being present at the weekly riots.

She was also a human shield in support of terrorists...

This certainly doesn't sound like a tireless "aid worker". Instead, it connotes a supporter of Palestinian Arab terrorist groups. Her praise of the muezzin calls and "resistance" suggests she's on the side of the worldwide jihad, not viewing all human beings, even Jews, as having the same rights.

Well, that's certainly one reading of Mueller's life and work. She isn't here to defend herself, after all.

But even these ruminations on the life and death of an American hostage were circumspect compared to the droolings of a rabid conservative shock-radio olingo calling itself Debbie Schlussel, which called Mueller a "Jew-Hating, Anti-Israel Bitch":

No tears for the newly-departed Kayla Mueller, the ISIS hostage whose parents confirmed today that she is dead. Mueller was a Jew-hating, anti-Israel piece of crap who worked with HAMAS and helped Palestinians harass Israeli soldiers and block them from doing their job of keeping Islamic terrorists out of Israel. She also worked to prevent Israel from tearing down terrorists' "houses," which the Palestinian terrorists used to smuggle weapons from and to HAMAS in order to perpetrate terrorist attacks. And she wrote several lying, anti-Israel blog posts.

Schlussel added that her rancor is not limited to Mueller:

As I noted last week and many other times on this site, I have no sympathy for any of these "American" (in name only!) hostages of ISIS. And my attitude when I hear they've been snuffed out is, so sad, too bad. Every single one of these hostages has been a leftist America-hater. They are anti-American "journalists" there to tell us how "moderate" and "democratic" these beheaders and live-human-burners are. Or they are anti-American "aid workers" (that's like the Middle East version of Barack Obama's "community organizer").

True to her word, Schlussel also called Stephen Sotloff—a Jewish American journalist who was beheaded last year—"an apologist for jihad and supporting not just Muslims, but the most extreme Muslims he could find, especially the terrorist variety."

The International Solidarity Movement, the pro-Palestinian group that Mueller worked with and that all these frothing partisans hate with a seething rage, is hardly a sinless neutral arbiter in the Mideast conflict. It certainly has a political bent, and a willingness to use optics and public relations to further its aims. But that sort of awareness—the sort that appeals to human empathy, even in a manipulative way—is a far sight better than the haughty bloodlust evinced by critics of a dead young woman, critics whose alleged respect for life leads them to dance a gleeful horah on her corpse.

Allison Williams Might Be the Most Boring Person in New York

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Allison Williams Might Be the Most Boring Person in New York

What a crazy year it's been for Allison Williams. On Girls, a man burrowed his face deep into her ass. As Peter Pan, on NBC's conceived Peter Pan Live!, she did the most absurd chicken cluck the world has ever seen. Recently, her father became embroiled in a scandal that could ultimately derail his career. You might think that Williams' life, by default, is frantic and interesting, but you would be very, very wrong.

Williams took part in the most recent edition of the New York feature "21 Questions," which surveys celebrities on New York-specific topics. They say there are thousands of interesting people in New York City; Allison Williams does not appear to be one of them.

Here is her response to the question "Who is your favorite New Yorker, living or dead, real or fictional?":

I think they've earned New York citizenship by now, so it's got to be the animals and dinosaurs in the Museum of Natural History.

This is an objectively horrible answer.

She is asked to recall a Crazy Subway Story and answers with the type of interaction that could only be enjoyed by the type of person who finds everything about New York to be "so interesting":

How could I possibly pick one? I had a long conversation on the L with a woman strung-out on meth, about meth.

Allison Williams also does not drink:

What's your drink?

Cranberry and seltzer with lime.

She does not take any medications:

What's your favorite medication?

I usually skip the medicine and go straight to a spoonful of sugar.

Granted, that is something that an adult who yearned to play Peter Pan on live television would probably say.

And, worst of all, she might be a secret Republican?

Here is her take on Bill de Blasio:

What do you think of Mayor de Blasio?

He is currently serving as the 109th Mayor of NYC.

This would be mildly funny shade if not for...

Finish this sentence: The NYPD _____.

... does a job I couldn't do.

If this is your first opinion about the NYPD, you probably felt a chill run up your spine when they turned their backs on the mayor.

Allison Williams might be the only person on Girls who is somehow more tolerable on the show than in real life, which is... something.

[image via Getty]

Man Arrested After Alleged Victim Watched Episode of Law & Order SVU

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Man Arrested After Alleged Victim Watched Episode of Law & Order SVU

A Maryland businessman, athletic coach and PTA member was arrested this week on sickening charges related to a 12-year-old girl—charges that reportedly only came about because the alleged victim watched an episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit with her mother.

According to WJLA, 53-year-old Robert Shapiro employed the girl's mother as a housekeeper and nanny. She quit the job last spring when Shapiro allegedly emailed her a photograph of her 11-year-old daughter changing in his bathroom.

It wasn't the first accusation against him—he was also arrested for photographing and molesting a 17-year-old neighbor—but those charges were later dropped, reportedly for lack of evidence.

In December, the nanny and her daughter were watching an episode of "Law and Order" that involved sexual abuse. The nanny asked her daughter if anyone had ever inappropriately touched her, to which the girl reportedly replied, "Rob did it." Her mother contacted police to report her daughter's confession.

Detectives with the Special Victims Unit interviewed the girl, who claimed that on at least one occasion, Shapiro took her to a secluded basement bedroom. Shapiro, a part-time personal trainer, reportedly pulled out a nerve stimulator machine and placed sensors on the girl's bare chest, hips and buttocks. Shapiro is also accused of snapping digital photos of the unclothed girl claiming he, "wanted to remember where he kept the [sensor] tabs."

"And he seemed so nice," said no one, including his wife who immediately divorced him after the housekeeper allegedly confronted her with the email.

"Everybody kind of thought he was weird, but had no idea that he would be a child predator," a neighbor told ABC. "He was a member of the [Little Bennett] Elementary School PTA, he was a member of the [Greater Clarksburg] Chamber of Commerce. He was getting involved with the Clarksburg Sports Association, so this is a man that put himself out there in positions to be around children."

CBS News Correspondent Bob Simon Killed in Manhattan Car Crash

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CBS News Correspondent Bob Simon Killed in Manhattan Car Crash

Longtime 60 Minutes correspondent Bob Simon reportedly died in a car crash Wednesday night. He was 73.

CBS confirmed the news but did not give much detail, saying only that Simon "died suddenly tonight in a car accident in New York City."

According to the Daily News, Simon was in the back of a livery cab that rear ended a Mercedes and slammed into a median on the West Side Highway in Manhattan Wednesday night.

Both Simon and the driver had to be cut out of the car but according to the paper, the driver was not seriously injured.

The Post also spoke to the Mercedes driver, who claims Simon's driver was driving erratically.

"He swerved into me," the driver said. "He hit me and he looked like he lost control of the car."

[image via CBS]

Hundreds Feared Drowned Off the Italian Coast

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Hundreds Feared Drowned Off the Italian Coast

Authorities believe an estimated 300 migrants trying to cross the Mediterranean in dinghies were "swallowed by the waves" leaving only a handful of survivors off the Italian coast.

According to the AFP, the victims came from Senegal, the Ivory Coast, Gambia, Guinea, Niger, Mali and Mauritania and left from the coast of Libya in "four small inflatable boats."

The Italian coast guard successfully rescued nine survivors, but another 29 reportedly died of exposure during the 18-hour rescue—deaths which might have been preventable, the AFP reports:

The 29 who died of exposure on Monday were picked up from a small boat that was hopelessly ill-equipped to cope with waves up to eight metres (25-feet) high, gale-force winds and torrential rain.

Doctors involved in the rescue operation believe some of them would have survived if they had been rescued by a large military vessel rather than the small patrol boats that were sent to their aid.

The report is renewing calls for the EU to step up its Triton rescue patrol, which replaced Italy's respected state-run rescue patrol last year and has been criticized as "insufficient" for rescuing the thousands of people who attempt the crossing each year.

The nine survivors—which reportedly includes three children who were traveling on their own—told officials they had been forced to set off from Libya in the inflatable boats at gunpoint in "extreme sea conditions" at temperatures "hovering just a few degrees above zero," Al Jazeera reports.

[image via AP]

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