Category: The Shadow Knows

Porn and violence

~ susie

25/52 Deadly Sins

This is a very disturbing story. As I’ve mentioned before, I was in a relationship with someone who was a heavy porn user, and it definitely warps and distorts the sexual experience. (Pretty much every woman I know nods her head when I talk about this.) This story is interesting because it ties porn addiction to actual dopamine levels, making it a very powerful stimulus-reward system.

But that’s not the worst of it. The hard-core sex available on line is violent and sadistic, and the content rewires your brain to seek more extreme novelty. (Which is why a friend’s ex is about to go to jail for child pornography.)

Anyway, a very interesting story. And if you have young boys in the house, you should definitely watch it. (If my kids were still young, I think I’d add a keystroke logger to their online tools.)

‘God weeps’

~ susie ~ 3 Comments

Philadelphia’s archbishop Chaput has been, shall we say, less than warm and supportive of the victims and has refused to meet with them. So Pope Francis is laying down the law:

PHILADELPHIA — Speaking to hundreds of bishops and seminarians, Pope Francis on Sunday said he met in private with a group of victims of sexual abuse and he pledged that “all responsible will be held accountable.”

“God weeps for the sexual abuse of children,” he said.

The pope, speaking on the last day of his trip to the United States, delivered his words before his prepared speech. He said abuse survivors “have become true heralds of mercy. Humbly, we owe each of them our gratitude for their value as they have had to suffer terrible abuse.”

In several references to the scandal during his trip, the pope drew criticism for seeming more concerned about the scandal’s effect on the clergy than the victims.

At a prayer service with bishops in Washington on Wednesday, he told the bishops he was “conscious of courage with which you have faced difficult moments in the recent history of the Church in this country without fear of self-criticism and at the cost of mortification and great sacrifice.” He told clergy at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York: “You have suffered greatly in the not distant past by having to bear the shame of some of your brothers who harmed and scandalized the church in the most vulnerable of her members.” He added: “I accompany you at this time of pain and difficulty.”

I did not take this the way most people did, mostly because I had a sarcastic Irish mother and also know how Jesuits think. Trust me, he was chiding them for not doing enough.

But on Sunday, he said he committed himself “to a careful oversight to ensure that youth are protected and that all responsible will be held accountable.”

I feel sorry for her

~ susie

Image from http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Cvu_IwiITTw/Te67gMuoWwI/AAAAAAAAGEw/r-bxto6BCyc/s400/ann-coulter-300x219.jpg.

Ann Coulter, believe it or not, is a non-denominational Christian. On a day when so many Americans are joyfully welcomed Pope Francis to America — a man noted for his compassion and caring — look what she wrote:

Even Matthew Dowd felt compelled to respond:

Think of how painful it must be, to carry all that acid inside.

Shooter’s manifesto said Charleston was motivation

~ susie ~ 2 Comments

ABC News received a 22-page fax from someone claiming to be Bryce Williams this morning, blaming the shooting on the Charleston shootings earlier this year. A man claiming to be the gunman who killed a reporter and cameraman on live television said in a rambling letter that he was motivated by the church shootings in Charleston,… Continue reading “Shooter’s manifesto said Charleston was motivation” →

Who are the real rentboys?

~ susie ~ 1 Comment

Spirituality - Healing

So they never managed to put any of the Wall St. bankers in jail for crashing the economy, but they arrest these guys and call a press conference? They must be so proud.

Federal agents raided the Manhattan headquarters of Rentboy.com as part of a money laundering and state prostitution investigation Tuesday, authorities said.

Seven people, including CEO Jeffrey Hurant, were arrested as part of the raid at the Rentboy.com offices on 14th Street and Fifth Avenue. Department of Homeland Security agents and members of the NYPD, which assisted in the raid, were seen removing boxes from the offices Tuesday.

The site bills itself as “the world’s destination to meet the perfect male escort or masseur,” and boasts a database of more than 10,500 men in more than 2,100 cities worldwide.

Users can search for a rentboy or masseur on the site by country and city, as well as by rate, age, talents and a variety of physical features.

Ex-Subway spokesman Jared Fogle pleads guilty to child pornography charges

~ susie

Jared Fogle, “The Subway Guy,” has pled guilty to charges that he paid for sex with girls as young as 16 and also received child pornography. Fogle was arrested in July at his Zionsville, Indiana home as part of an FBI raid on the premises.

According to Virginia federal criminal lawyer Steve Duckett, “sex with a minor and child pornography are very serious charges that carry maximum federal sentences of 30 and 20 years, respectively.”

As part of the plea, the government agreed not to seek a sentence greater than 12.5 years.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Steven DeBrota said that Fogle sought out child prostitutes during numerous trips to New York City for Subway and the Jared Foundation, his charity. Court documents detail how Fogle paid for sex at hotels with two underage girls. Fogle later texted one of these girls, who was 16 at the time, and asked if she could connect him with other girls. He allegedly stated “that he would accept a 16-year-old, while stating that the younger the girl, the better.”

In addition to his involvement with child prostitutes, Fogle is charged with receiving child pornography. These explicit images and videos were produced by Russell Taylor, the director of Fogle’s Jared Foundation. Taylor, who was arrested two months before Fogle, secretly filmed the children in his home. According to court documents, Fogle knew that these children were underage and, in some cases, knew them personally through various social events.

Fogle will pay over a million dollars in restitution to 14 victims. His defense attorney told reporters that Fogle “knows that restitution can’t undo the damage that he’s done, but he will do all in his power to try to make it right.”

Indianapolis Police Chief Rick Hite, who oversaw the raid on Fogle’s house, said “We’re dealing with a celebrity who had the access, power, and resources to do anything he wanted to do in the world but he chose to utilize that to cajole, convince, and even take advantage of children.”

He’s screwed

~ susie ~ 1 Comment

Josh Duggar Makes An Incest Joke

I saw someone joke on Twitter say: “Josh, you swore to me it was only your sisters!” I’m gonna give his parents some of the blame for how they raised their kids, too:

In 2013, conservative reality TV star Josh Duggar—of TLC’s 19 Kids and Counting fame—was named the executive director of the Family Research Council, a conservative lobbying group in D.C. which seeks “to champion marriage and family as the foundation of civilization, the seedbed of virtue, and the wellspring of society.” During that time, he also maintained a paid account on Ashley Madison, a web site created for the express purpose of cheating on your spouse.

In May 2015, Duggar was forced to resign after In Touch Weekly reported that he had molested five young girls (four of whom were his own sisters) beginning in 2002. When the accusations became public, the family went into crisis mode, insisting that Josh had reformed and that the media covering the claims was intent on “exploiting women.”

Josh himself took to his family’s Facebook page to absolve himself of his past indiscretions and assure the world he was back on a righteous path:

Twelve years ago, as a young teenager I acted inexcusably for which I am extremely sorry and deeply regret. I hurt others, including my family and close friends. I confessed this to my parents who took several steps to help me address the situation. We spoke with the authorities where I confessed my wrongdoing and my parents arranged for me and those affected by my actions to receive counseling. I understood that if I continued down this wrong road that I would end up ruining my life. I sought forgiveness from those I had wronged and asked Christ to forgive me and come into my life. I would do anything to go back to those teen years and take different actions. In my life today, I am so very thankful for God’s grace, mercy and redemption.

And his wife, for her part, certainly seemed to believe it:

And when you, our sweet fans, first met me when Josh asked me to marry him… I was able to say, “Yes” knowing who Josh really is – someone who had gone down a wrong path and had humbled himself before God and those whom he had offended. Someone who had received the help needed to change the direction of his life and do what is right. I want to say thank you to those who took time over a decade ago to help Josh in a time of crisis. Your investment changed his life from going down the wrong path to doing what is right.

But data released online in the wake of the hack on Ashley Madison’s servers certainly seems to show otherwise. Someone using a credit card belonging to a Joshua J. Duggar, with a billing address that matches the home in Fayetteville, Arkansas owned by his grandmother Mary—a home that was consistently shown on their now-cancelled TV show, and in which Anna Duggargave birth to her first child—paid a total of $986.76 for two different monthly Ashley Madison subscriptions from February of 2013 until May of 2015.

Trumped!

~ susie ~ 3 Comments

We are in a very dangerous place in this country:

Two Boston men have been charged with assault after attacking a sleeping homeless Hispanic man and telling police that “Donald Trump was right, all these illegals need to be deported.”

The Boston Globe reports that brothers, Scott and Steve Leader of South Boston, cited the leading the Republican presidential candidate after they were arrested and charged on multiple assault charges, indecent exposure, and malicious destruction of property:

The Leader brothers were heading home after a Red Sox game when they approached a 58-year-old homeless man who was in a sleeping bag near the JFK/UMass T station. The brothers allegedly urinated on the man, punched him multiple times, and struck him with a metal pole.

(…)

The victim suffered a broken nose and bruises to his head and torso was taken to Boston Medical Center.

According to the police report filed in court, “Scott also stated Donald Trump was right, all these illegals need to be deported” and complained that he was only being arrested “because white people always are and never the minorities.”

Is there anything they can’t spin?

~ susie ~ 1 Comment

https://youtu.be/v4jng0ZBRUs

Occasionally, a political figure comes along and I think to myself, “Ah, Greg Stillson!”

Greg Stillson was the populist political psychopath played by Martin Sheen in the movie adaptation of Stephen King’s “The Dead Zone.” He’s running for Congress, and Johnny Smith, a local schoolteacher who woke up from a coma with psychic abilities, sees that Stillson will become the president who starts a nuclear war.

Johnny decides to kill him, and tries to assassinate him at a rally, but misses. Stillson grabs a nearby toddler, holds him up as a shield and the resulting picture destroys his career.

So that’s how I judge Republicans: Is this someone who would use a baby as a human shield?

Of course I wonder about Donald Trump; people who grow up with that kind of money strike me as (at the very least) pathologically narcissistic and maybe borderline sociopathic. You get the sense with some people that their parents never said no to them. They finally get so out of control that their parents send them to a military academy to straighten them out. (I used to work in a sandwich shop near a famous military academy. Some of these rich kids were actually sweet — but I suspect I also met many future psychopaths. Even at that age, you could tell when something was off.)

Trump is a guy whose ex-wife described some really brutal treatment (she said he pulled out clumps of her hair) and actual rape (although “not in the legal sense”), but of course the divorce settlement has since guaranteed her silence on this incident.

Allegations of rape and assault aren’t enough, right? Nor should they be, because we are allegedly a nation of laws. Because just like with Bill Cosby, we can’t prove anything. But the fact that Trump’s lawyer response to recent news accounts was saying “you can’t rape your spouse” should give decent people pause.

Yeah, we can’t prosecute them. But we should at least shun them.

I also wonder: Would using a baby as a human shield even be enough to ruin someone’s political career these days? Wouldn’t the spin be that he was actually trying to save the baby, but slipped and had to hold the kid up to keep his balance? Wouldn’t the talking heads all nod and say, “I think we have to give him the benefit of the doubt on this one”?

Look at the Iraq war. Look at Abu Ghraib. Look at how Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney and Paul Wolfowitz are treated like honorable men.

Is there anything a politician can do that’s heinous enough that our compliant media can’t — or won’t –distort, brush off or help cover up?

Oh, right. Penis pictures. Or a blowjob. Democrats, naturally.

Your librul media.

Pedophiles

~ susie ~ 2 Comments

WesPala1

I’ve been following this story for over a year. The “civilized” British let it go on for years, maybe decades — and the scandal encompasses many, many more celebrities and powerful people than they mention in this one story.

An investigation into claims in the 1980s that an MP had a “penchant for small boys” ended when he gave his word that he was not a paedophile, a review of government papers has discovered.

Peter Wanless, head of the NSPCC, and lawyer Richard Whittam QC, reported last year that there was no evidence that the government had destroyed documents about an alleged Establishment paedophile ring.

However, the Cabinet Office only belatedly discovered a number of other relevant documents, which have now been considered by the lawyers. They said they found no suggestion of a Whitehall cover-up in the new material, but added that the discovery of the files “illustrates the merit of a broader search of potentially relevant material both on and off the system”.

However, the papers did contain a “striking example” of how crimes against children were treated much less seriously than they would be now. The lawyers cited a document written in November 1986 about an unnamed MP accused by two sources of having a “penchant for small boys” by the then head of MI5, Sir Antony Duff, and sent to Sir Robert Armstrong, now Baron Armstrong of Ilminster but then Secretary of the Cabinet under Margaret Thatcher.

Continue reading “Pedophiles” →