In The Mailbox: 05.05.23

Posted on | May 6, 2023 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 05.05.23

Usual weekend deadlines for the usual weekend posts.
Ceterum autem censeo Silicon Valley esse delendam.

OVER THE TRANSOM
EBL: War: Cinco De Mayo
Twitchy: Ayanna Pressley – “Clarence Thomas Must Resign”, Adam Schiff Laughed Off Twitter For Cringe Star Wars Tweets, and Check Out This Brutal Split-Screen As DHS Head Mayorkas Claims “The Border Is Not Open”
Louder With Crowder: Viral video of an empty Bud Light stand at Fenway Park proves what enormous trouble the company’s in, Woke nincompoops are coming after “Bluey,” accuse the world’s greatest dad of being a fat shamer, and Neil deGrasse Tyson Gets Obliterated, Out-Scienced on Twitter by…Steak-umm.
Vox Popoli: U-Stasi in Action, also, Running Out of Rabbits
According To Hoyt: It’s The End Of The World, The Order of Consequences, and Throwing Darts At Popcorn
Monster Hunter Nation: The Futility of Trying
Stoic Observations: Several AI Scenarios

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Conservative: Supporting, Not Transforming, American Agriculture, also, The War on Porn Is Not Enough
American Greatness: Soros-Backed St. Louis Attorney Kim Gardner Resigns, Israeli Whistleblower With Info on Biden Corruption Disappears in Cyprus After Saying Biden Regime Wants to ‘Bury Him’, and Colorado Teachers’ Union Passes Resolution Declaring that Capitalism ‘Inherently Exploits Children’
American Power: ‘Rochelle Walensky is a monster for what she did during the Covid pandemic.’
American Thinker: Savor Trump’s Electoral Landslide — Until the Phantoms Vote, also, US Weakness Invites Iranian Attacks on Shipping in the Gulf
Animal Magnetism: Rule Five Global Currency Friday
Babalu Blog: Elderly man in Cuba faints from hunger while walking down the street, Cuban Catholic bishops should make no concessions to the Castro dictatorship, and Cuban dictatorship seals pact with Russia to launch ‘Russian-Cuban investment initiative’ (aka colonization)
BattleSwarm: LinkSwarm for May 5
Behind The Black: ESA finally admits — sort of — that private enterprise can do it better, Lockheed Martin reorganizes its space divisions to better compete in the new commercial market, Celestis recovers astronaut’s remains from suborbital rocket explosion, Hubble captures shadows on star’s outer accretion disk cast by inner accretion disk, and The modern corrupt legislative way of doing business: Know nothing, fund everything!
Cafe Hayek: Oren Cass Again Grossly Understates the Rise In Ordinary Americans’ Wages
CDR Salamander: Fullbore Friday
Da Tech Guy: Feed the Bums (BudLight) Tuppence a Can
Don Surber: Keeping Us Confused
Gates Of Vienna: Shanked on the Bus in Eupen, also, All Your Kids Are Belong to Us
The Geller Report: El Paso Declares Border Migrant ‘State of Emergency’, Soros-Backed Prosecutor Kimberly Gardner Resigns As Missouri AG Moved To Have Her Forcibly Removed From Office, and Emails Show Former CIA Director Mike Morell Conspired with CIA Director John Brennan to Call the Hunter Biden Laptop Story, ‘Russian Disinformation.’
Hogewash: H is for “Hot” and “Huge”, Fact Checking the Fact Chekists, I’m Not Making This Up, You Know, and Team Kimberlin Post of the Day
Hollywood In Toto: Woke Killed Comedy (Check Out the Frightening Numbers), also, Richard Dreyfuss: Oscar’s New Diversity Rules ‘Make Me Vomit’
The Lid: Joe Manchin: Biden Won’t Like Him When He’s Angry
Legal Insurrection: Duke University Students Launch Campaign to Disinvite Law Prof Over Her LGBT Opinions, New York State Now Banning Natural Gas Hookups in Some New Construction, ‘Radical DEI Bureaucracy’ Reportedly Created at University of Texas, U. Albany Prof Arrested for ‘Obstructing Pro-Life Display and Then Resisting Arrest’, and UC-Berkeley Prof Admits She’s a White Person After Claiming She was Native American Her ‘Whole Life’
Nebraska Energy Observer: Scattershot Friday
Outkick: Veronika Rajek Done With Tom Brady, Parties With Shaq, David Njoku, Deion Sanders Is Turning Over Colorado Roster With Help From NCAA Rule; AD Rick George Fully Supports, Big 12 Will Spice Up Telecasts With XFL-Like Production Including In-Game Player Interviews, Mic’d Up Coaches, NESN Turns Off Twitter Comments After First Female D1 Baseball Player Blows First Pitch, Tommy Tuberville Says Megan Rapinoe Would Work At A Grocery Store If She Had To Compete Against Men, and Cam Newton Blames Hairstyle As Reason He’s Not In NFL
Power Line: Thoughts from the ammo line, Sheldon Whitehouse plays Elmer Fudd, and The Ruling Class at Play
Shark Tank: Cory Mills Calls Biden Cartels’ MVP, also, DeSantis Ends Legislative Session by Bashing Child Castration/Mutilation & Pedophiles
Shot In The Dark: Profile In Cowardice, Communicating With The MN DFL Part X, and Deadsville
STUMP: Podcast: Choices Have Consequences – Pension Obligation Bonds
The Political Hat: Firing Line Friday – The Nixon Presidency
This Ain’t Hell: Friday Short Takes – Army/Navy shortfalls, Sludge Light down, Valor Friday, Neighbor claims that a veteran was behind pounds of pasta dumped in the woods, Marine veteran places Jordan Neely in chokehold, Kathy Hochul wants justice, and Proposed rule change would require U.S. government approval for land related purchases near eight military bases
Transterrestrial Musings: About That Attack On The Kremlin, Our Disastrous Educational System, and The Need For responsive Space
Victory Girls: Hunter Laptop Letter Was Planted As Debate Cover For Joe
Volokh Conspiracy: Is It “Abuse of Corpse” to Have Sex on Mattress That Partly Covers Your Ex-Girlfriend’s Dead Body?
Watts Up With That: Silence of the Grid Experts, also, Biden and the Bank Crash – Why Biden’s Green Energy Push is Driving US Banks into Insolvency
Weasel Zippers: Kamala Harris’ Word Salad Of The Day: “Very Good In Terms Of Us Addressing The Concern”, also, Denver City Council Member: Tax White-Owned Businesses And Give It To Black, Brown-Owned Businesses
The Federalist: Conservatives Won The Word ‘Woke.’ Now It’s Time To Reclaim Accurate Language Everywhere, From Canning ESG To Cracking Down On Crime, Here’s The Major Wins DeSantis Scored For Floridians This Week, Republicans Move To Curb Biden’s Federal Interference In Elections, Of Course Prince Harry Thinks He Can Break Our Immigrations Laws, Everyone Else Does , and Pro-Life Pediatricians Org Survives Cyberattacks Just Weeks After Judge Rules In Its Favor In Abortion Pill Case

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Category: Linkagery

Why Is Ex-Fox Producer Abby Grossberg Trying to Encourage Anti-Semitism?

Posted on | May 5, 2023 | Comments Off on Why Is Ex-Fox Producer Abby Grossberg Trying to Encourage Anti-Semitism?

Today I was scanning headlines at Memeorandum, when I spotted this one from Rolling Stone:

Producer Tells All: How Tucker Carlson Became the GOP’s MAGA Puppeteer
A former producer on Tucker Carlson’s show is revealing just how far the Fox host went to bully top Republicans to come on his show and bend the knee to the MAGA agenda.
Carlson terrified top Republicans with threats to “destroy” them if they failed to do his bidding and used his platform to push a personal agenda on the party’s leadership, Abby Grossberg, who worked as a producer for Carlson’s show starting in August 2022, tells Rolling Stone.
Grossberg says Carlson pressured Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott to militarize the southern border, tried to threaten Rep. Michael McCaul over military aid to Ukraine, and pushed Kevin McCarthy — then the aspiring House Speaker — to create the Republican-led committee on the “Weaponization of the Federal Government.”
Grossberg, a former senior producer for Tucker Carlson Tonight, filed a lawsuit in March against the right-wing TV host and Fox News, alleging Carlson and Fox fostered a workplace climate of misogyny and toxicity during her tenure at the company. . . .

You can read the whole thing, but the details don’t matter nearly so much as the glaring fact — which I’m sure anti-Semites must be feasting on — that Tucker got sabotaged by a Jew. It’s just a bad look, OK?

Is there any awareness within the Jewish community of how important it is that they avoid acting in ways that might be interpreted as confirming the worst anti-Semitic stereotypes? Because if so, somebody forgot to tell Abby Grossberg, who might as well be an AI simulation of the Untrustworthy Jew stereotype. If she didn’t actually exist, some neo-Nazi propagandist would have invented her. Being a philo-Semite myself, I hate to see Jews giving aid and comfort to their enemies, which is basically what Abby Grossberg has done by backstabbing Carlson.

As a member of the Appalachian-American community (we can call ourselves “hillbillies,” but consider it an insult if others use “the H-word”), I try to be conscious about avoiding stereotypical hillbilly behavior. There’s a reason why I never learned to play the banjo, and why I don’t drink moonshine whiskey. There are no broken-down old trucks up on blocks in my front yard, and my wife is not my cousin.

Concern for the reputation of my own frequently stigmatized ethnic group inspires me to strive to avoid certain behaviors, and I would hope that other Southerners share my sense of the importance of not acting like redneck trash. Why then do some Jews seem to be oblivious to the way their behavior might encourage anti-Semitism? I mean, a belief isn’t a prejudicial stereotype if you can illustrate it by actual examples, and any Jew-hater can now point to Abby Grossberg and say, “See?”

Truly, she is a shanda fur die goyim.

Category: Fox News

In The Mailbox: 05.04.23 (Evening Edition)

Posted on | May 5, 2023 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 05.04.23 (Evening Edition)

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Silicon Valley delenda est.

OVER THE TRANSOM
357 Magnum: How Is That Bail Reform Working Out?
EBL: The Windsors, also, May the 4th be with you
Twitchy: #TwitterFiles Comes For The CBC, NYC’s Mayor Adams Hits Back At Occasional Cortex Over Death Of Subway Crazy, and Heretic Minister Proclaims “Jesus Was A 30-Year-Old Black Man On The Subway”
Louder With Crowder: Anheuser-Busch issues another statement on Bud Light disaster, claims it was “just one can”, Student speaks out after tranny whipped out penis in girls bathroom, assaulted smaller girl who disagreed, and Alex Jones shares what his Tucker Carlson sources tell him REALLY happened
Vox Popoli: The Death of Cities, also, History for Europe

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Conservative: Roman Lessons From Milley, Greek Lessons From Milley, and Dieu et Mon Droit
American Greatness: Left-Wing Justice Sotomayor Took $3M from Book Publisher, Didn’t Recuse Herself from Cases, Jim Jordan Demands Answers as to Why Supreme Court Protesters Were Not Arrested, and All Hail Greg Abbott, Conqueror of Woke Sanctuary Mayors
American Thinker: Unprecedented Rise in Hate Crimes against American Churches, also, The Countdown of Good vs. Evil – The 2024 Presidential Election
Animal Magnetism: Animal’s Daily San Franmeltdown News
Babalu Blog: Reports from Cuba: Tired of Cuban inefficiency, Vietnamese abandon their successful rice project, Lifestyles of the Rich and Communist: Fidel Castro’s grandson goes skydiving during fuel crisis, Cuba claims one million tourists in first four months of 2023, half of them Canadian, and Texas update – Who’s challenging Senator Ted Cruz now?
BattleSwarm: Ted Cruz Draws A 2024 Challenger, also, Lina Hidalgo’s Continued Contempt for Transparency
Behind The Black: SpaceX launches 56 Starlink satellites into orbit, Maxar sale closes and company goes private, Two interacting galaxies, both with active supermassive black holes at their center, Two Russian astronauts shift airlock on ISS during 7-hour spacewalk, and Today’s blacklisted American: Biden administration threatens to shut down Catholic hospital system because of a candle
Cafe Hayek: Common-‘Good’ Statism
CDR Salamander: Our Navy Needs More Of The War, Less Of The College
Chicago Boyz: Whatever happened to FEE’s Fresh States Project?, also, Nuclear News Update
Da Tech Guy: YouTube Censors FilmLadd So Let’s Post His Video Here, also, Transableism is the next cause de jour that will be crammed down our throats by Leftists
Dana Loesch: It’s Almost Riot Season – The Left’s New Cause Celebre
Don Surber: SCOTUS Is The Left’s New Trump
First Street Journal: In trying to avoid calling street gangs gangs, The Philadelphia Inquirer has again beclowned itself, also, Remember when we were told that it was nobody else’s business what people did in their bedrooms?
Gates Of Vienna: Pope Francis Promotes the Great Replacement
The Geller Report: Whistleblower Says Joe Biden Engaged In “Bribery Scheme With a Foreign National,” ‘Money for Policy Decisions’, SEAL Who Helped Kill Bin Laden Fuming Over Navy’s Drag Queen Ambassador: ‘Can’t Believe I Fought Bor This Bullsh–t’, and The Border is Lost: Biden is Sending 1500 Troops As Title 42 Set to Expire
Hogewash: Team Kimberlin Post of the Day, also, Death of a Planet
Hollywood In Toto: Could Guardians Vol. 3 Follow in Ant Man’s Tiny Footprints?, Comedy Coward – Roy Wood Jr. Trembles Before VP Harris, and The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Beclowns Itself (Again)
The Lid: Lawless San Francisco Is Becoming A Disaster Zone, also, Dem’s Smear Campaign Against SCOTUS Conservatives Boomerangs On Sotomayor
Legal Insurrection: Nordstrom Closing Two Stores in San Francisco, Citing Crime and Safety Issues, Environmental Activists Sue FAA Over SpaceX Starship Rocket Launch, ‘Dream Defenders’ Protesters Furious That DeSantis Staffer Ate Cake During Their ‘Occupation’ Of Gov’s Office, Colorado Teachers Union Passes Resolution Claiming Capitalism ‘Exploits Children and Public Schools’, and Nonbinary Child of Massachusetts Rep. Katherine Clark Gets Probation for Assaulting a Cop
Nebraska Energy Observer: Boy, oh boy
Outkick: Oakland A’s Fans Chant ‘Sell The Team’ During Home Game, San Francisco Beat Writer Calls Sam Darnold ‘Most Talented Thrower 49ers Have Ever Had’, Kentucky’s John Calipari Upset That Older Players Are Dominating College Basketball, Jay Williams The Latest ESPN Employee To Be Triggered By The ‘Mount Rushmore’ Metaphor, and Nikola Jokic Whiteness Cost Him The NBA MVP
Power Line: Another Biden Bribery Allegation, Postscript on the National Vote Compact, and In defense of Justice Thomas
Protein Wisdom Reborn: The Stephen Colbert Interview – Uncensored
Shark Tank: DeSantis Set To Sign Protection Of Medical Conscience Into Law
Shot In The Dark: Irrelevant, From The “Being A DFLer Requires Suspending Logic & Reason, If You Ever Had Any” Files, and Communicating With The MN DFL Part IX
The Political Hat: Gender Madness – Transitioning Is A One Way Street, Transitioning Is A Flip-Flop, and Lying To Parents About Children Transitioning
This Ain’t Hell: Pakistan gets US Aid for Transgenders, Sergeant Daniel Perry denied retrial, Gov. Abbott wants to pardon him, and Good girl on carrier
Transterrestrial Musings: AI And The Screwfly Succession, also, The New Ugly Americans
Victory Girls: Atlanta Shooter Caught. Now What, Media?, also, It’s Not About Ethics, It’s About Making SCOTUS Toe The Democrat Line
Volokh Conspiracy: Trump To Remove Criminal Prosecution To Federal Court
Watts Up With That: European Green War on Agriculture: Farmers Banned for Life if they Want Compensation, The Elephants in The Room, and “80% Renewables by 2030 – Its Bullsh*t”
Weasel Zippers: College Professor Banned From Using Words “Male” And “Female” In Research Over Fears of “Misgendering”, Jaw-Dropper: WH Credits Biden For Opening Schools When He Took Office, California’s Slavery Reparations Panel Hints At $1.2 Million Payments To Each Black Resident, and Palestinian Terror Groups Fire 104 Rockets At Israel In One Day
The Federalist: Thanks To The Brave Men Who Saved New York Subway Riders From Jordan Neely, Yes, The Trans Movement Is Coming For Your Kids, Maine Seeks To Enshrine Democrats’ Unpopular Abortion Extremism In State Law Against Citizens’ Wishes, NBC Fabricates Fake Trans Propaganda About Montana Mom Who Cared For Suicidal Daughter, Gov. Kemp Signs Bill Banning Dark Money From Georgia Elections, Dashing Democrats’ Latest Infiltration Efforts, and Alaska Court Rules State House Candidate Should Never Have Been Removed From Special Election Ballot
Mark Steyn: Snerdley Sings Sondheim?, also, Relationship of Fools

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Category: Linkagery

BREAKING: Soros-Funded Kim Gardner Will Resign as St. Louis Prosecutor

Posted on | May 4, 2023 | Comments Off on BREAKING: Soros-Funded Kim Gardner Will Resign as St. Louis Prosecutor

Just Monday, I wrote about this situation (“Another Soros-Funded Disaster”), and now it has quickly moved to a resolution:

St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kimberly M. Gardner announced Thursday that, after weeks of blistering pressure from Missouri lawmakers, she would indeed resign, effective June 1.
In a letter addressed to Gov. Mike Parson, Gardner makes no mention of the turmoil in her office nor the extensive staff departures in recent weeks. Instead, she says she is stepping down to prevent the state legislature from passing a bill that would strip her of most of her power and “permanently remove the right of every St. Louis voter to elect their Circuit Attorney.”
“The most powerful weapon I have to fight back against these outsiders stealing your voices and your rights is to step back,” she writes. “I took this job to serve the people of the City of St. Louis, and that’s still my North star.”
News of her departure sent shockwaves through the halls of the two courthouses in downtown St. Louis where victims, defense attorneys, judges and even Gardner’s own staffers had complained for months about critical office departures and widespread dysfunction. It also reverberated through the Capitol in Jefferson City where lawmakers had been debating a bill to strip her of power.
At the same time, the news left questions about who would handle upcoming hearings, communicate with victims and pick up the pieces of an office that now has roughly a third of the attorneys as when Gardner took office.
Gardner declined to speak to a Post-Dispatch reporter about her decision as she left an all-staff meeting at the Carnahan Courthouse on Thursday afternoon.
Gov. Mike Parson will appoint Gardner’s replacement. His spokeswoman said Thursday morning that he would “begin the process to fill this office vacancy.”
Gardner, 47, St. Louis’ first Black circuit attorney, swept into office in 2017 in a national wave of victories for progressive prosecutors, who pledged to be a unifying force and build public trust in the criminal justice system.
Gardner quickly came under scrutiny within months of taking office for mass staff departures. She then about a year into office indicted sitting Gov. Eric Greitens for taking a partially nude photo of a woman in a Central West End basement without her consent. But charges were eventually dropped, an investigator she hired pleaded guilty in federal court to concealing documents in the case and Gardner herself was reprimanded by the Missouri Supreme Court and forced to pay a $750 fee in an ethics case over her office’s mishandling of evidence.
She continued to face public scrutiny over her “exclusion list” of St. Louis police officers, whose work she didn’t trust, and for her decision to charge a Central West End couple with brandishing guns at racial justice protesters.
Still, Gardner was re-elected for a second term in late 2020 in a landslide. She pledged to continue fighting for equality and criminal justice reforms in St. Louis.
But her second term brought more staff departures, leaving her with half the number of attorneys as when she took office. The state legislature filed bills that would strip her of most of her power.
Then in February, the scandals intensified when a car speeding through downtown streets crashed, pinning between two vehicles a teen visiting St. Louis for a volleyball tournament, and leading to the amputation of both of her legs. The car’s driver, Daniel Riley, had remained free after court delays, despite violating his bond dozens of times.
Gardner’s office was widely blamed for delaying Riley’s trial and not filing to revoke bond. She, in turn, blamed a judge for not accepting a bond reduction request and released a statement: “This is not the time for finger-pointing,” she said then.
The reaction was swift. Scores of people, including former allies, began calling for Gardner’s resignation. Bailey filed a lawsuit seeking her removal.

Good-bye, and good-riddance.

Category: Crime, Missouri

Crazy People Are Dangerous: Can You Guess Where ‘Defund the Police’ Leads?

Posted on | May 4, 2023 | Comments Off on Crazy People Are Dangerous: Can You Guess Where ‘Defund the Police’ Leads?

Jordan Neely encounters surprising consequences.

Ever since Fox News fired Tucker Carlson, the TV in my home office has been tuned to CNN — I watch, so you don’t have to — and they’ve been giving hourly attention to the death of Jordan Neely, a 30-year-old homeless man who died after he went berserk in a New York City subway train and got put in a chokehold by a 24-year-old Marine Corps veteran. “Outrage grows,” according to a headline in the New York Daily News, which quoted a city official: “We must not become a city where a mentally ill human being can be choked to death by a vigilante without consequence.” The same official promoted #DefundThePolice in 2020, but now he’s complaining about vigilantes? You elect Alvin Bragg as your district attorney, turn loose thousands of dangerous criminals on your streets, and then you act surprised when it comes to this?

Law enforcement sources said Neely had “numerous” arrests on his record, including for drugs, disorderly conduct, and fare beating — and that he had been living on the streets with a recorded history of mental illness.
At the time of his death, he had a warrant out for his arrest in a November 2021 case where he was accused of assaulting a 67-year-old woman in the East Village, the sources said.

How “numerous” were his arrests? Forty-two arrests between 2013 and 2021 — a habitual criminal, with an outstanding warrant for assault, and yet where was he? On the subway, screaming psychotic gibberish at the passengers. And did I forget to mention he was crazy?

Jordan Neely has been a menace to NYC subway riders.

He allegedly attempted to shove someone onto the subway tracks just days earlier. He was berating passengers and threatening them with an aggressive speech.

That’s when the marine stepped in to neutralize the situation. pic.twitter.com/IeIau9RxJS

— Xaviaer DuRousseau (@XAVIAERD) May 4, 2023

There is a backstory:

Jordan Neely, the homeless man choked to death on the subway, sank into a deep depression after his mother was brutally murdered by his stepfather in 2007 — and was not properly treated for his mental illness, friends and family told The Post.
Neely, who died Monday afternoon after being held in a chokehold for 15 minutes by a straphanger, descended into “a complete mess” after his mother, Christie Neely, was reportedly strangled to death and then stuffed into a suitcase when he was just 14, according to his aunt, Carolyn Neely.
“My sister Christie was murdered in ‘07 and after that, he has never been the same,” Carolyn, 40, said.
“It had a big impact on him. He developed depression and it grew and became more serious. He was schizophrenic, PTSD. Doctors knew his condition and he needed to be treated for that.”
Carolyn, who described herself as Jordan’s closest living relative, said she pleaded with judges and doctors to help get the proper care for her nephew, but to no avail.
“The whole system just failed him. He fell through the cracks of the system,” she said.
Christie Neely was murdered by Shawn Southerland, then 50, who stuffed her dead body in a suitcase and threw it on the shoulder of the Henry Hudson Parkway . . .

“To no avail” — it is nearly impossible to help people who are this severely deranged. The only thing that can be done — and what used to be standard practice, until the ACLU and other liberal do-gooders sued for the “rights” of the mentally ill — is to lock them up in the looney bin and feed them powerful antipsychotics (Haldol, Thorazine, etc.) until you can get them calmed down enough to participate in therapy. Even with such a forcible intervention program, the prospect of recovery isn’t very good. But now, thanks to “deinstitutionalization” (i.e., turning the kooks loose on the street to fend for themselves) there is no hope of recovery at all.

As a result, public safety is endangered, and a city as big as New York has thousands of these untreated psychotics roaming the streets, but why bring up Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez at this point?

But you said nothing on thesehttps://t.co/yQ47tr0xjP

— Cernovich (@Cernovich) May 4, 2023

Like so many other liberals, AOC simply refuses to acknowledge that the problems she’s complaining about have been caused by liberal “reform” policies. There was a time when someone like Jordan Neely would have been wearing a straitjacket inside a padded cell, but instead, he got turned loose and went strolling down F**k Around Street until he finally arrived at the intersection with Find Out Avenue.

Remember: Crazy People Are Dangerous.

Category: Crime, New York

In The Mailbox: 05.04.23 (Morning Edition)

Posted on | May 4, 2023 | 1 Comment

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Didn’t get this done last night because my slow-ass DSL connection took forever to upload this video, which is mostly about death and was inspired by Cobb’s video that I’ve linked below. Almost immediately after I’d finished uploading it, the internet died, so I gave up, went to bed, and got up way too early this morning.
Silicon Valley delenda est.

OVER THE TRANSOM
Ninety Miles From Tyranny: The 90 Miles Mystery Box, Episode #2068
EBL: Green California Transportation!
Twitchy: Did Democrats Threaten To Cut Funding For SCOTUS Security?, “Zooey Zephyr” Loses In Court, Claims He Was SWATted, and Ayanna Pressley Claims Madman Jordan Neely Was “Lynched” On NYC Subway
Louder With Crowder: Woke TikToker gets scared when restaurant sings National Anthem, blasts it as “white people things”, US Navy thought this seaman turned drag queen was their answer to record low military recruitment, and Dude working drive-thru so stoned he bangs his head on microwave and forgets what customers are
Vox Popoli: How the Vaxx Causes Cancer, The Culmination of Avalon City, The History of the US Color Revolution, and Anywhere and Anytime
Stoic Observations: Data Engineering vs. Data Science, also, Maggie’s Mom

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Greatness: Watchdog: IRS has Spent $10M on Weapons, Ammunition, and Combat Gear Since 2020, American Eighth Graders’ History, Civics Scores Drop on National Test, and More People Choosing to ‘Identify’ as Handicapped
American Power: Scott Jennings Hammers Randi Weingarten on Pandemic School Closures — on CNN!
American Thinker: Covid Hospital Protocols Destroyed Thousands of American Families, The Push for ‘Net Zero Emissions’ is Climate Hoax Fiction, Not Energy Reality, and The FBI’s Snipe Hunts
Animal Magnetism: Animal’s Hump Day News
Babalu Blog: Cubans stage protest in Havana, shut down main boulevard in the capital, An open letter to the Amazon labor union leader who admires Cuba’s Castro dictatorship, and Ana de Armas parties hearty in Havana
Behind The Black: Astronomers record moment star eats planet, In a Martian cold cauldron, boil and bake, SuperBIT balloon circling Antarctica snaps more high resolution astronomical pictures, and Pushback: Court rules that PA school district denied parent public documents in “bad faith”
Cafe Hayek: Negative-Productivity Administration Officials
CDR Salamander: No, No-one Tried To Assassinate Putin
Da Tech Guy: Drones, Moscow and Does Anybody Remember The Undeclared War Between the US and Germany During 1941?
Don Surber: Why These Boycotts Are Working,
First Street Journal: Why should we spend money keeping junkies alive?, also, Killadelphia
The Geller Report: Fox Bleeding: FOR THE FIRST TIME, MSNBC Number One in Primetime After Tucker’s Abrupt Departure, also, New York State To Ban Gas Stoves
Glenn Reynolds: AI & The Screwfly Succession
Hogewash: Big Black Holes, Nice Court You Have There. Be A Shame If Something Happened To It, and Team Kimberlin Post of the Day
Hollywood In Toto: Beau Is Afraid Is Big, Bloated and Brimming with Wonder, Gutfeld! Unaffected by WGA’s Writer’s Strike, and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 – A Noisy, Unnecessary Swan Song
Legal Insurrection: Left Wing Trans Activists Occupy Texas Capitol, Shut Down Proceedings, Federal Judge Rules Pennsylvania School District Must Allow After-School ‘Satan Club’, Savannah State U. Cuts Faculty and Freezes Open Positions Amid Lower Enrollment, Gendered-Oriented Funding in Academic Science Is Biased In Favor Of Women, and Survey: Conservative Seniors at Princeton ‘Uncomfortable Sharing Political Views’
Nebraska Energy Observer: Loyalty > Brand: Bud Light and Tucker
Outkick: Brooks Koepka Can Still Close, Knocks Up Sports Illustrated Wife Jena Sims, Trevor Bauer Diminishes MLB Crowds After Throwing Nasty Cheddar During Stellar BayStars Debut, Tributes Pour In As Olympic Gold Medalist Tori Bowie Dies At 32, How Long Until ESPN Makes P.K. Subban Apologize For Calling Lizzo Fat?, and Jessica Alba Resurfaces Out Of Nowhere At Knicks Playoff Game, Sets Internet On Fire
Power Line: Argumentum interruptum — live on Fox News!, also, Putin Assassination Attempt?
Protein Wisdom Reborn: The Protein Wisdom Interview – Stephen Colbert
Shark Tank: DeSantis Signs Bill Limiting Big Pharma Power
Shot In The Dark: There Were No Illusions On The Summer Side Of Life, Just Remember, and Communicating With The MN DFL Part VIII
STUMP: A Sampling of Political Mortality
The Political Hat: Louisiana vs. The Groomers
This Ain’t Hell: Russian “inspector” satellite continued to play “cat and mouse” with US satellite, Iranians seize US bound tanker, release footage of the attack, Three More Accounted For, Biden Sends Military to Southern Border. Again, and Joshua Kelley, Navy drag queen, leverages TikTok to aid Navy recruiting
Victory Girls: Portland Dumpster Fire: Rioter Ordered To Pay Damages
Volokh Conspiracy: No Application of Iranian Inheritance Law in Maryland Court
Watts Up With That: The Practical Impossibility of Large-Scale Carbon Capture and Storage, also, The Big Chill Will Save California from the Big Melt
Weasel Zippers: Biden Interior Secretary Deb Haaland Says There Are TOO MANY JOBS In The United States, Elon Musk Rips “Woke Mind Virus”, and MSNBC Clowns Outraged GOP Not On Board The Woke Train
The Federalist: From Sketchy Balloting To Shady Funding, New Montana Laws Say No To Rigged Elections, Cormac McCarthy Leaves His Last Will And Testament In Two Novels, Can We All Finally Admit ‘Ted Lasso’ Is A Terrible Show?, and Lawsuit Shows Government’s Hands All Over The Election Integrity Partnership’s Censorship Campaign

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Category: Linkagery

News From Down Home

Posted on | May 3, 2023 | Comments Off on News From Down Home

Judge Parker (right) singing gospel for MLK Day in Calhoun.

One of the best jobs I ever had was as sports editor of the Calhoun Times in Gordon County, Georgia. I arrived there in 1987, a few days before the start of football season, and a few weeks later met the beautiful woman who became my wife. For the next four years, I covered local sports there before moving on to the Rome (Ga.) News-Tribune (the daily paper whose parent company owned the Calhoun Times). Our first three kids were born at Gordon Hospital (now AdventHealth Gordon), and so that community still has a special place in my heart.

For some reason, I woke up in the wee hours this morning and the thought went through my mind that some of the kids I covered as a sports writer back in the 1980s must be grandparents by now. Probably what sparked that thought was what I wrote yesterday about Hunter Biden and his Arkansas stripper baby mama, whose 4-year-old is Joe Biden’s illegitimate grandchild. While I was working on that post, I’d texted my kids to tell them how proud I was of them. I mean, maybe I haven’t always been an ideal father, but at least none of my kids are crack-smoking, stripper-chasing trash like Hunter Biden.

So I got that going for me, as Carl Spackler would say.

When my wife and I got married in April 1989, we did so on a Friday afternoon at the Gordon County Courthouse, with Judge Johnny Parker doing the honors. Judge Parker was also a minister of the gospel, and the ceremony was conducted with the traditional Book of Common Prayer vows. One of the most memorable moments of my life was when we got to the part about “forsaking all others,” a phrase that struck me then as a particularly serious vow, all things considered. Here I was, vowing before God to turn away from my youthful gallivanting forever — “Til death do you part” — and wow, what a profound thought that was.

In 2008, Judge Johnny Parker stepped down from office after years as Gordon County’s probate judge, and guess who the voters chose to replace him? His son, Richie, whom I covered during my sports editor days back in the 1980s, when Richie was the point guard for Fairmount High School. What a scrappy player he was, too. One night, Fairmount was in the regional playoffs against Bremen, and Richie just absolutely lit it up — shooting, passing, defense, everything you could ask from a point guard. And it was only after the game that I learned he’d been suffering with the flu, a fever of 102, nearly passed out in the locker room at halftime, but he wasn’t going to let the team down.

So when that thought crossed my mind in the wee hours — some of the players I covered back then must be grandparents by now — the first name that came to mind was Richie Parker, and I began Googling to see what he had been doing lately. Don’t know if he’s a grandpa yet, but he and his wife have eight children — attaboy, Richie! — and that’s Richie you see in the picture at the top, playing guitar and singing, with Virgil Harrison on bass guitar, at the 2015 Calhoun-Gordon County MLK Community Celebration. Richie’s added a few pounds since his scrappy point guard days, it seems, but I’m sure he’s one of the most popular and respected members of his community, just like his dad.

One of the items I turned up while Google searching Richie was a Facebook post about his speaking at the local Rotary Club and, while I was on Facebook, I noticed a promotion for an article from The Atlantic with the provocative headline, “How Rural America Steals Girls’ Future.”

The article, by Arkansas native Monica Potts, was behind a paywall, so I couldn’t read it on my phone, and instead I began researching the author (because what else is a journalist going to do when he’s lying awake in bed at 1 a.m.?). Turns out the article is excerpted from her new book, The Forgotten Girls: A Memoir of Friendship and Lost Promise in Rural America. And I was able to find a review in the Guardian which summarized the book’s left-wing thesis:

Potts grew up in Clinton, Arkansas, a rural, majority-white town in the Ozark mountains, where poverty and lack of educational opportunities combined with the pervasive culture of evangelical Christianity to steer girls into early marriage and motherhood. Addiction and domestic abuse were widespread, though rarely acknowledged or addressed. A 2015 study by Princeton economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton attributed the drop in life expectancy among poor middle-aged white people to increases in drug overdoses, suicides and complications from alcoholism: “a trio of ailments they called ‘deaths of despair’”. “Words like malaise and despair hint at stories that can’t be told with data and statistics,” Potts writes. So she returned to Clinton, “with its ageing, shrinking population, governed by a small group of people who worshipped at the same churches as their parents and who had knit around themselves an ever thicker and tighter web of personal and political self-deceits”, in search of the women behind the statistics.

Of course, it’s that “pervasive culture of evangelical Christianity” which is the real villain in “majority-white” rural America — a purely political sermon from a feminist alumna of Bryn Mawr whose only reason for writing about her hometown was because she hates Jesus.

Excuse my wrathful tone, but there’s nothing easier in the world for a Southern writer — and nothing I hate more — than to trash their home folks this way for the pleasure and amusement of college-educated liberal readers. The downward socioeconomic trajectory of rural America over the past few decades is very real, of course, but trying to blame it on Jesus? No, thank you, ma’am. In fact, a much deeper problem is that too many small-town folks have turned their back on the Bible and have instead absorbed the message they get from media — TV and movies, etc. — which make sin seem exciting and glamorous and sophisticated.

As someone who has direct experience with sin in the real world (even if I now jokingly deride it as youthful “gallivanting,” I don’t hesitate to denounce it for what it really was, namely sin), I know very well what life is like on the Highway to Hell, and am grateful to God for pointing me to the exit ramp before I reached the final destination. Trust me when I say that not all of my good-time buddies back in the day were so fortunate. Kim McMichen died on death row, for example, and at least four guys in my senior class of high school later died from AIDS.

No matter how much the world changes — all the modern “progress” of interstate highways, air conditioning, cable TV, Wal-Mart, fentanyl — the fundamental nature of human existence remains what it was nearly 300 years ago, when Jonathan Edwards warned his congregation that they were “sinners in the hands of an angry God.”

Keep in mind that the Reverend Edwards preached that sermon to a flock of devout Christians, descendants of the Puritan settlers of New England who strove to live in the most respectable God-fearing way, yet even they were nothing but wretched sinners, entirely dependent on divine mercy.

If the most straitlaced New England Puritans were in need of this stern Calvinist warning, how much more do we need that sermon today?

The Devil is keeping mighty busy in 21st-century America, and sinners are going down to destruction on a daily basis by the dozens and hundreds. Even in seemingly wholesome small towns, the Devil’s always close at hand, eager to tempt folks with the “excitement” of sinful pleasure. Alas, the quality of preaching has been degraded, and there’s a lot of cheap grace and feel-good phony piety coming from too many pulpits. In the excerpt from her book in The Atlantic, Monica Potts focuses on her childhood friend Darci, who grew up to be a druggie loser. One night at age 13, Monica and Darci sneak out to meet up with some older teenagers at a party, where Darci hooks up with a boy and is later scolded by Monica:

At that first party, I saw a glimmer of this other life Darci had begun to live. When we got back to her den late that night, I told her that her new friends were sleazy. “That’s not very nice, and not very Christian” was her response. “I thought we were trying to see the good in people.”

Who taught her to think that way? “The Gospel of Niceness,” as I’ve sometimes called it, bears only a superficial resemblance to actual Christianity. Jonathan Edwards sure didn’t preach that stuff.

“Strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it” (Matthew 7:14 KJV) is not a message about being nice, because I’m sure most of the Pharisees in Jerusalem were considered perfectly nice, by the standards of the time and place.

And what about Hunter Biden and his baby mama, Lunden Roberts?

She was a standout athlete at Southside High School in Batesville, Arkansas (population 11,191), which is about 60 miles east of the much smaller town of Clinton (population 2,509) where Monica Potts grew up. In basketball, the 5-foot-8 Lunden Roberts “held the Arkansas state record for single-season free throw percentage, sinking 96.4 percent of her free throws during the 2007-2008 season.” She graduated high school in 2009 and first attended Western Illinois University before transferring in 2010 to Arkansas State in Jonesboro, about 70 miles east of Batesville. After getting her degree from Arkansas State, she then pursued a master’s degree in criminal investigation at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., reportedly hoping to land a job with the FBI. Instead, she ended up working as a stripper at the Mpire Gentlemen’s Club, which is on M Street, about halfway between downtown (K Street) and Dupont Circle. Could anyone back in her Arkansas hometown have ever imagined that this former all-conference basketball star would end up shaking her naked rump for tips in a D.C. strip club? And that, while doing it, she would attract the attention of the crackhead son of Obama’s Vice President? But even a small town high-school sports hero is not safe in these evil days when Satan “as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour” (I Peter 5:8 KJV).

Jonathan Turley has sought to portray Lunden Roberts in a more sympathetic light, but I’m sure the decent God-fearing folks in Batesville are scandalized by her sad fate. Getting knocked up by the Most Notorious Crackhead in America? Hester Prynne had Nathaniel Hawthorne to tell her tale, but Lunden Roberts gets her pathetic saga told and re-told by every trashy tabloid writer, not to mention us bloggers. Dear brothers, can’t you see that we are still very much “sinners in the hands of an angry God”? If the son of the President of the United States could turn into a sleazy crackhead, and a small town Arkansas basketball star could grow up to be a D.C. stripper, how can any of us be impudent enough to think our own children are safe from Satan’s snares?

Having barely escaped from the Highway to Hell — perhaps it was the next-to-last exit, but certainly it wasn’t far off from the infernal destination — I’ve always worried that my kids wouldn’t appreciate how important it is to avoid the various wicked ways of sin. Modern ideas of “progress” tend toward a tolerance of sin that would have horrified our ancestors. There are a great many self-identified “Christians” nowadays who think we shouldn’t call any behavior sinful (except “hate,” which in its 21st-century definition means disagreeing with liberals). Everybody nowadays reacts to any condemnation of sin the way Darci reacted when Monica Dobbs criticized her sleazy friends: “That’s not very nice, and not very Christian. . . . I thought we were trying to see the good in people.”

Well, ma’am, where did that approach get you? No matter how “nice” you think you are, you start hanging around a bunch of trash and you won’t be very nice at all before too long, and not a few such folks — just “trying to see good in people” — find their way to prison or an early grave.

This sermon could be extended further, but I’m already past the 2,000-word mark, and so I’ll tell you that today I decided to make a call to the Gordon County Courthouse: “Can I speak to Judge Parker?”

When I got him on the phone, I didn’t introduce myself right away, but told him I used to cover him when he played for Fairmount, and as soon as I told him my name, Richie was delighted. We talked for at least 45 minutes, and one of the things he told me was that he’d recently attended the funeral of Chris Randall, who played football at Red Bud High. As part of the tribute to Chris, his family had dug out the old newspaper clippings from Randall’s football days, including his picture — along with Richie Parker of Fairmount and two other players representing Calhoun High and Gordon Central High (the four high schools in the county at the time) — on the cover of the annual “Pigskin Preview.” There were several other clippings about Chris, and all of them had my byline. Richie said that while he was looking at those clips, he got to wondering whatever happened to me, so I caught him up to date, and then we just talked about everything for a while. During my years writing for the Calhoun Times, the local football teams all had losing records, but in the past 15 years, Calhoun has become a powerhouse, winning three state championships, dominating their region and advancing deep into the playoffs nearly every year they didn’t win the state title outright.

Richie’s kids are all doing fine, generally reflecting his family’s talents in athletics and music (Richie and his sister Leah are both musically gifted) and yes, as I guessed in that wee-hour thought that led me to start Googling, Richie is already a grandfather. His folks are still doing fine. When I promised Richie to get down to see him sometime, I told him how much I’d love to get a chance to see his dad again, and Richie said, “Oh, my mama, too. She always thought the best of you.”

There are still God’s people down in God’s country. Small-town living is the best way to live, no matter what any liberal writer may try to tell you. Never forget where you came from, and try to live in such a way that the folks down home can be proud of you. Amen.

UPDATE: Welcome, Instapundit readers!

Just coincidentally, my wife and I are leaving out today to attend our youngest son’s college graduation this weekend — a 1,122-mile road trip — so this might be a good time to remind readers of the Five Most Important Words in the English Language:

HIT THE FREAKING TIP JAR!