The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Rule 5 Sunday: For The Fallen

Posted on | December 11, 2023 | No Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho

I will advert to you that I am not really in the mood to do this post tonight, as I have been informed that one of my favorite SF authors, David Drake, has died. Still, if he taught me nothing else, he taught me that when you have a job to do, you do it – no bullshit or excuses accepted. I’ll post more about him tomorrow, I think, but in the meantime I think I’ll post something Christmas-themed instead.
Ceterum autem censeo Silicon Valley et Hamas delendam sunt.

A beloved death goddess comes bringing gifts!

ANIMAL MAGNETISM: Rule Five Outcomes Of Barbarity Friday, and the Saturday Gingermageddon.

EBL: Saturday Night Girls With Guns, Ryan O’Neal RIP, Fraser 2023, MAGA Post GOP Debate, Women of Pearl Harbor, Beacon 23, The Buccaneers, Virginia O’Brien, Terrific Taco Tuesday, Willa Fitzgerald, Strange Angel, Eva Vlaardingerbroek on Geert Wilders

A VIEW FROM THE BEACH: Kindly Myers, Fish Pic Friday – Ashleigh Stade, Two Views on Striped Bass, Thursday Tanlines, Good News, Bad News on Bay Hypoxia, Some Wednesday Wetness, Numb, Comer Readies Impeachment Inquiry, The Monday Morning Stimulus, Joe Biden’s Very Bad Report Card and Palm Sunday.

FLAPPR: T.I.T.S. for December 8th

AVERAGE BUBBA: Rule 5 Friday – Gun-Toting Girl Edition

Thanks to everyone for all the luscious links!

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Category: Rule 5

FMJRA 2.0: Dune

Posted on | December 11, 2023 | No Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Apologies for the lack of posting in the latter half of the week. For no good reason I can think of, I got very little sleep before having to drive to Las Vegas for a pulmonary appointment Thursday afternoon, and as a result I checked into the Stratosphere around 1700 and promptly went to bed, not waking until 0500 Friday – when I had to check out and dash up to the VA for a series of appointments early in the morning. Refueled at Maverik, grabbed a couple of BBQ pork rib buns (superior to the McRib in a number of ways) and drove back to Tonopah, where once again I went promptly to bed and didn’t get up until 0900 Saturday. Clearly, I’m getting too old for this three/four-hour drive into the flatlands and back. Or maybe I need to stop more often and not try to push straight through.
The Senators had a perfectly .500 week, losing two out of three to the Dodgers, but taking two out of three from the Red Sox under Robot Ted Williams, since I was too tired to manage. The sole win against the Dodgers went to Juan Marichal (his 23rd) while Jim Kaat and Pat Dobson (14th & 15th wins) got the W’s against the Sox.
Ceterum autem censeo Silicon Valley et Hamas delendam sunt.

.500 is better than losing two out of three.

Lesbian Teacher Sentenced to Prison for Sexually Molesting Two Teenage Girls
First Street Journal
The Daley Gator
A View From The Beach
357 Magnum
Flappr
EBL

Rule 5 Sunday: Hunting Season
Animal Magnetism
Average Bubba
A View From The Beach
Flappr
EBL

Mr. Hockey Stick Says the Quiet Part Out Loud About Population Control Agenda
The Daley Gator
A View From The Beach
357 Magnum
Flappr
EBL

Matt Taibbi vs. the Borg
Hogewash
357 Magnum
EBL

FMJRA 2.0: Take It Like A Man
A View From The Beach
EBL

In The Mailbox: 12.04.23
A View From The Beach
357 Magnum
EBL

‘Delusional-Sounding Allegations’: Conspiracy Kook Killed in Explosion
357 Magnum
EBL

In The Mailbox: 12.06.23 (Morning Edition)
A View From The Beach
357 Magnum
EBL

In The Mailbox: 12.06.23 (Evening Edition)
357 Magnum
EBL

Crazy Professors Are Dangerous
The Daley Gator
357 Magnum
EBL

‘Republican’ ‘Presidential’ ‘Debate’
A View From The Beach
357 Magnum
EBL

‘The Patriot Way’ Has Turned Toxic
EBL

‘Context Dependent’: Ivy League President Belatedly Realizes Maybe She Answered That Question About Genocide Wrong
First Street Journal
357 Magnum
EBL
A View From The Beach

Top linkers for the week ending December 8:

  1.  EBL (13)
  2.  357 Magnum (10)
  3.  A View From The Beach (8)

Thanks to everyone for all the links!

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Category: FMJRA Award

Pharaoh Amenhotep II and the Exodus: Vindicating the Bible as Israel’s History

Posted on | December 10, 2023 | No Comments

Pharaoh Amenhotep II

Since the October 7 terrorist attacks by Hamas, there has been a chorus of anti-Israel rhetoric portraying the Jews as “colonizers.” This rhetoric seeks to undermine the legitimacy of Israel’s historic claim to the land which, as the Bible says, God promised to the descendants of Abraham as a covenant (Genesis 12:1-3). As every child used to know — back in the day when church attendance and Bible study were near-universal experiences — it took hundreds of years for this promise to be fulfilled. Abraham was the father of Isaac, who was the father of Jacob, whose sons conspired to sell their brother Joseph into slavery (Genesis 37:23-36). Joseph became a servant in Egypt, rising to high office, and eventually his entire family joined him there (Genesis 46). There are scholars who have devoted themselves to researching this era, and who believe Joseph’s slavery in Egypt began around 1,900 BC, during the 12th Dynasty.

Originally, the Hebrews were treated well in Egypt, because of the memory of Joseph’s valuable service to Pharaoh, but Exodus begins with the story of how a later Pharaoh subjected them to “hard bondage”:

“And Joseph died, and all his brethren, and all that generation. And the children of Israel were fruitful, and increased abundantly, and multiplied, and waxed exceeding mighty; and the land was filled with them. Now there arose up a new king over Egypt, which knew not Joseph. And he said unto his people, Behold, the people of the children of Israel are more and mightier than we: Come on, let us deal wisely with them; lest they multiply, and it come to pass, that, when there falleth out any war, they join also unto our enemies, and fight against us, and so get them up out of the land. Therefore they did set over them taskmasters to afflict them with their burdens. And they built for Pharaoh treasure cities, Pithom and Raamses. But the more they afflicted them, the more they multiplied and grew. And they were grieved because of the children of Israel. And the Egyptians made the children of Israel to serve with rigour: And they made their lives bitter with hard bondage, in morter, and in brick, and in all manner of service in the field: all their service, wherein they made them serve, was with rigour.”
— Exodus 1:6-14 (KJV)

This “fruitful” multiplication of the Israelites was such that, by the time of the Exodus, they had more than 600,000 men age 20 or older, which suggests a total population of around 2 million. This is in keeping with God’s promise to Abraham that he would make his descendants “a great nation.” Of course, God didn’t tell Abraham how this would happen, or that it would involve centuries of servitude in Egypt.

Now we turn to the account of how Pharaoh sought to kill all the baby sons of the Hebrews (Exodus 1:15-22) and how Pharaoh’s daughter took Moses from the river and raised him as a royal prince (Exodus 2:1-10).

As I say, scholars have devoted themselves to studying this as history, and have identified the daughter of Pharaoh who saved Moses as none other than Hatshepsut, whose father was Thutmose I. Hatshepsut’s husband was Thutmose II, and she reigned as Pharaoh herself — only the second known queen to rule Egypt, as regent for her son Thutmose III — during the 22 years from the death of her husband until she died.

This is where the research becomes an amazing verification of the Bible. Moses was 40 years old when he fled from Egypt, fearing the Pharaoh’s wrath (Exodus 2:15). This Pharaoh would have been Thutmose III, the son of Hatshepsut, and the flight of Moses would have been about 1486 BC, a few years before Hatshepsut’s death. Moses remained in Midian until after Pharaoh died (Exodus 2:23), and Thutmose III died in 1450 BC. Then comes the “burning bush” episode: “And the Lord said unto Moses in Midian, Go, return into Egypt: for all the men are dead which sought thy life” (Exodus 4:19). This would have been near the start of the reign of Amenhotep II. Skip forward to the tenth plague, where God sends the angel of death to kill all the first-born of the Egyptians, and note this fact: Pharaoh himself doesn’t die.

Guess what? Amenhotep II was not the first-born son of Thutmose III. He had an older half-brother, Amenemhet, who died sometime early in the reign of Thutmose III. And something else: Amenhotep II’s successor as Pharaoh was not his first-born son, either. Amenhotep II’s successor, Thutmose IV, was not the original heir to the throne, thus indicating the death of his older brother. And so all these facts line up to support the biblical narrative: The long reign of Thutmose III, during which Moses was exiled in Midian, the fact that Amenhotep II was not his father’s first-born son, and the succession by another Pharaoh who wasn’t Amenhotep II’s first-born son. These are not the only facts discovered by researchers that vindicate the Bible as a true history of the Exodus, an event which scholars believe can be dated precisely to April 1446 B.C.

You know what’s most interesting about this? The research I’ve cited wasn’t done by Israelis trying to defend their claim to the Holy Land, but rather by fundamentalist Christians whose goal is to establish, from historical evidence, the Bible as literal truth. Do you think this is merely coincidence? Do you suppose that the advancement of historical research and archaeology by Christian scholars was just something that happened to approach an apex of certainty — dating the Exodus so precisely, based upon records of ancient Egyptian dynasties — at approximately the same time that most of the world has turned against Israel’s right to exist? Or do you, like me, see this confluence of events as providential?

 

You should watch Joel Kramer’s video about the Pharaoh of Exodus — he even shows you the mummy of Amenhotep II! — and also read Joel’s book, Where God Came Down: The Archaeological Evidence.



 

Category: Egypt, History, Israel, Religion

BREAKING: Penn’s Magill Resigns

Posted on | December 9, 2023 | No Comments

Mere hours after I blogged about this (“‘Context Dependent’: Ivy League President Belatedly Realizes Maybe She Answered That Question About Genocide Wrong”), now the University of Pennsylvania’s embattled President Liz Magill has resigned:

University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill has resigned as president of the university in the wake of intense backlash over her failure during a recent congressional hearing on Capitol Hill to say whether advocating for the genocide of Jews is permissible on campus.
“Dear members of the Penn community,” the university began in its announcement. “I write to share that President Liz Magill has voluntarily tendered her resignation as President of the University of Pennsylvania.”
“She will remain a tenured faculty member at Penn Carey Law,” the school added.
“On behalf of the entire Penn community, I want to thank President Magill for her service to the University of Pennsylvania and wish her well,” the university concluded.

“Thank you for your service and good-bye!”



 

Category: The Ivy League Is Depraved and Decadent

The ‘HotWifeExperience’ Democrat Won’t Go Away (and She Thinks You’re Stupid)

Posted on | December 9, 2023 | No Comments

In November, we had a good laugh when Susanna Gibson lost her race for the Virginia House of Delegates after it was revealed that she had engaged in livestream sex performances as “HotWifeExperience.”

For some unfathomable reason, Politico has decided to give Gibson a platform to try to redeem her political career, setting up the Q-and-A with this rather interesting assertion:

The episode also detonated a debate in Virginia and beyond about digital and sexual privacy in 21st-century politics. In a possible reflection of shifting social norms, Gibson nearly won the race anyway — she lost by less than 1,000 votes and has not ruled out a return to electoral politics in the future.

It “detonated a debate,” did it? Pray tell, what are the opposing sides of this alleged debate about “digital and sexual privacy”? Do the liberal editors at Politico expect us to believe that if a Republican candidate were exposed in similar behavior, they wouldn’t be on the story 24/7? Hell, the liberal media were all-in on the so-called “pee tape” allegations that were part of the “Russian collusion” hoax against Trump, but somehow a real sex scandal involving a Democrat requires a “debate”?

This is a perfect example of how the hivemind mentality takes hold in the media. Everybody employed at Politico is a Democrat, so there is never any pushback when someone comes up with obviously bad ideas like, “Hey, let’s try to rehabilitate this disgraced failure of a candidate.” The Q-and-A with Gibson includes dishonest statements, e.g.:

My entire life was rocked on Sept. 11, when the article ran. It ran, implying that I performed sex acts online with my husband for money. It was really written based on this Dropbox file that self-described Republican operatives shopped around. They had found these videos on the dark web and shopped them around to various news outlets. I didn’t have any idea that there were ever videos of me that had been made and uploaded to multiple sites. . . .
I hired an amazing attorney who worked around the clock and wrote them several letters, essentially saying: To be clear, Ms. Gibson never acknowledged or consented to videos being recorded, this is illegal pornography because it is illegal to record someone in a state of undress without consent. . . .
How can this be happening? How can a national news outlet decide to run a story about this? I think if I wasn’t a candidate, the Post probably would have been appalled at the invasion of my privacy. But because I was a candidate, they decided that it was a political story, rather than an invasion of my privacy and potentially a crime.

Can she not hear herself? Do words mean nothing to her? While I have not watched the “HotWifeExperience” videos, Luke Rosiak of the Daily Wire did, and described them in shocking detail:

Susanna Gibson . . . was as recently as last year posting as “HotWifeExperience” on the website Chaturbate, where men could pay tokens to get her to perform specific sex acts. In one video recorded shortly after she launched her campaign last year, she told her husband, “I’ll let you f— me in the a– doggy style in a private room if someone wants to pay. That’s the deal.”
In another video, she appears to say that for the right price, viewers could watch her urinate. “Y’all can watch me pee if you tip me and some tokens,” she said. “Again, I’m raising money for a good cause.”
“I like being choked. I like being hit. I do,” she said in one video posted exactly a year ago, on September 11, 2022.
“I just want a private room with somebody filming their [penis] so I can come looking at it, Jesus Christ,” she said. “Oh God I want to f—ing get railroaded by all of you.”
She said for 500 tokens, she would order room service in a hotel and cause the delivery person to see her naked, saying: “I’m definitely a slut… In order to leave the door cracked I need 500 tokens.”
Gibson said she has had sex with three men in one day, and “don’t tell my husband he was the third. I would say ethically nonmonogamous but I guess that three in one day was not.”
“I’m raising money for a really good cause and it’s my birthday so give me more please because it’s my birthday night and yeah so then I f—ed him in his house for the first time and then later that night I f—ed my husband,” she said.
In the videos, she appears to be filmed with her husband, lawyer John David Gibson, who ensured that the raunchiest acts were reserved for the biggest spendings, saying “no anal outside of private.”

Having posted such videos online, how can Gibson then claim to be a victim who was recorded “without consent”? She blabbers about “Republican operatives” and the videos being “on the dark web,” evidently thinking people are stupid enough to be deceived into thinking there was some criminal activity involved in the videos being discovered. The real story is that she was stupid enough to think she could post these videos online without anyone ever recognizing her.

Did she not realize that, when she and her husband livestreamed these videos, they were cached online? Probably that’s in the fine print of the user agreement that nobody bothers to read before clicking the box to sign up for a site like that. So she’s playing word games about not knowing the videos were recorded — i.e., she didn’t realize the site maintained archives of livestream videos, which is apparently how her performances came to the attention of “Republican operatives.”

Does the name Anthony Weiner ring a bell, boys and girls? At the time of the second #WeinerGate scandal in 2013, I remember reading my then-14-year-old son Jefferson the Riot Act about this: “Never say anything in a text or email that you wouldn’t want to see printed on the front page of the New York Times! The Internet is forever!” People who think they can engage in “private” or “secret” activity online are fools. You might want to ask Fred “Bubba” Copeland, a/k/a “Brittini Blaire Summerlin,” about this, except for the fact that “Bubba”/“Brittini” committed suicide after his/“her” online life as a “transgender curvy girl” was exposed.

Susanna Gibson thinks you’re so stupid you won’t figure out that she alone is to blame for her disgrace, and Politico wants you to think “shifting social norms” mean that Democrats should be allowed to get away with anything, including sex scandals that would destroy any Republican politician’s career. Don’t be stupid. Don’t vote Democrat. And remember: You’re not really “anonymous,” and the Internet is forever.



 

Category: Democrats, Scandal, Sex, Virginia

‘Context Dependent’: Ivy League President Belatedly Realizes Maybe She Answered That Question About Genocide Wrong

Posted on | December 8, 2023 | 1 Comment

Congresswoman Stefanik: “Ms. Magill at Penn, does calling for the genocide of Jews violate Penn’s rules or code of conduct? Yes or no?”
President Magill: “If the speech turns into conduct, it can be harassment. Yes.”
Congresswoman Stefanik: “I am asking, specifically calling for the genocide of Jews, does that constitute bullying or harassment?”
President Magill: “If it is directed, and severe, pervasive, it is harassment.”
Congresswoman Stefanik: “So the answer is yes.”
President Magill: “It is a context dependent decision, Congresswoman.”
— Dec. 5, 2023

For years I’ve been saying The Ivy League Is Decadent and Depraved, and perhaps some people thought this was mere hyperbole. Then came Tuesday, when the reality could no longer be denied — the decadence and depravity on live TV — and now even CNN can’t ignore it:

UPenn President Liz Magill
under fire over her testimony
on antisemitism: ‘An utter disgrace’
The growing chorus of donors, politicians, business leaders and other prominent figures calling for the immediate ouster of University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill has reached a crescendo after her disastrous testimony at a House hearing earlier this week.
During Tuesday’s House hearing, Magill, along with the presidents of Harvard and MIT, did not explicitly say that calling for the genocide of Jews would necessarily violate their code of conduct on bullying or harassment. Instead, they explained it would depend on the circumstances and conduct.
Magill had already been under fire prior to Tuesday’s hearing after multiple incidents of antisemitism on campus in recent months — and what critics have said was a tepid response to those incidents. . . .

(Note the phrasing “what critics have said” — as if there were no objective standard as to what constitutes a proper response to “multiple incidents of antisemitism on campus.” Just try to imagine if these “incidents” had been the work of neo-Nazis, instead of left-wing Hamas supporters, and think of how the administration at Penn would have responded. But I digress . . .)

After the fallout from Tuesday’s hearing, Magill attempted to clarify her message on Wednesday, posting a video on X in which she said she should have focused on the “irrefutable fact that a call for genocide of Jewish people is a call for some of the most terrible violence human beings can perpetrate.”
Magill said Wednesday that Penn’s policies “need to be clarified and evaluated,” adding that in her view: “It would be harassment or intimidation.” . . .

(Again, she is evasive. One cannot imagine Penn tolerating a neo-Nazi march on its campus, but when the Jew-haters at Penn are anti-Israel “progressives,” the university president must not condemn it outright.)

A bipartisan group of more than 70 members of Congress on Friday sent a letter to board members of Harvard, MIT and Penn demanding Magill and her counterparts at the other two universities be dismissed.
“Given this moment of crisis, we demand that your boards immediately remove each of these presidents from their positions and that you provide an actionable plan to ensure that Jewish and Israeli students, teachers, and faculty are safe on your campuses,” the lawmakers wrote.
“The university presidents’ responses to questions aimed at addressing the growing trend of antisemitism on college and university campuses were abhorrent,” the lawmakers added.
Former US Ambassador Jon Huntsman Thursday night called on Penn’s board of trustees to remove Magill. . . .
Huntsman, the former governor of Utah, was a 1987 graduate and former UPenn trustee. In October, he blasted Penn’s response to antisemitism on campus and promised to halt his family’s donations to the university. The Huntsman family has been such prominent supporters of UPenn that the Huntsman name is on the main Wharton School building. . . .
Stone Ridge Holdings CEO Ross Stevens, a major donor to Penn, sent a letter on Thursday to Penn threatening to take steps that would cost the Ivy League school approximately $100 million if Magill stays on as president.
Stevens, a Penn alum and CEO of Stone Ridge Holdings, argues he has clear grounds to rescind $100 million worth of shares in his company that are currently held by Penn. . . .
The Wharton Board of Advisors, comprised of a powerful group of business leaders, including NFL owner Josh Harris, former Johnson & Johnson CEO Alex Gorsky, Related Companies CEO Jeff Blau, Blackstone exec David Blitzer and BET CEO Scott Mills, has called for Magill’s immediate ouster.
“As a result of the University leadership’s stated beliefs and collective failure to act, our Board respectfully suggests to you and the Board of Trustees that the University requires new leadership with immediate effect,” the Wharton Board of Advisors wrote in a letter sent directly to Magill.
The letter, which appears to have been sent Wednesday, specifically cites Magill’s testimony.
Jonathan Greenblatt, the CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, called the testimony “catastrophic and clarifying” and said Magill’s attempt to clean-up her testimony “looked like a hostage video, like she was speaking under duress.” . . .

It’s difficult for the media to do their usual “Republicans pounce” trick when even Democrats like Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro are outraged.

Exit question: How many votes will Democrats lose next November because of the anti-Israel eruptions at elite universities? See, this is what’s really rattled the liberal media — the prospect that some Jews have become so disillusioned about their left-wing “allies” since Oct. 7 that they may just walk right out of the Democratic Party coalition. Who was the intended audience of all that “Trump is Hitler” messaging from Democrats, really? And now these stupid college kids have screwed it up with their pro-Hamas protests. What a splendidly ironic outcome!

UPDATE: Magill has resigned.



 

Category: The Ivy League Is Depraved and Decadent

‘The Patriot Way’ Has Turned Toxic

Posted on | December 7, 2023 | No Comments

Tonight, the New England Patriots play in prime time against the Pittsburgh Steelers, and bid fair to set an unwelcome NFL record:

The betting over/under total on the “Thursday Night Football” game between the New England Patriots and Pittsburgh Steelers is testing a 30-year low, and weather isn’t even a factor.
The total on the Patriots-Steelers game dipped to 29.5 earlier this week at ESPN BET before settling at a consensus 30 at sportsbooks as of Thursday morning. That would be the lowest over/under since a 2006 divisional playoff game between the Carolina Panthers and Chicago Bears (30).
There hasn’t been a total under 30 since Dec. 26, 1993, when frigid temperatures contributed to three games having sub-30 totals. That Sunday featured the lowest total on a game in ESPN Stats & Information’s database: 28 on Colts at Patriots in New England, where temperatures were in the low 20s with 23 mph winds. The Patriots won that game 38-0.
Temperatures on Thursday in Pittsburgh are expected to be in the 40s with light winds.
The Steelers will start backup Mitch Trubisky at quarterback against the Patriots’ stingy defense because of Kenny Pickett being out with a high ankle sprain, while New England has scored seven points or fewer in three straight games. Bailey Zappe took over as the starting quarterback for Sunday’s 6-0 loss to the Los Angeles Chargers.
The Patriots-Steelers total was attracting more betting interest than usual at sportsbooks, the bulk of it on the under.

The Patriots could make the record books (not in a good way):

The New England Patriots made history in their loss to the Los Angeles Chargers in Week 13, but for all the wrong reasons. They are now the first team in the NFL’s Super Bowl era to go winless through a three-game stretch in which they surrendered no more than 10 points in each contest, according to Boston Sports Info.
After losing 10-6 to the Indianapolis Colts and 10-7 to the New York Giants, the Patriots were shut out by the Chargers 6-0 on Sunday. No squad in the 58 years since the first Super Bowl has managed to accomplish a feat like that.
In fact, you have to go all the way back to the 1938 Chicago Cardinals — the team that later relocated to St. Louis and is now playing in Arizona — to find a similar streak of offensive ineptitude. Those Cardinals lost four games in a row in a similar manner, dropping those matchups 10-0, 7-0, 6-0, and finally 7-3.

The other day, Wombat asked why I haven’t written about football since September, and the simple answer is: Depression.

Any fan of a team as bad as this would be depressed by New England’s bleak and hopeless season, but I have special reasons to be glum, as I explained back in September:

Football is a team sport, but I became a New England Patriots fan in 2021 because of one player. When the Patriots drafted Alabama quarterback Mac Jones, they also acquired me as a fan: Roll Tide.
Jones had led the Crimson Tide to an undefeated season and the National Championship after spending three years on the bench behind Jalen Hurts and Tua Tagovailoa, stepping in after Tua suffered a season-ending injury late in 2019. . . . Mac led the Patriots to the playoffs as a rookie, finished second in Rookie of the Year voting, and seemed destined for future greatness.

To explain what went wrong — well, there is an army of sports writers in Boston trying to explain it, and their explanations don’t satisfy me. Don’t even mention the name “Bill Belichick” to my brother Kirby, who has developed an implacable hatred of the Patriots coach. Kirby’s basic analysis of what’s gone wrong in New England is simple: Belichick has become a dictator and, like other totalitarian leaders, has surrounded himself with “yes men.” Furthermore, Kirby finds fault with Belichick’s approach to roster-building, an approach that Kirby summed up in a memorable phrase: “Gucci defense, Dollar General offense.”

None of these genius sports writers in Boston know as much about football as my brother, or they’d have figured this out themselves. Before examining in detail the evidence in support of Kirby’s analysis, however, let’s first address the elephant in the room:

The New England Patriots are noted for the following characteristics under Belichick’s tenure, dubbed as the “Patriot Way”:

• Their self-critical, perfectionist, and militaristic approach;
• Their emphasis on team, equality among players and lack of individual ego;
• Their strong work ethic, intelligence and high level of focus and preparation for each individual game;
• Their versatile players, able to play multiple positions; and
• Their multiple schemes intended to take advantage of their opponent’s weaknesses.

Since 2000, the philosophy in making personnel decisions and in game planning has focused on the “team” concept, stressing preparation, strong work ethic, versatility, and lack of individual ego.

Is there anything wrong with that? Not really. I’m all in favor of a “militaristic approach” to football, and nothing else in this description of “The Patriot Way” really bothers me. The problem is that Belichick’s philosophy is insufficient explanation of New England’s “dynasty” with Tom Brady at quarterback. In the era of the NFL salary cap, Brady’s willingness to be underpaid — his salary was always less than his value to the Patriots — was crucial to their ability to remain competitive. This was how “emphasis on team, equality among players and lack of individual ego” manifested itself so powerfully during New England’s glory years, when they played in 10 Super Bowls and won six of them.

Unfortunately, this success led Belichick to think he’d hit upon some kind of magic formula that could produce victory without regard to personnel and — this is the real killer — subsequent years have demonstrated that Bill Belichick is a very poor judge of personnel, particularly on offense.

Andrew Callahan makes a key point about this:

Do you know the last college receiver the Patriots selected who became a multi-year NFL starter?
That would be Deion Branch in 2002. That’s right.
It’s been more than 20 years since Belichick drafted and developed a true wideout. Tom Brady papered over that problem for two decades, as he did many dynasty-era deficiencies.

This is where Kirby’s phrase “Gucci defense, Dollar General offense” is most glaring: Every sports writer in Boston has bemoaned the lack of what they call a “true Number One” wide receiver and, as Callahan points out, it’s Belichick’s inability to find such a talent in the draft that has put the Patriots into such a deficit on offense. Because top wide receivers — speed demons whose downfield threat keeps the defense honest — are so valuable in the NFL, if you can’t get one in the draft, you’re going to have to bleed yourself dry to get one via trade or free agency. And when it comes to evaluating collegiate receivers, Bill Belichick sucks.

Here’s where the “dictator surrounded by cronies” factor boomerangs around to whack New England in the back of the skull. Not only is Belichick the head coach of the Patriots, he’s also the general manager. Everybody on the staff — assistant coaches, front office personnel, etc. — answers to Belichick, so that the scouts and other people assigned to evaluate draft prospects is handpicked by Belichick, who has the final say-so on all such matters. Belichick’s coaching specialty is defense; he was defensive coordinator under Bill Parcells with the New York Giants when they won two Super Bowls. When it comes to picking linebackers or cornerbacks, Belichick does just fine. Wide receivers? Not so much.

Infamously, in 2019, the Patriots spent their first-round pick on N’Keal Harry out of Arizona State. Harry was a complete bust, who’s never had more than 33 catches in a season; Harry was traded in 2022 for a seventh-round pick, and is nowadays a member of the practice squad for the Minnesota Vikings. Wasting a first-round pick on a total failure is made all the more painful by the fact that, four picks after the Patriots chose Harry, the San Francisco 49ers picked Deebo Samuel from South Carolina, who in 2021 caught 77 passes for 1,405 yards, and led the NFL in average yards per catch. If N’Keal Harry was an isolated incident — hey, anybody can make a mistake — that would be one thing, but as Callahan says, it’s been more than 20 years since the Patriots drafted a top wideout. “But what about Julian Edelman?” you say. Edelman was a one-off — a seventh-rounder from Kent State who, while lacking outstanding speed, was an excellent route-runner with great hands.

Something I forgot to mention: Belichick has two of his sons working as assistant coaches on defense. Steve Belichick is the play-caller and Brian Belichick coaches the safeties. Neither of them has ever worked for any other team but the Patriots, which raises the question whether any other team would hire them, or if their employment in New England is nothing but nepotism. Returning to the dictator motif, is it fair to say the Belichick boys are the Qusay and Uday Hussein of Foxborough?

You could ask my brother Kirby his opinion, but brace yourself for an expletive-filled rant whenever you say the word “Belichick” around him.

The bottom line is, the Patriots offense sucks, and the architect of this disastrous 2-10 season is evading responsibility because the Boston sports media have bought into a narrative that makes Mac Jones the scapegoat. Every one of them are now engaged in a delusional fantasy in which the Patriots draft a quarterback — Caleb Williams of USC, Drake Maye of North Carolina, Jayden Daniels of LSU — and instantly become competitive. The problem with that pipe dream? Mac Jones was (and, I would argue, still is) better than any of the QBs the Boston media are fantasizing about as New England’s coming savior.

Let’s just take Caleb Williams for example. In two seasons at USC, Williams has completed 599 of 888 passes (67.5%) for 7,870 yards (8.9 yards per passing attempt) with 72 TDs and 10 interceptions, winning 18 games and losing 8. In his final two seasons at Alabama — including three starts his junior year, after Tua Tagovailoa was injured — Mac Jones completed 408 of 543 passes (75.1%) for 6,003 yards (11.1 yards per passing attempt) with 55 TDs and 7 interceptions, winning 15 games and losing 1. His senior year, of course, Alabama was undefeated and won the National Championship, as Jones set NCAA records for completion percentage and passer rating. None of the would-be saviors about whom the Boston pundits are drooling have anything close to the pedigree that Jones brought to New England when he was drafted in 2021. Belichick and “The Patriot Way” have ruined Jones’s career, and if anyone in Boston thinks it’s going to get better with a new first-round draft pick at quarterback, they need to seek psychiatric help. Probably the Patriots will start Bailey Zappe the rest of the season, and if the Mac Jones era in New England is over, that’s the best thing that could happen for Mac Jones.

Fuck New England, fuck the Boston sports media, and fuck “The Patriot Way.” Kirby ain’t the only one who can cuss a blue streak, y’know.



 

Category: Football

‘Republican’ ‘Presidential’ ‘Debate’

Posted on | December 7, 2023 | No Comments

Let’s face it — none of the four candidates on the stage Wednesday night are going to be the Republican presidential nominee. Donald Trump beats all of them by at least 30 points. What was the point of that televised exercise? Cui bono? Chris Christie’s poll numbers are microscopically small, but he feeds the media’s anti-Trump appetite:

Republican presidential candidate Chris Christie called former President Donald Trump a “dictator” during Wednesday night’s debate and said that “he wants to exact retribution” if he wins back the Oval Office.
The rhetoric mirrors a narrative spun in recent days as at least three leftist outlets — the Atlantic, the New York Times, and the Washington Post — have worked to stoke fear about a potential second Trump administration.
Christie first attacked Trump as a dictator in his opening statement while criticizing the other candidates for not speaking about Trump to that point:

The fact is that when you go and you say the truth about somebody who is a dictator, a bully, who has taken shots at everybody, whether they’ve given them great service or not over time, who dares to disagree with him, then I understand why these three are timid to say anything about it. . . .

Christie contended that Trump “instructed others to commit crimes,” which the federal government alleges but has not been proven in court.
“So, do I think he was kidding when he said he was a dictator? All you have to do is look at the history and that’s why failing to speak out against him, making excuses for him, pretending that somehow he’s a victim, empowers him,” Christie added.
“He will only be his own retribution. He doesn’t care for the American people. It’s Donald Trump first,” concluded Christie.

Now that he’s gotten his fourth TV debate appearance, Chris Christie has completed the purpose of his “Republican” “presidential” “campaign.” The anti-Trump forces have chosen Nikki Haley as their preferred alternative, and the other names on the ballot in Iowa, New Hampshire, etc., are irrelevant. It’s now Trump-vs.-Haley, which I would expect to be a 70-30 landslide for Trump, and all these televised “debate” circuses are just about producing sound bites for the cable networks.



 

Category: Debates, Republicans
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