The Other McCain

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

Next Media Narrative: How Joe Biden Defeated the Evil Chinese Spy Balloon

Posted on | February 4, 2023 | No Comments

The first 20 minutes on Meet the Press will be devoted to praising Joe Biden’s courage — his steely-eyed resolve and decisiveness — in ordering the Air Force to shoot down this threat to America:

A U.S. military aircraft on Saturday downed the suspected Chinese surveillance balloon that had been floating over the United States for several days, according to a U.S. official and eyewitness videos circulating on social media.
The balloon was brought down just off the Atlantic Coast, near the Carolinas, shortly after the Federal Aviation Administration ordered ground stops for all flights in and out of Wilmington, N.C., Myrtle Beach, S.C., and Charleston, S.C. In a statement, the agency said the ground stop was to “support the Department of Defense in a national security effort.”
President Biden, when asked about the situation earlier Saturday, told reporters, “We’re gonna take care of it.”
The days-long ordeal has placed new strains on what was already a fraught relationship between world powers, leading the Biden administration on Friday to postpone a trip to Beijing by Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
The balloon was disclosed to the public on Thursday after appearing over Montana the day before, prompting a temporary stoppage of all flights out of the airport in Billings.

Well, if it was out over the Atlantic Ocean, the balloon had already flown over the whole country and seen whatever it was the Chinese wanted to see, so I don’t grasp quite what this shoot-down accomplished. Karen Townsend points out that the Biden administration’s main concern seems to have been the danger that Republicans would pounce and/or seize on the story, but that won’t stop the Sunday talk shows from turning into revival meetings filled with hymns of praise for Brave Joe Biden.

(Hat-tip: Instapundit.)



 

 

Category: China, Joe Biden

‘We May Never Learn the Full Story’

Posted on | February 4, 2023 | No Comments

The late ‘Tortuguita’ (left); Atlanta riot on Jan. 21 (right)

No sooner do I finish one long rant about media bias than another egregious example comes to my attention. The phrase in the headline comes from the last paragraph of an obtuse article in The Nation about the Jan. 18 death of Manuel Esteban Paez Terán, a/k/a “Tortuguita.” In case you missed it, “Tortuguita” was part of the Antifa mob who were camping on the site of a planned police training center in Atlanta. When a law-enforcement task force went to clear out these self-described “forest defenders,” Teran shot a Georgia state trooper and was killed by return gunfire. This isn’t one of those “gray areas” in the law — you shoot a cop, you’re likely to die in a hail of gunfire. At least that’s how it is (and has always been) in Georgia, but Teran wasn’t from Georgia. He wasn’t even American, but had come all the way from Venezuela and somehow got himself mixed up with this crew of Antifa terrorists who have spent the past several months making a nuisance of themselves. I’ve written three times about this story:

It is not necessary for me to debunk The Nation article, because John Sexton at Hot Air has given it rather a thorough fisking. John’s pet peeve is that so many in the media are trying to cast doubt on how “Tortuguita” got shot, despite the available evidence. My pet peeve, on the other hand, is the way this “forest” is depicted as some sort of pristine environmental treasure when, in fact, it’s just a bunch of scrub trees that grew up on the site (formerly the Atlanta Prison Farm) after it was abandoned a few decades ago. And of course, The Nation plays into this narrative, referring to the site as “the Weelaunee forest,” a name invented by the Antifa crew, and unknown to locals. Go research it yourself and I guarantee you won’t find the phrase “Weelaunee forest” in anything written before 2021. What they did was to find some old article that said the South River had been called “Weelaunee” by the Creek Indians who once lived in that area of Georgia, and for all I know, that’s true. But (a) it’s been called the South River for more than a century, and (b) the river is two miles from the site of the planned police training facility. Referring to this property as “the South River forest” is misleading enough; there is a creek, half a mile east of the site, which is a tributary of the South River, but so what? I grew up in Douglas County, Georgia, near a small stream that, like every other stream in the area, fed into Sweetwater Creek which, in turn, fed into the Chattahoochee River. But nobody called the woods in my neighborhood “the Chattahoochee forest.” Creating the name “Weelaunee forest” to describe the planned police training site in southern DeKalb County is a deliberate trick by Antifa, intended to create the (false) impression that this is some kind of sacred indigenous site. The word for this is bullshit. The descendants of the Creek Indians who once lived in this area have been residents of Oklahoma for the past 150-plus years, and couldn’t even plausibly make claim to build a casino on the Atlanta site (although if they did, no Antifa would protest).

Anyway, I’ve ranted enough about this topic for one day, but if you want to hear me rant some more, you can tune into The Other Podcast tonight at 7 p.m. ET, when I’m sure I’ll have plenty to rant about.

(Hat-tip: Instapundit.)



 

 

Category: Georgia

The Grammar and Rhetoric of Media Bias

Posted on | February 4, 2023 | 2 Comments

Yesterday I recounted my experience of watching a couple hours of MSNBC — I watch, so you don’t have to — and perhaps I should remind readers that I’m old enough to remember what journalism was about before cable news and the Internet had permanently altered the media landscape. It took me more than a decade of toiling at local newspapers in Georgia before I got hired by The Washington Times in 1997, and then spent an eventful decade in the newsroom there before striking out on my own as a freelancer/blogger. Part of my experience at The Washington Times was dealing with the stylebook as dictated by our legendary editor Wes Pruden who, for example, banned the word “controversial” from the pages of the newspaper. You see, “controversial” is one of those words by which journalists introduce bias in reporting. It’s a lazy word, a label applied to stigmatize someone a reported doesn’t like, and whom he wants the reader to dislike, e.g., “controversial talk-radio personality Rush Limbaugh.” And the stylebook as dictated by Pruden had a number of other rules like that, intended to prevent The Washington Times from being like practically every other newspaper in the country, written with little tricks of tendentiousness intended to prejudice the reader.

While every conservative thinks of himself as an expert on media bias, very few of them have the kind of experience I had, spending a decade on the national desk in a newsroom under Mr. Pruden’s authority. The simplest sort of work in such an environment — turning a wire-service report into a four-paragraph item in the “National Briefs” column — might require a rewrite to eliminate the elements of liberal bias. And, good Lord, the hassle of dealing with copy from our Capitol Hill bureau, where some of the young reporters didn’t seem to understand the importance of being independent from the journalistic herd, and would parrot the same Democrat talking-points that everybody else in the D.C. press corps was parroting. How many times is it necessary to explain that tax cuts do not need to be “paid for”? This is not a trivial point, as the rhetoric of “paying for” tax cuts involves an evasion of the fundamental question of whose money it is that Congress is spending.

Furthermore (and excuse me for belaboring this point, which involves one of my pet peeves), the idea of “paying for” for tax cuts ignores a fact of economics that can be easily demonstrated, namely that reductions in the rate of taxation generally yields a higher level of revenue. This is the famous “Laffer Curve,” and was the not-so-secret reason why Ronald Reagan’s presidency yielded one of the greatest economic booms in world history. And as the private-sector economy boomed, the amount of tax revenue received in Washington actually increased, thus proving the basic falsehood of Democratic Party rhetoric about “paying for” tax cuts.

My point, however, is not to teach an economics seminar, but rather to illustrate how the business of eliminating liberal bias from news coverage requires a close scrutiny of how sentences are structured. And that was my day-to-day job for a decade, so that I can claim an expertise in this matter which most of my peers do not possess. If you never worked for Wes Pruden, don’t imagine you can teach me anything about how media bias operates. With that in mind, read this report from CBS News:

The GOP-led House Judiciary Committee is seeking information from the FBI about Charles McGonigal, the former top counterintelligence official in the bureau’s New York field office who was charged last week with violating U.S. sanctions on Russia and other related offenses.
Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, an Ohio Republican, and Rep. Matt Gaetz, a Florida Republican, wrote a letter to FBI Director Chris Wray on Thursday seeking material and information about McGonigal as part of an investigation into allegations of political bias at the bureau.
The Republicans are also requesting a briefing to discuss the FBI’s investigation into McGonigal, including whether the bureau is undertaking any review to determine how Russia and its oligarchs were able to influence senior FBI officials. Jordan and Gaetz set a deadline of Feb. 16 for Wray to respond. The bureau said it received the letter, but had no additional comment.
McGonigal, 54, was most recently the special agent in charge of the FBI’s Counterintelligence Division in New York and retired from the bureau in 2018 after a 22-year career.
A five-count indictment unsealed in federal court in New York last week accused McGonigal of working for Oleg Deripaska, a Russian aluminum magnate with ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Deripaska has been under U.S. sanctions since 2018, and federal prosecutors allege McGonigal and Sergey Shestakov, a former Russian diplomat who became a U.S. citizen, worked for Deripaska to investigate an unnamed rival Russian oligarch in 2021.
McGonigal is also facing federal charges in Washington, D.C., related to at least $225,000 in cash he allegedly received from a person with business interests in Europe and who worked for a foreign intelligence service.
He pleaded not guilty to the charges in both New York and Washington.
“This misconduct further erodes public confidence in the FBI’s conduct and law-enforcement actions,” Jordan and Gaetz wrote to Wray.
Citing reports from conservative news outlets that McGonigal played a role in the FBI’s decision to launch its investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election and possible ties between former President Donal Trump’s campaign and Russia, dubbed “Crossfire Hurricane,” the Republicans said McGonigal’s indictment “raises new questions about the FBI’s counterintelligence efforts during his employment” with the bureau.
Jordan and Gaetz have requested Wray turn over to the committee all personnel records regarding McGonigal; documents and communications “referring or relating to the FBI’s process for assessing and responding to the investigation” concerning McGonigal; and material related to the FBI’s efforts to mitigate national security risks posed by McGonigal’s alleged actions.
Republicans have accused the FBI of improperly targeting Trump with its investigation into possible connections between his 2016 campaign and Russia. The GOP-controlled House has created a select subcommittee, led by Jordan, on the “weaponization of the federal government” that will examine recent actions by the Justice Department and FBI.
The Justice Department’s inspector general conducted a review of the origins of the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane investigation and concluded in a December 2019 report that agents made many procedural errors, including “significant inaccuracies and omissions” in warrant applications, but did not find “any documentary or testimonial evidence that political bias or improper motivation influenced the FBI’s decision to conduct these operations.”
John Durham, the special counsel who was tasked in 2019 with investigating the Justice Department’s investigations surrounding the 2016 campaign, responded to the Horowitz findings at the time, and said he did not agree with parts of the inspector general’s report.
“Our investigation has included developing information from other persons and entities, both in the U.S. and outside of the U.S.,” Durham said in a statement. “Based on the evidence collected to date, and while our investigation is ongoing, last month we advised the Inspector General that we do not agree with some of the report’s conclusions as to predication and how the FBI case was opened.”

Now, the lead byline on this article is Catherine Herridge, a national security reporter who used to work for Fox News, so I do not think she is responsible for the obvious elements of bias here. In fact, I suppose Herridge had to fight tooth-and-nail with her bosses just to get the basic facts into this story, as her editors seem intent on portraying this investigation as a Republican snipe hunt. Her bosses as CBS News do not want to admit the obvious fact that the whole “Russian collusion” narrative was bogus, manufactured by Fusion GPS under contract to Hillary Clinton’s campaign, and that the FBI was part of the corrupt enterprise that turned a partisan smear into a two-year investigation based on a hoax. Certainly it is not far-fetched to suppose that McGonigal’s role in this might be crucial to understanding the extent of corruption at the FBI. So why the emphasis-by-repetition on the fact that this is a “GOP-led” investigation? During all the years that the “Russian collusion” narrative was treated as legitimate by journalists, did CBS News ever emphasize the partisan aspect of the story this way?

Over and over, in a thousand different ways on a daily basis, we encounter the same basic problem: Media bias enlists journalists to become “Democratic Party operatives with bylines,” so that anyone who disagrees with the Democratic Party’s agenda — even including Democrats who dissent about some particular item on that agenda — finds himself doing battle against dishonest reporting. But perhaps saying this makes me “controversial” . . .



 

 

Category: Media Bias

In The Mailbox: 02.03.23

Posted on | February 4, 2023 | No Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho

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

AI INSTANCES FOR JESUS!

OVER THE TRANSOM
357 Magnum: How Should An 80-Year-Old Man Defend Himself From Home Invaders?
EBL: Suspected Chinese Spy Balloon Spoted Over Billings, Montana? also, Saint Blaise
Twitchy: If This Thread About Why U.S. Is REALLY Helping Ukraine Is True At All…, also, Occasional Cortex Brings Knife To Gunfight With Marjorie Taylor Greene
Louder With Crowder: Two grown men beef over a skinny latte in the most beta-brawl imaginable, also, Ilhan Omar whines she was only booted from House Committee because GOP hates she’s a Muslim
Vox Popoli: The King’s Justice, Strategically Incapable, and AI = Inhibited Algorithms
According To Hoyt: It’s UP! It’s UP!, Dreaming In Esperanto, and You Get NOTHING
Monster Hunter Nation: WriterDojo S4 E4 – Monsters (Round 1), also, My response to the official complaint at MarsCon about my “tone”
Gab News: A Christian Perspective On AI

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Conservative: Come, Follow Me, also, The Born Loser
American Greatness: GOP to Investigate John Kerry’s Secret Negotiations with CCP, also, Rep. Chip Roy Introduces Bill to Eliminate Diversity Positions at Pentagon
American Power: Predator’s Paradise, Secretary of State Antony Blinken Cancels Trip to Beijing Over Chinese Spy Balloon, and ‘The Cult of Book Ownership’
American Thinker: President Trump vs. the Swamp
Animal Magnetism: Rule Five 2023 Outlook Friday
Babalu Blog: 86 House Democrats vote against resolution condemning the horrors of socialism, Food in Cuba is both scarce and unaffordable as prices double while incomes remain stagnant, and Connecticut Democrats seek to ban use of ‘Latinix’ in state documents
BattleSwarm: Power Out Day 2
Behind The Black: Red China to build space ground stations in Antarctica, NASA switches lunar landing site for Astrobotic’s Peregrine lander, Spanish airport to become a rocket spaceport, and Today’s blacklisted American: Comic book writer slandered and then canceled because of the slanders
Cafe Hayek: More from Phil Magness on the Error-Stuffed 1619 Project, also, The Typical Immigration Restrictionist Is No Better At Economics Than Is the Typical Protectionist
Da Tech Guy: How About the Patriots Post Brady Expectations?
Don Surber: Woke Is Headed For The Deep Sleep
First Street Journal: Is the “spy balloon’s” mission just to make President Biden look bad?
Gates Of Vienna: Ignacio Garriga – Islam is Incompatible With the Culture of the West, Pimping For Allah, and Brother, Can You Spare a Pfennig?
The Geller Report: Why Doesn’t Biden’s Pentagon Shoot Down the Chinese Surveillance Balloon Over Montana?
Hogewash: A Burnt-Out White Dwarf, also, I’m Not Making This Up, You Know
Hollywood In Toto: Colbert Preaches to His Masked-Up Parishioners, also, New Celebrity PR Gambit – Self-Approved ‘Documentaries’
The Lid: Florida College Fires Woke President Who Refused to End Racist CRT Curriculum
Legal Insurrection: Nearly 70 Percent of Military Personnel Have Witnessed “Growing Politicization” of Armed Forces, New Poll Reveals, Arizona State Journalism Prof Suggests the Media Should Continue ‘Abandoning Objectivity’, Harvard Kennedy School Fires ‘Misinformation Expert’ Joan Donovan, Texas DPS Finds Chinese Nationals, Who Paid Smugglers $35,000 Each, Crossing Border Illegally, and Maryland School District’s BLM Curriculum Talks About 13 Forms of Oppression, Including ‘Speciesism’
Nebraska Energy Observer: 64 Years Ago
Outkick: High School Swimmer Reportedly Disqualified from Race Due to American Flag on Swim Cap, Alex Cora Bragged About Houston Astros Cheating During 2017 World Series, According To New Book, TikToker Plans To Sell Bags Of Sand From The Spot Tom Brady Announced His Retirement To Recoup Money She Lost Betting On Him, Men’s Ball Was Used During First Half Of Duke – FSU Women’s Game, Blue Devils’ Coach Wants To Appeal The Loss, and ESPN Drags Dan Orlovsky Through The Mud Over Joe Montana Take
Power Line: Thoughts from the ammo line, Omar persists, and A modest proposal
Shark Tank: Meet The Only Florida Democrat To Vote In Support Of Socialism
Shot In The Dark: It’s About Suburban Maryland, Never Forget, and Tick Tick Tick
The Political Hat: Firing Line Friday: Texas Politics
This Ain’t Hell: A Modest Proposal II, Valor Friday, The U.S. agrees to send longer-range weapons to Ukraine, Extra dose of valor for your Friday, and More on ‘the balloon’
Transterrestrial Musings: How Humans Burn Calories, “We Were Wrong About Covid”, Virgin Orbit, and Finally
Victory Girls: Russia Saber Ratting Ahead Of Ukraine Anniversary
Volokh Conspiracy: Scholars for Peace in the Middle East Open Letter re Allegations of Antisemitic Bias by GW Prof Lara Sheehi
Watts Up With That: What is the IEA anyway?, Industry-Intensive Vietnam to Increase Fossil Fuel Consumption, and Could Someone Please Translate this Climate Change Gobbledygook?
Weasel Zippers: MSNBC Accues Israel Of Being A Terrorist State, Turning West Bank Into An Apartheid State, Occasional Cortex Says Eric Swalwell Was Removed From Intel Committee Over “Incisive Ability To Communicate”, Kamala Harris Claims “We Have A Lot To Be Thankful For” In Joe Biden, and The View Hags Denounce Pledge Of Allegiance As A “Waste Of Time”
The Federalist: Study: To Get Hired At UT Austin, Faculty Must Prove Allegiance To Racism,By Exposing Hamilton 68, The ‘Twitter Files’ Proved The Deep State Is A Weapon Aimed Directly At You, Kids’ Disinterest In Libraries Has Nothing To Do With A Manga Shortage, Was The Government Ever Going To Tell Us About The Chinese Surveillance Balloon?, and That Didn’t Age Well!
Mark Steyn: The First of Ninety-Nine Red Balloons

Valentine’s Day Gifts
Amazon Warehouse Deals




Category: Uncategorized

The Long Overdue and Much Awaited Return of Aspiring Rapper Update

Posted on | February 3, 2023 | No Comments

If it’s bad news that three men went missing in Detroit, is it good news when they are found? We report, you decide:

Two missing rappers and their friend were found dead in an abandoned Michigan apartment building Thursday — nearly two weeks after they disappeared the night their gig was canceled.
Investigators discovered the bodies of Armani Kelly, Dante Wicker and Montoya Givens, who had been missing since the night of Jan. 21, in a building in Highland Park, near the Detroit border, three police sources told the Detroit News. A person of interest has been brought in for questioning.
The three bodies were found under mounds of debris inside the basement of the apartment complex, Michigan state police said — without confirming the identities of the remains, the local outlet reported.
The men had been shot, one of the sources told the paper.
Squatters often use the abandoned building, according to cops.
Kelly, whose stage name was Marley Whoop, and Wicker, known as B12, had been scheduled to perform at a birthday party inside a Detroit lounge on the night they disappeared, but the show was canceled.
Kelly, 27, reportedly told his fiancée that his show at Lounge 31 had been canceled due to an equipment issue and planned to link up with his two friends to find some open mic events, the Detroit News reported.
He picked up Wicker, 31, and Givens, 31, in his car that evening.
Kelly’s fiancée said she couldn’t reach him sometime after 7:30 p.m. after texting and calling his phone several times.
Last week, police spotted Kelly’s car, a 2017 Chevrolet Equinox, on the road without a license plate. A 15-year-old boy was behind the wheel and was taken into police custody.
The teen told officers that a man had instructed him to pick up the car from a location on Detroit’s west side, the Detroit News reported.
Investigators looked through the boy’s texts and calls with the man and learned he had an outstanding warrant involving alleged fraud. They searched his home Monday and took him in for questioning, a source told the outlet.
Police also recovered surveillance video of a man wearing gloves cleaning out the Equinox.

And at the very end of the story, this sentence:

All three men had recently been paroled from prison, where they met, according to Kelly’s fiancée.

Fresh out of prison, and right into the grave.

PREVIOUSLY:



 

 

Category: Aspiring Rapper Update

MSNBC: ‘January 6 Now! January 6 Tomorrow! January 6 Forever!’

Posted on | February 3, 2023 | 2 Comments

What is it with some people named Wallace, eh?

At any rate, today my office TV was tuned to Fox News until I got bored with endless repetition: “THE CHINESE SPY BALLOON!” So at 4 p.m., I changed the channel to MSNBC and thereby entered a time warp, as Nicolle Wallace spent the first 22 minutes of the hour “reporting” about how “lies and conspiracies” from Orange Man Bad that inspired The Worst Day in American History “are now deeply embedded in the politics of the GOP.” She went on about this, as I say, for twenty-two minutes, because apparently this is what the MSNBC audience craves — an endless diet of fuel for their fathomless hatred of Donald Trump, an all-you-can-eat buffet of Fear and Loathing that leaves them permanently fixated on January 6, 2021, in the way some nostalgic Southerners used to be permanently fixated on July 3, 1863 at Gettysburg.

I actually took some notes on the topics of the subsquent segments in Nicolle Wallace’s two-hour afternoon bloc of programming until, after she led the top of the second hour with another 22 minutes of Trump-obsessed “reporting,” it dawned on me: What is this “news” really about?

Oh . . . DISTRACTION!

What important news have we just learned? Thanks to a letter from Hunter Biden’s lawyers, it has been confirmed that the “Laptop From Hell” was indeed his, and meanwhile there are questions about Joe Biden’s handling of classified documents, which may have been used by Hunter in his foreign business deals. So by filling her program time with Orange Man Bad bulletins and J6 nostalgia, Nicolle Wallace is distracting her audience from the scandals affecting the current resident of the White House, but her audience doesn’t know or care anything about such scandals. All that matters to them is making sure that Trump never gets back into the White House, which is why they insist that he must be criminally prosecuted for . . . something, anything, it doesn’t matter.

Well, I watch MSNBC so you don’t have to, but there’s only so much of it I can take. Back to Fox and the Chinese spy balloon hysteria, I guess.



 

 

Category: MSNBC

In The Mailbox: 02.02.23

Posted on | February 3, 2023 | 1 Comment

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Thirty-seven years ago, the Army promoted me to Staff Sergeant and my daughter was born. Happy birthday, kiddo, wherever you are.
Silicon Valley delenda est.

USS Montana, from the Azur Lane predecessor Kantai Collection.

OVER THE TRANSOM
357 Magnum: Concealed Carry In Chicago
EBL: Russia plans big offensive in Donbas and here we go again, Ilhan Omar (D-Mogadishu) gets the boot from the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and Your Honor Prison Rodeo Poker
Twitchy: WaPo’s Matt Viser Claims Hunter’s Laptop “Doesn’t Have Much” Implicating Joe, The Best Occasional Cortex Preaching Memes, and Christopher Rufo Takes A Look At FSU’s “Matrix Of Oppression”
Louder With Crowder: AOC melts down over Ilhan Omar’s removal from Foreign Affairs committee, also, ‘Fentanyl is colorblind’
Vox Popoli: Ben Shapiro Backtracks, Surrender Means Success, and The War on Chickens

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: Comments update
American Conservative: The Shadow Of One Dark Wing, also, Media’s Russiagate Self-Mutilation
American Greatness: Dems Spit Fire as House Votes to Boot Rep. Ilhan Omar Off Foreign Affairs Committee
American Thinker: White Supremacy, Racism and Malevolent Incitement
Animal Magnetism: Animal’s Daily Imperial Spending News
Babalu Blog: Castro dictatorship thugs sneaking in to the U.S. disguised as Cuban refugees, The Cuban butcher shop, and Russian ‘economic experts’ propose total digitalization of money, banking, & trade within Cuba
BattleSwarm: Power Out Here
Behind The Black: SpaceX successfully launches 53 Starlink satellites, ROK officially cancels Russian launch contract, signs Vega-C instead, ISRO completes investigation into failure of its SSLV rocket on first launch, and Today’s blacklisted Americans: Catholic students kicked out of Air & Space museum for wearing pro-life hats
CDR Salamander: Diversity Thursday
Da Tech Guy: Let’s Revisit the Tom Brady Expectations game with Tampa Bay now that his Three Years are up, also, Sorry Facebook Fact Checkers – The Great Reset is not a conspiracy theory
Dana Loesch: Hunter Biden Is A Gross Sex Predator & The Left Is Okay With That
Don Surber: DeSantis Beats The Devil
First Street Journal: In which Leonard Downie says the quiet part out loud
Gates Of Vienna: Knife Jihad at the Schuman Metro Station, also, The Mother of Satan Pays a Visit to Brussels
The Geller Report: Jihadi Jew-Hater Ilhan Omar Gets The Boot Off Foreign Affairs Committee, ‘People want honest coverage!’, and Islamic Nazi Caucus SHRIEKS & CRIES, In Congress When Jew-Hater Ilhan Omar Gets Booted Off Foreign Affairs Committee
Hogewash: What’s Up for February, 2023, Nothing to See Here. Move Along, Team Kimberlin Post of the Day, and Correction to the Correction to the Correction
Hollywood In Toto: 80 for Brady Is a Cinematic Fair Catch, also, FLASHBACK – Hunter Biden Tells Kimmel Laptop is ‘Red Herring’
The Lid: Daniel Pearl Was Brutally Murdered 21 Years Ago But The Key Lesson Wasn’t Learned
Legal Insurrection: Hulu Series Based on 1619 Project Pushes ‘False History’, Chip Roy Confronts Maxine Waters With Her Own Words on Socialism, Leftists Lose Their Minds After DeSantis Declares War on Wokeness in Higher Ed, Florida has More People in the Workforce Than New York, and Pentagon Monitoring Suspected Chinese Spy Balloon Over Northern States for the Past Several Days
Nebraska Energy Observer: What do…
Outkick: CBS Isn’t Happy With Tony Romo, Met With Analyst To Address Decline In Quality, Arrest Warrant Issued To Cincinnati Bengals RB Joe Mixon For Pointing Gun At A Woman, Jake Paul Calls Out Bomani Jones Projecting His Many Failures, Phil Mickelson Says LIV Golf Would Dominate PGA Tour In Team Event, Drags Twitter Bald Guy, Punks Tiger On His Way Out, and OutKick Founder Clay Travis Gets Into A Vicious Street Battle With Blue Checkmarks Who Hate Freedom, Biological Female Instagram Models & Fun
Power Line: Battle of the Bulge Biden style, Hunter Biden – More Depraved Than You Knew, and Fascism and Betrayal
Shark Tank: FL Republicans Continue To Overshadow Democrats With Massive Voter Registration Advantage
Shot In The Dark: A Boot On Your Neck Forever, Grandma Bea, and Schiffed
The Political Hat: Abusing Girls In The UK: Police Knowingly Neglect Victims; Hardcore Porn For Pre-Teen Homework; Challenging The Gender Narrative
This Ain’t Hell: A Modest Proposal, also, The U.S. secures additional access in the Philippines
Transterrestrial Musings: Hail Columbia, Biden’s Base, The New FBI Building, and CRT Pitch
Victory Girls: Meltdowns And Tantrums Ensue After Ilhan Omar Ousted
Volokh Conspiracy: Gag Order Bans Political Tweeter from Naming Man Who Accused American Conservative Union President of Groping
Watts Up With That: Those Attacks on Gas Stoves Aren’t Really about Health, also, Al Jazeera – We are “greening” ourselves to extinction
Weasel Zippers:  Biden Admin Announces New Crackdown On Gas Stoves, Hakeem Jeffries Complains – Condemning Socialist Dictators Would “Undermine” House Democrat Agenda, and Hispanic Democrats In Connecticut Introduce Bill To Ban Woke Term “Latinx”
The Federalist: The Media Keep Lying To Protect Ilhan Omar, Biden’s ‘Cooperation’ With The FBI Is Meaningless And Misleading, If New Mexico Democrats Get Their Way, Even Felons Will Be Voting By Mail, False Statistics Fly As California Democrats Push For Gun Control Laws That Failed Already, and 5 Riveting Films Snubbed By The Academy Awards
Mark Steyn: 15 Minutes to Communism

Amazon Warehouse Deals




Category: Uncategorized

‘A Very Minuscule Number’

Posted on | February 2, 2023 | 2 Comments

Shamann Walton was first elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 2018 from District 10, the voting-age population of which is about 42% Asian, 21% white, 19% black and 15% Hispanic. After being reelected as supervisor in 2020, Walton was chosen by his fellow members of the Board of Supervisors to be president of the board, a position which has often been a springboard to even higher office (e.g., Sen. Dianne Feinstein was previously president of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors). Walton is therefore not a fringe figure in California politics, but rather represents the mainstream of politics in the highly influential city of San Francisco. Which makes this extra-scary:

A San Francisco advisory committee’s recommendation that the city pay out hefty reparations to the city’s longtime black residents does not go far enough toward making things right, a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors told National Review on Tuesday.
Supervisor Shamann Walton, who wrote the legislation that formed the committee two years ago, said that the proposed $5 million payment per qualifying person is actually “much less than a lot of the projections that people say black people should receive for reparations here in the United States.”
“You can Google a lot of the reparations work that has been done and look at the monetary formulas that people have put together and most certainly the 5 million is a very minuscule number compared to a lot of research that has been done over the past couple of decades, quite frankly,” said Walton, who has represented the city’s 10th district since 2019 and previously served as board president.

If anyone offered to give me $5 million, I “most certainly” would not deride this as “minuscule.” But without regard to the amount, the whole idea of reparations is absurd, as Jazz Shaw comments what is being proposed “would be a payment funded entirely by people who have never owned slaves to people who have never been enslaved in a state where slavery was never legal.” Will other minorities, including recent immigrants, be taxed to make payments to black Californians? Hispanics are 40% of California’s population, Asians are 16%, and nearly 30% of California residents were born in foreign countries. On what theory of “social justice” is their obligation to pay reparations to be calculated?

That any such scheme is unworkable as a practical matter does not mean that it is not a mainstream idea in California, which has become a gigantic lunatic asylum under statewide Democratic Party rule. A state that elects Adam Schiff to Congress is a state where no idea is too crazy to be “mainstream.” Have you heard about “The Train to Nowhere”?

In a 2008 referendum, “California voters . . . authorized $9.5 billion in bonds for the planned 800-mile project set to operate [high-speed rail] between San Francisco and Los Angeles.” But now the projected cost has ballooned, while the proposal has been reduced to a “171-mile segment from Merced to Bakersfield” — because so many people in Merced are in a big hurry to get to Bakersfield, right? — that would cost $22 billion to complete, and the state doesn’t have that much, either. California’s most recent annual budget is about $300 billion, which includes about $4 billion for the Merced-Bakersfield high-speed rail line.

So, in a state currently spending more than a million dollars a day to build this “Train to Nowhere,” you can’t dismiss California’s talk about reparations as a joke, because California is a place where political jokes have a way of becoming catastrophic realities. And it’s only going to get crazier, because any California resident who is not crazy is going to get the hell out of there pretty soon, until there is nobody left in California except lunatics (e.g., the people who elected Adam Schiff).



 

 

Category: California
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