In The Mailbox: 07.03.24 (Evening Edition)

Posted on | July 4, 2024 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 07.03.24 (Evening Edition)

For every Southern boy fourteen years old, not once but whenever he wants it, there is the instant when it’s still not yet two o’clock on that July afternoon in 1863, the brigades are in position behind the rail fence, the guns are laid and ready in the woods and the furled flags are already loosened to break out and Pickett himself with his long oiled ringlets and his hat in one hand probably and his sword in the other looking up the hill waiting for Longstreet to give the word and it’s all in the balance, it hasn’t happened yet, it hasn’t even begun yet, it not only hasn’t begun yet but there is still time for it not to begin against that position and those circumstances… (William Faulkner)

“General Lee, I have no division.” – Maj. Gen. George Pickett, after the fatal charge
Silicon Valley et Hamas delenda sunt.

Lewis Armistead reaches the crest of Cemetery Ridge.

OVER THE TRANSOM
357 Magnum: Lucasfilm No Longer Understands Visual Storytelling
EBL: Gettysburg, Joe “Old Yeller” Biden, MAGA SCOTUS, and There is a special day tomorrow
Twitchy: NYT Executive Editor Claims They’ve Stayed On Biden’s Mental Acuity At Every Turn, Theory – Joe Biden Was Zapped By A Disorienting Microwave Weapon Before The Debate, and You May Literally Have To Kill Your Friends And Family Members Who Support Trump
Louder With Crowder: Woman has major MELTDOWN after a nurse breaks the news that her mask is useless
Vox Popoli: Recognize Good Rhetoric, This is No Black Pill, An Unwise Choice, Fake Democracy in France, and Bad Idea Jeans: Neil Gaiman edition
L’Ombre de L’Olivier: What Have The Tories Done For Us?
Postcards From Barsoom: Fear

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: The Debate, AI and Piggies
American Conservative: The VA Must Stop Working for Illegals
American Greatness: Occasional Cortex Threatens to Impeach Supreme Court Justices Over Immunity Ruling, DC Gulag Bodycam Video Confirms J6 Prisoner Was Pepper-Sprayed in the Face Twice, Raising ‘Serious Questions and Concerns,’, Missouri AG Andrew Bailey Files Suit Against New York For ‘Hijacking Presidential Election’ With Lawfare Campaign Against Trump, and House Committee Says CIA Contractors Conspired with Biden Campaign
American Thinker: Barack Obama and the Stupidity of the American Voter, How TDS Destroyed the Democrats, The Communist Plan That Has Subverted Our Intel Agencies, and What Now that the Gaslighting is Over?
Animal Magnetism: Goodbye, Blue Monday, Animal’s Daily Immunity News, and Animal’s Hump Day News
Babalu Blog: Castro dictatorship declares Cuba to be in a ‘wartime economy’, Private vendors in Santiago de Cuba have their merchandise confiscated by Castro dictatorship, Lifestyles of the Rich and Communist: The jet-set life of Tony Castro, Fidel Castro’s son, and Pregnant women in Cuban hospital fed worm-infested meals
BattleSwarm: Guess How Many UT Protesters Were Charged, Texas Democratic Party Chair Says Election Fraud Is Real, Roundup Of Dem Panic Over Slow Joe, A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To Fascist France, and Knives Out For Biden Roundup
Behind The Black: Firefly’s Alpha rocket launches eight smallsats into orbit, Two German-built spy satellites apparently failed immediately after launch, Las Vegas space-related resort (claiming it will be a spaceport) gets FAA airport license, SpaceX launches 20 Starlink satellites, Centrifuge research on ISS suggests some artificial gravity can mitigate negative effects of weightlessness, and Pushback: Jury awards former BlueCross researcher almost $700K for firing her vindicatively for not getting the jab
Cafe Hayek: High Chinese EV Sales Are Not Evidence of the Success of Tariffs or Industrial Policy, Beijing Wants to Reduce China’s Trade Surplus, “But Also What If?”, and The Compass Remains Broken
CDR Salamander: Caroline Glick’s Failed Doctrines
Chicago Boyz: Lewis vs Haldane: Another Look, also, Shall It Be Sustained?
Da Tech Guy: Joe Biden and Jeffrey Epstein – It Wasn’t a Disaster Until YOU knew about it, An updated list of reasons to oppose J.B. Pritzker for president, Now You Know Why Joe Biden Bypassed the New Hampshire Primary, The DC Bubble, and Joe Biden, Sir Humphry, and the Deep State’s Dream Candidate, or, Who is Actually the President?
Don Surber: Thomas v. Biden. Ha ha ha
First Street Journal: “The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”, Joltin’ Joe Biden is going to fight on! Denial is not a river in Egypt, What about the right to a speedy trial? and We have a President willing to play nuclear patty-cake with Vladimir Putin, and he’s only lucid six hours a day?
Gates Of Vienna: Queer Liberation is Palestinian Liberation, Hooligans for a Ceasefire, Arguments Arise and Knives Emerge, German Trans Leftist to Face Justice in Hungary, and German Muslims Should Vote for the AfD!
The Geller Report: U.S. Military Bases on High Alert for Terror Attack, also, Desperate Macron’s Endorsement of Islamic Terror Groups “Antisemitic,’ ‘Pro-Hamas’ Far Left Shocks French Jews
Hollywood In Toto: Bill Maher’s Shameless Attempts to Gaslight America, Hudsucker Proxy – From Flop to Cult Classic, Eddie Murphy Goes Woke in the Worst Way, Five Fascinating Lessons from Horizon’s Sluggish Start, and Why MaXXXine Lives Down to Its Seedy Roots
The Lid: July 4th, Independence Day… For Those Who Actually Remember It
Legal Insurrection: Illegal Crossings Explode at Northern Border Since Biden Didn’t Include it in His ‘Crackdown’, Independence Day Costs Skyrocket Under Biden, Biden to Sit for First Post-Debate Interview With Former Bill Clinton Staffer George Stephanopoulos, Joe Biden: ‘I’m Not Leaving’, Video Shows Jewish NYC Banker was Attacked by ‘Queers for Palestine’ Mob Before Fighting Back, and Israeli Airstrike Eliminates Top Hezbollah Terror Commander in South Lebanon
Michele Catalano: no time for hate
Nebraska Energy Observer: Saturday – just for you, Canada Day, Debate Aftermath, Risk, Failure, and Success, Please stand, and Treason Day Eve
Outkick: Tim Howard Says US Soccer Should Pursue Jurgen Klopp, With His Help, Texas A&M And AD Trev Alberts Forgetting His Sneaky Little Exit From Nebraska, Bronny James’ Contract Is An Embarrassment To The NBA, Las Vegas Aces Vet Pulls Incredible Classy Move After Caitlin Clark’s Hard Tumble, Major League Baseball All-Star Starters Are A Mixed Bag, and Riley Gaines Triggers The Left With Guns, Hooters Girls Say Goodbye & Wimbledon Streaker Rips Off Her Apron
Power Line: The Comedy Continues, The Kamala Zeitgeist, and Stark Raving Mad
Shark Tank: Ahead Of Jobs Report, Rick Scott Calls Biden A Liar Over Job Numbers
Shot In The Dark: A Pattern, The Keystone Prosecutors, Plan B, Stay The Curse, News Flash, America Takes A Six-Month “Lid”, and The Curmudgeons For The Win
The Political Hat: An Uncanny Election Year
This Ain’t Hell: Biden to award two MoHs tomorrow, IDF warnings ignored prior to Oct. 7, Afghanistan withdrawal had Donald Trump been in the White House, and The Dark Psychology of Politics
Transterrestrial Musings: “The Imperial Presidency”, The Three “Ds” Of The Climate Agenda, Teaching Students To Think, and Starship Flight Four
Victory Girls: Sonia Sotomayor Doesn’t Know Shite About The Military
Volokh Conspiracy: Thoughts on the Trump Immunity Decision
Watts Up With That: Major Utility Provider Cuts Thousands Of Customers’ Power To Prevent Wildfires From Breaking Out, Audubon: Frightful Fundraising, and What Happened To That “Wettest Summer”, Met Office?
The Federalist: Disney’s Emotional Inside Out 2 Is Tailor-Made For A Therapy-Obsessed Culture, Help Find The Grave Of This 14-Year-Old Who Fought For U.S. Independence, The Administrative State Is Too Big If It Can Write Its Own Criminal Laws, July 4 Has Always Been About Resisting Tyranny, And This Year Is No Exception, Heartbreaking Stories Of Detransitioners Expose The Damaging Transgender Cult, and Russia Hoaxer Marc Elias’ Firm Sues To Let Foreign Billionaires Buy Ohio Elections
Mark Steyn: The Plot Thickens, Jaws – You’re Gonna Need a Bigger Theatre, Border Jumping, Singin’ in the Rain, and Far Cries

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Dumbest Car Thief Ever?

Posted on | July 3, 2024 | Comments Off on Dumbest Car Thief Ever?

Say hello to 29-year-old Charles Millsaps, who had the brilliant idea to (a) steal a 1992 Honda Accord, and then (b) try to outrun the Georgia State Patrol in aforesaid vehicle, with the result that (c) he got locked up in the Chatham County Jail — and never mind the fact that (d) he was already wanted on warrants in South Carolina. The reason I bring this felon to your attention is because I so rarely encounter a white car thief in my coverage of crime. Now, meet the trooper who made the arrest:

Trooper Tyler Byrd has an admirable resumé. He worked his way through college as a manager at Kroger while also serving in the U.S. Marine Corps Reserve. While attending Georgia Southern University, Byrd did two internships, one in the office of U.S. Rep. Buddy Carter and another with the U.S. Marshall’s Service. After getting his bachelor’s degree in Political Science in 2019, Byrd worked two years as a police officer in Chatham County before becoming a State Trooper in January 2022.

Now read his report of this February 2023 arrest:

On 2/2/2023 at 1104 hours, I was stationary on Interstate 95 south Mile Marker 109. The LPR cameras notified me that a stolen vehicle had hit on the Interstate 95 south Mile Marker 111 as vehicle entered Georgia from South Carolina. The vehicle was described as a 1992 white Honda Accord with a North Carolina tag RAW3837. I looked in my rearview mirror and observed the vehicle in the number three lane. As the vehicle was getting ready to pass me, the vehicle quickly got on the off-ramp onto State Highway 21. I activated my emergency lights and siren for the vehicle to stop. The vehicle stopped on State Highway 21 near Interstate 95; as I opened the driver’s door of my patrol car, the violator immediately took off, initiating a pursuit. I notified Troop F Communications that I was in an active pursuit.
The vehicle drove across all northbound lanes of State Highway 21 and made an improper U-turn at a no U-Turn median, cutting off multiple vehicles going southbound on State Highway 21. As we were south on State Highway 21, the violator drove across multiple lanes of traffic, drove between two cars, and recklessly began to drive through the grass to bypass traffic and get onto the on-ramp to Interstate 95 south. Before the subject could get back onto Interstate 95 and drive recklessly around several other vehicles or get into the city limits of Savannah, I determined that the vehicle must be stopped immediately to safeguard life and preserve public safety. I attempted the PIT maneuver but was unsuccessful. I attempted a second PIT maneuver as we were getting onto Interstate 95; the violator was able to drive out of it. As the vehicle recovered from the second PIT, I utilized the front of my push bumper to make contact with the driver’s side of the violator’s vehicle, causing the vehicle to become disabled.
I exited my patrol vehicle, drew and aimed my department-issued pistol at the driver, and told him to keep his hands up. TPR Gurganus arrived on the scene and drew his department-issued pistol. I went to the passenger side, handcuffed the driver, and had him exit the vehicle. The violator was later identified as Mr. Charles Millsaps by his Florida identification. I searched the driver before placing him in my back seat.
I read him his Miranda Rights and asked him if he understood them and would be willing to speak with me. He said he didn’t know what to say. I asked him if he knew the vehicle was stolen, and he said he didn’t think the owner would call and report it. I observed his speech was sometimes mumbled, and I smelled the odor of marijuana coming off his person and observed his pupils were dilated. I asked him when was the last time he used it, and he said he smoked marijuana 10 to 15 minutes before the chase; I had him stick his tongue out and observed his taste buds were raised. Field sobriety was not conducted because he was handcuffed and risk of fleeing; I told him he would be
charged with DUI. I read him Georgia’s Implied Consent Notice for Suspect Age 21 or over for blood off my green card, and he agreed.
I ran Mr. Millsaps’s identification through NCIC, and it was determined he had a parole warrant out of South Carolina that was confirmed and validated. Mr. Millsaps’s license was also suspended. I transported him to Memorial Hospital to be cleared; he had complaints of a knee injury but was cleared by the nurse and doctor staff. Chatham EMS Captain Samantha Cavicchia met me at Memorial and conducted the blood draw at 1226 hours. After being cleared, Mr. Millsaps was taken to CCDC, where he was turned over to the jail staff for processing.
Cpl. Williams responded and worked the crashes. TPR. Gurganus conducted a vehicle search. Sapp’s Wrecker took possession of the vehicle, which was confirmed stolen. This incident was digitally recorded on the GSP439-Watchguard-4RE camera.

Having read dozens of police reports, I’d say Trooper Byrd’s report of this incident is equal or superior to any such report I’ve ever read, in terms of clarity and syntax — which I suppose might be expected of a university graduate. Watch the video:

When I got my first look at the suspect (1:40), my reaction was like, “Damn — a white car thief!” You just don’t see that very often, and I’ve watched hundreds of police videos like this. But then when Trooper Byrd appeared on camera (2:11), I was laughing out loud. How perfect is this?

Anyway, don’t steal cars, but if you do, don’t steal a 30-year-old Honda and then expect to out-run the Georgia State Patrol, because we’re all going to be laughing at the video of the PIT maneuver, dummy.

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Category: Crime, Georgia

In The Mailbox: 07.03.24 (Afternoon Edition)

Posted on | July 3, 2024 | 1 Comment

— compiled by Wombat-socho

July 2, 1863: Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia conducts a disjointed attack against Meade’s entrenched Army of the Potomac. He succeeds in wrecking Sickles’ III Corps, which had foolishly taken a position in the Wheatfield and Peach Orchard forward of the main line, but does not break Meade’s lines. On Meade’s left flank, Hood’s division attempts to take the Little Round Top, but is finally driven off by Chamberlain’s 20th Maine, which, having run out of ammunition, conducts a bayonet charge. In the center, Anderson’s division reaches the crest of Cemetery Ridge, but a suicidal charge by Colvill’s 1st Minnesota buys time for reinforcements to drive Anderson off. Northwest of the main battle, newly-promoted Brigadier General George A. Custer’s cavalry division defeats Wade Hampton’s tired brigade at Hunterstown.
Silicon Valley et Hamas delenda sunt.

“Fix Bayonets!” Col. Joshua Chamberlain leads his 20th Maine into history at Little Round Top.

OVER THE TRANSOM
357 Magnum: Self-Defense Appears To Be Legal In Alabama
EBL: Canada Day, SCOTUS, and Tan, Rested, Ready
Twitchy: Here’s CNN’s Pathetic & Lame Defense Of Media Taking So Long To Report On Biden’s Feebleness, After Months Of Gaslighting, Biden Finally Has A Plan To Tackle Grocery Prices, and HACK ALERT! David Frum Bemoans Collapse Of Democracy Despite “Full Employment” and “Rapidly Climbing Wages”
Louder With Crowder: Megan Rapinoe’s silence when confronted on support of allowing boys in girls’ sports speaks volumes, also, Orange man…good? Joe Biden (and his new cheap spray tan) attacks SCOTUS before he pulls this move
Vox Popoli: The Fourth Front, The Last Comics Publisher, AI Fraud and Fakery, and The USA Has Already Lost WWIII
Gab: Reclaiming Our Dignity – A Call For A Cultural Reawakening On The Right
Upstream Reviews: When The Gods Fell

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
CDR Salamander: The Most Essential Battle Of The Russo-Ukrainian War
Dana Loesch: Trump Wins At SCOTUS, Last Week In Legal – Cannon Fire Edition, “The Great Biden Coverup”,
Don Surber: Eagleton is Kamala’s hope
STUMP: Taxing Tuesday – A Bobby Bonilla Hangover

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The Killer Angels
Bayonet! Forward: My Civil War Reminisences
The Last Full Measure: The Life & Death Of The 1st Minnesota Volunteers
Today’s Deals

Category: Linkagery

The Zuckerberg Conspiracy: How a 501(c)3 Funded the 2020 Election ‘Cabal’

Posted on | July 3, 2024 | 1 Comment

“The ‘cabal’ that bragged of foisting Joe Biden on us must answer for his failed presidency,” Glenn Reynolds wrote in December 2021. Nearly everyone now seems to agree about the “failed presidency” part of that headline, but is it too late to examine the nature of that “cabal”?

William Doyle at The Federalist has a must-read article:

Joe Biden’s unprecedented “basement” presidential campaign in 2020 and the chaotic election that followed represented a stunning repudiation of U.S. election norms as they have evolved over the last 250 years. The chaos involved a flurry of legally questionable and last-minute suspensions of existing election rules and an avalanche of unsupervised mail-in ballots in states that were not accustomed to their use. The election also brought the formerly obscure practice of “ballot harvesting” to the forefront of popular consciousness.
Amidst the chaos, one of the biggest questions remaining is how the Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL) — a sleepy, Chicago-based election and civic “engagement” nonprofit, armed with a staggering sum of more than $300 million from tech billionaire Mark Zuckerberg — became one of the key 2020 election players. CTCL’s officers, promoters, and donors were among the “well-funded cabal of powerful people” who, as Time Magazine admitted in 2021, worked “behind the scenes” to “fortify” the 2020 election against Donald Trump.
Many Republican election watchers have long been scratching their heads, wondering if there is something that ties CTCL to something more nefarious than taking advantage of a legal gray area to help local election offices with “COVID-19 Response” during the 2020 election.
Our research revealed that, while election safety during Covid may have been the stated reason for CTCL’s program, this was not its purpose.
CTCL’s $332 million-plus election funding effort (also known as “Zuckbucks”) influenced election offices in critical Democrat areas in 2020 through large, “strings attached” CTCL grants. Ultimately, the evidence suggests that its purpose was to win the election for Joe Biden at the electoral margin in the swing states. . . .

You should read the whole thing, because the point Doyle is making is that (a) tax-exempt non-profits are prohibited by federal law from engaging in partisan political activity, and (b) the Zuckerberg-funded “cabal” had no other purpose except to guarantee Biden’s election. And they did this through a surprisingly simple method:

In the counties where CTCL made its 50 largest grants per capita, the average partisan lean in favor of Democrats was 33 points, which corresponds to a 67 percent Democrat to 33 percent Republican vote breakdown. What’s more, of CTCL’s 10 largest grants per capita, seven were given to key urban counties and cities in Georgia and Wisconsin. Biden narrowly won these two swing states in 2020 — by no more than 12,000 votes and 21,000 votes respectively.
In other words, the bulk of the money was spent in a sophisticated and novel effort to mobilize the mail-in ballots of specific voter profiles to benefit Democratic candidates, and the distribution of the largest CTCL grants ultimately increased Democrats’ partisan advantage in the electoral college.
As we found in our research, deep blue states with no chance of favoring Trump like Colorado and Vermont, as well as solid red states opposed to Biden like Tennessee and Utah, received very little CTCL funding — only around $0.10 per capita. However, swing states key to Joe Biden’s electoral college strategy like Georgia, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin were lavished with tens of millions of dollars in CTCL money averaging between $1 and $2 per capita. Georgia, the top CTCL grant recipient, received a whopping $41 million — roughly $4 per capita — the lion’s share of which went to only seven deep blue metro Atlanta counties out of the state’s 159.

However angry you are about this, you’re not angry enough. What these Zuckerberg-funded non-profits did was prohibited by federal law, and nobody so far has been sent to prison for those crimes.

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When You’ve Lost Nate Silver …

Posted on | July 2, 2024 | 1 Comment

What? A Democrat telling “obvious lies that nobody but the dumbest partisans will buy”? You mean it’s a day ending in “-y”?

My friend Stephen Green is reveling in schadenfreude over Silver’s latest election forecast, which is developing a trendline in exactly one direction — from bad to worse for “Sundown Joe,” showing “Biden with just a 27.6% chance of winning the Electoral College and 44.2% odds of taking the popular vote.” As a Democrat, Silver is grief-stricken and angry about the situation, going through the “woulda coulda shoulda” second-guessing about the process by which his party’s establishment, after foisting upon the electorate the Oldest President Ever, then apparently decided there was no risk in attempting to extend his White House tenure another four years. Last week’s debate disaster should have been foreseen, because what’s the point of getting paid as a “campaign strategist” if you can’t anticipate potential problems?

Now, however, the same fools who led Democrats into that disaster are busy trying to convince their voters (and, perhaps more importantly, their donors) that they can somehow recover enough to win in November.

“It’s fundamentally a terrible idea to ask the public to make the guy they saw on Thursday president until he’s 86,” Silver says in his pay-walled newsletter, stating the blindingly obvious truth.

You’ve got to understand that Silver was one of those 20-something lefties who jumped into the political fray during the years when the Iraq War made George W. Bush very unpopular on college campuses. (One reason most conservatives my age roll our eyes at rhetorical symptoms of Trump Derangement Syndrome — the Hitler comparisons, etc. — is that it’s basically the same thing we heard about Dubya during the Bush Derangment Syndrome epidemic two decades ago.) Silver’s first big “win” as a forecaster, the foundation of his reputation as a polling expert, was in 2006, which in hindsight was the 21st-century’s high-water mark for Democrats. Silver predicted a big win for Democrats and he was right, and his winning streak continued two years later when Obama got elected. However, his accuracy since then has not been so stellar. In October 2010, Silver offered a “best guess” that Republicans would gain 48 House seats in the midterms; the GOP’s actual net gain in 2010 was 63 seats, the biggest net gain for House Republicans since 1938.

Generally speaking, when Democrats have a good year, Silver’s projections are more accurate than they are when Republicans have a good year. Silver has never overestimated Republican performance. So if Nate Silver’s numbers are telling him that Biden’s got barely a one-in-four chance of winning? That’s bad for Joe, because the reality of his situation is probably a lot worse than that. Others see the same thing.

Lloyd Doggett becomes first sitting
Democratic member of Congress
to call on Biden to withdraw
Democratic Rep. Lloyd Doggett of Texas on Tuesday became the first sitting Democratic member of Congress to call on President Joe Biden to withdraw from the presidential race, a huge moment for the Democratic Party as Doggett says publicly what many elected officials had been speculating about privately.
“I represent the heart of a congressional district once represented by Lyndon Johnson. Under very different circumstances, he made the painful decision to withdraw,” Doggett said in his statement. “President Biden should do the same.”
Doggett’s statement magnifies the pressure surrounding the president and his team, who have been trying to tamp down party concerns in the wake of Biden’s disappointing debate performance against former President Donald Trump last week.
In calling on Biden to step aside, Doggett said the president could help usher in a new generation of leadership to help the party achieve its ultimate goal: defeating Trump.
“Recognizing that, unlike Trump, President Biden’s first commitment has always been to our country, not himself, I am hopeful that he will make the painful and difficult decision to withdraw,” Doggett said. “I respectfully call on him to do so.”

That’s the first pebble rolling downhill in what may soon become an avalanche and there’s really no “win” possible for Democrats. Either they stick with the dementia patient whose feebleness has now been exposed on national TV — a bell that cannot be unrung — or else they do some kind of smoke-filled room arrangement to dump Biden and replace him with another candidate, thus nullifying the Democratic primaries.

Utterly devastating. Biden isn't even remotely close in any of the swing states. https://t.co/84MPwzAtDp

— Joe Concha (@JoeConchaTV) July 1, 2024

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In The Mailbox: 07.02.24 (Morning Edition)

Posted on | July 2, 2024 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 07.02.24 (Morning Edition)

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Thanks to everyone who bought stuff through my Amazon links in June.
Yesterday was the 161st anniversary of the most important cavalry action in American history.
Silicon Valley et Hamas delenda sunt.

The legendary SPI monstergame

OVER THE TRANSOM
357 Magnum: Concealed Carry In Chicago
EBL: Biden Playing Golf, also, Snap Elections Did Not Work Out So Well For Macron!
Twitchy: Randi Weingarten Faceplants Trying To Show Support For The Biden-Harris Campaign, Sacre Bleu! You’ve Booked A Vacation Home Just As France Votes For The “Fascists”, and MSNBC’s Kyle Griffin Plays Stupid Games & Wins Stupid Prizes
Louder With Crowder: Texas SCOTUS stands up for children, bans “gender-affirming” “care” for minors, also, They sent Nancy Pelosi out to defend Biden’s cognitive ability, she lacked the cognitive ability to do so
Vox Popoli: Joe Must Go, Atheists Discover Consequences, The Clowntardery of Color Revolutions, Macron Raus, and Che Cosa?
L’Ombre de L’Olivier: The Gaslighting Will Continue Until It Leaks And Explodes,
Postcards From Barsoom: Meritocratic Racial Quotas As A Universally Disagreeable Compromise,
Defending The Wood Perilous: Wheels Within Wheels With Eyes

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Dana Loesch: President Biden’s Alternate Reality, also, Jill Biden’s Vogue Cover,
Don Surber: Trump Court Rolls On
Glenn Reynolds: Chevron, The Supreme Court, And The Law,
STUMP: Actuaries Longevity Illustrator – Refreshed!, Rhode Island COLAs – Increasing Expenses For Underfunded Plans, Happy Bobby Bonilla Day 2024!

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In Defense of Cynicism

Posted on | July 1, 2024 | 3 Comments

Antisthenes

“The cynics aren’t always right. But that’s the way to bet,” Professor Glenn Reynolds says, in regard to a young journalist’s belated discovery that an infamous “hate crime” was not what he’d been told.

There is an unfortunate shortage of Cynicism among the young nowadays. Their idealistic conceptions of “social justice” make them automatic suckers for every “cause” that comes along, e.g.:

Further proof of the BLM movement’s essential bogusness was the fact that, once Joe Biden was installed as president, the protests ended. Black suspects are still getting shot by cops, but the national news media has ceased covering these incidents, because that was never really what it was about. It was about electing Democrats, period, and having succeeded at that goal, the media has moved on from BLM.
“Demand Justice for [Fill-in-the-Blank]” memes are now gathering dust back in the Instagram archives of liberals too stupid to wonder what the 2020 season of “activism” was really about. Never once has a liberal asked the cynical question, “Cui bono?” Who benefited from all that “activism”? Whose interests were served? Who got rich from those months of media-fueled outrage?

Have you heard of Linzell Parhm? He got shot to death by cops in Fort Wayne, Indiana, last month. Linzell’s family has retained the services of Ben Crump, whose legal practice seems to consist primarily of shaking down municipalities for “wrongful death” settlements. It isn’t clear that Linzell’s death was “wrongful,” considering that he had an AK-47-style Draco next to him in the car and the cop ordered him at gunpoint, “Keep your hands on the f—ing dash. If you reach down there again I will shoot you, motherf—er.” I don’t know about you, but if a cop drew his pistol and told me to keep my hands “on the f—ing dash,” my hands would be on the f—ing dash. Apparently this wasn’t how Linzell Parhm was taught to react to such situations, but he’s not here to argue in defense of his own approach to the situation, is he? But I digress . . .

My point is that Fort Wayne hasn’t been burnt to the ground, and nobody’s rioting over the death of Linzell Parhm, despite the fact that he’s just as dead as St. George of the Blessed Fentanyl. All that “social justice” uproar in 2020 was about one thing and one thing only, electing Joe Biden, and his campaign strategists apparently don’t think having nationwide race riots this summer would advance their chances of getting Biden reelected, so major national news organizations don’t give a damn about some idiot getting himself shot by the Fort Wayne PD.

In fact, to get back to Professor Reynold’s point about cynicism, I rather doubt that anybody in the media ever gave a damn about George Floyd. All they cared about was helping Democrats win an election, which is why they incited those “fiery but mostly peaceful” riots.

Merriam-Webster defines cynic as “one who believes that human conduct is motivated wholly by self-interest,” which strikes me as rather too narrow a definition. More generally, cynicism is about doubting those who claim to act from purely altruistic motives. Cynicism is about not being a chump. If you think the “journalists” at CNN are motivated by a noble desire to “speak truth to power,” blah blah blah, then you are the kind of sucker who never deserves an even break.

Do you believe Jake Tapper and Jim Acosta are better people — more virtuous, more honest, more intelligent — than you are? Are you morally and intellectually inferior to them? Then why would you content yourself to be tutored by them, to have them lecture you about “democracy,” as if you were an ignorant fifth-grader? It’s not just that they are “Democratic operatives with bylines” (although they definitely are that), but rather that they think the rest of us are too stupid to see through their scam, and I don’t know about you, but I take kindly to such insults.

By the way, do you know Antithenes is? Did seeing him at the top of this post arouse your curiosity to such an extent that you Googled his name to discover that this disciple of Socrates is regarded as the founder of Cynicism as a philosophy? In just a few minutes of reading, I learned more about Antithenes and Cynicism than 99% of people know, because fewer than 1% of people give a damn about ancient philosophers and their arguments. The reason I acquired this half-hour’s worth of expertise on the subject is because if I’m going to write about something, I certainly don’t want to write something wrong about it. Wikipedia says that the original Cynics “rejected all conventional desires for wealth, power, glory, social recognition, conformity, and worldly possessions and even flouted such conventions openly and derisively in public.” So, in its original meaning, a Cynic was a sort of ascetic non-conformist who rejected common social values. Elsewhere, Wikipedia tells us, the contemporary meaning of cynicism — “an attitude characterized by a general distrust of the motives of others” — arose in the 1800s from an “emphasis on the ascetic ideals” that led to a critique of contemporary society as falling short of such ideals. So now you know as much as I know on the subject which, as previously mentioned, makes you more knowledgeable than 99% of people, probably including Jake Tapper and Jim Acosta.

Am I a philanthropist, with a mission to enlighten humanity? No, I’m just a guy who doesn’t want to look stupid by writing something wrong, because that would damage my credibility, which is my stock in trade. Having disavowed any unselfish motive for my own actions, why should I imagine that other people are more altruistic than me?

“Thou shalt not be a chump” is not listed among the Ten Commandments, but I consider it a basic duty of any journalist. So, when I followed the link from Insty’s blog, I found this article by Ben Kawaller about the Matthew Shepard murder, with an introduction from Free Press editor Bari Weiss:

Ben — like me and so many others — grew up believing in the story of Matthew Shepard and what his murder meant about America. Or at least certain parts of the country.
But then, a few years ago, Ben heard another narrative. It caused him to wonder: Was the story we heard true?

My first reaction to this confession that Weiss and Kawaller “grew up believing” in the media-manufactured myth of Matthew Shepard as a martyr for gay rights was, “Wow, I’m old.” Because I was an adult — a 39-year-old assistant nation editor at The Washington Times — at the time of Shepard’s murder and, to be honest, 1998 doesn’t seem like ancient history to me. So the idea that there are now adult journalists who “grew up” during that time I so well remember — well, it makes me feel like an antique. But I never bought the martyr-myth of Matthew Shepard.

Amid the media hysteria over the case, I was reading everything that came across the wires and it seemed to me that what had happened was something akin to the central story of In Cold Blood, namely that two small-time criminals had upped their game to murder and thereby managed to commit a murder that became a nationally known atrocity. It wasn’t the police saying that Shepard’s killers, Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson, were motivated by homophobia; that interpretation was being imposed on the story by activists, media and politicians. McKinney and Henderson had prior arrests for drugs and burglary; this college kid from back East made the mistake of getting mixed up with these local hoodlums, and that was basically the story.

About a year after the murder, a liberal writer named JoAnn Wypijewski wrote an article about the case that included details which, if you were reading carefully, seemed to undercut the “hate crime” motif. Wypijewski reported, for example, that McKinney and Henderson were on a five-day meth binge at the time of the murder. Try hanging around meth-heads in the midst of a binge, and you could get murdered, too. Unfortunately, that article seemed not to make a dent in the martyr-myth of Matthew Shepard, which had sprung up more or less instantaneously in October 1998. It was not until 2013 that Stephen Jimenez published a book debunking the “hate crime” angle (see, “The Sorelian Myth of Matthew Shepard: Petty Criminals and Liberal Media Bias,” Sept. 25, 2013):

By making people believe in politically crafted falsehoods, media propagandists seek to inspire action — “to make a difference” — and so the record of the media’s past failures (Stephen Glass, Jayson Blair, Dan Rather, et al.) is carefully suppressed.
The one thing the news media will never do is to confess their own lack of credibility, to expose their own errors and biases. So when it turns out that what the media promoted as an anti-gay “hate crime” was, in fact, the act of two petty criminals in the throes of a five-day meth binge, this is a truth that the media will ignore, because it is a truth that exposes the media itself as untrustworthy.

We need more cynicism in America, not less. And however much you hate the media, you don’t hate them as much they deserve to be hated.

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A Substack About Nothing

Posted on | July 1, 2024 | 1 Comment

Finally decided to try my hand at it:

A few months ago there was a lot of noise about an alleged Nazi problem on Substack. Certainly it is not the case Substack is pro-Nazi, but they are anti-censorship, and this distinction was apparently impossible for some self-described “progressives” to comprehend:

“Substack’s leaders … proudly disdain the content-moderation methods that other platforms employ … to limit the spread of racist or bigoted speech. An informal search of the Substack website … turns up scores of white-supremacist, neo-Confederate, and explicitly Nazi newsletters on Substack—many of them apparently started in the past year. These are, to be sure, a tiny fraction of the newsletters … But to overlook white-nationalist newsletters on Substack as marginal or harmless would be a mistake.” . . .

We’re living in a 21st-century Salem, and the folks who want to hang witches all claim to be “progressive.” Basically anybody who votes Republican nowadays is suspected of witchcraft — “white-supremacist, neo-Confederate, and explicitly Nazi”! — and whatever actual danger there may be from such extremism is obscured by the hysterical paranoia of self-appointed witch-hunters like Casey Newton.
If everybody is a Nazi, nobody is Nazi. If you start exaggerating the extent of extremism by expanding the definition to include anyone you disagree with, don’t pretend that your diminished credibility is anyone’s fault but your own. . . .

You can and should read the whole thing, which is 3,600 words long, but I figured if I was going to introduce myself to a new readership, the introduction should be thorough. By the way, I start out by explaining why my Substack newsletter is not yet monetized, so you can sign up for free, which I urge you to do, because eventually maybe it will be about more than nothing, and therefore worth paying to read.

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