We Survived Thunder Bird Falls

Posted on | July 2, 2023 | Comments Off on We Survived Thunder Bird Falls

JOINT BASE ELMENDORF-RICHARDSON
When my son told us we were going for a hike Saturday, my first thought was, “We’re going to get eaten by bears.” A quick Google search (“thunder bird falls + grizzly bear”) turned up several results, including a recent story with this quote:

“Bear encounters can happen anywhere in Anchorage, in Alaska,” Fish and Game Assistant Area Biologist Cory Stantorf said. “So regardless of where you’re at, whether it’s a viewing deck or the Anchorage Coastal Wildlife Refuge, Kincaid, you always have to be prepared and ready for an encounter with wildlife, whether it’s bear, moose, wolves.”

And then there was this headline from 2005:

“Nothing to worry about,” said my son, as he loaded his .44 revolver and packed it into the holster strapped to his chest. “Just in case.”

By the way, notice how the Fish and Game biologist spoke of “bear encounters,” rather than “bear attacks.” Political correctness run amok. I expect this kind of euphemism from Democrats in Philadelphia (“Carjacking encounters can happen anywhere”) but this is Alaska, OK? We’re talking the Final Frontier, pioneers in the wilderness. When I “encounter” a gigantic omnivorous wild beast with fangs and claws, this is a bear attack, I don’t care what you call it. Anyway . . .

We headed up the highway to Thunder Bird Falls, which is in Chugach State Park. An interesting Alaska cultural note: “Chugach” is a compound word, from the native chu (“eaten by”) and gach (“bears”).

On our way to adventure.

A helpful map near the park entrance, showing visitors where they can get eaten by grizzly bears (i.e., everywhere)

Thunder Bird Falls is on the Eklutna River, which is less than 12 miles long, tumbling down from the top of a mountain to the Cook Inlet in the Gulf of Alaska. The inlet is named for 18th-century British explorer Captain James Cook, who sailed into the inlet seeking the fabled Northwest Passage. Given the trend whereby Mount McKinley has been renamed “Denali” (because that’s what the natives allegedly called it), it’s probably only a matter of time before Cook Inlet gets renamed, because you can’t name stuff after white guys anymore. Meanwhile . . .

Another interesting Alaska cultural fact: Eklutna is also a compound word, from the native eklu (“food for”) and utna (“grizzly bears”).

If you’re getting tired of my dark sarcasm, imagine how my wife felt as I was cracking these jokes all the way to the park. Facing danger with a smile on your face — that’s just the way I roll. And because of my habitual sarcasm, you may think I was joking when I talked about my son strapping a .44 to his chest before we left the house.

See the revolver handle sticking out of the holster? In addition to being a Ranger-qualified Army Airborne sergeant first class, my son is also a serious hunting enthusiast, who is currently planning bow-hunting expeditions for mountain sheep (aoudad) this fall. On our trip to Thunder Bird Falls, he was telling me something about the state game laws that protect the bears, and I was thinking, “Shouldn’t the laws be about protecting people?” Fortunately, there is a loophole in the laws, so that it’s not illegal to kill a bear in self-defense, but because this is 2023, I’m sure some environmentalist version of Ben Crump would show up to lead a protest claiming the bear was an honor student who was just minding his own business when you killed it: “No justice! No peace!”

Anyway, my son had a pistol strapped to his chest, and a two-month-old baby girl strapped to his back, because he’s a badass that way.

Grandma and Eliza: Smile and say, ‘Bears!’

So now we had the family ready for the hike up the trail, and if I was (mostly) joking about the danger of a “bear encounter,” soon I encountered something perfectly calculated to inspire fear.

OH MY DEAR GOD! While I’d been clowning around about the prospect of being eaten by grizzly bears, it hadn’t occurred to me that this trail followed the edge of a deep mountain gorge. Exactly how high was that “STEEP CLIFF” the sign was warning me about? I don’t know, because I’m so afraid of heights I didn’t dare get close enough to look.

It’s weird how my acrophobia is selective. Like, I’m not afraid of every high-altitude situation. We’d flown over 3,000 miles to get to Alaska, and that didn’t scare me at all. And when I was a kid, it was nothing to climb way up in the biggest poplar tree in the neighbor’s yard. But put me on the edge of a precipice — no, I can’t stand that. It terrifies me. Any action-adventure film where the hero is dangling off the side of a skyscraper? Nope. Never see those scenes. Got my eyes closed.

That first sign, warning me how close I was to the “STEEP CLIFF” — plummeting hundreds of feet to my death — caused me to notice how narrow the trail was, and how crowded it was with tourists who seemed utterly heedless of their proximity to “DANGER.”

When I’d started out up the trail, my main concern was about the my-thighs-are-getting-sore steepness of the climb. Once I realized there was a “STEEP CLIFF” just a few feet to my left, however, my concern shifted to the fact that there were whole families of tourists, some of them with dogs on leashes, carelessly loping up and down this trail with utter disregard of the “DANGER” nearby. And the trail was barely wide enough for three people to walk side-by-side safely, so that when I’d see a cluster of tourists approaching, I’d get wwaaaayy over to the right side of the trail to let them pass. And, every 40 or 50 yards up the trail, there’d be another one of those signs: “DANGER! STEEP CLIFF! STAY ON TRAIL!” And I’d be muttering, “Yeah, you didn’t have to tell me twice.”

About a half-mile up the trail, we reached the “Gorge Overlook.”

Family members foolishly risk their lives.

It must be explained that I also have vicarious acrophobia — it’s not just that I’m afraid of heights, but I also get freaked out by seeing other people near the edge of a precipice, especially my kids. Like, when the boys were little, we’d hike up to Black Rock, and I’d be a bundle of nerves whenever they’d go to the edge of those cliffs. While I could control my own risk — I ain’t going anywhere near the edge, if I can help it — the children were beyond my control, and I was deathly afraid of them falling off. Wonderful irony that my son should have become a paratrooper, but “out of sight, out of mind.” I can ignore Bob’s death-defying career choices, because I don’t have to see it, and am therefore capable of blocking it out of my consciousness. Meanwhile . . .

Staying far away from danger

While everybody else was RISKING THEIR LIVES at the “Gorge Overlook,” I was on the other side of the trail, chilling out — and by “chilling out,” of course I mean, avoiding psychiatric trauma.

Should I mention that I dislike the word “acrophobia”? Because a “phobia” is an irrational fear, whereas being 300 feet above a river gorge is a real danger, and therefore my fear is perfectly rational. The crazy people are the ones who can stare down at the bottom of that cliff and not freak out, but the psychiatric community doesn’t have a word for that.

My daughter-in-law laughs at the danger

See what I mean? She’s standing next to a sign that clearly says “DANGER,” and she’s laughing at my (entirely rational) fear.

It’s Alaska. It’s about survival on the frontier — basically living inside a Jack London novel, and I’m pretty sure his protagonists never took any unnecessary risks, simply because life was so difficult they didn’t have time for cheap thrills. But nonetheless, we continued hiking up to the “Falls Overlook,” with me trailing behind so that I could navigate around the clusters of dumbass tourists who kept coming down the trail with no apparent concern about the “STEEP CLIFF” on one side.

As we approached the overlook, the path turned into a sort of wooden deck, with rails on either side. DEAR GOD IN HEAVEN! We were literally suspended over the side of the cliff by some kind of jerry-rigged cantilever construction that I’m certain would not pass a safety inspection in any of the Lower 48 states. The headlines were easy to imagine:

JOURNALIST KILLED WHEN OBESE TOURIST
CAUSES OVERLOOK WALKWAY COLLAPSE

Even if I’m not as skinny as I used to be, still I’m easily 100 pounds lighter than some of the tourists who were clomping around up there.

So the family went ahead of me to the overlook, while I hung back waiting for the crowd to clear out. Because if I’m going onto an overlook deck, I’m sure as hell not going onto it while it’s occupied by:

7 or 8 fat tourists;
5 or 6 of their clumsy low-IQ children;
and
3 or 4 dogs.

What is it with people taking their dogs everywhere they go? Like, it’s important for your dogs to have the cultural enrichment of travel? Perhaps most people don’t think about this, and maybe my misanthropic streak was aggravated by the circumstances, but COULD YOU IDIOTS PLEASE LEAVE YOUR DOGS HOME when I’m trying to walk a trail marked with “DANGER STEEP CLIFF” signs every 50 yards?

Finally, the crowd thinned out enough, and I was ready.

Smile for the camera!

You may notice in that picture that my left hand is very firmly gripped on the rail, because I’m surviving, like a Jack London hero. Also notice that I’m wearing red sneakers. Those aren’t my sneakers. I’d expected to wear my normal street shoes — tasseled loafers — for this hike, but my son insisted on lending me a pair of his sneakers, and boy, I’m glad he did. As bad as it was going up that “DANGER STEEP CLIFFS” trail, it would have been a thousand times worse if I’d been wearing slick-soled loafers instead of those sneakers. Grateful for every small advantage.

My son’s family.

Despite my advanced age, I out-hiked everybody on the way back down the mountain. It wasn’t even close. Smile for the camera — snap! — and then I set off at a blistering pace, because the faster I went, the sooner I’d be away from “DANGER STEEP CLIFFS.” By the time the rest of the family got to the bottom of the trail, I’d been sitting there 15 minutes, smoking a cigarette, smiling like the hero of a Jack London novel.

Throwing in The Big Yellow Button here because I hope you’re enjoying this tale of my Alaska adventures enough to hit the freaking tip jar. And don’t worry about the IRS, because of course, I’ve got plenty of tax-deductible business expenses from this trip. This is one of the beauties of being a Professional Journalist™ in America — anything becomes a “business expense” if you write about it. You write about travel? Tax-deductible business expense. You write about food?

Having survived the trip to Thunder Bird Falls, and to celebrate not getting eaten by bears or falling off a cliff, we headed up to Palmer, where we dined at La Fiesta Mexican Restaurant. This was the occasion of even more of my habitual sarcasm, because who else would travel to the arctic wilderness to eat Mexican food? And as we were heading up there, I already knew what I was going to order, because the menu in every Mexican restaurant has it — the #1 Combination Plate, with a beef taco, chicken enchilada, rice and beans. There is nothing more predictable than the #1 Combination Plate, which is why I always order it. And, wearing my Professional Journalist™ hat as a food critic, I can tell you that La Fiesta Mexican Restaurant serves excellent food in large portions. My wife ordered the vegetarian burrito and it was ENORMOUS! As soon as they brought it out, I was like, “Just go ahead and bring us a take-out box, because there’s no way she’s going to eat that whole thing.”

After dinner, we did a bit of sightseeing in downtown Palmer — the view of the mountains is breathtaking — then went for ice cream at The Big Dipper, which is also excellent, the Professional Journalist™ said.

Having survived the wilderness — in a thrilling Jack London way — I took a long nap when we got back, and now, after 2,000 words, I must remind you of the Five Most Important Words in the English Language:

HIT THE FREAKING TIP JAR!

Category: Alabama, Shoe Leather Fund

Just a Bear Walking Down the Street

Posted on | July 2, 2023 | Comments Off on Just a Bear Walking Down the Street

JOINT BASE ELMENDORF-RICHARDSON, Alaska
After an exciting day when we visited Thunder Bird Falls and had dinner in Palmer, I went immediately to bed, about 7 p.m. local time Saturday. Around midnight, my wife woke me up to show me the video she had captured of a bear walking around outside our son’s house. I tried to get back to sleep, but about 1:30 a.m., gave up and came downstairs, intending to write up our Saturday activities. So I went outside to smoke a cigarette, and when I glanced up from my phone — there it was!

Category: Alaska

FMJRA 2.0: No Joy In Philly

Posted on | July 1, 2023 | Comments Off on FMJRA 2.0: No Joy In Philly

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Fresh off a sweep of the Red Sox in Fenway on Tuesday, the Senators went to Shibe Park expecting to rock the 10-11 Phillies, but it was not to be. We lost two of the three games (game #2, where we started Jim Kaat much to our regret, wasn’t even close) and barely managed to salvage the third game as Juan Marichal outdueled ex-Senator Larry Dierker. Still, that makes us 4-2 on the week, and that makes Teddy Baseball happy.
After a couple of weeks of bucketing around various nations’ postal services, I finally got Klaus Schulze’s La Vie Electronique Volume 9, which has some really neat music, a couple of interviews, and no screeching by Arthur Brown. On to Volume 10!
Ceterum autem censeo Silicon Valley esse delendam.

Our manager is not in his happy place, but he’s not displeased.

Ironic Journalism
Hogewash
The DaleyGator
Prepper Dave’s Online
First Street Journal
American Free News Network
A View From The Beach
EBL
357 Magnum
Flappr

Who They Think We Are
The DaleyGator
Okrahead
A View From The Beach
EBL
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The Wonderful Joys of ‘Progress’
A View From The Beach
EBL

Undertakers of Democracy: How the Washington Post Is Deliberately Burying the Hunter Biden Influence Scandal
The DaleyGator
A View From The Beach
EBL
357 Magnum

FMJRA 2.0 Let It Ride
A View From The Beach
EBL

Rule 5 Sunday: Tracy Cortez
Animal Magnetism
A View From The Beach
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357 Magnum

North! To Alaska!
EBL
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Checked and Ready for Boarding
Okrahead
EBL
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Science Fiction, Gatekeeping, And Why Awards Are Useless
EBL

In The Mailbox: 06.26.23
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The Moose Is Loose
Okrahead
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In The Mailbox: 06.27.23
A View From The Beach
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Your ‘Private’ Messages Aren’t Private
EBL
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In The Mailbox: 06.28.23
A View From The Beach
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CBS Evening News — !!! — Reports About Hunter Biden Influence Scandal Cover-Up
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In The Mailbox: 06.29.23
A View From The Beach
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What Part of ‘Drop the Gun’ Is So Difficult for Some People to Understand?
EBL

In The Mailbox: 06.30.23
EBL
A View From The Beach
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Top linkers for the week ending June 30:

EBL (18)
357 Magnum (14)
A View From The Beach (12)

Amazon Warehouse Deals

Category: FMJRA Award

Have The Dutch Torn Down All Their Statues and Renamed All Their Streets?

Posted on | July 1, 2023 | Comments Off on Have The Dutch Torn Down All Their Statues and Renamed All Their Streets?

Obviously it’s just a matter of time:

Dutch King Willem-Alexander has apologized for his country’s historic involvement in slavery and its ongoing repercussions, as the Netherlands on Saturday begins an official event to mark 150 years since the end of slavery in Dutch colonies.
The king issued his apology during a speech marking the event.
“Today I’m standing here in front of you as your king and as part of the government. Today I am apologising myself,” Willem-Alexander said. “And I feel the weight of the words in my heart and my soul.”
The king commissioned a study into the exact role the Dutch royal family, the House of Orange-Nassau, played in slavery in the Netherlands.
He asked for forgiveness “for the clear failure to act in the face of this crime against humanity.”
Thousands of descendants from the former Dutch colony of Suriname and the Dutch overseas territories of Aruba, Bonaire and Curacao are attending celebrations in Amsterdam.
The event has been dubbed “Keti Koti,” meaning “breaking chains” in Sranan Togo, a Creole language spoken in Suriname.
Queen Maxina and Prime Minister Mark Rutte are also expected to attend Keti Koti commemorations. . . .
Last December, Rutte apologized for slavery on behalf of the Dutch government.
A number of Dutch cities, including Amsterdam, issued their own apologies before the prime minister did so.
Beginning in the 17th Century, the Netherlands grew into one of Europe’s major colonial powers and was responsible for about 5% of the trans-Atlantic slave trade.
Some 600,000 slaves were transported from Africa to colonies in the Americas, and many Javanese and Balinese people were enslaved and taken to South Africa under Dutch colonial rule.
The Netherlands officially abolished slavery on July 1, 1863. However, slaves continued working on plantations in the Dutch Caribbean for another decade before abolition was put into practice.

As I said quite recently:

If one studies slavery from a global and historical perspective, the idea of a transtemporal collective grievance — an idea Thomas Sowell addresses in The Quest for Cosmic Justice — is simply absurd. To carry around permanent grudges over the practices of antiquity is a foolish posture.

Sowell addressed the issue of colonialism more specifically in Conquests and Cultures: An International History, the general point of which is that the endless anti-American guilt-tripping by “progressives” over our nation’s history is based on ignorance. Almost everybody everywhere in the world has, at one time or another, been either a “victim” or “oppressor,” as such things as judged by the Social Justice Warriors who insist that we should feel ashamed if we are one or two notches above anyone else on the socioeconomic hierarchy. Just yesterday, for example, I was re-reading Winston Churchill’s account of the English Civil War, when King Charles was beheaded and various of the aristocracy who supported his Royalist (“Cavalier”) cause had their property stolen by supporters of the victorious Republican (“Roundhead”) faction. After about a dozen years of Puritan dictatorship, when the English finally decided they’d be better off with a king, Charles II was welcomed to take the crown under an agreement that stipulated, among other things, that the properties seized during the Civil War would not be returned to their previous owners. So the heirs of various dukes and earls were never compensated for their lost property. No “social justice” for them.

Well, so much for the disinherited and expropriated English Royalists. What about the former Dutch colony of Suriname?

It has a population of approximately 612,985, dominated by descendants from the slaves and labourers brought in from Africa and Asia by the Dutch Empire and Republic. . . .
Europeans arrived in the 16th century, with the Dutch establishing control over much of the country’s current territory by the late 17th century. During the Dutch colonial period, Suriname was a lucrative source of sugar, its plantation economy driven by African slave labour, and after abolition of slavery in 1863, by indentured servants from Asia, predominantly from British India, as well as the Dutch East Indies. . . .
In 1667, during negotiations leading to the Treaty of Breda after the Second Anglo-Dutch War, the Dutch decided to keep the nascent plantation colony of Surinam they had gained from the English. In return the English kept New Amsterdam, the main city of the former colony of New Netherland in North America on the mid-Atlantic coast. The British renamed it New York City, after the Duke of York who would later become King James II of England. . . .

(Excellent bargain you made there, Dutch colonialists!)

The Netherlands abolished slavery in Suriname in 1863, under a gradual process that required slaves to work on plantations for 10 transition years for minimal pay, which was considered as partial compensation for their masters. After that transition period expired in 1873, most freedmen largely abandoned the plantations where they had worked for several generations in favor of the capital city, Paramaribo. Some of them were able to purchase the plantations they worked on, especially in the district of Para and Coronie. Their descendants still live on those grounds today. . . .
As a plantation colony, Suriname had an economy dependent on labor-intensive commodity crops. To make up for a shortage of labor, the Dutch recruited and transported contract or indentured laborers from the Dutch East Indies (modern Indonesia) and India (the latter through an arrangement with the British, who then ruled the area). In addition, during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, small numbers of laborers, mostly men, were recruited from China and the Middle East. . . .
The largest ethnic group are Indians [i.e., descendants of laborers brought from India], who form over a quarter of the population (27.4%). . . . If counted as one ethnic group, the Afro-Surinamese are the largest community, at around 37.4%; however, they are usually divided into two cultural/ethnic groups: the Creoles and the Maroons. Surinamese Maroons, whose ancestors are mostly runaway slaves that fled to the interior, comprise 21.7% of the population. . . . Surinamese Creoles, mixed people descending from African slaves and Europeans (mostly Dutch), form 15.7% of the population. . . . Javanese make up 14% of the population, and like the East Indians, descend largely from workers contracted from the island of Java in the former Dutch East Indies (modern Indonesia). . . .
A small but influential number of Europeans remain in the country, comprising about 1% of the population.

Very interesting. Now, per capital gross domestic product:

Netherlands ….. $61,098
Suriname ………… $5,556

You can hear all the SJWs screaming: “RAAAAACISM!”

But instead of comparing Suriname’s per capital GDP to the Netherlands (the world’s 11th-richest country), let’s compare it to two countries where the ancestors of modern-day Surinamese came from:

Suriname ………… $5,556
Indonesia ……….. $5,016
India ……………….. $2,601

Now, compare to a few nations of the “Slave Coast” of Africa:

Suriname ………… $5,556
Angola …………….. $3,204
Ivory Coast ………. $2,646
Nigeria …………… $2,280
Senegal …………… $1,719
Cameroon ………. $1,699
Guinea …………… $1,549

It is not a defense of slavery, nor of 17th-century Dutch colonial policy, to point out that the modern descendants of slaves in Suriname are demonstrably better off than residents of many African nations. However, it is a useful antidote to the idiotic social-justice mentality that leads to the absurd spectacle of the King of the Netherlands confessing to his personal guilt in “this crime against humanity.” Right, and I’m still waiting for an apology from the King of England for the various “crimes against humanity” perpetrated against my Scottish ancestors.

Only from what Sowell calls the “cosmic justice” perspective does this kind of guilt-tripping make sense: “Let’s all point fingers about what happened 200 or 300 years ago, because that’s easier than finding practical ways to deal with the problems we have in the here and now!”

Meanwhile, some Dutch guy is reading my blog and saying, “Wait a minute — we traded New York to the English for freaking Suriname? What a rip-off! Let’s make the English apologize for that swindle!”

BWAHAHAHAHA! Sucks to be you, Dutch guy.

Category: History, Netherlands, Racism

The Supreme Court Ruling Won’t Change the Ivy League’s Racial Quota Regime

Posted on | July 1, 2023 | Comments Off on The Supreme Court Ruling Won’t Change the Ivy League’s Racial Quota Regime

Liberals are running around with their hair on fire, shrieking that the Supreme Court’s 6-3 ruling in Students for Fair Admission v. Harvard will necessarily produce a 21st-century Jim Crow, an idea so absurd that only liberals could possibly believe it. In fact, the safest prediction in the world is that nothing will change in the way the Ivy League and other “selective” universities choose their incoming freshman classes on the basis of racial quotas. It took more than 10 years for this lawsuit to make it all the way to the Supreme Court, by which time nearly every elite university (e.g., Columbia) announced that they would eliminate the SAT as a factor in determining admissions. They did this because SAT scores served as a crucial data point — an objective metric of academic qualification — cited by the Asian-American students who sued Harvard.

The Supreme Court just ruled against Affirmative Action. Why?

Because it is systemically racist.

Harvard applicants in the top academic decile have different chances of admission depending on their race:

– Asians: 12.7%
– Whites: 15.3%
– Hispanics: 31.3%
– Blacks: 56.1% pic.twitter.com/AhI6p4n14h

— The Rabbit Hole (@TheRabbitHole84) June 29, 2023

Probably no one would object if the level of favoritism extended to “underrepresented minorities” was modest. However, as the data obtained as part of discovery during the lawsuit demonstrates, the “diversity” regime at Harvard involved extreme favoritism, so that if an Asian student and a black student had identical qualifications (as measured by SATs and GPAs), the black student was more than 4 times as likely to be admitted as the Asian student. There was a reason, after all, that the admissions process at Harvard (and other elite schools) was so secretive that it took a federal lawsuit to discover the facts. If people actually knew what was happening, they’d be outraged. And, as the data obtained in the lawsuit demonstrated, “diversity” was just a fancy word for racial quotas. Year after year, Harvard’s incoming freshman class was 14% black — never 11% or 17%, but always within a few decimal points of 14% — making it plain that the administration had settled on this as the “correct” number of black students to be admitted, and then arranged the process to achieve that quota. Asian students were most affected by this quota regime, as the Harvard administration clearly didn’t want to have “too many” Asian students, because that would deprive whites of the opportunity to soak in this carefully formulated bath of “diversity.”

The University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill was added as a defendant in the lawsuit because, although UNC-Chapel Hill is not nearly as “elite” as Harvard, it is the prestigious flagship of the state’s university system, and the admissions process there reflected a similar “diversity” rationale for what were, in fact, discriminatory racial quotas that favored “underrepresented” (black and Hispanic) minorities, while disfavoring Asians and whites. In all such cases, wherever the regime of “diversity” exists, it results in evaluating people not on objective measurements of individual merit, but rather on the basis of membership in racial groups. And this emphasis on group identity breeds and nourishes resentments that might not otherwise exist — the obsession with “diversity” actually causes racism, or at least aggravates it, rather than alleviating it.

Before I share a few of the ridiculous “hot take” reactions from liberals about the Supreme Court decision, let me first emphasize this prediction about the results of the ruling: NOTHING WILL CHANGE.

Harvard and other “elite” schools will continue doing exactly what they’ve been doing, and if they get sued again, so what? They don’t care. It’s not like Merrick Garland’s Justice Department is going to swoop down and send federal marshals to prevent Harvard from doing whatever it wants in pursuit of “diversity.” Harvard will continue admitting the same 14% quota of black students and, if they do grudgingly admit a few extra Asian students as a token gesture of compliance with the SCOTUS ruling, those extra seats for Asians in the freshman class will be obtained by admitting fewer white students, so that the quotas for “underrepresented minority” students remain undisturbed. The alarmist Chicken Little sky-is-falling outrage from liberals is just emotional venting, and has nothing to do with the actual effect of the Supreme Court’s decision, which won’t change anything meaningful at elite universities.

Hilariously on brand. pic.twitter.com/RzYY57rrCf

— Tom Bevan (@TomBevanRCP) June 29, 2023

Elizabeth Warren, who gamed the system by pretending to be a Native American, has thoughts about affirmative action.

— Christopher F. Rufo ?? (@realchrisrufo) June 29, 2023

I am not a lawyer, but it doesn’t look like a legal argument to me. https://t.co/LSSF9UMWA1

— Katya Sedgwick (@KatyaSedgwick) June 29, 2023

Oh look, a white female Democrat who worked for Biden thinks that black people are so stupid that they can't get into college on their own merit.

This is what actual racism looks like, kids.

— Tim Young (@TimRunsHisMouth) June 29, 2023

This is not a normal administration. https://t.co/nOWiXOjHRg

— Doug Powers (@ThePowersThatBe) June 29, 2023

Category: Racism, Supreme Court, The Ivy League Is Depraved and Decadent

In The Mailbox: 06.30.23

Posted on | July 1, 2023 | 1 Comment

— compiled by Wombat-socho

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

SCOTUS sticks it to the socialists.

OVER THE TRANSOM
357 Magnum: 1970’s Nerd Programmers 1, ChatGPT 0
Twitchy: Ed Krassenstein Tries To Shame Libs Of TikTok & Fails, L. Louise Lucas Makes Us Laugh As Pornhub Pulls Out Of Virginia, and Laurence Tribe Writes BRUTAL Letter Trashing Justice “Wise Latina” Sotomayor
Louder With Crowder: Dylan Mulvaney lashes out at Bud Light while “America’s Beer” chooses an influencer of their own, JK Rowling hater demands she performs a sex act on him, but she ruins his life with a tweet instead, and Supreme Court rules AGAINST Joe Biden’s unconstitutional student loan bailout – here are some things to know
Vox Popoli: Pantsir vs Storm Shadow, also, Magic Dirt Fail in France
According To Hoyt: This is a Post I hoped Never To Write, The Problem of Hindsight, and Weird
Monster Hunter Nation: LibertyCon 35 was a blast, also, Gritty Cop Show: LibertyCon 35 Charity Game Recap (the statistically impossible edition)
Stoic Observations: The New Diversity
Gab News: Congress Enlists GAO For “Domestic Extremist” Study on Faming & Social Media Platforms

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: A Land without Honor
American Conservative: The Iron Cross Returns to the East
American Greatness: Supreme Court Rules Against Biden’s Loan Forgiveness Plan, in Favor of Web Designer Who Refused to Make Same-Sex Wedding Websites, also, Over 17 Million Guns Sold in 2022: Report
American Thinker: Thomas Sowell — Still Relevant at 93, NYC Bans Delicious Pizza for Climate Change, and Seven Truths to Unmask the Regressive Left
Animal Magnetism: Rule Five Leftists in America Friday
Babalu Blog: Cuban dictatorship moves into the 21st century, prepares to launch digital ration book, Cuban State Security arrests dissident Jose Daniel Ferrer’s wife, steals her money, warns her of imminent eviction, and The other Perón woman history forgot
BattleSwarm: LinkSwarm for June 30
Behind The Black: Webb takes infrared (heat) image of Saturn, Dragon cargo freighter safely splashes down in Atlantic, Curiosity tops a ridge to see its rough path forward, Another layered mesa in the Cydonia region of Mars, and A blacklisted American wins in court
Cafe Hayek: On Today’s Ruling On Student-Loan ‘Forgiveness’
CDR Salamander: Fullbore Friday
Da Tech Guy: SCOTUS Makes the Case for Trump
Dana Loesch: SCOTUS Ends Affirmative Action, also, News You Might Have MIssed
Don Surber: Ending centuries of Harvard bigotry
First Street Journal: The Supreme Court destroys all chances of race-based ‘reparations’, also, Dumb as a box of rocks
Gates Of Vienna: The Alienork Way, “We Are Dragged Into Reality”, Marinus van der Lubbe Gets an Extra 15 Minutes, Nancy Faeser Pronounces Anathema Against the Heretics of the AfD, The Mexican Standoff, and Makin’ Bacon With Annalena
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Hogewash: What’s Up for July, 2023, also, Team Kimberlin Post of the Day
Hollywood In Toto: Is Evil Dead Rise the Year’s Most Pro-Life Film?, also, Dial of Destiny and the Lowering of Indiana Jones’ Expectations
The Lid: Ron DeSantis Pledges to Eliminate the Departments of Energy, Commerce, & Education PLUS the IRS
Legal Insurrection: Planner Of Attacks On Israelis in Cyprus Captured By Mossad Inside Iran, Taped Confession Released, Wisconsin Democrat State Senator Comments on Crime: ‘F**k the Suburbs’, Bates College Prof Reveals Inside Look at ‘the Racial Gaming of Admissions’, Saying the Quiet Part Out Loud – Video of Berkeley Law Dean Admitting To “Unstated Affirmative Action”, and Left Loves The Kochs Again, Now That They’re Reportedly Mounting Anti-Trump 2024 Effort
Nebraska Energy Observer: Scattershot Friday
Outkick: Pat McAfee Responds To Criticism After ESPN Layoffs, David Pollack May Be The Most Surprising ESPN Layoff So Far: What’s The Plan For College GameDay Moving Forward?, Joe Theismann Pleads To Elon Musk: ‘Let Me Back On Twitter!’, WNBA’s Natasha Cloud Says ‘Our Country Is Trash’ In Wake Of Supreme Court’s Affirmative Action Ruling, ESPN On-Air Bloodletting Begins: Jalen Rose, Jeff Van Gundy Are Out, and Haley Cavinder Declares War On Paige Spiranac With Unreal Putt
Power Line: A Case Study in ‘Progressive Fragility’ & Entitlement, Joey Mumbles does college admissions, and Thoughts from the ammo line
Shark Tank: Sen. Scott Highlights “Big Wins For Florida” In Recent NDAA
Shot In The Dark: Saint Paul Schooled, also, Thoughtcrime
STUMP: Taxing Tuesday: Wealth Taxes in Norway and SALT Cap Review
This Ain’t Hell: Gotta give credit to Grinston’s office, Valor Friday, The U.S. Supreme Court strikes down university affirmative action, exempting the service academies, and Chinese B/A-1100N Foiled by DOD
Transterrestrial Musings: The Affirmative-Action Decision, When Elites Don’t Fight, and Astra Carta
Victory Girls: Affirmative Action Dissenters Illustrate Hypocrisy in Action
Volokh Conspiracy: SCOTUS Holds That Speech Creators (e.g., Web Designers) Can’t Be Required to Create Content They Object to
Watts Up With That: BBC: China is Firming Wind and Solar Power with Coal Plants, also, Another Climate-Savior Alarmist Jetsets to South America – For Two Months Of Vacation!
The Federalist: Why Russia’s Instability Could Throw Off Xi Jinping’s Taiwan Invasion Timeline, State Department Finally Admits In Heavily Redacted Report That Biden Botched The Afghanistan Withdrawal, Records Suggest Top NIH Official Squashed Lab-Leak Theory For Fauci, Used Personal Email To Hide It, SCOTUS Decision Protecting Religious Liberty Provides The Perfect Ending To Pride Month, House GOP Rejects Socialist Mortgage Rule, But That Won’t Stop Biden From Taking Your Money For ‘Equity’, and Affirmative Action Is Another Nonsense Leftist Position We’ve Been Conditioned To Take Seriously
Mark Steyn: Live Around the Planet

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Category: Linkagery

What Part of ‘Drop the Gun’ Is So Difficult for Some People to Understand?

Posted on | June 30, 2023 | Comments Off on What Part of ‘Drop the Gun’ Is So Difficult for Some People to Understand?

A ‘routine traffic stop’ in small-town Illinois

Watching the police bodycam video of this incident, I was struck by how much of what we call “race” is actually about culture.

A police officer in Rantoul, Illinois — a town of 12,000 people, about 15 miles north of Champaign, and 120 miles south of Chicago — approaches a car that he recognizes as having fled at high speed a couple months earlier. The driver, later identified as 20-year-old Jheremia [sic] Xavier McKown, begins speaking in what might be called a ghetto way, which was confusing to me. This guy looked white, so why was he talkin’ like a brotha out the ‘hood, y’know what I be sayin’?

His behavior was similarly distinctive, acting like every felon I’ve seen in these Police Activity videos (and I must have watched hundreds by now) when apprehended in the midst of felonious activity. The cop is like, “stop reaching in the car” and yet McKown keeps reaching. The cop finally decides to pull him out of the car and a struggle ensues, even as McKown tries to pretend he doesn’t understand why the cop wants to handcuff him. Not to spoil the ending, but there were six pounds of marijuana in the car, as well as three loaded handguns — two Glocks under the driver’s seat, and one in the possession of the passenger, 18-year-old Jordan Richardson. Richardson’s pistol had an extended magazine, and Illinois investigators later determined it had been stolen during the burglary of a vehicle in Colorado. While McKown is wrestling with the cop, resisting arrest, Richardson takes off running on foot. This is ghetto thug behavior, except it’s not happening in a ghetto, it’s happening on a tree-lined street in a picturesque small town. And who are these thugs, anyway?

Jheremia Xavier McKown

You can see why I was confused. McKown (whose mother apparently couldn’t spell “Jeremiah” correctly) is very, very light-skinned.

Cafe au lait, with extra au lait. Almost as white as Rachel Dolezal.

Here we encounter a problem with the belief that the problems experienced by black people are a result of hereditary inferiority. The “DNA is destiny” crowd will have to explain why this guy — who’s got to be at least 75% Caucasian — was thuggin’ like a ghetto homeboy, whereas there are black people of 100% African ancestry with MIT engineering degrees. Clarence Thomas grew up in the segregated South and became a Supreme Court justice, whereas this damned-near-white kid grew up in small-town Illinois and became a felon. Say what you will, this disparity just can’t be explained by genetics, nor do I think the “social justice” crowd can explain how McKown is more “oppressed” by systemic racism in 2023 than Justice Thomas was in the Jim Crow era.

People don’t become drug dealers because of “oppression.” There is no reason to believe McKown was denied opportunities for education or employment because of his race. He just would rather deal dope than to work any legal job. Where did he develop that preference? I don’t know, but you can’t blame “white supremacy.” Meanwhile . . .

[State’s Attorney Julia] Rietz asked for a $2 million bond for McKown after informing Beckett that McKown had a prior juvenile adjudication for attempted armed robbery. In 2020, Rietz said, McKown tried to rob two cannabis dealers, and one of them shot McKown in the leg.
“This is a defendant who is a danger to the community. Because of him, Rantoul is in an uproar,” Rietz argued.

The “uproar” was because McKown’s passenger who ran from cops, Jordan Richardson, ended up getting shot to death, but before we get to that, let’s get a bit more information about McKown:

A Champaign man charged in connection with an incident that led to the death of his friend in Rantoul on Wednesday will have to jump through some hoops before he can be released from jail.
Judge Roger Webber ordered late Friday afternoon that before Jheremia McKown may post bond, he will have to persuade a judge that his bond money is coming from a “legitimate and lawful” source.
State’s Attorney Julia Rietz filed the motion for a “source of bail” hearing after Judge Chad Beckett set bond for McKown at $500,000 following his arraignment on charges of armed violence, possession with intent to deliver cannabis, aggravated unlawful use of weapons and resisting arrest. . . .
In written support of her request for a source of bail hearing, Rietz repeated the allegations surrounding McKown’s arrest by Rantoul police about 12:30 p.m. Wednesday. . . .
After the arraignment, McKown made a phone call from the jail — which inmates are informed are being recorded — to another man with two pending weapons cases who was able to post $15,000 in cash to win his own release in February despite telling a judge he was “looking for work” and had no income.
That man asked McKown what his bond was and when McKown told him he would need $50,000 to be released, the man replied, “That’s what we were expecting, we got you bro.”
“It is believed that the cash found (in McKown’s car) is from the fruits of illegal narcotics activity, and that there is reason to believe the defendant has access to other large amounts of U.S. currency derived from the same illicit activities,” Rietz wrote.

“We got you bro” — his criminal associates promising to bail him out with the money they make from dealing dope. They’re career criminals. They’ve never earned an honest nickel in their lives.

And as for Jordan Richardson . . .

Jordan Richardson (right) hugs his mother, Amy

His mother, Amy Richardson, was the subject of a friendly article in Smile Politely, “Champaign-Urbana’s culture magazine”:

Mother refuses to let authorities demonize son killed by Rantoul police
“I can’t sleep. The time that I have [fallen] asleep, I just woke up with a nightmare,” said Amy Richardson, whose son Jordan was shot and killed by police in Rantoul last week. “I keep rounding that corner and hearing those two shots and then I just wake up.”
It was just after noon on Wednesday, June 7th when Amy dropped off her son at a friend’s car and left. She noticed police coming up the street and turned her car around. She watched as police approached the two Black youth in the car and arrested 20-year-old Jheremia McKown. She heard McKown cry out, “I’m not fighting, I’m not resisting.”

(She knew her son was hanging around McKown. Indeed, his mother gave him a ride to meet up with McKown. Not going to say she’s to blame for her son’s death, but . . .)

Amy then saw her son Jordan take off running. She drove around the corner to try to intercept him. Rantoul police Sergeant Jerry King, a ten-year veteran of the force, chased after him.
“All I heard was pop pop,” she recalled, “and I turn the corner, and my son was laid out in a driveway.” Police would not let her near her son as he lay bleeding. He was transported to Carle Hospital in an ambulance. Amy frantically demanded to see her son at the hospital, but police would not let her. Police were “so cold” about it, telling her, “No, his body’s evidence.”
Jordan Richardson, who was 18 years old and just recently graduated from Rantoul Township High School, was found to have a single gunshot wound in his chest at 1:42 p.m. and pronounced dead shortly after.
State’s Attorney Julia Rietz is painting this picture with a broad brush. Focus has been on the case of McKown — alleged to be involved in a high-speed car chase in April, found last week with six pounds of marijuana in his car, possessing two loaded handguns, and fighting with police — who is held on a half-million dollar bond. Because of McKown, Rietz said at arraignment, Rantoul was in an “uproar.”
Jordan’s death at the hands of police has already been deemed justified in the media for his association with McKown. “They’re just trying to make him seem like he’s just some low down thug,” Amy said. “No, I refuse, I absolutely refuse to let them do this.”

(Just hanging out with his buddy, in a car with six pounds of weed and three pistols, but he’s not “some low down thug.” Thanks, Mom.)

“My son was an amazing kid,” Amy said. “He was so smart. Anybody around here that you ask, they don’t have a bad thing to say about my son.” . . .

(“He was so smart,” mom says, and yet her son seemed to have trouble comprehending the simple sentence, “Drop the gun!”)

The shooting at a balloon launch for Jordan on Friday, June 9th has also cast a shadow over events. An individual with a rifle shot into the crowd, miraculously missing everyone, and fled on foot. . . .

(Call me a cynic, but when you get shot by cops and then gunfire breaks out at your memorial “balloon launch,” you might just be “some low down thug.”)

“These Rantoul police have been on my son’s heels for months now,” Jordan’s mom told me. In October 2022, Jordan was shot at while visiting a friend at Golfview Village apartments in Rantoul. When police arrived, she said, they tackled Jordan and left him with a “big knot” on his forehead. Police seized his phone, Amy said, although, “He was the victim.” After the incident, Jordan was “fired up” and “angry.”
Amy sent Jordan to Colorado after he was shot at because she was “scared for [her] son’s safety.”

(Gosh, somebody shot at Jordan while he was “visiting a friend” — this happens all the time in a picturesque small town with a population of 12,000, right? — and it was his mom who sent Jordan to Colorado. After he got shot by the cops, they found that Jordan’s gun had been stolen in Colorado. Coincidence, I’m sure.)

He finished high school early and returned for the graduation ceremony a couple weeks ago.
“I feel so twisted,” Amy said, “I know he wanted to come here and graduate, you know, and walk the stage. He earned that right. But then I just keep questioning myself that I made the right decision by letting him come back here.” . . .

(She could have left him in Colorado, and then her “low down thug” son could have gotten shot by Colorado police instead.)

“Was my son a threat to you because of the color of his skin?” Amy wondered. “Because he had dreads? What made my son so threatening to you that it had to go like this? I just don’t understand. I really don’t understand.”

Well, ma’am, what made your son “so threatening” was probably that stolen pistol with the extended magazine he was carrying when he took off running from that car — you know, the car with six pounds of weed in it? The car that had fled from police at high speed two months earlier? The car driven by the criminal Jheremia McKown?

Wonder no more. This week we got police bodycam video, as well as home surveillance camera video from nearby residences, all of which are referenced in the report issued by the State’s Attorney’s office.

Rantoul PD 6-7-23 OIS Final… by WICS Newschannel 20 (WICS A…

State’s attorney: Rantoul officer’s use of lethal force was legally justified
The same officer who shot Jordan Richardson as he ran because he refused to drop a gun also tried to save his life.
“He just wouldn’t drop the (expletive) gun. I don’t understand,” Sgt. Jerry King said to a fellow officer as he applied pressure to the chest of the 18-year-old he shot seconds earlier.
On Wednesday, State’s Attorney Julia Rietz concluded that the actions of the 10-year officer on the afternoon of June 7 constituted a justifiable use of lethal force.
“Sgt. Jerry King’s use of deadly force in firing his weapon in Richardson’s direction while Richardson was in possession of a firearm and disobeying commands to drop the weapon were legally justifiable given the totality of the circumstances,” she said. . . .
Officer Rene Wissel, who made the stop of driver Jheremia McKown, radioed for help, alerting fellow officers that the person running had a gun that he dropped then picked up as he continued to run.
Officer Tyler Johnston, who arrived to help Wissel, also saw Mr. Richardson stop in the front yard of a house, reach down and pick up an object, then continue running. Johnston gave chase, yelling “drop the gun, drop the gun, police, stop,” having no apparent effect on Mr. Richardson.
King, meantime, was in his squad sport utility vehicle when he saw Mr. Richardson carrying an olive-green handgun and running between two houses in the 400 block of East Belle. He ran right in front of King’s vehicle, still carrying the gun.
State police investigators learned later that the gun found near Mr. Richardson’s body that had his fingerprints on it had been reported stolen May 20 from a car in Colorado Springs, Colo.
“As he passed the front of my patrol car, I feared that Jordan would begin firing at my squad car,” King wrote in his original police report.
Mr. Richardson turned his head to look at King as he ran past his car, which caused him to stumble and drop the gun at the edge of a driveway. Again, he picked it up and ran.
Jumping from his squad, King drew his gun, aimed at Mr. Richardson and yelled three times, loudly enough for Mr. Richardson to hear him, to drop the gun or risk being shot.
“Jordan had made it approximately 70 feet up the driveway before once again stumbling and falling forward onto the ground. I was now approximately 50 feet from Jordan,” King wrote in a report prepared after reviewing his body-camera footage. “Jordan was now still on the ground with his left hand on the ground supporting him and his gun in his right hand but facing away from me. I gave another command, ‘Drop the gun!’ and at the same time, Jordan began spinning around towards me holding his gun.
“It was at this moment, with Jordan turning towards me while armed with the handgun, that I felt he was going to shoot me,” King wrote. “I fired two rounds in quick succession at Jordan as his body, and more specifically his arm holding the gun, was spinning towards my direction.”
Mr. Richardson’s last audible words were “I’m hit.”
Rietz noted that the time between when King gave his first command to when he fired was approximately six seconds.

At least eight times, cops yelled at him to drop the gun. And, in point of fact, while running from cops, Richardson accidentally dropped the gun twice, but picked it up again. “He was so smart,” his mom said.

Live the ghetto life, die a ghetto death.