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

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

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

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

Good-bye, and good-riddance.

Category: Crime, Missouri

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

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

Jordan Neely encounters surprising consequences.

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

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

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

Jordan Neely has been a menace to NYC subway riders.

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

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

— Xaviaer DuRousseau (@XAVIAERD) May 4, 2023

There is a backstory:

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

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

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

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

— Cernovich (@Cernovich) May 4, 2023

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

Remember: Crazy People Are Dangerous.

Category: Crime, New York

In The Mailbox: 05.04.23 (Morning Edition)

Posted on | May 4, 2023 | 1 Comment

— compiled by Wombat-socho

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

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

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

Amazon Warehouse Deals

Category: Linkagery

News From Down Home

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

UPDATE: Welcome, Instapundit readers!

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

HIT THE FREAKING TIP JAR!

Category: Georgia, History

In The Mailbox: 05.02.23

Posted on | May 3, 2023 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 05.02.23

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Silicon Valley delenda est.

OVER THE TRANSOM
357 Magnum: The Disney/LucasFilm Trial For The Murder Of Star Wars
EBL: Gordon Lightfoot, RIP, also, Blackpink Jennie Kim
Twitchy: A Video Tour Of Minneapolis Before & After The 2020 Riots, Insurrectionists Occupy Texas State Capitol To Disrupt Vote On Child Castration & Mutilation Ban, and Ted Cruz Blisters Dems & Media For New “High-Tech Lynching” Of Clarence Thomas
Louder With Crowder: Ron DeSantis: We’re executing convicted pedos in Florida now, also, Bud Light effect? Coca-Cola gets the message, votes AGAINST woke proposal to target pro-life states
Vox Popoli: Peak America, Not Alarmist, Avant Garde, The Economy of Evil, and The Cult of Free is Over

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: Covid – State Sanctioned Mass Murder
American Conservative: End American Military Aid to Azerbaijan, also, An Age of Repoliticization
American Greatness: Biden Admin Still Has Not Properly Vetted 88,000 Afghan Refugees, Two Years After Withdrawal, also, During Fiery Hearing, GOP Senators Blast Democrats’ ‘Unseemly Efforts’ to Delegitimize Supreme Court
American Thinker: A Woman is not a Cat, It Takes a Village?, Who Will be the next Chief of Naval Operations?, and The New Robber Barons
Animal Magnetism: Animal’s Daily Senile Dementia News
Babalu Blog: Cuban woman left homeless after her building in Havana collapses, Pro-Castro Cuban radio host in Miami threatens Castro regime with exposing his ’20 years of collaboration, How communism destroyed and outlawed Cuba’s independent labor movement, and The natives are restless: 370 public protests recorded in Cuba during April
BattleSwarm: Observing 2023 Victims of Communism Day, also, Score One For Gary Gates
Behind The Black: Suborbital rocket explodes four seconds after launch in New Mexico, A nearby aging galaxy with an active supermassive black hole at its center, Irish startup lobbies for Irish spaceport, The cliff wall of ancient Martian lava channel, and Private college allows its students to blacklist refugee from Communist China
Cafe Hayek: A New Study of Industrial Policy
CDR Salamander: The Philippines…Again
Chicago Boyz: Folkways
Da Tech Guy: Do journalists have ethical standards anymore? Overlooked story about a Chicago Tribune gives me doubts, May Indulgence Calendar, And that’s the way it was, and Covid Shot Committed: An Army of Ernst Jannings
Dana Loesch: Don’t Become The Rage Mob
Don Surber: Gun Control? We Need Border Control
First Street Journal: Is The Philadelphia Inquirer shading stories to fit Teh Narrative?, also, World War III Watch: Warmongers gotta warmonger!
Gates Of Vienna: Life in Prison for the Botkyrka Murderers, also, Road Trip
The Geller Report: 1 in 4 High School Students Identifies as LGBTQ, Biden Energy Secretary Doubles Down on Electrifying US Military’s Vehicle Fleet by 2030, ALL Nine SCOTUS Justices Issue Rare Statement Rejecting Senate Democrats’ New “Ethics Oversight” Measures, and Democrats Frequently Met With Alleged Red Chinese Police Station Director Arrested By The FBI, Photos Show
Hogewash: Team Kimberlin Post of the Day, What’s Up for May, 2023, I’m Not Making This Up, You Know, and Parking Lot Geography
Hollywood In Toto: FORBES Thinks Writers’ Strike Might Be Late-Night TV’s Death Blow, Rockers Dee Snider, KISS’s Paul Stanley Oppose ‘Gender Affirming’ Surgery, and His Only Son Turns Profit for Crowdfunding Investors
The Lid: Biden’s SPOX Karine Jean-Pierre: Liar Or Mentally Handicapped?
Legal Insurrection: Gordon Lightfoot, R.I.P., Senate Hearing On Supreme Court Was “Bad Faith” By “Angry, Bitter Democrat Senators Who Are Furious” There’s A Conservative Majority, UVA Student Claims BLM Activist Ruined Her Life Over a Misheard Remark, North Dakota Bill: Students Cannot Use Bathroom of Their Choice, Teachers Can Ignore ‘Preferred Pronouns’, and Elite Border Patrol BORTAC Agents Capture Mexican National Accused of Murdering 5 in Texas
Nebraska Energy Observer: This man
Outkick: Serena Williams Pregnant With Second Child After Complaining That ‘Unfair’ Biology Forced Her To Retire, Anti-Turf Will Levis Is Not A Fan Of His New NFL Field After Being Drafted By Titans, AAU Basketball Coach Trades Punches With Referee In A Solid Travel Ball Fracas, LeBron James’ Former Teammate Alex Caruso Appears To Confirm His Reading Shtick Is Fake, and Shannon Sharpe Sets Deion Sanders Straight After Complaining Only One HBCU Player Was Drafted
Power Line: Gordon Lightfoot dies at 84, It ain’t me, babe, Blinken edition, and Hunter Biden pleads poverty
Protein Wisdom Reborn: Mehdi I’m Amazed
Shark Tank: Florida, Where ESG Goes To Die, also, Mills Introduces Bill To Prevent Important Drug Shortages
Shot In The Dark: Sign O’ The Times, Part MMMCCLXV, What A Difference a Few Column-Feet Make, and Communicating With The MN DFL, Part VII
STUMP: Is Joe Biden Likely to Die Within 5-6 Years?
The Political Hat: The Environmental Movement Is A Cult
This Ain’t Hell: Big Army tells aviators that they have to serve another three years, Veterans filing claims in increasing numbers, VA staff may burn out, Wisconsin man pretends to be deployed, is in jail, Bill proposed to ban AI from running nuclear missile systems without human leadership, and Pentagon- Personal Bio Monitoring Next
Transterrestrial Musings: Gordon Lightfoot, On Friendship With Self-Righteous Cowards, Tucker Carlson, The Left’s War On SCOTUS, and Antony Blinken
Victory Girls: UNC Professors: Teaching The Constitution Violates Our “Academic Freedom”, also, Troops Heading to the Southern Border. For What?
Volokh Conspiracy: Another Judicial Ethics Story About Justice Thomas Falls Apart
Watts Up With That: Feds admit offshore wind can kill whales!, 99.2% of Swiss National Bank Shareholders Just Rejected a Green Investment Push, and Wind-financed Exposé against Kevon Martis Backfires
Weasel Zippers: WH Absurdly Claims “Illegal Migration” Has “Come Down By More Than 90%”, Palestinians: It’s “Racist” To Say That Israel Made The “Desert Bloom”, and Oklahoma Becomes 16th State To Ban Trans Procedures On Kids
The Federalist: White Man Calling Himself A ‘Lesbian Indian’ Forces Alphabet Activists To Turn On Their Own Talking Points, Why I’m More Scared Of American Social Media Companies Than TikTok, California’s Rainbow Color Revolution Just Felled Tennessee, And It’s Not Stopping There, Report: Unable To Meet Recruiting Targets, The U.S. Navy Is Turning To Drag Queens For Help, and Stephen King’s Fiction Is Just Clumsy Left-Wing Moralism Now
Mark Steyn: The Mark Steyn Show Down Under!

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Category: Linkagery

Baby Mama Lawsuit Update

Posted on | May 2, 2023 | 1 Comment

That tabloid headline from November 2019 was perhaps the first clue for a lot of people that maybe it wouldn’t be a good idea to elect Joe Biden president. While it may not have been the worst scandal involving the Biden clan, the fact that Hunter had spawned a “love child” with a stripper from Arkansas — and then had to be forced by a court order to take a DNA test to confirm his paternity — was certainly an insight into the kind of moral character for which the Biden family is known.

Dude: Unprotected sex with a stripper? Are you crazy?

Crack addicts aren’t noted for their excellent decision-making skills, of course, but Joe Biden once called Hunter “the smartest guy I know,” a claim that Ace of Spades cashes in for laughs:

The Smartest Man Joe Biden Knows
Will Appear in Arkansas Court
to Plead Poverty and Beg a Judge
Not to Make Him Pay
for His Illegitimate Daughter

Permit me to suggest that if the smartest guy you know is a crack addict who had unprotected sex with a stripper, you must be surrounded by very stupid people. Which is to say, you’re a Democrat. But beyond the easy humor, there is actual news this week:

The Arkansas judge overseeing Hunter Biden’s long-running child support battle with his baby mama chastised the first son’s lawyers Monday for being stingy with his financial data.
Judge Holly Meyer rebuked the 53-year-old’s legal team during the two-hour proceedings, saying they wrongly concealed details of filings that had already been submitted to the court as part of the ongoing legal saga.
“The ability to redact is somewhat being abused,” the judge told Hunter’s attorneys before ordering them to refile some of those papers. It wasn’t immediately clear exactly what financial information was included in the filings.
Hunter appeared in a Batesville court as he seeks to reduce his monthly payments for the 4-year-old daughter he fathered with ex-stripper Lunden Roberts.
The Biden scion was required to hand over documents detailing his money situation after he reopened his paternity case last September to try to reduce his $20,000-per-month remittance.
The first son, who has never met his daughter with Roberts, had alleged he experienced a “substantial material change” in his income.
Meyer on Monday ordered Hunter to answer additional written questions about his money — including investments, his art sales and other financial transactions — after Roberts’ attorney Clinton Lancaster claimed he had so far provided “incomplete answers.”
Lancaster argued Hunter divulged neither who had purchased his art nor the estimated values of the pieces.
But Hunter’s attorneys hit back, saying the first son didn’t know the identities of the buyers as part of a purported arrangement to ensure they were unable to “influence” his father’s administration.
“He will not know. Someone else may know,” one of the attorneys told the judge.
Meyer informed Lancaster that he could “issue a subpoena” to force the gallery to divulge names of buyers and prices of the art, adding: “It’s a little incredible that there is no estimate of valuations.”
Both Hunter and Roberts will have to sit for a deposition in mid-June to answer questions under oath, the judge added during Monday’s hearing.
Roberts previously accused her former flame of withholding evidence in the ongoing paternity spat, arguing that Hunter should be held in contempt of court until he complies.
When the first son asked the court in September to reduce his monthly payments, it allowed Roberts to reopen the discovery process and demand the financial records. . . .
Meanwhile, Roberts’ lawyers have rejected Hunter’s claims of financial hardship, saying in court filings last week that he is actually “living lavishly.”
“He travels the world on the safest and most comfortable airplane in existence — Air Force One,” Lancaster wrote. “He also has some of the most expensive attorneys on planet Earth.”

Gosh, I wonder who’s footing the bill for that? Because the Bidens won’t explained how Hunter — who can’t afford child support — can somehow afford big-dollar lawyers, you could assert that Hunter’s legal bills are being paid by the DNC or George Soros or the Chinese Communist Party, and they can’t refute you. His finances are completely secret, and Hunter wouldn’t dare sue anyone for libel, because discovery is proverbially a bitch. Speaking of bitches, what about Lunden Roberts?

Ace quotes Jonathan Turley expressing sympathy for her:

In the Biden family, the four-year-old girl remains “she who must not be named” literally. Not only has President Biden refused to refer to her as a grandchild or even include a Christmas stocking with the other children, her father Hunter is fighting to prevent her from using the Biden name. Indeed, the only reason that Hunter is coming to the same state with his daughter is to seek to limit his child support.
The viciousness of the Biden family in dealing with this little girl is only matched by that of the media. Reporters who profess to support women and denounce deadbeat dads have either ignored this story or belittled her mother, Lunden Roberts.
Roberts is widely dismissed as a “former stripper.” That appears how she met Hunter, but it is often used to paint her in the same way that the media gleefully reported Hillary Clinton denouncing women involved with her husband as mere “bimbo eruptions.”
The media ignores Roberts because it wants to ignore what the Bidens have done collectively. This is one single mother’s story that is not considered fit to print.
Yes, Roberts was an exotic dancer. She used that job to go to one of the most expensive colleges in the country, George Washington University where I teach.

Well, OK, Professor Turley, but how many of your students are strippers? And how many of them have unprotected sex with crackheads? Because I’m guessing that such behavior is not so common among GWU students that one can shrug it off as telling us nothing about the character of Hunter Biden’s baby mama. Do I “belittle” Lunden Roberts in saying that she is a tawdry slut? Or am I somehow defending the Biden clan in saying this? God forbid! My point is that Hunter Biden has sex with tawdry sluts because no decent woman would associate with him. He is vile, scummy and immoral — which is to say, he’s a typical Democrat.

EIGHTY-ONE MILLION VOTES!

America is so doomed . . .

Category: Arkansas, Democrats, Scandal

‘Everybody’s Dead’: Seven Bodies Found at Oklahoma Sex Offender’s Home

Posted on | May 2, 2023 | 1 Comment

Jesse L. McFadden

In 2003, when he was 19 years old, Jesse McFadden of Oklahoma was convicted of first-degree rape and sentenced to 20 years in prison. In 2017, while still in prison, “he was accused of sexting an underage girl,” but despite this, was released from prison in 2020. He was scheduled to go to trial Monday “on charges of soliciting sexual conduct [or] communication with a minor by use of technology and a child pornography complaint.” Meanwhile, he had married a woman named Holly, and moved to a property near Henryetta, in Okmulgee County, about 50 miles south of Tulsa, with Holly and her three children, who included a teenage daughter named Tiffany. Over the weekend, two of Tiffany’s friends, Ivy Webster, 14, and Brittany Brewer, 16, who had been spending the night at the home were reported missing. Monday, the bodies of both missing girls — as well as Jesse McFadden, Holly, Tiffany and two others — were found on the Henryetta property:

Authorities believe the search for two missing Henryetta teens may have come to an end as seven bodies have been found Monday afternoon.
Okmulgee County Sheriff Eddy Rice, in a phone interview with Tulsa World, confirmed the bodies were discovered on property where Jesse McFadden resided.
“Everybody’s dead,” the sheriff said before having to quickly return to the scene of the investigation.

Yes, everybody’s dead — because that son of a bitch got out of prison.