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!

Amazon Warehouse Deals

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.

Category: Crime, Oklahoma

In The Mailbox: 05.01.23

Posted on | May 2, 2023 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 05.01.23

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Thanks to everyone who bought stuff through my Amazon links in April! It was very much appreciated!
Silicon Valley delenda est.

OVER THE TRANSOM
357 Magnum: Don’t Bring a Hammer To A Gunfight
EBL: MAGA I don’t give a Trump, also, Black Widow Evelyn Dick
Twitchy: Former Congressman Wonders – Can You Keep A Weiner Down? Better Dead Than Trans, and Mehdi Hasan’s Accidentally Hilarious Meltdown Over His Blue Check
Louder With Crowder: Alarming video shows transgender high school student beating the crap out of a girl. Or, the dude might have been trans?, Two bros with wicked mullets troll vegan protestors by munching KFC in front of them, and Little man punished for wearing a “there are only two genders” shirt goes off on his school board
Vox Popoli: With Tongues of Neoclowns, Be Very Afraid, Gell-Man Amnesia in Action, Neoclowns in Retreat, and Pfizer Knew Pregnancy Risks
Stoic Observations: The Relationship Commitment Elevator

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Conservative: Stuck in Khartoum, also, Murphy’s Financial Law
American Greatness: Gender Clinic Trained Elementary School Teachers on How to ‘Transition’ Little Kids, Hunter Biden’s Lawyers ‘Testing the Limits’ of Witness Intimidation By Contacting Potential Whistleblowers, and The Crazy Contours of the Crazier 2024 Election
American Power: Elon Musk on Real Time with Bill Maher, Newsmax Ratings Climb After Tucker Carlson’s Exit at Fox, and Uncool Blue Checks
American Thinker: Speak Now or Forever Hold Your Peace, Biden Will Be Running on His Record This Time, and Why Tucker Carlson was Doomed
Animal Magnetism: Goodbye, Blue Monday
Babalu Blog: Castro dictatorship calls on Cubans to attend May Day events on foot, bicycle, or on horses, Surprise! Biden Treasury Dept. approves car, truck, bus, and tractor exports to Cuba, Reports from Cuba: Starting in May, Cubans older than 13 won’t get chicken through the ration book, Cuban dictatorship courting Latin American tourists to fill empty hotel rooms, and Reports from Cuba: Rats and sewer water in the heart of the Cuban capital
BattleSwarm: Fire In The Night, also, Fire Breaks Out In Russia’s Only MLRS Factory
Behind The Black: Musk press conference on Starship/Superheavy launch, Radar antenna on Europe’s JUICE probe to Jupiter stuck, Viasat drops launch contract with Ariane-6, Exploring just one small corner of Valles Marineris, Mars’ Grand Canyon, and Environmentalists sue FAA, demanding it shut down Boca Chica and Starship
Cafe Hayek: “Common-Good Capitalism” Is Really “Person X’s-Good Statism”
CDR Salamander: Command Posts – Hunter Or Hunted?, also, Humility & Hard Questions Win Wars
Chicago Boyz: Worthwhile Reading, also, A Visit To Wendover Field
Da Tech Guy: The military OPHOLDs are here!, Fast Under the Fedora Thoughts, and If You Want to Know Why the BudLight stuff Needs to be Pushed Till they Squeal, This is it
Don Surber: RFK Jr. Is A Trojan Horse,
First Street Journal: It was never about tolerance; it was always about forced acceptance, also, Killadelphia – Another three bite the dust!
Gates Of Vienna: Think Bosnia, Not Gettysburg, Culture-Enriching Machetes on a School Bus, How Bad is Your Batch? and An Open Word to Markus Söder
The Geller Report: Here is How The Government Rigged The Election and Shielded Joe Biden From The ‘Laptop From Hell’, Preparing for New Onslaught, Biden Regime CUTTING NEW PATHS For Migrants To Enter USA, and “It’s a Bloodbath”: FOX Ratings Collapse, Loses Half It’s Audience, MSNBC Wins Demo Each Hour From 4-10 PM
Hogewash: A Foreground Star and a Background Galaxy, Team Kimberlin Post of the Day, Sizing Up a Black Hole, and Helene
Hollywood In Toto: ‘Egypt’s Jon Stewart’ Calls Cancel Culture a ‘Myth’, Reporters Rage as Free Speech Heroes Bill Maher, Elon Musk Meet, and Why Hudson Hawk Is the Bruce Williest Bruce Willis Movie
Legal Insurrection: Norfolk VA School Board Eyeing Planned Parenthood’s Sex-Ed Program, “He shows his genitals in the locker room”, Penn State Encourages Students to “Celebrate Their Identities Separately With ‘Affinity Graduations’”, Only U.S. Factory Making Key Explosive for Artillery Rounds and Tomahawk Missiles Still Offline After It Blew Up in 2021, Conservative Reforms at New College in Florida Are Sending the Left Into a Panic, and AFT’s Randi Weingarten Shut Down on Twitter, CNN After Falsely Claiming She Fought to Reopen Schools
Nebraska Energy Observer: Saturday – just for you, Jubilate Deo, and A New Month
Outkick: Big 12 Headed South Of The Border To Mexico For Basketball, Football Games, Will Levis’ Sister Seems Ready For A Revenge Tour After NFL Draft Disaster, Biological Male Cyclist Does The Unthinkable, Somehow Smokes Biological Females To Win Tour Event, Overall Title, Chargers Coach Brandon Staley Thinks TCU Is On The Same Level As Alabama And Georgia, Pirates Dugout Goes Nuts After Drew Maggi’s First Big League Hit, and Robert Kennedy Jr. Says Biological Males Should Not Be Playing Women’s Sports
Power Line: Party of the Rich, Subramanian’s silence, Eat Meat!, and This Year’s Default Drama
Protein Wisdom Reborn: A Language Primer,
Shark Tank: Broward Schools Vote To Recognize National Day of Prayer
Shot In The Dark: Open Letter To State Rep. Vang, Communicating With The MN DFL Part VI, and Making That Problem Go Away
STUMP: Podcast: Danger! Fire, Hurricanes, Drowning, and More
The Political Hat: Victims of Communism Day, 2023
This Ain’t Hell: The Air Force’s Newest Bomber… the A-10?, Army Aviation Safety Stand Down, Artificial Intelligence Propaganda, Bar Backtracks After Losing Business, Better Late Than Never in Sudan, and Captain Royce Williams recounts his heroics over Korea
Transterrestrial Musings: On Race And Crime, Saul Alinsky Smiles, and News You Can Use
Victory Girls: Can America Still Be Saved?, Texas Mass Murder Presents Inconvenient Truths, and Biden’s Army Of Influencers Begets Cringetocking
Volokh Conspiracy: Victims of Communism Day—2023, “Petitioner’s Second Amendment Rights Are Not Dependent on Her Spouse’s Acquisition…”, and The New York Times Uncovered The Worst-Kept Secret In Academia
Watts Up With That: Joe Biden Wants Every US Military Vehicle To Be Climate Friendly, “No Bricks, No Glass, No Cement” – What Net Zero 2050 Demands According to Government-Funded Report, XR Founder Moans About His Carrots, and L A Times Electric Bill Increase Editorial Conceals California’s Incompetent Energy & Climate Policies that Hugely Drive-Up Costs
Weasel Zippers: Report: Biden Is Only Functional Six Hours A Day, Five Days A Week, Planned Parenthood Kills 375K Babies While Raking In Record Public Funding In FY2022, DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas Has No Idea Why Border Patrol Union Calls Him “National Disgrace”, Bernie Sanders Says No Dem Will Challenge Biden Because “Fear Of The Growth Of Right-Wing Extremism”, and Texas Man Who Murdered Neighbors Execution-Style Is Illegal Immigrant Who Was Deported 5 Times
The Federalist: I Wish Modern Architecture Would Stop Assaulting My Eyes, Minnesota Democrat Signs Bill Banning Free Speech For Therapists Of People Struggling With Sexual Distress, Republicans Proved They Aren’t Holding Anyone ‘Hostage’ On Raising The Debt Limit, and Exhausted Republican Voters Should Be More Skeptical Of RFK Jr.
Mark Steyn: If It’s Not Scottish: Bill Forsyth and Local Hero, Tal Bachman: Memento Mori, and Home on the Range

Amazon Warehouse Deals

Category: Linkagery

Illegal Aliens Murdering Illegal Aliens

Posted on | May 1, 2023 | 1 Comment

The mainstream media spent days telling Americans that a TEXAS MAN had murdered five of his neighbors, and some of us were like, really? Because the name Francisco isn’t like, say, Bubba. And while I usually try to avoid jumping to conclusions in the immediate aftermath of such incidents, my hunch was that maybe Francisco wasn’t in the country legally. Likewise, the names of the victims didn’t exactly seem very Texan.

So it turns out that, not only is Francisco Oropesa an illegal immigrant from Mexico who had previously been deported five times, but that the five people he killed were illegal immigrants from Honduras. We are not only importing murderers, we’re also importing murder victims. I’m sure this was what Emma Lazarus must have had in mind.

Category: Crime, Immigration, Texas

Another Soros-Funded Disaster

Posted on | May 1, 2023 | 1 Comment

When we talk about crime-riddled cities, Chicago, New York and Philadelphia get a lot more attention than St. Louis, but on a per-capita basis, crime is much worse in St. Louis, which regularly leads New Orleans and Baltimore as the most violent major city in America. Alas, so many people have fled St. Louis in recent decades that it almost doesn’t qualify as a “major” city now, with fewer than 300,000 residents. (Henderson, Nevada, Greensboro, North Carolina, and Irvine, California, are all bigger than St. Louis now.) Things have been going downhill in St. Louis for a long time, so it would be wrong to say that the 2016 election of Kim Gardner as Circuit Attorney for the city has caused the decline; rather, the scandal-ridden tenure of Gardner is symptomatic of the social decay in a city that has long since passed the point of no return. Only in a desolate urban nightmare could someone with such little aptitude for office have gotten elected, and it is impossible to pity the residents of St. Louis, as they have gotten exactly what they deserve for electing a prosecutor who ran on an anti-law-enforcement platform.

Kim Gardner has never bothered to hide her hatred of police. In many cases, she has refused to prosecute criminals, and she has driven out nearly all the experienced prosecutors in her office:

St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner’s Office has dismissed more than 9,000 cases, frequently as they were about to go to trial according to Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey’s latest filing.
Judges have been “forced” to dismiss more than 2,700 cases because of the prosecution’s failure to provide defendants with discovery and speedy trials, according to the filing.
The few assistant attorneys who remain must endure a “toxic environment” that has driven dedicated attorneys — burdened with unbearable caseloads — to exhaustion and medical emergencies, Bailey said in the filing.
All are among new allegations Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey filed [March 21] against Gardner in a 121-page amended petition as part of a rare legal maneuver to remove her from office.
Bailey began the quo warranto process as it’s known in February, and has since reviewed more than 30,000 documents and data from the St. Louis City Circuit Court and St. Louis Comptroller’s Office, according to a press release from the Attorney General’s Office.

What prompted the state Attorney General to take action against Gardner was a horrific incident in February involving 21-year-old Daniel Riley.

Riley had been charged in an August 2020 armed robbery but was released on bond and then, despite repeatedly violating the terms of his release, was still on the streets in February 2023 when he was speeding in an Audi SUV, failed to yield at an intersection and caused a crash that led to a teenage volleyball player from Tennessee — who was in St. Louis for a tournament, and just happened to be on the sidewalk at the time of the crash — having both of her legs amputated.

While it is perhaps predictable that Missouri’s Republican attorney general would be trying to force Gardner out of office, even Democrats in St. Louis have now started turning against her. A local defense attorney, David Mueller, has announced himself as a Democratic primary challenger to Gardner, and other local Democrats are also expected to toss their hats into the ring. And last week, St. Louis Circuit Court Judge Michael Noble denounced Gardner’s office as a “rudderless ship of chaos” in a hearing on whether she should be held in contempt of court. “It appears that Ms. Gardner has complete indifference and a conscious disregard for the judicial process,” he said.

Gardner’s campaign received about $116,000 from political action committees backed by billionaire George Soros. We are told that identifying Soros as a funder of liberal DAs is promoting anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, but the question is, do Jews actually support this dangerous “progressive” lunacy? If not, then it is incumbent on Jews to denounce Soros — and indeed, many have done so loudly — and to stop this baseless smear of Soros’ critics. How is it a “conspiracy theory” to point out how Soros is spending his money to affect elections? And if the Anti-Defamation League really wants to discourage anti-Semitism, why aren’t they criticizing Soros, rather than defending him? Because I think every decent citizen — Jew or Gentile, black or white, Republican or Democrats — should consider Soros indefensible, given the results he has obtained in St. Louis and other cities where his money has helped elect “progressive” prosecutors like Kim Gardner, who remains unapologetic:

Gardner shrugged off the ongoing court battle to remove her from office as “a witch hunt” designed to discourage young reformers from going to law school or pursuing a career in the criminal justice arena.
“I’m not leaving. I’m not resigning. I’m not doing nothing,” she said to rousing cheers. “You gonna have to remove me.” . . .
Gardner walked out of the Central Baptist Church Saturday morning after delivering a defiant 13-minute speech to about 60 loyal supporters who awarded her with a t-shirt and heralded her as “the Mother of Justice.” . . .
“I’ve been criminalized every day because of my black skin, because I’m Black,” she said. “I’ve never had a fair shake.”

Playing the race card? Really? Despicable to the end . . .

'I ain’t leaving': Soros-backed prosecutor Kim Gardner refuses to step down from 'rudderless ship of chaos' https://t.co/R4OqOws48h via @americanwire_

— Bo Snerdley (@BoSnerdley) April 30, 2023

“The circuit attorney's office appears to be a rudderless ship of chaos. Kim Gardner is the Circuit Attorney, and it is her duty to manage the caseload of each staff member. Chris Desilets has approximately 104 felony cases. Any prudent practitioner would expect such a caseload… pic.twitter.com/tbfMqCbTRc

— FOX2now (@FOX2now) April 27, 2023

Category: Crime, Missouri

Rule 5 Sunday: Paige Spiranac

Posted on | May 1, 2023 | 2 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho

I’m a little fuzzy on what all these influencers in social media are influencing; sometimes it just seems like a (mostly) wholesome grift allowing pretty girls to show off their bodies while keeping (most of) their clothes on and showing off Stuff and Things gifted to them by people wanting them to promote said Things and Stuff. One of the more successful influencers who’s come to my attention through Outkick and similar outlets is Paige Spiranac, who apparently didn’t make it in the LPGA but is wildly successful promoting Golf Things. Here we have Ms. Spiranac apparently promoting golf balls.
Ceterum autem censeo Silicon Valley esse delendam.