The Other McCain

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

FMJRA 2.0: A Utilitarian View Of The Monitor’s Fight

Posted on | April 23, 2023 | Comments Off on FMJRA 2.0: A Utilitarian View Of The Monitor’s Fight

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Good to be back in the ruts; getting used to the thin air again and not subsisting mostly on gas station food, even if Maverik is a cut above 7-11 and Speedway. It’s no Sheetz or Wawa, either, though I think it aspires to reach that level.
I am continuing my gradual purchase of the Klaus Schulze collection La Vie Electronique, from whose Volume 4 the SOTD comes.
Ceterum autem censeo Silicon Valley esse delendam.

Media and “celebrities” this week

How Did He Get Those Secrets?
EBL
357 Magnum

Best Aspiring Rapper Update Ever?
The DaleyGator
EBL
357 Magnum

Violent Chaos in Chicago and…Alabama?
EBL

Professor Demonizes ‘Wealthy White Men’ for ‘Violence, Deceit, Irresponsibility’
EBL
A View From The Beach
357 Magnum
Flappr

An Argument for Gun Control?
The DaleyGator
EBL
357 Magnum
Flappr

Teens Charged in Dadeville Massacre
EBL
357 Magnum

Portland Is Now a ‘No-Go Zone’
The Pirate’s Cove
EBL
A View From The Beach
357 Magnum

Three Hundred Years in Prison?
EBL

Don Lemon Is on a Roll
EBL

Dadeville Update: Six Suspects Now in Custody for ‘Sweet 16’ Massacre
First Street Journal
EBL

In The Mailbox: 04.21.23
EBL
A View From The Beach

Top linkers for the week ending April 21:

  1.  EBL (11)
  2.  357 Magnum (6)

Thanks to everyone for the links. A wider selection of of posts returns this week. 

Amazon Warehouse Deals




Category: FMJRA Award

Tranny Canned: Bud Light Marketing Executive Now on ‘Leave of Absence’

Posted on | April 23, 2023 | 2 Comments

Dylan Mulvaney is a show-business scam — an unemployed actor invented a “female” character, turned this into a TikTok comedy channel and, because millions of people are too stupid to see through the scam, became a viral online sensation. His agent was able to persuade a bunch of companies to sponsor Dylan as an “influencer,” which is how he ended up with his face on his own personalized Bud Light can.

Well, conservatives pounced and seized on this — whenever lefties do something offensive, the “backlash” becomes the story, which is a deflection, but never mind — and the damage to Anheuser-Busch’s profit picture was serious enough that the company had to take action:

Bud Light Marketing Vice President Alissa Heinerscheid has taken a leave of absence from the company amid ongoing controversy over the brand’s decision to bring on transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney as an ambassador.
Bud Light announced that Heinerschneid, who has been in charge of the brand since June 2022, would be replaced by Budweiser global marketing Vice President Todd Allen, according to Ad Age. In a March 23 podcast appearance, Heinerschneid said that she wanted to pivot from the brand’s traditionally “fratty” image. . . .
“I’m a businesswoman, I had a really clear job to do when I took over Bud Light, and it was ‘This brand is in decline, it’s been in a decline for a really long time, and if we do not attract young drinkers to come and drink this brand there will be no future for Bud Light,‘” Heinerschneid said.
The brand’s decision to partner with Mulvaney sparked a boycott, which resulted in the company losing $6 billion in market cap. Notably, country music stars such as John Rich and Travis Tritt both denounced the brand and announced they would be joining the boycott.
Bud Light initially tried to defend its partnership with Mulvaney, citing that the brand tries to connect with “audiences across various demographics” and that Mulvaney was only one of “hundreds of influencers across our brands.”
On April 14th, Budweiser CEO Brendan Whitworth responded to the controversy with a statement saying that he never intended to be a part of a divisive conversation.
“We never intended to be part of a discussion that divides people,” Whitworth wrote, “We are in the business of bringing people together over a beer.”

Unfortunately, “leave of absence” is not a synonym for fired:

So if you were boycotting Anheuser-Busch, don’t be deceived into quitting your boycott because of this token repentance. (I prefer Corona, Yuengling or Flying Dog, so the boycott is irrelevant to my choices.) Liberals seem to think of “diversity” as carte blanche to insult people, with complete immunity from consequences. When there actually are consequences, liberals believe they’re being victimized by hate.

Here’s a Washington Post columnist:

Dylan Mulvaney, a trans influencer with more than 10 million followers, documented her transition over the course of a year. To celebrate Day 365 of her journey, Bud Light sent her some personalized cans of beer. She unveiled them on TikTok in a partnership with Bud Light’s parent company, Anheuser-Busch.
This attempt on Bud Light’s part to be forward-thinking about how its customers live and love has been met with a backlash by one group of people who seem to believe that another group of people should not exist. Kid Rock used his gun to shoot several cases of the beer; another guy destroyed a can of Bud Light with a baseball bat in a typical digital tantrum.
For some, trans people represent just the latest Babadook, a complex fear they cannot tolerate.
A note to those folks who are upset that Anheuser-Busch relied on a trans woman as a quasi-spokesperson: Whether you like it or not, queer people have been drinking “your beer” for decades. In fact, as long as there’s been beer, queer people have been drinking it.
Mulvaney’s celebration for some reason threatened the very existence of a whole bunch of guys who aren’t ready for that reality. . . .

Note the flat assertion that transgender propaganda is “forward-thinking,” and that critics are motivated by irrational fear. If you thought the beginning of that column was insulting, you should read its entirety, basically claiming that anyone who doesn’t celebrate transgenderism is childish, and lecturing readers about how the controversy highlights “problematic” ideas of masculinity. But is it really “a whole bunch of guys” who are insulted by Dylan Mulvaney, whose parody is to genuine womanhood what “Amos & Andy” was to black culture?



 

 

Category: The Transgender Cult

Crazy Moms Are Dangerous

Posted on | April 22, 2023 | 1 Comment

Last month, I commented on this situation (“Hiding In Plain Sight: Jeanette Jennings and Transgender Munchausen by Proxy”) wherein the TV reality show personality known as “Jazz Jennings” was obviously being manipulated by his/“her” mother, Jeanette, in what was clearly a case of Munchausen syndrome by proxy.

This psychodrama has been playing out for eight years on the TLC series I Am Jazz, the first-season description of which reads:

Jazz Jennings is the typical 14-year-old girl in all ways but one — Jazz was assigned male at birth. Her supportive family accepted Jazz as a girl at a young age, but with her teenage years upon them, they’re in for a whole new set of challenges.

Question: What were the producers and network executives thinking? Did it occur to any of them that, in choosing a bizarre experiment as the subject of a “reality TV” program, they might make themselves liable for blame if the experiment went awry? And of course, it has gone awry, in ways that would be comical were it not for the essentially tragic nature of the case. There’s no need to list all the details of what has gone wrong with Jazz’s “transition,” but suffice it to say that there was a lack of foresight about the possible consequences of early dosages of so-called “puberty blockers,” which had the effect of making “gender affirming” surgery more complicated for Jazz and, as in the case of Canadian tranny Jessica Yaniv’s “gaping ax wound,” there were complications.

How many times do people need to be warned about such matters?

Never bet against The Gods of the Copybook Headings, as I’ve often said. There are reasons why proverbs of ancient wisdom are of continuing value, and people are apt to rediscover the enduring truth of these adages — often in brutal and disastrous ways — whenever they choose to ignore ancient wisdom. Speaking of which . . .

This is a Hebrew word (toebah or toevah) meaning “abomination,” which appears repeatedly in the Old Testament, perhaps most pertinently in Leviticus 18:22 and Deuteronomy 22:5. One doesn’t have to do too much Googling to see that pro-LGBT activists in recent years have piled up a veritable mountain of articles claiming that these verses do not really mean what they have been traditionally understood to mean. As someone who believes in religious liberty, this kind of stuff annoys me. If you don’t want to be Christian, fine — go be an idolatrous heathen, an atheist, a hedonist, a Communist, whatever. But don’t presume to tell me that God condones your favorite kinkiness, when there are thousands of years of tradition contradicting your self-serving claim. Nowadays we have a crowd of self-identified “experts” who presume themselves qualified to lecture us about Bronze Age customs of the ancient Near East which, they claim, show in cultural context that Jews and Christians have spent centuries misunderstanding these Bible texts, and if you’re inclined to be persuaded by such “experts,” fine — you are free to go to hell in the time and manner of your own choosing. But stop lecturing me about it, as if I’m some ignorant child in need of your tutoring.

Excuse me for that digression in sermonizing, but my point remains: Never bet against The Gods of the Copybook Headings, because they’ve never been wrong yet, and my hunch is they’re going to maintain their undefeated record into perpetuity. As it applies to the case of Jazz Jennings, the producers and network executives responsible for this reality TV series evidently didn’t consider the factor of hubris when they decided to televise this particular medical experiment. What they apparently wished to do was to demonstrate how acceptance — the “supportive family accepted Jazz as a girl at a young age” — was the appropriate stance toward transgenderism, and they must have expected that the “whole new set of challenges” facing Jazz as a teenager would serve to validate that pro-acceptance message. Unfortunately for them (and for Jazz), the Gods of the Copybook Headings had other ideas, and among the “challenges” that emerged was one that the producers apparently failed to anticipate, namely that the “gender affirmation” surgery for Jazz would go badly awry. To date, Jazz has undergone four separate surgeries, as the licensed genital butchers have tried to correct complications arising from the first botched operation.

Here, I must state that the phrase “botched operation” is an expression of opinion, as I am merely a journalist, and am not qualified to judge cases of medical malpractice, although I do know enough about libel law to understand the importance of inserting this disclaimer. So if I use the phrase “modern-day Mengele” to describe the person who performed this surgery on Jazz, this expression of my personal opinion cannot be interpreted as defamatory, as a matter of law. Meanwhile . . .

Tim Pool took notice of scenes in recent episodes of I Am Jazz in which the mother of Jazz Jennings said things which, Tim says, ought to be enough to get her prosecuted for abuse:

 

For the sake of discretion, I’m not going to quote any of what Jazz Jennings’ mother said, and if readers don’t watch that video, they won’t understand the depths of insanity involved in this case, or why Tim Pool is demanding that authorities pursue a criminal investigation of this case. You might also want to read “Does Jazz Jennings Regret Transitioning?” in The American Spectator for more background. The point, however, is that Jazz Jennings is a victim of her crazy mother, who has too many problems in her life to worry about bringing a spurious libel suit against an honest journalist exercising his First Amendment right to express his personal opinion, as Bert the Samoan Lawyer might say.

In the matter of First Amendment law, however, I am clearly within my rights to state as a fact that Crazy People Are Dangerous.



 

 

Category: The Transgender Cult

In The Mailbox: 04.21.23

Posted on | April 22, 2023 | 2 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Finally done in the tax mines and back home in Tonopah, getting used to the high altitude again. Usual weekend deadlines for the usual weekend posts.
Ceterum autem censeo Silicon Valley esse delendam.

Mayor Pete’s solution to the infrastructure problem

OVER THE TRANSOM
Ninety Miles From Tyranny: The 90 Miles Mystery Box Episode #2054
EBL: AI Created Rule 5, Shot Heard Round The World, The Treachery of Images, and Charges Dropped Against Alec Baldwin
Twitchy: Lauren Boebert Triggers, Then Owns Mayor Pete, Occasional Cortex Invokes Natural Disasters To Whine About New Blue-Check Tariff, and MTG Creates New & Appropriate Nickname For Eric Swalwell, Massive Leftist Butthurt Ensues
Louder With Crowder: ‘I’m A Man of God’: Based Grandpa Walks Out, Refuses To Dance With Drag Queen In Competition, Elon Musk’s response to Alyssa Milano’s Twitter meltdown is s***posting perfection, and Chaos ensues when guest lectures Piers Morgan that he’s ‘not allowed’ to be disgusted by Sam Smith
Vox Popoli: An Obvious Solution, The Failure of the Materialist Model, There is No Thucydides Trap, The War on Clown World, Losing Their Free Trade Religion, and Nothing Works Anymore So Plan Accordingly
According To Hoyt: Illusions, Unstable Equilibrium, Saying Goodbye, and Funny Only Once
Monster Hunter Nation: A Letter to Epic Fantasy Readers – I know Rothfuss and Martin hurt you, but it’s time to get over it and move on., also, So the Cancerous Tumor on the Prolapsed Anus of Fandom is Upset With My Letter About George Martin’s Laziness Fucking Over a Generation of New Writers. Oh Well!
Stoic Observations: What I Don’t Know About Women, also, Save Your Mind With BUckets
Gab News:

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: A Brutal Conclusion to a Successful Fast, Death to Women’s Sports, and Can we criticise our priests?
American Conservative: Learning From Vlad the Impaler, Originalists Against Satanism, More Than Teen Spirit, and A Free Republic Depends on Worker Power
American Greatness: Florida Passes Bill Enacting Death Penalty for Sexual Abusers of Children, Biden Vows to Give $1 Billion to U.N. Climate Fund that Sends Money to Red China, IRS Whistleblower Says DOJ is Obstructing Criminal Investigations of Hunter Biden, and IRS Whistleblower Claims to Have Information That Contradicts AG Garland’s Sworn Testimony to Congress
American Power: Alleged Pedophile Throws Himself Under Wheels of Utility Van, West Coast Cities Are Letting Drug Addicts Kill Themselves, and In Test Flight, SpaceX’s Starship Explodes Shortly After Launch
American Thinker: Biden’s Susceptibility to Blackmail has Unleashed Domestic and International Chaos, Both American Political Parties Have Adopted Lenin’s Strategy for the Destruction of Capitalism, and Netflix’s Black Cleopatra Exposed
Animal Magnetism: Animal’s Daily Hate Speech News, Animal’s Daily Biden Corruption News, Animal’s Daily Threat Assessment News, and Rule Five Lost Boys Friday
Babalu Blog: Members of Congress call on PAHO to punish Cuba’s dictatorship for enslaving doctors, Cuba’s Castro dictatorship ‘re-elects’ its sock puppet president for another term, Reports from Cuba: How has Cuba’s economy fared under Diaz-Canel? His five years in numbers, and UN finally admits Cubans are going hungry
BattleSwarm: Ex-LA Sheriff Alex Villanueva Discusses The Homeless Industrial Complex, Ninth Circuit To Berserkley – No, You Can’t Ban Natural Gas. Not Yours, Has The Ukrainian Counteroffensive Already Begun?, and LinkSwarm for April 22, 2023
Behind The Black: Starship/Superheavy did not explode!, The strange terrain in the basement of Mars, India’s Modi government releases its new space policy, ULA delays first launch of Vulcan to June at the earliest, and Today’s blacklisted Americans: NY bans whites from honoring American Indians in school nicknames
Cafe Hayek: Beware of ESG Investing, Which Proponents of Capitalism Believe Themselves NOT to Promote the Common Good?, To Repeat: Industrial Policy Is Naive and Blind Arrogance, and Phil Magness Debates Woody Holton on the ‘1619 Project’
CDR Salamander: Doomsday Inertia, The VA & Suicide Prevention, There’s Still Time To Get It Right, and Fullbore Friday
Chicago Boyz: I’m Surprised That He is Surprised, Quote of the Day, Retrotech, Revitalized, and DARVO
Da Tech Guy: Let’s go Brandon – Chicago exodus accelerates as Walmart closes four stores, My local leaders turn down the feds, South Africa, the Future of Chicago, Six Quick Thoughts on the Upcoming Boston “Satancon” under the Fedora, and Hello from Zilla
Dana Loesch: Man Charged For Shooting Teen Through His Front Door, also, Charges Dropped Against Alec Baldwin For Killing Halyna Hutchins
Don Surber: Save Your State – Vote Republican, Fox Shows It’s Disney Lite, and End The FBI Blackmail
First Street Journal: People are investing in nice housing in parts of Philly, but if the city doesn’t address rampant crime, such will eventually cease, Danielle Outlaw isn’t just toast, and The Amazoning of our lives
Gates Of Vienna: Germany Says Goodbye to Nuclear Power Plants, The Great Replacement: French and Italian Perspectives, Germania Delenda Est, The Invasion and Ethnic Cleansing of a Small Archipelago, and Yesterday’s Conspiracy Theory Becomes Today’s Fact
The Geller Report: Bill Gates Donated Over $80 million To Org that Teaches 10-Year-Olds How to Become “Sex Workers”, Oversight Committee Has Evidence of Biden Family Connections to Human Trafficking of Prostitutes from US, Russia, Ukraine, and NO END: Biden Announces New Ukraine Military Aid Package of Another $325 Million
Hogewash: Team Kimberlin Post of the Day, Everything Is Proceeding As I Have Foreseen, Looking Upward From A Balloon, and When a Friend Falls
Hollywood In Toto: Wicked Games Goes All-In on Style, Lack of Substance, Candace Owens’ Greatest Lie Censored…with No Repercussions?, To Catch a Killer Evokes Real-World Fears of Mass Shooters, and Landau: Steven Crowder Censored Me, Fellow Comic
The Lid: Calif. Democrats Floating Law to Take Kids Away from Parents Who Aren’t Woke Enough, Afghanistan Surrender Was A Tragedy Biden Caused; Now He’s Blaming Others, and Maybe It’s Time To Fess Up, We Jews DO Run The World
Legal Insurrection: Twitter #FauciFiles Drops, Revealing Collusion Between Platform and Big Pharma, ‘People are Going to Die’: The Great Twitter Meltdown Over the Loss of Legacy Checkmarks, U. Chicago Refuses to Recognize TPUSA as Official Campus Club, Dem Rep. Rosa DeLauro Praises Pete Buttigieg for Promoting Female Crash Test Dummies to Promote Gender Equity, and Leftists Protest Matt Walsh at University of Iowa, Hack His Twitter and Personal Email Accounts
Nebraska Energy Observer: The Celtic Last Stand, Truth, and The Slow, Painful Death of Chi Town
Outkick: Former Cardinals GM Says Nick Bosa Warned Him Not To Draft Kyler Murray, Stephen Jackson Defends Dillon Brooks’ Trash Talk, New College Football Rule Would Keep Clock Running After First Downs, Heidi Klum Once Again Tests Instagram’s X-Rated Patience With G-String Post, NFL Suspends Five Players For Gambling, Including Four Detroit Lions, and Mark Davis Is NOT Happy About The A’s Moving To Las Vegas
Power Line: Some Small Signs of Sanity?, Thoughts from the ammo line, Carve ‘Em Up!, and Feeling Blue: The Check(mark) Is Not in the Mail
Protein Wisdom Reborn: The United States Of Queer, also, Libertarian Utopianism Was Always Bound To Fail
Shark Tank: Rubio & Scott Call For Waivers To Ease S. Florida Fuel Shortage
Shot In The Dark: Stochastic Terror Part I, Blue America Calling, Stochastic Terror Part II – Whitewashed, and Controlled Demolition Part III
STUMP: Video: U.S. Mortality Through the Pandemic, part 2 — Differences by State, Podcast: Financial Reporting v. Budgeting: SC Comptroller Resigns Over $3.5 Billion Error, and The French Continue to Protest Over Retirement Age Changes
The Political Hat: Designated Oppression, Green Authoritarianism: Planetary “Right To Health”; Killing Diesel In California; The Nevada “Green Amendment”, and Electric Equity – To Each According To Their Electricity Consumption
This Ain’t Hell:  Charges against Alec Baldwin dropped?, US foreign aid intended for the Afghan people might be going to the Taliban instead, Flushed toilet at military housing resulted in toilet water dripping from multiple spots on the kitchen ceiling, Valor Friday, and Ukraine to receive $325 million in military aid, includes HIMARS rounds
Transterrestrial Musings: Climate “Tipping Points”, Paganism, Anti-DeSantis Imbecility, Mocking The Trans Cult, and Ariane 6
Victory Girls: Do the Irish Still Want to Come to America?, FBI Is Stalling The Release Of Audrey Hale Manifesto, Fetterman’s Remarks At Hearing Are Alarming And Sad, and IRS Whistleblower Implicates Merrick Garland
Volokh Conspiracy: Judge James C. Ho’s Remarks on Justice Thomas and Judge Kacsmaryk, Russian Opposition Leader Vladimir Kara-Murza’s Powerful Final Statement to the Court, and Unanimous Supreme Court Affirms Right to Challenge Federal Agencies in Federal Court
Watts Up With That: Is Russia Preparing to Attack Offshore Wind Turbine Infrastructure?, Ford F-150 Lightning Spectacular EV Fire, New York Goes Full Central Planning for The Electricity Sector, and Scientific American – Social Bullying is the Best Motivator for Green Behaviour
Weasel Zippers: Michelle Obama Scolds Americans For Having Second Amendment Rights, UN-Backed Report Suggests Normalizing Pedophilia, PETA Says New York City Shouldn’t Kill “Sensitive” Rats, Biden Admin Cannot Assure Congress We Are Not Currently Funding The Taliban, Hakeem Jeffries Says Biological Men Playing In Women’s Sports Is An “Issue That Doesn’t Exist”, and Occasional Cortex Says Raises For Police Officers Are “Misplaced,” Decries “Militarized” NYPD
The Federalist: Louisville Shooter Killed Five To Get Firearms Banned —  Democrats Are Happy To Oblige, Dennis Prager Is Dead Wrong About Pornography, Whistleblower Points To Biden Admin Obstructing Hunter Biden Tax Probe, Transgender-Identified Montana Lawmaker Censured For ‘Hate-Filled’ Comments, Despite Drugs, Sex, And Serial Killers, Bret Easton Ellis Leaves Readers Cold, and Feinstein, Fetterman, And Biden Illustrate Democrats’ Double Standard On Mental Acuity
Mark Steyn: They Want You Dead, Walking Toward the Fire, Decadence and Decline, and Live Around the Planet: Friday April 21st

Amazon Warehouse Deals




Category: Linkagery

Dadeville Update: Six Suspects Now in Custody for ‘Sweet 16’ Massacre

Posted on | April 21, 2023 | 1 Comment

When we last updated on Wednesday, two teenage brothers from Tuskegee, Ty Reik McCullough, 17, and Travis McCullough, 16, had been charged in last weekend’s mass shooting at a “Sweet 16” birthday party in Dadesville, Alabama, that left four dead and dozens injured. Late Wednesday night, Wilson LaMar Hill Jr., 20, of Auburn was added to the list of those arrested and charged in the shooting, and then yesterday, authorities announced the arrest of Johnny Letron Brown, 20, of Tuskegee, and Willie George Brown, 19, of Auburn. Later, it was announced that a sixth suspect, also from Tuskegee, was under arrest, but because he is only 15 years old, we don’t yet know his name.

As I said Wednesday, the biggest mystery is the motive. What would inspire six young men, ages 15 to 20, from out of town to grab their pistols and head to Dadeville to kill a bunch of people? Auburn is 25 miles from Dadeville, and Tuskegee is 35 miles away, so what was it that made Dadeville their target? Among those killed in the massacre was Phil Dowdell, a local football star who had a scholarship to my alma mater, Jacksonville State University. Dowdell’s sister was the birthday girl at the party, and it occurs to me that this deadly incident might have grown out of some kind of overheated high-school football rivalry.

But that would be completely crazy. You’re going to murder people because of football? The South is notorious for its quasi-religious devotion to football, but this would just be too much.

Oh, and I suppose I should mention that today I am once again watching CNN (so you don’t have to), and it seems the network lost interest in the Dadeville mass shooting just about the time cops released the mug shots of the suspects. Coincidence? I don’t think so.



 

 

Category: Alabama, Crime

Don Lemon Is on a Roll

Posted on | April 21, 2023 | Comments Off on Don Lemon Is on a Roll

So to speak:

2024 presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy angered “CNN This Morning” host Don Lemon during a debate on gun rights for Black Americans while on-air.
In the heated exchange, Lemon took offense to Ramaswamy’s recent statements at an NRA conference last week about Democrats in the south instituting gun laws to prevent African Americans from protecting their newfound rights in the post-Civil War era.
Lemon reduced Ramaswamy’s point to a declaration that the Civil War was fought merely to give Black people gun rights and berated him for it, telling him the statement “insulted” him as a Black American.
The CNN host further told Ramaswamy that he had no right to talk about the experience of Black people in America because he’s not Black.
Ramaswamy pushed back and insisted that Lemon was misunderstanding his point.
He also argued that both men should be able to talk about the issue regardless of their skin color.
In the heated crosstalk, Lemon also snapped at his producers who were apparently distracting him over his earpiece.
The intense live debate came after the hosts played a moment from Ramaswamy’s speech to the NRA in Indianapolis.

Need I remind you which show beats CNN in the ratings?

Paw Patrol! Paw Patrol! Whenever you’re in trouble!
Paw Patrol! Paw Patrol! We’ll be there on the double!
No job’s too big, no pup’s too small.
Paw Patrol, we’re on the roll!

Headline: “CNN insiders baffled why network stands by Don Lemon as controversies mount: ‘One of the biggest mysteries’.”



 

 

Category: CNN

Three Hundred Years in Prison?

Posted on | April 20, 2023 | 2 Comments

Earlier this month, two burglars broke into a pawn shop in Macon, Georgia, and stole more than 60 firearms. It did not take long for police to solve the crime. A week later, they executed a search warrant in Cordele — more than 50 miles south of Macon — and recovered about half the stolen guns at the home of 32-year-old Rontavious Jackson. He has been charged with 31 counts of receiving stolen property, 32 counts of possession of a weapon by a convicted felon, and 1 count of theft by receiving stolen property. Every time a mass shooting makes national headlines, Joe Biden issues a statement blaming the NRA and Republicans for opposing “commonsense gun safety reforms,” as if these “reforms” would have prevented the incident in question. But murder is already illegal; why would criminals — who, by definition, do not obey laws — be deterred by new gun laws, seeing as how they’re obviously willing to ignore laws against murder? Of course, anyone expecting logic from Democrats is doomed to be disappointed, but why do the media swallow these bogus arguments for new gun-control laws without question, when the basic flaw of such arguments is so obvious?

However many laws you may impose to restrict the sale of firearms, these so-called “reforms” won’t stop criminals from stealing guns. Just think, for example, about Derrick Gathers, who recently shot a state trooper in South Carolina. The trooper made a traffic stop on Gathers, who was driving 20 mph over the speed limit, with no license and no insurance. Did I mention that Gathers is a convicted rapist, who had warrants out for his arrest in Georgia? It may come as a surprise to liberals to discover that criminals who don’t obey traffic laws also don’t obey gun laws. As a convicted felon, Gathers was prohibited from possessing firearms, so how did he get the gun he used to shoot the trooper? We don’t know the details, but I’d be willing to bet the gun was stolen.

Now we return to the case of Rontavious Jackson, who has been charged with 32 counts of possession of firearms by a convicted felon, each offense of which under Georgia law carries a possible sentence of up to 10 years in prison. If courts in Georgia are serious about preventing gun violence, they could sentence Jackson to more than 300 years in prison.

Oh, and in case you forgot, there were two burglars involved in this caper, and the criminals got away with more than 60 guns, which means that Rontavious Jackson’s accomplice might be caught with 30 or so guns and, if he is also a convicted felon, the court could also sentence the accomplice to 300 years in prison. If judges were to start handing out maximum sentences for every case of a felon being caught in possession of a firearm, it would go a lot farther toward reducing gun violence than any of the “reforms” Joe Biden keeps babbling about.



 

 

Category: Crime, Georgia

Portland Is Now a ‘No-Go Zone’

Posted on | April 20, 2023 | 1 Comment

Antifa rioters in Portland, 2018

“Progressives” ruin everything:

When Antifa besieged downtown in 2020, resulting in months of rioting and millions in property damage, President Trump offered to send in the National Guard. City hall refused the help, and vilified Trump instead. A Trump fan wearing an insignia was murdered by a rabble rouser who laid in wait at a parking garage. The killer was later gunned-down by federal agents in a Washington State apartment complex parking lot.
Downtown hasn’t recovered. Businesses are still fleeing. Slabs of plywood cover many street-level windows. Intractable homelessness besotting block after block and open-air shooting galleries have turned Portland into a no-go zone for thousands of locals and decimated the tourist and convention trade. The pandemic played a part in creating the current malaise, but that’s over, and there’s been little discernible bounce-back.

(Hat-tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.) There are two points that need to be made here. First of all, what part did the COVID-19 pandemic play “in creating the current malaise” in Portland. The answer is that, like most other major cities in Democrat-controlled states, Portland sought to impose maximum lockdown conditions — schools, businesses, etc. — and to keep these draconian policies in place as long as possible. It was not the pandemic, per se, that caused this damage, but rather the punitive job-killing policies enacted by Democrats in the guise of “public health.” And part of those anti-business/anti-freedom policies, of course, involved paying people not to work. If you wonder why all those smelly Antifa morons had so much free time to engage in “mostly peaceful” rioting in the summer of 2020, it’s because they were collecting extra unemployment benefits justified as “pandemic relief.”

Nobody wants to talk about this, for some reason. Like, how is it that there was such a dramatic spike in gun violence and drug overdoses in the wake of the pandemic? Oh, it was free money — i.e., “pandemic relief” payments — that many of the recipients used to buy guns and/or drugs. And don’t even bother to notice who it is that’s getting indicted on charges of fraud for illegally swindling “pandemic relief” programs to the tune of billions of dollars. (Hint: Probably not Trump voters.) When the government is giving away “free money,” it is generally not the most honest and productive members of society who benefit.

Laziness and stupidity are bad enough in their own right; but government-subsidized laziness and stupidity are much worse.

The second point, however, involves something that Andy Ngo pointed out about Portland in an interview with City Journal:

I say that Portland is a city where victimhood ideology is mainstreamed and is normalized, and it flows through the ethos and hearts and minds of the denizens here. So I’ve lived in Portland most of my life and it’s a progressive bubble. . . .
[T]hen the other dimension to it is demography as well, which I don’t hear people talk about as much. So Portland is a majority white city and I think I’ve heard it dubbed as one of America’s whitest cities for the size that it is. So with these two factors together, it creates this element of this extreme white guilt, I would say. I’ve witnessed it a lot and it makes the city vulnerable to radical leftist movements that try to exploit white guilt for their own political gain and I think that’s my analysis for why we’ve seen the leadership of the city kind of take a hands-off approach when it comes to political violence from the far left. Because there’s probably certain, perhaps, sympathies as well as a critical mass of constituents who are supportive of these groups.

Hit the nail on the head there, I’d say. Often, when I discuss the problems of crime, drugs, welfare dependency and the general breakdown of civilized norms, readers may think I’m engaging in racism — “RAAAAACISM!” — as if white people are immune to such problems. But go somewhere like Portland, which is certainly “one of America’s whitest cities,” and there are plenty of Caucasians living la vida ghetto.

Progressivism incentivizes “victimhood ideology” — which is to say, it encourages self-pity and envy — no matter the racial composition of the populace. This is why you find so many aggrieved radicals among the students at “elite” private universities. Students at Harvard, Yale, etc., aren’t rioting because they’re oppressed; they’re rioting because they’re privileged, and because their “progressive” faculty teach them that being an angry victim is heroic. Meanwhile, other people’s kids — the ones who are actually working for a living — don’t have time to riot.

You should buy Andy Ngo’s book, Unmasked: Inside Antifa’s Radical Plan to Destroy Democracy, and remember I get a commission on Amazon sales, because capitalism is a beautiful thing.



 

 

Category: Oregon, Progressivism
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