The Other McCain

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

Rule 5 Monday: Rebecca Bagnol

Posted on | February 20, 2023 | 1 Comment

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Born in December 1994. Rebecca is a French Instagram model best known for nostalgic black & white photos with artistic style. Apparently got booted once from Instagram for being excessively artistic/nude, depending on who you ask.
Ceterum autem censeo Silicon Valley esse delendam.

NINETY MILES FROM TYRANNY: Hot Pick of the Late Night, The 90 Miles Mystery Box Episode #1995, Morning Mistress, and Girls With Guns

EBL: MAGA – Veep Lake Audition?, 18 February 2014, Maria Callas, Tripoli, Raquel Welch RIP, Celine Buckens, Warrior, Liza Minnelli, and the Super Bowl

A VIEW FROM THE BEACH: Khainsaw, Fish Pic Friday – From Down Under, Charity Selleck, Offshore Whale Deaths Continue, The Somebody I F*cked Once Trilogy, RIP: Raquel Welch, Flotsam and Jetsam – Balloons Still Down, Haley In, Di-Fi Out, The Wednesday Wetness, Flotsam and Jetsam – A Day Without Balloons, Happy Valentines Day!, ,No, Just No, Flotsam and Jetsam – And that Makes Four, The Monday Morning Stimulus, Good for Her, and  Superbowl Sunday Sunrise

Thanks to everyone for all the luscious links!

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Visit Amazon’s Intimate Apparel Shop
Shop Sex & Sensuality Gifts




Category: Rule 5

FMJRA 2.0: Home At Last

Posted on | February 20, 2023 | Comments Off on FMJRA 2.0: Home At Last

— compiled by Wombat-socho

I had hoped to get this done yesterday evening, but the wild Saturday night in Elko turned into an early bedtime since I was exhausted from the drive from Provo, and I felt even worse last night after stopping in the office in Reno to retrieve some gear, so I had a very early bedtime in Carson City and finally arrived home this afternoon.
Part of the gear I retrieved was Klaus Schulze’ La Vie Electronique, Vol. 5, which I have ripped to my hard drive and am currently enjoying.
Ceterum autem censeo Silicon Valley esse delendam.

h/t Lurch on MeWe

James Baker’s Amnesia Problem
The DaleyGator
Okrahead
A View From The Beach
EBL
357 Magnum





Vince Dao Wrecks Liberals by — Wait for It — Denying Genetic Determinism
Okrahead
The DaleyGator
The Political Hat
EBL
357 Magnum
A View From The Beach

Don’t Bet on the Super Bowl
Okrahead
EBL
357 Magnum

FMJRA 2.0: On Your Feet Or On Your Knees
EBL
357 Magnum
A View From The Beach

Rule 5 Sunday: Christina Ricci
Okrahead
Animal Magnetism
Ninety Miles From Tyranny
EBL
A View From The Beach

Why Nick Sirianni Cried
Okrahead
EBL

In The Mailbox: 02.13.23
Okrahead
EBL
357 Magnum
A View From The Beach

MSU Gunman Got Charge Reduced to Misdemeanor on 2019 Gun Arrest
The DaleyGator
Okrahead
EBL
357 Magnum

What’s Up in Ukraine Lately?
Okrahead
EBL
357 Magnum

In The Mailbox: 02.14.23
EBL
357 Magnum
A View From The Beach

Report: Jake Tapper’s Executive Producer Fired in Latest CNN Sex Scandal
The DaleyGator
EBL
357 Magnum

More Bad Headlines About CNN
The DaleyGator
EBL
357 Magnum

In The Mailbox: 02.16.23 (Punditocalyse Redux)
EBL
357 Magnum
A View From The Beach

In The Mailbox: 02.17.23 (Morning Edition)
EBL
357 Magnum
A View From The Beach

CNN: Making News (Not in a Good Way)
The DaleyGator
EBL
A View From The Beach

In The Mailbox: 02.17.23 (Evening Edition)
EBL

Top linkers for the week ending February 17: 

  1.  EBL (16)
  2.  357 Magnum (12)
  3. A View From The Beach (9)
  4.  Okrahead (8)
  5.  The DaleyGator (6)

Thanks to everyone for all the links!

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Category: FMJRA Award

Ukraine Joe Ignores Ohio

Posted on | February 20, 2023 | 1 Comment

Ohio is Trump country, so screw ’em. This has been the general Democrat attitude toward the residents of East Palestine, Ohio, dealing with the catastrophic train derailment, a story being deliberately ignored by the stenographers of the liberal media. Oh, but Ukraine Joe’s so presidential!

President Biden made a surprise, hourslong visit to Kyiv on Monday, pledging the United States’ “unwavering commitment” to supporting Ukraine in a dramatic show of resolve almost one year into Russia’s full-scale invasion.
Mr. Biden rode 10 hours by train from the Polish border to arrive in the Ukrainian capital on Monday morning. As air-raid sirens sounded, Mr. Biden strolled in the sunshine with President Volodymyr Zelensky and announced $500 million in additional military aid for Ukraine during a joint news conference at which he recalled the beginning of the invasion last Feb. 24. “One year later, Kyiv stands,” Mr. Biden said. “And Ukraine stands. Democracy stands.”

“Here’s $500,000,000, Volodymyr! Screw those people in Ohio!”



 

 

Category: Ohio, Ukraine

War in Ukraine = Jobs in America

Posted on | February 20, 2023 | Comments Off on War in Ukraine = Jobs in America

The beautiful thing about being “the arsenal of democracy” is that it’s very profitable. For the past year, Ukraine has been burning through the available supply of artillery ammunition at a much higher rate than Western nations can produce ordnance:

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg warned [Feb. 13] that Ukraine is using up ammunition far faster than its allies can provide it and putting pressure on Western defense industries, just as Russia ramps up its military offensive.
“The war in Ukraine is consuming an enormous amount of munitions and depleting allied stockpiles,” Stoltenberg said. “The current rate of Ukraine’s ammunition expenditure is many times higher than our current rate of production. This puts our defense industries under strain.”
According to some estimates, Ukraine is firing up to 6,000-7,000 artillery shells each day, around a third of the daily amount that Russia is using almost one year into the war.
Speaking on the eve of a two-day meeting of NATO defense ministers, Stoltenberg said the waiting time for the supply of “large-caliber ammunition has increased from 12 to 28 months,” and that “orders placed today would only be delivered two-and-a-half years later.”

When the war began last year, the U.S. and its allies had stockpiles of ammunition, at least for Western weapons, although much of Ukraine’s weapons are Soviet-era Warsaw Pact equipment, for which we don’t have facilities to produce ammunition, and once Ukraine used up all the old Soviet stuff, that was it. So the U.S. and NATO countries have been resupplying Ukraine with Western-made artillery, thus increasing demand for shells. Ukraine’s current “burn rate” is around 200,000 shells a month, or 2.4 million shells a year, so you can see what this means — lucrative defense contracts:

The Army has selected General Dynamics Ordnance & Tactical Systems [GD] and American Ordnance to compete for orders to produce 155mm artillery rounds under a new $993.8 million contract.
Under the deal, officially awarded on Wednesday, the Army said it aims to expand manufacturing capacity of 155mm M795 projectiles to produce an additional 12,000 to 20,000 rounds per month.
GD OTS and American Ordnance were the only two firms to submit bids for the work, with the contract running through February 2028.
Doug Bush, the Army’s top acquisition official, has detailed the service’s focus on ramping up production of 155mm ammunition in the coming years and said he expects there will be “several big awards” in February and March related to replenishing stockpiles of critical munitions sent to Ukraine (Defense Daily, Jan. 26).
The final version of the fiscal year 2023 National Defense Authorization Act included a provision allowing the Pentagon to use multi-year contracts for select critical munitions procurements, to include M1113, M107 and M795 155mm artillery rounds.
In November, the Army awarded IMT Defense a $391 million contract to produce 155mm M795 projectile shell bodies and a separate task order to GD OTS to build a new 155mm artillery metal parts production line.
The Army said at the time both deals were accelerated contracting efforts to “significantly increase production capacity” for 155mm artillery shells, as the service looks to replenish stockpiles of munitions transferred in large numbers to help support Ukraine.
Late last month, the Army awarded $522.3 million with Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative funds to Northrop Grumman [NOC] and Global Military Products, a division of Global Ordnance, to produce 155mm artillery ammunition for Ukraine.

This means jobs! jobs! jobs! for American workers at defense plants:

Running full-tilt, as it was on a recent January morning, the Scranton Army Ammunition Plant churns out roughly 11,000 artillery shells a month. That may seem like a lot, but the Ukrainian military often fires that many shells over just a few days.
To meet that demand, the Scranton plant is undergoing a massive expansion, fueled by millions of dollars in new defense spending from the Pentagon. It’s investing in new high-tech machinery, hiring a few dozen additional workers and will eventually shift to a 24/7 schedule of constant production. . . .
The Army is planning a 500% increase in artillery shell production, from 15,000 a month to 70,000, according to Army acquisition chief Doug Bush. Much of that increase will be fulfilled by the Scranton plant, which makes a large share of the country’s supply of artillery shells.
Across the US, munitions factories are increasing production as fast as possible. A Lockheed Martin plant in Camden, Arkansas, is cranking out a series of rockets and missiles, including those used by the Army’s Patriot missile system – all of which are in high demand in Ukraine. Bush told reporters in January that the Army was standing up a new plant in Garland, Texas to make artillery shells, while an existing plant is being expanded in Middletown, Iowa that loads, packs and assembles 155 millimeter shells.

Pennsylvania, Arkansas, Texas, Iowa — these are just a few of the places where the demand for war matériel is translating to good-paying jobs in the defense industry for American workers. So while many people may be saddened by the death and destruction in Ukraine — a bloody stalemate with no end in sight — Americans with a more pragmatic worldview look at it and see dollar signs. Good times, my friends, good times!



 

 

Category: Military, Ukraine

‘Blood Will Tell,’ as Folks Say Down Home

Posted on | February 19, 2023 | Comments Off on ‘Blood Will Tell,’ as Folks Say Down Home

In addition to being handsome, my son Jefferson is also very smart. Last week I texted him, “What did you score on the LSAT?” He answered 170 which, really, is Ivy League caliber, but instead he accepted a generous scholarship offer from a law school in the Midwest and is now in his second semester. The reason I asked was because of a headline at Instapundit, “Two-Thirds Through The Fall 2023 Law School Admissions Season: Applicants Are Down -3.5%, With Biggest Decline (-7%) In The 165-169 LSAT Band.” I was trying to figure out what this meant. The largest decline in law school applications, it seems, are from students with not-quite-Ivy-caliber scores. “Yeah, I’m better than those schmucks,” my son replied when I told him why I was asking.

Sure, good looks are hereditary. Intelligence is also coded into my son’s DNA, but that unmistakable McCain arrogance? Is it nature or nurture?

Last night on The Other Podcast, we were discussing my post about how Vince Dao wrecked liberals’ minds by denying genetic determinism. Whatever our hereditary traits may be, people are neither doomed to failure nor guaranteed success merely by their genetics. Dao went viral by making arguments best articulated by Charles Murray in his 1984 book Losing Ground, i.e., that long-term poverty is closely linked to certain behaviors and that, merely by avoiding these behaviors, anyone in America has a 97% chance of avoiding poverty. Read more

Category: Racism

A Criminal History

Posted on | February 19, 2023 | Comments Off on A Criminal History

Kaitlin Roberts (left) and her mother Rebecca Shaw

The weird thing about the YouTube algorithm is its apparent randomness. Saturday night at dinner with my podcast partner John Hoge, I went off on a tangent about the bass riff on the 1966 Simon and Garfunkel hit, “A Hazy Shade of Winter” — something I picked up watching a YouTube video — and then started talking about the guitar parts on Beatles songs, which I’d been studying with YouTube videos by Mike Pachelli. You watch one video like that, YouTube will keep showing you more, and it’s the same with police chase videos — watch one of them, and the algorithm will continue feeding you similar suggestions. My interests are sufficiently eclectic that I get a good variety of YouTube suggestions, especially because I frequently search YouTube for videos related to stories I’m writing about. Still, I have no idea what it was that caused the YouTube algorithm to suggest “Mother shares legacy of daughter killed by ex-husband,” except that I’d previously subscribed to the feed of WUSA-TV news (the CBS affiliate in Washington).

In 2011, Lemuel Roberts was 22 when he was convicted of assault and battery and abduction for a 2010 incident in which he “rammed a woman’s vehicle with his vehicle, then pulled her out of the vehicle and kidnapped her. He beat the woman, with whom he had previously lived, then took her to the Red Roof Inn”:

Roberts was sentenced to 2½ years imprisonment, with two years of the sentence suspended. In 2012, while out on probation, he was charged with drunken driving in Winchester. Police said he fought with them when they tried to arrest him and they had to shock him twice with a Taser to get him handcuffed.
While jailed in 2013, Roberts completed anger management and addiction recovery courses. However, [in June 2019], police said an informant for the Northwestern Virginia Regional Drug and Gang Task Force bought 14 grams of cocaine from Roberts, leading to police raiding his Oakmont Circle home. They said they seized marijuana, hashish oil and $15,000 in cash.

In 2015, Roberts got involved with Kaitlin Jones. The couple married in 2017, and had two children together, but divorced in 2018. Despite the divorce, however, they continued living together, but their domestic situation was not peaceful, and police were repeatedly called to their home near Winchester, Virginia. He killed her in 2020:

A jury found a Virginia man guilty of first-degree murder on Thursday for his involvement in the 2020 stabbing death of his ex-wife.
Lemuel Lee Roberts, 34, of Winchester, Virginia is scheduled to be sentenced on Friday, April 21, 2023, at 9 a.m. for his alleged involvement in the following incident.
Shortly after 2 a.m. on Jan. 11, 2020, a 911 caller reported finding a body in the roadway at English Muffin Court and English Muffin Way in Frederick, Maryland. The victim was later identified as Kaitlin Nichole Roberts of Winchester, Virginia.
Investigators determined that Lemuel Lee Roberts traveled to Frederick, Maryland with his ex-wife Kaitlin Roberts and stabbed her 32 times and ran over her body while driving a Buick Enclave.

Well, it was just the randomness of the YouTube algorithm that brought this story to my attention, with the video of Kaitlin’s mother:

 

There’s this from the Frederick paper’s account of the trial:

After the verdict was announced, a member of Lemuel Roberts’ family stormed out of the courtroom. As she was leaving, she said, toward Kaitlin Roberts’ family: “She’s going to stay dead. It doesn’t f—— matter.”

Just a crime I learned about because of the YouTube algorithm. These things seem random, but some people think there must be a pattern . . .



 

 

Category: Violence Against Women

Shocking: Muslim ‘Diversity’ Grifter Exposed as Just Another White Woman

Posted on | February 18, 2023 | Comments Off on Shocking: Muslim ‘Diversity’ Grifter Exposed as Just Another White Woman

Let me start with this: Never trust a Quaker. In a world where most forms of “hate speech” are severely sanctioned, Quakers don’t have the kind of official victim status that protects some other groups, and I could probably start promoting anti-Quaker conspiracy theories without suffering any serious repercussions. So why not? My genocidal hatred of Canadians hasn’t caused much controversy yet, so I’ll just add Quakers to my hate list, and start with this: Richard Nixon was a Quaker.

This offers bipartisan possibilities for my anti-Quaker crusade, but nowadays (and perhaps historically) Quakers are left-wing subversives, and the primary vehicle of Quakerism’s subversive activity is their “charitable” organization, the American Friends Service Committee. The AFSC is described by The Intercept as “a prominent Quaker organization known for its progressive values and social justice advocacy in the U.S. and abroad.” Translation: They’re anarchist vermin.

Did I mention — and it’s probably relevant, since my larger objective here is to whip up a firestorm of violent animosity — that the prestigious Sidwell Friends School in Washington, D.C., is a Quaker institution? You may remember it as the school where the Clintons sent Chelsea. So now we’ve demonstrated the connections of both Nixon and the Clintons to the sinister Quaker conspiracy, but I digress . . .

Having begun as a heretical Christian sect (“inner light,” my ass) and metamorphosed into an elite hive of “progressive” subversion, the Quakers are now all-in on “diversity,” and the AFSC hired a Muslim woman to be their diversity boss, but it turns out she was an impostor:

Raquel Evita Saraswati, a Muslim activist who for years has encouraged people to believe that she is a woman of color, including Latina as well as of South Asian and Arab descent, is the AFSC’s chief equity, inclusion, and culture officer, a senior position that gives her access to the files of dozens of the organization’s staff and volunteers. But Saraswati, who was born Rachel Elizabeth Seidel, is not a person of color, according to her mother, Carol Perone.
“I call her Rachel,” Perone told The Intercept, when reached by telephone. “I don’t know why she’s doing what she’s doing.”
Saraswati, her mother added, is of British, German, and Italian descent — not Latina, South Asian, or Arab. “I’m as white as the driven snow and so is she,” added Perone . . .

Now, here’s the big payoff in this story:

Oskar Pierre Castro, a human resources professional who participated in the search committee to fill Sarawati’s position, told The Intercept that she had presented herself as a “queer, Muslim, multiethnic woman.”
“It really touched all the points,” said Castro . . .
“DEI is becoming a multibillion-dollar industry: corporations, companies, nonprofits,” [an anonymous] AFSC leader told The Intercept. “The data shows a tiny percentage of the directors are Black. And now you have white people in brown face getting into DEI positions, with its salary, resources, and power.”

IT’S ABOUT THE MONEY! (Hat-tip: Instapundit.)

DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) originated in response to shakedown operations by the likes of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, who made their fortunes by attacking big corporations as “racist,” and then leveraging that power to get paid: “Give us money, and we won’t boycott you.” In order to protect themselves against accusations of racism, corporations instituted “diversity training” programs, where they’d hire a consultant to come in and lead seminars, and over the course of time this led to the institutionalization of “diversity” as a corporate goal, with full-time personnel devoted to achieving this nebulous objective. But it all began as a sham, a defensive measure to protect themselves from Sharpton-style “civil rights” racketeers, and the fundamental bogusness of DEI was thus baked into the cake from the start. You can’t say the diversity racket “became” corrupt for the simple reason that it has always been corrupt. DEI is the poisonous fruit of a bad seed.

The fact that degenerate white people like Rachel Seidel a/k/a “Raquel Sarawati” are willing to masquerade as “people of color” in order to cash in on this racket just goes to show you that some people will do anything for a dollar. They are basically prostitutes for diversity.

As for the fact that it was Quakers who were deceived by this grifter — well, as the Bible says, God has sent them “strong delusion.”

How much do you hate Quakers? Not as much as you should.



 

 

Category: Progressivism, Racism

Armed Self-Defense in Dallas

Posted on | February 18, 2023 | 1 Comment

This happened in December, but the police took a while to complete their investigation and make arrests, so we’re just now getting a detailed account of what happened:

There are a lot of new details about how a recent attempted carjacking of a luxury car went down in an upscale area of Dallas.
Police arrested the three suspects they were looking for, and court documents detail a good lead police had.
One suspect showed up at a hospital with a gunshot wound minutes after the attempted carjacking and shootout last December.
Police say he was shot by a friend of the Maserati owner they were trying to carjack.
Three men have now been arrested for their alleged roles in a shootout and botched attempted carjacking at a popular shopping center off Lovers Lane around 6:30 p.m. on Dec. 30. . . .
Dallas police say three people were leaving dinner at Odelay Tex-Mex when 21-year-old Lequezio Dade, 19-year-old Kylan Owens and 21-year-old Anthony Primers approached them.
According to an arrest affidavit, “Dade used a rifle held horizontally to violently shove one of the men backward while demanding the keys to his Maserati and his wallet.”
There was a struggle. Dade fired once. Then, someone with the victim fired their gun at the suspects, but “Dade returned fire, discharging several rounds into a busy parking lot.”
Then, the suspects took off in a grey Acura RLX.
In a car matching that description, Dade was dropped off at Methodist Dallas Medical Center minutes after the shootout, according to the affidavit. He’d been shot in the leg.
While at the hospital, Dade told Dallas police he was shot during a drive-by shooting at a Fiesta Market off MLK Boulevard near Fair Park. However, according to the affidavit, investigators say there were no 911 calls made to this area about a drive-by.
No calls from Dade or anyone else. They say that’s uncommon.
Also, while in the hospital, investigators say Dade told police he did not want to pursue any charges against whoever may have shot him in a drive-by shooting. It’s safe to say police were not buying his story.
According to the affidavit, a geofence search warrant identified three cell phones present at both the shooting scene and hospital at times consistent with the investigation. Those phones belonged to Dade, Owens and Primers.
Primers was found to own a 2016 Acura RLX matching the suspect vehicle.
Police located Primers’ car. It had been repossessed, but it had blood in the back seat consistent with where Dade, who was shot, was riding.
Primers and Dade were arrested on Jan. 12. Owens was arrested on Friday [Feb. 10].
“Just because you’re not hearing something might be happening in a particular case doesn’t mean that there’s work that’s not being done behind the scenes, and that was being done here,” said Kristin Lowman with the Dallas Police Department. “Detectives take time. They gather that evidence. They identify the suspects, and they build a case to make those arrests.”

This attempted carjacking happened, as they say, “in an upscale area” on the north side of Dallas, which shows that there is no such thing as a “safe” neighborhood in 21st-century America. Who knows what might have happened had it not been for the fact that the Maserati owner’s friend was armed? Permit me to recommend two books by my friend Robert Waters, The Best Defense: True Stories of Intended Victims Who Defended Themselves with a Firearm and Guns Save Lives: True Stories of Americans Defending Their Lives With Firearms.

It is unfortunate that civilization has collapsed to the point that no one is safe unless they’re carrying a pistol, but we must live in the world as it is, rather than that fantasy world where “safe” neighborhoods still exist.



 

 

Category: Crime, Texas
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