The Other McCain

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

#TwitterGate Update: Shadowbanning Is Real, and Vijaya Gadde Lied About It

Posted on | December 10, 2022 | 1 Comment

Vijaya Gadde became a multimillionaire working for Twitter, and apparently part of her job — why she got paid the big bucks — was to conceal the facts about how Twitter employees were manipulating their platform to suppress facts and opinions that Twitter employees didn’t like. Evita Duffy recounts at Twitter:

Remember all the times Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and top Twitter lawyer Vijaya Gadde assured us that Twitter neither shadowbans nor targets conservatives? Well, they lied.
In the second installment of Elon Musk’s “Twitter Files,” independent journalist Bari Weiss exposed how the Big Tech company was secretly “blacklisting” conservative tweets and users by keeping “disfavored” tweets from trending and secretly hiding whole accounts or topics without users’ knowledge. . . .
On July 25, 2018, Vice News reported that several prominent Republican politicians, such as Mark Meadows, Jim Jordan, and Matt Gaetz, did not show up in a drop-down menu of automatically suggested searches, even when typing in the politicians’ names.
A day after the outcry over the apparent shadowbanning, Gadde and Twitter’s product head Kayvon Beykpour attempted to couch concerns by co-authoring a blog post titled “Setting the record straight on shadow banning.” “We do not shadow ban,” Gadde and Beykpour insisted. “You are always able to see the tweets from accounts you follow (although you may have to do more work to find them, like go directly to their profile). And we certainly don’t shadow ban based on political viewpoints or ideology.”
The day before publishing that blog post, Beykpour posted a Twitter thread blaming the discrimination against Republican members of Congress on the company’s use of “behavioral signals and machine learning,” which they were working to “improve.” However, Beykpour assured users that “our behavioral ranking doesn’t make judgments based on political views or the substance of tweets.”
Dorsey then shared Gadde and Beykpour’s blog post, writing, “We don’t shadow ban, and we certainly don’t shadow ban based on political viewpoints.”
“We want a vibrant and healthy public conversation inclusive of all perspectives, and one that’s immediately relevant and valuable,” added Dorsey.

As Bari Weiss’s thread makes clear, these denials were the direct opposite of truth. It wasn’t some “machine learning” algorithm that was controlling content on Twitter. Internal documents show that top Twitter executives discussed specific decisions on “visibility limitation” tools. They played favorites, boosting some accounts and suppressing others.

The revelations keep coming, and on Friday, Matt Taibbi began telling the story of the lead-up to Twitter’s fateful decision to ban Donald Trump from the platform. Why? Because of “election misinformation”? But as Taibbi clearly demonstrates, Twitter bosses were picking and choosing what (and who) to suppress on that subject:

Did I mention that Twitter executives were at times acting on orders from the FBI in deciding whose election-related content got flagged? Because that seems kind of important, doesn’t it?

To summarize the situation as succinctly as possible, everything that they labeled a “conspiracy theory” turns out to be 100% true, and all their denials and explanations turn out to be 100% false.

At some point, we’re going to need an in-depth inquiry to answer a couple of questions: First, how is it that Silicon Valley, once a stronghold of freedom-loving libertarianism, turned into a hive of “woke” SJW Thought Police? And second, when did the FBI become an apparatus of the Democratic Party? Things have gone badly wrong in the past few years, and there must be some coherent explanation for these developments.



 

Category: Crime, Election, Scandal

Crazy People Are Dangerous (and Keep Getting Shot by Cops in Detroit)

Posted on | December 10, 2022 | 2 Comments

Last month, infamous legal pest Geoffrey Fieger filed two separate $50 million lawsuits against Detroit police for the fatal shootings of two mentally ill residents, Ki’azia Miller, 27 and Porter Burks, 20.

There’s a word for this, and that word is shakedown. It is a near-certainty that neither of these lawsuits will ever see the inside of a courtroom; instead, the city will negotiate a settlement with the plaintiffs, perhaps somewhere in the range of $2 million to $5 million per victim, and Feiger will collect his 50% commission, adding millions more to his multimillionaire status. Being a legal pest is quite a lucrative racket, but while a lawyer can grow rich from the proceeds of suing police departments — a direct transfer of wealth from taxpayers — the question needs to be asked whether this kind of “justice” actually does anything to improve law enforcement or the treatment of the mentally ill.

Before we discuss these shootings, or the policy implications involved, let’s first note that Detroit is in Wayne County, named for Revolution War hero and frontier fighter Gen. “Mad Anthony” Wayne (who, of course, is nowadays denounced by liberals as a racist). With a population of around 1.8 million, Wayne County is the largest county in Michigan and “the 19th-most populous county in the United States.” However, Wayne County has been losing population for the last half-century, and at the 2020 census had nearly 900,000 fewer residents than it did in 1970, a decline of 32.7% in 50 years. The population of Wayne County is 48% white and 37% black. Of the county’s 669,277 black residents at the 2020 census, the majority of them (493,212) lived in Detroit, a city whose population is 82% black. So it makes very little sense to claim that the police in Detroit are racist, and if these lawsuits result in a settlement, that money will be subtracted from the budget of a majority-black city. Maybe the black taxpayers in Detroit should ask themselves what “justice” there is in making Geoffrey Fieger richer. But I digress . . .

Did I mention that Wayne County is a Democratic Party stronghold? In the 2020 presidential election, Joe Biden won Michigan by a margin of less than 3%, with 2,804,040 votes (50.6%) to President Trump’s 2,649,852 (47.8%). In Wayne County, Biden got 597,170 votes (68% of the county total) to Trump’s 264,553 votes (30%). You see that Biden’s margin in Wayne County (332,617) was more twice the size of his statewide margin (154,188) — i.e., Biden won Detroit, and Trump won the rest of the state. Detroit is the urban Democratic tail that wags the statewide Republican dog. Keep this in mind, as we consider the state of affairs in Detroit, where cops are shooting crazy people.

Porter Burks “was believed to have been experiencing a schizophrenic episode Oct. 2 while wandering his neighborhood on the city’s west side with a 3.5-inch knife. Concerned for Burks’ safety, his older brother had called police asking for help and for Burks to be admitted to a hospital.” Five Detroit police officers fired 38 rounds, 19 of which hit Burks. No charges will be filed against the cops involved:

[Wayne County Prosecutor Kym] Worthy sided with police . . . echoing Detroit Police Chief James White’s claim that responding officers had minimal time to “eliminate the threat.”
“The police spent a significant amount of time trying to get him to drop his weapon,” Worthy wrote in a statement. “He suddenly ran at them with the knife and covered the distance between them in approximately three seconds. Eyewitnesses to the shooting were interviewed and indicated that the police did all that they could to de-escalate the situation before Mr. Burks charged at the police.”

Prosecutor Kym Worthy (let); Police Chief James White (right)

I’m just going to go out on a limb here and suggest that Kym Worthy and James White are not racists who want to kill innocent black people.

Which brings us to the case of Ki’azia Miller:

The lawsuit alleges officers failed to execute the de-escalation tactics Detroit police are trained in — at least one officer was a member of Detroit Police’s Crisis Intervention Team.
Instead, three officers shot four rounds at Miller, and officers allegedly surrounded the home with assault rifles, according to the lawsuit. Miller’s family previously held a vigil for their loved one, demanding justice.
“It was obvious that the easily agitated 27-year-old Ms. Miller, who was dressed only in her underwear, was in the midst of a mental health crisis,” Fieger wrote in the lawsuit.
The officers ”were in no immediate danger while brutally taking down, assaulting, and fatally shooting four times the underwear-clad, mentally ill, and unarmed Ms. Miller who just assured the officers she did not, and was not going to, harm anyone,” Fieger continued. . . .
Miller’s mother, Lakisha Washington-Meeks, called police on Nov. 10 asking for help for her daughter, who she said was experiencing a mental crisis and was diagnosed with schizophrenia. Washington-Meeks told police that Miller had hit her young child and was armed with knives, a bat and a gun. . . .
Detroit Police Chief James White said he had concerns regarding the killing and previously announced recommending the unpaid suspensions of three officers, including supervisor Sgt. Marvin Anthony. Another unidentified supervisor was taken off the streets and assigned desk work.
The Detroit Board of Police Commissioners denied White’s recommendation to have Anthony’s suspension be without pay.
No officers have been charged in Miller’s death.

We haven’t yet heard from the prosecutor’s office, but in the meantime, permit me to suggest that if you call 911 to report that your schizophrenic daughter is behaving violently and is “armed with knives, a bat and a gun,” and if she’s running around in her underwear ranting like a lunatic when the cops show up . . . Well, Crazy People Are Dangerous.

 



 

Category: Crime, Michigan

In The Mailbox: 12.09.22

Posted on | December 10, 2022 | 2 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho

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

From The Trading Desk

OVER THE TRANSOM
357 Magnum: Socialized Medicine & Euthanasia
EBL: Jim Jordan Masterfully Exposes A Shameless Democrat Liar
Twitchy: Don’t Look Now, But The GOP Is Pouncing On Admin Pervo Sam Brinton’s Alleged Crimes, also, ALL THE TWITTER DUMPSTERS ARE IN FLAMES AND IT’S AWESOME
Louder With Crowder: Elton John throws hissy fit announcing he’s leaving Twitter and Twitter users are bringing the jokes, also, Twitter Files Part Two dropped, and it names specific conservatives who were blacklisted
Vox Popoli: Goodbye Brazil, also, 10,000 Dead Canadians
According To Hoyt: Home Star, , Aim Small, Miss Small
and Quick, to the Typewriter!
Monster Hunter Nation: WriterDojo S3 E21 – Sequels
Stoic Observations: On Insecurity

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Conservative: Obedience to Duty, also, The Three Problems Of Paul Whelan
American Greatness: The Fake, and Real, Domestic Terrorists, Twitter Files: Dorsey and Gadde Were in Top Secret Group That Blacklisted High Profile Conservative Users, and Biden DOE’s Nonbinary Nuclear Waste Guru Charged With Stealing Luggage From ANOTHER Airport
American Power: How Trump and MAGA Allies Are Defending Violent Jan. 6th Rioters
American Thinker: 21st Century Robber Barons: the WEF
Animal Magnetism: Rule Five War on Food Friday
Babalu Blog: Foreign tourists and communist party elite in Cuba get meat, Cubans get the bones, Susan Eckstein and ‘Cuban Privilege’: The privilege of being a gusano, and Cuba’s deadbeat dictatorship faces potentially devastating trial in London for some of its massive debt
BattleSwarm: LinkSwarm for December 8
Behind The Black: Red China completes two launches successfully, Last 747 rolls off assembly line, SOFIA to retire to Arizona museum, Ancient lava flows down the flanks of the solar system’s largest volcano, and Pushback: Students win $90K from University of Idaho for restricting their free speech
CDR Salamander: Fullbore Friday
Da Tech Guy: Five Assorted Thoughts Under the Fedora
Don Surber: A military run by whiners, also, Merry Christmas, Charlie Brown
First Street Journal: Lies, damned lies, and statistics
Gates Of Vienna: “Everybody Knows Our Election Was a Fraud”, also, Biowarfare Research in Ukraine
The Geller Report: Sinema LEAVES DEMOCRAT PARTY Switches To Independent In Senate Shake-Up
Hogewash: Team Kimberlin Post of the Day, Peekaboo, and Drip…Drip…Drip…
Hollywood In Toto: The Shocking Secret Behind Jihad Rehab’s Cancel Culture Comeback, Empire of Light Stumbles Over Racism, Relationship Woes, Angel Studios Spreads Its ‘Wings,’ Plots Content Revolution, and Elon Musk Calls Elton John’s Bluff
The Lid: Adam Schiff Picks A Fight With Elon Musk …OUCH! That Was A Mistake
Legal Insurrection: California Will Close More Prisons, Including Last Private Facility, Virginia Tech Athlete Who Alleged ‘She Lost Playing Time’ for Not Kneeling for BLM Can Proceed With Lawsuit, Wholesale Prices Up 0.3% in November and 7.4% From a Year Ago, and #Twitterfiles Part 3: Twitter Regularly Interacted With FBI/DHS To Restrict PRE-ELECTION Tweets
Nebraska Energy Observer: Scattershot friday
Outkick: Russian TV Mocks Woke Culture, Says Biden Didn’t Choose Whelan Because He’s A Straight White Man, Ryan Fitzpatrick Rips Raiders DC Live On Air And Baker Mayfield Can’t Stop Laughing, Steph Curry Thanks Brittney Griner For Her ‘Sacrifice’ After Her Release From Russian Prison, Jackson State Players Defend Deion Sanders In Midst Of Backlash, and Baker Mayfield Unbelievably Orchestrates Game-Winning Drive Two Days After Joining Rams
Power Line: Thoughts from the ammo line, The best deal since…, and Twitter Busted Wide Open
Shark Tank: Bilirakis Votes Against Bipartisan NDAA To Preserve Gun Rights
Shot In The Dark: Diverse!, 
The Political Hat: Firing Line Friday: The Role of Liberals in the Republican Party
This Ain’t Hell: How can we miss him if he won’t leave?, Valor Friday, A ‘Preacher’ is accused of taking a Vietnam Veteran’s life savings, and Navy Veteran drives 300 yards despite Police flashing lights and sounding horn
Transterrestrial Musings: The January 6th Protest, True Misogyny, and ESG
Victory Girls: Drag Shows Are NOT A Republican Obsession
Volokh Conspiracy: Judge Dismisses Libel Claim by Mask Mandate Opponent Against The Daily Beast
Watts Up With That: Is the Renewable Energy Industry Nothing More Than a Jobs Program?
Weasel Zippers: Sen. Kyrsten Sinema Leaves Democratic Party, WH Denies Biden Admin Was Involved In Twitter’s Effort To Censor Conservative Voices, and Russians Mock Biden For Leaving Behind a “Hero, a Decorated Marine” For “a Black Lesbian Hooked On Drugs”
The Federalist: Lindsay Lohan Is Trying To Make ‘Pilk’ Happen — And It’s Actually Good, Virginia Dems’ Ballot Harvesting Manual Instructs Going After Dead People, ‘Bad’ Addresses, Is The Abortion Escort Who Went After Pro-Lifer Mark Houck The Real FACE Act Violator? , Head Of Twitter’s Censorship Operation Was A Former FBI, CIA Operative, and Court Shuts Down Biden Attempt To Force Doctors To Sterilize Sex-Confused Patients
Mark Steyn: Shadowbans and Light

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Not Since ‘Jack and the Beanstalk’ Has Anyone Made a Worse Trade Than This

Posted on | December 9, 2022 | 1 Comment

Arms dealer Viktor Bout (left); basketball player Brittney Griner (right)

A textbook example of what bargaining from a position of weakness looks like: The U.S. released an infamous terrorist arms dealer known as “The Merchant of Death” for a lesbian dopehead basketball player.

One need not be biased against lesbians or marijuana users — “Why, some of my best friends . . .” — to see what’s wrong with this deal. Nor is it necessary, in criticizing the Biden administration’s fecklessness, to forget that Vladimir Putin is a bad guy, and that the prosecution and imprisonment of Brittney Griner was essentially about hostage-taking.

Even if you are deeply sympathetic to cannabis consumers and lesbians, and deeply hostile to Putin’s regime, still one must recognize this: In negotiating with authoritarians, a democracy is always at a disadvantage, because the antagonist is essentially immune to public opinion.

Sure, Putin is a tyrant and, sure, nine years in prison is a conspicuously harsh sentence for cannabis possession, but there are other Americans serving prison sentences in foreign countries for crimes that might have gotten them only probation in U.S. cities with slap-on-the-wrist prosecutors like George Gascón and Larry Krasner.

Russia’s prosecution of Griner was obviously part of a propaganda strategy, at a time when Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has made him an international pariah, and the bottom line is, it worked.

Because Brittney Griner “checked all the boxes” — gay, female, minority — and is something of a celebrity in the world of sports (never mind that almost nobody watches women’s basketball) the Russians knew very well that her prosecution would make her a valuable symbol and thereby expose Biden to enormous interest-group pressure.

The Russians had long wanted to get Viktor Bout released:

On 2 November 2011, Bout was convicted by a jury in a Manhattan federal court of conspiracy to kill U.S. citizens and officials, delivery of anti-aircraft missiles, and providing aid to a terrorist organization, and was sentenced to the minimum 25 years’ imprisonment because the crime was due to [a U.S.] operation. . . .
On 18 November 2010, shortly after Bout’s extradition to the United States, former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev’s aide Sergei Prikhodko said that Russia had “nothing to hide” in Bout’s criminal case stating, “it is in our interest that the investigation … be brought to completion, and [Bout] should answer all the questions the American justice system has.
On 18 January 2013, Russian government officials announced that “judges, investigators, justice ministry officials and special services agents who were involved in Russian citizens Viktor Bout’s and Konstantin Yaroshenko’s legal prosecution and sentencing to long terms of imprisonment” would be added to a list of U.S. officials who will be denied Russian entry visas in response to the U.S. Magnitsky Act, under which certain Russian officials are ineligible to enter the U.S.
It is thought that Bout was of help to Russia’s intelligence agencies, and he is alleged to have connections to ranking Russian officials, including former deputy prime minister Igor Sechin.

So, Bout wasn’t just an arms dealer, he was a GRU “asset,” and in order to spring him from U.S. prison, the Russians needed something to offer in exchange — this was a motive for hostage-taking, which may explain why, in 2018, tourist Paul Whelan found himself arrested, charged with being a spy in what was obviously a set-up arranged by the FBS (successor agency to the KGB) and sentenced to 16 years. The blunt-force crudeness of the “spying” case against Whelan might have been justified in Russian minds by the fact that Viktor Bout’s arrest was the result of a U.S. “sting” operation: “You set up our guy, we set up your guy.” Except, of course, there is zero reason to believe Whelan was “our guy” at all, whereas Bout’s connections to the GRU were plainly apparent.

As a pawn to exchange for Viktor Bout, Paul Whelan may have been useful with Donald Trump in the White House, but when the Biden administration took over, the Russians seem to have calculated that a Democrat wouldn’t trade a terrorist arms dealer for a mere middle-aged white guy, and thus the arrest of Brittney Griner.

The Biden administration bought it, hook, line and sinker.

“[Brittney Griner] represents the best America — the best about America — just across the board, everything about her.”
— Joe Biden

She is a symbol, you see? And because Democrats are controlled by this kind of symbolism, they played right into Putin’s hands, trading the family cow for some magic beans, as it were.



 

Category: Joe Biden, Russia

In The Mailbox: 12.08.22 (Evening Edition)

Posted on | December 9, 2022 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 12.08.22 (Evening Edition)

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Silicon Valley delenda est.

Today is a day like any other day.

OVER THE TRANSOM
357 Magnum:  Good Guys 3 Bad Guys 0, also, Swiss To “Restrict” Use Of Electric Cars
EBL:  John Ford’s They Were Expendable, From Here to Eternity, and Which Trade Was Worse?
Twitchy: Elon Musk Drops Adam Schiff For Lying About Hate Speech On Twitter, also, Conservatives (And Liberals) React To Twitter Files II Revelation That Yes, Twitter Was Shadowbanning Despite Denials
Louder With Crowder: Smug vegan attempts lecturing Piers Morgan about meat, so he eats a steak in front of him, also, WH defends saving Brittney Griner over Paul Whelan because the WNBA star is a role model…as opposed to the Marine?
Vox Popoli: Mailvox: Gamma Struggles, Triggering the Hitlerians, and Avalon Poll

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Conservative: Annals Of LGBT Institutional Capture, also, Sunlight For America’s Great Unhealed Wound
American Greatness: Duke University Surgeons Deny a 14-year-old Girl a Kidney Transplant Because She Didn’t Get The Jab, Actor Kirk Cameron Can’t Get a Single Story Hour Booking for His Wholesome New Children’s Book at Public Libraries Across America, and FBI Agent Testifies About Bureau’s Involvement in Social Media Censorship
American Power: Anniversary of Pearl Harbor Attack, December 7th, 1941, also, At Dawn We Slept
American Thinker: Democrat Crime Policies Pave The Way For Destroying Constitutional Rights, also, What Does the Constitution Mean to Me?
Animal Magnetism: Animal’s Daily Stupid Party News
Babalu Blog: Ana Belen Montes, Cuba’s highest-ranking spy in the U.S., set to be released from prison, Cuba’s liquefied gas nightmare, Peru’s leftist president dissolves congress and tries to install himself as dictator, is quickly arrested and impeached, and Your Cuban abuela always knows best
BattleSwarm: An End To Herschel Walker Emails, also, Autogolpe Aborted
Behind The Black: Red China’s Kuaizhou-11 rocket launches test satellite, UK regulators block Virgin Orbit launch, Sweden upgrading suborbital launchsite for orbital business, Update on Starship/Superheavy testing at Boca Chica, and Pushback: Professor wins big against Auburn for punishing him for his opinions
Cafe Hayek: The Moral Case for Recycling Only When Directed To Do So by the Market, also, A Libido for the Superficial
Chicago Boyz: The Pleasures of Yew-Toob, also, The Kids — They May Not be Alright
Da Tech Guy: A Day for Brittany Cooper To Celebrate, Mitch McConnell is betraying Republican voters by collaborating with Democrats to pass the JCPA Media Cartel Bill, and Why You Should Put Your Kids into a Catholic School Vs just a Private School in one Video and a Pair of Tweets
Don Surber: WNBA star released while Marine languishes, also, The Republican future is in — New York City?
First Street Journal: The Philadelphia Inquirer just trashed its own gun control arguments, also, To the government, telling the whole truth will make you less likely to comply, so the whole truth will be hidden
Gates Of Vienna: Italian Court Nullifies “Green Pass” Judgment, Funeral in Illerkirchberg, When Putsch Comes to Shove, and Requiem for a Culture, Part 4: The Amelia Christmas Parade
The Geller Report: Woke MILITARY and Police Respond To NJ Elementary School Mom Who Voiced Concern About Pan/Poly Sexualization Of Her 7 Year Old Child
Hogewash: Team Kimberlin Post of the Day, Swift and Fermi Spot a Long Gamma-Ray Burst, Pleading the Hatch Act or the Fifth Amendment?, Skynet Frowns, and About Twitter
Hollywood In Toto: Old Way Will Enrage Gun Control Crowd, Jennifer Lawrence ‘Don’t Know Much About (Movie) History’, and The View Perfectly Defends Edgy Humor
The Lid: DeSantis Vows To Hold Big Pharma Accountable For Adverse Reactions To mRNA Shots
Legal Insurrection: Twitter Blue Check Leftist is Shocked When His Side Doesn’t Show Compassion After Ted Cruz ‘Family Matter’, Sen. Tom Cotton Wishes ‘Woke’ CEO ‘Best of Luck’ When Seeking Help From GOP, Gov. Youngkin Orders Virginia to End State Enforcement of Covid Violations, The Freakout Over The Elections Clause Continues After SCOTUS Oral Argument, and #Twitterfiles Part 2: “Twitter employees build blacklists, prevent disfavored tweets from trending, and actively limit the visibility of entire accounts or even trending topics”
Nebraska Energy Observer: Change is … good???
Outkick: Brittney Griner Released In Prisoner Swap For The Merchant Of Death, Kyrie Irving Tapes Over Nike Swoosh, Writes Message On Shoe Following Split With Company, Bills Safety Jordan Poyer Makes Boy’s Day, Shows Up To School To Thank Him For Letter, Antonio Brown Still Believed To Be Inside His House Six Days After Police Arrived With A Warrant For His Arrest,Joe Biden Draws Bill O’Brien Comparisons For ‘Getting Fleeced’ In Griner Trade , and Fans Demands MLB Apologize For Moving All-Star Game Out Of Georgia
Power Line: Thought for the Day: John Marini on Trump, The FBI factor, and The Mystery of Woke Capitalism
Shark Tank: Rep. Sheila Jackson-Lee (D-TX) Throws Flag In Garbage
Shot In The Dark: Proof Of Concept, also,Downtown’s Back Baybee! (Part II)
This Ain’t Hell: Day of Infamy, The Road to Pearl Harbor, They just never stop, and Prisoner exchange, WNBA star returns to US, Marine veteran remains in Russia
Transterrestrial Musings: New Speed Record, The Solar Power Satellite Game, and In Which Biological Sex Is Real
Victory Girls: Occasional Cortex Facing House Ethics Committee Investigation, also, Loudoun Superintendent Fired After Grand Jury Report
Volokh Conspiracy: School District Must Release E-Mail List of Parents to Whom It Sent Various Ideological Advocacy Messages
Watts Up With That: ‘Common Ground’ on ESG? Only Bad Wins, How Protests and Crackdowns Can Exacerbate Climate Change, and Victories against ESG Starting to Accelerate
Weasel Zippers: Far-Left LA County DA Tells Prosecutors To Give Illegal Immigrants Under Criminal Investigation A Way To Avoid Deportation, Climate Czar John Kerry: It’d Be “Great” If There Were Taxpayer Funds To Pay Climate Reparations, and Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) Gets Bitch Slapped By Elon Musk
The Federalist: America Still Has Lessons To Learn From Pearl Harbor About Taking Foreign Threats Seriously, Misnamed ‘Respect For Marriage Act’ Doesn’t Just Gut Religious Liberties, It Puts Selfish Adult Wants Over Kids’ Needs, 3 Unsexy Reasons Warnock Beat Walker In The Georgia Runoff, Like Rail Workers, Truckers Are Also Feeling The Pain Of Predatory Systems, and Republicans Insisting The Party ‘Move On’ Are Daring Voters To Do The Exact Opposite
Mark Steyn: Fonda You, Culture of Death, and Keeping Up with the Sussexes

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In The Mailbox: 12.08.22 (Morning Edition)

Posted on | December 8, 2022 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 12.08.22 (Morning Edition)

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Silicon Valley delenda est.

This really ought to be Twitchy’s logo.

OVER THE TRANSOM
Rumor Control: The Days Of Future Past, Free Speech, & Twitter
Ninety Miles From Tyranny: The 90 Miles Mystery Box Episode #1924
Baldilocks: That Such Men Lived
EBL: World War Two Pinups, also, Rogue Heroes
Twitchy: The GOP’s Latest Betrayal, also, Radio Host Explains Why It’s OK To Go After Ted Cruz & His Teen Daughter After She Was Rushed To The Hospital 
Louder With Crowder: While San Francisco declares war on Elon Musk over beds, he wants to know ‘what about all that fentanyl?’
Vox Popoli: Disney Admits Racism, Ukraine’s War on Christianity, and We Will Raise Wolves
Stoic Observations: Ye Of Little Faith

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: Podcast #158 – The Happiness episode, also, Who Wants to Live Forever – An Hypothesis for the Covid Vaccines
American Conservative: I’m a Stranger Here Myself
American Greatness: Department of Defense Spends Nearly $100K on Diversity Seminars for Air Force Band, Fauci Worried that COVID Lab Leak Theories Would Increase Tensions with Red China, and The Tyranny of the Minority
American Thinker: ‘A Long Train of Abuses’, The ‘China Model’ and the WEF, and Harden the Electrical Grid, or Suffer the Consequences
Animal Magnetism: Animal’s Hump Day News
Babalu Blog: Cuban State Security forces human rights activist into exile, also, Video of the Day: Cuba’s sock puppet president tries to speak English, hilarity ensues
Behind The Black: Ingenuity sets altitude record on 35th flight, Computer modelers predict millions will die if China relaxes its zero COVID lockdowns policy, and Pushback: Judge rules flight attendant must be rehired by Southwest, but reduces her award significantly
Cafe Hayek: Recycle – When It’s Not Wasteful To Do So
CDR Salamander: What a Beautiful Morning
Don Surber: Saudis treat Xi like Trump, not Biden, also, Punish the fascists
First Street Journal: Killadelphia
Gates Of Vienna: Confession and Apology First, Then Amnesty
The Geller Report:  Top FBI Official Steps Down as Republicans Prepare to Probe Into Bureau, also, Zero Faith In Our Elections: Warnock Declared Winner in Georgia
Hogewash: Team Kimberlin Post of the Day, also, NGC 376
The Lid: December 7, 1941: A Day That Will Live In Infamy
Legal Insurrection: Small but Significant Win for Chinese Protesters as Covid Restrictions Loosen, Teen at Ted Cruz’s Houston Home in Hospital After ‘Self-Inflicted Cutting’ Call, and Warnock Squeaks by to Win Georgia Senate Race, Gives Dems Outright Majority
Nebraska Energy Observer: Unipolarity, Atlas, and a Coffee Break
Outkick:  High School Football Team That Hasn’t Completed A Pass All Season Playing For A State Championship, Dana White Torches Soccer As A Stupid Sport In Resurfaced Video, Aaron Judge Has Re-Signed With Yankees For 9 Years, $360 Million, Todd McShay Rips Jaxon Smith-Njigba For Missing Ohio State Playoff Game, and The 5-7 Miami Hurricanes Want $100 Million For Football Facility And ‘Podcast Room’
Power Line: The Grassley-Johnson experience
Shark Tank: Marco Rubio Questions Lack Of Leadership Change In Senate
Shot In The Dark: Memorial, also, Peak Bureausotan
This Ain’t Hell: Transgender Navy SEAL veteran announces detransition
Victory Girls: San Francisco: Don’t Release The Killer Robots
Volokh Conspiracy: Free Speech Rules, Free Speech Culture, and Legal Education: More Responses to Objections
Watts Up With That: The Mirror Makes Ludicrous Claim That Large Parts of England Will Be Under Water By 2100, Claim: Indoor Farms can Solve Climate Crisis Weather Disruption, and Apollo 17: 50th Anniversary of the Most Successful Manned Space Mission… So Far
Weasel Zippers: Biden Tries To Tell Arizona Crowd About Nanochips, Confusion Ensues, MSNBC: SCOTUS Religious Liberty Case Will Bring US Back To Jim Crow, and Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-MI): Biden Doesn’t Need To Visit Southern Border Because “He’s Seen The Photos”
The Federalist: Pope Francis Owes Catholics In China An Apology, Abortion Radicals Threaten To ‘Shoot Up’ Pro-Lifers, But FBI Won’t Commit To Investigating, 50 Years After The Last Moon Landing, Big Government Still Wants Taxpayers To Foot The Bill For Space Exploration, and May The Anniversary Of Pearl Harbor Remind Us Of The Gravity Of War, As Our Inept Government Barrels Toward It

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In The Mailbox: 12.06.22

Posted on | December 7, 2022 | 1 Comment

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Forgot to note this yesterday, but Mark Steyn is doing a reading of “A Christmas Carol”. Part three is linked below. 

Silicon Valley delenda est.

OVER THE TRANSOM
357 Magnum: An Entitlement That Can’t Be Fulfilled
EBL: Kirstie Alley, RIP, Should Ronna McDaniels Stay On As RNC Chair?, and John Bolton Threatens To Run For President 
Twitchy: More Whimpering From Ben Collins About Elon Musk, also, Meet Twitter’s Newest Ex-Employee
Louder With Crowder: Elon Musk fires controversial Twitter lawyer over suppressing Hunter story, handling the ‘Twitter Files’, English teacher claims teaching kids to talk and write good is white supremacy, so she refuses to, and Oh my: Post-Liver King, Joe Rogan calls on The Rock to come clean about using steroids
Vox Popoli: Contemplating Infinity, Freedom or Foreigners, The Ultimate Troll, Brazil Wins, and Drone Attacks in Russia

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Conservative: Of Course Trust in the Military Has Declined
American Greatness: Biden Supports Keeping Vax Mandate for Troops, Stop Virtue-Signaling and Prioritize Real Marriage, and Yes, the 2020 Election Was Stolen
American Thinker: Democrat Voter Fraud: A Brief History, also, A Corrupt, Evil Regime Intent on Imprisoning Trump
Animal Magnetism: Animal’s Daily Ben Franklin News
Babalu Blog:  Cuban artist says she was censored at Miami’s Art Basel when she held up a ‘Che was a killer’ sign, Cuban woman has been waiting 5 years for her hurricane-damaged home to be repaired, and Question of the Day: Was fake Cuban president’s global begging tour a disaster?
BattleSwarm: Ukraine Hits Airbase 600 Kilometers Inside Russia, also, Followup: Ford F-150 Lightning EV Suffers Drastic Range Decrease In The Rare Weather Event Known As “Winter”
Behind The Black: Orion completes burn to send spacecraft back to Earth, Ukrainian rocket startup targets ’23 for first launch, Martian dunes, as far as the eye can see, and Today’s blacklisted American: Richmond restaurant to the Family Foundation: “No Christians served here!”
CDR Salamander: There Must be Consequences for Germany
Chicago Boyz: Fun with GPT-3
Da Tech Guy: A Somber Elon Musk Twitter Thought, The Biden Peak, and Don’t know much about history
Don Surber: Don’t feed the trolls — including NYT, WaPo and The View, “Vladimir” Zelensky goes after churches, Never Trump ?s the police state, and Supreme Court is over the target
First Street Journal: Watch out! The signs are there that the Biden Administration wants to reimpose mask mandates
Gates Of Vienna: Knife Jihad in Illerkirchberg, The Peasants of Elon’s Digital Fiefdom, Ukrainian Refugees in Poland Will Help Pay Their Way, and The Vax and Heart Health
The Geller Report: Iran Threatens to Turn the World into Graveyard for US, Israel, Saudis, also, George Soros can influence global media with ties to AT LEAST 253 organizations
Hogewash: Team Kimberlin Post of the Day, A Golden Anniversary, How Did Socialists Cook Before Electricity?, and Nothing to See Here. Move Along.
Hollywood In Toto: Triangle of Sadness Drowns in a Sea of Socialist Wishcasting, Christmas Bloody Christmas Should Be Unplugged, The Sad, Predictable Decline of Sacha Baron Cohen, and Office Star Won’t Show Series to Her Own Kids (Maybe Never)
The Lid: Trust In Media Has Fallen To All-Time Low
Legal Insurrection: Louisiana, Missouri Release Full Fauci Deposition Transcript in Social Media Collusion Case, DOJ Subpoena to Twitter Demanded Info on Tara Reade’s Account After Accusing Biden of Sexual Assault, EU Threatens to Shut Down Twitter as Musk Eases Censorship Rules, and Republican Lawyer Harmeet Dhillon Running for Republican National Committee Chair
Nebraska Energy Observer: Free Speech Monday, also, I’m sorry but
Outkick: Joe Rogan Calls For ‘The Rock’ To Come Clean About Steroids Use, Deion Sanders Doesn’t Care About Your Feelings, Former Celtics Coach Ime Udoka And Nia Long Are Reportedly Finished After Scandal, Failed TV Host Bomani Jones Calls Deion Sanders A Sell Out For Leaving HBCU, and Is Soccer Finally Starting To Be Cool In America? 
Power Line: Saving the World With Electric Vehicles, The Daily Chart: Take Your Lithium, and Notes on the Twitter Files
Protein Wisdom Reborn: On Censorship & Its Discontents
Shark Tank: Waltz Says U.S. Faces Mineral Crisis Against Red China
Shot In The Dark: I’m Old Enough To Remember, Today’s Joke – Tomorrow’s Reality, and Heavy-Handed Metaphor Alert
The Political Hat: Normalizing Medical Homicide In Canada: By Commercials; By Mandated Doctor’s Recommendations; By Proactively Making The Life Of The Living Insufferable
This Ain’t Hell: Return of an old ‘friend’. Be All You Can Be, Canadian VA official offers assisted suicide to Canadian veteran, and Armed Forces Qualification Test
Transterrestrial Musings: Objections To Mars Colonization, Lunar Landing Pads, and The Twitter Censorship
Victory Girls: Salon Strikes Again At Candace Cameron Bure
Volokh Conspiracy: Prof. Michael McConnell (Stanford) on 303 Creative (the Web Site Designer / Same-Sex Wedding Case)
Watts Up With That: Contra Yahoo News, “Weather Whiplash” is not Threatening Autumn Weather
Weasel Zippers: DOJ Targeted Tara Reade After She Accused Joe Biden Of Sexual Assault, ACLU Threatens To Sue Hospital If It Doesn’t Perform Transgender Surgeries, and Biden Chief of Staff: “Fiscal Responsibility Is Very Important To Us”
The Federalist: Though Not Victorious, The Christian Right’s Consistent Resistance To Child Sexualization Has Been Vindicated, Why Elon Musk’s ‘Twitter Files’ Matter, Fauci Knows Everything But Remembers Nothing In His Big Tech Collusion Deposition, Dutch Government Takes Next Step In Its Climate-Crazed Crusade Against Nation’s Farmers, and MLB Still Won’t Apologize After Damaging Georgia’s Economy With Election Law Lies
Mark Steyn: Lab Leaks and Twitter Files, Doom and Decline, and “Rise! And Walk With Me!”

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Category: Linkagery

Headless Woman in Hopeless City

Posted on | December 6, 2022 | 4 Comments

How many murders involving decapitation happen in an average year in the United States? Pretty sure the number is small, but when your city is on pace for more than 500 murders a year — as is the case in “Killadelphia” — a certain number of statistical outliers can be expected:

Since the beginning of the year, Philadelphia police have been called 21 times to the Lawndale house where a woman was found decapitated this week, a law enforcement source said Thursday.
Seven of those calls to the two-story home on the 300 block of Magee Avenue were for reports of domestic disturbances. One of the calls was for a person with a gun and some of the others were reports of fights between a man and a woman, the source said.
It was unclear whether any of those incidents involved the victim of Tuesday’s homicide, Leila Al Raheel, 41, or Ahmad Shareef, the 34-year-old man accused of killing her.
Word of repeated calls to the home steps away from Tacony Creek is the latest development in a gruesome slaying that shook the Lawndale neighborhood.
Al Raheel was found dead in the home Tuesday afternoon, after police responded to a report of a stabbing and found her headless corpse.
Minutes later, police discovered Shareef hiding a distance away. They also recovered a knife, police said.
Shareef was charged with murder, abuse of a corpse, and possessing an instrument of crime, authorities said. He was being held without bail.
It was unclear what, if any, relationship Shareef and Al Raheel had beyond living in the same house, but authorities said the slaying was being investigated as a domestic homicide.

Now, I know what you must be thinking. It’s a murder in Philadelphia and the suspect is named “Ahmad,” so he’s probably . . .

Ahmad Shareef

Syrian! Surprise, surprise!

Neighbors said that as many as 10 people had been living in the house, and that some of them may have been staying in the garage. Shareef and at least one other man who lived there behaved aggressively toward others on the street, threatened neighbors, and got into fights, they said. . . .
One nearby resident, who asked not to be identified, said the occupants of the house were Syrian immigrants who had moved in about seven years ago. At first, the residents were welcomed to the neighborhood, but fights and arguments were soon heard constantly coming from the house.

You gotta admit, it takes a special kind of immigrant to be more disturbingly violent than the locals in Philadelphia, who murder about 10 people in an average week. And maybe the State Department needs to do a better job of vetting these “refugees.” Like, why are we importing bloodthirsty savages from foreign countries, as if the domestic population doesn’t already have enough bloodthirsty savages? But on second thought, if you’re going to resettle refugees from a war-torn country like Syria, they’ll feel right at home in Murder City, U.S.A.

A Philadelphia parking authority officer was shot in the head in broad daylight by a thug in the City of Brotherly Love [Nov. 25].
The suspect was caught on a surveillance camera walking up behind the 37-year-old male parking official and shooting him in the head at point-blank range at 3.50pm on the 4500 block Frankford Avenue the day after Thanksgiving.
The officer, who was on duty at the time of the crime, is seen in video footage immediately collapsing onto the sidewalk before help arrives.
He is now in stable condition and the PPA is hopeful he will make a full recovery, having primarily been injured in his shoulder and ear.
Police are still investigating the incident and have not yet made any arrests, but believe the victim was a ‘target’.
Following the shooting, Philadelphia Deputy Commissioner Frank Vanore said, ‘It’s bold. It’s brazen and something we’re definitely going to do everything we can to solve immediately.’
‘We believe he was the intended target,’ he continued. ‘We have some witnesses saying a car pulled up, shots were fired, and then a car pulled away.’

Well, at least he didn’t decapitate him . . .



 

Category: Crime, Pennsylvania
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