In The Mailbox: 11.25.25

Posted on | November 26, 2025 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 11.25.25

Silicon Valley et Hamas delenda sunt.

Sometimes one little typo changes the whole meme.

OVER THE TRANSOM
Director Blue: Top 20 Insights From Mike Benz On Soros & The Blob
EBL: Friends With Benefits, Flatfish, The Last Waltz, and Woody the Woodpecker Theme Song
Twitchy: Alarming Posts From Army JAG Show How Dangerous “Seditious Six” Video Is, Aspiring Governor Eric Swalwell Posts Video Featuring His Unimpressive Staff, and Eugene Vindman Thumping His Chest About Returning To Active Duty To Defend Mark Kelly Goes Badly Wrong
Louder With Crowder: Chicago mayor goes on unhinged rant, claims putting violent criminals in jail is racist, Eric Swalwell runs from black lesbian exposed by “trans” male in women’s locker room, Greta Thunberg banned from Venice with other lunatics, and NYT demands you feel sorry for an illegal who stole another man’s identity
Vox Popoli: Let Experience Be Silent, The Romans Didn’t Learn, and KU Question
The Bugscuffle Gazette: Publishing Stuff!
Cedar Sanderson: Temporary Duty

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Conservative: Trump’s Ukraine Proposal Is the Least Bad Option
American Greatness: Report: DOJ and FBI to Interview ‘Seditious Six’ Dems Over ‘Refuse Illegal Orders’ Video
American Thinker: Ken Burns Is Off To A Hard-Left Start With His American Revolution Series
Animal Magnetism: Animal’s Daily Placeholder News
BattleSwarm: Won’t Someone Think Of The Country Clubs?
Behind The Black: Predicting dust storms in the Starship candidate landing zone on Mars, The smooth and extremely calm methane lakes of Titan, Russia launches classified military satellites, NASA releases images during Osiris-Apex’s fly-by of Earth in late September, and A Midnight Repost: Farewell to America
Cafe Hayek: Facepalm
CDR Salamander: Nigeria’s Jihad Is Only A Problem If You Try To Stop It?
Don Surber: Will Vlad and Volod kiss and make up?
First Street Journal: Will these bad guys finally do some serious time?
The Geller Report: Minnesota Democrat Judge Shockingly Overturns Guilty Verdict of Abdi Fatah Yusuf, also, Mideast Envoy Steve Witkoff Says Hamas Promised Me It Would Disarm
Hollywood In Toto: Is This Why L.A. Is Losing So Many Movie Productions?
Legal Insurrection: Duffy Threatens to Withhold Millions From PA After Terror Suspect Received CDL, 24 Years Ago Today – Johnny “Mike” Spann – CIA Officer And First American Killed In Afghanistan Post-9/11, Auburn University Admissions Officer Resigns Amid Scandal Over Race-Based Practices, Report: FBI Wants to Interview Democrats Who Told Military to Refuse Illegal Orders, and Trump Moves to Designate Muslim Brotherhood Chapters as Terrorist Groups
Matt Taibbi: Yes, Both Sides,
Outkick: NFL Suspends Tre’von Moehrig For Nutty Way He Punched Jauan Jennings, Brian Kelly Claims Ongoing Battle With LSU Regarding Buyout Has Prevented Him From Finding Job, Major Big Ten University Has Outrageous Web Page Dedicated To The ‘Whiteness Pandemic’ In The U.S., Baseball’s Richest Team Is Once Again Crying Poor, and Twerking Video & Thirst Trap Allegations At The Center Of Drama In The Poker World
Power Line: Ruben Gallego Says What You Think, Feeding Our Fraud – Nur sentenced, Elon Exposed the Fake Activists, and Ukraine Peace Deal Close?
Shark Tank: Florida Tourism – $133.6 Billion In Financial Impact, Nearly $2000 In 2024 Tax Savings
The Political Hat: The One Piece Revolts
This Ain’t Hell: Cory Mills in the spotlight, also, Recall to Active Duty?
Victory Girls: Laura Loomer Needs a Disclaimer – Literally, also, Aftyn Behn (D) Hopes Voters Overlook Her Ugly Words
Watts Up With That: UK Climate Change Minister Claims COP30 Victory, Dissecting Scotland’s economy-wrecking Net Zero plans, Rising Electricity Prices? Blame Green Energy Policies, Not President Trump, and How Much Asbestos Do Wind Turbines Contain?
The Federalist: Why Trump’s Obesity Drug ‘Deal’ Will Help Big Pharma Most Of All, Documents Show Jack Smith Ignored Constitutional Standards To Target GOP Senators In Arctic Frost Probe, Copy Our Neighborhood Pie Night Tradition If You Want To Build A Better Community, An Illegal Alien Stole An American’s Identity For 15 Years But NYT Says He’s A Victim Too, and Undermining America’s National Security Is Nothing New For Mark Kelly
Mark Steyn: From Pussyhats to Peninas

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This Is Joe. Don’t Be Like Joe.

Posted on | November 25, 2025 | Comments Off on This Is Joe. Don’t Be Like Joe.

Why do some fools get the idea that a traffic stop is a good time to hold an impromptu hearing about their constitutional rights?

Joe got pulled over by a cop in Portage County, Wisconsin, and could have gotten off with a mere traffic ticket — or perhaps just a warning — but he was defiant, looking for trouble. If you’ve watched a lot of police body camera videos on YouTube (it’s a hobby of mine), you’ve become familiar with this scenario, the routine traffic stop that “escalates,” sometimes fatally. It often begins with a motorist’s refusal to give the officer a driver’s license, proceeding to the demand that the officer summon a supervisor, etc. Joe ended up in handcuffs in the back of a squad car, charged with assault and other crimes, adding to his already lengthy history of run-ins with the law.
What causes these unnecessary confrontations? In a word, equality — or, as I’ve previously pointed out, Equality, with a capital “E,” denoting the quasi-religious faith in Equality common among liberals. “All men are created equal,” as our Declaration of Independence famously proclaimed, and that simple five-word phrase has become the foundation of a dangerous cult, which threatens to wreck the very nation that the Declaration announced our ancestors’ intent to create.
Equality, as conceived by liberals, is not merely a political ideal, but a moral principle, so that any sort of inequality is to them a sort of sin. . . .

Read the rest of my latest column at The American Spectator, but let me warn you it’s 2,400 words. This topic gets me so angry that I can’t help myself, and I start preaching: Y’all need Jesus.

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Category: American Spectator

Jared Loughner Is Newsworthy Again

Posted on | November 25, 2025 | Comments Off on Jared Loughner Is Newsworthy Again

Psycho killer Jared Loughner

Remember this guy? On January 8, 2011, Jared Loughner used a Glock-19 with a 33-round magazine to kill six people and wound 13 others, including Democratic Rep. Gabby Giffords, at a political rally in Tucson, Arizona. In the immediate aftermath of the shooting, Democrats tried to blame the Tea Party movement generally, and Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin in particular, for the shooting. These claims turned out to be false — as I will explain in a moment — but that 2011 shooting is back in the news because Giffords married Mark Kelly, now a Democratic senator from Arizona, and Kelly tried to leverage that fact to silence his critics:

Senator whose wife was shot fears for safety after Trump sedition accusation
Senator Mark Kelly — whose wife, Gabrielle Giffords, narrowly survived an attempted assassination while she was in Congress in 2011 — says he is worried about “increased threats” to his family’s safety after Donald Trump accused him and other Democratic lawmakers of “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH”.
“This kind of language is dangerous, and it’s wrong,” Kelly said on Friday on MS NOW’s Morning Joe . . .
“My family has suffered from political violence,” Kelly said on Morning Joe. “My wife … was nearly assassinated — shot in the head at a political event. We have rising political violence in this country, even the president — two assassination attempts. He should understand that.”

Leaving aside Trump’s bombastic rhetorical style, and Kelly’s role in the “Seditious Six” video, let me instead call your attention to the man who shot Gabby Giffords, and what we know about his motive.

It matters, because I covered the story back in 2011:

The two-hour video is anti-Christian, anti-American and anti-capitalist, and Jared Lee Loughner became obsessed with it. Zeitgeist, a conspiracy-theory documentary released in 2007, has spawned its own cult following. According to Loughner’s friends, the accused Tucson gunman was one of the cult’s most zealous converts. And many of Loughner’s otherwise inexplicable obsessions — from his fascination with currency to his rantings against illiteracy to his paranoid fears of “mind control” — parallel ideas promoted in Zeitgeist. . . .
“I really think that this Zeitgeist documentary had a profound impact upon Jared Loughner’s mindset and how he views the world that he lives in,” Zach Osler, 22, told ABC’s Ashleigh Banfield. Osler’s father confirmed that influence in an interview published Sunday by the Arizona Republic. “He wanted to watch [Zeitgeist] all the time,” George Osler told the Phoenix newspaper. “It was cool at first. But then it got weird. It was all he wanted to do.” . . .

You can read the rest of that article I wrote for The American Spectator in January 2011. Doing a critical analysis of that fringe conspiracy-theory video struck me at the time as work that was above my pay grade. Given the nationwide media attention to the Tucson shooting, and the fact that ABC News had reported about Loughner’s Zeitgeist obsession, wouldn’t you expect that someone on the staff of the New York Times or the Washington Post would have done that work? But for some reason, none of them did, and the only journalists who spent any time researching Zeitgeist were me and Jesse Walker of Reason magazine.

Threats against public figures should be investigated and the persons responsible should be arrested and prosecuted, but what Kelly has done here — invoking his wife’s shooting as a way to deflect criticism — needs to be called out as the cheap trick it is. “This kind of language is dangerous,” Kelly says, after recording a video implying that the President of the United States is giving “illegal orders” to our troops. As if that kind of language is not dangerous? But none of this had anything to do with what Jared Lougher did in 2011. It was not “dangerous” political rhetoric that motivated Loughner, it was a weird conspiracy-theory video and, of course, his own psychotic condition: “After his arrest, two medical evaluations diagnosed Loughner with paranoid schizophrenia and ruled him incompetent to stand trial.” Crazy People Are Dangerous.

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Category: Arizona, Conspiracy Theories

In The Mailbox: 11.24.25 (Evening Edition)

Posted on | November 25, 2025 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 11.24.25 (Evening Edition)

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Behind The Black is running its annual fundraising drive, and I apologize for just now noticing.

Silicon Valley et Hamas delenda sunt.

OVER THE TRANSOM
Director Blue: The Illustrated Laptop From Hell Part VI, also, The UK’s Assault Knife Crisis
357 Magnum: Cops Waited Until Someone Had Been Shot Before Responding
EBL: Lindsey Halligan, The poetry of RFK Jr. and Olivia Nuzzi, and To Roast A Turkey | The French Chef
Twitchy: Senator Warnock Blames Measles Resurgence On RFK Jr., NY’s Jose Vega – Send Money, ICE Took My Stepdad & Trump Is After Me, and Nex Benedict’s Dad Troons Out – Jailed For Sexual Abuse
Louder With Crowder: Watch: X’s New Location Update Just Exposed Entire Platform As A Psyop, Eric Swalwell launches his gubernatorial campaign with horrible voting idea, Campbell’s Soup VP in hot water after admitting company uses “bioengineered” meat only poor people buy, and The latest in Democrat performative slacktivism involves buying ice scrapers at Home Depot
Vox Popoli: The Return of Christian Nationalism, Castalia Thanksgiving Sale 2025, A Civilizational Collapse Model, and Welcome to Midnight
Stoic Observations: (my) AI Images & Words
Gab: Launches ChristianNationalist.com

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Conservative: The Latest Step in the Establishment Campaign to Stop Elbridge Colby, also, The Dangerous, Unhinged Reaction to Trump’s Ukraine Peace Plan
American Greatness: DoW Reviewing Misconduct Allegations Against Sen. Mark Kelly, Trump Vows to Designate Muslim Brotherhood a Terrorist Organization, Clinton-Appointed Judge Dismisses James Comey and Letitia James Cases, Insurrection Chic, and The Evils of Capitalism
American Thinker: Carrots and Sticks, also, The Land of 10,000 Grafts!
Animal Magnetism: Goodbye, Blue Monday
BattleSwarm: How Minnesota Welfare Dollars Support Somali Jihad Terrorism, Japan, Poland and Correcting Bill Maher, and Russian Tank Factory Layoff?
Behind The Black: China launches unmanned Shenzhou-22 capsule to its Tiangong-3 station, Blue Origin’s Blue Ring orbital tug gets a customer, Two Middle Eastern startups sign deal to build a mini-shuttle dubbed Oryx, A company that wants to shoot payloads into orbit with a cannon, and NASA trims $768 million from Boeing’s Starliner contract
Cafe Hayek: Trump’s Tariffs and Manufacturing Employment, On Those “TRILLIONS”, and Wisdom from Tocqueville
CDR Salamander: Did Senator Kelly Endanger The SHIPS For America Act?
Chicago Boyz: You Could Be Mine
Da Tech Guy: Diet Update: Entering Phase 2
Don Surber: The Mamdani Effect
First Street Journal: World War III Watch: the neocons want to see the fruitless fighting in Ukraine go on and on and on, World War III Watch: So many people want to fight, fight, fight for Ukraine who never actually go to Ukraine and fight, and Kristallnacht in New York City? It’s not so far-fetched!
Gates Of Vienna: “Germans” Celebrate Hamas, Éric Zemmour: “France Without Christianity is No Longer France”, Taqiyya Ramadan: A Retrospective, and Vienna Will Be a Muslim City Within Two Generations
The Geller Report: State Department Declares Mass Migration ‘Existential Threat to Western Civilization’, Democrat Judge Dismisses Indictments Against Corrupt James Comey & Letitia James, IDF Eliminates Hizb’Allah’s Second-In-Command Ali Tabatabai, THE GREAT X HOAX, and President Donald Trump ENDS Deportation Protections for Somalis in Minnesota
Hollywood In Toto: Last PIcture Show – A Perfect Blast from the Past, This Indie Author Ignored the Gatekeepers (and Won), Bill Maher Wants to Save Thanksgiving (and Democrats), and Variety (Accidentally) Confirms Woke Killed Movie Comedies
Legal Insurrection: DOGE Dissolves But Efficiency Mandates Remain in Washington, California Losing One Taxpayer Every Minute as Residents Flee Failed Policies, Maine Dem Senate Candidate Tells People to Harass Lawmakers Who Oppose “Medicare for All”, Pentagon Investigating Sen. Kelly Over ‘Serious Allegations of Misconduct’, and Chicago Public Schools Spent Millions on Travel as Students Fall Under Expectations
Matt Taibbi: The Censorship-Industrial Complex’s Power Grip In Germany
Outkick: Donald Trump Takes A Victory Lap After Shedeur Sanders Prediction Begins To Manifest, Lane Kiffin Says It’s ‘Very Important’ To Coach Remainder Of Season At Ole Miss, NASCAR Execs Exposed After Leaked Texts Show Disgraceful Messages, NFL Loves Tightening Playoff Races And What That Means For This Week’s Holiday Games, Taryn Manning Draws Britney Spears Comparisons With Inspirational Solo Topless Dance Number, and Brock Purdy Throws to Everyone But His Own Team, 49ers Fans Suddenly Miss Mac Jones
Power Line: Pentagon Investigating Kelly? Good, Geographic Reveal Exposes Fakes [Updated], 78th Feeding Our Future defendant charged, and Panic over Somali TPS ending
Shark Tank: AG Uthmeier Wants Illegal Gambling Raised From Misdemeanor To Felony
Shot In The Dark: My TPS Report
This Ain’t Hell: Therapist describes Trump Derangement Symptom as real pathology, Federal Charges in Haitian Island Coup Attempt, Censure fever, Wicker Convicted of Stolen Valor, and Charlotte ICE Operation leads to reduction of activity at construction sites
Transterrestrial Musings: The Future Of Journalism, The JFK Assassination, The Subversive Foreign Bots, Photonic Computing, and Cornelius Vanderbilt
Victory Girls: School Boards – Dangerous Front Lines For Conservatives, also, Greedy Elizabeth Warren and Affordability
Watts Up With That: Fake Famine Fears at the Collapsed COP30 Fuel Net Zero Fantasy, Whistling Past the Graveyard, A World Without Air, The Problem With Wind Energy in the Northwest, and Consumer Watchdog Alerts Feds About Alleged Climate Activist Scam
The Federalist: Elizabeth Warren Yells ‘Soak The Rich’ While Making Millions On Wall Street, Pentagon Could Recall Democrat Senator For Court-Martial Over ‘Seditious’ Video, Bishops Vote To Prohibit Trans Surgeries And Hormone Treatment In Catholic Hospitals, Judge Says US Attorney Lindsey Halligan Can’t Prosecute Comey Because Trump Appointed Her, and My Ancestors Were At The First Thanksgiving, And You Better Believe I’m Proud Of It
Mark Steyn: A Serenade to Stupidity, Mrs Brown, “Sixteen Tons”, In the beginning, there was Buckley, and Black Friday Specials!

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In The Mailbox: 11.24.25 (Weekend Substackery)

Posted on | November 24, 2025 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 11.24.25 (Weekend Substackery)

— compiled by Wombat-socho

If I don’t get some of this stuff out of the way now I’ll be up until 1 AM doing the regular post.
A few thoughts on the importance of regional gas & restaurant chains.
Silicon Valley et Hamas delenda sunt.

too soon?

OVER THE TRANSOM
Director Blue: The Illustrated Laptop From Hell Part V, Top 20 Outrages Of The EU Censorship Regime,
EBL: Smoked King Mackerel, A Working Man, Blessed Miguel Agustín Pro, Spanish Reconquista Song, and Spilt Pompano
Twitchy: General Mike Flynn Tells James Comey “Don’t Think It’s Over”, Kurt Schlichter Ends Dumba** Dan Goldman & His Claims About ICE “Crossing A Line”, and SecWar Hegseth Posts About “Despicable” Video By “The Seditious Six”
Louder With Crowder: “I’m probably going to get eaten”, Another country (not America) follows the science and bans puberty blockers for underage “trans” people, Trump DOJ says enough is enough, sues Gavin Newsom for giving free taxpayer-funded tuition to illegals, “Shout Your Abortion” co-founder launches new children’s book aimed at teaching the joy of abortions to five-year-olds, and Mother of four was an assault victim, but now SHE’S being charged with a hate crime for calling her attacker a slur
Vox Popoli: AI Hallucinations are Wikislop, The Threat to Candace Owens, RIP Jellybean, An Old and Prescient Warning, and The Dark Side of Star Trek
Cedar Sanderson: Sometimes You Just Want A Donut, also, Domesticity
The Bugscuffle Gazette: Feeling Melancholy, also, Nothing From Government Is Free
Based Books Sale: What Are 2025’s Top Based Books?
Stoic Observations: Career Acceleration, also, When Your Values Are A Crime
Tom Kratman: The Thanksgiving Prayer (Updated For 2025)

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
CDR Salamander: A Midrats Podcast Pre-Thanksgiving Free For All
Elizabeth Nickson: Their Satanic Majesties Roar; MAGA Bites Back
STUMP: The Week In Meep – MST3Kgiving, Movember, & SUMO!

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Rule 5 Sunday: Roll Tide

Posted on | November 24, 2025 | Comments Off on Rule 5 Sunday: Roll Tide

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Not sure who this gal is, but despite the #10 ranking in this week’s bogus College Football Rankings*, Alabama is clearly #1 in her heart.
*It could be worse. In the objectively superior Marble Rankings, the Tide is rated #12.
Ceterum autem censeo Silicon Valley et Hamas delendam sunt.

ANIMAL MAGNETISM: Rule Five Felonious Politicians Friday, also, the Saturday Gingermageddon.

EBL: Saturday Night Girls With Guns, MAGA Meets Mamdani, “The Trolley Song”, Thanksgiving Is Coming, Sara Berki, Peggy Shippen, Iris DeRode, Sweater Weather, I Feel Her Pain, Revolutionary War Women, Address To The Ladies, and Landman Season 2

A VIEW FROM THE BEACH: Sydney Lint, Fish Pic Friday – Megan Watts, Tattoo Thursday, A New Bay Diet Plan for Fisheries?, The Wednesday Wetness, Gone Fishin’, Tuesday Tanlines, The Monday Morning Stimulus, Palm Sunday, and Democrats Still Beating the Dead Epstein Horse

BACON TIME: Rule Five – Yes, I Will Have A Beer

Thanks to everyone for all the luscious links!

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FMJRA 2.0: Curse of the Gopherball

Posted on | November 23, 2025 | Comments Off on FMJRA 2.0: Curse of the Gopherball

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Another miserable week of Senators baseball…we won only one game out of three against the Cubs at RFK because Charlie Hough gave up two homers in the 9th and 10th to blow the save and the game for Steve Renko in Game 1, and then the hitters just couldn’t get more than two runs off Marty Pattin in Game 3 while the Cubs got to Pat Dobson for three. Then it was the Hated Yankees turn to roast us, which they did; we should have beaten Doc Medich like the family mule but only scored two in the bottom of the 9th while Jim Kaat coughed up five runs in the second inning for his fourth loss. Game Two was a 0-4 blowout courtesy of Jim Lonborg, who held our boys to one lousy hit in nine innings. I’m not quite ready to put the team on autopilot for the rest of the season, but these 1-4 weeks are getting very old.
Ceterum autem censeo Silicon Valley et Hamas delendam sunt.

FMJRA 2.0: In Like A Lion
A View From The Beach
EBL
357 Magnum

Rule 5 Sunday: It’s Always Warm & Sunny Somewhere
A View From The Beach
Animal Magnetism
EBL

In The Mailbox: 11.17.25
Pulse News
A View From The Beach
EBL
357 Magnum

In The Mailbox: 11.18.25
A View From The Beach
EBL
357 Magnum

In The Mailbox: 11.20.25
Sucarha Post
A View From The Beach
EBL
357 Magnum

In The Mailbox: 11.21.25
EBL
A View From The Beach
357 Magnum

In The Mailbox: 11.21.25 (Evening Edition)
EBL
A View From The Beach
357 Magnum

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Category: FMJRA Award

A Death in Oakland: ‘Defund the Police’ Movement Gets Beloved Coach Killed

Posted on | November 22, 2025 | Comments Off on A Death in Oakland: ‘Defund the Police’ Movement Gets Beloved Coach Killed

Coach John Beam (left); Cedric Irving Jr. (right)

How dangerous is Oakland, California? It is one of the few cities in America that is worse than Baltimore. In the U.S. News listing of Most Dangerous Cities, Baltimore ranks fourth, while Memphis is Number One, followed by Oakland, with St. Louis in third place.

Let’s put some numbers on this. In 2023, the overall U.S. homicide rate was 5.6 per 100,000 population, while the rate in Oakland (26.9 per 100,000) was more than four times higher than the national rate, and about 50% higher than Chicago (18.7 per 100,000). The population of Oakland is less than half a million, and they average about two homicides a week, so getting murdered in Oakland isn’t a rare thing. It’s a routine fact of life, but one murder there recently made national news:

Oakland police on Friday arrested a 27-year-old former football player following the death of legendary Laney College coach, John Beam, who died from his gunshot wounds in what authorities described cryptically as a “targeted” shooting. . . .
The news of Beam’s death and subsequent arrest of Cedric Irving, Jr., 27, were announced Friday [Nov. 14], a day after Beam, 66, was shot before noon in the 900 block of Fallon Street, near the Laney Fieldhouse. That building is adjacent to the college’s football field and houses the school’s athletic facilities and resources, where Beam worked.
Irving was spotted before dawn Friday by Alameda County sheriff’s deputy Miguel Torres at the San Leandro BART station, conspicuously carrying two duffle bags, a source and police said.
No motive was given. . . .
At a Friday news conference, Asst. Police Chief James Beere said that Irving knew Beam, “but they did not have a relationship.”
He also said that Irving was not a Laney College student but had been known to “loiter around the campus.” Irving had played football at Skyline High in 2017, according to Max Preps, but not during the time that Beam coached there.
Beere did state that Irving was “on campus for a specific reason,” and that Beam was “targeted,” though he wouldn’t say more, as charges are pending. . . .
Police recovered a weapon that they said matched the caliber of live rounds found at the scene.

It is difficult to exaggerate how beloved the coach was:

Celebrated former football coach John Beam, who was featured in the Netflix series “Last Chance U” that showcased the connections he made with players others wouldn’t gamble on, has died after being shot on the college campus where he worked, the Oakland Police Department said Friday. . . .
The Netflix docuseries focused on athletes at junior colleges striving to turn their lives around, and Beam’s Laney College Eagles starred in the 2020 season. Beam gambled on players nobody else wanted. He developed deep relationships with his players while fielding a team that regularly competed for championships. . . .
Beam, who was serving as athletic director, joined Laney College in 2004 as a running backs coach and became head coach in 2012, winning two league titles. He retired from coaching in 2024 but stayed on at the school to shape its athletic programs. According to his biography on the college’s website, at least 20 of his players have gone on to the NFL.

Got that? Coach Beam took players that nobody else wanted and turned their lives around, sending many of them all the way to the NFL. Now he is dead as a direct result of the “Defund the Police” movement.

One day before his fatal shooting in what police called a “targeted incident,” Laney College athletic director John Beam stood in a community forum and said he was worried about safety on campus.
Beam, 66, raised concerns specifically about security at the Laney College field house, citing a nearby fire and a previous break-in. He made the comments Wednesday at a “Taco ’Bout Safety” event on campus. He was shot in the field house Thursday, and police announced his death Friday.
Cedric Irving Jr., a 27-year-old former Laney student and Oakland high school football player, was arrested Friday as a suspect in the shooting.
Two days before the shooting, an active shooter [training] took place on the campus.
Beam said at the event Wednesday that he felt the campus was less safe after the 2020 termination of a contract with the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office that provided armed deputies to protect the school. In June, the Peralta Community College District switched its security contractors and assigned unarmed guards from Diligence Security Group to guard Laney College.
Beam claimed the security contractors were able to show him footage of a theft at the field house but did not intervene, recover items, or detain suspects. He questioned whether this was because of a shortage of guards spread across the four community colleges that make up the Peralta Community College District.
“Six guards, four campuses, 24 hours,” Beam said. “How does that work?”

The decision to terminate the contract with the sheriff’s office came amid the George Floyd controversy, Laura Powell explains:

In June 2020, activists in Oakland capitalized on the death of George Floyd to successfully demand that the Peralta Community College District — which includes Laney College — end its contract with the Alameda County Sheriff’s Department for campus security.
The deputies were replaced with “local people of color,” who were unarmed, but many of them were reportedly “trained in martial arts.” Complaints emerged that the firms had not been not properly vetted. The new arrangement cost 50% more than the sheriff’s services.
The day before his murder on campus, Coach John Beam voiced serious concerns about campus safety under the new system.
Policy choices have consequences, sometimes tragic ones.

From a KTVU-TV report in December 2020:

Two weeks from now, armed Alameda County sheriff’s deputies will be a thing of the past at Laney College in Oakland, and other campuses that make up the Peralta Community College District.
“The relationship with the Alameda sheriffs ends on Dec. 31. So that really put them under a lot of pressure,” said David Rowe, a journalist at Peralta Citizen, which covers the four community college campuses in the district.
Some wonder whether the district’s board moved too quickly on Monday night, voting to hire several unarmed community-based security firms that will take the deputies’ place, without fully vetting those firms. . . .
“There’s no business license, there’s no security guard license, we have no sense of what kind of mental health training,” said Pamela Rudd, a journalist with Peralta Citizen.
At the district’s board meeting Monday night, interim Peralta Chancellor Carla Walter said the minority-owned security firms are prepared to patrol Laney, Merritt College in Oakland and the College of Alameda. Berkeley City College has an existing contract with another firm.
“We have done the appropriate due diligence,” Walter said. “We have checked each of the contractors’ backgrounds and their readiness for completing this work.”
The guards will be uniformed, local people of color, many trained in martial arts.
But the district will end up paying about $6 million to the new firms instead of the nearly $4 million it paid to the sheriff’s office.
“I think there was an expectation that the district was actually going to save money, that these community policing organizations would be less expensive than the sheriff, not more expensive,” Rowe said.

A few months after vouching for the bona fides of these security contractors, Carla Walter resigned as interim chancellor, citing unexplained “personal reasons.” So the person responsible for this decision didn’t hang around to see the results. Meanwhile, those diligent journalists at the Peralta Citizen got curious about the firms which contracted to provide security:

Affect Real Change, (AFC), doing business as Community Ready Corps (CRC), is slated to begin as the new security and safety team at Laney College beginning January 1, 2021, marking the end of Peralta Community College District’s long relationship and contract with the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office (ACSO). This move reflects Peralta’s community values and intention to align with those inherent in the Black Lives Matter movement. . . .
Most information about CRC, who will provide “community-based security services” to Laney College at the cost of 2.1 million dollars, has been gleaned from CRC websites and public records. CRC’s main website is also associated with getreadystayready[dot]org, a Black-owned business support fund, and the Black Solidarity Fund, blacksolidarity[dot]org created by CRC to create alternatives to traditional philanthropy. . . .
Although CRC’s mission to support and protect communities from racist intimidation, harassment and violence through a variety of community-based solutions for community safety is clear, their business structure is unclear.
According to their Peralta contract released with the public agenda on December 11, Affect Real Change is the company that will DBA, or “do business as” CRC. . . . On the Peralta contract, Affect Real Change is the company who is doing business as the secondary name CRC. . . .
A search on the City of Oakland’s business search website shows that the most recent business license for Affect Real Change expired on December 31, 2019. . . .
Neither Earl Harper, who is president of CRC, or CRC, are registered with the state of California as a Private Patrol Operator. According to BSIS, it is illegal to work as an unlicensed security guard and any company or individual who provides unlicensed security guard services risks severe consequences. . . .
A search on the California Secretary of State’s website shows Affect Real Change as a “foreign nonprofit” based in Monroe, Louisiana with Earl A. Harper listed as president effective December 11, 2020. Prior to that, newly elected Oakland City District 3 Councilmember Carroll Fife was listed as CEO.
On December 12, The Citizen again reached out to Johnson and Walter to see if they knew about CRC’s security license status. Johnson said he didn’t know the answer to that question and told The Citizen to contact Harper, the name on the district’s contract with CRC.
One of the phone numbers listed on the district’s contract rang through to Fife, who suggested community activist Tur-Ha Ak would be the best person to speak with regarding CRC. On Peralta’s contract with CRC, Ak is listed as “co-founder” and point of contact for services. In a May 2020 article in Vogue magazine, Ak is referred to as Fife’s husband.
During a phone call with The Citizen on December 12, Ak explained, with pride, some of CRC’s history as community activists and supporters. He said CRC had provided security services for nearly 30 years with a model based on working within the community, building relationships, making it easy for CRC to call on other community-based services to help serve when needed.
However, In an attempt to clarify Ak’s affiliation with CRC, The Citizen asked what his role was relative to Harper. Those questions “don’t really deal with the general subject of security,” Ak said.

To summarize: Community Ready Corps (CRC) is apparently a front for Affect Real Change (AFC), the former CEO of which is Carroll Fife, who in 2020 was elected to the Oakland city council.

Oakland City Council member Carroll Fife

For several years prior to her campaign for city council, Fife was an activist with Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE), which “was founded in 2010 to train activists across California to organize low-income and minority communities in California in support of left-leaning policies.” Fife then became “one of the key architects of the movement that came to be known as Moms 4 Housing”:

In the fall of 2019 . . . Fife organized the takeover of a vacant house for a group of homeless and housing-insecure mothers and their children.

The four-bedroom house they targeted, at 2928 Magnolia Street, had been vacant for some time before being purchased for $500,000 by an investment firm looking to renovate and “flip” it — something the company had done to more than 100 other properties in the San Francisco Bay area. People in the tech industry (i.e., folks with jobs and money) had been “gentrifying” this area of Oakland, and the “occupation” of 2928 Magnolia Street was about putting a stop to this trend: “Fife visited every day, raised money, coordinated media coverage, and organized volunteers to protect and support the moms.”

After that episode in 2019, of course, came the summer of George Floyd in 2020, and Fife ran for city council on a “Defund the Police” platform.

Note that Fife used the hashtag #DefundOPD (Defund Oakland Police Department) in her social media campaign and specifically promised a 50% reduction in the department’s budget. And in September 2020, Fife was the keynote speaker for a “virtual teach-in” promising to “answer the following questions”:

What does it mean to Defund the Police?
How does investing in communities make campuses safer?
How do we implement safety without guns and sheriffs?
Are over-policing and under-resourced schools products of systemic racism?
What does it look like to invest in students and communities?
Does your vote matter now more than ever?
How can WE make a difference?

As to what it means to “Defund the Police,” it meant that Fife’s organization got paid to provide security on campus with “local people of color,” and now, as a consequence, Coach John Beam is dead.

The killer? A kook: “Law enforcement sources also told KTVU that Irving believed Beam had used witchcraft on him.” Maybe I should host a virtual teach-in on the topic Crazy People Are Dangerous.

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