The Other McCain

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

In The Mailbox: 12.21.22

Posted on | December 22, 2022 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 12.21.22

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Silicon Valley delenda est.

¡Verdad!

OVER THE TRANSOM
Ninety Miles From Tyranny: The 90 Miles Mystery Box Episode #1938
EBL:  Extraordinary Attorney Woo, also, Franco Harris, RIP
Twitchy: House Republicans Release Report On J6 Security Failures, also, Actor/Rapper Ice T Has Refreshingly Sane & Sensible Opinion About Twitter Under Elon Musk
Louder With Crowder: Elon Musk responds to stepping down as Twitter CEO, and…BAH GAWD, that’s MySpace Tom’s entrance music
Vox Popoli: Free Speech is Anti-Christ, The Importance of Engagement, and Another Warning Signal

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: The End of the Peterson Fraud
American Conservative: ‘The Most Dangerous Show on Netflix’?
American Greatness: Sen. Rick Scott Demands Explanation For Biden Regime’s Wildly Inflated Q2 Employment Numbers, also, Twitter Files: ‘Special Protection’ Given to Pentagon Propaganda Accounts
American Thinker: The Problem With Voting Machine Certification In Arizona, A Fool’s Game on Climate, In Elections, It’s Not The Votes That Count, It’s The Ballots That Count, and Is America Falling Like Rome?
Animal Magnetism: Animal’s Hump Day News
Babalu Blog: Senate Foreign Relations Committee Republicans warn Biden about concessions to Cuba’s communist regime, Cuban YouTuber threatened with being fired from her teaching job for videos exposing reality in Cuba, and Reports from Cuba: The absurdities of Cuba’s revolutionary bureaucracy
BattleSwarm: Biden Administration: You’re Not Exporting Any Of That Dirty, Sinful Natural Gas! Ted Cruz: Guess You Don’t Need Any Of These Department Of Energy Nominees Approved, Then. Biden Administration: [Folds]
Behind The Black: The Wuhan panic underlines how scientists have abandoned the search for truth, SpaceX and the Ukraine resolve funding issues for Starlink terminals, ISS spacewalk postponed because controllers had to maneuver station to avoid space junk, and InSight mission ended
Cafe Hayek: Let’s Amend the U.S. Constitution
CDR Salamander: Mines for All My Friends
Da Tech Guy: The Three Dangers of the Frank Pavone Case: Danger One The Errors of the Church
Don Surber: Biden investigates school library for removing child pornography, also, Walt Disney helped launch Toys for Tots
First Street Journal: You can’t make poorer people wealthier by making wealthier people poorer, If the Tridentine Mass brings more Catholics to Mass, why would the Church ever restrict it?, and The left want to blame normal people for suicide of a transgender person
Gates Of Vienna: Excess Mortality in Germany, Part Two, Clearing the Roadway, and Excess Mortality in Germany, Part Three
The Geller Report: OBSCENE SPENDING, Democrats Dump Trump Tax Data In Tuesday Night Release After They Voted To Release His Tax Returns To The Public, and Biden to Send Patriot Missiles to Ukraine Which Means Deploying US Troops
Hogewash: Team Kimberlin Post of the Day, A Summary of Today’s News, and Westerhout 5
Hollywood In Toto: Puss in Boots: The Last Wish Is the Antonio Banderas Show (And Little Else), The Best Movies of 2022 (And a ‘Maverick’ Shall Lead Them), Jane Fonda Is Right. Really, and ‘I Wanna Dance with Somebody’ Checks All the Biopic Boxes (Yawn)
The Lid: $1.7 Trillion Spending Bill Has Funds for Border Security (For OTHER Countries), also, Stanford Eliminates Harmful Language Such As “American”
Legal Insurrection: CA Regulators Make Controversial Move to Reduce Incentives to Homeowners with Solar Panels, Stanford Language Guide Considers the Word ‘American’ Harmful, Ronna McDaniel Overwhelmingly Rejected for RNC Chair in Turning Point USA AmericaFest Straw Poll, Ordinary Americans Can Save the Country at the Local Level, and #TwitterFiles Part 7 – FBI and DOJ Worked To Discredit Reports of Hunter Biden’s Foreign Business Dealings
Nebraska Energy Observer: The Aftermath of Canada’s Freedom Convoy
Outkick: Eagles Gift Jaguars Cheesesteaks As Thank You For Their Win Over Cowboys, Ex-Broncos RB Ronnie Hillman Revealed To Be Battling Liver Cancer In Hospice, Mets, Steve Cohen Steal Carlos Correa From Giants, Agree To 12 Years, $315M Following Collapsed Deal With San Francisco, Arch Manning Officially Signs With Texas, and Steelers’ Legend Franco Harris Passes Away Just Days Before 50th Anniversary Of The Immaculate Reception
Power Line: What’s Happening With the Job Numbers?, Thrown under the omnibus, and A cancer on the presidency
Protein Wisdom Reborn: Another Hump Day Shrapnel Post
Shark Tank: Florida Republicans Choose Sides In Contentious RNC Election
Shot In The Dark: Lethal Force Authorized, A Mostly Peaceful Year In St. Paul
The Political Hat: 12 Posts of Christmas, 2022 (Day 9)
This Ain’t Hell: Army gives one of its rarest awards to 5, Academy grads can’t play pro until they serve! Ha, J/K, Twitter assisted U.S. Military PSYOP contrary to policy, and The VA’s budget could top $300 billion for fiscal 2023
Victory Girls: Mom Kicked Out of Rockettes Show Because of Where She Works, also, Omnibus Bill Puts Coal in Stockings for Christmas
Volokh Conspiracy: Should Justices Sotomayor and Kagan Retire?
Watts Up With That: German Officials Blame Gas Shortage on Consumers, warn “People Will Feel the Cost of The Energy Crisis Hard”, also, Don’t Let “Green” Grinch Absurdities Steal Christmas
Weasel Zippers: Taliban Closes Afghan Universities To Women, MSNBC Reporter: Illegal Immigrants Told Me “They Just Walked Right In” To The United States, Occasional Cortex Says Pro-Life Christians Views On Abortion Are “Theocratic,” “Authoritarian”, and Kamala Harris Blames Republicans For Border Crisis
The Federalist: GOP Can’t Be Successful Until Mitch McConnell Is Gone, Heart Failure Kills ‘Body Positivity’ Activist At 37, For Conservatives To Win, Republicans Must Get Comfortable Using Power, House Republicans Expose Pelosi’s Culpability In Jan. 6 Riot, and A Catholic College Just Gave Its First Ethics Award To A Pro-Abortion Journalist
Mark Steyn: Transspotting, also, Bootleg Bûche for Christmas

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Category: Linkagery

Gone To The Dogs

Posted on | December 22, 2022 | 1 Comment

— by Wombat-socho

10/10, would borf again

O, the shame. O, the embarrassment. While compiling the last book post, I inadvertently omitted The Best Tweets From Actuary Problem Dog, originally recommended by In The Mailbox’s Favorite Actuary, Mary Pat (“Meep”) Campbell. While this may seem to be an extremely niche joke book, a lot of what Actuary Problem Dog is tweeting about will be immediately familiar to not only actuaries, but accountants, tax professionals, randos using Excel, and just plain socially awkward folks. Highly recommended.

Speaking of socially awkward folks, Komi Can’t Communicate is up to volume 22, but since that’s still in the shipping pipeline (Amazon claims they delivered it, but it’s not in my mailbox) we’ll talk about Volume 21, wherein Komi’s class goes to New York on a trip and Komi reunites with her friend Rei Natsukido, who’s acquired an uncommunicative American friend of her own. I’m really happy with this manga, since it’s slowly evolving from a high-school slice of life series (with some seriously weird characters) into a romance between the main character and her first friend, the “completely average” Tadano Hitohito. 

Spy x Family also continues to progress in interesting ways, as the Forger family gets a dog – but not just any dog, a dog that’s been subjected to experiments and can now see the future. This immediately becomes an issue when Bond (the dog) shows Anya a future in which Loid dies in a terrorist bomb attack, and she rides to the rescue with Bond. Having solved that issue, we then get an amusing pair of issues in which Yor’s brother Yuri (an agent of Ostanian State Security) visits and is very suspicious of his sister’s husband – and then Loid’s protégé Nightfall drops by to assist with the mission, while futilely attempting to break up Yor and Loid’s marriage because she doesn’t think Yor is good enough for her old teacher. People are already pairing Yuri and Nightfall  for the sole reason that neither one of them wants the Forgers to remain a couple, though for entirely different reasons. Highly amusing. 

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Category: Books

People Never Ask Me for Advice

Posted on | December 21, 2022 | 1 Comment

My brother Kirby and I had just finished eating lunch at Primanti Brothers and were enjoying a post-prandial smoke when, for no apparent reason, he brought up the subject of the New England Patriots. But why bring it up? This is obviously a painful topic for me to think about, especially after The Dumbest Play in NFL History.

Anyway, so Kirby was sermonizing on the subject of what Patriots owner Robert Kraft should do — i.e., give Bill Belichick an ultimatum to get rid of Matt Patricia, who is hated by New England fans like God hates sin — until finally I interrupted: “You know why I don’t think in terms of what people should do? Because nobody ever asks for my advice.”

In writing about politics, I try to avoid being one of those dime-a-dozen pundit types who presumes to offer election strategy or policy guidance. If politicians want my advice, they can pay me for it, and as no Republican has offered to hire me to be the right-wing James Carville, it’s safe to assume that any advice I offered — unsolicited, as a voluntary contribution — would be ignored. So what’s the point?

And it’s the same thing with the Patriots. Every sports talk-radio personality in New England is calling for Matt Patricia’s scalp, so what’s the point of adding my voice to this deafening chorus? Like, last night I was watching Greg Bedard and Nick Cattles discussing this disaster, and Nick is talking about a situation where the Patriots had the ball first-and-goal at the Raiders one-yard-line, saying that there were six-year-old children shouting at their TVs: “Give the ball to Rhamondre!”

Exactly — everybody can see what’s wrong with the Patriots, and they’re shouting it from the rooftops, with no apparent impact on the situation.

Politics is the same way. Like, WTF, Mitch McConnell?

Helping Ukraine is our Number One priority? Are you kidding me with this? As much as I want Ukraine to defeat the Russian invaders, that’s probably not even a Top Five issue for me, in the grand scheme of what the Republican Party needs to prioritize. And I can’t believe the voters of Kentucky — you know, the people who actually elected Mitch McConnell to the Senate — share his sense of priorities. But again, what’s the point of complaining? Ace of Spades, who has a lot more readers than me, has been hammering Mitch McConnell five days a week, and is running out of new ways to say the same basic thing: “Mitch, you bitch.”

The more you care about politics, the harder it becomes to escape feelings of helpless despair, a sense of futility caused by your inability to influence events, because nobody seems to be listening. You understand what Ecclesiates is getting at: “Vanity of vanities! All is vanity!”

It’s not just politics and football that cause wise men to decry the carnival of folly to which we bear unwilling witness. Every day, people are ruining their own lives by doing foolish things, which is why I feel compelled to offer my kids advice like, “Heroin is a bad drug. Stay away from heroin.” Or, “Don’t send people pictures of your penis.” Stuff like this should be obvious, and yet there are apparently people who didn’t get the memo, so I feel an obligation to warn my kids against such behavior.

If the world was organized on a basis of what I think people should do (and not do), we certainly wouldn’t be in the mess we’re in. Last night, Tucker Carlson interviewed a woman named Camille Keifel who has filed a lawsuit against the people who inflicted a double mastectomy on her as “treatment” for her “gender” problem. And I turned it off because it was too painful to watch, like the last play of the Patriots game.

Young women experiencing “gender” issues don’t solicit my advice on their problems, of course, but just imagine if they did.

“What do you think, Mr. McCain? Should I start injecting myself with testosterone and get my breasts amputated?”

ARE YOU FREAKING KIDDING ME WITH THIS?

Nevertheless, there are licensed medical professionals who think this kind of “treatment” is a splendid solution to “gender” problems, and who are getting paid to butcher confused young people like this, and if you question the wisdom of such procedures, they’ll accuse you of hate.

Thousands of people are being chemically altered and surgically mutilated the way Camille Keifel was, and this is even being done with taxpayer money in some cases, but no one can be allowed to object — Libs of TikTok got banned — because criticizing “gender treatment” is considered dangerous hate speech. But of course, I don’t hate people or wish harm to befall them. Except maybe Matt Patricia, but even in his case, if he got murdered by an enraged Patriots fan, I’d consider that to be . . . unfortunate. Certainly I would never advocate or endorse criminal violence against Matt Patricia, and if a gang of deranged season-ticket holders were to kidnap him, murder him with a chainsaw and grind up his dismembered corpse in a wood chipper, then feed the remains to a pack of hungry pitbulls . . . Well, as I say, this would be unfortunate.

However, the world is not organized according to my preferences, and nobody ever listens to my advice, or else on first-and-goal, Matt Patricia would have called Rhamondre left, and if that didn’t work, he’d have called Rhamondre right on second down, followed by Rhamondre up the middle on third down. If they end up settling for a field goal on fourth down, OK, but I completely agree with that six-year-old kid shouting at his TV: “Give the ball to Rhamondre!”

They don’t ask for my advice, so we’ll keep spending billions on Ukraine, women will keep getting mutilated as “gender treatment,” and the Patriots will keep losing football games until, inevitably, Matt Patricia gets kidnapped by a gang of chainsaw-wielding season-ticket holders.

It’s just so . . . unfortunate.



 

Category: Football, Mitch McConnell, The Transgender Cult

In The Mailbox: 12.20.22

Posted on | December 20, 2022 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 12.20.22

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Silicon Valley delenda est.

OVER THE TRANSOM
357 Magnum: Sadly, This Is Not Babylon Bee Or The Onion
EBL: Harvey Weinstein found guilty regarding one victim in California criminal trial, It’s A Wonderful Life, and The Murder Turtle Sells Out the GOP Base (again)
Twitchy: Man With WW1 Explosive Lodged In Rectum – Jokes Write Themselves, Twitter Files #8 Reveal How Twitter Helped The Pentagon Run Covert Online PsyOps, and Tranny At Center Of Wi Spa Protests Arrested For Indecent Exposure After Going On The Run
Louder With Crowder: Feds paid Twitter MILLIONS to suppress news, and Elon Musk claims they aren’t the only ones
Vox Popoli: Gammacaust on Gab, On Thought Leadership, Debt Bubble Close to Popping, and The Chinese Listened
Stoic Observations: When I Look At The World

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Conservative: Canadian Lives Unworthy Of Canadian Life, also, See, Here Is Water
American Greatness: ‘Buckle Up America’: Kari Lake’s Election Challenge Will Go to Trial, also, Appeals Court Blocks Biden Vaccine Mandate for Federal Contractors
American Thinker: Why Did the FBI Want Joe Biden to Become President?, also, Reflections of a Baby-Boomer
Animal Magnetism: Animal’s Daily Party Flipping News
Babalu Blog: DHS tips off the Castro dictatorship on Cuban refugees in the U.S. claiming persecution and torture, Cuban activist living in Bolivia expelled from that country for criticizing the Castro dictatorship, and Pro-dictatorship agricultural lobbyists meet with diplomats at Cuban embassy in Washington, D. C.
Baldilocks: I Am The Door
BattleSwarm: What If Russia’s Partial Mobilization Is Actually A General Mobilization?, also, Another Cold Blast Heading To Texas
Behind The Black: InSight fails to respond during scheduled communications session, Russians preparing replacement Soyuz for launch to ISS, Rocket Lab reschedules first Wallops launch to January, and Pushback: Blacklisting Virginia Tech soccer coach loses effort to get lawsuit dismissed
Cafe Hayek: David Henderson on “The Abject Failure of Central Planning During Covid”
CDR Salamander: Japan Rising
Chicago Boyz: Nuclear News
Da Tech Guy: I Have No Idea What Musk is Doing, Off-label use of diabetes drug as a weight loss tool, Under the Fedora, and Pittsburgh: Is downtown at a crossroads?
Don Surber: Biden prescribes transgender surgery, also, NYT attacks the Supreme Court
First Street Journal: Killadelphia
Gates Of Vienna: Excess Mortality in Germany, Part One, My Kingdom for Horse-Paste!, It’s Nobody’s Business But The Turks‘, and Is the Pope Catholic?
The Geller Report: TWITTER FILES 7: Treasonous FBI Was Directly Working As An Asset For The Biden Crime Family, Analysis of RNC Spending Since 2017 Shows Millions Were Spent on Private Jets, Limousines, Luxury Retreats, Broadway Shows, The Nazis Over at NY Times Publishes Swastika Shaped Puzzle on First Day of Chanukkah, and South Dakota Gov. Noem Proposes Legislation to Restrict Chinese Purchase of US Farmland
Hogewash: A Crater on Mercury, Follow the Money, and Ho Hum, Another Possible Government Shutdown
Hollywood In Toto: Tim Robbins: ‘Orwellian’ COVID Rules Based on Politics, Not Science, Elf Beats Woke Empire of Light (and Other Hollywood Horror Stories), and Hollywood Must Learn from Tom Cruise … or Else
The Lid: White House Struggles to Define ‘Border Czar’ Harris’ Role in Immigration Policy
Legal Insurrection: Energy Groups Suing Biden Administration for Failing to Hold Mandated Gas and Oil Lease Sales, Arizona Judge Allows Two of Kari Lake’s Election Challenge Claims to go to Trial, Holy Names University in Oakland Closing After Spring 2023 Semester, and U.S. Postal Service to Spend Almost $10 Billion for Electric Vehicles and Infrastructure
Nebraska Energy Observer: Steam Airplane Drivers and American Guys, also, No politics today…too much
Outkick: Eagles QB Gardner Minshew Skips Practice To Deliver Heartfelt Tribute At Mike Leach Memorial, 4 Penn State Players Get Teslas As Part Of NIL Deal, Pittsburgh’s Pat Narduzzi Hears North Carolina QB Drake Maye Was Offered $5 Million To Leave But Doesn’t Name School, Booger McFarland Drank ‘A Little Whiskey’ To Stay Warm During NFL Games, and A Grand Total Of 20 People Showed Up To A Brittney Griner ‘Homecoming’ Celebration In Waco, ESPN Doesn’t Seem Happy About It
Power Line: Welcome to Stanford Kindergarten, Sorry About Those Jobs, and The Post on the Twitter Files
Protein Wisdom Reborn:
Shark Tank: DeSantis Takes Aim At Teachers’ Union Dues, also, Is Anthony Sabatini The Real “Enemy Of The American People”?
Shot In The Dark: NPR’s War On Things That Just Work, also, Twitter – Not The Only Fed Sock Puppet
The Political Hat: 12 Posts of Christmas, 2022 (Day 8)
This Ain’t Hell: Keeps his job, even promoted, Tuesday with the Libs of Tik Tok, and The Marines are sexist!
Victory Girls: Marjorie Taylor-Greene & Lauren Boebert – Stoopid Mean Girls, also, Sam Bankman-Fried Gets Extradition Deal And More Details
Volokh Conspiracy: Congress Moves Forward on Electoral Count Act Reform
Watts Up With That: Attention Poor People, Step Away from The Fuel. It’s Not for You. And Stop Using It Anyway. Thank You, also, Space Based Solar Power: Like Terrestrial Solar, but More Expensive
Weasel Zippers: House GOP Leader Calls For Investigation Into Past FBI, CIA Abuses, Supreme Court Blocks Biden Admin From Lifting Title 42, and Proud To Be An American? Stanford Says That’s Offensive
The Federalist: Latest ‘Twitter Files’ Bombshell Shows FBI Neck-Deep In Russian Disinformation Lie To Kill Hunter Biden Laptop Story, Top Lessons Investors Should Take Away From The Collapse Of FTX, For Falsely Accusing Bakery Of Racism, Oberlin College Finally Coughs Up $36M Settlement But No Apology, House Republicans Threaten Legislative Gridlock For Senate Colleagues Who Support Reckless Omnibus Bill, and King Charles Can’t Refute Meghan’s ‘Racism’ Charges Because He Is A Self-Flagellating Globalist
Mark Steyn: Rolling in Doha, I’ll Be Holmes for Christmas, Room at the Inn…for Migrants, and Fowl Play

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Category: Linkagery

Why Was the Department of Justice Spying on Republican Congressional Staff?

Posted on | December 20, 2022 | Comments Off on Why Was the Department of Justice Spying on Republican Congressional Staff?

Something for Jim Jordan’s committee to investigate:

In an extraordinary intrusion on congressional oversight, the Justice Department used grand jury subpoenas to secretly obtain the personal email and phone data of at least two top House Intelligence Committee investigators back in November 2017 just as they and their boss, then-Chairman Devin Nunes, were assembling bombshell evidence of FBI abuses in the Russia collusion probe, Just the News has learned.
The subpoenas, obtained by Just the News, show the DOJ demanded that Google turn over personal email and phone data from the two senior staffers on Nov. 20, 2017 and that responsive materials were to be returned to DOJ by Dec. 5, 2017.
The subpoenas were delivered during a critical time frame in the committee’s effort to expose the Donald Trump-Russia collusion investigation as having been driven by an uncorroborated political opposition dossier funded by Hillary Clinton. Nunes’ committee was locked at the time in a bitter struggle to force the FBI and DOJ to turn over records to the committee.
The DOJ subpoenas came to light in the last few days when the former committee staffers were informed by Google that their records had been taken, consistent with the Big Tech company’s policy of alerting customers five years after law enforcement takes such actions.
One of the subpoenaed staffers, former Intelligence Committee senior counsel Kash Patel, told Just the News that the DOJ’s subpoenas were an extraordinary intrusion on congressional oversight and raised serious concerns about the separation of executive and legislative branch powers guaranteed in the Constitution. . . .

And they told me “The Deep State” was a myth . . .



 

Category: Congress

In The Mailbox: 12.19.22

Posted on | December 20, 2022 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 12.19.22

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Silicon Valley delenda est.

Public education.

OVER THE TRANSOM
357 Magnum: Hollywood Getting Woke & Becoming Irrelevant
EBL:  Black Adam, Musk Done At Twitter? and So how is the Avatar sequel doing at the box office?
Twitchy: Here’s the reason liberal women walk with such swag & confidence
Louder With Crowder: Taylor Lorenz got herself suspended by Twitter. No one knows why and we’re all laughing too hard to care, Jeffrey Epstein victim claims to have sex tapes he made of certain  friends with underage girls, and James Cameron doesn’t understand why there isn’t an empowering female warrior who is six months pregnant
Vox Popoli: A Ticket-Taker’s Holiday, The Economics of Clown World, 2-2 (4-2), and Black Magick War

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Conservative: Is This Winning?, also, Why You Should Go To Church This Christmas Sunday
American Greatness: 10 Steps to Save America, Only Ron DeSantis Can Win in 2024, and The EV Zero Emissions Scam
American Thinker: Why Are Communists Determined to Destroy the US?, Deep State Suspicions, and It’s ‘Trump Will Never Be President’ All Over Again
Animal Magnetism: Goodbye, Blue Monday
Babalu Blog: Cuba went from the world’s tallest Christmas tree in 1957 to banning Christmas a decade later, With Cuba’s labor force decimated by mass exodus, dictatorship looks to enforce ‘anti-laziness law’, Despite food and medicine shortages, Cuba’s dictatorship keeps building more apartheid hotels, and Lifestyles of the Rich and Communist: Wife of Cuba’s sock puppet president wears $6,300 Cartier watch
Baldilocks: Who Runs Things?
BattleSwarm: Peru’s New President Is On Team Riot, also, Two Juicy EU Scandals Bubble Up
Behind The Black: SpaceX completes third launch in less than two days, L3Harris to buy Aerojet Rocketdyne for $4.7 billion, Could the Apollo 11 lunar module still be orbiting the Moon?, and Today’s blacklisted American: Law firm fires lawyer of 44 years for expressing the wrong opinion
Cafe Hayek: History “Disprivileges” This Person’s Understanding, Vernon Smith on the Fall of Nature, Getting Adam Smith Right, and Vernon Smith on Adam Smith (and on Adam Smith’s Interpreters)
CDR Salamander: Cyber Lessons of the Russo-Ukrainian War with Shashank Josi – on Midrats, also, “Support You and Your Family” – Really?
Chicago Boyz: Monastic Technology, 2022, also, Christmas Story
Da Tech Guy: Virginia finally bans TikTok, Very Quick Under the Fedora Thoughts, I’m going to reserve judgement on the Vatican’s Move on Fr, Pavone for now, and Hope for the future: Lightfoot badly trails in first poll of 2023 Chicago mayoral race
Don Surber: The Dummy Who Invented The Artificial Heart, We are letting weirdos run things, Praising Garland for ignoring a law Biden co-wrote, I paused Google Ads, and Germans screwing up NATO
First Street Journal: Kara Alaimo exercised her #FreedomOfSpeech and CNN’s #FreedomOfThePress to decry conservatives’ Freedom of Speech and of the Press, Philadelphian Amanda Marcotte is very, very upset that 35 transgender people have been murdered this year, but doesn’t care about 496 killings in her home town, and Killadelphia: the city is tied for third place all time in murders, with 13 days left in the year
Gates Of Vienna: Buyer’s Remorse About the Vax, A Nation of Snitches, Enricher vs. Enricher in Montpellier, and Germans Must Prepare to Shiver in the Dark
The Geller Report: FDA Now Says Pfizer’s COVID-19 VACCINE Linked to Blood Clotting, Arizona Judge Approves Kari Lake Request to Examine Ballots, Freed J6 Political Prisoner, Former West Virginia Delegate Denounces Kevin McCarthy, and FBI Had 80 Agents Monitor Joke and Satire Accounts To Silence Conservatives
Hogewash: Dihydrogen Monoxide in Space, M47, Team Kimberlin Post of the Day, and I’m Not Making This Up, You Know
Hollywood In Toto: Barbie Woke Propaganda Push Already Under Way?, The 20 Best TV Shows of 2022, and Here’s What You Missed About the Overrated Bodies Bodies Bodies
The Lid: Differences Between Christmas And Hanukkah (With Tongue Firmly In Cheek), also, Biden Making U.S. Citizenship Test Easier so Dumber Foreigners Can Feel Included
Legal Insurrection: Some Democrats Resisting Party’s Plan to Hold South Carolina Primary First, Europe Cools Toward ESG in Light of Energy Realities, University of Richmond Receives $625K Grant to Advance Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, Washington U. Med School Lecturer Warns Students Not to Debate Her on CRT or ‘Systemic Oppression’, and Ethnic Fraudster Sen. Elizabeth Warren Pressures Elon Musk Over Twitter By Bullying Tesla Board
Nebraska Energy Observer: Change is good, also, Advent IV: Love
Outkick: Topless Argentina World Cup Flashers Are Alive & Not In Jail!, Patriots Lose Game On One Of The Most Boneheaded Plays Of All-Time By Jakobi Meyers, Brittany Mahomes Calls Out NFL After Husband Gets Rocked On Violent Sack, Roger Goodell Causes Widespread Confusion By Showing Up At HBCU National Championship To Support Nephew, and College Football Playoff Game Played In Snowy Weather So Cold It Caused Beer To Explode
Power Line: Sunday morning coming down, Notes on the Twitter Files, cont’d, and Earth to Joe Biden
Protein Wisdom Reborn: The Noxious Racism Of “Disparate Impact”, also, I Am Woman, Hear Me Giggle & Scree
Shark Tank: Rep. Scott Franklin (R-FL15) Explains GOP Opposition To Puerto Rico Status Act
Shot In The Dark: Mission Creepy, also, Vibrant! Vibraaaant! VIBRAAAAAAAANT!
STUMP: Geeking Out: What Does COVID Vaccination Status Have to Do With Motor Vehicle Accident Risk?
The Political Hat: 12 Posts of Christmas, 2022 (Day 5), (Day6), and (Day7)
This Ain’t Hell: Is this heaven? No, it’s Iowa….bbrrrrrrttt, Potential changes to Arlington National Cemetery burial eligibility could disqualify most, Russian soldier describes the Ukraine War as “destruction of the Russian people”, Map and compass. Wha…?, and Uncle Frank Biden’s Purple Heart
Transterrestrial Musings: Anthropology, also, Leftist Journalists
Victory Girls: Sam Brinton Is In Your Schools, Vatican Defrocks Pro Life Priest Frank Pavone, and “Defeated” Border Patrol Braces For Next Wave, SCOTUS Issues Reprieve
Volokh Conspiracy: Happy Saturnalia!
Watts Up With That: Germany’s Gas Reserves “Emptying at Record Speed” As Country Struggles to Keep Warm, Lights On, How Michelin Covered Up Industrial Deforestation by its Indonesian Partner in “Eco-Friendly” Rubber Venture, and No evidence for BBC claim that Churchill is simply getting too warm for polar bears
Weasel Zippers: Biden Says After He Was Elected VP (In 2008) He Awarded Uncle (Who Died In 1999) A Purple Heart, Top Biden Advisor Can’t Explain Why Biden Refuses To Visit Southern Border, Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH): “I Don’t Hear A Lot About Immigration Except From People On The Far Right”, and Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) Threatens Big Tech Unless They Censor More Content
The Federalist: The LGBT Alphabet Lobby Has Come For Its Own Women, AOC’s Climate Change Movie Bombs At Box Office, Want Proof Our Government Is A Cash-Gobbling Ball Of Incompetence? Look No Further Than The Post Office, David French: Yes, The Dispatch Takes Money To Help Leftists Keep The Internet Conservatism-Free, and With Russia Hoaxer Jim Baker On The Inside, The FBI Primed Twitter To Kill Hunter Biden Story Long Before It Broke
Mark Steyn: Go Where the Journeyman Leads: Steve McQueen and Nevada Smith, A Child’s Christmas in Wales, Blue Christmas, and The Mark Steyn Show – live Monday to Thursday!

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Category: Linkagery

The Dumbest Play in NFL History

Posted on | December 19, 2022 | 1 Comment

As unexpected disasters go, Sunday’s game was for New England Patriots fans what the Hindenburg crash was for the zeppelin industry. The Patriots, at 7-6, were clear contenders for a Wild Card playoff berth coming into the game against the 5-8 Las Vegas Raiders. With a win, they would have solidified their status as contenders going into the final three games against the defending AFC champion Cincinnati Bengals, AFC East rivals the Miami Dolphins and the division-leading Buffalo Bills.

New England fell behind 17-3 at halftime, but struck back in the second half, with Kyle Duggar scoring a pick-six touchdown on an interception, followed by two field goals and then finally a three-play touchdown drive that featured a 39-yard pass from Patriots QB Mac Jones to Jakobi Meyers and a 34-yard TD run by Rhamondre Stevenson. With a two-point conversion pass, New England had a 24-17 lead with less than four minutes to play. The Raiders rallied in the final two minutes, with Las Vegas QB Derek Carr hitting Keelan Cole for a 30-yard pass that was ruled a touchdown, even though Patriots fans will forever insist Cole was out of bounds. Now the game was tied 24-24 with 32 seconds remaining, and it looked like it was destined for overtime, unless New England could move the ball quickly into field-goal range. Using their two remaining timeouts, the Patriots were able to get to their own 45 with 14 seconds left. Two passes went incomplete and then, on third down with three seconds on the clock, New England ran a draw play, handing the ball to Stevenson, who rambled to the Las Vegas 32 as time ran out, but instead of just letting it go to overtime, Stevenson decided to try to keep the play alive, pitching the ball back to Meyers, who then ran around a bit before throwing a cross-field lateral in the general vicinity of Mac Jones. But the ball went directly into the hands of Las Vegas defensive end Chandler Jones at the New England 48. Mac Jones made a feeble attempt to tackle the Raider, but was stiff-armed aside as Chandler Jones romped all the way for the winning touchdown. The football world was stunned.

There is still, from a purely statistical standpoint, a hypothetical chance that New England could make the playoffs, but realistically? No, they’re done. A team that could blunder away a game in such spectacular fashion cannot be expected to beat the Bengals, the Dolphins or the Bills. The Patriots are probably heading toward a 7-10 finish, and even if they luck out and win a game or two in this final three-game stretch, they are ultimately doomed, like the Hindenburg at Lakehurst.



 

Category: Football

A Book Post For Hanukkah

Posted on | December 19, 2022 | Comments Off on A Book Post For Hanukkah

— by Wombat-socho


You know it’s been too long since the last book post when you have to go back and look at the archives to see when you did the last one and what you covered. I’ll try to do better next year, if I can pry myself away from the damn video games…

“He’s the type of person Commissars are supposed to shoot.”

Let’s lead off with something that is simultaneously hilarious and depressing: Kurt Schlichter’s Inferno, the seventh of the Kelly Turnbull action novels set in a post-national divorce America. It’s really too bad that Bruce Willis is past his prime, because he’d be a perfect Kelly Turnbull in the movies – anyway, this book is equal parts Road Warrior and eerie echo of the Roman Republic, in which it looks like Red America’s commanding general in California looks like he’s about to march on Texas with a whole collection of misfit auxiliary troops who are loyal to him and not the government in Austin. Plus, there’s a stray nuclear weapon and an apocalyptic cult to deal with in the debatable lands that used to be Oregon. If you liked the previous six Turnbull books, this one won’t disappoint; Schlichter is good at writing both action and political intrigue, and does a good job of segueing from one to the other.

More on the comedy side is the latest Commissar Cain omnibus from Sandy Mitchell: Ciaphas Cain, Saviour Of The Imperium. Unlike most of the other Warhammer 40k novels I’ve read, which tend to be turgid, prolix, and slightly more grimdark than The GULAG Archipelago, the Ciaphas Cain novels are light-hearted and humorous, despite the formula of Cain being sent to deal with a problem only to stumble on something EVEN WORSE. TVTropes insists that Cain is a synthesis of Captain Blackadder and Harry Flashman, but they’ve only got it half right – the Blackadder part. Cain is far too considerate of his troops and his ladies* to be the selfish cad Flashman was, and in fact more closely resembles Dand McNeil from Fraser’s The General Danced At Dawn, particularly because of Private McAuslan, who is obviously (somehow) the ancestor of Gunner Jurgen. Anyhow, three novels and some short stories about the commissar’s misadventures in the dark future where there is only war.** Recommended despite the extortionate price – and I should note here that all three of the Cain omnibus collections are finally available on the Kindle.

I am willing to bet money that if he lives to be 100 and writes as many books, Marko Kloos will not write anything as good as the Frontlines series, which concluded this fall with the eighth book in the series, Centers of Gravity. The saga of humanity’s war against the alien Lankies has been quite a tale, and Kloos ends it on an upbeat note with Andrew Grayson and (most) of his compatriots escaping from what looks like certain death, hundreds of light-years from Earth. As much as I would like to see more books in the series, leading up to the ultimate triumph of humanity over the Lankies (or at least a negotiated peace) I can see why Kloos decided to end it here. Worth your time, especially if you read the first seven.

* He can’t afford not to, since one of his ladies is an Inquisitor.
** And a few wry chuckles, guffaws, and belly laughs.


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Category: Books
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