A Simple Idea: ‘Four or More’

Posted on | September 17, 2022 | Comments Off on A Simple Idea: ‘Four or More’

Yesterday, Ace of Spades jabbed Jonathan V. Last as one of “True Conservatives Conserving Conservatism at The Bulwark” — a jab richly deserved, but it filled me with a sense of sadness, because Last used to be so good, before he fell victim to Trump Derangement Syndrome.

What To Expect When No One’s Expecting was, and still is, a book well worth reading. To quote the dust-jacket summary:

For years, we have been warned about the looming danger of overpopulation: people jostling for space on a planet that’s busting at the seams and running out of oil and food and land and everything else.
It’s all bunk. The “population bomb” never exploded. Instead, statistics from around the world make clear that since the 1970s, we’ve been facing exactly the opposite problem: people are having too few babies. Population growth has been slowing for two generations. The world’s population will peak, and then begin shrinking, within the next fifty years. In some countries, it’s already started. . . .
What to Expect When No One’s Expecting explains why the population implosion happened and how it is remaking culture, the economy, and politics both at home and around the world.
Because if America wants to continue to lead the world, we need to have more babies.

Of course, I didn’t need any lectures on that topic, being a father of six, but still this was an important message, and Last marshaled an array of arguments on behalf of this pro-natalist message. What To Expect When No One’s Expecting followed in the footsteps of the late Ben Wattenberg’s 1987 book The Birth Dearth, which was the first examination of the modern trend of demographic decline in industrial societies. Wattenberg later followed that up with Fewer: How the New Demography of Depopulation Will Shape Our Future (2004).

As should be obvious, these warnings have been largely ignored. There has been no new “Baby Boom” in response to the concerns raised by Last’s book, or Watterberg’s books, and the question is, why?

Permit me to share the insight of personal experience: People’s behaviors are limited by their imagination. That is to say, people generally don’t attempt things they regard as impossible and, in the minds of most Americans, having a large family is a financial impossibility. Even if they wished to have lots of kids, they can’t figure out how it could be done, from the perspective of their personal economic situation.

They can’t afford it, they say.

OK, believe what you want to believe, but how is it that I could afford it, if you can’t? Do you suppose I’m some kind of financial genius? An heir to the Rockefeller fortune? No, of course, they realize that my wife and I don’t have some hidden pile of cash that has enabled us to raise all these kids; we were just willing to make sacrifices that most people aren’t willing to make. And that knowledge makes them embarrassed.

This embarrassment expresses itself as defensiveness, especially among conservative Christians who understand that they are not exactly practicing what they preach, as regards “family values.” Sure, maybe it’s silly to think that every faithful Christian couple would strive to spawn a Duggar-sized brood, but insofar as we are pro-life, isn’t it logical that we would be more welcoming to offspring as blessings from God?

“See, I have set before thee this day life and good, and death and evil. . . . I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live.”
— Deuteronomy 30:15, 19 (KJV)

“Therefore choose life” — this quote from Deuteronomy became a slogan for the pro-life movement, but how many pro-life conservatives have tried to live out the meaning of that phrase? Most people wouldn’t judge me to be a particularly fine example of Christian virtue, but despite my failings, at least I got this part right. And along the way, I picked up a few helpful pieces of advice. When our oldest was just a little baby, and my Dad came to visit us for the first time after she’d been born, we were living in a roach-infested $250-a-month rental home in Gordon County, Georgia. When I complained about our financial situation, my Dad laughed and said, “Son, if you wait to have kids until you can afford to have kids, you’ll never have kids.” Truer words were never spoken.

Ten years later, after we’d moved to the D.C. area so I could work at The Washington Times, our family had grown to four kids, and in July 1999, I saw this item on a pro-life website:

Where are the children?
In reacting to a report released today by the statistics office of the European Union, STOPP International director Jim Sedlak said, “This report points out what we have been yelling from the rooftops for some time now — the world needs larger families.”
The Eurostat report warns that European Union countries can expect health and pension costs to soar over the next 50 years as the number of people over retirement age rises to about one third of the total population. “The main cause of the aging,” according to the report, “is the decline in births over the last two to three decades.”
“The ‘success’ of the population controllers in Europe is now taking its toll,” said Sedlak. “The average number of babies per woman has fallen from 1.95 to 1.65, and there is no end in sight.”
“In order to turn things around, four things are necessary,” Sedlak said. “First, the world has to understand that there is not an overpopulation problem, but a problem of too few children. Second, everyone in our society must accept large families and stop using peer pressure to convince people not to have more children. Third, governments and rich philanthropists must stop giving money to population control programs. Finally, young people getting married have to be thinking of having four or more children.”
“We have one generation to turn things around,” Sedlak said. “After that, it may be too late.”

The author of that short article, Jim Sedlak, was a remarkable individual. A research physicist, Sedlak worked for IBM for 30 years before retiring in 1993, at age 50, “to devote a full-time effort to the pro-life cause.” A devout Catholic, Sedlak was particularly a critic of classroom “sex education,” and founded Stop Planned Parenthood (STOPP), which eventually became part of the American Life League, of which Sedlak became Executive Director. He died earlier this year, but I had the chance to talk to him a few times over the years, and he was full of wisdom about our culture, including this simple idea: “Four or more.”

Sedlak had studied the demographics of the Baby Boom, and understood this: It was largely a Catholic phenomenon. Most people don’t realize this, because the way we think about population trends usually focuses on medians and averages, without much thought to the human variables behind such statistics. The Baby Boom peaked in 1957, when the U.S. Total Fertility Rate (TFR) reached 3.77 average lifetime births per woman. If you think hard about that number, you realize that it means the average American woman in 1957 was three times more likely to have four children as to have merely three. To reach such an astonishing figure, however, you must first account for those women who will ultimately be childless, and whose contribution to the total is zero. Such a subtraction means that the average mother (as opposed to the average woman) was even more likely to have at least four children. And, as this 3.77 TFR number was an average, it means that for every woman who had only two children in 1957, there was another woman who had five or six. For every “only child” born in 1957, there was another child born into a family with six or seven siblings. Large families were what really made the “Baby Boom” happen and, among these super-sized families, Catholics were a disproportionately large share. The Catholic Church’s doctrine against artificial contraceptives was taken seriously back then, and the decline of that faithfulness is the real cultural explanation of the changing demographic trend over the past 60 years.

Of course, I’m Protestant, but the issue with Catholics and their declining fertility rate is illustrative of the overall trend. While different Protestant denominations have different approaches to these questions, in general, more conservative Protestants are inclined toward the “pro-life”/“pro-family” beliefs so elaborately spelled out in the various encyclicals (e.g., Humanae Vitae) that codify Catholic doctrine on this subject.

The salt has “lost its savour” would be the best description of what’s happened, in terms of Christian family practice in recent decades. One might imagine that self-identified Catholics would still have substantially higher fertility rates than the average American, but they don’t — they have been “conformed to this world,” and the same is true of evangelical Christians. The commandment to “be ye separate” — to have no fellowship with unrighteousness — seems to have been forgotten, so that many Christians are now just following the crowd, and making the same lifestyle choices as the unchurched. This is true about many things, including divorce, and few church spokesmen seem willing to speak out against this trend. Church leadership is not leading.

People make trends, not the other way around. The choices you make, as an individual, have an influence far beyond your own awareness, and what you practice will ultimately have more influence than what you preach, if you don’t live up to own professed beliefs.

Our ability, as individuals, to influence something so large as the national birth rate may seem infinitesimally small, and Jonathan V. Last’s book apparently failed to make a dent in the trend. But our actions ultimately make more difference than any author’s words, and you don’t need a whole book to explain it. “Four or more” — a very simple idea.

Now, to find a cure for Trump Derangement Syndrome . . .

Category: Contraceptive Culture, Religion

‘Humanitarian Crisis’ Update

Posted on | September 17, 2022 | Comments Off on ‘Humanitarian Crisis’ Update

By now you know the story: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis sent a planeload of 50 illegal immigrants from Venezuela to Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, the island vacation resort where Barack Obama and other wealthy elites have private beachfront mansions. The affluent liberals of Martha’s Vineyard freaked out, and had the governor send in the National Guard to round up the Venezuelans and ship them off to a military base on Cape Cod. Hypocrisy exposed, mission accomplished.

During this comic escapade, however, an appeal showed up on GoFundMe, soliciting funds to address the “humanitarian crisis” in Martha’s Vineyard. Mia Cathell reports on who was behind that appeal:

The ultra-wealthy elites of Martha’s Vineyard launched a GoFundMe fundraiser over the island’s “humanitarian crisis” of (*finger-counts*) 50 migrants sent ashore by Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL). That’s right. The trust fund babies and Old Money socialites on Martha’s Vineyard, a well-known magnet for millionaires, CEOs, and celebrities, were soliciting online donations from middle-class Americans on the crowdfunding platform.
As of Friday afternoon, the affluent community’s “urgent plea” has raised over $42,000. The proceeds are benefiting the Martha’s Vineyard Community Foundation (MVCF) whose mission includes putting “charitable contributions to work for the people of Martha’s Vineyard by making grants that address community priorities” and “dispersing emergency response funding during extreme times of need.” MVCF builds and invests its endowment to “provide continued resources for enhance[ing] and preserving the quality of life on the Vineyard.”
MVCF is the permanent endowment for Martha’s Vineyard and has grown to assets under management of over $14 million dollars, according to its financials page. MVCF’s current causes accepting monetary gifts include the Climate Action Fund, which backs projects “that address the effects of climate change on the Island; the Islanders Write festival, a free event where authors come together “for robust conversation about the art, craft and business of writing;” and the Diversity Coalition Charitable Trust, which is dedicated to “eradicat[ing] racism,” understanding “the barriers that prevent equal rights for all,” and “ultimately eliminate inequality and injustice.”
In addition to the flow of GoFundMe sympathy cash, MVCF had established a separate Migrant Relief Fund, noting that it’s “concerned about the well[-]being of the migrants who have recently arrived on our island.” . . .
“Martha’s Vineyard is a community of open-hearted individuals that view these migrants as people, not political pawns,” the GoFundMe campaign’s description read overnight, right before the “immigrant-friendly,” welcoming “sanctuary destination” quickly bid adieu Friday morning to the dozens of migrants within a 48-hour period.
The companion Migrant Relief Fund’s caption was updated to note that the “immigrant visitors” were just that—passersby. Of course, the MVCF was sure to emphasize that the visiting migrants “expressed enormous gratitude for the outpouring of support and generosity shown by the Island community, which was heartfelt and overflowing.” Then the MVCF vowed to “make every attempt to stay connected” with the group of migrants.
The fundraiser’s organizer, New York communications consultant Sarah Goulet, claimed the resort community “faces a shortage of affordable housing,” although dissidents in the island’s Facebook groups have called out their fellow liberals for not practicing what they preach by refusing to offer up their multiple summer rentals, which remain vacant most of the year. . . .
A quick Google search on Goulet shows her family’s four-bedroom, $1.6 million-plus Martha’s Vineyard home sitting on almost four secluded acres within walking distance of a 1,300-ft private association beach. . . .
Last year, Vineyard Haven, where the Goulet family residence is, was named the most expensive town in America, even beating Los Angeles, according to a 2021 analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data by LendingTree.
During the 2020 presidential race, Goulet donated six times to the campaign of Vice President Kamala Harris. She’s a frequent contributor to ActBlue, a left-wing funding vehicle for progressive groups and candidates.
Goulet, a graduate of Brown University, owns her own namesake public relations and marketing company, offering strategic communications and media relations for fine art, design, and luxury brands. Her father is the owner of a commercial millwork manufacturer in Denver while her mother, also an Ivy League alumna, is a prominent and acclaimed appellate lawyer, serving as a partner at the prestigious law firm Holland & Hart.
Her husband from pricey Manhattan Beach, California, is a correspondent for GQ magazine and the author of two books. He proposed to Goulet on the beach below the family’s property and the two married in the summer of 2018, catching the attention of The New York Times, which published a profile on the wedding venue.
At the appointment-only Mark Ingram Atelier premier bridal salon, Goulet received an Italian textured silk dress from Milan-based designer Peter Langner. Before the outdoor meadow ceremony, guests were treated to Aperol spritzes and a raw bar, according to wedding blog site Over The Moon. A string quartet serenaded along with a premiere private brand whose vocalists have been featured on “American Idol,” “The Voice,” and “The X Factor.”
These are the class of people making more than six figures in this inflation-ravaged economy but want your money to solve their so-called “humanitarian crisis,” one that’s derived from a very real crisis at America’s border. It’s a worsening situation they didn’t care about until it directly affected them—when there’s trouble in paradise.

So, Ms. Goulet went to Brown University (annual cost of attendance, $80,986 including room and board), while her husband went to Duke University (annual cost of attendance, $81,220 including room and board), and these rich elitists can’t stand the thought of illegal immigrants spoiling their beloved Martha’s Vineyard.

Oh, but they’ve got their ready-made excuse — there’s a “shortage of affordable housing” on the island where Ms. Goulet’s family owns a four-bedroom $1.6-million home on four acres. That’s why they want to put the illegal aliens somewhere else, someplace far away from their own beachfront vacation homes. Not that they’re hypocrites, you see, it’s just that darned “affordable housing” shortage on the island.

You can click here to read all about Sarah Goulet’s wedding on Martha’s Vineyard, with an eight-piece band playing at the reception.

Dozens of Airbnb rentals available on Martha's Vineyard despite 'housing crisis' claims https://t.co/RGeHbKIPOY pic.twitter.com/r4N1vC5b9i

— New York Post (@nypost) September 17, 2022

On MSNBC tonight: A montage of tearful Vineyard residents emotionally embracing the migrants AS THEY SEE THEM ON TO THE BUSES TAKING THEM THE FUCK OFF THEIR ISLAND.

— Ann Coulter (@AnnCoulter) September 17, 2022

Category: Immigration, Massachusetts

In The Mailbox: 09.16.22

Posted on | September 16, 2022 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 09.16.22

— compiled by Wombat-socho

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

OVER THE TRANSOM
357 Magnum: Do Cops Think They Have Mystical Powers?
EBL: More Pedos Who Work At Disney Arrested, also, Judge Raymond Dearie Appointed As Mar-A-Lago Special Master
Twitchy: Facebook Thread Shows How Martha’s Vineyard Residents Really Feel About Illegals, also, Another Unbeliever Tries To Shame Christian Conservatives Over Martha’s Vineyard, Fails Miserably
Louder With Crowder: Crazy fight breaks out on a Carnival Cruise ship after an argument about a chair, also, Ice T says Los Angeles crime is so bad, it’s not safe for west coast rappers
Vox Popoli: Germany Doubles Down, Xi Knows, and Alpha Dream, Gamma Nightmare
According To Hoyt: Two Households, also, At Fencon
Monster Hunter Nation: September Update Post
Stoic Observations: Everybody Hates A Level Playing Field

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Conservative: Dugin: World War 3 Is Coming, also, Why Can’t The Democrats Beat Trump?
American Greatness: Send All of the Illegals to Martha’s Vineyard , also, Martha’s Vineyard Migrants Shuttled Off the Island to Joint Base Cape Cod
American Power: Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, September 15, Russia’s Battered Army Has No Quick Fix in Ukraine, and It’s Time to Prepare for a Ukrainian Victory
American Thinker: Progressives are the Cause for American Decline
Animal Magnetism: Rule Five Tyranny Friday
Babalu Blog: Cuban State Security arrests mother for criticizing government on social media, Employees at Radio/TV Martí say Biden admin is censoring them to placate the Cuban dictatorship, and Will Cuba heed Russia’s call to send troops to Ukraine war?
Behind The Black: CAPSTONE update: Situation improved but not resolved, Starlink being tested in Antarctica, and Today’s blacklisted American
Cafe Hayek: Not All Deflation Causes Suffering
CDR Salamander: Fullbore Friday
Da Tech Guy: Expand Yad Vashem To Include a “Illegal Immigrants Flown to Martha’s Vineyard” Section
Don Surber: New movie honors the enslavers, also, Winning the Battle of Martha’s Vineyard
First Street Journal: Jamie Gauthier stands with Larry Krasner!, also, They’ve got a big job ahead of them
Gates Of Vienna: After 2030 Comes 2060
The Geller Report: National Guard Deployed To Kick Illegals Out of Obama’s Backyard, also, Biden Regime Pressuring FBI to Fabricate ‘Extremist’ and ‘White Supremacist’ Cases, Agents Say
Hogewash: Team Kimberlin Post of the Day, Panning Across NGC 346, and Slow Blogging Ahead
Hollywood In Toto: Crazy Whoopi Goldberg Trashes DeSantis, Misses Huge Point, also, Oliver Stone’s U-Turn Is His After Hours
The Lid: The FBI: A Division Of The Democratic Party
Legal Insurrection: Pending Return to SCOTUS, Yeshiva University Freezes All Student Group Activities Rather Than Recognize LGBT Alliance, Schumer Singing Different Tune Than the Press on Democrat ‘Comeback’ Talking Point, Ohio State University Task Force on Racism and Racial Inequities wants School to Apply DEI Policies To Everything, and Cook Political Report Changes Oregon Governor Race From Lean Democrat to Toss Up
Nebraska Energy Observer: This Keeps Jumping Into My Mind
Outkick: Twitter Reacts To Kirk Herbstreit Calling Thursday Night Football, Patrick Mahomes’ Wife Takes Aim At The Refs With Unnecessary Tweet, Phoenix Suns Vice Chairman Calls For Team Owner Robert Sarver’s Resignation, and David Beckham Waits In Line Like Everyone Else To Visit Queen Elizabeth’s Coffin
Power Line: Fraud Pays, Will Comedians Save the West?, and Thoughts from the ammo line
Shark Tank: Marco Rubio & Rick Scott Stand Behind Florida’s Sugar Industry
Shot In The Dark: This Should Solve Everything, No Bias Here, and Open Letter To Governors Abbott & DeSantis
STUMP: Data visualization lessons: Jitter charts, screwups, and visionaries
The Political Hat: Firing Line Friday: The Selling of the President 1968
This Ain’t Hell: Valor Friday, also, Bribery and Corruption on the Red River
Victory Girls: Martha’s Vineyard Pleads Poverty, Illegals Go
Volokh Conspiracy: Fifth Circuit Rejects First Amendment Challenge to Texas Social Media Common Carrier Law
Watts Up With That: Grauniad Asks Why Queen Elizabeth’s Funeral Received More Coverage than the Climate Crisis
Weasel Zippers: Biden Climate Czar John Kerry Jets To Africa To Lecture Them On Being “As Green As Possible”, Biden Spox Tells Reporter Unironically: “We Agree That The Border Is Secure”, Former CDC Director Blasts Fauci, and Liberal Hecklers Get Too Close To Marjorie Taylor Greene And Threaten Her – Then Allege She Kicked Them
The Federalist: ZuckBucks Election Rigger Announces Plan To Take Over Government Election Communications, Local Officials Wanted Martha’s Vineyard To Be A ‘Haven’ For Illegals, Until Migrants Actually Arrived, Big Tech Whistleblower Exposes Twitter’s Close Relationship With The Chinese Communist Party, and New Alaska Senate Poll Reveals Lisa Murkowski Neck-and-Neck With Kelly Tshibaka
Mark Steyn: Live Around the Planet: Friday September 16th, also, Would You Like Feds with That?

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Category: Linkagery

Sometimes, It’s Just Too Easy

Posted on | September 16, 2022 | Comments Off on Sometimes, It’s Just Too Easy

So I saw this story earlier today:

President Joe Biden on Thursday expressed his frustration with Republican governors sending migrants from the Southern border to Democrat-run cities, calling their actions “Un-American.”
“Republicans are playing politics with human beings, using them as props,” Biden said. “What they’re doing is simply wrong. It’s un-American. It’s reckless”
The president spoke at the Hispanic Caucus Institute Gala celebrating the beginning of Hispanic Heritage Month.
Biden reacted to the news Thursday that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis flew a group of migrants to Martha’s Vineyard and that Texas Gov. Greg Abbot sent a busload of migrants to Vice President Kamala Harris’s home in Washington, DC.
He defended his administration’s immigration system, blaming Republicans for getting in the way.
“We have a process in place to manage migrants at the border. We’re working to make sure its safe and orderly and humane,” he said.
Biden spoke quickly and angrily about the situation, although he appeared powerless to stop it.
“Republican officials should not interfere with that process by waging these political stunts,” he said.
The president called for Republicans to join him to pass amnesty for illegal immigrants, calling it “long overdue.” . . .
Biden also noted proudly that schools are reopening after the coronavirus pandemic, reminding the audience that 28 percent of students in public schools are Hispanic.
“You all are going to own the country, man. We better darn well make sure they have every opportunity they have, not a joke,” he said.

That last line caught my eye — Hispanics “are going to own this country” — and I began to think of the headline I was going to write about it, but then I logged onto Twitter and saw Steve Sailer had beaten me to it.

Remember the Great Replacement is a Conspiracy Theory.

Biden addresses the Hispanic Congressional Caucus. Noting that Hispanics make up 28% of public school students, he congratulates the Latino politicians: “Y’all are going to own the country, man."https://t.co/OavmpbxrdT

— Steve Sailer (@Steve_Sailer) September 16, 2022

Exactly. You’re a dangerous far-right extremist if you so much as mention “The Great Replacement,” but here is the President of the United States citing demographic data to celebrate it as fact. And, of course, the “stunt” of flying a few dozen illegals to an elite conclave in Massachusetts exposes the basic dishonesty of the whole thing: Democrats are eager to flood your community with illiterate foreign peasants — that’s “social justice,” see? — but don’t you dare expect them to accept any of these peasants in their community. Why, it’s “un-American” to expect that!

Category: Conspiracy Theories, Immigration, Joe Biden, Massachusetts

Las Vegas: Criminal Starts Gunfight; Wounded Female Officer Finishes It

Posted on | September 16, 2022 | Comments Off on Las Vegas: Criminal Starts Gunfight; Wounded Female Officer Finishes It

Say hello to 27-year-old Gabriel Charles and, while you’re at it, go ahead and say good-bye, because this criminal scumbag ceased to be a threat to public safety just a few seconds after he shot a Las Vegas cop.

It was shortly after 1 a.m. Saturday when Officer Tierney Tomburo and her partner pulled over a vehicle for a traffic violation. Three males were in the vehicle, including Charles, the front-seat passenger. Officer Tomburo asked all three of the men to exit the vehicle while she investigated and, just after she asked if any of them had any weapons on them, Charles took off running. Officer Tomburo pursued on foot when suddenly, without warning, Charles turned around and fired one shot from a 9-mm Smith & Wesson semiautomatic pistol. Officer Tomburo was struck in the pelvis and knocked down, but she was able to grab her own pistol and return fire. She fired four shots, and Charles was fatally wounded. It turned out that, although Charles’ pistol had 14 rounds in the magazine, the gun jammed after he fired the first shot at Officer Tomburo. Assistant Sheriff John McGrath “called the jam a ‘stovepipe’ where the bullet casing doesn’t eject clear from the handgun’s slide”:

“The gun will not fire when it’s like that, but there were 14 additional rounds in the magazine,” he said.

Bodycam shows Charles shooting Officer Tomburo.

A typical amateur error. We may surmise that, after his gun jammed, Charles tried to clear the “stovepipe” — with the intent to shoot Officer Tomburo again — instead of running away. That meant he was standing stock-still right next to the wounded cop, who had a clear target at close range: Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam! R.I.P., criminal scumbag.

Assistant Sheriff McGrath said that “if Charles had survived, he would have been facing several charges including attempted murder with a deadly weapon on a protected person, battery with a deadly weapon, resisting with a firearm, and prohibited person in possession of a firearm.” Oh, wait — a “prohibited person”? So what he’s really telling us is, the deceased Gabriel Charles was already a convicted felon. Officially, however, “Investigators are not releasing details on Charles’ criminal history, and leaving that responsibility to the District Attorney’s Office.” Just gonna guess he had a very lengthy record, and should not have been out on the streets to begin with. The whole scene was captured on bodycam video and Officer Tomburo’s voice after she was shot doesn’t sound very heroic, but the results speak for themselves.

Did I mention that Officer Tomburo is only 24? That she had only been a member of the Las Vegas police force for two years?

Basically the whole Las Vegas police force turned out to applaud Officer Tomburo when she was released from the hospital on Monday.

Category: Crime, Nevada

In The Mailbox: 09.15.22

Posted on | September 15, 2022 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 09.15.22

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Silicon Valley delenda est.

OVER THE TRANSOM
357 Magnum: Western Civilization Was Nice While It Lasted
EBL: Biden The Tank(ing) Administration, Govenor DeSantis Sends Illegal Aliens To Martha’s Vineyard, and Biden Family Values
Twitchy: Unbelieving Whore Calls Governor Hypocrite For Claiming Christian Values, also, Sanctuary City Resident Whines About Arrival Of Fifty Illegals
Louder With Crowder: Badass Chick-fil-A employee saves mother and baby as he chokes out their carjacker, Florida sheriff busts more sexual predators, including another Disney employee, and Catholic schools’ enrollment surges as kids flee public schools
Vox Popoli: The Original Mary Sue, BIC Digs Deeper, Retards Demand Respect, and How Did This Happen?

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Conservative: NEW: Americans Opposed to Boots on the Ground in Ukraine, Poll Finds, Counterculture Warriors, and The Royal Accession
American Greatness: Ron DeSantis Sends Two Plane Loads of Illegal Aliens to Martha’s Vineyard, also, Greg Abbott Sends Two Buses Filled With Illegal Immigrants to Kamala Harris’ Naval Observatory Residence in DC
American Thinker: Who was Behind the January 6 Events?
Animal Magnetism: Animal’s Daily Hunter’s Illegal Gun News
Babalu Blog: Communist Cuba has slowest internet in Latin America and the Caribbean, WASP Network: 24th anniversary of the largest ever Cuban spy ring discovered in the U.S., and Cuban doctor whistleblower reports death of an infant caused by medical negligence
BattleSwarm: Peter Zeihan on the Ramifications of Russian Imperial Decline
Behind The Black: Update on SpaceX’s Starship and Superheavy, Rocket Lab successfully launches commercial radar satellite, and Pushback: Fraternities break free from USC’s draconian supervision
Cafe Hayek: Antitrust Ain’t Groovy, also, The Myopia of Antitrust
CDR Salamander: Diversity Thursday
Chicago Boyz: Captain Kirk on Risk
Da Tech Guy: Under the Fedora: Dangerous Pillow Makers, Trusted Russians Manufacturers, Less Lucky Russians, Metal Detectors and Don Bolduc, Immigrant Group Apparently Believes Massachusetts is a Shithole Compared to Florida, and If the Republican Party could stop being the stupid party that would be great
Don Surber: 9 states Republicans can flip, also, NYT: Drill, baby, drill
First Street Journal: Bidenflation
Gates Of Vienna: Giorgia Meloni: “Christian Values Have Molded Our Civilization”, Eyeballing It, and Terra Australis Incognita
The Geller Report: KARMA: Don Lemon loses prime-time role in latest CNN shake-up, also, Biden Moves To Open Up Public Benefits to 5+ Million Illegal Immigrants
Hogewash: Martha’s Vineyard and Illegal Immigrants, Team Kimberlin Post of the Day, Hunter’s Finances, and Pushing Back Against Illegal Search and Seizure
Hollywood In Toto: See How They Run (Barely) Keeps Murder Mysteries Alive, also, Biden’s America: Violence Crashes Hollywood’s Gates
The Lid: The Counter-Revolution That Changed The World
Legal Insurrection: Biden Bows to Pressure from Rail Unions to Avert Potentially Catastrophic Strike, Republican J.D. Vance Now Leading Democrat Tim Ryan in Ohio U.S. Senate Race, Rep. Hank Johnson Likens Parents Protesting Woke School Board Meetings to Capitol Hill Rioters, and Sweden’s Socialist Prime Minister Resigns, Paves Way For Sweden Democrats-Led Right-Wing Coalition
Nebraska Energy Observer: Please, dear God
Outkick: BYU Replaces Flaky Dawn Staley’s Gamecocks To Tip Off WBB Season, Lakers Owner Jeanie Buss Gives Absolutely Pathetic Answer About The NBA And China, Greg Norman: LIV Golf Has ‘No Interest’ In A Truce With PGA Tour, and Trey Lance Gets Over Week 1 Loss By Making It Rain On Strippers
Power Line: Tom Friedman Says . . . Drill, Baby, Drill?, Migrants In the Vineyard, and The GOP Learning How to Fight (Updated)
Shark Tank: Florida Nationally Recognized For Economic, Educational Achievements
Shot In The Dark: Urban Progressive Privilege – Their Own Dog Food, Deflection, and Messaging
The Political Hat: Quick Takes – Euthanasia in Canada: Killing The Disabled; Death To Veterans; Death To The Deaf
This Ain’t Hell: And you thought Iron Man and Starship Troopers were just movies
Victory Girls: Politico Tries To Blame Ken Starr For Trump
Volokh Conspiracy: Is Silicon Valley Spying on Conservatives for the FBI?
Watts Up With That: Global Decarbonization: Negative Agricultural Impacts
Weasel Zippers: Judge Finds Delaware’s Mail-In Voting Unconstitutional, Treasury Dept Auditing IRS After It’s Discovered Nearly 1500 Agents Failed To Pay Their Own Tax Debts, A Children’s Hospital Performing Gender Change Surgeries On Kids Got A Bomb Threat – Turned Out To Be A Hoax, and BREAKING: Labor Union Says There Is A Tentative Deal To Avert Rail Strike
The Federalist: NBC News Tries To Censor Viral Videos Highlighting John Fetterman’s Slurred Speech, Left-Wingers Melt Down Over Diversity Brought To Martha’s Vineyard, L.A. Schools Push Childhood Obesity In Bizarre Video Promoting Donuts As Healthy, and Delaware’s Mail-In Voting Ruling Is A Victory For The Rule Of Law
Mark Steyn: Cannon Fodder for the Elites

Amazon Warehouse Deals

Category: Linkagery

Pro-Criminal Fetterman Puts Convicted Killers on His Senate Campaign Payroll

Posted on | September 15, 2022 | Comments Off on Pro-Criminal Fetterman Puts Convicted Killers on His Senate Campaign Payroll

One of the great liberal myths of our age is the belief that America’s prisons are full of Wrongly Convicted Black Men. Even in cases where the evidence of guilt is overwhelming, liberals view Systemic Racism is an all-purpose excuse, so that even if he’s caught red-handed and confesses his guilt, no black man is ever really guilty of criminal wrongdoing. In this warped view, every black inmate in America’s prisons is a Victim of Oppression, and therefore — following this Liberal Logic™ to its inescapable conclusion — it is wrong for any black person ever to be arrested, prosecuted or incarcerated. The influence of what we may call the Myth of Universal Black Innocence is obvious in the policies pursued by left-wing district attorneys like Larry Krasner in Philadelphia, Alvin Bragg in New York and George Gascón in LA, as well as in Democrat-controlled states such as Illinois and California that have enacted “reform” policies to turn dangerous criminals loose on the streets.

Democrat soft-on-crime policies also result in lenient treatment of white criminals who get turned loose and become repeat offenders, but that is incidental to the political objective of such policies, which are advocated as a measure of “racial justice” with the intent of ending so-called “mass incarceration” of black criminals. But I digress . . .

I haven’t paid much attention to the Senate campaign in Pennsylvania, or any other Senate campaign, for that matter, because it seems to me that (a) the GOP has a near-certain chance to take back the House majority in the midterms, and (b) winning the Senate would merely be the cherry on top of that result. Also, I wasn’t a huge fan of Trump’s endorsement of Doctor Oz in the Pennsylvania GOP primary, not because of anything particular against Doctor Oz, but just because I would have preferred a candidate with a more typical background, rather than a celebrity with no political record. The more I’ve learned about the Democratic candidate in Pennsylvania, however, the more obvious it seems that conservatives have a duty to rally behind Doctor Oz. Because the Democrat, Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, is a very dangerous person, and would certainly be defeated if Pennsylvania voters were fully informed about him.

A few recent headlines about an important controversy:

Fetterman slams Oz demand that
he fire ‘wrongfully convicted’ brothers
who received clemency over 1993 murder
— Business Insider, Sept. 1

Did John Fetterman Hire Convicted
Murderers for Campaign as Dr. Oz Claims?
— Newsweek, Sept. 1

Dr. Oz Demands Fetterman
Fire ‘Convicted Murderers’
— Who Were Granted Clemency
— Politico, Sept. 1

Fetterman accuses Dr Oz
of ‘sad and desperate smear’
with misleading claim he
hired ‘convicted murderers’
— UK Independent, Sept. 2

This is an important controversy, as I say, because it highlights both Fetterman’s policy toward crime and justice issues, as well as his judgment and honest (or lack thereof). The two convicted murderers Fetterman hired on his campaign staff are Lee and Dennis Horton.

Convicted felons Lee and Dennis Horton

Notice the liberal media seek to suggest that the Horton brothers were “wrongfully convicted,” or that, because they were “granted clemency,” somehow their guilt is in doubt. In fact, there is no doubt at all, and it is neither “misleading” nor a “smear” for Oz to call attention to this situation, which speaks volumes about Fetterman’s worldview.

Ann Coulter does an excellent job of dismantling the bogus claim that the Horton brothers were “wrongfully convicted,” a column in which she cites a Pennsylvania appeals court decision issued just last year, rejecting Lee Horton’s claims for relief under the state’s Post-Conviction Relief Act.

Despite repeated appeals, no court has overturned the convictions of Lee and Dennis Horton, and there is absolutely no reason for anyone to believe that they were “wrongfully convicted.” The most recent court ruling points out that the only new “evidence” Lee Horton offered in seeking PCRA relief was a handwritten note by one of the police investigators, previously not included as part of discovery during the proceedings, which could not possibly have affected the outcome of his original trial. But what about this “clemency”? And what about the original crime for which the Hortons were convicted?

It was the armed robbery of a Philadelphia bar:

The evidence adduced at trial established that on May 31, 1993, [Lee Horton], his brother Dennis Horton (“Dennis”), and a coconspirator Robert Leaf (“Leaf”) robbed Filito’s Bar located at 5th and Hunting Park Avenue. During the course of the robbery, Dennis, who was brandishing a rifle, shot Samuel Alemo multiple times. He later died from his gunshot wounds. Dennis also shot Luz Archella and her daughter Luz Martinez, injuring both. After leaving the bar, the three men fled in a blue automobile. A passerby was able to supply a description of the vehicle and a partial license plate number. A radio call was sent out, which included a description of the three assailants, their vehicle, and the last four digits of the license plate. A police officer observed the vehicle a short time later only a mile from the crime scene and placed [Horton] and his companions under arrest. Police recovered a .22 caliber semi-automatic rifle from the backseat of the car as well as a black pellet gun under the front passenger seat. Ballistics testing identified the rifle as the same weapon used during the robbery at Filito’s. [Horton], Dennis, and Leaf were taken to the hospital where Martinez and her daughter, as well as another bar patron Miguel DeJesus, identified them as the robbers. . . .
The evidence shows that [Horton] entered the bar with Leaf and Dennis, who were both armed. [Lee Horton] took money from a bar patron while Leaf held a gun to the patron’s head. [Horton] remained present when Dennis opened fire on two other bar patrons and murdered Alemo. He then fled the bar together with Leaf and Dennis, and was arrested with them a short time later. . . . Regardless who opened fire, [Horton] remains liable as an accomplice for any resulting deaths as well as any other crimes committed that night at Filito’s bar during the robbery.

This is the law in most states on capital murder: If you participate in a crime, such as a robbery, that results in someone being killed, you can be charged with murder even if you didn’t pull the trigger, and even if the person who got killed was one of your accomplices. One reason the law is this way is because, when two or more perpetrators are involved in a crime that ends in homicide, it can be difficult to determine which of the criminals did the fatal deed. If Moe, Larry and Curly decide to rob a bank, and a teller gets shot to death in the process, cops may not be able to figure out which one of the Three Stooges pulled the trigger, and Moe might be pointing the finger at Curly or Larry, both of whom insist that it was really Moe that did the killing; however, insofar as all three were involved in the robbery-turned-murder, all of them are equally liable under the capital murder law. Interestingly, in the Horton brothers’ case, while Dennis and Lee were both convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison, their accomplice Ryan Leaf was convicted of third-degree murder and only sentenced to “a term of years,” eventually being released in 2008. Nobody knows where Ryan Leaf is now, but the fact that he had already gotten out of prison was widely cited last year as an argument for releasing the Horton brothers. Among other things, such an argument seeks to void the findings of the jury and the judgment of the prosecutors, who were certainly more familiar with the facts of the case in 1993 than any of the liberal journalists or “activist” types running their mouths about the case in 2022. Regardless of why Leaf was sentenced to less time than the Horton brothers, no reasonable person would find this a reason to believe the Hortons were “wrongfully convicted” or that their life sentences were unjust. A man was killed and two women were wounded in this robbery, and unless you’re the kind of liberal idiot that thinks it’s OK to let murderers go with a slap on the wrist, life in prison is an entirely justifiable sentence in such a case.

Care to guess what kind of idiot John Fetterman is?

The Pennsylvania Board of Pardons meets four times a year to consider the ever-growing pile of applications for a pardon or a commutation submitted by inmates at state prisons across the Commonwealth. There are five people on the board: the lieutenant governor, the state attorney general (Josh Shapiro), and three other members with relevant expertise picked by the governor and approved by the state Senate. Votes on cases involving death sentences and life imprisonment must be unanimous; otherwise, recommendations for a pardon/commutation (the conferring of which ultimately lies with the governor) are denied.
With Fetterman at the helm, the board has been wading through the huge backlog of applications at a determined clip. Shocked and shaken by the overwhelming majority of elderly Black faces among the 5,400 inmates currently serving life sentences in Pennsylvania’s state prisons, Fetterman has made it his mission to shift the emphasis from cruelty to compassion. “We’re making it all about second chances, about redemption and forgiveness and completing the circle,” he says. “People think the face of life in prison is Hannibal Lecter, but sometimes it’s the face of Morgan Freeman in Shawshank Redemption.”

This is from a May 2021 Philadelphia magazine profile and, sweet holy jeebus, are you kidding me with this Shawshank Redemption crap? I mean, really? Hollywood dramas are the basis of your decision-making as chairman of the state Board of Pardons? But wait, there’s more from the Philadelphia magazine profile:

Two people Fetterman deemed worthy of a second chance are Lee and Dennis Horton, brothers from North Philadelphia who, until their release in February, had served 27 years of life sentences as accessories to a murder they maintain they had no part in. In one of the many cruel ironies of the U.S. justice system, the man who confessed to committing the murder was released in 2008.

This is how laziness functions as a servant to bias in journalism. Any reporter diligent enough to look up the court records on the case against the Horton brothers could see that this tale is false. According to witnesses and victims (to say nothing of the jury’s verdict and the various courts that repeatedly rejected Lee Horton’s appeals), it was not Ryan Leaf, but Dennis Horton who shot the three victims. The reporter who wrote this feature profile about Fetterman simply repeats what he was told by the Hortons, without having bothered to check the facts for himself. There is no “cruel irony” to why the Hortons were still behind bars; they were both guilty, but never once have they acknowledged their guilt. Returning to the Philadelphia profile:

By all accounts, the Horton brothers were model prisoners, counseling fellow inmates struggling with incarceration, teaching yoga, convincing their peers to act in and build props for productions of plays they wrote about atonement and restorative justice.
Two wardens and assorted deputies, not to mention the state secretary of corrections, advocated for their release at a Board of Pardons hearing in December of 2020. When it came time to vote on the Horton brothers’ request for a commutation, Fetterman wept openly as the other board members voted “yes”; when his turn came, he was too overcome with emotion to speak. AG Josh Shapiro, who’s locked horns with Fetterman in the past over whom to let out and whom to keep in, answered for him: “I’m a yes, and I think the lieutenant governor is a yes as well,” he said over Zoom. The Horton brothers were watching all of this go down from the warden’s office at SCI Chester, where they were incarcerated.
“This is a man who supported us with everything he had in him; he was all in, emotionally, physically,” Dennis Horton told me back in April, just a few weeks after he and his brother were released from prison. “He gave what he had to help free us from the clutches of a life sentence.”
“He saved our lives, because life in Pennsylvania means you die in prison — they call it ‘death by incarceration,’” said Lee. “When he broke down, I was taken aback, because you don’t expect a guy that big to be that emotional.”
“Especially with all those tattoos on him,” Dennis chimed in. Since their release, the Horton brothers have been hired by Fetterman’s U.S. Senate campaign to coordinate voter outreach in Philadelphia.

Perhaps “outreach” to the family of their victims? See, that’s the magician’s trick in this kind of story, where liberal journalists portray criminals as victims, while — abracadbra! — making the real victims disappear. But they should never be forgotten:

The victim’s brother, Reinaldo Alamo, 62, said he opposes clemency for the Hortons. “They took a human life, and they don’t deserve to be out in society,” he said. . . .
Attempts to locate Leaf and witnesses from the 1993 trial were unsuccessful.
To Reinaldo Alamo, it was and remains an open-and-shut case, given the brothers were caught with the weapon an hour after the murder. He won’t be speaking at the hearing, but submitted a letter noting his opposition.
“When I heard this it put me in a state of depression,” Alamo said of the commutation hearing. “To think of … the turmoil they caused my family, the pain and suffering that it did to my mother.”

John Fetterman doesn’t care about the suffering of crime victims.

That’s what this controversy is really about. Democrats have become the pro-criminal party, advocating policies that ensure violence criminals are turned loose to commit more crimes, and Democrats like John Fetterman are absolutely indifferent to the impact that these policies have on innocent law-abiding citizens. You must be some kind of racist if you think murderers should be sentenced to life in prison, and even if your own brother gets killed by these monsters, well, tough luck!

Whether or not Republicans win a Senate majority in November, and without regard to what we may otherwise think of Doctor Oz’s candidacy, it seems to me that conservatives have an obligation to do everything in our power to stop John Fetterman from being elected.

Click Here to Support
DR. MEHMET OZ FOR U.S. SENATE

Do all you can. Innocent lives are on the line.

Category: Crime, Pennsylvania, Senate

In The Mailbox: 09.14.22

Posted on | September 14, 2022 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 09.14.22

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Today’s pic deserves a little explanation – it is, of course, Yor Forger from Spy x Family, but it reminded me of this picture of the DC Comics antihero Thorn in its reflection of, as Private Joker once said, “the duality of man”.
Silicon Valley delenda est.