The Other McCain

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

Is @MaxBlumenthal on the Kremlin Payroll? (And Other Ukraine Questions)

Posted on | August 3, 2022 | Comments Off on Is @MaxBlumenthal on the Kremlin Payroll? (And Other Ukraine Questions)

We’ll get to the Max Blumenthal-as-Putin-puppet angle in just a minute, but first, Ace of Spades notices a shift in Bidenland:

White House Stenographer Tom Friedman
Throws Zelenskyy and Ukraine
Under the Bus, Calling Both Corrupt.
What Does It Mean?

That question — “What does it mean?” — involves some reading of the tea leaves from anonymous officials quoted by Friedman:

Dear reader: The Ukraine war is not over. And privately, U.S. officials are a lot more concerned about Ukraine’s leadership than they are letting on. There is deep mistrust between the White House and President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine — considerably more than has been reported.
And there is funny business going on in Kyiv. On July 17, Zelensky fired his country’s prosecutor general and the leader of its domestic intelligence agency — the most significant shake-up in his government since the Russian invasion in February. It would be the equivalent of Biden firing Merrick Garland and Bill Burns on the same day. But I have still not seen any reporting that convincingly explains what that was all about. It is as if we don’t want to look too closely under the hood in Kyiv for fear of what corruption or antics we might see, when we have invested so much there.

Why would “U.S. officials” be informing Friedman of how “privately . . . concerned” they are and their “deep mistrust” toward Zelensky? Such communications are never accidental. “U.S. officials” don’t just happen to express such misgivings over cocktails with a prominent New York Times columnist. The Biden administration (or the State Department, or the Pentagon or the CIA, or some combination of these bureaucracies) is clearly trying to send a signal, but as Ace asks, “What does it mean?”

I mean, it’s true that Ukraine is corrupt, but we live in an Empire of Lies where the truth is forbidden and is only permitted to be spoken when it, coincidentally, and perversely, advances a Regime goal.
So why send out this errand boy? Why has this errand boy been sent out by grocery clerks to collect a bill?
What Regime goal is being perversely advanced by the truth here?
We had a similar Deep State hit on Zelenskyy a week or so back — regarding Zelenskyy firing government officials the American Deep State apparently had on their payroll and thus did not want fired — I think and I think it can be explained the same way: Zelenskyy is being told “You are being paid by us, you are our puppet, and we can replace you easily if you do not dance to our movement of your strings.”

Ace enlists Jim Geraghty’s expertise in tea-leaf reading:

My best guess is that nobody at the White House was prepared for Russia’s invasion, but neither did they believe that Ukraine could inflict such heavy casualties on the Russians and thus produce this kind of drawn-out conflict, which has had very bad political consequences for Biden. So they want to pressure Zelensky into some kind of “peace for our time” negotiated ceasefire that Team Biden can then spin as a foreign-policy “success.” But that’s just my guess, and it’s entirely possible that nobody in D.C. really knows what their ideal end-game is or how they’ll achieve it, so perhaps I’m giving too much credit to them as having some kind of coherent motive, when they actually don’t. And now let’s turn our attention to alleged Russian puppet Max Blumenthal . . .

About 15 years ago, when he was a young “investigative reporter” (a/k/a, partisan hit man) for The Nation, Blumenthal authored an “exposé” of the Washington Times focused on accusations of racism — “RAAAAACISM!” — against me and some of my bosses. Blumenthal’s “sources” included a washed-up alcoholic who’d left the paper a year or so previously, and whose name I won’t repeat here, but whose credibility wasn’t exactly gold standard, to say the least. All that is water over the dam, and I never even think about it anymore, except Tuesday morning I woke up and wondered, “Whatever happened to Max Blumenthal?”

Don’t ask me why that question just hit me out of the clear blue sky, because I can’t exactly remember — maybe it was something I dreamed. At any rate, Blumenthal was once reasonably prominent, well-known enough that Andrew Breitbart liked to use him as a punch-line, but I hadn’t heard anything about him in several years, since he got himself mixed up in a controversy over his anti-Israel opinions.

So, I started Googling and oh, ho ho ho! What have we here?

Blumenthal has contributed to broadcasts on RT (formerly known as Russia Today) on many occasions. In December 2015, during a visit to Moscow presumed by multiple sources to have been paid for by the Kremlin, Blumenthal was a guest at RT’s 10 Years On Air anniversary party attended by President Vladimir Putin, then-Lieutenant General Michael Flynn of the United States and English politician Ken Livingstone. In an interview with Tucker Carlson on Fox News in November 2017, Blumenthal defended RT against “the charge that it’s Kremlin propaganda.” He has also contributed on multiple occasions to Sputnik radio, as well as to Iran’s Press TV and China’s CGTN. Blumenthal founded The Grayzone website within a month after his visit to Moscow. In an October 2019 article for New Politics magazine, Gilbert Achcar wrote that Blumenthal’s Grayzone, along with the World Socialist Web Site, has “the habit of demonizing all left-wing critics of Putin and the likes of [Syrian dictator ] Assad by describing them as ‘agents of imperialism’ or some equivalent”. . . .
After Blumenthal’s visit to Moscow in December 2015, according to a 2018 article by Janine di Giovanni in The New York Review of Books, he began to promote views supportive of Bashar al Assad and the Syrian government’s position.

For the record, Blumenthal denies selling out for Kremlin cash, and I have no information one way or another on the subject, but it appears that Blumenthal has now somehow become a target of the “Deep State.” This involves a London-based firm called Molfar, “a consulting company specializing in open-source intelligence.” Molfar “is partnered with Ukraine’s Ministry for Digital Transformation” and with the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), an agency that is almost as “Deep State” as the CIA. And it seems Molfar is defaming Blumenthal, the left-wing British paper Morning Star reports:

Molfar came to the attention of the Star after it sent a press release last week offering to dish dirt on Grayzone journalist Max Blumenthal, who it accused of taking “money from the Kremlin to run an aggressive campaign against Ukraine.”
Mr Blumenthal strenuously denied the allegations and told the Star he had not been given a copy of the file.
“Molfar has been too cowardly to provide its dodgy dossier to my colleagues, so I have not seen it in full. But the claims made in its mass email are totally false, as I and the Grayzone do not receive state funding. Unlike the USAID-backed smear factory at Molfar, our support is entirely grassroots and reader-based.
“This half-baked attempt at intimidating me for my factual journalism pales in comparison to the repression and violence meted out by the US-backed post-Maidan regime against the many Ukrainian journalists, politicians and human rights activists who have dissented against its corrupt and authoritarian rule,” he said.

So, Zelenksy’s “regime” is “corrupt and authoritarian,” according to Blumenthal, who claims to be the victim of a “USAID-backed smear factory.” In other words, our tax money is being paid to some “consulting company” in London that is defaming an American citizen on behalf of the Ukrainian government? Speaking as someone who has zero admiration for Max Blumenthal, neverthless I must object to this alleged abuse of U.S. taxpayer money. It was perhaps predictable, when the Biden administration started flinging billions upon billions of dollars in assistance to Ukraine, that some of this money would be used in nerfarious ways, but smearing Max Blumenthal — whose father is a longtime henchman of Hillary Clinton — on behalf of the Kiev government? No, I never would have predicted that.

On the other hand, if these Molfar guys have actual proof that Blumenthal is on Putin’s payroll, they need to stop making vague accusations in press releases and start dishing out the actual evidence.

Either way the cookie crumbles — either Max really is a Kremlin puppet, or the “Deep State” is once again exposed as shady and incompetent — I’m ready to see this story become front-page headline news.




 

Category: Journalism, Russia, Ukraine

In The Mailbox: 08.02.22

Posted on | August 2, 2022 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 08.02.22

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Silicon Valley delenda est.

Hard to disagree.

OVER THE TRANSOM
357 Magnum: How Social Justice Warriors Hurt Minorities
EBL: Nice When Old Friends Can Reconnect
Twitchy: Robber Upset That 80-Year-Old Store Owner Shot His Arm Off, also, Eric Feigl-Ding Thinks Schools Will Need More Safety Mitigations Because Of Monkeypox
Louder With Crowder: Doocy Smokes White House Over Inflation “Reduction” Act
Vox Popoli: The Price of Popularity, Arktoons 8 Million, and Were the Chinese Bluffing?
Stoic Observations: He Looked Just Like You

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: The best way to tell if she’s worth a second look
American Conservative: Against Public Atheism, also, Catholic Readers Respond To TLM Post
American Greatness: Port of Los Angeles Clogs Up Again Due to Railroad Worker Shortage, also, Soros Vows to Continue Supporting Soft-on-Crime DAs Despite Backlash
American Power: Fit to Print? UNC’s Settlement with Nikole Hannah-Jones is Bad News, also, The Left’s Assault on the Middle Class
American Thinker: Democrats Are Learning That Hating Trump Is Not The Same As Governing
Animal Magnetism: Animal’s Daily Nuclear News
Babalu Blog: Who knew we’d be talking about the misery index again?, Cuba’s Largest Power Plant Closes Down Again Due To Breakdown, and Looming blackouts in Havana a reminder of the failure of communism in Cuba
BattleSwarm: Lebanon Seizes Ship Loaded With Stolen Ukrainian Grain, also, Peter Zeihan: World Agricultural Output Is Screwed, US Output Is Not
Behind The Black: 500 healthcare workers, fired for refusing COVID jab, win $10.3 million lawsuit, Russia launches military satellite, and Long March 5B pieces crash near villages in Malaysia and Indonesia
Cafe Hayek: Geoff Brennan, R.I.P., also, Goods and Services With Price Ceilings of $0
CDR Salamander: The USA Thinks in Domains; the PRC Thinks in Dominances, also, How Many Fireboats Can You Buy for $1.2 Billion?
Chicago Boyz: The Light of Rutupaie Going Out
Da Tech Guy: Fact-checkers are gaslighting Americans over definition of a recession, The Left in General and the Transgender Groomer Left in one Image (and some advice), and Report from Louisiana: Back to School Wish Lists
Don Surber: Biden got the recession he wanted, Let Trump be Trump, and Tossing away 246 years of progress
First Street Journal: Killadelphia
Gates Of Vienna: Afghan Culture-Enricher Punches Out a Girl Soldier, We’ve Got to Beat the Meat, and Imagine There’s No Religion
The Geller Report: No Media Coverage: Biden’s Baby Formula Shortage Worsens, Wreaking Havoc On American Families
Hogewash: Team Kimberlin Post of the Day, also, What’s Up for August, 2022
Hollywood In Toto: Broadway Star: Hollywood Ended My Career for Not Getting Vaccine, Wayne’s World at 30: Even More Excellent!, and Dunham’s Sharp Stick Features Film’s First ‘Abortion Baby Shower’
The Lid: Tisha B’ Av: The Day God Gave The Jews A Reason To Cry, also, Rampant Fatherlessness Leads To Tragedies
Legal Insurrection: The Battle Over Wokeness in Higher Ed is Hitting Conservative Colleges Too, Republicans Don’t Believe New CNN CEO’s Promise to End Partisanship, and Air Force Base Hosts Drag Show During Its Diversity Weekend
Nebraska Energy Observer: Looking Back, also, Part One Of Three
Outkick: Enes Kanter Freedom Says He Has No NBA Offers After Speaking Out Against Red China, Exclusive: Allison Williams Joins Fox Sports, Kurt Warner Defends Coordinator Who Said Patrick Mahomes Plays ‘Streetball’, and White Sox Manager Tony La Russa Caught Sleeping on the Job!
Power Line: Living hell in Minneapolis, also, I Scream, You Scream, Reuters Screams
Shark Tank: VP Harris Says Resiliency Money Coming To South Florida
Shot In The Dark: Justice, also, The Mother Of All Debacles
The Political Hat: Anti-Prayer Zones In Ireland
This Ain’t Hell: Outrage over toxic waste burn pit bill, Nan Arrives!, and Navajo Code Talker Passes
Transterrestrial Musings: The FBI And The Democrats, Why America Can’t Build, and George Soros On Criminal Justice
Victory Girls: Joe Manchin’s Tone Deaf Victory Lap, also, Germany Energy Shortage Should Be Warning To U.S.
Volokh Conspiracy: The Conservative Case for Sanctuary Cities and States
Watts Up With That: Climate Scientist Andrew Dessler Proves Renewable Energy is Useless
Weasel Zippers: Biological Man Booted From Girls Cheerleading Camp After Choking Out A Biological Female, Liz Cheney Thinks “Water World” Actor Can Save Her, and Governor Hair Gel Declares State Of Emergency Over Schlong COVID
The Federalist: Russell Moore And Evangelical Elites Can’t Let Go Of Their Jeremiad Against Conservative Christians, Inside Liz Cheney’s Coordinated Effort To Prevent Troop Deployment Before Jan. 6, and It’s Not A “Loophole” Just Because Democrats Don’t Like It
Mark Steyn: It’s Not a Fair Cop, also, Making Plans For Us

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Category: Linkagery

America Needs More Patriotism

Posted on | August 2, 2022 | Comments Off on America Needs More Patriotism

“Patriotism,” as in being a New England Patriots fan. My team — led by my quarterback, Mac Jones — opened training camp last week, and the stands were crowded with thousands of Patriots fans. Is there any other team in America that gets that kind of turnout for training camp?

After winning six Super Bowls in 20 years, New England fans are the most football-crazy people outside of Alabama, and so it feels like a natural fit for Mac Jones, who was accustomed to high expectations in Tuscaloosa, to be tasked with meeting the demands in Foxborough, where merely making the playoffs is not considered success:

Patriots quarterback Mac Jones is preaching patience through the process following another training camp practice in which the defense appeared to outplay the offense.
In the last few practices, Jones has had to scramble because plays have broken down. Jones emphasized that learning a new offense takes time.
“We have a lot of room to grow here,” Jones said following Tuesday’s practice. “…Our offensive line is doing a good job, we just have to get on the same page.”
As the Patriots work to discover their offensive identity, Jones has been visibly frustrated at points as the offense has struggled.
“I care a lot about football and…when we lose the day, to me that’s like a shot in the heart, it’s like we lost a game,” Jones said of his frustration.

Did I mention he went undefeated his senior season at Alabama? He’s got that championship mindset, where even “losing” in practice is “like a shot in the heart.” Going 10-7 last year and then losing to the Bills in wild card round might have been OK with some people, but not Mac Jones, who wants to win everything, all the time — like Patton said:

Now, I want you to remember that no bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country. Men, all this stuff you’ve heard about America not wanting to fight, wanting to stay out of the war, is a lot of horse dung. Americans, traditionally, love to fight. All real Americans love the sting of battle.
When you were kids, you all admired the champion marble shooter, the fastest runner, the big league ball players, the toughest boxers. Americans love a winner and will not tolerate a loser. Americans play to win all the time. Now, I wouldn’t give a hoot in hell for a man who lost and laughed. That’s why Americans have never lost and will never lose a war. Because the very thought of losing is hateful to Americans.

That is how Mac Jones approaches football. He’s got a great sense of humor and loves to joke around with his teammates, but when it comes to football — winning — he takes that very seriously. And that’s good, because Patriots fans take it seriously, too. They’re so football-crazy up there in New England, they demand a daily stream of Patriots news, even during training camp, so the headlines just keep stacking up:

Mac Jones sees ‘room to grow’
for Patriots’ new-style offense
— Pats Pulpit

Tyquan Thornton ‘clearly has the speed
to get open’ as Patriots’ second-round
pick continues to impress
— MassLive.com

Patriots training camp Day 6 observations:
Mack Wilson shines, Ty Montgomery
making case for roster spot
— CBS Sports

Day 6 blogservations: Agholor enjoys solid start
— Patriots.com

Christian Barmore, defense handcuff
offense again in Patriots’ second
padded practice at training camp
— WEEI-FM

Patriots training camp notebook:
Linebackers stand out on Day 6
— WBZ-FM

When 12,000 fans show up for training camp, there must be a huge audience of diehard Patriot fans out there, and the business of feeding them tidbits of news — which linebacker looked good in drills, which cornerback got an interception in practice — employs a small army of sports writers. There is nothing like it anywhere else in the NFL, and these football-crazy New England fans just love Mac Jones.

Is there another quarterback in the league who gets a standing ovation just for running out on the field before practice? We are now nine days away from the Patriots’ first pre-season game at home against the New York Giants, and a month after that, they open the regular season at Miami against their AFC East rival Dolphins. Probably you don’t care. Probably you’ve got some local NFL franchise where you live, but you don’t really care about them, do you? So why not join me in becoming a New England Patriots fan? America needs more patriotism.




 

Category: Football

Give War a Chance?

Posted on | August 2, 2022 | Comments Off on Give War a Chance?

You might be a “climate change” fanatic if . . .

South China Morning Post (SCMP) North American bureau chief Robert Delaney published a bizarre editorial on Tuesday in which he suggested a war between America and China, sparked by Beijing making good on its threat of a military response to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-CA) visit to Taiwan, could be even better than the coronavirus pandemic for reducing the world’s carbon footprint.
Delaney’s long screed, which only got around to his give-war-a-chance grand finale in the final paragraphs, included hosannas for the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic as the luckiest break for the climate change movement in generations, since it significantly reduced energy consumption and emissions.
Perhaps more importantly, the pandemic gave free nations a taste of the Chinese-style authoritarianism that would be needed to make Delaney’s climate dreams come true.
A war between America and China that could quickly spiral into a global conflict would seem likely to release a great deal of carbon and other pollutants into the atmosphere — and, in the worst-case scenario, some rather massive radioactive heat blooms — but Delaney argued it would be worthwhile in the long run, because it would make the West more accustomed to totalitarian control and reduce carbon footprints by impoverishing all of mankind . . .
“All things considered, a Pelosi delegation to Taiwan might be just what the Earth’s natural ecosystems need,” Delaney mused.

Is there a thorazine shortage? Because this kind of craziness is apparently becoming rampant — a pandemic of incurable insanity.




 

Category: Global Warming

In The Mailbox: 08.01.22

Posted on | August 2, 2022 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 08.01.22

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Thanks for everyone who bought stuff through my amazon links last month. Very much appreciated!
Silicon Valley delenda est.

OVER THE TRANSOM
357 Magnum: F*c*book Doesn’t Believe In Privacy
EBL: Nichelle Nichols, RIP, also, Nancy’s Going To Taiwan
Twitchy: MSNBC – Here’s How Atheists Can Help Fight Christian Nationalists Who Have America Under Siege
Louder With Crowder: “Everybody’s Trying To Be A F****ing Victim”, also, Elon Musk Blasts Wikipedia For Redefining “Recession”
Vox Popoli: Dynamic Definitions, Paul Krugman, Economics Whore, and Scott Adams Comes Clean
Gab News: Godless Media Now Calling Christianity A “Toxic Religion”
Stoic Observations: Explaining The Cloud To Grandpa, also, Some Type Of Therapist

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: Taking Joy In The Fall Of The Church
American Conservative: Filicide Of The Catholic Faith
American Greatness: My Publisher Canceled Me in Favor of an Activist Who Threatened My Life, also, Trump Stays in the Picture 
American Power: War With Russia Enters New Phase as Ukraine Readies Southern Counterblow, also, In Monkeypox, Gay Men Confront Echoes of the Past
American Thinker: Lessons from Ruby Ridge, also, Naming Things
Animal Magnetism: Goodbye, Blue Monday
Babalu Blog: Nearly 5,000 dengue cases in Cuba in just the past week, Prizeworthy sanitation and hygiene in Cuban hospitals, Fervent young communist repressor from Cuba enters U.S. through Nicaragua, and Images of privilege: No pain, no hunger, no deprivations for Cuba’s ruling class
BattleSwarm: LinkSwarm for July 29, also, Steep Mexican Road 15, Drivers 0
Behind The Black: Space junk thought to be service module of Dragon manned capsule found in Australia, Long March 5B stage falls to Earth near Malaysia, and Another blacklisted American sues school board for banning and censoring him
Cafe Hayek: Orwell Nailed It, Inflated with Motivated Reasoning, and Price Ceilings Harm Those Persons Who Can Least Afford to Be Harmed
CDR Salamander: July Farewell Maritime Free For All – on Midrats
Chicago Boyz: Resilience and Renewal
Da Tech Guy: The Best Argument for Biden that the Left can Manage, How to know you’re in a recruitment crisis, and Baseball league updates 1970 Draft League
Don Surber: Why the press is the enemy of the people, West Virginia takes on BlackRock, and Yanqui go home
First Street Journal: Welfare for the well-to-do, also, Killadelphia
Gates Of Vienna: Pride in Islam, Too White to Reggae, Robbin’ and Gropin’ in Valencia, and The Abused Cadaver of a Jab-Enforcer Lagerkapo
The Geller Report: Biden Creating Permanent USPS Division to Deliver and Return Ballots in US Elections, also, The Clinical Steps To Grooming Kids Match Exactly What They’re Being Taught In Schools
Hogewash: Team Kimberlin Post of the Day, Civil Rights Update, and Don’t Know Much Biology—Or English Vocabulary
Hollywood In Toto: How Sum of All Fears Got Caught in 9/11’s Cultural Fallout, Yes, Tobe Hooper Directed Poltergeist…End of Story, and Is LetsGetFr.ee the Ultimate Woke Fail?
Legal Insurrection: Bidenflation: Hershey Warns There Won’t Be Enough Candy To Meet Halloween Demand, Surprise: Misleadingly-Named “Inflation Reduction Act” Will Raise Taxes Even On The Middle Class, UW-Madison Faces Backlash Over New Chancellor’s Pro-CRT Views, and NYT: Democrats Should Be Afraid of Parents, Very Afraid
Nebraska Energy Observer: Change is good, also, Thoughts
Outkick: Prepare For Start Of College Football With A Packed Florida Stadium Singing ‘I Won’t Back Down’, NWSL Player Benched For Refusing To Wear “Pride” Jersey, Warren Moon Implies Racism Was Motive Behind Kyler Murray’s ‘Homework Clause,’ Media Continues To Push The Idea, and Boston Celtics Legend Bill Russell Has Died
Power Line: A clown-car administration, “Green” Is Unsustainable, and Guest Post: Emina Melonic on ‘War Chic’
Shark Tank: The Hypocrisy Behind The Miami Herald, Orlando Sentinel, And Florida’s Entire Press Corps
Shot In The Dark: Misinformation, Keeping Up With The Newsomes, and Headline 2025
STUMP: Public Pension Returns Start to Roll In for FY 2022
The Political Hat: California To The World: All Your Children Are Belong To Us
This Ain’t Hell: Shoot Down SanFranNan? Uh, no., One of the last Navajo Code Talkers dies, and Ayman Al Zawahiri Droned Near Kabul
Transterrestrial Musings: It’s Not Enough To Be Pro-Choice, Nichelle Nichols, and Milton Friedman
Victory Girls: Kim Foxx Burned in Resignation Letter from Prosecutor, Linda Sanchez Displayed Her IQ, Blames GOP Women, and Talcum X Buys Show Dog With Donor Funds
Volokh Conspiracy: Today in Supreme Court History: August 1, 1942
Watts Up With That: Green Nightmare: Aussie Power Prices Rising Out of Control, Great Idea for U.S. Energy Policy: Let’s Follow the Example of Germany!, and You are the pollution they want to eliminate!
Weasel Zippers: Facebook Censors Top Economist For Defining A Recession, Occasional Cortex Tells Trannies “You Are Patriots”, and Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) Refuses To Say If He Will Support Biden As The 2024 Nominee
The Federalist: CNN Tried To Find People In Wyoming Who Like Liz Cheney. It Didn’t Go Well, Parents, If You Don’t Get A Grip On Your Kids’ Social Media, Trans Activists Will, and The Creepy Weirdness Of Democrats Is Best Understood When They Talk About Law Enforcement
Mark Steyn: Town Without Pity: Yul Brynner in Invitation to a Gunfighter, Ruritania and Cyrenaica, and Renaissance Man

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Category: Linkagery

Lena Dunham Is Totally Triggered About Abortion Rights (Even Though She Had a Hysterectomy More Than Four Years Ago)

Posted on | August 1, 2022 | Comments Off on Lena Dunham Is Totally Triggered About Abortion Rights (Even Though She Had a Hysterectomy More Than Four Years Ago)

Nothing is ever private with Lena Dunham. Remember the 2014 memoir in which Lena described molesting her little sister? Remember how she described being raped at Oberlin College by a Republican, except that it never actually happened? Because she inhabits a narcissistic bubble in which her own feelings and experiences (real or imaginary) are the only thing that matter, Dunham’s self-centered confessional mode of writing makes everything about her. Nothing can be perceived objectively, because what about me? So when her chronic gynecological problems led her to get a hysterectomy in December 2017, this became the subject of a 2,400-word article in Vogue, as if it were imperative to share this experience with her “fans” (whoever they may be). And now this:

Filmmaker Lena Dunham — who once said she has never had an abortion but wishes she had — says the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to overrule Roe v. Wade was one of the “darkest days” she has experienced in her life.
“I’m terrified,” Dunham told Yahoo! Entertainment of the Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization ruling. “I grew up with a mother who was part of the Downtown Women’s Action Coalition that went and held hands around abortion clinics to make sure that women could enter and exit safely without being harassed by protesters.”
“I was also raised to say ‘anti-choice’ and not ‘pro-life’ for people who advocate those views,” the 7 Days in Hell actress added, before claiming that pro-life Americans are “anti-the livelihood of people with female reproductive organs.”
Dunham went on to bizarrely refer to women as “people who are assigned female at birth,” stating, “when people who are assigned female at birth don’t have bodily autonomy, we don’t have a free society.”
“So those are my beliefs, and I think that it’s my job and all of our jobs to do everything that we can to make abortion accessible and affordable,” she added.
Dunham also implored Americans to “make sure that people who are in these states that are locking down are going to have support of people who are in states where there is more freedom to get where they need to go and make the choices to live free lives.”
“My life exists because I’ve been allowed to have bodily autonomy,” Dunham affirmed. “My ability to have and pay for a hysterectomy allowed me autonomy because I no longer lived in chronic pain.”
“I think that [June 24] was probably one of the darkest days that I’ve experienced in my life in terms of my terror around what’s happening in this country,” the actress added.
Dunham is just one of many celebrities having a public meltdown over the idea that women may not be able to as easily kill their unborn children in a post-Roe America.
In 2016, Dunham proclaimed that she has never had an abortion but wishes she had, because she believes killing one’s own unborn child is a sign of “bravery” and “self-knowledge.”

Do you believe in curses? Do you believe that, by their actions, people may draw down the wrath of Almighty God upon themselves? Because I was raised up in Bible-believing tradition, where it was emphasized that we were “sinners in the hands of angry God,” as Jonathan Edwards famously phrased it, and that only by God’s mercy could any of us hope for anything good in this life, or the hereafter.

God hates sin, and we are all guilty of it, and therefore those who defy God invite their own destruction. Or so I was raised to believe, and when I contemplate the miserable life of Lena Dunham, I’m thankful for all those Bible-thumping sermons I heard as a child. Otherwise . . .

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Lena Dunham (@lenadunham)

Behold the consequences of sin. Be grateful for God’s mercy.

UPDATE: Speaking of curses, Doug at Daley Gator is cursing me for inflicting Dunham on his eyes. “For the wrath of God is revealed …”




 

Category: Abortion, Celebrities

Late Night With Rule 5 Sunday: Olga Alberti

Posted on | August 1, 2022 | Comments Off on Late Night With Rule 5 Sunday: Olga Alberti

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Delayed on account of laundry…anyway, the toothsome Miss Alberti was born in Leningrad in 1988, has appeared in a number of movies & TV shows, and was May 2012 Playmate of the Month in the Russian edition of Playboy. She apparently DJs in her spare time.
Ceterum autem censeo Silicon Valley esse delendam.

NINETY MILES FROM TYRANNY: Hot Pick of the Late Night, The 90 Miles Mystery Box Episode #1792, Morning Mistress, and Girls With Guns. 

ANIMAL MAGNETISM: Rule Five Oil Bonanza Friday, and the Saturday Gingermageddon. 

EBL: Recession Girls, Becoming Elizabeth, Beatrice Of Burgundy (1148, colorized), “China Girl”, Sir Francis Drake & Queen Elizabeth, Smokin’ Girls, The Gray Man, Oh! Calcutta, “Girls Of Summer”, Sergey Brin’s Wife Nicole Shanahan, Marilyn Mosby, and Anne Karine Strom

A VIEW FROM THE BEACH: Sabina Gadecki, Fish Pic Friday – Victoria Vartiainen, Proud, The Wednesday Wetness, Ancient Dogs Enjoyed Fish Dinner, Tuesday Tanlines, Are Chesapeake Crab Woes a Management Failure?, I Hate It When That Happens, The Last Days of ‘Joe Biden’?, The Monday Morning Stimulus, Biden Least Popular President in History and Sunday Sunrise

AMERICAN POWER: Katie Pavlich, Kayla Sweetie, Aubrey Nolan, Immie Hills, and more Aubrey. Welcome back!

Thanks to everyone for all the luscious links!

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Category: Rule 5

All Neighborhoods Are Not Created Equal

Posted on | July 31, 2022 | Comments Off on All Neighborhoods Are Not Created Equal

One of the things that caused the impressive reduction of crime in New York City in the 1990s was CompStat, where data about criminal activity in the city was compiled and analyzed in weekly reports that gave police detailed information about when and where crime was happening. This allowed police to concentrate their efforts on specific areas at the most likely time to apprehend perpetrators. The CompStat approach was subsequently emulated by other law-enforcement agencies, and thereby helped produce a nationwide downward trend in crime that began in the 1990s and continued for about 20 years, until the “Ferguson effect” took hold during Obama’s second term. The important point is that CompStat, along with other technological advances (e.g., widespread video surveillance), made law enforcement more effective in apprehending and prosecuting criminals. This is why liberal complaints about “racial profiling” and “mass incarceration” are so misguided. If there is a rash of street robberies in a particular location, and victims of these crimes are reporting that their attackers are young black males, the cops trying to prevent these crimes can’t do so by scrutinizing elderly Chinese women in some other neighborhood. Investigations will focus on specific locations, and on suspects fitting witness descriptions. Add video to the investigative toolkit, and not only are police better able to identify suspects, but they obtain evidence that makes it much easier to get convictions — the jury can see the crime for themselves.

More effective law enforcement meant more criminals going to prison, and it wasn’t innocent people who were getting locked up. The “social justice” crowd engages in deliberate deception about the factors in so-called “mass incarceration,” and they do so for two reasons: Money and politics. It is little appreciated how many tens of millions of dollars annually are poured into the coffers of “social justice” groups by gigantic tax-exempt foundations. That money goes to hire an army of researchers, writers and publicists who promote these misleading narratives that, in turn, are amplified by Democratic Party politicians and activists trying to win elections. All of these people have incentives to maintain the belief that statistical disparities in crime are the products of “systemic racism” — it’s their job, it’s what pays their bills — and will respond to any pushback by accusing their opponents of racism. Because most journalists are sympathetic to the political objectives of these activists, the public is presented with a distorted picture of crime and law enforcement, particularly as it pertains to the black community.

Manhattan Institute scholar Rafael A. Mangual has produced a new book, Criminal (In)Justice, examining this crucial topic:

The effects of serious violent crime are not evenly distributed. Criminal violence has long been both geographically and demographically hyper-concentrated. In New York, about 3.5 percent of street segments see about 50 percent of the city’s violent crime; and every year for well over a decade, a minimum of 95 percent of shooting victims are either black or Hispanic (the vast majority of them male). Uncomfortable as it may make some people, you’ll see similar disparities in the statistics of shooting suspects. Nationally, black males constitute between 6 and 7 percent of the population but are murdered at a rate ten times that of their white counterparts. And homicides are tightly clustered in a relative handful of neighborhoods in and around American cities. For example, in 2019, the national murder rate was five per 100,000. In the ten most dangerous Chicago neighborhoods, which are 95.7 percent black or Latino, the 2019 homicide rate was a whopping 61.7 per 100,000. As high as that number is, it actually understates how dangerous some of those neighborhoods actually are. West Garfield Park, for example, had a 2019 murder rate of 131 per 100,000.
My book highlights data like these for two reasons. First, a thorough understanding of how violence is (and has long been) concentrated helps us understand exactly who it is that will suffer the most should a particular policy program diminish public safety, and, by extension, who it is that will gain the most should a particular policy program enhance public safety.
Second, the reality of crime concentration can help contextualize some of the disparities in enforcement statistics that we hear so much about — disparities often seized upon to make the cases for mass decarceration and depolicing as a means of pursuing racial equity. If the most serious crimes are occurring in very small slices of our cities, and affecting particular demographic groups more than others, then it is entirely reasonable for enforcement resources to be disproportionately deployed to these areas. Disparities would naturally arise from that uneven distribution of law-enforcement resources. In other words, if we accept as legitimate the decision to police neighborhoods where victimization rates are highest, we must also accept as legitimate that police are going to interact disproportionately with the people spending time in those neighborhoods.
To focus on the disparate rate of interactions in a vacuum is to ignore important context that, when accounted for, undermines the assertion that enforcement disparities are driven exclusively by racial animus. . . .

Read the whole thing, and you can click here to buy Criminal Injustice: What the Push for Decarceration and Depolicing Gets Wrong and Who It Hurts Most. (Hat-tip: John Tierney at Instapundit.)




 

Category: Crime
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