The Other McCain

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

Academic Stasi Protecting Students From White Supremacist Menace of (Checks Notes) 18th-Century Scottish Philosopher

Posted on | July 23, 2022 | Comments Off on Academic Stasi Protecting Students From White Supremacist Menace of (Checks Notes) 18th-Century Scottish Philosopher

David Hume: A premature neo-Confederate?

“Don’t worry,” they told us, “it’s just a few Confederate statues.”

Next thing you know, the woke mob has come for . . . David Hume?

The University of Edinburgh has seen its donations slump by almost £2 million after it “cancelled” the philosopher David Hume over his slavery links.
The institution said that 24 donations and 12 legacies had been “cancelled, amended or withdrawn” in response to the September 2020 renaming of a prominent campus building dedicated to its former student, one of the leading figures of the Scottish enlightenment.
While he argued against the institution of slavery, Hume was condemned by student activists largely for a footnote in a 1758 essay in which he said he was “apt to suspect the negroes to be naturally inferior to the whites”.
The David Hume Tower was rechristened 40 George Square with the university claiming that while Hume’s opinions were “not uncommon” when he wrote them more than 250 years ago, they “rightly cause distress today”.

(Hat-tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.) Years ago, when the SPLC (and the once-influential Little Green Footballs) tried to “cancel” me, I took solace in knowing that my many friends would reject this smear and, more than a decade down the line, everyone now sees how this Thought Police tendency has run completely amok — as some of us predicted it would.

Once you incentivize witch-hunting, you can be sure that some people will begin seeing evidence of witchcraft everywhere. Thus it is with “white supremacy,” a term which once was chiefly used to describe the Jim Crow regime, but which has since lost all meaning by being slung around irresponsibly as an all-purpose smear. Orwell once observed:

The word Fascism has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies ‘something not desirable’. The words democracy, socialism, freedom, patriotic, realistic, justice, have each of them several different meanings which cannot be reconciled with one another. In the case of a word like democracy, not only is there no agreed definition, but the attempt to make one is resisted from all sides. It is almost universally felt that when we call a country democratic we are praising it: consequently the defenders of every kind of régime claim that it is a democracy, and fear that they might have to stop using that word if it were tied down to any one meaning. Words of this kind are often used in a consciously dishonest way. That is, the person who uses them has his own private definition, but allows his hearer to think he means something quite different. 

To accuse someone of being a “white supremacist,” it ought to be necessary to prove they have advocated genocide or, at least, have spelled out a political platform for creating a latter-day apartheid. That is to say, unless someone is engaged in actively promoting violence and oppression, the accusation of “white supremacy” is erroneous, and perhaps “consciously dishonest,” as Orwell says. When we see this kind of Thought Police activity — people on the Internet claiming to have “exposed” such-and-so person as guilty of Wrongthink — rather than focusing our attention on the person accused of “white supremacy,” we should instead carefully scrutinize the accusers. What is their motive? What do they seek to gain by denouncing others as “extremists”?

Most of the time nowadays, it’s just partisan politics — Democrats trying to frighten voters by smearing Republicans as dangerous. But what could possibly be the motive, beyond virtue-signalling, for besmirching the character of David Hume, who died in 1776, and is therefore quite unlikely to endanger anyone? Hume’s unforgivable Thought Crime, we are told, involves a footnote in his essay, “Of National Characters.” Now, I daresay that not one in a thousand students at the University of Edinburgh has actually read this essay, which begins thus:

The vulgar are apt to carry all national characters to extremes; and having once established it as a principle, that any people are knavish, or cowardly, or ignorant, they will admit of no exception, but comprehend every individual under the same censure. Men of sense condemn these undistinguishing judgments: Though at the same time, they allow, that each nation has a peculiar set of manners, and that some particular qualities are more frequently to be met with among one people than among their neighbours.

Hume’s purpose is to argue against prejudicial generalizations about the character of people based upon their nationality. We might suspect that Hume was engaged in a bit of special pleading here as a Scot, given the sort of anti-Scottish stereotypes then prevalent in England. Still, the point he was trying to make is that it is “vulgar” to make such assumptions about any people. In arguing against the (then-popular) belief that conditions of climate shape “national characters,” Hume makes several enumerated points before reaching this paragraph:

If the characters of men depended on the air and climate, the degrees of heat and cold should naturally be expected to have a mighty influence; since nothing has a greater effect on all plants and irrational animals. And indeed there is some reason to think, that all the nations, which live beyond the polar circles or between the tropics, are inferior to the rest of the species, and are incapable of all the higher attainments of the human mind. The poverty and misery of the northern inhabitants of the globe, and the indolence of the southern, from their few necessities, may, perhaps, account for this remarkable difference, without our having recourse to physical causes. This however is certain, that the characters of nations are very promiscuous in the temperate climates, and that almost all the general observations, which have been formed of the more southern or more northern people in these climates, are found to be uncertain and fallacious.

It is at the end of this paragraph that Hume adds a footnote:

I am apt to suspect the negroes to be naturally inferior to the whites. There scarcely ever was a civilized nation of that complexion, nor even any individual eminent either in action or speculation. No ingenious manufactures amongst them, no arts, no sciences. On the other hand, the most rude and barbarous of the whites, such as the ancient Germans, the present Tartars, have still something eminent about them, in their valour, form of government, or some other particular. Such a uniform and constant difference could not happen, in so many countries and ages, if nature had not made an original distinction between these breeds of men. Not to mention our colonies, there are Negroe slaves dispersed all over Europe, of whom none ever discovered any symptoms of ingenuity; though low people, without education, will start up amongst us, and distinguish themselves in every profession. In Jamaica, indeed, they talk of one negroe as a man of parts and learning; but it is likely he is admired for slender accomplishments, like a parrot, who speaks a few words plainly.

Certainly, if Hume were alive and running for public office, his authorship of this statement would make it difficult for him to get elected, to say the least. As it is, we’re dealing with a 179-word footnote in an essay about “National Characters.” Hume writes only that he is “apt to suspect” — that is to say, offering his best guest, based on however much direct observation and study he had done — as to the “original distinction between these breeds of men.” Supposing that any student at the University of Edinburgh had actually read this 1758 essay (which I doubt many have), are we supposed to imagine that they were offended by it? Or, conversely, that this footnote by Hume had persuaded them that “negroes” are indeed “naturally inferior”? We may imagine the serious-minded sophomore philosophy student who, poring over the collected works of Hume, find this footnote and suddenly cries, “Eureka! This explains everything!” No, of course not. Don’t be absurd.

But this is how the Thought Police operate, you see — the life’s work of Hume, comprising many tens of thousands of words written on a variety of subjects, must be cast aside because of this one footnote of less than 200 words and, rather conveniently, the author is not alive to defend himself. Hume is, in this sense, kind of like those Confederate soldiers whose reputations are posthumously besmirched by “activists” and “intellectuals” engaged in virtue-signalling at their expense. Knowing what kind of men those soldiers were — “of gunpowder reputation,” as was said of my great-grandfather’s regimental commander — one doubts any of these pipsqueak “activists” would dare insult them if they were alive, but defaming the dead is easy work. Hume was a man of formidable skill in argumentation, and if anyone at the time had found fault with this footnote in his essay, certainly Hume would have been capable of defending himself. As it was, of course, no one in 18th-century Europe had any reason to question Hume’s judgment on this matter. How many avid believers in racial equality were there in England in 1758? Few, if any, I’m sure, and probably they had more important matters to deal with than accosting a Scottish philosopher about a footnote.

Really, why was this deemed important enough to rename a building at the University of Edinburgh? Is it any wonder that donors are canceling their bequests? What a silly tempest in a teapot — “Ban the dead racist David Hume!” — yet the Eminent Scholars in charge of a university evidently took it seriously. Everyone involved in this disgrace ought to be ashamed of themselves, but our latter-day “intellectuals” don’t seem to have any sense of shame. “Get woke, go broke,” indeed.




 

Category: Education, Great Britain, Racism

In The Mailbox: 07.22.22

Posted on | July 23, 2022 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 07.22.22

— compiled by Wombat-socho

“I went to bed too late and got up too soon…”
Usual weekend deadlines for the usual weekend posts.
Ceterum autem censeo Silicon Valley esse delendam.

OVER THE TRANSOM
357 Magnum: Electric Vehicles Are Disposable
EBL: GOP Candidate For NY Governor Lee Zeldin Attacked, Attacker Released Almost Immediately, also, Two-Tier Justice – Steve Bannon Guilty Of Contempt Of Congress
Twitchy: Brutal Thread Breaks Out Puppets & Crayons To Explain Why Most Folks DGAF About January 6, also, Kamala Calls For More Violence Just One Day After Attempted Assassination Of Lee Zeldin
Louder With Crowder: ‘My Lawn Is Now Becoming a Public Bathroom’, also, Dave Chappelle Fans Come to Comedian’s Defense as He Bodies Haters for Second Night in a Row
Vox Popoli: IQ Estimation Guide, also, Scientology > Science
According To Hoyt: I inspire the strangest fan art, It’s a Mystery, and How to Add More LGBTQ characters to your fiction – a guest post by Frank Fleming
Monster Hunter Nation: WriterDojo S2 Ep2: Writing Action (Round 2)

Amazon Warehouse Deals




Category: Linkagery

Crazy People Are Dangerous, and Yes, Black Hammer Is a Dangerous Cult

Posted on | July 22, 2022 | 1 Comment

Have you forgotten Augustus Claudius Romain, Jr., the Brooklyn native who styles himself “Gazi Kodzo,” supreme commander of the Black Hammer Organization? I wrote about Romain/“Kodzo” in February (“The Destructive Cult of Racial ‘Liberation’”) as the group tried and failed to build their own “community” in Colorado:

For the followers of Black Hammer, their “take back the land” dream ended with what can only be called a sort of radical Fyre Festival, a bummer of a bad camping trip, with a few minor injuries. But there is no guarantee that the next radical gesture will end so harmlessly.

After that dream fell apart, Romain/“Kodzo” and his remaining followers relocated to Atlanta, where things apparently went downhill badly:

The group regularly gathers in downtown’s Woodruff Park to hand out food and clothing to the homeless as members proselytize over a megaphone.
In November, Atlanta police arrested several members of the group, including Kodzo, when they refused an order to turn down the amplifier that was violating the city’s noise ordinance, according to a police report. When the police went to arrest Kodzo other members of the group began pushing officers, according to the report.
Kodzo and several other Hammers were arrested and charged with disorderly conduct and obstruction of police. Officers seized a .45-caliber handgun and two-way radios, among other items, according to the reports.
Last year, members of the group who were closest to Kodzo moved into a rented house in a suburban southside neighborhood in Riverdale. The group was evicted in December and owed $21,000 in unpaid rent, attorney’s fees and other charges, according to records in Clayton County State Court. Public records indicate the group then took up residence in the Fayetteville home that was the scene Tuesday’s shooting.

Now, we will get to Tuesday’s shooting in a minute, but let me clear up something that seems to be causing a problem for some journalists.

Infamous ‘Cult’ Leader Arrested
After Dead Body Found in Home

Notice the word “cult” is inside quotation marks in that Daily Beast headline, as if they’re afraid of being sued for libel if they state, as a fact, that Black Hammer is a cult — which it most definitely is, and we ought not be tiptoeing around that fact as if we’re scared of it. Good journalism at times requires courage, the kind of courage that involves publishing the truth and defending it. Having gone to trial to defend myself in such a situation, I do not say this casually. If you’re a journalist who’s afraid to call a cult a cult, maybe you need to find some other line of work.

My thumbnail summary biography of Romain/“Kodzo”:

Romain was born in Brooklyn and grew up around Atlanta. In his early 20s, he went to Los Angeles and apparently worked as some kind of personal assistant for the head of a small modeling agency, helping to stage “mansion parties,” among other things. Sometime after 2015, Romain was recruited by the African People’s Socialist Party (APSP) and moved to the party’s headquarters in St. Petersburg, Florida, where his duties were mainly about running social-media accounts. In 2018, Romain — now calling himself Kodzo — left the APSP and moved back to Atlanta, where he established the Black Hammer Organization in February 2019. Romain/Kodzo claimed he quit the APSP because it was secretly controlled by white people; the APSP says he was expelled for unspecified misconduct. You can believe whatever you want, but the point is that he learned his ideology and tactics at one black “liberation” organization and then employed this knowledge to create his own organization with himself as “Commander-in-Chief.”

The key to Black Hammer was, first, its leader’s large following on social media and, second, his knowledge of radical organizing tactics. He already had a large following on Twitter and Facebook before he started Black Hammer, and his experience with the APSP gave him a level of prestige that put him far above the vulnerable young people he attracted to his organization, so that his leadership — his words, his ideology, his actions — were exempt from criticism. Without him, there was no Black Hammer, and therefore, to be a member of the organization was to be an idolatrous servant of the Supreme Commander. This is a cult.

Here’s what made Romain/“Kodzo” notorious in April 2020:

 

Would any sane person be associated with this dangerous kook? I think not, but as I said, Black Hammer attracted vulnerable young people, and by “vulnerable,” of course I mean, a few fries short of a Happy Meal. The very fact that someone was involved in this cult was evidence of their mental deficiency, because rational and intelligent people would never go anywhere near a group led by such an obvious crackpot.

There is a factor of self-selection in the membership of cults. People who are generally successful in life are seldom enthralled by the radical promise of “liberation,” and people with a healthy sense of street-wise skepticism — i.e., those with a functional bullshit detector — would be suspicious of anyone calling himself the Supreme Commander. If you’ve read Eric Hoffer’s The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements, you know that such movements tend to attract people who can be categorized as misfits. So you collect together a bunch of misfits, who don’t have a lot going for them in terms of career success or social popularity, and who furthermore are naïve enough to fall for the radical promise of “liberation,” and what you have is a recipe for disaster. The Khmer Rouge, Jonestown, Heaven’s Gate — these things never have a happy ending. It was therefore foreseeable that Black Hammer would ultimately end with some headline-making debacle, even if the specifics could not be predicted. And thus we turn to events in Fayetteville:

The home linked to Tuesday’s SWAT standoff, alleged kidnapping and deadly shooting in Fayetteville is a communal house of Atlanta-based extremist organization, the Black Hammer Party, whose leader was arrested in connection to the episode, according to police.
The group’s leader, Augustus C. Romain, 36, was charged with 11 felony counts, including party to the crime of false imprisonment, party to the crime of kidnapping, party to the crime of aggravated assault, criminal street gang activity, criminal conspiracy to commit a felony and aggravated sodomy, according to a press release issued Wednesday by the Fayetteville Police Department.

(Whoa — “aggravated sodomy”? We eagerly await the police affidavit that gives us the tawdry details behind that charge.)

A second person who lived at the home, Xavier H. Rushin, 21, was charged in the incident with a misdemeanor and 10 felonies, including kidnapping, aggravated assault, false imprisonment and criminal street gang activity, the release said.
Fayetteville Police said they received a 911 call Tuesday morning at 7:48 a.m. from “a person whispering that they had been kidnapped by an organization and was being held in the garage of a residence.” Police said they located the residence by tracing the call.
The hours-long standoff, which resulted in a neighborhood shelter-in-place order, ended Tuesday afternoon when officers discovered a person inside the home shot dead, police said.
When officers responded to the residence in the Woodbyne subdivision off White Road, a group of nine people exited the home, but one person remained inside, a police press release said.
Police observed a person waving their hand from a garage window, the release said. Officers also approached a person outside the residence and they attempted to flee, the release said. The police press release did not identify that person.
The shelter-in-place order remained in effect for several hours as a SWAT unit responded. Police eventually sent a robot into the home for further investigation and discovered a person who remained inside was dead, the spokesman said. With the robot’s help, the house was surveyed and the lockdown lifted around 2:15 p.m.
The deceased person was found in the home with a gunshot wound to the head. The Black Hammer group’s social media posts identified the man as one of their members. Police said the man was 18, but the AJC is not identifying him because he appears to be a suicide victim. Officials said they believe the gunshot wound to the head was self-inflicted.

The AJC won’t name him, but the dead teenager was Amonte Ammons, who was hailed by Black Hammer as their “Minister of Defense,” and who is alleged to have been kidnapped, beaten and forcibly sodomized by Romain/“Kodzo.” Now, I don’t know what the word “liberation” means to you, but that sure doesn’t sound like my idea of liberation.

Gazi Kodzo’s police booking mug shot

Fayette County is a prosperous suburban community where President Trump got 52% of the vote in 2020, so it’s not likely that the would-be revolutionary (and accused rapist) “Gazi Kodzo” can expect lenient treatment from the criminal justice system there. They’re going to send him to Reidsville, and probably for a long, long time.

He’s certainly not likely to be suing anyone for libel, so there is no reason for any journalist to hesitate to call Black Hammer a cult.

There is a moral to this story: Crazy People Are Dangerous.




 

Category: Crime

In The Mailbox: 07.21.22

Posted on | July 21, 2022 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 07.21.22

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Silicon Valley delenda est.

OVER THE TRANSOM
357 Magnum: Manhattan Da Wakes Up & Smells The Fail
EBL: Hotel Portofino
Twitchy: Blake Masters Fires Back At Lincoln Project, also, Townhall’s Investigation Into The Exploitation Of The 10-Year-Old Rape Victim
Louder With Crowder: Dave Chappelle Gets The Last Word – Blasts First Avenue For Canceling Him & Performs Anyway
Vox Popoli: Why Globalism Cannot Survive, Another Elite Pedo?, and When Losing One War Isn’t Enough

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Conservative: A Wake-up Call for the Educational Establishment
American Greatness: Quadruple Vaxxed Joe Biden Tests Positive For COVID-19 One Year After Lying That The Jabbed Can’t Get COVID, also, The Left Should Be Happy with Biden
American Thinker: Saving the Planet, or Themselves?, also, Trump or DeSantis: Who Is the Man for the Times?
Animal Magnetism: Animal’s Daily Fiscal Disaster News
Babalu Blog: Congress overwhelmingly votes down Democrat amendment to extend credit to Cuba’s dictatorship, Two Cubas – Food shortages and blackouts for Cubans, ‘quality service’ for foreign tourists, and Over the past 6 months, 63 newborns die from lethal infections in Cuban children’s hospital
BattleSwarm: Texas Republican Agriculture Commissioner Comes Out For Legalizing Medical Marijuana
Behind The Black: NASA sets tentative launch date for SLS, Northrop Grumman delays next Cygnus cargo mission, and SpaceX launch aborted 46 seconds before launch
Cafe Hayek: Floridians and Covid, Some Economics of True Price Floors, and The World Would Be a Better Place Without Any International Trade and Finance Accounting
Chicago Boyz: Nancy Pelosi and I Have Something in Common
Da Tech Guy: Reminder to National Review – Trump Predicted All the Results of a Biden Administration before the election, also, Green Energy Policies are destabilizing the world
Don Surber: Biden cost Democrats 1-in-4 Hispanic voters, also, NYT writer sorry he called you appalling
First Street Journal: The journolism of The Philadelphia Inquirer, also, Economics writer Eduardo Porter wants gasoline to rise back to $5.00 per gallon
Gates Of Vienna: Dr. Sucharit Bhakdi -“Bring These Criminals to Justice”, also, The Hardening of “Soft” Totalitarianism
The Geller Report: Woke Netflix Loses Nearly 1 Million Subscribers in Historic Loss, also, Italian Government Implodes
Hogewash: Team Kimberlin Post of the Day, also, An Extragalactic Black Hole
Hollywood In Toto: Die Another Day – The Very Best, and Worst, of James Bond, also, Springsteen Silent on Outrageously High Ticket Prices
The Lid: Joe Manchin Is Saving Democrats, And They Hate Him For It
Legal Insurrection: The Senate Armed Services Committee Calls For Pentagon To Cease Rooting Out “Extremism” In The Military, Big Court Win For Parents’ Right To Attend And Speak Out At School Board Meetings, and Independent Truckers Protesting New Labor Law Shut Down Port of Oakland
Nebraska Energy Observer: “First thing I would ask …”
Outkick: Ratings Show People Don’t Care About ESPY Awards, ESPN Awards Red Chinese Skier Eileen Gu ‘Breakthrough Athlete’ ESPY After She Apparently Gave Up Her U.S. Citizenship, and NBA Execs Caught Bowing To Red China In Leaked Audio Obtained By ‘Tucker Carlson Tonight’
Power Line: Emergency, Biden style, also, Americans Want Oil
Shark Tank: Crist & Fried Square Off In Debate, Sparks Fly
Shot In The Dark: Real American Heroes, also, Rage For The Machine
The Political Hat: Woke Priorities Of The Left: Racist Dog Names; Nonevident Climate Crisis; Mass Starvation
This Ain’t Hell: Fewer vets recommending the service, Hooker hired at Air Force contractor, and Douglas Stringfellow – Old School Stolen Valor
Transterrestrial Musings: Apollo And Space Tourism, The Current State Of The War, and Google
Victory Girls: The January 6 Committee Persists
Volokh Conspiracy: A Quick Breakdown Of The Right To Contraception Act
Watts Up With That: BBC Ignore the Real Reason for Sri Lanka’s Problems, also, Climate Alarmists Respond to the Global Warming Pause
Weasel Zippers: CNN’s Van Jones On Black Voters’ Frustrations With Biden, also, Biden Transportation Sec. “Astonished” People “Really Struggle To Let Go” of Their Cars In Favor of Electric Vehicles
The Federalist: Fact Check: Ohio’s Tim Ryan Voted To Allow Emergency Reserve Oil To Be Sent To Beijing, Public Media Outlet Hides Violent Criminal Records Of ICE Detainees, and NYT’s Bret Stephens Becomes First Corporate Media Figure To Acknowledge Russian Collusion Was A ‘Hoax’
Mark Steyn: Nice Hair, Though

Amazon Warehouse Deals




Category: Linkagery

Despite the Media’s Deranged Obsession, Not Everything Is About Trump

Posted on | July 21, 2022 | Comments Off on Despite the Media’s Deranged Obsession, Not Everything Is About Trump

Wednesday, there was a glitch on the Fox News signal, so I switched the home-office TV over to CNN and wow! If you haven’t watched CNN lately, it’s basically, “January 6 now, January 6 tomorrow, January 6 forever,” to paraphrase a certain Alabama Democrat. They’re leading every hour with some kind of Trump/“insurrection” angle, as if nothing else happening in the world could be of interest to a TV news audience.

How did CNN cover Tuesday’s Maryland primary? Do you even have to ask? TRUMP! TRUMP! TRUMP! You see, Trump endorsed delegate Dan Cox in the GOP gubernatorial primary, while outgoing Gov. Larry Hogan (who is term limited) endorsed former state Commerce Secretary Kelly Schulz. Cox won and — ZOMG! — this crazy extremist kook is doomed in November because Trump. Except, maybe not:

It’s not clear whether Trump’s endorsement, however, was the key element in Cox’s win. That’s because the Democratic Governors Association spent more than $1 million in ads arguing that Cox was too conservative for the state. While the group insisted the ads were aimed at damaging Cox in a possible general election, the move was widely seen as Democrats trying to ensure that the candidate with lesser chance of appealing to a general electorate wound up winning the GOP primary.

Maryland has been a deep-blue Democrat stronghold since anyone can remember, and the fact that Hogan was able to win two terms as governor says a lot about how the stench of Baltimore has made the state more competitive for Republicans. The idea that Democrats would be able to “fix” the race by spending a million bucks in support of the supposedly “unelectable” Cox is an unproven hypothesis. In the Democratic primary, USMC veteran Wes Moore beat out former DNC chairman Tom Perez, and if it’s unlikely that Cox can beat Moore, it’s by no means certain that Schulz would have done better. And if the anticipated “red wave” arrives in November, Cox could win anyway.

Nevertheless, everybody fixated on the Trump angle (“Hogan won’t support Trump-backed Maryland governor candidate,” as the headline in The Hill declared) and nearly ignored what happened in Maryland’s 6th Congressional District, where local legislator Neil Parrott scored a big win in the GOP primary over Matt Foldi, a former Free Beacon reporter who was endorsed by Hogan, Mike Pompeo and Kevin McCarthy, among other big-name Republicans. Before the primary, Foldi boasted: “We put the race on the radar. The Republican Party is completely united behind me in Maryland.” Unfortunately for Foldi and his supporters, somebody apparently neglected to inform voters in the 6th District of how “completely united” they were, as Parrott got 64% of the voter to Foldi’s 15% — a whopping 4-to-1 landslide. But guess how the Daily Beast headlined it? “Former Washington Free Beacon Reporter Backed by Don Jr. Gets Trounced in GOP Congressional Primary,” as if (a) the endorsement by Donald Trump Jr. was the most important thing about Foldi’s candidacy and (b) a vote for Parrott was a vote against Trump. This is completely false, because Parrott is a strong conservative who was first elected to the Maryland legislature as a local Tea Party organizer. The Washington Post noted:

In May 2020, he sued Gov. Larry Hogan (R) to challenge his emergency pandemic orders.
That said, Mr. Parrott has spent more than a decade trying to make it harder to vote. He proposed a voter ID bill during his first year in the assembly. After the 2020 election, Mr. Parrott traveled to Philadelphia to analyze provisional ballots in an effort to help Mr. Trump, and maintains that 1 to 2 percent of ballots he reviewed had signatures that didn’t appear to match the voter’s original registration form. He introduced legislation last session, which didn’t go anywhere, that would have required signatures on ballots in Maryland to exactly match those on registration forms.

So it’s not like Parrott is a RINO type, and yet the fact that Foldi was “backed by Don Jr.” is held out as signifying . . . what? It doesn’t matter. All the media care about is finding some way to connect everything to Trump, because they’re still in the throes of an irrational fixation. Meanwhile, my friend John Hoge shares thoughts from Carroll County:

Can Cox win in November?
Maybe. Democrats outregister Republicans by more than 2:1, but I haven’t noticed much in the way of Democrat candidate yard signs or bumper stickers in most of the state. Democrat turnout for the primary was only 16.7 %, compared to 23.8 % for Republicans. Joe Biden’s approval/disapproval polling is -12 % (37/49) in Maryland. And Wes Moore won the Democrat primary with only 36 % of the vote, so he may have trouble generating turnout in November.
Meanwhile, Cox’s showing here in Carroll County suggests he is developing an enthusiastic following. Republicans have a 2:1 registration advantage in our red county, but yesterday’s turnout was so lopsided that Cox’s vote total was 141 % of the total vote in the Democrat primary in Carroll County.
If those relative levels of enthusiasm hold, Cox might win. If Moore can frighten enough Democrats by running against Trump, he may win.

We’ve got about 16 weeks to go until the November mid-terms, and we’ll just have to wait and see what happens then. If, as I expect, Republicans score a “red wave” landslide coast-to-coast, we can expect to see GOP candidates like Cox and Parrott win races that, on paper, may not seem very winnable. And if the “red wave” happens, I would dare hope it will cause the media to belatedly realize their Trump obsession wasn’t really helpful to Democrats. November 8 can’t come soon enough.




 

Category: Donald Trump, Election, Maryland, Media Bias

In The Mailbox: 07.20.22 (Evening Edition)

Posted on | July 20, 2022 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 07.20.22 (Evening Edition)

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Silicon Valley delenda est.

OVER THE TRANSOM
Ninety Miles From Tyranny: The 90 Miles Mystery Box Episode #1784
357 Magnum: A Good Guy With A Gun 
EBL: Is Elon Musk going to get harpooned on this deal?, also, Sorry Pete Buttigieg, but electric vehicles are not going to save us
Twitchy: ARGLE BARGLE RAR!, also, Rep. Lucy McBath (D-GA) Provides Demented Testimony On Assault Rifles
Louder With Crowder: Legendary Football Coach Shares Powerful Pro-Life Message And The Pro-Abortion Left Wants to Abort Him Over It
Vox Popoli: The Potemkin “Tech” Industry, A Tale of Two Capitalisms, and The Human Handgrenade

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Conservative: EXCLUSIVE: Romney And Paul Face Off In Tense Senate Foreign Relations Meeting
American Greatness: Joe Biden Hits New Low of 31 Percent Approval in New Quinnipiac Poll; Only 19 Percent of Hispanics Approve, also, Politically Homeless?
American Power: Democrats’ Far-Left Climate Agenda Costing Americans More and More
American Thinker:  Election Heroes Are Stopping Fraudulent Voting…Right Now, also, The Party of Affluent, Progressive Whites
Animal Magnetism: Animal’s Hump Day News
Babalu Blog: Cubans condemn Pope Francis for befriending dictator Raul Castro while ignoring the torture of political prisoners, While Cubans suffer food shortages and chronic blackouts. the Castro dictatorship is building golf courses, and Happy #84 to new Hall of Famer Tony Oliva
BattleSwarm: California’s Gun Grabbers Screw Themselves
Behind The Black: NSF to do environmental impact statement on TMT, NASA awards SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy launch contract for Roman Space Telescope, and Pushback: Flight attendant fired for having opinions wins big against airline and union
Cafe Hayek: The Real Danger Is Hysteria, Bilateral ‘Trade Deficits’ and Money, and I Hope That Ms. Ruben Isn’t a Teacher of Economics or of Logic
Chicago Boyz: Extremely Cool, also, It’s Called Acting, Dear Boy
Da Tech Guy: Full Circle John Cleese meets the Babylon Bee, also, Reality catches up to Starbucks
Don Surber: Zelensky is an arms dealer, also, Even if it saves but one life, constitutional carry is worth it
First Street Journal: How does Joe Biden not realize how ridiculous this is?, also, 300
Gates Of Vienna: Annalena Baerbock Proposes a Solution to the Energy Crisis, “You Are Perpetrators and Accomplices of a Fascist State”, and Those Well-Armed Swedish Youths
The Geller Report: Nazi Collaborator Soros Contributes $1 Million to Beta O’Rourke’s Campaign, also, Hypocritical Swine John F. Kerry’s* family private jet emitted over 300 metric tons of carbon since Biden took office
Hogewash: Team Kimberlin Post of the Day, Zooming in on VFTS 243, and Yesterday’s Primary Election in Maryland
Hollywood In Toto: Tom MacDonald: Facebook, Instagram Censored My ‘Names’ Video, Peele’s Nope Might Be Year’s Worst Film, and Free Speech Win – Andrew Schulz’s Infamous Earns 3X His Investment
The Lid: Do You Know The Greatest Major League Pitcher EVER?, also, Dem Opponent Of Mayra Flores Hired Leftist Blogger To Post Racist And Sexist Posts About Her
Legal Insurrection: House Republicans Demand Answers on Reports of Federal Resources Used to Transport Illegal Immigrant Minors to Get Abortions, Rep. Massie Tears Apart Buttigieg’s Argument That Electric Cars Would Save Americans Money, and Black Scholar Aims to End the ‘Big Lie’ of the 1619 Project
Nebraska Energy Observer: Live Better and More Free
Outkick: Teddy Bridgewater Is Sick Of NFL Players Pretending To Be ‘Gangsta’, Kendrick Perkins Has One BIG Problem With LeBron James Saying Boston Fans Are ‘Racist As F–k’, and Poor Juan Soto Had To Fly Commercial And His Agent, Scott Boras, Isn’t Happy
Power Line: The apocalypse this time, Joe Biden, Cancer Victim, and Ken Green on Covid Policy Idiocy and the “Nobody Knew/Fog of War” Excuse
Shark Tank: Loomer Capitalizes On Webster’s Absence From FL-11 Debate
Shot In The Dark: Red Carpet Walk
This Ain’t Hell: Military dog retired and reunited with handler, Congress raises morale at forward Navy bases , and What could possibly go wrong?
Transterrestrial Musings: Air Conditioning, Fossil Future, and Gavin Newsom
Victory Girls: Buttigieg Wonders Why The Peasants Won’t Eat Cake
Volokh Conspiracy: Federalism and the Respect for Marriage Act
Watts Up With That: Wind Power Fail: Texas Heatwave Triggers Record Fossil Fuel Demand
Weasel Zippers: NYC Says It’s Overwhelmed By Illegal Aliens Being Dumped In The City By Texas, Biden Climate Advisor: Biden Will Use “Every Power Available” To Get Rid Of Fossil Fuels, and Biden DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas Insists “Border Is Secure”
The Federalist: Biden Has No Right To Declare A ‘National Climate Emergency’, Pete Buttigieg Wants You To Pay Higher Gas Prices To Lower The Price Of His Electric Car, and Watchdog Files Complaint After Wealthy Interior Secretary Haaland Reported Zero Assets On Her Financial Disclosures

*Who, by the way, served in Vietnam. (h/t the late Rush Limbaugh) 

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Category: Linkagery

In The Mailbox: 07.20.22 (Early Morning Edition)

Posted on | July 20, 2022 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 07.20.22 (Early Morning Edition)

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Silicon Valley delenda est.

Things don’t always go the way one plans them to…

OVER THE TRANSOM
EBL: Anna Netrebko Cancelled Again?
Twitchy: Non-binary teacher proud that her outreach helped a first-grader come out as transgender, also, Moderate San Fran liberal DESTROYS SF Public Schools AND the teacher’s union
Louder With Crowder: “Whoever Did This Is a Legend”
Vox Popoli: Making Millions with Comics, Unreliable Conclusions, and Does a Bear Glow in the Woods?

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Conservative: Time for Churches to Lead on Education, also, Setting Fathers Against Sons
American Greatness: Court Holds Illegal Ballot Drop Boxes Tainted 2020 Election, also, Democrat Congressional Staffers Unionize Over Poor Pay, Sexual Harassment
American Power: Yes, Things Are Really As Bad As You’ve Heard [In Public Education]
American Thinker: The Left’s Blackmailing of Biden has Unleashed National Chaos, Stagflation and Systemic Uncertainty, also, Court Strikes Down “Quarantine Camp” Regulation in New York State
Animal Magnetism: Animal’s Daily Basic Competence News
Babalu Blog: Remembering Celia Cruz, Cuba’s Queen of Salsa, on the 19th anniversary of her death, also, Who listens to Don Lemon?
BattleSwarm: Semiconductor Update for July 18, also, Charges Against Jose Alba Dismissed
Behind The Black: Long March 5B rolls to launchpad, carrying Red China’s next large space station module, NASA delays launch of its VIPER lunar rover to over concerns about commercial lander, and Picking the Republican candidates to vote for in the Arizona August 2nd primary
Cafe Hayek: Political Activism: The Reality, On the Economics of Trade, Lighthizer Is a Lightweight, and On Why Bilateral Trade Accounts are Meaningless
CDR Salamander: SDP Becomes the Salamander Democratic Party?
Chicago Boyz: Command Failure in the Ardennes, December 1944
Da Tech Guy: Liberal Police Contradictions and Other Matters Under the Fedora, Report from Louisiana: Working two jobs, and Slouching toward Philadelphia
Don Surber: NYT and WaPo keep their yellow journalism awards, also, The Biden Dorktatorship
First Street Journal: Will Bunch really hates him some representative democracy when the voters don’t vote the way he thinks that they should
Gates Of Vienna: The Mysterious Increase in Demand for Coffins for Young People, Shootout at an Indiana Mall, and The Balkan Route Heats Up Again
The Geller Report: Soros-Linked Group Wins $172M Contract from Biden to Help Illegals Avoid Deportation also, ‘Scarf lady’ Dr. Deborah Birx admits she deceived Trump to push COVID measures
Hogewash: Team Kimberlin Post of the Day, A Slow Black Hole, and Zooming in on the Southern Ring Nebula
Hollywood In Toto: Andrew Schulz’s Infamous Offers Crash Course in Taboo Comedy, The Miracle That Was A Fish Called Wanda, and Rippaverse Artist Fires Back at Racist Critics
The Lid: Dems Poised To Give Billions To Rogue Nation That Shot Down Commercial Airliner
Legal Insurrection: Democrat D.C. Mayor Bowser Complains About TX and AZ Sending Illegal Immigrants to Her City, CA Gov. Newsom Doesn’t ‘Know Enough’ About LA County DA’s Poor Job Performance to Comment, and Prof Suggests Underlying Principles of Critical Race Theory Have Been Embedded in Academia
Michelle Malkin: A Transplant Miracle That Defied COVID Tyranny
Nebraska Energy Observer: Church: Where Are The Men?, also, But why?
Outkick: Deion Sanders Pledges Massive Chunk Of His Salary To Help Renovate JSU’s Facilities, Home Run Derby Controversy Surrounding Soto, Schwarber Has Sports Betting World Up In Arms, and Notre Dame Reportedly Wants $75 Million A Year In Media Money From NBC To Remain Independent
Power Line: Police Brutality In Washington, also, Full Circle for Feminism?
Shark Tank: RNC Tags Crist As The “Joe Biden Of Florida”
Shot In The Dark: Pauline Kael Syndrome, also, Yet Another Good Guy With A Gun
The Political Hat: Florida To Gaia: No Rights For You!
This Ain’t Hell: “Buffalo Soldiers” convention, Six More Are Accounted For, and Good Idea Fairy Part Deux
Transterrestrial Musings: Jill Breaks Out The Violin For Joe, Nanomechanical Computers, and Important Writing Advice
Victory Girls: Playing Games: AOC Pretends To Be Handcuffed During Abortion Protest
Volokh Conspiracy: The Good Samaritan With A Gun In Indiana Serves To Refute Four Common Gun Control Myths
Watts Up With That: The Heatwave Green Hysteria is Out of Control, also, Victoria’s Green Zealots Banned Gas Fracking – Now Running Out of Gas
Weasel Zippers: Lesbian Bar Shuts Down One Week After Grand Opening Because It Wasn’t Woke Enough, Dem Pro-Abortion Witness Suggests It’s Better For Black Americans To Be Aborted Than Born, and George Soros Donates $1 Million To Beta O’Rourke’s Campaign
The Federalist: Democrats Plan To Snatch Medicare Dollars From Seniors To Subsidize Their Rich Friends, Book About Nazi Slaughter Of The Disabled Nearly Lost To History Sends A Message To Post-Roe America, and NeverTrump’s Latest Attempt To Dismiss Election Concerns Is Particularly Dishonest
Mark Steyn: The Dress-Up Superpower, also, Aquatic Minute Man

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Aspiring Rapper Updates

Posted on | July 20, 2022 | Comments Off on Aspiring Rapper Updates

Mario Austin, a/k/a “King Lil Jay”

Aspiring Rapper
North American euphemism for a member of the urban criminal class. This unusual occupation is usually mentioned in conjunction with the subject either being slain or being taken into custody for a violent or property-related crime. A relative of the subject usually points out that the subject’s demise or incarceration comes at an extremely inopportune moment, occurring just as the subject was “turning they(sic) life around.”

It’s been a while since we updated our readers on the leisure life of the hiphop community, who have been keeping law enforcement busy. We begin in Chicago, where 29-year-old Mario Austin, a/k/a King Lil Jay, has been arrested on weapons charges. King Lil Jay just got out of prison on parole in April after serving seven years on a murder conspiracy charge connected to the 2015 death of his associate Filmon Rezene in a shootout with a drug dealer. One of King Lil Jay’s fans said the rapper “didn’t deserve” to be arrested as a felon in possession of a firearm, arguing that in “Chiraq” (as they call Chicago, where the casualty rate is like the Iraq War), King Lil Jay had a lot of “opps on the street” (enemies) and therefore was “staying strapped” (armed) “out of necessity of safety.”

Tione Jayden Merritt, a/k/a Lil Tjay

Meanwhile, in New Jersey, Tione Jayden Merritt a/k/a Lil Tjay is recovering after being shot multiple times when “gunfire erupted at a Chipotle restaurant at a residential and outdoor shopping center in Edgewater” June 22. Now, I don’t know about you, but when I go to Chipotle for a bowl of barbacoa, rice and beans, I don’t expect to be dodging gunfire, so what’s the deal in Edgewater, N.J.? It’s right across the Hudson River from Harlem, and this proximity may explain why Lil Tjay was the target of a “botched robbery” for which police in Bergen County arrested Mohamed Konate, 27, of New York City. Police also arrested “Jeffrey Valdez, 24, and Antoine Boyd, 22, both of the Bronx, who were with the rapper and allegedly armed” — allegedly! Man, you take your Bronx crew down to Chipotle in New Jersey for some barbacoa and beans, and they can’t even protect you from a robber, even though they’re “allegedly” armed? Don’t know about you, but if my security crew was so incompetent, I ain’t gonna pay extra for their guacamole.

Ethan Reyes, a/k/a Notti Osama

Meanwhile, in New York, a sad ending for a promising young performer, as 14-year-old Ethan Reyes, a/k/a Notti Osama, got stabbed to death “during a scuffle with a 15-year-old rival” July 9 at a West Harlem subway station. The 15-year-old suspect “had an ongoing feud” with Notti Osama, sources told the New York Post, but “it wasn’t immediately clear what it was about. Reyes initially pushed the other boy on the [subway] tracks, sources said. He was then stabbed and tried to run but collapsed on the subway station’s steps, according to police sources.” Obviously, this highlights the need for common-sense knife reform laws.

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Category: Aspiring Rapper Update
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