The Other McCain

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

HOAX? Biden Repeats Unverified Story About 10-Year-Old Ohio Girl’s Abortion

Posted on | July 8, 2022 | 2 Comments

Monday, I called attention to this story (“A Story Too Good to Check?”) about an Indiana abortion doctor who claimed that, just three days after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, she had a 10-year-old girl referred for an abortion from Ohio, where a new law banned abortions after six weeks — and the girl was allegedly just past that gestational threshold. As a longtime editor, the problem was obvious to me:

Where’s the comment from police?
Even if you’re willing to take Dr. Caitlin Bernard’s word for the basic claim — while some 10-year-olds are physically capable of getting pregnant, such cases are very rare — you’ve left the reader knowing nothing about the most basic elements of the story: What Ohio city did this happen in? Do authorities have a suspect in custody? Or is the public still in danger from the child rapist responsible for this atrocity?

Obviously, I wasn’t the only one who found this story suspicious, and Megan Fox at PJ Media has been raising hell about it, too. The veracity of this story is not enhanced by the fact that Biden invoked it for political propaganda purposes today at the White House:

What we’re witnessing is a giant step backwards in much of our country. Already, the bans are in effect in 13 states. . . . They’re so extreme that many don’t allow for exceptions, even for rape or incest. Let me say that again: Some of the states don’t allow for exceptions for rape or incest.
This isn’t some imagined horror. It’s already happening. Just last week, it was reported that a 10-year-old girl was a rape victim in Ohio — 10 years old — and she was forced to have to travel out of the state, to Indiana, to seek to terminate the [pregnancy] and maybe save her life. That’s — the last part is my judgment. Ten years old. Ten years old Raped, six weeks pregnant. Already traumatized. Was forced to travel to another state. Imagine being that little girl. Just — I’m serious — just imagine being that little girl. Ten years old.
Does anyone believe that it’s the highest majority view that that should not be able to be dealt with, or in any other state in the nation? A 10-year-old girl should be forced to give birth to a rapist’s child? I can tell you what: I don’t. I can’t think of anything as much more extreme.

Ohio is so “extreme,” you see, and this story proves it — but when asked about the case, the White House was unable to provide any verification:

The White House has refused to offer proof to support President Biden’s claim that a 10-year-old rape victim was denied an abortion in Ohio and had to travel to Indiana for the procedure.
Mr. Biden said the story illustrated the “extreme” anti-abortion laws taking hold in states after the Supreme Court overturned a nationwide right to abortion.
When asked about the story, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre refused to say if the administration had taken steps to verify the story or if it knew the girl’s identity. Instead, she referred questions to the Justice Department saying there was a “legal component.”
“I would refer you to the DOJ, I don’t have anything more to share on the identity of this young woman or the question you asked,” she said.
She said Mr. Biden highlighted the story to underscore how “extreme” anti-abortion laws are in states that have outlawed the decision.
When pressed again if the administration, including the Justice Department, will take steps to protect the girl, Ms. Jean-Pierre sidestepped the question.
“I think what the president is calling on and what he has laid out is to protect girls and women like her and beyond,” she said.

How rare is a pregnant 10-year-old? Rare enough that there is a listing of every 10-year-old known to have given birth, and it has happened just three times in the United States since 2000:

  • March 2009: A 10-year-old Haitian girl in Lantana, Florida, became pregnant after a 33-year-old man [Fede Datilus] raped her when she was 9. Her father learned of her pregnancy only when he took her to the clinic when she suffered labor contractions on March 18, 2009. The same day, she gave birth naturally to a full-term boy. . . . She confided that she had been afraid that she and her father would be deported to Haiti — a threat the rapist had used against her. Datilus was sentenced to life imprisonment for raping a minor under 12 years, to which 5 years for impregnating her was added.
  • April 2008: Isabel Chasearez’s 10-year-old daughter, from St. Anthony, Idaho, gave birth by cesarean section to a girl weighing approximately 6 lb (2.7 kg) at Madison Memorial Hospital in Rexburg after her mother’s boyfriend [Guadalupe Gutierrez-Juarez] raped her. The man, an undocumented immigrant from Mexico, was jailed on one felony count of rape with impregnation; Chasearez was jailed as well for failing to provide proper prenatal care. Juarez was sentenced to 5 years to life.
  • April 2006: A young girl in Abbeville, South Carolina, gave birth by cesarean section. Her 26-year-old stepfather, William Edward Ronca, raped her. The baby was placed up for adoption. Ronca admitted to having molested the girl over a two-year period and was sentenced to 25 years in prison and is currently incarcerated in the Allendale Correctional Institution.

Three times in more than 20 years. If you went all the way back to 1969 (i.e, more than 50 years), you’d only add five more cases to the list. While we cannot exclude the possibility that some cases might have escaped public notice, the point is, a pregnant 10-year-old is extremely rare, so that the claim that such a case occurred in Ohio just this month, immediately after a new Ohio law went into effect, seems peculiarly convenient. As always, of course, Democrats expect the media to let them get away with telling such stories without fact checking — indeed, the media is actively helping to promote this likely hoax. Because the story has now been made so notorious, however, more reporters now have an incentive to try to verify it and all I can say to them is, good luck.

Maybe ask Jayson Blair and Stephen Glass to investigate . . .




 

Category: Abortion, Joe Biden, Journalism

In The Mailbox: 07.07.22

Posted on | July 8, 2022 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 07.07.22

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Silicon Valley delenda est.

OVER THE TRANSOM
Ninety Miles From Tyranny: The 90 Miles Mystery Box, Episode #1770
357 Magnum: Get Woke, Go Broke
EBL: Save Dutch Cows and Cheese, also, James Caan, RIP
Twitchy: Taylor Lorenz Calls Out Elon Musk For Procreating, also, “Well…Bye!”
Louder With Crowder: Women Destroy Restaurant, Send Employee To Hospital Over $1.75 Sauce, also, Elderly Bodega Employee Charged With Murder By NYC DA For Defending Himself From Career Criminal
Vox Popoli: Joe Rogan is a Narrative Puppet, Contemplating the Non-Problem of Evil, and The Dutch Farmer Rebellion
Gab News: Was Your Pastor Silent On Roe?

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: Love as opposed to Power
American Conservative: Conservatives Must Prioritize the Second Amendment, also, Free Jose Alba!
American Greatness: Gov. Abbott Empowers Texas National Guard and State Troopers to Return Illegal Aliens Back to the Border, also, Tucker Carlson – Biden Selling U.S. Emergency Oil Reserves to China is Impeachable–Possibly Indictable Offense
American Power: Why the Left Truly Is Evil (and Not Stupid), also, The Price of an Unpopular Argument
American Thinker: The Mass Psychosis of Liberals, also, Follow the COVID Money
Animal Magnetism: Animal’s Daily Trust in Media News
Babalu Blog: Miami radio star Lourdes Ubieta quits Radio Mambi, refuses to work for Soros-funded leftist group, Police killing of young black Cuban exposes Castro dictatorship’s police brutality and racism, and Dengue fever alert – Cuban dictatorship unable to prevent massive epidemic
BattleSwarm: Tank News Roundup: America Gets A New Light Tank, also, Boris Johnson To Resign
Behind The Black: SpaceX launches another 53 Starlink satellites, U.S. missile test explodes 11 seconds after launch, and Today’s blacklisted Americans
Cafe Hayek: Paris Will Need a New Moniker
CDR Salamander: Pluperfect’s Programmatic Imperfection on the Future Perfect’s Presentism
Chicago Boyz: Advanced Incompetence
Da Tech Guy: A good ride, The 3% Solution in Pro-Life States, and Shades of Steve Martin and a Startling Surprise in this story about the NYT & July 4th
Don Surber: Twitter hypocritically sues India, African reporter asks question the rest won’t, and How to become a media hero
First Street Journal:  Another begging letter from The Philadelphia Inquirer, also, Gun Control Laws and Our First and Second Amendment Rights
Gates Of Vienna: The Four Great Lies of the Globalists, On Holiday With the Reaper, and Energy Poverty in Germany
The Geller Report: You Know What Would Deter More Shootings Than Red Flag Laws?, also, “Justice Gone Mad!”
Hogewash: Team Kimberlin Post of the Day, also, A Galaxy with Extra Arms
Hollywood In Toto: Andrew Schultz Defies Censors, Plots Solo Infamous Special Release, also, Macy Gray, Bette Midler Battle to Survive Latest Woke Wave
The Lid: Climate Crazies Glue Themselves To 500 Year-Old Copy Of ‘The Last Supper’
Legal Insurrection: NY Times – Be Afraid Of ‘Far-Right Latinas’ Like Mayra Flores, Recall Gascón Submits Over 700,000 Signatures to LA County Registrar, and European Union Votes to Classify Natural Gas and Nuclear as ‘Green Energy’
Nebraska Energy Observer: And then, there’s Canada
Outkick: Brittney Griner Pleads Guilty To Drug Charges In Russian Court, Raiders Hire First Black Female President In NFL History, Sandra Douglass Morgan, and Hockey Goalie Mikayla Demaiter Is Back Between The Pipes, Derek Jeter On Dad Duty & Kyle Schwarber Is On A Heater
Power Line: Montana for me — but not for thee, 4th of July Shootout Averted, and Worst Sports Story of the Year
Shark Tank: Wassermann-Schultz Asserts Republicans Want Mass Shootings
Shot In The Dark: Breaking News Wind From Seven Years Ago, Paris, and Highland Park
STUMP: Top Causes of Death in U.S. for 2021, by Age, Ranking Table, Fairly Finalized
This Ain’t Hell: Five More Are Accounted For, Last of the “Band of Brothers” Passes, and Space Force Launch’s Intelligence Center
Transterrestrial Musings: The University, Packing The Supreme Court, and BoJo
Victory Girls: Kansas Life Amendment and Pro-Abortion Lies
Volokh Conspiracy: Elected Official vs. [Chocolate] Dick At Your Door, also, $370K Verdict in Bee Libel Lawsuit
Watts Up With That: Dutch Police Shoot Live Ammo At Anti-Climate Rule Protestors, also, Hot Sand
Weasel Zippers: Biden To Make Deported Illegal Aliens Eligible For Citizenship, Former Japanese PM Shinzo Abe Shot, and Dem Rep. Cori Bush: “We Must” Start To Perform Late-Term Abortions In National Parks
The Federalist: Truth Social Doesn’t Just Want To Distinguish Itself From Tech Giants, It Wants To Rival Them, Fauci Just Canceled $1.8 Million In Grisly Beagle Experiments After Fake Fact-Checkers Lied To Save His Behind, and The Military’s Recruiting Crisis Will Continue Until Its Woke Messages Stop
Mark Steyn: What Was It All For?, The Long Goodbye, and As Goes Morality, So Goes Civilization

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Category: Linkagery

She’s Ready for Her Close-Up, Mr. DeMille

Posted on | July 7, 2022 | Comments Off on She’s Ready for Her Close-Up, Mr. DeMille

You may not recognize that teenager from New Mexico who, in 1981, posed for Oui magazine, and she hadn’t crossed my mind in many years until I saw this headline today:

Demi Moore, 59, poses in swimsuits
as she hopes to change ‘this idea that
we become less desirable as we get older’

Well, you’ve posed in a lot less than that, Demi, but I suppose most would still prefer the 1981 version, given the choice. Of course, there has been some change in fashion in the past 40 years and — how shall I say this? — the topiary might require substantial trimming to suit 21st-century tastes, but I’m sure a plebiscite would still return a landslide majority in favor of 18-year-old Demi, despite the excessive shrubbery.

Her career and love life have been equally disappointing, a failure to make the most of her many opportunities. Demi Guynes took as her show business surname that of her first husband, a recently divorced rock musician 12 years her senior whom she married not long after arriving in Hollywood as a teenager. She filed for divorce from Freddy Moore in 1984, after she had landed two seasons on the soap opera General Hospital and her earliest film roles. One of those film parts was in the unspeakably wretched Blame It On Rio, the plot of which would be enough to end the career of anyone who dared produce such a film nowadays. A few years ago I happened to see it while surfing cable and, well, if the adjective “cringeworthy” had not previously been coined, Blame It On Rio would be sufficient inspiration.

Michelle Johnson, just 18 when Blame It On Rio was filmed, was quite lovely, but as the love interest of Michael Caine, then age 50? Even by the depraved standards of Hollywood, this was unusually perverse. Frankly, I’d forgotten that Demi Moore was part of the cast until that headline about her posing in a swimsuit at age 59 sparked my research. Someone should ask how her opinion about “this idea that we become less desirable as we get older” might be contextualized by reference to the creepy plot of Blame It On Rio. But I digress . . .

Demi next starred in St. Elmo’s Fire, arguably the most ambitious of the so-called “brat pack” movies of the 1980s. While I’ve forgotten the plot of St. Elmo’s Fire, I recall the wonderful cinematography, where the scenes always seemed to be filmed in “the golden hour” with Washington, D.C., as the backdrop. She followed that with the popular romantic comedy About Last Night and, at age 24, was well on her way to success as a leading lady. A year later, she married Bruce Willis, and the couple had three daughters together, during a period when both of their careers were peaking, he with Die Hard and its sequels, she with Ghost and A Few Good Men. But while Bruce’s career continued to yield hits (Armageddon in 1998, The Sixth Sense in 1999), things weren’t so good for Demi. G.I. Jane was awful and a total bomb at the box office, from which she never really recovered. She has kept working steadily, but she ceased to be a marquee name. And what’s with the swimsuit photos as an argument against being “less desirable” at 59? Desirable to whom?

Oh, yeah — she divorced Bruce Willis (or he divorced her) and then “Moore had a three-year relationship with martial arts instructor Oliver Whitcomb” and subsequently “began dating actor Ashton Kutcher, who is 15 years her junior.” Did that relationship ever make any sense at all? It lasted about eight years, the divorce being finalized in 2013, when Demi was 51 and Kutcher was 36. Now he’s married to Mila Kunis with two kids, while his elderly ex-wife Demi is posing in swimsuits to prove she’s still “desirable.” Never made sense to me why she split with Bruce Willis, but I suppose when people burn bridges like that, they have fond hopes of a better road ahead. Demi was in her mid-30s when she divorced Bruce, and her trajectory to that point had been entirely upward, so the possibility of a “less desirable” future was beyond her imagination.

A 21st-century Norma Desmond. So sad . . .




 

Category: Celebrities, Hollywood

Our Patriotic Duty

Posted on | July 7, 2022 | Comments Off on Our Patriotic Duty

That’s my son Jim, rigging the last fuse on our Fourth of July fireworks finale. We planned the show on very short notice — driving back from Georgia after attending my Aunt Pat’s memorial service Saturday — and were adding to the show as late as six o’clock Monday afternoon, when Jim sent me to Pyro Dudes to grab another 48 shells and 40 feet of extra fuse for the finale. Unlike previous years, when we bought cases of fireworks wholesale, this year’s supply was purchased retail, mostly from our friends at Pyro Dudes, who have excellent prices and discounts.

We have been doing this since the boys were little, and I regret that only Jim was able to be involved in this year’s show. Bob and his wife are in Alaska now, Jefferson is in a certain Midwestern state, where he will begin law school this fall, and Emerson is in Spain with his wife. Meanwhile, my wife and our youngest daughter Reagan are in Florida with our oldest daughter Kennedy, so that left just Jim and me to carry on the patriotic family tradition of shooting off beaucoup fireworks on the Fourth of July. My brother Kirby was there, and kicked in $50 to help fund the show. We had a couple of slight timing issues with the fuses, although this did not detract from the overall awesomeness of the display and, most importantly, everything detonated safely.

After nearly 20 years, we kind of take safety for granted, because the way we fuse things together, nobody is actually in vicinity of danger when the stuff goes off. We have occasionally had a shell blow up in the tube, and a couple of times we had cakes that tipped sideways, but nothing that would endanger spectators. Other people, however . . .

That video has gotten 37 million views on Twitter, and is a perfect example of how not to shoot fireworks safely. The first error is proximity. You don’t want your spectators to be sitting right next to where the fireworks are going off. Considering that aerial shells can travel 150 feet or more up in the air, what happens if one goes sideways? So, yes, a setback of at least 50 yards between fireworks and spectators is advised.

Their second error — and this is actually rather common, although not often so disastrous — is that they were shooting off fireworks within just a few yards of their stash. The result speaks for itself, in terms of why this is not advisable. One spark goes into your fireworks stash and BOOM!

Meanwhile, 911 dispatchers across America were plagued by “Karens”:

Fireworks incidents, complaints erupt across NJ
— WKXW-FM

Nassau police: 12 arrests made, hundreds of illegal fireworks complaints on July 4th
— News 12 The Bronx

Minneapolis: Stop calling 911 for fireworks noise complaints
— Bring Me the News

Thousands of firework calls tie up 911 emergency phone lines in Colorado
— KUSA-TV

It’s become an annual ritual — every Fourth of July, patriotic Americans celebrate with fireworks, and the neighborhood Karen calls 911. This is generally the same person who votes for politicians who want to tax and regulate everything. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the Karens were demanding vaccine mandates. No doubt their ancestors were grumbling about those hooligans that threw the tea in Boston Harbor.




 

Category: Fireworks

In The Mailbox: 07.06.22

Posted on | July 6, 2022 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 07.06.22

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Silicon Valley delenda est.

OVER THE TRANSOM
EBL: Savannah Daisley Accused of Rape of 14 Year Old Boy, also, Jerone Davidson (R-AZ4) for Congress – Make Rifles Great Again
Twitchy: Rep. Lauren Boebert informs Rep. Eric Swalwell that no, he can’t date her, also, Fauxcahontas on the warpath against Massachusetts crisis pregnancy centers
Louder With Crowder: Tom Hanks Speaks Out on Disney Recasting Tim Allen’s Buzz Lightyear, also, Elon Musk – ‘They’re Going Way Too Far’
Vox Popoli: The USA’s Last War, Lugansk is Liberated, and The Sins of the Debtors

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: Greasy Pole #21 – The Babies for Moloch episode
American Conservative: Biden’s Immigration Policies Are Killing People, also, Biden and Universities Launch Sneak Attack on Free Speech
American Greatness: Several Texas Counties Declare Border Crisis to be an ‘Invasion’, also, Infamous Georgia Guidestones Damaged in Early Morning Explosion; Remaining Structure Demolished ‘For Safety Reasons’
American Thinker: Much More than Murder in Highland Park
Animal Magnetism: Animal’s Hump Day News
Babalu Blog: One year later, a Cuban pastor remains imprisoned for peacefully protesting on July 11, also, Cuban dictatorship appoints female colonel as interim replacement for its dead money chief Lopez-Calleja
BattleSwarm: Biden’s EPA Trying To Crush The Permian Basin?, also, Halifax Bank Update – They Made It Worse
Behind The Black: Engineers propose flying gliders on Mars, Red China begins construction of commercial spaceport, and Today’s blacklisted American
Cafe Hayek: Majority Rule Isn’t As Straightforward As Many People Suppose It to Be, also, Change the Constitution?
Chicago Boyz: Where We Spent Today, also, Very Nicely Put
Da Tech Guy:  One Thing You Have To Remember About all the Left’s “I Hate America” July 4th Events, Report from Louisiana: renaming, rebranding, and rewriting history in a free country, and July Indulgence Calendar Plus Previews of coming Attractions and other loose ends under the Fedora
Don Surber: Next up: WV vs. SEC, Griner pulled a Kaepernick and now wants our help, and 80% still live in the American Dream
First Street Journal: Even hormones and surgery are not enough!, also, Six killed in Highland Park shooting, and everybody knows about it; ten killed in Philly, and no one cares
Gates Of Vienna: A Flood of Migrants From Hong Kong, Culture-Enriching Gang Rape Behind a Hedge in Milan, and What is it That We’re Not Supposed to Learn?
The Geller Report: Holland On The Brink Of Civil War After Left-Wing Government Bans Farming, also, Manufacturing Plants Aren’t Just Mysteriously Getting Burned Down In The United States
Hogewash: Team Kimberlin Post of the Day, also, A Prospective Merger
Hollywood In Toto: Thor: Love and Thunder Delivers Woke Camp, Not MCU Thrills, also, Isaak/Lovett at Red Rocks – The Culture Wars Get the Night Off
The Lid: Poll Ends Dem Hopes of Riding Roe Rage to Midterm Victory
Legal Insurrection: Google to Automatically Delete Tracking Info on Trips to Abortion Clinics, Biden Admin Shipping U.S. Oil Reserves Overseas as Americans Struggle at the Pump, and Yale Law Prof Says Right to Own Guns is Really Right to “Suppress Inner City Blacks”
Michelle Malkin: America, the Globalist Grift
Nebraska Energy Observer: In reverse, also, B1G Follies
Outkick: Ja Morant Blesses Waitress With Massive Tip, Leaves Her Stunned When She Realizes Who He Is, Dallas Cowboys Get Criticism from Liberals for New Team Sponsorship With Vet Owned Brand, and Baker Mayfield Traded To Carolina Panthers For Draft Compensation
Power Line: Biden Free Fall Continues, Hauteur with a twist of deceit, and Horror In the Law Schools
Shark Tank: FAA and NASA now Affecting Flights in Florida
Shot In The Dark: Vibrant! also, Recessional
STUMP: Yes, COVID was a top cause of death for middle-aged people in 2021
The Political Hat: Mandatory Wokeness In Academia – Mandatory Bias Test For Admission, Mandatory “Maoist” Diversity Training, and Mandatory Power, Inequity, & Justice Classes
This Ain’t Hell: SCOTUS Rules on Burn Pit Veteran’s Case, Marine aviator refuses to wear American Flag apparel, and Bonhomme Richard fire – too many admirals, not enough leaders
Transterrestrial Musings: In Case You Thought That Bill Nelson Was Smart, Ukraine’s Future, and More From Lori Garver
Victory Girls: Kamala Stops By Highland Park To Serve Word Salad
Volokh Conspiracy: Whites from Africa Claiming African-American Status
Watts Up With That: Dumb As It Gets: Germany Heads into Winter Refusing to Let Badly Needed Power Plants Operate
Weasel Zippers: Biden Gave 5 Million Barrels Of Our Strategic Oil Reserves To Europe, Mayor Groot Blames “The Toxicity In Our Public Discourse” For Increase of People Shooting At Police Officers, and Transportation Sec. Buttigieg Laughs When Confronted On Gas Prices Surging Since Biden Took Office
The Federalist: Washington State School Board Director Plans Sexual ‘Pleasure’ Workshops For 9-Year-Olds, Barstool Subverts Elites On Everything Except Sexual Ethics, and Dutch Government Launches Canadian-Style Crackdown On Farmer Protests
Mark Steyn: A Childhood Lost to Monsters and Their Enablers, The Child Sex Crime Capital of England, and The Stories the Media Won’t Tell

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Category: Linkagery

In The Mailbox: 07.05.22

Posted on | July 6, 2022 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 07.05.22

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Silicon Valley delenda est.

OVER THE TRANSOM
357 Magnum: What’s The Military Version of “Get Woke, Go Broke?”
EBL: Mamie Van Doren, also, Bikini Day
Twitchy: Dean Obeidallah says that Gov. Gavin Newsom is doing more than just crushing Gov. Ron DeSantis
Louder With Crowder: UFC Champ Asks the Question On All Our Minds, also, Macy Gray Says Changing Your Body Parts ‘Doesn’t Make You a Woman’
Vox Popoli: Truth in an Empire of Lies, That’s Not a Course Correction, and It’s Going to be So Bad

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: Fag Month – a Tale of Three Photos
American Conservative: Biden’s War for Liberalism, also, Last of the Greatest
American Greatness: The New American Slave Revolt, Led by Clarence Thomas, ‘If All Men Are Created Equal, That Is Final’, and So Much Winning
American Power: Leftists Push ‘F*** the Fourth’, also, California Governor Gavin Newsom Fuels Presidential Speculation
American Thinker: New York Moves to Nullify Supreme Court Decision Upholding Gun Rights, also, A SCOTUS Guide for the Perplexed
Animal Magnetism: Happy Independence Day!, also, Goodbye, Blue… Tuesday?
Babalu Blog: The death of dictator Raul Castro’s right-hand man could spell the end of the Cuban dictatorship, Cuba’s transition to kleptocracy, and Amidst chronic blackouts, Cuba’s sock puppet president tells Cubans to find the charms of summer heat
BattleSwarm: Russia Defaults; Finland, Sweden Get Greenlight To Join NATO, also, Halifax Bank: “We’re Going To Shove Pronouns Down Your Throat. If You Don’t Like it, Leave.” Customers: “Your Terms Are Acceptable.”
Behind The Black: One of Perseverance’s two wind sensors damaged by wind-blown material, Today’s blacklisted American, and How to find the least dishonest politician to vote for
Cafe Hayek: Hotter and Longer Perhaps – More Dangerous, Not So Much, also, Four Amazing Differences
CDR Salamander: VADM Brown; Remembering the Johnston‘s Turn
Chicago Boyz: Top Gun!, also, Shall It Be Sustained?
Da Tech Guy: Some Advice From My Grandfather for Those Doing Political Prosecutions These Days, When should you start a family?, and Fast Thoughts Under the Fedora for the 4th of July
Don Surber: Democrats, defying the Supreme Court for 190 years, Abortionists target Christianity, and Asian-Americans abandoning Democrats
First Street Journal: What is ‘gatekeeping’?, also, What happens when “racial inequities” are the choices of minority populations?
Gates Of Vienna: The Arrest of Michael Ballweg, An Actuarial Armageddon, and Vehicular Jihad in Norway
The Geller Report: Survey: More Than 750,000 Dead, 30 Million Injured Because of Covid Vax, Highland Park Mass Murderer, Tied to Socialists, Progressives, Antifa and the Occult, and Poll: Entire World ‘Unhappier, More Stressed’ Since Joe Biden Took Over
Hogewash: A Civil Rights Update, A Flyby of Mercury, and Team Kimberlin Post of the Day
Hollywood In Toto: HuffPo: Comedians No Longer Have ‘Right to Offend’, Joe Rogan: ‘All the Woke Comics Are F***ing Terrible’, and Breuer’s Somebody Had to Say It Pummels Pandemic Hypocrisy
The Lid: When Israel Showed The World The Spirit of 1776 Still Exists
Legal Insurrection: “The Nightmare Scenario SCOTUS is Plotting For the 2024 Election Takeover”, Democrats of Pima County Arizona Celebrate Independence Day by Saying ‘F**k the Fourth’, and Repeal of Roe Doesn’t Appear to be Helping Democrats Politically So Far
Nebraska Energy Observer: Random Observations, Thoughts, and The Mission Statement
Outkick: Elle Duncan is a Disaster, Madison Bumgarner Paid Awesome Tribute To America On The Fourth Of July, Joey Chestnut Choked Out A Protestor On Way To His 15th Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest Title, and ESPN Hates America on July 4th, Loves Woke Columnist Arrested For Choking His Wife
Power Line: Is Kamala’s Disease Spreading? (Updated), She who gets booed, and The eternal meaning of Independence Day
Shark Tank: Biden’s DOJ Sues Arizona To Make Mexico Great Again, also, Man Arrested for Assaulting Mills for Congress Volunteer, Rearrested on Felony Burglary Assault Charge
Shot In The Dark: Standards, Teenagers Vs. The Left, and We Three Things
STUMP: NY Corruption: Hochul, Benjamin, and Chester A. Arthur — Can You Tell the Difference?
The Political Hat: When in the Course of Human Events
This Ain’t Hell: , When They Say Who They Are Believe Them Biden supports abortion pill and crossing state lines to obtain abortions, and Team Biden asked about grants promoting atheism
Transterrestrial Musings: Who Is In Charge?, The Economic Genius In The White House, and Constitutional Visions
Victory Girls: Biden Team Is Making Sure There Is Pain At The Pump, Orlando Eats Crow After Fourth Of July Hot Take, and Democrats Are Mad That Biden Has Failed Them
Volokh Conspiracy: What the Declaration of Independence Said and Meant, also, “Oregon Health Officials Delayed a Meeting Because ‘Urgency Is a White Supremacy Value'”
Watts Up With That: The New Pause Lengthens to 7 Years 10 Months, Our Green Energy Future?, and British Greens Pushing for a Home Wood Heater Ban
Weasel Zippers: Capitol Police Were WARNED A Riot Might Break Out J6…Did Nothing, Kamala Harris Laughs At Americans Struggling To Afford Gas, and Ilhan Omar Booed Off Stage At Somali Concert In Minneapolis
The Federalist: If You Don’t Want Woke Bureaucrats To Ruin America’s 250th Birthday, Start Planning Now, Beavis And Butt-Head Are Back With A Movie And Haven’t Matured At All, and Liz Cheney Has No Future In The GOP And She Knows It
Mark Steyn: You Can’t Go Back Again – Robert Altman’s The Long Goodbye, A Name to Conjure, and America the Beautiful

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Category: Linkagery

Eulogy for a Great Southern Lady

Posted on | July 4, 2022 | 1 Comment

With my Aunt Pat Huber, May 2019

(My cousin Trish asked me to give a eulogy for my Aunt Pat Huber at the memorial service July 2 in Mableton, Georgia.)

The Roman poet Ovid said, “If you want to be loved, be lovable.” And I think everyone who knew Pat Huber would agree that she was a very lovable person. She was kind, she was generous and courteous, she was cheerful and optimistic. A smile was her natural expression, and she was capable of laughing even amid sorrow and hardship.
When I spoke to Trish about what I should say today, I mentioned that Aunt Pat reminded me of Melanie Wilkes in Gone With the Wind, the epitome of a gracious old-fashioned Southern lady. Like Miss Melanie, Aunt Pat never had a bad word for anyone and lived up to that ancient maxim of good manners, “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say nothing all.”
Trish laughed when she said her mother tried to raise her and Deborah to be nice Southern ladies, but perhaps not with as much success as she’d hoped. For me as a boy, a visit to Aunt Pat’s was always a pleasure, going over to play with my cousin Mark, and begging to spend the night. I was a rambunctious chatterbox of a boy, and I got on people’s nerves, but Aunt Pat was always so sweet to me. Then one Saturday morning after I’d spent the night, Mark and I were playing when he was supposed to be doing his chores. She chewed him out real good, and I was shocked: I had never in my whole life seen Aunt Pat angry.
Aunt Pat was the last living member of my parent’s generation. She was born on a farm in Randolph County, Alabama, in 1933, the second of three sisters born to Hermit and Eucal Kirby. My mother Frances McCain was the oldest of the Kirby girls and Aunt Barbara Ellis was the youngest. A sociologist might observe that there was a tendency toward matrilineal affiliation in this family. For example, we always attended the Fincher Clan reunion at Big Springs, an association owed to the fact that Grandma Kirby’s mother was a Fincher. And at holidays in my youth, the gathering was always of the three Kirby sisters and their children.
A mother is the heart of a home, and because my own mother died when I was 16, I have a deep appreciation for the maternal qualities in which Aunt Pat excelled. I was always welcome at her home, and any time I’d visit, she’d insist I stay for dinner. When I had first started dating Lou Ann, I took her down to meet my Dad and brothers, and then I took her to meet Aunt Pat. Lou Ann said it was after meeting Aunt Pat that she decided to marry me, so certainly I owe her that debt of gratitude.
Aunt Pat’s two-storey home on Pleasant Drive was the closest thing to a mansion in our family, and a symbol of how far hard work can take you in life. That a girl who grew up in rural Alabama during the Depression could live in such a fine home is truly the American Dream. And I think some of Aunt Pat’s grandchildren and great-grandchildren have no idea what her life was like growing up. Trish and Deborah and the rest of us in our generation grew up hearing stories of what life was like back then in those days of dirt roads and Franklin Roosevelt. “Y’all kids don’t know how good you’ve got it,” our parents would say. “When I was a kid …” And then we’d hear a tale of shocking hardship. Our parents had to walk five miles to school – uphill both ways! Barefoot! In the snow! Or so we were expected to believe. We can laugh about it now, but the hardship of life back then was very real. Poverty was so widespread in rural Alabama in the 1930s that it was more or less universal. Aunt Pat would say, “We didn’t know we were poor – everybody was poor!”
The Kirby family actually wasn’t as poor as some of their neighbors. Grandpa Kirby was a very hard-working man, and when World War II came along, he got a job working in the shipyards in Brunswick, Georgia. Grandma Kirby joined him there, working in the canteen that served meals to the shipyard workers. They left their daughters in the care of Grandma Kirby’s parents on the farm in Alabama, so that Aunt Pat was largely raised by her grandparents, Elisha and Maude Moses. Aunt Pat and her sisters knew the value of hard work, and they knew the importance of family. We take care of our own.
As a teenager, slender young blonde Pat Kirby caught the eye of a dark-haired fellow from LaGrange named Ervin Huber. He was a cotton mill worker, three years older than Aunt Pat, and rode a motorcycle. Try to picture 20-year-old Ervin Huber roaring around on a motorcycle in 1950, and then imagine what a reaction that caused for the parents of a nice Baptist girl from Randolph County girl. Love conquers all, however, and Grandma Kirby gave her consent to the marriage on one condition, that Pat graduate from Randolph County High School before the wedding.
Ervin and Pat Huber were married for 42 years until his death in 1992. I’ve often thought of how remarkable Uncle Ervin’s career was. After they moved to Atlanta, while Ervin was working in the mill there, he took a home-study course in electronics, and got hired by Rich’s. For most of my childhood, he worked at Rich’s repairing household appliances. For the benefit of you younger folks, I have to explain that Rich’s was THE department store chain in Atlanta for decades, and the big Rich’s store downtown was THE place to shop. So when Deborah, Trish and Mark were growing up, they were always fashionably attired, because of Uncle Ervin’s employee discount at Rich’s. I also have to explain to young people that, once upon a time, when you bought an appliance or any kind of what we’d nowadays call “consumer electronics,” the store that sold it to you would repair it if it wasn’t working. Something folks used to call “customer service.” Anyway, as I say, for many years, that was Ervin’s main job, repairing radios and toasters and whatever other kind of electrical things anybody bought from Rich’s. Over the years, however, his job description changed. In the 1970s, Rich’s became part of the nationwide Federated department Store chain. Computerized cash registers and automated inventory became standard retail practice, and Ervin’s skills made him the natural choice to take over this work, so that eventually he became basically the IT chief of the whole Federated chain – very impressive for a small-town boy with a high school diploma.
Meanwhile, Aunt Pat – the girl who grew up on a farm in Randolph County – gave birth to her first two children before she was 21. She took a home-study course and taught herself shorthand, and eventually went to work in the aerospace industry. Now, when I say she worked in the aerospace industry, she was an executive secretary at the Lockheed plant in Marietta. It takes a lot of people doing a lot of different jobs to run a major company like that, so when I say Aunt Pat was part of the aerospace industry, by God, it’s the truth. She spent about 30 years at Lockheed, which is now Lockheed-Martin. My Dad worked there for 37 years, and whenever you see a C-130 cargo plane, that’s something we can be proud of – Lockheed made the greatest cargo plane the world has ever known. Folks talk about the “military-industrial complex” like it’s some kind of awful thing and I tell ‘em, buddy, the military-industrial complex put food on my table when I was a kid. Those jobs are good jobs, and Aunt Pat had every reason to take pride in working for Lockheed.
All of her children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren ought to be proud to be part of Pat Huber’s legacy, just as I know she was always so proud of y’all. You are the descendants of a wonderful Southern lady, who was also a very devout and prayerful Christian. Her grandson Chris is an ordained minister, and I checked with Trish to make sure I wouldn’t be stealing from his sermon when I close this tribute by quoting from a famous passage of Proverbs 31:
“Who can find a virtuous woman? for her price is far above rubies. … Strength and honour are her clothing; and she shall rejoice in time to come. She openeth her mouth with wisdom; and in her tongue is the law of kindness. She looketh well to the ways of her household, and eateth not the bread of idleness. Her children arise up, and call her blessed; her husband also, and he praiseth her.”
Those of us who were blessed to know Pat Huber have reason to thank God for that blessing. We should cherish her memory forever, and each of us should strive to emulate her example.




 

Category: Family

A Story Too Good to Check?

Posted on | July 4, 2022 | 2 Comments

This headline appeared Friday in the Columbus Dispatch:

As Ohio restricts abortions, 10-year-old
girl travels to Indiana for procedure
On Monday three days after the Supreme Court issued its groundbreaking decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, Dr. Caitlin Bernard, an Indianapolis obstetrician-gynecologist, took a call from a colleague, a child abuse doctor in Ohio.
Hours after the Supreme Court action, the Buckeye state had outlawed any abortion after six weeks. Now this doctor had a 10-year-old patient in the office who was six weeks and three days pregnant.
Could Bernard help? . . .

This story has since been repeated all over the place (e.g., “‘A tragic situation’: Governor discusses pregnant 10-year-old with CNN host”), but having read through the original story twice with an editor’s eye, my question is: Where’s the comment from police?

Even if you’re willing to take Dr. Caitlin Bernard’s word for the basic claim — while some 10-year-olds are physically capable of getting pregnant, such cases are very rare — you’ve left the reader knowing nothing about the most basic elements of the story: What Ohio city did this happen in? Do authorities have a suspect in custody? Or is the public still in danger from the child rapist responsible for this atrocity?

The extreme youth of the alleged victim is what made the headline so shocking, and I actually checked the National Institutes of Health to make sure I wasn’t alone in finding this highly unusual. The median age of menarche (i.e., onset of menstruation, generally taken as meaning when a female becomes physically capable of pregnancy) in the United States is 11.9, about three months earlier than in the 1990s. About 10% of females reach menarche by age 10. Precocious puberty is slightly correlated with earlier sexual activity — the median age of first intercourse is 15.4 for girls reaching menache by age 10, compared to 16.6 for girls reaching menarche at age 14 or older. In general, blacks and Hispanics reach menarche earlier than white girls, but the differences are not dramatic.

Still, a 10-year-old girl getting pregnant is rare enough in the United States that I had difficulty finding any statistical data on the phenomenon. When you’re talking about something with far less than a 1% probability, good luck finding reliable data. What I was able to find was a 2008 NBC News story reporting that only 17.4% of U.S. abortions involved women under 20. So what were the chances, really, that Dr. Bernard’s Indianapolis clinic would be dealing with the case of a pregnant 10-year-old from Ohio at the very time that the Supreme Court’s ruling made this case relevant to Ohio’s abortion laws?

I don’t trust this kind of “just so” anecdote anchoring a story like this, especially when there is nothing else about the case reported in the story. While I’m not willing to go so far as to call it “fake news,” my editor’s eye immediately noticed the omission of any corroborating details. If a 10-year-old is pregnant, a crime has been committed, and the reader naturally expects such a story to include some comment from law enforcement officials where this crime occurred.

We don’t have that here. Of course, Dr. Bernard would cite medical confidentiality as a reason not to release information about the patient — except the age, because that makes for a good headline — but no reporter should accept this tale without corroborating information.

What this story reminds me of is Curry College in Massachusetts, where it was reported that swastikas were found on campus “directed at black individuals.” Six months later, the college reported:

The College carefully reviewed evidence gathered by law enforcement and interviewed the person of interest identified by law enforcement investigators and other individuals who were potentially connected to specific incidents. The outcome of our independent investigation has resulted in an employee being terminated and removed from our community. The College’s Statement on Non-Discrimination requires confidentiality related to investigations. Therefore, this is the only information we can provide at this time.

So, the former college employee who perpetrated this alleged hate crime is protected by school policy? You can’t even tell us anything which might confirm or contradict our suspicion that the whole thing was a hoax? How convenient, just like the similar confidentiality policy that Dr. Bernard would likely cite as why she can’t tell us anything else about this 10-year-old sex crime victim except that (a) she was 10, (b) she was from Ohio, and (c) she was more than six weeks pregnant in a state that recently outlawed abortion past six weeks gestation.

Nothing to see here, folks. Just another tiny example of how the news media are slowly destroying their own credibility.




 

Category: Abortion, Media Bias
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