The Other McCain

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

In The Mailbox: 05.24.23 (Morning Edition)

Posted on | May 24, 2023 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 05.24.23 (Morning Edition)

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Silicon Valley delenda est.

Your news media today

OVER THE TRANSOM
357 Magnum: Building Uncensored AI
EBL: The Best of Eva Vlaardingerbroek
Twitchy: The “Machete Professor” Dismissed From Hunter College, also, The Atlantic Declares Twitter A “Far Right Social Network”
Louder With Crowder: Girl track star (who was a boy track star two years ago) brags about PR as she steals opportunity for state championship, Los Angeles Dodgers tell Catholics to drop dead, get bullied by pols into reinstating drag nuns to Pride Night festivities, and Watch: Former ESPN host goes scorched Earth on “mediocre men” competing in girls’ sports, calls Lia Thomas a bigot
Vox Popoli: Kinder and Gentler, Zelensky Avoids Ukraine, and Redefinitions and Rhetoric

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Conservative: After Bakhmut
American Greatness: Target Partners With Trans-Satanist Designer For ‘Pride’ Collection, Report: Fox News Issued Trans-Friendly Handbook to Employees, Ordered Hosts Not To Bash Dylan Mulvaney, and Why Is Everyone Protecting Ray Epps?
American Thinker: For Obama, the Cover-Up Was Worse than the Crime
Animal Magnetism: Animal’s Daily Absurdities News
Babalu Blog: Cuba’s population is shrinking, aging rapidly, Cubans must choose between hotels and eating, and Reports from Cuba: With friends like this, the die is cast for Cuba
Baldilocks: Choosing The Character, Neapolitan
BattleSwarm: “Does The US Military’s New Combat Rifle Kinda Suck?”, also, Russians Invade Russia?
Behind The Black: Red China launches two satellites yesterday, one for Macau, Three government agencies now investigating the safety of methane-fueled rockets, Ancient volcano vent in the Martian southern cratered highlands?, and Pushback: California loses big for trying to force churches to violate their religious beliefs
CDR Salamander: Lieutenant Alkonis – Lost In Japan, also, Speaking Of The Russian Navy
Chicago Boyz: Welcome Wagon Essay Series: 1
Da Tech Guy: October 16th 2004 vs May 21st 2023
Dana Loesch: Sen. Tim Scott Announces Presidential Campaign – Is It Weird That He’s Still Single? also, DeSantis To Announce Presidential Bid On Twitter Spaces With Elon Musk
Don Surber: What Reparations Are Really About, also, Ending The Lies
Gates Of Vienna: Tariq Ramadan Gets His Day in Court, What Will the Culture-Enrichers Do When the Money Runs Out?, Thai Elections: Rinse and Repeat, BR-R-R-R-R-R!, and Returning Germany to the Stone Age
The Geller Report: California Reparations Commission Claims Slavery is Chief Reason for Black Hardship Within State
Hogewash: Team Kimberlin Post of the Day, Don’t Know Much Biology, and A Sonification in Two Movements
Hollywood In Toto: ‘Buddy Games’ Sequel Targets Woke Mind Virus (Gets Roasted by Critics), also, ‘Wrath of Becky’ Piles on Progressive Talking Points
The Lid: Whoopi Goldberg’s Latest Stupidity: Racist Attack On Tim Scott
Legal Insurrection: National Association of Scholars President Defends Prof Ejected From Class for Objecting to DEI Policies, 60,000 Pounds of Potential Explosive Component Ammonium Nitrate Lost During Shipping, Scientific American is Now the Bud Light of Science Journals, Uber’s DEI Chief on Leave After Complaints Over ‘Don’t Call Me Karen’ Seminar, and Victory: U. Minnesota Drops Race Requirements Excluding Whites From Summer Program After Equal Protection Project Complaint
Nebraska Energy Observer: A Cabal of Sociopaths
Outkick: LeBron James Floats Idea Of Retiring After Lakers Get Swept, But There’s No Way He Calls It Quits This Offseason, Dodgers Re-Invite Anti-Catholic Drag Group To Pride Night, Issue Apology To LGBTQ+ Community, LSU Softball Player Wrongly Criticized For Berating Umpire Serves As Great Reminder To Give Athletes Grace, Pittsburgh’s Pat Narduzzi Blasts Deion Sanders’ Transfer Portal Tactics That ‘Look Bad On College Football Coaches’, Former NFL Cornerback-Turned-Hunter, Trae Waynes, Uses Bud Light For Target Practice, and Did Justin Verlander Yell ‘F**k ESPN’ Right Before Pulling Francisco Lindor Out Of Sunday Night Baseball Interview?
Power Line: “Loretta” Cancels Monty Python, Here Come the Blackouts, and Thought for the Day: The Roots of Our Corrupt National Security Institutions
Shark Tank: Rick Scott Issues His Own Travel Advisory For Socialists & Leftists
Shot In The Dark: “I’m An Expert!”, also, Untargeted
STUMP: Sunday Sumo: Some Winning Moves on the Middle Day
The Political Hat: Segregating Precalculus Classes In Illinois
This Ain’t Hell: It’s False! It’s False!
Transterrestrial Musings: Climate Wars On Twitter, The Left’s Judicial Philosophy, Human Missions To Mars, and The FBI Is Out Of Control
Victory Girls: Jake Sullivan Has No Answers Or Accountability, also, Energy Watchdogs Warn Of Power Blackouts This Summer
Volokh Conspiracy: Happy 20th Birthday to the Streisand Effect
Watts Up With That: German Greens in Crisis, Plummet 40% In Opinion Polls as Anger Mounts Over Bans, Scandals, also, Wrong, WEF, Climate Change Is Not Threatening Lizards, Wine, Coffee or Air Turbulence
Weasel Zippers: NAACP Issues Travel Advisory For Florida, Says Blacks Aren’t Safe There Because of Gov. DeSantis, also, Poll: Biden’s Approval Rating On The Economy Falls To Just 33%
The Federalist: Taxpayers Spend Billions Of Dollars Annually On A Woke Welfare Racket, Ukraine War Fetishist David French Is Now Lecturing You From Kyiv, Ontario Bill Would Banish Freedom Of Speech From LGBT ‘Safety Zones’, If You Want To ‘Drain The Swamp,’ Then Drain The FBI, and Here’s How House Republicans Could Block Senate Democrats’ Efforts To Thwart IRS Whistleblower
Mark Steyn: How About You?, also, Steyn Sues Ofcom

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Category: Linkagery

The Deadly Menace of Feral Youth

Posted on | May 23, 2023 | Comments Off on The Deadly Menace of Feral Youth

On Sunday, police in Baltimore County, Maryland, wore black mourning bands on their badges to mark the five-year anniversary of the death of one of their own. Officer Amy Caprio was responding to a 911 call of a burglary in progress west of U.S. Highway 1 near Perry Hall when she confronted the driver of a stolen Jeep, who ran over her — a death captured on the officer’s bodycam video. Her death highlighted the problems in a juvenile justice system that endangers public safety by failing to incarcerate repeat offenders.

Dawnta Harris

The criminal behind the wheel of the stolen Jeep was 16-year-old Dawnta Harris, who had a long history with the Department of Juvenile Services:

  • December 29, 2017 – Dawnta Harris is charged as a juvenile for Auto Theft and related felonies in Baltimore City. Released to mother pending trial.
  • January 14, 2018 – Harris charged as a juvenile for Auto Theft in Baltimore City. Placed on Electronic Monitoring by DJS until court hearing the next day.
  • January 15, 2018 – Baltimore City Juvenile Court removes Electronic Monitoring requirement and releases Harris to his mother.
  • February 18, 2018 – Harris charged as a juvenile for Auto Theft and related felonies in Baltimore City, placed by court on Electronic Monitoring in the community.
  • February 26, 2018 – Harris goes into AWOL status from Electronic Monitoring.
  • March 2, 2018 – An adjudication hearing is held with Harris present. Baltimore City Juvenile Court sustained one Auto Theft charge from December 29, 2017 arrest, dismisses all charges from January 14, 2018 and February 18, 2018 arrests. Court orders youth placed into non-secure shelter facility in Montgomery County and into Community Detention/Electronic Monitoring.
  • March 13, 2018 – DJS is notified of Harris’ arrest regarding possible involvement in car theft in Montgomery County. Harris is returned from the shelter in Montgomery County and brought to Baltimore City Juvenile Justice Center for secure detention.
  • March 14, 2018 – Placement hearing held for Harris in Baltimore City Juvenile Court. Based on a standardized public safety risk assessment score, DJS recommends day and evening reporting and Community Detention/Electronic Monitoring. Court releases Harris from Baltimore City Juvenile Justice Center and sends him to a non-secure shelter in Catonsville.
  • March 20, 2018 – Harris is charged as a juvenile for Auto Theft in Montgomery County that occurred on March 12, 2018. DJS intake in Montgomery County sends Auto Theft charge to State’s Attorney for formal processing.
  • March 29, 2018 – Baltimore City Juvenile Court holds disposition (sentencing) hearing. Disposition was continued to April 16, 2018. Court continued Harris in the structured shelter but released him from Community Detention/Electronic Monitoring.
  • April 16, 2018 – Harris fails to appear for disposition hearing at Baltimore City Juvenile Court. Court issues writ so that Harris can be apprehended by police and brought in.
  • April 17, 2018 – Harris arrested and detained on writ. Court holds detention hearing where DJS recommends, due to public safety risk, that Harris be securely detained at Baltimore City Juvenile Justice Center. Court orders the secure placement and schedules a detention review for May 10, 2018.
  • May 10, 2018 – Court holds detention review hearing, which does not include DJS participation. Court releases Harris from detention and places him on Community Detention/Electronic Monitoring where he is required to engage in a day and evening reporting center.
  • May 10 to May 13, 2018 – DJS maintains contact with Harris while he is on Community Detention/Electronic Monitoring.
  • May 14 to May 16, 2018 – Harris goes into AWOL status. DJS makes multiple attempts to re-engage Harris via cell phone and visits to his home. DJS workers remain in regular contact with Harris’ mother, who states she does not know where he is. DJS workers meet with Harris and his mother on May 15 to discuss behavior and non-compliance.
  • May 17, 2018 – DJS Director of Community Detention directs that the community detention violation be referred to juvenile court. DJS confers with Harris’ mother, who agrees to be present the following day for a court hearing
  • May 18, 2018 – Baltimore City Juvenile Court holds hearing with Harris’ mother, DJS workers, State’s Attorney, and Public Defender present. Harris was on AWOL status and not present at hearing. Court did not make a detention decision due to questions raised by the public defender regarding whether Harris had proper notice and continued the matter to Tuesday, May 22, 2018.

That hearing was scheduled for a Tuesday — but on Monday afternoon, Dawnta Harris and three accomplices were out committing burglaries, which is when Dawnta killed Officer Caprio. So instead of going to a hearing for violating terms of his release from the juvenile system, Dawnta found himself charged as an adult with murder and facing District Court Judge Sally Chester, who denied bond and put him in a grown-up jail, telling the teenager’s lawyer: “In the last six months, no offense, but your client is a one-man crime wave. I’m not certain any juvenile facility is secure enough to hold him.”

Here’s a couple of facts about the case to keep in mind: First, the suburban neighborhood where Harris and his accomplices were burglarizing homes was 20 miles away from the Gilmor Homes housing project in West Baltimore where Harris lived. Second, among the items they stole that day was a 9mm pistol. These facts are important, because liberals love to lecture us about “non-violent crimes.” Auto theft and burglary? “Non-violent crimes,” the liberals yell, as if it were wrong to put people in jail for such offenses. But what if it was your car that was stolen? What if it was your house that was burglarized? Would you feel that these were trivial crimes and that the perpetrators shouldn’t be prosecuted? And, by the way, how do criminals get guns?

Oh, that’s right — criminals steal guns! The rampage of violent crimes in America’s inner cities? Stolen guns are fueling that deadly trend. And where are these guns being stolen from? Well, the case that led to Officer Caprio’s death shows one way this happens — criminals steal cars and drive to the suburbs to steal guns. If auto theft is not itself a violent crime, it is certainly a crime related to violence. For example, when gangbangers want to do a drive-by shooting? Yeah, steal a car to do it.

The trend of leniency toward juvenile offenders is a significant factor in the surge of crime we have witnessed in recent years. If minors who commit serious crimes — and grand theft auto is a serious crime — are given a slap on the wrist and returned to the streets, where is the deterrence? Do juveniles have to commit murder before they finally do real time behind bars? In the case of Dawnta Hall, not only was he sentenced to life in prison for killing Officer Caprio, but his three accomplices in the burglary spree also got sent to prison.

Leniency is not to be confused with mercy. If the juvenile justice system had kept Dawnta Harris behind bars — and they had multiple opportunities to do so — not only would Officer Caprio still be alive, but Harris’ codefendants wouldn’t have been convicted of felony murder for their role in Officer Caprio’s death. So, yeah, go ahead liberals, and congratulate yourselves for doing your part to advance the cause of “social justice.” All it cost was a dead cop and four boys going to prison.



 

 

Category: Crime, Maryland

In The Mailbox: 05.23.23 (Morning Edition)

Posted on | May 23, 2023 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 05.23.23 (Morning Edition)

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Silicon Valley delenda est.
OVER THE TRANSOM
EBL: Hey, Hey, LBJ, Another Reason Epstein Did Not Hang Himself, and Cocaine Bear
Twitchy: Roy Cooper Declares State Of Emergency In NC Over School Choice And We Have Questions , also, @Political Math Does WaPo’s Job And Looks At What’s Actually In Books Removed By Georgia School District
Louder With Crowder: “This raggedy a** b***”, WNBA coach is pissed and confused why it wasn’t a sellout for Brittney Griner’s return, and NAACP calls on black people to stay away from Florida because Ron DeSantis has made it hostile
Vox Popoli: The World They Knew is Gone, Italian Apocrypha, The Battle for Bakhmut is Over, Spirits Accessing the Material World, and Gen X Answers Gen Z
Stoic Observations: Gnosis – The Third Leg Of Modern Civilization?

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Conservative: The FBI Is Not Your Friend
American Greatness: Jim Jordan Threatens to Cut Funding for FBI, The Absurdities of Our Age, and FISA Court Report: FBI Continued to Abuse Surveillance Tool After Trump-Era Abuses
American Power: Martha Stewart Becomes Sports Illustrated’s Oldest Swimsuit Cover Model
American Thinker: 8 Disturbing Similarities between the Democrat and Nazi Parties, Let’s Call Them What They Are: Communists, and A Cabal of Sociopaths
Animal Magnetism: Goodbye, Blue Monday
Babalu Blog: Cuban dictatorship arrests sixth protester from the peaceful Caimanera protests, Cuban woman patched up with labels after eye surgery despite bringing her own bandages to hospital, and Why are Cuban military being trained in Belarus?
BattleSwarm: LinkSwarm For May 19, also, Followup: Homeless Industrial Complexer Tried To Channel Money To Own Company While On City Payroll
Behind The Black: Buried dying glacier in the Martian dry equatorial regions?, SpaceX launches 5 Iridium and 16 OneWeb satellites, SpaceX launches Axiom’s second commercial manned mission to ISS, and May 19, 2023 Quick space links
Cafe Hayek: The ‘Theory’ of “Greedflation” Is Rank Nonsense, also, The NatCons Are Deeply Confused
CDR Salamander: The Philippine Pact With Claude Berube,
Chicago Boyz: The CEO of the United States?
Da Tech Guy: It’s the Sandmann sequel coming to NYC, Why defend the backstabbers?, Today in Your Hearing This Passage is Fulfilled, and Review, Black Knight on Netflix
Dana Loesch: Can Biden Use Article XIV To Circumvent Congress On The Debt Ceiling?,
Don Surber: Highlights Of The Week
First Street Journal: I make a confession, also, Killadelphia: Lies, damned lies, and statistics
Gates Of Vienna: Welcome to Brussels, the Capital of the European Caliphate, All Dressed Up and No Place to Go, Tomio Okamura: No Support for the War in Ukraine, Telephonic Blues, and Twelfth Oregon County Votes to be Part of Greater Idaho
The Geller Report: 30-Ton Shipment Of Explosive Chemical Disappears Between California And Wyoming, also, Discredited But Massively Wealthy SPLC Working with Corrupt FBI to Silence Dissidents
Hogewash: Team Kimberlin Post of the Day, It’s A Long Way Down, The Lagoon Nebula, and Sausage Globular Clusters
Hollywood In Toto: One Woman’s Battle to Enshrine Phil Collins in Rock’s Hall of Fame, Now, It’s Time to ‘Cancel’ Problematic ‘Three’s Company’, and ‘Little Mermaid’ Avoids Disney’s Live-Action Curse
The Lid: House Select Committee On Weaponization Whistleblower Report Reveals FBI ‘Rotted At Its Core’, also, Kerry Says US Farm Confiscations Not Off the Table
Legal Insurrection: Pregnant Nurse Hunted By Internet Mob After False Accusations Of Theft and Racism Will Sue, New Study Links Cannabis Abuse to Schizophrenia in Young Men, Biden’s Secretary of Education: All Your Kids Are Belong To Us, George Mason U. Students Turn Their Backs, Walk Out on Governor Glenn Youngkin Commencement Speech, Numerous Democrats Join Rep. Cori Bush in Demanding $14 Trillion Reparations, and Seattle Official Berates Board Member for Calling Out Nominee’s Pedophilia, Describing ‘Bad Experience’ With Him
Nebraska Energy Observer: Saturday – just for you, also, Exaudi
Outkick: Brooks Koepka Kills Multiple Narratives, Creates Another With His Third PGA Championship Victory, Hilarious Ump Show Unfolds As Alabama High School Baseball Player Gets Ejected AFTER Already Losing State Championship, Trans High School Track Runner Robs Female Athlete Of State Championship Bid, Mercury Coach Mad At WNBA Crowd For Brittney Griner’s First Game Back: ‘How Was It Not A Sellout?’, Jim Brown, One Of The NFL’s Greatest Players, Dead At 87, and Tampa Bay Rays Have Potential Buyers Lining Up For Both Local, Relocation Options: REPORT
Power Line: Heart of darkness, DFL style, High School Boys Send a Clear Message to Trans-obsessed State Legislators, Not dark yet, and How rotten is it?
Shark Tank: “DeSantis Presents The Greatest Threat To Donald Trump”
Shot In The Dark: #OneAbusedSpouse, also, Illegitimate!
STUMP: Podcast: Spending Dreams of Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson and Waking to Reality, also, Mortality Nuggets: “Young People”, Actuarial Club Meeting, and Disparate Results Pre-Pandemic
The Political Hat: Firing Line Friday: Is It Possible to Be a Good Governor?
This Ain’t Hell: Jim Brown, NFL legend and Army vet, dies at age 87, AF adds jammer to Reaper, Fake Veteran Sentenced, and It’s Twue! It’s Twue!
Transterrestrial Musings: Michio Kaku’s Latest Book, The EU’s Green Dreamland, The Flag Officers Strike Back, and Innovation
Victory Girls: NYC To Fight Crime One Acronym At A Time, also, The Atlantic: An Ode To Masculinity
Volokh Conspiracy: First Amendment Challenge to Discipline of 8th-Grader for “Racially Insensitive” Instagram Post Can Go Forward
Watts Up With That: Lord Frost warns: Hurtling towards net zero at any cost will be a mistake, John Kerry targets farmers: ‘We can’t get to Net-Zero…unless agriculture is front & center as part of the solution’, Unreliable Green Energy Has the World Running Back to Coal and Nuclear, and Germany’s Growing List Of Bans: Next Up: Wood Stoves And Heating With Wood
Weasel Zippers: Video: UC Berkeley Holds Annual “Black Graduation” Ceremony, MSNBC Compares Pro-Life Republicans To Jihadists, WH: Biden Definitely Trusts VP Harris On Budget Negotiations, and Despite Biden’s Recent Polling, Rep. Clyburn Doesn’t Think Democrats Should Choose Another Candidate
The Federalist: Gospel Giant Tim Keller Leaves A Profound Legacy Worthy Of High Praise And Fair Critique, Merrick Garland’s J6 Juries Prove Durham’s Point, Lawlessness Is Not ‘Racial Justice’ — It Has Nothing To Do With Race At All, and It’s Time To Put The Woke Tattletales Ruining America In Their Place
Mark Steyn: What Should Have Been: Denzel Washington and Devil in a Blue Dress, also, Tal Bachman: Two Centuries of Rugby, Part II

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Category: Linkagery

NAACP: ‘Stay Out of Florida, Negroes’

Posted on | May 22, 2023 | Comments Off on NAACP: ‘Stay Out of Florida, Negroes’

That’s the real message, if you don’t mind me paraphrasing:

Today, the NAACP Board of Directors issued a formal travel advisory for the state of Florida. The travel advisory comes in direct response to Governor Ron DeSantis’ aggressive attempts to erase Black history and to restrict diversity, equity, and inclusion programs in Florida schools.
The formal travel notice states, “Florida is openly hostile toward African Americans, people of color and LGBTQ+ individuals. Before traveling to Florida, please understand that the state of Florida devalues and marginalizes the contributions of, and the challenges faced by African Americans and other communities of color.”
“Let me be clear — failing to teach an accurate representation of the horrors and inequalities that Black Americans have faced and continue to face is a disservice to students and a dereliction of duty to all,” said NAACP President & CEO Derrick Johnson. “Under the leadership of Governor Desantis, the state of Florida has become hostile to Black Americans and in direct conflict with the democratic ideals that our union was founded upon. He should know that democracy will prevail because its defenders are prepared to stand up and fight. We’re not backing down, and we encourage our allies to join us in the battle for the soul of our nation.”
The travel advisory was initially proposed to the Board of Directors by NAACP’s Florida State Conference. NAACP’s collective consideration of this advisory is a result from unrelenting attacks on fundamental freedoms from the Governor and his legislative body.
“Once again, hate-inspired state leaders have chosen to put politics over people. Governor Ron DeSantis and the state of Florida have engaged in a blatant war against principles of diversity and inclusion and rejected our shared identities to appeal to a dangerous, extremist minority,” said Chair of the NAACP Board of Directors, Leon Russell. “We will not not allow our rights and history to be held hostage for political grandstanding. The NAACP proudly fights against the malicious attacks in Florida, against Black Americans. I encourage my fellow Floridians to join in this fight to protect ourselves and our democracy.”

As Karen Townsend of HotAir.com points out, the purpose of this bogus “travel advisory” has nothing to do with the safety of African-Americans — who are far more likely to get killed in Detroit or Baltimore than anywhere in the Sunshine State. Instead, this is about smearing DeSantis in anticipation of his official announcement this week of a 2024 presidential campaign. The NAACP is no longer an independent organization, but a de facto adjunct of the Democratic Party.



 

 

Category: Florida, Racism

Rule 5 Monday: The Komi Girls

Posted on | May 22, 2023 | Comments Off on Rule 5 Monday: The Komi Girls

— compiled by Wombat-socho

This week, Shuuko “Forever 17!” Komi and her tongue-tied daughter Shouko, from the most excellent manga (and now anime!) Komi Can’t Communicate.
Ceterum autem censeo Silicon Valley esse delendam.

Shuuko and her daughter in qipao.

NINETY MILES FROM TYRANNY: Hot Pick of the Late Night, The 90 Miles Mystery Box Episode #2083, Morning Mistress, and Girls With Guns.

ANIMAL MAGNETISM: Rule Five Ninth Annual Commencement Speech Friday, and the Saturday Gingermageddon. 

EBL: Saturday Night Girls With Guns, Jim Brown RIP, MAGA Karen McDougal, Mrs. Davis, Swimsuit [Martha] Stewart, Mayor Pete Loves His Electric Mustang*, Abigail Spencer, Marianne Faithful, Betty Hutton, Vintage Beer Ads, Priyanka Chopra Jonas, and Mother’s Day Rule 5.

A VIEW FROM THE BEACH: Alexandria To the Max, Fish Pic Friday –  Laura Loves 2 fish, Thursday Tanlines, The Wednesday Wetness, MD Announces New Summer/Fall Striper Regs, Durham Report Drops, Tattoo Tuesday, Are Emergency Striper Regulations Coming?, There’s Tornados in Iowa, The Monday Morning Stimulus, Are Hunter’s Hookers on the Hook? and Palm Sunday.

FLAPPR: T.I.T.S. For May 19 – The End Of The Donna D’Errico MILF Thirst Economy?

Thanks to everyone for all the luscious links!

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Category: Rule 5

FMJRA 2.0: Who Made Who

Posted on | May 21, 2023 | Comments Off on FMJRA 2.0: Who Made Who

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Chilling in Chantilly for a few days before heading north for Balticon.
So far the draft is going well for me. I have a solid outfield, starting rotation, and deadly bullpen. Don’t think the Senators are going to finish in the cellar this year.
Ceterum autem censeo Silicon Valley esse delendam.
Rule 5 Sunday: Late Night With IJN Atago
Animal Magnetism
Ninety Miles From Tyranny
A View From The Beach
Flappr
EBL

Crazy People Are Dangerous
The DaleyGator
A View From The Beach
357 Magnum
EBL



 

FMJRA 2.0: Toward Compliant Towers
A View From The Beach
EBL

I, For One, Welcome Our New Anti-White Racist Asian Academic Overlords
A View From The Beach
Flappr
357 Magnum
EBL

In The Mailbox: 05.15.23
A View From The Beach
357 Magnum
EBL

In The Mailbox: 05.16.23
The DaleyGator
A View From The Beach
357 Magnum
EBL

In The Mailbox: 05.19.23 (Punditocracy Edition)
357 Magnum
EBL

Top linkers for the week ending May 19:

  1.  EBL (7)
  2.  A View From The Beach (6)
  3.  357 Magnum (5)

Thanks to everyone for all the links!

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Category: FMJRA Award

The Romance of Radicalism

Posted on | May 21, 2023 | Comments Off on The Romance of Radicalism

East Berlin honors Karl Liebnecht and Rosa Luxemburg, 1988

Because I am a history buff, the YouTube algorithm shows me all kinds of stuff — the history of Carthage, the Anglo-Saxon invasion of post-Roman Britain, the Stuart dynasty, etc. — about obscure topics that would be boring to most people, and which even most history buffs might not care much about. Usually I watch videos like these on my phone at bedtime and fall asleep during them, which can make for interesting dreams, narrated by some guy blabbering on about Cannae or whatever.

Saturday night, I watched (or rather, fell asleep watching) a series of videos about the 1918 German revolution. which is something I dare say 99% of Americans know nothing about. The Bolshevik Revolution was not the only Communist uprising in Europe at that time. There was also the short-lived reign of Bela Kun in Hungary and various failed revolutionary attempts in Germany, including the brief Communist coup in Bavaria in April-May 1919. Anyway, so I fell asleep watching this thing about the German revolution of 1918, and when I woke up early Sunday, I took a brief look at the third part of the series, “The Violent End of the German Revolution.” As is my wont, I became curious about who was producing this material, which was of a particular political theme, i.e., neo-Communism. As might be expected, most neo-Communists are young, and thus have no useful memory of what Soviet-era Communism actually was, or how difficult it was for the West to win the Cold War. Unless you lived through the 1960s and ’70s, a time when it seemed that Communism was ascendant, you have little appreciation of the heroic qualities that manifested themselves in the Reagan Revolution.

Neo-Communists, generally influenced by older leftists who were objectively pro-Soviet during the Cold War, refuse to accept the verdict of 20th-century history, and wish to believe that Communism can exist without producing the kind of totalitarian horrors it produced in Russia, China, Cambodia and elsewhere. It seemingly does not occur to them that the evils of 20th-century Communist regimes were not accidental, but rather that Communism always must, by its very nature, result in brutal dictatorship and widespread misery. To quote myself:

Five years after the Bolshevik Revolution, Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises predicted that the Soviet project was doomed to fail. In his classic work Socialism, Mises explained that the attempt to replace the market system with central economic planning could not succeed, because the planners could not possibly have the information necessary to make all the decisions which, in a market economy, are made by individuals whose needs and desires are reflected in prices: “The problem of economic calculation is the fundamental problem of Socialism.”
“Everything brought forward in favour of Socialism during the last hundred years,” Mises wrote in 1922, “in thousands of writings and speeches, all the blood which has been spilt by the supporters of Socialism, cannot make Socialism workable. … Socialist writers may continue to publish books about the decay of Capitalism and the coming of the socialist millennium; they may paint the evils of Capitalism in lurid colours and contrast with them an enticing picture of the blessings of a socialist society; their writings may continue to impress the thoughtless — but all this cannot alter the fate of the socialist idea.”
Undeterred by Mises’ criticism, the Soviet Union spent the next seven decades proving his prediction correct. By the time the Communist utopia collapsed in bankruptcy and disgrace, it seemed that everyone with two eyes and a brain understood the lesson: The Marxist-Leninist project was a complete failure and, as historians documented in The Black Book of Communism, tens of millions of people had died for this mistake, deliberately starved or slaughtered by totalitarian Communist governments. . . .

What Mises was saying was that Communism is doomed to failure simply because its basic economic idea is wrong. There is no feasible alternative to the market economy, and the sooner everyone accepts this truth, the happier they will be. Whether your own individual fortune within the market economy may be judged a success or a failure, while certainly a matter of great interest to you personally, is irrelevant to the larger truth that a society organized on the basis of economic liberty ultimately produces greater prosperity and, as is said, “a rising tide lifts all boats.”

It should not be necessary for me to elaborate this explanation much further. Anyone can read Mises’ Socialism or Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom or any of another dozen books I could recommend, and come to the same conclusion. I have nothing original to say on the subject, and can only lament that so few people seem to be interested in understanding why economic freedom is so essential. The real point is that neo-Communists are willing to ignore not only the nightmare reality of what Communist regimes inflicted upon their subjects in the 20th century, but also ignore the work of Mises, et al., in explaining why it was all doomed from the start. Instead, as Mises said a century ago, these latter-day Bolshevik wannabes continue to “paint the evils of Capitalism in lurid colours,” as if such critiques suffice to justify their radicalism and their fanciful dreams of life in a Marxist utopia.

Which brings me to Jonas Ceika, who has more than 200,000 subscribers on the YouTube channel where I saw his videos about the German revolution of 1918. There seems to be zero biographical material about Ceika except what he’s published himself. He is a philosophy student in Norway whose first YouTube efforts were Marxist analyses of pop culture (e.g., Shrek in 2017), but who really hit the big time in 2018 with a video titled, “Jordan Peterson doesn’t understand postmodernism.” See, this is the way lefties gain clout online, by attacking popular figures on the right, and Ceika’s attack on Peterson has gained more than 900,000 views. What Ceika’s audience wants to believe is that Peterson has been “debunked” — refuted, exposed as a fraud — and I’m sure this video suffices to convince people who don’t like Peterson that they are justified in their dislike. In other words, Ceika targets his audience’s susceptibility for confirmation bias.

Well, if you’re foolish enough to believe in Communism, you’re likely to believe anything, and Ceika has built an audience of the naïve and gullible, for whom his version of the failed German revolution is perhaps definitive — The True History™ — and this is unfortunate in many ways. Ceika wants his audience to believe that it was a bad thing that Liebnecht and Luxembourg failed to bring about a Soviet Germany in 1918, that the radical faction of German socialists were the heroes of this particular drama, and that the Left in Germany was guiltless in the subsequent rise of Hitler. But by their rejection of electoral democracy, attempting to seize power by armed uprising in mimicry of what the Bolsheviks had done in Russia, the German Communists legitimized revolutionary violence, an example which Hitler and his associates subsequently imitated for their own purposes. There were many factors involved in the rise of Hitler, of course, but the radicalism the German Left was certainly an important part of the formula for national catastrophe.

By the way, for some reason, Ceika doesn’t want his photograph to appear anywhere online, but he was willing to do a video interview from which I was able to grab this image. You’re welcome.

Is there a famine in Norway? A meth epidemic? It’s a cheap shot to mock Ceika’s emaciated appearance, I suppose, and so I’ll instead return to mocking his politics. He exhibits a tendency to think of people categorically, using bourgeois as an epithet for anything he considers bad, as for example the moderate democratic socialists in early 20th-century Germany, and speaking of “the masses” when describing those whom Communists aspired to lead to revolution. Ceika uses the phrase “class consciousness” without irony when speaking of workers who supported Communism, as if it were self-evident that their interests would be best served by a Marxist-Leninist revolution.

Perhaps there are many youth who’ve had the privilege of growing up in the post-Soviet world who share Ceika’s romantic view of Rosa Luxemburg and other Communist revolutionaries, much like all those idiot American college kids wearing Che Guevara T-shirts and voting for Bernie Sanders. The reality of what Communism was — a formula for tyranny and mass murder — is ignored so as to enable these young dreamers to imagine what they wish Communism could have been, and perhaps what their hoped-for future revolution will bring into being.

All of which brings us to the final irony of this wannabe revolutionary: Ceica’s book How to Philosophize with a Hammer and Sickle: Nietzsche and Marx for the 21st-Century Left was published a couple years ago by Penguin Random House, part of the $30-billion media conglomerate Bertelsmann. Yes, he’s on the payroll of the hated bourgeoisie.



 

 

Category: Economics, History

Math Teacher Goes Berserk

Posted on | May 20, 2023 | Comments Off on Math Teacher Goes Berserk

Just a typical day in a Wisconsin school:

Brenda Poulos remembers working in Kenosha last Friday when she received a series of texts from her son.
“I know he’s not supposed to use his phone in school, so the fact that he texted me was already, something’s up right,” Poulos said. “He said, ‘Mom, something’s going on at school. They fired our teacher and something bad is going on.”
Poulos’ son, Ethan, is a seventh-grade student at John Long Elementary. He told WISN 12 News he was in math class on Friday [May 12] when his teacher became upset and started making threats after discovering a swastika drawn in a notebook.
“Five seconds later, he went on this ramble about how this was a disgrace to his people and how he wanted to scorch Earth on us and how he was apparently going to cause pain on all our families,” Ethan said. “How he’d send his daughter to our house with a baseball bat and that he had 17 guns and he wasn’t afraid to use them.”
“I was scared. I had never heard a teacher say that to me or any kids before,” Ethan said.
According to a criminal complaint filed Monday afternoon in Ozaukee County Circuit Court, David Schroeder, 46, of Grafton, was charged with terrorist threats — create risk of causing result.
According to Assistant District Attorney Benjamin Lindsay, the school never contacted law enforcement. Lindsay said police only became involved more than an hour after the incident, when parents contacted police saying they were concerned their children weren’t safe with Schroeder in the community and with admitted access to guns. After police arrived at the school, the entire class was sent home early.
“It was chaos. There were a lot of kids in office area, panicked parents coming to get their kids,” said Sgt. Sean Fuerstenberg with the Grafton Police Department.
Police said they contacted Schroeder, who voluntarily turned himself in and was arrested on Friday.
In court Monday, the prosecutor said he was particularly concerned that Schroeder mentioned that he had a number of firearms.
Judge Paul Malloy, who is presiding over the case, did not take Schroeder’s actions lightly.
“The time when somebody can blow off steam and have a meltdown, that bird has flown a long time ago,” Malloy said.
According to the complaint, Schroeder told the students that he was Jewish, that “all Jews have guns and that he had 17 guns in his basement and that he would ‘F’ them up.”
Schroeder bonded out of jail on Tuesday. As a condition of his bail, he was ordered to first turn over any dangerous weapons to the Ozaukee County Sheriff’s Office.
The principal indicated to police that Schroeder was already under investigation for “other concerning or inappropriate behavior towards students,” and the school district had already determined his contract would not be renewed for next year.

In other words, this guy had been a known problem before he went berserk in the classroom. And just by the way, if drawing swastikas in your notebook was some kind of human-rights violation, basically every kid in my childhood schools would have been under investigation. Our fathers’ generation had fought World War II, which was a subject of lots of TV shows (e.g., Combat!) and movies (e.g., The Longest Day) that we watched as kids, so we were fairly saturated with that stuff about fighting the “Krauts” (as the Germans were habitually referred to in the G.I. slang dialogue of those old movies). Because a swastika is a simple thing to draw (as opposed to say, a Stuka dive bomber or a Tiger tank), basically every schoolboy drew them, in notebooks, on desks, etc. It had no deeper meaning in our minds. Certainly the boys who drew swastikas — and I mean, literally every boy did, back in the 1960s and ’70s — did not intend it as signifying support for totalitarianism, or sympathy toward Germany, least of all Jew-hating. It was like drawing Batman (another favorite schoolboy doodle) or hot rods, just stuff that boys did, without any political intent. But that was long ago, in what may now be viewed as a Golden Age of political incorrectness, when a popular comedy on TV was Hogan Heroes, with the Nazis played for laughs.

(By the way, I’m sure every guy my age grew up assembling models of various WWII tanks and planes. You could order a Tiger tank model kit or a Stuka bomber kit via Amazon, but you’ll also need to order some Testors paint and glue. DO NOT SNIFF THE GLUE! Because I have to tell you kids everything . . .)



 

 

Category: Education, Wisconsin
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