The Other McCain

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

‘New System’? Off-Season Excitement Has New England Patriots Fans Wondering

Posted on | June 2, 2022 | Comments Off on ‘New System’? Off-Season Excitement Has New England Patriots Fans Wondering

Let’s face it, this has been a stressful off-season for fans of the New England Patriots (of which I became one after they drafted Mac Jones). First, there was the demoralizing blowout loss to Buffalo in the wild card playoff game, then the departure of several veterans via free agency and trades, followed by some perplexing choices in the NFL draft. Oh, and I almost forgot — longtime offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels left to take the head coaching job at Las Vegas, taking with him several assistants and front-office people. No matter how deep your trust in Coach Bill Belichick, these events might have shaken your faith.

So today I’m lying down for a nap and scrolling YouTube when I see a “Patriots Beat” video with my favorite guys Evan Lazar and Alex Barth, with the provocative title, “Are the Pats Switching to Shanahan-Style Offense?” The gist of it is, based on what they’ve seen in OTAs (Organized Team Activities, which are voluntary spring drills) and a remark by wide receive Kendrick Bourne that the offense is switching to a “new system,” Lazar deduces that the Patriots are adopting the offensive style pioneered by Kyle Shanahan, who has been head coach at San Francisco since 2017.

 

What’s funny about this video is that, while Lazar is usually the overthinking worrywart of this duo, and Barth is more laidback, in this case the roles are reversed, with Lazar obviously optimistic about the “new system” on offense, while Barth is the one deeply worried.

Doing some research (i.e., a quick Google search and watching a YouTube video) has me on the optimistic side. Look, if your offensive coordinator leaves, isn’t that as good a time as any to change your offensive scheme? Also, isn’t it possible that (a) the Patriots had become too predictable on offense and (b) this new Shanahan-style offense might be better suited to the type of personnel the Patriots have now? From what I’ve seen, based on a quick scan of this system, it might be ideal for a running back like Damien Harris, who’s very good at making cutback runs. The Shanahan scheme uses “zone blocking” in the running game with the specific goal of creating the kind of seams that a back like Harris can exploit.

In the passing game, the Shanahan scheme uses a lot of pre-snap motion and play action to mislead defenders, and I could see how this would appeal to Belichick’s idea of what the Patriots can accomplish with quarterback Mac Jones and their current corps of receivers.

On the other hand, as my brother Kirby says, we must consider the possibility that “Evan Lazar is full of s***” and maybe the Patriots aren’t switching to the Shanahan-style offense. Then again . . .

If Bourne says it’s a whole new system, what is it? We are now 101 days from New England’s season opener against the Dolphins. So in less than 15 weeks, we’ll find out what it means. Can’t wait . . .




 

Category: Football

‘Actual Malice’: Jury Gives Johnny Depp Victory Against Lying Bitch Amber Heard

Posted on | June 1, 2022 | 1 Comment

Millions of dollars worth of justice:

The jury in a Fairfax County, Virginia, courthouse decided Wednesday that Johnny Depp and Amber Heard each wronged the other, though Depp was the more aggrieved party, in a defamation suit and counter-suit that captivated the country.
Depp sued Heard, his former wife, for a 2018 op-ed in the Washington Post that claimed she was a victim of domestic abuse. She did not name Depp directly, but it was clear from the context that she was accusing Depp of having abused her.
Depp sued Heard for $50 million. Heard filed a counterclaim for $100 million, complaining about statements his lawyers had made about her in answering her claims.
The trial lasted from April until early June, and featured sensational and shocking details their marriage. Depp’s side presented evidence that Heard had actually abused him, rather than the other way around, and refuted rumors that Depp had abused previous lovers, such as supermodel Kate Moss. Public opinion appeared to side with Depp.
The jury found for Depp on all three of his defamation claims regarding the op-ed, awarding him $10 million in compensatory damages and $5 million in punitive damages. Notably, the jury found that a statement accusing Depp of sexual violence and domestic abuse was defamatory.
The jury found for Heard on only one of her two claims, awarding her $2 million in compensatory damages but no punitive damages, sending a message that they found her more at fault.

The lying bitch is now the whining bitch:

“The disappointment I feel today is beyond words,” Heard’s team told The Post in a statement. “I’m heartbroken that the mountain of evidence still was not enough to stand up to the disproportionate power, influence and sway of my ex-husband.
“I’m even more disappointed with what this verdict means for other women. It is a setback. It sets back the clock to a time when a woman who spoke up and spoke out could be publicly shamed and humiliated. It sets back the idea that violence against women is to be taken seriously,” Heard’s statement continues. “I believe Johnny’s attorneys succeeded in getting the jury to overlook the key issue of Freedom of Speech and ignore evidence that was so conclusive that we won in the UK.
“I’m sad I lost this case,” Heard’s statement concluded. “But I am sadder still that I seem to have lost a right I thought I had as an American — to speak freely and openly.”

What America wants from Amber Heard now:

1. Shut up;
and
2. Go away.

The moral of the story: Never trust a bisexual.




 

Category: Celebrities

Save Babies, Help Moms, Hit the Tip Jar!

Posted on | May 31, 2022 | Comments Off on Save Babies, Help Moms, Hit the Tip Jar!

It’s that time of year again — Saturday is the annual Walk for Life to raise money for Richland Pregnancy Services in Mansfield, Ohio.

Last year, we rattled the tip jar for this event because my wife’s mother, at 80 years old and having recently undergone knee replacement surgery, was doing this 5K walk. And she’s doing it again this year!

CLICK HERE TO DONATE

As I explained last year:

My mother-in-law is a very special woman, the mother of six children, she also adopted one of her nieces, and now has 24 grandchildren, as well as a growing number of great-grandchildren.

When we rattled the tip jar for her last year, it got a huge response, and I know everybody wants to help out again this year.

CLICK HERE TO DONATE

Let me tell you more about Saturday’s event:

Richland Pregnancy Services’ Walk for Life is just days away and they are inching closer to their fundraising goal of $35,000 dollars.
The Walk for Life steps off at North Lake Park on Saturday, June 4, 2022, at 10:00 a.m.
In addition to a leisurely stroll on the scenic B&O Bike Trail, walkers can win prizes from Cedar Point, Kings Island, Little Buckeye, Precision Lube, and the Cleveland Cavaliers to name a few.
Kids will have the opportunity to snap a photo with Captain America and Spider-Man. . . .
Richland Pregnancy Services provides services for women and men experiencing unplanned pregnancies. They offer free ultrasounds and STD testing, mentoring, parenting classes, and a baby boutique.

You can click here to find out more about Richland Pregnancy Services, but the main point is my 81-year-old mother-in-law is going to do a 5K!

CLICK HERE TO DONATE

So far, my mother-in-law’s church has raised $100 of their $500 goal for this year’s event, but I’m sure we can not only get them to $500, we can do better than that. Whatever you can give — $5, $10, $25 — will help.

CLICK HERE TO DONATE

Thanks in advance, on behalf of the babies whose lives you can save.

 

Category: Family

‘Equality’ and the Murderous Losers

Posted on | May 30, 2022 | Comments Off on ‘Equality’ and the Murderous Losers

Park MacDougald has a very interesting article inspired by this month’s mass shootings, and he begins thus:

Rampage shooters tend to be losers. The archetype of the modern school shooter, Eric Harris, frequently wrote in his diary about his feelings of alienation and resentment over his lack of social success. . . .
Elliot Rodger, the 2014 Isla Vista shooter whose “manifesto” was a laundry list of complaints about his loneliness and sexual rejection, felt particularly resentful toward his female classmates, whom he saw as “mean, cruel, and heartless creatures that took pleasure from my suffering”. Unable to attract a girlfriend, he settled on revenge. “If I cannot rise above them,” he wrote, “I will destroy them.” . . .

Now, I have written extensively about Elliot Rodger, and the crucial point is that the Creepy Little Weirdo seems to have imagined that he was “rejected” by girls that he never even talked to. You start examining so-called “incel” culture, and one of the things you realize is that the problem goes far beyond the fact that these guys can’t get a girlfriend. They don’t have any friends at all. They are introverts, afflicted by a deficit of social skills, and they have all sorts of weird ideas bouncing around inside their heads — including dangerous ideas which they never talk about to anyone in real life, instead seeking out like-minded weirdos on the Internet. Most of the commentary you see on these guys attempts to shoehorn them into some kind of political category. Liberal journalists always want these shooters to be some kind of “right-wing” phenomenon, and will stretch the available facts to fit that narrative, if at all possible.

Park McDougald avoids that predictable dead-end trip, and thereby manages to come up with valuable insights:

According to the sociologist Nathalie Paton, rampage shootings represent a perverse expression of some of our culture’s dominant values, including self-expression, autonomy, and authenticity. . . .
The shooters, Paton argues, highlight another contradiction in the dominant ideology. Everyone is supposed to be an individual, and all individuals are respected equally. Yet beneath this injunction and guarantee are all the typical modes of conformity and hierarchy we would expect of a human society. The beautiful, the talented, the athletic, the funny, and the interesting rise above the ugly, the clumsy, the anxious, the introverted, the boring, and the resentful.
These relative statuses, for the losers, are all the more painful for being nothing other than a reflection of who and what they actually are.

You can read the whole thing. The point is that the “dominant ideology” in our culture (i.e., liberalism) does seem to “guarantee” equality. Of course, no such thing as “equality” has ever existed in human history — we are, by our very nature, keenly attuned to social hierarchy — and so the losers receive no coherent explanation of their status as losers. The cultural narrative of the “dominant ideology” is essentially a lie, but anyone who contradicts the narrative is denounced as a Thought Criminal, a proponent of “hate,” as if lying to people were an act of love.

Thus we return full-circle to Elliot Rodger. His final video was a shocking irony: Here he is, sitting in the BMW his parents gave him, with the glorious scenery of sunny California behind him, declaring that his “suffering” was the justification for murdering random strangers.

People who are truly suffering — somewhere in the slums of Calcutta, perhaps — must be amazed that this rich kid thought of himself as a victim. But this is where the celebration of “equality” leads. Anyone who is unhappy or unpopular considers themselves to be oppressed somehow, and the imaginary unfairness of their predicament becomes a grievance that inspires them to do crazy and dangerous things. Some of them become murderers. And others become Democratic voters.

 Crazy People Are Dangerous.




 

Category: Crime

Carjacking While Pregnant

Posted on | May 30, 2022 | 1 Comment

Perhaps the CDC should issue guidelines on this subject, although most expectant mothers probably don’t need to be told this: Engaging in armed carjacking is not recommended during pregnancy.

This is a story told in three headlines:

Suspect hospitalized following
officer-involved shooting in KCMO
— KCTV

Witness says Kansas City police
fired at woman running from officers
in parking lot
— Kansas City Star

Kansas police shoot
pregnant Black woman five times
despite having her hands up: witness
— Raw Story

Notice how the headline changes from one story to the next, even though the facts (known or alleged) are the same in all three stories.

According to police, there was a report of an armed carjacking in Kansas City, Kansas, with the dispatcher broadcasting a detailed description of the stolen vehicle, including the license plate number. On the other side of the Missouri River, in Kansas City, Missouri, police located the vehicle in the parking lot of a Family Dollar store about 8 p.m. Friday:

Two police vehicles with two officers approached the suspect vehicle.
At that point, the male driver ran away northeast and two officers pursued.
The female passenger in the suspect vehicle, identified as 26-year-old Leonna Hale, then got out and fled into the parking lot.

That’s from the KCTV report, published just two hours after the Friday night shooting. By Sunday evening, the Kansas City Star had this:

A witness said a woman had her hands up moments before she was shot multiple times by Kansas City police officers Friday night in a store parking lot. Shédanja, who declined to provide her last name, said the woman was trying to run from officers when they fired at her. . . .
Shédanja, 29, said she went to the store with her three children to get gasoline and ice cream.
She heard officers start yelling, “Get out the car,” to two people who were in the vehicle next to hers. A man exited, jumped a fence and ran. Three officers chased after him, she said.
The woman exited the car with her hands up, Shédanja said. Officers told the woman to get on the ground, but the woman told them she was pregnant, Shédanja said, and couldn’t get down on the ground.
Police asked her to get down multiple times. The woman then told police there was a gun in the vehicle. The woman started backing toward a fence in the parking lot. Several officers approached her and had their weapons drawn, Shédanja said.
“She did not pull out a weapon on them,” she said. “She did not even have a stick in her hand.”
The woman ran three steps away from officers, Shédanja said, and police shot five times.

If this account is accurate, certainly it seems like a “bad shoot,” as they say, and the state police have been called in to investigate.

Why does Raw Story feel it necessary to insert the racial angle in their headline? We don’t know the race of the officers involved in this shooting, but the interim police chief in Kansas City,  Joseph Mabin, happens to be black, and he has promised that his department will cooperate fully with the state police investigation.

Probably there will be policy bodycam and/or dashcam video of this incident, as well as store surveillance video of the parking lot. If such videos are available, then we won’t have to rely on the testimony of Shédanja or any other witnesses to know what happened.

It does not seem, based on what we’ve been told so far, that this shooting was justified, but it seems safe to assume that Chief Mabin is not engaged in a cover-up of a racially-motivated crime. Therefore, all we need to do is wait for the state police to complete their investigation, then the facts will be completely known. Regardless of what the facts may turn out to be, in regard to the shooting, what will be most interesting to learn is why a pregnant woman was a passenger in this vehicle, which was reportedly stolen in an armed carjacking. Did she know it was stolen? Was she a participant in the alleged carjacking? The backstory of this crime must be fascinating, so I’ll try to remember to update if and when we learn it.




 

Category: Crime, Missouri

Aspiring Rapper Update: Frères Jacques

Posted on | May 30, 2022 | Comments Off on Aspiring Rapper Update: Frères Jacques

Say hello to Kenard Jacques, Ahmad Jacques and Ameko Jacques of Miami, who are in custody for multiple crimes that include murder charges against Kenard and Ahmad. Two months ago (“Aspiring Rapper Update: ‘Baby Cino’ Gets Out of Jail, Immediately Gets Shot Dead”) we told you the story of Timothy Starks, a/k/a “Baby Cino,” who was only 20 years old when he “died in the hail of gunfire,” shot in broad daylight shortly after he got bailed out of jail. More than 40 shots were fired in that ambush, and “Baby Cino” died while “still wearing the wristband given to inmates at the Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center.”

We are now learning the motive for the murder of “Baby Cino”:

Three brothers are behind bars in connection to a quadruple shooting, and two of them are facing murder charges.
Investigators now say that the quadruple shooting is connected to another shooting on the Palmetto Expressway that shut down traffic for hours.
Now, at least two of those brothers are behind bars for the murder of Troyvon Smith, 26, that happened in February 2022 in northwest Miami-Dade.
This isn’t the first time these brothers have been behind bars.
Kemard Jacques and his brother Ahmad Jacques both face first-degree murder charges and faced a judge.
Police say the two were involved in Smith’s murder. Investigators say six men were involved, including Timothy Starks.
Starks, known as Miami rapper Baby Cino, was shot to death on the Palmetto back in March. Detectives now say his death was likely in retaliation for Smith’s murder.
According to police, Starks had set up the car rentals for those two Mercedes sedans involved and even paid for them to be cleaned after.
Kemard and Ahmad’s brother, Ameko Jacques, also appeared in front of a judge. Police say he was an accomplice in the quadruple shooting in northwest Miami-Dade.
Ameko Jacques was also the driver police arrested for a hit-and-run crash in Brickell in December 2022, when two college students were walking along Southeast 7th Street were hit and seriously injured.
We’re also learning that Kemard Jacques has a lengthy rap sheet. He was shot at in Miami Gardens in 2014 and arrested for bringing a gun inside Miami Northwestern Senior High when he was a teen.
Police say Ahmad was actually hit with a bullet in that quadruple shooting, and say he had somehow gotten shot in the arm and drove one of those Mercedes to the hospital.

Here’s the background on that February shooting:

Three people were shot and critically wounded and a fourth was killed in an ambush-style shooting in Northwest Miami-Dade late Wednesday afternoon [], according to Miami-Dade police.
A group of men pulled up in two newer model sedans — one black and one white — in the area of Northwest 99th Street and 21st Court, just after 4 p.m., according to police spokesman Alvaro Zabaleta. The men then jumped out of the cars and ran over to the victims, who were on foot, and began shooting. After a barrage of gunshots, he added, the men ran back to their sedans and drove off.
The white sedan headed east on 100th street; the black one headed west.
“They were clearly targeted,” Zabaleta said. “This occurred at 4:12 in the afternoon and there were multiple rounds fired and we could have had more people that had nothing to do with this become victims of the gun violence.”
On Thursday, police named Troyvon Smith, 26, as the man who was shot and killed.
According to Zabaleta, officers responding to a ShotSpotter alert found three wounded men on the street. Smith died at the scene, and two others were taken to Jackson Memorial Hospital’s Ryder Trauma Center in critical condition.

So, “Baby Cino” rented the cars that were used in the February shooting that killed Smith and wounded three others. Someone — associates of Smith, we may presume — then put the hit on “Baby Cino,” and now the Jacques brothers, associates of “Baby Cino,” are behind bars in connection to Smith’s murder. Recall the definition:

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.”

Miami has a large “aspiring rapper” population, and the violent deaths and arrests among them barely make a dent in that population.

PREVIOUSLY:




 

Category: Aspiring Rapper Update, Florida

Late Night With Rule 5 Sunday: Dorothy Lamour

Posted on | May 30, 2022 | 1 Comment

— compiled by Wombat-socho

May 29 is Bob Hope‘s birthday, but since Bob doesn’t exactly meet our Rule 5 criteria, let’s instead enjoy this pic of his frequent co-star in the famous Road movies, Dorothy Lamour.

Ceterum autem censeo Silicon Valley esse delendam.

NINETY MILES FROM TYRANNY: Hot Pick of the Late Night, The 90 Miles Mystery Box Episode #1729, Morning Mistress, and Girls With Guns. 

ANIMAL MAGNETISM: Rule 5 Energy Reality Friday, and the Saturday Gingermageddon.

EBL: Memorial Day Weekend Military Nurses, Ice Mining On The Moon, The Lincoln Lawyer, Taylor Ham Vs. Pork Roll, Ukrainian Spring Planting, Baby Formula, Night Sky, and Khatia Buniatishvili.

A VIEW FROM THE BEACH: Laura Vandervoot, Fish Pic Friday – Motivator Fitness Fishing, Gone Fishin’, Shoulda, They’s Owed Them Crabs, A remarkable Recovery, Tuesday Tanlines, ‘I Don’t Know How Much Worse It Can Get’, The Monday Morning Stimulus, Scientists Seek To Fix Bird Blenders and Palm Sunday

Thanks to everyone for all the luscious links!

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Shop Sex & Sensuality Gifts




Category: Rule 5

Everybody Hates Amber Heard

Posted on | May 29, 2022 | Comments Off on Everybody Hates Amber Heard

For reasons related to testimony in Johnny Depp’s defamation suit against his ex-wife Amber Heard, two of the popular Twitter hashtags about the trial are #AmberTurd and #MePoo. While we don’t know what verdict the jury will reach — it’s very difficult for a public figure to win a defamation case in America because of the Sullivan precedent — clearly Johnny Depp has scored a victory in the court of public opinion.

How badly did the trial go for Amber Heard? Bad enough that the liberal media had to blame the public reaction on “right-wing extremists”:

The narrative of the trial has been shaped in part by what appears to be, according to multiple researchers, an army of bots spreading rhetoric favorable to Depp. One researcher found more bots favorable to Heard, but said most of those bots were from third-party apps trying to capitalize on the trial; meanwhile, they found the highest pro-Depp bot post was shared nearly 20,000 times. The work of those bots has been further amplified by “men’s rights activists” — the part of the far-right-leaning extremist “manosphere” that seems to have decided discrediting Amber Heard is the key to destroying every woman who accuses men of abuse or domestic violence.
Conservative media outlets have also promoted a one-sided narrative of the case; Vice recently reported that Ben Shapiro’s popular conservative news platform the Daily Wire has spent nearly $50,000 promoting ads about the trial on Instagram and Facebook — most of it trashing Amber Heard. The presence of these bad actors has, if anything, only exacerbated the vitriol Heard has received within the mainstream.

So, if the Daily Wire sees this high-profile celebrity trial as an opportunity to attract more readers, then their $50,000 ad buy means they’re responsible for “vitriol” against Amber Heard? But the online reactions we’re seeing — including the memorable reaction of Iraq War veteran Kurt Myers — seem to be organic, based entirely on ordinary people’s experience of watching the trial on TV. Which I haven’t done, by the way. I’ve never been a fan of “pack journalism,” scrambling to compete with a swarm of other reporters and commentators all covering the same story. My preferred mode of operation is to find some angle everybody else is ignoring and try to turn that into a story. So I’m not one of those people who watched every minute of the trial and issued daily updates on the proceedings. My position on Amber Heard remains what it was long before the trial began: Never trust a bisexual.

Your honor, I rest my case.




 

Category: Celebrities
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