The Other McCain

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

Who Is Charlie Warzel and Why Do I Feel This Urge to Give Him a Brutal Fisking?

Posted on | May 5, 2022 | Comments Off on Who Is Charlie Warzel and Why Do I Feel This Urge to Give Him a Brutal Fisking?

Honestly, this was a rabbit hole I never intended to go down. Like, why should I spend more than an hour scrolling through Google search results to try to assemble a biographical sketch of an obscure journalist? But today I glanced at Memeorandum and spotted this headline:

Why Are the Right Such Sore Winners?
Even when they win, they still play victim.

My first thought was, “What? Somebody’s trying to out-do Amanda Duarte in the ‘Worst Hot Take’ competition?” You see this is Charlie Warzel’s spin on the leaked Supreme Court draft opinion that’s caused such an uproar this week that Justice Samuel Alito had to cancel a scheduled appearance at a judicial conference because of death threats.

The obtuseness of Warzel’s spin, we’ll get to in a minute, but first, exactly who is this guy? He is from the suburbs of Philadelphia. In fact, I think Warzel and Jack Posobiec grew up in the same town in Montgomery County, which is kind of weird if you think about it. Like, what are the odds that two people so diametrically opposed would both be from the same suburb of Philly? At any rate, while Posobiec was attending a Catholic school, Warzel attended an elite prep school founded by Quakers. Annual tuition at The Shipley School in Bryn Mawr is about $43,000, which strikes me as lunacy. Warzel’s parents paid $160,000+ just for his high school education? My efforts to locate the source of the Warzel family fortune failed, so I don’t know if one Charlie’s ancestors was an Astor, a Fisk or some other 19th-century robber baron, but you’ve got to figure his folks must be loaded to send their kid to such a posh prep school, and his choice of college also screams “Trust Fund Baby.”

Hamilton College in Clinton, N.Y., is one of those pricey little sub-Ivy liberal arts schools where rich parents send their kids whose SATs weren’t quite good enough for Princeton or Dartmouth. Admission is somewhat selective (18% of applicants are admitted), but only the scions of wealthy families would bother applying, because the annual cost of attending Hamilton is $75,200 including room and board. So having spent more than $40,000 a year to send young Charlie to The Shipley School, the Warzels then spent roughly $300,000 for their boy to get his diploma from Hamilton. Privilege, with a capital “P.”

Damn, I’ll never understand rich liberals. If I had that kind of money, my politics would be somewhere to the right of Pinochet, and yet America’s affluent elite are apparently so burdened with guilt it’s a wonder they haven’t committed mass suicide and willed their fortunes to UNICEF.

Liberalism is like a fashion statement for the wealthy. Think of Lenny Bernstein throwing a soiree for the Panthers at his swanky Upper East Side penthouse. One imagines that not only the Warzel family, but everyone they know in the Montgomery County suburbs of Philly would be scandalized if Charlie had grown up to be a Trump voter.

“It’s simply not done,” they’d scold him. “We didn’t pay to send you to those schools so you could embarrass us like this.”

But Charlie made ’em proud, landing “an internship at NBC News, where he assisted in the production of Meet the Press with David Gregory, ultimately leading to stints with MSNBC’s Morning Joe—co-hosted by Joe Scarborough, Mika Brzezinski, and Willie Geist—and NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams.” A couple years after graduation from Hamilton, Warzel joined Buzzfeed where he was a “senior writer” for six years before scoring a gig at the New York Times, not to mention a book deal, and then joined The Atlantic. Somewhere along the way, he relocated to Missoula, Montana, which I suppose is easy to do if your job is writing about stuff on the Internet and you’re a descendant of Jay Gould or the Rockefellers or whatever. But I digress . . .

Charlie Warzel is plenty miffed at Republicans:

I want to take a moment and share a few observations about the GOP reaction to the leaked draft opinion of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade (with the obvious caveat that scope of the decision could still change before it becomes public next month).
I’d like to be very clear up front: The reaction to this opinion and the political jockeying is a second-order story compared to the actual, dire consequences for real people once states begin to criminalize abortion (and this is, in fact, the reason why the right is obsessing over it). And yet this reaction is important to understand as a tool in the broader right-wing culture war. What we’ve seen over the last day or so is a tried-and-true example of their sore-winners complex. . . .

(Notice he begins with the first-person singular “I,” which my teachers taught me to avoid, but perhaps the instructors at The Shipley School taught Charlie otherwise. At any rate, Charlie doesn’t want to talk about the Supreme Court’s decision, nor about the unprecedented leaking of a draft opinion, but rather “the GOP reaction,” which he insists his readers must “understand as a tool in the broader right-wing culture war.” By the way, to any journalism students who might happen to be reading this, permit me to advise avoiding trite phrases like “tried-and-true.”)

It is absolutely no secret that ending Roe has been the right’s political project for decades. As the writer Lyz Lenz said on Monday, “It’s always been the plan. And it’s never been a secret. The plan has been shouted at rallies. Held up on signs. It’s been plotted and spoken of and written about over and over.” The leaked opinion is that plan coming to fruition—the success of a long game of often-shameless political maneuvering. Republican reaction to the leak was, of course, faux outrage. . . .

(True, opposition to abortion — and specifically overturning Roe v. Wade — has been on the conservative agenda “for decades,” in quite the same way that imposing same-sex marriage nationwide was on the liberal agenda “for decades” before the Obergefell decision. However, the leaking of a draft opinion, weeks ahead of when the Supreme Court was expected to issue its ruling on the Mississippi case, was self-evidently calculated to bring pressure on the justices, an attempt to use protest mobs to intimidate the court. It is not unusual for there to be rumors of which way the Supreme Court is leaning on a decision, but this business of leaking a draft opinion is unprecedented, as far as I’m aware. Whatever you say about Republican reaction, their outrage about this leak is certainly not “faux.”)

But the focus on the leak over the substance is telling.
First, it is an act of deflection geared toward minimizing the sweeping and radical nature of this ruling. Not only is a majority of the American public in support of abortion rights and against the overturning of Roe v. Wade, but, as my colleague Adam Serwer argued, “in the U.S., the rights of many marginalized groups are tied to the legal precedents established in the fight for abortion rights. This opinion, if adopted, provides a path to nullifying those rights one by one.” . . .

(Wow, way to line up those dominoes and tip them all over at once. After declaring the draft opinion to be of a “sweeping and radical nature” — hint, not really — Warzel invites his reader to go flying down the slippery slope as all “the rights of many marginalized groups” are wiped out in the blink of an eye. Some of us, who would be to the right of Pinochet if we could afford it, might wish it were so, except that a careful reading of Alito’s draft discloses no such radicalism. All the ruling would do is to return us to the pre-Roe situation, in which laws regulating abortion were decided by state legislatures. The Burger court had no business arrogating to itself the authority to void the laws of 49 states, which is what Roe did, and if it took nearly 50 years to end that usurpation of authority, that’s only because the liberals were so firmly entrenched in the judiciary that even many Republicans didn’t know how they could ever be uprooted. So while we might, in our Pinochet-loving fantasies, dream of the oppression to be inflicted on “marginalized groups” as a consequence of Alito’s ruling, no such result is likely, no matter what that hysterical idiot Adam Serwer says.)

It is in the best interest of the right to obfuscate and downplay the monumental implications of such a ruling — especially until it is officially enshrined by the court. And the best way to do that is by ginning up a political scandal. Leak obsession and speculation happens to be a favorite topic in the political press especially — this is a media story, but it is also a story about power struggles inside a famously opaque institution.
It is, in other words, a story that mainstream news organizations find impossible to resist covering and prioritizing. . . .

(Speaking of obfuscation, notice how easily Warzel slides over that phrase “until it is officially enshrined by the court,” which would seem to be a tacit admission that the purpose of the leak was to prevent such an enshrinement. Such an admission, however, would give away the game — i.e., the outrage over the leak is legitimate, if such was the leaker’s intent — and so Warzel doesn’t want his readers to think too much about this attempt to apply external pressure on the court, but rather to focus on the nefarious tactics of Republicans.)

Second, the sore-winners tactic is also an example of the sheer relentlessness of the far-right’s culture warring. Political wins are celebrated internally, but externally each victory is treated as an opportunity to double down on a victimization narrative and politics of grievance. . . .

(Projection much, Charlie? The entire stock in trade of the liberal movement is about victimhood — everybody’s “oppressed” and deprived of their “rights,” and the only way to remedy this is to vote Democrat! The liberal narrative features a rotating cast of “marginalized” victims — one week, it’s criminals shot by cops, the next week, it’s college graduates who can’t pay back their student loans — and if you want to talk about “sheer relentlessness,” nobody could hope to exceed the LGBTQ movement in inventing new grievances. Anyway, after a lot of blah, blah, blah about Orange Man Bad, Warzel finally reaches his conclusion.)

The sore-winner complex highlights a fundamental asymmetry between the style of culture warring employed by the left and right. The right’s vision is ahistorical and logically confused, but more importantly, it is relentless. There is no appeasing this type of politics. It is a politics that will manage to use its victories to stoke additional fears inside its voters. For the media, there is no amount of evenhanded or both-sides coverage that will get the right to back down from calling the press illegitimate, biased, and corrupt. For non-Republican politicians, there is no amount of bipartisan language or good faith attempts at dialogue or engagement that will inspire bipartisanship, compromise, and a desire for majority rule. For the right, even in victory, there is only grievance and fear. 

What this prep-school alumnus is actually telling us is that conservatives have learned to play the same game that Democrats have been playing forever. Whose vision is “ahistorical,” Mr. Warzel? You seem to have forgotten all the fear-stoking and grievance-mongering that Democrats have done over the years. How about this one?

“Romney wants to — he said in the first hundred days
he’s going to let the big banks once again
write their own rules. Unchain Wall Street!
They’re going to put y’all back in chains.”

Really? You forgot that one? You know who the “y’all” Biden was referencing during that 2012 campaign speech in Virginia? As if Mitt Romney, of all people, was some kind of closet segregationist? Oh, spare me your lectures about “faux outrage” and imaginary “grievance,” Mr. Wurzel. What really bothers you is that, in the post-Trump era, some Republicans have finally wised up to the way Democrats have been playing this game, and are now playing it even better. Speaking of this leaked draft, by the way, it’s had the unexpected effect of causing some Democrats to declare their enthusiasm for late-term abortion, a stance which isn’t likely to play well in swing states like Ohio. Hit it, J.D.!

Yeah, that’s gonna leave a mark. Reckon Democrats can kiss their Senate majority good-bye and it’s only a matter of time before the Republican regime is dropping liberals out of helicopters.

Augusto Pinochet could not be reached for comment.




 

Category: Abortion, Liberals, Supreme Court

In The Mailbox: 05.04.22 (Evening Edition)

Posted on | May 5, 2022 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 05.04.22 (Evening Edition)

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Silicon Valley delenda est.

Yep.

OVER THE TRANSOM
Ninety Miles From Tyranny: The 90 Miles Mystery Box Episode #1707
357 Magnum: How Is That Bail Reform Working Out?
EBL: Trannies Gone Wild – Dave Chappelle Attacked On Stage, also, Biden & The Slaughter Of The Innocents
Twitchy: Rand Paul Beats SecDHS Mayorkas With The “Disinformation” Truth Hammer For Several Minutes
Louder With Crowder: Bill Gates Stutters & Squirms When Called Out For Epstein Friendship
Vox Popoli: We Don’t KNOW, also, The Decreasing Utility Of Email

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Conservative: The War For Globalism In Ukraine
American Greatness: Fighting The Cathedral, also, The Case Against The Border Wall Is Crumbling
American Power: Inside The New Right, also, Do We Need A Capitalist Civil War?
American Thinker: Normalizing Perversion, also, Why The Democrats Can Expect To Lose A Lot Of Elections
Animal Magnetism: Animal’s Hump Day News
Babalu Blog: Champion Wrestler, Olympic Medalist Defects In Mexico, also, Pope Blames NATO For Invasion Of Ukraine, Refuses (Again) To Denounce Tyrants
BattleSwarm: Roe v. Wade Overturned – The “No Earthquake” Scenario, also, Former Abbott Aide Now Soros Lobbyist
Behind The Black: Today’s Blacklisted American, Fish & Wildlife Documents Reveal Their Objections To SpaceX Boca Chica Site, and Biden’s NASA Administrator Slams Cost-Plus Contracts He Endorsed As Senator
Cafe Hayek: On Keeping Concepts Clear
CDR Salamander: Lessons Never Learned, Accountability Never Achieved
Chicago Boyz: The Dictatorship Of Theory
Da Tech Guy: Social Justice Warriors & The Academy, also, The Cost Of A Stolen Election In Two Biscuits
Don Surber: Trump Triumphs, Woke Disney Has Been A Loser Stock For Five Years, and Lefties Blame RBG For Roe Reversal
First Street Journal: Hold Them Accountable! also, CDC Still Pimping Masks On Public Transportation 
Gates Of Vienna: Red Dragon, Dead Dragon, The Green Nuclear War Machine, and The Ottoman Empire Strikes Back
The Geller Report: Trump Sweep – All 22 Trump-Endorsed Candidates Win In Indiana & Ohio, also, Repairman Who Revealed Hunter Biden’s Laptop Sues CNN, Daily Beast, Politico, & Rep. Schiff For Defamation
Hogewash: Team Kimberlin Post of The Day, In Re Stare Decisis, and Sonification – Eta Carinae
Hollywood In Toto: Can Meg Ryan Revive The Rom-Com? also, Dave Chappelle Attacked On Stage – What Happens Next?
The Lid: Think Gas Prices Are Too High? Just Wait
Legal Insurrection: Sen. Manchin Questions Need For Expanding EV Tax Credit, UC Considers Ending Letter Grade System Due To “Bias & Inequities”, and Media Matters Threatens Advertiser Boycott Of Twitter
Michelle Malkin: Aborti-Mania – The Perfectly Planned Meltdown
Nebraska Energy Observer: SCOTUS Leak – What’s The Fuss?
Outkick: NFL Mad At Lions for Not Spending More Time On #2 Pick, Kurt Warner Sacks Ryan Tannehill For Refusing To Mentor Malik Willis, and J.J. Reddick Gets Emotional When Chris Russo Tells Draymond Green To “Shut Up & Play”
Power Line: Sellout to Red China In Progress, also, Forget Star Wars, How About Chart Wars?
Shark Tank: Fla. Education Dept. Removes Woke Material From Textbooks
Shot In The Dark: Will The Real Donald Trump Please Stand Up? also, The IRGC & Mahdism
STUMP:
The Political Hat: Fight, But For What? also, Pronoun Gender Madness – Woke Irish, Punishing “Misgendering”, and Suspended For Asserting There Are Two Genders
This Ain’t Hell: Army Officer Convicted At First Known COVID Court-Martial
Transterrestrial Musings: Tik Tok, Take Them To The Cleaners, and Who Needs The Blood Of The Young
Victory Girls: Gutfeld Calls Occasional Cortex “An Entitled Sponge”
Volokh Conspiracy: Should The FCC Block Elon Musk From Buying Twitter?
Watts Up With That: A Stake Through The Heartland, also, Samantha Power & The Green New Famine
Weasel Zippers: MIT Study Finds The Jab Causes Heart Attacks, also, LA Abortion Protest Goes Exactly As You’d Think
The Federalist: Five Ways Democrat Policies Work To Destroy Childrens’ Lives, After Ivermectin Freakout, Left Now Pushes Actual Horse Meds For DIY Abortions, and Vincent College Reacts Hysterically To Hillsdale Prof’s Presentation On “Racial Hysteria”
Mark Steyn: COVID & Chaos

Amazon Warehouse Deals




Category: Linkagery

The Endless Grift of ‘Literally Who?’

Posted on | May 4, 2022 | Comments Off on The Endless Grift of ‘Literally Who?’

Last week, I mentioned Brianna Wu, a/k/a John Walker Flynt, the psychotranny drama queen who inserted herself into the #GamerGate controversy in 2014 and simply won’t let go of her 15 minutes of “fame” (such as it was). In the comments of that post, Wombat remarked: “Literally Who is crying again? We’ll give her something to cry about!” In case you don’t get that reference, the #GamerGate crew dubbed the three self-anointed “victims” as Literally Who (Zoe Quinn), Literally Who 2 (Anita Sarkeesian) and Literally Who 3 (Wu), the point of these sobriquets being that practically nobody in the videogame development community had ever heard of these people until #GamerGate happened. Quinn (a/k/a the Tattoo-Covered, Mentally Ill Ex-Stripper Whose Real Name Is Chelsea Van Valkenburg) had done one really crappy, primitive game called Depression Quest, Sarkeesian had done nothing except some YouTube videos applying critical theory to games, and Wu had done a boring game called Revolution 60 that almost nobody ever played. But then the Great #GamerGate Victimhood Derby of 2014 got underway and by October 2015 there were literally hearings at the United Nations (!!!) with Zoe and Anita testifying about “harassment.”

Never in history had such previously obscure nobodies become “famous,” except perhaps Gavrilo Princip, Lee Harvey Oswald, et al.

Zoe, Anita and Briann’s claims of victimhood were dubious; the FBI investigated and, except for a juvenile in the Midwest who’d made harassing phone calls, found no crimes against these high-profile victims. When the noise died down, the headlines faded and the media spotlight turned elsewhere, most of us forgot about the “Literally Who?” gang.

Alas, grifters gotta grift, and while I have no idea how Zoe and Anita are paying their bills nowadays, Wu has decided that progressive politics is her bag, which she promotes constantly on Twitter.

Notice that Wu talks about fundraising for “our congressional runs” as the foundation of the PAC formed with Cenk Uygur. How did those campaigns turn out? In 2018, Wu challenged Massachusetts Rep. Stephen Lynch in the Democratic primary and lost by 48 points, 71%-23%. After announcing another primary challenge to Lynch in 2020, Wu quit the race in April 2020, citing COVID-19 concerns. Uygur, meanwhile, jumped into the 2020 special election for California’s 25th District, which was vacated by disgraced Rep. Katie Hill’s resignation. In the so-called “jungle primary,” Uygur placed fourth, with 10,699 votes (6.6%), and in the subsequent runoff, Republican Mike Garcia won the seat. Uygur ran again in the regular election, again placing fourth in the primary, with 9,246 votes (5.9%) and, again, Garcia went on to win the seat. Such is the electoral record of the co-founders of Rebellion PAC.

If you’re going to research Brianna, eventually you must find yourself plowing through the extensive dossier on her at KiwiFarms. Today, I noticed this KiwiFarms entry about Rebellion PAC:

Compare and contrast Wu’s self review (“I am a great project manager.”) vs what James Tison had to say:

Mainly though, I found the executive director’s management style to be chaotic, aggressive, and not great with boundaries (for myself and in the way she treated various freelancers). Instructions that made no sense, constantly changing deadlines and expectations, and a general aura of overt bossiness.

Who is this James Tison?

According to his LinkedIn profile, for six months (August 2020 to January 2021), Tison was Production Coordinator for Rebellion PAC:

** Multi-million dollar Clean Progressive PAC ran by Cenk Uygur (The Young Turks) and Executive Director Brianna Wu
** Right-hand person to the Executive Director
** Produced, wrote, researched, and story edited 30+ political ads that ran throughout the 2020 cycle, working closely with editors to meet deadlines
** Participated in endorsement interview process for 10+ congressional candidates
** Opposition research on numerous conservative candidates
** Produced and organized digital events (talkbacks, fundraisers), managing communications with congressional candidates and The Young Turks network.
** Managed social media, helped quadruple the following on all platforms
** Researched, authorized, and executed ad buys in local tv and radio markets throughout country
** Aided Cenk Uygur directly with interview prep for his YouTube channel (1 Million subscribers)

This was Tison’s experience with the “chaotic” Brianna Wu, who exhibited “a general aura of overt bossiness” — allegedly, I hasten to add, as I don’t have the original source for that Tison quote on KiwiFarms. Even if we stipulate that the quote is authentic, it must be added that Tison is not himself exactly a pillar of emotional stability.


So much, then, for the former Production Coordinator for Wu’s PAC. What have they been up to lately at Rebellion PAC? While I don’t know how much money they’ve raised, Wu made a lot of noise on Twitter about the bang-up job they were doing in support of left-wing kook Nina Turner in her Democratic primary challenge against Rep. Shontel Brown in Ohio’s 11th District (Cleveland). Care to guess how that turned out?

Yes! A 32-point blowout victory for Brown! A completely humiliating defeat for Turner and her Rebellion PAC supporters. Just a wild guess here, but maybe Brianna Wu a/k/a John Walker Flynt doesn’t exactly have his/her finger on the pulse of voters in Cuyahoga County, Ohio.

Way to go, Madame Executive Director — wasting donor money on doomed kook candidates who get stomped in Democratic primaries. Please, offer more strategic help to “progressives”!

Translation: “Grifters gotta grift.” The entirety of her message can be summarized as, “Give us more money, because ‘progressive’!” And the truly sad thing is that there are plenty of “progressives” who will keep donating, because only extremely gullible people believe that “progressive” crap, and if nothing else, Brianna Wu knows how to get these chumps to fork over money for “the progressive vision.”




 

Category: Democrats

Some Ladies Love the Bad Boys

Posted on | May 4, 2022 | Comments Off on Some Ladies Love the Bad Boys

In December 2015, Casey Cole White went on a violent crime spree in two counties on either side of the Alabama-Tennessee border:

In one night, he staged a home invasion and carjacked two vehicles at gunpoint, shooting one person in the arm, WHNT reports.
At the home, he fired multiple rounds and killed a dog.
The crimes were followed by a chase where speeds reached more than 100 miles per hour.
It ended with a stolen car stuck in a field south of Huntsville, and officers — who were evidently well known to him — pleading with him to put down his gun and give himself up.
He was charged with attempted murder, two counts of kidnapping, first-degree robbery, first-degree burglary, third-degree burglary, breaking and entering a vehicle, animal cruelty for shooting a dog and attempting to elude.

White was sentenced to 75 years in prison where, in 2020, he sent a letter to authorities in Lauderdale County, Alabama, to whom he confessed the October 2015 murder of 59-year-old Connie Ridgeway, who was killed in her apartment in the tiny town of Rogersville, about midway between Florence and Athens, Alabama. Despite his confession, White pleaded not guilty at his arraignment, and was in jail awaiting trial for Ridgeway’s murder when he somehow struck up a romantic relationship with a female jail guard named Vicky Sue White. She helped her new boyfriend escape, and both of them are now wanted fugitives.

She had worked nearly 20 years at the Lauderdale Detention Center and authorities were stunned to discover that she’d been in a relationship with an accused murderer for nearly two years. But Vicky Sue White, 57, had been dealing with an invalid husband who died in January after a long struggle with Parkinson’s disease. Her late husband’s mother speculated that Vickey Sue had been “brainwashed” by Casey White: “Maybe he’s got her brainwashed. But I don’t know how he’d have had a chance to get her brainwashed, because he was in prison.” However, there is a word for what likely happened:

Hybristophilia is a sexual interest in and attraction to those who commit crimes, a paraphilia in which sexual arousal, facilitation, and attainment of orgasm are responsive to and contingent upon being with a partner known to have committed a crime. . . . In popular culture, this phenomenon is also known as “Bonnie and Clyde syndrome”.
Many high-profile criminals, particularly those who have committed atrocious crimes, receive “fan mail” in prison that is sometimes amorous or sexual, presumably as a result of this phenomenon. In some cases, admirers of these criminals have gone on to marry the object of their affections in prison.

Some women just can’t resist “bad boys” and a murder suspect like Casey White might seem a strange choice of partners, but he is 6-foot-9, 260 pounds — almost any man that tall would have a strong appeal to many women (who always go for the tall guys, as if such attraction were hardwired into their DNA). But this is likely to be a fatal attraction, given his history of violence toward women, including the ex-girlfriend he attempted to murder during his 2015 crime spree:

Casey Cole White, the murder suspect who escaped from an Alabama jail Friday morning with the alleged help of a prison official, warned cops in 2015 that he’d kill his ex-girlfriend if he got the chance, according to court documents.
“He stated that he wanted to kill her and have the police kill him,” a police report from December of that year concludes. “His only regret was that neither was successful. He stated that if he was released he would kill the victim.”

This love story is unlikely to have a happy ending.




 

Category: Alabama, Crime

In The Mailbox: 05.04.22 (Morning Edition)

Posted on | May 4, 2022 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 05.04.22 (Morning Edition)

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Silicon Valley delenda est.

The state of the Union after the draft opinion leak

OVER THE TRANSOM
357 Magnum: Canada – It’s Cheaper To Kill The Poor Than Treat Their Illnesses
EBL: This Time Maybe Roberts Will Let You Kick It
Twitchy: “Chelsea” Manning, 2nd Amendment Advocate – Who Knew?
Louder With Crowder: Mike Rowe Drops Truth Bomb – Truckers Don’t Blame Putin For Bidenflation
Vox Popoli: Can You Say “Template”?, You Can’t Fight The Market, and Rumors Of Roe v. Wade
Stoic Observations: Self-Preservation & The Relegation Of Roe

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Conservative: Confessions Of A Conspiracy Theorist
American Greatness: Why Gov. Kemp Leads In Georgia Despite Trump’s Opposition
American Power: Abortion Fight Takes Center Stage On Capital Hill, Election Trail
American Thinker: Obama’s Fundamental Manipulation Of Free Speech
Animal Magnetism: Animal’s Daily Past Is Prelude News
Babalu Blog: Salaries In Cuba Place Entire Population Below The Poverty Line
BattleSwarm: Domestic Terrorist Dies
Behind The Black: Viasat Again Demands Government Block Competitor Starlink, Space Force Awards 125 Small Contracts To Develop Space Junk Removal & Satellite Repair, and Berger – The Media Should Ignore Rogozin
Cafe Hayek: On Protectionism & The Dignity Of Protected Workers
CDR Salamander: What Our Plucky NATO Friends Are Bringing To Sea
Da Tech Guy: Democrat Attacks On “Misinformation” Have Their Roots In Obama’s “Truth Squad”, Report From Louisiana – Senseless Violence, and Five SCOTUS Leak Thoughts Under The Fedora
Don Surber: Disney Spin Makes No Sense But Libs Embrace It, Politico – Roe v. Wade Reversed? and Why Musk Bought Twitter
First Street Journal: Isn’t This Interesting? also, Why Does A Newspaper Censor The News?
Gates Of Vienna: All Your Gas Are Belong To Us, also, Building The Caliphate In Sweden
The Geller Report: Elon Musk Blasts NBC After Host Suggests Republicans Are Nazis, also, Biden Regime’s “Asylum Officers” To Replace Immigration Judges
Hogewash: Team Kimberlin Post Of The Day, Black Hole Binary Systems, and What’s There & What’s Not
Hollywood In Toto: Could 2000 Mules Change The 2020 Election Narrative? also, Doctor Strange Ramps Up The Excitement, Exhaustion
The Lid: Lies Being Told About Leaked SCOTUS Document
Legal Insurrection: Should The ABA Be Stripped Of Its Monopoly Law School Accrediting Power?, NYU’s LGBTWTFBBQ Center Floats “Latine” As Replacement For “Latinx”, and NBC Anchor Caught Allegedly Meeting Underage Boy For Sex
Nebraska Energy Observer: Teaching Western Civ, also, Special Grand Jury
Outkick: Privilege – ESPN Renews Bomani Jones Show After Lowest Rated Season In Modern History, Jimmy Garoppalo’s Surgery Ruined 49ers Trade & Possibly Season Plans, and Goalie Mikayla Demaiter Back For Stanley Cup Run & Other Notes
Power Line: Green Nightmares, also, Astounding Leak From SCOTUS
Shark Tank: Fried Thinks DeSantis Will Ban Abortions In Florida
Shot In The Dark: Roe No Mo, Mom, and Trust But Verify
The Political Hat: A Veritable Commentary On Conservatism
This Ain’t Hell: More Details On Fired Marine General’s Transgressions, also, Biden Continuing To Shrink The Military
Transterrestrial Musings: Ukraine’s Second Amendment, also, Snowball Fights In Hell
Victory Girls: Vikings & Why The Left Hates Us, also, SCOTUS Leak – You Say You Want A Revolution?
Volokh Conspiracy: Google’s Spamgate, also, I’ve Finished Reading The Apparent Dobbs Draft Opinion
Watts Up With That: A Sense Of Proportion, also, Africa Wants Oil & Gas, Not UN/COP Poverty
Weasel Zippers: New Poll Finds Majority Of Latinos Prefer GOP To Democrats, also, Dem Rep Cori Bush Calls For End To Filibuster, Force Pro-Lifers To Fund Abortions
The Federalist: Five Times Democrats Insisted SCOTUS Must Be Obeyed Without Question, “Let’s Burn This Place Down”, and Bill Would Allow Feds To Purge Military & Local Police For Thoughtcrime
Mark Steyn: Attack Of The Ginger Growler, A Birthing Person’s Right To Choose, and A Woman’s Right To Leak

Amazon Warehouse Deals




Category: Linkagery

Worst Twitter ‘Hot Take’ Ever?

Posted on | May 3, 2022 | Comments Off on Worst Twitter ‘Hot Take’ Ever?

In the 24 hours since Politico leaked the draft of the Supreme Court majority decision which, evidently, will overturn Roe v. Wade, liberals have outdone themselves in piling up stupid “hot takes” on Twitter. None of them, however, exceeded the stupidity of Amanda Duarte’s take:

The English language lacks a word for this colossal level of stupidity. Duarte has described herself as a “barren, child-eating sex witch” (by which phrase, of course, she means she’s a feminist) who has done a series of performances that pass for “comedy” in New York City. The main inspiration for her performances is her divorce, after her husband of 15 years had an affair with a much-younger woman.

Gosh, I just can’t understand why he would do that.

She now is getting revenge (not only on her ex-husband, but also the world in general) by smoking a lot of weed and having sex with random strangers she meets on Tinder. Which, I suppose, makes her happy. The random strangers could not be reached for comment.

So after making the Worst Twitter “Hot Take” Ever, first Duarte deleted her account, then changed her mind, and issued an apology:

Duarte, who obviously never had any children herself, seems rather obsessed with other people’s reproductive activity and — although she is rather pallid herself — seems fixated on the idea that white people specifically are doing something wrong in this regard. And I certainly wouldn’t encourage anyone to harass her, because whatever wrong she has committed, no doubt it is punishment enough that she has to spend the rest of her life . . . as herself. What misery that must be!




 

Category: Abortion, Supreme Court

In The Mailbox: 05.02.22

Posted on | May 2, 2022 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 05.02.22

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Thanks to everyone who bought stuff through my Amazon links in March. Very much appreciated!
Silicon Valley delenda est.

This week’s downloadable content

OVER THE TRANSOM
357 Magnum: “Control Of Film, Radio, Theater, & The Press”
EBL: Biden’s Disinformation Czarina Is A Scary Freak, also, The Offer
Twitchy: Politico Reports SCOTUS Has Voted To Strike Down Roe v. Wade, also, “Controversial? Yes. Racist? NO.”
Louder With Crowder: Teacher Hosts Raunchy Drag Show For Kids Without Notifying Parents
Vox Popoli: A Refusal To Cooperate, The Second Front, and The Russians Are Doomed Again

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: It’s Just A Trick, also, Podcast #152 – The Order Episode
American Conservative: The Press Fumbles Again On Ukraine
American Greatness: The New Disinformationists, also, Portland Police Struggle To Respond To Antifa Attack On GOP Rally
American Power: Kathy Boudin Becomes Good Terrorist, also, Democrats Hemorrhaging Black Support In Cities
American Thinker: MiniTru Is Where The Rubber Meets The Road, also, The Impending Economic Crash
Animal Magnetism: Goodbye, Blue Monday
Babalu Blog: Cuba’s May 1 Parade – “The Buses We Haven’t Seen For Months Are Here”, also, Mexico’s Secret Deal To Buy Slave Doctors From The Castro Dictatorship
BattleSwarm: Tucker Carlson – #BLM Resulted In More Black Deaths, also, Observing 2022 Victims Of Communism Day
Behind The Black: Pushback – Sports Anchor Sues ESPN After Being Punished For Expressing Opinions On Her Own Time, Update On Dream Chaser, and Navigating A Rover On Mars
Cafe Hayek: Deficit Spending Is No Free Lunch, also, The Way We Talk Matters
CDR Salamander: NATO’s Naughty & Nice List
Da Tech Guy: One-Liners Under The Fedora, The Air Force’s Double Standard On Sexual Assault, and Let Me Ask Just One Question
Don Surber: Call It Don’t Groom Kids, Biden Ignored The Polls & Faceplanted, and Democrats Want 10-Year-Olds To Read Gay Porn
First Street Journal: Hold Them Accountable! also, “It’s A Stinking Business, Mr. Rutledge, A Stinking Business!”
Gates Of Vienna: To Defeat Putin You Must Go Without, Trouble With A Capital P, and Blowing In The Wind
The Geller Report: The Evidence Of 2020 Election Fraud You’ve Been Waiting For, also, Ron DeSantis Announces Plans To Go After Biden’s DGB
Hogewash: Team Kimberlin Post Of The Day, What’s Up For May 2022, and Cancer Ward
Hollywood In Toto: Why The Original Cat People Trumps The R-Rated Remake, also, Amazon’s Outlaws Shows We Really Can Get Along
The Lid: Pelosi Visits Kiev – Haven’t The Ukrainians Suffered Enough? also, Ford Posts $3.1 Billion Loss Over Electric Car Gamble
Legal Insurrection: Administrators At UW-Superior Help Students Plan Matt Walsh Protest, U. Iowa Course Allegedly Teaches CRT Despite State Ban, and Why Aren’t Colleges Helping To Pay Off Student Loan Debt?
Nebraska Energy Observer: Random Observations, also, Musings
Outkick: Stephon Marbury Calls Out Stephen A. Smith, Whether You Like Them Or Not, Tony Vitello & Tennessee Are Good For College Baseball, and NFL Investigation Finds Browns Didn’t Tank In 2016-17
Power Line: The Student Loan Scam, Solving The Deepest Questions, and Baghdad Bob Does DHS
Shark Tank: Wasserman-Schultz Goes Scorched Earth On DeSantis, GOP
Shot In The Dark: As Goes Sri Lanka, also, Coming Not To Bury But (Strange As It May Seem) Praise, 
STUMP: Troubled Multiemployer Pensions – Central States Teamsters Files For Bailout
The Political Hat: Victims Of Communism Day 2022
This Ain’t Hell: Army Officer Receives Promotion To Brigadier General 100 Years After His Death, Rumors Of His Demise Were False – He Never Existed, and Study Finds Troops Sent To Exile Attempt Suicide More Often
Transterrestrial Musings: The Mary Poppins Of Disinformation, also, Commemorating May 1
Victory Girls: White House Correspondents’ Dinner – Send In The Clowns, also, “Admiral” Levine Claims All Pediatricians Promote “Gender Affirming Care”
Volokh Conspiracy: Making Sense Of The Apparent Leaked Decision In Dobbs
Watts Up With That: Electric Bus Catches Fire After Battery Explosion, also, The World Has Gone Bonkers
Weasel Zippers: Leak From SCOTUS Suggests Court Will Overturn Roe v. Wade, Barricades Going Up Around Supreme Court As Liberals Threaten To “Burn The Motherf*****r Down”, and Biden Laughs As “Comedian” Describes How He’s Devastated Our Lives
The Federalist: Five Reasons Joe Biden Can’t Force Taxpayers To Pay Other Peoples’ Student Loans, Why Does YouTube Host A Channel That Teaches Kids About Porn & Abortion? and Interior Department Demands Thousands Of Dollars To Release Records On Critical Mine Cancellation
Mark Steyn: Second Time As Farce – Bogie, John Huston, & Beat The Devil, I’m A Woman, and Live On May Day Bank Holiday

Amazon Warehouse Deals




Category: Linkagery

Russian Generals Keep Getting Killed

Posted on | May 2, 2022 | Comments Off on Russian Generals Keep Getting Killed

This is either the ninth or 10th killed so far:

Russia has lost another general in Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, according to top Ukrainian officials, The Kyiv Post has reported
Maj. Gen. Andrei Simonov was killed near the city of Izyum in the Kharkiv region, which is currently occupied by Russian forces, Ukrainian authorities said.
The Ukrainian military attacked a field command post of the Russian 2nd Army on Saturday, striking more than 30 Russian armored vehicles, including tanks, according to the paper.
Footage posted on social media appears to show the command post being bombarded by rockets, said the Kyiv Post.
The general was among 100 Russian soldiers killed in the attack, President Zellenskyy’s military adviser Oleksiy Arestovych said, according to The Kyiv Post. Arestovych said well-placed army sources had confirmed the death of Maj. Gen. Simonov in a YouTube interview, per the Mail Online.
The claims by the Ukrainian authorities have not been independently verified.
Russia has not as of yet confirmed the death of Maj. Gen. Simonov.
Simonov was a senior commander of electronic warfare, Ukrainian government advisor Anton Gerashchenko said on his Telegram account.
His death would make him the tenth Russian general to die in Ukraine, according to a count by The Kyiv Post.

Different sources give different counts of how many Russian generals have been killed in Ukraine, but as I said the last time it happened, “Look, I know this might seem far-fetched, but hear me out. Maybe if you’re going to have a meeting of your army commanders, you should try to choose a location that is not within range of the enemy’s artillery.” You don’t need to be a military genius to figure this out. Meanwhile:

Vladimir Putin’s top military commander has been flown out of the war zone with shrapnel wounds after being to sent to Ukraine by the Russian president to secure victory, a former Russian internal affairs minister has claimed.
Valery Gerasimov, the chief of staff of the Russian army, was today wounded in Izyum in Ukraine’s Kharviv region, which has been at the centre of intense fighting since Russia’s invasion.
Putin had sent Gerasimov to the region to take personal control of his push to grab territory in eastern Ukraine, after the Russian army abandoned its plans to take Kyiv at the end of March in favour of a concentrated assault on the Donbas region of Donetsk and Luhansk.
An unofficial Russian source reported that Gerasimov sustained ‘a shrapnel wound in the upper third of the right leg without a bone fracture.
‘The shard was removed – there is no danger to life,’ he said.
But Gerasimov’s injury was severe enough to have him flown away from the frontlines and back to Russia to undergo further treatment, marking another embarrassing defeat for Putin’s forces. . . .
Ukrainian interior ministry adviser Anton Gerashchenko said the attack on Izyum was ‘the very place where…Gerasimov, who personally came to lead the attack on Slavyansk, was located’.
A ‘large number’ of senior officers were killed in the attack which wounded Gerasimov, Gerashchenko said.
Pro-Ukrainian Telegram channel Vertikal also alleged Gerasimov had been ‘wounded near Izyum’, citing unspecified sources.
‘Our source reports that his legs and hips are damaged,’ Vertikal said.
It suggested that three of Gerasimov’s entourage had been killed before he was evacuated.

Such a high number of casualties among senior leaders is certain to degrade the effectiveness of Russian forces, which haven’t been very effective so far, and it’s difficult to see how they can maintain offensive operations much longer. What’s happening in this war?

You can click that map to enlarge it. The Russian command post that was struck over the weekend was in Izyum (circled in the center of the map), and what the Russians want to do is to push south from there toward Sloviansk, about 30 miles to the south. Taking Sloviansk would put the Russians athwart the supply lines of Ukrainian forces operating farther east toward Luhansk. The tactical objective of the Ukrainians must be to isolate the Russians in the Izyum salient, and the fact that the Ukrainians were able to strike the Russian command post there suggests that the invaders have lost the initiative. If Ukraine can develop momentum in its counterattack, it’s possible that the Russian invasion could collapse rather quickly. Remember that the Russians went from besieging Kyiv to being forced to withdraw in just a matter of weeks.




 

Category: Russia, Ukraine
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