The Other McCain

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

Killadelphia Update

Posted on | April 26, 2022 | Comments Off on Killadelphia Update

Say hello to Rahajahi Taylor Batchelor, 19, who pleaded guilty earlier this month to gun trafficking charges in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania. Batchelor was only 17 when he was arrested in September 2020 and, despite his youth, prosecutors said he was one of the “masterminds” of a major illegal firearms trafficking operation:

A Norristown man who as a teenager was accused of being one of the ringleaders of a multi-county gun trafficking network that illegally obtained and sold 44 firearms using straw purchase schemes has admitted to his role in the organization.
Rahajahi Taylor Batchelor, now 19, of the 1100 block of Green Street, pleaded guilty in Montgomery County Court to charges of corrupt organizations, dealing in proceeds of unlawful activities, illegal sale or transfer of firearms, criminal use of a communication facility, possession of a firearm by a minor and conspiracy in connection with incidents that occurred between March and August of 2020.
Judge Thomas C. Branca deferred sentencing so that court officials can complete a background investigation report about Batchelor. Branca said Batchelor will remain in the county jail without bail while awaiting his sentencing hearing, tentatively set for June.
The open guilty plea means Batchelor has no deals with prosecutors regarding his potential sentence. Batchelor potentially faces more than a decade in prison on the charges. . . .
“This 17-year-old was one of the ringleaders that orchestrated the straw purchases of 44 firearms by three adults and then illegally sold those firearms to people who could not legally buy firearms for themselves,” District Attorney Kevin R. Steele said in November 2020 when Batchelor was ordered to stand trial as an adult. “This defendant, along with his co-conspirators, has done a tremendous amount of damage to the safety of our community here in Montgomery County and in the greater southeastern Pennsylvania region.”
At the time of the arrests in September 2020, Steele alleged the organization’s “sole purpose is to make money by putting firearms in the hands of people who cannot lawfully buy and possess guns.”
Authorities alleged the gun trafficking organization was led by Batchelor, Terrence Barker, 21, of Philadelphia, and Mikal Scott, 19, of the 7900 block of Rolling Green Road, Cheltenham. Barker and Scott are still awaiting trial on corrupt organization and related charges.
Earlier this year, Anthony Jamaris McCrary, 26, of Philadelphia, pleaded guilty to charges he purchased 35 firearms via straw purchases at federally licensed gun dealers in the three counties between July and August 2020 on behalf of the gun trafficking network led by Batchelor, Barker and Scott. McCrary is awaiting sentencing.
A straw purchase occurs when a person with a clean background purchases firearms on behalf of another person to conceal the true ownership of the firearm. Those who are unable to legally purchase firearms include convicted felons, domestic violence offenders, juveniles and mentally ill individuals.

It was big news when the bust went down in September 2020:

Authorities dismantled a gun trafficking network operating in Montgomery, Bucks and Philadelphia counties, alleging nine adults and five juveniles, including some from Norristown and Cheltenham, illegally obtained and sold 44 firearms using a straw purchase scheme. . . .
Ashon Jared Pearson, 23, of the 1400 block of Arch Street, Norristown, Jamil Brown, 19, of Philadelphia, John McDonald, 21, of Philadelphia, and Clarence Codada, 18, of Philadelphia, also were charged with allegedly participating in the gun trafficking network. Four other juvenile males who ranged in age from 14 to 17 also face charges. . . .
“Oftentimes, some of the members of the gun trafficking organization accompanied the straw purchasers to the gun stores and helped choose the weapons,” Steele said.
“After the straw purchasers filled out the federal and state paperwork and lied on it, vowing that this gun was for their own use, they walk out of the gun store, they hand over the gun or guns to other members of the gun trafficking organization who immediately sold it, arming the people the law says cannot have a gun,” Steele added..
The charges lodged against all or some of the alleged participants include corrupt organizations, conspiracy, dealing in proceeds of unlawful activities and illegal sale or transfer of firearms. Bail was set for those charged and their preliminary hearings are pending.
“We may never know the true extent of the damage from these 44 illegal guns since guns obtained using a straw purchaser are typically immediately resold to people who can’t legally buy a gun for themselves. Then after an illegal firearm is used in a crime, it’s resold to other felons and the damage grows. It’s a domino effect,” Steele said.
Steele revealed only six of the 44 firearms have been recovered, including one that was linked to a shooting incident in Cheltenham and another seized during a traffic stop of a juvenile in Abington.
Thirty-eight of the guns remain on the streets.

Hey, did I mention that Philadelphia had a record 561 homicides last year? And that Joe Biden got 81% of the vote in Philadelphia? As our friend Dana Pico has frequently pointed out, the per capita homicide rate in Philadelphia is actually higher than Chicago’s. Dana recently did some more arithmetic and figured out that this year’s pace of murders in “Killadelphia” is lagging slightly behind 2021, so that there would be only 537 murders in the city, at the current pace — about 10 murders per week, on average. If any of the perpetrators are Trump voters or NRA members, this hasn’t been mentioned in the news coverage.




 

Category: Crime, Pennsylvania

In The Mailbox: 04.25.22

Posted on | April 25, 2022 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 04.25.22

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Silicon Valley delenda est.

OVER THE TRANSOM
357 Magnum: Amala Ekpunobi Reveals How She Discovered The Big Lie
EBL: Orrin Hatch, RIP, The Armenian Genocide, and Will Twitter Change Now That Elon Musk Is In Charge?
Twitchy: “I Feel Like I’m Going To Throw Up”, also, Christina Pushaw & Others Give Jeff Bezos The Wedgie Of Self-Awareness
Louder With Crowder: Blue-Check Twitter Is Awake & Freaking Out Over New Owner Elon Musk
Vox Popoli: Europe Waves The White Flag, France Votes For Self-Extinction, and Out With The Old Gatekeeper

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: In The Australian Election, What About The Unvaxxed? also, Podcast #151 – The Sexual Misery Episode
American Conservative: The Donbas Rebels In Their Own Words, also, The Virtues Of Strategic Ambiguity
American Greatness: Our Spanish Civil War? also, Who’s Running This Show, Anyway?
American Power: The Teen Mental Health Crisis, also, Elon Musk Buys Twitter
American Thinker: Six Years Of BLM Killed More Blacks Than 86 Years Of Lynchings, also, American Churches Are Killing Christianity
Animal Magnetism: The Saturday Gingermageddon, also, Goodbye Blue Monday
Babalu Blog: Russia Rewards Cuba For Loyalty With Huge Shipment Of Wheat, also, The Rationing Of Liberty In Cuba
BattleSwarm: Why Are Russia’s Arms Sucking So Badly? also, Accounts Elon Musk Should Restore
Behind The Black: Today’s Blacklisted American, Return Of Axiom Mission Delayed Again For Weather, and The Icy Reull Valley Of Mars
Cafe Hayek: Reich Is Wildly Wrong
CDR Salamander: Episode 622 – Red China’s Assassin Mace In WESPAC, also, The Progressive War Party, Of Sorts
Chicago Boyz: A Stylish Diversion, also, Where I Was Last Weekend
Da Tech Guy: The Five Lessons Of The Disney Story, Observations From A Trip To West Texas, and Report From Louisiana – Confederate Memorial Day Is No More
Don Surber: Exxon First To Lower The Rainbow Flag, What The Press Got Wrong On DeSantis & Disney, and $78, 107/Year Columnist Gives Elon Musk Financial Advice
First Street Journal: At Ohio State, The Students Want Wrongthink Punished, also, Why Philly Cancelled Its Mask Mandate
Gates Of Vienna: Russian Meddling In Slovenia, Sweden – Torching The Easter Parade, and The Fifth Horseman Of The Apocalypse 
The Geller Report: ELON MUSK BUYS TWITTER, also, Disney Has Lost $50 Billion In Value Since Going To War Against Florida
Hogewash: Team Kimberlin Post Of The Day, Micronovae, and 32 Years Of Hubble
Hollywood In Toto: Yes, 1982’s Tron Deserves Your Respect, When Entertainment Trumped The Message, and Who Will Be Bill Murray’d Next?
The Lid: Connection Discovered Between Mueller Report & Spygate-Implicated Tech Researchers, also, Tenn. Gov Bill Lee Should Veto SB 1005 – An Assault On Free Speech
Legal Insurrection: Triggered Leftists Get #RIPTwitter Trending After Musk Buyout, Facing Parental Wrath, San Diego High School Reverses Plans To End Honors Courses, and Former MCD CEO Organizes “Boardroom Initiative” To Fight Woke Corporations
Michelle Malkin: How Much Federal COVID Money Is Funding GLSEN’s Groomers?
Nebraska Energy Observer: Random Observations, also, Saints & Sinners
Outkick: If You Want Tennessee To Stop Having Fun, Go Beat Them Consistently, NBA Legend Eviscerates Ben Simmons, and Dodgers & Padres Fans Have An Old-Fashioned Prison Yard Fight At Petco Park
Power Line: A Salute To Michael Ramirez, Progressive Ideology Is A Lie, and Identity Politics Meets Its Waterloo?
Shark Tank: Rubio Mocks Demings For Co-Opting Old Obama & Biden Campaign Slogans
Shot In The Dark: Traditionalism – The New Radicalism, Critical Marksmanship Theory, and Chanting Points Memo – The Little Guy
STUMP: Process Is Important – SALT Cap & NY Redistricting
The Political Hat: Woke English Class – Non-Grammatical Gender
This Ain’t Hell: AF General Found Guilty Of Sexual Assault, also, Another Two Return
Transterrestrial Musings: Dietary BS, The Democrats’ Problems, and Trans Ideology
Victory Girls: AFT Boss Randi Weingarten Calls Parents Warmongers, also, Taylor Lorenz Offers More Excuses For Doxxing
Volokh Conspiracy: Ukraine & Double Standards On Refugees
Watts Up With That: New Study Shows Wind & Solar Energy Killing 48% Of Priority Bird Species With “Population-Level” Effects, also, Earth Day’s Failed Predictions From 52 Years Ago
Weasel Zippers: Biden Shakes Hands With Felon Who Tried To Kill Kyle Rittenhouse, also, Cook Political Report Says Democrats Totally Screwed In 2022
The Federalist: The Best Thing Elon Musk Could Do With Twitter Is Annihilate It, Left-Wing Group Demands Apple Pre-Emptively Nuke TruthSocial, and Throwing Government Housing At The Homeless Is Treating The Symptom
Mark Steyn: Sucker Punch – 99 River Street, There’ll Always Be An England, and Shots & Stats

Amazon Warehouse Deals




Category: Linkagery

So … Is #FreeStacy Trending Yet?

Posted on | April 25, 2022 | Comments Off on So … Is #FreeStacy Trending Yet?

He’s a multibillionaire with lots of things more important to worry about than restoring my @rsmccain account, but I hope he’ll get around to it pretty soon. Meanwhile, congratulations to Twitter’s new owner:

After a two-week battle against opposition from the platform’s board members, self-declared free speech absolutist Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX and currently the richest man in the world, has succeeded in his bid to buy Twitter.
In a press release, the Twitter board announced that they had reached an agreement with the multi-billionaire to sell 100 percent of the company at Musk’s original price of $54.20 per share. . . .
Musk had been slowly acquiring shares in Twitter in the first quarter, becoming the company’s largest shareholder at the end of March.
His highly publicized campaign to take the company private kicked off twelve days ago, when he offered to buy 100 percent of the publicly-traded company.
The prospect of a self-declared “free speech absolutist” taking over the company has led to outrage from the platform’s progressive users, as well as the Jeff Bezos-owned Washington Post.
On the road to acquiring Twitter, Musk clashed with Twitter board member Prince Al Waleed bin Talal Al Saud of Saudi Arabia’s royal family, who opposed the takeover attempt.
The board also attempted to block Musk’s takeover by deploying a “poison pill” strategy, a corporate jiu-jitsu move intended to increase the costs of a takeover. It appears that these efforts have failed.
In his acquisition offer to Twitter, disclosed to the SEC, Musk unambiguously stated that the goal behind his purchase was the restoration of free speech on the platform.
“I invested in Twitter as I believe in its potential to be the platform for free speech around the globe, and I believe free speech is a societal imperative for a functioning democracy,” wrote Musk.

When my @rsmccain account was banned in February 2016, it was a cause célèbre and, as it turned out, an omen of things to come. At the time, Twitter staff claimed I was being banned for “participating in targeted harassment,” but they never would say (a) who was “targeted,” (b) what kind of “harassment” they suffered or (c) how I “participated.” Many people suspected that my banishment was the first official act of Twitter’s newly appointed “Trust and Safety Council.”

Totalitarian ideologues don’t like being called totalitarian ideologues. Now watch the tears fall like rain as Elon Musk takes over Twitter.




 

Category: Media Bias

A Genuinely Weird Rock ’n’ Roll Story

Posted on | April 25, 2022 | Comments Off on A Genuinely Weird Rock ’n’ Roll Story

Do you see that guy with the gold top Gibson Les Paul guitar? That’s Bill Bartlett, lead guitarist of a one-hit-wonder band from 1967. The Lemon Pipers had formed in 1966 in the college town of Oxford, Ohio, and signed a deal with New York-based Buddah Records. Their first single, an original written by Bartlett, was a flop, so the record company told the group’s producer, Paul Leka, to team up with Brill Building songwriter, Shelley Pinz, to write the band a hit song. The result was “Green Tambourine,” a song which the band hated — they were a rock group, and this was a silly pop tune — but it went all the way to Number One in early 1968. Despite this sudden success, however, the Lemon Pipers weren’t able to follow up with any more hits, and broke up in 1969.

Buddah Records was home to a production team — Super K Productions, Jerry Kasenetz and Jeffry Katz — which specialized in so-called “bubble gum” pop. The Super K guys weren’t much for the whole “artistic integrity” thing, they were about money and didn’t care how they got it. They recorded a group called The Rare Breed, but the musicians quit in a dispute with the producers, so Kasenetz and Katz found an Ohio group called Sir Timothy & the Royals and renamed them the Ohio Express. Kasenetz and Katz then took recordings done by The Rare Breed, released these under the name of the new band, and had a Top 40 hit called “Beg, Borrow and Steal” in late 1967. Then a songwriter named Jon Levine sent them a demo for a tune called “Yummy Yummy Yummy.” Kasenetz and Katz liked the demo so much, they released it as a single under the Ohio Express name, even though nobody in the band sang or played on it! That made the Top Five on the charts in 1968.

Fast-forward a few years. After the breakup of the Lemon Pipers, Bill Bartlett had returned to Ohio and, while attending Miami University in Oxford, formed a new band that at times included three players from the Lemon Pipers and various other musicians. This new band was called Starstruck and they gigged around at clubs for two or three years before getting serious in 1975. They did some recordings at a studio in Cleveland and paid to have 1,000 copies of a single pressed, This record, a rocked-out version of an old blues song, got a decent amount of airplay on Ohio radio stations, becoming something of a regional hit. The group got a management deal and played as an opening act for such big names as Edgar Winter, Foghat, the Eagles and Fleetwood Mac. Alas, no major record company seemed interested and the band broke up in late 1975.

In spring 1976, a few months after Starstruck broke up, Bill Bartlett got a call from Jerry Kasenetz and Jeffry Katz, whom he knew from his Buddah Records days with the Lemon Pipers. Kasenetz and Katz were looking to put together a new hard-rock band, and Barlett was invited to audition, so he went to New York and took with him a copy of the single he’d recorded with Starstruck. Kasenetz and Katz loved it, and Barlett then returned to Ohio with an offer for his former bandmates: $3,000 for their rights to the recording, take it or leave it. They took the money.

Now, let me tell you a little bit about this song. In the 1920s and ’30s, musicologist John Lomax and his son Alan traveled the country doing “field recordings” of American folk songs. Among the places they recorded was the Central State Prison Farm in Sugarland, Texas, where one of the inmates was James “Iron Head” Baker, a habitual criminal who described himself as “the roughest n***er what ever walked the streets of Dallas.” Baker and his fellow inmates sang several of their work songs for the Lomax recording in 1933, and one of the tunes was recorded in 1939 by folk blues legend Huddie William “Lead Belly” Ledbetter.

How this tune came to the attention of a rock band in Ohio in the 1970s is a mystery, but this was the recording for which Kasenetz and Katz were willing to pay $3,000, to do one of their classic moves. Rather than have the new group re-record the song, Kasenetz and Katz simply took the Starstruck version of the song and did some editing which they released under the name of their new band, Ram Jam.

Whoa, Black Betty (Bam-ba-lam)
Whoa, Black Betty (Bam-ba-lam)
Black Betty had a child (Bam-ba-lam)
The damn thing gone wild (Bam-ba-lam)
Said it weren’t none of mine (Bam-ba-lam)
The damn thing gone blind (Bam-ba-lam)

“Black Betty” became a Top 20 hit in the United States in 1977, and made it to the Top 10 in England and Australia. At one point, the NAACP tried to mount a boycott against “Black Betty,” but that effort fizzled after it was learned that this was actually a black folk song from the 1930s.

Ram Jam released an album and toured for a couple of years, but there was no follow-up. Bill Bartlett thus has a unique claim to fame, having been a “one-hit wonder” twice — first with the Lemon Pipers and “Green Tambourine,” then 10 years later, with Ram Jam and “Black Betty.”

As Paul Harvey used to say, “Now you know the rest of the story.”




 

Category: Music

Go and Do Thou Likewise

Posted on | April 25, 2022 | Comments Off on Go and Do Thou Likewise

Generally speaking, I am against environmentalists engaging in protests, but I wish more of them would emulate Colorado “activist” Wynn Bruce:

A climate activist who lit himself on fire on Earth Day outside the United States Supreme Court Building has died, according to reports.
Wynn Bruce, 50, of Boulder, Colorado, died Saturday, a day after he set himself ablaze in Washington, D.C., the Metropolitan Police Department told Fox News.
The incident happened around 6:30 p.m. on the plaza in front of the court building.
He was airlifted to a local hospital, where he died.
A Facebook page belonging to a person named Wynn Bruce said he was a Buddhist and a climate activist.
In 2020, Bruce left a cryptic Facebook comment that included a fire emoji and the date of his death, 4/22/2022.
A Buddhist priest from Boulder said she knew Bruce and called his death “an act of compassion.”
“This guy was my friend. He meditated with our sangha [Buddhist community],” Dr. K. Kritee wrote. “This act is not suicide. This is a deeply fearless act of compassion to bring attention to climate crisis. We are piecing together info but he had been planning it for at least one year.”

We need more of these “fearless acts of compassion.” As far as I’m concerned, the entire environmentalist movement could set themselves on fire in an act of mass self-immolation “to bring attention to climate crisis,” and the world would be a better place without them. Busybody nuisances, is what they are. Nobody really likes them.

Of course, there is no “green” way to light yourself on fire. Can’t do it with windmills or solar panels, so you’ll need good old fossil fuel to get the job done and, at $4.10 for a gallon of gas nowadays, this could get expensive — I mean, we’re talking tens of thousands of “activists” torching themselves, right? — but I’m pretty sure we could organize a GoFundMe campaign to cover the cost. Good-bye and good riddance — whoosh!




 

Category: Global Warming

Rule 5 Sunday: A WILD PARAGUAYAN MODEL APPEARS!

Posted on | April 25, 2022 | Comments Off on Rule 5 Sunday: A WILD PARAGUAYAN MODEL APPEARS!

— compiled by Wombat-socho

*walks in*
*drops pic of Larissa Riquelme*
*refuses to explain*
*walks out*
Ceterum autem censeo Silicon Valley esse delendam.

NINETY MILES FROM TYRANNY: Hot Pick of the Late Night, The 90 Miles Mystery Box Episode #1694, Morning Mistress, and Girls With Guns.

EBL: MAGA – Keep Your Friends Close, Reinheitsgebot, The Flight Attendant Season 2, Holly Maddux RIP, “Wild Thing”, Mitchell Torok & Ramona Redd, The Batman, “You’ll Never Walk Alone”, Hero[ine] Of The Day, Tura Santana, and Outer Range

A VIEW FROM THE BEACH: The Rest of NCIS Hawai’i, Dem Crumble Continues, Elon Makes Another Bid, Fish Pic Friday – Nicole Milisci, Thursday Tanlines, The Wednesday Wetness, Judge Strikes Down CDC Mask Mandate, Tattoo Tuesday, The Monday Morning Stimulus, and Sunday Sunrise

Thanks to everyone for all the luscious links!

 

Amazon Warehouse Deals

Visit Amazon’s Intimate Apparel Shop
Shop Sex & Sensuality Gifts




Category: Rule 5

FMJRA 2.0: Youth Gone Wild

Posted on | April 24, 2022 | Comments Off on FMJRA 2.0: Youth Gone Wild

— compiled by Wombat-socho

As I remarked yesterday, I expect to be back in the groove of daily link posts starting tomorrow, so the FMJRA should be a a tad fatter. The expansion draft in Pete’s 1969 league was yesterday, and I lost Joe Niekro to the Angels, but it could have been worse. Now it’s time to prep for the full draft, for which the date has not yet been announced.
More importantly, as observed by 357 Magnum earlier in the week, the Daley Gator got yeeted from his original site by WordPress and is now on at a backup URL. Follow him at the new location!
Ceterum autem censeo Silicon Valley esse delendam.

Rule 5 Sunday: All Sydney, All The Time!
Animal Magnetism
Ninety Miles From Tyranny
A View From The Beach
EBL
Proof Positive

Ukraine Update
The Political Hat
EBL
357 Magnum

Ain’t I Done Told You?
DaleyGator
A View From The Beach
EBL
357 Magnum

R.I.P., Another Russian General
EBL
357 Magnum

FMJRA 2.0: Not Long Before The End
A View From The Beach
EBL

Expect More Riots This Summer
A View From The Beach
EBL
357 Magnum

The Weird Logic of COVID-19 Panic
DaleyGator
First Street Journal
EBL
357 Magnum

Netflix Stock Has Lost 62% This Year
Hogewash
A View From The Beach
EBL
357 Magnum

CNN+ Suddenly Becomes CNN-
DaleyGator
EBL

Racial Cult Murder in Georgia?
EBL

In The Mailbox: 04.21.22
A View From The Beach
EBL
357 Magnum
Proof Positive

In The Mailbox: 04.22.22
EBL
A View From The Beach
357 Magnum
Proof Positive

Top linkers for the week ending April 22:

  1.  EBL (12)
  2.  357 Magnum (8)
  3.  A View From The Beach (7)

Thanks to everyone for all the links!

Amazon Warehouse Deals




Category: FMJRA Award

Humans Dying in Mayor Frogface’s Town

Posted on | April 24, 2022 | Comments Off on Humans Dying in Mayor Frogface’s Town

As Chicago’s first Amphibian-American mayor, Lori Lightfoot has difficulty relating to the problems of mammals. While it may be unfair to accuse Mayor Frogface of anti-human prejudice, she just doesn’t seem to have a lot of sympathy for us warm-blooded creatures:

At least 35 people were shot, five of them fatally, Friday into Sunday morning in Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s (D) Chicago.
ABC 7 / Chicago Sun-Times reports the weekend’s first fatal shooting occurred around 1 p.m. Saturday “in the 4700-block of South Cottage Grove Avenue.” The gunfire followed an argument.
Two men were killed in a drive-by shooting “in the 1900-block of West Garfield Boulevard” just after 7:30 p.m. One of the men was 42-years-old and the second was 48.
The weekend’s fourth fatal shooting occurred Saturday night around 11:30 p.m. Officers arrived on scene in the 6200-block of South Francisco Avenue to find 26-year-old Alexis Daniel Velazquez Guadarrama had been shot in the chest. He died at the scene.
The fifth fatal shooting of the weekend occurred at 4:45 a.m. Sunday, when a 57-year-old man was shot multiple times following an argument. The shooting occurred “in the 400-block of South Pulaski Road” and the gunmen fled the scene and remains on the loose.
Breitbart News noted 14 were shot, one fatally, in Chicago during the same time-frame — Friday into Sunday morning — last weekend.

Science has not yet solved the mystery of how frog DNA got mixed up in Lightfoot’s chromosome sequence. Meanwhile, human life has no value in Chicago. The homicide rate is slightly down so far this year, compared to 2021, which was the worst year for homicides in Chicago since 1996.




 

Category: Chicago, Crime
« go back — keep looking »