The Other McCain

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

‘Watch This!’

Posted on | January 13, 2022 | Comments Off on ‘Watch This!’

The headline is a two-word text message I sent to my youngest daughter after watching producer Rick Beato’s “What Makes This Song Great” video about the 1970 Chicago hit, “Make Me Smile,” which is an absolute must-see. I’ve talked before about my love of Chicago:

It happened the other day (thank you, YouTube algorithm) that I started watching old videos of the jazz-rock band Chicago. Did you know that Chicago’s guitarist Terry Kath was Jimi Hendrix’s favorite guitarist? To listen to Kath play on “25 or 6 to 4” is to be amazed, and it’s a pity that Kath (who died tragically in 1978) is so seldom mentioned among the rock-and-roll greats. Kath could also sing like Ray Charles, a distinctive bluesy baritone . . .

Rick Beato is not just a music producer, but an accomplished musician who earned a master’s degree in jazz from the New England Conservatory of Music. What he provides on his YouTube channel is a far better educational experience than most kids get in school nowadays. One of the things Beato does occasionally is to review the Top 10 list on Spotify, the general point of his reviews being that most contemporary pop is puerile four-chord garbage produced by computer simulation of actual music. (See 357 Magnum’s “Rick Beato Listened to These Songs, So You Don’t Have To.”) Of course, it’s a steady fact of history that every generation believes that the younger generation’s music is crap (e.g., Richard Weaver denouncing the “barbaric impulses” of jazz), but things have gotten very bad indeed now. My teenage daughter is, God help us, a Harry Styles fan and, to be honest, some of his stuff is OK, but he is nearly the apex of sophistication in the vast wasteland of contemporary pop.

Baby Boomers like me grew up with Top 40 radio without realizing at the time we were living through the Golden Age of Classic Rock, to say nothing of all the other excellent music that was being produced. Some of the pop stuff that we sneered at back in the day — when cool kids were into Zeppelin and Floyd, and disdained those catchy singles on radio — was, in retrospect, very good music. For example, I wasn’t really “into” Steely Dan as a teenager, but they were excellent and “Do It Again” (a Top 10 hit in 1973) is a marvelously sophisticated piece of work. Because we were absolutely inundated in quality music in our youth, Boomers are not likely to enjoy the simplistic dumbed-down stuff that is popular with our children and grandchildren. But I digress . . .

Terry Kath was the heart and soul — especially the soul — of Chicago. As a guitarist, he was incomparable — so good that Jimi Hendrix, after seeing Chicago play a club date in L.A., said Kath was better than him. And his vocals were just so incredibly soulful. How could a Midwestern white guy in his early 20s sing like an aged blues legend? Very rarely do you encounter a lead guitarist who is also a talented lead singer, and Kath had that magic combination. “Make Me Smile” was the first time Chicago had a single make the Top 10, and there’s an important story behind that.

Like most rock bands of the late 1960s and 70s, Chicago was album-oriented — serious music listeners weren’t interested in 45-rpm records, but in the aftermath of what the Beatles did with Sgt. Pepper’s in 1967, were more focused on producing long-form music on 33-rpm albums.

As part of their deal with Columbia Records, Chicago secured an agreement that their first album would be a double album — something usually reserved for proven hitmakers, but Columbia’s president Clive Davis really believed in the band, so 1969’s Chicago Transit Authority was a double album with 12 mostly long tracks, including their 7-plus-minute cover of the Spencer Davis Group’s “I’m a Man.”

 

How strange it is that a band who could jam like that should have gained a reputation, just a few years later, as an “easy listening” pop group. And yet, by the time I was in my mid-teens, that’s how I thought of Chicago. But this was because of their subsequent success with hit singles that smashed through the Top 40 charts, completely against the wishes of the group itself! The earliest attempts to turn Chicago’s songs into singles flopped, but after the release of their second album in 1970, Clive Davis personally intervened to insist that “Make Me Smile,” which was more than four minutes long on the album, be edited down to under three minutes as a single. It has even been claimed that Davis himself was in the booth for the final edit, although this has been disputed and may be apocryphal. At any rate, the horn introduction to “Make Me Smile” was shortened, and Kath’s guitar solo was deleted from the middle of the song so that the single version was 2:58. It is this version that Beato analyzed in his “What Makes This Song Great” video:

You really must watch that video, as Beato isolates individual tracks to call attention to parts of the song you might never have noticed before. One thing that particularly impressed me was just how great drummer Danny Seraphine was (and is, as he’s still playing at age 73). Some of those parts are just incredible, and the whole group’s performance is a tour de force, made more enjoyable by Beato breaking down the chord progressions — A-flat+4, C-minor and so forth. Did we even know we were listening to Phrygian mode back in the day? No, but after Beato pointed it out, I felt ashamed that I didn’t appreciate it before.

Anyway, after watching that video, I sent it to my daughter in hopes that she will appreciate it, but she’d probably rather listen to Harry Styles, I suppose. Alas, these kids today . . .




 

Category: Music

Everything You Love Is Cancelled Now

Posted on | January 13, 2022 | Comments Off on Everything You Love Is Cancelled Now

You can still purchase Elvis Costelo’s 1979 album Armed Forces, but who knows how much longer this will be possible? How long before we’re required to forget that it ever existed?

Elvis Costello has said that he will no longer perform one of his biggest hits, “Oliver’s Army,” and has urged radio stations to also stop playing the song because of its use of the N-word.
The song, which is taken from Costello’s 1979 album “Armed Forces” and is one of the rockstar’s best-known hits, was written about The Troubles in Northern Ireland — a long and deadly conflict between mostly Protestant unionists determined for Northern Ireland to remain in the United Kingdom and Catholic republicans desperate to break away and create a united Ireland.
The anti-Black racial slur is used during the song to describe a British soldier. The line in question reads: “Only takes one itchy trigger, one more widow, one less white n——.”
In a recent interview with The Telegraph, Costello said he plans to go on tour this summer, but will no longer be performing “Oliver’s Army” as part of his setlist.
“If I wrote that song today, maybe I’d think twice about it,” he told The Telegraph in a recent interview.
“That’s what my grandfather was called in the British army — it’s historically a fact — but people hear that word go off like a bell and accuse me of something that I didn’t intend.”
Costello continued to say that he censored “Oliver’s Army” during his last tour, but he no longer believes that censorship is the correct method.

If you are familiar with British culture of the time, you understand how the word was used to denote someone of lowly status — a lackey, a stooge, expendable. John Lennon famously used it that way in another song we’re supposed to forget ever existed and nobody — absolutely nobody — could plausibly claim Lennon was racist. Nor have I ever encountered evidence that Elvis Costello (whose real name is Declan Patrick McManus) harbored any prejudice against anyone. If such evidence existed, surely it would be widely publicized, and yet this lyric, whose meaning was always clear to any educated person, must now send “Oliver’s Army” down the Memory Hole, airbrushed from existence like Trotsky during the Stalinist era. Has anyone in the Permanently Indignant class even bothered to ask what the song is about?

Hong Kong is up for grabs.
London is full of Arabs.
We could be in Palestine
Overrun by the Chinese line,
With the boys from the Mersey
And the Thames and the Tyne.
But there’s no danger,
It’s a professional career.
Though it could be arranged,
With just a word in Mr. Churchill’s ear.
If you’re out of luck or out of work,
We could send you to Johannesburg.

What an astonishingly brilliant commentary on imperialism and its consequences. Costello was expressing the view of the British soldier — a cynical working-class chap, generally — posted in Belfast, risking his life to keep the Irish down while, at the same time, “London is full of Arabs” (even more true now than then) and Britain’s Pacific outpost of Hong Kong was “up for grabs.” The soldier mocks the absurdity of his helpless situation in Northern Ireland, comparing it to the prospect of World War Three breaking out in the Middle East (“overrun by the Chinese line”) or being deployed to South Africa to prop up the apartheid regime. This was written during the dark era of the late 1970s, before the economic revival that followed under Thatcher’s administration, and there were a lot of young men “out of luck or out of work” in England, including not a few like Costello, who was a Catholic of Irish ancestry.

The religious background of the conflict in Ireland is signified by the “Oliver” in the title which “refers to English Parliamentarian leader Oliver Cromwell, who personally led the English forces which subjugated Ireland in 1649.” So the entire song, really, is about the cruel absurdity of this centuries-long warfare, with Catholic boys in England required to do service in “Oliver’s Army” fighting the Irish Catholics!

It doesn’t matter what your opinion was (or is) about British policy in Northern Ireland, the song is pure genius, in quite the same way the Creedence Clearwater Revival classic “Fortunate Son” is pure genius, no matter your opinion about U.S. policy in Vietnam.

Some would argue that “Oliver’s Army” is the best song Costello ever wrote, rivaling even his poignant breakthrough hit “Alison.” But now he can’t even play it anymore, because of stupid Political Correctness.

Well, you can still buy it. Just don’t tell anyone, or else you could become another dot on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s “hate map.”

The eyes of Texas are upon you,
’Til Gabriel blows his horn.

IYKWIMAITYD.




 

Category: Music, Racism

The Theme From ‘Cheers’ and Other Fundamental Errors of Reason

Posted on | January 12, 2022 | Comments Off on The Theme From ‘Cheers’ and Other Fundamental Errors of Reason

Before proceeding to the main topic of my philosophical discourse, permit me to point out that you can purchase a 7-horsepower wood chipper from Amazon for $619 through our associates program, which pays me a modest commission on all products purchased through our affiliated links, at no cost to you. And you might say to yourself, “What would I do with a 7-horsepower wood chipper?” Trust me, it could come in handy, and I think you might soon decide you need one.

Now, the main topic: Did you ever listen to the lyrics of the Cheers theme song? That popular sitcom ran on NBC for more than a decade, from 1982 to 1993. The Applebee’s restaurant chain has been using that theme song in their TV commercials, although of course it subverts the original idea — a gigantic restaurant chain is not, and can never be, your friendly neighborhood tavern — but the song itself has always seemed to me somewhat problematic. It’s this part that bugs me:

You want to go where people know
People are all the same.
You want to go where everybody knows your name.

There is a word for people who “know” — or at least claim to know — “people are all the same.” We call such people “fools,” because as a matter of indisputable fact, people are definitely not “all the same.”

If you believe in something that is self-evidently false, you are a fool, and anyone with two eyes and a brain can see that people are different.

No two of us are exactly alike, not even identical twins, and the vast disparity in human beings — in tastes and temperament, in abilities and attitudes, whatever metric you choose — is beyond dispute. While all human beings can be said to share certain traits, as a species, the differences are large enough and important enough that only a fool could possibly disregard them. No one would seriously argue, for example, that Charles Manson and Jonas Salk were “all the same.”

This idiotic phrase from the Cheers theme song has always bothered me, as I say, but just today I happened to catch it again on an Applebee’s commercial, which was why I felt a need to write about the fundamental error in this lyric. Also, coincidentally, USA Today ran an article attempting to “destigmatize” pedophilia:

Pedophilia is viewed as among the most horrifying social ills. But scientists who study the sexual disorder say it is also among the most misunderstood.

See? Pedophiles aren’t the problem. No, the problem is you, because you misunderstand pedophiles. You’re an ignorant bigot, and probably voted for Trump. This USA Today article goes on with a lot of reference to what “scientists” and “experts” say. The article endeavors to portray transgender Allyson “Allyn” Walker — who was forced to resign from Old Dominion University because of her pro-pedophile advocacy — as the victim of an “outcry” which, it is implied, occurred only because she/“he” used the phrase “minor-attracted people” to describe pedophiles. But let us imagine, for example, that the university had a neo-Nazi on their faculty; if the neo-Nazi got fired, would USA Today claim that it was just an “outcry” caused by their use of the word “kike”?

Use of the phrase “minor-attracted people” (MAP) is like a dye marker for a dangerously permissive attitude toward pedophilia and, I’d bet you dollars to donuts, this phrase was originated by pedophiles themselves who are very much interested in this project of “destigmatizing” their preferred perversion. Breitbart’s Paul Bois observes:

The article quoted no psychologist or forensic researcher with a different viewpoint on pedophilia – those who might rather characterize it as a severe mental disorder rather than a sexual orientation. It only gives a passing mention that the well-being and protection of children should be society’s top priority when it comes to handling such disorders. Instead, the article keeps asserting the need for treatment, allowing pedophiles to live openly without fear of social ostracization, not accounting for the risks involved.

Yes, the way is being paved to “destigmatize” this perversion by employing the same step-by-step methods by which homosexuality was normalized. First, advocates must undermine any moral objections to the practice, by treating it as a medical condition rather than a sin, which will then give way to arguments in favor of “reforming” laws against child molestation. Finally, the argument will come down to equality — because “people are all the same,” you see — and a majority of the Supreme Court will declare that laws against raping children are a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment. Only bigots will disagree.

The Breitbart article was linked at Instapundit by Ed Driscoll, who also linked a Twitchy post about this USA Today article and, for some reason, people on Twitter keep posting images of wood chippers.

Did I mention, by the way, that you can purchase a 7-horsepower wood chipper from Amazon for $619 through our associates program?

Might come in handy around the house. You never know.




 

Category: Crime, Media Bias

Low-Level Drug Crimes

Posted on | January 9, 2022 | Comments Off on Low-Level Drug Crimes

In September 2013, sheriff’s deputies in Mobile County, Alabama, spotted a stolen car parked in front of a home in the rural community of Wilmer. Deputies knocked on the door of the house, seeking to speak to Kenneth James Colburn (pictured above left) who was suspected of stealing the car. Deputies became aware of “a strong chemical odor” in the home and found a methamphetamine lab. Colburn, 24, was arrested along with Joshua Foran, 31, and Jeremy Love, 20. This was not Colburn’s first arrest: “In 2007, Colburn was charged with possession of a controlled substance. Two years later in 2009, Colburn faced one count of manufacturing a controlled substance.” Well, it’s just drugs — a low-level non-violent crime, as some advocates of “criminal justice reform” would have us believe. Some of us, however, have had direct experience in the field of freelance pharmaceutical distribution and have personal familiarity with the criminal underclass, and not so easily deceived.

Go peddle your “reform” somewhere else, because I ain’t buying it. There’s an old saying, “Don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time.” Dope dealers know they’re breaking the law; they do it because they have no respect for the law. This is why decriminalizing drugs is not the answer, because the criminal mindset is such that, if you legalize one thing, they’ll just find some other law to break. No “reform” can solve this; the criminal is a danger to society and the only way to protect society is to put the criminal behind bars. Getting busted for a meth lab (and a stolen car) didn’t end Kenneth Colburn’s criminal career. Less than five years after his bust in Mobile, he was arrested in Troup County, Georgia, on charges of “theft by receiving stolen vehicle, amphetamine-possession, possession of marijuana less than one ounce, possession of firearm by convicted felon, obstruction of officer.” Colburn’s criminal career continued, and here is the mug shot from his most recent arrest:

This time, the charge is murder:

Two people have been arrested for the death of a Fairhope woman.
44-year old Tammy Wedgeworth was originally reported missing by the Fairhope Police Department on January 3rd. Wedgeworth was last seen around 9 p.m. the night of January 1st when she left her home in Fairhope in a white Ford F-150 heading to Mobile.
Mobile Police were assisting Fairhope Police in the investigation when her body was found on Friday. Police say they also found the victim’s vehicle and credit card.
33-year-old Kenneth Colburn was arrested and charged with murder and fraudulent use of a credit card.
35-year-old Amanda Miller was also arrested and charged with fraudulent use of a credit card.
Police haven’t said what, if any, connection the victim had to the two suspects. Colburn has an extensive arrest record with several bookings into the Mobile County Jail starting in 2006.

We don’t yet know anything about the circumstances that led to Tammy Wedgeworth’s murder; police say that “to protect the integrity of the investigation,” they aren’t releasing details. What we do know is that just three years ago, Kenneth Colburn was charged with being a felon in possession of a firearm, a crime punishable by up to 10 years in prison. If Colburn had been in prison, Tammy Wedgeworth would not have been murdered. When will people wake up from their dreams of “reform” and start living in the real world? How many more people are going to be killed because the system keeps turning loose dangerous criminals?




 

Category: Crime

NFL Season Finale Drama

Posted on | January 8, 2022 | Comments Off on NFL Season Finale Drama

Let me be the first to admit that, since the New England Patriots suffered back-to-back losses to Indianapolis and Buffalo in December, this season has become somewhat disappointing for me in my role as newly minted Patriots fan. During New England’s seven-game winning streak, it appeared entirely possible that the Patriots might win all their remaining games to finish with a 13-4 record in Mac Jones’s rookie season. As it is, after New England clinched a playoff spot by stomping all over the hapless Jacksonville Jaguars last Sunday, we’re looking at a likely wild-card team with a record of either 11-6 (if the Patriots win Sunday at Miami) or 10-7 (if they lose to the Dolphins). Making the playoffs is good, but it’s not a division title or a No. 1 seed, both of which were within reach for New England after their Dec. 6 Monday Night Football win over Buffalo. So I’m disappointed, as all other Patriots fans must be, but our disappointment is somewhat relieved by comparison to the disaster zone that is the Jacksonville Jaguars:

Jaguars fans seem to be losing their patience when it comes to the team’s dysfunctional season.
After Jacksonville’s 50-10 blowout loss to the Patriots on Sunday, fans are reportedly planning a “clown party” to troll owner Shad Khan.
According to the Associated Press, fans attending the Jags’ season finale against the Colts on Sunday at TIAA Bank Field plan to wear clown costumes, red rubber noses, face paint and colorful wigs.
The motive behind the prank is to reportedly push Khan to fire general manager Trent Baalke, who’s been scrutinized for a number of decisions.
Just last week, NFL Network reported that Baalke would be retained in 2022 and would assist Khan in the team’s coaching search.
In response, hundreds of fans took to social media to change their profile avatars to a photo of a clown face sporting Khan’s signature mustache.
Fans have also been trolling the comments sections of the Jaguars’ social media accounts. The stadium takeover appears to be the next phase of the plan.
It’s been a miserable season for the 2-14 Jaguars, who’ve been at the center of numerous headlines detailing dysfunction within the organization.
Things reached a boiling point in Jacksonville when Khan announced the dismissal of former head coach Urban Meyer on Dec. 16 — following a string of negative reports, including allegations that he kicked veteran kicker Josh Lambo at practice and belittled assistant coaches.

Keep in mind, the Jags had the first-round draft pick and chose Clemson quarterback Trevor Lawrence, while the Patriots got Mac Jones at No. 15 in the draft. So the team that passed up a chance to draft Mac got beat by 40 points when they played him, and now the disaster in Jacksonville is so embarrassing that the team’s sponsor is suing to break their contract:

A Georgia roofing company is suing the Jacksonville Jaguars, claiming a breach of contract because the team wouldn’t allow it to pull its sponsorship deal after head coach Urban Meyer was fired.
The company, RoofClaim[dot]com, also claims that it doesn’t want its brand associated with being the primary sponsor for Sunday’s home game against the Indianapolis Colts because of the movement on social media of disgruntled fans planning to wear clown attire to the game to show their frustration with Jaguars owner Shad Khan.
The lawsuit, filed in circuit court on Thursday in Duval County, seeks in excess of $30,000 in damages. The company had signed a four-year sponsorship contract with the Jaguars in which it agreed to pay $2.51 million. It has already paid $300,000.
The Florida Times-Union newspaper first reported the lawsuit, which claims breach of contract because the defendant did not provide the full scope of marketing outlined in the agreement throughout the regular season. Even if it did provide these marketing opportunities, the defendant has created such a toxic environment around its brand that the promised “co-mingling of marks” has become a detriment to RoofClaim[dot]com, the lawsuit claims.
The lawsuit claims that RoofClaim[dot]com’s primary interest in a sponsorship deal was Meyer and specified that any deal would need to be tied to Meyer’s tenure with the team. The lawsuit claims that RoofClaim[dot]com met with the Jaguars on Dec. 16, the day Meyer was fired, and said it wanted to end the sponsorship deal “due to the harm that any further affiliation would have on RoofClaim[dot]com’s brand.”

Sucks to be you, Jacksonville.

In other NFL drama, Cleveland Browns quarterback Baker Mayfield is alleged to be hated by his black teammates who blame him for receiver Odell Beckham Jr. leaving the team. Meanwhile in Tampa, the Bucaneers are reeling from the midgame meltdown of star wide receiver Antonio Brown, who stripped off his uniform in the third quarter Sunday before leaving the game against the New York Jets. Turns out Brown had spent the night before the game having sex with a rather notorious Instagram/Onlyfans “model.” Because of course he did.

So as we look around the league and think how bad things are for the Jags and Browns — and even for Tom Brady’s Bucs, despite their division-winning record — Patriots fans can be glad that there has been very little drama in Foxboro this season. Now just beat the Dolphins on Sunday, and hope the Jets can somehow upset the Bills.




 

Category: Football

Still Another Aspiring Rapper Update

Posted on | January 8, 2022 | 1 Comment

Say hello to Kemandre King, 20, and Marlon King, 24, who are not aspiring rappers, so far as I know. Instead, they are associates of the late Desoni “Lil Theze” Gardner who, as we told you in November, made the mistake of attempting to carjack a retired police captain in Oakland, California. Ersie Joyner had risen through the ranks of the Oakland P.D. to become head of the homicide unit, had a concealed carry permit, and put enough shots on target to send “Lil Theze” to his eternal reward. Joyner was wounded six times in the carjacking attempt, but survived.

Ersie Joyner’s survival offers valuable lessons for every American. Your Second Amendment rights are about the First Law of Nature, and criminals preferred unarmed victims. There is less crime in places where law-abiding citizens exercise their rights, because criminals can never know which of their intended targets might be capable of doing to them what Ersie Joyner did to “Lil Theze.” Another lesson is one which the acquaintances of aspiring rappers ought to study well, namely the felony murder principle of law, whereby accomplices to a crime that results in homicide can also be charged with murder — even if it’s the death of one of their fellow criminals. This is why the King brothers, as well as accused getaway driver Joshua Hayles, 28, are now facing murder charges:

Three men have been charged following the attempted murder of Ersie Joyner, a former Oakland Police captain who shot a fourth suspect dead during an armed robbery at a gas station last month, with the charges including murder for the suspect’s death.
The Alameda County District Attorney’s Office announced charges [Nov. 23], a day after Oakland police said the three suspects had been arrested. The suspects were identified as 20-year-old Kemandre King, 24-year-old Marlon King, and 28-year-old Joshua Hayles.
Kemandre King and Marlon King were arrested last week in Elk Grove, while Hayles was arrested in Houston, Texas on Nov. 19 and was being extradited back to California. Both Kemandre King and Marlon King were arraigned Tuesday morning at the East County Hall of Justice in Dublin.
On October 21, Joyner was pumping gas at a Chevron station at 17th and Castro St. in Oakland when three suspects confronted him at gunpoint and proceeded to rob him. Joyner pulled out a handgun and fired, hitting the fourth suspect, identified as 20-year-old Desoni Gardner. One of the suspects fired back at Joyner, hitting him multiple times.
Gardner died at the scene while the two others fled in a Nissan sedan driven by Hayles, the DA’s office said. The vehicle was located Oct. 25 abandoned in Berkeley.
“Ersie Joyner was senselessly attacked and shot while being robbed,” said District Attorney Nancy O’Malley in a prepared statement. “We continue to pray for his full recovery. Our thoughts are with him and his family.”
All three defendants were charged with the murder of Gardner and second-degree robbery of Joyner, the DA’s office said. Marlon King and Kemandre King were also charged with one count each of assault with a semiautomatic firearm; Marlon King was also charged with the attempted murder of Joyner.

Because Desoni “Lil Theze” Gardner died during the commission of a robbery to which the King brothers and Hayles were accomplices, all three of them can be charged with felony murder so that, by shooting Gardner to death, not only did Joyner subtract “Lil Theze” from the criminal population of Oakland, but he also guaranteed that Gardner’s accomplices would face very serious felony charges.

The First Law of Nature is a thing of beauty.




 

Category: Aspiring Rapper Update

‘Speedway Bomber’ Update: Brett Kimberlin Is Still Guilty! Guilty! Guilty!

Posted on | January 7, 2022 | Comments Off on ‘Speedway Bomber’ Update: Brett Kimberlin Is Still Guilty! Guilty! Guilty!

John Hoge was the first to notice that the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals had denied Brett Kimberlin’s attempt to overturn his 1981 convictions in the Speedway bombing case. I didn’t react immediately because, of course, there was no valid reason to overturn his convictions and anyone familiar with Kimberlin’s track record as a pro se litigant knew he was going to lose. And so I didn’t mention this latest in the long string of defeats for Wile E. Coyote and the Acme School of Law. In November 2020, the District Court dismissed his case with brutal sarcasm:

Kimberlin has received an abundance of process. He had three trials, and at least four direct appeals, five collateral attacks, and four habeas petitions. … Put differently, “Kimberlin is no stranger to appellate proceedings.” United States v. Kimberlin, 898 F.2d 1262, 1264 (&th Cir. 1990) (Kimberlin VII). As of 1990, he had “averaged two appeals per year in [the Seventh Circuit] over the last decade.” Id.
Now he is back. Decades after his convictions, Kimberlin returns for another inevitable round of litigation. Dispersed over at least 10 filings, he launches a fusillade of claims — complete with typical conspiratorial bent — that range from merely incorrect to actually misleading. He does so under the writ of coram nobis — “[the] criminal-law equivalent” of a “Hail Mary pass.” United States v George, 676 F.3d 249, 251 (1st Cir. 2012). None of his passes finds a target.

The clown show of his appeal got similarly rebuffed by the appeals judges, who flatly state that “Kimberlin’s arguments . . . are meritless.”

Hat-tip to Instapundit for mentioning my own personal connection to Kimberlin, who sued me and a bunch of other people and — you guessed it — lost. Because that’s what losers do. They lose.




 

Category: The Kimberlin Files

Aspiring Rapper Update: ‘5050 Chuck’ and Girlfriends Charged in Murder

Posted on | January 7, 2022 | Comments Off on Aspiring Rapper Update: ‘5050 Chuck’ and Girlfriends Charged in Murder

Say hello to Charles Berltran, a/k/a “5050 Chuck,” 31, who is behind bars in Texas for the murder of Marisela Botello, 23. The Seattle woman had traveled to Dallas in October 2020 to visit a friend, then went out to a bar where police say she met Beltran. She went missing until March 2021, when hikers found her body in a wooded area. Dallas detectives say they tracked her cellphone signal, which showed that Botello had traveled to a home in the Dallas suburb of Mesquite where Beltran lived with two women, Nina Marano, 50, and Lisa Dykes, 58.

Police aren’t commenting on the nature of this domestic arrangement. Marano is a lawyer licensed to practice in New York and Florida, and Dykes, a paralegal, was listed as a business agent of a law firm that Marano founded. According to various news reports, Marano and Dykes were married to each other, but a source told one Spanish-language publication that the two women were in a polyamorous relationship with Beltran, who worked as a nightclub bouncer. Marano and Dykes were reportedly bankrolling Beltran’s rap career as “5050 Chuck.” This is a scene from a video for his song “Picture Me This”:

That house in the background? It’s where police say Marisela Botello was stabbed to death. And that car “5050 Chuck” is sitting on? That’s the aspiring rapper’s 2014 Audi A6, in the trunk of which police say they found a strand of the victim’s hair. You may be surprised (but not very surprised) to learn the aspiring rapper had spent time in prison:

Beltran was convicted of aggravated robbery in Travis County in 2007; authorities said he pistol-whipped a man after taking his wallet. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison, but a judge released him on probation after about four months. Beltran was found to have violated the terms of his probation in 2009 and was sentenced to 2½ years in prison.

Beltran claims that Dykes stabbed Botello, but it’s a death penalty case, and of course he’s going to blame his accomplices, who evidently helped dispose of the victim’s body. When police caught Beltran, he had fled to Utah, whereas Dykes and Marano fled to Florida, where they were captured in April. Somehow, a judge agreed to let Dykes and Marano out on bond, on house arrest with ankle monitors, but guess what? On Christmas Day, the two women apparently cut off their ankle monitors and disappeared, and the cops didn’t follow up until 10 days later. So the (alleged) killer lesbians are now fugitives, whereabouts unknown.

Is there a moral to this story? I don’t know. Generally speaking, avoid aspiring rappers. Nothing good ever seems to happen in the vicinity of aspiring rappers. It’s almost as if there’s a pattern or something.

PREVIOUSLY:




 

Category: Aspiring Rapper Update, Texas
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