JOINT BASE ELMENDORF-RICHARDSON Kings Mountain reaches an altitude of 5,800 feet above sea level, towering nearly 3,000 feet above the Matanuska River valley below, and there’s really no way that a photo can convey the impression of standing there in person looking up at that massive peak in three-dimensional space. Breathtaking is all I can say, and while the Alaska Chamber of Commerce isn’t paying me to say this — c’mon, hit the freaking tip jar — I’d certainly recommend that every American should pay a visit.
About three hours from now, our plane leaves for the return flight home, and we’ve had a wonderful time during our visit. Just driving along the highways here is a splendid adventure, surrounded by vast forests of fir, birch and cottonwood, with gigantic mountains on every horizon, their peaks often shrouded in clouds, making them look like scenery from a Lord of the Rings movie: “Here be orcs!”
‘Who you calling an ‘orc,’ mister?’
Our granddaughter Juniper is about two months old and, as you can see, is about twice the size of a 12-ounce cup of coffee. That photo was taken Saturday at the Alaska Zoo, where we spent about five hours, including a break at the zoo coffee shop where we enjoyed some entertainment.
Walk don’t run to see the SpeNerds
The SpeNerds (their name a play on words for the Spenard neighborhood of Anchorage) bill themselves as “Alaska’s Premier Instrumental Surf Trio,” and let no man dispute their claim to that honor. Among the various tunes they performed was Dick Dale’s classic “Misirlou” (which gained renewed popularity in the soundtrack of Pulp Fiction). At one point during their performance, they played the theme song from Goldfinger, and talking to them after the gig, while they were packing up their gear, I suggested that should have been segued into “Secret Agent Man” by Johnny Rivers, to which guitarist Fred Brosius replied that they’d played that one before I arrived. My son plays guitar, and I was telling him how the surf rock sound came about at a period when the electric guitar was still something of a novelty, and guitarists were experimenting with effects like reverb and tremolo, and this sonic experimentation must be appreciated in its historic context. Cultural education is an ongoing obligation of parenthood. Meanwhile . . .
The sergeant gives Juniper airborne training
We spent the Fourth of July at the Glacier View Car Launch, and I apologize that I don’t have any videos of my own to share, but they’re easy to find online. And, of course, I bought the T-shirt, because what’s the point of visiting Alaska if you don’t bring home some souvenirs?
The sergeant and his familyWith Mrs. McCain at the Car Launch
Well, we weren’t just tourists, here for sightseeing. We wouldn’t have visited Alaska if not for the fact that our son and his family are here, and this was our first chance to see our newest grandchild. They’ll be coming to visit us at Christmas, but for now I must pack up the laptop and head to the airport, leaving just enough time for me to once more remind readers of the Five Most Important Words in the English Language:
So after getting whupped in Philadelphia, the Senators boarded the train to Baltimore hoping to regain their road warrior mojo, but it was not to be: while Joe Coleman won the opener to balance his record at 2-2, Pat Dobson got outdueled by Andy Messersmith and Jim Kaat got pounded in an 8-1 rout. So the lads limped home to RFK, and whipped the Cubs in three hard-fought games to notch the first series win at home of the season and hang onto a second-place tie with Pete’s Brewers in the AL West. Juan Marichal outdueled Juan Pizarro in Game 1, which was won by Willie Mays’ home run in his first at-bat of the game. In Game 2, Joe Coleman held the Cubs to three runs, but the game was won by Darold Knowles in relief as Jeff Burroughs hit a sac fly in the bottom of the 9th to score Hal Lanier. The Nats benefitted from three errors by the Cubs and three double plays, as well as a great throw by Rick Reichardt to nail Vada Pinson at home. Game Three featured Pat Dobson holding the Cubs to four runs while the Nats pounded Clyde Wright for seven runs (six earned) including homers by Rick Reichardt and Jeff Burroughs. Thus we ended the week 4-2, and will face the division-leading A’s at home on Tuesday. Ceterum autem censeo Silicon Valley esse delendam.
Usual weekend deadlines for the usual weekend posts. Anybody know what’s going on with Weasel Zippers? Ceterum autem censeo Silicon Valley esse delendam.
Most “mass shootings” in urban America are actually shootouts between rival gangs, or personal disputes that turn into gunfights in crowded areas where bystanders are among the killed and wounded. And, since we’re clarifying phrases, let’s admit that “urban America” is a polite euphemism for where black people live. We have been taught by the news media to think of “mass shootings” as a category of crime whose perpetrators are crazy white men, e.g., Charles Whitman, who killed 15 people on the University of Texas campus in 1966, or Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, who killed 13 people at Columbine High School in 1999.
The point is that any discussion of “mass shootings” involves stereotypes, simply because of the way the media covers crime. The Gun Violence Archive (GVA) defines a mass shooting as one that involves “a minimum of four victims shot, either injured or killed,” distinguishing this from the category of mass murder, which the FBI defines as “four or more victims, killed, not including the shooter. Mass Murder by gun is a subset of the Mass Shooting count.” By Thursday, July 6, according to the GVA, there had been a total of 361 mass shooting incidents in the United States in 2023, of which 27 were mass murder incidents (at least four killed, not counting the shooter). Thursday was the 186th day of the year, so simple math tells us that we’re averaging about two mass shootings per day this year, and about one mass murder per week. Given the frequency of such crimes, the national media can’t give full attention to all of them, so they tend to be selective in their coverage, and therefore most mass shootings are considered to be strictly “local news.”
What happened Monday night in Philadelphia’s Kingessing neighborhood was definitely not the typical urban mass shooting. A lone gunman, wearing a ski mask and a bulletproof vest, walked down the street “aimlessly” shooting random people with an AR-15-style rifle. The gunman also carried a 9mm pistol and multiple magazines of extra ammunition. This rampage killed five people and wounded two others. Kimbrady Carriker has been charged with five counts of murder and several other felonies. Many hours elapsed after the shooting before Carriker’s name was made public, but almost as soon as it was, we learned that Kimbrady Carriker was a cross-dresser.
The main problem with mass shootings, according to liberals, is not that people get killed, but that the “far right” might blame someone — i.e., that conservatives will point out that this crime doesn’t seem to fit the preferred media narrative about who commits mass shootings. The other problem: What about his/her/their pronouns?
There was some confusion initially about Mr. Carriker’s gender identity and in a news conference on Tuesday, authorities used the pronouns “they/them.” But on Wednesday the district attorney’s office said it had no information indicating the suspect considered himself anything but male.
“It creates a situation where mostly Black and Brown people can’t be in their neighborhood enjoying summer weather. Kids — anyone — enjoying their block should not live in fear of being shot and killed,” she said Tuesday.
Now that Democrats control the state house for the first time in 12 years following last November’s election, [Council Member Jamie] Gauthier said some movement on gun control legislation has started. However, any house bills would still face opposition in the GOP-controlled state senate.
“In Pennsylvania, you have Philadelphia and Pittsburgh in the cities and outside of that, you have a lot of rural areas that don’t look like us and don’t have the same issues with everyday gun violence — and don’t have the same motivation to really cut off access to these types of weapons,” she said. “We have a long way to go to get these kinds of weapons off the street.”
There are 67 counties in Pennsylvania — Philadelphia (1.6 million people, about 12% of the state population), Allegheny (i.e., Pittsburgh, 1.2 million people, about 9% of the state population) and 65 others with about 10 million people total (about 78% of the state population). The two big cities account for slightly more than one-fifth of Pennsylvania’s population, but in 2021, when there were 1,027 homicides in the state, these two cities accounted for about two-thirds of the total; Philadelphia alone had nearly 55% of Pennsylvania’s homicide total that year.
The per capita homicide rate in Philadelphia was more than triple the rate in Pittsburgh, and more than 10 times higher than the rest of the state. This is not a gun control problem. This is a people problem; specifically, it’s about the people of Philadelphia who are either (a) part of the problem, or (b) too stupid to understand how to fix the problem.
If you’re voting for Democrats like Jamie Gauthier, you are the problem. Gauthier can only think of violent crime in terms of passing new laws to “get these kinds of weapons off the street,” so that it never occurs to her that, by enforcing existing laws, Philadelphia could get these kinds of people off the streets — put them in prison where they belong.
Or in the lunatic asylum, as would seem to be the case with Kimbrady Carriker, who not only occasionally dressed up in women’s clothing, but also at different times used his (or “their”) social media to express support for Black Lives Matter and Donald Trump. As I said of another notorious cross-dresser, Carriker is self-evidently “daft, deranged, bonkers, berserk, a few fries short of a Happy Meal and cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs.” The evidence of his craziness is impossible to overlook:
Philadelphia Shooting Perp Says
He Opened Fire to Help the City
Do Something About ‘Gun Violence’
. . . The shooter accused of killing five people during a harrowing rampage in Southwest Philadelphia Monday night told police the shooting spree was an attempt to help authorities address the city’s gun violence crisis, and that a deity would be sending more people to help, according to sources familiar with the investigation.
The assertions by Kimbrady Carriker were made to police in the hours after Carriker was arrested on the 1600 block of South Frazier Street, said the sources, who requested anonymity to discuss the ongoing investigation.
Carriker first told responding officers who made the arrest that they had done a good job, the sources said. Carriker also told them the gunfire — which spanned several blocks and struck people, including two children, who had no apparent connection to one another — was an attempt to help police because “all these guys are out there killing people,” the sources said.
I keep telling you: Crazy People Are Dangerous. And the national media will now decide this is strictly “local news.”
I have three subscriptions to Jeff Goldstein’s Protein Wisdom Reborn Substack thingy to give away. First three members of the commentariat who ask for one get them.
Silicon Valley delenda est.
Law enforcement officials confirmed on Wednesday that cocaine was found at the White House over the weekend.
But one official familiar with the investigation . . .
(Who may be Merrick Garland, or maybe not. Who knows?)
. . . cautioned that the source of the drug was unlikely to be determined given that it was discovered in a highly trafficked area of the West Wing.
(When a Democrat’s in the White House, everybody’s on dope.)
The small amount of cocaine was found in a cubby area for storing electronics within the West Exec basement entryway into the West Wing, where many people have authorized access, including staff or visitors coming in for West Wing tours.
(Oh, great — let’s blame the tourists!)
Asked what the chances were of finding the culprit, the official said that “it’s gonna be very difficult for us to do that because of where it was.”
(Notice the use of “us” here, indicating that this official is part of the investigation. And by “investigation,” of course I mean cover-up.)
“Even if there were surveillance cameras, unless you were waving it around, it may not have been caught” by the cameras, added the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity given that it’s an ongoing investigation. “It’s a bit of a thoroughfare. People walk by there all the time.”
As to whether Hunter Biden ever used this entrance, well, for some reason that Politico reporter didn’t think of asking the “official familiar with the investigation” about The World’s Most Famous Cocaine Addict.
These people aren’t doing any actual journalism. It’s all just stenography for the Democratic National Committee.
JOINT BASE ELMENDORF-RICHARDSON
“What do you mean, no fireworks?”
It was then explained to me that, because it never gets fully dark in Alaska during the Midnight Sun season, a fireworks display is impractical. What do Alaskans do for the Fourth of July?
They go to Glacier View — about 100 miles northeast of Anchorage, up the Matanuska River valley — for the annual Car Launch.
Old vehicles are rolled down a hill and off a cliff for the entertainment of a crowd of thousands. They’ve been doing this since 2005, and it’s become like race day at Talladega, an all-day redneck festival — Alabama in Alaska, essentially. Looks like fun. We’re going.
