The Other McCain

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

FMJRA 2.0: Christmas Eve Edition

Posted on | December 25, 2022 | Comments Off on FMJRA 2.0: Christmas Eve Edition

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Staring out the window, waiting for Dynasty Baseball to bring the 1971 season online – or spring, whichever comes first. In the meantime, tomorrow is Our Lord’s birthday, shared by (among others) Komi Shouko. I hope you all are having a happy one.
Ceterum autem censeo Silicon Valley esse delendam.

Shuuko: “Shouko was born at 2:38 AM on December 25, and weighed 3.2 kilos!”
Shouko: “Not so much detail, Mom!”

Propaganda, ‘Misinformation’ and Other Lessons From Communist History
Battleswarm Blog
The DaleyGator
A View From The Beach
EBL
357 Magnum

Last-Minute Christmas Gift Ideas
EBL
357 Magnum

FMJRA 2.0: Rogers Hornsby Was Right About That, Anyway
A View From The Beach
EBL

Crime Is Not Just a Statistic
The Pirate’s Cove
The First Street Journal
The Political Hat
EBL

Secondhand ‘Stolen Valor’? Lying Joe Invents Purple Heart Story About Uncle
The DaleyGator
Animal Magnetism
EBL
357 Magnum

Rule 5 Sunday: Mrs. Santa
Animal Magnetism
A View From The Beach
EBL
Ninety Miles From Tyranny

A Book Post For Hanukkah
EBL
357 Magnum

The Dumbest Play in NFL History
EBL

In The Mailbox: 12.19.22
A View From The Beach
EBL
357 Magnum
Proof Positive

Why Was the Department of Justice Spying on Republican Congressional Staff?
EBL
357 Magnum

In The Mailbox: 12.20.22
A View From The Beach
EBL
357 Magnum
Proof Positive

People Never Ask Me for Advice
Okrahead
EBL
357 Magnum

Gone To The Dogs
EBL

In The Mailbox: 12.21.22
A View From The Beach
EBL
357 Magnum
Proof Positive

In The Mailbox: 12.22.22
A View From The Beach
EBL
357 Magnum
Proof Positive

The Shame of Adam Kinzinger
The DaleyGator
A View From The Beach
EBL
357 Magnum

In The Mailbox: 12.23.22
EBL
A View From The Beach
357 Magnum
Proof Positive

Amazon Warehouse Deals




Category: FMJRA Award

Elliot Rodger and Nick Fuentes: The Satanic Politics of Self-Destruction

Posted on | December 24, 2022 | Comments Off on Elliot Rodger and Nick Fuentes: The Satanic Politics of Self-Destruction

The first I remember hearing of Nick Fuentes was when Michelle Malkin tried to retrieve him from the trash dump of Jew-hating nihilism. That must have been 2019, and I don’t know if Malkin (whom I greatly admire) has expressed regret over the evident failure of that effort.

Malkin has been a stalwart opponent of our de facto open borders policy for as long as I’ve known her, and I suppose she must have seen some potential in Fuentes and his following of “Groypers.” Try to steer these misguided young fellows back onto the path of sanity, she probably figured in her maternal way, but three years later there doesn’t seem to be any evidence of reform, as Fuentes continues to play the role of Holocaust-denying Pied Piper, a sort of 21st-century Willis Carto.

Those who take the turn down the Jew-hating road never arrive at any good destination, and surely this is no coincidence. Clearly, God intends to keep the promise quoted in Genesis 12:3, and no wise man would deliberately choose to get on the wrong side of that issue.

Having always been a philo-Semite, and somewhere to the right of Bibi Netanyahu in terms of my ultra-Zionist tendencies, I have long contemplated the cosmic significance of such things, but realize that “now we see through a glass, darkly,” and must patiently await the workings of divine providence. But I digress . . .

Hate Leader Nick Fuentes
Is Recruiting Incels
The racist troll who dined with Trump is courting
a new online following: raging misogynists.

That’s the headline on a 2,500-word story in Mother Jones, where the editors apparently believe it is newsworthy that guys who can’t get laid could be an important political constituency. Am I the only one who wonders about the correlation between (a) conspiratorial hatred of Jews and (b) inability to get laid? It’s sort of like the connection between feminism and obesity, I suspect. Ordinarily, I would pay no attention to Nick Fuentes, but the editors of Mother Jones want me to do so, and for some reason the comparison that springs to mind is Elliot Rodger.

Humanity… All of my suffering on this world has been at the hands of humanity, particularly women. It has made me realize just how brutal and twisted humanity is as a species. All I ever wanted was to fit in and live a happy life amongst humanity, but I was cast out and rejected, forced to endure an existence of loneliness and insignificance, all because the females of the human species were incapable of seeing the value in me.
This is the story of how I, Elliot Rodger, came to be. This is the story of my entire life. It is a dark story of sadness, anger, and hatred. It is a story of a war against cruel injustice . . .

So begins “My Twisted World: The Story of Elliot Rodger,” the 100,000-word “manifesto” he published online to announce the motive for his 2014 murder spree — the Mein Kampf of Beta male losers.

How does this happen? What kind of person decides that the ideal solution to his personal problems is mass murder? A telltale clue came from Rodger’s manifesto, where he mentions Monette Moio, “a pretty blonde girl” who was the younger sister of one of his middle-school classmates. According to Rodger, she was part of “a group of popular Seventh Grade girls [who] started teasing me. . . . I started to hate all girls because of this. I saw them as mean, cruel, and heartless creatures that took pleasure from my suffering.” This enraged the girl’s father:

‘She was ten years old for God’s sake — she can barely remember the guy. He’s a sociopath. She hasn’t seen him since school.’
‘She’s devastated over the whole thing. . . . It’s like she’s being implicated in this terrible tragedy for something she hasn’t done and can’t remember.’ . . .
Mr Moio added that he and his daughter only remembers Rodger as a ‘strange kid’.
‘He was weird then and he’s weird now,’ he said. ‘He had a secret crush on her, but she was completely unaware of him. She had no idea… If you think about it, he could have killed her, he could have come after her.
‘I was hands on at that school and I don’t remember him. She just remembers that he was a strange kid, she knew he wasn’t a normal type person, but there are a lot of people like that at that age.’

In other words, it was all in Elliot Rodger’s mind — the “teasing” was imaginary, his “suffering” the product of his silent obsession with a cute girl who “was completely unaware of him.” And as for his “war against cruel injustice” — what he described in a YouTube video as his “day of retribution” — it was nothing but a violent gesture to dramatize and call attention to his ultimate choice of suicide. Rodger scapegoated innocent people, blaming them for his personal problems, but his “day of retribution” ended with the tacit admission that only way to end his “suffering” was to kill himself. He was the problem.

Nick Fuentes doing his “America First” podcast

The 24-year-old hosts a nightly broadcast with a cult-like following among young white men who believe they have lost their rightful place in the United States. For the last five years, Fuentes has pushed a vision for an “America First” movement that fuses white nationalism, antisemitism, and authoritarianism in calling for a nation dominated by white Christian men. . . .
Fuentes is advancing one of his latest strategies for cultivating followers: making overtures to men who feel aggrieved by women.
Over the past year, Fuentes has made a point of speaking directly to these men — many of whom identify as “incels” — in numerous appearances on his nightly livestream, far-right podcasts, and Telegram. Historically, incels defined themselves as “involuntary celibate,” but the term has become inextricably associated with misogynist incels, men who blame women for their problems and believe women owe them sex.
Fuentes claims to understand them because he is one of them. “I’m an incel, I’m a proud incel,” he claimed on his nightly America First podcast in January. He’d never had sex, he explained, because, “I’m choosing instead to lead a historical right-wing movement.”

Let’s talk about this “cult-like following.” Prior to the publicity he got for meeting with Trump at Mar-a-Lago, the audience for Fuentes’ videos was pathetically small, reaching somewhere between 1,800 and 6,000 viewers for each episode. In October, as the nation was preparing for the midterm elections, some of his videos got fewer than 1,000 views. So if you’re using “cult-like” as a synonym for tiny, then, yeah, Nick Fuentes has got a “cult-like following.” And probably a “cult-like” penis, too.

Since the Mar-a-Lago meeting, the size of Fuentes’ audience has grown to the tens of thousands, but that’s still an insignificant number in comparison to, say, Tim Pool, who has 1.3 million YouTube subscribers and routinely gets more than 200,000 views on his videos.

It should be obvious that the reason Mother Jones (and other liberal media) are giving a fringe figure like Fuentes free publicity is as a way to smear all conservatives as implicated in his craziness. And let there be no doubt about this — it is unmitigated lunacy:

Fuentes launched into what sounded like a political stump speech in which he outlined the world he would create with his followers’ help. “Why don’t we take the message to the men and say, ‘Hey men, hey men, vote for me, I’ll destroy feminism,” he said, vowing to “make it harder for women to become whores,” and “to incentivize women to be in monogamous marriages for the long term and to have and raise kids.”
The dark fantasy he was selling would not only fulfill his Christian nationalist agenda, it would give incels the unfettered access to women that they’ve long sought. That alignment is part of what makes Fuentes’ pro-misogyny marketing strategy so effective, says Right Wing Watch researcher Kyle Mantyla. “If they can impose Christian nationalism on this country, that will also solve their incel problem by making women second-class citizens who have no right to refuse to marry them, have sex with them, and bear their children.”

Can you even imagine being Kyle Mantyla, who has been on the payroll of People for the American Way since 1999, and it’s your job to pay attention to people like Nick Fuentes? Talk about “suffering” . . .

You cannot solve self-inflicted problems by scapegoating, and what the “incel” delusion has in common with anti-Semitic conspiracy theories is that both offer explanations for personal failure that focus on blaming others. Anti-Semitism is not really political at all. It’s not about U.S. policy in the Mideast or about Israel’s policy toward its neighbors, it’s about losers (both foreign and domestic) who view Israel and the Jews the same way Elliot Rodger viewed Monette Moio, as “mean, cruel, and heartless creatures that took pleasure from my suffering.” Even as we recognize the appeal of scapegoating by “right-wing” figures like Nick Fuentes, however, we must avoid the temptation to buy into the Left’s identity-politics victimhood mentality, which is the same damned thing.

Telling black people they’re oppressed by “systemic racism” is no more helpful that telling people that they’re victims of an international Zionist conspiracy, and the fact that Kanye West has apparently been sucked into the vortex of anti-Semitism shows how similar these beliefs really are. And both of these persecution fantasies are similar to the “incel” thinking his problems in life are the fault of the cute girl who (at least in his mind) was mean to him in seventh grade. It does not matter, in the grand scheme of things, that some cute girls actually are cruel, or that some white people really are racists, because these facts are inadequate as explanations of individual unhappiness. That is to say, there are black people who are happy and successful despite the reality of racism and, on a personal note, I have managed to have a pretty good life despite the fact that Vicky Jones never reciprocated my interest in seventh grade.

Likewise, the existence of bad Jews (e.g., George Soros) does not prove the existence of an all-powerful Jewish conspiracy, especially when we realize that some of Soros’ most vocal critics are themselves Jewish. But the Left wants you to believe that everyone who criticizes Soros is an ideological soulmate of Nick Fuentes and the danger is that people will start believing this: “If they’re going to call me an anti-Semite no matter what I do, why not just go all-in on this Jew-hating thing?”

The Left’s incessant name-calling — “racist! sexist! homophobe!” — can have a demoralizing effect on conservatives, and when you find yourself on their target list, it’s a test of character, requiring strength to resist their attempt to define you as evil. The Left is satanic in this way.

Satan is a liar (John 8:44), and a false accuser (Revelation 12:10) who “deceiveth the whole world” by his slanders against God, and against God’s people. When the Left aims its slander machine at you, the experience should give you some sense of what Jesus felt when he was falsely accused by the envious Pharisees, and when you reflect that Jesus was entirely blameless — whereas you are unquestionably a sinner — then you must realize that, however unjust the accusations against you may be, you cannot lash out at the enemies who chastise you.

“And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.”
— Romans 8:28 (KJV)

Exult in your chastisement! Take pride in your scars! If you love God and are truly seeking His will, then your suffering is proof that you are among “them who are called.” How you conduct yourself in the moment of crisis will be the test of your faith, and the proof of God’s favor.

It is not God’s will that we should be miserable and hopeless, tempted to self-destructive despair. Jesus said: “I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly” (John 10:8). So who is it that’s pointing people down the road to destruction? Who is it that tells us we must surrender to hate? Could it be . . . Satan?

Knowing myself to be nothing but a wretched sinner, my Calvinistic belief can be summarized simply: If God means to destroy a man, no one can save him, but if God means to save a man, no one can destroy him.

However vain it may be to think of myself as indestructible, it is nonetheless a fact that I have not yet been destroyed by my enemies, who have never ceased to plot my destruction. God keeps His promises, and we must remember that it is not by our virtue that we deserve His favor, but rather that we are beneficiaries of His grace.

We are “sinners in the hands of an angry God,” as Jonathan Edwards said, and are entirely dependent on God’s mercy for our preservation. We have no ground to complain for whatever misfortunes may befall us, since our sinfulness means we deserve nothing but death.

It was not my intention, when I began writing this, to preach a sermon, but here I am 2,000 words later, at the point a preacher would issue the altar call, with the choir singing “Softly and Tenderly.” Occasionally this blog is a mission and a ministry, I reckon, and perhaps a comfort to our Internet congregation, a source of hope amid the prevailing gloom. Earlier this month, the radical mayor of Richmond ordered that the remains of A.P. Hill be exhumed and his monument be removed from the intersection of Laburnum Road and Hermitage venue. When my great-grandfather, a private in the 13th Alabama Infantry, was captured at Gettysburg, he was serving under A.P. Hill; thus I have a personal reason to resent the insult to that general’s memory. Yet I can endure even this without complaint, as I recall the words of a man far wiser than myself:

My experience of men has neither disposed me to think worse of them nor indisposed me to serve them; nor in spite in spite of failures which I lament, of errors which I now see and acknowledge, or of the present aspect of affairs, do I despair of the future.
The truth is this: The march of Providence is so slow and our desires so impatient; the work of progress so immense and our means of aiding it so feeble; the life of humanity is so long, that of the individual so brief, that we often see only the ebb of the advancing wave and are thus discouraged. It is history that teaches us to hope.

Yes, sir. We shall carry on. Merry Christmas, and Deo vindice.



 

Category: History, Religion

In The Mailbox: 12.23.22

Posted on | December 24, 2022 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 12.23.22

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Since Christmas is on Sunday but everything’s closed on Monday, Rule 5 Sunday will therefore be on Monday this weekend. Deadlines for tomorrow’s FMJRA remain the same.
Ceterum autem censeo Silicon Valley esse delendam.

Your Santa this year is…Attila the Hun?

OVER THE TRANSOM
EBL: Tom Cotton, you disappoint us.
Twitchy: Rachael Ray Admonishing Americans That It’s Their Moral Imperative To Stand With Ukraine Goes Wrong, also, Occasional Cortex Complains About Chip Roy’s Earmark Criticism, Gets Served
Louder With Crowder: Little girl gets stuck in a claw machine when her sister dared her to climb in and it’s hard not to laugh, also, UFC fighter Jake Shields shows what happens when you call someone a Nazi IRL as opposed to on Twitter
Vox Popoli: The Null Factory, also, The Evil of this World
According To Hoyt: On Christmas Day In The Morning, Everything Is Broken – Riding the Catastrophic Change Wave, Part I, and The Christmas Cat
Monster Hunter Nation: WriterDojo S3 E23: How to Approach an Author
Stoic Observations: The Sand Pit Story
Gab News: Gab’s 2022 Accomplishments & Plans For 2023

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: Friday Hawt Chicks & Links – The Christmas 2022 edition
American Conservative: The Gift Of Margit, A Servant Of God, also, Once More, Neocons, Into The Breach!
American Greatness: Biden’s Christmas Address Fails to Mention Jesus, Instead Turns Political
American Thinker: It Must Always Be ‘Merry Christmas’
Animal Magnetism: Rule Five War on Cars Friday
Babalu Blog: Video of the Day: Communist Cuban doctor lectures colleagues to be like the Nazis, Cuba’s socialist elites party on ‘as God requires’ while starving Cuban children slaughter cats for food, and Tourism dropped by 65% in Cuba this year; the worst loss sustained by any country in the Americas
Baldilocks: How To Defend Yourself, also, The World Is A Ghetto
Behind The Black: Perseverance experiment generates new record of breathable oxygen on Mars, NASA requesting proposals for raising Hubble’s orbit, Newly passed Senate bill requires consultation between industry and government on space junk, and Today’s blacklisted American: Professor fired by a North Carolina school for having opinions
CDR Salamander: Fullbore Friday
Da Tech Guy: Under the Fedora Thoughts
Don Surber: Just do what Trump did, 20 people attend Brittney Griner’s homecoming!, and The war on the middle class is old
First Street Journal: As bitterly cold weather hits the United States, we’re not totally dependent upon electricity
Gates Of Vienna: The Closing of the Imanskolan, also, Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes?
The Geller Report: 13 US States Warn that Giant Climate Activists Funds Are Buying Up Public Utilities, also, Democrats’ Obscene $1.7 Trillion Spending Orgy Includes Extra Funds for DOJ to Pursue More Illegal Jan. 6 Political Prosecutions
Hogewash: Team Kimberlin Post of the Day, NGC 7469, A Busy Day, and Blognet
Hollywood In Toto: Guess What NY Times’ Late Night Year in Review Left Out?
The Lid: Kwanzaa- A Fake Holiday With A Racist Goal, Created By A Criminal Madman
Legal Insurrection: Dem Mega Donor Crypto King Released From Jail On Personal Recognizance Bond, The Ideological Capture of Our Scientific Institutions Accelerates, UNC-Chapel Hill Drops Criteria Excluding White People for a Fellowship After Civil Rights Complaint, NBC “Historian” Michael Beschloss Demands to Know Why Some Lawmakers Didn’t Applaud for Zelenskyy, and Victor Davis Hanson Wonders if Universities Are Doomed
Nebraska Energy Observer: It’s beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas
Outkick: Utah-Penn State Will Be The Last Traditional Rose Bowl Matchup Ever, You Don’t Say?! Anthony Davis Is Out Indefinitely For The Lakers, College Football Hall Of Fame Considering Exception For Mike Leach On Induction Requirements, Rams, Broncos Pranked With Ugly Christmas Uniforms, and Tennessee QB Joe Milton Unleashes A Howitzer, Throws An Orange 100 Yards
Power Line: Jack Clifford: Lake v. Hobbs, day 2, The Other Blue State, The Daily Chart: Long COVID Labor Market?, and Thoughts from the ammo line
Protein Wisdom Reborn: Patrick J. Carroll truly IS a sad, embittered psychopath
Shark Tank: Another Win For DeSantis – Fla. Supremes Empanel Grand Jury On The Jab
Shot In The Dark: Merry Christmas!
STUMP: Merry Christmas! Have Some Finalized 2021 U.S. Mortality Stats!
The Political Hat: 12 Posts of Christmas, 2022 (Day 11)
This Ain’t Hell: Russians warn on increasing aid to Ukraine, Digital evidence points to Russian Military as being behind the Bucha killings, Valor Friday, Russia’s only aircraft carrier experiences fire, and Paraphrasing the Bible is “hate speech”?
Transterrestrial Musings: The FBI’s Response, What A Shame, Just What We Needed, and Linux Problem
Victory Girls: Jan 6 Report: Liz Cheney’s Lecture
Volokh Conspiracy: Marines Must Exempt Sikhs from Boot Camp Shaving Requirements
Watts Up With That: BOOK REVIEW: The Unpopular Truth about Electricity and the Future of Energy, also,  Japan Embraces Nuclear Power, Cancels Phase Out Plans
Weasel Zippers: Biden EPA Chief Claims “Racism” In Environmental Laws, Pelosi Praises Media As “Guardians of Democracy” In Final Press Conference, Biden Chief of Staff Fumes: Americans More Concerned About Gas Prices Than Having “Free Pre-K”, and Complete Lack of Self-Awareness: Biden Complains, “Our Politics Has Gotten So Angry”
The Federalist: It’s Time To Tell The Truth About Colonialism In Africa, As Christians Face Death Sentences, Nigerian Court Can And Should Overturn Its Dangerous Blasphemy Law, South Dakota University Regents To Protect Kids, But Not Adults, From Explicit Shows On Public Property, and 50 Years Later, We Still Remember The ‘Immaculate Reception’ And The Great Roberto Clemente
Mark Steyn: Live Around the Planet: Friday December 23rd

Amazon Warehouse Deals




Category: Linkagery

The Shame of Adam Kinzinger

Posted on | December 23, 2022 | 1 Comment

Last week, Tucker Carlson bid a mocking farewell to Illinois Rep. Adam Kinzinger who, like Liz Cheney and many others, wrecked his career by succumbing to Trump Derangement Syndrome. As much as I enjoyed Carlson’s mockery — and as much as Kinzinger deserved to be mocked as a “male menopause” sufferer — it does not fully explain what happened to Kinzinger, and mockery will not prevent others from emulating such errors in the future. A “teachable moment” was missed.

Begin with this: You and I are different from those who harbor political ambitions. For most of us, political parties are a matter of choosing between two different policy agendas; we may not like everything that our party does, but in general we think our party represents our interests and ideals better than the other party does. In point of fact, most conservatives are more or less permanently exasperated with Republican politicians, who seem like a gang of bumbling clowns, cowards and knaves. But then we look at the Democrats, who are even worse, and figure we’ve got no other choice. Republican voters are like fans of a lousy NFL franchise — the Cleveland Browns or Detroit Lions, for example — who suffer endless disappointment, but nevertheless continue showing up at the stadium and rooting for the home team.

Most of my readers have been voting Republican all your adult lives, and don’t ever expect to stop voting Republican, no matter how futile and frustrating your experience may be. You are a loyalist, and consider it a duty to vote for the GOP, and that’s why people like Adam Kinzinger piss you off so much. If you can be loyal to the team, despite so many years of disappointment and frustration, why can’t Republicans like Kinzinger reciprocate your loyalty? Why can’t they be “team players”?

Ah, but politicians are different from you and me. For them, a political party is a machine by which to advance their own ambitions. And while they speak with apparent sincerity of their “principles,” it should be observed that these are difficult to distinguish from their career interests. Once upon a time, in the earliest era of our Republic, political careers were not particularly lucrative, and our legislatures were not occupied by careerists without any other employment opportunities. Being a state legislator or even a congressman or U.S. Senator, was not a full-time job, and these seats tended to be filled by wealthy landowners or prosperous lawyers, for whom serving a few years as a legislator was a sort of social obligation, as leading citizens of their communities.

As politics has become a full-time career, however, the character of our legislative representatives has changed, and thus we have such personalities as Adam Kinzinger, a former wunderkind who first got elected to Congress during the Tea Party year of 2010 and thus instantly became part of the governing GOP majority in the House of Representatives, when he was still just 32 years old. Republicans won a landslide in 2010, gaining a net 63 seats for a 242-193 majority, with John Boehner replacing Nancy Pelosi as Speaker of the House. Kinzinger had first won office as a county commissioner while a 20-year-old college student and then amid the patriotic fervor of the “War on Terror” in 2003, joined the Air Force, becoming a pilot flying aerial refueling planes. Endorsed by Tea Party darling Sarah Palin, Kinzinger easily won the 2010 GOP primary in the 11th District of Illinois, then won the general election by a 15-point margin. He was a young superstar.

Alas, things immediately started going downhill for the GOP, as Mitt Romney won the 2012 Republican presidential nomination and thus helped reelect Barack Obama. Meanwhile, Kinzinger got redistricted. As recently as 1990, Illinois had 22 House seats, but they lost two seats after the 1990 Census, and have lost one seat in every subsequent census, so that when Congress convenes next January, Illinois will have only 17 representatives in the House. When Kinzinger was first elected in 2010, Illinois had 19 congressional districts, but in the next election, that number shrunk to 18 and, in the ensuing game of “musical chairs,” Kinzinger ran in the 16th District, defeating fellow Republican Rep. Don Mazullo in the 2012 primary, then cruising to a 62%-38% win in November. So far, so good for Kinzinger, but in the aftermath of Obama’s reelection, Boehner went sideways in budget negotiations with the White House, pissing off the fiscal conservative Club for Growth.

Kinzinger had supported Boehner’s deal with Obama and, subsequently was faced with a Club for Growth-backed challenger in the 2014 GOP primary. Kinzinger had no trouble fighting off that challenge and was reelected, but this seems to have been the pivotal episode that turned Kinzinger — originally elected amid a populist Tea Party surge — into an enemy of conservatives. After all, self-declared conservatives had tried to prevent his reelection and this threat to his personal ambition was intolerable to Kinzinger: How dare they oppose him?

Things then went bad to worse. As the Republican field began assembling for the 2016 presidential campaign, Adam Kinzinger endorsed . . .

Go ahead, take a wild guess.

Betcha can’t guess, but give it a try.

I’ll wait.

If you guessed Jeb Bush, you’re a winner!

Was there ever any campaign more obviously doomed from the outset than the 2016 Jeb Bush campaign? America had gotten thoroughly sick of Bushism, and Jeb’s performance in the GOP primary campaign was a sort of asterisk in the final result. Jeb got less than 3% of the vote in the Iowa caucuses, getting exactly one delegate of the 30 chosen. In New Hampshire, Jeb got a whopping 11% and three delegates out of 23. Then came South Carolina, a winner-take-all primary where Jeb got less than 8% of the vote and then quit the race, at which point Kinzinger jumped ship to endorse Marco Rubio, but it was already too late to stop the Trump juggernaut. With the benefit of hindsight, everyone has since realized what I foresaw from the beginning: There were too many candidates vying to be the anti-Trump in that crowded primary field. If you go back to the New Hampshire primary, you see that the combined votes of the three “moderates” — Jeb (11%), John Kasich (16%) and Chris Christie (7%) — were nearly equal to the 35% that Trump got in New Hampshire. If the RINO Caucus had been able to coalesce behind one candidate, they might have stopped Trump, but the selfish ambition of these three candidates prevented that from happening. Likewise with the two “Conservative But Not Trump” candidates, Rubio and Ted Cruz. If one or the other had been willing to drop out early, perhaps their combined support would have exceeded Trump’s, but individual ambition prevented that, too. And, in that crisis of the Republican Party, you see, Kinzinger was always endorsing the wrong candidates.

Me, I’m a team player.

From the moment Trump came down that escalator, I realized he was going to be hard to beat and, a few weeks later, I got a call from my buddy Pete the Tech Guy, who was covering Trump’s first big rally in New Hampshire: “Stacy, this Trump thing is for real.” It was a genuine grassroots phenomenon, and when National Review subsequently published its “Never Trump” issue, I became concerned about a potential nightmare scenario: If the GOP Establishment somehow contrived a way to prevent Trump from getting the nomination, Trump might go third-party, and thus ensure Hillary’s election. We were, in a way, caught between the Devil and the deep blue sea. Trump was able to energize a segment of the electorate that had long felt neglected, and with this energized grassroots base, he ultimately overcame every obstacle, including the opposition of GOP Establishment types like Kinzinger, and thus saved America from the worst of all evils, President Hillary Clinton.

Being a team player, it was easy to see it this way, and the problem for Kinzinger and so many others is that they let their own ambitions blind them to the reality of what this choice meant. Whatever you think of Trump, there could be nothing worse for America than putting Hillary Clinton in the White House. We just barely avoided that apocalyptic catastrophe and, as bad as the subsequent imposition of Joe Biden has been, I’m sure it would have been much worse if Hillary had won in 2016 — but Kinzinger doesn’t seem to grasp this.

Something else Kinzinger doesn’t get: Congressmen are supposed to represent their constituents. In 2016, Donald Trump won the 16th District of Illinois by 17 points, with 55% to Hillary Clinton’s 38%. In 2020, the voters of the 16th District chose Trump by a 16-point margin, 56% to Biden’s 40%. In other words, the district that sent Adam Kinzinger to Congress voted for Donald Trump twice, by overwhelming margins, and you might think this would oblige Kinzinger to defend the man his constituents embraced, rather than to constantly attack Trump.

Who is it, really, that is the threat to democracy?

Why do Republicans like Kinzinger hate their own constituents?

This is what’s really wrong with the Republican Party, that so many politicians elected by the party apparently don’t feel any obligation to reciprocate the loyalty of GOP voters. If you are elected as a Republican, you ought to be enough of a team player that you don’t do what Adam Kinzinger has done, directly insulting his own party’s voters.

Fortunately for Republicans — not just in Illinois, but everywhere — the Census took care of our Adam Kinzinger problem. After the 2020 Census, Illinois again lost another House seat, and after the subsequent redistricting, Kinzinger would have had to face off against another Republican, Rep. Darin LaHood, in a very conservative district. Kinzinger decided to retire instead, and nobody — absolutely nobody — in the Republican Party will miss that selfish bastard. Good riddance.

Let this be a warning to all Republican politicians. Never forget that you are a representative of the people who elected you. If you had not first won a Republican primary, you never would have been a candidate in the general election, so that party loyalty is a prerequisite to success in politics. While philosophers may speculate on the existence and nature of a generalized public interest in political affairs, no speculative theory is necessary to understand the symbiotic connection between a politician’s success and the strength of his party in the community that elects him. That is to say, while a congressman or senator indeed is elected to represent all his constituents, he must always keep in mind what his own party’s grassroots voters want, in terms of his policy agenda. You may be able to fool voters to some extent for a while, but in the long run, politicians who don’t understand the reciprocal nature of party loyalty are doomed to destruction. If you cannot in good conscience represent your own party’s grassroots voters, honor requires you either to quit your office or to switch parties. What Adam Kinzinger has done is dishonorable, and he can posture all he wants as a Courageous Man of Principle, but he’ll have to do so somewhere else besides Congress, because the voters of his district rightly hate him.

Kinzinger betrayed the people who elected him, and ought to be ashamed of himself, but if he had any capacity for shame, I guess he never would have endorsed that loser Jeb Bush, would he?



 

Category: Congress, Illinois, Republicans

In The Mailbox: 12.22.22

Posted on | December 23, 2022 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 12.22.22

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Silicon Valley delenda est.

Our favorite Sumerian death goddess discovers Christmas.

OVER THE TRANSOM
357 Magnum: Concealed Carry Stops Michigan Carjacking
EBL: Thank you, Senators Mike Lee and Rand Paul, Bail for Bankman, and Clap Comrades Clap
Twitchy: Not Everyone Is Inspired By This Recolored American Flag Posted By Ukrainian Official, also, Mom Who Paraded Drag Queen Son On TV Whines About Pervert Posting A Pic Of Child
Louder With Crowder: O.G. Ice-T (original gangster) comes to Elon Musk’s defense and tells haters what to do with their Twitter
Vox Popoli: There Are No Bank Reserves, also, Suddenly in Norway

 

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Conservative: Feliz Navidad From Groomer Grandpa, also, Zelensky Takes Washington
American Greatness: Kari Lake Expert Witness: Missized Ballots That Caused Election Day Chaos Could Not Have Been An Accident, also, Kari Lake Trial: Election Day Chaos in Maricopa County Was Enough to Change the Results, Pollster Testifies
American Thinker: 5 Freedom-Based Solutions to Mass Shootings, also, Orwellian Language and Democrat Doublethink
Animal Magnetism: Animal’s Daily West Coast Meltdown News
Babalu Blog: Another repressive thug for Cuban dictatorship is identified, along with some accomplices, U.S. court decides in favor of Cuban dictatorship in trademark dispute over Cohiba brand cigars, and No Feliz Navidad card from Peru to Mexico
Baldilocks: If He Can Do It So Can I
BattleSwarm: Russian Atrocities Earn Ukraine New Kit
Behind The Black:  Perseverance deposits first core sample for pickup later, India buying land for new spaceport on India’s southern tip, Bursting lava bubbles on Mars, and Today’s blacklisted American: The FBI’s purge of conservatives forces one agent to sue
Cafe Hayek: John Tierney Explains and Decries the Covid-Fueled Further Politicization of Science, also, On Mapping Onto Reality Our Theoretical Understanding of Comparative Advantage
CDR Salamander: Diversity Thursday
Da Tech Guy: The Three Dangers of the Frank Pavone Case: Danger Two: the Sin of Pride, also, The Progressive war on the Holiday that Must Not Be Named continues unabated
Don Surber: Bidenana Republic, also, The war on Americans from within
Gates Of Vienna: Who Would Have Thought Climate Change Could Kill So Many People So Soon?, also, Excess Mortality in Germany, Part Four
The Geller Report: 8th Century B.C.: Discovery of King Hezekiah Inscriptions Among ‘Most Important’ Archaeological Finds Ever
Hogewash: Team Kimberlin Post of the Day, IC 443, and Gaming the Supreme Court
Hollywood In Toto: James Cameron Learns Hard Lesson – You’re Never Woke Enough
The Lid: The FBI Destroyed Its Once Great Reputation
Legal Insurrection: Former NYU Finance Director Charged With $3.5 Million in Fraud, Israel: Prime Minister Netanyahu Announces Formation of New Coalition Government, Three DEI Staffers Resign From Princeton University, Accusing School of No Support, and Omnibus Bill’s Monstrous Linkage of “Family Planning” to “Biodiversity”
Nebraska Energy Observer: There’s a balance
Outkick: Trevor Bauer Will Be Immediately Reinstated, LeBron James Makes It All About Himself With Ridiculous Photo Edit Despite Lakers’ Loss To Kings, Undrafted Washington Commanders Player Breaks Down After Pro Bowl Selection, Juwan Howard Loses His Cool, Again, Yells ‘Don’t F-cking Touch Me’ At His Own Player Holding Him Back From Official, and Former Broncos RB Ronnie Hillman Dead At 31 After Battling Cancer
Power Line: Was January 6 Pelosi’s Fault?, High in the Upper Valley, and The Daily Chart: The Shocking EU Energy Subsidies
Protein Wisdom Reborn: When Gender Theorists Attack
Shark Tank: Harmeet Dhillon Poised To Pull Of Major RNC Election Upset
Shot In The Dark: I’m Old Enough To Remember, also, The Final Word
The Political Hat: 12 Posts of Christmas, 2022 (Day 10)
This Ain’t Hell: The Russian military must tackle problems it faces in Ukraine, Twitter + Pentagon = Information Ops, and Army veteran initiates federal lawsuit against police officers who punched him during stop
Transterrestrial Musings: Vega C, Mitch McConnell, and James Cameron
Victory Girls: FTX Fallout: Guilty Pleas And Extradition
Volokh Conspiracy: Did The Ways & Means Committee Play The Supreme Court On Trump’s Tax Returns?
Watts Up With That: Academics Pursue Project to ‘Decolonize Physics’
Weasel Zippers: Woke Film Critic Accuses New Avatar Movie of “Cultural Appropriation”, Marines Receive Woke Report Which Says To Stop Calling Drill Instructors “Sir,” “Ma’am”, and Omnibus Bill Earmarks $750K For Trans Group That Wants To Inject LGBTQ “Discourse” In Elementary Schools
The Federalist: No, AOC, Abortion Is Not A Jewish Sacrament, Get Crafty This Christmas! These Easy, Low-Cost Holiday Poppers Will Add Joy To Your Table, In States That Limited Abortion After Dobbs, Biden’s Federal Agencies Are Pushing It Anyway, and Want To Cure Your Screen Addiction? Form A Luddite Club
Mark Steyn: Tmss Do not Use, Latkes and Prayers, Rotherham Reject, and As Ye Give, So Shall Ye Receive

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Category: Linkagery

In The Mailbox: 12.21.22

Posted on | December 22, 2022 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 12.21.22

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Silicon Valley delenda est.

¡Verdad!

OVER THE TRANSOM
Ninety Miles From Tyranny: The 90 Miles Mystery Box Episode #1938
EBL:  Extraordinary Attorney Woo, also, Franco Harris, RIP
Twitchy: House Republicans Release Report On J6 Security Failures, also, Actor/Rapper Ice T Has Refreshingly Sane & Sensible Opinion About Twitter Under Elon Musk
Louder With Crowder: Elon Musk responds to stepping down as Twitter CEO, and…BAH GAWD, that’s MySpace Tom’s entrance music
Vox Popoli: Free Speech is Anti-Christ, The Importance of Engagement, and Another Warning Signal

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: The End of the Peterson Fraud
American Conservative: ‘The Most Dangerous Show on Netflix’?
American Greatness: Sen. Rick Scott Demands Explanation For Biden Regime’s Wildly Inflated Q2 Employment Numbers, also, Twitter Files: ‘Special Protection’ Given to Pentagon Propaganda Accounts
American Thinker: The Problem With Voting Machine Certification In Arizona, A Fool’s Game on Climate, In Elections, It’s Not The Votes That Count, It’s The Ballots That Count, and Is America Falling Like Rome?
Animal Magnetism: Animal’s Hump Day News
Babalu Blog: Senate Foreign Relations Committee Republicans warn Biden about concessions to Cuba’s communist regime, Cuban YouTuber threatened with being fired from her teaching job for videos exposing reality in Cuba, and Reports from Cuba: The absurdities of Cuba’s revolutionary bureaucracy
BattleSwarm: Biden Administration: You’re Not Exporting Any Of That Dirty, Sinful Natural Gas! Ted Cruz: Guess You Don’t Need Any Of These Department Of Energy Nominees Approved, Then. Biden Administration: [Folds]
Behind The Black: The Wuhan panic underlines how scientists have abandoned the search for truth, SpaceX and the Ukraine resolve funding issues for Starlink terminals, ISS spacewalk postponed because controllers had to maneuver station to avoid space junk, and InSight mission ended
Cafe Hayek: Let’s Amend the U.S. Constitution
CDR Salamander: Mines for All My Friends
Da Tech Guy: The Three Dangers of the Frank Pavone Case: Danger One The Errors of the Church
Don Surber: Biden investigates school library for removing child pornography, also, Walt Disney helped launch Toys for Tots
First Street Journal: You can’t make poorer people wealthier by making wealthier people poorer, If the Tridentine Mass brings more Catholics to Mass, why would the Church ever restrict it?, and The left want to blame normal people for suicide of a transgender person
Gates Of Vienna: Excess Mortality in Germany, Part Two, Clearing the Roadway, and Excess Mortality in Germany, Part Three
The Geller Report: OBSCENE SPENDING, Democrats Dump Trump Tax Data In Tuesday Night Release After They Voted To Release His Tax Returns To The Public, and Biden to Send Patriot Missiles to Ukraine Which Means Deploying US Troops
Hogewash: Team Kimberlin Post of the Day, A Summary of Today’s News, and Westerhout 5
Hollywood In Toto: Puss in Boots: The Last Wish Is the Antonio Banderas Show (And Little Else), The Best Movies of 2022 (And a ‘Maverick’ Shall Lead Them), Jane Fonda Is Right. Really, and ‘I Wanna Dance with Somebody’ Checks All the Biopic Boxes (Yawn)
The Lid: $1.7 Trillion Spending Bill Has Funds for Border Security (For OTHER Countries), also, Stanford Eliminates Harmful Language Such As “American”
Legal Insurrection: CA Regulators Make Controversial Move to Reduce Incentives to Homeowners with Solar Panels, Stanford Language Guide Considers the Word ‘American’ Harmful, Ronna McDaniel Overwhelmingly Rejected for RNC Chair in Turning Point USA AmericaFest Straw Poll, Ordinary Americans Can Save the Country at the Local Level, and #TwitterFiles Part 7 – FBI and DOJ Worked To Discredit Reports of Hunter Biden’s Foreign Business Dealings
Nebraska Energy Observer: The Aftermath of Canada’s Freedom Convoy
Outkick: Eagles Gift Jaguars Cheesesteaks As Thank You For Their Win Over Cowboys, Ex-Broncos RB Ronnie Hillman Revealed To Be Battling Liver Cancer In Hospice, Mets, Steve Cohen Steal Carlos Correa From Giants, Agree To 12 Years, $315M Following Collapsed Deal With San Francisco, Arch Manning Officially Signs With Texas, and Steelers’ Legend Franco Harris Passes Away Just Days Before 50th Anniversary Of The Immaculate Reception
Power Line: What’s Happening With the Job Numbers?, Thrown under the omnibus, and A cancer on the presidency
Protein Wisdom Reborn: Another Hump Day Shrapnel Post
Shark Tank: Florida Republicans Choose Sides In Contentious RNC Election
Shot In The Dark: Lethal Force Authorized, A Mostly Peaceful Year In St. Paul
The Political Hat: 12 Posts of Christmas, 2022 (Day 9)
This Ain’t Hell: Army gives one of its rarest awards to 5, Academy grads can’t play pro until they serve! Ha, J/K, Twitter assisted U.S. Military PSYOP contrary to policy, and The VA’s budget could top $300 billion for fiscal 2023
Victory Girls: Mom Kicked Out of Rockettes Show Because of Where She Works, also, Omnibus Bill Puts Coal in Stockings for Christmas
Volokh Conspiracy: Should Justices Sotomayor and Kagan Retire?
Watts Up With That: German Officials Blame Gas Shortage on Consumers, warn “People Will Feel the Cost of The Energy Crisis Hard”, also, Don’t Let “Green” Grinch Absurdities Steal Christmas
Weasel Zippers: Taliban Closes Afghan Universities To Women, MSNBC Reporter: Illegal Immigrants Told Me “They Just Walked Right In” To The United States, Occasional Cortex Says Pro-Life Christians Views On Abortion Are “Theocratic,” “Authoritarian”, and Kamala Harris Blames Republicans For Border Crisis
The Federalist: GOP Can’t Be Successful Until Mitch McConnell Is Gone, Heart Failure Kills ‘Body Positivity’ Activist At 37, For Conservatives To Win, Republicans Must Get Comfortable Using Power, House Republicans Expose Pelosi’s Culpability In Jan. 6 Riot, and A Catholic College Just Gave Its First Ethics Award To A Pro-Abortion Journalist
Mark Steyn: Transspotting, also, Bootleg Bûche for Christmas

Amazon Warehouse Deals




Category: Linkagery

Gone To The Dogs

Posted on | December 22, 2022 | 1 Comment

— by Wombat-socho

10/10, would borf again

O, the shame. O, the embarrassment. While compiling the last book post, I inadvertently omitted The Best Tweets From Actuary Problem Dog, originally recommended by In The Mailbox’s Favorite Actuary, Mary Pat (“Meep”) Campbell. While this may seem to be an extremely niche joke book, a lot of what Actuary Problem Dog is tweeting about will be immediately familiar to not only actuaries, but accountants, tax professionals, randos using Excel, and just plain socially awkward folks. Highly recommended.

Speaking of socially awkward folks, Komi Can’t Communicate is up to volume 22, but since that’s still in the shipping pipeline (Amazon claims they delivered it, but it’s not in my mailbox) we’ll talk about Volume 21, wherein Komi’s class goes to New York on a trip and Komi reunites with her friend Rei Natsukido, who’s acquired an uncommunicative American friend of her own. I’m really happy with this manga, since it’s slowly evolving from a high-school slice of life series (with some seriously weird characters) into a romance between the main character and her first friend, the “completely average” Tadano Hitohito. 

Spy x Family also continues to progress in interesting ways, as the Forger family gets a dog – but not just any dog, a dog that’s been subjected to experiments and can now see the future. This immediately becomes an issue when Bond (the dog) shows Anya a future in which Loid dies in a terrorist bomb attack, and she rides to the rescue with Bond. Having solved that issue, we then get an amusing pair of issues in which Yor’s brother Yuri (an agent of Ostanian State Security) visits and is very suspicious of his sister’s husband – and then Loid’s protégé Nightfall drops by to assist with the mission, while futilely attempting to break up Yor and Loid’s marriage because she doesn’t think Yor is good enough for her old teacher. People are already pairing Yuri and Nightfall  for the sole reason that neither one of them wants the Forgers to remain a couple, though for entirely different reasons. Highly amusing. 

Amazon Warehouse Deals




Category: Books

People Never Ask Me for Advice

Posted on | December 21, 2022 | 1 Comment

My brother Kirby and I had just finished eating lunch at Primanti Brothers and were enjoying a post-prandial smoke when, for no apparent reason, he brought up the subject of the New England Patriots. But why bring it up? This is obviously a painful topic for me to think about, especially after The Dumbest Play in NFL History.

Anyway, so Kirby was sermonizing on the subject of what Patriots owner Robert Kraft should do — i.e., give Bill Belichick an ultimatum to get rid of Matt Patricia, who is hated by New England fans like God hates sin — until finally I interrupted: “You know why I don’t think in terms of what people should do? Because nobody ever asks for my advice.”

In writing about politics, I try to avoid being one of those dime-a-dozen pundit types who presumes to offer election strategy or policy guidance. If politicians want my advice, they can pay me for it, and as no Republican has offered to hire me to be the right-wing James Carville, it’s safe to assume that any advice I offered — unsolicited, as a voluntary contribution — would be ignored. So what’s the point?

And it’s the same thing with the Patriots. Every sports talk-radio personality in New England is calling for Matt Patricia’s scalp, so what’s the point of adding my voice to this deafening chorus? Like, last night I was watching Greg Bedard and Nick Cattles discussing this disaster, and Nick is talking about a situation where the Patriots had the ball first-and-goal at the Raiders one-yard-line, saying that there were six-year-old children shouting at their TVs: “Give the ball to Rhamondre!”

Exactly — everybody can see what’s wrong with the Patriots, and they’re shouting it from the rooftops, with no apparent impact on the situation.

Politics is the same way. Like, WTF, Mitch McConnell?

Helping Ukraine is our Number One priority? Are you kidding me with this? As much as I want Ukraine to defeat the Russian invaders, that’s probably not even a Top Five issue for me, in the grand scheme of what the Republican Party needs to prioritize. And I can’t believe the voters of Kentucky — you know, the people who actually elected Mitch McConnell to the Senate — share his sense of priorities. But again, what’s the point of complaining? Ace of Spades, who has a lot more readers than me, has been hammering Mitch McConnell five days a week, and is running out of new ways to say the same basic thing: “Mitch, you bitch.”

The more you care about politics, the harder it becomes to escape feelings of helpless despair, a sense of futility caused by your inability to influence events, because nobody seems to be listening. You understand what Ecclesiates is getting at: “Vanity of vanities! All is vanity!”

It’s not just politics and football that cause wise men to decry the carnival of folly to which we bear unwilling witness. Every day, people are ruining their own lives by doing foolish things, which is why I feel compelled to offer my kids advice like, “Heroin is a bad drug. Stay away from heroin.” Or, “Don’t send people pictures of your penis.” Stuff like this should be obvious, and yet there are apparently people who didn’t get the memo, so I feel an obligation to warn my kids against such behavior.

If the world was organized on a basis of what I think people should do (and not do), we certainly wouldn’t be in the mess we’re in. Last night, Tucker Carlson interviewed a woman named Camille Keifel who has filed a lawsuit against the people who inflicted a double mastectomy on her as “treatment” for her “gender” problem. And I turned it off because it was too painful to watch, like the last play of the Patriots game.

Young women experiencing “gender” issues don’t solicit my advice on their problems, of course, but just imagine if they did.

“What do you think, Mr. McCain? Should I start injecting myself with testosterone and get my breasts amputated?”

ARE YOU FREAKING KIDDING ME WITH THIS?

Nevertheless, there are licensed medical professionals who think this kind of “treatment” is a splendid solution to “gender” problems, and who are getting paid to butcher confused young people like this, and if you question the wisdom of such procedures, they’ll accuse you of hate.

Thousands of people are being chemically altered and surgically mutilated the way Camille Keifel was, and this is even being done with taxpayer money in some cases, but no one can be allowed to object — Libs of TikTok got banned — because criticizing “gender treatment” is considered dangerous hate speech. But of course, I don’t hate people or wish harm to befall them. Except maybe Matt Patricia, but even in his case, if he got murdered by an enraged Patriots fan, I’d consider that to be . . . unfortunate. Certainly I would never advocate or endorse criminal violence against Matt Patricia, and if a gang of deranged season-ticket holders were to kidnap him, murder him with a chainsaw and grind up his dismembered corpse in a wood chipper, then feed the remains to a pack of hungry pitbulls . . . Well, as I say, this would be unfortunate.

However, the world is not organized according to my preferences, and nobody ever listens to my advice, or else on first-and-goal, Matt Patricia would have called Rhamondre left, and if that didn’t work, he’d have called Rhamondre right on second down, followed by Rhamondre up the middle on third down. If they end up settling for a field goal on fourth down, OK, but I completely agree with that six-year-old kid shouting at his TV: “Give the ball to Rhamondre!”

They don’t ask for my advice, so we’ll keep spending billions on Ukraine, women will keep getting mutilated as “gender treatment,” and the Patriots will keep losing football games until, inevitably, Matt Patricia gets kidnapped by a gang of chainsaw-wielding season-ticket holders.

It’s just so . . . unfortunate.



 

Category: Football, Mitch McConnell, The Transgender Cult
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