The Other McCain

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

Late Night With Rule 5 Sunday: World Cup Edition

Posted on | November 28, 2022 | 1 Comment

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Because I am a merciful wombat, I interrupt the punitive procession of shipgirls with this timely pic of Shuuko and Shouko Komi cheering for Brazil. Why Brazil? Maybe the Komi family has relatives in Brazil. Maybe the artist is a Brazilian Komi fan.* Who cares?
Ceterum autem censeo Silicon Valley esse delendam.

NINETY MILES FROM TYRANNY: Hot Pick of the Late Night, The 90 Miles Mystery Box Episode #1911, Morning Mistress, and Girls With Guns.

ANIMAL MAGNETISM: Rule Five New Amendment Friday, and the Saturday Gingermageddon. 

EBL: MAGA – My Dinner With Ye, Bond Girls: Quantum Of Solace, Casino Royale (2006), Skyfall, and Die Another Day; also, Gum Chewing & Oral Health (SFW), Jenny Agutter, Vintage Thanksgiving, Tulsa King, 11/22/78 – A Date That Will Live In Infamy, and The English. 

A VIEW FROM THE BEACH: Pihla Viitala, Oregon, My Oregon, Fish Pic Friday – Blackfly June, Happy Thanksgiving!, The Wednesday Wetness, New Pennsylvania Bay Diet Plan Disappoints EPA, Tuesday Tanlines, The Monday Morning Stimulus, Another Great Moment in Climate Hypocrisy, Sunday Sunrise, and Garland Sics Special Counsel on Trump, Boebert Goes Back, Lake Hangs Tough

Thanks to everyone for all the luscious links!

*This is the correct answer.

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Category: Rule 5

FMJRA 2.0: Control

Posted on | November 27, 2022 | Comments Off on FMJRA 2.0: Control

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Can it be possible? A five-game winning streak for my Senators? YES IT CAN! We took two out of three from the Braves at home in RFK, then went to New York and swept the DayTraders in a wild set of games that featured a 9-8 slugfest with not one but TWO homers from Ed Brinkman (the second of which was the game-winner) and Gene Brabender’s first win (in relief of Juan Marichal, who only lasted three innings). Game Three I was worried about, because we were facing Steve Carlton, but we got to him for two home runs, which was all we needed. Casey Cox started and only lasted 4.2 (scoreless) innings, but Jim Bouton came in and held the Daytraders to one run in 3.2 innings. Carlton left in the eighth, and the Nats beat Bill Wilson like a rented mule for six runs in the top of the 9th before Hannan & Drabosky came in to shut the door. We’ve got a three-game series against the Dodgers coming up, we’re 2-1 against them so far this season, so I’m hoping for the best.
Ceterum autem censeo Silicon Valley esse delendam.

Fly the Curly W flag!

Lauren Boebert Reelected
Animal Magnetism
The DaleyGator
A View From The Beach
EBL
357 Magnum







Yet Another Inconvenient Mass Murder Destined for the Media’s Memory Hole
The DaleyGator
Okrahead
EBL
357 Magnum
Proof Positive

Orange Man (Still) Bad: Anti-Trump Witch Hunt Must Continue, Says Garland
A View From The Beach
EBL
357 Magnum

FMJRA 2.0: If You Want Blood (You’ve Got It)
A View From The Beach
EBL

Payback Time: McCarthy Will Boot Infamous Jew-Hater From Committee
A View From The Beach
EBL
357 Magnum

Rule 5 Sunday: USS McCall
Animal Magnetism
Ninety Miles From Tyranny
A View From The Beach
EBL

Will the Media Ever Admit That Christine Blasey Ford Slandered Brett Kavanaugh?
EBL
357 Magnum

In The Mailbox: 11.21.22
A View From The Beach
EBL
357 Magnum
Proof Positive

Disney Not Gay Enough Yet? New Plan: Get (More) Woke, Go (More) Broke 
The Pirate’s Cove
The DaleyGator
EBL
357 Magnum

Crazy People Are Dangerous: No Motive Yet in Colorado Springs Shooting
UPDATE: Shooter Is ‘Non-Binary’?
First Street Journal
American Free News Network
EBL

In The Mailbox: 11.23.22 (Afternoon Edition)
A View From The Beach
EBL
357 Magnum
Proof Positive

In The Mailbox: 11.23.22 (Evening Edition)
A View From The Beach
EBL
357 Magnum
Proof Positive

Continuity & Tradition
EBL
357 Magnum

Mystery Solved? Did This CANADIAN Get @rsmccain Banned From Twitter?
The DaleyGator
EBL
357 Magnum

In The Mailbox: 11.25.22
A View From The Beach
EBL
357 Magnum

Top linkers for the week ending November 25:

  1.  EBL (15)
  2.  357 Magnum (12)
  3.  A View From The Beach (8)

Thanks to everyone for all the links!

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Category: FMJRA Award

‘Blood On Your Hands’? Is Anyone Really Endangered by Twitter ‘Amnesty’?

Posted on | November 27, 2022 | 1 Comment

Hopewell Chin’ono is an award-winning journalist who has relentlessly exposed the evils of the lawless and corrupt regime in Zimbabwe:

In 2020, Hopewell reported on alleged Covid-19 procurement fraud within the health ministry, which led to the arrest and sacking of Health Minister Obadiah Moyo. It was President Emmerson Mnangagwa who fired Obadiah in July for “inappropriate conduct” over the $60 million medicines supply scandal. On July 20, 2020, Hopewell was arrested and charged with inciting public violence. The US embassy called Hopewell’s arrest “deeply concerning”, while his lawyer called it “an abduction” and Amnesty accused Zimbabwean authorities of “misusing the criminal justice system to persecute journalists and activists”. He was freed in September on bail, then he was arrested again in November 2020 and was charged with obstructing justice and contempt of court for a tweet about the court outcome of a gold smuggling scandal.
Hopewell Chin’ono was released on bail on January 27, 2021 after spending three weeks in prison. Chin’ono expressed concern about the COVID-19 pandemic in the overcrowded Chikurubi Prison and accuses the government of harassment for arresting him three times in five months.

Given such credentials, Chin’ono must be taken seriously when he warns of the risks of a general “amnesty” for banned accounts on Twitter. And certainly we should hope that Elon Musk will have his staff exercise caution when it comes to such cases as these, where repressive regimes are using “ghost accounts” to harass their critics. But the problem in the United States is almost the diametrical opposite situation, i.e., critics of the regime have been banned, because Twitter staff were working with the Democratic Party to effectively prohibit dissent.

The New York Post, America’s oldest continuously published newspaper, had its Twitter account suspended at the behest of intelligence officials who falsely declared the Hunter Biden laptop story to be “Russian disinformation.” (For the record, I do not think the Biden family is less corrupt than the rulers of Zimbabwe.) Comparing the problems in America to the problems in Zimbabwe is apples and oranges, of course, but that’s the point: If we don’t want to descend into a Third World nightmare, the voices of opponents of the Democratic Party must be heard. Maybe you think Zimbabwe can’t happen here, but you’re wrong. I mean, look what Democrats have done to Chicago and Philadelphia . . .

My point is that, even though I personally expect to benefit from Elon Musk’s Twitter “amnesty,” I am not unreasonable about the need to prevent genuinely dangerous people from having access to the platform. Someone pointed out to John Hoge that deranged cyberstalker Bill Schmalfeldt has more than 200 banned accounts, for example, and do we really want that nutjob back on Twitter? I don’t think so.




 

Category: Crime

Idaho Breakthrough: A Serial Killer?

Posted on | November 26, 2022 | 2 Comments

My brother Kirby has been following the unsolved murder of the four university students in Idaho, and a few days ago, he said to me, “This is a maniac. This is one sick m****rf***er, somebody who’s obsessed with horror movies, like Friday the 13th.” Almost from the beginning, when this case first started making national headlines, Kirby has believed that this was not the perpetrator’s first murder.

Why should you pay attention to my brother’s hunches? Because he’s got an uncanny record of accuracy about such things. Do you remember the 2002 D.C. sniper case? Kirby solved that before the FBI did.

After it was made public that “profilers” believed the sniper was a white male, Kirby called me when I was working at The Washington Times to tell me the profilers were wrong: “Stacy, it’s got to be a black guy.” His explanation was that some of the shootings were in predominantly black neighborhoods. How could a white guy be going in and out of neighborhoods like that without attracting attention? I passed this idea along to my coworkers, who scoffed that “Stacy’s truck driver brother” knew more about the case than the geniuses at FBI headquarters, but of course, Kirby was right. So, yeah, pay attention.

Four young people stabbed to death in their sleep near the campus of the University of Idaho — everything about it is mysterious. Four days after the killings, the local police chief said the FBI had joined the case and “currently we have 25-plus investigators working this case.” That number has since grown, and by last Sunday, “more than 100 investigators, officers and support staff” were working to process the tips that were being received at a special phone number set up for that purpose.

Why is the FBI so interested in this case? Kirby points out that if, as some have suggested, the murderer was a disgruntled ex-boyfriend of one of the slain girls, such a merely local crime would not attract this much FBI involvement. What do we know about the killings? Six people were in the residence at the time of the murders, sometime after 3 a.m. on Nov. 13, and the four victims were on the second and third floors. Police say there was no sign of forced entry. So somebody managed to get into this house in the pre-dawn hours of a Sunday morning without waking anyone, stab four people to death and leave behind two others, apparently in the basement, who slept through the whole thing.

Nearly two weeks later, police still haven’t identified a suspect, so it seems that this knife-wielding killer must have been very careful in his plan to commit this crime and get away with it. This doesn’t seem to be some sudden act of impulsive rage, but rather an act that was methodically planned. And then we come back to Kirby’s belief that this quadruple homicide wasn’t the killer’s first crime:

The grieving mother of a 26-year-old man murdered in Oregon last year says she has been given “hope” that the case will finally be solved after police revealed they are exploring a potential link to the murders of four University of Idaho students in Moscow.
Myra Juetten told The Independent on Thursday that finding out who killed her son Travis Juetten in a brutal stabbing attack in his home in Silverton, Oregon – and also catching the killer of the slain students in Idaho – would be “the best Christmas present ever”.
“I want answers for all five of them,” she said of the victims.
“If law enforcement can work together and solve both cases that would be the best Christmas present ever.”
Back on 13 August 2021, Travis, 26, and his wife Jamilyn Juetten, 24, were woken at around 3am when a masked assailant broke into their home, entered their bedroom and stabbed them both multiple times with a knife.
Travis tried to fight off the attacker but was stabbed to death. Ms Juetten was stabbed 19 times but miraculously survived, the Marion County Sheriff’s Office said at the time.
Despite Travis’ family putting up a $50,000 reward for information leading to the killer, 15 months on, the case remains unsolved.
This week, similarities were drawn between the knife attack on the young couple and the 13 November stabbing murders of Kaylee Goncalves, Madison Mogen, Xana Kernodle and Ethan Chapin, 400 miles away in Moscow.

Wait just a minute here — what day of the week was Aug. 13, 2021? It was a Friday. Just a coincidence, perhaps, but then you see that the Idaho victims were also killed on the 13th, and while it may be a bit of a stretch to connect these crimes, which happened 400 miles and 15 months apart, investigators don’t seem to have any other leads, so maybe this is more than a coincidence. Because one of the Oregon victims survived the attack, we know that the killer wore a mask, but they don’t say what kind of mask. Was it a hockey mask? Like Jason in Friday the 13th?

Could there be a third murder connected to this case?

As investigators skipped Thanksgiving celebrations to continue their search for a suspect in the unsolved slaying of four University of Idaho students, a third unsolved stabbing in the Pacific Northwest has resurfaced with eerie similarities. . . .
[Thursday] morning, the Idaho Tribune reported that a third nearby attack shared similar characteristics.
Sandra Ladd, 71, was found dead in her home in Washougal, Washington, on June 14, 2020, according to Oregon Crime Stoppers. Her death was ruled a homicide after the medical examiner found multiple stab wounds in her torso, Washougal police said at the time.
The two attacks [on Ladd and the Juettens] happened 14 months apart but within 70 miles of one another. The locations are roughly a five-hour drive west of Moscow, Idaho.
University of Idaho students Ethan Chapin, 20, Xana Kernodle, 20, Madison Mogen, 21, and Kaylee Goncalves, 21, were stabbed to death in their sleep on Nov. 13, 2022 between 3 and 4 a.m. in a rental house just off campus, according to police.
Like the attack on the Juettens, the incident happened between 3 and 4 a.m. on the 13th of the month.

Map showing location of three crimes.

Had anyone previously connected Ladd’s murder in Washington State to the Juetten case in Oregon? Probably not, but then these four students were killed in Idaho, 400 miles away, and suddenly the coincidence — knife-wielding attacker, early-morning hours, 13th of the month — was maybe not so coincidental. And if indeed these crimes are connected, isn’t it apparent that the killer is very methodical in his planning? He first struck in Washington State, then moved across state lines to Oregon, which would reduce the likelihood of investigators making a connection between the two crimes, and then struck 400 miles away in Idaho. If he is deliberately choosing the 13th as the date of his attacks, then he must have spent some days or weeks ahead of time, scouting out his intended victims. All of this, of course, is contingent on the “if” factor; we don’t actually know that these crimes are all connected.

Notice that all three of these crimes occurred after the COVID-19 pandemic broke out in early 2020. Did the killer find himself stuck at home — school canceled, or workplace shut down — and start binge-watching horror movies and serial-killer documentaries? Three or four months into his forced isolation, he decides to emulate one of his “heroes” by stabbing an old lady to death. He gets away with it, and more than a year later, decides it’s time to do it again. Gets away with that one, another year goes by, and he relocates to Idaho — new job? new school? — where he strikes again. All of these crimes happen on the 13th of the month, and if they are actually connected, the choice of a specific date (combined with the fact that the killer keeps getting away with it) suggests an intelligent perpetrator, capable of planning and organizing.

Of course, this is all just speculation. Unless and until the police apprehend a suspect, we don’t actually know that the Idaho murders are connected to these other cases. However, I cannot help but remark that these developments in the investigation tend to confirm Kirby’s hunch.

They didn’t send all those FBI agents out there for no reason, y’know.




 

Category: Crime, Idaho

In The Mailbox: 11.25.22

Posted on | November 26, 2022 | 1 Comment

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Usual weekend deadlines for the usual weekend posts.
Don’t forget the Black Friday book sale, continuing through Tuesday, November 29!
Ceterum autem censeo Silicon Valley esse delendam.
OVER THE TRANSOM
357 Magnum: This Was A Story I Didn’t See In The Media
EBL: Vintage Thanksgiving, Macy’s Balloon Fest 2022, Steely Dan: Black Friday, and Gum Chewing and Oral Health
Twitchy: New phone, who dis? Could Elon Musk create a Musk Phone?, Vatican’s Shameful Response to Hong Kong Court Convicting Cardinal, and What Robert Reich Doesn’t Understand
Louder With Crowder: Elon Musk’s recent tweets show he’s about to expose everything we assumed Twitter was doing to conservatives, also, Our favorite beautiful and brave ‘chesty’ shop teacher goes skydiving, but not all of ‘her’ makes it
Vox Popoli: A War of Economic Systems, Meme of the Week, Happy Thanksgiving, Go Woke and Choke, and Educating the Spiritually Blind
According To Hoyt: What to Do When Someone Disagrees with You (By Frank Fleming), And Yet Thankful, and Well, That Was Fun
Monster Hunter Nation: WriterDojo S3 E20: Supporter Spectacular (Round VII)
Stoic Observations: On Complaint
Gab News: There Is No Freedom Of Speech Without Freedom Of Reach
Rumor Control: The Soft Opening Of Rumor Control

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Conservative: Balenciaga: Child Sacrifice, Cannibalism, & Couture, also, America’s Harvest Festival
American Greatness: Is Congress Poised to Investigate Whitmer Fednapping Hoax?, also, Trump’s Arc Must Play Out
American Thinker: Are You Connecting The Pandemic Dots Yet?, Surprised by the Midterm Election Results? Take a Look at the Data, The Democrats’ Plan to Give Illegal Aliens a Path to the Voting Booth, and Americans Living under Communism
Animal Magnetism: Happy Thanksgiving!, also, Rule Five New Amendment Friday
Babalu Blog: Opposition in Cuba call for boycott of upcoming ‘elections’, The press in Florida neither serves nor represents the people, Over 100K homes still damaged after Hurricane Ian, Cubans forced to take loans to BUY materials from dictatorship, and Only harmful African snails are in good health at the 26th Avenue Havana Zoo
BattleSwarm: William Shatner’s Annual Warning Not To Burn Yourself Frying A Turkey, also, LinkSwarm for November 25
Behind The Black: Ingenuity completes 34th flight using new hazard avoidance software, Perseverance data so far finds no evidence of lake in Jezero Crater, ESA commits more than $100 million to encouraging private space companies, and Government lies versus COVID truths
Cafe Hayek: Are Scandinavian Welfare States Rooted in Viking Slaveholding?
CDR Salamander: Happy Thanksgiving
Chicago Boyz: Selfish, Personal Post: If You Were to Start Tomorrow, What e-mail service would you use?
Da Tech Guy: Thanksgiving Sports report 1970 League Races with aprox 20 games left, Progressives are trying to kill Thanksgiving – we must not let them, and Giorgia Meloni takes Sir Humphrey’s advice
Don Surber: Bill Barr already burnt the party down, Go home, Jack Daniels. You’re drunk, Musk beware – Twitter made enemies, and They should have thanked God, not government
First Street Journal: They thought we wouldn’t notice, but we did.
Gates Of Vienna: Teach Your Children Well… NOT, Mandatory Vaccination? Never Mind!, Indians in Brazil Demand UN Intervention Against Election Fraud, Sudden Death, and All the Fake News That’s Unfit to Print
The Geller Report:  Adopting Red China’s Authoritarian Tactics, Democrats Claiming To ‘Defend Democracy’ Are The Gravest Threat To Our Republic, also, Trump Shares New Ads For 2024 Campaign And They Are Fantastic
Hogewash: Team Kimberlin Post of the Day, A Star-Shattering Kaboom, A Robot’s *Got* to Know It’s Limitations, 20 % of the Customers Drink 80 % of the Beer, and A Tale of Three Cities
Hollywood In Toto: Great Basin Zooms in on Forgotten Lands, Need for Freedom, also, Elon Musk Drops a Bomb on Woke Hollywood
The Lid: Elon Musk Confirms that Old Twitter Only Censored Conservatives
Legal Insurrection: Israel Police Hunt for Terror Cell Behind Jerusalem Blasts, Arrest Suspect Plotting Bus Bombing, Italy’s Meloni to Revoke Welfare Payments From Those Who Refuse to Work, Rail Labor Dispute Careening Toward December Strike, Over 1,000 U.S. Profs Sign the “Stanford Academic Freedom Declaration”, and Duke U. Student Govt. Urges Students to Focus on ‘Genocidal’ Aspect of Thanksgiving
Nebraska Energy Observer: Among the thanksgivings, also, Thanksgiving History
Outkick: Washington Post Tries To Cancel Jerry Jones Over High School Photo Taken 65 Years Ago, High School Sports Broadcaster Demands Coach Be Reprimanded For Following Libs Of TikTok On Twitter, Bebe Rexha’s Thanksgiving Halftime Show Was Embarrassing For The NFL, Arch Manning Throws 100-Yard Pick-Six As High School Career Ends Three Wins Short Of State Title In Brutal Blowout Loss, and Dak Prescott’s Phone Background Sets The Internet On Fire
Power Line: Fauci: I’m a Bureaucrat, Not a Scientist, America’s first socialist republic, Let the credits roll, and Thoughts from the ammo line
Shark Tank: House Democrats Will Continue To Target Guns While In The Minority
Shot In The Dark: The Low Bar, Violence!, The Horror, and Gratitude
STUMP: Happy Thanksgiving 2022! Deciphering Historical Death and Actuarial Humor Books
The Political Hat: Happy Thanksgiving for 2022!
This Ain’t Hell: Thank you, Shootings update, The U.S. might return to Subic Bay, Testing Drone ability to deliver blood to the battlefield, and Valor Friday
Transterrestrial Musings: Happy Thanksgiving, Sauce For The Gander, and Good Luck With That
Victory Girls: WaPo Doesn’t Want Banned Conservative Accounts Reinstated, also, Jack Smith, Trump Special Counsel, Tea Party Tormentor
Volokh Conspiracy: Question for Mastodon Users
Watts Up With That: New York State Cracks Down on Bitcoin Miners Buying Old Coal Plants, GOP Vows to Block Climate Reparations, and Office for Budget Responsibility Reveals the Crippling Cost of Net Zero
Weasel Zippers: Raphael Warnock Tells Audience To Vote Because “This Is Important Spiritual Work That We Have To Do”, Biden Says He Hasn’t Engaged In Rail Strike Negotiations Despite White House Saying Exact Opposite, Biden Call Into Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade Turns Into Cringe TV Moment, and One In Five Americans Can’t Afford a Traditional Thanksgiving Meal This Year Because of Inflation
The Federalist: A Poet’s Reflection On Why We Can Thank God For Worry And Trouble, Eyewitness Stories To The First Thanksgiving From The OG Pilgrims, YouTube Censored User After He Published Democrats’ 2016 ‘Stolen Election’ Claims, and If You’re An Advent Newbie, Here’s How To Embrace The Glorious Tradition
Mark Steyn: Woad, Kilts and Lederhosen, Over the River, Through the Years, Just Give ‘Em Wales, Stopping to Watch the Colours, and Dans le temps…

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Category: Linkagery

Mystery Solved? Did This CANADIAN Get @rsmccain Banned From Twitter?

Posted on | November 25, 2022 | 3 Comments

My categorical hatred of Canada is notorious, of course, and I probably should have known that those fiendish Canadian scum had spent years plotting their revenge against me, but now I feel like Don Corleone after he figured out who was behind Sonny’s murder: “I didn’t know until this day that it was Barzini all along.” And my Barzini is Scaachi Koul.

Before we get to that, however, some necessary background.

On Feb. 19, 2016, my @rsmccain account was banned from Twitter for “participating in targeted abuse.” As I said at the time, nobody at Twitter ever explained to me (a) who was “targeted,” (b) what kind of “abuse” they suffered, or (c) how I was “participating” in this alleged abuse.

People who had followed me on Twitter — and my @rsmccain account had tens of thousands of followers — were mystified. Nobody had seen me do anything different than my usual activity. In most other high-profile cases where Twitter accounts were banned, there was some kind of “incident” seen by everyone that was used to justify the banishment, so that even if you didn’t agree with it, at least you knew why it happened.

At the time, Anita Sarkeesian was the prime suspect behind my banishment, because I had called her out as a totalitarian when she was appointed to Twitter’s “Trust & Safety Council.”

Ten days after that tweet, my account was suspended, and when I appealed the suspension, I was told it was permanent. What could I have possibly done to deserve this? It was a mystery.

So, now Elon Musk has paid $44 billion for Twitter, and he has lifted the ban on Donald Trump, and raised the question of whether other banned accounts should be restored. In the hope that perhaps something might finally be done to remedy the injustice of my banishment, I logged into @rsmccain for the first time in years and sent an appeal to Twitter Support, receiving this email reply:

Hello,
We received your appeal regarding your account. Please reply to this message and confirm that you have access to this email address. Once we receive your confirmation, we’ll review the information you provided and will respond as soon as possible.
We typically suspend accounts for violations of the Twitter Rules [URL] or Terms of Service [URL]. Additionally, repeat violations may result in permanent account suspension.
Thanks,
Twitter
ref:00DA0000000K0A8.5004w00002YzdWt:ref

Having filed this appeal, I then happened to glance at the @rsmccain feed, which I could view in “read only” mode. And here is one of the final tweets I sent before my banishment:


Do you see the significance of this? At first it wasn’t apparent to me, but I have always been a diligent researcher, driven by the kind of insane curiosity that led me to ask here: “Who the f**k is this ‘Scaachi’ person?” Honestly I had no idea, and had completely forgotten about this brief controversy caused by her public declaration that white males were persona non grata at BuzzFeedCanada. British journalist Martin Daubney screencapped her tweets (which she deleted amid the blowback) and I replied by calling it to the attention of Instapundit and adding the hashtag #tcot (Top Conservatives on Twitter).

The reason I didn’t make a mental connection between this and being suspended hours later was simply because this was such a routine sort of activity. Lots of people were raging against this @scaachi person’s discriminatory declaration, and I just added a couple of tweets to the general outrage. No big deal, right? Oh, but it was!

BuzzFeed’s search for marginalized writers
is progressive, not racist
— Ryerson Review of Journalism, Feb. 21, 2016

Scaachi Koul, BuzzFeed Writer,
Harassed After Call For
‘Not White And Not Male’ Contributors
— Huffington Post, Feb. 21, 2016

Writer attacked for seeking
diverse voices on Twitter
— SheKnows, Feb. 22, 2016

BuzzFeed writer’s harassment
just the latest example of why
Twitter is broken for women
— Toronto Globe & Mail, Feb. 22, 2016

Oh, the melodrama! Oh, the victimhood! Oh, the mean tweets!

Scaachi Koul said something genuinely offensive, and the predictable reaction was very harsh. I’m sure some people said very rude things to her, and some may even have been so angry that what they said could be credibly called a threat. However, I was not one of those people. I didn’t send any death threats or whatever it was that caused Scaachi Koul to (temporarily) delete her account. But this climb-up-on-the-cross victimhood act by feminists — who think themselves entitled to insult anyone they choose, and never suffer repercussions for such behavior — has become a threat to free speech, because too many people are willing to play along with that childish game. In a futile effort to make public platforms “safe” for these easily offended children, social media companies have effectively prohibited open disagreement with the Left.

Twitter’s “participating in targeted abuse” rule is intended for just such a purpose. It now seems obvious to me that what happened was that Scaachi Koul went boohoing to the Twitter “safety” staff, complaining that she was a victim of harassment and the staff just decided arbitrarily to “make an example” of me, but without telling me what I had done to deserve being banned. Why didn’t they tell me? Because, if the case had been open to examination — if people were able to see my tweets and decide for themselves whether I deserved this odious punishment of being permanently banished from the platform — then certainly most people would have seen that this was grossly unfair.

Now that Twitter’s new owner Elon Musk has promised to “amnesty” suspended accounts, I suppose it’s only a matter of days before @rsmccain will be active again, and as for Canadian feminists . . .

Well, they’re not even a real country anyway.




 

Category: Canada

Continuity & Tradition

Posted on | November 24, 2022 | Comments Off on Continuity & Tradition

–by Wombat-socho


Pic related


Conservatives tend to be traditionalists, by and large, preferring to preserve the past and look skeptically on the New Improved Billion-Volt Limitless Future. We also tend to get cranky when organizations and people who we thought were on our side start acting woke or kowtowing to those who are.

So it pleases me to see that the Wall Street Journal, whose editorial page has been a bastion of conservatism* for as long as I can remember, has rejected the whining of sundry annoying leftists and once again reprinted a pair of classic editorials by former editor Vermont Royster: The Desolate Wilderness, as well as And The Fair Land, which recount the arrival of the Pilgrims in Massachusetts and our progress since then. They are both well worth your time, as is the late Rush Limbaugh’s The True Story of Thanksgiving.

I hope this finds all of you in the Loyal Commentariat, as well as the trolls and ne’er-do-wells** that occasionally visit, having a happy Thanksgiving with your loved ones. See you tomorrow.

*One may occasionally grumble about the kind of conservatism they are defending, but generally, they have been Right.
**Romans 3:23 applies here, I think.

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Category: Zeitgeist

Yet Another Inconvenient Mass Murder Destined for the Media’s Memory Hole

Posted on | November 24, 2022 | 2 Comments

Walmart gunman Andre Bing

Wednesday I was watching CNN (so you don’t have to) and they were still leading every hour with Tuesday night’s shooting at a Walmart in Chesapeake, Virginia. The gunman killed six people and wounded four others before turning the gun on himself and committing suicide, shortly after police arrived. In CNN’s coverage, however, there was almost no mention of the gunman, and I had to Google to learn that police had identified him as Andre Bing, a 31-year-old who worked as team leader on the overnight shift. Co-workers said he was a weirdo:

The Walmart gunman who opened fire in the break room of the Chesapeake store where he worked last night had a list of the names of people he wished to target.
Andre Bing, 31, opened fire in the breakroom of the Walmart in Sam’s Circuit, Chesapeake, at 10.12pm last night, where 14 employees had gathered for a pre-shift meeting.
Bing’s rampage killed six people in total, including a 16-year-old boy.
In a press release Wednesday evening, the City of Chesapeake identified five of the deceased victims as Lorenzo Gamble, Brian Pendleton, Kellie Pyle, Randall Blevins, and Tyneka Johnson.
The sixth deceased victim’s name and photo was withheld due to his age, the city said. . . .
Earlier in the day, the city identified the shooter as Bing, saying he was ‘armed with one handgun and had multiple magazines on his person.’ . . .
Bing opened fire in the breakroom at the back of the store. He shot ten people before killing himself.
When police searched his body, they found a list of names that contained the names of the colleagues he wished to target, according to local Virginia outlet WAVY, citing an anonymous source. . . .
Former colleagues today described Bing as ‘weird’ and revealed he was so paranoid about being watched by the government that he taped over the camera on his phone. . . .
‘Everyone called him weird. That was all anyone could say about Andre,’ Shaundrayia Reese, who previously worked with him, told The New York Times.
She added that he had a ‘nasty attitude’ – something other staff also complained about.
‘He had an attitude. He was kind of aggressive.
‘There were moments where he was OK, but he was definitely hard to work with and a little hostile,’ Nathan Sinclair, who also used to work with him, said.

None of this was mentioned on CNN, which de-emphasized the killer and instead ran with a chyron, “GUN VIOLENCE IN AMERICA,” but actually had Stephen Gutoski on their panel, surrounded by liberals advocating gun control. But what law could have prevented this shooting? The gunman used a common sort of pistol, not some exotic “assault rifle.” While it’s not known how he acquired the weapon, there’s no indication that he got it illegally, or that “background checks” should have prevented him from purchasing firearms. The White House issued a presidential statement: “This year, I signed the most significant gun reform in a generation, but that is not nearly enough. We must take greater action.” Well, so what? In what way would this “gun reform” have prevented the Walmart shooting? If “greater action” is needed, please tell us exactly what you have in mind, and how it’s related to what happened in this case. Which, of course, they won’t and can’t, because Democrats won’t be satisfied until Americans are completely disarmed, but they can’t say that out loud and still win elections. Meanwhile, however, this story presents yet another Case of the Disappearing Perpetrator.

If the shooter had been a white guy, especially some sort of right-wing type, the perp’s mug shot would have been featured at the top of the hour, every hour, on CNN, but instead Andre Bing is barely mentioned (and his photo never shown) in CNN’s coverage. This is your big “tell” that what they’re doing is not exactly news, but rather political propaganda on behalf of the Democratic Party. The obvious reason CNN jumped on the Virginia Walmart shooting initially was that the producers must have thought: “The South! Surely this shooter must be a redneck Bubba!”

Unfortunately for their agenda, wrong again.

They’re 0-for-2 this week on mass shootings. When a gunman stormed into a Colorado Springs gay bar and opened fire, killing five people, the media immediately leapt to the conclusion: “Hate crime!” And immediately seized on the idea that “transphobic rhetoric” by Republicans must somehow be to blame, since the club in question had hosted drag queen performances. In a New York Times column, Michelle Goldberg declared the shooting “was at once shocking and entirely predictable, like terrorist attacks on synagogues and abortion clinics.” She name-checked Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis, Christopher Rufo and Ben Shapiro among those to blame for the “demonization” that she presumed led to the shooting, even though her column was published before anybody actually knew anything about the gunman or his motives.

Then it turned out (a) the shooter had been in a standoff with police in June 2021, but the charges were mysteriously dropped, (b) the shooter identifies as “non-binary,” and (c) the shooter changed his name to avoid association with his estranged father, a meth-addicted former porn star.

In other words, not your typical Trump voter.

Their brains simply can’t cope with the disappointment. So the Colorado Springs shooter will disappear down the media’s memory hole, as will the Virginia Walmart shooter, because neither of them fit the Preferred Narrative of Right-Wing Violence. These gunmen lack the necessary qualifications of significance — they don’t advance the agenda — and so they’ll be forgotten, just like Bernie Sanders fanboy James Hodgkinson has been forgotten, because most self-identified “journalists” are, indeed, just Democratic Operatives With Bylines.




 

Category: Crime, Media Bias
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