The Other McCain

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

Rams Win the ‘White Supremacy’ Bowl

Posted on | February 15, 2022 | Comments Off on Rams Win the ‘White Supremacy’ Bowl

Super Bowl LVI will go down in history as one of the great triumphs of systemic racism, in which the Los Angeles Rams — with white head coach Sean McVay and white quarterback Matt Stafford — defeated the Cincinnati Bengals, with white coach Zac Taylor and white quarterback Joe Burrow. This is almost certainly part of the NFL’s white supremacist conspiracy, according to a lawsuit by former Miami Dolphins head coach and (victim of racism) Brian Flores.

Former New England Patriot defensive end Jason Bequette comments:

If we want an NFL that proportionally “looks like America,” as Joe Biden is so fond of saying, then 3 or 4 of the 32 head coaches, general managers, and team owners would be black, but 75 percent of the players would be white or Hispanic. It’s doubtful that Flores is advocating for two-thirds of black players to be fired and replaced with whites. Is there any reason, other than “discrimination,” why NFL rosters are still 100 percent male? Why is neither team in the upcoming Super Bowl starting a transgender female at left tackle?

(Hat-tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.) Bequette regards the Flores lawsuit as without merit, and a consequence of the NFL’s so-called “Rooney Rule.” Once the league decided to establish a de facto quota system for hiring coaches and front-office personnel, it was inevitable that someone would eventually claim the system wasn’t working and demand more. This is true in every situation where “diversity” becomes an organizational goal, because no matter how much is done to ensure “equity,” there will always be someone with a grievance, who feels they’ve been cheated somehow, and who blames racism for their misfortunes.

And, just by the way, I hate that it’s Brian Flores doing this. Flores, who spent more than a decade as an assistant with the Patriots, is actually a good coach, who turned around the Dolphins, producing back-to-back winning seasons (10-6 in 2020 and 9-7 this past season), which was the first time in 20 years that Miami had consecutive winning seasons. I hate to see a good coach ruin his reputation by filing a lawsuit like this, and I also hate it because the Flores firing in Miami involves an Alabama alumni, Dolphins quarterback Tua Tagovailoa. It has been reported that the Dolphins owners and management are committed to Tagovailoa as the future of their franchise, while Flores wasn’t a big Tua fan, to put it mildly. There were other problems in Miami — Flores, a defensive specialist, kept firing offensive coordinators — but the fact that my guy Tua is at the center of this controversy is personally painful to me as an Alabama fan. I want all Crimson Tide players to succeed in the NFL, because pro success helps recruiting, so the fact that Flores’ doubts about Tua’s ability led directly to this ugly lawsuit is bad for ’Bama.

Beyond that, however, can we talk about The Black Quarterback Issue?

Rush Limbaugh got fired from ESPN for raising this issue, so we all know we’re not supposed to talk about it, but the enforced silence — at least in official sports coverage — is making things worse, because astute football fans can see what’s happening with their own eyes, and yet nobody is allowed to talk about it on TV, which can give rise to racial paranoia.

To boil it down into a nutshell: Three decades ago, there were almost no black quarterbacks in the NFL. Doug Williams of the Washington Redskins was the first black quarterback to win a Super Bowl, in 1988, which was rightly celebrated as repudiating the belief that black players didn’t have the “intangibles” (whatever that means) to play the most demanding position in the game. Since then, however, only six black quarterbacks (Steve McNair, Donovan McNabb, Colin Kaepernick, Russell Wilson, Cam Newton and Patrick Mahomes) have made it to the Super Bowl, and only two of those (Wilson in 2014 and Mahomes in 2020) have won the Super Bowl. So, of the past 34 Super Bowls, white quarterbacks won 30 of them, which is interpreted as proof of either (a) white supremacy or (b) white supremacy. By which I mean, some people think white success (in football or anything else) proves that white people actually are superior (i.e., white supremacy) while other people think such disproportionate outcomes are evidence that the system is rigged against minorities (i.e., white supremacy). The fact that both of these competing and mutually exclusive theories can be called “white supremacy” should tell us something about the complexity of the problem, but the real problem is that it’s hurting football.

If you watched Sunday’s pregame show, you know that the NFL, in an apparent effort to defend itself against absurd accusations of racism, rather bent over backward to appease their accusers, and the halftime show likewise seemed to be a sort of minstrel show of “wokeness,” evidently based on the idea that black people don’t actually like football, but must also have a hiphop halftime program. Am I exaggerating this, or did other people get the same vibe? It’s impossible to say, because nobody in the media is allow to discuss these things at risk of being “cancelled,” which in turn means that the NFL never gets any honest feedback about its ostentatious “diversity” efforts.

But somebody has to tell them: You’re trying too hard.

Every mature and reasonably observant person understands this about race relations, i.e., that the best thing to do is to mind your own business, and avoid turning everything into a racial issue. Whatever your opinions about race may be, in your day-to-day interactions, it is best to carry on as if you don’t even notice such things. Especially if you’re a white person, you’re not really helping matters by engaging in performative wokeness, and that’s the real problem with the NFL’s approach.

Once the sports media became obsessed with The Black Quarterback Issue, it gave rise to a sort of competition among teams: “Oh, the Eagles have a black quarterback, so probably we need to draft one, too.” This had a trickle-down effect because, if NFL teams were making an extra effort to find black quarterbacks, this demand-side imbalance encouraged college coaches to feed the supply side of that market. And this in turn gave rise to implicit suspicions of racism for any team that didn’t have a black quarterback. Suppose, for example, that the University of North Carolina had a black starting quarterback, while their ACC rival Clemson had a white starting quarterback. If having a black quarterback is a proxy for “equity” (as some in the sports media seemed to believe), then wouldn’t Clemson be suspected of racism? And isn’t it likely that, in the recruiting process, this suspicion would work to Clemson’s disadvantage? Of course it would, and therefore college coaches became even more desperate to recruit black quarterbacks, with the result that talented white quarterbacks were often underrated.

Take the case of Joe Burrow, for example. Burrow comes from an exceptional family of athletes, his father having played for Nebraska and the Green Bay Packers before coaching for more than three decades. As a high school quarterback in Athens, Ohio, Burrow led his team to three straight playoff appearances, and was recruited by Ohio State University. You might think Burrow would have been set for an outstanding career at OSU, except for this one fact: The Buckeyes haven’t had a white quarterback since 2011. The starting QBs at OSU over the past decade were Braxton Miller (2011-2013), J.T. Barrett (2014-2017), Dwayne Haskins (2018), Justin Fields (2019-2020) and C.J. Stroud (2021) — 100% black. NO WHITE QUARTERBACKS, PERIOD — that’s the rule at Ohio State, apparently, and after two seasons as backup to Barrett, Joe Burrow figured out the rule, and transferred to LSU, where he immediately became the starting QB. In 2018, Burrow led the Tigers to a 10-3 record. In 2019, Burrow led LSU to an undefeated season and beat Clemson 42-25 for the national championship. Burrow threw for 463 yards and five touchdowns against Clemson, finishing the season with 5,671 yards passing. But he never started at Ohio State.

What about the quarterback the Buckeyes chose ahead of Burrow? Dwayne Haskins had a great year in 2018, setting all kinds of school records as the Buckeyes finished 13-1 and Haskins was named MVP of the Rose Bowl. Drafted in the first round by the Washington Redskins in 2019, Haskins played two seasons there before being released. Justin Fields also had an excellent career as Ohio State’s starting quarterback, compiling a 20-2 record and two Big Ten Championships, before being drafted by the Chicago Bears in 2021. The one thing neither Haskins nor Fields did at Ohio State was win a national championship, like Burrow did at LSU. And as for their NFL careers, neither of them has made it to a Super Bowl yet, as Burrow did with the previously hopeless Bengals.

Look, I’m not saying Joe Burrow’s success is proof of racial superiority, but what I am saying is that discriminating against white quarterbacks — which is what Ohio State is obviously doing — isn’t smart football.

The NFL’s obsession with racial “equity” in coaching positions is similarly stupid. The absurdity of the “Rooney Rule,” says Jason Bequette, “can be illustrated by simply applying it to NFL roster vacancies”:

Imagine if every NFL team were forced to invite a white cornerback into training camp every season. No NFL team has started a white cornerback since Jason Sehorn in 2002. A white cornerback who fulfilled a team’s obligation under a “Sehorn Rule” would feel insecure and teammates would feel resentful, even if the player was qualified for the position and seriously considered for the job.

Far be it from me to say that no white guy will ever again play cornerback in the NFL, but I’m certainly not going to endorse some kind of quota system in order to ensure that white players get their “fair share” of cornerback positions. Currently, about 60% of NFL players are black, 25% are white and 15% are “other.” As long as NFL rosters are determined by ability and performance, I do not care if white players are “underrepresented” in the league, nor do I think anyone else should care. What I suspect, however, is that many coaches may be guilty of stereotypical thinking in such a way that some white players are overlooked. Consider, for example, the case of Cooper Kupp.

He was the Super Bowl MVP, with eight catches for 92 yards and 2 TDs.

In four seasons at Eastern Washington University, Kupp caught 428 passes for 6,464 yards and 73 touchdowns. Those are certainly impressive stats but . . . a white wide receiver?

To quote Joe Biden, “C’mon, man.” Everybody knows only black players can be wide receivers in the NFL. And so Kupp was not drafted until the third round, the 69th player overall in the 2017 NFL draft.

Six other wide receivers were drafted ahead of Kupp that year: Corey Davis (Western Michigan, Tennessee Titans, 1st round, 5th overall), Mike Williams (Clemson, LA Chargers, 1st round, 7th overall), John Ross (Washington, Cincinnati Bengals, 1st round, 9th overall), Zay Jones, East Carolina, 2nd round, 37th overall), Curtis Samuel (Ohio State, Carolina Panthers, 2nd round, 40th overall), and JuJu Smith-Schuster (USC, Pittsburgh Steelers, 2nd round, 62nd overall). A lot of different factors can affect the career of a wide receiver, so it is perhaps unfair to say that receiving statistics alone are the measure of a player’s talent, but here are the numbers (not including playoffs) for these wide receivers, Cooper Kupp and the six others drafted ahead of him in 2017:

John Ross: 62 catches, 957 yards, 11 TDs
Zay Jones, 124 catches, 1,338 yards, 10 TDs
Curtis Samuel, 185 catches, 2,087 yards, 14 TDs
Corey Davis, 241 catches, 3,343 yards, 15 TDs
Mike Williams, 218 catches, 3,543 yards, 25 TDs
JuJu Smith-Schuster, 323 catches, 3,855 yards, 26 TDs
Cooper Kupp, 443 catches, 5,517 yards, 40 TDs

Kupp has nearly 1,700 yards more (and 14 more TDs) than his nearest rival among wide receivers in the 2017 NFL draft class, yet he wasn’t picked until the third round. Is it possible that Kupp was underrated because of the stereotype that wide receiver is a position for black players? And if the Rams got a bargain in the NFL draft because of such perceptions, is it possible that other teams could similarly benefit by taking a chance on white players at wide receiver (or running back, or other positions typically dominated by black players)?

It’s usually a mistake to generalize on the basis of a singular exceptional case, but say, did you ever hear of a guy named Julian Edelman? You remember him, the MVP of Super Bowl LIII? Seventh-round draft pick in 2009, 232nd overall, finished his career with 738 catches for 8,264 yards and 41 TDs, and three Super Bowl rings. Not bad for a white guy who’s only 5-foot-10 and didn’t even play wide receiver in college.

Again, this doesn’t prove anything except that the NFL needs to stop focusing on racial “equity” and instead focus on football.

Otherwise, they’re gonna get woke and go broke.




 

Category: Football, Racism

Late Night With Rule 5 Apologies

Posted on | February 14, 2022 | Comments Off on Late Night With Rule 5 Apologies

— compiled by Wombat-socho


Sorry, but I’m absolutely whipped. I’ll double up on the links next Sunday, I promise. In the meantime, have a death goddess.
Silicon Valley delenda est.


Shishou chilling at the office.


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Category: Rule 5

FMJRA 2.0: Whipping Post

Posted on | February 14, 2022 | Comments Off on FMJRA 2.0: Whipping Post

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Well, the Senators had a .400 week, splitting a two-game series against the San Francisco Seals before dropping two of three games against Da Tech Guy’s Seattle Pilots, who had recently acquired “Limp” Dick Allen partially out of frustration at our pitchers intentionally walking Pete Rose seven times in our first series. Allen was a non-factor in our three games; he didn’t even hit for extra bases, but they didn’t need him; all three games were close, but not close enough. To round off the weekend, we traded the worthless Dave Boswell to Minnesota for Jim Kaat, which will be a definite upgrade to our rotation since Boswell has been a terrible pitcher for us; future Hall of Famer Kaat could hardly be worse and has better stats in 1970 than Boswell anyway.

Rule 5 Sunday: SUNshine Girl
Animal Magnetism
Ninety Miles From Tyranny
A View From The Beach
EBL
Proof Positive

GUILTY! GUILTY! GUILTY!
EBL 

Have You Heard of ‘The CROWN Act’?
The Political Hat
EBL

‘The Dismantling of Race-Conscious Admissions Would Deal Another Blow to Equity in Science’
357 Magnum
EBL
Proof Positive

FMJRA 2.0: Burning For You
A View From The Beach
EBL

In The Mailbox: 02.07.22
357 Magnum
EBL
Proof Positive

Man Killed in Philadelphia Carjacking
First Street Journal
357 Magnum
EBL
Proof Positive

In The Mailbox: 02.08.22
A View From The Beach
357 Magnum
EBL
Proof Positive

Is the Irony Obvious Enough?
Living In Anglo-America
357 Magnum
EBL
Proof Positive

In The Mailbox: 02.09.22
A View From The Beach
357 Magnum
EBL
Proof Positive

The Destructive Cult of Racial ‘Liberation’
EBL

President Crack-Pipe’s Very Bad Week
EBL

In The Mailbox: 02.10.22
A View From The Beach
357 Magnum
EBL
Proof Positive

Aspiring Rapper Update: Bloods Gangster Arrested for Shooting Atlanta Cop 6 Times
357 Magnum
EBL

How to Die in Philadelphia
EBL

Ukraine Freakout: Is This for Real?

In The Mailbox: 02.11.22
A View From The Beach
357 Magnum
EBL
Proof Positive

Top linkers for the week ending February 11:

  1.  EBL (16)
  2.  357 Magnum & Proof Positive (tied) (9)
  3.  A View From The Beach (6)

Thanks to everyone for all the links!

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Category: Linkagery

Who’s Afraid of President Crackpipe?

Posted on | February 12, 2022 | Comments Off on Who’s Afraid of President Crackpipe?

Our Commander-in-Chief never served in the military. He was never the sharpest tool in the shed, and his cognitive capacity has visibly declined in recent years. His chief foreign-policy accomplishment is surrendering Afghanistan to the Taliban, and he’s less popular than Jimmy Carter.

So, yeah, I’m sure Vladmir Putin is just scared to death:

President Joe Biden warned Russian President Vladimir Putin on Saturday that an invasion of Ukraine would result in “swift and severe costs for Russia” during a high-stakes hourlong phone call that failed to ease rising tensions.
A senior Biden administration official described the call as “professional” but said the dialogue resulted in “no fundamental change in the dynamics that have been unfolding now for several weeks.”
The call, which lasted a little over an hour, ended shortly after noon ET. It came as the White House says a Russian invasion of Ukraine could be imminent, perhaps before the conclusion of the Beijing Winter Olympics, which end Feb. 20.
Biden told Putin that “if Russia undertakes a further invasion of Ukraine, the United States together with our Allies and partners will respond decisively and impose swift and severe costs on Russia,” according to the White House.
“President Biden reiterated that a further Russian invasion of Ukraine would produce widespread human suffering and diminish Russia’s standing,” the White House said, adding that Biden was also clear the U.S., while committed to diplomacy, is “equally prepared for other scenarios.”
The talks came after the State Department late Friday directed most staff who remain in the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv to leave Ukraine immediately. The Pentagon also ordered the withdrawal of 160 National Guard troops from Ukraine.
Biden is in Camp David in Maryland for the weekend.
During a phone call earlier Saturday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, that if Russia invades Ukraine, it would result in a “resolute, massive, and united Transatlantic response.”
This image provided by The White House via Twitter shows President Joe Biden at Camp David, Md., Saturday, Feb. 12, 2022. Biden on Saturday again called on President Vladimir Putin to pull back more than 100,000 Russian troops massed near Ukraine’s borders and warned that the U.S. and its allies would “respond decisively and impose swift and severe costs” if Russia invades, according to the White House.
Putin also spoke on Saturday with French President Emmanuel Macron, who has tried to serve as a chief European interlocutor in the crisis.
Macron told Putin that “sincere dialogue” is not compatible with military escalation, during a phone call that lasted more than an hour, according to French media.
Putin, meanwhile, suggested the United States was engaging in “provocative speculations” about a possible Russian investigation of Ukraine, according to a statement from the Kremlin on the Russian leader’s conversation with Macron. Putin also raised concerns about the “massive supplies of modern weaponry” the West is sending to Ukraine and suggested that would create conditions for a Ukrainian military assault in the eastern Donbass region of Ukraine where Russian-backed separatists have been operating.

If there’s anyone who scares Putin less than Joe Biden, it’s Emmanuel Macron. Even if France had the will to fight — which, of course, it doesn’t — it lacks the ability. The French army is a complete joke. France could not deploy so much as one infantry battalion to defend Urkraine, let alone armored units, and Putin knows this as well as Macron.

This, even more than the brain-addled ineptitude of Biden, is America’s basic strategic problem: Our so-called “allies” are useless. While the British still have some military capability, the rest of Western Europe is a collection of weak sisters, from a military standpoint. Even if we had a competent Commander-in-Chief (which we don’t), our European “allies” are unable to do anything that might cause Putin to pause before sending his troops marching toward Kiev. And considering that Biden has demonstrated an unwillingness to defend U.S. strategic interests in Afghanistan (or anywhere else, for that matter), would Putin be wrong to guess that this talk of “swift and severe costs” is just a lot of bluster?

Of course, I don’t actually believe a Russian invasion of Ukraine is “imminent.” As previously explained, I don’t think Russia would launch an invasion in mid-February, when it makes more sense to wait until May. Were I asked to wager on this proposition, I’d bet that what we’re watching now is just a lot of “wag the dog” propaganda from the Biden administration, seeking to distract voters from the unmitigated disaster of Biden’s domestic policy: Free crackpipes!




 

Category: Joe Biden, Russia, Ukraine

Aspiring Rapper Update: NYC Mayor Mourns Jayquan ‘Chii Wvttz’ McKenley

Posted on | February 12, 2022 | Comments Off on Aspiring Rapper Update: NYC Mayor Mourns Jayquan ‘Chii Wvttz’ McKenley

Readers should remember the relevant definition:

Aspiring Rapper
North American euphemism for a member of the urban criminal class. This unusual occupation is usually mentioned in conjunction with the subject either being slain or being taken into custody for a violent or property-related crime. A relative of the subject usually points out that the subject’s demise or incarceration comes at an extremely inopportune moment, occurring just as the subject was “turning they(sic) life around.”

There was something truly weird about what happened this week:

New York’s Mayor, Eric Adams, paid an emotional tribute to the latest victim of the city’s gun violence, an 18-year-old aspiring rapper, Jayquan McKenley.
McKenley who went by the name Chii Wvttz, was shot dead outside a recording studio in Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood on Sunday.
Adams struggled to hold back tears as he blamed the shooting on a ‘broken system that ‘continually fails black and brown New Yorkers.’
The mayor detailed [Jayquan’s] life explaining how the city ‘betrayed’ him including being unable to secure stable housing from officials failing to intervene after he missed 250 days of high school.
‘I didn’t know Jayquan, but his death hit me hard because the more I found out about Jayquan’s story, the more I saw how many times he had been failed by a system that is supposed to help boys like him,’ Adams said.
McKenley grew up in the South Bronx, a neighborhood with high rates of poverty and unemployment.
Adams explained that by the time he was five, Jayquan’s family was living in a homeless shelter.
Adams told how McKenley was placed in a program for children with severe cognitive disabilities. After then moving into a mainstream program just a couple of years later, he was behind.
He was already at risk and though his mom begged for help, McKenley never got any, Adams said.
McKenley went to five different high schools and as a teenager missed hundreds of days of school.
‘Now, right there, our city should have done more,’ Adams said. ‘Over the next four years, Jayquan’s family lived in seven different shelters without stability or security.
‘To Jayquan’s mother and father, I want to say I’m sorry,’ Adams said with tears in his eyes. He had previously spoken with Jayquans’ grieving parents earlier in the week.
‘The story of Jayquan breaks my heart,’ Adams said. ‘His story tests my spirit, and we must do better for young people like him.
‘I’m sorry we betrayed him and so many others like him, but you have my word as your mayor that I will be looking out for the thousands of other Jayquans in our city because I was once a Jayquan, too.
‘I knew what it was like to worry about losing your apartment, your stability, what it’s like to live with a learning disorder, what it’s like to get on the wrong side of the law,’ he said. ‘I’ve been on that path of pain, and I know there’s a way out,’ Adams said.
‘He was a Drill rapper, part of a scene which involves using music as a challenge for social media posts — posts that bled out into violent real-world confrontations,’ he said. ‘It was right there, for all to see. Our city should have done more.’
Drill is a subgenre of rap which is dominated by themes of death and violence.
He had been arrested several times since 2017 including once for attempted murder, last year.
‘We had all the signs you can ever have that a young man’s life was in crisis, and with social media acting as an accelerant, that crisis was escalated,’ Adam’s said noting that red flags were ignored.
‘He was not just a victim now, but a perpetrator. But he was young, there was still time for him to turn the path of violence and move away from that,’ Adams said. ‘Our system and justice system should have done more, more to help him, rehabilitate him.’

He was a hoodlum, a gang-banger. Live by the gun, die by the gun.

All this woe-is-me stuff about how the “system failed him” — who failed? Isn’t this rhetoric just a way to exonerate Jayquan for his own deadly choices, by saying “society” in general was somehow at fault? Jayquan “had been arrested several times,” so why wasn’t he in jail or prison? Isn’t this because of the turn-’em-loose liberal bail policies in New York?

Leave enough gang-bangers out on the streets, don’t be surprised when they shoot each other. Hoodlums have a tendency to become dead hoodlums that way, and if the “system should have done more,” well, more what? More time behind bars for young hoodlums?

The death of “Chii Wvttz” is perhaps symbolic of what’s wrong with New York City, but probably not in the way the mayor imagines.

PREVIOUSLY:




 

Category: Aspiring Rapper Update, New York

In The Mailbox: 02.11.22

Posted on | February 12, 2022 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 02.11.22

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Ceterum autem censeo Silicon Valley esse delendam.

OVER THE TRANSOM
357 Magnum: How Is That Bail Reform Working Out?
EBL: Ozarks Season 4
Twitchy: “You’re The Expert, Professor Tow Truck”
Louder With Crowder: Joe Rogan Takes Another Dump All Over CNN, also, GiveSendGo Gives Canadian Government The Finger
Vox Popoli: This Bodes Well For The Future, Reflections On Organizational Success, and And Morgoth Smiled
According To Hoyt: It’s A Long Long Way To Fall, also, Fisking Anton
Monster Hunter Nation: Analyzing My Royalties, also, It Came From Facebook

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: Two Articles I Wrote In 2017 On Vaccinations
American Conservative: Are Your Emojis Racist?
American Greatness: Judge Blasts DOJ For Lies About Kamala’s Whereabouts On January 6, also, Joe Biden Rejects Army Report Detailing Failures Of Afghanistan Bugout
American Power: The Unbearable Bleakness Of American Schoooling, also, The Unbearable Pressure Of Winning The Olympics
American Thinker: If DC Fears Trump, He Deserves Four More Years
Animal Magnetism: Rule Five Return To Prosperity Friday
Babalu Blog: “Commander Ostrich”, Survivor Of Latest Military Purges, Turns 94, also, Extrajudicial Killings Continue In Communist Cuba
BattleSwarm: LinkSwarm For February 11
Behind The Black: Judge Blocks Camden Spaceport Land Purchase Pending Vote, First Image From Webb Released, and Global Image Of Mars From UAE’s Al-Amal Orbiter
Cafe Hayek: “Children Erupt Into Cheers After Learning They No Longer Have To Wear Masks”
CDR Salamander: Fullbore Friday
Da Tech Guy: Five “Are We The Baddies?” Indicators For The Opponents Of The Canadian Trucker Convoy
Don Surber: Creeping Socialism Finally Creeped People Out, also, The Boston Convoy
First Street Journal: Larry Krasner Won’t Put Criminals In Jail, So Philadelphians Lock Themselves Up, also, Lexington Killer Will Be Out Of Jail By Age 39 If Not Earlier
Gates Of Vienna: Forget The Tinfoil Hat – Time To Mask The Brain!, It’s As Simple As That, and “This Is Your Moment To Be A Hero”
The Geller Report: Judge Blocks Schools From Enforcing Gov. Pritzker’s Mask & Vaccine Mandates, also, Watch Gov. DeSantis Destroy Democrats On Masks
Hogewash: Team Kimberlin Post Of The Day, Science!, and Everything Is Proceeding As I Have Foreseen
Hollywood In Toto: Move Over Gigli, Here Comes Marry Me, also, Death On The Nile – A Return To Glamour, Epic Storytelling
The Lid: Beta Backtracks On Grabbing Guns
Legal Insurrection: Beta O’Rourke Now Has “No Interest In Taking” Your AR-15, Biden Calls NBC’s Lester Holt A “Wise Guy” Over Inflation Question, and The False Choice Between Academic Freedom And CRT Bans
Nebraska Energy Observer: Scattershot Friday, Genocide Olympics, and Free Men Arise
Outkick: Bama Hires LSU QB It Struggled To Stop Before Joe Burrow, Wait – Did A Stripper Break The James Harden News? and UFC’s “Stylebender” Gives Expletive-Laden Defense Of Joe Rogan
Power Line: Thoughts From The Ammo Line, Common Sense & Gutlessness At Harvard, and Bidenflation Year One
Shark Tank: DeSantis Doesn’t Budge On Redistricting
Shot In The Dark: We Are, Apparently, The New Revolutionaries, also, Mayor Carter/Frey’s Perilous Tightrope
The Political Hat: Firing Line Friday – Is NYC Out From Under?
This Ain’t Hell: Analysis Of Stolen Valor, Valor Friday, and 3000 More Paratroopers Headed For Europe As Biden Warns Ukraine War Is Imminent
Transterrestrial Musings: What The Truckers Want, Biden’s Afghanistan Debacle, and Defenders Of Free Speech
Victory Girls: School Board President Says The Quiet Part Out Loud, also, Biden Blames Army For HIS Afghanistan Blunders
Volokh Conspiracy: Funny Oral Argument Moments
Weasel Zippers: Biden – “That’s Not What I Was Told”, Meet Biden’s New DOE Appointee, and Oil Spikes To $95/Barrel Over Fears Of Russo-Ukraine War
The Federalist: College Championship Illustrates Jeopardy‘s Post-Trebek Shifts, Like A Case Gone Cold, Murderville Drags On Too Long, and Why Do 15% Of Voters Still Believe The Corporate Media Tells The Truth?
Mark Steyn: Canadian Stand-Off

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Category: Linkagery

Ukraine Freakout: Is This for Real?

Posted on | February 11, 2022 | Comments Off on Ukraine Freakout: Is This for Real?

While on the one hand, I’m not a paranoid conspiracy theorist, on the other hand I am very cynical about politics, which is why I am somewhat hesitant to accept that all this media noise about Ukraine is legit:

President Joe Biden plans to speak with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Saturday, a person familiar with the matter said, as the US warns Russia could attack Ukraine using bombs and missiles at any moment.
The high-stakes talks come at what US officials describe as a critical juncture in the ongoing crisis. A significant increase of Russian ground forces and military assets have surrounded Ukraine, and Putin could decide at any moment to activate them into a deadly invasion.
He hasn’t decided whether to act, the White House said Friday. But that has not stopped American officials from dramatically increasing their warnings an attack is now a “distinct possibility” and could occur swiftly.
Biden’s phone conversation with Putin — scheduled for 11 a.m. ET Saturday, according to the Kremlin — will be his first since the end of December. Since then, the number of Russian troops near Ukraine has increased and the prospects of an invasion have increased, according to American intelligence assessments. . . .
The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs Friday accused Western countries and the media is spreading a “large-scale disinformation campaign,” which promotes the thesis about an allegedly impending Russian invasion of Ukraine.

As I say, I don’t want to get too paranoid about a “Wag the Dog” scenario here, and do not wish to minimize the possibility that Putin does indeed plan military aggression toward Ukraine . . . but in February? Hello?

The forecast in Kiev calls for an overnight low of 19ºF with a high Saturday of 35ºF and, while the week ahead is expected to be comparatively balmy — with temperatures reaching as high as 44ºF Wednesday — mid-February is certainly not an idea time for military operations in Ukraine. Why wouldn’t Putin wait until spring?

Nonetheless, the White House and the media are sounding the alarms — invasion is imminent! 48 hours to evacuate Ukraine! — and the question that occurs is, if the threat is not real, why are they faking it?

If I had to guess, what’s happening is that Team Biden is trying to manufacture a “win” for Joe, hyping up the invasion threat so that the old guy can then claim he stopped Putin from invading Ukraine. And maybe also, at the same time, what we’re seeing is how “the ongoing crisis” is allowing Putin to play a sneaky game with the American “intelligence community,” sending out fake invasion signals and then watching how they react. That way, the Russians discover which information channels the NSA/CIA are monitoring, which will enable Russia to manipulate perceptions in any future scenario, including a real Ukraine invasion.

Remember, Putin is ex-KGB so he knows this Spy-vs.-Spy stuff inside and out, while the Biden administration is run by a bunch of progressive “social justice” clowns who couldn’t organize a Cub Scout camping trip. As to how all this works out, my guess would be that Biden will do a Chamberlain-at-Munich stunt, claiming he’s negotiated “peace for our time,” and then a couple months later — mid-April to early May — he’ll be blindsided when Putin sends the tanks rolling into Ukraine.




 

Category: Joe Biden, Russia, Ukraine

How to Die in Philadelphia

Posted on | February 11, 2022 | Comments Off on How to Die in Philadelphia

Even though Philadelphia set an all-time record for homicides last year, nearly twice as many people died of drug overdoses as died of gunshot wounds in “Killadelphia” in 2021.

Dana Pico notes that Philadelphia wanted to open a “supervised injection site” where junkies could presumably shoot up more safely than where they would otherwise shoot up, but the city ran up against the problem that such a site would violate federal law that makes it a felony to operate such a place. And the city’s lenient attitude toward junkies is not unrelated to the surge of deadly violence in “Killadelphia”:

Drug users are not somehow ‘not criminals’, no matter what District Attorney Krasner likes to think. To obtain their recreational pharmaceuticals, they have to buy them from a drug dealer, and Philadelphia’s record-setting 562 murders in 2021 were largely fueled by gang warfare, mostly drug gang warfare. Junkies buying heroin and fentanyl are a captive market which keeps the dealers in operation, and that endangers all Philadelphians.

Heroin, meth and cocaine are soul-destroying addictions, even among those who don’t die of overdoses, and drug abuse is highly correlated to other criminal activity, including not only the gang violence by drug dealers, but also the theft and burglary committed by dopeheads trying to get money to feed their habits. If it were possible to solve that problem with “social justice” approaches, wouldn’t progressives be able to point to successful programs somewhere? Instead, everywhere the progressives are in charge, these problems have skyrocketed out of control.




 

Category: Crime, Pennsylvania
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