The Other McCain

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

NFL Season Finale Drama

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

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

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

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

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

Sucks to be you, Jacksonville.

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

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




 

Category: Football

Still Another Aspiring Rapper Update

Posted on | January 8, 2022 | 1 Comment

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

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

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

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

The First Law of Nature is a thing of beauty.




 

Category: Aspiring Rapper Update

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

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

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

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

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

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




 

Category: The Kimberlin Files

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

PREVIOUSLY:




 

Category: Aspiring Rapper Update, Texas

Welcome to New York City

Posted on | January 7, 2022 | Comments Off on Welcome to New York City

The pro-criminal/anti-police agenda seems to be working out great:

A vagrant slashed another man who confronted him for masturbating in front of his wife outside Penn Station late Wednesday, according to cops and police sources.
The unidentified 21-year-old suspect — who is listed as a “John Doe” in police records — was pleasuring himself near the married couple at the corner of West 34th Street and Seventh Avenue around 11:20 p.m., according to cops and police sources.
The husband, 31, told the homeless man to cut it out – prompting him to slash the man in the hand with a razor, authorities and the sources said.
The victim refused medical attention for a minor cut on his hand, cops said.
The suspect fled into Penn Station, where cops found him and took him into custody, police said.
He was charged with public lewdness and assault, authorities said.

Public masturbation and stabbing people are no longer against the law in New York, now that George Soros has installed Alvin Bragg as district attorney. The masturbating stabber has probably been released from jail already, and is back to his usual habits at Penn Station.




 

Category: Crime, New York

What ‘Social Justice’ Really Means

Posted on | January 5, 2022 | Comments Off on What ‘Social Justice’ Really Means

New Yorkers are about to get what they voted for, and they deserve it:

Manhattan’s new liberal district attorney sent guidance to his staff this week saying he does not intend to prosecute several offenses, suggesting that “decriminalization” will help “make us safer,” according to reports.
Alvin Bragg, who was sworn in as Manhattan district attorney on January 1, sent a memo to his office on Monday calling for the “decriminalization/non prosecution” of crimes including marijuana possession, turnstile jumping, trespassing, resisting arrest, interfering with an arrest and prostitution.
The guidance calls for downgrading felony charges in cases including armed robberies and drug dealing.
The memo says the office will “not seek carceral sentence other than for homicide” or “class B violent felony in which a deadly weapon causes serious injury, domestic violence felonies” with few exceptions.
“This rule may be excepted only in extraordinary circumstances based on a holistic analysis of the facts, criminal history, victim’s input (particularly in cases of violence or trauma), and any other information available,” the memo reads.
Bragg suggested that “reserving incarceration for matters involving significant harm will make us safer.”
The office also does not plan to seek any sentences of life without parole, regardless of how heinous a crime is, and will only recommend pretrial detention in “very serious cases.”
“The data show that the overwhelming majority of those released pretrial do not commit a violent crime while at liberty,” the memo says. “Two studies show that even three days in jail can lead to a loss of housing, employment and strain family connections and increase the likelihood failure to appear in court.”
The move comes as the number of murders, robberies, felony assaults, burglaries, grand larcenies and grand larceny auto thefts surpassed 100,000 for the first time since 2016, according to data from the New York Police Department.
The New York Police Benevolent Association expressed “serious concerns” about the plan in a tweet on Tuesday.

(Hat-tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)

One must admire the blandness of that phrase, “The data show,” by which Bragg asserts that most criminal suspects released on bail “do no commit a violent crime” while awaiting trial — certainly a fact, but one which offers no comfort to the law-abiding citizens whose safety is jeopardized by the catch-and-release policy that liberals advocate.

Suppose, arguendo, that a mere 5% of suspects out on bail commit violent crimes; 95% can be fairly described as an “overwhelming majority.” But (a) this is the situation under the existing system, rather than the “progressive” policy that Bragg intends to implement, and (b) that 5% can wreak serious havoc, when you’re talking about a city like New York with a criminal population numbered in the tens of thousands. And we might furthermore add (c) that the “data” to which Bragg refers is no doubt supplied by left-wing advocacy organizations which may not be entirely scrupulous in dealing with statistics.

We do not need any research to know that Bragg’s policy will produce disastrous results — common sense tells us so and, given what we’ve seen in other cities where funding from George Soros has elected “progressive” district attorneys like Bragg, we know that life in New York City will become nightmarish. Prostitutes and drug dealers will ply their trades without fear of prosecution, carjackings and burglaries will skyrocket, and the daily death toll from drive-by shootings will shock the nation.

“Social justice” requires this. It is unfair for some people to live in safe neighborhoods with nice cars; to make things equal, every neighborhood in New York City must become as lawless and chaotic as the worst slums of the Bronx. While “social justice” will not improve the quality of life of allegedly “oppressed” minorities — indeed, black and brown people will be victimized at much higher rates — it will help accomplish Bragg’s real goal, i.e., to make life worse for white people in New York.

You’re not supposed to say this out loud, of course, but this is the ultimate meaning of all that “Critical Race Theory” noise. The problem with law enforcement, according to the CRT perspective, is not merely the “disparate impact” of locking up black criminals. No, the real problem is that keeping criminals in jail allows white people to live in nice neighborhoods. It is wrong for white people to be safe from crime.

We know for a fact that 37% of criminals released from prison are re-arrested within a year. The reality of recidivism — the fact that most crime is committed by repeat offenders, who are more or less full-time criminals — is something that “progressives” wish to ignore, or bury beneath a lot of blah blah blah about “oppression.” The fact that about half the violent crime in America is committed by young black males is another fact that “progressives” seek to conceal or obscure. When calling attention to these facts, one must point out that the disproportionate amount of violent crime committed by young black males does not mean that most young black males are criminals. It is a minority of the minority, as it were, who are responsible for this misunderstanding, in the same way that a comparative handful of outspoken bigots can engender the false belief that most white people are racists. If we wish to protect the black community from stereotypes about criminality, locking up black criminals should be high on the list of priorities, since prison inmates are thereby quarantined from the public.

Instead, the “progressive” solution is to normalize criminality, to permit prostitution and drug dealing to flourish, and to effectively legalize theft (e.g., California). How can anyone possibly justify this madness? Simple — just shout “racist” at anyone who complains. One marvels at the childishness of such reasoning, but this mentality is now the dominant force in Democratic Party politics, and no one’s life or property is safe wherever Democrats are in power. Therefore, anyone who votes for Democrats — as did 78% of Manhattan voters in 2020 — is voting for violent anarchy. New York City deserves what comes next.




 

Category: Crime, Democrats, New York

Democrats Continue J6 Insanity

Posted on | January 4, 2022 | Comments Off on Democrats Continue J6 Insanity

This is Day Three of Insurrection Anniversary Week, brought to you by Democrats and the media (but I repeat myself) who have latched onto the Jan. 6 Capitol riot (“J6”) as their permanent campaign strategy:

House Democrats introduced a bill to erect a permanent “Attack On The Capitol” exhibit on the grounds of the U.S. Capitol.
Co-sponsored by nearly 20 Democrats, the bill, dubbed the Capitol Remembrance Act, would “direct the Architect of the Capitol to design and install in the United States Capitol an exhibit that depicts the attack on the Capitol that occurred on January 6, 2021.”
The bill specifies that the project must be installed in a “prominent location” and retain a “permanent” status. Property “damaged during the attack,” photographs, and a plaque honoring the “sacrifice of heroes, including United States Capitol Police Officers Brian Sicknick” are among the exhibit requirements. Officer Sicknick, however, died of natural causes according to D.C.’s Chief Medical Examiner.
“The Architect may include artwork created to depict the attack on the Capitol,” the bill adds.
The legislation adds to the Democratic party’s continued exploitation of the events on January 6th, epitomized by President Biden, who recently referred to the event as “worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War” and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who professed she thought she “was going to die” when Trump supporters entered the U.S. Capitol despite the fact the congresswoman was in an entirely different building at the time of the attack.

In a related development, “Republican” Rep. Liz Cheney told CBS that “the single most important thing” about the Select House Committee investigation of J6 “is to ensure that Donald Trump is not the Republican nominee and that he certainly is not anywhere close to the Oval Office ever again.” She actually said that. In an interview. On television.

Cheney probably thinks we are too stupid to notice her clumsy admission of the real purpose of Nancy Pelosi’s witch hunt “investigation.”

(Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

Democrats have become obsessed with the “insurrection” narrative because they think it will help them win elections; therefore, it will continue until Democrats lose elections. Act accordingly.




 

Category: Congress, Democrats

We’re All Horny for AOC, Which Is Why We Vote Republican, or Something

Posted on | January 3, 2022 | Comments Off on We’re All Horny for AOC, Which Is Why We Vote Republican, or Something

It was Ace of Spades who dubbed Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez “donkey chompers,” and I really tried to avoid using it because making fun of someone’s appearance is cheap humor, and not political debate. But just like you can’t unsee “Brian Stelter is a potato,” so likewise with AOC as donkey chompers. Her idiocy is exceeded only by her narcissism. After pictures emerged of AOC having cocktails in Miami, while New York was experiencing a record spike of COVID-19 cases, this was how she reacted:

Is she really that stupid? What part of Steve Cortes’s tweet is indicative of “sexual frustrations”? His comment about her boyfriend wearing sandals was obviously intended to call attention to (a) how pasty white the guy is, and (b) the fact that he was wearing sandals despite not being at the beach. (Guys: It’s tacky, the sign of a slob, to wear sandals anywhere except at the beach. And do we also need to have a conversation about when shorts are appropriate?) Beyond criticizing the sartorial choices of AOC’s boyfriend, where does she get this idea that Republicans are mad they can’t date her? But then again, where does she get any her loony ideas? Her reserve supply of stupidity is apparently infinite.

But this goes back to why I try to avoid making fun of someone’s appearance in political arguments. (Unless they’re a potato, like Brian Stelter.) Whether or not a particular woman is attractive is irrelevant to validity of her opinions on public policy. Even if it is true, as Ann Coulter said of anti-Trump protesters, that “without fat girls, there would be no protests,” such a comment does nothing to advance our understanding of the relevant public policy issues. And by bringing appearance into the discussion, we invite a tu quoque reply. Of course, it is far more likely that the unhinged rage of anti-Trump protesters was rooted in “sexual frustrations” than to imagine that Steve Cortes was motivated by such frustrations. At the same time, why does it even matter?

The reason AOC became a target of criticism for her Miami trip was because it was hypocritical of her, as an advocate and defender of COVID-19 lockdown policies, to travel to the Republican state of Florida to escape those policies. And the reason why Steve Cortes mentioned how pale her boyfriend is, is because AOC routinely engages in rhetoric demonizing white males as the cause of all evil in America, i.e., more hypocrisy.

It’s not about AOC’s donkey chompers, and it’s not even about her stupidity. It’s about the fact that her rhetoric and policy positions are contradicted by her own personal choices — she does not wish to live in the world that her policies seek to bring into existence. And I think no one would wish to live in such a world, if they soberly contemplated where AOC’s policies would lead us. Sensible people will always prefer liberty — which is what Ron DeSantis’s Florida is all about — to the soul-crushing bureaucratic nightmare world of socialism. This preference for liberty, and not “sexual frustrations,” is why 74 million Americans voted to reelect Donald Trump. And we’re not going to apologize for that.




 

Category: Democrats
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