The Other McCain

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

‘Smart Takes’ = Too Clever By Half

Posted on | October 9, 2021 | Comments Off on ‘Smart Takes’ = Too Clever By Half

The first thing to understand about Jonathan Chait is that he has never been anything but a pundit. He hired on at The New Republic fresh out of the University of Michigan, and has never done the kind of journalism that involves any actual reporting. He’s never worked at a newspaper, covering city council meetings or zoning boards, and instead has always aspired to be an intellectual, telling others what to think.

America is cursed with a vast surplus of such “journalists,” whose only interest is influencing politics on the grand scale — aspiring to be persons of world-historic importance, “public intellectuals” on the model of Arthur Schlesinger Jr. or Kenneth Galbraith. They exclusively focus on the Big Picture, and thus can never be bothered to write about any subject they deem less important than the Destiny of Humankind which, it turns out, always somehow involves U.S. electoral politics.

The second thing to understand about Jonathan Chait is that he is a partisan Democrat. There’s no need to bother with labels like “liberal” or “progressive,” really, because all Chait really cares about — the bottom line of his punditry — is helping Democrats win elections.

You could say the same not only of most pundits like Chait, but the entire class of “journalists” employed by such institutions as the Washington Post, the New York Times, NBC, ABC, CBS, etc., who never for a minute lose sight of their existential purpose — their raison d’être — which is to help Democrats win elections. This is why national “news” coverage has become an exercise in political propaganda, because the editors and producers involved in deciding what counts as “news” always evaluate stories on the basis of how they might influence elections, with an eye toward helping Democrats win. In many cases, the same exact story — e.g., a mass shooting — will either attract saturation coverage from the national media or be completely ignored, based upon the identity and motives of the shooter, and how this fits into the political narrative that Democrats want to advance. If the gunman is white, this is national news; if he had any sort of “right-wing” motive, he’ll make the front page of the New York Times. But nobody who watches MSNBC or CNN will ever hear the name of Timothy Simpkins, for some reason.

In general, “journalists” are oblivious to their own partisan bias. There is no one in the newsroom of the Washington Post or NBC who would ever call attention to the blatant dishonesty of what they are selling as “news.” The hiring process at such organizations ensures no one is ever employed who isn’t down for the agenda of helping Democrats win elections. And therefore, as I’ve said for years, journalists don’t notice liberal bias for the same reason fish don’t notice water — it surrounds them, and they are so deeply submerged in it that they could not imagine life without it.

And this brings us back to the kind of punditry practiced by Jonathan Chait, whose specialty is the “smart take” — discovering (or, if necessary, inventing) some angle on political current events that is so unusual as to astonish his peers by its audacious cleverness. This generally involves a deliberate contradiction of conventional wisdom, and is a sort of show-off game, wherein the liberal intellectual flaunts his skill by mounting an argument in favor of something he knows most of his readers are against, or vice-versa. Thus, in February 2016, as the GOP presidential primary campaign was underway in earnest, Chait published this:

Why Liberals Should Support a Trump Republican Nomination
The initial stupefaction and dismay with which liberals greeted Donald Trump’s candidacy have slowly given way to feelings of Schadenfreude— reveling in the suffering of others, in this case the apoplectic members of the Republican Establishment. Are such feelings morally wrong? Or can liberals enjoy the spectacle unleavened by guilt? As Republican voters start actually voting, is it okay to be sad — alarmed, even — by the prospect that the Trump hostile takeover of the GOP may fail?
There are three reasons, in descending order of obviousness, for a liberal to earnestly and patriotically support a Trump Republican nomination. The first, of course, is that he would almost certainly lose. . . .

Well, how’d that work out for ya, Mister Chait?

This particular “smart take” displayed many of the characteristic traits of the species. His first sentence, for example, includes three fancy words — stupefaction, schadenfreude, and apoplectic — which serve chiefly to signify that Chait’s SAT score was higher than yours. There are times, of course, when such words may be necessary and appropriate, but to cram all three of these words into the first sentence of your column?

However, Chait’s intellectual exhibitionist tendency is not confined to displaying a collegiate vocabulary. He also engages in ostentatious exhibition of advanced analytical skill:

The GOP is a machine that harnesses ethno-nationalistic fear — of communists, criminals, matrimonial gays, terrorists, snooty cultural elites — to win elections and then, once in office, caters to its wealthy donor base. . . . As its voting base has lost college-­educated voters and gained blue-collar whites, the fissure between the means by which Republicans attain power and the ends they pursue once they have it has widened.

You see that Chait was presuming to describe to his liberal readers, in February 2016, a fundamental conflict within the Republican Party which Trump would make worse. It apparently did not occur to Chait that one could say much the same about the Democratic Party, which has its own “wealthy donor base” whose interests are arguably at odds with the interests of the people on whom the party relies to win elections.

This paragraph-long putdown of the GOP was Chait’s attempt to supply the spoonful of sugar to make the “smart take” medicine go down. If you’re going to try to convince liberals that it’s really a good thing for Donald Trump to win the GOP nomination — the source of rampant panic among Democrats in 2016 and thereafter — you must signify tribal membership: “I’m on your side. I hate Republicans, too.”

Describing the Republican Party as “a machine that harnesses ethno-nationalistic fear” was also a sort of Godwin’s Law dog whistle, a way of smearing them as Nazis without saying so directly. And this brings us to a third important point about Jonathan Chait: He’s a Jew.

This is a fact that I would prefer not to mention, as I don’t wish to attract any Stormfront readership, or to encourage anti-Semitism. But there are times — and this is certainly one of them — when the fact that a liberal intellectual is Jewish cannot be ignored. When Chait described the GOP as a “machine” based on “ethno-nationalistic fear,” he knew damned well what he was implying, and so did his intended readership. Every four years, the liberal media gin up a propaganda campaign to smear the Republican presidential nominee as The Next Hitler, and they do this in large measure because they want to mobilize Jews into an all-out effort on behalf of whichever Gentile gets the Democratic nomination.

It perhaps did not escape Jonathan Chait’s notice how, in the 2016 Democratic primaries, Team Hillary leveraged the party apparatus to cheat Bernie Sanders out of the nomination, and why? Because it would not do — the “optics” would not be optimal — for Democrats to nominate an actual socialist Jew for president, as this would more or less confirm what anti-Semites have said about liberalism all along. Nightmarish fears that the various components of the Democratic Party coalition might go flying asunder with Sanders as the nominee were part of the calculus that helped Team Hillary fend off the left-wing populist challenge of Sanders in 2016, as it was for Joe Biden in 2020. While Democrats regularly attract 75% of the Jewish vote (to say nothing of Jewish campaign contributions), they are at the same time eager to avoid the appearance of being an instrument of what anti-Semites would call the Worldwide Jewish Conspiracy because many black voters are anti-Semites.

And Democrats can never win elections without 90% of the black vote.

“Gonna put y’all back in chains,” remember? Please remind me — I’ve forgotten — which party is harnessing “ethno-nationalistic fear”?

No, I could not avoid mentioning that Jonathan Chait is Jewish, because this is highly relevant not only to the style of “smart take” punditry he practices, but also to the habitual way Democrats accuse Republicans of being crypto-Nazis. Why do Democrats always get 75% of the Jewish vote, anyway? Books have been written on the subject — e.g., Why Are Jews Liberal? by Norman Podhoretz — and an undeniable part of this syndrome is that Jews have been taught to believe that “the right” in America is contiguous with “the right” in Germany circa 1932.

It is not necessary here to explain everything that’s wrong with that analogy, and I’m already past the 1,400-word mark, so I won’t bother to examine this in any detail. My only point is that, when Jonathan Chait accused the GOP of being an “ethno-nationalist fear” machine, he knew exactly how that would be understood among his Jewish readers, and so the fact that Chait is Jewish becomes the elephant in the room — and I can’t help but notice this “Republicans Are Actually Nazis” theme being endlessly reiterated by other liberal Jewish pundits.

Oh, but the “smart take” pundit who argued in 2016 that liberals should be in favor of Donald Trump as the GOP nominee — because Trump “would almost certainly lose” — has a new “smart take”:

Anybody Fighting Joe Biden
Is Helping Trump’s Next Coup
All Republican politics is now
functionally authoritarian.

The words “coup” and “authoritarian” here have special meanings to Democrats because (a) Trump never staged an actual “coup,” but merely acted on his belief that the 2020 election was stolen, in attempting to prevent Biden (whom he regarded as the beneficiary of fraud) from being installed as president, and (b) Chait never accused Democrats of being “authoritarian” when they were protesting what they regarded as illegitimate election results (e.g., Stacey Abrams in 2018). Part of the magical function of the liberal media echo chamber is that it enables them to change the definitions of words without ever being called to account for this dishonest semantic abracadabra.

Exactly how are Trump and his supporters “authoritarian” in a way that Biden and his supporters are not? Well, never mind that. Chait takes it for granted that all his liberal readers know exactly what is intended by this smear — TRUMP IS HITLER! REPUBLICANS ARE NAZIS! — and he expects that no one whose opinion actually matters will find fault with such an accusation. Furthermore, Chait does not expect anyone to point out that the essence of his argument is mere partisan cheerleading: Biden’s poll numbers are in the tank, so every loyal Democrat has a sacred duty to rally ’round the embattled leader — or else!

The bogeyman threat of another Trump “coup” (whatever that’s supposed to mean) is brandished as an alternative to partisan solidarity: “Unless we all stick together now, in Biden’s darkest hour, there will be a return of the ‘authoritarian’ ORANGE MAN BAD!”

What Chait is saying here is really crude and simplistic, and yet he dresses it up in the costume of intellectualism. The “smart take” is actually so stupid that any partisan hack could do it, provided he keeps a thesaurus handy to supply himself with some fancy high-SAT words.

We’re not laughing with you, Mister Chait, we’re laughing at you.




 

Category: Intellectuals, Liberals

In The Mailbox: 10.08.21

Posted on | October 9, 2021 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 10.08.21

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Since I am turning sixty-two around 5 AM tomorrow, I plan on spending the day indulging in various species of debauchery, most likely involving Mexican food, video games, and possibly baseball, but not including blogging. This means the FMJRA is being officially punted to Sunday, so your links aren’t due until noon on Sunday along with those for Rule 5 Sunday. If you want to throw books at me, my Amazon wish list is here; if you want to throw money, the tip jar button is at the bottom of this post; if you just want to congratulate me on another successful orbit around the sun, you know where to find the comments. Hard to believe I’ve been doing this for over a decade now.
Ceterum autem censeo Silicon Valley esse delendam.

Another Friday, another Komi in a bunny suit.

OVER THE TRANSOM
357 Magnum: Your Papers Are Not In Order – Australian Edition
EBL: Maid, also, Mr. Alexander Goes To Washington
Twitchy: Shelley Meyer’s Last Tweet, also, Photographer Captures The Magical Moment When A Bird Craps On Don Lemon
Louder With Crowder: Biden Celebrates United Airlines’ Jab Rate – Achieved By Firing Hundreds Of People
Vox Popoli: U.S. Provides Casus Belli To Red China, also, Don’t Blame Russia If Europe Freezes
According To Hoyt: Make Room, also, Surfing The Event Horizon
Monster Hunter Nation: October Update Post, WriterDojo S1E8 – Heroes & Villains, and Series 3 Challenge Coins & Swag Shop Opening
Stoic Observations: The Survivor

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Conservative: FDA Failures & The Public Health Regime
American Greatness: TX School Shooter Released On Bail One Day After Shooting, also, Elon Musk Announces Tesla’s Move From CA To New Texas Headquarters
American Power: NYC Phasing Out Its Gifted & Talented Program
American Thinker: Democrats’ Antisemitism – It’s Not Just The Squad, also, Follow The Science (Except When It Comes To Natural Immunity)
Animal Magnetism: Rule Five Six Decades Friday
Babalu Blog: Media Continues Propagating The Myth Of Educational Excellence In Communist Cuba, also, On This Day In History – Racist Mass Murderer Che Guevara Captured In Bolivia
BattleSwarm: Internet Outage
Behind The Black: Today’s Blacklisted American, also, Perseverance Data Indicated Jezero Crater Once Held A Lake
Cafe Hayek: Cleaned By Capitalism XLII
CDR Salamander: Fullbore Friday
Da Tech Guy: Fr. Leonard Mary Ravella Of EWTN Returns To Fitchburg
Don Surber: Fairfax County Schools Are Everything That Is Wrong With America, NYT – Freedom Is Bad For You, and Media Uses Trump Hotel As Distraction From Biden’s Chaos
First Street Journal: Philly Jab Mandate Delayed But Not Ended, also, This Guy Must Like Jail!
Gates Of Vienna: Why Is Red China So Dangerous?
The Geller Report: The Plot To Destroy America
Hogewash: Don’t Know Much About History
Hollywood In Toto: Critics Whine That Dave Chappelle’s Closer Is Bigoted & Transphobic, Movies Plus Brings “Banned” Movies To Your Streaming Device, and Have We Reached Peak Woke?
The Lid: State AGs Vow To Protect Protesting Parents From Garland’s FBI
Legal Insurrection: Ohio Northern U. Rejects College Republicans’ Request To Print “Back The Blue” On T-Shirts, also, DOJ Attack On Parent Protest Movement Was Pre-Arranged Ambush, Says Letter Requesting IG Investigation
Nebraska Energy Observer: Scattershot Friday
Outkick: Sox Suck – Astros & Rays Dominate Day 1 Of ALDS, Raiders Head Coach Gruden Under Fire For Racially Insensitive Email, and Joe Montana Thinks Tom Brady Can Play Until He’s Sixty
Power Line: Where We Are Now, Terry McAuliffe Squirms, and Ruling Class In Free Fall?
Protein Wisdom: Study – Antibody Levels Decrease After Two Doses Of Pfizer Vaccine
Shark Tank: Major Screwup By Nikki Fried
Shot In The Dark: Counterintuitive, While Things Are Headed In The Right Direction, and A Rorschach Blob
The Political Hat: Firing Line Friday – Proposals For Welfare
This Ain’t Hell: Valor Friday, Andrew Yang On Leaving The Democrats, and GOP Senators Address Alleged Anti-Christian Stance Of Nominee That Would Oversee Chaplains
Transterrestrial Musings: Light Posting
Victory Girls: “Civility Is Gone”, also, September Jobs Report A Build Back Bust
Volokh Conspiracy: Short Circuit – A Roundup Of Recent Federal Court Decisions
Weasel Zippers: McAuliffe – Parents Concerned About CRT Are Racist, Code Pink Boards The Sinema Harassment Train, and McAuliffe Has Debt Consultant & Competitive Eater Stacy Abrams Stumping For Him
The Federalist: Pentagon Investigating Marine Combat Veteran For Shaking Trump’s Hand At Rally, also, The Left Doesn’t Actually Care About “Democracy”
Mark Steyn: Collateral Sacking, We Have Met The Enemy Part XXIII, and Mr. Thorpe’s Shout

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Category: Linkagery

Lepanto

Posted on | October 8, 2021 | Comments Off on Lepanto

— by Wombat-socho

“We are in a new phase of a very old war.” – Gates of Vienna

I am reminded by this post linked on Instapundit that I should have posted this yesterday.

Don Juan de Austria, victor of Lepanto.

Lepanto

BY G. K. CHESTERTON

White founts falling in the courts of the sun,
And the Soldan of Byzantium is smiling as they run;
There is laughter like the fountains in that face of all men feared,
It stirs the forest darkness, the darkness of his beard,
It curls the blood-red crescent, the crescent of his lips,
For the inmost sea of all the earth is shaken with his ships.
They have dared the white republics up the capes of Italy,
They have dashed the Adriatic round the Lion of the Sea,
And the Pope has cast his arms abroad for agony and loss,
And called the kings of Christendom for swords about the Cross,
The cold queen of England is looking in the glass;
The shadow of the Valois is yawning at the Mass;
From evening isles fantastical rings faint the Spanish gun,
And the Lord upon the Golden Horn is laughing in the sun.

Dim drums throbbing, in the hills half heard,
Where only on a nameless throne a crownless prince has stirred,
Where, risen from a doubtful seat and half attainted stall,
The last knight of Europe takes weapons from the wall,
The last and lingering troubadour to whom the bird has sung,
That once went singing southward when all the world was young,
In that enormous silence, tiny and unafraid,
Comes up along a winding road the noise of the Crusade.
Strong gongs groaning as the guns boom far,
Don John of Austria is going to the war,
Stiff flags straining in the night-blasts cold
In the gloom black-purple, in the glint old-gold,
Torchlight crimson on the copper kettle-drums,
Then the tuckets, then the trumpets, then the cannon, and he comes.
Don John laughing in the brave beard curled,
Spurning of his stirrups like the thrones of all the world,
Holding his head up for a flag of all the free.
Love-light of Spain—hurrah!
Death-light of Africa!
Don John of Austria
Is riding to the sea.

Mahound is in his paradise above the evening star,
(Don John of Austria is going to the war.)
He moves a mighty turban on the timeless houri’s knees,
His turban that is woven of the sunset and the seas.
He shakes the peacock gardens as he rises from his ease,
And he strides among the tree-tops and is taller than the trees,
And his voice through all the garden is a thunder sent to bring
Black Azrael and Ariel and Ammon on the wing.
Giants and the Genii,
Multiplex of wing and eye,
Whose strong obedience broke the sky
When Solomon was king.

They rush in red and purple from the red clouds of the morn,
From temples where the yellow gods shut up their eyes in scorn;
They rise in green robes roaring from the green hells of the sea
Where fallen skies and evil hues and eyeless creatures be;
On them the sea-valves cluster and the grey sea-forests curl,
Splashed with a splendid sickness, the sickness of the pearl;
They swell in sapphire smoke out of the blue cracks of the ground,—
They gather and they wonder and give worship to Mahound.
And he saith, “Break up the mountains where the hermit-folk can hide,
And sift the red and silver sands lest bone of saint abide,
And chase the Giaours flying night and day, not giving rest,
For that which was our trouble comes again out of the west.
We have set the seal of Solomon on all things under sun,
Of knowledge and of sorrow and endurance of things done,
But a noise is in the mountains, in the mountains, and I know
The voice that shook our palaces—four hundred years ago:
It is he that saith not ‘Kismet’; it is he that knows not Fate ;
It is Richard, it is Raymond, it is Godfrey in the gate!
It is he whose loss is laughter when he counts the wager worth,
Put down your feet upon him, that our peace be on the earth.”
For he heard drums groaning and he heard guns jar,
(Don John of Austria is going to the war.)
Sudden and still—hurrah!
Bolt from Iberia!
Don John of Austria
Is gone by Alcalar.

St. Michael’s on his mountain in the sea-roads of the north
(Don John of Austria is girt and going forth.)
Where the grey seas glitter and the sharp tides shift
And the sea folk labour and the red sails lift.
He shakes his lance of iron and he claps his wings of stone;
The noise is gone through Normandy; the noise is gone alone;
The North is full of tangled things and texts and aching eyes
And dead is all the innocence of anger and surprise,
And Christian killeth Christian in a narrow dusty room,
And Christian dreadeth Christ that hath a newer face of doom,
And Christian hateth Mary that God kissed in Galilee,
But Don John of Austria is riding to the sea.
Don John calling through the blast and the eclipse
Crying with the trumpet, with the trumpet of his lips,
Trumpet that sayeth ha!
Domino gloria!
Don John of Austria
Is shouting to the ships.

King Philip’s in his closet with the Fleece about his neck
(Don John of Austria is armed upon the deck.)
The walls are hung with velvet that is black and soft as sin,
And little dwarfs creep out of it and little dwarfs creep in.
He holds a crystal phial that has colours like the moon,
He touches, and it tingles, and he trembles very soon,
And his face is as a fungus of a leprous white and grey
Like plants in the high houses that are shuttered from the day,
And death is in the phial, and the end of noble work,
But Don John of Austria has fired upon the Turk.
Don John’s hunting, and his hounds have bayed—
Booms away past Italy the rumour of his raid
Gun upon gun, ha! ha!
Gun upon gun, hurrah!
Don John of Austria
Has loosed the cannonade.

The Pope was in his chapel before day or battle broke,
(Don John of Austria is hidden in the smoke.)
The hidden room in man’s house where God sits all the year,
The secret window whence the world looks small and very dear.
He sees as in a mirror on the monstrous twilight sea
The crescent of his cruel ships whose name is mystery;
They fling great shadows foe-wards, making Cross and Castle dark,
They veil the plumèd lions on the galleys of St. Mark;
And above the ships are palaces of brown, black-bearded chiefs,
And below the ships are prisons, where with multitudinous griefs,
Christian captives sick and sunless, all a labouring race repines
Like a race in sunken cities, like a nation in the mines.
They are lost like slaves that sweat, and in the skies of morning hung
The stair-ways of the tallest gods when tyranny was young.
They are countless, voiceless, hopeless as those fallen or fleeing on
Before the high Kings’ horses in the granite of Babylon.
And many a one grows witless in his quiet room in hell
Where a yellow face looks inward through the lattice of his cell,
And he finds his God forgotten, and he seeks no more a sign—
(But Don John of Austria has burst the battle-line!)
Don John pounding from the slaughter-painted poop,
Purpling all the ocean like a bloody pirate’s sloop,
Scarlet running over on the silvers and the golds,
Breaking of the hatches up and bursting of the holds,
Thronging of the thousands up that labour under sea
White for bliss and blind for sun and stunned for liberty.
Vivat Hispania!
Domino Gloria!
Don John of Austria
Has set his people free!

Cervantes on his galley sets the sword back in the sheath
(Don John of Austria rides homeward with a wreath.)
And he sees across a weary land a straggling road in Spain,
Up which a lean and foolish knight forever rides in vain,
And he smiles, but not as Sultans smile, and settles back the blade….
(But Don John of Austria rides home from the Crusade.)

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Category: Foreigners, History, Italy, Spain, Turkey

Congress Subpoenas Ali

Posted on | October 8, 2021 | Comments Off on Congress Subpoenas Ali

The Sammy Davis Jr. lookalike is now world-famous:

The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol on Thursday subpoenaed additional organizations connected to the “Stop the Steal” rally that occurred prior to the attack on Congress.
The committee sent the subpoenas to Ali Alexander, an organizer of the Stop the Steal rally and conservative provocateur, and Nathan Martin, both of whose names are linked to permit applications for the rally.
The move follows the committee late last month issuing 11 subpoenas to allies of former President Donald Trump who were also involved with organizing the Stop the Steal event that preceded thousands of Trump supporters storming the Capitol in an effort to prevent Congress from certifying Joe Biden as the 46th president of the United States.
Five people died in the siege and more than 140 Capitol Police officers were injured.
The select committee has been investigating the causes that led to the insurrection attempt with focus on those who organized the Stop the Steal rally on the Capitol grounds Jan. 6.
“The rally on the Capitol grounds on Jan. 6th, like the rally near the White House that day, immediately preceded the violent attack on the seat of our democracy,” committee chair Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., said in a statement. “Over the course of that day, demonstrations escalated to violence and protesters became rioters.”
The committee said its investigation found that an organization named One Nation Under God submitted a permit application to hold an event Jan. 6 on the Capitol grounds on “the election fraud in the swing states.”
The permit named Martin as a contact for the organization and the listed address was the same provided on Alexander’s website soliciting donations, the committee said, adding that a vendor also listed on the permit told Capitol Police that he was reporting to both Martin and Alexander and identified them as with the Stop the Steal event.
“However, the permit application did not disclose any connection between STS and the Capitol rally event,” the letter sent to Alexander reads. “Further, when a USCP official spoke by telephone with Mr. Martin on or about Dec. 28, 2020, Mr. Martin claimed not to have any information about the rally and directed the official to speak with the vendor.”
Capitol Police had granted the permit for the One Nation Under God rally, which had estimated there would be only 50 attendees, it said.
In its letter to Alexander, the committee said he repeated during Stop the Steal events in the weeks before the attack of the potential for violence to achieve their goals while stating he was in communication with the White House and members of Congress to organize an effort to coincide with the certification of the 2020 Electrical College results.
The committee on Thursday also subpoenaed records from Stop the Steal, LLC.
“The Select Committee needs to understand all the details about the events that came before the attack, including who was involved in planning and funding them,” Thompson said. “We expect these witnesses to cooperate fully with our probe.”
The announcement came as Trump has instructed former aides subpoenaed to testify before the committee to not comply, claiming the information sought is protected by executive privilege, and that the former president will defend them.

The usual suspects on left-wing Twitter were doing the happy dance about this Thursday because, in their minds, Ali is the key to linking congressional Republicans to the “insurrection.” But in fact — and this is what the Left refuses to acknowledge — the rally organized by Ali was entirely peaceful, while a separate group (some Proud Boys and Oath Keepers) were the ones who breached the Capitol building. The committee has subpoenaed Ali to testify in three weeks, and I don’t think the Left is going to be smiling after Ali — who has been banned from Twitter since January — gets his moment in the spotlight.

What this “investigation” is really about is a political strategy by Democrats to keep producing headlines about “insurrection” all the way to November 2022, with the idea of more or less permanently campaigning against Trump. Alas for the Democrats, this strategy is too clever by half. It was one thing, back in May, when Biden’s approval numbers were high, to make a big deal about the alleged threat to “our democracy” of right-wingers trying to “overturn” the election. Since the disaster in Afghanistan, however, Biden’s poll numbers have cratered, and “buyer’s remorse” has set in — like, maybe this guy really shouldn’t be president — and many voters now view the “Stop the Steal” movement more favorably than they did just four or five months ago.




 

Category: Congress

In The Mailbox: 10.07.21

Posted on | October 8, 2021 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 10.07.21

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Silicon Valley delenda est.

And that’s the way it is.

OVER THE TRANSOM
357 Magnum: Reporters Still Don’t Understand The Definition of Victim
EBL: Brian Stelter Is A Sad Potato, also, Dave Chappelle – The Closer
Twitchy: “So, Joe Biden’s Speech Went Well”, also, S.E. Cupp Complains Biden Isn’t “Neutralizing” Biggest Threat To America
Louder With Crowder: Hero Turns Classic Budweiser Super Bowl Ad Into F*** Joe Biden Commercial 
Vox Popoli: A Silent & Dutiful Massacre, Puppets In Politics, and Mailvox – Lockdown II Staff Shortage
Gab News: Pfizer Admits You Don’t Need The Vaccine

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Conservative: Joe Biden Becomes A Bernie Sanders Democrat
American Greatness: California Students Still Trapped Behind Enemy Lines In Afghanistan, also, GOP Lawmakers Demolish Democrats’ “Big Lie” That Arizona Audit Proved Biden Won The Election
American Thinker: People Notice When The Elites Lie, also, Another University Capitulates To The Mob
Animal Magnetism: Animal’s Daily State Of The States News
Babalu Blog: Communist Cuba’s Alternative Reality, also, Cuban Farmer Serving Five-Year Sentence For Complaining About Food Shortages
BattleSwarm: Is The Great Gun-Buying Boom Over?
Behind The Black: Today’s Blacklisted Americans, NASA Shifts Starliner Crew to Dragon To Get Them Into Space, and Indian Advocacy Group Calls For Prosecution Of Elon Musk & Starlink
Cafe Hayek: Quotation Of The Day
CDR Salamander: Diversity Thursday
Da Tech Guy: My Question To The AOC Crowd That Has No Trouble Chasing Women Into Bathrooms, also, The Biden Regime Is Siccing The FBI On Concerned Parents
Don Surber: Help Wanted – Coal Miners, also, Coldest Summer On Record
First Street Journal: Kroger & Masks, also, Self-Cleaning Oven
The Geller Report: Retired Officers Say Election Was Fraudulent, Question Biden’s Mental Health, also, Backlogged Cargo Ships Off American Coasts Face Four-Week Wait To Unload
Hogewash: Team Kimberlin Post Of The Day, Nothing To See Here – Move Along, and Messier 55 – Rotating Stars
Hollywood In Toto: Media Rush In To Save Fauci Documentary, Here’s What You didn’t Know About Halloween, and Skills Like This – The Indie Darling Time (And Audiences) Forgot
The Lid: Can’t Make This Up, also, Trump Tells Former Admin Members To Invoke Executive Privilege For 1/6 Subpoenas
Legal Insurrection: Rashida Tlaib Stars In Epic Performance Of COVID Theater, U. Tenn. Students Want Pro-Life Group’s Free Speech Limited, and Politifact Tries To Ride To The Rescue After Sen. Grassley Notes Broad Support For Photo ID Election Laws
Nebraska Energy Observer: But Wait! There’s More!
Outkick: Hendon Hooker Becoming The “Certifiable Dude” At Tennessee, Shirtless Scherzer After The Game – “Can’t Talk, I’m Drunk”, and NBA Suspends Marijuana Testing For 2021-2022 Season
Power Line: The Omarova Thesis, Are The Vaccines Failing? and Joe Biden’s Idea Of Healing America
Protein Wisdom: On Deaths & Dyings, also, What’s Really Inside The COVID “Vaccines”?
Shark Tank: Garcia’s Bipartisan Effort Expands College Tuition Waivers
Shot In The Dark: Campaign Advice, Confirmed, and Consent
The Political Hat: Deadly Harvest – Harvesting Organs From The Heathy & Denying Them To The Mentally Disabled
This Ain’t Hell: Afghan Gun Stores Selling American Military Weapons, More On The 82nd Airborne’s Taliban War Trophy, and FOIA Request Update
Victory Girls: Trust The Media – To Mock “The Other”, also, Frances Haugen To Meet With 1/6 Committee
Volokh Conspiracy: 28 Days Later, The Administration Has Still Not Released An OSHA Jab Mandate
Weasel Zippers: CNN On Biden’s New Poll Numbers – “Brutal”, Administration Reportedly Was Warned Of Illegal Surge But Did Nothing, and Marines Deployed To Taiwan – Red China Screeches “Expel The Invaders!”
The Federalist: Senate Minority Report Exonerates Trump Of Weaponizing DOJ Over 2020 Election Results, also, How To Stop The Entire World From Marching Across The U.S. Border
Mark Steyn: Live Around The Planet, also, Your Way Or The Norway

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Category: Linkagery

Milwaukee Teen Killed by Racist System and High-Speed Head-On Collision, But …

Posted on | October 7, 2021 | Comments Off on Milwaukee Teen Killed by Racist System and High-Speed Head-On Collision, But …

. . . well, yeah, mainly it was the collision:

Dashcam video shows the crash that killed a 16-year-old and injured five other teens. It started with a police pursuit on Milwaukee’s northwest side, lasting around 6 minutes.
On June 15, when the crash happened, Milwaukee police said the pursuit ended before the deadly crash. Dashcam video reveals the time between the two was only a few seconds.
Officers first tried to pull over the silver Kia near Mariners Street and North 99th Street. Milwaukee police say the Kia was reported stolen the day before, and the pursuit began because of reckless driving, crossing into oncoming traffic about a minute and a half later on Good Hope Road – reaching speeds over 90. The video shows the Kia performing illegal U-turns multiple times.
The Kia again enters oncoming traffic on 76th Street. About 25 seconds later, the officers were told to cancel the pursuit.
The crash happened mere seconds later, just over 6 minutes after the chase started.
The 16-year-old driver of the Kia died that night at Children’s Wisconsin. He had two 12-year-old passengers who were seriously injured. There were three teens in the white Infiniti that was hit. . . .
An analysis of the Kia estimates the car was going over 100 miles per hour 5 seconds before the crash, slowing down to 65 miles on impact.

 

If you don’t have time to watch the whole seven-minute video now, you can click here to skip to the 6:08 mark where the teenage car thief makes the fatal decision to drive into oncoming traffic. Immediately after this deadly “accident” (a head-on collision isn’t really very accidental when you’re driving in the opposite lane at 100 mph) in June, local media produced the inevitable “Family Demands Answers” story:

The Milwaukee County Medical Examiner’s Office identified the 16-year-old boy who died in a horrific crash Tuesday night as Damantae Hambright. Five other young people were injured.
It happened just before 9 p.m. on North 76th Street, near Good Hope Road.
According to the Milwaukee Police Department, officers noticed a stolen Kia Sportage on Good Hope Road and attempted to pull it over. Rather than stopping, the 16-year-old driver, Damantae Hambright, took off. A police chase ensued.
Investigators say Hambright started driving the wrong way — into oncoming traffic — on 76th Street, ultimately crashing head-on into another car (an Infiniti M35).
The occupants of that car — two 18-year-olds and a 19-year-old — all suffered life-threatening injuries, but are stable at Froedtert Hospital.
Two 12-year-old girls who were in the stolen car with Hambright sustained very serious injuries. . . .
Police say none of the occupants in the stolen vehicle were wearing seatbelts.
Hambright’s mother, Pairresh Bond, sent TMJ4 a statement that reads in part, “my only son was a 16-year-old black male in Milwaukee, Wisconsin who made the wrong decision, and who hasn’t at that age? He didn’t deserve to pay with his life. I feel terrible about the whole incident and send my prayers to all involved.”

Excuse me if this seems insensitive to a grieving parent, but are you out of your freaking mind, lady? What kind of bizarre madness has seized hold of people in Milwaukee that stealing a car and driving it 100 mph into oncoming traffic is spoken of as merely the kind of “wrong decision” that anyone might make at age 16? And what does this “wrong decision” have to do with him being a “black male in Milwaukee”? Is the mother of the deceased car thief telling us that people of African descent have some sort of genetic tendency toward grand theft auto and high-speed driving? Or is this just some localized custom, specific to Milwaukee? A coming-of age ritual? Jewish boys get a bar mitzvah, WASP girls do the cotillion, Mexican girls have a quinceañera, and black kids steal cars?

Damantae just “made the wrong decision” when he stole that car. Damantae just “made the wrong decision” when he was riding around on a Tuesday with two 12-year-girls in that stolen car. When Damantae got blue-lighted by the cops, he just “made the wrong decision” to take off at 100 mph, cross the median and go head-on into oncoming traffic.

And why? Because he was a “black male in Milwaukee,” his mom says, as if that explains everything, or as if maybe she expects Ben Crump to show up and make her son a heroic martyr like George Floyd.

As someone who has spent a 35-year career finding the right words to describe all kinds of situations, I confess utter failure here, because there are no words adequate to express such intense stupidity. This astonishingly stupid quote — Damantae “made the the wrong decision, and who hasn’t at that age?” — expresses a pattern of belief and behavior that we might call the Zero Consequences Syndrome.

If people are encouraged to believe that it is unfair for them to suffer negative consequences for harmful behavior, and if social institutions like schools, courts and the news media are all committed to such beliefs, harmful behavior will become commonplace. Many black people apparently now believe that it is wrong for any black person to be arrested or imprisoned for crime, because the justice system is “racist.” And so this belief leads to an increase of harmful behaviors that the criminal justice system is supposed to deter. Mayhem and destruction ensue and when, inevitably, people die as a result, you get quotes like this from idiots who are shocked — shocked! — that somebody has to suffer the consequences of bad behavior. The perpetrator of a serious crime (and auto theft is serious, to say nothing of attempting to elude police at 100 mph) is depicted as a victim, who “didn’t deserve to pay with his life.”

This is where the “social justice” mentality leads. By the logic of BLM, police are always wrong and criminal suspects are always innocent, so long as the suspect is black. No matter what the black suspect has done, police are never justified in attempting to arrest him, and the conclusion of this syllogism is that the black suspect has a “right” to resist arrest or, as in the case of Damantae Hambright, to flee from police at 100 mph in a stolen car, going head-on into oncoming traffic. And the car thief does not “deserve” the consequences of his own felonious behavior.

The stupid acorn never falls far from the stupid oak.




 

Category: Crime, Wisconsin

In The Mailbox: 10.06.21

Posted on | October 7, 2021 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 10.06.21

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Silicon Valley delenda est.

From JimBob on Gab.

OVER THE TRANSOM
Ninety Miles From Tyranny: The 90 Miles Mystery Box, Episode #1497
357 Magnum: This Happens When You Put Bean Counters In Charge Of Tech
EBL: Why Victor Davis Hanson Left National Review
Twitchy: Gov. DeSantis’ Press Secretary Calls the AP “Activist Progressives”, also, “Amazing Words Of Wisdom”
Louder With Crowder: Joe Biden Responds To #FJB Chants, Proves Ignorance Of How One-Term Presidencies Work
Vox Popoli: Red China Beats The War Drums, Calling For The Green Light, and This Policy Should Age Well

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: Can You Prove That You’re Unvaxxed?
American Conservative: Building A Family-Friendly Country
American Greatness: The Left Can Finally Admit What It Wants, also, Judge Rules That Kansas City Can’t Defund Their Police Department
American Thinker: Biden Is Brewing A National Crisis, also, The Good News About The Federal Deficit
Animal Magnetism: Animal’s Hump Day News
Babalu Blog: Cuban National Baseball Team Stealing Home, also, Communist Indoctrination In Cuba Lauded As “Hispanic Heritage” By Axios
BattleSwarm: Austin Police/Jose Garza Roundup For October 6
Behind The Black: Today’s Blacklisted American, also, Millions Have Contracted COVID, Almost None Have Died
Cafe Hayek: Quotation Of The Day
CDR Salamander: Ships Should Fail To Sail More Often
Da Tech Guy: The Supremes Are Back, If You Lost A Job Or A Loved One Due To The Mandates Remember This, and Arson, Climate Change, & Wildfires
Don Surber: Bring Back Andrew Cuomo, Biden Official Wrote “How To Kill A Country”, and Amazon Leaves Seattle
First Street Journal: Many States have Decriminalized Marijuana. Now Trevor Burrus Wants To Legalize Smack. 
The Geller Report: Fraudulent Biden Responds To #FJB Signs – “81 Million People Voted For Me”, also, Pfizer Scientist Admits “Antibodies Are Probably Better” Than COVID Vaccine
Hogewash: Team Kimberlin Post of The Day, Nothing To See Here – Move Along, and I’ll Just Leave This Right Here
Hollywood In Toto: Oscar Season Beware – Adult-Minded Movies Are Dying At The Box Office, also, Why Vindication Is The Most Original Cop Show In Ages
The Lid: States Spent Almost NONE Of The $350 Billion “Emergency” COVID Funds Biden Sent
Legal Insurrection: Democrats & Media Deploy Same Eliminationist Rhetoric Against Parents As They Did Against The TEA Party, Emerson College Investigating Conservative Student Group Over Stickers Criticizing Red China, and Garland Memo Fallout In Rhode Island
Michelle Malkin: Comply Or Die – Vaxxpartheid In The Operating Room
Nebraska Energy Observer: Lupus Tenebrosis Chapter 9
Outkick: NBA Union Director Says Players Shouldn’t Lose Pay Because Of Jab Mandates, Urban Meyer’s Family Breaks Its Silence, and Wild Card Loss Could Be Boone’s Last Game As Yankees’ Skipper
Power Line: Andrew Yang, Former Democrat, Derek Chauvin Needs A Lawyer, and Clueless Joe Biden & The “Taiwan Agreement”
Protein Wisdom: Winning The War Against Therapeutic Nihilism – Trusted Treatments Vs. Untested Novel Therapies
Shark Tank: AG Moody Claps Back At Eskamani, Defends Lawsuit
Shot In The Dark: Offsetting, also, Already Gone
STUMP: U.S. COVID Mortality – Winter Is Coming 
The Political Hat: Shoelaces Of Wokeness
This Ain’t Hell: John Kerry Says Biden “Literally Had Not Been Aware” Of What Led To France/U.S. Dustup, also, Fixing The Federal Debt Problem – Just Mint a Trillion-Dollar Coin?
Transterrestrial Musings: And Jews Will Still Vote Democrat, Walmart But For Space, and Polarization
Victory Girls: Terry McAuliffe – School Choice For Me, Not For Thee
Volokh Conspiracy: Emerson College Suspends Student Group For Distributing “China Kinda Sus” Stickers
Weasel Zippers: FBI Creates Critical Race Theory-Based Training, also, Report – Biden Paying $5 Million A Day Not To Build A Border Wall
The Federalist: Financial Records Show Facebook “Whistleblower” Is Less Concerned Employee And More Radical Democrat Activist, also, Across America, Parents Refuse To Be Intimidated By Biden’s AG Calling Them Domestic Terrorists
Mark Steyn: The Shadow Of Your Stall

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Category: Linkagery

FBI Now Targeting Parents as Terrorists

Posted on | October 6, 2021 | Comments Off on FBI Now Targeting Parents as Terrorists

The Justice Department has now decided that the real terrorists in America are parents upset about local public school policies:

Attorney General Merrick Garland called on the FBI to “use its authority” against parents who threaten or use violence against public school officials in a Monday memorandum.
Garland said there has been a “disturbing spike in harassment, intimidation, and threats of violence against school administrators, board members, teachers, and staff.” He said he is directing the FBI to work with each U.S. attorney and leaders “in each federal judicial district” to discuss strategy to address threats within 30 days of his statement.
The Department of Justice’s memorandum did not specify what it classifies as a crime and did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for clarification on the matter.
Garland’s statement follows a letter from the National School Board Association (NSBA) that asked the federal government to get involved in the “immediate threat” of violence from parents faced by American public schools and its education officials. The NSBA said the incidents could be “the equivalent to a form of domestic terrorism and hate crimes.”
“It is shameful that activists are weaponizing the US Department of Justice against parents,” Nicole Neily, president of Parents Defending Education told the Daily Caller News Foundation in response to the memorandum. “This is a coordinated attempt to intimidate dissenting voices in the debates surrounding America’s underperforming K-12 education – and it will not succeed. We will not be silenced.”

Right — Antifa and BLM can engage in weeklong sprees of vandalism and looting, burn down police precincts and take over entire city blocks, and that’s just “mostly peaceful protests,” but let a few parents show up at the local school board meeting to complain about COVID-19 policy, transgenderism or Critical Race Theory, and the Justice Department will sic the FBI on them. The DOJ’s priorities are clear: Never mind the tens of thousands of illegal aliens streaming across the unprotected border, we’ve got to crack down on rowdiness at the PTA meeting.

(Hat-tip to Gina Carano on Twitter for the artwork.)




 

Category: Crime
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