The Other McCain

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

Politics and Friendship

Posted on | August 26, 2022 | Comments Off on Politics and Friendship

If you squint very hard at this 1973 photo of the low-brass section of the Douglas County (Ga.) High School Marching Tiger Band, you can see a 14-year-old trombonist, squatting down in the center, who is now a professional journalist of some minor notoriety. Among his good friends in this photo, kneeling to the left, is Phil Underwood, son of the local Church of God pastor who, of course, grew up to become a pastor himself. But that was after Phil got kicked out of the band because, during a trip to Florida — where we performed at Walt Disney World — the future pastor went on an unauthorized dune-buggy ride with two girls.

Also pictured in this photo, standing at the rear just left of center, is a tuba player known by his nickname “Sasquatch,” who went on to tremendous renown as a member of the Spirit of Atlanta drum-and-bugle corps. The last time I saw him was at a Fourth of July at Lake Weiss in Alabama circa 2010, where I did the fireworks show and “Sasquatch” showed up to cook barbecue (which was fall-off-the-bone excellent).

Anyway, I learned this week that my old buddy “Sasquatch” had just rejoined Facebook after a four-year hiatus — a “self-imposed departure,” as he called it — due to political quarrels. This kind of thing happens, unfortunately, but I’ve never understood it. Perhaps I’ve developed advanced skills in ignoring anything that doesn’t interest me, e.g., “reality TV” personalities. There is a sort of media cottage industry devoted to covering the no-talent “celebrities” created by shows like Real Housewives and the Bachelor franchise, and I occasionally see references to these trashy people on my Google feed, but have never been tempted to click on any of those links, much less to waste my time watching those tacky travesties. There are apparently millions of Americans who can’t get enough of dreadful shows like The Bachelor, and yet — because of my prowess at ignoring things — I couldn’t tell you anything about “reality TV” shows, except that they’re all fake. But I digress . . .

Some people aren’t as good at ignoring things as I am, so they get upset about politics and actually lose friends over that nonsense:

“The nonpartisan Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) found 24 percent of Democrats distanced themselves from people on social media because of a political posting. Nine percent of both Republicans and independents reported doing the same to those in social media circles. Additionally, 28 percent of liberals surveyed said they removed someone from their social media circle because of the content that person posted, compared with 8 percent of conservatives.”

(Hat-tip: Ace of Spades.) Permit me to suggest that the real problem is a lack of healthy cynicism about politics. Having spent some time in the company of professional political operatives, I can assure you that, whatever their political ideals may be, at the end of the day, they’re mainly about getting paid. Like, during the 2012 cycle, I knew GOP operatives who went from working against Mitt Romney to working for Mitt Romney in a matter of weeks. As a journalist covering politics, I’ve seen enough of that kind of behavior that I take it for granted that more or less everybody’s a sell-out. The business of partisan politics is not a place for Boy Scouts, and I laugh at the pretensions of people like David French, who seems to think the rest of us are too stupid to understand he’s being paid to express a certain point of view, and that his vaunted “principles” are not exactly sturdy pillars of integrity.

So many of my Republican friends get wrathful over being sold down the river by Mitch McConnell, to which I reply, sic semper hoc. Before we were sold out by Mitch, we were sold out by Trent Lott (remember him?) and before Trent, it was Bob Dole. There is a long tradition of Senate Republicans pissing down our back and telling us it’s raining, and after you’ve watched this game a while, you lose your capacity for outrage.

Perhaps being routinely raped by leaders of our own party explains why Republicans are less likely to “unfriend” liberals on Facebook than vice-versa. Do I think the average Biden voter is an idiot? Of course, but I don’t hate them the way I hate the faithless swine in charge of the GOP.

Being an ex-Democrat myself, I’ve explained to friends that the most wonderful thing about becoming a conservative is that you don’t have to stop hating Republicans, you just hate them for different reasons. Apparently, most liberals can’t put themselves in our shoes and see how the Republican politicians they view as DANGEROUS RIGHT-WING EXTREMISTS are, in fact, a cowardly bunch of milquetoast pantywaists afraid of offending their Big Money donors. And the activist grassroots of the Democratic Party — the folks naïve enough to believe all that “progressive” chatter — seldom wise up to the nature of the grift by which people like Hillary Clinton get rich by pretending to stand up for “progressive” principles. Insufficient cynicism, you see.

The damned lying media (dishonest scoundrels whom I hate worse than most politicians of either party) devote a lot of effort to getting people emotionally worked up about politics, and if we don’t learn to tune out this noise, it will drive us crazy. My hunch is that this helps explain why my old friend Sasquatch took a break from Facebook. His politics are more or less diametrically opposed to mine, and I hope it wasn’t anything I put on my Facebook feed that stuck in his craw. But the one thing I don’t do on Facebook is argue about politics. I’ll post memes or articles, but I wouldn’t dream of wasting my time criticizing what someone else posts on their feed, because what could possibly be gained? If your aunt is a dyed-in-the-wool MSNBC-watching “progressive,” you’re not going to change her mind by arguing with her on Facebook (or at Thanksgiving dinner, for that matter). And the same goes for me: It’s not like I became a conservative on a whim, or that I am ignorant of the arguments made in favor of liberalism. No, there’s quite a bit of study behind my political beliefs, and if I don’t feel the need to engage in a point-by-point rebuttal of your argument, you shouldn’t imagine that this means a rebuttal is impossible. It’s just that I’ve concluded it’s a waste of time.

Arguing about politics is also undignified.

You’re basically insulting people, implying that there are no sound reasons for their political beliefs, that they are ignorant, and that you are so superior to them in intelligence and knowledge that they will change their minds merely by listening to your lecture. This is the pose that feminists habitually take toward men, by the way. Feminists seem to think they possess a monopoly of knowledge, and that men have an obligation to shut up and listen to them. God help the fellow who thinks there is something to be gained by attempting to have an actual conversation with a feminist. But again I digress . . .

When I was a young fool, I actually enjoyed arguing about politics, but was eventually cured of that bad habit because, when I worked at The Washington Times, my desk was directly across from Victor Morton, a pious Catholic who possessed a master’s degree in philosophy from the University of Notre Dame. Victor had been a debate champion in high school, and his forensic skills were remarkable. Because I am, and always have been, a decidedly opinionated person, I’d invariably find myself arguing with Victor about some detail of policy, and he’d refuse to cede anything to me because, by God, he wasn’t going to let a damned redneck with a diploma from Jacksonville (Ala.) State University beat him!

Victor was and is a stout-hearted conservative, and we agreed on about 95% of everything, but we always argued about that other five percent, because this is just how argumentative people are. Arguing is a habit with some people, and they’ll try to provoke an argument just for the sport of it. Well, I used to enjoy that kind of amusement, but arguing with Victor — a dear friend, whom I hold in high esteem — eventually made me accept the futility of it. Apparently, I’m just not a persuasive sort of person, and I finally stopped trying to persuade people.

A couple of weeks ago on The Other Podcast, I informed my friends John Hoge and Dianna Deeley that there are two kinds of people in the world:

1. People who agree with me;
and
2. People who are wrong.

The certainty of my own correctness goes a long way to explaining why I avoid arguing about politics. If other people were as confident in my judgment as I am, there would be no need for argument: I’d say vote this way, and they’d do it. But some people — the ones who are wrong — wish to “think for themselves” rather than to act in accordance with my wisdom, and I am powerless to stop them from doing the wrong thing.

Which explains why Joe Biden is president, obviously. Eighty-one million people thought they were smarter than me, and this is the result.

By the way — and Sasquatch, if you’re reading this, read carefully — why don’t liberals blame Hillary for everything that’s gone wrong lately? Because really, it’s all her fault. In 2007, she was the odds-on favorite to win the Democratic presidential nomination and her main rival was John Edwards (remember him?) the vaguely Kennedyesque senator from North Carolina who eventually wrecked himself with some daffy bimbo named Rielle Hunter. By all reckoning, the 2008 nomination should have been Hillary’s for the asking, but she fumbled it away to Barack Obama. Undaunted by this failure, she tried again in 2016, only this time she had the DNC so tightly within her grasp that she was able to screw over Bernie Sanders with rigged caucuses and “superdelegates” and win the nomination. However much Democrats hate Trump, doesn’t the blame for the Trump presidency really belong to Hillary Clinton? What a combination of arrogance and incompetence it took for Hillary to lose the 2016 election! And she reacted to her self-inflicted defeat by ginning up the “RussiaGate” hoax, with consequences that haunt us to this day — but Democrats still act like Saint Hillary is some kind of martyr.

What’s sauce for the goose is also sauce for the gander, and as a Republican, I have to view recent political history in terms of our own failures. Exactly who the hell thought nominating John McCain would be such a brilliant idea? Certainly not me — the reason this blog is The Other McCain is because I didn’t want to be associated with that damned fool. When somebody wins an election, somebody else loses, and a party that nominates losers ought to get its own house in order before getting so worked up about the winners. Which is to say that Republicans must accept some blame for the disaster of the Biden presidency; the only ones who can claim exemption are those serving time for the January 6 riot.

Maybe the kook in the Viking hat was smarter than all of us.

If you want to hear me rant about politics, I can go all day, but I don’t want to argue about politics. What’s the point of arguing? People who disagree with me don’t want to hear my arguments about why they’re wrong, and thus I’d be wasting my time. Whereas, by contrast, my rants are at least entertaining, even if they’re not persuasive — I could probably even get a laugh out of that humorless cadaver Chuck Schumer.

And of course, you’re always free to ignore me, which is basically what I’m saying to Sasquatch. Nobody’s ever accused me of excessive humility, but I perfectly understand that my innate arrogance can be annoying, even to people who agree with me, so just imagine how annoying I am to people who are wrong. My tendency toward sarcasm has led some critics to accuse me of being Not a Serious Person, however, I would contend that we suffer from a surfeit of Serious People, who are also generally boring people. But why bring up David French again?

My real point is that next Fourth of July, I’d very much like some of that excellent fall-off-the-bone barbecue, and hope that Sasquatch will ignore my politics long enough that we can arrange it. Because it would be terrible to ruin an old friendship, merely because of politics.




 

Category: Politics

In The Mailbox: 08.25.22

Posted on | August 25, 2022 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 08.25.22

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Silicon Valley delenda est.

OVER THE TRANSOM
357 Magnum: Someday Companies Will Take Security Seriously
EBL: Spring Break will be lit next year
Twitchy: Someone Got A Photo Of The Dangerous Ben Shapiro Inside A Podcasting Convention, also, Zuckerberg Says FBI Warned Facebook That Hunter’s Laptop Was Russian Disinformation
Louder With Crowder: Lady Gaga poker faceplants claiming Texas is going to ‘turn blue’ in November, also, ‘That’s not right’: Ron DeSantis defends middle class, goes beast mode against Biden’s student loan plan
Vox Popoli: A Good Start, WW3 Mobilization Math, and Shut Up, He Explained
Stoic Observations: Living In A Material World

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Conservative: Farm or Die
American Greatness: California to Ban New Gas-Powered Cars by 2035, Texas Bans BlackRock for Anti-Oil Agenda, and The White House Is Creating A Texas-Border Patrol Standoff 
American Thinker: What Would the Devil Have to Do Today to Destroy America?, also, The Second American Civil War, and Ways to Win It
Animal Magnetism: Animal’s Daily Student Loan News
Babalu Blog: Cuba Libre: Civic Commitment for a Transition to Democracy, HRF report exposes Castro dictatorship’s modern-day slave trade in Cuban doctors, and Cuban regime claims $255 million cost to repair 4 of its power plants as more protests erupt during blackouts
BattleSwarm: School District by School District, Critical Race Theory Is Being Defeated
Behind The Black: How SLS reveals the difference between state-run propaganda and real journalism, Pushback? BLM murderer of retired black St. Louis police captain found guilty, and Eroding glacial ice on Mars, dipping in the wrong direction
Cafe Hayek: The (Il)logic of Retaliatory Industrial Policy, also, ‘Following the Science’ – My &(Y#
CDR Salamander: Diversity Thursday
Da Tech Guy: I’m Old Enough to Remember When “Death Panels” were a Punch Line for the Left vs Palin and not Policy in Canada, also, Social and Emotional Learning is the latest front in the war the political left is waging on individualism
Don Surber: Finland is not a serious country. Kick it out of NATO, also, Dump the National Archives and Records Administration
First Street Journal: In Philadelphia, Black Lives Don’t Matter!
Gates Of Vienna: The Revenge of the Moors, You Never Know When the Gun Might Go Off by Accident, and Jew-Hating Workers of the World Unite!
The Geller Report: Florida’s Governor Ron DeSantis Sweeps School Board Elections with 25 Wins
Hogewash:  Team Kimberlin Post of the Day, An Isolated, Irregular Dwarf, and Disinformation Governance Board Sent Down the Memory Hole
Hollywood In Toto: Stallone’s Samaritan Shows Limits to Icon’s Screen Presence
The Lid: American Voters Are Moving To The Right
Legal Insurrection: U. Washington Never Corrected False Reporting on a Transgender Study Due to Positive Coverage, El Paso Sector Border Patrol Have Picked Up Hundreds of Illegal Immigrant Adults Posing as Children, Whistleblowers: FBI Leadership Told Agents ‘You Will Not Look at That Hunter Biden Laptop’, and Triple Crown Winner: Italian Man Goes to Spain, Returns With Monkeypox, HIV, and Covid
Nebraska Energy Observer: The scales
Outkick:  Jacoby Brissett Says It’s ‘Easy’ For Him To Not Be Like Deshaun Watson, Deion Sanders Rips Players Focusing On NIL, South Carolina Has To Rename Its Rooster And Fans Want ‘Cock Commander’, and Dennis Rodman No Longer Visiting Russia To Free Brittney Griner
Power Line: Facebook Censors Flag Power Line, also, Walz Failed
Shark Tank: Rubio Calls Out Demings For Supporting Biden’s Student Loan Forgiveness Proposal
Shot In The Dark: Stumble Of Faith, also, Buying Time
STUMP: Childhood Mortality Trends, 1999-2021 
The Political Hat: Republicanism And Conservatism
This Ain’t Hell: NJ VA home Covid death suits, Gov Ron DeSantis Mocked by ex-Navy Pilot – Accused of Stolen Valor, SEAL Training Priorities, and Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene swatted a second time
Transterrestrial Musings: Ukraine’s Attrition Strategy, also, Ukraine
Victory Girls:  Biden Team Dodges All The Money Questions
Volokh Conspiracy: Latest Order Regarding Unsealing of Mar-A-Lago Search Warrant Affidavit
Watts Up With That: ‘There is No Climate Emergency’ (1,107 Signatories and Counting)
Weasel Zippers: Fauxcahontas Tells The Truth: Biden’s Student Debt Bailout Is About The Votes, DNC Chair: Republicans Are “Misreading The Landscape” On Talk About Crime, Inflation, and Europe’s Largest Power Plant In Ukraine Now Disconnected From Power Grid Over Meltdown Fears
The Federalist: No, Killing People Is Not A Humane Solution For The West’s Epidemic Of Despair, Democrats Accuse Crisis Pregnancy Centers Of Manipulating Women — But That’s Planned Parenthood, and Dems Ask Taxpayers To Fund More Living Expenses For Lawbreaking Migrants
Mark Steyn: Cockroach Bolognese, also, Broken Britain

Amazon Warehouse Deals




Category: Linkagery

Suspect Charged for Hit-and-Run That Killed Three Outside Chicago Gay Bar

Posted on | August 25, 2022 | Comments Off on Suspect Charged for Hit-and-Run That Killed Three Outside Chicago Gay Bar

Tavis Dunbar, 34

We previously reported on this Aug. 14 incident in which three men — Donald Huey, 25, Devonta Vivetter, 27, and Jaylen Ausley, 23 — were fighting in the street outside the Jeffery Bar (“one of the oldest and longest continuously running Black gay bars in the nation”) at 5 a.m. when they were killed by a driver who disappeared after ditching his car three blocks away from the fatal scene. He is now behind bars:

Hours after Tavis Dunbar plowed a borrowed car into four men outside a Chicago gay bar, he asked a friend to help him with an alibi, prosecutors say.
But she refused to help, telling him he had killed two people.
“Actually,” Dunbar allegedly replied, “it’s three.”
Dunbar turned himself in to the police on Monday. He is now charged with three counts of first-degree murder and one count of attempted first-degree murder for the horrifying crime, which unfolded outside Jeffery Pub, 7041 South Jeffery, early on August 14.
Prosecutor Danny Hanichak said Dunbar and the four victims were inside Jeffery Pub around 5 a.m., which was closing time. Moving outside, the four victims got into an argument, which spilled into the street, and a witness heard a man with braids say, “I got something for you, you motherf*ckers.”
That man then walked north on Jeffery toward the car Dunbar had borrowed, Hanichak said.
Video shows the headlights of his car turn on about a half-block north of the bar and then pull into the street. The car accelerated quickly, reaching 59 mph a half-second before the crash, Hanichak continued.
Three victims died at the scene: Devonta K. Vivetter, 27, Donald Huey, 25, and Jaylen Ausley, 23. The fourth man suffered leg injuries but survived.
Dunbar parked the car about three blocks away and started calling out for a friend who lived nearby.
With glass in his braids and blood on his hands, Dunbar went into the friend’s home and talked about an incident outside Jeffery Pub but did not tell the whole story, according to Hanichak. Dunbar asked the friend to drive him to a female friend’s home, and the man agreed.
There, Dunbar told the woman that he had been kicked out of the bar and totaled his cousin’s car after people started “coming at him,” but there is no evidence that anyone threatened Dunbar, Hanichak said.
The woman saw a video of the crash online later that day and immediately realized that Dunbar was responsible for the murders, according to Hanichak.
When Dunbar asked her to be an alibi witness, she refused because he had killed two people. Dunbar corrected her, Hanichak said. It was three people.
Analysis of the car Dunbar allegedly drove showed that its accelerator was depressed at 99%, and the brakes were never touched before impact.
When Dunbar turned himself in on Monday, he had cut his hair and “significantly” changed his appearance, Hanichak alleged.
Judge Susana Ortiz ordered Dunbar held without bail.

Did I mention Dunbar has twice served time for violent crimes?

According to Hanichak, Dunbar received a five-year prison sentence for beating a victim in the head with a baseball bat during a dispute over money in 2007. Five years later, Dunbar hit his 11-year-old brother in the head and body with a curtain rod and grabbed the boy by his neck, Hanichak said. Dunbar received two years for that crime.

Even in Chicago, I don’t think he’ll get off so lightly now.




 

Category: Chicago, Crime, Gays

Biden’s Illegal Boondoggle Giveaway

Posted on | August 25, 2022 | Comments Off on Biden’s Illegal Boondoggle Giveaway

It’s not just that Joe Biden’s stroke-of-the-pen student loan giveaway will cost U.S. taxpayers something like $400 billion or more. Nor is it just that this presidential mandate will drive inflation higher. And we haven’t even considered that Biden’s debt-cancellation scheme is regressive — everybody else forced to pay for this gift to a relatively affluent cohort — or that it is transparently an attempt to buy votes for Democrats in the November midterms. Leave all that criticism aside as mere details, because the far more important point is that THE WHOLE DAMNED THING IS ILLEGAL BECAUSE THE CONSTITUTION DOESN’T GRANT THE PRESIDENT ANY SUCH AUTHORITY.

Not only did Nancy Pelosi publicly deny that the president has this authority, but Biden himself also denied it: “I don’t think I have the authority to do it by signing the pen.” Well, you may ask, if nobody — not even Joe Biden — believed the president could just cancel debt by executive order, then under what flimsy pretext do they justify this plainly illegal action? Believe it or not, they claim that what makes this legal is the 2003 HEROES (Higher Education Relief Opportunities for Students) Act, which Congress passed during the Iraq War to help military members (including National Guard troops) who had been attending college before being deployed overseas. The HEROES Act authorizes the Secretary of Education to issue “waivers or modifications” to student loan terms that he “deems necessary in connection with a war or other military operation or national emergency.” No one can deny that deploying half-a-million troops to the other side of the world was a “national emergency,” but where is the justification now?

Oh, say the Biden officials, it’s the COVID-19 pandemic!

To which we calmly answer: WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK?

The pandemic is over, but “addressing the financial harms caused by the COVID-19 pandemic” is how the Biden regime justifies this “emergency” power. Is there any evidence — any at all — that college graduates suffered more “financial harms” than other people because of COVID-19? Or, is it possible to show that those who owed student loans suffered more harm than college graduates who didn’t owe student loans? In other words, the Biden administration is stretching the definition of “national emergency” to make the HEROES Act the authority for this otherwise illegal action, without even demonstrating that the beneficiaries of this policy were disproportionately harmed by the “national emergency.”

Everything about this is wrong, and only dishonest and immoral people — i.e., Democrats and the media — would dare to defend it.




 

Category: Joe Biden

In The Mailbox: 08.24.22

Posted on | August 24, 2022 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 08.24.22

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Silicon Valley delenda est.

OVER THE TRANSOM
Ninety Miles From Tyranny: The 90 Miles Mystery Box, Episode #1819
EBL: Did Joe Biden Order The Mar-a-Lago Raid?, PAUL PELOSI DUI COVER UP?, and 24 August 1814: Burning of the White House
Twitchy: “Complete Horse Manure”, also, WaPo’s Megan McArdle Not Down With Student Loan Giveaway – “It Wasn’t Bad Enough To Justify Government Intervention”
Louder With Crowder: Parents’ massive wins in Florida’s school board elections were the REAL bellwether for the 2022 midterms, also, Mike Rowe exposes bigger scam behind the White House’s student loan bailout
Vox Popoli: The Judeo-Christian War, Already in the Top 10, and Doubling Down on Ukraine

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Conservative: ‘Christian Nationalism’ Didn’t Cause January 6
American Greatness: Marjorie Taylor Greene Says She’s ‘Not Backing Down’ After Being Swatted By Trans Extremist
American Power: Biden’s Student Loan ‘Forgiveness’ Is an Abuse of Power
American Thinker: Is this the Public Image the FBI Wants?
Animal Magnetism: Animal’s Hump Day News
Babalu Blog: Video of the Day: What the Cuban revolution gave the people, Canadians who ‘own’ a private island in Cuba announce opening of yet another apartheid luxury hotel in Havana, and Italian tourist with monkey pox dies of sepsis in so-called ‘medical powerhouse’ of Cuba
BattleSwarm: Ukraine’s Attrition Strategy
Behind The Black: Red China launches hi-res Earth observation satellite, Indian research project for Red China’s space station threatened by Sino-Indian military conflict, and There are no permanent political victories
Cafe Hayek: Let’s Not Participate In a TRUE Race to the Bottom, also, Yep
CDR Salamander: Re-industrialization is a National Imperative
Chicago Boyz: Miscellaneous Business/Economics/Energy Items
Da Tech Guy: Report from Louisiana: Mary on the Bayou, It’s all about the kids, and Under the Fedora, Not Python, Wen in School, Stacy finds Perry, Honor Satisfied and a Simple Pleasure
Don Surber: Never Trumper not so sure now, 70% of catch-and-release suspects commit a new crime, and “A police state, if you can keep it”
Gates Of Vienna: The Long Hot Autumn, RBB: A Family Affair, Culture-Enriching Nightmare in Piacenza, and The Beatification of St. Angela
The Geller Report: WELFARE FOR THE RICH: Biden Moves To Pay Off College Loans Of The Privileged At The Expense Of the Working Poor, also, Six High Profile GOP Senators including Tom Cotton, Lindsey Graham, and Marco Rubio Funding Left-Wing Cancel Troll
Hogewash: Team Kimberlin Post of the Day, NGC 4424, and Meanwhile, in Florida’s 1st Congressional District
Hollywood In Toto: New Johnny Cash Doc Focuses on Country Legend’s Faith (at Last), also, No Film School. No Experience. No Money. The ‘Freedom’s Path’ Story
The Lid: Slow Death Of Labor Unions Is Good For America, Painful For Media And Democrats
Legal Insurrection: How A Weak Penn Law Dean Weaponized Student Hurt Feelings Against Dissident Prof. Amy Wax, Ohio State Board of Trustees Stands Up for Free Speech, Federal Judge Slams Defense Dept. and Marine Corps, Grants Class-Action Status in Jab Mandate Case, and Google Sets Limits on How Many White, Asian Students Can be Nominated for Fellowship Program
Michelle Malkin: Lie Down with McChao and You’ll Get Bit
Nebraska Energy Observer: Eye of the Beholder, and His Mind
Outkick: LeBron James’ Latest Cry For Attention Is Sad And Pathetic, Cincinnati Bengals RB Joe Mixon Warns Americans To Look Out For ‘$10 Gas Prices’, MMA Fighter Tells Jimmy Kimmel: ‘Eat D*ck’, and Deion Sanders Tells Players ‘No Armpits, No Wifebeaters’ Before First Day Of School
Power Line: Only Racists Need Apply, also, Robert Reich vs Dave Chappelle on Economics (& Common Sense)
Shark Tank: Florida’s Biggest Loser
Shot In The Dark: The New Democrat Strategery, also, VIBRAAAANT!
STUMP: Public Pensions, ESG, DeSantis, and The Catholic Church
This Ain’t Hell: Ft. Bragg barracks update, also, Loan forgiveness plan may cost the taxpayers approximately $300 billion
Transterrestrial Musings: SLS/Artemis
Victory Girls: Carolyn Maloney Loses to Nadler, Blames Misogyny
Volokh Conspiracy: Eleventh Circuit Finds FDA Treatment of Vaping Product Marketing Applications to be Arbitrary & Capricious
Watts Up With That: Democrats Soak U.S. Taxpayers $430+ Billions so World’s CO2 can Climb 2+ Billion Tons by 2030
Weasel Zippers: After Telling Americans They Could Return To Ukraine, Embassy Issues Warning To Leave Again, Yelp To Flag Crisis Pregnancy Centers For Not Killing Babies, and AOC Admits To Breaking Financial Disclosure Rules
The Federalist: ‘It Didn’t Have To Be This Way’, Mike Pence’s Defense Of The FBI Is Completely At Odds With Real ‘Law And Order’, ‘You Will Not Look At That Hunter Biden Laptop’, and EXCLUSIVE: Plurality Of Independents Don’t Trust DOJ Or FBI
Mark Steyn: “Legal but Harmful”?, also, First Aid Kitty

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Category: Linkagery

In The Mailbox: 08.23.22

Posted on | August 23, 2022 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 08.23.22

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Silicon Valley delenda est.

OVER THE TRANSOM
357 Magnum: Texans Are Still Armed
EBL: Was Vladimir Putin behind the bombing of Darya Dugina?, Rainbow Crush: Suspect Arrested for Tagging Rainbows with Swastikas, and So It’s Bots, All The Way Down
Twitchy: Florida father tells of suicide attempt by his daughter, who was being secretly ‘transitioned’ in school, also, Pentagon Again Nixes Guard Help For Bowser
Louder With Crowder: MMA fighter calls out Jimmy Kimmel and the other ‘mainstream media pedophiles’ in viral interview
Vox Popoli: Gamma Grit, Herd People, and Enforcing the Beautiful
Gab News: An Amish Farmer Needs Our Help

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Conservative: Reinforcing Failure in Ukraine, also, Don’t Trust DC on Election Integrity
American Greatness: Government Memos: Joe Biden Okayed National Archives Decision to Waive Trump’s Claims to Executive Privilege Ahead of FBI Raid, also, Where Is Steven D’Antuono?
American Power: ‘Quiet Quitting’? This Is Not Good
American Thinker: Cheney Agonistes, also, Joe Biden and the Ides of August
Animal Magnetism: Animal’s Daily Taxation is Theft News
Babalu Blog: Former Cuban soldiers in exile call on the military to take the side of the people, Black Ribbon Day: When the communists and the Nazis joined forces to start WWII, and Reports from Cuba: Why Nuevitas?
BattleSwarm: Another Day, Another Murderer Out On Bond, also, State of Texas Lowers Boom On Harris County Over Police Defunding
Behind The Black: SpaceX to use both Falcon 9 and Starship to launch 2nd gen Starlink satellites, Ingenuity completes 30th flight, and Pushing back harder: Blacklisted oral surgeon Skoly amends lawsuit against Rhode Island to note CDC new guidelines
Cafe Hayek: Getting the Quantity Theory of Money Straight, also, Arnold Kling on Superabundance
CDR Salamander: Some Damn Fool Thing in the Balkans
Chicago Boyz: A Tipping Point?, also, Rapò Sitiyasyon Ayiti
Da Tech Guy: Louise Perry or My Very Catholic Mother (Born 1924), Chicago is being devoured by violence, so city looks to removing monuments, and This Screams “I’m running in 2024”
Don Surber: NYT published classified material, AP rewrites the Inflation Reduction Act, and It is no longer OK to call a president Hitler
First Street Journal: Everything about #Monkeypox is built on lies, also, Killadelphia
Gates Of Vienna: Welcome to the Machine, Malmö: Caught in the Culture-Enriching Crossfire, and Michael Stürzenberger Bashed in Gladbeck
The Geller Report: President Trump SUES US Justice Department Over Illegal FBI Mar-a-Lago Raid, also, Famed Hacker Blows Whistle on Twitter, App is Risk to National Security
Hogewash: Team Kimberlin Post of the Day, Rumors of the Death of the Big Bang Are a Bit Premature, and Batteries Not Included
Hollywood In Toto: Here’s Why Hollywood Loves Reboots, Prequels, Sequels and More, also, Why Trevor Noah’s Cancel Culture Critique Rings Hollow
The Lid: Nancy Pelosi’s Husband Had $MILLIONS in COVID ‘Relief’ Loans Forgiven
Legal Insurrection: Federal Judge Blocks Biden’s Attempt to Pause on Oil, Gas Drilling in 13 States, NBC Poll Shows Trump Got a Bump Despite Mar-a-Lago Raid, People Want Republican Congress, Are We Allowed to Talk About George Soros?, and 19 Attorneys General Slam Morningstar’s Surreptitious Effort to Impose ESG and Anti-Israel Investment Bias
Nebraska Energy Observer: Partition  and Identity, also, ICYMI
Outkick: Oakland A’s Fans Engage In Mid-Game Sex Act, Cleveland Degenerates Off To Disgusting Start With Deshaun Watson Experiment, Oregon Is In ‘Preliminary Discussions’ With The Big Ten: REPORT, and Hot Mic Catches LLWS Player Blame A Bad Call On ESPN Fixing Games
Power Line: What Climate Crisis?, Yale’s Latest Disgrace: The Report They Don’t Want You to Read, and How a City Dies
Shark Tank: Crist Wins Democrat Primary For Governor, also, Lauren Book Wins Democrat Primary In SD-35
Shot In The Dark: Checks & Balances, also, As Long As We’re On The Subject
STUMP: Silent Generation Has Odd 2021
The Political Hat: The Purported Whiteness Of The Gender Binary
This Ain’t Hell: Two star promotion with Patton’s stars, Energy secretary recommends weatherizing your homes to lower costs, and DC Mayor Bowser’s Nat’l Guard Request Denied. Again.
Transterrestrial Musings: Our “Democracy”, The World In Panic, and The Russian Army
Victory Girls: Special Master Requested In Trump/Mar-a-Lago Raid, also, New York Primary Grinding To The Bitter End
Volokh Conspiracy: Protecting People from Their Own Religious Communities: Jane Doe in Church and State
Watts Up With That: Germany: 60% in Energy Poverty, Thanks to Green Policies
Weasel Zippers: Poll: Majority Of Americans Say Canceling Student Loan Debt Will Make Inflation Worse, Kamala Harris Has Taken 166 Weekend Vacation Days Since Taking Office, and FALSE FLAG: IRS Claims “Suspicious Package” Sent To Franklin TN IRS Office
The Federalist: Roy Moore’s Defamation Victory Sends A Message About The ‘Actual Malice’ Standard, Left-Wing Elites Gaslight Americans With Perverse Priorities While Society Crumbles, Leftists Smearing Vote Integrity Advocates As ‘Election Deniers’ Rejected A Few Elections Themselves, and Two Years After Kenosha Riots, Why No August 23 Committee To Investigate The Big Lie That Stoked The Flames?
Mark Steyn: O Sole Mio, Meltdown of a Superpower, and The War on Us

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Category: Linkagery

Joe Biden Has Not Condemned This Atlanta ‘Hate Crime,’ For Some Reason

Posted on | August 23, 2022 | Comments Off on Joe Biden Has Not Condemned This Atlanta ‘Hate Crime,’ For Some Reason

Atlanta police got 911 calls: Someone was spray-painting swastikas on the rainbow crosswalk in the predominantly gay Midtown district. The LGBTQ community, not only in Atlanta, but nationwide, was prepared to launch a 24/7 media circus over this atrocity, but then police released surveillance video of the suspect, and suddenly the activists got so quiet you could hear the crickets chirping. An arrest was made Friday:

Atlanta police have identified the man arrested last week after allegedly spray-painting swastikas on the city’s rainbow crosswalks that honor the gay community.
Police identified Jonah Sampson, 30, as the man who allegedly spray-painted swastikas on Atlanta’s Midtown rainbow crosswalks. Authorities believe he is also responsible for graffiti that was found on a monument at the Federal Reserve Building, Fox 5 reported.
Sampson was arrested in Atlanta on Friday outside his apartment after a roughly five-hour standoff with a SWAT team.
Jail records show Sampson is facing three charges of second degree criminal damage to property, one count of criminal trespass and a felony charge of interference with government property.
A spokesperson for the Fulton County Sheriff’s Office told Fox News Digital on Monday that Sampson’s bond was set to $77,500 for all charges. He remains in custody.
His arrest follows the discovery of one swastika that had been painted on the rainbow crosswalk last Wednesday, as well as a second swastika found on the crosswalk on Friday, which appeared next to an anti-gay slur. Police also discovered another swastika and other graffiti on the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta on Friday.

A five-hour standoff with a SWAT team because of graffiti? Gosh, if only we’d taken this approach with Antifa … but I digress. Why would Jonah Sampson commit these crimes? Could it be that he is, shall we say, a few fries short of a Happy Meal? Andy Ngo offers important clues:

Sampson’s feed consists almost entirely of screenshots of Apple’s note app, with the occasional image of a swastika.
Some of his posts reference a “master race” of black people, while other posts are religious in nature. He often targets Jehovah’s Witnesses for portraying biblical figures as white. In one post, he simply writes “EPHESIANS 6:12.”
“For our struggle is not against flesh and blood,” the verse reads, “but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.”
These words mirror many of the comments Sampson makes in his posts, calling out political leaders and sometimes even threatening them with violence.

People have gotten banned from social media for a helluva lot less than what Jonah Sampson was posting on Instagram. But the larger point is to ask the question, why hasn’t Joe Biden or any other national Democratic Party leader commented on this case? If this crime had been committed by a white person, somehow the media would have found a way to blame it on the Republican Party — the “climate of hate” incited by Trump, no doubt — but they never make the opposite inference, do they?

Of course, it’s foolish to see the actions of a lunatic as having a political significance for which public officials are responsible. The voices in the heads of schizophrenics can be consider non-partisan. Yet if an atrocity is committed by a lunatic who can, in some way, be construed as “right wing,” the media treat this as if the kook were on the payroll of the RNC.

Oh, and just imagine if the Atlanta SWAT squad had shot and killed Jonah Sampson during that five-hour standoff: He would have instantly become a martyred saint of the Black Lives Matter movement.

The media now interprets everything through political lenses, and so some atrocities become national headlines while others are just local crime stories. We should be grateful that Jonah Sampson surrendered peacefully to police, or we’d be watching Atlanta burn live on CNN.




 

Category: Crime, Gays, Georgia

Louise Perry Gets It

Posted on | August 23, 2022 | Comments Off on Louise Perry Gets It

Louise Perry is a young British writer who has just published her first book, The Case Against the Sexual Revolution: A New Guide to Sex in the 21st Century. Although she considers herself a feminist, the core of her argument rather resembles something I wrote in May 2010:

Insofar as men and women are different, they are not equal.
Equality implies fungibility — that two things are perfectly interchangeable, so that one thing may be substituted for the other without any difference in value. Only a fool could believe that men and women are equal in that way, and yet this is what feminists would require us to believe. And any man who dares contradict this egalitarian dogma is a sexist, an oppressor, a reactionary representative of the patriarchy.
All the other errors of feminism flow from this one fundamental error, a counterfactual insistence on the equality of the sexes. Men and women are not the same, and therefore are not equal.

For decades, most conservatives have been so intimidated by feminism that they’re unwilling to speak this blunt truth, and therefore when I stated it in clear sentences, many people were shocked and angered. Belief in a fictitious “equality” between the sexes is, I would argue, far more damaging to women’s interests than accepting the reality of sexual difference. Truth is always a better basis for living than lies.

At Bari Weiss’s Common Sense blog, Louise Perry writes:

It’s precisely because I’m a feminist that I’ve changed my mind on sexual liberalism. It’s an ideology premised on the false belief that the physical and psychological differences between men and women are trivial, and that any restrictions placed on sexual behavior must therefore have been motivated by malice, stupidity or ignorance. 
The problem is the differences aren’t trivial. Sexual asymmetry is profoundly important: One half of the population is smaller and weaker than the other half, making it much more vulnerable to violence. This half of the population also carries all of the risks associated with pregnancy. It is also much less interested in enjoying all of the delights now on offer in the post-sexual revolution era. . . .
If we are to challenge the social costs of the sexual revolution effectively, then we can’t redesign society on the back of an envelope. We have to look at social structures that have already proven to be successful and compare them against one another, rather than against some imagined alternative that has never existed and is never likely to exist. The technology shock of the Pill led many liberals to the hubristic assumption that our society could be uniquely free from the oppression of sexual norms and function just fine.
The last 60 years have proved that assumption to be wrong. We need to re-erect the social guard rails that have been torn down. To do that, we have to start by stating the obvious: Sex must be taken seriously. Men and women are different. Some desires are bad. Consent is not enough. Violence is not love. Loveless sex is not empowering. People are not products. Marriage is good. . . .

You can read the whole thing. What Perry seems to be arguing for is what we may call neo-traditionalism, a revival of older social customs, updated to accommodate the inescapable requirements of modernity. In rejecting egalitarian utopianism — “some imagined alternative that has never existed and is never likely to exist” — Perry has taken a bold step, for a young woman who dares call herself a feminist, because modern feminism originated with just such a utopian ambition, as delineated by the schizophrenic radical Shulamith Firestone and others. Insofar as Perry rejects “ideology premised on . . . false belief,” she must question whether she is actually a feminist in any meaningful sense of that word.

(Hat-tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)




 

Category: Sex Trouble
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