The Other McCain

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

In The Mailbox: 06.10.22

Posted on | June 11, 2022 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 06.10.22

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Usual weekend deadlines for the usual weekend posts.
Ceterum autem censeo Silicon Valley esse delendam.

OVER THE TRANSOM
357 Magnum: Because Keeping Violent Criminals In Jail Is Unfair
EBL: Grifter Liz Cheney, also, Global Warming – It’s Freezing In Australia
Twitchy: Iowahawk’s Handy Economics Thread, also, Taylor Lorenz Discusses COVID Prevention With Sydney Leathers
Louder With Crowder: Texas Rapper Raps About Robbing ATMs, Gets Busted After Robbing ATM
Vox Popoli: The Collapsing Tripod, So That’s Settled, and A Little Late, Donald
According To Hoyt: Paying The Price, also, Being Difficult
Monster Hunter Nation: WriterDojo – Lessons From The Gun Range, also, MHI Swag Shop Now Open!
Stoic Observations: All Us So-Called Blacks, Part One

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: I Do Care What Goes On Behind Closed Doors
American Conservative: Cultural Amnesia In War-Torn Ukraine, also, The Meaning Of Chesa Boudin’s Recall
American Greatness: Hispanic Groups Fight Back Against Soros Spanish-Language Radio Deal, also, Top Schumer Aide Received J6 Warning Frontline Officers Never Saw
American Thinker: Why Do Democrats Hate Our Children? also, Why Was The Abbott Labs Baby Formula Factory Shut Down?
Animal Magnetism: Rule Five Higher Education Friday
Babalu Blog: Cuban Agriculture – Price Caps, Threatened Merchants, & Less Arable Land, also, AMLO Tells Joe “Tu Casa No Es Mi Casa”
BattleSwarm: LinkSwarm For June 10
Behind The Black: Parents & Teachers Sue Va. School Board For Teaching Queer Sex To Kids & Lying To Parents About It, SLS 2nd Mobile Launcher To Cost More Than $1.5 Billion, 3x Initial Budget, Today’s Blacklisted Americans, and Update On Starship In Texas & Florida
Cafe Hayek: Regime Uncertainty Is Real…And Dangerous
CDR Salamander: Fullbore Friday
Chicago Boyz: Classics & The Public Sphere
Da Tech Guy: What Stacy Said About Dave Weigel, Has It Occurred To Anyone That The Reason Pols On The Left Won’t Unconditionally Condemn The Attempted Murder Of Justice Kavanaugh…, and Democrats Are Destroying America Because They’re True Believers 
Don Surber: 2022 Is Looking Like 2010 On Steroids, also, Groceries Up 11.9%
First Street Journal: Chesa Boudin Kicked To The Curb, also, You Will Comply, Or We’ll Starve Your Children!
Gates Of Vienna: Culture-Enriching Vehicular Marauder In Berlin, African Culture Enrichers Run Wild, Are We Being Replaced? and The Importance Of Being Sawsan
The Geller Report: Israel Makes Dramatic Upgrades To Iran Attack Plans, also, Stock Market Tanks 800 Points At Open As Inflation Hits 40-Year High
Hogewash: Team Kimberlin Post of The Day, Abell 2146. and New! Improved!
Hollywood In Toto: Keeping Company Proves Too Bleak For Its Own Good, Will Movie Reviews Require Trigger Warnings? and McConaughey Just Picked His Political Party. Huge Mistake. 
The Lid: Leftist Political Violence Will Increase – Guaranteed
Legal Insurrection: Liberals Mock GOP Efforts To Protect Supreme Court Justices After Attempted Assassination Of Kavanaugh, Parents’ Battle Against Woke School Boards Continues, and Inflation Soars To 41-Year High As Democrats & Corporate Media Focus On J6 Show Trial
Nebraska Energy Observer: Scattershot Friday
Outkick: Absurd Esquire List Names Sarah Spain, Jemele Hill, & Bomani Jones As Top Sports Podcasters, #1 Tennessee Looking To Fight Off Irish, Return To CWS, and Mississippi Burning – For Baseball
Power Line: Americans Say Democrats Are Doing This On Purpose, Speaking Of Disinformation, and Democrats Put Out A Contract On Justice Barrett
Shark Tank: DeSantis Signs Bill Caring For Retired K-9s
Shot In The Dark: Meet The Gatekeepers
STUMP: Fewer Than 4000 People Just Approved Boosting Providence RE Liabilities By $515 Million
The Political Hat: Firing Line Friday – The Lawyer’s Role
This Ain’t Hell: SAR Community Remembers Pedro 66, Valor Friday, and Female AFSOC Candidate Given Special Treatment, Was A “Victim” Of People “Chirping About Cultural Norms”
Transterrestrial Musings: The Economics Of Space Resources, The Steam Engine, and Laughter
Victory Girls: Biden Dithers While Inflation hits 40-Year High, also, Cheney Claims Trump Said Pence May Deserve To Hang
Volokh Conspiracy: Today In Supreme Court History
Watts Up With That:  Top Lithium Producer Risks Shutting German Plant If EU Declares Lithium A Hazard
Weasel Zippers: No-one Wants To Talk To Joe Biden, also, Occasional Cortex Brags About Stopping Bill To Protect SCOTUS Justices & Their Families
The Federalist: J6 Committee’s Show Trial Pulls Dismal Ratings, Biggest Winner In Biden’s Solar Panel Charade Is Red China, and Outraged Viewers Pillory Fox For Segment Promoting Child Gender Experiments
Mark Steyn: Judy, also, Incompetence As A Front

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Category: Linkagery

Bye, Felicia!

Posted on | June 10, 2022 | 1 Comment

Took her seven days to tweet herself out of a job:

The Washington Post fired its political reporter Felicia Sonmez on Thursday after she publicly criticized the paper and her colleagues for nearly one week straight.
Sonmez started internal drama at the company when she called out fellow reporter Dave Weigel on Twitter for retweeting an alleged sexist tweet last week.
Weigel retweeted a tweet that joked, “Every girl is bi. You just have to figure out if it’s polar or sexual.” Sonmez shared a screenshot of Weigel’s retweet and said, “Fantastic to work at a news outlet where retweets like this are allowed!”
On Monday, the Post suspended Weigel for one month without pay over his retweet, despite his public apology.
Sonmez’s feud with Weigel was not the only fight with one of her colleagues. Washington Post reporter Jose A. Del Real criticized Sonmez for publicly lambasting one of their colleagues.
“Felicia, we all mess up from time to time. Engaging in repeated and targeted public harassment of a colleague is neither a good look nor is it particularly effective,” Del Real told Sonmez. Ultimately, Sonmez doubled down on her decision to call out Weigel, adding that it was “important that all those who saw Dave’s tweet also see Washington Post reporters standing up for our newspaper’s value.”
After the feud, Del Real temporarily deactivated his Twitter account. When he rejoined the platform, he blocked Sonmez from viewing his tweets.

Sonmez kept up the crybully act all week, and continued parading around on Twitter like a heroic martyr after she got fired. Honestly, she seems mentally ill, but so does everybody at the Post. because, let’s face it, you’d have to be crazy to want to work at such a toxic institution.

Bad causes attract bad people — I started saying that years ago, during the Kaitlyn Hunt controversy. The #FreeKate movement attracted people whose argument was essentially that it should be legal to have gay sex with minors, because age-of-consent laws were “homophobic.” These people would not admit that this was what they were arguing for, and none of them were smart enough to see they were being manipulated on behalf of a criminal pervert who just didn’t want to take the plea bargain (which is what happens in nearly every statutory rape case).

So stupidity and dishonesty were sort of baked into the pie of the #FreeKate crowd, and the reason I bring this up is because Felicia Sonmez was one of the opportunistic vipers who felt a need to scramble onto the #MeToo bandwagon a few years ago. Can we all now recognize that the #MeToo movement was not a worthy cause? It began, you will recall, with Harvey Weinstein — arguably one of the worst people in Hollywood, a town full of bad people — and everyone was happy to see Harvey get his long-overdue comeuppance. But from there, it started to snowball into a lynch-mob mentality. It seemed that every woman with a Twitter account felt a need to proclaim herself a victim of rape, or sexual harassment, or at least some kind of vaguely “sexist” behavior.

It was like living in Paris during the Reign of Terror, and every day the tumbrels went rolling across the cobblestones, conveying their victims to the scaffold. One got the impression that the entire entertainment industry was staffed by rapists — Kevin Spacey, Louis C.K., Les Moonves, James Franco, Aziz Ansari and a long list of names less familiar. Then the #MeToo movement turned its sights on the journalism business, and a whole new set of villains were sent to the guillotine — Mark Halperin, Charlie Rose, and Matt Lauer among them. Where would it end? I remember reading the accusations against Ansari and thinking, “What? Clumsy foreplay is now a crime? Dear God, every teenage boy is a felon!” But every girl who ever had a bad date was now a victim, it seemed, and during all that uproar I lost track of exactly who was accused of doing exactly what to exactly whom. Everything kind of blurred together, and among the cases that completely slipped my mind was this:

Consider the case of Jonathan Kaiman, a young journalist who was Beijing bureau chief of the Los Angeles Times, and was elected in 2017 as president of the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of China (FCCC). And then #MeToo happened. In January 2018, a girl he’d hooked up with one night in 2013 wrote a blog post in which she described their encounter as, well, not entirely consensual on her part:

After an evening out drinking and flirting, [Laura] Tucker drove Kaiman on her scooter back to her apartment. There, she wrote, they mutually and consensually undressed and got into bed. . . .
Tucker wrote that while making out in bed with Kaiman, she had a change of heart, so she stood up and said she didn’t want to continue. . . .

Evidently, Kaiman persuaded her to resume their encounter, but she says it made her feel “gross” and, once Tucker did her #MeToo hit-piece on Kaiman, another woman came forward to say that she, too, had a less-than-entirely-consensual encounter with him. The result was the destruction of Kaiman’s once-promising career.

That was what I wrote in 2019 and can you guess the name of the second woman who “came forward” to accuse Kaiman? Felicia Sonmez.

The wheel of karma has turned, as it always does. Robespierre ultimately went to the guillotine, you know. The end of Felicia Sonmez’s employment at the Washington Post may not be the end of her journalism career, but it is hard to imagine why any editor would hire such a troublemaker. Sonmez is still on Twitter claiming to be a victim, but I doubt this act is going to get her hired at any organization remotely as prestigious as the Washington Post.




 

Category: Journalism

In The Mailbox: 06.09.22 (Evening Edition)

Posted on | June 10, 2022 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 06.09.22 (Evening Edition)

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Silicon Valley delenda est.

OVER THE TRANSOM
357 Magnum: If You Point A Gun At A Security Guard
EBL: Felicia Sonmez Thinks She’s Hot, also, Cassandra Chastain lays The Smackdown On Bully
Twitchy: CNN’s Chris Cillizza – “This Is A Huge Night In Washington”
Louder With Crowder: Elon Musk Forces Twitter To Bend The Knee
Vox Popoli: Forever Swept Away, Historical Injustices, and Starve Harder
Gab News: Weapons For Spiritual War

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: The Paradigm Shift In War
American Conservative: Washington’s Failed Push For An Anti-Russian Global Consensus
American Greatness: Why I Refuse To Testify Before The Illegitimate J6 Committee, also, The Subordinate Citizen
American Thinker: If You’re Reading This Message, You’re Ready To Resist Tyranny
Animal Magnetism: Animal’s Daily Sovietization News
Babalu Blog: Soros-Backed Group Panics After Radio Mambi Staff Threatens To Quit, also, The Revolting Achievements Of Cuba’s Education System
BattleSwarm: Soros-Backed DA Chesa Boudin Recalled, also, New Trend For Young Chicoms – Give Up And “Let It Rot”
Behind The Black: Today’s Blacklisted American, SpaceX Successfully Launches Egyptian Comsat, and ULA’s Vulcan Rocket Likely Delayed Until 2023
Cafe Hayek: My Review Of Thomas Piketty’s Time For Socialism, also, Government-Imposed Protection From COVID Can Be Hazardous To Our Health
CDR Salamander: I Guess We Need A “Bad Ukraine Takes” Series
Chicago Boyz: A Promise Or A Threat?
Da Tech Guy: Emily DeRean On How To End Up Alone With Cats, It’s Not The Presence Of Guns In Schools It’s The Absence Of God, and The Unintended Consequences Of Israel’s Invasion Of Lebanon
Don Surber: A Decision Bigger Than Guns & Abortion Looms, 20 Million Biden Voters (24%) Disapprove Of Him, and Trump’s .943 Batting Average
First Street Journal: More On The South Street Gunfight, also, Hold Them Accountable!
Gates Of Vienna: Russia Retaliates For Sanctions, Pakistanis Gone Wild, and Everybody Gets To Stay!
The Geller Report: Former Dem Rep Pleads Guilty To Stuffing Ballot Boxes, Slow Joe Loses To Air Force One Steps Again, and Newly Leaked Memos Show DGB To Be State Propaganda Machine
Hogewash: Well, That’s OK Then, Team Kimberlin Post Of The Day, and 70 Years Ago Today
Hollywood In Toto: Comedians Rally Behind Lewis CK For New Film Project, Watcher Can’t Lap Rear Window, Other Voyeur Classics, and Jurassic World Dominion – Bloated Blockbuster Ends Trilogy On Weak Note
The Lid: Hunter Biden’s Hooker Got $20,000 In COVID Relief Payments
Legal Insurrection:  LA County DA Gascon May Be Following Boudin Out, Liberal Media Predictably Downplays Or Ignores Threat To Justice Kavanaugh, and I’m Not Watching The Made-For-TV J6 Show Trial
Nebraska Energy Observer: The Hand That Feeds
Outkick: NAACP Wants Jack Del Rio Fired For J6 Comments, ESPN Promotes Everything – Except Sarah Spain Calling Rays Players Bigots, and Tony La Russa Has Officially Gone Mad
Power Line: Are The Democrats To Blame?,  The Schumer Fatwa, and Is It Immoral To Drive An EV?
Shark Tank: DeSantis Rips Push For Special Gun Control Session
Shot In The Dark: Terrorism, White Out, and Lessons Unlearned?
The Political Hat: Woke Education – Race-Based Grading, Abolishing Honors Classes For Equity, Banning Whites From Theater
This Ain’t Hell: 10th Mountain Division CG Wants Troops To Use Their Cell Phones Less, USMC Osprey Crashes In So Cal Desert, and Army Couple Allegedly Steals Millions
Transterrestrial Musings: The Next SLS Shoe, Naomi Wolf, and SLS Boondoggle Update
Victory Girls: Biden On Kimmel – It’s Obvious Why He Went There, also, Colbert Supplies Trailers For Tonight’s Show Trial
Volokh Conspiracy: New Details On Attempted Assassination Of Justice Kavanaugh, also, Press Coverage Of The Assassination Attempt
Watts Up With That: 2022 Monarch Butterfly Update, also, New Zealand Imposes Climate Change Meat Tax
Weasel Zippers: West Point To Remove Robert E. Lee Portrait, also, Ron Klain – “America Feels More Like Itself Again” Under Joe Biden
The Federalist: Corporations See Dollar Signs, Not Rainbows, During Pride Month, Democrats Think Teens Can Sterilize Themselves & Kill Babies But Are Too Young For Self-Defense, and Team Zuckerberg Trying To Hide Partisan Tilt Of “Zuck Bucks” In 2020 Election
Mark Steyn: Killer Joke, The Bafflement Of Doctors, and Racist & Woke

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Category: Linkagery

Crazy or Evil? We Report, You Decide

Posted on | June 9, 2022 | Comments Off on Crazy or Evil? We Report, You Decide

Say hello to Michael Cook, 33, of Phoenix. His mother says Cook has been diagnosed with schizophrenia but doesn’t take his medicine. This may partly explain his brutal assault last week on 22-year-old Maria Coronado, who was working at a telephone store when Cook suddenly attacked her, a crime captured by store surveillance video:

The victim isn’t buying the “crazy” defense:

Coronado said the Cook was watching her all day until she was alone, and that was when he allegedly came in and attacked her. . . .
Coronado said she saw Cook looking inside the store several times before the attack. . . .
“He was evil,” said Coronado. “He knew what he was doing. This was premeditated. He came four times the whole day, just seeing if there were customers, if I was alone. On Wednesday, he literally told a manager I’m going to come back and kill you.”
Coronado claims no one called police about his prior threats.
“If they would have said something, they probably would have caught him and this wouldn’t have happened,” said Coronado.

Why do you think he would attack her that way? The argument against excusing this as a random act of madness is that, as Coronado said, Cook seemed to be watching the store looking for a chance to find the employee alone — demonstrating he had the mental capacity to plan his crime. According to cops, “Cook admitted to stealing three phones and selling two of them for fentanyl and meth,” and he eluded capture for three days, which indicates a certain degree of rationality. Cook has been charged with multiple felonies for this incident, but what would you like to bet that this is not the first time he’s been arrested for criminal violence?

While it seems to me we can’t rule out the possibility that this was some kind of hate crime, you can be sure that the “social justice” crowd will show no interest in this incident, which won’t be covered by the national media, for some reason. Meanwhile, they’ll go 24/7 covering the “insurrection” hearings in Congress, because that’s a real crime.




 

Category: Arizona, Crime

Norms Restored: FBI Now Literally Arresting Republican Candidates

Posted on | June 9, 2022 | Comments Off on Norms Restored: FBI Now Literally Arresting Republican Candidates

At a time when leftists are attempting to assassinate Supreme Court justices — never mind gas at $5 a gallon and the risk of Ukraine turning into World War III — our federal government is arresting Republicans who made the mistake of thinking America is still a free country:

A Republican candidate for Michigan governor has been charged with misdemeanors for his role in the 2021 post-election riot at the U.S. Capitol, further complicating an already messy GOP primary. . . .
Ryan Kelley, 40, was arrested in western Michigan and appeared at a brief hearing in federal court in Grand Rapids, where he was released from custody without posting bail. The government did not ask that Kelley be detained.
His arrest came hours before the House committee investigating the insurrection holds a widely anticipated public hearing, showing never-seen video, audio and an array of evidence highlighting the deadly violence that erupted on Jan. 6, 2021.
Kelley walked away from the courthouse, joined by his wife and other family, saying only that he would comment later. His campaign posted on Facebook two words: “political prisoner,” and the chairman of the state GOP accused Democrats of “weaponizing our justice system” against poltical opponents.

Kelley is charged with a misdemeanor. The affidavit for his arrest stipulates that Kelley never entered the Capitol. Just being in attendance at the protest is evidently a crime now, and how soon before they start rounding up everybody who expresses doubt about the administrative capacity of President Eight-One Million Votes? You could go to federal prison for having a Trump bumper sticker, I guess.




 

Category: Crime

In The Mailbox: 06.09.22 (Morning Edition)

Posted on | June 9, 2022 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 06.09.22 (Morning Edition)

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Silicon Valley delenda est.

Narrator: Nobody watched the hearings.

OVER THE TRANSOM
Ninety Miles From Tyranny: The 90 Miles Mystery Box, Episode #1742
EBL: CNN Castaways?
Twitchy: Matthew Dowd Reminds Americans That Hitler Also Opposed Inflation
Louder With Crowder: George Takei Has “Crazy Thought” To Get Rid Of AR-15s – Too Crazy To Realize That He Makes The Case FOR Gun Rights
Vox Popoli: SJWs Discover Unintended Consequences, Murder Hamster Economics, and They Called Their Shot

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: I Do Believe
American Conservative: Silver Screen, Red Scare
American Greatness: Internal Capitol Police Review Outlines Numerous Intelligence & Security Failures Ahead Of J6
American Power: Thomas E. Ricks, Making The Corps
American Thinker: Progressive America Is The Twilight Zone, also, Selling Global Warming To Eskimos
Animal Magnetism: Animal’s Hump Day News
Babalu Blog: The Silencing Of Radio Mambi
Behind The Black: Woman Arrested For Trespassing At SpaceX Boca Chica Facility, France Re-Approves Starlink Service, and Victory Against Blacklisting – School District Drops Attempt To Punish Kids For Using Wrong Pronouns
Cafe Hayek: MacLean is Best Ignored, Jonathan Sumption Argues Against Lockdowns, and Toddler-Like Thinking
CDR Salamander: Five Centuries Of Maritime Excellence, also, Red China’s New Cambodian Naval Base – Nice Work
Chicago Boyz: Septoplasty Part Three – Recovery
Da Tech Guy: Tragedy Of The Commons – HOAs, Five Pentecost Sunday Thoughts Under The Fedora, and Report From Louisiana – Growing Frustration
Don Surber: Bring Back The 1792 Militia Acts, Poll Shows Nothing Will Save Democrats, and Democrats Want To Kill & Replace SCOTUS Justices
First Street Journal: When You’re A Desperation Candidate…, also, It’s Always The Gun’s Fault!
Gates Of Vienna: Taharrush On The Train To Milan, A Flood Of Black-market High-tech Weapons From Ukraine, and Culture Enrichers Vs. LGBTQ – Who Will Win?
The Geller Report: Four Latin American Nations Boycott Biden’s “Summit Of The Americas”, Biden Regime Begins Using FBI To Arrest Political Opposition, and Gavin Newsom Intervenes To Have DUI Charges Against Pelosi’s Husband Dropped
Hogewash: WaPo & Its Mean Girls, Team Kimberlin Post of The Day, and A Crater On Venus
Hollywood In Toto: Office Alum – Free Speech Scolds Are Coming From The Left, 2000 Mules Is Year’s Top-Selling Documentary So Far, and Is This Why Jimmy Kimmel Is Mulling Late Night Retirement?
The Lid: Marxist DA Kicked Out Of Office – In San Francisco
Legal Insurrection: Pro-abortion Gunman Arrested Near Justice Kavanaugh’s House. Admits Intent To Kill, Soros-Backed DA Chesa Boudin Gets The Boot In SF, and Boston Mayor Wants Catholic Boston College To Create LGBT Center
Nebraska Energy Observer: Wow
Outkick: CBS Replaces NFL Insider Jason La Canfora After Years Of Fake News Stories, Jaylen Brown Hints Celtics Could Boycott NBA Finals Over Gun Violence, and Topless Female Protestors Storm WNBA Game
Power Line: Kavanaugh Threatened By Gunman, Yellen About Stupidity, and What’s The Matter With San Francisco?
Shark Tank: DeSantis Defends Press Secretary With Blistering Response To WaPo “Smear Piece”
Shot In The Dark: The Ash Heap Of History, Flushed, and The High Road
The Political Hat: Nevada Primary Early Voting (Week 1)
This Ain’t Hell: Marty Saffel, POW-MIA Vietnam Vet – Not So Fast, also, The Great Resignation Continues
Transterrestrial Musings: They’re Proud To Work At The Washington Post, Foods Past Their “Use By” Date, and If Biden Intended To Destroy America
Victory Girls: Tiffany Cross Blames White Patriarchy Again, also, Matthew McConaughey Wants Responsible Gun Solutions
Volokh Conspiracy: So Long As Dobbs Remains Undecided, The Lives Of Justices Are At Risk
Watts Up With That: India Reopens 100 Coal Mines, also, Is It Ethical To Purchase A Lithium-Battery EV?
Weasel Zippers: Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX) Spent Thousands On Private Security While Pushing To Target Cops, also, While Americans Suffer From Inflation, Democrat Senator Brags About Avoiding Gas Stations In Her Electric Car
The Federalist: Mo. AG Investigation Reveals Systematically Racist Curricula & Intrusive Surveys In Public Schools, Three Takeaways From The Successful Recall Of Chesa Boudin, and The “Lean In” Era Is Over And That’s Good For Everyone
Mark Steyn: People Will Say We’re In Love, Confidence Man, and An Example To Others

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Category: Linkagery

What Do Smart People Do?

Posted on | June 8, 2022 | Comments Off on What Do Smart People Do?

Smart people learn. That’s the basic difference between smart people and everybody else — a superiority in learning. And as every NFL analyst has commented, Mac Jones is a very smart quarterback — “borderline genius,” one NFL executive called him. His greatest strength in his rookie season was in what the analysts call “processing.” He could very rapidly analyze what the defense was doing, and get the ball to the right target. Making a quick read and getting rid of the ball — it’s the difference between completing a pass and taking a sack.

Oh, but the haters gonna hate! And guess what? Mac listens to the haters, too, then does what it takes to make them shut their mouths.

He’s got a “weak arm,” can’t throw the deep ball, the haters say.

So Mac Jones spent the past five months working on his diet and strength training, then came back for OTAs (voluntary Organized Team Activities) leaner and stronger than he’s ever been. And, oh, yeah — working with legendary throwing coach Tom House. During OTAs, it was reported that Mac stayed late after every practice, working on his deep ball. Keep in mind, he did all this extra work despite:

A. Having thrown for 4,500 yards and 41 touchdowns his senior season at Alabama, leading the Crimson Tide to an undefeated season and the national championship;
and
B. Putting up numbers in his first year with the Patriots that made him not only the best rookie QB in the league for the season, but the best rookie QB since Dak Prescott entered the league in 2016.

So, a very good rookie quarterback put a lot of work into getting better during the off-season, including organizing informal practice sessions with his receivers, to help build the vital team chemistry.

Smart people learn, and all that work Mac Jones did is clearly paying dividends, as this week’s mandatory mini-camp sessions show.

You hear that, haters? Mac Jones is dropping dimes, he’s throwing the deep ball with pinpoint accuracy. It’s not just one or two people saying this, it’s everybody who watched the Patriots practice this week and it’s still only June. We’re 95 days away from the first game at Miami and, at least so far as the passing game is concerned, New England’s offense is firing on all cylinders. What I found most interesting in the comments of those who watched the Patriots this week is that Mac’s most impressive throws were to tight end Jonnu Smith and slot receiver Tre Nixon. Neither of those guys made much of an impression last season. In fact, Nixon — drafted in the seventh round out of the University of Central Florida — spent last season on the practice squad. Smith, acquired in free agency from the Titans, had just 28 catches for 294 yards, and was overshadowed by Hunter Henry, another free agent tight end acquired from the L.A. Chargers. So these two previously underutilized receivers, who need to show the coaches something extra if they want to make the final 53-man roster, seemed to get extra attention from Mac.

The Patriots’ quarterback is Mister Team Player, you see.

It’s very early, of course. They don’t even start practicing in pads until training camp opens in late July. The AFC is stacked with talent at quarterback — Patrick Mahomes at Kansas City, Joe Burrow at Cincinnati, Josh Allen at Buffalo, on and on — and Mac Jones might be lucky to rank in the Top Five in the conference for 2022. Also, there are still a lot of unanswered questions for New England on defense, plus some doubts about the reshuffled offensive line. Insofar as one player can make a difference, however, Mac Jones is doing everything necessary to make the Patriots a better team this season. Let me tell you something else smart people do: They don’t bet against Mac Jones.

Kid’s gonna be a champion, I tell you.




 

Category: Football

‘Killadelphia’ Update: Amanda Marcotte Escapes Death in South Street Massacre

Posted on | June 8, 2022 | 1 Comment

Look, we don’t expect expert marksmanship from gang-bangers gunning it out on the streets of Philly, but oh, what an opportunity they missed!

After reassuring multiple people by text that my partner and I had been tucked safely in bed at 11:30 on Saturday night, I finally cracked and posted a general reassurance on Facebook. No, we had not been near the shooting on South Street in Philadelphia, where we live, that resulted in 3 deaths and 11 major injuries. But people’s concerns weren’t misplaced. We had been at a party in that neighborhood just the night before. Saturday’s was the ninth mass shooting in the city this year alone, according to the Gun Violence Archive. There have been shootings at train stations and house parties. One group of victims was going to the prom. These things really are a matter of luck in a society that’s swimming in as much gun violence as ours.

Doggone it, where’s an armed thug when you really need one?

This is mere sarcasm, of course. I do not actually wish Amanda Marcotte had been killed in an urban shootout, but it is ironic that she had been in that vicinity 24 hours earlier. Dana Pico at First Street Journal gives Marcotte’s column a thorough fisking, thus sparing me the trouble. However, to summarize her theme briefly, it seems to be Marcotte’s contention that, because a majority of U.S. shootings involve “people of color,” Republicans actually encourage criminal violence:

“It is nothing more than a new version of the Southern strategy,” [Philadelphia DA Larry] Krasner told Business Insider. “They’re saying ‘big cities, lawless,’ except all the big cities they’re talking about are very Democratic and have huge Black and brown populations.”
This race-baiting is especially gross when one considers that, despite the paranoia of the white GOP, racial minorities are more likely to be victims of gun violence. But that underscores just how nasty and cynical the Republican strategy here is. They back policies that lead to violence that harms people of color, then they blame people of color in order to get votes from racist white people. For Republicans, it’s all political upside.

Neither Marcotte nor Krasner has ever had to face any well-informed critic in debate. Liberals merely hurl the accusation of “racism” at their opponents and, believing this sufficient to discredit anyone, conduct themselves as if they possess a monopoly to discuss the underlying policy issues. In her column, Marcotte takes a jab at Arizona Republican candidate Blake Masters, who recently had the temerity to say of the current violent crime rampage in America: “It’s gangs. It’s people in Chicago, St. Louis, shooting each other very often, you know, Black people frankly.” You may say that this statement is “racist,” but that doesn’t mean it’s not also true. Let anyone consult the official data about violent crime from the Department of Justice, and you will discover that black males, who constitute about 7% of the U.S. population, perpetrate about 50% of the nation’s homicides, attempted murder, aggravated assaults, etc. Black males are also about half of the nation’s homicide victims. In 2019, the most recent year for which we have official data, there were 13,927 murder victims, of whom at least 7,484 (54%) were black, including 6,446 (46%) who were black males. (The reason I say “at least” 54% of murder victims were black is because some jurisdictions don’t officially identify victims by race, so there were an extra 1,808 homicide victims whose race was not reported to the FBI.)

Because I write about crime on a regular basis — not just when it’s political convenient because of some atrocity that gets nationwide headlines — the facts on this subject are very familiar to me. If anyone was truly shocked by what Blake Masters said, it’s because either (a) they don’t know the facts or (b) they understand that we’re not supposed to say this kind of stuff aloud, no matter how true it may be.

Since the Black Lives Matter movement grabbed the spotlight in 2020, it’s common to see activist types claim that “black-on-black crime” is a racist myth, a phrase conjured up by white supremacists, rather than the simplest way to describe about half of the crime committed in the United States. The number of young black men killed by police is an insignificant fraction of the thousands of young black men killed by other young black men every year. However, it is important to point out that black criminals are themselves but a small fraction of the U.S. black population (total 45.5 million). Inasmuch as violence perpetrated by black criminals jeopardizes the safety of law-abiding black citizens, it is not in the best interests of the black community to tolerate, ignore or excuse such crime. Yet tolerating this menace is exactly what liberals like Amanda Marcotte and Larry Krasner want to do. The real enemy of the black community is not Republicans like Blake Masters, it’s white liberals.

And since I may claim to be an expert on the subject of racism — having been conspicuously accused of it, by folks recognized as professionals in this regard — let me just say that liberals don’t understand the correlation between crime and racism. The prevalence of crime in urban black communities is often explained away by liberals who imply that the gang-bangers are somehow victims of racism. But racism doesn’t cause black crime; if anything, it’s the other way around. There are certainly genuine racists in the world, people who hate other people on the basis of mere differences in physical appearance. But much of what is condemned as “racism” in America isn’t hate, it’s fear, and it isn’t based on skin color or hair texture, but rather on behavioral differences, including differences in rates of violent crime. BLM’s anti-police crusade, and the efforts of “progressive” DAs like Krasner, are aimed at reducing or preventing the arrest and incarceration of black criminals, which will logically have the effect of increasing the perception of danger. If you want to reduce what Marcotte calls “racial paranoia,” turning loose carjackers and armed drug dealers is probably not good policy, and yet turning criminals loose is exactly what liberals advocate in the name of “social justice.”

Of course, it’s racist — “RAAAAACIST!” — to disagree with a liberal, so Marcotte will continue pretending that there’s no problem in Philadelphia that can’t be solved by electing more Democrats, and Krasner will continue turning loose criminals, and nothing I say will deter either of them. However, my advice to Marcotte (or anyone else living in Philadelphia) continues to be, “Get out, before they kill you.”

Don’t blame me if you end up as a statistic. I warned you.




 

Category: Crime
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