Felicia Sonmez Strikes Again

Posted on | June 5, 2022 | 1 Comment

You may recognize the name Felicia Sonmez because she is the Washington Post reporter who got suspended two years ago after deciding that the death of NBA star Kobe Bryant was an excellent occasion to remind the world that Bryant was accused of rape in 2003.

Sonmez was quickly reinstated because, well, facts are facts, even if it’s tasteless to mention them when nine people have just died in a helicopter crash. Probably the reason the Post rushed to suspend Sonmez was because it might have seemed racist — “RAAAAACIST!” — for this white woman to be highlighting a rape accusation against a black man. “Thou Shalt Not Offend the Black Community” is sacred writ in much of the media establishment, and I could cite a thousand examples of the bend-over-backwards compliance to that commandment. Sometimes it’s silly, sometimes it’s actually dangerous, as when a violent criminal suspect is at large and newspapers refuse to mention the race of the suspect.

While I don’t think Sonmez should have been sacrificed to the cancel culture mob, it turns out that she is a problematic employee quite generally, who unsuccessfully sued the Post last year:

Sonmez in her suit alleged that the Post illegally discriminated against her when it temporarily banned her from covering stories related to sexual harassment or misconduct after she publicly identified herself as a sexual assault victim. But D.C. Superior Court Judge Anthony Epstein on Friday ruled that Sonmez had failed to make “a plausible claim that The Post took adverse employment actions, or created a hostile work environment, because of her sex or status as a victim of sexual assault.”
Sundeep Hora, Sonmez’s lawyer, told the New York Times that they planned to appeal the decision, which they are “disappointed in” and “strongly disagree with.”
Sonmez failed to demonstrate that the paper showed “discriminatory motive” in temporarily blocking her from reporting on issues of sexual misconduct, Epstein said in a 28-page decision, restrictions that the Post’s editors had attributed to Sonmez’s public statements, not her victim status or gender. Sonmez’s own account of what happened, the ruling notes, was that “the Post did not want the external perception that it had an advocate covering an issue she experienced.” Sonmez’s suit was dismissed with prejudice, meaning it cannot be filed again.

Somnez destroyed the career of a former male coworker by claiming she was “pressured into having sex after a night of drinking.” The colleague denied wrongdoing and it doesn’t matter whether you think he was guilty or innocent. The point is that after that incident and then Sonmez’s attack on the recently deceased Kobe Bryant, her bosses at the Post seemed to conclude that Somnez was an ax-grinder whose reputation might damage the newspaper’s credibility. That she then sued the newspaper claiming discrimination ought to have been sufficient cause for termination. I’m sorry, but why would anyone expect to continue getting paid to work for a company after you dragged them into court?

So now this happened:

A Washington Post reporter has apologized after he was called out by a female colleague at the newspaper for retweeting a sexist joke.
David Weigel, who covers politics for the Jeff Bezos-owned daily broadsheet, tweeted on Friday that he had removed a post that he retweeted earlier in the day.\
Weigel retweeted a post by a Twitter user who wrote: “Every girl is bi. You just have to figure out if it’s polar or sexual.”
Felicia Sonmez, who also covers politics for the Washington Post, was angered by Weigel’s retweet, writing: “Fantastic to work at a news outlet where retweets like this are allowed!”
Weigel later tweeted: “I just removed a retweet of an offensive joke. I apologize and did not mean to cause any harm.”
Washington Post COO Kris Coratti Kelly told the New York Post: “Editors have made clear to the staff that the tweet was reprehensible and demeaning language or actions like that will not be tolerated.”
Weigel, 40, is a veteran politics reporter who has worked at Slate and Bloomberg. He joined the Washington Post in 2015.

(Hat-tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.) The joke was “sexist” and “reprehensible”? No, I’m pretty sure it was inspired by Amber Heard, who is bisexual and afflicted with either bipolar or borderline personality disorder, depending on which expert you ask. The comedian whose joke Weigel RT’d, Cam Harless, says no one should be punished for retweeting his jokes. The people who really should be punished are “woke” tattletales like Felicia Sonmez, who remind me of Stasi informers, and certainly shouldn’t be employed as journalists in a free country.

Category: Media Bias

Cleanup On Aisle Blogroll

Posted on | June 5, 2022 | Comments Off on Cleanup On Aisle Blogroll

— by Wombat-socho

Ceterum autem censeo Silicon Valley esse delendam.

mfw I see just how many blogs we have on the blogroll

One of the things that happened while I was out east in the suburbs of Mordor-On-The-Potomac* was that I got to consult with Smitty. John Hoge, and Loyal Reader Brian E., all of whom Know Stuff about computers & software in general and WordPress specifically. Since Smitty is pretty busy with kids & family, and John has his own blog plus a full-time job, it means I need to cowboy up and take care of some of the housekeeping around here, especially with respect to the blogroll. I have already made some changes; the dearly departed Charles Hill’s Dustbury and Kathy Shaidle’s Five Feet of Fury have been deleted, and I have updated the links to Don Surber, The DaleyGator, and Geller Report (f/k/a Atlas Shrugs).

I’ll be going through the rest of the blogroll over the coming month in between dental and VA appointments and working on my continuing education requirements for next tax season. If you’re listed on the blogroll and you know the link is bad, or you’ve gotten out of the blogging habit, please contact me in the comments or via e-mail. Your help in this tedious but necessary effort is very much appreciated.

*Or Washington DC, as it is known in the Common Tongue.

Amazon Warehouse Deals

Category: Blogging

FMJRA 2.0: Opening Day

Posted on | June 4, 2022 | Comments Off on FMJRA 2.0: Opening Day

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Well, that was a fun week in the DC area. Got to see a lot of my friends, eat delicious food I can’t find out here, do The Other Podcast, and in general avoid all the drama & COVID stupidity at Balticon this year.

In other news, the time zone changes screwed up my participation in the first few series of Pete’s 1970 League, and led to Robot Ted Williams being swept in a three-game series against Oakland. Still, we were two for three against the Angels and Red Sox and have a two-game series against the latter tonight to determine who’s going to be in the cellar of the AL West. (The divisions have been shuffled so most of us are in the same time zone as the other teams in our division.) We’re going to be in Fenway, so I think some of my pitchers might be feeding their gophers tonight, but then again we might just have a lot of doubles off the Green Monster.
Ceterum autem censeo Silicon Valley esse delendam.

Late Night With Rule 5 Sunday: Dorothy Lamour
Animal Magnetism
Ninety Miles From Tyranny
EBL
A View From The Beach
Proof Positive

Deliberate Dishonesty: Biden Keeps Repeating Lies About the Economy
The DaleyGator
A View From The Beach
EBL
357 Magnum
Proof Positive

For Crying Out Loud! ‘The Paramilitary Wing of the American Right,’ Ma’am?
EBL
357 Magnum

Ukraine: Bad Week in the Donbas
The Political Hat
EBL
357 Magnum

FMJRA 2.0: RIP Vangelis
A View From The Beach
EBL

Everybody Hates Amber Heard
EBL
357 Magnum

Aspiring Rapper Update: Frères Jacques
EBL

Carjacking While Pregnant
First Street Journal
357 Magnum
EBL

‘Equality’ and the Murderous Losers
The DaleyGator
EBL
357 Magnum

Save Babies, Help Moms, Hit the Tip Jar!
The DaleyGator
EBL

‘Actual Malice’: Jury Gives Johnny Depp Victory Against Lying Bitch Amber Heard
BitsBlog
EBL
357 Magnum

‘New System’? Off-Season Excitement Has New England Patriots Fans Wondering
EBL

Important Updates
Battleswarm Blog
A View From The Beach
EBL
357 Magnum

In The Mailbox: 06.02.22 (Afternoon Edition)
A View From The Beach
EBL
357 Magnum
Proof Positive

In The Mailbox: 06.02.22 (Evening Edition)
A View From The Beach
EBL
357 Magnum
Proof Positive

Vox Day and Chairman Xi?
EBL

In The Mailbox: 06.03.22
EBL
357 Magnum
Proof Positive

When Anti-Gun Propaganda Actually Doesn’t Support the Anti-Gun Narrative

Posted on | June 4, 2022 | 2 Comments

In the wake of the mass shootings in Uvalde and Buffalo last month, Democrats and their media friends want to tell a story about how this is a “crisis” for which “assault weapons” are to blame, and we need to enact “common-sense laws” to prevent such atrocities.

22 mass shootings. 374 dead.
Here’s where the guns came from

That’s the headline on an Associated Press story by Michael Sisak which says that the gunmen in Uvalde and Buffalo “are just the latest suspected U.S. mass shooters whose ability to obtain guns has raised concern”:

After the shootings, which together left 31 people dead, President Joe Biden renewed calls for stronger gun laws and questioned whether people as young as 18 should be allowed to purchase firearms. In the past, Biden has called for banning assault-style weapons and expanding background checks. Many Republicans oppose the measures.
A look at how suspects in mass shootings over a decade obtained guns, based on police accounts, court documents and contemporaneous reporting . . .

Now, that’s interesting — to get that headline number, the Associated Press had to go back a decade, i.e., to 2012. during Obama’s first term. In other words, over the past 10 years, the kind of “mass shootings” that generate national headlines have occurred about twice a year, producing less than 40 deaths annually. Keep in mind that, according to the FBI, there were 16,425 murders in the United States in 2019 (the last year for which we have complete data). Compared to that number, 40 deaths a year is two-tenths of a percentage point, a proverbial drop in the bucket.

In other words, 99.8% murders are not “mass murders.” As much as recent shootings — two high-profile incidents in the span of a week — may have contributed to the sense of a “crisis” that demands legislative action, these incidents are not a statistically significant phenomenon, when viewed in the larger context. Also, many of the mass shooters didn’t use rifles to commit their crimes:

Samuel Cassidy used three 9-mm pistols to kill eight people before committing suicide in San Jose, California, in 2021.
Robert Long used a 9-mm pistol in a shooting rampage that killed eight women at massage parlors in the Atlanta area in 2021.
DeWayne Craddock used two .45-caliber pistols to kill 12 people in Virginia Beach in 2019.
Ian Long used a .45-caliber pistol to kill 11 people and then commit suicide in Thousand Oaks, California, in 2018.
Dimitrios Pagourtzis used a shotgun and a .38-caliber pistol to kill 10 people in Santa Fe, Texas, in 2018.
Dylann Roof used a .45-caliber pistol to kill nine people in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015.
Aaron Alexis used a 12-gauge shotgun to kill 11 people at the Washington Navy Yard in 2013.

So, of the 22 “mass shootings” included in the Associated Press list, seven didn’t involve a rifle. These shootings accounted for 52 of the 374 dead in the AP headline. And examining the details of the 22 mass shootings chronicled in the AP story, there is no reason to believe they would have been stopped by any of the “common sense” laws Democrats propose.

Meanwhile, in New York:

Democratic lawmakers in Albany plunged into the national debate on Thursday, wielding supermajorities to enact protections denied elsewhere in the wake of recent mass shootings and a conservative shift in other states and on the Supreme Court.
The State Legislature passed a broad package of gun bills that will raise the minimum age to buy a semiautomatic rifle to 21, ban most civilians from purchasing bullet-resistant body vests and revise the state’s so-called red flag laws, making New York the first state to approve legislation following shootings in Buffalo and Texas that left a total of 31 dead.

So, in a state where Democrats wield complete control, this is what they’ve done, and what will it do to reduce the homicide rate in New York? Probably nothing, because the Democrats in New York are against effective public-safety strategy, i.e., putting criminals in prison.

Category: Crime

In The Mailbox: 06.03.22

Posted on | June 3, 2022 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 06.03.22

— compiled by Wombat-socho

No second helping today because I had no time this morning and am utterly beat after driving back from Las Vegas with no a/c. Usual weekend deadlines for the usual weekend posts.
Ceterum autem censeo Silicon Valley esse delendam.

Explaining 4GW to the NPC next door

OVER THE TRANSOM
357 Magnum: The “How Dare You Live Without Me!” Attitude, also, Uvalde – Expecting “The System” To Save You Is Foolish
EBL: Creepy Porn Lawyer Gets Four Years, also, Happy Jubilee
Twitchy: Good Thing We Took A Screenshot! also, Gun-Grabber Has Hot Take On Jesus Not Owning Guns, Gets Rekt
Louder With Crowder: Kyle Rittenhouse Returns – Feels Inspired By Johnny Depp To Start Suing People For Defamation, also, “Joe Biden, You A Ho”
Vox Popoli: Defamation Can Be Expensive, World War Clown, and They Really Do Always Double Down
According To Hoyt: These Are Not Signs Of Winning, also, Today We Kipple!
Monster Hunter Nation: WriterDojo S2E22 – Don’t Negotiate With Terrorists (Round 2)
Stoic Observations: Occasion Sixty-One

Amazon Warehouse Deals

Category: Linkagery

Deliberate Dishonesty: Biden Keeps Repeating Lies About the Economy

Posted on | June 3, 2022 | Comments Off on Deliberate Dishonesty: Biden Keeps Repeating Lies About the Economy

The constant refrain from Democrats is that Joe Biden is unpopular because the White House has a “messaging” problem. Nothing is actually going wrong in America, they seem believe, and certainly none of the problems we’re experiencing are the result of Biden’s policies. No, the real problem is that they’re not “getting their message out” effectively.

Keep in mind that practically every major news organization in America — ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS, CNN, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Associated Press, etc. — is entirely in the tank for Democrats, no longer even pretending to be “objective,” but instead pumping out Democratic Party propaganda 24/7. How bad does your “messaging” operation have to be if, in such a friendly media environment, your approval rating is still 13 points underwater?

Despite this incongruity, Democrats remain committed to the belief that “messaging” — and not policy — explains Biden’s upopularity. And so, today, they sent the doddering septuagenarian out today to squint at his teleprompter while he read this astonishing script:

Good morning, everyone. With today’s excellent jobs report and unemployment remaining at a near-historic low of 3.6 percent, I want to speak very briefly today about our economy and what we’re doing to lower the costs for American families.
I know that even with today’s good news, a lot of Americans remain anxious, and I understand the feeling. I grew up in a family about 100 miles from here that if — where if the price of gas went up, you felt it. It was a discussion at the kitchen table.
And there is no denying that high prices, particularly around gasoline and food, are a real problem for people. . . .

Permit me to interrupt and say that today’s employment report was not “good news,” and it certainly was not “excellent.” Also, why was Biden giving this speech from his beach house in Rehoboth Beach? But never mind, his handlers wrote this bit about the “kitchen table” discussion of rising gas prices when he was growing up “about 100 miles from” Rehoboth Beach. Except of course, when Joe was growing up, there was no wild inflation of gas prices. In 1948, when Truman was president and Joe was 6 years old, the price of a gallon of gas was 26 cents. Ten years later, when Joe was 16 and ready to get his driver’s license, the price of a gallon of gas had increased to . . . 30 cents.

So this notion that Joe can totally relate to your problems with gas at $5 a gallon because of the circumstances of his childhood is bullshit, just like everything else Joe says:

But there is every reason for the American people to feel confident that we’ll meet these challenges. Because of the enormous progress we’ve made on the economy, the Americans can tackle inflation from a position of strength. . . .
That purpose that we’ve set out to accomplish and the progress we’ve made, I think, is critical.
At the time I took office, about 16 months ago, the economy had stalled and COVID was out of control.
Today, thanks to the economic plan and the vaccination plan that my administration put into action, America has achieved the most robust recovery in modern history just two years removed from the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. . . .

If you were watching that on TV, how could you possibly restrain your urge to throw something at the screen and curse a blue streak? The economy had not “stalled” in January 2021 and COVID was not “out of control.” The “vaccination plan” about which Biden tries to claim credit was actually begun by the Trump administration. The biggest problem in the economy, of course, was that Democrats had demanded complete lockdowns in response to COVID-19. While GOP-run states like Texas and Florida had been more or less open for business since mid-2020, states like California, New York and Illinois had imposed draconian shutdown orders that they kept in place more than a year after Floridians had ditched their masks and gone to back to work. Democrats think the rest of us are too stupid to know any of that, and so Biden (or rather, the people who wrote the script of this speech) supposes that all he has to do is say his administration has made “enormous progress . . . on the economy” and we’ll just nod along as if it were actually true.

Everything’s going just hunk-dory, we’re supposed to believe, and if not, why it’s that wicked Putin fellow’s fault:

The two challenges on the minds of most working families are prices at the pump and prices at the grocery store. Both of these challenges have been directly exacerbated by Putin’s war in Ukraine.
The price of gas is up $1.40 since the beginning of the year when Putin began amassing troops at the Ukrainian border. This is the “Putin price hike.”
Putin’s war has raised the price of food because Ukraine and Russia are two of the world’s major breadbaskets for wheat and corn — the basic product for so many foods around the world.
Ukraine has 20 million tons of grain in storage right now, and it’s been in storage since the last harvest. Normally, that would have already been exported into the world market. But because of Putin’s invasion and a blockade of the port at which they could take that grain out for the rest of the world, it’s not. It’s not.
And look, I understand that families who are struggling probably don’t care why the prices are up. They just want them to go down. “Joe, what are you going to do to bring them down?” But it’s important that we understand the root of the problem so we can take steps to solve it.
I’ve been up front with the American people from the outset that there would be a cost here at home of Putin’s decision to brutally and savagely invade a sovereign nation.
But as your President, I remain committed to doing everything in my power to blunt the impact on American families, and that’s exactly what I’m doing.
I led the world to coordinate the largest release of global oil reserves in history — 240 million barrels — to boost global supply and keep prices from rising even more.
I directed the sale of gasoline using homegrown biofuels this summer.
And I’m working closely with our European partners to get more of the grain locked in Ukraine right now out into the world market, which could help bring down prices. There’s ways to do that over land, which we could talk about at another time.
But actions have already helped to blunt that — what would have been an even larger Putin price hike.
And as I said, I’m going to continue to use every tool available to me to further blunt those price hikes as we move forward.
But the fact is this: There’s more than one way to solve this problem. If food and gas prices are going to be elevated by Putin’s price hike, one way we can make things a little better for families is by helping them save on other basic items their family needs on a monthly basis, like their utility bills, their Internet bills, their prescription drug bills, and other costs like housing.

You see here that “Putin price hike” got repeated three times in the span of about two minutes, as if there had been no inflation before Putin invaded Ukraine, and as if Biden’s own policy — i.e., doing everything he could to shut down domestic petroleum production — had nothing to do with the high price of gasoline. For that matter, would Putin have invaded Ukraine if Biden hadn’t signaled weakness by his botched retreat from Afghanistan? Nothing Biden did prior to the invasion had any deterrent effect on Putin for the simple reason that Biden’s incompetence is as obvious to Putin as it is to anyone else. Putin doesn’t respect Joe Biden, because nobody respects Joe Biden. Insofar as the Ukraine war has contributed to inflation, then, that’s Biden’s fault, too.

Of course, the people who write Joe’s speeches don’t think we’re smart enough to figure this out, so they stick “Putin’s price hike” in the script three times, figuring that if Joe repeats it often enough, we’re eventually going to start believing it’s actually true. Skipping ahead in Joe’s speech:

I’ve laid out a plan to lower the cost of everyday goods that move through our supply chains to stores and families’ doorsteps.
For example, at the State of the Union, I called on Congress to crack down on foreign-owned shipping companies that have raised their prices to transport goods by as much as 1,000 percent. One thousand percent. And that obviously raises the cost of the goods on those ships to consumers.
The Senate has passed legislation, and I am hopeful the House can do the same to send me legislation in the coming weeks to crack down on these companies and help lower overall costs.
And my plan does all this without raising a penny in taxes on people making less than $400,000 a year and without raising the deficit at all by taxing the super wealthy and big corporations, like the 55 major corporations that don’t pay a single penny in taxes, even though they had a — $40 billion in profits.

It was at around this point of the speech that I walked outside to smoke a cigarette and try to calm down. The idea that there is some vast amount of revenue to be gotten by “taxing the super wealthy and big corporations” is one of those pie-in-the-sky beliefs that Democrats cling to like a religion. In fact, if you hike the marginal rates on “the super wealthy,” they will just take their money out of the U.S. economy and put it somewhere with lower taxes. That is to say, confiscatory tax policies will encourage disinvestment and “capital flight” and — at a time when the shrewdest investment gurus are warning of an economic “hurricane” — this is not what you want to encourage, unless you’re a complete imbecile like Joe Biden. And, just incidentally, Biden’s proposal to punish foreign shipping companies is just a lot of ignorant noise. The price of shipping has gone up because the cost of shipping has gone up. If it were sheer greed that caused the price increase for shipping, don’t you think some eager shipping operators would take advantage of the situation by undercutting the competition to grab a greater market share?

Nobody has ever accused Joe Biden of understanding economics, and if there is anyone else in his administration who does understand economics, I’d like to know the name of this person, so I can ask them why the hell they haven’t quit in disgust by now. Certainly, no one who understands economics could be under the delusion that “messaging” is the core problem of Biden’s presidency. No matter what clever rhetoric they write for Biden to read from his teleprompter, the underlying reality is unchanged, and that reality is that Biden is the Worst President Ever.

Category: Economics, Joe Biden

Vox Day and Chairman Xi?

Posted on | June 3, 2022 | Comments Off on Vox Day and Chairman Xi?

In a Thursday press conference, China’s foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian declared the belief of the Chinese Communist Party: “The country is the people and the people are the country.”

Vox Day wonders why he gets called a Nazi for believing the same thing.