The Other McCain

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

Report: Nation of Islam Supporter Killed After Attacking Cops at U.S. Capitol

Posted on | April 3, 2021 | Comments Off on Report: Nation of Islam Supporter Killed After Attacking Cops at U.S. Capitol

When the news broke Friday afternoon that there had been an attack at the Capitol, intelligent people waited for police officials to identify the suspect before we speculated about the possible motive. But some people are not intelligent, and stupidly jumped to conclusions.

How many times have I warned about this in breaking news situations? You cannot know the motive for a shooting until you know the identity of the shooter, so when these incidents happen, the thing to do is to be patient. But the idiots on Twitter never seem to learn this lesson, so their wrong takes become part of the public record, permanent evidence of their folly. Meanwhile, the facts finally got reported:

Noah Green, 25, struck two officers, killing one, at the US Capitol just after 1 p.m. Friday, cops said.
Green got out of the car, wielding a knife, and lunged at officers before being fatally shot. Capitol Police Officer William Evans died 30 minutes after the attack at the hospital.
Green’s Facebook page, reviewed by The Post before it was taken down, wrote about Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan and losing his job after graduating college.
In Instagram stories, some posted just hours before the attack, Green blamed the US government for his issues and wrote he believed federal law enforcement agencies were trying to conduct mind-control experiments on him, according to CNN.

Police said this was not a terrorist attack, by which standard, all the claims about “incel” attacks as terrorism are now invalid. What happens in most of those cases is (a) some guy’s life is miserable and (b) he turns to a weird hateful ideology to justify a “blaze of glory” fantasy where he kills a bunch of people and, usually, dies in the attack — either committing suicide or getting shot by cops. Frankly, most “lone wolf” white supremacist attacks also fit this description — the combination of a miserable life and a weird hateful ideology. So what, if anything, is the difference between those cases and Noah Green?

Hateful ideologies in general do not attract successful, happy people. In the case of Noah Green, we know that he embraced Nation of Islam as a teenager, because in his college football biographical sketch he said “person in history he’d most like to meet is Malcolm X.” But there was no indication of a tendency toward violence, and Green apparently had no criminal record before Friday’s attack. He lost his job and his mind slowly began unraveling:

Andre Toran, who was a captain on the football team at the time, said Green was a “really quiet guy” who would crack jokes every once in a while but usually just smiled instead of chiming in on conversations.
“I know people say this all the time, but the guy who I played with is not the same person who did this,” said Toran, a reporter at the Courier-Journal in Louisville, Kentucky . . .
Toran said while he moved away to attend graduate school in Chicago, Green’s mental state became an issue of concern among their friends.
Toran shared a Facebook post from Green during the COVID-19 pandemic in which Green accused his roommates of drugging him. Green wrote that he’d moved out but was suffering from withdrawals that included seizures and a lack of appetite, along with “paranoia” and “depression.” He wrote in the post that he was also experiencing “suicidal ideation.” . . .
KC Humphries, who attended CNU with Green, told USA TODAY they worked together at the school’s gym.
“He kind of came off as the average football athlete,” she said.
But, she added, she noticed the recent changes in his social media posts.
“They were very weird. It was posts about joining his church and ‘one day you’ll see’ kind of stuff,” Humphries said. “It was just a lot of weird, kind of cult stuff.”
On what appeared to be Green’s Facebook page, he posted last month about struggling over the last several years and his issues during the pandemic, including losing a job. He talked about his recent “spiritual journey.” . . .
One of Green’s brothers told The Washington Post that Noah Green appeared to have mentally unraveled in the last several years. He abruptly moved from Virginia to Indiana and told his brother, Brendan, he was suffering from hallucinations, heart palpitations, headaches and suicidal thoughts. Brendan Green told the paper his brother informed him the drugs told him to move to Indianapolis.
In Indiana, Noah told his brother that people were attempting to break into his apartment. Brendan Green said he flew out to Indianapolis but didn’t see anything suspicious and told The Post that Noah’s “mind didn’t seem right.”
A few months ago, Noah Green moved to Botswana, his brother told the Post. The brothers kept in contact and at one point, Noah told Brendan that “his mind was telling him to basically commit suicide” and said he’d jumped in front of a car, Brendan told The Post. Several weeks ago, Brendan allowed Noah to come live with him after Noah said he was “in a really bad situation.”

As is typical in such cases, there were “red flags” in the case of Noah Green, just as there were “red flags” in the case of Elliot Rodger, and “red flags” in the case of Robert Aaron Long, and other mass-murder cases.

Moral of the story? Crazy People Are Dangerous.




 

In The Mailbox: 04.02.21

Posted on | April 2, 2021 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 04.02.21

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Thanks to everyone that bought stuff through my Amazon links last month. I really appreciate it.
The usual weekend deadlines are in effect for the usual weekend posts.
Ceterum autem censeo Silicon Valley esse delendam.

Mr. Winnfield has an opinion on MLB pulling the All-Star Game out of Atlanta

OVER THE TRANSOM
357 Magnum: One Day, Two Hate Crimes – Narrative Hardest Hit
EBL: Major League Baseball Is Dead To Me
Twitchy: Stacey Abrams Disappointed That MLB Moving All-Star Game From Atlanta
Louder With Crowder: Bad Orange Woman Called Out On Biden Hypocrisy – If POTUS Wants All-Star Game Out Of Georgia, Why Not Olympic Out Of Red China?
Vox Popoli: Taking The Filth Factory Public, also, MLB Cuts Its Own Throat
Stoic Observations: Doc’s LAPD Story
According To Hoyt: Throne Of Lies
Monster Hunter Nation: Audible Books On Sale, Nominate For The Dragon Awards!, and Announcing Some New Book Projects
Jon Del Arroz: No One Cares About The Hugo Awards Any More – You Won’t Believe These Poor Numbers!

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: Good Friday
American Conservative: Turning The Trans Tide
American Greatness: Against The COVID Clingers, also, Will The West Be Lost?
American Power: Suspect In Orange City Mass Shooting Identified  – Another Multiracial White Supremacist
American Thinker: Election Fraud Hotspots – 10% Of The Data, 70% Of The Fraud, also, How To Stick It To Leftist Billionaires Without Crushing The Little Guy
Animal Magnetism: Rule Five Pwning The Woke Friday
Babalu Blog: Ghost Enterprise Of Cuban Oligarchs Has Dodged U.S. Embargo For 37 Years
Behind The Black: Today’s Blacklisted American, also, Two Pits At Opposite Ends Of Mars’ Big Volcanoes
Cafe Hayek: A Truly Heroic Woman, also, Two Cheers (Not Three)
CDR Salamander: Fullbore Friday, also, Biden & Mahan
Da Tech Guy: Good Friday Conventional Wisdom – Coke, MLB, & Delta Airlines
Don Surber: Democrats Near A Civil War, also, Illegals Are The Worst Parents In The World
First Street Journal: Majority-white Schools Reopening Faster Than In Heavily Minority Districts
The Geller Report: Capitol Attacker Is Farrakhan Follower, also, AZ Senate Announces Forensic Audit Of 2020 Election
Hogewash: Team Kimberlin Post Of The Day, also, Article IV Section 4
Hollywood In Toto: Making Roe v. Wade Revealed Country’s Increasing Division, also, Godzilla v. Kong Is Beyond Bad, Except…
The Lid: McConnell Calls Biden’s “Infrastructure” Bill A Trojan Horse
Legal Insurrection: They Told Me If I Voted for Trump Billionaires Would Be Running The Country, also, Chauvin Trial Day 5 – Poorly Informed Witnesses Provide State With Poorly Informed Opinions
Nebraska Energy Observer: My Folk, What Have I Done To Thee?
Outkick: Why Does Kevin Durant Get A Pass For Racist, Homophobic Comments? also, MLB Caves, Will Move All-Star Game From Atlanta
Power Line: Down With Major League Baseball! also, Down With Delta!
Shark Tank: Fried Calls SB90 “Jim Crow Law”
Shot In The Dark: Ideas
The Political Hat: Systemic Privilege Of The Oppressed In San Francisco
This Ain’t Hell: Valor Friday, also, An Inspiration To Us All
Transterrestrial Musings: The FBI, also, Senator Ballast
Victory Girls: Colorado Bill Will Legalize Crime In Schools
Volokh Conspiracy: VT Provides Special Vaccine Access If You’re In The Right Racial Group
Weasel Zippers: Shockingly, CDC Director Lied, also, Facebook Deletes All Mention Of Capitol Hill Attacker
The Federalist: Pete Buttigieg Beclowns Himself – “Bikes” To Work After SUV Carries Him Most of The Way, also, Lester Holt Accents Journalism’s Corruption
Mark Steyn: The Reset Jet Set Revisited, also, Muted Hosannas

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In The Mailbox: 04.01.21

Posted on | April 1, 2021 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 04.01.21

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Glad everyone enjoyed the April Fools joke this morning. We’d never done one before, and Lord knows we could use a few yuks these days, no matter how cheap.
Silicon Valley delenda est.

Especially anything pooped out by Cardi B.

OVER THE TRANSOM
Bacon Time: A Question For Those Of You In The Rx Industry
357 Magnum: Another Failure Of The Victim-Selection Process
EBL: Penguins
Twitchy: New Coke Complaint As Its CEO Bashes Georgia Election Law – Company Needs Answer For Its Racist ID Requirements
Louder With Crowder: Shot – Delta CEO Attacks GA Voter Integrity Law; Chaser – GA House Votes To Revoke Delta’s Tax Breaks
Vox Popoli: No Wonder They Want Her Out, also, A Wholly-Owned Subsidiary
Gab News: Have Faith! The Kids Are Christian Nationalists

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Conservative: Biden Plans Afghanistan Train Wreck
American Greatness: Gender Equity Bill Threatens Liberty
American Power: Marc Morano, Green Fraud
American Thinker: H.R 1 It’s Worse Than You Think, also, Let’s Celebrate The Federal Government On April Fools Day
Animal Magnetism: Animal’s Travelogue Day 5
Babalu Blog: Communist PartyOf Cuba’s 8th Congress – The Old Castro Elite’s Last Gambit
BattleSwarm: Islamist Insurgency Besieges Mozambique City
Behind The Black: Today’s Blacklisted Americans, also, Industry Group Representing Big Tech Demands Starlink Be Blocked In India
Cafe Hayek: COVID Tyranny
CDR Salamander: Ukraine Back In The Scan
Da Tech Guy: Holy Thursday Thoughts – A Chance To Serve Jesus Or To Serve The Deep State, also, Vaccine Passports Would Be Unconstitutional, Immoral, & Unscientific
Don Surber: Chauvin Case Shows We Need A Jury Protection Service
First Street Journal: Political Correctness In The Lexington Herald-Leader (and Part Two), also, President Biden Wants To Tax The Working Class To Subsidize Their Bosses’ Electric Cars
The Geller Report: Man Slashes Jewish Family (Including 1-Year-Old) In Manhattan, also, Democrat Victims – 80 Unaccompanied Illegal Alien Children Found In Arizona Desert
Hogewash: Team Kimberlin Post Of The Day, also, How Confident Are They?
Hollywood In Toto: How French Exit Never Stops Surprising Us, also, Why The Unholy Is Solid But All Too Familiar Horror
The Lid: Democrats Are Exploiting Pandemic To Push Socialism On America
Legal Insurrection: Rep. Gaetz Produces Documents That Seem To Substantiate His Claims Of Extortion, also, RI State Rep Calls For Keeping Critical Race Theory Out Of Schools
Nebraska Energy Observer: Maundy Thursday
Outkick: GA Gov Kemp Roasts Biden On All-Star Game Stance, also, ESPN’s Mark Jones Lies About Jacob Blake Being Unarmed
Power Line: Biden Administration Solicits Random Federal Employees To Go To The Border, also, America Is Back?
Shark Tank: Federal Prosecutor’s Letter Corroborates Gaetz’ Extortion Claim
Shot In The Dark: None Dare Call It Slander
STUMP: Mortality With Meep – Ranking The States (And NYC & DC) By Excess Mortality
This Ain’t Hell: Equity For Military Working Dogs, also, PTSD Turns Air Force General Into Pedophile
Transterrestrial Musings: REgenerating Teeth
Victory Girls: Biden Spendapalooza Does Not Please Occasional Cortex
Volokh Conspiracy: Justice Alito Pokes Justice Sotomayor Over Canons Of Construction In Facebook v. Duguid
Weasel Zippers: Occasional Cortex Claims Using “Surge” To Describe Border Crisis Is Racist, also, Whoops! CNN Says The Quiet Part Loud And The Loud Part Quiet
The Federalist: White House Doubles Down On Lies About GA Election Law, also, Rubio Rips “Woke Corporate Hypocrites” At Delta For Ignoring Uighur Genocide While Whining About GA Election Law
Mark Steyn: COVIDStan Forever

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What Was George Floyd Doing?

Posted on | April 1, 2021 | Comments Off on What Was George Floyd Doing?

Most people seem to believe that Derek Chauvin is going to be found guilty, simply because of the emotional content of the testimony, and I suppose they’re right. Today, the prosecution called George Floyd’s girlfriend as a witness, and she boo-hooed during most of her testimony, which was characterized in the media as being about her and her boyfriend’s “struggle with addiction.” Excuse me if my eyes just rolled out of my head, but where was all this sympathy for drug users back when I was a teenage dope fiend? If I had gotten myself killed by cops while being arrested back in the day, I’m pretty sure nobody would have rioted on my behalf. Just another dead teenage dopehead — so what?

The emotional components of this trial, with George Floyd turned into a martyr for “social justice,” and Derek Chauvin treated as a symbol of “systemic racism,” may well indeed suffice to produce a guilty verdict, but on the other hand, maybe facts still matter. And the fact is that George Floyd died of a fentanyl overdose, with three times the lethal level of fentanyl in his system. It was obvious to Chauvin and the other cops on the scene that Floyd was under the influence of something, but they had no way of knowing that he had swallowed enough fentanyl to kill himself. However much emotion is generated by the video of Chauvin with his knee on Floyd’s neck, that’s not what killed him.

But let’s talk about something else that’s quite relevant to this case, namely, what was George Floyd doing at that store?

You can click here to read a detailed timeline of events. The fact is that George Floyd arrived at that store in the company of two career criminals, Morries Lester Hall and Shawanda Renee Hill. Early media accounts of Floyd’s death described Hill as Floyd’s girlfriend, even though he had another girlfriend, Courteney Ross, who was the one who testified at the trial today. Both Hill and Hall had records:

Morries Lester Hall (42) would flee Minneapolis two days after the incident and hitchhike to Houston, Texas, where he was originally from. He had outstanding warrants for his arrest in Minnesota. He had a previous arrest record and convictions in Minnesota for first-degree felony assault, burglary, aggravated robbery, and multiple domestic assault charges between 2012 and 2018. He would be detained in Houston and interrogated by Minneapolis investigators there pending extradition. He also had a criminal history in Texas. He was wanted for being a felon in possession of a firearm. . . .
Shawanda Renee Hill (45) . . . had a previous arrest record and convictions for check forgery, felony theft, disorderly conduct, solicitation for prostitution, and stalking and domestic abuse between 1997 and 2016.

Courteney Ross testified that she believed Hall and Hill were supplying Floyd with drugs. They also had evidently involved him in attempting to pass counterfeit currency, which was why the cops were there.

This wasn’t made clear in the media accounts of the events leading up to Floyd’s death. What happened was that Floyd and Hall went into the store while Hill waited outside in the SUV Floyd was driving. Floyd bought a pack of cigarettes with a counterfeit $20 while Hall attempted to buy some electronic equipment with more counterfeit $20s. The clerk who dealt with Hall spotted the counterfeit and refused the purchase. Then the store manager, realizing Floyd had entered the store with Hall, asked the clerk at the tobacco counter to check the $20 Floyd had given him, and learned that it was also counterfeit.

Then two store employees, seeing Floyd still outside leaning on the hood of the SUV, go out to confront him, demanding he return the cigarettes and the change he’d gotten. Floyd refuses. The two employees go back inside the store, then return with a third employee. Again, Floyd refuses to return the cigarettes and the change. One of the employees takes down the tag number of the SUV, and then they go back inside the store. It’s now about 8 p.m., roughly 15 minutes after Floyd first entered the store. At 8:01, one of the employees calls 911:

Operator: 911 what’s the address of the emergency?
Caller: This is ah 3759 Chicago AV.
Operator: How can I help you?
Caller: Um someone comes our store and give us fake bills and we realize it before he left the store, and we ran back outside, they was sitting on their car. We tell them to give us their phone, put their (inaudible) thing back and everything and he was also drunk and everything and return to give us our cigarettes back and so he can, so he can go home but he doesn’t want to do that, and he’s sitting on his car cause he is awfully drunk and he’s not in control of himself.
Operator: Okay, what type of vehicle does he have?
Caller: And…. um he’s got a vehicle that is ah…ah he got a vehicle that is ah…one second let me see if I can see the license. The driver license is BRJ026.
Operator: Okay, what color is it?
Caller: It’s a blue color. It’s a blue van.
Operator: Blue van?
Caller: Yes, van.
Operator: Alright blue van, gotcha. Is it out front or is it on 38th ST?
Caller: Ah it’s on 38th ST.
Operator: On 38th ST. So, this guy gave a counterfeit bill, has your cigarettes, and he’s under the influence of something?
Caller: Something like that, yes. He is not acting right.

You see that the store employee mentioned Floyd’s intoxication — he was “not in control of himself . . . not acting right.” As it turned out, he had taken fake Percocet tablets that were actually a mixture of fentanyl and methamphetamine. This was the garbage dope Hall was apparently dealing, and also, it seems, running a counterfeit cash operation.

Possession of counterfeit currency is a federal crime that can get you up to 15 years in prison. A lot of people, upon hearing that the cops were called on Floyd because of a fake $20 were like, “They killed him for $20,” but several other fake $20s were found in the SUV, and there hasn’t been much reporting on the investigation of that crime, but this incident might have been the tip of an iceberg of a much larger conspiracy. Somebody in Minneapolis was circulating counterfeit currency, and the role of Morries Hall in this crime cannot be ignored.

Of course, the underlying crime — the reason the cops were there — is being ignored by the media, who are promoting the narrative that the real crime was Derek Chauvin’s knee on Floyd’s neck, despite the evidence from the toxicology report that Floyd was already dying of an overdose (and complaining “I can’t breathe”) before the cops put him on the ground. The reason they put him on the ground was because he refused to get in back of the squad car, and they decided to call for EMS because he appeared to be in a state of “excited delirium” which we now know was due to his drug overdose. But the emotional nature of the testimony at the trial is intended to cancel out these known facts, to make the jurors convict Chauvin of murder even though it was the fentanyl that killed Floyd who was, by the way, a criminal:

Between 1997 and 2005, he was convicted of eight crimes. He served four years in prison after accepting a plea bargain for a 2007 aggravated robbery in a home invasion.

That’s nine crimes total, that we know of, before he tried to pass counterfeit currency that day and — oh, by the way, another crime — possession of the illegal narcotics that killed him.

Please explain to me how dopehead criminals became secular saints in our culture. When did this happen? Because as I say, when I was a teenage dopehead, nobody treated me like a saint, and if I had died of an overdose with a cop’s knee on my neck, no one would have rioted.

Maybe I was being oppressed, but was too stoned to know it. Also, I’m pretty sure I saw Excited Delirium open for Cheap Trick in 1979.




 

The Other McCain Sells Out

Posted on | April 1, 2021 | Comments Off on The Other McCain Sells Out

— by Wombat-socho

So long, and thanks for all the links.

DATELINE LAS VEGAS
After a shocking early morning phone call from Stacy in which he revealed that he had sold the blog to Jeff Bezos of the Washington Post for an undisclosed amount of money “and other valuable considerations”, possibly including a minority stake in the Hagerstown Suns minor league baseball team, it is my unhappy duty to inform you that this will be the last post at The Other McCain. Family spokesman Kirby took the phone and said there would be more details in a later video post on YouTube, “but right now Stacy has to talk the Ewok off the ledge.”

Smitty had no comment, but sources speaking on background to the Navy Times revealed that the former Admiral of the Afghan Sea had been recalled to duty, promoted to Commodore, and would be sent on a three-year accompanied tour of the Little America Antarctic base where he would be in charge of efforts to root out alleged multi-racial white supremacists in Neu Schwabenland.

As for your resident burrowing marsupial and linkmongler, I am sitting in my hotel room surrounded by half-naked cosplay girls and bemusedly examining the packing slip on this box I received from Amazon Prime late last night. Thirty silver eagle coins, a case of fishnet stockings, five pounds of See’s Chocolates, a gallon of Astroglidea man could have a pretty good weekend in Vegas with all that

UPDATE: Stacy’s news conference.

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In The Mailbox: 03.31.21

Posted on | April 1, 2021 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 03.31.21

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Silicon Valley delenda est.

OVER THE TRANSOM
Ninety Miles From Tyranny: The Ninety Miles Mystery Box, Episode #1308
357 Magnum: It’s Not Unethical When Democrats Do It
EBL: Duct Taped Bunny
Twitchy: Gov. Kemp Fires Back At Delta CEO For Taking Cue From “Partisan Activists” & Virtue-Signaling About Election Law
Louder With Crowder: Six-Month-Old Child Thrown Into Rio Grande By Smugglers, Saved By Brave Border Patrol Agent
Vox Popoli: If You Want Hopium, also, Oh, Shut Up, Trumps
Gab News: The GOP Is Dead, Long Live American Populism

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: Lifting Heavy Weights & Fighting The System
American Conservative: Bad Omens From Buckley’s Biographer
American Greatness: TX Coronavirus Cases Drop Over Two Weeks After Restrictions & Mask Mandate Lifted, also, Loudoun County School Advisory Board Demands Firing Of Teachers Who Disagree With Critical Race Theory
American Thinker: The Supreme Court – Cowards, Crooks, Or Compromised?
Animal Magnetism: Animal’s Hump Day News
Babalu Blog: Communist Cuba’s Economic “Reforms” Make Matters Worse, Spark Protests
BattleSwarm: Red China Perfidy Update
Behind The Black: Today’s Blacklisted American, also, FAA Says It Will “Lead” Investigation Into Yesterday’s Starship #11 Crash
Cafe Hayek: Again, If Pundits Are So Smart, Why Aren’t They Super-Rich?
CDR Salamander: Is Mozambique On Your Hot List?
Da Tech Guy: Life Imitates Python & Other Holy Week Monday Thoughts Under The Fedora, also, The Left & The Purgatory Line
Don Surber: Blame Democrats For The Stomping Of Asians
First Street Journal: Big Brother Will be Watching You!
Fred On Everything:
The Geller Report: YouTube To Remove “Dislike” Feature As Biden White House Gets Massively Ratioed, also, Black Man Who Brutally Beat Old Asian Woman Is Convicted Murderer On Parole
Hogewash: A Change In Staffing, also, Team Kimberlin Post of The Day
Hollywood In Toto: PolitiFact Gaslights Readers On Late Night’s Comically Obvious Liberal Bias
The Lid: Wildlife Conservation Programs Funded Almost Entirely By Hunters & Gun Owners
Legal Insurrection: GoFundMe Takes Down Page Of Virginia Parents Fighting Critical Race Theory Curriculum, also, Democrats Abandon Attempt To Steal IA-2
Michelle Malkin: The Global Trace & Track Regime
Nebraska Energy Observer: A Harlot’s Way 5 – The Cross
Outkick: Kevin Durant Apologizes For Social Media Slams Of Michael Rapoport, also, Two More Women File Lawsuits Against Deshaun Watson
Power Line: Chauvin Trial Day 2, also, On Race, Britain Leads The Way
Shark Tank: Senate Bill Would Ban Chicom Manufactured Solar Panels
Shot In The Dark: Opportunity Stumbles
The Political Hat: Defining The Term “Transgender Child”, also, Critical Race Theory Vs. North Carolina
This Ain’t Hell: Ninth Circus Strikes Again, also, New Rules For Trans Troops
Transterrestrial Musings: Spaceship 3, also, Chuck Lauer
Victory Girls: Beyond Jim Crow – Democrats Circle Back To Slavery
Volokh Conspiracy: Wisconsin Supremes Strike Down Governor’s Emergency Decrees
Weasel Zippers: Officials Say Border Problems Began When Biden Stopped Work On The Wall, also, NYT Actively Trying To Dox George Floyd Jurors
The Federalist: CNN Claims There’s No Way To Tell If A Baby’s A Boy Or A Girl, also, Democrats Oppose IDs For Voting But Insist You Carry A Vaccine Passport
Mark Steyn: Digging The Holes, also, Hug Stasi & Vaccine Passports

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Anatomy of a Smear

Posted on | March 31, 2021 | Comments Off on Anatomy of a Smear

When this story first broke Tuesday, I didn’t know what to make of it, and even after Rep. Matt Gaetz went on Tucker Carlson to defend himself, I still wasn’t sure what the truth was. After another 24 hours, however, the picture is becoming clearer: A scammer named Bob Kent, who has raised money supposedly to help free an American citizen named Robert Levinson from prison in Iran, evidently realized Gaetz’s father is rich, and decided to make him the target of an extortion scheme.

Allegedly, I hasten to add, because this complex story involves a lot of accusations and counter-accusations that I can’t fully evaluate. But if the story laid out by Emily Brooks and Joseph Simonson in the Washington Examiner is accurate, apparently Kent came up with the idea of telling Gaetz’s father that the congressman was under investigation by the FBI for sex trafficking. In return for funding Kent’s project of rescuing Levinson from Iran, the elder Gaetz was told, his son would be guaranteed a pardon by Joe Biden. Crazy.

The “sex trafficking” part of the thing involved an allegation that Gaetz had paid for a 17-year-old girlfriend’s interstate travel, but he says he hasn’t had any 17-year-old girlfriends. Assuming that this denial is truthful, then Gaetz is the victim of a crime, not a perpetrator.

However, we must wait and see what shakes out because (a) Gaetz is a bachelor, (b) he’s been known to date younger women, and (c) one could imagine how this might lead to trouble, even if it doesn’t actually amount to “sex trafficking.” Still, at this point, it looks like Gaetz is the target of a politically motivated smear, which the New York Times was willing to assist. There has even been a guilt-by-association element to the smear, with outlets reporting on Gaetz’s acquaintance with Joel Greenberg, a local Florida politician who actually did get charged with sex trafficking last year. And so what? There is zero evidence that Gaetz (or anyone else) knew what Greenberg was doing with his “sugar daddy” accounts.

I hesitate to go all-out defending someone in Gaetz’s situation because it may turn out he is guilty of something, but from what I’ve seen so far, this looks like an elaborate smear job. We shall see.




 

The Late, Great G. Gordon Liddy

Posted on | March 31, 2021 | Comments Off on The Late, Great G. Gordon Liddy

“When the legend becomes fact, print the legend,” as the famous line from an old Western says, and G. Gordon Liddy was certainly a legend.

Most famously, Liddy was the man in charge of the so-called “Plumbers,” assigned to stop national-security leaks in the Nixon administration after the “Pentagon Papers” were published. It must be remembered, when we are discussing the Watergate scandal, that Nixon was trying to bring the Vietnam War to a successful conclusion by forcing the Communists to negotiate a ceasefire agreement. The so-called “peace” movement in the United State was an impediment to that effort, despite the fact that no one was more eager than Nixon himself to end U.S. involvement in Vietnam. By 1972, Nixon had drastically reduced the size of the U.S. troop deployment to Vietnam, but he was at all times an enemy of Communism, and the Commies were doing everything they could to undermine Nixon’s presidency. This is crucial to understanding why the “Plumbers” morphed into a dirty-tricks squad, engaged in intelligence operations against the Democrats in 1972.

The great irony of the Watergate break-in is that it was completely unnecessary. Nixon was on his way to a re-election landslide over the hapless George McGovern, and no dirty tricks were needed. Liddy never denied his responsibility in the scandal that destroyed Nixon’s presidency, but famously refused to cooperate with the investigation:

Mr. Liddy refused to cooperate with prosecutors and Congress, and was sentenced in March 1973 to a 20-year prison term for conspiracy, burglary and illegal wiretapping. President Jimmy Carter commuted Liddy’s sentence in 1977 and he was released after 52 months behind bars.
By his own account, the Liddy of the Watergate break-in was a product of the culture wars of the 1960s. “The nation was at war not only externally in Vietnam but internally,” he said in his 1980 autobiography “Will,” which sold more than 1 million copies. “I had learned long ago the maxims of Cicero that ‘laws are inoperative in war’ and that ‘the good of the people is the chief law.’ ” . . .
Mr. Liddy refused to testify before the grand jury investigating Watergate, saying he had not been raised to be “a snitch or a rat.” But his silence failed to prevent the disintegration of the coverup after Nixon’s reelection in November 1972. When [James W.] McCord began to cooperate with investigators in March 1973, Dean and other Nixon aides concluded that it was every man for himself and negotiated their own immunity deals.

How many people do you know who would be willing to go from a White House job to federal prison, rather than turn snitch?

Liddy believed he had done his patriotic duty, and if that meant he must go to prison, so be it, but his code of personal honor did not require that he act as a witness against others involved in Watergate. Liddy never hesitated to denounce John Dean as a selfish coward after Dean became a chief witness against Nixon in the impeachment investigation.

“Don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time” — that’s all you need to know, when it comes to situations like this. Trying to get a break from prosecutors by ratting out your accomplices is a punk move, and whatever you say about G. Gordon Liddy, he was no punk.

Some 20 years ago, I was first interviewed as a guest on Mr. Liddy’s talk-radio show, which at its peak reached an audience of 10 million. I returned for many other interviews with “The G Man,” who famously described himself as “virile, vigorous and potent” into his 80s.

Mr. Liddy relished his reputation as a right-wing tough guy, a scourge of liberals everywhere, and his success in talk radio let him have the last laugh against those who tried to destroy him. Think about this — is John Dean a hero to anyone? No, but Mr. Liddy was a hero to millions who shared his belief that re-electing Nixon in 1972 was a patriotic duty, and if that duty involved a few dirty tricks against Democrats . . .?

Well, he served his time in federal prison, but he was no punk.

R.I.P., G Man.




 

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