The Other McCain

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

GUILTY! GUILTY! GUILTY!

Posted on | February 5, 2022 | Comments Off on GUILTY! GUILTY! GUILTY!

Last July, Michael Avenatti was sentenced to two-and-a-half years in prison for his attempt to extort money from Nike, and now the creepy porn lawyer has again been convicted of felony charges:

Attorney-turned-criminal Michael Avenatti was convicted Friday of swiping nearly $300,000 in book-advance money from his then-client Stormy Daniels.
The now-twice-convicted felon — and one-time rising star — now faces a maximum of 22 years in prison for his conviction on wire fraud and aggravated identity theft charges.
The jury started deliberating Wednesday. He’s scheduled to be sentenced on May 24.
After the verdict, Avenatti made a brief statement to reporters outside of the courthouse in lower Manhattan as rain poured down.
“I’m very disappointed in the jury’s verdict. I am looking forward to a full adjudication of all of the issues on appeal,” he said.
His conviction marks another black eye for the already tarnished attorney, who rose to national fame during the Trump administration as a vocal foe of the president while he was representing Daniels.
Avenatti was a darling of the left during his time as Daniels’ attorney, who relished in sparring with former President Donald Trump and his supporters on social media and cable news.
He even floated running for president against Trump in 2020, as he was reportedly dubbed “the savior of the republic.”
Throughout the trial, prosecutors painted Avenatti, 50, as a calculating thief who stole two book-advance payments from Daniels in 2018 that totaled nearly $300,000.

A thief, a swindler, a liar and a liberal media darling.

(Hat-tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)




 

Category: Crime

In The Mailbox: 02.04.22

Posted on | February 5, 2022 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 02.04.22

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Well, I gave it my best shot, but I didn’t make it home early enough to do two of these and get fully caught up. Which I suppose is just as well since then you would have six link posts this week…anyway, since I have to be back in the tax mines on Sunday (and I already have four clients lined up) I’m just going to spend one night in my own bed before heading back up US-95 to Reno. Might be a book post tomorrow along with the FMJRA. Might wait until next Saturday. We’ll see.
Ceterum autem censeo Silicon Valley esse delendam.

OVER THE TRANSOM
357 Magnum: The Joys of Owning A Sparky Car
EBL: Is CNN Paying Chris Cuomo Millions In Hush Money? also, David French & The Dispatch Are Fighting Systemic Racism
Twitchy: Here’s How To Get A Refund Now That GoFundMe has Nuked The Freedom Convoy Fundraiser
Louder With Crowder: Shaq Dunks On Mandates, Says Nobody Should Be Forced To Get The Jab
Vox Popoli: Conservatives Discover Wang Humin, No More Soros Games, and Natural Immunity Is The Only Immunity
According To Hoyt: When They Honk People Off, also, Conspiracy Theories
Monster Hunter Nation: Current Event Roundup, also, Gun Runner Now In Paperback

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: The Straight White Christian Man
American Conservative: Appeasement For A Good Cause, also, All The Institutions Failed
American Greatness: Senate Report – Thousands Of Americans Left Behind In Afghanistan Thanks To Biden’s Botched Withdrawal 
American Thinker: Austin Thinks Again, also, School Board Demeans Parents Over Controversial Books
Animal Magnetism: Rule Five Happy Society Friday
Babalu Blog: Beta Is Desperately Hoping The Lights Go Out, also, Surprise! Cuban Dictatorship Raises Millions Collecting Blood From Its Citizens & Selling It Abroad
BattleSwarm: Jeff Zucker Out At CNN For Sexing Not Sucking,  Snowpocalypse Not, and LinkSwarm For February 4
Behind The Black: Pushback – Doctor Fired For Opposing Mandates Sues Hospital, SpaceX Launches Another 49 Starlink Satellites, and Iceye Raises $136 Million In Private Investment Capital
[Speaking of capital, this is February, and time for Mr. Zimmerman’s birthday fundraiser to help keep Behind The Black going. Go show the man some love at his website or via Patreon. – WS]
Cafe Hayek: Peacefully Protesting COVID Hysteria
CDR Salamander: Fullbore Friday
Da Tech Guy: The Key Line From The Story Of Charlotte Bellis, Truck Trudeau & The Rest Of The COVID Authoritarians, and CNN, Jeff Zucker, & The Left/Media’s Harvey Weinstein Rules
Don Surber: Poll Shows Most Ukrainians Won’t Defend Ukraine, Biden Denies Religious Exemption To Navy Chaplain, and Just Like That, Liberals Hated Mountain Lions
First Street Journal: 44 Murdered In Philadelphia This January – An Improvement! also, A “Crime” Created By Government
Gates Of Vienna: “Canada Has Been Usurped By A Maoist”, Sharia On The Federal Bench, and An Appeal From A Canadian Trucker
The Geller Report: FBI Director Shamelessly Lies That J6 Protesters Have Been Treated No Differently Than Antifa & #BLM, also, Here’s How Democrats Plan To Rig The 2022 Elections To Stay In Power
Hogewash: Team Kimberlin Post of The Day, Discovery Will Be Entertaining, and I’ve Had A Previous Bad Experience With GoFundMe
Hollywood In Toto: Susan Sarandon’s Ghastly Anti-Cop Tweet Explained, Masculinity Gets A Comeback With Reacher, and Jon Stewart’s Chickens Coming Home To Roost
The Lid: Pelosi Will Soon Regret Her Advice To Olympians In Beijing, also, Latest Hunter Biden Corruption Evidence Triggers Special Counsel Demands
Legal Insurrection: Professor Glenn Loury’s Ilya Shapiro Moment, Former ACLU Head Ira Glasser Blasts Organization’s New Progressive Agenda, and Ilya Shapiro To Whoopi – “Let’s Talk…We Have To Disrupt This Toxic Cultural Moment In Favor Of Free Speech”
Michelle Malkin: Open Borders Inc. – The “Conspiracy” Is Real
Nebraska Energy Observer: Something Good To Say, People’s Party Of Canada, and Eppur Si Muove, Galileo
Outkick: ESPN Idiot Says Red China Genocide Is No Worse Than Red States Requiring Voter ID, Is NBC’s Savannah Guthrie Working For The Red Chinese?, and Credit To NBC Olympics Host Mike Tirico For Covering Red China’s Genocide
Power Line: Truckers Of The World Unite!, Price of the Ticket, and Who’s Toobin Who?
Shark Tank: Occasional Cortex Praises Eskamani’s Work, also, Murphy Lone Democrat To Vote Against COMPETES Act
Shot In The Dark: On The One Hand, Sic Transit Gloria Civilis Occidentalis, and It’s Always A National Holiday When You’re A Fact Checker
The Political Hat: Brave New World – Abolishing Parenthood, Racial Equity Audits, and Criminal Prosecution By AI, also, Poe’s Law Is Broken
This Ain’t Hell: Vindman Returns, Navy Master Chief Under Investigation, and Valor Friday
Transterrestrial Musings: Aerojet, Moonfall, and Vitamin D
Victory Girls: #BLM Shuts Down Fundraising, Red China Wins Gold In Olympic Oppression, and Schools Nationwide Bitterly Clinging To Masks & Vax
Volokh Conspiracy: Georgetown Law’s Actions Against Ilya Shapiro Lack Credibility, also, #TeamJackson Member Allegedly Edited Wikipedia Bios Of Potential SCOTUS Nominees
Weasel Zippers: Black Republican Blackballed By Virginia Assembly’s Black Caucus, Teacher Yells At Student For “Thin Blue Line” Mask – “That’s The New Confederacy Flag!”, and Bad Orange Woman Can’t Explain Why Biden Won’t Attend NYPD Funerals During NYC Visit
The Federalist: How Much Did Mark Zuckerberg’s Money Shift Wisconsin Votes For Biden?, Stop Harming Yourself With “Self Care”, and How Green Energy Fantasies Can Amplify Civil Unrest
Mark Steyn: The Shame Of A Nation, Copper Bottom, and Honking The Week Away

Amazon Warehouse Deals




Category: Linkagery

What Does ‘White Supremacy’ Mean?

Posted on | February 4, 2022 | Comments Off on What Does ‘White Supremacy’ Mean?

Four people wasting their time (and yours, too).

This is a question I have been thinking about for a while, but never found the right entry point for exploring it until today, when Instapundit linked to this article at Campus Reform:

The Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis hosted an event that made headlines before it even began, called “Is Professionalism a Racist Construct?”
In the event, the presenters characterized various qualities of workplace environments such as “perfectionism,” “a sense of urgency,” “defensiveness,” “worship of the written word,” and “quantity over quality” as characteristics of White supremacy culture.
One presenter, Assistant Dean for Field Education Jewel Stafford connected these alleged characteristics of White supremacy culture to the idea that “even though we’re working really hard, there’s a narrative that we’re not enough, that somehow who we are, what we do, it’s just not enough.”
The host, Associate Dean for External Affairs Gary Parker, noted that “there were some media outlets that portrayed this talk in a less than flattering light.”
Another presenter, Assistant Dean of the Office of Community Partnerships Cynthia Williams, addressed this controversy in her speech, noting multiple times that she was “getting into good trouble” with her colleagues, and specifically addressed the “provocative” nature of the question, “Is professionalism racist?” . . .
The presenters began their presentation with a land acknowledgment, noting that the Brown School “is within the ancestral homelands” of various “tribes that have resided, occupied, and called this region home.”
Williams then said, “We acknowledge the 1,252 black American men and women who since January 1, 2015, unjustifiably died due to police brutality and anti-black violence.”

Let’s start with that last claim, which is self-evidently false. The source of that 1,252 number is a Washington Post database but — excuse my white supremacist “perfectionism” — Dean Williams cited it wrong:

You see that the 1,252 refers to the total number of black people who died in police shootings between January 2015 and late May 2020 (see this NPR piece for a contemporary citation), but the cited source did not claim all these people “unjustifiably died.” In fact, nearly all of the people shot by police, whatever their race, were “armed or otherwise dangerous,” as Heather Mac Donald explained in June 2020:

In 2019 police officers fatally shot 1,004 people, most of whom were armed or otherwise dangerous. African-Americans were about a quarter of those killed by cops last year (235), a ratio that has remained stable since 2015. That share of black victims is less than what the black crime rate would predict, since police shootings are a function of how often officers encounter armed and violent suspects. In 2018, the latest year for which such data have been published, African-Americans made up 53% of known homicide offenders in the U.S. and commit about 60% of robberies, though they are 13% of the population.
The police fatally shot nine unarmed blacks and 19 unarmed whites in 2019, according to a Washington Post database, down from 38 and 32, respectively, in 2015. The Post defines “unarmed” broadly to include such cases as a suspect in Newark, N.J., who had a loaded handgun in his car during a police chase. In 2018 there were 7,407 black homicide victims. Assuming a comparable number of victims last year, those nine unarmed black victims of police shootings represent 0.1% of all African-Americans killed in 2019. By contrast, a police officer is 18½ times more likely to be killed by a black male than an unarmed black male is to be killed by a police officer.

Do the math: In 2019, of the 235 black people fatally shot by police, 226 of them (96.2%) were armed. A detailed examination of the circumstances in which the 3.8% unarmed black suspects were shot might reveal incompetence or bad training as the explanation, but if there is among those nine cases a clear-cut example of “anti-black violence,” I’m unfamiliar with it, and certainly that label cannot be applied to all 1,252 police shootings of black suspects between 2015 and mid-2020.

Dean Williams was simply wrong about this, and yet she holds a position of authority at a prestigious private university where the annual cost of attendance is $76,766, including room and board. Maybe professionalism is “white supremacy,” so it’s racist to expect a university dean to be careful about citing data correctly. More importantly, however, what is this offensive nonsense about “white supremacy culture”?

This became a subject of controversy in 2019, when it was included in a slide presentation that was “was part of mandatory training sponsored and funded by the [New York City education] department’s Office of Equity and Access and . . . administered to principals, central office supervisors and superintendent teams.” The source of this is a 2001 book, Dismantling Racism: A Workbook for Social Change Groups by Kenneth Jones and Tema Okun. The full list of “white supremacy culture” characteristics, as listed on that 2019 training slide:

1. Perfectionism
2. Sense of urgency
3. Defensiveness
4. Quantity Over Quality
5. Worship of the Written Word
6. Only one right way
7. Paternalism
8. Either/or thinking
9. Power Hoarding
10. Fear of Open Conflict
11. Individualism
12. Progress is Bigger, More
13. Objectivity
14. Right to Comfort

While Jones died in 2004, Okun is still alive and has explained her authorial intent:

The original list is really a list of white supremacy characteristics that define and express white middle and owning class values and norms. White middle- and owning-class power brokers embody these characteristics as a way of defining what is “normal” and even “aspirational” or desired – the way we should all want to be. We know this because of how those who do not belong to the white middle and owning classes are required to adopt these characteristics in order to assimilate into this desired norm (when such assimilation is allowed). As a result, many poor and working class white people report they have not and do not internalize some of these norms. For example, fear of open conflict does not reflect the lived experience or value of all people in the white group.
These characteristics are not meant to describe all white people. They are meant to describe the norms of white middle-class and owning class culture, a culture we are all required to navigate regardless of our multiple identities.

Now, I’m not going to go through this entire list of characteristics — my “sense of urgency” tells me this would be a poor allocation of my valuable time — but rather will observe that it is by no means clear to me either (a) why these all these traits are deemed harmful, or (b) in what sense they are “white supremacist” either deliberately or in their unintended impact on minorities. No doubt it is true that anyone who aspires to success in a competitive environment (i.e., with “middle and owning class values and norms”) would manifest some tendency toward “perfectionism” and a “sense of urgency.” That is to say, you want to do the job exactly right, and do it as quickly as possible — quality control, productivity, and efficiency, in other words. These are basic values necessary to success in any business, but I suppose if you’re in the world of tax-exempt non-profit “social justice” activism (which is Tema Okun’s career), you can work as slow and sloppy as you want, and it doesn’t make any difference. As for “worship of the written word,” let me quote Jones and Okun:

Worship of the written word shows up as:

— if it’s not in a memo, it doesn’t exist
— if it’s not grammatically “correct,” it has no value
— if it’s not properly cited according to academic rules that many people don’t know or have access to, it’s not legitimate
— an inability or refusal to acknowledge information that is shared through stories, embodied knowing, intuition and the wide range of ways that we individually and collectively learn and know
— continued frustration that people and communities don’t respond to written communication; blaming people and communities for their failure to respond
— those with strong documentation and writing skills are more highly valued, even in organizations where ability to relate to others is key to the mission
— those who write things down get recognized for ideas that are collectively and generationally informed in a context where systemic racism privileges the writing and wisdom of people in the white group
— academic standards require “original” work when our knowledge and knowing almost always builds on the knowledge and knowing of others, of each other
— claiming “ownership” of (written) knowledge to meet ego needs rather than understanding the importance of offering what you write and know to grow and expand the community’s knowing

Do you see the problem here? The advantage of the written word, in terms of communication, is clarity and permanence.

If I tell you something — such as describing a workplace rule or a standard procedure — you might misunderstand me or forget what I told you. By putting the rule or procedure into writing, I thereby create a permanent record of it, and if you then fail to adhere to the prescribed instruction, you can’t say you weren’t told. If you say that my written instruction was not clear, anyone can look at the written document and see for themselves whether or not the meaning was clear. On the other hand, if you are barely literate, I can see why this preference for written communication in the workplace might be problematic for you. And if you are a habitual fuckup, with a tendency to create workplace problems by your haphazard and sloppy way of doing things, it might be inconvenient for you if your boss can point to a written memo in which he specifically told you not to do things that way. What is being attacked here as “white supremacy culture” by Jones and Okun is the value of written communication; they are attempting to devalue literacy, per se.

Keep in mind that, as I said before, Jones and Okun wrote this in a handbook about tax-exempt non-profit “social justice” activist groups, where efficiency and productivity might not be as highly valued as in, for example, the world of engineering or banking or any other competitive field of enterprise where doing things the right way actually matters.

We should not be surprised that a bunch of academic administrators with degrees in sociology would think this Jones/Okun text was splendid, because is there anywhere efficiency is less valued than modern academia? Can you imagine any greater waste of time and money than this hour-long video seminar?

 

These are four people who have nothing better to do than to record an hour-long YouTube video for an audience of 840 people. Nobody will learn anything about “white supremacy” from that video, unless what they mean is to describe the characteristics necessary to success.

Oh, wait a minute . . .




 

Category: Education, Racism

Somebody Tell Nick Wright That Patrick Mahomes Will Never Be the GOAT

Posted on | February 4, 2022 | Comments Off on Somebody Tell Nick Wright That Patrick Mahomes Will Never Be the GOAT

The retirement this week of Tom Brady gives me another excuse (as if I needed one) to rub salt in Nick Wright’s fresh wounds. If you don’t understand why I despise Nick Wright, you can read all about it here, but the main point is that Nick is a shameless homer for the Kansas City Chiefs, which impairs his objectivity vis-a-vis my boy Mac Jones and the New England Patriots. Because of his bias, as a KC native, Wright wants to believe that the Chiefs are poised to become an NFL “dynasty” similar to the Patriots’ two-decade dynasty under Coach Bill Belichick, and that Chiefs QB Patrick Mahomes can supplant Tom Brady as the “GOAT” (greatest of all time). But that’s never going to happen.

Brady and Mahomes are two very different types of quarterbacks. Brady is a classic dropback passer, while Mahomes is an improvisational genius whose scrambling ability makes him one of the best running QBs in the league. After four seasons as KC’s starter, Mahomes already has more rushing yards (1,189) than Brady had in his entire 20-year career (1,124).

This fact is the biggest reason why Mahomes is unlikely to replace Brady as the GOAT. Brady won a record seven Super Bowls, and four of those (beginning with Super Bowl XLIX in 2015) he won after he turned 37. In other words, a major reason Brady won more Super Bowls than anyone else is because he lasted longer in the NFL than anyone else, and a quarterback isn’t likely to still be playing in his 40s if he’s always running around the way Mahomes does. Football rules protect a quarterback as long as he’s behind the line of scrimmage passing, but once he runs downfield, he’s just another runner, and that involves a heightened risk of injury. Besides which, even if Mahomes can avoid getting his knees wrecked in one of his wild downfield runs, running ability tends to decline with age. Even the greatest running back in NFL history, Emmitt Smith, only lasted 15 years in the league, and didn’t top 1,000 yards in his last three seasons. Insofar as his mobility and speed make Mahomes exceptional, nobody (not even Nick Wright) could imagine he’s still going to be outrunning linebackers when he’s 35.

Look, I understand the “excitement” factor with Mahomes, who has a seemingly miraculous way of extending plays even after the pocket collapses and all his receivers are covered, but age will take its toll, and there is no way the Chiefs QB, now 26, can keep doing that forever. Bottom line, if Mahomes aspires to win more Super Bowls than Tom Brady, he needs to get his streak rolling now, and not be choking in the playoffs the way he choked Sunday against the Bengals.

Did I mention it’s hard to win Super Bowls? Think of everything that has to happen just right for a team to even make it to a Super Bowl — first, you have to win enough regular season games to qualify for the playoffs (14 out of 32 NFL teams, a 44% chance), but then except for the top seed in each conference, you have to win three games (wild card round, divisional playoffs, conference championship) to reach the Super Bowl. One loss in the playoffs and you’re out, as Nick Wright learned to his everlasting mortification Sunday. Only two of the 32 teams in the league play in the Super Bowl, and only one can win, so that 1/32nd chance is always a long-shot. This is why the fact Tom Brady won it seven times is so amazing. At age 27, Brady had already won three Super Bowls.

Patrick Mahomes has won one Super Bowl, and will turn 27 this September. It’s possible Mahomes might have won another Super Bowl, but he got beat by the GOAT last year. Mahomes didn’t even throw a touchdown pass in that game, which might have been a foreshadowing of how bad he choked in the second half against the Bengals.

Need more salt in that wound, Mr. Wright? Your boy Mahomes is behind the sticks, so to speak, in his drive to beat Brady as the GOAT. If he doesn’t win the Super Bowl next year, he’ll be two behind Brady’s pace. Of course, after winning Super Bowl XXXIX, it took another ten years before Brady won his fourth, as the Patriots beat the Seahawks 28-24 in Super Bowl XLIX. In between those two Super Bowl victories, Brady and the Patriots twice lost the Super Bowl (XLII in 2008 and XLVI in 2012) to Eli Manning’s New York Giants. Those were the only two Super Bowls that Eli Manning won; his brother Peyton Manning also won two (XLI in 2007 with the Colts and L in 2016 with the Broncos). Six other quarterbacks — Bart Starr, Roger Staubach, Bob Griese, Jim Plunkett, John Elway, Ben Roethlisberger — each won two Super Bowls. Troy Aikman won three, while Terry Bradshaw and Joe Montana each won four Super Bowls. If Mahomes were to win one more Super Bowl, he would rank among the 12 best quarterbacks in NFL history by that metric. Should Mahomes win a third Super Bowl, he’d be one of the five best quarterbacks in history, and winning four would rank him in the top three all-time. So far, however, Mahomes has won only one Super Bowl, and if he keeps choking the way he choked Sunday against the Bengals — really, that second half was one of the worst choke jobs anyone can remember — he may never win another.

The chances of Patrick Mahomes surpassing Tom Brady’s seven Super Bowl victories are so tiny, you might not be able to see them without an electron scanning microscope. Yet that tiny chance is what Nick Wright is betting on, every time he suggests Mahomes could be the new GOAT.

Let’s just hope Nick’s disillusionment is as painful as possible.

You can buy more salt on Amazon, just sayin’ . . .




 

Category: Football

Carjacker Had ‘Ghost Gun,’ Five Outstanding Warrants, Felony Record

Posted on | February 4, 2022 | Comments Off on Carjacker Had ‘Ghost Gun,’ Five Outstanding Warrants, Felony Record

Say hello to Robert Seth Carter, 32, and while you’re at it, you can also say good-bye, because last month he was shot to death by police in San Jose, California. There were no riots. Ben Crump didn’t hold a press conference “demanding justice” for Carter. CNN ignored this police shooting for the obvious reason that Carter is white and was shooting at the cops when they shot back. Had he survived, he would have been charged with a long list of felonies, but there were four cops and they lit him up pretty good, so we may now speak of him in the past tense:

“Carter is prohibited from processing any firearm due to prior felony convictions,” [San Jose Police Chief Anthony] Mata said. “Carter is a San Jose resident, currently had five felony warrants for his arrest and is on probation for battery.”

“Prior felony convictions . . . on probation” — another case of the revolving-door criminal justice system in California, where Democrats have striven to make it nearly impossible to put anybody in prison. Junkies shooting up in public and defecating on the sidewalk? Not a crime in California. Walking out of Walgreens with $900 of stolen merchandise? Not a crime in California. The reason for this leniency is “social justice,” i.e., that if you put all the criminals in prison, too many black and brown people will be locked up. But leniency also benefits white criminals like Carter, who should have been in prison but was instead on a criminal rampage in San Jose:

San Jose police on [Jan. 21] said the suspect in a carjacking who was shot and killed by police earlier this week had a “ghost gun” on him and was wanted on five felony warrants.
Police Chief Anthony Mata identified the man as 32-year-old Robert Seth Carter.
Mata said he drove through downtown East San Jose in a stolen Toyota Camry on Wednesday and then to Santa Clara where he tried to carjack a woman at gunpoint but quickly abandoned that plan.
“He was unsuccessful with that attempted carjacking. But it was very apparent at that scene that he was armed with a gun. So we knew he was armed,” Sgt. Christian Camarillo said earlier.
Police said Carter then sped south, back into San Jose, where he collided with two passengers in another vehicle at Hedding and Park avenues about 6 p.m. where it all came to a violent conclusion.
Carter got out of the stolen car – witnesses say with gun-in-hand – and allegedly opened fire at responding police officers. One officer fired back and hit Carter at least once, Mata said.
Three more officers arrived and saw Carter still holding the gun, according to police. The four police officers fired their weapons at least once, striking Carter multiple times. Carter fell to the ground and the Santa Clara County Sheriff’s K-9 Unit arrived. A police dog bit Carter’s leg to pull him away.
Some of what transpired was captured on video from a helicopter as well as from the officers body-worn cameras.
“Obviously fearing for their lives, they were engaged by gunfire from the suspect, our officers on scene returned fire,” Camarillo said.
Carter was handcuffed by officers, who gave him First Aid. He was then taken to a local hospital and pronounced dead there.
None of the four officers has been identified. All are on paid administrative leave.
Police said Carter was found with a gun still in his hand after police opened fire and they produced a picture of the weapon at a news conference.
The shooting is the first by San Jose police officers this year. Last year, officers were involved in two on-duty shootings, both of which were fatal.

The whole purpose of that Jan. 21 press conference was to prove to the public that Carter deserved to be shot by cops, and they had screenshots from the aerial surveillance video to prove Carter was armed and pointing his gun at officers. One aspect of the post-George Floyd environment is that police departments everywhere are now doing this “transparency” thing, which I wholly endorse because it creates a mountain of public evidence proving what we already knew, i.e., that police are almost always justified in the use of deadly force. The “bad shoots” are a rarity, and the available evidence — which, as I say, is now piling up in public as a result of press conferences like this one in San Diego — absolutely contradicts the “social justice” narrative of trigger-happy racist police killing unarmed black suspects. The fact that the suspect in this case was white is sort of icing on the cake, reminding the world that cops kill white criminals, too, and white people don’t have a problem with that.

Where does the “ghost gun” aspect of this story fit in the narrative? Well, criminals have all kinds of ways to get guns — stealing them, to cite one obvious example — but they can’t get guns (“ghost” or otherwise) if they’re in prison, which is where they would be if it weren’t for the lenient policies demanded by the “social justice” crowd. Put the criminals in prison, and then they won’t be carjacking you, or getting shot by the cops.




 

Category: California, Crime

In The Mailbox: 02.03.22

Posted on | February 4, 2022 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 02.03.22

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Silicon Valley delenda est.

Meanwhile in Ottawa

OVER THE TRANSOM
357 Magnum: Shoot First & Ask Questions Never
EBL: Year Of The Tiger, also, Reacher 
Twitchy: “This Is Like Alex Jones Territory”, also, “If Masks Work, Why Don’t They?”
Louder With Crowder: CNN Insiders Call For Network To Step Up And Fire Brian Stelter
Vox Popoli: Warning From The Farm, Satan’s Servant Attacks Xi, and Diversity Time Bombs
Stoic Observations: Racialists!

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: Ranty McRantface
American Conservative: The Truckers Fighting Dystopia
American Greatness: Russian Appeasement Was A Left-Wing Monopoly, also, Johns Hopkins Study Confirms Lockdowns Did Nothing To Prevent COVID Deaths
American Power: Whoopi Goldberg “Apologizes” For Comments On The View, Then Doubles Down On Colbert’s Show
American Thinker: The COVID Narrative Is Falling Apart, also, Why Trump Should NOT Be The Republican Nominee
Animal Magnetism: Animal’s Daily Manchin News, Animal’s Hump Day News, and Animal’s Daily Inflation News
Babalu Blog: Nearly 300 Anti-Government Protests In Cuba During January, also, Ted Turner – “It Has Never Been Proven That Castro Killed Anyone”
BattleSwarm: Federal Judge Revokes Oil & Gas Leases, also, Another Cold Front Due Today (Plus Cheap Prepping Supplies Revisited)
Behind The Black: NM Legislature Dumps Space Tourism Tax, Today’s Blacklisted American, and Another SLS Delay
Cafe Hayek: “We Have For Two Years Endured A Pandemic Of Coercion And Compliance”
CDR Salamander: Keeping An Eye On The Long Game, Part XCII
Da Tech Guy: Report From Louisiana – Fun At The Grocery Store, “American Pie” Turns 50, and The Real Scandal In The Brian Flores Story
Don Surber: Biden Doesn’t Trust The Vaccine, Letter From A Fired Hershey Worker, and W Will Save Liz Cheney From The Voters
First Street Journal: Left Coasters Just Don’t Understand American Politics, also, Big Brother Will Be Watching You!
Gates Of Vienna: Beware The Jabberwock!, The Irritating Functionaries Of BionTech, and Cultural Enrichment In The Netherlands
The Geller Report: Watch AZ Gov Candidate Kari Lake Utterly Destroy ABC Reporter Attempting Hit Job, also, SUNY Prof Defends Pedophilia
Hogewash: Team Kimberlin Post Of The Day, I’m Not Making This Up You Know, and Correction To The Correction To The Correction
Hollywood In Toto: New Fiction Publisher Fights Silent Censorship, also, Janet Jackson – The American Dream In Closeup
The Lid: Daniel Pearl Was Murdered 20 Years Ago But We Still Haven’t Learned The Key Lesson
Legal Insurrection: Convoy To DC 2022 Gains Momentum As Truckers Get Organized, Tulsi Gabbard Blasts Biden For Using “Identity Politics” To Choose SCOTUS Nominee, and Documents Show Biden Was Completely Unprepared For Afghan Withdrawal
Michelle Malkin: Why AirBnB Banned Me (And My Hubby)
Nebraska Energy Observer: O Canada! also, Deliberate Observation – Continued
Outkick: ESPN Won’t Comment On Bomani Jones’ Racist Rant, Dolphins Owner Denies Brian Flores Allegations – “Malicious & Defamatory”, and Lawsuit Claims NFL Has A Racism Problem – It Actually Has A Moron Problem
Power Line: In Free Lunch Fraud, The Friends Of Ilhan Omar, Notes On The Election Of 1876, and A School Shooting You Won’t Be Hearing About
Shark Tank: New Poll Shows Biden & Democrats Struggling In Midterms
Shot In The Dark: I Hope HenryArthur Miller Will Remember, also,  Berg’s Eighth Law Never Sleeps
STUMP: Suicide – Trends From 1968-2020 & Provisional Counts Through June 2021
The Political Hat: What Is A Woman?, Sooner Or Later You WILL Choose Sides, and Education Is A Madhouse And The Lunatics Are In Charge
This Ain’t Hell: Tuesdays With The Libs Of TikTok, Fake Female Combat Vet, and Interview With James Mattis
Transterrestrial Musings: In Support Of Ilya Shapiro, Public Health, and 19 Years On
Victory Girls: Canada Is A Hot Mess, also, Jeff Zucker Resigns Because THIS Is CNN
Volokh Conspiracy: Magistrate Rules Insults To Cop On Facebook Not Protected By First Amendment, also, Should Judge Be Censured For Posting Nude Pics On “Dating Site For Couples”?
Weasel Zippers: Bad Orange Woman Claims Democrats Are NOT Soft On Crime, California Democrats Caught Maskless Even As Mandates On Toddlers Continue, and Far-Left “Squad” Spends Half A Million On Personal Security While Promoting “Defund The Police”
The Federalist: Baseball Writers Have Broken The Hall Of Fame, The Left Doesn’t Just Want More Criminals On The Streets, and Five Inconvenient Truths For Democrats Who Want To Raid Medicare Again
Mark Steyn: Rock-A-Hula Baby, The Truck Stops Here, and Whoopi & Justin

Amazon Warehouse Deals




Category: Linkagery

Crime Is a People Problem, Which Is Why You Can’t Expect Democrats to Solve It

Posted on | February 3, 2022 | Comments Off on Crime Is a People Problem, Which Is Why You Can’t Expect Democrats to Solve It

Joe Biden went to New York City today and gave a speech which was billed in advance as addressing the unprecedented crime wave in America’s cities but was instead an attack on the Second Amendment:

Across the country, police departments reported sharp increases in the number of ghost guns found at crime scenes. That’s why, today, the department is launching an intes- — an intensified National Ghost Gun Enforcement Initiative to determine and deter criminals from using those weapons to cover their tracks.
If you commit a crime [with a] ghost gun, not only are state and local prosecutors going to come after you, but expect federal charges and federal prosecution as well.
We’ve also created a strike force to crack down on illegal gun trafficking across state lines. As the mayor said, as he pointed out, guns that are used to kill people in New York City, they aren’t made in New York City, they aren’t sold in New York City. They are sold in other places.
Today, the Attorney General directed all U.S. attorneys in the United States to prioritize combating gun trafficking across state lines and city boundaries.
The Justice Department is sending additional prosecutorial resources to help shut down what’s referred to, as you all know, as the “Iron Pipeline” that funnels guns from shops in states like Georgia to crime scenes in Baltimore and Philadelphia and New York and so many other places. . . .
I’ll keep doing everything in my power to make sure that communities are safer. But Congress needs to do its part too: pass universal background checks, ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, close loopholes, and keep out of the hands of domestic abusers — weapons, repeal the liability shield for gun manufacturers.
Imagine had we had a liability — they’re the only industry in America that is exempted from being able to be sued by the public. The only one. Imagine had that been the way with cigarette manufacturers. Where the hell would we — where the heck would we be? We’d be in tough shape.
Why gun manufacturers? Because of the power of their lobbying ability. It’s got to end. End. They’ve got to be held responsible for the things that they do that are irresponsible.
And, folks, you know, it’s the only industry in America, as I said, that’s exempt from being sued. And I think — I find it to be outrageous.

You see that he’s portraying Democrat-run cities — New York, Baltimore, Philadelphia, etc. — as victims of “shops” selling guns “in states like Georgia,” and of the “lobbying” by “gun manufacturers,” as if this were the explanation of why crime is out of control in places where Democrats are pursuing a “social justice” agenda of turning criminals loose in the streets. Everything could be solved, Biden implies, if only Congress would enact the laws he wants. The speech Biden gave was merely a distraction from the actual cause of this crime wave:

Crime is a people problem. It’s not a drug problem. It’s not a poverty problem or a gun problem. Crime is caused by bad people — criminals — who will commit crime more or less continuously unless they’re put behind bars. The only way you can reduce crime is to identify the criminals, arrest them, and send them to prison. It doesn’t really matter what they’re arrested and convicted for — burglary, assault, drug possession, car theft, whatever — what matters is that you convict them of something, and get them off the streets. Put enough thugs in prison, and the would-be thugs on the street will be discouraged from following in their footsteps. 

That’s what I wrote Monday about a “running gun battle” in Polk County, Florida and you may ask, “If this is so obvious, why doesn’t anyone in the Biden administration see it that way?” Because everyone in the Biden administration is a Democrat, and Democrats are the Party of Crime, elected to office by criminals. The people who elect Democrats are very bad people — dishonest, violent, drug-addicted perverts, the vilest scum of humanity — and they are concentrated in the communities where criminal activity is so prevalent as to be a way of life. A policy of sending thieves, burglars, pimps, rapists and drug dealers to prison will be opposed by Democratic officials, because these crimes are part of the habitual lifestyle of the voters who elect Democrats.

Try this sometime: Google “mall arrest shooting.” Who is typically involved in shootings at shopping malls? Hint: Not Republican voters.

Teens arrested in Brooklyn mall
shooting that left two injured
Three reputed gang members have been charged with allegedly shooting two teens at a Brooklyn mall — a midday melee that sent 10 rounds flying in a sneaker shop, cops and law enforcement sources said Tuesday.
Timothy Briggs, 19, allegedly pulled a gun during the dispute at 2:30 p.m. Monday inside Kings Plaza Shopping Center in Mill Basin, firing roughly 10 shots at six young men, striking two of them, ages 14 and 16, authorities said. . . .
Briggs, a reputed member of the Blood Hound Brims gang, and two other teens have been charged in the shooting — which sources say is believed to be gang related.
Briggs was charged with two counts each of attempted murder, assault, criminal possession of a loaded firearm, criminal use of a firearm and four counts of reckless endangerment, authorities said.
The teen was arrested last November in Brooklyn and charged with criminal possession of a weapon after officers allegedly found two Glock pistols on him following a car chase, according to the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office.
Bail in that case, which is still pending, had been set at $25,000 but Briggs posted $2,500 bond — and was out at the time of Monday’s shooting, according to the Office of Court Administration.
“Here he is in Kings Plaza, armed with another gun, firing shots in a mall, which is open,” Chief Michael Kemper, commanding officer of Patrol Borough Brooklyn South, told reporters at a Monday press briefing.
Jaheim Covington, 19, was also hit with multiple raps in connection to the shooting, authorities said. Sources said he’s an alleged member of the Depend on Nobody gang.

Was it a “ghost gun”? Was the gun used by Timothy Briggs sold in a Georgia gun shop and smuggled to New York via the “Iron Pipeline”? Would changing laws — universal background checks, etc. — have prevented Briggs from shooting up the mall? No, nothing that Biden has proposed would have prevented this crime. What would have prevented it would be (a) not to let this teenage monster out on bail, and (b) send him to prison for a long time. By the way, who bailed Briggs out of jail when he was caught with two guns in November? Did his mama just happen to have a spare $2,500 lying around the house? Or is it more likely, as I suspect, that the bail money came from the proceeds of Briggs’s drug trafficking? What do you think these people do for cash, anyway?

They’re Democrats. It’s not like they work honest jobs. And because they vote Democrat, they’re protected by Democrats, so that they are essentially exempt from the law in Democrat-controlled New York.

Joe Biden is not going to do anything about this problem. He would not be president, were it not for the enthusiastic support of criminals.




 

Category: Crime, Joe Biden, New York

‘Complicit in Oppression’

Posted on | February 3, 2022 | Comments Off on ‘Complicit in Oppression’

Sarah Hoyt called attention to this take on the Whoopi Goldberg incident:

It wasn’t enough to talk about black people’s oppression. White people – all of them, every single one – had to be demonized. And it couldn’t matter that some individual white people had even joined in the historic struggle against discrimination of blacks. They were oppressors too.
The root of much of this is the Marxist idea that people are marked solely by their membership in certain groups, that the individual actions don’t really matter to that designation because it’s all about groups, and that there is always an oppressor group (or groups) and always a victim group (or groups), and that the former are bad and the latter good no matter what they actually do, either as individuals or together.

We tried to tell you it wouldn’t stop at Confederate generals, but because you didn’t want to defend Confederate generals, you now see how far it has gone, and can estimate how much further it’s likely to go.

One imagines a sort of time-travel science-fiction plot in which someone from 2022 goes back to 1992 and warns well-meaning moderates: “You must defend the Confederate flag. Trust me on this one.”

A quote from a 2018 academic journal article:

Over the past twenty years or so, in American scholarship on racism, with ever growing intensity, it has become fashionable and even mainstream to assert that Jews are white, that is, that they belong to the dominant majority. This means, that as a collective, due to embedded racialized structures in society, they benefit from their dominant position and are complicit in oppression.

In other words, if “whiteness” is synonymous with social dominance, and if everyone who is non-white is an oppressed victim of white domination, then “systemic racism” makes individual action irrelevant to either domination or victimhood, which are determined on a collective basis, according to the position of one’s group. It’s the “one-drop rule” approach to social justice, and these soi-disant critical theorists are arguably more dogmatic about racial categories than Jefferson Davis.

And honestly, I’m happy we’ve reached this cul-de-sac, where everyone is either a Hutu or a Tutsi, so to speak, and our choice is either to fight to the death or, as I would prefer, decide to drop the subject altogether.

Either you follow the totalitarian logic to its conclusion — revolutionary genocide, to liquidate the oppressors — or else, realizing that this logic can lead to nothing less than bellum omnium contra omnes, you abandon the utopian fantasy of “equality” that inspires the totalitarian project.




 

Category: Racism
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