The Other McCain

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

In The Mailbox: 01.27.21 (Evening Edition)

Posted on | January 28, 2021 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 01.27.21 (Evening Edition)

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Ugh. I can’t believe it’s only Wednesday.
Ceterum autem censeo Silicon Valley esse delendam.

OVER THE TRANSOM
Ninety Miles From Tyranny: The 90 Miles Mystery Box, Episode #1245
357 Magnum: Do You Expect Social Justice Warriors to Worry About FACTS?
EBL: Impeachment MAGA Erection, also, DOUBLE SECRET MASK PROTECTIONS
Twitchy: Man Charged With Election Interference For 2016 Disinformation Memes, But THIS Video Is Still Up
Louder With Crowder: Chicago Teachers Union Won’t Teach, Explains Why Through Interpretive Dance
Vox Popoli: Gamers 1, Bankers 0, also, The Secret Of The Elites

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: Game Stop Shock – Burning Down The House
American Conservative: Why National Greatness Matters
American Greatness: To Hell With Unity, also, Biden Regime Embraces “Great Reset” Plan To Destroy Capitalism
American Thinker: Buyer’s Remorse? Let’s Blame The Press
Animal Magnetism: Animal’s Hump Day News, also, China Virus
Babalu Blog: Cuban Regime Caving To Striking Coal Workers’ Demands?
BattleSwarm: Nancy Pelosi, Inside Trader, also, Biden – Stop All Deportations! Federal Judge – Not So Fast
Behind The Black: Today’s Blacklisted American – Evangelist Franklin Graham, also, Space Force Ends Development Contracts With Blue Origin & Northrop Grumman
Cafe Hayek: There Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free Borrowed Lunch
CDR Salamander: Elon Musk Vs. The U.S. Navy
Da Tech Guy: Biden Bought The Election With Questionable Campaign Money, also, An Army Of Telosian Slaves
Don Surber: Megyn Kelly, Trump Supporter? also, Impeachment Helped The Donald
First Street Journal: The Editors Of The Philadelphia Inquirer Blame The Puppet, Not The Puppet Master
The Geller Report: Beijing Biden Signs EO Banning The Phrase “Chinese Virus”, also, Democrats Introduce Bill To Make DC The 51st State
Hogewash: Team Kimberlin Post of The Day, also, A Science Experiment
Hollywood In Toto: Ted Cruz Exposes Seth Rogen & Hollywood As Part Of Blacklist 2.0, also, Veteran Film Scribe Fears Democrats Are Crushing Free Speech
The Lid: Biden Campaign Reportedly Took In A Record $145 Million In Dark Money
Legal Insurrection: Schumer Wants Biden To Declare “Climate Emergency”, also, Twitter Permab& My Pillow CEO Mike Lindell’s Personal Account
Nebraska Energy Observer: Terms Of Service & Shrugging
Power Line: The Hell With The Hall of Fame, also, They Don’t Embarrass Easy
Shark Tank: State Rep Eskamani (D-Orlando) Files Bill To End Orlando Tax Break
Shot In The Dark: The Strib – Preparing The Narrative Battlefield
STUMP: Mortality With Meep
The Political Hat: The Anti-Aryan Guard
This Ain’t Hell: Navy SEAL Gets 10 Years For His Part In Green Beret’s Death, also, Tanks For The Memories
Transterrestrial Musings: End Run, also, The Revolution
Victory Girls: President Eisenhower Predicted Our Current Situation
Volokh Conspiracy: The First National Injunction Against The Biden Administration
Weasel Zippers: Red China Rolls Out Anal Swab Test For Corona-chan, also, Watch – Joe Biden (Completely Out to Lunch) Puts His Pen Away Then Forgets What He’s Doing
The Federalist: Rand Paul’s Cage Match With George Stephanopoulos Is A Model Everyone On The Right Should Follow, also, Susan Rice Abandoned Me During A Gunfight In Benghazi – She’ll Abandon You On Guns
Mark Steyn: Sleeping The Big Twitter Sleep, also, Cardboard Cops

Amazon Warehouse Deals




Category: Linkagery

In The Mailbox: 01.27.21 (Morning Edition)

Posted on | January 27, 2021 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 01.27.21 (Morning Edition)

— compiled by Wombat-socho

“Late to bed, and early to rise/Makes a man grumpy and red in the eyes.” – Robert Heinlein
Silicon Valley delenda est.

OVER THE TRANSOM
357 Magnum: Affordable Bail, Take Two
EBL: The Stand – A Review
Twitchy: Need A Tissue? NASDAQ CEO Responds To The Reddit/GameStop Trading Boom
Louder With Crowder: Tulsi Gabbard Describes Big Tech In Two Words – Domestic Enemies
Vox Popoli: Everything Is Totally Normal, also, Google Doubles Down
Stoic Observations: A Social Short Squeeze

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Greatness: “Multiracial Whiteness” Is The Latest Leftist Branding Iron
American Power: They Can’t All Be “Extremists”
American Thinker: The Attempt To Install A One-Party Oligarchy Is Destined To Fail
Animal Magnetism: Animal’s Daily Committee For State Security News
Babalu Blog: Cuban Priests Defy Communist Party & The Vatican, Urge Cubans To “Break The Chains” Of Socialism
BattleSwarm: Joe Biden Vs. American Oil Industry Jobs
Behind The Black: Boeing & NASA Move Up Launch Date For Second Unmanned Starliner Flight, also, New Democrat Head of House Subcommittee Says He Supports Artemis
Cafe Hayek: Economics, Economists, Big Data, & Big Questions
CDR Salamander: Know Capabilities, Not Names
Da Tech Guy: The Trump Cadaver Synod, also, Report From Louisiana – In Person School Is Better
Don Surber: Time Is On Trump’s Side
First Street Journal: Are There No Mirrors In The Biden Administration?
The Geller Report: Democrat Chicoms Move To Ban Trump Supporters From Federal Jobs Or Joining The Military, also, Judge Says State Order Allowing Ballots Without Postmarks Was Illegal
Hogewash: Someone Self-Identifies, also, Team Kimberlin Post Of The Day
Hollywood In Toto: How Chicago Father Addresses What Hollywood Won’t, also, MLK/FBI Doesn’t Avoid The Icon’s Flaws
The Lid: As Predicted, Blue States Relax COVID Restrictions Now That Trump Is Gone
Legal Insurrection: CA Gov Newsom Cancels State’s COVID Stay At Home Orders – Unexpectedly! also, Keystone XL Pipeline Workers Speak Out About Lost Jobs After Biden’s Cancellation Of The Project
Michelle Malkin: The Matter of Tori Rose Smith’s Life
Nebraska Energy Observer: Eye Roll
Power Line: Portents Of The Biden Regency, also, Variants & Variations
Shark Tank: Nikki Fried Praises Biden’s Job Creation Edict After He Kills Off 11,000 Oil Industry Jobs
Shot In The Dark: I Don’t Want To Speak Too Soon
The Political Hat: Stop Critical Race Theory
This Ain’t Hell: Biden Signs EO Extending Trump’s Delay Of VA Debt Collections, also, Tit For Tat
Transterrestrial Musings: “Journalists” Mobilize Against Free Speech
Victory Girls: Article Of Impeachment Has Freedom Of Speech Issues
Volokh Conspiracy: Is SCOTUS Done With Emergency COVID Free Exercise Litigation?
Weasel Zippers: Biden In October 2020 – “You Can’t Legislate Through Executive Orders ‘Unless You’re A Dictator'”, also, Washington Teachers Union President Says Opening Schools Is “White Supremacy” And Suicide Concern “White Privilege”
The Federalist: Biden’s First Two Major Gifts To Russia, also, How To Stop Using Google Search On Your Computer & Phone
Mark Steyn: Try, Try Again

Amazon Warehouse Deals

a




Category: Linkagery

In The Mailbox: 01.25.21

Posted on | January 26, 2021 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 01.25.21

— compiled by Wombat-socho

I don’t know what went wrong with this so that it didn’t post last night, but better late than never.
Silicon Valley delenda est.

OVER THE TRANSOM
357 Magnum: I’m Shocked To Discover A Politician Would Lie
EBL: Outside The Wire – A Review, also, Sen. Rand Paul Takes On Democrat Op George Stephanopoulos
Twitchy: Newsweek Stealth Edits Piece On Female Rangers To Line Up With Salon‘s Smear Of Sen. Tom Cotton
Louder With Crowder: Video Shows Pro-Abortion Activists Storming Catholic Church
Vox Popoli: Biden Voters Reconsider Biden, also, Fake It ‘Til They Take It
Stoic Observations: Jedi & Sith

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: The Benefits Of Prayer
American Conservative: Waiting For Our Salazar
American Greatness: The River Of Forgetfulness, also, NM Voters Already Regretting Votes For Biden After He Signs Oil & Gas Restrictions
American Power: AZ GOP Censures Doug Ducey, Jeff Flake, & Cindy McCain; Narrowly Reelects Kelli Ward As State party Chair
American Thinker: Right On Schedule, Corona-Chan Pivots For Biden, also, You Know There Was Industrial-Scale Election Fraud. What Can Be Done?
Animal Magnetism: Goodbye, Blue Monday 
Babalu Blog: Cuban Priests Pen Open Letter Calling On Cubans To Live In Truth And Freedom, also, Price Gouging In Socialist Cuba
BattleSwarm: Important Safety Tip – Don’t But Cheap Chicom Body Armor, also, The Trump White House List of President Trump’s Accomplishments
Behind The Black: Falcon 9 Successfully Places 143 Satellites In Orbit, also, Today’s Blacklisted American
Cafe Hayek: Should Corporations Put “Social Responsibility” Before Shareholder Profits? also, Economic Nationalism Marches On
CDR Salamander: Facing The Third Decade Of The 21st Century
Da Tech Guy: Stop Defending Donald Trump, also, The Long March
Don Surber: Governors Pull The Plug On Biden’s Show Of Force, also, Liberals Suffer Trump Withdrawal
First Street Journal: Tulsi Gabbard Is Very Much A Leftist, But The Left Hates Her Anyway
Fred On Everything: Dijjywan – Dijjydo Or Dijjydon’t?
The Geller Report: Biden Rescinds Trump EO Banning Chicom Involvement In US Power Grid, also, Anti-Trump BLM Leader Group Helped Storm Capitol
Hogewash: Team Kimberlin Post of The Day, also, Impeachment 2 – Electric Boogaloo
Hollywood In Toto: Why The First Mission Impossible Movie Matters Even More Now, also, Confirmed – Fallon’s Anti-Trump Pose Crushed His Ratings
The Lid: Joe Biden, The Job-Killing President
Legal Insurrection: Former Trump Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders Running For Arkansas Governor, also, Chief Justice Roberts Won’t Be Presiding Over Trump “Impeachment” Trial
Nebraska Energy Observer: Random Observations, also, Rowan’s Way – 8 Clouds
Power Line: A Guardsman At The Capitol, also, How To Stop Big Tech Censorship
Shark Tank: DeSantis Fires Back At Biden Flack Psaki’s COVID-Related “Political Talking Point”
Shot In The Dark: The Old School, also, Open Letter To “A Wide Swath Of Liberal & Progressive Organizations”
STUMP: Mortality With Meep
The Political Hat: Multiracial Whiteness
This Ain’t Hell: Top Enlisted Soldier At Ft. Hood Cleared, Reinstated, also, Of The Tab & The Scroll
Transterrestrial Musings: Biden’s Culture War Blitzkrieg, also, Canceling The Cancelers
Victory Girls: Women Erased By Biden Executive Order, also, Mitch McConnell Shivved Us All In The Back
Volokh Conspiracy: Update On New Hampshire v. Massachusetts, also, Pretrial Release Condition – “Can’t Speak About The Capitol Protest” or “Matters Related To The United States Government”
Weasel Zippers: WaPo Fact Checker Says They Won’t Count Biden’s Lies, also, Amazon Insists Workers Voting To Unionize Should Only Be Able To Vote In Person Since Mail-In Votes Are Susceptible To Fraud
The Federalist: Biden Freezes Trump Order Lowering Insulin & EpiPen Prices, also, No Wonder Biden Cancelled The 1776 Commission
Mark Steyn: The King Of Comedy, also, Down Under

Amazon Warehouse Deals
Best Sellers in Automotive




Category: Linkagery

Manufacturing an Atrocity Narrative: How BLM Distorts the Reality of Crime

Posted on | January 26, 2021 | Comments Off on Manufacturing an Atrocity Narrative: How BLM Distorts the Reality of Crime

That is a police mugshot of Najee Rechelle McGilbray. She was 18 years old in December 2014 when she was charged with Fleeing or Eluding Police Officer, 3rd Degree, in Battle Creek, Michigan. This offense is a Class E felony, which carries a penalty of up to five years in prison. However, after being sentenced in April 2015, Najee McGilbray served less than a year behind bars, and was released in December 2015.

Why am I telling you about this? Well, as I’ve mentioned before, I’ve gotten into the habit of watching police dashcam and bodycam videos on YouTube as a way of relaxing and forgetting about all the political craziness that would otherwise drive me out of my mind. Monday night, I watched a video of a December 2017 police chase that ended in a crash:

 

That was in Battle Creek, Michigan, and the driver being pursued by the cop was none other than — you guessed it — Najee McGilbray:

Police from two departments are continuing their investigation in Sunday’s fatal police pursuit.
Najee R. McGilbray, 22, of Battle Creek died when she lost control of her car on Golden Avenue near Raymond Road in Emmett Township as she was fleeing from Battle Creek police.
“At first look it appears everything was according to policy and procedure,” Battle Creek Police Chief Jim Blocker said Monday.
McGilbray died at the scene of the 3:34 a.m. crash, according to Lt. Ken Cunningham of the Emmett Township Department of Public Safety. He said the woman’s 2008 Saturn Vue left the south side of Golden Avenue at the top of a hill and crest of a curve and struck two trees. One of the trees fell on the wrecked car.
Blocker said Officer Gregory Gammons was parked near Capital Avenue Southwest and Christy Road on the south side of the city when the SUV passed his position and was traveling northbound on Capital Avenue.
He began to pursue the car and reported it was back and forth in the lane, crossing the center line and the fog line on the right side of the roadway. Gammons activated his lights and siren and the car stopped near Golden Avenue but before Gammons could leave his patrol car the driver turned on the right turn signal and fled again on Golden Avenue, Blocker said.
The car failed to stop at the intersections of Riverside Drive and after crossing into Emmett Township also failed to stop at 6 ½ Mile Road and Beadle Lake Road before traveling east in the westbound lanes of a portion of Golden, which is divided.
Gammons reported speeds of 80 to 90 miles per hour.
“She was way ahead and advancing on him,” Blocker said, after reviewing a video from Gammons’ patrol car. He estimated the officer was as much as a half mile behind the SUV and said no other vehicles were involved in the pursuit.
Gammons was reporting road and traffic conditions.
“It fits with our policy,” Blocker said. “We ask officers about the environment and road conditions and if it was congested and are you putting people at risk. The conditions were right that the chase was safe. There was no call to terminate the chase.”
Gammons was the first at the scene of the crash and found a small fire under the hood which he extinguished and then was unable to find a pulse on McGilbray.
He called for Lifecare Ambulance and Emmett Township Public Safety Officers.
Cunningham said portions of the fallen tree had to be cut before emergency responders could open the car, which was destroyed in the crash.
Investigators are awaiting results of an autopsy and trying to determine if the car was equipped with a Crash Data Recorder which may have recorded the speed of the vehicle just before the crash.
Police said McGilbray had a suspended license.

What the police did not say was that McGilbray had a prior record for the exact same crime — fleeing/eluding — three years earlier.

Go watch that video again. It’s 3:30 in the morning, and it seems fair to guess that McGilbray had been out partying somewhere. Given how she was weaving all over the road, she was probably drunk. With a prior record and a suspended license, she was almost certainly driving under the influence when Officer Gammons turned on his blue lights.

This is a very common scenario in police pursuits. I’ve watched dozens of them on YouTube in the past couple of months and, based on this extensive research, I know that there is a certain predictability in the answer to the obvious question, “Why do they run?” Having a suspended license is one common answer. Most of the time, the fleeing driver is, like McGilbray, someone with a prior criminal record who fears that being busted for a traffic offense will violate their probation and send them back to prison. In many cases, the police pursuit involves someone driving a stolen car, or someone with drugs and/or guns in the car. In other cases, the driver is wanted on an active arrest warrant.

My point is, fleeing/eluding is not usually about a mere traffic violation. Almost always, there is some more serious underlying crime involved, and guess who knows this? Cops, that’s who.

There are patterns to criminal behavior, and an experienced cop knows that if he blue-lights somebody and they take off, he’s probably dealing with somebody who’s already got criminal record. That’s why, if you watch enough of these videos, you become accustomed to the “felony stop” procedure when the chase finally comes to an end. The officer who initiates the pursuit will call for back-up, and usually there are at least three or four squad cars on the scene at the end of the pursuit. All the cops exit their vehicles with guns drawn, and the command is shouted at the suspect: “Show me your hands!” It’s a tense moment, because the police have reason to suspect they may be dealing with an armed felon.

Anyway, after watching video of this police chase in Battle Creek, I did a Google search and located the information about Najee McGilbray’s prior incident of felony fleeing/eluding. There also was a story about McGilbray’s family reacting to her death:

Battle Creek police said Najee’s death could have been avoided if she’d just stopped for the officer. The McGilbray family also has questions.
[Her mother] said, “It’s really hindsight and it’s too late to say ‘would of, should of, could of,’ but I don’t know it just seems like it was all unnecessary. To me, there was a better way to handle it. I feel like she was scared.”

Oh, “there was a better way to handle it”? Like what? When your daughter took off at 90 mph, weaving all over the road at 3:30 in the morning, what do you think the cop should have done?

This absurd belief that there must be “a better way to handle it” any time police are involved in an unfortunate incident is just a way for people to excuse the criminal conduct that caused the incident. The officer in this case did nothing wrong, and yet the family of the fleeing felon try to absolve her of responsibility by implying that the cop somehow mishandled the situation. This attitude is unrealistic and impractical. Sometimes bad things happen for no reason, but if you go through life with the belief that you are never responsible for your own behavior, bad things are likely to happen to you, and you are the reason.

Well, I was Googling for more information about Najee McGilbray when I found her name on a list of victims of “police killing”:

The structural nature of this state-sanctioned killing of Black people is underscored by the refusal of official sources to even collect and publish this information.
Since the year 2000 nearly 5,000 identified Black men, women and children have been killed in fatal encounters with police across the United States. . . .
Fatal Encounters, a volunteer-maintained national database of people killed during interactions with police, documents at least 4,896 Black people killed since 2000. . . . For too long the facts have been hidden and the names of those killed have been silenced. Even the publicly created databases are incomplete, the numbers of Black lives stolen is still greater than the names that have been collected. . . .
We stand against the racialized economic violence that disproportionately impacts Black and Brown communities resulting in eviction, homelessness, systematic discrimination, educational exclusion and severe health disparities. We call for an end to police murder of Black people and the removal of police from the public schools.

There follows a list of names including Najee McGilbray who, by the abracadabra of radical rhetoric, is transformed into a martyr.

This is a perfect example of how the Atrocity Narrative operates: Create a category, add numbers, cite the most egregious cases, and pretend that you have documented a pervasive social problem.

The level of cynicism involved in this propaganda is astonishing. I never would have known that this dubious list of victims of “state-sanctioned killing” existed, had I not been doing background research on a person whose name was included on the list. But when Black Lives Matter activists start chanting “Say Their Names,” I suppose, Najee McGilbray’s name is one of those. You have seen the video yourself, dear reader — was she a victim of racist “state-sanctioned killing”?

Was this just a coincidence? Or is it the case, as I suspect, that a great many of the names on this list of “fatal encounters” are people whose criminal behavior was the direct cause of their deaths?

OK, so I just grabbed a name off the list — Corey Antonio Boykin Jr. — and Googled: Boykin was armed, and was the suspect in a robbery in which the victim was pistol-whipped and bounded and gagged with duct tape. The police bodycam video is too shaky to offer much insight beyond that, but it wasn’t like Boykin was an innocent lamb.

So I grabbed another name off the list — Deztanee Cobb — and Googled it, and discovered that this was someone involved in an incident that I’d written about just a few months ago:

Cortavion Tyriques Shemerlee Murphy was 15 years old and behind the wheel of a stolen Dodge Charger traveling about 115 mph when he crashed into a tree, killing himself and four passengers, all minors.
The crash that killed Murphy and his passengers — two 15-year-old boys, Jaquarius Hegler and Marshawn Williams, and two girls, Elexus Hillsman, 16,and Deztanee Cobb, 17 — happened around 12:45 a.m. on Saturday, Sept. 2, 2017. Shortly before the crash, the Dodge Charger had blown past a police car in Kalamazoo, Michigan. The cop had at first tried to pursue the Dodge, but gave up, telling the dispatcher: “Yeah, I’m going to have to terminate it. It’s well over 100 mph.” The officer continued traveling east on Main Street at normal speed and, about a mile later, came across the site of the flaming wreckage.

How are racist police to blame for that one? Never mind. My point is that, if you start researching every name on that list, you’d find a lot of cases that don’t look anything like “state-sanctioned killing.” You ram a stolen car into a tree at 115 mph, don’t blame “systemic racism” for your death.

Do you see the distortion involved in BLM propaganda? There are certainly cases when trigger-happy cops shoot the wrong person, and we can examine the extent to which racial prejudice might be involved, on a case-by-case basis. But BLM activists are wildly exaggerating the number of such incidents in order to justify their “activism,” which is funded by tax-exempt foundations and which (not coincidentally) is part of campaign efforts by Democrats to “energize” black voters at election time.




 

Category: Crime

‘HOLY F***ING S**T!’

Posted on | January 26, 2021 | Comments Off on ‘HOLY F***ING S**T!’

The headline is a direct quote from me, when I saw the headline at Ace of Spades a few minutes ago. Joe Biden has appointed Maher Bitar to be Senior Director for Intelligence on the National Security Council. He might as well have named Louis Farrakhan. Bitar is a rather notorious Jew-hater and supporter of Islamic terrorism, it seems.

Remind me again why Trump was Hitler?




 

Category: Israel, Joe Biden

Rule Five Sunday: Jayne Mansfield

Posted on | January 25, 2021 | Comments Off on Rule Five Sunday: Jayne Mansfield

— compiled by Wombat-socho

I’m not sure when I first heard of Jayne Mansfield; the first time I remember seeing her that stuck in my mind is the famous picture of her with Sophia Loren in a restaurant, of which Loren later said, “I was worried that her breasts were going to explode out of that dress and go right in the soup.”
She had quite a career in the late 50s and early 60s as one of the early Playboy Playmates, a star on Broadway and in Hollywood, and a celebrity notorious for controversy and publicity stunts. She died at the age of 34 in a horrendous semi-trailer crash on Highway 90 east of the Rigolets Bridge in Louisiana, which gave rise to the safety device known as a Mansfield bar. Here she is posing next to another classic.

Ceterum autem censeo Silicon Valley esse delendam.

Ninety Miles From Tyranny: Hot Pick of the Late Night, The 90 Miles Mystery Box Episode #1239, Morning Mistress, and Girls With Guns. 

Animal Magnetism: Rule Five Paranormal Economics Friday and the return of the Saturday Gingermageddon.

EBL: Carmen, Lucia di Lammermoor, King Fishers, Norma, La Traviata, Green Bay Packers, Tosca, June In January, Hot Tuna, Manon, January Wedding, Mittens, Die Walkure, and MAGA Success – Operation Warp Speed.

A View From The Beach: A Heartbreaker – Malin Åkerman, Fish Pic Friday – Ashley Underwood, Tattoo Thursday, MD Likely to Maintain Summer Rockfish Hiatus, More Wednesday Wetness, Tuesday Tune – 20 Below, Your Monday Morning Eye Opener, Palm Sunday and Election 2020: Still Chugging Along

Proof Positive’s Vintage Babe Of The Week is Joan Vohs. 

Thanks to everyone for the luscious linkagery!

Amazon Warehouse Deals
Visit Amazon’s Intimate Apparel Shop
Shop Sex & Sensuality Gifts




Category: Rule 5

Booted!

Posted on | January 24, 2021 | Comments Off on Booted!

by Smitty

Got booted off a social network site today. Hilarious.

It’s a good site. I like the Mastadon interface. It’s most of what there was in Twitter. Apparently I was having too much fun posting links, throwing out discussion points, and building a following. Perhaps some server AI thought I was naughty. The experience and community were of sufficient quality that I was on the cusp of supporting the site financially. These things cost money. Maybe when I’m done with school in a couple of years we could host such.

Some of my terminology usage in reference to current events apparently irritated the admin. The case that we are in a no-kidding Civil War can be made on a conceptual level, but a literal Civil War with troops and battles is just far-fetched, and I said so. This was apparently unacceptable, and my knowledge of the Civil War, the U.S. Military and the French Revolution was assailed.

OK. Running around bragging about my resume is not how I roll. I have one, and it is respectable. No, this was one of those moments where I have to be thankful to have escaped (what in retrospect looks like) an echo chamber. Not quite sure what the deal is with the admin, or what stresses that admin is under, but I rejoice that I didn’t part with any money for this experience. Also, I do have other things that really ought to have my attention.

I haven’t really posted on Twitter in weeks, either. I had advertised the aforementioned site in DMs to a few twitter chums, and this post will serve as a follow-up for them to explain my abrupt absence.

Category: Uncategorized

Lincoln Project Senior Adviser Blames Capitol Riot on … David Brooks?

Posted on | January 24, 2021 | Comments Off on Lincoln Project Senior Adviser Blames Capitol Riot on … David Brooks?

If you’ve never heard of Rachel Bitecofer before, she’s a Ph.D. political scientist who captured widespread attention from liberals for her analysis of the 2016 election and her accurate prediction of the 2018 midterm elections. This got her a gig as a “senior adviser” to the Never-Trump grift gang at the Lincoln Project, and let me say this: Not everything she says is wrong. Bitecofer’s theory of how Hillary Clinton lost the 2016 election was that a lot of people didn’t bother to vote because they didn’t believe Donald Trump had any chance of winning. Also, black voter turnout was way down because, let’s face it, Hillary wasn’t Obama.

But I could have told you that, without benefit of a Ph.D. Whereas I am just a blogger, Bitecofer has leveraged her credentials to market herself as an all-knowing, all-purpose political expert, which led her to offer the remarkable claim that David Brooks of the New York Times is somehow responsible for the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.

(Hat-tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)

It is difficult to find words for how wrong this is. What seems to have offended Doctor Bitecofer is that Brooks, casting about for “two sides” of a left-right divide, decided that “elite universities” could be a bogeyman on the left, equivalent to “white supremacy” on the right.

Probably some white supremacists would be offended by that comparison. I mean, whatever evil the Klan did, they never charged anyone $300,000 for a useless Gender Studies degree, but I digress . . .

According to Doctor Bitecofer, the “radicalization” of Republican voters (e.g., the Capitol rioters) is the fault of the “conservative intelligentsia” (e.g., David Brooks), because they promote “the constant dehumanization” of “the other” (e.g., academic elites like Rachel Bitecofer). Thereby, Brooks has “done more, personally, to put people in that Capitol insurrection than nearly anyone else.”

There is a word for this, and that word is crazy.

However crazy it is, you see how Doctor Bitecofer arrived at her conclusion. The problem with the Capitol rioters, from her perspective, is that they don’t listen to people like her. Anyone who rejects the belief system promoted by academia is at risk of “radicalization,” according to Doctor Bitecofer (who, by the way, insists on being referred to as such).

The Capitol rioters are representative of GOP voters in general, in the minds of the liberal elite. Rachel Bitecofer believes that if you don’t vote Democrat, you are a menace to society — a white supremacist, probably, and a potential terrorist threat. One notices, however, that despite the “constant dehumanization,” there are no right-wing death squads roving college campuses with the intent to terrorize liberal academia. I have yet to see a single news story about Gender Studies professors being curb-stomped by the Proud Boys. That is to say, if David Brooks is guilty of “constant dehumanization” with his remarks about “elite universities” as “engines for inequality,” nobody has acted directly on that incitement.

By the way, what the heck is David Brooks saying in this column?

What idea of America does Joe Biden call us to unite around? It’s the old one. As Walt Whitman understood, America was founded mostly by people fleeing the remnants of feudalism, the stratified caste societies of Europe.

(Can someone familiar with Walt Whitman’s work please tell me where this “fleeing the remnants of feudalism” idea is to be found there? Brooks does not actually quote Whitman in his column, but just tosses this out there as if every literate person will nod in recognition. While I consider myself quite literate, I never much cared for Whitman, a degenerate bohemian, and so I confess myself in the dark here. Meanwhile . . .)

Today we have homegrown feudalism. On the right, we have white supremacy, an effort to perpetuate America’s racial caste system, and Christian nationalism, an effort to define America in a way that erases the pluralism that actually exists.

(Notice how, among pundits published by the New York Times, the words “white” and “Christian” can never be used except as pejoratives. White people are bad, and Christianity is wrong — this is the subtext of the attack Brooks makes on the kind of Republican voters he despises.)

On the left, less viciously, we have elite universities that have become engines for the production of inequality. All that woke posturing is the professoriate’s attempt to mask the fact that they work at finishing schools where more students often come from the top 1% of earners than from the bottom 60%. Their graduates flock to insular neighborhoods in and around New York, D.C., San Francisco and a few other cities, have little contact with the rest of America and make everybody else feel scorned and invisible. . . .

You can read the rest of that, if you happen to be feeling the kind of guilty masochistic urge that would make you want to subject yourself to the entirety of a David Brooks column. I’ve seldom been able to read more than a few dozen words by Brooks without feeling the urge to kick him in his smug little face. On the couple of occasions when I’ve actually been in the same room with Brooks, I walked out, simply because this violent urge was so overwhelming I feared the consequences:

RIGHT-WING BLOGGER JAILED
ON ASSAULT CHARGES AFTER
ATTACK ON N.Y. TIMES PUNDIT

Thank God, I was able to restrain the urge, so you haven’t seen that headline, yet. But my point is this: Nobody hates David Brooks more than I do, and you might think I would be happy that Rachel Bitecofer is blaming him for the Capitol riot. But somehow, I’m not happy.

Every intelligent and patriotic American should delight in the feeling of schadenfreude whenever anything bad happens to David Brooks, but so clumsy and misguided is Rachel Bitecofer’s attack on Brooks that she has cheated us out of this pleasure. This disappointment tells you a lot about the caliber of people associated with the Lincoln Project grift.




 

Category: David Brooks Fisking Day
« go back — keep looking »