In The Mailbox: 09.29.21 (Afternoon Edition)

Posted on | September 29, 2021 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 09.29.21 (Afternoon Edition)

Silicon Valley delenda est.

Vox Day notwithstanding

OVER THE TRANSOM
Red Pilled Jew: Quick Takes
357 Magnum: Women & Minorities Embrace Self-Defense – Leftist Stereotypes Hardest Hit
Ninety Mils From Tyranny: The 90 Miles Mystery Box, Episode #1490
EBL: Whip It
Twitchy: Terry McAuliffe’s Comments On Who Shouldn’t Have A Say In What Schools Teach “Should Frighten Every Parent”
Louder With Crowder: Pelosi’s Brain Turns To Mush, Forgets Who’s President, Says They’ll be Voting On The Obama Agenda This Week
Vox Popoli: The End Of Avoidance, also, And Which God Is That?
Gab News: Building Technology To Power A Parallel Christian Society

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: The Death of Doctors, also, Do Not Succumb To The Black Pill
American Conservative: Why Aren’t Men Going To College? also, It Looks Like We Forgot
American Greatness: Democrats Repeat The Mistakes Of 2016, also, Marine Officer Who Demanded Accountability From Pentagon Leaders Thrown In Brig
American Power: Red China Plays Hardball To Get Back Arrested Executive, also, Krysten Sinema – The Enigma At The Center Of Democrats’ Spending Talks
American Thinker: Does Biden Believe That Laws Should Only Be Observed Selectively?
Animal Magnetism: Animal’s Daily Dog Trade News
Babalu Blog: Dissident Cuban Artist Forced Into Exile In Poland Speaks To Press, also, Cuba’s Socialist Revolution – Over 70% Of Families Must Survive On Less Than $4/Day
BattleSwarm: What If There Was An Austin Shootout & Nobody Noticed? also, Supply Chain Disruption Update
Behind The Black: Red Chinese Long March 3B Successfully Launches Satellite – Which Immediately Fails, UK’s New Comprehensive Space Strategy – Develop A Robust Private Sector, and Today’s Blacklisted Americans
Cafe Hayek: Asking “Why Don’t You Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is?” Is A Test Of Legitimacy
Da Tech Guy: Report From Louisiana – Bouncing Back After Ida, Musings About 7-0, and I’m Old Enough To Remember
Don Surber: 54% Of Black Parents Want CRT Removed, also, We’re Preparing To Bomb The Hell Out Of Afghanistan
First Street Journal: Killadelphia Passes The 400 Mark, also, Another Capitol Kerfluffler Pleads Guilty
The Geller Report: Sports Fans Aren’t The Only Ones Ramping Up The “F*** Joe Biden” Chants, also, Trucker Blockade Developing, Ohio Highway Patrol On Notice
Hogewash: Team Kimberlin Post of The Day, also, Moving Back To The Third World?
Hollywood In Toto: How To Feed Your Sopranos Fix After Many Saints Of Newark, also, Insane Clown Posse – First Amendment Heroes?
The Lid: NY Governor Hochul Says God Wants Us To Get The Jab – Did They Talk On The Phone?
Legal Insurrection: Legal Insurrection Now On Telegram, also, McKenzie, Milley, & Austin All Confirm Biden Received Recommendation To Leave 2500 Troops In Afghanistan
Michelle Malkin: What Every Parent Must Know About Pfizer
Nebraska Energy Observer: Manhood & The Green Knight, also, Lupus Tenebrosus, Chapter 8
Outkick: NBA Players Continue To Reject League’s Jab Mandate, Dez Bryant Blasts Colin Kaepernick For Creating Awareness But Doing Nothing, and Sexual Assault Charges Against Don Lemon Finally Going To Court
Power Line: Joe Biden’s Free Breakfast, Lunch, & Dinner, Chamber Of Commerce Tries To Rein In Democrats It Endorsed, and New Frontiers In The Whopper
Shark Tank: Mucarsel-Powell Endorses Janelle Perez For Congress
Shot In The Dark: Prophets Of Manufactured Rage, also, When Reality Is Absurd, Parody Is Impossible
The Political Hat: Adoption Is Racist Now
This Ain’t Hell: Marine LTC Who Went Viral Speaking Against Biden’s Bugout Arrested, Tuesday FGS, and Update On Slapped Sailor Incident
Transterrestrial Musings: Biden’s World
Victory Girls: Democrats Sending Country Off A Fiscal Cliff, Republicans Finally Unite
Volokh Conspiracy: City-Organized Veterans’ Parade Can Exclude Confederate Flags
Weasel Zippers: WH Defends Biden Banning Horse Patrols Based On Lies, also, Autistic Green Jesus Babbles
The Federalist: The Texas Heartbeat Act Is Saving 100 Babies Every Single Day, Americans Are Done With Biden’s Pandemic Incompetence, and Media Outlets That Called Hunter Biden Laptop Russian Disinformation Ignore Confirmation It Was Real
Mark Steyn: A Greasepaint Medley, also, Lost In Translation

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Category: Linkagery

‘The Negro Problem,’ Then and Now

Posted on | September 28, 2021 | Comments Off on ‘The Negro Problem,’ Then and Now

For about four decades, Nathaniel Southgate Shaler (1841-1906) was among the leading professors of science at Harvard University. In 1884, Professor Shaler published in The Atlantic Monthly a lengthy article entitled “The Negro Problem,” which begins with this paragraph:

When the civil war determined by its result the political position of the black people in the Southern States, there was a general belief among their friends that the race had thereby received a complete enfranchisement as American citizens; that they were made free to all our national inheritances; that all the problems of their future involved only questions of a detached nature — such slight matters as their rights in hotels and railways, in fields of labor, or at the polling booths. But those who by their eagerness to bid the negro welcome to his new place in the state did so much credit to the spirit of hope and friendship of our time could not see the gravity of this problem. Never before in the history of peoples had so grave an experiment been tried as was then set about with a joyous confidence of success. Only their great military triumph could have given to our hard-minded, practical people such rash confidence. Here, on the one hand, was a people, whose written history shows that the way to the self-government on which alone a state can be founded is through slowly and toilfully gained lessons, handed from father to son — lessons learned on hard tilled and often hard fought fields. The least knowledge of the way in which their own position in the world had been won would have made it clear that such a national character as theirs could be formed only by marvelous toil of generations after generations, and an almost equally marvelous good fortune that brought fruit to their labor. There, on the other hand, was a folk, bred first in a savagery that had never been broken by the least effort towards a higher state, and then in a slavery that tended almost as little to fit them for a place in the structure of a self-controlling society. Surely, the effort to blend these two peoples by a proclamation and a constitutional amendment will sound strangely in the time to come, when men see that they are what their fathers have made them, and that resolutions cannot help this rooted nature of man. . . .

You may read the rest, and I suppose both the current editors of The Atlantic and the current leadership of Harvard University would vehemently disavow the entirety of Professor Shaler’s arguments. Nevertheless it is always helpful, in studying the origins of social problems, to consult in the original text the opinions of our predecessors, rather than to rely on modern interlocutors to summarize or interpret those views. One of the problems with the teaching of history nowadays is that most students just absorb the Cliff Notes summary of the past — reading only whatever is assigned, as necessary to obtain the desired grade — and thus we have millions of “educated” Americans who are almost entirely ignorant of vast amounts of history, despite having gotten A’s in the subject, even at our most prestigious universities.

Professor Glenn Reynolds today calls attention to a dispute between Princeton Professor Sean Wilentz and Nikole Hannah-Jones of the infamous “1619 Project.” The latter’s authorial purpose was to impugn the United State, per se and in toto, as hopelessly stained by “white supremacy.” Wilentz’s criticism is that Hannah-Jones goes too far — indeed, she goes so far as to completely outrace the historical evidence, which does not support her outlandish claim that our War of Independence was waged to prevent a threat to slavery from the British homeland (a fictitious threat that Hannah-Jones manufactures from whole cloth, a threat which the Patriots in such places as Vermont and Massachusetts certainly never mentioned). Wilentz is correct in this. However, I would argue that the real issue is not that Hannah-Jones goes too far, but rather that she is going in the wrong direction.

Hannah-Jones’s argument is wrong because her intentions are wicked — motivated by a hatred of America which is, in turn, informed by a hatred of white people (never mind or, at least, leave to examination by psychoanalysts, the fact that her own mother is white). Hannah-Jones began her project with an anti-American (and anti-white) agenda, and having made hatred the premise of her argument, everything else followed logically. Wilentz speaks of Hannah-Jones’s argument as exhibiting such “perversity” that, if it were submitted as a high school history paper, would automatically receive an “F” grade.

It can be easily demonstrated that Hannah-Jones is factually wrong about America, but why and how did she get it so wrong? And the answer is that her hateful purpose led her into these errors. She is wrong because she wants to judge the America of 1619-1776 by a standard of radical egalitarianism by which our forefathers are condemned as racists, and never mind that the word “racist” did not even exist at the time.

Anyone familiar with the history of England would see, in the Patriot cause of 1776, a sentiment that can be traced back through the Whig cause in the Glorious Revolution — principles delineated by John Locke — and further to the Parliamentary cause as exemplified by the heroic figures of Algernon Sidney and John Hampden, among others.

What the Patriots believed was that the home government was denying to them the rights which their English ancestors had fought so hard to obtain. Even while proclaiming it to be a “self-evident” truth that “all men” were “endowed by their Creator” with these rights, the signers of the Declaration were aware that such rights were not recognized in most of Europe, to say nothing of the lack of recognition of these “self-evident” rights in more remote regions of the globe. But I digress . . .

What is important is that we try to see the past as it actually was, rather than trying to impose our moralistic views on the past, in order to congratulate ourselves on our superiority to dead men who are not here to defend themselves against our accusations of “racism,” etc.

Read the original texts, let dead men speak in their own voices, and you’ll learn a lot more than you can from any tendentious intellectual presuming to interpret (and usually, to condemn) the motives of historic figures. For example, Ibram X. Kendi, author of the popular BLM/CRT diatribe How to Be an Anti-Racist, previously published Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America (2016). In the process of explaining how he got the title of his first book, Kendi linked an online text of The Congressional Record from April 1860. What he meant to call attention to was the “Racist Ideas” of one of the senators who was participating in that debate. There was a proposal to use federal funds for public schools in the District of Columbia, a measure that the Senator opposed. But someone (and I haven’t gone through the entire legislative history of that bill) then amended the legislation to specify that the proposed public schools would be for both white and black children.

Here is an excerpt from the Senator’s remarks:

“Mr. President, the propositions, both the main one contained in the bill and that contained in the amendment, I think, rest on two fundamental errors: in the first place, that our Government was instituted for eleemosynary purposes, and in the next place, that it was instituted for a mixed race. This Government was not founded by negroes nor for negroes, but by white men for white men. It was not founded for eleemosynary purposes, but as an agent of the States; and there is no right to take one dollar from the Treasury to appropriate it to public schools. . . .
“The errors are fundamental on which the bill rests; and these errors have been developed by the alliance which it has brought from the other side, developing, as a consequence of the very proposition, this controversy as to the rights of whites, and the equality of the negroes. I do not choose to argue with any one who thinks proper to assert the equality of the negro and the white man. The man who makes the assertion may prove to me his equality with the negro. He proves to me no more; and I accept his argument only for so much.” [Emphasis added.]
— Sen. Jefferson Davis, April 12, 1860

The highlighted sentence, you see, is offered by Davis as a statement of fact — the same fact that Chief Justice Roger Taney expressed in the Supreme Court’s 1857 Dred Scott decision. So far as I am aware, no one has ever provided evidence that Justice Taney and Senator Davis were wrong about this. Examine the writings of the Founding Fathers and see if you can find anything indicating that they desired or intended (or even imagined in their wildest dreams) a future in which the descendants of African slaves would obtain, en masse, full political equality with whites.

What has happened, you see, is that most Americans have been taught our own history in such a way that they don’t even recognize the importance of something that was apparent to Professor Shaler in 1884 when he spoke of the “experiment” that necessarily followed emancipation.

If we experience difficulties — political, social and economic — as a result of trying to integrate such diverse people into a single body politic, this should not cause surprise or dismay, simply because no one else anywhere has ever attempted anything remotely like it. Well, yes, you can speak of the Austro-Hungarian Empire as an experiment in “diversity,” but how did that work out? Our problem in America, I suggest, is that our expectations are too high, that we have been encouraged to think it should be easy to arrive at some utopian ideal of Equality (with a capital “E,” denoting its religious significance to liberals).

Utilized as a weapon by dishonest partisan agitators, “Equality” tends to make people unhappy, to cause resentment and suspicion — those evil rich people are exploiting us, we are told, as we sit in our air-conditioned homes with high-speed Internet connections and giant flat-screen TVs. It’s not just racial hatred that is incited by these “Equality” agitators, but every imaginable species of hatred, fear and envy.

We must live in reality, rather than in our political fantasies of an ideal condition of “Equality” that, so far as I know, has never existed anywhere at any time in all of human history. This utopian fantasy is harmful in that it breeds irrational discontentment, no matter how objectively splendid our actual circumstances may be. Some of the most bitter people in America are rich liberals whose affluent lifestyles would have been unimaginable to their grandparents or more remote ancestors. My own grandfather plowed the red clay hills of east Alabama behind a mule team. He had no indoor plumbing or electricity or central heat. Rather than make myself miserable by comparing my situation to that of Mark Zuckerberg or Bill Gates, I prefer to make myself happy by thinking how much easier my life is than that of my grandfather. Right now, I’m drinking a fruit smoothie and eating a meal I warmed up in the microwave, while preparing to hit the “publish” button and communicate with a readership of thousands. What have I got to complain about, if I pause to compare my situation to my grandfather’s life in rural Alabama?

Couldn’t the same be said for Nikole Hannah-Jones? She’s employed by the most influential newspaper in the world, yet it seems she’s made herself miserable by dwelling upon her alleged oppression.

“The errors are fundamental,” as Jefferson Davis said, and I don’t think Nikole Hannah-Jones is doing much to prove Davis wrong.

But “I do not choose to argue,” et cetera.

Category: History, Intellectuals, New York Times, Racism

Crazy People Are Dangerous

Posted on | September 28, 2021 | Comments Off on Crazy People Are Dangerous

Say hello to Alexandra Souverneva, a 30-year-old California woman whom the Monterey Herald describes as a “scientist,” because she has a bachelor’s degree from California Institute of Technology and later enrolled in a Ph.D. program. However, Souverneva describes herself as a “shaman,” which is relevant to the criminal charges against her:

A California “shaman” charged with starting a wildfire that is threatening thousands of homes claimed it started by accident — while she was boiling bear urine to drink, according to local reports.
Alexandra Souverneva, 30, faces up to nine years in prison for allegedly sparking the Fawn Fire, which has destroyed 41 homes and 90 smaller structures and is threatening 2,340 others, officials have said. She has pleaded not guilty.
She is now being eyed for possibly starting other fires across the Golden State, according to the Redding Record-Searchlight.
As the fire in Shasta County raged on Wednesday, Souverneva claimed she’d been hiking and trying to get to Canada, according to documents obtained by the outlet.
She told forest officials that she was thirsty and had come across a puddle of what she believed to be bear urine — and tried to make a fire to boil it, according to documents obtained by the outlet.

What? You wouldn’t drink a puddle of bear urine, even after it was boiled? Don’t you believe in science? Ask any shaman about this.

By the way, police say a search of Souverneva’s backpack found “a green, leafy substance she admitted to smoking that day” — entirely legal in California, of course — and no self-respecting shaman would pass up a chance to smoke “a green, leafy substance.” Because science.

Further background on our scientific California shaman:

She may be linked to other recent fires in the state, Shasta County District Attorney Stephanie Bridgett said during a press conference on Friday morning. Souverneva has declined an interview request from the Bay Area News Group.
Souverneva graduated from Palo Alto High School in 2009 and the California Institute of Technology in 2012 with degrees in chemistry and biology.
She enrolled in a Ph.D. program at the State University of New York’s College of Environmental Science and Forestry but did not complete studies. She then worked in medicinal chemistry as a research associate at the biotech companies Gilead Sciences in Foster City and Nanosyn in Santa Clara.
A former Palo Alto yoga instructor, certified scuba dive master, piano teacher and camp counselor, she most recently tutored Bay Area students in the sciences at Palo Alto’s AJ Tutoring, a respected SAT test prep business.
Souverneva’s LinkedIn profile, which features a photo of a forest, lists her occupation as “shaman,” a religious term for a person who believes themselves connected to the transcendent world and acts as a healer and diviner. She’s registered to vote as a member of the Green Party.
But she has run into legal trouble before. In Santa Clara County, court records show she faced misdemeanor charges in 2017 and criminal charges in 2015. Details were not available on Sunday.
Earlier this month, Souverneva was arrested on Interstate 5 near Red Bluff and booked into the Tehama County Jail on suspicion of driving under the influence of alcohol and drugs and obstructing and resisting arrest. A week later, she was arrested in coastal Oregon for criminal trespass, which means unlawfully entering another’s enclosed or fenced-in property.
The Fawn Fire was ignited Sept. 22 in a remote canyon on property adjacent to Shasta County’s JF Shea Quarry. Earlier that day, Souverneva was seen trespassing on the property by a quarry employee and asked to leave. She ignored the warning and continued walking into the hills, according to a report filed by CalFire.
The quarry employee reported that she was acting strangely, said Bridgett.
That evening, as firefighters were battling flames, she walked out of the brush and asked for water and medical help, according to the CalFire report. . . .
At the Friday court appearance, an attorney said Souverneva had made statements to law enforcement that indicated a possible mental health crisis “or something to do with drug abuse,” according to the Redding Record-Searchlight.

A Green Party member was “acting strangely”? I’m shocked, shocked! However, as to the scientific value of this incident, I’d say it proves one thing: Crazy People Are Dangerous. But we already knew that.

Category: California, Crime

In The Mailbox: 09.27.21

Posted on | September 27, 2021 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 09.27.21

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Silicon Valley delenda est.

Meanwhile in Australia…

OVER THE TRANSOM
McG’s Tally Book: #FJB
Red Pilled Jew: Monday Memes
357 Magnum: Don’t Bring A Rock To A Gunfight
EBL: R Kelly Found Guilty, also, RIP Commander Cody
Twitchy: “That’s How You Know They Lie On Purpose”, also, Lincoln Project Announces They’re Going After Glenn Youngkin – “The Pedo Jokes Are Just Writing Themselves”
Louder With Crowder: F*** Joe Biden Week 4 In College Football
Vox Popoli: The Mark Of The Retarded, SJWs Do NOT Approve, and The Spartacus Letter

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: Become A Patriarch
American Conservative: Taking Antifa’s Mask Off
American Greatness: NYT Reveals FBI’s Role In 1/6, also, State Of Texas Will Hire Mounted Border Patrol Agents Punished By Biden
American Power: Trapped In Kabul, Prominent Afghan Women Fear Retaliation From Taliban
American Thinker: Every Tragedy Caused By Government Is Done With The Best Intentions, also, Why Your Otherwise Smart Friends Think Stupid Things
Animal Magnetism: Goodbye, Blue Monday
Babalu Blog: Despite Increased State Security Presence, Cuban Protests Continue, “We Are Continuity!”, and Mexican Senator Says Government Paid Millions For Unqualified Cuban Slave “Doctors”
BattleSwarm: TPPF’s Jason Isaac On The Reasons Behind The Great Texas Freeze Blackouts, also, Supply Chain Disruption Update
Behind The Black: Today’s Blacklisted Americans, also, Red China Launches Earth Observation Satellite
Cafe Hayek: The Enduring Relevance Of Hayek & Mises’ Critique Of Socialism, also, Assertions Are Cheap
CDR Salamander: The New Standard In Cruise Videos, also, Jake Sullivan – The Well Protected Golden Boy
Da Tech Guy: Caring About What You Actually Control, Happiness Is When Your Son Does Something Like This, and Biden Will Visit A Troubled Chicago On Wednesday
Don Surber: Biden Pays For Afghanistan, Making The Abnormal Normal Destroys Society, and The Endgame Of The Election Audits
First Street Journal: Aren’t Reporters Supposed To Ask Relevant Questions? also, Occasional Cortex Reveals The Antisemitism Of The Squadristi
The Geller Report: Arizona Audit Reveals Over 57,000 Illegal Ballots, 23,000 Phantom Voters – Five Times Biden’s “Victory” Margin, also, Hillary Clinton Booed, Heckled, & Jeered In Belfast
Hogewash: Team Kimberlin Post of The Day, Politiholics Anonymous, and An Interesting Polling Factoid
Hollywood In Toto: Could Woke Marketing Crush No Time To Die & The Bond Franchise? also, Is Russell Brand Getting Redpilled In Real Time?
The Lid: Former DOD Chief Of Staff Shoots Down Biden’s “No Afghanistan Plan” Lie, also, Democrats Will Own A Government Shutdown
Legal Insurrection: Guilty Of Existing Week In Higher Education, Former Social Media Addict Suggests It’s Destroying Young Lives, and Former Black Emory U. Employee Arrested For Racist Graffiti
Nebraska Energy Observer: Random Observations, also, Does It Make Sense?
Outkick: Bears Basically Considering Everyone At QB, Rams Fan Trolls NFL Broadcast With “Unvaxxed” Sign, and Nashville Sounds Break Minor League Attendance Record
Power Line: Are Electric Vehicles A Joke?, Does Red China Rule The World? and Judge Rejects Fairfax County Prosecutor’s Deal Of Three Years For Child Rape
Shark Tank: Mast Accuses House Democrats Of Funneling Money To Hamas
Shot In The Dark: Things That Can Get You Banned From Facebook, also, Via The Back Door
The Political Hat: When Mayors Go Woke
This Ain’t Hell: House Dems Introduce Bill To Abolish Space Force, Captain Kirk Headed To Space, and Marines Reluctantly Allow Sikh Officer To Wear Turban – He Says It’s Not Enough
Transterrestrial Musings: The Democrats, How It Might End, and Food Myths
Victory Girls: Afghan Refugee Problems – Who Exactly Is Here? also, Mayorkas Admits Releasing Haitian Illegals Into U.S.
Volokh Conspiracy: “I Eat A**” Bumper Sticker Might Not Be Constitutionally Protected
Weasel Zippers: Marine Vet Dies In Custody Waiting For Trial On 1/6 Charges, Kerry Struggles To Explain Why Uighur Lives Don’t Matter, and
The Federalist: AZ Vote Audit Finds Potentially Election-Shifting Numbers Of Illegal Ballots, also, FL Gov. DeSantis Calls For Investigation Of Big Tech For Violating Election Laws
Mark Steyn: Beam Them Up, The Jolliest Of Rogers, and The Party She Didn’t Come Home From

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Category: Linkagery

The Power of Political Tribalism

Posted on | September 27, 2021 | Comments Off on The Power of Political Tribalism

Ed McGinty is in the news again. The 72-year-old Democrat has made himself obnoxious to his neighbors in The Villages of Florida by riding around in his golf cart plastered with anti-Trump signs.

Last week, McGinty was arrested and charged with stalking after he accosted a woman at the neighborhood swimming pool who was wearing a T-shirt with the slogan “Joe Biden Sucks.” The details of that incident are less important than what Ed McGinty’s obnoxiousness teaches us about political tribalism. If you’re looking for a way to explain why a grown man would act the way that McGinty does, it was revealed in a Washington Post profile last year which mentioned that McGinty, a retired real estate broker and Philadelphia native, “has always been a Democrat, just like his parents before him.”

In other words, McGinty inherited his partisan loyalty to the Democratic Party and, until he moved to The Villages a few years ago, he had lived inside a bubble where such loyalty was commonplace, especially among Irish Catholics like himself. In 1960, when young Ed was 11, America elected its first Irish Catholic president, John F. Kennedy, who got 68% of the vote in Philadelphia. For the son of an Irish Catholic family in Philadelphia in those days, being a Democrat was as natural — just “the way things were” — as it was for me, growing up in Georgia during the “Solid South” days when there was no Republican Party to speak of in the state. (Kennedy got 69% of the vote in Douglas County, where I was a 1-year-old at the time.) I remained a Democratic Party loyalist until the mid-1990s, when Bill Clinton’s policies (particularly the so-called “assault weapons” ban) drove me out of the party. Probably I was like a lot of my fellow Georgians during that era. We had remained loyal Democrats until Clinton’s presidency convinced us that the party no longer shared our values, and that our loyalty was not reciprocated.

It’s difficult to believe that someone like Ed McGinty, who proudly boasts of his Catholicism and mentions attending Cardinal Dougherty High School, never reconsidered his political loyalty, given how the Democratic Party has gone all-in for abortion since 1972. But recall that he’s from Philadelphia, which went for Obama by 83% in 2008 and 85% in 2012, and which went for Hillary Clinton by 83% in 2016. In communities where partisan affiliation is so one-sided, dissent is seldom heard, and is viewed as disloyalty to the community. This is why, for example, black Republicans are so rare — more than 90% of black people vote Democrat, and a black person who speaks out against the party’s liberal agenda is denounced as a traitorous “Uncle Tom” sellout.

The Villages is in Sumter County, Florida, which is not quite as solidly Republican in the way Philadelphia is solidly Democrat. However, 68% of voters in Sumter County voted to reelect Donald Trump, and probably the percentage was even higher in The Villages, an affluent (and nearly all-white) retirement community. Somehow, Ed McGinty can’t figure out why anyone would vote Republican, so he plasters his golf cart with signs denouncing his Republican neighbors as “racist,” etc.:

“I’m proud that I’m standing up for what’s right,” he said. “There’s never been a doubt in my mind that what I’m doing is right.”

Never a doubt in his mind, you see. That’s what tribalism looks like.

Category: Democrats, Florida

Rule 5 Sunday: Gwen Verdon

Posted on | September 27, 2021 | Comments Off on Rule 5 Sunday: Gwen Verdon

— compiled by Wombat-socho

I think my first encounter with the hit Broadway play Damn Yankees was on an easy listening station in DC which used to run a program called “Matinees At One” on Sunday afternoons. They’d play the soundtrack from a Broadway show, and in between songs the announcer would recount the plot of the play. Not having lost interest in baseball yet, I wound up checking out the book the play was based on, Douglas Wallop’s The Year The Yankees Lost The Pennant, and years later I actually got to see the movie. Boy howdy, they sure made the right call casting Gwen Verdon as the demonic temptress Lola for both the play and the movie. Yow.
Ceterum autem censeo Silicon Valley esse delendam.

Poster for the 1958 movie.

Ninety Miles From Tyranny: Hot Pick of the Late Night, The 90 Miles Mystery Box Episode #1484, Morning Mistress, and Girls With Guns.

Animal Magnetism: Rule Five Done With Democrats Friday and the Saturday Gingermageddon.

EBL: The Bangles, Beloe Zlato, Keri Russell, Cry Macho, Amy Phan West, Krysten Sinema, Foundation, Natalie Imbruglia, Ted Lasso, and MAGA Saturday.

A View From The Beach: Amy Shi, Fish Pic Friday – Egrac, Forget It Jake, It’s Baltimore – So BYOB, Oregon, My Oregon, Carolina in My Mind, Maryland Otters Get the Jab, Wednesday Wetness – Let it be Known There is a Fountain, Farm Bureaus Happy to Help Launder $3/4 Billion in Farm Dollars, Tattoo Tuesday, The Monday Morning Stimulus, and Palm Sunday.

Brian J. Noggle: Linda Ronstadt

Thanks to everyone for all the luscious links!

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Category: Rule 5

Manhunt for Florida Cop-Killer

Posted on | September 26, 2021 | Comments Off on Manhunt for Florida Cop-Killer

Patrick Rene McDowell is like a “rabid animal,” according to the Florida sheriff whose deputy was fatally shot by the suspect Friday. The manhunt for McDowell is now in its third day.

“This guy is dangerous,” Nassau County Sheriff Bill Leeper said Saturday. “If you’re in a home and he breaks into your home and you have a gun, blow him out the door cause he’s like a rabid animal. He will kill you with his mindset. What he did to that deputy, was uncalled for, unnecessary and he needs to pay for it.”

An ex-Marine with a drug habit and a criminal record, McDowell was driving a Chrysler minivan with a female passenger about 2:30 a.m. Friday when he was pulled over by Deputy Josh Moyers. McDowell didn’t have a license and gave the deputy a false name. When Moyers learned that the name didn’t match the vehicle’s owner, he asked McDowell to step out, at which point McDowell shot Moyers in the face with a pistol, then shot him again in the back after the deputy hit the ground. McDowell went into a nearby wooded area, and authorities believe he shot a police dog that was tracking him Friday.

“We never know what’s going to happen when we leave home in the morning,” Sheriff Leeper said Saturday. “This was just a traffic stop and it turned out to be a murder of the deputy.”

Nassau County, on the Georgia border north of Jacksonville, Florida, is largely rural, and authorities believe McDowell is still in the area.

McDowell was active duty in the Marine Corps from 2005 to 2009, and was deployed to Iraq. He was in the Marine Reserves until 2013. For a while after he returned from Iraq, McDowell worked as a security guard in the Jacksonville area, but in recent years turned to drugs and crime:

He has previously been arrested for giving a false name to law enforcement and aggravated possession of stolen firearms, according to Nassau County Sheriff’s Office. McDowell was arrested in April 27, 2021 by the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office for failure to appear for several charges stemming back to 2019, according to arrest documents. Those charges include possession of cocaine and possession of drug paraphernalia. He was also arrested in September 2018 by the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office for driving with a suspended license and attaching a license plate or sticker not assigned. McDowell was arrested in 2019 for forging checks from his grandfather’s account as well. He has a criminal past in Illinois and Indiana too. Charges there range from burglary, to theft, to carrying a handgun without a license and leaving the scene of an accident, as well as driving while intoxicated endangering a person. Some of those charges were reduced or dismissed. . . .
Deputies say Patrick McDowell has previously been [involuntarily committed for psychiatric treatment under the Baker Act] and has been noted to suffer from depression, seizures, and PTSD.

Why was this guy out on the street? Less than six months ago, they had him under arrest in Jacksonville, but turned him loose. Now a deputy is dead, and McDowell is being hunted “like a rabid animal.”

Category: Crime, Florida

FMJRA 2.0: Draft Weekend

Posted on | September 26, 2021 | Comments Off on FMJRA 2.0: Draft Weekend

— compiled by Wombat-socho

SOTD
Spent pretty much all of yesterday drafting players for my ’69 Senators, after which I had just about enough energy to make some soup and change my bandages before bedtime. Slept for 12 hours and still felt like crap when I got up this morning for the 1000 part of the draft, but fortunately a large mug of coffee and some Claritin-D helped with that. Didn’t get all the players I wanted, but the ones I did get were good, and of course we’re not nearly done yet since we have 35-man rosters to pick.
Ceterum autem censeo Silicon Valley esse delendam.

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