The Other McCain

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

The Biden Administration’s Blame Game and the Sad Fate of #NeverTrump

Posted on | September 25, 2021 | Comments Off on The Biden Administration’s Blame Game and the Sad Fate of #NeverTrump

My colleague John Hoge points out that, no matter what goes wrong in the Biden administration, it’s never their fault. It is psychologically unhealthy to think of oneself as a victim of forces beyond one’s control. Good mental health requires a sense of agency — the belief that we are masters of our own fate, able to obtain success and happiness by our own efforts — and the opposite of this is the victimhood mentality, the belief that we are doomed to misery, because we are being sabotaged and betrayed by an evil “them.” The tendency of the Biden administration toward the victimhood mentality was observed by Jonah Goldberg, who seems to be sobering up from his five-year binge of Trump Derangement Syndrome, experiencing “buyer’s remorse” over the Biden presidency he helped foist upon the nation. Brett Baier had Jonah on Thursday:

BAIER: Jonah, I have to commend this piece that you wrote for “The Dispatch” about Joe Biden and the passive voice, and that is the portrayal that this is somehow passively happening to him as opposed to decisions that Biden is making and the consequences of them.
GOLDBERG: Yes. We heard this just tonight, the clip you had from Jen Psaki earlier in the show, where she says we are weathering storms. No, when you are weathering storms, you are not responsible for the weather. Storms are things that happen to you. Joe Biden says events in Afghanistan unfolded, events at the border have unfolded, as if he has no agency and no responsibility for these things. He has made choices, and we are seeing the consequences of his choices on a whole bunch of fronts. And the way the media and the way the White House spin it, it’s like poor Joe Biden is like Charlie Brown being followed by a rain cloud, and he has no responsibility for what the predicaments that his White House is in.

Go ahead, spit on the ground and curse Jonah Goldberg, but he is correct about this passive-voice tendency in the Biden administrations — events unfolded, they are weathering storms and facing challenges, always victims of forces beyond their control. Nothing that goes wrong is ever their fault, according to them, because they are incapable of admitting error. The whole point of the Biden presidency — their existential purpose, their raison d’être — is to be Not Trump, the antithesis of Trumpism, doing everything the opposite of what Trump did.

Now they are shocked by the discovery that this approach doesn’t work.

Why? Because, however much you hate Trump, the fact is that his policies worked. Prior to the arrival of the Wuhan vicus, Trump’s policies had the U.S. economy in overdrive, with record-low unemployment, and it was his administration that initiated “Operation Warp Speed,” which yielded the COVID-19 vaccines that Biden now wants to make mandatory. This is where Jonah Goldberg needs his own confrontation with reality. What was the point of “Never Trump” conservatism if, as we now can all see plainly, reversing Trump’s policies produces disaster?

Goldberg now bemoans the passive-voice victimhood mentality of the Biden administration, but what about you, Jonah? Do you and your #NeverTrump comrades bear no responsibility in this failure?

Last time I checked the official numbers, Biden was elected because he beat Trump in four states by a combined margin of ~60,000 votes. Is it possible that such narrow margins might have gone the other way had it not been for the constant attacks on Trump from Goldberg, et al.?

Unlike so many others on what Kurt Schlichter dubbed the “Ahoy” crew — Jen Rubin, David French, Charlie Sykes — Jonah Goldberg does not seem content merely to parrot the daily DNC talking-points. One gets the idea that Goldberg may be nostalgic for the days when people didn’t spit on the ground and curse the very mention of his name, as every decent and patriotic American must now do. But he could rectify this, merely by titling the name of next book, I Was Wrong.

Don’t hold your breath waiting for that confession of error, though.

By the way, am I the only one who noticed the weirdly ritualistic way in which Biden administration officials used the word “horrific” to describe the photos of Border Patrol on horseback rounding up Haitian illegal immigrants? What was so “horrific” about these images? You cross the border illegally, the Border Patrol catches you — this happens every day. Is it merely because these illegals happened to be black?

In making such an issue of this, obviously in an effort to quell outrage among the BLM crowd, I doubt the Biden administration has thought about how the Hispanic community might view the situation. Imagine you’re a Hispanic resident of Arizona or Florida, and you see the Biden administration jumping up and down to denounce the Border Patrol for rounding up Haitian illegals. Wouldn’t you be tempted to say, “Wait a minute — where was this hyperventilating outrage during all the decades when it was Mexicans being rounded up at the border?” Isn’t it possible that this will cost Biden some Hispanic support? I think so.

Joe Biden is about as popular as herpes nowadays, so of course he is lashing out at scapegoats, promising to punish them:

President Joe Biden berated American border patrol agents for using horses to confront migrants crossing into the United States on the Southern border, vowing they would be punished.
“To see people treated like they did, horses running them over and people getting strapped, it’s outrageous I promise you those people will pay,” Biden said, despite no publicly available evidence to back up his claims.

“Those people will pay” — the people who are enforcing the law are wrong, according to Biden, but as for the foreign invaders trying to violate U.S. law by crossing the border? Oh, nothing wrong with that.




 

Category: Immigration, Joe Biden, Jonah Goldberg

Aspiring Rapper Update

Posted on | September 25, 2021 | Comments Off on Aspiring Rapper Update

Readers may have forgotten Timothy Nathaniel Leeks, but last November, the 22-year-old was arrested in the fatal shooting of rapper Dayvon Bennett, a/k/a “King Von,” outside an Atlanta hookah bar.

It’s been two months since our last Aspiring Rapper Update, and I know that many of our readership may have been disappointed in the dearth of recent news about violence affecting the hiphop community.

Such readers will no doubt be interested to learn that Timothy “Lil Tim” Leeks has not been idle since being busted for shooting King Von. It seems that the original charge of murder was reduced to manslaughter, perhaps because video of the incident showed that King Von was the aggressor in the fight that ended with him being fatally shot. So in March, after twice being denied bail, Leeks was released on $100,000 bond and immediately resumed his peaceful, law-abiding civilian life.

That was sarcasm, OK?

Timothy Leeks is a lifelong thug and a menace to society, and it was no surprise to learn that he got busted Wednesday on 11 different charges after leading police on a high-speed chase in Chatham County, Georgia.

A search of Savannah-area media turned up no coverage of the arrest — apparently high-speed pursuits aren’t deemed newsworthy in Savannah — but as the website HipHopDX says, you can find Leeks in the Chatham County jail database. Meanwhile, the “aspiring rapper” motif has become an international phenomenon, e.g., Ontario, Canada:

An aspiring Scarborough rapper has been arrested for the shooting murders of two young women at a Fort Erie Airbnb in January.
On Thursday [Aug. 26], Niagara Regional Police confirmed that with the assistance of Toronto Police, 22-year-old Christopher Lucas — who cops said was also known as ‘El Plaga,’ was arrested and charged with the shocking deaths.
He faces two counts of first-degree murder and was to appear for a video bail hearing in St. Catharines on Thursday.
On Jan. 19, during a birthday bash at a chalet-styled home along the Niagara Parkway, 20-year-old Windsor resident Juliana Pannunzio and 18-year-old Christine Crooks, of Toronto, were shot.
Someone called 911 and police arrived to find the women dead.
Detectives previously released video surveillance images of the party in an attempt to identify some of the unknown guests who attended.
A $100,0000 reward was also offered for information leading to the arrests of the perpetrator.

There’s a birthday party. Two women get shot to death. Everybody leaves the party before cops show up. An aspiring rapper is arrested.

You will perhaps not be surprised to learn that Christopher Lucas had previously been arrested in 2016 for attempted murder and 22 other charges including assault with a weapon, robbery with a firearm and possession of crack cocaine. Meanwhile, in Colchester, England:

Two men who launched a vicious knife attack on an aspiring rapper and young father after smashing down his front door have been convicted of murder.
Alinjavwa Siwale, 22, was stabbed and died in the kitchen of his Colchester home while his younger brother Suwi frantically cried out for help.
Chelmsford Crown Court heard Phoenix Lee, 20, and Sheldon McKay, 25, carried out a swift attack “lasting less than two minutes” shortly after midnight on December 11 last year.
CCTV footage captured the pair approaching the front of the house the Siwale brothers shared in Affleck Road, on Colchester’s Greenstead estate.
Lee took a short run up before kicking in the front door, before the pair entered the home.

Sometimes the aspiring rapper is the victim, sometimes the perpetrator, but seldom far from the scene of the crime.

PREVIOUSLY:




 

Category: Aspiring Rapper Update, Canada, Georgia, Great Britain

In The Mailbox: 09.24.21

Posted on | September 25, 2021 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 09.24.21

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Usual weekend deadlines for the usual weekend posts.
Ceterum autem censeo Silicon Valley esse delendam.

OVER THE TRANSOM
357 Magnum: The State Of Education In NYC
EBL: Foundation
Twitchy: “They Said…”, also, Maricopa County Responds To Trump & Others On Leaked Audit Report
Louder With Crowder: Brits Heckle Nancy Pelosi – “Go Back To Epstein’s Pedo Island”
Vox Popoli: Suvorov Was Right, also, How To Beat COVID
According To Hoyt: Disjointed Observations, also, Spoiled Children
Monster Hunter Nation: WriterDojo Episode 6 – Genre
Stoic Observations: My Pronoun

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: Is There One Godly Priest In Melbourne?
American Conservative: The COVID Vaccine Pass Slippery Slope
American Greatness: An American Horror Story, also, Arizona Audit Finds Over 50,000 Illegal Votes
American Thinker: The Killing Fields Of Utopia, also, The Fraud Behind “Missing White Woman Syndrome”
Animal Magnetism: Rule Five Done With Democrats Friday
Babalu Blog: Cuban Province With The Most Cows Produces Only Eight Liters Of Milk Per Cow, also, AMLO’s Love & Affection For The Cuban Communist Regime Not Felt By All Mexicans
BattleSwarm: LinkSwarm For September 24
Behind The Black: Today’s Blacklisted American, also, Union Lobbyists Want To Influence Biden Against Non-Union SpaceX
Cafe Hayek: Quotation Of The Day
CDR Salamander: Fullbore Friday
Da Tech Guy: Draft Day Thoughts Under The Fedora
Don Surber: Lose The War, Lose The Presidency, Media Won’t Call Them Peaceful Protests This Time, and “Vaccinated Up The Wazoo” Two On The View Get COVID
First Street Journal: Something The Credentialed Media Don’t Seem To Like, also, Killadelphia
The Geller Report: Muslim Tries To Storm Cockpit On Jet Blue Flight, also, Jew-Hating Occasional Cortex Cries After House Overwhelmingly Votes For Iron Dome Funding
Hogewash: Team Kimberlin Post of The Day, An Einstein Ring, and Forget It Jake, It’s Maryland
Hollywood In Toto: Failing Up – Low-Rated Full Frontal With Samantha Bee Gets Renewed, also, Dear Evan Hansen Crushes Broadway Show’s Spirit
The Lid: Marco Rubio Introduces Bill To Hold Companies Accountable For Woke Policies
Legal Insurrection: Administration Still Pushing Whip Lie To Distract From Disastrous Border Policy Failure, also, 
White Male Students In “Multicultural Space” Told Their Presence Is Offensive
Nebraska Energy Observer: Friday, Finally, And Some Maybe Good News
Outkick: Early Numbers Suggest First Take Viewers Not Keen On Kellerman Getting The Boot, also, LSU Star Stingley Questionable For SEC Opener
Power Line: Joe Biden, Tax Evader? also, Who’s Whippin’ Who – Tentative Finale
Shark Tank: Murphy Votes for “Womens’ Health Protection Act”
Shot In The Dark: Innumeracy, also, Coattails 
The Political Hat: When Your Gender Both Is & Isn’t Fluid, also, Firing Line Friday – Are Public Schools Necessary?
This Ain’t Hell: Valor Friday, also, Local Pastor Touches Boy At Bus Stop – Boy’s Father “Renders Judgment”
Victory Girls: 1/6 Committee Subpoenas Trump Allies, also, Chris Cuomo Now On Harassment Hot Seat
Volokh Conspiracy: Can Cooper v. Aaron Save Roe v. Wade?
Weasel Zippers: “Life Is Always Full Of Tough Choices”, also, “We Don’t Use The Term ‘Illegal Immigrants'”
The Federalist: Biden’s Border Policy Is Sheer Horses**t, also, DeSantis Scores 3,000 More COVID Treatments For Florida After Biden Cuts Allocations To Red States
Mark Steyn: We Have Met The Enemy, Part XXI

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Category: Linkagery

Seattle: Mecca of White Guilt Syndrome

Posted on | September 24, 2021 | Comments Off on Seattle: Mecca of White Guilt Syndrome

Why is Primila Jayapal a member of Congress?

Radical Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) broke “into tears” Wednesday while pleading with President Biden to include amnesty into the $3.5 trillion reconciliation package.
During Biden’s attempt to resolve the Democrat infighting over the his tax and spend measures, Jayapal cried in front of the President of the United States to sway his emotions towards allowing millions of illegal immigrants amnesty. Jayapal used her story as a “selling point,” Jayapal’s spokesperson Chris Evans confirmed to Politico.
“She said, ‘I’m the first South Asian woman ever elected to the House … and one of only two dozen immigrants in Congress … as an immigrant woman of color, I just want to share my perspective,” Evans explained. “She has a unique story as an immigrant — but also coming at 16, and to be sitting at the White House delivering what would be a transformational investment in social programs, it will be a moment she will remember forever.”
Unfortunately for Jayapal’s sob story, the Senate parliamentarian ruled Senate precedent would not allow amnesty measures to be included in the reconciliation package. The parliamentarian stated a number of non-fiscal impacts would result from including amnesty into the giant package, which opposes the budgetary purpose of using the tactic of reconciliation in the first place.
“Senate rules never contemplated a majority circumventing the filibuster by pretending that sweeping and transformational new policies were mere budgetary changes,” Sen. Mitch McConnell wrote in a statement after the ruling.

You see that Jayapal’s agenda is about destroying all American institutions and traditions, and what does she care about the filibuster?

When I first saw the headline about Jayapal’s tearful plea for amnesty, the question occurred: What district does she represent? She was elected in 2016 to replace retiring Democratic Rep. Jim McDermott in the 7th District of Washington state, which includes Seattle. According to Wikipedia, the 7th District “is the most Democratic district in the Pacific Northwest and the most Democratic district on the West Coast outside the San Francisco Bay Area or Los Angeles. It is also the most Democratic majority-white district in the United States” (emphasis added).

Three-quarters of the residents of the 7th District are white, but such is their liberal guilt about their whiteness that they felt only an immigrant woman could be qualified to represent them in Congress.

The politics of White Guilt Syndrome have always fascinated me, simply because I have no such guilt plaguing my conscience. All this progressive chatter about “white privilege” does nothing except inspire me to sarcastic laughter, knowing that I’m but one generation removed from the ubiquitous poverty of Depression-era rural Alabama. And certainly it’s not as if I’m living in the lap of luxury today. One must be higher up the socioeconomic ladder (or perhaps, further down the long slope of degeneracy) to be the kind of guilt-stricken white liberal who thinks congressional seats should be filled on the basis of affirmative action.

White Guilt Syndrome is a luxury, a status display marker, by which wealthy white people exhibit their presumed moral superiority. The median household income in Seattle is $92,263, so I reckon they can afford this 21st-century noblesse oblige, but it’s out of my price range.




 

Category: Congress, Washington State

In The Mailbox: 09.23.21

Posted on | September 23, 2021 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 09.23.21

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Silicon Valley delenda est.
OVER THE TRANSOM
Red Pilled Jew: The Jab & Kids – Introducing PROJECT DREAD
McG’s Tally Book: The Rot
EBL: Al Harrington, RIP, also, Senate Wild Card – Krysten Sinema

Twitchy: A “Devastating Timeline Of Woke Nonsense,” also, “Your Hatred Of Jews Is Showing”
Louder With Crowder: Doocy Asks Bad Orange Woman – Why Should Texans Risk COVID From Illegals & Joe’s Border Crisis?
Vox Popoli: Is Plan B In Effect?, Angelo Codevilla RIP, and Comfort, Chaos, & Conservatives

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: Let America Die
American Conservative:
American Greatness: Soros-Funded Group Sends Letter To FCC Calling For Murder Of Republicans, also, Biden Regime Suspends Border Patrol Mounted Unit Over Already Debunked #FakeNews
American Power: Murder Rates Still Up In 2021, also, Biden’s (In)competence
American Thinker: The Great Reset & COVID, also, What Will Democrats Do About The Maricopa County 2020 Election Audit?
Animal Magnetism: Animal’s Daily Wrong Way News
Babalu Blog: How The Cuban Regime Uses GAESA To Capture Remittances & Launder Money, also, Statues Of Fidel Castro & Che Guevara In Mexico Vandalized 
BattleSwarm: Could Red China’s House Of Cards Finally Collapse?
Behind The Black: Today’s Blacklisted Americans, also, Fired Flight Director Accuses Virgin Galactic Of Lying About Problems On July Suborbital Flight
Cafe Hayek: Human Intolerance Is Never Far Below The Surface, also, What’s To Blame?
CDR Salamander: Want More VLS Cells West of Wake Before 2030? This Is The Way
Da Tech Guy: O’Toole Pulls A Romney & Loses In Canada, also, People Around The World Beginning To Rise Up Against COVID Restrictions & Jab Mandates
Don Surber: Pence! May Be The Next Jeb!, NYT Blames Trump For Biden’s Failure, and Biden’s Jab Mandate Cost Him Black Support
First Street Journal: Killadelphia, also, Journolism
The Geller Report: Now We Know Why Administration Hid 1/6 Videos From Americans, also, “Ballot Trafficking Will Soon Be Exposed On A Major Scale” In AZ, GA, MI, PA, & WI
Hogewash: Team Kimberlin Post of The Day, Cui Bono? and An Infographic
Hollywood In Toto: Jeff Daniels Decries Systemic Racism While Ignoring Racist Attack On Larry Elder, also, Eleven Hilarious Responses To Late Night’s “Climate Night” Programming
The Lid: The Iron Dome Fight & Anti-Israel Democrats – It’s Not Just The Squad
Legal Insurrection: HHS Documents Reveal Unaccompanied Illegal Kids Suffered Sexual & Physical Abuse, also, Independent Voter Support For Biden Craters To 37% In New Gallup Poll
Nebraska Energy Observer: Come From Away
Outkick: Off The Top Rope! WWE Mocks Woke Mob With Controversial New Superstar, Former Buckeye Receiver Who Voted To Impeach Trump Won’t Run For Reelection, and In Mid-Season Form – Fired Up Nick Saban Snaps At Reporters
Power Line: Is Xi Reviving Maoism? also, Who’s Whippin’ Who, Cont’d
Shark Tank: Rep. Carlos Guillermo Smith Abandons “Latinx” Label
Shot In The Dark: Darn Those Science-Denying Trumpkins! also, RIP Property Rights?
The Political Hat: Academic MiniTru – Decolonizing Curricula, Revising History, & Woke Propaganda
This Ain’t Hell: Stolen Valor By Super Bowl Ring Thief, Honorable Discharge For Military Jab Refusers Strongly Opposed, and Army’s Chief PAO Sacked After 97% Negative Climate Survey
Transterrestrial Musings: Dairy Fat, also, Defensive Gun Use
Victory Girls: Lawyers, Guns, & Money – How School Boards Wield Power Around Mask Mandates
Volokh Conspiracy: NYT Botches The History Of Budget Conflicts & Government Shutdowns
Weasel Zippers: Biden May Owe As Much As $500,000 In Back Taxes, Sinema May Leave Dems, Run As Independent, and Over 600,000 Illegals Released Into U.S. Since Biden Took Office
The Federalist: Packed College Football Stadiums Will End The Pandemic, also, The Labor Shortage Isn’t Just Closing Small Businesses, It’s Shattering Retirement Plans
Mark Steyn: #MeTooing The G-Spotters, also, Live Around The Planet

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Category: Linkagery

Everybody Loves the $3.5 Trillion Boondoggle, Says Nancy Pelosi’s Pollster

Posted on | September 23, 2021 | Comments Off on Everybody Loves the $3.5 Trillion Boondoggle, Says Nancy Pelosi’s Pollster

Nancy Pelosi’s massive spending bill is very popular, according to no less an authority on public opinion than . . . Nancy Pelosi:

New Poll: Overwhelming Majority of Americans
Support Build Back Better Act
An overwhelming majority of Americans, independents, and even four-in-ten Republicans back President Biden and House Democrats’ plan to cut taxes for the middle class, lower costs for working families, create more jobs, and sustain economic growth for years to come.
New polling from Navigator Research shows high support for the Build Back Better Act with support from:

— 66 percent of Americans
— 61 percent of Independents
— 39 percent of Republicans

Democrats believe we face an urgent choice between keeping an economy that serves the wealthiest and biggest corporations – or finally give middle class families a fair shot. It turns out the American people agree.

Does anyone older than 12 actually believe this? Because it doesn’t take much effort to discover that this poll was published by something called “Navigator Research,” which describes itself thus:

In a world where the news cycle is the length of a tweet, our leaders often lack the real-time public-sentiment analysis to shape the best approaches to talking about the issues that matter the most. Navigator is designed to act as a consistent, flexible, responsive tool to inform policy debates by conducting research and reliable guidance to inform allies, elected leaders, and the press. Navigator is a project led by pollsters from Global Strategy Group and GBAO along with an advisory committee, including: Andrea Purse, progressive strategist; Arkadi Gerney, The Hub Project; Joel Payne, The Hub Project; Christina Reynolds, EMILY’s List; Delvone Michael, Working Families; Felicia Wong, Roosevelt Institute; Mike Podhorzer, AFL-CIO; Jesse Ferguson, progressive strategist; Navin Nayak, Center for American Progress Action Fund; Stephanie Valencia, EquisLabs; and Melanie Newman, Planned Parenthood Action Fund.

GBAO is a firm founded by four Democratic political operatives, while Global Strategy Group “began as a Democratic polling firm operating predominantly in the New York market.” To put it bluntly, everybody involved in this poll is a partisan hack, and here is the question on which the “overwhelming support” numbers are based:

As you may know, President Biden and Democrats have proposed new legislation to provide paid family and medical leave, establish a universal Pre-K program, expand Medicare coverage for seniors to include dental, vision, and hearing coverage, lower health care costs by allowing Medicare to negotiate lower drug prices, provide tax breaks for clean energy, and expand the Child Tax Credit for most families with children. Do you support or oppose this legislation?

In other words, “Do you want the government to give you a bunch of free stuff?” To which everybody answers, “Free stuff? Gimme! Gimme!”

You might get different answers if you asked other questions, such as:

  1. Do you have any fucking clue how much $3.5 trillion is?
  2. Where the hell are we going to get $3.5 trillion to pay for this?
  3. The U.S. national debt is currently $28 trillion. The most recent year the federal government had a balanced budget was 1998. This crazy pile of crap Nancy Pelosi is trying to ram through Congress will permanently bankrupt America. Do you support or oppose this?

Now, some would say that asking such questions might be somewhat biased, but is it any more biased than Nancy Pelosi’s poll asking people if they want a bunch of free stuff from the government, without even mentioning the disastrous fiscal consequences of this legislation?

Read that Pelosi poll question again — it doesn’t even mention the $3.5 trillion price tag. The idea that policy decisions should be made on the basis of such dishonest polling by partisan hacks is insane.




 

Category: Budget, Nancy Pelosi, Polls

In The Mailbox: 09.22.21

Posted on | September 23, 2021 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 09.22.21

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Silicon Valley delenda est.

OVER THE TRANSOM
Red Pilled Jew: Rome, Er, America
Ninety Miles From Tyranny: The 90 Miles Mystery Box, Episode #1483
357 Magnum: How Close Is Too Close With A Knife?
EBL: Cry Macho, also, Angelo Codevilla RIP
Twitchy: Judge Orders Prosecution To Release New Collection Of 1/6 Capitol Surveillance Videos, also, The New Yorker – “We Could Have Been Canada”
Louder With Crowder: Australian Construction Workers Rise Up Against Lockdown Restrictions
Vox Popoli: The Devil’s Children Fear Xi, They’re Not On Our Side, and A Belated Admission
Gab News: The Beginnings Of A New Parallel Economy On Gab

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: Is It Time To Break Zee Rules? (Asking For A Friend)
American Conservative: The GOP Needs To Stop Funding An Unaccountable Military, also, From Marshall To Milley
American Greatness: The Bidenization Of America, also, Zombie Sheep Masking Kids
American Power: Iowa Poll – Nearly Two-Thirds Can’t Stand Biden, also, Democrats In Danger
American Thinker: Repeal The 17th Amendment, also, Can Xi Jinping Defeat Biden-Led America?
Animal Magnetism: Animal’s Hump Day News
Babalu Blog: Cuban Dissidents Planning Massive Peaceful Protest On 11/20, also, Ongoing Blackouts – The Story That Never Ends In Cuba
BattleSwarm: Is Austin Homeless Funding A Conduit For Democrat Party Graft?
Behind The Black: Today’s Blacklisted American, also, NASA Reorganizing Manned Program Bureaucracy
Cafe Hayek: Quotation Of The Day
CDR Salamander: Budget War Warning
Da Tech Guy: Stacy McCain Explains A Fact Of Life, Liberals Vs. The Left, and Why The GOP & Professional Conservatives Aren’t Down With The FJB Chants
Don Surber: How Republicans Could Take The Senate This Year, also, W Campaigns For Cheney’s Brat
First Street Journal: This Is Why We Need The First Amendment, also, When It Comes To Murder The Philadelphia Inquirer Is More Concerned About Cute Little White Girls
The Geller Report: GOP Reps File Articles Of Impeachment Against Biden, also, American Troops’ Rage At Their Leaders Grows 
Hogewash: Team Kimberlin Post of The Day, A War Story, and It’s Never Their Fault
Hollywood In Toto: Media Wake Up, Realize That Comedy Is Crumbling In Our Woke Age, also, Was Monica Lewinsky The First Cancel Culture Victim?
The Lid: Hundreds Of Navy SEALs Threatened With Dismissal For Refusing The Jab
Legal Insurrection: Indian Tribe Wants Myles Standish’s Name Removed From Boston University Dorm, also, The Revolution Is Swarming But Can Be Defeated
Nebraska Energy Observer: Lupus Tenebrosus, Chapter 7
Outkick: COVID Rates Down Across The SEC Since College Football Season Started, Stephen A. Smith Still Kicking Max Kellerman While He’s Down, and CFP Expansion Discussions On Hold
Power Line: Biden’s Aides Won’t Let Him Speak, also, Life Imitates Clueless
Shark Tank: Gaetz Backs Luna, Brushes Off Makki
Shot In The Dark: More, Faster, also, Priorities
STUMP: Spanish Flu Vs. Corona-chan – Comparing The Numbers, Forgetting The Lessons 
The Political Hat: Clown Cop Cars
This Ain’t Hell: Space Force News – New Uniforms & Enlisted Insignia, FBI Director Seeks New Opportunity As Captain Obvious, and Student With 0.62 GPA Ranked 62nd Out Of 120 Graduating Students
Transterrestrial Musings: The Biden Administration
Victory Girls: Trump Sues, Niece, NYT Over Tax Records Story
Volokh Conspiracy: Things Are Getting Messy
Weasel Zippers: AOC & The Squad Force Pelosi To Cut $1 Billion For Israel’s Iron Dome From Spending Bill, also, Black Republican Running For Nevada Lt. Gov. Dragged Out Of COVID Meeting & Beaten
The Federalist: #BLM Threatens An “Uprising” Against “Racist” Jab Mandates, also, Remote Learning Killed The Myth Of Unsocialized Homeschooled Kids
Mark Steyn: Chimeras, Cleavage, & Bounced Czechs

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Joy Reid Is … Right?

Posted on | September 22, 2021 | Comments Off on Joy Reid Is … Right?

Nearly all my fellow conservatives are shrieking in anger at MSNBC’s Joy Reid for saying something that is actually true: There is such a thing as “Missing White Woman Syndrome,” and we ought to call it out when — as in the case of Gabby Petito — it dominates the news cycle:

MSNBC host Joy Reid turned to race Monday while discussing the media’s coverage of missing 22-year-old Gabby Petito, dismissing the focus on the case as “missing White woman syndrome.”
During a segment on her show “The ReidOut,” Reid said while Petito’s family deserved “answers and justice,” she felt the same media attention didn’t apply to non-White people when they go missing.
“It goes without saying that no family should ever have to endure that kind of pain. And the Petito family certainly deserves answers and justice,” Reid said. “But the way this story has captivated the nation has many wondering, why not the same media attention when people of color go missing?”
“Well, the answer actually has a name: Missing White woman syndrome. The term coined by the late and great Gwen Iffil to describe the media and public fascination with missing White women like Laci Peterson or Natalee Holloway, while ignoring cases involving missing people of color,” she added, referencing two well-known cases of missing women.

Yes — Natalee Holloway, whose disappearance gave Greta Van Susteren a permanent excuse to travel to Aruba for “reporting” the case.

Besides affording TV reporters a pretext for traveling to the Caribbean — “Oh, please, boss, don’t send me to that tropical island again!” — the Natalee Holloway case offered story elements that no elderly woman can resist (a) mystery and (b) a villain. Basically, it was an updated Agatha Christie novel, catnip for the post-menopausal audience that loves murder mysteries. Joran van der Sloot was the presumed villain of this tale, and all those suspicious little old ladies knew, deep in their lascivious little hearts, that the missing blonde teenager had been savagely RAPED before she was murdered by the Dutch villain.

That’s the thing about a Missing White Woman story — the damsel-in-distress angle only works, in terms of TV news ratings, if the missing woman is young and attractive, preferably blonde. Males can and do go missing, but those disappearances never dominate national news. It’s always a woman, and a young, attractive woman — if she’s old, fat or ugly, nobody cares if she goes missing. But the nubile blonde? Oh, yeah, that’s nationwide headline stuff, because she’s Prime Rape Bait, and sex is the secret ingredient in the Missing White Woman story.

Beyond the cynical calculations of ratings-hungry TV news producers, however, what’s really wrong with Missing White Woman Syndrome is not the kind of “social justice” concerns Joy Reid is talking about. No, what’s wrong is that it feeds the public’s distorted ideas about crime.

How many people are murdered in America annually? Nearly 14,000 in 2019, according to the FBI, and about 78% of the victims were male. In terms of statistical risk, then, males were nearly four times more likely to be murdered than women, but how many of those murdered men become national news? Not many. And how many murder victims are white? About 5,800 in 2019 — 42% of the total — whereas blacks were 54% of the total murders. There were 1,759 white women murdered in 2019 — 12.6% of the total, according to the FBI — compared to 6,446 black males, 46.3% of the total. So the death of Gabby Petito was anomalous, a comparative rarity in the overall crime situation in America.

A blonde, blue-eyed “social media influencer” is not typical of murder victims, who are disproportionately male and black. During the month of August, when Gabby and her boyfriend were on their excursion across the West, 87 people were killed and 424 were wounded in Chicago. Did any of those Chicago victims make national news? Well, about 83% of the victims in Chicago were black, and none were blonde, blue-eyed 22-year-old “social media influencers.” Not newsworthy, you see?

The selectivity of the news media in deciding which murders deserve national attention is a sort of bias that most people never notice. Why does the death of one black in police custody become a cause célèbre, while the vast majority of murdered black men — about 125 a week, on average — never get any national media attention? Because the death of George Floyd fit a specific political narrative. And why does the disappearance of a blonde girl with an Instagram account get hourly updates on the cable-news networks? Because it’s a convenient distraction from the disastrous failure of Joe Biden’s presidency.

Think about it. During the four years of Trump’s presidency, was there any case of a Missing White Woman that got this kind of attention?

Think of something else — what happened to all the black guys getting killed by cops? Did that just stop happening on January 20? It’s almost as if the media’s concern about black victims of police violence was just ginned up to help Democrats win the election. But that can’t be — these are professional journalists, after all, and we can trust them. Right?




 

Category: Crime, Media Bias
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