FMJRA 2.0: Indians Scalped!

Posted on | May 25, 2025 | Comments Off on FMJRA 2.0: Indians Scalped!

What a wild week! The Senators went to the Mistake By The Lake to face the Tribe, against whom we were 2-4, and managed a sweep. The bullpen saved us in Games 1 & 2, with Steve Foucault and Charlie Hough notching the wins, and Spaceman Lee returned to form in Game 3, outdueling Mickey Lolich for his 13th win. It dodn’t go so well against the Royals at home. Joe Coleman lost the opener because we couldn’t buy a hit off Bert Blyleven, but Carl Morton gave us hope in Game 2 by blanking the Royals as Dave “Kong” Kingman led the offense by blasting two homers off Mike Cuellar. Unfortunately, in Game 3 Blue Moon Odom failed us again, coughing up three runs in the 4th, and the bullpen made it worse, giving up another six runs for a 9-1 blowout by the Royals. Still, that left us 4-2 for the week, tied for second with the Red Sox at 60-64 and 6.5 games behind the Brewers. Unfortunately, Charlie Hough ran out of innings, which means we won’t have our best right-handed reliever for the final 38 games, but we’re hoping Foucault and Sells can fill in. Pete gave us a nice writeup this week, and we hope to keep the winning ways going when we face the Braves on Tuesday (we’re 2-1 against him this season) and the Brewers on Friday (4-5 so far).
Usual weekend deadlines for the usual weekend posts.
Ceterum autem censeo Silicon Valley et Hamas delendam sunt.

When Teddy Baseball is happy, everybody’s happy! Have a Moxie!

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Category: FMJRA Award

Blast From the Blogging Past: Saint Pancake and the Anti-Israel Cause

Posted on | May 25, 2025 | 1 Comment

Certainly it is not a coincidence that Elias Rodriguez is being compared to Rachel Corrie and Aaron Bushnell by a slew of social media accounts. When people are part of an activist hive-mind, participating in a propaganda campaign on behalf of a terrorist organization, one does not expect originality in their rhetoric. As I’ve been saying for more than a decade, bad causes attract bad people, and the kind of people who think “solidarity” with Hamas is a good idea . . . Well, they’re not the sharpest tools in the shed. Like a herd of bleating sheep, they mindlessly repeat the same slogans because they’re incapable of more intelligent discourse.

Pro-Hamas terrorist Elias Rodriguez

No need to use “allegedly” here. Elias Rodriguez has admitted he murdered Israeli embassy aides Sarah Milgrim and Yaron Lischinsky — shot them in the back, and kept shooting even after Milgrim, severely wounded, was trying to crawl away. Nor is there any doubt about Rodriguez’s motive. He “did it for Gaza,” he told the cops, and posted an online “manifesto” elaborating on his pro-Hamas beliefs.

February 2024: Aaron Bushnell

To quote myself:

“If you’re a Jew-hating, terrorist-supporting left-wing kook, the kind who likes to scream ‘Free Palestine’ and chant other pro-Hamas slogans, I want to encourage you to emulate Aaron Bushnell.”

Bushnell lit himself on fire in front of the Israeli embassy in Washington, livestreaming it on Twitch after declaring he would “no longer be complicit in genocide.” Brilliant idea. The world would be a better place if all the entire pro-Hamas student protesters at Ivy League universities decided to emulate Bushnell en masse. But what really drew my attention was the people comparing Elias Rodriguez to Rachel Corrie.

In case you’ve forgotten, or perhaps never knew, who Rachel Corrie was, she was a 23-year-old middle-class college kid from Olympia, Washington, who got caught up in post-9/11 “peace” activism. During the Second Intifada, at a time when the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades and other terrorists were blasting Jews to smithereens on a regular basis, Rachel Corrie took up the Palestinian cause, joining a radical “direct action” group called the International Solidarity Movement (ISM). Her radicalization ultimately ended with her death in Rafah, Gaza:

Her fanaticism led Corrie to travel to Gaza in January 2003. Three weeks later, when activists organized an international protest of the impending U.S. invasion of Iraq, Corrie was photographed burning a hand-drawn fascimile of the U.S. flag, her face distorted by rage, while dozens of Palestinian children watched. . . .
So it was that, on March 16, 2003, Rachel Corrie joined six other ISM activists in a “direct action” against the Israeli military. The Israelis were destroying terrorist bases and smuggling tunnels in Gaza, an operation that ISM attempted to thwart. The circumstances of Corrie’s death have been mired in controversy for years, but there is no argument that she positioned herself in the path of an Israeli bulldozer and was fatally crushed.

Immediately, the anti-Israel propagandists seized on Corrie’s death to portray her as a martyr, and commenters at the Little Green Footballs blog responded by mocking her as “Saint Pancake.”

“The Holy Church of St. Pancake”https://t.co/Q44Bb4ax7z

— The Patriarch Tree (@PatriarchTree) May 23, 2025

Do you know what I mean by the phrase “institutional memory”? Back when I was in the newspaper business, every newsroom had some old guys who’d been there 15 or 20 years, who could help provide guidance to the new hires. This was before you could research stuff with computers, and you had to go plowing through archives in what was called the “morgue” if you wanted to look up the background on a story. Old-timers in the newsroom were a repository of institutional memory, because they could show you the “shortcuts” (so to speak) in this kind of research.

A major problem in the 21st-century communication environment is a deficit of institutional memory. There are so many people out there blabbering away on social media — and, indeed, “professional journalists” at major news organizations — who don’t know a damned thing about what happened 15 or 20 years ago. Still fewer are those who, like me, are old enough to have watched the Six-Day War on TV news as it happened. Unless you’re my age or older, you can’t have that kind of direct historical knowledge, and you’re certainly unlikely to know the background of the so-called “Palestinian” cause. To put it bluntly, Yasser Arafat was the Fidel Castro or Ho Chi Minh of the Middle East, at a time when the Soviet Union’s geopolitical strategy was focused on sponsoring “wars of national liberation” in the Third World. Almost none of the journalists and commentators on the current situation in the Middle East are old enough to understand this Cold War background, which is a major reason why latter-day Communists — literally, I mean Communists — are able to deceive so many idiots into supporting Hamas terrorists.

The recent death of David Horowitz has deprived us of a valuable source of institutional memory on all this. Among his contributions to the cause of freedom was starting a site called Discover the Networks, a database about left-wing organizations and individuals that is extremely useful to anyone researching the Left. For example, Discover the Networks can tell you all about the Workers World Party (WWP) and its splinter, the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL), both of which are connected to International ANSWER (“Act Now to Stop War and End Racism”).

David Horowitz also created Front Page Magazine, where Daniel Greenfield describes Elias Rodriguez as a “Communist terrorist,” pointing out Rodriguez’s known association with PSL and ANSWER.

“This was a Communist #terrorism attack in support of Muslim terrorists.”-@Sultanknish

Communist Terrorist Kills Engaged Couple Outside Israeli Embassy https://t.co/j1tCxfxrqA

— ImaZionist (@ImaZionist) May 22, 2025

We could follow this chain of connections further, to include Code Pink co-founder Jodie Evans:

From 2017-2022, Evans and [her husband] Neville Roy Singham together served as the two principal funders of The People’s Forum, a New York-based organization describing itself as a “movement incubator for working class and marginalized communities to build unity across historic lines of division at home and abroad.” During that period, the couple — through an array of shell organizations and donor advisory groups — gave more than $20.4 million to The People’s Forum, a sum that accounted for almost all of the funding which the organization received.

Here’s the connection to Elias Rodriguez:

The suspected terrorist charged with gunning down two Israeli embassy workers in Washington Wednesday is associated with radical socialist groups funded by the far-left Chinese sympathizer, millionaire Neville Singham and his activist wife Jodie Evans.
Elias Rodriguez, 31, who allegedly confessed to killing the couple outside the Capital Jewish Museum and chanted “free, free Palestine!” was part of that network through his association with the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL), a Communist political organization that has fielded presidential candidates since 2008.
In 2018, Rodriguez also raised $240 in a GoFundMe campaign to join the March to Fight Poverty in Washington DC and took part in demonstrations and protests around Chicago as a member of the ANSWER coalition around 2017 and 2018, another radical socialist group, according to the Anti-Defamation League.
Both the PSL and ANSWER Coalition are connected to People’s Forum – a Manhattan-based non-profit which has ties to the Chinese Communist Party – through funding from Singham, 71.
All three groups have been involved in anti-Israel protests, with the People’s Forum having a cadre of operatives embedded at Columbia University — an epicenter of protest — according to previous reports.
The People’s Forum received more than $20 million in grants from Singham, much of it filtered through the Goldman Sachs Philanthropy Fund, a fiscal sponsor, as The Post has previously reported.
Another group, the Bronx Antiwar Coalition is also connected to groups in Singham’s orbit. The Bronx group applauded the murders of the Israeli diplomats on X Thursday.
“What Elias Rodriguez did is the highest expression of anti-Zionism,” a tweet from the group proclaimed.
The Bronx Anti-War Coalition was founded by Dee Knight, a radical socialist and pro-China activist, who has worked with People’s Forum, according to reports. . . .
“The People’s Forum… and ANSWER Coalition serve as the conduit through which [Chinese Communist Party]-affiliated entities have effectively co-opted pro-Palestinian activism in the US, advancing a broader anti-American, anti-democratic, and anti-capitalist agenda,” according to [the National Contagion Research Institute].

These people are literally Communists, like I said, but kids nowadays don’t know enough about history to understand what’s wrong with Communism, which killed 100 million people in the 20th century.

Institutional memory matters, and I hope y’all remember yesterday’s post, in which I explained why I’m rattling the tip jar this weekend — just $5 or $10 would help — and ended with the familiar reminder that the Five Most Important Words in the English Language are:

HIT THE FREAKING TIP JAR!

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Joseph Javonte Washington Was Shot by a Cop and (Perhaps Unfortunately) Survived

Posted on | May 24, 2025 | 2 Comments

If he lives long enough to get out of prison when his sentence expires in 2055, Joseph Javonte Washington will be 60 years old. The taxpayers of Minnesota can do their own cost-benefit analysis in this matter, but a former police officer nearly saved them that cost — and got fired for it.

I’ve watched enough YouTube videos of officer-involved shootings in the past few years that I could probably qualify as an expert witness on the subject by now. Many times, there’s not much to learn from such videos — like, what part of “drop the knife” do I have to explain? At least 90% of the time a suspect gets shot by a cop, there’s no doubt that the shooting was justified, and the deceased criminal is such a menace to society that nothing of value was lost in incident. However, the case of Joseph Javonte Washington is highly instructive in several ways, because (a) he’s a vile monster, but (b) was unarmed when the cop shot him, however (c) he survived the shooting and (d) the cop got fired before the completion of the investigation which (e) found the shooting was justified.

OK, maybe it’s a stretch to say that the investigation found the shooting of Washington was “justified,” but no charges were filed against the officer, and when you consider that this decision was made by Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison — yeah, if he could have prosecuted the cop, he certainly would have done it. There are a lot of interesting factors involved in this case, including the fact that Joseph Javonte Washington was stark naked when he got shot, so I’m gonna break it down pretty thoroughly — right after this brief word from our sponsor . . .

Say hello to the Big Yellow Button. Every once in a while, as a service to those readers who might be suffering visual impairment, I super-size the PayPal button, just in case you didn’t notice it before. Also, I rattle the tip jar like this when I find myself in need of some extra cash, which hasn’t been very often lately, as the day job’s been pretty good to me. However, with Fourth of July just a few weeks away, and my fireworks addiction being a monkey on my back, I’m kind of in a bind. Must I approach my dear wife and ask, “Honey, the fireworks store has a buy-one-get-one-free special for Memorial Day weekend, do you mind if I blow a couple hundred dollars?” Because we just got back from our trip to Michigan and Wisconsin for our kids’ graduations, and that wasn’t exactly cheap.

Anyway, to rescue me from that dilemma, readers are invited to chip in whatever they can — just $5 or $10 would help — and thanks in advance. Meanwhile, back to this police shooting in Minnesota . . .

St. Paul ‘community advocate’ Toshira Garraway

It was November 2020, barely six months after George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis touched off nationwide riots, when Joseph Javonte Washington was shot by a cop in neighboring St. Paul:

“No justice no peace, prosecute the police,” and “no good cops in a racist system” were among the chants heard last Friday, Dec. 4 as over 100 people marched down University Avenue in St. Paul demanding former St. Paul cop Anthony Dean be criminally charged following his November 28 shooting of Joseph Javonte Washington.
Washington was naked and unarmed at the time of the shooting and appeared to be experiencing some kind of mental crisis. Dean was fired within days of the shooting by St. Paul Police Chief Todd Axtell.
On the same day, Ramsey County Attorney John Choi referred the case to Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison. . . .
“This is not about what happened prior to the incident,” said Toshira Garraway in a speech to the crowd, referring to Washington’s assault on his girlfriend prior to his confrontation with the police. “Police should not add to our pain. They say they are fighting crime, but they are committing crimes.”

Fortunately, this inflammatory rhetoric didn’t incite any rioting because, even in a hotbed of liberalism like St. Paul, most people have enough common sense to consider that maybe it really was “about what happened prior to the incident,” as Ms. Garraway phrased it.

What happened was heinous enough that Washington won’t be getting out of prison for another 30 years, and even Keith Ellison couldn’t find a way to prosecute the cop who shot Washington.

Officer Anthony “Tony” Dean had been previously recognized as a hero:

The St. Paul officer who shot an unarmed man did so “to protect his fellow officers and himself” and because he had information that the suspect “claimed to have a gun and had used a knife earlier that evening in a violent assault and rape,” his attorney said Wednesday.
Tony Dean, who the police chief has terminated, was an award-winning officer who reached his dream of becoming a cop in his hometown.
Dean, who graduated in 2001 from St. Paul’s Central High School, was a U.S. Marine for eight years and Ramsey County Sheriff’s Office correctional officer before he was hired as a St. Paul officer in 2014. . . .
“Many attempts by law enforcement to de-escalate the situation using a variety of non-lethal methods were unsuccessful and the suspect did not cooperate,” Dean’s attorney, Robert Paule, said in a statement on Wednesday. . . .
Dean, who initially was a St. Paul patrol officer, was assigned to the gang unit since 2018. . . .
The Minnesota American Legion named Dean as officer of the year in 2016 and Axtell gave him the department’s life-saving award for working with other officers to save a woman who was trying to jump from a bridge in April.
Axtell honored Dean and the gang unit at the start of the year, writing in January that they “displayed diligence, teamwork, professionalism and exemplary investigative work over the past few years” in federal prosecutions against more than 50 people related to firearms crimes involving gang members.
“Officer Dean has led an exemplary career as a law enforcement officer, and has received recognition and accolades for his compassion, commitment to community, and his mentorship of youth in St. Paul,” said Paul Kuntz, St. Paul police union president, in a statement Wednesday.

What happened here? Wouldn’t you think that an officer like Tony Dean, who had been praised just a few months before by the chief, would have deserved the benefit of the doubt? But the political climate had been changed by the George Floyd riots, and the police chief . . . Well, I hesitate to criticize the chief too harshly, but when all the facts are considered, Officer Dean deserves an apology. Here I have to give a big tip of the hat to the Midwest Safety YouTube channel, which had to file an appeal with the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA) in order to get access to all the records and video footage in this case.

You can and should watch that entire 20-minute video, because the crimes committed by Joseph Javonte Washington were heinous and, when you look at the situation in its totality — Washington was known to have wielded a knife, yelled to cops that he had a gun, etc. — it’s clear that Officer Dean made the best decision possible. Also, I would point out, Officer Dean didn’t do a “mag dump” on Washington. Once the suspect was down, Officer Dean stopped shooting, which is the only reason the suspect survived. By the way, this was the first time in Officer Dean’s entire career that he ever shot anyone, so it’s not as if he could fairly be accused of being trigger-happy. And wow, the details of Washington’s crimes — “what happened prior to the incident” — are horrific:

A judge handed down a nearly 35-year sentence Tuesday [May 13] to a man who sexually assaulted and kidnapped his girlfriend, after which he was shot by a St. Paul police officer during a manhunt.
Dakota County Judge Dannia Edwards said she agreed with the prosecution’s request for a long sentence because Joseph Javonte Washington livestreamed the sexual assault “for the world to see” and because he assaulted the woman in her Lakeville residence, a place where she should have been safe.
After Washington assaulted the woman in November 2020, he instructed her “to drive him at high speeds from Lakeville to St. Paul,” which she did due to “fear and self-preservation,” Assistant Dakota County Attorney Caitie Prokopowicz wrote in a memo to the court. . . .

(OK, I’m interrupting here to point out that it’s about 30 miles from Lakeville to St. Paul, which fact is relevant.)

Washington, now 35, ran and hid in a dumpster behind a funeral home in St. Paul’s North End.
He yelled from the dumpster that he had a gun. The officer who shot him reported that Washington wasn’t fully facing the officers when he jumped out and he couldn’t tell if he was armed, according to prosecutors.
Washington, who was naked, turned out to be unarmed. . . .
Washington punched the woman in the face, breaking her eye socket. He held a knife to her neck and forced her to perform a sex act on him, Prokopowicz said during the trial. The prosecution also said he caused the vehicle to crash as the woman drove him. . . .
Washington previously filed a federal lawsuit against the city of St. Paul and two officers over his shooting, and the lawsuit is ongoing. The Minnesota Attorney General’s Office reviewed the officer’s shooting and announced in 2021 he would not charge him.

That brief summary barely scratches the surface of what Washington did:

Around 6:30 p.m. Saturday [Nov. 28, 2020], Washington’s ex-girlfriend came home to find him waiting inside her Lakeville apartment.
Washington stole her phone and punched her in the face, knocking her head into a TV stand as she fell on the ground.
For the next hour, Washington dragged her from room to room by the hair, sexually assaulting her while brandishing a knife from her kitchen, charges say. Throughout the assault, Washington used her cellphone to record and livestream videos on Facebook and Snapchat. . . .

(This detail is important: He used her phone to livestream the sexual assault on her Facebook and Snapchat accounts, meaning that all of her followers — friends and family — could see it.)

Eventually, Washington forced the victim into her car and told her to drive, without stopping, through red lights. The car crashed into the fence of a Minnoco service station on Maryland Avenue and Rice Street around 8 p.m., after Washington grabbed the steering wheel.
A naked Washington ran from the car. The victim flagged down a passing motorist for help. . . .

(And now, ladies and gentlemen, the kicker.)

His criminal record includes at least three previous felonies for burglary and illegal possession of a firearm as a minor.

How many “second chances” do criminals deserve? How many times must we read news stories about heinous crimes committed by lifelong habitual felons who probably should have still been behind bars? All things considered — especially with Washington forcing the woman at knifepoint to drive at speeds over 100 mph, running red lights — this could be considered attempted murder. Washington was a clear danger to the community, and yet just four days after the shooting, Chief Axtell announced Officer Dean’s firing at a press conference where the chief played a single 44-second clip of body cameras video:

A St. Paul officer who shot and wounded a Black man who emerged naked from a dumpster while being sought in connection with a sexual assault failed to measure up to department standards, the city’s police chief said.
Chief Todd Axtell said Tuesday at a news conference where he released police bodycam video of the confrontation that he’d taken “swift, decisive and serious action” against the officer, identified by state investigators as Officer Anthony Dean.
Axtell said state law precludes him from releasing details of the action. The Minneapolis Star Tribune and St. Paul Pioneer Press, citing law enforcement sources they did not identify, reported that the officer was fired following Saturday night’s shooting of Joseph Javonte Washington.
“When I asked myself if the officer’s actions on Saturday night were reasonable and necessary,” Axtell said, “the only answer I could come up with is “No.”

Again, I urge you to watch the 20-minute video from Midwest Safety, which contextualizes the incident thoroughly, in a way that could not have been done after a mere four days. And I cannot emphasize enough that the state’s attorney general, a notorious liberal who served in the Obama administration and who is certainly not pro-police, declined to file charges against Officer Dean:

[T]he investigation by the Attorney General’s Office found that Dean had enough facts at the time to reasonably conclude Washington was capable of inflicting great bodily harm or death upon officers or others in the area, and that Dean took action to protect himself and others.
“Officer Dean stated that he could not see Washington’s hands while in the dumpster, which caused him concern given report of a knife and Washington’s assertion he had a gun,” according to the Attorney General’s report.
Dean declined to comment Saturday. But his attorney, Robert Paule, said Dean was “relieved that justice was served in this matter” and called Axtell’s decision to fire his client “a knee-jerk reaction designed to prevent protests in St. Paul rather than a logical, thoughtful decision.”
Leading up to the incident on Nov. 28, Washington’s ex-girlfriend told officers that he had sexually assaulted, kidnapped and held her at knife point before forcing her to drive from Lakeville to St. Paul and crash her car. She said that Washington was high on drugs.
Later that night, officers attempted to coax a naked Washington out of a dumpster he was hiding in behind a funeral home in the North End. Body camera footage shows him suddenly jumping out of the dumpster and rushing at the officers, getting within 3 feet of Sgt. Kathleen Brown, who was leading the negotiations with him. That’s when Dean, who was assigned to cover Brown, shot Washington.
Dean told investigators that Washington had displayed several characteristics that “reasonably implied his use of narcotics and unpredictability.” Those characteristics included being naked in 40-degree temperatures for more than an hour, breaking into a nearby home to steal orange juice, and not being affected by pepper balls that officers shot at the dumpster where he was hiding.
Washington yelled at officers that he had a gun with him in the dumpster, Dean told the Attorney General’s Office. . . .
Dean told investigators he couldn’t see Washington’s hands as he left the dumpster, so he couldn’t verify that he was unarmed. Though the officers gave Washington a clear path to flee, he chose instead to run directly at them — another highly unusual sign that pointed to his unpredictability and potential for violence, Dean said.
Investigators hired use-of-force expert Jeffrey Noble to review the evidence independently and determine whether Dean’s conduct met generally accepted police practices. Noble determined that Dean’s actions were “objectively reasonable and consistent with generally accepted police practices.”
“Based on these objective facts, the State could not disprove that it was reasonable to believe death or great bodily harm could occur without using deadly force,” the Attorney General’s memo concluded.

“Objectively reasonable” — and we don’t know what would have happened if Officer Dean hadn’t shot Washington. As it was, Officer Dean should have been given an award for his excellent marksmanship, considering that he fired four shots at a moving target, at night, scored two hits, and did not hit either the officers nearby or the police K-9 that was involved in trying to take down Washington.

It was August 2021 when AG Ellison announced there would be no charges against Officer Dean, and two months later, in October 2021, Chief Axtell announced that he would retire after 33 years on the force, effective June 2022. As previously stated, I don’t want to criticize Chief Axtell too harshly. As the St. Paul Pioneer Press noted, Axtell’s six-year term as police chief was a long series of crises, and the chief had to walk a tightrope, especially after the George Floyd riots. I think Officer Dean’s lawyer is correct in saying that he was fired in “a knee-jerk reaction designed to prevent protests,” but I would also say that Chief Axtell sincerely believed he was doing the right thing. And frankly, it seems to me that Chief Axtell was psychologically broken by his experiences.

Imagine what it’s like trying to be cop in the capital city of a liberal state like Minnesota. You’re out there putting your life at risk every day, getting paid less than a school teacher (and a lot less than a politician) and the whole time you have to worry you’ll get into some kind of “incident” like this, where the “community advocate” types like Toshira Garraway demand you get fired and prosecuted. Always, it’s problems with The Community™ that make a cop’s life miserable. He is supposed to “serve and protect” The Community™ and yet cannot avoid noticing that many members of The Community™ (including the Toshira Garraway types) hate his guts and would be happy to see him dead.

Chief Axtell did that job for more than 30 years, rising up through the ranks of the St. Paul PD, and somewhere along the way, alas, I think the Woke Mind Virus took hold. Just before his retirement, Chief Atxell gave a long interview to to the local CBS affiliate, and if you watch the whole thing, you’ll hear the chief start talking a lot of progressive jargon about “disparate impact,” which was the point when I stopped watching, because I can’t stand to see a man humiliate himself that way.

It’s a sad thing to see a veteran cop demoralized, and I suspect many police officers in St. Paul were angry at how swiftly Chief Axtell threw Tony Dean under the bus to appease The Community™.

Just one little coda to this story. After the attorney general’s office announced there would be no charges against Officer Dean, we got this pious lecture from an outstanding Community™ member:

Washington’s mother, Tonya Comer, said the officer could have killed her son when he shot him.
“My son was unarmed, he had no weapons and he suffers from a mental health condition,” Comer said Friday. “… I want that police officer charged. … My son is being dragged through the mud for something he didn’t even do.”

Ma’am, your son already had three felony convictions before that night, and he livestreamed the sexual torture of a woman using her own phone. Yet here you are trying to claim “he didn’t even do” it? Portraying him as some kind of victim, making excuses about his “mental health condition,” and demanding that the officer be charged, despite the clear results of the investigation that found the officer did nothing wrong? Why anyone would sign up to “protect and serve” such people is a mystery to me. Some people just don’t deserve good cops, and the entire Community™ in St. Paul, Minnesota, can go straight to hell, for all I care.

* * * * * *

Well, that’s more than 3,000 words, but I figured on a Memorial Day weekend, maybe you had time to read the whole story. Also, because Officer Tony Dean is a Marine Corps veteran, Memorial Day weekend is a good time for remembering that not all heroes wear capes. But I’m not a hero, just a guy who tells stories for a living, and I disclaim any motive other than the one Samuel Johnson bluntly described: “No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money.” That Memorial Day weekend sale at the fireworks store is beckoning me, so once again I ask readers to recall the Five Most Important Words in the English Language:

HIT THE FREAKING TIP JAR!

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Category: Crime, Fireworks, Minnesota

In The Mailbox: 05.23.25

Posted on | May 24, 2025 | 1 Comment

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Usual weekend deadlines for the usual weekend posts.
Ceterum autem censeo Silicon Valley et Hamas delendam sunt.

OVER THE TRANSOM
Director Blue: Andersonville Diary
EBL: North West Mounted Police, Newly Released Footage of Judge Dugan in Wisconsin, and Karoline Leavitt blasts Yamiche Alcindor over denial of the murders of South African white farmers
Twitchy: Vile Unhinged Leftard Rebekah Jones Wishes Death On All Israeli Embassy Staff, Old Video Of Biden Joking About Faking Prostate Cancer To Get Out of the Obama Administration, and Unhinged Tiktok Influencer Guy Christensen Rants In Praise Of Elias Rodriguez
Louder With Crowder: Chicago Mayor melts down over DOJ investigating his racist practices of only hiring Black people, CNN’s Kaitlan Collins Has Nothing To Say After RFK Jr. Calls Out Liberal Media For Demanding You Trust “The Science”, Teen girl forced to change in her car because school demanded (trans) boys be allowed to change in the locker room with her, and To understand his big, beautiful bill, here’s a review of Trump’s classic “The Art of the Deal”
Vox Popoli: MPAI: Even Worse Than You Think, also, People Can Tell It’s AI
According To Hoyt: Tiger, Tiger, Waking Bright, A Tsunami By Any Other Name, Up in the Air, and The Price of The Gift
Monster Hunter Nation: Graveyard of Demons (Audio)
Upstream Reviews: Scales of Injustice
Jim McCoy: The Chooser

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Conservative: The Harvard Institution Stoking Left-Wing Media Bias
American Greatness: Why It Is So Difficult for Trump to Clean Up Biden’s Ukraine Mess
American Thinker: Vaccine Side-Effects – Democrats Lied, Thousands Died, FBI’s Disgraced Comey Peddles Ludicrous ‘8647’ Explanation, and From Blackouts to Breakouts – Trump’s Energy Revolution Begins
Animal Magnetism: Rule Five Cheating in Women’s Sports Friday
BattleSwarm: LinkSwarm For May 24
Behind The Black: SpaceX confirms 9th test flight of Starship/Superheavy now scheduled for May 27, Pentagon official blasts ULA’s slow Vulcan launch pace to Congress, NASA continues to push Biden-era interpretation of Artemis Accords, Astronomers discover another object in an orbit so extreme it reaches the outskirts of the theorized Oort Cloud, and Boeing and Justice Department reach new deal on criminal prosecution for 737-Max crashes
Cafe Hayek: Trump Now Proves That His Tariffs Aren’t A Tool to Bargain Down Tariffs Worldwide, also, Complete Lunacy
CDR Salamander: Fullbore Friday
Da Tech Guy: And in the Alpha Division of the 1973 National League
Don Surber: Make Thomas Massie The Next Liz Cheney
First Street Journal: Apparently I am a “Domestic Violent Extremist”, or so Joe Biden and his minions would have classified me, also, You in not that big a heap o’ trouble, boy!
Gates Of Vienna: The Little Mujahideen Are Learning Fast, also, “The World Health Organization Will Become the Master of the World”
The Geller Report: Backing the Blue: Justice Department Drops Lawsuits Against Police Departments in Minneapolis and Louisville, also, Wisconsin Democrat Judge Sneaks Illegal Immigrant Out of Court While Distracting ICE Agents
Hollywood In Toto: Gig Cancellations Are Totally Out of Control
The Lid: U.S. Supreme Court Sides with Trump on Firing Federal Employees in Independent Agencies
Legal Insurrection: Gene-Editing Breakthrough Saves an Infant with a Rare Disease, “A book written in 1978 was called Harvard Hates America. And it’s still true and people sense it.”, Chapman U. Summons Student Activists to Disciplinary Hearings Following Pro-DEI Protest, DOJ Opens Investigation into Discriminatory Admissions at Thomas Jefferson High in Virginia After Private Lawsuit Failed, and GOP Rep. Elise Stefanik in Dead Heat With Kathy Hochul in Hypothetical NY Governor Race
Outkick: College Football Playoff Format Have SEC And Big Ten Forcing Others To Bend The Knee? No Love Lost – Danica Patrick Says Relationship With Aaron Rodgers Was ‘Emotionally Abusive’, Arkansas Ends Up With Inside-The-Park Home Run After Ole Miss Players Have Brutal Collision In The Outfield, Here’s Your Crash Course In What To Expect From The 109th Running Of The Indianapolis 500, and Karoline Leavitt Makes Her Hot MAGA Girl Debut, Livvy Dunne Chugs Beer & Angel Reese Is The Worst Player Ever
Power Line: They experiment, you die, Stowaway, Madel versus Star Tribune, and Thoughts from the ammo line
Shark Tank: Memorial Day Gas Prices Much Lower In Florida This Year Compared To 2024
Shot In The Dark: Modeled Behavior, also, THAT’s The Reason!
The Political Hat: Light Posting for a Week and a Half
This Ain’t Hell: Fast-attack motorcycle units, A new story about Pershing, Valor Friday, Non-English speaking truck drivers to be removed from US roads, and US Supreme Court precedence already exists regarding birthright citizenship
Transterrestrial Musings: Flight 8 Report
Victory Girls: Who Was Running The White House Under Joe Biden?
Watts Up With That: Michael Mann’s Legal Costs Now Climbing Past $1.1 Million, ICE AGE SOLAR STORM SHOCK, Warming, But Far From Global, NERC’s latest reliability assessment is unreliable, and Trump Admin Backs Red States’ Antitrust Suit Against Financial Titans To ‘Protect Coal’
The Federalist: Judge Says Tariffs Are Authorized By Emergency Powers Act In Win For Trump, Obama Judge Blocks DHS From Revoking Harvard’s Ability To Enroll Foreign Students, ‘Green Energy’ Is Quietly Polluting A Landfill Near You, The Left Can’t Admit The Sexual Revolution Was Harmful Without Admitting Christians Were Right, and Supreme Court Stands By While Lower Courts Carry On Ripping Up The Constitution
Mark Steyn: A New Trump and His Old Enemies

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In The Mailbox: 5.22.25

Posted on | May 23, 2025 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 5.22.25

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Palindrome Day!
Silicon Valley et Hamas delenda sunt.

OVER THE TRANSOM
357 Magnum: Five Months to the End of Windows 10 Support
EBL: A Simple Favor, Sarah Lynn Milgrim, RIP, Big Beautiful Bill passes in House, MAGA No Tax On Tips passes in Senate, and Sally Quinn of the Washington Post accuses Jill Biden of Elder Abuse
Twitchy: St. Louis Official Defends Her Decision Not To Activate Tornado Sirens, Courthouse Video Of Accused Judge Released, and CNN Goes Full Norm MacDonald Interviewing Jewish Witness To DC Murder
Louder With Crowder: JD Vance calls out rogue judges who claim “the American people are not allowed to have what they voted for”, Blue state governor signs law stripping parents of rights over their child’s medical records, Woke mother “rejects” reality, rants that your athletic daughter losing to trans boys teaches her a valuable life lesson, Trump responds to Bruce Springsteen’s anti-American rant as only he can, and Male students were suspended raising complaints of a (trans) girl in their locker room, now there’s video
Vox Popoli: The Gaza War Comes to DC, Calling Out the Media, and It’s Time to Surrender
Toni Airaksinen: Two Israeli Embassy Staff Killed BY Gunman Yelling “Free Palestine”, also, Shooter’s Manifesto – Why Two Young Jews Were Murdered Last Night

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: Pray for Scott Adams
American Conservative: The Gen Z Right Is Pat Buchanan’s Lasting Legacy
American Greatness: Trump and the Welcome Demise of the Neocon Catholic Pontificate
American Thinker: Unmasking the Real Threat to America’s Democracy, also, Can You Be a Trump-Supporter and a Good Christian?
Animal Magnetism: Animal’s Red Thursday News
BattleSwarm: Big? Yes. Beautiful? Not So Much
Behind The Black: Space Force to cut civilian workforce by 14%, also, Perseverance moves on across the barren outer rim of Jezero Crater
Cafe Hayek: Regime Uncertainty and Market Uncertainty, American Manufacturing Is Doing Just Fine (Or At Least Was Through 2024), The Protectionist Is Someone Who Believes, and One of My Favorite Quotations Ever Shared at Cafe Hayek
CDR Salamander: Diversity Thursday
Chicago Boyz: True Colors, also, A Symbol of Hate
Don Surber: Media sides with genocides
First Street Journal: So many who want to “Free Palestine” are willing to shoot unarmed Jews
Gates Of Vienna: The Axe Falls in Nogent-sur-Oise
The Geller Report: Under Democrat Rule, US Officials Delayed Warning Public About Heart Inflammation Risk from COVID Shot
Hollywood In Toto: Live-Action Lilo & Stitch Is No Snow White, This Is One Friendship You’ll Want to End, and The Last Rodeo Lassoes Very Best of Neal McDonough
The Lid: Texas Wins Battle Against Biden’s Woke ‘Pronoun’ and ‘Bathroom’ Orders for Employers
Legal Insurrection: Harvard Researcher Claims the University is ‘Totally Corrupted’, Supreme Court Stays Order Forcing Trump to Reinstate Fired Labor Regulators, Senate Report Alleges that Biden Officials Downplayed Covid Vaccine Myocarditis Risks, FBI Says “Pro-Palestinian” DC Shooter Continued Firing Into Victims As They Were On Ground, and Harvard Loses Ability to Enroll Foreign Students
Matt Taibbi: Should We Keep Sacred Cows Or Slaughter Them?
Outkick: Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese Are Exposing Morons in Sports Media, Like ESPN’s Ryan Clark, We’ve Got Our First Look At Wienermobiles On-Track At Indianapolis Motor Speedway, Watch Angel Reese Put On A Brick Show In Loss To New York Liberty, Red Sox Pitcher Liam Hendriks Says He And His Wife Received Death Threats After Loss To Mets, and Heidi Klum Put A Thong On Then Got Handsy With Her Husband Poolside In Cannes
Power Line: On Left-Wing Terrorism, Your lying eyes, and DC shooting suspect to face death penalty?
Shark Tank: New Petition Law’s Court Hearing Invokes “Rancid Sausage”, “Killing Babies”
Shot In The Dark: Walz 3.0 – Thrash That Poor Crippled Horse
STUMP: President Biden Followed Bad Prostate Cancer Screening Guidelines – Here’s Better Ones
The Political Hat: Quick Takes – Gaia’s Rights Get Moist: Whale Rights; Rivers Are People Too; Unalienable Great Lakes
This Ain’t Hell: Let’s have some fun! The Race is On, Pro Palestine man shoots and kills two Israeli diplomats, Kim watches new Nork warship fall off drydock, and Navy Sailor allegedly makes false bomb report onboard a Hawaiian Airlines flight
Transterrestrial Musings: Harvard, Return To Flight, and News On The Mann Front
Victory Girls: Salon And Incurable Trump Derangement Syndrome
Watts Up With That: EXCLUSIVE: Almost All ‘Extreme’ Temperature Highs in UK Now Being Recorded at Junk Sites with Massive Possible Errors, Virginia: The Front Line between AI and Climate Action, Puerto Rico’s Power Pivot: Trump Admin Ditches Solar Subsidies for Reliable Fossil Fuel Fix, and “We’re not doing that climate change, you know, crud, anymore,”
The Federalist: Filing Alleges Smartmatic Executives Deleted Data, Messages Related To Lawsuit Over Election Reporting, Rogue Judge Blocks Trump Admin From Cleaning Up Education Department, Democrats Don’t Get The Benefit Of The Doubt On Biden’s Health, ‘86,’ Or Anything Else, Trump Debunks Media Denials Of South Africans’ Refugee Claims To Their President’s Face, and CNN Lets Its Anti-Christian Bias Fly With Hit Piece On Pentagon Prayer Service
Mark Steyn: Face Time at the White House, also, Am Yisrael Chai

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In The Mailbox: 05.21.25

Posted on | May 22, 2025 | 1 Comment

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Silicon Valley et Hamas delenda sunt.

OVER THE TRANSOM
EBL: Cheers | Every Time Norm Peterson Enters the Bar, “Original Sin” Fake Tapper gets grilled by Megyn Kelly, and Trump plays video for South African president showing proof of genocide claims
Twitchy: The Atlantic – “Sure, We Lied To You, But You Didn’t Believe Us, Did You?”, Two Jewish Diplomats Shot & Killed At Museum Event In DC, and Nancy Pelosi’s Infamous Words Come Back To Bite Her
Louder With Crowder: Bernie Sanders admits out loud what we all know, Donald Trump DEFENDS Joe Biden against the people who controlled the Biden WH, Megyn Kelly shuts down Jake Tapper’s attempt to rewrite history, Democrat rep brags about bullying ICE and local police with her “girl squad”, and We’re not sure what’s worse in this CNN clip
Vox Popoli: Peter Turchin’s Substack, The Divisions Survive, Big Fun Needs a Remix, and They Knew the Vaxx was Bad
Upstream Reviews: Not That Kind of Good Guy
Cedar Sanderson: Joys of Beauty
The Bugscuffle Gazette: Bloody Amazon

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Conservative: Horrified Democrats Discover the Imperial Presidency
American Greatness: Congress Needs to Fix Trump’s Tax Bill to Protect Small Businesses
American Thinker: Democrats’ Confederacy of Dunces
Animal Magnetism: Animal’s Hump Day News
BattleSwarm: Ukraine Hits Another Russian Semiconductor Fab
Behind The Black: China reports discovery of new microbe on its Tiangong-3 space station, Astronomers detect evidence of exoplanet in weird orbit, China launches six satellites, South Africa courts Starlink; Musk says no, and Fish & Wildlife has expanded its regulatory rule to every tree in much of the U.S.
Cafe Hayek: Historically, Large Tariff Hikes Have NOT Been Good Politics in the United States
CDR Salamander: OK, So It Wasn’t A Special Reason For The DDG
Chicago Boyz: Real or Mythical? America’s Past Golden Age
Da Tech Guy: Just Because We Lied to You About What You Saw With Your Own Eyes on Joe Biden Doesn’t Mean You Should Believe Your Own Eyes on South Africa Says MSM
Dana Loesch: Biden’s Cancer Cover-Up Leads To A Constitutional Crisis, also, The Resurrection Of Big-Spending Pre-Tea Party Republicanism Has Begun
Don Surber: Mr. Trump Goes To The Capitol
First Street Journal: No matter how much you hate the credentialed media, you do not hate them enough!
Gates Of Vienna: History Repeats – A Remake in New Uniforms, also, The Muslim Brotherhood in France, Part 12
The Geller Report: SELLING AUTOPEN PARDONS? Biden’s 8,064 Pardons Are Act of ‘Fraud’ Against the American People, Secretary of Defense Hegseth Announces Comprehensive Review of Catastrophic Afghanistan Withdrawal, FDA Stops Recommending Covid Shots for Most Americans, Trump‘s ‘Big, Beautiful Bill’ Delivers Decades-Long Conservative Wish List, and President Trump Announces Launch of Golden Dome Defense
Hollywood In Toto: Is Wes Anderson Hollywood’s Most Overrated Director?
The Lid: Elon Musk Pulls Back on Politics: ‘I’ve Done Enough’
Legal Insurrection: Court Blocks School District in California From Enforcing CRT Ban, Appeals Court Judge Ho decries “special treatment being afforded to certain favored litigants like members of Tren de Aragua”, Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-VA) Passes Away at 75, DOJ Investigating Cuomo for Allegedly Lying About COVID Nursing Home Deaths, and Chicago Resident Confronts Mayor Johnson: ‘Why are You a Racist?’
Outkick: LeBron, Who Runs A Failing Ohio School, To Be Given Honorary Doctorate In Public Service By Ohio State, Knicks Get Their Dreams Crushed in Game 1 By Tyrese Haliburton, The ‘Comeback’ Pacers, NFL QB Aaron Rodgers Unleashes On Trans Athletes, Indianapolis Colts Owner Jim Irsay Dies At Age 65, and Red Sox Pitcher Rips Mets Star Francisco Lindor On Social Media For Acting Petty
Power Line: The unhappiest concurrence, Into the Lions’ Den, and Consent of the governed
Shark Tank: DeSantis Approves Seventh Bill In Seven Years Hardening Schools Against Shooters
Shot In The Dark: I Don’t Make The Rules, Equitable, and Cruel. Unusual?
The Political Hat: Alienation And The Mythologies Of Fascism And Communism
This Ain’t Hell: Two Navy SEALs face disciplinary action over racist memes, also, SECDEF Orders Afghan Review
Transterrestrial Musings: Fracture Day, also, The Long-Overdue Deregulation Of Regulatory Offenses
Victory Girls: Laurel Libby, Maine Rep Silenced For Defending Girls, Wins At SCOTUS
Watts Up With That: Kathryn Porter – The True Affordability of Net Zero, Vermont Hits Brakes on EV Mandate, Admits Tech and Infrastructure Aren’t Ready, Energy Should Never Be In Question, and The Folly of Starmer’s Surrender Summit
The Federalist: SCOTUS Quietly Weighs Major Case On Candidates’ Standing To Challenge Election Rules, Racist Democrats Suddenly Oppose Immigration When Refugees Are White, Democrats Told You ‘Democracy Is On The Ballot’ And Wanted You To Vote For Someone Who Wasn’t Even In Charge, For KBJ And Sotomayor, Leftist Suppression Of Democracy Is Not An ‘Exigent’ Issue, and GOP Budget Would Finally Defund Democrat Mega-Donor Planned Parenthood
Mark Steyn: Live Around the Planet – Portents of Tomorrow

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HUGE: Challenger O’Connor Defeats BLM Pittsburgh Mayor in Democratic Primary

Posted on | May 21, 2025 | 2 Comments

Generally speaking, I’m against “common sense” Democrats. As a conservative, I want to see the Democratic Party destroy itself by embracing the most extreme ideas of the progressive fringe. From that perspective, Corey O’Connor’s victory in Tuesday’s Democratic primary for mayor of Pittsburgh is actually bad news, because the guy he was running against, incumbent Mayor Ed Gainey, is the pluperfect example of everything wrong with the Democratic Party. Gainey “has been a vocal supporter of the Black Lives Matter movement” and, when he was a member of the Pennsylvania state legislature in 2020, he joined a “protest on the floor of the state House to demand a special session on police reform.” Democrats want to be the party of cop-hating racial demagoguery? As a Republican, I say, “Go for it!”

Likewise with Gainey’s embrace of “affordable housing” mandates. Understand that I am not against affordable housing. The problem is the use of mandates and regulations to impose so-called “affordable housing” in places that contradict actual market conditions. These policies do more harm than good. Common sense would suggest that, if you can’t afford to live where you want to live, maybe consider moving someplace cheaper, but the advocates of “affordable housing” mandates apparently imagine there is a right to live wherever you want, and therefore impose mandates that are essentially futile attempts at price-fixing.

Gainey’s election as Pittsburgh mayor in 2021 was hailed as a “progressive” victory, but now that’s all come crashing down:

Allegheny County Controller Corey O’Connor defeated Pittsburgh Mayor Ed Gainey in the city’s hotly contested Democratic mayoral primary, The Associated Press projected Tuesday, after a race which garnered national attention as a notable proxy fight between progressives and center-left Democrats.
With more than 85% of the vote in, O’Connor led Gainey 54%-46% in the nominating contest.
Tuesday’s election was one of the first major Democratic primaries since the 2024 election in which the party’s progressive and center-left wings faced off. And the mayoral race followed an election cycle where Democratic governance of cities took center-stage in Republican campaign messaging.
Gainey and his allies painted O’Connor, the county controller and the son of a former mayor, as beholden to President Donald Trump and monied real estate interests, pointing to campaign donations from Trump backers and developers. . . .
Gainey, the city’s first Black mayor, won a contested primary in 2021, knocking off incumbent Mayor Bill Peduto in a three-way primary with a plurality of the vote. . . .
The Pittsburgh mayoral race elevated housing policy to the forefront of the local discussion. Gainey has sought to enact inclusionary zoning policies throughout Pittsburgh that require new developments to set aside at least 10% of units for affordable housing. Those policies currently apply to only a few neighborhoods, and O’Connor came out against making inclusionary zoning citywide policy.

So, Pittsburg’s first black mayor tried to portray O’Connor as an evil MAGA racist and still lost the Democratic primary? This is very discouraging to those of us Republicans who are trying to trick Democrats into nominating an AOC/Crockett ticket in 2028.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Jasmine Crockett

My dream of having Democrats relegate themselves to permanent loser status is jeopardized by results like Tuesday’s primary in Pittsburgh — a white male with “common sense” defeating the BLM mayor — and now I can only hope Democrats nationally don’t get a clue from this outcome.

UPDATE: Welcome, Instapundit readers!

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Category: Democrats, Pennsylvania