Crazy People Are Dangerous

Posted on | July 25, 2020 | Comments Off on Crazy People Are Dangerous

Sydney Parham went viral this week when a video showed her (allegedly, I hasten to add) pouring gasoline into a Jeep and setting it on fire. Oops!

She done blowed herself up, as folks would say down home, but perhaps I had better not invoke folks down home, because some of them have been known to use language that might be considered offensive. Meanwhile, police have arrested the (alleged) arsonist:

Authorities arrested a 26-year-old Fraser woman this week on an arson charge related to a Harrison Township vehicle fire, according to a statement from the Macomb County Sheriff Department.
Sydney Parham was arraigned Friday on a charge of third-degree arson after video allegedly showed her dumping gasoline inside a black Jeep at San Remo Apartments and setting it on fire.
The blaze occurred Wednesday in the parking lot of the apartment complex.
Deputies were dispatched about 8 a.m. Wednesday to the San Remo Villa Apartments near Union Lake Road on reports of a vehicle fire and found a black Jeep fully engulfed, investigators said in a statement. Township firefighters responded and extinguished the blaze.
In a video taken at the scene and posted to YouTube, a person is shown dumping gasoline in the back of the Jeep prior to leaning forward to throw a lit match into the vehicle. The explosion threw the individual back into a nearby vehicle.
Witnesses at the scene told responding firefighters and deputies that the woman in the video was Parham and that she knew the owner of the vehicle, according to the Macomb County Sheriff Department.
Parham was pulled over in Roseville and taken into custody, where she was treated for minor cuts and burns.
Parham was given a $20,000 personal recognizance bond prior to her next hearing Aug. 5.

Many believed the Jeep that Ms. Parham allegedly torched must have belonged to her ex-boyfriend, but the vehicle’s owner denied it:

Avery Stevenson . . . didn’t want to go on camera, but he did say he knows the suspect.
He said she was not his girlfriend. He said he’s not sure what the motive could be.

Is he telling the truth? Like, a woman decides to torch your car and you have no idea what her motive is? Or is it rather the case you don’t want anyone to know you were messing around with a crazy woman?

On the other hand, maybe she’s a complete lunatic, who became obsessed with Avery and burned up his car because he didn’t reciprocate her feelings. Either way, Crazy People Are Dangerous.

Category: Crime, Michigan

‘An Expert in Russian Politics’

Posted on | July 25, 2020 | Comments Off on ‘An Expert in Russian Politics’

That’s how the New York Times describes Igor Danchenko in an article complaining that “Trump allies” revealed Danchenko’s identity as a source for the infamous Steele dossier, which was the basis of the “Russian collusion” hoax. It seems, however, that the main thing Danchenko is an “expert” about is getting drunk. Danchenko is an immigrant who worked for a while as a “research analyst” for the Brookings Institute, and while he was there managed to get arrested for public intoxication and disorderly conduct, as Paul Sperry reports:

The Russian-born Danchenko, who was living in the U.S. on a work visa, was released from jail on the condition he undergo drug testing and “participate in a program of substance abuse therapy and counseling,” as well as “mental health counseling,” the records show.

The guy is not even an American citizen or a green-card legal resident, but is living here on a work visa? And this is the guy that the Brookings Institute recommended to help Steele dig up dirt about Trump in Russia? Oh, there’s a tangled network of connections, but here’s the big payoff:

As a former member of Britain’s secret intelligence service, Steele hadn’t traveled to Russia in decades and apparently had no useful sources there. So he relied entirely on Danchenko and his supposed “network of subsources,” which to its chagrin, the FBI discovered was nothing more than a “social circle.”
It soon became clear over their three days of debriefing him at the FBI’s Washington field office — held just days after Trump was sworn into office — that any Russian insights he may have had were strictly academic.
Danchenko confessed he had no inside line to the Kremlin and was “clueless” when Steele hired him in March 2016 to investigate ties between Russia and Trump and his campaign manager.
Desperate for leads, he turned to a ragtag group of Russian and American journalists, drinking buddies (including one who’d been arrested on pornography charges) and even an old girlfriend to scare up information for his London paymaster, according to the FBI’s January 2017 interview memo, which runs 57 pages. Like him, his friends made a living hustling gossip for cash, and they fed him a tissue of false “rumor and speculation” — which Steele, in turn, further embellished with spy-crafty details and sold to his client as “intelligence.” . . .

Read the whole thing at Real Clear Investigations. You’d have to be crazy — or a New York Times editor, which is the same thing — to consider Danchenko an “expert in Russian politics.”

Category: Russia

In The Mailbox: 07.24.20

Posted on | July 25, 2020 | 2 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho

OVER THE TRANSOM
Pagan Vigil: American Racism
357 Magnum: Another Tesla Autopilot Crash
EBL: Michelle Malkin Calls Out Ben Shapiro
Twitchy: Federal Judge Shoots Down Oregon AG’s Bid To Stop DHS Arrests In Portland
Louder With Crowder: Gunshot To The Head? In Florida, You’re A COVID-19 Victim, also, Mike Rowe Delivers Common Sense That COVID-19 Panickers Will Hate
Vox Popoli: Apparently Taylor Swift Didn’t Fix 2020, also, Good News About Women In Combat
According To Hoyt: They’re Serving Tuna In Valhalla Tonight
Gab News: Big Tech Profits From Slave Labor In Red China

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Conservative: Is The Left Finally Starting To Care About The Federal Bootheel?
American Greatness: Brookings Institution – A Key Collusion Collaborator, also, The Five Burning Questions Of This Election Season
American Power: Workers Resist The Return To Work
American Thinker: Do Global Elites Commit Crimes Against Children?
Animal Magnetism: Rule Five Grand Theft Auto Friday
Babalu Blog: Marxist Protesters Plan March On Sen. Rubio’s Home For Cuba’s Communist Anniversary
BattleSwarm: LinkSwarm For July 23
Cafe Hayek: Populism Returns
CDR Salamander: Diversity Thursday, also, Fullbore Friday
Da Tech Guy: Completely Anecdotal Restaurant Story
Don Surber: Democrats Killed Thousands To Get Back At Trump
First Street Journal: No, Jennifer, We Are Not “All AOC”
Fred On Everything: Fulu Miziki, WhyNats, & Other Heresies
The Geller Report: Toddlers Hold Signs Saying “F**k The Police” Outside Portland Courthouse, also, WaPo Settle Defamation Suit Against Covington Catholic Student Nick Sandmann – Hundreds Of Millions?
Hogewash: Team Kimberlin Post of The Day, also, Funding The Police
Hollywood In Toto: Apolitical Ryan Long Can’t Stop Mocking Woke Absurdities
The Lid: GOP Rep Louie Gohmert Proposes Resolution To Ban Racist Democrat Party From The House
Legal Insurrection: Nicholas Sandmann Settles Suit Against Washington Post, also, Gov. Cuomo Now Dictating Food Portions If You Want To Be Served Alcohol
The PanAm Post: Iran’s Military Network Comes Out Of The Venezuelan Shadows, also, 2020 Could Be Mexico’s Most Violent Year
Power Line: Get Woke, Sometimes Go Broke, also, WSJ Editors Resist The Cancel Culture
Shark Tank: Reba Sherrill Lies About Being A Doctor
Shot In The Dark: Snappy Answers To Casual Gaslighting, Part V
The Political Hat: Firing Line Friday – Are Freedom And The CIA Compatible?
This Ain’t Hell: The Army’s Polar Bears, 1918-1920, also, Valor Friday
Victory Girls: Baseball Returns With Fewer Games, More Preaching
Volokh Conspiracy: Fordham U Disciplines Student Austin Tong For Political Instagram Posts
Weasel Zippers: Seattle Man Has Had It With #BLM’s Nightly Invasions Of His Neighborhood, also, Antifa Goon Arrested For Assaulting Federal Officer Was Strapped
Megan McArdle: Sorry, Parents & Kids, Your School Probably Won’t Be Open This Fall
Mark Steyn: It’s Red China’s World, We’re Just Paying For It

Amazon Warehouse Deals

Category: Linkagery

Chicago Mayor Solves City’s Crime Problem by Removing Columbus Statues

Posted on | July 24, 2020 | 2 Comments

Chicago has been plagued by riots, vandalism, looting and arson — to say nothing of homicide, which has increased more than 30 percent, with 434 people killed so far this year — but Mayor Lori Lightfoot has solved the problem by eliminating the statues that were causing it:

Chicago’s two Christopher Columbus statues were taken down early Friday morning, nearly one week after protests erupted in the city.
Crews were seen taking down the statues in Grant Park and the city’s Little Italy neighborhood during the overnight hours. By 6 a.m., only the pedestal remained in Grant Park, where the statue stood since 1933 after being dedicated during Chicago’s second World Fair.
“The city of Chicago — at Mayor Lightfoot’s direction — has temporarily removed the Christopher Columbus statues in Grant Park and Arrigo Park until further notice,” the mayor’s office said in a statement. “This action was taken after consultation with various stakeholders. It comes in response to demonstrations that became unsafe for both protesters and police, as well as efforts by individuals to independently pull the Grant Park statue down in an extremely dangerous manner. This step is about an effort to protect public safety and to preserve a safe space for an inclusive and democratic public dialogue about our city’s symbols. In addition, our public safety resources must be concentrated where they are most needed throughout the city, and particularly in our South and West Side communities.”
Reports first surfaced on social media Thursday indicating the statue at Grant Park could be taken down as soon as late Thursday night.
Protesters across the county have called for the removal of statues of Columbus, saying that the Italian explorer is responsible for the genocide and exploitation of native peoples in the Americas.
Still, some Italian-Americans in Chicago said they did not support the move.
“Columbus is a symbol of hope who we’ve celebrated for years and maybe we all forgot why we celebrated Christopher Columbus,” Sergio Giangrande, president of the Joint Civic Committee of Italian American said. “To take someone who’s a symbol of hope for us? We are not OK with that.”
Giangrande added, however, that the group understands the safety concerns but hoped for a compromise.
“I can guarantee you that Italian Americans are not happy about this,” he said.
Mayor Lori Lightfoot said Monday that she would announce a process in which the city will take inventory of the various monuments, paintings “and other things that memorialize” Chicago’s past and history.
“In time, our team will determine there are no monuments to African Americans in this city,” Lightfoot said. “There are no monuments to women. There are no monuments that reflect the contributions of people in the city of Chicago who contributed to the greatness of this city.” . . .
Last Friday, chaos erupted as clashes broke out during a protest calling for the Grant Park statue’s removal. There, 49 Chicago police officers and four demonstrators were injured. More than a dozen individuals were also arrested. . . .
In June, the Grant Park statue of Christopher Columbus was spray-painted with the letters “BLM” for Black Lives Matter. The following day, vandals hit a statue of President George Washington in the city’s Washington Park, spray painting the words “slave owner” and “God Bless Amerikkka” on the base and placing a white hood over the monument in reference to the Ku Klux Klan.
The Columbus statues in both Grant Park and the city’s Little Italy neighborhood were also vandalized last month.
Statues of Columbus have also been toppled or vandalized in cities such as Miami; Richmond, Virginia; St. Paul, Minnesota; and Boston, where one was decapitated.

So you see, these statues have caused all the problems in Chicago, which will immediately become a utopian paradise, now that those provocative racist symbols have been banished from public view.

This innovative approach to crime has inspired me to propose my own bold reform. What if we could eliminate racism by banishing from view anything that caused people to believe negative racist stereotypes or to mutter racial epithets? I can think of one such cause of racism.

Get this woman’s face off TV, and racism will automatically be reduced.

Category: Chicago, Crime, Racism

In The Mailbox: 07.23.20

Posted on | July 23, 2020 | 1 Comment

— compiled by Wombat-socho

OVER THE TRANSOM
Red Pilled Jew: Wednesday Whittle
357 Magnum: East Germany, The Cold War, & Lessons Lost
Pagan Vigil: Who Benefits?
Twitchy: Are The Portland Rioters Trying To Change Their Brand To Patriotism?
Louder With Crowder: “Peaceful” Protester In Portland Accidentally Sets Another “Peaceful Protester” On Fire
Vox Popoli: The Irrelevance Of Google, also, Republican National Convention Canceled

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: Economic Citizenship Shopping
American Conservative: The United States Should Not Lead The World
American Greatness: STL Prosecutor’s Office Appears To Have Tampered With Evidence In McCloskey Gun Case, also, Firming Up The Fundamentals
American Power: Tesla Utterly Dominates Electric Vehicle Market
American Thinker: Hurting Americans To Beat Trump
Animal Magnetism: Animal’s Daily Tough Stuff News
Babalu Blog: Surprise! San Francisco Lawmakers Call For Cuban Involvement In U.S. Coronavirus Plague Crisis
BattleSwarm: Tesla Austin Factory Now Official
Cafe Hayek: An Open Letter To David Autor
Da Tech Guy: The Democrat Slavery/Jim Crow Not Our Business Argument Is Back For Portland, also, Gov. Baker’s Continued Business Lockdown Is Destroying The Massachusetts Economy
Don Surber: Democrats Reap The Whirlwind
First Street Journal: A Flight To The Suburbs?
The Geller Report: NYC Banner Shows Mayor De Blasio Holding Lady Liberty’s Severed Head, also, At Least Three Federal Officers May Be Permanently Blind After Portland Rioters Attack Them With Lasers
Hogewash: Team Kimberlin Post of The Day, also, A Pair Of Exoplanets
Hollywood In Toto: What Cancel Culture Is, And Why Artists Should Fear It, also, Most Wanted Reminds Us Quality Journalism Matters
JustOneMinute: Neverending Nightmare
The Lid: STL Prosecutor Tampered With Evidence So The McCloskeys Could Be Charged
Legal Insurrection: Conservative UNC-Wilmington Professor Mike Adams Found Dead At Home, also, Media & Portland Mayor Lie About Attack On Federal Courthouse, Call It “Protest”
Power Line: Our Orwellian Nightmare Come True, also, Coronavirus In One State
Shark Tank: Jessi Melton – Sex, Lies, & a DWI Arrest
Shot In The Dark: The Most Heinous Crime Of This Heinous Year
STUMP: Mortality With Meep – COVID-19 Deaths & The Importance Of Dates
The Political Hat: The Hitlerite Playbook, also, The Underground Railroad Is Now Racist
This Ain’t Hell: That Went Well, also, Yet Another Political Race With Stolen Valor Accusations
Victory Girls: Mayors Go Chicken Little Over Federal Officers
Volokh Conspiracy: Federalism, Law, & Order
Weasel Zippers: Former Democrat Congressman Charged With Ballot Stuffing & Bribery, also, MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough Still Claims Portland Filled With “Peaceful Protesters”
Mark Steyn: Orchestral Manoeuvres No Longer In The Dark

Amazon Warehouse Deals

Category: Linkagery

‘Supreme Gentleman’ Syndrome

Posted on | July 23, 2020 | 2 Comments

Everyone remembers the “supreme gentleman” Elliot Rodger, who “killed six people and injured fourteen others near the campus of University of California, Santa Barbara, before killing himself inside his vehicle.” His deranged murder spree made him the idol of “incels” who have actually been deemed a domestic terrorism threat, because these losers keep going on copycat shooting rampages, usually after posting “manifestos” declaring their war against . . . Well, who? Normal people.

Normal people may or may not be very successful in the romance department, but they don’t turn their failures into a weltanschauung. Normal people don’t commit mass murder because they can’t get a date.

Crazy People Are Dangerous, as I’ve told you a few hundred times, and anyone who considers Elliot Rodger to be a hero is crazy. So, a therapist in Seattle has seen a few “incel” types as patients in his practice, and quotes the following account from one young loser:

“Imagine you are a 23-year-old skinny and hardworking guy. You were called “nerd” growing up. You are also shy and don’t know what to say to girls but all around your town, you see thugs, dealers, rednecks all with models?
“You ask out girls every chance you can but they shut you off. You cut your hair nice, shave beard nice, have a car, do your best to get ahead and you have a motorcycle and you’re kind and EVERY SINGLE TIME YOU ARE AROUND A WOMAN THEY ARE TREATING YOU LIKE THE WEIRD UNCLE OR LIKE A GODDAMN INFERIOR BEING and yet you meet the guys these women married and they are arrogant, crude, lying obnoxious pricks. So then you AS A NORMAL GUY sign yourself up for POF (Plenty of Fish), Tinder, Match, etc and you message HUNDREDS of women like 400 on POF and you swipe right on EVERY tinder profile and you wait a week or 2 and check back to see how many messages you got and you have ZERO messages on POF and one message on tinder.
“You just weren’t born with Brad Pitt’s face. That is your sin. You can be fit, make more money, etc but if you are deemed unattractive you are put in a corner of rejection.”

Notice that I highlighted a couple of qualities this guy mentions: He is skinny, has been called a “nerd,” and is “shy and [doesn’t] know what to say to girls.” As soon as I saw this, I knew what the problem was.

“Do you have any friends? Like, guy friends?”

That should be the first question any counselor or therapist asks a young man complaining this way. Because, you see, the fundamental problem is that the guy is an introvert with a lack of social skills. He complains aobut his inability to connect with women — he doesn’t know how to talk to them — but I’ll bet you $100 he doesn’t have any male friends, either.

The “incel” is not merely a loser, but also a loner. He spends too much time playing videogames and not doing “real world” stuff that involves social interaction because such activities make him uncomfortable. He’s made “shy” and “nerd” his core identity, a ready-made explanation for failure, and then blames his failures on women. It is wrong for women to prefer “obnoxious” guys (i.e., extroverts) when obviously they should prefer him, the Supreme Gentleman. Well . . . why?

What is it that women want from men? Or to put it another way, how does a guy supply value added to a woman’s life? What benefit do women derive from the companionship of guys you dismiss as “thugs”?

Are women’s preferences entirely irrational? Is there perhaps a reason why women treat this shy, skinny nerd as an “inferior being”?

He doesn’t have any friends. He is held in low regard by male peers and thus suffers from a lack of social status, whereas the guys he dismisses as “obnoxious” are more gregarious and, as a result, have more friends and greater status. It’s not really very complicated. There are plenty of guys who “weren’t born with Brad Pitt’s face” and yet nevertheless do not become pathetic “incel” losers. And there’s something else.

The age at which a guy should start worrying seriously about his lack of success with girls is not 23. I’d say 15 or 16 is more like it.

You notice this about “incels,” i.e., that they completely missed out on the dating scene as teenagers. Why? It baffles me, and I could speculate on this subject, but I think there is something significant about the lack of self-awareness involved. Like, I recall being enormously frustrated about not having a girlfriend as early as 13 or 14. There were a few girls with whom I got past first base by the time I was 15 or 16, but this only increased my frustration, IYKWIMAITYD. My point, however, is that I was aware of a need for self-improvement by the time I was old enough to get a driver’s license, and I never stopped trying to improve my game.

Why is it, therefore, that this guy keeps losing until he’s 23 before finally seeking help? He’s been following the same self-defeating patterns since high school without ever once consulting someone — a friend, a relative, anyone — who could give him a few pointers?

This is much easier to do as a teenager, when basically everybody is clueless, so that there’s no shame in asking for advice. Even if you’re such a pathetic loser that you don’t really have any friends, maybe you’ve got aunts, uncles, or cousins you could ask. Sure, it’s embarrassing to admit that you’re a complete failure in desperate need of help, but you’ve got to start somewhere, and it’s best to start early, because otherwise you’ll be national news at age 23: SEVENTEEN DEAD AFTER ‘INCEL’ MANIAC GOES BERSERK WITH ASSAULT RIFLE.

Don’t be that guy. Mass murder is not cool.

Category: Fear. Loathing.

Crazy People Are Dangerous

Posted on | July 23, 2020 | 2 Comments

Shane Green, 58, lives in Portland, Oregon, which for the past eight weeks has been the scene of Antifa/#BlackLivesMatter riots. Do the radical protesters actually want to help black people? Or are they just a bunch of anarchist scum who hate cops? Shane Green needed help, and by “help” of course I mean, confinement in a psychiatric ward:

A man is facing a slew of charges after police say he attacked two people in a Portland laundromat with a handsaw — and it was caught on video.
On the afternoon of July 17, several 911 callers reported a man with a handsaw was assaulting people and breaking car windshields near the 2700 block of NE Weidler Street, the Portland Police Bureau said.
Two of the victims were inside a laundromat. Security video shows the suspect march straight up to a woman inside and swing the saw at her head.

Officers found the suspect near the 2100 block of NE Weidler Street. Police said they told him to stop and drop the saw but he refused and told officers he was going to make them shoot him.
The man walked into the middle of traffic, then started moving toward the officers while yelling at them while still holding the saw, police said. After several warnings, police used a less-lethal munition and the man dropped the saw. Officers started talking to him to try and calm him down but several bystanders interrupted by screaming and taunting the officers, the PPB said. This only made the suspect more upset, according to police.
Officers said they kept talking calmly and listening to the man and he was eventually taken safely into custody.
The suspect — 58-year-old Shane Vordelmicha Green — was charged with three counts of second-degree assault, six counts of unlawful use of a weapon, first-degree attempted assault, strangulation, four counts of menacing, two counts of second-degree attempted assault, harassment, second-degree disorderly conduct, interfering with a peace officer and four counts of reckless endangering. He was booked into the Multnomah County Detention Center.

When we understand this as attempted suicide-by-cop, we see the connection between Shane Green’s violence and the violence of the lunatics engaged in “mostly peaceful” protests in Portland.

Antifa is not a political movement, it’s a mental-health crisis.

And, as you know, Crazy People Are Dangerous.

UPDATE: Welcome, Instapundit readers! We ask readers to remember that the Five Most Important Words in the English Language are:

HIT THE FREAKING TIP JAR!