The Other McCain

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

Philly to Chicago: ‘Hold My Beer’

Posted on | July 19, 2021 | Comments Off on Philly to Chicago: ‘Hold My Beer’

Every time I write about the ghastly homicide toll in Chicago, our friend Dana Pico pipes up to remind me that the per-capita homicide rate in Philadelphia is actually worse. Do the math, says Dana, and the homicide rate in Chicago currently works out to about 27 per 100,000 population annually, while in “Kill-a-delphia,” the current rate is about 35 per 100,000 annually — about 25% higher. So while the forecast in Chicago continues to be “partly cloudy with widely scattered afternoon and evening gunfire,” it’s always pouring down murder in Philadelphia:

At least three dozen people have been shot in another violent weekend in the city of Philadelphia.
Since Friday evening, at least three people have died and 33 others were injured by gunfire.
In the latest shooting, which occurred around 11:15 p.m. Sunday near Market and Peach streets in West Philadelphia, three teenagers were injured.
Police on patrol heard gunshots and rushed to the scene.
Arriving officers found three shooting victims and then spotted a male running from scene.
Police went after the suspect, but there is no word yet on whether they caught him.
In all, investigators found at least 10 shell casings in that area.
The victims, ages 16, 17, and 18, are listed as stable at the hospital.
Detectives are still working to learn exactly what led to the shooting.
Just before 3 p.m. Sunday, three people were shot on the 5500 block of Malcolm Street.
Police say a 15-year-old male, a 29-year-old male and a 19-year-old male were all injured by gunfire. All three victims suffered non-life-threatening injuries.
One of the youngest victims of gun violence this weekend was a 1-year-old girl who was shot in the leg Saturday. It happened around 8 p.m. at the corner of 50th Street and Haverford Avenue.
The child was transported by police to Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and listed in stable condition. Officials say a 26-year-old man was also shot in the left forearm. The man is expected to survive.
And on Friday night, a quintuple shooting left one person dead and four others, including a 14-year-old, injured. It happened around 8:40 p.m. on the 2700 block of Ruby Terrace.

OK, as of this morning (after 199 days since the start of the year) there had been 304 homicides in “Kill-a-dephia,” an average of about 1.528 per day; if that average daily homicide count continues until the end of the year, there will be another 254 murders in the city this year, for a total of 558 Philadelphia homicides — an all-time record. The latest:

Philadelphia police keep getting
shot at while responding to shootings

Shoot somebody, the cops show up, and you shoot at the cops.

Fact: Joe Biden got 81% of the vote in Philadelphia.




 

Category: Crime, Pennsylvania

Rule 5 Sunday: Rumiko Manbagi

Posted on | July 18, 2021 | Comments Off on Rule 5 Sunday: Rumiko Manbagi

— compiled by Wombat-socho

When we first meet Rumiko Manbagi in the manga Komi Can’t Communicate, she looks absolutely hideous, the platonic ideal of a gyaru girl* who doesn’t know the meaning of moderation. Feeling horribly lonely and out of place, she flees to the girls’ room, where Komi finds her and befriends her. It’s the start of a beautiful relationship, as Rumiko ditches the ganguro look in favor of letting her natural blonde beauty shine through, becomes Komi’s second-best friend, and eventually, the ultimate wingwoman. Let’s face it, for a two-dimensional character, she develops beautifully. Here she is in some fanart with her BFF, Komi.
Ceterum autem censeo Silicon Valley esse delendam.

A winning pair.

Ninety Miles From Tyranny: Hot Pick of the Late Night, The 90 Miles Mystery Box Episode #1414, Morning Mistress, and Girls With Guns. 

Animal Magnetism: Rule Five Hunter’s Laptop Friday, and the Saturday Gingermageddon. 

EBL: Hacer America Vuelva Ser Grande, Turandot, La Rondine, La Fanciulla Del West, Linda Ronstadt, These Boots, Madama Butterfly, Duran Duran, Tosca, Don’t Tread On Me, The Style Council, La Boheme, Manon Lescaut, and Peter Schilling.

A View From The Beach: Taylor Anne Ramirez, No Sweat!, Fish Pic Friday – Tiffany Ann, Toad Smokin’ Thursday, Study Claims Ecological Fisheries Management Unnecessary, Some Wednesday Wetness, Tattoo Tuesday, “Dragon Man” Ousts Neanderthal as Nearest Human, The Monday Morning Stimulus, Palm Sunday, Lindsey Harrod, Fish Pic Friday – Kelly Young, Election 2020: While Waiting on Elsa, Trucking into Thursday, NYT Dreads Patriotism, Flags and Pickup Trucks, Rule 5 Star Makes WuFlu News, The Wednesday Wetness, Some Tuesday Tanlines, The Monday Morning Eye Opener, Cave Women Found Not Guilty in Decline of Elephants, 2020 Election – July 4, 2021 Edition and Happy Fourth of July!

Brian Noggle: Constance Towers in The Horse Soldiers.

Thanks to everyone for all the luscious links!

*Actually more ganguro, but why be picky?

Amazon Warehouse Deals

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




Category: Rule 5

Mindless Carnage Continues in Chicago

Posted on | July 18, 2021 | Comments Off on Mindless Carnage Continues in Chicago

Covering homicide in Chicago must be like covering the weather: “Partly cloudy with widely scattered afternoon and evening gunfire . . .”

At least 53 people had been shot in Chicago this weekend as of Sunday afternoon, and five of them had been killed.
At least nine of the surviving victims were under 18, with the youngest being just 8 years old.
On Saturday night, six people were shot outside a party in the South Austin neighborhood — all but two of them girls under 18.
The victims were standing on the sidewalk on Ohio Street near Lavergne Avenue at 11:40 p.m., when someone in a dark-colored sport-utility vehicle shot them all.
Three of the victims were taken to Stroger Hospital of Cook County. A 15-year-old girl was taken to Mount Sinai Hospital with a graze wound to the head. The youngest victim, who is 12, suffered a graze wound to her hand. Family members drove her to West Suburban Medical Center in Oak Park. The sixth victim was a 25-year-old man who was shot in the backside and taken to Mount Sinai Hospital, where he was treated and released.
At 1:05 a.m. Sunday, a shooting in South Chicago left an 8-year-old boy injured along with a 28-year-old man. They were both in a moving vehicle in the 2000 block of West 83rd Street when someone in a black sport-utility vehicle fired shots. The man was shot in the back and was treated and released from Advocate Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn, while the boy was taken to Advocate Christ in good condition with a shot to the left leg.
The first fatal shooting happened at 6:48 p.m. Friday. A 26-year-old man was on the street in the 12000 block of South Union Avenue in West Pullman when a vehicle pulled up and someone inside shot him. He suffered multiple gunshot wounds and was pronounced dead at Advocate Christ Medical Center in Lawn.
At 11:57 p.m. Friday, a man was killed and three others were injured in a shooting in the South Austin neighborhood. Police said the four men were standing outside when three other men came up and shot them all.
A 29-year-old man was shot in the head and back was pronounced dead on the scene. A 40-year-old man was shot in the hip and leg and aa 45-year-old man was also shot in the leg – both were taken to Stroger Hospital of Cook County in serious condition. A 62-year-old man suffered a graze wound to the back and was taken to Stroger in good condition.
The suspects fled in a possible gray Nissan.
At 1:46 a.m. Saturday, a 31-year-old man was shot in the head by a man he knew during a quarrel in the 2800 block of West Van Buren Street in the East Garfield Park neighborhood. He was pronounced dead Mount Sinai Hospital.
At 11:23 p.m. Saturday, a 27-year-old woman and a man of an unknown age were standing in the 7600 block of South St. Lawrence Avenue when someone in a black sport-utility vehicle fired shots. The woman was taken to the University of Chicago Medical Center with a gunshot wound to the right knee and was in fair condition, but the man was pronounced dead at the same hospital with gunshot wounds throughout the body.
At 12:38 a.m. Sunday, a 30-year-old man was on the sidewalk in the 5100 block of South Marshfield Avenue when someone in a gray sedan shot him. He was taken to the U of C Medical Center with gunshot wounds to the chest and was pronounced dead at the hospital.

Criminals just cruising the streets, randomly shooting people. So far this year, 396 people have been shot dead in Chicago, and another 1,905 wounded — a casualty rate far higher than U.S. troops in Afghanistan recently, so why aren’t we withdrawing from Chicago? Oh, wait — I just remembered, Joe Biden got 82% of the vote in Chicago, so these are Democratic voters murdering each other. If not for the ammunition shortage, they might keep killing until Illinois becomes a GOP bastion.




 

Category: Chicago, Crime

FMJRA 2.0: Blank Generation

Posted on | July 18, 2021 | Comments Off on FMJRA 2.0: Blank Generation

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Ceterum autem censeo Silicon Valley esse delendam.

CNN ‘Stepped Up,’ Covered Avenatti Prison Sentence, MSNBC Didn’t
EBL
357 Magnum

Civil War History: Kibbitzing
EBL

FMJRA 2.0: Shotgun Blues
A View From The Beach
EBL

Death at Chuck E. Cheese
EBL
357 Magnum

In Defense of R.E. Lee
Dark Brightness
EBL

Rule 5 Sunday: Natasha Romanova Redux
Animal Magnetism
A View From The Beach
Ninety Miles From Tyranny
EBL
Proof Positive

England Soccer: ‘Get Woke, Go Broke’?
The Pirate’s Cove
EBL

In The Mailbox: 07.12.21
A View From The Beach
EBL
357 Magnum
Proof Positive

64 Shots: Londre ‘KTS Dre’ Sylvester Gunned Down Outside Chicago Jail
First Street Journal
EBL
357 Magnum

What’s Happening in Houston?
EBL
357 Magnum

Oh, Dear God: Barrett Brown Again!
EBL

In The Mailbox: 07.13.21
A View From The Beach
EBL
357 Magnum
Proof Positive

Apocalypse in South Africa
EBL

Never Doubt God Answers Prayer
Dark Brightness
EBL

In The Mailbox: 07.14.21
A View From The Beach
EBL
357 Magnum
Proof Positive

Whither the ‘Ahoy’ Coalition?
EBL
357 Magnum

In The Mailbox: 07.15.21
A View From The Beach
EBL
357 Magnum
Proof Positive

Aspiring Rapper Update
EBL
357 Magnum

Another Aspiring Rapper Update
EBL
357 Magnum

Yet Another Aspiring Rapper Update
First Street Journal
EBL
357 Magnum

In The Mailbox: 07.16.21
A View From The Beach
EBL
357 Magnum
Proof Positive

Top linkers for the week ending July 16

  1.  EBL (21)
  2.  357 Magnum (13)
  3.  A View From The Beach (7)
  4.  Proof Positive (6)

Thanks to everyone for all the links!

Amazon Warehouse Deals




Category: FMJRA Award

The First Rule of Censorship Club

Posted on | July 18, 2021 | Comments Off on The First Rule of Censorship Club

“The first rule of Fight Club is: you do not talk about Fight Club.”

Something very similar is at work in the operations of Big Tech, acting as a political arms of the Biden administration. Using the pretext of suppressing “misinformation,” Facebook and other platforms are identifying and silencing the administration’s opponents and, even though this is happening in full view of anyone paying attention, you’re not going to know anything about it if you get your news from CNN, MSNBC or one of the broadcast network troika of NBC/ABC/CBS.

In fact, the liberal media are engaged in “fact-checking” that labels reporting about this censorship as (you guessed it) “misinformation.”

Politico reported last week that the Democratic National Committee is going to “work with SMS carriers to dispel misinformation about vaccines that is sent over social media and text messages.”

Repeat: “text messages.”

The DNC is going to censor your text messages?

A lot of people (among them our friends at Gateway Pundit) were startled by this news, but then the Thought Police “fact-checkers” at USA Today went to work to label this as “misinformation,” explaining that what they were actually talking about was mass-delivery text messages sent via software platforms (known as SMS APIs), the kind of messages you get from political campaigns when you sign up to get text alerts. So the White House is not monitoring your private text messages, but instead is trying to silence groups like Turning Point USA, which sends its members alerts like, “Biden is sending goons DOOR-TO-DOOR to make you take a Covid-19 vaccine. Sign the petition to: No medical raids in America.”

Let us stipulate that a certain amount of hyperbole is to be expected in the messages that political organizations deliver to their followers. How is what TPUSA does any different than what the DNC itself sends to its supporters? If you’re signed up for such text-message alerts from any political outfit, you have volunteered to receive this stuff, and why is it that the effort to suppress “misinformation” is only directed toward opponents of the Biden administration, not its supporters?

It’s the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 all over again.

No, wait — that’s hyperbole, and perhaps even “misinformation,” but my point is that the Biden administration’s behavior is comparable to what the Adams administration was attempting to do, to suppress the publication of material deemed “dangerous” to the public interest:

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said Thursday that the White House is not only working with Facebook to flag disinformation on vaccines — it’s also asking Facebook to share data on the reach and engagement of posts deemed disinformation.
“We’re flagging problematic posts for Facebook that spread disinformation,” the White House press secretary said.
Facebook, which did not respond to requests for comment from the Daily Caller News Foundation, was one of several social media platforms that attempted to suppress discussion of the theory that COVID-19 originated in a Wuhan lab. Evidence has since been uncovered suggesting the theory holds merit.
Senior Biden administration staff and members of the COVID-19 team are targeting misinformation, specifically on coronavirus vaccines and the pandemic, by keeping “in regular touch” with social media platforms, Psaki said Thursday.
The Biden administration has also proposed four key requests to social media platforms, Psaki said: the first, that social media platforms “measure and publicly share the impact of misinformation on their platform.”
“Facebook should provide, publicly and transparently, data on the reach of COVID-19 vaccine misinformation, not just engagement, but the reach of the misinformation and the audience that it’s reaching,” Psaki said. “That will help us ensure we’re getting accurate information to people. This should be provided not just to researchers but to the public so that the public knows and understands what is accurate and inaccurate”
The Biden administration also wants platforms like Facebook to “create a robust enforcement strategy that bridges their properties and provides transparency about the rules,” to take “faster action against harmful posts,” and to promote “quality information sources in their feed algorithm.”
“There’s about 12 people who are producing 65% of anti vaccine misinformation on social media platforms,” Psaki said. “All of them remain active on Facebook, despite some even being banned on other platforms, including Facebook, ones that Facebook owns.”

This raises so many questions, it’s hard to know where to begin, but try this: Why is it that “smart” people, like Jen Psaki, believe that they are capable of discerning the difference between facts and “misinformation,” yet they believe the rest of the country is full of people too stupid to tell the difference? Like, “We need to censor Facebook or otherwise your grandmother is going to die from drinking bleach.”

What is at the heart of the White House crusade to suppress “misinformation” about COVID-19 is not an issue of fact, as to the safety and efficacy of vaccines, but rather an issue of power — the Biden administration seeks the authority to control what people are allowed to publish on social media platforms, not just about COVID-19 vaccines, but about anything it might deem to be dangerous in some way. The issue is not about the specific content of any particular message on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc., but instead whether these companies are going to be taking orders from the White House. Saagar Enjeti nailed it:

Exactly — censorship of social media has escalated drastically since 2016 because, in the wake of Hillary Clinton’s defeat, Democrats decided that “misinformation” was to blame. Even while all the major media were lined up to support Hillary, your grandma’s Facebook feed was full of content that wasn’t aligned with the pro-Hillary message strategy, and therefore DONALD TRUMP IS HITLER! ZOMG! #RESISTANCE!

The Democratic reaction to their 2016 defeat has shaped everything that they’ve done ever since, and this reaction is apparent everywhere. One of the guys who gets this is Matt Taibbi, a former Rolling Stone reporter who I used to loath for his left-wing views — he was very much an advocate of the “Occupy” movement and “Anonymous” cyberterrorism, back during the Obama era. Much like Glenn Greenwald, however, Taibbi has become disillusioned with Democrats in the past few years, and is now concerned about the anti-“misinformation” censorship crusade.

Taibbi has a fascinating account about video producer Matt Orfalea’s recent experience with YouTube censorship. Orfalea says this:

You have all these people who’ve been complaining about fascism since Trump, and then this [the White House encouraging social-media censorship] is actual, by-definition, fascism. According to the classic definition, it includes the merging of corporate and state power.
Look, I’ve done a lot of videos that are very critical of Biden. So the thought does go through my head, “Is this why my channel was targeted?” Now that Jen Psaki admitted that the government does have this direct relationship with the social media companies, picking targets, telling them who needs to be [flagged], it’s hard not to think about it.

Are any left-wing or pro-Biden accounts being censored? Don’t be silly. This censorship goes in only one direction, and we know how it works.

What we must focus on is not the nature of the messages being censored, but rather the abuse of power involved. There are a million and one things on the Internet that, were it up to me, might be banished, but this is not a Third World banana republic, and I’m not the leader of a military junta with the autocratic power to make my enemies quake with terror. Oh, what the imaginary McCain Junta Regime might do, if ever I had such power to punish those on my personal Enemies List! But as it is, in the real world, I’m just a law-abiding citizen of a constitutional republic, and so I must tolerate the fact that people are free to publish all kinds of dangerous nonsense on the Internet. Actual murderers post videos brandishing pistols and boasting about their crimes — almost 30 million views for “Who I Smoke,” mocking the victims killed by ATK in Jacksonville — but that’s fine with YouTube, I guess.

The collusion between the Biden administration and Big Tech is more fascist than anything Donald “Orange Hitler” Trump ever did. And if you think this is just about COVID-19, you’re part of the problem. It’s time to wake up and smell the Orwellian dystopia, people.




 

Category: Media Bias

Aspiring Podcaster Update

Posted on | July 17, 2021 | Comments Off on Aspiring Podcaster Update

Tonight at 7 p.m. ET, John Hoge, Dianna Deeley and myself will take to the digital airwaves for another episode of The Other Podcast. Relevant to tonight’s discussion, from the Urban Dictionary:

Aspiring Rapper
North American euphemism for a member of the urban criminal class. This unusual occupation is usually mentioned in conjunction with the subject either being slain or being taken into custody for a violent or property-related crime. A relative of the subject usually points out that the subject’s demise or incarceration comes at an extremely inopportune moment, occurring just as the subject was “turning they(sic) life around.”

That’s probably RAAAAACIST, but I’m just quoting the source. If you miss tonight’s episode, be sure to check the archives at Podbean.




 

Category: The Other Podcast

Mystery Gunmen in D.C.

Posted on | July 17, 2021 | Comments Off on Mystery Gunmen in D.C.

Police are baffled:

Six people were injured and one 6-year-old girl killed in a shooting that took place in Washington, D.C., Friday night.
The Metropolitan Police Department of the District of Columbia released a video statement regarding the shooting, which took place shortly after 11 p.m.
Executive Assistant Chief Ashan M. Benedict said police heard shots of gunfire at 2900 Block of Martin Luther King, Jr., Avenue, Southeast, and rushed to the scene to find six victims injured: three male adults, two female adults and one child.
The 6-year-old girl was shot and killed at the scene and was later pronounced dead at a local hospital, Benedict said.
The five adults were being treated at area hospitals Friday night with non-life-threatening injuries.
The shooters are unknown, and police are asking for the public’s help in identifying them.
“We’re asking for the public’s assistance to bring these shooters to justice,” Benedict said.

Here’s a clue: I don’t think Trump supporters did it.




 

Category: Crime

‘Build a Path to Citizenship’

Posted on | July 17, 2021 | Comments Off on ‘Build a Path to Citizenship’

Quietly, proceeding by stealthy cat-like steps, the open-borders lobby has decided that permanent legal status for illegal aliens is something that Congress must cram into the “reconciliation” legislation:

Sen. Alex Padilla, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s immigration panel, said Tuesday it was his “understanding and expectation” that a pathway to permanent status for undocumented immigrants would be included in Democrats’ budget reconciliation package.
“I do think it could be a matter of just a couple of months, if all the necessary steps are taken,” the California Democrat said regarding a timeline to green light relief for millions of undocumented immigrants, including those brought to the U.S. as children.
“And thus far, my understanding and expectation is that immigration is included in that reconciliation package,” he said in a call with reporters and advocates. “It seems pretty optimistic and ambitious, and it is, but it’s also very realistic. We just need a few important things to fall in place.”
Padilla also said he believes the White House supports efforts to establish a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants through reconciliation.
“Are they aware of my interest and my request? Absolutely. And I haven’t been told no,” he said. “I believe the White House is supportive of both an ambitious infrastructure package, and as substantive immigration reform as you can achieve in any way possible.”
Advocates have called on Democrats to include immigration provisions in a budget reconciliation package, which would include trillions of dollars for party priorities such as child care and climate change, in acknowledgment that a standalone immigration bill would be unlikely to garner the Republican votes needed to overcome a filibuster in the Senate.

In other words, because amnesty for illegal aliens cannot be passed as stand-alone legislation — with both sides having a chance to debate and vote on it directly — they’re going to ram it through by the dishonest process of “reconciliation,” cramming it into a multi-trillion-dollar budget deal that everybody can be made to feel obligated to vote for.

By the way, nobody ever elected Alex Padilla to the Senate. He was appointed by Gov. Gavin Newsom to fill the seat vacated when Kamala Harris became vice president. So an unelected Senator is advocating the use of anti-democratic processes to give amnesty to illegal aliens.

And all of this was planned in advance — not kidding, not a conspiracy theory. Since at least May, the open-borders lobby has been running advertisements with titles like, “Build a path to citizenship for immigrant essential workers so recovery includes everyone!”

Whatever it is, this is certainly no accident. Look at how many results you get if you Google the phrase “build a path to citizenship.”

As my brother Kirby pointed out this morning, however, there already is “a path to citizenship” for immigrants, a path that begins by following U.S. law, applying for a visa, and coming here legally. But this is not what the open-borders lobby wants. What they want to do is to reward millions of law-breaking foreigners who have no legal right to be in this country at all, and who therefore should be deported. The same people who claim that “Our Democracy” is threatened by people suspicious of election fraud are not willing to go through the normal democratic process of passing legislation — committee hearings, a debate directly on the issue, ending in an up-or-down roll-call vote — on a matter of great importance to the future of our country. Why is this so?

To understand what is wrong with America’s immigration system, the best place to start is by reading Peter Brimelow’s 1995 book, Alien Nation: Common Sense About America’s Immigration Disaster, which points to the Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1965, also known as the Hart-Celler Act, as the root of our current problem. Ted Kennedy was the leading advocate for passage of this measure in the Senate, at a time when Democrats had a 66-seat filibuster-proof Senate majority.

Buried in the details of that legislation were “family reunification” measures which were supported by many Democrats of immigrant ancestry — Irish, Italian, Polish, Jewish, etc. — who seemed to believe that these provisions would mainly be used by their constituents to bring over Uncle Guido or Cousin Greta from the Old Country. What happened instead, of course, was that “family reunification” became the machinery of what is called “chain migration” — just get one member of your family into the country, and then everybody can come. And then there was the matter of “refugee” status which has been used, for example, to give Salvadorans preference over Mexicans, and to give Somalis preference over Cubans. Every effort to “reform” the 1965 immigration law has been hijacked by liberals (and/or Big Business interests who see immigrants as a source of cheap labor) and the fundamental flaws of the legislation have never been fixed, mainly because the open-borders lobby has a habit of screaming “RAAAAACIST!” at anyone who raises the subject of whether the American people actually want the kind of wholesale demographic transition that our broken immigration system is producing.




 

Category: Immigration
« go back — keep looking »

    About

    This is an area on your website where you can add text. This will serve as an informative location on your website, where you can talk about your site.

    Subscribe to our feed

    Search

    Admin