In The Mailbox: 02.20.20

Posted on | February 20, 2020 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 02.20.20

OVER THE TRANSOM
357 Magnum: Bail Reform Claims Another Life
EBL: Pete Buttigieg Goes For The Black Vote, also, Confirmed – Ilhan Omar Married Her Brother To Evade U.S. Immigration Law
Twitchy: The Bulwark’s Charlie Sykes Posts Speakers At The Summit For Principled Conservatism
Louder With Crowder: Bloomberg Savages Bernie – “You’re A Socialist That Owns Three Houses”

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Conservative: Farming Isn’t An Information Age Skill
American Greatness: James Comey Is Lying About The Justice Department’s Job
American Power: The Limits Of Democracy Promotion
American Thinker: Rush Limbaugh, Trump, & The Tea Party Family
Animal Magnetism: Animal’s Daily Smackdown News
Babalu Blog: Socialism In Action – Lack Of Personal Hygiene Products Plunges Cuba Into Medieval Times
BattleSwarm: Coronavirus Update For February 2020
Cafe Hayek: No, Hayek’s “Promise” Wasn’t “Broken”
Camp Of The Saints: Perilous Times – On The Radical Young Left
CDR Salamander: Hedging Billions To Keep Shareholders Happy
Da Tech Guy: My Astros Suggestion, also, Shining Some Light On The True Nature Of Socialism
Don Surber: Pardon Stone, Fire The Judge
First Street Journal: What Could Possibly Go Wrong?
The Geller Report: CNN Caught Coaching LV Debate Audience On How/When To Clap & Cheer, also, CONFIRMED – Ilhan Omar DID Marry Her Brother
Hogewash: Team Kimberlin Post of The Day, also, This Ain’t Staying In Vegas
Hollywood In Toto: Night Clerk – Long On Sympathy, Short On Thrills, also, Standing Up, Falling Down Lets Billy Crystal Shine (Again)
Legal Insurrection: Judge Sentences Roger Stone To 40 Months, also, Stacey Abrams – Sure, I’ll Take The VP Slot In 2020, But I Really Want To Be President Someday
Megan McArdle: Hey Democrats, You’re Attacking The Wrong Candidate
The PanAm Post: Will Paraguay Follow Argentina’s Economic Decline? also, Spanish Government Criminalizes Memories Of Falangist Past While Supporting Communist Cuba
Power Line: Steve Scalise Wins Tweet Of The Year, also, How Far Left Are Journalists?
Shark Tank: NRCC Lists Dane Eagle As Contender For Rooney’s Seat
Shot In The Dark: “Evidence-Based”
The Political Hat: Recent Temporary Absence
This Ain’t Hell: Texas Rangers Investigating Jowers & Foley, also, Air Force Pleading With People To Adopt Some Of Their Retired Dogs
Victory Girls: Knives Out At #DemDebate Yelling Match
Volokh Conspiracy: Federal Court Rules Against Plaintiffs In Second Hurricane Harvey Takings Case
Weasel Zippers: Bloomberg Paying People $2500/Month To Say Nice Things About Him On Social Media, also, Biden Claims He Can Help A Democrat Win Senate Race In Pennsylvania (There Isn’t One)
Mark Steyn: Clash Of Titans, also, The Bloomberg Administration Takes Shape

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Category: Linkagery

Violence Against Women Update

Posted on | February 20, 2020 | Comments Off on Violence Against Women Update

The transgender agenda marches on:

On April 1 of last year, 29-year-old Janiah Monroe was transferred from Pontiac Correctional Center, a prison for men, to women’s prison Logan Correctional Center after the MacArthur Justice Center (MJC) and the Uptown People’s Law Center (UPLC) filed a lawsuit against the Illinois Department of Corrections (IDOC) on his behalf.
Named Andre Patterson before he began identifying as a woman, Mr Monroe’s criminal record includes convictions for second-degree murder, attempted murder, aggravated battery and attempted aggravated arson. At age 17, Mr Monroe argued with his male jail cellmate, 31-year-old Kimani Muhammad, and strangled him to death. At the time of the homicide, Mr Monroe was being held on suspicion of aggravated battery with a firearm after shooting two people outside a barber shop.
Two months after the transfer to Logan, Mr Logan was placed in a housing unit with a woman whom he immediately began “express(ing) an interest” in. According to the lawsuit, the woman was terrified of Mr Monroe due to his much greater size and strength. Mr Monroe raped her that same day, she said.
Following the incident, the woman was moved into the prison’s Health Care Unit and interviewed by internal affairs officers. Todd Sexton, a supervisory officer, told her he did not believe her and coerced her into providing a statement in which she retracted the rape allegation, she said. She was then subjected to months of punishment by the IDOC for filing a false complaint under the Prison Rape Elimination Act.

The victim has filed a federal lawsuit against prison officials.

Crazy People Are Dangerous

Posted on | February 20, 2020 | Comments Off on Crazy People Are Dangerous

Nine dead in Germany:

A far-right ‘terrorist’ who shot nine people dead in an attack on two shisha bars in Germany before killing his mother and then himself was a far-right conspiracy theorist who was obsessed by aliens, mind control, Satanic sacrifice and government surveillance.
Tobias Rathjen, 43, detailed his extremist views in a 24-page manifesto posted to a now-deleted website in which he vowed to wipe out entire countries including Israel, most of the Middle East, some Asian nations, North Africa, Central and South America, the Caribbean, and Germans who he considered to be ‘impure’,
‘I can imagine halving the population,’ he wrote, alongside claims that he never slept with a woman because was being watched by the government, and his belief in various anti-Semitic conspiracy theories.
Alongside the manifesto, Rathjen posted his plan to help the German football team win a World Cup and a strategy that he insisted could have ended the Afghan and Iraq wars within 10 years.
His website included links to prominent conspiracy theorists including people who claim to have carried out autopsies on aliens or to be investigating missing persons cases which they link to alien abduction.
And in a video posted online just a few days before last night’s attack in the town of Hanau, Rathjen rants about underground military bases in America where he claims Satan worship and child abuse takes place — urging people to rise up and storm the compounds.
Rathjen posted the manifesto and videos online before opening fire in his hometown around 10pm Wednesday, killing nine people and wounding six. He then went home, killed his 72-year-old mother and then killed himself.
All nine of those killed at the shisha bars have a ‘migrant background’, German attorney general Peter Frank confirmed Thursday, adding that they were aged between 21 and 44.

Describing him as “far-right” — that his motive was political — requires us to ignore the obvious evidence that he was just crazy. Of course, I freely stipulate if a Muslim immigrant had killed nine Germans in a similar manner, we would automatically assume a terrorist motive. But the problem here is that you’ve got a guy who is just generally paranoid, ranting about Satanic rituals and alien abduction, so that his anti-immigrant hatred is just part of a big ball of crazy.

Category: Germany

How Bad Was It?

Posted on | February 20, 2020 | 2 Comments

It was bad — very, very bad:

Mike Bloomberg’s millions in campaign spending flew right out the window Wednesday night.
The billionaire’s self-bankrolled presidential bid was torn to shreds in the opening minutes of Wednesday’s Democratic debate as his opponents skewered him for his checkered past on sexual harassment and his record on stop-and-frisk.
Each candidate on the Las Vegas stage attacked Bloomberg right out of the gate, and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren made the former Big Apple mayor visibly squirm and roll his eyes in frustration.
“I’d like to talk about who we’re running against, a billionaire who calls women ‘fat broads’ and ‘horse-faced lesbians,’” she said from the Paris Theater.
“And, no, I’m not talking about Donald Trump. I’m talking about Mayor Bloomberg.”
Bloomberg, 78, started to surge in national and state polls after pouring hundreds of millions of dollars of his personal fortune into a slick campaign with catered campaign events and wall-to-wall TV ads.
Former Vice President Joe Biden attacked Bloomberg for “throwing close to 5 million young black men up against a wall” while mayor of New York City and said he only stopped after President Barack Obama intervened in his stop-and-frisk policy.
Ex-South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg called Bloomberg and Vermont socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders the “two most polarizing figures on this stage,” while Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar accused the media mogul of hiding.
“I actually welcomed Mayor Bloomberg to the stage. I thought that he shouldn’t be hiding behind his TV ads, and so I was all ready for this big day,” she said.

While watching the candidates take turns pummeling Bloomberg, I was working on a column about the idiot pundits who are always wrong:

One of the most amazing things about American journalism is the continued employment of political pundits whose penchant for failure would disqualify them from being hired in any other field. All the experts who were wrong about the 2016 election are now confidently making predictions about the 2020 election, as if their credibility were undiminished by their previous mistakes.
Last week, for example, ex-Republican pundit Max Boot — panicked by the sudden meltdown of Vice President Joe Biden’s campaign, which he had failed to anticipate — issued a desperate appeal to prevent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders from winning the Democratic nomination. “Please, Democrats, do the smart thing and coalesce quickly around one of the three moderates — Pete Buttigieg, Amy Klobuchar, or Michael Bloomberg — who are still standing after the first two contests,” Boot begged on Twitter in the aftermath of the New Hampshire primary, adding, “The future of our democracy may depend on it.”
Really? Is “our democracy” in such dire peril that it can only be preserved by one of the three Democrats whom Max Boot has named? Or is it rather the case, as I suspect, that Boot is chiefly concerned about rescuing his own damaged reputation? . . .

Read the whole thing at The American Spectator.

Category: Debates, Democrats, Nevada

In The Mailbox: 02.19.20

Posted on | February 19, 2020 | 1 Comment

– compiled by Wombat-socho

OVER THE TRANSOM
Ninety Miles From Tyranny: The 90 Miles Mystery Box, Episode #901
357 Magnum: Denial – It ain’t just a river in Egypt
EBL: 1/19/1945 – The Battle Of Iwo Jima Begins
Twitchy: CNN’s Oliver Darcy Dings Fox For Interviewing InfoWars Correspondent Kaitlin Bennett, Gets Well-Deserved Self-Awareness Check
Louder With Crowder: Cruz Drops New Video Exposing The Real Reason Democrats Push The Climate Change Agenda

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: No NHS For You, Bigot, also, You Don’t Need Game In Marriage, But You Do Need God
American Conservative: Michael Bloomberg – Smirking Id Of America’s Elites
American Greatness: Media Spread Gossipy Barr Resignation Rumor, also, Soros Calls For Zuckerberg, Sandberg To Be Removed From Facebook
American Thinker: Barack Obama – A Traitor For The Ages
Animal Magnetism: Animal’s Hump Day News
Babalu Blog: Bernie Sanders & His Terrifying History Of Praising Murderous Communist Regimes
BattleSwarm: The Cult Of Social Justice, also, Bushes Behaving Badly
Cafe Hayek: Made Blue By Green Initiatives
Camp Of The Saints: Essential – Restoring America’s Can-Do Attitude
CDR Salamander: The Terrible 20s Surface Force Gets Its Just Reward
Da Tech Guy: Don’t Let This Virginia 2A Victory Fool You, also, China, Socialized Medicine, & Me
Don Surber: Mini-Mike Made Us All Farmers
First Street Journal: Bloomberg – He Can’t Even Run His Own Life, I’ll Be Damned If He’ll Run Mine
Fred On Everything: Gilbert, Edmund Scientific, & The Postwar Flowering Of American Techno-Industrial Superiority
The Geller Report: Democrat “New Way Forward” Bill Would Gut The Rule Of Law, also, Arabic Is First Language In Majority Of Iconic Swedish Town ‘s Preschools
Hogewash: Team Kimberlin Post of The Day, also, I’m Not Making This Up, You Know
Hollywood In Toto: Amazon’s Hunters An Inglorious Tarantino-Style Train Wreck, also, Media Gaslighting 101 – Rescuing Birds Of Prey From Reality
JustOneMinute: Debate Night & More
Legal Insurrection: Maxine Waters Wants AG Barr “Out Of DOJ, Disbarred, Disgraced, & Investigated”, also, Gun Rights Activist Swarmed By Angry Mob of Student Protesters At Ohio State
Michelle Malkin: Parents’ Anti-Drag Queen Story Hour Resistance Rises
The PanAm Post: Spanish PM Withdraws Recognition Of Guaido As Venezuelan President
Power Line: The Democrats’ Doom Loop, also, The Washington Post Comes Clean
Shark Tank: DeSantis Pressed To Restore Voting Rights To Felons
Shot In The Dark: Lie First, Lie Always, Lie Finally
This Ain’t Hell: Richard Calvert, Green Beret…NOT, also, US Marshals Asking For Help – Sex Offender Fugitive Lies About Being Vietnam POW
Victory Girls: Democratic Clown Car Of Candidates Hits Nevada
Volokh Conspiracy: Bail Reform In Chicago Appears To Have Increased Crime
Weasel Zippers: Anti-Barr Letter by “Former DOJ Officials” Organized By Obama/Schiff Staffers, also, Top House Democrat Slams Trump Economy – “We Were Fully Employed Under Slavery”
Mark Steyn: Beam Movie Actor, also, Tough-Skinned & Big-Hearted

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Category: Linkagery

The Teenage Anxiety Epidemic

Posted on | February 19, 2020 | Comments Off on The Teenage Anxiety Epidemic

For some reason, nobody was talking about teenage anxiety when I was a teenager. Of course, that was the 1970s, when we were threatened by real dangers like the Arab oil embargo, the Symbionese Liberation Army, Soviet aggression, and the presidency of Jimmy Carter. How did teenagers cope with anxiety back then? Speaking only for myself, it involved massive amounts of drugs and listening to Led Zeppelin albums, but maybe that’s not the advice I’d give kids in the 21st century:

Megan, 19, wants to stand out and be “the person,” but she perceives herself to be falling short. The problem began in high school. She attended an elite academy, where she began “to feel like I was mediocre or below average.” Earlier, at a regular school, she “was the smartest person in the class” and had been on the gifted and talented track since the fifth grade. This heady recognition made her feel special. But then came the academy, where she was surrounded by very bright, high-achieving kids. She began to “feel marginalized” and yearned to “feel special again.” These feelings carried over into college.
Although she is now a scholarship student at a first-rate university, Megan is frustrated and despairing of herself. She explains that she is attending her “safety school” and wants to “show that I should be somewhere better by acing all my classes and being president of 40 organizations.” But, she adds, “that is really not happening. I am, if anything, a mediocre student … and that just makes me so angry at the world and then me for not being the person.” Although she wants “to impress someone,” she says, “I end up being impressively unimpressive,” and that “crushes me.”
Megan is one of the many young people that I, with the help of my students, have interviewed over the past decade. Stories like hers are not unique. The distress of America’s young people continues to attract attention from the media and experts. Anxiety in teens is on the rise and constitutes the leading mental health issue among American youth. Frequently-cited surveys show that the number of adolescents diagnosed with an anxiety disorder is growing, more and more high school seniors are reporting feeling overwhelmed, and the past-month prevalence of college students feeling “overwhelming anxiety” surpasses 40 percent. . . .

You should read the whole thing. As the father of a teenage girl, I try to pay attention to trends like this. Our daughter (thank God) doesn’t have the kind of problems my parents had to deal with when I was a teenage dopehead, but as this article makes clear, the anxiety epidemic seems to be affecting nice kids worst of all. The one thing nobody ever accused me of being was a “nice kid.” So I had that going for me . . .

Otter: “Come on, Flounder. You can’t spend your whole life worrying about your mistakes. You f**ked up. You trusted us. Make the best of it. Maybe we can help you.”
Flounder: “That’s easy for you to say. What am l going to l tell Fred?”
Otter: “I’ll tell you what. I’ll swear you were doing a great job taking care of his car, but you parked it out back last night, and this morning, it was gone. D-Day takes care of the wreck. We tell the police. Your brother’s insurance buys him a new car.”
Flounder: “Will that work?”
Otter: “It’s got to work better than the truth.”
Bluto: “My advice to you is to start drinking heavily.”
Otter: “Better listen to him, Flounder. He’s in pre-med.”

Did I mention Jonestown? Polyester slacks and disco? Man, there was a lot to be anxious about in the 1970s, but for some reason, nobody cared.

Probably it was the weed . . .

Category: Fear. Loathing.

R.I.P., ‘Sexual Intellectual’

Posted on | February 19, 2020 | 1 Comment

Amie Harwick was a licensed marriage and family therapist (LMFT) in California who specialized in talking about sex. Harwick claimed to be a former Playboy centerfold, but good luck finding those photos. On her official website, Harwick described her qualifications:

She has her Bachelors of Arts in Psychology from California Polytechnic University in Pomona, California. She has her Masters of Arts in Clinical Psychology with an emphasis on Marriage and Family Therapy from Pepperdine University. She graduated from the Institute for Advanced Study of Human Sexuality with her Doctorate of Human Sexuality.
Amie has worked with a variety of populations of clients in a variety of settings ranging from a private practice to community based mental health facilities. She has worked with a range of clients including, but not limited to, anxiety, depression, sexually exploited teenagers, juvenile sex offenders, children with trauma, court mandated adults, divorce, sexual identity issues, chronic pain, sex addiction, Bipolar disorder, displaced adolescents, and domestic violence.
Amie was a recipient of the Phillips Graduate Institute stipend award for her multicultural knowledge and awareness regarding displaced children.
Amie is also a member of:

AASECT (American Association of Sexuality Educators, Counselors, and Therapists)
CAMFT (California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists)
PSI CHI (Psychology Honor Society, Pepperdine Chapter)
KAP (Kink Aware Professionals through the National Coalition for Sexual Freedom)

Dr. Amie is the author of The New Sex Bible for Women available at most major booksellers including Amazon and Barnes and Noble.

Years ago, I observed that the most popular form of “feminism” is really a very simple formula: Cute young women talking about sex. Not to say that Harwick lacked qualification as a therapist — her credentials were equal or superior to most practitioners, and her former clients praised her — but her stock in trade was her youth and good looks. That’s why, for example, she was a guest on the Good Morning LaLa Land program. Because the book trade depends on such programs for publicity, having a telegenic presence makes a prospective author more valuable to publishers, thus Harwick became author of The New Sex Bible for Women: The Complete Guide to Sexual Self-Awareness and Intimacy.

Like I said: Cute young women talking about sex. That sells, and never mind whether Amie Harwick had more knowledge about sex than you or I might have, there’s always a ready market for such a product.

Here’s a question: When did sex become so complicated that people needed someone with a Ph.D. to explain it to them? For most of human history, human beings somehow managed to do the basic deed without consulting any credentialed experts, and yet nowadays one must have a doctorate degree from the Institute for Advanced Study of Human Sexuality to claim enough knowledge to dispense advice on such matters.

Just last week, Amie Harwick offered this advice on Instagram:

With Valentine’s Day coming up, many people may be reflecting on past relationships. More often than not, when a relationship ends one or both partners may feel that they have not had what they feel is closure. Moving on, moving forward, and taking care of yourself after the end of a relationship often means accepting that you may not have the ideal closure. Making peace with this takes time.

That seems like good advice, right? And maybe some of Harwick’s fans thought she was referencing her relationship with The Price Is Right host Drew Carey, to whom she was engaged for about a year before they split in 2018. On the other hand, most of Harwick’s fans didn’t know that she was being stalked by an ex-boyfriend she broke up with about 10 years ago. Gareth Pursehouse is a computer programmer and photographer who dated Harwick when she was in her 20s and, evidently, had trouble “accepting that you may not have the ideal closure.” Big trouble:

The Los Angeles Medical Examiner revealed the cause of death of Amie Harwick, a family therapist and the ex-fiancee of comic and “The Price Is Right” host Drew Carey.
Harwick, 38, died of blunt force injuries to her head and torso, according to the Medical Examiner’s Office. Police said they were responding to reports of a “woman screaming” on Saturday when her roommate said Harwick was being “assaulted inside of her residence.” When officers found Harwick at her home, below a third-story balcony, she was “unresponsive” and they determined her injuries were “consistent with a fall.”
The Los Angeles Fire Department then transported her to a local hospital, where doctors pronounced her dead.
Police also found “possible evidence of a struggle” and “forced entry to the residence.”
The suspect, 41-year-old Gareth Pursehouse, was arrested outside his home in Playa del Rey and booked on murder charges, the release explained.

Further details on the accused killer:

Hollywood sex therapist Amie Harwick’s alleged killer, ex-boyfriend Gareth Pursehouse, “stalked and threatened” her at a starry porn awards show hosted by Stormy Daniels just weeks before her death.
Pursehouse confronted Harwick at the XBiz adult-industry awards ceremony Jan. 16 in downtown LA, leaving her terrified, her close friend, former adult-film star Jasmin St. Claire, exclusively told Page Six. Fearful Harwick — who was at XBiz representing Pineapple Support, an org that offers mental health services to sex workers — alerted the cops, but nothing was done, St. Claire claims.
She said, “Gareth knew Amie was going to be at XBiz. He stalked her there and went bats–t crazy. He was at the awards working as a photographer, but his behavior was abusive and threatening. He was yelling and screaming. Amie told me after the incident that she was scared he would show up at her home. She went to the police, but they did not take it seriously. He was really obsessive over her; controlling.”

Pursehouse had a history of abusive and threatening behavior:

Slain celebrity family therapist Dr. Amie Harwick, who was killed Saturday morning at her Hollywood Hills home, was abused multiple times by her ex-boyfriend, according to court documents. . . .
Harwick applied for a restraining order against Pursehouse on two separate occasions, once in 2011 and again in 2012, but neither were still in effect at the time of the killing. . . .
“He has suffocated me, punched me, slammed my head on the ground, kicked me,” Harwick told police, according to the restraining order.
She said Pursehouse also broke into her apartment complex previously and “smashed 10 picture frames on my door.”
According to the restraining order, Pursehouse also texted Harwick saying “things will get worse,” which prompted her to call the police. . . .
Dr. Hernando Chavez was with Harwick when that most recent encounter happened.
“He was irate, angry, aggressive, verbally abusive, distraught, under duress,” Chavez said. “And she was trying to calm him down, she was trying to help him soothe, she was trying to be compassionate and empathic.”

Guess he didn’t have “closure,” even after all these years. Why is it that some guys just can’t move on and find somebody new? When I was young, I carried the torch a while for some ex-girlfriends, pining with nostalgia for lost love, but it never occurred to me to blame them for my pain, when obviously the fault for those breakups was all mine.

“Better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all,” as Tennyson said, but I guess they don’t teach romantic poetry anymore, nor do guys watch the kind of movies that would teach them how to walk away from a relationship: “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.”

Always act like a winner, even when you lose. If you really want revenge against the girl who dumped you, the thing to do is to carry on with your life as if you’ve suffered no pain at all. If she’s done you wrong, there are other women in the world who’ll do you right. Or such would be my advice, if any heartbroken young guy sought my advice.

Were there any other clues Gareth Pursehouse might be dangerous?

He tweeted anti-Trump comments frequently in the weeks before his arrest, including a February 12 tweet saying, “Reminder… Once Trump is not president, the FBI can prosecute him for all the Mueller report findings…”

Here’s some advice for you ladies: Don’t date guys who show clear symptoms of Trump Derangement Syndrome.

Not that I’m a Ph.D. therapist or a relationship expert or anything, but like I keep saying, Crazy People Are Dangerous.

UPDATE: Welcome, Instapundit readers! And thanks to the commenter who identified Amie Harwick’s nom de nude as “Nicolette Novak.”

She was definitely not a “Playboy centerfold,” but rather a so-called “cybergirl” (i.e., web-only) whose profile had some interesting quotes:

“I grew up around Philadelphia, Pennsylvania,” she says. “It was a normal middle-class environment, like Stepford. Nothing unexpected, and I didn’t really fit in. I moved to Los Angeles when I graduated from high school, and now I really feel like I’m home.” . . . Nicolette started modeling to pay for her graduate school tuition . . . “I’m attracted to a man that is motivated and self-actualized,” she says. “And I don’t like traditional gender roles. Chivalry casts women in a ‘damsel in distress’ role — a position of inferiority.”

This was circa 2012-2013. Evidently, she got a nose job since then.

Category: Crime, Sex Trouble