The Other McCain

Amazon Warehouse Deals
Ordinary Men
The Order of the Death’s Head
The Wages Of Destruction
Mothers Day Gifts

Category: Journalism

In The Mailbox: 04.22.24

Posted on | April 23, 2024 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 04.22.24

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Silicon Valley et Hamas delenda sunt.

OVER THE TRANSOM
357 Magnum: “Just Call 911,” They Say
EBL: Julie and Dick in Covent Garden
Twitchy: The Lost Jedi – People React To Mark Hamill’s Claim That Joe Biden Is The Best President Ever, UCLA Med School’s DEI Chief Caught Plagiarizing, and “Biden’s Newest Handler” – Earth Day Brings Slow Joe And Occasional Cortex Together
Louder With Crowder: “Undocumented” Cornell Professor Throws Temper Tantrum At Ann Coulter Event And Gets Herself Arrested, also, Trans middle schooler beats female student to a bloody pulp and this brave girl wants to know why the school did NOTHING
Vox Popoli: Another Horseman in Hell, Why Warhammer Survived So Long, The Empire’s Economic Death Spiral, Waterloo Need Not Have Been Fought, and Europe’s Crisis of Legitimacy
L’Ombre de L’Olivier: LLM Considered Harmful,
Upstream Reviews: Superversive Spotlight – Henry Vogel,
Postcards From Barsoom: The Great Canadian Darkness, also, Devil-Worshipping Aliens From Dimension X

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Conservative: What’s Next After the Ukraine Mistake? also, The Generals’ Trump Brief Actually Makes a Compelling Case
American Greatness: Biden Weaponizes the Federal Government for His Own Reelection Campaign, Florida Congresswoman to Propose Bill Banning the Display of Foreign Flags in Congress, Mass Deportations Would Lower Housing Prices, and Are Iran’s Nine Lives Nearing an End?
American Power: Peachy Keenan, Domestic Extremist (and a bunch of other worthwhile books)
American Thinker: President Trump Did Not Incite the Jan. 6 Capitol Riot, ‘Conspiracy Theories’ Aren’t Theoretical Anymore, Voices For a Return to God, and What Won’t the Swamp Do to Stop Trump?
Animal Magnetism: Goodbye, Blue Monday
Babalu Blog: Public transportation in Cuba drops by nearly 20% while tourist transportation spikes up over 60%, The reason the Cuban people are starving, Tourist numbers in Cuba continue to decline in 2024 (except among Canadians) while half a million ‘diaspora’ Yo-Yos flock to the island, and Cuba purge update: Another provincial communist party first secretary gets sacked
Baldilocks: Strategic Assault
BattleSwarm: Petition To Remove Soros-Backed Travis County DA Jose Garza Granted, Why Saudi Arabia’s Neom Is Doomed, and “Ghost Gun” Ban Headed To Supreme Court
Behind The Black: Slovenia signs Artemis Accords, Update on SpaceX’s preparations for the 4th test flight of Superheavy/Starship, Computer models suggest there is no life in Europa’s underground ocean, China launches “remote-sensing” satellite, Patchy arms in a nearby spiral galaxy, and On the left, certainty and violent passion; On the right, doubt and fearful timidity; This must change!
Cafe Hayek: Pittsburgh Tribune-Review: “Council of Political Enablers”
CDR Salamander: Israel’s Measured Response
Chicago Boyz: Ukraine, and the World Outside US Borders
Da Tech Guy: Under the Fedora: Who Needs Norms Edition, Is this not the Perfect Metaphor for the Democrat Party, History awaits as Chicago White Sox might finish with worst MLB season ever, DaTechGuy’s 3rd Law of Media Outrage Memphis Edition, and Oh Canadian Teeth!
Dana Loesch: Last Week In Legal – The Storm Has Started, also, Yes, America Was Right To Drop The Atomic Bomb
Don Surber: Lawyer up, Republicans
First Street Journal: Crazy people are dangerous
Gates Of Vienna: Not Quite the Götterdämmerung I Expected, Thoughts on the State of the UK as We Approach Our Rubicon, and Daddy Warbucks is Doing Just Fine
The Geller Report: Democrats Move to Strip Trump of Secret Service Protection, HITLER YOUTH Rampage at Columbia University, Biden Regime To Announce Sanctions Against IDF Unit, and Jewish Yale Student Stabbed in Eye By Terrorist Student
Glenn Reynolds: In Which I Partake In A Cultural Moment
Hollywood In Toto: Beautiful Girls Couldn’t Be Made Today. Here’s Why, Bill Maher Agrees with DeSantis – Disney Grooms Children, Can Colbert Ignore ‘Genocide Joe’ Chants at DNC? and What Happened To World War II Movies?
The Lid: Socialism and Passover: The Holiday Of Freedom, Michigan Bishop Says Joe Biden a ‘Stupid’ Catholic, and Smithsonian, America’s Top Museum, Worried it Can’t Hold Drag Shows Any More
Legal Insurrection: Columbia Faculty for Justice in Palestine Announce Boycott of Commencement Until Demands Are Met, Harvard Suspends Undergraduate Palestine Solidarity Committee for the Rest of Spring Term, Twenty-Five State Attorneys General Sue Biden EPA over Economy-Crushing Emissions Mandates, Dean of Students at Northwestern U. Attends Protest Targeting Campus Jewish Community Center, NYC Judge Rules Trump’s $175 Million Bond From Civil Trial Stands, Disease Caused by Rat Urine Surged in New York City to Record Levels during 2023, and IDF Intelligence Chief to Step Down Over Hamas Invasion Failures
Nebraska Energy Observer: Saturday – just for you, Jubilate, and Decline and Fall
Outkick: Texas High School Baseball Game Takes 2 Days To Play, Finally Ends After 23 Innings, Caitlin Clark’s 8-Year Nike Deal Worth Up To $28 Million, Olivia Dunne Didn’t Compete At NCAA Championships, But She Is A National Champion, Kendrick Perkins, Michael Wilbon Slam Miami Heat Fans: ‘They’re Front-Runners’, Chinese Swimmers Test Positive For Banned Substance, Win Olympic Gold Anyway While WADA Looks Other Way, Former Colorado CB Cormani McClain Says He Wants To Play For A ‘Real Program,’ Not Just ‘For Clicks’, and Angel Reese Shares Simple Message About Protecting Women’s Sports
Power Line: The EV Bubble Bursts, And then the darkness fell, and Did Biden Revoke Title IX?
Shark Tank: “Democrats Have A Jewish Problem”
Shot In The Dark: The Kristallnacht Theme Park, Feature Not A Bug, and Call On Line 5 From The Dixie Chicks
STUMP: Five Decades Of Meep,
This Ain’t Hell: News for Marines today, Illegal aliens moving into Soldiers’ Home in Chelsea, Massachusetts, Michael Avenatti in contact with Donald Trump’s defense, Massie, Trump dissing troops, and Sailor Convicted of Attempted Espionage
Transterrestrial Musings: An American Education TImeline, Economists, Civil War, Lunar Elon, and A Propellantless Drive?
Victory Girls: Ilhan Omar Is Extremely Proud To Be Hateful, Hillary Clinton – Still Crazy After All These Years, and Biden Surrenders Niger Base, After Afghanistan Debacle
Volokh Conspiracy: House Passes REPO Act Giving President Authority to Confiscate Russian Government Assets in the US and Transfer them to Ukraine, also, Special Counsel Jack Smith Lacks Standing to Defend the D.C. Circuit’s ruling on Presidential Immunity in the Supreme Court
Watts Up With That: Electric car demand plunges across Europe, Smart meters could soon cost you a whole lot more, Major Setback for New York Renewable Energy Goals, China’s dangerous battery monopoly, and Climate Change Is Normal and Natural, and Can’t Be Controlled
The Federalist: SCOTUS Deliberates Over Homeless Camps And A Fictional ‘Right To Housing’, Ignoring Primaries Gives The GOP Establishment Permission To Be Awful, Here’s Just Some Of The Historical Evidence For The Biblical Exodus, We’re So Sorry, Uncle Bosie, Why West Virginia’s Secretary Of State Won’t Follow Biden’s ‘Illegal Directives’ Federalizing Elections, Opposition To Trump Is Rooted In Contempt For Ordinary Voters, and Is Biden’s IRS Meddling In The IG Investigation Of Hunter Biden Whistleblowers?
Mark Steyn: Island in the Sun: Pietro Germi’s Seduced and Abandoned, The Days of Wine and Roses, Happy Earth Day! and A Biden in Every Pot!

Category: Linkagery

Is New York City in 2024 Better or Worse Than Salem, Massachusetts, in 1692?

Posted on | April 22, 2024 | 1 Comment

There was less crime in colonial Salem than in Alvin Bragg’s Manhattan, and certainly more justice than Donald Trump is likely to get with Judge Juan M. Merchan presiding over this 21st-century witchcraft trial. Bragg’s theory of the case is that Trump STOLE THE ELECTION from Hillary Clinton in 2016 by arranging for a “hush money” payment to keep Stephanie Gregory (a/k/a “Stormy Daniels”) from telling the world about her “affair” with Trump (which, I feel pretty certain, never happened).

Trump was the victim of an extortion scheme, and “Stormy Daniels” was the perpetrator (or, at least, she was a willing participant in an extortion conspiracy against Trump), but rather than punish the blackmailers, instead Bragg is persecuting Trump, the victim of this crime. A year ago, the House Judiciary Committee sent Bragg a letter:

The New York County District Attorney’s Office has been investigating President Trump since at least 2018, looking for some legal theory on which to bring charges. The facts surrounding the impending indictment have “been known for years.” Michael Cohen, President Trump’s disgraced former lawyer, pleaded guilty over four years ago to charges based on the same facts at issue in the impending indictment. By July 2019, however, federal prosecutors determined that no additional people would be charged alongside Cohen. Now, in the words of one legal scholar, you are attempting to “shoehorn” the same case with identical facts into a new prosecution, resurrecting a so-called “zombie” case against President Trump. Even the Washington Post quoted “legal experts” as calling your actions “unusual” because “prosecutors have repeatedly examined the long-established details but decided not to pursue charges.”

Everybody knows Bragg’s case is bogus, including Bragg.

Bragg and Judge Merchan are both Democrats, and this bogus prosecution is simply the latest Democratic Party operation intended to extend to the entire United States the totalitarian one-party government that exists in New York, by criminalizing opposition. When they talk about “our democracy,” this is what they mean — in “our democracy,” there can be no effective opposition, and never a chance that a Democrat could lose an election. If you express doubt that Joe Biden really got 81 million votes, you’re an “election denier” — a dangerous extremist — and the candidate you voted for will be sent to prison, just to stop you from voting for him again. Alvin Bragg is going to convict Trump of a felony, even if he has to solicit “spectral evidence” to do it.

NEW: DATA: Majority Now Say Trump Trials 'A Witch Hunt,' Agree 'Fair Trial' is 'Not Likely.'https://t.co/dIBsEi3n7K

— The National Pulse (@TheNatPulse) April 22, 2024

Trump attorney and spokesperson Alina Habba GOES OFF on lawfare waged against Trump outside NY courtroom:

"This is where your taxpayer dollars are going, America! Right here—witch hunt after witch hunt!"???

pic.twitter.com/gglcjLkS3Q

— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) April 22, 2024

A VIEW FROM THE BEACH: Hilde Osland, Fish Pic Friday – Brooke Russell, Thursday Tanlines, Gone Fishin’, The Wednesday Wetness, Thursday Tune from the Legwarmers, Trump Scores Bigly, The Monday Morning Stimulus, Palm Sunday, Hailey Grice, Fish Pic Friday – Astrid deGrunchy, As the Palaces Burn Cover, The Wednesday Wetness, What Do Baby Striped Bass Eat, Tattoo Tuesday, The Monday Morning Stimulus, Palm Sunday and DNC Pays Biden Legal Costs, and Judge Nixes Hunter’s Gun Plea

Category: Crime, Donald Trump

Rule 5 Sunday: Super Extra Double-Scoop Post-Tax Day Leather Edition

Posted on | April 22, 2024 | 1 Comment

— compiled by Wombat-socho

SOTD

This was originally going to be dedicated to hot accountant chicks, but the results of that image search were disappointing when they weren’t X-rated, so you get busty biker babes in leather instead.
Ceterum autem censeo Silicon Valley et Hamas delendam sunt.

An appropriate appetizer for Double Scoop Sunday.

ANIMAL MAGNETISM: Rule Five Climate Rule Friday, last week’s Saturday Gingermageddon, Rule Five Mining Road Friday, and this week’s Saturday Gingermageddon.

EBL: Saturday Night Girls With Guns, The Bricklayer, Traditional Japanese Salted Salmon, Porchetta, Nicole Brown Simpson RIP, Ripley, MAGA Stormy Prosecution, Parasyte Grey, Emily Feld, McHale’s Navy Great Eclipse, Eclipse Monday, Isla Fisher, Saturday Night Girls With Guns, AntiMAGA Coward Judge Merchan, Dickey Betts RIP, Separated At Birth? Canterbury Tales, “Tale Of Brave Ulysses”, Fallout, HMS Titanic Sinks, Masters Weekend, Italia Ricci, and I Will Follow You Into The Dark.

FLAPPR: T.I.T.S for April 12 and April 19

Thanks to everyone for all the luscious links!

Have some more leather-clad cuteness.

Amazon Warehouse Deals
Deals on Premium Beauty Products
Visit Amazon’s Intimate Apparel Shop
Shop Sex & Sensuality Gifts

Category: Rule 5

Para-Dogs

Posted on | April 21, 2024 | Comments Off on Para-Dogs

by Smitty

Some sorry Socialist para-dogs
About which Commies ever bark
Are how “the things” our spirit bogs
With “Equity for all” in *their* dark

Materials: good in their way
No shame is found in the suitable tool
Yet “Stuff obsessions” wreck the day
(Extremist views are of the fool)

In stark contrast are we then told
That all wealth gaps are born of sin
“Riches come in theft’s unfold,
There is, at last, no honest win.”

And yet in the following breath
“Diversity” is all the rage
Monoculture is a death
How fit we all then on one page?

Can we somehow reconcile
Two ideas so at odds?
Do possessions all defile
Or: diversity in private goods?

The thing about the Para-Dogs
Is: they are rooted in a ruse
That people are just pollywogs
Livestock for elite to use

The lesson, then, is nothing new
“Covet not thy neighbor’s stuff”
Reject those insisting one do
For folly makes the times get tough.

Author’s rendition

Category: Uncategorized

FMJRA 2.0: Home For Tax Day

Posted on | April 21, 2024 | 1 Comment

— compiled by Wombat-socho

This tax season has been odd for a number of reasons: I did not expect to be left in Tonopah for the last couple of weeks of the season instead of being called up to Reno, and I did not expect to be working on the day after the tax filing deadline. Both of these things happened, and oddly enough I wound up putting in the kind of hours at home the last weekend of the season that I had the last two years at the Damonte Ranch office in Reno. I haven’t checked to see if I brought in enough revenue to earn a post-season bonus, but by God I certainly worked hard enough on some complicated returns that I’m sure I came close.
Meanwhile at RFK, my Senators took two out of three from the Cubs and then two out of three from the A’s, who are a much weaker team than they were last year. This means we ended the week at 15-18, one game ahead of the Twins, who we will face Tuesday afternoon. They seem to hit pretty well, but their defense sucks, so it should be interesting.
Ceterum autem censeo Silicon Valley et Hamas delendam sunt.

Fly the Curly W flag!

Biden’s Gun Control Policy Won’t Work
The Pirate’s Cove
A View From The Beach
First Street Journal
EBL
357 Magnum

Let’s Play ‘Spot the Missing Word’
The Daley Gator
A View From The Beach
Flappr
EBL
357 Magnum

Crazy People Are Dangerous (and Pennsylvania Democrats Are Crazy)
The Daley Gator
The First Street Journal
American Free News Network
EBL
357 Magnum

Iran Attacks Israel: Biden to Blame
A View From The Beach
Flappr
EBL

FMJRA 2.0: A Winning Week
A View From The Beach
EBL
357 Magnum

In The Mailbox: 04.16.24 (Afternoon Edition)
A View From The Beach
Flappr
EBL
357 Magnum

In The Mailbox: 04.19.24 (Afternoon Edition)
EBL
357 Magnum

In The Mailbox: 04.19.24 (Evening Edition)
EBL
357 Magnum

Amazon Warehouse Deals

Category: FMJRA Award

Crazy People Are Dangerous

Posted on | April 20, 2024 | Comments Off on Crazy People Are Dangerous

There is a widespread mental health problem in Chicago:

Protesters showed up Thursday night at a Chicago Police Board meeting demanding the firing and prosecution of officers who fired 96 shots at Dexter Reed during a traffic stop last month.
Dozens packed a conference room at CPD Headquarters, 3510 S. Michigan Ave., in Douglas, while dozens more waited behind barricades outside, clamoring to be let in. Hundreds had gathered for a rally in support of Reed outside headquarters earlier in the evening.
Grace Patino, with the Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression, said during public comment that Chicago police Supt. Larry Snelling — who was at the meeting — should be dismissed.
“Dexter Reed should be here today,” Patino said. “The officers involved in the execution of Dexter Reed must be immediately fired and prosecuted to the fullest extent possible.”
“We need an immediate end to pretextual traffic stops, and Larry Snelling should be fired,” she added to loud applause.
Miracle Boyd, an activist with Good Kids Mad City, said Reed was “racially profiled,” and his death was detrimental to Black communities.
“We demand the tactical units be banned, and Mayor Johnson, Supt. Snelling and COPA fire the officers,” she said. “We no longer need police to perform traffic stops because it’s not safe.”

Got that? No more traffic stops in Chicago. This is insane — a demand to end enforcement of traffic laws, because Dexter Reed got killed after he shot first in a confrontation with five police officers. Do these people think it’s irrelevant that Reed shot first? Do they care nothing about the facts that (a) Reed was packing a 9mm pistol despite (b) being out on pre-trial release for a 2023 weapons charge, and (c) this shooting happened in one of Chicago’s most violent neighborhoods? (See “What CNN Didn’t Tell Its Audience About the Police Shooting of Dexter Reed Jr.,” April 10.)

If you are sane (unlike Democrat voters in Chicago), you are not likely to believe Reed was “racially profiled,” except insofar as at least 70% of the shootings in Chicago involve black suspects, so that if cops in Chicago want to “get guns off the street” (as liberals keep telling us they want to do), they’re probably not going to be looking for Korean suspects.

Was the death of Dexter Reed “detrimental to Black communities”? Perhaps someone should ask Dexter’s uncle about that:

Before Dexter Reed shot a Chicago police officer during a traffic stop and set off a gunfight that claimed his life, he was seriously wounded in another shooting over two years earlier when he threatened to kill a family member while brandishing a knife, records show.
Police records indicate Reed was in the throes of a mental health crisis when he attacked his uncle in August of 2021, leading his uncle to shoot him. Reed was left in a coma for weeks and struggled with his mental and physical health as he recovered.
Amid a series of lawsuits Reed filed after he was shot in 2021, he acknowledged that he suffered from schizophrenia and post-traumatic stress disorder.
Details of the earlier shooting, which haven’t previously been reported, along with the lawsuits and Reed’s social media posts, provide a clearer picture of a troubled life that ended in a hail of gunfire in Humboldt Park earlier this year. . . .
On the morning of Aug. 25, 2021, the uncle told police that Reed “was acting weird” and “just didn’t seem right” when he came to the basement of a family home in Austin after spending the night. Reed then pulled a six-inch kitchen knife from his pants and held it “in a menacing way,” according to a police report.
“I’m going to kill you,” Reed allegedly said as he approached his uncle with the knife in his right hand.
The uncle grabbed a gun and started yelling upstairs to his mother to call 911, the report states. His uncle’s mother, who was Reed’s grandmother, then came downstairs and tried to intervene but was pushed to the ground.
Reed then lunged at his uncle with the knife, and his uncle fired a single gunshot, according to the report. The uncle lost track of the gun during a subsequent struggle and ultimately ran inside a bedroom as Reed continued to threaten him and pulled on the doorknob.
While Reed was pulling the door open, his uncle grabbed another gun and fired multiple times as Reed entered the bedroom, the report states. Reed was shot once in the back and twice in the groin and was rushed to Mount Sinai Hospital.
The uncle told police he didn’t want to press criminal charges but noted that Reed needed mental health treatment, according to the records. Reed’s grandmother said he had “mental problems but does not want to get checked out.”

Dexter Reed tried to stab his own uncle, and wouldn’t stop even after his uncle grabbed a gun. This is the guy whose death has become a cause célèbre for “activist” types in Chicago. It takes a special kind of crazy to think that way, to be so obsessed with race that you want to basically shut down the police department over the death of a dangerous lunatic.

HIT THE FREAKING TIP JAR!

Category: Chicago, Democrats

Max Azzarello: ‘Just Another American Driven Insane by the Past Few Years’

Posted on | April 20, 2024 | 1 Comment

Start a f**king revolution!
Start a f**king revolution!
Start a f**king revolution!
You’ve got nothing to lose!
— Max Azzarello, January 10, 2024
(sung to “The Battle Hymn of the Republic”)

Well, Max, maybe you “had nothing to lose,” before you set yourself on fire outside the Trump trial in New York City, but the rest of us generally do have something to lose. We have our sanity, for example, and we’re not going to risk that by running down the rathole of paranoia that led you to believe we’re threatened by “an apocalyptic fascist world coup.”

Many thanks to Sasha Stone for doing a “deep dive on Azzarello” and supplying the summary quote in the headline. Sasha’s main point is that Azzarello is not some kind of “right-wing extremist,” but is in fact the polar opposite. He was a “Bernie Bro,” who sported an “Eat the Rich” T-shirt to express his support for Bernie Sanders’ 2016 presidential campaign. If you read his “manifesto,” you’ll see that a lot of his rhetoric is about Bill and HIllary Clinton being essentially the same as Republicans, so that, in his words, “the Democrat vs. Republican division has been entirely manufactured,” like fake villains in pro wrestling.

This is a common theme of extremists, both left and right, that the two-party system is essentially phony, that leaders of both parties are “sold out” to the same set of wealthy corporate donors. This extremist claim is persuasive because . . . Well, it’s basically true. Anyone with two eyes and a brain can see how the Clintons have gotten rich from politics while claiming to represent the interests of “working families.” And any Republican could point to figures on our side of the aisle (e.g., Mitch McConnell) who seem to care more about their corporate donors than they do about the voters who elected them. But however corrupt and phony our leaders may be, we do not surrender to despair.

Despair is the essence of the kind of radicalism that leads people to engage in suicidal gestures (Azzarello died late Friday night). And despite my general cynicism about politics, I consider it my duty to remain hopeful, never forgetting these words:

“The truth is this: The march of Providence is so slow and our desires so impatient; the work of progress so immense and our means of aiding it so feeble; the life of humanity is so long, that of the individual so brief, that we often see only the ebb of the advancing wave and are thus discouraged. It is history that teaches us to hope.”
— Robert E. Lee, 1870

Think about what Lee had lived through, and the discouraging situation of the South in the aftermath of the Civil War. Contemplate the contrast between that desolate time and our own era of widespread affluence and opportunity, then perhaps you can try to explain why we should feel hopeless now, but don’t expect to persuade me.

You know, I hear a lot about how bad young people have it nowadays, but when I look at my own kids, they’re doing fine. What was Max Azzarello’s problem, other than his enthusiasm for “revolution”? He was 37 years old and got his undergraduate degree in anthropology and public policy from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2009, then got a master’s degree in city and regional planning in Rutgers University in New Jersey in 2012. UNC-Chapel Hill is rather prestigious — it requires a high SAT and top grades for admission — and Azzarello should have had very nice career prospects, but something went wrong:

Associates of Azzarello told The Daily Beast that he’d “gone a little haywire” in recent years, with his posts to Facebook growing more and more unhinged.
“[He is] a very personable guy, not an idiot when you’re sitting around talking with him, but over the course of the last few years he’s become more and more involved with the thought process that everything is a conspiracy against the common person,” his former landlord, Larry Altman, told The Daily Beast. “Authority is not doing anything to help you.”
Despite him showing signs of going off the rails, Altman added that Azzarello gave no indication he might do something as radical as setting himself ablaze.
“I would find it difficult to believe he was burning himself because he didn’t like Trump,” Altman said. “He might be burning himself because he doesn’t like authority in general and maybe he was feeling the trial was a show trial .. I don’t know. I can’t even imagine him going that far.”
“He has been unwell,” said one family friend, who asked not to be named because of the sensitivity of the situation. They said Azzarello was living in St. Augustine and working as a consultant but previously lived in New York. “He was very intelligent and a very strong-willed person who was extremely kind. He was a kind guy. He had a big heart. He just battled with some mental illness.”

“Some mental illness,” no doubt similar to the insanity that inspired Jew-hater Aaron Bushnell to self-immolate in February, or that inspired James Hodgkinson to open fire on Republicans practicing for the annual congressional baseball game in 2017. It is not politics, per se, that drives these people crazy, but rather the despair caused by their inability to bring about whatever idiotic “ideal” they’re obsessed with. They believe themselves to be “on the right side of history,” and see the world going in what they consider to be the wrong direction, and become frustrated by their own powerlessness. They aspire to be important, to achieve some kind of historical notoriety, and thus feel compelled to do something — a symbolic gesture — that will attract widespread attention.

Let’s face it, dear reader: The whole world has gone crazy, except for me and you, and I’m not too sure about you. All things considered, few of my friends expected me to become The Last Sane Man in America, but nevertheless, here I am, clinging tightly to reality, while watching everybody else go spiraling off into craziness. The key to staying sane amid the pervasive lunacy is to ignore politics as much as possible. The endless drama of the 24/7 news cycle, piped into your brain via cable TV and social media, is a formula for psychosis. Turn off the TV, find a hobby, something to distract yourself from the Permanent Crisis, and also, while you’re at it, maybe hit a blogger’s tip jar once in a while, so that I can buy some fireworks. There’s nothing wrong with me that can’t be cured by buying a few cases of fireworks and fusing together a big aerial bombardment for the Fourth of July. But I digress . . .

Have I mentioned lately that Crazy People Are Dangerous? That’s pretty important to remember, although perhaps nothing is more important than the Five Most Important Words in the English Language: