The Other McCain

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

Journalism and Mental Health

Posted on | April 6, 2021 | Comments Off on Journalism and Mental Health

Dear Ms. Aviles:

What you need here, ma’am, is an expert analysis, and you’ve found the right guy for the job because — ask around — I’ve always been crazy.

One spring afternoon in 1986, I put on my three-piece suit and walked into the offices of the Cobb News-Chronicle. I walked out with a $4.50-an-hour job as a staff writer and an assignment to cover that evening’s Austell City Council meeting. I had no idea what I was doing, but it was better than driving a forklift, which was what I’d been doing for the past year-and-a-half, saving up money to buy P.A. gear for my rock band.

Thirty-five years later, I’m still at it and, some would say, I still have no idea what I’m doing, but I am by God doing it, aren’t I?

My point here is that journalists have mental health problems because no genuinely sane person would ever get into this miserable racket. Some people pine for the Golden Age of Journalism, but this “profession” (if you can call it that) has always attracted more than its fair share of kooks and cranks who, if they actually became successful at journalism, were politely called “eccentric,” which is just a word for crazy people who make good money. But these were rare exceptions, and the bulk of the people in America’s newsrooms were always a mix of neurotics and drunks, supervised by sadistic sociopaths known as “editors.”

You want to talk about “trauma-facing” work? Yeah, I spent a few years as a sports editor in a small town in North Georgia, where the fans of the various high schools constantly accused me of being biased in favor of their rivals. Calhoun fans thought I was in the tank for Gordon Central and vice-versa, but all I cared about was hitting my deadlines and having enough copy to fill up the section. Talk about trauma . . .

Bowling-league standings.

For years, my job included typing in the local bowling-league scores, which is about as low on the journalistic totem pole as it gets, but I had a wife and kids and bills to pay, so I did it. The problem with most young journalists today is they never had to do that kind of grungy low-level local journalism. Instead they graduated from Northwestern or Columbia and landed a job with one of those clickbait farms — HuffPo, Buzzfeed, Vox — cranking out listicles and other worthless crap. On my tombstone, the epitaph should read: “Here lie the mortal remains of Robert Stacy McCain, who never once in his journalism career wrote a listicle.”

Bowling scores, yes. Listicles, never.

Nowadays, every 23-year-old J-school grad thinks he’s qualified to be a pundit, telling us How to Save Our Democracy. They don’t want to do any actual work, so they haven’t paid their dues covering the police beat or city-council meetings or whatever, but you can find them on Twitter 24/7 snarking away about national politics and how utterly oppressed they are, because they’ve got $60,000 in student-loan debt. And then when they get axed in the latest round of layoffs, we’re expected to take seriously the wailing about the Death of American Journalism because some 26-year-old lost his/her (they/them?) job writing clickbait for HuffPo.

How was it that I managed to make my way up the food chain from the lowest level — bowling scores! — to covering presidential campaigns? Working crazy hours, mainly. I once worked 30 hours straight to hit a major deadline, then went home and slept for 18 hours. More than once over the years, I actually fell asleep at my desk from sheer exhaustion, but the thing was, I knew it was my own fault. I am disastrously inefficient — easily distracted, an undiagnosed case of ADHD if ever there was one — so it takes me more hours to produce the necessary amount of output, and this overcompensation for my inefficiency became a habit. Above all, I was persistent, doggedly determined to keep banging away until I amounted to something. “You sons of bitches think you’ve got me beat? Ha! I refuse to admit defeat.” And so here I am. Not rich or famous, but still working long after most of those sons of bitches packed it in and went off to write P.R. or sell insurance or whatever.

One of my college buddies, who landed a newspaper job in Alabama at the time I was driving a forklift in an Atlanta warehouse, decided to go to law school instead. “Forget about journalism, McCain — it’s a lousy job and there’s no money in it.” I refused to heed his warning, and sometimes think what might have happened if I’d stuck with that forklift gig. But I’m crazy, see? You want to talk about mental health in journalism, sweetheart, I’m an acknowledged expert. Out on the campaign trail, I did 110 mph in a rented Nissan racing across upstate New York covering the craziest congressional campaign in American history. That was after I’d gone to Kentucky to cover an alleged murder that turned out to be a suicide. And did I mention I’ve been hate-listed by the SPLC? Sued for defamation by a notorious bomber? I’ve smoked cigars with members of Congress and drank beers with presidential candidates.

Only a maniac could have done all the things I’ve done over the past 35 years, and yet for some reason I’m not under psychiatric care. My only medications are two packs of Marlboros a day, copious amounts of coffee and maybe a beer or two every now and then.

Since you’re so interested in mental health, maybe I can come see you up there at Columbia Journalism School. Just rattle the tip jar for a road trip, book a ticket on the Amtrak to New York, take an Uber uptown to Morningside Heights, and we can have some beers, talk things over.

Would you like that, Ms. Aviles? One-on-one interview with the craziest living American journalist? Clarice and Hannibal Lecter?

No, probably not. In fact, I imagine you’d call 911 and get a restraining order against me if you really thought I might do it.

NOTORIOUS RIGHT-WING EXTREMIST
THREATENS COLUMBIA PHD STUDENT
NEW YORK — Police here launched a manhunt this week for notorious right-wing blogger Robert Stacy McCain after he was accused of “stalking” a Ph.D. student at the Columbia University School of Journalism.
The threat came after Columbia’s Gwen Aviles issued a Twitter request for journalists to talk to her about their mental health problems. McCain, who has been described by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a “neo-Confederate white supremacist,” apparently took this as an invitation to visit Aviles in person. He quickly raised money on PayPal to fund a trip to New York, and was last seen driving a rented Dodge Hellcat.
“His current whereabouts are unknown,” said an NYPD source, recounting how McCain had eluded state troopers in New Jersey last weekend after a pursuit that hit speeds of 130 mph. . . .

They’d never think to look for me in a low-rent tribal casino, playing $2 roulette and drinking beer until the panic died down. Find some loser who went bust at the blackjack table, offer him a couple hundred bucks to drive me up to New York to, uh . . . visit my girlfriend Gwen.

Nah, they’d never catch me. But there’s no point pursuing this wild fantasy digression further, because it’ll never happen. I’m not that crazy.

Or maybe I am.

That’s the thing about crazy people. You never really know how crazy they are until they do something so insane that all the neighbors are telling the TV reporters, “He was a quiet guy, kept to himself, but he didn’t seem like the kind of maniac who would do something like this.”

And when the radical priest
Come to get me released,
We was all on the cover of Newsweek.

Just a bit of a Gonzo trip there. But they don’t teach Gonzo journalism at Columbia University, do they Ms. Aviles? No, of course not. People in Respected Institutions of Higher Education have never sanctioned the Symbiotic Trapezoid Quote, because they’d never pay a practitioner of Gonzo to teach kids how to do it: “Now, class, if you’ll check the syllabus, you’ll see that you’re gonna need a substantial supply of mescaline . . .”

But obviously this kind of first-hand experience with serious craziness is not what you were looking for when you sent out that tweet talking “trauma” and “mental health” in the field of journalism. What you had in mind, Gwen, was people talking about anxiety and depression and stress, which is quite a different thing than the bizarre manic freakouts that are my special area of expertise. I’m also familiar with several forms of weird sexual fetishes that are common (although seldom mentioned in public) among journalists. You might be surprised — or maybe not — at how many staffers at the New York Times are into really sick kinky stuff. Certainly you would be unwise to trust any NYT staffers alone with your pets or your children, if you know what I mean. But I digress . . .

In summary, Ms. Aviles, after 35 years in this miserable racket, I think journalists are not really crazier now than they were back in the day when there was an ashtray on every desk in the newsroom, and a pint bottle of whiskey in the bottom drawer of most of those desks. In fact, I think the problem is that most journalists now are just too uptight — they don’t drink, they don’t smoke, they don’t have any fun at all, as far as I can tell. Most of them spent four years chasing some paranoid fantasy about the Kremlin and Donald Trump and expected us to take that shit seriously — clearly, they’ve lost touch with reality. If the entire newsroom of CNN were to be hospitalized in the psych ward at Bellevue, they’d be less dangerous to the public. I mean, have you seen Brian Stelter?

He’s demented, deranged, depraved, a few fries shot of a Happy Meal, nutty as squirrel farts, and cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs. If your research project into the mental health of journalists results in Stelter finally getting a straitjacket in a padded cell, America will thank you.

Meanwhile, you should consider taking me up on my offer of a one-on-one interview. Ask around. I’m an expert on crazy.




 

Category: Journalism

In The Mailbox: 04.05.21

Posted on | April 6, 2021 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 04.05.21

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Silicon Valley delenda est.

OVER THE TRANSOM
357 Magnum: Satanic Panic 2.0 & Heavy Metal
EBL: Democrat Stooges Target DeSantis
Twitchy: Teens Charged With Carjacking & Murder Of Uber Eats Driver Get A Pretty Sweet Plea Deal
Louder With Crowder: 60 Minutes Busted Deceptively Editing Ron DeSantis In Hit Piece
Vox Popoli: The Wicked Foundations Of Clown World, also, The Media Discovers 2033
Stoic Observations: The Power Of Prayer
Gab News: The Time For Lukewarm Christianity Is Over

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: An Attachment To Pleasure – How To Begin The Process Of Becoming A Man
American Conservative: CNN Versus Biological Reality
American Greatness: The Appeal Of The New Totalitarians, also, A Narrative Collapse In The Chauvin Trial
American Power: Corporations Get Political, Cancel Georgia After State Passes Voting Reform Legislation
American Thinker: When Everybody Is A White Supremacist, also, What’s More American Than Coke & Baseball?
Animal Magnetism: Goodbye, Blue Monday
Babalu Blog: UN’s International Labor Organization Has Been Complicit In Cuba’s Slave Trade, also, Dissident Rapper Escapes Cuba’s State Security, Leads Neighbors In Chant Against Regime
BattleSwarm: Austin Burning, also, Polish Pastor Don’t Play That
Behind The Black: Today’s Blacklisted Americans, also, ISS’ Russian Zvezda Module Is Leaking Again
Cafe Hayek: Trying To Understand The Silence, also, COVIDocratic Tyranny
CDR Salamander: Raids, Probes, & Scouting Parties
Da Tech Guy: Corporations Need To Stay Out Of Politics, also, The Question The Democrats & MLB Aren’t Answering About The Georgia Voting Reform Law
Don Surber: Now That He’s Safe, Hunter Biden (Sorta) Admits The Truth, also, Borrowing $2 Trillion To Spend $921 Billion On Public Works
First Street Journal: Once Again, The Government Is Targeting Religion During Easter, also, Show Me A Bad Kid…
Fred On Everything: War With Red China? What Fun!
The Geller Report: President Trump Calls For Boycott Of Coke, MLB & All Woke Companies, also, Police Ejected From Easter Service – “Get Out, You Gestapo Psychopaths!”
Hogewash: Team Kimberlin Post of The Day, also, TANSTAAFL
Hollywood In Toto: How The Phantom Beat The Odds & Became A Cult Favorite, also, Four Times Conservative Art (Or Artists) Got Un-Cancelled
The Lid: Murder Turtle Threatens Woke Corporations Objecting To Georgia’s Election Reforms
Legal Insurrection: Scott Walker Has A Plan To Take Back Culture & Education From The Left, also, 60 Minutes Lies About Gov. DeSantis’ COVID Vaccine Rollout
Nebraska Energy Observer: He Is Risen Indeed!
Outkick: Atlanta Area Will Reportedly Lose $100 Million After Move Of All-Star Game, also, Cowardly NBA Media Refuses To Press LeBron James On Space Jam 2‘s Red China Release
Power Line: Why Does 60 Minutes Still Exist? also, The Great Liberal Death Wish Enters A New Phase
Shark Tank: Florida University Using Anti-Semitic Textbook
Shot In The Dark: Our Ad, also, 2021 Pledge Drive
STUMP: Will The Recent Bailout Destroy Pensions In The Long Run?
The Political Hat: Texas Vs. Critical Race Theory
This Ain’t Hell: Ft. Sill Instructors Suspended After Trainee Alleges Sexual Assault, also,  Another Three Are Known
Transterrestrial Musings: Virtue Signaling, also, The Death Of Density
Victory Girls: Capitol Shooter’s Background Is Inconvenient For The Left, also, Questions About The Illegal Immigrants At The Border
Volokh Conspiracy: Justice Thomas Suggests Rethinking Legal Status Of Digital Platforms
Weasel Zippers: Democratic Mayor Of Palm Beach County Calls 60 Minutes Fake News, also, “Reverend” Warnock Commits Ridiculous Heresy
The Federalist: Questions The Media Should Ask Biden About His Call For Economic Sanctions On Georgia, also, Poll Shows Murkowski Losing To GOP Primary Challenger By Double Digits
Mark Steyn: The Passion Of The Christ, also, Easter Parade

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Category: Linkagery

A Legendary Privateer

Posted on | April 4, 2021 | Comments Off on A Legendary Privateer

When you watch the Pirates of the Caribbean movies, you have to understand that this piracy emerged in the context of a struggle between the major powers of Europe — Spain, France, England, Portugal and the Netherlands — over colonies and trade in the New World:

In the Caribbean the use of privateers was especially popular for what amounted to legal and state-ordered piracy. The cost of maintaining a fleet to defend the colonies was beyond national governments of the 16th and 17th centuries. Private vessels would be commissioned into a de facto ‘navy’ with a letter of marque, paid with a substantial share of whatever they could capture from enemy ships and settlements, the rest going to the crown. . . . This substantial profit made privateering something of a regular line of business; wealthy businessmen or nobles would be quite willing to finance this legitimized piracy in return for a share. The sale of captured goods was a boost to colonial economies as well. The main imperial countries operating at this time and in the region were the French, English, Spanish, Dutch and Portuguese. Privateers from each country were all ordered to attack the other countries’ vessels, especially Spain which was a shared enemy among the other powers.

One major impetus to the rise of piracy was Queen Elizabeth’s commissioning of privateers in the Anglo-Spanish War that erupted in 1585 and continued for nearly 20 years. Her government’s tacit endorsement of maritime looting functioned in a gray area of legality not entirely unlike the modern jurisdictions hosting offshore sportsbooks and shell corporations today. Among these privateers was a young man named Christopher Newport, the son of a shipmaster, who first went to sea at age 18. Newport was 22 when the war with Spain began, and soon found himself commanding privateer ships, successfully raiding Spanish shipping in the Caribbean, and losing an arm in a fight to capture a Spanish galleon in 1590. This grave injury did not end his career, however. “By the time the war had ended in 1604 Newport had raided the Spanish Main more times than Francis Drake had.”

When the war with Spain ended, many of the former privateers turned to piracy — basically doing the same thing they’d been doing in the Queen’s service, except without royal authorization or the need to share their spoils with the crown. Newport, however, returned to England, where his two decades of seafaring experience recommended him to a group of merchants who were organizing a new enterprise. The Virginia Company, as it was called, hired Newport to lead their fleet to settle what became the first permanent British colony in the New World.

Newport led the first April 1607 expedition aboard the 120-ton Susan Constant, accompanied by the 40-ton Godspeed and the 20-ton Discovery. He returned in January 1608 with 70 more settlers and much-needed supplies, and again in October 1608, with another 70 settlers and more supplies. On his third re-supply mission to the Virginia colony, however, Newport’s nine-ship fleet encountered a hurricane that scattered them. Seven of the ships managed to make it to Virginia, but Newport’s flagship was shipwrecked in Bermuda in July 1609. The crew managed to construct two small ships from the wreckage, augmented by native wood, and Newport finally reached Jamestown in May 1610. However, the situation when they arrived was such a disaster — hundreds of colonists had died in what became known as the “Starving Time” — that it was decided to abandon the colony and take the survivors back to England. This was prevented by the arrival of a new governor of the colony, Thomas West, Lord Delaware, who brought with him three ships and 150 men. Newport later made a fourth expedition to Virginia, arriving in May 1611 and bringing with him Thomas Dale, who had been appointed Marshall of the colony. Among the supplies Newport brought were cattle, and Dale established a strict discipline in the colony that was credited with the subsequent success of Virginia.

All of this I learned because the man who attacked the U.S. Capitol on Friday had been a football player at Christopher Newport University in Newport News, Virginia. Well, I wondered, who was this Christopher Newport for which the town and the university were named? Little did I expect to discover the tale of this seafaring adventurer, whose bold privateering raids on Spanish colonies and ships in the Caribbean exceeded even those of Sir Francis Drake. That this legendary privateer should have played such a pivotal role in the establishment of Virginia is remarkable. And now you know the rest of the story.




 

Category: Uncategorized

Rule Five Sunday: Happy Easter!

Posted on | April 4, 2021 | Comments Off on Rule Five Sunday: Happy Easter!

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Perhaps predictably, lots of bunny girls in r/cosplaygirls today, to say nothing of other anime-related subreddits. 
Ceterum autem censeo Silicon Valley esse delendam.

Ashley Spencer doing Mai Sakurajima from Rascal Does Not Dream Of Bunny Girl Senpai.

Ninety Miles From Tyranny: Hot Pick Of The Late Night, The 90 Miles Mystery Box Episode #1309, Morning Mistress, and Girls With Guns. 

Animal Magnetism: Rule 5 Pwning The Woke Friday, and the Saturday Gingermageddon.

EBL: Norma, Capriccio, Roberto Devereux, Il Trovatore, Werther, Tristan und Isolde, MAGA Easter Bunny, and The Elixir Of Love. 

A View From the Beach: A Goddess – Cirilla Rose, Election 2020: Georgia on Their Minds, Fish Pic Friday – Heather Smith, Thursday Tanlines, MDDNR Posts New Striped Bass Regs, Election 2020: Most Capitol Protesters Won’t Face Jail, Your Wednesday Wetness, I Thought Museums were for Real Things, Tuesday Truckin’, Jon Snow Will Be So Disappointed, Election 2020: Democrats have Georgia on Their Minds, The Monday Morning Stimulus and Palm Sunday

Proof Positive’s Vintage Babe of the Week is Betty Brosmer.

Thanks to everyone for all the luscious linkagery!

 

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Category: Rule 5

George Floyd and ‘The Riot Ideology’

Posted on | April 4, 2021 | Comments Off on George Floyd and ‘The Riot Ideology’

The best book on the failure of liberal urban policy is Fred Siegel’s The Future Once Happened Here: New York, D.C., L.A., and the Fate of America’s Big Cities. Siegel devotes much analysis to the “riot ideology” whereby organized violence (or the threat thereof) is used to intimidate officials into doing the bidding of “community leaders.”

What we are witnessing in the trial of former Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin is how the “riot ideology” impacts law enforcement. Because George Floyd was black, and because Officer Chauvin is white, there is no presumption of innocence. Chauvin’s guilt is assumed as a fact, and if he is not convicted, the verdict will be regarded as an injustice — “systemic racism” — as a pretext for a riot, much the same way the verdict in the Rodney King case inspired the Los Angeles riot of 1992.

From the standpoint of law enforcement, this is a lose-lose proposition. Either officers are effectively prohibited from enforcing the law — because cops face legal jeopardy if they attempt to apprehend a suspect who resists arrest — or else the city is destroyed by violence. This is “democracy” as mob rule, where the criminal element holds the entire community hostage with the assistance of “civil rights” activists (e.g., Ben Crump) and the liberal media. The narrative of racial “injustice” requires that certain inconvenient facts be made to disappear.

It should be obvious, for example, that Officer Chauvin and other members of the Minneapolis police were not just randomly killing black people to advance some “white supremacist” ideology. When cops were called to the Cup Foods store last May to deal with a counterfeiting case, they did not murder every black person present at the store. George Floyd was in the company of two black accomplices, Morries Lester Hall and Shawanda Renee Hill, both of whom had criminal records, but neither of whom was harmed by the police. How can “systemic racism” explain this?

Body camera footage from Officer Thomas Lane, one of the first two cops to arrive on the scene, shows George Floyd’s erratic behavior:

 

Floyd’s movement inside the SUV caused Lane to fear he might be reaching for a handgun, so he ordered Floyd at gunpoint to put both hands on the wheel, while he radioed for backup. Lane then told Floyd to put his hands on top of his head and step out of the vehicle (1:02 in the video). It took about 30 seconds to get Floyd to exit the vehicle, then another 30 seconds to get him handcuffed. After that, Lane leaves Floyd to his partner, Officer Alexander Keung, while Lane deals with Hall and Hill. Things take a turn for the worse when Lane and Keung try to put Floyd in the back of their squad car:

Lane: What, are you on something right now?
Floyd: No, nothing.
Kueng: Because you are acting a little erratic.
Lane: [leading Floyd to the car] Let’s go. Let’s go.
Floyd: I’m scared, man.
Lane: Let’s go.
Kueng: You got foam around your mouth, too?
Floyd: Yes, I was just hooping earlier.

We are told that “hooping” is slang for “putting drugs in the anus, resulting in a quick and intense high.” Is that how George Floyd got a dose of fentanyl that was three times the lethal level?

Floyd refused to sit in the squad car, saying he was “claustrophobic” and his resistance — Floyd was 6-foot-4 and 220 pounds — made it impossible. It was at Floyd’s request that the officers put him on the ground instead, but not before he had said seven times “I can’t breathe.”

 

The activist narrative insists these facts be ignored. They call it “victim blaming” when critics point to Floyd’s behavior, and assert, “Derek Chauvin is on trial, not George Floyd.” But you see that (a) there never would have been a trial if Floyd had simply gotten in the back of the squad car, (b) Floyd’s erratic behavior is evidence of the severity of his fentanyl overdose, and (c) how are cops supposed to deal with a drug-crazed giant who refuses to cooperate with his arrest?

Do we or don’t we want to enforce the law? That is the real question, and what sort of answer do we get if this question is reduced to the eight-minute video of Chauvin with his knee on Floyd’s neck?

Too little consideration is being given to the larger social consequences of permitting the Black Lives Matter narrative to prevail, not just in this specific case, but in the general matter of how placing unreasonable limits on law enforcement will allow crime to proliferate. What happens if “social justice” makes it impossible for cops to do their jobs? Well, in Minnesota, the number of handgun permits increased last year to 96,554, up from 51,404 in 2019 — a one-year increase of 88%.

If cops can’t protect you — and Black Lives Matter is about destroying law-enforcement in America — you’ll have to protect yourself.

Liberal are not likely to be happy with the result.




 

Category: Crime, Minnesota, Racism

FMJRA 2.0: Day Late & A Dollar Short

Posted on | April 4, 2021 | Comments Off on FMJRA 2.0: Day Late & A Dollar Short

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Ceterum autem censeo Silicon Valley esse delendam.

Joe Biden’s Potemkin ‘Press Conference’
EBL
Proof Positive

The Murder of Mohammad Anwar
357 Magnum
EBL

FMJRA 2.0: Force Majeure
A View From The Beach
EBL

Rule 5 Sunday: Oksana Rykova
Animal Magnetism
Ninety Miles From Tyranny
A View From The Beach
EBL
Proof Positive

Trump-Hating BLM Activist Charged for Attacking Asian Women in Seattle
357 Magnum
EBL

In The Mailbox: 03.30.21 (Afternoon Edition)
357 Magnum
EBL
Proof Positive

In The Mailbox: 03.30.21 (Evening Edition)
A View From The Mailbox
357 Magnum
EBL
Proof Positive

‘Insurrection’? Most Capitol Rioters Probably Won’t Face Prison Time
A View From The Beach
357 Magnum
EBL

The Late, Great G. Gordon Liddy
357 Magnum
EBL

Anatomy of a Smear
EBL

In The Mailbox: 03.31.21
A View From The Beach
357 Magnum
EBL
Proof Positive

The Other McCain Sells Out
A View From The Beach
EBL

What Was George Floyd Doing?
357 Magnum
EBL

In The Mailbox: 04.01.21
A View From The Beach
357 Magnum
EBL
Proof Positive

In The Mailbox: 04.02.21
357 Magnum
A View From The Beach
EBL
Proof Positive

Top linkers for the week ending April 2:

  1.  EBL (15)
  2.  357 Magnum (10)
  3.  A View From The Beach (8)
  4.  Proof Positive (7)

Thanks to everyone for all the links!

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Category: FMJRA Award

‘I Saw Her Standing There’

Posted on | April 3, 2021 | Comments Off on ‘I Saw Her Standing There’

Lately, I’ve been watching YouTube videos by Mike Pachelli, a guitarist, singer and producer who has done a series of tutorials on how to play classic Beatles songs note-for-note. What’s really fascinating to me is that Pachelli was able to isolate John Lennon’s rhythm guitar parts so well. For years, in listening to Beatles records, I simply couldn’t hear these parts. The way the records are mixed, George Harrison’s lead guitar is much more prominent and the two guitarists usually play together on rhythm parts, although each plays different riffs.

Pachelli breaks down each part in an instructive way, and then ends each lesson by performing the song all the way through. Watch and learn, as he does the 1963 classic, “I Saw Her Standing There”:

 

Maybe you’re not a Beatles fan as I am, so you may not enjoy that as much as I did, but do you remember how the lyrics of that song begin?

Well, she was just seventeen,
You know what I mean,
And the way she looked
Was way beyond compare.

Speaking of 17-year-old girls . . .

A Justice Department investigation into Rep. Matt Gaetz and Joel Greenberg is focusing on their involvement with multiple women who were recruited online for sex and received cash payments, according to people close to the investigation and text messages and payment receipts reviewed by The New York Times.
Investigators believe Greenberg, the former tax collector in Seminole County, who was indicted last year on a federal sex trafficking charge and other crimes, initially met the women through websites that connect people who go on dates in exchange for gifts, fine dining, travel and allowances, according to three people with knowledge of the encounters. Greenberg introduced the women to Gaetz, who also had sex with them, the people said.
One of the women who had sex with both men also agreed to have sex with an unidentified associate of theirs in Florida Republican politics, according to a person familiar with the arrangement. Greenberg had initially contacted her online and introduced her to Gaetz, the person said.
Gaetz denied ever paying a woman for sex.
The Justice Department inquiry is also examining whether Gaetz had sex with a 17-year-old girl and whether she received anything of material value, according to four people familiar with the investigation. The sex trafficking count against Greenberg involved the same girl, according to two people briefed on the investigation.
The authorities have also investigated whether other men connected to Gaetz and Greenberg had sex with the 17-year-old, two of the people said.
Gaetz, 38, was elected to Congress in 2016 and became one of former President Donald Trump’s most outspoken advocates.
The Times has reviewed receipts from Cash App, a mobile payments app, and Apple Pay that show payments from Gaetz and Greenberg to one of the women, and a payment from Greenberg to a second woman. The women told their friends that the payments were for sex with the two men, according to two people familiar with the conversations.
In encounters during 2019 and 2020, Gaetz and Greenberg instructed the women to meet at certain times and places, often at hotels around Florida, and would tell them the amount of money they were willing to pay, according to the messages and interviews.
One person said that the men also paid in cash, sometimes withdrawn from a hotel ATM.
Some of the men and women took ecstasy, an illegal mood-altering drug, before having sex, including Gaetz, two people familiar with the encounters said.
In some cases, Gaetz asked women to help find others who might be interested in having sex with him and his friends, according to two people familiar with those conversations. Should anyone inquire about their relationships, one person said, Gaetz told the women to say that he had paid for hotel rooms and dinners as part of their dates.
The FBI has questioned multiple women involved in the encounters, including as recently as January, to establish details of their relationships with Gaetz and his friends, according to text messages and two people familiar with the interviews. . . .
One of the sites the men met women through was called Seeking Arrangement, which describes itself as a place where wealthy people find attractive companions and pamper them “with fine dinners, exotic trips and allowances.” The site’s founder has said it has 20 million members worldwide.

After this story broke on Tuesday, I was willing to give Gaetz the benefit of the doubt. But it now appears that this isn’t just a smear job, and that there is some substance to the case. Even thought Gaetz continues to deny any wrongdoing, if there are CashApp receipts for his hook-ups with “sugar babies,” there’s no way he survives this scandal. Like the song says, he’ll never dance with another, except maybe in prison.




 

Category: Florida, Scandal

Report: Nation of Islam Supporter Killed After Attacking Cops at U.S. Capitol

Posted on | April 3, 2021 | Comments Off on Report: Nation of Islam Supporter Killed After Attacking Cops at U.S. Capitol

When the news broke Friday afternoon that there had been an attack at the Capitol, intelligent people waited for police officials to identify the suspect before we speculated about the possible motive. But some people are not intelligent, and stupidly jumped to conclusions.

How many times have I warned about this in breaking news situations? You cannot know the motive for a shooting until you know the identity of the shooter, so when these incidents happen, the thing to do is to be patient. But the idiots on Twitter never seem to learn this lesson, so their wrong takes become part of the public record, permanent evidence of their folly. Meanwhile, the facts finally got reported:

Noah Green, 25, struck two officers, killing one, at the US Capitol just after 1 p.m. Friday, cops said.
Green got out of the car, wielding a knife, and lunged at officers before being fatally shot. Capitol Police Officer William Evans died 30 minutes after the attack at the hospital.
Green’s Facebook page, reviewed by The Post before it was taken down, wrote about Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan and losing his job after graduating college.
In Instagram stories, some posted just hours before the attack, Green blamed the US government for his issues and wrote he believed federal law enforcement agencies were trying to conduct mind-control experiments on him, according to CNN.

Police said this was not a terrorist attack, by which standard, all the claims about “incel” attacks as terrorism are now invalid. What happens in most of those cases is (a) some guy’s life is miserable and (b) he turns to a weird hateful ideology to justify a “blaze of glory” fantasy where he kills a bunch of people and, usually, dies in the attack — either committing suicide or getting shot by cops. Frankly, most “lone wolf” white supremacist attacks also fit this description — the combination of a miserable life and a weird hateful ideology. So what, if anything, is the difference between those cases and Noah Green?

Hateful ideologies in general do not attract successful, happy people. In the case of Noah Green, we know that he embraced Nation of Islam as a teenager, because in his college football biographical sketch he said “person in history he’d most like to meet is Malcolm X.” But there was no indication of a tendency toward violence, and Green apparently had no criminal record before Friday’s attack. He lost his job and his mind slowly began unraveling:

Andre Toran, who was a captain on the football team at the time, said Green was a “really quiet guy” who would crack jokes every once in a while but usually just smiled instead of chiming in on conversations.
“I know people say this all the time, but the guy who I played with is not the same person who did this,” said Toran, a reporter at the Courier-Journal in Louisville, Kentucky . . .
Toran said while he moved away to attend graduate school in Chicago, Green’s mental state became an issue of concern among their friends.
Toran shared a Facebook post from Green during the COVID-19 pandemic in which Green accused his roommates of drugging him. Green wrote that he’d moved out but was suffering from withdrawals that included seizures and a lack of appetite, along with “paranoia” and “depression.” He wrote in the post that he was also experiencing “suicidal ideation.” . . .
KC Humphries, who attended CNU with Green, told USA TODAY they worked together at the school’s gym.
“He kind of came off as the average football athlete,” she said.
But, she added, she noticed the recent changes in his social media posts.
“They were very weird. It was posts about joining his church and ‘one day you’ll see’ kind of stuff,” Humphries said. “It was just a lot of weird, kind of cult stuff.”
On what appeared to be Green’s Facebook page, he posted last month about struggling over the last several years and his issues during the pandemic, including losing a job. He talked about his recent “spiritual journey.” . . .
One of Green’s brothers told The Washington Post that Noah Green appeared to have mentally unraveled in the last several years. He abruptly moved from Virginia to Indiana and told his brother, Brendan, he was suffering from hallucinations, heart palpitations, headaches and suicidal thoughts. Brendan Green told the paper his brother informed him the drugs told him to move to Indianapolis.
In Indiana, Noah told his brother that people were attempting to break into his apartment. Brendan Green said he flew out to Indianapolis but didn’t see anything suspicious and told The Post that Noah’s “mind didn’t seem right.”
A few months ago, Noah Green moved to Botswana, his brother told the Post. The brothers kept in contact and at one point, Noah told Brendan that “his mind was telling him to basically commit suicide” and said he’d jumped in front of a car, Brendan told The Post. Several weeks ago, Brendan allowed Noah to come live with him after Noah said he was “in a really bad situation.”

As is typical in such cases, there were “red flags” in the case of Noah Green, just as there were “red flags” in the case of Elliot Rodger, and “red flags” in the case of Robert Aaron Long, and other mass-murder cases.

Moral of the story? Crazy People Are Dangerous.




 

Category: Crime, Racism
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