The Other McCain

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

Rule 5 Sunday: Paige For Purdue!

Posted on | April 1, 2024 | Comments Off on Rule 5 Sunday: Paige For Purdue!

— compiled by Wombat-socho

I had no idea that noted golf influencer Paige Spiranac was a Purdue fan, but apparently so.
Ceterum autem censeo Silicon Valley et Hamas delendam sunt.

ANIMAL MAGNETISM: Rule 5 VP Gabbard Friday, and the Saturday Gingermageddon.

EBL: Saturday Night Girls With Guns, Mending Line, MAGA Law & Order, Cavalleria Rusticana, The Animals, This Could Be Good, The Empty Pockets, Gavin Marie Antoinette Newsom, Wyatt Earp, Caitlin Clark, Three Body Problem, Linda Ronstadt, The Breakfast Club At 40, and Generation War. 

A VIEW FROM THE BEACH: Lele Pons, Fish Pic Friday – Andrea from France, Hunting with the Boys, The Wednesday Wetness, Tattoo Tuesday, Gone Fishin’, The Monday Morning Stimulus and Palm Sunday

FLAPPR: Assorted Stimulating Subjects for March 29

Thanks to everyone for all the luscious links!

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Category: Rule 5

FMJRA 2.0: Gloom, Despair, Etc.

Posted on | March 31, 2024 | Comments Off on FMJRA 2.0: Gloom, Despair, Etc.

— compiled by Wombat-socho

SOTD
The Senators haven’t had a week this bad since the 1971 season, and I hope we don’t have another one like this soon. First we got swept by the Angels in our home opener, and then we went to New York and lost two out of three to the Hated Yankees, barely managing to win game three 5-3 as Reggie Cleveland went the distance. Well, at least our closer’s coming off the disabled list as we welcome the Reds to RFK this week. Ted and Whitey have been having some tense conversations in the manager’s office.
Alas, we were deprived of links from our good friends at Flappr this week, probably because the usually reliable Bartleby left the blog in the hands of that child of misbelief Mujahed Kobbe. We’ll still link to them for Rule 5 Friday and hope things get back to normal next weekend. 
Ceterum autem censeo Silicon Valley et Hamas delendam sunt.

How Senators fans were feeling this week.

Death Toll Mounts in ISIS Moscow Attack
357 Magnum
EBL

Just a Couple of Car Thieves
357 Magnum
EBL

FMJRA 2.0: Opening Day & Other Disasters
A View From The Beach
EBL

Rule 5 Sunday: Blast From The Past
Animal Magnetism
A View From The Beach
EBL

The Leticia James Fraud
A View From The Beach
357 Magnum
EBL

Election Fraud Never Happens. Election Fraud Never Happens. Election Fraud Never…Oh, Wait–Chicago?
The Daley Gator
A View From The Beach
357 Magnum
EBL

In The Mailbox: 03.25.24
357 Magnum
EBL

Baltimore, a Reeking Hellhole of a City, Somehow Just Got Even Worse
The Daley Gator
A View From The Beach
EBL

In The Mailbox: 03.26.24
A View From The Beach
357 Magnum
EBL

In The Mailbox: 03.27.24
A View From The Beach
357 Magnum
EBL

The Cruel and Stupid Lies of the Media’s Transgender Victimhood Narrative
First Street Journal
A View From The Beach
357 Magnum
EBL

‘A History of Domestic Violence’
357 Magnum
EBL

In The Mailbox: 03.29.24 (Afternoon Edition)
357 Magnum
A View From The Beach
EBL

In The Mailbox: 03.29.24 (Evening Edition)
357 Magnum
A View From The Beach
EBL

Top linkers for the week ending March 29:

  1.  EBL (14)
  2.  357 Magnum (11)
  3.  A View From The Beach (10)

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The New Bill James Historical Abstract


 

Category: FMJRA Award

Notes on Partisanship: ‘At Some Point You Have to Join the Team That You’re On’

Posted on | March 31, 2024 | Comments Off on Notes on Partisanship: ‘At Some Point You Have to Join the Team That You’re On’

Professor Reynolds quotes me as having once said the above quote, and I’m sure I did, but I couldn’t find it via Google search, and that’s OK. As I recall, it was during Barack Obama’s first term in the White House, when some Republicans were reluctant to embrace the Tea Party movement while, at the same time, some members of the Tea Party movement were reluctant to embrace the GOP. Or, to speak more broadly, there was then (as now) an apparent divide between the Establishment and the grassroots of the opposition to the Democrat-controlled regime.

P.J. O’Rourke’s 1988 classic Republican Party Reptile is a useful reference point to understanding this. Famous for his humor as an editor of National Lampoon (back in the days of its greatness), O’Rourke found himself in the 1980s at odds with the direction of the Democratic Party (and the majority of the media class). Despite being a dope-addled long-haired hippie type, O’Rourke was excited by the booming economy of Reagan-era America and, like many Baby Boomers at the time, realized that this placed him in a somewhat awkward coalition with a lot of uptight Eisenhower-vintage people who didn’t wholly approve of his worldview and lifestyle. O’Rourke wanted to set up a booth to promote his book at the 1988 Republican convention, but the RNC refused to allow it. You might understand their reluctance to endorse a book which included the essay, “How to Drive Fast on Drugs While Getting Your Wing-Wang Squeezed and Not Spill Your Drink”:

When it comes to taking chances, some people like to play poker or shoot dice; other people prefer to parachute-jump, go rhino hunting, or climb ice floes, while still others engage in crime or marriage. But I like to get drunk and drive like a fool. Name me, if you can, a better feeling than the one you get when you’re half a bottle of Chivas in the bag with a gram of coke up your nose and a teenage lovely pulling off her tube top in the next seat over while you’re going a hundred miles an hour down a suburban side street. You’d have to watch the entire Mexican air force crash-land in a liquid petroleum gas storage facility to match this kind of thrill. If you ever have much more fun than that, you’ll die of pure sensory overload, I’m here to tell you.

On the advice of Bert the Samoan Lawyer, I will invoke my right to remain silent on this particular subject, but the point is, the Republican National Committee didn’t appreciate O’Rourke’s sense of humor. It was at the DNC, not the RNC, that Rob Lowe had his scandalous escapade, and I can’t remember if the “teenage lovely” in his case was wearing a tube top, but it’s probably not relevant to whatever point I was making before I wandered off into this digression. Namely, that the two-party system in America ultimately requires us to choose sides, if we want to participate in the process in such a way as to make a difference.

You don’t want to be a “swing voter,” the kind of idiot who tells pollsters he’s undecided who to vote for two weeks before Election Day. Politics is a team sport. and unless you want to be some schmuck who’s a mere spectator at the game, well, you have to join the team you’re on.

Let me explain this with a personal anecdote which doesn’t involve teenagers in tube tops. At CPAC 2011, my friend Andrew Breitbart was instrumental in getting Donald Trump to give a main-stage speech and I hated it — a lot of protectionist tariff talk about China to which my reaction was, “Smoot and Hawley could not be reached for comment.”

I was not then, and am not now, part of any “cult” that believes Trump is a beau ideal of principled conservatism. Fast-forward from CPAC 2011 to June 2015 — after the Romney debacle, etc.– and Trump famously rides down the escalator to throw his hat in the ring of the GOP primary. What was my reaction? Well, before getting into that, let me remind you of my manic campaign-trail adventures of 2011-2012, when I went all-in on the Herman Cain campaign and then, after Cain got sabotaged, jumped onto the Rick Santorum campaign. My general idea was Anybody But Mitt. We had a good run of it, trying to stop Mister Inevitable and the GOP Establishment, but in the end were forced to accept our fate, and I’ll never forget being in a hotel room in Gahanna, Ohio, for Election Day. About supper time, just before the polls closed, we were debating whether to head over to the state GOP Victory Party in downtown Columbus, but we decided to stay at the hotel at least long enough to watch the early returns come in,. We soon realized that the downtown party was going to be a bummer we didn’t want to attend, and I cranked out my column, “Doomed Beyond All Hope of Redemption.”

So I’d gone all-in three times over during that campaign, and gotten stomped flat each time, and when the field of Republican candidates for the next presidential primary campaign started forming up in early 2015, I adopted a wait-and-see posture. Of course, I had a prior friendship with Santorum, who was planning another run at it, but it seemed to me more likely that conservatives would coalesce behind Scott Walker, who had battled the Left so successfully as governor of Wisconsin.

Walker seemed a near-perfect choice — a successful two-term governor with a solid record of policy achievements in a Midwestern “swing” state — and so, when Trump came riding down that escalator in June 2015, my reaction could best be described as mild amusement. Like a lot of other people, I thought Trump’s celebrity candidacy would be a flash in the pan, basically an effort to get himself a book deal, and I didn’t take it seriously until one afternoon in late August or early September, when I got a call from my old campaign-trail buddy Pete Da Tech Guy. Pete was out covering a Trump rally in New Hampshire and told me, “Stacy, this Trump thing is for real. You should see this crowd!”

Trump in New Hampshire, September 2015

From that moment, a lot of dangers began to become apparent to me. The worst-case scenario was that the GOP Establishment would somehow find a way to stop the Trump grassroots juggernaut and that he’d run as a third-party independent, splitting the GOP coalition and resulting in the ultimate nightmare: President Hillary Rodham Clinton.

On the other hand, of course, Trump might win the nomination but then flame out in November and . . . President Hillary Rodham Clinton.

At the time I got the phone call from Pete, however, everything in the future was still a matter of speculation. After the first GOP debate, an August 2015 Rasmussen Reports poll of likely Republican primary voters had Trump at 17%, followed by Marco Rubio (10%), Jeb Bush (10%), Walker (9%), Carly Fiorina (9%), Ben Carson (8%) and Ted Cruz (7%).

Then in late September, a few days after the second Republican debate, Scott Walker announced he was quitting the campaign. Walker did so while encouraging other GOP candidates “to consider doing the same so that the voters can focus on a limited number of candidates who can offer a positive, conservative alternative to the current front-runner.” In other words, Walker’s exit from the campaign was an anti-Trump gesture, but because others refused to heed his advice, the Republican opposition to Trump remained divided among multiple candidates. Later it came down to Rubio supporters and Cruz supporters pointing their fingers at each other: “Your guy needs to drop out!” “No, your guy needs to drop out!”

All this I observed with cynical detachment, having made my peace with the primary voters deciding who the candidate would be, and watching as Trump stomped his various rivals the way Godzilla stomped Tokyo. In July 2016, I reported from the Republican convention in Cleveland:

“America is a nation of believers, dreamers, and strivers that is being led by a group of censors, critics, and cynics,” Trump said near the end of his hour-plus address to an enthusiastic crowd at Quicken Loans Arena. “Remember, all of the people telling you that you can’t have the country you want, are the same people telling you that I wouldn’t be standing here tonight.”
Indeed, in the past year, Trump success has confounded the cynics and critics who at first did not take his campaign seriously. The same doubters, including many conservative pundits, subsequently panicked when Trump’s populist campaign caught fire with primary voters who ignored the pundits and voted for the billionaire businessman who promised to put a stop to illegal immigration. Trump took special aim at “elites in media” who he said are “lining up behind the campaign of my opponent.”
Indeed, liberals reacted with alarm to Trump’s speech. Former MSNBC personality Melissa Harris-Perry walked out 10 minutes into his speech, declaring “I left early because I was afraid.” CNN personality Sally Kohn seemed traumatized, moaning on Twitter: “The problem is, this speech seems believable and convincing, especially in a vacuum. I’m scared.” On NBC, former Bush aide Nicolle Wallace announced, “The Republican Party that I worked for for two decades died in this room tonight.”
Of course, the GOP couldn’t beat Barack Obama in 2008 or 2012, and none of the regular Republican candidates could beat Trump for the nomination this year, so what were the chances that a Nicolle Wallace-approved Republican could have defeated Hillary Clinton this year? Tired of predictable losers, GOP primary voters this year gambled on Trump who doesn’t like to lose – and he’s tired of seeing America lose.

Indeed, Republican voter had taken a gamble. When the Access Hollywood tapes were released in October 2016, I believed we were once again doomed, but on Election Night, we watched the results come in and laughed at seeing Democrats cry “the tears of unfathomable sadness.”

Do you remember the insane reactions? Do you remember the “traumatized” students at Yale University? Do you remember the professor at Rutgers whose unhinged Twitter rant landed him in Bellevue Hospital for a psychiatric evaluation? In my lifetime, no election result has produced the kind of emotional shock to the establishment as did Trump’s victory in 2016. The candidate I hadn’t taken seriously — and who I’d actively disliked the first time I saw him speak at CPAC back in 2011 — had somehow harnessed the energy of grassroots populism in such a way that not even the worst scandal could stop him.

This happened despite all the “experts” saying it couldn’t possibly happen. Trump won without the support of most “conservative” pundits, and with such publications as National Review openly opposing him. As for me, I was merely an observer who had decided (what now seems genius in hindsight) to take a wait-and-see stance about the primaries at the outset of the campaign and let voters decide for themselves. Politics is a team sport and, at the end of the day, I’m a team player.

What about the Nicolle Wallace types? When she said at the convention in Cleveland that the party she worked for had “died” during Trump’s acceptance speech, a lot of us probably said, “Yea! We killed it!” During the Obama years, the GOP Establishment had started looking a lot like “controlled opposition,” and Nicolle Wallace didn’t seem to mind that at all. She was happy to cede the White House to the Democrats, and the only “Republicans” she would support in 2016 were tedious moderates like Jeb Bush who could be counted on to lose to Hillary Clinton.

HILLARY CLINTON WILL NEVER BE PRESIDENT!

Trump voters can congratulate ourselves on that accomplishment, at least. We’ve been called all kinds of names — deplorables, white supremacists, Russian agents, insurrectionists, “election deniers” — but the fact remains, we’re still here, and Hillary is still not president.

Many of us were not eager for 2024 to be a Biden-Trump rematch, but that’s what the GOP primary voters wanted, so here we are again, and what are the odds? November’s still more than seven months away, and a lot of things could happen between now and then, but all in all, the prospects are hopeful. As of today, Biden’s job approval is hovering around 40%, which makes you wonder about the mental health of anybody who thinks Joe is doing a good job, but historically speaking, Biden’s approval ratings are well below any recent incumbent’s at this point in their term, and Democrats are pushing the panic button.

However much you may value your political independence, or your commitment to abstract principles, the reality is that we live in a two-party system, and in that binary universe, you have to come to grips with the fact that you’re a Republican Party Reptile: “At some point, you have to join the team that you’re on.” And I still think it’s a winning team.



 

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Category: Politics, Republicans

Trans. Sec. Buttigieg Announces $500M Pronoun Retooling Effort

Posted on | March 30, 2024 | Comments Off on Trans. Sec. Buttigieg Announces $500M Pronoun Retooling Effort

by Sissypuss

Secretary of Transportation Buttigieg decried the language used to describe the recent Key Bridge disaster in Baltimore. “We have to do everything in our power to avoid such costly calamities in the future,” he said, referring to the collision of the merchant vessel Dali with a bridge support, “and ‘everything’ means striking such antiquated usages as ‘she smacked that abutment’. We cannot even begin to rebuild this crucial infrastructure until we have outgrown this medieval mindset, even if takes a new bridge past a decade to complete. We either do this properly, or not at all. Ending our long, tragic history of sexism and misogyny is among the prime goals of the Biden Administration.”

Asked about the possibility of replacing the bridge with a less risky tunnel, Buttigieg accidentally spoke the truth: “We always go for maximal graft, and Maryland hasn’t coughed up enough kickbacks for another Big Dig yet. So we’re just throwing scraps to our agitator corps with this pronoun noise.”

Category: Uncategorized

In The Mailbox: 03.29.24 (Evening Edition)

Posted on | March 30, 2024 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 03.29.24 (Evening Edition)

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Usual weekend deadlines for the usual weekend posts.
Ceterum autem censeo Silicon Valley et Hamas delendam sunt.

The Fuehrer is not happy with this upstart.

OVER THE TRANSOM
EBL: Democrat Disaster at Democrat Event , Good Friday Crucifixion, Lou Gossett, Jr., RIP, and Deposition of Christ
Twitchy: Kathy Griffin Still Thinks It’s About Trump, Gov. Hochul May Have Been Invited But She Sure Wasn’t Welcome At Slain NYPD Officer’s Funeral, and Republican Rep Refused To Play Pretend For Troon Democrat
Vox Popoli: Finland Played for Fools, The Wicked Conspire, and Total Tory Implosion
According To Hoyt: A Blasted And Empty Future, The Good Times, and There Comes A Time

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Conservative: Convicting Julian Assange Would Mean the End of Free Speech, also, U.S. Officials Believe That ‘We’ Are at War With Russia
American Greatness: Gaza: Truths Behind All the Lies, Obama Fears Trump Win in 2024, Making Frequent Calls to Biden’s Chief of Staff, Liberal Judge Recommends Disbarment For Former Trump Election Lawyer John Eastman, and Comer Invites Joe Biden to Testify Before Oversight Committee to Explain His Past Statements About Family’s Business Schemes
American Thinker: The Third Fall of Rome, Some Men Just Want To See The World Burn, and Why Were Americans Not Informed of the Difference Between FDA-Approved and Emergency Use Authorization?
Animal Magnetism: Animal Magnetism LIVE Ep. 1 – Spring in Alaska, also, Rule Five VP Gabbard Friday
Babalu Blog: Abandoned Havana building collapsing since 2014 continues to crumble slowly, bit by bit, Putin sends 715,000 barrels of oil to his colony of Cuba, Colombia pulls diplomats out of Argentina over ‘disrespectful’ remarks made by Javier Milei, Yum! Cuban dictatorship sells spoiled sprouting chick peas to its starving citizens, and Western Union still unable to send remittances to Cuba due to lack of cooperation from dictatorship
BattleSwarm: Did Facebook Run A Man-in-The-Middle Hack Against Competitors? also, LinkSwarm For March 29
Behind The Black: SLIM survives its second lunar night, re-establishes contact, Martian waves of ridges and cracks, Japan awards development agreements with four rocket startups, Head of France’s space agency blames too many subcontractors for high cost of Ariane-6, Red China working to save classified lunar mission from launch failure, Ispace, which built the lunar lander Hakuto-R1, has raised $53 million in investment capital, and Arizona city shuts down church program that fed the hungry for the last 25 years
Cafe Hayek: Exploring the Unseen In Trade and Trade Policy
CDR Salamander: Fullbore Friday
Da Tech Guy: Gimmie that old time Science It’s good enough for me, Irony meters across the universe cried out in agony as if they were overwhelmed by a great disturbance, Voices of the 2024 Worcester Catholic Men’s Conference – Author Pia Imperial, and Divine Mercy Novena Day 1
Don Surber: Let him rip
First Street Journal: Whenever there is a truth you cannot tell, that is a truth you must tell! also, Biden Administration project to push electric vehicles is falling short
Gates Of Vienna: Interview With Edwin Wagensveld, I’ve Just Seen a Face I Can’t Forget, and The Muslim Brotherhood in Sweden, Part 18
The Geller Report: NYC Police Union INVITES TRUMP, But Tells City Council Members to Stay Away From Funeral for Officer, Accuses Them of Being Complicit in Murder, Trump’s White House Lawyer Admits to Engineering Plot To Prevent Investigating 2020 Election Fraud, Swamp Ran Deep, and President Trump speaks at the wake of NYPD Officer Jonathan Diller
Hollywood In Toto: Why Netflix’s 3 Body Problem Is Causing a Commotion, The Shroud: Face to Face – A Journey from Skepticism to Faith, and Will Martin Scorsese Get Canceled (Again)?
The Lid: Church Should Be About Worship, Not Entertainment, New York City Demands Supreme Court Allow 800,000 Illegals to Vote, and Kansas and Iowa Act to Place Bans on Transgenderism
Legal Insurrection: Idaho Bans Public Colleges From Requiring Diversity Statements From Students and Staff, Canadian Judge Approves Young Woman’s Medically Assisted Suicide Plans Due to Her Autism and ADHD, Chinese Cultural Revolution Scene in New Netflix Series is Disturbing Parallel of Cancel Culture, Campus Struggle Sessions, Student Group at MIT Promotes Palestinian Terror Organization, Proposed European Climate Change Plan Flails Amid Farmer Protests, Vanderbilt U. Students Arrested and/or Suspended Following ‘Occupation’ of Chancellor’s Office, and Joe Biden is Throwing Israel and Jews Under the Bus
Nebraska Energy Observer: Another Comp, also, Scattershot Friday
Outkick: Braves Manager Kept His Family Home Thanks To ‘Hostile’ Atmosphere In Philadelphia, Kim Mulkey Declines To Further Discuss ‘Post’ Story Outside Comfort Zone Of Baton Rouge, Shaq Rips Chronically Injured Ben Simmons – ‘Man Up!’, DJ Burns Captures Hearts, Becomes Fan Favorite During NC State’s Run To Sweet 16, Shohei Ohtani Answers Questions On Interpreter, MLB Wants To Finish Investigation ‘Soon’, Too Sweet! For The First Time Since 1980, Clemson Is Headed To The Elite Eight After Massive Win Over Arizona, and WWE Superstar Chelsea Green Dresses Up As A Hooters Waitress To Celebrate Receiving A Green Card
Power Line: A word from JFK, Thoughts from the ammo line, Bontasaurus Wrecks, and The Best Climate Beatdown of the Year (So Far)
Shark Tank: GOP Vacation Rental Bill Faces Conservative Backlash
Shot In The Dark: Words. Just Words, Philatelic Equity, Some Animals Are More Equal, Show Me The Pro-Lifer & EMQ Will Show You The Crime, and A Cold Detroit
STUMP: Good Friday Thoughts – It Is Finished
The Political Hat: Quick Takes – Normalizing Euthanasia: Anti-Euthanasia Tattoos; Lessening The Worth Of A Disabled Persons Life; The Slippery Slope Ain’t No Fallacy
This Ain’t Hell: Intelligence community informed that “Jihadist” is problematic, Pali Protester’s Aromatic Argument, Chris Prentis dies, Valor Friday, Kansas lawmakers pass a bill that bans adversaries from purchasing land near military bases, Army Corps of Engineers to Baltimore Recovery, and Democrat New York City Council Member Asks Why won’t men call out attacks?
Transterrestrial Musings: Twilight Of The Wonks
Victory Girls: Nex Benedict Death Was The Suicide Of A Badly Abused Teenager, also, Democrats Now Realize The Biden-Trump Optics Were Bad
Volokh Conspiracy: Missouri Government Agency Threatening to Sue Critic for Libel, also, District Court Judgment in 303 Creative v. Elenis (the Wedding Web Site Design Case)
Watts Up With That: Officialdom Responds to Doubts That a Renewables-Based Electricity System Will Work, Wrong, Daily Mail, Climate Change Isn’t Causing a Chocolate Easter Egg Crisis, and Ford “Drastically” Cutting EV Lightning Workforce Hours
The Federalist: ‘Gender Identity’ Law Spells The End Of Religious Liberty In Minnesota, Rep. Mike Gallagher Leaves GOP, Wisconsinites In The Lurch, The RNC Is Right: -Anyone Who Can’t Recognize Flaws In 2020 Is Unfit To Help Republicans Win, As Sexual Accuser Bankrupts Trump, Biden Fundraises With Epstein Pal Bill Clinton, Georgia House Guts Bill That Would Have Given Election Board Power To Investigate Secretary Of State, ‘Bidenbucks’ Tentacles Expand As Judge Shuts Down Lawsuit, and If ‘Diversity Is Our Strength,’ Why Is Our Military So Weak?
Mark Steyn: Culling the Herd, Passing Strange, “This Will Kill That”, and The Passion Of The Christ

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Category: Linkagery

In The Mailbox: 03.29.24 (Afternoon Edition)

Posted on | March 29, 2024 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 03.29.24 (Afternoon Edition)

— compiled by Wombat-socho

It’s time again for the Based Books Sale! Now with its own Substack! (h/t Upstream Reviews) 

Silicon Valley et Hamas delenda sunt.

OVER THE TRANSOM
EBL: Former Democrat Darling Sam Bankman-Fried gets 25 years for Crypto-Fraud, DeSantis – Say No To Squatters, BBC Proms – Jerusalem, and Joe Lieberman, RIP
Twitchy: Coleman Hughes Drops Writer Angry At Him For Being Colorblind, Nothing To See Here Just The FBI Showing Up To Hassle Woman Over Facebook Post, and Uh Oh! California’s “Elite” Find Out They’re Not Immune To Democrat Policies
Louder With Crowder: As Ron DeSantis passes law ending “squatters rights,” NYC suggests putting up a “No Trespassing” sign instead
Vox Popoli: Archeology and the Sacred Name of God, also, And Then There Were Four
Upstream Reviews: Project Eclipse

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Animal Magnetism: Animal’s Red Thursday News
CDR Salamander: Diversity Thursday
Don Surber: Mutiny on the MSNBC
Michele Catalano: Update
STUMP: RIP Joe Lieberman

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Category: Linkagery

‘A History of Domestic Violence’

Posted on | March 29, 2024 | Comments Off on ‘A History of Domestic Violence’

Jennifer Cruz was 33 years old when she was fatally shot near the Royal Inn motel on U.S. 15 north of Sumter, South Carolina. She was also 35 weeks pregnant; doctors were able to deliver her baby alive, but the infant was last reported as being in critical condition. According to the sheriff’s department, security camera video recorded at the scene shows Cruz’s estranged boyfriend ambushed her as she arrived at the motel where she had recently been staying, The ex-boyfriend fired several shots at the car Cruz was riding in, chasing the vehicle down the street.

Sheriff Anthony Dennis said “Cruz and [Troy] Wells had a history of domestic violence.” Because the suspect knew that Cruz was pregnant, the sheriff described the shooting as “callous and cold-blooded.”

Don’t expect to see this story on CNN. The only reason I know about the murder of Jennifer Cruz is that, in an idle moment, I decided to Google “suspect manhunt.” This is something I do occasionally — Google some phrase like “mass shooting” or “stabbing suspect” and see what kind of stories turn up in the search results. Our news media establishment picks and chooses which crimes deserve national coverage, and I don’t trust their judgment in such matters any more than I trust them to deliver unbiased political coverage. On an average day, there are roughly 50 homicides committed in the United States — 355 homicides a week, more than 1,500 a month — and if the only murders you know about are the ones that get national media attention, you don’t have an accurate picture of crime in America. Much of the public is therefore misinformed about crime and law enforcement, and this misunderstanding has serious political and social consequences. As voters, how can we assess public policy in regard to the criminal justice system if we don’t have the basic facts about how and why and where and when crime happens? Beyond that, in terms of public safety, how can you act to prevent crime — to avoid becoming a victim — if you aren’t fully informed about the risk factors involved? Risk is not randomly distributed in society, but rather follows certain patterns and, if you are aware of the patterns of criminal behavior, you can reduce your risk of becoming a victim of crime.

All of this is to explain the rationale behind my occasionally doing searches for phrases like “suspect manhunt,” which is how I became aware of the March 23 murder of Jennifer Cruz in South Carolina.

The good news is that the suspect Troy Wells is no longer at large. He surrendered to Sumter County authorities on Thursday, and is now in custody, charged with murder and attempted murder:

“I say this was ‘cold-blooded’ because it was premeditated. Wells lay in wait for the victims, and he knew Cruz was pregnant,” said Sumter County Sheriff Anthony Dennis.
“We believe he intended to not only kill both occupants of the car but the unborn child as well,” he added. . . .
Wells has had numerous encounters with law enforcement. His convictions include lynching, domestic violence, drug charges, larceny, traffic violations, and failure to stop for a blue light.
Sheriff Dennis added, “We believe that anyone who would commit a crime like this is a danger to the community and we are pleased that he is now in custody.”

One of the facts about crime that the media don’t tell you is that criminals seldom begin their criminal careers with murder. Which is to say, most murders are committed by people with prior criminal histories — repeat offenders, like Troy Wells — and therefore leniency toward such habitual criminals represents a menace to public safety. Speaking of patterns of behavior, local NBC affiliate WIS-TV reports:

“The baby was everything to her,” said Ashley Cannon, Cruz’s sister. “She was just so excited she was having another child.”
Cannon said Cruz had a tumultuous romantic relationship with Wells that had been going on for about year. Recently, Cruz had cut ties with him.
“They had lots of physical altercations,” Cannon said. “Not to the point where she would call the cops. She told me a few things, but she didn’t want to tell me much, because she knew I would get upset. I think she hid a lot from me, but I do know that he has been abusive to her before.”
Cannon also said Wells had threatened to kill people multiple times.

It’s a pattern of criminal behavior, you see. But this won’t be reported on CNN, and feminists — who love to lecture us about “violence against women” — haven’t mentioned this case, for some reason.



 

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Category: Crime, Media Bias, South Carolina, Violence Against Women

The Cruel and Stupid Lies of the Media’s Transgender Victimhood Narrative

Posted on | March 28, 2024 | 1 Comment

For weeks, liberal media targeted Chaya Raichick (@LibsOfTikTok), wrongly blaming her for the death of Dagny “Nex” Benedict, who died after a fight at her school in Owasso, Oklahoma. The logic of this vicious smear was that (a) two years ago, Raichick called attention to a TikTok video posted by Owasso teacher Tyler Wrynn in which Wrynn declared, “If your parents don’t accept you for who you are, f–k them. I’m your parents now” and Wynn got fired; and (b) supposedly, the fight was part of transphobic bullying aimed at Benedict, who identified as “non-binary,” and (c) ergo, @LibsOfTikTok killed “Nex” Benedict.

Students of logic will say, “What? You call that a syllogism? It makes no sense at all!” Exactly my point, of course. The Left’s logic is so nonsensical — “word salad,” symptomatic of psychosis — that any attempt to formalize it as a syllogism immediately exposes it to ridicule. Which, now that I think about it, seems to be the basic idea of @LibsOfTikTok: Show the world what left-wing activists are saying amongst themselves, when they think no one else is watching, and expose the obvious absurdity. It goes without saying that people who can’t deal with basic logic also are usually not too reliable in regard to facts, and after “Nex” Benedict’s death in February, liberals couldn’t be bothered to wait for the facts to be determined. No, instead they leapt to the conclusion that Benedict had essentially been beaten to death by transphobic bullies. However, as it turned out (a) Benedict started the fight by throwing water on another girl, (b) she did not die as a result of any injury suffered in the fight, and instead (c) she committed suicide.

Even after these facts were revealed, Joe Biden still had the audacity to double down on the victimhood narrative:

Don’t even get me started on all the things wrong with this message, but suffice it to say, everything. The obsession with victimhood, and the transparent effort to imply that discrimination is to blame for this alleged “suicide crisis,” are part of a pancake stack of false assumptions surrounding transgenderism, in general, and distort the reality of what happened to “Nex” Benedict, in particular. It should not be necessary for me to say that I am against bullying, but notice how liberals (e.g., the White House staffers who wrote Biden’s “message”) seem to have no doubt that Benedict’s “non-binary” identification was the only factor involved in her being bullied, so that transphobia is the only explanation for her suicide. Hence, it’s a simple morality tale, with evil Republicans (who supposedly endorse bullying and “discrimination”) on one side, and virtuous Democrats on the other. Oh, but wait — more facts:

Now that we have the full autopsy report for Dagney (Nex) Benedict, many of the questions surrounding her overdose have been answered. The full report, released by the Chief Medical Officer and Board of Medicolegal Investigations on March 27th, 2024, confirms what the earlier Medical Examiner’s Office reported on March 13th, 2024. There were “massive” amounts of Diphenhydramine, more commonly known over the counter as Benadryl, in Dagney’s blood.
Dr. Paul Wax, the Executive Director of the American College of Toxicology, reviewed the results and confirmed she could have consumed 50 to 100 pills to reach that toxicity level. . . .
The report indicated, “The 11 pages released indicate handwritten notes ‘suggestive of self-harm’ were found in Nex’s room by family members, and that the teen has a history of ‘bipolar disorder, depression, anxiety, self-harm (cutting).’”
While advocacy groups remain insistent that her distress sourced from bullying at school, Dagney did not indicate this in her last notes. . . .

(Got that? Dagny/“Nex” had a documented history of mental illness and didn’t mention bullying “in her last notes.)

On July 17th, 2019, when Dagney was 11 years old, an arrest warrant was issued for James Everette Hughes, Dagney’s father. He was arrested on July 31st, 2019, in Sebastian County, AR. The charge was for rape of a minor under the age of 14, during the time period between May 2017 and August 2017, when Dagney was nine years old. Among many witnesses was Sue Benedict, the grandmother who would adopt Dagney in 2019.
Hughes would accept a plea deal to sexual assault in the second degree on November 27th, 2019. He was sentenced to five years in prison with ten years suspended. He would be placed on the sex offender list and have no contact with his daughter. He was arrested again on January 25th, 2024, by the Little Rock Police Department for failing to comply with reporting as a sex offender, two weeks before Dagney would take her own life. . . .

You can read the whole thing, which has more details about this horrific crime. Whether there is any connection between this crime and Dagny/“Nex” subsequently identifying as “non-binary,” I will leave the reader free to speculate, but the more relevant point is that Dagny/“Nex” had serious personal problems that had nothing to do with any kind of “discrimination” that Joe Biden might wish to “work to end.” And, needless to say, those who tried to blame Benedict’s death on @LibsOfTikTok were wildly wrong. Beyond that, however, isn’t this a more or less representative case demonstrating the falsehood of the victimhood narrative that liberals have constructed around transgender identity? How many times have I called attention to how the Left compiles statistics about transgender murder victims — meaning to show a pattern of transphobic violence — when in fact nearly all these victims were killed in circumstances that had nothing to do transphobia?

The media’s habit of manufacturing bogus narratives like this — misleading the public, for reasons that are essentially about producing political propaganda for the Democratic Party — is harmful in many ways, not least of which is that it encourages misunderstanding of the issues involved. The last thing someone suffering mental health problems needs is a message that encourages self-pity by telling them they’re victims of unjust persecution. Good mental health requires a sense of personal agency, the belief that one is in charge of one’s own life. Depicting the world as controlled by menacing forces of “hate” — systematic in their oppressive power — is scarcely conducive to such an outlook. At the same time, decent people have long since become tired of being lectured constantly on controversial topics like this, and the media destroy their own credibility by producing such propaganda.

Yet there are still people who are apparently too stupid to see through this media charade, and so the world becomes more and more divided, between those who believe whatever they’re told by the media, and the rest of us, who have become skeptical of the media’s messages.



 

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Category: Media Bias, The Transgender Cult
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