The Other McCain

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

Play Stupid Games, Win Stupid Prizes

Posted on | June 2, 2020 | 2 Comments

 

First, there was the rioter in St. Louis who decided he could win a contest against a FedEx truck, and lost. This morning, we had the story of the young Philadephians who decided that robbing a gun store was a good idea, to their eternal regret. Now we have the tale of a young “social justice” activist in Omaha, Nebraska, who chose poorly:

A handful of grainy and graphic videos led Douglas County Attorney Don Kleine to conclude that a white bar owner acted in self-defense when he shot and killed a 22-year-old black Omaha man Saturday night.
As a result, Jake Gardner, owner of the side-by-side Gatsby and Hive bars downtown, will not face charges in the death of James Scurlock.
A surveillance video from Gardner’s bars, played Monday at a press conference, shows a group of young people, including Scurlock, approaching Gardner.
Walking backward, Gardner lifts his shirt to show a handgun, then pulls it to his side and continues backing up. Two people from Scurlock’s group — a man and a woman — tackle Gardner, who ends up on his back in a puddle in the street.
He fires twice into the air — he characterized them as warning shots in an interview with Omaha police. The two people run away from him.
Four seconds after that, Scurlock rushes from the sidewalk and dives on Gardner. Kleine said Scurlock was on Gardner’s back and had his arm around the bar owner’s neck. Gardner could be heard on another bystander’s video hollering, “Get off me, get off me.”
His right arm pinned, Kleine said, Gardner switched the gun to his left hand and fired over his shoulder. The bullet hit Scurlock in the shoulder-neck area, killing him.
Under Nebraska law, a person can be justified in killing another if he has a reasonable belief that deadly force is needed to protect himself or others. People are not allowed to use deadly force to protect property.
Kleine said he and Chief Deputy Brenda Beadle spent Sunday breaking down videos and witness statements “with all of the homicide detectives.”
“There was a consensus that the actions of the shooter were justified,” he said. “We certainly wish that none of this would have happened. It’s a senseless death.”

Here’s the report from Omaha’s KMTV:

 

 

That television report doesn’t make clear the context of what happened. James Scurlock was part of a group of criminals who were vandalizing businesses in the Old Market district. Scurlock was seen on surveillance video with an accomplice at 10:15 p.m. smashing up an architecture firm on Harney Street half a block from Gardner’s bar. Forty minutes later, the rioters smashed the glass in Gardner’s bar. The owner and his father were inside, protecting their business, and when the owners came out on the sidewalk, Scurlock’s accomplice attacked Gardner’s father, shoving him to the ground. This led to the fatal altercation.

In the video, the person who first jumped Gardner was a 19-year-old woman named Alayna Melendez. It is not clear whether she herself was part of the gang of vandals smashing up Harney Street, but she was obviously (a) in the vicinity, and (b) sympthetic to the rioters:

One of the protesters who tackled Gardner told KETV Newswatch 7’s Michelle Bandur, she had to act when she heard someone had a gun.
“I knew it was not going to end well,” Alayna Melendez said.
Melendez, 19, said she had been at the protests Friday and Saturday at 72nd and Dodge and moved downtown closer to home.
“Silence is violence,” she said.
Melendez said as a person of color, she had to jump in to help.
“I grabbed him from behind and pulled him to the ground and as soon as I pulled him to the ground, people gathered around us and he had his hand positioned in a way and just shot,” she said.
Melendez said Gardner fired two warning shots.
“The very last shot, that got him (Scurlock) and that killed him,” she said.
Melendez gave a statement to police hoping it would help bring charges against Gardner.
She also says she would do it again.
“I was not scared to lose my life that night. I was fully indebted to losing my life and fully aware I could have lost my life that night,” Melendez said.

Why hasn’t Alayna Melendez been charged with assault? By the way, there is another video of this incident that went viral:

“It’s not worth it!”

They didn’t listen. James Scurlock could not be reached for comment.


 

Category: Crime, Nebraska

‘Young Philadelphians’

Posted on | June 2, 2020 | Comments Off on ‘Young Philadelphians’

 

Play stupid games, win stupid prizes:

Police said one person is dead following a shooting during a burglary attempt inside a South Philadelphia gun store early Tuesday.
It happened around 4:20 a.m. on the 1500 block of South Front Street in the Pennsport section of the city.
Police were called to the Firing Line Gun Range and Gun Store.
Officers said when they arrived at the store they found a man on the second floor with a gunshot wound to the head. He was pronounced dead at the scene.
Investigators said the gun shop owner told them he was staking out his store following an earlier burglary attempt. He said he watched the security screen show three or four men use wire cutters to break through the gate and enter the store.
The owner said he pointed his gun at the man inside the store and fired, striking him in the head. The two to three other people ran from the scene.
Officials said another person arrived at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital with a gunshot wound to his shoulder. Police are unsure if this shooting is connected to the incident at this time.
Police said the owner of the gun store is cooperating with the investigation.

 

Police told Fox News there will be no charges against the store owner, as this is the very definition of justifiable homicide. Meanwhile . . .

Most Looters Are Young Philadelphians
Not Associated With the Protests, DA Says

That’s the headline from Philadephia’s WCAU-TV, which quotes the Soros-supported Democrat district attorney Larry Krasner:

“I think it would be fair to describe most of these as looting cases,” Krasner said in an interview with NBC10 Monday. “They are often situations in which people are caught inside of a store… within Macy’s or at some other location.”
For the looting and burglary, Krasner said it’s mostly been 18- to 24-year-olds from Philadelphia in what he called crimes of opportunity. Many of them, he said, were first time offenders.
Among the protesters, police found a few people with guns, Krasner said. So his office has charged three people with illegal gun possession charges. . . .
So far, he said, the looting videos have shown different crowds from those protesting.
“They don’t seem to be carrying signs, talking about political issues or talking about police accountability, they don’t seem to have t-shirts on that are political in nature,” he said. “They seem to be committing opportunistic crimes and they seem to be doing it within the context of peaceful protest.”

Why does this distinction between protesters and looters matter so much to Krasner? Is it not obvious to everyone with two eyes and a brain that the people who organize the “peaceful protests” are doing so with the intent of causing riots? And that the people committing “crimes of opportunity” understand this as well as the political organizers do? Of course, the protest organizers are funded by Soros, the same man who spent nearly $2 million to elect Krasner. Democrats are the party of criminals. Someone should write a book about that.

Oh, wait . . .


 

Category: Crime, George Soros, Pennsylvania

Rioter vs. FedEx Truck: Guess Who Won?

Posted on | June 1, 2020 | 3 Comments

 

Here’s a helpful hint for young “social justice” activists — truck drivers have no obligation to surrender to armed hijackers:

Authorities said a man was hit and killed by a FedEx truck during protests over George Floyd’s death in St. Louis.
A preliminary investigation revealed that the driver of a FedEx double tractor-trailer was rerouted because protesters shut down certain areas near downtown St. Louis.
St. Louis Police said the driver stopped due to a large gathering of protesters. While he was stopped, several people gained access to the first trailer and started to remove items.
Two men, “while standing on the passenger side footboard of the truck cab, displayed guns to the driver. The driver, fearing for his safety, sounded the airhorn and drove off until he was stopped by police,” Sgt. Keith Barrett said in a statement.
The driver didn’t realize that a person was stuck on the converter dolly between the two trailers, police said. The man had been caught by the trailer tire, pulled under and was eventually run over by the tire.
Authorities are now investigating the incident but they believe the man who died appeared to be one of the protesters.

I’ve seen two different videos of the incident. The graphic nature required the local Fox affiliate to censor some images, but you get the idea:

 

The thing that struck me about this entire nightmare — here’s a good roundup of Sunday night’s anarchy — is how stupid and senseless it all is. Police in Minneapolis killed a guy who was caught trying to pass a counterfeit $20. Why does this require people to riot all over the country?

What purpose were the protest marches intended to accomplish? To express disapproval of racism? Yet if practically everybody is against racism — and it is quite difficult to find self-avowed racists in 21st-century America — who are the protesters marching against? Consider the case of Minneapolis, in particular. The city has long had a reputation as a bastion of liberalism. Hubert Humphrey, an outspoken champion of racial equality, was mayor of Minneapolis before winning three terms in the U.S. Senate and becoming vice president during the presidency of Lyndon Johnson. Minnesota is such a stronghold of the Democratic Party that not even Ronald Reagan’s historic 1984 landslide could tip the state into the GOP column. So if Minneapolis is now run by a secret cabal of racist officials determined to oppress the city’s black residents, these oppressors must be Democrats. Surely such an accusation cannot be what inspired the protest marches that followed the death of George Floyd, can it?
Whatever wrongdoing might have been committed by the police implicated in Floyd’s death, no one could plausibly assert that officials in Minneapolis endorsed it. . . .

Read the rest of my latest column at The American Spectator.


 

Category: Crime, Missouri, Racism

Rule 5 Sunday: Carol Alt

Posted on | June 1, 2020 | 2 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho

You just never know what you’re going to find when you go wandering the web in search of a worthy subject for the Sunday Rule 5 post. At first I thought I was going to post about tie-dyed bikinis, which are coming back into fashion, but Halsey is an Antifa-coddling moron and ugly besides, and Kylie Jenner does nothing for me. But in the sidebar at Page Six, there was Carol Alt, looking pretty hot for a woman almost my age. She was a Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition cover girl back in 1982, and appears to have done a really good job of staying in shape.

Carol Alt in Hawaii, 1982

Ninety Miles From Tyranny leads off with the fabulous 90 Miles Mystery Box Episode #1000 – One Grand Extravaganza! also, Hot Pick Of The Late Night, Morning Mistress, and Girls With Guns. At Animal Magnetism, it’s Rule 5 1776 Friday Part V and the Saturday Gingermageddon.

EBL’s got more movies and opera this week – Manon, Rio Lobo, The Damnation Of Faust, Susana Dosamantes, Emani, Escape From New York, Manon L’Escaut, La Somnabula, Jeffrey Epstein – Filthy Rich, and Pretty Yende.

A View From The Beach’s haul this week includes Digital Makeup with Yumi Lambert, Fish Pic Friday, Snakeheads Stop Conowingo Shad Lift, A Wuflu Medley, Tattoo Thursday, Some Wednesday Wetness, You’re Doing It Wrong!, Tuesday Tattoos and Tanlines, Palm Sunday and  I Hope the Mussels are OK!,

Red Pilled Jew checks in with Women With Braids, and Bacon Time says it’s Swimsuit Season.

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Category: Rule 5

Ivy League Terrorist

Posted on | May 31, 2020 | 2 Comments

 

Trained by an elite university your kids could never afford to attend:

Two Brooklyn lawyers, including an Ivy League graduate corporate attorney, are facing federal charges for tossing a Molotov cocktail into an NYPD vehicle early Saturday morning during a protest over the police killing of George Floyd.
Colinford Mattis, 32, a lawyer and member of Community Board 5 in East New York, was charged along with fellow attorney Urooj Rahman with the attempted attack on an empty police cruiser parked outside the 88th Precinct station house in Fort Greene.
“This is shocking news to me,” Andre Mitchell, president of Community Board 5 told the Daily News. “The allegation does surprise me because that doesn’t sound like him.”
The super of Rahman’s building called her “an angel” who recently lost her legal job.
“I can’t believe it. I’m stunned,” said George Raleigh, the super of Rahman’s building in Bay Ridge. “This kid? She’s an angel.”
Authorities say Rahman, 31, tossed a bottle filled with gasoline through a broken window into the cruiser just before 1 am Saturday but the Molotov cocktail failed to ignite. Rahman jumped into a van driven by Mattis and they sped off, court papers allege.
The attempted torching was captured by video surveillance cameras outside the precinct stationhouse on DeKalb Ave.
Cops gave chase and stopped the van nearby on Willoughby St.. They found the makings of another Molotov cocktail in the back seat along with a gasoline container.
“No rational human being can ever believe that hurling firebombs at police officers and vehicles is justified,” said Brooklyn U.S Attorney Richard Donaghue. . . .
Mattis, who lives in East New York, graduated from Princeton University and New York University law school, according to his LinkedIn page.
He is an associate with Pryor Cashman, a Times Square corporate law firm where he specializes in start-ups. The firm did not immediately return a call for comment.
Mattis has served for two years on Community Board 5, which covers East New York and Starrett City. He is vice chairman of the by laws committee and serves on the housing and land use committee headed by prominent activist Viola Plummer.

The annual cost of attending Princeton is $69,020, including room and board. Somehow, I suspect the Alumni Association won’t be getting too many contributions from Mr. Colinford in the future.


 

Category: Crime, The Ivy League Is Depraved and Decadent

FMJRA 2.0: In The Heat Of The Night

Posted on | May 31, 2020 | 1 Comment

— compiled by Wombat-socho

I’m on Gab and Parler now. See if you can guess what my handle is. 😛

Rule 5 Sunday: Kayleigh “Honey Badger” McEnany
Animal Magnetism
Pushing Rubber Downhill
Ninety Miles From Tyranny
A View From The Beach
Proof Positive
EBL

Further Developments
357 Magnum
EBL

West Virginia’s COVID-19 ‘Hot Spot’
The Political Hat
EBL

FMJRA 2.0: Walking In The Shadow Of The Big Man
The Pirate’s Cove
A View From The Beach
EBL

The Early Summer Book Post
EBL

‘A Team of Editors’
357 Magnum
EBL

May Is Mental Health Awareness Month, and Crazy People Are Dangerous
EBL

Why Is Ann Coulter Doing This?
Pushing Rubber Downhill
EBL

How to Ruin Your Life (or Down the Rabbit Hole With a Deer-Sexual)
Dark Brightness
EBL

Hallowed Ground
EBL

In The Mailbox: 05.26.20 (Morning Edition)
357 Magnum
Proof Positive
EBL

In The Mailbox: 05.26.20 (Afternoon Edition)
A View From The Beach
Proof Positive
EBL

COVID-19: The ‘Experts’ Are Clueless
Bacon Time
357 Magnum
A View From The Beach
EBL

U.S. Coronavirus Daily Deaths Have Decreased 43% in the Past Four Weeks
EBL

In The Mailbox: 05.27.20
357 Magnum
A View From The Beach
Proof Positive
EBL

‘Fact-Based Truth’: MSNBC Demonized Ron DeSantis; Where’s the Apology?
World News Daily
El Informe Hispano
357 Magnum
EBL

In The Mailbox: 05.28.20
A View From The Beach
Proof Positive
EBL

Anarchy in Minneapolis: Democrats Celebrate Rioters Who Burned Down City
357 Magnum
Pushing Rubber Downhill
EBL

Friday Fiction: 100 Word Challenge
EBL

Courageous Social Justice Activists Vandalize CNN Atlanta Headquarters
357 Magnum
A View From The Beach
EBL

In The Mailbox: 05.29.20
357 Magnum
A View From The Beach
Proof Positive
EBL

Top linkers for the week ending May 29:

  1.   EBL (21)
  2.   (tied) 357 Magnum and  View From The Beach (8)
  3.   Proof Positive (6)

Honorable mention to our antipodean friends Dark Brightness and Pushing Rubber Downhill, who are usually good for two or three links a week on a consistent basis. Thanks!

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Category: FMJRA Award

Arson, Looting, Aggravated Assault and Attempted Murder Are Not ‘Protests’

Posted on | May 31, 2020 | 6 Comments

 

Rioting across the nation leaves
cities reeling as hundreds arrested,
National Guard called in,
businesses damaged and at least 3 dead

pretext (noun) — a reason given in justification of a course of action that is not the real reason.

Watching city after city go up in flames — stores looted, innocent people attacked, arsonists and criminals running wild — I had difficulty thinking: “What do I want to write about this?”

The first and most obvious thing is that this spree of criminal actity had nothing at all to do with what happened to George Floyd. People ransacking stores in Los Angeles, brutalizing people in Dallas and setting fire to City Hall in Nashville were not “protesting” against a violation of civil rights. The businesses and institutions targeted by these criminals had nothing to do with what police officers did in Minneapolis.

“Let’s loot a liquor store, because social justice!”

George Floyd’s death was not a reason for these riots, it was a pretext.

Hateful people do not need a reason to hate. Destructive people do not need a reason to destroy. They just need a pretext. Some people in the media want us to believe that rioters are like werewolves; they are normal, law-abiding citizens until the full moon rises — or there is a “racial incident” — and then they magically transform into monsters.

You can prove the falsity of this common liberal belief by asking them to apply the same kind of thinking to earlier riots. Were the participants in the 1921 Tulsa Massacre just ordinary people who were magically transformed into a lynch mob by a “racial incident”? No, the liberal will insist, the perpetrators of that atrocity were always evil racists. Stipulating this, why can’t we be allowed to say something similar about the criminal mobs engaged in lawless violence in 2020?

The Office of the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York says it is filing federal charges against an upstate New York woman with four counts of attempted murder after she allegedly threw a Molotov cocktail at a police van on Friday during anti-police brutality protests.
The NYPD says Samantha Shader, 27, threw the Molotov cocktail at the rear window of a van while it was parked near Prospect Park, around 10:40 p.m. on Friday. Officers were able to get out of the car before it caught fire.
Shader also allegedly bit one of the officers in the leg while she was being taken into custody.
Her sister, 21-year-old Darian Shader, tried to interfere with the arrest, police said. She was taken into custody and charged with obstructing governmental administration and resisting arrest.
Samantha Shader is charged with four counts of attempted murder of a police officer, attempted arson, criminal possession of a weapon and reckless endangerment.
Both women are from Catskill, New York, which is roughly 130 miles from Prospect Park.

Why would a white girl from upstate travel more than 100 miles to Brooklyn to participate in a riot, and try to murder New York police officers, because of something that happened hundreds of miles away in Minneapolis? If enthusiasm for the #BlackLivesMatter movement is inherently good, as liberals would have us believe, does this mean Samantha Shader is morally superior to anyone who didn’t participate in this kind of “protest”? You see that there is a certain logic behind this kind of craziness: Racism is bad, and therefore . . . whatever.

There are many bad things in the world. Gluttony and sloth are bad, but that doesn’t justify murdering people for being fat and lazy. Why, then, do so many people think that they can justify criminal violence simply by saying that they are protesting against racism? Are there any limitations to such a syllogism? Is there anything you “cause” cannot justify?

Once upon a time, you had to study grammar, logic and rhetoric to be considered truly educated, yet despite the vast expansion of our educational system, we have a lot of allegedly educated people — including many journalists — who can’t construct a valid syllogism or spot a fallacy. These people seem to think that slogans are an acdeptable substitute for argument, and their reaction to criticism is always some kind of ad hominem attack, an attempt to “kill the messenger” rather than to refute the opposing argument. Because so many intellectuals in our society are now utterly irrational, there are no “adults in the room” with the necessary authority to correct the errors of the reckless mob.


 

Category: Uncategorized

‘An Epicenter of Anti-Trans Violence’

Posted on | May 30, 2020 | 2 Comments

 

Once the “social justice” bandwagon of identity-politics victimhood gets rolling, everybody starts trying to climb aboard:

A black transgender man was fatally shot Wednesday by a police officer in Tallahassee, Florida — at least the third reported officer-involved shooting in Tallahassee in two months.
The victim, Tony McDade, 38, was identified as a suspect in a reported stabbing the morning of his death. Police said McDade fled the scene of the stabbing on foot before officers arrived, but they encountered McDade nearby shortly afterward.
According to police, McDade reportedly had a handgun and “made a move consistent with using the firearm” against an officer, prompting the officer to shoot McDade.
The Tallahassee Police Department said that it is investigating and that the officer, who was not identified, has been placed on administrative leave. . . .
Equality Florida, a statewide LGBTQ advocacy organization, said McDade’s death further exemplifies that Florida is “an epicenter of anti-trans violence.” At least seven black transgender people were murdered in Florida over the last two years, according to the organization.
Following McDade’s death, the National Black Justice Coalition said the “tragic incident should be a reminder that hate crimes against Black LGBTQ” people happen “too frequently” and “often without the national public outcry that our cis and/or heteronormative brothers and sisters receive.”
“It is important to highlight the too often ignored violence that members of our community face in addition to the discrimination we may experience because we are Black,” the coalition said in a statement.”

Are you . . . skeptical of such claims? Are you less than 100% confident this incident was a “hate crime”? Do you doubt Florida is actually an “epicenter of anti-trans violence”? Do you suspect that “Tony” McDade might not be an entirely innocent victim? Because you’re a hater?

 

A Tallahassee resident shot and killed by police Wednesday vowed they would never return to federal prison in a haunting Facebook live video posted the previous day.
Natosha “Tony” McDade, 38, died after a confrontation with police on Holton Street. Officers tried to stop McDade in connection with a deadly stabbing on Saxon Street minutes earlier.
“It’s just Tony the Tiger all alone coming for your blood,” McDade said in the Facebook Live post, “And after I get through killing you (expletive) I’m going to go back on live if I have the opportunity, because I will not be going back to prison.”
“Me and the law will have a standoff,” McDade said, “Because I’m fed up.”
The Bureau of Prisons website shows McDade was just released from federal prison on January 17, 2020 after serving a ten year sentence on weapons charges.
McDade was indicted by a federal grand jury in 2009 for possession of a gun and ammunition by a convicted felon. Federal court records indicate McDade was sentenced to 10 years in prison on those charges to be followed by three years of supervised release.
“All I ask of you is to make sure my mother is fine once I depart,” McDade said in the Facebook Live post. “I am killing and going to be killed because I will not go back into federal prison.”
Leon County court records show that McDade was arrested a few weeks ago after a confrontation outside the Circle K on South Monroe Street in which a woman claimed McDade threatened her and pulled a gun on her.
The arrest affidavit dated May 4, 2020 says officers later talked with McDade, who admitted the two had argued outside the Circle K but told officers the gun in question was a BB gun. The affidavit says officers found that BB gun under the driver’s seat of McDade’s car saying it was “nearly identical to an actual firearm and was only determined to be a BB gun upon closer inspection.”
Leon County court records show McDade was charged with aggravated assault and released on bond the next day.
Leon County court records show McDade had several prior arrests between 1999 and 2009 including arrests for armed robbery, battery and forgery. Florida Department of Corrections records show McDade did two stints in state prison including five years on the armed robbery charge.

So, a career criminal, out on bond for an aggravated assault charge, who had vowed never to go back to prison and warned of a “standoff” with police, and who had just stabbed somebody to death, got killed in a confrontation with police. In what sense is “Tony” the victim here?

But this is how “social justice” works. Merely by being a member of a particular category, you’re automatically a victim, no matter what happens, and everyone is required to play along with this victimhood narrative, or else they’re guilty of “transphobia” or racism or whatever.


 


 

Category: Crime, Florida, The Transgender Cult
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