The Other McCain

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

FMJRA 2.0: (Like) There’s No Tomorrow

Posted on | December 31, 2023 | Comments Off on FMJRA 2.0: (Like) There’s No Tomorrow

— compiled by Wombat-socho

I haven’t listened to my lengthy collection of Conelrad electronica in a while, so this weekend I’m making up for lost time. He seems to have pulled his music off Amazon, but the whole catalog seems to be on YouTube now. If you’re looking for chill, relaxing electronic music with a bit of Cold War ambience, this is right up your alley.
Ceterum autem censeo Silicon Valley et Hamas delendam sunt.

One of the first Conelrad releases.

‘Corporate Profit’ and the Political Ideas That Are Driving America’s Crime Wave
The Daley Gator
Flappr
EBL
Average Bubba
357 Magnum
A View From The Beach






Rule 5 Sunday: Santa, Baby!
Animal Magnetism
Flappr
EBL
Average Bubba
A View From The Beach

‘Oh, We’re Halfway There’
The Daley Gator
EBL
357 Magnum
A View From The Beach

Meth-Crazed Lesbian Dies in Proverbial Hail of Gunfire; No Charges for Cops
EBL

Ex-NFL Player: ‘Average White Guys’ Shouldn’t Be Talking About Football
EBL
357 Magnum
A View From The Beach

FMJRA 2.0: Our Annual Rogers Hornsby Moment
EBL
A View From The Beach

 

 

NYC Maniac Turned Loose So He Could Stab Two Girls in Grand Central Station
The Daley Gator
EBL
357 Magnum

Amazon Warehouse Deals




Category: FMJRA Award

‘Teens Arrested’

Posted on | December 31, 2023 | Comments Off on ‘Teens Arrested’

After reading a story about a recent murder, the idea occurred to me, why not just Google “teens arrested”? One of the first news stories I saw was the case from Charlotte, North Carolina, where five teens in a stolen Dodge Charger led police on a high-speed pursuit Thursday afternoon. The youthful miscreants were ages 14-16:

Police said they are serial offenders and had racked up at least 84 charges between them before Thursday’s arrest. Several of the teens were linked to multiple vehicle break-ins, police said.

A stolen firearm was found in the vehicle. Anyway, I continued my Google search and here is a sampling of recent headlines:

Four teens arrested in connection
to the murder of a 17-year-old in November
— KNXV-TV, Phoenix, Dec. 20

3 teens arrested
in string of armed robberies
across San Diego County
— KNSD-TV, San Diego, Dec. 18

Two teens arrested after fight breaks out
at Southern Park Mall
— WFMJ-TV, Youngstown, Ohio, Dec. 27

10 teens arrested in 2 carjacking rings
— WRC-TV, Washington, D.C., Dec. 11

5 teens charged in violent beating
at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School
— CBS News, Dec. 19

Four arrested, including three teens,
for carjacking in Baltimore County
— WBAL-TV, Baltimore, Dec. 5

3 teens arrested after assaulting,
carjacking 72-year-old woman
in Bethesda: police
— WTTG-TV, Washington, D.C., Dec. 13

5 teens arrested after crashing
stolen vehicle into patrol cars
at downtown apartment parking garage
— KSAT-TV, San Antonio, Texas, Dec. 19

Four teens arrested after Little Rock
traffic stop leads to seizure
of six guns, 42 grams of marijuana
— KARK-TV, Little Rock, Arkansas, Dec. 22

Metro police: 3 teens caught
with 2 stolen cars, 6 guns, 19 key fobs
— WKRN-TV, Nashville, Dec. 28

So much high-spirited adolescent hijinks! So many mischievous young scamps! Stealing cars, stealing guns, shootings, beatings, armed robberies — typical fun for American teens! With few exceptions, the news media never identify these fun-loving youngsters by name, but when they do . . . Well, it’s ain’t Amish kids, OK? Consider this recent report about some Florida teens celebrating the festive holiday season:

Two brothers, 14 and 15, face murder charges after an argument over who was getting more presents led to a shooting that killed their sister — a mother of two — on Christmas Eve.
Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri said the “family spat” began Sunday during a shopping trip in Largo. When the family returned to the home of the boys’ grandmother in the 2300 block of 22nd Avenue Southwest, the teens were still arguing.
Standing in the kitchen, Damarcus Coley, 14, pulled out a .40 caliber semi-automatic handgun and aimed it at his brother, 15-year-old Darcus Coley, threatening to shoot him in the head, Gualtieri said.
The teens’ uncle separated the boys, telling Damarcus to step outside. Gualtieri said a neighbor’s outdoor camera captured audio of their sister, Abrielle Baldwin, 23, as she tried to intervene.
“You all need to leave that stuff alone. Why are you trying to start it? It’s Christmas,” Baldwin told her younger brother, Gualtieri said.
At about 1:45 p.m., Damarcus yelled threats at Baldwin and then shot her in the chest, Gualtieri said. The round went through her left arm before puncturing her lungs. At the time, Baldwin was holding her 10-month-old baby, who was not injured, Gualtieri said.
After hearing the gunshot, Darcus ran outside, screaming about how Damarcus had shot their sister.
Eight seconds after the fatal shot rang out, Darcus fired a round at his brother with his own .45 caliber pistol, Gualtieri said. The 15-year-old threw his gun in a neighbor’s yard and ran to a relative’s home in Clearwater, where deputies later arrested him, Gualtieri said. Darcus made statements about self-harm and was taken to a mental health facility.
Baldwin was taken to Largo Medical Center, where she died. She was also the mother of a 6-year-old boy.
Damarcus was taken to a hospital where he underwent surgery. Gualtieri said later will be moved to a juvenile detention center.
“This is what happens when you’ve got young delinquents and they carry guns,” Gualtieri told reporters. “They get upset, they don’t know how to handle stuff, so they just pick up their guns and start shooting each other.”
Damarcus Coley is charged with first-degree murder, child abuse and being a minor in possession of a firearm.
Darcus Coley is charged with attempted first-degree murder and tampering with physical evidence. . . .
Family members told investigators the two boys routinely carried guns. . . .
Damarcus’ arrest history dates back to when he was 12. He previously has been charged with vehicle theft, battery on a school employee and battery on a law enforcement officer, Gualtieri said. He said both brothers were arrested in May for multiple car burglaries and both have previous juvenile charges for being a minor in possession of a firearm.
Gualtieri said he believes both guns used in Sunday’s shooting were likely stolen from unlocked cars.

This case has been widely commented upon, but as I watched the video of Sheriff Gualtieri’s press conference, I noticed something that nobody else in the media seemed to notice. He stated that the victim, Abrielle Baldwin, was born May 5, 2000. He further noted that the mother of the victim (who is also the mother of the Coley brothers) was born June 25, 1984. Apparently nobody else bothered to do the basic arithmetic here: Abrielle was born when her mother was only 15 years old and, given that Abrielle’s oldest child is 6 years old, this means that she became a mother at age 17. Abrielle’s mother became a grandmother when she was no older than 33. Am I the only one who perceives this as relevant?

Also, notice that Abrielle and the Coley brothers have different surnames, indicating they were sired by different baby-daddies, none of whom are named as attendees at the festive family holiday gathering. Teenage mothers and absentee fathers would seem to be normative in this community. Also: “Family members told investigators the two boys routinely carried guns.” Routinely! If your 14-year-old was “routinely” carrying a pistol, wouldn’t this be a cause of parental concern? One kid’s got a .40-cal, the other’s packing a .45, both guns were likely stolen during the multiple burglaries perpetrated by the Coley brothers, but nobody in the family did anything about it until, of course, the festive holiday was celebrated with gunfire. Youthful hijinks!

Speaking of the Idiot-in-Chief:

Biden’s Crime Problem: Violent Crime
Is Down, but Voters Don’t Believe It

Yes, this year, many police agencies will report a record decrease in crime, made possible because crime was so completely out of control after the 2020 George Floyd riots, with many cities setting homicide records in 2021 and 2022. But a decline from a historic peak does not return America to the level of public safety the nation had before the summer of “fiery but mostly peaceful protests.” Furthermore, one reason for the reduction in crime is that law-abiding citizens just got the hell out of Democrat-controlled cities, and learned to avoid areas where teenage criminals — excuse me, I mean, urban youth — pose a constant threat to life and property. If you’ve sold your city home and moved to the countryside — hunkered down in a rural bunker, protected by guard dogs and video surveillance — you probably don’t feel a lot of gratitude to President Biden for your circumstances. You damned deplorable!



 

Category: Crime

History You Probably Never Knew

Posted on | December 30, 2023 | Comments Off on History You Probably Never Knew

Very early in my childhood, history became a favorite subject, most likely because of my father’s service in World War II. Knowing that he had been wounded while fighting the Germans in France — he had a deep scar on the back of his neck from the shrapnel that nearly killed him — I was always eager to read anything about that war, and while still in high school read the entirety of William Shirer’s monumental The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. The history of the Civil War was of less interest to me, but my sixth-grade project for the Social Studies Fair at Lithia Springs Elementary School was about the Battle of Kennesaw Mountain, which took place in neighboring Cobb County. Many times as a boy, driving up to Lake Altoona for fishing trips, we had stopped at Lost Mountain Store, near the western part of the Confederate defense line during that battle; when I was in college, I had a girlfriend who lived in Kennesaw, and my route to her house had me driving past the battlefield at Cheatham Hill on a regular basis. In 1979, to mark the 115th anniversary of Sherman’s capture of Atlanta, the Atlanta-Journal Constitution published a multi-part series about that campaign beginning at Dalton, and I was fascinated by this as the most detailed account of the Atlanta campaign I’d encountered up to that point. Later, after graduating college, I purchased Bruce Catton’s Civil War, a one-volume compilation of his three-part Army of the Potomac series, and as anyone who has read it knows, that was a masterpiece of narrative history.

All of this I recount as partial explanation of how it was that I subsequently became known as a “neo-Confederate,” an appellation intended by some to designate the target as a dangerous extremist — “RAAAAACIST!” — like those “neo-Nazi” misfits who fancifully imagine they can somehow bring about a Fourth Reich. The point I wish to make is that my interest in the Confederacy stemmed from my larger interest in military history and, considering how crucial battles of the Civil War were fought in the immediate vicinity of my childhood home in Georgia, this interest was by no means remarkable. The further tale of how I became a member of the League of the South, I’ve recounted elsewhere and need not repeat here; during the Great LGF Blog War of 2009, I decisively vindicated my reputation, without ever having been compelled to apologize or repudiate any of my prior associations. Whatever my faults and errors may be, those who know me best know that I am nothing like the sinister “white supremacist” character that left-wingers have manufactured by their smears. I owe those bastards no apologies.

Recently, I encountered on Amazon a book I’d never seen before: The Heritage of The South by Jubal Early, a Confederate general who rose to corps command in Lee’s army, and who had been a delegate to the Virginia convention that voted for secession (which Early voted against). Because of his background as a lawyer deeply involved in Virginia politics — representing Franklin County in the House of Delegates for one term, and later serving as Commonwealth’s Attorney — Early was well-qualified to discuss the history of events that led to the Civil War.

Here is how General Early begins his tale:

The struggle for independence made by the Southern States of the American Union, grew out of questions of self government arising mainly in regard to the institution of African slavery as it existed in those states, and as that institution was the occasion for the development of the difficulties which led immediately to the struggle, the conduct of the states lately forming the Southern Confederacy has been misunderstood, therefore, misrepresented, with the effect of casting upon them not only the odium of originating the war but even for the existence and continuance of slavery itself.
Much misapprehension has existed in the minds even of intelligent foreigners upon these subjects and it is therefore not inappropriate to take a retrospective view of the history of slavery in general and especially of the slave trade and of slavery in the United States, as well as of the questions which led to the secession of the Southern States and to the war consequent thereon.
It is said that the Portuguese began the traffic in slaves on the coast of Africa in the 15th century, and that at the beginning of the 16th century negro slaves had become quite common in Portugal.
After the discovery of America, the Spaniards made slaves of the Indians and employed them in their first settlements in the newly discovered country, but the supply not being found sufficient and the Indians not being very well adapted for the purpose in the tropical regions, negro slaves were introduced from Africa—the first being imported[ 12 ] into Hispaniola (St. Domingo), in the year 1503. The example of Spain in regard to the use of negro slaves in her American Colonies was followed by all the other nations of Europe, who undertook the colonization of the newly found continent and islands, to-wit: the Portuguese, English, French, Dutch, Danes and Swedes.
Sir John Hawkins, an English admiral and adventurer, was the first Englishman known to have engaged in the African slave trade, and he carried his first cargo to the Spanish West India islands about the year 1562. Report says that Queen Elizabeth became a partner in and shared the profits of his subsequent voyages in the prosecution of the trade. From that time the African slave trade became a regular branch of English commerce, and was conducted in its first stages principally under monopolies granted to companies, in the profits of which members of the Royal family, noblemen, courtiers and churchmen, as well as merchants, shared, as was the practice in those days in all important branches of commerce.
From the restriction under Charles II, the African trade, including that in slaves, was monopolized by the “Royal African Company” for a number of years; and that company built and established, on the coast of Africa, forts and factories for the purpose of facilitating and protecting the trade; but in the year 1698, the slave trade was thrown open to private traders, upon the payment to the company of a certain percentage towards the support of its forts and factories.
The growing demand in Europe for colonial products now gave a new impulse to the slave trade, and its profits were very great. It was not only recognized by the government, but was sustained by the universal public sentiment in England, and was fostered and cherished by Parliament as a lucrative traffic.
In the year 1713, by the treaty of Utrecht, the Assiento, a contract originally entered into by the Spanish government with a company of French merchants for a monopoly by the latter of the trade in slaves to Spanish America, was assigned to the South Sea Company. By the terms of this contract 4,800 negro slaves were to be furnished to the Spanish colonies annually for thirty years, the company being privileged to introduce as many more as could be sold.
In this company Queen Anne and the King of Spain became stockholders, as did a large portion of the nobility, gentry, churchmen, and merchants of England. England thus sought a monopoly of the entire slave trade, at least so far as her own and the Spanish colonies were concerned. The exclusive privileges granted to the Royal African Company having expired, in the year 1750 the British Government undertook to maintain the forts and factories on the African coast at its own expense, and the slave trade was thrown open to free competition on the part of its citizens. A great increase of the trade now took place, and England had become the leading nation in that trade, which was carried on chiefly from the ports of Bristol and Liverpool, but other ports including that of London shared in it—the West Indies furnishing the principal market, but a considerable number were also introduced into the colonies of North America. . . .

You can purchase the book from Amazon (paying me a small commission) and read the rest of General Early’s account, but perhaps you grasp the point he was endeavoring to make, i.e., that while Southerners were blamed for “the existence and continuance of slavery itself,” the institution had a much larger history. In fact, there were far more African slaves imported to the Spanish and Portuguese colonies (Cuba, Brazil, etc.) than ever arrived in the English colonies that eventually became the United States. According to Wikipedia, some 5.8 million Africans were shipped to Brazil, for example, compared to less than 400,000 shipped to North America. For some reason, however, we don’t hear many denunciations of Portugal (or Spain or France) over slavery; instead, as General Early remarked, the “odium” has historically been focused on the South. This was a function of politics, you see. The damned Yankees wished to believe that they were entirely innocent and that Southerners were uniquely guilty in regard to the practice of slavery. It may or may not surprise readers to learn that I grinned ever so slightly as I wrote about Albany, New York, removing the “statue of General Philip Schuyler that stood in front of Albany City Hall for nearly a century.” Because, yes, Schuyler owned slaves, and the fact that African slaves had toiled as far north as upstate New York might seem strange to most Americans, but guess what? Southerners knew all about the North’s hypocrisy, and were never deceived by the Yankees’ (rather conveniently belated) attempt to claim moral superiority in this matter.

And in breaking 19th-century news:

Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley has come under fire for issuing a word-salad response when asked in New Hampshire on Wednesday why America fought in the Civil War, refusing to say the word “slavery.”
The moment came during a campaign event in the Granite State when someone in the crowd asked Haley what caused the Civil War. The presidential candidate seemed somewhat puzzled by the question to the point of calling the answer difficult.
“I mean, I think the cause of the Civil War was basically how government was going to run. The freedoms and what people could and couldn’t do,” Haley said.
When Haley asked the voter what he thought had sparked the Civil War, the voter said, “I’m not running for president.”
“I think it always comes down to the role of government and what the rights of the people are,” Haley added. “I will always stand by the fact that I think government was intended to secure the rights and freedoms of the people. It was never meant to be all things to all people,” she said.

Because I watch CNN (so you don’t have to), I’ve been watching this story recycled hourly for three days. Even if you don’t like Nikki Haley, sensible people must abhor the fact that she is subjected to such an inquisition, merely because she is from South Carolina. This continued effort to stigmatize the South, to fasten upon the Southern people this burden of blood-guilt, has become so mindless that even the daughter of Sikh immigrants from Punjab gets targeted, as if she bears personal responsibility for the, uh, misunderstanding at Fort Sumter.

The execrable Nikole Hannah-Jones was among those exulting over Nikki Haley’s stumble, but Glenn Reynolds took the opportunity to remind us of Hannah-Jones’s own history of . . . unusual comments.

That comment provoked a discussion in which Hannah-Jones refused to give the North any credit for ending slavery by force of arms:

Far be it from me to waste my time arguing with fools, a bad habit that anyone would be well advised to avoid, but the reality of the modern information system is such that it is dangerous to let folly go unrebuked. When people publish inflammatory and insulting claims, the absence of immediate pushback will lead many observers to think that the claim made is valid, and thus do bad ideas and harmful myths become commonplace. Are black people collectively victims of “inhumanity visited” upon them by white Americans collectively?

This is the implied meaning of Hannah-Jones’s rhetoric, seeking to make personal responsibility disappear by the use of racial collectivism to point the accusing finger at white people. The circumstances of history cannot be changed retroactively, and this guilt-tripping attitude — seeking to impugn white people based on what happened centuries before they were even born — also has the rhetorical effect of implying that no black person can expect success or happiness in America because white people are always inflicting “inhumanity” upon them.

Historically, people who incite this Us-vs.-Them way of thinking have not been viewed as philanthropic humanitarians. Unless you consider Pol Pot to be an advocate for “social justice,” you’d best avoid the kind of blame-game rhetoric that is the stock-in-trade of Nikole Hannah-Jones.

Rooting around in remote history in search of a pretext to hate other people is not just foolish, but wicked. It is un-Christian, to say the very least, and as the descendant of Confederate soldiers — including one who was captured at Gettysburg and spent two years as a prisoner of war at Fort Delaware — I know the importance of letting the past be the past. We should study history with an eye toward finding examples that can inspire us, as individuals, to strive for the best in ourselves and, as citizens, to benefit from what history can teach us about policy.

In 2019, I wrote this for The American Spectator:

Private Bolt signed his parole with an “X.” He was completely illiterate, you see, and it is therefore impossible for me to know what my ancestor’s opinions were on the controversies that led to the Civil War. However, I can form an estimate of his character from knowing his daughter Perlonia, my grandmother, a stern but kindly Christian woman who lived to be 94 years old. It should not be necessary to explain why I bristle at any insult to my grandmother’s family, to hear them smeared as “racists” by people who never knew them. Some people like to display their imagined superiority by impugning my Southern ancestors in this manner, and I’ve learned to restrain my temper about such insults. Had such men as Alabama’s William Lowndes Yancey been better able to restrain their tempers, there might never have been a Civil War, but we must live with the consequences of history as it actually happened, rather than in whatever fictional alternative anyone might fondly imagine. Wishing that slavery or secession never happened is as futile as wishing that J.E.B. Stuart’s cavalry had been present to protect the advance of Lee’s army toward Gettysburg on that fateful July morning in 1863. . . .

You can read the rest of that, if you’re interested. As a famous Yankee once said, we should act with malice toward none, but with charity for all, to bind up the nation’s wounds. Alas, I fear that not everyone takes those words as seriously as they should. Beware the consequences.



 

Category: History, Racism

NYC Maniac Turned Loose So He Could Stab Two Girls in Grand Central Station

Posted on | December 28, 2023 | Comments Off on NYC Maniac Turned Loose So He Could Stab Two Girls in Grand Central Station

Gosh, if only there were some simple phrase to briefly summarize the public safety threat posed by the mentally ill:

The unhinged vagrant accused of randomly stabbing two teen tourists at Grand Central Station was a stalker who suffered from paranoid delusions and was in dire need of psychiatric help, his ex-girlfriend told The Post Wednesday.

(Kind of like Hillary Clinton, in some ways.)

Charisma Knight, 37, said onetime beau Steven Hutcherson allegedly threatened to kill her “at least five times” in the past year and became increasingly deranged after he refused to take his meds for schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.
“I called the police all the time and said ‘he’s bipolar and schizophrenic, ‘he needs help, he needs help.’ These people actually do need help. If you’re just letting them go… he might just kill somebody,” Knight said from her East Harlem apartment.

(If only there were some phrase . . .)

“He should have been in a mental institution where he cannot come out and they can monitor him taking his medication,” she added.
Knight and Hutcherson, 36, met in elementary school and dated for three months in 2021 and then again for nine months, until October 2022, she said. . . .
Her ex had a penchant for conspiracy theories, watching videos on YouTube about Malcolm X, wars and “how to train to fight with a knife,” Knight said.
“He swore the government was after him,” she said.

(Too bad they weren’t “after him.”)

“I knew this was gonna happen because if you look at his Facebook account with all the rants that he’s doing with the police, it’s crazy,” Knight added, referring to the Grand Central attack.
At one point, he thought mold growing in his bathroom was planted by the police, and also suspected a close friend of being an FBI informant, Knight recalled. . . .
Hutcherson was estranged from his mother but never recovered from her death some two decades ago — sparking a particular disdain for the holidays, Knight said.
She theorized that may have contributed to his alleged violent outburst on Christmas Day, when he is accused of stabbing the teen sisters, 14 and 16, in a French restaurant at the Grand Central dining concourse.
“He gets depressed around the holidays. Around October he starts thinking about his mom and thinking about how he has no one. Around Thanksgiving and Christmas he’s weird — extremely weird,” she said.
“Being that it was Christmas, it triggered something in him, whether he was mad that it was like a family setting that they were having and they was enjoying themselves,” she opined.

He was arrested in November, but the judge turned him loose:

Prosecutors wanted Steven Hutcherson, 36, to be committed to a psychiatric program for randomly threatening a stranger on a Bronx street last month, but Judge Matthew Grieco instead gave the career criminal a conditional discharge that put him back on the street, records show.
Less than two weeks after that Dec. 12 hearing, Hutcherson allegedly went off the rails at a restaurant in the historic Midtown terminal, launching into an anti-white rant and knifing a 14-year-old girl and her 16-year-old sister, visiting the city from Paraguay with their family.

Have I mentioned lately that Crazy People Are Dangerous?



 

Category: Crime, New York

‘Corporate Profit’ and the Political Ideas That Are Driving America’s Crime Wave

Posted on | December 28, 2023 | Comments Off on ‘Corporate Profit’ and the Political Ideas That Are Driving America’s Crime Wave

The image above is from a police dashcam showing the end of a pursuit in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin. The SUV was driven by 18-year-old Demetrius Walker of Milwaukee, and the front-seat passenger, 18-year-old Nevaeh Beck of Milwaukee, had stolen about $300 worth of merchandise from Home Depot, where Walker had helped himself to some snacks and soft drinks. After a pursuit of about five miles that reached speeds over 90 mph, heading back into Milwaukee, the SUV crashed into a light pole, at which point five people — Walker, Beck, two other teenagers and a 5-year-old child — fled on foot before being apprehended:

According to the criminal complaint, Wauwatosa police responded to a retail theft at Home Depot on N. 124th Street on Friday, Sept. 22. Officers were told two females walked out of the store with cleaning supplies and loaded them into a black SUV with no license plate. The criminal complaint says the pair left the store with $308.93 worth of cleaning supplies without paying for them. The complaint also says the driver of the SUV, identified as defendant Demetrius Walker, also entered the store, “took two bottles of soda and a bag of chips and left the store without paying for the property. As soon as the females loaded up the (SUV) with the rest of the stolen merchandise, Walker drove away.” . . .
In an interview with police, Walker “admitted to shoplifting from Home Depot and that he took drinks and a snack without paying. Walker admitted to being the driver of the vehicle. Walker admitted that he knew the merchandise being loaded into the (SUV) was stolen because he was told by Beck that it was stolen as she was loading the (SUV) up. Walker admitted to fleeing from officers because he had been informed that the (SUV) was stolen,” the complaint says.

Stolen SUV. Stolen cleaning supplies. Stolen soda. Stolen chips.

Watch the YouTube video of the police pursuit:

 

After watching this YouTube video in the wee hours, I read the comments, many of which were about the “usual suspects” nature of these criminals. Being a habitual viewer of police videos on YouTube, I am inured to this unpleasant reality. Why do some people feel the need to resist the law so strenously? You see the blue lights in the rear-view mirror, you pull over. You know you’re guilty. What are the chances you’re going to outrun the cops in your stolen SUV? And once you wreck out, with multiple cop cars in pursuit, why even try fleeing on foot?

Perhaps these young scholars from Milwaukee were so busy studying for their AP Physics exams that they didn’t have the leisure to watch YouTube videos and figure out they had no chance of escaping the law. Perhaps, but what I perceive — not just in this video, but in so many dozens of others I’ve watched — is that some people have an attitude of disrespect for the law and contempt for authority.

Gosh, I wonder how they got that attitude?

The anti-police rhetoric that flooded the TV airwaves during the summer of 2020, and the media coverage that excused the “fiery but most peaceful protests,” have helped foster a belief that resistance to law enforcement is some kind of heroic duty. So you drive the stolen car until it crashes, then you flee on foot and, if you happen to have a pistol handy, you get into a shootout with the cops, dying in the proverbial “hail of gunfire,” thus becoming a courageous martyr for social justice.

It would be easy to write a 5,000-word essay about this irrational and destructive mentality, but that’s not what got me going on this particular video. No, it was this comment that set me off:

“I’m so happy we’re protecting corporations profits”

This infuriated me, and I replied:

“Your attitude — ignorantly deriding ‘corporate profit’ — is indistinguishable from that of the criminals. Why do you think businesses (large or small) exist, huh? Where do you suppose the profit goes? And what would happen if the business could not make a profit? You should be ashamed of yourself, but if you had any sense of shame, I suppose, you never would have said such a thing.”

Has this person never read Atlas Shrugged? Or do they just not understand how business operates? Here’s a simple formula:

Profit = Jobs

It’s really not much more complicated than that. The only reason any business exists is because the owners — whether sole proprietor, partnership, or corporation — hope to make a profit on their investment. If they fail to make a profit, they go out of business, and then they can’t employ anybody. No profit, no jobs. This is true both on the global and local level. Where any government creates conditions that are incompatible with profitable business activity, they will thereby drive jobs out of the community. (Hint: There are no CVS stores in Gaza.) You may say, “Well, Home Depot is a gigantic nationwide business that’s in no danger of going out of business anytime soon.” True, but any particular Home Depot location that doesn’t make a profit will be closed, costing jobs at the local level. And if a community tolerates lawlessness, there won’t be any Home Depot locations there. Like, there’s no Home Depot in downtown Baltimore; you have to go out on the east side, near I-95.

There are today many places in America where the local Democratic governments, by tolerating crime, have ruined the economies of their communities. The entire state of California is circling the toilet bowl:

California’s budget deficit swells
to record $68B as tax revenue falls
— Politico, Dec. 7

Report: Wealthy Taxpayers Are
Fleeing California
— Breitbart, Dec. 20

The California exodus continues.
Chart shows how unusual
the population drop was
— San Francisco Chronicle, Dec. 21

There are many causes of California’s problems — Gov. Gavin Newsom enforced one of the most draconian and longest-lasting COVID-19 lockdowns in the country — but a lot of it has to do with the crime wave unleashed when the state’s voters approved Proposition 47, which reduced “most drug possession offenses and thefts of property valued under $950.00 from felonies to misdemeanors.” Well, guess what? The level of retail theft in California is now “beyond crisis level,” as the Sacramento County sheriff has said. Anyone who sneers at “corporate profit” ought to have second thoughts, if they’ll just watch a few videos about what’s happened in San Francisco — one empty storefront after another in what were once bustling commercial districts:


 

My friend Dianna Deeley, who used to live in the San Francisco area, was saddened when I sent her those videos. This economic destruction was entirely avoidable, and the voters of California who inflicted this destruction — electing people like Newsom, and voting for ill-considered “reforms” like Prop 47 — should be ashamed of themselves. But then again, if they had any sense of shame, they wouldn’t vote for Democrats.



 

Category: Crime, Wisconsin

Rule 5 Sunday: Santa, Baby!

Posted on | December 25, 2023 | Comments Off on Rule 5 Sunday: Santa, Baby!

— compiled by Wombat-socho

This is the time of year when we’re blessed with a surfeit of attractive young ladies clad in festive Christmassy raiment. One such is this lass, whose pic I filched from kbdabear’s feed on X.
Ceterum autem censeo Silicon Valley et Hamas delendam sunt.

ANIMAL MAGNETISM: Rule Five Climate Cult Friday, and the Saturday Gingermageddon.

EBL: Saturday Night Girls With Guns, Candy Cane Lane, Julie Christie, “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel”, Nordic Solstice, Last & First Men, Buffalo Gals, MAGA Rocky Mountain Ballot Ban, The Ventures Christmas Album, Mistletoe Ranch, and The Family Plan

A VIEW FROM THE BEACH: Lucy Kilcommons, Forget It Jake, It’s Baltimore, The Grinches Want to Steal Christmas, Fish Pic Friday – Madison Shaudys, Tattoo Thursday, The Wednesday Wetness, Still Fighting About Little Fish, Tuesday Tanlines, The Monday Morning Stimulus, and  Palm Sunday

FLAPPR: T.I.T.S. For December 22

AVERAGE BUBBA: Rule Five Friday (Pre-Christmas Edition)

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Category: Rule 5

FMJRA 2.0: Our Annual Rogers Hornsby Moment

Posted on | December 25, 2023 | Comments Off on FMJRA 2.0: Our Annual Rogers Hornsby Moment

— compiled by Wombat-socho

People ask me what I do in winter when there’s no baseball. I’ll tell you what I do. I stare out the window and wait for spring.
– Rogers Hornsby, Hall of Fame second baseman

So we got stomped in the playoffs by the Angels. So what. After two years as the co-doormat of Pete’s Draft League*, it was good to rise up and deal out the beatings for a change; finishing second in the AL West with a 91-71 record felt very, very good indeed. Now comes the time to look over the roster and see which players we want to keep and which players we’ll set free because they’re turning into pumpkins in 1972. We also ought to take a few minutes and talk to this Herzog kid; Ted’s making noises about wanting to spend more time with the fish next summer, and it would be kinda cool to let the Kid leave while he’s on top.
Ceterum autem censeo Silicon Valley et Hamas delendam sunt.

Time to lock the doors and go home until spring.

Why Are Democrats Such Bad People?
First Street Journal
The Daley Gator
Flappr
A View From The Beach
357 Magnum
EBL




Rule 5 Sunday: Outstanding In Her Field
Animal Magnetism
Average Bubba
Flappr
A View From The Beach
EBL

John Hoge, R.I.P.
The Pirate’s Cove
357 Magnum
EBL

FMJRA 2.0: Falcons & Eagles
A View From The Beach
357 Magnum
EBL

Which One of You ‘Christofascists’ Urinated in A.R. Moxon’s Cornflakes?
357 Magnum
EBL

In The Mailbox: 12.18.23
A View From The Beach
357 Magnum
EBL

In The Mailbox: 12.20.23 (Afternoon Edition)
A View From The Beach
357 Magnum
EBL

Do Bananas Grow in Colorado?
Flappr
357 Magnum
EBL

In The Mailbox: 12.21.23 (Afternoon Edition)
A View From The Beach
357 Magnum
EBL

In The Mailbox: 12.21.23 (Evening Edition)
Average Bubba
A View From The Beach
357 Magnum
EBL

‘TNFlyGirl’ as a Metaphor
357 Magnum
A View From The Beach
EBL

In The Mailbox: 12.22.23
357 Magnum
A View From The Beach
EBL

Top linkers for the week ending December 22:

  1.  EBL (12)
  2.  357 Magnum (11)
  3.  A View From The Beach (9)

Thanks to everyone for all the links!

*Montreal is still the worst team in the National League, and it’s not even close.

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Category: FMJRA Award

Ex-NFL Player: ‘Average White Guys’ Shouldn’t Be Talking About Football

Posted on | December 24, 2023 | Comments Off on Ex-NFL Player: ‘Average White Guys’ Shouldn’t Be Talking About Football

Rashard Mendenhall kicked a hornet’s nest this week, and even after getting ratio’d into oblivion, refused to apologize:

Let us stipulate that we don’t know what set him off. Something must have provoked him to say these offensive things, and his willingness to maintain his defense suggests that either (a) the provocation was great, or (b) Mendenhall has been getting tired of hearing “average white guys” for a long time. Because I don’t know what the background might be, I would not participate in a rush to jump on this particular dogpile. What is to be gained by joining an online lynch mob? Besides which, I dislike the tendency of some of my fellow conservatives to point the finger and say, “See? Black people are racist, too!” The far better approach to such issues, I contend, is to attack the fundamental premise of the syllogism, i.e., the liberal assumption that “racism” is the universal explanation of every problem afflicting black people. Call me a “racist,” and my response is likely to be, “So?” What does that have to do with anything? Even if it were true that I harbored some opinion which you might describe as “racist,” how is anyone — black, brown, whatever — actually harmed by my mere opinion? Spurious accusations of racism — “RAAAAACISM!” — are generally motivated by politics, representing an attempt to gain some advantage by discrediting one’s opponents, a character assassination that is logically invalid as argument and irrelevant in terms of explaining the problems of black America. But I have digressed far enough . . .

Rashard Mendenhall asserts that he is better than “ur goat,” G.O.A.T. being an acronym for Greatest of All Time, but this is self-evidently false. I’m guessing Mendenhall, as a former Pittsburgh Steeler, might be thinking of Rocky Bleier and I’m sorry, no, sir, you’re not better than him, at least in terms of pure courage. Whether or not Bleier was ever the “greatest” in terms of speed, the simple fact that he made it to the NFL — and won four Super Bowls with the Steelers — after being blasted by a hand grenade in Vietnam is ample testimony to his character.

So if Mendenhall was provoked by some old Pittsburgh fan’s nostalgic remembrance of Rocky Bleier as the G.O.A.T., maybe the best response would have been to bite his tongue. But I actually don’t think that’s what set him off. No, I think it more likely that Mendenhall’s resentment was provoked by the praise being heaped on San Francisco 49ers running back Christian McCaffrey, a white guy who’s a lot better than “average.”

Since being acquired from the Carolina Panthers in a mid-season trade last year, McCaffrey has become the driving force of San Francisco’s offense, and is arguably the reason the 49ers are now 11-3, with the best record in the NFC and the odds-on favorite for the Super Bowl.

McCaffrey has rushed for nearly 1,300 yards and added more than 500 yards catching passes, with a total of 20 touchdowns, and these statistics don’t really do justice to the decisive nature of McCaffrey’s contributions. Whether it’s making crucial third-down conversions, or just enabling the Niners to play the kind of ball-control offense that helps keep their defense rested, it’s hard to imagine San Francisco being the conference leader without him. And yes, he’s white, in an era where it’s rather rare to see white players as running backs, let alone the kind of franchise star McCaffrey has become in San Francisco.

If there’s any secret to McCaffrey’s success, it’s good breeding. His father, Ed McCaffrey, spent 13 NFL seasons as a wide receiver, including three consecutive 1,000-yard-plus seasons (1998-2000) with the Denver Broncos. Athleticism comes from both sides of the family, however, as Christian McCaffrey’s mother was a soccer star at Stanford, and her father was an Olympic sprinter. Coming from a family with a tradition of athletic success, Christian McCaffrey’s NFL career is less surprising than it might otherwise appear in an era where it is not controversial to assume that only black players can be star running backs.

And, hate to break it to you, Rashard Mendenhall, but Christian McCaffrey is better than you ever were. In your best NFL season, you rushed for 1,273 yards and 13 TDs, which is less than McCaffrey’s got this year. So if you’re ranting about “average white guys” because you’re tired of hearing TV commentators praise McCaffrey’s ability, that’s too bad — he deserves the praise, and your complaints are unseemly.

By the way, permit me to suggest reading Taboo: Why Black Athletes Dominate Sports And Why We’re Afraid To Talk About It by Jon Entine, a careful examination of the subject. The crucial point is that we’re talking about tail-end-of-the-bell-curve phenomena, which is less about average group differences than about what happens in competition between a comparative handful of elite athletes. It is unfortunate that a dogmatic commitment to intellectual abstractions about equality tends to make many people reluctant to acknowledge actual differences between racial or ethnic groups, as if such an acknowledgement would automatically lead to resurrecting Jim Crow or Nazi Germany.

There is no reason why all of us — including “average white guys” — can’t get along peacefully, without resorting to censorship and quotas and endless protests about “injustice.” Just get used to the idea that (a) everybody’s racist and (b) so what? The rest of it is then a lot easier.



 

Category: Football, Racism
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