The Other McCain

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

The Strange Career of Eric Boehlert

Posted on | December 23, 2019 | Comments Off on The Strange Career of Eric Boehlert

 

Over the weekend, Breitbart News editor Alex Marlowe gave a speech at a Turning Point USA conference in which he invoked the memory of the late Andrew Breitbart. Coincidentally, I happened to be present at the 2007 Young America’s Foundation conference where Andrew first met Alex, who was then a student at UC-Berkeley, but I digress . . .

At the TPUSA event, Marlowe played a video clip for the attendees — most of them too young to remember Andrew in his heyday — in which Breitbart expressed his populist contempt for the elite media. And if you remember how Andrew operated on Twitter, one of his frequent targets was Eric Boehlert of Media Matters for America.

 

You may recall the notorious paranoia of MMfA’s David Brock, and may even remember Brock’s ugly lawsuit against his ex-boyfriend, but surely the kids at TPUSA don’t understand the history of MMfA, which is basically this: During the presidency of George W. Bush, progressives became quite desperate to defeat what they saw as the success of the “vast right-wing conspiracy” (to use Hillary Clinton’s phrase) in shaping the media environment. In particular, they hated the influence of Fox News, and feared that “mainstream” journalists were being too friendly to Republicans. With money from George Soros, among others, MMfA was created as an attack machine, compiling dossiers on “right-wing” figures in the media, in an effort to discredit anyone who disagreed with the Democrats’ left-wing agenda. Boehlert, who had previously worked for Salon-dot-com after getting his start in print media covering entertainment at Billboard and Rolling Stone, joined MMfA in 2006 and worked there for more than a decade. But in the past two years, Boehlert left MMfA and, since December 2018, has been blogging at DailyKos.

 

Excuse me? How does a veteran journalist go from a full-time position at a major left-wing 501(c)3 to doing a free DailyKos blog? Was there some kind of scandal or perhaps a falling-out with David Brock?

At one point, Boehlert was calling himself an employee of ShareBlue Media (an attempt by Brock “to build the left’s answer to Breitbart News,” which has since morphed into The American Independent) but it would seem that Boehlert left that gig sometime in late 2018.

There’s been no explanation of Boehlert’s career change, but he continues to pound away at his favorite themes in his DailyKos blog:

The press doesn’t have — or won’t use
— the proper language to describe
today’s radical Republican Party

— Dec. 8

Media pushes ‘Dems in disarray’
over impeachment — again

— Dec. 15

The New York Times’ impeachment coverage
devolves into Republican talking points

— Dec. 16

Media fail: The press keeps
covering impeachment through
the eyes of the Republican Party

— Dec. 18

Boehlert is a one-trick pony, endlessly repeating the same argument, that the liberal “mainstream” media is too nice to Republicans. You really have to be living in an alternative universe to believe, for example, that the New York Times is publishing “Republican talking points,” but in Boehlert’s mind, the only acceptable media coverage of politics would be nothing but press releases from the DNC. Boehlert denounces any “mainstream” news organization that ever treats Republicans as representing a legitimate point of view. Boehlert clearly desires to exercise the authority of a commissar in a totalitarian Ministry of Truth.

Boehlert’s weird worldview was on display Sunday morning:

MSNBC guest Eric Boehlert said the media’s focus on white working-class voters is “dangerous” and “racist” during an appearance on AM Joy.
“This obsession, and it goes back to the day after he was inaugurated, this obsession with interviewing white, Midwestern Trump voters and asking them what they think about Trump, it is a dangerous, it is a racist message,” Boehlert said. “Because the message is, white Republicans are who matter in this country. Their opinions are what really matter. The press invented this beat out of whole cloth after Trump was elected.”
Boehlert said that the opinions of white working-class voters are not news.
“After impeachment, article after article: ‘Trump voters, what did you think of impeachment?’ What’s the point? That’s not news,” he said. “That’s just not news. And again, I think it’s dangerous and I think it’s frankly racist.”

 

Could it be that Boehlert’s monomaniacal obsession has made him unemployable? Has he become so paranoid that nobody wants to hire him? Or maybe that “vast right-wing conspiracy” is to blame . . .

(Hat-tip: Instapundit.)



 

Crazy People Are Dangerous (and They’re All Using Online Dating Apps Now)

Posted on | December 23, 2019 | Comments Off on Crazy People Are Dangerous (and They’re All Using Online Dating Apps Now)

 

See if you can’t spot the red-flag warning here:

A Melbourne woman who met a man using an online dating app, invited him over for sex and then strangled him in bed has been found guilty of manslaughter.
Jamie Lee Dolheguy was charged with murder over the death of Indian student Maulin Rathod at a Sunbury house in July 2018.
But a Supreme Court jury instead found she was guilty of manslaughter.
It was never disputed that Dolheguy killed Mr Rathod but her barrister questioned whether she had “murderous intent”.
She was 18 when she met her victim via the online dating app Plenty of Fish and they exchanged brief messages before agreeing to meet up.
Her online profile indicated she was dating for the first time, had borderline personality disorder, suicidal ideation and extreme fetishes, including bondage.
“We’ll do whatever you want,” Mr Rathod told Dolheguy via text before he drove over to her house.
While Mr Rathod, 24, was on his way, the teenager went online and searched “I’m going to kill someone tonight for fun” and “I will kill someone tonight, I want to commit murder”.

If she tells you she’s crazy, believe her.

When my brother Kirby told me about this story, I Googled “Plenty of Fish murder” and guess what? Online dating is a good way to get killed:

Mom of 3 killed in apparent murder-suicide
by man she met on dating app, family says

KDFW-TV, July 19, 2019

Christine Wood met accused killer
on Plenty of Fish dating site, court told

CBC, April 30, 2019

Ohio woman, 24, ‘shot dead man, 27, she met
on dating site Plenty Of Fish and robbed him’

Daily Mail, Feb. 14, 2019

Suspected serial killer hunted victims
on Tinder and Plenty of Fish as survivors
reveal he was a ‘cool guy’ until he ‘flipped’

UK Sun, July 31, 2018

Man jailed for life after murdering
woman he met on Plenty of Fish

UK Independent, March 21, 2018

Parolee Met Woman On Plenty Of Fish;
He’s Accused Of Killing Her

Patch.com, Feb. 15, 2018

Florida dad killed after woman
he meets on online dating site PlentyOfFish
sets him up to be robbed

NY Daily News, Aug. 23, 2016

Violent fantasist who killed young teacher
on their first date after meeting her
on Plenty of fish is jailed for life

Daily Mail, June 3, 2016

Seems to be kind of pattern here, you might say. And what have I been telling you for years? Online dating is for losers. The mere fact that someone is on a dating app tells you that nobody who knows them in real life wants to date them — an automatic red-flag warning. And coincidentally, you may remember this case:

 

Ayoola Ajayi, 31, was charged in June with murdering 23-year-old University of Utah student Mackenzie Lueck. There was a related development in the case last week:

The man accused of killing 23-year-old University of Utah student MacKenzie Lueck is one step closer to a trial for unrelated charges alleging he kidnapped and sexually abused another woman in March 2018.
Ayoola Ajayi, facing four felony counts, is accused of abusing a woman he met on the Latter-day Saint dating app Mutual. After hearing testimony and arguments from attorneys, 3rd District Judge Vernice Trease determined Friday that there was enough evidence for the case to move forward to trial.
Ajayi pleaded not guilty Friday to aggravated kidnapping and three charges of forcible sexual abuse. A trial has been set for February.
In that case, prosecutors allege that Ajayi invited a woman to his home to cook her dinner on March 10, 2018, and that while they watched TV on his couch, he started “intensely” kissing her and trying to touch her inappropriately and forcefully.
When the woman attempted to get away, Ajayi allegedly pinned her down and bit her at least three times, “causing her significant pain, and left bruising and bite marks,” the charges said.
The woman came forward to police after Ajayi was arrested for allegedly killing Lueck in June.
He faces charges of aggravated murder, aggravated kidnapping, obstruction of justice and abuse or desecration of a human body in connection with Lueck’s slaying. . . .
Investigators have searched Lueck and Ajayi’s social media profiles and online activity, and have said evidence showed the two were texting the night Lueck disappeared. But police have not disclosed how they first met.

We may never learn the details in the Lueck case. Ask yourself why prosecutors are bringing Ajayi to trial first on this earlier sexual assault case, and the obvious answer is that they want to convict him of this felony before they move forward with the murder case. Once he is convicted in the sexual assault case, Ajayi will be a prison inmate and there will be no chance of him making bail. Then the prosecution will have more leverage to get Ajayi to accept a plea bargain. They want him to plead guilty, I suspect, because they want to spare Mackenzie’s family the ordeal of learning exactly why it was their daughter agreed to meet a complete stranger at 3 a.m. She was reportedly meeting men through “sugar baby” sites, which isn’t exactly prostitution, but close enough.



 

Rule 5 Sunday: Christmas With Attila The Santa & The Queen Of The Underworld

Posted on | December 22, 2019 | 3 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Every year, the mobile game Fate/Grand Order has a Christmas event, each more bizarre than the last, usually featuring Evil Jeanne d’Arc cosplaying as Santa by way of repenting for her evil deeds. This year, though, all the Santa!AlterJeannes – and all the other servants in Chaldea – are stricken with Sumerian Summer Fever, and it’s up to Attila the Santa and her magic sheep Doomzy (pictured below) to accompany you to the underworld and find out why the queen of the underworld, Ereshkigal (also pictured below), has turned on her former allies before Christmas is ruined for everyone. Oh, and everyone dies of the fever. It’s a goofy, madcap sort of Christmas tale, with Attila handing out all manner of semi-appropriate presents to friends and enemies alike. Except for Nergal, who is definitely getting some hot tongue and cold shoulder from his wife the Queen…

Santa Attila and her magical sheep Doomzy.

Ereshkigal, not to be confused with her sister Ishtar.

Ninety Miles From Tyranny starts the preparations with Hot Pick Of The Late Night, The 90 Miles Mystery Box Episode #839, Morning Mistress, and Girls With Guns. At Animal Magnetism, it’s Rule Five UFO Kookery, Friday Evening Culture, and the Saturday Gingermageddon.

EBL brings us Joan Blondell, Zooey Deschanel, Alyssa Milano, Not Peaches & Cream, Eartha Kitt, Vintage Christmas, and Hollywood for the Holidays.

A View From The Beach offers The Hunted Melissa GeorgeFish Pic FridayEmergency Morning PostGreat Moments in Climate HypocrisyAtlantic States Governors Ask Feds to Shut Down Menhaden Fishery in BayTattoos for TuesdayMounds of Monday and Great Moments In Climate Hypocrisy – Flying Nun Uses Jet Fuel to Cross Continent for Warming Protest.

Proof Positive’s Vintage Babe of the week is Ann Sothern, and at Bacon Time, there’s a nip in the air.

Thanks to everyone for all the luscious linkagery!

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A Fitting Memorial to Lonell Irvin

Posted on | December 22, 2019 | 2 Comments

 

Saturday would have been Lonell Irvin’s 23rd birthday. Unfortunately, Lonell wasn’t there to celebrate the occasion, because he was stupid.

In April, Lonell tried to carjack a guy’s BMW at gunpoint, but the driver had a concealed carry license, and that was the end for Lonell.

Despite his fatal stupidity, Lonell was beloved by his family in Chicago, so they had a memorial for him on Saturday, and it seems to have been attended by many similarly stupid people:

Chicago police are questioning a person of interest after 13 people were wounded, four of them critically, during a shooting inside a memorial gathering early Sunday in the Englewood neighborhood on the South Side, authorities said. . . .
The violence began at about 12:40 a.m. at a house party in the 5700 block of South May Street commemorating the birthday of a man who died in a previous shooting. Someone at the party opened fire, sending 13 people to area hospitals, according to Chicago police.
The injured ranged in age from 16 to 48, and a 16-year-old boy was one of those in critical condition though it was later improved to “serious,” said Fred Waller, who heads the patrol division for Chicago police.
Two people remained in critical condition as of Sunday afternoon, according to Officer Michelle Tannehill, a police spokeswoman: a 40-year-old man who’d been shot in the chest and was being treated at the University of Chicago Hospital, and a 21-year old man suffering from a gunshot wound to the back, who was at St. Bernard Hospital.
Two people initially were detained and questioned after the shooting, though only one of the two is thought to have fired shots, according to a law enforcement source familiar with the investigation. No charges have been announced.
The party was in honor of Lonell Irvin, a 22-year-old man fatally shot near the intersection of State Street and Ida B. Wells Drive during an attempted carjacking April 26 in the Loop, according to multiple people at the scene. . . .
Waller said there was a dispute during the party and someone started shooting. Once people started running outside, video surveillance from a city police camera captured images of someone firing more shots outside the home.
A different person also was caught on surveillance video shooting at a vehicle, Waller said.
“From outside, definitely there was two different shooters,” Waller said. “It looked like they were just shooting randomly at people as they exited the party.”

Question for the reader: Has anyone ever started “shooting randomly” on your street after midnight? If you throw a party at your house and someone has a “dispute,” does this lead to gunfire? If you answered “no,” then you probably don’t live in Chicago, where such activity is routine.

So far this year, 449 people have been shot to death in Chicago, and more than 2,000 others were wounded by gunfire. So the good news is, more than 80% of Chicago shooting victims survive. About 45 people get shot in an average week in Chicago, but the murder rate is actually down significantly from 2016, when more than 700 people were killed.

A 29-year-old woman near the scene of this latest shooting told a reporter for the Chicago Tribune: “Your kids can’t grow up, you can’t do nothing. This is what our life is going to be about. . . . Y’all can try your best to stay out here and watch these streets all night, but no matter how they do it, it’s going to be multiple deaths, multiple shootings, innocent people getting shot. I cannot wait to leave Chicago.”

Hey, good luck with that. Hope you make it out alive.



 

Who the F*** Is @EmmaVigeland?

Posted on | December 22, 2019 | Comments Off on Who the F*** Is @EmmaVigeland?

 

“I’ll take ‘Stupid Progressive Twitter Hot Takes’ for $400, Alex.”

We were at dinner last night following the conclusion of The Other Podcast when I saw Emma Vigeland’s bizarre tweet about Tulsi Gabbard on my phone and said, “Who the f**k is this Emma Vigeland?” To which my buddy John Hoge calmly replied, “Oh, you’re just now seeing her?”

Evidently, many people on Twitter consider Ms. Vigeland an obnoxious idiot but declaring “white male bitter incels” the chief supporters of Democratic Rep. Tulsi Gabbard’s presidential campaign was unusually offensive even to those long familiar with Ms. Vigeland’s oeuvre.

Who is this person? The first rule of warfare is, “Know your enemy,” and whenever I encounter someone like this for the first time, I immediately start researching their background. The first thing you have to know about Emma Vigeland is that, in 2016, she was all-in for Bernie Sanders, and was at that time a huge fan of Tulsi Gabbard, who was also a Sanders supporter. In 2016, Ms. Vigeland praised Gabbard for calling out the “corporate Democrats” who had rigged the 2016 primaries on behalf of an “unbelievably corrupt candidate” (i.e., Hillary Clinton). In fact, Ms. Vigeland at that time said of Gabbard: “God, I hope she runs for president in 2020 and just rubs it in your face.”

Well, what changed in the past three years? In 2016, Ms. Vigeland had just graduated from LaFayette College, a private liberal arts school where the cost of attendance is more than $70,000 (including room and board). That summer, she worked as an intern for The Young Turks, Cenk Uygur’s progressive YouTube channel, which then hired her as a political correspondent. Of course, supporting Bernie was more or less mandatory for anyone involved in The Young Turks. Cenk was like the original “Bernie Bro,” and Ms. Vigeland . . . well, she’s very close to Cenk.

 

Look, I never even heard of Emma Vigeland until Saturday night, and I don’t even know if she is heterosexual or not, so I certainly would not suggest that she has anything other than a professional relationship with Cenk Uygur. Readers are free to draw their own conclusions, of course, but don’t blame me, you dirty-minded right-wingers.

In early 2018, Ms. Vigeland interviewed a certain Democratic congressional candidate in a certain New York congressional district:

“Within minutes of meeting her, it was undoubtedly clear: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was a progressive star.”

 

You have to be a progressive star to recognize who the progressive stars are, I guess, and who can deny that Emma Vigeland has enjoyed a meteoric rise to stardom? Just a working-class girl from a gritty blue-collar neighborhood in New Jersey who got lucky. Oh, wait a minute, let me check my notes . . . No, it seems that Emma grew up two blocks from the Glen Ridge Country Club, in a five-bedroom home valued at $1 million. Her father is a big-shot lawyer who got his undergraduate degree at Dartmouth and his law degree from Columbia — “double Ivy,” as they say. Her father spent $35,000 a year to send Emma to the prestigious private Kent Place School before sending her to LaFayette College, because only the best will do for Daddy’s Little Princess.

Why is socialism so appealing to rich girls like Emma Vigeland? And what explains Ms. Vigeland’s seething hatred of all white males, with the notable exception of the elderly socialist Bernie Sanders?

Well, I’m a blogger, not a psychiatrist, so I’ll leave it professionals to explain Emma’s deep-rooted neurotic tendencies. But now you know the answer to the question, who the f*** is Emma Vigeland?

 



 

FMJRA 2.0: Dance To The Plastic Beat

Posted on | December 21, 2019 | 2 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho

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

University of Tennessee Football Program Has Finally Reached Rock Bottom
Dark Brightness
EBL

She Paid the Toll, So to Speak
Pushing Rubber Downhill
EBL

FMJRA 2.0: [This Space Intentionally Left Blank]
The Pirate’s Cove
A View From The Beach
EBL

NFL Star Makes New Year’s Resolution
EBL

‘We Should Have Just Let Him Die’
EBL

Impeachment Circus Update
EBL

Crazy People Are Dangerous
EBL

In The Mailbox: 12.17.19
357 Magnum
A View From The Beach
Proof Positive
EBL

Impeachment Day Arrives
EBL

A Christian ‘Cult’ Sex Scandal
EBL

In The Mailbox: 12.18.19
Proof Positive
A View From The Beach
EBL

Trump Unites Republicans
357 Magnum
A View From The Beach
EBL

The Return of the Big Yellow Button
EBL

In The Mailbox: 12.19.19
A View From The Beach
Proof Positive
EBL

Democrats Aren’t Hitler, But…
EBL

The Cargo Cult Mentality
EBL

In The Mailbox: 12.20.19 (Afternoon Edition)
A View From The Beach
Proof Positive
EBL

In The Mailbox: 12.20.19 (Evening Edition)
A View From The Beach
Proof Positive
EBL

Top linkers for the week ending December 20:

  1.  EBL (19)
  2.  A View From The Beach (8)
  3.  Proof Positive (6)

Thanks to everyone for all the linkagery!

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Chicago: Violence Against Women

Posted on | December 21, 2019 | 2 Comments

 

A young woman of color raped and murdered on her university campus:

Donald Thurman is a 26-year-old Chicago man who has been charged in the murder and sexual assault of University of Illinois at Chicago student Ruth George. The 19-year-old UIC student was raped and strangled in her own car in a university parking garage, police said.
Thurman followed George into the garage and then sexually assaulted and killed George because he was angry that she ignored his catcalls, prosecutors said in court, according to The Associated Press.
Thurman was taken into custody not long after George was found dead on Saturday, November 23. UIC Police identified Thurman as the suspect in a press release on November 25 after charges were filed.
Thurman was charged with first-degree murder and criminal sexual assault, police said. “His most recent address was near the UIC campus. He has no affiliation with the University or the victim,” police said.
George was reported missing by her family [Nov. 23]. She was found by police after they tracked her location using her cell phone. George was a sophomore from Naperville, Illinois, who had been studying kinesiology at UIC, the university said. . . .
Police Chief Kevin Booker said, “The offender has a criminal record and was released from prison in December 2018 for armed robbery. He was sentenced to 6 years, but only served two and is currently on parole.”
According to the Chicago Tribune, Thurman was accused of snatching an iPhone from a woman’s hands and then fleeing in a stolen car. The incident occurred in 2016. Thurman was scheduled to remain on parole until 2021, according to state records.

Given how often feminists have expressed concern about “violence against women,” and considering how loudly feminists insist that sexual assault on university campuses is a problem deserving national attention, you might suppose that feminists would have mentioned this crime. And yet they remain strangely silent about it, for some reason.



 

Deranged Cyberstalker Deb Frisch Ph.D. Wins Colorado Holiday Vacation

Posted on | December 21, 2019 | Comments Off on Deranged Cyberstalker Deb Frisch Ph.D. Wins Colorado Holiday Vacation

 

 

Jeff Goldstein shared the happy news Thursday that former psychology professor Deborah Frisch had been arrested in California for violating terms of her release from the Colorado prison system. If you don’t know who Dr. Frisch is, my post from October 2018 (“Deranged Ex-Professor Deborah Frisch Sentenced to Four Years in Prison”) has the basics. You can also check the compilation of online resources here.

Her persistent pattern of criminal behavior seems to suggest that Dr. Frisch’s years of alcohol abuse have inflicted organic brain damage. Of course, I’m not a trained professional with a Ph.D., so my diagnosis of her problems is just a personal opinion. However, I do know for a fact that Crazy People Are Dangerous. Enjoy your trip to Colorado, Dr. Frisch.



 

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