The Other McCain

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

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: Wombat Hospitalized, Could Use Your Help

Posted on | October 29, 2018 | 2 Comments

 

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The first time I met Wombat — in 2010, as I recall — I was struck by the enormous size of the man. It’s like meeting an NFL lineman in real life. You see them on TV and know they are unusually large human beings, but actually being in their physical presence is startling. How tall is Wombat? I dunno. Maybe six-foot-four, and not skinny, either.

So we met up in D.C., and went to dinner with some of my GOP operative buddies, and not long thereafter, Wombat became a co-blogger. One day in September 2010, we sat down and came up with the plan for the “Live at Five” daily updates, subsequently segued into the “In the Mailbox” feature and, when Smitty was deployed to Afghanistan, Wombat also took over duty on the weekly FMJRA post and Rule 5 Sunday. Furthermore, Wombat was tasked with wielding the Mighty Troll Hammer, preventing moonbats from disruptive behavior in the comments.

As a valuable member of the blog team, Wombat has been so effective that I tend to take his work for granted — it just predictably happens, day after day, like the sun rising in the East. So when there was no “In the Mailbox” feature on Friday, I didn’t panic, but I did notice. Then when there was no FMJRA or Rule 5 Sunday post, I was like, “What happened to Wombat? Did he get kidnapped by a gang of Thai hookers?” The man lives in Las Vegas, a place notorious for weirdness, and who knows?

After going out to eat at Taco Bell with my two youngest kids Sunday afternoon, I lay down for what I expected to be a short nap and woke up at midnight and noticed there was still no Wombat on the blog. That’s when I checked Facebook and discovered that he’d been hospitalized Friday with an infection and other health problems. He’s still got Internet access via his phone — you can wish him well on Twitter — but evidently the doctors won’t allow him to actually blog from his hospital room.

Readers must help restore Wombat’s health before the moonbats discover he’s been sidelined and trolls run amok in the comments.

The man is a military hero, you know — author of What Did You Do in the Cold War, Dad? If it hadn’t been for the service of troops like Wombat (a Russian-language specialist in the Army Security Agency) the Red Army would have rampaged through the Fulda Gap or the Commies could have subverted our government and then who knows? We might be living under a totalitarian regime nearly as frightening as North Korea.

Or maybe even California.

Wombat helped win the Cold War, and kept the Bolshevik menace from conquering the world (except California, and they did that to themselves.)

In September, Wombat started a GoFundMe page to help with his moving expenses, and I urge readers to go contribute there.

UPDATE: Welcome, Instapundit readers!

 

 

Category: Fear. Loathing.

Crazy People Are Dangerous: Cornell Student Takes LSD, Does Bad Things

Posted on | October 29, 2018 | Comments Off on Crazy People Are Dangerous: Cornell Student Takes LSD, Does Bad Things

 

Saano Murembya of Okemos, Michigan, was a freshman at elite Cornell University (annual cost of attendance, $70,004 including room and board) when he reportedly took a dose of LSD last Sunday, Oct. 21. The effects of LSD are unpredictable, particularly when you’re talking about street drugs, where the contents and dosage levels are uncertain:

A cross country athlete from Okemos has been charged with attempted sexual abuse and unlawful imprisonment in New York state.
Cornell University police said Saano E. Murembya, 18, was arrested after police were called at about 4:40 p.m. Sunday for a disturbance on campus.
Witnesses told police Murembya was seen naked from the waist down near an on-campus community center and appeared to be “under the influence of some type of drug,” according to a news release posted on the police department’s Facebook page.
Witnesses also told police Murembya accosted at least two women on campus, according to the news release, threw them to the ground and pinned them so they couldn’t escape.

The Cornell Sun adds further details:

A Cornell custodian finishing up his shift and a freshman printing out a computer science worksheet both sprang into action when they saw a half-naked man attacking two women this weekend on North Campus, helping to end a terrifying episode that resulted in criminal charges.
Rogelio Gordon, a 35-year-old custodian in the Robert Purcell Community Center, pulled the man off one woman twice and brought the woman to safety. And when the suspect ran outside and attacked a different freshman woman, witnesses said, Gordon dashed toward the man and knocked him off her, too. That woman later told police she wasn’t able to escape until Gordon intervened. . . .
When the man ran away from Gordon after attacking the second woman, a student stepped in. A freshman who wrestled in high school grabbed the man, put him in a headlock and tried to calm him down until police arrived.
“Obviously he was a threat,” Ian Moritz ’22 said in an interview. “Once I recognized and understood that, I just went for it. He’s clearly a danger to himself and others like that.”
Cornell police on Sunday arrested Saano E. Murembya ’22, of Okemos, Michigan, and charged him with unlawfully imprisoning and attempting to sexually abuse two women. The 18-year-old runner on the cross country and track and field teams has pleaded not guilty to the charges and was released from jail after posting bail. His lawyer has not responded to multiple requests for comment.
Murembya’s girlfriend told police that she saw him take “a tab of what he called acid” — referring to the hallucinogen LSD — hours before the Sunday afternoon incident.
Murembya fled his girlfriend’s dorm around 4 p.m. and entered RPCC, where he grabbed a woman and tried to take off her clothes while yelling that he was going to rape her, police and witnesses said. They said he pinned another woman down outside minutes later, also threatening to rape her — until Gordon stepped in.

Feminists have ignored this “rape culture” story, for some reason.

(Hat-tip: Kirby McCain on Twitter.)

 

 

Category: Crime, Education, Sex Trouble

Pittsburgh Gunman: ‘All Jews Must Die!’

Posted on | October 27, 2018 | Comments Off on Pittsburgh Gunman: ‘All Jews Must Die!’

PITTSBURGH (KDKA) — Police say a gunman opened fire at a Pittsburgh Synagogue yelling “All Jews must die.”
KDKA-TV sources say the shooting suspect is Robert Bowers.
Eight people have been killed and a number of others injured after the shooting at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Squirrel Hill on Saturday.
Bowers is described as a white male, heavy set, with a beard. He surrendered to police after opening fire on police officers. Police say he was injured and crawling when he was taken into custody.
Three police officers were also shot, their conditions are not currently known.
When officers arrived, the gunman reportedly shot at them, forcing officers to use their vehicles as a shield.

Crazy people are dangerous. But you knew that, right?

UPDATE: Evidently, the gunman not only hates Jews, he also hates President Trump, claiming the administration has a “kike infestation.”

So, to all you liberals who think Trump is Hitler — no, according to the crazy Jew-hating gunman, Trump isn’t Hitler enough for him.

 

Category: Crime, Pennsylvania

Deranged Ex-Professor Deborah Frisch Sentenced to Four Years in Prison

Posted on | October 27, 2018 | Comments Off on Deranged Ex-Professor Deborah Frisch Sentenced to Four Years in Prison

 

Twelve years after she made national headlines by threatening conservative blogger Jeff Goldstein’s family, former psychology professor Deborah Frisch — who once called herself “a left-wing Rush Limbaugh” — was sentenced to four years in state prison Friday in Colorado.

Frisch, 56, has a Ph.D. in psychology and was once a tenure-track professor at the University of Oregon. She lost that job, however, and in 2006 was working as a part-time adjunct instructor at the University of Arizona when she began posting hateful comments at Goldstein’s “Protein Wisdom” blog. That escalated into threats against Goldstein’s young son, and when it was discovered that she was using a university computer to post her obscene comments, Frisch was forced to resign. She moved back to Oregon where, according to the Eugene Register-Guard, she continued her anti-social behavior:

Frisch frequently sends group emails to a large number of officials and media representatives in the Eugene area and elsewhere. Recipients typically include university officials, city and county government employees and elected officials, and others. Her emails often include lewd and obscene messages. . . .
A number of anti-stalking orders have been filed against Frisch since 2008, according to the Oregon Judicial Department, where records show Frisch has been arrested and convicted of harassment, criminal impersonation, and unlawful use of mace in three separate cases since 2008.

In 2015, Frisch was convicted of falsely accusing a Eugene police officer of sexually assaulting her. She was sentenced to two years probation and ordered to undergo a mental health evaluation. Frisch then moved to California, where her parents live and, in 2016, sent harassing emails to various “enemies.” When she CC’d me on one of these emails, I replied:

Were you to solicit my advice, I would tell you to stop hunting around for “enemies” to blame for your problems, which are entirely of your own making. . . . You will bring only further humiliation upon yourself, and quite possibly be subject to criminal prosecution, if you continue doing the kind of things that have caused you problems in the past.

Frisch’s harassing behaviors escalated and she again targeted Goldstein, who pressed charges. Felony warrants were issued and, after she was arrested Nov. 11, 2016, in Yreka, California, on a drunk and disorderly behavior charge, she was extradited to Colorado to face those charges. In April 2017, Frisch pleaded guilty to felony stalking and harassment in Colorado and was sentenced to 10 years probation.

However, she soon violated the conditions of her probation, resulting in new warrants being issued for her arrest. Frisch became a fugitive and fled to Oregon, where she was captured in January 2018. The arresting officer reported that Frisch was “extremely hostile and belligerent” and used anti-Asian insults. Frisch “referred to me as ‘Kung Pao Cunt’ and kept saying that she was going to resist and that we were going to have to use force on her,” Officer Cynthia Ksenzulak wrote. Frisch was extradited again to Colorado and in May 2018 pleaded guilty, but a judge released her pending an October sentencing date and by July — after spending time in a psychiatric facility — Frisch was back in California, where she resumed her habit of online harassment. Last month, she was arrested again in San Diego County, California, and on Monday was extradited once more to Weld County, Colorado. After her court hearing Friday, Jeff Goldstein reported on Twitter that Frisch had been sentenced to four years imprisonment in the Colorado Department of Corrections, to be followed by three years of probation. Let’s all pray we’ve heard the last of this lunatic with a Ph.D. Remember: Crazy People Are Dangerous.



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Category: Crime

Crazy People Are Dangerous: The Fake Seminole Steroid-Using Stripper Bomber

Posted on | October 26, 2018 | 2 Comments

Cesar Sayoc as a North Miami High School senior, 1980.

The arrest today of a 56-year-old Florida man as the suspect in the mail-bomb case was, on the one hand, profoundly disappointing to me, in that I couldn’t believe any Trump supporter would do such a thing. On the other hand, the suspect wasn’t exactly your typical Republican voter:

Although a sticker on Sayoc’s van reads “Native Americans For Trump” and his Twitter feed includes several references to the Seminole Tribe, Seminole spokesman Gary Bitner said there are no records of Sayoc having ever been a member of the tribe.
According to Ancestry.com, Sayoc’s father immigrated to the U.S. from the Philippines and was naturalized in 1970 in North Miami Beach.
Public records show that Sayoc had been arrested numerous times in South Florida.
He was arrested in Miami-Dade in 2002 for making a bomb threat against Florida Power and Light, court records show. Sayoc called FPL because he was upset about the amount of his bill. “The defendant then stated that he didn’t deserve it and that he was going to blow up FPL,” according to files released by the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office.
“FPL will get what they deserve and will be worse than 9/11,” Sayoc said, according to the case notes.
Sayoc also told an FPL employee he “was going to blow her head off,” according to the case file. . . .
Sayoc was also arrested on petty theft charges in Miami-Dade in 1992 and 2014 and sentenced to probation.
Sayoc also had multiple run-ins with the law in Broward County, including for grand theft and battery. Sayoc pleaded no contest to charges of third-degree grand theft and battery on a merchant in 2014, and was arrested in 2004 for possession of a controlled substance without a prescription and with intent to sell. . . .
He was also involved in a domestic violence dispute with a woman named Viola Altieri, who appears to be his grandmother. Altieri filed a civil complaint against Sayoc for domestic violence in 1994. She later filed a request to dismiss the complaint. . . .
While on probation for a felony theft charge in 2014, Sayoc asked the court to let him travel for his job a road manager for “a variety of traveling male revue shows, Chippendales, International Gold Productions, Cesar Palace Royale Burlesque Show, etc.,” according to Broward County court records. A judge granted his request.

Yes, you read that correctly — “traveling male revue shows”:

 

The man suspected of sending mail bombs to prominent Donald Trump critics across the country previously worked as a male stripper. Cesar Sayoc said on his now-deleted LinkedIn page that he worked as a promoter for the Chippendale male stripper organization as a promoter, as well as being a promoter for a burlesque show in the Miami-area. While on his Facebook page, Sayoc said that he was employed by the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Florida. . . .
Speaking to the Washington Examiner, Ohio event promoter Tony Valentine said that Sayoc had previously worked for him. Valentine described Sayoc as a “big muscle head” who “wanted to be a professional wrestler.” Valentine added, “He really couldn’t find his niche in life, and I guess he found it now. Back in the nineties, he was running around from Minnesota to the Carolinas to Florida. He was like a gypsy. He would show up and do an individual act and leave. He was dancing for a guy out in Oklahoma, too.” Valentine said that Sayoc’s career as a stripper was over saying, “He’s like 900 years old now. I wouldn’t hire a 50- or 60-year-old stripper.”
The Chippendales put out a statement denying that Sayoc ever worked for them. TMZ reports that Sayoc actually worked for Gold Productions, a company that has been sued multiple times by the Chippendales for infringement. 

He’s crazy and his mother is a Democrat:

He was mentally disturbed, told his Democrat mom he hated her and likely aggravated his anger with steroid use.
That’s the portrait of Florida bombing suspect Cesar Sayoc painted by lawyer Ronald Lowy, a family friend who represented Sayoc in multiple criminal cases over the years. . . .
“I met with his mother. It’s a very sad situation. She’s obviously very distressed. Her son has been mentally disturbed for a very long time. They’ve encouraged him to get assistance, therapy and treatment, but he’s always refused,” Lowy told the Daily News.
“She’s a Democrat. She finds all of this so shocking and painful. She’s asked me to express her empathy for the victims who had to receive these packages and be in fear. She’s in shock it could have been her son, and if so, she’s deeply regretful,” he said. . . .
Sayoc was also charged in 2004 with felony possession of testosterone-based steroids. Online court records show the case was ultimately dismissed.
“We convinced the state attorney to treat it as they would narcotic. He got in a diversion program to hopefully try to get him off steroids. Sadly, it’s our understanding he went back and continued using them. We think that is probably part of problem. Steroids can create heightened emotions and anger. It’s a very dangerous drug,” Lowy said. . . .
“He’s someone who doesn’t exhibit the sophistication to commit such a sophisticated crime. He’s always shown a diminished capacity in dealing with society, a difficulty conforming or carrying on substantial tasks without supervision,” Lowy said.

The ultimate “Florida Man” — a Filipino-American who pretended to be a Seminole, worked as a male stripper for a fake Chippendales company, used steroids, suffered from mental illness, hated his mother and terrorized the country by sending fake bombs through the mail.

We’re living in Heinlein’s “Crazy Years” . . .

UPDATE: Welcome, Instapundit readers!



 

 

Category: Crime, Florida, Terrorism

Halloween Edition: Friday Fiction, 100 Word Challenge

Posted on | October 26, 2018 | Comments Off on Halloween Edition: Friday Fiction, 100 Word Challenge

by Smitty

On that fateful Autumn eve
‘Neath a moon so full and bright
Moon maidens would dance and weave
Offering an eldritch sight

That was until Saint Thorgun came
Caught them at their pagan toil
Dared their awful prance to tame
And their magic cloth to coil

For though their wanton wiles were strong
They could not tempt a heart so pure
That was too young to know their wrong
And could long their sorceries endure

But even though his soul was smooth
And walk away in triumph true
Their cloth would his undoing prove
As material things so often do

—
via Darleen

Category: Friday Fiction

BREAKING: Suspect in Mail-Bomb Hoax Scare Reportedly Arrested in Florida; UPDATE: Identified as Cesar Sayoc, 56

Posted on | October 26, 2018 | Comments Off on BREAKING: Suspect in Mail-Bomb Hoax Scare Reportedly Arrested in Florida; UPDATE: Identified as Cesar Sayoc, 56

Fox News reports:

A suspect was arrested in Florida on Friday morning in connection with the rash of suspicious packages sent to prominent Democrats nationwide, a law enforcement source confirmed to Fox News.
Federal authorities had been focusing on Florida as the location where the majority of packages originated.
“Some of the packages went through the mail,” Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen told Fox News. “They originated, some of them, from Florida. I am confident that this person or people will be brought to justice.”
Several of the packages went through a U.S. postal facility in Opa-locka, Florida. The Miami-Dade County Police Department confirmed Thursday it was helping federal agents who were at the facility as part of the ongoing investigation. . . .

UPDATE: Rick Leventhal just reported on Fox News that his sources tell him the suspect is a white male in his 50s, a native of New York with a prior history of being arrested for making terroristic threats. The suspect was reportedly arrested in the north Miami suburb of Aventura.

UPDATE II: More from the Miami Herald:

The Miami Herald has learned that the suspect who has been arrested is a man in his 50s from Aventura. He is being questioned by FBI agents with the joint terrorism task force since his arrest this morning at about 10 a.m.
Live shots from a Local 10 news helicopter show federal agents examining a white van covered in a blue tarp.
A law enforcement source tells the Miami Herald the arrest was made at an auto parts store in Plantation. Miami Herald news partner CBS4 reports a “loud explosion” was heard at the time of the arrest, possibly from an FBI flash bomb device.
A spokesperson for the Department of Justice confirmed on Twitter one person is in custody and the department plans to hold a press conference at 2:30 p.m.

UPDATE III: TV news showed a white van being towed from the parking lot of the auto parts store in Plantation, Florida, where the suspect was reportedly arrested. Observers say windows of the van were covered in stickers with pro-Trump and other “right-wing” slogans.

UPDATE IV: Multiple sources are now identifying the suspect as Cesar Sayoc Jr., 56, of Aventura, Florida, who is a registered Republican voter.

UPDATE V: A close-up of the suspect’s van (click to enlarge):

 

This photo was taken by a Miami-area resident who says he “saw him at a stoplight one day and thought [it] was very strange.”

UPDATE VI: The British Sun tabloid reports:

Online records show Sayoc has owned companies called Native American Catering & Vending, as well as Proud Native America One Low Price Drycleaning.

Sayoc was also apparently a bodybuilder.

UPDATE VII: From the London Daily Mail:

Cesar Altier Sayoc was taken into custody on Friday morning in Plantation, Florida in connection with the 12 suspicious packages that have been discovered this week.
According to Sayoc’s Facebook page, he is a Trump fan who posted pictures and videos of himself at one of the President’s rallies in October 2016.
He posted a photograph of himself wearing a MAGA hat in front of the US Capitol in 2017.
He is Native American, and according to a picture posted on his social media page, he is a member of the Seminole Tribe of Florida.
In a post a year ago, Sayoc shared a photograph of Governor Rick Scott and Donald Trump, writing: ‘The greatest Governor in Country Fla Rick Scott and great friend of We Unconquered Seminole Tribe . Trump Trump Trump’
He shared bodybuilding pictures and appears to have worked in a strip club.

Fox News reported that federal authorities got a warrant Wednesday to obtain Sayoc’s phone records. So he came under suspicion almost immediately after the first suspicious packages were found.

 

 

Category: Crime, Florida

#FakeNews: NBC Withheld Evidence of Avenatti’s Kavanaugh Deception

Posted on | October 26, 2018 | Comments Off on #FakeNews: NBC Withheld Evidence of Avenatti’s Kavanaugh Deception

 

Thursday, we reported (“Grassley Refers Creepy Porn Lawyer and His Lying Client for FBI Investigation”) that Julie Swetnick and her lawyer, Michael Avenatti, are suspected of giving false statements to the Senate Judiciary Committee during the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation process.

Now, NBC News is admitting that another one of Avenatti’s clients, whose affidavit he provided as corroborating Swetnick’s tales of attending gang-rape parties with Kavanaugh, contradicted those claims:

When Sen. Chuck Grassley referred attorney Michael Avenatti and his client Julie Swetnick to the Justice Department for criminal investigation Thursday, he cited Swetnick’s interview with NBC News as evidence the two were trying to mislead the Senate Judiciary Committee.
In the NBC News interview that aired on Oct. 1, Swetnick back-tracked on or contradicted parts of her sworn statement where she alleged she witnessed then-Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh “cause girls to become inebriated and disoriented so they could then be ‘gang raped’ in a side room or bedroom by a ‘train’ of boys.”
NBC News also found other apparent inconsistencies in a second sworn statement from another woman whose statement Avenatti provided to the Senate Judiciary Committee in a bid to bolster Swetnick’s claims.
In the second statement, the unidentified woman said she witnessed Kavanaugh “spike” the punch at high school parties in order to sexually take advantage of girls. But less than 48 hours before Avenatti released her sworn statement on Twitter, the same woman told NBC News a different story. . . .
The statement also said that Kavanaugh was “overly aggressive and verbally abusive to girls. This conduct included inappropriate physical contact with girls of a sexual nature.”
But reached by phone independently from Avenatti on Oct. 3, the woman said she only “skimmed” the declaration. After reviewing the statement, she wrote in a text on Oct. 4 to NBC News: “It is incorrect that I saw Brett spike the punch. I didn’t see anyone spike the punch…I was very clear with Michael Avenatti from day one.” . . .
In a subsequent text on Oct. 5, she wrote, “I will definitely talk to you again and no longer Avenatti. I do not like that he twisted my words.”

This is enormously significant, as Ashe Schow of the Daily Wire points out: “NBC had all this but didn’t report it at the time, before Kavanaugh’s was confirmed. I wonder why.”

Kavanaugh was confirmed Oct. 6, and NBC News had known since Oct. 4 that the corroborating affidavit supplied by Avenatti was contradicted by the woman who signed it, yet they sat on this evidence — clearly indicating that Avenatti was engaged in deception — for three weeks. NBC thereby became complicit in this deception.

Claiming that a man nominated for the Supreme Court had once engaged in a criminal conspiracy to gang-rape teenage girls is not trivial and if, as now seems probable, Michael Avenatti deliberately created this false narrative, Avenatti has committed a very serious crime. Didn’t NBC News have an obligation to report the evidence it had obtained that indicated Avenatti was engaged in a criminal effort to deceive the Senate?

NBC News promoted Julie Swetnick’s claims against Kavanaugh in an “exclusive” interview five days before the Senate voted. How can they excuse the irresponsibility of giving credibility to Avenatti’s client in this way, and then not following up when they learned that Avenatti’s other client was unwilling to stand by her affidavit? If you want to know why Americans don’t trust the news media, this is it.



 

 

Category: MSNBC, NBC, Senate, Supreme Court
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