The Other McCain

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

In the Mailbox: 11.29.23

Posted on | November 29, 2023 | 1 Comment

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Sick as hell with some kind of cold, but otherwise okay…as opposed to our man Doug Hagin at the Daley Gator, who could use your help.
Silicon Valley et Hamas delenda sunt.
OVER THE TRANSOM
Average Bubba: Welcome To Biden’s Amerika
EBL: Did Netanyahu Promise Not To Go After Hamas in Qatar?
Twitchy: Mika Brzezinski Claims Everyone Knows Somebody Who’s Suffered Like Hunter Biden, SecEd Miguel Cardona Butchers Ronald Reagan Quote, and BBC Promotes New Julius Caesar Documentary, And Boy, Does It Look Terrible
Louder With Crowder: Education Secretary Lacks Education, Mangles Famous Ronald Reagan Quote Used AGAINST People Like Joe Biden, UFC’s Sean Strickland (and his gun) shows his is the WRONG house to trespass on: “I thought he was stealing my car”, and Woman Refuses To Compete In Pool Championship Against Man, Her Teammates’ Supportive Response Drives Her To Tears
Vox Popoli: The Book Sale and the Bindery, 1.1 Million Dead, Literally Fake Media, and The Internet isn’t Dead
Flappr: Wes Reviews The Fall Of The House of Usher, Episodes 5-8

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
CDR Salamander: The Naval War College After October 7
Don Surber: Democrats are splitting up

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Category: Linkagery

MSNBC Guest Noura Erakat: ‘You Can Support Israel and Hate Jewish People’

Posted on | November 29, 2023 | Comments Off on MSNBC Guest Noura Erakat: ‘You Can Support Israel and Hate Jewish People’

Let’s start by agreeing that the ability to nod along with left-wing pretzel logic is pretty much Joy Reid’s only qualification to be on national TV, but then we have to proceed to asking the question, “Who is Rutgers University Professor Noura Erakat?” From her official profile:

Noura Erakat is a human rights attorney and an Associate Professor at Rutgers University, New Brunswick in the Department of Africana Studies and the Program in Criminal Justice. Her research interests include human rights law, humanitarian law, national security law, refugee law, social justice, and critical race theory. Noura is an editorial committee member of the Journal for Palestine Studies and a co-Founding Editor of Jadaliyya, an electronic magazine on the Middle East that combines scholarly expertise and local knowledge. She is the author of Justice for Some: Law and in the Question of Palestine (Stanford University Press, 2019). . . .
Noura served as Legal Counsel for the Domestic Policy Subcommittee of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee in the House of Representatives from 2007-2009. Prior to her time on Capitol Hill, Noura received a New Voices Fellowship to work as the national grassroots organizer and legal advocate at the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation.

So, she was a Democrat congressional aide, after having previously worked for something called the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, which has since changed its name to the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights, and I’ll bet most readers will have no problem guessing who one of their major donors is. Anyway, here’s some more interesting information about Professor Erakat:

In June 2020, Erakat’s cousin Ahmed’s car collided with a military checkpoint in the West Bank near Abu Dis, following which he was shot and killed by Israeli soldiers.

Yes, Professor Erakat’s cousin was a Palestinian terrorist who deliberately rammed into a border checkpoint, injuring one of the guards. Do a bit of research, and you’ll find that getting rammed by Palestinian terrorists is a fairly common risk for Israeli border guards. You will probably not be surprised to learn that, despite video clearly showing that the ramming attack by Professor Erakat’s cousin was deliberate, she claims he was an innocent victim. And so this is the person whose words Joy Reid was nodding along with, and I’ll quote the whole thing, just so it can’t be claimed I’ve taken her out of context:

JOY REID: Let me show you a picture. I want to show you a picture. I’m very curious to know what you think of it. This is the prime minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, giving a tour at one of the kibbutz that was attacked on October 7, to one Elon Musk. What is happening here? Why is Elon Musk, who has made some pretty heinous anti-Semitic statements on his version of Twitter, and has been accused of anti-Semitism, what is he doing in Israel? Why would he be received by the prime minister at this time?
NOURA ERAKAT, RUTGERS UNIVERSITY INTERNATIONAL STUDIES PROFESSOR: Well, I’m not really sure why Elon Musk is there. I will say that it points out to a phenomenon we have seen, which is the conflation of anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism, where we can have very explicit anti-Semites like former President Donald Trump who appointed to a room of Jewish Americans and referred to Israel as their country, highlighting this trope of dual loyalties and nationalities, who said that — refers to their wealth and their power in a way that hits on classic anti-Semitic tropes and yet is hailed as Israel’s, you know, number one ally. And this points to this phenomenon of the difference between support for Israel and support and protection for Jewish life. Those are not the same thing.
The opposition to Zionism and the idea that you oppose, you oppose an ethnonational state that is contingent on maintaining a Jewish demographic majority that requires the ongoing removal of Palestinians and the confiscation of their lands is not the same thing as bigotry towards Jewish people, and that’s precisely why you see a very robust, diverse coalition including Jewish voice for peace and other anti-Zionist Jews who are part of this movement.
When we see Elon Musk there and you’re scratching your head saying wait a minute, I thought he actually has said very anti-Semitic things, it’s precise because these are not the same thing. You can support Israel and hate Jewish people, and that’s the sad truth here, is that many of us who are fighting to free Palestine are fighting for all people’s freedom, including for Jewish liberation, which we see as part and parcel of our human emancipation, and we find our safety in solidarity.

Notice the unqualified assertion by Joy Reid that Elon Musk has made “heinous anti-Semitic statements” — heinous! — and the equally unqualified assertion that Trump is a “very explicit” anti-Semite, as if no one could argue with these crude slanders. But then consider that Professor Erakat defended her own cousin’s attempt to kill Israeli border guards, and weigh that in the balance against whatever you may think about Musk and Trump. Say what you will about Elon Musk, he never rammed into any border checkpoints, as far as I know.



 

Category: Israel, MSNBC

Suspect in Shooting of Palestinian Students ‘Struggled With Depression’

Posted on | November 28, 2023 | 2 Comments

In the immediate aftermath of the weekend shooting in Burlington, Vermont — wounding Hisham Awartani, Kinnan Abdalhamid, and Tahseen Aliahmad — I braced myself for an anticipated tsunami of reports about an “extremist” radicalized by Fox News and “far right” websites, because that’s obviously who must have done it, right?

Then the arrest of a suspect was announced Sunday, and I was still bracing myself for the expected media onslaught blaming a right-wing “climate of hate” for the Burlington gunman’s crime. But I waited, and waited, and waited some more, and even after the suspect was publicly identified as Jason Eaton, 48, the media horde failed to produce the “blame Republicans” headlines I had feared. This led me to wonder what the heck was going on, and then I found this story by the Daily Beast:

The suspect accused of shooting three Palestinian college students in Vermont on Saturday night has worked as a farm hand, a Harvard research assistant, and a former ski instructor, according to a resume reviewed by The Daily Beast.
Jason J. Eaton, 48, was arrested Sunday afternoon and charged with three counts of second-degree attempted murder in connection with the shooting. Police say the college students were walking along a Burlington street when the suspect opened fire with a handgun “without speaking.” Afterward, he fled. . . .
Eaton had previously struggled with depression and had Thanksgiving with his family just days earlier, his mother told The Daily Beast in an exclusive interview. “Jason has had a lot of struggles in his life but he is such a kind and loving person,” Mary Reed, his mother, said on Monday. “I am just shocked by the whole thing.” . . .

(This phrase — “struggled with depression” — could be used to describe tens of millions of Americans who never opened fire on three strangers for no discernible reason.)

Eaton’s resume states that he went to the University of Idaho for a bachelor’s in general studies in 2001, where he focused on natural resource ecology and conservation biology but was seven credits short of graduating. He also got a graduate certification at the University of Idaho in environmental education, which is pending his undergraduate completion, as well as a pro-professional forestry degree at Paul Smith’s College, according to the document. . . .

(“Environmental education”? Hmmm.)

According to NBC, Eaton appears to have a YouTube account that has playlists with videos that include “Expose Fauci,” long COVID, economics, and how to use brain crystals for “psychic powers.” An Instagram account that appears to belong to him also shows him on a farm and cooking.
In an X account that appeared to belong to Eaton, he describes himself as a “radical citizen…patrolling demockracy and crapitalism for oathcreepers.” A 2022 archived version of that same account, which contains the same photo, has a more subdued bio that describes him as a Vermont dad and part-time farmer. The archived X account also provides a link to a Substack, with the “wandering ramblings of a reformed broker on the ADHD/ASD spectrum.” . . .

(The hints of kookiness begin to proliferate.)

Reed said Eaton had previously suffered from depression and other mental health issues but had been “in such a good mood” when she saw him on Thanksgiving.
She said her son, who has bounced around different jobs and previously was an “assistant to a financial officer.” . . .
On Thanksgiving, Reed said, Eaton was “totally normal” and the family had a great holiday together. It was not immediately clear whether Eaton owned a gun. “It was the best Thanksgiving we had in years,” Eaton’s mother said. “We were all together.”
During the family dinner, Reed said that Eaton did not mention the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas. She added, however, that her son is a “very religious person” who connects with different religious figures and often reads the Bible.
“He, like all of us, thinks the world is a mess,” Reed said. “He is a spiritual person.”

Yeah, not much in the way of a specific motive there, but you get the idea that Eaton led a rather aimless and unsuccessful life — leaving college just seven credits shy of a diploma — and had some distinctly weird ideas bouncing around in his head (“other mental health issues”). As much as the media might want to depict Eaton as a “right-wing extremist,” his biography doesn’t lend itself to such a narrative. Unless and until further evidence sheds more light on Eaton’s motive, then, his crime doesn’t help the media’s pin-the-tail-on-the-Republicans game.

Have I mentioned lately that Crazy People Are Dangerous?



 

Category: Crime, Vermont

In The Mailbox: 11.27.23

Posted on | November 28, 2023 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 11.27.23

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Silicon Valley et Hamas delenda sunt.

One of the many reasons I didn’t like ST:TNG.

OVER THE TRANSOM
357 Magnum: I Can’t Wait Until We Have Socialized Medicine
EBL: Shanksgiving? Marty Krofft, RIP, and World on Fire Season 2
Twitchy: “Wasn’t He Robbing The Store With A GUN?”, Guy Tries To Make Racially Charged Rittenhouse Analogy & Reveals Himself To Be And Idiot, and State Rep “Truly Disappointed” In Shaming Of Demonstrators Who Block Roads
Louder With Crowder: Susan Sarandon’s son wants you to stop sharing this video of his mom with her boobs out, YouTube suspended us for our Bongino episode. Not because of anything we said. They just hate Bongino’s existence, A TikTok Video On Bidenomics Has Team Biden So Wee-wee’d Up, They Want Social Media To Label It Misinformation, and Senator not only admits she’s limiting your freedom, she brags about it “for the common good”
Vox Popoli: An Army of Gammas, Delingpole and the Demons, The Dangers of the Moment, We Are the Whitepills, and Copyright is Corporate Welfare
Stoic Observations: The Plessy & Parks Scenario
Draw & Talk: Yikes! People Are Quitting Every Day In Comics
Gab News: Breaking The Spell – Reclaiming The Power of Words

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Conservative: An Alternative Narrative to the Los Angeles Streetcar Myth, also, The Pro-Life Movement Is Down, But Not Out
American Greatness: ‘Mysterious’ Entities Reportedly Giving Migrants GPS Coordinates to Unsecure Locations on Southern Border
American Thinker: Manipulating with Lies and Manufactured Sob Stories, Has the Left Finally Blown It? and Legalizing Ballot Fraud in Pennsylvania
Animal Magnetism: Vacation Totty I
Babalu Blog: Lack of food, fuel, and other shortages forces Cuban college students to drop out of school, EU human rights envoy tells political prisoners’ families Cuban dictatorship denies existence of political prisoners, The British look the other way as the Cuban dictatorship murders political prisoners, and Cuban dictatorship prefers importing rather than producing food because imports earn them greater profits
BattleSwarm: Argentina’s President Not A Fan Of Communist China, No Wonder the Left Hates “Argentina’s Trump”, and One Down: State Rep. Kyle Kacal Declines Reelection Bid
Behind The Black: Russia launches military satellite, Blue Origin begins third major expansion of Huntsville facility, and Mars’ giant sinkholes
Cafe Hayek: Worried About the Cleanliness of American Households? also, More on the Regulation (or Not) of Expression and Emissions
CDR Salamander: U.S. Navy (With Assist From Japan) Captures Pirates
Chicago Boyz: The Razors
Da Tech Guy: Some Jewish Hostages that We Were Told Did not Exist Released, Don’t Poke the Bear. Catholic Edition, This should be our policy in Israel: American hostages released or Hamas leaders dead, and Doctor Who The Star Beast Review (Plus Bonus Children in Need Destination: Skaro Review)
Don Surber: Irish Lives Matter
First Street Journal: Did you know that wanting to protect your country’s borders makes you ‘far right’? When it’s time to put up or shut up, the left do neither, and Why do the left want to defend Ukraine’s borders, but not our own?
Gates Of Vienna: Political Earthquake in The Netherlands, Stop the Mosques! Soppy, “The People Will Get Their Country Back”, and Muslim Subjugation of Women is the Same the World Over
The Geller Report: HAMAS BLOOD GAMES Delays Hostage Release, Not Another Dime to Hamas “Charities” in US, and Daughter of Critically Ill Freed Hostage Rips Red Cross
Hogewash: M87 and Its Jet, NGC 3521, The Southern Crab, Team Kimberlin Post of the Day, and A Record Black Friday
Hollywood In Toto: Only One Thing Can Save Disney’s Wish Now, The Three Worst Shows of 2023 (And 16 Runners-Up), Patricia Heaton Perfectly Sums Up Shocking Spike in Anti Semitism, Russell Peters Defends Joe Rogan from ‘Bulls***’ Cancel Culture Attacks, and Why Napoleon Will Surprise Everyone
The Lid: In the Biden Era, Walmart Officials Note that Americans Can’t Afford Toys, Spending Money on Food and Necessities
Legal Insurrection: Prof Claims Museum Collections ‘Deeply Entrenched’ in Violence, Colonialism, Anti-Israel Protesters Plan to Interrupt Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree Lighting Ceremony, U.S. Air Force and Army Send Out Letters Pleading for Those Discharged for Refusing Covid Shot to Return, Investigation Claims Texas A&M is Defying State’s Ban on DEI Policies, Biden Border Crisis: – Red Chinese Nationals Flooding Across Our Borders In Record Numbers, U. Minnesota Pro-Abortion Prof Creates ‘Critical Race Theory and Implicit Bias’ Birth Class, and Democrat Privilege in Effect As Jamaal Bowman Escapes Ethics Committee Investigation Over Fire Alarm Stunt
Nebraska Energy Observer: So you know, Christ the King, and Monday Maunderings
Outkick: Gregg Popovich Doubles Down, Doesn’t Regret Mid-Game Admonishment Of Spurs Fans For Being ‘Hateful’, Desmond Howard Calls Out ESPN Colleague For Hiding In Stadium After Receiving Threats From Michigan Fans, College Football Game Ends On ‘Tragic Note’ When Opposing Team Taunts Kneeling Kicker After Missed FG, Conor McGregor Continues To Rip Irish Government, Appears To Hint At Political Aspirations, Mark Stoops Reacts To Texas A&M Reports, Makes Future Plans Clear, Mind-Blowing Stat Shows How Pathetic The Patriots’ Offense Is, and Kendra Lust & Brandi Love Celebrate Michigan Beating Ohio State
Power Line: Dolly Does Dallas, They Don’t Mind Being Wrong, Green Ideology as Class Warfare, and New Low in Liberal Ignorance
Shark Tank: FL Senator Ingoglia Introduces Bill To Bar Reparations Payments
Shot In The Dark: Mark From St. Louis Park, “Thinking Of You This Thanksgiving”, It Was 81 Years Ago Sunday, and While Waiting For The Murder Hornets
The Political Hat: News of the Week
This Ain’t Hell: Openness and transparency…yep, New Department of Homeland Security tactic in face of continued illegal immigration, and Seinfeld actress uses AI to write acceptance speech, things did not go as planned
Transterrestrial Musings: “The Game”, The Nazis And Hamas, and Back On The Road
Victory Girls: Nikki Haley Is Making Her Move, Communism: Kids Who Love It Are Elitist Brats, and Life For Hostages In The Terror Tunnels
Volokh Conspiracy: Journal of Free Speech Law: “‘Dangerous to the Liberties of a Free People’: Secret Societies and the Right to Assemble,” by Nathan Ristuccia
Watts Up With That: Blue State Residents Are Paying Way More For Energy Than Red States, New Report Shows, World’s Largest Iceberg, Three Times the Size Of NYC, Starts Moving for First Time in Over 30 Years, and While America pursues renewables, worldwide expansion is underway for nuclear generated electricity
The Federalist: Doctors Ignore Existing Postpartum Depression Treatment In Favor Of Pricey Synthetic Drugs, House Republicans: Force Joe Biden To Explain Why Israel And Ukraine Are More Important Than America, Democrat Senators Attack Justices With Ethics Complaints While Ignoring Their Own Conflicts Of Interest, Biden Air Force Nominee’s ‘Pride’ Antics Prove Leftists Have Ideologically Captured The Military, and The White House’s Black Friday Spin Can’t Blind Voters To Our Bad Economy
Mark Steyn: No Man of Her Own – Gable and Lombard’s Only Flip of the Coin, Camelot, and Is There a Non-Far Right?

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Category: Linkagery

Criminal Degeneracy in Action

Posted on | November 27, 2023 | 2 Comments

Say hello to David Matthew Fines of Fort Smith, Arkansas, and yeah, go ahead and mention the obvious — face tattoos.

Does anything good ever happen to anyone after they get tattoos on their face? I doubt it. As a symbolic expression of poor decision-making skills, it’s hard to beat face tattoos, and David Matthew Fines has a documented history of making poor decisions, e.g., this incident from May 2016:

A Fort Smith man who police say led a chase on a bicycle faces felonies in connection with an apartment break-in.
David Matthew Fines, 27, of Fort Smith was arrested on suspicion of felony residential burglary, on two felony warrants for failure to appear and on suspicion of fleeing apprehension, and on two misdemeanor warrants.
Shortly before 7:15 p.m. Monday, an officer patrolled the vicinity of North 12th Street, he saw Fines riding a bicycle, knew he had warrants out for him, and decided to conduct a traffic stop. When the officer tried to conduct the traffic stop, Fines fled on his bicycle, according to the Fort Smith Police Department.
A witness who saw the chase told police Fines went into [an] apartment in the 1200 block of North G Street. The apartment manager told the officer no one was supposed to be inside the rented apartment, according to the Police Department.
The door had been left unlocked, and when the officer went inside the apartment and found Fines. The tenant of the apartment arrived at the scene and told the officer Fines didn’t have permission to be inside of his residence, according to the an arrest report.
Fines remained in the Sebastian County Detention Center Friday without bond, deputies said.

I would argue it was a mistake ever to release this guy from custody. Sure, life in prison may seem harsh in such a case, but what evidence is there that this guy — who was already wanted on two felony warrants before he fled police and broke into somebody’s apartment — is capable of a law-abiding life? He seems to be a more-or-less constant menace to public safety, and did I mention that he’s got tattoos on his face?

Because I do a lot of blogging about crime and law enforcement, and because black criminals are statistically overrepresented in such cases, some might mistakenly accuse me of racism — “RAAAAACISM!” — for my interest in these issues. But lest the SPLC add another entry to my dossier, let me make the point that I hate white criminals, too. In fact, perhaps I hate white criminals more, especially degenerate trash like David Matthew Fines of Fort Smith, Arkansas.

Not that I’m any kind of “woke,” you understand, but when you consider how often we’ve been lectured about “white privilege” and “systemic racism” in recent years, don’t you think it behooves white folks to be minding their manners and obeying the law? When the Commie mob is accusing us of these things, it seems to me, we ought to make an extra effort to prove ourselves worthy of any advantages we might actually have. Whatever it takes to deserve “white privilege,” I’m willing to do, but it seems to me that the bare minimum is not to be a despicable criminal like this Arkansas trash with tattoos on his face.

And you know what? I don’t think I’m alone in this opinion. How else to explain the wrathful reaction of Arkansas State Trooper Roam when he apprehended David Matthew Fines after a high-speed pursuit:

 

If you don’t want to watch the first four minutes of that frightening pursuit — Fines driving 120 mph in the opposite lane of traffic — you can skip ahead to the post-apprehension scene:

Fines: “I’m going through things, man.”
Trooper: “I don’t give a shit what you’re going through.”

And let all God’s children say, “Amen.”

Let us recall how often law enforcement gets accused of racism — “RAAAAACISM!” — when dealing with black suspects. Do you think that’s going to make them go easy on white criminals? Oh, hell, no. If Trooper Roam had just started blasting away with his pistol and filled David Matthew Fines full of bullet holes, this might not have been ruled a justifiable homicide, but nobody would have rioted. Ben Crump wouldn’t have showed up to hold a press conference. As far as most white folks are concerned, a white criminal deserves whatever ill fate may befall him: “Don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time.”

Check the Sebastian County Jail file, and you’ll see that David Matthew Fines has kept pretty busy in his criminal career since his 2016 arrest. He was repeatedly charged with violating parole, failing to pay fines, absconding, etc., and there seems to be little likelihood he’ll start a law-abiding life at any future time. So why did a judge turn him loose on a mere $130 cash bond? Can someone in Arkansas investigate this judge and maybe start a petition to kick him off the bench? Did the judge even see that trooper’s dashcam video? I’d say that video constitutes an overwhelming argument in favor of denying bond on the grounds that David Matthew Fines is an eminent threat to public safety.

Sooner or later, a criminal like that is going to kill somebody, or else he’s going to die in the proverbial “hail of police gunfire” and no one will have occasion to mourn his death. Because . . . face tattoos.



 

Category: Arkansas, Crime

Another ‘Pretendian’ Exposed

Posted on | November 27, 2023 | 1 Comment

This is deeply offensive to me, and should be offensive to everyone: The once-popular folk singer known as Buffy Sainte-Marie has spent decades fraudulently claiming to be of Native American ancestry. One of the telltale clues was that, at different times during the 1960s, she claimed ancestry from three different groups — first Algonquin, then Micmac, and finally Cree. In fact, as an extensive investigation by the Canadian Broadcasting Company (CBC) shows, “Buffy Sainte-Marie” is actually Beverly Jean Santamaria, born in Massachusetts to a family that was Italian on her father’s side and Anglo-American on her mother’s side. Early in her musical career, she began telling reporters that she had been adopted — a claim conclusively refuted by her birth certificate — and further claimed that her adoptive family had changed their surname from Santamaria to “Sainte-Marie” because of anti-Italian prejudice in the 1940s. This might surprise some of her surviving relatives in Massachusetts who still call themselves by the family name:

Bruce Santamaria said his family told him Sainte-Marie’s claim that she was adopted was incorrect.
“We were told flat out that she was my Uncle Albert’s child,” he said.
Despite the family’s concerns, his aunts and uncles followed Sainte-Marie’s career with passion and were proud of her, Bruce Santamaria, 61, said.
“She was a really talented musician,” he said. “And she was also authentic in her support for the Native Americans. She really cared about them. She was a voice for them.”
He said the family believed her claim to Indigenous ancestry was some sort of publicity stunt.
Whispers began to swirl that Sainte-Marie had threatened family members, including her own brother, with legal action or worse if they publicly questioned her ancestry claims.

Why did she lie? A hint can be found in a detail from the CBC account: Buffy’s brother Alan St. Marie served as a pilot in the Air Force and later became a commercial pilot. In the mid-1970s, he was greeting passengers one day after landing a flight in New York, and was surprised to see Buffy among the passengers. She was accompanied by a producer for PBS, and introductions were made, as Alan’s daughter explained to CBC:

Weeks later, that PBS producer called Alan to confirm that he was, in fact, Sainte-Marie’s biological brother.
Heidi St. Marie said the producer told her dad he didn’t appear to be Indigenous. Alan had light-coloured hair.
Alan told the producer he and Sainte-Marie were white and shared the same parents. St. Marie said her dad didn’t think much more about that call until Nov. 7, 1975, when a letter from a Los Angeles law firm arrived in his mailbox.
“This firm represents Buffy Sainte-Marie,” said the letter from a lawyer who had represented the likes of the Rolling Stones and the Beach Boys.
“We have been advised that you have without provocation disparaged and perhaps defamed Buffy and maliciously interfered with her employment opportunities,” the letter said. It said if he continued, Buffy would “spare no expense in pursuing any and all of her legal remedies.”

It so happened that Buffy Sainte-Marie was angling to get a gig on Sesame Street, based on her (fake) Native American identity, which was the basis of the lawyer’s accusation that her brother was interfering “with her employment opportunities,” simply for telling the truth.

But notice something — Buffy’s brother was fair-complected with light-colored hair, whereas Buffy is swarthy. Probably this explains her creation of a fictional Native persona. Was she insecure about her appearance? Was she ashamed of being half-Italian? In any family, some children will favor either their father or their mother more strongly, and Buffy more closely resembled her Italian father. Rather than to present herself honestly, she instead fabricated a more “exotic” explanation for her dark features, and thus hit upon the myth of herself as an adopted Native girl. And while this may have been “some sort of publicity stunt,” as her relatives say, it is both dishonest and offensive.

What’s wrong with being white, huh? This was part of what I hated about Elizabeth Warren and her “high cheekbones” nonsense about being part Cherokee. While I would expect that anyone of genuine Cherokee ancestry would be proud of who they were, the fakery of “Fauxcahontas” Warren implies that there’s something shameful — some inferiority — in merely being white. What inspires most such fakery, I believe, is that so few Americans know anything about their actual genealogy.

No one is generically “white.” This classification is simply too large to function as the basis of a meaningful ethnic identity. Every white person in America is a descendant of people from specific places, but most Americans nowadays can’t even tell you their grandmother’s maiden name, and have done zero research into their family tree. While Americans of Irish Catholic ancestry, or those descended from Ellis Island-era immigrants, may have a certain ethnic chauvinism about their particular identity, generic Anglo-American white people — descended from the colonial era “Old Stock” — seldom view themselves as having any distinct ethnic heritage. Unless you’re a Hyphenated American, you’re just a mayonnaise-on-Wonder-Bread sandwich of whiteness.

This attitude is harmful in many ways, and one of its consequences is that some white people feel a compulsion to create fictional identities, if not to exploit the “diversity” quota system (which seems to have been Elizabeth Warren’s motive), then to have an “exotic” identity that strikes them as more interesting than the bland vanilla identity of generic whiteness.

But is it boring to be a descendant of Rollo the Viking or Colonel John Bolling? These are just a couple of the eminent individuals in my own family tree, and who knows how many other extraordinary connections might be discovered if I ever did a complete genealogy? Everybody has eight great-grandparents, 16 great-great-grandparents, etc., so that if you can trace your ancestry back seven or eight generations, that’s more than 100 different lineages, and certainly some of them must be at least interesting, if perhaps not illustrious. Somehow, though, most people would rather be ignorant of their forebears, and in that sense, really don’t know who they are. This ignorance is, I believe, a crucial factor in leading people to manufacture fake identities, not just as fake Indians, but also such bizarre identities as “Queen of the Lost Continent of Lemuria.”



 

Category: Celebrities

Rule 5 Sunday: Face Time

Posted on | November 27, 2023 | 2 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho

This week’s appetizer courtesy of Rule 5 Texan on X.
Ceterum autem censeo Silicon Valley esse delendam.

ANIMAL MAGNETISM: Rule Five Jurassic Park Friday and the Saturday Gingermageddon.

EBL: Saturday Night Girls With Guns, MAGA Thanksgiving, Thais Meditation, The Girl Next Door, Pilgrim Ladies, Upload Season 3, Vintage Thanksgiving, Wild Turkey Day, Treadstone, and Les Feuilles Mortes. 

A VIEW FROM THE BEACH: Kiki Passo, Gone Fishin’, Fish Pic Friday – Marie Ve?ronneau, Oregon, My Oregon, Thanksgiving Day Flotsam and Jetsam, A Thursday Tune – Desperado, Flotsam and Jetsam – Another DIY Day, The Wednesday Wetness, Maryland, My Maryland, Oregon, My Oregon, Musk Mauls Media Matters, Tattoo Tuesday, The Monday Morning Stimulus, Random Celebrity News, Palm Sunday and Maryland, My Maryland

FLAPPR: T.I.T.S. for November 24

AVERAGE BUBBA: Rule Five Thursday – Thanksgiving Edition

STICKS, STORIES, & SCOTCH: IJN Murasaki, from Azur Lane’s Senran Kagura Crossover

Thanks to everyone for all the luscious links!

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Category: Rule 5

Crazy People Are Dangerous

Posted on | November 26, 2023 | 3 Comments

When weighing career opportunities, most of us never give any consideration to cult leader as a job worth pursuing. However, I’ve spent some time contemplating the pros and cons of such a gig, and reached the conclusion that I’m simply not cut out for that kind of work. For starters, to be an effective cult leader requires a rare combination of traits — the charisma necessary to attract a loyal following of gullible idiots, the cleverness to come up with a uniquely weird belief system, and the cunning cruelty to exploit the aforesaid gullible followers.

Just not my idea of fun, really. So as much as I might enjoy imposing my personalized brand of Divine Wisdom on a brainwashed mob, enjoying the pleasure of polygamous relations with their nubile daughters, etc., I simply lack the basic aptitude, even if I were willing to accept the risk of the way cults typically end. Dying in a shootout with the FBI or serving a life sentence in federal prison are outcomes I’d prefer to avoid, so scratch “cult leader” from the career list. But there are other considerations.

How do cult leaders come up with the implausible bullshit they foist on their followers, and where do they find people stupid enough to believe it? Well, that’s what the Internet’s for, as exemplified by the Colorado-based “Love Has Won” cult and its deceased leader, Amy Carlson:

According to her family, Amy Carlson grew up in Dallas, Texas, and was a “straight A student”. In Carlson’s early adult life, however, she began to talk increasingly about “outlandish concepts” such as starships. During the mid 2000s, Carlson developed an interest in New Age philosophy, and became a regular poster on the forums of the website Lightworkers.org. On the forum, she met Amerith WhiteEagle, who convinced Carlson that she was divine, and Carlson began to claim to experience paranormal phenomena. In late 2007, Carlson left her third husband, her children, and her job as a manager at McDonald’s, and ceased contact with most members of her family, and joined up with WhiteEagle in Colorado. The group was originally known under the name “Galactic Federation of Light”. The group posted their first videos to YouTube in 2009.

There is a new HBO documentary series about Carlson and her cult, and Saturday night I watched part of the first episode, enough to reach the conclusion that almost anyone could have their own cult nowadays, because the Internet provides access to an effectively unlimited supply of gullible followers. Nearly all of Carlson’s followers were the kind of dopeheads we used to call “burnouts,” people who’d done too much LSD and permanently fried their cerebral cortex. These wild-eyed kooks are interviewed for the documentary and let’s just say that none of them seem to have a very firm grasp on reality. Which isn’t surprising, when you consider the cult’s belief system:

The theology of Love Has Won has been described as fluid, combining New Age spirituality, conspiracy theories, and elements from mainstream Abrahamic religions. The group proclaimed that Carlson was a divine, 19 billion year-old being who had birthed all creation. Carlson claimed she had been reincarnated 534 times, including as Jesus, Joan of Arc, Marilyn Monroe and Cleopatra, and would lead 144,000 people into a mystical “5th dimension”. Carlson had several romantic partners throughout the group’s history, beginning with Amerith WhiteEagle, who were referred to as “Father God”, and who played a counterpart role to Carlson in the theology of the group. The group also adopted elements of the QAnon conspiracy theory.
The group claimed that Carlson was the queen of the lost continent of Lemuria, and the group incorporated the belief that Lemurians live within Mount Shasta in California.[9] Carlson had stated that Donald Trump was her father in a past life, and that she had spoken to the spirit of deceased actor Robin Williams, who she claimed was archangel Zadkiel. The group’s theology also included references to the concepts of Atlantis, the Anunnaki and “reptilians”. They believed that the world was run by a “cabal” determined to keep the planet in a “low vibration” state.

Unfortunately for the “Queen of the Lost Continent of Lemuria” and her followers, Carlson died at age 45 from a combination of anorexia, alcohol abuse and colloidal silver poisoning.

“COLLOIDAL SILVER POISONING”?

This is an unusual twist. We’re used to cult leaders dying in mass suicide rituals or being gunned down in a hail of automatic weapons fire. But what the heck is this colloidal silver thing?

Colloidal silver consists of tiny silver particles in a liquid. It is sometimes promoted on the internet as a dietary supplement; however, evidence supporting health-related claims is lacking.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has warned that colloidal silver isn’t safe or effective for treating any disease or condition. Additionally, the FDA and the Federal Trade Commission have taken action against a number of companies for making misleading claims about colloidal silver products.
Colloidal silver can cause serious side effects. The most common is argyria, a build-up of silver in the body’s tissues causing a bluish-gray discoloration of the skin, which is usually permanent.
Colloidal silver can cause poor absorption of some drugs, such as certain antibiotics and thyroxine (used to treat thyroid deficiency). There is also some evidence that it can cause kidney, liver, or nervous system problems.

This explains why, when law enforcement in Saguache County, Colorado, found the mummified corpse of Amy Carlson, she was blue.

What sort of lessons can we learn from this? To me, it’s about how the Internet creates niche echo chambers of like-minded people. Even the tiniest fraction of a single percentage point of the population represents an audience of thousands, when you realize that there are 1.2 billion English-speaking Internet users worldwide (one-tenth of one percent = 1,200,000). Given the basic mathematics of the equation, it’s not really strange that “Mother God” Carlson could get 20,000 online followers, of whom about two dozen moved to Colorado to join her cult IRL.

Speaking of weird cult beliefs, the director of the HBO documentary is a liberal with an Ivy League diploma, who sees this as a political morality tale about health care and income inequality:

The self-styled deity sold remote healings and slowly gained an impressive online audience: almost 20,000 followers on Facebook and nearly 10,000 on YouTube. The group’s videos were watched more than 1.5 million times. All the while, she convinced more and more people to escape their lives and join her party. “You were high from the moment you woke up to the moment you went to bed,” a former follower recalls in the series.
Many who devoted themselves to Mother God were escaping one specific reality, according to [producer/director Hannah] Olson. “This is a group of people who were traumatized by the health care system,” the director says. One member arrived after struggling with an opioid addiction. Another found the group after losing his father to that same disease. One young woman joined after waking up from a coma to discover she owed half a million dollars in medical bills. “Love Has Won exists,” says Olson, “because people were searching online for how to heal their bodies and minds, because they could not afford to go to a doctor.” Many, if not all, were without insurance; the uninsured rate for American adults stood at 11% earlier this year.
“Reality doesn’t make sense for a lot of people because of the enormous income inequality,” Olson says. “My generation has not inherited the world we were promised.” (The director is a millennial.)

Like I said, weird cult beliefs. Despite the director’s politics, I haven’t found any liberal sermonizing in this HBO documentary, which is like watching a slow-motion train wreck, with a trainload of kooks.



 

Category: Colorado, Crime, Religion
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