In The Mailbox: 02.11.25

I posted a video about stuff.
The Senators started the week getting mauled by the Twins as Spaceman Lee self-destructed on the mound en route to a 14-2 blowout, but we managed to salvage the final game with Jim Kaat and the bullpen holding on for a 9-5 win. Things likewise started badly in Montreal; Joe Coleman picked up his fourth loss against Paul Splittorff, but then Spaceman Lee came back for a close 3-2 win and Carl Morton won another squeaker in Game 3. We’re still in the cellar, two games behind Oakland, but only five games behind the Red Sox. No surrender!
Ceterum autem censeo Silicon Valley et Hamas delendam sunt.

Real Murders, Fake Suicides: ‘Zizian’ Death Cult Fugitives Still at Large
EBL
357 Magnum

FMJRA 2.0: Back In The Cellar
A View From The Beach
EBL
357 Magnum

Scott Siskind Didn’t Start the Fire: Rationalism, NY Times and the Zizians
A View From The Beach
EBL
357 Magnum

Rule 5 Sunday: You Can Be My Cowgirl
Animal Magnetism
A View From The Beach
EBL
357 Magnum

‘Shrill and Hysterical’: Michael Bennett, Tulsi Gabbard and Edward Snowden
A View From The Beach
EBL
357 Magnum

In The Mailbox: 02.04.25 (Afternoon Edition)
A View From The Beach
EBL
357 Magnum

In The Mailbox: 02.04.25 (Evening Edition)
A View From The Beach
EBL
357 Magnum

Pam Bondi Confirmed as A.G., and Why Did Democrats Vote Against Her?
The Daley Gator
A View From The Beach
EBL
357 Magnum

The Worst Democrat in Congress?
The Daley Gator
EBL
357 Magnum

In The Mailbox: 02.07.25 (Morning Edition)
EBL
357 Magnum
A View From The Beach

In The Mailbox: 02.07.25 (Evening Edition)
EBL
357 Magnum

Top linkers for the week ending February 7:

(tied) 357 Magnum & EBL (11)
A View From The Beach (8)

Thanks to everyone for all the links!

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H&R Block Deluxe & State Tax Software w/Bonus Refund OfferThe Valentine’s Day Shop

Category: FMJRA Award

A Shootout in Carnarsie

Posted on | February 8, 2025 | Comments Off on A Shootout in Carnarsie

The intersection of Flatlands Avenue and East 80th Street is probably not the worst part of Brooklyn, but it’s also not the best part of Brooklyn.

Far be it from me to pretend to have any expert knowledge of Brooklyn neighborhoods. All I know on the subject, I learned via Google searches, which tells me that this vicinity is part of what’s known as Carnasie:

Canarsie was initially a fishing community, but became a popular summer resort in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. By the late 1930s and early 1940, the resorts had been destroyed, and Canarsie was developed as a largely Italian American and Jewish suburb. In the 1970s, racial tensions developed around an argument over the zoning of the area’s schools, and in the aftermath, Canarsie became a mainly black neighborhood with a high West Indian population in the late 1990s.

The intersection of Flatlands Avenue and East 80th Street is in ZIP Code 11236, where the population is 82% black and 4% white. You may wonder why I’m sharing this information, or how it might be relevant to any current political discussion, but I became interested in this because of a video I watched on the Police Activity channel on YouTube:

Suspect Points Gun at NYPD Sergeant Before Being Shot and Arrested
On Friday, January 10, 2025, at approximately 9:43 p.m., Sergeant Salzman, Police Officer Okafor, Police Officer Wilson, Police Officer Zaheer, and additional officers assigned to the 69th Precinct, were transporting a prisoner to the 69th Precinct following an unrelated arrest. While at the intersection of East 80th Street and Flatlands Avenue, the officers heard a gunshot in the vicinity and observed, 50-year-old Moonra Durham fleeing northbound on East 80th Street. Sergeant Salzman and Police Officer Zaheer pursued Durham on foot while Police Officer Wilson and Police Officer Okafor pursued him in their vehicle. While the officers pursued him, they shouted commands for Durham to stop. Once in front of 754 East 80th Street, Durham positioned himself behind a tree and pointed a firearm at Police Officer Zaheer.
Durham then turned to his left and pointed the firearm at Sergeant Salzman. As a result, Sergeant Salzman discharged three shots, Police Officer Okafor discharged four shots, Police Officer Wilson discharged two shots, and Police Officer Zaheer discharged four shots, from their service firearms at Durham. Durham was struck by the gunfire and taken into custody without further incident. Durham was transported from the scene via ambulance to Brookdale University Medical Center where he was treated for his injuries. For his actions, Durham was arrested and charged with Attempted Murder in the First Degree (police officer), Attempted Murder in the Second Degree, Criminal Use of a Firearm in the First and Second Degree, Attempted Aggravated Assault Upon a Police Officer, Criminal Possession of a Weapon in the Second Degree, and related charges.

We do not know why the initial gunshot was fired — robbery? assault? just another Friday night in Canarsie? — but it so happened that at least four cops were within earshot of this incident, and considering how it played out, the suspect is lucky he didn’t get shot dead. Where I come from, you point a gun at a cop, let alone four cops, and you’re likely to die in the proverbial “hail of police gunfire.” What kind of place is this, where gunfire goes off randomly on a Friday night and the perp thinks it’s a smart idea to point his gun at cops? That’s how my curiosity about Canarsie got started; the description included a street address — 754 East 80th Street — and I was able to do a Google “street view,” which showed a pleasant-looking tree-lined street, with brick apartments or rowhouses.

Just looking at it, you wouldn’t think of East 80th Street as “ghetto,” and in terms of its physical appearance, this Canarsie neighborhood probably hasn’t changed much since the days when, as Wikipedia says, it was “a largely Italian American and Jewish suburb.” Alas, the Jews and Italians cleared out decades ago because of a school-zone dispute, and the more recent “gentrification” that turned neighborhoods like Park Slope into hot spots for yuppies never got as far east as 80th Street. OK, so who is this suspect walking around with a pistol? “Moonra Durham” is a sufficiently unique name that I figured it was worth a Google search.

Moonra Durham

Moonra Durham is a registered sex offender who was convicted of first degree sexual abuse in 2013. Details of his full criminal history were not available, but the fact that a registered sex offender armed with a pistol was just strolling through Canarsie on a Friday night — well, that would be scary, if you happened to be in Canarsie, but my advice is to stay the hell away from there. The New York Times published an interactive map of the 2024 presidential election, which allows you to search results down to the precinct level, and in this particular part of Canarsie, the results were Kamala Harris 93%, Donald Trump 6%. This neighborhood is part of New York’s 8th Congressional District, represented in Congress by Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, who won reelection last year with 75% of the vote.

Readers will recall that on Thursday, I took note of Rep. Jasmine Crockett, who had proclaimed on CNN that “the people that commit 80% of the most violent crimes in this country are white supremacists.” And I pointed out that Crockett represents the 30th District of Texas:

“With a Cook Partisan Voting Index rating of D+27, it is the most Democratic district in Texas.” If your employer relocated you to Dallas, and you were looking to purchase a residence in the area, I’d advise you to stay as far away from the 30th District as possible. Nothing good ever happens inside a D+27 congressional district.

The Eighth District of New York is rated D+26. Just sayin’ . . .

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Category: Crime, New York

Obama Judge Orders DOGE to Stop Telling Us Where Our Money Went

Posted on | February 8, 2025 | Comments Off on Obama Judge Orders DOGE to Stop Telling Us Where Our Money Went

Chuck Schumer and friends protest DOGE

Wow, what a week it’s been, huh? Elon Musk’s young wizards at the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) have applied their superpowers — weaponized autism — to the simple question: Exactly who has the federal government been giving our tax dollars to? The resulting revelations, especially at the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), have been shocking — the biggest scandal of my lifetime, and perhaps the biggest since Teapot Dome.

USAID Plotted to Promote
Censorship Practices Worldwide
— Breitbart, February 7

USAID Funds Ended up at BLM (and
You Might Not Believe Where Else)
— PJMedia, February 7

USAID Funneled Nearly $800 Million
To ‘Gender Transformative’
Global Censorship Group
— The Federalist, February 7

USAID: $270 Million
for ‘Independent’ Journalists
— Hot Air, February 6

These headlines are just a tip of the iceberg of shady spending that the DOGE geeks have turned up in the past week, and the way they were doing it, apparently, was by doing automated searches through federal payments by the Empoloyer Identification Number (EIN) of recipient organizations. The discoveries are mind-boggling. Hello, the government was paying millions for subscriptions to Politico?

We’re all missing the important question.

The question is “Is the US Government Politico’s biggest customer?”

From the looks of it, the answer is yes.

But in any case, it’s very clearly a payoff. We’re wasting effort arguing about how this payoff was structured to look legit. https://t.co/4CtYCsUb1a

— RBe (@RBPundit) February 6, 2025

The reaction of Democrats and the media (but I repeat myself) to these revelations was a simple three-step process:

Deflect
Distract
Demonize

The deflection involved claiming that all the bizarre spending by USAID was normal and/or trivial. The distraction involved claiming that the real scandal was not the corruption uncovered by DOGE, but rather the “unfettered access” to federal data with which DOGE was making these discoveries. The demonization involved making Elon Musk a scapegoat, with the slogan “Nobody Elected Elon” being repeated by Democrats.

If you’re getting your news from any establishment media organization — CNN, ABC, CBS, NBC, New York Times, Associated Press, Washington Post, etc. — you’ll find that their coverage is entirely structured around this deflect/distract/demonize narrative. They are devoting zero coverage to what it is that DOGE actually found about federal spending, except to mention “right-wing outrage” as a reaction to these revelations.

All of this distracting noise generated by Democrats and their media handmaidens was necessary to buy time for them to obtain an emergency injunction from an Obama-appointed judge in New York:

Judge Halts Access to Treasury Payment Systems by Elon Musk’s Team
A federal judge early Saturday temporarily restricted access by Elon Musk’s government efficiency program to the Treasury Department’s payment and data systems, saying there was a risk of “irreparable harm.”
The Trump administration’s new policy of allowing political appointees and “special government employees” access to these systems, which contain highly sensitive information such as bank details, heightens the risk of leaks and of the systems becoming more vulnerable than before to hacking, U.S. District Judge Paul A. Engelmayer said in an emergency order.
Judge Engelmayer ordered any such official who was granted access to the systems since Jan. 20 to “destroy any and all copies of material downloaded from the Treasury Department’s records and systems.” He also restricted the government from granting access to these categories of officials.
The defendants — President Trump and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent — should show cause on Feb. 14 before Judge Jeannette A. Vargas, who is handling the case on a permanent basis, Judge Engelmayer said.
The order came in response to a lawsuit filed on Friday by Letitia James of New York along with 18 other Democratic state attorneys general, charging that when President Trump gave Mr. Musk the run of government computer systems, he had breached protections enshrined in the Constitution and “failed to faithfully execute the laws enacted by Congress.”
The attorneys general said the president had given “virtually unfettered access” to the federal government’s most sensitive information to young aides who work for Mr. Musk, who runs a program the administration calls the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, though it is not an actual department.
While the group was supposedly assigned to cut costs, members are “attempting to access government data to support initiatives to block federal funds from reaching certain disfavored beneficiaries,” according to the suit. Mr. Musk has publicly stated his intention to “recklessly freeze streams of federal funding without warning,” the suit said, pointing to his social media posts in recent days.

Several things to note here: Judge Engelmayer was appointed by Obama, while Judge Vargas — she who is “handling the case on a permanent basis” — was appointed by Joe Biden. And, of course, New York AG Letitia James is under investigation for colluding with the Biden administration in her witch-hunt prosecution of Trump. Of course, the basis of their lawsuit — the claim that DOGE’s investigation of federal spending, ordered by the duly-elected President, are somehow violating “protections enshrined in the Constitution” — is absurd.

You know it’s absurd, I know it’s absurd, the federal judges know it’s absurd and the “journalists” reporting this story also know it’s absurd. They don’t care. They’re at the stage of desperation — viewing Trump as an existential threat — where they don’t care about the plausibility of the claims they’re making. Evil Orange Man is trying to stop their access to taxpayer money, and this must be prevented By Any Means Necessary.

Eventually, of course, this case will make it to the Supreme Court, where the majority decision will be brief: “LOL. GFY.” What Democrats are banking on is that the appeals process will take a couple of years, and that in the meantime, Democrats will take back Congress in the 2026 midterm elections, which will have the effect of neutralizing the Trump administration. Obtaining a delay in DOGE’s operation through the judicial process is therefore quite valuable to Democrats, even if they know darned well that they will ultimately lose at the Supreme Court.

The best thing that Ordinary Americans can do is simply to start focusing on the 2026 midterms. If Democrats lose in the next midterms — when historic trends suggest they should gain seats — that would serve as the proper rebuke of their obstructionist actions. Democrats obviously learned nothing from their 2024 defeat, and so it is our to duty to teach them a lesson in 2026 that they will never forget.

Yes. And the funds were filtered through nonprofits.

— Dianna Deeley (@DiannaDeeley) February 7, 2025

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Category: Corruption, Democrats, Donald Trump, Media Bias

In The Mailbox: 02.07.25 (Evening Edition)

Posted on | February 8, 2025 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 02.07.25 (Evening Edition)

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Usual weekend deadlines for the usual weekend posts.
In case you were wondering, Babalu Blog seems to have vanished from the Intertubes, which is unfortunate since it was the best blog for Cuban and Latin American affairs.
Ceterum autem censeo Silicon Valley et Hamas delendam sunt.