YouTube Shooter a Vegan Animal Rights Activist

April 3rd, 2018

YouTube shooter, who wounded three then killed themselves, has been identified.

MSM: “Please let the shooter be a conservative Republican male! Please let the shooter be a conservative Republican male! Please—”

“Nasim [Aghdam] the Persian Azeri female vegan bodybuilder, also animal rights activist promoting healthy and humane living—”

MSM: “GOD DAMN IT!”

She evidently had a grudge against YouTube, though whether they had “demonitized” her channel (as they have done to so many conservative and gun channels) is unclear.

Evidently you can check a whole lot of “intersectionality” boxes and still be a crazed shooter. Who knew?

Update This is evidently her old web page. Relive the glory days of Geocities! (Hat tip: Jubal E. Harshaw’s Twitter feed.)

Voltron of Sucky Religions Update

April 3rd, 2018

Remember my piece on the teamup between Scientology and the Nation of Islam?

Well, there’s more on that subject:

An independent Scientology news service, @IndieScieNews, first tipped me off to the connection. On October 20, the Church of Scientology honored the Nation of Islam’s Tony Muhammed with its Freedom Award in Inglewood, Calif., in recognition of his “humanitarian” efforts. What, exactly, are those efforts? Muhammed travels the world showing a documentary on vaccines, claiming they cause autism. Just this week, Nation of Islam members held a blessing and naming ceremony for Tony Muhammed at the Scientology Land Base Chapel in Clearwater, Fla.

The individual behind IndieScientologyNews told me:

The extent of the integration of Scientology into the Nation of Islam is demonstrated by the fact that members of the Nation of Islam are not only practicing the religion of Scientology, they are also becoming Ministers and Ministers-in-Training of the Church of Scientology.

The connection between the two groups goes far deeper than just a gala or a naming ceremony. One of the stars of Leah Remini’s docuseries, Aaron Smith-Levin, laid out the financial connection and the incentive for Nation of Islam members to become involved in the Church of Scientology, and vice versa. Smith-Levin explained to me:

Louis Farrakhan is entitled to personally receive a 10% commission on all money NOI members pay for Scientology auditing and a 15% commission on all money NOI members pay for Scientology courses. I don’t know what Farrakhan’s compensation plan is within the NOI, but with ~40,000+ NOI members, the relationship between the NOI & the Church of Scientology, Farrakhan stands to personally earn an awful lot of cash.

During his keynote address to members of the Nation of Islam last year, Farrakhan seemed to take aim at Remini. Writing at his blog, Ortega explains,

He then cited a chapter from the Koran, and used it to say that he was interested in useful knowledge, whatever its source.

“I’m just setting the record straight. I’m not a Scientologist but I respect L. Ron Hubbard. I know that this is the time that they’re making an all out move to destroy Scientology. But what I ask Mrs. Remmy, or whatever her name is, she’s going in hard. She’s hurt, by something.”

Farrakhan then seemed to go on a tangent, talking about his followers looking for understanding but worrying that it was coming from sources that weren’t “perfect.” It was difficult to tell whether this was another reference to Hubbard and Scientology. But he concluded this section of remarks with this line: “The more we strive to make ourselves better, the better we will become in being disciples of Christ or Muhammad or anybody we think we should follow.”

The message seemed pretty clear: Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam will stand by the Church of Scientology as it is marked for destruction by a hurt Leah Remini.

And both, of course, are willing to silence their critics and defecting former members by any means necessary…

Jesus Christ Superstar Live: Brief Impressions

April 2nd, 2018

NBC’s live production of the Tim Rice-Andrew Lloyd Webber musical Jesus Christ Superstar on Easter Sunday was a fairly daring undertaking, in that hundreds of things (at a minimum) could have gone wrong, and only about a dozen did. Never mind that this isn’t the production I would have staged, or that its partisans (or fans of the individual singers involved) are already wildly overpraising it as “OMG the best thing EVER!!!!” It was a very solid, and very credible effort that took the source material (both the musical and the underlying Biblical story of Christ’s last few days) seriously.

The overall production design made no attempt at mimetic realism, depicting a open performance space surrounded by visible stage scaffolding with the audience on two sides, visible costumed musicians who wove their way in and out of the action, a graffitied wall backdrop, and cameras that looped in and out for closeups in the middle of the action (and so carefully choreographed they never appeared on screen).

Things that work:

  • Judas (Brandon Victor Dixon) is a stronger singer than Jesus (John Legend), which is a necessity in the score.
  • Doing the piece as halfway between a live concert and an actual stage production could have failed miserably and doesn’t, and gives the production a palpable energy.
  • The serious pieces are serious, and the tacky showbiz pieces (like the title track and “King Herod’s Song”) are really, really tacky, and that too is true to the original score. (They represent the fleeting glory of this world.)
  • Alice Cooper makes a credible Herod.
  • Sara Bareilles was excellent as Mary Magdalene, who is there to sing ballads and provide a female lead (Because Musicals).
  • And they did include “Could We Start Again, Please,” the one song in the Broadway production that wasn’t on the original London precast album. (Indeed, I ended up arguing about this with Salena Zito on Twitter.)
  • They also used the extended version of “Trial Before Pilate” from the Broadway production.
  • Though I’m not wild about the set or costume design, they use it consistently, putting it a step up on many a Julie Taymor production.
  • There are two images that fully tap into the lasting power of the underlying story. One, where the sick overwhelm Jesus in the Temple:

    That’s an apt visual metaphor: a broken world, desperate for Christ’s salvation.

    So too does the final message of a crucified Christ ascending into heaven through a cross-shaped opening in the rear backdrop, backlit by light, make you willing to forgive the previous excesses in staging:

    These impressions are proving not so brief. Possibly more later.

    But they staged a credible production of a very difficult musical, and for that they deserve a lot of credit.

    “This is extremely dangerous to our democracy”

    April 1st, 2018

    Fake news talks about fake news:

    Austin Master Sergeant Killed in Syria

    March 31st, 2018

    Talk of drawing down America’s presence in the Middle East should not obscure the fact that there are many American soldiers still in harm’s way over there, including Master Sgt. Johnathan J. Dunbar of Austin, who was killed by an IED in Syria:

    The Defense Department on Saturday identified the American soldier supporting Operation Inherent Resolve who was killed after an improvised explosive device (IED) detonated near his patrol.

    That soldier was Master Sgt. Johnathan J. Dunbar, 36, of Austin, Texas, who was assigned to Headquarters, U.S. Army Special Operations Command, at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. He died from injuries sustained during the IED attack, the Pentagon said.

    Two U.S.-led Coalition personnel were killed on Thursday, and five others wounded, in Mangij [AKA Manbij], Syria.

    Dunbar’s death marks the first death of an American service member in Syria or Iraq this year.

    Manbij is in the Aleppo Governorate in northern Syria. It is controlled by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces but is close to Turkey’s incursion.

    This was “the second U.S. combat death in Syria. Navy Senior Chief Petty Officer Scott C. Dayton, was killed by an improved explosive device in November 2016.”

    Condolences to his friends and family, and best wishes for the other U.S. military personnel to quickly achieve complete victory and come home safely.

    LinkSwarm for March 30, 2018

    March 30th, 2018

    Happy Good Friday! Spring has sprung and I’m knee-deep in my taxes.

  • The sitcom Roseanne‘s return features the titular character as a Trump supporter and enjoys smash ratings.
  • French President Emmanuel Macron talks about sending forces to Syria to block Turkey, then almost immediately walks it back, offering to “mediate” between Turkey and the coalition-backed, Kurd-led Syrian Democratic Forces. That’s…interesting.
  • What will Middle East Studies academics do now that Saudi sugar daddy Alwaleed bin Talal is out of favor? (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • More ObamaCare rate hikes coming, as Democrats in blue states scramble to avoid the inevitable results of their own policy choices. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • Headline: “POPE SAYS HELL DOESN’T EXIST!” (tiny print) “According to a 93 year old atheist who has been wrong before, didn’t tape him, and is quoting from memory. And the Pope himself denies it.” Guess I’ll have to cancel that hooker and blow party I was going to throw Easter Sunday, just in case…
  • Gun ownership rates say absolutely nothing about homicide statistics.

    When a media source such as Mother Jones or Everytown for Gun Safety implies that “we have a gun problem,” they are making exactly the same reasoning error as if they said, “we have a black people problem.”

    And black population was six times more predictive than gun ownership was.

  • Harris County hit with lawsuit for refusing to turn over voter roles so non-citizens can be purged.
  • Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban is running for reelection on a platform of opposing Muslim immigration and George Soros.
  • Texas booze lobby defeated in court, paving the way for Sam’s Club, Costco, and other national chains to start selling hard liquor. (Hat tip: Cahnman’s Musings.)
  • Mozilla launches a “condom” extension to thwart Facebook spying on other sites.
  • Of all the things to be adopted by the InfoWars right as a bulwark against the radical left, an Austin vegetarian cat café would seem to be among the most unlikely.
  • What happens when an airliner crashes in your front yard.
  • Oracle vs. Google heads back to trial.
  • Karl Rehn attended the 2018 Rangemaster Tactical Conference and brought back lots of insights on things like engaging active shooters. That’s just the first of four after action reports, and all are worth your time to click through.
  • Latest Hollywood bigshot to sexually exploit underage women: Ren & Stimpy creator John Kricfalusi.

    In an extensive report from BuzzFeed, cartoonist John Kricfalusi—the creator of iconic Nickelodeon series Ren & Stimpy—has been accused of sexually exploiting teenage girls, promising them careers in animation at his studio Spumco while allegedly grooming them for sexual relationships. One of the women, Robyn Byrd, says it all began in 1994 when she was only 13, after she sent Kricfalusi a video of herself talking about how she wanted a career in animation and how important Ren & Stimpy was to her. Kricfalusi, who was 39 at the time, responded by sending her packages of toys and art supplies, and eventually he helped her set up an AOL account so they could communicate more regularly.

    Kricfalusi visited Byrd at her home and told her that she could “become a great artist,” and later he invited her out to Los Angeles, where she says he “touched her genitals through her pajamas” while they were at his house. She was 16. In 1997, Kricfalusi gave Byrd an internship at Spumco; she lived with him during this period, prompting him to allegedly call her “his 16-year-old girlfriend.” Convinced that he was helping her launch the career of her dreams, Byrd moved in with Kricfalusi once she graduated from high school.

    Apparently, this was all an open secret in the animation world at the time, partly due to an interview Kricfalusi gave with Howard Stern in which he creepily noted that a “hot chick with big cans and nice legs” he had drawn for a comic book was “underage, too.” People working at Spumco allegedly shrugged off the relationship between Byrd and Kricfalusi, with another former intern noting that Kricfalusi once “left out a drawing he made of Byrd, naked, with a dog ejaculating on her.”

  • Via Dwight comes a followup to yesterday’s Waco biker trial roundup: “Yesterday a judge ordered the McLennan County District Attorney’s Office to stop distributing what his attorney calls “private, intimate sexual images” of former defendant Cody Ledbetter and his wife.”
  • All good things must come to an end. And all bad ones.
  • Polish man kayaks across the Atlantic. Three times.
  • Waco Biker Trials Update

    March 29th, 2018

    The wheels of (in)justice seem to be grinding ever on in the endless string of (non)trials resulting from the 2015 Twin Peaks Waco biker shootout.

    First, another of the bikers arrested in the shootout is now headed to trial on April 2:

    Cody Ledbetter has been trying to get his day in court for almost three years as the specter of witnessing his stepfather’s death in the 2015 Twin Peaks shootout and his pending indictment hang over his life.

    Ledbetter and his attorney, Paul Looney, of Houston, got their wish Monday when 54th State District Judge Matt Johnson gave them the April 2 trial date initially reserved for the retrial of Jacob Carrizal, president of the Dallas Bandidos chapter, whose November trial ended in a mistrial.

    Ledbetter’s stepfather, Daniel Boyett, was shot and killed at Twin Peaks during the Sunday afternoon brawl between members of the Bandidos and Cossacks motorcycle groups and their support clubs, and Ledbetter’s life has been turned upside down while the first-degree felony charge hangs over his head.

    Carrizal’s trial ended in mistrial in November after jurors could not reach unanimous verdicts on any of the counts against him. The McLennan County District Attorney’s Office hand-picked Carrizal to be tried first among 154 bikers indicted at the time in the Twin Peaks case.

    On Monday, Carrizal’s new attorney, Christopher Lewis, of Dallas, filed a motion for continuance in the case, telling Johnson he is set for trial in federal court in Dallas on the same day. He also said he received 1.9 terabytes of discovery from the DA’s office on Feb. 12 and needs more time to adequately review the materials and prepare for trial.

    With a trial date available, Looney and Ledbetter, a 28-year-old diesel mechanic with no criminal record, jumped in.

    “It is just time to go in and lay the cards on the table and let the jury exonerate this man,” Looney said. “He has been innocent and on bond for three years. That is a torture that no innocent person should have to go through. It is time for it to stop, and we are finally in front of a group of people who can finally make it stop.”

    Looney filed a motion to disqualify McLennan County District Attorney Abel Reyna in October after it was discovered that the DA’s office released videos from Ledbetter’s cellphone that showed Ledbetter and his wife having sex. The videos were sent to more than 125 attorneys as part of the massive Twin Peaks discovery process.

    In news you may have missed, the charges against thirteen of the bikers were dismissed in February:

    An attorney for one of the bikers indicted in the deadly 2015 Twin Peaks shootout said it appears the “Twin Peaks dam” is starting to break with the dismissal of charges against 13 bikers Thursday.

    Meanwhile, the same attorney, Brian Bouffard, said McLennan County District Attorney Abel Reyna only dropped the cases in a show of “moral cowardice by an elected official” to avoid adverse testimony at a scheduled Thursday hearing to disqualify his office.

    Two district judges signed orders submitted to them by the DA’s office Thursday morning dismissing charges against 13 bikers arrested in the May 17, 2015, Twin Peaks shootout and two recusing the McLennan County District Attorney’s Office in two other biker cases.

    Besides the 13 dismissals, prosecutor Michael Jarrett told the judges that Reyna also intends to formally refuse eight more cases against bikers who were arrested, but have not been indicted in the shootout that left nine dead and dozens injured.

    The dismissals came hours before a hearing scheduled for Thursday afternoon at which two bikers were asking to disqualify Reyna from handling their cases on a variety of grounds.

    That hearing was canceled in light of Reyna’s actions.

    Reyna did not return phone calls seeking comment Thursday and declined to provide the Tribune-Herald with a written statement he prepared about the dismissals.

    Judge Ralph Strother, of Waco’s 19th State District Court, said Thursday he plans to ask the Texas Attorney General’s Office prosecutorial assistance division to take over prosecution of the case against biker Billy McRee. Reyna agreed to recuse his office in that case, while he dismissed the case against Jorge Salinas.

    Salinas, a two-tour Marine combat veteran; and McRee, a mechanic, are both former members of the Cossacks motorcycle group.

    Salinas, who said he was sitting in a deer blind when he was notified his case had been dismissed, said he became emotional at the news. He said he is grateful, but that the decision came too late and at too high a cost to him and his family.

    Salinas, his family and Bouffard, of Fort Worth, spoke at a press conference Thursday that also included McRee and his family; and his attorney, David Conrad Beyer, also of Fort Worth; and Dallas attorney Clint Broden.

    Broden, who represents two bikers indicted in the incident, said they chose the first-floor courthouse rotunda as the location of the press conference because it was there that Reyna held a press conference almost three years ago to announce that he had, as Broden characterized it, “bamboozled” a grand jury into indicting 154 bikers on identical charges after the shootout.

    “My client is a decorated Marine combat veteran,” Bouffard said. “He and I took the same oath years ago. Part of that oath is that we will support and defend the Constitution of the United States of America from all enemies, foreign and domestic. And I ask you and I ask the public to ask yourselves, what better definition of a domestic enemy of our Constitution than Abel Reyna?”

    The attorneys charged that Reyna only decided to drop the charges and to recuse his office in McRee’s case to escape being placed under oath at the disqualification hearing and to prevent the adverse testimonies of former and current members of his staff, some of whom have reported alleged abuses of his office to Texas Rangers and the FBI.

    “The Twin Peaks dam has now broken, and with each new dismissal that may come, the public will see clearly what Twin Peaks defense counsel have known for almost three years — that Abel Reyna arrested, charged, and indicted a very large number of these men for purely political reasons, apparently without any intent to take them to trial,” Bouffard said in a statement Thursday morning.

    “Though it took far too long, we pushed Mr. Reyna’s back to the wall and he finally had nowhere else to run.”

    And what about Mr. Reyna himself, the prosecutor who has yet to bring a single charge of murder in an incident where nine people died, but was more than willing to file conspiracy charges against bikers for being in the wrong place at the wrong time? He lost in the Republican primary:

    Barry Johnson, who beat Reyna in the Republican primary, made the bungled prosecution of more than a hundred bikers a central issue of his campaign. The years since the shootout, he argued, have been marked by misconduct, suppressed evidence, and overreach.

    According to the official story, two rival motorcycle gangs got into a turf war outside a local Twin Peaks restaurant, and then turned their guns on police officers who tried to intervene. Nine of the bikers were killed in the shootout and 20 more were wounded. But investigative reporters have cast doubt on this narrative, suggesting instead that police overreacted to a small skirmish and escalated the fight. Police were responsible for at least four of the nine deaths, according to evidence obtained by the Associated Press.

    Snip.

    Reyna’s office ultimately pursued charges against more than 150 bikers under the argument that even individuals who weren’t involved in the fight were guilty by their attendance alone. More than 100 bikers have since sued Waco for wrongful arrest. Their cases could cost the city more than a billion dollars.

    Prosecutors were caught repeatedly withholding evidence during the first and, thus far, only biker trial. A Texas Ranger relayed that Reyna had specifically instructed him to keep evidence away from the defense team.

    “At one point in the trial, [the defense attorney’s] discoveries of withheld evidence had become so regular that [the judge] ordered Reyna to instruct his prosecutors and all law enforcement agencies involved in the Twin Peaks investigation to go back and search their files to make sure all materials had been disclosed to the defense as required by law,” the Waco Tribune reported.

    That trial ended with a deadlocked jury in November. Since then, Reyna has dismissed more than 50 biker cases and recused his office from another to avoid a disqualification hearing. The bikers’ defense attorneys subpoenaed several of Reyna’s employees and a retired police detective to testify about the DA’s misconduct and corruption.

    Assuming he wins in November, Johnson has his job cut out for him cleaning up Abel Reyna’s mess…

    (Hat tip: Dwight.)

    The Mask Slips

    March 28th, 2018

    Finally!

    Finally, a high ranking Democrat finally has the guts to say what lies near and dear to the cockles of the vast majority of their party’s heart: “Repeal the Second Amendment.”

    Thanks you, John Paul Stevens, for not just, at long last, admitting what Democrats have long-believed, but doing so out-loud and in mixed company!

    There, was that so hard? All you had to do was tell the truth.

    Democrats want to repeal part of the Bill of Rights so they can forcibly disarm law-abiding Americans.

    Both left and right have known this for a long time, but Democrats felt compelled to lie about it for trivial reasons like “losing elections.”

    To thine own self be true!

    Additional reactions:

    Ann Althouse:

    Usually, advocates of gun control tend to give assurances that they’re not out to repeal the Second Amendment. A forthright demand for a repeal of the Second Amendment would wreck those assurances and elevate the pro-gun side, which could credibly intensify its rhetoric with reality-based anxiety that they are coming to take away your constitutional rights. If they can take away your Second Amendment rights — if the Bill of Rights is on the chopping block — they may come for your freedom of religion next, they can take away your freedom of speech, you right to be free of unreasonable searches and seizures — whatever they like, whatever they think stands in their way.

    Ed Morrissey at Hot Air:

    The op-ed comes across as whining over his Heller defeat and the implication that the Constitution should be treated as a historical relic (Stevens’ term). That certainly explains some of his votes on the Supreme Court, perhaps most notably in Kelo, although courts had unfortunately paved that road long before. At least in this case, Stevens suggests using a valid constitutional process to erode individual rights rather than a Supreme Court decision that effectively rewrites the Constitution to expand federal power at the expense of liberty. That may have more to do with Stevens’ lack of a seat on the court at this time, though.

    So how likely will a repeal effort be? Maybe if Democrats really start pushing it — as they clearly would love to see it happen — it might get, oh, 40% of the House to vote for it, far short of what’s necessary to send it to the states. The only states likely to ratify such an amendment proposal are those whose gun-control regulations have utterly failed to stop violence in their jurisdictions, as was the case in Washington DC when Heller was decided in 2008.

    However, such an effort would certainly clarify the choices for voters outside of those jurisdictions in national elections, and Democrats would be lucky to comprise 40% of Congress if they tried to follow Stevens’ advice. Don’t expect too many of them to climb on Stevens’ bandwagon, especially as rickety as it is in this essay.

    And some tweets:

    NBC To Broadcast Jesus Christ Superstar Live Easter Sunday

    March 27th, 2018

    My mind is clearer now
    At last
    All too well
    I can see
    Where we all
    Soon will be…

    Not paying much attention to TV networks, this news caught me off-guard: NBC will be broadcasting a live performance of the Tim Rice-Andrew Lloyd Webber musical Jesus Christ Superstar this Easter Sunday starting at 7 PM CDT.

    I am so going to watch the Hell out of that.

    I would confess my love of Jesus Christ Superstar as a guilty pleasure but I’m honestly not the least bit guilty about it. It’s musically the strongest of all the “rock operas” that made it to Broadway in the late 60s and early 70s. Thanks to the power of the source material, it’s a much more compelling musical than any of Webber’s later work. Though Christians may object to portions of it (Judas is portrayed more as a victim of God’s machinations than The Great Betrayer), most of it the story is recognizably faithful.

    And broadcasting a live musical on network television? That’s the sort of risk-taking that deserves to be rewarded.

    I am curious as to whether it will include “Could We Start Again, Please?“, the song from the Broadway production that was not in the original (and far more famous) London pre-cast recording.

    Real Reform in Saudi Arabia?

    March 26th, 2018

    Displaying another tiny crack in the wall of Saudi Arabian intransigence, Riyadh has allowed overflight of its country to Israel-bound air traffic for the first time.

    Saudi Arabia opened its airspace for the first time to a commercial flight to Israel with the inauguration of an Air India route between New Delhi and Tel Aviv.

    Flight 139 landed at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion Airport after a seven-and-a-half hour journey, marking a diplomatic shift for Riyadh that Israel says was fuelled by shared concern over Iranian influence in the region.

    To be sure, it’s not Israeli air traffic, but baby steps. Combine this with Friday’s story about Saudi Arabia purging Muslim Brotherhood members from the country, and signs that he wishes to loosen the restrictive dress code on omen (hat tip: Instapundit), and it appears that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is ushering in real reform in the kingdom. To be sure, the results will not remotely resemble modern western liberal democracy, but they will mark a vast improvement over the status quo that prevailed before his ascension.

    Speaking of Saudi Arabia, they also shot down seven ballistic missiles launched by Yemen’s Houthi rebels, the shrapnel from one killing an Egyptian citizen. Pretty much everyone believes the missiles are manufactured and supplied by Iran. Do you think Egypt is going to take that lying down? I rather doubt it. Egypt supports the Saudis in Yemen, but have avoided intervention due to their own unpleasant history there.

    Reform in Saudi Arabia is potentially one of the biggest stories this year, and the mainstream media is barely covering it at all.