The media gets lots of stories wrong, but the Kyle Rittenhouse story (along with the Russiagate hoax, the “fine people” hoax, and the antifa/BLM “mostly peaceful riots” gaslight) is a story that the mainstream media got intentionally wrong to push a particular narrative. (If you haven’t read it already, this previously linked Bari Weiss piece on the trial is the go-to piece for covering media lies.) As the fallout from media lies continues,
Kyle Rittenhouse was found not guilty on all six charges today, already causing a great exploding of heads in the pundit-o-sphere. Unrest wouldn’t be surprising. How could it be otherwise? Colleagues in national media spent over a year telling the country the 18-year-old was not just guilty, but a moral monster whose acquittal would be an in-your-face affirmation of systemic white supremacy.
It used to bother me that journalists were portrayed in pop culture as sniveling, amoral weenies. Take William Atherton’s iconic portrayal in Die Hard of “Thornburg,” the TV-news creep who gasps, “Tell me you got that!” with orgasmic awe when an explosion rocks the Nakatomi building. I got that I’d seen that face on reporters.
But risking the life of hero John McClane’s wife Holly by putting her name on TV, and getting the info by threatening the family nanny Paulina with an immigration raid? We’re bad, I thought, but not that bad. I got that it was a movie, but my father was a local TV man, and that one stung a bit.
MSNBC Thursday pulled a Thornburg in real life. Police stopped a man named James Morrison who was apparently following a jury bus, and said he was acting at the direction of a New York-based MSNBC producer named Irene Byon. Even if all you’re after is a post-verdict interview, if a jury gets the slightest whiff that the press is searching out their names and addresses, that’s clear intimidation. People will worry about the safety of their spouses and children as they’re deliberating. Not that it matters to anyone but the defense, prosecution, judge, jury, and taxpayers, but you’re also putting the trial at risk. I’ve covered plenty of celebrity trials, from Michael Jackson to the Enron defendants, and know the identifying-jurors practice isn’t unheard of. However, in a powder-keg case like this, it’s bonkers to play it any way but straight.
We’ve seen Die Hard-level indifference to social consequence from the beginning of this case. The context of the Rittenhouse shootings involved a summer of protests that began after the police killing of George Floyd, and continued in Kenosha after the shooting of Jacob Blake. We saw demonstrations of all types last summer, ranging from solemn candlelight vigils and thousands of protesters laying peacefully on their backs across bridges, to the burning of storefronts and “hundreds” of car thieves stealing “nearly 80” cars from a dealership in San Leandro, California. When the population is on edge, and people are amped and ready to lash out, that puts an even greater onus on media figures to get things right.
In a tinderbox situation like this one, it was reckless beyond belief for analysts to tell audiences Rittenhouse was a murderer when many if not most of them had a good idea he would be acquitted. But that’s exactly what most outlets did.
This is separate and apart from the question of whether or not you like Kyle Rittenhouse, or agree with his politics, or if, as a parent, you would want your own teenager carrying an AR-15 into a chaotic protest zone. The huge media error here was of the “Walls are closing in” variety, except the context was far worse. The “Walls are closing in” stupidity raised vague expectations among #Resistance audiences that at some unfixed point in time, Donald Trump would be pushed from office by scandal. In this case, the same people who poured out onto the streets last summer were told over and over that Rittenhouse was guilty, setting the stage for shock and horror if and when the “wrong” verdict came back.
Media figures got every element of this story wrong. As documented by TK contributor Matt Orfalea, the Young Turks alone spat out all sorts of misconceptions with shocking inattention: that Rittenhouse was “shooting randomly at people” after falling down, that he’d fired first, that there was no evidence that anyone had raised a gun at him, among many, many other errors. Belatedly, the show conceded some of these problems…
Snip.
Joe Scarborough on MSNBC said Rittenhouse unloaded “about sixty rounds” into the crowd (it was eight), adding in another segment that he “drove across state lines and started shooting people up,” and in still another that he was “shooting wildly, running around acting like a rent a cop, trying to protect property in a town he doesn’t know.” (His father and other relatives live there). John Heilemann on the same channel said Rittenhouse was “arguably a domestic terrorist” who “crossed state lines to go and shoot people.” Bakari Sellers, CNN: “The only person who fired shots that night was Kyle Rittenhouse” (he didn’t fire first, and protesters actually fired more rounds).
In the early days after the shooting, there were widespread reports that Rittenhouse either was a “militia member” or “thought of himself as a militia member,” but these turned out to not be true (he was actually only a member of a Police Explorers program). A well-known politician, squad member Ayanna Pressley, whom I wouldn’t by any means characterize as stupid or generally careless, tweeted a slew of accusations paired with a challenge to media outlets to “fix your damn headlines”
This was followed by other politicians making similar comments. Congressman Ted Lieu in September of last year said Rittenhouse “drove across state lines and he murdered two protesters,” adding, “Americans of all colors and creeds are seeing that racism and white supremacy are problems we can’t ignore.” Stacy Abrams said Rittenhouse was “willing to drive across state lines in order to commit murder.” Of course, the crowning impropriety, already mentioned in this space, was then-candidate Joe Biden putting Rittenhouse in a campaign ad in which he talked about how Trump “refused to disavow white supremacists” in a debate…
Snip.
A scant few outlets bothered to do what The New Yorker did in July of this year, in examining each of these claims one by one. This involved simple things like citing the Anti-Defamation League report covering Rittenhouse:
Quote:
There is to date no evidence that Rittenhouse was involved with the Kenosha Guard or showed up as a result of their call to action. Nor is there evidence of ties to other extremist groups, either militia groups or white supremacist groups. Rittenhouse’s social media accounts provided no evidence of ties to extremism prior to the killings.
The New Yorker also took a sober look at the oft-howled objection that Rittenhouse “crossed state lines,” as if this were somehow an offense in itself (see the Matt Orfalea video above) and quickly determined that news outlets simply didn’t bother to ask a few basic questions about the case:
Quote:
Because he lived in Illinois, people assumed that he had travelled some distance, for nefarious purposes, and had “crossed state lines” with his rifle. (The Rittenhouse apartment was a mile south of the Wisconsin border, and Rittenhouse had been storing his gun in Kenosha, at the house of a friend’s stepfather.)
Because of all of these simple factual misconceptions that Rittenhouse was a militia member and a white supremacist who’d traveled a great distance to a town to which he had no connection, then fired first and indiscriminately analysts not only pre-judged Rittenhouse’s guilt, but offered advance explanations for any possible acquittal.
Since it was not possible that it was real self-defense, the trial could only be an affirmation of white supremacy’s hold on the judicial system. “I know what white people are willing to do to defend white supremacy,” is how Nation justice correspondent Elie Mystal put it, in a Democracy Now! appearance that casually explained some of Judge Schroeder’s decisions by saying things like, “That’s what racists do.” There’s simply no requirement anymore for substantiating words like “white supremacist” or “racist” in media. We were once terrified to use these words without a lot of backup, but now, we don’t distinguish between a person who attends Richard Spencer rallies and, say, a judge with a “God Bless The U.S.A.” ringtone, or a member of a Police Explorers program.
Pretty much any use of the phrase “white supremacy” in current political context indicates the one using it is pushing a radical left-wing social justice agenda.
Here’s a quick and dirty takedown of various Rittenhouse lies in meme form:
One campaign, titled “CHARGED WITH BANK ROBBERY DURING GEORGE FLOYD RIOT,” has raised $140 of a $40,000 goal for a couple arrested in May last year.
“My girlfriend was released with no paper, but unfortunately they kept me and charged me with bank larceny,” the description reads, adding that the charges have since changed to “attempted bank robbery.”
Another titled “Fundraiser for Tuscon Arrestees” is soliciting donations for 12 people who face felony riot charges. The campaign has so far raised nearly $7,200 of a $12,000 goal.
The “Tia Pugh Legal Defense Fund” is raising money for a 22-year-old Alabama woman arrested for criminal mischief and inciting a riot. The fund has just fallen about $50 short of a $3,000 goal.
Rittenhouse, however, was unable to collect donations from the website because the then-17-year-old shooter was charged with a violent crime.
The Norfolk Virginia Police Department fired Sgt. William K. Kelly III for donating anonymously $25 to Kyle Rittenhouse’s defense.
The department only found out because a hacker group released the information of the anonymous users.
A jury found Rittenhouse not guilty on all counts.
Kelly wants his job back.
A lot of the left-wing response to the Rittenhouse verdict is that “juries would never acquit black people who used deadly force in self-defense.” A tiny problem with this argument: It’s not true.
Jaleel Stallings was acquitted of multiple attempted murder charges related to him shooting at several St. Paul police officers last summer. He [reasonably] claimed self-defense and that he had no idea these guys were cops. https://t.co/8DPWDdRIut
Timothy Simpkins, an 18-year-old who shot three people with an illegally possessed gun at a Texas high school, is literally out on bond right now and claiming he shot in self-defense. Honestly, he has a viable claim wrt to the intended target. https://t.co/A591OzmE36
Tony Bristol, a nightclub security guard, was acquitted after claiming self-defense in the shooting deaths of two unarmed patrons. https://t.co/Zqd3Ek3F1A
One rare Democrat not joining the irrational “Kyle Rittenhouse is a white supremacist murderer” mob: Tulsi Gabbard.
The jury got it right—finding Rittenhouse not guilty on all charges. The fact that charges were brought before any serious investigation is evidence that the government was motivated by politics, which itself should be considered criminal. pic.twitter.com/4pf8Ct3TkE
After spending 2020 calling police “systematically racist” and trying to get them defunded (mainly so they could get their fingers on that money, suddenly it’s 2021 and Democrat-run cities and counties suddenly need police to be their vaccine enforcers. And police aren’t having any of it.
Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot has foolishly put herself—and the safety of the people of Chicago—in a game of chicken, with at least half the police force ready to defy her vaccine mandate and be sent home from work by City Hall without pay, rather than comply.
“She wants to play a game of chicken. Well, we’re in a semi. And she’s in a Smart Car. And she wants to play chicken?” said Fraternal Order of Police President John Catanzara told me on Thursday. “That’s her decision.”
I figure Chicago’s little Napoleon in pants suits caves by Friday. As I type this on Thursday evening, Chicago aldermen are calling, saying she’s already blinking on her threats of “no vaccine, you’ll be sent home without pay.”
FRIDAY MORNING UPDATE: She blinked. She did cave. After her repeated threats, she won’t withhold their pay and send them home if they don’t comply with her vaccine mandate. Lori, that’s no way to play chicken or poker. Her chicken little game has come home to roost. Cops have had enough. Now she’s pouting, driving up the ramp of the chicken coop in her little clown car.
If she didn’t cave, victims of weekend violence would blame Lightfoot because she put her ego ahead of public safety. The smart play was to cave and call it something else. Her media friends can spin it. She can even call it victory, if she wants. But she caved. And that weakens her even more.
Across Allegheny County, public employees are fighting vaccine mandates but none as hard as those in law enforcement, which has suffered some of the highest losses from the disease.
The unions representing the county police and the corrections officers have gone to court to block the county’s order that all employees be vaccinated or be fired.
According to the National Fraternal Order of Police, 743 police officers have reportedly died of COVID-19, but while the FOP is encouraging officers to get vaccinated, the union opposes mandates, calling vaccines a personal health decision.
The leader of the Seattle Police Officers Guild (SPOG), which represents over 1,300 officers of the Seattle Police Department (SPD), is calling the COVID-19 vaccine mandate the latest in a long list of betrayals by the city of Seattle.
SPOG President Mike Solan said city leaders could accommodate officers who don’t want the shot and keep the city safe, but they are choosing not to do that. With just days until the mandate takes effect, Solan said now is not the time to force a vaccine on officers as the police department already faces a staffing crisis.
“Crime is surging in this city. Our community is demanding more police officers to answer the 911 calls, and the fact we’ve already lost close to 350 police officers because of the politicians’ political betrayal,” said Solan.
Solan said that before George Floyd’s death at the hands of Minneapolis police officers in May 2020, city officials called SPD a “model department” when it came to police reform. But he said the tables turned after Floyd’s death with some city leaders demanding massive cuts to the department.
Now, Solan wants Mayor Jenny Durkan to do what some other cities have done and allow officers who don’t want to get the shot the option to wear masks, get tested regularly for COVID-19, and not have their assignments changed.
“For some reason, this mayor is refusing that, which I think is unreasonable and is void of common sense,” said Solan.
It’s only illogical if you haven’t been paying attention. Every knee must bend to the holy demands of the Party and the State. Heresy against the narrative cannot be tolerated.
Biden is bumbling, borders are crumbling, bankers are plotting, and Art is out. Welcome to another Friday LinkSwarm!
Stephen Green finds out the real reason behind the supply chain SNAFUs: California Democrats changing the rules because they weren’t getting enough kickbacks and graft from an efficiently functioning transportation system.
The immediate problem, the one in Los Angeles, has been caused by the state’s vindictively regulatory state government.
We’ll get to the trucker shortage in just a moment, but California also faces a shortage of trucks for them to drive.
Twitter user Jerry Oakley reminds us that “Carriers domiciled in California with trucks older than 2011 model, or using engines manufactured before 2010, will need to meet the Board’s new Truck and Bus Regulation beginning in 2020.” Otherwise, “Their vehicles will be blocked from registration with the state’s DMV,” according to California law.
Snip.
As a result, trucks aren’t being purchased to replace the ones being regulated out of business.
But even if there were plenty of trucks in California, there wouldn’t be enough truckers to drive them — and it isn’t because the truckers are too old.
“Traditionally the ports have been served by Owner Operators,” Oakley says, who are non-union. But under AB-5, “California has now banned Owner Operators.”
Just like the union longshoremen, union truckers work under a whole host of work rules that simply can’t accommodate crisis conditions like the ones in Los Angeles.
In fact, those work rules helped create the crisis conditions.
The exact language of AB-5 was copied and pasted into Presidentish Joe Biden’s $5 trillion (Or: Five Million Million Dollar) “Build Back Better” bill currently stalled in the Senate.
It’s one thing for Californians to screw themselves over, but AB-5 is hurting the entire country’s economy — and Washington Democrats want to take AB-5 nationwide.
Social Justice doesn’t want to win, it wants to destroy you:
If you’re unaware, [David] Shor was canceled for accurately summarizing the contents of an academic paper. Shor made a point that he felt was important for the messaging of the Democrats. At the time the country was exploding in riots aligned with BlackLivesMatter and driven by anger over the deaths of George Floyd and Breanna Taylor. Shor linked to a paper that argued that riots have bad political consequences for Democrats. This would not seem to be particularly inflammatory; people indiscriminately burning and smashing shit has little obvious utility for the marginalized or anyone else. But Shor lost his job for tweeting that paper and agreeing with its thesis. Similarly, the Intercept’s Lee Fang was absolutely mobbed for the crime of recording an interview with a young Black man who was critical of the riots and the protest movement from which they sprang. He almost lost his job, as well.
(Here’s a fun tip for you all: if you have the power to get someone fired or otherwise ruin their life you are not a powerless, marginalized Other.)
Not that they had rebutted a particularly coherent pro-riot argument. There was little in the way of defense of riots in 2020 at all, really. Many attempted to invoke Martin Luther King in that regard, which is hilarious and bizarre concerning a man who among many other critiques of riots said that they “are not revolutionary but reactionary because they invite defeat; they offer an emotional catharsis, but they must be followed by a sense of futility,” and that close to the end of his life. (In their defense, almost no one who invokes MLK has actually read him.) But what Shor and Fang were guilty of was not of breaking with some intellectual mandate within liberalism but with speaking out of turn, with criticizing the wrong people. The difference between Shor and Fang’s criticism of the pro-riot side and the behavior of those who rose against them is that Shor and Fang never tried to destroy anyone, didn’t tweet at anyone’s boss in an attempt to get them fired, didn’t have the inclination or the power to punish those who dared to disagree with them. But those who targeted them were operating in a bizarre liberal discursive culture where, if you dress up what you’re doing in vague language about oppression, you can operate however you’d like without rebuke and attempt to ruin the life of whoever you please.
Snip.
The left-of-center is in a profoundly strange and deeply unhealthy place. In the span of a decade or less a bizarre form of linguistically-radical but substantively-conservative identity neoliberalism descended from decaying humanities departments in elite universities and infected social media like Tumblr and Twitter, through which it conquered the media and entertainment industries, the nonprofit industrial complex, and government entities as wide-ranging as the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights and the brass of the Pentagon. That movement now effectively controls the idea-and-story generating power of our society, outside of explicitly conservative media which exists in a large silo but a silo all the same. On any given day the most powerful institutions in the world go to great lengths to mollify the social justice movement, to demonstrate fealty, to avoid its wrath. It’s common now for liberals to deny the influence and power of social justice politics, for inscrutable reasons, but if the current level of control over how people talk publicly is insufficient, I can’t imagine what would placate them. Are most of these institutions false friends? Of course. But that, too, is not much of a defense.
This tendency to be promiscuous in enthralling elites and powerful institutions should be a clue to the fact that, despite its radical self-branding, the contemporary social justice movement fundamentally serves to empower the status quo. Effective left politics are about convincing various people who are unalike that they have a shared self-interest, that society can do best for them when we do best for others, too. That’s how you build a mass movement, by appealing to people’s sense of self-interest and showing them how they can help their neighbors while they help themselves. But because the social justice movement’s first dictate is to establish a hierarchy of suffering, and to tell those that are purported to suffer less that their problems aren’t problems, no such mass movement is coming. The social justice movement is not just incidentally antagonistic to organizing everyone and recognizing all kinds of people as worthy of our compassion and support. That antagonism is existential. When you ask many people within the movement, “what could we do to convert the white working class to our values?,” they will simply tell you that they don’t want to convert them, that they are not worthy of being a part of their movement. They would rather have targets than converts, to lose as an exclusive moral caste than win as a grubby populist coalition.
Core to understanding this moment is to realize that the vast majority of people who enforce these politics don’t actually believe in them. They don’t, that is, think that social justice politics as currently composed are healthy or just or likely to result in tangible positive change. There’s a core of true-believers who do, and there’s a group of those who profit directly from the hegemony of social justice politics in elite spaces. (The former two groups have some overlap, but it’s not a perfect circle.) There’s conservative critics, who are both the most natural targets of social justice ire and yet those the social justice movement seem least interested in targeting. There’s an island of misfit toys of left and leftish critics of social justice politics like me. And then there’s the great big mass of people who are just scared.
Do global elites have incentives for pushing “Green Energy”/”Climate Change” nonsense? $150 trillion of them.
Now, in case someone is still confused, none of these institutions, and not a single of the erudite officials running them, give a rat’s ass about the climate, about climate change risks, or about the fate of future generations of Americans (and certainly not about the rising water level sweeping away their massive waterfront mansions): if they did, total US debt and underfunded liabilities wouldn’t be just shy of $160 trillion.
So what is going on, and why is it that virtually every topic these days has to do with climate change, “net zero”, green energy and ESG?
The reason – as one would correctly suspect – is money. Some $150 trillion of it.
Snip.
How much would this green utopia cost, because if the “net zero”, “ESG”, “green” narrative is pushed so hard 24/7, you know it will cost a lot.
Turns out it does. A lot, lot.
Responding rhetorically to the key question, “how much will it cost?”, BofA cuts to the case and writes $150 trillion over 30 years – some $5 trillion in annual investments – amounting to twice current global GDP!
At this point the report gets good because since it has to be taken seriously, it has to also be at least superficially objective. And here, the details behind the numbers, do we finally learn why the net zero lobby is so intent on pushing this green utopia – simple answer: because it provides an endless stream of taxpayer and debt-funded “investments” which in turn need a just as constant degree of debt monetization by central banks.
Consider this: the covid pandemic has so far led to roughly $30 trillion in fiscal and monetary stimulus across the developed world. And yet, not even two years later, the effect of this $30 trillion is wearing off, yet despite the Biden’s admin to keep the Covid Crisis at bay, threatening to lock down society at a moment’s notice with the help of the complicit press, the population has made it clear that it will no longer comply with what is clear tyranny of the minority.
And so, the establishment needs a new perpetual source (and use) of funding, a crisis of sorts, but one wrapped in a virtuous, noble facade. This is where the crusade against climate change comes in.
Imagine a central banker, destroying your bank account through hyperinflation…forever.
Controlling (barely) all three branches of government, you wouldn’t expect Democrats to show this much panic.
he results in 2020 came as a shock to Democrats for several reasons. First, Joe Biden’s official margin of victory, while slightly larger than Obama’s in 2012 at 51.26% to 46.8%, was half the size that polls, such as Nate Silver’s 538, had showed, at 51.8% to 43.4%. But even more concerning for Democrats, the locations of the polling error tended to be not in places where Democrats were strong, but rather either in swing areas where they hoped for gains, or areas where Obama had done well in 2008 and 2012, but Trump had won in 2016. In effect, Democrats won areas they felt were moving in their direction such as Arizona, Pennsylvania, Nevada, and Wisconsin by far less than they expected, and lost states they thought were close such as Iowa, Ohio, and Florida by much larger margins.
The implications of this in the Presidential race were obscured by the fact that the numbers showed Biden won. But they were keenly felt in the Senate races, where Democrats lost races in Iowa and North Carolina where they believed they were favored, and their candidates did worse than Biden even where he won, such as in Michigan and Maine. The result at the time was to leave the Senate at 50 Republicans and 48 Democrats, a situation transformed by the victory of Democrats Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock against a dysfunctional Georgia GOP in January 2021. Nonetheless, it was ominous and it set the tone for Democratic behavior in 2021.
In light of these results, we can understand that the reason Democrats are now obsessing the filibuster is not because they have a mere 50 seats in the Senate. When Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut calls out Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema for blocking legislation that 48 Democrats support, he is doing so not because he believes they are likely to be 50 or 52 Senators for it in the future but because he is pretty sure 50 is as good as it is going to get. In 2008, Democrats won 60 Senate seats, and while with hindsight we can see this was a high-water mark, at the time Democrats dreamed bigger. After all, Mitch McConnell had only won 53%-47% in 2008. There were also open seats in states Obama had won in 2008 such as New Hampshire, North Carolina and Florida coming up in 2010, and there was a path to a Democratic supermajority.
That is not the case after 2020. In 2020, only Susan Collins won reelection in a state won by the Presidential candidate of the opposing party. Democratic challengers, including strong ones such as Montana’s two-term governor, Steve Bullock lost, and lost badly (by 10% in Bullock’s case). This was also not just a 2020 phenomenon. Despite a good year for Democrats overall in 2018, Democratic incumbent Senators lost in Florida, Indiana, and Missouri that year.
Biden’s underperformance scared Democrats because it indicated a ceiling, rather than a floor for their strength.
In 2022, Democrats will be defending Senate seats in Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, and New Hampshire, all states that went to Biden, but within margins whereby strong GOP challengers, which exist in all those states, could win. More problematically, the list of Democratic targets includes only Pennsylvania and Wisconsin among states Biden won, and North Carolina and Florida among states Trump won by less than landslide margins. Matching Biden exactly would get the Democrats a gain of two seats; but even in 2020 most Democratic candidates ran behind Biden, and Biden is himself deeply unpopular today.
The situation in the House is, if anything, worse for the Democrats. Democrats lost 12 House seats in 2020. The impact of redistricting is overblown – Republicans will gain a marginal advantage from the lines, but census results show the areas growing most quickly lean Democrat – yet nonetheless, the Democrat position is so weak that any deterioration in Biden’s position will be fatal to their 2022 hopes.
In effect, the 2021 Democratic majorities are on a “death watch,” and Democrats’ confused attempts to deal with that realization is determining their current erratic behavior.
The split in the party is not so much between the moderates and the progressives. It is between progressives and moderates who desire political futures and those who know they have none. Pelosi is able to generally pass left-wing legislation in the House despite her narrow majority because many of her moderates know they are doomed no matter what, and are willing to cast their votes for the progressive agenda. In turn, AOC and the Squad feel free to sabotage any compromises because their own seats are safe and they believe they have time to fight another day, even if it is ten years from now. By contrast, both Sinema and Manchin seem to resent the efforts of other Democrat officials to pressure them to commit political suicide or behave as if they personally are doomed, just because it is true of some of their colleagues. In particular, rhetoric out of the Democrat caucus that Manchin is “probably in his last term anyway” or that Sinema “won’t win reelection” seems predicated on the idea that both should act as if they are finished and behave accordingly.
But think about the deeper implications of that statement: All moderate Democrats (with the possible exceptions of Manchin and Sinema) are aching to do The Will of the Party and push the most radical, leftmost agenda possible if only it weren’t for the pesky problems of winning elections. Even moderate Democrats are leftwing radicals.
Biden: The war against terror is over! Supreme Court: Then why are you still doing all these things that are only legal if a war’s still on? Biden Administration: Yeah, when we said the war against terror was over, we didn’t mean it was over over…
You know Merrick Garland’s social justice warrior problem? It gets worse:
We learned, too, that Merrick Garland’s son-in-law, through his company, Panorama Education, sells CRT materials to public schools. And yesterday, it turned out that Panorama is also spreading material calling Trump and his supporters “white supremacists”
Alexander “Xan” Tanner, a very White man, is married to Merrick Garland’s daughter. Tanner co-founded Panorama Education, which purports to provide a data platform that delves into students’ psychosocial issues in order to help schools intervene in problems and improve the school climate. In a word, it’s creepy…
The educational workshop released by Panorama Education, co-founded by Alexander “Xan” Tanner, the group’s president, revolves around “systemic racism” and includes an article as a resource that states the Ku Klux Klan and attendees of Trump’s rallies are both “examples of white supremacy.”
Garland should be forced to resign.
“More Hunter Biden Questions: Art Gallery Repping Him Gets Big Federal COVID Loan.” Try to contain your shock.
A husband and wife were arrested for trying to sell U.S. submarine secrets. “Navy nuclear engineer Jonathan Toebe, 42, and wife, Diana, 49, were charged Saturday with selling secret information to an unidentified foreign country.” Bonus! “The woman arrested with her Navy nuclear engineer husband for allegedly selling secret information about nuclear submarines to an undercover FBI agent appears to be vocally in support of Black Lives Matter and ‘resistance’ movements on her social media.” There’s a lot of shocked face in this LinkSwarm…
Investigators determined Trenae Myesha Rainey, 28, a facility employee, did not contact residents as set by procedure and instead filled out the applications and forged the resident’s signature to each application….
Investigators determined Nancy Juanita Williams, 55, planned to control absentee ballots for legally incapacitated persons under her care by fraudulently submitting 26 absentee ballot applications to nine identified city and township clerks.
Morgan Freeman still isn’t having any of your defund the police lunacy. “I am not in the least bit for defunding the police.”
Democratic Virginia gubernatorial candidate and Clinton toady Terry McAuliffe lies again.
Democratic gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe incorrectly stated on Thursday night that there were 1,142 children in Virginia’s intensive care unit beds, a gross overestimation of the virus’s current impact in the state.
“We in Virginia today, 1,142 children are in ICU beds,” McAuliffe stated during a roundtable discussion with local reporters. The statistic is a massive overestimation. Virginia Department of Health statistics show that there are a total of 443 people of all ages currently in ICU beds, a fraction of the figure McAuliffe put forth for children.
The state database shows the number of Virginians in ICU beds infected with COVID-19 has never come close to 1,142 since the first hospitalizations in March 2020—the peak of individuals hospitalized in the ICU with COVID-19 was on Jan. 13, when there were 587 cases. State records show that just 1,094 individuals younger than 19 years old have been hospitalized with COVID-19 since the beginning of the pandemic. Children, who rarely get seriously ill from the virus, have never made up a significant chunk of hospitalized individuals.
McAuliffe also said during the roundtable Virginia had “8,000 cases on Monday,” another exaggerated statistic. On Monday, Oct. 4, Virginia saw 1,220 “confirmed” cases and 864 “probable” cases, according to the Virginia Department of Health.
The state has never seen 8,000 confirmed cases in a day. According to the department, Virginia’s 7-day moving case average peaked at 5,904 on Jan. 8, 2021—a number thousands short of McAuliffe’s case assessment.
“Longtime politician Mark Ridley-Thomas and the former dean of the School of Social Work at a university in Southern California were indicted today on federal corruption charges that allege a bribery scheme in which a Ridley-Thomas relative received substantial benefits from the university in exchange for Ridley-Thomas supporting county contracts and lucrative contract amendments with the university while he served on the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors.” This is the fed indictment notice, so it doesn’t mention that he’s a lifetime Democrat, in addition to being an LA City Councileman and former state rep.
Art Acevedo out in Miami. Sounds like a mixture of BS and real Acevedo stupidity. And it’s generally not a good idea to compare Miami Cubans to commies…
“Buy an electric vehicle,” they said. “They’re just as good and you’ll be saving the earth,” they said. Well surprise! “UK Readying New Law Mandating Home EV Chargers Be Shut Down During Peak Hours.” Also: “Beginning May 30, 2022, all chargers that are installed must be ‘smart’ chargers connected to the internet, allowing their functions to be limited between 8am to 11am and 4pm to 10pm.” Big brother in his squad car’s coming near…
Communist China demands that Christian pastor denounce himself for daring to preach the gospel in violation of state doctrine. Oh wait, did I say Communist China? I meant “Canada.”
Texas House passes Save Girls Sports act to keep them from having to compete against men.
UK: “Sir David Amess: Conservative MP stabbed to death. Police said a 25-year-old man was arrested on suspicion of murder after the attack at a church in Leigh-on-Sea.” Police seem awful tight-lipped on details about the murderer…
When the federal government banned sliced bread, supposedly due to helping the war effort in World War II. But nobody would admit who ordered it, or what scarce wartime commodities it was supposed to save, and the ban was lifted after two months. Sound familiar? Well, except for that whole “admitting the mistake and quickly reversing course” part…
John Kerry’s commie connection. “Kerry’s latest filing with the Office of Government Ethics shows Teresa Kerry benefits from an investment of at least $1 million in a hedge fund specializing in private partnerships with Chinese government-controlled funds.” (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
The Indictment of Hillary Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussman for allegedly lying to the FBI has a lot of people grumbling about how long it took prosecutor John Durham to finally come up with an indictment of someone with regard to the Russia collusion hoax. And even then, while Sussman was an important lawyer at an important Democrat operative law firm, his indictment has a “that’s it?” feel to it.
But, the 27-page Indictment is a wealth of information, and hopefully a roadmap to wider and more substantial prosecutions (you can’t take my hope away!). What the indictment demonstrates is that the Russia collusion claim leveled against Donald Trump and the Trump campaign was a fabrication of Hillary Clinton operatives who peddled the fraud to the media and FBI, allowing Clinton to use the media reports in the campaign against Trump.
Much like the fabricated Steele Dossier, also paid for and arranged by Clinton operatives, Hillary Clinton and Clintonworld perpetrated a massive fraud on the American public which not only manipulated the election process but also froze the Trump presidency and nearly paralyzed the nation politically for years.
We have had some pretty terrible politicians in our lifetime, and it’s always dangerous to say “the worst” — but the Russia collusion hoax fabricated by Hillary Clinton operatives proves beyond little doubt that Hillary Clinton is the most systemically manipulative politician of our lifetime.
Forget the MSM spin: Here’s what the Maricopa County audit really found:
None of the various systems related to elections had numbers that would balance and agree with each other. In some cases, these differences were significant.
There appears to be many ballots cast from individuals who had moved prior to the election.
Files were missing from the Election Management System (EMS) Server.
Ballot images on the EMS were corrupt or missing.
Logs appeared to be intentionally rolled over, and all the data in the database related to the 2020 General Election had been fully cleared.
On the ballot side, batches were not always clearly delineated, duplicated ballots were missing the required serial numbers, originals were duplicated more than once, and the Auditors were never provided Chain‐of‐ Custody documentation for the ballots for the time‐period prior to the ballot’s movement into the Auditors’ care. This all increased the complexity and difficulty in properly auditing the results; and added ambiguity into the final conclusions.
That’s the thing about a Missing White Woman story — the damsel-in-distress angle only works, in terms of TV news ratings, if the missing woman is young and attractive, preferably blonde. Males can and do go missing, but those disappearances never dominate national news. It’s always a woman, and a young, attractive woman — if she’s old, fat or ugly, nobody cares if she goes missing. But the nubile blonde? Oh, yeah, that’s nationwide headline stuff, because she’s Prime Rape Bait, and sex is the secret ingredient in the Missing White Woman story.
Beyond the cynical calculations of ratings-hungry TV news producers, however, what’s really wrong with Missing White Woman Syndrome is not the kind of “social justice” concerns Joy Reid is talking about. No, what’s wrong is that it feeds the public’s distorted ideas about crime.
How many people are murdered in America annually? Nearly 14,000 in 2019, according to the FBI, and about 78% of the victims were male. In terms of statistical risk, then, males were nearly four times more likely to be murdered than women, but how many of those murdered men become national news? Not many. And how many murder victims are white? About 5,800 in 2019 — 42% of the total — whereas blacks were 54% of the total murders. There were 1,759 white women murdered in 2019 — 12.6% of the total, according to the FBI — compared to 6,446 black males, 46.3% of the total. So the death of Gabby Petito was anomalous, a comparative rarity in the overall crime situation in America.
A blonde, blue-eyed “social media influencer” is not typical of murder victims, who are disproportionately male and black. During the month of August, when Gabby and her boyfriend were on their excursion across the West, 87 people were killed and 424 were wounded in Chicago. Did any of those Chicago victims make national news? Well, about 83% of the victims in Chicago were black, and none were blonde, blue-eyed 22-year-old “social media influencers.” Not newsworthy, you see?
The selectivity of the news media in deciding which murders deserve national attention is a sort of bias that most people never notice. Why does the death of one black in police custody become a cause célèbre, while the vast majority of murdered black men — about 125 a week, on average — never get any national media attention? Because the death of George Floyd fit a specific political narrative. And why does the disappearance of a blonde girl with an Instagram account get hourly updates on the cable-news networks? Because it’s a convenient distraction from the disastrous failure of Joe Biden’s presidency.
In fact, there were at least 46 reports of swollen balls (and another 76 of testicular pain) in the VAERS database of adverse reactions.
People who wanted Biden to win to see a “return to normal” are being gravely disappointed:
In traditional Washington fashion, Biden has ignored that message voters sent and delivered the opposite. In less than seven months, we have found that Biden is far from that empathetic persona he has crafted over the years, and we have not returned to anything near normal.
And Biden lies. Not tiny little lies, but ones that affect events that are deeply tragic. Last week, he told leaders in the Jewish community that he visited the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, where 11 people were slaughtered during a service in 2018.
Synagogue officials said he was never there.
One can only guess he said this as an attempt to continue the manufactured empathy he allegedly possesses. Forgetfulness is not an excuse anyone should accept.
Nor is it normal.
In fact, the only thing the Biden presidency has done most effectively is prove that we are not on the path to normality under his administration.
From the uneven overall economy to soaring inflation to the humiliating debacle in Afghanistan, and from Biden’s insistence to spend our money like a drunken sailor to the crisis at the Mexican border that he has blatantly ignored and to how he has politicized the pandemic: None of this is normal, none of this promotes stability, none of this is what an exhausted electorate bargained for.
Over the past 18 months our overall sales have increased as follows:
590% increase in revenue
604% increase in transactions
271% increase in site traffic
77% increase in conversion rate
This data is from February 23, 2020 – August 23, 2021, when compared to the previous 18 months (August 24, 2018 – February 22, 2020).
Leading the way: Texas, with a 736% increase.
9mm was the most popular ammunition just about everywhere, followed by .223 and 5.56 NATO.
“Maspeth High School [NYC] created fake classes, awarded bogus credits, and fixed grades to push students to graduate — ‘even if the diploma was not worth the paper on which it was printed,’ an explosive investigative report charges. Principal Khurshid Abdul-Mutakabbir demanded that teachers pass students no matter how little they learned, says the 32-page report by the Special Commissioner of Investigation for city schools, Anastasia Coleman.”
Alexandria Ocasio Cortez’s gambit to have funding for Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system stripped backfires, with the funding passing 420-9. Now there’s principled case to be made against the U.S. funding Iron Dome, as part of a broader initiative to eliminate all foreign aid because it’s not an enumerated responsibility of the federal government, because we’re already running huge budget deficits, and because Israel is a prosperous, modern country that shouldn’t need our charity. But we all know that not why The Squad presented this bill.
I think the Squad’s biggest problem with the Iron Dome is that it keeps people from killing Jews.
Word is that pick isn’t popular with the rank and file:
@austin_police officers voted 90% to 10% for an outside candidate over a career insider for chief, yet Cronk/Council gave the insider the nod. Tell me again who is protecting the status quo? #atxcouncil has forfeited the right to say APD officers are the ones resisting change. pic.twitter.com/RwnBOHptmv
In the UK: “Our eco-obsessed government is sleepwalking into an energy crisis….we could be facing a hard winter of higher energy bills and even blackouts.”
50-64 years: 106,674 (.27% of total cases) 65-74 years: 144,020 (.36% of total cases) 75-84 years: 173,655 (.43% of total cases) 85+ years: 185,188 (.46% of total cases)
50-64 years: 106,674 (.27% of total cases) 65-74 years: 144,020 (.36% of total cases) 75-84 years: 173,655 (.43% of total cases) 85+ years: 185,188 (.46% of total cases)
Islamic terrorist dirtnapped in Indonesia. “The military earlier said the militants killed late Saturday were Ali Kalora, leader of the East Indonesia Mujahideen network that has claimed several killings of police officers and minority Christians, and another suspected extremist, Jaka Ramadan, also known as Ikrima.” (Hat tip: Rantburg.)
Our current moment is often described as a “racial reckoning.” In reality, what this often means is that a narrative about Black victimization has gone mainstream. We hear endlessly about systemic racism, white supremacy, the black/white income gap, and police brutality. So powerful an ideology has this narrative become that those of us who pose a credible counter-narrative—black anti-woke writers, for example—frequently find our words being misconstrued in an effort to stanch their impact.
This doesn’t happen to everyone who opposes the Critical Social Justice narrative of black victimization. White dissenters are simply called “racist” while many black dissenters are considered tragic victims of internalized racism. But things get ugly when woke Critical Social Justice proponents encounter a certain kind of black person who does not align with their preferred victim narrative and instead emphasizes his or her own individuality or self-regard. Such people present a threat to the woke narrative, since that narrative insists that all black people are victims of white supremacy, meaning anyone who insists on their individuality and their own power proves the falsity of that victim narrative; if the woke narrative were true, such people should not be able to exist.
Which means that when we claim to exist, antiracist woke warriors need to erase us, using a logical fallacy I call “erase and replace.” Erase and replace is a combination of the strawman and ad hominem logical fallacies. The move involves taking the argument someone is making and substituting it for one that fits more neatly into the woke victim narrative by specifically targeting the character of the challenger—since it is, in part, their character that is the greatest challenge.
“Chris Cuomo accused of sexually harassing former boss at 2005 party.” “A former ABC executive producer has accused Chris Cuomo of sexually harassing her at a 2005 work party after he grabbed her butt in front of her husband and co-workers.” If she was his boss, does that technically count as sexual harassment? In New York, I believe such an offense would fall under the statute for “forcible touching,” which is a class A misdemeanor. Do you think that this is coming out now because, with his brother out of office, Fredo is no longer of any particular political use to CNN?
ACLU alters Ruth Bader Ginsberg’s words to eliminate #Wrongthink.
The Republican National Committee (RNC) is invested in a comprehensive nationwide effort to make it easier to vote and harder to cheat. We’re fighting for election integrity because it’s absolutely vital to protect the sanctity of your ballot from Democrat schemes to undermine voting security. We are involved in 19 election integrity lawsuits nationwide, and we’re winning the fight.
Our investment is partially driven by polling that consistently shows the American people supporting our common-sense approach to securing elections. A recent poll commissioned by the RNC found that 78 percent of Americans support a proposed voting plan with five key principles: presenting voter ID, verifying voters’ signatures, controlling the ballot’s chain of custody, bipartisan poll observation, and cleaning up voter rolls. The poll also found that 80 percent of voters support voter ID requirements; this sentiment matches up with other polling, including a recent one from NPR which found 79 percent of voters in favor of voter ID. The measures we are pushing are not controversial or dramatic. They are common-sense and they are supported by American citizens.
Of course, that hasn’t stopped Democrats from trying to generate false outrage and controversy at every level of this conversation. The Democrat election playbook is simple: lie and seek attention until the mainstream media eagerly takes the baton and turns Democrat lies into a false national narrative. You saw this in Georgia, where Joe Biden and Stacey Abrams’ lies about the state’s election reforms pressured the MLB into moving its All-Star Game out of Atlanta. These lies cost the good people of Georgia an estimated $100 million. You’re seeing it now in Texas, where local Democrats have stormed out of legislative debates on election integrity not once, but twice. Their latest stunt saw them leave the floor of the Texas legislature and hop on private planes to fly to DC in a juvenile quest for media attention.
Unsurprisingly, the mainstream media lapped it up. This is their playbook. When it comes to election integrity, Americans need to pay attention to the relationship between Democrat lies and the mainstream media machine.
Back on June 24, the great Peggy Noonan hailed [Eric] Adams’s primary win as a victory of reality over progressive theory. “Adams was a cop for 22 years, left the New York City Police Department as a captain, and was the first and for a long time the only candidate to campaign on crime and the public’s right to safety. He was the first to admit we were in a crime wave.” Noonan observed, accurately, that African-American voters were not necessarily the most progressive voters in the electorate anymore, and that they represented a de facto force of, if not conservatism, then a realist wariness of the fringes of modern progressive thinking.
The notion of a centrist, tough-on-crime mayor replacing the notorious groundhog murderer and early pandemic denier sounds good, but we’ll see. Every elected official operates within a particular “Overton Window”: the range of policies that a politician can recommend without appearing too extreme to gain or keep public office given the climate of public opinion at that time. Adams did not win this primary by a landslide. While he received the most votes in the first round, he was the top choice of less than a third of the city’s Democrats. He has 51.1 percent out of the final two.
New York City desperately needs a dramatic improvement in its policing and prosecution of criminals, but Adams will have to take on a lot of deeply entrenched opponents and a city media and cultural environment that have evolved to reflexively demonize the NYPD. Way back in 2005, Fred Siegel described the New York City of the David Dinkins years as an era of “hysteria that led upstanding liberals to insist that they were more afraid of the NYPD than they were of criminals.” Whatever you think of Rudy Giuliani now, the young(er) mayor of the early 1990s was willing to be utterly hated as he enacted his reforms, convinced that the broader public would look past the controversy and appreciate the effects of lower crime rates. It remains to be seen whether Adams has that same courage to exchange short-term unpopularity for long-term improvement in the city’s streets — or whether he’ll bump up against the city’s Overton Window of what policy changes are acceptable and settle for a series of half measures.
The irony is that we see the same phenomenon in the opposite direction at the national level in Washington. Many progressives interpreted Biden’s presidential win, the 50–50 Senate, and the slightly shrunken House majority in the 2020 elections as a mandate to enact sweeping changes in the country — and they’re largely hitting brick walls. The national Overton Window isn’t wide enough to accommodate the wildest fantasies of progressives.
I’m not sure the feasibility of Overton Window possibilities matters to the Social Justice left. There’s is a holy revolutionary cause, and they need to seize control of the Party before they can seize control of the nation. To that end, I suspect many think that letting moderate Democrats lose elections is a small price to pay for continuing their unpopular march through America’s institutions…
The Texan brings back The War Room to track 2022 Texas election races.
“Texas House Democrats’ COVID-Spreading Publicity Stunt Is Backfiring.”
Outnumbered by Republicans in Austin 83 to 67, the Texas House Democratic Caucus decided to head to D.C. to publicize its opposition to election integrity bills, fundraise, and drum up support for federal legislation that would nationalize election law by imposing California law as a template on the nation — banning meaningful voter ID, expanding mail balloting while eliminating fraud safeguards, prohibiting proactive voter list maintenance, and mandating same-day voter registration with no checks for eligibility to vote.
But the Democrats’ trip hasn’t turned out as planned.
Soon after meeting with Vice President Kamala Harris and numerous White House staffers and members of the U.S. House and Senate, three Democrats were diagnosed with COVID-19, then another two, and now a total of six. An aide to Speaker Nancy Pelosi and a White House official tested positive soon after meeting with the Texas Democrats.
And the attention Democrats were hoping for soon turned sour, with Texas’s major newspapers, none of whom are friends of Republicans and have had little good to say about their election integrity bills, have nevertheless weighed in against the walkout. By two-to-one, Texas voters disapprove of the quorum-busting as well. Even national Republicans have piled on, with this tweet from Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley’s press secretary being emblematic.
Closer to home, Travis County GOP Chairman Matt Mackowiak said the quorum-breakers had “…engaged in performance theater for weeks claiming Gov. Abbott was putting lives at risk by reopening the state economy and waiving the statewide mask mandate, then they flew to DC on a private jet stocked with Miller Lite without masks, in violation of FAA rules, and now this farce turned into a super spreader event.”
But there are signs the Democratic solidarity is breaking down. With chairmanships, seniority, and even district boundaries on the line in a redistricting year, powerful Democrats are wavering while those seeking to move up sense an opportunity. A week ago, 80 House members were on the floor. As of Tuesday, 90, including several Democrats, were present. It’s a classic “prisoner’s dilemma” situation. If another 10 Democrats show up, the Texas House will have a quorum and can resume consideration of bills, leaving the other 50 holdouts with nothing for their efforts — except for perhaps being redrawn out of their districts by the Legislative Redistricting Board later this year.
When the Democrats do return, they will be asked to vote on bills that would bring mail-in balloting up to the standard for in-person voting by asking for ID in the form of writing a driver’s license number, or state ID number, or the last four of the Social Security number inside of a privacy flap in the ballot return envelope. The bill would also prohibit local elections officials from sending out unsolicited mail-in ballot applications, ban last-minute changes to election procedures, and clarify that properly appointed poll watchers must be able to see and hear election workers’ activities.
Asking for ID for mail-in ballots — one of the measures most vociferously opposed by Democrats — is supported by 81 percent of Texas voters, with voters from all demographic groups and both major parties approving of the safeguards.
With all due respect to Chuck DeVore, until the Texas election integrity bill is passed, their publicity stunt hasn’t backfired yet. There are few prices Democrats won’t pay for the ability to continue cheating.
Barely a year after the Minneapolis City Council voted to to defund the city’s police department after the death of George Floyd, a judge has ordered the city to hire more cops, thanks to a lawsuit filed by fed-up citizens.
“Minneapolis is in a crisis,” wrote the eight plaintiffs in their complaint, citing the rise in violent crimes, including shootings, sexual assault, murders, civil unrest, and riots, Fox News reports.
Progressive city council members couldn’t wait to gut the police department and allow a surge in crime, most of which would affect poor black neighborhoods. The tsunami of crime recently took the life of a popular coach who was shot attending a memorial for another victim of Minneapolis’ violent crime surge. He was the 42nd person murdered this year in Minneapolis. No word from Antifa and BLM if they are planning a mostly peaceful riot in his honor.
The cop-hating Minneapolis City Council and Mayor Jacob Frey were ordered to “immediately take any and all necessary action to ensure that they fund a police force,” according to Thursday’s court order by Judge Jamie L. Anderson. The crime-loving city council and mayor have until June 30, 2022, to establish a police force of 730 sworn officers. They currently have 669 cops. Minneapolis saw nearly 200 cops file paperwork to leave the Minneapolis Police Department in the first three months after the George Floyd riots. No idea how many more will resign or retire by the June 30, 2022, deadline, as the nation has seen a surge in cops walking away from departments nationwide.
NPR has not run a piece critical of Democrats since Christ was a boy. Moreover, much like the New York Times editorial page (but somehow worse), the public news leader’s monomaniacal focus on “race and sexuality issues” has become an industry in-joke. For at least a year especially, listening to NPR has been like being pinned in wrestling beyond the three-count. Everything is about race or gender, and you can’t make it stop.
Conservatives have always hated NPR, but in the last year I hear more and more politically progressive people, in the media, talking about the station as a kind of mass torture experiment, one that makes the most patient and sensible people want to drive off the road in anguish. A
Numerous examples snipped.
NPR sucks and is unlistenable, so people are going elsewhere. People like [Ben] Shapiro are running their strategy in reverse and making fortunes doing it. One of these professional analysts has to figure this one out eventually, right?
Evidently the primary mover behind the Gretchen Whitmer kidnapping “plot” was the FBI. It’s FBI “informants” all the way down. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
Want to keep track of violence in Lori Lightfoot’s Chicago? Hey Jackass has the trending data plants policy wonks crave!
“In 25 major U.S. cities, officials have proposed cutting—or in 20 cases already cut—police budgets. However, what OpenTheBooks.com auditors found was that mayors and city officials still enjoy personal protection of a dedicated police detail costing taxpayers millions of dollars,” Adam Andrzejewski, CEO and founder of Open The Books (OTB), said in a statement announcing the new data.
Snip.
In San Francisco, for example, the costs of the security detail protecting Mayor London Breed and other city officials spiraled up from $1.7 million in 2015 to $2.6 million in 2020.
Breed has proposed shifting $120 million from the city’s police department to mental health and workforce training programs. City officials declined to say how many officers are assigned to the security details, according to OTB.
In Chicago, Mayor Lori Lightfoot claimed to be opposed to defunding the police, but OTB found that officials quietly abolished 400 police department positions last year.
Those positions were eliminated even as the city’s “security detail costs peaked in 2020—up $700,000 over five years: $2.7 million spent on 16 officers (2015); $2.9 million for 16 officers (2016); $2.7 million for 20 officers (2017); $2.8 million for 16 officers (2018); $2.8 million for 17 officers (2019); and $3.4 million for 22 officers (2020)—an all-time high,” OTB stated.
In New York, Mayor Bill de Blasio slashed $1 billion from the New York Police Department’s (NYPD) $6 billion annual budget, including $354 million transferred to mental health, homelessness, and education services.
But the mayor, who briefly sought the Democratic presidential nomination last year, continues to enjoy tax-paid police protection for himself, his wife, and his son.
“Serial Swatter Who Caused Death Gets Five Years in Prison.” “Shane Sonderman, of Lauderdale County, Tenn. admitted to conspiring with a group of criminals that’s been ‘swatting’ and harassing people for months in a bid to coerce targets into giving up their valuable Twitter and Instagram usernames.” So not only has he gotten people killed, he got them killed for really shitty reasons. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
“ERCOT Expands Power Grid Reserve Capacity in Preparation for Summer Heat.” “To prepare, ERCOT has dedicated 38 percent more in generation to reserve capacity from this July compared to last. And they plan to dedicate 56 percent more reserve capacity for August compared to August 2020.” 1.) That’s good, but 2.) Isn’t mid-July a wee bit late to be rolling out such plans? Let’s hope they’ve been working on this a while…
California court says that state laws requiring people to use crazy SJW pronouns violates freedom of speech.
Speaking of Harris: “Last month, the Supreme Court smacked down then-California Attorney General Kamala Harris’ attempt to force charitable nonprofits to turn over the names of their top donors, calling the power-grab ‘facially unconstitutional.'”
Gun sales decline slightly from record highs in 2020. Does this mean I might finally be able to pick up an AR-15 without it costing me an arm and a leg?
“Wayne LaPierre a Bigger Risk Than Fire and Brimstone.” “Lloyd’s of London is dropping all coverage for the NRA’s Board of Directors through their officers and directors insurance plan.”
More Soros-backed DA justice: “Accused murderer set free after St. Louis County prosecutors fail to show up, but found time for McCloskeys.”
Last week, Circuit Judge Jason Sengheiser dismissed charges of first-degree murder, armed criminal action, and unlawful gun possession against Brandon Campbell, 30, when prosecutors from the Circuit Attorney’s Office did not attend hearings for the case in May, June, and July, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported.
“The court does not take this action without significant consideration for the implications it may have for public safety,” Sengheiser wrote in kicking the case.
“Although presumed innocent, (Campbell) has been charged with the most serious of crimes. While the court has a role to play in protecting public safety, that role must be balanced with adherence to the law and the protection of the rights of the defendant,” the judge continued.
Sengheiser then took aim at Kim Gardner’s office.
“The Circuit Attorney’s Office is ultimately the party responsible for protecting public safety by charging and then prosecuting those it believes commit crimes,” he wrote.
“In a case like this where the Circuit Attorney’s office has essentially abandoned its duty to prosecute those it charges with crimes, the court must impartially enforce the law and any resultant threat to public safety is the responsibility of the Circuit Attorney’s Office.”
Thirty-eight-year-old Brandon Andrus’s criminal history is so lengthy he has more mug shots than some people have selfies.
But that didn’t stop 185th Criminal District Court Judge Jason Luong from allowing Andrus to be a free man by giving him three felony bonds, one for assaulting a family member last year.
On June 14, police say Andrus and another man murdered 35-year-old Rodrick Miller.
“Amazon’s New World Is Reportedly Frying High-End Graphics Cards.” Nothing like having your $2,000 Nvidia card bricked over a beta game…
Netflix to Wall Street: “Did I say we were going to gain two million new subscribers? Yeah, what I actually meant was we were going to lose 500,000 subscribers. Whoopsie! My bad!” Get woke, go broke.
James May launches his own gin. I don’t drink gin, but I bet that stuff sells out instantly, since the Top Gear/Grand Tour trio have one of the largest worldwide fan bases. I did not know that gin started out with neutral spirits before juniper berries were added.
A video from a press conference in Ukraine is going viral. It is the follow-up to a video press conference that Ukraine released over a year ago, in which Members of the Ukraine Parliament demanded that President Zelensky and President Trump investigate billions of dollars of corruption in Ukraine that is tied to the U.S. The newly released video is meant to provide documentary and eyewitness information about the corruption – and the Biden family figures prominently in the story.
Snip.
At one of the first press conferences about a year ago, we showed bank transactions for hundreds of thousands of dollars to the family of former US Vice President Joe Biden, namely to his son Robert Hunter Biden. The latter was a member of the board of directors of the infamous gas production company Burisma.
Burisma belongs to the fugitive Yanukovych-era minister Mykola Zlochevsky.
The inclusion of Biden in the Burisma leadership and payment for his services is nothing more than a political cover that protected Zlochevsky from the Ukrainian law, namely from the criminal code.
Two foreign witnesses whose identities are protected – Witness 1 and Witness 2 – came forward to testify about the facts of the case. Konstantyn Kulyk, the Head of the Group of Prosecutors of the Prosecutor General’s Office of Ukraine, explained what the witnesses offered:
One quote from a statement by a Witness:
“All the described financial transactions were fictitious. And a lot of money was paid in Ukraine so that the state authorities turned a blind eye to it.”
[snip]
In the period from November 2014 to October 2015, the Witnesses noticed strange recurring payments that, at the direction of Oleh Nelin (Zlochevsky’s assistant in the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine), were sent from the account of BURISMA HOLDINGS LTD, which was opened for the personal needs of Mykola Zlochevsky, in the Latvian PrivatBank AS to the account of the American company ROSEMONT SENECA BONAI LLC.
The witnesses drew attention to these payments since about 20 times the same uneven amount was recurring – $83,333.33 as payment for consulting services.
[snip]
In the period from November 2014 to October 2015, the money stolen from Ukrainians, located on account of BURISMA HOLDINGS LTD with the Latvian PrivatBank AS, was transferred to the account of ROSEMONT SENECA BONAI LLC in the American bank MORGAN STANLEY in payments in total amounting to $3.4 million for consulting services.
And this handy chart:
The broad outlines of this have already been covered here, but the conference filled in some details.
So I guess there’s going to be a rally in Washington DC on Wednesday, organized by https://stopthesteal.us/. There’s also going to be rallies (protests?) in many state capitols on Sunday as well.
My question is, why? What, exactly, is the point of these demonstrations?
If the purpose is to just gather like-minded people together for one last good time rock and roll bash before the awful, awful Harris-Biden administration sets in, OK, I can see that. Just don’t delude yourself into thinking that something is going to change because of these rallies. No Democratic lawmaker is going to say “hey, look at all of those pro-Trump protestors out there. We’d better not certify the swing-state electors because maybe they’re right about election fraud.”
They’re not afraid of us.
Because we hold our rallies, listen to the scheduled speakers, clap politely, and march around carrying our protest signs in an orderly fashion, and then go home – after first cleaning up after ourselves.
At these rallies, we don’t wear masks to hide our identity, we don’t slug it out with the police, we don’t assault random passers-by and shout at diners through bullhorns at outdoor restaurants, we don’t vandalize and loot small businesses, we don’t break windows and we don’t cover the place with graffiti. And we don’t walk away from 100 tons of trash, which is the amount the city of Seattle had to clean up when they finally got around to busting up the CHAZ sh*thole last summer.
So why would they listen to us?
I am by no means advocating we start doing any of those things. This is an advantage the other other side has over us that we have to live with: politicians and judges are afraid of their protests, but not ours. Because if a judge rules against them, they’ll show up at his house late at night and threaten him. Nobody wants to have to face that. And I wonder why many of Trump’s election lawsuits got dismissed without so much as looking at the evidence. Is it because of the fear of the consequences if they found in his favor?
My point is, none of these rallies, and I don’t care if they get a million people, two million to show up on Jan. 6th, is going to move the needle in the slightest.
Slowly but surely, I think people are getting tired of Woke. None of us signed up to be ruled by a bunch of lachrymose sophomores who burst into tears because we insist they use the right toilet. Even liberals are getting sick of constantly having to navigate a minefield of microaggressions – it’s tiresome to always be worried that someone is going to freak out by your perfectly reasonable behavior. Look for a major star of some sort who is too big to cancel to simply refuse to play along anymore, and that may open the door to others. The SJW emperor truly has no clothes, and the second someone points and laughs at his/her/their shriveled junk, the entire country will join in the well-deserved mockery.
4. The Murder Turtle Will Be Even More Of A Hero Than Dick “The Savior of Saigon” Blumenthal
He’s frustrating, sure, but Cocaine Mitch is the most skillful knife fighter/Senate Majority Leader in American history, and whether or not we win in Georgia next week (I think we will, but not enough to put money on it – just don’t be an idiot and refuse to vote if you dwell in the Peach State), he will be our bulwark against the Democrat onslaught. And by “bulwark,” I refer to a strong, implacable defensive fortification, and not that lame blog written by sexually inadequate sissies that is hoping that the end result of 2020’s election is that they can once again round up suckers to pay good money to take their insipid Conservative Inc. cruises.
However, I doubt his number 1 prediction, that Biden won’t be president by next New Year’s Eve. As bad as Biden’s cognitive decline might be, I have a hunch that both Jill Biden and the DNC cabal that managed to install him will turn the reigns over to Kamala Harris anytime soon.
A Nevada mother has followed through on her threat to file a civil rights lawsuit against her son’s charter school for refusing to let him opt out of a mandatory class that promotes hostility toward whites as a race.
Democracy Prep at the Agassi Campus forced William Clark “to make professions about his racial, sexual, gender and religious identities in verbal class exercises and in graded, written homework assignments,” creating a hostile environment, the biracial high school student and Gabrielle Clark allege in their federal lawsuit filed Tuesday.
The senior’s statements were “subject to the scrutiny, interrogation and derogatory labeling of students, teachers and school administrators,” who are “still are coercing him to accept and affirm politicized and discriminatory principles and statements that he cannot in conscience affirm.”
The suit also names Democracy Prep Public Schools, the New York-based charter network, and several officials in the local school and network as defendants.
One of the earliest signals that 2020 would be a year of mass homeschooling appeared in an April survey of parents conducted by EdChoice. It asked a variety of questions about how families were coping with school shutdowns and revealed that more than half of the respondents had a more favorable view of homeschooling as a result of the school closures. I remember thinking at the time that if families thought homeschooling was tolerable during the springtime tumult and isolation, then they would find it far more fulfilling under ordinary circumstances when they could actually gather with others, visit libraries and museums, attend classes and so on.
In May, a RealClear Opinion Research survey confirmed that many parents were more satisfied with at-home learning than expected, with 40 percent saying they were more likely to choose homeschooling or virtual learning even after lockdowns ended. Around the same time, a USA Today/Ipsos poll found that 60 percent of parents surveyed said they would likely choose at-home learning in the fall rather than send their children to school even if the schools reopened for in-person learning.
As summer began, parent actions reflected pollster predictions. Many parents began pulling their children out of school and registering them as independent homeschoolers. During the first week of July, so many parents in North Carolina submitted their online intent to homeschool forms that it crashed the state’s nonpublic education website. Homeschool applications were up 21 percent in Nebraska in July, and 75 percent in Vermont, while grassroots homeschooling networks and local Facebook homeschooling groups reported record increases in new members.
Here’s Joe Rogan @joerogan blasting Awful Austin Mayor Adler @MayorAdler on the JRE podcast this week for telling everyone in Austin to stay home while he was in Cabo, Mexico pic.twitter.com/SB7HyiZo8t
Greetings, and welcome to the Friday LinkSwarm! President Trump’s approval rises among black people, more antifa behaving badly, and a look at just how badly Lebanon is screwed.
“President Trump’s approval rating among Black voters jumped by 60% during the Republican National Committee even as Democrats and progressives sought to brand the Republican president as racist. A HarrisX-Hill poll released Friday showed Mr. Trump’s net approval with Black voters from Aug. 22-25, which included the first two days of the RNC, rose to 24%, up from 15% in the pollster’s Aug. 8-11 survey.” If those numbers are accurate, and hold, all by themselves they could put Pennsylvania out of reach for Democrats, since they lost by 50,000 votes in 2016, and have to rack up huge black totals in Philadelphia to balance out their disadvantage in the rest of the state. (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
Dirtbag dirtnapped: “Michael Forest Reinoehl, 48, died in Lacey, Washington, where federal agents were attempting to take him into custody for the shooting — the same night his interview on the shooting aired on Vice News.”
President Trump is ordering the federal government to begin the process of defunding New York City and three other cities where officials allowed “lawless” protests and cut police budgets amid rising violent crime, The Post can exclusively reveal.
Trump on Wednesday signed a five-page memo ordering all federal agencies to send reports to the White House Office of Management and Budget that detail funds that can be redirected.
New York City, Washington, DC, Seattle and Portland are initial targets as Trump makes “law and order” a centerpiece of his re-election campaign after months of unrest and violence following the May killing of George Floyd by Minnesota police.
“My Administration will not allow Federal tax dollars to fund cities that allow themselves to deteriorate into lawless zones,” Trump says in the memo, which twice mentions New York Mayor Bill de Blasio by name.
“To ensure that Federal funds are neither unduly wasted nor spent in a manner that directly violates our Government’s promise to protect life, liberty, and property, it is imperative that the Federal Government review the use of Federal funds by jurisdictions that permit anarchy, violence, and destruction in America’s cities.”
The course of the nightly action against the PPB followed a fairly predictable pattern: a contingent of notional BLM protesters rendezvoused with a group of antifa black bloc at a public park close to their objective. As they moved towards the police building which was their target, “corkers” -a sort of bicycle-mounted blocking force- closed off side streets and the scouting line -typically on mopeds- moved ahead and on the flanks. Behind them came the main contingent of black bloc. Upon arrival at the PPB the streets were blocked with vehicles and burning dumpsters, with the “corkers” stationed to direct traffic away from the action and the scouts setting up a picket line extending out several blocks, watching for police reinforcements and creating the strong impression of antifa control of territory.
The black bloc then engaged in an steadily-escalating level of vandalism and property damage directed at their target, including unguarded police vehicles parked nearby. If uninterrupted, this quickly escalated to arson and serious destruction to the facilities.
By this point the scouting line often detected the flanking lines of riot police and a riot was formally been declared. Blocs armed with shields deployed defensively to allow time for the rest of the rioters to disengage. These “shield walls” provided a tempting target for a police “bull rush”, video of which can then be used for propaganda purposes. Behind the shield wall other bloc members threw commercial fireworks, frozen water bottles, and paint-filled balloons. The paint balloons are often mixed with sand or abrasive material that scratches clear shields and visors when cleaning is attempted damaging expensive riot suppression equipment. Meanwhile the main element of the antifa black bloc continued to retreat into bordering residential areas.
Antifa chooses the residential areas for specific reasons. As the police deploy flashbangs, tear gas, and assorted non-lethal munitions in order to control the ongoing riot, the disruptive effects are experienced by the local residents. Additionally, as the action moved further into the poorly-lit neighborhoods, small groups of rioters and black bloc would break off to either escape, or engage in vandalism against the original PPB target (if left unguarded) or other nearby targets of opportunity.
The action concluded at some point in the early morning hours, usually 4-5 hours after the assembly in the designated park. The location was almost always shifted to a different location every night, very rarely going to the same location on successive nights. This means it’s rare for the same location to be targeted more than twice in one week.
Plus suggested tactics on countering it.
“Flamethrower-Packing Antifa ‘Entered Fetal Position And Began Crying’ After Unsuccessful Escape From Cops.” This was in Green Bay, Wisconsin. I can’t believe I didn’t have a “flamethrower” tag until now.
Goya CEO Bob Unamue, tells Democrats that “the ‘hatred and destruction’ are moving Latinos to Trump.” Plus a comparison to communist enforcement mobs. (Hat tip: @txpoliticjunkie.)
Like a lot of observers at the time, I thought Trump had no real policy agenda to define his campaign beyond a vague pro-America sentiment and a withering disdain for the political establishments of both major parties. I thought his political inexperience was a liability, that his penchant for insulting his opponents would turn voters off, and that the GOP had missed an opportunity to defeat Hillary Clinton by nominating someone else—anyone, really, besides Trump.
But it turned out Trump was the best candidate to beat Clinton because Clinton embodied nearly everything voters had come to hate about America’s political class: the falsity, the naked hypocrisy, the barely disguised disdain for ordinary people. For all his obvious faults, Trump wasn’t a professional politician, had no record to defend, and was unconstrained by the conventions of ordinary political rhetoric. He was uniquely positioned to call out and exploit Clinton’s faults and shortcomings, and expose the contradictions at the heart of the Democratic Party.
For Republican voters, Trump offered the promise of something different from the seemingly endless pattern of politicians who promised one thing and did another, especially on immigration and free trade. For decades, incessant Republican boasting about “securing the border” never actually secured the border as mass illegal immigration continued apace. Expressions of sympathy for the American working class never produced policies that might actually help the working class. Trump zeroed in on these things, and his message resonated because it was true (and still is).
Joseph P. Kennedy III loses his senate primary to incumbent Ed Markey, who seemed to run to Kennedy’s left.
Speaking of members of the Kennedy clan running for office, NJ Democratic congressional candidate Amy Kennedy calls for lifting sanctions on Chinese companies. In one of those amazing coincidences, she also owns substantial amounts of Chinese stock. What are the odds? (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
The Media Lynching of Kyle Rittenhouse. A liberal journalism professor not only omits the fact that Rittenhouse was attacked, but also thinks that the Kenosha riots will hurt Trump.
The effects of the explosion of nearly 3,000 tons of ammonium nitrate fertilizer in the port of Beirut, Lebanon on August 4th was not restricted to 170+ deaths and 3,000+ injuries. The explosion’s metaphorical shockwaves may prove to be the death knell of Lebanon’s domestic politics and economy. Both were already collapsing from extreme corruption even before COVID struck. Add an explosion that caused billions of dollars of damage to an already bankrupt country, and the result is a failed state in the making.
Lebanon is failing in no small part because the Shia terror group Hezbollah, which translates as “Army of God,” makes its home there. Hezbollah’s continued residency and effective Lebanese governance seem to be mutually exclusive propositions.
Except calling Hezbollah merely a terror group is too simplistic, and nothing in Lebanon is ever simple or easy to explain.
Hezbollah is responsible for countless murders, kidnappings, and terror attacks, including the 1983 suicide bombing of the US Marine barracks in Beirut that killed 241 Marines. But Hezbollah is also a charity operating in refugee camps. It’s a social service provider for Shia Lebanese, operating clinics, hospitals, and schools (which teach wildly anti-Semitic propaganda). It operates a satellite TV channel. It smuggles guns, sells drugs, and launders money. It has a finger in almost every pie in Lebanon, and influence in Syria, Iran, Iraq, the Northern Triangle countries of Central America (Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador), and Venezuela. (Click to see the Washington Institute’s regularly updated interactive map of Hezbollah’s globe-spanning activities, and the actions taken to counter them.)
Beyond all that, Hezbollah is also a powerful paramilitary group with 30,000+ fighters, armed with tens of thousands of rockets, as well as precision munitions like guided ballistic missiles. Hezbollah fought Israel’s last incursion in Lebanon in 2006 to a standstill, and Hezbollah is often considered the winner of the clash, despite Israel’s access to the latest weapons tech.
Yet, like every other organization in Lebanon, Hezbollah is in very deep shit.
Lebanon’s current chaos is due to decades of previous chaos spawned of ongoing demographic and power shifts in the post-WWII era among Lebanon’s Maronite Christians, Sunni Muslims, Shia Muslims, and the Druze (a splinter Shia sect). The brutal Lebanese civil war fought by sectarian militias from 1975 to 1990 ended with a peace deal splitting political power along explicit sectarian lines. By law, the Shia nominate the Speaker of the Parliament, the Sunni get the Prime Minister’s Office, and the Christians select the Lebanese President. The sectarian structure of the government mandated by the peace deal effectively embedded political corruption into law. Each sect controls a piece of the Lebanese government and economy, and each has installed a patronage system dispensing favors and money to their upper echelons, with little of the wealth trickling down to the sects’ underclasses.
Enlightening, and depressing. Read the whole thing.
“Iowa Judge Voids 50,000 Absentee Ballot Requests.” “The Trump campaign argued the forms should have been blank except for the election date and type, per the Iowa secretary of state’s directions. Local officials in Linn County, which is home to Cedar Rapids, ignored those directions and sent out the applications with more information anyway.”
MILWAUKEE JOURNAL SENTINEL: Wisconsin woman launches effort to recall Gov. Tony Evers (D) over unrest in Kenosha, says "We're not willing to stand by and watch our cities burn."
As with most cultural revolutions that wish to start things over at “year zero,” the violence is aimed at America’s past in order to change its present and future.
The targets are not just the old majority culture but also classical statues and buildings, hallowed institutions, religious icons, the renowned names of streets and plazas, and almost every representation of tradition and authority.
For the majority of Americans who do not buy into the revolution, it all seems so surreal — and hypocritical.
Only a despised, dynamic American economy allows millions to divorce from it for a summer of protest.
A ridiculed U.S. Constitution ensures that looters and arsonists have due process.
The Bill of Rights guarantees peaceful assembly and electrically amplified profanity rarely protected elsewhere.
Affirmative action; federally ensured and subsidized college grants and loans; and cheap smartphones, headphones and laptops all give youth choices unimagined in the past.
No matter — cultural revolutions are incoherent and nihilist.
Those who signed up for the Jacobin Reign of Terror wanted violence, not a constitutional republic to replace the French monarchy.
The Bolsheviks were less interested in substituting an elected prime minister for the Russian czar than in grabbling power and murdering millions of their enemies.
Mao Zedong did not just hate the warlords, landlords, Mandarins and Nationalists. He wished to reinvent 1 billion Chinese in his own narcissistic image by first killing millions.
There is, of course, reason to oversee the police more effectively.
Universities are partly culpable for a collective $1.4 trillion in student loan debt.
Globalization eroded the middle class. Inner-city America is far too violent — and far too neglected.
But these are not the apparent concerns of those who carry off shoes and phones in U-Hauls, kick the unconscious on the pavement, destroy art and sculpture, or seek to torch public buildings with public servants inside.
The point of the mob is to wipe out what it cannot create.
It topples what it can neither match nor even comprehend.
It would erode the very system that ensures it singular freedom, leisure and historic affluence.
The brand of the anarchist is not logic but envy-driven power: to take it, to keep it, and to use it against purported enemies — which would otherwise be impossible in times of calm or through the ballot box.
More fundamentally: where do you think the country would be without him? Even if you’re disappointed with less than 200 miles of wall, remember that leading Democrats not only insist that every single new inch is a moral atrocity, they want to tear down sections that already exist.
Think the trade agenda is progressing too slowly? Well, President Trump already renegotiated two of our worst trade deals. How many new, bad ones do you think a Hillary administration would have signed by now? Trump not tough enough on China for you? A little too much talk about his “good friend” Xi Jinping? I sympathize. But he’s still done more than all the last four presidents combined. More than that, he’s reversed the China policy of the last four presidents combined. Have you heard how Joe Biden kowtows to China?
And I know that some will insist that, so long as a single American soldier, sailor, airman, or marine is deployed anywhere in the Middle East, then Trump has failed—or worse, betrayed them. But in fact, the president has mostly succeeded at the tasks he promised for that region: defeating ISIS, revitalizing our alliances while requiring more from our allies, and prudently disengaging from existing conflicts while not starting any new ones.
All of these trends, changes, policies, and initiatives, and many others—however incomplete—would be reversed in the event of a Trump loss. The ruling class would hail the president’s defeat as a historic repudiation of his (allegedly) “racist and xenophobic” vision, etc., as a vindication of every charge and complaint they’ve made against him and his supporters since Day 1. Their goal would be to erase the last four years and the 2016 election as if they never happened. If think-tank conservatives want above all to get into a DeLorean and go back to 1985, the ruling class wants to cram America into a Prius and force us back to 2015. And then resume the trajectory the country had been on back then, i.e., the road to woke managerial tyranny.
Password is: “Enthusiasm Gap,” with six times as many CSPAN viewers for the RNC than the DNC. (Hat tip: Ann Althouse.)
President Trump’s poll numbers rise in swing states. Adjust by the usual 3% polls historically favor Democrats over election results, and Trump is tied or ahead in all of them. And that was before the RNC. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
The reason I fight so hard against the Fine People Hoax and race hoaxers in general is that it was always obvious it would escalate to mass shootings. A legitimate press could have stopped all of this months ago.
This is how cities die: “Shaken by summer looting in affluent neighborhoods, some Chicagoans are moving away.”
Jerry Seinfeld tries to refute that New York City is dead piece, but it just amounts to “New York is awesome and we’re tough” yadda yadda, and doesn’t address the insanely high taxes or actually changes in economic justification that used to make living in the city a requirement that isn’t there anymore. (Hat tip: Ann Althouse.)
Powerline has additional thoughts on that New York Times article mentioned yesterday that shows that, amazingly, riots, looting and arson aren’t popular with average Americans.
If you believe the mainstream media, Donald Trump is involved in a nefarious scheme to somehow make the USPS into something inefficient and incompetent, which comes close on the heels of his plot to make the sun start setting in the West. If that’s his plan, he already pulled it off decades before he first hit the cover of the New York Post. We conservatives think the president has done a lot of great stuff since humiliating Felonia Milhous von Pantsuit in 2016, but not even the most hardcore Trump Train engineer would go as far as Trump’s frothy pie-holed critics and credit the president with the mastery of time and space.
The correspondence conspiracy is pretty much liberal Q, except the eccentric Q folks at least like America.
And here’s a special shout-out to the Democrats pushing this intellectual fentanyl for deciding it is a good idea to choose the competence of the post office as their hill for the crusty crustacean’s campaign to die on. Please, continue pointing to the USPS as an example of what you’ll make the entire government into if we’re dumb enough to elect Gropey J. Good thinking, because if there’s anything that real people outside the MSNBCNN bubble love, it’s the post office. It’s the federal DMV, except with stamps.
Snip.
What is clear is that the real goal of this conspiracy theory is to launch a preemptive attempt to find another excuse for a Democrat defeat. Last time it was PUTIN PUTIN PUTIN and this time it’ll be POSTAGE POSTAGE POSTAGE.
Apparently, his plan is to somehow make it so the post office will be unable to deliver vote by mail ballots in order to prevent Democrats from winning the election that their senile old weirdo nominee is in the process of blowing. It might be interesting to examine the details of this conspiracy theory if there was even a coherent conspiracy theory to examine, but there’s not. It’s mostly “Trump bad!,” then low and undecipherable mumbling, then “And that’s how he will steal the election!”
The specifics of the alleged plot, to the extent you can identify them, are puzzling and elusive. What exactly is Trump going to do again? Is he going to order the mailmen to toss ballots in the shredder? Seems like it would be hard to pull off that flex with all those crack journalists out there. We are also told that he is rounding-up blue mailboxes from America’s street corners, and that this has been going on for a couple of decades is only further proof of his evil plan, somehow. What is not clear is how this might work in practice – so, the idea is that the Democrat voter comes home, ballot in hand, weeping because there are no blue mailboxes anymore to place his ballot into, and then he walks back inside his house past … his own mailbox? And then he just gives up? He sits at his dinner table, head in hands, sobbing at his inability to figure out how to drop a piece of correspondence into the postal system?
Good news! Yaser Abdel Said, the man accused of murdering his own two daughters in an Islamic honor killing, has finally been apprehended after a 12 year manhunt.
Reporter: Why are the NBA’s ratings down? Expert: Woke politics and China. Reporter: Do you have any idea? Expert: Woke politics and China. Any idea at all? Expert: WOKE POLITICS AND CHINA! Reporter: .
Funny how the P word seems to be used by those too lazy to make anything out of their lives so they make up a term to label people so they can play victim to their own laziness. https://t.co/IJK0XOd8pW
Idiot rioters and their identifying tattoos, more elected Democrats behaving badly, and a higher than usual helping of cute animals. Enjoy your Friday LinkSwarm!
Borepatch points out that U.S. Wuhan coronavirus deaths hit post-March lows. Also, all U.S. deaths are now far below the norms.
This was not just a bad flu. The data are crystal clear on that.
However, the data did not justify shutting down the economy. The data did not justify preventing you from saying goodbye to Grandma on her deathbed. The data did not justify prohibiting public gatherings at funerals. The data did not justify shutting down Sunday church. The data did not justify shutting down the schools. The data don’t justify mandatory mask wearing. The data don’t justify the hype.
George Soros-backed St. Louis prosecutor Kim Gardner, who charged Mark and Patricia McCloskey with felonies for using guns to protect their homes, illegally took several trips took several trips paid for by activist groups that she failed to disclose. Fair and Just Prosecution is the name of the activist group in question.
Tennessee Democratic state senator Katrina Robinson was charged with swindling $600,000 in federal funds to pay for her wedding and a lavish lifestyle.
“Say Her Name” is one of the slogans that activists have connected to this Louisville shooting, but if we want to understand why police shot Breonna Taylor, there is another name that needs to be said — Jamarcus Glover.
Glover is a 30-year-old narcotics trafficker who police say was dealing crack cocaine and marijuana out of a “trap house” on Elliott Avenue in Louisville’s west side. According to a police affidavit, detectives had Glover and his accomplice Adrian Walker under surveillance, and had seen their car — a red Dodge Charger with Mississippi plates — “make frequent trips” from the Elliott Avenue “trap house” to an apartment 10 miles away on Springfield Drive. Detective Joshua Jaynes wrote in the affidavit that Glover was using the Springfield Drive apartment as his mailing address; Jaynes said he had witnessed Glover pick up a postal package at the apartment; and, citing his “training and experience,” Jaynes stated his belief that Glover “may be keeping narcotics and/or proceeds from the sale of narcotics” at the Springfield Drive apartment. All of this was stated in an application for a search warrant of the Springfield Drive apartment where Breonna Taylor lived.
You see, Jamarcus Glover was Breonna Taylor’s ex-boyfriend. They broke up a couple years ago, according to a lawyer for Taylor’s family who said she maintained a “passive friendship” with Glover. This “friendship” apparently included allowing Glover to receive his mail at her apartment, and, although there is no evidence that Taylor was ever involved in Glover’s drug operation, the “training and experience” of Detective Jaynes led him to believe there must be some connection. This was convincing enough for Jefferson County Circuit Court Judge Mary Shaw, who approved the so-called “no-knock” warrant for Taylor’s apartment, and also approved nearly identical warrants for the four other addresses linked to Glover’s drug operation, including the Elliott Avenue “trap house.”
Louisville police served all five warrants almost simultaneously, shortly after midnight on March 13. Glover was arrested at the Elliott Avenue address, but the raid on Taylor’s apartment went horribly wrong. Police Sgt. Jonathan Mattingly, who was part of the five-man squad assigned to serve the warrant on the Springfield Drive address, said the squad was told in a preliminary briefing that this was a “soft target” because Taylor was believed to be alone in the apartment. Therefore, Sgt. Mattingly said, the decision was made for officers to knock on the door and announce themselves as police, despite the authorization for a “no-knock” entry. Sgt. Mattingly knocked for about a minute, he said, before the supervising lieutenant ordered them to “hit it,” using a battering ram to breach the door.
Inside the apartment, however, Breonna Taylor was not alone. She had a new boyfriend visiting her, and they were watching a movie in her bedroom. The boyfriend, Kenneth Walker (no relation to Glover’s accomplice Adrian Walker) had a legally owned pistol, and when he heard somebody pounding on the front door, he grabbed his weapon. Why? Because he was “scared to death,” believing that the person pounding on the door might be Taylor’s drug-dealer ex-boyfriend. Walker and Taylor emerged from the bedroom into the hallway of the apartment and, Walker said, Taylor called out, “Who is it?”
The next thing that happened, in Walker’s description of the incident, is the door “comes off its hinges” — the police are busting in, but he doesn’t know it’s the police. If you’re dating a drug dealer’s ex-girlfriend and somebody busts through your door at 12:30 in the morning, what do you do?
Walker fired a shot, hitting Sgt. Mattingly in the thigh, and Sgt. Mattingly immediately returned fire, getting off six shots. Two other officers also opened fire. In total, police fired at least 22 shots, none of which hit Walker, but Taylor was struck eight times and died on the scene. Although a grand jury indicted Walker on a charge of attempted murder of a police officer, that charge was dismissed in May at the request of Commonwealth’s Attorney Tom Wine.
Lest people think I always follow President Trump’s policy position, here’s another one I differ on: Russia shouldn’t be let back into the G7 as long as they’re occupying parts of Ukraine.
Speaking of super-genius rioters and tattoos, Edward Thomas Schinzing was arrested on federal arson charges in Portland thanks to the fact he was shirtless and had his own name tattooed across his back.
The Washington press corps seems engaged in a collective demonstration of the legal concept of willful blindness, or deliberately ignoring the facts, following the release of yet another declassified document which directly refutes prior statements about the investigation into Russia collusion. The document shows that FBI officials used a national security briefing of then candidate Donald Trump and his top aides to gather possible evidence for Crossfire Hurricane, its code name for the Russia investigation.
It is astonishing that the media refuses to see what is one of the biggest stories in decades. The Obama administration targeted the campaign of the opposing party based on false evidence. The media covered Obama administration officials ridiculing the suggestions of spying on the Trump campaign and of improper conduct with the Russia investigation. When Attorney General William Barr told the Senate last year that he believed spying did occur, he was lambasted in the media, including by James Comey and others involved in that investigation. The mocking “wow” response of the fired FBI director received extensive coverage.
The new document shows that, in summer 2016, FBI agent Joe Pientka briefed Trump campaign advisers Michael Flynn and Chris Christie over national security issues, standard practice ahead of the election. It had a discussion of Russian interference. But this was different. The document detailing the questions asked by Trump and his aides and their reactions was filed several days after that meeting under Crossfire Hurricane and Crossfire Razor, the FBI investigation of Flynn. The two FBI officials listed who approved the report are Kevin Clinesmith and Peter Strzok.
Clinesmith is the former FBI lawyer responsible for the FISA surveillance conducted on members of the Trump campaign. He opposed Trump and sent an email after the election declaring “viva the resistance.” He is now under review for possible criminal charges for altering a FISA court filing. The FBI used Trump adviser Carter Page as the basis for the original FISA application, due to his contacts with Russians. After that surveillance was approved, however, federal officials discredited the collusion allegations and noted that Page was a CIA asset. Clinesmith had allegedly changed the information to state that Page was not working for the CIA.
Meet the source for all the most salacious claims in the debunked Steele dossier: Russian-born habitual drunk Igor Danchenko, who used to work for the Brookings Institution.
From the “facts pulled out of our ass” department:
Other outlets have asked for this evidence too, and have similarly come up with nothing.
"Richmond officials have presented no direct evidence showing white supremacists organized the protest, encouraged violence or participated in any property damage."https://t.co/RJKpblJXi5
Well, every single gun nut in America has spent their entire adult life being continually mocked, insulted, and belittled by the left. You’ve done nothing but paint us as the bad guys.
In Hollywood, we’re always evil, stupid, violent, malicious, redneck, racist, murderers. That’s so ingrained in the liberal religion that when “ally” Harvey Weinstein was trying to get out of being a sleazy rapist, his repentance consisted of promising to make more movies about how the NRA is bad.
In the news, everything is always our fault. If there is a mass murder, we can always count on the vultures to swoop in and blame America’s gun culture. They flog it for weeks on end, 24/7 coverage, hoping for gun control. And if the identity of the shooter doesn’t fit the narrative, it drops off the news in mere hours.
And then at the local, state, and federal level, legally speaking, the left fucks us at every opportunity. You ban everything you can get away with. You ban things that literally make no sense. You ban shit just out of spite.
When we fight back against gun control laws, you declare we are stupid because only the police should have guns (hey, aren’t those the guys you are protesting right now?)
“Stupid racist rednecks! We live in a civilized society! Don’t you realize the police will protect us?” until when your democrat cities are on fire, and you call 911 and the operator tells you sorry, the police can’t come to your house right now, please try not to get murdered… How is that strict gun control working out for you?
Then you did everything in your power to chase gun owners out of your sainted liberal strongholds. You passed laws. You banned everything we like. Forced all the shooting ranges to close. Forced most of the gun stores to close. And just generally let us know that our kind is not welcome there.
But now you’ve started some shit, YOU want US to go into democrat cities, with democrat mayors, and democrat police chiefs enforcing democrat policies which cause strife among democrats, in order to get into gun fights on your behalf?
How fucking gullible do you think we are? Like holy shit. Damn dude!
Because we all know that literally 30 seconds after a gun nut blows away a government employee on your behalf, then all the national media coverage of the riots will instantly cease (sorta like the Corona Virus coverage did) and it’ll be back to the news breathlessly reporting about right wing extremist gun nuts, and all you useless fucks would go back to whining for more dumb ass gun control.
You’ve already thrown the black community under the bus, cheering as their neighborhoods get burned and yours are safe. Seriously, white liberals are the shittiest “allies” in history, and your moral foundation has the consistency of Play-Doh. Your moral compass is a wind sock.
Guns are flying off the shelf, India isn’t rolling over for China’s aggression, and things just keep mysteriously blowing up in Iran. Welcome to another Friday LinkSwarm!
The media have claimed over the past three months: 1. Cuomo was great; 2. Seattle's CHOP and Portland were paradisical; 3. Mass riots were no biggie; 4. Enormous BLM protests provided no health risk in the midst of a pandemic. I can't imagine why they have a credibility gap.
Gun sales are up big. “A record 10.3 million firearms were purchased in the first half of 2020, according to NSSF’s adjusted NICS data. They report, ‘The highest overall firearm sales increase comes from Black men and women who show a 58.2 percent increase in purchases during the first six months of 2020 versus the same period last year.'” Makes sense, since they disproportionately live in Democrat-controlled cities where they’ve let rioters, arsonists and looters run rampant…
“Trump Task Force to Dismantle MS-13 Takes Down Gang’s Key Leaders.”
Thanks to Barack Obama’s open border policies, MS-13 was energized with new recruits provided by a steady flow of illegal immigrant minors. When the Obama administration started welcoming a barrage of Unaccompanied Alien Children (UAC) in 2014, Homeland Security sources told Judicial Watch that the nation’s most violent street gangs—including MS-13 and the 18th Street gang—were actively recruiting new members at U.S. shelters housing the minors. The Texas Department of Public Safety subsequently confirmed that the MS-13 is a top tier gang thanks to the influx of illegal alien gang members that crossed into the state under Obama’s disastrous program, which saw over 60,000 illegal immigrants—many with criminal histories—storm into the U.S. in a matter of months. Tens of thousands more have entered since then.
Snip.
The cases announced this week include an indictment against a high-ranking MS-13 operative, Melgar Diaz, in Virginia. Diaz is charged with conspiring to provide material support to terrorists, conspiring to kill or maim persons overseas, conspiring to commit acts of terrorism transcending national boundaries, conspiring to finance terrorism, and; conspiring to engage in narco-terrorism, in addition to racketeering conspiracy and drug trafficking. In another case eight MS-13 members were indicted in New York for committing six murders, two attempted murders, kidnapping, narcotics felonies and related firearms offenses. In Nevada 13 MS-13 gang bangers, including leaders of the “Hollywood Locos” clique and “Los Angeles Program” were charged with multiple counts of narcotics distribution and weapons crimes. The task force is also responsible for the indictment in New York of Alexi Saenz, an MS-13 leader accused of committing seven murders, including two high school students with a machete and baseball bat. “MS-13 is a violent transnational criminal organization, whose criminal activities respect no boundaries,” said [Joint Task Force Vulcan (JTFV) director John Durham]. “The only way to defeat MS-13 is by targeting the organization as a whole, focusing on the leadership structure, and deploying a whole-of-government approach against a common enemy.”
China may be a powerful adversary to India, but its bluffs can be called. And that is what India has done in the last two weeks, making a host of decisions that, seen in the perspective of the stand-off with China, represent its resolve and constitute a sustained effort on several fronts — military, diplomatic, economic, social — to make China pay.
Previously, India had never taken sides with or against China on the Hong Kong protests. But this time around, it took a strong stand on the passage of the new security law, which is an attempt to stifle the city’s pro-democracy movement.
It has also blocked Chinese firms from investing in India under the free FDA route, taken several initiatives to force a global probe into the source and origin of COVID-19, and, as mentioned above, banned a host of Chinese apps.
That’s not all. India’s railways ministry has canceled a signals and telecom contract with a Chinese company for a mammoth freight corridor project in Uttar Pradesh. Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL) and Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Limited (MTNL) have decided to exclude Chinese firms from providing telecom equipment and cancelled their plans for upgrading 4G services. The roads department has announced that no highway projects will be awarded to China. The power ministry is looking to curtail imports from adversarial nations, including China. The move is aimed also at reducing the ability of adversarial nations to cripple India’s power infrastructure through cyber attacks.
Several Indian states have followed up on the national government’s moves. A push to deny a Chinese firm, Shanghai Tunnel Engineering Co Ltd, a contract for the construction of a critical section of the Delhi-Meerut RRTS corridor, is ongoing. The state of Maharashtra is on the verge of cancelling three agreements with Chinese firms. It includes an agreement with China’s Great Wall Motors (GWM) to set up an automobile plant near Pune and produce electric vehicles there. However, the state is going ahead with nine other agreements signed with the U.S., Singapore, and South Korea, indicating to China what’s to come.
Next was a heavily fortified, highly restricted, underground nuclear enrichment facility. Then power stations, a port, a health clinic and a petrochemical plant.
For weeks, things have been blowing up or catching fire in Iran.
The two most significant incidents were a June 26 explosion at Khojir, near Tehran — a liquid fuel production site for the country’s missile program — and more recently, a blast deep underground at the Natanz nuclear facility on July 2.
Red Bull decides that they don’t want to go broke, refuses to get woke. “Red Bull has fired two ‘diversity directors’ who tried to force the company into virtue signaling about Black Lives Matter while also dissolving several ‘culture teams’ who were pressuring Red Bull to take a more aggressive ‘woke’ political stance.” Good for them.
Gerald Walpin had been investigating Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson, a former NBA basketball star and Obama supporter, for misusing federal grant money from AmeriCorps. The program was created by the National and Community Service Trust Act of 1993 and grew to over 80,000 members. Program participants received benefits such as student loan deferment, living allowances, health benefits, career opportunities and training, and so forth. The program has done some good but has also been plagued by waste and corruption.
He found that Johnson gave $850,000 of AmeriCorps grant money to a nonprofit organization he founded called St. HOPE Academy. In addition to being improperly used to pay AmeriCorps volunteers for political activity, to wash his car, and to run his personal errands, Walpin also discovered that Johnson had used AmeriCorps grant money to pay hush money to underage girls, who were students at St. HOPE Academy, that he had sexually assaulted and then staged a cover-up.
Walpin called for Johnson to be criminally prosecuted. Instead, Johnson was able to get a sweetheart deal avoiding prosecution if he paid back the money. This deal was approved by Alan Solomont, a major Democratic fundraiser who was also the chairman of the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS).
Walpin was furious about the deal and made it known, prompting his illegal firing. Following the firing, the Obama White House waged a smear campaign against Walpin, making bogus allegations that he appeared “confused, disoriented and unable to answer questions,” and exhibited “behavior that led the [CNCS] board to question his capacity to serve.”
If there were no police, if the police were defunded, wealthy people would hire private security guards, but the people who cannot afford private guards need to have a well‑funded police force. I am in favor of extra funding for the police. Give them better training. Teach them how to subdue people without using lethal force.
The problem with the UN is not that it passes too many resolutions, but too few. It never attacks its favorite countries. It applies a double standard of injustice. It has devoted more time to condemning Israel than all the other countries of the world combined. Let us see what it says about recent reports concerning murders in Iran of gay people, for instance the recent murder of a 14‑year‑old by her father as an honor killing. Let us see what it says about so many of the violations of human rights around the world. Well, do not hold your breath. It will say nothing. It will focus only on Israel and the United States. There is a case to be made for the United States withdrawing and defunding…
Plus some observations on recent Social Justice Warrior/Cancel Culture issues. Not in agreement with everything (he opposed elected judges), but worth reading. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
During the height of the coronavirus lockdown, with a substantial portion of the world’s population in quarantine and the global economy sliding toward a deep economic recession, most of us still ate our fill every evening. We should rejoice in this miracle. Hunger, which has accompanied humanity from our beginnings, has practically disappeared. Isolated cases of malnutrition—but not of famine—remain, due to local conflict and extreme forms of poverty, themselves on their way to remission.
Since 1970, world population has doubled—but food production has tripled. In 1970, India was known as “the famine continent,” and the economic literature was uniformly pessimist, an echo of the writings of Thomas Malthus, who proclaimed 170 years earlier an inevitable contradiction between demographic growth and agricultural growth. Humanity escapes this proclaimed fate, thanks to science and commerce—the two foundations of progress, including agricultural progress.
Snip.
What saved us from famine was the 1970s Green Revolution: a combination of species selection, hybridization, and the application of farming techniques such as irrigation and fertilization. When these techniques were applied to wheat and rice, average yields tripled, especially in India, China, Vietnam, and Indonesia. The leaders of this revolution, which we do not celebrate enough, were two agronomists: Norman Borlaug, a Texan who transformed wheat cultivation in his laboratory near Mexico City; and M. S. Swaminathan, an Indian from Chennai who applied Borlaug’s method to rice in a laboratory near Manila. Borlaug received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970 (Swaminathan was overlooked). Never was the Nobel Peace Prize more deserved—or so soon forgotten.
Progress is seldom, if ever, unanimously welcomed. Activist groups in India and the United States have blamed Borlaug and the Green Revolution for creating new inequalities. It’s true that all Indian peasants were equally poor and hungry before the Green Revolution. Those who applied Borlaug’s recommendations became more prosperous than those who stuck to the old methods. It’s easy to achieve equality when there is nothing to distribute; leftists seem to prefer scarcity to plenty if plenty implies unequal portions. The same people who condemned the Green Revolution now oppose GMOs. Their ancestors, in the early nineteenth century, justified destroying new textile machines using the same arguments. Science progresses; ideologies spin their wheels.
Kanye West explains why he’s against abortion. Man says a lot of wacky things, but he sounds truly sincere about this and his faith.
Small engine maker Briggs & Stratton declares bankruptcy. The very last paragraph mentions seeking a new deal from United Steelworkers of America. (Hat tip: ASM826 at Borepatch.)
James Lileks goes to town on that stupid “Classical music is white supremacy” essay.
(@TulsiGabbard) November 20, 2021
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The Cynical Hun 
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Like holy shit. Damn dude!
sarabi_the_meerkat IG ) 
