So much for my plans to post light video content today.
Given the flood of news stories, blog posts and videos, I wasn’t sure I had a good angle on the assassination attempt against Donald Trump by (according to police reports) 20 year old Thomas Matthew Crooks, one that would do anything to enlighten my readers that hadn’t already been done before.
But Russo-Ukrainian War YouTuber Suchomimus put up a video that I think admirably elucidates spatial awareness of the attempted assassination:
Takeaways:
Initial reports made me think the would-be assassin was in front of Trump, but he was actually off to Trump’s right side. The Secret Service counter-sniper was behind Trump.
Analyzing footage, Suchomimus comes to the conclusion that the Secret Service spotted the would-be assassin a split second before he opened fire on Trump, adjusted their sights, and shot him just as the first bullet was fired and grazed Trump’s ear.
“As for Donald Trump’s reaction, he handled it amazingly well.”
Sky News has an overview and footage of the shooting at about 2:30 in:
Like every other dramatic shooting event, a lot of the initial information (including the shooter’s name) was wrong.
Beyond this, there’s a lot of noise (a registered Republican who donated to Act Blue and wore a Demolition Ranch t-shirt?) that I don’t want to try untangling at this late hour.
Biden goes all Nuremberg Rally, more transexual madness, Gibson’s Bakery wins final victory, states subcontract their energy policies to crazy California, and more really stupid criminals. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
You would think that Biden’s team might have better sense than to dress his set like it’s Darth Maul’s bedroom:
That was the most demagogic, outrageous, and divisive speech I have ever seen from an American president. Joe Biden essentially declared all those who oppose him and his agenda enemies of the republic. Truly shameful. pic.twitter.com/ZcJX2BbZlt
What happens when people in the federal government are incompetent and refuse to do their job? Usually nothing. Or they get promoted. But in Florida? Governor DeSantis fires their asses.
On Friday, Governor Ron DeSantis announced that he would be suspending four members of the Broward County School Board for their “incompetence, neglect of duty, and misuse of authority” at Marjory Stonemason Douglass High School.
In a press release, the governor’s office stated that Patricia Good, Donna Korn, Ann Murray and Laurie Rich Levinson had been suspended following the recommendations of the Twentieth Statewide Grand Jury. DeSantis has been particularly active in education, going as far as endorsing school board members in their races across the state, and enacting laws on curriculum transparency and parental rights.
“Even four years after the events of February 14, 2018, the final report of the Grand Jury found that a safety-related alarm that could have possibly saved lives at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School ‘was and is such a low priority that it remains uninstalled at multiple schools,’ and ‘students continue to be educated in unsafe, aging, decrepit, moldy buildings that were supposed to have been renovated years ago,’” the press release states.
“These are inexcusable actions by school board members who have shown a pattern of emboldening unacceptable behavior, including fraud and mismanagement, across the district,” the press release continued.
“It is my duty to suspend people from office when there is clear evidence of incompetence, neglect of duty, misfeasance or malfeasance,” said DeSantis. “The findings of the Statewide Grand Jury affirm the work of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas School Safety Commission. We are grateful to the members of the jury who have dedicated countless hours to this mission and we hope this suspension brings the Parkland community another step towards justice. This action is in the best interest of the residents and students of Broward County and all citizens of Florida.”
In their place, DeSantis has appointed Torey Alston, former Commissioner of the Broward County Board of County Commissioners and President of Indelible Solutions, Manual “Nandy” A. Serrano, member of the Florida Sports Foundation Board of Directors, Ryan Reiter, a US Marine Corps Veteran and Director of Government Relations for Kaufman Lynn Construction, and Kevin Tynan, Attorney with Richardson and Tynan, who previously served on the Broward County School Board and South Broward Hospital District, to take the suspended members’ places.
Rachel, a Brooklyn mom with a gender-dysphoric child…went undercover as a pre-teen in the chat, searching for resources for detransitioners. She found none.
Instead, she opened a “Pandora’s box” of sexually perverse content, aggressive gender re-assignment referrals, adults encouraging minors to hide their transitions from their parents, and many troubled kids in need of psychological counseling. She shared screenshots of the chat with National Review.
Rachel says she looked to the Trevor Project in desperation, “when I thought my child was going to kill herself.” The organization frequently claims that LGBT youth are more than four times more likely to attempt suicide than their peers. It claims to be a refuge for these people with its crisis services including TrevorLifeline, TrevorText, and TrevorChat.
Under the advice of a “highly credentialed” medical and mental-health team, Rachel and her husband decided to socially transition their child a few years ago, she told National Review. After that, her child was hospitalized three times for self-harm and suicidality, including at least one suicide attempt. In New York, due to a ban on psychotherapy, so-called gender affirmation was the only legal option they could pursue, she said.
They were at their wit’s end, until her spouse sat her down and presented her with a PowerPoint, showing statistics that people who transition are, by a huge factor, much more likely than the general public to commit suicide.
“My jaw hit the floor. I said, ‘Oh my God we’ve been lied to’,” she says.
Since then, Rachel, a lifelong Democrat and feminist, has been dedicated to exposing the child gender-transition craze, which she argues is driven by “predatory medicine” incentivized by the government.
In TrevorSpace, she got a bird’s-eye view of the progressive non-profit giant that is claiming to save young lives but is really driving them further into existential rabbit holes, depravity, and potential danger, she said.
She documented kids talking about how to buy binders, an undergarment that constricts breasts, behind their parents’ backs. “I know the way people usually do this is by ordering it to a friend’s house or something of the sort, but I don’t have anyone to do that with,” wrote a girl whose account says she’s under 18. “I have money and know where I want to get it from and all that. I just need a means of getting it.” Another user suggested she have the binder sent to a post office where she could pick it up without her parents’ knowledge. Other users were referred to eBay to purchase a packer, or an artificial appendage meant to mimic a penis.
When people sign up for TrevorSpace, they have the option of placing themselves within the age ranges of “under 18” or “18-25.” The community is open to people 13-24, according to the site. There is no system in place to confirm a person’s age, Rebecca says and National Review confirmed. She also said she noticed entries from people claiming to be over 25 too, as well as guest accounts with no age listed.
Other teens, presumably girls transitioning to boys, testified to the effectiveness of Minoxidil, an over-the-counter medication that stimulates facial hair growth. “Can I get and use Minoxidil without my parents knowing?” a girl asked.
The kids Rachel followed on TrevorSpace spanned a diverse spectrum of gender disorientation, some confident in their belief that they were the opposite sex and some just gender curious. But, as Rachel observed, they were all pointed in one direction: gender transition. In a significant number of cases, adults gave minors this validation.
Gibson’s Bakery finally wins complete victory in their case, as Ohio’s Supreme Court refused to hear Oberlin College’s appeal. “It means the Gibsons now can collect approximately $36 million.”
Another day, another high profile Kamala Harris aide leaving. “Herbie Ziskend, a senior communications adviser, announced that he is leaving Harris’s side for the West Wing, where he will be the new White House deputy communications director.”
French tax agency deploys AI to find high ranking government official who are embezzling. Ha, just kidding! They’re using it to find and tax unreported pools.
The last Luftwaffe raid against the UK happened April 21, 1945, less than two weeks before Hitler committed suicide, and some three weeks before VE Day. The planes took off from occupied Stavanger, Norway, and it didn’t work out well for the Germans…
On May 12, Biden’s Interior Department blocked a proposal to open up more than one million acres of land in Alaska for oil and gas drilling. Two days later, Biden’s Environmental Protection Agency blocked plans to expand an oil refinery in the US Virgin Islands.
Biden and his defenders said he had to block the expansion of the Virgin Islands refinery, given how polluting it was.
But had Biden’s EPA allowed the Virgin Island refinery to expand, the owners would have poured nearly $3 billion into retrofitting the plant so it produced gasoline and other products more cleanly, while significantly increasing production at the same time.
In truth, there are many things Biden could have done, and still should do, to lower energy prices. He could invoke the National Defense Act to accelerate the rate of oil and gas permits. He could set a floor of $80/barrel for re-filling the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR), which would be a powerful incentive for the industry, because it would prevent prices from falling to unprofitable levels. Biden could announce trade agreements with American allies to supply them with liquified natural gas, which would incentivize more natural gas production and lower prices.
If Biden got America on a wartime footing, as he should be given Russia’s aggression in Europe, we would see the lowering of oil, gas and petroleum prices in less than one year.
Why won’t Biden do it? Because he has declared war on fossil fuels. “I guarantee you, we’re going to end fossil fuel,” Biden promised a student climate activist in 2019. “I am not going to cooperate with them,” he said, referring to the oil and gas industry.
Joe Biden has proven once again that he has no interest in reducing the record-high costs of gasoline, which have gone up throughout his time in office.
Biden not only wants to block all new oil drilling in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, but he’s also taking steps to shut down exploration of oil and gas on federal lands.
“A plan released Friday shows the White House proposed no more than 10 potential lease sales in the Gulf of Mexico, an option for one potential lease sale in the northern portion of the Cook Inlet of Alaska, and no lease sales for the Atlantic or Pacific planning areas over the 2023-2028 period,” reports Breitbart. This plan is not finalized, however, but any potential areas of exploration or sale not mentioned in the proposal will reportedly be off-limits from 2023-2028.
Former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe assassinated by a man with a homemade shotgun while giving a speech.
Abe’s Japan was a reliable ally to the United States. But we should not let the shocking assassination blind us to the fact that Abe’s much-praised (by western MSM outlets, anyway) runaway deficit spending “Abenomics” efforts to lift Japan out of its long-running recession were a colossal failure, jacking up Japan’s national debt to the highest debt-per-GDP ratio in the world while failing to measurably increase actual economic activity.
Here’s a little leadership secret that’s actually not a secret at all to competent commissioned and non-commissioned officers. There are no bad cohorts of soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines, Coast Guardsmen and whatever the hell Space Force people are called. There are only bad leaders, and we have the worst military leadership in American history, starting right at the top with a commander-in-chief who is less like Ike than Beavis.
In fact – and this rips me up to say because I would not trade my about 27 years in the Army for anything – the reluctance to enlist of the traditional, normal Americans who are most likely to serve and who are the most desirable for service, is entirely rational. You do have an obligation to serve your country in some way, the military being the highest and best way for those who are able. But you do not have an obligation to do so if your life is going to be squandered by a leadership whose strategies are a disaster, whose priorities are not the defense of this country but some sort of bizarre pan-global progressive ideology, and who will use you as a guinea pig in freakish and morally bankrupt social experiments, all while failing to fulfill even the most basic obligations of the leaders to the led. Our military today is failing to meet its recruiting goals because it has failed to earn the trust of normal Americans who would otherwise be inclined to raise their hands.
Snip.
That social justice nonsense is another reason we can’t recruit. Would you want to waive your civil rights and sleep in the dirt to be part of an institution that hates you? Would you feel like joining an organization whose leadership is very, very focused on mythical “white privilege” and those scary “insurrectionists?” Remember, if you are conservative, you are an official extremist threat. If you are a believer, you run afoul of the official morality of CRT. If you think men can’t become women because they feel like it, you are a horrible bigot and you will be ordered to lie and use the pronoun du jour or else.
This is your city on Woke: “Over 400,000 High-Priority Incidents In Chicago In 2021 Had ‘No Police Available To Send.'”
Speaking of Democratic Party-ruled city approaches to crime, look at the New York City case against Jose Alba, who “was sitting in his store working and was no harm to anyone. Then the perpetrator came behind the counter and attacked him.” Alba defended himself by killing his attacker with a knife. Naturally, Soros-backed DA Alvin Bragg charged Alba with murder.
The Social Justice Warrior love affair with pedophiles continues: “Top New Biden Staffer Defended Underage, Gay Prostitution Website Raided By Feds.”
“The owner of a Washington sex shop, who also serves as the director of the local school board, is hosting a pair of sex education workshops for children as young as 9 years old. Jenn Mason, the owner of the Wink Wink Boutique in Bellingham, Washington, and the director of the Bellingham School Board, is hosting a sex-ed workshop titled ‘Uncringe Academy: Sex Education Without (most) of the Awkward’ for children ages 9-18.” If the story seems familiar, it’s because she tried to do the same thing in May. According to their website, she’s still a Bellingham School Board Director.
“The ailing #WokeSuperheroes and teenagers-talking-in-hallways network The CW has been sold for zero dollars.” Plus $100 million in debt assumption. Bonus: Critical Drinker reviews Batwoman.
Sunday I got my taxes to the all-but-printed stage, and then drove down to Bookpeople to attend a signing for Robert Caro’s new book Working (an excerpt of which I printed back in January).
Caro is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of four (soon to be five) monumental volumes on the life of Democratic President Lyndon Baines Johnson (The Path to Power, Means of Ascent, Master Of The Senate, and The Passage of Power). The portrait Caro paints of Johnson (and keep in mind that I haven’t read all of them yet) is that of a shrewd, driven, absolute son-of-a-bitch. I’m sure Mr. Caro and I would have many political disagreements (he’s obviously a fan of many of the big government initiatives Johnson championed), but no one doubts his competence and commitment to research (which is what Working is about; how he found out certain things in the lives of Johnson and Robert Moses, the subject of his equally acclaimed book The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York.)
No one, that is, except Kennedy Assassination conspiracy theorists.
Now let’s grant that there were many strange aspects to the Kennedy Assassination, that LBJ was an absolute son-of-a-bitch, and that numerous people in the 1960s thought he might have had a hand in it. I own copies of A Texan Links at Lyndon and MacBird! (a satirical play casting LBJ as Macbeth and JFK as Duncan). So it’s not exactly a new idea.
One would think, more than half a century after the assassination, the conspiracy theorists, having failed to provide incontrovertible proof of said conspiracy, would move on. But it seems that an entirely new crop has popped up in the margins.
One of them showed up at Caro’s signing. (I later found out the name of the local crank, but don’t feel like giving him the publicity.) During the question and answer session he nattered on and on about Madeleine Brown, Billie Sol Estes, etc. It was more a monologue than a speech.
After sharp prompting from Bookpeople staff and the audience, he finally got out something resembling a question and briefly shut up. Caro replied he had read the Brown, said it was a poor plagiarism of another book he had read (but couldn’t remember the title), and dismissed the others. Then came the money quote:
“In 40 years of research I never came across any credible evidence that LBJ had anything to do with JFK’s assassination.”
Keep in mind that this is a man who has made every effort to interview all the living principles of Johnson’s life, read hundreds of boxes of papers in the LBJ library, found out the undocumented source of Johnson’s secret power in 1940 (discussed in the aforementioned post), and even interviewed Ladybird Johnson about her late husband’s longtime lover Alice Glass.
This is not a man who skimps on research.
If Robert Caro says there’s no evidence that Johnson had anything to do with the Kennedy assassination, I don’t see how an objective observer can regard that as anything but the definitive word.
Unfashionable though it may be to believe so, communist sympathizer Lee Harvey Oswald, probably acting alone, almost certainly killed John F. Kennedy, and Lyndon Baines Johnson had nothing to do with it.
The Daily Caller is reporting that an assassination list was found on Hodgkinson, and if true, had three members of the conservative House Freedom Caucus on it:
James T. Hodgkinson, the shooter who opened fire on dozens of Republican congressmen and staffers at a baseball practice in Alexandria, Virginia, on Wednesday, had a list of Republican names in his pocket that was recovered by the FBI, The Daily Caller has learned.
The news that the shooter had a list of names suggests the shooting was not a random outburst, but instead appears to be a premeditated political assassination.
The list was written out on notepad paper and found in the shooter’s pocket, according to multiple sources with intimate knowledge of the situation, who spoke on condition of anonymity, citing the sensitivity of the investigation. The list of names included Alabama Rep. Mo Brooks, South Carolina Rep. Jeff Duncan and Arizona Rep. Trent Franks, TheDC has confirmed.
Had Hodgkinson succeeded and not been killed by capitol police, that would likely have changed his charge from Second Degree Murder to First Degree Murder.
Scalise remains alive but in critical condition. Says his doctor: “I would say that when he arrived, he was in critical condition with an imminent risk of death.” Scalise now faces “additional operations to manage abdominal injuries and other bone injuries.”
The Russian ambassador to Turkey, Andrey Karlov, has been badly wounded in an armed assault in Ankara according to Turkish press. According to CNN Turk man opened fire in the air then fired twice at the ambassador, who was shot in the back. It is reported that police is still exchanging fire with the attacker.
The attack took place at the opening of the “Russia through Turks’ eyes” photo exhibition, Turkish NTV news channel reports, and adds that there is information that three other people are injured.
Karlov was immediately rushed to a hospital after the assault, according to Turkish media. The ambassador is reported to be in a critical state.
Russian Embassy in Ankara has not issued an official statement concerning the assault yet. However, soon after the news emerged, Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said that Russian Foreign Ministry would soon issue a statement. The attack comes just a day before Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu’s planned visit to Moscow for Syria talks with his Russian and Iranian counterparts.
No word yet on who is responsible for the attack. The Islamic State’s a good candidate, but if the Turkish government announces the PKK was behind it, there’s a 99% chance it’s a false flag operation.
Let’s hope it’s not a “Gavrilo Princip in Sarajevo” big deal…
Karlov was several minutes into a speech at the embassy-sponsored photo exhibition in the capital when a man wearing a suit and tie shouted “Allahu Akbar” and fired at least eight shots, according to an AP photographer in the audience. The attacker also said some words in Russian and smashed several of the photos hung for the exhibition.
CNN Turk reported that the gunman entered the gallery with a police ID and opened fire on the ambassador as he made a speech. CNN Turk is reporting that a brief hostage situation has ended after special forces entered the building, adding that Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu is at the scene.
Haaretz also offers this photo of the attacker:
More Russian looking than Middle Eastern, and a bit on the light-skinned side for a Chechen.
Update 2: The Russian ambassador has died. Not the sort of things those cheerful, forgiving, happy-go-lucky sorts in the Kremlin are inclined to sweep under the rug…
Update 3: “Turkish security officials identified the attacker as Mert Altıntas, who had graduated from İzmir Rüştü Ünsal Police Academy in 2014.” Also: “He said something about ‘Aleppo’ and ‘revenge’.”
Update 4: Holy fark! Footage of the shooting:
Andrie Karlov, Russian ambassador to Turkey was shot while making a speech at the opening of exhibition “Russia in the eyes of Turks.” Video pic.twitter.com/ddX3kMBvu4
Update 6: Turkey’s Foreign minister is flying to Moscow of Syria talks. Meanwhile, Russian capo Vladimir Putin isn’t sounding overly belligerent over the assassinations. “This murder is clearly a provocation aimed at undermining the improvement and normalization of Russian-Turkish relations, as well as undermining the peace process in Syria promoted by Russia, Turkey, Iran and other countries interested in settling the conflict in Syria.” Notably absent from Putin’s statement: the phrases “Casus belli,” “glass parking lot” and “sew the earth with salt.”
James Taranto in the Wall Street Journal. Including why we went in with troops rather than B-52s: “The president wanted proof that bin Laden was dead. So he assembled a small death panel, which went to the compound in Pakistan and shot him.” Heh.
The White House seems to be unclear on some of the details of the operation. Not a good idea to be handing the “deathers” ammunition this early.
And now, in honor of Bin Laden’s demise, and stolen from Dwight’s pal Borepatch, here’s Achmed the Dead Terrorist:
Believe it or not, thought I had seen the “I Kill You!” pic, I had actually never seen the video before going to Borepatch’s site. Given that this video has over 133 million hits, I may be a wee little bit behind the curve on this one. Tune in next week when I cover such cutting edge Internet phenomena as Mahir’s website, an animated dancing baby, and cat pictures with funny misspelled captions…
This is not good news. Imagine if the governor of California or Texas were assassinated in broad daylight by his own bodyguard. Well, that’s what happened to Punjab Governor Salman Taseer in Pakistan. Of course, former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto was also assassinated, and Indian PM Indira Gandhi was assassinated by her own bodyguards, in large measure due to policies regarding Sikhs in the Indian portion of Punjab.
As for who is responsible, who knows? It could be a freelance jihadist, it could be al Quada, it could be Taliban, or it could be some of the Islamist elements of the Pakistani ISI. (Given the circumstances, I’m assuming it wasn’t Kashmiri nationalists, though stranger things have happened.) In any case, it’s bad news for a nuclear-armed nation that always seems to be inching ever closer to become a failed state.
I don’t have any particular insight into Pakistani, so I direct you to the odd piece by the ever-interesting Christopher Hitchens, which are long on insight and short on hope. Sometimes, as in the Middle East, there are simply no good options.
