I believe in a multi-racial, progressive society where whites, blacks, and Koreans can all work together to stand on rooftops and shoot communists.
Dogs don’t have thumbs @MorlockP
Tweeted on August 23, 2021
Deleted by Twitter sometime between August 24, 10:22 AM PDT and August 25 7:01 PM PDT.
[That was an unexpected plot twist in the last couple of words.—Joe]
The indictment alleged Reid lied to a Seattle federal grand jury about statements purportedly made to her by an individual identified in court papers as “Suspect #1” — a man federal agents say bragged to Reid about being involved in Wales’ death.
According to court documents and law enforcement sources, Suspect #1 is an acquaintance of the individual believed to have killed Wales on contract, and Suspect #1 is believed to have acted as a lookout while the job was done.
During her appearance before the grand jury on Feb. 28, 2018, Reid claimed the government lawyers laid a “perjury trap” — tricking her into telling a lie — so they could indict her, with the goal of pressuring her to give more information about Suspect #1 and others. Her attorney, Nance, has said it was a dry well and that Reid had no firsthand knowledge of the crime or those involved in it.
Wales, a white-collar prosecutor with the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Seattle, was shot to death in the basement of his Queen Anne Hill home on Oct. 11, 2001.
Mike Carter
Seattle Times Reporter
August 23, 2021
Woman accused of lying in unsolved Thomas Wales slaying case pleads guilty to misdemeanor
[I sort of marvel at the effort put into this case. As near as I can tell the FBI has been working on this full time for just short of 20 years. At this point it appears they are willing to violate the rights of innocent people in order to give indicators they are making progress. They brought in “special” prosecutors with questionable (at best) ethical standards (from the quoted article):
Earlier this month, Robart reprimanded and chastised the special prosecutors out of Washington, D.C., brought in to handle the case, for “carelessness” by failing to turn over evidence to the defense.
The apparently innocent person in this case, Reid, was ensnared in the “perjury trap” and then threatened with a lengthy prison sentence:
Reid was indicted on charges of lying to a grand jury and obstruction of justice. A conviction could have sent her to prison for up to five years.
She traded a guilty plea for:
U.S. District Judge James Robart sentenced Shawna Reid to time served — a total of nine days in custody since she was indicted in 2019 — with no additional supervised release, plus a $25 fine.
Can you imagine the FBI having a team work full time for 20 years to solve the murder of an ordinary citizen and withholding evidence from the defense to acquire a conviction? I can’t. This must mean the “King’s Men” are considered very special.—Joe]
The American appetite for social media censorship is apparently increasing: 48 percent of survey respondents now want the government to restrict misinformation, compared with just 39 percent in 2018.
…
That figure—48 percent—is significant. It means, that just about half of all people want the government to violate the First Amendment, which protects the free speech rights of private actors, including tech companies.
Robby Soave
August 20, 2021
48% of Americans Want the Government To Restrict Misinformation on Social Media
[I find it very telling that Democrats had a 25% jump in desire for government infringement upon the specific enumerated right to free speech.—Joe]
Lawyers for the city of St. Louis, St. Louis County and the state of Missouri will be in a Cole County courtroom Thursday afternoon for a motion hearing over a new state law that hasn’t gone into full effect yet, but one which the Department of Justice says is already having a chilling impact on law enforcement.
At issue is House Bill 85, dubbed as the Second Amendment Preservation Act.
Gregg Palermo and Heidi Schmidt
August 18, 2021
Feds say Missouri Second Amendment law already having chilling impact
[There is a chilling effect on law enforcement infringing upon the rights of the specific enumerated right of the people to keep and bear arms? Excellent! That was the point of the law. Good to know it is working as intended.
I am looking forward to the prosecutions and convictions.—Joe]
The big reveal in Afghanistan is that what happened there can happen here, quickly. Those goat-herders just showed us how to defeat an Empire abroad. Now it’s time to defeat the empire within.
Tom Luongo
August 16, 2021
What If Afghanistan is More Than Just a Failed War?
[I suspect the rot is very deep and collapse could be much closer than what 99% of the people realize.—Joe]
These gang members didn’t have too hard a time getting around New Jersey’s gun laws. More than that, though, your typical gang member isn’t known for being some kind of master criminal.
In other words, if they can get guns, anyone can get guns.
…
When it comes to gun control, the only ones really slowed down by the law are good, decent, law-abiding citizens who are trying to walk the straight and narrow path. The criminals, on the other hand, will find a way around it without much challenge. Most probably won’t even realize a new law was passed.
Tom Knighton
August 12, 2021
Gang Members Don’t Seem Bothered By New Jersey Gun Laws
[It’s easier to believe this is all according to plan rather than the politicians are that stupid and/or ignorant after so many decades of no evidence that gun control makes the general population safer.
I am nearly convinced it’s about creating a safe work environment for the politicians and their comrades, the criminals. This is well-known. Read The Gulag Archipelago. The USSR regarded thieves as allies in the building of communism because they were the enemy of property owners. Why should our modern day socialists behave any differently?—Joe]
It is worth noting that even previously ardent supporters of restricting the right to keep and bear arms don’t want to talk those ideas on the campaign trail in Cleveland this year. Instead, they’re talking about building up the city’s police force, focusing on violent actors, and at least in one case, encouraging residents to obtain a concealed carry license so that they don’t have to fear for their lives when they step outside their door. This is a step in the right direction, and a sign that at least some Democrats feel comfortable putting some distance between themselves and the gun control lobby that’s still eager to court their support.
Cam Edwards
August 16, 2021
Change: Cleveland Democrats Downplay Gun Control As Solution To Violent Crime
[Yes, it’s worth noting. I might have some trust in their change of direction after they advocate for and repeal many of the restrictions on our specific enumerated right to keep and bear arms.
Until then I’ll continue to advocate for their prosecution.—Joe]
Congress is going to pass wild spending package after wild spending package, and the Fed is just going to continue to pump billions upon billions of fresh dollars into the financial system.
This is the greatest financial bubble in the history of the world, and it will be fascinating to watch how long it can last before it finally implodes.
Michael Snyder
August 11, 2021
I Feel Like I Am Living In Crazytown
[For certain values of “fascinating”.
Prepare appropriately.—Joe]
We woke libruls don’t need no fancy book learning.
Ted Cruz @tedcruz
Tweeted on August 11, 2021
[This is in regard to this:
This sounds like the “logic’ used for a lot of the push for more people to get college degrees and why it should be free in the last few decades., “People with college degrees earn more money and have better lives. Everyone should get college degrees.”
It, perhaps deliberately, confuses cause and effect. People with certain college degrees had the aptitude to understand and apply the course material required for high paying jobs in certain fields. It wasn’t just a generic college degree that resulted in high paying jobs. The English, psychology, music, art appreciation, etc. degrees did not correlate with high paying jobs like the medical, legal, engineering, finance, and business degrees. But the political sounds bites led you to believe it was the degree and not the person able to acquire the degree that made the difference between the degreed and non-degreed.
It appears the failed (for certain definitions of “failed”, one can make the case it was deliberate deception which worked exactly as planned) college degrees for everyone project is now being implemented at the high school level.
And so now, it is clear we need to add Oregon to the list of states circling the toilet drain. The Antifa/BLM stuff in Portland is just the most visible symptom.
I recently met a group of people who could be described as Oregon refugees. They left Oregon because of the stupid and/or evil politics and took up residence in Idaho. Idaho is the fastest growing state in the union. The people I was talking to are living in travel trailers and mobile homes as they try to get their own homes built. They work in the construction industry and help fill the gap in construction workers. They own and/or rent heavy equipment and are skilled operators. I wish them well and welcome them to Idaho.—Joe]
Humanity needs to become a bigger priority in this state. This means that stricter gun control is necessary. Our government should listen to its people and make them feel safe, rather than allowing a law as dangerous as permitless carry.
Sumera Siddiqi
Liberal studies freshman at University of Houston
August 9, 2021
Permitless carry infringes on the right to safety
[Is it truth or is it a caricature? Sometimes it is so hard to tell.—Joe]
There are lies, damned lies and gun control lies. The problem with the gun control lies is that those who continue to spout them have no shame even when they’ve been proven wrong.
Larry Keane
August 9, 2021
NSSF: There’s one thing those who are pushing for gun control don’t want you to know. It’s called “the truth”.
[As Lyle sometimes points out, a case could be made that they take pride in their lies.—Joe]
I have been listening to the book Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland on Audible on my commute.
It’s a difficult book to listen to.
In chapter 10, the author talks about the clearing of the ghetto at Międzyrzec to send the Jews to Treblinka.
What stuck out at me was that 11,000 Jews were deported and over 900 shot by a cadre of only 350 police.
…
And there wasn’t one report of Jews fighting back.
J. KB
July 23, 2021
Why I am the way I am
[The book sounds as if it has similar content to Hitler’s Willing Executioners which I have posted (this post is extremely relevant J. KB concerns) about before.
I just purchased the Audible version of Ordinary Men and will start it later this week when I finish the current book I’m listening too.
As difficult as the books may be to read/listen-to they present some very important lessons worth learning.—Joe]
Everything we know about evidence-based violence interruption says you have to interact directly with the highest-risk individuals. And that’s true for police, but that’s also true for all sorts of community services, including but not limited to street outreach. So for all of these individuals who are at the highest risk, all of a sudden, all of those services stop because of the physical distancing mandates.
Thomas Abt
August 2, 2021
What Philadelphia Reveals About America’s Homicide Surge
[Ahh… This can explain the rise in violent crime over the last year or so. I had not had a good hypothesis for what was going on. This sounds quite plausible.—Joe]
Why is it that back in the 1950’s, one could walk into a hardware store, gun shop or mail order all kinds of firearms with no background checks or waiting period and crime was far less than today?
James
August 7, 2021
Comment to BREAKING: Mexico Blames American Guns For Their Problems, Sues U.S.
[My first hypothesis is criminals were more likely to be prosecuted then. My second hypothesis is that we didn’t have a culture of entitlement and people competing for profit in the victim Olympics. Both could be true as well as false.—Joe]
The democracy beat shouldn’t be some kind of specialized innovation, but a widespread rethinking across the mainstream media.
Making this happen will call for something that Big Journalism is notoriously bad at: An open-minded, nondefensive recognition of what’s gone wrong.
Top editors, Sunday talk-show moderators and other news executives should pull together their brain trusts to grapple with this. And they should be transparent with the public about what they’re doing and why.
As a model, they might have to swallow their big-media pride and look to places like Harrisburg, Pa., public radio station WITF which has admirably explained to its audience why it continually offers reminders about the actions of those public officials who tried to overturn the 2020 election results. Or to Cleveland Plain Dealer editor Chris Quinn’s letter to readers about how the paper and its website, Cleveland.com, refuse to cover every reckless, attention-getting lie of Republican Josh Mandel as he runs for the U.S. Senate next year.
Margaret Sullivan
July 28, 2021
Our democracy is under attack. Washington journalists must stop covering it like politics as usual.
[Ms. Sullivan openly demands the suppression of views which diverge from her narrative.
Prepare and respond appropriately.—Joe]
New York’s licensing requirements criminalize the exercise of the fundamental Second Amendment right, with rare exception. As a result, each year, we represent hundreds of indigent people whom New York criminally charges for exercising their right to keep and bear arms. For our clients, New York’s licensing regime renders the Second Amendment a legal fiction. Worse, virtually all our clients whom New York prosecutes for exercising their Second Amendment right are Black or Hispanic. And that is no accident. New York enacted its firearm licensing requirements to criminalize gun ownership by racial and ethnic minorities. That remains the effect of its enforcement by police and prosecutors today.
BRIEF OF THE BLACK ATTORNEYS OF LEGAL AID, THE BRONX DEFENDERS, BROOKLYN DEFENDER SERVICES, ET AL. AS AMICI CURIAE IN SUPPORT OF PETITIONERS
July 2021
[Via Damon Root.
It is somewhat disturbing that pointing out that the demographics of the illegal prosecutions are believed to make a difference in whether the law is declared unconstitutional or not. It would seem to me the constitutionality of a law should not be decided on skin color or ethnicity.
That said, if it gets another SCOTUS justice vote (Root opines, “It’s possible that such arguments will resonate with Justice Sonia Sotomayor”) I give my thanks to the public defenders for their contribution.—Joe]
The FBI needs to go away. It should happen in an orderly and thoughtful process, over a period of months. Congress should authorize and create an investigative division in the U.S. Marshals Service and open applications for law enforcement officer seeking to be rigorously screened, vetted and then accessed into the new organization. Similar action was taken before in the very creation of the FBI. It is now time to clean house and restore the public’s trust in the “premier investigative agency” of federal law enforcement.
Chris Farrell
July 28, 2021
Disband the FBI
[About 99% of the Federal government needs to go away to be operating with the limits set by the U.S. Constitution. So the FBI is just a tiny snowflake at the tip of the iceberg.
And if you think about it a little bit you realize the bigger issue is all the Federal laws the FBI enforces. The laws need to be eliminated first or at least concurrently with the FBI. If they didn’t have laws to enforce their “teeth” would be essentially pulled and be mostly irrelevant.
The FBI was once extremely well regarded. I remember my dad once telling me, I must have been about eight years old at the time, how great the FBI was. They trained to shoot one handed and using their weak hand only. I was amazed at this. And, “Once the FBI is on a case the case will be solved. The FBI always gets their man.”
After Ruby Ridge, Waco, and the failed coup against President Trump, to hit just a few of the low spots, many people now rightfully regarded the FBI as an enemy of the people.—Joe]
If we’ve gotten to a point where a giant tech company, or even a little company, is silencing people who are providing first-hand sourcing for major, major news stories, or reading press releases from elected officials, that’s like not America anymore.
Naomi Wolf
July 30, 2021
Former Clinton Adviser Naomi Wolf: Big Tech Bans Leading to Self-Censorship
[I was chatting with someone about this sort of thing a few weeks ago and he said something which surprised me. He said, “I don’t expect Facebook to exist a year from now.”
I expressed my surprise but there were more important things to discuss and I dropped it. He is a former Secret Service agent, but I don’t see how that would give him insider knowledge about something as big as the elimination of Facebook as a company.
Is this a QAnon thing I haven’t heard?—Joe]
The frustration is in the United States the freedom of speech and to say things is largely cannot be regulated.
David Chipman
2019
Biden ATF Nominee ‘Frustrated’ By First Amendment Freedom Of Gun Owners To Say Things He Doesn’t Like
[Chipman isn’t fit for a government job as a toilet scrubber, let alone a position requiring a presidential nomination and Senate approval.
Via email from Rolf.—Joe]
From Newsweek (emphasis added):
Millions of Americans could be forced out of their homes after the Biden administration declined to extend the federal eviction ban put in place last September to protect tenants during the pandemic. The White House said Thursday that it would not extend the moratorium, citing a Supreme Court decision last month against an extension past July.
…
Bush and Pressley spearheaded a letter to Biden Saturday—signed by six others including Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and Ilhan Omar of Minnesota—calling for “an urgent government response,” according to Politico. “Extending the eviction moratorium is a matter of life and death for the communities we represent,” they wrote.
Rep. Maxine Waters of California called on Biden to issue an executive order to “expand and extend” the moratorium on CNN Saturday, criticizing the president for following the Supreme Court’s ruling. “We thought that the White House was in charge,” she said. “We have families, probably 11 million families, out there who stand to be evicted.”
I grant you that Rep Waters isn’t the sharpest Fruit Loop in the knife drawer, but her “thought” seems to be shared by others. This appears to include the writer of the article. I find this “thought” of hers extremely telling. She and others do not regard SCOTUS decisions as binding on the executive or legislative branch.
This is truly scary stuff. Make appropriate preparations.
