British climate protesters who blocked the London beltway get seriously slammed in court:
Obstructing a highway is not simple political expression, and it is far from “peaceful protest.” It involves the physical obstruction of others’ freedom of movement. It is also disruptive and potentially tortious conduct that can have severe consequences. In this case, those seeking to “just stop oil” have done little to advance their cause (traffic congestion results in worse fuel economy and increases emissions), but and managed to cause significant harm to others. From the BBC report:
The action resulted in chaos on the M25 over four successive days, causing nearly 51,000 hours of driver delays, the court heard. The protests closed parts of the motorway in Kent, Surrey, Essex and Hertfordshire.
People missed flights, medical appointments and exams. Two lorries collided, and a police motorcyclist came off his bike during one of the protests on 9 November 2022 while trying to bring traffic to a halt in a “rolling road block”.
Prosecutors alleged the protests led to an economic cost of at least £765,000, while the cost to the Metropolitan Police was put at more than £1.1m.
The activsits and their allies also sought to disrupt the trial, but to no avail.
The party that thinks women dressing in the ketchup bottle costumes from Handmaid’s Tale is utterly profoundly meaningful and not a little bit mawkish or cloying or hyperdramatic…
…has suddenly developed scruples about costume accessories?
Is it just me, or is Joe Biden throwing everything he can find at the wall to see what buys votes?
First, its “national rent control”:
President Joe Biden is ready to propose a 5% cap on annual rent increases for tenants of major landlords as he tries to show he’s doing something about the high cost of housing, according to a person familiar with the plan.
The proposal, to be announced while the president visits Nevada on Tuesday, is being championed by Biden in the middle of a tense presidential campaign and a time when housing costs have been a major driver of overall inflation.
Because that did so much good for “affordable housing” in New York, San Francisco, Minneapolis and Saint Paul..
But that’s just retail Democrat pettifoggery. Next, he goes big:
President Biden is reportedly planning to endorse major changes to the U.S. Supreme Court, including proposals for legislation to establish term limits for the justices and an enforceable ethics code. https://t.co/VD474v8YPx
This is a play for the “ignorant low-information emotion-driven” voter bloc, which elections since 2000 show is between 48-52% of the electorate.
The “rent control”, like his “student loan forgiveness”, is a violation of the Takings clause. Expanding the court without a very solid congressional majority, merely a delusion.
To: Rep. McCollum From: Mitch Berg, Obstreporous peasant Re: Civil RIghts
Your Highness,
Yesterday, you criticized the federal appeals court ruling that said Minnesota could not deny carry permits to qualfied adults between ages 18 and 20.
Just days after a 20-year-old shot a former U.S. president, this ruling puts Minnesotans at greater risk by putting guns ahead of protecting lives. It overrules the will of the people seeking to make our communities safer from epidemic of gun violence.https://t.co/G3bH3NxFeE
— Rep. Betty McCollum (@BettyMcCollum04) July 16, 2024
Please list the other civil rights from which adults ages 18-20 should be excluded.
Chaya Raichik, of the account “Libs of TikTok”, and her seven-digit collection of followers, have gone scorched earth on social media accounts that cheered last weekend’s assassination attempt on former president Trump:
I get the urge. Perhaps more than most. I’ve had at least one job get tanked because some (very “progressive”) management found out about my alter ego life (which I have never, not once in 20 years, mentoined in a workplace. I don’t talk about politics at work – and yet I know of one contract job that didn’t get extended, notwithstanding the fact that I saved the project I was working on (long story for another time) because someone googled up some portion of my shadowy talk-radio existence and complained.
And that’s just the once I know about. I have suspicions about other jobs.
It was fine as far as it went – I found better jobs. But I’m not going to say I was never angry about it.
I never had the time, bandwidth or following to act on it like Raichik even if I had. And Raichik has certainly endured plenty of harassment herself. And the two of us aren’t alone.
Of course, on the right the “cultural memory” of the left’s social oppression is pretty hot and current; “cancellation”, including losing jobs, having professional license challenged, and other active harassment over quesitoning and refusing the Covid vaccine; losing jobs over photos in MAGA caps, having kids harassed because their parents were open conservatives.
And it is a little disturbing to see some people – doctors, nurses, teachers – not only cheering on the assassination, but actively wishing the same on half the population. It’d be great to help them recognize how stupid and evil they are being.
This is pretty much the definition of “punching down”.
I’ve had a policy on this blog from the beginning; I don’t go after peoples (non-elective) day jobs – and I am absolutely hands-off their families.
Does that make me a better person than those that don’t have those scruples?
Yes. Absolutely.
Has it deterred people going after me, my job and family? Well, not all of them. I don’t have the means to scorched-earth them all. WIth some, its irrelevant. With others? Karma’s a bitch. But I’m the one that has to live with myself.
SCENE: Mitch BERG is trimming weeds while listening to “Office Ladies” on headphones. He doesn’t notice Avery LIBRELLE has come up the sidewalk, looking for evidence of herbicide use.
LIBRELLE: Merg!
BERG: (Oblivious)
LIBRELLE: The so-called “assassination attempt” was pretty much a fake.
BERG: (No response, as he continues to listen to his podcast)
LIBRELLE: It looks like his ear was cut by a piece of glass! What a drama queen!
BERG: (Nothin’)
GUY RIDING PAST ON BIKE: So what do you think it was that accelerated this supposed piece of glass to a speed capable of taking a chunk out of the President’s ear?
WOMAN WAITING AT BUS STOP ACROSS THE STREET: Yeah! Perhaps magic?
GUY TRIMMING HEDGES DOWN THE BLOCK: Maybe the kids from Slytherin playing around with their wands again?
LADY IN KITCHEN, LISTENING THROUGH WINDOW: Maybe it was Umbrella Man?
BUS DRIVER (Picking up the woman across the street): Couldn’t have possibly been a bullet aimed at the candidate’s head, could it?
Apologists for the government of the City of Minneapolis have pivoted to talking about crime dropping, we are told, from the three year average.
There’s a reason for that, naturally:
Here’s the city crime dashboard as of today:
The three year average is indeed high – it includes the tail end of the Walz/Covid crime wave of 2021.
But over the past year, to date?
Murder is up.
Robbery is up – sharply.
You’ll note that Minneapolis is now at 32 non-negligent homicides for the year so far. That’s up from 30 homicides in 2016. For the whole year.
It’s a shame the city doesn’t include a ten-year average space. It’d be interesting to see how the DSA/DFL coalition that runs the city would spin that.
President Biden, in his remarkably dilatory and perfunctory statement about the murder of a Trump supporter and the attempt to murder his rival, called for “Unity”.
It was a chanting point that a lot of Democrats took a break for claiming Republicans were “threats to democracy” to gravely intone.
Let’s talk about it.
Back before they called online talk shows “podcasts”, I appeared on one. There was a panel of guests talking politics. There were online “phone callers”. It was sort of like a talk show, only without the radio.
The host introduced a caller. He identified himself as from Detroit. He had a very African-American accent; I say this to describe the sound, not to caricature the person.
He said “What this country needs is unity“.
Eventually, I asked the caller “So, let’s talk about this ‘unity’. True unity has to be consensual. That means everyone is going to compromise a little bit to achieve this ‘unity’. So tell me – what Republican principles are you willing to accept to achieve the ‘unity’ you’re talking about?”
“Oh”, he responded. “Republicans are BUUUUUL-shit”.
Democrat calls for “unity” seem about as perfunctory as someone who’s said the Lord’s Prayer so many times they’ve disconnected their brain from the act. Unity good. Disunity bad.
It’s empty. There is no effort behind it. It has no meaning.
Until they give on something, it’s all just words.
And they don’t have to give on much. Like, “all that yapping about ‘threats to democracy’ and ‘literally Hitler’ and ‘this could be our last election’ was a little overheated. We’re all on the same team. Let’s have a solid American-style election, here”.
You’d be crazy to hold your breath, of course. Dennis Prager says “being a leftist means never needing to apologize”. It’ll never occur to them.
Saturday’s murder of a Trump supporter and father of several, the serious wounding of at least two more, and the miraculously slight injury to candidate Trump, was shocking.
But it was far from unexpected.
First things first: Thomas Crooks was the one who pulled the trigger, killed Corey Comperatore, and tried his damnedest to kill former President Trump. On him alone lies the immediate responsibility.
But creating the atmosphere in which a 20 year old would consider blazing away at a crowd that included a Presidential candidate?
That’s been a team effort.
The left has spent 8 years telling the entire world this man is Orange Hitler, merely because they want government power. What's surprising is that this hasn't happened sooner. pic.twitter.com/EUHRpkf4cb
Of DNA And Psychiatry: This is what America does to dictators.
This is what we did to Nazis.
We’ve brought a lot of them down in our time:
Our cultural memory involves a lot of fighting against actual tyranny – indeed, it’s an inextricable part of our country’s DNA:
And so last Monday, a week ago, whenthe once-presigious New Republic ran this as their cover…:
…and supported it with this…:
We chose the cover image, based on a well-known 1932 Hitler campaign poster, for a precise reason: that anyone transported back to 1932 Germany could very, very easily have explained away Herr Hitler’s excesses and been persuaded that his critics were going overboard. After all, he spent 1932 campaigning, negotiating, doing interviews—being a mostly normal politician. But he and his people vowed all along that they would use the tools of democracy to destroy it, and it was only after he was given power that Germany saw his movement’s full face.
Today, we at The New Republic think we can spend this election year in one of two ways. We can spend it debating whether Trump meets the nine or 17 points that define fascism. Or we can spend it saying, “He’s damn close enough, and we’d better fight.” We unreservedly choose the latter course.
I’m not saying the New Republic intended to inflame some nutbar to take a literal shot a Trump (and, let’s not forget, a crowd of his supporters, murdering one and leaving two more in the hospital). But if they were, it’d be hard to know what they’d do differently.
It’s nothing new:
Untermensch: Of course, it’s not just Trump – although he’s been the focus of most of Big Left’s efforts over the past 8-9 years.
The left’s noise machine has moved someone to put literal crosshairs on Republicans – but the rhetorical iron sights were in play long ago.
POTATUS? As recently as the day before the assassination attempt, this was the President (or at least his loathsome social media tweep):
It’s been a running theme of his entire presidency; here’s his entire “Independence Hall” speech in which, surrounded by fascist re-framings of totems of American democracy, he said that half the population – “MAGA Republicans” – wanted to “end democracy”.
I’m loathe to use phrases like “declaration of (fill in adjective) war” lightly. But it’s too corrosive a narrative to just call “collctive slander”. The President actively tried to stoke irrational fear in half ot the population, of the other half of the population, for purposes of inflaming passions to turn people out for a mid-term election the Democrats expected to lose.
But it’s about way, way more than just elections.
Bad History: Big Left – the collective institutions that support the larger leftist drive for power, the media, academia, big leftybusiness, the non-profit/industrial complex, the public employee unions – have been actively working to demonize, marginalize and dehumanize their opposition as a matter of “etermal campaign” policy for a solid decade and a half.
Locally? Let’s not forget the fact that Major Jacob “Humiliiating Mompants” Frey told the Minneapolis Police not to worry to hard about protecting people coming to see Donald Trump at Target Center in 2016 – and didn’t bother intervening in a wave of assaults on the street.
Also, the March 4 2017 attack by “Anti”-Fa on a group of Republicans in the rotunda the the State Capitol, injuring several in the immediate aftermath of the Trump inauguration.
In the latter two episodes, official actions can be seen as positive incentives to commit violence against Trump, his supporters and conservative dissenter is general.
The surprise is that it took this long to bubble up to Trump.
The counter-gaslighting has already begun:
“It was fake! They sounded like blanks!” (Tell it to the dead man)
“It was just a piece of glass from the teleprompter!” (That’s very unconfirmed – and irrelevant, since any “piece of glass” would have been propelled by f*cking bullet aimed at Trump’s head)
“The shooter was a registered Republican! (in an open primary state, who also donated to ActBlue. This one is in the process of falling apart).
But to me, for purposes of this piece, the worst is this:
Biden has never incited violence against Mr. Trump or any political opponent. Please stop with these unfounded accusations which have the potential to inflame more violence. That’s the last thing our country needs right now.
This is the culmination (so far) of a fifteen year long arc of stoking hatred for political gain. Caling it otherwise is delusion at best, evil at worst.
For Want Of An Inch: But Trump survived.
And the imaging is much more redolent of Churchill…
…whom, let’s be honest, Big Left hates just as badly.
ENTIRE LGBT COMMUNITY: “Don’t you dare use tired stereotypes of “Groomers” and “Chicken Hawks” to refer to our community! We do not target children!”
ALSO THE LGBT COMMUNITY: (referring to a proposal in the California Assembly that would make soliciting a minor for prostitution a felony):
SB1414 would turn the LGBTQ community into literal felons in California. It would disproportionately affect People of Color, and be used to jail more of our Black and Brown brothers! As Democrats, we must stand against the soft bigotry of low expectations. pic.twitter.com/cDKCWhs4Iz
I’ve also urged prayers for what seemed like insurmountable health problems – 13 years ago.
He’s passed away at age 70:
I got a call at 8 a.m. this morning I’d been dreading. Pioneer Press columnist Ruben Rosario, a titan of journalism, dies at 70. A worthy obituary written by @MaryEDivine. https://t.co/r34fvjYvdn
— Frederick Melo, Reporter/Axolotl (@FrederickMelo) July 11, 2024
Condolences and prayers for his family and friends.
In Murthy v. Missouri, the Biden administration was accused of unconstitutional infringement of free speech by pressuring social media to suppress stories unfavorable to the administration. A lower court found it was the most blatant act of censorship in American history.
The Supreme Court sidestepped the issue in cowardly fashion and reversed. The court did not say the government’s action was constitutional, it said citizens have no standing to challenge the unconstitutional action.
There’s no such thing as “standing” in the Constitution, it is strictly a made-up rule that courts use to get rid of nuisance cases they don’t want to hear. It’s a convenient way to avoid making hard decisions. Minnesota courts have used it to rule that ordinary citizens have no standing to challenge the governor’s Covid lock down order, even though it cost them their livelihood or landed them in jail. There is simply no legal remedy for those acts.
Imagine that Biden stays in the race so Democrats have to steal the election to keep the Bad Orange Man out of power. Imagine that the courts act for this instance as they did in 2020 denying that individual citizens have standing to challenge the result and refusing to hear the merits of the election fraud case. What’s the remedy?
If the court is correct citizens have no peaceful remedy within the constitutional system for unconstitutional government action, then the only remedy available is the one the founders exercised: insurrection leading to revolution.
Plenty of rope in the hinterlands and plenty of lamp poles in Washington. No wonder the elites are terrified.
Ask not “why is Hollywood endlessly rebooting old movies ideas” . That one’s obvious; Big Hollywood has almost not good new ideas, and comic books are reaching a state of diminishing returns.
The real question is, how will modern morés bastardize their victims – in this case, Fistful of Dollars?
Instead of a revolver, she’ll practice some anachronistic martial art. Or maybe use a longbow.
The villains – Mexicans in the original – will be white males.
The townspeople will be plucky single mothers whose white male husbands ran off with saloon floozies (but for a few Latino families and at least one anachronistic black one).
…the best joke and metaphor about the Biden years has come to us.
Really, for all of progressive “liberalism”. The pier was built as a campaign gimmick to appeal to low information voters with little critical thinking skills and much emotional self-righteousness, ignoring the fact that Israel was already sending more food to Gaza than before October 7, and it was all being stolen.
But I’ll hold back the “soy boi” references – because to say there are no masculine “progressive” men today ignores great examples like Judd Hoff and (allegedly) Jason Metsa.
In a provided statement, Mayor Jacob Frey says Minneapolis’ cultural scene would be a perfect fit for the festival.
“With our thriving arts and entertainment scene, diverse cultural heritage, and passionate film community, Minneapolis is the ideal backdrop for the Sundance Film Festival,” said Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey. “There is no city that embraces the arts quite like we do – and Minneapolis already has a long history of supporting independent filmmakers and their art of storytelling. Sundance would be a welcome addition to our theater community, and we’re excited to throw our hat in the ring to host this world-renowned festival.”
Minneapolis’ bid is being backed by CEOs from Target, Best Buy, and U.S. Bancorp along with the McKnight Foundation and Margaret A. Cargill Philanthropies.
There was a time this would have been a no-brainer. From the 60s to the 2000s, Minneapolis had one of the most dynamic arts scenes in the country; the biggest regional theatre community between the coasts; art and music communities that punched waay above their weight; others, from dance to literature far out of proportion to the city’s size; even a breakout film scene in the ’90s.
Almost none of that is true anymore. Austin, Salt Lake City, Boulder, Santa Fe, Raleigh/Durham, Boise, Nashville, even Atlanta have become much more dynamic. Most of them are much less expensive (not that that’s necessarily a huge factor for the tony Sundance crowd).
Minneapolis is like the high school football star come back to the 20 year reunion, working a job he hates and paying bills from his divorce from the head cheerleader. His day has passed. He might have another day, someday, but it ain’t today.
In 2016, I was a Trump skeptic. I voted for Scott Walker (who I still think would have made, and would make, a great President, in the same way Ron DeSantis would, and hopefully will in four years).
As I noted on the eve of the 2016 election, and as we awaited the inauguration, I agreed with fellow Trump skeptic Dennis Prager; I was a little apprehensive, but I figured if we got a good SCOTUS nominee out of the deal, it’d all wash out over time.
Trump turned out to be a good President on a policy level (I have to strenuously ignore “rhetorical Trump” to focus on “policy Trump”) – and we got three good, solid conservative justices out of the term.
