Whenever your elite betters on the left thunder their jeremiads, telling you you need to adopt one or another of their draconian responses to some catastrophe just over the horizon, because science, remind them that the essence of science is disproving hypotheses.
Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:
Conservatives are upset the FBI’s recommends no prosecution of Hillary for her email crimes. They say the fix was in, and this line proves it: “To be clear, this is not to suggest that in similar circumstances, a person who engaged in this activity would face no consequences. To the contrary, those individuals are often subject to security or administrative sanctions. But that is not what we are deciding now.”
In other words: crimes that are okay for Hillary to commit, are not okay for others to commit. So don’t worry, our national security will remain safe from betrayal by Little People.
Any reasonable person would know they were committing a crime, probably treason. But no reasonable prosecutor would bring this case. Why is that? Well because they know that the Clinton’s are untouchable, and that The Won will grant a pardon if they do try to bring it, and that the person bringing the case will be utterly destroyed in the vendetta that Shrillery will launch on them; see Ken Starr.
But a reasonable prosecutor and reasonable federal agents persecuted some previously unknown shlep for a video that was used as the excuse of the death of the Ambassador in Benghazi. In a pre-planned terrorist attack, that can never be called that because, among other things, it may have been planned based on information obtained from Hillery’s closet server.
Joe Doakes
That whole “of, by and for the people” thing is rapidly fading from “inaccurate” to “cruel joke”.
Joe Doakes from Como Park emails about the story of the day:
White cop from St. Anthony department shot Black man at traffic stop on Larpenteur at Fry in Falcon Heights. Passenger took video, protests and vigils occurring.
you might want to reiterate your policy of refusing to comment until facts are known to stop speculation on SITD.
As with all shooting stories; the first 24-48 hours of media reporting will be absolutely squalid. I’ll be withholding most comment.
Doakes continues, speaking about the narrative from the video (which I’ll include below the jump):
Passenger says cop asked driver for his wallet, driver reached down for it and while reaching, told cop that driver had a concealed carry permit and was carrying (which they tell us in training you’re supposed to do). Cop told driver to put his hands up, driver brought his hands back up and officer opened fire because driver was making threatening movements, possibly bringing up the gun.
I’m guessing young cop, twilight, Black guy, gun . . . yeah, that script pretty much writes itself. Girlfriend and child in the car watched it all.
Not an accidental discharge, by the way, several shots fired.
Driver age 32, employed, no serious criminal record if he had a concealed carry permit . . . bad scene all around.
Not just employed; employed by the Saint Paul Public Schools, apparently, in a position for which (I’m informed) one needs to pass a background check.
My focus would be additional mandatory training for law enforcement and for permitted carriers: What, exactly, are permitted carriers supposed to do if stopped when carrying? Play-act it. Drivers need to know so they don’t alarm officers, and officers need to have a standard method of handling the situation.
Joe Doakes
While I neither confirm nor deny I own or carry any firearms, I have sat through carry permit training; the most prudent course seems to be to inform the officer only when there’s a likelihood of a search – like, if you’re asked to get out of the car. This was posited for exactly the reasons that seem likely to have occurred in this incident; an incident that started as a fix-it ticket (apparently) escalated because a (law-abiding, black) man told the (apparently jumpy, possibly rookie) cop that he had a permit and gun in a manner that had likely been prescribed to him in his training.
We don’t know all the facts, though.
Indeed, that’s my only real answer to everything in this incident; we don’t know the facts yet. Everything that everyone is saying is conjecture at this point. Not pure, unadulterated conjecture; the video shot by the girlfriend an interesting wrinkle to this case (statements made while the incident is still in progress are admissable under Minnesota rules of evidence, although I’m not sure of any limitations that might apply); her story, for what it’s worth, stays very consistent through several retellings on video.
Question: if Philando Castile was shot unjustly, was it because of paranoia over black men, or over the new plague of urban paranoia over gun owners?
Anyway, I’ll urge everyone to reserve judgment, knowing full well nobody will.
Video follows:
…for the wave of “right wing violence” that, we are assured, will be much worse than Al Quada and ISIS and is just around the corner, honest, we see the left’s propensity to thuggery is alive and well:
An adjunct professor at Southern State Community College (SSCC) in Ohio is under investigation for threatening to shoot up the NRA.
“Look, there’s only one solution. A bunch of us anti-gun types are going to have to arm ourselves, storm the NRA headquarters in Fairfax, VA, and make sure there are no survivors,” James Pearce wrote in a Facebook post on June 13. “This action might also require coordinated hits at remote sites, like Washington lobbyists. Then and only then will we see some legislative action on assault weapons. Have a nice day.”
By all means, “professor ” Pearce, go for it.
…then one can only hope that this is the needle.
A student on a school bus, seeing another student pointing a gun at a third student, wrestled the would be shooter to the ground, almost certainly saving the intended victim’s life.
The school administration reacted… Well, you’ve read this blog for a few years, right? How do you think they reacted?
A Florida high school hero who wrestled a loaded gun away from a football player threatening to shoot a teammate was himself suspended for three days.
The 16-year-old, from Cypress Lake High School in Fort Myers, was punished for his part in disarming the boy who wanted to blast another student on the school bus ride home……But, instead of rewarding the heroic teen who put his own life at risk, school authorities suspended him “for his role in an incident where a weapon was present”.
Good is punished as if it’s evil.
And they say schools aren’t mindless indoctrination centers.
So it looks like all the people who were caterwauling about doom and gloom for British trade in the wake of the “brexit” were unreservedly correct, and the English economy is going to spiral into the toilet like an airplane missing both wings…
… I’m sorry. I got something caught in my throat. As I was trying to say, the lesson is clear: without the guidance of “experts” who’ve never run a business, and whose entire frame of reference is nothing but being bureaucrats, a sovereign peoples’ hopes of a decent living or just wind and sales…
…hopes of a decent living are just wind and sales…
… No, that’s just something in my throat still…
… Oh, who am I kidding? It’s been less than two weeks, and countries are lining up to cut trade deals with Britain, independent of the EU.
Why, it’s almost as if all those jeremiads from the wonks, and the wannabee wonks in the media, the American and European left, and National Public Radio, we’re just trying to scare people into acquiescence with the wishes of their self-appointed betters or something.
In California, everybody is subject to “commonsense gun laws”.
It’s just that for some, the sense is more common than for others.
Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:
Liberals want to strip gun rights from people on the No Fly List. The only civil rights group standing up for the constitutional rights of citizens is the National Rifle Association.
But wait, didn’t the ACLU also object? Sort of. The ACLU objects to using the No Fly List in its present form to deny civil rights. If there was an easier way to get your name off the list, the ACLU would be fine with using it to block gun purchases.
That idea flips constitutional law on its head. The Founders explained in the Declaration of Independence that Rights come from God, not from government. The Constitution exists to protect our Rights from the government. Therefore, the government should not have the power to arbitrarily take away Rights and then allow citizens to beg to get them back (ACLU version). The government should bear the burden of proving why the citizen’s Rights should be taken away BEFORE the Rights are taken (NRA version).
To see how absurd the ACLU’s plan is, try substituting other rights. “Journalists on the No Truth List are forbidden to publish anything bad about Hillary Clinton. But you can request a special waiver to get off the list.” Or how about “Women on the No Fetus List are forbidden to get an abortion. But you can submit an application to get your name removed from the list.” Can you imagine the ACLU’s response?
Justice Thomas wrote a dissenting opinion to the new Whole Women’s Health abortion case, saying: “ . . . our Constitution renounces the notion that come constitutional rights are more equal than others.” Too bad it’s only a dissent; the country would be better off if more people believed that.
Joe Doakes
The big problem is that a majority of Americans have no idea what a “right” is.
I have gun control advocates ask me constantly “so what’s wrong with ‘no fly, no buy’?” – in other words, with barring people on the feds’ double-dog secret terror watchlist from buying guns.
My response: “You mean, other than completely sidestepping due process? Well, there’s this sort of thing“:
Hawaii could become the first state in the United States to enter gun owners into an FBI database that will automatically notify police if an island resident is arrested anywhere else in the country.
Most people entered in the “Rap Back” database elsewhere in the U.S. are those in “positions of trust,” such as school teachers and bus drivers, said Stephen Fischer of the FBI’s Criminal Justice Information Services Division. Hawaii could be the first state to add gun owners.
In other words, the feds, or anti-gun states, can abuse databases – basically making entire classes of otherwise law-abiding citizens into de facto criminals with de facto trashed civil liberties.
Then, remember what happened in 2009 – when Homeland Security Theater secretary Janet Napolitano told law enforcement to watch out, essentially, for all conservatives, as potential terror threats.
Now, combine the three; the urge to abuse federal law enforcement, the power to ignore due process at will, and the technology to strip entire groups of their freedoms with the touch of a top secret button.
Obama’s America: Orwell was only three decades off.
Lately, the anti-gunners have been quoting “Shootingtracker.com” as a “source” in claiming that “there’s a mass shooting ever day in the US”.
Of course, “mass shootings” – a shooting in which four or more people are killed or injured, no matter what the motivation of the shooter/s, is not the same as a “spree killing” or “rampage killing”; most “mass shootings” involve shootings that are offshoots of other crimes; robberies, gang activity and the like.
Spree killings – like Orlando, San Bernardino, Red Lake, Tuscon, Columbine, Virginia Tech and the like – have “murdering people at random”, or “targeting a specific group” (gays, Jews, Americans, the military) as the sole goal of the episode (along, sometimes, with political terrorism).
Anyway – I had a hunch about the site. So I checked it out.
Sure enough – the shooting I wrote about last week, in South Carolina, where a citizen with a carry permit shot and wounded a man who’d shot and injured three others at a bar, ending what could have been a much bigger, much uglier crime?
Sure enough. They counted it.
How much you wanna bet “Protect” MN calls this “just another mass shooting” as a result?
Reading this piece in the NY Times about feckless British millennials sniveling about the Brexit, mostly focusing on travel to the continent getting more difficult and overseas study getting more expensive (a very dubious conclusion), it occurred to me – the millennial generation is more reactionary and terrified of change than their elders are.
Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:
Some RINOs are talking about joining Democrats to base gun control on a secret Enemies List.
The proposal is contrary to the fundamental philosophy underpinning American government.
The Founders told us in the Declaration that Rights come from God, not from Government.
The Founders explained in the Federalist papers that the Constitution was written to protect our Rights from the Government.
The Founders added the Fifth Amendment specifically to emphasize that before Government took away any Rights from anybody, it gave Due Process consisting of, at a minimum, notice of the proposed action, a meaningful opportunity to oppose the action before it occurs, and a neutral decider.
The Founders would have been flabbergasted at the notion that the Government could take away a citizen’s Constitutionally protected rights, in secret, without evidence, just so long as the Government allowed that citizen to beg for relief after-the-fact. But that’s the scheme these RINOs are considering.
Well, why not? We already have pre-judgment forfeiture, where the Government can seize your money. We already have IRS agents willing to delay your political fundraising until after the election. We already have Customs agents willing to seize your imported rosewood at the behest of a competitor guitar manufacturer.
Why not let the President write up an Enemies List and everyone on that list loses the right to travel, to vote, to own a firearm, to have a bank account or credit card, to hold a job . . . why not make them complete un-persons with no rights at all?
What could possibly go wrong?
Joe Doakes
Other than “the whole notion of self-government?”
Here’s to the 240th anniversary of the original Brexit.
Our founding fathers bet long and all in on the idea that people could govern themselves.
This next few years will be an interesting time in terms of seeing if they were right.
Today, the Northern Alliance Radio Network – America’s first grass-roots talk radio show – is on the air! I will be on live from 1-3PM today!
Don’t forget – King Banaian is on from 9-11AM on AM1440, and Brad Carlson has “The Closer” edition of the NARN Sundays from 2-3PM.
So tune in the Northern Alliance! You have so many options:
Join us!
It was well before dawn, on what promised to be a warm day in central France.
The 11th Battalion of the East Lancashire Regiment – the “Accrington Pals”, who’d volunteered en masse for service in the war, in line with the great British tradition of turning out for King and Country – had had a busy year; after a stretch of duty guarding the Suez Canal in Egypt, they’d been recalled to France (along with their 94th Infantry Brigade, part of the 31st Infantry Division, a unit of about 15,000 men recruited in the north of England in the first autumn of the war.
The 11th Battalion of the East Lancashire Regiment – the “Accrington Pals” – parading in Accrington in 1915.
Like the rest of the Brigade, they’d seen little to no action – Egypt worried the Imperial General Staff greatly, but the Ottoman Turks had never managed to make good on the potential threat they posed; indeed, they’d largely crumbled throughout the Middle East – partly as a result of post-dated self-determination checks written by the British and French that we’re still paying for today, especially in “Palestine”.
But as the war dragged on into its third bloody summer, the Accrington Pals became part of the General Staff’s plan to make a major difference in the war.
And they did – but not in the way that the Staff planned.
Carry permit holder in South Carolina interrupts a mass shooting.
Probably not a “spree killing” or “rampage killing” – it looks more like a crime of passion or gangland outbreak – but why quibble? The good guys won one.
That is an unalloyed good.
Being a liberal must be confusing.
Exhibit A: This week’s City Pages.
On the one hand: Mike Mullen complains that Mendards’ management training program urges the store’s staff to oppose tax hikes. Because taxes are what makes life worth living, and by no means should Menards expect its management to support the store’s financial health, nosirreebob.
On the other hand: Corey Zurowski bemoans a non-profit that presumably is no “happy to pay for a Better Minnesota” as it has been extincted by…taxes.
I’d imagine this’d cause some heads to explode, if any of the City Pages’ audience really thought about it.
But I jest.
Sometimes I slay me.
(Via regular commenter Chuck)
Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:
In the olden days, a child born out of wedlock was illegitimate and not entitled to support from the father. Fear for her child kept women from straying which contributed to social stability. Apparently, it’s not just a human thing.
Too bad the birdbrains who changed our laws are not as smart as sparrows.
Joe Doakes
The first step to saving our society may be a game show for our politicians and media stars called “Are You Smarter Than A Small Bird?”
I’m afraid we’d have to run qualifiers through a round of “Are You Smarter Than An Invertebrate?”
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