California is nearing the logical limits of progressive adventurism in policy and politics
By Victor Davis Hanson
National Review
October 31, 2019
More than 2 million Californians were recently left without power after the state’s largest utility, Pacific Gas and Electric — which filed for bankruptcy earlier this year — preemptively shut down transmission lines in fear that they might spark fires during periods of high autumn winds.
Consumers blame the state for not cleaning up dead trees and brush, along with the utility companies for not updating their ossified equipment. The power companies in turn fault the state for so over-regulating utilities that they had no resources to modernize their grids.
Californians know that having tens of thousands of homeless in their major cities is untenable. In some places, municipal sidewalks have become open sewers of garbage, used needles, rodents, and infectious diseases. Yet no one dares question progressive orthodoxy by enforcing drug and vagrancy laws, moving the homeless out of cities to suburban or rural facilities, or increasing the number of mental hospitals.
Taxpayers in California, whose basket of sales, gasoline, and income taxes is the highest in the nation, quietly seethe while immobile on antiquated freeways that are crowded, dangerous and under nonstop makeshift repair.
Gas prices of $4 to $5 a gallon — the result of high taxes, hyper-regulation, and green mandates — add insult to the injury of stalled commuters. Gas tax increases ostensibly intended to fund freeway expansion and repair continue to be diverted to the state’s failing high-speed rail project.
Residents shrug that the state’s public schools are among weakest in the nation, often ranking in the bottom quadrant in standardized test scores. Elites publicly oppose charter schools but often put their own kids in private academies.
Californians know that to venture into a typical municipal emergency room is to descend into a modern Dante’s Inferno. Medical facilities are overcrowded. They can be as unpleasant as they are bankrupting to the vanishing middle class that must face exorbitant charges to bring in an injured or sick child.
No one would dare to connect the crumbling infrastructure, poor schools, and failing public health care with the non-enforcement of immigration laws, which has led to a massive influx of undocumented immigrants from the poorest regions of the world, who often arrive without fluency in English or a high-school education.
Stores are occasionally hit by swarming looters. Such Wild West criminals know how to keep their thefts under $950, ensuring that such “misdemeanors” do not warrant police attention. California’s permissive laws have decriminalized thefts and break-ins. The result is that San Francisco now has the highest property crime rate per capita in the nation.
Has California become premodern?
Millions of fed-up middle-class taxpayers have fled the state. Their presence as a stabilizing influence is sorely missed. About one-third of the nation’s welfare recipients live in California. Millions of poor newcomers require enormously expensive state health, housing, education, legal, and law-enforcement services.
California is now a one-party state. Democrats have supermajorities in both houses of the legislature. Only seven of the state’s 53 congressional seats are held by Republicans. The result is that there is no credible check on a mostly coastal majority.
Huge global wealth in high-tech, finance, trade, and academia poured into the coastal corridor, creating a new nobility with unprecedented riches. Unfortunately, the new aristocracy adopted mindsets antithetical to the general welfare of Californians living outside their coastal enclaves. The nobodies have struggled to buy high-priced gas, pay exorbitant power bills, and deal with shoddy infrastructure — all of which resulted from the policies of the distant somebodies.
California’s three most powerful politicians — House speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senator Dianne Feinstein and Governor Gavin Newsom — are all multimillionaires. Their lives, homes, and privileges bear no resemblance to those of other Californians living with the consequences of their misguided policies and agendas.
The state’s elite took revolving-door entries and exits for granted. They assumed that California was so naturally rich, beautiful, and well-endowed that there would always be thousands of newcomers who would queue up for the weather, the shore, the mountains, and the hip culture.
Yet California is nearing the logical limits of progressive adventurism in policy and politics.
Residents carefully plan long highway trips as if they were ancient explorers charting dangerous routes. Tourists warily enter downtown Los Angeles or San Francisco as if visiting a politically unstable nation.
Insatiable state tax collectors and agencies are viewed by the public as if they were corrupt officials of Third World countries seeking bribes. Californians flip their switches unsure of whether the lights will go on. Many are careful about what they say, terrified of progressive thought police who seem more worried about critics than criminals.
Our resolute ancestors took a century to turn a wilderness into California. Our irresolute generation in just a decade or two has been turning California into a wilderness.
Friday, November 01, 2019
RELEASING CONVICTS EARLY, OR NERLY ALL CRIMINAL SUSPECTS WITH NO BAIL, IS ANYTHING BUT REFORM
Get set for New York’s coming criminal justice disaster
By Joseph Giacalone
New York Post
October 24, 2019
Criminal justice reform is all the rage this political season. In practice, it entails “woke” politicians making decisions for communities where they don’t live in — and never will.
Releasing convicts early, or nearly all criminal suspects with no bail, is one element of such “reform.” It’s anything but reform — it sounds the death knell for police-community relations. It will further erode public trust in the police. Why? There is no plan. Most of these convicts/suspects released will reoffend. Then the police will be forced to deal with them. It’s already happening.
It’s only a matter of time before a situation goes sideways, and a police officer’s actions will be at the forefront of the discussion. The question won’t be, “Why was this criminal out on the street to begin with?” Or “who is responsible for this terrible decision”? Rather, the “reformers” and their media allies will denounce the police for failing to “de-escalate, or shoot him in the finger, or (just fill in the blank).”
Whether it’s physical force or deadly physical force, it won’t matter. A snippet of a cellphone video, an allegation, a rumor will rekindle anger without facts and anger without common sense. Then, these same politicians along with the anti-police crowd will blast the “police-are-the-enemy” mantra.
Each use of force incident, even the most justified, seem to be questioned these days by the false “reformers.” Uninformed opinion drives a wedge further between the police and the community they serve.
Do any of these reformers clamoring to close jails and defer jail time know that both jail and prison populations in New York, as well as crime, have been on the decline for decades? Against this backdrop, they think we should let everyone out and call it “reform.” It makes no sense.
Violence is already beginning to explode, from the Chinatown massacre guy to the friendly fire incident in the Bronx to a fresh officer-involved shooting in Brooklyn. What do these situations all have in common? The alleged perps were all out, awaiting trial on other violent cases.
Hope is not a plan. I can’t wait until January, when Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s “reform” plan takes full effect, to see what happens next. I guarantee one thing, the police will be searching for all of these individuals that warrant out when they don’t show up for court. What do you think will happen when the police finally catch up to them? They will just surrender, right? If you believe that, I’d like to sell you a bridge over the East River.
This isn’t fear-mongering. Open your eyes. When police-community relations are bad, people are less likely to cooperate.
The police need help from the public to solve many violent crimes. But under the new rules going into effect Jan. 1, the identity of victims and witnesses will be known faster than before. Prosecutors will be forced to provide discoverable information within 15 days after arraignment.
Good luck getting anyone to help the police ever again. This will cause further victimization, higher crime rates, more mothers missing their sons.
Get used to it. This is “reform.”
By Joseph Giacalone
New York Post
October 24, 2019
Criminal justice reform is all the rage this political season. In practice, it entails “woke” politicians making decisions for communities where they don’t live in — and never will.
Releasing convicts early, or nearly all criminal suspects with no bail, is one element of such “reform.” It’s anything but reform — it sounds the death knell for police-community relations. It will further erode public trust in the police. Why? There is no plan. Most of these convicts/suspects released will reoffend. Then the police will be forced to deal with them. It’s already happening.
It’s only a matter of time before a situation goes sideways, and a police officer’s actions will be at the forefront of the discussion. The question won’t be, “Why was this criminal out on the street to begin with?” Or “who is responsible for this terrible decision”? Rather, the “reformers” and their media allies will denounce the police for failing to “de-escalate, or shoot him in the finger, or (just fill in the blank).”
Whether it’s physical force or deadly physical force, it won’t matter. A snippet of a cellphone video, an allegation, a rumor will rekindle anger without facts and anger without common sense. Then, these same politicians along with the anti-police crowd will blast the “police-are-the-enemy” mantra.
Each use of force incident, even the most justified, seem to be questioned these days by the false “reformers.” Uninformed opinion drives a wedge further between the police and the community they serve.
Do any of these reformers clamoring to close jails and defer jail time know that both jail and prison populations in New York, as well as crime, have been on the decline for decades? Against this backdrop, they think we should let everyone out and call it “reform.” It makes no sense.
Violence is already beginning to explode, from the Chinatown massacre guy to the friendly fire incident in the Bronx to a fresh officer-involved shooting in Brooklyn. What do these situations all have in common? The alleged perps were all out, awaiting trial on other violent cases.
Hope is not a plan. I can’t wait until January, when Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s “reform” plan takes full effect, to see what happens next. I guarantee one thing, the police will be searching for all of these individuals that warrant out when they don’t show up for court. What do you think will happen when the police finally catch up to them? They will just surrender, right? If you believe that, I’d like to sell you a bridge over the East River.
This isn’t fear-mongering. Open your eyes. When police-community relations are bad, people are less likely to cooperate.
The police need help from the public to solve many violent crimes. But under the new rules going into effect Jan. 1, the identity of victims and witnesses will be known faster than before. Prosecutors will be forced to provide discoverable information within 15 days after arraignment.
Good luck getting anyone to help the police ever again. This will cause further victimization, higher crime rates, more mothers missing their sons.
Get used to it. This is “reform.”
A DRUG CARTEL JUST DEFEATED THE MEXICAN MILITARY IN BATTLE
Mexico is in a state of collapse, and Americans need to realize that the crisis underway south of the Rio Grande won’t stop at the border
By John Daniel Davidson
The Federalist
October 21, 2019
The southwest U.S. border might be quieter now than it was this spring at the height of the migrant crisis, but south of the Rio Grande the Mexican state is disintegrating.
Last Thursday in the city of Culiacan, the capital of Sinaloa state, a battle erupted between government forces and drug cartel gunmen after the Mexican military captured two sons of jailed drug kingpin Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman. The elder son, Ivan, was quickly freed by his men, who overpowered government forces and secured his release. Ivan then launched an all-out siege of the entire city in an effort to free his younger brother, Ovidio.
The ensuing scene could have been mistaken for Syria or Yemen. Footage posted on social media Thursday showed burning vehicles spewing black smoke, heavily armed gunmen blocking roads, dead bodies strewn in the streets, and residents fleeing for cover amid high-caliber gunfire.
Armed with military-grade weapons and driving custom-built armored vehicles, cartel henchmen targeted security forces throughout Culiacan, launching more than one dozen separate attacks on Mexican security forces. They captured and held hostage eight soldiers, then kidnapped their families. Amid the fighting, an unknown number of inmates escaped from a nearby prison. At least eight people were killed and more than a dozen were injured.
The eight-hour battle ended when government forces, outgunned and surrounded, without reinforcements or a way to retreat, received an order directly from Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador to release their prisoner and surrender. Lopez Obrador later defended this decision, insisting that his security strategy is working and saying, “Many people were at risk and it was decided to protect people’s lives. I agreed with that, because we don’t do massacres, that’s over.”
The Mexican State Is Collapsing
The battle of Culiacan marks a turning point in the collapse of the Mexican state. There is now no doubt about who is in control of Sinaloa, let alone the rest of the country. Cartel forces seized a major regional capital city in broad daylight and defeated the national armed forces in open battle.
Violence is rampant across Mexico. Earlier in the week, more than one dozen police officers were massacred in a cartel ambush in western Mexico. A day later, 14 suspected gang members were killed by the Mexican Army. Homicides in Mexico this year are on track to surpass last year’s record total of more than 29,000.
Understand that the fighting in Culiacan is not just another episode in the “drug war,” nor is it merely an incident of organized crime. What’s happening Mexico right now is more like an insurgency. Yes, drug-trafficking is one of the things the cartels do, but it doesn’t nearly describe what they are or what role they’re playing in the disintegration of civil society in Mexico. Indeed, over the past decade cartels have diversified their economic activities to include everything from oil and gas production to industrial agriculture to offshore commercial fishing.
In other words, it’s fair to say that Mexico is now on a trajectory to become a vast gangland governed more by warlordism than by the state. The last time this happened was a century ago, during the decade-long Mexican Revolution, which eventually triggered the invasion and occupation of northern Mexico in 1916 by the U.S. Army, including the mobilization of the entire National Guard and a call for volunteers. Before it was over, U.S. forces attacked and occupied Nogales, Sonora, in 1918 and Ciudad Juarez in 1919.
Historically, insurgent and secessionist movements have bedeviled Mexico from its very beginnings. Civil wars and rebellions were endemic in Mexico throughout much of the 19th century, ceasing only with the Porfiriato and resuming with its collapse in 1910.
What’s different today is that Mexico, despite its corrupt and incompetent government, has a rising middle class and a growing economy. Unlike the Mexican state, the Mexican people have shown themselves to be more than capable of industrious and liberal self-government, not just in the success millions of them have achieved in the United States but also in the success of local governments throughout the country.
Set against the Mexican people is a Mexican state incapable of governing and a cartel insurgency that now controls vast swaths of both territory and industry. President Lopez Obrador will not push back on the cartels. He has never said a bad word about El Chapo or the Sinaloa Cartel, and even campaigned for cartel amnesty in 2017, but he does have a long history of associating his political rivals with organized crime.
He has said he wants to tackle the “root causes” of crime and violence, which he has said are poverty and lack of opportunity, and campaigned for president on slogans such as “hugs, not gunshots,” and “you can’t fight fire with fire.” In short, Lopez Obrador is not the man to rescue Mexico from the unfolding crisis.
The idea that a nation of 120 million people with whom the United States shares a 2,000-mile border and ever-increasing economic ties might spiral into collapse has not seriously occurred to the American people. We’ve had a century of relative peace on our southwest border, and aside from dealing with an occasional surge of illegal immigration, we have assumed that it will continue. It will not.
Culiacan should be a wake-up call that the war now underway in Mexico will not stay there, and that we’d better start thinking about what that will mean for America.
__________
American-Made .50-Caliber Rifles Help Fuel Mexican Cartel Violence
LAPPL News Watch
October 31, 2019
Mexican authorities were outgunned by criminal cartels in two notable incidents this month. In both cases, the criminals were armed with high-powered .50-caliber firearms.
First, on October 13, in the state of Michoacan, a police convoy was ambushed with .50-caliber sniper rifles, leaving 13 officers dead and nine wounded. Four days later, in the state of Sinaloa, the government was forced to abandon an operation to arrest the son of Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, after his henchmen assaulted a Mexican military force with both sniper rifles and truck-mounted machine guns.
“We are seeing a full-out criminal insurgency in Mexico right now,” said Robert Bunker, an international security expert who teaches at the Army War College Strategic Studies Institute and has written about the use of .50-caliber rifles by Mexican cartels.
Often, the weapons come from the United States, where civilian sales of high-caliber sniper rifles are unregulated in all but three states.
By John Daniel Davidson
The Federalist
October 21, 2019
The southwest U.S. border might be quieter now than it was this spring at the height of the migrant crisis, but south of the Rio Grande the Mexican state is disintegrating.
Last Thursday in the city of Culiacan, the capital of Sinaloa state, a battle erupted between government forces and drug cartel gunmen after the Mexican military captured two sons of jailed drug kingpin Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman. The elder son, Ivan, was quickly freed by his men, who overpowered government forces and secured his release. Ivan then launched an all-out siege of the entire city in an effort to free his younger brother, Ovidio.
The ensuing scene could have been mistaken for Syria or Yemen. Footage posted on social media Thursday showed burning vehicles spewing black smoke, heavily armed gunmen blocking roads, dead bodies strewn in the streets, and residents fleeing for cover amid high-caliber gunfire.
Armed with military-grade weapons and driving custom-built armored vehicles, cartel henchmen targeted security forces throughout Culiacan, launching more than one dozen separate attacks on Mexican security forces. They captured and held hostage eight soldiers, then kidnapped their families. Amid the fighting, an unknown number of inmates escaped from a nearby prison. At least eight people were killed and more than a dozen were injured.
The eight-hour battle ended when government forces, outgunned and surrounded, without reinforcements or a way to retreat, received an order directly from Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador to release their prisoner and surrender. Lopez Obrador later defended this decision, insisting that his security strategy is working and saying, “Many people were at risk and it was decided to protect people’s lives. I agreed with that, because we don’t do massacres, that’s over.”
The Mexican State Is Collapsing
The battle of Culiacan marks a turning point in the collapse of the Mexican state. There is now no doubt about who is in control of Sinaloa, let alone the rest of the country. Cartel forces seized a major regional capital city in broad daylight and defeated the national armed forces in open battle.
Violence is rampant across Mexico. Earlier in the week, more than one dozen police officers were massacred in a cartel ambush in western Mexico. A day later, 14 suspected gang members were killed by the Mexican Army. Homicides in Mexico this year are on track to surpass last year’s record total of more than 29,000.
Understand that the fighting in Culiacan is not just another episode in the “drug war,” nor is it merely an incident of organized crime. What’s happening Mexico right now is more like an insurgency. Yes, drug-trafficking is one of the things the cartels do, but it doesn’t nearly describe what they are or what role they’re playing in the disintegration of civil society in Mexico. Indeed, over the past decade cartels have diversified their economic activities to include everything from oil and gas production to industrial agriculture to offshore commercial fishing.
In other words, it’s fair to say that Mexico is now on a trajectory to become a vast gangland governed more by warlordism than by the state. The last time this happened was a century ago, during the decade-long Mexican Revolution, which eventually triggered the invasion and occupation of northern Mexico in 1916 by the U.S. Army, including the mobilization of the entire National Guard and a call for volunteers. Before it was over, U.S. forces attacked and occupied Nogales, Sonora, in 1918 and Ciudad Juarez in 1919.
Historically, insurgent and secessionist movements have bedeviled Mexico from its very beginnings. Civil wars and rebellions were endemic in Mexico throughout much of the 19th century, ceasing only with the Porfiriato and resuming with its collapse in 1910.
What’s different today is that Mexico, despite its corrupt and incompetent government, has a rising middle class and a growing economy. Unlike the Mexican state, the Mexican people have shown themselves to be more than capable of industrious and liberal self-government, not just in the success millions of them have achieved in the United States but also in the success of local governments throughout the country.
Set against the Mexican people is a Mexican state incapable of governing and a cartel insurgency that now controls vast swaths of both territory and industry. President Lopez Obrador will not push back on the cartels. He has never said a bad word about El Chapo or the Sinaloa Cartel, and even campaigned for cartel amnesty in 2017, but he does have a long history of associating his political rivals with organized crime.
He has said he wants to tackle the “root causes” of crime and violence, which he has said are poverty and lack of opportunity, and campaigned for president on slogans such as “hugs, not gunshots,” and “you can’t fight fire with fire.” In short, Lopez Obrador is not the man to rescue Mexico from the unfolding crisis.
The idea that a nation of 120 million people with whom the United States shares a 2,000-mile border and ever-increasing economic ties might spiral into collapse has not seriously occurred to the American people. We’ve had a century of relative peace on our southwest border, and aside from dealing with an occasional surge of illegal immigration, we have assumed that it will continue. It will not.
Culiacan should be a wake-up call that the war now underway in Mexico will not stay there, and that we’d better start thinking about what that will mean for America.
__________
American-Made .50-Caliber Rifles Help Fuel Mexican Cartel Violence
LAPPL News Watch
October 31, 2019
Mexican authorities were outgunned by criminal cartels in two notable incidents this month. In both cases, the criminals were armed with high-powered .50-caliber firearms.
First, on October 13, in the state of Michoacan, a police convoy was ambushed with .50-caliber sniper rifles, leaving 13 officers dead and nine wounded. Four days later, in the state of Sinaloa, the government was forced to abandon an operation to arrest the son of Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, after his henchmen assaulted a Mexican military force with both sniper rifles and truck-mounted machine guns.
“We are seeing a full-out criminal insurgency in Mexico right now,” said Robert Bunker, an international security expert who teaches at the Army War College Strategic Studies Institute and has written about the use of .50-caliber rifles by Mexican cartels.
Often, the weapons come from the United States, where civilian sales of high-caliber sniper rifles are unregulated in all but three states.
Sunday, October 20, 2019
ON-SITE AT THE TRUMP RALLY
Minnesota Nice Vs. Minneapolis Deplorables
By Andy Bloom
Newsmax
October 14, 2019
Anyone who has spent significant time in Minnesota is familiar with the term “Minnesota Nice.” The friendliness demonstrated by Minnesotans is quite real. Depending on where you sat last week, you either saw Minnesota Nice at its best or the Minneapolis deplorables at their worst.
Trump’s campaign believes it has a chance to take Minnesota’s ten electoral votes in 2020. Trump won 80 of the 87 counties in the state in 2016, yet lost Minnesota by less than 44,000 votes (out of over 2.9 million cast). However, he lost Hennepin and Ramsey counties (Minneapolis and St. Paul, respectively) by 243,000 votes. Trump must narrow losses in the Twin Cities to win Minnesota in 2020.
Therefore, Trump’s first “Keep America Great” rally since the Democrats’ on-going impeachment efforts turned to the Ukraine came to Minneapolis. The rally was held downtown at the Target Center in the heart of the Congressional District represented by Ilhan Omar.
The day Trump’s Target Center rally was announced, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey made it clear that the president wasn’t welcome in the city. Frey acknowledged there was no legal way to prevent the Trump rally from taking place. Unable to stop the gathering, Frey and the DFL (Democrat Farm Labor Party) did everything possible to inconvenience the campaign.
In advance of the rally, Frey sent the Trump campaign a $530,000 security bill. In 2009, the then Minneapolis Police Chief Tim Dolan told The Saint Paul Pioneer Press that security costs would top $20,000 for President Obama’s Target Center rally. The security bills for the two previous in-state Trump rallies averaged about $75,000. Frey was obviously playing games with the $530,000 security bill, and the campaign scoffed.
Simultaneously, the rules changed to prevent police officers from wearing their uniforms at political events unless they were on duty. Previously there had been no restrictions. In response, the Police Officers Federation of Minneapolis sold red “Cops for Trump” t-shirts. Union President Bob Kroll announced that 5,000 had been sold. The red shirts had a noticeable presence inside the arena. Trump made it a point to voice his support for law enforcement officers. He also brought Kroll and off-duty Minneapolis police officers on stage.
The security bill and changing the police rules fueled a Twitter fight between Trump and Frey. Twitter is Trump’s standard operating procedure. I am not Donald Trump, and I did not win the White House. Still, I don't see the upside of elevating the Mayor of Minneapolis to the level of the President of the United States.
Inside an estimated 20,000 Trump fans packed the Target Center and demonstrated what "Minnesota Nice" means. For an hour and forty minutes, the atmosphere was as electric as election-day eve. The occasional protestor was ushered out quickly and without incident.
Trump's comments were a tour de force covering Mayor Frey, Ilhan Omar, Joe Biden, Hunter Biden, FBI agents Stzrok and Page, Nancy Pelosi, Congressional Democrats, impeachment, and the media — with shoutouts to virtually every Fox News host, and introducing Minnesota's Mike "My Pillow" Lindell. He defended his actions in the Middle East, Ukraine, and the economy. He talked about the wall and immigration, including legal immigration focusing on Somalians, a large number of whom have immigrated to Minnesota. Those comments created moments of discomfort for me — there is a distinction between legal and illegal immigrants.
Hillary Clinton dubbed Trump supporters “a basketful of deplorables.” I’m at a loss for words to describe roughly 1,000 protestors roaming the cold, rainy night outside of the Target Center. Antifa and Black Lives Matter had a noticeable presence. Signs with words I can’t use here were plentiful. Protesters gathered against the police lines waving middle-fingers, screaming obscenities, and throwing everything from urine-filled bottles to burning MAGA hats.
Over 20,000 additional Trump supporters who did not get in the Target Center were watching the rally on the big screens outside. Protesters reacted violently to Trump's speech and supporters. MAGA hats were frequently taken or knocked off supporters' heads. Several Trump fans were spat on. A Fox News reporter was pushed, shoved, and cursed at repeatedly. Ultimately, most of the supporters sought shelter in the skyways.
A series of skyways connect most downtown buildings in Minneapolis. It is possible to walk from one side of the city to the other without going outdoors via the skyways. They are necessary for a city that can go weeks without temperatures above zero, months below freezing, and mountains of snow piled up on corners.
The skyways are critical to the Trump rally because they are how most people leaving the Target Center rally exited. Had 20,000 amped-up Trump supporters emptied to the streets with nearly 1,000 equally hyped protesters, it might have gotten ugly.
I can’t think of a similar example when conservative protesters intruded violently into a liberal politician's event. Aren’t conservatives supposedly intolerant? If you saw what happened during and after Donald Trump’s rally in Minneapolis last Thursday, you would have no doubt that the Trump “resistance” composes the real deplorables.
By Andy Bloom
Newsmax
October 14, 2019
Anyone who has spent significant time in Minnesota is familiar with the term “Minnesota Nice.” The friendliness demonstrated by Minnesotans is quite real. Depending on where you sat last week, you either saw Minnesota Nice at its best or the Minneapolis deplorables at their worst.
Trump’s campaign believes it has a chance to take Minnesota’s ten electoral votes in 2020. Trump won 80 of the 87 counties in the state in 2016, yet lost Minnesota by less than 44,000 votes (out of over 2.9 million cast). However, he lost Hennepin and Ramsey counties (Minneapolis and St. Paul, respectively) by 243,000 votes. Trump must narrow losses in the Twin Cities to win Minnesota in 2020.
Therefore, Trump’s first “Keep America Great” rally since the Democrats’ on-going impeachment efforts turned to the Ukraine came to Minneapolis. The rally was held downtown at the Target Center in the heart of the Congressional District represented by Ilhan Omar.
The day Trump’s Target Center rally was announced, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey made it clear that the president wasn’t welcome in the city. Frey acknowledged there was no legal way to prevent the Trump rally from taking place. Unable to stop the gathering, Frey and the DFL (Democrat Farm Labor Party) did everything possible to inconvenience the campaign.
In advance of the rally, Frey sent the Trump campaign a $530,000 security bill. In 2009, the then Minneapolis Police Chief Tim Dolan told The Saint Paul Pioneer Press that security costs would top $20,000 for President Obama’s Target Center rally. The security bills for the two previous in-state Trump rallies averaged about $75,000. Frey was obviously playing games with the $530,000 security bill, and the campaign scoffed.
Simultaneously, the rules changed to prevent police officers from wearing their uniforms at political events unless they were on duty. Previously there had been no restrictions. In response, the Police Officers Federation of Minneapolis sold red “Cops for Trump” t-shirts. Union President Bob Kroll announced that 5,000 had been sold. The red shirts had a noticeable presence inside the arena. Trump made it a point to voice his support for law enforcement officers. He also brought Kroll and off-duty Minneapolis police officers on stage.
The security bill and changing the police rules fueled a Twitter fight between Trump and Frey. Twitter is Trump’s standard operating procedure. I am not Donald Trump, and I did not win the White House. Still, I don't see the upside of elevating the Mayor of Minneapolis to the level of the President of the United States.
Inside an estimated 20,000 Trump fans packed the Target Center and demonstrated what "Minnesota Nice" means. For an hour and forty minutes, the atmosphere was as electric as election-day eve. The occasional protestor was ushered out quickly and without incident.
Trump's comments were a tour de force covering Mayor Frey, Ilhan Omar, Joe Biden, Hunter Biden, FBI agents Stzrok and Page, Nancy Pelosi, Congressional Democrats, impeachment, and the media — with shoutouts to virtually every Fox News host, and introducing Minnesota's Mike "My Pillow" Lindell. He defended his actions in the Middle East, Ukraine, and the economy. He talked about the wall and immigration, including legal immigration focusing on Somalians, a large number of whom have immigrated to Minnesota. Those comments created moments of discomfort for me — there is a distinction between legal and illegal immigrants.
Hillary Clinton dubbed Trump supporters “a basketful of deplorables.” I’m at a loss for words to describe roughly 1,000 protestors roaming the cold, rainy night outside of the Target Center. Antifa and Black Lives Matter had a noticeable presence. Signs with words I can’t use here were plentiful. Protesters gathered against the police lines waving middle-fingers, screaming obscenities, and throwing everything from urine-filled bottles to burning MAGA hats.
Over 20,000 additional Trump supporters who did not get in the Target Center were watching the rally on the big screens outside. Protesters reacted violently to Trump's speech and supporters. MAGA hats were frequently taken or knocked off supporters' heads. Several Trump fans were spat on. A Fox News reporter was pushed, shoved, and cursed at repeatedly. Ultimately, most of the supporters sought shelter in the skyways.
A series of skyways connect most downtown buildings in Minneapolis. It is possible to walk from one side of the city to the other without going outdoors via the skyways. They are necessary for a city that can go weeks without temperatures above zero, months below freezing, and mountains of snow piled up on corners.
The skyways are critical to the Trump rally because they are how most people leaving the Target Center rally exited. Had 20,000 amped-up Trump supporters emptied to the streets with nearly 1,000 equally hyped protesters, it might have gotten ugly.
I can’t think of a similar example when conservative protesters intruded violently into a liberal politician's event. Aren’t conservatives supposedly intolerant? If you saw what happened during and after Donald Trump’s rally in Minneapolis last Thursday, you would have no doubt that the Trump “resistance” composes the real deplorables.
TULSI TAKES ON THE QUEEN OF WARMONGERS
Tulsi Gabbard calls Hillary Clinton the ‘embodiment of corruption’
By Laura Italiano
New York Post
October 18, 2019
Rep. Tulsi Gabbard blasted Hillary Clinton Friday — calling the former first lady “the queen of warmongers” after Clinton implied the Russians were “grooming” the Hawaii congresswoman as an asset.
“Thank you @HillaryClinton,” tweeted Gabbard, who is vying to win the Democratic primary.
“You, the queen of warmongers, embodiment of corruption, and personification of the rot that has sickened the Democratic Party for so long, have finally come out from behind the curtain.”
Gabbard’s red-hot tweet came in response to Clinton earlier Friday implying that Russians were “grooming” the Hawaii congresswoman to give up her Democratic primary bid and run for president as a third-party candidate.
Clinton did not accuse Gabbard by name on Friday, while appearing on former President Obama aide David Plouffe’s “Campaign HQ” podcast. But the former first lady said she believed Russia has “got their eye on somebody who is currently in the Democratic primary and are grooming her to be the third-party candidate.
“She’s the favorite of the Russians,” Clinton said “They have a bunch of sites and bots and other ways of supporting her so far.”
Plouffe ended the podcast with a reference to Clinton’s “belief that Tulsi Gabbard is going to be a third-party candidate propped up by Trump and the Russians — ” and Clinton did not contradict him.
By Laura Italiano
New York Post
October 18, 2019
Rep. Tulsi Gabbard blasted Hillary Clinton Friday — calling the former first lady “the queen of warmongers” after Clinton implied the Russians were “grooming” the Hawaii congresswoman as an asset.
“Thank you @HillaryClinton,” tweeted Gabbard, who is vying to win the Democratic primary.
“You, the queen of warmongers, embodiment of corruption, and personification of the rot that has sickened the Democratic Party for so long, have finally come out from behind the curtain.”
Gabbard’s red-hot tweet came in response to Clinton earlier Friday implying that Russians were “grooming” the Hawaii congresswoman to give up her Democratic primary bid and run for president as a third-party candidate.
Clinton did not accuse Gabbard by name on Friday, while appearing on former President Obama aide David Plouffe’s “Campaign HQ” podcast. But the former first lady said she believed Russia has “got their eye on somebody who is currently in the Democratic primary and are grooming her to be the third-party candidate.
“She’s the favorite of the Russians,” Clinton said “They have a bunch of sites and bots and other ways of supporting her so far.”
Plouffe ended the podcast with a reference to Clinton’s “belief that Tulsi Gabbard is going to be a third-party candidate propped up by Trump and the Russians — ” and Clinton did not contradict him.
I, ROSE SAYER
Going Downriver With Donald Trump
By Lars Walker
The American Spectator
October 19, 2019
I’m not a huge fan of the film The African Queen. I’ve actually only seen it twice. But I know it well enough to know that, much as I’d like to tell you I identify with Charlie Allnut, Humphrey Bogart’s character in the film, I’m actually closer to Rose Sayer, as portrayed by Katharine Hepburn. I’m aging and unmarried, straitlaced, religious, and set in my ways.
In the last few years I’ve discovered another personal resemblance to Rose. I feel as if I’m riding a boat down a river, in hostile territory, tied up with, and dependent on, someone I’m dubious about.
President Donald Trump is Charlie Allnut to me. I didn’t want him for a candidate, though I voted for him in something like despair. His behavior often appalls me. And yet …
Although I live in the Minneapolis area, I didn’t attend the big rally last week. Can you imagine Rose Sayer at a Trump rally? Neither can I. But I heard a lot about it. Especially, thanks to a particular radio talk show host, one memorable line.
It’s line I’m not going to repeat here, because Rose wouldn’t approve. It had to do with a certain politician kissing another politician in a particular way. The talk show host I mentioned, whom I generally admire, was so delighted with that statement that he played it over and over on the air.
I had to turn it off. Rose and I were not amused.
I can remember a time, not that long ago, when no American politician would have said that in public. Even inveterate pottymouths like Lyndon Johnson knew how to button it up when the microphones were on.
I’m not blaming President Trump for lowering the tone of political discourse. That started long ago, in my college years, when the Left decided that common courtesy was hypocrisy and integrity meant using a lot of obscenities. Those campus radicals grew up to run the country and enshrined those ideas in the culture (see R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr.’s recent column on this site). President Trump is only throwing their trash back over the fence where it came from. There’s some justice in that.
But still I sit here, under my metaphorical wide hat and parasol, thinking, “Here we are. We’ve descended to this level as a culture.”
My Never Trump friends will now jump in to say, “At last you’ve seen the light! Join us in standing for righteousness. God will never bless our country while a reprobate like that is our leader!”
Ah, but that seems unjust to me. Charlie Allnut is uncouth, and he drinks (which President Trump, I’m told, does not), but he’s done what no one else has done for me. He’s getting me through the rapids and the marshes and the crocodiles and the Germans. He isn’t the man I’d choose, but he’s the man on the job.
Was Rose a hypocrite for not going ashore and trying to make her way alone overland? Should she have given herself up to the “civilized” Germans? I can imagine one of her old friends, once she’d gotten home, saying, “Don’t you think it would have been better for your soul if you’d just accepted death rather than partnering with that evil man?”
But of course, Charlie wasn’t evil. He had serious character flaws. He was no doubt an embarrassment to Rose in later years, in many situations. But that’s not being evil.
Evil is advocating for unrestricted abortion and extending it past the point of birth. Evil is luring children into sex-change operations and barring parents from interfering. Evil is promoting voluntary euthanasia and gradually transitioning to the mandatory kind. Evil is identifying race as the most important characteristic of any individual. Evil is promising poor people free stuff in order to kill their ambition and doom them to lives of dependency. Evil is identifying the most wonderful country in the history of the earth as a conspiracy intended to perpetuate slavery.
In many ways, Charlie Allnut was his own worst enemy. His manners masked his virtues. I’ve always found Donald Trump annoying. He exemplifies that particular kind of stereotypical New Yorker we Midwesterners have always disliked — brash, arrogant, pushy, verbally abusive.
The danger for the Rose Sayers of the world is judging the Charlies by their manners alone. Charlie Allnut promised he’d go down the river, and he kept his promise. And Donald Trump has kept more of his campaign promises (for good and ill) than any president in my extensive lifetime. When did keeping promises cease to count among the virtues? I disagree with some of the president’s decisions, but the man is going down the river, and I’m headed that way myself, and I expect I’ll stay with him until he changes course.
I do wish he’d clean up his mouth, though. There are ladies present.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Here is that ‘memorable line’ about Joe Biden that Walker would not repeat.
“He was never considered a good senator. He was only a good vice president because he understood how to kiss Barack Obama's ass.”
By Lars Walker
The American Spectator
October 19, 2019
I’m not a huge fan of the film The African Queen. I’ve actually only seen it twice. But I know it well enough to know that, much as I’d like to tell you I identify with Charlie Allnut, Humphrey Bogart’s character in the film, I’m actually closer to Rose Sayer, as portrayed by Katharine Hepburn. I’m aging and unmarried, straitlaced, religious, and set in my ways.
In the last few years I’ve discovered another personal resemblance to Rose. I feel as if I’m riding a boat down a river, in hostile territory, tied up with, and dependent on, someone I’m dubious about.
President Donald Trump is Charlie Allnut to me. I didn’t want him for a candidate, though I voted for him in something like despair. His behavior often appalls me. And yet …
Although I live in the Minneapolis area, I didn’t attend the big rally last week. Can you imagine Rose Sayer at a Trump rally? Neither can I. But I heard a lot about it. Especially, thanks to a particular radio talk show host, one memorable line.
It’s line I’m not going to repeat here, because Rose wouldn’t approve. It had to do with a certain politician kissing another politician in a particular way. The talk show host I mentioned, whom I generally admire, was so delighted with that statement that he played it over and over on the air.
I had to turn it off. Rose and I were not amused.
I can remember a time, not that long ago, when no American politician would have said that in public. Even inveterate pottymouths like Lyndon Johnson knew how to button it up when the microphones were on.
I’m not blaming President Trump for lowering the tone of political discourse. That started long ago, in my college years, when the Left decided that common courtesy was hypocrisy and integrity meant using a lot of obscenities. Those campus radicals grew up to run the country and enshrined those ideas in the culture (see R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr.’s recent column on this site). President Trump is only throwing their trash back over the fence where it came from. There’s some justice in that.
But still I sit here, under my metaphorical wide hat and parasol, thinking, “Here we are. We’ve descended to this level as a culture.”
My Never Trump friends will now jump in to say, “At last you’ve seen the light! Join us in standing for righteousness. God will never bless our country while a reprobate like that is our leader!”
Ah, but that seems unjust to me. Charlie Allnut is uncouth, and he drinks (which President Trump, I’m told, does not), but he’s done what no one else has done for me. He’s getting me through the rapids and the marshes and the crocodiles and the Germans. He isn’t the man I’d choose, but he’s the man on the job.
Was Rose a hypocrite for not going ashore and trying to make her way alone overland? Should she have given herself up to the “civilized” Germans? I can imagine one of her old friends, once she’d gotten home, saying, “Don’t you think it would have been better for your soul if you’d just accepted death rather than partnering with that evil man?”
But of course, Charlie wasn’t evil. He had serious character flaws. He was no doubt an embarrassment to Rose in later years, in many situations. But that’s not being evil.
Evil is advocating for unrestricted abortion and extending it past the point of birth. Evil is luring children into sex-change operations and barring parents from interfering. Evil is promoting voluntary euthanasia and gradually transitioning to the mandatory kind. Evil is identifying race as the most important characteristic of any individual. Evil is promising poor people free stuff in order to kill their ambition and doom them to lives of dependency. Evil is identifying the most wonderful country in the history of the earth as a conspiracy intended to perpetuate slavery.
In many ways, Charlie Allnut was his own worst enemy. His manners masked his virtues. I’ve always found Donald Trump annoying. He exemplifies that particular kind of stereotypical New Yorker we Midwesterners have always disliked — brash, arrogant, pushy, verbally abusive.
The danger for the Rose Sayers of the world is judging the Charlies by their manners alone. Charlie Allnut promised he’d go down the river, and he kept his promise. And Donald Trump has kept more of his campaign promises (for good and ill) than any president in my extensive lifetime. When did keeping promises cease to count among the virtues? I disagree with some of the president’s decisions, but the man is going down the river, and I’m headed that way myself, and I expect I’ll stay with him until he changes course.
I do wish he’d clean up his mouth, though. There are ladies present.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Here is that ‘memorable line’ about Joe Biden that Walker would not repeat.
“He was never considered a good senator. He was only a good vice president because he understood how to kiss Barack Obama's ass.”
A DE BLASIOVILLE PIE IN THE SKY PROGRAM ….. AND IT COSTS ONLY $3.91 MILLION
NYC Program Offers Criminals Art Lessons Instead of Jail Time
By Shant Shahrigian
New York Daily News
October 3, 2019
NEW YORK -- Good artists copy, great artists steal.
Now great artists busted for low-level crimes will be offered paint brushes instead of prison bars, thanks to a new city-backed program.
Under the nearly $4 million project, prosecutors and public defenders will give petty criminals the chance to opt for art appreciation sessions at sites including the Brooklyn Museum in lieu of going to court.
The goal is “ending a criminal justice system that turns minor offenses, minor crimes into lifelong problems,” Council Speaker Corey Johnson said at a Wednesday press conference at the Brooklyn Museum.
The City Council and de Blasio administration recently agreed to allocate $3.91 million total to the program, called Project Reset, following a trial run in Brooklyn, Manhattan and the Bronx.
About 200 people have completed the program at the Brooklyn Museum, where teachers take them to look at art, discuss it and then make works of their own in mediums including collage.
Participants in a trial run of the project were nearly 75% less likely to be convicted of a crime within a year of completing the program, according to a study by the Center for Court Innovation, which launched it.
“It definitely helped me avoid the anxiety of having to attend an actual court date for a mistake I made,” said program participant Jessy Singh.
“It helped to make me feel human in a system that often criminalizes people for the smallest of things,” she added.
Singh said she’d been caught with a friend who was shoplifting, though she declined to specify what she was arrested for. Now her record is clean thanks to the program.
People will be eligible for Project Reset for 15 non-violent misdemeanors including petit larceny and theft of services, graffiti, second-degree possession of drug paraphernalia and trespassing.
Artist Sophia Dawson, who is instructing groups at the Brooklyn Museum, said her sessions start with a viewing of Titus Kaphar’s painting “Shifting the Gaze.” Then she takes them to a room where they create collages using materials including newspaper headlines.
She said she challenges participants to “take on the authority as the artist."
“How can you take that authority, shift the gaze, switch the narrative, switch the perspective to say something that you want to say or cause the viewer to look at what you want them to see?” Dawson explained.
“We make a lot of mess,” she said.
The sessions last about 2.5 hours each, and some participants do follow-up counselling sessions.
The New Museum in Manhattan is also participating, according to Adam Mansky, director of the Center for Court Innovation. His organization launched Project Reset in partnership with the NYPD, the Brooklyn DA’s office, public defenders and the Brooklyn Museum.
Other than art, Project Reset offers group workshops on conflict and “identifying triggering factors” as an alternative to judicial proceedings for eligible people.
“It’s about holding people accountable but doing it in ways that promote human dignity, that help them think about their conduct and provide them with tools to contribute back to their community,” said Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez.
Mansky hopes the Staten Island DA’s office will join the program by year’s end. He expects Queens to get on board, too, sometime after the next DA is elected in November.
Johnson declined to predict how many arrested people eventually will participate.
The project comes as sweeping criminal justice reforms are coming to the state starting Jan. 1, including new bail policies meant to reduce the number of people held in jail.
Last year, 271,630 people were arrested for misdemeanors in the city, according to NYPD stats. Johnson and Gonzalez declined to guess how many people would participate in Project Restart as it expands.
The Speaker asserted, “We say art instead of jail; culture instead of prosecution.”
EDITOR’S NOTE: When we came to America in 1936, our first home was in an apartment just two blocks from the Brooklyn Museum.
As for Project Reset, I’m sure the participants in the trial run were picked very carefully in order to ensure a good outcome so as to justify the program.
By Shant Shahrigian
New York Daily News
October 3, 2019
NEW YORK -- Good artists copy, great artists steal.
Now great artists busted for low-level crimes will be offered paint brushes instead of prison bars, thanks to a new city-backed program.
Under the nearly $4 million project, prosecutors and public defenders will give petty criminals the chance to opt for art appreciation sessions at sites including the Brooklyn Museum in lieu of going to court.
The goal is “ending a criminal justice system that turns minor offenses, minor crimes into lifelong problems,” Council Speaker Corey Johnson said at a Wednesday press conference at the Brooklyn Museum.
The City Council and de Blasio administration recently agreed to allocate $3.91 million total to the program, called Project Reset, following a trial run in Brooklyn, Manhattan and the Bronx.
About 200 people have completed the program at the Brooklyn Museum, where teachers take them to look at art, discuss it and then make works of their own in mediums including collage.
Participants in a trial run of the project were nearly 75% less likely to be convicted of a crime within a year of completing the program, according to a study by the Center for Court Innovation, which launched it.
“It definitely helped me avoid the anxiety of having to attend an actual court date for a mistake I made,” said program participant Jessy Singh.
“It helped to make me feel human in a system that often criminalizes people for the smallest of things,” she added.
Singh said she’d been caught with a friend who was shoplifting, though she declined to specify what she was arrested for. Now her record is clean thanks to the program.
People will be eligible for Project Reset for 15 non-violent misdemeanors including petit larceny and theft of services, graffiti, second-degree possession of drug paraphernalia and trespassing.
Artist Sophia Dawson, who is instructing groups at the Brooklyn Museum, said her sessions start with a viewing of Titus Kaphar’s painting “Shifting the Gaze.” Then she takes them to a room where they create collages using materials including newspaper headlines.
She said she challenges participants to “take on the authority as the artist."
“How can you take that authority, shift the gaze, switch the narrative, switch the perspective to say something that you want to say or cause the viewer to look at what you want them to see?” Dawson explained.
“We make a lot of mess,” she said.
The sessions last about 2.5 hours each, and some participants do follow-up counselling sessions.
The New Museum in Manhattan is also participating, according to Adam Mansky, director of the Center for Court Innovation. His organization launched Project Reset in partnership with the NYPD, the Brooklyn DA’s office, public defenders and the Brooklyn Museum.
Other than art, Project Reset offers group workshops on conflict and “identifying triggering factors” as an alternative to judicial proceedings for eligible people.
“It’s about holding people accountable but doing it in ways that promote human dignity, that help them think about their conduct and provide them with tools to contribute back to their community,” said Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez.
Mansky hopes the Staten Island DA’s office will join the program by year’s end. He expects Queens to get on board, too, sometime after the next DA is elected in November.
Johnson declined to predict how many arrested people eventually will participate.
The project comes as sweeping criminal justice reforms are coming to the state starting Jan. 1, including new bail policies meant to reduce the number of people held in jail.
Last year, 271,630 people were arrested for misdemeanors in the city, according to NYPD stats. Johnson and Gonzalez declined to guess how many people would participate in Project Restart as it expands.
The Speaker asserted, “We say art instead of jail; culture instead of prosecution.”
EDITOR’S NOTE: When we came to America in 1936, our first home was in an apartment just two blocks from the Brooklyn Museum.
As for Project Reset, I’m sure the participants in the trial run were picked very carefully in order to ensure a good outcome so as to justify the program.
FEWER JAILS WON’T MAKE FEWER CRIMINALS
New York City’s closure of Rikers Island is based upon magical thinking
By Seth Barron
City Journal
October 17, 2019
New York City has approved a plan to close the incarceration facilities on Rikers Island and replace them with four new borough-based jails. When first put forth in 2017, the plan was conditioned on a reduction of the city’s total jail population over the next ten years to about 5,000 inmates by 2026. Unlike Rikers Island—which, at half the size of Central Park, is large enough to hold ten separate low-rise jail facilities, along with parking lots, maintenance areas, and space for outdoor basketball courts and running tracks—the new jails will be high-rise buildings in already-dense urban areas. But community opposition to the new jail-skyscrapers led to an announcement earlier this week that the proposed facilities would be markedly smaller than originally anticipated. A planned 45-story jail in Manhattan will top out at 29 stories, while an originally conceived 39-floor, 395-foot facility in Brooklyn will now rise only 295 feet.
The city has decided to reduce the size of these not-yet-constructed facilities, according to Mayor de Blasio and city council speaker Corey Johnson, because the “expected average daily jail population for 2026 is now 3,300, due to the expectation of fewer people incarcerated.” This sudden one-third drop from the earlier 5,000 estimate was not driven by a change in crime trends—indeed, some serious crimes are trending up—but by the demands of council members in whose districts the new jails would be sited. These council members have refused to approve the construction of larger jails. The city, then, is apparently letting political considerations dictate how large its new jails can be, and then tailoring prisoner-population estimates to fit those circumstances.
Decriminalization of quality-of-life offenses and the elimination of cash bail for most misdemeanors and many felonies are indeed expected to reduce the jailed population—but even so, the new 3,300 target will likely require a significant realignment of expectations about public safety. The number of people in jail in New York City is already historically low, due to concerted efforts to divert low-level offenders into incarceration alternatives. The remaining incarcerated population largely represents a core group of hardened, violent, habitual criminals. The city’s own numbers demonstrate that virtually no one is in jail for marijuana possession, prostitution, or jumping subway turnstiles.
Speaker Johnson mostly attributes the reduction of the estimated population from 5,000 to 3,300 to bail reform, passed in Albany as part of the budget in June. The remainder of the reduction, he says, will represent people no longer sent back to jail, as they are now, after violating “technical” provisions of their parole, such as “missing curfew.” In reality, few parolees get remanded to prison simply for minor violations of the rules, and when they do, they spend only limited time in Rikers before being sent back to prison.
Keeping the number of people in jail below 3,300 will require fewer arrests and the immediate release of serious criminals following arraignment. This agenda is not confined to the far Left—it is the stated goal of a major segment of the city’s criminal-justice complex and is backed by a sizeable minority of its elected officials. The No New Jails coalition, which demands the closure of Rikers Island without replacing the lost capacity, has pushed its abolitionist argument into the mainstream.
The respected Legal Aid Society, which receives hundreds of millions in public dollars to provide legal services to indigent defendants, condemns the “false binary of the Close Rikers plan,” which is “inextricably linked to the gentrification that has gutted Black and Latinx communities.” The organization demands “a future with zero jails in our city, zero jails in our state, and zero jails in our country.” Assembly member Yuh-Line Niou, who represents the district that will house the Manhattan jail, argues against the new plan on the basis that “our system criminalizes poverty through mandatory surcharges and fees which create modern day debtors’ prisons.”
No evidence exists that anyone in New York City is incarcerated due to such fees.
The plan to close Rikers in favor of smaller jails adjacent to county courthouses is morally neutral, but its actualization has fulfilled the worst suspicions of skeptics, who see the effort as a camouflage for mass decarceration. That remains to be seen. Common sense should tell us, though, that smaller jails may mean fewer inmates—but not fewer criminals.
By Seth Barron
City Journal
October 17, 2019
New York City has approved a plan to close the incarceration facilities on Rikers Island and replace them with four new borough-based jails. When first put forth in 2017, the plan was conditioned on a reduction of the city’s total jail population over the next ten years to about 5,000 inmates by 2026. Unlike Rikers Island—which, at half the size of Central Park, is large enough to hold ten separate low-rise jail facilities, along with parking lots, maintenance areas, and space for outdoor basketball courts and running tracks—the new jails will be high-rise buildings in already-dense urban areas. But community opposition to the new jail-skyscrapers led to an announcement earlier this week that the proposed facilities would be markedly smaller than originally anticipated. A planned 45-story jail in Manhattan will top out at 29 stories, while an originally conceived 39-floor, 395-foot facility in Brooklyn will now rise only 295 feet.
The city has decided to reduce the size of these not-yet-constructed facilities, according to Mayor de Blasio and city council speaker Corey Johnson, because the “expected average daily jail population for 2026 is now 3,300, due to the expectation of fewer people incarcerated.” This sudden one-third drop from the earlier 5,000 estimate was not driven by a change in crime trends—indeed, some serious crimes are trending up—but by the demands of council members in whose districts the new jails would be sited. These council members have refused to approve the construction of larger jails. The city, then, is apparently letting political considerations dictate how large its new jails can be, and then tailoring prisoner-population estimates to fit those circumstances.
Decriminalization of quality-of-life offenses and the elimination of cash bail for most misdemeanors and many felonies are indeed expected to reduce the jailed population—but even so, the new 3,300 target will likely require a significant realignment of expectations about public safety. The number of people in jail in New York City is already historically low, due to concerted efforts to divert low-level offenders into incarceration alternatives. The remaining incarcerated population largely represents a core group of hardened, violent, habitual criminals. The city’s own numbers demonstrate that virtually no one is in jail for marijuana possession, prostitution, or jumping subway turnstiles.
Speaker Johnson mostly attributes the reduction of the estimated population from 5,000 to 3,300 to bail reform, passed in Albany as part of the budget in June. The remainder of the reduction, he says, will represent people no longer sent back to jail, as they are now, after violating “technical” provisions of their parole, such as “missing curfew.” In reality, few parolees get remanded to prison simply for minor violations of the rules, and when they do, they spend only limited time in Rikers before being sent back to prison.
Keeping the number of people in jail below 3,300 will require fewer arrests and the immediate release of serious criminals following arraignment. This agenda is not confined to the far Left—it is the stated goal of a major segment of the city’s criminal-justice complex and is backed by a sizeable minority of its elected officials. The No New Jails coalition, which demands the closure of Rikers Island without replacing the lost capacity, has pushed its abolitionist argument into the mainstream.
The respected Legal Aid Society, which receives hundreds of millions in public dollars to provide legal services to indigent defendants, condemns the “false binary of the Close Rikers plan,” which is “inextricably linked to the gentrification that has gutted Black and Latinx communities.” The organization demands “a future with zero jails in our city, zero jails in our state, and zero jails in our country.” Assembly member Yuh-Line Niou, who represents the district that will house the Manhattan jail, argues against the new plan on the basis that “our system criminalizes poverty through mandatory surcharges and fees which create modern day debtors’ prisons.”
No evidence exists that anyone in New York City is incarcerated due to such fees.
The plan to close Rikers in favor of smaller jails adjacent to county courthouses is morally neutral, but its actualization has fulfilled the worst suspicions of skeptics, who see the effort as a camouflage for mass decarceration. That remains to be seen. Common sense should tell us, though, that smaller jails may mean fewer inmates—but not fewer criminals.
TENNESSEE MAY HAVE EXECUTED SEDLEY ALLEY IN 2006 FOR A 1985 RAPE-MURDER FOR WHICH THOMAS BRUCE, A FORMER PASTOR, IS NOW A SUSPECT
Did Tennessee execute the wrong man for a horrific 1980s murder? Alcoholic who confessed but then recanted before his 2006 death may have been INNOCENT as cops suspect an ex-pastor arrested last year for another brutal killing in Missouri could be connected
By Ralph R. Ortega
Daily Mail
October 18, 2019
A new suspect in the the brutal murder of a young female marine more than 30 years ago has been identified by authorities after another man was already executed for the slaying.
Sedley Alley was put to death by the state of Tennessee 15 years ago for the 1985 murder of Suzanne Marie Collins, a 19-year-old Marine who left her barracks for a jog and never returned.
Collins was later found raped, beaten and stabbed with a sharpened tree branch and strangled in a park in Millington, according to police.
Alley, a 29-year-old repairman at the time, who was alcoholic and addicted to drugs, confessed to the murder after cops fed him breakfast and bought him a pack of cigarettes, reports the Washington Post.
A jury delivered a guilty verdict in less than three hours, and despite changing his story and possible DNA evidence that could have exonerated him, Alley was forced to die by lethal injection at the age of 51 in 2006.
Then came the arrest of Thomas Bruce in Missouri in November 2018.
Cops said the 54-year-old, former Missouri pastor posed as a customer at a Catholic Supply store in the suburbs of St. Louis, returned armed with a gun, forced two women into sex acts, and killed a third.
He was arrested and faces 17-felony charges for the grisly attack and is currently awaiting trial.
At the time of Bruce's arrest, police were stunned that he had no prior criminal record. Given the horrific nature of his alleged sexual assaults and murder, took a closer look at the man.
That's when they suspected he may be linked to other crimes and came across a 77-year-old woman, who recognized his face in media reports, and said that before the Catholic supply store incident he had forced his way into her home, raped her and stole her cell phone.
He has plead not guilty to both charges.
Authorities in their investigation of Bruce also made what they believed could be major break in the Collins case. They said they had learned Bruce was enrolled in the same avionics school Collins had attended in Memphis, not far from where her body was found after she was murdered.
Cops contacted Barry Scheck, co-founder of the Innocence Project, a nonprofit group that helps to exonerate people who are wrongly convicted, through the use of DNA evidence, and which had unsuccessfully tried to help Alley.
'They were saying to us, there's a possibility that he is the serial killer that you had argued might be discovered by a DNA test all those years ago,' Scheck said.
Lawyers for the Innocence Project had long-argued that a potential piece of key evidence -- a pair of men's red underwear discovered at the scene where Collins was slain -- should have been submitted for testing to know for sure Alley was the killer.
Tennessee prosecutors, however, have argued that there were other factors proving Alley was the killer, and that DNA alone would not have been enough to prove his innocence.
His execution came after Alley took back his confession, and experts had come to the conclusion that he had been coerced.
There also had been no physical evidence linking him to the murder, and his recollection of the attack on Collins didn't match up to autopsy results and findings from the crime scene, reports the Post.
Innocence Project lawyers warned against putting Alley to death penalty without the DNA testing, and that if executed, the real murderer would still be on the loose.
After the execution, attorneys for the project petitioned the courts to have the DNA tested on behalf of Alley's daughter. She said she hoped to get closure during a court hearing on Monday.
A judge is expected to rule on her request in November.
By Ralph R. Ortega
Daily Mail
October 18, 2019
A new suspect in the the brutal murder of a young female marine more than 30 years ago has been identified by authorities after another man was already executed for the slaying.
Sedley Alley was put to death by the state of Tennessee 15 years ago for the 1985 murder of Suzanne Marie Collins, a 19-year-old Marine who left her barracks for a jog and never returned.
Collins was later found raped, beaten and stabbed with a sharpened tree branch and strangled in a park in Millington, according to police.
Alley, a 29-year-old repairman at the time, who was alcoholic and addicted to drugs, confessed to the murder after cops fed him breakfast and bought him a pack of cigarettes, reports the Washington Post.
A jury delivered a guilty verdict in less than three hours, and despite changing his story and possible DNA evidence that could have exonerated him, Alley was forced to die by lethal injection at the age of 51 in 2006.
Then came the arrest of Thomas Bruce in Missouri in November 2018.
Cops said the 54-year-old, former Missouri pastor posed as a customer at a Catholic Supply store in the suburbs of St. Louis, returned armed with a gun, forced two women into sex acts, and killed a third.
He was arrested and faces 17-felony charges for the grisly attack and is currently awaiting trial.
At the time of Bruce's arrest, police were stunned that he had no prior criminal record. Given the horrific nature of his alleged sexual assaults and murder, took a closer look at the man.
That's when they suspected he may be linked to other crimes and came across a 77-year-old woman, who recognized his face in media reports, and said that before the Catholic supply store incident he had forced his way into her home, raped her and stole her cell phone.
He has plead not guilty to both charges.
Authorities in their investigation of Bruce also made what they believed could be major break in the Collins case. They said they had learned Bruce was enrolled in the same avionics school Collins had attended in Memphis, not far from where her body was found after she was murdered.
Cops contacted Barry Scheck, co-founder of the Innocence Project, a nonprofit group that helps to exonerate people who are wrongly convicted, through the use of DNA evidence, and which had unsuccessfully tried to help Alley.
'They were saying to us, there's a possibility that he is the serial killer that you had argued might be discovered by a DNA test all those years ago,' Scheck said.
Lawyers for the Innocence Project had long-argued that a potential piece of key evidence -- a pair of men's red underwear discovered at the scene where Collins was slain -- should have been submitted for testing to know for sure Alley was the killer.
Tennessee prosecutors, however, have argued that there were other factors proving Alley was the killer, and that DNA alone would not have been enough to prove his innocence.
His execution came after Alley took back his confession, and experts had come to the conclusion that he had been coerced.
There also had been no physical evidence linking him to the murder, and his recollection of the attack on Collins didn't match up to autopsy results and findings from the crime scene, reports the Post.
Innocence Project lawyers warned against putting Alley to death penalty without the DNA testing, and that if executed, the real murderer would still be on the loose.
After the execution, attorneys for the project petitioned the courts to have the DNA tested on behalf of Alley's daughter. She said she hoped to get closure during a court hearing on Monday.
A judge is expected to rule on her request in November.
UTAH TROOPER PERFORMED TRULY HEROIC RESCUE
Trooper saves driver seconds before train collides with car
By Jacob Klopfenstein
KSL
October 16, 2019
CENTERVILLE — When Utah Highway Patrol trooper Ruben Correa approached a car stuck on the FrontRunner tracks with a train bearing down early Wednesday morning, he knew he had just seconds to get the unconscious driver out of the car.
"At that point, I actually wasn’t really thinking, I was just doing my job," Correa said Wednesday.
Correa got the driver out mere seconds before a northbound train slammed into the car, throwing it at least 30 feet ahead on the tracks, video of the incident shows.
No injuries were reported in the incident, which took place about 6:50 a.m. Wednesday on the FrontRunner tracks between Pages Lane and Parrish Lane in Davis County, according to Utah Transit Authority spokesman Carl Arky.
Correa was on a traffic stop on northbound I-15 in Farmington before he responded to the area on a call of a car on the tracks, he said.
He used his spotlight to locate the car and told dispatchers when he found it on the southbound side of the freeway. He then got out of his patrol vehicle, ran over to the car on the tracks and opened the door, noticing the unconscious driver still inside, he said.
Then he heard the train's horn; it was rapidly approaching the car. He dragged the still unresponsive driver out of the car and onto the embankment next to the tracks, dashcam video from his patrol car shows.
If Correa had been just a second later, there would have been a much different outcome, he said.
"That's when I realized, 'Oh wow, that was a lot closer than what I would have liked,'" he said.
The driver, who was not identified, is safe and with his family now, Correa said. He had an unknown medical issue prior to the crash, according to Correa.
"I'm still trying to process everything that happened," Correa said later Wednesday morning. "I'm just very grateful that I was able to get him out and he's alive and he's back with his family now."
Correa said he was able to talk to the driver, and he was grateful that both he and Correa made it out of the situation OK, the trooper said.
Arky initially said a Union Pacific railroad employee pulled the driver out, but later clarified that it was actually a UHP trooper.
A bus bridge was put in place for FrontRunner trains between Woods Cross and Farmington, Arky said. As of 8:15 a.m., the bus bridge has been canceled, according to a tweet from UTA. Residual delays are still possible in the area, the agency said.
Traffic on southbound I-15 was also impacted by the situation, with the right lane of the freeway closed, according to Utah Department of Transportation. By 10 a.m., the scene was cleared and there were no delays reported in the area, according to UDOT.
By Jacob Klopfenstein
KSL
October 16, 2019
CENTERVILLE — When Utah Highway Patrol trooper Ruben Correa approached a car stuck on the FrontRunner tracks with a train bearing down early Wednesday morning, he knew he had just seconds to get the unconscious driver out of the car.
"At that point, I actually wasn’t really thinking, I was just doing my job," Correa said Wednesday.
Correa got the driver out mere seconds before a northbound train slammed into the car, throwing it at least 30 feet ahead on the tracks, video of the incident shows.
No injuries were reported in the incident, which took place about 6:50 a.m. Wednesday on the FrontRunner tracks between Pages Lane and Parrish Lane in Davis County, according to Utah Transit Authority spokesman Carl Arky.
Correa was on a traffic stop on northbound I-15 in Farmington before he responded to the area on a call of a car on the tracks, he said.
He used his spotlight to locate the car and told dispatchers when he found it on the southbound side of the freeway. He then got out of his patrol vehicle, ran over to the car on the tracks and opened the door, noticing the unconscious driver still inside, he said.
Then he heard the train's horn; it was rapidly approaching the car. He dragged the still unresponsive driver out of the car and onto the embankment next to the tracks, dashcam video from his patrol car shows.
If Correa had been just a second later, there would have been a much different outcome, he said.
"That's when I realized, 'Oh wow, that was a lot closer than what I would have liked,'" he said.
The driver, who was not identified, is safe and with his family now, Correa said. He had an unknown medical issue prior to the crash, according to Correa.
"I'm still trying to process everything that happened," Correa said later Wednesday morning. "I'm just very grateful that I was able to get him out and he's alive and he's back with his family now."
Correa said he was able to talk to the driver, and he was grateful that both he and Correa made it out of the situation OK, the trooper said.
Arky initially said a Union Pacific railroad employee pulled the driver out, but later clarified that it was actually a UHP trooper.
A bus bridge was put in place for FrontRunner trains between Woods Cross and Farmington, Arky said. As of 8:15 a.m., the bus bridge has been canceled, according to a tweet from UTA. Residual delays are still possible in the area, the agency said.
Traffic on southbound I-15 was also impacted by the situation, with the right lane of the freeway closed, according to Utah Department of Transportation. By 10 a.m., the scene was cleared and there were no delays reported in the area, according to UDOT.
MEXICANS RELEASE EL CHAPO’S CAPTURED SON TO PROTECT THE CITIZENS
Botched mission to capture El Chapo’s son sparked by DC judge
By Emily Saul and Ebony Bowden
New York Post
October 18, 2019
Mexico’s botched mission to capture an alleged drug-peddling son of narcotics kingpin Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzmán started with an arrest warrant from a federal judge in Washington, DC, his lawyer told The Post on Friday.
Eight people were killed when Mexican agents stormed a home in the country’s drug-infested Sinaloa state Thursday with an arrest warrant for Ovidio Guzman Lopez but abandoned the job when they were outgunned by cartel gunmen.
Lawyer Jeffrey Lichtman, who represented Lopez’s infamous kingpin father, confirmed to The Post that the warrant came out of DC — although he said details of what went down afterward are still murky.
“It’s unclear what exactly happened,” he said, but “Ovidio is safe and not in custody.
“As soon as the smoke clears, we’ll endeavor to figure out exactly what happened here.”
The Mexican national guard released Lopez following his brief capture when it led to an all-out cartel war — sparking wild gun battles throughout Sinaloa which killed eight people and injured another 21.
Guzman Lopez and his brother Joaquin Guzman Lopez were charged with drug trafficking in the US District Court of Columbia in 2017. The indictment was unsealed in February of this year.
Mexico’s president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, said Friday he backed the decision to let Lopez go free, telling reporters it “was made to protect the citizens.”
Mexico’s defense secretary decried the botched operation by the country’s army and national guard, which he said was meant to pave the way for US extradition. He said Mexican cabinet officials were not made aware of it beforehand.
“The group responsible for this action, in eagerness to achieve positive results, acted in a hasty manner, with poor planning,” Secretary of Defense Luis Cresencio Sandoval told reporters in Culiacan on Friday.
In July, a Brooklyn federal judge sentenced El Chapo — the once-powerful leader of the Sinaloa cartel — to life in prison after he was convicted on a slew of drug-trafficking charges.
By Emily Saul and Ebony Bowden
New York Post
October 18, 2019
Mexico’s botched mission to capture an alleged drug-peddling son of narcotics kingpin Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzmán started with an arrest warrant from a federal judge in Washington, DC, his lawyer told The Post on Friday.
Eight people were killed when Mexican agents stormed a home in the country’s drug-infested Sinaloa state Thursday with an arrest warrant for Ovidio Guzman Lopez but abandoned the job when they were outgunned by cartel gunmen.
Lawyer Jeffrey Lichtman, who represented Lopez’s infamous kingpin father, confirmed to The Post that the warrant came out of DC — although he said details of what went down afterward are still murky.
“It’s unclear what exactly happened,” he said, but “Ovidio is safe and not in custody.
“As soon as the smoke clears, we’ll endeavor to figure out exactly what happened here.”
The Mexican national guard released Lopez following his brief capture when it led to an all-out cartel war — sparking wild gun battles throughout Sinaloa which killed eight people and injured another 21.
Guzman Lopez and his brother Joaquin Guzman Lopez were charged with drug trafficking in the US District Court of Columbia in 2017. The indictment was unsealed in February of this year.
Mexico’s president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, said Friday he backed the decision to let Lopez go free, telling reporters it “was made to protect the citizens.”
Mexico’s defense secretary decried the botched operation by the country’s army and national guard, which he said was meant to pave the way for US extradition. He said Mexican cabinet officials were not made aware of it beforehand.
“The group responsible for this action, in eagerness to achieve positive results, acted in a hasty manner, with poor planning,” Secretary of Defense Luis Cresencio Sandoval told reporters in Culiacan on Friday.
In July, a Brooklyn federal judge sentenced El Chapo — the once-powerful leader of the Sinaloa cartel — to life in prison after he was convicted on a slew of drug-trafficking charges.
Saturday, October 19, 2019
NOTICE
BarkGrowlBite and The Unconventional Gazette will have no postings from October 21 through October 30.
Old Bark will be in Germany enjoying 10 days of Beer guzzling. And this Incredible Shrinking Nonagenarian won't be fucking around with a computer while I'm gone. I hope I won't be going through withdrawals. And I will sorely miss my doggie.
Until old Bark gets back, here's wishing all of you well.
Old Bark will be in Germany enjoying 10 days of Beer guzzling. And this Incredible Shrinking Nonagenarian won't be fucking around with a computer while I'm gone. I hope I won't be going through withdrawals. And I will sorely miss my doggie.
Until old Bark gets back, here's wishing all of you well.
THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING NONAGENARIAN
I’ve shrunk down from 5-8 t0 5-4½
Friday, I had a bone density scan. The technician asked me how tall I was. I told her 5-6, which I believed I was. But when she measured me I was only 5-4½.
Holy shit! I used to be 5-8. How depressing! If this keeps up, I may be shorter than my dick if I live for a few more years.
And my dick is also shorter than it used to be. It’s only good for peeing now. More depressing shit!
I guess I’m entitled to be called the incredible shrinking nonagenarian.
Friday, I had a bone density scan. The technician asked me how tall I was. I told her 5-6, which I believed I was. But when she measured me I was only 5-4½.
Holy shit! I used to be 5-8. How depressing! If this keeps up, I may be shorter than my dick if I live for a few more years.
And my dick is also shorter than it used to be. It’s only good for peeing now. More depressing shit!
I guess I’m entitled to be called the incredible shrinking nonagenarian.
FORMER DEFENSE SECRETARY JAMES MATTIS SAYS ‘I EARNED MY SPURS ON THE BATTLEFIELD; DONALD TRUMP EARNED HIS SPURS IN A LETTER FROM A DOCTOR’
Mocking American war heroes, betraying allies, joking about kids fighting as kids are dying, and willfully fueling impeachment… this has been President Trump’s worst week and he only has himself to blame
By Piers Morgan
Daily Mail
October 18, 2019
President Trump was on full self-aggrandizing Trumpian form last night as he addressed a packed stadium of loyal supporters in Dallas.
Like a veteran rock star, he swaggered through his greatest hits from ‘Crooked Hillary’ and ‘Sleepy Joe’ to ‘Crazy Nancy’ and ‘Shifty Schiff’.
And the fans, thousands of whom couldn’t even get into the rally so watched it on screens outside, lapped it up.
It was a two-hour tour de force brimming with high-energy performance and bombastic rhetoric.
Love him or hate him, and there’s no middle ground, Trump can whip up a crowd like nobody else in current U.S. politics.
And his unshakable self-belief shows no sign of shaking.
According to him, he’s the greatest president that’s ever lived (with the possible exception of Lincoln), America’s never had it so good, every decision he’s taken is not only right but pure genius, and he’s steaming to another election win in 2020.
To be fair, that last bit might actually be true.
Trump, as can be seen by the staggering fervor of the Texans who turned up to roar him on last night, continues to hold granite solid support among his base.
To them, Trump is still the modern-day Robin Hood standing up for the little guys against the ‘swamp’ establishment system, and delivering on his campaign promises.
(To his enemies, Trump more closely resembles a less endearing fabled legend - the Pied Piper.)
And with the Democrats seemingly dragging themselves ever more inexorably towards a socialist nominee, then unless he gets impeached, I still think Trump will get re-elected.
BUT, and it’s a big ‘but’, there is still every chance that Donald Trump could be defeated – by himself.
Let’s be frank; for all his self-congratulatory wallowing last night, this has been a terrible week for President Trump.
In fact, I’d say it’s been his worst since winning the White House.
His decision on Sunday to suddenly withdraw U.S. troops from north-eastern Syria, giving a green light to Turkey’s ruthless President Erdogan to invade and attack the Kurds, America’s allies in the fight against ISIS, was catastrophic.
Within hours, Turkish forces were killing Kurdish men, women and children, and hundreds of ISIS terrorists were pouring out of prisons amid the chaos.
It signaled a terrible betrayal of people who had so recently fought alongside America to defeat a common enemy.
For all his absurd triumphalism over a desperately sought four-day pause in the shocking violence – a truce that’s reportedly already been broken - Trump got played by Erdogan.
And the president’s childish ‘I’ll destroy your economy, you devilish fool’ threats in that now infamous letter to his counterpart – one that Erdogan contemptuously dismissed by throwing it away - were an embarrassment to him and his country.
The horrendous mistake has exposed Trump’s main weaknesses – a susceptibility to being manipulated by ‘strongman’ dictators, a refusal to listen to expert advice (everyone warned him it would be a disaster), a lack of clear strategic planning and a trash-talking diplomatic style better suited to the Apprentice boardroom than when deciding the fate of people’s lives.
‘Like two kids in a lot, you have got to let them fight,’ Trump quipped on stage last night, ‘and then you pull them apart.’
It’s hard to imagine a more insensitive analogy given that many kids have literally been killed in the fighting.
Back home, things have been no better; Trump’s faced increasing impeachment pressure over his dealings with Ukraine, and that pressure massively intensified yesterday when his acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney all but confirmed there WAS a ‘quid pro quo’ surrounding the Trump administration’s decision to withhold military aid to Ukraine unless they helped, with a Justice Department investigation into alleged Ukrainian corruption in America’s 2016 election involving a DNC server.
‘I was involved with the process by which money was held up temporarily, OK? Mulvaney told reporters at a White House briefing. ‘Three issues for that: corruption in the country, whether or not other countries were participating in support of the Ukraine and whether or not they were cooperating in an ongoing investigation with our Department of Justice. That’s completely legitimate.’
It’s also pretty much exactly the smoking gun impeachment campaigners have been hunting.
After the briefing, all hell broke loose as first the Justice Department denied any knowledge of any connection between aid to Ukraine and the department’s investigation, and then Jay Sekulow, the president’s legal counsel, issued a terse statement saying he’d had no involvement in Mulvaney’s bombshell revelation.
Later, Mulvaney walked back his comments, saying ‘there was never any condition on the flow of the aid related to the matter of the DNC server.’
Sorry, what? We heard that condition from Mulvaney’s own mouth, and he said he was personally involved in the process of implementing that condition.
What a fiasco, and what a dangerous development for President Trump.
Many Republicans have turned on him this week, voting in Congress against his decision to withdraw troops from Syria.
Now the main allegation of the proposed impeachment seems to have been confirmed by the man running the White House staff.
Yet the person really to blame is Trump himself, for making that ridiculously dumb phone call to Ukraine’s President Zelensky in the first place, then brazenly admitting it and saying he wanted China to get digging dirt on his US election opponents too.
To make this week even more difficult, the president has also been savagely attacked in the past 24 hours by two of America’s most respected military heroes.
First, retired Admiral William McRaven, the man who oversaw the 2011 raid that killed Osama bin Laden, accused Trump of destroying America.
‘He’s undermined the intelligence community,’ he said, ‘the law enforcement community, the Department of Justice, the State Department. He has called the press the enemy of the American people and I will tell you, I’ve fought a lot of America’s enemies – the press is not the enemy of the American people. He’s undermined our NATO allies, taken out of the JCPOA (Iran nuclear agreement) and the TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal) and really the international community has lost faith in America. And then through the course of all this, he’s convinced he’s doing it all for the right reasons and that is really what is troubling.’
McRaven, who was particularly enraged that Trump has ‘left our allies the Kurds on the battlefield... betrayed them’, concluded in an op-ed for the New York Times: ‘If this president doesn’t demonstrate the leadership that America needs, both domestically and abroad, then it is time for a new person in the Oval Office, Republican, Democrat or Independent – the sooner the better. The fate of our Republic depends on it.’
Wow.
A few hours later, at a dinner in New York, General James ‘Mad Dog’ Mattis, Trump’s former defense secretary, launched a similarly withering assault on his old boss.
He spoke out after Trump told a meeting of members of Congress at the White House on Wednesday that Mattis was ‘the world’s most overrated general’, ‘wasn’t tough enough,’ and went onto say: ‘I captured ISIS.’
Mattis, who left the administration because Trump didn’t agree with his vehement pleas for U.S. forces to remain in Syria to stop ISIS resurging, taunted back: ‘I’m honored to be considered the most overrated general by Donald Trump because he also called Meryl Streep an overrated actress. So I guess I’m the Meryl Streep of generals, and frankly that sounds pretty good to me. You have to admit that between me and Meryl, at least we’ve had some victories.’
Ouch.
After a series of other lacerating zingers, Mattis got serious and paraphrased a speech made by Abraham Lincoln in 1838 in which Lincoln said great nations crumble for one of two reasons, either foreign invasion or, ‘the corrosion from within, the rot, the viciousness, the lassitude, the ignorance. Anarchy is one potential consequence of all this. The other is the rise of an ambitious leader, unfettered by conscience, or precedent or decency, who would make himself supreme.’
President Trump will doubtless react to the criticism from McRaven and Mattis as he does to all such criticism – very badly, very personally, and very abusively.
But denigrating America’s greatest military leaders in the same week you’ve committed one of the worst acts of military betrayal on your allies is not a good look.
In fact, it’s a shameful look.
And talking of looks, it’s time to take a good long hard look at yourself in the mirror, Mr President.
What kind of leader do you really want to be?
Because if it’s one that insults U.S. war heroes, betrays courageous allies, jokes about kids fighting as real kids are dying, and only helps countries in need if they dig up dirt on your election opponents, then Admiral McRaven’s right: America needs someone else in the White House.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Apparently with the betrayal of the Kurds and the absurd remarks Trump made since then, his friend Piers is no longer his friend. If Trump sounds like a raving lunatic, he’s brought that image on himself.
It boggles the mind that Trump the Draft Dodger would badmouth a Marine Corps general who served our country in combat at the same time the coward was playing 18 holes on the golf course with his phony bone spurs. While Mattis was ducking enemy fire, Trump was ducking an occasional stray golf ball.
We are fucked. If Trump survives impeachment, which he most probably will, we are left with the choice of either a crazy Democrat or a crazy Republican in 2020. And that’s why I won’t be voting for any of the presidential candidates.
By Piers Morgan
Daily Mail
October 18, 2019
President Trump was on full self-aggrandizing Trumpian form last night as he addressed a packed stadium of loyal supporters in Dallas.
Like a veteran rock star, he swaggered through his greatest hits from ‘Crooked Hillary’ and ‘Sleepy Joe’ to ‘Crazy Nancy’ and ‘Shifty Schiff’.
And the fans, thousands of whom couldn’t even get into the rally so watched it on screens outside, lapped it up.
It was a two-hour tour de force brimming with high-energy performance and bombastic rhetoric.
Love him or hate him, and there’s no middle ground, Trump can whip up a crowd like nobody else in current U.S. politics.
And his unshakable self-belief shows no sign of shaking.
According to him, he’s the greatest president that’s ever lived (with the possible exception of Lincoln), America’s never had it so good, every decision he’s taken is not only right but pure genius, and he’s steaming to another election win in 2020.
To be fair, that last bit might actually be true.
Trump, as can be seen by the staggering fervor of the Texans who turned up to roar him on last night, continues to hold granite solid support among his base.
To them, Trump is still the modern-day Robin Hood standing up for the little guys against the ‘swamp’ establishment system, and delivering on his campaign promises.
(To his enemies, Trump more closely resembles a less endearing fabled legend - the Pied Piper.)
And with the Democrats seemingly dragging themselves ever more inexorably towards a socialist nominee, then unless he gets impeached, I still think Trump will get re-elected.
BUT, and it’s a big ‘but’, there is still every chance that Donald Trump could be defeated – by himself.
Let’s be frank; for all his self-congratulatory wallowing last night, this has been a terrible week for President Trump.
In fact, I’d say it’s been his worst since winning the White House.
His decision on Sunday to suddenly withdraw U.S. troops from north-eastern Syria, giving a green light to Turkey’s ruthless President Erdogan to invade and attack the Kurds, America’s allies in the fight against ISIS, was catastrophic.
Within hours, Turkish forces were killing Kurdish men, women and children, and hundreds of ISIS terrorists were pouring out of prisons amid the chaos.
It signaled a terrible betrayal of people who had so recently fought alongside America to defeat a common enemy.
For all his absurd triumphalism over a desperately sought four-day pause in the shocking violence – a truce that’s reportedly already been broken - Trump got played by Erdogan.
And the president’s childish ‘I’ll destroy your economy, you devilish fool’ threats in that now infamous letter to his counterpart – one that Erdogan contemptuously dismissed by throwing it away - were an embarrassment to him and his country.
The horrendous mistake has exposed Trump’s main weaknesses – a susceptibility to being manipulated by ‘strongman’ dictators, a refusal to listen to expert advice (everyone warned him it would be a disaster), a lack of clear strategic planning and a trash-talking diplomatic style better suited to the Apprentice boardroom than when deciding the fate of people’s lives.
‘Like two kids in a lot, you have got to let them fight,’ Trump quipped on stage last night, ‘and then you pull them apart.’
It’s hard to imagine a more insensitive analogy given that many kids have literally been killed in the fighting.
Back home, things have been no better; Trump’s faced increasing impeachment pressure over his dealings with Ukraine, and that pressure massively intensified yesterday when his acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney all but confirmed there WAS a ‘quid pro quo’ surrounding the Trump administration’s decision to withhold military aid to Ukraine unless they helped, with a Justice Department investigation into alleged Ukrainian corruption in America’s 2016 election involving a DNC server.
‘I was involved with the process by which money was held up temporarily, OK? Mulvaney told reporters at a White House briefing. ‘Three issues for that: corruption in the country, whether or not other countries were participating in support of the Ukraine and whether or not they were cooperating in an ongoing investigation with our Department of Justice. That’s completely legitimate.’
It’s also pretty much exactly the smoking gun impeachment campaigners have been hunting.
After the briefing, all hell broke loose as first the Justice Department denied any knowledge of any connection between aid to Ukraine and the department’s investigation, and then Jay Sekulow, the president’s legal counsel, issued a terse statement saying he’d had no involvement in Mulvaney’s bombshell revelation.
Later, Mulvaney walked back his comments, saying ‘there was never any condition on the flow of the aid related to the matter of the DNC server.’
Sorry, what? We heard that condition from Mulvaney’s own mouth, and he said he was personally involved in the process of implementing that condition.
What a fiasco, and what a dangerous development for President Trump.
Many Republicans have turned on him this week, voting in Congress against his decision to withdraw troops from Syria.
Now the main allegation of the proposed impeachment seems to have been confirmed by the man running the White House staff.
Yet the person really to blame is Trump himself, for making that ridiculously dumb phone call to Ukraine’s President Zelensky in the first place, then brazenly admitting it and saying he wanted China to get digging dirt on his US election opponents too.
To make this week even more difficult, the president has also been savagely attacked in the past 24 hours by two of America’s most respected military heroes.
First, retired Admiral William McRaven, the man who oversaw the 2011 raid that killed Osama bin Laden, accused Trump of destroying America.
‘He’s undermined the intelligence community,’ he said, ‘the law enforcement community, the Department of Justice, the State Department. He has called the press the enemy of the American people and I will tell you, I’ve fought a lot of America’s enemies – the press is not the enemy of the American people. He’s undermined our NATO allies, taken out of the JCPOA (Iran nuclear agreement) and the TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal) and really the international community has lost faith in America. And then through the course of all this, he’s convinced he’s doing it all for the right reasons and that is really what is troubling.’
McRaven, who was particularly enraged that Trump has ‘left our allies the Kurds on the battlefield... betrayed them’, concluded in an op-ed for the New York Times: ‘If this president doesn’t demonstrate the leadership that America needs, both domestically and abroad, then it is time for a new person in the Oval Office, Republican, Democrat or Independent – the sooner the better. The fate of our Republic depends on it.’
Wow.
A few hours later, at a dinner in New York, General James ‘Mad Dog’ Mattis, Trump’s former defense secretary, launched a similarly withering assault on his old boss.
He spoke out after Trump told a meeting of members of Congress at the White House on Wednesday that Mattis was ‘the world’s most overrated general’, ‘wasn’t tough enough,’ and went onto say: ‘I captured ISIS.’
Mattis, who left the administration because Trump didn’t agree with his vehement pleas for U.S. forces to remain in Syria to stop ISIS resurging, taunted back: ‘I’m honored to be considered the most overrated general by Donald Trump because he also called Meryl Streep an overrated actress. So I guess I’m the Meryl Streep of generals, and frankly that sounds pretty good to me. You have to admit that between me and Meryl, at least we’ve had some victories.’
Ouch.
After a series of other lacerating zingers, Mattis got serious and paraphrased a speech made by Abraham Lincoln in 1838 in which Lincoln said great nations crumble for one of two reasons, either foreign invasion or, ‘the corrosion from within, the rot, the viciousness, the lassitude, the ignorance. Anarchy is one potential consequence of all this. The other is the rise of an ambitious leader, unfettered by conscience, or precedent or decency, who would make himself supreme.’
President Trump will doubtless react to the criticism from McRaven and Mattis as he does to all such criticism – very badly, very personally, and very abusively.
But denigrating America’s greatest military leaders in the same week you’ve committed one of the worst acts of military betrayal on your allies is not a good look.
In fact, it’s a shameful look.
And talking of looks, it’s time to take a good long hard look at yourself in the mirror, Mr President.
What kind of leader do you really want to be?
Because if it’s one that insults U.S. war heroes, betrays courageous allies, jokes about kids fighting as real kids are dying, and only helps countries in need if they dig up dirt on your election opponents, then Admiral McRaven’s right: America needs someone else in the White House.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Apparently with the betrayal of the Kurds and the absurd remarks Trump made since then, his friend Piers is no longer his friend. If Trump sounds like a raving lunatic, he’s brought that image on himself.
It boggles the mind that Trump the Draft Dodger would badmouth a Marine Corps general who served our country in combat at the same time the coward was playing 18 holes on the golf course with his phony bone spurs. While Mattis was ducking enemy fire, Trump was ducking an occasional stray golf ball.
We are fucked. If Trump survives impeachment, which he most probably will, we are left with the choice of either a crazy Democrat or a crazy Republican in 2020. And that’s why I won’t be voting for any of the presidential candidates.
GOVERNOR ISSUES PARDONS TO PREVENT DEPORTATIONS
by Bob Walsh
Gavin Newsom, the HMFIC of the formerly great state of California, issued three pardons yesterday to prevent three convicted felons from being deported.
Victor Ayala, 38, was brought into the country legally at age 2. He was convicted of robbery and assault.
Arnou Aghazanian, 41, came in as a refugee while a teenager. He was convicted of arson.
Thear Sam, 41, was convicted of theft and aiding and abetting someone to flee from police. He came in as a refugee at age 4.
Just to show he is even handed he also commuted the sentences of a few native citizens too.
Gavin Newsom, the HMFIC of the formerly great state of California, issued three pardons yesterday to prevent three convicted felons from being deported.
Victor Ayala, 38, was brought into the country legally at age 2. He was convicted of robbery and assault.
Arnou Aghazanian, 41, came in as a refugee while a teenager. He was convicted of arson.
Thear Sam, 41, was convicted of theft and aiding and abetting someone to flee from police. He came in as a refugee at age 4.
Just to show he is even handed he also commuted the sentences of a few native citizens too.
HILLARY SEEING RUSSIANS UNDER THE BED
by Bob Walsh
Hillary Clinton, expert on all forms of Russian election interference, has declared that the Russkies are "grooming" a current female presidential candidate (presumably Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii) to run as a third party candidate to pee in the Democrat soup.
I do know that as soon as Ms. Gabbard files to run as a third party I will be happy to make a modest donation to her campaign, just to keep the pot stirring. You got to have some fun somehow.
Hillary Clinton, expert on all forms of Russian election interference, has declared that the Russkies are "grooming" a current female presidential candidate (presumably Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii) to run as a third party candidate to pee in the Democrat soup.
I do know that as soon as Ms. Gabbard files to run as a third party I will be happy to make a modest donation to her campaign, just to keep the pot stirring. You got to have some fun somehow.
IN DE BLASIOVILLE, THE ONLY THING WORSE THAN CRIME IS LOCKING UP CRIMINALS
What does it take to get sent to jail in New York City?
By Bob McManus
New York Post
October 15, 2019
Does Tony Johnson, the Brooklyn 17-year-old who stands charged as a gang-banging crime tsunami, represent the future of New York?
Johnson now sits in a “secure youth facility” — whatever that means these days — having been busted on a 34-count street-crime indictment, turned loose by a soft-hearted, low-bail-setting judge and then, police say, getting right back to doing what he does best: brutalizing his neighbors.
His depredations seem to have ended with a particularly loathsome sexual assault on a 12-year-old girl in the basement of a Brooklyn housing project — but who knows for sure; the cops likely missed a mugging or two, and maybe worse.
Indeed, all that’s certain is that — thanks to New York’s new Raise the Age law — Johnson can’t be tried as an adult no matter how precocious his crimes.
So thank you, Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
It’s easy to criticize the judge here — the prosecution had asked for $225,000 bail and Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice Craig Walker knocked that down to $6,000 — and surely some blame accrues.
But this is de Blasioville circa 2019, where the zeitgeist has it that the only thing worse than crime is locking up criminals; where Congress member AOC is a guiding light of the No New Jails movement — and where the top municipal priority seems not to be schools, infrastructure or public hospitals, but rather shuttering Rikers Island.
And as for bail, well, it’s a town where the latest thing in do-goodery is dredging up dough to spring low-lifes, no questions asked. (Randy Santos, the accused Bowery mass murderer, was twice bailed by nonprofit organizations that exist pretty much solely to do that sort of thing; Santos’ victims could well be protesting today, if they weren’t dead.)
It’s only going to get worse.
The problem extends far beyond de Blasioville: Cuomo and the increasingly hard-left state Legislature in Albany this year went right to the heart of the pre-trial detention issue, mandating release without bail of suspects charged with a mind-bending array of charges, including intrinsically violent offenses.
Starting Jan. 1, for example, those charged with criminally negligent homicide, manslaughter, a wide range of drug-dealing offenses, weapons possession on school grounds, resisting arrest — even assault on a person less than 11 years old — will be shooed right back out on to the street.
Thus, those judges who do take seriously their responsibility to protect public safety (there really are a few in New York, you know) will be denied the bail-setting flexibility needed to do so.
Whence this insanity, and why?
All politicians pander, and you can learn a lot by studying who they pander to. And why they do it.
New York is a city in profound demographic flux. Its median age is 35 and 4.5 million of its 8-plus million residents are foreign born — which is to say, half the city has only the vaguest recollections, if any, of life before Pax Giuliana.
Meanwhile, newcomers tend not to be wave-makers, and Gotham’s streets tend to be tranquil compared to those many immigrants left behind — so all is good. They’ll learn better, of course, but it’ll take time.
So with relatively little solid-citizen pushback, New York’s pols — in Albany, on the City Council and just hangin’ at the Park Slope Y — are falling all over themselves sucking up to activist progressive lefties and the folks they champion: the types who came so close to bringing New York City to its knees a generation ago.
Not literally the same folks, of course. The addicts, pushers, pimps, gangsters, gunsels and murderously insane vagrants who made life in pre-Giuliani New York such a pulse-pounding adventure have long since gone to the places where bad choices take people.
Jail was one such destination, and in large numbers they went. It was a dreadful necessity back then and likely will be once again now that that the Giuliani-Bloomberg urban-oasis interregnum seems to be nearing an end.
Certainly the bad actors are making a comeback, as New York moves to shed jail cells, backs away from quality-of-life law enforcement, cedes mass transit and other public spaces to threatening, often vicious vagrants — all to keep the progressive population and its dubious clients happy.
Cultures reap what they sow, of course, and this year’s crop includes Randy Santos and Tony Johnson. There’s two long months to go.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Gov. Pinko Cuomo and Mayor Sandinista de Blasio must have taken a page out of Scott Henson’s book, or vice versa.
By Bob McManus
New York Post
October 15, 2019
Does Tony Johnson, the Brooklyn 17-year-old who stands charged as a gang-banging crime tsunami, represent the future of New York?
Johnson now sits in a “secure youth facility” — whatever that means these days — having been busted on a 34-count street-crime indictment, turned loose by a soft-hearted, low-bail-setting judge and then, police say, getting right back to doing what he does best: brutalizing his neighbors.
His depredations seem to have ended with a particularly loathsome sexual assault on a 12-year-old girl in the basement of a Brooklyn housing project — but who knows for sure; the cops likely missed a mugging or two, and maybe worse.
Indeed, all that’s certain is that — thanks to New York’s new Raise the Age law — Johnson can’t be tried as an adult no matter how precocious his crimes.
So thank you, Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
It’s easy to criticize the judge here — the prosecution had asked for $225,000 bail and Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice Craig Walker knocked that down to $6,000 — and surely some blame accrues.
But this is de Blasioville circa 2019, where the zeitgeist has it that the only thing worse than crime is locking up criminals; where Congress member AOC is a guiding light of the No New Jails movement — and where the top municipal priority seems not to be schools, infrastructure or public hospitals, but rather shuttering Rikers Island.
And as for bail, well, it’s a town where the latest thing in do-goodery is dredging up dough to spring low-lifes, no questions asked. (Randy Santos, the accused Bowery mass murderer, was twice bailed by nonprofit organizations that exist pretty much solely to do that sort of thing; Santos’ victims could well be protesting today, if they weren’t dead.)
It’s only going to get worse.
The problem extends far beyond de Blasioville: Cuomo and the increasingly hard-left state Legislature in Albany this year went right to the heart of the pre-trial detention issue, mandating release without bail of suspects charged with a mind-bending array of charges, including intrinsically violent offenses.
Starting Jan. 1, for example, those charged with criminally negligent homicide, manslaughter, a wide range of drug-dealing offenses, weapons possession on school grounds, resisting arrest — even assault on a person less than 11 years old — will be shooed right back out on to the street.
Thus, those judges who do take seriously their responsibility to protect public safety (there really are a few in New York, you know) will be denied the bail-setting flexibility needed to do so.
Whence this insanity, and why?
All politicians pander, and you can learn a lot by studying who they pander to. And why they do it.
New York is a city in profound demographic flux. Its median age is 35 and 4.5 million of its 8-plus million residents are foreign born — which is to say, half the city has only the vaguest recollections, if any, of life before Pax Giuliana.
Meanwhile, newcomers tend not to be wave-makers, and Gotham’s streets tend to be tranquil compared to those many immigrants left behind — so all is good. They’ll learn better, of course, but it’ll take time.
So with relatively little solid-citizen pushback, New York’s pols — in Albany, on the City Council and just hangin’ at the Park Slope Y — are falling all over themselves sucking up to activist progressive lefties and the folks they champion: the types who came so close to bringing New York City to its knees a generation ago.
Not literally the same folks, of course. The addicts, pushers, pimps, gangsters, gunsels and murderously insane vagrants who made life in pre-Giuliani New York such a pulse-pounding adventure have long since gone to the places where bad choices take people.
Jail was one such destination, and in large numbers they went. It was a dreadful necessity back then and likely will be once again now that that the Giuliani-Bloomberg urban-oasis interregnum seems to be nearing an end.
Certainly the bad actors are making a comeback, as New York moves to shed jail cells, backs away from quality-of-life law enforcement, cedes mass transit and other public spaces to threatening, often vicious vagrants — all to keep the progressive population and its dubious clients happy.
Cultures reap what they sow, of course, and this year’s crop includes Randy Santos and Tony Johnson. There’s two long months to go.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Gov. Pinko Cuomo and Mayor Sandinista de Blasio must have taken a page out of Scott Henson’s book, or vice versa.
WHO WOULD EVER BE A COP?
If Officer Aaron Dean is guilty of murder, what’s next? Should we charge doctors with murder when they make mistakes and someone dies? Is professional malpractice really now a strict liability offense for murder whenever someone dies?
By William Choslovsky
Chicago Sun-Times
October 16, 2019
So is the new standard that whenever a cop — even just mistakenly — shoots a citizen while doing his job, it’s murder?
If so, then let’s be very clear what the natural consequence will be: cops will be less likely to do their jobs.
Really, would you want to be a cop?
You get a call at 2:30 in the morning. Adrenaline running. You hear something. You overreact. You shoot. You kill an innocent.
That is what happened last weekend when Aaron Dean, a young, white, Fort Worth, Texas officer, killed Atatiana Jefferson, a young black woman. Dean was called to her home to investigate an open door early in the morning. He shot and killed Jefferson when she appeared on the other side of the window with a gun in her hand.
To be sure, Dean violated police policy by failing to identify he was a police officer when he suddenly saw someone — Jefferson — standing on the other side of the window. It is unclear whether in that split second he saw she had a gun. Either way, his violation was deadly.
In the old days, when police had license to do anything, nothing would have happened to Dean. There would be no consequence. That was, of course, wrong.
But the pendulum has swung so far that today — because of a mistake with no ill intent — Dean is charged with murder. He went from being on patrol looking for a bad guy to being the bad guy in a split second.
That too is wrong. Very wrong.
The proper consequence should be you lose your job. You violated policy. You made a mistake. You were negligent in doing your job, and it cost a life.
You — and your employer the police department — may also be sued civilly for the mistake. Prepare for a big-money judgment against you.
But losing your job and suffering financial penalty is one thing. Losing your liberty is another.
Absent ill intent, an officer should, at most, be charged with manslaughter, the standard of which is usually gross indifference or recklessness.
Such seemed the case with Amber Guyger, the Dallas cop who in 2018 mistakenly entered her neighbor’s apartment while off duty and tragically shot and killed Botham Jean. Guyger was convicted of murder.
But murder for an on-duty officer, like Dean this past weekend, for screwing up on the job? And perhaps piling on civil rights claims, as if an officer at 2:30 a.m. can make out race in a split second through a window, and then fire purposefully because of it?
Dean’s case is particularly bad — meaning he should lose his job, not his liberty — because reports now state that Jefferson, scared the cop outside was an intruder, pointed a gun at him from inside the window. With a gun pointed at him at 2:30 in the morning, he made a split second, tragic decision.
You might, too, in that situation, no matter your color. The truth of the matter, which we will never know, is that had Dean not fired, Jefferson might have shot him, fearful he was an intruder.
My goal is not to absolve all cops. As with any profession, there are rogue cops who cross lines. Murder charges for cops might at times be justified, as we sadly know here in Chicago.
But Dean’s case is not one of them.
If Dean is guilty of murder, what’s next? Should we charge nurses and doctors with murder when they make mistakes and someone dies? How about a firefighter who drives the truck too slow? Or the construction manager of the building in New Orleans that collapsed and killed a worker inside?
Is professional malpractice really now a strict liability offense for murder whenever someone dies?
As for the racial overlay, there is, sadly, enough racism in this world we don’t need to go looking and manufacture more. We don’t eviscerate our country’s sad racist history by charging white cops with murder every time they shoot a person of color.
The logical consequence of all this will be police won’t get out of their cars, what some call the “Ferguson effect.” Like you, almost all of them just want to do their jobs and go back to their families.
But if in doing their dangerous job they risk going to jail for murder when screwing up, good luck recruiting cops. Don’t complain when they stay in their cars. There’s way too much downside to do otherwise.
And as a result, we will all be less safe.
By William Choslovsky
Chicago Sun-Times
October 16, 2019
So is the new standard that whenever a cop — even just mistakenly — shoots a citizen while doing his job, it’s murder?
If so, then let’s be very clear what the natural consequence will be: cops will be less likely to do their jobs.
Really, would you want to be a cop?
You get a call at 2:30 in the morning. Adrenaline running. You hear something. You overreact. You shoot. You kill an innocent.
That is what happened last weekend when Aaron Dean, a young, white, Fort Worth, Texas officer, killed Atatiana Jefferson, a young black woman. Dean was called to her home to investigate an open door early in the morning. He shot and killed Jefferson when she appeared on the other side of the window with a gun in her hand.
To be sure, Dean violated police policy by failing to identify he was a police officer when he suddenly saw someone — Jefferson — standing on the other side of the window. It is unclear whether in that split second he saw she had a gun. Either way, his violation was deadly.
In the old days, when police had license to do anything, nothing would have happened to Dean. There would be no consequence. That was, of course, wrong.
But the pendulum has swung so far that today — because of a mistake with no ill intent — Dean is charged with murder. He went from being on patrol looking for a bad guy to being the bad guy in a split second.
That too is wrong. Very wrong.
The proper consequence should be you lose your job. You violated policy. You made a mistake. You were negligent in doing your job, and it cost a life.
You — and your employer the police department — may also be sued civilly for the mistake. Prepare for a big-money judgment against you.
But losing your job and suffering financial penalty is one thing. Losing your liberty is another.
Absent ill intent, an officer should, at most, be charged with manslaughter, the standard of which is usually gross indifference or recklessness.
Such seemed the case with Amber Guyger, the Dallas cop who in 2018 mistakenly entered her neighbor’s apartment while off duty and tragically shot and killed Botham Jean. Guyger was convicted of murder.
But murder for an on-duty officer, like Dean this past weekend, for screwing up on the job? And perhaps piling on civil rights claims, as if an officer at 2:30 a.m. can make out race in a split second through a window, and then fire purposefully because of it?
Dean’s case is particularly bad — meaning he should lose his job, not his liberty — because reports now state that Jefferson, scared the cop outside was an intruder, pointed a gun at him from inside the window. With a gun pointed at him at 2:30 in the morning, he made a split second, tragic decision.
You might, too, in that situation, no matter your color. The truth of the matter, which we will never know, is that had Dean not fired, Jefferson might have shot him, fearful he was an intruder.
My goal is not to absolve all cops. As with any profession, there are rogue cops who cross lines. Murder charges for cops might at times be justified, as we sadly know here in Chicago.
But Dean’s case is not one of them.
If Dean is guilty of murder, what’s next? Should we charge nurses and doctors with murder when they make mistakes and someone dies? How about a firefighter who drives the truck too slow? Or the construction manager of the building in New Orleans that collapsed and killed a worker inside?
Is professional malpractice really now a strict liability offense for murder whenever someone dies?
As for the racial overlay, there is, sadly, enough racism in this world we don’t need to go looking and manufacture more. We don’t eviscerate our country’s sad racist history by charging white cops with murder every time they shoot a person of color.
The logical consequence of all this will be police won’t get out of their cars, what some call the “Ferguson effect.” Like you, almost all of them just want to do their jobs and go back to their families.
But if in doing their dangerous job they risk going to jail for murder when screwing up, good luck recruiting cops. Don’t complain when they stay in their cars. There’s way too much downside to do otherwise.
And as a result, we will all be less safe.
IN DEFENDING THE BETRAYAL OF THE KURDS, TRUMP IS SOUNDING CRAZIER THAN CRAZY BERNIE
Donald Trump hails five-day ceasefire deal in Syria as 'a great day for civilization' and boasts of 'incredible outcome' claiming 'great leader' Erdogan and the Kurds are happy - but Turkey hits back that they have only agreed to a PAUSE
Daily Mail
October 17, 2019
Donald Trump on Thursday hailed an agreement between the United States and Turkey for a five-day cease fire in Syria as a 'great day for civilization' as Turkish officials down played the outcome of the deal.
'A great day for the Kurds. It's really a great day for civilization. It's a great day for civilization,' Trump said.
'They're not going to have to kill millions of people, and millions of people aren't going to have to kill them,' he said.
The president gloried in the agreement on Thursday, calling Erdogan a 'hell of a leader.'
_________
Trump says he allowed Turkish and Kurdish forces to fight 'like two kids in a lot' before 'you pull them apart' - but the five-day ceasefire deal he hailed as a 'great day for civilization' has ALREADY been broken
Daily Mail
October 18, 2019
President Donald Trump said last night that he allowed Turkish and Kurdish forces to clash in deadly battle because the two sides were like children who needed to fight each other.
__________
'Dad stop the burning, I beg you': Horrifying footage reveals badly-burned Kurdish children in Syria amid claims Turkey is using banned weapons such as napalm and white phosphorus
Daily Mail
October 18, 2019
Distressing video and images captured in Syria before the ceasefire came into effect appears to show children with chemical weapons burns.
In a hospital in Tal Tamr, close to the city of Ras al-Ayn where the majority of the fighting has been taking place, a young boy was brought in with burns covering his body while screaming 'dad stop the burning'.
Chemical weapons experts said his injuries appear consistent with white phosphorous - an internationally banned weapon.
Meanwhile a medic in another hospital near the city said he has treated several children who have injuries that he believes were caused by napalm or a similar incendiary bomb.
__________
Trump insists that Kurdish allies are “very happy about the way things are going”
CBS News
October 18, 2019
President Trump insisted Friday that Kurdish allies who were being forced from northern Syria to avoid slaughter are "very happy about the way things are going," describing the already breached ceasefire brokered with Turkey like a business deal.
“It was a lot of, a lot of pain for a couple of days and sometimes you have to go through some pain before you can get a good solution, but the Kurds are very happy about it,” Mr. Trump said Friday in the Roosevelt Room of the White House. “President Erdogan in Turkey is satisfied with it. And we are in a strong position.”
The president also said the U.S. has taken control of oil in the region, although it's unclear what he meant by that.
“We've taken control of the oil in the Middle East, the oil that we're talking about. The oil that everybody was worried about. We have, the U.S. has control of that,” he said.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Where does Trump get that ‘happy’ crap when the Kurds are driven from their long-held homes to make way for several million Arabs now living in Turkish refugee camps.
We’ve taken control of the oil? – Duh. We are in a strong position – Duh again. Our generals and most foreign affairs experts say the abandonment of the Kurds is a sign of weakness. But then Trump is smarter than all the generals.
Daily Mail
October 17, 2019
Donald Trump on Thursday hailed an agreement between the United States and Turkey for a five-day cease fire in Syria as a 'great day for civilization' as Turkish officials down played the outcome of the deal.
'A great day for the Kurds. It's really a great day for civilization. It's a great day for civilization,' Trump said.
'They're not going to have to kill millions of people, and millions of people aren't going to have to kill them,' he said.
The president gloried in the agreement on Thursday, calling Erdogan a 'hell of a leader.'
_________
Trump says he allowed Turkish and Kurdish forces to fight 'like two kids in a lot' before 'you pull them apart' - but the five-day ceasefire deal he hailed as a 'great day for civilization' has ALREADY been broken
Daily Mail
October 18, 2019
President Donald Trump said last night that he allowed Turkish and Kurdish forces to clash in deadly battle because the two sides were like children who needed to fight each other.
__________
'Dad stop the burning, I beg you': Horrifying footage reveals badly-burned Kurdish children in Syria amid claims Turkey is using banned weapons such as napalm and white phosphorus
Daily Mail
October 18, 2019
Distressing video and images captured in Syria before the ceasefire came into effect appears to show children with chemical weapons burns.
In a hospital in Tal Tamr, close to the city of Ras al-Ayn where the majority of the fighting has been taking place, a young boy was brought in with burns covering his body while screaming 'dad stop the burning'.
Chemical weapons experts said his injuries appear consistent with white phosphorous - an internationally banned weapon.
Meanwhile a medic in another hospital near the city said he has treated several children who have injuries that he believes were caused by napalm or a similar incendiary bomb.
__________
Trump insists that Kurdish allies are “very happy about the way things are going”
CBS News
October 18, 2019
President Trump insisted Friday that Kurdish allies who were being forced from northern Syria to avoid slaughter are "very happy about the way things are going," describing the already breached ceasefire brokered with Turkey like a business deal.
“It was a lot of, a lot of pain for a couple of days and sometimes you have to go through some pain before you can get a good solution, but the Kurds are very happy about it,” Mr. Trump said Friday in the Roosevelt Room of the White House. “President Erdogan in Turkey is satisfied with it. And we are in a strong position.”
The president also said the U.S. has taken control of oil in the region, although it's unclear what he meant by that.
“We've taken control of the oil in the Middle East, the oil that we're talking about. The oil that everybody was worried about. We have, the U.S. has control of that,” he said.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Where does Trump get that ‘happy’ crap when the Kurds are driven from their long-held homes to make way for several million Arabs now living in Turkish refugee camps.
We’ve taken control of the oil? – Duh. We are in a strong position – Duh again. Our generals and most foreign affairs experts say the abandonment of the Kurds is a sign of weakness. But then Trump is smarter than all the generals.
PENCE AND TRUMP APPROVED ERDOGAN’S DEMAND OF CAPITULATION FOR THE KURDS
Turkey's Erdogan warns Trump he has 120 hours to get Kurdish fighters out of Syria or he will restart attacks - as he claims 750 ISIS fighters have been released by the Kurds
Daily Mail
October 18, 2019
Recep Tayyip Erdogan said two million Syrian refugees who fled to Turkey during the brutal civil war could be moved into the area along the border once Kurdish fighters were expelled. He also claimed Kurdish forces had released 750 ISIS fighters being held in camps during the week-long Turkish military operations, which were instigated by a US troop pullout earlier this month.
It comes as French President Emmanuel Macron described Turkey's invasion as 'madness' and said Ankara would be to blame if there was an ISIS resurgence in the region.
European Council president Donald Tusk said Turkey's US-brokered truce was not serious and demanded Ankara halt its offensive against the Kurds. Tusk said the peace deal agreed by Ergogan and Vice President Mike Pence yesterday was 'not a ceasefire' and in fact a 'demand of capitulation for the Kurds'.
Erdogan threatened to resume his 'Operation Peace Spring' attacks as soon as the pause on military action ends in under five days.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Erdogan is making a laughingstock out of Trump and Trump brought that on himself.
Daily Mail
October 18, 2019
Recep Tayyip Erdogan said two million Syrian refugees who fled to Turkey during the brutal civil war could be moved into the area along the border once Kurdish fighters were expelled. He also claimed Kurdish forces had released 750 ISIS fighters being held in camps during the week-long Turkish military operations, which were instigated by a US troop pullout earlier this month.
It comes as French President Emmanuel Macron described Turkey's invasion as 'madness' and said Ankara would be to blame if there was an ISIS resurgence in the region.
European Council president Donald Tusk said Turkey's US-brokered truce was not serious and demanded Ankara halt its offensive against the Kurds. Tusk said the peace deal agreed by Ergogan and Vice President Mike Pence yesterday was 'not a ceasefire' and in fact a 'demand of capitulation for the Kurds'.
Erdogan threatened to resume his 'Operation Peace Spring' attacks as soon as the pause on military action ends in under five days.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Erdogan is making a laughingstock out of Trump and Trump brought that on himself.
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