Field Day 8/24/17: Charlottesville and the Media

I’ll start with the fallout from the Charlottesville protest, counterprotest, and violence.  A couple nights ago, President Trump held a rally in Arizona where he spent around 20 minutes condemning the mass media for lying and misrepresenting him and the facts.  Most of it was warranted, some was him stretching the point.  (I heard various reports say it was 16 minutes of talking about the media, others that said 30.  I listened to it and it seemed longer – more like 25, but the consensus seems to be about 20 focused minutes.)

This is from the NYT yesterday, condemning Trump for going after the media.  The story itself isn’t much more than the usual media caterwauling we’ve come to expect in the last year, but it’s noteable for one thing buried in the middle of it that exemplifies the problem:

Its lead items on Wednesday were about attacks on journalists in Charlottesville from both white nationalists and counterprotesters aligned with the so-called antifa movement.

So-called?  (Screenshot in case it disappears.)  So-called?  No problem identifying the white national socialists, but the international socialists barely get mentioned and get the dismissive “so-called”, insinuating that they aren’t really a problem at all.

What seemed to particularly sting on Wednesday was the way that Mr. Trump had impugned journalists’ patriotism.

“Claim bias. Fine. Claim elitism. Fine,” Mr. VandeHei of Axios wrote on Twitter. “But to say reporters erase America’s heritage, don’t love America, turn off cameras to hide truth, are to blame for racial tension, is just plain wrong.”

Anyone with a passing interest in history knows that the founders viewed an independent press as essential to democracy. Talk about heritage.

Anyone with a passing interest in history knows that we don’t have a democracy.  We have a republic – if we can keep it.

Journalists aren’t patriotic.  They’ve been actively trying to get the president to fail since Trump was elected, and they want the country to suffer for it.  They actively believe that half the country are neo-Nazi reactionary racist hicks who are too stupid to be trusted to live and so they need to be beaten into submission, and they’ll do so with any story and any angle they can.

They just spent the last year ranting about how Russia (which Hillary did favors for in a cash for uranium deal, lest we forget how they were Democrat friends two years ago), right up until it was basically proven the story was nonsense.  Even hard-left Salon.com came to the realization that the subject was being changed because the “Russia collusion” story was BS and independent analysts have come to the conclusion it had to be an inside source – namely someone like the murdered Seth Rich.

Last week the respected left-liberal magazine The Nation published an explosive article that details in great depth the findings of a new report — authored in large part by former U.S. intelligence officers — which claims to present forensic evidence that the Democratic National Committee was not hacked by the Russians in July 2016. Instead, the report alleges, the DNC suffered an insider leak, conducted in the Eastern time zone of the United States by someone with physical access to a DNC computer.

The Russia collusion story, despite being thrown on the front page of every leftist rag for the last year, turned out to be, as communist and CNN personality Van Jones called it – a “nothingburger”.  Meanwhile asking about Seth Rich’s unsolved murder is decried by the media as “right wing conspiracy”… that’s been debunked by… Snopes.  Y’know, two leftists, their cats, and a spam server to keep urban legends circulating to generate traffic.

At Charlottesville, the media went out of their way to ignore that there was violence on both sides, exactly as President Trump stated.  We have video of it.

The white racist identitarian national socialists – and yes, that socialism part puts them on the left, whether they like it or not – had a permit to march.  They were legally entitled to go make fools of themselves, but then Antifa decided to attack them, as Antifa does.

Antifa has the wonderful self-made justification that any violence they do, especially attacks they make, are completely righteous and absolutely correct, because they call themselves “Anti-Fascist”, and everyone knows fascists are bad, so ergo they can attack anyone they view as a fascist.  And anyone who opposes them must be a fascist, because they exist as a force solely to oppose fascism.  It’s a wonderful circular logic that completely ignores their roots as communist rioters that go back nearly a hundred years.

One thing both sides commented on was the lack of police presence.  Like we’ve seen in Berkeley over and over and over in the last year or so, the police are ordered to stand down by appointed police chiefs on leftist mayors’ orders.  In the case of Charlottesville, VA, the mayor is a leftist Democrat and pal of Obama and Podesta who works with the hard leftist Center for American Progress.  He’s horribly left.  His vice mayor, also a Democrat, is more entertainingly terrible, in that he’s a sexist racist homophobe.

These are the kind of people who tell the police to stand down because they identify with Antifa.

CNN did an accidentally honest piece on Antifa that they had to go back and edit.  This is the unedited version, still around on the Wayback Machine:

And this is the edited version, to delete the whole “they start violence everywhere they go” part:

The video story actually shows that the reporter doesn’t unmask Antifa at all.  In fact, the Antifa terrorists (because they use violence for political ends and are thus the very definition of terrorists) keep their masks, hoods, and glasses on while talking about how they have to be able to commit crimes with impunity in the name of “social justice”.

Or, y’know, so they can stab people for having the wrong haircut.

A “confused anti-fascist” swung a knife towards the face of a man with a haircut similar to the one popular with white nationalists.

Joshua Witt, 26, was getting out of his car at Steak ’n Shake in Sheridan, Colorado when a man ran over to him yelling, “Are you one of them neo-Nazis?”

The man aimed for his head over his car door, but Witt blocked the blow with his hand, which needed three stitches.

“I threw my hands up and once the knife kind of hit, I dived back into my car and shut the door and watched him run off west, behind my car.”

Witt, who is in no way a neo-Nazi, joked that he believes it was indeed his haircut that confused the anti-fascist, and said he’s considering changing his style. He has no other marks that would make his attacker mistake him for a white nationalist, he said.

But it’s not really a surprise that a bunch of violent socialist revolutionaries would begin attacking people who look like their racial and political enemies.

For those who haven’t seen what Antifa actually stands for (hint: mostly communist Anti-American violence and racism against anyone who’s not in lockstep with them), here’s some examples of their propaganda and events:

Did I mention Antifa was racist?

Antifa really seems to like hitting black people who disagree with them.  Seeing as how Antifa are collectivist identitarian racists, that makes sense, because someone who disagrees with them and is of a different skin-color is the kind of person who is a visual affront to their violence and stupidity just by existing.

Basically, Antifa is this:

The Horrors of Deportation To Mexico

Delightful sarcasm from Sargon.

Quite entertaining to see someone from across the pond objectively fisk some Al Jazeera leftist propaganda about deportation.

Sheriff David Clarke Shuts Down Don Lemon & The Leftist #BLM Lie

Milwaukee Sheriff David Clarke makes clear the law enforcement perspective… and one shared by most of the nation regardless of color.  The best exchange is above.

The later part, after cutting to commercial to protect Don Lemon from further looking like a biased chump and useful idiot, is what CNN posted.  It’s 30 seconds of Don Lemon saying, in effect – if you want to have a conversation, you need to shut up and agree with me, then Lemon running interference for racist Black Lives Matter while saying “that’s a different conversation” every time the Sheriff brings up a point.

Sheriff Clarke is elected by the people of the county to provide law enforcement for them.  He is as direct a representation of what a community wants in law enforcement as is possible in a representative democratic republic.  And based on that first exchange, it sounds like he’s got the community’s interests at heart – both the citizen community and law enforcement community, as they are one and the same (7).

Normally I’d say it’s a safe bet Sheriff Clarke won’t be invited back… but then again, if it generates ratings, views, and hits, CNN may recognize they should have someone on besides their party loyalist mouthpieces.

Gunwalker Update: Five Years On

From Katie Pavlich:

Five years ago today, Marine and Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was killed in a firefight by Mexican bandits. The firearms used by the criminals who killed him were part of the Obama Justice Department’s Operation Fast and Furious. As a reminder, ATF agents allowed more than 2500 AK-47s and other firearms to be purchased and trafficked by known Mexican cartel members through Fast and Furious. Hundreds of people have been killed as a result of the program, which was secret until ATF whistleblower John Dodson exposed it after Terry’s death in 2010.

“Five years later. We have celebrated Brian so many times that it warms my heart. This is a little something of past friends and ones we met along the way at events held to honor Brian. I thank all of you with every ounce of my being! We will keep fighting. 11:08pm tonight is when a deadly gunfight happened and took Brian. Please also pray for his team that was there when he took his last breathe and The Border Patrol family,” Terry’s sister, Kelly Terry-Willis, posted to her Facebook page late yesterday.

Today, not a single ATF agent has been fired as a result of the operation.  Terry’s killers have been sentenced to life in prison after being found guilty on a variety of different charges, including first degree murder.

Holder nor Obama are in prison.  There’s a Border Patrol station named after Brian Terry.  Sharyl Atkisson left CBS.  Hundreds to thousands of Mexicans and Americans are now dead because of Obama/Holder’s ATF’s actions.  But aside from a lot of people who won’t forget the wrongs done by Obama/Holder’s DOJ and ATF, to most of the US, it’s almost like nothing ever happened.  The media succeeded in carrying the water for Obama to the point he can still make claims for the need for gun control after a terrorist attack and not get laughed out of office – despite having been responsible for arming narcoterrorist cartels.

Hell, assholes from the ATF are still called on by the media for gun control pieces as though they aren’t an agency composed of criminals and thugs that doesn’t care about either the rights or lives of Americans or our Mexican neighbors.

It’s a sad indicator of the times we’re living in.

Possible Next Head of Border Patrol was a Violator of Alien Smuggling Laws 8 USC 1324 & 1327 as “Sanctuary” City Police Chief

Via HotAir:

Here’s a piece of cheerful news to brighten your day. We’re going to be needing a new boss at the Border Patrol shortly and while there is nothing written in stone yet, word on the street is that one of the names near the top of the list is that of Heather Fong. While unfamiliar to most of you I’m sure, Heather may ring a bell when you’re reminded that she’s a San Francisco law enforcement figure who was very big on the whole sanctuary city thing. Feel better yet? (Fox News)

A former San Francisco police chief and vocal supporter of a sanctuary cities policy is on a short list of candidates to become the new chief of the Border Patrol, according to sources.

As police chief, Heather Fong shielded illegal immigrants, including aliens who committed crimes, from deportation. In contrast, it is the job of the U.S. Border Patrol to catch and deport all illegal immigrants, including those with a criminal history.

“If they bring (a police chief) in for political purposes based on the sanctuary cities model, that politicizes the job and I think it completely undermines credibility and morale in the organization,” House Committee on Homeland Security Chairman Mike McCaul, R-Texas, told Fox News.

HotAir adds some more info and backstory, but there’s a simple takeaway from this – 8 USC 1324(a):

(a) Criminal penalties

(1)
(A) Any person who—
(i) knowing that a person is an alien, brings to or attempts to bring to the United States in any manner whatsoever such person at a place other than a designated port of entry or place other than as designated by the Commissioner, regardless of whether such alien has received prior official authorization to come to, enter, or reside in the United States and regardless of any future official action which may be taken with respect to such alien;
(ii) knowing or in reckless disregard of the fact that an alien has come to, entered, or remains in the United States in violation of law, transports, or moves or attempts to transport or move such alien within the United States by means of transportation or otherwise, in furtherance of such violation of law;
(iii) knowing or in reckless disregard of the fact that an alien has come to, entered, or remains in the United States in violation of law, conceals, harbors, or shields from detection, or attempts to conceal, harbor, or shield from detection, such alien in any place, including any building or any means of transportation;
(iv) encourages or induces an alien to come to, enter, or reside in the United States, knowing or in reckless disregard of the fact that such coming to, entry, or residence is or will be in violation of law; or
(v)
(I) engages in any conspiracy to commit any of the preceding acts, or
(II) aids or abets the commission of any of the preceding acts,
shall be punished as provided in subparagraph (B).

And 8 USC 1327:

Any person who knowingly aids or assists any alien inadmissible under section 1182(a)(2) (insofar as an alien inadmissible under such section has been convicted of an aggravated felony) or 1182(a)(3) (other than subparagraph (E) thereof) of this title to enter the United States, or who connives or conspires with any person or persons to allow, procure, or permit any such alien to enter the United States, shall be fined under title 18, or imprisoned not more than 10 years, or both.

Pretty cut and dried.

People who run sanctuary cities are in violation of federal laws.  Their leaders and their henchmen should be prosecuted.

The Obama administration won’t enforce federal law in this case because of its identity politics and hard leftist ideology, and the Bush Administration didn’t enforce it because of their lazy economic interest, and so on and so forth pretty much back to the Eisenhower administration when law was actually enforced.

Open Borders Activists – Stabbed In The Back By “Migrants”, Raped by “Migrants”

Via Gateway Pundit:

A high profile open borders activist was nearly killed in Dresden. He was attack by six or more Arabs and stabbed in the back outside a Pizzeria. (Stop Hate Crimes)

**Julius has protested the PEGIDA anti-immigrant invasion movement, and campaigned for illegal alien rights.

No doubt, Julius still supports the migrant invasion of Germany.
Breitbart.com reported:

A pro-migrant, open borders activist is reported to be “very sad” after being stabbed twice in the back by a gang of “Arabs” as he stood outside a pizzeria in Dresden, east Germany.

Twenty-nine year old ‘Julius G.’ involved himself in political activism while reading his degree in industrial engineering Technical University of Dresden. Now he may have fallen victim to his own politics, as the refugee advocate was attacked while waiting for friends in Dresden’s Neustadt, known as the city’s ‘left wing’, or ‘alternative’ quarter.  …

The student didn’t think the motivation was robbery, as nothing was taken after the stabbing.

This sounds a bit familiar.

The Democrat Moran didn’t get a brain after getting hit at 60mph by an illegal, and neither will this German clown.

There’s something intrinsic about the open-borders self-hating burn-the-west redistributor leftists on both sides of the pond that make them really feel they deserve crimes inflicted on them by illegals and “migrants”.

Julius G. was “sad”, just like Democrat Moran.  Democrat Moran, despite being hit by an illegal alien wearing a mariachi outfit, no less, said this afterwards:

I know this is a tough issue that we’re dealing with and as you probably know I have been and will continue to be pro immigrant and some cases even pro illegal immigrant. And it would be politically expedient for me at this point in time to change that. That should give you some indication of my commitment to immigration and immigrants to tell you that even after being hit by one I will continue to advocate for immigrants and their rights as citizens of this country.

He’s advocating for illegal aliens having “rights as citizens”, which they don’t, because they aren’t.

Julius G. was “sad” because his ideology won’t let him see that the people trying to stop the surge of immigration into Germany would’ve kept him from getting stabbed and left to die, and his ideology is to inflict those same wounds on his countrymen, regardless of what they want… same as Moran.

And just to further illustrate this, there are activists who’ve been raped by the “migrants” they’re trying to support, only to be silenced so as “not to damage the cause”:

A young, female ‘No Borders’ activist working in a migrant camp on the France-Italy border remained silent about her gang rape by Sudanese migrants for over a month because “the others asked me to keep quiet.”

Colleagues are alleged to have said that reporting the crime would set back their struggle for a borderless world.

The ‘No Borders’ activist had dedicated a month of her life to helping migrants. Her group was stationed between Italy and France in Ponte San Ludovico in Ventimiglia when the atrocity occurred, according to reports from local papers La Stampa and Il Secolo XIX, and now reported in the major Italian national Corriere Della Serra.

One Saturday night, as loud music played at a nearby party, the woman was reportedly trapped in a shower block set up near the camp in a pine forest know as Red Leap.

A gang of African migrants allegedly raped her there, and her cries for help are said to have gone unheard because of the music.

La Stampa reports that the woman, around 30 years of age, would have reported the horrific crime were if not for her fellow left-wing activists, who convinced her that if the truth got out it could damage their utopian dream of a world without borders.

But Corriere Della Serra also reports that some of her fellow activists are now accusing the woman of reporting the rape out of “spite,” because her group was withdrawn from the camp following a separate controversy.

Maybe she should’ve said they were a lacrosse team, or that they were gamers.  Then she might have been listened to.

European woman against third world illegal migrants?  Looks like her fellow left-wing activists consulted the progressive stack and told her to “check her privilege”.

Field Day 9/4/15: Citizenship, Racism, Turmoil, and One Old Pilot Takes His Last Flight

Whole lotta stuff to go back and note.  Hopefully not too jumbled up, just going through stories of interest from the last couple weeks.

Birthright citizenship was recently the subject of no small amount of discussion – especially how exploitation of jus soli “the law of place” meant that anchor babies are a viable means of getting into the US.  First off – it costs the US taxpayers and existing US citizens a huge amount of money.  Ultimately the reason you have a country is because it’s either bonds of ethnic kinship (for most of the world) or bonds of creed (for the US – ideally – and a handful of other nations).  You joined together to take care of your own first, then depending on the nature of your country, help others as you see fit.  Not put yourself at a disadvantage to someone who breaks in to your home.

In 2003 in Stockton, California, 70 percent of the 2,300 babies born in San Joaquin General Hospital’s maternity ward were anchor babies, and 45 percent of Stockton children under age six are Latino (up from 30 percent in 1993). In 1994, 74,987 anchor babies in California hospital maternity units cost $215 million and constituted 36 percent of all Medi-Cal [California’s Medicaid program] births. Now [2005] they account for substantially more than half.

The article goes on to mention how once they hit 18, they bring in family.  That was intended back when immigration laws were modified in the 1960s.  Democrats saw their opportunity to bring in low-skilled, low-wage labor that would gravitate towards their pandering and handouts.  Ted Kennedy was no small part of the push for it as well.

Ho brings up some points, but also misses some:

We begin, of course, with the text of the Citizenship Clause. To be “subject to the jurisdiction” of the U.S. is simply to be subject to the authority of the U.S. government.

And with a simple policy and interpretation change, that could go away.  Someone who’s illegally in the country wasn’t inspected by an immigration official and can be considered to have border nexus and even being on “the functional equivalent of the border” definition could be moved to apply to them – meaning they wouldn’t legally be in the country because they weren’t allowed in, even if they were physically in the country by breaking in.  They’re not subject to the jurisdiction of the US government – they’re simply here illegally.

The law has two terms for people who come to the country – immigrant and non-immigrant.  The definitions are pretty lame, with non-immigrant being someone who comes in on a non-immigrant visa, and immigrant being anyone else.  Take away the idea the word immigrant from illegal aliens and you have someone who’s not blurring the lines between legal immigrants and illegals.  It also gives room for returning to “subject to the jurisdiction” of the US – which was originally written to exclude Native American tribes who were on US soil but not US citizens, because they were considered members of other nations.

Go back to illegal aliens being members of their own foreign nations, and the problem is solved.  No more anchor babies, and those poor aliens can be repatriated to their ancestral homelands to once again share in the bounty of success of their rich, diverse cultures.

—

An Alabama detective feared being labeled racist… so he let himself get roughed up.  When the choice is between temporary pain of a whooping and the longer term legal suffering and targeting that comes with the charge of wrongthink by the media especially when you’re innocent, it’s probably better to just get roughed up.

Instead of following policy to try to get the man back in the car, the officer says he hesitates. It’s just enough time police say for 34-year-old Janard Cunningham to sucker punch the officer, knocking him unconscious. He then allegedly takes the officer’s gun and uses it to pistol whip him.

From Bob Owens at Bearing Arms:

This is the world that the criminal-coddling, police-hating mainstream media hath wrought…

There’s no small amount of irony in CNN reporting this story, and the attack’s callous aftermath, which saw sick criminal supporters take mocking photos of the unconscious officer instead of attempting to help him. After all, they’ve done so much to fan the flames of discord that have bought us to this point, with their serially dishonest portrayal of lawful self-defense shootings by police officers and citizens alike…

And this is the world that the police hating mainstream media hath wrought…

Miles is accused of killing Deputy Darren Goforth, 47, in northwest Harris County. Investigators say Deputy Goforth had worked an accident scene at around 8:30pm, then went to a gas station on Telge and West Road. As he was pumping gas, detectives say Miles approached Deputy Goforth from behind, said nothing and fired multiple shots. Once he fell to the ground, authorities say Miles fired more shots at the deputy. Deputy Goforth was pronounced dead at the scene.

It’s not yet a return to the bad old days of the 70s as far as the violence goes, but the rhetoric and justification for the violence by the leftist media is certainly at a fever pitch.

Meanwhile, in Waller County, TX:

WALLER COUNTY, Texas — A group of armed members of the New Black Panther Party marched on the Waller County Jail Wednesday afternoon chanting “The revolution is on… Off the pigs,” and “Oink Oink… Bang Bang!” The group of about fifteen Black Panthers exercised their First and Second Amendment rights. The group was met in Waller County by a large contingent of Harris County (Houston) Sheriff’s Office deputies.

It went peacefully, mostly because it was a standoff, and because when you’re chanting “kill the cops” in front of them, if you do something stupid you’re going to get mowed down.

First off, I’m supportive of them exercising their First and Second Amendment rights.  An armed society is a polite society – presence of arms kept both sides from acting the fool because both sides knew the consequences of their actions.  But I don’t think it’s terribly productive to protest someone while armed saying “we want to kill you”.  Not exactly from the pages of Dale Carnegie’s books.

I’ve said it before with regards to gun control in California – no small part of that state’s slide into draconian laws was done as a response to a Black Panther march on Sacramento that scared the white people in power.  Everybody lost for that.  It was a loss for the average citizen who committed no crime but lost a right, it was a loss to the CA government and the Panthers because it ended discourse and started a backlash by the power structure.  The grievance wasn’t really heard when a threat was made.

Same goes here.  If you don’t chant “die pigs die” (yes, it’s only reported they said “off the pigs” but it’s the same thing), you might get a better response.  Sling your arms like Open Carry Texas does and have the same march without the death threats and you’ll get a much better response.  The action also further illustrates the hypocrisy of the left – if a group decided to protest other government officials with “off the ____” – making threats against higher elected officials (especially Democrats), they’d be jumped on by the FBI so fast their heads would spin.

This is a lot more effective display anyway – assuming one’s concern is about lives:

That turns down rhetoric and shows a desired goal of racial/ethnic harmony.  Of course, that’s assuming one believes that groups like #blacklivesmatter (apparently run by white leftists) actually give a crap about any lives and aren’t just pushing for their own hard left political angle.

The effects of that kind of ramping up of hate and distrust of local/state authorities is a good way to build up more demands for federalizing the police and controlling everything from DC.  The answer is always more power for those who want even more power.

It’s also why the “police acted stupidly” with the professor, why “if I had a son he’d look like Trayvon”, etc., is always the first thing the pres says, while at the federal level, anyone who questions Eric Holder about the Obama ATF sending guns to narcoterrorist cartels is racist because Eric Holder is black.  (And to the Obama administration, Mexican lives don’t matter unless they’re illegally in the US voting for Democrats).

It’s also how people started making excuses for a narcissist news reporter murderer:

Revenge race murder: Bitter black reporter who gunned down white ex-colleagues live on air and posted the video online blames Charleston shootings and anti-gay harassment in manifesto

…he professes a deep respect for other mass shooters like Virginia Tech gunman Seung-Hui Cho.

‘Also, I was influenced by Seung–Hui Cho. That’s my boy right there. He got NEARLY double the amount that Eric Harris and Dylann Klebold got…just sayin’.

He goes on to say that he has faced both racial and sexual discrimination as a black, gay man and that he was just waiting to explode.

‘Yes, it will sound like I am angry…I am. And I have every right to be. But when I leave this Earth, the only emotion I want to feel is peace…’

‘The church shooting was the tipping point…but my anger has been building steadily…I’ve been a human powder keg for a while…just waiting to go BOOM!!!!’

At one point in the manifesto he even confesses to killing his cats in a forest close to where he lives, blaming the news station for the animals’ deaths.

Except that apparently nobody really discriminated against him.  He just blamed other people for his problems.

Flanagan, 41, had ‘a long series of complaints against co-workers nearly from the beginning of employment at the TV station,’ said Dennison, now an official with the Hawaii Department of Land and Natural Resources.

‘All of these allegations were deemed to be unfounded. And they were largely under along racial lines, and we did a thorough investigation and could find no evidence that anyone had racially discriminated against this man.’

Yeah, no one disliked him because of his skin color or his orientation.  But the media provided and he readily took in a steady stream of toxic “everyone hates you because you’re black/gay/something and they’re racists/homophobes/somethinghaters and thus you’re justified in your actions“.

Welcome to the new leftist America, where if someone has a different opinion than you that you find distasteful and against leftism, you can go tell them how to live, and when they tell you to get lost, you can attack them.  And the police.

RACINE, Wis. (AP) – Authorities say a Racine man was arrested after forcing his way inside a home to take down a Confederate flag placed in a window. …

A criminal complaint says a woman and Boatner told police he had politely asked her to remove the flag from her kitchen window Friday, and she moved it to another window.

According to the complaint, both started yelling, and the woman used a racial slur toward Boatner. Authorities say Boatner pushed the woman down and walked into the house to remove the flag. According to authorities, Boatner later argued with police and struggled to avoid being handcuffed.

Sticks and stones will break your bones if you use words that hurt my feelings.

—

Everything’s Trump these days (rather than Cruz, Walker, or Paul), but a reminder… people hate leftist ideas from Obama but love them from Trump.

By being loud and obnoxious, he’s bringing things to the forefront that sometimes need to be discussed – illegal aliens murdering US citizens, for example.  He’s also getting free airtime that’s being redirected away from better, actually conservative candidates with voting records who weren’t Democrats a couple years ago and didn’t invite Hillary to their weddings.

If you think that “people hate ideas from Obama but love them from Trump” is an exaggeration, consider this:

My broad opinion of Trump is negative for reasons I listed a couple posts ago, but he is shaking things up.  There is some good in that, and assuming he sticks to his “I won’t run third party” pledge, hopefully he loses the primary and directs his energy more towards Democrats rather than Republicans.  It’d be nice to see him go after Clinton or Obama as tenaciously as he’s gone after Jeb Bush.  Jeb Bush probably deserves it, but Clinton and Obama deserve it even moreso.

—

And finally, despite being a eulogy, still a story of the success a heroic aviator:

BALTIMORE — Frank E. Petersen Jr., the first black aviator and brigadier general in the Marine Corps, has died.

Frank E. Petersen III said his father died Tuesday at his home in Stevensville, on Maryland’s Kent Island, of complications from lung cancer. He was 83. …

According to a news release on the Marine Corps website, Petersen was commissioned in the Corps in 1952. The Marines say Petersen served in the Korean War in 1953 and Vietnam in 1968. He received the Purple Heart for wounds suffered when he ejected over the demilitarized zone in Vietnam, The Post reported.

During his career, Petersen flew more than 350 combat missions and more than 4,000 hours.

He, Roy Geiger and Alfred A. Cunningham are probably having a few beers and swapping stories now.

Freddie Gray and Knife Laws – Why Is He Dead Over A Pocketknife?

It’s interesting to watch the left try to figure this out.  Over at Daily Beast, there’s a somewhat bizarre piece about the prosecutor and the legality of Freddie Gray’s knife.

The weapon police described is definitely illegal—so why did Marilyn Mosby say it wasn’t? The answer hinges on a single spring.

So the man goes to jail or goes free, lives or dies, according to whether or not his knife has a spring in it?

Larry Kobilinsky, a professor of forensic science at New York’s John Jay College of Criminal Justice, believes Gray’s knife could make or break Mosby’s case.

“I think it makes a lot of difference if the arrest was legal,” Kobilinsky said. “If they took him into custody and had reasonable suspicion that a crime had been committed, then they acted reasonably in restraining him and taking him to jail.”

Furthermore, by saying the arrest was illegal, Mosby has made the case to the public that cops should have never begun what ended with Gray’s death. Cops surely had no right to kill Freddie Gray, but they may have had the right to arrest him. All of that—and what happens next in Baltimore—may now hinge on a single spring.

Freddie Gray had a substantial criminal history, and running when you see the police is something that may draw police attention, but he was arrested and ultimately ended up dead – whether due to trying to injure himself in the back of the police van in order to serve time in a hospital rather than jail, or malfeasance or murder on the cops part – because of a cutting tool that’s been around for thousands of years.

It’s a knife.  Who cares how it opens?

(Also a minor note in the Daily Beast piece – cops do not have a “right” to arrest.  They have an authority to arrest.  A right is intrinsic, God-given or nature-given, and inherent to free men, an authority is derived from the state’s power.)

From KnifeRights:

While it is theoretically possible that without the presence of a knife in his pocket, Gray might have been arrested on some other trumped-up charge, it is clear that the presence of a knife was used as the actual basis for the arrest, and the practice has unfortunately become a common one.

Thousands of law-abiding citizens are regularly harassed and arrested for nothing more than carrying this basic tool, and that is unacceptable. Knife Rights is committed to forging a Sharper Future by passing knife law preemption and removing all restrictions on the lawful carry of knives. Those who misuse any tool (knife or otherwise) in the commission of a crime should be severely punished, but law-abiding citizens who possess knives should be left alone.

If Freddie Gray was out on his streetcorner dealing drugs (and discussion of repeal of drug prohibition is another question), then why wasn’t he arrested for that?  If he was out conspiring with other known criminals to conduct some crime, why wasn’t he arrested for conspiracy for that attempted crime?

When the arrest is “he had an illegal knife”… I’d be curious to know why that knife was illegal?  Also, with the thousands of incomprehensible laws on the books making mens rea for any crime a real stretch, did he know that knife was illegal?

And how is a ban on a sharp piece of metal Constitutional?  And how is a conviction for carrying a sharp piece of metal ever upheld as Constitutional?

Knife laws are often even worse than gun laws, because people just know to avoid certain states when it comes to guns.  People don’t know that some municipality decided to ban carrying of a pocketknife because some pants-wetting progressive statist in the 1950s saw “West Side Story” and decided they needed a way to arrest those ethnic hoodlums.

The left does want to see everyone defenseless, and would agree with draconian Sword Hunts in order to render people defenseless, but for those people who don’t believe in being dominated by an all-powerful state, why would you want anyone chased down, arrested, sent to prison or possibly killed because they have a sharp piece of metal in their pocket that opens with a spring?

Why is Freddie Gray dead over something that’s legal in so many other states?

And why is the left so infuriated over an arrest for knife control laws they support and the resulting death in police custody in a leftist state that has the kinds of leftist knife (and gun) control laws they want to inflict on everyone?  They got the government they wanted to make.  They got the knife from his cold dead hands.

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As an addendum, there are a handful of people who are coming around to seeing that the roots and the effects of knife control laws are racist (just like gun control laws).  Despite the story being from inherently biased Bloomberg:

“I don’t see knives posing that big of a danger to the public,” Representative Harold Dutton Jr., who sponsored the bill, said in an interview. “Now that we’re going to let everybody have a gun, I think we ought to set knives free.”

Dutton, a black Democrat from Houston, sees knife laws as a threat to civil rights.

“It is another one of those things that helps establish probable cause for a policeman to stop you,” he said.

Freddie Gray, the 25-year-old Baltimore man whose April death in police custody ignited riots, was arrested after police said they noticed a knife inside his pants.

Guns or knives in this case are just the same – they’re tools and also individual arms for any uses that don’t infringe on someone else’s life, rights, property or person.  Frankly it’s insane that the state’s enforcers could send you to prison for decades for the “crime” of owning them, or that you could end up dead in police custody arrested for a knife that might have had a spring in it, and even more insane that there are people who still support and advocate eliminating the rights of the citizenry to own those tools at all.

The argument is frequently heard that “if those weapons exist in people’s hands they will hurt someone”, which is both absurd and as ridiculous as the “if it saves one child’s life” plea for more tyranny.  Regardless of anything else involved in the case and his past history, Freddie Gray is dead because some hand-wringing leftist demanded he be sacrificed for their world where only the police and the state have weapons – the very institutions that killed Freddie Gray.

Lives only matter to the progressive left when it’s convenient – doesn’t matter the gender, age, creed, background or color they are.

Baltimore Riots and The Left

First off, this piece from Salon, that says exactly what it says:

Baltimore’s violent protesters are right: Smashing police cars is a legitimate political strategy
It’s crucial to see non-violence as a tactic, not a philosophy. If it fails to win people over it’s a futile tactic
Benji Hart

As a nation, we fail to comprehend Black political strategy in much the same way we fail to recognize the value of Black life.

We see ghettos and crime and absent parents where we should see communities actively struggling against mental health crises and premeditated economic exploitation. And when we see police cars being smashed and corporate property being destroyed, we should see reasonable responses to generations of extreme state violence, and logical decisions about what kind of actions yield the desired political results.

I’m overwhelmed by the pervasive slandering of protesters in Baltimore this weekend for not remaining peaceful. The bad-apple rhetoric would have us believe that most Baltimore protesters are demonstrating the right way—as is their constitutional right—and only a few are disrupting the peace, giving the movement a bad name.

This spin should be disregarded, first because of the virtual media blackout of any of the action happening on the ground, particularly over the weekend.  Equally, it makes no sense to cite the Constitution in any demonstration for Black civil rights (that document was not written about us, remember?)

Benji’s pretty deep into social justice-socialist revolutionary communist rhetoric here, and it’s only with those red-colored glasses that he finds a world so warped.

To give him credit, he does actually acknowledge the violence in Baltimore as not just “a few bad apples” or “outside agitators”, but rather acknowledges that it is a big part of his community.

Of course, he’s in support of that.

I do not advocate non-violence

Clearly.

The political goals of rioters in Baltimore are not unclear—just as they were not unclear when poor, Black people rioted in Ferguson last fall. When the free market, real estate, the elected government, the legal system have all shown you they are not going to protect you—in fact, that they are the sources of the greatest violence you face—then political action becomes about stopping the machine that is trying to kill you, even if only for a moment, getting the boot off your neck, even if it only allows you a second of air. This is exactly what blocking off streets, disrupting white consumerism, and destroying state property are designed to do.

This is really hardcore social justice socialist revolutionary marxist communist rhetoric.

The political goals are to throw a violent, destructive tantrum.

The free market has a difficult time existing in the cities of the hard left.  Eric Garner, the “black man killed by a police choke hold” in NYC, was killed by positional asphyxia, and was arrested for selling cigarettes.  The socialist nanny state determined to save people from their own habits decided to massively tax cigarettes for the stupid masses’ own good, and when Eric Garner wanted to sell cigarettes for the going price on a free market, the socialist state put him down.

The free market was not one of “the sources of the greatest violence” faced by anyone.

The buildings and homes and businesses in Baltimore or any other riot-plagued city were providing jobs, incomes, and a steady life for people.

That real estate that Benji thinks is one of “the sources of the greatest violence” was something that provided for people.  It was a tiny glint of hope in a neighborhood that didn’t have stability.  It was the free market trying desperately to sneak in and give people there something reliable, stable, and hopeful.

And Benji the communist terrorist wannabe would burn it down because he thinks CVS is the enemy.

The elected government?  Oh, the elected government in Baltimore starts and ends with the hard left.  Mayor Stephanie Rawlins-Blake empathizes with the rioters with her own brand of leftism, so much so that she called the police off so the rioters could destroy people’s homes and businesses.  And of course she’s in favor of giving people who wish to destroy space to do so.

The elected government in Baltimore is, as the quote goes, funded by people who work for a living and elected by people who vote for a living.  There’s no one to blame but the community and their community organizers.

The legal system?  If one were to trust it in Baltimore, it hasn’t been given time to go through the process to determine if there was wrongdoing by the police, which in a system of rule of law requires presuming everyone’s innocent until proven guilty (and they may well be).  But among the things missed in the last week were that Freddie Gray (the man whose spine was severed while in police custody) had an extensive criminal history.  There may well have been much more to his arrest than “looking at the cops wrong” as his lawyers have claimed.  Everyone knows that lawyers for defendants are always trustworthy.

As Alinksy said, all the angels must be on one side and all the demons on the other – can’t give the legal system a chance if it were to do the right thing.

And meanwhile, The Fourth Estate claims to have dug up info suggesting that Freddie Gray had a spinal injury treated the week before his arrest.

If this is true, then it is possible that Gray’s spinal injury resulting from his encounter with the Baltimore Police was not the result of rough-handling or abuse, but rather a freak accident that occurred when Gray should have been at home resting, not selling drugs.

So it could be murder in police custody (it does happen), or it could be an accident, an accident that’s got people like Benji sweating in their Che shirts dreaming of burning down convenience stores.  There’s not even a chance for the legal process to be concluded.  (And of course the legal process is only so slow because of the left dominating the law business both in Baltimore and Maryland government and courts.)

There is no “machine trying to kill you”.  The only “machine” is the hard left Democratic one that exists to perpetuate itself.  It dominates Baltimore, it dominates the discussion in Baltimore, and like the communists blaming the kulaks or people who wear glasses, it’s never the hard left system that people like Benji have instituted that’s the problem, it’s always that someone somewhere has resisted them.

“White consumerism” like the CVS that had a black manager and all black employees (at least in the video above) that Benji hates so much was the only thing helping those communities.  It did not have a boot on their neck.  It’s also only “white consumerism” to a marxist like Benji.

“Corporate property” is property of those who are stockholders in the corporation.  It’s also intrinsically valuable to the employees of the corporation and people in the community, who were crying at the loss of a major store in their community.  “Corporate property” is not white, and is not the enemy, unless you’re a hardcore marxist leftist.  Of course, judging by his writing, Benji is a social justice hardcore revolutionary marxist communist leftist.

Militance is about direct action which defends our communities from violence. It is about responses which meet the political goals of our communities in the moment, and deal with the repercussions as they come. It is about saying no, firmly drawing and holding boundaries, demanding the return of stolen resources. And from Queer Liberation and Black Power to centuries-old movements for Native sovereignty and anti-colonialism, it is how virtually all of our oppressed movements were sparked, and has arguably gained us the only real political victories we’ve had under the rule of empire.

With this kind of crazy true-believer communist, raised in an environment free of actual dangers, with no understanding of what came before or what will come after, there’s not really much you can do.  I did look up the author and find that the only Benji Hart that Google knows is a British actor, so maybe Salon just adopted a new marxist.

Kevin D. Williamson breaks down the riots of Baltimore further, pointing out that Baltimore is an entirely leftist, entirely progressive, entirely Democrat problem:

Yes, Baltimore seems to have some police problems. But let us be clear about whose fecklessness and dishonesty we are talking about here: No Republican, and certainly no conservative, has left so much as a thumbprint on the public institutions of Baltimore in a generation. Baltimore’s police department is, like Detroit’s economy and Atlanta’s schools, the product of the progressive wing of the Democratic party enabled in no small part by black identity politics. This is entirely a left-wing project, and a Democratic-party project.

When will the Left be held to account for the brutality in Baltimore — brutality for which it bears a measure of responsibility on both sides? There aren’t any Republicans out there cheering on the looters, and there aren’t any Republicans exercising real political power over the police or other municipal institutions in Baltimore. Community-organizer — a wretched term — Adam Jackson declared that in Baltimore “the Democrats and the Republicans have both failed.” Really? Which Republicans? Ulysses S. Grant? Unless I’m reading the charts wrong, the Baltimore city council is 100 percent Democratic.

That’s how the rebellion against “corporate property” and “white consumerism” and the “free” market and “real estate” comes about.  When the communists couldn’t find anyone to blame for the bad wheat harvests, it was the kulaks.  Once the kulaks were gone, it was outside influences or people who weren’t sufficiently revolutionary.  The application of leftist policy demands more leftist policy.

It’s never that it’s wrong, of they’ve gone too far – it’s that there’s someone out there somewhere who isn’t part of them, and there’s someone out there somewhere that’s ruining their “perfect” system that never turns out that way.  Everyone else is at fault, everything that goes wrong is someone else’s fault, and if they’re in control of their own future it’s a lie because of cultural history and socioeconomic historic inequalities they’ll never be free of and someone else is really at fault.  There’s always someone else to blame – often out of mad jealousy that the others have something the leftist wants and they want and need it because of their own failures – failures they’ll never see because all they can do is find a fictional cause to their problems in someone else’s lack of problems.  Blame and destroy, and implode.

A is hungry.  B has food.  A is hungry because B has food.  A needs to take B’s food and destroy B, because if B didn’t have food, A and B would be equal, and B will always take food that A should have.  B must be destroyed.  Once B is destroyed and A is hungry again, it must be because of B again and because elements within A now think like B.  A(B) must be destroyed by A.

This is all the left doing itself in.  Problem is that they want to destroy everyone and everything else that’s successful out of mad envy and hatred at their own failure before they go away.

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Minor addendum: It’s possible Benji Hart is just an elaborate troll by Salon to see what kind of responses they get from printing stuff the CPUSA would find off-putting.  But it’s difficult to tell.

Also, with the massive political storm and riots, it’s going to be difficult for authorities to go through the process of determining what happened as politics will be saturating the situation.  With Eric Holder’s racist cop-killing DOJ descending on Ferguson, MO, like a biblical plague, they still couldn’t find wrongdoing on the part of Wilson.  I’m much more suspect of Baltimore (as it’s run by Democrats and progressives) than I am of the Ferguson PD, but it’s only going to make things more difficult now, because assuming the Baltimore PD did kill Gray, who’s going to be the Democrat used as a scapegoat and what will they do to try to keep themselves from going down?

Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake and Space to Destroy

She said she didn’t say what she said about giving rioters space to destroy the city.

It’d be laughable if it weren’t so sad.

All day long pundits and politicians have gone on about “policies that have failed communities” without yet recognizing that it’s the hard left policies and ideas that have failed.  Their answer, is of course more hard left policies and ideas – their conclusion is that they haven’t yet gone far enough – rather than that they could be wrong.

How far gone are the policies?  So far gone that rioters are “protesters” and they should be given space to destroy.  MSNBC spent the day talking about “controlled burns” and how they think it was a good thing that the police just let the rioters destroy part of the city.  Given that the crux of the left’s ideological mindset is destruction of everything successful, it’s how they can so easily disconnect from the fact that people are destroying their own communities – that and justifying any act by means of calling it “justice” while they engage in grievance-based violence over perceived slights.  Well, that and the fact that somebody else will be left to pick up the bill after the destruction.

But she didn’t say they were giving those who wish to destroy space to do so… except that she did.