Month: February 2020

It worked for Walter Mondale….not.

Carol Moseley Braun? Kamala Harris (well, she’s actually not black, but Arab…but whatever). And “appoint”? I seem to recall StunnedTaters are elected, but if replaced, their states Governor does the appointing.
His Alzheimer’s is getting worse.

Coronavirus fears empty store shelves of toilet paper, bottled water, masks as shoppers stock up.

Local health officials told us not to panic buy and not to freak out, and that was enough to get us to go out and buy everything.

Trump: Democrats’ coronavirus criticism just their latest ‘hoax’

President Trump jeered Democrats Friday night for criticizing his response to the COVID-19 coronavirus outbreak, saying that it was a “new hoax” after a failed attempt to remove him from office over Ukraine.

“They tried to beat you on Russia, Russia, Russia — that didn’t work out too well,” Trump told a cheering crowd in South Carolina. “They tried the impeachment hoax. That was a perfect conversation.”

“And this is the new hoax,” Trump declared.

Trump told the audience that just 15 people had been diagnosed in the US with coronavirus as of Friday, excluding Americans evacuated from Wuhan, China, and the Diamond Princess cruise ship.

“Let’s get this right: A virus starts in China, makes its way into various countries all around the world, doesn’t spread widely at all in the United States because of the early actions that myself and my administration took against a lot of other wishes. And the Democrats’ single talking point and you see it is that it’s Donald Trump’s fault,” he said.

The president praised his administration’s response to the coronavirus, highlighting his decision to bar foreign nationals from entering the US if they visited China in the past 14 days. “Democrats will only say horrible things even though they know we’re doing a great job,” he said.

China’s factory activity plunges to all-time low, worse than global financial crisis, February data show.

So, it appears there’s better intelligence on China’s economy, than on their epidemic?

  • China’s official manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) dropped to 35.7 in February from 50.0 in January, below the 38.8 figure reported in November 2008
  • The non-manufacturing PMI – a gauge of sentiment in the services and construction sectors – also dropped to 29.6 from 54.1 in January, the lowest since November 2011

The official manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) dropped to 35.7, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said on Saturday, having slipped to 50.0 in January when the impact of the coronavirus was not yet visible.

Chinese manufacturing activity plunged to an all-time low in February, with the first official data published amid the coronavirus outbreak confirming fears over the impact on the Chinese economy.

Analysts polled by Bloomberg had expected the February reading to come in at 45.0. A reading below 50 indicates a contraction in sector activity. The farther the figure is below 50, the greater the contraction in activity.

China’s official manufacturing PMI dropped to 38.8 in November 2008 at the start of the global financial crisis.

The economy experienced huge negative growth in February, the trough has been reached, the duration of the impact should be monitored in the next step
Ren Zeping chief economist at Evergrande Research Institute, said on Weibo.

China’s non-manufacturing PMI – a gauge of sentiment in the services and construction sectors – also dropped, to 29.6 from 54.1 in January. This was also the lowest on record, below the previous low of 49.7 in November 2011, according to the NBS. Analysts polled by Bloomberg had expected the February reading to come in at 50.5.
Within the official manufacturing PMI, China’s export order sub-index dropped to 28.7 from 48.7 in January, while imports fell to 31.9 from 49.0. The sub-index for manufacturing production nosedived to 27.8 in February from January’s 51.3, while the reading for new orders plunged to 29.3, down from 51.4 a month earlier.
The employment index, meanwhile, dropped to 31.8, a decrease of 15.7 points from the previous month, indicating that the employment level within manufacturing enterprises had decreased.

US Signs Peace Deal With Taliban, Will Withdraw All Troops If Taliban Keeps Commitments

https://twitter.com/TOLOnews/status/1233743305445384194

The United States signed a peace deal with the Taliban Saturday that would end America’s longest war, if the group keeps its commitments.

Under the deal, the U.S. would reduce deployment numbers in Afghanistan from 13,000 to 8,600 over the next several months. The U.S. will withdraw completely within 14 months if the Taliban holds to the deal’s commitments of controlling terrorism.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo personally oversaw the signing of the deal in Doha, Qatar, where U.S. negotiator Zalmay Khalilzad signed the deal with Taliban leader Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar.

“This country is not in the best shape after 40 years; they’ve been suffering from conflict. If we ripped everybody out overnight it would, almost in a certain sense, threaten everything we’ve done,” one senior Trump administration official familiar with the deal said.

The officials emphasized to reporters on background that the troop withdrawals will happen “if and only if” the Taliban hold up their end of the deal.

Indeed, the signing only took place after the Taliban proved willing and capable of minimizing violence under the reduction in violence agreement signed earlier in February.

Among the officials’ top priorities was ensuring that a U.S. withdrawal didn’t result in a power vacuum, as it had under the Obama administration, leading to the rise of ISIS.

“If this all blows up that’s unfortunate, but fine, we’ll just start killing them again,” one official said…….

Milwaukee Brewery Killings Highlight How Suppressed Information Enables Infringement

“The people are tired of Moscow Mitch’s deadly obstruction,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi declared in response to the Milwaukee brewery murders in a tweet that has since been taken down and replaced with a longer statement citing “universal background checks” as some sort of solution. “A year ago, we took action in the House to save lives. Every day that he and the Republican-controlled Senate refuse to act, 100 Americans are killed by gun violence.”

Since so little information was released at that time, how any citizen disarmament bill floated by Democrats would have had any impact on saving lives is left unsaid. And that’s intentional.

Michael Bloomberg, the bodyguarded gun-grabber who almost let slip that he had “bought” Pelosi, was quick to slam President Donald Trump and call for “background checks,” per CNN Politics.

Bloomberg’s “seed money” venture, The Trace, wasted no time exploiting the killings to push its agenda. “True” to its journalistic “ethics,” the report aimed at disarming those of us who behave ourselves, was co-written by the “daddy issues”-plagued flack whose father was a mob hitman.

And Vox, ignoring that correlation does not equal causation, played to those who don’t think things through and tried to tie the killing in with Wisconsin Republicans rejecting disarmament laws that ignore due process. That’s hardly a surprise — being disingenuous about guns is SOP for those guys.

We still don’t know much about what laws (besides the obvious) the lunatic may have ignored. Reports citing the police say he had “two handguns, one with a silencer,” but do not mention their “legality.” If his suppressor was owned in accordance with the rules, Pelosi’s background check argument goes out the window. If not, background checks won’t stop black-market transfers anyway. And can you imagine the field day the antis would be having had he used a quote/unquote “assault rifle”? One with “20, 30, 40, 50 clips in a weapon”…?

What deterrents may have been in place are unknown (by me) at this writing. Per Molson Coors Employment Principles:

“Workplace Security Molson Coors is committed to maintaining a workplace that is free from violence, harassment, intimidation and other unsafe or disruptive conditions due to internal and external threats. Security safeguards for employees are provided as needed and will be maintained with respect for employee privacy and dignity.”

How they meet that commitment is unclear. Especially since the facility’s “No Guns” policy was ignored.

When I started gathering links for this article earlier today, his identity had been unannounced, and that was just revealed as I was writing this. That fits right in with what I blogged last night before going to bed, nothing prescient, just a realization of the way these things always seem to be handled:

It’s been hours and we still haven’t been told who the killer is?  No doubt any social media accounts will be shut down before we do, meaning we will be entirely dependent on “authorities” and “Authorized Journalists” for information and unable to find any dots for connecting on our own.

Lo and behold, once the killer’s identity was released, we’re told his photo  was “taken from a family member’s Facebook page that has since been removed.” Yet despite what appears to be an attempt to bury relevant background information, it was internet sleuths, not “Authorized Journalists,” who uncovered an Elizabeth Warren connection.

The first thing that’s obvious is we’re not talking about one of those “white right-wing nationalists” we’re constantly being warned are the greatest threat we face. If the killer had been one, and if he had social media posts brimming with sentiments that allow “progressives” to dismiss anyone to the right of Bernie Sanders as a Nazi, it would be headline news. It certainly would not have taken this long to release who he was, and odds are good some of his more egregious posts would have survived, at least in screenshot form. As it is, the victims are being blamed for racism, and that’s in spite of a corporate “code of conduct” policy that is now being alleged to work every bit as well as its “security safeguards.”

This in itself is dangerous to freedom. By hiding his identity until they’ve got their ducks lined up, and by ensuring his internet tracks have been swept to only release information supportive of the narrative being told by “the authorities,” our ability to glean public interest information, which is needed to be informed, self-governing citizens, is diminished and effectively deprived.  If our only source of that information is the government, disseminated and amplified through its media mouthpieces, our system becomes no more credible or any less manipulative and tyrannical than China’s or Iran’s.

When that’s the only information out there, demagogues like Pelosi and Bloomberg can say whatever they damn well please without fear of being contradicted, or at least given a reality check. That’s the stuff that influences public opinion and finds its way into legislation with real-world effects on our freedoms.

I’m not sure what the solution is, but it’s one I’d like to see made part of a wider conversation. One can make the case that some information should be withheld pending notification of family members, and other information is temporarily suppressible because public dissemination may have an impact on police investigations, criminal proceedings, national security and the like.

That said, there ought to be a way to find out more about such freaks without government automatically putting their backgrounds on lockdown. Questions about what kind of causes and candidates a killer identified with are unquestionably relevant, not only to protect innocent parties from being blamed and smeared, but to keep political opportunists from circumventing the truth, exploiting ignorance, and imposing more infringements. Significantly, they can only get away with that when key facts are suppressed by those whose mandate should be “to secure the Blessings of Liberty,” and to enforce rights as well as laws.

Masked intruder shot during home invasion in Katy

What is it with these inept Bunglers in Katy Texas?

KATY, Texas — A home invasion suspect was shot Friday morning in Katy, a sergeant with the Harris County Sheriff’s Office confirmed.

The suspect, who was reportedly wearing a mask, was shot in the arm after burglarizing a home in the 18700 block of Sandleford.

The suspect was taken to a nearby hospital where he is expected to survive.

Detectives are on scene investigating.

Man shot, killed after breaking into girlfriend’s apartment

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — A man was shot and killed after breaking into his girlfriend’s apartment, police say.

It happened at about 6 a.m. Saturday in the area of Fairfield Avenue and 59th Street S, according to the St. Petersburg Police Department.

Police say a 26-year-old man got into his girlfriend’s apartment when he was confronted by a 48-year-old man. At some point, shots were fired and the 26-year-old died at the scene.

The 48-year-old suffered a non-life-threatening injury, police say.

Two women and a child who also were in the apartment were not hurt.

 

Person dies from coronavirus in Washington state, first in the US, health officials say

Sources in Washington state had heard of this report last night, but as it was unconfirmed at the time, I didn’t post it. Not that this should have been an unexpected thing.

Health officials in Washington confirmed Saturday that one person has died from coronavirus, marking the first disease-related death in the U.S.

Seattle and King County Public Health officials issued a vague media advisory announcing the first COVID-19 death in the U.S., adding that there was an undisclosed number of new cases as well.

News of the death comes on the heels of three new cases in California, Oregon and Washington in which the patients were infected by unknown means. They had not recently traveled overseas or had come into contact with anyone who had.

President Donald Trump said during a press conference Saturday that 22 people in the U.S. have been stricken by the new coronavirus and that additional cases are “likely.”

“Unfortunately, one person passed away overnight,” Trump said.

“She was a wonderful woman a medically high-risk patient in her late 50s. Four others are very ill. Thankfully 15 are either recovered fully or they’re well on their way to recovery. And in all cases, they’ve been let go in their home.

Gun Owners Cause Peace- the amazing experiment in Richmond, Virginia proves the media wrong.

The mainstream media tells us that guns cause crime. The media shows us night after night that guns are bad. We see it in their “news” and in their Hollywood dramas. We recently conducted another massive public experiment and the results contradict the media’s story about guns. We put tens of thousands of armed men and women on the street in one small area. The rate of crime dropped precipitously when these armed civilians were there. Guns brought peace. Let me show you what happened.

Virginia Capital on Second Amendment Rally Day

Twenty-five-to-fifty thousand people came to the Virginia Capital on one morning to lobby the legislature. Once they filled the capital grounds, they overflowed into the streets in every direction.

A few thousand people deliberately disarmed to enter the capitol building. I can’t prove that everyone else was armed, but the vast majority of them were since this was a second-amendment protest. Judging from the pictures I’ve seen and the people I’ve talked to, for each person who was not armed at the rally, there was another person who carried multiple firearms. Call it one gun per person in round numbers.

Show us your badges- Virginia Gun Owners Rally Day in Richmond

I couldn’t find reports of violent crime in the area of the protests when I searched the news and police records. The protesters even brought trash bags and left the city streets cleaner than they’d found them. The single reported arrest I could find was of a counter-protester.

Video from ground level- https://t.co/NXZPwDxpPG

This peaceful gathering isn’t a surprise once you study the record of legally armed civilians in the US. We’ve seen this phenomenon before and I’ve seen it with my own eyes. I routinely stand in a room with twenty-to-thirty thousand armed individuals. I’ve done that over a dozen times and the results are uniformly boring.

I’ve never seen violence at those sites. I’ll go a step further and say that people are polite and there is very little conflict of any kind. We’ve searched police records and the rate of crime drops in every city when that many gun owners gather together. A public experiment on that scale is a sociologist’s dream come true.

Honest gun-owners bring peace rather than crime and conflict.

It is remarkable when we gather that many gun owners together, and we conduct that experiment for free year after year. You could argue that we conduct a similar experiment every day when these honest gun owners return home and go about their lives.. armed. We are there day after day, but concealed is concealed, and you never see us.

That leaves an obvious question unanswered. Ask yourself why the media continues to sell the lie that guns and legally armed citizens cause crime.

 

Court halts Trump asylum policy, then suspends its own order

“The tragedy of a man court who could not make up his its mind” 

SAN DIEGO (AP) — A 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel voted unanimously Friday to suspend an order it issued earlier in the day to block a central pillar of the Trump administration’s policy requiring asylum seekers to wait in Mexico while their cases wind through U.S. courts.

The three-judge panel told the government to file written arguments by the end of Monday and for the plaintiffs to respond by the end of Tuesday……….

Government attorneys said immigration lawyers had begun demanding that asylum seekers be allowed in the United States, with one insisting that 1,000 people be allowed to enter at one location.

“The Court’s reinstatement of the injunction causes the United States public and the government significant and irreparable harms — to border security, public safety, public health, and diplomatic relations,” Justice Department attorneys wrote…….

The “Remain in Mexico” policy, known officially as “Migrant Protection Protocols,” took effect in January 2019 in San Diego and gradually spread across the southern border. About 60,000 people have been sent back to wait for hearings, and officials believe it is a big reason why illegal border crossings plummeted about 80% from a 13-year high in May.

Appeals court rules House can’t subpoena Don McGahn to testify

A federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., ruled Friday that former White House counsel Don McGahn doesn’t have to comply with a House subpoena to testify.

The opinion curtails Congress’ ability to force members of the executive branch to appear before committees for questioning.

The U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia’s opinion overturned a lower court’s decision in November that McGahn must testify in the House’s impeachment investigation………

The U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia’s opinion overturned a lower court’s decision in November that McGahn must testify in the House’s impeachment investigation….

2 new coronavirus cases emerge in Washington, in King and Snohomish counties

Here you go Bob.

SHORELINE — Two new COVID-19 cases have been confirmed in Washington, in a King County woman and a Snohomish County teenager, state and local officials said Friday night.

The woman had recently been to South Korea, a country affected by the outbreak. But the Snohomish County patient, a high school student, did not recently travel to any countries affected by SARS-CoV-2, the official name of the novel coronavirus, said Snohomish Health District officer Dr. Chris Spitters.

“It’s concerning that this individual did not travel, since this individual acquired it in the community,” Washington state health officer Dr. Kathy Lofy told reporters Friday at a news conference at the Department of Health Shoreline. “We really believe now that the risk is increasing.”

Both cases are considered “presumptive positive,” as test results were confirmed at the Shoreline site Friday, but are also being sent to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for confirmation. A case awaiting confirmation by the CDC was also reported Friday in Oregon.

The case in Oregon, two in California and the new Snohomish County case do not appear linked to travel to a country affected by the outbreak.

The Snohomish County student, who attends Henry M. Jackson High School in Mill Creek, became ill Monday with a fever, body aches and a headache, and visited two clinics in the county this week, Spitters said.

Because he was feeling better, he returned to school Friday morning, but after his tests came back positive, he went home before attending class…………

The King County patient is a woman in her 50s, said Dr. Jeffrey Duchin, health officer at Public Health – Seattle & King County. She returned to Washington from South Korea on Feb. 23 and worked for one day before developing symptoms, Duchin said. Her husband then called county health officials to report her symptoms and travel history.

She did not interact with the public during her workday, Duchin said, and is recovering at home “without complications.” A workplace investigation is underway.

Her husband has not shown any symptoms. He is also under home quarantine………

The 35-year-old Snohomish County man who was the United States’ first patient confirmed to have the virus is considered fully recovered. He had recently visited Wuhan, China, where the global outbreak began in December.

BERNIE’S OWN PRIVATE DENMARK

Whenever Bernie Sanders’s socialism comes up in the Democratic debates, he deflects criticism by saying he favors something along the lines of Denmark’s model. Sanders’s debate rivals almost invariably let this answer pass. (I think Pete Buttigieg tried to take it on in the last debate but couldn’t get the floor.)

In reality, the policies Sanders advocates bear little resemblance to those of Denmark and other Scandinavian countries today. They do resemble many of the policies these countries tried 50 years ago. However, these policies failed and were discarded.

The Vermont socialist is getting away with false advertising, including bait and switch.

But with Sanders now the clear frontrunner, and perhaps on the verge of nailing down the nomination, some liberals are starting to look behind Sanders’s Denmark dodge, as Buttigieg tried to do in the most recent debate.

Fareed Zakaria calls Sanders on it in this Washington Post op-ed. He writes:

The image [Sanders] conjures up is of a warm and fuzzy social democracy in which market economics are kept on a tight leash through regulation, the rich are heavily taxed and the social safety net is generous. That is, however, an inaccurate and highly misleading description of those Northern European countries today.

Take billionaires. Sanders has been clear on the topic: “Billionaires should not exist.” But Sweden and Norway both have more billionaires per capita than the United States — Sweden almost twice as many. Not only that, these billionaires are able to pass on their wealth to their children tax-free. Inheritance taxes in Sweden and Norway are zero, and in Denmark 15 percent. The United States, by contrast, has the fourth-highest estate taxes in the industrialized world at 40 percent.

The Scandinavian economies were once more in line with Sanders’s socialist vision, but these policies were ruinous. Accordingly, they eventually were abandoned:

In Sweden, government spending as a percentage of gross domestic product doubled from 1960 to 1980, going from approximately 30 percent to 60 percent. But as Swedish commentator Johan Norberg points out, this experiment in Sanders-style democratic socialism tanked the Swedish economy. Between 1970 and 1995, he notes, Sweden did not create a single net new job in the private sector. In 1991, a free-market prime minister, Carl Bildt, initiated a series of reforms to kick-start the economy. By the mid-2000s, Sweden had cut the size of its government by a third and emerged from its long economic slump.

The story is essentially the same throughout Northern Europe, including in Denmark, according to Zakaria. And speaking of Denmark:

A 2008 OECD report found that the top 10 percent in the United States pay 45 percent of all income taxes, while the top 10 percent in Denmark pay 26 percent and in Sweden 27 percent. Among wealthy countries, the average is 32 percent.

The United States has a significantly more progressive tax code than Europe, and its top 10 percent pays a vastly greater share of the country’s taxes than their European counterparts.

Sanders doesn’t want Denmark’s taxation policy. Nor does he advocate other key elements of the Danish model — flexible labor markets, light regulations, and a deep commitment to free trade.

Sanders favors policies much more along the lines of those that failed Scandinavia in the 1960s and 1970s. Or perhaps a mixture of those policies and the ones that are failing in Venezuela today.

As I said, liberals have been slow to point this out. If Sanders is the Democratic nominee, conservatives, with President Trump in the lead, won’t be.

Democrats are deranged, demoralized, and at each other’s throats

Good. Maybe they’ll just ruin the brand so much the partei disappears like the Whigs, Federalists and some others.

The Democrats are at their lowest point since the outbreak of the Civil War. Derangement by definition means acting in self-destructive ways, and mass derangement, specifically Trump Derangement Syndrome, is the animating force behind a large share of the thoughts and actions of both leaders and followers of the world’s oldest political party. Put starkly, the crazies have grabbed control and reinforce one another, spinning farther and farther away from the mainstream of American political life. A few vignettes this week illustrate the crisis.

The circular firing squad
As of two weeks ago, there have been 389 violent attacks against Trump supporters. But a hallmark of true frenzy is when those violent impulses turn against ostensible allies who are just not pure enough. The Bernie Bros now are morphing into the Bernie Brownshirts, with a strong undercurrent of fratricidal violence that comes to the surface when Project Veritas films campaign workers threatening to burn down Milwaukee if their leader is not the candidate chosen by the party. That threat is already manifesting its early stages.

Nick Arama writes in Red State:

On Monday a group of Bernie supporters surround the care [sic] of Illinois Democratic congressional candidate Betsy Dirksen Londrigan as she was leaving a campaign event in Champaign, Illinois.
They were demanding that she debate socialist candidate Stefanie Smith.

The people on the video can be heard yelling “where did she go,” “block her in” and “get by her window!” One demanded to know if she that she would “support Medicare for All.” The video says “January 24” but it actually happened on February 24.

According to the CBS Capitol Bureau Chief Mark Maxwell, Smith is a fringe candidate who “only has 2 donors from Illinois.”

Most candidates in such a situation would have disavowed it if their supporters did anything like that.

Not so Smith. Smith praised the group for their actions, thanking them in a Facebook post,. “I can’t tell you how much it meant to me when I watched the video of what happened — when I saw red umbrellas go up.”

The crazies have all the momentum. Nancy Pelosi has outright surrendered to The Squad, approving the disastrous impeachment that strengthened Trump’s approval ratings.

Self-destructive behavior

Having learned nothing from their impeachment disaster, Democrats press ahead with words and deeds that alienate the mainstream. Openly hoping for, even urging on an economic disaster that would harm most people, in the hopes of damaging Trump, for instance. Or sponsoring legislation to halt work on the border wall to purportedly fund coronavirus countermeasures (even as President Trump specified money will be no object) in the face of Chinese nationals being smuggled across the Mexican border.

Suggesting that a virus originating in China be called “Trumpvirus” makes sense to people deranged by hatred, but strikes the other 75% of the populace as mean-spirited at best.

The Democrat presidential candidates have been outright lying about the state of American readiness so blatantly in their efforts to disparage the man leading us through the crisis that even the Associated Press publishes a scathing fact check.

None of this inspires any public confidence in the Democrats as the party to lead us through perilous times.

Demoralization

The Bernie faction is able to command a third to a half of the primary vote, which is a fraction of the fraction of the voting public that identifies as Democrats.  Driven by anger, they make the effort to turnout at caucuses and primary elections. But they are not attracting much new support, and there is evidence that they are demoralizing the rest of the party and repelling the non-Democrat voters, who report unprecedented levels of satisfaction with the way their lives are working out under President Trump……….

It is hard to see sanity returning to the party.  It may well require a thorough drubbing in November before the sane remnant (if any) is able to pick up the pieces and head back toward the mainstream.

Breaking: Pompeo to Sign Historic Peace Agreement With Taliban

Secretary of state Mike Pompeo is soon traveling to sign a historic peace deal with the Taliban, President Donald Trump said in a statement Friday.

Defense secretary Mark Esper will be signing a joint declaration affirming the administration’s partnership with the Afghan government in concert with the Taliban peace deal. The president described the ceremonies as ‘a powerful path forward to end the war in Afghanistan and bring our troops home’.

President Trump has been pushing for a peace deal with the Taliban in order to keep his campaign promise of ending the decades-long war in Afghanistan. Under the proposed deal, the US would gradually withdraw troops from Afghanistan in exchange for promises from the Taliban that they will not engage in or fund terror.

he president ceased negotiations with the Taliban in September after the group took credit for a suicide car bombing that killed an American service member. However, talks resumed after the Taliban promised that they would be open to reducing violence, a huge change for a group that was committing violent acts at record highs last year. The US and the Taliban reached a seven-day reduction in violence agreement this past Friday, which was not equivalent to a ceasefire but expected the Taliban to avoid any major forms of violence.

Trump stated, ‘these commitments represent an important step to a lasting peace in a new Afghanistan, free from al-Qaeda, Isis, and any other terrorist group that would seek to bring us harm. Ultimately it will be up to the people of Afghanistan to work out their future. We, therefore, urge the Afghan people to seize this opportunity for peace and a new future for their country.’

Secretary Pompeo noted that the US would sign a fuller peace agreement ‘if and only if’ the reduction in violence was successful, adding that it would likely be signed ‘on or about February 29’.

Critics have warned that the Taliban may simply resort back to violence or seize control of the Afghan government after the deal is made, but the administration contends that they are clear-eyed about the risks of negotiating with the terror group and are willing to retaliate with military force if necessary.

Divisive New Mexico Gun Seizure Bill Signed Into Law

Further estranging the state’s sheriffs and pro-gun advocates, New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham on Tuesday signed a new “red flag” bill into law.

The measure, SB 5, was backed by national anti-gun groups such as Giffords and Bloomberg-financed Everytown, who applauded the action by Lujan Grisham, a Democrat who ran for office on support from such groups. The bill squeaked through the Democrat-controlled state Senate earlier this month largely along party lines in a 22-20 vote while the state House greenlighted the proposal 39-31.

The law adopts an Extreme Risk Fiream Protection Order program in the state to allow courts to order temporary gun seizures for up to a year. Arguing the concept ranges from flawed to downright unconstitutional, 30 of the state’s 33 sheriffs opposed the move. To this, Lujan Grisham this week said the lawmen should step down if they persist in vows to refuse to enforce the controversial seizures.

“If they really intend to do that, they should resign as a law enforcement officer and leader in that community,” she said, as reported by ABC.

Two New Community-Spread Coronavirus Cases Found In Northern California, Oregon

That second case I posted the article about earlier? Now there’s a third.

On Friday evening, authorities confirmed that two people – a woman from Santa Clara County, California, and a patient from Washington County, Oregon – had contracted coronavirus from unknown sources within the community.

According to The Washington Post, the woman from Santa Clara County, in Northern California, is 65-years-old and has not recently traveled outside the country. The patient tested positive for coronavirus on Friday, according to “people familiar with the case.”

The second case, which has occurred in an unknown individual from Washington County, Oregon, was confirmed by state health authorities, reports the news agency. The patient, who is an adult and currently at Westside Medical Center in Hillsboro, Oregon, didn’t have contact with other people known to have the coronavirus, and had not recently traveled outside the country.

The two cases confirmed Friday night represent the second and third community spread cases that have been found in the United States. The first case, a person from Solano County, California, was the first confirmed instance of community-spread coronavirus in the United States, and the patient is currently at the UC Davis Medical Center in Sacramento, California.

The two California cases have occurred within 100 miles of Travis Air Force Base in Northern California, where some of the 400 U.S. citizens aboard the Diamond Princess Cruise Ship were for quarantine. As of Thursday evening, six passengers from the cruise ship out of the 3,711 people on board have died, including five Japanese citizens and a British citizen, reports Forbes.

CA Nannies: Thou Shalt Have No Boys Nor Girls Depts.

The Socialist Nannies in the California legislature have soooo solved all the issues of the state – streets and sidewalks covered with feces and needles, rising property crime, horrible K-12 education, etc. – that they have decided to become Store Managers and dictate to retail stores how they are to display children’s merchandise.

Introduced February 20, 2020, by Assembly critter Evan Low (D-mented), AB2826 would …

A new California bill would require some retailers to have gender-neutral floor space inside their stores. […]

It would do away with “boys aisles” and “girls aisles” and require that children’s products be offered in a single, gender-neutral section.

Low would have you believe there’s been a particularly evil sham perpetuated upon the public by not having sparkly-pink dresses with unicorns hanging with the green dinosaur t-shirts.

Unjustified differences in similar products that are traditionally marketed either for girls or for boys can be more easily identified by the consumer if similar items are displayed closer to one another in one, undivided area of the retail sales floor.

Keeping similar items that are traditionally marketed either for girls or for boys separated makes it more difficult for the consumer to compare the products and incorrectly implies that their use by one gender is inappropriate.

Now, does Evan Low really believe that parents and grandparents are too stupid to be allowed to shop for their own offspring without his benevolent guidance? That they have been paralyzed by signs reading “Girls Clothing 5-8”?

Suspect shot by homeowner in Walker Co. charged with several crimes

While this crim is a ‘prowler’ alright, notice his current charges are theft & breaking into a vehicle, not burglary. Outside of Texas, shooting a thief just for thieving is a risky proposition that puts a person at the mercy of ‘prosecutorial discretion’. Apparently in that section of Alabama (and I know of many other areas) a prosecutor won’t bother charging a homeowner if a known miscreant gets his just desserts, but that’s relying on politics and not the law to keep yourself out of legal jeopardy.

WALKER COUNTY, Ala. (WBRC) – A suspect who was shot by a homeowner in Walker County has now been charged with breaking into multiple vehicles and stealing items.

Several people in the Boldo community called the sheriff’s office on January 31 to report a prowler near their homes.

While Deputies were en route to the scene, the prowler was shot by the homeowner in the leg. The homeowner recognized the man as Jimmie Sanders, due to Sanders staying in the vicinity recently. Sanders then ran from the scene.

Deputies were able to locate Sanders, who was taken to Brookwood Baptist Hospital in Jasper for treatment.

During the investigation, it was determined that Sanders had broken into multiple vehicles in the neighborhood and had stolen several items in the process.

Throughout the night and the next morning, Investigator Brad Curtis received many other complaints concerning vehicles that Sanders was believed to have broken into.

Sanders has been charged with numerous counts of theft crimes, as well as breaking and entering a Motor Vehicle. The investigation is ongoing and more charges are expected.

PREPARING FOR CORONAVIRUS:
Getting ready for the possibility of major disruptions is not only smart; it’s also our civic duty

This applies to all “prepping” as a general concept. The better you can look after yourself and yours, the less of a drain you are on emergency resources. The press wants to treat prepping as selfish, but it’s actually the opposite.

As the new human coronavirus spreads around the world, individuals and families should prepare—but are we? The Centers for Disease Control has already said that it expects community transmission in the United States, and asked families to be ready for the possibility of a “significant disruption to our lives.”

Be ready? But how? It seems to me that some people may be holding back from preparing because of their understandable dislike of associating such preparation with doomsday or “prepper” subcultures. Another possibility is that people may have learned that for many people the disease is mild, which is certainly true, so they don’t think it’s a big risk to them. Also, many doomsday scenarios advise extensive preparation for increasingly outlandish scenarios, and this may seem daunting and pointless (and it is). Others may not feel like contributing to a panic or appearing to be selfish.

Forget all that.

Preparing for the almost inevitable global spread of this virus, now dubbed COVID-19, is one of the most pro-social, altruistic things you can do in response to potential disruptions of this kind.

We should prepare, not because we may feel personally at risk, but so that we can help lessen the risk for everyone. We should prepare not because we are facing a doomsday scenario out of our control, but because we can alter every aspect of this risk we face as a society.

That’s right, you should prepare because your neighbors need you to prepare—especially your elderly neighbors, your neighbors who work at hospitals, your neighbors with chronic illnesses, and your neighbors who may not have the means or the time to prepare because of lack of resources or time……

Staying home without needing deliveries means that not only are you less likely to get sick, thus freeing up hospitals for more vulnerable populations, it means that you are less likely to infect others (while you may be having a mild case, you can still infect an elderly person or someone with cancer or another significant illness) and you allow delivery personnel to help out others.