Comment O’ The Day:
Actually Mao said “Women hold up half the sky.”
This potato cant even plagiarize correctly.
Biden Parrots Quote Made Famous By Communist Dictator Mao Zedong: “Women Hold Up Half The World”
Category: Crap For Brains
Joe Biden Has a ‘Please Clap’ Moment That Would Make Jeb! Bush Blush
If you thought Jeb! Bush was low energy, you haven’t seen Joe Biden lately, and by lately, I mean anytime in the last few years. Now, Biden is one-upping the former Republican presidential candidate in a different area.
While attending a graduation ceremony for the U.S. Coast Guard, Biden had his “please clap” moment in a cringe-tastic display where he insulted the graduating class and then wondered allowed why they didn’t break out into applause at his brilliance.
For posterity, here’s Bush’s viral moment.
Yeah, that was cringe, but I think Biden has him beat. Here’s the current president attempting to make a joke about the Navy that apparently no one understood. In response,he calls them “dull” and then ponders why they didn’t clap while proclaiming “C’mon man, is the sun getting to you?”
Please clap, stupid pic.twitter.com/PJuLtRRAtq
— Vince Coglianese (@VinceCoglianese) May 19, 2021
Biden’s appearance as a cosplay of Skeletor should be enough to elicit a few laughs, but this joke was that bad, I guess. You’ve probably noticed that one of Biden’s tics is that when people don’t respond the way he wants, he insults and belittles them. It’s a defense mechanism that never comes across well. Here, after he chastises the class, he finally gets a few laughs from what sounds like officers near the front, but there’s never a real response.
Of course, maybe some of this has to do with the fact that military members aren’t necessarily keen on Biden and his party. With more and more woke garbage being shoved down their throats by the top brass at the direction of the administration and a foreign policy that promises to cause chaos, why would they be?
Past that, if you’ve got a really good memory you may recall that this isn’t Biden’s first time to insult military members while demanding applause. He did it back in 2016, calling the troops he was speaking to “dumb bastards” for not clapping at a quip about his wife and a military appointment.
Here’s the quote via a “fact-check” by Reuters which desperately tries to spin what he said.
Then he said, “I just want you to know that. Clap for that, you stupid bastards.” After the applause, Biden said to the audience, “Man, you are a dull bunch. Must be slow here, man. I don’t know.”
Everything that’s old is new again for this administration, I suppose. To be fair, Biden probably doesn’t even remember that he had already made nearly the exact same comment half a decade earlier.
Even still, maybe Biden should take a breath and realize that military members do not exist to clap like seals for him every time he says something dumb.
Cowardly Journalists Chuckle as Biden Jokes About Murdering Them:
Imagine if Donald Trump had jokingly threatened to murder journalists standing in front of him. They probably wouldn’t have laughed. Yet that’s what Joe Biden did on Tuesday and the assembled reporters just chuckled at the funny threat. While test driving an electric Ford F-150, ABC’s Cecilia Vega broke up the adoring queries about the car by actually asking, “Mr. President, can I ask you a quick question about Israel before you drive away since it’s so important?”
Biden, who was sitting in a truck at the time, sneered, “No, you can’t. Not unless you get in front of the car as I step on it. I’m only teasing.” The off-camera journalists awkwardly snickered in reply. Biden then drove off, having threatened the press and then not answered the serious question.
Just prior to a real question, the reporters acted as Democratic hacks, offered up sycophantic queries about the photo-op. They included, “How does it feel to be behind the wheel, sir?” and “Mr. President, how fast were you going?” Biden was happy to answer those.
We don’t actually have to imagine how the networks would react if this were Trump. In July of 2017, the then-President tweeted a video of a wrestling video in which Trump grappled with a superimposed CNN logo. On the July 3, 2017 Today, Hallie Jackson warned, “A spokesperson for the cable network saying, ‘It is a sad day when the President of the United States encourages violence against reporters’…”
Then-CNN political commentator Sally Kohn fretted, “Both sides have a problem with hateful crazies. The difference is the left denounces theirs. The right elects theirs president.” Journalists on the network declared Trump a “dangerous” madman who will get members of the press killed.
How will Cecilia Vega report this story? Wonder how the people at CNN feel now? They probably laughed along with the reporters Biden threatened today.
A ‘study’ using interviews of sixteen seasoned citizens and thirteen medicos and the researchers use it as a venue to merely regurgitate their previous anti-gun views.
And just to point out:
Read These Taxpayer Funded Antigun Research Projects
The Centers for Disease Control recently announced the projects funded by more than $7.8 million dollars to “Prevent Firearm-Related Violence and Injuries.”
Let’s take a look at some of the projects receiving CDC funding:
Dr. Ali Rowhani-Rahbar of the University of Washington will receive $1.5 million over three years for a project that “will identify the context, antecedents, and consequences of handgun carrying among adolescents who reside in rural communities in order to inform culturally appropriate and community-specific interventions.” “This project is intended to inform the development, adoption, and refinement of non-punitive prevention approaches to address factors that influence handgun carrying and reduce the burden of firearm-related injury among youth in rural communities.”
This project would seemingly build on Rowhani-Rahbar’s previous work on the topic through an NIH grant, and he has published dozens of articles and studies on firearms and firearms-related policies. He is the Co-Director of the Firearm Injury and Policy Research Program at Harborview Injury Prevention & Research Center at the University of Washington.
Gun for young people are baaaaaad.
Guns for old people are baaaaaaad.
Guns are baaaaaaad!
Should There Be ‘Gun Retirement’ for the Elderly?
MONDAY, May 17, 2021 (HealthDay News) — Just as some elderly drivers need to give up their car keys, older gun owners may eventually face “firearm retirement.” And a preliminary study suggests they are open to the idea.
In focus-group interviews with older gun owners, researchers found that many had considered putting limits on their firearm access — though they usually hadn’t yet laid out plans for when and how.
It’s an important issue, given that 40% of older Americans live in a home with a gun, said lead researcher Laura Prater of Harborview Injury Prevention and Research Center at the University of Washington in Seattle.
The concern, she said, is that a significant number of those seniors have or will develop dementia or major depression. If they have easy access to a firearm, they could harm themselves, accidentally or intentionally.
No one wants to wrest firearms from the hands of older adults who can use them safely, Prater said.
The point, she stressed, is that gun owners, family members and health care providers should talk about the future — including what should happen with household firearms once a person’s health makes access a hazard.
“We should be treating this like a normal conversation,” Prater said, “just like you plan for other things, like driving, retirement or finances.”
A big takeaway from the interviews was that gun owners accepted the concept of firearm “retirement.”
“Older adults want to be responsible gun owners,” Prater said.
“What they weren’t open to,” she added, “was someone else making the decision for them.”
That means planning is key — before, say, early-stage dementia advances. One place to start, Prater said, is with a “firearm inventory,” where the older adult and family members account for all firearms in the home.
Many owners, Prater noted, have multiple firearms, and family members or other caregivers are not always aware of them.
Some older adults might want a “transition period,” she said, starting with disposing of firearms that are not being used. (Local laws vary on how to do that, Prater noted.)
The current findings are based on interviews with 16 older gun owners, as well as 13 geriatrics specialists.
I think we covered this back in the late 18th Century. I don’t care what the British think about rights. We told them where to go and how to get there concerning them, and we actually helped a lot of them on their travels in two wars before they finally got the idea through their thick heads.
Harry: 1st Amendment ‘Bonkers’ So He’ll Have Real Trouble with 2nd
Fox News is reporting that Prince Harry ignited a media firestorm when he stated during a podcast interview that he thinks the First Amendment is “bonkers.”If that’s the case, he’s liable to cause a social and political earthquake if he ever takes a position on the Second Amendment.
Harry, also known as the Duke of Sussex, made the observation while appearing on an episode of “Armchair Expert,” the podcast hosted by Dax Shepard and Monica Padman.
Harry and wife, Meghan Markle, have set up housekeeping in Los Angeles. The Duke—not to be confused with American icon John Wayne—was holding forth on what he considers a media “feeding frenzy” when his every move is watched by the media, especially paparazzi. His mother, Princess Diana, died as the result of a car crash in which the driver of the car she was in was trying to elude photographers. That occurred in Paris in 1997.
Harry had been staying at the Beverly Hills mansion owned by actor/producer Tyler Perry. He told Shepard and Padman, “I don’t want to start sort of going down the First Amendment route because that’s a huge subject and one in which I don’t understand because I’ve only been here a short period of time,” Harry said. “But, you can find a loophole in anything. And you can capitalize or exploit what’s not said rather than uphold what is said.”
“I’ve got so much I want to say about the First Amendment as I sort of understand it, but it is bonkers,” he stated.
Report: John Cornyn Seeking ‘Compromise Language’ for Democrat Gun Control
Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) is still seeking “compromise language” for Democrat gun control, the Washington Post reported.
On April 20, 2021, Breitbart News pointed to Politico’s claim that Cornyn was talking gun control behind the scenes with Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT).
Cornyn was having “quiet conversations” with Murphy for the purposes of “[finding] common ground,” Politico indicated.
On May 16, 2021, the Post observed that Cornyn’s talks with Murphy are ongoing, saying, “Some Republicans, including Cornyn, have said they generally favor background checks and have been actively talking with Murphy about compromise language that would not go as far as the House versions but could close some loopholes.”
Cornyn admitted the talks were taking place, but suggested no middle ground has yet to be found. “There’s nothing right now to say other than we are still talking,” he said.
Murphy is currently pushing universal background check legislation in the Senate.
Colorado has universal background checks, but they did not prevent the March 22, 2021, Boulder, Colorado, attack.
New York has universal background checks as well, but they did not prevent 11 people from being shot in New York City during an 8-hour window of time on Saturday.
California adopted universal background checks in the early 1990s, but they did not prevent the April 2, 2012, Oikos University Attack/Oakland, California (7 killed); the May 23, 2014, Santa Barbara attack (6 killed); the December 2, 2015, San Bernardino attack (14 killed); the June 14, 2017, San Francisco UPS shooting (3 killed); and the November 7, 2018, Thousand Oaks attack (12 killed), among other attacks.
“I know nothing” was the comic catchphrase of Sgt. Schultz on Hogan’s Heroes. He occasionally varied or elaborated on it, adding “I see nothing.” In the clip below, for example, he declares, “I see nothing. I was not here. I did not even get up this morning.”
After its customary warning to protect civilian life, the IDF took out the 12-story Jala Tower housing Hamas military intelligence offices as well as offices for media organs including Al Jazeera and the Associated Press. As far as I can tell from reports such as this photo-filled story in the Daily Mail, no lives were lost in the bombing.
The Biden administration nevertheless found the occasion fit to lecture Israel yesterday “that ensuring the safety and security of journalists and independent media is a paramount responsibility.” According to the Jerusalem Post, Israeli authorities have showed Biden administration officials the “smoking gun” proving that Hamas worked out of the building. I demand proof that intelligent life exists within the Biden administration.
You can be sure the SloJoe administration is focused like a laser on issues like this.
Space Force CO Who Got Holiday Call from Trump Fired Over Comments Decrying Marxism in the Military
A commander of a U.S. Space Force unit tasked with detecting ballistic missile launches has been fired for comments made during a podcast promoting his new book, which claims Marxist ideologies are becoming prevalent in the United States military.
Lt Col. Matthew Lohmeier, commander of 11th Space Warning Squadron at Buckley Air Force Base, Colorado, was relieved from his post Friday by Lt. Gen. Stephen Whiting, the head of Space Operations Command, over a loss of confidence in his ability to lead, Military.com has exclusively learned.
“This decision was based on public comments made by Lt. Col. Lohmeier in a recent podcast,” a Space Force spokesperson said in an email. “Lt. Gen. Whiting has initiated a Command Directed Investigation on whether these comments constituted prohibited partisan political activity.”
Lohmeier’s temporary assignment in the wake of his removal was not immediately clear.
Earlier this month, Lohmeier, a former instructor and fighter pilot who transferred into the Space Force, self-published a book titled “Irresistible Revolution: Marxism’s Goal of Conquest & the Unmaking of the American Military.”
Analysis: Dogs Can’t Smell Serial Numbers and the Dangers of Mindlessly Repeating Police Narratives
Dogs, no matter how well trained, can not tell if a gun has a serial number engraved into it or not.
That is not the impression you would get if you listened to KSBY’s report on Santa Barbara, California’s new police dogs, though. The NBC affiliate chose to frame their story on the dogs through the lens of their ability to detect so-called ghost guns.
“The [ghost] gun might look similar to any regular weapon; however, it’s missing one major piece: registration to make it legally owned,” KSBY reporter Melissa Newman said. “Today, I got a first-hand look at the only K9 in the county trained to detect them.”
The K9 is actually trained to sniff plastic, steel, and gun powder. That’s it. He can’t smell whether a gun has a serial number engraved in it. He doesn’t know if the owner has a registration paper from the state government for it. That is exactly what Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Deputy Shane Moore tells the station eventually.
“Zeke is trained to alert on what we call polymer 80’s, and it’s like the grip part of the handgun. He’s also trained to alert on the steel, the slides, and the ammunition we use for firearms,” Deputy Moore told the news station.
Moore is oddly trying to conflate a company that sells unfinished gun parts, Polymer 80, with the gun parts themselves. So, let’s be clear. The grip on a gun made with Polymer 80 parts is made out of, you guessed it, polymer, just like a Glock or Smith & Wesson pistol sold at the store. There’s no real difference in materials for parts used in homemade guns or retail firearms.
KSBY eventually acknowledges this obvious fact, but they commit to this bizarre framing anyway.
The whole piece reads like a police department wanted to brag about how they’re doing something to combat the specter of “ghost guns,” and nobody at KSBY thought twice about how ridiculous the narrative was. Police departments often want to show people they are actively fighting criminals, and local news often wants to play up threats to juice ratings. Those incentives align in all sorts of bad ways, but occasionally they combine to make everyone involved with the story look utterly ridiculous.
I believe most police are trying to do the right thing most of the time. But that doesn’t mean you have to take everything they say or do at face value. You absolutely shouldn’t do that with police spokesmen or any other kind of government official if you’re a journalist.
There’s a major difference between respecting law enforcement and mindlessly repeating anything they have to tell you. This principle extends well beyond firearms, but it’s certainly true here. Some police, especially those in public relations, like to frame rights primarily as impediments to easier police work. And while life would be easier on law enforcement if we allowed them to search anyone for any reason they saw fit, or let them arrest anyone for merely owning a gun, it would make life quite a lot worse for everyone else.
So, the next time a police officer tries to tell you a story about how their new K9s are trained to smell the difference between a serialized gun and an unserialized one, maybe take that with a grain of salt.
Unless you are ‘intersex’ which is a defective congenital anomaly, you are a Male with the “XY” chromosome, or a Female with the “XX” chromosome. What clothes are worn and what words one uses to describe themselves don’t matter, and ‘scientists’ having trouble with this aren’t scientists but propagandists.
Scholar booted from APA discussion group after suggesting there are only two sexes
‘This incident just illustrates the current inability of some scientific communities to tolerate dissent’
A scholar has been removed from an American Psychological Association email discussion group after he posed questions on the listserv that upset others, most recently about the nature of biological sex.
John Staddon, an emeritus professor of psychology and neuroscience at Duke University, was taken off the Society for Behavioral Neuroscience and Comparative Psychology Division 6 listserv overseen by the APA.
“This incident just illustrates the current inability of some scientific communities to tolerate dissent about issues related to sex and race,” Staddon told The College Fix via email. “Psychology and sociology seem to be especially flawed in this respect.”
The topic that appears to have gotten him removed was the suggestion that there are only two sexes.
According to Staddon, what likely got him taken off was this post: “Hmm… Binary view of sex false? What is the evidence? Is there a Z chromosome?”
Comment O’ The Day:
Did we dodge a bullet when McConnell kept this moron off the Court, or what?
At the 4:15 mark, Garland says: “When someone tries to promote or impose an ideology through acts of violence, those acts can be the most dangerous crimes we confront as a society.”
Is that not exactly what BLM and Antifa did when they burned, looted, and rioted their way through American cities for most of 2020?
Funny, he fails to mention those groups even once.
NY Times Tells Huge Whopper About Gas Lines and Shortages After Cyber Attack
Remember once upon a time when people used to call the New York Times the “paper of record?” It was considered the standard of reporting.
That seems so long ago. Now, random people tweeting on the internet are more accurate than the Times and their bias is frequently stark.
Here’s the latest entry in the Unreality Olympics. The New York Times is claiming there have been “no long lines” as a result of the Colonial Pipeline cyber attack.
Since the pipeline shutdown, there have been no long lines at gasoline stations, and because many traders expected the interruption to be brief, the market reaction was muted. Nationwide, the price of regular gasoline climbed by only half a cent to $2.97 on Monday from Sunday, even though the company could not set a timetable for restarting the pipeline. New York State prices remained stable at $3 a gallon, according to the AAA motor club.
“Potentially it will be inconvenient,” said Ed Hirs, an energy economist at the University of Houston. “But it’s not a big deal because there is storage in the Northeast and all the big oil and gas companies can redirect seaborne cargoes of refined product when it is required.”
The problem with this? We can see all the videos of the long lines at the various gas stations around the East Coast, with some stations going dry and posting “out of gas signs,” as my colleague Jennifer Oliver O’Connell reported. We can also see the stories of the prices going up. Do they actually have any real reporters at the New York Times or are they just so invested in protecting Joe Biden and not covering anything negative that facts have no meaning for them?
BLUF:
T. Patrick Hill Ph.D. is an associate professor at Rutgers University where he teaches ethics and law in the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy.
⇑⇑⇑THIS is why you must take extreme care in selecting which college, if any, you send your children to. Because these are the idiots who will be filling your children’s minds with crap like this⇓⇓⇓
Gun ownership, yes! As a right, no! | Opinion
So, we have to change the national conversation. A basic reason for the interminable debate over gun violence in America has been the general assumption that there is a right to a gun. However, given the nature and function of rights, is it conceivable that a gun as such, regardless of any consequences, good or bad, of its use, qualifies for that status? That is the question that has been and continues to be unexamined.
As long as it does, the very absurdity of such a notion will continue to offend our common humanity. With each new mass shooting, the shooter often possesses a gun to which, he has an unqualified and inviolable right to have, including the consequences of its use. But if a gun can be used with such devastating consequences, how can its possession qualify for the status of a right? A standard response has been that it is people, not guns, who shoot people. The sophistry here should be obvious.
Put simply, a right is a claim made to something perceived as a benefit to be enjoyed. The strength of the claim is derived from the basis on which the benefit is viewed as a right. That basis will also be a measure of the value, relative or absolute, separable or inseparable, of the benefits to be enjoyed. This also enables us to prioritize among rights, as a civil right like the right to vote, and a human right like the right to liberty, with human rights superseding civil rights.
The right to liberty, as a human right is both absolute and inseparable by virtue of its basis, which is being human. In the absence of being at liberty, one’s identity as a human being is at its core compromised. Liberty, in other words, is integral to human beings, by virtue of birth, and is independent for its origination of any authority such as the United States Constitution, which does not initiate but only confirms it. Despite the substantial difference noted between civil and human rights, it is clear that the function of a right in both instances is the same. It justifies the claim to enjoy the benefits of the objects to which a right is asserted, with the consequence that actions taken under the right are rightful actions. If so, then it is reasonable to ask what actions were taken under the right to a gun might be justified.
The most obvious issue that comes to mind is self-defense. But a Harvard study showed that people used a gun for self-defense in 1% only of 14,000 crimes committed between 2007-2011, suggesting that society has more effective alternative means of self-defense. That aside, gun ownership data are decidedly negative for society. A 2018 survey confirmed that American civilians own 393 million guns, even as other research shows unequivocally that households with guns are less safe, and run a higher risk for accidental deaths, suicides and domestic homicides. Compared with Canada’s gun-related death rates of 0.47 deaths per 100,000 people, the rate of gun-related deaths in the United States is nine times higher at 10.6 deaths per 100,000 people. In comparison with Denmark where the rate is 0.15 deaths per 100,000 people, the rate in the United States is 29 times higher.
Coincidently, during COVID-19, gun sales in the United States have grown exponentially, accompanied, according to research at the University of California-Davis, by an 8% increase in violence across the country. Last year, 41,000 people were killed because of gun violence.
Concede the Second Amendment was intended to confer the right to a gun, then in light of the inevitable loss of life in America from guns claimed as a right, one must also acknowledge an unavoidable trivialization of rights generally in which the rights to life or liberty of thousands have been sacrificed to secure the right to a gun. What absurdity is this not? Whatever the Second Amendment means, it must not be such as to allow a right to a gun to offend humanity by trivializing our rights to it.
Seems? Nay, it is. I know not ‘seems’.
Touting HighSpeed Rail!™, while pushing his $2 trillion “infrastructure” bill, SloJoe gets derailed.
In 30 seconds, he bumbles around, starting in North Carolina, descending to Florida and somehow ending up talking about a tunnel in New York.
Media Continues Meltdown Over Gun Sale Surge
There has been a gun sales surge ever since the early days of the pandemic. From the moment we knew it was coming to our shores, people started buying guns. The buying hasn’t stopped either.
This has been good news for the firearm industry.
However, anti-gunners have been freaking out about this for some time now. That freak out isn’t slowing down, apparently, with news outlets proclaiming that “gun sales and a mental health crisis… are seen as risk factors in school shootings.”
Students in many US states are just returning to classrooms after months of remote learning due to the coronavirus pandemic – but the move back has come with an unfortunate uptick in gun violence.
From the first hours of Thursday, it felt like Groundhog Day –– at 7:00 am (1200 GMT) an Army trainee carrying a rifle hijacked a bus full of elementary school students near Fort Jackson, South Carolina for reasons unknown, before letting them go unharmed.
Arrested a short time later, the 23-year-old man was charged with 19 counts of kidnapping, carjacking and other crimes.
“Probably one of the scariest calls that we can get in law enforcement … is that a school bus has been hijacked with kids on it with someone with a gun. And that’s what we had this morning,” local sheriff Leon Lott told the ABC station.
Then, on the other side of the country in Idaho, at about 9:00 am (1500 GMT) a girl in sixth grade – meaning she is about 11 or 12 – took a gun out of her backpack and started shooting. Two students and a staff member were injured.
A teacher disarmed the girl and she was taken into custody. Her motive remains unknown.
…
The incidents are reported by local media, but they do not make national headlines.
Only a deadly shooting spree, like the one at Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school in Parkland, Florida in February 2018 (17 dead), sparks a shockwave.
“No other high income country experiences or tolerates constant school shootings,” tweeted Shannon Watts, the founder of the Moms Demand Action movement against gun violence.
Except at least one of those incidents involved the theft of a military rifle. The others mentioned were from firearms likely stolen from their parents.
The author tries to make a point that the mental health issues stemming from COVID-19 and the gun sales surge create a dangerous environment. However, they fail to show their work.
See, while gun sales are increasing, they failed to show that any of these incidents were newly purchased firearms. The gun sale surge exists, but were any of these firearms purchased as part of that surge?
Further, even if they were, the sale of these guns isn’t the issue and never has been because they were purchased lawfully by someone who still hasn’t broken the law. They’re the victims, really, because their guns were taken and then misused.
People are constantly going on and on about how we have too many guns, but then they say they don’t want to take our guns. They fail to address guns in criminal hands but instead focus on those firearms being sold lawfully.
With this story, desperate to try and link increased gun sales to school violence, it’s almost sad. You’d think that people would understand that correlation doesn’t equal causation, yet they don’t. Then again, they still think gun control works.
Well; you can’t have them.
TBS’s Sam Bee Just Says It: I ‘Want to Take your Guns’
Samantha Bee recently admitted she lets politics invade her “comedy.”
It’s the worst kept secret in Hollywood, a rule that virtually every mainstream comic follows in our deeply divided culture.
It’s why Saturday Night Live won’t lay a glove on President Joe Biden and Stephen Colbert would rather take on the MyPillow guy than a president holding “kids in cages.” Now, Bee wants us to trust her on one of the more divisive topics of the modern era.
“Full Frontal Wants to Take Your Guns,” to air at 10:30 p.m. EST May 12, will allegedly explore ways to reduce gun violence now.
11 days after Kamala Harris says that ‘Only the government should have assault weapons’, an Army trainee hijacks an elementary school bus full of children…….
The 23-year-old suspect was taken into custody.
A Fort Jackson trainee is in custody after allegedly hijacking a South Carolina elementary school bus with 18 children on board while carrying a rifle, authorities said.
The Forest Lake Elementary students and the bus driver are safe, Richland County Sheriff Leon Lott said at a news conference.
The 23-year-old trainee’s weapon did not have ammunition, Fort Jackson Commander Brig. Gen. Milford H. Beagle Jr. said at a news conference, adding that the children and driver could not have known that.
Lott called this “one of the scariest calls that we could get in law enforcement.”
The incident began around 7 a.m. Thursday when the suspect allegedly hopped a barbed wire fence and fled Fort Jackson, according to Lott and Beagle.
The children had boarded the bus when the armed suspect, Jovan Collazo, got on and allegedly “told the bus driver he didn’t want to hurt him, but he wanted him to drive him to the next town,” Lott said.
The sheriff’s office released surveillance video from inside the school bus showing the suspect pointing a rifle at the bus driver and telling him to drive.
The bus driver started driving and Collazo brought the children to the front of the bus, Lott said.
“The kids started asking lots of questions to the suspect if he was going to hurt them or the bus driver,” Lott said.
“The suspect got a little frustrated,” Lott said, and the driver pulled over.
After six minutes on board with Collazo, the children and the bus driver got off safely, Lott said.
The suspect then drove the bus for a few miles before abandoning it, leaving the rifle inside, Lott said.
Collazo was spotted by deputies and civilians and was arrested without incident, Lott said. He faces charges including kidnapping, Lott said.
Beagle described the trainee, believed to be in his third week at Fort Jackson, as a quiet 23-year-old from New Jersey. He said it appeared the trainee was trying to get home.
“There is nothing that leads us to believe in his counseling, in his screening records coming in, that this had anything to do with harming others, harming himself or anything that links to any type of nefarious activity,” Beagle said. “We do experience several soldiers that over the course of initial stages have that desire, that anxiety, and due to separation from their families, to get home. We think that was truly his intent and nothing beyond that.”
Richland County School Board Chairman James Manning said, “I’ve been on the board now for over 10 years and I have never received a call that scared me as much as the call that I received this morning — that a bus had been hijacked with our students and staff.”
The students were taken to school “where they received support from school employees and counselors and were reunited with their parents/guardians,” the school district said.
Superintendent Baron Davis said in a statement, “Once we were certain all students were accounted for and physically safe, we immediately began deploying social and emotional counseling resources to the school so that our students could begin the process of healing as they are dealing with a traumatic event. We will continue to provide counseling services for the students and their families, our bus driver and employees as long as necessary.”
Lott praised the bus driver who he said “kept his cool” and “kept the situation calm.”
“His main concern was the safety of those kids and he did his job,” Lott said.
These aren’t ‘gaffes’, he’s suffering from dementia. He can’t even read off his TelePrompTer.
President Biden Gaffes Several Times During Tuesday Press Conference
President Joe Biden slipped up several times during a Tuesday afternoon press conference on his administration’s ongoing response to the coronavirus pandemic.
After being mocked Monday for saying that “anybody making less than $400,000 a year will not pay a single penny in taxes” under his infrastructure plan, Biden was again forced to correct himself several times after misspeaking while answering questions from the media.
The first gaffe came when Biden said his administration is “going to slip vaccines directly to pediatricians” while talking about vaccine distribution. He quickly corrected himself to “ship.”
Biden slipped up again while encouraging Americans to continue following the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) guidelines on coronavirus, catching himself after calling it the “CCD.”
“I’m asking people to continue to follow the CCD guidelines — the CDC guidelines,” Biden said.
Biden also announced a new website designed to make it convenient for Americans to find vaccine locations near them, but had to again correct himself after saying “vaccines.gum.” He also stumbled while explaining the text alert that can be used for the same purpose.
“We’re going to make it easier than ever to get vaccinated. Visit vaccines.gum — .gov — vaccines.gum — or text to, text your zip code to 438829.”
There have been several moments during the Biden administration where he has come under criticism for his longtime tendency to gaffe, which some of his political opponents cited as the reason that he waited longer to have a press conference than any American president since World War II.
The staggering stupidity of Don Lemón.
What the stupidest thing you will hear today?
Here’s one way to improve your odds at an accurate answer: who is the stupidest television commentator currently polluting the airwaves?
If you said ‘Don Lemón™’, you are hot on the trail.
But it soon became clear that Lemón (accent on the ‘o’) was something special.
It was partly the brittle touchiness, partly the steady emission of self-satisfied entitlement. Mostly, though, it was the stupidity, unwritten by ignorance and fired by adamantine self-certainty.
The latest instance is one of the best.
Responding to Rick Santorum’s appearance last night on Chris ‘Fredo’ Cuomo’s show, Lemón went on a tear about Santorum’s defense of his remarks about American Indian culture, remarks that had the moist PC-crowd in a tizzy. ‘There isn’t much Native American culture in American culture,’ Santorum said in a speech last month.
If Anti-Gunners Want To Know Why We Cling To Them, They Should Ask
Millions of Americans love their firearms. We like guns and that’s not likely to change anytime soon. Nor should it. After all, these are the weapons with which we keep our freedom.
However, there are a ton of people who really don’t like that. They don’t want us with firearms at all. Others are fine with you owning a firearm, they just want to place so many restrictions on them so that they’re impractical for anything but going to a gun club and popping off a few rounds.
So what happens when those who don’t like guns try to ponder why those who do like them “cling” to them? Well, you get some hilariously bad takes.
Why are we so in love with our guns?
Historically, this nation was built on violence, whether the initial settlers from England or the wagon loads of internal migrants who ventured westward seeking land and opportunity. Creating a foothold on the east coast and then expansion to the west involved the violent subjugation of the Indigenous Peoples, as well as animals like Buffalo, because they stood in the way of that process. The perspective of subjugation at any cost, i.e. manifest destiny, still resides in our nation’s psyche.
Combine that opinion of cultural superiority with Heston’s interpretation of the 2nd Amendment to the Constitution and the result is the ‘until death do we part’ attitude about gun ownership. Why is it so relentless in its effort to protect itself? Why is every piece of proposed gun control legislation met with an avalanche of criticism by those who own guns and the politicians they support?
Obviously, the gun lobby, which includes the National Rifle Association and numerous gun manufacturers and vendors, is extremely vociferous and aggressive, stating that politicians who propose smart gun laws are ‘soft on crime’. In addition, it uses news media outlets, particularly conservative ones, to raise fear that the government is attempting to take your guns away with these new laws. And, if that were to happen, you would be less safe from crime, completely unable to defend yourself and, worst of all, be vulnerable to an authoritarian government.
I love it when they place all that on the “gun lobby.”
It’s because of the NRA and other pro-gun groups, including the National Shooting Sports Foundation which they couldn’t bother to name, that you’re concerned about gun control advocates trying to take away your right to keep and bear arms.
Of course, that could have nothing at all to do with these advocates’ own words, now could it. My friend, science fiction author David Burkhead, has been keeping a record of people of note saying they want all your guns. He’s kept it fairly up to date, too.
But that doesn’t play a factor, now does it?
Yet the author of this piece thinks he understands why we hold onto our guns? He feels he understands enough about all of us to tell his readers why we “cling” to our guns.
Maybe he should have just asked.
As noted, politicians and gun control advocates have expressly acknowledged their desire to disarm us all. Around us, violent crime is spiking, even if heavily gun-controlled states. We have a government that, frankly, few of us actually trust. With all that, you think the reason we’re resistant to gun control is because the NRA tells us to be?
To quote a prominent anti-gunner, “Come on, man!”
We’ve got ample reason to resist gun control. We’ve got all those reasons and more to “cling” to our firearms, including that it’s just plain fun to go shooting. But for some people, actually talking to us and finding out why we refuse to budge is just too damn hard.