Category: Goobermint

“People who don’t even buy guns are coming in and buying magazines just because they might buy a gun someday.”

Sales of high-capacity magazines brisk as bill banning them heads to Governor’s desk

OLYMPIA, Wash. — Business is brisk at this local gun shop, three days after a historic vote banning the sale of high-capacity magazines in our state.

The legislation cleared the Washington State Senate last Friday and is now headed to Governor Jay Inslee’s desk.

The bill bans all gun magazines with a capacity of more than 10 rounds, making Washington State the 10th state to do so.

There is now a big demand for these magazines. A lot of people appear to be stocking up on them.

That has people here saying law-abiding gun owners are once again being penalized for the actions of criminals.

“These are all going to be banned,” said Tiffany Teasdale. “It’s a lot of our inventory.”

These are the waning days for Lynnwood Gun and Ammunition.

Teasdale and her business partner are closing shop after eight years. She says it is a coincidence that the Washington state legislature has voted to ban the sale of high-capacity magazines, just as she’s shutting down her business.

The vote is already impacting her store.

“People who don’t even buy guns are coming in and buying magazines just because they might buy a gun someday,” said Teasdale.

“Yeah, I think there’ll be a short-term impact where people go out and buy the ones that you can legally access,” said Sen. Marko Liias, the 21st District Democrat who sponsored the legislation.

He says his goal is to prevent mass shootings like what happened in his district in Mukilteo in 2016.

A 2015 Kamiak High School graduate killed three fellow graduates, including an ex-girlfriend, seemingly on impulse.

“And so, taking these products off the shelf means that folks who are disturbed like he was won’t be able to access that when they get into that, into that dark place,” said Liias.

Senate Bill 5078 will prevent anyone in this state from manufacturing, distributing, possessing, buying or selling high-capacity magazines — anything that holds more than 10 rounds.

Senator Liias says he believes the bill will save innocent lives.

“We know in states where they have passed a law like this, they see lower levels of mass shooting violence,” he said. “And that’s my goal.”

“They’re saying that this magazine is going to promote public safety,” said Tiffany Teasdale, holding a high-capacity magazine.

She says the bill will mostly penalize law-abiding gun owners.

“Just because they are banned for law-abiding citizens,” says Teasdale, “doesn’t mean criminals aren’t going to have them.”

She says a better deterrent is to adequately fund the police and prosecute the criminals they catch.

Senator Liias says if the governor signs the bill, it could become law in mid-June.

‘The Trace’ (Yes, ‘The Trace’) Reveals the Lie Behind San Jose’s New Gun Owner Liability Insurance Law

[Sam] Liccardo, the mayor, has said that safe gun behavior will determine insurance rates and lead to discounts. He told Slate last month: “When you notify the insurance company, the insurance company can start to ask questions like, ‘Do you have a gun safe? Do you have a trigger lock? Have you taken gun safety classes?’ And those kinds of actions can help to reduce the premium.”

But experts we spoke with said insurance companies won’t be asking these questions, and gun owner behavior probably won’t influence rates, because the ordinance only requires policies that cover accidental shootings, which are rare in San Jose. “It’s totally oversold,” said George Mocsary, a law professor at the University of Wyoming. “I think it’s an idea that makes sense on the surface. But when you dig into it a little bit, it essentially falls apart.”

A spokesperson for the Mayor’s Office, Rachel Davis, told us that staffers reached out to “over a dozen” insurance companies and that all of them asked about risk factors. These included whether children lived in the home, whether someone was on medication for depression, whether there is a gun safe, how many guns were in the house, and if the gun owner had safety training. But Davis didn’t say how these factors would affect premiums.

“While there’s a clause in most policies that covers negligent gun harm, it’s up to the gun owner to disclose more information that could affect their rates,” Davis said in an emailed response to our questions. “It’s also up to each of the insurance companies to define their policy requirements and up to residents to find the insurance policy that will work for them.” Davis insists that when gun owners file a claim, they will be asked about risk factors like gun storage, and the answers to those questions will determine whether a shooting is covered.

We reached out to several major insurance providers for more details about how the policies will work, but only three got back to us. Farmers and State Farm, referred us to [Janet] Ruiz of the Insurance Information Institute, while AAA said in a statement: “AAA supports the safety and security of our communities, which is why we offer insurance covering a broad scope of losses. We are reviewing the newly passed ordinance to determine whether it affects our products.”

According to the Pacific Institute study, San Jose has an average of two unintentional shooting deaths per year. The nonprofit Gun Violence Archive, meanwhile, has recorded just three unintentional shootings in San Jose since 2015, resulting in two deaths and two injuries. Those figures may be an undercount — GVA bases its tallies on news and police reports, which can be incomplete — but even so, none of those shootings would have been covered by San Jose’s gun owners insurance because they all resulted in criminal charges.

According to Mocsary, the rarity of unintentional shootings make the odds of ever paying out on a claim so low that “the insurance companies just don’t care.” “They’ve already had the opportunity to do the actuarial math on this, and they found that it makes no difference,” he added. If risky gun behaviors affected their bottom line, insurers would already be asking about them. “And they don’t,” he said.

That contradicts a major selling point of the ordinance: the claim that risk-adjusted premiums will encourage gun owners to take safety courses and invest in gun safes, trigger locks, or chamber-load indicators.

— Jennifer Mascia in Will Requiring Gun Owners to Buy Insurance Improve Firearm Safety?

WA Gun Owner Fury Erupts as Lawmakers Pass Magazine Ban

By a 55-42 dead-of-night vote, the Washington State House of Representatives has passed a ban on rifle and pistol magazines holding more than 10 cartridges (including magazines for rimfire rifles), causing outrage among Evergreen State grassroots activists who will be looking unseat as many Democrats as possible in the November 2022 election.

Senate Bill 5078 goes to the desk of anti-gun Democrat Gov. Jay Inslee, who has already vowed to sign it. Two Democrat House members—Reps. Kirsten Harris-Talley from Seattle and Steve Kirby from Tacoma—voted against the measure, breaking ranks from their majority Democrat colleagues.

The vote came about two weeks after Liberty Park Press published a revealing report about the ineffectiveness of magazine capacity limit that many readers sent to their state lawmakers.

The late-night Friday vote was hailed by anti-gun Democrat Attorney General Bob Ferguson in a tweet now posted at the Facebook page of the Washington 2022 Legislative Action Group. The legislation was introduced at Ferguson’s request by Democrat Sen. Marko Liias of Lynnwood.

“Today is the fulfillment of years of hard work from so many,” Ferguson wrote. “More than five years ago, I stood with the parents of shooting victims, legislators, mayors, police chiefs and representatives from faith communities to say enough is enough, and proposed banning the sale of high-capacity magazines in Washington state. Today, our Legislature chose public safety over the gun lobby, and I am deeply appreciative of their service. This policy will save lives and make our communities safer from gun violence.”

 

But Wade Gaughran, owner of a Bellevue gun range and firearms retail business, reacted bluntly, telling KING News, “There’s no way that an intelligent person is going to look at this law and see that it would stop or limit or change the of any kind of mass shooting.”

He predicted a surge in magazine purchasing, a notion reinforced by an announcement from at least one firm—Palmetto State Armory—announced it will prioritize orders from Washington State residents: “All magazine orders placed from Washington State with Palmetto State Armory with ship out immediately and receive priority over all other orders.”

Dan Mitchell, owner of Vancouver’s Sporting Systems, posted a “Fact Sheet” about the magazine ban, which included a depiction of the state flag with dictatorial overtones.

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“The deep commitment to an Iran nuclear deal that makes no sense has me convinced that a lot of people are either being bribed or blackmailed.”
–Prof. Reynolds

Joe Biden Spits on US Allies to Secure a Deal That Makes No Sense.

While the Biden administration has done its best to hide the ongoing negotiations, you’ve probably been made aware by now that a new JCPOA nuclear deal with Iran is in the works.

Guess who’s at the forefront of helping secure that deal? That would be none other than Vladimir Putin, who the United States is ostensibly at economic war with over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. About now, you are probably asking how that makes any sense at all. But stick around, because I promise you that it gets even worse.

Recently, I wrote two articles noting the seeming subservience of the Biden administration to Russia (see here and here), even as Biden himself has trotted out the tough-guy talk for a gullible public. Yet, behind the scenes, it appears that a deal with Iran has taken priority, even as Putin continues to bomb cities in Ukraine.

But hang on, I told you things would get worse. According to Kenneth Vogul, the Biden administration is now looking to normalize relations with the communist Maduro regime in Venezuela. How does that connect with the Iran deal? We’ll get to that in a moment.

 

Ostensibly, this action is being taken to help separate Venezuela from Russia. But anyone who is able to critically think and possesses a modicum of knowledge regarding international relations will quickly realize how dumb that contention is. Venezuela and Russia are allies, to the point where the latter held nuclear exercises there back in 2018. Russia has also been a supplier of commodities and materials to Venezuela as the South American nation has suffered under Western sanctions.

Now, does anyone think a quick visit from the Biden administration is going to “drive a wedge” between Venezuela and Russia given the relationship that exists between the two nations? In short, the Times’ spin on the matter, no doubt meant to protect the White House, doesn’t add up.

There is something that does add up though, and it connects to the Iran deal.

 

That makes much more sense. Russia has reportedly been making demands as part of its role in negotiating the new Iran deal. Putin having one of its chief allies legitimized on the world stage, setting up the framework to have sanctions removed while expanding Russia’s sphere of influence, sounds like a pretty good win for the Russian leader, doesn’t it?

In short, Biden’s pursuit of a boondoggle Iran deal boils down to empowering Russia and spitting on our allies, whether we are talking about Ukraine, Israel, or Venezuela’s democratically elected government. And for what? What is the United States getting out of a deal with Iran? There is no strategic interest there, especially given Israel, which does actually have a direct strategic interest, is against the JCPOA.

Again, nothing about this makes sense, and when nothing makes sense, it’s probably time to start asking tougher questions about what lies beneath the surface. Why have the last two Democrat-led presidencies been so obsessed with making a deal with Iran? Who is gaining what here? Are there payoffs involved? Why is Russia even a part of the negotiations given its behavior in Ukraine?

It seems the Biden administration is willing to do just about anything to hand the Iranian Mullahs another big win. That shouldn’t just be extremely concerning, it should be a scandal.

What with the earlier stories of the power behind the throne looking for ways to get rid of Kamalalalamadingdong, I wasn’t the first person to have ‘Ron Brown?’ pop into mind.

God Help Us: White House May Send Kamala to Europe for Diplomatic Mission.

Joe Biden was unable to prevent Russia from invading Ukraine, but now the White House is considering a new strategy. According to The Hill, there are active discussions about “sending Vice President Harris to Warsaw, Poland, and Bucharest, Romania, in the coming days to show solidarity with Ukraine as it faces an escalating Russian invasion.”

“The discussions involve sending Harris to visit troops stationed in Romania and potentially to the border with Ukraine, where a refugee crisis has seen more than 1 million people flee that country since the Russian attack,” the report continues. “The trip could happen in the coming weeks, one source said, adding that there is no active dialogue about sending President Biden to the region.”

“A presidential visit is a heavier logistical lift,” the source told The Hill. “The vice president has a smaller footprint and is historically more nimble.” The White House declined to comment, but one official was sure to make it known that Harris has been “deeply involved in the administration’s engagement with allies and partners.”

Harris spoke separately with the leaders of various European allies earlier this week to discuss Russia’s invasion.

“You can expect the vice president will continue to engage with allies and partners on these issues,” the official added.

And how well have her diplomatic skills worked so far? Last month, before Russia invaded Ukraine, Harris was at the  Munich Security Conference, during which she threatened Russia with “severe consequences” if they invaded Ukraine. That obviously worked out well.

Republicans brutally mocked her visit.

“Biden is deploying Kamala Harris to Europe to help ease Russia-Ukraine tensions,” Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) tweeted at the time. “Right, because she’s doing so well with our southern border…”

“I doubt [Putin’s] sitting back at the Kremlin right now shaking because Kamala Harris is over there,” Rep Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.), who sits on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told Newsmax at the time. “She can’t even find our southern border, much less the Ukrainian border. This is a joke, this is a travesty.”

After the failed trip, Harris continued to inspire zero confidence that she is capable of effective diplomacy or even understands world affairs. Earlier this week, in an attempt to explain the Russian invasion in layman’s terms, Harris said in a radio interview that “Ukraine is a country in Europe. It exists next to another country called Russia. Russia is a bigger country. Russia is a powerful country. Russia decided to invade a smaller country called Ukraine, so basically, that’s wrong.”

Clearly, Harris doesn’t know what she’s doing, and for the White House to be even considering sending her back to Europe is a horrible joke.

Not surprisingly, crimes like this aren’t happening all that much in places where demoncraps aren’t in charge of the goobermint

Carjackings in cities like NYC, Philadelphia jump over 200% – often with kids behind the wheel, officials say.

Carjackings have skyrocketed 200% — or more — in multiple big cities across the county in past years, as law enforcement officials and crime experts pleaded with lawmakers on Tuesday for help addressing the rampant issue, with one official warning: “Anyone in a car is a potential victim.”

“The primary goal is to do our best to ensure that no one has a gun in their face demanding their car in the first place.”

— Dallas Police Chief Edgardo “Eddie” Garcia, to Fox News Digital

Law enforcement executives and officials from crime monitoring agencies from across the country convened on Capitol Hill on Tuesday morning to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee for a hearing to address the startling trends related to carjackings. During his time at the microphone, National Insurance Crime Bureau (NICB) president and CEO David Glawe revealed some cities saw carjacking upticks as high as more than 280% between 2019 and 2021.

Carjackings have soared by 286% in New York City from 2019 to 2021, while Philadelphia saw the second-highest increase, with 238, the NICB found. Chicago followed with the third-highest increase, 207%, from 2019 to 2021, then Washington, D.C. with a 200% increase and New Orleans with 159%, Glawe told lawmakers.

“A disturbing subplot to these bleak numbers is that many carjackings are often committed in furtherance of other serious violent crimes, and many carjackings are committed by juveniles are committed by juveniles — some as young as 11 years old,” Glawe explained.

Glawe was joined by Cook County Sheriff Thomas Dart, Metropolitan Family Services executive director Vaughn Bryant, Alliance for Automotive Innovation president and CEO John Bozzella, former U.S. Attorney Justin Herdman and Dallas Police Department Chief Edgardo “Eddie” Garcia.

Garcia, who also spoke on behalf of the Major Cities Chiefs Association, testified that the increase in carjackings is being driven by certain factors, such as financial gain and to further other violent criminal activity.

“Many of these carjackings are also committed by juveniles seeking to gain notoriety on social media or as part of gang initiations,” he said.

He pointed to reluctant prosecutors and judges who “continue to release violent and repeat offenders pretrial,” and noted that the challenges also apply to juvenile offenders.

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Putin Threatens Nuclear Escalation as Biden Goes on Vacation.

Does anyone at the White House realize how bad it looks for Joe Biden to hide at his private home in Delaware while Russia’s invasion of Ukraine continues?

Apparently not, because that’s where he is, and Fox News reports that media communications with Biden have been limited while he’s been there.

Does anyone think that Trump could’ve gotten away with this? Now, granted, Russia wouldn’t have invaded Ukraine had Trump still been in office. Still, it doesn’t take a political expert to understand the optics of Biden hunkering down in Delaware for a long weekend as the Russia/Ukraine conflict appears to be escalating toward a nuclear war.

“He is right now threatening a nuclear escalation,” former DIA intelligence officer Rebekah Koffler told Fox News. “This a veiled threat – or maybe such a veiled threat – he just met with his chief of general staff and minister of defense. He is escalating the conflict into the nuclear domain in order to de-escalate – that is, topple Kyiv’s regime quickly.”

Meanwhile, questions remain about what Putin’s endgame is.

“It is not entirely clear if Mr. Putin has designs beyond the Ukraine,” Pentagon press secretary John Kirby said. “And it’s because that’s not perfectly clear that we continue to look for ways to bolster our NATO capabilities and to reassure our allies. I mean, one of the reasons we’re doing this is because we want to make it clear to him that we will defend every inch of NATO territory.”

I’d like to believe that, but mostly, I’m wondering whether Biden cares more about what his next ice cream cone flavor will be.

The Collapsing Covid Narrative is Being Replaced with Putin and Ukraine

Game-changing news has emerged out of Iceland.

As of this week, Iceland is the first country in the world to completely drop ALL Covid measures. There will be no lockdowns or social restrictions. There will be no mandatory Covid testing and if you happen to catch Covid you do not have to isolate. There will be no vaccine passports and no vaccine mandates. Anyone regardless of their vaccination status can travel to the country with no test required. The unvaccinated will not face any form of discrimination or exclusion from society.

Iceland is returning to going back to life as it was before Covid.

This by itself would be astounding enough given that Iceland is in the midst of a massive Covid surge and posting record cases even as we speak.

If you did not know, the vaccination rate in Iceland is some 80% of the total population which means that around 90% of the adult population is fully vaccinated.

Obviously, the vaccines have done absolutely nothing to stop or even slow down the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Quite on the contrary, they seem to have led to its increase.

Not only has the government of Iceland decided to drop all Covid restrictions and vaccine requirements, but the Ministry of Health issued remarkable new guidelines on how to deal with the virus. The country’s health authorities have advised the Icelanders that “as many people as possible need to be infected with the virus as the vaccines are not enough.”

Do you hear this?

Iceland’s government now tells its people that it is good to contract Covid. In other words, Iceland’s government has decided to handle Covid through herd immunity derived from natural infection.

This marks the complete negation of the official Covid narrative which was accepted as the conventional wisdom by nearly every government for the last two years.

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President Zelensky Appears to Take Direct Shot at Joe Biden

On Thursday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky spoke out from what appeared to be a bunker, taking a direct shot at President Joe Biden for completely failing the Ukrainian people and the world.

Zelensky started off by stating how he is being hunted down by the Russians.

“I know that a lot of misinformation and rumors are being spread now,” Zelensky said. Adding to that, he continued, saying:

“In particular, it is claimed that I have left Kyiv. I remain in the capital; I am staying with my people. My family is not a traitor, but a citizen of Ukraine. According to our information, the enemy marked me as the number one target. My family is the number two goal.

They want to destroy Ukraine politically by destroying the Head of State. We have information that enemy sabotage groups have entered Kyiv. … I am staying in the government quarter together with others.”

And Ukraine has some serious enemies. Chechen “kill squads” are reportedly roaming through Ukraine at the moment, something that can’t help but spook Zelensky.

In fact, “The kill squad was allegedly in a Ukrainian forest, with each soldier reportedly given a special ‘deck of cards’ with Ukrainian officials’ photos and descriptions, a Moscow Telegram channel that has links to the security establishment reported,” The Daily Mail reported.

Adding to that report, it said “State TV in Chechnya reported that Ramzan Kadyrov, the republic’s leader and a close Putin ally, had visited his forces in Ukraine. The Chechens are believed to be from the South battalion of the Federal Guard Service, based in Chechnya.”

But returning to his speech, it was after he said where he was staying that Zelensky then appeared to take a direct shot at President Biden.

“This morning we are defending our state alone. Like yesterday, the world’s most powerful forces are watching from afar,” he said. “Did yesterday’s sanctions convince Russia? We hear in our sky and see on our earth that this was not enough.”

“We are left alone in defense of our state. Who is ready to fight with us?” Zelensky continued. Then, adding yet more emphasis to his points by calling out NATO, he said:

“Honestly – I do not see such. Who is ready to guarantee Ukraine’s accession to NATO? Honestly, everyone is afraid. … I tell all the partners of our state: now is an important moment – the fate of our country is being decided. I ask them: are you with us?

They answer that they are with us. But they are not ready to take us to the Alliance. Today, I asked the twenty-seven leaders of Europe whether Ukraine will be in NATO. I asked directly. Everyone is afraid. They do not answer.”

“And we are not afraid of anything. We are not afraid to defend our state,” he continued. “We are not afraid of Russia. We are not afraid to talk to Russia. We are not afraid to say everything about security guarantees for our state. We are not afraid to talk about neutral status. We are not in NATO now. But the main thing – what security guarantees will we have? And what specific countries will give them?”

Here’s one point that gets little notice about Ukraine.
And why weak leaders and leadership always causes problems.

When the Soviet Union collapsed in ’91, Ukraine became a sovereign country again, and in return for handing over their nuclear weapons, accepted security deals from Russia and the United States.
At the end of the Cold War, Ukraine had the third biggest nuclear arsenal on Earth with over 5,000 nuclear warheads.

The 1994 agreement, known as the Budapest Memorandum had the U.S., U.K. and Russia guarantee Ukraine’s security for the nation signing on to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons and giving up their nukes.

However, when Russia ‘annexed’ Crimea in 2014, anyone with 2 working brains cells knew that Putin’s word meant nothing.

Ukraine demanded the former Soviet Union and America respect its sovereignty and existing borders, but 28 later? With a senile puppet sitting in the oval office, and his lackies more concerned with gender equity and covid mandate BS, than energy independence, we get crap like this again.

Constitutional Carry in doubt after Indiana committee guts legislation

The good news for Indiana gun owners is that Constitutional Carry legislation passed out of a key Senate committee on Wednesday. The bad news is that it’s no longer a Constitutional Carry bill.

HB 1077 had already passed out of the House with an overwhelming majority, but its future is very much in doubt in the state Senate after an eight-hour hearing of the Judiciary Committe left the bill stripped of its original intent.

As amended, House Bill 1077 would keep the permit requirement in place to carry a handgun in Indiana. However, it would enable qualified candidates who have applied for a permit to carry a handgun without a license until they receive their permit. The idea is that this would end complaints about delays in the permitting process.

The amendment to gut the bill just narrowly passed by a 6-5 vote, splitting the Republicans on the committee. Every Democrat voted to gut the bill. Shortly after, the committee unanimously voted to advance the bill to the floor. Some were unhappy with the bill, but voted to keep it moving.

Now, this doesn’t mean that Constitutional Carry is officially dead in the Indiana legislature. It’s possible that the bill will be amended once again to restore the permitless carry provisions once the legislation comes up for debate on the Senate floor, though many law enforcement agencies and gun control groups are going to continue their efforts to kill the bill, even if many of their arguments don’t make much (gun)sense.

Critics say there should be a vetting process.

“We will have people walking on our street never vetted by law enforcement, never receiving a background check with loaded firearms around our children,” Jennifer Haan with Moms Demand Action in Indiana said last month.

There are already people doing that right now in Indiana, and if they’re not legally allowed to own a gun they’re not legally allowed to carry it. That wouldn’t change under the Constitutional Carry language in HB 1077. The only difference would be that those who can legally possess a gun in their home could also lawfully carry it in public without the need for a government-issued permission slip.

Gun control activists weren’t the only ones making some odd arguments in opposition to the bill.

Officers also said individuals would have to background check themselves if the permit requirement was nixed, and might not know they aren’t qualified to carry a handgun. Detective Matt Foote from the Fort Wayne Police Department, said 14% of those who applied for permits in his community in 2021 were denied.

That’s actually already an issue. If you don’t know that you’re a prohibited person and you fail a NICS check, you could be charged with a crime for attempting to purchase a firearm (though under federal law prosecutors must prove that you knowingly tried to purchase a gun you weren’t allowed to possess). The responsibility of ensuring that you can lawfully carry already lies with the gun owner, and that wouldn’t change if HB 1077 became law.

Constitutional Carry still has a chance in Indiana this year, but if it’s going to get across the finish line gun owners and Second Amendment activists need to contact their senators and urge them to restore HB 1077 to its original intent when it reaches the Senate floor.

More than 20 states have already adopted Constitutional Carry, and none of them have seen any cause to repeal the law and return to requiring a license to carry (though every Constitutional Carry state with the exception of Vermont still maintains a “shall issue” licensing system for gun owners who want to be able to legally carry in states with reciprocity agreements). Indianans are no less responsible than the residents of Arizona, Texas, Oklahoma, Utah, West Virginia, and the other states that have permitless carry laws already in place. The big question now is whether Indiana lawmakers are as supportive of the 2A rights of residents as their counterparts in nearly half of the states across the nation.

Gaslighting: CBS News Wants You to Think Ukraine-Russia Caused Our Economic Problems.
CBS News thinks we’re stupid enough to believe inflation, supply-chain issues, and high gas prices started right now because of Ukraine and Russia.

Propaganda at its finest. CBS News thinks we’re stupid enough to believe inflation, supply-chain issues, and high gas prices started right now because of Ukraine and Russia.

They think we forgot all three started in 2021.

It’s no wonder the Biden administration has pushed for war. It’s no wonder Biden all of a sudden started caring about Ukraine. Wag the dog, you guys.

They know a war would make it worse so why not? It’ll deflect the blame from them to Putin. Or so they think.

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The word is that the Canadian Senate let him know they weren’t going to pass his power grab, so he does the politically expedient thing of reversing course so he won’t look like the loser he is

‘Trudeau backs down’: Canadian PM revokes emergency powers

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced on Wednesday that Canada will end the rarely used measures used nine days ago to deal with weeks-long protests that shut some border crossings and paralyzed Ottawa since late January.

“The situation is no longer an emergency. Therefore, the federal government will be ending the use of the Emergencies Act,” he told a news conference.

“We are confident that existing laws and bylaws are now sufficient to keep people safe,” he said.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Canada’s governor-general will formally revoke the emergency measures in the coming hours.

Following Trudeau’s announcement last week, the Emergencies Act was approved by the House of Commons on Monday, but not without opposition.

Invoking the powers was seen by the main opposition Conservative Party and some provincial leaders as overreaching.

The government said that the use of these powers would have a time limit. According to Trudeau, the powers were needed because the blockades threatened the economy and the public and because they helped coordinate the police forces.

“Trudeau backs down,” Pierre Poilievre, a Conservative lawmaker who is running for leadership of the party, said on Twitter. “Thank you to all who fought this abuse of power.”

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Grabbing Guns Won’t Reduce Urban Violence
Firearm seizures are ineffective, and gun possession arrests are frequently unjust

If you want to reduce gun violence, New York City Mayor Eric Adams thinks, you need to go after guns. His plan relies heavily on disrupting gun trafficking, seizing guns, and arresting people for illegal gun possession.

This strategy is unlikely to work. Worse, the focus on gun possession arrests, if it fails to distinguish between people who pose a real threat to public safety and people who carry guns for self-protection, will compound the injustice of systematically denying city dwellers their Second Amendment rights.

“It is estimated that as many as 2 million illegal guns were in circulation in New York City in 1993,” the Justice Department reports. Last year, the New York City Police Department seized about 6,000 guns; even at that unusually high rate, three decades of seizures would not have made much of a difference.

Given that reality, attempts to disrupt the supply of guns are not a very promising approach either. For crime guns in New York, the average time between initial sale and confiscation is nearly 12 years.

Philadelphia, like New York, has recently seen sharp increases in homicides. But law enforcement officials in that city are rightly skeptical that gun seizures or supply-side measures are an effective way to tackle the problem.

Between 1999 and 2020, according to a January report from a committee that includes local police officials and Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner, nearly 13 million guns were legally sold in Pennsylvania, an average of more than 1,600 a day. Meanwhile, Pennsylvania law enforcement agencies seized an average of 22 guns per day.

“With so many guns available,” Krasner says in the report, “a law enforcement strategy prioritizing seizing guns locally does little to reduce the supply of guns.” And if that strategy “entails increasing numbers of car and pedestrian stops,” he warns, it “has the potential to be counterproductive by alienating the very communities that it is designed to help.”

As in New York, the Philadelphia report notes, “most guns used and/or recovered are those purchased a long time ago, indicating that attempts to limit the future supply of guns now will not impact the current gun violence crisis.” The report’s analysis of 100 shootings confirms other research finding that criminals typically obtain guns through illegal transfers or theft, sources that would not be affected by new restrictions on sales, such as expanded background checks.

Data from Baltimore, another city where homicides have risen in recent years, likewise cast doubt on the effectiveness of Adams’ strategy. Based on 31 years of homicide and gun-seizure data, a Battleground Baltimore report published last week concludes that “seizing ‘illegal’ guns does not reduce violent crime, although gun seizures and gun possession arrests remain metrics frequently cited by police.”

Arresting people for illegal gun possession is not just ineffective; it is frequently unjust. Krasner says gun possession arrests “must be targeted to distinguish between drivers of gun violence who possess firearms illegally and otherwise law-abiding people who are not involved in gun violence.”

When “people do not feel protected by the police,” Krasner notes, they may “view the risk of being caught by police with an illegal gun as outweighed by the risk of being caught on the street without one.” Before he was elected, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg expressed a similar concern.

“We need to recognize that not every person charged with possessing an illegal gun in New York City is a driver of violence,” Bragg said on his campaign website. “My dad had an illegal gun not because he liked guns or because he was ‘dangerous’; he had a gun because of crime in the neighborhood.”

Bragg has since retreated from that stance, echoing Adams’ determination to vigorously prosecute people who carry guns without the government’s permission. But law enforcement agencies cannot redeem their failure to protect public safety by locking up people who respond to that failure by exercising the constitutional right to armed self-defense.

Yes, I also think such could happen (anything’s possible), but 1, We’re not Canada and 2, I think that if SloJoe, or anyone else for that matter, tried to enact the sort of ’emergency measures’ martial law as Trudeau did in Canada, for anything short of global thermonuclear war, what would result is exactly what TPTB are scared to death of.

BARR: A Canadian-Style ‘Emergency’ Could Easily Happen Here

On Feb. 14, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau gave Canadians a Valentine’s Day present, invoking the draconian “Emergencies Act” and suspending a wide range of civil liberties otherwise enjoyed by his countrymen.
Lest Americans conclude that our constitutional republic is safe from such facially dictatorial actions, they should know that under existing federal laws and the laws of every state, the president or a governor could take similar “emergency” action at any time they decide an “emergency” presents itself. COVID has demonstrated this is spades.
Regardless of whether a real emergency exists prior to a president or governor invoking such powers, and regardless of whether such declaration is for a statutorily limited time, consequential damage to the fabric of a free society results. At a minimum, declaring an “emergency” and suspending individual liberties serves as a “warning” to citizens that they had best be careful what they say and do in the future.
Trudeau’s actions in declaring a “national emergency” because of an irksome, but peaceful, trucker’s strike should cause Americans to pay far closer attention to “emergency powers” laws here at home. Doing so might force some of our countrymen to question the abject fear that has undergirded much of public policy in the United States since the terror attacks of 9/11 — made far worse by the manner in which governments at all levels have responded to the COVID pandemic in the past biennium.
From a practical standpoint, as we see in Canada, it matters little whether the declaration of the “emergency” fits clearly within the four corners of the emergency law that is invoked. What matters is the presence of circumstances in which an elected leader is able to stoke the flames of fear and anger in a sufficiently large segment of the electorate, so that the invocation of the law seems to constitute a reasonable response.
Once an “emergency” law is on the books of the sovereign entity, whether of a state or the federal government, all it takes is a “stroke of the pen, law of the land” (to quote former Bill Clinton adviser Paul Begala) to unleash the awesome powers at that sovereign’s disposal. Just watch the videos emerging from Ottawa to see how quickly the nightmare unfolds once the document is signed.
The actual form of the government declaring the emergency is of little consequence. Abuse of emergency powers can happen in a representative democracy such as ours just as easily as in a Canadian parliamentary system. Moreover, Republicans often are just as likely to play the “emergency powers” card as are their Democrat counterparts. It was, after all, Republican President Donald Trump who, in March 2020, invoked the powers of at least three federal “national emergency” laws to meet a perceived COVID emergency threat.
Granted, many emergency declarations by state and federal officials are focused toward and limited to natural disasters, such as hurricanes or floods, and used primarily to free up government assistance. However,  the actual powers nestled within those laws are frighteningly expansive. For example, a U.S. president arguably could, among other actions upon declaring a “national emergency “ (not expressly defined in federal laws), seize control of the internet pursuant to a 1930s era communications law or freeze individuals’ financial accounts in reliance on 1970s era laws.
At the state level, Second Amendment supporters will recall law enforcement officers in New Orleans seizing, at times forcibly, over 1,000 lawfully owned private firearms in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Even though subsequent legal action undertaken by the NRA and other gun-rights groups successfully challenged the seizures, many firearms never were returned to their owners.
Even today, with medical and scientific evidence clearly demonstrating that lingering COVID hazards are not dire and are manageable, many government agencies, including public schools in jurisdictions across the country, are refusing to hand back all the “emergency” powers they grabbed in early 2020.
Founding Father James Madison had it right when he wrote in Federalist 57 that placing the powers of all three branches of government in the hands of one entity (whether a prime minister, a governor or a president) is “the very definition of tyranny.”
Today, 234 years later, tyranny is still tyranny, even if it is only “temporary.”
Bob Barr represented Georgia’s Seventh District in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1995 to 2003. He served as the United States Attorney in Atlanta from 1986 to 1990 and was an official with the CIA in the 1970s. He now practices law in Atlanta, Georgia and serves as head of Liberty Guard.

When Boring People Turn Dangerous: Canada’s Insane Power Grab

On Christmas Eve, 2018, New York Times writer Andrew Ross Sorkin published, “How Banks Unwittingly Finance Mass Shootings.” Chronicling the credit card history of the man who killed 49 people at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida Sorkin noted Omar Mateen had not merely spent $26,532 on weapons and ammo in the eight months before the 2016 attack, but had wondered if his doing so had raised red flags:

Two days before Omar Mateen killed 49 people and wounded 53 more at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, he went on Google and typed “Credit card unusual spending…” His web browsing history chronicled his anxiety: “Credit card reports all three bureaus,” “FBI,” and “Why banks stop your purchases.”

He needn’t have worried. None of the banks, credit-card network operators or payment processors alerted law enforcement officials about the purchases he thought were so suspicious.

Sorkin’s piece ended up being an argument in favor of credit-card companies, payment processors, banks, and others working together to bring about a Minority Report-style panacea in which society’s dangerous folk could be cyber-identified and stopped before they commit horrific acts. At one point he quoted George Brauchler, the District Attorney who prosecuted the Century 16 movie shooter in Aurora Colorado, James Holmes:

“Do I wish someone from law enforcement had been able to go to his door and knock on his door and figure out a way to talk their way into it or to freak him out?” he said of Mr. Holmes. “Yeah, absolutely.”

I’ve never owned a gun and have been sympathetic to gun control ideas for as long as I can remember. Sorkin, however, was not talking about gun control. He was theorizing a quasi-privatized vision of social control that would bypass laws by merging surveillance capitalism and law enforcement.

In a rhetorical trick that’s since become common, he described how the failure of companies like Visa to block Mateen’s purchases made them “enablers of carnage.” Clearly, someone made the mistake of letting Sorkin see Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man, and Cliff Robertson now whispers from the beyond to him too. If those with power to act don’t stop wrongdoing, aren’t they just shirking their great responsibility?

By the way, this same Sorkin once suggested he wouldn’t stop at arresting Edward Snowden, but go after the reporter who broke his story, too. “I would arrest him and now I’d almost arrest Glenn Greenwald, the journalist… he wants to help him get to Ecuador,” he said, on CNBC’s Squawk Box. It’s amazing how selective one can be in one’s authoritarian leanings. After Goldman, Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein appeared to commit perjury in 2011 when he told the Senate, “We didn’t bet against our clients,” Sorkin rushed an apologia into print saying “Mr. Blankfein wasn’t lying,” failing to remind audiences that his Dealbook blog at the Times was sponsored by… Goldman, Sachs.

Sorkin’s Visa piece is suddenly relevant again, after fellow former finance reporter Chrystia Freeland — someone I’ve known since we were both expat journalists in Russia in the nineties — announced last week that her native Canada would be making Sorkin’s vision a reality. Freeland arouses strong feelings among old Russia hands. Before the Yeltsin era collapsed, she had consistent, remarkable access to gangster-oligarchs like Boris Berezovsky, who appeared in her Financial Times articles described as aw-shucks humans just doing their best to make sure “big capital” maintained its “necessary role” in Russia’s political life. “Berezovsky was one of several financiers who came together in a last-ditch attempt to keep the Communists out of the Kremlin” was typical Freeland fare in, say, 1998.

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Seattle PD having trouble hiring new officers

Politicians often can’t really afford to be far-sighted. Their constituents want immediate results, not the promise of better days down the road.

Yet officials can be far too short-sighted for their own good. Seattle, for example, was another of a handful of cities that cut funding to their police department not all that long ago.

Violent crime reached a 14-year high in Seattle last year as the city’s police department deals with a staffing shortage that is straining its ability to protect the community.

Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell said during his state of the city address this week that there is funding to hire 125 new officers this year and put more resources on the street.

“The depleted staffing we see today does not allow us to react to emergencies and crime with the response times our residents deserve,” Harrell said Tuesday.

“It does not allow us to staff the specialty teams we need for issues like domestic violence or DUI or financial crimes targeting the elderly,” he said. “It does not allow us to conduct the thorough investigations we expect to make sustainable change.”

Twenty officers left the force in January, 171 officers exited last year, and 186 officers separated from the force in 2020 amid the push to defund the police, according to KOMO. Only 137 officers have been hired in that time span.

In other words, Seattle treated officers like crap, demonized them, and then are absolutely and completely shocked that they can’t hire officers.

Yep. The whole thing is an absolute mystery. Not a soul could have seen this one coming, now could they?

I mean, other than every person with a functional brain, that is.

Look, cops are people. Not only does that mean some will be good and some will be bad, it also means they want to be appreciated for what they do and know they’re supported by their leadership.

Additionally, when you’ve demonized them in the press, you can’t really expect applicants to flock to fill the void. It’s just not going to work that way.

“You know, the media and the city have been treating police like crap. I just can’t wait to get me some of that!” said no one ever.

This is of Seattle’s own making, much like what’s going on in San Francisco right now. You can’t demonize the police then be surprised when things don’t go well in the aftermath.

I get that they shouldn’t be lionized and shielded from liability for their mistakes, but there’s a middle ground that most people can understand and respect between those two extremes. Most people want that middle ground, even.

Unfortunately, public officials are too short-sighted to see that appeasing a mob one day might come back to bite them in the backside in the not-so-distant future.

So, here we are. Seattle can’t get enough police officers and seems genuinely confused as to why. Frankly, were it not for good people who are going to get hurt, I’d just sit here and laugh at them.

How Joe Biden Created The Ukraine Crisis.

The liberal media won’t admit it, but the reason Russian forces are entering Ukraine can be explained in two words—Joe Biden. In fact, thanks to Biden, the U.S. is paying for the Russian invasion. His energy policy of reducing American production, stopping the almost completed keystone pipelines, no drilling on federal lands, new regulation regarding oil and gas drilling, and much more spiked the price of energy. For example, in 2020 the price of natural gas was $4.36/1,000 cubic feet, 2021 prices averaged $9/1,000 cubic feet.

Before Biden became President, the U.S. was energy independent and an exporter of energy. The lower American production and removing Trump’s restrictions on the Nordstream natural gas pipeline from Russia to Germany. His policies made other countries more reliant on Russian gas. Giving Putin leverage on other countries such as Germany and doubling the price. All that extra money went straight into Russia’s pockets. Those new profits helped Russia raise the funds to continue Putin’s dream of the greater Russia of the USSR.

On top of the higher prices and the increased dependence on Russian energy, the mishandling of the Afghan withdrawal and removing some of the Iran sanctions showed Biden to be a weak President. Putin is no idiot. All of Biden’s flawed policies and feeble foreign policy made the Russian president understand that if he was ever going to get Ukraine back in Russia’s clutches, this was it.

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Canada’s Hoax of a Democracy & Tyrant Trudeau : #TruckersForFreedom protesters treated like animals.

  • An Ottawa gelato shop owner who was revealed to have donated to the Freedom Convoy claims she has since been doxxed and had her information posted online

  • Tammy Giuliani, who owns the Stella Luna Café, received constant abusive phone calls calling her a Nazi, and a sign saying ‘Tammy supports terrorists’

  • Giuliani spoke of the backlash she’s faced since news came to light of her donation to the group of Canadian truckers protesting against COVID mandates

  • ‘You know, we have been called terrorists. For the first 60 to 36 hours, we were inundated with hatred, with threats of violence,’ she said

  • Giuliani is among roughly 92,000 supporters of the Freedom Convoy that had their information hacked after donating to the cause through GiveSendGo

  • The crowdfunding website, which describes itself as the ‘number one Christian crowdfunding site,’ had raised more than $9 million of the $16 million goal

  • The website Distributed Denial of Secrets said it was given donor information that included including names, email addresses, ZIP codes and IP addresses.