Back in 2017, Walter Russell Mead wrote: If Donald Trump “were the Manchurian candidate that people keep wanting to believe that he is, here are some of the things he’d be doing:
Limiting fracking as much as he possibly could
Blocking oil and gas pipelines
Opening negotiations for major nuclear arms reductions
Cutting U.S. military spending
Trying to tamp down tensions with Russia’s ally Iran.”
Trump, of course, did none of those things, and indeed the entire “Russian collusion” narrative that the press pushed for his entire presidency has been thoroughly exploded.
But someone is doing these things, right now. I’m talking, of course, about Joseph Robinette Biden Jr., who at his shambolic Wednesday press conference gave Russia the go-ahead to invade Ukraine, though it was quickly walked back by backwalker-in-chief Jen Psaki, his press secretary.
The last time something like that happened was in 1950, when Secretary of State Dean Acheson gave North Korea what appeared to be a green light to invade South Korea. The result was the Korean War. One hopes Biden’s blunder will not bear similar consequences.
BLUF:
As with any crime, and to be clear, willfully violating the Constitution is a criminal act. You have to look at motive, means and opportunity. Joe Biden has the motive to violate our rights and the means to do so. And although I believe it will happen sooner rather than later, unless fate or the 25th Amendment intervene, for the next three long years he’ll have opportunity for all the infringing he and Kamala desire.
The Biden-Harris administration is trapped inside a hostile media spotlight, a victim of their own incompetence. They’re like a cornered animal – desperate for a way out, but clearly willing to settle for anything that would shift the public focus off of their ever-growing list of failures.
They’re a consistent bunch, that much is true. They consistently lurch from one self-inflicted crisis to another, while we pay the price for their mistakes.
It began with Joe’s unconditional surrender of Afghanistan and was followed by the Build Back Better bust and the deadly fiasco on our Southern border. Added quickly to the mix were skyrocketing inflation, lots of empty shelves, the Supremes embarrassing denouncement of a clearly unconstitutional vaccine mandate, COVID tests becoming unobtainium while omicron surged.
All the while, the filibuster remaining as strong as it was a year ago thanks to good Sens. Manchin and Sinema, and the fact that Russia is making ready to launch an invasion of the Ukraine, which could trigger a third world war, in which Joe Biden (!) would be the defender of the free world.
The Biden-Harris administration tried to get the focus off of its near-daily faux pas by uploading a Jan. 6-themed “democracy is under threat” speech onto Joe’s teleprompter. The speech caught hold of the media’s news cycle for about a day, but the respite didn’t last long, despite hard-sell attempts by Pelosi et al.
Next, Joe tried pivoting to voting rights, but when voting rights advocates themselves boycotted his speech, his pivot lost its luster. The speech itself – “Do you want to be on the side of Abraham Lincoln or Jefferson Davis?” – was about as easy for most Americans to stomach as a fistful of ghost peppers. It was, in fact, more of a cry for help – another what-the-hell-is-wrong-with-Joe exemplar.
Now, what has me and some of my much smarter and more experienced friends losing sleep, is trying to fathom what Joe will try next. It is time, we fear, for Joe to pivot once again toward gun control, as he did right out of the box a year ago.
BLUF:
Is there any Islamic terrorist too monstrous and evil for even Biden to free? It’s still a long way to 2024 and there’s plenty of time for us to find out and for him to free them all.
After Obama’s obsession with freeing as many Islamic terrorists from Gitmo as possible, the ones who remained were the absolute worst of the worst. Now Biden is setting them loose too.
5 Islamic terrorists, Al Qaeda and allies, have been scheduled for release from custody.
They include Osama bin Laden bodyguards and murderous terrorists with blood on their hands.
Zuhail al-Sharabi had been allegedly trained in “how to function in Western cities” and “reading airline timetables” alongside 9/11 hijacker Nawaf al-Hazmi. He also met Khalid al-Mihdhar who, along with Al-Hazmi, was part of the crew that hijacked American Airlines 77 for the attack on the Pentagon.
Al-Sharabi had been part of an expanded version of the September 11 attacks that would have targeted American planes in Southeast Asia; either blowing them up in mid-air or hijacking them to crash into American military bases. That part of the operation was cancelled by Al Qaeda.
While the mainstream media portrays the Texas synagogue hostage-taker as a lone gunman with “mental health issues,” new reports reveal his deep ties to Islamist organizations and his leadership role in Muslim religious organizations.
On Saturday, 44-year-old British citizen Malik Faisal Akram was shot dead by a SWAT team after a 10-hour stand-off at a synagogue in Colleyville, Texas. Akram, who had traveled from Lancashire (UK), took four Jewish worshipers hostage, including the congregation’s rabbi.
“According to official sources based in London, Malik Akram was a member of the pan-Islamic Tablighi Jamaat and had travelled abroad for works related to the organisation,” the leading Indian newspaper Hindustan Times reported. Tablighi Jamaat, an Islamist group with roots in India and Pakistan, is banned in some Muslim countries, including Saudi Arabia.
“Akram also briefly served as the head of the Rondell street Islamic Centre in the London area, also known as Reza Masjid, where largely Muslims of Pakistani origin prayed,” the Indian newspaper revealed. “He is a known participant in demonstrations supporting pro-Palestine agenda and Guantanamo Bay prisoner rallies and approved of Jihad.”
Since the anti-police movement came to prominence after the killing of Michael Brown in 2014 and exploded after the death of George Floyd in 2020, many reasonable people have speculated whether the protests against police have led to a rise in violent crime.
City Journal editor Heather Mac Donald once dubbed this idea the Ferguson Effect, tying the protests to higher rates of violent crime which have undone many of the strides law enforcement has taken in the previous decades.
Two recent studies — one brand new and one from just over two years ago — demonstrate that the Ferguson Effect is a real phenomenon. They provide evidence that the police protests that followed officer-involved shootings led to a decline in proactivity from police, which in turn allowed violent crime to increase.
The newest study, published in the Feb. 2022 issue of the Journal of Public Economics, demonstrates that “high-profile killings reduced policing activities.”
When they specifically looked at statistics in St. Louis in the aftermath of Brown’s killing, researchers Cheng Cheng and Wei Long made a discovery that shouldn’t surprise many people, as Charles Fain Lehman reports in City Journal:
U.S.A. -(AmmoLand.com)- Bobby Timmons, director of the Alabama Sheriff’s Association (ASA), is so opposed to acknowledging your inherent right-to-carry, and wants so badly to protect the revenue stream from permit fees, that he openly opposes the Second Amendment and allies with anti-gun extremists. He said in a media interview that the ASA is working with a Bloomberg-backed, national anti-gun group in order to oppose the constitutional carry legislation currently in the Alabama Legislature.
“Timmons has claimed several times that the Second Amendment was not written to give citizens the right to carry a weapon in a concealed fashion, saying that the amendment was only written to allow citizens to have weapons to defend their homes.
Given his interpretation of the Second Amendment, 1819 News asked Timmons if ASA would support amending the Constitution to limit the Second Amendment to the possession of firearms only for the defense of a person’s home.
‘Oh yeah,’ Timmons said. ‘I’d be in favor of that. But, I mean, it would never get passed.’”
…
“When asked if permits were a significant revenue stream for Alabama Sheriffs, Timmons conceded this was true, but stressed that any such revenue would come from permits or taxes on the public.”
The brother of Malik Faisal Akram, the UK citizen who was shot and killed after an 11-hour hostage standoff at a synagogue in Texas, has claimed that his brother had a previous criminal record.
Gulbar Akram, the brother of terrorist Malik Faisal Akram, who took four hostages at the Congregation Beth Israel synagogue in Colleyville, Texas on Saturday, has revealed that his brother had a criminal record in comments to UK media, raising questions about how he was allowed into the United States……………..
Q Mr. President, do you know more about the motivations of the person?
THE PRESIDENT: No, I don’t. I — there’s speculation, but I’m not going to get into that. I will — I’m going to have a press conference on Wednesday, and I’ll be happy to go into detail of what I know in detail at that time.
Q Do you know why he targeted that specific synagogue, Mr. President?
THE PRESIDENT: Well, no, I don’t. We don’t have — I don’t think there is sufficient information to know about why he targeted that synagogue or why he insisted on the release of someone who’s been in prison for over 10 years, why he was engaged — why he was using antisemitic and anti-Israeli comments. I — we just don’t have enough facts.
Biden says the gunman’s motivation was a mystery, and then mentions that he was “using anti-Semitic and anti-Israeli comments.” Call me crazy, but I think the antisemitic and anti-Israeli comments might give a hint as to his motivation!
The hostage-taker called for the release of Aafia Siddiqui, a Pakistani neuroscientist who was found guilty in 2010 of attempting to kill U.S. military officers while in custody in Afghanistan in 2008, a law enforcement official told the Associated Press. Siddiqui was sentenced to 86 years in prison and is currently imprisoned at Carswell Air Force Base, near Fort Worth.
Why on earth did Matthew DeSarno, the special agent in charge of the FBI Dallas Field Office, initially say, “we do believe from our engagement with this subject that he was singularly focused on one issue, and it was not specifically related to the Jewish community. But we are continuing to work to find motive”? (Thankfully the FBI backtracked and issued an updated statement declaring, “this is a terrorism-related matter, in which the Jewish community was targeted, and is being investigated by the Joint Terrorism Task Force.”)
Who, or what, is served by contending that it is impossible to know the true motive of a gunman who attacks a synagogue and takes hostages and demands the release of a convicted al-Qaeda operative? Why is it so vertoben to say “jihadism” or “support for al-Qaeda and Islamist terror groups”? Why were authorities so reluctant to say antisemitism was a motive, as if the gunman had chosen to target a synagogue at random?
Is it that authorities are now so afraid of being accused of inciting anti-Muslim hate crimes that they are reluctant to acknowledge the obvious?
The quickest and easiest way to convince people that the threat of jihadism is much, much worse than they thought is for law-enforcement authorities to appear as though they’re hiding something or afraid to speak the truth.
It’s been more than six months since the city council in San Jose, California unanimously approved a measure requiring all legal gun owners in the city to carry liability insurance and pay the city a fee for the “privilege” of exercising their Second Amendment rights, but so far the city hasn’t taken any concrete steps to start enforcing the ordinance or even explain to gun owners how they’re expected to comply with the unconstitutional mandate.
Still, the city clearly hasn’t given up on the idea, with Mayor Sam Liccardo touting the plan in his recent State of the City address.
NBC News is reporting that Joe Biden is expected to sign an Executive Order on Police Reform since recent efforts in Congress have stalled. The Biden Junta hopes that this Executive Order (EO) will shore up faltering support among Black voters. Likely the policing EO will also give Biden an opportunity to rant against Donald Trump, always popular with the Left, insult half of America, shout for no reason and pound the little mini-desk in his fake Oval Office set.
The good news is that at least most of the Lefty Moonbats have stopped shouting “Defund the Police”. The bad news is that there has been absolutely no effort at bipartisan negotiations on real police reforms. A year and a half ago, South Carolina Senator Tim Scott wrote a not perfect bill with some police reforms. When the Democrats wouldn’t take up Scott’s bill, he said it was because the Dems cynically wanted the issue, a divisive racial issue. Read Deanna’s post here.
In 2020 and 2021, the Democrats have failed to move on the “George Floyd Justice in Policing Act”. Creepy Joe Bidenf has failed at absolutely everything he has touched (energy, supply chain, Afghanistan, to name a few) and he got a new dog last month. So what’s a failed President to do? Sign an Executive Order, that’s the ticket.
Not that I think Joe Biden remembers what his positions used to be, but he once was considered strong on law enforcement. From NPR July, 2021:
For years, Biden was a loyal ally to law enforcement, dating back to his days in the Senate when he crafted the 1994 crime bill with their direct help.
“When he was vice president, he would routinely have law enforcement at the residence,” said Chuck Wexler, executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum, a Washington, D.C.-based police think tank. “He told President Obama when he was vice president he wanted the police portfolio. So, he knows this issue.”
But while Biden may know the issue, the issue itself has changed with mounting calls for more accountability among police officers in the aftermath of George Floyd’s killing.
Now, Joe’s poll numbers are cratering and he desperately needs a win. Hence, the expected EO on Police Reform. As NBC reports:
President Joe Biden is planning to sign executive actions on police reform as early as this month, three people familiar with the plans said, as his administration seeks to unilaterally jumpstart an issue that’s a top priority for a key constituency.
The executive actions would follow Biden’s uphill battle to advance voting rights legislation, and could coincide with a similar effort by some Democratic lawmakers to revive the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, which stalled on Capitol Hill after failed attempts to craft a bipartisan measure.
The focus on police reforms is part of what appears to be a last-ditch effort by the Biden administration to take action on some of the president’s signature initiatives in the run-up to his State of the Union Address on March 1. In addition to voting rights and policing, the White House and congressional Democrats are considering ways to resurrect Biden’s Build Back Better package, either by paring back the legislation or separating it into two bills, according to three sources familiar with the discussions.
The Squad already threatened Biden about breaking up Build Back Better and they don’t play. If Biden doesn’t sign the police EO, he will have nothing but failures to talk about in his March 1 State of the Union Address. Sweet Baby Jesus, that’s going to be awful anyway.
But, wait, there is more:
Two people familiar with the discussions said the White House could roll out the executive actions to mark the beginning of Black History Month in February.
Biden also is expected to use the moment to criticize former President Donald Trump, the people familiar with the discussions said. The president was sharply critical of Trump during a Jan. 6 anniversary speech and again on Tuesday while giving remarks on voting rights.
Yes, the old racist Biden will get a twofer. Black History Month and swatting Trump.
The EO signing will be a combination of the fake office with the teeny desk and the odd yelling like in this video about fewer democracies:
The Police Reform EO will be like everything else Creepy Joe has done: a failure and likely extra Constitutional.
On Wednesday, Kittitas County released a statement claiming that the Washington State Department of Transportation refused help to clear snow from roadways because the county does not mandate the COVID vaccine for their employees…………
BREAKING: GOP House Oversight Committee releases never before seen emails showing Dr. Fauci may have concealed information about #COVID19 originating from the Wuhan lab & intentionally downplayed the lab leak theory. pic.twitter.com/gDSBii6bBP
Americans Aren’t Buying Biden’s Agenda According to a recent poll, only 22 percent of people believe that the current state of the economy is “good” or “excellent.”
The new year often feels like an opportunity to correct past mistakes—for example, improving one’s diet or quitting smoking. This explains why 25 percent of Americans, and 40 percent of those under 30, make New Year’s resolutions. Based on the latest poll from The Economist and YouGov, the Biden administration should adopt a New Year’s resolution too. In particular, it should reconsider its domestic policy agenda. Americans aren’t buying it.
YouGov is an influential international research data and analytics group headquartered in London. Pollsters asked 1,500 American adults about the state of the economy, the COVID-19 pandemic, inflation and more. Their findings show that people aren’t particularly happy right now.
When asked whether the country is headed in the right direction, only 23 percent of respondents said yes, while 62 percent think we’re on the wrong track. Black Americans seem more content than most, with 38 percent answering yes, as opposed to only 22 percent of Hispanics. There is also a small gender disparity in these opinions: 33 percent of white male college grads believe the country is heading in the right direction, while only 22 percent of white female college grads have the same optimistic view. Meanwhile, only 17 percent of white, non-college grads of all genders are happy with the country’s current direction.
Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) has been the one to pretty much deliver the bad news to Democrats concerning their plan to nuke the filibuster. He’s already seen as public enemy number one on Build Back Better after he went on national television to announce he’s killing it because it’s an expensive communist venture. It’s a 50-50 Senate. I don’t get what Chuck is trying to do here. Is it to ward off a potential primary challenge from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez? Maybe—but she’ll be coming after you no matter what, Chuck. That’s her character. Period.
You could pass Build Back Better-plus, and she would still primary you if that was her plan. Yet, Sen. Krysten Sinema is the other party in this ongoing drama among Senate Democrats. They can’t afford to lose one vote. They always end up losing two—these two specifically. And like Manchin, Sinema isn’t keen at all about nuking the filibuster (via Axios):
Voting rights: Schumer says the Senate will vote on a package of Senate rules changes by Jan. 17 — less than two weeks away.
While Manchin said he’s still talking with his colleagues, he isn’t on board with a filibuster carve-out for voting rights — calling it “a heavy lift” — and isn’t willing to go nuclear and eliminate the filibuster altogether.
“Once you change a rule, or you have a carve-out … you eat the whole turkey,” the senator told a COVID-thinned group of pool reporters on Tuesday.
He added that he would want any reform of Senate rules to have GOP buy-in — a long-shot to near impossible ask.
Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.), also a key holdout to major filibuster reform, reiterated during the Democratic lunch she will not support any effort to get rid of the 60-vote threshold, according to two sources familiar with the call.
Sinema has been having one-on-one talks with her colleagues for weeks, one of the sources said.
Schumer was hosting a meeting Tuesday evening with Manchin and the other seven Senate Democrats who helped craft the Freedom to Vote Act.
The majority leader said earlier in the day: “Manchin has said all along he wants to work with Republicans, and we’ve all been very patient … but I believe he knows we won’t get any Republican cooperation.”
Well, even if Manchin signs onto this plan, and I don’t think he will, then Democrats still fail thanks to Sinema. This isn’t going anywhere. It’s the illusion of progress. It’s the long con of showing the television people that Congress is working when they’re not. We’re paying these people over six figures to do nothing. Yet, we’re also assuming that the other 48 Democratic senators are in lockstep behind this.
The media have been making a big deal over a Washington Post/University of Maryland poll which finds that 34 percent of Americans believe violence can be justified against the government. It’s a poll meant to feed the hysteria over the Capitol Hill riot and embarrass Republicans into supporting “voting rights” bills and so on.
Despite the framing of most reaction stories, the question wasn’t about January 6. It was: “Do you think it is ever justified for citizens to take violent action against the government, or is it never justified?”
Ever? Of course it is. It’s a failure of our civic education that 100 percent of respondents didn’t answer yes. The ability to resist a tyrannical government is a foundational American idea. It was the justification for the founding revolution. It, not hunting or skeet shooting, is the core reason for existence of the Second Amendment — which, Joseph Story, an associate Supreme Court justice, said best, “offers a strong moral check against the usurpation and arbitrary power of rulers.”
Incidentally, the participants were asked to provide instances when violence against the state would be justified, and all of them are perfectly reasonable:
Government violates or takes away rights or freedoms/Oppresses people – 22 percent
Government no longer a democracy/ Becomes a dictatorship/Coup/ Military takes over – 15 percent
Government violates constitution — 13 percent
Government abuses power/Tyranny — 12 percent
Government is violent against citizens/Safety at risk – 11 percent
Contemporary liberals often view this form of rhetoric as an endorsement of treason because they view our rights as an arbitrary and malleable cluster of edicts handed down by the government. What sneering contemporary critics fail to comprehend is that the founding generation believed that those who would undermine the universal and inalienable liberties of the people laid out in the Constitution were traitors.
Now, I don’t believe there was any justification for the rioting on January 6. But if the Post was interested in extracting even marginally useful information, it would have asked if people thought there was a justification for January 6 violence, rather than a separate question about the veracity of the 2020 election followed by a broad question on violent resistance. Though a specific question almost certainly wouldn’t have brought back the intended result.
Q:What is the ‘Rule of Law’ in Hong Kong?
A: There isn’t any.
Oh great, a justice system that have not sentence two guys for 7 months after convictions, & won’t, until they testify against Jimmy Lai,, and for that matter,,,me. — https://t.co/W0nXaJMeTd
Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot might not have shouted “We’re Number One!” while pumping her fist as the clock struck midnight last night. However under her leadership, the Windy City easily clinched the top spot for most homicides of any American city. In fact, it wasn’t even close.
Hey Jackass had the tentative numbers this morning: 842 homicides committed in Chicago city limits. That number reflects a 6% higher body count than 2020. The tally still remains preliminary as additional victims could still surface or wounded parties may succumb to their injuries.
Sadly, Hey Jackass writes about how the numbers oftentimes slowly continue to rise even after the clock strikes midnight.
With mere hours left in this ****show of a year, we wanted to post a quick note to illustrate how the year end totals are accounted for and how best to compare this year to years past.
Past year end totals reflected on this site account for resolved death investigations, found bodies and late passings that can and will occur for many years after the clock strikes midnight on Jan 1st. We apply those incidents towards the time of occurrence, not date of death. Other agencies, such as the CPD, choose to add those resolved death investigations, found bodies and late passings to the year in which the death was recorded.
For example, when the clock struck midnight on January 1st, 2021, the final totals for 2020 were:
Shot & Killed: 719
Shot & Wounded: 3,455
Total Shot: 4,174
Total Homicides: 792
In the nearly 365 lead-filled days since, the totals have shifted as additional homicides have been recorded:
Shot & Killed: 723 (+4)
Shot & Wounded: 3,451 (-4)
Total Shot: 4,174 (0)
Total Homicides: 797 (+5)
2016 showed a similar pattern and eventually broke the 800 barrier unlike this year which accomplished that 90s feat weeks ago. On January 1st 2017, the final totals for 2016 were:
Shot & Killed: 713
Shot & Wounded: 3,665
Total Shot: 4,378
Total Homicides: 795
Over the subsequent years, those totals have been slowly adjusted to show:
Shot & Killed: 722 (+9)
Shot & Wounded: 3,658 (-7)
Total Shot: 4,380 (+2)
Total Homicides: 808 (+13)
Wherever 2021 ends up on January 1st, it will be the most violent year so far this century with a homicide tally that rivals the 1990s and will only increase over the coming years.
3750 additional victims were “merely” shot and wounded, up 9% year over year from a very bloody 2020’s tally.
Never fear, though. Mayor Lightfoot is working hard at solving her city’s crisis of violent crime by producing “Happy Kwanzaa” videos and dressing up as a clown to show she’s doing something about the Chinese flu.
In the popular NBC television series Chicago PD, Sgt. Hank Voight’s intrepid intelligence unit solves virtually every homicide thrown at them. Meanwhile, here in the real world, thanks to the “no snitch” culture so prevalent among Windy City residents, the CPD has identified assailants in only 90 of the city’s 842 homicides, or about 10.6% of cases as of December 1st.
As we’ve reported before, police say about one-third of known murder assailants were out on affordable bail from previous serious felony arrests.
Those 842 victims represent more homicides than 47 entire states reported in 2019. Someone catches a bullet in Chicago just under once every two hours. Think about that for a moment.
When I made my last career move to the Newport News areas back in late ’09, actual construction on the Ford was just beginning.
12+ years later………….
The Navy’s costliest warship finally has all the elevators needed to lift bombs from below its deck so it can deploy on its first operational patrol — more than four and a half years after delivery.
The service has announced that the 11th and final Advanced Weapons Elevator is in place on the $13.3 billion USS Gerald R. Ford and the aircraft carrier is ready for training and operations.
“This is a significant milestone for the Navy, ship and her crew,” Rear Admiral James Downey, the Navy’s program executive officer for aircraft carriers, said in a statement. “We now have the entire system to operate and train with.” He said the service and the prime contractor, Huntington Ingalls Industries Inc., used “hundreds of craftsmen, technicians and engineers, working around the clock –through multiple underway and holiday periods — to get these advanced systems on line and operational.”
The Navy took delivery of the first in the Ford class of carriers in May 2017, praising the “newest, most capable, most advanced warship” and saying it was “expected to be operational in 2020.” The service didn’t disclose that none of the 11 elevators were operational, much less installed, until Bloomberg News reported the problem in November 2018.
“I recognize the extraordinary effort that it has taken to finish all 11 of these elevators, but this effort should not have been necessary,” Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma, the top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee and the most vocal congressional critic of the Navy on the issue, said in a statement.
The carrier ultimately was delivered “six years late and $2.8 billion over budget,” Inhofe said.
The delay to fix the elevators and resolve other issues “has lengthened a period during which the Navy is attempting to maintain policy maker-desired levels of carrier forward deployments with its 10 other carriers,” the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service said in a report this month.
Inhofe put it more bluntly. He said the delay has forced other ships and crews to deploy “longer and more often,” as well as causing gaps in the Navy’s global “presence when no carrier could deploy, at a time when naval presence and capability could not be more critical for our national security.”
Perhaps the only positive outcome of the weapons elevator delays is “development of what the Navy and the shipyard should have had from the very beginning — a Ford-class plan for the development, building, installation and operational training” that’s now needed to avoid such mistakes on the second ship in the four-vessel class, the USS John F. Kennedy, said Mike Fabey, author of “Heavy Metal: The Hard Days and Nights of the Shipyard Workers Who Build America’s Supercarriers.”
In Naples, Italy, the mayor cited COVID to announce a ban on fireworks for a second straight New Year’s Eve. This was the response from citizens.pic.twitter.com/duu7Jkb7yK
