Category: Goobermint

It’s a Potemkin office for a Potemkin president

Why Did Joe Biden Build His Hollywood Oval Office Set?
An Answer Emerges.

President Joe Biden participates in a virtual meeting of the Major Economies Forum on Energy and Climate on Friday, September 17, 2021, in the South Court Auditorium of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building at the White House. (Official White House Photo by Erin Scott) From Flickr

One year ago, Reuters and all the rest of the mainstreams released their minion fact-checkers to debunk the notion that Joe Biden had a fake Oval Office from which he was doing the American people’s business.

Stories and speculations of a fake movie set Oval Office were declared to be fake news.

The bright lights at Snopes “debunked” the existence of a fake Oval Office where Joe worked, with this headline: “Is This Biden on a Movie Set Resembling the Oval Office? The reality won’t stop it from happening.” The “fact-checkers” found that a photo claiming Joe was sitting in a fake office was “miscaptioned.”

Politifact: “NEW: A conspiracy theory circulating online says Joe Biden’s inauguration was fake, and that his Oval Office is really a movie set. Nope.” Combining claims, changing facts, and then fact-checking what people don’t say is Democrat outfit’s favorite trick to find something wrong and rewrite a narrative, but click on the story and find they instead checked “claims that the inauguration was fake or that Joe Biden is not the real president.”

NEW: A conspiracy theory circulating online says Joe Biden’s inauguration was fake, and that his Oval Office is really a movie set. Nope. https://t.co/urJ8I3RSxk

— PolitiFact (@PolitiFact) January 29, 2021

Reuters was aghast that anyone would dare say their candidate built a Potemkin Oval Office, calling the claim of a “fake White House set” “misleading.”

But the fake fact-checkers were wrong. All wrong.

In Sept. 2021, when Joe got his COVID booster in his Potemkin White House office, the Left’s fake fact-checkers pretended their previous protestations, guffaws, and “fact checks” to the contrary were no big deal. Nothing to see here.

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Florida Doctor: Families Sneak Ivermectin to Loved Ones in Hospitals With COVID-19, See Improvement

A Florida doctor says families of loved ones hospitalized with COVID-19 are resorting to desperate measures when approved treatments have failed.

And when it’s not too late, some have seen tremendous success by sneaking medications prohibited by hospitals to patients, says Eduardo Balbona, an independent internist in Jacksonville.

He’s helped dozens of seriously ill patients recover using ivermectin and other drugs and supplements not officially approved in the treatment of COVID-19, he says.

Hospitals receive payments from the federal government for treating patients with COVID-19. But those payments are tied to their use of approved treatments only, as outlined in the CARES Act. When there’s nothing left to try under those protocols, families naturally research alternatives,  Balbona says, often learning about treatments touted by independent physicians around the country.

Hoping to try anything that might work, families around the country have filed lawsuits asking judges to intervene.

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The old line from a James Bond movie is;
Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action
Paul will affirm that I don’t believe in ‘coincidence’, and I allow for ‘happenstance’ only in very limited instances.
From that, take what you will about what is termed ‘mistakes’ here.

Florida case shows inherent flaw with red flag laws

Red flag laws are a particularly onerous piece of gun control legislation. While a number of states have such laws on the books, all of them have serious problems. Part of that is because they start from a presumption of guilt and then you have to essentially prove your innocence.

But there tend to be layers to problems, and red flag laws aren’t uniquely devoid of those, apparently.

Take this case from Florida recently highlighted by USA Carry:

A case in point. The Lakeland, FL police department petitioned for a Red Flag Risk Protection Order through the Florida Statute 790.401(3)(a) and (b), in May 2020. Under the Order, a man I will call “E.P.” (identity protected because it is an active case) was taken into custody and his firearms and ammunition were seized.

His Hearing on the Order was scheduled for June 12, 2020 “in the court facility located at 255 N. Broadway Ave., Bartow, FL.” This date and time were confirmed on June 3, 2020, by the police department’s attorney, and again in a court notice issued before June 12. So, E.P. arrived at the appointed date and place at 1:30 pm and waited until 3:00 pm. He testified that “he was not let into the courtroom, nor was he aware that the Hearing would take place virtually or how to attend.” The Hearing was held at a remote video conferencing event, without notice of this change to E.P.

At that hearing, the court determined, incorrectly, that E.P. had “elected not to attend” and entered a Red Flag Protection Order against him. He was prohibited from having custody or control of, or purchasing, possessing, receiving, or attempting to purchase or receive, a firearm or ammunition for up to a year, and was required to surrender any and all guns or ammo not already in the custody of the police to law enforcement. E.P. appealed the Order on the basis that it was made without giving him the chance to appear or a notice that the proceedings would take place by means other than those designated in court documents. This non-legal layman understands that a Notice of Hearing must be issued by the court, received, and followed by involved parties about the specifics given.

From May of 2020, the Order was in effect, and not until August 13, 2021, was the Order invalidated. The Appellate Court ruled that E.P.’s Due Process rights were violated by the failure to notify him that the Final Hearing would take place virtually instead of in the court facility listed in the Order. His right to be heard was deprived and the Order was reversed in his favor. I also recognize that his Second Amendment rights were violated.

Note that E.P. spent much time and money to correct the mistakes made by the government court system and to restore his inalienable rights to his guns, ammo, and property… his Second Amendment and Due Process Rights.

Now, as the above-linked piece points out, for poorer people, this simply isn’t an option. E.P. was in a position to seek legal assistance, but a lot of people really just can’t do so. That means they’re stripped of their Second Amendment rights, sometimes because of a bureaucratic screw-up and not because they represent an actual danger to anyone.

E.P. did what he was supposed to, but the state didn’t. Yet because of their mistakes, he was ordered to surrender any and all firearms he might still possess, was denied the ability to even shoot a gun lawfully, and had to spend time and treasure fixing the issue.

Nothing about that is right and there are no repercussions for those who make such mistakes.

If this were the only issue with red flag laws, that would be enough, but it’s not. Red flag laws can be used by those with a grudge against the person, and we’ve seen attempts to do just that. How many have we not heard about?

This is especially troubling since red flag laws aren’t even needed. Those who represent a risk to themselves or others can be held for psychological evaluation for up to 72 hours as it is. Those planning a mass shooting can be arrested under existing laws as well.

There’s really no reason for red flag laws, and yet, here we are.

When you’re a demoncrap and still losing the WaPost…..

Joe Bye-Done: WaPo’s Article About Biden’s Struggles Sure Does Drive a Dagger Into His Presidency

Joe Biden’s presidency is one year old—and it’s a total nightmare. The nation is still divided. Omicron is sweeping the nation. Inflation is through the roof. The grocery store has bare shelves. The supply chain crisis is ongoing. The border crisis is out of control. The Afghanistan withdrawal was a nightmare. We might see another embassy evacuation in Ukraine. The jobs reports are trash. It’s not going well. The only person who thinks all is well is…Joe Biden. That doesn’t account for much since he’s dementia-ridden. He’s old. He’s slow. He’s stupid. Three things the president of the United States cannot be in this world. The scent of weakness is present for all to see, which is why Russia and China are flexing big league right now. As Russia prepares for a possible invasion of Ukraine, China is probably smiling looking at the Taiwan Strait.

What’s become clear is that one year into his presidency, Biden can’t do the job. That’s what jumps out in this Washington Post piece about Biden’s “slide” in the polls. The other thing that comes to mind is this question: how did this get published? It’s quite a searing piece, with even members of his own party slamming his performance. Even swing voters polled by Democratic pollsters see a bad word association brewing when it comes to Joe Biden, ones that are election killers. It’s why many Democrats probably cringed when Joe declared he was going to be active on the 2022 campaign trail for the midterms. Biden’s approvals are circling the drain, with numbers ranging from the 30s and 40s. He’s a cancer to his party, with its more centrist members probably hoping he just forgets where they are on the district map. Congressional Democratic leaders told their members to gamble on Build Back Better, with moderates voting for the lefty action items only to have Joe Manchin torpedo the bill. Now, their names are attached to this Bolshevik package. For progressives, Biden promised he could sway Manchin. That failed miserably. It was a disastrous push toward the end of the holiday season that pretty much captured the Biden administration as one of being incompetent and being outright blind to the political realities at hand. You can’t go hard left with a 50-50 Senate and a four-seat majority in the House.

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BLUF:
This is the true meaning of “Our Democracy”™: an oligarchy in fact but with the external trappings of democracy to provide rhetorical legitimacy. We stand at a crossroads. We as citizens will either reclaim the mantle of republican self-government or, by meekly submitting to the rule of our oligarchic elites, bid a sad farewell to the American commonwealth.

‘Our Democracy™’: Oligarchy With Democratic Trappings

Over the past few months, it has become common for Democrats and progressives to invoke “Our Democracy”™ whenever they criticize efforts to ensure election integrity or condemn the perpetrators of the January 6 “insurgency.” On one level, the phrase is just another annoying example of debasing the language by the very people who have been working overtime to rewrite the Constitution.

But on another level, the phrase suggests something even more sinister: that those who invoke it literally mean “their” democracy, i.e. a regime that belongs to them, validated by the votes of the “right people” who approve of their so-called progressive enterprise. Anyone who doesn’t approve is, by definition, an insurgent, an enemy of the state. Any attempt to limit their power—e.g., by insisting on election integrity—is therefore “anti-democratic.”

I am only one of a number of writers who have argued that the United States has devolved from a republic or commonwealth to an oligarchy. Lest we succumb to the error of progressives and simply use a word to mean something we don’t like, it is important to understand the nature and background of oligarchy. It is not just any “ruling class” but an elite and ruling class of a particular sort. In this regard, it helps to examine the taxonomy of regimes outlined by the first political scientists, Plato and Aristotle.

These writers identified three types of rule: the one; the few; and the many. Each form had a good and bad version, the former based on rule for the benefit of the entire polity and the latter rule on behalf of the ruler or ruling class alone. Thus, the good form of rule by the one was kingship; the bad form tyranny. The good form of rule by the few was aristocracy; the bad form oligarchy or plutocracy. And the good form of rule by the many was politeia or a balanced constitution, which the Romans translated as res publica and which is most properly rendered as commonwealth in English; the bad form was pure democracy or ochlocracy: that is, mob rule.

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It’d like what was said about education. If a foreign nation was forcing us to doing this, it would be seen as an act of war.

BLUF:
And Biden? His woke national-security and foreign-policy B-team seem more eager to subsidize electric cars for the rich than to provide cheap oil and gas to the American middle class or to deter America’s adversaries.

Team Biden seeks to stop yet another pipeline even as gas prices rise.

If you needed any more proof that the anti-American, pro-Russia, pro-Iran, pro-China, anti-Israel wing of the Democrat Party has captured the White House flag, last week we learned Team Biden plans to put the kibosh on a natural-gas pipeline with US involvement that would reduce Europe’s dependence on Russian energy.

The Eastern Mediterranean Gas Pipeline, which would carry Israeli and Cypriot natural gas, is yet another energy resource serving America’s strategic interests that the Biden White House wants gone. EastMed joins a long list that started on Day One with the Keystone XL pipeline, a ban on oil and gas leases on public lands and the October federal court ruling that ended drilling in the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska.

All these actions, demanded by “climate change” alarmists, have reversed America’s long-sought energy independence won at great political cost by President Donald Trump.

They have not only made us dependent once again on foreign oil; they have sent oil prices skyrocketing, enriching America’s adversaries in Russia and Iran.

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Biden acts much more like Putin’s puppet than Trump ever did.

Thanks Biden! Guess Who We’re Buying More Oil From Now?

One of the first things Joe Biden did upon taking office was kill the Keystone XL pipeline. For good measure, he also aggressively sought to limit new drilling permits, and despite some legal setbacks, Biden managed to reverse Trump’s progress in making the United States energy independent.

Under Trump, the United States became a net exporter of energy for the first time in decades. Now under Biden, we’re importing more oil again, and one of the key beneficiaries of our increasing dependence on foreign oil is Russia.

“U.S. oil imports from Saudi Arabia and Russia have increased, and gasoline prices are higher than they have been in the last five years,” reports Energy Now.

And much of that is because Biden killed the Keystone XL pipeline.

“[Keystone XL] was a missed opportunity to increase North American energy security, lower costs for American consumers and reduce dependence on foreign energy sources that are hostile to U.S. interests,” Frank Macchiarola, senior vice-president with the American Petroleum Institute, told Energy Now. “The Keystone XL pipeline would have provided good-paying union jobs to American workers while delivering affordable, reliable energy to American consumers from a close U.S. ally.”

According to government statistics, energy imports from Saudi Arabia more than doubled from Dec. 2020 to Oct. 2021. And our imports from Russia more than tripled from Feb. 2019 through Sept. 2021.

While I’m sure the oil sheiks in Saudi Arabia and Vladimir Putin are thrilled to be making money selling oil and petroleum to the United States, it’s hard to imagine why any American president would have intentionally enriched them at the expense of our own prosperity and our national security.

“Safe streets worker” (replacing police) gunned down in Baltimore.

During the course of the madness that promoted “defunding” or abolishing the police, there was an emphasis placed on replacing police in some circumstances with “community safety” workers who would supposedly act as unarmed “violence interrupters” and reduce the number of lethal use of force incidents by police officers. In Baltimore, Maryland’s violent gang territories, an existing organization known as the “Safe Streets Program” gained a lot of attention and municipal support in this effort. The goal of the program is to deploy former gang members (or “former”) into areas controlled by the gangs to negotiate nonviolent resolutions to conflicts. Unfortunately, as we’ve seen with other proposed “violence interruption” programs in major cities, sending someone with a clipboard out to resolve a beef between gang members isn’t always effective. That was sadly this case this week when one of Baltimore’s Safe Streets workers was shot to death along with several other people on the East side of Charm City. (Baltimore Sun)

A quadruple shooting in East Baltimore on Wednesday night left three people dead, including a Safe Streets worker, and one person injured, police said. Three others were injured in separate shootings in West and South Baltimore.

At about 7:25 p.m., Eastern District patrol officers responded to a ShotSpotter alert in the 2400 block of E. Monument St. Once there, officers located four men suffering from apparent gunshot wounds.

A 28-year-old man was pronounced dead on the scene. Medics transported three other victims to area hospitals, where a 24-year-old man and another man were also pronounced dead.

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‘enemies, foreign and domestic‘

And this is called a ‘Freudian slip’ by one of them

BLUF:
What they want for America is rigged phony Chavista-style elections.  Jeffries just let the cat out of the bag.

Hakeem Jeffries lets the cat out of the bag about Dems’ plan for America

Sometimes, the truth gets out.

That seems to be the case with Joe Biden’s “Freedom to Vote” bill, which his fellow Democrats are shilling. Problem: One of them said too much.

Jeffries is the fifth most powerful Democrat in the House and considered the heir apparent to jurassic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.  He’s a power.

His self-revision in that video, that he was talking about “César” Chávez, is total nonsense.  César Chávez was a famous labor organizer who had little to do with voting rights.  He had a job in his youth registering voters, but that’s a nothingburger compared to his claim to fame with organizing a large union and advocating for rural workers’ rights.  Hugo Chávez, by contrast, is the late, unlamented Venezuelan dictator who pioneered rigged elections under gaslighting claims, repeated on the American left, of expanding democracy for all.  Hugo was able to seize absolute power by corrupting Venezuela’s election process, starting in 2004, when he knew he was an unpopular political goner and subject to a recall referendum under his own revised constitution.

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Biden acts much more like Putin’s puppet than Trump ever did.

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.

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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 Question On Gun Owners’ Minds: What Will Joe Biden’s Next Pivot Be?

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.

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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.

Biden Frees Alternate 9/11 Hijacker and Military Base Truck Bomb Plotter

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.

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Another ‘Known Wolf’…cue the meme.

Texas Synagogue Hostage-Taker was Under Investigation by British MI5, Supported Pro-Palestinian and Jihadi Causes.

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.”

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WHO: “No Evidence At All” That Healthy Kids Needs ‘Booster’ Jabs

Studies Show That Anti-Police Protests Have Led to Rise in Violent Crime.

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:

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Alabama – ASA and Bloomberg Fight Against Constitutional Carry

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.

From the 1819 News article:

“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.”

Brother of Texas Synagogue Terrorist Reveals Akram Had a Criminal Record, Questions Why He Was Given a Visa

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……………..

Why Were Authorities So Evasive About the Synagogue Gunman’s Motive?

Actual statements from our president, midday Sunday:

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.

What happened to San Jose’s insurance mandate for gun owners?

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.

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