Month: December 2019

Person comes home to burglary, shoots suspect

MACHESNEY PARK (WREX) — Winnebago County Sheriff’s Deputies say they’re investigating a burglary and shooting in the 2000 block of Anjali Way.

Deputies say, shortly before 5:30 p.m. Thursday, a person came home to a burglar attempting to break into his or her home and tried to stop the burglary.

Deputies say a struggle then happened between the two, and the suspect was shot in the face.

The suspect then ran from the scene, but later showed up at a local hospital with a gunshot wound, according to the sheriff’s department.

Deputies say the person who lived at the home stayed on scene, they are still investigating. Deputies could not say if the alleged burglar was shot with his own gun, or if the person who lived there used a concealed carry firearm.

Woman fatally shoots burglar in southeast Las Vegas Valley

LAS VEGAS (FOX5) — A woman inside of her house fired one fatal shot at an attempted burglar in the southeast valley on Saturday afternoon, police said.

The woman was home alone about 11:15 a.m. on the 7000 block of Knoll View Drive, near Spencer Street and Warm Springs Road, when she heard glass shatter.

Moments before, she had heard a knock on the door and ignored it, police said.

Las Vegas homicide Lt. Ray Spencer said a 30-year-old man broke through the woman’s sliding glass back door and went into her home. The woman went to her bedroom to get her handgun when the suspect confronted her, Spencer said.

The woman told police the man lunged toward her and she shot him once. He then ran out of the house through the broken door and drove off in a Kia.

Spencer said the woman then called 9-1-1 to report the incident. A nearby patrol officer found the suspect in his Kia about a half-mile away at the intersection of Warm Springs and Spencer Street after having hit a few other cars.

African Americans Are Taking Back Jobs Stolen By Illegal Aliens

African Americans are taking back jobs that were stolen from them by illegal immigrants. In August, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers swept up 680 illegal immigrants during raids on seven food processing plants in Mississippi. Without the cheap labor, the companies were forced to hire Americans to do the work.

(The New York Times explains)

By the end of the 1960s, black workers predominated on the lines.

It was an important win for African-Americans looking for an alternative to housework in wealthy white homes, or for those who had seen fieldwork dry up in an increasingly mechanized agricultural sector.

“The chicken plant,” Dr. Stuesse [an associate professor of anthropology at the University of North Carolina] quoted a civil rights veteran saying, “replaced the cotton field.”

But as American chicken consumption boomed in the 1980s, manufacturers went in search of “cheaper and more exploitable workers,” Dr. Stuesse wrote, chiefly Latin American immigrants.

At the time, the Koch plant in Morton was owned by a local company, B.C. Rogers Poultry, which organized efforts to recruit Hispanics from the Texas border as early as 1977. Soon, the company was operating a sizable effort it called “The Hispanic Project,” bringing in thousands of workers and housing them in trailers.

And we were told Americans just wouldn’t do the jobs illegal aliens are doing.

 

Yellowstone’s Steamboat Geyser breaks eruption record, stuns scientists

Ah, just in case the scientists forgot. The Yellowstone Caldera is one of the largest volcanoes on the North American continent. Not that anyone can do anything about it, if it erupts again. Just me, but it appears that something’s “heating up” underneath.

If you’re headed to Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming, there’s a good chance that visiting the park’s iconic geysers will be near the top of your to-do list. In 2019, tourists were treated to plenty of activity from the Steamboat Geyser, which is the tallest currently-active geyser on the planet.

That’s great news for parkgoers and perhaps even for the park itself, but with over 45 eruptions in 2019, the geyser’s highly active streak is leaving scientists scratching their heads. The geyser erupted a whopping 32 times in 2018 before ramping up even further this year.

The most famous geyser at Yellowstone, and perhaps the world, is Old Faithful. Old Faithful is famous for its incredibly predictable schedule of eruptions, which makes it perfect for visits from tourists. Steamboat is different, often going quiet for long stretches before eventually roaring back to life.

As NPR reports, Steamboat Geyser didn’t erupt at all in 2015, 2016, or 2017. Park visitors weren’t treated to an eruption for three full years. 2018 was different, and 2019 has seen even more activity from the geyser. But why? Researchers can only guess.

“It’s such a big geyser. And the bigger something is, the easier it is to study,” Michael Manga of the University of California, Berkeley, told NPR. “But it also captures people’s imagination. When it got active again there was lots of press and it reminded people that there are fundamental things about the Earth we don’t understand.”

Of course, you can’t mention Yellowstone’s geysers without also mentioning the suspected supervolcano resting beneath the park. Researchers believe that a massive volcano erupted in Yellowstone around 631,000 years ago. Scientists believe it will eventually erupt again, though estimates of when that might occur often conflict.

How liberals are allowing anti-Semitism to flourish.

Anti-Semitic attacks continue to shake our city and state. Last week, eight attacks — including four in just in 48 hours — sent a familiar shockwave rippling through the Jewish community. Then Saturday came the horrific stabbing in Monsey, New York. The poison of Jew-hatred is spreading.

Like many of you, I’m thinking, “Not this subject again.” How many columns can be devoted to it? I’ve read them. I’ve written them. It’s exhausting, and it’s dreary. Jews are being beaten up, anti-Semitism flows some years and ebbs in others. So what?

But it matters — gravely.

Mayor de Blasio released his usual by-the-numbers statement. “Hate doesn’t have a home in our city,” he tweeted. But hate does have a home here, and it has found it while Hizzoner has mostly looked away.

The mayor added: “In light of recent anti-Semitic attacks, the NYPD will increase their presence in Borough Park, Crown Heights and Williamsburg.” But the recent attacks have spread to Midtown Manhattan and Gravesend, Brooklyn. The problem has gotten worse while inaction paralyzed the mayor.

I first wrote about the uptick in May. The reason the city’s liberal political class was ignoring it, I ­argued, is that the criminals don’t fit their picture of Evil Bigots. They aren’t, for the most part, MAGA-hat wearing white guys with tiki torches. In fact, many of the attackers are people of color, as investigative reporting by Tablet’s Armin Rosen and others has shown.

Imagine if they were white ­nationalists. How much faster would the mayor and other city leaders have taken action?

IDENTITY POLITICS ENABLES ANTI-SEMITIC VIOLENCE. ENOUGH:

When it came to discussing the recent shooting at the Jersey City kosher supermarket by two Black Hebrew Israelites, reporting was startlingly sparse on the particulars surrounding the murders. As Bethany Mandel of Ricochet noted, many key details appeared purposely omitted, including but not limited to, the fact that video footage suggested the perpetrators’ initial target was a school full of Jewish children; that the perpetrators had a significant amount of ammunition; and that videos taken after the attack revealed many in the neighborhood blamed the Jews for the attack. Even following the killings, I am not sure if even one media outlet reported on the fact that a school board member in Jersey City, referring to Jews as “brutes,” essentially defended the murders as a natural response to too many Jews moving into the area.

The “social justice” arena in the United States, where most issues related to racial discrimination get siloed, is occupied primarily by those on the left. Thus, the growing problem is now groups traditionally in the business of confronting hate are less interested in doing so if they are unable to attribute the Jew-hatred to Trump or Republicans. If that anti-semitism is emanating from corners traditionally occupied by the left, the advocacy figures and media talking heads show an alarming and frankly disturbing indifference.

Looking Back at Afghanistan, The ‘War of Necessity.’.

“The Ten Ships,” which was written ten years ago, argued that Afghanistan had no intrinsic geographical value in the War on Terror.

One of the reasons the Navy opposed a Southwest Pacific campaign during the Pacific War was the shrewd appreciation that once bureaucracy started on a task it would grow with it like a cancer whatever its original purpose. Admiral King wasn’t against an action in the Solomons. He was just afraid that it would take on a life of its own. The passage of time has not changed this tendency.
The campaign in Afghanistan began in 2002 with a specific purpose. But by the time Barack Obama was running for President its chief attraction was the fact that it was an alternative to the campaign in Iraq.
A 2009 article in the Wall Street Journal covering his speech before the VWF captured his thinking: Afghanistan was a “war of necessity”, unlike Iraq, which was a “war of choice”. Of all the “false choices” the President was fond of rhetorically raising, this was perhaps the falsest choice of all.
By asserting that Afghanistan, not oil or the Middle East or radical Islam was the center of gravity of the enemy, President Obama completely misframed the strategic choices.

Time has been kind to that assessment.  Attempts to remake Afghanistan into something moderately Western through nation-building has wound up feeding the Taliban. “Families of almost 150 U.S. service members and civilians who were killed or wounded in terror attacks in Afghanistan sued a group of Western contractors involved in the nation’s reconstruction for allegedly bribing the Taliban for protection for years.”

The alleged payments ultimately helped finance a Taliban-led insurgency that led to the attacks in Afghanistan between 2009 and 2017, according to a lawsuit filed Friday in federal court in Washington. The suit seeks unspecified damages for the families under the Anti-Terrorism Act.
“Defendants were all large Western companies with lucrative businesses in post-9/11 Afghanistan, and they all paid the Taliban to refrain from attacking their business interests,” according to the complaint. “Those protection payments aided and abetted terrorism by directly funding an al-Qaida-backed Taliban insurgency that killed and injured thousands of Americans.”

The Ten Ships argued — ten years ago — that one denies the jihad money, not give it to them…………

For all of its defects the campaign in Iraq was at least in the right place: at the locus of oil, ideology and brutal regimes that are the Middle East.
Ideally the campaign in Iraq would have a sent a wave of democratization through the area, undermined the attraction of radical Islam, provided a base from which to physically control oil if necessary.
That the campaign failed to attain many of objectives should not obscure the fact that its objectives were valid.
It made far more strategic sense than fighting tribesmen in Afghanistan.
Ideology, rogue regimes, energy are the three entities which have replaced the “ten ships” of 70 years ago.
The means through which these three entities should be engaged ought to be the subject of reasoned debate, whether by military, economic or technological means. But the vital nature of these objectives ought not to be. Neutralize the intellectual appeal of radical Islam, topple the rogue regimes, and ease Western dependence on oil and you win the war. Yet their centrality, and even their existence is what the politicians constantly deny.

If the War on Terror seems largely won today, or at least less desperate than September 2001, it is because radical Islam has discredited itself, the strongmen of the Middle East have self-immolated themselves through their own dysfunction, and entrepreneurs have eased American dependence on foreign oil through fracking and other innovations.

2 Dead, 1 Critically Injured After Shooting At West Freeway Church Of Christ In Fort Worth, TX Suburb.

This photo is from the live feed the church puts on YouTube. The shooter can be seen in the top just left-of-center and the church member who took the shooter out can be seen in the top left.

This is how fast things can happen, and how much some people will be calm and cool under pressure, while others go into hysterics.
Oh, and not to be too morbid, but being able to draw your gun quickly and get it into action can make a world of difference. The first man shot by the murderer was still trying to get his gun out of his pocket. Take that poor man’s experience for what it’s worth.

WHITE SETTLEMENT, Texas (CBSDFW.COM) – Two people are dead and another person is critically injured after a shooting at a church in the Tarrant County city of White Settlement, officials said.

Authorities responded to the shooting Sunday morning just before 10 a.m. at the West Freeway Church of Christ on Las Vegas Trail.

A witness told CBS 11 News the gunman walked up to a server during communion with a shotgun and then opened fire. According to the witness, another church member shot the suspect……..

During the incident, two men died from their injuries and another man was critically injured. Authorities believe the gunman is among the three but it’s unknown if he was killed or is injured.

No, the Senate is not a jury, and other misconceptions about impeachment.

Timothy Snyder is a historian at Yale University. He has written books of varying critical reception on Russia and Eastern Europe. Lately, he has taken to warning Americans of what he sees as the danger the United States will fall into totalitarianism under President Trump. In the past few days, Snyder has turned his attention , not in a scholarly work but in a series of tweets, to a Trump impeachment trial in the Senate. His tweets were notable mostly because Snyder managed to pack a large number of misconceptions about impeachment into a very small space.

The tweets, ten in all, were directed toward Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell. McConnell has been majority leader since the GOP won control of the Senate in the 2014 election; he was most recently reelected (by acclamation among the Senate’s 53 GOP members) after the 2018 elections. It is perhaps too obvious to note that since the majority leader represents the majority, he exercises a lot of power and influence in the Senate. Nevertheless, Snyder began his critique with this:

Why does Senator McConnell talk about how he will run the impeachment trial, and why do we listen? He has zero constitutional authority to decide its shape.

What does that mean? Does Snyder mean that McConnell as a person — Mitch from Kentucky — has no constitutional authority to decide how the trial will be run? Perhaps, but the fact is, McConnell is the Senate majority leader, and the majority, not any individual senator himself or herself, but the majority, has substantial authority to shape the trial. That’s how the Senate runs. We listen to McConnell because what he says matters. Here are the next two tweets:

John Roberts is in charge of the impeachment trial. The Constitution clearly states that if the president is impeached, the chief justice presides.

Constitution: “The Senate shall have the sole Power to try all Impeachments. When sitting for that Purpose, they shall be on Oath or Affirmation. When the President of the United States is tried, the Chief Justice shall preside.”

It seems hard to write a clearer sentence than, “The Senate shall have the sole Power to try all Impeachments.” And yet there still seems to be some confusion on that score. If the Senate has the “sole power” to try the impeachment of Trump, how could Chief Justice John Roberts be “in charge” of the trial? It seems obvious, especially to anyone who watched the President Bill Clinton impeachment trial in 1999, that the chief justice’s role in the trial will actually be quite limited. Does anyone believe that on any matter of great import, on which a majority of the Senate disagrees with Roberts, that the majority will defer to the chief justice? That the majority will meekly do what the chief justice says because he is “in charge” of the trial? That is not going to happen. After the Clinton trial, Chief Justice William Rehnquist described his role this way: “I did nothing in particular, and I did it very well.” Next from Snyder:

The impeachment trial is a trial and the senators are all sworn jurors. No special role is foreseen in the Constitution for any specific senator.

Actually, the Constitution, which mentions juries in several places, does not say that the Senate will serve as a jury in an impeachment or that senators will be jurors. During the Clinton impeachment, Iowa Democratic Sen. Tom Harkin objected to the use of the word “juror” to describe senators. Harkin had a variety of reasons but basically believed Republican House managers were trying “to put parameters on what we could do in the Senate, that all we could do was to take the facts and decide.” In Harkin’s view, senators could, in fact, “be expansive.” Rehnquist, in the kind of inconsequential decision left to the chief justice, agreed. “The objection of the senator from Iowa is well taken,” he said, “that the Senate is not simply a jury; it is a court in this case. Therefore, counsel should refrain from referring to the senators as jurors.”

On Snyder’s “special role” point, the Senate operates by rule of the majority. Even though convicting Trump would take a two-thirds supermajority, much of what will take place in the Senate trial will be decided by majority vote. And the majority has selected McConnell to be its leader. So no, the Constitution does not specify a role for the Senate majority leader. In fact, that job is not in the Constitution at all; it emerged in the 1920s. But the majority rules, and when the Constitution says the Senate “shall have the sole Power to try all Impeachments,” in today’s Senate, that means the majority leader has a special role. The next three tweets from Snyder:

When you are a juror, you set aside your normal concerns and swear to be impartial. If you are a juror your obligation is to try a case, not advance your interests. The same is true of senators acting as jurors.

Senators in an impeachment trial therefore have an exclusively legal responsibility, just as any citizen serving as a juror in a trial would.

If we treat the impeachment trial as anything but a trial, we disregard the Constitution and endanger the rule of law and the Republic.

Snyder, like many, many others in the impeachment debate, appears to view the impeachment trial as the exact equivalent of a criminal trial in the justice system. Senators, he says, “have an exclusively legal responsibility, just as any citizen serving as a juror in a trial would.” Further, if any senator fails to act in precisely the same way a juror in a criminal trial would act, that senator would “endanger the rule of law and the Republic.”

What to say about that? An impeachment trial is simply not like a trial in the justice system. Throughout, the Senate acts as a body. It can set the rules for the trial. It can stop the trial. It can start it again. It can pause the trial. It can rule out witnesses. It can call witnesses. It can dismiss the articles of impeachment altogether. It can do what the chief justice suggests, or it can ignore him altogether. Each senator can decide what evidence he or she wants to consider or reject. Each senator can vote guilty or not guilty or make up some kooky verdict based on Scottish law. All of that is part of having the “sole power” to try all impeachments.

On the question of impartiality, the senators will in fact take an oath to do “impartial justice.” Here is perhaps the ultimate impeachment spoiler alert: They won’t really mean it. Or, perhaps they will mean it according to their own political views and their own definition of “impartial.” Does anyone think Democratic Sen. Mazie Hirono, for example, will render “impartial justice”? Hirono has already said that, unless Trump produces some miraculous exoneration, “the facts are that he committed an impeachable act, and I will vote to convict him.” On the other side, several Republicans have dismissed the articles of impeachment as BS. Does that sound impartial? Look again at the Clinton case. In 1999, Senate Democrats were so impartial that they voted unanimously — 100% — to acquit the Democratic president. Were all of them rendering “impartial justice”? The fact is, individual elected officials, some of whom passionately support the president and some of whom passionately oppose him, will not render “impartial justice.” The constitutional requirement of a two-thirds vote to convict means the case against the president has to be so overwhelming that two-thirds of decidedly nonimpartial senators would agree to convict. The next two tweets from Snyder:

If senators say that they regard an impeachment trial as political rather than legal, they have disqualified themselves as jurors.

If senators reveal how they will vote before the impeachment trial has taken place, they have disqualified themselves as jurors.

See above. Snyder’s final tweet:

Senator McConnell has no constitutional authority to lead an impeachment trial. His constitutional responsibility is to serve as a juror. From that he has disqualified himself.

To say it a different way: When the Senate has a constitutional authority to do something, the Senate majority leader has a role in doing it. How else is today’s Senate supposed to work? To impose some sort of judicial template on the process makes no sense. From the very beginning of the impeachment process, when commentators referred to the House Intelligence Committee, and later the House itself, as a “grand jury,” the campaign to remove the president has suffered from inapt comparisons to the judicial system. Snyder is just the latest to make that mistake.

Support for Second Amendment Sanctuaries Grows as Virginia Democrats Push Gun Control
Counties and Cities Throughout Virginia Established Second Amendment Sanctuaries in Response to Gun Control Measures. Will Indiana Follow Suit?

Liberal calls for stricter gun legislation and increasing concerns that the Federal government will infringe on Americans’ Constitutional right to own a firearm are prompting conservative citizens to take action on the local level.

The Second Amendment of the United States Constitution reads: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

The Founders’ language seems clear, yet liberal anti-gun activists consistently argue that their interpretation of the Second Amendment empowers them to pass and enforce oppressive gun legislation that hinders the individual’s right to carry and own the firearm of his or her choice. As a result, support for the establishment of Second Amendment sanctuaries as an effective countermeasure to the gun control movement is on the rise.

The establishment of Second Amendment sanctuaries unofficially began in the state of Virginia, where a Democrat-controlled state government previously attempted to confiscate its citizens’ guns, prompting multiple counties and cities to push back and assert they would impede and resist the state’s attempts enforce unconstitutional gun laws against lawful citizens.

Taking a cue from Virginia, Second Amendment sanctuaries were quickly established in an astonishing number of counties and cities across the country.

Score another one for the Constitution. The freedom of the individual had persevered once again, and liberals now had a new grievance to scream at the sky.

As far as the state of Virginia was concerned, the matter appeared settled. But with liberals, nothing is ever settled – except for the science of global warming, apparently.

Now the Democrats have regained control of the Virginia state legislature, Governor “blackface” Northam has announced intentions to reintroduce restrictive gun measures in the upcoming legislative sessions.

WIBC’s Hammer and Nigel spoke with “Gun Guy” Guy Relford about the renewed push for gun control measures in the state of Virginia, the challenge and potential legal consequences of Second Amendment sanctuaries, and why Hoosiers are unlikely to see the establishment of Second Amendment sanctuaries in counties and cities throughout the state of Indiana.

Report: Trump held private, enlisted-only Afghanistan war meetings – ‘No generals or officers, only enlisted guys that have been there’.

Since taking office, President Donald Trump has been meeting with enlisted troops to get a better understanding of how they feel the war in Afghanistan has been progressing.

Trump did not want to meet with higher ranking officers, instead choosing to meet with enlisted troops to get a more candid assessment of the America’s longest-running war, Business Insider reported.
“I want to sit down with some enlisted guys that have been there,” Trump reportedly told advisers, according to Peter Bergen, author of “Trump and His Generals: The Cost of Chaos.”

“I don’t want any generals in here. I don’t want any officers,” he added.

Enlisted members of the military may have been seen as better able to critique the war effort as their roles tend to place them closer to combat and the consequences of a command. Enlisted members are also less concerned with the day-to-day politics that might affect higher ranking officers.

Trump reportedly compared the opinions of senior military officers to those of a restaurant consultant. Rather than taking the advice of the consultant, who would suggest expanding a kitchen for renovations, Trump argued it would be more prudent and cost effective to ask the advice of the waiters who see the day to day operations and can identify the most basic problems in a restaurant’s functions.

One of the first groups Trump reportedly met with were enlisted Navy SEALs who criticized the war and said the war in Afghanistan is “unwinnable.”

“NATO’s a joke. Nobody knows what they’re doing,” the SEALs reportedly told Trump. “We don’t fight to win. The morale is terrible. It’s totally corrupt.”

On another occasion on July 18, 2017, Trump held a White House meeting with four more Army and Air Force senior enlisted service members.

“I’ve heard plenty of ideas from a lot of people, but I want to hear it from the people on the ground,” Trump said at a press conference for the July 2017 meeting.

Following that meeting, Trump reportedly gathered senior military officials to the White House situation room, where he then warned that the enlisted members he spoke with know “a lot more than you generals,” and said that “we’re losing” the war in Afghanistan.

1 dead in Valero gas station shootout in north Harris Co.

HARRIS COUNTY, Texas (KTRK) — One person died Friday and another was wounded after a shooting at a north Harris County gas station, authorities said.

It happened at a Valero at Cypresswood Drive and FM 1960.

Deputies said it may have begun as a robbery when a man approached a Jeep in the parking lot. A man in the Jeep was shot, but not before exchanging gunfire with the suspect, authorities said.

The man believed to be the suspect died at the scene. The man in the Jeep was taken to a hospital with what authorities described as non-life threatening injuries.

Investigators are working to get surveillance video from the gas station.

When they went to rob a man at gunpoint, his wife fired her gun. She’s a Charlotte cop.

Early Friday, multiple suspects approached a couple in the parking lot of an apartment complex in south Charlotte. When they tried to rob the husband at gunpoint, the woman, an off-duty Charlotte-Mecklenburg officer, took out her gun and fired it, police said.

According to the police, the other suspects fired back then fled the scene, and a 17-year-old male suspect was taken to the hospital with non-life threatening injuries. The officer, Emily Bishop, was unharmed.

The State Bureau of Investigation has launched an investigation into the shooting, which took place at 12:15 a.m. in the 7900 block of Waterford Tide Loop. An SBI investigation is standard procedure when a CMPD officer shoots and injures someone.

No More Private Homes… To Save the Planet

Funny how the environmental objectives of the “Save the Planet from the Flying Global Warming Monster” squad and that of Marxism line up so neatly.

Of course you shouldn’t have personal autonomy or private property. It’s bad for the ‘planet’. And by the planet, we mean the red planet.

So it’s no surprise that The Nation, where the synergy of the red and the green meet, should roll out a story like this, “If we want to keep cities safe in the face of climate change, we need to seriously question the ideal of private homeownership.”

Yes, climate change intensifies the fires—but the ways in which we plan and develop our cities makes them even more destructive. The growth of urban regions in the second half of the 20th century has been dominated by economic development, aspirations of home ownership, and belief in the importance of private property.

To engage with these challenges, we need to do more than upgrade the powerlines or stage a public takeover of the utility companies. We need to rethink the ideologies that govern how we plan and build our homes.

And embrace a discredited 19th century ideology instead. And give up on dreams of independence and private property. Instead we can all live in barracks or gulags.

Won’t that be fun.

Expansionist, individualist, and exclusionary patterns of housing became synonymous with freedom and self-sufficiency.

Not became. Are.

Private property as freedom and self-sufficiency isn’t New Deal brainwashing, as The Nation insists, it’s human nature.

 Cheap energy is untenable in the face of climate emergency. And individual homeownership should be seriously questioned.

To the gulags, go!

That’s the meaning of every single sentence in every single leftist global warming policy proposal. Sometimes you don’t even need to read between the lines.

But don’t worry. When the revolution comes, the Nation nomenklatura will have mansions. Until they’re purged.

There are other options, in theory: Rental housing serves many cities around the world well

Yes. Not having a home you can actually all your own is great.

There is also the potential for new or reconstituted forms of cooperative housing. In New York City, cooperative apartment buildings have long been a norm.

If you don’t want a backyard or personal space. If you want to hear every argument upstairs.

If we can reframe debates about the future of cities beyond rote acceptance of property ownership

And rote acceptance of individual freedoms that will have to be set aside for the duration of the emergency.

We need another kind of escape route—away from our ideologies of ownership and property, and toward more collective, healthy, and just cities.

Go to the collective farms, the gulags, and to slavery. For the planet.

Giuliani Claims He’s ‘More Of A Jew’ Than George Soros: Liberals Freak (But He’s Right). 

And he never worked with Nazis to confiscate Jewish property

In the latest issue of New York Magazine, former NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani said he was more of a Jew than George Soros. While it is true that Soros is a Jew by birth and the former may is Catholic, there is truth to what he is saying. After all, Rudy is a good friend of the Jews, and Soros is what is commonly called a self-hating Jew (I call him a Jew-hating Jew because he doesn’t hate himself).

“Don’t tell me I’m anti-Semitic if I oppose him,” he said. “Soros is hardly a Jew. I’m more of a Jew than Soros is. I probably know more about — he doesn’t go to church, he doesn’t go to religion — synagogue. He doesn’t belong to a synagogue, he doesn’t support Israel, he’s an enemy of Israel. He’s elected eight anarchist DA’s in the United States. He’s a horrible human being.”

When CNN reported about Giuliani’s statement, it emphasized that Soros was a holocaust survivor–true. They were trying to infer that because he was a Holocaust survivor doesn’t mean he is pro-Jewish and Jewish caused today. They also reported the ADL’s Jonathan Greenblatt said Giuliani’s attack on Soros was anti-Semitic. However, despite its mission for the past decade, or so, the ADL’s first priority has been progressivism and the Democratic Party. That is why I recommend that donors to the ADL give to  StopAntisemitism.org instead, or if they wish to give to the Democratic Party, send the money directly and cut out the middleman.

Gun Rights Groups Hit Back After VA AG Says Second Amendment Sanctuaries Have ‘No Legal Effect’

The Virginia Defense League and Gun Owners of America, the gun rights group that is spearheading the Second Amendment sanctuary movement in the commonwealth, responded to Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring’s statement that called the sanctuary resolution as having “no legal effect.”

The VDL and GOA sent a letter to their supporters and urged them to resist any unconstitutional gun control law the General Assembly passes in the new session next year.

“It is apparent that AG Herring and Governor Ralph Northam believe that Virginia localities have a duty to actively assist the Commonwealth in the enforcement of any law enacted by the General Assembly. These officials appear to believe that such blind obedience is required irrespective of whether a law violates the U.S. Constitution, the Virginia Constitution, or is manifestly destructive of the preexisting rights of the People of Virginia,” the groups wrote. “This radical view is demonstrably false, and ignores the significance of the fact that local officials are required by law to take an oath to support the federal and state constitutions above the laws enacted by the General Assembly.”

The VDL and GOA said Governor Ralph Northam and Herring are wrong in their assessment counties must always implement laws passed since they “have taken exactly the opposite legal position” when it came to sanctuary status for illegal immigrants.

Northam vetoed two bills in March that would have banned localities from becoming sanctuary cities for illegal immigrants and would have required law enforcement agency to notify federal authorities if they had illegal immigrants in their custody.

“The safety of our communities requires that all people, whether they are documented or not, feel comfortable, supported and protected by our public safety agencies,” Northam said at the time.

“Thus, three times in three consecutive years (2017, 2018, and 2019), Governor Northam used his office to support the right of Virginia’s localities to declare themselves sanctuary cities and counties, refusing to help with the enforcement of federal immigration laws, based on mere policy differences with those federal laws,” the gun rights group said.

The VDL and GOA stated there is nothing new with people not obeying illegal and unauthorized government acts, adding, “If necessary, the lower authority may even actively resist the superior authority, since the higher authority is acting illegitimately and unconstitutionally, and without legal authority.”

An overwhelming number of counties in Virginia have declared themselves as Second Amendment sanctuaries, promising to not enforce any gun law deemed as unconstitutional.

A few Virginia sheriffs voiced their support for counties becoming gun sanctuaries to Townhall, giving the movement critical backing.

“I am in favor of the Second Amendment Sanctuary. I believe we need to send a message to Richmond that our citizens will take a stance. My deputies and I take an oath to uphold the Constitution and that’s what we will do,” said Rappahannock County Sheriff Connie Compton.

Colleges Are Dropping Testing, Curriculum Standards in Order to Create ‘Diversity’

Colleges and universities are changing both admissions and curriculum requirements in order to create more ‘diversity’ within their student bodies. These changes often involve lowering of standards, and an implication that students from certain backgrounds cannot score as high on tests as their peers.

1.  SAT spikes social justice-themed ‘adversity scores’…kind of

“Mr. Singer’s actions exemplified the pernicious effect of racial preferences on the college admissions process.”    

This year, the College Board ruled that it would not go forward with adding the proposed controversial “adversity score,”  which would add points to a student’s SAT/ACT score based on his or her socioeconomic background. After criticism from many students and parents concerned not only about the implication that certain groups need to handicap their test scores but also about the creation of unfair disadvantages for students who don’t fit the ‘diversity’ bill, the CEO of College Board decided to instead use a system by a different name: “Landscape.” This program doesn’t assign an “adversity score,” but has the same goal of considering socioeconomic factors into SAT and ACT scores. The factors considered are housing stability, median family income, household structure, college attendance, education levels, and crime.

2. Judge recommends “bias training” preceding Harvard lawsuit

Harvard found itself in the middle of a major scandal this year, after being accused of bias against Asian Americans via the university’s affirmative action admissions program. A federal judge ultimately sided with Harvard and suggested that a mandatory bias training for the school’s admissions officers should be implemented to give every student a fair chance. Edward Blum, President of plaintiff group Students for Fair Admissions, says he will be taking this case to the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, as he believes Harvard does indeed have a history of discriminating against Asian American applicants in its effort to ensure the admission of applicants of other minority ethnicities.

3. Stanford pushes separate physics course for minority students

This year Stanford pushed a separate physics course to ensure retention of “underrepresented” physics majors. The course is a modified version of a standard required course, with additional class time and “learning assistants” hired to offer extra help with coursework. The school stated that “students from underrepresented groups often don’t have the same level of preparation from high school as their majority peers,” and that “the difference in preparation is large enough that it may lead students to drop out of the major but small enough that the kind of support offered by this course can be enough to keep them in.”

4. Ditching SAT/ACT requirement to promote diversity

To increase diversity, Colorado College has decided to make it “optional” to submit SAT/ACT scores. “Standardized test scores do not always reflect the academic potential of students from disadvantaged backgrounds,” said one professor. The school suggests these tests limit minorities, and therefore that removing this requirement makes it easier to reach those with a disadvantaged background. By removing the SAT/ACT requirement, the school claims that their numbers of freshmen have doubled. These numbers do not say, however, the academic success the institution is experiencing

5. Using affirmative action to get a “competitive advantage”

The man at the center of this years’ college admissions scandal, Rick Singer, reportedly not only helped celebrities get their children into college by lying about athletic involvement but also instructed them to lie about their ethnicities. If he was working with a white family, Singer would reportedly tell them to lie about their race on college applications to give that student a better competitive advantage.

“Mr. Singer’s actions exemplified the pernicious effect of racial preferences on the college admissions process,” said Dion J. Pierre, a conservative research associate, adding that that Asian and Caucasian Americans have less edge than the other races while millions of dollars in grants and scholarships are given to students solely based on skin color.

U.S. Stocks Climb Again in Santa Claus Rally as All Three Main Indexes Close at Records

U.S. stocks powered higher again Thursday, helped by reports of record year-end retail sales, though trading volumes were light and markets were closed in Europe, Hong Kong and Australia for another post-Christmas holiday.

Amazon led the market up, with the stock gaining more than 4% after the e-commerce giant said the holiday shopping season broke all records.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 105.94 points or 0.37% to 28,621.39 and has gained for 9 of the past 11 trading days to post a year-to-date rise of 22.69%.

The S&P 500 gained 16.53 points, or 0.51%, to 3,239.91 for a year-to-date return of 29.24%.

The Nasdaq Composite rose 69.51 points, or 0.78%, to a new record at 9,022.39 after posting a record close for a 10th straight day, the longest winning streak since July 1997. Year-to-date the Nasdaq has risen 35.98%

U.S. Gun Sales Near Record High as Violent Crime Rate Drops
Gun-related crimes fell 68 % and violent crimes 48.6 % in the same period that more guns were sold in the U.S.

Violent crime dropped by 48.6% in the U.S. in the same period that saw the record number of arms purchases: 423 million firearms, according to recently released data from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives.

Firearms-related accidents alone declined 68 percent between 1986 and 2018, a period in which U.S. citizens purchased 8.1 billion rounds of ammunition.

“These figures show that the United States has a strong desire to continue buying firearms for lawful purposes,” Joe Bertozzi, president of the National Shooting Sports Foundation, told American Military News.

“The continued popularity of guns demonstrates that Americans have a keen interest in protecting themselves and their homes,” he added.

American citizens have the right to defend themselves. They have been able to counteract crime as opposed to what is happening in Latin American countries where the hyper-regulation of arms has granted a monopoly to law enforcement, state security forces, and criminal groups that act above the law, such as organized crime groups.

Caracas, Venezuela, which lost the right to carry arms under Hugo Chavez, is the most striking example of the city with the most homicides. Now Mexico, with more than 100 homicides per day and the second most violent city in the world, Acapulco, is living through the most violent year in its history and shows how the rigid law restricting the bearing of arms leaves the law-abiding citizen vulnerable.

Meanwhile, in the United States, more and more citizens have legal access to firearms. More than 25 million people registered in 2019 to carry guns in the US.

According to the FBI, 202,465 people registered to buy weapons on the biggest selling day. The gun registry process involves authorities corroborating whether the person has a criminal record.

This was the second-highest figure in history. The highest was in 2017 when 203,086 people filed their information for review in a single >
Both historical dates coincided with “Black Friday,” which falls on the last weekend of November, the day when there are massive discounts across the country.

Compared to last year, there was an 11% increase in domestic sales. At the end of November 2018, there were 182,093 registered arms buyers. As Christmas and New Year approaches, the numbers continue to rise.

In rural states like North Dakota, the number of buyers increased by up to 20%. According to Cody Schuh, owner of Shooters Inc., the political climate always contributes to a spike in sales. But he says this year was noteworthy. People not only stocked up on ammunition but also bought new rifles and pistols.

“Now we’re beginning to see that individuals buy weapons because they want to be safe without being told to do so by the state,” Schuh said.

It should be noted that the figures show the number of buyers, not the number of weapons. In October of this year alone, 1.2 million firearms were sold in the USA, 10.8% more than in October 2018.

Also, in October, the FBI reported that it reviewed the profiles of 2.4 million potential buyers, the highest record in a given month. In October last year, it was 2.3 million.

According to Small Arms Analytics and Forecast, 1.1 million firearms were sold in the U.S. in September of this year, 11% more than in September last year.

The U.S. Constitution guarantees the right to bear arms and overthrow an abusive government with a militia.

“What this tells us is that Americans vote with their wallets when it comes to the ability to exercise the Second Amendment,” said Mark Oliva, director of public relations for the National Shooting Sports Foundation.

Oliva says that this phenomenon is interesting, because contrary to the will of politicians who openly demand to restrict the Second Amendment, citizens are supplying themselves with weapons.

The Second Amendment to the Constitution speaks of the right of every American citizen not only to bear arms but to arm a militia if the government abuses its power and exceeds its functions.

Oliva considers FBI data to be the most accurate barometer when measuring arms sales and argues that this is not just a whim or coincidence but a “meaningful investment.”

He argues that U.S. citizens choose to invest their hard-earned money to exercise their rights, unlike the politicians seeking to restrict their ability to defend themselves.

The Democratic Party wants to remove Trump from power, but to deprive citizens of the right to rise against a tyrannical government.

For example, the Democratic Party demands greater control when carrying arms and has the backing of at least 150 companies that demanded greater control before the Senate. But sales show that millions of people disagree.

The irony is that the same party that seeks the removal of President Trump, whom they consider to be abusing his power, is the one that wants to deprive citizens of the ability to remove a tyrant from power.

This reflects the actions of the Democratic Party. They demand that the high and mighty state be the one to remove Trump from power, not “the people” they claim to represent.

Meanwhile, those with a more libertarian or conservative political orientation refuse to give more power to the state, much less to take away their right to self-defense.

For history has shown that every tyranny is established once it disarms its citizens. This is what happened in Cuba through Fidel Castro’s speech “Guns? For what?”

Sixty years later, Cuba is still run by the same family. Twenty-five million people in the U.S. showed with their weapons that they are not willing to risk the same thing happening in their country.

They are safer both from crime and the possibility of the emergence of tyranny. That is why they are literally in charge of their self-defense.

Virginia’s Second Amendment attack

By WALTER WILLIAMS

Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam apologized for his medical school blackface stunt, but he will have much more to apologize for if he signs into law a bill that attacks Virginia residents’ Second Amendment rights.

The measure is Senate Bill 16, which would ban “assault” firearms and certain firearm magazines.

Since Democrats have seized control of Virginia’s General Assembly, they are likely to push hard for strict gun control laws. Those laws will have zero impact on Virginia’s criminals and a heavy impact on Virginia’s law-abiding residents who own, or intend to own, semiautomatic weapons for hunting or their protection.

As a friend once explained to me, “I carry a gun because I can’t carry a cop.”

I am proud of my fellow Virginians’ response to the attack on their Second Amendment rights. Firearm owners in the state have joined with sheriffs to form Second Amendment sanctuary counties. That means local authorities will be required to protect Second Amendment rights in the face of any attempt by Virginia’s General Assembly to abrogate those rights.

Eighty-six counties – over 90 percent – in the Virginia commonwealth have adopted Second Amendment sanctuary resolutions. Spotsylvania County’s Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to approve a resolution declaring that county police will not enforce state-level gun laws that violate Second Amendment rights.

Sheriff Chad Cubbage said, “Be it be known that the Page Sheriff hereby declares Page County, Virginia, as a ‘Second Amendment Sanctuary,’ and that the Page County Sheriff hereby declares its intent to oppose any infringement on the right of law-abiding citizens to keep and bear arms.”

Culpeper County Sheriff Scott Jenkins made a vow during a Board of Supervisors meeting, where the board unanimously agreed to declare the county a Second Amendment constitutional county, to “properly screen and deputize thousands of our law-abiding citizens to protect their constitutional right to own firearms.”

In an attempt to appease residents’ resistance, Northam suggested there would be a ban on only the sales of semiautomatic rifles. He would allow gun owners to keep their current AR-15s and similar rifles as long as they registered them. Otherwise, they must surrender the rifles.

I’d urge Virginians not to fall for the registration trick. Knowing who owns what weapons is the first step to confiscation. Northam further warned, “If we have constitutional laws on the books, and law enforcement officers are not enforcing those laws on the books, then there are going to be consequences, but I’ll cross that bridge if and when we get to it.”

Some Democratic lawmakers on Capitol Hill say that local police who do not enforce gun control laws should face prosecution and even threats of the use of the National Guard.

Virginians must heed the words and capture the spirit of their two most distinguished residents, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, who wrote the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions. These resolutions referred to the federal government, but are just as applicable to state governments in principle.

They said: “Resolved, That the several States composing the United States of America, are not united on the principle of unlimited submission to their General Government … and whensoever the General Government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of no force.”

Too many Americans view the Second Amendment as granting Americans the right to own firearms to go hunting and for self-protection. But the framers of our Constitution had no such intent in mind. James Madison, in Federalist Paper No. 46 wrote that the Constitution preserves “the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation … [where] the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms.”

Thomas Jefferson wrote: “What country can preserve its liberties if its rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms.”

Similar quotations about our Founders’ desire for Americans to be armed against the possible abuses of government can be found at https://walterewilliams.com/quotations/arms/.

Walter E. Williams is a professor of economics at George Mason University.

 

What the Hell Is Wrong with Nancy Pelosi?

The dictum attributed to Bonapart still applies:
“Never interrupt your enemy when they’re making a mistake.”

The First Rule of Holes states: “If you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.”

VodkaPundit’s Second Rule of Holes says: “When your opponent is in a hole, get them a bigger and nicer shovel.”

Whatever Nancy Pelosi is trying to accomplish, it isn’t working. She’s in a hole, she’s digging furiously, and with such dedication to her craptaculent efforts that she wouldn’t even notice me handing her a bigger and nicer shovel.

Dig, Nancy, dig!