Having crap-for-brains is why and that appears to be a life long affliction

Bad arguments in favor of gun control persist

For proponents of gun control, there are tried and true arguments they trot out whenever they need them, and by “tried and true” I mean “tired and wrong.”

Over and over again, we see these arguments used, with almost no pushback from the mainstream media. After all, they’re the ones making these arguments.

Take this op-ed from the Star Tribune:

Gun regulation long has been the third rail of American politics. But the increase in murders, accidental shootings, suicides, armed carjackings and robberies, as well as the ongoing tragedy of mass shootings, shows the urgency of changing course. A responsible gun safety regulatory system would reduce crime and save lives.

Consider how we regulate cars. There are lawful uses for both guns and cars, but both are deadly when misused.

With cars, we require operators to be trained and licensed. We register every vehicle, and re-register each when it’s transferred to a new owner. We require liability insurance. We also require safety modifications and regulate how and where cars are driven.

Except that’s an inaccurate comparison. You only have to do any of that if you drive the vehicle on a public road. If you keep it confined to your farm, you’re not required to do any of that.

Further, the right to keep and bear arms is a constitutionally protected right. Cars, not so much. The courts have ruled that driving is a privilege, not a right, so comparing regulations surrounding a privilege to the lack of regulations for a right isn’t asinine, it’s idiotic.

But it’s bound to get better, right?

Don’t hold your breath.

For guns, there is no licensing, no training requirement, no registration, no insurance, no safety equipment required. This enables criminals to obtain guns with no background check, no waiting period — no means of enforcement at all.

Except that every FFL holder conducts criminal background checks on every firearm they sell.

“Oh, but private sales-”

Sure, in theory, but do you know how criminals tend to get guns? Via the black market, which is never going to conduct a criminal background check. Remarkably few buy from law-abiding gun owners looking to lawfully sell a firearm, so it’s a non-issue.

Yet the hits don’t stop there. Oh no, we get this classic gem:

The U.S. Constitution explicitly says “well-regulated” when referring to gun rights, yet the gun lobby opposes any form of gun regulation. The courts have said that reasonable restrictions may be placed on the possession of firearms. The National Firearms Act of 1934 effectively banned machine guns from most private ownership. Since that time, the “Tommy guns” of the Al Capone era and other fully automatic machine guns have not been used in mass killings or other crimes.

Oh, goodie, the “well-regulated” argument.

Talk about nonsense.

Look here, Sport. The phrase “well-regulated” meant nothing more than “properly functioning,” such as a well-regulated clock. The term didn’t mean then what it means now and there’s been a lot of actual scholarship supporting that fact.

Plus, more importantly, the right explicitly says “the right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” That’s a contradictory clause unless “well-regulated” meant something differently at the time. It’s unlikely such a contradictory amendment would have been added by our Founding Fathers who desperately were trying to build a nation of laws.

But the author doesn’t care about that. He just wants to see new gun control passed, claiming it saves lives. Except, a look at the UK’s homicide rate before and after they passed gun control shows that it doesn’t really.

So not only are his arguments bad, even the facts work against him.

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

‘Trudeau backs down’: Canadian PM revokes emergency powers

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Man with Lee County ties reportedly killed, was wanted in shooting of Taylor County deputy

A man with connections to Lehigh Acres who was wanted in connection with the shooting of a Taylor County Sheriff’s Office deputy Tuesday night is reported dead.

Gregory Mediema, 33, has listed an Arbordale Street address in Lehigh Acres as a residence. The alert said Miedema was last seen near U.S. 19 South Deer Run Road in Perry, between Tallahassee and Gainesville.

Tallahasee television station WCTV Wednesday reported that the Taylor County Sheriff’s Office says a suspect was killed during a home invasion in Steinhatchee in southern Taylor County.

That suspect’s body was found near the same car that was listed in a part Florida Blue Alert issued late Tuesday night.

The Taylor Sheriff’s Office identified the deputy who was shot as Troy Andersen with the agency’s K-9 unit. The Sheriff’s Office said Andersen was stable at Shands Hospital in Gainesville.

The Florida Blue Alert on Miedema was issued shortly before midnight seeking information on his whereabouts. Blue alerts are issued through the state’s Emergency Alert System to phones, television, radio and message boards across the highway when a law enforcement officer is killed, seriously injured or missing in the line of duty and there’s still an imminent threat to the public.

The alert was cancelled Wednesday morning.

A Facebook post from the Franklin County Sheriff’s Office shortly after 10 a.m. Wednesday said Miedema had been killed but included no other information.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Trudeau’s Dictatorial Crackdown on Protesters Is Popular Among One Group of US Voters

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s descent into dictatorship to rein in the Freedom Convoy protest has support from a majority of likely Democratic voters in America.

According to a survey conducted by Trafalgar Group and Convention of States Action, 55 percent of likely voters disapproved of Trudeau’s handling of the demonstration, while 35 percent approved.

When broken down by party affiliation, 65 percent of Democrats backed Trudeau’s heavy-handed response compared to 17 percent who disapproved, while 87 percent of likely Republican voters opposed the prime minister’s crackdown and 8 percent approved.

One hundred percent of young voters, meanwhile, (those 25 to 35-years-old), disapproved of Trudeau’s response.

On Feb. 14, the Canadian prime minister invoked the Emergencies Act to crack down on demonstrators who had been in Ottawa since late last month protesting the country’s vaccine mandates and other Covid-19 restrictions.

The government announced they would freeze bank accounts of those even loosely attached to the protest, while Ontario’s premier threatened to revoke driver’s licenses. Protesters’ pets weren’t even off-limits.

Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland also said the government would be broadening its “Terrorist Financing” rules to include cryptocurrencies and crowdfunding platforms as part of the Act.

The Canadian Parliament voted on Monday night to extend its emergency powers for another 30 days despite the blockade being over.

The survey of 1080 likely general election voters was conducted Feb. 18-20 and was provided exclusively to The Daily Wire.

Bill would reimburse defendants who shoot under self-defense

BOISE, Idaho (AP) — A panel of lawmakers introduced legislation that would strengthen Idaho’s “stand your ground” law by requiring counties to reimburse anyone charged in a slaying if a judge or jury concludes they acted in self-defense.

Sen. Christy Zito, a Republican from Hammett, said the proposal is needed to protect people like Kyle Rittenhouse, who used an assault-style rifle to shoot three people during a street protest in Kenosha, Wisconsin, in 2020. Rittenhouse killed Anthony Huber and Joseph Rosenbaum and wounded Gaige Grosskreutz, but he said he acted in self-defense. A jury last year acquitted him of multiple charges including homicide.

“The way our political world is looking more and more every day, we need to make sure that our citizens are protected beyond any shadow of a doubt so if they do indeed take human life, they’re protected from that,” Zito said told the House State Affairs Committee.

Zito, who is sponsoring the proposal along with Rep. Priscilla Giddings, a Republican from White Bird, said the bill includes “immunity and reimbursement for justifiable homicide.”

The immunity and reimbursement wouldn’t apply if the person knew or reasonably should have known that the person they are using force against is a police officer, Zito said.

If enacted, the legislation would require the county or prosecuting state agency where the person was charged with a crime to reimburse the defendant for “all reasonable costs” if they are found not guilty by reason of self defense. Reasonable costs would include lost wages, the costs of any lost business opportunities and legal costs including bail, expert witness fees, attorney’s bills and other expenses.

The bill also includes a “safety net” to protect defendants if they are sued by victim in a self-defense case, she said.

The proposal was introduced on a unanimous vote.

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

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

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

Question O’ The Day

Did Biden secretly agree in advance to allow Putin to do this? Or are we to believe this is a coincidence?

What’s next from Russia, Ukraine and the new Cold War?
Putin’s land grab in Ukraine is a grim reminder of a new world order under Biden’s watch

“This is the beginning of a Russian invasion of Ukraine,” President Biden said on Tuesday in response to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s recognition of Ukraine’s two breakaway regions. Putin’s decision was quickly followed by the movement of thousands of Russian troops to the region to enforce that land grab, a sobering reminder of the emergent new world order.

Moscow’s invasion of eastern Ukraine is déjà vu 2008 with the Republic of Georgia [seizure of Abkhazia and South Ossetia] and Ukraine in 2014 [annexation of Crimea], and if I were in the Baltics [Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania] and the balance of Ukraine, or perhaps even Poland, I’d watch carefully movements to my east. Putin is poised to push west against the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to recover lost ground which he considers part of the historic Russian Empire.

Putin’s aggression should alarm westerners who naively cling to NATO’s prowess. Years ago, during the Cold War (1948-1991), the West was much stronger and more able to stand up against Soviet aggression but not so much now. I doubt anyone who truly understands NATO’s capabilities believes the alliance can really defeat the Russian army. The numbers just aren’t there anymore.

Meanwhile, Putin long ago planned to create the pretext to move against Ukraine’s east via misinformation about alleged atrocities. That’s been building now for weeks: hybrid warfare with psychological operations, cyberattacks, and cease-fire violations. Recently the evacuation of civilians into Russia was a clear indication Putin’s plan was falling into place. Those actions remind me of Germany in 1939 and Poland.

Has Putin set his sights on NATO member states?

What now? Putin didn’t need 190,000 troops and a phalanx of tanks, thousands of artillery pieces, and a shipment of plasma to declare the eastern Ukrainian region independent. No, there is much more and this was long ago planned.

Looking into the future, expect Russia to keep large numbers of troops in Belarus, and many thousands inside eastern Ukraine. Also, recall that Putin and Belarus’s President Alexander Lukashenko declared the formation of a reaction force, a key indicator that Russia will hold its ground. Further, expect the geopolitical temperature to rise, subject in part to NATO and the West’s response, if any.

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Putin: First Person Spoken Word

If you are only reading commentary about Russian President Putin’s speech of 21 Feb 2022 or watching short clips, you are doing yourself a disservice.

While some reporting is good, there is a lot of spin, narrative shaping, and just plain lazy reporting.

If you want to try to understand if not what is in Putin’s head, but what he wants the Russian people to think is in his head, you need to read and watch the speech yourself.

When someone tells you what they’re thinking, listen to them.

Putin isn’t trying to bring back the Soviet Union, he’s focused on something much deeper and meaningful, the Russian Empire…build back better, as it were.

You can clearly see that he is playing a very long game. Just like he did in Georgia and Crimea last decade. He will take a bite, let the short term outrage burn itself out, let the rest of Europe and the international community regress to the mean, and then take another bite…etc…etc.

As long as this process works, why change it?

If you don’t have time for a full read but want to get a boildown of foundation of the argument for all that follows, here is what got my attention.

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Western Authoritarianism

The original question was: “What lies at the root of the authoritarianism that seems to be asserting itself in free societies in today’s West?”

Here’s my answer:

The same root that causes irritating busybodies to take over Home Owner Associations. Some people have a lust for power. Government is the ultimate well of power. Author Frank Herbert expressed it well:

“All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts pathological personalities. It is not that power corrupts but that it is magnetic to the corruptible.”

Also:

“When religion and politics travel in the same cart, the riders believe nothing can stand in their way. Their movements become headlong – faster and faster and faster.”

Leftism is itself a religion, complete with an Eden (Earth), an original sin (Capitalism), and a god (government – aka “power over others.”) Another quote I’m fond of by a gentleman by the name of Glenn Wishard:

“The rise and fall of the Marxist ideal is rather neatly contained in the Twentieth Century, and comprises its central political phenomenon. Fascism and democratic defeatism are its sun-dogs.
The common theme is politics as a theology of salvation, with a heroic transformation of the human condition (nothing less) promised to those who will agitate for it.
Political activity becomes the highest human vocation.
The various socialisms are only the most prominent manifestation of this delusion, which our future historian calls “politicism”.
In all its forms, it defines human beings as exclusively political animals, based on characteristics which are largely or entirely beyond human control: ethnicity, nationality, gender, and social class.
It claims universal relevance, and so divides the entire human race into heroes and enemies.
To be on the correct side of this equation is considered full moral justification in and of itself, while no courtesy or concession can be afforded to those on the other.
Therefore, politicism has no conscience whatsoever, no charity, and no mercy.”

When your quest is to drag the rest of the world, kicking and screaming, into your utopia, authoritarianism is the way to get there. Never mind that you’re enabling the most greedy, rapacious and psychopathic to grab the levers of power.

In short, it’s human nature.

Alabama House Passes Permitless Carry Bill

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (WBRC) – The Alabama House passed a proposal Tuesday to allow people to carry concealed handguns without a state permit.

House Republicans have named the handgun bill as a priority for the year.

The bill would do away with the requirement to get a concealed carry permit to carry a handgun concealed under clothes or in a purse or bag when they go in public.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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To remember, when she was campaigning , she got more delegates than KamalaLaLaDingDong did.
Also remember, she was right in there pushing for a ban on the AR.

Contrarian Democrat Tulsi Gabbard to headline CPAC.

Former Democratic Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, a 2020 presidential primary candidate who has been critical of President Joe Biden and liberal lawmakers, will be the headliner at the main CPAC dinner event this week, officials told Secrets Monday.

Gabbard, the former Hawaii congresswoman, will speak at the annual Ronald Reagan Dinner held by the American Conservative Union’s Conservative Political Action Conference. Glenn Beck is slated to be the keynote.

Having a popular Democrat speak at the group’s main dinner, to be held Friday, is an “extraordinary event,” said a spokeswoman.

Two hours after this was posted, the dinner sold out, said CPAC boss Matt Schlapp.

Gabbard has recently roiled Democratic circles with her criticism of Biden’s handling of the Russia-Ukraine crisis and decision to consider only a black woman for the U.S. Supreme Court. She has also blasted Vice President Kamala Harris as a weak vice president.

CPAC opens in Orlando Thursday and ends Sunday. Former President Donald Trump and virtually every conservative politician and pundit are expected to speak.

Seattle PD having trouble hiring new officers

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

TPTB want the ‘unwashed’ disarmed because we’re a long term threat to their controller dreams. They’re not ignorant of history where the pitchforks, rope & torches have often come out in response to their tyranny.

Is the Gun Dangerous, or is it the Criminal?

The world is fascinatingly complex yet important truths are often simple. We shouldn’t take that too far since most simple answers are also wrong or incomplete. That tension helps make life so interesting as we try to understand the world around us. For example, we saw violent crime increase in the last few years. Should we try to keep violent criminals away from guns, or should we try to keep violent criminals away from us? Is the tool dangerous or is the person dangerous? Let’s look at both ideas and see if there are any simple answers to be found.

When we look for simple solutions we see that criminals use guns to commit violence. That sounds like the case is closed but there is more evidence to uncover. If we keep looking then we find that innocent victims also use firearms to stop violence. That means the answers are not black and white but shades of gray.

When we look at all firearms we see that a vanishingly small fraction of the guns owned by civilians were used in violent crime each year (1 in 1400). Now we look deeper and find out that honest citizens used a firearm for self-defense over 1.6 million times a year. That is more people than live in New Hampshire or Hawaii. Each year, more people use a firearm for self-defense than the population of Wyoming and Vermont combined. Armed defense is common.

Proportions matter when we’re looking at shades of gray. We use a firearm for self-defense six times more often than a firearm is used in violent crime (5.98). Good guys with guns save lives. That is both simple and true.

Is safety that simple?

Despite the facts that guns overwhelmingly stop crime, New York State legislators passed a law to lets the public sue gun manufacturers because criminals used a “dangerous” gun that the manufacturers released into the public. That obviously misses the target of reducing crime. Either those New York lawmakers missed the facts or they didn’t care about honest citizens who defend themselves. Politics is obviously complex.

When we look at how criminals behaved, we see that most violent crimes (85%) didn’t involve a firearm at all. Said another way, if we would magically disarm everyone, that wouldn’t hamper the vast majority of violent criminals. Instead of reducing crime, disarming the innocent victims makes it easier for the criminals and would lead to more violence.

Young men commit most violent crimes. Young men are stronger than old men, and far stronger and faster than most women. Disarming women and the elderly makes them much more vulnerable to violent criminals.

Few of us want that. Disarming the good guys hurts honest citizens who want to protect their family. That isn’t an abstract theory, but common practice as we use a gun for self-defense over a million times a year.

Let’s step away from the soundbites. Look at human nature instead and think of the people you know. Some of the people you know are completely trustworthy while others are not. Some resist any temptation while others can’t be trusted with a penny. We are not all the same. When it comes to violence, some of us are a danger to others and most of us are not. It is the person who is a danger to others rather than the tools they use. Again, that is both simple and true.

Violent criminals are not like us. Most of us will never commit a violent crime, yet we know that a few people will victimize others. Most murders are committed by a few hitmen in drug gangs. 64 percent of felons who served time for a violent crime were re-arrested. 41 percent of violent criminals were later re-convicted of subsequent crimes. 34 percent of them were re-incarcerated. Some people practice a life of violent crime.

Shades of gray matter and a violent criminal is 500 times more likely to re-offend than a firearm is likely to be used in a violent crime.

In contrast, firearms manufacturers built a product that we overwhelmingly use to save lives in armed defense. If we’re looking for people who increase the risks for all of us, then let’s sue New York politicians, judges, and prosecutors who put dangerous recidivist-criminals back on our streets. Now that will save lives

How Joe Biden Created The Ukraine Crisis.

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

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

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

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The Neoliberal War on Dissent in the West
Those who most flamboyantly proclaim that they are fighting fascists continue to embrace and wield the defining weapons of despotism.

When it comes to distant and adversarial countries, we are taught to recognize tyranny through the use of telltale tactics of repression. Dissent from orthodoxies is censored. Protests against the state are outlawed. Dissenters are harshly punished with no due process. Long prison terms are doled out for political transgressions rather than crimes of violence. Journalists are treated as criminals and spies. Opposition to the policies of political leaders are recast as crimes against the state.

When a government that is adverse to the West engages in such conduct, it is not just easy but obligatory to malign it as despotic. Thus can one find, on a virtually daily basis, articles in the Western press citing the government’s use of those tactics in Russia, China, Iran, Venezuela and whatever other countries the West has an interest in disparaging (articles about identical tactics from regimes supported by the West — from Riyadh to Cairo — are much rarer). That the use of these repressive tactics render these countries and their populations subject to autocratic regimes is considered undebatable.

But when these weapons are wielded by Western governments, the precise opposite framework is imposed: describing them as despotic is no longer obligatory but virtually prohibited. That tyranny exists only in Western adversaries but never in the West itself is treated as a permanent axiom of international affairs, as if Western democracies are divinely shielded from the temptations of genuine repression. Indeed, to suggest that a Western democracy has descended to the same level of authoritarian repression as the West’s official enemies is to assert a proposition deemed intrinsically absurd or even vaguely treasonous.

The implicit guarantor of this comforting framework is democracy. Western countries, according to this mythology, can never be as repressive as their enemies because Western governments are at least elected democratically. This assurance, superficially appealing though it may be, completely collapses with the slightest critical scrutiny. The premise of the U.S. Constitution and others like it is that majoritarian despotism is dangerous in the extreme; the Bill of Rights consists of little more than limitations imposed on the tyrannical measures majorities might seek to democratically enact (the expression of ideas cannot be criminalized even if majorities want them to be; religious freedom cannot be abolished even if large majorities demand it; life and liberty cannot be deprived without due process even if nine of out ten citizens favor doing so, etc.). More inconveniently still, many of the foreign leaders we are instructed to view as despots are popular or even every bit as democratically elected as our own beloved freedom-safeguarding officials.

As potent as this mythological framework is, reinforced by large media corporations over so many decades, it cannot withstand the increasingly glaring use of precisely these despotic tactics in the West. Watching Justin Trudeau — the sweet, well-mannered, well-raised good-boy prince of one of the West’s nicest countries featuring such a pretty visage (even on the numerous occasions when marred by blackface) — invoke and then harshly impose dubious emergency, civil-liberties-denying powers is just the latest swing of the hammer causing this Western sculpture to crumble. In sum, you are required by Western propaganda to treat the two images below as fundamentally different; indeed, huge numbers of people in the West vehemently denounce the one on the left while enthusiastically applauding the one on the right. Such brittle mythology can be sustained only for so long:

Reuters, Aug. 8, 2019 (left); BBC, Feb. 15, 2022 (right)

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Suspect shot, another arrested after break-in at Deep Ellum business

DALLAS — One suspect was shot and another was arrested after a reported break-in at a business in the Deep Ellum area early Monday, according to the Dallas Police Department.

Based on preliminary information, officers responded to a shooting in the 3000 block of Canton Street, near South Malcolm X Boulevard.

A business owner was asleep inside his own business, according to an officer on the scene.

The officer said two men kicked in the door and went inside, and the business owner shot one of the men. That man was transported to the hospital in critical condition.

The other man who broke into the business was not injured and was arrested, according to police at the scene. Police said the case would be referred to a grand jury to determine if it was self-defense.

Police were still investigating the shooting Monday morning, and more information was not available.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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