by Bob Walsh
Michael Mathisen, 30, and Lauren Wilde, 31, were both drunk when they decided to play hide the salami in one of the gondola cars on the 150 foot tall ferris wheel in downtown Cincinnati. The gondola cars hold up to six people. It seems that there were other passengers, including children, and those other passengers were not amused.
At the end of the 12 minute ride they both got another ride, to the police station. Wilder was RORd. Mathisen was held overnight.
EDITOR'S NOTE: For Christ's sake that was a teachable moment. It taught those kids what the birds and bees are really all about.
Sunday, March 31, 2019
BOLTON’S HARD LINE SCUTTLED TRUMP MEETING WITH KIM JONG UN
Exclusive: With a piece of paper, Trump called on Kim to hand over nuclear weapons
By Lesley Wroughton and David Brunnstrom
Reuters
March 29, 2019
WASHINGTON -- On the day that their talks in Hanoi collapsed last month, U.S. President Donald Trump handed North Korean leader Kim Jong Un a piece of paper that included a blunt call for the transfer of Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons and bomb fuel to the United States, according to the document seen by Reuters.
Trump gave Kim both Korean and English-language versions of the U.S. position at Hanoi’s Metropole hotel on Feb. 28, according to a source familiar with the discussions, speaking on condition of anonymity. It was the first time that Trump himself had explicitly defined what he meant by denuclearization directly to Kim, the source said.
A lunch between the two leaders was canceled the same day. While neither side has presented a complete account of why the summit collapsed, the document may help explain it.
The document’s existence was first mentioned by White House national security adviser John Bolton in television interviews he gave after the two-day summit. Bolton did not disclose in those interviews the pivotal U.S. expectation contained in the document that North Korea should transfer its nuclear weapons and fissile material to the United States.
The document appeared to represent Bolton’s long-held and hardline “Libya model” of denuclearization that North Korea has rejected repeatedly. It probably would have been seen by Kim as insulting and provocative, analysts said.
Trump had previously distanced himself in public comments from Bolton’s approach and said a “Libya model” would be employed only if a deal could not be reached.
The idea of North Korea handing over its weapons was first proposed by Bolton in 2004. He revived the proposal last year when Trump named him as national security adviser.
The document was meant to provide the North Koreans with a clear and concise definition of what the United States meant by “final, fully verifiable, denuclearization,” the source familiar with discussions said.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The State Department declined to comment on what would be a classified document.
After the summit, a North Korean official accused Bolton and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo of “gangster-like” demands, saying Pyongyang was considering suspending talks with the United States and may rethink its self-imposed ban on missile and nuclear tests.
The English version of the document, seen by Reuters, called for “fully dismantling North Korea’s nuclear infrastructure, chemical and biological warfare program and related dual-use capabilities; and ballistic missiles, launchers, and associated facilities.”
Aside from the call for the transfer of Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons and bomb fuel, the document had four other key points.
It called on North Korea to provide a comprehensive declaration of its nuclear program and full access to U.S. and international inspectors; to halt all related activities and construction of any new facilities; to eliminate all nuclear infrastructure; and to transition all nuclear program scientists and technicians to commercial activities.
The summit in Vietnam’s capital was cut short after Trump and Kim failed to reach a deal on the extent of economic sanctions relief for North Korea in exchange for its steps to give up its nuclear program.
The first summit between Trump and Kim, which took place in Singapore in June 2018, was almost called off after the North Koreans rejected Bolton’s repeated demands for it to follow a denuclearization model under which components of Libya’s nuclear program were shipped to the United States in 2004.
Seven years after a denuclearization agreement was reached between the United States and Libya’s leader, Muammar Gaddafi, the United States took part in a NATO-led military operation against his government and he was overthrown by rebels and killed.
‘MISERABLE FATE’
Last year, North Korea officials called Bolton’s plan “absurd” and noted the “miserable fate” that befell Gaddafi.
After North Korea threatened to cancel the Singapore summit, Trump said in May 2018 he was not pursuing a “Libya model” and that he was looking for an agreement that would protect Kim.
“He would be there, he would be running his country, his country would be very rich,” Trump said at the time.
“The Libya model was a much different model. We decimated that country,” Trump added.
The Hanoi document was presented in what U.S. officials have said was an attempt by Trump to secure a “big deal” under which all sanctions would be lifted if North Korea gave up all of its weapons.
U.S.-North Korean engagement has appeared to be in limbo since the Hanoi meeting. Pompeo said on March 4 he was hopeful he could send a team to North Korea “in the next couple of weeks,” but there has been no sign of that.
Jenny Town, a North Korea expert at the Washington-based Stimson Center think tank, said the content of the U.S. document was not surprising.
“This is what Bolton wanted from the beginning and it clearly wasn’t going to work,” Town said. “If the U.S. was really serious about negotiations they would have learned already that this wasn’t an approach they could take.”
Town added, “It’s already been rejected more than once, and to keep bringing it up ... would be rather insulting. It’s a non-starter and reflects absolutely no learning curve in the process.”
North Korea has repeatedly rejected unilateral disarmament and argues that its weapons program is needed for defense, a belief reinforced by the fate Gaddafi and others.
In an interview with ABC’s “This Week” program after the Hanoi summit, Bolton said the North Koreans had committed to denuclearization in a variety of forms several times “that they have happily violated.”
“We define denuclearization as meaning the elimination of their nuclear weapons program, their uranium enrichment capability, their plutonium reprocessing capability,” Bolton said.
Asked who authored the document, Bolton said it had been “written at staff level and cleared around as usual.”
EDITOR’S NOTE: What the fuck was Trump’s team thinking. Any imbecile would have known that Bolton’s demand was a non-starter.
By Lesley Wroughton and David Brunnstrom
Reuters
March 29, 2019
WASHINGTON -- On the day that their talks in Hanoi collapsed last month, U.S. President Donald Trump handed North Korean leader Kim Jong Un a piece of paper that included a blunt call for the transfer of Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons and bomb fuel to the United States, according to the document seen by Reuters.
Trump gave Kim both Korean and English-language versions of the U.S. position at Hanoi’s Metropole hotel on Feb. 28, according to a source familiar with the discussions, speaking on condition of anonymity. It was the first time that Trump himself had explicitly defined what he meant by denuclearization directly to Kim, the source said.
A lunch between the two leaders was canceled the same day. While neither side has presented a complete account of why the summit collapsed, the document may help explain it.
The document’s existence was first mentioned by White House national security adviser John Bolton in television interviews he gave after the two-day summit. Bolton did not disclose in those interviews the pivotal U.S. expectation contained in the document that North Korea should transfer its nuclear weapons and fissile material to the United States.
The document appeared to represent Bolton’s long-held and hardline “Libya model” of denuclearization that North Korea has rejected repeatedly. It probably would have been seen by Kim as insulting and provocative, analysts said.
Trump had previously distanced himself in public comments from Bolton’s approach and said a “Libya model” would be employed only if a deal could not be reached.
The idea of North Korea handing over its weapons was first proposed by Bolton in 2004. He revived the proposal last year when Trump named him as national security adviser.
The document was meant to provide the North Koreans with a clear and concise definition of what the United States meant by “final, fully verifiable, denuclearization,” the source familiar with discussions said.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The State Department declined to comment on what would be a classified document.
After the summit, a North Korean official accused Bolton and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo of “gangster-like” demands, saying Pyongyang was considering suspending talks with the United States and may rethink its self-imposed ban on missile and nuclear tests.
The English version of the document, seen by Reuters, called for “fully dismantling North Korea’s nuclear infrastructure, chemical and biological warfare program and related dual-use capabilities; and ballistic missiles, launchers, and associated facilities.”
Aside from the call for the transfer of Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons and bomb fuel, the document had four other key points.
It called on North Korea to provide a comprehensive declaration of its nuclear program and full access to U.S. and international inspectors; to halt all related activities and construction of any new facilities; to eliminate all nuclear infrastructure; and to transition all nuclear program scientists and technicians to commercial activities.
The summit in Vietnam’s capital was cut short after Trump and Kim failed to reach a deal on the extent of economic sanctions relief for North Korea in exchange for its steps to give up its nuclear program.
The first summit between Trump and Kim, which took place in Singapore in June 2018, was almost called off after the North Koreans rejected Bolton’s repeated demands for it to follow a denuclearization model under which components of Libya’s nuclear program were shipped to the United States in 2004.
Seven years after a denuclearization agreement was reached between the United States and Libya’s leader, Muammar Gaddafi, the United States took part in a NATO-led military operation against his government and he was overthrown by rebels and killed.
‘MISERABLE FATE’
Last year, North Korea officials called Bolton’s plan “absurd” and noted the “miserable fate” that befell Gaddafi.
After North Korea threatened to cancel the Singapore summit, Trump said in May 2018 he was not pursuing a “Libya model” and that he was looking for an agreement that would protect Kim.
“He would be there, he would be running his country, his country would be very rich,” Trump said at the time.
“The Libya model was a much different model. We decimated that country,” Trump added.
The Hanoi document was presented in what U.S. officials have said was an attempt by Trump to secure a “big deal” under which all sanctions would be lifted if North Korea gave up all of its weapons.
U.S.-North Korean engagement has appeared to be in limbo since the Hanoi meeting. Pompeo said on March 4 he was hopeful he could send a team to North Korea “in the next couple of weeks,” but there has been no sign of that.
Jenny Town, a North Korea expert at the Washington-based Stimson Center think tank, said the content of the U.S. document was not surprising.
“This is what Bolton wanted from the beginning and it clearly wasn’t going to work,” Town said. “If the U.S. was really serious about negotiations they would have learned already that this wasn’t an approach they could take.”
Town added, “It’s already been rejected more than once, and to keep bringing it up ... would be rather insulting. It’s a non-starter and reflects absolutely no learning curve in the process.”
North Korea has repeatedly rejected unilateral disarmament and argues that its weapons program is needed for defense, a belief reinforced by the fate Gaddafi and others.
In an interview with ABC’s “This Week” program after the Hanoi summit, Bolton said the North Koreans had committed to denuclearization in a variety of forms several times “that they have happily violated.”
“We define denuclearization as meaning the elimination of their nuclear weapons program, their uranium enrichment capability, their plutonium reprocessing capability,” Bolton said.
Asked who authored the document, Bolton said it had been “written at staff level and cleared around as usual.”
EDITOR’S NOTE: What the fuck was Trump’s team thinking. Any imbecile would have known that Bolton’s demand was a non-starter.
BONNIE TOOK A CRAP ON MURDERED COP
Bonnie and Clyde were murderous thugs who defecated on murdered cops and my uncle WAS a hero: Nephew of Texas Ranger who killed notorious outlaws praises Kevin Costner movie and blasts Hollywood
Daily Mail
March 30, 2019
Frank Hamer lead a group of law enforcers who tracked and killed the infamous bandits in Arcadia, Texas, in 1934, peppering the lovers and their Ford V8 with 187 bullets.
His great-nephew Harrison Hamer said his family have long been unhappy with their crime-fighting relative's portrayals, which have painted the Texas Ranger as a blundering fool. But Harrison said his family now have the 'justice they deserve' after watching Kevin Costner as Frank in Netflix's The Highwaymen.
In an interview, Harrison said: 'Bonnie and Clyde were no Robin Hoods, as they’ve been portrayed. They were pure and simple murderous thugs. The cruellest of killers. Once, after murdering two officers, Bonnie is said to have walked up to one of the dead men and took a crap on his chest.'
Daily Mail
March 30, 2019
Frank Hamer lead a group of law enforcers who tracked and killed the infamous bandits in Arcadia, Texas, in 1934, peppering the lovers and their Ford V8 with 187 bullets.
His great-nephew Harrison Hamer said his family have long been unhappy with their crime-fighting relative's portrayals, which have painted the Texas Ranger as a blundering fool. But Harrison said his family now have the 'justice they deserve' after watching Kevin Costner as Frank in Netflix's The Highwaymen.
In an interview, Harrison said: 'Bonnie and Clyde were no Robin Hoods, as they’ve been portrayed. They were pure and simple murderous thugs. The cruellest of killers. Once, after murdering two officers, Bonnie is said to have walked up to one of the dead men and took a crap on his chest.'
UNDERPAID GUATEMALAN COPS MOONLIGHTED FOR ADDITIONAL NEEDED INCOME
Guatemala Dismantles Ring of Police Moonlighting as Hitmen
By Cat Rainsford
InSight Crime
March 28, 2019
A series of arrests in Guatemala has brought down a criminal group made up of police officers working as drug dealers and hitmen, showing how the country has not been spared from the growing crisis of police criminality across the region.
The network, known as “Los Patrones,” operated across southern and western Guatemala, and was supported by local policemen. “Each [member] controlled their own drug distribution point, while the police agents facilitated the transportation of the illicit substances in exchange for economic benefit,” read a statement by the Attorney General’s Office.
Among the 15 group members captured in Saturday’s operation were the group’s leaders, Miguel Antonio Solán Solis and Sonia Haydee Lainez Aguilar de Salán, a married couple known as “El Patrón” and “La Patrona.”
Donil Vinicio Orozco López, alias “El Más Chingón” (“The Most Awesome”), who headed up the group’s network of police collaborators, was also arrested.
Some 300 members of the National Civilian Police (Policía Nacional Civil – PNC) participated in the operation, which included 30 raids in the departments of Guatemala, San Marcos, Huehuetenango and Escuintla.
InSight Crime Analysis
The dismantling of Los Patrones is the latest operation to reveal the extent of police collaboration with criminal networks in Guatemala. In August 2018, eight policemen were arrested for participation in the “Comando Silencioso” network, which carried out illegal raids in order to steal cash and valuables. The network was associated with the criminal group “Los Marrocos,” which had previously recruited police officers to seize and resell drug shipments.
The alarming incidence of police criminality in Guatemala reflects structural failures within the PNC that appear to have worsened over the last year. Low pay and a lack of opportunities for professional advancement make it ever more tempting for officers to supplement their earnings with criminal activities, a problem exacerbated by corruption and cronyism within the PNC.
In January, a report by the Coalition for Citizen Security and the Centre for National Economic Research revealed that, of 167 police promotions in the period between January and August 2018, 81 percent showed irregularities.
Trends in security policy are compounding the phenomenon. A 2018 report by the Guatemalan Studies Center warned that increasing militarization of public security, particularly since the arrival of Enrique Degenhart as Interior Minister in February 2018, risked further devaluing the PNC and harming the professionalization of the police force.
The problem of police collaboration with organized crime is far from unique to Guatemala. Parallel examples across the region include Brazil’s Escritorio do Crime (Office of Crime), a militia group comprised largely of current and former members of the security forces. In Mexico, the phenomenon has reached epidemic proportions, with 2018 witnessing the decommissioning of entire police forces in Tehuacán and Acapulco due to alleged links with drug trafficking.
The structural factors driving police criminality bear striking similarities across the region, which varying attempts at police reform have failed to resolve. The case of Los Patrones demonstrates that the struggle to build strong, trustworthy police forces remains one of Latin America’s most intractable security problems.
By Cat Rainsford
InSight Crime
March 28, 2019
A series of arrests in Guatemala has brought down a criminal group made up of police officers working as drug dealers and hitmen, showing how the country has not been spared from the growing crisis of police criminality across the region.
The network, known as “Los Patrones,” operated across southern and western Guatemala, and was supported by local policemen. “Each [member] controlled their own drug distribution point, while the police agents facilitated the transportation of the illicit substances in exchange for economic benefit,” read a statement by the Attorney General’s Office.
Among the 15 group members captured in Saturday’s operation were the group’s leaders, Miguel Antonio Solán Solis and Sonia Haydee Lainez Aguilar de Salán, a married couple known as “El Patrón” and “La Patrona.”
Donil Vinicio Orozco López, alias “El Más Chingón” (“The Most Awesome”), who headed up the group’s network of police collaborators, was also arrested.
Some 300 members of the National Civilian Police (Policía Nacional Civil – PNC) participated in the operation, which included 30 raids in the departments of Guatemala, San Marcos, Huehuetenango and Escuintla.
InSight Crime Analysis
The dismantling of Los Patrones is the latest operation to reveal the extent of police collaboration with criminal networks in Guatemala. In August 2018, eight policemen were arrested for participation in the “Comando Silencioso” network, which carried out illegal raids in order to steal cash and valuables. The network was associated with the criminal group “Los Marrocos,” which had previously recruited police officers to seize and resell drug shipments.
The alarming incidence of police criminality in Guatemala reflects structural failures within the PNC that appear to have worsened over the last year. Low pay and a lack of opportunities for professional advancement make it ever more tempting for officers to supplement their earnings with criminal activities, a problem exacerbated by corruption and cronyism within the PNC.
In January, a report by the Coalition for Citizen Security and the Centre for National Economic Research revealed that, of 167 police promotions in the period between January and August 2018, 81 percent showed irregularities.
Trends in security policy are compounding the phenomenon. A 2018 report by the Guatemalan Studies Center warned that increasing militarization of public security, particularly since the arrival of Enrique Degenhart as Interior Minister in February 2018, risked further devaluing the PNC and harming the professionalization of the police force.
The problem of police collaboration with organized crime is far from unique to Guatemala. Parallel examples across the region include Brazil’s Escritorio do Crime (Office of Crime), a militia group comprised largely of current and former members of the security forces. In Mexico, the phenomenon has reached epidemic proportions, with 2018 witnessing the decommissioning of entire police forces in Tehuacán and Acapulco due to alleged links with drug trafficking.
The structural factors driving police criminality bear striking similarities across the region, which varying attempts at police reform have failed to resolve. The case of Los Patrones demonstrates that the struggle to build strong, trustworthy police forces remains one of Latin America’s most intractable security problems.
STONE THROWERS BEWARE: THE IDF IS LIABLE TO SHOOT YOU DEAD
Two dead, 224 injured in clashes along Gaza Border - Palestinian report
By Hagay Hacohen
The Jerusalem Post
March 30, 2019
Two young Palestinians were shot dead by IDF forces during the clashes along the Gaza Border with Israel, the Palestinian Ministry of Health reported on Saturday.
The two men are Mohammed Jehad Sa'ad, 20, and Adham Nedal Amara, 17.
Two hundred and twenty four Palestinian were been injured, including 26 children and eight women. Among the injured were four reporters and three medical staff members, the statement said.
IDF Arabic spokesperson released a video on Saturday as mass protests erupt along the Gaza Strip border in which mothers in the Hamas-controlled territory are warned to "guard the lives of their children."
"A child who throws stones [on IDF troops] is not a hero," the video also said.
Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh joined the riots along with members of the Egyptian intelligence, Palestinian media reported.
Living conditions under the Radical Islamic terrorist group Hamas had deteriorated so badly young people are willing to join the massive protests in exchange for a sandwich and a promise to have access to free Wi-Fi, Haaretz reported on Friday.
By Hagay Hacohen
The Jerusalem Post
March 30, 2019
Two young Palestinians were shot dead by IDF forces during the clashes along the Gaza Border with Israel, the Palestinian Ministry of Health reported on Saturday.
The two men are Mohammed Jehad Sa'ad, 20, and Adham Nedal Amara, 17.
Two hundred and twenty four Palestinian were been injured, including 26 children and eight women. Among the injured were four reporters and three medical staff members, the statement said.
IDF Arabic spokesperson released a video on Saturday as mass protests erupt along the Gaza Strip border in which mothers in the Hamas-controlled territory are warned to "guard the lives of their children."
"A child who throws stones [on IDF troops] is not a hero," the video also said.
Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh joined the riots along with members of the Egyptian intelligence, Palestinian media reported.
Living conditions under the Radical Islamic terrorist group Hamas had deteriorated so badly young people are willing to join the massive protests in exchange for a sandwich and a promise to have access to free Wi-Fi, Haaretz reported on Friday.
Saturday, March 30, 2019
BY BEING PROUD OF THE ANTI-SEMITIC CONGRESSWOMAN WHO CALLED TRUMP A MOTHERFUCKER, BARACK OBAMA FINALLY SHOWS HIMSELF TO BE THE ANTI-SEMITIC MOTHERFUCKER HE IS
'I'm proud of you': That’s what Barack Obama told Muslim Democratic Rep. Rashida Tlaib who drew fire for anti-Semitism and vowed to 'impeach the motherfucker' Trump
By David Martosko
Daily Mail
March 29, 2019
A Democratic congresswoman who vowed in vulgar language to impeach President Donald Trump and later suggested pro-Israel Jewish members of Congress have dual loyalties got a thumbs-up this week from Barack Obama.
The former president 'met with us new members of Congress and we had a thoughtful discussion about serving our country,' Rep. Rashida Tlaib wrote Thursday on Instagram and Twitter.
'The best part was when he looked straight at me and said, "I'm proud of you".'
The posts included a photo of Tlaib and Obama grinning, with the former president's arm around her. Tlaib spokesman Denzel McCampbell told DailyMail.com that it was taken Monday night.
Obama tweeted about the event on Tuesday, writing that the new Democratic House freshmen are 'a young, diverse class, stocked with a bunch of my campaign and administration alums who’ve taken the torch. This group is going to be driving progress for a long time to come.'
Tlaib is one of just three Muslim members of Congress.
She was photographed at an event in January posing with Abbas Hamideh, a Palestinian activist who has praised the Hamas and Hezbollah terror organizations, equated pro-Israel Jews to Nazis and claimed Israel has no right to exist.
'Yes, I am Muslim and Palestinian. Get over it,' Tlaib tweeted amid that controversy.
She also supports the 'Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions' (BDS) movement, which aims to economically isolate Israel.
According to The Times of Israel, however, her official website is built on Wix, an Israeli-owned platform.
American Jewish leaders condemned her in January after she suggested that lawmakers who supported an anti-BDS measure held dual loyalties.
'They forgot what country they represent,' Tlaib tweeted at the time. 'This is the U.S. where boycotting is a right & part of our historical fight for freedom & equality.'
Questioning the national loyalty of American Jews is an age-old anti-Semitic canard meant to attack their patriotism.
Tlaib has also been criticized for following an Instagram account called 'free.palestine.1948,' a name referring to the year of Israel's founding.
That account routinely posts anti-Semitic memes that compare Jews to rats, call them a 'plague' and suggest moneyed Jews control the U.S. news media.
One image on the account directly compared Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Adolf Hitler and suggested he was behind the 9/11 terror attacks.
When challenged about the account's content this year, its owner responded: 'Haha make me laugh fuck you and fuck israhell […] you wankers will never like the truth.'
Tlaib first burst onto Americans' radar just hours after she was sworn in as a Michigan congresswoman, when she was videotaped at a party saying that she had promised her young son that Democrats would remove President Donald Trump for power.
'We're going to impeach the motherfucker,' she said.
By David Martosko
Daily Mail
March 29, 2019
A Democratic congresswoman who vowed in vulgar language to impeach President Donald Trump and later suggested pro-Israel Jewish members of Congress have dual loyalties got a thumbs-up this week from Barack Obama.
The former president 'met with us new members of Congress and we had a thoughtful discussion about serving our country,' Rep. Rashida Tlaib wrote Thursday on Instagram and Twitter.
'The best part was when he looked straight at me and said, "I'm proud of you".'
The posts included a photo of Tlaib and Obama grinning, with the former president's arm around her. Tlaib spokesman Denzel McCampbell told DailyMail.com that it was taken Monday night.
Obama tweeted about the event on Tuesday, writing that the new Democratic House freshmen are 'a young, diverse class, stocked with a bunch of my campaign and administration alums who’ve taken the torch. This group is going to be driving progress for a long time to come.'
Tlaib is one of just three Muslim members of Congress.
She was photographed at an event in January posing with Abbas Hamideh, a Palestinian activist who has praised the Hamas and Hezbollah terror organizations, equated pro-Israel Jews to Nazis and claimed Israel has no right to exist.
'Yes, I am Muslim and Palestinian. Get over it,' Tlaib tweeted amid that controversy.
She also supports the 'Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions' (BDS) movement, which aims to economically isolate Israel.
According to The Times of Israel, however, her official website is built on Wix, an Israeli-owned platform.
American Jewish leaders condemned her in January after she suggested that lawmakers who supported an anti-BDS measure held dual loyalties.
'They forgot what country they represent,' Tlaib tweeted at the time. 'This is the U.S. where boycotting is a right & part of our historical fight for freedom & equality.'
Questioning the national loyalty of American Jews is an age-old anti-Semitic canard meant to attack their patriotism.
Tlaib has also been criticized for following an Instagram account called 'free.palestine.1948,' a name referring to the year of Israel's founding.
That account routinely posts anti-Semitic memes that compare Jews to rats, call them a 'plague' and suggest moneyed Jews control the U.S. news media.
One image on the account directly compared Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Adolf Hitler and suggested he was behind the 9/11 terror attacks.
When challenged about the account's content this year, its owner responded: 'Haha make me laugh fuck you and fuck israhell […] you wankers will never like the truth.'
Tlaib first burst onto Americans' radar just hours after she was sworn in as a Michigan congresswoman, when she was videotaped at a party saying that she had promised her young son that Democrats would remove President Donald Trump for power.
'We're going to impeach the motherfucker,' she said.
JOE BITE-ME MAY GET BIT BY THE #METOO MOVEMENT
by Bob Walsh
Yesterday news stories popped up about a young lady accusing former V. P. Joe "Bite-Me" Biden of walking up behind her, grabbing her shoulders and kissing her on the neck without her consent. This allegedly took place about three years ago.
Joe denies any recollection of any such incident. Since he is about 130 years old he may be telling the truth. He also said he was sorry if he made anybody feel uncomfortable with anything he has ever done at any time during his whole life. He has been on an apology tour for the last couple of weeks apologizing for every piece of legislation he ever supported in his entire political career, which goes back to the Herbert Hoover administration I think.
I wonder if he is in any actual trouble over this. I sure hope so, just because.
Yesterday news stories popped up about a young lady accusing former V. P. Joe "Bite-Me" Biden of walking up behind her, grabbing her shoulders and kissing her on the neck without her consent. This allegedly took place about three years ago.
Joe denies any recollection of any such incident. Since he is about 130 years old he may be telling the truth. He also said he was sorry if he made anybody feel uncomfortable with anything he has ever done at any time during his whole life. He has been on an apology tour for the last couple of weeks apologizing for every piece of legislation he ever supported in his entire political career, which goes back to the Herbert Hoover administration I think.
I wonder if he is in any actual trouble over this. I sure hope so, just because.
MAJOR NEWS FLASH........THERE IS AT LEAST ONE SANE, LITERATE JUDGE IN CALIFORNIA
by Bob Walsh
U. S. District Court Judge Roger Benitez struck down the standard factory capacity magazine ban (often referred to as high-capacity magazines because they hold more than ten rounds) as unconstitutional. Arguments against the ban cited numerous instances where citizens defending themselves from armed home invasions were at a severe disadvantage against the bad guys. Judge Benitez also had a serious problem with the law turning thousands of honest law-abiding citizens into criminals for possessing something they bought legally and that the state wanted to take without compensation.
The requirement came along in 2016 with the passage of Proposition 63, something that was pimped for heavily by our former and our current governor both. Newsom had a hissy-fit over the ruling.
The case, Duncan V. Becerra, may be appealed according to the A. G., Xavier Becerra, who is also a liberal asswipe who wouldn't know the U. S. Constitution and Bill of Rights if they walked up and bit him on the ass. Which they sort of just did.
U. S. District Court Judge Roger Benitez struck down the standard factory capacity magazine ban (often referred to as high-capacity magazines because they hold more than ten rounds) as unconstitutional. Arguments against the ban cited numerous instances where citizens defending themselves from armed home invasions were at a severe disadvantage against the bad guys. Judge Benitez also had a serious problem with the law turning thousands of honest law-abiding citizens into criminals for possessing something they bought legally and that the state wanted to take without compensation.
The requirement came along in 2016 with the passage of Proposition 63, something that was pimped for heavily by our former and our current governor both. Newsom had a hissy-fit over the ruling.
The case, Duncan V. Becerra, may be appealed according to the A. G., Xavier Becerra, who is also a liberal asswipe who wouldn't know the U. S. Constitution and Bill of Rights if they walked up and bit him on the ass. Which they sort of just did.
GAVIN NEWSOM IS A FUCKING MORON
by Bob Walsh
Gavin Newsom, governor of the formerly great state of California, is indeed a fucking moron. He is about to launch on his first out-of-the-country travel as Governor, on a "fact-finding" trip, to El Salvador. He wants to find out why people in Latin America are migrating to the U. S. in general and California in particular.
It isn't a secret Gavin. In fact it's easy. Where they are now is a shit hole, and it is getting shittier. It is poor, dangerous and their society if strongly stratified making it hard to rise out of the shit.
In the U. S. you get free stuff, even if you are here illegally. CA will give you "free" health care (paid for by citizen-taxpayers) and a "free" immigration lawyer (also paid for by citizen-taxpayers) to fight deportation. You will get tons of public assistance. Your illegal alien kids get to go to a decent school where they probably won't be beat up or raped on the way to or from, and neither they nor you will ever have to learn to speak English. The government will bend over backwards to help you to live here without assimilation. Your "cultural norms" will be respected, even if they include domestic abuse, child sexual abuse or violence against police officers. Anything to make you feel welcome.
Like I said, Gavin Newsom is a fucking moron.
Gavin Newsom, governor of the formerly great state of California, is indeed a fucking moron. He is about to launch on his first out-of-the-country travel as Governor, on a "fact-finding" trip, to El Salvador. He wants to find out why people in Latin America are migrating to the U. S. in general and California in particular.
It isn't a secret Gavin. In fact it's easy. Where they are now is a shit hole, and it is getting shittier. It is poor, dangerous and their society if strongly stratified making it hard to rise out of the shit.
In the U. S. you get free stuff, even if you are here illegally. CA will give you "free" health care (paid for by citizen-taxpayers) and a "free" immigration lawyer (also paid for by citizen-taxpayers) to fight deportation. You will get tons of public assistance. Your illegal alien kids get to go to a decent school where they probably won't be beat up or raped on the way to or from, and neither they nor you will ever have to learn to speak English. The government will bend over backwards to help you to live here without assimilation. Your "cultural norms" will be respected, even if they include domestic abuse, child sexual abuse or violence against police officers. Anything to make you feel welcome.
Like I said, Gavin Newsom is a fucking moron.
I ADMIT I DO NOT SEE THE POINT IN THIS
Except To Fuck With Honest, Law-Abiding Citizens
by Bob Walsh
AB 1602, by Assemblyman Evan Low (Democrap- San Jose) is making its way thru the legislature of the formerly great state of California as I write this. If passed into law this proposal would outlaw any insurance policy in the state of California that insures the holder against damages related to the discharge of a firearm.
Interestingly enough, at this time, it does not exclude government agencies.
I guess he wants to a make real sure that, if you are in a position where you are forced to actually shoot a criminal, he or his survivors can sue you into bankruptcy.
by Bob Walsh
AB 1602, by Assemblyman Evan Low (Democrap- San Jose) is making its way thru the legislature of the formerly great state of California as I write this. If passed into law this proposal would outlaw any insurance policy in the state of California that insures the holder against damages related to the discharge of a firearm.
Interestingly enough, at this time, it does not exclude government agencies.
I guess he wants to a make real sure that, if you are in a position where you are forced to actually shoot a criminal, he or his survivors can sue you into bankruptcy.
SHIT, I MAY HAVE TO TRASH MY KEURIG COFFEE MAKER AND STOP DRINKING DR. PEPPER
The family behind JAB Holding Co, which owns the Keurig Coffee makers and Dr. Pepper, used Jewish slave labor during the Holocaust
BarkGrowlBite
March 30, 2019
I’ve been using Keurig coffee makers ever since they arrived on the market. And I dearly love Dr. peppers which I have been drinking for around 80 years.
Keurig and Dr. Pepper are now owned by the JAB Holding Co. It has just been revealed that the family behind that holding company used Jewish slave labor during the Holocaust.
Holy shit! I guess I’m going to have to trash my Keurig coffee maker and stop drinking Dr. Peppers. It’s a good thing I don’t drink Green Mountain coffee because JAB owns that too.
But wait a minute, Bayer and Chase National Bank also have ties to the Holocaust. I have accounts with Chase and use Bayer products.
Bayer supplied the deadly Zyklon B gas that was used in Nazi death camps to kill Jews and used Jewish slave labor as well. Work them to death or gas them to death.
When other banks refused to do so, Chase aided Hitler’s Third Reich by converting German marks into U.S. dollars between 1936 and 1941.
Among other products, Bayer owns Aleve, Alka-Seltzer, Bayer Aspirin, Claritin, Coppertone, Dr. Scholl’s, MiraLAX and Roundup. I see where Bayer is still killing people who use a lot of Roundup.
Krispy Kreme, Coca-Cola, Volkswagen, Hugo Boss, IBM, Puma and Adidas, BMW and Mercedes-Benz are some other companies that used slave labor during the Nazi regime or were otherwise tied to the Holocaust.
I’ve been taking one Bayer full-dose aspirin a day for some 60 years and I’ve used Alka-Seltzer and MiraLAX too. What am I to do … stop using Bayer products, close my accounts with Chase, trash my coffee maker and stop drinking my beloved Dr. Peppers? Shit no! It’s a little late for me to stop my bad habits.
BarkGrowlBite
March 30, 2019
I’ve been using Keurig coffee makers ever since they arrived on the market. And I dearly love Dr. peppers which I have been drinking for around 80 years.
Keurig and Dr. Pepper are now owned by the JAB Holding Co. It has just been revealed that the family behind that holding company used Jewish slave labor during the Holocaust.
Holy shit! I guess I’m going to have to trash my Keurig coffee maker and stop drinking Dr. Peppers. It’s a good thing I don’t drink Green Mountain coffee because JAB owns that too.
But wait a minute, Bayer and Chase National Bank also have ties to the Holocaust. I have accounts with Chase and use Bayer products.
Bayer supplied the deadly Zyklon B gas that was used in Nazi death camps to kill Jews and used Jewish slave labor as well. Work them to death or gas them to death.
When other banks refused to do so, Chase aided Hitler’s Third Reich by converting German marks into U.S. dollars between 1936 and 1941.
Among other products, Bayer owns Aleve, Alka-Seltzer, Bayer Aspirin, Claritin, Coppertone, Dr. Scholl’s, MiraLAX and Roundup. I see where Bayer is still killing people who use a lot of Roundup.
Krispy Kreme, Coca-Cola, Volkswagen, Hugo Boss, IBM, Puma and Adidas, BMW and Mercedes-Benz are some other companies that used slave labor during the Nazi regime or were otherwise tied to the Holocaust.
I’ve been taking one Bayer full-dose aspirin a day for some 60 years and I’ve used Alka-Seltzer and MiraLAX too. What am I to do … stop using Bayer products, close my accounts with Chase, trash my coffee maker and stop drinking my beloved Dr. Peppers? Shit no! It’s a little late for me to stop my bad habits.
Friday, March 29, 2019
THE CAUSE OF SHITTY SCHOOLS IN CALIFORNIA
by Bob Walsh
The Superintendent of Public Instruction in the formerly great state of California is Tom Torlakson. He announced a few days ago why the schools in California are shit. This problem is caused by selfish parents who do not want their kids to go to shitty schools.
Yes, according to Tom, parents who send their kids to Charter Schools (which are, generally speaking, non-union) are selfish bastards who are actually just siphoning money off from the real (government) school system where they can not pick and choose their students but instead have to take the violent gang members, rapists, huffers and non-English speaking illegal aliens.
Perfectly good liberal logic right there.
The Superintendent of Public Instruction in the formerly great state of California is Tom Torlakson. He announced a few days ago why the schools in California are shit. This problem is caused by selfish parents who do not want their kids to go to shitty schools.
Yes, according to Tom, parents who send their kids to Charter Schools (which are, generally speaking, non-union) are selfish bastards who are actually just siphoning money off from the real (government) school system where they can not pick and choose their students but instead have to take the violent gang members, rapists, huffers and non-English speaking illegal aliens.
Perfectly good liberal logic right there.
WAS IT NECESSARY FOR COPS TO KICK IN THE DOOR WITH GUNS DRAWN TO REMOVE SICK TODDLER?
Children removed by cops at gunpoint from Arizona home over extremely high fever
By Justin Pazera and Zach Crenshaw
ABC 15
March 27, 2019
CHANDLER, AZ — State Representative Kelly Townsend says she's troubled by video that shows Chandler police officers with guns drawn, forcing their way into a family's home.
The officers were there for a 2-year-old boy who was believed to have an extremely high fever.
Townsend, a Republican in District 16, played a big role in getting legislation passed requiring the Arizona Department of Child Safety to get a search warrant to remove children from their home in a non-emergency situation. Townsend says she never thought this would be the result.
"The doctor chose to use DCS to remove the child and DCS chose to use the police and the police chose to use the SWAT team," said Townsend. "That is not the country that I recognize."
Townsend says this all started back in February when the parents took the 2-year-old-boy, who isn't vaccinated, to a naturopathic doctor for a fever of about 105. The doctor instructed the parents to take the infant to the emergency room but after the doctor's visit the child's fever broke, so they never went.
After finding that out, the doctor called DCS which then called Chandler police to check on the child. After the father refused to let police into the home to check on the boy, police came back later with a search warrant and forced their way into the home after the family didn't respond.
"All because of a fever. A fever! It's absolutely ridiculous," said Nicholas Boca, the family's attorney. "That type of kicking your door in, with guns drawn... it should be reserved for violent criminals."
"At that point who now owns control over the child?" asked Townsend. "And it seems like we've given that now to the doctor and the parent no longer has the say or they risk the SWAT team taking all of your children and potentially the newborn."
Townsend says she can see both sides on this story: a concerned doctor and protective parents, but she's questioning how it was done and the amount of force used.
"We need to admit that this situation was a mistake," said Townsend. "There are other situations where there is neglect, there is abuse and that's what we need to focus on."
ABC15 asked DCS for a comment on why such force was used. DCS said it's not able to comment on the case specifically because of privacy laws.
Townsend told ABC15 the child actually had an upper respiratory infection, not meningitis like the doctor had feared.
The Chandler Police Department says DCS obtained a search warrant and asked for their assistance entering the home, but says they used regular officers and not SWAT officers.
The parents are fighting to get their kids back.
"They have a good family. And this is a waste of state resources," said Boca.
By Justin Pazera and Zach Crenshaw
ABC 15
March 27, 2019
CHANDLER, AZ — State Representative Kelly Townsend says she's troubled by video that shows Chandler police officers with guns drawn, forcing their way into a family's home.
The officers were there for a 2-year-old boy who was believed to have an extremely high fever.
Townsend, a Republican in District 16, played a big role in getting legislation passed requiring the Arizona Department of Child Safety to get a search warrant to remove children from their home in a non-emergency situation. Townsend says she never thought this would be the result.
"The doctor chose to use DCS to remove the child and DCS chose to use the police and the police chose to use the SWAT team," said Townsend. "That is not the country that I recognize."
Townsend says this all started back in February when the parents took the 2-year-old-boy, who isn't vaccinated, to a naturopathic doctor for a fever of about 105. The doctor instructed the parents to take the infant to the emergency room but after the doctor's visit the child's fever broke, so they never went.
After finding that out, the doctor called DCS which then called Chandler police to check on the child. After the father refused to let police into the home to check on the boy, police came back later with a search warrant and forced their way into the home after the family didn't respond.
"All because of a fever. A fever! It's absolutely ridiculous," said Nicholas Boca, the family's attorney. "That type of kicking your door in, with guns drawn... it should be reserved for violent criminals."
"At that point who now owns control over the child?" asked Townsend. "And it seems like we've given that now to the doctor and the parent no longer has the say or they risk the SWAT team taking all of your children and potentially the newborn."
Townsend says she can see both sides on this story: a concerned doctor and protective parents, but she's questioning how it was done and the amount of force used.
"We need to admit that this situation was a mistake," said Townsend. "There are other situations where there is neglect, there is abuse and that's what we need to focus on."
ABC15 asked DCS for a comment on why such force was used. DCS said it's not able to comment on the case specifically because of privacy laws.
Townsend told ABC15 the child actually had an upper respiratory infection, not meningitis like the doctor had feared.
The Chandler Police Department says DCS obtained a search warrant and asked for their assistance entering the home, but says they used regular officers and not SWAT officers.
The parents are fighting to get their kids back.
"They have a good family. And this is a waste of state resources," said Boca.
JOE MOODY IS FIGHTING ON THE WRONG SIDE IN THE WAR ON DRUGS
It's about damn time that Texas stopped creating life-long drug criminals of our teens
By Trey Rusk
Running Code 3
March 27, 2019
Texans caught with small amounts of marijuana could receive a fine rather than jail time under a bill that passed a state House committee.
I'm a retired cop and it's true that I hold conservative views but this is the right thing to do.
Currently any amount of marijuana possession in Texas is a criminal offense. For years the Texas courts have ruined futures for teens who have been caught experimenting with small amounts of marijuana.
The life long stain caused by one indiscretion have caused our children to be denied entrance into colleges, vocational studies, the military and not be able to obtain clearances for some government jobs.
I am not an advocate for possession of small amounts of marijuana. However, I believe the de-criminalization of small amounts of marijuana will free up our courts and police to do more important things.
State Representative Joe Moody of El Paso has filed HB-63 that would make less than an ounce of marijuana a civil penalty. The civil fine imposed could not be above $250 and no jail time. Members of the House Committee forwarded the bill with a vote of 5 to 4 in favor of the legislation.
I want to be clear about this topic. I believe marijuana can be a gateway drug for some people but I believe alcohol has ruined more lives than any other drug. At some point people are responsible for their own actions. The drug record associated with less than 1 ounce of marijuana needs to be eliminated.
The same stigma is not attached to the criminal charge of possession of alcohol by a minor. Why? Alcohol has been linked directly to the deaths of far more people than marijuana ever will be.
That's the way I see it.
EDITOR’S NOTE: While I am not overly opposed to this bill, I most certainly do not support it!
My heart really doesn’t bleed for 17, 18 and 19-year-old teens who knowingly break the law by using pot. There are consequences for breaking the law - although the Jussie Smollett case brings that into question – and those teens should be treated accordingly. Besides that, in Texas, those under 17 are handled as juveniles, so they will have no drug criminal record.
Moody’s bill also applies to adults and will only encourage the use of drugs, not discourage it. The path to hell is paved with the stones of good intentions. Moody is making it harder to fight the war on drugs.
Trey, it seems as though you have switched over to the wrong side in the war on drugs.
And that’s the way I see it.
By Trey Rusk
Running Code 3
March 27, 2019
Texans caught with small amounts of marijuana could receive a fine rather than jail time under a bill that passed a state House committee.
I'm a retired cop and it's true that I hold conservative views but this is the right thing to do.
Currently any amount of marijuana possession in Texas is a criminal offense. For years the Texas courts have ruined futures for teens who have been caught experimenting with small amounts of marijuana.
The life long stain caused by one indiscretion have caused our children to be denied entrance into colleges, vocational studies, the military and not be able to obtain clearances for some government jobs.
I am not an advocate for possession of small amounts of marijuana. However, I believe the de-criminalization of small amounts of marijuana will free up our courts and police to do more important things.
State Representative Joe Moody of El Paso has filed HB-63 that would make less than an ounce of marijuana a civil penalty. The civil fine imposed could not be above $250 and no jail time. Members of the House Committee forwarded the bill with a vote of 5 to 4 in favor of the legislation.
I want to be clear about this topic. I believe marijuana can be a gateway drug for some people but I believe alcohol has ruined more lives than any other drug. At some point people are responsible for their own actions. The drug record associated with less than 1 ounce of marijuana needs to be eliminated.
The same stigma is not attached to the criminal charge of possession of alcohol by a minor. Why? Alcohol has been linked directly to the deaths of far more people than marijuana ever will be.
That's the way I see it.
EDITOR’S NOTE: While I am not overly opposed to this bill, I most certainly do not support it!
My heart really doesn’t bleed for 17, 18 and 19-year-old teens who knowingly break the law by using pot. There are consequences for breaking the law - although the Jussie Smollett case brings that into question – and those teens should be treated accordingly. Besides that, in Texas, those under 17 are handled as juveniles, so they will have no drug criminal record.
Moody’s bill also applies to adults and will only encourage the use of drugs, not discourage it. The path to hell is paved with the stones of good intentions. Moody is making it harder to fight the war on drugs.
Trey, it seems as though you have switched over to the wrong side in the war on drugs.
And that’s the way I see it.
MEXICAN PRISONS ARE JUST LIKE AMERICAN PRISONS ….. BUT POSSIBLY THE CONS DON’T GROW POT PLANTS IN OUR JOINTS
Drugs, arms, cell phones, and a marijuana plant seized at Monterrey’s Topo Chico Prison
By Chivis Martinez
Borderland Beat
March 27, 2019
Drug, cell phones, metal shanks, bottles with distilled alcohol, are just some of the items confiscated during the inspection of inmates and cells at the Topochico prison.
Through a statement it was reported that, in the cells of the Center for Prevention and Social Reintegration, were located a total of 28 pieces of metal weapons of different sizes, eight mobile phones of different brands and seven bottles of alcohol distillate of 600 milliliters each a. That the prison and Civil Force personnel also seized three doses of cocaine in its rock form, marijuana, as well as a marijuana plant.
EDITOR’S NOTE: The only difference is that in our joints most inmates either have a cellphone that has been smuggled in or have access to one.
By Chivis Martinez
Borderland Beat
March 27, 2019
Drug, cell phones, metal shanks, bottles with distilled alcohol, are just some of the items confiscated during the inspection of inmates and cells at the Topochico prison.
Through a statement it was reported that, in the cells of the Center for Prevention and Social Reintegration, were located a total of 28 pieces of metal weapons of different sizes, eight mobile phones of different brands and seven bottles of alcohol distillate of 600 milliliters each a. That the prison and Civil Force personnel also seized three doses of cocaine in its rock form, marijuana, as well as a marijuana plant.
EDITOR’S NOTE: The only difference is that in our joints most inmates either have a cellphone that has been smuggled in or have access to one.
Thursday, March 28, 2019
AN APOLOGY TO JUSSIE SMOLLETT
I’m sorry - you’re even more despicable than I thought you were, and so are the shameful prosecutors who let you off this repulsive fake hate-crime
By Piers Morgan
Daily Mail
March 27, 2019
It was a stunning moment.
Standing outside court, emotional Empire star Jussie Smollett looked close to tears as he spoke, just minutes after all 16 grand jury charges against him had been sensationally dropped.
‘I have been truthful and consistent on every single level since day one,’ he said. ‘I would not be my mother’s son if I was capable of one drop of what I have been accused of. This has been an incredibly difficult time, honestly one of the worst of my entire life, but I am a man of faith, and I am a man that has knowledge of my history and I would not bring my family, our lives, or the movement through a fire like this, I just wouldn’t.’
His bottom lip trembled as he added: ‘I’d like nothing more than just to get back to work and move on with my life but make no mistakes I will always continue to fight for the justice, equality and betterment of marginalised people everywhere.’
Wow.
As I watched him speak, so eloquently and so powerfully, I felt a surge of sympathy welling inside me for this poor misjudged young man who had just been cleared of staging a race-hate, homophobic attack on HIMSELF.
It’s hard to imagine a worse thing for a high profile black, gay man in America to be accused of doing.
And I actually felt a sense of relief that it had all turned out to be untrue and that he really was the good, innocent, ‘sweetest guy in the world’ his famous friends had insisted all along.
But as he posed for pictures with celebrating fans, there was something nagging me.
Shortly before Smollett appeared to speak to the media, it was revealed that he had forfeited $10,000 bond money and secretly performed 16 hours of community service at Rainbow Push, a civil rights organisation in Chicago.
These two things had apparently been ‘factored into’ the decision to drop charges.
Why, if he was an innocent man?
Like many journalists, I was bemused.
‘So weird,’ I tweeted, ‘why would you pay a forfeiture if you’d been cleared?’
First Assistant’s State’s Attorney Joe Magats, the man who made the decision, soon answered this puzzling conundrum during one of the most embarrassing, shifty, excuse-laden displays I have ever seen from a prosecutor trying to defend a decision.
‘Does dropping the charges vindicate him?’ he was asked by CBS.
‘No.’
Does it exonerate him?
‘No.’
‘Do you believe that he is innocent?’
‘I do not believe he’s innocent.’
‘So you believe he’s guilty?’
‘Yes.’
Sorry, WHAT?
You dropped all charges against him because he’s GUILTY?
At this point my bemusement turned to cold fury.
Smollett hadn’t been cleared at all.
He’d staged the ‘attack’, but was being let off with effectively just a small fine and a bit of community work. His record would be expunged and the files sealed forever from public gaze.
Magats inferred this was sufficient punishment because Smollett had no criminal record, and did not represent a threat to public safety.
But the decision smacked of a disgraceful stitch-up, driven by Smollett’s wealth and fame, his connections to powerful politicians, and the furore surrounding the case.
Chicago Mayor Rahm Emmanuel was in no doubt.
‘This is a whitewash of justice,’ he raged. ‘This is a person who has been let off scot-free with no sense of the accountability of the moral and ethical wrong of his actions… how DARE he?’
He compared it to the elite college admissions scandal, saying: ‘This sends a clear message if you’re in a position of influence and power you’ll get treated one way and other people will get treated another way. This is wrong.’
And he warned: ‘Gay men and women who will come forward and one day say they were a victim of a hate crime now will be doubted.’
Exactly.
Emmanuel wasn’t the only high profile Democrat to express anger at the outcome.
David Axelrod, Barack Obama’s former Chief Strategist, blazed on Twitter: ‘Here’s the lesson of this weird turn in the Smollett case: you can contrive a hate crime, make it national news, get caught and - if you are well-connected celebrity – get off for $10k and have your record expunged and files sealed. Hate crimes are loathsome. Faking them is insidious and shouldn’t be excused. It really is outrageous.’
Yes, it is.
I watched Smollett’s court statement again, now I knew he was lying again.
It was a very convincing performance, almost as convincing as his performance on Good Morning America when he first recounted his story to Robin Roberts and garnered the nation’s horrified sympathy.
One thing’s for sure – Smollett is a GREAT actor.
Sadly, both his performances were just as fake as the original staged ‘attack’.
Last month, when the charges were first made, I accused Smollett of being ‘the most hideous, reprehensible, disgusting, snivelling little liar in America.’
I said he was a ‘sickening, shameful disgrace’ who had lynched the truth in the most despicable manner possible and deserved ‘no mercy and no sympathy.’
Chicago Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson, who trashed Smollett in similarly robust terms at the time, said yesterday that the city ‘is still owed an apology.’
Well it’s not going to get one from Jussie ‘I didn’t do it!’ Smollett.
But I would like to make an apology instead, to Smollett himself, and it’s this: I’m truly sorry that I was so complimentary about him.
In fact, I wish I’d gone in much harder.
For the truth is Smollett wasn’t content with just perpetrating an act of wicked deception that grabbed global headlines and made a mockery of real victims of racial or homophobic attacks.
No, he had to go a step further even than that and pretend he’s been completely exonerated of any wrongdoing and is once again the victim – not just of the original ‘attack’, but now of a terrible slur against his good name and reputation.
By doing this, he has confirmed himself to be a truly despicable human being.
It takes a rare kind of execrable douchebag to invoke his mother, God, black history, justice, equality and the ‘betterment of marginalised people’ as he brazenly lies about being cleared over an incident that did unbelievable damage to justice, equality and marginalised people.
But staggeringly, Smollett’s not even the worst villain in this disgusting saga.
That badge of dishonour goes to the State’s Attorney Kim Foxx and her team including her hapless First Assistant Magats.
Foxx officially recused herself from the case after she was found to have exchanged text messages with a member of Smollett’s family in the days after the incident.
Now it’s been alleged that she tried to wrestle the case out of the hands of the Chicago Police Department and have the FBI take it over, at the request of Smollett family friend Tina Tchen, who is Michelle Obama’s former chief of staff.
At the very least, it appears that her team acted on her apparent conflicted desire to protect Smollett from facing proper justice – a shameful, breathtakingly cynical example of the very worst kind of racial politics.
The result of this shocking carve-up is that Smollett walks away a free man with no criminal stain on his record.
Fortunately, there’s another court he now has to face and that’s the court of public opinion.
Nobody apart from Smollett’s family and a few of his deluded celebrity friends is buying this travesty.
Smollett lynched the truth, caused immeasurable harm to real victims, betrayed America’s black and gay communities, and thinks he’s got away with it.
His reward for all this shouldn’t be a return to his $100,000-an-episode life as a feted TV star.
Smollett should be fired from Empire, banished from Hollywood and treated like the pariah he deserves to be, by an industry that supposedly prides itself on tolerance.
This wouldn’t fully atone for such a grotesque insult to justice, but it would help.
By Piers Morgan
Daily Mail
March 27, 2019
It was a stunning moment.
Standing outside court, emotional Empire star Jussie Smollett looked close to tears as he spoke, just minutes after all 16 grand jury charges against him had been sensationally dropped.
‘I have been truthful and consistent on every single level since day one,’ he said. ‘I would not be my mother’s son if I was capable of one drop of what I have been accused of. This has been an incredibly difficult time, honestly one of the worst of my entire life, but I am a man of faith, and I am a man that has knowledge of my history and I would not bring my family, our lives, or the movement through a fire like this, I just wouldn’t.’
His bottom lip trembled as he added: ‘I’d like nothing more than just to get back to work and move on with my life but make no mistakes I will always continue to fight for the justice, equality and betterment of marginalised people everywhere.’
Wow.
As I watched him speak, so eloquently and so powerfully, I felt a surge of sympathy welling inside me for this poor misjudged young man who had just been cleared of staging a race-hate, homophobic attack on HIMSELF.
It’s hard to imagine a worse thing for a high profile black, gay man in America to be accused of doing.
And I actually felt a sense of relief that it had all turned out to be untrue and that he really was the good, innocent, ‘sweetest guy in the world’ his famous friends had insisted all along.
But as he posed for pictures with celebrating fans, there was something nagging me.
Shortly before Smollett appeared to speak to the media, it was revealed that he had forfeited $10,000 bond money and secretly performed 16 hours of community service at Rainbow Push, a civil rights organisation in Chicago.
These two things had apparently been ‘factored into’ the decision to drop charges.
Why, if he was an innocent man?
Like many journalists, I was bemused.
‘So weird,’ I tweeted, ‘why would you pay a forfeiture if you’d been cleared?’
First Assistant’s State’s Attorney Joe Magats, the man who made the decision, soon answered this puzzling conundrum during one of the most embarrassing, shifty, excuse-laden displays I have ever seen from a prosecutor trying to defend a decision.
‘Does dropping the charges vindicate him?’ he was asked by CBS.
‘No.’
Does it exonerate him?
‘No.’
‘Do you believe that he is innocent?’
‘I do not believe he’s innocent.’
‘So you believe he’s guilty?’
‘Yes.’
Sorry, WHAT?
You dropped all charges against him because he’s GUILTY?
At this point my bemusement turned to cold fury.
Smollett hadn’t been cleared at all.
He’d staged the ‘attack’, but was being let off with effectively just a small fine and a bit of community work. His record would be expunged and the files sealed forever from public gaze.
Magats inferred this was sufficient punishment because Smollett had no criminal record, and did not represent a threat to public safety.
But the decision smacked of a disgraceful stitch-up, driven by Smollett’s wealth and fame, his connections to powerful politicians, and the furore surrounding the case.
Chicago Mayor Rahm Emmanuel was in no doubt.
‘This is a whitewash of justice,’ he raged. ‘This is a person who has been let off scot-free with no sense of the accountability of the moral and ethical wrong of his actions… how DARE he?’
He compared it to the elite college admissions scandal, saying: ‘This sends a clear message if you’re in a position of influence and power you’ll get treated one way and other people will get treated another way. This is wrong.’
And he warned: ‘Gay men and women who will come forward and one day say they were a victim of a hate crime now will be doubted.’
Exactly.
Emmanuel wasn’t the only high profile Democrat to express anger at the outcome.
David Axelrod, Barack Obama’s former Chief Strategist, blazed on Twitter: ‘Here’s the lesson of this weird turn in the Smollett case: you can contrive a hate crime, make it national news, get caught and - if you are well-connected celebrity – get off for $10k and have your record expunged and files sealed. Hate crimes are loathsome. Faking them is insidious and shouldn’t be excused. It really is outrageous.’
Yes, it is.
I watched Smollett’s court statement again, now I knew he was lying again.
It was a very convincing performance, almost as convincing as his performance on Good Morning America when he first recounted his story to Robin Roberts and garnered the nation’s horrified sympathy.
One thing’s for sure – Smollett is a GREAT actor.
Sadly, both his performances were just as fake as the original staged ‘attack’.
Last month, when the charges were first made, I accused Smollett of being ‘the most hideous, reprehensible, disgusting, snivelling little liar in America.’
I said he was a ‘sickening, shameful disgrace’ who had lynched the truth in the most despicable manner possible and deserved ‘no mercy and no sympathy.’
Chicago Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson, who trashed Smollett in similarly robust terms at the time, said yesterday that the city ‘is still owed an apology.’
Well it’s not going to get one from Jussie ‘I didn’t do it!’ Smollett.
But I would like to make an apology instead, to Smollett himself, and it’s this: I’m truly sorry that I was so complimentary about him.
In fact, I wish I’d gone in much harder.
For the truth is Smollett wasn’t content with just perpetrating an act of wicked deception that grabbed global headlines and made a mockery of real victims of racial or homophobic attacks.
No, he had to go a step further even than that and pretend he’s been completely exonerated of any wrongdoing and is once again the victim – not just of the original ‘attack’, but now of a terrible slur against his good name and reputation.
By doing this, he has confirmed himself to be a truly despicable human being.
It takes a rare kind of execrable douchebag to invoke his mother, God, black history, justice, equality and the ‘betterment of marginalised people’ as he brazenly lies about being cleared over an incident that did unbelievable damage to justice, equality and marginalised people.
But staggeringly, Smollett’s not even the worst villain in this disgusting saga.
That badge of dishonour goes to the State’s Attorney Kim Foxx and her team including her hapless First Assistant Magats.
Foxx officially recused herself from the case after she was found to have exchanged text messages with a member of Smollett’s family in the days after the incident.
Now it’s been alleged that she tried to wrestle the case out of the hands of the Chicago Police Department and have the FBI take it over, at the request of Smollett family friend Tina Tchen, who is Michelle Obama’s former chief of staff.
At the very least, it appears that her team acted on her apparent conflicted desire to protect Smollett from facing proper justice – a shameful, breathtakingly cynical example of the very worst kind of racial politics.
The result of this shocking carve-up is that Smollett walks away a free man with no criminal stain on his record.
Fortunately, there’s another court he now has to face and that’s the court of public opinion.
Nobody apart from Smollett’s family and a few of his deluded celebrity friends is buying this travesty.
Smollett lynched the truth, caused immeasurable harm to real victims, betrayed America’s black and gay communities, and thinks he’s got away with it.
His reward for all this shouldn’t be a return to his $100,000-an-episode life as a feted TV star.
Smollett should be fired from Empire, banished from Hollywood and treated like the pariah he deserves to be, by an industry that supposedly prides itself on tolerance.
This wouldn’t fully atone for such a grotesque insult to justice, but it would help.
CHICAGO POLICE UNION ASKS FOR FEDERAL INVESTIGATION...OF COOK COUNTY PROSECUTOR
by Bob Walsh
The Chicago police union has asked the feds to launch a formal investigation of Kim Fox, the State's Attorney (local prosecutor) for Cook County. I don't know that they will get any traction, but I don't know that they won't either.
Clearly somebody with major juice is running interference. The record has been sealed for Jussie Smollett and he was given a total walk for 16 felonies with 16 hours of community service, working for Jessie Jackson's Rainbow Push Coalition, and for forfeiture of his $10,000 bond.
Fox is a major leftie and buddy of the Obamas, as is Jussie Smollett. She hates cops.
I am seriously wondering if this whole episode was a "Fuck You" to Donald Trump as a payback for the Barr Letter on the Mueller Report.
Chicago is the most corrupt shithole in all of America and has been for 100 years. That's what one-party Democrap rule does for you. Turns your town into a dysfunctional cesspool.
The Chicago police union has asked the feds to launch a formal investigation of Kim Fox, the State's Attorney (local prosecutor) for Cook County. I don't know that they will get any traction, but I don't know that they won't either.
Clearly somebody with major juice is running interference. The record has been sealed for Jussie Smollett and he was given a total walk for 16 felonies with 16 hours of community service, working for Jessie Jackson's Rainbow Push Coalition, and for forfeiture of his $10,000 bond.
Fox is a major leftie and buddy of the Obamas, as is Jussie Smollett. She hates cops.
I am seriously wondering if this whole episode was a "Fuck You" to Donald Trump as a payback for the Barr Letter on the Mueller Report.
Chicago is the most corrupt shithole in all of America and has been for 100 years. That's what one-party Democrap rule does for you. Turns your town into a dysfunctional cesspool.
TO ALL THE ANTI-SEMITES OUT THERE - WE STAND UP, WE FIGHT AND WE WIN
"Take it from this Benjamin, it's not about the Benjamins."
By David Lazarus
Israel Today
March 27, 2019
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke via satellite to the AIPAC conference after cutting his Washington visit short in order to get back to Israel to oversee the response to escalating Hamas rocket fire.
In the speech, the prime minister did not shy away from Rep. Ilhan Omar's antisemitic tweet trying to reignite the horrific libel that Jewish finances control the world. Netanyahu told the 14,000-strong crowd gathered for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee annual conference: “Take it from this Benjamin, it's not about the Benjamins. The people of America support Israel not because they want our money, it’s because they share our values.”
Netanyahu went on to say that “those who seek to undermine American support for Israel must be confronted. They don't stop at criticism of Israel's policies, but spew venom that has long been directed at the Jewish people. To all the anti-Semites out there – we stand up, we fight, and we win,” the prime minister said to roaring applause.
In the 10-minute speech hampered by some minor broadcast glitches, US President Donald Trump was praised for his recognition of Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights “on behalf of all the people of Israel,” Netanyahu said. “The Golan Heights is indispensable for our defense. It's part of our history … and we shall never, ever give it up. It is part of Israel,” the prime minister confirmed.
Netanyahu also gave a well-articulated explanation of why Israel needs to be a nation-state for the Jewish people. “Israel is a home for all Jews,” he explained. “All Israelis are first-class citizens and all citizens have exactly the same individual rights, and these rights remain sacred,” he emphasized.
US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman also attended the conference, and in his speech hailed Trump as “the best friend Israel ever had in the White House.”
By David Lazarus
Israel Today
March 27, 2019
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke via satellite to the AIPAC conference after cutting his Washington visit short in order to get back to Israel to oversee the response to escalating Hamas rocket fire.
In the speech, the prime minister did not shy away from Rep. Ilhan Omar's antisemitic tweet trying to reignite the horrific libel that Jewish finances control the world. Netanyahu told the 14,000-strong crowd gathered for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee annual conference: “Take it from this Benjamin, it's not about the Benjamins. The people of America support Israel not because they want our money, it’s because they share our values.”
Netanyahu went on to say that “those who seek to undermine American support for Israel must be confronted. They don't stop at criticism of Israel's policies, but spew venom that has long been directed at the Jewish people. To all the anti-Semites out there – we stand up, we fight, and we win,” the prime minister said to roaring applause.
In the 10-minute speech hampered by some minor broadcast glitches, US President Donald Trump was praised for his recognition of Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights “on behalf of all the people of Israel,” Netanyahu said. “The Golan Heights is indispensable for our defense. It's part of our history … and we shall never, ever give it up. It is part of Israel,” the prime minister confirmed.
Netanyahu also gave a well-articulated explanation of why Israel needs to be a nation-state for the Jewish people. “Israel is a home for all Jews,” he explained. “All Israelis are first-class citizens and all citizens have exactly the same individual rights, and these rights remain sacred,” he emphasized.
US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman also attended the conference, and in his speech hailed Trump as “the best friend Israel ever had in the White House.”
OPPOSING VIEWS ON THE GOLAN HEIGHTS
EU: We do not recognize Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights
By Tovah Lazaroff
The Jerusalem Post
March 27, 2019
All 28 European Union member states have rejected the United Sates recognition of Israel’s 1981 annexation of the Golan Heights from Syria.
US President Donald Trump signed that declaration in Washington this week, during Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to the White House.
But the move, has been widely rejected by the international community.
“The position of the European Union as regards the status of the Golan Heights has not changed. In line with the international law an UN Security Council resolutions 242 and 497, the EU does not recognize Israeli sovereignty over the occupied Golan Heights,” the EU member states said in a short statement issued on Wednesday.
On Tuesday, the five European Union member of the Security Council also issued a statement against the move, explaining that it did not recognize Israeli sovereignty over any territory Israel captured during the Six-Day War in 1967.
“Annexation of territory by force is prohibited under international law. Any declaration of a unilateral border change goes against the foundation of the rules-based international order and the UN Charter.
“We raise our strong concerns about the broader consequences of recognizing illegal annexation and also about the broader regional consequences,” the European members of the UNSC said. This included; France, Great Britain, Belgium, Germany and Poland.
Acting US Ambassador to the United Nations Jonathan Cohen defended the move, explaining that any peace agreement wold have to address Israel’s security needs in the Golan Heights.
“To allow the Golan Heights to be controlled by the likes of the Syrian and Iranian regimes would turn a blind eye to the atrocities of the Assad regime and malign and destabilizing presence of Iran in the region,” Cohen said.
In Washington State Department spokesman Robert Palladino told reporters that if Israel withdrew from the Golan, it would be used as a launching ground for attacks against Israel.
Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan enhances Israel’s security “which strengthens, frankly, our ability to partner with Israel to fight the common threats that we face,” Palladino said.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the US decision was not an attempt to make a statement with regard to the acquisition of territory during times of war.
Rather, he explained it is an assessment of Israel’s unique security situation. Israel should not be asked to commit suicide to be compliance with a UN resolution, he said.
“This is an incredibly unique situation. Israel was fighting a defensive battle to save its nation, and it cannot be the case that a UN resolution is a suicide pact. It simply can’t be, and that’s the reality that President Trump recognized in his executive order yesterday,” Pompeo said.
__________
Israeli politicians to EU: “Shame on you” for opposing Golan sovereignty
By Tovah Lazaroff
Israeli right-wing politicians lashed back at the European Union for its “shameful” rejection of Israeli sovereignty on the Golan Heights, calling its 28 nations “peace refuseniks.”
“Minutes ago the EU announced that it would not recognize the Golan Heights as part of the state of Israel,” Far Right Party head and Education Minister Naftali Bennett said in a video message he posted on Twitter.
“We could add to that the fact that the EU does not recognize Jerusalem as our capital,” he wrote, adding “Shame on you.”
“The Golan heights and Jerusalem and the Land of Israel has been the home of the Jewish people thousands of years before France was the home of the French and the United Kingdom the home of the British,” Bennett said.
“So we will continue building our amazing country. We will continue defending the free world from radical Islam, even though you do not deserve it,” Bennett said.
Kulanu Party head and Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon said, “We now allow those who keep the Iranian terror regime’s economy afloat to preach morality to us. Israel will not be held hostage by peace refuseniks and the policies of the Axis of Evil,” Kahlon said.
“The whole world knows that the Golan Heights is an inseparable part of the Land of Israel and the State of Israel,” Kahlon said.
Meretz Party head MK Tamar Zandberg said, “Trump's election gift to Bibi has started to cost us dearly. Now the EU is clarifying its position on the Golan Heights. Why did these demons have to be awaken on a subject that was not even on the table?”
“Instead of making needless statements on the Golan Trump should publish his peace plan so that each party can relate to,” she said.
But when it comes to “peace” and “Bibi,” she said, “there isn’t even anything to mention.”
By Tovah Lazaroff
The Jerusalem Post
March 27, 2019
All 28 European Union member states have rejected the United Sates recognition of Israel’s 1981 annexation of the Golan Heights from Syria.
US President Donald Trump signed that declaration in Washington this week, during Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to the White House.
But the move, has been widely rejected by the international community.
“The position of the European Union as regards the status of the Golan Heights has not changed. In line with the international law an UN Security Council resolutions 242 and 497, the EU does not recognize Israeli sovereignty over the occupied Golan Heights,” the EU member states said in a short statement issued on Wednesday.
On Tuesday, the five European Union member of the Security Council also issued a statement against the move, explaining that it did not recognize Israeli sovereignty over any territory Israel captured during the Six-Day War in 1967.
“Annexation of territory by force is prohibited under international law. Any declaration of a unilateral border change goes against the foundation of the rules-based international order and the UN Charter.
“We raise our strong concerns about the broader consequences of recognizing illegal annexation and also about the broader regional consequences,” the European members of the UNSC said. This included; France, Great Britain, Belgium, Germany and Poland.
Acting US Ambassador to the United Nations Jonathan Cohen defended the move, explaining that any peace agreement wold have to address Israel’s security needs in the Golan Heights.
“To allow the Golan Heights to be controlled by the likes of the Syrian and Iranian regimes would turn a blind eye to the atrocities of the Assad regime and malign and destabilizing presence of Iran in the region,” Cohen said.
In Washington State Department spokesman Robert Palladino told reporters that if Israel withdrew from the Golan, it would be used as a launching ground for attacks against Israel.
Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan enhances Israel’s security “which strengthens, frankly, our ability to partner with Israel to fight the common threats that we face,” Palladino said.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the US decision was not an attempt to make a statement with regard to the acquisition of territory during times of war.
Rather, he explained it is an assessment of Israel’s unique security situation. Israel should not be asked to commit suicide to be compliance with a UN resolution, he said.
“This is an incredibly unique situation. Israel was fighting a defensive battle to save its nation, and it cannot be the case that a UN resolution is a suicide pact. It simply can’t be, and that’s the reality that President Trump recognized in his executive order yesterday,” Pompeo said.
__________
Israeli politicians to EU: “Shame on you” for opposing Golan sovereignty
By Tovah Lazaroff
Israeli right-wing politicians lashed back at the European Union for its “shameful” rejection of Israeli sovereignty on the Golan Heights, calling its 28 nations “peace refuseniks.”
“Minutes ago the EU announced that it would not recognize the Golan Heights as part of the state of Israel,” Far Right Party head and Education Minister Naftali Bennett said in a video message he posted on Twitter.
“We could add to that the fact that the EU does not recognize Jerusalem as our capital,” he wrote, adding “Shame on you.”
“The Golan heights and Jerusalem and the Land of Israel has been the home of the Jewish people thousands of years before France was the home of the French and the United Kingdom the home of the British,” Bennett said.
“So we will continue building our amazing country. We will continue defending the free world from radical Islam, even though you do not deserve it,” Bennett said.
Kulanu Party head and Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon said, “We now allow those who keep the Iranian terror regime’s economy afloat to preach morality to us. Israel will not be held hostage by peace refuseniks and the policies of the Axis of Evil,” Kahlon said.
“The whole world knows that the Golan Heights is an inseparable part of the Land of Israel and the State of Israel,” Kahlon said.
Meretz Party head MK Tamar Zandberg said, “Trump's election gift to Bibi has started to cost us dearly. Now the EU is clarifying its position on the Golan Heights. Why did these demons have to be awaken on a subject that was not even on the table?”
“Instead of making needless statements on the Golan Trump should publish his peace plan so that each party can relate to,” she said.
But when it comes to “peace” and “Bibi,” she said, “there isn’t even anything to mention.”
Wednesday, March 27, 2019
THE WITCH HUNT IS TURNING INTO A CIRCUS WHERE DEMOCRATS ARE TRYING TO MAKE PIGS FLY
The Trump haters won’t let it go, insist the president obstructed justice, and cling onto the belief that he colluded with the Russians
By Howie Katz
Big Jolly Times
March 26, 2019
The Democrats are furious because the 22-month long Mueller investigation that up to now has cost $25 million found no Russian collusion. They are also furious at Attorney General William Barr for not charging Trump with obstruction of justice. And so is the media and Hollywood.
California Congressman Adam Schiff has been out front for nearly two years saying there was evidence proving Trump colluded with the Russians and obstructed justice. On Sunday, Donald Trump Jr. tweeted “Has anyone heard from slimy Adam #fullofschiff Schiff today? I mean it must be embarrassing to have spent the last 2 years as the leader of the tinfoil hat brigade and have it all come crashing down so quick. I’m legitimately concerned for his mental state.”
In an interview on Fox & Friends, Kellyanne Conway came on stronger than Don Jr. She said, “Adam Schiff – talk about an oxymoron – this man heads the Intelligence Committee in the House! He ought to resign today. Schiff has been on every TV show 50 times a day for practically the last two years, promising Americans that this president would be impeached or indicted. Adam Schiff should resign. He has no right, as somebody who's been peddling a lie day after day after day, unchallenged – unchallenged and not under oath – somebody should have put him under oath and said, ‘Do you have evidence? Where is it?’”
Daily Mail columnist Piers Morgan says the Russia collusion hoax was a disgraceful fake news witch-hunt that shames all of Trump’s deranged enemies in the media, the FBI and Hollywood and has probably ensured their worst nightmare - his re-election.
But the witch hunt goes on as the House Democrats, who are trying to make pigs fly, have turned their hatred for Trump into a 3-ring circus.
House Judiciary Chairman Jerold Nadler, House Intelligence chair Adam Schiff, and House Oversight chair Elijah Cummings issued a letter blasting Attorney General William Barr for his letter to Congress which exonerated Trump of any collusion or conspiracy with the Russians and in which he said there would be no obstruction of justice charges. They want Barr to testify before the Judiciary Committee and they want every single page of the Mueller report plus any and all pages of investigation reports associates with the Mueller investigation released to Congress and the public. We’re talking about thousands of pages here.
Hollywood is besides itself that Trump has been exonerated. Stars like Bette Midler, Alyssa Milano, Chelsea Handler, John Cusack, Rosie O'Donnell and George Takei were quick to express their unhappiness with the result. We have yet to hear from Trump critic George Clooney. Only James Woods reacted with joy, tweeting “Democrats react to the Mueller Report the way they accepted the 2016 election,” and included a video clip of a man jumping off a bridge.
The congressional Democrats will not stop in their determination to destroy the Trump presidency. Nadler, Schiff and Cummings intend to investigate everything Trump has ever done, including how many times he shit-stained his underwear.
And the US Attorneys for Southern New York, Virginia and D.C. are investigating the Trump family business dealings, both before and since he became president. So are the NY state Attorney General and the Manhattan DA, both Democrats of course.
It ain’t over till the fat lady sings. We’ll have to wait while the Democrats are trying to make pigs fly for their circus act. It looks like it is going to take quite a while before the fat lady sings. One can only hope that this 3-ring circus will result in. as Piers Morgan put it, the worst nightmare for all of Trump’s deranged enemies – his re-election.
By Howie Katz
Big Jolly Times
March 26, 2019
The Democrats are furious because the 22-month long Mueller investigation that up to now has cost $25 million found no Russian collusion. They are also furious at Attorney General William Barr for not charging Trump with obstruction of justice. And so is the media and Hollywood.
California Congressman Adam Schiff has been out front for nearly two years saying there was evidence proving Trump colluded with the Russians and obstructed justice. On Sunday, Donald Trump Jr. tweeted “Has anyone heard from slimy Adam #fullofschiff Schiff today? I mean it must be embarrassing to have spent the last 2 years as the leader of the tinfoil hat brigade and have it all come crashing down so quick. I’m legitimately concerned for his mental state.”
In an interview on Fox & Friends, Kellyanne Conway came on stronger than Don Jr. She said, “Adam Schiff – talk about an oxymoron – this man heads the Intelligence Committee in the House! He ought to resign today. Schiff has been on every TV show 50 times a day for practically the last two years, promising Americans that this president would be impeached or indicted. Adam Schiff should resign. He has no right, as somebody who's been peddling a lie day after day after day, unchallenged – unchallenged and not under oath – somebody should have put him under oath and said, ‘Do you have evidence? Where is it?’”
Daily Mail columnist Piers Morgan says the Russia collusion hoax was a disgraceful fake news witch-hunt that shames all of Trump’s deranged enemies in the media, the FBI and Hollywood and has probably ensured their worst nightmare - his re-election.
But the witch hunt goes on as the House Democrats, who are trying to make pigs fly, have turned their hatred for Trump into a 3-ring circus.
House Judiciary Chairman Jerold Nadler, House Intelligence chair Adam Schiff, and House Oversight chair Elijah Cummings issued a letter blasting Attorney General William Barr for his letter to Congress which exonerated Trump of any collusion or conspiracy with the Russians and in which he said there would be no obstruction of justice charges. They want Barr to testify before the Judiciary Committee and they want every single page of the Mueller report plus any and all pages of investigation reports associates with the Mueller investigation released to Congress and the public. We’re talking about thousands of pages here.
Hollywood is besides itself that Trump has been exonerated. Stars like Bette Midler, Alyssa Milano, Chelsea Handler, John Cusack, Rosie O'Donnell and George Takei were quick to express their unhappiness with the result. We have yet to hear from Trump critic George Clooney. Only James Woods reacted with joy, tweeting “Democrats react to the Mueller Report the way they accepted the 2016 election,” and included a video clip of a man jumping off a bridge.
The congressional Democrats will not stop in their determination to destroy the Trump presidency. Nadler, Schiff and Cummings intend to investigate everything Trump has ever done, including how many times he shit-stained his underwear.
And the US Attorneys for Southern New York, Virginia and D.C. are investigating the Trump family business dealings, both before and since he became president. So are the NY state Attorney General and the Manhattan DA, both Democrats of course.
It ain’t over till the fat lady sings. We’ll have to wait while the Democrats are trying to make pigs fly for their circus act. It looks like it is going to take quite a while before the fat lady sings. One can only hope that this 3-ring circus will result in. as Piers Morgan put it, the worst nightmare for all of Trump’s deranged enemies – his re-election.
CALIFORNIA MOVES TO STOP VACCINE DODGERS
by Bob Walsh
Used to be all you had to do in CA was state that you had a religious or philosophical objection to vaccines and your rugrat could attend school without his or her shots. Not any more. You have to come up with at least a half-assed medical reason to avoid vaccinations, even in private schools.
In the past it has not been all that hard to find a doctor who will take your money and write you a bullshit note that will do the job. Maybe not so much any more.
Under SB 276, which is going thru the legislature now, parents looking for a medical exemption would have to submit their information to the Dept. of Public Health. The doctor must submit information to that department, including the doctors name and license number and a certification that they have actually examined the patient in question.
Both state and county health officials can revoke exemptions if found to be fraudulent.
There are some areas of California where the non-vaccinated children number close to 20% of the student body.
Used to be all you had to do in CA was state that you had a religious or philosophical objection to vaccines and your rugrat could attend school without his or her shots. Not any more. You have to come up with at least a half-assed medical reason to avoid vaccinations, even in private schools.
In the past it has not been all that hard to find a doctor who will take your money and write you a bullshit note that will do the job. Maybe not so much any more.
Under SB 276, which is going thru the legislature now, parents looking for a medical exemption would have to submit their information to the Dept. of Public Health. The doctor must submit information to that department, including the doctors name and license number and a certification that they have actually examined the patient in question.
Both state and county health officials can revoke exemptions if found to be fraudulent.
There are some areas of California where the non-vaccinated children number close to 20% of the student body.
MIRACLE HAPPENS IN SACRAMENTO
by Bob Walsh
Yes, it is true, Something truly miraculous happened in Sacramento recently. A state auditor's report recently released (this happens about twice a year) specified that an unnamed department director pulled strings to get her own daughter a job in her department back in 2011 even though the daughter did not meet the MQs for the job. She then directed her staff to interfere with disciplinary action against the daughter and attempted to diddle with the state auditor's office during the investigation. Allegedly during the audit a significant number of other "bad faith" appointments and bypassed civil service regs to give homies jobs.
The state auditor says her people went over 1,000,000 (one million) emails and interviewed dozens of witnesses, many of who reported fear of retaliation.
The investigation actually started in 2015, but people high up in the Jerry Brown administration gave the unnamed director a heads up on the investigation. The director apparently made strenuous efforts to identify whistleblowers and declined to keep interview information confidential in violation of state law.
One of the people interviewed was the director's brother, who also worked for the department.
As far as I can tell from a muddled news report the department referred to is the Department of Industrial Relations, which operated under the Secretary of Labor, headed by Julie Su. Ms. Su has released a statement, expressing her concern about a breakdown in a department under her oversight.
The department head is a woman named Baker. The audit was finished in May of last year, but since the Brown administration declined to take any action on it the report was released.
Ms. Baker is no longer at that job. She was moved by Jerry Brown to......wait for it......here it comes the state Fraud Assessment Commission.
Strangely I just checked their web site. There is no one named Baker listed.
Yes, it is true, Something truly miraculous happened in Sacramento recently. A state auditor's report recently released (this happens about twice a year) specified that an unnamed department director pulled strings to get her own daughter a job in her department back in 2011 even though the daughter did not meet the MQs for the job. She then directed her staff to interfere with disciplinary action against the daughter and attempted to diddle with the state auditor's office during the investigation. Allegedly during the audit a significant number of other "bad faith" appointments and bypassed civil service regs to give homies jobs.
The state auditor says her people went over 1,000,000 (one million) emails and interviewed dozens of witnesses, many of who reported fear of retaliation.
The investigation actually started in 2015, but people high up in the Jerry Brown administration gave the unnamed director a heads up on the investigation. The director apparently made strenuous efforts to identify whistleblowers and declined to keep interview information confidential in violation of state law.
One of the people interviewed was the director's brother, who also worked for the department.
As far as I can tell from a muddled news report the department referred to is the Department of Industrial Relations, which operated under the Secretary of Labor, headed by Julie Su. Ms. Su has released a statement, expressing her concern about a breakdown in a department under her oversight.
The department head is a woman named Baker. The audit was finished in May of last year, but since the Brown administration declined to take any action on it the report was released.
Ms. Baker is no longer at that job. She was moved by Jerry Brown to......wait for it......here it comes the state Fraud Assessment Commission.
Strangely I just checked their web site. There is no one named Baker listed.
THIS MAY BE A SERIOUS OVER-REACTION
by Bob Walsh
Something really interesting happened in an Arby's in Tulsa, Oklahoma on Saturday.
Desean Tallent, 25, had some sort of a beef with the Arby's manager in the store. He spit on the manager, Delonna Young, 25, and then left the store.
About an hour later Tallent returned to the store, then left. Young got in her car and followed him. At some point Young pulled her (unlicensed) .45 and capped Tallent's ass, as he was driving. He crashed near the local Walmart and died.
Young is being held without bond in the local slammer. Too bad she didn't shoot him at the time, she could have maybe gotten away with self-defense. As it stands now I suspect she is in deep legal trouble.
Something really interesting happened in an Arby's in Tulsa, Oklahoma on Saturday.
Desean Tallent, 25, had some sort of a beef with the Arby's manager in the store. He spit on the manager, Delonna Young, 25, and then left the store.
About an hour later Tallent returned to the store, then left. Young got in her car and followed him. At some point Young pulled her (unlicensed) .45 and capped Tallent's ass, as he was driving. He crashed near the local Walmart and died.
Young is being held without bond in the local slammer. Too bad she didn't shoot him at the time, she could have maybe gotten away with self-defense. As it stands now I suspect she is in deep legal trouble.
SPOOKED!
Ex-British spy Christopher Steele RUNS AWAY from questions on his discredited 'dodgy dossier' which wrongly accused Trump of collusion with Russia in 2016 US election
By Paul Thompson
Daily Mail
March 26, 2019
The former British spy who wrote the 'dodgy dossier' which claimed Donald Trump colluded with Russia to fix the election went on the run today after being tracked down by Mail Online.
Christopher Steele bolted from his local railway station when asked to comment on the now discredited dossier that helped spark a two-year investigation into the US President.
This weekend Trump was exonerated of conspiring with the Russians to rig the election in the race for the White House following a probe by Special Counsel Robert Mueller.
But when asked if he had any comment, Steele - who published the notorious dossier to discredit Trump by claiming among other outlandish things that Trump paid prostitutes to urinate on him in a Moscow hotel room - looked stunned today and said: 'I have nothing to say to you.'
The ex-MI6 agent was standing in a queue with other commuters at a Surrey railway station when he was approached by MailOnline.
Looking shocked that his cover was blown he suddenly clasped a small briefcase to his chest, pushed through a line of other commuters queuing to buy a ticket and dashed out of the entrance.
He ran towards a car driven by his wife that just two minutes earlier had dropped him off at the station for his commute to his London office.
Steele waved frantically to attract his wife's attention as he ran towards the car and jumped into the passenger seat.
He stared rigidly ahead as his wife Katherine drove him the short distance back to his home.
It is the first time Steele has been seen since Trump was cleared of any collusion with the Russians over his 2016 election victory.
Special Counsel Robert Mueller exonerated Trump of conspiring with the Russians to win the Presidency - a claim long held by many of his opponents.
Steele, who runs a private intelligence firm, had supplied a dossier to an outside company used by Hillary Clinton's election committee.
It contained unverified information that Trump was vulnerable to blackmail from Russia and had engaged with 'golden showers' with prostitutes during a 2013 trip to Moscow for the Miss Universe pageant.
Leaked details of the dossier were seized upon by Trump's detractors as evidence that Russia's President Vladamir Putin had interfered in the election.
As well as supplying the dossier to the Clinton campaign Steele also handed it over to American and British intelligence agencies as he was worried about the national security implications.
With Trump in the clear Republicans are now turning their attention on those who put Trump in the firing line and triggered the investigation.
Senator Lindsey Graham has vowed to get answers on the origins of the Steele dossier and hinted the ex-spy could be summoned to appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee.
As Chairman of the Committee, Graham has outlined a list of investigations he plans to start in the wake of the findings from special counsel Robert Mueller's report.
He said he wanted to find out how Steele was hired to do the research job and how much money he received from Democrats to do it.
He said he would also like to bring Steele before his committee to testify.
'I'd like for him to come if he would,' Graham said.
Since being named as the author of the dossier Steele has kept a low profile and has shunned all media requests for interview.
After a career with MI6 that included working at the British Embassy in Moscow Steele left in 2009 to set up his own company Orbis Business Inteligence with another former spy.
It was this company that was hired to write the dossier into alleged Trump-Russia activities.
By Paul Thompson
Daily Mail
March 26, 2019
The former British spy who wrote the 'dodgy dossier' which claimed Donald Trump colluded with Russia to fix the election went on the run today after being tracked down by Mail Online.
Christopher Steele bolted from his local railway station when asked to comment on the now discredited dossier that helped spark a two-year investigation into the US President.
This weekend Trump was exonerated of conspiring with the Russians to rig the election in the race for the White House following a probe by Special Counsel Robert Mueller.
But when asked if he had any comment, Steele - who published the notorious dossier to discredit Trump by claiming among other outlandish things that Trump paid prostitutes to urinate on him in a Moscow hotel room - looked stunned today and said: 'I have nothing to say to you.'
The ex-MI6 agent was standing in a queue with other commuters at a Surrey railway station when he was approached by MailOnline.
Looking shocked that his cover was blown he suddenly clasped a small briefcase to his chest, pushed through a line of other commuters queuing to buy a ticket and dashed out of the entrance.
He ran towards a car driven by his wife that just two minutes earlier had dropped him off at the station for his commute to his London office.
Steele waved frantically to attract his wife's attention as he ran towards the car and jumped into the passenger seat.
He stared rigidly ahead as his wife Katherine drove him the short distance back to his home.
It is the first time Steele has been seen since Trump was cleared of any collusion with the Russians over his 2016 election victory.
Special Counsel Robert Mueller exonerated Trump of conspiring with the Russians to win the Presidency - a claim long held by many of his opponents.
Steele, who runs a private intelligence firm, had supplied a dossier to an outside company used by Hillary Clinton's election committee.
It contained unverified information that Trump was vulnerable to blackmail from Russia and had engaged with 'golden showers' with prostitutes during a 2013 trip to Moscow for the Miss Universe pageant.
Leaked details of the dossier were seized upon by Trump's detractors as evidence that Russia's President Vladamir Putin had interfered in the election.
As well as supplying the dossier to the Clinton campaign Steele also handed it over to American and British intelligence agencies as he was worried about the national security implications.
With Trump in the clear Republicans are now turning their attention on those who put Trump in the firing line and triggered the investigation.
Senator Lindsey Graham has vowed to get answers on the origins of the Steele dossier and hinted the ex-spy could be summoned to appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee.
As Chairman of the Committee, Graham has outlined a list of investigations he plans to start in the wake of the findings from special counsel Robert Mueller's report.
He said he wanted to find out how Steele was hired to do the research job and how much money he received from Democrats to do it.
He said he would also like to bring Steele before his committee to testify.
'I'd like for him to come if he would,' Graham said.
Since being named as the author of the dossier Steele has kept a low profile and has shunned all media requests for interview.
After a career with MI6 that included working at the British Embassy in Moscow Steele left in 2009 to set up his own company Orbis Business Inteligence with another former spy.
It was this company that was hired to write the dossier into alleged Trump-Russia activities.
BEWARE OF THEM PORCH PIRATES IN WHATEVER STATE YOU HAPPEN TO RESIDE
How Bad Are Porch Pirates In California? You Might Want To Rethink Those Online Purchases
LAPPL News Watch
March 26, 2019
In a digitally plugged-in world — where front-door delivery of everything from burritos to dog food to underwear has practically become an inalienable right for Americans — the leave-it-on-the-doorstep trend has been quickly followed by the steal-it-from-the-doorstep phenomenon.
For thousands of people across the U.S., the front porch has increasingly become a crime scene.
As far back as late 2017, it was clear trouble was brewing as more and more of us had stuff shipped to our homes by FedEx or UPS. A survey back then by home-security startup Ring found that nearly 20 percent of us had reported a front-porch theft.
Now comes U.S. Packaging & Wrapping, a nationwide packaging supply company based in Arkansas, with its own survey of “porch piracy,” a look at shipping shenanigans that have made some people think twice before ordering that printer ink and medical marijuana for 24-hour delivery. Here are the top 10 porch pirate states in the continental U.S.:
1. Wyoming
2. Vermont
3. California
4. Massachusetts
5. Alaska
6. New York
7. Oregon
8. Washington
9. Rhode Island
10. North Dakota
EDITOR’S NOTE: I demand a recount! Texas is not in the top 10. Quick, git a rope!
LAPPL News Watch
March 26, 2019
In a digitally plugged-in world — where front-door delivery of everything from burritos to dog food to underwear has practically become an inalienable right for Americans — the leave-it-on-the-doorstep trend has been quickly followed by the steal-it-from-the-doorstep phenomenon.
For thousands of people across the U.S., the front porch has increasingly become a crime scene.
As far back as late 2017, it was clear trouble was brewing as more and more of us had stuff shipped to our homes by FedEx or UPS. A survey back then by home-security startup Ring found that nearly 20 percent of us had reported a front-porch theft.
Now comes U.S. Packaging & Wrapping, a nationwide packaging supply company based in Arkansas, with its own survey of “porch piracy,” a look at shipping shenanigans that have made some people think twice before ordering that printer ink and medical marijuana for 24-hour delivery. Here are the top 10 porch pirate states in the continental U.S.:
1. Wyoming
2. Vermont
3. California
4. Massachusetts
5. Alaska
6. New York
7. Oregon
8. Washington
9. Rhode Island
10. North Dakota
EDITOR’S NOTE: I demand a recount! Texas is not in the top 10. Quick, git a rope!
Tuesday, March 26, 2019
PIERS SLAMS WITCH HUNT AND ALL THOSE ASSOCIATED WITH IT
The Russia collusion hoax was a disgraceful fake news witch-hunt that shames all of Trump’s deranged enemies in the media, the FBI and Hollywood and has probably ensured their worst nightmare - his re-election
By Piers Morgan
Daily Mail
March 25, 2019
So it was all fake news…
The entire two-year Russia collusion frenzy was based on an absolute falsehood that Donald Trump and his team had colluded with Russians to fix the 2016 election.
It’s hard to imagine a worse thing to say about someone than that they betrayed their country, that they were traitors to their own people.
Yet that was the charge levelled at Trump in an obsessively unrelenting campaign to bring him down as President.
Today, he stands completely vindicated.
The long-awaited report by Special Counsel Robert Mueller sensationally cleared Trump of any collusion.
After an intensive investigation, Mueller concluded that neither the President nor any of his campaign team conspired with any Russians to interfere with the election.
Trump is jubilant, understandably.
But whilst I am pleased for him that he was finally exonerated of a high crime I never thought he could possibly have committed, my overwhelming feeling today is one of fury that he had to endure such a disgraceful, deceitful and concerted attack on his presidency based on nothing but a fervent desire to destroy him and his family.
Make no mistake, this was a ‘Get Trump’ mission driven by a collection of people who just couldn’t stomach the thought that he won the White House.
The Democrats, led by the demented Adam Schiff, screamed ‘COLLUSION!’ so often I’m amazed their larynxes didn’t explode.
But at least they had an obvious political motive for wanting Trump gone.
What is far worse is the way so many mainstream US media networks, newspapers and individual journalists fuelled the fake frenzy.
They let all the normal rules of balanced reporting fly out the window as they competed with each other over who could land the biggest Pulitzer prize-winning Trump/Russia sucker punch that would KO the President they loathe.
Only it turned out they were all punching thin air.
There was no collusion.
None.
Nada.
And today, all the people who’ve spent the past two years telling the world ‘Trump’s going down for Russia collusion’ look very stupid and have their reputations for impartiality irrevocably ruined.
Once revered newspapers like The New York Times and Washington Post are effectively finished as credible purveyors of fair and balanced news.
Their sustained, often viciously partisan Russiagate coverage has been dictated not by any ‘higher purpose’ journalistic rigour but by commercial greed: the more they hammer the President, the more copies they sell and website clicks they attract, and the more money they make.
And the ‘Trump’s a traitor’ narrative has been their biggest money-spinner.
The Times has seen subscriptions and profits skyrocket since it erupted and has boasted about its success ad nauseam - but at what cost to its integrity?
Meanwhile, on the internet, websites have behaved like they were back in the unregulated, unlicensed wild west.
Buzzfeed, keen to show the world it’s a serious news organisation and not a trivia-led click-baiting gossip sheet, recklessly published the infamous dossier from ex-British spy Christopher Steele and Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson that claimed among other outlandish things that Trump paid prostitutes to urinate on him in a Moscow hotel room.
This revelation was designed to humiliate Trump personally, and also to infer that Vladimir Putin’s intelligence operatives had tapes of the incident, which is why Trump was so badly compromised by Russia.
It was also untrue.
I wrote at the time that most of the dossier – commissioned by the Hillary Clinton campaign and Democrats - sounded like nonsense, and sure enough all the more lurid revelations have never been proven.
Yet that terrible journalistic decision to run a completely unverified document full of obvious bullshit poured a million tons of fuel onto the small Russia collusion fire burning slowly away in Washington and turned it into a furnace that threatened to engulf and destroy the Trump presidency.
Cable TV news has arguably been even worse than the press, feeding off every tiny scrap of unsubstantiated Russia-related gossip to drive headlines and ratings.
CNN anchors like Anderson Cooper can’t hide their sneering disdain for Trump, which is entirely their prerogative.
But when, like Cooper, that disdain compels you to spend night after night, month after month, devoting almost your entire ‘news’ show to what has turned out to be a fake news story, your reputation as an unbiased, fair-minded journalist is finished.
Why should any CNN viewer ever trust the likes of Cooper again given how badly he’s burned himself on this bogus Russia collusion story?
At MSNBC, hugely popular anchors like Rachel Maddow pumped out the Russia line with increasingly intense, emotional nightly detail, convincing themselves and their viewers in the process that they were exposing the new Watergate.
But they weren’t.
They were just exposing their own bias and news-judgement-twisting hatred of Trump.
Late night hosts, too, all eagerly embraced the Russia collusion line, led by Stephen Colbert who turned round his ailing Late Late Show’s ratings fortunes by making it a Trump-whacking forum featuring the constant subliminal message, ‘Don’t worry folks, Mueller’s coming for him!’
Ironically, Fox News, which is routinely attacked by the left in America for its often undeniably slavish support for Trump, emerges with by far the most credit on this story.
Their much-vilified prime time anchors Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson have repeatedly picked apart and rubbished the Russia collusion claims - and they were right.
The collective impact of all this hysteria was that 95% of America’s media was actively colluding - oh the irony! - to turn the false Russia collusion story into a presidency-ending scandal.
As Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi wrote in an excoriating attack, it has been this media generation’s equivalent of the WMD fiasco that led to the Iraq War being fought on an entirely bogus pretext, aided and abetted by a woefully supine and deluded media.
Taibbi said: ‘As a purely journalistic exercise, WMD was a pimple compared to Russiagate. The sheer scale of the errors and exaggerations this time dwarfs the last mess. Worse, it’s led to most journalists adopting a radical change in mission. We’ve become side-choosers, obliterating the concept of the press as an independent institution whose primary role is sorting fact and fiction.’
Exactly.
As for other big losers in all this, the list is long and illustrious:
Hillary Clinton, who never got over being beaten by a candidate with zero political experience, has been shrieking away ever since about Trump colluding with Russians in the desperate hope it would be proven true and she should rise again in glory as the true winner in 2016.
Today, she just looks an even bigger loser.
And what about the FBI, supposedly the very byword of discretion and unimpeachable integrity?
The bureau’s former boss turned self-aggrandising secret-revealing lawman celebrity James Comey posted a moody photo of himself in woodland on Sunday and the caption: ‘So many questions..’
Yes, there are – like: ‘What the hell was the FBI doing on Comey’s watch while Russia was aggressively hacking away to try to fix the last election?
The shocking answer is that they were more fixated with trying to stop Trump becoming President and wrecking his presidency if he did.
There should now be a proper investigation into Comey’s role in forcing the Mueller investigation into life in the first place, by leaking misinformation to the media when there was no hard evidence to support any collusion.
Such a new probe should also examine how Comey’s FBI colleagues like Andrew McCabe, Lisa Page, Bruce Ohr and Peter Strzok all conspired to compromise the democratically elected president of the United States.
They are all heavily implicated in numerous acts of alleged crimes involving the misuse of the dodgy Steele dossier, which they used as an excuse to get FISA warrants to spy on an associate of Trump’s campaign, without any mention of Hillary and the Democrats financing it.
Their treachery, and Trump-hating motivation for it, is all there in their own words.
Strzok texted Page, his secret lover, before the 2016 election, and after he had just helped get Hillary off the email scandal rap, to say a newly-opened FBI investigation against Trump was an ‘insurance policy’ against him in case he won.
McCabe, who succeeded Comey as FBI Director, confirmed to CBS after his own departure that he not only launched a counter-intelligence operation against President Trump, but also discussed with FBI colleagues whether it was possible to remove him from office using the 25th Amendment.
What the hell were all these FBI agents, who took an oath to serve the President, doing by plotting against him in such a disgraceful way?
The full scale of their behaviour must be properly investigated and those involved, if proven to have acted illegally, should be jailed.
And then, of course, we’ve got the Trump-bashing liberal celebrities who’ve been hollering ‘COLLUSION’ for two years and more recently been salivating on social media about the President’s impending day of reckoning at the hands of their hero, Mueller.
Today, this preening, posturing collection of ridiculous Hollywood creatures from Bette Midler, Sarah Silverman and Chelsea Handler to Alyssa Milano, Rob Reiner and George Takei have all been left in a state of shock, distress and denial – unable to believe that their knight in shining armour didn’t just spare their target but exonerated him.
Of all the many terrible things about this Russia collusion farce, the worst is the open, excited craving by so many Americans to WANT to believe their President was a corrupt agent of a foreign enemy, and their undisguised disappointment now it turns out he wasn’t.
This scandal has exposed many of America’s politicians, journalists and celebrities for the hysterical Trump-deranged fools that they have become.
By obsessing about the fake saga of Russia collusion, they have done immeasurable harm to their country and their own reputations.
Trump is no angel, and faces other investigations that may or may not uncover bad stuff. That remains to be seen.
But on Russia, he has been absolutely consistent in repeatedly crying ‘NO COLLUSION”, and he’s called the probe a ‘witch hunt’ more than 170 times.
He was right: there was NO collusion, and it WAS a witch-hunt.
The result of this appalling episode in modern American history is that Trump emerges vindicated, emboldened and with a massive stick to beat his many critics in the 2020 election campaign.
And his opponents have once again shown their horrible tendency to believe their supposed moral superiority justifies anything they do, however venal.
I can see him now on the stump, declaring: ‘I delivered on defeating ISIS, I delivered on the economy - and I crushed the fake news attempt to destroy me on Russia collusion.’
It’s a powerful vote-winning cocktail.
I tweeted last year that my bet was Mueller would find no collusion.
Today, I bet that Trump, if nothing serious emerges in any other investigation, will now be re-elected President – and his enemies will have only themselves to blame.
EDITOR’S NOTE: And yet the witch hunt goes on.
By Piers Morgan
Daily Mail
March 25, 2019
So it was all fake news…
The entire two-year Russia collusion frenzy was based on an absolute falsehood that Donald Trump and his team had colluded with Russians to fix the 2016 election.
It’s hard to imagine a worse thing to say about someone than that they betrayed their country, that they were traitors to their own people.
Yet that was the charge levelled at Trump in an obsessively unrelenting campaign to bring him down as President.
Today, he stands completely vindicated.
The long-awaited report by Special Counsel Robert Mueller sensationally cleared Trump of any collusion.
After an intensive investigation, Mueller concluded that neither the President nor any of his campaign team conspired with any Russians to interfere with the election.
Trump is jubilant, understandably.
But whilst I am pleased for him that he was finally exonerated of a high crime I never thought he could possibly have committed, my overwhelming feeling today is one of fury that he had to endure such a disgraceful, deceitful and concerted attack on his presidency based on nothing but a fervent desire to destroy him and his family.
Make no mistake, this was a ‘Get Trump’ mission driven by a collection of people who just couldn’t stomach the thought that he won the White House.
The Democrats, led by the demented Adam Schiff, screamed ‘COLLUSION!’ so often I’m amazed their larynxes didn’t explode.
But at least they had an obvious political motive for wanting Trump gone.
What is far worse is the way so many mainstream US media networks, newspapers and individual journalists fuelled the fake frenzy.
They let all the normal rules of balanced reporting fly out the window as they competed with each other over who could land the biggest Pulitzer prize-winning Trump/Russia sucker punch that would KO the President they loathe.
Only it turned out they were all punching thin air.
There was no collusion.
None.
Nada.
And today, all the people who’ve spent the past two years telling the world ‘Trump’s going down for Russia collusion’ look very stupid and have their reputations for impartiality irrevocably ruined.
Once revered newspapers like The New York Times and Washington Post are effectively finished as credible purveyors of fair and balanced news.
Their sustained, often viciously partisan Russiagate coverage has been dictated not by any ‘higher purpose’ journalistic rigour but by commercial greed: the more they hammer the President, the more copies they sell and website clicks they attract, and the more money they make.
And the ‘Trump’s a traitor’ narrative has been their biggest money-spinner.
The Times has seen subscriptions and profits skyrocket since it erupted and has boasted about its success ad nauseam - but at what cost to its integrity?
Meanwhile, on the internet, websites have behaved like they were back in the unregulated, unlicensed wild west.
Buzzfeed, keen to show the world it’s a serious news organisation and not a trivia-led click-baiting gossip sheet, recklessly published the infamous dossier from ex-British spy Christopher Steele and Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson that claimed among other outlandish things that Trump paid prostitutes to urinate on him in a Moscow hotel room.
This revelation was designed to humiliate Trump personally, and also to infer that Vladimir Putin’s intelligence operatives had tapes of the incident, which is why Trump was so badly compromised by Russia.
It was also untrue.
I wrote at the time that most of the dossier – commissioned by the Hillary Clinton campaign and Democrats - sounded like nonsense, and sure enough all the more lurid revelations have never been proven.
Yet that terrible journalistic decision to run a completely unverified document full of obvious bullshit poured a million tons of fuel onto the small Russia collusion fire burning slowly away in Washington and turned it into a furnace that threatened to engulf and destroy the Trump presidency.
Cable TV news has arguably been even worse than the press, feeding off every tiny scrap of unsubstantiated Russia-related gossip to drive headlines and ratings.
CNN anchors like Anderson Cooper can’t hide their sneering disdain for Trump, which is entirely their prerogative.
But when, like Cooper, that disdain compels you to spend night after night, month after month, devoting almost your entire ‘news’ show to what has turned out to be a fake news story, your reputation as an unbiased, fair-minded journalist is finished.
Why should any CNN viewer ever trust the likes of Cooper again given how badly he’s burned himself on this bogus Russia collusion story?
At MSNBC, hugely popular anchors like Rachel Maddow pumped out the Russia line with increasingly intense, emotional nightly detail, convincing themselves and their viewers in the process that they were exposing the new Watergate.
But they weren’t.
They were just exposing their own bias and news-judgement-twisting hatred of Trump.
Late night hosts, too, all eagerly embraced the Russia collusion line, led by Stephen Colbert who turned round his ailing Late Late Show’s ratings fortunes by making it a Trump-whacking forum featuring the constant subliminal message, ‘Don’t worry folks, Mueller’s coming for him!’
Ironically, Fox News, which is routinely attacked by the left in America for its often undeniably slavish support for Trump, emerges with by far the most credit on this story.
Their much-vilified prime time anchors Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson have repeatedly picked apart and rubbished the Russia collusion claims - and they were right.
The collective impact of all this hysteria was that 95% of America’s media was actively colluding - oh the irony! - to turn the false Russia collusion story into a presidency-ending scandal.
As Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi wrote in an excoriating attack, it has been this media generation’s equivalent of the WMD fiasco that led to the Iraq War being fought on an entirely bogus pretext, aided and abetted by a woefully supine and deluded media.
Taibbi said: ‘As a purely journalistic exercise, WMD was a pimple compared to Russiagate. The sheer scale of the errors and exaggerations this time dwarfs the last mess. Worse, it’s led to most journalists adopting a radical change in mission. We’ve become side-choosers, obliterating the concept of the press as an independent institution whose primary role is sorting fact and fiction.’
Exactly.
As for other big losers in all this, the list is long and illustrious:
Hillary Clinton, who never got over being beaten by a candidate with zero political experience, has been shrieking away ever since about Trump colluding with Russians in the desperate hope it would be proven true and she should rise again in glory as the true winner in 2016.
Today, she just looks an even bigger loser.
And what about the FBI, supposedly the very byword of discretion and unimpeachable integrity?
The bureau’s former boss turned self-aggrandising secret-revealing lawman celebrity James Comey posted a moody photo of himself in woodland on Sunday and the caption: ‘So many questions..’
Yes, there are – like: ‘What the hell was the FBI doing on Comey’s watch while Russia was aggressively hacking away to try to fix the last election?
The shocking answer is that they were more fixated with trying to stop Trump becoming President and wrecking his presidency if he did.
There should now be a proper investigation into Comey’s role in forcing the Mueller investigation into life in the first place, by leaking misinformation to the media when there was no hard evidence to support any collusion.
Such a new probe should also examine how Comey’s FBI colleagues like Andrew McCabe, Lisa Page, Bruce Ohr and Peter Strzok all conspired to compromise the democratically elected president of the United States.
They are all heavily implicated in numerous acts of alleged crimes involving the misuse of the dodgy Steele dossier, which they used as an excuse to get FISA warrants to spy on an associate of Trump’s campaign, without any mention of Hillary and the Democrats financing it.
Their treachery, and Trump-hating motivation for it, is all there in their own words.
Strzok texted Page, his secret lover, before the 2016 election, and after he had just helped get Hillary off the email scandal rap, to say a newly-opened FBI investigation against Trump was an ‘insurance policy’ against him in case he won.
McCabe, who succeeded Comey as FBI Director, confirmed to CBS after his own departure that he not only launched a counter-intelligence operation against President Trump, but also discussed with FBI colleagues whether it was possible to remove him from office using the 25th Amendment.
What the hell were all these FBI agents, who took an oath to serve the President, doing by plotting against him in such a disgraceful way?
The full scale of their behaviour must be properly investigated and those involved, if proven to have acted illegally, should be jailed.
And then, of course, we’ve got the Trump-bashing liberal celebrities who’ve been hollering ‘COLLUSION’ for two years and more recently been salivating on social media about the President’s impending day of reckoning at the hands of their hero, Mueller.
Today, this preening, posturing collection of ridiculous Hollywood creatures from Bette Midler, Sarah Silverman and Chelsea Handler to Alyssa Milano, Rob Reiner and George Takei have all been left in a state of shock, distress and denial – unable to believe that their knight in shining armour didn’t just spare their target but exonerated him.
Of all the many terrible things about this Russia collusion farce, the worst is the open, excited craving by so many Americans to WANT to believe their President was a corrupt agent of a foreign enemy, and their undisguised disappointment now it turns out he wasn’t.
This scandal has exposed many of America’s politicians, journalists and celebrities for the hysterical Trump-deranged fools that they have become.
By obsessing about the fake saga of Russia collusion, they have done immeasurable harm to their country and their own reputations.
Trump is no angel, and faces other investigations that may or may not uncover bad stuff. That remains to be seen.
But on Russia, he has been absolutely consistent in repeatedly crying ‘NO COLLUSION”, and he’s called the probe a ‘witch hunt’ more than 170 times.
He was right: there was NO collusion, and it WAS a witch-hunt.
The result of this appalling episode in modern American history is that Trump emerges vindicated, emboldened and with a massive stick to beat his many critics in the 2020 election campaign.
And his opponents have once again shown their horrible tendency to believe their supposed moral superiority justifies anything they do, however venal.
I can see him now on the stump, declaring: ‘I delivered on defeating ISIS, I delivered on the economy - and I crushed the fake news attempt to destroy me on Russia collusion.’
It’s a powerful vote-winning cocktail.
I tweeted last year that my bet was Mueller would find no collusion.
Today, I bet that Trump, if nothing serious emerges in any other investigation, will now be re-elected President – and his enemies will have only themselves to blame.
EDITOR’S NOTE: And yet the witch hunt goes on.
NARCOTICS OFFICER: THE WAR ON DRUGS IS NOT A FAILURE
by Howie Katz
Law Enforcement Today
March 25, 2019
Local and state police, the DEA, Customs and Border Patrol agents, and the U.S. Coast Guard are in the front lines of the war on drugs. These agencies seize illegal drugs that were intended to be sold on this nation’s streets. And our drug warriors are not just fighting the illegal drug distributors, but they are also confronted by a ‘fifth column’ in our country.
Liberals have been declaring that we are fighting a failed war on drugs. It is true that the Mexican drug cartels have been successfully smuggling heroin, cocaine, meth and marijuana across the border and even control their distribution in a number of our cities. It is also true that Heroin and fentanyl have bee coming into this country by container ships from China. But to claim that the war on drugs is a failed war is a damn lie. If our law enforcement agencies were not making narcotic seizures, there would be tons more of illegal drugs available on the streets.
The problem in this country is that we are fighting a two-front war on drugs. On one front we are fighting the distributors of illegal drugs. On the other front we are fighting a ‘fifth column’ consisting of liberals with their soft-on-drugs approach and groups like the ‘National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws’ (NORML).
Before the Vietnam War there was no fifth column. Most illegal drug use occurred among poor blacks and Mexican- Americans. Whites were not the least bit concerned about the arrest of minorities for possession of pot and other drugs. But all that changed with the ant-war movement and counter culture revolution of white youths from the middle and upper class. When kids from good white families were being thrown in jail for illegal drug possession, their parents squealed like stuck pigs about their clean-cut kids being imprisoned.
A two-front war is difficult to fight. Just ask the surviving Germans about fighting the Russians on the eastern front and the Allies on the western front, both at the same time.
And then there is the problem of who we are not fighting … the users of illegal drugs. The Law of Supply and Demand tells us that when there is no demand for a product, it will no longer be produced. The insatiable hunger of Americans for illegal drugs keeps the Mexican Drug cartels and other distributors of illegal drugs busy meeting that demand.
Compared to us, Asian countries fight the War on Drugs not only against those who manufacture and distribute them, but also against the users of drugs. In Japan drug users are imprisoned if caught, including those who use marijuana, the possession of cannabis for personal use carrying a maximum prison sentence of five years. In China, Malaysia, Indonesia and Singapore, drug users are imprisoned and drug dealers or those found in possession of large quantities are executed.
According to Human Rights Watch, since taking office on June 30, 2016, Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has carried out a war on drugs that has led to the deaths of over 12,000 Filipinos. In July of last year, Duterte told the Philippine Congress: “Let me begin by putting it bluntly. The war against illegal drugs is far from over. It will be as relentless and chilling as on the day it began.”
Illegal drug use in those Asian countries is not nearly as bad as it is in the United States because the police go after the users who are severely punished when caught. That acts as a significant deterrent to illegal drug use.
Now let’s take a look at some significant victories in our war against drugs.
In December 2016, the U.S. Coast Guard and the Royal Canadian Navy seized 26.5 tons of cocaine worth $2 billion and in November 2018, the Cost Guard seized 18.5 tons of cocaine worth $500 million.
In November 2017, Colombian police seized more than 12 tons of cocaine worth $360 million.
In August 2018, Mexican Marines raided an underground drug lab in Sinaloa and seized 50 tons of meth worth $7.5 billion.
In January, around 1.7 tons (3,800 pounds) of meth worth almost $1 billion was seized by U.S. Customs and Border Protection at the Los Angeles/Long Beach port. The meth, as well as 55 pounds of cocaine and about 11 pounds of heroin which were also seized, were bound for Australia.
In January, the Mexican navy intercepted a speedboat off the Sinaloa coast from which they seized more than 1,300 pounds (630 kilograms) of cocaine. Of the 15 crew members taken into custody, eight were from Ecuador, four were Colombians and three were Mexicans.
In February the U.S. Coast guard offloaded 17 tons of cocaine seized by six Coast Guard cutters from 21 different smuggling vessels in the Pacific off the coasts of Mexico and Central and South America. The 17 tons was worth an estimated $466 million wholesale.
On February 28, authorities seized about 1.6 tons of cocaine from a shipping container in the port at Newark, N.J. The seizure resulted from a joint investigation by U.S. Customs, the U.S. Coast Guard, Homeland Security Investigations, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the New York Police Department and the New York State Police. The coke had an estimated street value of $77 million.
On March 2, the DEA seized more than 20 kilos of fentanyl and 5 kilos of heroin from a truck at a New Jersey highway rest stop. That amount of fentanyl was enough to kill more than the entire population of NJ. The next day, LAPD seized more than 100 pounds of meth worth about $1 million at a South Los Angeles motel. Two children, ages 8 and 10, had been left alone with the meth.
I’ve called attention to these seizures to show that the War on Drugs is not a failed war. The seized drugs, and the drugs in many more seizures too numerous to mention here, would have been sold on the streets of America were it not for the War on Drugs.
Our soft approach to the use of drugs and the legalization of marijuana for recreational use have made it harder for us to fight the war on drugs.
Make no mistake about it though, the war on drugs is protecting our society. Because we are winning many battles in this war, tons of illegal drugs are being kept off of our streets.
Law Enforcement Today
March 25, 2019
Local and state police, the DEA, Customs and Border Patrol agents, and the U.S. Coast Guard are in the front lines of the war on drugs. These agencies seize illegal drugs that were intended to be sold on this nation’s streets. And our drug warriors are not just fighting the illegal drug distributors, but they are also confronted by a ‘fifth column’ in our country.
Liberals have been declaring that we are fighting a failed war on drugs. It is true that the Mexican drug cartels have been successfully smuggling heroin, cocaine, meth and marijuana across the border and even control their distribution in a number of our cities. It is also true that Heroin and fentanyl have bee coming into this country by container ships from China. But to claim that the war on drugs is a failed war is a damn lie. If our law enforcement agencies were not making narcotic seizures, there would be tons more of illegal drugs available on the streets.
The problem in this country is that we are fighting a two-front war on drugs. On one front we are fighting the distributors of illegal drugs. On the other front we are fighting a ‘fifth column’ consisting of liberals with their soft-on-drugs approach and groups like the ‘National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws’ (NORML).
Before the Vietnam War there was no fifth column. Most illegal drug use occurred among poor blacks and Mexican- Americans. Whites were not the least bit concerned about the arrest of minorities for possession of pot and other drugs. But all that changed with the ant-war movement and counter culture revolution of white youths from the middle and upper class. When kids from good white families were being thrown in jail for illegal drug possession, their parents squealed like stuck pigs about their clean-cut kids being imprisoned.
A two-front war is difficult to fight. Just ask the surviving Germans about fighting the Russians on the eastern front and the Allies on the western front, both at the same time.
And then there is the problem of who we are not fighting … the users of illegal drugs. The Law of Supply and Demand tells us that when there is no demand for a product, it will no longer be produced. The insatiable hunger of Americans for illegal drugs keeps the Mexican Drug cartels and other distributors of illegal drugs busy meeting that demand.
Compared to us, Asian countries fight the War on Drugs not only against those who manufacture and distribute them, but also against the users of drugs. In Japan drug users are imprisoned if caught, including those who use marijuana, the possession of cannabis for personal use carrying a maximum prison sentence of five years. In China, Malaysia, Indonesia and Singapore, drug users are imprisoned and drug dealers or those found in possession of large quantities are executed.
According to Human Rights Watch, since taking office on June 30, 2016, Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has carried out a war on drugs that has led to the deaths of over 12,000 Filipinos. In July of last year, Duterte told the Philippine Congress: “Let me begin by putting it bluntly. The war against illegal drugs is far from over. It will be as relentless and chilling as on the day it began.”
Illegal drug use in those Asian countries is not nearly as bad as it is in the United States because the police go after the users who are severely punished when caught. That acts as a significant deterrent to illegal drug use.
Now let’s take a look at some significant victories in our war against drugs.
In December 2016, the U.S. Coast Guard and the Royal Canadian Navy seized 26.5 tons of cocaine worth $2 billion and in November 2018, the Cost Guard seized 18.5 tons of cocaine worth $500 million.
In November 2017, Colombian police seized more than 12 tons of cocaine worth $360 million.
In August 2018, Mexican Marines raided an underground drug lab in Sinaloa and seized 50 tons of meth worth $7.5 billion.
In January, around 1.7 tons (3,800 pounds) of meth worth almost $1 billion was seized by U.S. Customs and Border Protection at the Los Angeles/Long Beach port. The meth, as well as 55 pounds of cocaine and about 11 pounds of heroin which were also seized, were bound for Australia.
In January, the Mexican navy intercepted a speedboat off the Sinaloa coast from which they seized more than 1,300 pounds (630 kilograms) of cocaine. Of the 15 crew members taken into custody, eight were from Ecuador, four were Colombians and three were Mexicans.
In February the U.S. Coast guard offloaded 17 tons of cocaine seized by six Coast Guard cutters from 21 different smuggling vessels in the Pacific off the coasts of Mexico and Central and South America. The 17 tons was worth an estimated $466 million wholesale.
On February 28, authorities seized about 1.6 tons of cocaine from a shipping container in the port at Newark, N.J. The seizure resulted from a joint investigation by U.S. Customs, the U.S. Coast Guard, Homeland Security Investigations, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the New York Police Department and the New York State Police. The coke had an estimated street value of $77 million.
On March 2, the DEA seized more than 20 kilos of fentanyl and 5 kilos of heroin from a truck at a New Jersey highway rest stop. That amount of fentanyl was enough to kill more than the entire population of NJ. The next day, LAPD seized more than 100 pounds of meth worth about $1 million at a South Los Angeles motel. Two children, ages 8 and 10, had been left alone with the meth.
I’ve called attention to these seizures to show that the War on Drugs is not a failed war. The seized drugs, and the drugs in many more seizures too numerous to mention here, would have been sold on the streets of America were it not for the War on Drugs.
Our soft approach to the use of drugs and the legalization of marijuana for recreational use have made it harder for us to fight the war on drugs.
Make no mistake about it though, the war on drugs is protecting our society. Because we are winning many battles in this war, tons of illegal drugs are being kept off of our streets.
POLICE BODY CAMERAS ARE NOT HAVING THE EFFECTS MANY EXPECTED
What’s likely the most comprehensive review of research on body cameras shows that they're most often used to prosecute citizens, not police. And while they've led to fewer citizen complaints, their impact on other aspects of policing, such as use of force, is less certain
By Mike Maciag
Governing
March 25, 2019
For years, many people hailed body-worn cameras as a potential key to improving police transparency and strengthening often-fractured relationships with the communities they serve. But so far, academic research suggests the technology largely hasn't lived up to those expectations.
That’s the conclusion of a new report from the Center for Evidence-Based Crime Policy at George Mason University.
Researchers reviewed 70 empirical studies on body cameras' effects, ranging from officer and citizen behavior to influences on law enforcement agencies as a whole. While much of the research remains mixed, it counters some promised benefits of body cameras at a time when departments are increasingly adopting the technology.
"There is an incongruence between people’s expectations of cameras, police expectations of cameras and what they think they’re being used for," says Cynthia Lum, the center's director and a co-author of the report.
Mixed Results on Use of Force
One of the top-cited reasons behind the push for body cameras has been the potential to limit officers’ use of force. Six of the reviewed studies suggested officers wearing cameras were less likely to use force, but another eight studies found no statistically significant effects.
One study offered a possible explanation for the discrepancy: Officers required to wear and turn on their cameras used force less frequently than those given more discretion.
One impact the cameras do seem to have is a reduction in the number of citizen complaints. The vast majority of the studies reviewed show that officers wearing body cameras receive fewer complaints against them than those not being recorded.
The reasons for that remain unclear. It’s possible that officers change their behaviors, leading to fewer complaints. But officers have suggested that citizens are less likely to file unfounded complaints when they know incidents are recorded.
“Officers are liking body-worn cameras more and more because they see it as protection against frivolous complaints,” Lum says.
More Prosecutions, But Not For Police
The introduction of body cameras is also having an effect on criminal investigations. But while many anticipated that camera footage would lead to more prosecutions of police misconduct, they’re instead being used more often against citizens.
In one study, 93 percent of prosecutors’ offices used camera footage primarily in prosecutions of civilians. Findings from three British studies similarly suggest cameras might play a role in raising clearance rates and producing more guilty pleas. Other reports showed cameras were particularly useful in domestic violence cases, leading to increased arrests, charges, guilty pleas and guilty verdicts.
Still, there’s no strong evidence that body cameras reduce crime. The most rigorous study the George Mason University researchers reviewed didn’t find any “general deterrent effects.”
De-Policing Didn't Happen
Perhaps the most commonly cited potential drawback of body cameras has centered around claims that officers would pull back on enforcement activities, effectively leading to de-policing. But the majority of studies reviewed don’t support this concern. In fact, three studies suggested officers wearing cameras actually might initiate more total contacts than those without them.
Lum says the research suffers from a shortcoming, though, in that it doesn’t distinguish between all the different types of actions officers take. Little research, for instance, examines whether body cameras encourage types of activities that might promote community policing.
Many hoped the arrival of body cameras would foster greater accountability within departments. Research to date hasn’t concluded that any such shifts have occurred.
“Agencies influence technology, not the other way around,” Lum says. “The culture and other aspects of the agencies will really determine how it is used.”
One study, for example, concluded that cameras increased officer burnout and that better organizational support could help mitigate it.
Some officers may perceive cameras primarily as a punitive measure. Rather than only using camera footage for disciplinary reasons, Lum recommends departments employ it as a learning tool for officers and their supervisors.
“The body-worn camera footage could provide a forum that increases the communication between the supervisor and the officer. And that might be a lever to strengthen the accountability structure,” she says.
Citizen Interactions
One of the main goals of body cameras is to increase the public's trust in police. The research shows that hasn't happened.
One study reported no links between deployment of body cameras and citizens’ views of police legitimacy, professionalism or satisfaction with police interactions.
Meanwhile, studies examining their effects on resisting arrest or assaults on officers were mixed, and no definitive conclusions could be made about whether body cameras influenced numbers of arrests and citations.
Body Cameras Are Here to Stay
Despite their uncertain effects, body cameras will likely continue to proliferate across police departments. A Bureau of Justice Statistics survey published last year reported 47 percent of general-purpose law enforcement agencies had already acquired the technology as of 2016, and studies consistently show that officers' views of the cameras improve over time as they begin using them.
But Lum cautions that police departments shouldn’t pursue body cameras merely because other agencies are doing so.
“Agencies really have to think carefully about the goals they have for the cameras and whether they’re achieving those goals,” she says. “Just because it reduces frivolous complaints or helps prosecute crimes better may not necessarily do anything to the relationship between the citizens and police.”
By Mike Maciag
Governing
March 25, 2019
For years, many people hailed body-worn cameras as a potential key to improving police transparency and strengthening often-fractured relationships with the communities they serve. But so far, academic research suggests the technology largely hasn't lived up to those expectations.
That’s the conclusion of a new report from the Center for Evidence-Based Crime Policy at George Mason University.
Researchers reviewed 70 empirical studies on body cameras' effects, ranging from officer and citizen behavior to influences on law enforcement agencies as a whole. While much of the research remains mixed, it counters some promised benefits of body cameras at a time when departments are increasingly adopting the technology.
"There is an incongruence between people’s expectations of cameras, police expectations of cameras and what they think they’re being used for," says Cynthia Lum, the center's director and a co-author of the report.
Mixed Results on Use of Force
One of the top-cited reasons behind the push for body cameras has been the potential to limit officers’ use of force. Six of the reviewed studies suggested officers wearing cameras were less likely to use force, but another eight studies found no statistically significant effects.
One study offered a possible explanation for the discrepancy: Officers required to wear and turn on their cameras used force less frequently than those given more discretion.
One impact the cameras do seem to have is a reduction in the number of citizen complaints. The vast majority of the studies reviewed show that officers wearing body cameras receive fewer complaints against them than those not being recorded.
The reasons for that remain unclear. It’s possible that officers change their behaviors, leading to fewer complaints. But officers have suggested that citizens are less likely to file unfounded complaints when they know incidents are recorded.
“Officers are liking body-worn cameras more and more because they see it as protection against frivolous complaints,” Lum says.
More Prosecutions, But Not For Police
The introduction of body cameras is also having an effect on criminal investigations. But while many anticipated that camera footage would lead to more prosecutions of police misconduct, they’re instead being used more often against citizens.
In one study, 93 percent of prosecutors’ offices used camera footage primarily in prosecutions of civilians. Findings from three British studies similarly suggest cameras might play a role in raising clearance rates and producing more guilty pleas. Other reports showed cameras were particularly useful in domestic violence cases, leading to increased arrests, charges, guilty pleas and guilty verdicts.
Still, there’s no strong evidence that body cameras reduce crime. The most rigorous study the George Mason University researchers reviewed didn’t find any “general deterrent effects.”
De-Policing Didn't Happen
Perhaps the most commonly cited potential drawback of body cameras has centered around claims that officers would pull back on enforcement activities, effectively leading to de-policing. But the majority of studies reviewed don’t support this concern. In fact, three studies suggested officers wearing cameras actually might initiate more total contacts than those without them.
Lum says the research suffers from a shortcoming, though, in that it doesn’t distinguish between all the different types of actions officers take. Little research, for instance, examines whether body cameras encourage types of activities that might promote community policing.
Many hoped the arrival of body cameras would foster greater accountability within departments. Research to date hasn’t concluded that any such shifts have occurred.
“Agencies influence technology, not the other way around,” Lum says. “The culture and other aspects of the agencies will really determine how it is used.”
One study, for example, concluded that cameras increased officer burnout and that better organizational support could help mitigate it.
Some officers may perceive cameras primarily as a punitive measure. Rather than only using camera footage for disciplinary reasons, Lum recommends departments employ it as a learning tool for officers and their supervisors.
“The body-worn camera footage could provide a forum that increases the communication between the supervisor and the officer. And that might be a lever to strengthen the accountability structure,” she says.
Citizen Interactions
One of the main goals of body cameras is to increase the public's trust in police. The research shows that hasn't happened.
One study reported no links between deployment of body cameras and citizens’ views of police legitimacy, professionalism or satisfaction with police interactions.
Meanwhile, studies examining their effects on resisting arrest or assaults on officers were mixed, and no definitive conclusions could be made about whether body cameras influenced numbers of arrests and citations.
Body Cameras Are Here to Stay
Despite their uncertain effects, body cameras will likely continue to proliferate across police departments. A Bureau of Justice Statistics survey published last year reported 47 percent of general-purpose law enforcement agencies had already acquired the technology as of 2016, and studies consistently show that officers' views of the cameras improve over time as they begin using them.
But Lum cautions that police departments shouldn’t pursue body cameras merely because other agencies are doing so.
“Agencies really have to think carefully about the goals they have for the cameras and whether they’re achieving those goals,” she says. “Just because it reduces frivolous complaints or helps prosecute crimes better may not necessarily do anything to the relationship between the citizens and police.”
Monday, March 25, 2019
IT AIN’T OVER TILL THE FAT LADY SINGS
Exonerated, but the witch hunt continues unabated
BarkGrowlBite
March 25, 2019
After 22 months and $25 million, the Mueller report exonerated Trump and his campaign of any collusion or conspiracy with the Russians and Attorney General William Barr says there was no obstruction of justice.
A significant victory for Trump, yes, but it ain’t over till the fat lady sings. The Mueller report may have exonerated Trump, but the witch hunt continues unabated.
The Democrats continue to be relentless in their efforts to destroy the Trump presidency. Investigation after investigation after investigation will be conducted in the House of Representatives where the Democrats intend to look into everything Trump has ever done and how many times he shit-stained his underwear.
And the US Attorneys for Southern New York, Virginia and D.C. are investigating the Trump family business dealings, both before and since he became president. So are the NY state Attorney General and the Manhattan DA, both Democrats of course.
It looks like it is going to take quite a while before the fat lady sings.
BarkGrowlBite
March 25, 2019
After 22 months and $25 million, the Mueller report exonerated Trump and his campaign of any collusion or conspiracy with the Russians and Attorney General William Barr says there was no obstruction of justice.
A significant victory for Trump, yes, but it ain’t over till the fat lady sings. The Mueller report may have exonerated Trump, but the witch hunt continues unabated.
The Democrats continue to be relentless in their efforts to destroy the Trump presidency. Investigation after investigation after investigation will be conducted in the House of Representatives where the Democrats intend to look into everything Trump has ever done and how many times he shit-stained his underwear.
And the US Attorneys for Southern New York, Virginia and D.C. are investigating the Trump family business dealings, both before and since he became president. So are the NY state Attorney General and the Manhattan DA, both Democrats of course.
It looks like it is going to take quite a while before the fat lady sings.
NO OBSTRUCTION, NO COLLUSION
by Bob Walsh
The Barr letter on the Mueller Report was released yesterday. The President was happy, and rightfully so. It said no collusion occurred, no obstruction occurred. It did NOT say that there was inadequate evidence to convict. It did NOT say there was inadequate evidence to charge. It said there was no crime. It DIDN'T happen. We spent two years and 25 million dollars investigating something that did not happen.
is Trump off the hook? No. There are still people who hate his guts who want to destroy him and have positions of power. His political enemies will attempt to tie him up for the next two years, and four years after that if possible and necessary. Much of this effort is being spent to ensure that no outsider ever again even CONSIDERS running for president, lest the deep state destroy them.
Will it work? Maybe, maybe not. One thing for sure, Trump is entitled to a victory lap, maybe even two. Shit, the A.G. may even spend some time now looking at the Clinton Crime Family Foundation and taking an HONEST look at the email situation.
The fight isn't over, but the anti-Trumpers are running on two flats and 1/8 a tank of gas.
The Barr letter on the Mueller Report was released yesterday. The President was happy, and rightfully so. It said no collusion occurred, no obstruction occurred. It did NOT say that there was inadequate evidence to convict. It did NOT say there was inadequate evidence to charge. It said there was no crime. It DIDN'T happen. We spent two years and 25 million dollars investigating something that did not happen.
is Trump off the hook? No. There are still people who hate his guts who want to destroy him and have positions of power. His political enemies will attempt to tie him up for the next two years, and four years after that if possible and necessary. Much of this effort is being spent to ensure that no outsider ever again even CONSIDERS running for president, lest the deep state destroy them.
Will it work? Maybe, maybe not. One thing for sure, Trump is entitled to a victory lap, maybe even two. Shit, the A.G. may even spend some time now looking at the Clinton Crime Family Foundation and taking an HONEST look at the email situation.
The fight isn't over, but the anti-Trumpers are running on two flats and 1/8 a tank of gas.
NEW JERSEY GOES AFTER CALIFORNIA GHOST GUN PRODUCER
by Bob Walsh
U. S. Patriot Armory is based in Apple Valley, CA. They produce unfinished AR-15 receivers. Under current law these are considered gun parts and not guns. They can be sold to anybody with no record keeping. They are not serialized. They can be turned into a functional receiver by drilling a few holes in the right places.
New Jersey does not like that. They have sued the company under consumer fraud laws for selling an unfinished AR-15 receiver to an A. G. investigator.
It is illegal under state law for a New Jersey resident to buy or possess an unfinished receiver. It is not illegal for a CA company to sell them. Many other sellers have stopped shipping these items to New Jersey. U. S. Patriot Armory has not.
U. S. Patriot Armory is based in Apple Valley, CA. They produce unfinished AR-15 receivers. Under current law these are considered gun parts and not guns. They can be sold to anybody with no record keeping. They are not serialized. They can be turned into a functional receiver by drilling a few holes in the right places.
New Jersey does not like that. They have sued the company under consumer fraud laws for selling an unfinished AR-15 receiver to an A. G. investigator.
It is illegal under state law for a New Jersey resident to buy or possess an unfinished receiver. It is not illegal for a CA company to sell them. Many other sellers have stopped shipping these items to New Jersey. U. S. Patriot Armory has not.
HERE YOU BUM, EAT SHIT
San Antonio police officer who lost his job for trying to feed a feces sandwich to a homeless person wins an appeal to get his dismissal overturned
By Michael Nam
Daily Mail
March 24, 2019
A police officer in Texas who had been fired after he gave a homeless person a fecal sandwich had his dismissal overturned on a technicality.
San Antonio Police Officer Matthew Luckhurst argued that the timeline of the incident fell outside the window for allowing him to be indefinitely suspended, and an arbitrator agreed with him earlier this month, KSAT reported.
'The indefinite suspension is overturned due to the violation of the 180-days prohibition,' the arbitrator wrote in his decision based on the rule that Luckhurst's discipline fell outside of the time limit on punishing his behavior.
The arbitrator did note that while the suspension was overturned, the punishment was ''reasonable based on just cause for Luckhurst's action whether intentionally or grossly inappropriate, regarding the fecal sandwich being placed in a container close to a homeless person.'
Luckhurst had initially testified that the incident had occurred on May 6, 2016, when he had picked up some dog feces, put it on a piece of bread before placing the 'sandwich' in a Styrofoam container of a 'half-eaten meal' provided by a local religious group for the homeless in the area of the I-35 overpass in San Antonio.
He had placed it next to a sleeping homeless man who would wake up, pick up the container before smelling the contents and throwing it away.
Another bike officer reported that he told Luckhurst, a five-year veteran of the force, that he could not just leave the container next to the homeless person, and told him to go back and dispose of it.
The officer said he watched Luckhurst bike back and assumed that he threw it away, but it's not confirmed that he did.
Luckhurst was notified of his dismissal on October 28 of that year which fell within the 180-day window if the incident happened in May as originally believed, but the officer reviewed his medical records that would challenge the assumption.
According to his records, the officer had suffered an injury during a martial arts class that left him on light duty between April 6 and June 14, 2016, and would not have been able to ride his bicycle in May.
Witness and hearsay testimony in the record also provided vague or contradictory dates regarding the incident, there was no body cam or video footage to corroborate the date and authorities were unable to identify or locate the homeless man referenced.
His suspension was reduced to five days by the arbitrator for another incident where he failed to arrest another homeless person who had a warrant.
While he won this particular appeal, the former officer has yet another feces related claim he needs to address from 2016.
Luckhurst was given a second indefinite suspension in December of 2016 over an allegation that he and another male officer had defecated in a toilet assigned to women in the bike patrol office.
'The toilet was left unflushed by both officers intentionally,' the suspension document states.
'Officer Luckhurst and the other officer also obtained a brown substance with the consistency of tapioca and spread it on the seay,' the report continued. 'Officer Luckhurst then boasted of these actions to fellow officers. This inappropriate behavior was done after a female officer requested the women's restroom be kept clean.'
By Michael Nam
Daily Mail
March 24, 2019
A police officer in Texas who had been fired after he gave a homeless person a fecal sandwich had his dismissal overturned on a technicality.
San Antonio Police Officer Matthew Luckhurst argued that the timeline of the incident fell outside the window for allowing him to be indefinitely suspended, and an arbitrator agreed with him earlier this month, KSAT reported.
'The indefinite suspension is overturned due to the violation of the 180-days prohibition,' the arbitrator wrote in his decision based on the rule that Luckhurst's discipline fell outside of the time limit on punishing his behavior.
The arbitrator did note that while the suspension was overturned, the punishment was ''reasonable based on just cause for Luckhurst's action whether intentionally or grossly inappropriate, regarding the fecal sandwich being placed in a container close to a homeless person.'
Luckhurst had initially testified that the incident had occurred on May 6, 2016, when he had picked up some dog feces, put it on a piece of bread before placing the 'sandwich' in a Styrofoam container of a 'half-eaten meal' provided by a local religious group for the homeless in the area of the I-35 overpass in San Antonio.
He had placed it next to a sleeping homeless man who would wake up, pick up the container before smelling the contents and throwing it away.
Another bike officer reported that he told Luckhurst, a five-year veteran of the force, that he could not just leave the container next to the homeless person, and told him to go back and dispose of it.
The officer said he watched Luckhurst bike back and assumed that he threw it away, but it's not confirmed that he did.
Luckhurst was notified of his dismissal on October 28 of that year which fell within the 180-day window if the incident happened in May as originally believed, but the officer reviewed his medical records that would challenge the assumption.
According to his records, the officer had suffered an injury during a martial arts class that left him on light duty between April 6 and June 14, 2016, and would not have been able to ride his bicycle in May.
Witness and hearsay testimony in the record also provided vague or contradictory dates regarding the incident, there was no body cam or video footage to corroborate the date and authorities were unable to identify or locate the homeless man referenced.
His suspension was reduced to five days by the arbitrator for another incident where he failed to arrest another homeless person who had a warrant.
While he won this particular appeal, the former officer has yet another feces related claim he needs to address from 2016.
Luckhurst was given a second indefinite suspension in December of 2016 over an allegation that he and another male officer had defecated in a toilet assigned to women in the bike patrol office.
'The toilet was left unflushed by both officers intentionally,' the suspension document states.
'Officer Luckhurst and the other officer also obtained a brown substance with the consistency of tapioca and spread it on the seay,' the report continued. 'Officer Luckhurst then boasted of these actions to fellow officers. This inappropriate behavior was done after a female officer requested the women's restroom be kept clean.'
TOO MANY TEAHERS GET FIRED FOR REACTING TO THE DISRUPTIVE CONDUCT OF PUPILS
Why aren't our school teachers wearing body cameras?
By Trey Rusk
Running Code 3
March 22, 2019
It's fairly common place to read a news story about a misbehaving student or teacher. Cell phones sometimes record these events or capture text messages that substantiate the wrong doing.
I think it would be fairly easy to equip teachers and school bus drivers with body cameras. Students and teachers would automatically adjust the way they speak to each other and assaults would drop dramatically. Just think of all the lying and bad behavior that would stop.
As soon as a complaint was reported, the principal could review the footage. If something criminal had occurred, then the footage would be stored for trial. Simple.
There is just one problem. The cost. Each camera would run a minimum of $300 and the storage of the footage would run in the millions for a medium to large school district.
There is another way. Teachers could buy their own body cams that can be activated as needed. I can buy a body cam on Amazon today for $30. In fact, I own one. That's cheap insurance for any situation.
Of course, you probably won't catch any video of a teacher having sex with a student because they control the recorder. But incidents in the classroom or on a school bus can be documented as evidence.
Several years ago in Los Angeles, citizens complained about police brutality and insisted that officers should wear body cameras to record the violence. The police began wearing the body cams. It wasn't long before people complained that the body cams were intrusive. Maybe what they actually saw was their own criminal behavior.
I wore a body camera on the job. They can come in handy.
That's the way I see it.
By Trey Rusk
Running Code 3
March 22, 2019
It's fairly common place to read a news story about a misbehaving student or teacher. Cell phones sometimes record these events or capture text messages that substantiate the wrong doing.
I think it would be fairly easy to equip teachers and school bus drivers with body cameras. Students and teachers would automatically adjust the way they speak to each other and assaults would drop dramatically. Just think of all the lying and bad behavior that would stop.
As soon as a complaint was reported, the principal could review the footage. If something criminal had occurred, then the footage would be stored for trial. Simple.
There is just one problem. The cost. Each camera would run a minimum of $300 and the storage of the footage would run in the millions for a medium to large school district.
There is another way. Teachers could buy their own body cams that can be activated as needed. I can buy a body cam on Amazon today for $30. In fact, I own one. That's cheap insurance for any situation.
Of course, you probably won't catch any video of a teacher having sex with a student because they control the recorder. But incidents in the classroom or on a school bus can be documented as evidence.
Several years ago in Los Angeles, citizens complained about police brutality and insisted that officers should wear body cameras to record the violence. The police began wearing the body cams. It wasn't long before people complained that the body cams were intrusive. Maybe what they actually saw was their own criminal behavior.
I wore a body camera on the job. They can come in handy.
That's the way I see it.
UN AS RELENTLESS AGAINST ISRAEL AS DEMOCRATS AGAINST TRUMP
UN human rights body asks for larger presence in PA territories
By Associated Press and Israel Hayom Staff
Israel Hayom
March 24, 2019
The top U.N. human rights body on Friday requested a larger presence in Palestinian areas following a report alleging Israeli soldiers may have committed war crimes in a deadly response to Gaza protests last year.
The U.N. Human Rights Council made the request to U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet in a resolution that passed 23-8 with 15 abstentions, a vote loaded with political implications that quickly drew accusations of bias from the Israeli government.
Five central and eastern European countries joined Australia, Fiji and Brazil in opposing the measure. Britain and many EU countries abstained. Several Persian Gulf states, with which Israel has claimed warming ties, voted in favor.
The resolution was the strongest among five considered by the council focusing on Israel and "occupied Palestinian territory," the only such "country situation" discussed at every council meeting. The issue made up more than one-sixth of the 29 resolutions considered as the four-week session ended Friday.
Last summer, U.S. President Donald Trump withdrew the United States, long one of Israel's strongest backers at the 47-member Geneva body, from the council, in part due to its anti-Israel bias.
The resolution comes after a three-person team of investigators commissioned by the council late last month issued an extensive report on violence during a string of Palestinian riots along Israel's border with the Gaza Strip that started nearly a year ago.
In it, the Independent Commission of Inquiry said Israeli soldiers intentionally fired on civilians and could have committed war crimes and crimes against humanity. The panel said over 6,000 people had been shot by military snipers using live ammunition to repel protesters.
Jerusalem officials did not cooperate with the investigation.
On Friday, the Foreign Ministry said, "The Human Rights Council repeated today its absurd and hypocritical ritual of creating a Commission of Inquiry singling out Israel, whose findings against Israel are predetermined, and then adopting them, all the while ignoring the reality on the ground," Israel's Foreign Ministry said Friday.
"Israel will continue to exercise its right of self-defense and will protect its citizens against terror and aggression," it said.
By Associated Press and Israel Hayom Staff
Israel Hayom
March 24, 2019
The top U.N. human rights body on Friday requested a larger presence in Palestinian areas following a report alleging Israeli soldiers may have committed war crimes in a deadly response to Gaza protests last year.
The U.N. Human Rights Council made the request to U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet in a resolution that passed 23-8 with 15 abstentions, a vote loaded with political implications that quickly drew accusations of bias from the Israeli government.
Five central and eastern European countries joined Australia, Fiji and Brazil in opposing the measure. Britain and many EU countries abstained. Several Persian Gulf states, with which Israel has claimed warming ties, voted in favor.
The resolution was the strongest among five considered by the council focusing on Israel and "occupied Palestinian territory," the only such "country situation" discussed at every council meeting. The issue made up more than one-sixth of the 29 resolutions considered as the four-week session ended Friday.
Last summer, U.S. President Donald Trump withdrew the United States, long one of Israel's strongest backers at the 47-member Geneva body, from the council, in part due to its anti-Israel bias.
The resolution comes after a three-person team of investigators commissioned by the council late last month issued an extensive report on violence during a string of Palestinian riots along Israel's border with the Gaza Strip that started nearly a year ago.
In it, the Independent Commission of Inquiry said Israeli soldiers intentionally fired on civilians and could have committed war crimes and crimes against humanity. The panel said over 6,000 people had been shot by military snipers using live ammunition to repel protesters.
Jerusalem officials did not cooperate with the investigation.
On Friday, the Foreign Ministry said, "The Human Rights Council repeated today its absurd and hypocritical ritual of creating a Commission of Inquiry singling out Israel, whose findings against Israel are predetermined, and then adopting them, all the while ignoring the reality on the ground," Israel's Foreign Ministry said Friday.
"Israel will continue to exercise its right of self-defense and will protect its citizens against terror and aggression," it said.
THE CRYING OF LOT 330
San Francisco’s leaders prepare to site a large homeless shelter in the heart of the city
By Erica Sandberg
City Journal
March 21, 2019
The prospect of a 225-bed homeless shelter on the Embarcadero, one of San Francisco’s most scenic and economically vital areas, took residents by surprise. Only eight days earlier, the proposal had been unveiled to turn what is now a parking lot—Seawall Lot 330—into the largest homeless shelter of its type in the city. Neighbors arrived en masse at the Port Commission hearing to express their views. It was standing-room only, with people crowded on floors and in aisles, and spilling out the door.
After a brief presentation by Jeff Kositsky, executive director of the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing, who touted the merits of the “Navigation Center”—as the new shelters are called—local homeowners, renters, and workers were granted two minutes each at the mic. All spoke passionately about their ties to the neighborhood and how the shelter would erode safety and quality of life. They worried that it would intensify drug use and other illegal activity and draw additional homeless people onto their property, leaving more needles and feces behind. Several described how their toddlers have already been poked by discarded syringes and had to take HIV tests. A father explained that his baby stroller was stolen as he was placing her in her car seat; a senior citizen recounted being chased by “a crazy person.”
Their testimonies were often agonizing. A few broke down as they pleaded with the commissioners to reject the proposal. Many emphasized that the waterfront is a jewel of the city. Placing an enormous homeless shelter in the center of it, in such close proximity to the prized Ferry Building, is bizarre. The location, they pointed out, is also a poor choice because few amenities like hospitals or grocery stores are nearby, and police response time in the area is slow. With no requirement for shelter residents to be sober, drug dealing, overdoses, and crime would proliferate.
Port Commissioners Kimberly Brandon, Willie Adams, and Doreen Woo Ho sat poker-faced. The Port of San Francisco owns Lot 330, and the proposal depends on their consent, which seems likely. Mayor London Breed supports the idea. The site itself was likely chosen for expediency, because the Port of San Francisco oversees the location, and commissioners are appointed by the mayor and approved by the Board of Supervisors.
“The community is feeling blindsided and shortchanged in regard to public process or a sincere desire for public input,” says Jamie Whitaker, who lives a block away from the site. “They cast us as millionaires who don’t care about the homeless, which is completely wrong. We just do not have faith in the city to provide the right kind of place for them and us. For example, there should be serious talk of building a mental hospital. It’s clear we have schizophrenic people in this city and they need help.”
After community members expressed their objections, a small contingent of homeless-rights activists spoke, trivializing their neighbors’ concerns as NIMBYism, and, predictably, accusing them of hating the poor. Most of the residents, however expressed compassion and praised the nearby Delancey Street Foundation, a self-supporting residential community for ex-convicts, addicts, and homeless people, because it provides vocational and social skills training in a drug and alcohol free setting. It’s a critical difference but the activists are deaf to nuance and unconcerned about anyone with homes, children, or businesses.
More crucial, though, is the attitude of city leaders and the media. The San Francisco Chronicle ran an editorial headlined, “San Francisco Neighbors are Wrong to Fight A New Homeless Facility,” dismissing the concerns of residents as “the magnetizing fear of a homeless influx,” and implying that elitism fueled their protest. But the Chronicle also admitted that those living on the streets are “often struggling with addiction or mental illness.” The proposed Navigation Centers are neither psychiatric hospitals nor substance-abuse facilities, both of which the city desperately needs.
Further, the Navigation Centers have not reduced homelessness. At last count, approximately 7,500 people were living on the city’s streets on any given night; shelters aren’t making a dent because so many homeless people are “service-resistant.” No one is required to go or stay, and many don’t. Tents and illegal activity mushroom around the shelters, despite so-called good-neighbor policies that are supposed to maintain a modicum of safety in the surrounding area.
The city, however, refuses to guarantee that there will be no uptick in crime and vagrancy. “We feel swindled,” says Wallace Lee, a retiree living in the area. “Something strange is going on. I used to be a lawyer and how this city works is confusing even to me. What I do know is that city officials don’t care about our concerns. I’ve been coordinating people to show up at these meetings. We will challenge the legislation. I’ve made this my full-time job, I stay up until midnight. I heard from a lot of people who want to continue to fight and I’m encouraged.”
And now Mayor Breed claims that she is “ready for battle over housing, homeless.” Her attitude is making enemies of tens of thousands of San Franciscans. An us-versus-them approach is counterproductive. At worst, she’ll get what she’s preparing for: a war with the people who care most profoundly about the city. The commission vote is expected on April 23.
By Erica Sandberg
City Journal
March 21, 2019
The prospect of a 225-bed homeless shelter on the Embarcadero, one of San Francisco’s most scenic and economically vital areas, took residents by surprise. Only eight days earlier, the proposal had been unveiled to turn what is now a parking lot—Seawall Lot 330—into the largest homeless shelter of its type in the city. Neighbors arrived en masse at the Port Commission hearing to express their views. It was standing-room only, with people crowded on floors and in aisles, and spilling out the door.
After a brief presentation by Jeff Kositsky, executive director of the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing, who touted the merits of the “Navigation Center”—as the new shelters are called—local homeowners, renters, and workers were granted two minutes each at the mic. All spoke passionately about their ties to the neighborhood and how the shelter would erode safety and quality of life. They worried that it would intensify drug use and other illegal activity and draw additional homeless people onto their property, leaving more needles and feces behind. Several described how their toddlers have already been poked by discarded syringes and had to take HIV tests. A father explained that his baby stroller was stolen as he was placing her in her car seat; a senior citizen recounted being chased by “a crazy person.”
Their testimonies were often agonizing. A few broke down as they pleaded with the commissioners to reject the proposal. Many emphasized that the waterfront is a jewel of the city. Placing an enormous homeless shelter in the center of it, in such close proximity to the prized Ferry Building, is bizarre. The location, they pointed out, is also a poor choice because few amenities like hospitals or grocery stores are nearby, and police response time in the area is slow. With no requirement for shelter residents to be sober, drug dealing, overdoses, and crime would proliferate.
Port Commissioners Kimberly Brandon, Willie Adams, and Doreen Woo Ho sat poker-faced. The Port of San Francisco owns Lot 330, and the proposal depends on their consent, which seems likely. Mayor London Breed supports the idea. The site itself was likely chosen for expediency, because the Port of San Francisco oversees the location, and commissioners are appointed by the mayor and approved by the Board of Supervisors.
“The community is feeling blindsided and shortchanged in regard to public process or a sincere desire for public input,” says Jamie Whitaker, who lives a block away from the site. “They cast us as millionaires who don’t care about the homeless, which is completely wrong. We just do not have faith in the city to provide the right kind of place for them and us. For example, there should be serious talk of building a mental hospital. It’s clear we have schizophrenic people in this city and they need help.”
After community members expressed their objections, a small contingent of homeless-rights activists spoke, trivializing their neighbors’ concerns as NIMBYism, and, predictably, accusing them of hating the poor. Most of the residents, however expressed compassion and praised the nearby Delancey Street Foundation, a self-supporting residential community for ex-convicts, addicts, and homeless people, because it provides vocational and social skills training in a drug and alcohol free setting. It’s a critical difference but the activists are deaf to nuance and unconcerned about anyone with homes, children, or businesses.
More crucial, though, is the attitude of city leaders and the media. The San Francisco Chronicle ran an editorial headlined, “San Francisco Neighbors are Wrong to Fight A New Homeless Facility,” dismissing the concerns of residents as “the magnetizing fear of a homeless influx,” and implying that elitism fueled their protest. But the Chronicle also admitted that those living on the streets are “often struggling with addiction or mental illness.” The proposed Navigation Centers are neither psychiatric hospitals nor substance-abuse facilities, both of which the city desperately needs.
Further, the Navigation Centers have not reduced homelessness. At last count, approximately 7,500 people were living on the city’s streets on any given night; shelters aren’t making a dent because so many homeless people are “service-resistant.” No one is required to go or stay, and many don’t. Tents and illegal activity mushroom around the shelters, despite so-called good-neighbor policies that are supposed to maintain a modicum of safety in the surrounding area.
The city, however, refuses to guarantee that there will be no uptick in crime and vagrancy. “We feel swindled,” says Wallace Lee, a retiree living in the area. “Something strange is going on. I used to be a lawyer and how this city works is confusing even to me. What I do know is that city officials don’t care about our concerns. I’ve been coordinating people to show up at these meetings. We will challenge the legislation. I’ve made this my full-time job, I stay up until midnight. I heard from a lot of people who want to continue to fight and I’m encouraged.”
And now Mayor Breed claims that she is “ready for battle over housing, homeless.” Her attitude is making enemies of tens of thousands of San Franciscans. An us-versus-them approach is counterproductive. At worst, she’ll get what she’s preparing for: a war with the people who care most profoundly about the city. The commission vote is expected on April 23.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)