A dramatic good morning to all.
1. Let’s see which news media outlets report this. Because, you know, the President is the one encouraging violence…State senator Martin Sandoval, who represents Illinois’ 11th District, had a fundraising event last week that included a mock assassination of President Trump for the enjoyment and edification of Sandoval’s supporters. Photos posted by a woman at the event show someone pointing a fake machine gun at a man wearing a Trump mask. “Trump” is acting as if he has been shot, grabbing his chest and leaning back. In another photo, Sandoval can be seen standing next to the person holding the gun.
Thus busted, and under fire from officials of his own party, Sandoval released a statement over the weekend apologizing for the incident, which he called “unacceptable.” “I don’t condone violence toward the President or anyone else,” Sandoval said. “I apologize that something like this happened at my event.”
Oddly, he didn’t take any action indicating those sentiments at the event.
2. Now THIS is police misconduct! Wow. Portland police suspected Tyrone Lamont Allen of robbing four banks and credit unions. Yet none of the tellers noticed Allen’s facial tattoos, and he was not wearing a mask. To address that problem, the police photoshopped out the tattoos on Allen’s face before including his picture in a photo line up.
Then the witnesses identified Allen.
Police forensic criminologist Mark Weber testified that he merely “painted over the tattoos . . . like applying electronic makeup.’’ It was more than that. It was “like” altering the appearance of suspects to secure a criminal identification.
Laughably, Assistant U.S. Attorney Paul Maloney defended the changes because “the whole idea was to make Mr. Allen blend in – so his photo wouldn’t stand out . . . These procedures were prudent. They were appropriate.’’ Maloney should be fired and disciplined by the bar. Writes Professor Turley, who found this story,
Give the persistent unreliability of witness identification, the actual removal of identifying features is an outrageous act…One study showed that roughly 75 percent of cases overturned by DNA evidence involved convictions based on eyewitness identification — often more than one such witness. Jurors are heavily influenced by such identifications in court and prosecutors know that such a witness can overcome other evidentiary shortcomings. To engineer an identification through photoshopping is therefore particularly egregious and far . . . far from “prudent.”
3. She’s an underdog, but don’t bet against her. That is, Senator Kamala Harris is still in there battling to be the #1 Democratic Party demagogue. Senator Warren has a big lead, but Harris and Warren both appeal to the Left’s totalitarians. Harris now says that if elected she will push for legislation authorizing federal courts to issue gun confiscation orders against people who express opinions that “may indicate” an intent to commit a hate crime. These “domestic terrorism prevention orders” would “temporarily restrict a person’s access to guns if they exhibit clear evidence of dangerousness,” including “violent racist threats or anti-immigrant manifestos.”
We know what Harris and her ideological clones regard as “racist” and “anti-immigrant” statements—whatever they those in power say they are. This is part of the “red flag” argument, holding that citizens should lose their constitutional rights because they say or think “unacceptable” things.
It’s funny: I was watching Season Two of “Mindhunter,” the Netflix drama about the development of the FBI’s Behavioral Studies Unit, which refined the art of profiling. Investigating the Atlanta child murder spree, during which Wayne Williams killed thirty black children, terrifying the city, the agents interview a poor, semi-literate Klan member and open racist. When they confront him with his various racist statements, he smirkingly points out that hate isn’t a crime, thoughts aren’t a crime, and expressing racist opinions aren’t a crime. “They are protected under the Constitution!’ he says, correctly.
And I thought: this vile idiot understands and respects the Constitution better than most Democrats. Scary.
4. On second thought, maybe Warren is too far ahead to catch. Yesterday the former Native American and minority faculty hire was speaking to real Native Americans, grovelling and offering all sorts of goodies–“full funding for housing, for health care, for education, for infrastructure”— for the tribes if they will just forgive and forget. Yes, this is called “buying votes.” It works.
She also apologized for claiming to be a Cherokee for her whole academic career. I love it when people who have profited from and built a career on cheating apologize long after all of the benefits have been enjoyed and are in the bank. Such apologies are cynical and cheap. I haven’t heard Warren apologize to the applicants for faculty positions that she leaped over by claiming minority status. If she had played it straight, maybe one of them would be running for President.
The Times piece about Warren’s appearance also exemplifies the distortion of her Indian problem that the news media has been spinning to her benefit. More than once, reporter Thomas Kaplan describes the President’s “Pocahontas”nickname for Warren as a “slur” referring to her “ancestry.” Fake news: that description is the exact opposite of what Trump’s gag name means. He is sarcastically pointing out her lack of the ancestry she falsely claimed. He isn’t mocking Native Americans; he’s mocking a woman who pretended to be a Native American. Sure, it’s juvenile, but its no racial slur. In college, I had a classmate who was always boasting about his supposedly wealthy family, but who was also the last one to pick up a check. Some of us called him “Rockefeller.” Was that a slur on the Rockefellers?
5. About that New York Times “1619” Project…Nah, no political agendas or historical distortions here! Some headings from the special New York Times Magazine issue on the project:
- “In order to understand the brutality of American capitalism, you have to start on the plantation.”
- “How Slavery Built Wall Street”
- “Why doesn’t the United States have universal health care? The answer begins with policies enacted after the Civil War.”
- “American democracy has never shed an undemocratic assumption present at its founding: that some people are inherently entitled to more power than others.” (This one is from professional anti-white racist and race-baiter Jamelle Bouie.)
- “Slavery gave America a fear of black people and a taste for violent punishment. Both define our criminal justice system.”
and my personal favorite,
- “A vast wealth gap, driven by segregation, redlining, evictions, and exclusions, separate white and black America.” Just a few factors are left out of that calculation, I think.
My diagnosis is that “1619” is a thinly-veiled cognitive dissonance scale exercise, devoted to tying everything the progressive agenda wants in 2019 to overhaul or eliminate—like capitalism, the rule of law, and merit-based hiring—to slavery.
Ethics Alarms 
Re: No. 4, Warren’s Apology.
Where did she apologize for claiming Cherokee heritage. I must have missed that part while I was laughing.
What I saw was an apology “for the harm I have caused”, a generic mea culpa, which then turned into the Warren-Patented breathless and sincere “I have listened and I have learned” nonsense from the eternally cynical. Did she apologize for using Native American heritage to get a great gig at Harvard? How about her declaration to the Texas State Bar that she was Native American when she applied for her law license? No.
jvb
Did she ask, nay demand, that the Fordham Law Review not only rescind, but supply an appropriately groveling retraction of their 1997 hysterical slobbering about her being Harvard Law’s First Woman of Color?
Not exactly.
Seeing any article’s accompanying image of her pasty white puss waxing serious about her ‘trailblazing’ is positively cringe-inducing.
1. Oh, come on. The Left has already established that violence against conservatives is okay because they’re all white racists. It’s tantamount to punching Hitler, right?
3. Make no mistake. The idiot Klansmen line was supposed to imply to the audience, “But it should be illegal”.
4. I wonder what would happen if the parties just paid for lots of beer like they used to in the old days?
5. I love that we know exactly where these headlines are stemming from.
3.: I thought so, too. I had to stop watching television for all the obvious subversive cant seeping out of it. Now I just assume every line of dialogue is intended to force-feed me some idea, and I only struggle to identify one on rare occasions.
Those crime dramas were the worst! If you want a good FBI profiling show, though, find Manhunt on Netflix. It’s almost an airbrushed, sympathetic take on the Unabomber. It was great! It really captures and fairly presents distaste for modern society but without having to push it cloyingly at every turn. The best propaganda for the truth is a fair hearing.
”Those crime dramas were the worst!”
If it’s no political agenda bull$#!t crime drama you want, give HBO’s 8 episode (On Demand) True Detective/Season I.
McConaughey & Harrelson like you’ve never seen ’em, and, IMO, everything about it is outFREAKINstanding!!
Season III is not slouch, either.
#3 and #4: Surely you can see what they are building…the battle lines and the demography of the next civil war. People of color against white people. Gullible versus clear eyed. Irrational utopians versus rationalists. Those currently capable of defending the Constitution have been demonized and quite quickly being criminialized. Their correct thinking society demands the danger we represent be laid low by forcible disarming or expending of ammunition.
Why stop at restricting access to guns?
Why not suspend any licenses to practice law or medicine?
Why not forbid any form of intimate contact or relationship?
Why not require the wearing of a distinctive badge on the left sleeve while out in public?
https://www.quora.com/Should-people-on-the-terrorist-watch-list-be-required-to-wear-a-distinctive-badge-on-their-left-sleeve-when-out-in-public
The same criminal justice system that will enforce the gun control laws that the New York Times editorial board wants?
I wonder what Harris would say if Trump proposed periodic sweeps of public housing to look for illegal guns and drugs.
Such a proposal could mimic Mel Brooks
Tag line: We don’t need no stinkin warrants.
Maybe they’re thinking about making the distinctive badge resemble a target. Somehow I think I’ve seen this before: Achtung deplorable!!
For possibly the best story of lineup identification of all time, please see the link below. The witness ‘somehow’ picked out the person the police suspected. However, the actual perpetrator was included in the lineup randomly. Guess who the real perpetrator is and which one served 27 years in prison is.
https://harvardpress.typepad.com/hup_publicity/2011/03/understanding-eyewitness-misidentifications.html
1. Trump Derangement Syndrome claims yet another victim.
2. I saw this, and had basically the same take you did. But disbarment isn’t enough for me.
May the District Attorney suffer the ravages of a mistaken identification as the perpetrator in a criminal case. He has earned it in spades. Karma, you’re up.
3. Crimethink
It’s Ninteen Eighty-Four again! George Orwell would be flabbergasted to learn that his satirical classic has become reality, and only 35 years after his title.
So the police get to take a person’s opinions, spin them in the most negative possible light, and remove by main force a constitutional right, all without the commission of a criminal act or true threat.
Yep. This is the woman we want running the country and defending our “rights.” Or at least, the “rights” she believes we deserve.
4. Warren
Not just fake news, total incomprehension. How incompetent are today’s “reporters?” So incompetent that they cannot use reason even for the time required to figure out what something actually means.
5. So, let me see: Every Leftist ideal that hasn’t become reality is because racism. All of America’s problems are because racism. The country was founded because racism.
Well, then, let’s enslave the Times and give them what they apparently can’t live without — the moral high ground. We may be reprehensible for doing it, but by God, at least we won’t have to read this nonsense.
We’ll save thousands of minds in the process, and we all know a mind is a terrible thing to waste, or even worse, allowed to be destroyed by agenda-driven gobbledygook.
On point 2, Did any witness state the perpetrator had visible marks on the face prior to selecting lineup participants?
If any did then adding facial marks would make sense. There would be no reason to remove identifying marks because if the witness never saw such marks it would rule that person out. If you add marks to known innocent persons then in the event of one of the innocents being selected then you must question the witnesses credibility.
I read that story a day or so ago. The witnesses claimed not to remember any marks on his face.
In that case removing them is obviously abuse of power. Show him as he is and if the witness dies nit identify him – thems the breaks.
I totally agree.
Jack did you see Turley’s article on the teachers who went to Venezuela ?
Non sequitur, but whew lad, this is a dissent.
Click to access 14-10080.pdf
Ctrl-f And search for “???”
“MURDER 2 in the second-degree is NOT a crime of violence??? Yet attempted first-degree murder,3 battery,4 assault,5 exhibiting a firearm,6 criminal threats 7 (even attempted criminal threats 8), and mailing threatening communications 9 are crimes of violence. How can this be? “I feel like I am taking crazy pills.”10
This unbelievable result (arising because of the Majority’s opinion) stems from the Majority’s misapplication of the categorical approach to conclude that second-degree murder cannot serve as a predicate crime of violence under 18 U.S.C. § 924(c)(3)(A). Never mind that the Majority’s result is contrary to Supreme Court precedent and our precedent 11 and further defies reality and logic. See
United States v. Hill, 890 F.3d 51, 56 (2d Cir. 2018), cert. denied, 139 S. Ct. 844, 202 L. Ed. 2d 612 (2019) (noting that “the categorical approach must be grounded in reality, logic, and precedent, not flights of fancy”).”
For the record, reference 10:
“10 Ben Stiller (Director), Zoolander [Film], United States: Paramount Pictures (2001).”
Forget it, Jake, it’s the Ninth Circuit.
Just idle curiosity…do the Democratic primaries even mean anything? Don’t the Democrats still use “Super Delegates”?
(And complain about the Electoral College…which according to intellectual giant Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is a scam…which I assume she missed the six week block of instruction on the Federalist Papers in High School civics…so we’ll give her a pass on that)
1) Remember back a few years after the turn of the century that a rodeo clown was fired for wearing an Obama face mask?
All these years later and I thought we’d advanced past such savagery…and now we have assassination cosplay encouraged and overseen by elected Democrats. There’s even a viral video of a deeply sick person stabbing a Trump effigy repeatedly.
‘Forget it, Jake: it’s the Democrats’