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| Moose and Squirrel |
Colleges have been perceived as liberal bastions for decades, but the latest round of campus culture warring—beginning around 2014 and continuing through the present day—has had a sudden and dramatic impact on conservatives’ perceptions of the Ivory Tower. According to a new Pew survey, Republicans saw colleges and universities as having a “positive effect on the way things are going in the country” by about a 20 point margin until 2015. In the last two years, however, GOP esteem of America’s higher education institutions started to collapse. Today, Republican [sic] 58 percent of Republican voters say colleges have a negative effect on American society, compared to just 36 percent who say they have a positive effect.Writing for the American Interest, Jason Willick explains the current dynamic well:
Most campus lefties will probably look at these numbers as evidence that Republicans are even more anti-intellectual than they thought, and that the #resistance against them needs to be taken up a few notches. This would be a big mistake. The homogenization of leftwing views on college campuses, and the obvious hostility to conservative ones was bound to produce a backlash from conservative voters. That backlash has been wrapped up in class conflict between a highly-credentialed professional class and a working class that finds higher education and the well-paying jobs it provides to the elite increasingly out of reach.And, more importantly, the conservatives hold the purse strings:
Meanwhile, Republicans control an overwhelming share of America’s statehouses, and so have unprecedented power to defund and restructure public higher education. And Congressional Republicans could restrict the flow of student loans that academia depends on or subject massive university endowments to ordinary tax rates (most are currently exempt). In other words, America’s higher education system, as currently structured, depends on consensus support from both parties. If universities continue to torch their reputation with the right, they may find that some of the privileges and resources and social prestige they have become accustomed to will go up in flames as well.This is why Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker is feuding with the UW system; he'd prefer more money go into undergraduate instruction and less into the scholarly research that fills the obscure journals of academe. He's not wrong in wanting that, and he doesn't particularly care whether the denizens of the UW system excoriate him about his preferences, since they would find another thing to complain about if he weren't digging in their sandbox.
But it’s also important to know that many on the left offend and repudiate people who dislike Trump by reacting to him like rabid rats got loose in their shorts. Seriously, when I read the transcript of Trump’s speech yesterday, I thought it was pretty ordinary stuff. The American president saying Western civilization is good and worth defending? This is controversial? And as I’ve said a couple of times in this space, it’s eye-rolling to hear Donald Trump talk about the importance of strong families and strong values. Still, if you’re going to go to pieces every time a politician says something hypocritical, you’ll never be able to get out of bed in the morning.Hypocrisy is the tribute vice pays to virtue, in other words. A lot more at the link.
Gov. Mark Dayton canceled a meeting with business owners around Lake Mille Lacs Saturday after about 75 protesters in boats encircled him on the lake to protest a temporary ban on walleye fishing.Don't question the governor, people. There's more:
Dayton was with a small group of people fishing for bass to promote the fishing that is still allowed at the lake after restrictions — including a ban on fishing walleye until July 28 — went into place Thursday. Dayton’s boat spent about 90 minutes on the water before heading back to land.
Passengers on roughly 25 boats displayed balloons and signs reading “REGULATION WITHOUT REPRESENTATION = TYRANNY” and “GOV. DAYTON STOP LAKE MILLE LACS POLITICS!”
Dayton said he respects the protesters’ frustration, but he defended the ban as a way of preserving the struggling walleye population. He said he canceled Saturday’s meeting — which was going to include several Lake Mille Lacs-area business owners — because he didn’t want to “reinforce that kind of destructive behavior.” He said he would meet with them later.Perhaps after they go out of business. I'm not a fisherman but I know this much -- fishing for bass is quite different than fishing for walleye. The larger issues surrounding walleye populations on Mille Lacs aren't going away any time soon, either. But taking his ball, or his bass boat, and going home is par for the course for Our Governor.
Democratic lawmakers voted 71-42 to override Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner's veto of a $5 billion tax hike on Thursday.For comparison, the top income tax rate in Minnesota is nearly double that of Illinois. For purposes of illustration:
Illinois has been in a budgetary showdown to address a $6.2 billion deficit, as well as nearly $15 billion in unpaid bills and hundreds of billions of dollars in unfunded retirement benefits for state workers.
Rauner had pushed lawmakers to close the deficit by reforming workers compensation and consolidating local governments, while also capping local property taxes. Democrats, who control the state Senate and House of Representatives, along with 16 Republican state representatives, rejected those measures and instead approved hiking income taxes from 3.75 percent to 4.95 percent and corporate taxes from 5.25 percent to 7 percent on Sunday night. Rauner vetoed the bill on Tuesday.
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| Lock the front door, oh boy |
As part of its weekly essay series on the legacy of the Russian Revolution, the New York Times has earnestly broken the news to its readers that the American Communist Party wasn’t a principled and well-meaning organization but an anti-American espionage operation:So did you know what the Times is reporting? See if you did:
The C.P.U.S.A. dutifully spread the lies put out by Moscow. The party thus insisted that the show trials during Stalin’s purges had uncovered a vast capitalist plot against the Soviet leader. Party members dutifully repeated Soviet fabrications that Trotsky had been in the pay of the Nazis. Worst of all, many Communists applauded the execution of tens of thousands of Soviet comrades, denouncing those who were executed as bourgeois spies and provocateurs.Dang. Who knew? Well, anyone who was paying attention, or wasn't publishing Walter Duranty's lies. Mead wonders what the Times might tell us about in 25-50 years:
The Muslim Brotherhood hated Western ideas of freedom.That's just half the list. The rest is at the link.
Iran was a committed enemy of the United States.
Cuban communists were anti-democratic thugs.
Abortion was an unspeakable tragedy that led to millions of unnecessary deaths.
Press bias and lack of self-awareness plus elite policy failures made the Trump presidency possible.
The Reddit user who initially claimed credit for President Donald Trump's tweet that showed Trump tackling CNN issued an apology Tuesday for the video and other offensive content he posted -- one day after CNN identified the man behind the account and attempted to make contact with him.The First Amendment doesn't belong to dudes on Reddit. It belongs only to CNN and its pals in the mainstream media. The apology from the Reddit guy is Nikolai Bukharin-quality stuff:
Reddit user "HanA**holeSolo" first shared the GIF last Wednesday of Trump pummeling a wrestler with CNN's logo imposed on his face. CNN could find no earlier instance of the GIF. The GIF was later edited into a video with sound and tweeted by the President on Sunday.
"First of all, I would like to apologize to the members of the reddit community for getting this site and this sub embroiled in a controversy that should never have happened," he wrote. "I would also like to apologize for the posts made that were racist, bigoted, and anti-semitic. I am in no way this kind of person, I love and accept people of all walks of life and have done so for my entire life. I am not the person that the media portrays me to be in real life, I was trolling and posting things to get a reaction from the subs on reddit and never meant any of the hateful things I said in those posts. I would never support any kind of violence or actions against others simply for what they believe in, their religion, or the lifestyle they choose to have. Nor would I carry out any violence against anyone based upon that or support anyone who did."CNN then added the following:
The user further apologized for calls for violence against the press in his statement on Reddit.This last part is crap, of course. Most journalism jobs consist of rewriting other people's press releases and reporting on meetings of the Danville Sewer Board. The dashing foreign correspondents are mostly sitting in windowless rooms, banging out the company line on laptops. The most dangerous place the average CNN on-air personality goes is the tailor, and that's only because tailors have sharp objects.
"The meme was created purely as satire, it was not meant to be a call to violence against CNN or any other news affiliation," he wrote. "I had no idea anyone would take it and put sound to it and then have it put up on the President's Twitter feed. It was a prank, nothing more. What the President's feed showed was not the original post that was posted here, but loaded up somewhere else and sound added to it then sent out on Twitter. I thought it was the original post that was made and that is why I took credit for it. I have the highest respect for the journalist community and they put their lives on the line every day with the jobs that they do in reporting the news."
CNN is not publishing "HanA**holeSolo's" name because he is a private citizen who has issued an extensive statement of apology, showed his remorse by saying he has taken down all his offending posts, and because he said he is not going to repeat this ugly behavior on social media again. In addition, he said his statement could serve as an example to others not to do the same.And just so this Reddit guy keeps his yap shut, they add the following:
CNN reserves the right to publish his identity should any of that change.They won't destroy the Reddit guy so long as he doesn't squirm too much under the boot on his throat.
Placing every man on a plane where he acknowledged no superiors, where no one possessed any right to rule over him, he must inevitably choose his own rulers through a system of self-government. This was their theory of democracy. In those days such doctrines would scarcely have been permitted to flourish and spread in any other country. This was the purpose which the fathers cherished. In order that they might have freedom to express these thoughts and opportunity to put them into action, whole congregations with their pastors had migrated to the Colonies. These great truths were in the air that our people breathed. Whatever else we may say of it, the Declaration of Independence was profoundly American.We are not nearly as religious people in 2016 as we were in 1926. One ought not conclude that those who are not religious do not have a faith, however. They do. Such faith may not rest upon the principles Coolidge discusses, however. We'd best be checking the roots.
If this apprehension of the facts be correct, and the documentary evidence would appear to verify it, then certain conclusions are bound to follow. A spring will cease to flow if its source be dried up; a tree will wither if its roots be destroyed. In its main features the Declaration of Independence is a great spiritual document. It is a declaration not of material but of spiritual conceptions. Equality, liberty, popular sovereignty, the rights of man — these are not elements which we can see and touch. They are ideals. They have their source and their roots in the religious convictions. They belong to the unseen world. Unless the faith of the American people in these religious convictions is to endure, the principles of our Declaration will perish. We can not continue to enjoy the result if we neglect and abandon the cause.
Liberals don’t annoy me when they whine about Trump’s tweeting because I know it's all a lie and a scam, just like everything else liberals say. They don't care that Trump is mean to girls. These cretins brought us Bill Clinton. They don't care that Trump is vulgar. You should see what liberals, including proggy blue checks, say to me on Twitter. Let me put it this way: after the nonstop parade of death wishes, perversion accusations, and general mouth-foaming hostility the liberals traffic in every day, I'm distinctly unimpressed by Trump calling out Mika’s chin lift.Just so. And there's more:
So I refuse to care. And I don't care. Not even a little. At most, I'm entirely indifferent to these playground spats, though I do enjoy seeing these leftist schmucks getting a taste of their own medicine. And do I love seeing the frustration of the hapless establishment when Trump just ignores its tantrums and keeps firing off tweets long after they've been decreed unacceptable. Trump galls them because he refuses to submit to the moral authority of the immoral. It's beautiful.
Yeah, I get it. Trump's aesthetically displeasing to your delicate sensibilities. Do you think this is news to us? Do you presume you're the only ones who have detected that Donald Trump is not a proper gentleman? Get over it, and yourselves.More, a lot more, at the link.
And cut out the freaking clichés. What am I going to tell my children about Donald Trump? Whatever it is, it’ll be hell of a lot easier than explaining Bill Clinton's humidor habits.
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| Culture of death |
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| Wearing a face that she keeps in a jar by the door |
"His whole life has been one continued insult to good manners and to decency."Or his summation on Alexander Hamilton, which might have required 2 tweets to complete:
"That bastard brat of a Scottish peddler! His ambition, his restlessness and all his grandiose schemes come, I'm convinced, from a superabundance of secretions, which he couldn't find enough whores to absorb!"The difference, as far as I can tell, between Trump and his predecessors, is that he likes to do the dirty work himself. As a general rule, it's considered bad form to punch down, and yes, it would be better to ignore the likes of Mika Brzezinski, but Trump isn't going to do it.
A major schism in the party is over the question of how much pretense we're fighting to keep lying about. A lot of people seem to think that even though we're plainly in a Cold Civil War, and even thought Joe and Mika spend three hours a day ripping Trump, Trump's supposed to pretend we're all (as John McCain says) Good Friends.It's the question of the moment, really. Is there any compelling reason to assume that anyone in the MSM is playing it down the middle? John McCain and Mitt Romney always went all Marquess of Queensberry in their presidential ambitions. We know how that turned out.
I'm not saying Trump scored some tactical victory here. I'm saying, as I usually do- - who gives a wet shit?
How can the flailing old women of the Nominal Right huff themselves up so much to pretend outrage that a guy being attacked by the media everyday decides to occasionally attack them back?
I understand the leftist media's interest in pretending that they're behaving normally and haven't rewritten the professional code of conduct to allow attacks on Trump which would have been near-hanging-offenses on Obama.
But what is the interest of the sissified Nominal Right over defending the media and pretending along with them?
Wednesday's commute into downtown Minneapolis was even worse than many had feared.I'm not sure who thought it would be a good idea to simultaneously shut down parts of the Lowry Hill tunnel on I-94, and Hennepin Avenue, and the light rail line, but it shows a stunning lack of coordination and communication. And people were, well, pissed. Here's a commuter I know pretty well:
Express buses took hours to arrive and downtown streets were parking lots well into the day.
Emily Zieska, an accountant with the Dougherty & Company LLC, said she was late to work Wednesday after her commute up Interstate 94 was stalled for an hour and a half.
Dear Powers that Be in Downtown Minneapolis,That's from our sometime contributor Stinger, who had a dandy time in his trip from Nordeast into downtown this morning. I would also suggest a presidential motorcade, just to really get people going. Or not going.
Next time you plan simultaneous construction projects that close major thoroughfares and close light rail, all while traffic on I-94 is routed through one side of the Lowry Hill Tunnel, you should do it when the Twins are in town. I don't think we've even come close to reaching the true gridlock potential we have, but with a Twins game thrown in the mix, I really think we could get there. That's how we become a real world-class city!
The list of construction projects weaving through the Twin Cities is about to get even longer.Emphasis mine. I'm going to guess that a lot of traffic in that stretch is going to move to Hiawatha and/or 35E, and even Highway 100, so the nightmare will extend into other parts of the city and St. Paul. And it will be going on for four years. Yay.
Starting in August, Interstate 35W will be under construction between I-94 in downtown Minneapolis and 46th Street. The tough part for drivers and neighbors is the estimated $240 million project should take more than four years to complete.
And during construction, nine lanes of highway will be reduced to just five.
Bumper to bumper and side to side, rush hour traffic on I-35W can be a pain. And that’s with nine lanes and every ramp and bridge over the highway open.
When asked what it will be like to know a more than four year construction project is on the way, one commuter said exiting off the highway near Uptown said, “It’s a good thing I bike to work in the summer for the most part.”
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| Pathway |
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| Scene of a crime |
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| The perpetrator |
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| A short trip |
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| God Save the Queens |
Three CNN journalists, including the executive editor in charge of a new investigative unit, have resigned after the publication of a Russia-related article that was retracted.
Thomas Frank, who wrote the story in question; Eric Lichtblau, an editor in the unit; and Lex Haris, who oversaw the unit, have all left CNN.
"In the aftermath of the retraction of a story published on CNN.com, CNN has accepted the resignations of the employees involved in the story's publication," a spokesman said Monday evening.
An internal investigation by CNN management found that some standard editorial processes were not followed when the article was published, people briefed on the results of the investigation said.
The story, which reported that Congress was investigating a "Russian investment fund with ties to Trump officials," cited a single anonymous source.I mentioned last week that I saw a fair amount of CNN coverage while I was traveling. That particular network has gone all in on Russia scandal-mongering and once you go single-source, you're essentially reporting whatever crap someone told you. It's not journalism, for sure. At best, it's gossip. And, as has happened before, I find that the Outer Borough Marmalade Man has weighed in yet again on that very topic, even as I am writing this post:
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| Shootin' fish in a barrel |
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| The main drag |
You may not be interested in Social War, but the Social Warriors are deeply, deeply interested in you, and bringing you to heel, and making you confess that you are indeed a creature with fewer rights and privileges than they possess.
No one's ever going to put them in a position of authority over others -- which is why they desperately need you to accept they have authority over you.
I didn't particularly want Kathy Griffin fired -- but it was necessary.
I actually envy her lack of inhibition and total feeling of freedom. She felt she could do whatever she wanted, so long as it broke no laws.
I'd like to feel that way. But I can't.
I can't feel that way, because I know the progressive mob is always scalp-hunting, and that I am not free to say or think as I might like.
They rule part of my brain -- my very fear of them limits my thoughts, creates inhibitions and limitations in me which I did not choose for myself, but were forced upon me from without.
I have become, partly, a recruit in the Social Justice Warrior army. Their dicta, their demands, their fury is always alive inside of me.
I know to fear them. And so I must self-censor.
My fear of their power makes part of my own brain their appointed warden for the rest of my head.
So a big part of my anger is in seeing Kathy Griffin act as a totally free spirit and free agent, able to do what she likes just because she thinks it's funny, or "edgy," or whatever.
It makes me angry to see her living a life where she can just do something without fearing the consequences -- but I can't.
And neither can you.
My hatred of Kathy Griffin isn't a hatred of her -- it's a hatred of the vicious caste-based system which says she has more rights than Sean Hannity, and more rights than you, and more rights than me.
If keeping some of my diminished amount of freedom means that I have to thuggishly begin taking it from others -- so be it.
I didn't make the rules.
I'm just trying to survive them.
I don't want her to have less freedom -- but the only way to make sure I keep the limited, constantly-eroded freedom I currently have is to insist that I am not a serf, and I will not be held to different laws than the Lords.
As I cannot accept that -- and as I will not accept that -- I must insist she pay the same cost I would be expected to pay if I were to do what she did.
Otherwise, I'm saying Sir/Ma'am to the Ruling Caste, and confirming that I accept my lower position.
Hillary Clinton called half of the country "The Deplorables."It's essentially the same argument Gino is making. War is here.
It's really not so different from the lowest caste in India -- the "Untouchables," is it?
They're not even attempting to turn us into serfs covertly any longer -- it's now just pretty much out in the open.
No more.
No more.
A jury found St. Anthony police officer Jeronimo Yanez not guilty Friday in the fatal shooting of Philando Castile, whose livestreamed death during a traffic stop stunned a nation.And the predictable aftermath:
Castile’s family called the decision proof of a dysfunctional criminal justice system, while prosecutors cautioned the public to respect the jury’s verdict “because that is the fundamental premise of the rule of law.”
“I am so disappointed in the state of Minnesota,” Castile’s mother, Valerie Castile, said at a news conference shortly after the verdict was read in court about 2:45 p.m. “My son loved this state. He had one tattoo on his body and it was of the Twin Cities — the state of Minnesota with TC on it. My son loved this city and this city killed my son. And the murderer gets away.”
Hours later, at the tail end of a protest march through the streets of St. Paul, hundreds of people headed out on Interstate 94 at Dale, shutting down the freeway. Over the course of about an hour, the crowd thinned out and was moved to a ramp near Marion before State Patrol officers moved in after 12:30 a.m. Saturday and began making 18 arrests. Among those arrested were reporters Susan Du of City Pages and David Clarey of the Minnesota Daily, who were covering the protest.Where to begin? Well, a few preliminary thoughts:
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| Because they hate you, that's why |
Jurors concluded about 24 hours of deliberations in the manslaughter trial of officer Jeronimo Yanez without reaching a verdict, pushing talks into their fifth day Friday.The longer the jury is out, the higher the tension rises. The key issue remains unresolved -- it's not whether Yanez shot Castile, which is beyond dispute. What matters more is why Yanez stopped Castile in the first place:
There was little activity Thursday before the jurors were recessed for the day about 4:30 p.m.
In a change from previous days, the jury had lunch catered in instead of leaving the Ramsey County Courthouse. The jury of five women and seven men, including two people of color, first appeared to be stalled Wednesday on whether Yanez is criminally culpable for last year’s fatal shooting of Philando Castile.
About 1:40 p.m. Thursday, Castile’s mother, Valerie Castile, and her attorney Glenda Hatchett arrived at the eighth floor of the courthouse to await any developments, leaving about an hour before jurors when it became apparent that nothing would come that day.
Prosecutors argued that Yanez, who is Mexican-American, racially profiled Castile, a black man, when he stopped him for a nonworking brake light. Yanez testified that he also wanted to investigate whether Castile was a suspect in the armed robbery of a nearby convenience store four days earlier. Castile was never connected to the robbery.We keep hearing that Castile was not connected to the robbery, but at that point Yanez could not have known that. We've touched on it before, but to this day the robbery remains unresolved.
Defense attorneys argued that Castile was culpably negligent in the shooting because he volunteered that he possessed a gun without disclosing that he had a permit to carry it, that he reached for it instead of keeping his hands visible, and that he was high on marijuana, rendering him incapable of following Yanez’s order not to reach for the gun. Yanez testified last week that he fired because he feared for his life.
The special counsel overseeing the investigation into Russia’s role in the 2016 election is interviewing senior intelligence officials as part of a widening probe that now includes an examination of whether President Donald Trump attempted to obstruct justice, officials said.Officials said. What they didn't say directly is they are coming for Trump, though the message is unmistakable.
The move by Special Counsel Robert Mueller to investigate Trump’s own conduct marks a major turning point in the nearly year-old FBI investigation, which until recently focused on Russian meddling during the presidential campaign and on whether there was any coordination between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin. Investigators have also been looking for any evidence of possible financial crimes among Trump associates, officials said.
Mueller has selected Deputy solicitor general Michael Dreeben as one of his advisers. Dreeben is a premier criminal law expert. However, he’s considered a left-winger by people whose judgment I trust. And Preet Bharara — former US attorney of the Southern District of New York and current Trump adversary — says he’s over-the-moon about Dreeben’s selection.Meanwhile, Mirengoff's colleague John Hinderaker is making a related argument:
Dreeben does not owe his selection to investigative prowess. He’s on the team to evaluate whether the fruits of the investigation give rise to a crime.
That’s fine if Dreeben has no agenda. But if he’s anti-Trump, there’s reason to fear he will bend over backwards to spin out a theory through which Trump can be prosecuted.
Mueller has also tapped Jeannie Rhee, formerly a federal prosecutor and high-level Justice Department official. Rhee provided legal services for the Clinton Foundation, a fact the Washington Post omits from its account. In addition, she donated $5,400 to Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign PAC “Hillary for America.”
As bitter as the Clintonistas are about losing the election (or rather having it “stolen” by the Russians), it seems unconscionable that Rhee would be on a team that will decide whether to prosecute President Trump at the end of a “Russian interference” investigation.
The idea that Jeff Sessions had something to do with a spearfishing expedition into the DNC’s email server (the Russians, if they were Russians, tried the same thing with the RNC, but the Republicans weren’t dumb enough to fall for it) is ridiculous. No one believes it, not even the most rabid Democrat. To say that there is no evidence to suggest any such thing is an understatement.Meanwhile, Le Grand Orange is tweeting again this morning:
No doubt CNN, the New York Times and the Washington Times will pretend to find something “troubling” in Sessions’s testimony tomorrow, no matter what he says. But it is becoming increasingly obvious to any sane person that with regard to the “Russian investigation,” there is nothing to investigate.
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| Sad! |
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| Green is never a good color |
Unlike its failed predecessor, this new, greener socialism seeks not to weaken, but rather to preserve, the emerging class structure. Brown and his acolytes have slowed upward mobility by environment restrictions that have cramped home production of all kinds, particularly the building of moderate-cost single-family homes on the periphery. All of this, at a time when millennials nationwide, contrary to the assertion of Brown’s “smart growth” allies, are beginning to buy cars, homes and move to the suburbs.
In contrast, many in Sacramento appear to have disdain for expanding the “California dream” of property ownership. The state’s planners are creating policies that will ultimately lead to the effective socialization of the regulated housing market, as more people are unable to afford housing without subsidies. Increasingly, these efforts are being imposed with little or no public input by increasingly opaque regional agencies.
To these burdens, there are now growing calls for a single-payer health care system — which, in principle, is not a terrible idea, but it will include the undocumented, essentially inviting the poor to bring their sick relatives here. The state Senate passed the bill without identifying a funding source to pay the estimated $400 billion annual cost, leading even former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa to describe it as “snake oil.” It may be more like hemlock for California’s middle-income earners, who, even with the cost of private health care removed, would have to fork over an estimated $50 billion to $100 billion a year in new taxes to pay for it.
Delta Airlines and Bank of America pulled out of their sponsorship of New York’s Public Theater on Sunday over a production of “Julius Caesar” that reimagines the main character as President Trump.
Shortly after Delta, who was a four-year sponsor, made its announcement, Bank of America yanked its support as well.
The Shakespeare in the Park play tells the story of the leader assassinated by Roman senators over the fear that he’s becoming too tyrannical, but rather than the original setting, the production stages Caesar (Gregg Henry) and his wife, Calpurnia, (Tina Benko) with Donald and Melania Trump lookalikes.
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| Epistemology, again |
Yanez, 29, a St. Anthony police officer, is charged with second-degree manslaughter for shooting Castile, 32, shortly after 9 p.m. last July 6, and two counts of dangerous discharge of a firearm for endangering Castile's passengers, girlfriend Diamond Reynolds and her daughter, then 4.Noble is Jeffrey Noble, a prosecution expert who is apparently a retired deputy police chief from Irvine, California. He's likely mistaken about that last part -- the Larpenteur Avenue area is actually well known in the black community as a place where you are likely to be pulled over for Driving While Black. But that's part of the subtext of this trial.
Noble testified that Yanez had few details, including height or weight, when he linked Castile to an armed robbery suspect whom police had documented with a description and photo.
A transcript of Yanez's car-to-car call that night was previously published in court, showing that Yanez called partner Joseph Kauser and said that Castile looked like the suspect because of his "wide-set nose."
No other "reasonable" officer would have considered Castile the suspect, Noble said. (Authorities have said he wasn't.)
"I mean, hundreds of black men had to have driven by," Noble said. "That's absurd."
A 25-year-old federal contract worker in Georgia is facing federal charges for leaking classified materials to the media, the Department of Justice says.It's apparently not that difficult to get a top-secret security clearance. An image of Reality:
Reality Leigh Winner, of Augusta, was arrested by the FBI on June 3 and appeared in federal court on June 5. She remains in federal custody pending a hearing scheduled for June 8.
She was charged with gathering, transmitting or losing defense information that could have been damaging to the U.S. She is accused of taking a top secret National Security Agency document, copying it and mailing it to a news organization believed to be The Intercept, NBC News reported, though the organization was not named in the federal court documents.
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| Likes her selfies |
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| Weasel and the white girl's cool |
The government was not aware Winner leaked the document until a news outlet contacted government officials for comment on an upcoming report based on a document they believed to be classified. After receiving and reviewing a copy of the document, the government began an investigation.Essentially, the Intercept gave their source up for nothing. Given Glenn Greenwald's experiences, especially with regard to Edward Snowden, you have to have to wonder what's up with that. My guess? If you spend all your time looking at the SJW Bernie Girl, you don't pay attention to the other actors. If you think the game is on, you're likely right, but we're still pretty deep into the funhouse. Reality, baby!
"The U.S. Government Agency examined the document shared by the News Outlet and determined the pages of the intelligence reporting appeared to be folded and/or creased, suggesting they had been printed and hand-carried out of a secured space," the affidavit read.
Sick jihadis Khuram Shazad Butt, 27 – also known as “Abz” – and Rachid Redouane, 30, along with a third accomplice were shot dead in Borough Market after mowing down pedestrians on London Bridge and launching a relentless stabbing attack.
Formal identification has not yet taken place, but cops believe they know the identities of the two men named today – both of whom are from Barking in East London.
Inquiries are still ongoing to confirm the identity of the third attacker.
Ex-KFC and London Tube worker Butt was quizzed by cops over his twisted views before he was gunned down along following the depraved assault on Saturday night.And, of course, there's this part of it:
The killer and his two accomplices murdered seven people after mowing down revellers in central London before going on a rampage wearing fake bomb vests and wielding hunting knives.
The Sun had earlier revealed that the Arsenal kit-wearing ringleader of the London Bridge terror attack posed with a jihadi flag on Channel 4 documentary The Jihadis Next Door, was thrown out of a mosque and tried to radicalise kids in his local park in the years before the devastating atrocity.
Police today confirmed Butt was known to security services, including MI5.And, there's this:
The extremist was thrown out of an East London mosque two years ago for ranting that voting in an election was “un-Islamic”.You get what you subsidize. And mostly what you get is hopelessness. If your life doesn't consist of much other than temporary jobs and the dole, it's especially easy to search for a worldview that explains the world in terms you'd prefer, and that gives you a course of action to follow. Jihad has all of that. You get to be a martyr and you get to kill strangers. It's a real kick until the police show up.
One local said: “On Saturday he was asking one of our other neighbours where he could rent a van and how much it would cost.”
The wife of the killer, who was of Pakistani origin, had just given birth to their second child, neighbours in Barking revealed.
The couple are believed to have been living with his mum — enjoying a comfortable lifestyle boosted by state handouts.
The deepening levels of corruption in our legal system and our politics may be seen in what appears to be the disregard that the media, the legal system, the Trump administration itself, and the Special Counsel’s charge are showing for the one and only violation of law that has occurred: namely, the revelations of communications intelligence operations as well as of results therefrom, by unnamed but authoritative intelligence officials, to such as the Times’ Michael Schmidt and the Post’s Adam Entous.A lot more at the link. A depressing but necessary read.
Since the number of those who possessed the information in question is small, ascertaining the identity of those who divulged it poses no problem to serious investigators. Since Messers Schmidt and Entous could not help but know that communications intelligence is protected by a strict liability statute, they could also be held responsible for their participation in the crime.
Instead, we have a ruling class, led by the Democratic Party, that is trying to reverse the effects of an election that repudiated it by alleging a conspiracy―evidence for which is limited to the allegation itself. We have a Republican Party and President so frightened of their political enemies that they play along, in the forlorn hope of being granted legitimacy. Hence, both sides play at politics and law. But contending on the basis of insubstantial allegations while tolerating flagrant crime kills respect for law. It augurs a future in which the only punishable crime will be to stand with the less bloody-minded side.
"In the past," [NYT lefty blogger Thomas] Edsall writes, "Democrats could support progressive, redistributive policies knowing that the costs would fall largely on Republicans. That is no longer the case. Now supporting these policies requires the party to depend on the altruistic idealism of millions of supporters who, despite being relatively well off, often feel financially pressed themselves."Most of the Republicans of my acquaintance aren't super wealthy -- that's Democratic Party territory and has been for a long time now. For every Donald Trump, there's a Bill Gates or a Warren Buffett. Other Republicans are the ones making money now, often in small businesses, and the Democrats have always been keen to hit those folks first -- it's why we tax income, not accumulated wealth. But now, as Michael Barone notes at the link, the money isn't always there:
Those of us who think that unduly redistributive taxation can be an impediment to growth will regard this as a feature, however. That's a conclusion to which Connecticut's Democratic Governor Daniel Malloy has uncomfortably arrived, after noticing that his previous tax increases have caused the geese who have been laying the golden eggs have been taking wing and flying off to no-state-income-tax Florida. "The reality is in Connecticut," Malloy said last month, "we get most of our money from very few people and that can produce some very wild swings."It's a formula that doesn't work well. It can't work, actually. Out on the West Coast, Joel Kotkin has noticed, too:
The two most remarkable campaigns of 2016 — those of Trump and Bernie Sanders — were driven by different faces of populist resentment. Yet, increasingly, the Democrats’ populist pretensions conflict with their alliance with ascendant “sovereigns of cyberspace,” whose power and wealth have waxed to almost absurd heights. Other parts of their upscale coalition include the media, academia and the upper bureaucracy.The people who control the pixels and buy the ink by the barrel. There's more:
This affluent base can embrace the progressives’ social agenda — meeting the demands of feminists, gays and minority activists. But they are less enthusiastic about the social democratic income redistribution proposed by Bernie Sanders, who is now, by some measurements, the nation’s most popular political figure. This new putative ruling class, notes author Michael Lind, sees its rise, and the decline of the rest, not as a reflection of social inequity, but rather their meritocratic virtue. Only racism, homophobia or misogyny — in other words, the sins of the “deplorables” — matter.Unfortunately, to keep the coalition together, Jerry Brown has to manage the care and feeding of a lot of people that Bezos would rather not see. And the Bernie Sanders wing of the party doesn't care about their blandishments. They want what they want -- "free" healthcare, "free" college tuition, like that. And someone has to pick up the tab. The grandees of Silicon Valley would rather not. This can't go on, and it won't.
The Washington Post, owned by Jeff Bezos, the world’s third-richest man, reflects this socially liberal, but oligopolistic, worldview. Last spring, Bezos worked assiduously to undermine Sanders’ campaign, then promoted Clinton, and now has become a leading voice in the anti-Trump “resistance.” The gentry wing of the party, which dominates fundraising and media, as the opposition to Sanders reveals, likes its money. The tech community is famously adept at avoiding taxes.
Like many Trump-era debates, the President’s actions on Paris are best understood through the lens of what we (following Tyler Cowen) have called “placebo politics”—elevating or reducing the status of this or that group through symbolic actions that won’t have much if any material impact on policy. President Trump’s repudiation of the agreement falls into this category: It delights his nationalistic base and sends his internationalist-minded critics into paroxysms of rage and despair—all without actually doing anything, because the Paris agreement consists simply of voluntary, unenforceable emissions pledges that are already being flouted.All religious movements bewail apostates. And on an operational level, faith in the efficacy of climate agreements, and treaties generally, requires belief in the perfectibility of human nature, and on the self-proclaimed genius of those who negotiate such things. Back to Willick:
The drama of the Paris climate accords, then, amounts to a portrait in miniature of our political moment. A smug establishment indulged in vacuous, photo-op politics that doesn’t get us any closer to solving our major problems but pleases donors and nonprofits and makes the great and good feel even better about themselves. An angry coalition of people who felt that their status was declining reacted against this half-hearted phoniness by indulging in a placebo politics of their own—raising their own status by nihilistically tearing down the other side. Trump’s decision today doesn’t make the U.S. better off, but it probably doesn’t make us much worse off, either.That mostly seems right to me, but I do have one quibble -- are we really talking about nihilism in this context? I don't really know too many nihilists -- do you? And as Mark Steyn has said, when we are talking about climate treaty supporters, we are talking about people who believe, in the main, that we cannot control political borders, but we can control the heavens. Clearly there's faith involved.
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| Oops, that might not be from his press conference |
The DFL governor on Tuesday vetoed the Legislature’s operating budget in an effort to force Republican legislative leaders to reopen disputes over taxes, education policy and immigration. That followed a decision by Republicans just days earlier to approve a bill that would have terminated funds for Dayton’s Department of Revenue had the governor not signed off on their tax cuts.Dayton can believe what he wants, but I expect the state Supreme Court to strike down what Dayton did. If one branch of government can zero out the operating budget of another, then we no longer have a constitutional form of government in Minnesota, and the courts will recognize that.
It was a surprise strike and counterstrike that soured the end of an otherwise productive legislative session. For Dayton and Republican leaders, it set up a political and legal dispute that could linger for months.
“The Minnesota Constitution gives me the authority to line-item veto appropriations,” Dayton said Wednesday. “It doesn’t qualify that I can line-item veto these but not others. It’s blanket authority.”
