Justplainbill's Weblog

January 12, 2015

The Progressive Racial Narrative and Its Beneficiaries, by Bruce Thornton [nc]

Filed under: Bail-out, Business, Econonics, Education, Elections, Historical context, Law Enforcement, Political Commentary, Politicians, Racism, US Constitution — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — justplainbill @ 5:04 pm

The Progressive Racial Narrative and Its Beneficiaries
January 11, 2015 7:41 am / Leave a Comment / victorhanson
Debunking the lies about race in America.

by Bruce S. Thornton // FrontPage Magazine

al_sharpton_speaking_reuters-450x337A recent NBC/Wall Street Journal poll reveals that nearly 6 in 10 people believe race relations are bad, with 23% saying they are “very bad.” The causes of these perceptions are many, including nationally publicized police killings of two black men, disorderly and violent demonstrators ignoring the facts of the cases to brand the police “racist,” a lazy media neglecting to dig up and then publicize those facts, and a president, Attorney General, and mayor of New York willing to exploit and widen racial division and consort with hustlers like Al Sharpton.

What we see at work in these events is the long established racial narrative in which endemic white racism accounts for all the ills that afflict black people. Not just individual whites harbor this original sin, but our educational, political, social, justice, and economic institutions are racist as well, favoring white people and hence conferring on them “white skin privilege.” The wide scope of racism means that no matter how well meaning towards blacks, or how socially and economically disadvantaged, individual whites cannot purge themselves of racism. Only radical transformation of all our institutions can redeem America from racism.

This fairytale regularly ignores numerous facts. The decline in black poverty, for example, calls into question the notion that there is “institutional racism” warping the economy. Thanks to postwar economic growth, the black poverty rate decreased from 87% in 1940 to 28% today. Similar improvement can be seen in the growth of the black middle class and increases in black home ownership. And the claim that blacks are shut out of the job market is hard to square with the fact that millions of illegal aliens are working in this country, and immigrant entrepreneurs are creating small businesses.

Similarly, the idea that the police are an “occupying army” targeting blacks, a cliché we heard repeatedly during the recent demonstrations over the police shootings in Ferguson and Brooklyn, is exploded by simple statistics that show about 200 blacks a year––most shot while possessing a gun or knife––are killed by police officers, while almost 6,000 a year are killed by other blacks. It’s a strange “army” that endangers itself in order to protect and save the lives of those it’s allegedly “occupying.”

Then there’s the “voter suppression” charge, the assertion that attempts by states to ensure only legal voters cast ballots really are designed to discourage black voters. The increasing numbers of black people registering and turning out to vote belie this claim, as does the much greater number of blacks holding elected office. Indeed, in 2012 the proportion of black voters turning out in the national election was greater than that of white.

The fact is, by global standards the largest number of politically free and well off blacks is in the United States. As for those blacks still mired in dysfunctional communities filled with crime, violence, unemployment, drugs, and fatherless children, those evils do not reflect white racism or a “legacy of slavery.” Rather, they can be traced to what Michael Gerson called the “soft bigotry of low expectations,” the culture of dependence and the erosion of self-reliance and self-responsibility created by government handouts and the liberal narrative of endemic white racism that demeans blacks as helpless victims incapable of improving their lives or being accountable for their actions, since through no fault of their own they are imprisoned by “institutional racism.” And don’t forget progressive government policies that inhibit economic growth, historically the great engine for improving black lives, and the culture-wide degradation of sexual mores and the collapse of traditional marriage.

So cui bono, as the lawyers say, who benefits from this narrative? The federal and state entitlement industry, of course, whose agencies and bureaucrats profit from having a permanent underclass of clients. So too the Democratic Party, which buys black votes with promises to keep the transfers and set-asides flowing. So too the racial grievance industry, that gang of activists, academics, ethnic studies professors, “diversity” consultants, and shakedown artists like Al Sharpton who use black misery as leverage for more power and pelf. So too the leftover leftists, who find in racial discord a weapon for attacking the country that kicked their cherished collectivist ideology into the dustbin of history.

Most black Americans aren’t invested in this narrative. They’re too busy working and raising their families. But let’s not forget the role this narrative plays in camouflaging the privilege of those millions of blacks who live better and have more social clout than millions of white people. By ignoring their economic advantages and brandishing their scars from alleged racist wounds, many in the black upper-middle and upper class, particularly those in education, sports, entertainment, and government, can gain vicarious victim-privilege and hence social leverage. Thus through a spurious claim to racial brotherhood, they plunder and spend the capital of black suffering many of them have never experienced. They then can enjoy a social cachet and a whiff of exotic authenticity that sets them apart from their bland white counterparts, and that gives them an air of gnostic racial wisdom embodied in the cant phrase, “It’s a black thing, you wouldn’t understand.”

The phoniness of this ploy can be seen in the various claims well off blacks make about their personal experiences of racism. In the 90s it was the epidemic of racist cabdrivers refusing to pick up black passengers. That one faded when research showed that many of the cabdrivers were themselves black, and were prudently avoiding the murder and mayhem they often experienced at the hands of black passengers. Then there was the “driving while black” trope, which focused on the disproportionate number of blacks pulled over for traffic violations like speeding. Department of Justice investigations ended up with sanctions imposed on states for “racial profiling.” But the study done of drivers on the New Jersey Turnpike, a much-publicized case of “profiling,” revealed that while blacks were 25% of all speeders, they were 23% of those pulled over. That is, they were underrepresented, not overrepresented, among those stopped.

More recently we have heard affluent, privileged blacks like Eric Holder, and the white father of a half-black son, New York mayor Bill De Blasio, indulge another hackneyed trope, the “talk.” This is the conversation black fathers must have with their sons in order to “train them to be very careful when they have . . . an encounter with a police officer,” as De Blasio said, lest they give a policeman a pretext for the violence incited by their racism. The irony of this claim is that if reflects just how privileged these children are, for people who grow up in the dangerous neighborhoods the police must frequent drink that wisdom in with their mother’s milk. Worse yet, it assumes that a white kid who resists arrest, fights a cop, curses him, or otherwise challenges his authority will be treated with kid gloves. I’ll have to see some hard data before I believe that. The reality is, the biggest danger to a young black man today is not a policeman, but another young black man.

No doubt some blacks have experienced rude cops or cabdrivers, or have been subjected to the other evidence of racism like those Obama claims to have experienced, such as women clutching their purses more closely in an elevator, or locking their car doors at the approach of a black man. But even if true, these slights don’t amount to “systemic racism.” They more likely reflect prejudices, many acquired through unpleasant experiences. If you want to see what real racism looks like, visit this site and peruse its collection of lynching postcards. You’ll see just how much progress has been made over the last half-century.

But facts or even common sense don’t matter when it comes to a narrative with so many beneficiaries, the biggest one being Barack Obama, who never would have become president without it. The saddest part of all this, however, is that the black people truly suffering today aren’t on that list. In the racial narrative, black lives don’t matter.

Article printed from FrontPage Magazine: http://www.frontpagemag.com

URL to article: http://www.frontpagemag.com/2015/bruce-thornton/the-progressive-racial-narrative-and-its-beneficiaries/

Copyright © 2015 FrontPage Magazine. All rights reserved.

January 9, 2015

While Paris Burns, Obama’s apptee gets set to import 70,000 Muslims into USA [nc]

Filed under: Econonics, Elections, Global Intel, Historical context, Illegal Aliens, Islam, Political Commentary, Politicians, Racism, US Constitution — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — justplainbill @ 10:16 pm

Joseph R. John
To
‘USBPSSA Robert M. Trent, (Ret) (WO2/ANG/USMC)’
Today at 3:55 PM

Bob, Thank you. We believe the below listed Assistant Director USCIS will most likely rubber stamp the entry of 70,000 Muslim refugees from Syria without properly completing the necessary background investigation on each refugee to determines if their acceptance would endanger the National Security interest of the United States. Her department doesn’t have the thousands of well-trained intelligence analyst required to do the in depth background investigation on each refugee.

Obama has quietly agreed to resettle 70,000 Muslim refugees throughout the US as part of the UN Resettlement Program, and is putting the refugees on a fast track for US citizenship; the Obama administration has accepted more Muslims than all the other nations in the world combined. These new Muslim immigrants are posing a major security risk, will cost $10 billion to resettle, and some of the Muslim immigrants may have previously joined ISIL. Some of the Somalis that were on the fast track program, and received US citizenship have already gone to fight for ISIL in Syria and when they return will pose a serious threat to the United States. It has been reported that Al Q’ieda is infiltrating the UN Resettlement Program to obtain legal acceptance as US citizens in the US.

In addition, DHS’s Immigration Service will approve the issuance of Social Security numbers and work permits to 5 million Illegal aliens, without doing the proper investigation required to determine if the 5 million illegal aliens have resided in the US for 5 year, are not convicted criminals, or have any terrorist links. The Obama administration has rented new office space, and is are hiring 1000 new employees, with no experience, to accomplish the detailed review and processing of each Illegal alien. If each of the 1000 new employees reviewed 5 illegal aliens each day on a 5 day week, it would normally take over 4 years to process the 5 million Illegal aliens, but those new employees will be directed to rubber stamp each application with little or no investigation, and it won’t take 4 years to process them.

It is very dangerous for the National Security interest of the United States to issue social security numbers and work permits for 5 million Illegal aliens and fast track 70,000 Muslim refugees for US citizenship without doing the in proper depth background investigations on each individual, in order to determine if they are convicted felons, involved in drug smuggling, and to determine if they have terrorist ties. The Obama administration seems to be approving one program after another that is destabilizing the National Security interest of the Republic

Respectfully,

Joe

Joseph R. John, USNA ‘62

Capt USN(Ret)

Chairman, Combat Veterans For Congress PAC

2307 Fenton Parkway, Suite 107-184

San Diego, CA 92108

Fax: (619) 220-0109

http://www.CombatVeteransForCongress.org

Then I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for Us?” Then I said, “Here am I. Send me!”
-Isaiah 6:8

From: Robert Trent [mailto:roberttrent1@gmail.com]
Sent: Wednesday, January 07, 2015 6:25 PM
To: aaa aaa
Subject: Assistant Director USCIS

See where we are going…

MEET OUR NEW ASST DIRECTOR FOR US CITIZENSHIP AND IMMIGRATION…

Another “qualified” appointment by BO in Homeland Security. No doubt she’ll be essential to his Muslim immigration efforts.

Unfortunately, this is true and she is another unqualified, inexperienced Obama appointee!!

http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/fatimanoor.asp

Meet Fatima Noor, President Obama’s latest appointment to a high level position in the Department of Homeland IN-Security, the post of Assistant Director for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration.

cid:4EF6A03A-BFE7-4E1E-BB41-7EC7ECC9E0C7

Ms. Noor has little if any experience in the compliance or enforcement fields. Her total experience in government related work is limited

to volunteer work with World Relief Memphis and as activities coordinator the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition.

She majored in psychology with minors in Spanish and Arabic international relations.

She recently completed a month-long research fellowship in Muslim psychology hosted by Carnegie-Mellon and the University of Pittsburgh, yes you read that correctly . an entire month long research fellowship ; her research will be ongoing as part of her work the DHS.

No, this is not a joke.

January 8, 2015

An Unavoidable Truth About Terrorism, by L. Neil Smith [nc]

Filed under: Elections, Global Intel, Historical context, Illegal Aliens, Islam, Law Enforcement, Military, Police, Political Commentary, Politicians, Religion, US Constitution — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — justplainbill @ 4:34 pm

An Unavoidable Truth About Terrorism
by L. Neil Smith
lneil@netzero.com

Attribute to L. Neil Smith’s The Libertarian Enterprise

When I boot up every morning, my “homepage” for at least twenty years has been The Drudge Report. I don’t possess broadcast television (I watch Netflix), so this morning I was surprised by screaming headlines concerning some homicidal loonie taking over a chocolate shop full of hostages in downtown Syndney, Australia, in the name of Allah.

I followed the story to the online Daily Mail, which was full of the same photographs, enormous and in full color, we’ve all seen a thousand times before: the idiot himself, the religious and political slogans, mostly written (one wonders why) in an alphabet I can’t read, terrified hostages, relieved when they had escaped, a splash or two of blood {“If it bleeds, it leads.”) and what seemed like hundreds of government tough-guy typess, all carrying automatic weapons—M-16s—standing around, waiting for their glorious leaders to get off the pot.

Three people died before it was over, two of them unnecessarily. My first thought was that it was the fault of Australian legislators, and the morally lazy voters who offer them support, who stripped the Southern Continent of its personal weaponry—brutally violating a thousand-year-old tradition among English-speaking peoples—and leaving it helpless before genetic culls like this. Speaking plainly, this asshole should have died the instant he opened his mouth about taking over the shop, at the hands of the barista, armed with a .45 automatic.

And hundreds of millions of decent, productive, nonviolent Muslims around the world wouldn’t have to go on taking the rap for jerks like him.

I also knew it was time to declare that the dangerous delusion which has been destroying Western Society is over. Peace is neither won nor maintained by the unarmed. Clearly, government cannot—will not—protect us; we must protect ourselves. I was reminded recently that I once said that terrorism is decentralized. It has no leader. It has no center. It’s a diffuse phenomenon, best dealt with by diffuse means: in this country, that means hundreds of millions of armed individuals.

Terrorism is the kind pf problem that can’t be solved by a handful of heavily-armed thugs, prancing around in their military fat-suits, but by the average suburban housewife—multiplied by a hundred million—with three small kiddies in tow and a .380 automatic in her purse.

Self-defense is a wholly individual bodily function tha can no more be delegated to somebody else—especially to the thumb-fumbling government—than can going to the bathroom, eating, or making love. If the individual people of the United States, Canada, Great Britain (or the United Kingdom—I’m unaware the distinction), Australia, New Zealand and any territories associated with them, were to arm themselves, even with .22s and .25s, that would be an end to terrorism.

(Yes, yes, I know there would still be bombs, poison gas, and various biological and radiological threats. Those are different problems, every one of them with different soutions. Want another essay?)

The simple change that I propose would not be unaccomanied by screaming, wailing, hair-tearing, and tooth-gnashing by the whining babies who have made this mess. Every proposal they make, every law they pass and enforce only make it easier for hobgoblins like this one in Sydney to have their way, to get their fifteen minutes of fame. Those who oppose what I am calling “ballistic democracy” are nothing more than knowing, willing enablers and accessories to terrorism and mass-murder.

The king of them all, multi-billionaire Michael Bloomberg is nothing more than a jumped-up Charles Manson, with a haircut and necktie.

In 1776, the great economist Adam Smith wrote that, if only each individual looked out for his own interests, and minded his own business, a nation would prosper as if guided by an “Invisible Hand”. It is our task now to make sure that the Invisible Hand has a gun in it.

January 6, 2015

Gun Trouble, from Butch – If you support the troops, you will read and act

Filed under: Business, Historical context, Military, Political Commentary, Politicians, US Constitution, US Marine Corps. Patriots — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — justplainbill @ 3:10 pm

January/February 2015
Gun Trouble
The rifle that today’s infantry uses is little changed since the 1960s—and it is badly flawed. Military lives depend on these cheap composites of metal and plastic. So why can’t the richest country in the world give its soldiers better ones?
Robert H. Scales Dec 28 2014, 7:44 PM ET

13k Shares

A custom M4, similar to the one used by infantry today. The M4 is a lighter version of the M16, which killed so many of the soldiers who carried it in Vietnam. (Adam Voorhes)

One afternoon just a month and a half after the Battle of Gettysburg, Christopher Spencer, the creator of a seven-shot repeating rifle, walked Abraham Lincoln out to a grassy field near where the Washington Monument now stands in order to demonstrate the amazing potential of his new gun. Lincoln had heard about the mystical powers of repeating rifles at Gettysburg and other battles where some Union troops already had them. He wanted to test them for the rest of his soldiers. The president quickly put seven rounds inside a small target 40 yards away. He was sold.

But to Army bureaucrats, repeaters were an expensive, ammunition-wasting nuisance. Ignorant, unimaginative, vain, and disloyal to the point of criminality, the Army’s chief of ordnance, General James Wolfe Ripley, worked to sabotage every effort to equip the Union Army with repeating rifles, mostly because he couldn’t be bothered. He largely succeeded. The Civil War historian Robert V. Bruce speculated that had such rifles been widely distributed to the Union Army by 1862, the Civil War would have been shortened by years, saving hundreds of thousands of lives.

Ripley’s bureaucratic victory over Lincoln was the beginning of the longest-running defense scandal in American history. I should know. I was almost one of Ripley’s victims. In June of 1969, in the mountains of South Vietnam, the battery I commanded at Firebase Berchtesgaden had spent the day firing artillery in support of infantry forces dug into “Hamburger Hill.” Every person and object in the unit was coated with reddish-brown clay blown upward by rotor wash from Chinook helicopters delivering ammunition. By evening, we were sleeping beside our M16 rifles. I was too inexperienced—or perhaps too lazy—to demand that my soldiers take a moment to clean their guns, even though we had heard disturbing rumors about the consequences of shooting a dirty M16.

At 3 o’clock in the morning, the enemy struck. They were armed with the amazingly reliable and rugged Soviet AK‑47, and after climbing up our hill for hours dragging their guns through the mud, they had no problems unleashing devastating automatic fire. Not so my men. To this day, I am haunted by the sight of three of my dead soldiers lying atop rifles broken open in a frantic attempt to clear jams.

With a few modifications, the weapon that killed my soldiers almost 50 years ago is killing our soldiers today in Afghanistan. General Ripley’s ghost is with us still. During my 35 years in the Army, it became clear to me that from Gettysburg to Hamburger Hill to the streets of Baghdad, the American penchant for arming troops with lousy rifles has been responsible for a staggering number of unnecessary deaths. Over the next few decades, the Department of Defense will spend more than $1 trillion on F-35 stealth fighter jets that after nearly 10 years of testing have yet to be deployed to a single combat zone. But bad rifles are in soldiers’ hands in every combat zone.

In the wars fought since World War II, the vast majority of men and women in uniform have not engaged in the intimate act of killing. Their work is much the same as their civilian counterparts’. It is the infantryman’s job to intentionally seek out and kill the enemy, at the risk of violent death. The Army and Marine Corps infantry, joined by a very small band of Special Operations forces, comprises roughly 100,000 soldiers, some 5 percent of uniformed Defense Department employees. During World War II, 70 percent of all soldiers killed at the hands of the enemy were infantry. In the wars since, that proportion has grown to about 80 percent. These are the (mostly) men whose survival depends on their rifles and ammunition.

In combat, an infantryman lives an animal’s life. The primal laws of tooth and fang determine whether he will live or die. Killing is quick. Combat in Afghanistan and Iraq reinforces the lesson that there is no such thing in small-arms combat as a fair fight. Infantrymen advance into the killing zone grimy, tired, confused, hungry, and scared. Their equipment is dirty, dented, or worn. They die on patrol from ambushes, from sniper attacks, from booby traps and improvised explosive devices. They may have only a split second to lift, aim, and pull the trigger before the enemy fires. Survival depends on the ability to deliver more killing power at longer ranges and with greater precision than the enemy.

Any lost edge, however small, means death. A jammed weapon, an enemy too swift and elusive to be engaged with aimed fire, an enemy out of range yet capable of delivering a larger volume of return fire—any of these cancel out all the wonderfully superior and expensive American air- and sea-based weapons that may be fired in support of ground troops. A soldier in basic training is told that his rifle is his best friend and his ticket home. If the lives of so many depend on just the development of a $1,000, six-pound composite of steel and plastic, why can’t the richest country in the world give it to them?

The answer is both complex and simple. The M4, the standard carbine in use by the infantry today, is a lighter version of the M16 rifle that killed so many of the soldiers who carried it in Vietnam. (The M16 is still also in wide use today.) In the early morning of July 13, 2008, nine infantrymen died fighting off a Taliban attack at a combat outpost near the village of Wanat in Afghanistan’s Nuristan province. Some of the soldiers present later reported that in the midst of battle their rifles overheated and jammed. The Wanat story is reminiscent of experiences in Vietnam: in fact, other than a few cosmetic changes, the rifles from both wars are virtually the same. And the M4’s shorter barrel makes it less effective at long ranges than the older M16—an especially serious disadvantage in modern combat, which is increasingly taking place over long ranges.
To this day, I am haunted by the sight of three of my dead soldiers lying atop rifles broken open in a frantic attempt to clear jams.

The M16 started out as a stroke of genius by one of the world’s most famous firearms designers. In the 1950s, an engineer named Eugene Stoner used space-age materials to improve the Army’s then-standard infantry rifle, the M14. The 5.56-mm cartridge Stoner chose for his rifle was a modification not of the M14’s cartridge but of a commercial Remington rifle cartridge that had been designed to kill small varmints. His invention, the AR‑15, was light, handy, and capable of controlled automatic fire. It outclassed the heavier, harder-recoiling M14. Yet the Army was again reluctant to change. As James Fallows observed in this magazine in 1981, it took the “strong support” of President Kennedy and Defense Secretary Robert McNamara to make the Army consider breaking its love affair with the large-caliber M14. In 1963, it slowly began adopting Stoner’s invention.

The “militarized” adaptation of the AR-15 was the M16. Militarization—more than 100 proposed alterations to supposedly make the rifle combat-ready—ruined the first batch to arrive at the front lines, and the cost in dead soldiers was horrific. A propellant ordered by the Army left a powder residue that clogged the rifle. Finely machined parts made the M16 a “maintenance queen” that required constant cleaning in the moisture, dust, and mud of Vietnam. In time, the Army improved the weapon—but not before many U.S. troops died.

Not all the problems with the M16 can be blamed on the Army. Buried in the M16’s, and now the M4’s, operating system is a flaw that no amount of militarizing and tinkering has ever erased. Stoner’s gun cycles cartridges from the magazine into the chamber using gas pressure vented off as the bullet passes through the barrel. Gases traveling down a very narrow aluminum tube produce an intense “puff” that throws the bolt assembly to the rear, making the bolt assembly a freely moving object in the body of the rifle. Any dust or dirt or residue from the cartridge might cause the bolt assembly, and thus the rifle, to jam.

In contrast, the Soviet AK‑47 cycles rounds using a solid operating rod attached to the bolt assembly. The gas action of the AK‑47 throws the rod and the bolt assembly back as one unit, and the solid attachment means that mud or dust will not prevent the gun from functioning. Fearing the deadly consequences of a “failure to feed” in a fight, some top-tier Special Operations units like Delta Force and SEAL Team Six use a more modern and effective rifle with a more reliable operating-rod mechanism. But front-line Army and Marine riflemen still fire weapons much more likely to jam than the AK‑47. Failure to feed affects every aspect of a fight. A Russian infantryman can fire about 140 rounds a minute without stopping. The M4 fires at roughly half that rate.

During the Civil War, General Ripley argued, among other things, that infantry soldiers would have trouble handling the complexity of new repeating weapons. We hear similarly unconvincing arguments now. Today’s grunt has shown in 13 years of war that he can handle complexity. He’s an experienced, long-service professional who deserves the same excellent firearm as the more “elite” Special Operations forces, who have the privilege of buying the best civilian gear off the shelf if they want to.

What should a next-generation, all-purpose infantry rifle look like? It should be modular. Multiple weapons can now be assembled from a single chassis. A squad member can customize his weapon by attaching different barrels, buttstocks, forearms, feed systems, and accessories to make, say, a light machine gun, a carbine, a rifle, or an infantry automatic rifle.

The military must change the caliber and cartridge of the guns it gives infantry soldiers. Stoner’s little 5.56-mm cartridge was ideal for softening the recoil of World War II infantry calibers in order to allow fully automatic fire. But today’s cartridge is simply too small for modern combat. Its lack of mass limits its range to less than 400 meters. The optimum caliber for tomorrow’s rifle is between 6.5 and 7 millimeters. The cartridge could be made almost as light as the older brass-cased 5.56-mm by using a plastic shell casing, which is now in final development by the Marine Corps.

The Army can achieve an infantry version of stealth by attaching newly developed sound suppressors to every rifle. Instead of merely muffling the sound of firing by trapping gases, this new technology redirects the firing gases forward, capturing most of the blast and flash well inside the muzzle. Of course, an enemy under fire would hear the muted sounds of an engagement. But much as with other stealth technology, the enemy soldier would be at a decisive disadvantage in trying to determine the exact location of the weapons firing at him.

Computer miniaturization now allows precision to be squeezed into a rifle sight. All an infantryman using a rifle equipped with a new-model sight need do is place a red dot on his target and push a button at the front of his trigger guard; a computer on his rifle will take into account data like range and “lead angle” to compensate for the movement of his target, and then automatically fire when the hit is guaranteed. This rifle sight can “see” the enemy soldier day or night at ranges well beyond 600 meters. An enemy caught in that sight will die long before he could know he was seen, much less before he could effectively return fire.

But infantrymen today do not use rifles equipped with these new sights. Hunters do. In fact, new rifles and ammunition are readily available. They are made by many manufacturers—civilian gun makers and foreign military suppliers that equip the most-elite Special Operations units. Unlike conventional infantry units, top-tier Special Operations units are virtually unrestricted by cumbersome acquisition protocols, and have had ample funding and a free hand to solicit new gun designs from private industry. These units test new guns in combat, often with dramatic results: greater precision, greater reliability, greater killing power.

The Army has argued that, in an era of declining resources, a new rifle will cost more than $2 billion. But let’s say the Army and Marine Corps buy new rifles only for those who will use them most, namely the infantry. The cost, for about 100,000 infantrymen at $1,000 each, is then reduced to roughly $100 million, less than that of a single F-35 fighter jet. The Army and the Marine Corps can keep the current stocks of M4s and M16s in reserve for use by non-infantry personnel in the unlikely event that they find themselves in combat.

From the time of General James Ripley to today, the Army has found reasons to deny its soldiers in the line of fire the safest and most efficient firearms. It doesn’t have to be this way. A few dollars invested now will save the lives of legions of brave infantrymen and -women for generations to come.

January 5, 2015

And y’all want to put these 2 back in the White House

Filed under: Econonics, Elections, Global Intel, Historical context, Political Commentary, Politicians, US Constitution — Tags: , , , , , , , — justplainbill @ 8:40 pm

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2584309/Bill-Clinton-identified-lawsuit-against-former-friend-pedophile-Jeffrey-Epstein-regular-orgies-Caribbean-compound-former-president-visited-multiple-times.html

January 4, 2015

MO Elected Official threatens whites [c]

Filed under: Econonics, Media Check, Police, Political Commentary, Politicians, Racism, US Constitution — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , — justplainbill @ 8:43 pm

[“White Privilege?” Who does she think paid for her education? Her “Affirmative Action?” Her NAACP privileges? What idiot thought up this new taxpayer oppression? Whatever happened to the democracy in Democrat?]

Elected Missouri Democrat threatens voters over white privilege on Twitter

January 4, 2015 12:01 AM MST
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Democrat state Senator Maria Chappelle-Nadal issues racist threat to voters on Twitter.
YouTube/Screengrab/Nicole Gipson
On Saturday, Maria Chappelle-Nadal, a Democrat serving in the Missouri state Senate whose district includes Ferguson, issued what many took to be a racist threat against white people on her Twitter feed. Her message, while apparently escaping the notice of local media outlets, angered a number of people.
“LET ME BE CLEAR,” she screamed on Twitter. “When you exercise your #WhitePrivilege, don’t think I’m not going to remember. I will use it for the future. Uncomfortable?”
“The system has literally failed the people I represent,” she said hours later. “There is no hope that anything will change. We go through the motions (because) we have to.” She also said the country has failed. Ironically, the conservative blog Weasel Zippers observed, she made the comment while using an image of Communist dictator Fidel Castro as her background.
“If you r not a legislator representing #Ferguson & you have not communicated w me, yet u have a ‘resolution’, expect fire,” she said in another angry tweet. Several responded angrily to that message as well, calling her a racist and a bigot. One responded by telling her to quit having supporters direct violence at police officers.
“So, you are a racist & are saying as an elected official, you only represent select people,” one person said in response. Another person asked Chappelle-Nadal if she intends to round white people up and place them in internment camps.
“Does the nursing staff at the hospital you live at know you’re on their computers this late at night?” another person asked. “Let me be clear,” added another Twitter user. “THE VOTERS ‘WE THE PEOPLE’ will remember you when it comes to voting for you. You just burnt your future.”
On the same day Chappelle-Nadal issued her racist message, the Associated Press said legislation she is sponsoring would, if passed into law, narrow the instances when police officers may use deadly force. Her proposal would also require the state attorney general to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate deaths or injuries caused by police. Currently, those incidents are handled by the locally elected prosecuting attorney. She also wants uniformed officers to wear cameras and believes institutional racism was behind the August shooting of Michael Brown.
This is not the first time Chappelle-Nadal has made controversial remarks. At one point, she accused police of purposely planning and executing the violence in Ferguson. But she changed her tune in November, when she told MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell the looting and burning taking place in Ferguson was “our race war.”
“Not only has this Mike Brown movement revealed the true intentions of people in police departments across the state, but I have to tell you that there has been systematic racism, institutionally in state government for decades, including my own state party,” she said. “People are angry, and they are hurt, and they’re trying to figure out: how are they going to receive justice?”
“I have to tell you, this is St. Louis’ race war,” she added. “We didn’t have a race war like other cities throughout the country. This is our race war.”

December 31, 2014

Confessions of a Public Defender, Michael Smith Esq., from “Face to Face with Race” [nc]

Filed under: Econonics, Elections, Global Intel, Historical context, Illegal Aliens, Law Enforcement, Media Check, Police, Political Commentary, Politicians, Racism — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — justplainbill @ 3:07 pm

It may help explain Ferguson. This was one of the stories in Face to Face with Race.

Confessions of a Public Defender

Confessions of a Public Defender

Michael Smith, American Renaissance, May 9, 2014

Still liberal after all these years.

I am a public defender in a large southern metropolitan area. Fewer than ten percent of the people in the area I serve are black but over 90 per cent of my clients are black. The remaining ten percent are mainly Hispanics but there are a few whites.

I have no explanation for why this is, but crime has racial patterns. Hispanics usually commit two kinds of crime: sexual assault on children and driving under the influence. Blacks commit many violent crimes but very few sex crimes. The handful of whites I see commit all kinds of crimes. In my many years as a public defender I have represented only three Asians, and one was half black.

As a young lawyer, I believed the official story that blacks are law abiding, intelligent, family-oriented people, but are so poor they must turn to crime to survive. Actual black behavior was a shock to me.

The media invariably sugarcoat black behavior. Even the news reports of the very crimes I dealt with in court were slanted. Television news intentionally leaves out unflattering facts about the accused, and sometimes omits names that are obviously black. All this rocked my liberal, tolerant beliefs, but it took me years to set aside my illusions and accept the reality of what I see every day. I have now served thousands of blacks and their families, protecting their rights and defending them in court. What follow are my observations.

Although blacks are only a small percentage of our community, the courthouse is filled with them: the halls and gallery benches are overflowing with black defendants, families, and crime victims. Most whites with business in court arrive quietly, dress appropriately, and keep their heads down. They get in and get out–if they can–as fast as they can. For blacks, the courthouse is like a carnival. They all seem to know each other: hundreds and hundreds each day, gossiping, laughing loudly, waving, and crowding the halls.

When I am appointed to represent a client I introduce myself and explain that I am his lawyer. I explain the court process and my role in it, and I ask the client some basic questions about himself. At this stage, I can tell with great accuracy how people will react. Hispanics are extremely polite and deferential. An Hispanic will never call me by my first name and will answer my questions directly and with appropriate respect for my position. Whites are similarly respectful.

A black man will never call me Mr. Smith; I am always “Mike.” It is not unusual for a 19-year-old black to refer to me as “dog.” A black may mumble complaints about everything I say, and roll his eyes when I politely interrupt so I can continue with my explanation. Also, everything I say to blacks must be at about the third-grade level. If I slip and use adult language, they get angry because they think I am flaunting my superiority.

At the early stages of a case, I explain the process to my clients. I often do not yet have the information in the police reports. Blacks are unable to understand that I do not yet have answers to all of their questions, but that I will by a certain date. They live in the here and the now and are unable to wait for anything. Usually, by the second meeting with the client I have most of the police reports and understand their case.

Unlike people of other races, blacks never see their lawyer as someone who is there to help them. I am a part of the system against which they are waging war. They often explode with anger at me and are quick to blame me for anything that goes wrong in their case.

Black men often try to trip me up and challenge my knowledge of the law or the facts of the case. I appreciate sincere questions about the elements of the offense or the sentencing guidelines, but blacks ask questions to test me. Unfortunately, they are almost always wrong in their reading, or understanding, of the law, and this can cause friction. I may repeatedly explain the law, and provide copies of the statute showing, for example, why my client must serve six years if convicted, but he continues to believe that a hand-written note from his “cellie” is controlling law.

The risks of trial

The Constitution allows a defendant to make three crucial decisions in his case. He decides whether to plea guilty or not guilty. He decides whether to have a bench trial or a jury trial. He decides whether he will testify or whether he will remain silent. A client who insists on testifying is almost always making a terrible mistake, but I cannot stop him.

Most blacks are unable to speak English well. They cannot conjugate verbs. They have a poor grasp of verb tenses. They have a limited vocabulary. They cannot speak without swearing. They often become hostile on the stand. Many, when they testify, show a complete lack of empathy and are unable to conceal a morality based on the satisfaction of immediate, base needs. This is a disaster, especially in a jury trial. Most jurors are white, and are appalled by the demeanor of uneducated, criminal blacks.

Prosecutors are delighted when a black defendant takes the stand. It is like shooting fish in a barrel. However, the defense usually gets to cross-examine the black victim, who is likely to make just as bad an impression on the stand as the defendant. This is an invaluable gift to the defense, because jurors may not convict a defendant—even if they think he is guilty—if they dislike the victim even more than they dislike the defendant.

Most criminal cases do not go to trial. Often the evidence against the accused is overwhelming, and the chances of conviction are high. The defendant is better off with a plea bargain: pleading guilty to a lesser charge and getting a lighter sentence.

The decision to plea to a lesser charge turns on the strength of the evidence. When blacks ask the ultimate question—”Will we win at trial?”—I tell them I cannot know, but I then describe the strengths and weaknesses of our case. The weaknesses are usually obvious: There are five eyewitnesses against you. Or, you made a confession to both the detective and your grandmother. They found you in possession of a pink cell phone with a case that has rhinestones spelling the name of the victim of the robbery. There is a video of the murderer wearing the same shirt you were wearing when you were arrested, which has the words “In Da Houz” on the back, not to mention you have the same “RIP Pookie 7/4/12” tattoo on your neck as the man in the video. Etc.

If you tell a black man that the evidence is very harmful to his case, he will blame you. “You ain’t workin’ fo’ me.” “It like you workin’ with da State.” Every public defender hears this. The more you try to explain the evidence to a black man, the angrier he gets. It is my firm belief many black are unable to discuss the evidence against them rationally because they cannot view things from the perspective of others. They simply cannot understand how the facts in the case will appear to a jury.

This inability to see things from someone else’s perspective helps explain why there are so many black criminals. They do not understand the pain they are inflicting on others. One of my robbery clients is a good example. He and two co-defendants walked into a small store run by two young women. All three men were wearing masks. They drew handguns and ordered the women into a back room. One man beat a girl with his gun. The second man stood over the second girl while the third man emptied the cash register. All of this was on video.

My client was the one who beat the girl. When he asked me, “What are our chances at trial?” I said, “Not so good.” He immediately got angry, raised his voice, and accused me of working with the prosecution. I asked him how he thought a jury would react to the video. “They don’t care,” he said. I told him the jury would probably feel deeply sympathetic towards these two women and would be angry at him because of how he treated them. I asked him whether he felt bad for the women he had beaten and terrorized. He told me what I suspected—what too many blacks say about the suffering of others: “What do I care? She ain’t me. She ain’t kin. Don’t even know her.”

No fathers

As a public defender, I have learned many things about people. One is that defendants do not have fathers. If a black even knows the name of his father, he knows of him only as a shadowy person with whom he has absolutely no ties. When a client is sentenced, I often beg for mercy on the grounds that the defendant did not have a father and never had a chance in life. I have often tracked down the man’s father–in jail–and have brought him to the sentencing hearing to testify that he never knew his son and never lifted a finger to help him. Often, this is the first time my client has ever met his father. These meetings are utterly unemotional.

Many black defendants don’t even have mothers who care about them. Many are raised by grandmothers after the state removes the children from an incompetent teenaged mother. Many of these mothers and grandmothers are mentally unstable, and are completely disconnected from the realities they face in court and in life. A 47-year-old grandmother will deny that her grandson has gang ties even though his forehead is tattooed with a gang sign or slogan. When I point this out in as kind and understanding way as I can, she screams at me. When black women start screaming, they invoke the name of Jesus and shout swear words in the same breath.

Black women have great faith in God, but they have a twisted understanding of His role. They do not pray for strength or courage. They pray for results: the satisfaction of immediate needs. One of my clients was a black woman who prayed in a circle with her accomplices for God’s protection from the police before they would set out to commit a robbery.

The mothers and grandmothers pray in the hallways–not for justice, but for acquittal. When I explain that the evidence that their beloved child murdered the shop keeper is overwhelming, and that he should accept the very fair plea bargain I have negotiated, they will tell me that he is going to trial and will “ride with the Lord.” They tell me they speak to God every day and He assures them that the young man will be acquitted.

The mothers and grandmothers do not seem to be able to imagine and understand the consequences of going to trial and losing. Some–and this is a shocking reality it took me a long time to grasp–don’t really care what happens to the client, but want to make it look as though they care. This means pounding their chests in righteous indignation, and insisting on going to trial despite terrible evidence. They refuse to listen to the one person–me–who has the knowledge to make the best recommendation. These people soon lose interest in the case, and stop showing up after about the third or fourth court date. It is then easier for me to convince the client to act in his own best interests and accept a plea agreement.

Part of the problem is that underclass black women begin having babies at age 15. They continue to have babies, with different black men, until they have had five or six. These women do not go to school. They do not work. They are not ashamed to live on public money. They plan their entire lives around the expectation that they will always get free money and never have to work. I do not see this among whites, Hispanics, or any other people.

The black men who become my clients also do not work. They get social security disability payments for a mental defect or for a vague and invisible physical ailment. They do not pay for anything: not for housing (Grandma lives on welfare and he lives with her), not for food (Grandma and the baby-momma share with him), and not for child support. When I learn that my 19-year-old defendant does not work or go to school, I ask, “What do you do all day?” He smiles. “You know, just chill.” These men live in a culture with no expectations, no demands, and no shame.

If you tell a black to dress properly for trial, and don’t give specific instructions, he will arrive in wildly inappropriate clothes. I represented a woman who was on trial for drugs; she wore a baseball cap with a marijuana leaf embroidered on it. I represented a man who wore a shirt that read “rules are for suckers” to his probation hearing. Our office provides suits, shirts, ties, and dresses for clients to wear for jury trials. Often, it takes a whole team of lawyers to persuade a black to wear a shirt and tie instead of gang colors.

From time to time the media report that although blacks are 12 percent of the population they are 40 percent of the prison population. This is supposed to be an outrage that results from unfair treatment by the criminal justice system. What the media only hint at is another staggering reality: recidivism. Black men are arrested and convicted over and over. It is typical for a black man to have five felony convictions before the age of 30. This kind of record is rare among whites and Hispanics, and probably even rarer among Asians.

Stats

Source: Bureau of Justice Statistics.

At one time our office was looking for a motto that defined our philosophy. Someone joked that it should be: “Doesn’t everyone deserve an eleventh chance?”

I am a liberal. I believe that those of us who are able to produce abundance have a moral duty to provide basic food, shelter, and medical care for those who cannot care for themselves. I believe we have this duty even to those who can care for themselves but don’t. This world view requires compassion and a willingness to act on it.

My experience has taught me that we live in a nation in which a jury is more likely to convict a black defendant who has committed a crime against a white. Even the dullest of blacks know this. There would be a lot more black-on-white crime if this were not the case.

However, my experience has also taught me that blacks are different by almost any measure to all other people. They cannot reason as well. They cannot communicate as well. They cannot control their impulses as well. They are a threat to all who cross their paths, black and non-black alike.

I do not know the solution to this problem. I do know that it is wrong to deceive the public. Whatever solutions we seek should be based on the truth rather than what we would prefer was the truth. As for myself, I will continue do my duty to protect the rights of all who need me.

December 29, 2014

Race Mongers All, by Sylvia Thompson [nc]

Filed under: Econonics, Education, Historical context, Police, Political Commentary, Politicians, Racism — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — justplainbill @ 7:24 pm

Sylvia Thompson column
Race mongers all, with blood on their hands

Sylvia Thompson
Sylvia Thompson
December 28, 2014

President Barack Obama, Attorney General Eric Holder, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, and race-hustler Al Sharpton are most definitely complicit in the recent deaths of two New York City police officers. I refuse to listen to the blather that says otherwise. These four race mongers set the stage for the hateful act committed by Ismaaiyl Brinsley, the murderer. Furthermore, I reject the playing down of this hater’s guilt by branding him “mentally unstable.” He was a typical hateful black person spawned by the Left’s decades-long campaign to brainwash American blacks.

Police officers across the country are rightfully enraged at these despicable men, wielding their enormous political power against the entire law enforcement community. Shunning de Blasio is the least these officers could do to show the leftist mayor how much they despise him. All of America should despise all four of these men.

That said, I focus this commentary on the incredible naivety of so many pundits, such as Greta Van Susteren’s. The pundits are puzzled by Obama’s and Holder’s lack of a convincing response to the murders. These two men, in their positions of authority, refuse to make any genuine attempts to quell the hatred that spawned Brinsley’s murderous scheme, which is why they are culpable.

Classic liberals (and I consider Ms. Van Susteren one of them) are completely clueless when it comes to assessing black behavior. That naivety is what accounts, in my view, for the assumption that most of us blacks are in need of their protection and guidance. It is a condescending attitude, but many of them are completely ignorant of how they come across. I learned this fact over the years, which is why I ignore classic liberals. I follow closely, however, the diabolical leftists. Failure to understand leftism is dangerous.

This naivety also explains why many pundits and educated white Americans are baffled over Obama’s choice of a character, such as Al Sharpton, to be a legitimate representative of black America. It requires an understanding of black elitism to comprehend this behavior. As a non-elite, I have found that black elites, like their counterparts in other ethnic groups, are adept at using people whom they perceive to be beneath them to do their bidding. Blacks of Sharpton’s character are ripe for manipulation. They possess little in intellect and they crave great power. They acquire a perceived power in being near the powerful.

Obama and Holder, and all of their ilk, know that some activities (such as street rabble-rousing) are beneath them. Therefore, they plant the seeds of hatred; Sharpton and his ilk stir up the soil so that the seeds will grow. They provide the poison; the Sharptons stir it into the water and encourage blacks to drink up. In Obama’s eyes, Sharpton is merely a tool.

Greta Van Susteren laments that Obama does not approach blacks such as Senator Tim Scott to assist with issues of race. Simply stated, Senator Scott cannot be used.

Sharpton may well understand this thinly vailed disdain, and it could be that a mutual “using” is taking place. The elitist using the despised black of “the other class” to foment unrest and hatred, as part of the Left’s grand plan to destroy America, and the lower-classed hustler gaining a level of recognition that the circumstances of his birth denied him. Hustlers are skilled manipulators in their own right, and Sharpton has many years of experience under his belt.

We often hear pundits of both races decrying “America still has racism and something has to be done about it.” That excuse is used to further the Left’s agenda of “transforming” (meaning “destroying”) America. Newsflash: We will never be completely rid of racist thinking until Almighty God removes it from the flawed psyche of those who refuse to let go of it. And He will indeed do that, in due time.

Meanwhile, I truly hope that more white Americans will come to an understanding that this whipping rod of “perpetual racism” is a ploy. People on the Left use it because it works. The solution is that Americans who are not racist must stop allowing the Left to use the ploy against them. Reject it; call it out for what it is – a pernicious scheme.

I offer a fervent plea to my fellow Americans of any color who are really sick and tired of it all – stop listening to the race baiters. Even the ones who sound reasonable or wear white collars of the clergy, but will not task blacks with any of the responsibility for their circumstances. The plight of disadvantaged black Americans will not improve until they remove themselves from the yoke of leftist liberalism. They must begin to take personal responsibility for how they live, behave, and rear their children, as well as which leaders and educators they accept into their communities.

This rethinking needs to happen soon, because there will not always be race-baiting professed black leaders in control of this country. There will come a time when leaders will be in charge who are immune to overwrought cries of “racist” and “racism.” And we had better hope that they are decent men, because the game of “payback” will be detrimental if they choose to play it against us twelve percent of the American populace.

Sylvia Thompson is a black conservative writer whose aim is to counter the liberal spin on issues pertaining to race and culture.

Ms. Thompson is a copy editor by trade currently residing in Tennessee. She formerly wrote for the Conservative Forum of Silicon Valley California Newsletter and the online conservative blog ChronWatch, also out of California.

She grew up in Southeast Texas during the waning years of Jim Crow-era legalized segregation, and she concludes that race relations in America will never improve, nor will we ever elevate our culture, as long as there are victims to be pandered to and villains to be vilified. America is better served without victims or villains.

© Copyright 2014 by Sylvia Thompson
http://www.renewamerica.com/columns/sthompson/141228

Col. Bud Day, USAF/ Medal of Honor Recipient, on torture [nc]

Filed under: Education, Elections, Global Intel, Historical context, Illegal Aliens, Islam, Media Check, Military, Political Commentary, Politicians, Religion, US Constitution — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — justplainbill @ 7:19 pm

Colonel Bud Day

I JUST ENJOY HOW HE RELATES TO OBAMA & THE REST OF CANDY ASS WASHINGTON CROWD!!!!

I got shot down over N Vietnam in 1967, a Squadron Commander.
After I returned in 1973…I published 2 books that dealt a lot
with “real torture” in Hanoi . Our make-believe president is
Branding our country as a bunch of torturers when he
has no idea what torture is.

As for me, I was put thru a mock execution because
I would not respond.. Pistol whipped on the head….same event..
Couple of days later… Hung by my feet all day.
I escaped and a couple of weeks later, I got shot and recaptured.
Shot was OK…what happened afterwards was not.

They marched me to Vinh…put me in the rope trick, trick…almost
pulled my arms out of the sockets. Beat me on the head with
a little wooden rod until my eyes were swelled shut,
andmy unshot, unbroken hand a pulp.

Next day hung me by the arms…re-broke my right wrist…
wiped out the nerves in my arms that control the hands….
rolled my fingers up into a ball. Only left the slightest movement
of my L forefinger. So I started answering
with some incredible lies.

Sent me to Hanoi strapped to a barrel of gas in the back of a truck.

Hanoi ..on my knees….rope trick again. Beaten by a big fool.

Into leg irons on a bed in Heartbreak Hotel.

Much kneeling–hands up at Zoo.

Really bad beating for refusing to condemn Lyndon Johnson.

Several more kneeling events. I could see my knee bone
thru kneeling holes.

There was an escape from the annex to the Zoo. I was
the Senior Officer of a large building… because of escape…
they started a mass Torture of all commanders.

I think it was July 7, 1969…they started beating me with a car fan-belt.
In the first 2 days I took over 300 strokes, then stopped counting
because I never thought I would live thru it.

They continued day-night torture to get me to confess to
a non-existent part in the escape. This went on for at least 3 days.
On my knees… fan belting…cut open my scrotum with fan belt stroke.
Opened up both knee holes again. My fanny looked like hamburger…
I could not lie on my back.

They tortured me into admitting that I was in on the escape…
and that my 2 room-mates knew about it.

The next day I denied the lie.

They commenced torturing me again with 3- 6- or 9 strokes of
the fan belt every day from about July 11 or 12th..
to 14 October 1969.
I continued to refuse to lie about my roommates again.

Now, the point of this is that our make-believe President
has declared to the world that we (U.S.) are a bunch of Torturers…
thus it will be OK to torture us next time when they catch us…
because that is what the U.S. Does.

Our make-believe president is a know nothing fool who thinks
that pouring a little water on some one’s face, or hanging a
pair of women’s pants over an Arabs head is TORTURE..
He is a meathead.

I just talked to Medal Of Honor holder Leo Thorsness, who
was also in my squadron, In jail…as was John McCain…and
we agree that McCain does not speak for the POW group
when he claims that Al Gharib was Torture…
or that “water boarding” is torture.

Our president and those fools around him who keep bad mouthing
our great country are a disgrace to the United States . Please pass
This info on to Sean Hannity. He is free to use it to point out the
stupidity of the claims that water boarding…
which has no after effect…is torture.

If it got the Arab to cough up the story about
how he planned the attack on the twin towers in NYC …
Hurrah for the guy who poured the water.
____________________________________________________________________

“Bud” Day, Medal Of Honor Recipient

George Everett “Bud” Day (born February 24, 1925) is a retired
U.S. Air Force Colonel and Command Pilot who served during the
Vietnam War. He is often cited as being the most decorated U.S.
Service member since General Douglas MacArthur, having
Received some 70 decorations, a majority for actions
In combat. Day is a recipient of the Medal of Honor.
————–
Please pass on to your
Family and friends

What is America’ Survival Plan? by Carol Brown [nc]

Filed under: Econonics, Elections, Global Intel, Historical context, Illegal Aliens, Islam, Military, Political Commentary, Politicians, Religion, US Constitution — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — justplainbill @ 6:55 pm

http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2014/12/what_is_americas_survival_plan_.html

December 26, 2014
What is America’s survival plan?

By Carol Brown

We’re facing the greatest national security threat we have ever known and there is no coherent plan to battle the enemy. This nation is so far behind the eight ball, the president and his minions won’t even name the enemy, no less fight it.

Name = Islam

Even worse, those in positions of power and influence misrepresent what the enemy stands for. Like a pre-recorded announcement that just won’t stop, we are endlessly subjected to the false refrain: Islam is a religion of peace. By Muslim lights, we live in the Dar al Harb, the territory of war, simply because we refuse to accept Islam. We didn’t declare war, Mohammed did.

And when it comes to the threat of Islamic supremacism, it’s not only the left that’s putting us at risk. The right is hardly better, as both parties serve up a boatload of ignorance, complicity, and cowardice on a daily basis. Our elected officials draft legislation, set foreign policy, speak at podiums, sit on panels, write press releases, pen op-eds, and yack away on talk shows about the wonders of Islam. If anyone challenges what they’re peddling, the peddlers get rather hot under the collar. As for the truth-tellers, they are mocked, marginalized, and vilified.

And what a truth it is, as we confront a totalitarian ideology bent on world domination ruled by one religion — an ideology that is infecting every aspect of our culture and which has the potential to destroy all of civilization.

Despite this grave threat, you can count on one hand how many leaders are informed and speaking the truth. And even they — and God bless every single one of them — have offered ideas in bits and pieces, with faint calls to investigate Huma Abedin, a proposal to designate the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization, a proposal to strip citizenship from Americans who travel overseas to fight for terrorists, along with a few states that passed anti-Sharia laws. Woefully inadequate as these actions are, three-quarters of them barely saw the light of day as the truth-tellers were pilloried and the legislation never came to pass. In any case, the solutions noted above are not an overarching strategy.

Not even close.

How can that be? The most brutal and ruthless enemy is advancing toward us and has infiltrated every arm of our government, and there is hardly a word said, no less a plan offered, as to how to beat them back. Quite the opposite. We are welcoming them with open arms. Giving them the keys to the kingdom.

If we are to survive, this madness must end. And toward that end, I suggest the following:

Name the enemy: If you don’t name the enemy, how can you win the war? Let’s stop talking like idiots. We’re battling a totalitarian ideology as written in the Koran, and the people who follow it. It’s called Islam. Not “radical Islam.” Just Islam. By any standard, the teachings in the Koran are radical. When people say “radical Islam,” it suggests there is some other form of Islam that is more tempered. Moderate, as they say. But such a thing does not exist, except as neglect of scriptural imperatives. And should anyone claim there are peaceful verses please point them to Chapter 2, Verse 106 (Abrogation) which states that later (violent) verses override and/or replace earlier (peaceful) ones.

Stop saying “war on terror”: This expression is vague and minimizes the scope of the battle. We’re fighting Islamic jihad in all its forms — from physical violence to creeping Sharia and everything in between. We are at war with those who follow the teachings of the Koran — whether they are violent jihadists or members of the school board trying to influence curriculum.

Shut down Iran’s nuclear program: Iran is a mortal threat to Israel, the United States, and indeed the entire civilized world. We should not be involved in negotiations with a nation that has declared its murderous intentions against America and her allies. If Iran develops a nuclear weapon, the world as we know it will be forever altered as a blanket of death will descend. We must destroy Iran’s ability to develop a nuclear weapon before it is too late. And the clock is running down. Quickly.

Address the malevolent influence of the Muslim Brotherhood: It is critical that we address how deeply the Muslim Brotherhood has infiltrated our government. We must designate the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization, remove members of the Muslim Brotherhood from government positions, and shut down all Muslim Brotherhood front groups. We cannot survive if the enemy is not only attacking from without, but also from within (per their stated plan). Terrorists have no place on American soil, no less within our government. Identify them, arrest them where appropriate, and send the rest packing.

Stop construction of mosques and shut down most of those already built: Mosques are popping up all across America, with a 75% increase in new construction since 9/11. There are now well over 2,000 mosques in America (some of them “mega mosques”) with no end in sight. Two separate studiesdocument that 80% of mosques in the United States preach jihad. That number is staggering. The situation is intolerable. It pushes the limit of freedom of religion and freedom of speech. A nation cannot endure direct threats against it if it hopes to survive.

Shut down Islamic schools and get Islam out of public school classrooms: We cannot allow Islamic schools to indoctrinate the next generation of Muslim Americans, where students are taught Islamic dominance, forced conversions, death to non-believers, and the destruction of Israel. This is not a reflection of American values and serves as a direct threat to our future. If Muslim Americans want their children to attend such schools, the family should relocate to an Islamic country. We must also remove Islamic propaganda from our public schools, private schools, college and universities. And while we’re on the subject, Muslim colleges are blossoming. The most prominent (Zaytuna College) opened five years ago in Berkeley, California. But there have been others, including the Islamic Online University. At the very least, these institutions must be monitored.

Shut down American jihadist training compounds: We cannot tolerate Muslim enclaves in America where jihadist training is taught. Muslims of America have training compounds scattered throughout the country poised to inflict violence on a massive scale. This cannot stand. America is a nation that is free, not a nation that is stupid. “Anything goes” is not our founding principle. It is sheer insanity to tolerate people and organizations that train jihadists to attack Americans. Plus, last I checked, it’s against the law. We know where thesecompounds are. We must shut them down. Immediately.

Address prisons as breading grounds for Muslim converts: Prisons have become breeding grounds for Islamic converts and jihadist indoctrination. We must block the outside influence from Saudi Arabia and terror states, ensure those in the prison power structure become educated about Islam, and involve subject matter experts to help vet and monitor Muslim chaplains. No one — imams or prisoners — must be allowed to engage in violent rhetoric or activity, Muslim prison gangs must be broken apart, and perks that Muslim prisoners alone get must be stripped away.

Stop immigration from Islamic countries: As seen throughout Europe, it doesn’t take a lot of Muslims to wreak havoc on a nation. To help ensure we don’t wind up like Europe, we must halt all immigration from Islamic countries. The risks are simply too high. No nation has an obligation to allow immigration from any and all countries. And in the case of immigration from Islamic countries, it is impossible to fully vet Muslim immigrants for the following reasons: (1) We cannot know who has an agenda to impose Sharia law (and statsshow most support it). (2) We need to recognize that increasing numbers of Muslims who seem like regular folks are morphing into jihadists. (3) We must understand the role that taqiyya (sanctioned deception) plays in any vetting process. Islam is not compatible with Western values. It is not compatible with Judeo/Christian values. It is not compatible with liberty and freedom. It’s illogical to import people from cultures where some, many, or most individuals hate America and want to destroy everything we stand for. (When considering this issue, one should also keep in mind the 3 stages of jihad.)

Stop moral equivalence: All cultures are not the same. All ideas are not the same. All religions are not the same. Stop speaking as if they are. Islam is the 21st century Nazism. As Prime Minister Netanyahu said, “We’ve seen this before. There’s a master race; Now there’s a master faith.” Human beings have the ability to discern. Let’s start using this God-given gift. Western cultures are better than Islamic cultures. The idea of liberty is better than the idea of oppression. Values of love and life trump those of darkness, death, and destruction. Everything is not the same. Spread the word.

Ban the burqa and niqab: A person’s face must be exposed for all the obvious reasons. In addition, swaths of fabric draped over and around one’s body mask the human form and can also hide weapons. We’ve already had criminals exploit burqas in order to commit crimes. This sort of identity-hiding garb has no place in a modern, Western society. If a Muslim insists on wearing a burqa I suggest she move to any one of the dozens of Muslim countries where such attire is welcome, if not required. It’s not how we do things in the United States and we shouldn’t start. Cultures are different. Values are different. The United States, thank God, is not an Islamic nation. And we shouldn’t slide any further down the path of embracing Islamic values (such as they are) and norms. Including Islamic dress codes.

Allow people who want to join terror groups overseas to leave the country and ensure it’s a one-way ticket: When we become aware of persons planning to travel overseas to join ISIS or any other terror organization, we should not stop them. There is no reason to have such individuals among us. We should let them go, then slam the door behind them so they can never return: revoke their passport, visa, and U.S. citizenship. They must not be allowed to engage in this treasonous act without consequence (as is currently the case).

Secure the border: The United States must secure its borders so that, among other things, we don’t leave ourselves open to terrorists coming across. It defies common sense and sound national security to have open borders. The border must be secured.

Achieve energy independence: We must break our reliance on oil from Saudi Arabia and other Middle Eastern countries that are run by dictators who use their power and influence to undermine our nation. There is no reason this great nation cannot become energy independent if we set about to achieve that goal. We have the resources. Now we must find the will.

Stop supporting terror: We must stop all funds that go to the Palestinian Authority. We must investigate Turkey and Qatar as state sponsors of terror and reassess our ties with these nations. We should suspend funding for the UN Human Rights Commission.

Become citizen activists: This battle must be fought on all fronts by everyone. Leftists might be permanent goners, but there are a lot of folks who are simply uninformed. Get involved and speak out. Be savvy about the best way to approach others. Don’t overwhelm. Choose your focus, your words, and your support materials carefully. Here are a few ideas:

Educate others about the Koran: This is critical. Islam is a totalitarian ideology at its core and we must tell it like it is when we speak about it. Educate yourself. Then educate others. Robert Spencer has two excellent books that I highly recommend if you haven’t read them already: The Complete Infidel’s Guide to the Koran and The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades)

Educate others about the 3 stages of jihad: Islam has a methodical method to the bloody madness. Part of that method involves how to advance jihad in three stages to reach its most bellicose form. David Wood of Answering Muslims has an excellent video on the subject, here.

Support people and organizations that are on the front lines of this battle: There are many brave patriots working tirelessly to wake people up to the threat of Islam. They are a great resource and they also need our support. For blogs that focus exclusively on Islam, see here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here,here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here among countless examples. See here and here for political action organizations focused exclusively on Islam. (Remember, you don’t have to reinvent the wheel. JoiningAct for America, for example, can help provide focus.) For legal centers on the front lines of this battle, see here and here.

Reach out to others in your place of worship: Churches and synagogues should be leading voices in this battle. Sadly, they’re not. “Interfaith dialogue” has become all the rage as many churches and synagogues enable the enemy. In addition, many churches have joined the BDS movement against Israel — a nation on the bleeding edge of the fight against jihad. We must shift this dangerous course. (When enlightening members at your place of worship, theChristian Action Network might be a resource for some that is particularly resonant.)

Know what’s going on in your community: In addition to the construction ofnew mosques, there are myriad ways that creeping Sharia creeps. Stay on top of what’s going on in your community and take action. See here, here, here, here,here, here, here, here, and here for a snapshot among an endless battery of examples that are reminders of how vigilant we must be.

Stay on top of what is going on in schools: Whether you have children in school or not, it behooves all of us to know what’s going on in the school system. Lord knows, CAIR and other Muslim Brotherhood front groups are campaigning, lobbying, applying pressure, and in some cases, suing to make sure Islam marches through the halls of our public and private schools (as well as colleges and universities). We will all pay a price for the next generation’s brainwashing if we don’t address it. See here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here,here, and here among countless examples.

Let your elected officials know where you stand and what you expect from them: Most of them are clueless. At best. They need to be educated. Who’s going to educate them? That would be us. We cannot, for example, ever again have an imam lead a prayer in Congress. Not. ever. again.

Contact the media: Speak out about biased and erroneous coverage of Islam, Sharia, and terror. Urge them to stop inviting guests who are members of Muslim Brotherhood front groups. Educate them about this issue.

Be creative and take initiative: Every day, whether on an international, national scale, or local level, the West is increasingly in the grip of Islamic law. Find ways to speak the truth and educate the public. Here’s an inspiring story: A group of concerned citizens formed an organization called the Counter Jihad Coalition. They created brochures on Islam and, armed with knowledge and these materials, they stand in a public square (in this case, 3rd Street Promenade in Santa Monica, California) and educate others. To read more about them and hear an interview, see here.

And: The Counter Jihad Report has compiled a comprehensive list of things citizens can do. Each item on the list links to a page with more detail on the particular area of interest. There are also excellent suggestions on the best ways to approach people. I highly recommend AT readers visit this page where you can explore and find one or two things to act on, here.

In closing, I would like to say that the current state of affairs with respect to our nation’s retreat is unsustainable. We either fight with everything we have, or we will be undone. The terrifying command to “convert or die” will not be a savage reality forced upon people in other nations. It will be bellowed through this land. And while many of us feel overwhelmed with our time and energy stretched thin, please consider that if we don’t take this on now, an inconceivable darkness will envelope our lives that will silence our voices — if not our beating hearts — on this, and every single thing.

No one will be immune to the evil that is coming. Democrats, Republicans and Independents; patriots and dhimmis; men, women, and children; the young, the old and everyone in between; rich and poor; Christians, Mormons, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, agnostics, and atheists; black, brown, and white; the educated and uneducated; public servants and private sector employees; doctors, teachers, roofers, truck drivers, lawyers, veterinarians, CEO’s, cooks, plumbers, dog walkers; as well as dogs.

America is the ultimate target of this evil. We either fight now, or face the unthinkable later. And later is much sooner than we think.

December 23, 2014

Micheal Brown, of Ferguson MO, in action

Filed under: Historical context, Law Enforcement, Police, Political Commentary, Politicians — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , — justplainbill @ 4:56 pm

a clip of the gentle giant Michael Brown of Ferguson fame.

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=062_1418174243

December 17, 2014

Must See, if necessary go to: face book, Jan Ziech, public

Filed under: Education, Law Enforcement, Police, Political Commentary, Politicians, US Constitution — Tags: , , , , , , — justplainbill @ 3:56 pm

(function(d, s, id) { var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0]; if (d.getElementById(id)) return; js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id; js.src = “//connect.facebook.net/en_US/all.js#xfbml=1”; fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs); }(document, ‘script’, ‘facebook-jssdk’));

Post by Jan Ziech.

December 16, 2014

Garner Death Facts, by Bryan Fischer [nc]

Filed under: Education, Historical context, Law Enforcement, Media Check, Police, Political Commentary, Politicians — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — justplainbill @ 4:36 pm

Almost No Truth in Media Reports on Garner Death

By Bryan Fischer, American Family Association

It turns out that almost everything bleated out by the race-mongers and the low-information media about the Eric Garner tragedy has turned out to be wrong.

Eric Garner, a 43-year-old father of six, is dead. This is a tragedy, regardless of the circumstances. We rightly mourn with his wife and children. They will never see their husband and father again, and that should break everyone’s heart.

When we witness a gut-rending tragedy like this, we want to know ! who is responsible. Who is to blame for depriving this family of its husband and father? As the facts emerge, it becomes increasingly clear that, as tragic as this situation is, in the end the culpability for Eric Garner’s death rests with… Eric Garner.

To put it as simply as possible, if Mr. Garner had not broken the law and then resisted arrest, he would be alive today.

While protesters are trying to make this about race, it must be noted that the police showed up in response to complaints from black business owners. The arrest was ordered by a black officer, and the arrest itself was supervised by a black officer, a female sergeant.

A crackdown on the sale of illegal, untaxed cigarettes – called “loosies” since they are sold in singles rather than in packs – had been ordered just days before Garner’s arrest by the highest ranking black police officer in the NYPD, Philip Banks.

So a black officer ordered the crackdown, black business owners called for the arrest, a black officer ordered the arrest, and a black officer supervised the arrest itself. It’s also worth noting that the 23-member grand jury which refused to indict the arresting officer included nine non-white members. Ask yourself how many of those facts you have heard from any member of the race-obsessed, low-information media.

Garner had been arrested 31 times, and eight of those had been for selling loosies. His rap sheet goes back decades and includes arrests for assault and grand larceny.

At the time of his death, Garner was out on bail after being charged with multiple offenses, including illegal sale of cigarettes, marijuana possession, false impersonation and driving without a license.

So he certainly knew the law, knew he was in violation, and knew doing it again would likely lead to his arrest, a drill he’d been through dozens of times before.

There were 228,000 misdemeanor arrests in New York City in 2013, the last year for which figures are available. All of them put together led to precisely zero deaths.

Garner, all six-foot, three inches and 350 pounds of him, clearly resisted arrest, swatting away the arresting officer’s hands while loudly exclaiming, “Don’t touch me!” After he was taken to the ground, he growled, “This ends here!” That could be taken any number of ways, but in the heat of the moment it certainly could be read reasonably as a declaration that he was going to fight arrest until he was subdued by compelling force.

The patrolman who wrestled Garner to the ground, Daniel Pantaleo, did it by the book, using a takedown maneuver every policeman is taught at the academy. He did not, in fact, use a chokehold, which is defined by the NYPD as “any pressure to the throat or windpipe, which may prevent or hinder breathing or reduce intake of air.” Now Garner was clearly able to breathe, since that’s the only way he could repeatedly say, “I can’t breathe.”

The autopsy explicitly declares that there was no injury to Garner’s windpipe or to his neck bones. This was a wrestler’s headlock, not a ch! okehold. (As a sidenote, chokeholds, while contrary to police policy, are not in fact illegal in the state of New York when an officer uses one to restrain a resisting subject. They are not even illegal in New York City, at the insistence of liberal mayor Bill DeBlasio.) Patrolman Pantaleo was not indicted for the simple reason that he did nothing wrong.

Garner’s death likely should be attributed to the fact that he himself suffered from severe asthma, something the arresting officers had no reason to know. According to Garner’s friends, his asthma was severe enough that he was forced to quit his job as horticulturist for the city. He wheezed when he talked and could not walk so much as a city block without having to stop to rest. Garner “couldn’t breathe” because of his asthma, not because of a chokehold.

In addition, he suffered from heart disease, advanced diabetes, hypertension, obesity and sleep apnea. Contrary to public perception, he did not die on site, nor did he die of asphyxiation. He suffered cardiac arrest in the ambulance and was declared dead about an hour later at the hospital.

So it turns out that almost everything bleated out by the race-mongers and the low-information media has turned out to be wrong. As the wisest man who ever lived wrote 3,000 years ago, “The one who states his case first seems right until the other comes and examines him” (Proverbs 18:17).

Eric Garner and Michael Brown both fought the law, and the law won. In the end, they have no one to blame but themselves.

New York Post columnist Bob McMcanus concluded his column on Eric Garner this way:

“There are many New Yorkers – politicians, activists, trial lawyers, all the usual suspects – who will now seek to profit from a tragedy that wouldn’t have happened had Eric Garner made a different decision.

“He was a victim of himself. It’s just that simple.”

Bryan Fischer is director of issues analysis for the American Family Association. He hosts “Focal Point with Bryan Fischer” every weekday on AFR Talk from 1:00 – 3:00 p.m. (Central).

December 10, 2014

Hillary’s Bad Politics and Worse Ideas, Bruce S. Thornton [nc]

Filed under: Bail-out, Business, Econonics, Elections, Global Intel, Historical context, Illegal Aliens, Islam, Media Check, Military, Political Commentary, Politicians, US Constitution — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — justplainbill @ 4:16 pm

Hillary’s Bad Politics and Worse Ideas
December 10, 2014 7:15 am / Leave a Comment / victorhanson

by Bruce S. Thornton // FrontPage Magazine
Photo via FrontPage Magazine

Photo via FrontPage Magazine

Once again Hillary Clinton has given the Republicans some suicidal soundbites they should stash away for 2016 in the likely event she is the Democratic candidate for president. A review of some of her recent statements reveals that Clinton is not just entitled, money-grubbing, unlikeable, unpleasant, and unaccomplished. Nor do they just show that she is a political dunce who has obviously learned nothing from her politically brilliant husband. More seriously, they expose her commitment to failed ideas and dangerous delusions.

First there was the “What difference at this point does it make!” she practically shrieked to Senator Ron Johnson during a January 2013 hearing on the Benghazi debacle that unfolded on September 11, 2012. Clinton had told the grieving parents of the victims during the transfer of remains ceremony at Andrews Air Force base that they died because of “an awful Internet video that we had nothing to do with.” Four Americans, including an ambassador, had been murdered on her watch, but she refused to explain to the Senate why she blamed the hapless maker of a YouTube video, who spent a year in jail.

This evasion is significant, for within hours of the attack it was clear that it had been a carefully coordinated, well-planned assault, not the spontaneous reaction to a video. Soon it also became known that ambassador Stevens had repeatedly requested increased security, but had been denied by officials in the State and Defense Departments. As Secretary of State, Clinton was ultimately responsible for those decisions made by State, as well as for the astonishing failure to notice the escalating violence in the months before the attacks, or the significance of the anniversary of 9/11, or the immediate evidence that the attack was not a spontaneous reaction to a video that had been on YouTube for weeks.

But in her response to all this evidence of negligence and post facto political spin, all she could do was indignantly declare that all these failures were irrelevant. In 2016, this footage of the arm-waving, shrill Clinton transparently trying to misdirect the Senators and the citizens from her patent incompetence should be played and replayed in political ads.

Next came the more recent revelation of her embarrassing economic ignorance, shameless pandering to her left-wing base. At a campaign event in October, attended also by lefty heartthrob Elizabeth Warren, Clinton lectured, “Don’t let anybody, don’t let anybody tell you that, ah, you know, it’s corporations and businesses that create jobs. You know that old theory, trickle-down economics. That has been tried, that has failed. It has failed rather spectacularly.”

Somehow Clinton missed the 1980s, when economic and tax policies that encouraged business investment led to spectacular growth. As the Laffer Center explains,

“According to the National Bureau of Economic Research, 1982-1999 was one continuous mega-economic expansion. In fact, as it stretched into 2007, this 25 Year Boom saw a tripling in the net wealth of U.S. households and businesses from $20 trillion in 1981 to $60 trillion by 2007. When adjusted for inflation, more wealth was created in this 25-year boom than in the previous 200 years. This sustained economic growth is not only impressive on its own, but even more astonishing as it compares to the period immediately preceding it. In the 10 years from 1972-1982, recessions were deep and recoveries were short. In fact, throughout American history, the nation’s economy has been in recession or depression roughly one-third of the time. But from 1981-2005, the annual growth rate of real gross domestic product (GDP) in the U.S. was 3.4 percent per year, and 3.8 percent per year during the 1983-1989 Reagan expansion alone.”

Compare that to the performance of Obama’s economic policies over the last 6 years, when intrusive regulatory regimes like Dodd-Frank and a runaway EPA, Obamacare’s highjacking of the health-care industry, the trillion-dollar stimulus squandered on crony socialist projects like “green energy,” and the anti-business rhetoric of Obama’s “you didn’t build that,” have all led to sluggish economic growth, metastasizing debt, declining income for the middle class, an explosion in entitlement spending, and nearly 20 million unemployed and under-employed.

Contrary to Clinton’s Keynesian superstitions and dirigiste magical thinking, what has “failed spectacularly” has been progressive economic policies that think parasitic politicians and unaccountable government bureaucrats can manage a complex, dynamic economic system better than a free market that incentivizes people to actually build businesses that create jobs and increase wealth. And just as spectacularly incompetent is Hillary’s political tin ear that lets her make such a statement just to curry favor with a narrow base of anti-capitalist fundamentalists, when she surely must know that come the 2016 presidential election, those words will be pinned to the Obama albatross sure to be hanging around her neck.

Finally, there is the bizarre statement at Georgetown last week about improving our foreign policy with what she called “smart power”: “Using every possible tool and partner to advance peace and security. Leaving no one on the sidelines. Showing respect even for one’s enemies. Trying to understand, in so far as psychologically possible, empathize with their perspective and point of view. Helping to define the problems, determine the solutions.” She then added a banal cliché of modern feminism, suggesting that the lack of women negotiators and signatories was responsible for the failure of many peace treaties. After all, women are naturally more empathetic and sensitive to others’ “point of view,” one of those Victorian stereotypes that feminists used to tell us were sexist insults.

These comments embody everything that is wrong with a modern foreign policy based on Kantian delusions about a global “harmony of interests,” the notion that all peoples are just like us and want all the same goods such as peace, prosperity, political freedom, and respect for human rights. If they behave differently, it’s because they just don’t know these goods are in their best interests, or they have been traumatized by history, particularly the depredations of Western colonialism, imperialism, and capitalist exploitation, which are the causes of their violent aggression and brutality. Thus if we “understand” and “empathize” with the roots of our enemies’ behavior, they will see the light and abandon aggression and tyranny.

This is the same delusion that Obama based his foreign policy on, as evidenced by his infamous “apology tour,” on which he donned the hair shirt of Western sin and groveled before foreign audiences. It’s the application to foreign affairs of the two-bit psychologizing that dominates the public schools, where boosting self-esteem and “empathizing” with punks and bullies are the favored mechanisms for teaching and civilizing young people. It utterly lacks any understanding of the tragic constants of human nature and the wisdom accumulated by the human race since the ancient Greeks and Hebrews––that, as Machiavelli said, “all men are bad and that they will use their malignity of mind every time they have the opportunity.”

For all her alleged foreign policy toughness, Clinton’s philosophy embodies the bad utopian ideals that have enabled much of the disorder afflicting the world since their spectacular failure in preventing World War I. We hear the same delusions in the words of Neville Chamberlain after Hitler’s Anschluss of Austria in March 1938, when he told the House of Commons, “We should take any and every opportunity to try to remove any genuine and legitimate grievance that may exist,” and then imagined telling Hitler, “The best thing you can do is to tell us exactly what you want for your Sudeten Deutsch.” Such blind “empathy” and “understanding” and “respect” for Germany’s “grievances,” of course, in 6 months culminated in the debacle of Munich and the devastating sequel of World War II.

Contrary to Clinton and Obama, enemies like Vladimir Putin, ISIS, Bashar al Assad, Hamas, Hezbollah, Boko Haram, the Ayatollah Khamenei, and Xi Jinping are not the global village’s wayward teenagers “acting out” because they don’t know their own best interests and suffer from insufficient self-esteem and “respect.” They are hard, brutal men, vicious and ruthless, who know exactly what they want, and who possess beliefs alien to Western ideals like liberal democracy, human rights, tolerance, and a preference for diplomatic words and “mutual understanding and respect.” In their “perspective” and “point of view,” violence is a tool of international relations, and a legitimate instrument for achieving their aims and interests. And they have nothing but contempt for our schoolmarmish empathy and respect, which they correctly interpret as civilizational weakness and a failure of morale. All they respect is force. That’s the most important truth we need to “understand.”

These 3 statements reveal political beliefs and character flaws that should automatically disqualify Hillary Clinton from being president. And even if we attribute them to rank ambition and venal opportunism rather than sincere belief, their sheer political stupidity and lack of prudence bespeak a mind and character unfit for leading the most powerful country on the planet.

Article printed from FrontPage Magazine: http://www.frontpagemag.com

URL to article: http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/bruce-thornton/hillarys-bad-politics-and-worse-ideas/

Copyright © 2014 FrontPage Magazine. All rights reserved.

December 9, 2014

Dick Lamm, former Gov of Colorado (pre-weed) [nc]

Filed under: Business, Econonics, Education, Elections, Historical context, Illegal Aliens, Islam, Media Check, Political Commentary, Politicians, Religion, US Constitution — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — justplainbill @ 7:57 pm

AMERICAN SUICIDE

Isn’t it rather amazing how a past Governor of Colorado can focus and zero
in on a major issue facing this State of California.—and now the U.S.

Wherever you stand on this issue, please take the time to read this; it
should wake you from your slumber on this important truth.

We know Dick Lamm as the former Governor of Colorado. In that context his
thoughts are particularly poignant.

Last week there was an immigration overpopulation conference in Washington,
D.C., filled to capacity with many of America’s finest minds and leaders. A
brilliant college professor by the name of Victor Davis Hansen talked about
his latest book, “Mexifornia”, explaining how immigration – both legal and
illegal was destroying the entire state of California. He said it would
march across the country until it destroyed all vestiges of The American
Dream.

Moments later, former Colorado Governor Richard D. Lamm stood up and gave a
stunning speech on how to destroy America.

The audience sat spellbound as he described eight methods for the
destruction of the United States. He said, “If you believe that America is
too smug, too self-satisfied, too rich, then let’s destroy America. It is
not that hard to do. No nation in history has survived the ravages of time.
Arnold Toynbee observed that all great civilizations rise and fall and that
‘An autopsy of history would show that all great nations commit
suicide.’â€

“Here is how they do it,” Lamm said.

“FIRST, to destroy America, turn America into a bilingual or multi-lingual
and bicultural country. History shows that no nation can survive the
tension, conflict, and antagonism of two or more competing languages and
cultures. It is a blessing for an individual to be bilingual; however, it
is a curse for a society to be bilingual. The historical scholar, Seymour
Lipset, put it this way: ‘The histories of bilingual and bicultural
societies that do not assimilate are histories of turmoil, tension, and
tragedy.’ Canada, Belgium, Malaysia, and Lebanon all face crises of
national existence in which minorities press for autonomy, if not
independence. Pakistan and Cyprus have divided. Nigeria suppressed an
ethnic rebellion. France faces difficulties with Basques, Bretons,
Corsicans and Muslims.”

Lamm went on:

“SECOND, to destroy America, invent ‘multiculturalism’ and encourage
immigrants to maintain their culture. Make it an article of belief that all
cultures are equal; that there are no cultural differences. Make it an
article of faith that the Black and Hispanic dropout rates are due solely
to prejudice and discrimination by the majority. Every other explanation is
out of bounds.”

“THIRD, we could make the United States an ‘Hispanic Quebec’ without much
effort. The key is to celebrate diversity rather than unity. As Benjamin
Schwarz said in the Atlantic Monthly recently: ‘The apparent success of our
own multi-ethnic and multicultural experiment might have been achieved not
by tolerance, but by hegemony. Without the dominance that once dictated
ethnocentricity and what it meant to be an American, we are left with only
tolerance and pluralism to hold us together.’ Lamm said, “I would encourage
all immigrants to keep their own language and culture. I would replace the
melting pot metaphor with the salad bowl metaphor. It is important to
ensure that we have various cultural subgroups living in America enforcing
their differences rather than as Americans, emphasizing their similarities.”

“FOURTH, I would make our fastest growing demographic group the least
educated. I would add a second underclass, unassimilated, undereducated,
and antagonistic to our population. I would have this second underclass
have a 50% dropout rate from high school.”

“My FIFTH point for destroying America would be to get big foundations and
business to give these efforts lots of money. I would invest in ethnic
identity, and I would establish the cult of ‘Victimology.’ I would get all
minorities to think that their lack of success was the fault of the
majority. I would start a grievance industry blaming all minority failure
on the majority placation.”

“My SIXTH plan for America’s downfall would include dual citizenship, and
promote divided loyalties. I would celebrate diversity over unity. I would
stress differences rather than similarities. Diverse people worldwide are
mostly engaged in hating each other – that is, when they are not killing
each other. A diverse, peaceful, or stable society is against most
historical precedent. People undervalue the unity it takes to keep a nation
together. Look at the ancient Greeks. The Greeks believed that they
belonged to the same race; they possessed a common language and literature;
and they worshipped the same gods. All Greece took part in the Olympic
games. A common enemy, Persia, threatened their liberty. Yet all these
bonds were not strong enough to overcome two factors: local patriotism and
geographical conditions that nurtured political divisions. Greece fell. “E.
Pluribus Unum” — From many, one. In that historical reality, if we put the
emphasis on the ‘pluribus’ instead of the ‘Unum,’ we will “Balkanize”
America as surely as Kosovo.

“NEXT TO LAST, I would place all subjects off limits. Make it taboo to talk
about anything against the cult of ‘diversity.’ I would find a word similar
to ‘heretic’ in the 16th century – that stopped discussion and paralyzed
thinking. Words like ‘racist’ or ‘xenophobe’ halt discussion and debate.
Having made America a bi-lingual/bi-cultural country, having established
multi-culturalism, having the large foundations fund the doctrine of
‘Victimology,’ I would next make it impossible to enforce our immigration
laws. I would develop a mantra: That because immigration has been good for
America, it must always be good. I would make every individual immigrant
symmetric and ignore the cumulative impact of millions of them.”

In the LAST minute of his speech, Governor Lamm wiped his brow. Profound
silence followed. Finally he said, “Lastly, I would censor Victor Davis
Hanson’s book ‘Mexifornia.’ His book is dangerous. It exposes the plan to
destroy America If you feel America deserves to be destroyed, don’t read
that book.”

There was no applause. A chilling fear quietly rose like an ominous cloud
above every attendee at the conference. Every American in that room knew
that everything Lamm enumerated was proceeding methodically, quietly,
darkly, yet pervasively across the United States today. Discussion is being
suppressed. Over 100 languages are ripping the foundation of our
educational system and national cohesiveness. Even barbaric cultures that
practice female genital mutilation are growing as we celebrate ‘diversity.’
American jobs are vanishing into the Third World as corporations create a
Third World in America. Take note of California and other states. To date,
ten million illegal aliens and growing fast. It is reminiscent of George
Orwell’s book “1984.” In that story, three slogans are engraved in the
Ministry of Truth building: “War is peace,” “Freedom is slavery,” and
“Ignorance is strength.”

Governor Lamm walked back to his seat. It dawned on everyone at the
conference that our nation, and the future of this great democracy, is
deeply in trouble and worsening fast. If we don’t get this immigration
monster stopped within three years, it will rage like a California wildfire
and destroy everything in its path, especially The American Dream.

If you care for and love our country as I do, take the time to pass this on
just as I did for you. NOTHING is going to happen if you don’t!

“If we ever forget that we’re one nation under God, then we will be a
nation gone under” – Ronald Reagan

December 8, 2014

Muslims force Sikh principal out, push for Sharia in Birmingham, NY Times [nc]

Filed under: Education, Global Intel, Historical context, Islam, Media Check, Political Commentary, Politicians, Religion — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , — justplainbill @ 10:44 pm

A Sikh Principal, Too English for a Largely Muslim School

By KIMIKO DE FREYTAS-TAMURA DEC. 7, 2014

BIRMINGHAM, England — As a Sikh and second-generation Briton running a public school made up mostly of Muslim students, Balwant Bains was at the center of the issues facing multicultural Britain, including the perennial question of balancing religious precepts and cultural identity against assimilation.

But in January, Mr. Bains stepped down as the principal of the Saltley School and Specialist Science College, saying he could no longer do the job in the face of relentless criticism from the Muslim-dominated school board. It had pressed him, unsuccessfully, to replace some courses with Islamic and Arabic studies, segregate girls and boys and drop a citizenship class on tolerance and democracy in Britain.

“I suppose I was a threat, giving these children more British values, for them to be integrated into society,” Mr. Bains said in his first interview since the controversy over his departure.

His experience has helped bring to life the often deeply emotional and highly contentious conflicts unearthed by a British government investigation this year into whether organized groups of conservative Muslims were having undue influence on public schools.

The topic has become especially sensitive at a time when Britain is concerned about the radicalization of young Muslims in the country and their involvement with jihadis in Syria and Iraq. The investigation was prompted by an anonymous letter, sent last year to local officials in Birmingham, alleging an organized Islamic takeover of British schools in Muslim neighborhoods.

Conducted by the Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills, or Ofsted, the inquiry found the allegations to be overstated. But the agency found much that was troubling about Muslim efforts to promote changes in secular public schools, and it has recently widened its investigation to 46 schools across the country.

The investigation found that five schools in Birmingham, including Mr. Bains’s, shared a pattern of behavior similar to what was described in the anonymous letter. The letter also cited Mr. Bains’s impending resignation, a month before it was made official and which only a few knew about, suggesting that the author was someone with detailed knowledge of the schools.

“The Sikh head running a Muslim school,” the letter said, “will soon be sacked and we will move in.”

The investigation found that some teachers and school board governors at the other schools were encouraging homophobia, anti-Semitism and support for Al Qaeda, sometimes inviting speakers who endorsed the establishment of a state run under Sharia law.

One school stopped music and drama lessons as well as Christmas and Diwali celebrations, and subsidized trips to Saudi Arabia for Muslim students.

In another school, the report found, girls and female teachers were discriminated against, and compulsory sex education, including discussions about forced marriage, was banned. Girls and boys seen talking for too long or considered flirtatious were reprimanded, while boys were given worksheets that said a wife had to obey her husband.

The report, released in July, highlighted Mr. Bains’s case and concluded that there had been a “coordinated, deliberate and sustained action, carried out by a number of associated individuals, to introduce an intolerant and aggressive Islamic ethos into a few schools in Birmingham.”

Muhammad Khan, the chairman of the board of governors at the time, who is no longer at the school, did not respond to repeated requests for comment. Three governors who were also present at meetings with Mr. Bains also refused to comment on his allegations.

Muslim leaders in Britain have condemned the report’s findings, saying it was wrong to conflate conservative Muslim practices with an alleged agenda to Islamicize school systems.

Mr. Bains, 47, was born to Indian immigrants in a suburb of Coventry notorious for prostitution and violent crime. He grew up listening to stories of how his father, a teacher in Punjab State, walked 30 miles each day to and from school. He would study by candlelight because his village had no electricity. After arriving in Britain and securing work as a laborer, he put his son and daughters through college.

“It made me value education more, and because it is free in this country,” Mr. Bains said. “I lifted myself out of poverty because of education. If I could do it, if I could break the cycle, other children could, too.”

His background, he said, is that “I’m an inclusionist.”

He added that he saw his role as being to “educate children to live and function in a multicultural Britain, to be appreciative of the views of other people, but also to express themselves.”

In 2012, he became head teacher of Saltley, a school where grades were falling behind the national average. In spite of his ordeal throughout 2013, the school achieved its best General Certificate of Secondary Education grades ever — roughly equivalent to the high school diploma in America. Britain’s school inspectorate judged the school as one of the most improved state schools that year.

“But I never got a single congratulation” from the school’s governing board, a mix of elected parents and other people from the community and members appointed to represent the staff and the local government, Mr. Bains said. “It was emotional harassment.”

The chairman of the governing board took to challenging his day-to-day decision making, Mr. Bains said. In one instance he was required to justify every decision he made during a three-month period, Mr. Bains said, including why he had students walk on the right side of the corridor instead of the left, what he said at assemblies and why he made changes to the school website. He had to print and distribute the resulting 300-page document to each of the 15 members of the governing board.

When a student threatened six classmates with a knife, he expelled the boy, a Muslim, in a decision supported by parents and the local authority. But governors reinstated the boy. Because Mr. Bains did not suspend another student, a white boy who had surrendered the weapon, talk spread among staff that he was racist and Islamophobic. He discovered a Facebook post and text messages calling on parents and students to protest against him, he said, and later learned that the message had even been circulated among local mosques.

“Some of the children would come in and tell me, ‘Mr. Bains, they’re going to egg your car today, so you better move your car,’ ” he said. “I felt very isolated, I was despondent. I was a head teacher going into work without any power.”

The treatment, he said, lasted 11 months, beginning just two months after he was appointed head teacher, until he resigned.

By then, all non-Muslim governors except one at his school had left. He was immediately replaced by a friend of the chairman of the board of governors. A number of staff members at other schools cited in the government investigation also resigned because they disagreed with the attitudes taken by some administrators. They also claimed that teachers had been appointed based on their religious zeal, not their teaching qualifications.

The government report partly vindicated him, Mr. Bains said. But if nothing changes, he said, “then it means anyone can just go in and destroy a school and get away with it.”

A version of this article appears in print on December 8, 2014, on page A4 of the New York edition with the headline: British Principal Who Resigned Believes He Was Seen as a Threat.

The Economist Explains Grand Juries [nc]

Filed under: Education, Historical context, Law Enforcement, Police, Political Commentary, Politicians — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — justplainbill @ 9:37 pm

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The Economist explains
How a grand jury works
Dec 7th 2014, 23:50 by R.W.

Timekeeper

ON DECEMBER 3rd a grand jury in New York decided not to indict a white police officer who choked and killed an unarmed black man. Protest marches were quickly organised across America. The decision followed on from another grand-jury decision not to indict a white police officer for killing Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager in Ferguson, Missouri. In that case, the officer claimed self defence and no video footage existed to show what had happened. But bystanders filmed the death of Eric Garner, the man in New York. The chokehold manoeuvre that was used has been banned by the NYPD since 1993. Several officers were at the scene; at no point was there a suggestion that they were in danger from Mr Garner. All this makes the decision by the grand jury not to indict the policeman particularly baffling. What is a grand jury, and how does it work?

America is one of the few countries to use grand juries. The Fifth Amendment requires that the federal legal system uses grand juries for all capital and “infamous” crimes. Grand juries are meant to weed out ill-conceived prosecutions and are particularly useful in cases of terrorism, public corruption and organised crime. Most Americans know little about the process, as the proceedings are not open to the public or to the media. Such secrecy is meant to ensure that investigations are free from outside influences and that witnesses are more forthcoming. State rules are different: only around half of the states use grand juries. And practices can vary widely. The size of a grand jury, for example, differs from place to place: in Missouri, it was made up of 12 people. In New York some 23 people sat on the jury.

In an ordinary trial there are two attorneys (one for each side), a presiding judge and a jury of 12 people who must convict beyond a reasonable doubt. Grand juries have an easier job. All they decide is if there is enough evidence to bring a case to trial—they do not determine whether or not someone is guilty or innocent. Unlike in ordinary trials no judge oversees a grand jury. Instead the presiding officer is the prosecuting attorney, who also instructs the jury on the law. This means that the prosecuting lawyer has a lot of sway. In 1985 Sol Wachtler, a former chief judge in New York, told the New York Daily News that “district attorneys now have so much influence on grand juries that ‘by and large’ they could get them to indict a ham sandwich.” Nearly three decades on it is still rare for a grand jury not to return an indictment. According to one calculation, federal attorneys brought 162,000 cases before federal grand juries in 2010. Only 11 did not result in an indictment.

Police officers are rarely charged for on-duty homicides. In 2011 the Department of Justice found that the police, who are often responding to the threat of violence, kill roughly one person every day. But between 2005 and 2011, only 41 officers were charged with murder or manslaughter for on-duty shootings, according to research by Philip Stinson of Bowling Green State University. Even so it seems shocking that the video of the police officer using the deadly chokehold was not enough to warrant an indictment. One theory as to why the officer was not indicted is that local prosecutors work closely with the local police and prefer to remain on good terms with them. This means grand juries are more likely to trust the police, too. Some people are now calling for special prosecutors to preside over grand juries in cases against police officers. Others are calling for the complete elimination of the whole grand-jury system.

Dig deeper:
Police departments would do well to look at Camden, New Jersey (Dec 2014)
Race is America’s deepest problem (Nov 2014)
How America’s police became so well armed (Aug 2014)

White Police killed by Black Perps, by Joseph John [nc]

Filed under: Global Intel, Historical context, Law Enforcement, Media Check, Police, Political Commentary, Politicians — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — justplainbill @ 7:36 pm

Joseph R. John
To
jrj@combatveteransforcongress.org
Dec 5 at 3:43 AM

The below listed E-mail is from a retired Federal Law Enforcement Officer, who I once served with. His E-mail outlines how, over a 60 day period this past summer, 4 white Police Officers were murdered by black criminal assailants. Those 4 Police Officers were murdered while trying to enforce the law, like Police officers throughout the nation do daily, at the risk to their lives. The report of the Police Officer murders was obtained from the San Diego Police Department News Group.

Where was Obama, Holder, Al Sharpton, Jesses Jackson, and Farrakhan when those 4 white Police Officers were murdered by black criminals—did they wring their hands, instigate national street demonstrations that are dividing the races, and are they going to insist on 4 federal civil rights investigation by the Justice Department to determine if the civil rights of the 4 white Police Officers were violated by the black criminals? Many other white Police Officers, who enforce the law daily at a risk to their lives, have been murdered since July 2014.

The repeated public comments by Holder and Obama about a criminal, Michael Brown, continues to foment racial strife.. Brown weighed 325 pounds, was high on drugs, robbed a convenience store, manhandled the owner of the convenience store, refused to follow the orders of a Police Officer who was dispatched to investigate the convenience store robbery. Brown then beat the police officer in his own police car while Brown was trying to take the Police Officer’s gun away. After the attack on the Police Officer, Brown refused to halt as ordered by the Police Officer. Instead of halting, Brown turned and tried to attack the Police Officer for a second time. According to the testimony of 5 black witnesses, Brown was charging the Police Officer like a football player, when he was shot in self-defense. A Grand Jury impaneled long before the shooting of Brown occurred, with 3 black members, found Brown’s shooting to be an authorized shooting.

Obama and Holder public comments have resulted in street demonstration, the torching of stores, and the firebombing of many cars which is perpetrating racial divides (Over the past 6 + years, Obama and Holder’s public comments have aggravated and perpetuated racial strife). Holder announced to the nation that he has ordered the Justice Department to conduct a federal civil rights investigation to determine if a criminal high on drugs, who robbed a convenience store, who beat a Police Officer, then tried to disarm the Police Officer, and then tried to charge the Police Officer a second time, had his civil rights violated by the Police Officer.

Holder and Obama have it wrong, the civil rights of a white Police Officer was being violated by a black criminal who attacked him, beat him, tried to disarm him, and was trying to attack him for a second time. Holder and Obama continue to ignore the repeated murders of white Police Officers by black criminals, and charge that there are too many unauthorized shootings of blacks by Police Officers—which is not true.

Joseph R. John, USNA ‘62

Capt USN(Ret)

Chairman, Combat Veterans For Congress PAC

2307 Fenton Parkway, Suite 107-184

San Diego, CA 92108

Fax: (619) 220-0109

http://www.CombatVeteransForCongress.org

Then I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for Us?” Then I said, “Here am I. Send me!”
-Isaiah 6:8

From: OFFICER GARY R RICKERT (Ret)
Sent: Thursday, December 04, 2014 8:34 PM
To: Joseph R. John
Subject: THE KILLING OF POLICE OFFICERS

Does anyone remember Detective Melvin Santiago? He was a Jersey City police officer who was shot to death just a month ago, on July 13th. Santiago was white. His killer, Lawrence Campbell, was black. Does anyone recall Obama appearing before national television and calling for justice for Officer Santiagos family? Does anyone recall Eric Holder rushing to Jersey City to see that justice was done?

How about Officer Jeffrey Westerfield? He was a Gary, Indiana police officer who was shot to death on July 6, 2014. Officer Westerfield was white, his killer, Carl LeEllis Blount, Jr. was black. where was Obama? Where was Holder?

Officer Perry Renn was an Indianapolis, Indiana police officer who was shot to death July 5, 2014, the day before Officer Westerfield was killed. Officer Renn was white. His killer, Major Davis, was black. I don’t recall any mention by Obama about the untimely death of Officer Renn. and, I doubt that Eric Holder rushed to Indianapolis to make sure justice was served.

Vermillion Parish Deputy Sheriff Allen Bares was gunned down by two men June 23, 2014 in Louisiana. Deputy Bares was white. His two killers, Quintlan Richard and Baylon Taylor were black. Was Obama outraged? Did Eric Holder rush to Louisiana to make sure that the family of Deputy Bares found justice?

Detective Charles Dinwiddie of the Killen, Texas Police Department was murdered on May 11, 2014 by Marvin Lewis Guy, a black male. Officer Dinwiddie was white. Do you recall seeing anything about that on the news? Certainly, the white citizens of Killeen didn’t take to the streets to loot and burn businesses. Do you recall any mention of Obama or Holder here?

Then, there is Officer Kevin Jordan of Griffin, Georgia Police Department. He was gunned down on May 31, 2014. Officer Jordan was black, his killer, Michael Bowman was white. This was a white man murdering a black police officer. Where was Jesse Jackson? Where was “The Reverend” Al Sharpton? Was there looting and burning on the streets of Griffin, Georgia? No, in fact, we don’t recall hearing about this one in the news as well. Why? You can draw your own conclusions.

Over that 60 day period, there have been five reported deaths of police officers by gunshot in the U.S. Of those, four were white officers who were murdered by black men. Blacks complain that white officers treat black men more aggressively on the street. You can draw your own conclusions on that one, as well.

This is what the Dems think of the Red States, from the Daily Beast [c]

Filed under: Business, Econonics, Elections, Global Intel, Historical context, Illegal Aliens, Law Enforcement, Media Check, Political Commentary, Politicians, Religion, US Constitution — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — justplainbill @ 6:19 pm

Lost Cause
12.08.14
Dems, It’s Time to Dump Dixie
With Mary Landrieu’s ignominious exit, the Democrats will have lost their last senator in the Deep South. And that’s a good thing. They should write it off—because they don’t need it.

I don’t remember a much sadder sight in domestic politics in my lifetime than that of Mary Landrieu schlumpfing around these last few weeks trying to save a Senate seat that was obviously lost. It was like witnessing the last two weeks of the life of a blind and toothless dog you knew the vet was just itching to destroy. I know that sounds mean about her, but I don’t intend it that way. She did what she could and had, as far as I know, an honorable career. I do, however, intend it to sound mean about the reactionary, prejudice-infested place she comes from. A toothless dog is a figure of sympathy. A vet who takes pleasure in gassing it is not.

And that is what Louisiana, and almost the entire South, has become. The victims of the particular form of euthanasia it enforces with such glee are tolerance, compassion, civic decency, trans-racial community, the crucial secular values on which this country was founded… I could keep this list going. But I think you get the idea. Practically the whole region has rejected nearly everything that’s good about this country and has become just one big nuclear waste site of choleric, and extremely racialized, resentment. A fact made even sadder because on the whole they’re such nice people! (I truly mean that.)

With Landrieu’s departure, the Democrats will have no more senators from the Deep South, and I say good. Forget about it. Forget about the whole fetid place. Write it off. Let the GOP have it and run it and turn it into Free-Market Jesus Paradise. The Democrats don’t need it anyway.

Actually, that’s not quite true. They need Florida, arguably, at least in Electoral College terms. Although they don’t even really quite need it—what happened in 2012 was representative: Barack Obama didn’t need Florida, but its 29 electoral votes provided a nice layer of icing on the cake, bumping him up to a gaudy 332 EVs, and besides, it’s nice to be able to say you won such a big state. But Florida is kind of an outlier, because culturally, only the northern half of Florida is Dixie. Ditto Virginia, but in reverse; culturally, northern Virginia is Yankee land (but with gun shops).

So Democrats still need to care about those two states, at least in presidential terms. And maybe you can throw in North Carolina under the right circumstances. And at some point in the near future, you’ll be able to talk about Georgia as a state a Democrat can capture. And eventually, Texas, too.

But that’s presidential politics. At the congressional level, and from there on down, the Democrats should just forget about the place. They should make no effort, except under extraordinary circumstances, to field competitive candidates. The national committees shouldn’t spend a red cent down there. This means every Senate seat will be Republican, and 80 percent of the House seats will be, too. The Democrats will retain their hold on the majority-black districts, and they’ll occasionally be competitive in a small number of other districts in cities and college towns. But they’re not going win Southern seats (I include here with some sadness my native West Virginia, which was not a Southern state when I was growing up but culturally is one now). And they shouldn’t try.

My friend the political scientist Tom Schaller said all this back in 2008, in his book Whistling Past Dixie. I didn’t want to agree with Schaller then, but now I throw in the towel. He was a man ahead of his time. Look west, Schaller advised the Democrats. And he was right. Now it’s true that many states in the nation’s heartland aren’t winnable for Democrats, either. Kansas, Nebraska, Wyoming, Idaho, and Utah will never come anywhere close to being purple. But Colorado already is. Arizona can be. Missouri, it’s not crazy to think so. And Montana and South Dakota are basically red, of course, but are both elect Democrats sometimes. (Did you know that both of Montana’s senators right now are Democrats?!) In sum, between the solid-blue states in the North and on the West Coast, and the pockets of opportunity that exist in the states just mentioned (and tossing in the black Southern seats), the Democrats can cobble together congressional majorities in both houses, under the right circumstances.

The main point is this: Trying to win Southern seats is not worth the ideological cost for Democrats.

But it’s not just a question of numbers. The main point is this: Trying to win Southern seats is not worth the ideological cost for Democrats. As Memphis Rep. Steve Cohen recently told my colleague Ben Jacobs, the Democratic Party cannot (and I’d say should not) try to calibrate its positions to placate Southern mores: “It’s come to pass, and really a lot of white Southerners vote on gays and guns and God, and we’re not going to ever be too good on gays and guns and God.”

Cohen thinks maybe some economic populism could work, and that could be true in limited circumstances. But I think even that is out the window now. In the old days, drenched in racism as the South was, it was economically populist. Glass and Steagall, those eponymous bank regulators, were both Southern members of Congress. But today, as we learned in Sunday’s Times, state attorneys general, many in the South, are colluding with energy companies to fight federal regulation of energy plants.

It’s lost. It’s gone. A different country. And maybe someday it really should be. I’ll save that for another column. Until that day comes, the Democratic Party shouldn’t bother trying. If they get no votes from the region, they will in turn owe it nothing, and in time the South, which is the biggest welfare moocher in the world in terms of the largesse it gets from the more advanced and innovative states, will be on its own, which is what Southerners always say they want anyway.

[SECESSION, THIS IS WHAT THE LEFT THINKS OF THE RED STATES. SECESSION IS THE ONLY WAY TO KEEP AMERICAN VALUES. SECESSION.]

December 1, 2014

Witness 10, The Washington Post [see prior comment on the law] Michael Brown/Ferguson MO

Filed under: Historical context, Law Enforcement, Police, Political Commentary, Politicians — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — justplainbill @ 8:05 pm

Witness 10 proves Darren Wilson had a reasonable belief he needed to shoot Michael Brown
By Paul Cassell December 1 at 2:57 AM

Missouri law allows a person to use deadly force defending himself when he has a “reasonable belief” he needs to use deadly force. The law goes on to define a reasonable belief as one based on “grounds that could lead a reasonable person in the same situation to the same belief.” Unsurprisingly, Officer Darren Wilson testified to the grand jury that he reasonably believed he needed to use deadly force to defend himself against Michael Brown. But the clinching argument on this point is that other reasonable people — i.e., some credible eyewitnesses — agreed with Wilson.

In previous posts, I have discussed how the grand jury process was fair, how Officer Wilson’s testimony covered the bases of Missouri self-defense law, and how the physical evidence bolstered his credibility. In this post, I turn to eyewitness testimony — which the Post has helpfully collected in this story. It would be difficult to discuss in detail the testimony of all of several dozen eyewitnesses. But a defendant raising self-defense need not show that his interpretation was the only one; rather he need only show that it was a reasonable one — i.e., a conclusion a reasonable person could reach based on all the facts.

Against that backdrop, I want to review in detail the testimony of one seemingly reasonable and neutral observer — Witness Number 10. If his objective assessment was that Officer Wilson acted appropriately, that would be strong evidence demonstrating Wilson’s belief was reasonable.

Witness 10 told the grand jury that he was outside while working a job on Canfield Drive when two men (later identified as Mike Brown and Dorion Johnson) walked by him. He then was able to see the events in question with a direct line of sight. Witness 10 saw the struggle in Wilson’s police car — with Brown confronting Wilson inside the car:

I just see Mr. Brown inside the police officer’s window. It appeared as [though] some sort of confrontation was taking place. . . . [T]hat took place for seconds, I’m not sure how long. . . . And one shot, the first shot was let loose and after the first shot, Mike Brown came out of the window and took off running. So my initial thought was that wow, did I just witness this young guy kill a police officer (grand jury testimony, Vol. 6, page 165, line 23, hereafter cited by just page and line number).

Witness 10 elaborated about Brown’s position: “Half of his body, his feet was still planted on the ground, his upper body was inside the window in a leaning motion inside the window, his upper body was inside” (169:21). And while the witness could not hear what was being said inside the car, “it just looked out of the norm with somebody being leaned over inside the police officer’s car” (171:15). Witness 10 then explained that, after the firing of a shot, Michael Brown and his friend took off down Canfield Drive. Officer Wilson remained in his car briefly, and then pursued with his gun drawn — but not firing at Brown (177:15). Eventually Brown stopped.
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According to Witness 10, Brown then turned and ran “full charge” toward Wilson:

He [Mike Brown] stopped. He did turn, he did some sort of body gesture, I’m not sure what it was, but I know it was a body gesture. And I could say for sure he never put his hands up after he did his body gesture, he ran towards the officer full charge. The officer fired several shots at him and to give an estimate, I would say roughly around five to six shots was fired at Mike Brown. Mike Brown was still coming towards the office and at this point I’m thinking, wow, is this officer missing Mike Brown at this close of a range. Mike Brown continuously came forward in the charging motion and at some point, at one point he started to slow down and he came to a stop. And when he stopped, that’s when the officer ceased fire and when he ceased fire[], Mike Brown started to charge once more at him. When he charged once more, the officer returned fire with, I would say, give an estimate of three to four shots. And that’s when Mike Brown finally collapsed . . . . (166:21-167:18).

With regard to the body gesture, Witness 10 explained: “All I know is it was not in a surrendering motion of I’m surrendering, putting my hands up or anything, I’m not sure. If it was like a shoulder shrug or him pulling his pants up, I’m not sure. I really don’t want to speculate [about] things . . . .” (180:5). But “[i]mmediately after he [Brown] did his body gesture, he comes for force, full charge at the officer” (180:16). Ultimately, in the view of Witness 10, the officer’s life was in jeopardy when Brown charged him from close range (206:4).

Under Missouri law, this testimony by itself (even apart from any other evidence) would have provided a sound basis for the grand jury to decline to return any charges against Wilson. A Missouri appellate decision approves the following jury instruction allowing deadly force when supported by a “reasonable belief” in the need to use such force:

In order for a person lawfully to use force in self-defense, he must reasonably believe he is in imminent danger of harm from the other person. He need not be in actual danger but he must have a reasonable belief that he is in such danger. . . . But a person is not permitted to use deadly force, that is, force that he knows will create a substantial risk of causing death or serious physical injury, unless he reasonably believes he is in imminent danger of death or serious physical injury. And, even then, a person may use deadly force only if he reasonably believes the use of such force is necessary to protect himself.

Of particular importance for this post, Missouri law defines a “reasonable belief” as one that would be held by a reasonable person knowing the same facts:

As used in this instruction, the term “reasonable belief” means a belief based on reasonable grounds, that is, grounds that could lead a reasonable person in the same situation to the same belief. This depends upon how the facts reasonably appeared. It does not depend upon whether the belief turned out to be true or false.

Witness 10 was a neutral observer who saw all the same things that Officer Wilson saw (albeit from a safe distance). He concluded that Wilson’s life was in jeopardy. This would seem to be very strong evidence that a reasonable person could reasonably conclude that deadly force was required to protect against 300-pound Mike Brown’s “full on charge.”

Moreover, Witness 10′s version of the facts is quite credible. Witness 10 saw a “confrontation” and Mike Brown’s DNA was later found inside the car. Indeed, witness 10 was afraid that Brown might have killed the police officer inside the car when he heard the firing of a single shot. (The ballistics evidence shows two shots were fired at the car, so that is a point of difference.) Witness 10 then describes Wilson pursuing Brown but not firing any shots along the way. Here again, the ballistics tracks this testimony.

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