Archive for 2021
March 31, 2021
FLOYD MURDER TRIAL: Confrontation with Feisty Witness Brings Chauvin’s Defense into Focus.
Hansen is one of those people who is often mistaken but never in doubt — the toughest kind of personality for a litigator to prep for testimony. Once defense counsel Eric Nelson began confronting her with errors in her prior statement, she obviously realized she was unprepared and looked foolish. Clearly, saying “I did not review my statement” wasn’t going to do the trick. So, in her frustration, she started arguing with Nelson and defensively adding details that were not responsive to his questions — such as the explosive conclusion that she was angry at the time of the events in question because she had just watched the police murder Floyd. That, of course, is the central issue in the case, and one on which she is not competent to render an opinion, lacking both medical training and non-hearsay knowledge of what happened before she arrived on the scene just four minutes before the ambulance took Floyd away.
Hansen also has a service-rivalry chip on her shoulder. As a trained first responder, she perceives that the Floyd situation was botched. She has convinced herself that if 9-1-1 had been called, her fire department would have had responders on the scene within three minutes, the paramedics would have been close behind, and Floyd would have been saved. She therefore blames the police department and its dispatcher for mishandling the situation, with the result that the medics arrived too late. Hansen is emotionally invested, and self-restraint is not her strong suit, so she leaps to the conclusion that the police killed Floyd, and she wants the world to know that’s what she thinks — regardless of whether it’s admissible testimony.
Earlier: Justice for Derek Chauvin.
TRANSLATION: PLEASE DON’T IMPEACH ME. Gov. Cuomo signs bill legalizing recreational marijuana in New York.
Also effective immediately, New Yorkers will be legally allowed to possess up to 3 ounces of cannabis outside the home and up to 5 pounds at home — and can smoke pot in public wherever smoking tobacco is permitted.
Good luck regarding that last item, Manhattanites.
AFRICANS ARE HIGHLY ENTREPRENEURIAL. AFRICAN POLITICIANS — LIKE POLITICIANS EVERYWHERE — NOT SO MUCH. Africa Tries Free Trade. “Africa’s turbulent relationship with socialism began in the late 1950s and early 1960s, when a plethora of newly independent states rejected the capitalist model. Many of the new leaders viewed capitalism and colonialism as synonymous.”
Well and, like our own politicians, they realized that socialism offers more in the way of graft and unaccountable power.
“JOURNALISTS POSTING THEIR L’S ONLINE:” ‘Dude are you crying’? Serious journos are very upset that Volkswagen ‘[thinks] it’s funny to lie to reporters’ about that whole ‘Voltswagen’ thing.
CRISIS BY DESIGN: Media Finally Allowed To Tour Joe Biden’s Cages for Immigrant Kids, and Everything Is Awful.
Related (From Ed): AOC breaks silence on border to vent outrage at … the word “surge?”
That Newspeak Dictionary doesn’t shrink itself, you know.
YOU’RE GONNA NEED A BIGGER BLOG: The Biden administration quietly extended a disastrous pandemic policy.
By declaring evictions illegal, the government essentially made the collection of rent impossible. It’s as if the CDC ruled that anyone could go to a grocery store, fill up their cart, and walk out without paying.
To be fair, the latter is essentially the law (or the lack thereof) these days in Gavin Newsom’s California.
VODKAPUNDIT PRESENTS YOUR DAILY INSANITY WRAP: It’s the End of the World As We Know It (And It’s All Your Fault).
Insanity Wrap needs to know: Is literally everything bad due to climate change?
Answer: Yes, literally everything — and climate change is literally America’s fault.
Before we get to the sordid details, a quick preview of today’s Wrap.
- From “broken windows fallacy” to “broken windows fat profits”
- Watch as a progressive race-baiter is hoist with her own canard, so to speak
- Hunter Biden is the pot calling the orange black
Bonus Sanity: Americans have had it up to here with cancel culture.
And so much more at the link, you’d have to be crazy to miss it.
YOU’RE GONNA NEED A BIGGER BLOG: China Perfidy Update For March 31, 2021. “Death, taxes, and China’s communist government doing the world dirty are three unchanging verities in the modern world. Here’s a roundup of their recent misdeeds.”
Lots to chew on in this one.
THEY SEE THEMSELVES AS MEMBERS OF THE DEMOCRATS’ PROPAGANDA APPARAT, AND SO SHOULD EVERYONE ELSE: It’s Important To Be Honest About What Today’s Media Actually Are.
Earlier: Matt Taibbi on The Sovietization of the American Press.
BREAKING: Wisconsin supreme court strikes down Evers’ emergency powers — including mask mandate. “At some point, state courts will have to step up to remind governors that no one elected them Dictator. Kudos to the Wisconsin supreme court for reminding Evers [D] of the importance and necessity of small-R republican institutions of self-governance. Now Evers has to do the hard work of governing by engaging the legislature in policymaking. Let’s see if he has it in him.”
READINESS: U.S. nuclear weapons are aging quickly. With few spare parts, how long can they last?
When hundreds of land-based nuclear armed ballistic missiles were first lowered into underground cement silos spread across the vast cornfields here in 1970, the weapons were only intended to last a decade before a newer system came in.
Fifty years later, these missiles — called the Minuteman III — are still on alert, manned by members of the U.S. Air Force in teams of two who spend 24 hours straight below ground in front of analog terminals from the 1980s, decoding messages and running tests on the missiles’ systems to check if they could still launch if needed.
But it’s not the age of weapons or the decades-old technology that troubles their operators. It’s that the original manufacturers who supplied the gears, tubes and other materials to fix those systems are long gone.
Related: Did Barack Obama Invite a Nuclear Confrontation with Russia?
UPDATE (FROM GLENN): To be honest, I feel safer with the out of date analog gear than I would with modern digital stuff.
WE’RE PUTTING THE BAND BACK TOGETHER: Biden Puts Susan Rice in Charge of Effort to Expand Vote by Mail.
STRAIT TRANSIT SECURITY EXERCISE: Marines with 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU) participate in a “strait transit exercise” aboard the dock landing ship USS Carter Hall. The machine guns aboard the vehicles would provide additional “close in” defensive firepower against small boat and drone attack when the ship passes through a narrow channel (naval choke point) like the Strait of Hormuz. Photo taken March 1, 2021. This Marines update from 2019 discusses the tactical use of using weapons on Marine vehicles to repel small boat swarm attacks– precisely the mission the Marines in the picture are training to do. The third paragraph of this Air Weapons update from 2017 discusses Iranian small boat “swarm” attacks.
SENATOR COTTON CHALLENGES THE LEFT’S PSY-WAR ASSAULT ON THE U.S. MILITARY:
The psychological-warfare attack — its script straight from the antifa/Black Lives Matter version of the Cold War’s Marxist playbook — began in January when the predictable chorus of hard-left hacks in academia, media and government vilified the American military with toxic allegations calculated to demoralize military personnel, sow destructive institutional suspicion and undermine command authority with the goal of weakening U.S. national security.
Tom Cotton has decided to counterattack. It is a constructive counterattack.
RIP: G. Gordon Liddy, architect of the Watergate burglary, and legendary Miami Vice guest star, dead at 90.
COLD WAR II: Iran and China sign 25-year cooperation agreement.
The agreement is said to have been in the works since Chinese President Xi Jinping visited Iran in 2016, also agreeing to increase bilateral trade more than 10-fold to $600bn in the next decade.
No details of the agreement have yet to be officially published, but it is expected to be a sweeping “strategic accord” that includes significant Chinese investments in Iran’s key sectors such as energy and infrastructure, in addition to military cooperation.
It comes as both Iran and China are under different levels of sanctions imposed by the US.
For now, anyway.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, CULTURE-OF-HATE EDITION: Conservative students attacked for their Bible verse Easter egg hunt.
At the University of North Texas.
GET WOKE, GO BROKE: Nearly Half of Americans Changed Sports Viewing Habits Because Woke Social Justice.
Barely more than two months in and the Biden Administration seems to thrill on just how badly they can run our faces in their awfulness.
IMMEDIATELY IMPLEMENT A $1000/MONTH STUDENT FEE TO FUND THEM: Brown University students overwhelmingly vote in favor of reparations.
GOT THE SECOND MODERNA SHOT YESTERDAY AFTERNOON, and symbolically did this in the evening:
Yes, I know masks will still be necessary at times, and as a result, only lit the one up for the photo. But damn, it felt so good.
Related: Here’s what the EXP expiration date means on your vaccine card.