THIS IS MY SHOCKED FACE: Combination of Fentanyl-Laced Pills and Social Media Proving Toxic to American Teens.
Archive for 2022
May 27, 2022
BECAUSE OF COURSE THEY DO: Politifact Runs Interference for Stacey Abrams After Revisiting Issue of MLB Pulling All-Star Game.
UNTIL MORALE IMPROVES: Congressional Budget Office: Inflation Will Continue Into 2023.
PARKLAND PART II:
● Timeline Shifts AGAIN in Uvalde School Shooting. “It’s not unusual to see new facts emerge and shifting timelines in the wake of such a horrific attack. The fog of war makes it difficult to piece together a moment-by-moment account of how a situation unfolded. It will likely take weeks or even months before we know how things really transpired. Nevertheless, the information we do have raises questions about the police response to the shooting.”
May 26, 2022
WHAT CRUDE POLITICS LOOKS LIKE: Biden and Obama step on Uvalde victims to remember George Floyd.
BECAUSE THE IDEA IS MOSTLY POPULAR AMONG AFFLUENT LEFTY WOMEN, WHO ONLY VOTE DEMOCRAT: Why Republicans feel little political pressure for stricter gun control. “Most people are generally fine with our country’s gun laws (to the degree that they are satisfied) or want them to be less strict.”
Also because it’s a dumb idea.
SO THE CONVENTIONAL WISDOM OF THE LAST FEW YEARS, THAT POLICE ARE TOO AGGRESSIVE, NEEDS ADJUSTING: Uvalde Shooter Fired Outside School for 12 Minutes Before Entering: Local residents express anger and frustration as police detail new timeline of mass shooting.
Local residents voiced anger Thursday about the time it took to end the mass shooting at an elementary school here, as police laid out a fresh timeline that showed the gunman entered the building unobstructed after lingering outside for 12 minutes firing shots.
Victor Escalon, a regional director for the Texas Department of Public Safety, gave a new timeline of how the now-deceased gunman, 18-year-old Salvador Ramos, walked into Robb Elementary School, barricaded himself in a classroom and killed 19 children and two teachers.
Mr. Escalon said he couldn’t say why no one stopped Ramos from entering the school during that time Tuesday. Most of the shots Ramos fired came during the first several minutes after he entered the school, Mr. Escalon said.
People who arrived at the school while Ramos locked himself in a classroom, or saw videos of police waiting outside, were furious.
“The police were doing nothing,” said Angeli Rose Gomez, who after learning about the shooting drove 40 miles to Robb Elementary, where her children are in second and third grade. “They were just standing outside the fence. They weren’t going in there or running anywhere.”
Mr. Escalon said officers inside the school were evacuating students and school employees from the premises, as well as calling for backup. “There’s a lot going on,” he said.
Department of Public Safety officials previously said an armed school officer confronted Ramos as he arrived at the school. Mr. Escalon said Thursday that information was incorrect and no one encountered Ramos as he arrived at the school. “There was not an officer readily available and armed,” Mr. Escalon said.
Ramos shot his grandmother Tuesday morning and drove her truck to Robb Elementary School, crashing the vehicle into a nearby ditch at 11:28 a.m., according to the timeline laid out by Mr. Escalon. He then began shooting at people at a funeral home across the street, prompting a 911 call reporting a gunman at the school at 11:30. Ramos climbed a chain-link fence about 8 feet high onto school grounds and began firing before walking inside, unimpeded, at 11:40. The first police arrived on the scene at 11:44 and exchanged gunfire with Ramos, who locked himself in a fourth-grade classroom. There, he killed the students and teachers. . . .
Ms. Gomez described the scene as frantic. She said she saw a father tackled and thrown to the ground by police and a third pepper-sprayed. Once freed from her cuffs, Ms. Gomez made her distance from the crowd, jumped the school fence, and ran inside to grab her two children. She sprinted out of the school with them.
Videos circulated on social media Wednesday and Thursday of frantic family members trying to get access to Robb Elementary as the attack was unfolding, some of them yelling at police who blocked them from entering.
“Shoot him or something!” a woman’s voice can be heard yelling on a video, before a man is heard saying about the officers, “They’re all just [expletive] parked outside, dude. They need to go in there.”
The videos were collected by Storyful, a social-media research company owned by News Corp, parent company of The Wall Street Journal.
Bob Estrada lives directly across the street from the school, which his grandson attends. The 77-year-old said he and his wife walked outside when they heard gunshots and were confused why the police who arrived didn’t immediately enter.
“They are trying to cover something up,” he said of the information released Thursday. “I think the cops were waiting for backup because they didn’t want to go into the school.”
The Uvalde Police Department couldn’t be reached for comment.
This is why you should own a gun. And, frankly, why “failure to protect” on the part of police should be legally actionable.
Plus: “President Biden and first lady Jill Biden will travel to Uvalde on Sunday to grieve with the community, the White House said.”
UPDATE: Texting with a former research assistant, I wrote:
I’m thinking of writing an article calling for a new tort, “failure to protect,” when those charged with public safety fail to reasonably do their jobs. Current case law says there’s no right to police protection, but that’s just case law. I’d hold cops and the municipalities that employ them jointly and severally liable for reckless or willful failure to protect. With treble damages when they stop others from doing so.
It seems fair.
OPEN THREAD: Oh the joy.
DON SURBER: Twitter is more evil than we imagined.
Maybe the best thing Elon Musk can do is shut Twitter down once he owns it.
In the name of security, Twitter demanded more personal information from users. They complied because they wanted their security protected, right? Twitter then sold this data to advertisers.
This was so bad that the evil Biden administration objected.
NPR reported, “Twitter has agreed to pay a $150 million fine after federal law enforcement officials accused the social media company of illegally using peoples’ personal data over six years to help sell targeted advertisements.
“In court documents made public on Wednesday, the Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice say Twitter violated a 2011 agreement with regulators in which the company vowed to not use information gathered for security purposes, like users’ phone numbers and email addresses, to help advertisers target people with ads.
“Federal investigators say Twitter broke that promise.”
That’s as shocking as learning there is no Santa.
You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy.
THE WINTER SOLDIER IN WINTER: Newly obtained memo shows John Kerry was conducting ‘secret’ meetings with Iran during the Trump administration.
(Classical reference in headline.)
PROFESSOR CARRINGTON, CALL YOUR OFFICE: Coronal mass ejections: What are they and how do they form?
PARKLAND PART II: Texas Police Lieutenant Says Cops Were Reluctant to Engage Gunman Because ‘They Could’ve Been Shot.’
● Uvalde mom: The feds cuffed me when I begged cops to go in and confront the shooter.
● Texas Police Spox on Live TV Confirmed Cops Went In for Their Own Kids During Uvalde Shooting.
PAST PERFORMANCE IS NO GUARANTEE OF FUTURE TRUNALIMUNUMAPRZURE:
—The New York Post, Monday.
● Chaser: White House Eyes Restarting Idle Refineries.
The Biden administration is reaching out to the oil industry to inquire about restarting shuttered refineries, as the White House scrambles to address record-high gasoline prices that are setting off political alarm bells ahead of the midterm elections.
Members of the National Economic Council and other officials have inquired within the industry about factors that led some refining operations to be curtailed and if plans are underway to restart capacity, a person familiar with the matter said. The person, who wasn’t authorized to speak on the record, added no direct ask to restart operations was made.
The White House didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
The administration’s efforts come as the average price of a gallon of regular unleaded gasoline stood at a record $4.60 May 25, just as the summer driving season is set to begin. In California, prices are more than $6 a gallon, according to AAA.
—Bloomberg News, today.
As Glenn asks in his latest New York Post column, “So does the Biden administration actually want to see middle-class Americans reduced to poverty and privation? Or is it just too stupid to foresee the obvious consequences of its own action? At this point, I’m not even sure which is worse. But with the midterms coming, no amount of talk about gun control, abortion or other Democratic hot-button issues is going to distract Americans from what’s happening to their pocketbooks. Good.”
WAIT, I THOUGHT EVERY SMOKER WAS SURE TO GET LUNG CANCER: The Mystery of Why So Many Lifelong Smokers Never Get Lung Cancer May Be Solved.
Meanwhile an ex-girlfriend of mine died of lung cancer at 33 despite never smoking, which always struck me as particularly unfair.
EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: US economy shrank by 1.5% in first quarter of 2022.
The Crisis Of Young Men In America: I join Rachel Campos-Duffy and former US Congressman Sean Duffy on their Fox News podcast to discuss the Texas school shooting.
HAPPY WORLD DRACULA DAY.
My favorite take on the Dracula story is Fred Saberhagen’s series, beginning with The Dracula Tape, which is amazingly faithful to the Bram Stoker novel and yet tells a very different story.
MY NEW YORK POST COLUMN: Team Biden might be purposefully grinding down the middle class. “Vladimir Lenin supposedly once said, ‘The way to crush the bourgeoisie is to grind them between the millstones of taxation and inflation.’ There’s some doubt as to whether this line is genuine; regardless, it seems like a pretty good description of what the Biden administration is doing to America’s middle class.”
PARKLAND REVISITED? WaPo: Video shows Uvalde parents were begging cops to intervene within 15 minutes of start of shooting.
Related: Grieving father: ‘As soon as they heard the gunshots they should have rushed in.’
UPDATE: It looks like officers just stood around. “Is this like Marjory Stoneman Douglas in Florida? That’s not a debate that’s constructive right now. I will say that the school resource officer at Marjory, Scot Peterson, did absolutely nothing, which led to his termination. The security guard at Robb engaged Ramos. Still, for members of the community and parents especially, the fact that police were there and did nothing for 40 minutes is not comforting. Yes, police are the first ones to enter the fray. They’re supposed to face danger and neutralize threats to ensure public safety but two of their own went down and the situation was chaos. Still, it’s just all-around heartache for this city. And it really doesn’t help that politicians, like Beto O’Rourke, would think this could be the moment to remind people he’s running for governor.”
Well, Beto. But see the update, which says that the school resource officer didn’t confront Ramos. What really happened? Lots of uncertainty, but not about the cops standing around outside while parents begged them to take action.
GOOD: Texas Association of School Boards severs ties with national association.
The fall-out from concerned parents being called domestic terrorists by a school board in Virginia continues. Membership in the National School Boards Association (NSBA) has dropped substantially. The Texas Association of School Boards (TASB) is the latest state group to sever its ties with the national association. The TASB responded to the release of a private investigation into a letter sent by the National School Boards Association to the White House on Sept. 29. The NSBA contacted the White House asking for assistance from the Department of Justice to deal with angry parents attending school board meetings. Parents were showing up at school board meetings demanding answers on school closures during the pandemic, mask mandates, and progressive curriculum being taught in classrooms. School board members labeled parents as domestic terrorists after overheated exchanges during school board meetings. The letter sent on September 29 initially included a request for the National Guard to be deployed to some school district meetings. That language was later removed.
Let that sink in. The NSBA wanted to send in a military presence to intimidate parents into submission. The investigation findings brought about a decision by the TASB board of directors to leave the national organization on Monday.
Public schools should be replaced by vouchers, as a way of eliminating the toxic — and unAmerican — bureaucracy that has built up around them.
OK, CHIEF: SFUSD drops the word ‘chief’ from job titles to avoid connotation with Native Americans.
They deserve to be mocked.
DON’T CONFLATE MASS SHOOTINGS WITH SCHOOL SHOOTINGS: There Have Been 13 Mass School Shootings Since 1966, Not 27 This Year.