Archive for 2020

DANIEL JOHN SOBIESKI: Feckless Fauci Lies About Masks And Nearly Everything Else. “There are so many things wrong with the picture of Dr. Fauci taking in a Washington Nationals baseball game that one does not know where to start – and no it is not the fact that at that moment he is not wearing a mask. The first thing is that he is there at all, unlike the rest of America that he forbids from watching a baseball game. They’d like to take in a game too but only Fauci, secure in the knowledge that he has a regular job and a regular paycheck gets to enjoy America’s new favorite national pastime, players kneeling during the National Anthem. Dr. Fauci took a break from his world tour long enough to take in a game and throw out the first pitch, which was predictably wild and to the left, the latest in a long series of curveballs he has thrown at us.”

THE RISE OF PRIVATE MILITIAS IS NOT USUALLY SEEN AS EVIDENCE OF ADVANCING CIVILIZATION: In Minneapolis, Armed Residents Set Up Patrols Amid Calls to Defund the Police: The city council approves its first permanent cuts to the police budget; crime has surged in the past two months.

Minneapolis residents in some areas still recovering from rioting and unrest are forming community watch and security groups, some bearing firearms, to fight a surge of crime in the wake of the George Floyd killing in May. At least one neighborhood has put up barricades to keep away outsiders.

The moves come as the city council on Friday approved its first permanent cuts to the police budget, amid calls to defund the department and generally lower tax revenue due to the economic strain caused by the coronavirus pandemic. The $193 million police budget will be cut by $10 million, including making permanent some temporary spending measures—including a hiring freeze—put in place in June. Around $1 million from the police budget is being shifted to a program called Cure Violence that tries to prevent things such as retaliatory shootings through community engagement. . . .

Police say the increase in crime follows a pattern seen in Ferguson, Mo., and other places where there have been high-profile officer-involved deaths and protests. Police say that, while some in the city seem to believe police have given up, officers remain on patrol throughout the city.

As riots played out across the city in late May and early June, a group of Black gun owners responded to a call from the local NAACP and patrolled the mostly African-American West Broadway business district for 10 nights, keeping the area free of looting or arson without firing a shot, said Jamil Jackson, a leader of the group called the Minnesota Freedom Fighters, which advocates for Black gun ownership. . . .

Council member Linea Palmisano said armed neighborhood patrols, or even efforts to just keep unfamiliar people out of a neighborhood, opens a Pandora’s box.

“We are lurching for solutions,” she said, noting she doesn’t support the idea of doing away with the police department but supports the idea of letting residents vote on it.

With the neighborhood patrols, “you could very easily create the same things we rally against,” she said.

In late June, residents near a commercial strip that had been looted, and the 3rd Precinct station that was abandoned and burned, were seeing a surge of shooting and drug-related crime on their block.

“It got to the point where crime had no consequences,” said Tania Rivera, 30, who runs a child-care center with her mother. “It was being done deliberately out in the open. Drive-through drug dealing, drive-through prostitution, everything from gunshots to assaults to sex out in the public. Everything you didn’t want your neighborhood to look like.”

So after a number of community meetings, neighbors began constructing a barrier to close off two blocks of their street, first with trash cans, then debris. For a while, a boat on a trailer protected one intersection. Eventually, a nearby iron maker constructed a permanent gate. Police gave their approval as long as emergency responders could get through if requested by the neighborhood.

Neighborhood men also began an armed patrol, kicking out anyone who didn’t belong on the block after dark.

Kicking out people who “don’t belong.” When the dawn patrol’s got to tell you twice, they’re gonna do it with a shotgun. Well, laboratories of democracy and all that.

OPEN THREAD: If it takes all night, that’ll be all right. If you can get me to smile before you leave.

COMEDY BREAK: Ecstatic teen opens his first-ever paycheck, learns what taxes are, is absolutely crushed (video).

As P.J. O’Rourke wrote in his 1995 book, Age and Guile Beat Youth, Innocence, and a Bad Haircut, In 1970, “I got a job. It wasn’t much of a job. I was a messenger. But it brought in $150 a week and that was wealth as far as I was concerned. We were paid fortnightly. I waited greedily for my $300. But when my pay envelope arrived I found, after federal, state, and city taxes had been deducted and social security, health insurance, and pension plan payments had been made, only $160 was left. I began yelling. ‘I’m a revolutionary! I’ve been a revolutionary since I went to college! I’ve demonstrated! I’ve rioted! I’ve done everything I could to overthrow capitalism! And what do I find when I get my first paycheck from a capitalist company? COMMUNISM!!!’ Of course, it was several years before the implications of what I yelled sank in. At that age I wasn’t listening to anyone, myself included.”

ENDORSED:

METEOROLOGIST MARTY CONIGLIO LEAVES DENVER’S 9NEWS AFTER COMPARING FEDERAL TROOPS TO NAZIS:

Meteorologist Marty Coniglio, a staple of Denver TV weather for three decades, left [local NBC affiliate] 9News Friday, a day after he compared, on social media, federal troops in U.S. cities to Nazis.

Coniglio, in a text message, confirmed his departure but said he would “not be able to talk about the situation for at least a week or so.”

Mark Cornetta, the station’s president and general manager, said in an email that “Marty is no longer employed by 9News.” He declined to comment on the circumstances surrounding his exit.

Thursday morning, Coniglio tweeted “Federal police in cities … now where have I seen that before?” with a picture of Nazi soldiers posing in front of a Swastika banner.

Or to put it another way:

ROGER SIMON: Whirlwind: It Will Be Worse for Democrats If They Win.

One thing that will not be happening is conditions in the country getting better. Biden’s economic plans, heavily under the influence of AOC and others from his left he seems terrified of confronting, will only make things worse.

In a short while, the radical groups will be back in the streets again, demanding changes that can never be satisfied short of revolution—and even then, if history is any guide, will continue on Robespierre-style into oblivion.

Critical race theory—again with ninety-nine percent not knowing what the hell it is—will reign, dividing us even more. Many will unfairly be accused of racism and punished severely, in a way eerily similar to what happened to Evgenia Ginzberg for being called a “Trotskyist.”

The limousine liberals of Brentwood, Calif. or Malibu who backed Biden so adamantly, whether as a last resort or not, will be starting to sweat. The revolution will be coming for them.

How could they not have known? DIdn’t they see “Dr. Zhivago”? Some of them may even have helped make it. (Well, maybe not in today’s Hollywood.)

If you think things are bad now, just wait.

Read the whole thing.

MOSTLY PEACEFUL: Austin Protest Turns Deadly; One Killed. “According to a source with knowledge of the events that transpired Saturday night, the protesters surrounded the wrong car. The driver was armed, as is legal in Texas, and fired when the man with the rifle approached the driver’s car and pointed his gun at the car window.” Well, stay tuned, but blocking streets and threatening motorists is a violent act, and it is dangerous for all concerned. It’s malpractice for police to allow this to happen.

Possibly related: Black militia member accidentally shoots his comrades during face off with Three Percenters in Louisville.

FOLLOW THE MONEY… OUT OF NEW YORK:

It’s interesting to watch idiot politicians set out to destroy a city. In fairness, the idiot politicians were elected by idiot voters, so, we must conclude that these voters are getting what they voted for.

Being of less than surpassing intelligence, they vote for the political party that promises to support and care for them. And they discover that the very same political party believes that the best way to do it is through higher taxes on the rich. Since they are not rich they are all for taxing other people. But then when the rich start fleeing the high tax state, the voters who believed that they had voted themselves a living suddenly discover that the goose has stopped laying the golden eggs. So, naturally, they blame Donald Trump.

QED

Anyway, the Zero Hedge blog has offered two recent stories on a slightly arcane issue: taxing stock transactions. You see, in many stock markets around the world, the local government takes a tiny piece of every transaction. Obviously, when you have billions of stock trades, those tiny pieces end up being real money. New York State does not do so because some four decades ago the stock exchange threatened to move out of the city.

Now, with New York’s tax base shrinking and the city and state being in the hands of idiot politicians, the idea is rising from the dead.

Related: New York, London Get Hit Hardest in Mega-Mansion Sales Plunge.

While Covid is mentioned in the brief Bloomberg article, no mention of riots, protests, or other reasons that could be driving the real estate plunge.

(Via Maggie’s Farm, which is loaded with many more links for your reading and blogging pleasure.)