OAKLAND, Calif. (KTVU) — 73-year-old Judy gave the gift of pot to herself, unafraid to vape and smoke inside the lounge at the Magnolia dispensary in Oakland.
She said she has been smoking marijuana since the 1960s, and thought the perfect way to relax on Christmas Eve was to buy some marijuana.
“I just learned about this place a year ago,” Judy said. “I’m doing great now.”
Just like her, dozens of customers have been lining up and packing into Bay Area cannabis dispensaries to buy holiday gifts including gummies, chocolates, cartridges and flowers.
“From the moment we were open at 9 o’clock we had a line,” Magnolia assistant general manager Kysa Butler said. “We’ve been knocking the lines out quickly but they’ve been steady, too.”
Pot presents are pretty popular as many visited for the first time to get gifts. Christopher and his dog Frankie were picking up some edibles and said they make the perfect stocking stuffers. . . .
Many cannabis businesses report having five times as many customers or more during the days leading up to Christmas.
“People start stocking up,” Butler said. “Sometimes you need a little stress reliever from Christmas shopping or sometimes you need a little something when you meet your family.”
Grandma’s getting stoned for Christmas. Because it’s California.
At least 11 people were shot and there were “multiple fatalities” when a gunman opened fire at the Borderline, a country music bar in Thousand Oaks, California. The shooting took place during a “college night” event at the bar. Some witnesses have claimed the gunman was a Middle Eastern man who threw smoke bombs to create confusion during the shooting. A Ventura County sheriff’s deputy is reportedly among those shot.
UPDATE 6 a.m. ET: In a press conference, Ventura County Sheriff Geoff Dean said 11 victims were killed inside the bar. The gunman was found dead, and a sheriff’s deputy, who was the first on the scene, was fatally wounded by the gunman. The gunman has not yet been identified, the sheriff said. Terrorism has not been ruled out as a motive, but the investigation is continuing.
A gunman has opened fire at a country music bar during a student night in the city of Thousand Oaks, California, killing 12 people and injuring several before turning the gun on himself.
The shooter stormed the Borderline Bar and Grill wearing a black trenchcoat armed with a pistol equipped with an extended magazine and smoke grenades and began targeting people as young as 18.
A Ventura County deputy sheriff was among the deceased. An additional ’10 to 15′ victims were injured during the mass shooting, including a doorman, a young female cashier and college students.
The perpetrator, dressed in all-black, wearing a baseball cap, sunglasses and a mask covering the bottom part of his face, walked up to the entrance at 11.20pm and shot the doorman before making his way into the venue.
He then opened fire on a young female cashier before throwing smoke grenades onto the dancefloor and letting off rounds into the crowd.
First responders from the Ventura County Sheriff’s Office and Highway Patrol arrived at 11.23pm and got into a gunfight with the suspect, during which a deputy sheriff was shot and later died from his injuries.
Several minutes later a SWAT team arrived and found 11 victims dead inside. The suspect was also found lifeless after apparently turning the gun on himself.
A man fired a gun at a bar in a city in Ventura County on Wednesday night, leaving 11 college night revelers dead and fatally wounding a sheriff’s sergeant who responded to the emergency before the gunman was reported dead.
The incident happened during a college night at 11:15 p.m. at the Borderline Bar & Grill at 99 Rolling Oaks Drive in Thousand Oaks, about 40 miles west of Los Angeles, said Capt. Garo Karedjian, a spokesman for the Ventura County Sheriff’s Office.
Ventura County Sheriff Geoff Dean said his agency received multiple calls of shots being fired at the bar.
Minutes later, sheriff’s Sgt. Ron Helus and a California Highway Patrol officer went in to respond to the gunshots. Helus was a 29-year veteran and was looking to retire, Dean said.
“He went in to save lives,” Dean said, his voice cracking. “He went in to save other people.”
A gunman threw smoke bombs and rained bullets on a crowd of hundreds inside a Thousand Oaks bar that is popular with college students Wednesday night, leaving 12 dead including a Sheriff’s sergeant shot trying to stop the carnage.
The massacre occurred at the Borderline Bar & Grill, with the assailant firing wildly into the crowd.
In addition to the dead, 10 other people may have been injured, according to Sheriff Geoff Dean, who added that it’s too early to know if the shooter took his own life.
The gunman burst into the bar around 11:20 p.m., cloaked in all black.
Ventura County Sheriff’s Department Sgt. Ron Helus and a California Highway Patrol officer entered the bar first and were met with gunfire from the suspect, whose identity was not immediately known. Helus was shot several times and died at an area hospital early Thursday morning, according to Dean.
Helus, a 29-year veteran of the sheriff’s department, was planning to retire next year. Dean said he died “a hero.”
He is survived by a son and his wife, whom he called before entering the bar, Dean said.
“It’s a horrific incident,” Dean said. “It’s part of the horrors that are happening in our country and everywhere, and I think it’s impossible to put any logic or sense to the senseless.
“This community in my 41 years had never experienced anything like this,” he added.
Witnesses reported a horrifying scene as gunfire echoed through the club and those inside ran for cover, in some cases using chairs to break windows to escape the building. Others hid in bathrooms and an attic as they frantically called loved ones who were hearing reports of the shooting.
The first 911 calls reporting the shooting were received around 11:20 p.m., according to Dean. Helus and the CHP officer arrived on scene and engaged the suspect by 11:26 p.m., he said.
A motive in the shooting was not immediately clear, but Dean said there was no evidence linking the attack to terrorism. Police believe the weapon used was a handgun.
Eleven victims and the shooter were found dead inside the bar by responding emergency personnel.
“It’s a horrific scene in there,” Dean said. “There’s blood everywhere.”
Until we know the identity of the gunman, we cannot know the motive. Although the sheriff said they have not ruled out terrorism, we have no substantial reason to believe that is the motive.
Progressive protesters lined up along a fence on Tuesday to protest Rep. Jeff Denham (R., Calif.) as he exited a vehicle, prompting one female protester to denigrate his Hispanic wife by saying, “Shame on your Mexican wife.”
The Modesto Progressive Democrats and other groups aligned with Josh Harder, a Democratic congressional candidate running against Denham in California’s 10th Congressional District, were in attendance at the protest. Denham’s campaign manager Josh Whitfield posted a video of the interaction on Twitter. . . .
The female protester, who was holding up a sign in Spanish, not only called Denham “garbage,” but also said “Shame on your Mexican wife” multiple times. It is unclear what several of the other protesters were chanting.
National Republican Congressional Committee spokesman Jack Pandol also tweeted out the video of the incident, which led Harder to “like” the tweet. It was later “unliked” by Harder, but Pandol saved a screenshot. . . .
Denham slammed the Democratic candidate on Twitter Wednesday, saying it was “reprehensible” for Harder to endorse what was said about Sonia Denham, his wife of 25 years. . . .
The NRCC slammed the “toxic and corrosive” culture among Harder’s supporters.
“Josh Harder needs to address the toxic and corrosive culture among his supporters to end these dangerous confrontations right away,” Pandol said.
Sonia Denham is not the first minority supporting his candidacy to be targeted. The GOP candidate sent out a statement earlier this week denouncing a hate crime against Surjit Malhi, the chair of Sikhi’s for Denham Campaign Coalition, after he was assaulted on July 31 while helping place signs for Denham’s campaign.
“Mr. Malhi is a respected leader in our community & a proud American. This is the 3rd incident in less than 2 weeks members of my team were targeted. Hate Crimes have no place in our society. The people responsible for this reprehensible act of hatred must be brought to justice,” Denham tweeted.
You see, they believe that all minorities owe their allegiance to the progressive cause because progressives say they’re working for minorities. Minorities aren’t permitted to have the agency to decide for themselves whom they will and will not support. They’re supposed to do as they’re told by their leftist betters.
Democrats are the party of hate, and it keeps getting worse.
Eric Clanton attacked Trump supporters in Berkeley.
Once upon a time — perhaps as recently as 2012 — it was possible to assume that Democrats merely disagreed with the rest of America. Through ignorance of economics or misjudgment of foreign-policy issues, perhaps their destructive agenda was an innocent error. This benign interpretation of politics allowed patriotic Americans to believe that their friends and neighbors who voted for Democrats were well-meaning, decent, sincere people who had simply made a mistake.
A former Diablo Valley College professor who used a bike lock to assault seven Trump supporters at a free speech rally last August will only receive three years of probation as part of a plea deal.
Eric Clanton, a former philosophy professor at Diablo Valley College, will receive only a three-year probation for his assault on Trump supporters at a Berkeley Free Speech rally in August 2017. Clanton was captured on video smashing a Trump supporter’s head with a bike lock. His victim ultimately fell to the ground, covered in his own blood.
Court documents revealed that Clanton struck at least seven people in the head at the Berkeley free speech rally on April 15, 2017. One of his victims had a head laceration that required five staples to fix. Clanton was initially charged with four counts of felony assault.
During a search of Clanton’s home, investigators found documents that linked him to local Antifa groups. Investigators also found bike locks and clothing that were similar to the items used by the assailant in the assault video that was published online. Additional,y, cell phone tower data placed Clanton close to the location of the assaults on the date they took place.
Clanton entered into a plea agreement on Wednesday for a misdemeanor battery charge. All felony charges against Clanton were dismissed. A charge against Clanton for wearing a mask during the assault was also dropped as a result of the plea deal.
This is who Democrats are. This is what Democrats believe. This is what your friend or relative who votes for Democrats is actually voting for — political violence against anyone who disagrees with them, so that Democrats are free to commit assault in the name of “social justice,” to deny the constitutional rights of citizens who vote Republican.
Make no mistake. This slap-on-the-wrist sentence of Eric Clanton signifies an endorsement of anti-Republican violence by the Democrat Party officials who control California, in the same way that California’s “sanctuary state” law signifies hostility against American citizens.
Democrats are an anti-American party. They hate you. If you express disagreement with Democrats, they will resort to violence to silence you, and expect the courts to set them free to do it again.
Do not forget that Eric Clanton was a professor, employed at taxpayer expense to teach philosophy to college students in California. Democrats control the schools — data on the political campaign contributions of teachers unions and university professors show that discrimination against Republicans is pervasive in the education system. The partisan activists who control this system take extraordinary measures to prevent Christians from being employed as teachers and professors, instead hiring atheist radicals like Eric Clanton to indoctrinate students with the Democrat Party’s crypto-Marxist ideology of “social justice.”
This incident must be viewed in the context of what is happening elsewhere in California, where Democrats have obtained a monopoly on power. The streets of San Francisco are a public sewer, where human feces pile up on the sidewalks next to the hypodermic needles of heroin addicts. In Hollywood, vandals destroyed the star commemorating the show-business career of President Trump. It is California Democrats like Nancy Pelosi and Maxine Waters who now define the party’s agenda.
Like I keep saying, people need to wake the hell up.
This week, a vandal destroyed President Trump’s star on the Hollywood “Walk of Fame.” Thursday night, Elijah Schaffer and Joy Villa were recording a video at the site (Schaffer hosts a YouTube channel called “Slightly Offensive”) when they were surrounded by an angry mob of Democrat thugs. Being a Republican is more or less considered a “hate crime” nowadays in California, and Schaffer was wearing a red-white-and-blue Trump jersey. The mob started chanting “F–k Donald Trump” and — because they’re Democrats, and therefore thieves — one of the thugs stole a $3,000 camera from Schaffer’s crew. This led to a brawl and police are now looking for two suspects.
[INSANE VIDEO]: Fight breaks out at Donald Trump’s star on Hollywood Boulevard. All because @ElijahSchaffer was wearing a Trump jersey and USA hat.
Children removed from a squalid California home described acts of intentional abuse that resulted in puncture wounds, burns, bruising and injuries consistent with being shot with a pellet gun, authorities said Monday.
Sharon Henry, chief deputy district attorney for Solano County, said she was “horrified” by the statements from the children and that torture was carried out in the house “for sadistic purposes.” She declined to elaborate.
“It literally breaks your heart, and you’re outraged by how a parent or anyone could commit those acts,” Henry said afterward.
Jonathan Allen, 29, the father of the children, has pleaded not guilty to seven counts of torture and nine counts of felony child abuse. He is being held on $5.2 million bail.
Police in Fairfield said earlier Monday that the 10 children, ages 4 months to 12 years, had been removed from their home March 31 after their mother, Ina Rogers, 30, reported her oldest child was missing.
Police found filthy conditions in the home shared by Rogers and Allen, police Lt. Greg Hurlbut said.
“Officers located unsafe and unsanitary living conditions including garbage and spoiled food on the floor, animal and human feces and a large amount of debris making areas of the house unpassable,” he said.
Rogers was arrested and released after posting $10,000 bail on April 9.
She gave reporters a tour of her house on Monday, denying that her husband had abused the children. . . .
Rogers told reporters she’s surprised police had leveled the most serious accusations against her husband, as he was not the disciplinarian of the family.
“There’s no broken bones, there is no major scars, nothing,” Rogers told reporters in front of her house. “My kids get bumped and bruised and scratched because they’re kids but that’s it.”
During the tour, the four-bedroom house in Fairfield, 46 miles (74 kilometers) northeast of San Francisco, was messy with scuffed walls and animal feces in the bathroom.
YOUR HUSBAND HAS TATTOOS ON HIS FACE! YOUR HOUSE IS FULL OF FECES! YOU’RE 30 YEARS OLD AND HAVE 10 KIDS!
Excuse me if I seem a bit … judgmental, but in what kind of world does this happen? “Hey, honey, I’m thinking about getting a tattoo on my face.” And she’s like, “That would be awesome. Let’s get pregnant again, because 9 kids isn’t enough. Oops, watch out for the cat poop . . .”
California has rejected terms of the federal government’s initial plans for sending National Guard troops to the border because the work is considered too closely tied to immigration, two U.S. officials told The Associated Press.
Gov. Jerry Brown elicited rare and effusive praise from President Donald Trump last week for pledging 400 troops to the Guard’s third large-scale border mission since 2006. But the Democratic governor conditioned his commitment on troops having nothing to do with immigration enforcement, even in a supporting role.
Brown’s announcement last week did not address what specific jobs the California Guard would and would not do and how state officials would distinguish work related to immigration from other aspects of border enforcement, such as fighting criminal gangs and drug and gun smuggling.
Brown’s offer of troops for the mission that Trump wants up to 4,000 troops to perform is still in place. But state authorities told federal officials late last week that the California Guard will not perform tasks in an initial rollout planned for all four border states, according to officials with knowledge of the talks who spoke condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter.
California Republicans are mounting a campaign to motivate voters against a very unpopular gas tax increase Democrats passed in 2017.
Republican Reps. Kevin McCarthy and Mimi Walters of California . . . want to put a measure on the ballot that repeals the increase. They believe the campaign could increase voter turnout and staunch a blue wave in the state. “We pay one of the highest gasoline taxes in the nation,” Walters told reporters Saturday, according to The Hill. “By the time you get to 2021, we’re going to be paying $2 a gallon for gasoline just in taxes, and we can’t do that for working families who have to travel for their job.”
The law, passed April 6, imposes a 12 cents per gallon (cpg) hike on citizens and raises the tax on diesel fuel by 20 cpg. It also implements an additional charge to annual vehicle license fees ranging from $25 to $175 depending on the car’s value.
Higher taxes and refusing to defend the border — California is the epitome of the Democrat Party’s agenda. Does America want that?
“Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves: be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves.”
— Matthew 10:16 (KJV)
“Turn the other cheek,” Jesus exhorted his followers, an excellent moral principle in terms of breaking the cycle of resentment and retaliation that has so often produced misery in human history. “Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord,” and the faithful should avoid the pursuit of punitive reprisals for every injury or insult they may suffer.
Christian discipleship is a difficult path to follow, but history shows that a misguided commitment to “peace” can have tragic consequences. What was it that allowed Hitler’s conquest of Europe, except the idiotic pacifism of Neville Chamberlain and other advocates of appeasement? Whatever the Saviour commanded, certainly the Christian should not be such a fool as to become an accomplice of genocidal brutality, yet this is what happens if we make “non-violence” a principle that allows aggressors to imagine they will meet no resistance, or if we permit criminals to believe they will suffer no punishment for their crimes.
If we would be as “wise as serpents,” we cannot reject a common-sense understanding of human nature, including the reality that, as “sheep in the midst of wolves,” the safety of ourselves and our families cannot be guaranteed by hoping that the wolves aren’t hungry today. Even if we desire to be as “harmless as doves,” common sense suggests that in some situations, a wise Christian might want to keep a pistol handy.
Guns Save Lives: True Stories of Americans Defending Their Lives With Firearms is a book I highly recommend to anyone who wants to understand the value of the armed citizen in defending human life. The law-abiding gun owner has a deterrent effect even if he never actually uses his weapon because criminals prefer unarmed victims. A criminal who disregards the possibility that his victim might be armed isn’t likely to become a repeat offender, because his first mistake could be his last. For example, if you were a criminal looking to commit a robbery, would you choose as your target the Dixie Pawn Shop in Mableton, Georgia?
The owner of a gun shop who shot back against two armed suspects is speaking out after the incident, saying he had no choice but to fire at the men, killing one.
Bullet holes are still visible on the front on the Dixie Gun and Pawn shop [Dec. 26, 2016] after what detectives describe as a gun battle broke out earlier in the day.
Police said two armed men burst in Jimmy Groover’s store in broad daylight Monday and held the gun store owner at gunpoint. “Get down on the floor, get down on the floor or I’ll kill you,” Groover recalled the suspects telling him. “Then they shot at me.”
What the men weren’t aware of is that Groover had a gun of his own. Feeling like his life was on the line, he pulled the trigger, shooting and killing one of the suspects. The other is still on the run.
Groover returned to his Cobb County business after the ordeal and showed detectives and family members how he pulled the gun off his hip to defend his life.
“I had no other choice. I had no other choice. I hate that it happened,” he told 11Alive. “I’ve been doing this 30 years. Nothing like this has ever happened. I never wanted this to happen but I want to go home at night, too.”
Was it wrong for Jimmy Groover to “want to go home at night, too”? If the meek are to inherit the earth (Matthew 5:5), they must survive long enough to receive their promised inheritance. How many crimes had these two robbers already committed before they tried to rob Jimmy Groover’s store? And how many more people would they have victimized if they hadn’t been stopped? Beyond that specific incident, how much more vulnerable to crime would we be if left-wing fanatics like David Hogg were able to disarm law-abiding Americans?
Criminals are cowards who prefer victims who are unarmed. They prey upon the weak and helpless, and what is America’s refusal to enforce its immigration law except an advertisement of helplessness which functions to summon predators from every corner of the globe?
Say hello to Yonel Hernandez Velasco, described by Sacramento’s KCRA-TV as “a transient with no ties to the community” who had a prior record for DUI and trespassing. Hernandez Velasco was hanging around a park in Auburn, California, when he attempted to kidnap a girl:
A father decked a man who allegedly grabbed his 3-year-old daughter in an Auburn-area park Saturday evening.
Yonel Hernandez-Velasco, 26, of Auburn reportedly had been acting strange about 7 p.m. in Regional Park in North Auburn. A group of boys playing basketball said Hernandez-Velasco twice asked them whether he could buy their basketball. He showed them a pair of handcuffs and told them he could handcuff one of them and drag them into the pond, according to a Placer County Sheriff’s Office Facebook post.
After the boys told him to go away, Hernandez-Velasco wandered up to a young girl, who was in the park with her family. He took the youngster’s hand and began skipping through the grass, the news release said.
The girl’s mother and the mother’s boyfriend were with their dog nearby and yelled at Hernandez-Velasco to stop. The boyfriend confronted Hernandez-Velasco and told him to let go of the girl, which he did, the news release said.
As Hernandez-Velasco began to act aggressively toward the boyfriend, the girl’s father ran up from a nearby apartment. When the father asked Hernandez-Velasco what he was doing, Hernandez-Velasco reportedly pulled the handcuffs from his pocket and wrapped them around his hand like brass knuckles.
Hernandez-Velasco charged the father, who punched him in the face, the news release said. When he came back at the father, the father punched him in the face again, and Hernandez-Velasco fell to the ground, where he remained until sheriff’s deputies and medical personnel arrived.
Hernandez-Velasco was taken to a hospital for medical clearance. A blood sample was drawn to determine whether he was under the influence of alcohol or drugs, the news release said.
He was then booked into Placer County jail in Auburn on suspicion of kidnapping, assault with a deadly weapon and attempted kidnapping.
Turn the other cheek? What kind of sick self-hatred has America embraced in the name of “non-violence,” that our children are offered as defenseless prey to monsters like Yonel Hernandez-Velasco? A nation that is not willing to defend its borders against such invaders is a nation with a suicidal commitment to its own self-destruction. California has declared itself a “sanctuary state,” but for whom is it a sanctuary? Not for Americans or their children. California has become a crime-ridden statewide ghetto where no one’s life or property is safe, where illegal aliens are appointed to office by the Democrats who run the state.
Half of the 10 cities in the world with the highest murder rates are in Mexico. All of the top 10 are in Latin America, including two cities in Venezuela and three in Brazil. The highest murder rates for U.S. cities are in St. Louis (#13 worldwide) and Baltimore (21st worldwide). Does anyone think America will be safer — that crime rates will decrease — if we continue allowing millions of illegal immigrants to enter the country?
Liberals have convinced many people — the 65.8 million who voted for Hillary Clinton — that America is a bad country that doesn’t deserve to be defended against this invasion of foreign criminals. Democrats hate America and want to destroy it, the way they’ve destroyed California.
How long will America pursue the politics of self-destruction?
