What’s causing the supply-chain crisis? One word: California.
Sundance at Conservative Treehouse has a long article explaining this: California passed an emissions law that required trucks to meet standards that the majority of trucks in America can’t meet. Basically, about half the truckers in America are banned from operating in California. Because California ports — specifically Los Angeles and Long Beach — are the most convenient for shipments from Asia, this policy created a transportation problem that major importers tried to solve by diverting shipments to other ports. So then you had ships from Asia going through the Panama Canal to reach ports in New Orleans, Tampa, Jacksonville, Savannah, etc. However, the necessary infrastructure (especially cranes to offload cargo containers) to handle the increased loads at those other ports could not be created overnight. Thus, the bottleneck in California (caused by that state’s stringent emissions laws) led directly to bottlenecks at every other port in America.
The Constitution clearly allots to the federal government the authority to regulate interstate commerce, but California’s law — one Democrat-controlled state’s “Green New Deal” — is clearly having a disastrous impact on this commerce. Donald Trump would have put a stop to this, but Biden got 64% of the vote in California, and Biden would very much like to impose those job-killing policies on the whole country.
Only Pat Herrity stood firm. The rest of the Fairfax County Board of Brandons and Karens voted to assume the position, and request that the box be stuffed next month for the gubernatorial election. And if anyone is equipped, it’s Greasy Terry:
The Fairfax County Board of Supervisors is asking Gov. Ralph Northam to waive the witness signature requirement for absentee ballots cast by mail in this fall’s election.
The board voted 9-1 for the proposal by Chair Jeffrey McKay to send a letter to Northam, with Springfield District Supervisor Pat Herrity, the board’s only Republican, casting the only vote against the motion.
McKay said that waiving the witness signature requirement – as was done during the 2020 election – is necessary due to the continued threat of COVID-19. He said several Fairfax residents had shared concerns with him about obtaining witness signatures – arguing they could be exposed to COVID-19 in the process.
No one believes you, Demsheviks. With every day, with ever liberty that you brutally devour like it was some fat-dripping slice of baked flatbread smothered in toppings, your butt just gets bigger. The good nature of Americans has been stressed the last twenty months by the “two weeks to flatten the curve”. However, a line as been crossed when parental input into what is taught in schools is casually rejected:
In [his] last debate with Youngkin, however, McAuliffe opined that parents shouldn’t be telling schools what to teach their children. This statement may have shifted the race in Youngkin’s favor, and I no longer assume McAuliffe will win.
Last night two smart, politically knowledgeable Virginia residents told me they believe Youngkin will win. I’m on the fence, but find it interesting that McAuliffe is now complaining that Joe Biden is dragging him down. He’s probably right, but it occurs to me that candidates who think they will win don’t start blaming their party’s president for their woes.
There is no way that any rational, well-informed, patriotic voter would ever cast a ballot for the godless Commies that the Demsheviks have degenerated into. The willingness of the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors to sacrifice election security to allow stuffing the ballot box seems a tacit recognition of this reality.
Virginia conservatives broke my heart when they were too lame to support Ken Cuccinelli eight years ago. The more GOPe Ed Gillespie had no joy in 2017. So, despite the fact that Glenn Youngkin is running a smart campaign against a buffoonish candidate with President Potted Plant for a backdrop, it’s best to focus on getting everyone voting and keep the hopes in check.
After last night’s heartbreaking loss at Texas A&M, I texted my sons, “Y’all boys have been spoiled by Saban.” Over the past 13 seasons, dating back to 2008, Alabama has lost only 17 games, while recording two undefeated seasons (2009 and 2020) and winning six national championships. Under Saban, the Crimson Tide has won so often that a defeat seems unthinkable; going into Saturday’s A&M game, ’Bama had won 19 consecutive games dating back to a 2019 loss to Auburn.
We must not lose perspective. Only once under Saban has Alabama recorded back-to-back national championships, in the 2011 and 2012 seasons, with A.J. McCarron at quarterback, and a powerful running game led by Trent Richardson (2011) and the one-two combination of Eddie Lacy and T.J. Yeldon in 2012. But what distinguished those teams was defense — the Tide was at or near No. 1 in every defensive category.
It would perhaps be too much to hope that Alabama could repeat that feat of back-to-back national titles, especially after sending so many players from last year’s team to the NFL, including six first-round draft picks — Jaylen Waddle, Patrick Surtain, DeVonta Smith, Mac Jones, Alex Leatherwood and Najee Harris. As folks say, Alabama doesn’t “rebuild,” they reload, but that’s an awful lot of talent to replace in a year and, due to injuries, the Crimson Tide was actually starting a true freshmen on defense Saturday. True, Dallas Turner is a five-star recruit, but it doesn’t change the fact that a year ago he was playing high-school ball.
Being an Alabama fan means there are no excuses for losing, however. We actually expect to win every game — Saban has spoiled us, as I say — and so the occasional defeat is traumatic. I remember the 2015 loss to Ole Miss the way some people remember where they were on 9/11.
Speaking of the 24 points Alabama gave up to A&M in the first half Saturday, Saban said tersely: “There were a lot of issues.”
That’s a succinct understatement. Much of the problem is with the Crimson Tide’s offense, which was inconsistent — at times brilliant, but at other times hapless. My brother Kirby focused his blame on our “midget quarterback” Bryce Young, who is listed on the roster at 6 feet tall, but whom Kirby insists is no taller than 5-foot-10. However tall he is, Young is shorter than Mac Jones (6-3), and as a sophomore, does not yet have the steadiness that Jones showed as a senior in last year’s national championship season. My grievance, however, is that Alabama was throwing the ball too much. Our star running back, Brian Robinson Jr., had 24 carries for 147 yards — more than six yards per carry — and yet the coaches would not commit to the running game as the key to their offense. Call me old-fashioned, if you will, but if the running game’s going good — and 6 yards a carry is very good — why even pass the ball at all? Robinson left, Robinson right, Robinson up the middle — that would have been my game plan, at least until Texas A&M was forced to stack the box against him, and then we’d kill them with the pass.
Details, details. No doubt the coaches and players reviewing video of the game will have many post-game critiques of their decisions, but the season goes forward, and there is no time for regrets. The joy of cheering America’s greatest college football program comes weighted with a burden of sorrow, the death-like pangs of misery whenever Alabama loses. It doesn’t happen often, but when it does, it really hurts.
Dashcam video shows the crash that killed a 16-year-old and injured five other teens. It started with a police pursuit on Milwaukee’s northwest side, lasting around 6 minutes.
On June 15, when the crash happened, Milwaukee police said the pursuit ended before the deadly crash. Dashcam video reveals the time between the two was only a few seconds.
Officers first tried to pull over the silver Kia near Mariners Street and North 99th Street. Milwaukee police say the Kia was reported stolen the day before, and the pursuit began because of reckless driving, crossing into oncoming traffic about a minute and a half later on Good Hope Road – reaching speeds over 90. The video shows the Kia performing illegal U-turns multiple times.
The Kia again enters oncoming traffic on 76th Street. About 25 seconds later, the officers were told to cancel the pursuit.
The crash happened mere seconds later, just over 6 minutes after the chase started.
The 16-year-old driver of the Kia died that night at Children’s Wisconsin. He had two 12-year-old passengers who were seriously injured. There were three teens in the white Infiniti that was hit. . . .
An analysis of the Kia estimates the car was going over 100 miles per hour 5 seconds before the crash, slowing down to 65 miles on impact.
If you don’t have time to watch the whole seven-minute video now, you can click here to skip to the 6:08 mark where the teenage car thief makes the fatal decision to drive into oncoming traffic. Immediately after this deadly “accident” (a head-on collision isn’t really very accidental when you’re driving in the opposite lane at 100 mph) in June, local media produced the inevitable “Family Demands Answers” story:
The Milwaukee County Medical Examiner’s Office identified the 16-year-old boy who died in a horrific crash Tuesday night as Damantae Hambright. Five other young people were injured.
It happened just before 9 p.m. on North 76th Street, near Good Hope Road.
According to the Milwaukee Police Department, officers noticed a stolen Kia Sportage on Good Hope Road and attempted to pull it over. Rather than stopping, the 16-year-old driver, Damantae Hambright, took off. A police chase ensued.
Investigators say Hambright started driving the wrong way — into oncoming traffic — on 76th Street, ultimately crashing head-on into another car (an Infiniti M35).
The occupants of that car — two 18-year-olds and a 19-year-old — all suffered life-threatening injuries, but are stable at Froedtert Hospital.
Two 12-year-old girls who were in the stolen car with Hambright sustained very serious injuries. . . .
Police say none of the occupants in the stolen vehicle were wearing seatbelts. Hambright’s mother, Pairresh Bond, sent TMJ4 a statement that reads in part, “my only son was a 16-year-old black male in Milwaukee, Wisconsin who made the wrong decision, and who hasn’t at that age? He didn’t deserve to pay with his life. I feel terrible about the whole incident and send my prayers to all involved.”
Excuse me if this seems insensitive to a grieving parent, but are you out of your freaking mind, lady? What kind of bizarre madness has seized hold of people in Milwaukee that stealing a car and driving it 100 mph into oncoming traffic is spoken of as merely the kind of “wrong decision” that anyone might make at age 16? And what does this “wrong decision” have to do with him being a “black male in Milwaukee”? Is the mother of the deceased car thief telling us that people of African descent have some sort of genetic tendency toward grand theft auto and high-speed driving? Or is this just some localized custom, specific to Milwaukee? A coming-of age ritual? Jewish boys get a bar mitzvah, WASP girls do the cotillion, Mexican girls have a quinceañera, and black kids steal cars?
Damantae just “made the wrong decision” when he stole that car. Damantae just “made the wrong decision” when he was riding around on a Tuesday with two 12-year-girls in that stolen car. When Damantae got blue-lighted by the cops, he just “made the wrong decision” to take off at 100 mph, cross the median and go head-on into oncoming traffic.
And why? Because he was a “black male in Milwaukee,” his mom says, as if that explains everything, or as if maybe she expects Ben Crump to show up and make her son a heroic martyr like George Floyd.
As someone who has spent a 35-year career finding the right words to describe all kinds of situations, I confess utter failure here, because there are no words adequate to express such intense stupidity. This astonishingly stupid quote — Damantae “made the the wrong decision, and who hasn’t at that age?” — expresses a pattern of belief and behavior that we might call the Zero Consequences Syndrome.
If people are encouraged to believe that it is unfair for them to suffer negative consequences for harmful behavior, and if social institutions like schools, courts and the news media are all committed to such beliefs, harmful behavior will become commonplace. Many black people apparently now believe that it is wrong for any black person to be arrested or imprisoned for crime, because the justice system is “racist.” And so this belief leads to an increase of harmful behaviors that the criminal justice system is supposed to deter. Mayhem and destruction ensue and when, inevitably, people die as a result, you get quotes like this from idiots who are shocked — shocked! — that somebody has to suffer the consequences of bad behavior. The perpetrator of a serious crime (and auto theft is serious, to say nothing of attempting to elude police at 100 mph) is depicted as a victim, who “didn’t deserve to pay with his life.”
This is where the “social justice” mentality leads. By the logic of BLM, police are always wrong and criminal suspects are always innocent, so long as the suspect is black. No matter what the black suspect has done, police are never justified in attempting to arrest him, and the conclusion of this syllogism is that the black suspect has a “right” to resist arrest or, as in the case of Damantae Hambright, to flee from police at 100 mph in a stolen car, going head-on into oncoming traffic. And the car thief does not “deserve” the consequences of his own felonious behavior.
The stupid acorn never falls far from the stupid oak.
A California “shaman” charged with starting a wildfire that is threatening thousands of homes claimed it started by accident — while she was boiling bear urine to drink, according to local reports.
Alexandra Souverneva, 30, faces up to nine years in prison for allegedly sparking the Fawn Fire, which has destroyed 41 homes and 90 smaller structures and is threatening 2,340 others, officials have said. She has pleaded not guilty.
She is now being eyed for possibly starting other fires across the Golden State, according to the Redding Record-Searchlight.
As the fire in Shasta County raged on Wednesday, Souverneva claimed she’d been hiking and trying to get to Canada, according to documents obtained by the outlet.
She told forest officials that she was thirsty and had come across a puddle of what she believed to be bear urine — and tried to make a fire to boil it, according to documents obtained by the outlet.
What? You wouldn’t drink a puddle of bear urine, even after it was boiled? Don’t you believe in science? Ask any shaman about this.
By the way, police say a search of Souverneva’s backpack found “a green, leafy substance she admitted to smoking that day” — entirely legal in California, of course — and no self-respecting shaman would pass up a chance to smoke “a green, leafy substance.” Because science.
She may be linked to other recent fires in the state, Shasta County District Attorney Stephanie Bridgett said during a press conference on Friday morning. Souverneva has declined an interview request from the Bay Area News Group.
Souverneva graduated from Palo Alto High School in 2009 and the California Institute of Technology in 2012 with degrees in chemistry and biology.
She enrolled in a Ph.D. program at the State University of New York’s College of Environmental Science and Forestry but did not complete studies. She then worked in medicinal chemistry as a research associate at the biotech companies Gilead Sciences in Foster City and Nanosyn in Santa Clara.
A former Palo Alto yoga instructor, certified scuba dive master, piano teacher and camp counselor, she most recently tutored Bay Area students in the sciences at Palo Alto’s AJ Tutoring, a respected SAT test prep business.
Souverneva’s LinkedIn profile, which features a photo of a forest, lists her occupation as “shaman,” a religious term for a person who believes themselves connected to the transcendent world and acts as a healer and diviner. She’s registered to vote as a member of the Green Party.
But she has run into legal trouble before. In Santa Clara County, court records show she faced misdemeanor charges in 2017 and criminal charges in 2015. Details were not available on Sunday.
Earlier this month, Souverneva was arrested on Interstate 5 near Red Bluff and booked into the Tehama County Jail on suspicion of driving under the influence of alcohol and drugs and obstructing and resisting arrest. A week later, she was arrested in coastal Oregon for criminal trespass, which means unlawfully entering another’s enclosed or fenced-in property.
The Fawn Fire was ignited Sept. 22 in a remote canyon on property adjacent to Shasta County’s JF Shea Quarry. Earlier that day, Souverneva was seen trespassing on the property by a quarry employee and asked to leave. She ignored the warning and continued walking into the hills, according to a report filed by CalFire.
The quarry employee reported that she was acting strangely, said Bridgett.
That evening, as firefighters were battling flames, she walked out of the brush and asked for water and medical help, according to the CalFire report. . . .
At the Friday court appearance, an attorney said Souverneva had made statements to law enforcement that indicated a possible mental health crisis “or something to do with drug abuse,” according to the Redding Record-Searchlight.
A Green Party member was “acting strangely”? I’m shocked, shocked! However, as to the scientific value of this incident, I’d say it proves one thing: Crazy People Are Dangerous. But we already knew that.
Ed McGinty is in the news again. The 72-year-old Democrat has made himself obnoxious to his neighbors in The Villages of Florida by riding around in his golf cart plastered with anti-Trump signs.
Last week, McGinty was arrested and charged with stalking after he accosted a woman at the neighborhood swimming pool who was wearing a T-shirt with the slogan “Joe Biden Sucks.” The details of that incident are less important than what Ed McGinty’s obnoxiousness teaches us about political tribalism. If you’re looking for a way to explain why a grown man would act the way that McGinty does, it was revealed in a Washington Post profile last year which mentioned that McGinty, a retired real estate broker and Philadelphia native, “has always been a Democrat, just like his parents before him.”
In other words, McGinty inherited his partisan loyalty to the Democratic Party and, until he moved to The Villages a few years ago, he had lived inside a bubble where such loyalty was commonplace, especially among Irish Catholics like himself. In 1960, when young Ed was 11, America elected its first Irish Catholic president, John F. Kennedy, who got 68% of the vote in Philadelphia. For the son of an Irish Catholic family in Philadelphia in those days, being a Democrat was as natural — just “the way things were” — as it was for me, growing up in Georgia during the “Solid South” days when there was no Republican Party to speak of in the state. (Kennedy got 69% of the vote in Douglas County, where I was a 1-year-old at the time.) I remained a Democratic Party loyalist until the mid-1990s, when Bill Clinton’s policies (particularly the so-called “assault weapons” ban) drove me out of the party. Probably I was like a lot of my fellow Georgians during that era. We had remained loyal Democrats until Clinton’s presidency convinced us that the party no longer shared our values, and that our loyalty was not reciprocated.
It’s difficult to believe that someone like Ed McGinty, who proudly boasts of his Catholicism and mentions attending Cardinal Dougherty High School, never reconsidered his political loyalty, given how the Democratic Party has gone all-in for abortion since 1972. But recall that he’s from Philadelphia, which went for Obama by 83% in 2008 and 85% in 2012, and which went for Hillary Clinton by 83% in 2016. In communities where partisan affiliation is so one-sided, dissent is seldom heard, and is viewed as disloyalty to the community. This is why, for example, black Republicans are so rare — more than 90% of black people vote Democrat, and a black person who speaks out against the party’s liberal agenda is denounced as a traitorous “Uncle Tom” sellout.
The Villages is in Sumter County, Florida, which is not quite as solidly Republican in the way Philadelphia is solidly Democrat. However, 68% of voters in Sumter County voted to reelect Donald Trump, and probably the percentage was even higher in The Villages, an affluent (and nearly all-white) retirement community. Somehow, Ed McGinty can’t figure out why anyone would vote Republican, so he plasters his golf cart with signs denouncing his Republican neighbors as “racist,” etc.:
“I’m proud that I’m standing up for what’s right,” he said. “There’s never been a doubt in my mind that what I’m doing is right.”
Never a doubt in his mind, you see. That’s what tribalism looks like.
Patrick Rene McDowell is like a “rabid animal,” according to the Florida sheriff whose deputy was fatally shot by the suspect Friday. The manhunt for McDowell is now in its third day.
“This guy is dangerous,” Nassau County Sheriff Bill Leeper said Saturday. “If you’re in a home and he breaks into your home and you have a gun, blow him out the door cause he’s like a rabid animal. He will kill you with his mindset. What he did to that deputy, was uncalled for, unnecessary and he needs to pay for it.”
An ex-Marine with a drug habit and a criminal record, McDowell was driving a Chrysler minivan with a female passenger about 2:30 a.m. Friday when he was pulled over by Deputy Josh Moyers. McDowell didn’t have a license and gave the deputy a false name. When Moyers learned that the name didn’t match the vehicle’s owner, he asked McDowell to step out, at which point McDowell shot Moyers in the face with a pistol, then shot him again in the back after the deputy hit the ground. McDowell went into a nearby wooded area, and authorities believe he shot a police dog that was tracking him Friday.
“We never know what’s going to happen when we leave home in the morning,” Sheriff Leeper said Saturday. “This was just a traffic stop and it turned out to be a murder of the deputy.”
Nassau County, on the Georgia border north of Jacksonville, Florida, is largely rural, and authorities believe McDowell is still in the area.
McDowell was active duty in the Marine Corps from 2005 to 2009, and was deployed to Iraq. He was in the Marine Reserves until 2013. For a while after he returned from Iraq, McDowell worked as a security guard in the Jacksonville area, but in recent years turned to drugs and crime:
He has previously been arrested for giving a false name to law enforcement and aggravated possession of stolen firearms, according to Nassau County Sheriff’s Office. McDowell was arrested in April 27, 2021 by the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office for failure to appear for several charges stemming back to 2019, according to arrest documents. Those charges include possession of cocaine and possession of drug paraphernalia. He was also arrested in September 2018 by the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office for driving with a suspended license and attaching a license plate or sticker not assigned. McDowell was arrested in 2019 for forging checks from his grandfather’s account as well. He has a criminal past in Illinois and Indiana too. Charges there range from burglary, to theft, to carrying a handgun without a license and leaving the scene of an accident, as well as driving while intoxicated endangering a person. Some of those charges were reduced or dismissed. . . .
Deputies say Patrick McDowell has previously been [involuntarily committed for psychiatric treatment under the Baker Act] and has been noted to suffer from depression, seizures, and PTSD.
Why was this guy out on the street? Less than six months ago, they had him under arrest in Jacksonville, but turned him loose. Now a deputy is dead, and McDowell is being hunted “like a rabid animal.”
It’s been two months since our last Aspiring Rapper Update, and I know that many of our readership may have been disappointed in the dearth of recent news about violence affecting the hiphop community.
Such readers will no doubt be interested to learn that Timothy “Lil Tim” Leeks has not been idle since being busted for shooting King Von. It seems that the original charge of murder was reduced to manslaughter, perhaps because video of the incident showed that King Von was the aggressor in the fight that ended with him being fatally shot. So in March, after twice being denied bail, Leeks was released on $100,000 bond and immediately resumed his peaceful, law-abiding civilian life.
That was sarcasm, OK?
Timothy Leeks is a lifelong thug and a menace to society, and it was no surprise to learn that he got busted Wednesday on 11 different charges after leading police on a high-speed chase in Chatham County, Georgia.
A search of Savannah-area media turned up no coverage of the arrest — apparently high-speed pursuits aren’t deemed newsworthy in Savannah — but as the website HipHopDX says, you can find Leeks in the Chatham County jail database. Meanwhile, the “aspiring rapper” motif has become an international phenomenon, e.g., Ontario, Canada:
An aspiring Scarborough rapper has been arrested for the shooting murders of two young women at a Fort Erie Airbnb in January.
On Thursday [Aug. 26], Niagara Regional Police confirmed that with the assistance of Toronto Police, 22-year-old Christopher Lucas — who cops said was also known as ‘El Plaga,’ was arrested and charged with the shocking deaths.
He faces two counts of first-degree murder and was to appear for a video bail hearing in St. Catharines on Thursday.
On Jan. 19, during a birthday bash at a chalet-styled home along the Niagara Parkway, 20-year-old Windsor resident Juliana Pannunzio and 18-year-old Christine Crooks, of Toronto, were shot.
Someone called 911 and police arrived to find the women dead.
Detectives previously released video surveillance images of the party in an attempt to identify some of the unknown guests who attended.
A $100,0000 reward was also offered for information leading to the arrests of the perpetrator.
There’s a birthday party. Two women get shot to death. Everybody leaves the party before cops show up. An aspiring rapper is arrested.
You will perhaps not be surprised to learn that Christopher Lucas had previously been arrested in 2016 for attempted murder and 22 other charges including assault with a weapon, robbery with a firearm and possession of crack cocaine. Meanwhile, in Colchester, England:
Two men who launched a vicious knife attack on an aspiring rapper and young father after smashing down his front door have been convicted of murder.
Alinjavwa Siwale, 22, was stabbed and died in the kitchen of his Colchester home while his younger brother Suwi frantically cried out for help.
Chelmsford Crown Court heard Phoenix Lee, 20, and Sheldon McKay, 25, carried out a swift attack “lasting less than two minutes” shortly after midnight on December 11 last year.
CCTV footage captured the pair approaching the front of the house the Siwale brothers shared in Affleck Road, on Colchester’s Greenstead estate.
Lee took a short run up before kicking in the front door, before the pair entered the home.
Sometimes the aspiring rapper is the victim, sometimes the perpetrator, but seldom far from the scene of the crime.
The good nature of Americans has been stressed the last twenty months by the “two weeks to flatten the curve”. However, a line as been crossed when parental input into what is taught in schools is casually rejected:
