The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Miami Beach Mayor: ‘If You’re Coming Here to Go Crazy, Go Somewhere Else’

Posted on | March 20, 2021 | Comments Off on Miami Beach Mayor: ‘If You’re Coming Here to Go Crazy, Go Somewhere Else’

It’s not a party until somebody calls the cops:

Miami Beach Mayor Dan Gelber declared a state of emergency and set a curfew Saturday, saying the crowds that have descended on the city recently are “more than we can handle.”
“Too many are coming, really, without the intention of following the rules, and the result has been a level of chaos and disorder that is just something more than we can endure,” Gelber told CNN’s Ana Cabrera.
An 8 p.m. curfew will be put in place in the city’s entertainment district, and some roads will be closed, Gelber said at a news conference Saturday. The measures will be in effect for the next 72 hours, he said.
The causeways to Miami Beach from the mainland will be closed to non-local traffic starting at 9 p.m. for the next few nights, Gelber said.
At night, “it feels like a rock concert, wall-to-wall people over blocks and blocks,” Gelber told Cabrera.
On Friday night, someone shot a weapon into the air, and there was a riot, he said. . . .
“If you’re coming here because you’ve been pent up and you want to let loose, you think anything goes, please don’t come here,” Gelber told CNN. “We have extra police everywhere, we’re going to arrest people, and we have been. We’re going to keep order.”
“If you’re coming here to go crazy, go somewhere else. We don’t want you,” Gelber said.

Some videos of the South Beach scene have made the rounds:




 

Category: Crime, Florida

The ‘Extremist’ Boomerang

Posted on | March 20, 2021 | Comments Off on The ‘Extremist’ Boomerang

Why has the media become so obsessed with “white nationalism” as a domestic terrorist threat? Kyle Shideler makes an interesting argument that what has happened is an indirect consequence of the refusal of national-security officials, in the post-9/11 environment, to be specific in naming the nature of the threat we faced. Because they did not wish to define the threat as Islamic terrorism, instead the national security establishment defined the problem as “extremism.”

That rhetorical evasion has boomeranged around in a perverse way so that mainstream beliefs are now defined as “extremist”:

Forbidden from discussing the actual nature and ideology of the threat which they were instructed to counter, America’s intelligence and law enforcement officials lived and died by euphemism. And like the bureaucracies which perpetuate them, government euphemisms tend to expand even beyond the original logic for their creation. So, when “Islamic extremist” was no longer sufficiently vague, the phrase “homegrown violent extremist” was adopted, where “homegrown” paradoxically refers to those operating in service to a foreign ideology perpetuated by international terrorists.
The very logic of denying that foreign terrorists could be motivated by an ideology developed from within the context of their own society necessitated believing that any mainstream American within our society could be a potential threat.

Read the whole thing.




 

Category: Terrorism

Kentucky Cops Shoot a White Guy

Posted on | March 20, 2021 | Comments Off on Kentucky Cops Shoot a White Guy

The Police Activity YouTube channel has put out a lot of content in the past week, including bodycam footage from the Feb. 20 incident in which police in Kentucky shot 57-year-old Randall Lockaby:

 

When watching that 10-minute clip, I was impressed by how friendly the cop’s conversation with Lockaby seemed, up until the moment when he asked Lockaby to step out of his pickup truck and Lockaby emerged pointing a 9-mm pistol at the cop. Why did it escalate so suddenly?

Kenton County Commonwealth’s Attorney Rob Sanders said Friday that two Villa Hills officers were justified in the use of force in a Feb. 20, 2021, death of Randall Lockaby during a traffic stop on I-75.
Lockaby, 57, of Manchester, Kentucky, was taken to St. Elizabeth Hospital Medical Center in Florence where he died. The shooting took place outside of Villa Hills, but police have county-wide jurisdiction.
Officers Sean Dooley and Jacob Bolton did not violate any laws based upon a review of the Kentucky State Police investigation, said Sanders.
Lockaby was seen drawing a handgun from his waist and pointed the gun at officer Dooley, according to a letter Sanders sent to Villa Hills and KSP officials. Dashboard camera video from Bolton’s cruiser and body camera video from both officers captured the entire incident in which Lockaby refused to follow Dooley’s commands to step to the rear of the vehicle, according to the letter.
Sanders said Bolton fired after he saw Lockaby point a gun at Dooley. Bolton reasonably perceived the need to use deadly force to prevent Dooley from being shot, according to the letter.
The prosecutor said the officers had a reasonable belief they would be harmed based upon Lockaby’s threat to use the handgun on the officers.
Sanders told The Enquirer that he has spoken with Lockaby’s family.
“They say this is very out of character for him, and our thoughts and prayers are with his family,” he said.
Police started the traffic stop as a speeding incident on I-75, Sanders said.
Investigators found that Lockaby was a convicted felon who was not legally allowed to carry a gun.
Lockaby may have known officers would find multiple handguns in the car, and that he would go back to prison, he said.
“I don’t think this confrontation was anything anyone knew was coming other than Mr. Lockaby,” Sanders said.

Compare this to the shooting of Nika Holbert, which I examined yesterday and said “race had nothing to do with it.” In that case, what caused the situation to “escalate” was that Holbert had a prior record, she had drugs and a gun in the car, and knew that if she allowed cops to search the car she would be facing prison time — the same basic reason that caused the sudden escalation of Randall Lockaby’s traffic stop.

It is the consciousness of guilt that causes these deadly confrontations. Always the national media want to call attention to the relatively rare cases where the police shooting of a black suspect is not legally justified, where racism can be suggested as an explanation, but such cases are statistical anomalies in the overall pattern of law enforcement. The vast majority of cases in which police shoot suspects (whatever their race) are proven to be justified, a fact well known to the audience of the Police Activity YouTube channel, which has more than 2 million subscribers. The more of these videos you watch, the more you recognize the behavioral patterns which lead to shooting incidents.

Over and over again, we learn that the suspect who got shot by cops was not a first-time offender. Many, if not most, of them are habitual offenders with the proverbial “record as long as your arm.”

We don’t know the details of Randall Lockaby’s criminal record, except that he was a convicted felon who could not lawfully possess firearms. From the moment he got pulled over for speeding, Lockaby was conscious that he would go to prison if cops found the guns he had in his truck. And the police officer’s seemingly friendly conversation with Lockaby was actually part of his investigation technique:

“Listen, man, you’re not hauling anything illegal in here are you? Nothing illegal in here? No large amounts of anything you’re trying to haul or anything like that? . . . If I were to ask you for consent to search the vehicle, would you let me search the vehicle real quick? . . . Listen, partner, you’ve had a lot of pretty nervous behavior sitting here talking to me, OK? . . . You know what I do for a living, man? I catch drug dealers and drug smugglers. . . . A lot of your mannerisms and gestures while you’ve been sitting here talking to me, I’m trained to read people, OK?”

Bingo. The superficial friendliness of his conversation was a tactic — the cop talks in a friendly manner, so that the suspect has no obvious reason to feel intimidated, and if the suspect then shows telltale behavioral signs of nervousness, why is that? Consciousness of guilt.

Cops aren’t mind-readers, but with training and experience, they become quite good at recognizing the behavioral patterns of criminals.

There ought to be a default of respect for police who, after all, are acting as public servants on behalf of all law-abiding citizens. The two officers here in this small town in Kentucky showed remarkable professionalism, and as such are a credit to their community. No protest marches about this shooting. CNN doesn’t care. White lives don’t matter.




 

Category: Crime, Kentucky

In The Mailbox: 03.19.21

Posted on | March 20, 2021 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 03.19.21

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Usual deadlines for the usual weekend linkagery.
Ceterum autem censeo Silicon Valley esse delendam.

Formerly adorning Bob Stupak’s Glitter Gulch Casino (later a strip club) Vegas Vickie is back at a Circa cocktail lounge bearing her name.

OVER THE TRANSOM
357 Magnum: I For One Welcome Our Self-Driving Overlords
EBL: A Dish For St. Joseph’s Day
Twitchy: White House Flack’s Excuse For Biden’s Fall Actually Makes It MUCH WORSE
Louder With Crowder: White House Suddenly Firing Former Pot Smokers
Vox Popoli: Putin Bitchslaps Creepy Joe, also, Patreon Is A Factory Of Filth
According To Hoyt: Waiting For The Other Shoe
Monster Hunter Nation: Songs Of Valor, With A New Story By Me

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Conservative: To Flee Or Not To Flee, also, Romney Says America’s Leaders Too Old To Take On Red China
American Greatness: Putin Challenges Biden To A Televised Debate, also, New York’s Corrupt & Venal Leaders Must Go
American Power: San Francisco Asian Woman Who Fought Back Now Has GoFundMe Closing In On $1 Million
American Thinker: Meet America’s First Idiocracy President
Animal Magnetism: Rule Five Mis-Education Friday
Babalu Blog: The Song That Tells Cuba’s Dictatorship “It’s Over!”, also, Even Dollar-Only Stores In Cuba Running Out Of Goods As Economic Crisis Worsens
BattleSwarm: LinkSwarm For March 19
Behind The Black: Yesterday’s Blacklisted Americans, Today’s Blacklisted Americans, and  Biden Nominates Former Senator Bill Nelson As NASA Administrator
Cafe Hayek: Who Says Capitalism Doesn’t Work?
CDR Salamander: Fullbore Friday
Da Tech Guy: Biden’s First Public Address Was Proof He’s Clueless About Our Founding Principles, also, Ironies
Don Surber: Why Don’t We Oppose Perversion Any More? also, Buddha Trump
First Street Journal: This Is What Happens When Criminals Are Treated With Leniency, also, Amanda Marcotte Doesn’t Care About Murders Unless They’re Politically Useful
Hogewash: Team Kimberlin Post Of The Day, also, Room For Only One Kind Of Dope At The White House?
Hollywood In Toto: Depp’s City Of Lies Gets Oh, So Close To The Death Of Notorious B.I.G., also, Will Woke Insanity Crush Awards Season?
The Lid: The Week Biden Proved To The World He’s A Foreign Policy Disaster
Legal Insurrection: University Of Pennsylvania Denies Official Recognition To Hunting Club, also, The Weaponization Of Race & The Asian Model Minority Myth
Nebraska Energy Observer: The Mission
Outkick: Deshaun Watson Sexual Assault Lawsuits Now Up To Twelve Women, also, Hasbro’s “Diversity & Inclusion” Department’s Next Target – Monopoly
Power Line: Media Peddles Unsupported Racial Narrative On Atlanta Shootings, also, Thoughts From The Ammo Line
Shark Tank: Florida Democrats Want Special Election In SD37 Controversy
Shot In The Dark: A Minnesota Senate DFL Tradition, also, It Was Twenty Years Ago Today
The Political Hat: Marriage A Trois – Polyamory As A Constitutional Right, Polyamory Acceptance, & Polyamory Normalization, also, Oregon Poised To Ban Diesel
This Ain’t Hell: Valor Friday, also, Korean War Vet Awarded Silver Star, Almost 70 Years Late
Transterrestrial Musings: Mannsuit Update, also, Glynn Lunney
Victory Girls: Marjorie Taylor Greene Faces Expulsion From Congress
Volokh Conspiracy: National Review Not Liable For Mark Steyn’s Blog Post About Michael Mann
Weasel Zippers: Now That Biden Is President*, Dem Rep Claims It’s Not “Appropriate” For Media To Cover Border Facilities, also, California My Exclude Christians From Police Departments
The Federalist: After Mocking Trump’s Walk, Biden Gets Owned By A Set of Stairs, also, Corporate Media Doesn’t Want To Talk About The Atlanta Gunman’s Real Motivation
Mark Steyn: Kama To Frenesi

Amazon Warehouse Deals




Category: Linkagery

Nika Holbert and the BLM Myth

Posted on | March 19, 2021 | Comments Off on Nika Holbert and the BLM Myth

Nika Holbert shot a Nashville police officer last week and was shot to death when the officer returned fire. Ordinarily, this would not be a very newsworthy incident — “Criminal Dies in Shootout” — but we are not living in ordinary times. The Black Lives Matter movement has created what can only be described as a myth of racial innocence. At the core of this myth is the belief that every problem experienced by any black person in American can be explained as a result of racism; therefore, when a black person engages in wrongdoing, they are never really guilty — it’s all whitey’s fault — and should never suffer consequences.

The BLM Myth of Racial Innocence is now embedded in nearly all media coverage of crime involving the black community. No matter what the circumstances may be, the black person who commits a crime is never really guilty of anything, it is implied, and we are expected to believe that every black inmate serving time is a political prisoner, a victim of “systemic racism.” So when a police officer goes to arrest a black suspect who resists arrest, we are expected to sympathize with the criminal, rather than sympathizing with the officer who is, after all, putting his own life at risk to enforce the law and maintain public safety.

This is a dangerous belief system, and it is irresponsible for the media to promote it, because it tends to encourage resistance to law enforcement and thereby increase the number of violent encounters that end up with black suspects getting shot. WKRN-TV in Nashville interviewed a civil rights attorney about the Nika Holbert case:

“She made some very, very bad decisions, prior to shooting at the officer. But unfortunately, you just don’t understand her state of mind,” said Ashley Upkins, managing partner at The Cochran Firm.
Upkins has worked on several civil rights cases, including police conduct. She said despite the fact that this was a case of a white police officer pulling over a black driver, she does not believe the shootout was racially motivated. Instead, Upkins suggests the situation escalated due to systemic racial fears.
“I don’t think anyone can watch that video and not believe that she looked terrified and petrified,” Upkins explained.

Hold that thought for a minute while I explain a little about the background of this case, because contrary to what the lawyer says, I think I do understand Nika Holbert’s “state of mind,” and the reason she “looked terrified and petrified” had nothing to do with “systemic racism.”

Go back up to the top of this post and look at that picture of Nika Holbert, taken from the police officer’s bodycam. Notice anything?

Yeah — the car. That’s a 2015 Camaro.

You can buy one used for $15,000-$20,000.

Have you got $20,000 to spare? Because I’d really like to drive around in a late-model Camaro, instead of an old Nissan. So, let us ask, how was it that Nika Holbert was driving around in this fine vehicle?

Say hello to Demond Maurice Buchanan, who is well-known to law enforcement in Nashville, his lengthy criminal record dating back to 1996 — not coincidentally, the year he turned 18 — and including numerous drug offenses, weapons offenses, attempted murder and, less than five years ago, vehicular homicide:

A convicted felon has been arrested for vehicular homicide, aggravated assault, gun and marijuana charges.
SWAT officers arrested 37-year-old Demond M. Buchanan following an indictment on the charges filed after a crash last May that killed a passenger in his car.
On May 2nd, Buchanan was driving a Camaro possibly in excess of 100 mph when he struck an SUV. His passenger -Marlon Burnett died at the scene and Buchanan was hospitalized. A weapon, cash and marijuana were found inside the car.
Buchanan was found at a motel on Atrium Way. Inside, police found baggies of crack cocaine, heroin, marijuana and a loaded pistol.

That was in 2016. You might think that a criminal with such a lengthy rap sheet, charged with such serious crimes, would go to prison for a long time. But for some reason, the state of Tennessee can’t keep Demond Buchanan behind bars, so he was out on the streets, committing further felonies. Buchanan was wanted on six felony warrants when Officer Josh Baker spotted his 2015 Camaro. Baker called for backup when he pulled over the Camaro and began questioning the driver, Nika Holbert, who said she was “really confused” about why she was being stopped:

 

Was it “systemic racial fears” that led this traffic stop to escalate into a shootout? Or was it the fact that (a) Nika Holbert knew she had drugs in her purse, and also (b) was in possession of a firearm, so that (c) a search of the car would result in her going back to jail?

According to online records from both Metro and the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, Nika Holbert’s criminal background includes several repeat misdemeanors, including driving with a revoked license and theft under $500.
Holbert also had a felony drug charge from 2010.
Her last listed interaction with law enforcement was a public indecency charge in 2017.

So she was a habitual violator driving around in a car belonging to a locally notorious criminal. That is why the situation “escalated.”

One reason you’re seeing more situations “escalate” in this manner is simply that technology has shifted the balance toward law enforcement. More and more police vehicles are equipped with scanners that automatically read tags of passing cars, so that if you’re driving a stolen vehicle or, as in Nika Holbert’s case, driving a car whose owner is wanted on arrest warrants, the cops are gonna get you. Five or 10 years ago, you could be driving around with a car full of felonies and cops wouldn’t know it, unless you did something to attract their attention. Nowadays, it’s a lot harder for criminals to get away with crimes, which is why we keep seeing videos like this. Race has nothing to do with it.

But the BLM Myth of Innocence is everywhere:

A Nashville-based organization is calling for change nearly a week after two separate shootings — one of them deadly — involved Metro Police officers.
Nashville Organized for Action and Hope (NOAH) held a press conference on Thursday.
“Talk, talk, talk, we’re tired of talking, we’re tired of waiting,” said NOAH task force member Jane Boram. “Nashville cannot continue to kill innocent women. This has got to stop.”

Ma’am, Nika Holbert was not an innocent woman. She shot first.

You pull a gun on a cop, expect to die. I don’t know how to explain that more clearly. Cops aren’t trained to lose gunfights.




 

Category: Crime, Tennessee

Joe Biden Can’t Even Walk Up Stairs

Posted on | March 19, 2021 | Comments Off on Joe Biden Can’t Even Walk Up Stairs

His Fraudulency is incapable of the simplest tasks:

President Biden on Friday fell while walking up the stairs of Air Force One.
The Democrat, who at 78 became the oldest president to assume the presidency, was caught on video repeatedly tripping on the staircase and catching himself ahead of a flight to Georgia. Biden was able to recover on his own and he continued toward the plane without assistance.
Biden offered a quick salute at the top of the stairs after recovering from his fall.
White House Communications Director Kate Bedingfield took to Twitter to say Biden “is fine,” adding the fall was “nothing more than a misstep on the stairs.” . . .
White House aides have taken great strides during his two months in office to downplay the 78-year-old president’s age. They have limited him to brief speeches that have not required him to stand for long periods and released pictures of him playing with his German Shepherds on the White House’s South Lawn.

POLL: Americans ‘Worried’
About Biden’s ‘Ability To Do The Job’




 

Category: Joe Biden

Gentle Reminder To Instapundit

Posted on | March 19, 2021 | Comments Off on Gentle Reminder To Instapundit

by Smitty

The mighty Instapundit makes the point:

The Pentagon’s swift and coordinated ‘smiting’ of Tucker Carlson, who had the gall to ‘diss’ the idea of sending pregnant women to war—an obviously absurd idea to all but the most politically correct officers grasping for a promotion—makes it very clear.”

This is what they do instead of winning wars, something they haven’t done even once this century despite nonstop combat.

It’s absolutely the case that the military hasn’t been impressive of late. I was bemoaning the current shambles with an active duty friend just two days ago.

Nevertheless, one must not lose sight of the truth that the military is mechanism, not policy. It’s not Oldsmobile’s fault that a Delmont 88 makes a terrible submarine. You’ll have to bring that up with the driver.

Here, the driver is “We the People”. I wouldn’t go fearing military death squads anytime soon. On the other hand, the method for correcting our course and steering clear of the Full Banana Republic Experience is unclear.

Category: Uncategorized

‘Level With the American People’: Tennessee Senator Slams Biden

Posted on | March 19, 2021 | Comments Off on ‘Level With the American People’: Tennessee Senator Slams Biden

Last year voters in Tennessee elected Sen. Bill Hagerty to kick ass and chew bubble gum — and he’s all out of bubble gum:

The Biden administration today is being urged to “level” with a nation growing anxious about the historic surge of illegal immigrants across the U.S.-Mexico border and the danger that they pose by spreading COVID-19 and taking jobs just as the nation recovers from the pandemic.
“It is time to level with the American people regarding the nature of this crisis,” said Tennessee Sen. Bill Hagerty in a letter delivered to President Biden this morning . . .
“Your administration has demonstrated a complete lack of transparency regarding this crisis, including failing to provide adequate information concerning the migrants who are entering communities throughout the United States as a result of your policies and repeatedly refusing to even acknowledge that a crisis exists,” he wrote in the sharply worded letter. . . .
Since Biden took office with promises to dismantle former President Donald Trump’s immigration policies and open the border, over 100,000 migrants have been apprehended, and estimates suggest that number could near 1 million this year.
Officials have said that many have COVID-19 but are being released into U.S. cities. The National Sheriffs’ Association said yesterday that up to 50% of the migrants are infected. . . .
“You criticize American state and local leaders for relaxing pandemic mandates on Americans to allow businesses to open and Americans to return to work, while simultaneously releasing unknown numbers of non-Americans — some of whom are currently COVID-positive — into American communities,” said Hagerty. . . .
“This is a crisis of your own making,” he wrote.

Democrats and the media (but I repeat myself) are promoting a dual messages: First, that there is no “crisis” at the border, and second, that even if there is a crisis, it’s entirely Donald Trump’s fault.

Orange Man Bad, semper aeternum.




 

Category: Immigration, Joe Biden
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