Crazy People Are Dangerous

Posted on | December 30, 2020 | 1 Comment

More than a year before Anthony Warner detonated a Christmas Day bomb in downtown Nashville, officers visited his home after his girlfriend told police he was building bombs in a recreational vehicle at his residence, according to documents. But they did not make contact with him, or see inside his RV.
Those revelations, contained in a newly disclosed 2019 incident report, put Nashville’s police chief on the defensive Wednesday as he said his officers did nothing wrong and that they had handled the situation properly. He added that other than a 1970s marijuana-related arrest, Warner was “squeaky clean.”
“I believe the officers did everything they could legally. Maybe they could have followed up more, hindsight is 20/20,” Metro Nashville Police Chief John Drake said at a news conference.
Officers were called to Pamela Perry’s Nashville home on Aug. 21, 2019, following a report from her attorney that she was making suicidal threats while sitting on her front porch with firearms, the police department said in a statement.
According to the incident report, when officers arrived, police said she had two unloaded pistols beside her on the porch. She told them the guns belonged to “Tony Warner” and she did not want them in the house any longer. Perry, then 62, was taken for a psychological evaluation after speaking to mental health professionals.
“During that visit, before leaving for the evaluation, Perry told police that her boyfriend was making bombs in an RV,” the report stated.
The report says police went to Warner’s home, about 1 and 1/2 miles (2.4 kilometers) away, but he didn’t answer the door when they knocked repeatedly. They saw the RV but it was in a fenced-off backyard and officers couldn’t see inside the vehicle. They also spotted several security cameras and wires attached to an alarm sign on a front door.
“They saw no evidence of a crime and had no authority to enter his home or fenced property,” the police statement said, adding supervisors and detectives were then notified.
“If we could have had more to go off of, it would have been good,” Drake said.
Law enforcement officials did not publicly release the report, which was obtained only after news outlets submitted public records requests. Later, the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation announced that Warner’s only arrest was for a 1978 marijuana-related charge.
David Rausch, the TBI’s director, had told reporters earlier this week that Warner was not on their radar. Rausch was flanked by federal and state officials — including Drake — who did not object or amend the statement.
Drake later told reporters Wednesday he didn’t learn of the report until late Sunday evening, but said he believed his officers that they could not smell any explosives and that there was no probable cause for a search warrant.

You can almost — almost — see how this happened. Officers were called to a report that a woman was threatening suicide; she was taken for psychiatric evaluation. So all the police had to go on, in terms of suspicions about a bomb, was what a crazy woman told them. Imagine going to a judge to get a search warrant based on that.

Meanwhile, there’s the “lizard people” angle:

Investigators are exploring several conspiracy theories as potential motives behind the Christmas Day bombing outside an AT&T building in Nashville, Tennessee, including evidence that the bomber believed in lizard people and a so-called reptilian conspiracy, two senior law enforcement officials said Wednesday.
Investigators are expected to conclude their crime scene work this week, but it could take several more weeks until they determine the motive of the bomber, Anthony Quinn Warner, who died in the blast.
Since Saturday, authorities have been examining Warner’s digital devices — which an official said includes a significant trove of pictures, videos and writings — looking for any clues to what drove the man to set off a powerful bomb inside his recreational vehicle, which took down communications networks and injured several people in downtown Nashville.
Specifically, investigators are looking into the suspect’s previous trips to an undisclosed location in Tennessee where he would camp out in his recreational vehicle and, according to the suspect’s statements to others, hunt possible aliens, the officials said.
In addition, investigators are aware of statements the suspect made about an internet conspiracy that powerful politicians and Hollywood figures are actually lizards or other reptiles who have extraterrestrial origins and are taking over society, the officials said.

In terms of protecting Americans from terrorist threats, how do you deal with kooks who believe we’re being invaded by “lizard people”? Like, dealing with al-Qaeda or ISIS is certainly a national security challenge, but what are officials supposed to do when every random kook might go off on a deadly rampage? We are at the mercy of deranged nutjobs:

In the wake of an explosion that rocked Nashville last week, Americans are more concerned about domestic terrorism than foreign threats, and many believe the danger has increased during President Trump’s term in office.
A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey finds that 63% of Likely U.S. Voters say domestic terrorism is the greater threat to the United States, compared to 24% who say foreign terrorism is the greater threat.

To repeat what I have said so many times: Crazy People Are Dangerous.

America crushed al-Qaeda. America defeated ISIS.
Kooks who believe in "lizard people"? Not so much. https://t.co/5ORJnjhFtD

— The Patriarch Tree (@PatriarchTree) December 30, 2020

PREVIOUSLY:

Dec. 26: Mysterious Explosion in Nashville
Dec. 26: ‘Person of Interest’
Dec. 29: Nashville: ‘Lone Wolf’ Suicide Bomber

Category: Crime, Tennessee, Terrorism

In The Mailbox: 12.30.20 (Morning Edition)

Posted on | December 30, 2020 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 12.30.20 (Morning Edition)

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Silicon Valley delenda est.

I have admit, this is my reaction to 99% of the news these days.

OVER THE TRANSOM
Ninety Miles From Tyranny: The 90 Miles Mystery Box, Episode #1217
357 Magnum: A Quick Search For Wrong-Address Search Warrants
EBL: Project 86 – From December
Twitchy: Blue-Checked Lefty Trial Lawyer Crowned “King Shithead” For Monstrous Attack On Rep. Luke Letlow’s Death Drom COVID
Louder With Crowder: Alyssa Milano Compares Masks To AR-15s, And It’s All Kinds Of Stupid
Vox Popoli: The Greatest Showman, also, Stay Healthy – Take Vitamin D

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Conservative: The American System Is One Big Grift
American Greatness: PA GOP Says Election Numbers Don’t Add Up, Certification Of Presidential Results In Error
American Power: Is There Any Solution? also, Dead (Once-Treasured) Diners
American Thinker: Is Nothing Happening, Or Is Trump Channeling Sun Tzu?
Animal Magnetism: Holiday Totty II
Babalu Blog: Castro Regime Sentences Afro-Cuban Activist To Six Years In Prison
BattleSwarm: Dave Barry’s Year-End Review For 2020, also, San Diego Schools Declare War On Learning
Cafe Hayek: Lockdowns & The Presumption of Liberty
CDR Salamander: Having Trouble Seeing The Blog?
Da Tech Guy: When A Bomb Is About To Explode In Your Neighborhood, Do You Call The ACLU, Antifa, Or Black Lives Matter? also, Report From Louisiana – Wuhan Diary
Don Surber: Murdoch Stabs Trump In The Back, also, Biden – Godfather In Chief
First Street Journal: O, Their Precious Little Feelings Are Hurt Again! also, Congratulations, Philadelphia!
The Geller Report: Stacey Abrams’ Sister The Judge Blocks Georgia From Removing 4000 Voters From Election Rolls, also, Even Homer Gets Canceled By Leftist Mob
Hogewash: Team Kimberlin Post Of The Day, also, That Was The Year That Was – Fits 4, 5, & 6
Hollywood In Toto: Never Woke Enough – Critics Savage Soul, Wonder Woman 1984, also, Why Star Wars Made A Massive Mistake Hiring Patty Jenkins
JustOneMinute: What Was That All About?
The Lid: Camper Tells Of Abuse At Camp Run By Senate Hopeful Raphael Warnock, also, Iranians Protest Government’s Refusal To Buy COVID Vaccine
Legal Insurrection: MA School Allegedly Bans Homer’s Odyssey, also, WHO Warns Of “Super Gonorrhea”, More Pandemics
Nebraska Energy Observer: Innocents
Power Line: What Trump Gained By Delaying Coronavirus Relief, also, Get Ready For The “Climate Emergency”?
Shark Tank: Marco Rubio Slams Dr. Fauci For Lying About Masks, Herd Immunity
Shot In The Dark: Profiles In Courage, also, You Ain’t A Human Being
The Political Hat: Blogroll Cleanup 2020
This Ain’t Hell: Why Have Men Throughout History In All Cultures Fought To The End? also, Another Tuskegee Airman Passes
Victory Girls: U.S. Appeals Court Hands Cuomo Second Defeat On Religious Gatherings
Volokh Conspiracy: Latest Decision In Palin v. NY Times
Weasel Zippers: Disabled Vet Choked Out & Arrested By Police For Not Wearing Mask, also, Meme – Dancing Nurses Are Like Dancing At Funerals
The Federalist: What Big Tech Didn’t Want You To See On The Federalist In 2020, also, A National Popular Vote Won’t Fix The Electoral College, But Smaller Government Will
Mark Steyn: Such A Cold Finger, also, Lost In A Lost Year

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Category: Linkagery

Wealthy Celebrities Flock to Georgia to Help Elect Two Left-Wing Democrats

Posted on | December 30, 2020 | 1 Comment

If you believe the polls, it’s neck-and-neck in the two Senate runoff elections next week in Georgia. Republican Sen. David Perdue appears to be holding his own against Joel Osoff while we are told that Raphael Warnock (D-Racist) is edging ahead of Kelly Loeffler. Of course, the polls are garbage and nobody trusts them, and Democrats are probably going to steal the thing with truckloads of phony mail-in ballots anyway.

Meanwhile, Hollywood is going all-in to turn Georgia blue:

Georgia is ground zero in the battle for the balance of power in Washington, DC, as control of the U.S. Senate now hinges on the outcome of the two Senate runoff races in the Peach State. With the Senate majority leadership within his reach, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) recently declared, “Now we take Georgia, and then we change America.”
More than 50 Hollywood celebrities have tried to make that a reality for Schumer, mobilizing to raise money and pump up enthusiasm for Democrat challengers Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock. Using their star power to attract donor dollars, they have put their Hollywood imprint on the Georgia races in the hopes of flipping the Senate on January 5.
The vast majority of these celebrities have never lived in Georgia and have no personal connection to the state — except for the TV or movie roles that require them to occasionally film there. As Breitbart News recently reported, Ossoff raised nearly six times more in California than he did in Georgia. . . .

Call me crazy, but I’m not sure Amy Schumer’s endorsement is going to move the needle much with swing voters in Georgia.

Category: Election, Georgia, Senate

Nashville: ‘Lone Wolf’ Suicide Bomber

Posted on | December 29, 2020 | Comments Off on Nashville: ‘Lone Wolf’ Suicide Bomber

Police have identified Anthony Quinn Warner, 63, as the perpetrator of the Christmas morning explosion in Nashville. It is believed that Warner acted alone and that he died in the blast:

Metro Nashville Police Department Spokesman Don Aaron confirmed Warner’s identity to the Associated Press on Sunday. He did not provide any more details. However, Warner had experience with electronics and alarms, according to public records. . . .
It appears to be a “lone wolf” situation, but the motive remains under investigation. Authorities do not believe the city of Nashville is in danger.
Separately, a law enforcement official told The Associated Press that federal investigators have started examining Warner’s digital footprint and financial history.

The Internet has been buzzing with two slightly separate but related theories of Warner’s motive, based on the fact that the target of his attack seems to have been the AT&T facility in downtown Nashville. Either (a) Warner was “paranoid” about 5G technology or (b) Warner was concerned about AT&T’s (very real) involvement in federal surveillance.

Keep in mind that both of these theories are just speculation. We do not yet know if Warner left behind any kind of “manifesto” or some other indication of his motive. Warner’s father, who died in 2011, “once worked for BellSouth communications before it merged with AT&T,” according to investigators, so it is possible that Warner had some kind of personal grievance against the company. Much speculation, however, has focused on conspiracy theories about 5G technology:

Law enforcement and intelligence agencies warned in May of this year about escalating threats targeting 5G communications infrastructure, a possible motive now being considered by investigators looking into the Christmas Day bombing in Nashville, according to government documents reviewed by Yahoo News. . . .
5G is the latest standard for broadband cellular networks, which is expected to dramatically increase data transfer speeds. . . .
A May 14 Joint Intelligence Bulletin produced by the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI and the National Counterterrorism Center warns of social media posts calling on people to “target critical infrastructure including cell towers, locations associated with the electric power grid, and other sites associated with perceived impending government action against citizens during the COVID-19 pandemic” and referring to past attacks in Europe and the United States on cell towers.
The bulletin notes that there have been dozens of recent attacks on cell towers, particularly those associated with 5G service, in Western Europe. While there have been fewer such attacks in the United States — just six, according to the bulletin — there have been increasing online calls for such attacks, according to the document. . . .
“Online calls for targeting have focused particularly on those facilities believed to be equipped with 5G wireless technologies, probably in part because of the recent proliferation of conspiracy theories that falsely link the COVID-19 pandemic spread with 5G infrastructure development, including beliefs that 5G towers cause the spread of COVID-19 or weaken the immune system allowing transmission of COVID-19,” the document says.
The intelligence bulletin also says that some of the calls for attacks on critical infrastructure sites, like those connected to 5G, appear to come from white supremacists.

Oh, of course, they had to throw in the “white supremacist” angle, despite the complete lack of evidence connecting Warner to any such ideology, and despite the fact that 5G conspiracy theories are also rampant in minority communities and among left-wing anarchist types.

Beyond mere speculation and politically motivated finger-pointing, however, there is the reality — not a theory, but a fact — that AT&T is working with the National Security Agency.

AT&T Helped U.S. Spy on Internet on a Vast Scale

That’s a 2015 headline from the New York Times which, so far as I know, is not a right-wing “white supremacist” conspiracy theory site.

The NSA’s Hidden Spy Hubs in Eight U.S. Cities

That’s a 2018 headline from the Intercept, and although Nashville was not named as a site of one of these “NSA spy hubs,” there’s this:

The NSA considers AT&T to be one of its most trusted partners and has lauded the company’s “extreme willingness to help.” It is a collaboration that dates back decades.

So if you’re concerned about federal surveillance, you would certainly consider AT&T one of the bad guys. But it’s best to avoid any kind of potentially paranoia-inducing information if you’re concerned about your mental health. That is to say, if we are being targeted for warrantless surveillance by an all-powerful “Them” — Big Brother, the Deep State, rogue agents trampling on our constitutional rights — I don’t want to think too much about it, or it might drive me completely bonkers.

“How to Maintain Your Sanity” — trust me, I’m an expert.

Category: Crime, Tennessee, Terrorism

In The Mailbox: 12.28.20

Posted on | December 29, 2020 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 12.28.20

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Silicon Valley delenda est.

OVER THE TRANSOM
357 Magnum: They Suffered A Failure Of The Victim-Selection Process
EBL: Reviews – Room 237, also, The Parking Lot Movie
Twitchy: Rapper Who Campaigned For GA Senate Candidates Has Some Problematic Tweets
Louder With Crowder: Fed Up Restaurant Owner Blocks Health Inspector’s Car, Delivers Awesome Rant
Vox Popoli: Why I Am Confident, also, Why The President Signed The Spending Bill
Stoic Observations: Practical Communism

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: Merry Christmas
American Conservative: Profiles In Conservative Cowardice
American Greatness: An Essential Man, also, Did Americans Come To Love Big Brother?
American Power: How Christopher Lasch Repudiated The Radical Left
American Thinker: It’s For Mike Pence To Judge Whether A Legitimate Presidential Election Was Held At All, also, What Denying Election Fraud Accomplishes
Animal Magnetism: Holiday Totty
Babalu Blog: Castro Regime Will Take 75% Of The Wages Paid To Its Slave Doctors In Panama, also, The “Freedom Squad” Is Ready To Take On The Socialist “Squad” In Congress
BattleSwarm: LinkSwarm For December 25, also, UT Disbands PC Police
Cafe Hayek: Wise Warnings Conveyed With Wit, also, Making Visible Some Of The Unseen Tragedies Of COVID Derangement Syndrome
CDR Salamander: The Navy Has Problems And Must Be Bold To Fix Them
Da Tech Guy: Seeing Is Not Believing, also, Brady Vs. The Expectations Game Revisited
Don Surber: Thank You, Kirk Cameron, also, California Proves Lockdowns Don’t Work
First Street Journal: Big Brother Is Watching You – And The Left Thinks You Need To Be Watched More Closely, also, Killadelphia
The Geller Report: Sidney Powell Releases Massive 270-Page Document Detailing Alleged Election Fraud, also, Muslims Slaughter Nigerian Christians In Sickening Christmas Eve Attack
Hogewash: That Was The Year That Was – Fits 1,2, & 3, also, I Don’t Believe Her
Hollywood In Toto: Adam Carolla Says Mainstream Media & Big Tech Rigged The Election For Biden, also, How To Die For Predicted The Rise Of Social Media Influencers
The Lid: Red Chinese Puppet – GA Democrat Jon Ossoff Urged Americans To Follow Chicom State Media
Legal Insurrection: St. Fauci says American’s Can’t Handle The Truth About The Pandemic, also, Jeffrey Epstein’s Last Cellmate Died In November From COVID
Nebraska Energy Observer: Joy To The World, also, Random Observations
Power Line: Are Democrats In Trouble In 2022? also, Reject Woke Civics
Shark Tank: Eskamani Slams Republicans & Trump For Lack Of COVID Relief
Shot In The Dark: Un-Krakened
STUMP: Happy Stu Day!
This Ain’t Hell: A Response To Our Resident “Boomer-Hater”, also, Special Forces Sergeant Charged In Shooting
Victory Girls: Rand Paul Condemns Governors As “Tin Pot Dictators”, also, Kamala Chameleon Tells Kwanzaa Tales
Volokh Conspiracy: Trump Campaign Loses Another Court Appeal
Weasel Zippers: Buzzfeed Discovers Chicom Slave Labor Camps, also, Madison – We Closed Your Businesses & Ruined Your Life, But If You Don’t Clear The Snow We’ll Fine You
The Federalist: Dr. Fauci Admits He’s Treated The American People Like Children, also, Five Big Things We’ve Learned About Our Elites In 2020
Mark Steyn: The Mark Steyn Christmas Show, also, Boxing Day With Mark & Friends

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Category: Linkagery

‘Something for Everyone to Hate’

Posted on | December 28, 2020 | 1 Comment

It would be interesting to know how many high-school students in Loudon County, Virginia, would be able to identify Col. Edward D. Baker. If you are a student of the Civil War, you know that Baker’s death in the Battle of Ball’s Bluff was the chief inspiration for the creation of the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War, chaired by the radical abolitionist Sen. Ben Wade of Ohio. This tale is told artfully by Bruce Catton in a dozen pages (pp. 68-80) of Mr. Lincoln’s Army, a book I doubt any recent student at Heritage High School in Leesburg has actually bothered to read, despite the fact that the historic events related by Catton happened about five miles down the road from the high school.

Military history is almost completely absent from the 21st-century curriculum, which is big on “social justice” themes and short of any genuinely useful knowledge. What students are expected to learn in school now is not facts, but rather a politically-correct attitude. The way history is now taught, the chief goal of the curriculum is to inspire teenagers with the kind of fanatical passion for “progressive” values that one might find in an Antifa riot in Portland, Oregon — fire-bombing police cars as your senior project. But I digress . . .

Heritage High School was the scene of a teenage melodrama this summer, when a vindictive punk decided to make a big deal out of a Snapchat video, thus destroying the reputation of the captain of the school’s varsity cheerleading squad. “There’s something for everyone to hate in this story,” Ed Driscoll remarks, and indeed I found something:

How long must the South be chastised for its history? For the editors of the New York Times, apparently, the answer is, “Forever.” Nothing could be more obvious in its intended purpose than the non-accidental choice of Leesburg, Virginia, for the latest iteration of the tiresomely familiar “Legacy of Slavery” theme in the New York Times.
If you are not a Southerner, or if you pay no attention to the New York Times, you may be unfamiliar with that newspaper’s long tradition of invoking slavery, the Civil War, and Jim Crow as a means of insinuating the South’s permanent status of moral inferiority. . . .

Read the rest of my latest column at The American Spectator.

Category: American Spectator, History, New York Times, Virginia

Rule 5 Sunday: Sally Field

Posted on | December 28, 2020 | 2 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho

I was thinking earlier that Smokey & The Bandit was a movie that couldn’t be remade these days, because in an age when you can walk into any supermarket in most states and get whatever beer you want, who would smuggle a semi-trailer full of Coors from Texas to Georgia? Also, who could replace Jerry Reed, Burt Reynolds, and Jackie Gleason, to say nothing of Sally Field? Apparently Universal wants to give it a try, though. Here’s Sally in a still from the movie.
Ceterum autem censeo Silicon Valley esse delendam.