The Other McCain

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

I’ll Take ‘Things Not to Say to a Jersey Cop While You’re Holding a Knife’ for $400

Posted on | September 26, 2020 | 1 Comment

What is “I’m gonna stab him”?

Excuse me if I took some time off from writing my long Breonna Taylor post — which I promise I will finish — in order to watch some more police bodycam videos. This one is from Asbury Park, N.J., where police responded to a domestic violence call Aug. 21. They found a woman outside, and went inside the apartment where they encountered Hasani Best, 39, who was armed with a knife and barricaded himself in a bedroom. For about 45 minutes, cops tried to negotiate Best’s surrender. The guy in charge was Sgt. Sean DeShader, a black man who in 2016 was named the department’s “Officer of the Year.”

In the bodycam video released this week, you hear Best ranting profanely and even telling the cops to shoot him. DeShader tries to defuse the situation, joking and laughing. This was obviously not the first time police had been called to deal with Best. In the 911 call that summoned police, a neighbor says “the couple was known for fighting physically,” and that the woman was screaming for help.

Early in the standoff, police used a taser, but it was ineffective. Over and over, DeShader tells Best: “Put the knife down and come on out.”

In the final moment, Best opens the door halfway, knife in hand, and gestures toward an officer standing to the left of Sgt. DeShader.

“I’m gonna stab him.”

One second later, DeShader fires twice.

 

A lot of people who have viewed this video are critical of Sgt. DeShader’s decision to fire. Best did not visibly lunge toward the officers before he was shot, but on the other hand, this encounter was happening at close range. The cops were in a hallway, with no more than five or six feet between themselves and the bedroom door. If Sgt. DeShader had waited a half-second longer, who knows what might have happened?

But a point I’ve made before: How many times does a cop have to tell you to drop the knife? What part of “drop the knife” is so difficult to understand? If a cop was pointing a gun at me, I guarantee you he wouldn’t have to tell me twice. But after repeated warnings, Best then made an explicit threat: “I’m gonna stab him.”

He chose . . . poorly.




 

Category: Crime, New Jersey

In The Mailbox: 09.25.20

Posted on | September 26, 2020 | 2 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho

OVER THE TRANSOM
357 Magnum: Anti-Catholic Bigotry In The Media
Red Pilled Jew: Quick Take – Biden’s Past & A Hypothesis On TDS
EBL: Texas Reloaded – Don’t Mess With Texas
Twitchy: 1619 Project Author Tries Punishing Atlantic Journo Who Called  Out Her Gaslighting, Steps Into Minefield
Louder With Crowder: Dan Crenshaw Drops Action-Adventure Trailer That’s Easily The Best Campaign Ad Ever
Vox Popoli: Building Nihilists, also, Razorfist Joins UATV
According To Hoyt: NEKULTURNY
Stoic Observations: The Great Indoors – Adventures In Pandemicland

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Conservative: Erdogan Channels Ottomans To Announce Imperial Dreams
American Greatness: Hunter Biden’s Millions, also, U.S. Attorney To Investigate Discarded Military Ballots In Pennsylvania
American Thinker: The Shocking Full Extent Of Big Tech’s Censorship Of Conservatives
Animal Magnetism: Rule Five Socialist Takeover Friday
Babalu Blog: How The Legal Fight To Save Elian Gonzalez Shaped The Career Of Barbara Lagoa
BattleSwarm: LinkSwarm For September 25
Cafe Hayek: Your Sovereignty & Trade
Da Tech Guy: Two SCOTUS Constitutional Amendments The GOP Should Introduce Right Now, also, Ginsburg’s Favor
Don Surber: Never Trump, Never Right, also, Trump Supporters Are Having All The Fun
First Street Journal: Before The Internet, People Could Get Away With Running Their Mouths
The Geller Report: Man Finds Thousands Of Unopened Ballots In CA Dumpster, also,  Florida Reopens Everything
Hogewash: Team Kimberlin Post Of The Day, also, Hidin’ Biden’s Sidekick
JustOneMinute: What’s The Rush?
The Lid: The Democrats Fought Against A Peaceful Transfer Of Power In 2016
Legal Insurrection: Trump Expands Ban On Federal Funding Of “Critical Race Theory”, also, It’s Amy Coney Barret For SCOTUS (Reportedly)
The PanAm Post: Cuban Doctors Report Castro Regime’s Medical Slavery To The UN
Power Line: Americans Losing Patience With Riots, also, Ginsburg’s Alleged “Blind Spot”
Shark Tank: Mucarsel-Powell Exposed Again As Progressive By Obama Endorsement
Shot In The Dark: DIY Part 2
STUMP: Mortality With Meep – Increasing Life Expectancy & The Supreme Court
The Political Hat: “Justice” Is Just An Excuse For Riot & Revolution, also, The Gnostic Mysteries Of Wokeness
This Ain’t Hell: How The Marine Commandant Is Reshaping The Corps Without Increasing The Budget. also, Valor Friday
Victory Girls: Crossfire Hurricane Team Knew Steele Dossier Was Bogus
Volokh Conspiracy: On The Eve Of Yom Kippur, NYC Considers “Extraordinary Lockdown” Of Orthodox Jewish Communities
Weasel Zippers: Ron Paul Hospitalized After Apparent Stroke, also, Spotify Employees Threaten Strike If Joe Rogan Not Censored
The Federalist: Tucker Carlson Names The Rich CEOs Funding Supplies & Bail For Louisville Rioters, also, FBI Whistleblower On Mueller Team Details Real Reason Flynn Was Targeted
Mark Steyn: Of Princes & Priuses

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Category: Linkagery

Play Stupid Games, Win Stupid Prizes

Posted on | September 25, 2020 | 3 Comments

 

Did you know that Breonna Taylor’s father was a drug dealer? He’s serving life in prison because he murdered a guy over drugs. Did you know that Breonna Taylor twice posted bond for her drug dealer boyfriend Jamarcus Glover? Did you know that police surveillance shows Breonna dropping off Jamarcus at the “trap house” where he dealt drugs? Somebody ought to ask the Mostly Peaceful™ Protesters exactly how much they know about the case, because the more you actually know about Breonna, the less she looks like a candidate for sainthood, which is what the Black Lives Matter movement wants you to think of her.

Stupid people keep messing up their own lives — getting killed or committing crimes that will put them in prison — because they got involved in these Mostly Peaceful™ Protests without having any real knowledge of the cases they were protesting about.

Please explain to me how your “social justice” concerns about a shooting in Louisville, Kentucky, requires you to engage in a protest blocking the streets in Hollywood, California:

On the evening of September 24, 2020, approximately 7:00 p.m., a group of more than 300 protesters marched through Hollywood. While there were isolated reports of vandalism, the group was largely peaceful. The group eventually made its way onto Sunset Boulevard.
Shortly after 9:00 p.m., a blue pick-up truck traveling on Sunset Boulevard maneuvered through the crowd and became involved in an altercation. As the driver of the pick-up truck attempted to get away from the situation, he struck a protester standing in the street. That individual was transported to a local hospital with minor injuries.
Moments later, a white Prius attempted to drive around that same protest and also became involved in an altercation with individuals in the crowd. A black pick-up truck leading the protests accelerated and pinned that white Prius in, forcing it to come to a stop. The driver of the Prius attempted to flee the area and reversed into a green mustang behind it. That vehicle was also participating in the protest.
Both the drivers of the pick-up truck and the green Mustang attempted to extract the driver of the Prius from his vehicle. However, that driver was able to get away from the scene.
Several blocks away, that motorist was detained by Hollywood officers. There were no injuries associated with that second incident.
All of the drivers and victims involved in both altercations have been identified by Hollywood Officers and the investigation is on-going.

That’s a press release from the Los Angeles Police Department, and isn’t it rather ironic how these anti-police protesters expect cops to arrest somebody when a protester gets run over? How is it that the same criminal justice system you accuse of “systemic racism” whenever a black suspect gets shot is suddenly OK when you need some protection?

How was “justice denied,” Madame Speaker? The city of Louisville is paying out $12 million to settle a wrongful death lawsuit. But as to your question, if my daughter was associating with a criminal scumbag like Jamarcus Taylor? Well, lie down with dogs, wake up with fleas.

Whatever happened to common sense? Back in the day when I was running around with dopehead hoodlums, nobody would have said a word about “social justice” if I’d found myself on the wrong end of a gun. Believe it or not, cops still shoot plenty of white criminals, but you never hear about those cases because nobody riots — the media doesn’t notice and no politicians pay attention — when white people get killed.

UPDATE: Because there has been so much misinformation — and just outright ignorance — about this case, I have decided to write a long summary called “The Truth About Breonna Taylor.” This is going to take several hours, and I might not have it finished until Saturday morning, but somebody needs to tell this story right, and it might as well be me.

If readers want to help support this work, I’ll ask you to remember that The Five Most Important Words in the English Language are:

HIT THE FREAKING TIP JAR!

UPDATE II: “The Truth About Breonna Taylor, Part 1: Separating BLM’s Myth From Reality.” Apologies that this is taking longer than I’d expected. There’s an awful lot of truth to tell.




 

Category: Crime

Election Fraud Already Underway?

Posted on | September 25, 2020 | 3 Comments

You would like to think that things like this could never happen. Then you remember who Democrats are, and of course it’s happening:

Mail-in ballots from the military serving overseas were found in the trash in Pennsylvania. The ballots were discovered during an investigation into election issues in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania. They were all votes for President Trump.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office Middle District of Pennsylvania released a statement on the situation on Thursday:

On Monday, September 21, 2020, at the request of Luzerne County District Attorney Stefanie Salavantis, the Office of the United States Attorney along with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Scranton Resident Office, began an inquiry into reports of potential issues with a small number of mail-in ballots at the Luzerne County Board of Elections.
Since Monday, FBI personnel working together with the Pennsylvania State Police have conducted numerous interviews and recovered and reviewed certain physical evidence. Election officials in Luzerne County have been cooperative. At this point we can confirm that a small number of military ballots were discarded. Investigators have recovered nine ballots at this time. Some of those ballots can be attributed to specific voters and some cannot. All nine ballots were cast for presidential candidate Donald Trump.

While nine ballots have been recovered, it is not clear how many were actually discarded.
This announcement comes on the heels of a report that three trays of mail, including absentee ballots, were discovered in a ditch in Wisconsin.

(Hat-tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.) Tampering with the U.S. Mail is a federal crime. Somebody’s going to federal prison for this — unless Joe Biden wins, in which case the whole thing will be made to disappear.




 

Category: Crime, Election

In The Mailbox: 09.24.20

Posted on | September 25, 2020 | 1 Comment

— compiled by Wombat-socho

OVER THE TRANSOM
Bacon Time: Bourbon Score
357 Magnum: 96 Minute Wait For Police After 911 Call
EBL: Senate Report Finds Hunter Biden Is Corrupt AF
Twitchy: Woman Mortally Terrified After Seeing Trump Yard Signs At Airbnb Rental
Louder With Crowder: Antifa Assaulted A Seattle Cop, And They Don’t Want You To Know
Vox Popoli: Homeschool Or Divorce? also, Preparing To Fight The Demon State

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: Cardboard Guardians
American Conservative: A Mencken For Catholics
American Greatness: Stacks Of Absentee Ballots Found In Wisconsin Ditch
American Thinker: Trump Should Make A Recess Appointment To SCOTUS
Animal Magnetism: Animal’s Daily Manly Accessories News
Babalu Blog: Hundreds Of Cuban Doctors Accuse Castro Regime Of Slavery
BattleSwarm: Hunter Biden Has Been A Very, Very Bad Boy
Cafe Hayek: That’s Not How It Works
CDR Salamander: Diversity Thursday
Da Tech Guy: Five One-Liners Under Other Peoples’ Fedoras, also, Thanks To Corona-chan, The U.S. Has Become A Police State, And Far Too Many Are OK With That
Don Surber: No Energy Biden Campaign Worries Democrats, also, Democrats Broke The Rules, Then Blamed Trump
The Geller Report: U.S. Attorney – Military Ballots Cast For Trump Found Discarded In PA, also, Biden Campaign Mailing Out Pre-Filled Ballots
Hogewash: Sonification, also, A Simplified Method Of Counting Mail-In Ballots
Hollywood In Toto: Klavan – Late Night Comics “Provably Wrong”, Then Colbert Makes His Point For Him
The Lid: Durham Adds Clinton Foundation, Unfinished Huber Queries To Russiagate Investigation
Legal Insurrection: Trump Greeted With Boos, Heckling As He Pays His Respects To Justice Ginsburg, also, Democrats Fear Senator Feinstein Not Up For SCOTUS Battle At 87
The PanAm Post: Almagro – Absurd To Think That Ciminals Against Humanity Organize Elections
Power Line: Law Enforcement Priorities, also, Justice But No Peace
Shark Tank: FL Democrat Staff At Odds With Biden Over Defunding Police
Shot In The Dark: The New York Times’ Memory Hole
STUMP: COVID Roundup – The Case Of The Mysterious Missing Mortality, & More
The Political Hat: The Latest Tool Of White Supremacy – Miscegenation, also, The Not-So-Free State Of George Floyd
This Ain’t Hell: Retired Green Beret’s Widow Sues VA For Harassment, Slander Over Life Insurance Payouts, also, Military Ballots Discarded, Investigation Ongoing
Victory Girls: Louisville – Injury, Mayhem, & Lies
Volokh Conspiracy: Libertarian Party Candidate Jorgensen Releases “Liberty-Minded” SCOTUS Short List
Weasel Zippers: FBI Investigating After Trump Ballots Discarded In PA, also, Antifa Rioter Attempts To Murder Seattle Policeman By Skulling Him With Metal Bat
The Federalist: Explosive FBI Texts Detail Internal Furor Over Handling Of “Crossfire Hurricane”, also, Why #BLM Only Empowers Racist White Leftists
Mark Steyn: It’s Surprisingly Easy Out Here For A Pimp

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Category: Linkagery

Sleepy Joe’s Sundown Campaign

Posted on | September 24, 2020 | Comments Off on Sleepy Joe’s Sundown Campaign

 

I should be careful not to praise Michael Brendan Dougherty too much. He’s probably as close to a full-blown paleoconservative as they allow to write for National Review these days. Twice (in 2007 and again in 2017), Dougherty wrote about the late Sam Francis in ways that could be described as laudatory, and you don’t get more paleo than Sam. So if Dougherty is secretly reading VDare or American Renaissance, I wouldn’t want to “out” him as part of the Shadowy Far-Right Cabal. Next thing you know, there’d be an “exposé” by Oliver Darcy or Lachlan Markay and then Dougherty would be hate-listed by the SPLC.

Dougherty is very smart, however, so he’s probably covered his tracks well enough that even my praising him won’t lead to any career-shatttering scandal. and he’s got this nice piece today about how Joe Biden’s campaign is nearly non-existent:

[T]he distress signals are coming from the New York Times now. It’s not exactly about his health, but about the tortoise-like pace and manner of the campaign. In those pages, Mark Leibovich compared the Biden campaign to pandemic-era NFL games: “quiet, eerie and almost entirely fan-free.”
Leibovich gives ample space to the Biden campaign’s rationalization: The minimal event schedule is a sign that Joe Biden cares about his supporters, whereas we’re to suppose Trump rallies are nihilistic festivals of death, in which the MAGA-freaks aspirate and palpate each other in the hopes of joining Herman Cain in the Trump Taj Mahal in the skies.
But then Leibovich adds this:

Still, Mr. Biden’s minimal footprint on the ground tends to stoke anxiety among Democrats that their vehicle for defeating the president has a deficit in effort and enthusiasm, especially compared with an opponent whose big-splash approach (boat flotillas, fully resumed campaign events) is anything but reluctant.

By the tentative prose standards of the New York Times, this is a Civil Defense Siren blaring through a bonfire sending smoke signals, “S.O.S.” With polls tightening in Arizona and Florida you can feel nerves starting to jangle.
If Biden blows it, the basement-campaign strategy will look like an obvious culprit in his defeat. Usually, a party tries to avoid making the same mistakes that recent losing campaigns made. But Biden’s operation seems to be leaning into dangers that should be obvious.

First of all, does anyone believe the polls? I mean, when Dougherty describes “polls tightening in Arizona and Florida,” I figure both those states must be solidly for Trump. If there is even a hint of doubt from the Biden campaign about any state, I count it as solid “red.”

Maybe I’m overconfident, but what’s the alternative? To actually believe that Biden is leading in North Carolina? That even Georgia and Texas might be “in play”? That’s either (a) complete and utter bullshit, or (b) proof that the American constitutional republic is irreversibly doomed. If Biden is even close in Texas, all hope of the future is lost. So my hunch is that the truth is (b) and the polls are all bullshit.

Ace of Spades has a good summary of the polls-are-bullshit evidence. One of the things you have to do, when evaluating a poll, is to look past the topline number and get into the results of demographic subgroups — white, black, Hispanic, etc. How do those smaller subsets compare to anything observable in the real world? Ace points to a recent national poll that showed Biden leading by 5 points but which showed a Dem/GOP skew of 12.5% in the sample, whereas 2016 had only a 4% skew. So basically, this poll has an 8.5% oversample of Democrats. If you take that into consideration, you might guess that Biden is actually trailing by 3 points nationally, which would not be surprising in the least. Biden is actually a weaker candidate than Hillary was, even if his negatives aren’t as high as hers were. When you see egregious misrepresentations like that in one poll, you realize that other polls showing similar topline results must be similarly skewed. Meanwhile, Ace finds support for his theory “that Biden’s events are suspiciously small and unpublicized to make it very easy for him to cancel them if his brain is having a not-so-fresh feeling,” quoting Charles C.W. Cooke:

As of late, Biden’s team has regularly put a “lid” on his day by noon — or even earlier. And, when it does not, the events that Biden attends seem to have been designed to be either easily cancelable or easily replaceable. Were President Trump to cancel a rally, he would be unable to hide it. This is not true of the events on Biden’s schedule . . .
Those with suspicious minds have started to wonder if there is something wrong with Biden. Perhaps he is unable to work every day? Perhaps his schedule needs to be set up in such a way as it can be amended without notice?

So, according to this theory, Biden has his good days and his bad days, like any patient in the downhill slide into senile dementia. Because there are some days where Biden is completely out of it — a blank-eyed zombie — his campaign can’t schedule in advance the kind of major public events that presidential candidates usually do. Instead, they schedule micro-events that can be canceled or rescheduled at short notice.

Tonight, Trump spoke at a gigantic rally in Jacksonville, Florida, while Joe Biden was still stuck in his Delaware basement, eating a warm bowl of stew and trying to remember what he ate for breakfast.




 

Category: Joe Biden

Hazards of the Trade

Posted on | September 24, 2020 | 2 Comments

Earlier today, I mentioned that Shelby Talcott of the Daily Caller had apparently been arrested while covering the Louisville riot, now it turns out she wasn’t the only one who got the cuffs:

Two Daily Caller reporters were arrested as part of a mass detention during the Louisville riots.
Shelby Talcott and Jorge Ventura were covering the riots when police surrounded the group and made everyone get on the ground. A video showed police detaining several people and putting them in zip-tie handcuffs. Talcott and Ventura were arrested despite identifying themselves as press.
Daily Caller Editor-In-Chief Geoffrey Ingersoll notified the Louisville Metro Police Department that Talcott and Ventura were working as members of the press when they were arrested.
The Louisville Department of Corrections told Ingersoll that Talcott and Ventura would be processed and charged like the rest of the people who were arrested. They both will be charged with two misdemeanors related to breaking curfew and unlawful assembly, the Department of Corrections said, for their alleged failure to disperse and go to the press’ “observation area.”
The mass detention came after a chaotic night where two police officers were shot. An unlawful assembly was declared as rioters set multiple fires around the city and broke glass windows.

By the way, I completely endorse these arrests. Let me explain.

Hunter S. Thompson got tear-gassed while covering the riots at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. It’s a hazard of the trade. If you’re a combat correspondent in a war zone, you might get bombed. If you’re a reporter covering a riot, you might get arrested.

The city of Louisville declared a 9 p.m. curfew Wednesday, and anybody caught on the street after that time was subject to arrest. As it was, the Mostly Peaceful™ Protesters were allowed to stay on the streets well past the curfew hour. By the time Talcott and Ventura got arrested, there were only a few dozen people still protesting and, considering that two cops had already been shot, you can’t blame police if they decided, “OK, enough play time, kids — everybody is going to jail.”

“But Stacy,” you say, “they were reporters!”

So? There were probably a lot of Antifa scumbags in that crowd who could have claimed to be “journalists” of one sort or another. Basically anybody with a Twitter account could claim they were just “reporting” on the riots, and defy a police order to disperse the unlawful assembly.

The law is the law, in other words, and if the Daily Caller wants to object to cops enforcing the law, they can spend the money to hire a lawyer and fight these charges in court. But I hope not.

Just pay the fine. Consider it a tax-deductible business expense.

(P.S.: Shelby Talcott is way too cute to be Antifa, but the cops can’t make a Pretty Girl Exception to the laws, because then they would be accused of unconstitutional discrimination against ugly chicks.)




 

Category: Journalism

Mostly Peaceful™ Protesters Shoot Two Police Officers in Louisville Riot

Posted on | September 24, 2020 | 1 Comment

 

This is actually good news, relatively speaking. When I saw the mob unpacking riot supplies from a U-Haul truck (allegedly supplied by Soros-funded radical Holly Zoller), my thought was, “Uh-oh. This is gonna be bad.” Fortunately, Louisville is not Portland. There are about 120,000 black people in Louisville, but the protest mob — at least half of whom were white — was never more than a few hundred people.

Whatever the public opinion about the Breonna Taylor case in Louisville, the vast majority of residents there clearly do not support the radical cop-hating mob, and so the city didn’t burn down Wednesday night. The cops maintained a perimeter and, when the protesters did not disperse after the 9 p.m. curfew, they arrested everybody (apparently including Daily Caller reporter Shelby Talcott). All in all, the situation in Louisville was not nearly as bad as it could have been.

For me the most disturbing moment of the night — I mean, besides the two cops getting shot — was when I briefly watched CNN and had to listen to Ben Crump run his mouth for a couple of minutes.

If any sociologist is interested in researching the cause of racism in America, there it is — Ben Crump. I defy any white person to listen to Ben Crump for two minutes without having racist thoughts. The very idea that some college gave this fool a law degree? That’s got to be worth a few thousand recruits a year for the neo-Nazis. Meanwhile . . .

Organized hatred is a frightening thing to behold, and no one can blame Americans for being terrified by what happened Wednesday in Louisville. After it was announced that a grand jury had indicted only one of the police officers involved in the death of Breonna Taylor, an angry mob began shouting threats punctuated with obscenities. “We didn’t get it! Burn it down!” was one of the threats. Another voice in the protest mob was still more specific, shouting at police: “All y’all get ready to f***ing die!”
There followed the inevitable confrontations between police and the “mostly peaceful” protesters, who engaged in vandalism and arson. By 8:30 p.m., Louisville police reported that one officer had been shot in a confusing scene on East Broadway near the Interstate 65 overpass. Subsequently, it was reported that two officers had been shot, which perhaps the #BlackLivesMatter (BLM) movement will consider adequate to satisfy their slogan of “Justice for Breonna.” . . .

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




 

Category: Crime, Kentucky
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