Chicago Police Reportedly Have Solved the Jussie Smollett ‘Hate Crime’ Hoax
Posted on | February 14, 2019 | Comments Off on Chicago Police Reportedly Have Solved the Jussie Smollett ‘Hate Crime’ Hoax
When this story broke, there were a lot of reasons to be suspicious, as I detailed at the time (“You Haters! Stop Questioning Gay Actor’s Claim of ‘MAGA’ Hate Crime in Chicago,” Jan. 31, and “Persons of Interest,” Feb. 1). Now it is being reported that Chicago police are questioning two black men, one of whom appeared as an extra on Empire with Jussie Smollett, and once they get full confessions, we can expect the rest of the story behind this obvious hoax to emerge. The local crime site CWB Chicago has this summary:
Charlie De Mar of CBSChicago reports that police raided the home of the two “persons of interest” last night, seizing bleach, a wallet with stamps, a magazine, computers, and more. A relative of the men told De Mar that the two left for Nigeria on the day of the purported attack.
Chicago police today are questioning two persons of interest in the Jussie Smollett hate crime investigation, according to a department spokesperson. Both are African-American. Smollett, who police say “has been questioned throughout” their investigation is also being interrogated.
The persons of interest were arrested at O’Hare airport on Wednesday night, police said.
Smollett said in an interview aired on Good Morning America today that he believed the two persons of interest seen in the CPD images were the persons who attacked him. “I don’t have any doubt in my mind that that’s them. Never did.”
TMZ reported that the persons of interest are an actor who has appeared with Smollett on Fox television’s Empire and a person who was traveling with the second actor. These individuals are believed to be the “potential persons of interest” who were seen in low-quality images released by Chicago police days after the alleged attack, according to a police spokesperson.
TMZ also reported that police used “rideshare and/or taxicab records” to identify the “persons of interest” and to track their movements on the night of the purported attack.
CWB Chicago says they got an anonymous tip a week ago that police already knew who the “persons of interest” were, knew that the rope around Smollett’s neck was purchased at Ace Hardware, and had obtained phone data relevant to the investigation. So basically, the case has been solved for a week, and the police were just waiting for these two guys to return from Nigeria before taking them into custody.
It never made sense that two Trump supporters would be stalking an obscure gay actor on the streets of Chicago in the wee hours of the morning when temperatures were below zero, but you were a racist — “RAAAAACIST!” — if you suggested it looked like a hoax.
UPDATE: And now we know the motive:
Multiple sources have told ABC7 Eyewitness News that police are investigating whether Smollett and the two men staged the attack allegedly because Smollett was being written off of “Empire.”
Gay actor loses job, fakes “hate crime” against himself, blames Trump supporters. Now watch how quickly the media forget this ever happened.
UPDATE II: Tweets that have not aged well:
By the way, Chicago PD is pushing back against some of these reports as “inaccurate” or “unsubstantiated,” although officials are not being very clear about what elements of the stories are wrong, and are being close-mouthed about what they do actually know. We’ll see . . .
San Francisco and the Winter of Hate
Posted on | February 14, 2019 | Comments Off on San Francisco and the Winter of Hate
Some of us are old enough to remember — although I was not yet in third grade at the time — when San Francisco was famously the scene of the 1967 “Summer of Love.” All that hippie flower-child “Stop the War”/“Ban the Bomb”/“Tune In, Turn On, Drop Out” pacifist stuff was supposed to usher in an “Age of Aquarius” utopia, but in reality it led directly to an epidemic of sexual diseases, exploitation and violence. By 1969, the Manson cult had moved south to L.A. and was murdering “pigs,” while the so-called “peace movement” had spawned the radical terrorist group, the Weather Underground. Half a century later, San Francisco is the worst place in the world for anyone hoping to find love:
I spent about six years actively dating around the Bay Area. In that time I dated, for varying amounts of time, three self-described indie rockers, an amateur hockey player, an elementary school teacher with a drinking problem, a yoga teacher who didn’t drink alcohol (or consume processed sugars and carbohydrates of any kind), an English teacher living in his mom’s in-home daycare, and a skateboarding enthusiast who worked as a manager at a tech company.
These budding relationships ended for various reasons. At least three of the aforementioned men were still in love with their exes. One said he couldn’t handle the pressure of texting me “witty responses,” and thus could not go on seeing me. Most of the rest were “not looking for something serious.”
I attributed these failures not to the region in which I was dating, but to the fraught Millennial dating landscape as a whole. Perhaps I was wrong in thinking this, according to a popular San Francisco Reddit thread, posted just in time for Valentine’s Day.
(Hat-tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.) The woman who authored that analysis of the loveless state of affairs in San Francisco, journalist Michelle Robertson, eventually found love when she went to a film festival in Kansas City, where she met a man from Arkansas. The point is that men who belong to the college-educated urban elite — the kind of men who vote Democrat and live in places like San Francisco — are selfish, arrogant, immoral and therefore unlovable.
UPDATE: Welcome, Instapundit readers!
Democrat Ilhan Omar Sure Hates Jews — and the Media Sure Are Protecting Her
Posted on | February 14, 2019 | 1 Comment
Ace of Spades calls attention to the fact that CNN “reporter” Manu Raju is a Trump-hating partisan Democrat propagandist, and one of the examples of Raju and CNN’s dishonesty is how they’re making excuses for Minnesota Democrat Rep. Ilhan Omar’s anti-Semitism:
Freshman Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota is defending her controversial views on Israel as they come under scrutiny in Washington, telling CNN that “it’s not surprising” her positions are generating attention and that she finds it “exciting” to be sparking debate.
“It’s not surprising. I think it is actually exciting because we are finally able to have conversations that we weren’t really willing to,” Omar told CNN on Tuesday. “It is really important for us to get a different lens about what peace in that region could look like and the kind of difficult conversations we need to have about allies.”
Omar along with Democratic Rep. Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, the first two Muslim women to serve in Congress, are indeed changing the conversation on Capitol Hill over the United States’ long-standing relationship with Israel by speaking out critically against the Israeli government over its treatment of Palestinians.
Yes, her “controversial views” are “changing the conversation,” so now Jew-hating conspiracy theories are OK, according to CNN.
Monday’s press release from the ADL:
The ADL (Anti-Defamation League) today called on the leadership of the House of Representatives to take action in response to Rep. Ilhan Omar’s statements yesterday suggesting that Jewish influence and money was the reason for strong bipartisan support for Israel.
On Sunday night, Rep. Omar tweeted, “it’s all about the Benjamins baby” in response to a tweet from journalist Glenn Greenwald saying that “it’s stunning how much time U.S. political leaders spend defending a foreign nation,” referring to Israel (“Benjamins” is slang for 100-dollar bills). Later, when asked via Twitter by another journalist who she thought was paying American politicians to be pro-Israel, Rep. Omar responded, “AIPAC.”
“As Americans and Jews, we expect our politicians to condemn bigotry, not to fuel it. Words matter. At a time when anti-Semitism is on the rise in the U.S. and abroad, Rep. Omar is promoting the ugly, anti-Semitic conspiracy theory that Jews have an outsized influence over politics. The notion that wealthy Jews are controlling the government is a longstanding anti-Semitic trope and one of the pillars of modern anti-Semitism, a retread of ideas spread by bigots from David Duke to Louis Farrakhan. As the people’s House, the House of Representatives must not tolerate any bigotry against any community in our nation. We call on the House leadership to take immediate action, so that the message is clear: anti-Semitism will not be tolerated,” said Jonathan A. Greenblatt, CEO and National Director of ADL.
“Unfortunately, making insensitive statements toward the Jewish community is not new for Rep. Omar. These tweets are part of a disturbing pattern of behavior that must end. The Congresswoman needs to understand that these comments promote dangerous stereotypes and are hurtful to her Jewish constituents and Jewish-Americans throughout the country,” Greenblatt continued.
Omar’s anti-Jewish attitudes were notorious before she was elected to Congress, so much so that when she served in the Minnesota state legislature, local Jews — including Democratic state Sen. Ron Latz — tried to have what they called an “intervention” with Omar:
“We wanted to reach out to her,” Latz recalled. “We were a bit troubled about several things she had said.”
Among their concerns was a 2012 tweet in which Omar wrote: “Israel has hypnotized the world, may Allah awaken the people and help them see the evil doings of Israel.” The language evokes an anti-Semitic trope of Jews as practicers of some type of sorcery that allows them to control others. . . .
“Over the course of about two hours [Latz said], we shared with her our concerns for things, including language that has references and meanings beyond just the meanings of words. Tropes, dog whistles — call them what you will. We explained to her how hurtful, and factually inaccurate, they were.
“Most of us came out of that conversation very troubled by the answers we received. I was not convinced she was going to give a balanced approach to policy in the Middle East, and I was not convinced … where her heart is on these things.
“But we were glad she met with us, and we were hopeful she would be more careful about what she tweeted and she said if she got elected. Frankly, I was hopeful she’d grow in office a little, and understand the media platform she has. Instead, she keeps repeating her mistakes, if you can call them that.”
That’s just it, isn’t it? Her offensive statements aren’t “mistakes,” but expressions of her sincere hatred of Jews. Because she is a Democrat, and because media organizations like CNN are acting as partisan propagandists for Democrats, Omar receives sympathetic media treatment in a way that would not be extended to any Republican who repeatedly engaged in anti-Semitic rhetoric. It is one thing, as Latz said, to criticize Israel or to question U.S. policy in the Middle East, but Omar’s rhetoric goes far beyond that. And although Democrat leaders in Congress forced Omar to issue a half-hearted “apology,” she is still scheduled next month to address a $500-a-ticket “fundraiser for the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), a terror-tied organization that was named an unindicted co-conspirator in the largest terrorist financing case in U.S. history.” Where is the accountability?
In The Mailbox: 02.13.19
Posted on | February 14, 2019 | 1 Comment
— compiled by Wombat-socho
OVER THE TRANSOM
Ninety Miles From Tyranny: The 90 Miles Mystery Box, Episode #530
EBL: Come On, Mitch, Just Do It
Twitchy: President Trump Wants That $3.5 Billion In CA’s Cancelled Bullet Train Funding Back
Louder With Crowder: Hypocrite Alert – Occasional Cortex Prefers Airplanes To Trains, By A Lot
RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: Boomers Flooding Gyms In All-Out Effort To Avert Old Age
American Power: The Twitter Celebrity Takeover Of Politics
American Thinker: Four Ways Democrats Want To Ruin Your Life
Animal Magnetism: Animal’s Hump Day News
BattleSwarm: California’s High Speed Rail Stops Pining For The Fjords
CDR Salamander: The Expected Pullback From 355, also, Do We Need To Shut Down Our Flag Officers Until We Figure Out What’s Going On?
Da Tech Guy: Non-Tweets Under The Fedora, also, Laugh Off The Green New Deal At Your Own Peril
Don Surber: Private Investigator Clears Covington Boys
Dustbury: All And Tsundere
First Street Journal: Some Very Lame Advice From The Washington Post
The Geller Report: Jihadi Rep Omar Attacks Trump’s Envoy To Venezuela In Libel-Fueled Tirade, also, US Charges Former Muslima AF Officer With Spying For Iran
Hogewash: California Mugged By Reality, also, Team Kimberlin Post Of The Day
Hollywood In Toto: How Brie Larson Can Really Impact Diversity
Joe For America: James Woods Goes Ballistic On Cory Booker, Dubs Him “Fartacus”
JustOneMinute: Owning The Libs By Voting On Their Proposals
Legal Insurrection: MN Jewish Leaders Tried An Intervention With Ilhan Omar Last Year, also, Sen. Markey (D-Mass) Claims McConnell Is Trying To “Sabotage” and “Silence” Green New Deal
Michelle Malkin: Lost, Buried, Burned – Oklahoma’s Rape Kit Scandal
The PanAm Post: Buenos Aires Mayor Continues Unpopular Persecution Of Uber, also, From Despair To Guaido
Power Line: Ilhan Omar In Action – A Sickening Disgrace, also, Hot Stove League Gives Way To Spring Training
Shark Tank: Senator Cruz Calls For “El Chapo” To Pay For The Wall
Shot In The Dark: Why Does Governor Walz Hate The Environment And Want Rural Minnesotans To Die Flaming Deaths?
STUMP: How To Lie With Budget Statistics, Pritzker & Hynes Edition, also, Geeking Out – Fixing Fullerton California’s Popular Annual Financial Report
The Political Hat: Euthanasia Epidemic In The Netherlands
This Ain’t Hell: He Has A Purple Heart, But The VA Won’t Call Him A Veteran, also, Should Deported Veterans Be Allowed To Come Back To America?
Victory Girls: Ilhan Omar’s Behavior Toward Elliott Abrams Was Despicable
Volokh Conspiracy: LA Demanding That City Contractors Reveal Ties To The NRA
Weasel Zippers: Occasional Cortex’s “Policy Guy” Deletes Tweet Saying Public Option Won’t Pay For Elders’ Hip Replacements, also, New Emails Reveal FBI Tried To Cut Deal With State Dept. To Minimize Hillary Email Scandal
Megan McArdle: Why The United States Will Never Have High-Speed Rail
Mark Steyn: The Windmills Of Your Mind, also, A Valensteyn Special
‘I Gave You a Knife for a Reason’
Posted on | February 13, 2019 | Comments Off on ‘I Gave You a Knife for a Reason’
Julio Cesar-Ortega (left); Tyjanae Allen (center); Govenor Tate (right).
In November 2017, 18-year-old Tyjanae Allen and 19-year-old Govenor Tate “hatched a plan” to rob Julio Cesar-Ortega, 29, by offering that Allen would have sex with Cesar-Ortega for $200. He had $500 cash on him when he picked her up in his car near North 28th Avenue and Sprague Street in Omaha, Nebraska. Allen began texting Tate, who sent her a message: “Get that money. I gave you a knife for a reason.” When he realized she was planning to rob him, he threatened to drive her to the police station. Allen slashed Cesar-Ortega’s arm, severing an artery. The next morning, Cesar-Ortega’s body was found in his car in the parking lot of a police precinct. He had bled to death.
Today, Tyjanae Allen was sentenced to 20 to 40 years in prison by Judge Russell Bowie. Tate still awaits trial on murder charges.
Professor Glenn Reynolds says the moral of this story is, “Teach women not to lie about sex and commit murder.” Well, perhaps, but I would offer another suggestion: “Stay away from whores.”
Mitch the Ninja Turtle Will Force Democrats to Vote on Their Own Plan
Posted on | February 13, 2019 | Comments Off on Mitch the Ninja Turtle Will Force Democrats to Vote on Their Own Plan
Amateur hour in the House Democrat majority — the blundering overreach of freshman Rep. Alexandra Ocasio Cortez — gives Senate Republicans a chance to pounce and seize, so to speak:
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Tuesday that the Senate would vote on the Green New Deal introduced last week by Sen. Edward Markey, D-Mass., and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y.
“I’ve noted with great interest the Green New Deal, and we’re going to be voting on that in the Senate to give everybody an opportunity to go on record,” McConnell told reporters.
The proposal, which is not expected to pass the Republican-dominated upper chamber, could force some Democrats to make a politically awkward calculation.
Democratic liberals, including all of the senators currently running for president, have come out in support of the legislation, which calls for generating 100 percent of the nation’s power from renewable sources within 10 years. . . .
Democratic moderates have been less than enthusiastic about the proposal. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi derisively referred to the House version of the resolution as a “green dream,” while only 11 of the 47 senators who caucus with the Democrats have signed on as sponsors.
(Hat-tip: Instapundit.) The clumsy attempt by Democrats to distance themselves from the crazy “Green New Deal” FAQ that has now been removed from Ocasio-Cortez’s website showed how the party’s brash young socialist celebrity was Not Ready for Prime Time. Even so eminent a progressive as Jonathan Chait has admitted that the problem with the proposal was not a “botched” roll-out, as some Democrats have claimed, but simply that the plan is a bad idea. And now McConnell, shrewd tactician that he is, will force Senate Democrats to vote on this idea.
In 2020, Democrats will be defending Senate seats in Alabama, Colorado, Arizona, Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire and Virginia. Does anyone suppose that “swing” voters in those states would vote for candidates who have endorsed Ocasio-Cortez’s wacky radical scheme?
Assuming that all 53 Republicans vote “no” on this idea, how many Senate Democrats does Mitch need to get to vote “no” in order to make the plan a loser by a 2-to-1 or 3-to-1 margin? Because no fewer than five senators expected to seek the 2020 Democrat presidential nomination — Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), Cory Booker (D-NJ), Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), and Bernie Sanders (I-VT) — have endorsed the Ocasio-Cortez plan, what does this suggest the Democrat primary battle looming ahead? The televised debates will be a lunatic carnival of left-wing extremism, which will make it easy for President Trump and the Republicans to play the part of common-sense grown-ups in the upcoming campaign. Wanna buy some popcorn?
In The Mailbox: 02.12.19
Posted on | February 13, 2019 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 02.12.19
— compiled by Wombat-socho
OVER THE TRANSOM
EBL: National Cheddar Day
Twitchy: Sen. Markey (D-Mass) Say Mitch McConnell Is Trying To Sabotage The Green New Deal By Calling A Vote
Louder With Crowder: Vegan Cory Booker Wants You To Stop Eating Meat. No Wonder He’s Such A Miserable Troll.
RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: Podcast #102 – David Hiscox From XYZ Magazine, also, They Were The Most Worthless Of Times
American Power: Ilhan Omar Isn’t Really Sorry For Her Antisemitic Tropes
Animal Magnetism: Animal’s Daily Lever Gun News
BattleSwarm: Hard Education Truths From A Veteran Teacher
CDR Salamander: There Will Always Be Smugglers, There Will Always Be War, also, The USN’s Face Mission; Naval Presence, History & Present Use
Da Tech Guy: The Vengeful Tokenism Behind The Current Dr. Who Series, also, Bravo Sierra & Paying Attention
Don Surber: Obama Killed Steel; Trump Brought It Back
Dustbury: Thirst Come, Thirst Served
First Street Journal: Why Should Cities Spend Money To Make Shooting Up Safer For Drug Addicts?
The Geller Report: Linda Sarsour Raises Money For Muslim Who Raped, Killed 15-Year-Old, also, President Trump Calls On Antisemitic Dem Rep Omar To Resign
Hogewash: A Great Leap Backward (TM) Into Paperwork, also, Team Kimberlin Post Of The Day
Hollywood In Toto: Hollywood Stars Mum On Northam, Fairfax, & Omar
Joe For America: CA Train To Nowhere – Gov Newsom Cancels $100 Billion Boondoggle
JustOneMinute: Smoking In The DA’s Room
Legal Insurrection: Senate Finds No Direct Evidence Of Trump-Russia Collusion, also, Democratic Strategists Sour On Potential Biden Candidacy
The PanAm Post: Colombia’s Duque Claims FARC Dissidence Backed By Venezuela, also, Mysterious Turkish Company Helps Maduro Extract Gold To Fund Corruption Networks
Power Line: The Trouble With Solar, also, The Apology This Time (6)
Shark Tank: HUD Provides FL More Funding To Fight Homelessness
Shot In The Dark: Democrats
STUMP: Taxing Tuesday – Let’s Soak The Rich…Hey, Where Are They Going? also, The Undeniable Corruption Of Chicago & Illinois, Part 4
The Political Hat: Big Brother The Nanny, also, Stop (Terrorist) Hammertime!
This Ain’t Hell: The Loss Of CPO Kent, also, Trump’s Picture On MRE?
Victory Girls: Trump Says “Antisemitism Has No Place In Congress”, Omar Should Resign
Volokh Conspiracy: What’s Wrong With Telling Women Not To Drink?
Weasel Zippers: Sen. Gillibrand (D-NY) Calls Eliminating All Private Health Plans “An Urgent Goal”, also, Stoners Enter Vacant Houston Home To Toke Up, Find a Tiger Inside
Megan McArdle: “We’re Nuts!” Isn’t A Great Pitch For A Green New Deal
Mark Steyn: The Identity Politics Minstrel Show, also, Saturday Night & The Morning After
Meghan Murphy’s Lawsuit: Because Twitter Has Already Lost Its Credibility
Posted on | February 13, 2019 | 1 Comment
You don’t have to like Meghan Murphy to applaud her lawsuit against the corporate SJW totalitarians now running Twitter:
Canadian feminist writer Meghan Murphy is suing Twitter after she was banned for her tweets about transgender people.
Attorneys for Murphy on Monday filed suit in the Superior Court of California for the County of San Francisco, accusing Twitter of deceptive trade practices and breach of contract.
Twitter banned Murphy in November over a series of transgender-related tweets that included statements like “men aren’t women” and “How are transwomen not men?”
“Twitter’s repeated representations that it would uphold the free speech rights of its users and not censor user speech were material to the decision of millions of users, like Murphy, to join,” Murphy’s lawyers wrote in court documents reviewed by The Daily Caller News Foundation.
“Twitter would never have attracted the hundreds of millions of users it boasts today had Twitter let it be known that it would arbitrarily ban users who did not agree with the political and social views of its management or impose sweeping new policies banning the expression of widely-held viewpoints and perspectives on public issues,” the suit states.
“While it is appalling that Twitter would ban a journalist for asking legitimate questions about an incoherent ideology, such as gender identity, and for challenging legislation I believe is a massive threat to women’s rights, this is about more than just gender identity,” Murphy wrote in an email to TheDCNF.
“We cannot allow multi billion dollar corporations to dictate speech. Twitter is quite literally enforcing a 1984-style version of newspeak, wherein we may not speak or name material reality. The fact that it is so-called progressives, by and large, is appalling,” Murphy added.
The Wall Street Journal had the lawsuit story first. When Murphy was banned in November, I reported her story here:
Jonathan Yaniv is a notorious Canadian pervert who has filed 16 human rights complaints against women for refusing to wax his genitals. Yaniv claims to be transgender, using the name “Jessica.”
A week after the feminist blog Gender Trender exposed Yaniv’s history of describing pedophilic and voyeuristic behavior online, WordPress deleted the entire Gender Trender blog and announced a new policy that “deadnaming” (identifying someone by their birth name) is a terms-of-service violation. When people on Twitter began commenting about this egregious situation, Yaniv and/or other transgender activists got those accounts suspended and, apparently, Canadian feminist Meghan Murphy’s Twitter account has been permanently suspended and Twitter announced its own anti-“deadnaming” policy.
That a dangerously deranged pervert like Jonathan Yaniv would be able to get someone as prominent as Meghan Murphy (who runs Canada’s most popular feminist website) banned from Twitter tells you everything you need to know about who’s calling the shots at Twitter HQ. When my @rsmccain account got banned in February 2016, a lot of people were like, “Whoa! What did he do to deserve that?” And there was never an explanation. Wouldn’t you think that, if I was “participating in targeted abuse” sufficient to justify being permanently banned from Twitter, someone would have produced screencaps to show (a) who was targeted, (b) how they were abused, and (c) how I participated? But there was nothing like that, and nobody who followed my account had seen me do anything egregious prior to my account being suddenly shut down.
Oh, but I had called Anita Sarkeesian a “totalitarian ideologue” a week before I got banned. Probably just a coincidence:
Twitter had decided, in an election year, to surrender control of its platform to a crew of feminist social justice warriors (SJWs) designated the “Trust and Safety Council.” This secretive group of Soviet-style commissars included the notorious anti-male hatemonger Anita Sarkeesian, and soon Twitter began purging conservative accounts.
Anita Sarkeesian is a dishonest, selfish, hate-filled monster, and any corporation that would voluntarily associate itself with her could not be trusted to respect anyone’s freedom. Some people urged me to sue Twitter, but I recognized that (a) I would not be the ideal plaintiff, and (b) sooner or later, these Twitter purges would go too far.
Oops. Read Meghan Murphy’s complaint carefully:
Meghan Murphy Lawsuit Again… by on Scribd
What you’ll see is that Murphy has them dead to rights on the breach-of-contract claim. They promised freedom, now they’re anti-freedom, and if this lawsuit withstands a motion to dismiss, I expect Twitter to offer Murphy a multi-million-dollar settlement to avoid discovery. Once that happens, well, it’s gonna be Katy-bar-the-door on such lawsuits.
You go, girl! Burn it down — burn it all down!