Archive for the 'Politics' Category

News From Boston:

BOSTON – Allowing the use of silencers and the attorney general’s authority to regulate firearms were hot topics at a Public Safety Committee hearing Thursday that saw lawmakers and gun rights advocates tangle over the Second Amendment.

More than 100 people piled into a Statehouse hearing room for the hearing on more than 50 bills dealing with firearms. Gun control activists congregated on one side of the room, many wearing orange T-shirts with “Moms Demand Action” or “Stop Gun Violence” on them. The other side of the room featured gun rights advocates, some of whom wore shirts bearing various slogans.

“We have some folks in this room who believe it is a privilege and we have some folks in this room who believe it is a constitutional right” to own a firearm, National Rifle Association spokesman John Hohenwarter said. “I think that’s where the fight lies.”

Hohenwarter and other gun rights supporters keyed in on a statement Rep. Marjorie Decker, a Cambridge Democrat, made at the hearing as she was testifying in support of various gun control measures and against bills she said would erode Massachusetts’ status as the state with the lowest rate of gun deaths.

“It is a privilege that we allow individuals to hold onto something that causes harm and death,” Decker said. “It is a privilege to have a car license, it is a privilege to have a gun license.”

Jim Wallace, executive director of the Gun Owners Action League based in Northboro, said Decker’s comment illustrated frustrations lawful gun owners feel in Massachusetts.

“One of the problems that we face here in Massachusetts is that the Second Amendment is barely recognized in the state as a whole and certainly not as a civil right. I could not have asked for a better witness to that than the previous legislator that actually described our civil rights as a privilege,” Wallace said. “I am aghast that an elected official would actually say that … but that’s not unusual.”

One issue that elicited testimony in favor and in opposition on Thursday was removing the state ban on suppressors, or silencers, which attach to the barrel of a gun and reduce the sound of a bullet being fired.

Sen. Michael Moore, D-Worcester, the co-chairman of the Joint Committee on Public Safety and Homeland Security, and Sen. Donald Humason each filed bills (S 1340/S 1317) to remove the ban on the use of suppressors. Massachusetts is one of 10 states that bans gun suppressors for hunting and one of eight states that bans them for consumers.

“I see them as a tool to continue firearm safety education without having to damage your ears,” Amanda Deveno, a firearm safety instructor and GOAL member, told the committee. “It also makes it easier for me as an instructor on the line to communicate properly with my students.”

Deveno’s argument did not go over well with John Rosenthal, the founder of the nonprofit Stop Handgun Violence.

Rosenthal said that having the Committee on Public Safety approve a bill deregulating silencers “is like the FDA commissioner saying we should deregulate arsenic.”

American Suppressor Association President and Executive Director Knox Williams said the opposition to the suppressors bill “is pretty boilerplate, based on common misconceptions from people who have never taken the time to go out and hear a suppressed gunshot.” He said a gunshot from a gun with a suppressor attached is still as loud as a jackhammer.

Also at issue Thursday was the authority of the attorney general to regulate the sale of firearms. Last summer, Attorney General Maura Healey drew the ire of Second Amendment advocates and sportsmen when she heightened her office’s enforcement of an assault weapons ban that had been on the books for years by cracking down on copycat assault weapons.

Humason, a Westfield Republican, filed S 1326 to remove the regulatory authority for the attorney general from consumer protection laws, Humason and Warren Republican Rep. Todd Smola filed S 1322/H 1310 to strip the attorney general of the office’s authority to regulate weapons and to repeal previously issued regulations, and Spencer Democrat Sen. Anne Gobi filed S 1316 to do away with the term “copies and duplicates” in the definition of assault weapon.

Rep. David Linsky said the bills were “filed in retaliation” to Healey’s actions and urged the committee not to advance the legislation.

“The attorney general has the authority to promulgate and enforce rules on all items sold to consumers in Massachusetts, including firearms. Attorney General Healey acted within her constitutional authority as the consumer advocate to stop the sale of copycat assault weapons and protect the residents of the commonwealth from these illegal weapons,” Linsky, a Natick Democrat, said. “Stripping the attorney general of her authority to regulate firearm sales would set a troubling precedent and leave our residents vulnerable to the whims of the powerful gun lobby.”

The theme of federal inaction ran through Thursday’s hearing, with multiple representatives and gun control advocates arguing that Massachusetts cannot rely on the federal government to set rules for firearms.

“If Congress is not moved to act in the wake of events like Newtown or Las Vegas, we cannot continue to sit around and be shocked or wring our hands at their inaction. States must become the agents of their own protection,” said Sen. Sonia Chang-Diaz, D-Jamaica Plain.

Methinks that Decker has too elevated an opinion of herself.  “Animal Farm” suddenly came to mind, or perhaps Nazi Germany, or the Soviet Union or Communist China.  And the American revolution as the repair for all of this.

The very purpose for weapons to begin with.  Perhaps Decker knows that and fears it.

Why would anyone remain in that awful state anyway?  Say, isn’t Smith & Wesson still ensconced there?  Why, pray tell?

I’m going to offer up these links (via reader B Bauch) with just a little bit of commentary.  The reader can judge for himself the content of the links.  As for the first one, it’s a highly useful link and video until it gets to the ads.

If you come to me telling me things and you have a badge and title, I don’t believe you.  But guess what?  As for that black lady in the video?  I believe her.  Every word of what she said happened that night.

Next up is Intellihub:

LAS VEGAS (INTELLIHUB) — Footage captured by a private surveillance camera on the night of the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history reveals several shocking details which authorities have failed to investigate.

The bombshell footage was released on Fox News’s “Tucker Carlson Tonight” on Friday evening and is presumed to have been captured by a nearby business’s southward facing security camera which is located approximately 780 feet due east of the venue where the Route 91 Harvest Music Festival was held on Oct. 1. The tape was given to Fox News by an attorney who represents several shooting victims.

Although the date burned into the video says ‘Oct. 2,’ Tucker Carlson confirms that the tape was in fact recorded on Oct. 1, the night of the shooting. The discrepancy comes after the proper date was not entered upon installation of the system.

A close look at the footage reveals the first notable detail occurs at 10:06 p.m. which is just one minute into the shooting, according to the official timeline, as Carlson points out.

At 10:06 concertgoers can be seen running eastward through the parking lot in an effort to get to safety.

“By ten-fourteen much larger crowds of people can be seen streaming through the area to escape the massacre going on,” Carlson explains. “You can see a large amount of wind and debris, apparently that is due to a helicopter hovering overhead.”

This is astonishing, to say the least! A helicopter hovering overhead?

[ … ]

According to Carlson, the owner of the tape maintains that law enforcement investigators have never asked to see the footage.

Here is the video.  Read the rest at Intellihub.

I maintain that I don’t need a pet theory of what happened that night and why it happened.  I’m not a conspiracy theorist.  I don’t have to prove my theories.  I also maintain that the narrative told to you by FedGov is a lie.

The Guardian:

Another year, another church. Another month, another mass killing. Another day, another political shrug about gun massacres across the United States.

There is still some shock left in this uniquely American series of mass killings. And with that shock, maybe a small glimmer of hope that the silent majority of Americans might demand something more than prayers from their lawmakers.

Prayers, sadly, did not save 26 churchgoers in Sutherland Springs, Texas. Just as they didn’t save nine lives at the Bible study group in Charleston, South Carolina, two years ago.

There’s still some shock left from the faces of the Texas death toll, which included a pregnant woman, a five-year-old child, and the pastor’s teenage daughter. But there was also shock at the toll inside Charleston’s Emanuel AME church, which included the pastor himself. And we have yet to process the shock of the carnage in Las Vegas, that left 58 country music fans dead just last month.

There’s also some shock left from the pathetic excuses for inaction that tumble out at times like this. This isn’t just a failure of leadership at the very top: members of Congress and statehouses on both sides of the aisle and across the country have proved themselves to be delusional cowards. Either they act like nothing can be done to stop gun violence, or they pretend guns make America safer.

Then there’s the special podium of delusional cowardice occupied by Donald Trump. “I think that mental health is your problem here,” he told reporters at a press conference in Tokyo on Monday. “This was a very – based on preliminary reports – very deranged individual. A lot of problems over a long period of time. We have a lot of mental health problems in our country, as do other countries. But this isn’t a guns situation.”

Let us all sigh for the souls whom we have yet to lose, in part because of this stupidity. Of course these are mental health issues. Of course we need to treat mental health like any other health challenge. Of course other countries have the same issues.

But other countries are not awash with guns. So it’s that much harder for people suffering from mental health issues to gun down large numbers of their fellow citizens in church, or at school, or at an open-air concert. Or take their own lives, which is by far the bigger killer with guns.

“Fortunately somebody else had a gun that was shooting in the opposite direction,” continued Trump, speaking without any factual basis, “otherwise it would have been – as bad as it was, it would have been much worse. But this is a mental health problem at the highest level.”

Yes, this is a mental health problem at the highest level. Just not the one you think it is, Mr President.

According to the local sheriff, the gunman was only confronted by an armed civilian once he emerged from the church, after the massacre was completed. The mass murderer died by killing himself.

So along with the victims, let’s please bury once and for all the storyline pushed so hard by the National Rifle Association, and echoed by Donald Trump. The only thing that stopped the bad guy with a gun was the bad guy with his own gun. The good guys were shot dead in their church pews.

So Mr. Wolffe, the only thing you manage to argue is for more armed congregants in the pews of American churches, and I am in wholehearted agreement with you.  It took a man with an AR-15 to stop the killer, and had congregants been armed like they should have been, he may not have even been successful at all.

As for your preening superiority, I’m not impressed.  This is said from the perch of a man who undoubtedly knew that a scandal was going on, and didn’t say anything at all.  And your own government – as well as the only armed people in your lousy country, the police – helped to cover it all up.  You know what I’m talking about, don’t you?

My readers do, so you may as well admit it.  You let Pakistani nationals hold child slaves for their ring of prostitution under your own nose, and said and did nothing.  I’m talking about the Rotherham scandal, and you know it.  So spare me the morality play.  Go fix your own problems and leave us alone.

Music Row:

Prominent Nashville attorney Orville Almon, Jr. has died.

He practiced entertainment and music law, IP law and business law for over 35 years, representing numerous prominent recording artists, music producers and songwriters, as well as record company executives, music publishers, record companies, television production companies, managers and other clients affiliated with the entertainment industry.

What they’re not saying in this article is more important than what they say.

Describing meetings with MGM, Las Vegas police, and the FBI as “incredibly strange and complex” to one of his friends on recently made private Facebook threads, the attorney was privy to inside information that the FBI, by announcing they are no longer holding press conferences and the investigation is closed, have chosen to withhold from the public.

Orville Almon, known as a straight shooting attorney to the many Nashville musicians he represented, has become the latest in a very long line of suspicious deaths and disappearances surrounding the Las Vegas shooting.

Almon’s death, described by local Nashville media as “seizure during sleep”, mirrors that of Kymberley Suchomel of Apple Valley, California, a shooting survivor who was found dead in her home, hours after her husband left for work.

I agree with him.  The case is incredibly strange and complex.  Or at least it is given that we’re not being told anything but lies about it by FedGov.

Science Daily:

“It’s been known for some time that gun violence, like many other forms of crime and other social problems, can be clustered within certain neighborhoods,” says Charles Loeffler, the Jerry Lee Assistant Professor of Criminology in the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Arts & Sciences. “So when we observe that a particular part of the city has an elevated risk, how do we understand what that phenomenon actually is?”

Loeffler and Oxford statistician Seth Flaxman, who published their findings in the Journal of Quantitative Criminology, turned to data from Washington, D.C., firearm-related 9-1-1 calls and acoustical sensors around the city that listen for and record the latitude and longitude of every shot fired.

Starting from the baseline that gun violence doesn’t occur randomly, the researchers ran the numbers for two hypotheses. First, they asked whether such behavior could be an epidemic, something that spreads quickly and diffuses into the surrounding environment. One incident begets the next, such as a victim retaliating against a former perpetrator.

“The alternative hypothesis,” Loeffler says, “is that you have clustering of gun violence in certain neighborhoods at certain times, but it may not actually be spreading in any real sense.” The researchers call this an endemic pattern.

As an example, consider an encounter in a bar: Two individuals bump into each other. One takes offense at being accidentally shoved and pulls out or quickly gains access to a gun. The same scenario might happen during a drug deal, where one party feels slighted by another. In either case, the resulting action is not retaliation, but rather an aggressive response to a commonly reoccurring stimulus.

“It may not last more than a couple minutes and may not lead to further acts of violence,” Loeffler says. “It could be self-extinguishing.”

For Washington, D.C., the data were compelling.

“We found that a substantial fraction of the gun violence was better characterized as this endemic, non-random clustering rather than as an epidemic, contagious, diffusing process,” he says.

But then you knew that already, didn’t you.  That is, if you have a lick of common sense, which doesn’t seem to be so common these day.

There is L.A., Chicago, New York, St. Louis, Houston, Atlanta, New Orleans, Washington D.C. and Baltimore, and then there’s everywhere else.

Intellihub:

LAS VEGAS (INTELLIHUB) — Flight records and information obtained by Intellihub show that at least one assailant may have been extracted via helicopter for a 10:21 p.m. EXFIL from the southwest rooftop of the Delano Hotel just four minutes before Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department helicopter N911WY arrived in the vicinity for the first time since shots were fired at crowd goers attending the Route 91 Harvest Music festival around 10:05 p.m., as the timeline indicates.

Even more disturbing is the fact that the aircraft’s transponder was transmitting the call sign “SWA4119” which is registered to a Southwest Airlines Boeing 737-7H4 passenger jet with the tail number “WN4119.”

According to the data, SWA4119 was originally scheduled to depart Tulsa (TUL) at 14:10 and arrive in Las Vegas (LAS) at 15:00 but was somehow delayed for over 7-hours giving “SWA4119” a new arrival time of 22:22 (10:22 p.m.) which doesn’t make sense because the craft was headed north and was too close to the airport to be aligned with any of the runaways.

You see, the aircraft that was displaying “SWA4119” between 10:21 and 10:22 p.m., which emerged on radar for the first time at 10:21, absolutely can not be a passenger jet because the actual flight data confirms that the aircraft slowed to a stop then changed its direction abruptly to a due north heading before proceeding to hover over the Delano in a very specific spot for approximately one-minute (i.e. the craft in question was, in fact, a helicopter because jets simply cannot hover or change speed and direction with such intensity.) This means that the operators of the craft were intentionally transmitting a fictitious call sign before going dark (invisible) from radar altogether.

To top it off, the Oct. 1 flight data for Southwest Airlines “WN4119” is showing inconsistencies.

The following screen-capture of the the aircraft’s flight history shows that “SWA4119” landed at 10:22 p.m. at (LAS) despite the fact that a transponder was pinging from the rooftop of the Delano at that exact same time.

Not to mention, the tail number listed for that exact flight is “N227WN” and not “WN4119” as the transponder was emitting in real-time suggesting that the plane on the tarmac that “landed” was “N227WN” which is a different aircraft entirely.

Thanks to reader B Bauch for this tip.  Go read the rest at Intellihub, and make sure to watch the video he has embedded of official radar the night of the Las Vegas shooting.

I’ve been saying all along that while I don’t have a particular pet theory for what happened, the FedGov account could not and did not happen.  The more we find out, the more my view makes sense.

You won’t find anything else out from the FBI or the Las Vegas police.  The police have been shut down by the FBI, and the FBI doesn’t want you to know what they know about it.

David Codrea:

With the understanding that due process requires a presumption of innocence until proven guilty, it’s also understandable that many Americans are unsympathetic to seeing him get into trouble in a crime of violence case involving a gun. That’s because, even though he was a rookie, he was the only Major League Baseball player to take a knee during the national anthem, and also happens to be a supporter of “progressive” politics, foremost of which are demands for more gun laws.

Yea, I don’t have one iota of sympathy.  So let’s be fair to him and forget the charges for a moment (since they must be proven).  He wants his guns, but he wants to take a knee during the anthem as well.

Hey, I’ve got a suggestion for you, smart guy.  Go play baseball in Cuba, take a knee during the anthem, and tell me how that works out.  In fact, try to get a gun in Cuba and tell me about that as well.

PJM:

Special Counsel Robert Mueller has broadened his investigation, originally focused on Donald Trump’s ties with Russia, to a major Hillary Clinton bundler who worked for Ukraine’s Party of Regions, a political group backed by Russian President Vladimir Putin. Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, also worked for this party.

Recent reports have implicated Mueller in an alleged FBI cover-up. The FBI had been investigating the Russian firm Rosatom for years before the Obama administration approved its acquisition of 20 percent of U.S. uranium in the Uranium One deal. The FBI kept the investigation secret, even when it could have prevented such a monumental purchase.

At the same time, Hillary Clinton (who was on the very board which approved the Uranium One deal) stood to benefit from the deal, as a Russian bank promoting Uranium One stock had paid her husband half a million for a speech (and directed millions to Clinton Foundation-linked companies). At the same time, the FBI acted quickly to bust a Russian spy ring because it got too close to Clinton.

Mueller — who as head of the FBI seems likely to have known about the Rosatom investigation and covered it up, just as the FBI switched into overdrive to protect Hillary Clinton — has broadened his investigation of Trump-Russia into a line of questioning that might finally implicate the other side of the 2016 election, Clinton herself.

On Monday, NBC News reported that Tony Podesta and the Podesta Group are now the subjects of Mueller’s federal investigation. NBC News cited three unnamed sources, who may have leaked the information on Mueller’s orders — in order to suggest impartiality after these recent stories implicated Mueller.

The Podesta probe grew out of Mueller’s inquiry into Manafort’s finances, NBC News reported. Manafort had organized a public relations campaign for the non-profit European Centre for a Modern Ukraine (ECMU). The Podesta Group also worked on that campaign.

Mueller’s investigation into Tony Podesta and the Podesta Group has been a long time coming, and it is heartening to see the special counsel turn his eye toward the Russian connections of some prominent Clinton backers for once.

None of this frees Mueller from the stain of the FBI keeping the Rosatom investigation secret during the Uranium One deal, however. It is not enough to merely expand the Russia investigation into actors on Clinton’s side — he needs to fully investigate Russia ties on both sides of the aisle.

No, he doesn’t need to expand anything.  The notion of special counsel and special prosecutor are unconstitutional.  He needs to be fired for corruption and malfeasance in office.

As to this idea that Tony Podesta is under investigation, what if his office finds nothing?  Then what will you say?  That Tony Podesta is clean, just like his brother?

This entire thing is a leak designed as misdirect and bait.  Mueller is attempting to deflect attention away from his own role in all of this, and one of the best ways to do it is to get some GOP senators and congressmen in his corner cheering for him.  Once his enemies have said publicly that his office and efforts are legitimate, they cannot later undo that statement.

I’m not cheering.  I haven’t changed my mind from what I said earlier.

Twice last week I got visits from FBI criminal justice to exactly the same page.

You see that, don’t you?  They are interested in you and what you’re doing.  What they should have been interested in is this.

My words for you, chattering class and politicians, is that you are all a bunch of bitchy, cowardly, whiny, scared little chicken shits who would sell their own mothers, wife and children into slavery if it meant being accepted by the elitists.  You disgust me, one and all.  Furthermore, you DoJ and FBI employees who knew all about this, I feel the same way about you.  You disgust me, one and all.

Not only will this effect this nation’s access to important nuclear material for weapons, it will also effect the supply of fuel for commercial nuclear reactors used for peaceful, clean, reliable energy for your children and children’s children.

The FBI has foolishly squandered its moral authority.  It has none left.  And yet like the pigs in Animal Farm, it wants information on you.  And more of it, and more of it, and all it can get.  They have no interest in rehearsing their own malfeasance, and no particular problem with their moral turpitude.

And if the information we discussed here isn’t enough for you, you can read all about Bill Clinton’s meetings with Vladimir Putin, how Robert Mueller tried to entrap an acquaintance, how a U.S. consulting firm tied to the Clintons lobbied on behalf of Russian companies, about the DoJ blocking an FBI informant from testifying about the Uranium One deal, and how they all conspired to cover it up.

The abscess festers, and the cancer runs deep.  But the DoJ and FBI have lost moral authority, and when they speak now, it is only as the mouthpiece of the evil one.

The Hill:

Before the Obama administration approved a controversial deal in 2010 giving Moscow control of a large swath of American uranium, the FBI had gathered substantial evidence that Russian nuclear industry officials were engaged in bribery, kickbacks, extortion and money laundering designed to grow Vladimir Putin’s atomic energy business inside the United States, according to government documents and interviews.

Federal agents used a confidential U.S. witness working inside the Russian nuclear industry to gather extensive financial records, make secret recordings and intercept emails as early as 2009 that showed Moscow had compromised an American uranium trucking firm with bribes and kickbacks in violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, FBI and court documents show.

They also obtained an eyewitness account — backed by documents — indicating Russian nuclear officials had routed millions of dollars to the U.S. designed to benefit former President Bill ClintonBill ClintonAll five living former presidents to attend hurricane relief concertThe Hill’s 12:30 ReportThe Hill’s 12:30 ReportMORE’s charitable foundation during the time Secretary of State Hillary ClintonHillary Diane Rodham ClintonChris Murphy’s profile rises with gun tragediesDNC, RNC step up cyber protectionsGun proposal picks up GOP supportMORE served on a government body that provided a favorable decision to Moscow, sources told The Hill.

The racketeering scheme was conducted “with the consent of higher level officials” in Russia who “shared the proceeds” from the kickbacks, one agent declared in an affidavit years later.

Rather than bring immediate charges in 2010, however, the Department of Justice (DOJ) continued investigating the matter for nearly four more years, essentially leaving the American public and Congress in the dark about Russian nuclear corruption on U.S. soil during a period when the Obama administration made two major decisions benefiting Putin’s commercial nuclear ambitions.

The first decision occurred in October 2010, when the State Department and government agencies on the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States unanimously approved the partial sale of Canadian mining company Uranium One to the Russian nuclear giant Rosatom, giving Moscow control of more than 20 percent of America’s uranium supply.

This is all well known to my readers.  No, not in this sordid level of detail, but we have indeed discussed Uranium One and how the Clintons were implicated in quid pro quo for donations to The Clinton Foundation and Clinton Global Initiative.  There is even more at stake than Uranium.  There is a lot of gold at stake too, and while the media was focused on the occupation at Malheur, I told you that this was about something else.

That was almost two years ago.  I listened to one TV commentator tonight (I rarely watch TV, normally not once per month or two) who whined and bitched about how bad this is, and how “unbelievable” this whole thing was.  Here is the truth.  This commentator, and every Senator, and every member of the House, and everyone inside the beltway, and the former DoJ and FBI heads, including Eric Holder and Robert Mueller, and without a doubt Obama too, knew all of this.

This wasn’t hidden except to anyone except soccer moms and football fans who wear idiotic jerseys representing their favorite thug.  Every thinking man knew all about this.  The fact that this all came out in The Hill today means that they can’t ignore it any longer, and so there is safe harbor into which the chattering class and politicians can sail.

My words for you, chattering class and politicians, is that you are all a bunch of bitchy, cowardly, whiny, scared little chicken shits who would sell their own mothers, wife and children into slavery if it meant being accepted by the elitists.  You disgust me, one and all.  Furthermore, you DoJ and FBI employees who knew all about this, I feel the same way about you.  You disgust me, one and all.

Not only will this effect this nation’s access to important nuclear material for weapons, it will also effect the supply of fuel for commercial nuclear reactors used for peaceful, clean, reliable energy for your children and children’s children.

There ought to be hemp rope and lamp posts for all of these traitors.  Every one of them.