[PJ] News that Jussie Smollett was being let off without doing time for tying up the city of Chicago and half the world's media with his bizarre accusation of being beaten by homophobic Trump supporters in the middle of the night was met by predictable fury from Chicago's mayor and chief of police.
But they needn't worry. Smollett should. He will be the new O. J., another man getting away with a crime he committed in full public view. That didn't work out very well for The Juice. In fact, he's a pariah for life. And it won't for Smollett either. He will be a despised person for the rest of his days and a symbol of unequal justice. He might as well have gone to jail, served the time, and been forgiven.
Yes, the media was playing up a potential sentence of 48 years, but that would have been unlikely to have happened. It would have been a few years and out, especially if the man apologized. Now he's in the situation of perpetually defending himself. Maybe he should hire a detective as O. J. did, promising to find just who the perps were ‐ someone perhaps in "the world of Faye Resnick," as Johnny Cochran famously put it. Difficult to believe all of that was 25 years ago.
#1
Yeah, he's going to go the Kaepernick arc: Will never work in the business again but will be a shining symbol to the SWJ class. Unlike the NFL there is no one lawsuit target for him to go after like the kneeler did...
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
03/28/2019 10:02 Comments ||
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[Hot Air] Rahm Emanuel is angry, and prosecutors in Chicago won’t like Rahm when he’s angry. In fact, Emanuel’s so angry over the bizarre end to the Jussie Smollett hoax case that he kept talking over ABC’s George Stephanopoulos on Good Morning America earlier today. "What made them all of sudden say," Emanuel asked, "’You know what? On second thought, this is enough’?"
"Do you think it was a corrupt decision?" Stephanopoulos asked in return. Emanuel defers to ABC’s legal experts, but ... come on, man:
#1
I thought at first, Emanuel and Dems were trying to ensnare Trump in this racial, gay issue only to yell, look Trump's racist/homophobe but I don't think so. He's nearly as annoying as Anthony Weiner but he is not running for office again--Maybe he's trying to create a legacy.
#1
Headline linked video is good (if dated). Given link in the article give me:
This site is blocked.
http://www.johnkiriakou.com/
An unacceptable security risk is posed by this site.
McAfee Web Category: Malicious Sites
McAfee Security Rating: Red
[Auld Alliance] The ancient Franco-Scottish connection has it's roots in a centuries-long association of the two peoples in a political and military alliance.
It was an alliance of a classical pattern, many times repeated in the history of international relations. An old political commentator recommended, 'Stand well with your neighbour, but better with your neighbour's neighbour'. And so a Franco-Scottish alliance evolved that was as often as not defensive in nature to protect both parties from conquest by England.
First embodied in a written treaty in 1295 the alliance was to endure for nearly three hundred years, as long as the wars between Scotland and England lasted. At the time it was a step towards the opening of hostilities between Scotland and England. This led to the temporary conquest of Scotland by Edward 1 and to the resistance of the Scots, at first unsuccessfully under William Wallace and then successfully under Robert Bruce.
Wallace himself, after being defeated by the English in 1298, went to France to seek help; he and his fellow envoys received financial support while they were at the French court. Robert Bruce challenged Edward and when he was strong enough to hold a parliament (1309) a letter was sent to France acknowledging a message in which the French king had evidently expressed 'extraordinary and peculiar affection for King Robert' in accordance with 'the alliances formerly existing and maintained between the two kingdoms of France and Scotland.
When King Robert died in 1329 his son David was sent for safety to France as Scotland was once more in danger of conquest from England. The Hundred Years' War between France and England began at this time with the Franco-Scottish alliance being renewed and invoked many times. At the apex there was a series of royal marriages, intended to reinforce the alliance in a period when the direction of policy was mainly in the hands of monarchs. Again and again Scots went to fight alongside the French, especially when the latter's prospects looked particularly bleak. A good many of the Scots who went to France as warriors neither fell in battle nor returned home. Some of them settled in France where they were endowed with lands by French Kings or acquired estates by marrying heiresses.Thus Robert Patillo, from Dundee, who earned the nickname 'petit roi de Gascogne' for his military exploits, became Lord of Sauveterre.
Before the long wars with England began, Scots who wanted higher education had usually, it would seem gone to Oxford or Cambridge. The wars interrupted such scholarly intercourse, and it is significant that in 1326, the year in which Robert 1 renewed the league with France in the Treaty of Corbeil, provision was made for Scottish students in Paris. Just as Scottish scholars sometimes settled in France, so it was the way of Scots who went abroad as traders to spend long periods in France.
BEIJING (AP) ‐ China says U.S. trade negotiators will arrive in Beijing late Thursday afternoon and start the new round of talks with a working dinner.
Chinese commerce ministry spokesman Gao Feng said the discussions are expected to last for a full day Friday.
The talks are aimed at ending a tariff war over Beijing’s technology ambitions amid official suggestions they might be making progress.
Thursday’s meeting is the latest in a rapid-fire series of exchanges seeking to end a conflict that is disrupting trade in goods from soybeans to medical equipment.
President Donald Trump expressed optimism last week, saying, "we’re getting very close."
The dispute erupted after Trump raised duties last year on Chinese imports in response to complaints Beijing steals or pressures companies to hand over technology.
[Babylon Bee] PORTLAND, OR‐This morning, local liberal woman Meagan Porter jumped up from a terrible nightmare in which Trump was cleared of Russian collusion charges by Robert Mueller, Michael Avenatti was arrested for fraud and extortion, and the Green New Deal was overwhelmingly shot down in the Senate all in just a couple of days.
Porter stated the nightmare was "horrible" and one of her worst in years. "I have no idea where that came from," she said. "Can you imagine if that were real? The mind does funny things when you're sleeping, putting together completely nonsensical ideas in random patterns. Like, the idea of Mueller releasing his report and not finding anything on Trump? Shudder!"
"I'd rather dream about Pennywise the Clown or that I'm back in high school again and forgot to do my homework," she said.
"Whew, I'm glad that was just a bad dream," she added as she stretched her neck and pulled out her smartphone to check the morning news.
#1
Reminds of an old Night Gallery episode where John Astin dies in a car wreck and winds up in a room with several people who are all having a great time in ways that he can't stand (playing checkers, listening to 1930s music on a wind up record player, knitting) Then the Devil shows up. Astin says "This must be Hell!" The Devil smiles and says, "Well, for you it is..."
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
03/28/2019 7:25 Comments ||
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#2
Don't worry. They'll never take the opportunity to understand the bubble they've created for themselves in order to grasp why things don't turn out the way they have (no different than all the failed MMGW predictions).
[Washington Examiner] Conservative commentator Mark Levin lashed out against the Democrats in the aftermath of special counsel Robert Mueller submitting his final report to the Justice Department.
During his Fox News show Sunday, the nationally syndicated radio host blamed former President Barack Obama's government for seeding a Russian collusion frenzy and called for an investigation into their role in peddling the narrative.
"The Democratic Party is not a pro-America party. They act like a third-world party because they want to destroy this presidency," Levin said. "It is time to focus on the Democrats in the House. It is time to focus on the media, the Hillary campaign, the DNC, Barack Obama ‐ this was Barack Obama’s government that did all this when the Russians were interfering in our election."
"They put spies in [Trump's] campaign, they abused the FISA court system. This country doesn't belong to Adam Schiff, and [House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold] Nadler and [House Speaker Nancy] Pelosi."
Following Attorney General Bill Barr's submitting a four-page letter to Congress summarizing Mueller's findings, including finding no evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, Levin said Democrats owe Trump an apology for repeated allegations, including House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif. A growing number of Republicans have called on Schiff to step down from his role as chairman.
[Daily Wealth Alerts - but seems identical to a WaPo editorial behind the pay wall.]
On Oct. 31, 2016 ‐ one week before the presidential election ‐ the New York Times published an influential story under this headline: "Investigating Donald Trump, F.B.I. Sees No Clear Link to Russia." The story by Eric Lichtblau and Steven Lee Myers landed amid tremendous interest in Trump and the Russians. As a candidate, Trump had made conciliatory gestures toward Russian President Vladimir Putin. And a few weeks earlier, the Department of Homeland Security and Office of the Director of National Intelligence expressed confidence that "the Russian Government directed the recent compromises of emails from US persons and institutions, including from US political organizations," a clear reference to the hacking of the Democratic National Committee and other targets. Conclusion, after a lot of soul searching and Trump-ain't-necessarily-completely-innocent-you know:
There is one takeaway, however, that further revelations won’t erode: In recent days, critics of the mainstream media have attacked its nonstop collusion chatter, with Hannity leading this particular chorus. Meanwhile, the New York Times ‐ as well-sourced as any U.S. news outlet on Trump-Russia reporting ‐ published an authoritative "no collusion" investigative story, and it did so one week before the presidential election. The editorial process that birthed this story, furthermore, was filled with agita and bitterness ‐ not about whether the story would help or hurt this candidate or that candidate, but whether it would withstand scrutiny. "Journalism is hard," says Foer.
But the author is Senior Editor for the Washington Examiner. [NBC News] The news that special counsel Robert Mueller found no proof that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia is much worse for Democrats than it appears. Because the vehicle for destroying President Donald Trump has crashed so spectacularly that Trump will reconstruct it into the campaign bus that will deliver him victoriously to the White House on his second Inauguration Day.
Trump’s opponents will try to characterize the report as a detail that can now be discarded as congressional committees and various local prosecutors race to produce damning information. But they’ve already bet on the wrong horse. The Mueller report will simply trample everything else, smashing and discrediting ‐ whether justifiably or not ‐ all other probes hurled Trump’s way.
Worse for Democrats, Trump, who tweets from the hip and produces all kinds of unreliable, errant missives, begins to look credible. "Witch hunt," he regularly exclaims at dawn from the White House residence. Now, that formulation, drilled into voters’ heads, begins to look like a potentially apt description of the opponents Trump has said are trying to thwart his agenda and unfairly delegitimize his election.
Meanwhile, the left-wing voices in Congress will spend the next few months demanding internal administration documents, hurling people before committees and heading to TV studios to proclaim that Trump is guilty of something or other.
They'd better be careful. They reached very far and grabbed hold of mostly air so far. They run the risk of being perceived by reasonable people as engaging in overreach. I know some reasonable people who already think the Dems have overreached.
I'm betting that despite the risks, however, many Democrats won't be able to help themselves. The Democratic base smelled blood and still wants it. And these are the people whose small-dollar donations are fueling the Democratic presidential hopefuls, and whose votes in the primaries will choose the nominee. But they are not the people who will put a Democrat over the top in a general election.
The Mueller report has likely ensured it's going to be a very cold January 2021 for the Democratic Party.
Posted by: Bobby ||
03/28/2019 00:00 ||
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[DAWN] FOR the past four decades or so, Bloody Karachi ...formerly the capital of Pakistain, now merely its most important port and financial center. It is among the largest cities in the world, with a population of 18 million, most of whom hate each other and many of whom are armed and dangerous... has experienced several waves of violence, with periods of uneasy calm in between.
Sometimes bloodshed has manifested itself in political killings, at other times ethnic violence has erupted, while the threat of sectarian trouble is always bubbling under the surface. Throw into this lethal mix the incidence of deadly street crime, and a picture of a metropolis constantly on edge emerges.
While the city has seen some semblance of peace since the 2013 law-enforcement operation, this calm is often shattered by violent incidents that remind both the state and citizens how fragile the situation in Karachi is. Just on Wednesday, a number of violent incidents took place in the city, including murders and break-ins. In one incident, a teenager was rubbed out upon resisting an attempt to rob a few thousand rupees.
Over the past few weeks, a number of high-profile attacks have taken place, including the targeting of religious scholar Mufti Taqi Usmani; a police guard and another individual accompanying the mufti were killed, and though police claim to have made headway in the case, no solid leads have emerged. Only a day after the attack on the mufti, Wajahat Hussain, a youth related to an MWM leader, was bumped off in Orangi Town.
From circumstantial evidence, it seems the same set of elements that had previously sown chaos in the city have become active again. However, ars longa, vita brevis... only a proper intelligence-based analysis can uncover the sources of instability.
It needs to be ascertained where the threats are primarily emanating from. Have sectarian killers and political assassins become active again, or does the threat lie elsewhere, for example in killers for hire? Are small-time Mister Big gangs taking advantage of the chaos in Karachi, or are foreign players meddling in the city’s peace?
The situation needs to be studied deeply by the law-enforcement and intelligence apparatus to break the latest cycle of violence. Moreover, one key reason for recurring bloodshed is the fact that Karachi is awash with guns. Other than lip service, over the years no government ‐ federal or provincial ‐ has considered a serious de-weaponisation drive for Karachi. That is why everyone from professional killers to street criminals is armed to the teeth, and able to take precious lives at will.
The authorities need to arrest the rising violent crime graph before bloodshed once more becomes routine in Karachi.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/28/2019 00:00 ||
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[7 views]
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[The Federalist] The U.S. fertility rate recently dropped to a historic low. What are demographers saying about this downturn? Should humans stop procreating to fight climate change? Lyman Stone joins Ben Domenech on The Federalist Radio Hour to discuss fertility, demographics, the Green New Deal, and the nature of Twitter arguments.
"What if we did cut fertility in half? Yes, in 100 years, 50 years even that would result in meaningful amounts of emissions reductions," Stone said. "But if you believe the scientific research that’s motivating this whole argument, that’s too late. You’re past the point of no return."
#1
Consequences? Well, here's one consequence our gov't is standing by and doing virtually nothing about, in order to sustain the 'big gov't' ponzi scheme:
#4
As with the last 'boom', the coming civil war will provide an incentive to reproduce. Survivors have a different perspective with less distractions from institutions that pervaded the pre-war society.
#5
People who are un- or underemployed and carrying heavy debt delay adding an additional expense. Once they trust that the jobs will be there and they reduce their debt, we’ll see more having babies.
#9
Soy suppresses androgen (testosterone and estrogen). Soy is in everything.
Every culture that consumes large amounts of soy is having the same problem.
Get rid of soy, stop the vegan/vegetarian nonsense and you'll see the birthrates go back up.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[Hot Air] Rahm Emanuel is angry, and prosecutors in Chicago won’t like Rahm when he’s angry. In fact, Emanuel’s so angry over the bizarre end to the Jussie Smollett hoax case that he kept talking over ABC’s George Stephanopoulos on Good Morning America earlier today. "What made them all of sudden say," Emanuel asked, "’You know what? On second thought, this is enough’?"
[Babylon Bee] PORTLAND, OR‐This morning, local liberal woman Meagan Porter jumped up from a terrible nightmare in which Trump was cleared of Russian collusion charges by Robert Mueller, Michael Avenatti was arrested for fraud and extortion, and the Green New Deal was overwhelmingly shot down in the Senate all in just a couple of days.
[NBC News] The news that special counsel Robert Mueller found no proof that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia is much worse for Democrats than it appears. Because the vehicle for destroying President Donald Trump has crashed so spectacularly that Trump will reconstruct it into the campaign bus that will deliver him victoriously to the White House on his second Inauguration Day.
[DAWN] FOR the past four decades or so, 
[The Federalist] The U.S. fertility rate recently dropped to a historic low. What are demographers saying about this downturn? Should humans stop procreating to fight climate change? Lyman Stone joins Ben Domenech on The Federalist Radio Hour to discuss fertility, demographics, the Green New Deal, and the nature of Twitter arguments.
