“…In a second video, the man in the blazer is seen telling onlookers on board the plane that the tattooed man approached his family “aggressively” and orders him to tell the others “what happened.” “He approached me aggressively with my family”, the man with the sports jacket is seen yelling at passengers and a Southwest Airlines flight attendant. “I will sit down in jail for you approaching my family. I will die for my family.” “That’s why I beat your a–,” he continued.
…Witnesses said both men were taken off the plane. The Dallas Police Department said no one was arrested…“
So they have not only video of the assault, but a confession to the crime. Yet no one was arrested, let alone suffered any penalty or punishment. It’s the airborne equivalent of the broken windows theory.
Now, here’s The Gouge!
First up, writing at NRO, Ari Blaff, recounts how…
“Rather than trying to get to the bottom of how the pandemic began, Representative Raul Ruiz (D., N.M.) spent his allotted time during Wednesday morning’s hearing on Covid’s origins berating one of the witnesses over a book he wrote ten years earlier on the human genome, implying that the book was motivated by racism.
Ruiz, the ranking Democrat on the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, used his opening statement and much of his first round of questioning to argue that his Republican colleagues had compromised the panel’s efforts to investigate Covid’s origins by calling Nicholas Wade as a witness. “Today’s hearing marks a concerning step down the path of letting extremism get in the way of an inquiry that should be led by science and facts,” Ruiz said.
As the Republican chairman of the committee pointed out when introducing him, Wade has edited the two most prominent science journals in the world, Nature and Science, and led the New York Times’ science coverage for years. In his current role as an independent journalist, Wade established himself as one of the foremost authorities publicly examining the possibility of a lab leak and calling for a thorough and transparent investigation into Covid’s origins. Wade also authored the 2014 book A Troublesome Inheritance: Genes, Race and Human History, which examines the genetic basis of race and how varying environments shape human development.
Wade’s work on that book should disqualify him from being called as a witness in the hearing, despite his decades-long career and expertise, Ruiz argued. “When House Republicans announced this hearing with their slate of hand-picked witnesses, I was alarmed to see someone who wrote a book applauded by white supremacists,” Ruiz said, explaining that he sent a letter to his Republican colleagues insisting that they disinvite Wade, “so as not to give legitimacy to a man of such discredited, unscientific and harmful views. These views are dangerous and have no place in a hearing examining the origins of a pandemic that has disproportionately and overwhelmingly communities of color in the United States.”
Wade used the beginning of his opening statement to counter Ruiz’s characterization of his book, accusing him of parroting “untrue” claims about the book popularized by academics seeking to discredit him. “This was a determinedly non-racist book, it has no scientific errors that I’m aware of, it has no racist statements and it stresses the theme of unity that we are all variations on the same human genome,” Wade said. “My book was vigorously attacked by obscurantist academics who want everyone else to believe that there is no biological basis to race. And my book was as welcome to them as pictures of the earth from space are to flat-earthers.”
“I have nothing to be ashamed of in my book. It’s the only place you can now read about what the genome says about human races and I hope that Mr. Ruiz if he reads it will be pleasantly surprised to find it says none of the things he says it says,” he concluded.
Asked by Ruiz whether Wade was a valuable witness, Robert Redfield, former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), was unequivocal in his praise for the veteran science journalist. “I do think that Nicholas Wade — and I’ve followed his work over thirty years — is an outstanding science reporter and contributed substantially both in natural science and, of course, leading the New York Times.”
…Representative Kweisi Mfume joined Ruiz in smearing Wade as a racist, claiming that Wade’s theory about Covid’s origins are “steeped” in racism. “I’m a bit appalled that this hearing now gets layered over with the issue of race in a very strong way with the presence of Mr. Wade. And Mr. Wade I have read your book and I’m appalled by it,” Mfume said. “You’ve got an opinion, which is fine, but it’s steeped in this theory that minorities are so genetically different that they are culpable in some sort of way and I don’t like that at all,” he added…”
Can’t you just see White Supremacists “wading” through Nicholas Wade’s tome on the human genome!?!
“I am a paid contributor to Fox News, so I’m hesitant to comment on whether it was prudent for Speaker Kevin McCarthy to make available to Tucker Carlson, for selective airing on his nightly program, thousands of hours of Capitol-riot video, much of it never publicly broadcast before. I would note that no one at Fox has ever asked me to bend my opinions one way or the other, even when I’ve been critical (as I was, for example, when Tucker raised the specter of entrapment in connection with the Capitol riot). But being a contributor nevertheless presents a conflict for obvious reasons. Although I have reached the unfortunate age and am in the fortunate circumstances that enable me to say what I think without much worry about the grief it may cause, ethics always counsel avoiding the appearance of impropriety.
To the extent that the media–Democrat critique is that Carlson is an opinion journalist who is apt to present a skewed picture, this is the price they must have known they’d have to pay for the January 6 committee. That panel was a blatantly partisan, monochromatically anti-Trump political exhibition that presented the country with a skewed picture, eschewing cross-examination and perspectives that deviated from its relentless theme: “Trump’s incitement to insurrection had our democracy hanging by a thread.”
For myself, as I said about a zillion times during the committee’s proceedings, I’d have preferred for the committee to have been bipartisan; to have conducted traditional, adversarial hearings; and to have released full transcripts and videos of the witness testimony that it sliced and diced in its public presentations. That way, we could have judged for ourselves whether those presentations were fair and accurate.
But that’s not the way Democrats roll. To the extent this led to distortions that should be corrected, I’d have similarly preferred that McCarthy turn the video cache over to news reporters — there are plenty of outstanding ones at Fox News and elsewhere on the center-right — rather than to an opinion journalist who has as many ardent detractors as devoted fans. (I personally like and respect Tucker, even when I disagree with him. My point here is not to comment on a particular opinion journalist, but to state the obvious: The broad public is likely to view a body of evidence reported on by an opinion journalist more skeptically than the same body of evidence reported on by truly objective news journalists.)
Anyway, as we have lots of occasion to observe, the first rule of politics is: What goes around comes around. If Democrats and their notetakers don’t like this, they should have rethought the January 6 committee, as many of us implored them to do.
As for the videos thus far published, which focus on Jacob Chansley, the so-called “QAnon shaman,” we should be thinking of them in terms of two different things: the case against Chansley himself, and the overarching January 6 political narrative promoted by Democrats and the January 6 committee.
In Chansley’s case, we should be mindful that what is new to us is not necessarily new to him. Knowing what the proof against him showed, Chansley, represented by experienced defense counsel, voluntarily pled guilty to obstructing a congressional proceeding (namely, the January 6 joint session of Congress at which the state-certified electoral votes were counted and then-candidate Biden’s Electoral College victory was affirmed). His lawyers would have insisted on being shown any potentially exculpatory evidence prior to the guilty plea, and the prosecutors would have been obliged to produce it. I presume(Presume?!?) Chansley knew about this video (Maybe, maybe not, as you’ll learn later.), or at least images just like it; after all, he was in the Capitol and knew what he experienced there, including his interactions with the police.
And he pled guilty anyway, because there is nothing exculpatory on the video clipsthat Carlson has published.
Understand: As a matter of law, what is exculpatory or incriminating is not assessed based on a media narrative. It is assessed based on the specific charges in the case. Here, the charge was that Chansley obstructed Congress. One need not engage in an insurrection, or even a riot, to obstruct Congress. One need only be in a place one has no lawful right to be in, and willfully engage in action that prevents Congress from conducting its proceedings. In that sense, the just-released video is the antithesis of exculpatory evidence; it shows Chansley committing the crime charged.
Carlson and others who sympathize with the rioters and nonviolent demonstrators make much of Chansley’s being “escorted” by police in the video images.Escortedis the benign word being used to describe police who walked alongside one of the most visible intruders in the Capitol, observed what he was doing, and at a certain point allowed him to enter the congressional chamber. It’s been noted that this all seemed downright amicable: The police did not treat Chansley as if he were a threat, and they didn’t place him under arrest or otherwise attempt to subdue him.
What’s curious is that, from this commentary, you’d almost think Chansley was the only demonstrator wandering around the Capitol. Of course, we know he was one of hundreds. Police are trained to de-escalate violent or potentially violent situations when doing so is practicable. When they are grossly outnumbered in powder-keg situations, they are trained not to provoke people who are not menacing them, lest they needlessly ignite mob violence. No, Chansley shouldn’t have been inside the Capitol, but he wasn’t physically threatening the police, so why would they have manhandled him in a way that might have attracted attention and sparked a forcible reaction from him and other demonstrators? That would have been dangerous for the police (many of whom suffered injuries during the uprising) and for the demonstrators (one of whom was killed by an officer, and others of whom died during that afternoon’s frenzy). The police objective, in those moments, was to stabilize an already bad situation so that it did not become a bloodletting.
All that said, the media–Democrat narrative about January 6 is not so dry as ho-hum obstruction of Congress. It is startling, horrifying: White-supremacist domestic terrorists engaged in an insurrection, besieging the Capitol at the exhortation of an out-of-control president and leaving our democracy hanging by a thread.
This narrative has always been hyperbolic. Chansley — one of the highest-profile members of the mob — was sentenced, quite appropriately, to 41 months’ imprisonment. Forty-one months, not 41 years or 410 years (i.e., not the kind of sentence meted out to terrorists, such as the 1993 World Trade Center bombers who got sentences of 240 years). Chansley willfully impeded a significant congressional session, and he thus deserved every bit of the less-than-three-and-a-half-year term he got. But “democracy hanging by a thread”? Get a grip.
This was a riot. It was not an insurrection — the word Abraham Lincoln applied to the Civil War, and the word for a federal crime that none of the 900 defendants has been charged with. The riot was condemnable but utterly ineffectual.
The mindlessly repeated refrain that the riot “prevented the peaceful transition of power” is overwrought. The transition of power was never in doubt. Was the peace disturbed? Yes . . . that’s why so many people have been prosecuted, some for serious offenses, and many others for trivial crimes that the Justice Department would normally decline to charge. But there was so little damage done to the Capitol that Congress was able to reconvene a few hours after order was restored. It promptly affirmed Biden’s victory, as it was always certain to do. No one tried to blow up the Capitol. No one tried to mass-kill the security forces. Our Constitution held firm, and there was never any reason to suspect it wouldn’t. Our democracy was not realistically imperiled, much less at the precipice of annihilation.
The video we are now seeing does not establish anyone’s innocence. It does, however, bolster the conclusion that the Democrats’ political messaging about the day has been a duplicitous exercise in mythmaking. Is Tucker Carlson presenting a depiction of January 6 that is overly sympathetic to a violent mob? Probably so . . . but then, the Democrat-dominated January 6 committee put its thumb on the scale as it presented Götterdämmerung.
Neither version is accurate, as we already knew from having watched the televised goings-on in real time. What happened on January 6 was a riot. It was as surreal as the QAnon shaman’s getup. It was a disgrace. It has resulted in scores of worthy prosecutions. Though Donald Trump did not incite it in the strict criminal-law meaning of that term, it is an indelible, disqualifying stain on his record as president.
But it wasn’t the end of domestic tranquility and republican democracy, much less the end of the world.“
Tucker highlights the most important aspect of this entire, sordid affair:
Yes, they lie…continually. Unfortunately, so does Tucker, though in this case by omission, as in the following clip (you can watch it or take our word for it) he fails to mention Chansley PLED GUILTY to the crime of obstructing Congress, which as McCarthy pointed out requires only that “One need only be in a place one has no lawful right to be in, and willfully engage in action that prevents Congress from conducting its proceedings.“
That being said, Chansley’s lawyer has stated for the record he was NOT provided the footage, which may or may not have influenced the defendant to change his plea. And while we trust Andy McCarthy’s analysis of whether the video is exculpatory or incriminating over Tucker’s, we’ll be curious to see if that changes when McCarthy learns the evidence was apparently withheld, as Jonathan Turley suggests:
I wrote a column raising the question of whether this evidence was known to or shared with the Chansley’s defense. After all, he was portrayed as a violent offender by the Justice Department at his sentencing. It now appears that the answer is no. https://t.co/oRp9oibbTc
Since we’re on the subject of the incriminating, Mollie Hemingway informs us…
In stunning admission, the chairman of the J6 committee now confesses he never analyzed any footage before running the made-for-TV show trial with Liz Cheney. Absolutely insane. Even worse than we thought. https://t.co/55Cnfo7HMh
Because if the virus has a zoonotic origin and the whole global pandemic started because some poacher, animal smuggler, or wet-market vendor caught the virus, then all the lab-safety improvements in the world aren’t going to do a darn thing to prevent another pandemic.
And if the pandemic really did start because some researcher at the Wuhan Institute of Virology wasn’t careful one day, then all the efforts to crack down on poachers and animal smugglers and to clean up wet markets aren’t going to do a darn thing to prevent another pandemic.
And if there’s some scenario in the middle, like some virologist went into caves to collect bats for research and caught the virus and started spreading it among Wuhan residents before returning to a laboratory, then neither lab-safety improvements nor cracking down on poachers and traffickers will prevent another pandemic.
…The Chinese government sure isn’t acting like it’s worried about wet markets setting off another terrible pandemic. Yes, the Huanan Seafood Market closed the last day of 2019 and never reopened. But the vendors just moved to other wet markets; the other wet markets in Wuhan were reopened by April 2020. The Chinese government was reopening them as Dr. Fauci was saying, “I think we should shut down those things right away. . . . It boggles my mind how when we have so many diseases that emanate out of that unusual human-animal interface, that we don’t just shut it down. . . . I don’t know what else has to happen to get us to appreciate that.”
Eitherthe Chinese government is spectacularly reckless (a possibility that shouldn’t be dismissed), or some figures within the Wuhan or national Chinese government felt strangely confident that Covid-19 hadn’t come from a wet market, and there was little risk of another virus that was highly contagious among humans emerging from the local wet markets.
If the Covid pandemic can be traced back to someone not being careful at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the ramifications are vast and long-term.
It would have been nice if the economic liberalization that China pursued in the 1990s and 2000s had led to genuine political liberation, or at minimum, a softening of aggressive impulses. But it appears that economic liberalization traded in a poor, autocratic, and brutal regime for a wealthier, autocratic, and brutal regime. That’s not much of an improvement for us.
That headline at FiveThirtyEight reminds me of former secretary of state Hillary Clinton’s exclamation at a hearing about the attack in Benghazi: “What difference, at this point, does it make?” If you don’t understand how a problem started, you cannot prevent it from happening again.
A lot of Americans would prefer to ignore problems “over there.” But the Covid-19 pandemic demonstrates that sometimes those problems “over there” can turn your life upside down for a year or more.
It is a harsh and undeniable truth that this world has big and powerful regimes ruled by madmen, or men who seem mad by our standards.Terrorists are dangerous. Cartels and international crime rings are dangerous. But regimes run by madmen are exceptionally dangerous.
…In autocratic regimes, wars start because the guy at the top wants one and believes it will lead him to glory, a greater grip on power, distract his country’s citizens from other problems, address historical grievances, or gain additional resources through territorial conquest. Autocratic regimes are almost inherently destabilizing to their regions, because when the leader gets a bad idea in his head, there’s no one around who is powerful enough to say, “No, that’s a bad idea. We shouldn’t do that.” By stomping out dissent, the dictator has ensured that no one can hit the brakes on a disastrous plan.
That’s what happened with Russia in Ukraine, and we must wonder what Xi Jinping is hearing when the topic turns to Taiwan.
That Financial Times article also included this detail about the Western response to the Russian annexation of Crimea: “When the west, fearful of escalating tensions to a point of no return and jeopardizing Europe’s economic ties with Russia, responded with only a slap on the wrist, Putin was convinced he had made the right decision, according to several people who know the president.”
Insufficient consequences for aggression left Putin with the impression that he could get away with anything. What consequences has China suffered for not cooperating with the WHO’s investigation into how the Covid-19 pandemic started?“
Then there’s these two videos which explain why Faux Chi got while the getting was good:
Laura Ingraham is right when she says there must be accountability, but there won’t be…unless some enterprising attorney comes up with a way to file a civil suit seeking damages that will beggar this charlatan.
Moving on, here’s another sextet of special selections guaranteed to sate the curiosity of inquiring Conservative minds:
“…Miller’s attorneys initially hit back at racism claims, writing in a rejoinder to the suit which stated: “There is nothing inherently racist about choosing comparable properties that are located in the same city as the Subject Property, Without any direct (or indirect) evidence of actual racial discrimination, Miller’s choice of comparable properties cannot support Plaintiff’s claim of discrimination.”
However, the San Francisco property appraiser eventually agreed to the out-of-court settlement.
“I think everybody involved with the case was ready to move on,” Caroline Peattie, the executive director of Fair Housing, told San Jose Mercury News. “Obviously we felt we had a strong case or else we wouldn’t have pursued it in the first place,” she added. “[But] Filing a lawsuit on the strength of the evidence is one thing and how a judge will rule is a separate question. You’re never assured of a particular outcome.”…”
“The outlet has instructed its editors and writers to avoid words such as “mankind,” “manhunt,” and even terms like “biological male” and “biological female” in order to avoid “elevating transphobic voices.“
The list, which was proposed in an internal memo in January 2022, also banned other words that could be deemed politically incorrect, such as “Anchor baby,” and “Peanut gallery” – the latter being offensive because it was originally a reference to “the cheapest seats often occupied by Black people and people with low incomes.”“
Then…how could they afford peanuts?
Which brings us, appropriately enough, to The Lighter Side:
Then there’s these from Balls Cotton…
…Rick Page…
…and Ed Hickey…
…as well a few from The Patriot Post:
Finally, we’ll call it a wrap with yet another sordid story straight from the pages of The Crime Blotter
Texas mother accused of abandoning her two young children for weeks arrested in Alabama
Raven Yates’s 12-year-old daughter and 3-year-old son were abandoned for nearly 7 weeks before anyone realized they were home alone
“…The Roman Forest Police Department in Texas said Raven Yates was found at an apartment complex in Mobile, Alabama, around 4:30 p.m. Wednesday after the U.S. Marshals Gulf Coast Violent Offender Fugitive Task Force was tipped off to her location. Yates was reportedly staying with a man at the complex. Police noted that he cooperated with entry into the apartment and her arrest.
According to a November 2022 report from FOX 26 Houston, officials said a concerned father contacted law enforcement to report that his 12-year-old daughter and her 3-year-old brother had been home alone since Sept. 28 without consistent access to food or medical supplies. The father of the 12-year-old learned the children were home alone after his ex-mother-in-law told him Yates was in Mobile without her kids. He put two and two together after his daughter asked him to send food regularly because Yates was “working,” FOX 10 reported.
He immediately flew to Texas from California, where he had been working at the time. The children had been left alone from Sept. 28 to Nov. 14 before he arrived in Texas. They were also not registered in school, FOX 26 revealed…”
The fact this creature is sporting a sh*t-eatin’ grin while handcuffed in the back of the police vehicle tells us her kids will be better off with her behind bars.
Magoo
Video of the Day
OF COURSE you’re seizing record amounts of fentanyl crossing the border…because record amounts of the deadly drug from CHINA are coming INTO THE COUNTRY!!! Which begs the question why Peter Doocy didn’t immediately follow up with that fact?!? You can bet your a*s Ron DeSantis would have.
Tales of The Darkside
Matt Walsh introduces us to the mad, mad world of asexual furries. And when we say “mad”, we mean “mad”, as in psychologically ill.
On the Dimmer Side
Chase Allan may have been the gracious, loving soul his family claims, but he was also obviously an idiot, carrying in an unregistered vehicle and then initiating a confrontation with the cops. The officer called it early on when he told the young man, “The direction this encounter goes is 100% in your hands.” Chase chose to take it decidedly south.
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