When a trans-identifying individual committed mass murder, the powers-that-be collaborated to employ censorship and propaganda to shield their violent but useful mob from scrutiny, and get their divisive narrative back on track. Those of us who cherish liberty and tranquility must fight back, though not in kind.
As I write, I am serving a thirty-day suspension on facebook, caught up in a coordinated campaign of censorship and propaganda to protect radical trans activism from scrutiny over its increasing violent nature.
My crime was to post an image, which had already appeared in a number of media outlets, as an example of that violence. In a clever abuse of its terms of conduct, facebook instantly punished me for the hateful rhetoric contained therein.
In a similar move, Twitter suspended the accounts of several journalists who tweeted a poster for the upcoming and ominous ‘Trans Day of Vengeance.’ (If you find that surprising for supposed free-speech advocate Musk, remember that at least one of his spawn is gender-confused.)
Restore The Narrative
All of this came on the heels of the school shooting in Nashville, where three adults and three nine-year-olds were murdered. Normally the Left loves it whenever school kids get shot so, while the bodies are still warm, they can clamor for taking away guns from people who’d never harm a child. Inconveniently, this killer turned out to be trans-identifying (increasingly common for mass shooters, btw), and who may have been retaliating for the recent passage of a Tennessee law banning so-called ‘gender affirming treatments’ (i.e., sterilization and mutilation) for minors.
So obviously any visual reminders of the alarming prevalence of enraged, armed, & bloodthirsty transgenders had to be suppressed. As was the Nashville killer’s manifesto in which she detailed her motivation. And don’t even think about questioning the wisdom of brainwashing an emotionally disturbed, autistic lesbian into believing she’s a boy, pumping her full of testosterone, then stoking her resentment to the point where she considered it righteous to shoot little kids in the face.
That potential PR mess averted, the Democrats and their flying monkeys in legacy media quickly returned to railing against the ScaryBlack-15 and transphobia. Indeed, they completely turned the tables, making this horrific execution of innocents all about the ongoing hate campaign against the ‘trans community’ — you know, those horrible Christian Nationalists who can’t appreciate the beauty of adult men with paraphilias performing bawdy burlesque in front of children, or the vile removal from elementary school libraries of books containing instructions on how to use a butt plug.
Green Light The Thuggery
White House Spokesblacklesbian, Karinne Jeanne-Pierre, announced “our hearts go out to the trans community as they are under attack right now.” She went on to praise the “LGBTQI+ kids” who are “resilient,” “fierce,” and who “fight back.” “And we have their back,” she added. “This administration has their back.” Kamala Harris flew to Nashville, not to console the families of the six victims, but to support the three state legislators who’d led an anti-gun totally-not-an-insurrection inside the state capital, where the mob raised seven fingers to indicate that the heartless killer was eyrself a victim. Two Democrat operatives later amplified the messaging by tweeting exhortations to shoot ‘transphobes.’
With this public blessing from the regime, the non-binary goon squad resumed its pogrom. When women’s rights advocate, Riley Gaines (one of the female college swimmers forced to compete against the male autogynephile narcissist, ‘Lia’ Thomas) attempted to speak at San Francisco State University, she was physically attacked by a mob, chased while under police escort, then barricaded in a room for three hours while the mob outside the door demanded a ransom for her release.
No arrests have been made, but the school’s Dean of Diversity has publicly lauded the “peaceful” (sic) protestors. SFSU is as likely to punish these trans-ally thugs, as the NSDAP was to chide their Brownshirts for smashing windows.
Fostering Hate For Political Gain
More than just turning a blind eye to such behavior, the Democrats openly encourage it, while fomenting the underlying rage. For the Democrats depend on perpetually resentful identity groups. The gender-confused, a burgeoning horde of misdiagnosed sufferers of mood & personality disorders, told to blame ‘transphobia’ instead of the anti-science ideology and Dr. Moreau butchery inflicted upon them. Urban blacks, told to blame ‘systemic racism’ instead of the social engineering schemes of the past 60 years that dissolved their families and devastated their social structure. Lonely, unhappy women, told to blame ‘The Patriarchy’ instead of the tag-team of 4th Wave feminism and consumerism that duped them into trading the joy of raising a family for soul-crushing careers, and left them with passive, infantile, low-T geldings as hook-up prospects. All forming an irrational, reactionary Coalition of the Whining with the anemic, pseudo-intellectual elites caught up in an orgiastic Six Year Hate against their orange Emmanuel Goldstein.
Whether it’s Antifa scum engaging in Burn, Loot, and Murder, DEI cadres silencing and attacking speakers on college campuses, pro-choice fanatics fire-bombing pregnancy clinics, pink pussy hat harridans picketing the homes of Supreme Court justices in violation of Federal law, Branch Covidians assailing US Senators in the middle of the street, or angry mobs storming and occupying state houses, the Democrats applaud and encourage it, while the legacy media apologizes for it, so long as it serves their objectives. First rule of the Left: It’s Okay When We Do It.
No Way Out?
The prospect for arresting this juggernaut and averting a national catastrophe grows ever slim. The radicalized Democrats, with their tight control of information flow — just one of the many tactics they’ve borrowed from both religious cults and totalitarian regimes — have convinced their followers that it is the ‘others,’ not they themselves, who are extremist, out-of-touch, hateful and violent. That perceived threat justifies their own violence and disregard for the rule of law. By Any Means Necessary.™
Many on the right are too eager to adopt this form of combat. Like Johnny Ringo in TOMBSTONE, they exclaim ‘alright, let’s do it!’ Like Johnny Ringo, they will lose that duel to the more experienced practitioner.
No, the only hope is an appeal to common sense and calm. The vast majority of Americans are not perpetually butthurt, are generally decent, and tolerant within reason. They can tell that most of the rhetoric spewed by the Left — the trans lunacy, the race hatred, ‘decarceration’, ‘Environmental Justice’, ‘Shade Tree Equity’, etc. — is pernicious nonsense. But they’ve been cowed into silence by the extremely loud & vicious minority, and misled or kept ignorant by the partisan media.
We are perilously close to open civil war or the imposition of an authoritarian state. The way to avoid this is by lowering the temperature, not raising it. Not by furthering division, but rather by emphasizing the values and principles most of us still share. Regardless of our prior affiliations, we all need to turn now to political leaders who take that approach.
(c) 2023 by True Liberal Nexus. All rights reserved.
Postscript
A note on censorship, and just how real and extreme it has become. One can never quite tell if a given post will be declared verboten by our social media overlords. Their terms of conduct are sufficiently vague to provide great leeway for them to punish wrongthink. Nor is an offending post merely deleted with a stern warning. No, the punishment is immediate, harsh, and beyond appeal. Twitter further demands a Struggle Session where the transgressor publicly admits his or her guilt.
This dynamic was presciently captured by Orwell:
A Party member lives from birth to death under the eye of the Thought Police…. [H]e can be inspected without warning and without knowing that he is being inspected. Nothing that he does is indifferent…. Not only any actual misdemeanour, but any eccentricity, however small, any change of habits, any nervous mannerism … is certain to be detected. He has no freedom of choice in any direction whatever.
On the other hand his actions are not regulated by law or by any clearly formulated code of behaviour. In Oceania there is no law. Thoughts and actions which, when detected, mean certain death are not formally forbidden, and the endless purges, arrests, tortures, imprisonments, and vaporizations are not inflicted as punishment for crimes which have actually been committed, but are merely the wiping-out of persons who might perhaps commit a crime at some time in the future. A Party member is required to have not only the right opinions, but the right instincts. Many of the beliefs and attitudes demanded of him are never plainly stated, and could not be stated without laying bare the contradictions inherent in Ingsoc. If he is a person naturally orthodox (in Newspeak a GOODTHINKER), he will in all circumstances know, without taking thought, what is the true belief or the desirable emotion.
Such uncertainty leads — by design — to self-censorship. Working on the assumption that WordPress is in thrall to the woke mob, prudence dictates I still my own tongue to avoid further punishment. The curious can search the internet to view the images in question, or PM me for them.
Joe Biden’s usefulness to the Democrat Party is past. Further, his imminent downfall due to his involvement in his son, Hunter’s, shady business dealings, threatens to wreak collateral damage to the entire Party. So, as with a crumbling old building, the Dems are in the process of carefully bringing Biden down. The manipulated, albeit real, classified document scandal is their Emulex.
A controlled demolition. We’ve all seen one, and it’s a fascinating spectacle. An aging, crumbling edifice is intentionally and carefully razed before it can collapse on its own, potentially causing great damage to other surrounding structures or even the loss of human life.
Engineers place explosives at critical points within the building. Then, after everyone has moved away to a safe distance, the charges are denoted in sequence. The old building falls in on itself, leaving all around it untouched. The rubble is cleared and something new erected in its place.
This is precisely what is being done right now to Joe Biden’s presidency.
Setting the Charges
The discovery of classified documents in Joe Biden’s possession — some top secret and related to national security — is a very serious matter. More and more keep popping up: in a private office and scattered about his Delaware home, including in a banker’s box laying around the garage, with “important docs” scribbled in Sharpie on the lid.
He’s had them for a very long time. Some he took no later than 2017, when he was VP. Others date back to his time in the Senate, and raise a serious question of how Biden ever got his hands on them, when members of Congress are subject to very strict protocols for viewing classified material, and never allowed to take possession of it.
So why now, after all these years, did his own lawyers suddenly stumble upon this hoard? The timing is critical to understanding what’s really going on.
Classified material was, we are now told, first unearthed back on November 2, 2022, in Biden’s vice presidential office at the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement, a money laundering operation think tank funded by the Chinese Communist Party. The DOJ and White House secretly agreed to keep mum about it until after the midterms.
The lawyers poked around some more and found another handful of documents at Biden’s private residence. Those were the ones in the garage, next to the Stingray, which Hunter Biden, who apparently rented the house for $49,910 a month, used to borrow to drive around his underaged nieces/stepdaughters/girlfriends.
At this point, White House Spokesblacklesbian, Karine Jean-Pierre, assured the nation that the search was now completed. Biden is cooperating and takes classified documents very seriously. It’s totally not at all like what Trump did. These are not the droids you’re looking for. Go forth now, and write the news stories we tell you to write.
But she was lying. When the discovery of the first set of docs was announced, they’d already found the second, but neglected to mention them. And then came the announcement that a third set of documents had been found inside the house after the search had supposedly been completely completed.
MSM, ever the Democrats’ obedient flying monkeys, suddenly changed their tune. Abandoning their earlier mix of apologetics and disregard, now they are all in unison reporting non-stop on the fiasco and calling it a major fiasco. Charges detonated in sequence.
Why? Because not only has Joe Biden long out-served his usefulness, like that decrepit old building, he’s in imminent danger of collapsing and causing splash damage. Joe’s steadily deteriorating senile dementia can no longer be hidden. The GOP-led House will be investigating the contents of Hunter’s laptop, and they will reveal that ‘The Big Guy’ was actively involved in, and the monetary beneficiary of, his family’s influence-peddling schemes, including deals with the CCP. Further, so long as Joe remains standing, he’s in the way of new construction: namely, the presidential aspirations of more than a few powerful Democrats. And lately, Joe has been talking more and more about running for reelection.
Watergate Redux, But Planned
So how does this play out? These are serious felonies Biden has allegedly committed. If convicted of them, he could spend the rest of his days in a Federal penitentiary. But it will never come to that. The Dems just need to get Joe out of the way without embarrassing the entire Party in the process. No damage to surrounding structures.
When the Watergate scandal blew up in the GOP’s face, the Party leaders had a come-to-Jesus talk with Nixon: ‘You are in so deep to be beyond redemption. We in Congress will have no choice but to impeach & convict you. For the sake of the Party and for yourself, resign now. In return, you’ll get a pardon and a library.’
And that is essentially what’s being laid out to Jill Biden — for it’s she who’s encouraging Joe to run again. Sure, she’d love to play house in the White House for another 6 years wearing her Drapes of Tara dresses. But preserving a shred of Joe’s legacy has gotta count for something. As matriarch of the Biden Crime Family, she’s also motivated to not watch as everyone goes to jail while all the assets are seized.
So Joe will be allowed one more State of the Union, to receive standing O’s from the Dems for delivering a series of fabulist stories and patently false statements. Shortly thereafter — and I can’t see this going much past a month or so, as presidential campaign committees must be formed and first dibs on mega-donors taken — a (physical) medical condition will force Joe to resign. The investigation into the classified docs will slow to a crawl. If necessary, President Harris will issue the promised blanket pardon. Or she might renege, cuz she’s a batshit crazy, loose cannon.
Rats & Pawns
If there was any doubt that the razing of Biden was imminent, it was removed by the announcement that Ron Klain, White House chief-of-staff and de facto head-of-state, would be resigning in the next few weeks. The charges will only be detonated after everyone has moved away to a safe distance.
This may also explain why Jean-Pierre — easily the most atrociously bad PR person in the history of PR — has been allowed to flail & flounder for so long. Jean-Pierre won’t be around much longer, so can be sacrificed, left behind like some Japanese grunt in a tunnel on Iwo Jima. Nor does it matter how poorly she spins this scandal: not only can no spin make it go away, the Dem powerlords don’t want it to go away.
Who’s Next?
The Dems had hoped to avoid elevating Kamala at all costs, but desperate times call for desperate measures. Besides the potential for an administration on par with the reign of Emperor Commodus, there’s nothing stopping Kamala from running in 2024 and, were she to win, 2028. Her dear old friend, Gavin Newsom, is an impatient man. He’s premature in all he does. Just ask Jerry Brown. Or Kimberly Guilfoyle. So, the Dems must have some contingency plan to prevent Kamala from winning the primary. Letting her open her mouth during the debates should do the trick.
Besides Governor Hair Gel, plenty of other hopefuls are unwilling to wait until 2032 for their shot at the White House. Amy Klobuchar seems to be ramping up for another try; after her marquee internet censorship small journalism bill failed, she’s introduced ‘Free Britney’ legislation to regulate TicketMaster — anything to show she can get shit done. But her ‘Amy in the middle’ schtick won’t work next time, not after foolishly going hard Left to appease her DNC masters who would never let her win anyway. The chipmunk will likely also throw his hat into the ring, notwithstanding his complete failure as Secretary of Transportation. Because for his ilk (i.e., elitist parasites) utter incompetence is never a bar to seeking positions of power. Surely there will be others as well. (Watch for smoke signals rising above Cambridgeport.) Sadly, octogenarian Bernie Sanders has indicated he won’t run again, a disappointment to the entire Pacific Northwest and to all my friends who miss my impression of him. Still, the upcoming Democrat primary season should be almost as droll a clown car as the last one.
It will be interesting to see how things unfold, but one thing is certain: Joe Biden is going down and soon.
(c) 2023 by True Liberal Nexus. All rights reserved.
Skeptic Michael Shermer has solved gun violence in America. All it took was hackneyed tropes, trite observations, mathematical errors, obtuse reasoning, and a truckload of falsehoods.
Quillette has a new article by skeptic and author, Micheal Shermer, titled “The Cause of America’s Gun-Death Epidemic? It’s Guns.” In it, Shermer claims to have discovered the solution to the ‘epidemic’ through an application of the philosophy of science. The world has conducted a giant natural experiment, Shermer argues, and the results show that “the proximate cause of illegal gun violence is guns, full stop.” Ultimate causes — “mental illness, racism, white supremacy, a culture of violence, raging hormones, maleness, and the like” — are irrelevant to crafting public policy. Alluding to Overdetermination, (a concept invented by Freud, then adopted by Marxists,) Shermer argues that the chain of events preceding a firearm death can & should be ignored. As the “primary cause of gun violence is guns,” Shermer concludes, “curbing their availability and capacity can attenuate the resulting carnage.”
Of course, ‘gun violence is violence caused by guns’ is a tautology. The rubric ‘gun violence’ is itself an artificial category carved out of several distinct phenomena — suicide, crime-related murder, targeted murder & familicide, public mass killings, & accidental deaths — which ignores their actual respective etiologies. For each, the incidents involving firearms comprise only part of the entire set of incidents — most of murders, half of suicides (not “only a handful”), but only a tiny fraction of accidental deaths.
Shermer swaps between addressing these distinct phenomena individually or as total ‘gun deaths’, to suit his motivated reasoning. Likewise, he compares apples to oranges and plays loose with definitions, all in his quest to indict the gun.
Bad Maths
Comparing US states and then countries around the world, Shermer presents “best-fit regression line[s] showing that more guns are associated with more” gun deaths per capita. This is as profound as noting that Montauk has more shark attacks than Vail. But beyond that, as data analysis it’s pure garbage. It omits the 1/2 of suicides not involving a gun, intermingles suicides & murder, two very distinct social phenomena, clumps together all geographic & demographic groups, and fails to account for multiple confounding factors.
Most egregiously, guns of all types are tallied, when nearly all the firearms used in suicides and homicides are handguns. Only around 400 people a year are killed by long guns. It’s asinine to claim that thousands of bolt-action rifles in Appalachian Pennsylvania cause drive-by shootings in Philadelphia, any more than the pistol a woman in Philly carries for self-defense is responsible for someone swallowing rat poison.
Suicide
After devoting two turgid paragraphs to the trite observation that gun suicides are greater in countries with more guns, Shermer points to Australia, where suicide rates allegedly fell due to sweeping restrictions on firearms, including mass confiscation. However, a Rand study, noting “challenges for estimating the causal effect,” found
“these effects took place during a time of generally declining suicide rates in Australia. The fact that the observed reductions in suicide do not appear to be limited to firearm-related suicides raises questions about whether declines in suicides are primarily attributable to the [restrictions] or whether other social forces, such as those contributing to pre-[restriction] declines, account for these changes.”
The data from Australia seem to indicate that removal of guns affected the means of suicide, but not the overall numbers.
“Guns are far less forgiving than other methods of attempted … suicide,” Shermer writes. “When people attempt suicide, they don’t always want to kill themselves…. An overdose of medications or a botched attempt at slit wrists may grant someone a second chance at life. With guns, that is much less likely.”
When people attempt suicide, they don’t always want to kill themselves. Precisely. For the proverbial ‘cry for help,’ a less than lethal method will be intentionally chosen. But for a person determined to die, a gun offers the most certain way to get the job done, not to mention the quickest & least agonizing. When guns are not commonly available, as in other countries, hanging, poisoning, etc. are resorted to. Although the proximate cause is a noose, there are never calls for a cooling-off period to purchase rope.
Nor is absence of a firearm a brake on spontaneity or finality, as illustrated by the case of this professional, who after being passed over for a promotion, abruptly threw himself into the river. Try un-jumping off a bridge sometime.
Not surprisingly, many studies find that waiting periods “may serve only to delay suicides rather than prevent them.” For obvious reasons, I can assure Michael that his proposed limit on magazine capacity will have no impact on suicides.
Despite his fondness for global natural experiments, Shermer ignores the one on the gun:suicide connection. The US has 4x more guns than Austria, 6x more than France, 10x more than Belgium, and 400x more than Japan. Yet all five nations have very similar suicide rates. Worldwide, there is no significant correlation between gun ownership rates and suicide rates:
Murder
Shermer asserts that “homicide excepted, crime rates in the United States are comparable to those in other Western countries that have few guns.… It’s US homicide rates that are a category of their own —because of guns.” This is patently false.
Homicide included, the US is 56th in the world in crime rate, at 47.8/100K. Straddling the US are Sweden, with 5x fewer guns/capita, at 54th (48/100K), and the UK, with 24x fewer guns, at 64th (46/100K). For murder rate alone, the US is 76th. Brazil, in 16th place, has 3x the murders as the US with 14x fewer guns.
Moreover, murder in America is predominantly a problem of big cities, where but 1 in 5 own guns. Take Missouri, where half the residents have firearms, but nearly two-thirds of the state’s murders occur in St. Louis and Kansas City alone. Can guns really be the cause of murder, when an inverse relationship exists?
Accidents
Shermer finds it “darkly entertaining” how a “brief scan of YouTube videos. … will provide hours of … gun accidents due almost entirely to human error.” A more robust methodology would’ve been to review the actual data. The Gun Violence Archive recorded <400 accidental gun deaths for 2019. [NB: I previously examined each and every one.] Of these, only about a dozen were the clichéd ‘hunting accident’ type. A further three were the result of holstering mishaps (two LE and one civilian.) The vast majority were urban youth playing with a stolen or otherwise illicitly possessed gun they mistakenly believed was unloaded. A shocking number of these occurred while mimicking hip hop videos.
A further 38 deaths came from young children accessing a gun. (CDC, using a different categorization, records 51 victims age 14 & under.) Tragic as these are, consider that at least 4 in every 10 households, ~ 50 million, have firearms in them. Literally a one-in-a-million occurance. In contrast, in 2019, 74 children age 14 & younger died of poisoning, 645 from drowning, and 1,295 from suffocation, Still, no one calls for ‘curbing the availability and capacity’ of the proximate causes: cleaning products, swimming holes, & plastic bags.
Here again, a banal observation by Shermer: the US has more accidental gun deaths among children than do countries with fewer guns.
Public Mass Shootings
Citing “260 mass public shootings” for the year to date — a deceptive figure padded with gang shoot-outs, drive-by’s, family murder/suicides, and targeted murders — does not reflect well on Shermer’s scientific rigor. The standard benchmark is the FBI’s definition of ‘active shooter incidents’, of which there were 61 last year. Of the horrific Uvalde type attacks, there have been four so far in 2022.
An oft-repeated meme, repeated in the Quillette article, is that since its weapons ban & confiscation, Australia has suffered no public mass shootings. This is demonstrably false.
No less than five incidents, under the standard definition of a mass public shooting, have occurred in Australia since the ban. A further six shootings took place which fit the broader definition Shermer relies on above. Australia’s gun confiscation was also unable to deter the three deadly attacks by armed terrorists, the nine mass murders by arson, or thirteen family murder/suicides by sundry means. This equates to nearly 600 such incidents in the US.
Gun Control Shermer cites a study on Austria, where a 1997 gun control law allegedly reduced “firearm suicide and homicide.” Yet over this period, Austria saw a reduction in suicides & homicides by all means. As the cited paper itself illustrates, but fails to explain, gun control somehow had its greatest impact on suicide by hanging:
As for mass shootings, the only ones ever experienced by Austria occurred after the gun control law, in 2013, 2016, and 2020. This would equate to almost five per year for the US.
Gun Culture
That snide condescension toward gun owners, so common among the intellectual elite, and which blends arrogance with ignorance, drips from Shermer’s pen.
Following his Schadenfreude binging of negligent discharge videos, Shermer next attacks the “militant” NRA. Blustering that “the NRA’s solution to crime and violence” is “arming everyone and hoping the good guys out-gun the bad guys,” Shermer erects, then bashes, a straw man. “In essence, the NRA is presuming America to be an effectively lawless society in which might makes right, so let’s all arm ourselves to the teeth.” Uvalde, Shermer declares, “put the lie to [the] trope” that “[t]he only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.”
Just one day after Uvalde, a crazed, AR-15-wielding man opened fire on a large party, but was shot & killed by a woman with a handgun before anyone was injured. This story, and so many others like it that don’t fit the narrative, are rarely covered by MSM. In fact, defensive uses of guns to prevent crimes are abundant — CDC estimates over 1 million each year; other studies double that figure.
Half of all states now allow permitless carry — some have for decades, Vermont since it entered the Union in 1791. Yet the Wild West scenario of Shermer’s fantasies has never manifested. As the number of guns in America doubled from 1990 on, murders steadily decreased — until they abruptly soared following the breakdown of law & order in big cities beginning in the Summer of 2020. Did George Floyd somehow exert a spooky action from a distance to suddenly convert guns into proximate causes?
Shermer might reassess his haughty assumption, that private gun owners are ignorant, unskilled ER visits waiting to happen, by considering the extensive training & safety programs of organizations like The Liberal Gun Club, A Girl And A Gun, or the NRA itself. As for the prototypical policeman “routinely practic[ing] his craft at shooting ranges and in simulation drills,” Shermer could peruse this Youtube channel to discover that training standards among departments vary widely from adequate to atrocious.
Certain Unalienable Rights
Absent from Shermer’s fatuous equation is any recognition that ownership of firearms is a constitutionally protected right.
“Gun-control legislation does not mean outlawing guns,” Shermer assures us, “any more than the licensing and regulation of automobiles means that only outlaws will have cars.” There is no enumerated right to keep and drive carriages, Michael. Nor is anyone calling for limiting the ranges of vehicles, or for bans on assault Porsches.
In an apparent denial of every man & woman’s natural right to self-defense, Shermer opines that the armed civilian “contravenes our understanding that, except in rare and exceptional circumstances, designated law-enforcement officials have a monopoly on the use of force.” Forgive me for taking personal responsibility for my own safety. For, despite being well-worn, the adage, ‘when seconds count, the police are only minutes away’, holds true. (Closer to an hour for yours truly.) In scoffing at the maxim, ‘if guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns’, Shermer forgets that what most worried the Founders was, if guns are outlawed, only tyrants will have guns. Frankly, his entire take on this smacks of authoritarianism.
At the end of the day, Shermer’s approach is fatally flawed. Even had he gotten his facts straight, performed proper data analysis, and disabused himself of tired tropes, a blinkered, scientific-philosophical analysis is inadequate to address a complex issue intertwined with weighty legal, social, and political implications.
(C) 2022 by True Liberal Nexus. All rights reserved.
“We may be trying to return a guilty man to the community. No one can really know. But we have reasonable doubt, and this is a safeguard that has enormous value in our system.”
The phrase, ‘it’s better to let ten guilty men go free, than put one innocent man behind bars’, is not some empty platitude. It’s a fundamental principal, one we’ve built into our legal system. First, by requiring unanimous verdicts in criminal cases and, most importantly, by requiring that guilt be proven beyond a reasonable doubt. At times, with specific cases, we may find this frustrating. But overall, this cautious approach protects the liberties of every individual, while strengthening our society as a whole. Indeed, the principle resonates so strongly as to be frequently featured in our literature and cinema, most notably in To Kill A Mockingbird and Twelve Angry Men.
“The one place where a man ought to get a square deal is in a courtroom, be he any color of the rainbow, but people have a way of carrying their resentments right into a jury box.”
Closing arguments are being presented today in the trial of Derek Chauvin, accused of criminal responsibility for the death of George Floyd. A verdict may already have been returned by the time you read this. Under our system, the jury, as ‘finders of fact’, are charged with setting aside all preformed opinions, all prejudices and biases, to decide on the merits of the case based only on evidence presented in court. Regarding this, the most publicized and cataclysmic incident in memory, that may prove hard for some of the jurors. No one who viewed that initial video clip of Floyd on the pavement (and all of those empaneled had seen it) was not emotionally troubled. Nor could anyone have missed the Summer of protests and rioting it sparked. The acrimonious debate over alleged police brutality and ‘systemic racism’ dividing our nation surely draws its fault line through this jury box, too.
Still, over the past two weeks, the jury has been presented with a large amount of evidence — eyewitnesses, expert opinion, training manuals, toxicology reports, extended body camera footage of the incident from start to finish and from various angles — that most of the public is unaware of. Some objective legal observers (if anyone can be fully objective in this case) found the state presented a rather weak, scattershot case, while Chauvin’s defense attorney, Eric Nelson, performed exceptionally well, most notably in eliciting statements favorable to the defense from some of the state’s own witnesses.
The prosecution’s case relied primarily on reviving in the jury the emotional response to that viral video of Chauvin leaning atop Floyd, finding excuses to play segments over and over and over, while calling witnesses to share how they felt about it. Expert witnesses were called who attested variously that Chauvin’s knee on Floyd’s neck been a “blood choke” to a single carotid artery, then, that Chauvin’s knee — actually on Floyd’s back — had caused “positional asphyxia”, then shifting yet again to restraining Floyd face down had caused “compression asphyxia.” The state also called several witnesses to testify that Chauvin acted criminally outside of police regulations, for if his actions were lawful, all the rest is moot.
The state also encountered procedural embarrassments. One of its first witnesses’ belligerence toward Nelson earned her a warning from the judge, during which she became sassy toward the judge, earning her a very stern warning. (The jury was sent off before this scolding, but it could surmise something was up when court was adjourned early, with that witness returning the next morning to answer a single question.) Nearly all of the state’s frequent objections were overruled. One prosecutor earned a sidebar for badgering a defense witness on cross, returning noticeably chastised. Then, just as the main cases were wrapping up, the state, by attempting to introduce evidence Judge Cahill had expressly forbidden, came within seconds of triggering a mistrial. Throughout the trial, the state, boasting three main prosecutors, a bevy of assistants, plus the entire resources of Minnesota, swamped Nelson and his lone aid with tens of thousands of pieces of evidence, dropped just days or sometimes hours before introducing them in court. While the jury was not privy to all of these elements, and may not appreciate their significance, it surely didn’t help.
“Atticus told me to delete the adjectives and I’d have the facts.”
In contrast, Defense counsel Nelson’s performance, barring a couple of stumbles, was outstanding.
As an antipode, and likely intentional antidote, to the emotionally charged prosecution, Nelson remained calm throughout, and courteous to state witnesses, even the sassy one. Only on cross with one expert could noticeable signs of disdain been seen in Nelson’s face and heard in his voice. But to be fair, this witness was pretty much an arrogant prick.
From his opening statement onward, Nelson laid out the foundation of reasonable doubt, building upon it brick by brick. Establishing the lawfulness of Chauvin’s actions in the minds of the jurors may have been the hardest; numerous witnesses testified both that it was and that it wasn’t, allowing any given juror to hear what they want. Nelson also argued that the crowd, growing larger and more openly hostile and threatening over time, both distracted the officers’ attention away from Floyd’s deteriorating physical condition, and necessitated restraining him for longer than anticipated. This was supported in part by the fact that the EMTs, after belatedly arriving, considered the scene too dangerous to render aid on the spot, instead executing a “load and scoot” then driving several blocks away before attending to Floyd.
Far more compelling was the argument that what killed George Floyd was not a knee to the neck, but Floyd’s own choices that day, coupled with his extremely poor health. As attested by tangible evidence and testimony, Floyd:
Had ingested fentanyl prior to his arrest;
To prevent them being found by the police, swallowed pills containing more fentanyl and meth;
Physically and forcefully resisted arrest for about ten minutes;
Complained of being unable to breath long before being restrained on the ground;
Asked to be laid on the ground instead of loaded into the police cruiser;
Exhibited signs of “excited delirium” — violent, random physical movements, mental incoherence and delusions — which, per police training, requires restraining the subject to prevent harm to himself or others.
The autopsy revealed that Floyd suffered, inter alia, from:
Severe hypertension;
A grossly enlarged and weakened heart;
Of his four main arteries to the brain, 75% blockage in three of them, 90% in the fourth;
A rare tumor that can suddenly release large quantities of adrenaline;
and found that on the day he died, Floyd had;
An almost four times fatal overdose of Fentanyl in his blood;
Experienced pulmonary edema — also evidenced by the foaming around his mouth seen well before he was on the ground — which is a typical side effect of fentanyl;
No tissue injuries consistent with physical force required to cause asphyxia.
The alternate scenario, which Defense argues cannot be ruled out beyond a reasonable doubt, is that the adrenaline rush from violently resisting arrest demanded more oxygen for Floyd’s muscles. But because the fentanyl had filled his lungs with fluid, they could not provide it. His weak heart, trying to pump its remaining reserves of oxygen through nearly completely blocked arteries, simply gave out.
“The one thing that doesn’t abide by majority rule is a person’s conscience.”
In any other trial, that evidence would seem to make a conviction impossible. This case, of course, is like no other. Already, many forms of jury intimidation have occurred. Still, juries can often stun us, and predicting verdicts is a mug’s game. In the crucible of deliberations, all the dynamics of human social interaction come into play. Jurors cajole each other. They reason, plead, pout, intimidate, haggle. Although the presence of at least one obvious BLM-type on the panel may preclude full acquittals, haggling might produce a token conviction on one of the lesser charges only. Also plausible is a hung jury. And as noted, the state’s shenanigans during trial provide strong grounds for an appeal.
Anything but convictions on the more serious charges would shock the public, kept ignorant by the biased media and its own preconceptions. It would also enrage the mob. Maxine Waters stood on the very steps of the courthouse inciting violence if the verdict is ‘not guilty’. Death threats have been made against the jurors. Antifa vandalized the former home of one of the defense witnesses. BLM agitators have vowed to spill the blood of police across the country if Chauvin is not convicted. A mob came for Atticus Finch’ client, too.
“It takes a great deal of courage to stand alone even if you believe in something very strongly.”
If mob rule can determine the outcome of trials, then our legal system is lost and our individual liberties with it. Protesters hold aloft placards bearing the words “Justice For George Floyd.” In that, they get it all wrong. We need this trial to be conducted fairly and objectively according to our laws, free from outside influence. If that occurs, whatever the verdict, then justice will be served. Not for George Floyd, not for Derek Chauvin, but for our system which protects all of us.
If rule of law is to be preserved, and chaos and anarchy averted, we all now need to act like good jurors when reacting to this case, and all similarly volatile ones. So, if you haven’t yet, review the evidence presented in this trial (to get the quickest overview without suffering tedium, consider just watching the cross-exams) as well as analyses that might come from somewhere other than your usual sources. The mob will be aiming to raze our institutions. Whatever ‘verdict’ you’ve arrived at, don’t let them, and certainly don’t join them.
Sheila Jackson Lee (D, TX-18) has a reputation for saying really stupid things in public, and introducing really stupid legislation in Congress. Her latest anti-gun bill is par for the course.
Sheila Jackson Lee, 14-term congresswoman from Houston, is known for many things: her anti-socialbehavior on commercial air flights, her mistreatment of staffers leading to the highest turnover rate on Capitol Hill, and her propensity for embarrassing gaffes. For, despite somehow acquiring a BA from Yale and a JD from UVA, Sheila Jackson Lee is a complete moron.
She asked if the Mars Rover could take photos of where the Astronauts landed.
She thinks North and South Vietnam are still two separate countries.
She believes the US Constitution is 400 years old.
She blamed Wikipedia for WikiLeaks.
Stupid is as stupiddoes.
Jackson Lee’s stupidity extends to guns, which she hates and has for years tried to ban. She once hefted an AR-15, declaring it “as heavy as ten [moving] boxes” and firing .50 caliber rounds. AR-15s weigh about seven pounds and are chambered in .223 / 5.56 mm, Sheila. Regarding gun control, Jackson Lee stated:
“Don’t condemn the gangbangers, they’ve got guns that are trafficked, that are not enforced, that are straw purchased and they come into places even that have strong guns laws. Why? Because we don’t have sensible gun legislation.”
If that made your head hurt, check out Jackson Lee’s latest ‘sensible gun legislation’, H.R. 127, the Sabika Sheikh Firearm Licensing and Registration Act.
Without explaining the intended purpose, it calls for a Federal database containing the “the make, model, and serial number” of all four hundred million guns in the country, along with “the identity of the owner of the firearm, the date the firearm was acquired by the owner, and where the firearm is or will be stored.” Jackson Lee is apparently unaware that guns are portable.
This is not an AR.
Also to be recorded is “the identity of any person to whom, and any period of time during which, the firearm will be loaned to the person.” So, if you’d like to lend your rifle to your buddy while out hunting, let your friend try out your pistol at the range, or even tell your spouse or house guest to grab your shotgun during a home invasion, you’ll need to let the Feds know well in advance.
But wait — H.R.127 contains even more ‘sensible’ stuff.
A Federal license would be required to possess both firearms and ammunition, issued only after the applicant (that is, all one hundred million gun owners) passes a background check — something they already had to do when purchasing their firearm.
Completing 24 hours of approved training “in the use, safety, and storage of firearms” would also be mandatory, presumably to drastically reduce the c. 400 accidental discharge deaths each year.
Further, every gun owner would need to carry liability insurance for “losses and damages”, oddly issued by the US Attorney General, for an annual fee of $800.
Finally, anyone who wishes to buy a new gun, or just keep the ones they already own, would need undergo a “psychological evaluation conducted by a licensed psychologist approved by the Attorney General”. If that shrink deemed it necessary, interviews would be conducted with spouses, former spouses (you may as well give up now), all other household members, and “at least 2 other persons who are a member of the family of, or an associate of, the individual to further determine the state of the mental, emotional, and relational stability of the individual in relation to firearms.” Fortunately, if you’ve ever been in rehab or previously received a mental health diagnosis for pretty much anything, you get to skip the above process, cuz you’ll never be allowed to own a gun again in your life.
This license, along with all requirements, would need to be renewed every year for the first five years, then every three years thereafter. Violators would face minimum punishment of a $150,000 fine and 15 years in prison.
Additionally, the bill makes illegal the usual scary black guns, labeled “military-style weapons”, with evil stuff like adjustable stocks and pistol grips — that is, features making them easier to aim, thus safer. Also banned would be autoloading shotguns holding more than five shells, and “large capacity” (i.e., standard capacity) magazines holding more than 10 rounds — essentially every magazine in existence outside of CA, MA and NY. And don’t you dare condemn the gangbangers when they forget to turn them in.
NB: The bill is named after Sabika Sheikh, a Pakistani exchange student, one of ten people murdered in the 2018 Santa Fe High School shooting. The killer that day was an underaged fellow student, prohibited from possessing any firearm, who filched his daddy’s 4+1 pump-action shotgun and a snub-nosed, five round revolver. He also brought along a Molotov cocktail. That’s right — our legal eagle named her legislation after the victim of a shooting that involved none of the weaponry her bill seeks to ban.
Ban this military-style weapon!
If you wish to comfort yourself in the thought that H.R. 127 is just a bit of demagoguery that’ll never even get a floor vote, remember that Congress is thick with folks just as moronic as Sheila Jackson Lee when it comes to ’sensible’ (sic) gun control. I’ll tell you who the real fools are, though: anyone who owns a gun and still votes for Democrats.
(c) 2021 by True Liberal Nexus. All rights reserved.
Day 1: Signs executive order requiring all Americans to wear face masks at all times; all Trump voters required to wear orange stars at all times.
Day 2: Grants every illegal alien citizenship, free health care, and registration as a Democrat.
Day 3: Orders anyone who questions the fairness of the 2020 election arrested as a domestic terrorist.
Day 4: Bans all firearms without a device that automatically aims for the leg.
Day 5: To combat global warming, orders all remaining US industry relocated to China.
Day 6: Instructs Congress to admit DC & Puerto Rico as states, force Texas to secede.
Day 7: Kamala Harris walks into the Oval office and says, “Hey Joe, what an amazing four years! Are you ready to retire now?” Biden replies, “Wow, Beau — that went by fast.”
(c) 2021 by True Liberal Nexus. All rights reserved.
Kamala Harris was forced to drop out of the Democratic primary race months before a single vote was cast. Yet a handful of party insiders anointed her as vice presidential nominee. Now paired with an elderly running mate, Harris could well soon ascend to the Oval Office. Her personal past and professional record reveals how she managed this feat, and portends how she would comport herself as President.
A Pig in a Poke
Tonight, on this 281th day of the surreal anno 2020, Kamala Harris, the Democratic vice presidential nominee, will debate sitting VP Mike Pence. Way back on Day 43, it would’ve been inconceivable to imagine that match-up on stage in Utah eight months hence. The New Hampshire primary had just been held, with win, place, and show going to Bernie Sanders, Pete Buttigieg, and a surging Amy Klobuchar. Joe Biden had finished a distant fifth with only 8%, with pundits issuing Last Rites to his flagging campaign. Harris wasn’t even part of the conversation. She’d ended her run just after Thanksgiving; her grossly mismanaged campaign bankrupt and torn apart by acrimony, her polling sunken below 1%, the result of her caustic demeanor in debates, her serial flip-flopping on issues. And, perhaps, her inability to come across as empathetic, highlighted by her bizarre tic of protracted, cackling laughter at the most inappropriate moments.
There’s no need to detail what followed. The Dems’ backdoor scheming to block Bernie by settling for Biden. The George Floyd incident that indirectly knocked odds-on favorite, Klobuchar, out of the VP slot. The heated struggle among Biden’s handlers to select an African-American woman, one who neither espoused a too-far left agenda nor had a history as a tough police chief or prosecutor. All somehow resulting in the selection of a dark-skinned — though not African-American — former DA and AG with a record of draconian, often sadistic, law enforcement, who’d recently and eagerly embraced everything from open borders, to slave reparations, to gun confiscation, to socialized healthcare.
To give you an idea of the dread Kamala Harris instills in those who know her well, consider this: a large group of California Democratic pols desperately offered Rep. Karen Bass as an alternative. Not only is Bass an unknown with a thin legislative record, she’s an actual communist fellow-traveler. After pulling every string to thwart the socialist Sanders, these Dems were willing to place a Fidel Castro groupie on the ticket, just to keep Kamala off. Biden advisor and party veteran, Chris Dodd, vehemently opposed Harris’ selection on the principle of ‘first, do no harm.’
The American electorate, including the Democrat voters who endured a seemingly interminable primary season, are now asked to endorse a slate comprised of nobody’s first choice and everyone’s last choice. Simply because they aren’t Trump. Further, given Biden’s age and obvious mental decline, the tacit understanding is that Biden is merely a placeholder, with Harris the actual POTUS nominee “ready to step in on Day One”. Tellingly, Biden recently referred to a “Harris/Biden administration,” while Kamala haughtily spoke of a “Harris administration, with Joe Biden.”
If elected, Harris could well serve up to eleven years in the White House. She’s threatened to rule by fiat, ignoring Congress if it fails to pass legislation pleasing to her. Her record is rife with abuses of the powers of her offices, moral flexibility on issues and policy, and a machiavellian approach to anything or anyone standing in her way. Especially as her campaign is actively shielding her from public scrutiny, It would behoove us all to take a long, hard look at Kamala Harris.
Cette Petite Fille? C’était Moi.
Kamala Harris was born in 1964 to Donald Harris and Gopalan Shyamala, immigrants who’d met as grad students at UC Berkeley. As everyone now knows, when the young family lived in Berkeley, CA, little Kamala was bused across town. But the Harris’ were by no means poor or disadvantaged. Both parents were academics — Donald an economist, Gopalan, an endocrinologist. On her father’s side, Kamala is descended from wealthy Jamaican slave owners, while her mother comes from an elite Brahmin clan. With her parents, young Kamala visited relatives across the globe.
When Kamala was seven, her parents divorced. Kamala continued to reside with her mother in Berkeley while spending weekends at her father’s home in the upscale university community of Palo Alto. Five years later, Gopalan accepted a research and teaching position at McGill University in Montréal, where Kamala, now twelve, was enrolled in a private, French-speaking school.
So, whenever Kamala ‘code-switches’ into urban black dialect for the benefit of an african-american audience, recognize that she’s not just pandering, she’s faking.
Strictly 4 My N.I.G.G.A.Z.
In 1981, Harris returned to the US to attend college at Howard, a private HBUC where, she claims, she smoked a lot of weed while jamming to Tupac Shakur. Kamala must’ve been a huge Tupac fan, to be listening to the rapper a decade before he’d released any recordings.
Years later, as San Francisco’s District Attorney, the former stoner was unable to muster any empathy as she zealously prosecuted marijuana possession. As Kamala put it at the time, “It is not progressive to be soft on crime.”
Interestingly, Kamala’s life-long passion for hip hop came up again recently, during the candidate’s video appearance at the NCAAP’s streaming convention. When asked her opinion on the best living hip hop artist, Kamala blurted out “Tupac” — who, unfortunately, does not qualify for the honor, having died 24 years ago. When pressed to name a performer among the quick, Kamala demurred, saying “oh, there’s so many to choose from.” A much better response than admitting she was once again faking it.
On The Way Up
Harris attended law school at UC Hastings in San Francisco, gaining admission through the school’s Legal Education Opportunity Program (LEOP). The program
“offers special consideration in admission to applicants who have been subject to significant adversity that may have prevented them from attaining numeric criteria that fully reflect their motivation, talent, and academic and professional ability.”
In plain English, LEOP is a quota system for poor students with poor grades.
While Kamala, with a renowned cancer researcher and a Stanford professor for parents, likely didn’t meet the program’s financial hardship criterion, she was the daughter of immigrants, and surely played up the “impact on [her] academic performance” from the “bias” she faced as a Jamaican/Indian surrounded first by white Berkeleyites, then Quebecois, then Southern Blacks. She might even have had the temerity to claim that l’anglais was not her first language after those formative years at Notre-Dame-des-Neiges.
After passing the California bar in 1990, Harris was hired by Alameda County as a deputy district attorney, where she made a name for herself as ”an able prosecutor on the way up” by prosecuting child sexual assault cases. It was around this time that Harris first made the acquaintance of fellow up-and-comer, Gavin Newsom, and through him, his aunt, Nancy Pelosi — connections that would later serve Kamala well.
Whore
At some point in 1993 or early 1994 (accounts vary), the 29-year-old Harris became romantically involved with Willie Brown, thirty-one years her senior. A notorious philanderer, Brown was then speaker of the State Assembly and head of a very powerful, very corrupt, Democratic machine.
Brown bought his new squeeze a BMW and began sporting her on his arm at the many lavish society functions he frequented. Kamala was thus introduced to California’s political bosses, as well as to the philanthropists — among them Susie Tompkins Buell and Gordon Getty — the business magnates, and Hollywood moguls whose campaign donations sustained them. “I would think it’s fair to say that most of the people in San Francisco met her through Willie,” opined one Democratic bigwig. “It’s a club, and it’s bigger than Brown,” a former Harris backer observed. “It comes instantly with basically the entire business community at your doorstep, so it means you have access to large amounts of campaign money and institutional political support. It’s that simple.”
Brown’s next gifts to his new girlfriend were even more extravagant than a sports car: a seat on the California Medical Assistance Commission, then one on the state Unemployment Insurance Appeals Board, with annual salaries of $72,000 and $97,000 respectively. These two prize patronage plums falling into the lap of a neophyte with no related expertise or experience irked politicos, but Kamala had clearly put in the work.
Shortly after Brown won the 1995 San Francisco mayoral election, he and Harris split up. Accounts conflict as to who dumped who, but Harris’ words a few years later are revealing. Describing Brown as “an albatross hanging around my neck,” Harris sneered, “[h]is career is over; I will be alive and kicking for the next 40 years. I do not owe him a thing … Willie Brown is not going to be around. He’s gone — hello people, move on.”
Brown readily admits he jump-started Kamala’s political career with his favoritism. “I’ve helped lots of people…. The difference is that Harris is the only one who, after I helped her, sent word that I would be indicted if I ‘so much as jaywalked’ while she was D.A.”
Thug Life
In 1998, San Francisco’s district attorney, Terence Hallinan, recruited fellow progressive, Harris, as his assistant DA. Little did he realize at the time he was nursing a viper in his bosom. As she had in Oakland across the Bay, Harris focused on sexual assault cases. But before long, Harris was generating friction within the office. Frequently and publicly clashing with colleagues over policy, Harris became persona non grata. She quit in 2000 to run the City Hall’s Family and Children’s Services Division.
Two years later, it was time for Kamala’s next big career step; only her former boss stood in her way. When Harris entered the 2003 San Francisco District Attorney race, she had nothing close to the name recognition enjoyed by her rivals, the progressive, two-term incumbent, Hallinan, or the moderate challenger, Bill Fazio. What Kamala did have were those establishment relationships she’d forged at Willie Brown’s many soirees, not to mention the sympathy of her pal, Gavin Newsom’s, coterie. Working these connections, she began lining up endorsements — at times resorting to veiled threats. The president of the city police union recalled Harris cornering him at a party: “I didn’t know who she was … and she came up to me and she put her finger in my chest and she said, ‘You better endorse me, you better endorse me. You get it?’”
The endorsement of other unions who recognized their true masters followed. Harris also received a boon from her friends in high places. In an unprecedented move, the state Democratic Committee, led by Diane Feinstein and Nancy Pelosi, declined to endorse any candidate in the race. The donations rolled in, too — hundreds of thousands of dollars, coming in so fast Harris was cited for campaign finance violations. Curiously, among Harris’ largest donors were numerous individuals, groups, and law firms associated with San Francisco’s Roman Catholic archdiocese.
But Kamala’s biggest advantage over her rivals was her own sheer ruthlessness. At the first debate, Harris sprung a carefully-planned ambush that entered Bay Area politics legend. After Hallinan and Fazio gave their opening statements, Harris rose from her seat to stand behind Hallinan. “You know Terence Hallinan has attacked Bill Fazio for being caught in a massage parlor,” she boomed. Then, walking over to stand behind Fazio, Harris noted how he’d ridiculed Hallinan “for people having sex in his office.” Returning to her spot in the middle of the stage, Harris announced: “I want to make a commitment to you that my campaign is not going to be about negative attacks.”
It was a performance worthy of Machiavelli’s prince. Harris had simultaneously slung mud at both opponents while chastising them for the exact same mud-slinging. The audience ate it up. Decades later, Harris reminisced that “San Francisco is hard-knocks politics. They punch the gut.” Hallinan always considered it more of a stab in the back.
In the election, Harris eked past Fazio to force a run-off with Hallinan. Her campaign literature attacked her former boss for his low conviction rates, while contrasting her sex and skin color with his and all the city DAs of the past century. References to her affiliation with Brown were declared sexist. Harris won the run-off handily. In her victory speech, she promised to balance compassion for minor offenders with a hard-nosed pursuit of the most depraved criminals.
Menace II Society
Harris’ eight years as DA were filled with controversy while her decisions disappointed and shocked many of her grassroots supporters.
The mystery behind Kamala’s large haul of Catholic donations was solved soon after she took office. Harris, who’d first made a name for herself as a young prosecutor fighting “sex crimes and child exploitation” and “later touted her record on child sexual abuse cases and prosecuting pedophiles,” quashed Hallinan’s ongoing, exhaustive investigation into sexual abuse of minors by priests. Harris failed to pursue any open cases, while refusing to release any files to the public despite the urging of SNAP and other victims’ advocates. Years later, in response to FOIA requests, the SF DA’s office announced the documents were nowhere to be found.
While Harris significantly increased conviction rates over her predecessor’s, she did so by aggressively prosecuting minor pot busts and by accepting plea bargains on outstanding murder cases, something she’d criticized Hallinan for.
At other times, however, Harris could be draconian. In 2005, the DA’s office brought murder charges against Lashaun Ternice Harris, a paranoid schizophrenic who’d thrown her three small children into the San Francisco Bay by the command of voices in her head. Ternice Harris, who was living in a homeless shelter at the time, had recently gone off her meds in hopes of retaining custody of her children. The judge rejected the guilty verdict, instead committing her to a mental institution. Harris successfully fought to have the murder conviction reinstated.
In 2006, Harris launched a crusade against school truancy, on the questionable theory that, as most violent criminals had been truants, forcing kids to attend class today would reduce crime in future. To add teeth to her program, Harris threatened parents of habitual truants with a $2,500 fine and a year in jail. Although no parents served time, several were prosecuted. When Harris’ own staff brought to her attention the program’s deep unpopularity among the public, she laughed.
Harris ran unopposed for reelection in 2007, her powerful SF machine friends advising any aspirants to stay out of the race if they knew what was good for them.
In 2009, Deborah Madden, a police lab technician who’d frequently testified in court over the years, was arrested for stealing cocaine from the evidence room. It soon came out that Harris’ office had for years been aware of Madden tampering with evidence, among other criminal offenses. Madden’s personnel file even included a folder labeled “Brady Implications.” Under Brady v. Maryland (1963), the DA was required to hand over this potentially exculpatory evidence to any defendant convicted in trials in which Madden had appeared. Harris did not, even though an internal memo had circulated in her office listing over a hundred law enforcement officials with criminal or misconduct issues impacting over 1,000 convictions (600 of which were later vacated.) Harris claimed she never saw the memo.
In 2010, Jamal Trulove was convicted of murder based on a solitary eyewitness. The conviction was overturned when it was revealed that Harris’ office wrongfully withheld from the jury that the witness had been paid $60,000 and given new housing. Trulove was awarded a $13 million settlement.
In 2010, after a judge vacated Caramad Conley’s murder conviction, citing “voluminous” evidence of false testimony, Harris nevertheless attempted to retry Conley. Once Harris left office, the new DA declined to pursue the case.
Still I Rise
The next logical stepping stone in the Rise of Kamala was state attorney general, which she sought in 2010. With a 33.6% plurality against six primary opponents, Harris advanced to the general election, where she garnered 46% of the vote in another crowded field. She easily won reelection in 2014.
As in San Francisco, Harris’ tenure in Sacramento was marred with nearly identical controversies.
One of Harris’ first acts as AG was to block, for two years, the release of Daniel Larsen, whose conviction for illegal weapons possession had been overturned based on exculpatory testimony of nine eyewitnesses, including a policeman. When Larson was finally set free, Harris appealed, claiming he missed a deadline to file paperwork.
Beginning in 2011, and sporadically for the following three years, Harris would attempt to inflict her draconian anti-truancy crusade on the entire state.
2013: Harris recommended that the California Victim Compensation and Government Claims Board not pay Rafael Madrigal the $282,000 he was owed for a wrongful conviction due to … you guessed it, suppressed exculpatory evidence.
2013: Harris, citing technicalities, declined to prosecute OneWest Bank for “widespread violation” of California foreclosure laws. Many legal observers considered her excuse bogus. Coincidentally, Harris later was the only US Senate candidate to receive a campaign donation from Steven Mnuchin, who’d profited greatly from OneWest’s subprime lending.
2013: Harris certified that “micro-stamping” of handgun shell casings in two locations “is a technology available to more than one [gun] manufacturer unencumbered by any patent restrictions”, despite its defiance of the laws of physics. When the related law was challenged, Harris’ office successfully argued before the Ninth Circuit that impossibility of compliance is no bar to a legal requirement. The net result has been an effective ban on the sale of new handguns in California, even though most new models feature improved safety mechanisms. Harris recently revealed that she herself owns a handgun for personal protection.
2013: Harris declined to prosecute a Pacific Gas and Electric executive for an illegal meeting with a member of the state utilities board.
2014: Harris declined to investigate a widely publicized ‘judge shopping’ scandal surrounding a lawsuit stemming from a PG&E gas explosion that wiped out an entire neighborhood. NB: PG&E is a major campaign donor to several powerful California Democrats, including Kamala’s longtime ally, Gavin Newsom.
2014: state attorneys attempted to block the early release of prisoners, citing the need for inmates’ assistance in fighting wildfires. When this provoked public outrage, Harris denied all knowledge of the effort by her staff.
2015: Harris declined to act on a memo from within her own DA’s office on the urgency of investigating the nutritional supplement manufacturer, Herbalife, for multiple fraudulent marketing practices. Herbalife was represented by the law firm of Kamala’s husband.
2015: Harris brokered a $33 million settlement with Comcast for its release of data of tens of thousands of customers who’d paid for unlisted phone service. Comcast realizes $109 billion in annual revenue. Apparently, the deal resulted in no hard feelings, as five senior Comcast execs donated generously to Kamala’s 2019 presidential campaign.
2015: Harris fought an appeal of a sexual assault conviction by George Gage. A judge ruled that Harris’ prosecutors had withheld exculpatory evidence, but Harris successfully blocked a retrial on a procedural technicality.
2016 : Harris ordered the state DOJ to raid the home of David Daleiden, a pro-life activist who’d recorded undercover video exposing Planned Parenthood’s sale of fetal tissue from abortions in violation of California and Federal law. Daleiden was then charged with violating California’s two-party consent law regarding recorded conversations. This was the first and, to date, only indictment made under this law, despite the regular use of undercover recordings by journalists in exposés.
It later came to light that prior to the raid, Harris had met to strategize and to coordinate her actions with Planned Parenthood executives, including one whose clinic was under investigation by a County DA for illegal sale of fetal tissue. That executive later pleaded guilty, his clinic accepting a $7.8 million plea bargain. Needless to say, Planned Parenthood has been a generous campaign donor over the years to Harris.
2016: Harris opposed the American Bar Association’s request for the retesting of forensic evidence in the case of Kevin Cooper, an inmate on California’s death row who claims his 1983 conviction for murder was the result of evidence-tampering by police. Shortly before launching her presidential run, Harris publicly reversed her stance, saying, “I feel awful about this.”
Just Passing Through
The upwards path opened again for Kamala with the retirement of US Senator, Barbara Boxer. After a brief scuffle with Gavin Newsom over the vacancy, the two pals agreed to divvy up the booty, with Newsom gunning for Governor. In an open Senate primary, Harris breezed past 37 others, then won handily in the general election vs. another democrat under CA’s newly-introduced ‘top-two’ format.
During her brief time in Washington, Harris has not made much of a legislative mark. Co-sponsor to nearly five hundred bills, she is the architect of none of consequence. Her notoriety has come primarily from her performances during televised confirmations and other hearings. Whether it was disparaging three federal district-court nominees for their membership in the Knights of Columbus, badgering the US Attorney General by asking him whether he was “aware of the perception” that his agents were just like the KKK, or her clumsy attempt to bluff Brett Kavanaugh with an allusion to non-existent incriminating evidence, in committee chambers Harris has employed the pit-bull tactics of a prosecutor.
But Harris never intended to forge a legacy for herself as a workhorse on Capitol Hill. It was merely a momentary stop on her lifelong climb to the very pinnacle of power.
The Last Laugh
What to make of someone who, during a tough-on-crime era, is willing to burnish her reputation by suppressing exculpatory evidence, but during a time when policing reform is trending, will preach about how going after crime is “wrongheaded” and we must instead “reimagine public safety?” Who threatened to throw parents of truants in jail, but gave corporate criminals slaps on the wrist? Who billed herself as a warrior against the sexual exploitation of youth, but was fine with letting child raping priests get off if it’d help her win an election? Who traded sexual favors for access to patronage? Who will morph her persona on the fly to pander to this or that group?
There can be but one conclusion: Kamala Harris is a sociopath.
Over the course of her bid to ascend to the Oval Office, Kamala Harris has employed all of the same ruthless machinations seen in her relentless, lifelong quest for power. As one of her former campaign managers warned, “the biggest mistake would be to underestimate her. She will leave no stone unturned in figuring out how to get it done.”
Witness how, when Harris’ most formidable obstacle was Joe Biden, she carefully laid a brutal ambush, tacitly calling him a racist by professing she did not believe he was a racist. Witness her readiness to “believe” Tara Reade’s accusations, only to later throw Reade under the bus. Witness her flip-flopping on policy positions from one week to the next, a brazen attempt to surf the undulating wave of popular sentiment. Or, on controversial issues where she cannot tell which way the wind will blow, her trademark prevarication, “we really need to have a discussion on that.”
When these tactics led to her rejection by Democratic voters, she bitterly accused them of being racist and sexist and “not ready” for her intersectional awesomeness. Whereas any other candidate, whose campaign had crashed and burned as spectacularly as Kamala’s did, would have entered into four years of introspection, Harris merely dusted herself off and unleashed her secret weapon, those insider connections she’d first first cultivated all those years ago as Willie Brown’s arm candy. It was these titans, the party’s shadowy power brokers, the Silicon Valley mega-donors, who strong-armed Team Joe to pick their asset, Kamala.
And when questioned about her sudden volte-face on her now-running mate, she barely hesitated before dismissing any concerns as to whether she possessed any scruples whatsoever, much less a soul. “It’s just politics!” she laughed.
(c) 2020 by True Liberal Nexus. All rights reserved.
Posted by Matt 
True Liberal Nexus 