Looking at some of the other results in Tuesday’s California primaries, there appears to be a law-and-order trend – at least, as California would define law and order these days.
Developer Rick Caruso’s showing in the mayoral primary Tuesday demonstrated that a significant number of Angelenos want immediate changes on homelessness and aren’t turned off by the vast fortune of a billionaire who has never held elected office.
Caruso will face Rep. Karen Bass in the general election after the two candidates topped the field in a race focused on the unhoused and crime, a contest viewed as a judgment on City Hall’s handling of those issues.
Both Democratic and Republican voters in Tuesday’s election backed the developer, a onetime Republican who jumped in the race just four months ago and is seeking big changes in city government. He has proposed bypassing the City Council on homeless housing decisions, as well as removing their ability to oversee land use — a step that follows several FBI investigations of local politicians.
“The unhoused” – love that leftist nomenclature. Kind of like that old favorite, “undocumented.”
His campaign — which tapped his own wealth and relied on an unprecedented $40 million in spending — resonated in the heavily Democratic city, where voters are frustrated by the intractable homelessness crisis, unaffordable home prices and rising gun violence…
As Bass gathered with her supporters on election night at the W Hollywood hotel, she described the mayoral election as a “fight for the soul of our city.”
Some people will be surprised to hear that Los Angeles has a soul. But it’s a place where I’ve spent a lot of time over the last 50 years (!) or so, and for which I have some fondness. I think what the election is really about is a fight for the ability of the city to function and to ensure the safety of most of its citizens. That’s something so basic we might refer to it as the body of the city rather than its soul.
I was curious what the White House or Joe Biden had to say about the attempt on Kavanaugh’s life. All I could find was this:
White House deputy press secretary Andrew Bates said in a statement provided to Fox News that the president condemns the alleged actions of the suspect and “is grateful to law enforcement for quickly taking him into custody”.
“As the president has consistently made clear, public officials – including judges – must be able to do their jobs without concern for their personal safety or that of their families,” according to the statement. “And any violence, threats of violence, or attempts to intimidate justices have no place in our society.”
The president supports legislation to fund increased security for the Supreme Court and justices, the statement said.
So the deputy press secretary sends a written statement to news agencies (I’m going to assume not just Fox) with some boilerplate blah-blah. Does anyone actually read this except for someone searching for it as I did? And it took a while to find it, I might add.
On the other hand, Biden appeared on Jimmy Kimmel’s late night talk show last night, a venue that has a pretty wide audience. Here’s what Biden actually said:
President Biden in an interview broadcast late Wednesday predicted a “mini revolution” in November’s midterm elections if the Supreme Court overturns the landmark 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade, which enshrined abortion access as a constitutional right.
During the interview on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!,” Biden said overturning the court precedent would be “ridiculous” and would motivate turnout in November’s elections.
“I don’t think the country will stand for it,” Biden said. “If in fact the decision comes down the way it does, and these states impose the limitations they’re talking about, it’s going to cause a mini revolution and they’re going to vote these folks out of office.”
Now, he does define this revolution as a revolution in voting that will sweep Republicans out of office, not a violent one. But the rest of the rhetoric is stronger that that. The country “won’t stand for it.” Such a decision would be “ridiculous” – says the noted jurist Joe Biden.
That appearance would have been a golden opportunity to address the assassination attempt and to condemn it. It was an opportunity Joe didn’t take, however. Nor did he say that whatever SCOTUS eventually decides needs to be respected. Nope; he said it would be “ridiculous” if SCOTUS overturned Roe and that the country wouldn’t stand for it.
I can’t find a word from Kamala Harris – remember her? – on the Kavanaugh assassination attempt, either. She certainly did her bit in the past to assassinate his character, however:
Focusing on her support for abortion and position on the Senate Judiciary Committee that handled the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings, Harris strongly opposed Kavanaugh’s nomination within moments of it being announced, and long before she had a chance to review his record.
She joined other Democratic presidential hopefuls on the steps of the Supreme Court the next day to further express her opposition. She ran 3,600 different advertisements on Facebook before the second round of hearings began in late September 2018.
“Her performance during the Kavanaugh circus stood out as particularly demagogic, cynical & abysmal,” wrote TownHall political editor Guy Benson.
Within a few seconds of the first hearings being gaveled to order, Harris interrupted the proceedings in an attempt to shut them down on procedural grounds, part of a coordinated attack that included attempts by hundreds of compensated activists to get arrested.
Harris, a former prosecutor, led a line of questioning that was an obvious attempt to put Kavanaugh in a perjury trap, albeit a trap he was able to avoid. Harris began by asking Kavanaugh if he had ever discussed Robert Mueller, the special counsel then investigating the Trump presidential campaign, with anyone.
Read the whole thing; it’s quite interesting.
And what of Schumer, he of previous “released the whirlwind” threats, naming Kavanaugh and Gorsuch specifically? Crickets, as far as I can tell.
A trip down memory lane:
FLASHBACK: Democrat Senator Chuck Schumer threatened U.S. Supreme Court Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh.
"You have released the whirlwind and you will pay the price! You won't know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions!"pic.twitter.com/e1qKzocJDj
(1) I wrote briefly last night about the successful recall of San Francisco’s DA Chesa Boudin, and I’ve written about him previously as well. I just want to add that I first realized there was a good chance that the recall effort would work when, back in the fall, I was talking to some ultra-liberal friends who live in a San Francisco suburb and they spontaneously started to talk about their upset at the high crime rate. They were quite emotional about how awful it was, and although they didn’t say anything about Boudin and the recall, it made me realize that if people like this were so upset about it then an awful lot of people were going to be giving Boudin the boot. And so it’s happened.
Will his replacement be any better? Maybe a little bit.
(2) The drip drip drip of revelations about Hunter Biden’s dissipation isn’t something I’ve been covering heavily or even much at all lately. Who wants to wade through such a fetid cesspool? And yet it needs to be done. And today Ace has done yeoman’s work in a post entitled “Hunter Biden Made a Porno With a Druggy Hooker While Brandishing His Illegally-Purchased Gun.” It’s not just about Hunter’s sexual escapades and general dissipation; it’s also about how all his gun violations are being ignored by the oh-so-concerned left and our so-very-determined president, otherwise known as Hunter Biden’s dad.
An armed California man incensed about the leaked Supreme Court draft opinion expected to overturn Roe v. Wade was arrested near Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s Maryland home Wednesday after he hatched a plan to kill the jurist to “give his life purpose,” prosecutors said.
Nicholas John Roske, 26, was arrested by the Montgomery County Police Department at about 1:50 a.m. near Kavanaugh’s home in Chevy Chase and was charged later Wednesday in Maryland federal court with attempting to kill or kidnap a US judge, court records show.
Roske, who was dressed in black clothing and carrying a backpack and a suitcase, was spotted getting out of a cab in front of Kavanaugh’s home around 1:05 a.m. by two deputy US Marshals, who were stationed outside the residence, court papers state.
When he saw the marshals, who were standing next to their parked vehicle in the tony Washington, DC, suburb, he walked down the block and called 911 and told an operator he was having “suicidal thoughts,” had a firearm on him and wanted to kill Kavanaugh.
Doesn’t seem as though entrapment was involved here at all, unlike in the Michigan Whitmer kidnapping case. In the current incident, it seems as though the fact that Kavanaugh’s house had protection was the only reason this guy didn’t succeed or at least come a lot closer to succeeding in killing or wounding Kavanaugh and/or his family. The left is probably disappointed that he didn’t succeed, because if one or more of the SCOTUS justices on the right were to be assassinated, then Joe Biden would get to appoint a successor. This could change the course of history, and so the motivation is almost certainly quite strong. And since Kavanaugh in particular has been demonized from the start by the left and the Democrats, he’s a natural target for someone like Roske, who says he found Kavanaugh’s home address online.
See also a post entitled “The Schumer fatwa,” by Scott Johnson at Powerline.
(4) By the way, when is SCOTUS going to rule on Dobbs and thereby revisit Roe? Supposedly in late June or early July.
(5) The Washington Postis a hot mess. See also this as well as this. From the latter:
The state of the media industry is such that journalists are now incentivized to be as effusive as possible in professing how emotionally unstable they are. Why? Because it’s a surefire way to bolster their pleas for a redress of various workplace or personal grievances. No longer are these psychological issues thought to be best dealt with in the privacy of a therapist’s office, or among trusted confidants. Instead, these journalists create a public spectacle, beckoning colleagues to flood their tweet threads and affirm unstinting support. When Taylor Lorenz of the New York Times recounted her own emotional turmoil stemming from allegedly “violent” online criticism, the International Women’s Media Foundation, an NGO devoted to “[recognizing] badass female journalists and photographers whose courage sets them apart,” issued a rousing statement in her defense.
Subsequently, these journalists’ union representation will rush to amplify their grievances by echoing the therapeutic trauma jargon…
Most of these so-called jounralists are youngish women (well, they’re all young to me). They have probably been rewarded for this sort of behavior many times, and it seems to be continuing. The day of the hard-boiled reporter is long long gone.
“I just have to say just on the issue of that at gas prices; after waiting for a long time to have enough chips in this country to finally get my electric vehicle, I got it and drove it from Michigan to here this last weekend and went by every single gas station. It didn’t matter how high it was.”
The Senator then added, “So I’m looking forward to the opportunity for us to move to vehicles that aren’t going to be dependent on the whims of the oil companies and the international markets.”
How nice for you, senator. That electric car of course cost a ton more then the non-electric cars most of us peasants drive,
Plus, you mention zipping past the gas stations (chortling with glee and self-satisfaction?), but what about the fact that you had to stop to – you know – charge your electric car? Or does it run on Hope and Change?
According to this website, electric cars must be charged every 250 to 350 miles depending on the make (the Tesla has the 350-mile range). A trip from Michigan to DC is about 720 miles, so that probably means two charging stops (if you start out with a full charge). Charging such a car is not expensive (see this), but a person must find a charging station and then there’s time spent charging.
The time it takes to charge an electric car can be as little as 30 minutes or more than 12 hours. This depends on the size of the battery and the speed of the charging point.
–A typical electric car (60kWh battery) takes just under 8 hours to charge from empty-to-full with a 7kW charging point.
–Most drivers top up charge rather than waiting for their battery to recharge from empty-to-full.
–For many electric cars, you can add up to 100 miles of range in ~35 minutes with a 50kW rapid charger.
–The bigger your car’s battery and the slower the charging point, the longer it takes to charge from empty to full.
I don’t know which approach Stabenow used for her trip, full charge or topping off more frequently, but neither sound like great solutions for a lengthy trip such as from Michigan to DC.
I’ll add that her statement about gas prices being dependent on the “whims of the oil companies and the international markets” is inflammatory and ignorant. Does she really think the big bad oil companies and the international markets (or whoever runs them in her fevered imagination) just wake up in the morning and decide on whim to jack up the prices? That there are no market forces at work? I don’t believe she really thinks that. I believe she wants American consumers to think that.
Several commenters have called my attention to the fact that there’s a new Israeli film about Adolf Eichmann. It’s entitled ““The Devil’s Confession: The Lost Eichmann Tapes,” and it features interviews in which he describes how much he knew about the Holocaust (a great great deal) as it was happening, and how much he approved of it (a great great deal).
It’s been pointed out that this makes it even more clear that Hannah Arendt’s famous line about “the banality of evil” – based on Eichmann and his trial – is garbage:
When you watch Mozer’s film and hear Eichmann’s actual words from the old recordings, his persona is completely different from the figure of the dull bureaucrat he tried to present to the world at the trial. It is difficult not to be shocked by his haughtiness when admitting his crimes and boasting of them, and not to be appalled by the sheer indifference he displays, in view of the fact that he was directly responsible for the deaths of millions, in complete contradiction to what he said during the trial.
In the interviews with Sassen, Eichmann admits that the Holocaust was carefully planned, and clarifies that he knew that many of the Jews that were sent at his directive to the camps were destined for extermination. He declares that he has no remorse about anything.
Arendt and others somehow were fooled by a combination of Eichmann’s lawyers’ defense of him at the trial, and his own demeanor on the stand. I’ve long been somewhat puzzled by all the attention paid to her views, but it’s always seemed to me that it has to do with the catchy phrase “banality of evil” rather than anything especially compelling about her arguments. I have thought for quite some time that what fooled her was “the banal-appearing facade that evil can sometimes wear.” That fooled her into thinking the facade was real, and that it was deeper than a facade.
As for my own views about evil, I’ve written two posts that are especially relevant, and I suggest you read them. The first is called “Understanding evil,” and it was first posted in 2007 and then again in 2019. The other is called “The ladder of evil,” and it was first posted in 2014 and then again in 2021. For a good discussion of Arendt and Eichmann and that “banality” quote, I recommend this essay by Thomas White, written in 2018.
Buh-bye Chesa, and don’t let the door hit you on the way out. George Soros could buy your way in, but he couldn’t keep you there – not even in bluer-than-blue San Francisco.
It’ll be Dahle against Newsom for the governorship, though. I’m going to go waaaayyy out on a limb and predict a Newsom victory in November.
We hadn’t heard of his existence before, but now it emerges that there was a third teacher in one of the two rooms under siege at Robb Elementary, Arnulfo Reyes, and he survived although seriously wounded and still in the hospital. He told his story to ABC and it was featured today.
This man has been deeply deeply traumatized both physically and emotionally. The eleven children under his care were all killed and he alone survived to tell the tale. That’s already a heavy burden of survivor guilt for a man who really had no chance against a gunman. According to the newscasters at ABC, the interview was much longer than what they aired, but this is the segment they showed:
I’d be exceedingly curious to see the rest of the interview with Reyes, because as it’s edited it doesn’t answer a single question I would have wanted to ask this man. My own questions would have focused on what he actually perceived rather than his speculations about what the cops were doing outside the door, although he is understandably blaming them for delay without seeming to know anything more than we do about the details of why that happene. The aim of the ABC team is very very clear, and they have edited this suffering man’s interview to serve them well, and have asked leading question to elicit exactly what they want. For example, see minute 4:02 (interviewer: “Did you feel abandoned in that moment by police, by the people who were supposed to protect you?”).
That video piece is over nine minutes long, but a great deal of it isn’t the interview at all but is instead the rehashing of the “the police waited over an hour doing nothing” narrative, with no new facts at all. Reyes – and the interview we do see is heartbreaking because what this man went through was a nightmare – makes an impassioned plea at the end of his segment on the clip for more gun control, saying that no training would have helped. He doesn’t consider the possibility of firearms training for teachers, of course, but it seems to me that if he had had the opportunity for a firearm then he and his young students mightn’t have been such sitting ducks.
Although perhaps they still would have been, because no system is perfect. The gunman at Robb Elementary had the element of surprise – as Reyes tells the story, they had heard shots and they got down under a table and pretended “to be asleep,” but the gunman came into their room (111) through an adjoining door to 112 (as we already knew) and suddenly he was there. We don’t hear Reyes addressing the issue of whether he had locked his own door – I’m going to assume he did but it’s an odd omission in the interview – or whether he received the “Alert!” text calling for lockdown. Perhaps this was covered in the longer unedited interview, but it certainly isn’t covered in what we see. Nor does Reyes discuss the other teacher in the room – what she might have done, how she was killed. From his interview we still don’t know whether either of the other two teachers were in his room, or both in the other room, or one in each room.
The segment spends a lot of time blaming police, and Reyes does as well. The commenters at YouTube chime right in, too. Reyes’ feelings against the police are understandable, but his knowledge of what they in fact were doing out there during the wait may not be any better than ours. Just to take one example, he says at one point that they “went away,” but perhaps they just got quiet; how would he know they went away if he couldn’t see them? He also calls them “cowards” (ah, how the MSM must love that!) and addresses the officers this way: “You have a bulletproof vest. I had nothing.”
But did they have bulletproof vests? It certainly stands to reason they did – but did they? We know that the Border Patrol officers who finally entered had ballistic shields with which to protect themselves, and one was almost shot in the head nevertheless. We also know part of the wait had to do with getting the key from the janitor (and I’d like a ton more information about why that took so long). But the only thing I can find about bulletproof vests that day is this:
The [DOJ review of the Robb Elementary shooting] will also likely examine how well officers were prepared with gear like weapons and body armor. The shooter wore a tactical vest and was armed with an AR-15-style rifle, a powerful weapon capable of piercing basic bulletproof vests.
In previous shootings reviewed by the Justice Department, non-specialized law enforcement units did not have the kind of body armor needed to fully protect themselves.
It seems we don’t know what they had regarding such vests. Plus, not every bulky vest worn by law enforcement is a so-called “bulletproof vest.” And what does a bulletproof vest do against an AR15? I’ve already quoted information that it does not protect, and here’s more about that:
Body armor is meant to absorb impact of the projectile. Depending on the vest’s rating it may have stronger absorption than other vests. This does not make it bulletproof. Most manufacturers avoid the term when naming vests, even when the vest is up to the highest standard…
Keep in mind that the slower the bullet is, the better off the wearer is going to be. Bullets that have a hard tip or fired at a high velocity will get through the fibers and right through the bullet proof vest…
The highest possible level of ballistic protection possible for soft body armour is Level IIIA. Higher levels of protection from rifle ammo is only possible with aid of additional ballistic plates.
I’m not blaming Reyes at all for what he said. As far as I’m concerned, he can say whatever he wants, and I have empathy and sympathy for his reactions to the horror he endured. My ire is for the news people who guide him, edit him, and shape his interview towards their own goals: to blame the police prematurely and to further the cause of gun control. They are happy to exploit someone’s enormous mental and physical anguish in that endeavor.
They are the ones who could have put out a simple sentence saying whether the police had “bulletproof vests” on and if so what kind, or whether we actually know (at 7:29 newscaster Robin Roberts repeats that the officers had bulletproof vests; I’d love to know whether she actually knows that or not). The news people are also the ones who could and should explain about such vests and what happens when they face an AR15. I’m no firearms expert, but it took me about 30 seconds to find the information I wanted on that. I bet they didn’t even try, because they’re not interested in telling a more complete or more objective story.
[NOTE: Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick has called for “state leaders to move around $50 million in the state budget to buy bulletproof shields for school police officers.” That seems to be in line with previous reports that the police officers in Uvalde had to wait for Border Patrol to arrive in order to have access to protective ballistic shields.]
Although it may end up with the same-old same-old.
First we have the governorship. The loathsome Newsom is the current officeholder, and he survived a recall election recently quite handily. Newsom would dearly love Republican Brian Dahle to win the primary among his opponents, because Newsom is aware that no Republican stands a realistic chance of winning against him in November.
However, one of the candidates is the considerably more unique Michael Shellengerger, who is non-aligned in regard to party but who used to be a Democrat. Prior to his California run in 2022, I knew of Shellenberger from this book that he wrote:
In June 2020, Shellenberger published Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All, in which the author argues that climate change is not the existential threat it is portrayed to be in popular media and activism. Rather, he posits that technological innovation and capital accumulation, if allowed to continue and grow, will remedy environmental issues. According to Shellenberger, the book “explores how and why so many of us came to see important but manageable environmental problems as the end of the world, and why the people who are the most apocalyptic about environmental problems tend to oppose the best and most obvious solutions to solving them.”
Shellenberger was originally a Democrat but is now running with no party designation, and if you go here you’ll see some of the charts he’s emphasizing in his sharp critique of Newsom’s policies in California.
To give one example of his approach, here’s what Shellenberger had to say about San Francisco mayor London Breed’s proposal to favor the trans homeless over other homeless when getting benefits:
It’s not only totally unethical to discriminate against who gets shelter or medical treatment since the vast majority of homeless people on the streets are either addicted to hard drugs or suffering mental illness, it may be illegal…
The underlying problem is that California is completely without leadership at every level of government…Gov. Gavin Newsom refuses to shut down the homeless encampments, which are open drug scenes.
Sounds right to me, and not typical of the usual Democrat position.
“George Soros is the biggest donor of these radical left district attorneys and of Gavin Newsom. Their agenda is just to shut down the prisons, let the prisoners out without rehabilitating them first,” Shellenberger told “America Reports.”
“That’s why you see a crisis of chaos, the open-air drug markets, the fentanyl deaths. The people of California, we are very liberal people, but we do have our limits…we want to see law and order in the cities…the state.”
Interesting combination message: we’re liberals, but we have our limits.
And then there’s San Francisco DA Chesa Boudin, who is facing a recall. Here’s my very first post on Chesa, whom I called “the ultimate red diaper baby” when he was first elected as DA in 2019. It was a simple matter to predict that his tenure would be a disaster, and it certainly has been.
The real question is whether the vote today will be enough to get rid of him. If the polls are any indication he will be gone, but we all know that election results can surprise. I also have spoken over the last year to several people I know who live in San Francisco or its environs, and they are not at all happy with the crime increase. When I brought up Boudin, however, although they didn’t defend him they didn’t excoriate him either. So I don’t know.
[NOTE: I’d forgotten this article (I found the link in that Boudin post of mine from 2019), about the life and fate of a man who was wounded in Chesa’s parents’ crime. It’s quite a story.]
