The Tulsa hospital shooting

The New Neo Posted on by

A chilling mass murder has played out in Tulsa:

Tulsa police said a gunman charged into the second floor of the Natalie Building at St. Francis Hospital at 4:52 p.m. Wednesday, opening fire and killing four victims. Police also said the suspect died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

The Tulsa Police Department identified the victims as Dr. Preston Phillips, Dr. Stephanie Husen, Amanda Glenn and William Love. They also identified the suspect as Michael Louis.

Tulsa police Chief Wendell Franklin said during a news conference Thursday that Louis underwent back surgery performed by Phillips on May 19 and complained of pain after being released from the hospital. Louis contacted Phillips’ office several times over the coming weeks and met with Phillips for additional help…

Police said officers found a letter on Louis making it clear that he wanted to kill Phillips and anyone who got in his way. He blamed Phillips for causing the pain following the back surgery.

The MSM is playing up the angle that the gun had just been purchased, but other aspects of the story don’t really meet their needs. Both gunman and the orthopedic surgeon who was his main target are black. It is an unusual situation in which the target was a doctor and the complaint was failure to relieve pain.

Obviously, there was more going on with the perp; there are plenty of pain patients and they almost never kill their doctors. I would like to know more about what actually happened in terms of pain relief, however: what medication the killer had been given and how much, was it usually adequate for pain relief, and what his prior history was. Did he have a drug problem? Was he having an idiosyncratic mental/emotional reaction to the drug that might have increased his aggressiveness?

So far I’ve been unable to find anything about those issues, but as a long-time chronic pain patient I am very very curious. Thankfully my pain has been quite minor in the last twenty years or so, but for about fifteen years before that (and prior to a surgery that really helped me) it was fairly severe and sometimes extremely severe. Along the way I met many doctors and many many chronic pain patients, both online and in person. Some of them were very angry, although certainly none of them were physically violent about it. Some of them seemed under-medicated, probably by doctors who were afraid of addiction, and some of them seemed over-medicated (were some faking? Perhaps). The entire issue of pain medication is a confusing quagmire.

None of this is meant to excuse this murderer in any way. But these are issues that especially interest me, and I would welcome some more information about that aspect of the case. However, because this incident can’t be used quite as effectively as some for propaganda, I predict it will fall off the radar screen quickly.

Some have tried to use it that way, however. For example, I’m surprised this tweet is still up there:

RIP to the victims.

The left’s war against conservative DAs investigating election fraud, and against lawyers who would defend conservatives

The New Neo Posted on by

Please read the whole thing. Here’s an excerpt:

The left has developed a powerfully coordinated legal election effort under the leadership of left-wing lawyer Marc Elias. In recent years, he has successfully brought together a coalition of left-wing nonprofit groups to work in conjunction with each other on elections. It’s a brilliant plan considering the left now dominates much of the legal system to give him victories; in urban areas they have more judgeships, they dominate state bars which are responsible for attorney discipline, and they run the biggest, most powerful law firms.

A Gramscian March through the legal institutions.

More:

Now they’re coming after elected attorneys too. Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich, who has been out on the forefront investigating election fraud, had 12 bar complaints filed against him and his staff by radical activist Democratic Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs over election issues. He beat them, but she will just figure out reasons to file more; continue to throw mud until something sticks. The Arizona State Bar is one of the most vicious bars in the country. I work as a reporter, and can rarely get comments for my articles from conservative attorneys in the state due to their fear of retaliation.

The State Bar of Texas is going after Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, suing him for investigating election fraud in the 2020 election. Paxton asked the U.S. Supreme Court to enjoin Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan and Wisconsin for breaking election laws by implementing voting changes during the COVID-19 pandemic without the approval of state legislators. SCOTUS rejected his request 7-2 for lack of standing, a sign that it wasn’t completely without merit. So now the bar is alleging he violated a catch-all, vague rule of professional misconduct prohibiting “dishonesty, fraud, deceit, or misrepresentation.”

The left is ruthless, committed, and determined. And even in relatively conservative states, apparently the bar associations are not conservative at all. That’s why some attacks on conservative lawyers are accomplished through the bar.

As the author of that article, Rachel Alexander, writes:

It’s easy to get left-wing run state bars to disbar conservative attorneys, because it’s not a jury of Americans that decides; it’s either a left-leaning bar judge or panel stacked with left-wing attorneys, plus occasionally a token member or two from the public.

The writer goes on to describe how a Virginia lawyer who represented some January 6th protesters was disbarred that way. Other lawyers – these are not AGs, mind you, but lawyers – who represent conservatives, as well as Trump’s lawyers, have been targeted too.

It used to be that both sides respected the legal system and the need for every defendant to have a lawyer, even a defendant on the opposite political side. The left stopped subscribing to that principle quite some time ago. To them – based in part on being taught Marxist-based approaches such as Critical Legal Studies and its philosophical descendants – law is a power struggle, pure and simple. And in a power struggle the left will employ every weapon that it can find.

On opening doors and closing doors at Robb Elementary

The New Neo Posted on by

“Old Texan” asks a question:

Were there not firemen also on the scene [at Robb Elementary], lots of emergency back up perhaps with the ‘jaws of life’ which are are a hydraulic-extrication rescue tool used in a number of difficult emergency situations, particularly car crashes. I would think they could crush that door and frame open in seconds.

“Chases Eagles” answers that the proper equipment for the task might be a K-tool and Halligan bar, but it takes about 6 seconds even for a trained team, long enough for them to be shot.

I found this article stating that all 38 firefighters in Uvalde came to Robb Elementary on getting news of the shooter. It’s an all-volunteer group, and so they all have day jobs. It doesn’t say when they arrived – obviously they didn’t all arrive at once if they were coming from a host of other places. They may have arrived rather late in the game. It also doesn’t say what equipment they had.

One problem I’ve seen discussed elsewhere is that firefighters break down doors when there is a fire, but they are not trained to do so in a situation in which they are taking hostile gunfire from behind that door. I’m not sure how that would be done.

Some people say they should have risked their lives, and even risked almost certain death. But doesn’t it take a while to enter a door that way – maybe even more than 6 seconds – and wouldn’t they have to stand in front of the door or very near it for that time? And that’s of course assuming they had access to those tools and had trained people available at the time, and that the firefighters were aware the problem was the door. If firefighters trying to do that are killed, what good does that do anyone? Why should a bunch of firefighters die as well, all to no avail because it wouldn’t mean that they could get into the room any faster?

Is the goal to be seen to do something, even if it’s not productive or if it’s even counterproductive and suicidal?

Here’s a video on how to pull hinges from a metal door. It takes quite a while, as you can see, and it makes a lot of noise that certainly could be heard by the perp at Uvalde. It seems it would have been suicide for the firefighters to have tried this. And it also depends on the hinges being on the outside. If you want to see how it’s done with inside hinges, here’s another video. It takes a long time and a lot of effort as well, and the firefighters have to stand right in front of the door while they do it, making a lot of noise. To me – and I freely admit I’m the opposite of an expert on this – that again makes it seem like a suicide mission that would not produce the desired ends of the removal of the door.

Perhaps if all 38 firefighters had tried to do it, each pair after the other being killed and then a new pair taking their place, it could have been accomplished? Or maybe not? Is that what is demanded by some people – even though the shooting of the children had long ago stopped (and, however, delays meant it was possible or even likely that children were dying who might otherwise be saved)? And that assumes that those in charge knew the firefighters were there and that they had access to the proper tools. Firefighters regularly risk their lives, but do we require them to knowingly go on a suicide mission that probably has little chance of success?

And by the way, in case you’re wondering – it was reported that the shooter was able to shoot cops through the door and had already grazed the first responders that way, and this explains that metal doors do not stop bullets.

On another topic related to doors at Robb Elementary, the teacher who had propped the outer door – and then closed it again although somehow it didn’t lock – is now reported to have tried to make sure the door was locked behind her:

[Her lawyer Flanary said] “She kicked the rock away when she went back in. She remembers pulling the door closed while telling 911 that he was shooting. She thought the door would lock because that door is always supposed to be locked.”

Flanary added that the teacher even remembers pulling and holding onto the door — which has a horizontal push bar — while on the phone with 911. At one point as she headed back to her classroom, the 911 call dropped and she texted family that the gunman was inside the building and then that she could hear police.

And about another door at the school – I’ve already mentioned this in a previous post, but if you missed it and are wondering how the gunman got into the classrooms where he killed the teachers and students, one of the surviving students from that class has said that the teacher got an order to lockdown (perhaps in an email, but I think it may have been a text) and went to the classroom door to lock it and at that exact moment the gunman appeared and entered the room, shooting and killing the teacher and then the children.

Yellen admits she was mistaken about inflation

The New Neo Posted on by

On the one hand, at least Yellen admitted she got it wrong.

On the other hand, I don’t think that serious inflation was actually a difficult call. I’ve often said that economics is very far from my field of expertise, but even I was aware that inflation was very likely, and long ago it appeared it was no transitory fluke. So her error was actually pretty egregious.

And of course they are making all sorts of excuses:

A Treasury Department spokesperson told FOX News, “The Secretary was pointing out that there have been shocks to the economy that have exacerbated inflationary pressures which couldn’t have been foreseen 18 months ago, including Russia’s decision to invade Ukraine, multiple successive variants of COVID, and lockdowns in China. As she also noted, there has been historic growth and record job creation and our goal is now to transition to steady and stable growth as inflation is brought down.”

The article says that a lot of people on Twitter are calling for Yellen’s resignation. As far as I’m concerned, she can stay put, because any replacement would almost certainly be far worse than she has been.

Johnny Depp wins

The New Neo Posted on by

I haven’t followed the case in any detail, although a couple of people have told me about it and I’ve read a few articles. But for anyone who’s interested, the verdict was for Depp:

…[The jury returned] a verdict in favor of Depp on all counts. The jury awarded Depp a total of $15 million. Heard was found to have made defamatory statements in the Washington Post on all three counts alleged. The jury also found one statement in Heard’s counterclaim defamatory against Heard and awarded her $2 million. This is not a win for Heard. The jury did not believe any of her claims of abuse. On the single count where they sided with Heard, it appears that the jury did not believe that Heard conspired with friends to create a disturbance on the night police were called to a domestic dispute at her penthouse. The six-week-long trial that captured the nation is finally over. Johnny Depp sued Heard for $50 million after claiming that she lied about him for six years and used her fake story of violence and has been vindicated.

It turns out the FBI has been very cozy with Perkins Coie

The New Neo Posted on by

More revelations that I predict much of America will ignore or applaud:

In the wake of the risible Sussman verdict, it has emerged that for the last ten years, the FBI has maintained a “secure work environment” within the offices of Perkins Coie, the Democratic Party’s law firm. Marc Elias, the DNC’s top lawyer, was until recently a partner in Perkins Coie. It was Perkins Coie that laundered the money the DNC and the Hillary Clinton campaign paid Fusion GPS for what became the fraudulent Steele “dossier.”

And now we learn that not just in 2016, but four years earlier, dating to the middle of the Obama administration, the FBI had some kind of cozy relationship with the Perkins firm. I have never heard of the FBI maintaining a “secure work environment” inside a private law firm, let alone a private law firm that is best known for representing the Democratic Party. We need to know a great deal more about what was going on here. How was the Bureau collaborating with the Perkins firm? Was the Perkins firm a cut-out that concealed what actually was going on, i.e., collaboration between the FBI and the Democratic National Committee or other Democratic entities? The Bureau needs to come clean.

Excuse me while I guffaw at the idea of the FBI “coming clean.”

In his post that I’ve just quoted, Hinderaker references this piece by Andrew C. McCarthy, which I had read yesterday. Say what you will about McCarthy’s stance on Donald Trump and January 6th (he was outraged by what he considers Trump’s role in it) and also his naivete about government agencies and objectivity at the beginning of the Russiagate investigation, he’s certainly learned his lesson about the FBI. This is from his latest:

Durham has banked his investigation on the premise that the FBI was a victim — an innocent dupe manipulated by the wily Clinton campaign. On Tuesday, this misplaced faith led to the acquittal of Clinton lawyer Michael Sussmann…

As I contended in “Ball of Collusion: The Plot to Rig an Election and Destroy a Presidency,” the outrage of the Trump-Russia “collusion” farce is that the law enforcement and intelligence apparatus of the United States government was put in the service of partisan politics — first to attempt to get Hillary Clinton elected president and, when that failed, to hamstring the Trump administration’s capacity to govern.

That is, what makes Russiagate a uniquely dangerous chapter in modern American history is the willful interference by powerful federal agencies in electoral politics. The real collusion was between the Clinton campaign and the Obama-era executive branch — particularly (but by no means exclusively) the FBI…

The false-statement case against Sussmann is one of three indictments Durham has brought in more than three years of conducting his probe. In each one, the defendant is accused of duping the FBI, not collaborating with the FBI, in an effort to portray Trump as a Kremlin asset…

In Sussmann’s trial, the proof showed that the cover story did not fool the FBI; it enabled the FBI, which was second only to the Clinton campaign in its commitment to pursuing the Trump-Russia “collusion” tale.

Powerful federal agencies interfered in a presidential election, on behalf of one candidate against the other. The public needs accountability for that. It won’t get accountability if Durham continues to portray the FBI as a witless dupe, rather than a willing collaborator.

I think McCarthy makes an important point there about the Sussman trial and the FBI itself in regard to Russiagate. Unfortunately, I think McCarthy is still being naive if he believes the public would get accountability if Durham made it clear that the FBI was a “willing collaborator.”

What would give the FBI “accountability”? At this point I don’t know. But at least public approval of the agency appears to be down. This poll was taken in January of 2022:

A new national telephone and online survey by Rasmussen Reports finds that 46% of Likely U.S. voters have a favorable impression of the FBI, including 15% who have a Very Favorable view of the agency. That’s down from May 2020, when 60% had a favorable impression of the FBI. Forty-seven percent (47%) now view the FBI unfavorably, including 26% who have a Very Unfavorable impression.

That’s a pretty substantial change. But it’s nowhere near enough.

As far as the legal process goes, as long as these cases are brought in DC I don’t see accountability happening. Government agencies are so fraught with bias and corruption that it’s hard to see that anything but some fundamental and perhaps even cataclysmic change could cause accountability to occur, and prevent future government agency offenses of the same nature.

What one Border Patrol agent says about the efforts of officers at Robb Elementary

The New Neo Posted on by

This is from a border patrol agent who rushed to the Uvalde school after getting a frantic text from his wife, a fourth-grade teacher at Robb Elementary. The siege was ongoing at the time [emphasis mine]:

Albarado said he raced to the school…in an effort to save his wife and his daughter, a second grader, and others in his community.

When asked about the scene outside the school during the shooting, which has come under intense scrutiny, Albarado said, “Chaos. Chaos. Everyone was trying to get to the school, people were trying to get everything situated, I was just trying to get toward my wife’s room and my daughter’s room.”

Albarado said that local law enforcement and other members of the Uvalde community recognized him and let him through to help traumatized children climb out of broken windows to escape the school.

“The police were breaking out the windows from the outside and the kids were jumping out through the window,” Albarado said. “As I was coming in I could just see kids coming out the windows and kids coming my way, so I was just helping all the kids out.”…

Albarado disagreed with the idea that local police were not working hard enough to save the children inside.

“To me, I believe everyone there was doing the best that they could given the circumstances,” he said.

I’d like to hear from more officers who were there. Just to take one example, we’ve heard assertions that Border Patrol officers had equipment to breach the door and were told to hold back. I remember reading it myself. And yet just now, in a fairly lengthy search, I can’t find the source. Was it Border Patrol agents themselves? Someone else? I’d like to know, if anyone can locate it. There are so many inaccurate reports that it’s important to sort them out.

One thing I know is that, if the “cowardly inaction” story about Ivalde police turns out to have been untrue, or at least basically untrue, most people will probably continue to believe that it is true. I’ve seen this happen many times before, and it’s certainly not confined to criticisms of the police.

Commenters on this blog have also accused me of trying to exonerate the police of Uvalde. I am not trying to exonerate anyone. I always try to find the truth, and I’ve found over and over again that the truth is often not to be found for quite a while, especially in violent and chaotic situations. Authorities make errors (and/or lie), pundits make errors (and/or lie), and the MSM certainly makes errors (and/or lies).

[NOTE: Here’s another fact that may or may not be true:

Speaking to the New York Post, the source — who wished to remain unnamed — said that [Ramos’] grandmother, 66-year-old Cecilia “Sally” Martinez Gonzales, had been a teacher’s aide at [Robb Elementary], a fact confirmed by public records of employees in the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District. Though the type and duration of her employment is unclear, she was on the school’s payroll at the time of the incident.

That could certainly be part of the reason this particular school was chosen: it was familiar to the shooter and therefore convenient, and it was also a way to get back at the grandmother (whom he shot in the face) in an even more personally vindictive way.]

Beware of imagining you know more than you do about the Uvalde school shooting

The New Neo Posted on by

I was going to write a huge post on this issue today, but I got busy with other things and decided to postpone it till tomorrow.

But here’s a piece of information (hat tip: commenter “Kate”) that was revealed today that demonstrates one point I was going to make in that post: that the “fog of war” is still heavily operating. Even facts which we think we know for sure about the incident turn out to have been wrong. And there probably will be more revisions and then more revisions before a full report comes out.

Some people will consider these changes CYA lying. And perhaps there is some of that – if so, it wouldn’t be unheard of. But my guess is that a lot of it is simply that piecing together the truth, from hundreds and perhaps even thousands of interviews and videos and recordings, takes time and there are many reversals along the way as more information gets uncovered.

Case in point: the teacher who left the school door propped open. That story, which was reported just about everywhere quite early and didn’t waver (till now), turns out to be only half true, according to recently reviewed video:

Investigators initially said the teacher had propped the door open before Salvador Ramos, 18, entered the school in Uvalde, Texas, on May 24. Investigators have now determined that the teacher, who has not been identified, propped the door open with a rock, but then removed the rock and closed the door when she realized there was a shooter on campus, said Travis Considine, chief communications officer for the Texas Department of Public Safety. But, Considine said, the door did not lock.

Investigators confirmed the detail through additional video footage reviewed since the Friday news conference when it was first stated the door had been left propped open. Authorities did not state at that time what had been used to prop open the door.

Now the question is: why didn’t that door lock? It’s apparently supposed to lock automatically. It’s probably just one of those awful situations in which maintenance wasn’t completely on the ball, or someone had unlocked it at some time in the past, and then in a crisis the error is revealed.

Horrible. But at least the teacher needn’t feel quite the level of guilt that I was previously imagining she (I’d heard it was a she, but who knows at this point?) would be feeling. However, she’s probably feeling very guilty about not having double-checked to see whether the door actually locked behind her. My guess is that she was probably shaking with fear and in a mental state of panic, however, eager to get inside as fast as possible, and that she just made what she thought was a valid assumption about that door lock.

The Etute trial

The New Neo Posted on by

Ever hear of it? I hadn’t heard of this case until today when commenter “j e” wrote a comment about the verdict in the second degree murder case, which was an acquittal.

The facts of the case are both disturbing and of the type that one would think would mean that the case would get very widespread sensationalist coverage in the media. The fact that – at least as far as I know – it’s gotten mostly local coverage is interesting. And yet it’s got racial angles and sexual angles, and the story slightly resembles the plot of the movie “The Crying Game” gone even more horribly, horrifically wrong.

Here’s a summary

A jury found former Virginia Tech football player Isimemen “Isi” Etute not guilty of second-degree murder Friday in the death of Blacksburg resident Jerry Paul Smith.

The verdict was rendered after a three-day trial in Montgomery County Circuit Court that occurred almost a year after the beating death of Smith, 40, who posed as a woman named “Angie Renee” and matched with Etute on Tinder. Etute’s attorneys argued self-defense after an altercation between the two in Smith’s apartment when he was revealed to be a man…

Etute and Smith had an initial sexual encounter in April 2021 in Smith’s downtown Blacksburg apartment during which he, presenting as Angie, performed oral sex on Etute, who was a freshman linebacker at the time. After discovering upon a second meeting with Angie on May 31 last year that it was not a woman but Smith, a man, Etute said he struck Smith several times and kicked him as he left Smith’s apartment.

Upon questioning from Jensen, forensic pathology specialist Dr. Amy Tharp described a brutal beating that left nearly every bone in Smith’s face broken, his brain swollen and teeth knocked out. Jensen noted the size difference between Etute, who is 6 feet 2 ½ and over 200 pounds, and the 153-pound Smith.

“Only two people know what happened in that room and one of them is dead,” Jensen said during his closing argument.

Please read this article as well. Excerpt:

[Etute’s defense lawyer] Turk also said Smith was “controlling the entire environment and the entire episode.” He added that Smith had “demanded that it be dark” and had hidden a knife under his mattress “in case there was something awry.”…

Turk also argued that [Etute didn’t initially mention to police that he thought Smith was reaching for a knife or that he had fear of Smith because] police didn’t ask Etute essential questions about Smith’s knife or Etute’s fear while in the apartment, two questions whose answers could have shown whether Etute was afraid for his life and acting in self-defense.

In taking the stand earlier in the week, Etute had testified that he felt “violated” when he discovered that the Tinder match he believed to be a woman was actually a man.

In his testimony Thursday, Etute had testified that Smith reached for what Etute thought was a gun. Smith did not own a gun, but police reported finding a knife between the man’s mattress and box spring.

Etute said he punched Smith five times and kicked him to gain time to escape the apartment.

Jensen had maintained that Etute had not acted in self-defense. He argued that after Etute punched Smith and Smith fell to the floor, there was “no way” Smith could have reached a weapon under his mattress.

“He could never reach a gun from there,” Jensen said.

Jensen recalled the testimony of medical examiner Dr. Amy Tharp, who Jensen said testified Smith had been the victim of a “brutal beating.”

Jensen said that while Etute was wearing flip-flops at the time of the encounter, those shoes were attached to a “big person” and a “strong person.” He compared Etute, an “elite college athlete,” to Smith, who weighed 153 pounds (just under 70 kilograms).

“That’s a big disparity,” Jensen said.

It seems odd to me that Etute wouldn’t have initially mentioned to police that he feared for his life if in fact that was the case. I don’t know enough of the details of the evidence to what I would have voted had I been on the jury, but I do wonder whether the verdict would have been the same had the races been reversed – that is, if a huge, young, strong, athletic white man had beaten to death a small somewhat older transgender black man posing as a woman.

I wonder, but I think I know that answer: the verdict would have been “guilty” or the jury would have been hung, and the case would have gotten a great deal more national publicity than it did.