This was a heavy-handed message. Roger Stone was no Tony Montana waiting inside his house with an M-203 and a pile of coke in front of him, they could have sent notification to his lawyer to present himself at the local FBI building 15 miles away as the crow flies. And a full tactical team with CNN recording video? This is more ATF back in the day which eventually led with the colossal screw up at Waco.

This is the FBI announcing sides and not in favor of the President. And it is also the local agency trying to look butch after they dropped the ball with Nikki Cruz and the Parkland massacre.

20 years ago we thought we were about to see the disappearance of the ATF. Now we may be seeing two of them.

That is scary.

UPDATE: The Super Evil Villain Robert Stone who needed a Tactical team to effect his arrest at the wee hours of the morning like he was some confirmed terrorist about to bomb orphanages…. is already out on bail.

Not even 12 hours.

Tell me it was not a show of force for sheer intimidation.

Watch this clip Tweeted out by New York City mayor, Bill de Blasio.

There’s enough money in this country to pay workers what they deserve, guarantee health care for all and stop the climate crisis.

And I know where it is. pic.twitter.com/7WLtI8bWp0

— Mayor Eric Adams (@NYCMayor) January 25, 2019

There is plenty of money to cure all of society’s ill.  It’s just in the hands of the wrong people.  If I take their money I can fix the world with it. – Vladimir Lenin Joseph Stalin Mao Zedong Ho Chi Minh Fidel Castro Hugo Chavez Bill de Blasio

What kind of person would look at the record of history and think that will work?

Nate.  Nate does.  (Screen grab for posterity, link to read the whole insane thread.)

Remember what I said about dekulakization?

To the farmer with six cows, the farmer with a dozen cows was a kulak.  To the farmer with one cow, the farmer with six cows was a kulak.

There will always be someone poorer than you who thinks that it’s not fair that you have more and wants to take what you have.

Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez promised us that she will only take 70% over $10 million.

I guess Nate here makes so little that $60,000 might as well be $10 million, and he wants to take it.

When everyone on the right said that AOC’s tax plan would never work and the middle class would end up getting hit by it,  here comes Nate to prove them right.

By Nate’s standards I’m a kulak, and I guess he is going to support de Blasio and AOC taking most of my money too.

I wonder which Green New Deal project I’m going to be worked to death building when Nate goes to the polls.

I saw this at the New York Post and it blew my mind.

New York law is an open invitation to home invaders

Really, how so, I bet this is going to be good.

There is a reason homeowners can rarely afford to dispense mercy on an overnight invader: Criminal intruders tend to be the dangerous type.

That is a hell of a start.  First sentence and the New York Post already acknowledges that the people who break into occupied homes at night are dangerous.

I guess the New York Post didn’t get the memo from NBC New York that home invaders are just “unwanted house visitors.”

What homeowners don’t expect are law enforcers and prosecutors going after them for ­defending themselves and their loved ones.

Wait what?  Is the New York Post actually starting down the path of contemplating lawful self defense?

I want to see where this goes.

Queens resident Joel Christopher Paul faced a home-intruder threat in the early hours of July 30, 2017. The 27-year-old was home in Springfield Gardens with his mother, brother and sister when someone ­attempted to break in. The intruder was Shamel Shauvo, 26, who had traveled north from Maryland after being named a suspect in a shooting there 10 days earlier.

So a dangerous guy breaks into the family home.

Expecting a pizza delivery, Paul’s brother, Michael, 16, went to the door and discovered Shauvo trying to break in. Michael forced Shauvo to the surrounding area, and his mother called for help. Joel, adrenaline likely surging through his veins, answered the call — and brought a bat and knife to the confrontation.

It is New York City so I’m kind of surprised he’s allowed to possess both a knife and a bat.

By the time it was all over, Shauvo ­received the ultimate lesson in picking the wrong house.

That’s one way to put it.

He died at Jamaica Hospital after being clubbed and stabbed.

Ouch.

The confrontation had all the indications of a break-in gone wrong for the wanted man, and as one high-ranking police source told The Post, the response was justifiable.

The NYPD is not allowed to have that opinion, which is probably why the person here is being quoted as “one high-ranking police source” and not by name.

Both brothers avoided arrest and remained home after the incident. But months later, Queens DA Richard Brown submitted the case to a grand jury, bringing ruin upon Joel, who has been charged with manslaughter.

New York City DA’s are pieces of shit.  Flat out.  I think that is a qualification for the job.

Remember that Manhattan DA is hated by just about every civil rights org out there because he loved to prosecute working class trades people (especially workmen of color) for gravity knife violations for carrying the pocket knives they use for work, including those folding box cutters that have become so popular.

Vance was also the DA that refused to investigate accusations of sexual assault against Harvey Weinstein.

This is law enforcement in New York City.  Are you a construction worker who pays his taxes?  You get fined and a criminal record for carrying the tools of your trade.

Are you a heroin junkie, shitting in a public playground, wagging your penis at kids in the park?  You are just part of the rich cultural diversity of the Big Apple.

So it doesn’t surprise me that the Queens DA would prosecute home owners defending themselves against a break in by a wanted criminal with a violent record.

A ham sandwich, as the saying goes, can be indicted in grand-jury proceedings completely overseen by prosecutors. But prosecutors shouldn’t have targeted Joel. The stress, ­expense and uncertainty of facing a first-degree manslaughter charge are devastating and can lead to an unjustified plea that could result in Joel going to prison.

Part of the trouble lies with New York’s “retreat doctrine.” A theory fit for law school classrooms, the doctrine holds Joel had a duty to run and hide if it was safe to do so. It’s an obligation Joel, like the vast majority of New Yorkers, had probably never heard of.

Yet it’s likely that the Queens DA will pursue precisely this avenue at trial, since the indictment states that Joel, “with intent to cause serious physical injury to Shamel Shavuo,” caused his death.

*BOOM* Mind blown.

The New York Post figures out that duty to retreat laws just fuck over honest people and help criminals.

While most jurisdictions would have left Joel alone, the Queens DA seems to want to resurrect the city’s bad old days, when prosecutors developed a reputation of ­interpreting laws in ways that protected criminals more than they protected victims.

That’s because the system isn’t about reducing crime, it’s about enriching the city.

Going after real criminals is hard work and expensive.  Fining and jailing honest people who wanted to obey the law is easy.

High violent crime rates also increase budgets for law enforcement and prosecutors offices.

It’s like the Iron Law of Bureaucracy predicts this to a tee.  The most bureaucratically perfect law enforcement system is one that stops no real crimes and fines law abiding citizens for complaining about it.

There is also an abuse of prosecutorial discretion here.

Prosecutorial discretion is pure evil.  It is never used to avoid prosecuting the honest guy who made a simple, understandable mistake.  That’s the defendant that prosecutors love the most because those guys all but convict themselves just trying to explain why they are innocent.

Prosecutorial discretion is always used to avoid prosecuting the friends and donors of the prosecutor and his political friends.

The DA should have recognized that Joel was forced to make split-second ­decisions involving defending his vulnerable family members. Even if Shauvo was initially repelled, Joel had no time for a thoughtful ­inquiry into what Shauvo would do next unless he saw Shavuo’s backside running down the block.

This is why duty to retreat sucks.  The light bulb in this writers head just went “click.”  This guy gets it.  The New York Post hits the nail on the head.

Brown’s office should also ­review its own files to get a better sense of the devastation wrought by home invaders over the years. Such a search will reveal unsolved murders, sexual assaults and general terror inflicted on mostly working-class victims.

And why should the DA give a shit about working class victims?  They don’t donate to his campaign.

For a lesson in the threat posed by home invaders, the Queens DA might also recall the notorious 2007 Cheshire, Conn., home-invasion that ended with the murder and sexual assaults of a mother and her two daughters, one of them just 11 years old.

Other home invaders in this country have had remarkable runs, like the Golden State Killer, who allegedly committed numerous ­assaults in the 1970s. Closer to home, a woman in her 20s last week came home to her apartment from a Manhattan bar only to wake up to the nightmare of an unknown man, who tied her up and raped her.

California and New York.  You don’t read about that in places like Oklahoma where you can shoot your home invaders with an AR-15 and the cops only show up to take the bodies away.

And what if Joel had acted less assertively and Shauvo had grievously injured Joel’s kin or killed one or more of them?

Like the DA gives a shit about some working class guy getting murdered.  If Joel wants the DA to care about his kin, Joel needs to cut a big fat check to the DA’s reelection campaign.

Prosecution after the fact would have ­offered no relief.  No criminal sentence can put victims back together. Prosecution doesn’t raise the dead nor mend physical and mental ­scars left by crime.

It never does.

At times, the only defense is an unrelenting offense against a criminal you can ­assume has the worst of intentions. Unless there is more to this case than the DA has let on, those who neutralize criminals who threaten the sanctity of our homes shouldn’t face criminal charges.

Welcome to the justification for Castle Doctrine and Stand Your Ground.  It’s not about racism or hunting black men.  It is about the system protecting and giving the benefit of the doubt to the honest man defending himself, his loved ones, and his home, instead of protecting and giving the benefit of the doubt to the criminal attacking him.

Maybe, in this case it helps that Joel Paul is a black man and so this doesn’t have the Zimmerman/Trayvon Martin baggage.

The New York Post is starting to see how duty to retreat and prosecutorial discretion can destroy an honest man’s life.

Castle Doctrine and Stand Your Ground are good protections for all honest people of all races and identities because it puts the interests of the honest over the interests of the criminal.

The New York Post is finally figuring that out.

From The Hill:

BuzzFeed to lay off 15 percent of its workforce

BuzzFeed currently employs just under 1,500 employees, meaning a little more than 200 employees will be leaving.

From The Washington Times:

Huffington Post shutters its opinion and health sections

The Huffington Post cut down its commentary and healthcare teams Thursday.

“As of this morning, HuffPost’s opinion section is no more. I and the rest of the team have been let go,” the former head of the opinion section at Huffington Post, Bryan Maygers, tweeted.

From CNN:

Layoffs underway at HuffPost a day after parent company Verizon announced cuts

Wednesday served as a harbinger of what’s in store for the industry, with HuffPost’s parent company Verizon announcing a 7% cut to staff in its media division, a portfolio that also includes Yahoo and AOL. Within hours of that news breaking, BuzzFeed confirmed that it will lay off 15% of its staff. And journalists at Gannett, the nation’s largest newspaper chain, shared grim stories throughout the day on Wednesday as the company shed dozens of staffers throughout the country.

In all, the media industry lost about 1,000 jobs nationwide this week.

HA HA HA HA HA, fuck ’em.

After the Category 5 Hurricane Katrina-esque shit storm that was Buzzfeed’s totally fabricated Muller investigation story, followed up by the mendacious journalistic malfeasance of the Covington Catholic School imbroglio, if a bunch of Lefty journalists end up destitute on the streets I do not have a spare fuck to give them.

A spokesperson for HuffPost said the site is “investing its talents and resources to areas that have high audience engagement, differentiation and are poised for growth at a time when our mission means more than ever.”

“We are deeply committed to quality journalism that reflects what matters most to our diverse audiences across the globe,” the spokesperson said.

Horseshit.  I didn’t think that “deeply committed to quality journalism” means “destroying the futures of a bunch of high school kids because they are white boys in MAGA hats.

From the new deleted Twitter feed of a former opinion editor of HuffPo:

Like so many talented and lovely journalists, I was laid off today.

If you’re in the market for an opinion editor with a huge and diverse rolodex, or a columnist with 10 years of writing about gender politics (and a literal PhD in romantic comedies) under her belt, talk to me.

— Chloe Angyal (@ChloeAngyal) January 24, 2019

That right there is why HuffPo is losing money and they had to shit-can a bunch of their staff.

Go woke, go broke.

With a PhD in romantic comedies, she is qualified to make latte.  May she spend the rest of her adult life saying “Welcome to Starbucks, what can I get started for you.”  It’s more than she deserves.

I have a friend who expressed the following in Facebook

I have to say, all the slapping around of an old ass (recovering) drunk Indian is starting to feel like beating up the local “special needs” kid. I mean, sure, you can do it, but it doesn’t feel good.

I think there’s a point where going after him as harshly as he deserves starts to make us look like the bullies. What do you think? I’ll stipulate that he’s a liar, a poor excuse for a Marine, and a bully. I’ll also stipulate that he deserves everything he’s got coming. My question is, does our piling on make us look bad?

I understand my friend’s point, specially knowing he is what regular folks a good person. But we are engaged in what somebody called a Cold Civil War and it is my belief that Phillips still needs a good dose of dragging over the coals.  A video can be misconstrued. but the honorable thing would have been to step up and stop the fake narrative in the many interviews he had, yet he chose to support and augment the lie and it was profitable to him.  And lest not forget he did that inciting hate so much, he put high school kids, who had done nothing to him or anybody, in danger of bodily harm.

Does it make us look bad? Unfortunately, breathing the same air as the Chose Ones makes us look bad. We are Gun Owners so we got the image of monsters sometime in the Clinton Administration and then Terrorists after 9/11.

So, I am for the total destruction of the Nathan Phillips persona and have it rebuilt as ” liar, a poor excuse for a Marine, and a bully” and then some more. He deserves punishment and part of it is to serve as an example for future political con artists that actions come with serious consequences and we are playing with their own rules now and the shit is for keeps.

So yes, keep piling on the recon ranger, codename Whirlpool Warrior who sneaked behind enemy lines in Vietnam and stealthily fixed the Vietcong’s refrigerators.

And it seems somebody has figured a reason why Journalism is doing so poorly…not.

A professor of Journalism at Columbia opines that Capitalism is bad for Journalism. This demonstrates very well the absurd mentality that plagues her and her colleagues.

“a complete absence of sensible alternative funding models”

That is simply they need to be subsidized by the Government. Never mind the sad examples of Pravda (USSR) and Granma (Cuba) as papers that had zero input from Capitalism and are still the running joke about news in the communist world (Pravda and Izvestia, meant “the truth” and “the news” respectively, a popular saying was “there’s no truth in Pravda and no news in Izvestia”.) The Miami Herald is often referred by the Cuban Community as the Granma of the North. I also forgot, when you are being “alternatively funded” by the Government, you write what the Government tells you to write and specially not to criticize them.

Back in the late-late 80s or early 90s if memory serves, there was a great uprising within the TV news establishment because the three major networks were about to cut the time of the daily News shows citing cost. The big names Talking Heads came out decrying the measure and it was let out that the News section had not turned out profit in over a decade. I think it was Dan Rather (don’t quote me) who bitched about being all other departments had the responsibility to carry the news because it was the most important part of the Network and it would not exist without it. So the lesson was that thanks to Capitalism, the News department had been up and running all that time. Not “alternative funding” but the labor of others in the same corporation were subsidizing their arrogant asses.

I love this load of crap:

“a widespread misunderstanding that profit does not equal value”

She does not understand life, does she. Honey, you have it backwards: You are offering a product without value and thus generates no profit. Offer a good newspaper or News TV show, and people will flock or would in other times as your formats are dying. I don’t even watch local news anymore because they don’t even care for local stuff but the local weather, traffic and a couple of items that must have blood on them (Some exceptional shooting, some accident, a fire) or some sexual assault. After that it is a local repetition of the Big Network’s news with heavy political slants. I can get all the crap that takes them 30 minutes to broadcast by a simple look at their home page lasting under 30 seconds.

And I won’t bother with newspapers. How many times have we seen the same lies printed over and over whether be “hard” news or the opinion page? If you ever read the Miami Herald,  you know that with a 90% certainty, Leonard Pitts will have an opinion piece waving the race card. There is nothing new to offer in his columns, nothing of impact, just stale journalism stuck in a formula he was told is the only one, and not even the truth.

And that comes to the last point I wanted to make:  A Truth sells. You tell people the truth and they will buy your journalistic product. Even when you make the mistake, but step up and tell the truth by saying you screwed up, you will continue to sell and do what you love at the same time. It is an amazing thing, they should try that method.

Truth is I get better information from fellow Bloggers than Official News Networks. I get a daily summary of what is hot checking Drudge Report and whatever else is left by the outrages in Social Media including the heathens putting pineapple in pizza.

My wife just brought me old issues of the Wall Street Journal from where she works. I will not say I read them or that I use them to collect fecal matter from pets, nothing that crass. No, the WSJ has a very noble usage in this household: to get charcoal lit in the chimney so I can grill me some steaks.

Proof it’s all about emotion to liberals! I’m not a small guy, and she was afraid of my @realDonaldTrump hat!

Are You Kidding Me!!!

Thank you @FogCityMidge for standing in battle with me! #maga #trump #WomensMarch pic.twitter.com/I5aFjLHXZQ

— David J Harris Jr (@DavidJHarrisJr) January 24, 2019

“You should pay attention to fear, not logic.”

I understand the use of characters that are trying to elicit empathy as in “I am hurting, help me!” But it there is a level where a normal person cannot process the level emotional self-flagellation. You cannot ask me to understand what you call pain when any rational human being sees you are just either making stuff up or just too stupid and bought that some political totems actually hurt you.