Keith and Jacquelyn Smith danced Friday night at the American Legion on Madison Street in Baltimore, where they had brought his daughter Shavon to celebrate her 28th birthday.
Hours later, about 12:30 a.m., the 52-year-old Harford County man found himself calling 911 and rushing Jacquelyn, 54, to the emergency room. She had been stabbed by a man through their rolled-down car window after giving money to a woman panhandling in the rain in East Baltimore, he said.
Jacquelyn Smith, an electrical engineer at Aberdeen Proving Ground, had her necklace and pocketbook snatched by the woman and the man, who approached under the guise of thanking her for giving the woman money, her husband said. She died two hours after they arrived at Johns Hopkins Hospital, he said.

Woman killed after giving money to panhandler in Baltimore was engineer who had been out dancing with husband

Tis’ the Season. Love and charity should fill our hearts and at ;least for a little while, we give to those in need and substitute cynicism with love for others.

And predators know this. Use it. And in this case, a good-hearted woman paid the price with her life.

Some of us coming from other latitudes are immunized to this kind of ruse since it was a common happenstance in our countries of origin. Back in my youth, it was not uncommon to have your watch and neck jewelry snatched at a red light or during bad traffic jams. You either learned to do without or wear really cheap ornaments. By the way, you were lucky if your car came with Air Conditioner as factory standard, so it was a challenge to keep the windows up in the hot season.

Your car’s window is a security layer. Short of breaking it or threaten to do so with a gun, it will keep most criminals away from you or at least give you a chance to engage in a safety procedure. And as hard as it can be, do not let your good heart override your security. This couple used a baby (fake or not) to make Ms. Smith drop her barriers and the scum killed her.  About the only thing I can think of is to call police and report that the mother and child are in weaving in and out of traffic and you fear for the safety of the baby. If in real need, maybe the cops will see they get sent to a shelter. If scum of the earth, maybe they get removed from circulation.

But sure as hell, Do Not Lower Your Windows. Charity begins at home with keeping yourself unhurt.

Removing Jim Acosta’s White House Press pass was just the death of free Speech, right. How Awful that the President could do so. All US journalists should be in fear.

In the meantime and back in the real world across the southern border that Liberals want eliminated and allow the free flow of people, we have that Mexico’s 18th journalist murdered this year, presumably by the Cartels  and execution-style.

Authorities confirmed the murder of Jesus Alejandro Marquez, an independent journalist who routinely collaborated with various outlets and was the founder and director of a local publication, Orion Informativo. Marquez was also an activist for Mexico’s new ruling party, MORENA, started by President Lopez Obrador.
Mexico’s Excelsior reports that Marquez left his home in Tepic over the weekend after receiving a phone call and went missing until authorities recovered his body off a dirt road near the city.

Journalist Killed in Western Mexico — 18th in 2018

We need to start a new travel company: Socialists get to spend six months living like regular people in Venezuela (Including Venezuelan minimum wage)and Journalists get to spend six months in Mexico covering the Cartels coming and goings.

Maybe their bullshit outlook in life may change…if they survive. Either way the outcome is palatable to me.

PARIS (Reuters) – When Emmanuel Macron rose to power, he put the environment at the heart of his agenda. Eighteen months later, anger over those policies has stoked protests that are a huge challenge for the French president. Rioters torched cars and buildings in central Paris on Saturday following two weeks of protests caused partly by higher fuel taxes which Macron says are needed to fight climate change.

France’s Macron learns the hard way: green taxes carry political risks

The Left: President Macron, we need to do something about Global Warming. We support you!
President Macron: We will raise taxes of Fossil Fuels which are the number one contributor to this awful Climate Change
The Left: Va te faire foutre! (Go f*** yourself)

Everybody in Europe is a Socialist till they hit them in the wallet.  The problem is they expected the sacrifices were to be made by somebody else, not them since they are perfectly good Socialists entitled to free foie gras and wine while ranting the evils of Trump and Capitalism.

Great article in PoliceOne.

Read the crowd. If you roll up on a scene where there’s an armed person surrounded by a crowd of onlookers, that’s a good indicator the person with the gun is not a threat to innocents. If they thought he was a threat, they would probably be showing some kind of fear and running away from him, instead of staying nearby.

Having a cop shoot a citizen carrying a concealed weapon was unavoidable. And sorry but anybody saying the opposite is full of it because we do not live in a perfect world filled with people making the right decisions even when they do not have evil in their hearts.

If anything, I am amazed that it has happened so few times in 40+ years of Concealed Carry. That speaks a lot about the culture behind it and it goes contrary to the expectations of Gun Control. That being said, there is always room for improvement and updating training which is what this article does.

This part, to me, is still the scary one specially when the officer moves from a restrictive area such as NYC or L.A. to departments anywhere in Florida.

Evaluate your culture. In some geographic regions, and in some departments, the local police culture hasn’t caught up the reality of a lawfully armed public. Officers in these agencies are still trained to think that the only people who have guns, besides cops, are criminals.

Training never stops. Our advantage is we are flexible and do not have to follow a chain of command or be approved by and unyielding bureaucracy or deal with elected officials who are less than friendly to the concept of Armed Citizens.

Hat Tip Tom W.

Witnesses said the man went outside, grabbed the machete from his car and started chasing someone around in the parking lot while wielding the broad blade.
It was then that, witnesses said, another patron, pulled out a gun.
“All of a sudden, I hear four gunshots,” said DeBortolli.

Witnesses said the gunman then put his weapon on the ground and calmly waited for police.

Machete-wielding man shot dead outside Coral Springs bar

Poor victim selection by the attacker and the shooter followed proper post-shooting procedure. Although this particular article mentions him as a patron of the locale, others simply state that he was outside in a group and that he was cooperative with police, except the Miami Herald with such an sparsely written article you’d think somebody just shot the guy because he had a machete and doing nothing else.

Area residents were troubled by the violent chain of events.
“Shocked, like, it baffles me that this actually can happen here,” said Coral Springs resident Angel Jean, “because I’ve lived here for roughly two years now, and I’ve never had anything with guns, violence, nothing.”
“In Coral Springs, I was like, you never hear gunshots in Coral Springs,” said DeBortolli.

This is sad but you must realize people still believe that nothing bad will ever happen where they live. My neighborhood is damned quiet, but we do not stop from being careful and taking the proper precautions. Don’t get charmed with the song of “Nothing Never Happens Here.”

PS: Yes, I still hate machetes.

Newsweek tried to shame those who questioned what came out of the mouth of Ocasio Cortez:

Unfortunately, she went ahead and provided the answer just today:

The US Budget is $4.094 trillion for FY 2018. The US Department of Defense spent 610 billion in 2017 and if the comments I read beating around the expenditure on Defense between 1789 and 2018 (which includes several wars and “inexpensive” stuff like the Manhattan Project) only reaches $18 trillion.

We are not questioning her IQ, I think it is pretty much set and done. We are here with the popcorn enjoying the show.

I don’t mind that SWMBO likes the silly Romantic Christmas movies, but I object (silently) to the forced participation.

I am too old to sleep in the couch.