Fake laws, fake punishment-----Straw purchaser with 4 felony gun charges will not get jail time

Straw purchaser with 4 felony gun charges will not get jail time:
"A Chicago-area woman arrested last year for her role in illegally selling guns to prohibited buyers, some with gang affiliations, was sentenced to probation and community service last week.
Simone Mousheh, 23, of the Chicago suburb of Mount Prospect, will have to complete 15 days of community service in the Cook County Sheriff’s Work Alternative Program and 12 months probation after pleading guilty to illegal transfer of firearms last week, as reported by the Daily Herald.
Mousheh was arrested last September and charged with four felonies after an investigation by the Chicago Police Firearm Investigation Team concluded she had bought handguns through the benefit of her state-issued Firearms Owners Identification card and then illegally resold them..."
Read on!

NYT Creates Fictional Couple Supposedly Hurt By Trump's Tax Plan. There's Only One Problem: Trump's Tax Plan Helps Them. | Daily Wire

NYT Creates Fictional Couple Supposedly Hurt By Trump's Tax Plan. There's Only One Problem: Trump's Tax Plan Helps Them. | Daily Wire:

"Last week, The New York Times ran a shocking story about holes in the new Trump tax law. The Times explained that for some couples, the new tax law could mean increased taxes:
Thanks to lower rates and a doubled standard deduction, 2018 taxes will fall for many people. But that won’t be true for quite a few others, like this hypothetical couple in suburban New York, Samuel and Felicity Taxpayer.
Who were Samuel and Felicity, that unfortunate couple? "

More "junk studies"-----Oxford’s Junk Science on Fake News | The American Conservative

Oxford’s Junk Science on Fake News | The American Conservative
"Surprise: A university study uses fishy criteria to tar right-leaning journalists.
Is National Review “junk news”? 
A panel of Oxford scientists says yes. 
Their study, “Polarization, Partisanship and Junk News Consumption over Social Media in the US,” purports to show that on social media, conservatives are far more likely than others to share “junk news.” 
That conclusion has earned them glowing write-ups in left-of-center outlets like The Guardian, Salon, and The Daily Beast.

And what’s junk news? 

According to the study, a source is junk if it “deliberately publishes misleading, deceptive or incorrect information purporting to be real news about politics, economics or culture.”

The cry of “fake news” has become a defining weapon in our hyper-partisan age. 

No doubt there has been a profusion of it as the nation’s storied newsmagazines have ceded prominence to newsfeed-optimized content factories. 

But “fake news” is also an accusation of moral turpitude. 
Its scarlet letter signifies that a journalist is not merely wrong—he’s a liar.

...As worded, that standard feels easy to abuse, but what results did it produce? 

The scientists’ criteria yielded 91 sites positively identified as junk news. 

Of these, 78 featured right-leaning content, 10 were apolitical, and a grand total of three—Mediaite, Occupy Democrats, and Shareblue—were left-leaning.

Maybe junk news sites mostly don’t exist on the left? 

The fact that the authors named three left-of-center sites could indicate that they scoured the internet and found only a few offenders. 

More likely is that it shows the opposite...

...Maybe these sites were able to escape scrutiny because the “criteria” the Oxford researchers used to tell if a site is real or fake are not criteria at all. 

They’re flexible enough to produce any result deemed desirable in advance. 

A determination that a site’s reporting is “biased,” “uses emotionally driven language,” and fails to employ journalistic “best practices” earns it the junk label..."

Read it all!

The Campaign Against The NRA Is The Result Of Years Of Scheming

The Campaign Against The NRA Is The Result Of Years Of Scheming:
"Organizing isn't magic. 
The political campaign against the NRA is the result of a massive amount of hard work and planning.
If you’re not an organizer, and you’re not the kind of weirdo who reads Lefty organizing manuals so you can write book reports on Twitter, it’s easy to get the impression that the current campaign against the NRA and gun manufacturers came together on the fly. 
But it didn’t. 
These campaigns never do.
The strategy has been carefully researched, and it’s being executed now because the political moment is favorable. 
But the tendency of the press to write about activism as if it’s magic doesn’t help the public understand what’s happening. 
...As the group New Tactics for Human Rights notes, the way you approach somebody to move them a notch depends on which group they’re in. 
If they’re an active ally, they are already with you and fighting for you, fantastic. 
Engage them and fight the enemy together. 
...It’s hard to shift active opponents, because they usually have a good reason to oppose you. 
So make it clear that anything they do against you will cost them. 
Convince them not to act, making them passive opponents. 
If you can’t do that, then isolate them.
Sounds eerily familiar, doesn’t it? 
Because you’ve seen this a million times before, you just didn’t know the name for it. 
Once you know about spectrum of allies analysis, you start to see it everywhere.
...If all this stuff sounds almost military to you, that’s because it is. 
Don’t think of activism as “that dumb stuff the other guys do.” 
Think of it as a non-violent army. 
Because that’s what it is. 
Activism is unarmed coercion, and this is what nonviolent military science looks like..."
Read on!

Lunch video-----Welcome To Progressive Utopia

Noon-toon

Sessions unloads on California Dems for ‘radical, open borders agenda’ | Fox News

Sessions unloads on California Dems for ‘radical, open borders agenda’ | Fox News:

"In his remarks, Sessions noted “worrisome” trends as violent crime increased in 2014 and 2015, particularly a surge in homicide and drug availability. He said that a lawful immigration system was part of tackling such trends.
Sessions said that while America admits the highest number of legal immigrants in the world, the American people deserve a legal, rational immigration system that protects the nation and preserves the national interest.
“It cannot be the policy of a great nation to reward those who unlawfully enter its country with legal status, Social Security, welfare, food stamps, and work permits and so forth. How can this be a sound policy?” he asked."

The 2010s Have Been a Banner Decade for Unintended Consequences - Hit & Run : Reason.com

The 2010s Have Been a Banner Decade for Unintended Consequences - Hit & Run : Reason.com
"The 2010s are proving to be a banner decade for unintended consequences in America's war on drugs. 
By now, readers are likely familiar with the policies that bolstered the markets for heroin and then illicit fentanyl: 
Law enforcement cracked down on doctors who prescribed large amount of painkillers, pharmacists were required to report opioid prescriptions to government databases, and regulators asked the pharmaceutical industry to make pills harder to manipulate. 
Unable to access snortable or injectable pills, users turned to the black market. 
As a result, prescription overdose deaths have declined in many states, but fentanyl- and heroin-related overdose deaths have skyrocketed.

The New York Times reports that two other substances are also having a moment. 

• "Overshadowed by the Opioid Crisis: A Comeback by Cocaine," reads a Timesheadline from Monday morning. 
• "Meth, the Forgotten Killer, Is Back. And It's Everywhere," the Grey Lady declared in February.

Neither drug really went away—only Quaaludes have ever done that—but they are cheaper and more plentiful than they have been in years, thanks to supply reduction policies enacted by the United States and its allies. 
The Times tells us, for example, that a

study by RAND found that cocaine consumption fell 50 percent between 2006 and 2010. But in the past few years, the cocaine supply from Colombia has climbed to a record high in part because of a peace settlement that includes payments to farmers who stop growing coca. To be in a position to qualify for those payments in the future, many farmers started growing it. As a result...cocaine prices have fallen, leading to an increase in cocaine use in the United States and some European countries.

The Economist says farmers in Colombia knew for years before the peace settlement was completed that the government would eventually pay them to stop growing coca, which is a very good reason to not grow anything else until the checks start coming in.

Stateside, cocaine is cheap and, in many places, contaminated. Last week, Harm Reduction Ohio reported that cocaine samples across the state tested positive for illicit fentanyl and its analogs, meaning cocaine users with no opioid preference (or tolerance) are playing Russian roulette every time they put schnozz to mirror. 
People who intentionally mix heroin and cocaine, meanwhile, are increasingly likely to shoot those two plus fentanyl.

The result is more dead cocaine users.

Back in December, the pseudonymous blogger Jubal Harshaw emailed me with some data from the Centers for Disease Control showing that cocaine overdose deaths involving fentanyl had increased from 23 percent of cocaine deaths in 2015 to 40 percent in 2016. 
In Maryland, the number of opioid-cocaine deaths has increased dramatically:

Graph courtesy of Maryland Department of Public Health

Read all!

Timing Reveals What Media Ignore… | The Last Refuge

Timing Reveals What Media Ignore… | The Last Refuge:
"*ahem* As if on cue…

(tweet link)

DEEP-DIVE FULL BACKSTORY

The Eagle, The Panda and The Red Dragon

#1 This day 1959-----Frankie Avalon "Venus"

WH Shows 15 Jihadis Who Got Visas by Lottery or Chain Migration | Breitbart

WH Shows 15 Jihadis Who Got Visas by Lottery or Chain Migration | Breitbart:

White House officials rolled out a list of 15 visa-lottery jihadis and chain-migration terrorists to pressure Democrats towards a compromise on the president’s “framework” amnesty-and-immigration plan.

The February 2 list of jihadis includes a senior leader in the Islamic counter-attack against personal freedom, Mousa Mohammed Abu Marzook. 

He is an “alleged United States Hamas leader [who] received his green card through a predecessor program to the visa lottery,” said the statement. 

“Marzook was deported in 1997 for terrorist activities.”

The statement backs up Trump’s speech in the State of the Union speech, where he urged elimination of the visa lottery and chain migration programs, saying:

It is time to begin moving towards a merit-based immigration system, one that admits people who are skilled, who want to work who will contribute to our society and who will love and respect our country.

The jihadis include seven “mujahids” who arrived via the visa lottery and six “jihadis” who arrived via chain migration. 

They include:

• Sayfullo Saipov, a national of Uzbekistan, entered the United States in 2010 through the visa lottery program. On October 31, 2017, Saipov was arrested after he allegedly used a truck to run down numerous pedestrians on a bike lane on the west side of Manhattan, killing eight individuals.
• Hesham Mohamed Ali Hedayet, a national of Egypt, was able to claim Lawful Permanent Resident status through a family member who received their status via visa lottery in 1997. In July 2002, Hedayet opened fire at the El Al Airlines ticket counter at LAX airport, murdering two ticket agents and wounding three others.
• Ahmed Amin El-Mofty, an Egyptian national, entered the United States through a distant relative (chain migration) and became a United States citizen after arriving. Last month, El-Mofty was killed during a shootout after allegedly opening fire and targeting police at multiple locations in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
• Akayed Ullah, a Bangladeshi national, entered the United States in 2011 through chain migration. Ullah was allowed to enter the country as the family member of a visa lottery winner. On December 12, 2017, Ullah allegedly attempted to detonate a homemade pipe bomb in the New York City Port Authority Bus Terminal. The failed explosion injured himself and four bystanders.

Read all!

You ought to know!

University OKs Guns on Campus... 6 Months Later the Results Are Breathtaking

University OKs Guns on Campus... 6 Months Later the Results Are Breathtaking:

"Six months after adopting concealed carry of firearms on campus, the University of Kansas found that the crime rate dropped and there have been zero weapons violations."

Zhee Whiz

Zhee Whiz:
"Expanding on the growing institutional campaign to use gender-neutral pronouns, the University of Tennessee has confected up some new ones:

Students are increasingly coming to college ill prepared to do the work required, and the (overstaffed) administrations are still piddling about inventing new ways to tongue-tie pupils, ignoring that the English language – unlike, for example, Romance-based ones, Hebrew, Greek, and German – is remarkably devoid of gender specificity except for the basic pronouns, which clarify meaning.  
Try this out with zhee: Tom and Mary went to school.  Zhee passed; zhee flunked out.  Who?

Not tongue-tied is the odious Louis Farrakhan, friend of many top Democrats, including Keith Ellison, members of the Congressional Black Caucus, Democratic Congressman Danny Davis, and former president Obama.

This past week, Farrakhan unleashed a ridiculous diatribe to an audience, which included one of the leaders of the upcoming Women's March (several of whom have allied with him)...to silence from Democrats and those who find aggressions and microaggressions even in ordinary grammar:

During the speech in Chicago, Farrakhan made several anti-Semitic comments, including, "the powerful Jews are my enemy."

"White folks are going down.  And Satan is going down.  And Farrakhan, by God's grace, has pulled the cover off of that Satanic Jew and I'm here to say your time is up, your world is through," he later said.

It's impossible for me to take issue with Jake Tapper's tweeted observation:

The difference between Farrakhan and some members of the alt-reich whose heinous bigotry has received a lot of attention this past year: Farrakhan has a much larger following and elected officials meet with him openly...

Read it all! 

AM Fruitcake

History for March 9

History for March 9 - On-This-Day.com
Amerigo Vespucci 1454, Mickey Spillane 1918 - Author, Yuri Gagarin 1934


Bobby Fischer 1943 - Chess player, Linda Fiorentino 1960 - Actress, Juliette Binoche 1964 - Actress


1820 - The U.S. Congress passed the Land Act that paved the way for westward expansion of North America.


1832 - Abraham Lincoln announced that he would run for a political office for the first time. He was unsuccessful in his run for a seat in the Illinois state legislature.


1862 - During the U.S. Civil War, the ironclads Monitor and Virginia (built from the remnants of the USS Merrimack fought to a draw in a five-hour battle at Hampton Roads, Virginia.


1863 - General Ulysses Grant was appointed commander-in-chief of the Union forces.


1936 - The German press warned that all Jews who vote in the upcoming elections would be arrested.


1959 - Mattel introduced Barbie at the annual Toy Fair in New York.


1964 - Production began on the first Ford Mustang.


1975 - Work began on the Alaskan oil pipeline.

Dem under fire for ‘ghost employee’ in illegal server scandal

Dem under fire for ‘ghost employee’ in illegal server scandal:

"An ethics complaint has been filed against a Democratic congressman who reportedly paid $60,000 in taxpayer funds to a “ghost employee,” who had been fired from his job at McDonald’s, while the lawmaker’s office allowed a Pakistani-born IT aide to access his servers without authorization.
U.S. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, D-Mo. – a former co-chair of Hillary Clinton’s Missouri campaign and co-chair of her national Faith Steering Committee who delivered a fiery speech praising Clinton at the Democratic National Convention – is accused of paying an unqualified former McDonald’s employee, Rao Abbas, to be his IT aide, according to an ethics complaint filed Wednesday by the ethics watchdog Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust, or FACT.
The organization accuses Cleaver of grossly misusing House resources by giving the funds to Abbas for IT work he never performed – and for allowing Awan, a non-employee who is now facing bank-fraud charges, to perform IT services."

The way we were-----The Original Stroll - February 1958

Boob-tube-----Best 60s Dancer Boy Ever - The Nitty Gritty

Yeah, this is "college"-----WATCH: Leftist Students Freak Out When Panel Agrees Men And Women Are Different | Daily Wire

WATCH: Leftist Students Freak Out When Panel Agrees Men And Women Are Different | Daily Wire
"Even the women in there have been brainwashed!"

screenshot from Freethinkers of PSU
"By HANK BERRIEN 
On February 17, Portland State University held an event to discuss viewpoint diversity moderated by PSU philosophy professor Peter Boghossian, with a panel including former Evergreen State biologist Heather E. Heying, writer Helen Pluckrose, and former Google engineer James DaMore, who was fired in 2017 after writing a memo about the biological differences between men and women. 
When Heying spoke of the simple biological differences between men and women, some leftist activists hilariously threw a fit, rising up in protest and sabotaging the sound system as they exited.
At the event, which was titled, "We Need to Talk About Diversity," Boghossian preceded the brouhaha by asking Pluckrose what “social constructivism” meant. 
Pluckrose responded, “It’s the idea that all of our traits, our characteristics, abilities, cognitive, psychological, behavioral, are learned from societal norms; the idea that there can be innate or biological or inherited differences are dismissed. And so, we’re in a position where if there is injustice, or if there is an imbalance anywhere, sort of an inequality of representation, then the explanation for that can be the societal injustice.”...
Read on!

Trying to turn a turd into a butterfly?-----NBC NEWS!!---Is Texas turning purple? A look at the midterm numbers. - NBC News

Is Texas turning purple? A look at the midterm numbers. - NBC News: 
"...On Tuesday, Texas kicked off 2018's congressional primaries, and in a positive sign for Democrats across the country, their voters demonstrated far greater energy than in past midterms. 
With nearly all votes counted, total votes cast in the Democratic primary surged 85 percent over 2014's tally, compared to a 14 percent increase on the GOP side.
However, the Republican primary still accounted for 60 percent of all primary turnout..."

California 'sanctuary' laws obstruct public safety, law enforcement, Border Patrol says - Washington Times

California 'sanctuary' laws obstruct public safety, law enforcement, Border Patrol says - Washington Times:

"The Border Patrol says it’s been forced to release a drunk driver back onto the streets, and nearly missed out on nabbing a fake UPS delivery van carrying 77 illegal immigrants — all because California’s new sanctuary city laws have soured cooperation between police and federal authorities.
In the drunk driving case a local police department said it couldn’t respond to agents who’d pulled over the drunk driver, since it began as an immigration stop. They said it would violate the state’s sanctuary law limiting their ability to work with border or interior agents, Rodney S. Scott, chief patrol agent of the Border Patrol’s San Diego Sector, told a federal court."

Islam—Facts or Dreams? - Imprimis

Islam—Facts or Dreams? - Imprimis:
"In 1993 I was a seasoned federal prosecutor, but I only knew as much about Islam as the average American with a reasonably good education—which is to say, not much.
Consequently, when I was assigned to lead the prosecution of a terrorist cell that had bombed the World Trade Center and was plotting an even more devastating strike—simultaneous attacks on the Lincoln and Holland Tunnels, the United Nations complex on the East River, and the FBI’s lower Manhattan headquarters—I had no trouble believing what our government was saying: that we should read nothing into the fact that all the men in this terrorist cell were Muslims; that their actions were not representative of any religion or belief system; and that to the extent they were explaining their atrocities by citing Islamic scripture, they were twisting and perverting one of the world’s great religions, a religion that encourages peace.
...Unlike commentators and government press secretaries, I had to examine these claims...
One of the first things I learned concerned the leader of the terror cell, Omar Abdel Rahman, infamously known as the Blind Sheikh.
Our government was portraying him as a wanton killer who was lying about Islam by preaching that it summoned Muslims to jihad or holy war.
Far from a lunatic, however, he turned out to be a globally renowned scholar—a doctor of Islamic jurisprudence who graduated from al-Azhar University in Cairo, the seat of Sunni Islamic learning for over a millennium. 
His area of academic expertise was sharia—Islamic law.
I immediately began to wonder why American officials from President Bill Clinton and Attorney General Janet Reno on down, officials who had no background in Muslim doctrine and culture, believed they knew more about Islam than the Blind Sheikh.
Then something else dawned on me: the Blind Sheikh was not only blind; he was beset by several other medical handicaps.
That seemed relevant.
After all, terrorism is hard work.
Here was a man incapable of doing anything that would be useful to a terrorist organization—he couldn’t build a bomb, hijack a plane, or carry out an assassination.
Yet he was the unquestioned leader of the terror cell. 
Was this because there was more to his interpretation of Islamic doctrine than our government was conceding?
...When he said the scriptures command that Muslims strike terror into the hearts of Islam’s enemies, the scriptures backed him up..."
Read on!