Wednesday, April 08, 2020



Some suspicious thoughts from a reader (A retired medical specialist in Texas)

I haven’t heard in the news what is obvious to me:

1). Trump’s unwillingness to overrule local districts (which is what the constitution supports) has unleashed a terror by local officials (Little Napolean Syndrome).

One case of many: a regulation in Austin to discontinue building (with an exception for building new homes for the homeless).

State of Texas has put medical doctors out of business. (Only allowing “emergency surgery” - which pays almost nothing. (Blacks shooting each other, Rednecks driving unrestrained and drunk).

2). I believe the efforts by the Dems with their branch, the MSM, have been VERY SUCCESSFUL IN GENERATING PANIC, AND ECONOMIC DISTRESS.

I believe that the Dems have discovered a new political method to again cause panic, and  public unrest, the next time a “new virus” is “discovered”. I believe the precursor of the present coronavirus has been around a while, and not surprising that the Chicoms saw this as a way to cooperate with the Dems and the MSM to generate panic.





Hooray!  His Eminence has been cleared

Cleared unanimously by seven judges! I said from the beginning that his conviction was a travesty.  It was only hatred of his church that kept him in jail



Cardinal George Pell will walk free from jail today after the High Court quashed his conviction for sexually abusing two choirboys. 

Australia's most senior Catholic was convicted in 2018 of performing sex acts on the boys in Saint Patrick's Cathedral in Melbourne in 1996.

The decision overturns an earlier ruling by the chief justice of the Supreme Court of Victoria, Justice Anne Ferguson, president of the Court of Appeal Justice Chris Maxwell, and Justice Mark Weinberg.

It had taken them nine weeks to come to their decision. It took the High Court a little under four to reverse it.

Cardinal Pell was not in the court room in Brisbane for the hearing and will be told the news over the phone by his lawyer.

The court ruled that the trial's jury 'ought to have entertained a doubt' that Cardinal Pell may not have been guilty.

Much of Cardinal Pell's case centred on whether he had an opportunity to commit the offences at all.

Cardinal Pell's barristers had long argued it was not possible for him to be alone in the sacristies only a few minutes after the end of Mass.

Numerous witnesses took to the witness box at his trial to back the notion the crimes could not have been committed. 

In a summary of the decision handed down by the High Court on Tuesday, it stated the Supreme Court judges' analysis at his original appeal 'failed to engage with the question of whether there remained a reasonable possibility that the offending had not taken place, such that there ought to have been a reasonable doubt as to the applicant's guilt'.

Cardinal Pell's successful appeal is likely to bring an end to the ongoing saga, which has dragged on for years across four court jurisdictions.

A vindicated Cardinal Pell issued a statement to the media shortly after the ruling was made. 'I have consistently maintained my innocence while suffering from a serious injustice,' he said. 'This has been remedied today with the High Court’s unanimous decision. I look forward to reading the Judgment and reasons for the decision in detail.'

Cardinal Pell said he held no ill will to his accuser. 'I do not want my acquittal to add to the hurt and bitterness so many feel; there is certainly hurt and bitterness enough,' he said.

'However, my trial was not a referendum on the Catholic Church; nor a referendum on how Church authorities in Australia dealt with the crime of paedophilia in the Church. 'The point was whether I had committed these awful crimes, and I did not.'

Victoria Police issued a statement on Tuesday declaring it respected the decision of the High Court and praised the the 'tireless work' on the case by its Taskforce Sano, which brought the case against Cardinal Pell.

The jury in the original trial found Cardinal Pell guilty of sexually abusing two boys in the priests' sacristy at Melbourne's St Patrick's Cathedral after presiding over one of his first Sunday masses as archbishop in the 1990s.

The jury further accepted he abused one of the boys a second time in a corridor at the rear of the cathedral after another Sunday mass.

Cardinal Pell was jailed in March last year for six years with a non-parole period of three years and eight months.

Since then, he has been caged predominantly at Melbourne Assessment Prison in the heart of the city, but was recently moved to Barwon Prison, which houses some of the nation's vilest criminals.

There he has spent his days locked in isolation away from the jail population which no doubt would have treated him as a prize scalp.

SOURCE  






Peak Buffoonery: Paddleboarder in Ocean Off Malibu Is Arrested for Not Socially Distancing

A couple of weeks ago, thousands of people swarmed the Southern California beaches to get some fresh air and get their minds off the coronavirus for awhile.

In response to some people not socially distancing,  the Commissars of California closed the beaches.

Since then, miles of police tape have been deployed to cut off parking lots, bike paths, hiking trails, and mountain-bike trails to prevent people from going to these places and getting a little exercise for fear they may get too close to each other.

Drones are being sent up to spy on scofflaws.

There's no surfing allowed. Surfing. A sport that requires social distancing is outlawed. Thousands of kids in Southern California who are required to get physical activity to get their virtual school PE credits are not allowed to surf.

And don't even think about standing on the other side of a tennis court and hitting balls.

Forget swimming, the pools are closed.

Which brings us to a paddleboarder in the Malibu area of LA County.  To be clear, he was in the ocean off the coast of Malibu, minding his own business and paddleboarding by himself.

Well, he was alone until the cops and lifeguards came. They corralled the paddleboarder with the use of two lifeguard boats.

KTLA reports the arrested paddleboarder was booked and then released and ordered to appear in court:

Officials did not release any identifying information on the man. He could face a $1,000 fine, up to six months in jail, or both.

So far, the state order has not been widely enforced by police agencies, but this isn't the first time this week a Southern California man has faced consequences for being in the ocean.

According to the Los Angeles Times, a surfer in Manhattan Beach was fined $1,000 last weekend after similarly ignoring repeated orders to exit the ocean.

Some people were baffled.  "Two guys together in a small boat chase down man all by himself to ensure proper social distancing."

But the ocean isn't the only thing being watched for scofflaws. LA Mayor Eric Garcetti has announced plans for a spying program to look for businesses that are open. He announced this week that he has already shut off the water and power to eight businesses that he didn't deem "essential."

The Commissars of California mean well. We all know they're just trying to keep us from getting too close to others in this pandemic, but with these kinds of shenanigans, they run the risk of open rebellion against what are plainly dumb laws. And when the laws become a mockery of themselves, we've reached peak buffoonery.

SOURCE 






Oregon Court Affirms Conviction of Journalist Who Pulled Gun to Stop Advancing Antifa Mob

Before Ann Coulter, Ben Shapiro, Milo Yiannopoulos, Andy Ngo, and any number of people were bullied off the stage and silenced by the rampaging antifa mob, there was Mike Strickland.

Before most people had ever heard of the far-left group, the Portland videographer was recording the antics, ridiculous utterances, and violent actions of this mob, writing about them and selling his videos to news outlets, some of which went national. Strickland put the videos on his YouTube channel called "Laughing at Liberals."

He's the first person I'd ever heard utter the name "antifa."

Strickland had been following the far left for years. He started to watch them after the 2010-11 tea party rallies began attracting leftists, such as the International Socialist Organization (ISO), who would show up and attempt to drown out the public (and permitted) rallies.

And the mob was getting bigger and more dangerous.

Since 2003, I have been watching the far-left Portland mob, "Portland Professional Protesters" as I dubbed them, go from a collection of Friday-at-4pm drum circles to a rougher group of Wobblies, anti-war Bush-is-Hitler protesters, Earth Firsters, ISO types, anti-Israel pro-PLO America haters, assorted anarchists, monkey-wrenchers and eco- and animal-terrorist organizations. Many of the usual Portland Professional Protester groups feature fists on their logos and flags like the good communists and socialists they are.

They camped in front of the stores that sold fur and conspired against restaurants selling foie gras – screeching day after day until enough customers were repelled that the legal businesses went under. The city never lifted a finger to help.

They took over Portland City Hall, held illegal protests, closed freeways, halted traffic, and plotted terrorist activities. They firebombed SUV sellers, torched ski lodges, cold-cocked people on the streets, set fires, committed acts of vandalism, and engaged, like the continuing criminal enterprise I believe they are, in the doxxing of, defaming, and lying about people who dared show them on video and talk about their antics.

The City of Portland basically ignored the protesters even when they were under its nose, as was Occupy Portland in 2011 when union-backed "protesters" commandeered and did millions of dollars in damage to a park in front of city hall.

And now they're a black-clad violent mob.

Mike Strickland put a mirror up to those people and showed them who they were. They didn't like it. They called him a "snitch." They admitted in court that they conspired to get him thrown out of "their" public protests. And that's where the problems started.

Conservative Journalist Andy Ngo Beaten Up and Hit With Cement by Antifa in Portland, Says Police Did Nothing
In June 2016, at a rally and candlelight vigil for the Orlando terrorist shooting, Strickland was shooting for a client when he was confronted by a group (some of whom knew him) that took offense that he would dare come to such a solemn occasion. Codswallop. As he tried to record, they sought to ruin his video by crowding in front of his camera, screaming, yelling, and talking. They called Strickland – stop me if you've heard this before – a "racist" and "homophobe."

(The "racist" label came from when Strickland put together a series of videos exposing a series of classes at the local community college demonizing white people. Fox News featured them. The "homophobe" accusation supposedly came from his deigning to attend the Pulse Nightclub observance.)

One month later in July 2016, at a Black Lives Matter - Don't Shoot Portland public rally and protest, a mob of antifa and BLM protesters admitted (in court) that they would get Strickland thrown out of their rally because they didn't want the journalist recording them. Strickland was shooting the event as he usually did with all of his equipment – including his properly concealed pistol, a Glock, for which he had a concealed carry license.

A mob of Antifa members surrounded him, roughed him up, and then told him, "You need to get the f**k out of here!" Even though Strickland backed away from the thugs in the larger protest, he continued to shoot video. As he was leaving, the mob of masked antifa thugs ran toward Strickland and tried to surround him.

This time he pulled his pistol to back them off. No shots were ever fired; Strickland's finger never came close to the trigger. His gambit worked, however. They backed off and Strickland got away from the mob, eventually being arrested by the cops. He was released with a citation.

Charges against him grew from misdemeanors to 21 counts, ten of which were felonies, within hours of Portland politicos getting an earful from one of Strickland's favorite targets, an anti-Second Amendment group called "Ceasefire Oregon." The politicos also seemed to take on faith the word of one of the conspirators who insisted Strickland must be a racist, even though he knew better.

Only a couple of his so-called victims were identified, the rest were unknown and described as having masks over their faces and unidentifiable.

For this act of self-defense in defense of his own First Amendment rights, Strickland was ordered to jail.

Though he could have gone to state prison for decades, in the end, Strickland did 40 days in jail. But he was put on five years' probation, his Second Amendment rights were stripped and he was ordered to surrender some of his First Amendment rights by being forbidden from practicing journalism and recording Portland's leftist protesters. The mob, courts, and allies had silenced him.

Portland-are journalist Andy Ngo, who has followed Strickland in filming antifa, has been assaulted several times by the antifa. But after seeing Strickland arrested for defending himself, Ngo says he won't defend himself against antifa's attacks.

After he made arguments on Strickland's behalf to the Oregon Court of Appeals in October 2018, attorney Robert Barnes told me that if this can happen in Portland it can happen anywhere:

[R]ight now if you’re in the black bloc what do you think? I can harass somebody and get them arrested if they try to defend themselves.

And then they want people not to defend themselves so that they feel terrified, so that the[y] feel scared, so that they feel frightened, so that their behavior can be publicly and privately coerced. And that’s the danger. And that’s why this case is bigger than one person.

If this can happen to him here it can happen to anyone, anywhere, and it means that nobody is safe. And that’s why this case is so significant.

Barnes has always maintained that the Strickland case has never been a strictly Second Amendment case. He believes it's a First Amendment case:

In Portland, if you merely show you are armed, you will be arrested, charged with a felony, and banned from public events for "disturbing" ANTIFA with your presence. Ask Mike Strickland.

He continued about how corrosive ignoring antifa has been to Portland and beyond:

There is a reason the media celebrates ANTIFA, stays mute about the black bloc, and political patrons in Portland imprisoned ANTIFA critics rather than lefty violence. They were always heading in this direction once they lost political power: cultural blackmail & street violence.

Barnes says Strickland's case is bigger than one person because if the conviction against him stands then no one is safe:

This battle will be just the beginning of a long extended battle. If this can happen to him here it can happen to anyone, anywhere, and it means that nobody is safe. And that’s why this case is so significant.

Barnes is right about it being a long battle. The Oregon Appeals Court ruled Wednesday that the lower court ruling convicting Strickland stands.

He made a prediction of what this appeals court ruling really says about the Oregon justice system:

Excuses the @ORDOJ used to justify the jailing of independent reporter, Mike Strickland: that the black bloc violent anarchist group is part of the "protest community" of Portland & that a reporter who is "polarizing" to ANTIFA-types should be banned from filming public events.

Barnes told me he's filing a motion for reconsideration by the court – and will keep going if he has to.

SOURCE 

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Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the  incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of  other countries.  The only real difference, however, is how much power they have.  In America, their power is limited by democracy.  To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already  very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges.  They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did:  None.  So look to the colleges to see  what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way.  It would be a dictatorship.

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH,   EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and  DISSECTING LEFTISM.   My Home Pages are here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here.  Email me (John Ray) here

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