Cops Raid Mansion Of St. Louis Couple Who Defended Home From Protesters, Confiscate AR-15 Tyler Durden
Sat, 07/11/2020 – 12:00
St. Louis authorities confiscated an AR-15 used by Mark McCloskey, who made headlines with his wife Patricia last month when they defended their historic mansion from protesters who had broken down a gate to trespass on their private road.
Police executed a search warrant Friday evening at the McCloskey’s home, seizing the rifle used in the June 28 incident, according to KSDK. The couple said their attorney was in possession of the pistol Patricia McCloskey brandished during the confrontation. The raid comes two weeks after St. Louis circuit attorney Kimberly Gardner vowed to work with the St. Louis Police Department to conduct an investigation into the incident.
According to the report, there are no charges against the McCloskeys at this time, as the warrant was just for the guns.
As Fox News reports, the McCloskeys appeared on "Hannity" where they said that protesters had returned to their neighborhood on July 3, however they had been tipped off and hired private security before "300 to 500 people" entered their gated community, according to Patricia McCloskey.
Mark & Patricia McCloskey from St Louis have now had to get security guards & board up their home. This is not how people in their 60s should be living, in fear, simply because they own guns & held them to protect themselves.
BLM & these rabid protestors – disgrace to humanity. pic.twitter.com/bNw27vE7pJ
"[They said] that they were going to kill us," she said. "They were going to come in there. They were going to burn down the house. They were going to be living in our house after I was dead, and they were pointing to different rooms and said, ‘That’s going to be my bedroom and that’s going to be the living room and I’m going to be taking a shower in that room’."
Police investigating racist messages left on a Texas A&M student’s car in June say all available evidence points to it being a hoax.
School officials offered a $1,200 reward on June 25 for any evidence that identified the person who wrote “All lives matter, “You don’t belong here,” and “n—r” messages before leaving them on senior Isaih Martin’s windshield.
A College Station cop who watched surveillance footage from a nearby pool camera say that what they witnessed implicated Mr. Martin himself as the culprit.
Why is the media so fixated on Sweden’s coronavirus policy? What difference does it make?
Sweden settled on a policy that they thought was both sustainable and would save as many lives as possible. They weren’t trying to ‘show anyone up’ or ‘prove how smart they were’. They simply took a more traditionalist approach that avoided a full-scale lockdown. That’s all.
But that’s the problem, isn’t it? And that’s why Sweden has been so harshly criticized in the media, because they refused to do what everyone else was doing. They refused to adopt a policy that elites now universally support, a policy that scares people into cowering submission. The Swedish model is a threat to that approach because it allows people to maintain their personal freedom even in the midst of a global pandemic. Ruling class elites don’t want that, that is not in their interests. What they want is for the people to meekly accept the rules and conditions that lead to their eventual enslavement. That’s the real objective, complete social control, saving lives has nothing to do with it. Sweden opposed that approach which is why Sweden has to be destroyed. It’s that simple.
Of course, none of this has anything to do with Sweden’s fatality rate, which is higher than some and lower than others. (Sweden has 543 deaths per million, which means roughly 1 death in every 2,000 people.) But like every other country, the vast majority of Swedish fatalities are among people 70 years and older with underlying health conditions. (“90% of the country’s deaths have been among those over 70.”) Sweden was not successful in protecting the people in its elderly care facilities, so large numbers of them were wiped out following the outbreak. Sweden failed in that regard and they’ve admitted they failed. Even so, the failures of implementation do not imply that the policy is wrong. Quite the contrary. Sweden settled on a sustainable policy, that keeps the economy running, preserves an atmosphere of normality, and exposes its young, low-risk people to the infection, thus, moving the population closer to the ultimate goal of “herd immunity”.
[ZH: in Sweden (pop. 10.25m) – where there was no lockdown, huge international criticism of its strategy, and one of the highest fatalities per head in the world – only 70 people under 49 years old have died of Covid-19, out of 5,482 total virus deaths (1.3%) so far. For context, average annual deaths in Sweden over the last 5 years for under-49-year-olds have been 3,417. ]
Presently, Sweden is very close to reaching herd immunity which is a condition in which the majority have developed antibodies that will help to fend-off similar sars-covid infections in the future. Absent a vaccine, herd immunity is the best that can be hoped for. It ensures that future outbreaks will be less disruptive and less lethal. Take a look at this excerpt from an article at the Off-Guardian which helps to explain what’s really going on:
“Sweden’s health minister understood that the only chance to beat COVID-19 was to get the Swedish population to a Herd Immunity Threshold against COVID-19, and that’s exactly what they have done…
The Herd Immunity Threshold (“HIT”) for COVID-19 is between 10-20%
This fact gets less press than any other. Most people understand the basic concept of herd immunity and the math behind it. In the early days, some public health officials speculated that COVID-19’s HIT was 70%. Obviously, the difference between a HIT of 70% and a HIT of 10-20% is dramatic, and the lower the HIT, the quicker a virus will burn out as it loses the ability to infect more people, which is exactly what COVID-19 is doing everywhere, including the U.S, which is why the death curve above looks the way it looks.
Scientists from Oxford, Virginia Tech, and the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, all recently explained the HIT of COVID-19 in this paper:
We searched the literature for estimates of individual variation in propensity to acquire or transmit COVID-19 or other infectious diseases and overlaid the findings as vertical lines in Figure 3. Most CV estimates are comprised between 2 and 4, a range where naturally acquired immunity to SARS-CoV-2 may place populations over the herd immunity threshold once as few as 10-20% of its individuals are immune….
Naturally acquired herd immunity to COVID-19 combined with earnest protection of the vulnerable elderly – especially nursing home and assisted living facility residents — is an eminently reasonable and practical alternative to the dubious panacea of mass compulsory vaccination against the virus.
This strategy was successfully implemented in Malmo, Sweden, which had few COVID-19 deaths by assiduously protecting its elder care homes, while “schools remained open, residents carried on drinking in bars and cafes, and the doors of hairdressers and gyms were open throughout.
One of the most vocal members of the scientific community discussing COVID-19’s HIT is Stanford’s Nobel-laureate Dr. Michael Levitt. Back on May 4, he gave this great interview to the Stanford Daily where he advocated for Sweden’s approach of letting COVID-19 spread naturally through the community until you arrive at HIT. He stated:
If Sweden stops at about 5,000 or 6,000 deaths, we will know that they’ve reached herd immunity, and we didn’t need to do any kind of lockdown. My own feeling is that it will probably stop because of herd immunity. COVID is serious, it’s at least a serious flu. But it’s not going to destroy humanity as people thought.
Guess what? That’s exactly what happened. As of today, 7 weeks after his prediction, Sweden has 5,550 deaths. In this graph, you can see that deaths in Sweden PEAKED when the HIT was halfway to its peak (roughly 7.3%) and by the time the virus hit 14% it was nearly extinguished.”
In other words, Sweden is rapidly approaching the endgame which means that restrictions can be dropped entirely and normal life can resume. They will have maintained their dignity and freedom while the rest of the world hid under their beds for months on end. They won’t have to reopen their primary schools because they never shut them down to begin with. Numerous reports indicate that young children are neither at risk nor do they pass the virus to others. Most Americans don’t know this because the propaganda media has omitted the news from their coverage. Here’s a clip from the National Review which helps to explain:
Kari Stefansson, CEO of the Icelandic company deCODE genetics in Reykjavík, studied the spread of COVID-19 in Iceland with Iceland’s Directorate of Health and the National University Hospital. His project has tested 36,500 people; as of this writing,
Children under 10 are less likely to get infected than adults and if they get infected, they are less likely to get seriously ill. What is interesting is that even if children do get infected, they are less likely to transmit the disease to others than adults. We have not found a single instance of a child infecting parents.”
This is just one of many similar reports from around the world. Most of the schools in Europe have already reopened and lifted restrictions on distancing and masks. Meanwhile, in the US, the reopening of schools has become another contentious political issue pitting Trump against his Democrat adversaries who are willing to sacrifice the lives of schoolchildren to prevent the president from being reelected. It’s a cynical-counterproductive approach that reveals the vindictiveness of the people who support it. In an election year, everything is politics. (Watch Tucker Carlson’s short segment on “Kids cannot afford to stay locked down.“)
Here’s a question for you: Have you ever wondered why the virus sweeps through the population and then seemingly dissipates and dies out? In fact, the virus doesn’t simply die-out, it runs out of people to infect. But how can that be when only 1 of 7 people will ever contract the virus?
The answer is immunity, either natural immunity or built up immunity from other Sars-Covid exposure. Here’s more from the Off Guardian piece:
“Scientists are now showing evidence that up to 81% of us can mount a strong response to COVID-19 without ever having been exposed to it before:
Cross-reactive SARS-CoV-2 T-cell epitopes revealed preexisting T-cell responses in 81% of unexposed individuals, and validation of similarity to common cold human coronaviruses provided a functional basis for postulated heterologous immunity.
This alone could explain WHY the Herd Immunity Threshold (HIT) is so much lower for COVID-19 than some scientists thought originally, when the number being talked about was closer to 70%. Many of us have always been immune!“
It means that Fauci and the idiots in the media have been lying to us the whole time. It means that Covid-19 is not a totally new virus for which humans have no natural immunity or built-in protection. Covid is a derivative of other infections which is why the death toll isn’t alot higher. Check this out from the BBC:
“People testing negative for coronavirus antibodies may still have some immunity, a study has suggested. For every person testing positive for antibodies, two were found to have specific T-cells which identify and destroy infected cells. This was seen even in people who had mild or symptomless cases of Covid-19..
This could mean a wider group have some level of immunity to Covid-19 than antibody testing figures, like those published as part of the UK Office for National Statistics Infection Survey, suggest…..And these people should be protected if they are exposed to the virus for a second time.”
Now, I realize that there’s some dispute about immunity, but there shouldn’t be. If you contract the virus, you either won’t get it again or you’ll get a much milder case. And if immunity doesn’t exist, then we’re crazy to waste our time trying to develop a vaccine, right?
What the science tells us is that immunity does exist and the reason the vast majority of people didn’t get the infection— is not because they locked themselves indoors and hid behind the sofa– but because they already have partial immunity either from their genetic makeup or from previous exposure to Sars-CoV-2 which was identified in 2002.
It’s worth repeating that the reason everyone was so scared about Covid originally was because it was hyped as a “novel virus”, completely new with no known cure or natural protection. That was a lie that was propagated by Fauci and his dissembling Vaccine Mafia, all of who are responsible for the vast destruction to the US economy, the unprecedented spike in unemployment, and the obliteration of tens of thousands of small businesses.
As the author points out, we should have known from the incident on the Diamond Princess (Cruise Liner) that immunity was far more widespread than previously thought. Readers might recall that only 17% of the people on board tested Covid-positive, “despite an ideal environment for mass spread, implying 83% of the people were somehow protected from the new virus.”
Think about that for a minute. All of the passengers were 60 years old or older, but only 17% caught the virus. Why?
Immunity, that’s why. What else could it be? Cross immunity, natural immunity, or SARS-CoV-2 T-cell immunity. Whatever you want to call it, it exists and it explains why the vast majority of people will not get the highly-contagious Covid no matter what they do.
It’s also worth pointing out that even according to the CDC’s own statistics, the Infection Fatality Rate (IFR) is a mere 0.26% whereas “According to the latest immunological and serological studies, the overall lethality of Covid-19 (IFR) is about 0.1% and thus in the range of a strong seasonal influenza (flu).” (“Facts about Covid-19”, Swiss Policy Research)
So the death rate is somewhere in the neighborhood of 1 in every 500 (who contract the virus) to 1 in every 1,000. How can any rational person shut down a $21 trillion economy and order 340 million people into quarantine, based on the fact that 1 in every thousand people (mostly old and infirm) might die from an infection?? That was a act of pure, unalloyed Madness for which the American people will pay dearly for years to come. Once again, the US response was crafted by people who were promoting their own narrow political, social and economic agenda, not acting in the interests of the American people. We should expect more from our leaders than this.
So what does all of this say about the sharp spike in Covid positive cases in the south and the chances of a “second wave”?
There’s not going to be a second wave (The massive BLM protests in NY city has not produced any uptick in deaths, because NY has already achieved herd immunity. In contrast, Florida will undoubtedly experience more fatalities because it has not yet reached HIT or the Herd Immunity Threshold. Cases are increasing because younger- low-risk people are circulating more freely and because testing has increased by many orders of magnitude. At the same time, deaths continue to go down.
On Wednesday, US new cases rose to an eye-watering 62,000 in one day while deaths are down 75% from the April peak. This shouldn’t come as a surprise because the pattern has been the same as in countries around the world. The trajectory of infections was mapped out long ago by UK epidemiologist and statistician, William Farr. Take a look:
“Farr shows us that once peak infection has been reached then it will roughly follow the same symmetrical pattern on the downward slope. However, under testing and variations in testing regimes means we have no way of knowing when the peak of infections occurred. In this situation, we should use the data on deaths to predict the peak. There is a predicted time lag from infection to COVID deaths of approximately 21 to 28 days.
Once peak deaths have been reached we should be working on the assumption that the infection has already started falling in the same progressive steps. …
Farr, also illustrated that those who are the most ‘mortal die out’, and in a pandemic are those in most need of shielding….(So, Farr saw the wisdom of the Swedish approach a full 180 years ago!)
In the midst of a pandemic, it is easy to forget Farr’s Law, and think the number infected will just keep rising, it will not. Just as quick as measures were introduced to prevent the spread of infection we need to recognize the point at which to open up society and also the special measures due to ‘density’ that require special considerations. But most of all we must remember the message Farr left us: what goes up must come down.”
What this tells us is that the fatality rate is a more reliable barometer of what is taking place than the spike in new cases. And what the death rates signals is that the virus is on its last legs. We are not seeing the onset of a second wave, but the gradual ending of the first. Also, the fact that tens of thousands of young people are contracting Covid-19 without experiencing any pain or discomfort, confirms that immunity is widespread. This is a very positive development.
Here’s how Dr. John Thomas Littell, MD, who is President of the County Medical Society, and Chief of Staff at the Florida Hospital, summed it up in a letter to the editor of the Orlando Medical News, He said:
“Why did we as a society stop sending our children to schools and camps and sports activities? Why did we stop going to work and church and public parks and beaches? Why did we insist that healthy persons “stay at home” – rather than observing the evidence-based, medically prudent method of identifying those who were sick and isolating them from the rest of the population – advising the sick to “stay at home” and allowing the rest of society to function normally.”
Why? Because we were misled by Doctor Fauci and the Vaccine Gestapo, that’s why. In contrast, Sweden shrugged off the dire predictions and fearmongering, and “got it right the first time.”
In yet another story highlighting just how intolerant progressives can be, a man who owns and operates a café that hosts drag queens and features Black Lives Matters signs is facing a backlash for saying on MSNBC that he voted for President Donald Trump in 2016 and would do so again.
The New York Times published the article, titled, “The Cafe Has Black Lives Matter Signs. The Owner Voted for Trump.” The article outlines throughout all the liberal and good things the owner, Thomas Bosco, has done for the community, yet none of that matters because of who he voted for in 2016. From the Times:
At Indian Road Cafe in Upper Manhattan, a Black Lives Matter sign hangs in a front window. Local writers, artists, musicians and political activists are regulars. And for years, two drag queens have hosted a monthly charity bingo tournament there.
…
When a worker did not have child care, Mr. Bosco provided it on site, Mr. Bosco and another employee said. They also said that when a different worker feared being stopped by the police and questioned about his immigration status, Mr. Bosco drove that person to and from the cafe.
And on the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday, Mr. Bosco organized a brunch to raise money for an immigrant’s advocacy organization.
Yet none of this mattered because Bosco checked the box for Trump in 2016 and may do so again this year. At least, he was considering voting for Trump again. After the backlash, he now says he isn’t sure. As the Times reported, Bosco wrote an open letter to his community in which he defended his answer and said the MSNBC segment left out important context from his answer:
I answered honestly and from the heart. However, my answer was very much cut short and taken without context in the 9-minute edited version. It missed that I supported, and voted for the last 4 Presidents (including 2 Democrats), that my views are “between the 40’s”/ middle of the road, that I found many things troubling about our administration, but at the end I support the President, the Governor and the Mayor. The headline attributed to me was actually meant for the other guest. It cut out the pain and trouble I find with some things our President says and does. It left out the trouble I was having supporting him. It left out my desire that we all communicate, care for each other, and be examples of the ethic and attitude we wish those that serve us should have.
Bosco said he was “truly sorry if this caused any hurt or pain” and said the clip that aired “did not represent who I am or where my heart and actions are.”
Bosco told the Times that he supported Trump for his belief in “small government, big community.”
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The destroy everything & hate everyone culture has struck again last night as the Washingtonville NY Orange County 9/11 Memorial park was vandalized & AMERICAN FLAG CUT DOWN. These individuals obviously don’t know what sacrificing everything to save a fellow human being really is pic.twitter.com/oUFdh3gWr2 — NYCFireWire (@NYCFireWire) July 8, 2020 Via Fox News: Police […]
The United States is considering restricting Chinese social media platforms as a result of widespread data-mining and national security concerns. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo first addressed the issue Monday, revealing in an interview with Fox News host Laura Ingraham that members of the Trump administration are “looking at” banning prominent video-sharing application TikTok and…
On Wednesday morning’s New Day, CNN co-hosts John Berman and Alisyn Camerota brought on political correspondent Sara Murray to salivate over the supposedly tell-all book authored by President Trump’s niece, Mary Trump. Scrapping all pretense of being journalists, the Democratic hacks eagerly lapped up the book’s “revelations” without even questioning the truth of the wild accusations (like calling Trump a "sociopath"). Berman loved the claim that the President paid someone to take his SAT, but conveniently forgot Joe Biden’s disreputable academic reputation.
The morning show anchor began the segment by expressing his excitement for the “eye-popping” book:
Developing this morning, new details from an eye-popping book written by a member of the Trump family. The President’s niece, Mary Trump. She says her uncle is sociopath and claims he paid someone to take the SAT Test so he could get into Wharton. The book isn’t even out yet but CNN’s Sara Murray has read it. She is live in Washington with some of the details here. And Sara, I guess now we know why the President is so obsessed with people’s college transcripts and obsessed with maybe keeping his own private.
Murray also seemed to be quite exhilarated when discussing the book’s details:
You know, it certainly does have an interesting turnaround there doesn’t it. You know, you can see why the President did not want this book to come out. Mary Trump’s portrait of the President and of the Trump family is certainly very unflattering. She basically says Fred Trump, the patriarch of this family, her grandfather, Donald Trump’s father, really created this toxic environment that led Donald Trump to become a liar, and a cheater, and a sociopath and she does not hold back on you know, releasing these sort of embarrassing anecdotes. And one of them is her allegation that Donald Trump actually paid another kid to take the SATS for him….Which of course is interesting in light of the fact that Donald Trump often brags about how he went to such an amazing school at the University of Pennsylvania….Mary Trump explains that she could not be silent any longer. She says that Donald Trump destroyed her father’s life, that would be Donald Trump’s sibling, Fred Trump Jr., and she said she cannot stand by while Donald Trump destroys the country.
Berman chortled over the academic allegations and played a clip of Trump discussing Barack Obama’s transcripts in order to mock him:
BERMAN: Look, it gets under the President’s skin because the President has made such a colossal deal about how smart he thinks he is. He has all the best words, of course, maybe someone else is actually filling out the ovals and — and figuring out what those words mean. But he also went after President Obama. He demanded President Obama’s transcripts. So, I’m not a psychologist, but I’m sure that a psychologist could find some deflection in statements like this. I think we have the President talking about this when he was then just businessman Trump.
DONALD TRUMP: I heard at Columbia, wasn’t a very good student. He then gets to Harvard. How do you get into Harvard if you’re not a good student? Now, maybe that’s right or maybe it’s wrong, but I don’t know why he doesn’t release his records. Everyone says he was this great student. If he was that’s great, and if he wasn’t, that’s great. I was a very good student.
BERMAN: Oh, my. Oh, my.
Berman clearly does not care whether or not the book is true. He only cares about making Trump look bad with the presidential election looming.
Speaking of the election, if Berman were to be an actual journalist instead of a Democratic mouthpiece, he could discuss Joe Biden’s academic record. Biden has plagiarized multiple speeches and was caught cheating in law school. He also lied about finishing in the top half of his class in law school.
Camerota ended the segment by discussing Mary Trump’s claim that the President is a “sociopath”:
Maybe this will make him release the transcripts of his college career. That would be interesting to see. You know, back to the — the fact that she’s a clinical psychologist. She labels him a sociopath, which means no conscience, no empathy.
Camerota does not care about the veracity of such a nasty insult, fact checking is not for Democratic shills. Instead, she ended the segment by calling the unverified claims “revelations.” This is characteristic of her, as she also fawned over John Bolton’s book about Trump and seemed to believe every negative claim without question.
CNN has an election to help the Democrats win, and it will use anything it can to attack Trump.
This Democratic propaganda was brought to viewers by Entyvio and NordicTrack.
Here is the full July 8th transcript:
CNN New Day
07/08/20
6:26:31 AM
JOHN BERMAN: Developing this morning, new details from an eye-popping book written by a member of the Trump family. The President’s niece, Mary Trump. She says her uncle is sociopath and claims he paid someone to take the SAT Test so he could get into Wharton. The book isn’t even out yet but CNN’s Sara Murray has read it. She is live in Washington with some of the details here. And Sara, I guess now we know why the President is so obsessed with people’s college transcripts and obsessed with maybe keeping his own private.
SARA MURRAY (CNN POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT): You know, it certainly does have an interesting turnaround there doesn’t it. You know, you can see why the President did not want this book to come out. Mary Trump’s portrait of the President and of the Trump family is certainly very unflattering. She basically says Fred trump, the patriarch of this family, her grandfather, Donald Trump’s father, really created this toxic environment that led Donald Trump to become a liar, and a cheater, and a sociopath and she does not hold back on you know, releasing these sort of embarrassing anecdotes. And one of them is her allegation that Donald Trump actually paid another kid to take the SATS for him. So here’s what the book says. It says, Trump worried that his grade point average, which put him far from the top of his class, would scuttle his efforts to get accepted. Trump enlisted a smart kid with a reputation for being a good test taker to take his SATS for him. Donald, who never lacked for funds, paid his buddy well. Which of course is interesting in light of the fact that Donald Trump often brags about how he went to such an amazing school at the University of Pennsylvania. Now, the White House is responding to this book. They said, President Trump has been in office for over three years working on behalf of the American people. Why speak out now? The president describes the relationship he had with his father as warm and said his father was very good to him. He said his father was loving and not at all hard on him as a child. Well, in her book, Mary Trump explains that she could not be silent any longer. She says that Donald Trump destroyed her father’s life, that would be Donald Trump’s sibling, Fred Trump Jr., and she said she cannot stand by while Donald Trump destroys the country.
ALISYN CAMEROTA: Back to his aptitude as a student, Mary Trump names the kid who took the test for him, right? Does she use a name in this book about who she says did this?
MURRAY: She does. She names a guy named Joe Shapiro, who she says was one of Donald Trump’s coworkers — classmates at the time. You know, the White House did respond to this SAT thing in particular and they said it was absurd, which I think gives you an indication of how that little detail may be getting under the President’s skin. But it is — you know, a detailed anecdote for something that obviously happened a very long time ago.
BERMAN: Look, it gets under the President’s skin because the President has made such a colossal deal about how smart he thinks he is. He has all the best words, of course, maybe someone else is actually filling out the ovals and — and figuring out what those words mean. But he also went after President Obama. He demanded President Obama’s transcripts. So, I’m not a psychologist, but I’m sure that a psychologist could find some deflection in statements like this. I think we have the President talking about this when he was then just businessman Trump.
[Cuts to video]
DONALD TRUMP: I heard at Columbia, wasn’t a very good student. He then gets to Harvard. How do you get into Harvard if you’re not a good student? Now, maybe that’s right or maybe it’s wrong, but I don’t know why he doesn’t release his records. Everyone says he was this great student. If he was that’s great, and if he wasn’t, that’s great. I was a very good student.
[Cuts to live]
BERMAN: Oh, my. Oh, my.
MURRAY: Yeah. Yeah. Donald Trump loves to brag about what a great student he was. And I think this is such an interesting portrait because Mary Trump, of course, is giving this view from inside the family. Now, granted, there’s a lot of bad blood within the Trump family, but she’s also, as you point out, giving her view as a clinical psychologist. So for anyone who’s ever kind of wanted to play armchair psychologist to the President or has been curious about playing this role, I think this book kind of gives you an avenue in to do that. And she does pick at the things the President likes to brag about. You know, that he was a really good student, that he had really good grades. You know, she also, of course, digs into the family’s wealth and the notion that Donald Trump, you know, was not actually this big, self-made billionaire. You know, he — he didn’t match the aura that he was giving off. And, actually, it was all of this family money and all of this money from his father that was helping to prop him up. So I think there are a lot of moments in this book that are — that are the kinds of things that really bother the President.
CAMERATO: Maybe this will make him release the transcripts of his college career. That would be interesting to see. You know, back to the — the fact that she’s a clinical psychologist. She labels him a sociopath, which means no conscience, no empathy, and does she — I mean we don’t — we don’t have much time, Sara, but does she say what caused that?
MURRAY: You know, she basically says that he has no disregard for other people and she ties a lot of this to the way that he was raised and to the way that Fred Trump raised him. You know, the notion that your value is all your monetary value and what you bring to the table. Your value is not, you know, your life as a human being.
CAMERATO: Sara, thank you very much. We will talk more about the book and its revelations in the program.
Mark Levin blasted the decision and warned the SCOTUS judges that Congress can now subpoena their tax returns!
2. I can see a situation in which the House or the Senate decides that it must have access to all of the justices’ tax and financial records each year to determine if they’re influences in any way to write the decisions they write or vote the way they vote on numerous cases.
3. The justices will not be able to argue that they are immune as a matter of separation of powers as they just shot down that argument as applies to the president.
Mark Levin then clarified that it is the New York grand jury that can subpoena the SCOTUS members’ tax returns.
Actually, Congress did not get the President’s tax returns. The Manhattan DA may get the information. And the congressional subpoena issues have been punted to the lower courts.
Actually, Congress did not get the President’s tax returns. The Manhattan DA may get the information. And the congressional subpoena issues have been punted to the lower courts.
Congresswoman Ilhan Omar declared during a press conference yesterday that America’s “system of oppression” must be “dismantled.” She identified our political and economic systems, as well as the criminal justice system, as perpetuators of this oppression.
While listening to Omar deliver one of her trademark soliloquies about our evil and oppressive country, one wonders what exactly is this oppression she speaks of? Who is being oppressed and in what way are they being oppressed?
Omar is not the only one painting such a dystopian picture of our society. This is the message we hear all across the Left — from the protesters and riots, from Hollywood, from academia, from the media. Take this article just published by Teen Vogue, claiming that the United States is “by every indication, more committed to death, subjugation, and grief than life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” To prove the point, the author (who, for the record, goes by the Twitter handle @SatansJacuzzi) points to the recent but unconnected murders of two women. A vague attempt is made to link their deaths to racism. But what the esteemed Satan’s Jacuzzi neglects to mention is that both women were killed by black men.
Why didn’t the author use more useful and relevant examples of black women killed by white men? Probably because such cases are exceedingly rare. Despite America being, as the piece says, “a vast tapestry of death,” the fact is that white people rarely kill black people. The reverse is also true. As FBI statistics show, the vast majority of blacks are killed by blacks, and whites by whites. Interracial murders do occur, but very rarely, and the rare black-on-white murder is twice as common as the reverse.
And yet people are marching through the streets with signs screaming “Stop killing us.” A writer for the Atlantic is more specific, saying, “I want white people to stop killing us.” We are supposed to believe that black people are being hunted and gunned down in the street by racist whites, but this epidemic of racial violence is almost entirely imaginary. It’s a fable that is being repeated over and over again, from all corners of society, until people are persuaded just by the force of sheer repetition.
Even McDonald’s is getting in on the act. The fast food chain recently tweeted a video of a “trans woman” pleading with the public to “stop killing us.” Once again, the plea is unnecessary. The supposed problem of anti-trans violence is a myth. Trans people are murdered — just like people of all groups are murdered, given that we are mortal beings living in a human society — but almost all of the murders are tied to domestic violence, prostitution, or drugs. Bigotry rarely has anything to do with it.
McDonald’s is not alone. A great many of the largest and richest corporations in America have adopted the far-left talking points of Black Lives Matter and done their part to spread the misinformation to the public, which is not exactly what you’d expect in a country supposedly committed to the oppression and extermination of racial minorities. Indeed, corporations are so firmly on the side of the alleged “oppressed” that Colin Kaepernick has been able to parlay his oppression into multi-million dollar partnerships with three major corporations. He now has deals in place with Disney, Nike, and Netflix. Not a bad kind of persecution, if you can find it.
Not every allegedly oppressed person is as rich and (unduly) admired as Kaepernick. But, statistically speaking, almost everyone in this country is richer, freer, and more comfortable than almost everyone else who has lived on Earth at any point in history, anywhere on the globe. We all enjoy an unprecedented amount of freedom and luxury. Some of us more than others — we can’t all be as privileged as Colin Kaepernick — but even the most economically disadvantaged in our society still have liberties and luxuries unknown to the poor and downtrodden elsewhere on the planet and throughout history. None of this means that we should be complacent or accepting of actual injustice when it occurs, but it does make you wonder why now, of all times, and here, of all places, we should be seeing crazed mobs burning cities and calling for the dismantling of the system that has made them historically secure and comfortable in the first place.
I think the answer is that struggle is a basic human need. Humans, it turns out, must have something to struggle against, fight against, overcome. Humans need, even, to suffer — if only in manageable doses. What we cannot do is sit still, luxuriating in our comforts, and remarking on how easy we have it. We cannot be happy that way. Decadence is not quite as fun or fulfilling as we thought it would be. We need a struggle of some kind, but in modern society, there aren’t many forms of struggle immediately on offer. So we have to create one for ourselves.
There are two ways to go about this: the healthy or unhealthy way. The healthy way is to set out to do constructive and meaningful things that are difficult and require sacrifice. The most obvious and important example of this is starting a family. By starting a family, you make your life far more complicated, but in the bargain you get love, meaning, purpose, and an escape from loneliness.
And then there are the smaller undertakings, the little things people can do to purposefully make their lives a little harder than they need to be. Gardening, hunting, fishing, fixing your own plumbing, changing your own oil, making meals from scratch, etc. Modern society has provided much easier ways to obtain the practical benefits of all of these kinds of things, but we do them anyway, because it takes effort, and healthy people find value in putting in the effort. It is work largely for its own sake.
There was a time of course — the majority of human history, in fact — when people had no choice but to do everything the hard way. If you wanted something built, you had to build it. If you wanted something to eat, you had to grow it, kill it, or catch it. And we notice that in those times, there rarely were people marching through the streets over imaginary oppression. They had their struggle. They lived it every day. There was no need to create any new ones for themselves. Because every other human need was not automatically met, the human need for struggle was always met.
But what happens when someone rejects all of the fruitful and constructive outlets to satisfy this need? Then they resort to self-martyrdom and persecution complexes. For a lot of people, this means randomly ruining their relationships, creating drama where it doesn’t need to be, and convincing themselves that everyone is out to get them. They thrive on gossip, envy, and feelings of personal offense and injury. They are likely to find supposed backstabbers, cheaters, liars, and fake friends everywhere they go, because that is how they see the world; it is the struggle they have made for themselves. “Why can’t I find an honest man,” a woman of this sort will lament. The answer is that she can find an honest man, and quite easily, but she doesn’t want to. She has found meaning in her manufactured struggle, and she doesn’t want to let it go.
The protesters are in this camp, doing a version of this same thing. They fulfill their need for struggle by making up elaborate mythologies about oppression and persecution. They convince themselves that they are in a fight for their lives against the murderous racists and oppressive bigots who lurk around every corner. It’s all hallucinatory, a mirage for people whose freedom and luxury has made them thirst for struggle the way a man in the desert thirsts for water. But mirage or not, they will hang onto it and no mere fact or statistic will be allowed to interfere. They are determined to take vengeance on America, even if America never did anything to them but give them everything they could ever want or need. The irony is that if they succeed, if they actually do tear this country down, dismantle it, then the luxury and freedom and comfort will disappear, and they will finally get the authentic version of the oppression they so desperately want.
And once they have it, they will quickly decide that they don’t really want it. But then they will no longer have a choice. All they will be able to do is lie in the bed that they have made.
