Everyone has flowcharts, companies have them, to perform CPR there is a flowchart, to fix a car there is a flowchart, to diagnose illness or even make financial decisions, there’s a flowchart.
So I decided I needed to make us a little flowchart. It’s another one of those things where I see two things that fit together, well, in my mind.
First off we have this story about a 25 year old woman. She was alone at a bus stop minding her own business in essentially gun free, so crime free Chicago. Or, as some call is Chi-raq.
Residents are praising the 25 year-old woman, with a concealed carry license, who shot and killed a man who was trying to rob her at a bus stop.
Surveillance video shows the woman waiting alone at a bus stop at 103rd and Wallace around 5:45 a.m. Tuesday. Police say a 19-year-old man, in a light colored hoodie, pulled a gun on the woman in an attempt to rob her.
She pulled out her own gun and shot him in the neck.
How’s about that! So that made it all the more interesting when I saw this cartoon on facebook the other day. My buddy Chris puts up great stuff. Then I’ve been watching Miss Fisher Murder Mysteries. It’s set in 1920s Australia, before it was a gun free paradise. Back when women could defend themselves. This was the first one I watched called I believe “Cocaine Blues”. Costumes are beautiful, very elegant, the cars are amazing and the music is swell. The stories are great, when watching the first one it hit me! A flowchart. A simple flowchart to determine if you value women’s lives. To be fair, it can be anyone’s life, but all these stories involve women. Apples to apples don’t you know?
I had an interesting discussion with a girlfriend of mine the other day. I made the statement I thought someone was evil. She disagreed and said she didn’t think people were evil, some just made bad choices, even appalling choices. But people weren’t evil.
Yeah, I think they are. I watched a show the other night that talked about Nellie May Madison. Born in 1895, Nellie was an interesting lady. Raised on a ranch in Montana she learned to shoot, ride and survive in the wild from a young age. She was also the first woman in California sentenced to death for the murder of her husband. Nellie’s first set of lawyers did her no favors, and she got a judge determined to make an example of her. Luckily for her, she had a lawyer as one of her ex-husbands and he persuaded her to get a different lawyer and appeal. When the legendary Aggie Underwood got involved her sentence was commuted and eventually she was paroled. So why did she kill her husband (other than some people just need killing)? She could have been one of the first #MeToo people as well as the first woman on death row. Her husband had a nasty tendency to marry women, then abuse them, pick up teenage hookers, force his wives to write letters that they had been unfaithful because back then that was a sure way to win in court and then beat them. When Nellie held a gun on him and told him to give the letter back, he pulled a box of knives out from under the bed, told her he’d cut her heart out and flung a couple of the knives at her. He missed. She didn’t. But he had seemed so charming when she met him. Snappy dresser, nice car and treated her well. Pretty much the same thing his first wife said. He was really nice, till he wasn’t.
There are a lot of documentaries and crime shows with the topic of people that seemed to be kind, compassionate wonderful people. And how shocked people were when the found out that John Wayne Gacy , Bob Berdella, Samuel Little and the very charming Ted Bundy killed people. Stories of how people had been taken in by someone that seemed wonderful only to lose family members to them, or to be hauled into the police station to see when they knew about the neighborhood rapes, murders, thefts, whatever. These people didn’t see the traits, if they saw them they didn’t recognize what they were and if the did see the signs and suspect they tamped down their uneasiness and stifled their fears. And sometimes they had fears of their own and were unable to do anything useful, such as calling police, due to those.
FBI murder statistics 2017
So, when I think of evil, I think of someone who takes pleasure in hurting others in some form or fashion. I think of someone who has no empathy for others, and only sees people as someone who will help them get what they want, or is preventing or standing in the way of them getting something they want. Which is part of what got me to thinking about psychopaths. There are differences between psychopaths and sociopaths.
And if you’re really curious, this video explains a lot.
Again, victims usually do not understand what is occurring until it is too late. The psychopath may have already launched smear campaigns, taken unfounded legal action, and manipulated those the victim cares about, simply for sport. Once the victims begin sharing their stories with others, the people to whom they tell these stories, often cannot believe what they are hearing. It is common for others to be in disbelief, either because they perceive the victim as an unlikely candidate for targeting or abuse, or because the stories can seem so inherently unlikely that it may be difficult, at first, to believe they are true.
Because they are very convincing, and excellent at lying. The psychopath doesn’t really have a conscience, while the sociopath does, but it’s small and ineffective.
Why are the always usually successful? Because they are really, really good at picking their victims.
The sad thing is, most of us have traits that make us susceptible. Things like compassion, extroverted or introverted, sensitivity to the feelings of others, “go with the flow” attitude, competitive or sentimentality are all traits that can be exploited by someone with “antisocial personality disorder”, the comprehensive phrase for both psychopath and sociopath.
Several of the sites I did some reading on advise trusting your instincts, but sadly a lot can happen before the warning bell goes off it seems.
But what really got me to thinking about this, is a couple of the stories I’ve put up on social media for The Zelman Partisans recently about how the grabby giffords crew and the elitist Michael Bloomberg have been pushing the “red flag” laws, extreme order of protection in different states. They confiscate first and ask questions later. If you’re still alive after the confiscation. Maryland Red Flag Gun Confiscation Order Ends with Dead Gun Owner.
While some of those with “antisocial personality disorder” may not be violent, some obviously are. And now the criminal protection bunch have made it even easier. They don’t need to disarm the victims themselves, they just make a phone call and the law will do it for them.
You know, I believe I’m in favor of a law allowing civil lawsuits against the sponsor of such legislation when they result in a death. Like waiting periods cost Carol Browne her life because the restraining order only made her a target. So yes, I think we need legislation that when a civilian disarming law is passed, that those harmed by it are allowed to sue the sponsor and co-sponsor of such legislation. I realize it’s probably a pipe dream, but hey! If it saves just one life.
As a child growing up, most of the TV shows tended to portray law enforcement as heroes. They always got there in the nick of time, and if they were called in after the unfortunate event happened? They always knew what to do about that as well. They could do a dandy chalk outline of the corpse and then find out who made that happen to the unfortunate victim. And the really superior thing about law-enforcement back then is they could always make it happen in an hour. Minus the time for commercials of course. That’s not like the modern day shows that have running story lines. Like soap operas did when I was growing up. This is back before the day of “Cops as the bad guys”. Oh of course there have always been bad cops, it’s just they weren’t really so much a part of the TV land experience back then. We were taught to respect them, and if we were in trouble, look for a cop. TV shows where the guys stealing cars were the good guys didn’t happen. Nor was there near the amount of realism that you see in shows today.
Hospitals probably weren’t target rich environments back then, aka “gun-free zones”. But to be honest, I doubt that many people carried while at work either. It’s just that now the signs make it clear unless the crew of “Third Watch” happens to be in the ER waiting room they can pretty much be assured everyone will be doing what the medical staff was doing. Ducking, hiding, running, praying. Because throwing chairs, rocks and baseball bats don’t look to be a viable option to me there. No one is going to be firing back at them.
So if the crew of “Third Watch” happens to be in the ER waiting room, and 1-Adam12 has been dispatched to assist in response to Cruz’s call in for back up, how long will it take for Malloy and Reed to arrive on the scene?
“I would just call 911 for help.” There’s this false sense of security that we have created with the 911 system that has people believing that with a single call, a swat team will be dispatched immediately to save you and your family within moments of the call.
Unfortunately, this couldn’t be further from the truth. So what is the average-police-response-time to a 911 call?
According to American Police Beat, the average response time for an emergency call is 10 minutes. Atlanta has the worst response time with 11 to 12 minutes and Nashville comes in at a lightning speed of 9 minutes.
The Department of Justice, with their statistical prowess, reports that the best response time is 4 minutes and the worst over 1 hour. Interpretation? If you live in an upper income area you probably are privy to the 4 minute response time, while middle to rural areas will see a much longer response time.
Now here is where things get interesting. Even though the Department of Justice determined that the average police response time to a 911 call is 4 minutes, the average interaction time between a criminal and his victim is 90 seconds.
That translates to you being robbed/injured/maimed/raped/murdered and waiting for an additional 2 and a half minutes for the police to arrive. The truth of the matter is that the police will almost always arrive AFTER the crime has happened and the criminal has gone.
In rural areas the time can be even longer. A lot longer. Think 30 minutes, maybe more. It’s not that they are hanging out at donut shops, or trying to get someone at Taco Smell to take their order, there is a lot that goes into 9-1-1 calls, and a lot of calls can go into 9-1-1. The lady with the cat in the tree may have got a call in seconds before you were calling in about the guy fixin to come in through your back door.
There are four possible ways to mitigate the damage inflicted by an active shooter. You can harden the target, arm and train potential victims, strengthen prevention programs and suspect identification, and improve law enforcement response times. Each one of these steps is easier said than done because of the associated bureaucratic, political, and budgetary considerations.
Department of Homeland Security research reveals that the average duration of an active shooter incident at a school is 12.5 minutes. In contrast, the average response time for law enforcement is 18 minutes. That means it only makes sense for us to find ways to improve our response times. Working on our response times is about the only anti-active shooter measure that we can take at the operator level. We must find a way to shave off some time and in doing so, create some type of tactical advantage.
A little discouraging that political weighs into the mix making it harder. But when you consider two Buckets O’Chum in Florida were part of Barry’s social engineering project where by kids got a pass on criminal behavior to make statistics look better and law-enforcement agencies got money in return, I guess it’s the truth. Both of them had criminal actions in their backgrounds. Were they in jail? Juvenile court? Detention? Nope.
But you know what the bottom line on all of this is? They don’t gotta. What do I mean? They police do not have a duty to protect you, yours, your kith or your kin. Or Barbie either for that matter. I know, I know that’s what it says on the side of the Police cars, “To Serve and Protect”. Look, everyone needs a goal, a mission statement if you will. So think of it like that, it’s a goal, it’s their mission. Mine is to lose 7 pounds. They have equal chances of succeeding. They can’t be everywhere at once and fried okra still exists in the world.
This has become an issue again the wake of the actions of the law enforcement of Coward County Florida. Scot Petersen, not the Scott Peterson who murdered his pregnant wife, he’s still on death row, but the deputy who cowered outside as a Bucket O’Chum shot students in a Parkland school after security monitor Andrew Medina failed to confront O’Chum when he saw him or call a “Code Red” in the school. So, because Parkland is a safe gun-free zone and had the crack Coward law-enforcement on hand you have a massive #GunControlFail.
A judge has rejected a deputy’s claim that he had no duty to confront the gunman during the school shooting in Parkland, Florida.
Refusing to dismiss a lawsuit filed by the parent of a victim, Broward Circuit Judge Patti Englander Henning found after a hearing Wednesday that ex-deputy Scot Peterson did have a duty to protect those inside the school where 17 people died and 17 were wounded on Feb. 14. Video and other evidence shows Peterson, the only armed officer at the school, remained outside while shots rang out.
The negligence lawsuit was filed by Andrew Pollack, whose daughter Meadow was killed. He said it made no sense for Peterson’s attorneys to argue that a sworn law enforcement officer with a badge and a gun had no requirement to go inside.
“Then what is he doing there?” Pollack said after the ruling. “He had a duty. I’m not going to let this go. My daughter, her death is not going to be in vain.”
Bloom ruled that the two agencies had no constitutional duty to protect students who were not in custody.
“The claim arises from the actions of [shooter Nikolas] Cruz, a third party, and not a state actor,” she wrote in a ruling Dec. 12. “Thus, the critical question the Court analyzes is whether defendants had a constitutional duty to protect plaintiffs from the actions of Cruz.
“As previously stated, for such a duty to exist on the part of defendants, plaintiffs would have to be considered to be in custody” — for example, as prisoners or patients of a mental hospital, she wrote.
Police are not the only ones shielded from the consequences of the failure to protect. Another truly horrific case is that of DeShaney v. Winnebago County. That was a spectacular failure of a ‘child protection team,’ consisting of a pediatrician, a psychologist, a police detective, the county’s lawyer, several DSS caseworkers, and various hospital personnel, and the juvenile court. They returned a badly abused child to his custodial father. The father did not meet the requirements in the following year and the child protective services did______________nada, zip, zilch, zero, squat. Eventually the poor little four year old boy was beaten so badly he wound up in a institution for the rest of his life. His dad served less than 2 years in jail. And the child protection team? The department of social services that did nothing on their follow up visits? Nothing, nothing happened to any of them when the child’s mother attempted to sue. I’m thinking the court that awarded custody to the dad should be included in the list of shame there as well.
And what say the anti-gun, anti-self defense pink hatted faux feminists? Don’t get a gun, just go through the legal system. Get a restraining order and then sic the cops on him. And Town of Castle Rock v. Gonzales will show you that works as well as the law enforcement team of Coward County. That resulted in 3 dead little girls at the hand of their loving father. The mother had begged police to go find the girls. Her ex walked right through the paper target.
This reality does belie the often-made claim, however, that police agencies deserve the tax money and obedience of local citizens because the agencies “keep us safe.”
Nevertheless, we are told there is an agreement here — a “social contract” — between government agencies and the taxpayers and citizens.
And, by the very nature of being a contract, we are meant to believe this is a two-way street. The taxpayers are required to submit to a government monopoly on force, and to pay these agencies taxes.
In return, these government agents will provide services. In the case of police agencies, these services are summed up by the phrase “to protect and serve” — a motto that has in recent decades been adopted by numerous police agencies.
But what happens when those police agencies don’t protect and serve? That is, what happens when one party in this alleged social contract doesn’t keep up its end of the bargain.
The answer is: very little.
The Mises Institute also makes another excellent point.
The taxpayers will still have to pay their taxes and submit to police agencies as lawful authority. If the agencies or individual agents are forced to pay as a result of lawsuits, it’s the taxpayers who will pay for that too.
Oh sure, the senior leadership positions may change, but the enormous agency budgets will remain, the government agents themselves will continue to collect generous salaries and pensions, and no government will surrender its monopoly on the use of force.
No government will surrender it’s monopoly on power? Well what I ask, could go wrong with that??
“Guns would have served as a vital pillar to remaining a free people, or at least able to put up a fight,” Javier Vanegas, 28, a Venezuelan teacher of English now exiled in Ecuador, told Fox News. “The government security forces, at the beginning of this debacle, knew they had no real opposition to their force. Once things were this bad, it was a clear declaration of war against an unarmed population.”
Under the direction of then-President Hugo Chavez, the Venezuelan National Assembly in 2012 enacted the “Control of Arms, Munitions and Disarmament Law,” with the explicit aim to “disarm all citizens.” The law took effect in 2013, with only minimal pushback from some pro-democracy opposition figures, banned the legal commercial sale of guns and munitions to all – except government entities.
Happy Hanukkah! The story that celebrates the victory of the Maccabees, a Jewish Priestly family from Modiin that aren’t Israeli, didn’t live in Israel and they defeated the Greek empire that wanted to force them to abandon their faith, their heritage and their G-d.
If I were going to write the story today I would cast Jewish Voices for Peace, J street, If Not Now, B’Tselem, and leftist Jews as the Hellenistic Jews of the Hanukkah story. Because they work against Israel and those that want to live life according to Torah. It’s kind of interesting to me, I recently took a class called “Wrestling With Faith” in it we talked about the Mitzvot. The 613 little holy bread crumbs G-d gave to leave a path for us to follow to find him. You want to get to know someone? You ask him or her questions about themselves, and sometimes getting that information is like pulling teeth. G-d plays no such games with us. He says these things I like, these things I don’t like. You want to make me smile? You want to show you are a child who listen to their father? These are house rules. Which kind of baffles me when people tell me they don’t matter anymore. Maybe I just haven’t found the Parasha where it says G-d changed him mind about those. But that was the point of the Hellenization. To separate the Jews from the things that G-d ask. It’s like doing everything the opposite of what your boss, significant other, spouse or coach says you should do and then expecting them to still feel the same way about you. It doesn’t usually play out that way. So Hellenization was meant to turn people from the worship of G-d to the worship of the human body, art, and pagan rituals. They wanted to convince the Jews living in Israel that they didn’t need to observe the new months, circumcision, Torah study, Shabbat observance. They wanted to drive a wedge between the people and G-d.
For more info on this history of Hanukkah and information you’ll find we’ve got quite a few choices.
It definitely wasn’t safe to openly practice being a Jew in Israel at that time. As other times down through history different people of different nations have tried to eradicate Jews and their Judaism. It never began with cattle cars, concentration camps and ovens. It began with yellow stars and discrimination. At the end of WWII the world joined us in vowing #NeverAgain, and now there has been a self serving attempt to cheapen that phrase by a money grubbing, attention seeking political pawn who is protected by armed guards even as he oinks out that those that can’t afford paid protection be rendered defenseless. Little swine.
Did we think that would be the final attempt after the final solution? Well, it wasn’t.
One of the two new muslims elected to congress. She is leading a group to Israel, but not to visit Israeli Jews, Arabs, Christians and Druze. Nope, to visit the ancient people (est. 1964) Falestinians. The other muslim Ilhan Omar of Minnesota is also no friend.
Tlaib in the interview also came out in support of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel, which she said brings attention to “issues like the racism and the international human rights violations by Israel right now.”
Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, the other Muslim woman elected to Congress in November, said in an interview shortly after the election that she supports the BDS movement after saying during her campaign that it was “counteractive” and prevents dialogue.
What do people not yet accept or understand about “taquia”?
One might think it’s becoming unsafe in America for Jews to openly admit or display their faith. One would be correct. From wonderful Jack Engelhard in a column titled Americas Hidden Jews. This whole column is well worth reading.
Professor of Jewish and Holocaust studies at Columbia University Elizabeth Midlarsky is about the only one at the college who dares to identify herself openly as Jewish.
Let that sink in.
Remember, this is America. This is New York.
A few days ago she walked into her office to find it vandalized with anti-Semitic graffiti. “They got me,” she told The Washington Post. “I’m afraid.
And then we have Airbnb or AirBS depending on if you ask the company or me what their name is. AirBS is a site where people can list property, apartments or rooms they have to rent to vacationers. They have recently decided parts of Israel aren’t in Israel. So any of the Jewish homes listed in Judea and Samaria, the Biblical heartland, were removed. Not the Falistinian ones mind you, they’re still listed. Just not the Jewish ones. Have they done this in any other part of the world where there is dissension occurring? Why do I bother asking? Of course not. It is flat out anti-semitism. Are they being called out for it. Nope.
Remember in the Hanukkah story how a Hellenized Jew was going to sacrifice a pig on the alter in Modiin since Matthias Maccabee refused to do so? Matthias killed the corrupted Jew, and then the King’s officer that was commanding such a thing. There would be no pigs sacrificed on alters in the Maccabee name. The Hellenized Jews were trying to corrupt the pure ones. They’re still active today.
American Jewish peace activists who have spent much of their lives fighting discrimination against ethnic minorities, have decided there is one form of discrimination they support: discrimination against Jews who reside in Judea-Samaria.
According to the leftist Jews, that most likely do celebrate Hanukkah, as most all Jews do celebrate Hanukkah, Modiin, land of the Maccabees, IS NOT IN ISRAEL. Nope. Who knew?
Daniel Pipes is determined to make it clear to the Arabs in Judea and Samaria that in order to survive they must recognize Israel.
The Maccabeean revolt was a two fold war. One, it was incredible military victories, G-d gave many many miracles over the years the battles were fought. The other was the war of faith, religion or culture. However you choose to look at it.
I think I’m going to have to disagree with Lord Rabbi Jonathan Sacks this time. In his Hanukkah message this year he seems to me at least, to believe the great battle was for education, not military battles. I believe without the military battle of G-d through the Maccabees, there would have been no educational victories. To quote Dinesh D’Souza yesterday, he was discussing the difference between George H.W. Bush and President Trump. He said “sometimes you need Mother Teresa, and sometimes you need Dirty Harry”. I would add and sometimes, no one less than Judah Maccabee will do.
So this last week the Parasha was Vayishlach. This is an exciting portion. It’s when Jacob/Yakov/Israel returns home from his exile working for his crooked uncle Laban. Yakov had fled his brother Esav’s murderous rage after Esav regretted having sold his birthright for a bowl of beans, lentils. Esav didn’t value his birthright in the least. Probably a message in there for those that would pressure Israel to give up land for peace. It never works, because like Esav, they just always want more and don’t keep their end of the bargain. So, Yakov is returning home with his wives, their handmaidens and 12 children, a passel of camels, donkeys, sheep, goats and some servants. Yakov has done well, he is a very successful shepherd. But, he is in a quandary, what will his meeting with his brother be like? Will Esav still want to kill him, or will time have mellowed him. Yakov sends angels to ascertain his intentions. Turns out Esav hasn’t changed a bit. He’s heading towards Yakov with 400 men. Yakov is way outnumbered.
Then Jacob was greatly afraid and distressed (Gen. 32:8)
The fear is understandable, but his response contains an enigma. Why the duplication of verbs? What is the difference between fear and distress? To this a Midrash gives a profound answer:
Rabbi Judah bar Ilai said: Are not fear and distress identical? The meaning, however, is that “he was afraid” that he might be killed; “he was distressed” that he might kill. For Jacob thought: If he prevails against me, will he not kill me; while if I prevail against him, will I not kill him? That is the meaning of “he was afraid” – lest he should be killed; “and distressed” – lest he should kill.
And this brings us to self-defense.
One might argue that Jacob should surely not be distressed about the possibility of killing Esau, for there is an explicit rule: “If someone comes to kill you, forestall it by killing him.” Nonetheless, Jacob did have qualms, fearing that in the course of the fight he might kill some of Esau’s men, who were not themselves intent on killing him but merely on fighting his men. And even though Esau’s men were pursuing Jacob’s men, and every person has the right to save the life of the pursued at the cost of the life of the pursuer, nonetheless there is a condition: “If the pursued could have been saved by maiming a limb of the pursuer, but instead the rescuer killed the pursuer, the rescuer is liable to capital punishment on that account.” Hence Jacob feared that, in the confusion of battle, he might kill some of Esau’s men when he might have restrained them by merely inflicting injury on them.
Self defense is very definitely a Jewish concept, but unlike his brother Esav who delights in it, Yakov will do so if required, but he wants to avoid it. The taking of a life is not something to be done lightly. So what did he do to try to prevent needless loss of life?
He had a three pronged approach. Prayer, he threw himself on G-d’s mercy, he sent lavish tribute female and male goats, sheep, donkeys, camels all with the proper proportion for the most effective breeding program. Sort of a gift that keeps on giving. But then he prepared for battle. He divided his people into camps, his thinking was that if one camp was attacked the other might escape. Then he had the children with each of their mothers. Yakov knew the four women would fight for their children, so he left the children with their mothers, then he placed himself in front of them. Esav would have to go through Yakov to get to his family.
I’ve heard the opinion that if Yakov had really trusted G-d there would have been none of this battle preparation business. He would have just gone and met his brother. I don’t agree with this opinion. I think people are people and they have plans of their own. Plans I may not appreciate or agree with. I think if their plans concern me, I want a say in how they turn out. As Esav’s plans would have included Yakov’s family, I figure he felt the same way. There are cemeteries with those that refused to believe anything bad would happen to them. I’ve heard that there were Jews in the Warsaw ghetto that refused the chance to escape because they didn’t really think the nazis wanted to annihilate them, and perhaps, because they expected a miracle. I heard Rabbi Tovia Singer say in a lecture that while the Jewish nation will always be preserved, that promise does not extend to individuals. I’ve also heard it said that when you pray for help, you usually have to do something, expend some kind of effort for him to have something to help you with. And so, Yakov had his three pronged approach, which ultimately was successful. There was no battle between brothers, only a brotherly meeting, with quite possibly temporary brotherly feelings judging from Yakov’s refusal of Esav’s offer to escort them. It’s like having a black snake to guard your chicken house from mice. Yeah….the snake may eat the mice, but more than likely it is eating the chicken eggs, and/or baby chicks. I’ll pass, and Yakov did as well.
Yakov and concealed carry holders face a moral dilemma. More from Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks.
Moral dilemmas are situations in which doing the right thing is not the end of the matter. The conflict may be inherently tragic. Jacob, in this parsha, finds himself trapped in such a conflict: on the one hand, he ought not allow himself to be killed; on the other, he ought not kill someone else; but he must do one or the other. The fact that one principle (self-defence) overrides another (the prohibition against killing) does not mean that, faced with such a choice, he is without qualms, especially given the fact that Esau is his twin brother. Despite their differences, they grew up together. They were kin. This intensifies the dilemma yet more. Sometimes being moral means that one experiences distress at having to make such a choice. Doing the right thing may mean that one does not feel remorse or guilt, but one still feels regret or grief about the action that needs to be taken.
Even people of great faith, realize that there is a time to “Praise the L-rd and pass the ammunition”.
There is nothing about being prepared with a gun, a concealed carry endorsement if your state requires it, that says you don’t believe that G-d can and will keep you safe. We have fire extinguishers and spare tires, right? We have generators for bad weather, and carry an umbrella. The right tool for the right time.
That I think, is one of the things about concealed carry holders that leftists, politicians and the #FakeNews (sometimes one in the same) don’t understand about “gun nuts”. We are not anxious to kill, we don’t want to do that. What we do want is for us and our families to be safe.
Heat seeking bullets, who knew? Did BassPro have these listed in the Black Friday flier?
Self defense is not a spur of the minute deal. We put thought into what gun, training tactics, classes and tests to be able to live as free citizens. Just like Yakov had his three pronged approach for meeting Esav, we too plan our defenses.
These mixed feelings were born thousands of years earlier, when Jacob, father of the Jewish people, experienced not only the physical fear of defeat but the moral distress of victory. Only those who are capable of feeling both, can defend their bodies without endangering their souls.
Because like Yakov facing Esav, there can be bigger, stronger, mightier evil that hates us.
It’s Veteran’s Day, and I recently saw this video and it just nailed me. It broke my heart. That this can be happening in America is a shame, and I mean that literally and an outrage. The fact that there are around 7,000 foreign invaders headed for our southern border and that we should even entertain the thought of allowing any of them in, and giving them any kind of social services or benefits is a disgrace. And to the “do-good” helping hand out private social groups that would help the invaders but are not helping our Veterans first? You are a sham, you are a sham and a fraud.
Someone made the comment to me recently about people not wanting the caravan in the country because they look different than we do. What utter B___ S___. חרה to put it plainly.
I’m not a man, yet I would imagine the vast majority of the veterans in need of help are men. I’m not a black, or a Mexican, and only a little Native American, nor am I Asian. But we have homeless veterans that are, and I can promise you, I care far more about them than I do any illegal invader. No matter how pathetic CNN (#FakeNews) makes them look. We owe our veterans. We owe them a debt of gratitude for their service, and we owe them far more help than they are getting.
With the Demoncratic win in the house, I do not expect to see things improve for them at all.
At the end of the video there is quite a list of agencies should you choose to check them out. I reached out to a friend for some solid leads, and that’s what these are.
These are the statistics given in the video. Just in case you get caught up in the story and don’t absorb them, here they are to read over.
300,000 Veterans sleeping homeless on the streets, and rising.
Over 1.4 million are at risk of becoming homeless.
More than 67% of homeless Veterans served our country for at least 3 years.
Divorce rate among military couples has increased 42%.
An estimated 460,000 veterans suffer from PTSD.
Homeless veterans spend an average of 6 years on the streets.
The veterans administration has resources to serve only a fraction of our veterans.
Nearly 5000 veterans die by their own hands every year.
This is a large part of the list given at the end of the video, if I linked it, the link is active at the time of writing. Some in the video aren’t, and this is not the full list, but it’s a bunch of them.
For those of you who have served in the military, you are heroes. You are my hero, I don’t care if you peeled potatoes or washed sheets. Your families are heroes, because they served in their way right along side of you. You put aside your own life to serve our country, no matter your circumstance in life now, I ask G-d to bless you and your family, and bless ya’ll richly.
I get a weekly newsletter from Rabbi Johnathan Sacks called Covenant and Conversation, this week’s edition is about The Courage of Persistence. It’s always about the Parashat for the week. This week is Toldot. In this newsletter he talks about anti-semitic attacks in the Parashat. When the Philistines filled in the wells of Avraham for example. But a lot of it talks about the dichotomy of antisemitism.
As he points out in Amy Chau’s book World on Fire
Her thesis is that any conspicuously successful minority will attract envy that may deepen into hate and provoke violence. All three conditions are essential. The hated group must be conspicuous, for otherwise it would not be singled out. It must be successful, for otherwise it would not be envied. And it must be a minority, for otherwise it would not be attacked.
He further points out: Hostility to Jews becomes dangerous, she argued, not when Jews are strong, but when they are weak. This is along the lines of what Moshe Feiglin said in his column after the Synagogue shooting in Squirrel Hill.
But there is something more, deeper than the economic factor, which makes us partially responsible for what happened in Pittsburgh. Jewish history is being written today in the Land of Israel. It is clear to all of us that anti-Israel sentiments are the new expression of Anti-Semitism. When Israel is sure of itself, strikes its enemies as it did in the Six Day War, eliminates the hijackers as in Entebbe – the level of anti-Semitism decreases!!! And when Israel displays lack of self-assurance, temporariness, moral flaccidity – a feeling that we are not really on the map, that we are nothing more than colonialists acting only for the sake of self-defense, begging the Hamas for a cease-fire – then our enemies feel that they are just and anti-Semitism flourishes.
Rabbi Sacks continues on,
Antisemitism is a complex, protean phenomenon because antisemites must be able to hold together two beliefs that seem to contradict one another: Jews are so powerful that they should be feared, and at the same time so powerless that they can be attacked without fear.
It would seem that no one could be so irrational as to believe both of these things simultaneously. But emotions are not rational, despite the fact that they are often rationalised, for there is a world of difference between rationality and rationalisation (the attempt to give rational justification for irrational beliefs).
So, for example, in the twenty-first century we can find that (a) Western media are almost universally hostile to Israel, and (b) otherwise intelligent people claim that the media are controlled by Jews who support Israel: the same inner contradiction of perceived powerlessness and ascribed power.
He shows another way that the current situation in Gaza where the peaceful Falestinians so love the land of Israel and long to return to it that they are bombing, setting fire and trying to destroy it.
There is a second aspect of our passage that has had reverberations through the centuries: the self-destructive nature of hate. The Philistines did not ask Isaac to share his water with them. They did not ask him to teach them how he (and his father) had discovered a source of water that they – residents of the place – had not. They did not even simply ask him to move on. They “stopped up” the wells, “filling them with earth.” This act harmed them more than it harmed Isaac. It robbed them of a resource that would, in any case, have become theirs, once the famine had ended and Isaac had returned home.
But in the wake of the shooting at Squirrel Hill, I’ve been hopeful. Why? Because some are beginning to see that self-defense, and defense of others is necessary and right.
This last sentence is sometimes translated as “If someone comes to kill you, rise up and kill him first.”
This final sentence does not delegate discretion; it is a positive command. A Jew has a duty to use deadly force to defend herself against murderous attack.
Emphasis mine. It is our duty and a positive mitzvah to defend ourselves!
Returning to something in Rabbi Sack’s newsletter, “Jews are so powerful that they should be feared, and at the same time so powerless that they can be attacked without fear.”
Then there is CAMP JABOTINSKY, they seem to have been around awhile. Just an FYI, my baby Shimshon’s middle name is Zev, after Zev Jabotinsky. It’s fitting, it means “Wolf”.
This made me a little sad, as did this comment at the end of the article.
“I think he absolutely is generous in what he wants to do,” Ader said. “I think he wants to help and is very well intentioned. It just isn’t for us.”
Arming people, Ader told the TV station, “is a preventative measure, it is not part of the solution at all. The solution is civil discourse.”
I absolutely know he is entitled to his own opinion, but I don’t think he realizes yet that there are people out there that want to kill you, your congregation and there is not one thing civil or un that you are going to say to them to have a dialogue.
Ahh, yes. These times they are a changing. It doesn’t matter how you want to dress that pig up.
Anti-Zionism IS Anti-Semitism
It’s still anti-semitism, it goes way back, it is unreasoning and it’s lethal. It is also much, much harder to implement if the target of your irrational hatred is armed and realizes they have a duty to protect themselves, their families and their community.
A friend of mine asked me after the shooting, “Why didn’t someone shoot the man? Why didn’t they stop him”? I pointed out I didn’t know the gun laws in Pittsburgh, but I rather suspected that being big city on the east coast perhaps they have pretty strict gun control and they had been legislated out of their right to self-defense, and therefore, their right to live. This is what happens when you elect big government, people controlling leftists.
Perhaps the new members of the Second Amendment community will begin to understand a big part of the Second Amendment is fighting to keep it because there are most certainly those that prefer an unarmed populace.
Should I mention the 80th anniversary of Kristallnacht is tonight?
זק“א is the abbreviation for Zihuy Korbanot Ason. זיהוי קרבנות אסון, literally: “Disaster Victim Identification”
And I’m very tired and sad to hear it, yet again. For those that don’t know, ZAKA is a volunteer group that comes to the scene of a terrorist attack or a car crash or any such tragedy and gathers the body parts, pieces and blood of the Jewish victims so that they may be buried in accordance with Halakha, Jewish law. They also help with search and rescue, but I think they are best known for working with law enforcement and EMS (Emergency Medical Services) units to ensure that the necessary things are done. ZAKA volunteers prefer the work be called חסד של אמת – “Grace of truth” because the kindness they are showing the dead can not be returned by them. I would translate it as “kindness of truth” myself.
And ZAKA was on the scene in Pittsburgh.
ZAKA was on the scene because a Bucket of Chum entered the Tree of Life synagogue in Squirrel Hill on Saturday and opened fire during a Shabbat service. Eleven people lay dead. An elderly Holocaust survivor survived a maniac yelling all Jews must die by being late to the service.
‘It just never ends. It’s never completely safe for Jews. It’s in the DNA. Not just America’s DNA but the world’s.’
He’s right it doesn’t. And with that in mind, doing what we’ve been doing isn’t getting us anywhere.
I’m not really sure why anyone is surprised at the attack. The signs have been there for ages, I know TZP has certainly covered them. But there is a problem, it’s like taking your modern college snowflake leftist out to the woods and dropping them off in the middle of the woods with their $tarbuck$ double non-fat soy whatever and telling them there is a 300 pound grizzly bear in the woods, track it, or avoid it. Read the signs and you’ll be fine.
The snowflake doesn’t think it needs to read signs, it will be non-threatening to the grizzly and just drink it’s latte and it will all be fine. Yeah? Ignore some signs at your own peril. That’s not how life works, it can be how death works though.
Following the attacks what did we hear from the left, both Jewish and Goyim (the standard Hebrew biblical term for a nation)? Mostly what we heard was condemnation of President Trump, the anti-Semite, for the people on the right as “haters”, climate of hate, etc, etc.
Glick noted the prevalence of anti-Zionism on the left and within the Democrat Party. Marlow said, “[There is] a mainstreaming of anti-Zionism in the Democratic Party.”
“There is a huge problem with the empowerment of anti-Semites,” said Glick. “You have several Democratic nominees for Congress who are running on openly anti-Zionists platforms. Anti-Zionism is out-and-out anti-Semitism. It calls for the annihilation of the largest Jewish community on Earth, in Israel. … [Trump] is the most supportive president Israel has ever had, [and] they’re calling him an anti-Semite?”
Glick added, “There’s an insanity that’s infected the discourse inside of the Jewish community that doesn’t allow people to understand what the real threats are. Rather than deal with that, these radicals are making up stories. It does no service to the Jewish community in the United States to not pay attention [and] focus on actual anti-Semites who are actually involved in harming the position of Jews in American society, either politically or physically.”
….
Glick added, “A lot of people on the left in the Jewish community who are not seeing their interests because they’re blinded by ideology. Obviously, when you have congregants in a synagogue that are armed and capable of defending themselves and their fellow worshipers, you’re much safer than you would be with an alarm system or anything else in the face of somebody coming in and trying to massacre you.”
Glick observed, “People in general, in Israel, are better armed [than in America]. We have armed guards outside of every school. … It’s not considered to be a big deal. … This is just common sense.”
Glick concluded, “If you’re under threat, then you have to protect yourself. … It’s about life and death, and when you just concentrate on the fundamentals of the value of life and preserving the most precious thing in the world which is human life, then you come up with pragmatic ways of protecting it.”
So I respond: Don’t you dare insult me as a rabbi by blaming your perceived political enemies for some dirtbag Jew-hater. This President could not be a better friend of Jewish concerns and causes. He supports Israel and moved America’s Israel embassy to Jerusalem. His daughter and son-in-law are Orthodox Jews, and he treats them lovingly and respectfully, as he does their Orthodox Jewish children, his grandchildren. He ended Obama’s vicious anti-Israel animus, and he has supported Israel strongly in the United Nations. No wonder that Jews throughout the world love him, support him. In Israel, among Israeli Jews, he is wildly popular with a 67% approval rating. They hated Obama — and for great reason.
Some have become so caught up in the media lies and propaganda they can no longer see the truth of who is their enemy and who is their friend. They call what is good bad, and what is bad, good. The left wing of Judaism appears to me, to be more concerned with the worship of liberalism than Torah. Well, what do you call it when Jews daven Kaddish for the arabs that tried to infiltrate Israel from Gaza with the openly expressed purpose of ripping Jewish hearts from their chests? When they burn the land and shoot rockets into schools and homes? When they openly state they want to kill the Jews, and Jews in the diaspora daven Kaddish.
Jewish lives need to matter to Jews everywhere. Moshe Feiglin did a column on the massacre in Squirrel Hill.
But there is something more, deeper than the economic factor, which makes us partially responsible for what happened in Pittsburgh. Jewish history is being written today in the Land of Israel. It is clear to all of us that anti-Israel sentiments are the new expression of Anti-Semitism. When Israel is sure of itself, strikes its enemies as it did in the Six Day War, eliminates the hijackers as in Entebbe – the level of anti-Semitism decreases!!! And when Israel displays lack of self-assurance, temporariness, moral flaccidity – a feeling that we are not really on the map, that we are nothing more than colonialists acting only for the sake of self-defense, begging the Hamas for a cease-fire – then our enemies feel that they are just and anti-Semitism flourishes.
At a political event in Tennessee Rep. Marsha Blackburn asked for a moment of silence for the victims. That lasted a few seconds when leftists interrupted heckling the Representative. Wow.
The world is not worried about Jews being attacked, and the left is not our friend, and has not been for a long time. These are a couple of the observations that showed up on a Zehut list I’m fortunate enough to belong to.
Whatever happens to Israel happens to the rest of the world! A world that insists Israel not fight back, that insists Israel make peace with murderous infiltrators who came across our borders as economic immigrants who slaughter us at will at our Shabbat tables and our infants in our cribs. Who curse us with the worst kind of racist invective if we don’t allow violent, Jew hating infiltrators into our communities. What happens to us will happen to you– mida kneged mida. I’m not hating I’m explaining how justice works. This is not just aimed at Pennsylvania. This is aimed at the world. What happens here will happen there. Just ask Germany, France and the UK. Remember Genesis 12:3..Those who bless Israel are blessed, and those who curse Israel are cursed. If only you feared G*d you’d know it’s true.
And
My wife was pointing out how silent social media has been since yesterday’s attack. No viral hashtags of solidarity. No “je suis juif”. No black armbands worn by team athletes in national leagues (which they wear for the smallest of thing, find an excuse almost weekly). But spilled Jewish blood is not worthy of sympathy. It’s not notesworthy, and it’s to be expected. I’m sure there’s millions of people that, underneath their mask of politically correct niceties are pretty happy about this. What I keep wondering is: if I had lived in Austria in the early 30s, and had known what was coming, what kind of a life would I live? What choices would I make for myself and my family? This is a sobering moment. Jews have always been and will always be alone. We may buy our way to the top of the pyramid in gentile society (like Yosef also did) but sooner or later the weight of the entire pyramid is unleashed against us. Jews are the one single “other” capable to unite in hatred Islamic Jihadists, crazy SJWs and white supremacists.
The signs of danger are not what the media and those on the left say they are. The signs of growing anti-Semitism are the plethora of BDS and Free Falestine groups that abound on college campuses. They are professors refusing to write letters of recommendation for students that want to study in Israel, and they get by with it more than once. They are the embracing of Farafreak who compares Jews to termites with no denouncement. What? The View went full out nuts over that statement? No. They are the constant attacks on Israel in the U.N. The signs may be called “Anti-Zionism” or “Anti-Israel” as they call the only democratic state in the middle east an “apartheid” state, but it is anti-Semitism and that’s all it is. The same dirty thing recycled with a new brand label. It’s Jew hatred, period.
Below is a list of columns I’ve done for TZP and a general idea of what they dealt with.
We’ve been showing the warning signs for what they are. As I said, I’m not really all that surprised. People may not think President Trump condemned it in a way to suit them, but radio host Mark Levin called it the strongest condemnation of anti-Semitism by any president, ever.
I have never made any secret of the fact I greatly admire Judah Maccabee, and from the book of The Maccabees
Ch. 2 ; Ver. 39-49 ^ First Book
Victory of Now when Mattathias and his friends understood hereof, they mourned for them right sore. And one Mattathias of them said to another, If we all do as our brethren have done, and fight not for our lives and laws against the heathen, they will now quickly root us out of the earth. At that time therefore they decreed, saying. Whosoever shall come to make battle with us on the sabbath day, we will fight against him ; neither will we die all, as our brethren lo that were murdered in the secret places.
10And it was from that day on, half of my youths did work and half of them held spears, shields, bows, and coats of mail, and the rulers were behind the entire House of Judah.
11The builders of the wall and the carriers of the loads were loading, with one hand doing the work and one holding the sword.
12And the builders, each one with his sword bound to his waist, and [they were] building, and the one who sounded the shofar was beside me.
There have absolutely been times in our history when our wise leaders knew we needed to be armed, ready and willing to defend our lives, even on Shabbat.
If G-d forbid there is more to come – that hired guard standing in front of shul will be the first victim of an anti-Semitic gunman, guaranteeing another synagogue massacre
If a taboo was broken on Saturday and American synagogues are going to become magnets for violent anti-Semites, then American Jews will have to protect themselves.
We saw in Pittsburgh that it is not possible to save Jewish lives by waiting for the police to come and do so. For within minutes on Saturday, 11 Jews had been shot down and killed by a single gunman.
As we have heard since the massacre, the response among many Jews will be to hire armed guards to stand in front of synagogue buildings.
However, if an anti-Semite plans an attack on a synagogue, the first bullet must be for that bored and surprised guard standing by the front door.
We can choose how we stand
And that is exactly how it played out in the Kirkwood city hall massacre in 2008. The police were easily identified. The predator know they need to remove the sheepdog before they can kill the sheep. It is why concealed carry is effective. If you don’t know if people are armed, and you don’t know who is armed it sure changes the game.
A gunman went on a shooting rampage at a public meeting in the city hall, leaving six people dead and two others injured. Bucket O’Chum, 52, shot one police officer with a revolver across the side street from city hall and took the officer’s handgun before entering city hall. Bucket O’Chum reached council chambers with these two pistols shortly after the meeting began. There, he shot a police officer, the public works director, two council members, the mayor, and a reporter. In total, the gunman killed five and wounded two others; one of the two wounded victims, the mayor, later died. The gunman was then shot and killed by police
The answer is for us to be armed. If someone wants to walk into our Shul, and try to open up the response needs to be more like the bar scene from Code of Silence. Minus the language.
But I will leave you with thoughts from Rabbi Zev Weinberg. I’ve been fortunate enough to take a class from the Rabbi that I owe much to, and very much admire. There is much wisdom in what he has to share.
With Demoncrats doing everything to gain control of the nation so they can institute their program of higher taxes, impeaching a lawfully elected President and enacting gun control they have a variety of strategies they are flinging at the goal.
Since San Fran Nan has decided it’s more important to enact gun and citizen control than to win elections, I thought we might take a look at some of these brand new demoncratic socialist candidates. Although really, I guess if you’re a Demoncratic Socialist, after you’ve enacted gun and citizen control, you don’t really need to worry about winning elections, yeh? They’re just being more open about it now.
One is the socialist who thinks Bernie Sanders is the Great Pumpkin, Ocasio-Cortez.
Ocasio-Cortez’s Great Bernie Pumpkin
Another is a candidate in Texas who wants to lead the nation in gun control, has a perfectly WASP sounding name so apparently wants to be called Beta, oh, sorry! Not Beta? Oh, right Beto. So Beto is desirous of stripping Americans on one of their Constitutionally enumerated rights. Not granted. I’ve also heard he eats his tacos with a fork, so does Beto use the same fork to eat his tacos he uses to shred our Constitution?
Sometimes I wondered if the National Demoncratic Socialist Party realizes these elections are to be held in America, but in this day an age? Ocasio-Cortez beat a sitting legislator, so yeah, I guess they do.
Then there is Missouri. Missouri has Air-Claire McCaskill.
I’ll be right up front here, this really isn’t a “Gee Josh Hawley is a great guy, how could you pass him up” column. For one, I don’t like Josh Hawley, I think he is a smarmy, greasy, snake oil selling jerk. Missouri elected a Governor, we’ll call him Eric Greitens, shall we? Gov Eric did something quite foolish in his personal life before he ever ran for Governor. And like politicians all over, of every party, he got caught. Now, he didn’t drown her so he didn’t actually follow a recognized approved DSNC playbook and perhaps that is why the Demoncratic Socialists became convinced the world would end, end I say, if our Gov Greitens wasn’t removed from office. Well, it could have been the lack of playbook or it could have been that he signed a bill to allow Missouri to become a right to work state. The Demoncratic Socialists didn’t like that either. But the AG at the time was Josh Hawley. I don’t know if Hawley was just trying to prove how cool and unbiased he is but he felt compelled to wade into the poop patch created by Demoncrats and their propaganda arm, the mainstream media. Now the thing is, there are some actually very curious things about the persecution of Gov Greitens by good little Demoncratic Socialist Kim Gardner that SCREAM for someone such as a real attorney general to poke a nose in. Lt Col Dave Grossman did a couple of articles for The Federalist asking questions the media or the AG didn’t seem to be asking. The first one asked questions like,
1. Where is the police report?
2. Where is the evidence?
3. Why did the FBI, the U.S. Attorney, and the police refuse to look into this case?
4. What’s the deal with the private investigators?
5. Why did the prosecution want so badly to delay the trial until the fall?
That number 4? Now that is some interesting reading.
The Second article, had such data that one would really think someone would be asking about her expenditure of taxpayer funds,
1. It appears that Gardner began preparing the paperwork for the indictment prior to conducting any investigation.
2. Gardner allegedly broke the law in the course of her prosecution.
3. Gardner’s assistant prosecutor allegedly misled the grand jury about the indictment.
4. Gardner’s investigators were under FBI investigation.
5. Even the chief of police of St. Louis is demanding answers.
But, guess not. So no, I’m really not so much a Hawley fan. When you consider that this grave threat to freedom, Mom, the flag and apple pie just pretty much faded away after Gov Eric resigned…seems odd. Still don’t have Right to Work.
So, when I say this is about the Demoncratic Socialist known as Air Claire McCaskill, please don’t think this is about saying Hawley is great, it’s not. It’s that Air Claire is so much worse, and dirtier than Josh Hawley. Let’s take a few trips down memory lane, shall we? Because Air Claire has a lot of history that can be examined, along with her baggage, carry-on and otherwise.
But I’m saving the cherry of memory lane for last.
Air-Claire likes to create problems so she can use the force of government to solve them, like all big government Demoncratic Socialists do. For example in February of this year, Air Claire got all hot and bothered to battle “Identity theft” and the use of stolen social security numbers! Especially the use of stolen children’s social security numbers! Good job Air-Claire, right?? I mean who wouldn’t want Air-Claire in her crusader cape flying the friendly skies on behalf of law abiding citizens?
Air-Claire helped create the problem, now she expects private businesses to spend their money to fix it, after she blithely spent OUR money to create it. How so?
It would be appropriate to have [Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals – DACA] applicants disclose any misuse of Social Security numbers or other personal identifiers so that the system can be purged and corrected, and so that the true number holders can be informed. It would also be appropriate to impose an additional fine on the many DACA recipients who worked illegally before obtaining DACA status and improperly used false identity information. The fines could be used to establish a restitution fund for the victims.
… 43.9 percent of all surveyed DACA recipients had worked prior to gaining DACA status, and that percentage increases to 60.7 percent for DACA recipients over 25 years of age. However, these individuals were unable to legally obtain Social Security numbers for their pre-DACA employment, which means that they used fraudulently obtained Social Security numbers that all-too-often belong to American citizens, including American children.
The use of unlawfully obtained Social Security numbers by individuals eligible for DACA status is so pervasive that the Obama administration instructed applicants not to disclose their illegally obtained numbers. That ensured that Americans who are the victims of DACA identity theft were left with destroyed credit, arrest records attached to their names, unpaid tax liabilities, and corrupted medical records while the DACA recipients walked away scot-free from multiple felonies.
Does Air-Claire have anything to do with that mess? Does a Demoncratic Socialist love vote fraud?
She supports chain migration, sanctuary cities, funding for executive amnesty, and funding for processing centers for Central American unaccompanied minors. She voted for the DREAM Act, against a bill to prevent suing Arizona for immigration law, and against defunding sanctuary cities.
So is using taxpayer dollars to create a problem, then expecting private businesses or taxpayers to spend their money to fix her cockwomble (I love Katie Hopkins don’t you?) normal? Yeah, pretty much.
The Association of Air Medical Services (AAMS) is greatly concerned about the unintended negative consequences that can result from the recent Air Ambulance Consumer Protection Act, reported to be introduced today by Senator Claire McCaskill (D-MO). While it is the position of AAMS that all our members advocate on behalf of their patients and work toward solutions that keep patients out of the middle in negotiations with insurers, this legislation doesn’t do that – it only provides insurers with smaller portions of patient’s bills to cover while erecting “borders in the sky” making it difficult or impossible to transport patients across state lines. We can do better – we can require transparency, fix Medicare, and solve for greater healthcare access.
Transporting patients across state lines was something aero-medical helicopters routinely did when I flew. It’s like Air-Claire just hasn’t yet ruined enough healthcare systems to suit herself.
And it’s kind of ironic that Air-Claire thinks she should chime in on air anything really.
McCaskill is one of the wealthiest members of Congress, a fact that Republicans are quick to remind voters as McCaskill battles for a third Senate term representing a state President Donald Trump won by nearly 19 percentage points in 2016. GOP-funded ads trying to paint her as out of touch with ordinary Missourians have attacked McCaskill for buying a $2.7 million D.C. condo and for using her husband’s private plane on the campaign trail.
So a few years ago, air-Claire got busted using the family’s private jet to travel around and campaign. And billing the taxpayers for it.
It gets worse for Air Claire. The public realized (even the press) that using taxpayer dollars to pay yourself is wrong. The pressure was unbearable and McCaskill whipped out her personal checkbook and re-paid the federal treasury with an $88,000 check. It’s shameful when you game the system to the point of being politically forced to pay back a taxpayer subsidy.
McCaskill had been keeping the plane in Delaware and Illinois, two states that do not impose personal property taxes. Well, Missouri does. So, was McCaskill, a committed liberal millionaire who advocates soaking the rich, actually dodging taxes?
Yes, Air Claire was trying to pay fewer taxes. Caught again and pressured by the public, McCaskill pulled out her checkbook and wrote a check for over $300,000 for back taxes on the plane.
Not only was McCaskill paying her own company taxpayer dollars to fund her travels, she avoided paying taxes to the state she supposedly serves.
Now what is funny, is Air Claire has been doing the Hillary Clintoon Scooby van deal. Hers is called BigBlue. Wow, really Air Claire? Big Blue, well ok.
The RV, named BigBlue by the campaign, was unveiled late last month by McCaskill, who said she was “very excited to hit the road” in it for an upcoming “Veterans for Claire” tour. The campaign kept a live blog of its three-day RV trip from May 29 to May 31, posting updates of its whereabouts.
…
All indications from the McCaskill campaign were that she was traveling on the RV. The campaign bragged after the three-day tour concluded that it had traveled 700 miles on the RV. The campaign asked in fundraising emails for money to fuel the RV, complaining, “gas is expensive.”
“It costs us $200 just to fill up the RV and with the number of places we plan on going—that adds up fast,” the campaign wrote, without mentioning aircraft fuel costs. “Will you pitch in just $5 today to help fund our RV tour and power us to a victory in November?”
Now for the fun part?? Air Claire has been FLYING a bunch of that in her private plane, and just not telling anyone or at least so far as we know, charging the taxpayers for the use of the plane. The same article listed above tells how the plane has been tracked and it’s path lining up with her RV. Yeah. Worth reading that. But Air Claire knew they would probably track the plane, so she had
Email records show FAA was asked to hide tracking data of Democratic senator’s plane in April
Sen. Claire McCaskill (D., Mo.) took action earlier this year to make her family’s private plane untrackable by the public, according to documents obtained from the Federal Aviation Administration.
Didn’t work.
Which has led to some kind of fun things like the NRSC trolling Air Claire at campaign stops by having airport ground crew there for BigBlue like photo bombing gnomes, it’s kind of cute really.
But the Washington Free Beacon did the best coverage of it.
Then KOLR10 allowed Air Claire to express her outrage at Josh Hawley. Huh? He had nothing to do with it. Air Claire had a synapse or two go missing. So rather than watch Claire’s idiotic response, let’s watch the brilliant and talented Mr. O’Keefe dismantle it.
Now at 1:17 in, James seems shocked that Air Claire would just say something on TV, that is just a flat out lie. Just say it, just throw it out there with no truth behind it. Darling James, WHY?? It’s not like it’s the first time Air Claire has done this. From 20th June 2012,
And, we’ll let Glen Beck take it away
But now, now, the cherry. Just step into my wayback machine. And I do mean way back. Back to when Air Claire was the Prosecutor for Jackson County Missouri, on 9th December 1992.
McCaskill has been lying about gun laws even in 1992 as a prosecutor
Yes, Air Claire is the prosecutor. I’m almost sure back in 1992 James O’Keefe and Josh Hawley had nothing to do with her lying to the press about the law that she certainly should have known better as a prosecutor. But if you really fear that they might have secretly been taping what she openly lied about I can ask the author.
You see, that is the thing, Air Claire openly lies, in any way shape or form she feels the need to get what she wants. She will deceive and hurt whoever necessary, because Air Claire is evil. You may or not give two hoots about the Second Amendment, but I promise you, there is most likely an issue that you care very deeply about. And you think you know Air Claire’s position on it. But she has lied to and betrayed Second Amendment people for years, you think she won’t betray you? You are being foolish.
Air Claire is only one of the Demoncratic Socialists up for election this time. Nancy Pelosi has said if they win, gun control takes priority over winning elections. And, as I suspect will be the case it will be because the fight will have changed from the soft fight to the hard fight. Because there are something that they just can not do to us while we can fight back. Whether or not you believe in the electoral system or think it’s all bunkem, I think it it worth it to suit up and show up and participate in the legal option, at least as long as we have it. Besides, you can always join Bear in his new game.
I’ve been thinking about this the past few days. Last week I changed the battery in my pickup, went to a home improvement store and bought some things to make a Sukkah for Sukkot. I brought my supplies home, unloaded and set about building the sukkah with my handy pink drill, and a few other supplies. My greenery was already to go on the roof since I had cut down a evergreen tree and then cut off the branches. As I was doing all this, I was thanking G-d for having blessed me with the Dad he did. Dad never really treated me like “girls don’t do chainsaws, girls don’t work on cars, girls don’t _____” If I wanted to learn, Dad taught me. He also taught me the stuff he thought everyone should know how to do like change a tire. My parents took responsibility for me as a child, they raised me and trained me as best they could. When I became an adult, the responsibility for my behavior and choices fell on me.
When I decided I wanted to keep a gun in the house, Dad and I had a long talk about it. A very long talk about it, the responsibility it entailed and an idea of what would happen to my life if I ever had to kill an intruder. And then he loaned me one until he found what he felt would be a good one for me.
I ran across a couple of stories the other day that made me think about my folks in that capacity. One was about a older sister that had been out with her little brother practicing elk calls. I guess they must have sounded pretty good because on the way home the 16 year old girl saw a cougar about 3 yards from her 6 year old little brother. She told the brother to run to her and she shot the cougar behind the ear with an arrow. The cougar ran off and the kids made it home. The family dog and Dad went out with an AR-15, the ones with no defensive purpose, and killed the cougar. Apparently the parents believe in actually raising children and teaching them useful things, as opposed to say, just having children.
Another was of a 12 year old boy who used a Ruger .44 magnum lever-action rifle to protect his Mom from yet another domestic violence assault. There had been 5 previous calls to the residence for domestic violence none of which had ever resulted in charge. The say the 12 year old will most likely not be charged for defending his Mom. I’m thinking 5 calls? FIVE calls and no charges? Really?
This actually does happen in the real world, children using weapons to defend themselves or their families from nature’s miscreants, both two and four legged.
And then of course, we should all remember the case of Jessica Carpenter. When government gun control cost innocent lives.
Fear stalks Merced, California — fear of the government. Because of that fear, two innocent children died needlessly, victims of California’s “safe storage” gun laws. The mass media never told Americans what really happened in Merced. But the tale of the Merced Pitchfork Murders will not die.
See, those parents had taken responsibility for raising their children, those children knew how to handles guns safely. It was the state and a murderer that killed those children because they were unable to get to the one tool that could have saved their lives. California has mandatory safe storage.
The gun is inanimate, a tool its use in the hand. The death of a child is tragic, be it by gun, pitchfork, knife, swimming pool or attack by wild pigs. But it’s up to the parents to educate the children about guns, not toys, safe handling. That requires responsibility on the part of the parent and child.
It’s a responsibility thing. And it works best when parents and children know their responsibilities and carry them out.
At the other end of the spectrum of the “I have children” vs “I’m raising my children” are the people that are trying to take on tasks that really aren’t within their purview. Not withing the “scope” of their “practice” shall we say. Yeah, I’m kind of cracking myself up here with my humor.
Fair warning here, the source on this article is cnn #FakeNews, so you can take it for what it’s worth. But since they are obviously sympathetic to the point of view it’s what they want to put across anyway.
Your doctor already talks to you about sex, drugs and alcohol, but should they talk to you about guns, too? A newly-formed coalition of healthcare providers thinks so — and patient intervention is just one part of their plan to reduce what they call an “epidemic” of gun violence.
The organization, Scrubs Addressing the Firearm Epidemic, known as SAFE, is demanding an increase in federal funding for gun violence research, and is calling on lawmakers to implement “evidence-based policy” on guns.
At more than 30 medical schools across the country last week, students and physicians wore scrubs with SAFE’s bright red logo as they held demonstrations at their hospitals. According to Sarabeth Spitzer, a fourth-year medical student at Stanford who spearheaded the campaign, the group distributed about 2,700 of the special scrubs “to show the overwhelming consensus of health care providers that firearm violence is a public health crisis.”
Well Miss Sarabeth, heavens above please don’t ever let it be Dr. Sarabeth, there is indeed a medical crisis. And you in your little “special” scrubs aren’t doing diddly squat about it. You and your little sullen looking crew are all hat and no cattle. Seriously, look at the picture in the linked article. They all look either constipated or like little #MoneyHogg clones. Another great reason to look at the picture is if one of the little darlings ever walks into your treatment room you will know to request another doctor, a real one. One that is actually concerned about medicine. Because these knuckleheads aren’t.
Gee, here is a medical issue within their scope (stethoscope) of “practice”.
Medical malpractice deaths in the U.S. are over 500 times higher than accidental gun deaths.
A Johns Hopkins University study covering eight years of data found there are at least 250,000 malpractice deaths in the U.S. annually. CNBC reports the Johns Hopkins University study presents malpractice deaths on the low end, since other studies show malpractice deaths exceeding 400,000 a year.
On the other hand, accidental gun deaths hover around 500 a year.
For example, the Los Angeles Times reports there were 489 accidental gun deaths in 2015, making medical malpractice deaths over 500 times higher than deaths resulting from accidental firearm discharges.
The number of overall gun deaths in 2015—accidental, homicides, and suicides—was approximately 36,000, two-thirds of which were suicides. So 250,000 malpractice deaths is nearly seven times higher than gun deaths, even when counting intentional gun deaths.
Gee Miss Sarabeth and Co. this sort of thing doesn’t even seem to be on your radar!
So let old Auntie Sheila help you out a little bit here. GSW, Gunshot wounds, I don’t care if they are self inflicted, inflicted by the neighborhood gang banger, your spouse, your ex-spouse, your ex-spouse’s boyfriend, your ex-spouse’s girlfriend, your second cousin twice removed, you little sister, your little brother, your teacher, your teacher’s uncle, your teacher’s uncle’s dog, are all pretty much going to involve the same treatment protocols, and appear pretty much the same.
When I was in school I met a guy that had the same last name as mine, only he was in Doctor school. He’s the first one I ever heard use the phrase M. Deity complex, doctors that think they are G-d. He didn’t have it, and we wound up being good buddies.
I rather suspect Miss Sarabeth and friends are severely afflicted with M. Deity complex. I know how my buddy, and many of the other residents clawed their way through their residency phases and school and I’m unsure what it is Miss Sarabeth and Co. think they can afford to leave out to study more about the epidemic of gun violence, or perhaps she would like to extend the residency period? Do that Sarabeth, just do that, extend the residency period by a year or so. Let us know how living in hiding works out for you. And yes, I do want fries with that Southwest Salad.
Because whatever you do, don’t let that malpractice stat cause you to stop trying to shred the Constitution and affect my G-d given rights with your social justice drama. #BadMedicine
Jews. Guns. No compromise. No surrender.
Password Reset
Please enter your e-mail address. You will receive a new password via e-mail.
