I’ve made no secret that I love Hanukkah. I always find miracles humbling, amazing and awe inspiring. And what is Hanukkah but the time of miracles? This year, there are some big ones.
This is the second prayer for the candle lighting of the Hanukkiah
Barukh atah Adonai, Eloheinu, melekh ha’olam
Blessed are you, Lord, our God, sovereign of the universe
she’asah nisim la’avoteinu bayamim haheim baziman hazeh. (Amein)
Who performed miracles for our ancestors in those days at this time
And I guess that’s one of the things I’ve been thinking about. “In those days, at this time.”
This year is the 50th anniversary of the reunification of Jerusalem, the eternal capital of the Jewish people. It’s been 70 years since the U.N. voted Israel a nation, just a note, G-d had voted it long before that. It’s been 22 years since the Jerusalem Embassy act was passed in the US with bi-partisan support saying that the US would move their embassy to Jerusalem, where Israel has the seat of their government. There is no other nation on earth that has not designated their capitol and other countries have told them “No, it’s not”. And for 22 years for reasons of “security” Presidents have signed the loophole waiver, from Bill Clintoon until….President Trump.
The claim was always “security”. It would be discussed and the arabs would threaten “Days of Rage” “Day of Hissy fits” “Days of Pique” “Days of Temper Tantrum”. Here’s a helpful desk calendar from IsraellyCool.
Helpful to schedule your day of “Hissy fit”.
And the world and the US President would cave. I listened to a radio show in this last week when Rabbi Chaim pointed out “Do you really want to live under the threat of terrorism? Where your lives are controlled by a threat?”. His co-host Yitzach told about a email he received from a friend in the US who asked him his opinion on President Trump’s actions. It was very clear the friend didn’t like President Trump and was very critical of the action. Yitzach told him it was about time, and it was the right thing to do. The friend answered back that he guessed it was, he just didn’t like President Trump and couldn’t believe he could ever do the right thing, and didn’t want to think he had. AND he guzzles Diet Coca Cola!! Classic Trump derangement syndrome. Probably listens to cnn or mslsd (both #FakeNews). May I just point out that Oslo was suppose to bring peace, and how’s that worked out?? Um, not so well. And the media has yammered on and on about how President Trump broke the status quo. By finally implementing a LAW passed 22 YEARS ago?
And that brings me to Hanukkah. Hanukkah is different from Purim. With Purim we celebrate the very survival of the Jewish nation. Haman had decreed all were to be killed. Dead, met, מת
With Hanukkah, I think the case could be made it was something even worse, the Greek Antiochus had decreed that Jews would not allowed to be, well, Jews. He wanted to kill their souls, not just their bodies. They couldn’t observe feasts, Shabbat, Rosh Chodesh, or anything really that G-d had instructed. The Greeks worshiped the physical form, logic and Antiochus, never the most stable of rulers couldn’t abide that the Jews, well at least the backwards ones in flyover country would defy him. The more “enlightened” of the Jews worshiped at the alter of the demoncrats and Hellenism and were fine with casting off the chains of duty to G-d.
But then there was the Maccabees. Mattathias and his sons, his warrior son Judah who most assuredly were not going to “coexist”. They had no illusions as to what that would result in. There’s actually a bit of a pattern in this area. This is actually a T-shirt:
The fate of nations that have come against Israel.
And so, President Trump, and his recent speech about Hanukkah and Jerusalem.
Predictably, some of the arabs living in Israel (sometimes known as Falestinians by me) had reacted with ________ depending on the day. They are so miffed that Abu Mazen has refused to meet with Vice-President Pence and are threatening to cut ties with the U.S. No word if they will continue to take our money yet though.
You see, with the arabs living in Israel, it really isn’t about Jerusalem or the Alka Seltzer Mollusk. It never was. When they pray they face Mecca, they turn their Hamasses towards the Mollusk, not usually sign of reverence. More a sign of a 15 year old boy mooning a teacher he doesn’t like.
Remember I said The Maccabees didn’t live with illusions? There should be no illusions that giving in to arab terrorism will result in peace, it will not. There should be no illusions that “compromising” with anti-gun people or politicians will result in good gun laws. It will not. Like the Maccabees, we need to live with no illusions about people or situations.
In those days, at this time. The Maccabees were raised up, and were there to fight for Jewish life, Torah and Israel.
I don’t know about you, but there are times I’ve felt compelled to do something when it really didn’t make a lot of sense to me. I couldn’t think of a good reason, but I felt like I was suppose to do it, and so I did. Only later it might become apparent why I need to do, buy or learn whatever. But I was very glad I had heeded the urging.
In those days, at this time. Remember last week when I talked about Jacob going back for the tupperware of oil? He had just struggled with the angel, his hip had been wounded, he has a new name, he’s headed to face off with his brother who has sworn to kill him and he goes back for a tupperware of oil?
Rabbi Shlomo Luria, the Maharshal, suggests that these jugs contained the oil that Jacob had designated for anointing the monument he had set up many years earlier during his flight to Haran.3 This was holy oil, then, so Jacob did not want to leave it behind.4
Interestingly, these jugs may be linked to the miracle of Chanukah. According to Tzeidah la-Derech, “G‑d said to Jacob: You risked your life for a small jug of oil for My sake. In return, I will repay your descendants, the Hasmoneans, when a miracle will happen for them with a small jug of oil.”
In those days, at this time. We too are here in these days at this time for a purpose. We all are blessed with one, and we all fit together like a jig saw puzzle. The staff at Zelman’s Partisans, the people in the Second Amendment community, the people who take the kids out and give them their first experience safely learning to shoot, pro-freedom politicians, Second Amendment activists of all kinds, all of us fit and work together. May we all be blessed with knowing our purpose, and enjoying the blessings of Hanukkah and Christmas.
I’ll leave you with this humorous little video clip a good friend of mine from Israel shared with me a few days ago.
And how could I not give you a Hanukkah video?? It has English subtitles and it’s beautiful. I love it because they say Nes Gadol Haya POH!! Not Sham. That’s because they are in Israel, not anywhere else.
This last week was Parshat Vayishlach, and it talks about Yaakov and Esav’s reunion when Yaakov returns from his devious Uncle Levan, who had deceived him in much the same way he had deceived his father Yitzach. He has sent his family and herds across the Jabbok, and he remained alone, waiting for daylight when he would see the brother who had sworn to kill him. The one heading his way with 400 men.
Bereshit 32: 22-32
22 The same night he arose and took his two wives, his two female servants, and his eleven children, 1 and crossed the ford of the Jabbok. 23 He took them and sent them across the stream, and everything else that he had. 24 And Jacob was left alone. And a man wrestled with him until the breaking of the day. 25 When the man saw that he did not prevail against Jacob, he touched his hip socket, and Jacob’s hip was put out of joint as he wrestled with him. 26 Then he said, “Let me go, for the day has broken.” But Jacob said, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.” 27 And he said to him, “What is your name?” And he said, “Jacob.” 28 Then he said, “Your name shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, 1 for you have striven with God and with men, and have prevailed.” 29 Then Jacob asked him, “Please tell me your name.” But he said, “Why is it that you ask my name?” And there he blessed him. 30 So Jacob called the name of the place Peniel, 1 saying, “For I have seen God face to face, and yet my life has been delivered.” 31 The sun rose upon him as he passed Penuel, limping because of his hip. 32 Therefore to this day the people of Israel do not eat the sinew of the thigh that is on the hip socket, because he touched the socket of Jacob’s hip on the sinew of the thigh.
One of the Rabbi’s commentary I read this week talked about the difference in the style of Mozart and Beethoven. He felt that for Mozart, the music simply flowed from him, light and easy. For Beethoven, he struggled to get it just the way he wanted it, writing and re-writing it, the creativity for him was a struggle. He felt Yaakov, who later became Israel, had the same kind of struggles. In fact Rabbi Sacks points out in all of Tanakh/ First Testament, none of the people were perfect, they all had their struggles.
If you want to watch a little teaching on the Parsha, here is one from Rabbi Chaim.
Struggles was already on my mind this week, I’ve recently had the chance to see a independently produced movie. I think that’s what they are called. I don’t see many movies, cause there are not many I am willing to give money to see. The last one was a 1977 movie on Operation Thunderbolt.
This one was called “Big Sonia”. And it is about an amazing 91 year old lady from Poland who is a Holocaust survivor. Big Sonia stands a whopping 4’11” tall. The film talks very little about how she came to be in the concentration camps, she was in more than one, and she endured death marches. It does say the nazis used dogs to find her and her Mother hiding in the attic of their home, as they had found others. They were hidden under the floor. When the movie needs to show something from the Holocaust, it is mostly shown in crude, meaning not detailed, animation. The nazis and dogs finding them is one of those types of scene. Another is when they are separated after they’ve been at the death camp for a while. Her Mother had a red scarf, and in the graphic, I can’t really call it a cartoon, it shows her Mother handing it off to her. This is a clip of Sonia.
Sonia runs a tailor shop that she took over from her husband after he passed away. Her mission, I would say, is she with the help of her daughter visit school, prisons, and talk to groups about the Holocaust. About living with love and acceptance so that these things can never happen again. It has had a profound affect on students, and some of the prisoners were in the film crying and talking to Leah, one of the filmmakers about how hearing Sonia’s story affected them. It was disconcerting to me that some of these prisoners seemed unaware of the Holocaust, at all. But I know another Holocaust survivor, she was Austrian who had tried to tell her story to some people at a holiday get together. Some of them did not believe her. She told me she would never speak of it again. I understand, to have gone through that, then tell it, and not be believed? But to see this tiny little woman, who had survived more and harder things than the prisoners, or school children had and how she chose to respond to them? Amazing woman. I would also mention Sonia has a sister that did survive the war. She is currently living in Israel. She spent the war not in a concentration camp, but in the forest, with the Partisans, fighting. I don’t know how that happened, it doesn’t say in the film, but boy do I wish Leah would do that story! Sonia has faced many many struggles, her most recent one was when the shopping mall where the tailor shop was located served her an eviction notice. I will just say that there are Angels that walk among us today, and while we may not know the name of the one that wrestled with Yaakov, the one in the movie is Vernon and leave it at that. This movie is being seen all across the US, actually world wide. I’m free on the 16th, I think I’d like to see it again. That will necessitate me being in Jerusalem on the 16th. Hmm.
I was thinking about this column, and struggles. We all face them in our daily lives, from different directions. Some can be family, professional, monetary, personal, health, and just “stuff we have to do” be it cutting down trees, clearing fence row or making sure one kid gets to the doctor and another to piano lessons and you need to be at work on time, and pay for it all. But as I was thinking about struggles and how Yaakov faced his, and while it seems most of his life he faced a variety of struggles, he tried, he didn’t just give up. He may have been afraid and distressed, but he kept going forward and he struggled with the Angel and won. Sonia has certainly had her struggles, to survive and cope, she continues to try to use her experience to help others.
And then I had a conversation with a friend of the book of faces tonight. We’ll call him Chris. Chris is talking about his son that I’m going to call Stuart. Stuart is a Ordnance Disposal Tech in the military. Chris had said a little about some of the scares he has had due to Stuart’s occupation. We got started talking about this because of a particular song “More than a name on a wall” by the Statler Brothers.
Chris: I try to never miss an opportunity to tell him how proud I am of him. That song tears me up probably as much as it does you. But I know that if my son should go, he’ll be escorted to Valhalla by his fellows after accomplishing far more with his life than I ever have.
Me: WE each have a part to play in this drama called life Chris. HIS part is NOT your part. Your part is not mine. We must each fulfill our parts as best we can with who we are at this time, in this place.
And that’s when it gelled for me. I am so far from perfect, and some struggles will probably be lifelong, and some I may win, some I may lose. But the ones that G-d brings to me, those I must continue to try. We all have things that matter to us, to U.S. our freedom, our country, our way of life, and our families.
And each of us has a role we can play in that. Some who would never want to write on a Blog can pick up the pen and write a letter to the editor, they can talk to a co-worker who spouts Gabby Giffords latest uniformed, illogical or stupid idea. Some can take Grandchildren or nieces and nephews out to learn to shoot. Or, they can set their nephew up with lessons to learn to shoot from a good instructor. So I’ve heard. You can support Second Amendment groups, join local grassroots Second Amendment groups, go to rallies. You can know our country’s history, warts and all, and when people try to take it from us by lying, know they are lying and speak out, write a letter, make sure what your child or grandchild is learning in school isn’t the Common Core Crap, and if it is either talk to the school or at least talk to your child and make sure they know the truth. Old school books might make dandy gifts. To lose who were are and where we came from is something that is hard to reclaim. Someone has to keep the light burning.
There is a teaching in the end of the video Parsha about Yaakov going back for some small vessels. What? He hadn’t had enough struggle already? He goes back for some Tupperware? There is a bit more to it than this, but my point is, in that in the Tupperware, was oil.
Sonia’s struggles bring forth understanding and knowledge, Yaakov’s struggle brought forth the nation of Israel, and a small container of oil.
Last week was November 29th, there was an epic struggle that took place on November 29th, 1947 These are in English.
Behind the scenes stories
And today, today. President Trump announced that the United States recognizes Jerusalem is the Capitol of Israel, and the United States will be moving their Embassy to Jerusalem. The Jerusalem Embassy Relocation Act was written in 1995, at last, finally. I admit, watching those old film clips today, and then President Trump is a very emotional experience.
I heard on the news today there had recently been a shooting attack at a big box store called Costco. I have it on good authority that this is not possible!! Costco is a gun free zone! Admittedly they only came clean in 2014 that they were gun free. Before that they didn’t want to tick off gun owners by being proudly gun free.
But despite this gold standard of safety it seems an as yet unnamed man entered Costco today yelling and brandishing a gun. No word yet on what type of gun went crazy today and grabbed a nearby human and forced him to transport him to the gun free Costco. Even though the gun knew it was not welcome there, it forced the human to provide transportation. As the apparently distraught human entered Costco it was yelling. The employees tried to lower the security gates but were unable to lower it in time.
People fled for the exits as they realized what was happening and one little 82 year old lady struggled to keep up with the crowd as they stampeded towards safety.
But earthly angels need to shop too. And apparently one was shopping in the store when the out of control gun and the hapless shouting human made their entry. An off duty police officer. As panicked shoppers and employees fled out the store the officer pulled his gun and his badge and held them up so people could see. And as the defenseless fled towards safety a good guy with a gun went to confront evil. And he killed it. There were no other casualties. None. Apparently the good guy gun was better than the bad guy gun. Because after all, it’s all about an inanimate piece of metal right?
But I have lingering questions. Will the good guy with a gun be prosecuted by Costco? I mean, after all, he wasn’t on duty. And he obviously was carrying a gun in a “gun free zone”! Did the off-duty police officer check to see how many blacks vs how many whites were in the store? Aren’t they all suppose to be racist according to BLM? Are there any other types of Costco members that they have no concern for besides the 82 year old woman that struggled to keep up and escape? Perhaps they also have no regard for young children. They can’t run very fast either. Mothers carrying infants? They are sure to be slower. Questions for Costco to ponder, what is their “target” demographic? Either way, if shopping in a store that has made it clear that you must be defenseless and vulnerable to be welcome is your thing, I wouldn’t be surprised if Costco doesn’t have a sale on memberships err long.
I was told by someone I respect enormously I should be able to kill someone with a can of peas, should the occasion call for it, or the need arise. But do battle with a can of peas (not that I’m not willing, should the occasion call for it) instead of a gun? Inconceivable
Last Shabbat was Parsha Toldot. Genesis 25:19- 28:9. It talks about Yakov and Esav, when they were in the womb, born, the birth order (Esav first) and then the kind of men they each became. Esav, a skillful hunter and man of nature was favored by his father, Yitzchak. Rivka favored Yakov, who studied and basically stayed in the tents. Their desires were was different as the areas and activities they chose to pursue. .
28And Isaac loved Esau because [his] game was in his mouth, but Rebecca loved Jacob.
29Now Jacob cooked a pottage, and Esau came from the field, and he was faint.
30And Esau said to Jacob, “Pour into [me] some of this red, red [pottage], for I am faint”; he was therefore named Edom.
31And Jacob said, “Sell me as of this day your birthright.”
32Esau replied, “Behold, I am going to die; so why do I need this birthright?”
33And Jacob said, “Swear to me as of this day”; so he swore to him, and he sold his birthright to Jacob.
34And Jacob gave Esau bread and a pottage of lentils, and he ate and drank and arose and left, and Esau despised the birthright
His game was in his mouth, according to Rabbi Chaim, Esav talked a good game, a real good game. He pretended to be a serious Torah scholar to his father, but he was far from it. You think Esav was worn out from working in the fields all day? Um, probably not. He raped, murdered, and he married pagan women who sacrificed to idols in the camp. Esav didn’t love G-d, he wanted to destroy G-d’s presence in this world. Rivka had grown up in that environment, her father and her brother Levan, were both devious and deceitful. You find out just how much so when Yakov goes to Levan to meet a bride. Rivka knew BS when she heard it, she’d been there and done that. Yitzchak grew up with the faithful and hospitable Avraham and Sarah, he had much better role models, but was more innocent. When Yitzchak’s life was growing short, he called his first born son Esav to him, and asked him to go get him some game and fix it the way he liked it. I’m guessing sautéed with onions, mushrooms and Tabasco sauce? But Rivka came up with a plan to get the blessing for Yakov. One thing I’ve heard is Yitzchak was not fooled at all, but knew that Yakov would be the better character for the responsibility of the birthright. But at any rate, remember Esav had sold his birthright to Yakov for a bowl of soup and some bread. Esav had no love of his birthright, until it was gone. If you’d like to watch a short video on the Torah teaching, one is here.
It wasn’t valued? I guess I might point out to people who think Jews shouldn’t have all of the land that G-d alloted that they might want to remember G-d takes a dim view on those that don’t value their birthright. A way of living that has been good, and has sown benefits and opportunity that some discard as of no value because they don’t see the deep gift it really is. Rivka saw the birthright for the thing of value it really was. Esav wanted to claim the blessings of the birthright, but he wanted none of the responsibility. She understood about deceitful people. She’d seen bad, and wanted no part of it.
Sort of like one of my friends in school, she is from the Ukraine, and another lady I really like that is in a Torah study class I like to attend whenever I can, is from Russia. And they have no problem telling me what it was like. You could not openly worship G-d, or openly be a Jew. When talking about recipes for Matzah, my friend from the Ukraine was telling me how they fixed it. I asked what spices they used? She said “Spices? What spices? It was Russia, we were lucky if we had salt and pepper! I didn’t know what spices were until I left”. I’ve also heard her talk of the “dental care” you get under socialized medicine. But, it’s all equal, everyone is equal, everyone gets equally bad dental care. What little there is available.
“This troubling turn highlights widespread historical illiteracy in American society regarding socialism and the systemic failure of our education system to teach students about the genocide, destruction, and misery caused by communism since the Bolshevik Revolution one hundred years ago,” Mr. Smith said in a statement.
Millennials are more likely to prefer socialism and communism than the rest of the country. Fifty-nine percent of all respondents chose capitalism as their preferred arrangement, compared to 34 percent who said socialism, 4 percent fascism and 3 percent communism.
Some of communism’s luminaries are admired by millennials. Thirty-one percent said they have a favorable view of Che Guevara, 32 percent Karl Marx, 23 percent Vladimir Lenin and 19 percent Mao Zedong. Joseph Stalin is viewed favorably by just 6 percent.
In the poll, only 33 percent of millennials were able to identify the correct definition of socialism. They fared about as well as the rest of the country, which only successfully identified socialism at a 34 percent clip. Gen Z, the generation after millennials, ―was the most informed group, with 43 percent correctly identifying socialism.
Of course, I also think their college professors, especially the “cool” ones and the mainstream media play a big juicy role in this as well.
Thus the popularity of the Socialist/Communist Bernie Sanders. It seems Millinials think there is a “kinder gentler” form of socialism available. Like maybe small c? I seem to recall barry sotero, or BS for short, thinking Hugo Chavez was just dandy.
The government’s desire to control and monitor all economic activity led to the approval of a mass of inconvenient laws, which became enemies of investment, production, and innovation. The Ley Orgánica del Trabajo is just one example, which banned outsourcing, mandated 90 percent of a company’s employees be citizens, and impeded one’s capacity to remove unproductive individuals; it harms the national economy as well as the working classes. Since that legal instrument came into force last May, it has become increasingly difficult to create a job in the formal sector of the economy, while at the same time the productivity of workers has decreased at an alarming rate.
The price controls (or price-freezing process) and the fixed exchange rate (established in February, 2003) remain as a policy, regardless of the fact that they completely distort our country’s economy and against all evidence of their ineffectiveness and inconvenience.
And the Millennials and Snowflakes said to the Capitalists, “Pour into me some of that kitty stew for I’m famished and let me go eat it in my safe space so that no one might say any names or things that I don’t want to hear. I don’t want to hear about G-d and his tyrannical demands. I want the freedom of socialism where Uncle Bernie and Aunt Hillary say we get college and health care for free. I want business to pay their fair share of 99%, because I need things I can’t find a job anywhere. No company has over 3 employees these days! This Capitalism is so evil! I just hate it. I don’t want to have to do all the things that bosses want to make me do. I want to find myself. But until I do, give me some pigeon as well. Birthright? Freedom? Liberty? Of what use is that to me. Behold I’m going to die.”
Yes, yes indeed. The spirit of Esav is alive and well.
I ran across a column a last night about how police can use those commercial DNA company data bases to try to solve crimes. You know, the ones with the cute commercials with the guy who thinks he is of a certain ethnicity and by the end of the commercial he’s wearing lederhosen? Or somebody ends up playing the bagpipes. I love bagpipes, so I don’t mind that, as long as they do it well. So people wanting to connect with their past, send in their DNA, and find out their origins, or some of their origins.
I’ve never sent my DNA into anything. I just sort of thought well, once someone has your DNA, they have your DNA. It’s a bell that can’t be un-rung. But I thought the column interesting, so I posted it to FaceBook. I got some interesting comments. One person pointed out they will delete your profile if you ask. Another pointed out that it’s like NICS deleting the information. I would agree with that assessment, somebody else commented Orwell lives. Indeed. And what could be wrong?
Well, what a co-inky-dink! I happen to watch a TV show tonight, 48 Hours I believe. Guess what it was about! DNA. Well, I must watch this.
The case involves the murder of Angie Raye Dodge. A young, beautiful woman not even yet 20 years old. She had moved out from her Mom’s home and got her very own apartment a few weeks before she was murdered in Idaho Falls on June 13, 1996. She hadn’t shown up for work and one of her friends went to check on her and found the body and called police. Idaho Falls having a small town feel, where neighbors likely know each other was horrified. The pressure was on to catch the killer who stabbed Angie to death and cut her throat. As I recall, the report said there was no sign or forced entry, she was found with her throat cut, partially naked, raped and someone had ejaculated near the body. The sample would be known as a pristine profile, meaning one man, to the exclusion of everyone else on the planet. So what could go wrong?
All the locals were checked, no matches. Her mother Carol, was desperate to find the killer, so in 2014 she called Dr. Greg Hampikian,and said the police can’t find my daughter’s killer. So he got involved. Dr. Hampikian is a DNA expert. The police had DNA, they just didn’t have any local matches, and there were no matches in CODIS, the Combined DNA Indexing System. Carol wanted to use a new DNA technique called Familial DNA matching. Meaning, ok, it’s not you, but maybe someone in your family. In other words, sort of a “close enough for government work” plan. Some states, Maryland and DC have laws against doing familial DNA criminal data base searches. Idaho forbids doing familial DNA searches of it’s criminal data base. So Dr. Hampikian, proposed something, using “public” data base searches. Such as those used by Ancestry and 23andMe to do the familial DNA search. What could go wrong with that?
Dr. Hampikian is probably a brilliant DNA researcher, but I think he’s a tad bit on the drama diva side. So they did their search and got a hit, 34 out of 35 markers. Which sounds like a lot. It was deemed a solid lead. It came back to the family of Michael Usry. Now lets look at how the data base got Michael Usry’s DNA in the first place. He had submitted it as part of a church genealogy project. Voluntarily.
Seemed like it shouldn’t be a big deal, I mean, it’s a church genealogy project, not a poster on the Post Office wall. What could go wrong with that?
The cops chose to use a lab linked to a private collection of genetic genealogical data called the Sorenson Database (now owned by Ancestry.com), which claims it’s “the foremost collection of genetic genealogy data in the world.” The reason the Sorenson Database can make such an audacious claim is because it has obtained its more than 100,000 DNA samples and documented multi-generational family histories from “volunteers in more than 100 countries around the world.” Some of these volunteers were encouraged by the Mormon Church—well-known for its interest in genealogy—to provide their genetic material to the database. Sorenson promised volunteers their genetic data would only be used for “genealogical services, including the determination of family migration patterns and geographic origins” and would not be shared outside Sorenson. Its consent form states:
The only individuals who will have access to the codes and genealogy information will be the principal investigator and the others specifically authorized by the Principal Investigator, including the SMGF research staff.
Despite this promise, Sorenson’s vast collection of data, like data in other public DNA databases, is available online and may be searched by anyone with “DNA results obtained from a commercial lab.” This means, without a warrant or court order, investigators were able to run the crime scene DNA against Sorenson’s private genealogical DNA data.
So how did Chris Tapp become a suspect?? Well, a friend of his Ben Hobbs was arrested in Nevada for raping a woman at gun point. So they looked into Ben’s friends and came up with Chris Tapp. Then we have our second variety of what could go wrong? The first being using familial DNA.
Chris was interrogated something 9 like times in 23 days and underwent 7 polygraphs. His story changed six times. Yeah, I realize people can change their stories, but apparently this was more than that. In some of the video clips it does appear the police are leading him to the answers they want. It went to trial and he was convicted of murder and rape and sentenced to 30 years to life. Remember, this guy had no DNA match at the murder scene or any other physical evidence present.
Michael Usry, 18 years after the murder has two Idaho Falls Detectives and Louisiana State Trooper show up at his house saying they’d like a word. He goes downtown with them, has no clue what this is all about so he’s cooperating a bit blindly not understanding what this is all about. Then in questioning they mention the murder mystery movies he makes, very scary stuff, and by the way, it’s about a murder case in Idaho Falls, open wide were going to swab your cheek. He has no lawyer present and still not much of a clue. They take him home, drop him off at the curb bewildered and dazed. He calls a friend, who in 20 seconds of searching tells him about the Angie Dodge murder case. The 15 years before DNA his Dad submitted for the Church project has come home to roost and poop on the head of the son.
Michael was so horrified and incensed by what Ancestry had done to him, he decided to do what he does, and do a documentary on this issue. But after he met Carol Dodge, who agreed to meet with him, despite thinking someone in his family must have murdered her daughter, because, you know, DNA said so, he changes to documentary to be about Angie’s murder. Then Mike wondered why anyone would confess to a crime he now says he didn’t commit. So he met with Chris and became convinced Chris hadn’t done it. Yes, this is a bit shortened. By this time Carol is convinced Chris did not kill her daughter and wants him freed, Michael doesn’t think Chris killed Angie, and Chris has been in jail for 20 years. I mean, what could be wrong?
Then it really got good. Judges for Justice headed by a retired Superior Court judge from Washington got involved. Judge Heavey saw the tapes of the 7 polygraphs and was appalled. Polygraphs are supposed to be used to assess the credibility of the witness. That’s when the team got involved. You can read all the reports from the team members here. The one from Steve Moore is 85 pages long.
They also talk about why the judicial system and the police are sometimes hesitant to look at things from a fresh angle in cases where they may have made a mistake. But what could have gone wrong?
I’m guessing it was after 48 Hours got involved along with Judges for Justice that the Prosecuting Attorney’s office decided to offer Chris a deal. Accept the murder charge, we drop the rape charge and you have no probation, and you’re out of jail in a couple hours. Chris had seen so much go wrong, that should never have gone wrong he took the deal. Within 48 hours Carol Dodge, Michael Usry, Dr. Hampikian and others were in the courtroom. The judge in the case had to accept or reject the deal. He asked Chris if he had read every line of the document and he said he had. So how I hear this? Yeah, we sent you to prison for 20 years for a crime you didn’t commit, had nothing to do with, and if we let you out 10 years or more early and don’t put you on probation for crimes you didn’t commit, you say “no harm, no foul” and go your way. Carol Dodge says Chris is another victim of the crime. He is. As is Michael Usry who after court that day was asked by a detective to come with him. They wanted to show him a composite using new DNA technology that can make a facial sketch based on DNA. Michael said he didn’t want to look at first, thinking ‘what if it’s someone I know?” But it wasn’t. It was a face he was unfamiliar with. On July 12th of this year, Michael got a letter with a DNA report that cleared his family with 87.63% certainty that the murderer was not in their family. Wow.
Another interesting person interviewed for the show was Dr. Erin Murphy, A New York University Law professor and author of Inside the Cell: The Dark Side of Forensic DNA. She points out that this familial DNA raises real privacy issues of law enforcement trolling data banks to see if your brother, father are breaking the law. Consider the government’s insatiable appetite for biometric data, REAL ID and that really is a concern. Murphy points out that Usry’s family may have had nothing at all to do with the murder. She maintains that 99% of the people match to one another on a genome, that there could be a match to someone completely unrelated on the other side of the globe. It’s all dependent upon the quality of the match. So what in this case, could have gone wrong?
And actually, that is the answer. When you are dead set on seeing a situation, object or person in a certain way because you have this set of clues, this set of (DNA) data, this set of preconceived notions (it’s a AR-15 that happens to spit shotgun shells) we do ourselves and no one else any favors to insist on not considering any other possibilities.
Yes, as one person posted on my Facebook linked story, you can request that your DNA profile be deleted. I have no idea how long they would take to do that, if they actually do delete it. I suspect it’s a lot more like a NICS check and once they have it, they have it. Would the sell it? Who knows. But who would ask to have their profile deleted in the first place? I mean it’s not like Billy Bankrobber is sending his DNA in to see if he’s really a Viking or Scottish or Kenyan. It’s nice people, who want to know if they should buy lederhosen or a dreidel. They would never think 15 years down the road this is going to get my son in hot water because ___________. I mean it’s not like the government has ever used it’s (IRS) power to go after people (Joe The Plumber) or groups (The Tea Party) it doesn’t like, right? I mean, what could be wrong with that?
Today I was listening to the radio while I was driving. One of the topics was the attack on Sen. Rand Paul. The host discussed when it first happened the mainstream media (#FakeNews) more or less laughed it off. The assailant IS a Doctor at Bowling Green hospital, man they must be hurting for staff there, don’t think I’d go there regardless of the reason. Then the media said it was over “grass clippings” “landscaping”, apparently the statement given by the assailant’s lawyer. But then a spokesman for Sen. Paul released a tweet (love how there are ways to get around the msm) that made a few people begin to question the excuse given. Breitbart and I believe, the Washington Examiner actually did this old-fashioned thing called “journalism”. They didn’t accept the lawyers word, they went and talked to the neighbors. All of whom said the Pauls were wonderful neighbors, kept their place immaculate, and unlike everyone else who has a lawn care service, Sen. Paul does his own. The “doctor” who is the inventor of a QVC product in 2005. The neighbors reached out to Breitbart because what they were reading in the msm was so wrong. The media reported it as “minor injuries”. The man has six broken ribs and a pleural effusion. Check out the x-ray picture! Minor my ….. foot. The media did everything it could to cover for the liberal Bernie supporter and conservative hating “doctor” and QVC maven.
But this is not the first legislator attacked by a supporter of the communist Bernie Sanders. No, Republican Representative Steve Scalise was shot along with four others before a good guy with a gun, the Capitol police, showed up to end it.
And let’s say, what if the police, or campus security were told to stand down, not to help those being attacked. And some of the campus security were ticked, they were told by the college STAFF that everything was “ok”. Sounds like University of Missouri. Who now rents the empty dorm rooms to the 5 people that come to the football games.
If you live in a blue area, I’m sure this makes you really anxious for the next patriotic event, parade or speech perhaps, by someone you would like to hear. Except that to the thugs, many of them Soros funded, free speech only applies to them.
College campuses a safe space? Only the liberals are safe on college campuses. If you are conservative, or want to hear a conservative, not so much “safe space”.
A conservative, gay, Jewish speaker Milo was suppose to speak at Berkeley, yes, this is old news, but it’s going somewhere.
Milo is gay, normally not a group attacked by the left. Milo is Jewish, in the past, not a group attacked by the left. But Milo is a conservative, and no matter what else he is, it means he has no right to say things that college students don’t want to hear and expose them to thoughts they’ve never heard in class except to hear them derided.
This documentary portrays a horrific picture of anti-Semitism at a number of American campuses. Much takes the form of extreme anti-Israelism, yet also manifestations of intense hatred toward Jews are shown. Under the cover of the First Amendment of the US constitution, which does not permit limitation of free speech, far-reaching hate mongering against Jews and Israel is carried out and considered protected speech. In the American contemporary academic reality this movie can only be called contrarian.
…….
Another question is why has the Department of Education failed to intervene against this ongoing bigotry? Why has it not systematically investigated the breach of academic integrity by biased teachers at institutions of higher learning. Is it not a national interest that university administrations have a moral compass? All this is not only a Jewish issue but also one which indicates that there is a great deal wrong with the American university system.
Protected speech policies allow extreme hatred. Politically correct administrators and professors teaching one-sided biased views reflect academic degeneration. The probability that there is much more wrong on campuses beyond biased teaching and anti-Semitic hate speech is high. This is the more important issue because some students infected by their teachers may eventually come to hold senior positions in the country.
A mob of people going after people that they don’t like. They don’t agree with how they think, and they’ve been told by the media that those people aren’t really even human. So you don’t have to treat them as such. They’re vile, they’re deplorable. What happens when you have large groups of people that think that way? They believe it’s ok to attack? Because we have that now….And then
Today is November 9th. The anniversary of the start of Kristallnacht.
How did he get here? Chuck Schumer invited him via the “Diversity Visa” program. He came from Uzbekistan in 2010. He also brought in 23 family members. Um, anyone know where they all are now? They say that the “Diversity Visa” winners undergo the “same rigorous vetting” as other immigrants. Ahhh, think I found part of the problem. Said Bucket of Chum is proud of the killings. If only there could have been some prior warning that Bucket O’ Chum was a danger! Well, gee.
And they listened? To Linda Sarsour? I wouldn’t trust her to tell me if day was day or night. So lock Sarsour up as an accomplice already!
You see, they now fear Bucket of Chum may have been radicalized in the US. There is excellent reason to think this, Bill DeGoofio was sent a letter by Imam Tawhiki warning him of radicalizations. Imam Tawhiki is known as the Imam for peace.
Letter from Imam Tawhidi to DeBlasio
Not to mention the presences of ISIS flags being paraded down Manhattan streets. That could be a clue as well.
isis flag proudly paraded down the street.
And here’s the thing. This is another part of the problem. The leftist celebrated “diversity” and “multiculturalism”. Many of the muslims coming into our country do not want to assimilate, they have no intention of becoming Americans, well, beyond taking tax dollars, welfare, free housing, free healthcare, etc.
And we must celebrate the diversity of beliefs. For example, ripped, hole jeans are very fashionable among the younger set. So, the women need to be raped. Huh?
Al-Wahsh added, “I say that when a girl walks about like that, it is a patriotic duty to sexually harass her and a national duty to rape her.”
Mr. Al-Wahsh is an Egyptian Lawyer, not a cleric. Oh, goodie. Yep, let’s allow everyone to keep their culture they bring from the homeland. I’m not talking about corned beef and cabbage, I’m not talking about beer gardens. There are choice that anyone can choose from, unless your on the left and then you scream cultural appropriation and don’t eat the corned beef or wear hoop earrings. I’m speaking of beliefs that affect others. Such as New Year’s Eve in Cologne Germany. I’m talking about ISIS flags in Manhattan.
The left will not accept that there are violent evil people in this world, unless of course they are talking about people on the Right.
Have we, as Americans lost the ability to name the enemy? It’s not pickup trucks, it’s not box trucks, or guns, or flame throwers. It depends on who’s finger is on the trigger. Have we become so cowed by Political correctness that it is to late to name the enemy? Of late, it is Islam, but for a long time it’s been the leftist influence in our schools, our media and our government.
And what happened within mere days of another islamic attack on Americans?
Ok, so just a few things here that have me scratching my head as I read along and finally you just get to a point where you say “Wait, now WHAT??”
Bear just put up a column about how he has written in and tried to explain or correct some things the media has gotten wrong in their reporting. They want nothing to do with correcting their misinformation.
Within a day I found a story that said A gun-focused news outlet on what it takes to cover firearms credibly It talks about how news outlets are not taken seriously because of their attitudes and the large number of stupid mistakes they make in reporting. Ok, maybe I paraphrased that, a little.
So for how long has the leftists told us guns are evil, if there were no guns, there would be no violence, and no abuse and no hatred and plenty of unicorn ice cream.
Ok, yes, mildly gross, and amusing. What a great segue into the next part. Mildly gross and amusing.
The left and guns. Shannon T.Watts hates women, I don’t know how many stories I see up on The Zelman Partisans twitter feed that talk about women and children who were able to defend themselves or save their children by having a gun available. But for some reason those lives don’t matter to Shannon and Mikey Bloomers, who no doubt have their very own armed guards. Why they hates those women and children, who knows, but it seems they do. So the left, the leftist groups, their public voice known as the mainstream media and their thug enforcement arm known as the Demoncratic party have done everything they can to limit law abiding gun owners ability to own guns, to practice sport shooting, to practice self defense shooting, and yes hunting.
Until now.
Now we have new LGBTQ groups that are springing up to learn to shoot. Now Pink Pistols has been around for ages, their goal has always been legal gun ownership, not with an eye towards violence and attacking others, but towards defense. The same as every other law abiding gun owner.
Now we have antifa, the tool of George Soros, who have decided that they need to learn how to fight. Not content with merely carrying baseball bats, they are training in the gym to learn to fight and they are learning to shoot. Not with an eye towards self-defense, with a goal of destroying people they disagree with. Tolerant children aren’t they?
Wait, what? But they’ve been telling us guns are evil and must be banned.
You are planning to start riots and violence against people that you think are Trump voters to resist fascism. Which if you are successful in rioting all over the country and it becomes severe enough will possibly bring about a spell of martial law? Which is going to feel like fascism to you basement dwellers.
Now, let’s see, one site says that antifa plans to kill all the Trump voters. So, are you going to ask before you bash a skull or just watch for the secret conservative handshake? If only there could be a clue, like, oh, I don’t know. Like a color or something, like the bloods and crips used to do. Hmm, oh wait! I know! All the people that voted for Trump must be white, right? Because the media said he’s a racist. So that must be it, the “white privilege” thing. I’m telling you, Charlie Manson was off by a few years, but he may have been correct.
Let’s look at this “white privilege” deal. Any guesses as to where it originated? Well, of course the left, the media, colleges and social justice warriors. But leftists would be a big clue.
This column makes a lot of excellent points, it was written in 2014, during the reign of barry.
Communism is a system that demands total and complete obedience to the state and anyone who opposes that is standing in the way of progress and needs to be eliminated. Bringing society to the point where they will willingly participate in the slaughter of their own countrymen is not an overnight process. It is a gradual conditioning of the population to get them to believe that some people are not as worthy of life as others.
The author states that there are eight steps before this can take place.
1. The first step is classification. This simply means classifying people into different groups and intentionally dividing people along ideological lines.
2. The next stage is known as “symbolization.” This is the process of attaching a negative symbol to the dominating ideology of the targeted group.
3. The next stage is known as “dehumanization.” I personally can’t think of anything more dehumanizing than being assumed to be a racist simply because I am white.
4. The next stage is “organization.” The political left is the master of organization. Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals is the organizing bible for the left and they have mastered the art of teaching minorities that they are oppressed by America’s evil white men.
5. The next stage is “polarization.” Stanton identifies this as the downward spiral of killings until the vortex of all out genocide is reached.
6. 7. 8. This brings us to the final three stages which are “preparation, extermination and denial.” I stopped with polarization because I believe that is the stage we are currently in. However, it could be argued that we are in the preparation stage as it has been reported that all Americans must be micro chipped by 2017 per Obamacare regulations or even acall for a universal I.D. can be used to justify the idea that we are in the preparation stage.
And the government does love pushing that REAL ID law don’t they. And many people would tell you that in America, we have the right to pursue our dreams, we do not have the right to have someone else work only to have the fruit of their labor taken from them and given to another group. Is there really white privilege or just more SJW bull feathers, and yet another tactic used by those trying to bring about communism and division in our Republic.
Wait, what? What happened to Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.”? But this is not the “freedom” that antifa says they are fighting to bring about. Nope. Communism? Submit or die? I’m thinking some of those college profs and the media left out a few details about living under communism when they indoctrinated the useful idiots.
Didn’t the obama administration continually tell us how evil and dangerous guns are? In fact I seem to recall some schools wouldn’t even allow Police officer parents to pick up their kids if they were in uniform. And we know many schools do not want armed resource officers. I guess it’s better to let the kids be shot in a gun free zone? I don’t know. I haven’t figured that one out yet. But, back to barry’s regime. It seems some traditionally administrative agencies have armed up. To the tune of 20 million dollars.
Wait, what? This is all from one article, and there isn’t an answer for every square, but for the years 2015-2016…..
Agency
Dollars
Weapons
# of Agents
Misc
IRS
12.2 Million
AR-15, P-90 tactical rifles,”other heavy weaponry”
2,300
Sm. Business Admin
“Tens of thousands”
Glocks
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
Glocks with silencers
Veterans Affairs
AR-15’s, Sig Sauer handguns, and other semi-automatic pistols
3,700 armed
Dept of HHS
The same sophisticated weapons platforms used by our Special Forces
“National Training Operations Center” – a facility at an undisclosed location within the DC beltway.
Dept. of Energy
$49,559
M-16 rifles with extra magazines
GSA
$16,568
Shotguns and Glocks
Bureau of Reclaimation
$697,182
Bulk order of pistols, sights and accessories
They build dams, power plants, and canals
Dept of Education
Shotguns, Glocks and body armor
88
Dept of Interior
$4.4 million
Guns and Ammo
U.S. Geological Survey
Winchester Black Shadow shotguns and G27 Glocks, shotgun slugs, and frangible ammo
They “real-time data and information on current conditions and earth observations.”
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
$410,263
.308 rifles, Glock pistols with silencers, and semi-automatic rifles.
They conserve, protect, and enhance fish, wildlife, plants, and their habitats
The Bureau of Engraving and Printing
$100,000
“Firearms”
US Mint
$179,247
“Ammunition”
The Bureau of Fiscal Services
$672,424
.223 Rem 62 Grain Service Ammo, .40 caliber ammo, and buckshot. Additionally, they stocked up on Glock pistols, Remington firearms, and handgun magazine clips.
They promote the “financial integrity” of the government through accounting, financing, etc.
Dept. of Ag
$1.1 million
Guns and Ammo
National Resources Conservation Service
$10,347
“Guns through 30Mm.”
Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service
$22,336
Rifles and pistols plus nearly half a million dollars on ammunition including buckshot, shotgun shells, and rifle ammunition.
Wait, what? I mean obama kept telling us how fewer guns would make us safer, but all these agencies armed up while he was in office. Well, that’s scary isn’t it? Planning more Bundy and Hammond Ranch raids are they? More Ruby Ridge and Waco?
And so, right before Halloween, I’ll leave you with a little cartoon.
1 :capacity to endure pain or hardship :endurance, fortitude, stamina
2 a :sympathy or indulgence for beliefs or practices differing from or conflicting with one’s own
b :the act of allowing something :toleration
3 :the allowable deviation from a standard; especially :the range of variation permitted in maintaining a specified dimension in machining a piece
4 a (1) :the capacity of the body to endure or become less responsive to a substance (such as a drug) or a physiological insult especially with repeated use or exposure developed a tolerance to painkillers ; also :the immunological state marked by unresponsiveness to a specific antigen
(2) :relative capacity of an organism to grow or thrive when subjected to an unfavorable environmental factor
b :the maximum amount of a pesticide residue that may lawfully remain on or in food
Ok, that last one kind of made my eyebrows go up a bit.
There’s tolerances involved in all sorts of things. Sewing, you can be off by like a ¼ of an inch sometimes, gapping spark plugs, there is a set gap, it can be off a little, reloading bullets, ok, so I don’t actually know how to do this, but I’m guessing there is a tiny bit of play. But a lot of things involve a certain amount of give. There is tolerance in how long my horses will stand to have cockleburrs picked out of their manes and tails, this can be influenced with horse cookies, so things can have an effect on the amount of tolerance given or acceptable. There is tolerance in activity, running, reading, tail brushing, for example. Today I was listening to a radio show in the morning. They were talking about the NFL, the national losers and their behavior. The caller thought that since the left seems to be determined to destroy anything in this country with the least bit of masculinity to it, maybe people should just wait for the kneeing phase to blow over as if they were a bunch of spoiled 3 year olds acting out….which, well. Yeah. But the host made his point, the NFL, as a manly sport is gone. The owners by not keeping things professional have allowed it to basically die as the beloved American sport where kids could look up to the felon players. And that the previous things known as “football fans” tended to be pro-America, pro-Military, pro-Law enforcement and they are tired of antifa, tired of rioting, tired of being told to just ride it out, it will get better because it isn’t and this anti-American unprofessional crap is getting on their very last nerve and they are tired of being “tolerant” and fighting by Marquess of Queensberry rules and losing because the left never does fight by the rules, anyone’s. The right has tried to be the grown-ups and be tolerant of other lifestyle choices, beliefs and everything else and they’ve had it. Yep, I hear that.
Then driving home tonight, I was listening to Joe Pags, I like him. He was talking about the security guard from the Mandalay Bay. Actually he was probably more like a parking valet because he was unarmed. An unarmed “security guard”. Huh. Nope, a parking valet that doubles as a walk around bell boy, or regular valet. After the “incident” a few pictures of Jesus Campos made it onto the internet, the heroic security guard. And then he went missing. He was suppose to be on Sean Hannity, and had some other interviews lined up. And he supposedly went to a walk in clinic and then more or less vanished after having canceled all his interviews. Huh. He has since reappeared on The Ellen DeGeneres show. Huh. Well, I suppose it’s a logical choice. Ellen is known for her hard hitting, in depth investigative journalism. Oops, sorry, no, I was thinking of Sharyl Attkisson. So in addition to the baffling choice of venues for his one and only interview, it appears Jesus has been doing some stress eating. So the things Joe was pointing out were pretty interesting. After Jesus went missing, a reporter, Laura Loomer decided after finding that Jesus’s name had been scrubbed from the Mandalay employee list to pay a visit to his house. Which is being guarded by an armed guard working for a security company with a “virtual” address and a business license that expired in January of this year. Huh. Something else Joe pointed out, from the pictures of the guy that were posted on the net right after it happened it appears that Jesus has gained about 70 pounds, in two weeks. It seems that most of his answers on the Ellen show were very well rehearsed. No word if he was auditioning for Harvey Weinstein.
Now I’m a reasonably tolerant person, I think. In my job, I try hard to be nice and kind and helpful to my co-workers and to people I need to interact with. Really, I do. However, I have what is known as a low, and it’s getting lower all the dang time, B.S. tolerance. I will try very hard to be a team player, but, do.not.mess.with.me. It makes me cranky.
And as I’m listening to Joe, and thinking we’re on like the 3rd or 4th timeline now of how and when things happened, the B.S.-O-Meter pegged out.
B.S.-O-Meter
You have a lot of people that were killed, more wounded, theories abounding, immediate calls for more restrictions on the Second Amendment, cases made for gun confiscation, faux Second Amendment groups joining in the chorus for infringement like a bunch of demented Stockholm syndrome victims and the actual knowledge of what really happened and what this was really about is pretty dang thin. I mean, these fools want to bring our country to a point where only the government has guns, or at least regular American Citizens are only allowed a registered .22 single shot if they can prove need, keep it locked up and can only buy one box of registered ammunition every other month.
B.S.-O-Meter
So I thought a short walk down memory lane might be in order. In Chronological order.
December 28, 1890 a detachment of the U.S. 7th Cavalry Regiment commanded by Major Samuel M. Whitside intercepted Spotted Elk’s band of Miniconjou Lakota and 38 Hunkpapa Lakota near Porcupine Butte and escorted them 5 miles westward to Wounded Knee Creek, where they made camp. The remainder of the 7th Cavalry Regiment, led by Colonel James W. Forsyth, arrived and surrounded the encampment. The regiment was supported by a battery of four Hotchkiss mountain guns.
On the morning of December 29, the U.S. Cavalry troops went into the camp to disarm the Lakota. One version of events claims that during the process of disarming the Lakota, a deaf tribesman named Black Coyote was reluctant to give up his rifle, claiming he had paid a lot for it. Simultaneously, an old man was performing a ritual called the Ghost Dance. Black Coyote’s rifle went off at that point, and the U.S. army began shooting at the Native Americans. The disarmed Lakota warriors did their best to fight back.
The US Army killed about 250 Shoshone during the Bear River Massacre in southeastern Idaho in 1863. As recently discussed in Smithsonian, “200 soldiers under Colonel Patrick Connor’s command killed 250 or more Shoshone, including at least ninety women, children, and infants. The Shoshone were shot, stabbed, and battered to death. Some were driven into the icy river to drown or freeze.”
In eastern Colorado in 1864, the Sand Creek Massacre occurred. There, US soldiers attacked peaceful, unarmed Cheyenne and Arapaho Indians “with carbines and cannon, killing at least 150 Indians, most of them women, children and the elderly. Before departing, the troops burned the village and mutilated the dead, carrying off body parts as trophies.”
In 1870, the US Army accidentally killed the “wrong” group of Indians, in the Baker or Marias Massacre. In north-central Montana, along the Marias River, Major Eugene Baker ordered his soldiers to attack a village of peaceful Blackfeet. When informed by a subordinate that this group was not the one the troops were looking for, Baker responded, “That makes no difference, one band or another of them; they are all Piegans [Blackfeet] and we will attack them.” About 175 unarmed Blackfeet were murdered, the great majority children and women.
I can’t find any photos of what the press said about the massacre at Wounded Knee, how they explained or presented it. I did however find a line in an editorial of the Aberdeen Saturday Pioneer,
“The Pioneer has before declared that our only safety depends upon the total extermination of the Indians. Having wronged them for centuries, we had better, in order to protect our civilizations, follow it up by one more wrong and wipe these untamed and untamable creatures from the face of the earth.”~~L. Frank Baum
L. Frank Baum was the author of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Wow, so along with yellow brick roads and flying monkeys L. Frank was totally cool with some genocide. But, at least as a member of the press, he covered the massacre fairly and explained why it was totally necessary. /ticked off sarcasm.
Demoncrat President Bill Clinton, Attorney General Janet Reno
So the Sheila synopsis of this is the government wanted Randy Weaver to do some informant work for them. He declined, they wanted him to do a bit of gunsmithing. He declined initially and finally gave in. Yeah, I’m leaving out tons, but there’s a link above. But the circumstances lead to a stand-off between the jackboots and the Weavers and a family friend. The brave ATF, US Marshals Service, and the FBI found it necessary to shoot an unarmed dog, a 14 year old boy in the back and an especially brave FBI HOSTAGE RESCUE TEAM sniper named Lon Horiuchi scored a major victory when he shot 43 year old Vicky Weaver in the head as she stood at the back door of the cabin holding her baby. I don’t think that the FBI has a good grasp on what HOSTAGE RESCUE means. Cause that sure as hell isn’t it. The Boundary County, Idaho, prosecutor indicted sniper Lon Horiuchi for manslaughter in 1997. Both the Weaver family and Harris brought civil suits against the government over the events of the firefight and siege, the Weavers winning a combined out-of-court settlement in August 1995 for $3.1 million, and Harris being awarded, after persistent appeals, a $380,000 settlement in September 2000.
And this is how the media reported what was happening at the time.
Demoncrat President Bill Clinton, Attorney General Janet Reno
If they wanted to arrest Koresh, why didn’t they just do it when he went into town every morning?
On February 28,1993 overly aggressive and highly militarized agents of BATF set out to put on a “big show” to increase their budgets and prestige by attacking the Branch Davidian religious group outside of Waco, Texas. Six months earlier, agents had spurned David Koresh’s attempts to cooperate with their investigation of his gun business by inviting them to see his guns. On February 28, when he came to the front door and tried to cooperate, reckless agents shot him and mortally wounded his father-in-law. Other agents started shooting from helicopters, killing four Davidians. Agents probably assassinated another Davidian who approached Mount Carmel later that day. And so began a 51 day standoff.
So apparently Clinton, Reno and Congress saw no need for a overhaul of how to handle, or not escalate situations in the year since Ruby Ridge.
Now we’ll just move up to more recent history.
Does anyone remember a couple years ago the country seemed to have a spate of outlaw ranchers that the DOJ, BLM and a host of federal alphabet soup felt the immediate need to bring to heel?
Bundy Ranch April 5, 2015
Demoncratic President Barry Sotero aka Barak Obama (so does anyone know, did he finally ever legally get his name changed? Yet?) Attorney General Eric “Gunwalker” Holder
The pared down version is a 67 year old cattle rancher in Nevada has been running cattle on the same land his family has for over a 100 or so years. He is actually the last rancher in Clarke county these days due to the “management” practices of the BLM. The BLM-g* demanded he cut his 900 head herd to 150 head. Well, I don’t suppose a obama headed BLM-g would have any better idea of business than anything else he had anything he touched. Besides, they had to save the desert tortoise. The same desert tortoise the BLM-g was killing. Of course, the BLM-g was also killing Bundy’s cattle. BUT NOT ON PURPOSE!! They screeched! No, they just separated the calves and cows and the calves starved to death. And they “might have had to put down a few of the cows” for humane purposes, no doubt. This time, as opposed to Ruby Ridge and Waco Texas, patriots have been getting a belly full of seeing the government obliterate their neighbors for some reason. And they showed up. And the BLM-g went after them as well. Although in most of the court cases the charges were thrown out.
So why did it happen? Well, short answer is Cliven Bundy and his family were not big Harry Reid donors. Read the above link, a big donor wants the land, and Harry got him made head of the BLM-g. Another possible use, but someone else wants the land.
People were attacked at this government siege,but no one died. A pregnant woman had attack dogs set on her, Ammon Bundy was tasered twice, many of the Bundy’s cattle were killed and stolen by the BLM-g, but no one died. First Amendment zones were set up, which were the only places citizens were allowed to film and were located far enough away no one could film what the BLM-g was doing. The Governor of Nevada was not happy about that, but well. And those attacks I mentioned? They occurred on public lands. The public was attacked on public lands by the BLM-g and their law-enforcement cronies. That being said, the local sheriff and his deputies refused to take part in attacking citizens or stealing cattle. But, no one died.
The Hammond Ranch January 4, 2016
Demoncratic President Sotero? Obama? Fluffernutter? Attorney General Loretta “Tarmac” Lynch
Well, this one just makes my head hurt. Basically the Hammonds like the Bundys, are the last Ranchers in the area. They own a chunk of land in the middle of an area where the BLM-g have managed to run out all the other ranchers. For those that don’t know this, it’s common to burn off a pasture from time to time. It gets rid of growth you don’t want and your crops or grass will come back better and stronger, with fewer weeds. It also keeps the undergrowth and trees burned off. So when something like a lightening strike hits you won’t have the massive fires like what we are seeing in California right now. And that’s partly why we’re seeing them in California. Because of “environmentalists” people aren’t allowing people to keep things burned off and clean, so when you get a fire, you get a doozey. So in the course of burning off some fields, the fire jumped onto BLM-g land that the Hammonds were leasing. This happened a couple of times, a total of 140 or so acres were affected. The 73 year old Dwight and his son Steven were sentenced under a terrorism act. I’ve read enough to know that the BLM-g have also set fires, including back burn like what the Hammonds set in one instance to try to stop a fire started from a lightening strike burning even more. And the BLM-g fire has gotten out of control and cause large amounts of damage and no charges were ever brought in those cases. A judge reduced their sentence from five years to a few months for both of them, stating he didn’t think the anti-terrorism statute they were sentenced under applied. They served their time. And then the government decided they hadn’t served enough, and so the case went back to the 9th Circuit and the 9th Circus judge said the Hammonds had to serve the whole thing. No BLM-g ever served time for causing far more damage.
People showed up to the party. The Malheuer Wildlife Refuge was taken over.
But in this stand-off, someone did die. LaVoy Fincum. While the press often portrayed the protesters and wild eye lunatics, this article is a bit more sympathetic to Mr. Fincum. His death still raises many questions as some people feel he was basically shot in cold blood as he had his hands up.
This BLM-g seizure of ranch land is going on all around the country now. These grazing fees they talk about are not piddling little fees, and if the BLM-g wants your land, they raise them to unaffordable.
But the press does not side with the citizen if there is a Demoncrat President at the time. No word on how they would side if it were a Republican President in office.
There has also been speculation that there is uranium on the ranches and that the BLM-g wants to gain control of the mineral resources on the ranches. Here’s a hint, think about Mrs. Pantsuits. And since all the other ranchers have been run off from the surrounding ranches, the holdouts must go.
These are unelected government agencies that are ruining lives, and seizing control of valuable farming and ranch land. Where is the recourse?
And so now we have Las Vegas, a myriad of questions and few answers coming from the government. Many are dead, or wounded and the predictable full throated cries for more gun control, gun confiscation and no one even asks “And if there had been other assailants in the crowd you don’t think having some concealed carry holders in the audience would have saved lives?” Nope, just demands to take rights from people that have committed no crimes. And this little walk down memory lane is by no means exhaustive. How the media explained and portrayed it to the public seldom told what was really happening. So excuse me please if I choose to “cling” to my gun and my Tanakh/Bible a little bit closer right now….these sorts of situations tend to bring that out in me. Because right now?
B.S.-O-Meter
*BLM-g is Bureau of Land Management as opposed to Black Lives Matter. Both are rouge organizations where pain and suffering at the set goals. But this column concerned the “government” version so BLM-g as opposed to BLM-a which is Black Lives Matter-“antifa” version.
During a fair amount of the time the atrocity that occurred in Las Vegas has been discussion of the airwaves I’ve been dealing with a sinus issue. To sum it up, they hate me, I hate ‘em back. But what this has done is slow me down and put me in more of an observer role. Just sort of listening and watching, less than my usual dissecting. I do have a “be on the lookout” for my missing brain cells.
Here are some of my passing observations.
We have late night “comics” using the term generously, sobbing on late night TV because they are more righteous and compassionate than us mouth breathers and knuckle draggers about the deaths at the hands of a madman. Not a gun, a madman, a bucket of chum. However, as Charles Cooke points out of said comedian’s logic is missin flawed. Not to mention he had more than guns he was waiting to deploy on his hapless victims.
Then I had a video I was going to put in here, which as best as I can recall it shows a sheriff saying they didn’t know if bucket of chum had been “radicalized”. I found that interesting. I also find it interesting that the video is now removed for “hate speech”. Huh.
Then on September 29th in The Military Times there is the ISIS warning to Muslims to avoid public places.
The Islamic State group has sent out a message to its followers warning them to avoid public places in the U.S., Russia, France, the United Kingdom, Canada, Belgium, Australia, and Italy.
The message was first discovered by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), a think tank located in Washington D.C.
The message warns Muslims to avoid these public places because “these places are targets of the soldiers of the caliphate,” the message reads.
There is a very interesting to me, video of a gentleman explaining using data to show there was a second assailant and his locations. The video is about a half hour long, and does a nice job to my math phobic mind. His opening comment was along the lines of “well, the FBI said they wanted citizens to help”. I like that. So he did audio extractions and video analysis.
Anyone know how far behind the Police in Vegas Colin Kaopectate and the rest of the kneelers objecting to Law Enforcement were trailing? I’m sure those big NFL stars were pretty anxious to show how pointless law enforcement is and were beating feet toward that room in the Mandalay, right? Should I tweet Kaopectate and ask?
Ok, fine. I’ll agree, all that is speculation. Some of it informed, some of it calculated, as in mathematics, and some of it is flat informed speculation.
No word yet if Ms. Sinatra would have had this apply to her Dad’s old “Rat Pack” pal Sammy Davis Jr. or not. And if she would have, would that have been racist? If she wouldn’t have had him executed as well, would that have been racist? Because he absolutely did know his way around guns.
Here’s what is not speculation.
We have a cnn #FakeNews senior correspondent who felt it necessary to point out during his report that many of the victims were likely supporters of President Trump. I can only cringe when I consider what the up and coming batch of now junior reporters will be like. Probably graduates of MU.
“Something else, I think, to keep in mind – a lot of these country music supporters are likely Trump supporters. This is something, of course, hitting the tapestry of all Americans and there are going to be victims from across the country here,” Zeleny said after being asked to analyze President Donald Trump’s speech regarding the tragedy.
Here’s what is not speculation.
But not to be left behind in their quest to have a staff and employees that view the “news” as something that’s manufactured, not something thats “occurs”, we have SeeBS, sorry, spelling error CBS.
CBS’s offering to the journalistic swamp is one of their organization’s Vice-President and senior counsel, Hayley Geftman-Gold. The now unemployed, at least by CBS, well, at least at the writing of this column, Haley had a plenty to say about the victims of a madman.
The left consider it perfectly acceptable to throw venom and lies and accusations towards innocent people. Melania was a hooker? Donald Trump SAID “bad things” Harvey Weinstein DID bad things. Crickets. If people the media consider beneath them are attacked by _________, it’s fine. Violence has become an acceptable form of “political dissent”. Because to those on the left? Life is cheap. Think not? How many moonbats do you see proudly wearing the “che” shit shirts, typo, sorry.
The the Dancing Duo of Surrender Monkeys came out and in almost perfect unison preformed their routine. The nra and the saf both came out supporting a ban on bump-fire stocks. Such stalwarts defenders of the Second Amendment! Almost predictable isn’t it? Brings a tear to the eye doesn’t it? Oh, wait, I think that my aspirin is wearing off. Never mind that bit.
Anyway, Surrender Monkeys.
Musicians claiming they were strong Second Amendment supporters are now saying they support Gun Control. So, you have people not wanting to be lumped in with those evil mouth breathing red necks, if you are a “trendy” red neck crying for more gun control now, that is of course socially acceptable. Surrender monkeys defending the already tattered Second Amendment by calling for more gun control. Folks, the media and the likes of Hayley Geftman-Gold, cnn’s latest fresh catch twit of the day are never going to like us, respect us or treat us in a respectful manner. No matter what excuses we make for our stances. The answer is “I believe” “I honor” “I serve” not to be followed by a qualifier.
This is not speculation. Well, not all of it.
Rabbi Lazer Brody put up a column shortly after this happened, the first part before more information came out is speculation. The last part, which is why I wanted this link in the first place, is not. It starts at Remember what we wrote here before the solar eclipse in the USA?
This last is also a good one to read, “Calm Before The Storm”, also by Rabbi Lazer. Yes, I like Rabbi Lazer, a lot.
We are seeing so many people flood the street thinking destruction and attacking people because you think they are greedy/ privileged/ not a person of color/ or pick any of the multitude of other currently acceptable tags right now, is acceptable. They are encouraged in this by cnn, mslsd, msm, and on and on. I have said in the past they produce nothing, they create nothing they are a parasite on society as they don’t even do what they are suppose to be doing, which is deliver the news.
So, in honor of cnn, msnbc, producers of indoctrinated leftists, I have produced a new graphic. Leftists proudly and happily destroying people, countries, relationships and statues since it was first conceived.
We all know there are Hazardous Material and Toxicity warning symbols, but as I looked, I was unable to find one for such people, so they could be labeled. So just because I love ya’ll so much, I made one. It’s not very good, but I’m not that great at this stuff, but I do try.
Toxic People — Danger
But there are people who stand proud, strong and fierce in their defense of our country and our rights. While some “country artists” now crow (yeah, I did mean to use that word, chicken) they no longer support the Second Amendment, I want to introduce you to someone interesting. A real country artist, and a real cowboy/horseman. His name is Royal Wade Kimes. He’s a singer, songwriter, author, artist, and did I mention horseman? I did? Ok. One year, I bought so much cool stuff he called me to say “thank you”. If I’d have had a weaker constitution than that of a Southern Cowgirl, I’d have fainted on the spot.
Sometimes, I bring so much sad, worrisome stuff, I’m just kind of thinking I also need to remind myself as well, what is strong, what is brave, what is true. And it exists in our country, a plenty. I’m going to give you two things from Royal Wade Kimes, the first is this marvelous song. And the Second is a tip on a wonderful book. Eminent Domain and Old Man Smith. I gave it once as a gift, it got passed around and I’ve yet to read it. It’s available now in ebook. I’m getting my own copy. The book is so strong, I’ve had strong people tell me parts of it left them with tears running down their cheeks. Well written.
New year, new Torah cycle. It starts at the beginning, Parashat Bereshit. The founding of our country on Judeo Christian beliefs, turning back to HaShem, to the good solid things that has helped our country stand strong for all these years. There are plenty who now tell us what is evil is good, and what is good is evil. We know better, we hold onto it and we remain strong in our faith.
Jews. Guns. No compromise. No surrender.
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