Breaking: Biden Drops Out

Posted on July 21, 2024 by Lawrence Person

The Democratic Media Complex that gaslighted us for four years about Biden’s cognitive decline has now forced him out of the race.

President Joe Biden announced that he will be dropping out of the 2024 presidential race after intense public pressure from Democratic lawmakers and liberal commentators following his disastrous presidential-debate performance last month, a dramatic shake-up to the electoral landscape with only months to go until votes are cast.

Biden posted a statement on X, declaring his intention to drop out of the presidential race after seemingly having decided that he is not the Democratic Party’s best candidate to defeat former president Donald Trump this November. He did not endorse a replacement to top the presidential ticket.

Now a lame-duck president, Biden, 81, will serve the remaining months of his single presidential term. His political career, which has spanned five decades, will likely be defined by his decision to bow out of the presidential reelection contest.

Before stepping aside, Biden and his aides vigorously defended his mental acuity but failed to convince the public. Poll after poll found that most Americans believed Biden’s age presented a serious concern, and his decline became increasingly noticeable with each public appearance.

In February, special counsel Robert Hur observed Biden’s memory issues in his final report on the investigation into whether Biden had mishandled classified documents as a private citizen. Although Hur concluded that Biden “willfully” mishandled classified materials, he did not recommend criminal charges, in large part because he did not believe Biden was fit to stand trial.

When Hur’s report came out, Democrats leaped to his defense and claimed that Hur was a right-wing partisan who unnecessarily editorialized throughout the final report. Only after Biden’s horrendous debate showing last month did Democrats finally begin discussing publicly the problem posed by Biden’s advanced age.

Throughout the presidential debate, Biden coughed, stumbled over his words, lost his train of thought, whispered into the microphone, appeared outright confused, and rambled incoherently. Immediately, Democrats and their media allies began discussing the possibility of removing Biden from the presidential ticket.

So now the party that swore up and down that you had to vote for them to “save democracy” is now going to throw the only candidate to receive primary delegates this year (after keeping Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. off the ballot) out of the race so unelected party insiders can pick a new candidate.

His letter says he’s going to serve out his term, so they’re trying to maintain the fiction that he’s fit to govern:

Are they going with Kamala Harris, or was the plan to install Gavin Newsom at the top of the ticket all along?

Man, it has been a crazy eight days.

This is a breaking story, so there may be more revelations coming down the pike.

Update: Biden (or whoever controls his Twitter account) endorses Kamala Harris:

The only question now is whether the people pulling Biden’s strings have decided on Harris. And remember, Harris is both a horrible campaigner and a horrible human being.

Update 2: It occurs to me that the people actually running the Democratic Party may have decided they’re not beating Trump this year, and have settled on Harris as the sacrificial victim to toss to the tigers while they keep running things behind the scenes.

Update 3: It seems like a whole lot of media outlets had “Is Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro going to be Kamala’s running mate” pieces cued up and ready to go…

Update 4: And the first electoral map polling video since the announcement. Spoiler: Trump 340, Harris 198.

“Democrats have basically already lost this election.”

Don’t get cocky.

Update 5: Obama is not endorsing Kamala Harris. Hmmmm.

Update 6:

Update 7: Did White House staff not know about Biden’s decision until they read it on Twitter?

Posted in Democrats, Elections, video | Tagged , , , , , , , | 19 Comments

Seven-Time Felon Opens Up On LA Cops With Machine Gun

Posted on July 20, 2024 by Lawrence Person

Here’s a story that demonstrates the astounding failure of Democrat-controlled California’s soft-on-crime (but hard on legal guns) policies to keep citizens safe.

A man whose record includes seven felony convictions now faces an attempted murder charge after prosecutors say he opened fire with a machine gun on two Los Angeles police officers, grazing one of them.

Malcolm Darnell Guss Jr. is accused of using a fully automatic AR-style rifle to shoot at Officers Stefan Carutasu and Joshua Rodney after they tried to stop his white Chevrolet sedan at around 9:30 p.m. on July 3 in Willowbrook near Broadway and Rosecrans Avenue, just south of Los Angeles.

The articles uses “machine gun,” which is probably technically correct in terms of the National Firearms Act definition, but it sounds like what he was using was an actual assault rifle, capable of selectable fully automatic fire. But since the democratic media complex loves to call Modern Sporting Rifles like the AR-15 “assault rifles,” they’re bereft of language when a real one shows up.

Guss allegedly unloaded on the officers before they could get out of their patrol car, resulting in two graze wounds to the head. Both officers suffered lacerations from the glass fragments of the patrol vehicle’s windshield. Guss fled the scene but was apprehended July 12. On Tuesday, he pleaded not guilty in Compton court to attempted murder and other charges for allegedly using a machine gun in the attack.

Court records show Guss’ prior convictions include two strikes for residential burglaries in July 2014 and December 2018. Since 2020 he’s been charged three times with being a felon in possession of a firearm.

In December 2020, records show, Guss was arrested with drugs and a gun by Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies. He was sentenced to two years in prison after striking a deal to plead no contest to a single felony charge in March 2021. That same month, he received another two-year sentence in a separate gun case that stemmed from a September 2020 incident.

The district attorney’s office in a statement said the two convictions had concurrent prison sentences

Guss was arrested again in the Antelope Valley in May 2022, charged with resisting arrest and assault with a deadly weapon. He pleaded no contest to the resisting offense and got 16 months in prison, according to court records.

In February 2023, a judge issued a bench warrant for his arrest after he allegedly violated the terms of his release. LAPD officers in Newton Division arrested Guss on July 10, but he was released a month later, county jail records show.

And yes, there’s footage of Guss trying to kill two cops by blazing away with a “machine gun” through his rear window:

(I’m not sure if it’s the youth, the Gen Z, or the California, but those cops do sound radically different than classic LA police as depicted in TV shows like Adam-12 or Dragnet.)

So we have a repeat offender with multiple felony convictions, who by all accounts should already have been behind bars for a good long time, driving around free as a bird. “Since 2020 he’s been charged three times with being a felon in possession of a firearm.” Once again, Democrats scream and shout about “gun crimes,” but in the locales they control (especially in places with a Soros-backed DAs like Los Angeles’ George Gascon), they seem to do nothing about locking up felons with multiple gun violations. And in a state with some of the strictest gun laws in the country, a felon had no problem obtaining a fully automatic weapon.

Soft on crime policies in Democrat-run California, whether at the state level through bad legislation or at the local level due to Soros-backed DAs who refuse to prosecute, is putting convicted felons back on the street and endangering the lives of both ordinary California citizens and law-enforcement officers. Given how thoroughly the mind virus rot of social justice has infected the Democratic Party, that won’t change until Californians are willing to start electing Republicans again.

Which seems deeply unlikely. But New Yorkers elected Rudy Giuliani in 1993 for the same reason, so maybe it’s not entirely impossible…

Posted in Crime, Democrats, Guns, Regulation, Social Justice Warriors, video | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | 7 Comments

LinkSwarm For July 19, 2024

Posted on July 19, 2024 by Lawrence Person

The assassination attempt against President Donald Trump was less than a week ago and a ton of news has come down the pike since. Biden replacement rumors fly hot and heavy, Trump secures renomination, Windows machines across the globe are down thanks to CrowdStrike, a League of Assholes rises in Africa, Chuy’s gets sold, and we say goodbye to a comedy legend. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!

  • Rumors are flying fast that Biden is going to quit the race this weekend. This may just be a bluff from the anti-Biden faction for Biden’s handlers to force him out.
  • The fact that Biden was diagnosed with Flu Manchu has helped fuel rumors he’ll quit for “medical reasons.”
  • But his handlers are claiming rumors of a Biden withdrawal are fake news and that he’ll be back campaigning next week. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • Biden’s campaign chief Jen O’Malley Dillon says he’s not leaving the race.
  • A zoom call with prominent Democrats evidently didn’t reassure them.

    The 81-year-old president repeatedly lost his train of thought on the call and was dismissive of the Democrats’ concerns about his 2024 re-election campaign following his train-wreck debate performance last month, Puck reported Wednesday, citing multiple sources…

    ‘The call was even worse than the debate. He was rambling; he’d start an answer then lose his train of thought, then would just say “whatever.” He really couldn’t complete an answer. I lost a ton of respect for him,’ one person on the call said.

    ‘The president was rambling, dismissive of concerns, unable or unprepared to present a campaign strategy,’ added a second source, who is a member of Congress.

  • Pushing Biden out won’t solve the fundamental problem of the unpopularity of his administration’s leftist ideas.

    Joe Biden’s escalating dementia and the long media-political conspiracy to hide his senility from the public are the least of the Democrats’ current problems.

    Biden’s track record as president may be more concerning than his cognitive decline. He has literally destroyed the U.S. border, deliberately allowing the entry of more than 10 million illegal aliens. His callous handlers’ agenda was to import abjectly poor constituencies in need of vast government services without regard for the current struggles of a battered American middle class and poor.

    The widespread poverty of a vast new cohort of illegal immigrants could serve as indictments of a “racist,” “unequal,” and “unfair” America—as if the residents of East Palestine, Ohio or inner-city Chicago had anything to do with the centuries-long corruption and oppression of Mexico and Latin America that daily drives thousands of their own poorest citizens northwards to a society founded on very different ideas than those of their homelands.

    Note that the left, neither in Mexico nor in America, never asks why millions of these impoverished people prefer to break into a supposedly racist America. Much less do they even distinguish those principles and values that once made America prosperous, free, and secure from their antitheses that have sadly made much of Latin America mostly poor, without freedom, and insecure.

    Biden inherited near-zero real interest rates and inflation at 1.4 percent. Almost immediately, in nihilistic fashion, Biden did to a sound economy what he had done to a secure border. So, he recklessly printed money at a time of spiraling, quarantine-ending demand and supply chain disruption. Middle-class wages never caught up with Biden’s inflation, as prices for key staples are nearly 30 percent higher than when he took office.

    The cost of servicing the ballooning national debt at high interest is now nearly $1 trillion per year. The world abroad is aflame, lit by Biden’s inexplicable withdrawal from Kabul, his mixed signals to Vladimir Putin on the eve of his invasion of Ukraine, his deliberate alienation of Israel, his appeasement of Iran and China, and his cuts in the defense budget, coupled with his woke war on mythical “racists” in the military.

    Energy prices soared, even as Biden’s green agenda proved unworkable and prompted draining the strategic petroleum reserve and begging foreign oil despots before key elections. The “unifier” Biden by design needlessly alienated nearly half the country, and in his debate, he reiterated why Trump supporters do not deserve his concern. And more ominously and recently, Biden grossly told hundreds of his donors that “it’s time to put Trump in a bullseye”—just days before the attempt on Trump’s life.

    The greatest absurdity of the Biden White House is the gaslighting talk of Biden’s “achievements.” Biden’s actions over the last four years are not offsets for his senility that warrant his continuance in office, but again, sadly, they serve as force multipliers, furthering claims of his dementia and for his removal.

    (Hat tip: Sarah Hoyt at Instapundit.)

  • Donald Trump officially accepts Republican nomination for President.
  • Donald Trump, elder statesman.

    I’ve been saying for a month or so now that I’m really impressed with the way that Trump has been conducting himself in this campaign. Yes, I was a fan before, but he’s really been hitting all the right notes this year, especially given the pressure of the the Democrats’ un-American lawfare assault on him.

    The Donald J. Trump who took the stage in Milwaukee last night was a reflective, determined elder statesman and it was glorious. This is what my ultra mega super MAGA friend Kevin wrote about it:

    Trump took to the stage with a bandage covering the wound left by the would-be assassin’s bullet. He kicked off his mesmerizing speech by thanking the GOP for the nomination and promising to stand for all Americans, stating: “We rise together or we fall apart.”

    Trump’s speech was unlike any of his others. It lacked the bombast and sarcasm of earlier speeches, which I find entertaining. Instead, it focused on unity.

    Trump’s sotto voce, conversational tone was perfect, and a counter to the angry maniac that the commies in the mainstream media like to portray him as. He was the adult in the room at a time when the Republic desperately needs that. His recounting of the assassination attempt provided yet another deeply emotional moment at this convention.

    I’ve only briefly glimpsed some of the MSM hacks’ response to the speech, and it’s mostly been awful and not reality-based. They’re desperate and losing and their opinion doesn’t matter.

    The man who accepted the Republican nomination last night is the man who this country needs to right the wrongs of the Biden administration’s wrecking ball reign of error.

    (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

  • Borepatch sees a preference cascade for Trump that may have the effect of minimizing cheating. “It’s one thing to stuff ballot boxes when you think that everyone on your side is on board and your guy is going to win – and any potential investigation will be done in the most slipshod manner. It’s quite a different thing when you wonder just how many of the guys on your side are actually going to go through with this, and if the other guy wins will you be facing 20 years in Club Fed.”
  • Senator Bob Menendez Convicted in Corruption Trial.

    New York jury convicted Senator Bob Menendez (D., N.J.) on 16 felony charges on Tuesday, including obstruction of justice, acting as a foreign agent, bribery, extortion and honest services wire fraud.

    Over the course of a two-month trial, prosecutors accused the three-term senator and his wife, Nadine Arslanian Menendez, of accepting bribes — including hundreds of thousands of dollars, gold bars, and a Mercedes-Benz convertible — from three New Jersey businessmen in exchange for help with a number of legal issues. Menendez was also accused of accepting bribes to work as a foreign agent on behalf of Qatar and Egypt while he served as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

    Shortly after the verdict was handed down on Tuesday, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) urged Menendez to “do what is right for his constituents, the Senate, and our country, and resign.”

    You know it’s been a pretty news-packed week when the conviction of a Democratic senator on bribery charges is this far down the LinkSwarm…

  • It seems that Kamala Harris has just as tepid support among black women as Biden.

    Kamala Harris has the same approval rating among Black women as President Biden, according to a new poll, which must come as a blow to the Vice President as Biden’s electoral fortunes falter.

    And it comes as a surprise, as Black women have been pivotal for securing Harris her spot on the ticket.

    The poll, conducted by Split Ticket between July 12 and 14, asked Black voters in battleground states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin about their opinions on Harris, as well as Biden and Donald Trump.

    According to the poll, if the 2024 election was a toss up between Joe Biden and Donald Trump, 76 percent of Black voters would vote for Biden, compared to 17 percent for Trump. The gender split was 72 per cent of male voters and 79 percent of females backing Biden.

    In contrast, 12 percent of Black women and 23 percent of Black men said they would vote Trump.

    But if the election were a toss up between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, the results were virtually the same, with an equal proportion of voters opting for Harris over Trump, and a split of 79 percent of Black women and 73 percent of Black men preferring the Vice President.

  • You know who else doesn’t want to vote for Democrats any more? Young male voters.

    A years-long collapse in support for Democrats among young Gen Z “Zoomer” males accelerated to a dizzying speed during the Presidentish Joe Biden administration — and that’s before Donald Trump’s display of sheer damn manliness in the moments after Saturday’s assassination attempt.

    The collapse began in 2016, the same year Donald Trump was elected to his first term in office — and, looking back, it seems almost inevitable. That was the year the American Left went from merely unhinged to flying off the rails like Doc Brown and Clara Clayton at the very end of “Back to the Future Part III.”

    Daniel Cox — aka The Liberal Patriot — wrote Monday, “A mounting number of polls suggest that young voters are shedding their Democratic attachments” and that “the way young people relate to the two major political parties is undergoing a momentous change.”

    A recent Pew study found that “young Americans are evenly divided between the parties: 47 percent lean towards or identify as Republicans and 46 percent identify as Democrats.”

    Look at these other numbers from Gallup. They’re unsustainable for the so-called Party of Youth.

    Gallup has conducted this party ID/lean poll since 1998, so presumably, they know a thing or two about it.

    “Biden is a big reason why,” Cox concluded, but there’s much more to it than that.

  • Ukrainian drones destroy electronics factory in Kursk oblast.
  • Federal appeals court blocks all of Biden student debt relief plan. “The St. Louis-based 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals granted a request, by seven Republican-led states to put on hold parts of the U.S. Department of Education’s debt relief plan that had not already been blocked by a lower-court judge.” Good. I don’t see how the Constitution allows the President to simply declare billions of dollars of subsidies to favored classes of individuals absent congressional approval. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • Remember CrowdStrike, the company that helped wipe Hillary’s equipment? An update to their security product Falcon is blue-screening Windows machines across the world today. “The U.S. Emergency Alerts System said 911 lines in multiple states were down.”
  • Biden can’t remember the name of his own Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and calls him “The Black Man.” We all know this would be career-ending for a Republican, yet it’s just another expected “senior moment” for Slow Joe…
  • Here’s some news I missed a while back: China expelled a bunch of defense chiefs from the Communist Party in a “corruption crackdown.” “The moves against Li Shangfu and his predecessor, Wei Fenghe, follow a series of shake-ups at the top of the world’s largest military — Li was ousted from the role last year after disappearing without explanation.” Actual corruption, or simply suspicion of disloyalty to Xi?

  • Barry Diller has lost $9 million propping up The Daily Beast. I know a lot of political publications lose money, but I’m pretty sure you could prop up a leftist website for less than 1/10th that…
  • Welcome to Africa’s League of Assholes. “The military regimes of Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso marked their divorce from the rest of West Africa Saturday as they signed a treaty setting up a confederation between them….All three have expelled anti-jihadi French troops and turned instead toward what they call their ‘sincere partners’ — Russia, Turkey and Iran.” More.
  • Microsoft lays off its entire DEI team.
  • Followup: After being exposed, John Deere is also axing its DEI campaigns.
  • “Alderon Games revealed that it had observed a nearly 100% failure rate of [Intel] Raptor Lake processors in its own testing.” Intel’s patch for these 13th and 14th gen chips is to underclock them, but no root cause has been found.
  • Speaking of semiconductors, UT is sucking up $840 million of DARPA subsidies for research.
  • “Dallas Jailed 14 Illegal Alien Suspects for Child Sex Crimes in a Single Month.” Thanks, Joe Biden…
  • “Newly selected Austin City Manager T.C. Broadnax has presented his proposed budget for Fiscal Year 2025 that totals $5.9 billion — a record for the city.” You can look at the entire 1,162 page document here. Of course there’s plenty of line items for “equity” and “homeless.” That’s where some of the graft is…
  • Speaking of free-spending Austin ways: “Austin City Council Members Propose Creating a Municipal Bank.” Because obviously homelessness and toy trains don’t offer quite enough opportunities for leftwing activists to skim off graft.
  • Turns out slimy NeverTrumper Max Boot was married to a foreign spy:

    For legal reasons, I supposed I should describe Sue Mi Terry as an “alleged” foreign spy.

    Terry and her husband Max Boot, a Washington Post national security columnist, put up their tony Upper West Side apartment as collateral for her $500,000 personal recognizance bond as a condition of her release before trial.

    The six-room, $1.8 million turn-of-the-century home features lavish wood paneling, built-in bookcase, stained glass windows and airy 10-foot ceilings, according to its StreetEasy listing.

    The taste for such luxury is what allegedly drove Terry — a native of Seoul who formerly worked as a CIA analyst before becoming a prominent policy expert linked to several think tanks — to disclose US secret to South Korean spies, Manhattan federal prosecutors said.

    Terry traded her access to information from top US officials, including US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, in exchange for luxury goodies such as a $3,450 Louis Vuitton handbag and a $2,845 Dolce & Gabbana coat, prosecutors said.

    Heh:

    (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.) (Previously.)

  • “Hundreds Of Failing Water Systems In California Need Funding For New Infrastructure.” Because of course they do.
  • “Democratic Socialists Of America Withdraws Endorsement Of AOC.” Because she’s just not anti-Israel enough. Which has jack all to do with democracy or socialism. This is just another sign that victimhood identity politics has eaten the far left whole.
  • Uncle Sam is looking for 155mm air defense system.

    The US Army is seeking a wheeled, self-propelled 155mm cannon-based air defense system capable of firing cheaper hypervelocity rounds.

    A cost-effective alternative to current capabilities based on surface-to-air missiles is being sought, particularly in expeditionary scenarios against the rising threat of cruise missiles.

    Projectiles fired by the Multi-Domain Artillery Cannon (MDAC) will be guided by offboard sensors, eliminating the cost of onboard sensors in current rounds.

    “Current air and missile defense munitions require onboard guidance and targeting components that drive high munition procurement costs,” a service request for information explains.

    “In contrast, the MDAC seeks to significantly reduce munition costs and enhance expeditionary utility by developing a 155mm artillery cannon-based air defense system capable of firing Hypervelocity projectiles, integrated into a wheeled platform.”

    Additionally, the system will be linked with an external Command and Control Battle Manager and the Integrated Air and Missile Defense Battle Command System.

    A prototype contract award is expected in the third quarter of 2025, with deliveries by the last quarter of fiscal 2027 and demonstration in fiscal 2028.

    This is another case of “everything old is new again,” as Germany’s 88mm and 128mm flak cannons were generally considered very effective anti-aircraft weapons in World War II, and I bet 155mm is more than capable of putting a hurt on drones.

  • Ukrainian sniper takes record for world’s longest sniper shot, using a 12.7x114mm cartridge at 4,155 yards. (Hat tip: Reader John Zoch.)
  • If you have AT&T, hackers have probably stolen your phone records.
  • Local TexMex chain Chuy’s is being bought by Darden Restaurants for $605 million. I didn’t know they actually had more than 100 locations. The food is good, but here in Austin they’ve been in the “no one goes there anymore, they’re too crowded” category for a while. (Hat tip: Dwight.)
  • Generation Kill author Evan Wright RIP. That was a very solid book following a Marine recon unit into Iraq in 2003, and is well worth reading if you haven’t already.
  • Comedy legend Bob Newhart, RIP. I’m sure everyone and their dog will be posting the justly famous Newhart finale, but we’re going to kick it old school with a selection from his comedy albums.

  • Lou Dobbs, RIP.
  • Brits visit an HEB+. They’re astounded at the size and blown away by Blue Bell. They’re also amazed that a plain, fresh-baked tortilla can taste so good…
  • Fiberglass rebar?
  • For some reason, the camera focus on the alien romance scenes really crack me up in this episode of Let’s Game It Out.
  • “Democrats Order Flags To Be Flown At Half-Staff As Trump Still Alive.”
  • “Secret Service Director Assures Nation She Wasn’t Trying To Get Trump Killed, She’s Just Extremely Incompetent.”
  • “Democrats Warn That Democracy Will Cease If One Of The Two Major Political Parties That Have Existed For 170 Years Wins In November.”
  • “Democrat Leaders Make Tough Decision To Place Biden On Hospice Following COVID Diagnosis.”
  • West Virginia Republican Governor and senate candidate Jim Justice brings his dog Babydog up on stage at the RNC:

    • I’m still between jobs, so hit the tip jar if you’re so inclined.





    Posted in Austin, Border Control, Budget, Communism, Crime, Democrats, Elections, Foreign Policy, Jihad, Media Watch, Military, Republicans, Social Justice Warriors, Texas, video, Waste and Fraud | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 7 Comments

    Trump Assassination/Election Roundup for July 18, 2024

    Posted on July 18, 2024 by Lawrence Person

    There’s so much Trump news this week that I need to do a separate roundup or the LinkSwarm will end being bigger than Hunter’s coke habit.

  • A whole lot of things about how would-be assassin Thomas Matthew Crooks came so close to succeeding don’t seem to be adding up. Like cops knowing about Crooks nearly half an hour before he tried to assassinate President Trump.

    A team of snipers were inside the building where Donald Trump’s would-be assassin climbed onto the roof and opened fire after being spotted 26 minutes earlier, bombshell new reports claim.

    Cops at the scene noticed Crooks, 20, clambering into place in plain sight just 130 yards away from the rally stage and took two photos of him because he was acting suspiciously, sources told WPXI.

    Meanwhile a counter-sniper team was inside the building that was being used as a ‘watch post’ during the event when Crooks pulled the trigger, The New York Post reported.

    It’s not clear if he had the AR-style rifle on him when he was first seen scaling the AGR International Inc. factory or if he stayed on the roof for the whole time.

    The shocking new allegations surfaced as authorities and the U.S. Secret Service face mounting questions over how Crooks was able to shoot the former president and kill a member of the rally crowd.

    A horrifying video shows witnesses pointing at the roof and shouting at officers trying to warn them. MAGA fans also say they alerted law enforcement to Crooks as he crawled to his shooting position, but he was still able to shoot.

    (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)

  • During that time, Crooks evidently used a rangefinder and came back with a backpack before he started to climb the building, and somehow this didn’t set off giant, flashing alarms with the Secret Service?

  • Here’s ABC’s timeline:

    5:10 p.m. Crooks was first identified as a person of interest
    5:30 p.m. Crooks was spotted with a rangefinder
    5:52 p.m. Crooks was spotted on the roof by Secret Service
    6:02 p.m. Trump takes the stage
    6:12 p.m. Crooks fires first shots

    From the time Crooks fired his first shot to the gunman being killed was just 26 seconds, according to law enforcement officials. Eleven seconds after the first shot, Secret Service counter snipers acquired their target — and 15 seconds after that, Crooks was shot dead.

    So the early summaries were wrong, and the Secret Service response was orders of magnitude worse than we initially believed. (Hat tip: Ann Althouse.)

  • An officer even alerted people on a blanket tactical channel. Did the Secret Service have access to it? Were they just not listening?
  • A bold assertion: “Biden’s Team Deliberately Kneecapped Trump’s Security To Allow An Assassination Attempt.”

    Nobody wants to hear this because of the implications, but oh well, because it needs to be said: Joe Biden’s security regime deliberately and with malice aforethought created the conditions that led to an attempted assassin shooting Donald Trump in the head. It is by the grace of God that he lived and our nation is not currently in the midst of a violent civil war.

    They deliberately starved Trump’s security team of the resources it needed. And they did it repeatedly, over many weeks and months.

    With Trump’s security detail understaffed, under-resourced, and stretched to its limits, Biden’s security regime reportedly diverted even more resources to a hastily planned Jill Biden event that just happened to be in the area.

    Biden’s security regime then ordered the most obvious assassination perch in the entire area to remain outside the main security perimeter.

    Furthermore, Biden’s Secret Service director ordered law enforcement and counter-snipers OFF the roof the assassin used.

    If that weren’t enough, Biden’s security regime also refused to block the line of sight from the assassin’s perch to Trump’s location. When law enforcement radioed in a suspicious person using a laser range finder at the building and even took photos of him, nothing was done to detain the assassin.

    The assassin was so obviously a threat that bystanders at the event begged law enforcement to stop him, but nothing happened. And even as snipers on the roof near Trump saw a gunman on the other roof, Biden’s security regime refused to have agents immediately surround Trump or remove him from the stage to protect him from being shot.

    Given the lies and nonsense from both Biden’s Department of Homeland Security secretary and his Secret Service director, it’s increasingly difficult to believe this was just a series of independent mistakes (Secret Service director Kim Cheatle at one point this week claimed snipers couldn’t be on the roof because it was sloped and they might fall and hurt themselves). In contrast, when you look at the entire picture, what you see better resembles a deliberate plan to make Trump vulnerable but to appear at first glance to be just a couple of innocent mistakes.

    And when you add in how little information we’ve been given about the shooter — apparently the only person on Earth not on the internet — you begin to wonder if maybe a group of people at a different three-letter agency might have been working on a parallel track to find and encourage people to take action against Trump at the very same time he was kept vulnerable by Biden’s regime.

    We know this happens because the FBI did it with Gretchen Whitmer: It recruited and urged disturbed individuals to buy weapons and put together a plan to kidnap her. In that case, the FBI wanted a story it could use to slime right-wingers. So it created the story itself.

    What happens when an agency like that, or maybe even another three-letter agency, decides instead that it’s had enough of Trump? Some former FBI employees might even call it an “insurance policy.”

    Did the Biden Administration want Trump assassinated? That may be a bridge too far, but I think it’s fair to say that the Biden Administration didn’t go out of their way to ensure Trump’s safety. (Hat tip: Ann Althouse.)

  • Incompetence or malice?

    (Hat tip: Ann Althouse.)

  • An everything we know about the shooter piece that’s a few days old.
  • Sometimes the obvious answer is the answer: Evidently the shooter hated Trump.

    A former classmate of the man who attempted to assassinate former President Donald Trump recounted a heated political discussion with the shooter, according to Fox News.

    Vincent Taormina told Fox News Digital in an interview posted Wednesday that the shooter, Thomas Michael Crooks, considered him “stupid” for supporting Trump. Trump was slightly wounded Saturday during the attempted assassination at a Butler County, Pennsylvania, rally, which left former volunteer fire chief Corey Comperatore dead and two other attendees wounded. (RELATED: Liberal Media Outlets Claim Trump Contributed To ‘Violent Rhetoric’ After Assassination Attempt)

    “I brought up the fact that I’m Hispanic and, you know, I’m for Trump. And he said, ‘Well, you’re Hispanic, so shouldn’t you hate Trump?,’” Taormina recounted. “No. He’s great. He was a great president. He called me stupid – or insinuated that I was stupid.”

    “He said, ‘Well, that’s kind of stupid.’ He was a know-it-all,” Taormina continued. “So, like, once again, if he was passionate about something, he would just talk, talk, talk and acted like he knew everything, especially politics-related. He would say it in a tone that was, like, ‘I’m better than you,’ in a type of way, and meanwhile, it’s like, dude, we’re in the same classes.”

    So he was the living embodiment of those WE BELIEVE IN SCIENCE signs…with a gun.

  • Never forget that the Trump assassination attempt followed years of media incitement and liberals calls for violence against Trump.
  • “The mostly peaceful types are upset that Trump survived that assassination attempt, because of course they are.”

  • After years and years of uncivilized behavior, celebrating the attempted assassination of a presidential candidate is finally far enough over the line that leftists are finally getting pink slips. More good work by Libs of TikTok.
  • Biden Halts ‘Trump Is Hitler’ Ads After Assassination Attempt.” Then went back to calling him a threat to democracy the next day…
  • Anti-Trumper Bill Maher had an interesting start to his show following the assassination attempt:

    • He “unequivocally” denounced the attempt. “Not funny.”
    • “Whoever did this has done so much damage to the left.”
    • “They lost a lot of moral high ground in the ‘You’re the violent people.'” (The left hasn’t had that “high ground” for quite some time, as Steve Scalise and Rand Paul can attest.)
    • “I’ve got to say this: Trump is the luckiest motherfucker ever to walk the face of the earth.”
    • “Biden can’t get through a debate and a bullet can’t stop Trump.”
  • “MSNBC Yanks ‘Morning Joe’ Reportedly On Fears Of Inappropriate Trump Shooting Commentary.”

    Joe Scarborough reportedly threatened to quit if MSNBC pull the show again.

  • Just for the historical record: Donald Trump officially nominated as Republican candidate for President.
  • Here’s one of those electoral map YouTubers who says the J.D. Vance veep pick will help ensure a Trump lanslide. I’d like to believe that, but I don’t see enough evidence for the proposition yet.
  • “Trump Classified Docs Case Dismissed, Judge Finds Special Counsel Appointment Unconstitutional.”

    US District Court Judge Aileen Cannon has dismissed Donald Trump’s classified documents case, ruling that the appointment of Special Counsel Jack Smith was unconstitutional.

    “The Special Counsel’s position effectively usurps that important legislative authority, transferring it to a Head of Department, and in the process threatening the structural liberty inherent in the separation of powers,” Cannon wrote in her decision. “He can be appointed and confirmed through the default method prescribed in the Appointments Clause, as Congress has directed for United States Attorneys throughout American history.”

    “Dismissal of this action is the only appropriate solution for the Appointments Clause violation.”

    The Democratic Media Complex’s push to derail Trump by any means necessary has all but ensured his election.

    • I’ve barely touched on the Republican National Convention going on now, but this roundup is already pretty lengthy…

    Posted in Crime, Democrats, Elections, Media Watch, Republicans, Social Justice Warriors | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 8 Comments

    Elon Musk News Roundup For July 17, 2024

    Posted on July 17, 2024 by Lawrence Person

    A whole lot of Elon Musk news of note has popped up this week, so let’s dig in.

  • First, in the immediate aftermath of the assassination attempt against Trump, Musk endorsed Trump for President.

    Elon Musk, the billionaire CEO of Tesla, publicly endorsed Donald Trump for the first time in the U.S. presidential race, calling the Republican former president “tough.”

    Musk, the world’s richest person, posted the endorsement with a video of Trump with blood on his face pumping his fist after multiple shots rang out at Trump’s rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday. Trump was safe.

    The posts cement Musk’s shift towards right-wing politics and hand Trump a high-profile backer in his quest to return to the White House in the Nov. 5 election.

    “I fully endorse President Trump and hope for his rapid recovery,” Musk posted.

    “The martyr lived,” he wrote, citing a reported debate between conservative venture capitalist Peter Thiel and LinkedIn co-founder and Democratic megadonor Reid Hoffman.

    Musk later posted a photograph of Trump at the event, followed by: “Last time America had a candidate this tough was Theodore Roosevelt.”

  • Musk also revealed that the EU offered him a secret deal to censor Twitter/X.

    It IS true that Twitter’s current version violates the Digital Services Act, arguably, because the Digital Services Act is nothing but a censorship regime intended to shut down any speech that doesn’t parrot exactly what the Davos Elites want out there. That isn’t even an exaggeration; that is what it is intended to do.

    If George Orwell wanted to write a law to make 2024 look like 1984, the DSA would be a great first start. It is, I say unironically, evil.

    Elon clearly wants this fight, and he took his first shot back at the E.U. by revealing that they offered him and the other social media platforms a deal: comply with our censorship demands and we will help you deceive your users. He accuses the other social media platforms of taking the deal, and I believe him. Nobody is taking any shots at them because they have knuckled under.

    The European Union isn’t just doing it for their own Elites–they are collaborating with US policymakers, the intelligence “community,” the MSM, and the censorship industrial complex to do their dirty work because there are limits placed on what government can do due to the First Amendment.

    Europe will censor when the US is limited to.

  • Finally, Musk is moving Twitter and Space X headquarters to Texas over California’s transsexual-fueled attacks on parental rights.

    Billionaire Elon Musk said he is moving the headquarters of X and SpaceX out of California after governor Gavin Newsom signed a bill barring school districts from requiring teachers to notify parents if a child changes their gender identity.

    “This is the final straw,” Musk said in a social-media post Tuesday afternoon. “Because of this law and the many others that preceded it, attacking both families and companies, SpaceX will now move its HQ from Hawthorne, California, to Starbase, Texas.”

    Musk said he previously told the California governor a new law like this one would “force families and companies to leave California to protect their children.” Tesla moved its headquarters out of California to Austin, Texas in 2021.

    California is the first state to pass such a law, and conservative groups have said they plan to challenge it in court. Ongoing litigation may complicate those efforts. A San Bernardino County judge already blocked one school district’s parental notification policy after the state’s attorney general sued last year.

    The California Policy Center, a conservative think tank in the Golden State, said the new law “opens the door to child exploitation.”

    “Gov. Newsom has okayed a bill that was based on the flawed logic that parents are dangerous and not to be trusted, and that the state or strangers are better positioned to deal with the difficulties of adolescence than parents,” said Lance Christensen, vice president of education policy and government affairs. “Hundreds of millions of dollars in settlements with victims of sex assault by public school employees is evidence that the opposite is too often true.”

    Musk is reportedly moving Twitter/X headquarters to Austin. If so, I happen to know a Senior Technical Writer who is currently between jobs…

    • While writing this post, I was also going to cover how Musk was reportedly donating $45 million a month to a pro-Trump SuperPAC, but Musk himself just wrote that this report was “fake gnus.” Insert your own Linux pun here…

    Posted in Austin, Democrats, Elections, Media Watch, Republicans, Texas | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

    Feds Want To Eat 700,000 Acres of Texas/New Mexico Land

    Posted on July 16, 2024 by Lawrence Person

    The giant Borganism that is the federal government has a built-in bias to stick its tentacles into every orifice of the body politic, gathering more money, power and influence to itself in stark defiance of the Founder’s blueprints for a weak federal government checked by strong state and citizen sovereignty. In addition to money and power, it also wants to gobble up land, and now it wants to eat 700,000 acres of private land on Texas-New Mexico border.

    Under the guise of “land protection,” the federal government aims to acquire 700,000 acres of private land in the Southern High Plains region—which sits along the Texas-New Mexico border.

    The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service recently finalized its Land Protection Plan. The plan aims to acquire 700,000 acres of privately owned land and put it under federal control for “protection” in “perpetuity.” This is part of the federal government’s efforts to expand the Muleshoe National Wildlife Refuge—which feeds into the broader aim of the Biden administration: fulfilling the “30×30” initiative.

    Through the “30×30” initiative, the Biden administration decided that 30 percent of the nation’s land and waters must be under federal control and management by 2030. President Biden launched the agenda via Executive Order 14008 on January 27, 2021.

    However, American Stewards of Liberty explains that the initiative was rebranded as “America the Beautiful” after facing public backlash.

    As the American Stewards highlight, the Muleshoe National Wildlife Refuge is attempting to expand the “acquisition boundary” from 6,440 acres in Texas and New Mexico to 7,000,000 acres—all without congressional authority. After they acquire more land, they plan to federalize 700,000 acres through buying the land or obtaining permanent conservation easements.

    “Federally acquiring nearly three-quarter million acres from this region is a direct attack on the oil, gas, and mineral industries, agriculture production, and local economies,” the American Stewards write.

    They also claim counties were not notified of the expansion.

    “No direct notice was given to the counties or local governing authorities. The USFWS [U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service] failed to coordinate this plan with the local governments as required by law.”

    The expanded area grabs land in 15 Texas counties including Bailey, Castro, Cochran, Crosby, Dawson, Gaines, Garza, Hale, Hockley, Lamb, Lubbock, Lynn, Parmer, Terry, and Yoakum. The expansion into five counties in New Mexico includes land from Chaves, Curry, De Baca, Lea, and Roosevelt counties.

    If you look at a map of the proposed takings, you can see federal environmentalists want to “conserve” (i.e. control) land rightup to the edge of Lubbock:

    Both this plan and the 30×30 plan in general smack of the sort of unauthorized, self-directed bureaucratic empire-building that the Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo decision struck down. Both private land owners and the State of Texas should resist this blatant land grab with all the tools at their disposal.

    Posted in Democrats, Regulation, Social Justice Warriors, Texas | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 17 Comments

    Demolition Ranch’s Matt Carriker on The Would-Be Trump Assassin Wearing His Shirt: “It Sucks”

    Posted on July 15, 2024 by Lawrence Person

    Demolition Ranch’s Matt Carriker offers up a short, heart-felt video on the fact that would-be Trump assassin Thomas Matthew Crooks was wearing a Demo Ranch shirt when he committed his crime.

    Takeaways:

  • “It sucks.”
  • Carriker stays away from politics on his channel.
  • Says something like this shouldn’t happen to anyone, on any political side, and offers condolences to survivors.
  • Says, just like wearing Nikes, anyone can buy a Demo Ranch t-shirt.
  • “It’s unfortunate, but it’s not what we stand for, and it will never be what we stand for. We’re going to keep keep trucking.”
  • “When you’re watching a a CNN article and it says three names, the shooter’s, Trump’s, and mine, that was not on my 2024 bingo card.”

    • It was succinct, heartfelt, effective, and hit all the necessary notes. It’s as good as I’ve seen the Difficult But Necessary Speech done this side of David Letterman.

    Posted in Texas, video | Tagged , , , , , | 3 Comments

    J. D. Vance Is Trump’s Veep Pick

    Posted on July 15, 2024 by Lawrence Person

    Donald Trump has picked Ohio Senator J.D. Vance as his official Vice Presidential running mate.

    After lengthy deliberation and thought, and considering the tremendous talents of many others, I have decided that the person best suited to assume the position of Vice President of the United States is Senator J.D. Vance of the Great State of Ohio,” Trump said. The former president highlighted Mr. Vance’s record as a Marine, a graduate of Yale Law School, and a bestselling author.

    Mr. Vance, at just 39 years old, will be the youngest vice presidential nominee of a major political party since President Nixon ran with President Eisenhower in 1952. The Ohio senator was elected in just 2022, making him a candidate with some of the least experience in modern history.

    He has made his mark as an “anti-woke” warrior in the upper chamber, and has made it clear that American foreign policy must be geared much more toward the interests of the American middle class rather than the more obscure goals of protecting democracy and upholding international defense obligations.

    Mr. Vance’s stances on foreign policy issues — including saying that America should play a small, if not nonexistent, role in helping Ukraine in their war with Russia — does not frighten some of the more establishment members of his party.

    Senator Cornyn, the number two Republican in the upper chamber, tells the Sun that the GOP has been having thoughtful foreign policy debates within the party for more than 100 years.

    “These discussions on how active the United States ought to be around the world have been long-standing disputes, going back to at least World War I,” Mr. Cornyn said, adding that he was happy to see “a new generation of people” taking the helm of the Republican Party.

    A senior advisor to Trump who was granted anonymity to speak freely tells the Sun that choosing Mr. Vance as the veep candidate is a sign that the GOP is playing offense between now and November.

    “J.D. [Vance] is going to do well with veterans. Huge veteran population in New Hampshire … Hug veteran population in Virginia,” the source says. “It’s gonna be a battle to the end. Why was Vance the best pick for that? Because he’s young, because he’s a Marine. … There are alot of people who said: ‘Leave him in the U.S. Senate’, and there are a lot of people who said that because he may have been the president’s best advocate in the Senate.”

    Speaker McCarthy, who spoke briefly to the Sun after the announcement, says Mr. Vance will held the party do well in the typical “blue wall” states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin.

    Vance was previously vocally anti-Trump before changing his mind.

    Of the various possibilities floated as a possible Trump VP pick, Vance is a better choice than Nikki Haley (duh), Marco Rubio (a lightweight I never understood the appeal of), better than Doug Burgum for age-balancing the ticket (though not on executive governance experience), and possibly not as electorally savvy as Tim Scott. Maybe the blue collar Hillbilly Elegy author will help Trump further crack the “blue wall,” though I think Trump scooped all the votes in rural white demographics he’s going to, especially with the Biden Recession still raging. Trump leads in Ohio by 10+ points, so winning Vance’s home state (a traditional VP pick criteria) isn’t a concern. Also, Vance himself only won the state by six points in his 2022 Senate race.

    I’m enthusiastically behind Vance’s anti-woke crusade, though Trump should already have all the anti-woke votes locked up.

    Once of the biggest drivers behind the Vance pick may simply be loyalty, an area Trump obviously felt previous Vice President Mike Pence was lacking in.

    Trump seems to have a deeper innate understanding of the American electorate than anyone in my lifetime save Ronald Reagan, and frequently decisions that seem puzzling at first (even to me) have a way of working out. There’s an extremely high chance the Vance VP pick will work out as well.

    Posted in Elections, Republicans, Social Justice Warriors | Tagged , , , , , , | 5 Comments

    Your Obligatory Trump Attempted Assassination Post

    Posted on July 14, 2024 by Lawrence Person

    So much for my plans to post light video content today.

    Given the flood of news stories, blog posts and videos, I wasn’t sure I had a good angle on the assassination attempt against Donald Trump by (according to police reports) 20 year old Thomas Matthew Crooks, one that would do anything to enlighten my readers that hadn’t already been done before.

    But Russo-Ukrainian War YouTuber Suchomimus put up a video that I think admirably elucidates spatial awareness of the attempted assassination:

    Takeaways:

  • Initial reports made me think the would-be assassin was in front of Trump, but he was actually off to Trump’s right side. The Secret Service counter-sniper was behind Trump.
  • Analyzing footage, Suchomimus comes to the conclusion that the Secret Service spotted the would-be assassin a split second before he opened fire on Trump, adjusted their sights, and shot him just as the first bullet was fired and grazed Trump’s ear.
  • “As for Donald Trump’s reaction, he handled it amazingly well.”

    • Sky News has an overview and footage of the shooting at about 2:30 in:

    Like every other dramatic shooting event, a lot of the initial information (including the shooter’s name) was wrong.

    Beyond this, there’s a lot of noise (a registered Republican who donated to Act Blue and wore a Demolition Ranch t-shirt?) that I don’t want to try untangling at this late hour.

    Maybe more after I’ve slept…

    Posted in Crime, Elections, video | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | 51 Comments

    The Joe Biden Experience

    Posted on July 13, 2024 by Lawrence Person

    This video is almost genius in its simplicity: Joe Biden as Joe Rogan, interviewing Joe Biden, all populated exclusively with actual Biden audio.

    I’m not going to do a blow-by-blow recap, since the video is short and you’ll probably recognize most or all of the snippets. And who doesn’t love the loopy Corn-Pop/rusty razors in rain barrels story?

    The creators missed an opportunity to spoof the theme music, though. “The Joe Biden Experience! 10-4 all day! None at night!”

    Posted in Democrats, Uncategorized, video | Tagged , , , , | 5 Comments