90 Miles From Tyranny

Monday, March 13, 2023

The 90 Miles Mystery Box: Episode #2020

You have come across a mystery box. But what is inside?

It could be literally anything from the serene to the horrific,

from the beautiful to the repugnant,

from the mysterious to the familiar.

If you decide to open it, you could be disappointed,

you could be inspired, you could be appalled.

This is not for the faint of heart or the easily offended.

You have been warned.

Girls With Guns

Plenty of other falsehoods and misrepresentations animate the fable of January 6. But for those honestly seeking the truth, consider this a cheat sheet for future use.

In another example of Washington’s inexorable slide into banana republic territory, Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) took to the floor of the U.S. Senate on Tuesday to call for the removal of an American journalist.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen an anchor treat the American people, and American democracy, with such disdain,” Schumer said during his seven-minute authoritarian tirade. “And he’s going to come back tonight with another segment. Fox News should tell him not to. Fox News, Rupert Murdoch—tell Mr. Carlson not to run a second segment of lies. You know it’s a lie.”

Schumer later reiterated his demand to a group of journalists who, rather than denounce one of the most powerful government officials in the country attempting to silence an influential member of the media, dutifully reported Schumer’s bleating without question.

Republican senators including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Senator Mitt Romney (R-Utah) joined the fray, echoing Schumer’s faux concerns over “national security.”

Clearly, it’s panic time. The White House, Congress, and the Democratic Party propaganda arm that is the corporate media realize their carefully engineered narrative about January 6 is imploding in real time. Which is why they’re accusing Carlson of “whitewashing” and “rewriting” the events of January 6. Anything less than total fealty to regime-approved talking points about what happened before and after that day now is considered a “threat to democracy.”

But facts are facts. And no amount of pearl-clutching by the hags on “The View” or threats made by U.S. senators can alter the reality of January 6. Between video recordings, witness testimony, court filings, and news reporting, the undeniable truth about January 6 cannot be willfully wished away even by the most skilled spinmeisters.

Here’s what we know:

Some people acted badly. A handful came ready for a fight while others admit they were caught up in a mob mentality that unfolded over the course of the afternoon.
The overwhelming majority of protesters did not act badly or violently. Not only do security footage and other video sources demonstrate that is indeed true, the Justice Department’s own data supports it. “Parading” in the Capitol, a class B misdemeanor, is by far the most common charge in the Justice Department’s sweeping investigation. According to an update published this week, 919 out of 1,000 defendants face trespassing charges. Of the 518 who accepted plea agreements, 385 pleaded guilty to misdemeanors and 133 pleaded guilty to a felony.
The most common felony is not “insurrection” but rather obstruction of an official proceeding. Fewer than 20 people face seditious conspiracy charges.
Roughly 100 defendants are accused of attacking police officers with a dangerous weapon. No one is charged with carrying or using a firearm inside the building.
Speaking of police, body-worn camera and independent video show outrageous misconduct by law enforcement. D.C. Metropolitan Police launched an aggressive and unnecessary offensive against the crowd assembled on the west lawn. Even though protesters were respecting police lines at the time, footage shows officers throwing stun grenades into and other devices containing rubber bullets into the crowd beginning shortly after 1:00 p.m.
Video and testimony by Capitol police officers at trial confirmed how that activity enraged the crowd. Other officers shoved women down stairs and shoved one man off the upper terrace balcony.
This conduct continued inside the building. Some officers shoved and hit individuals inside the Rotunda and other areas. A brutal scene in the lower west terrace tunnel unfolded as police used their batons to beat at least two women on the head resulting in bleeding and injuries.
Excessive force caused the deaths of four Trump supporters: Ashli Babbitt, Rosanne Boyland, Kevin Greeson, and Benjamin Phillips.
On the flip side, despite persistent claims even by Attorney General Merrick Garland and White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre as recently as this week, no police officers died as a result of injuries sustained on January 6. Officer Brian Sicknick is on video walking around after he suffered a pepper spray attack; he died of a stroke the next day. There’s no evidence the reported suicides of other officers after January 6 were related to the protest.
Further, the responsibility of sufficiently protecting the Capitol with enough officers fell to the Capitol Police board—staffed by the sergeant-at-arms for then House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and then Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. Former Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund repeatedly testified that he requested additional help including National Guardsmen days before January 6. Even as the chaos unfolded that day, House Sergeant-at-Arms Paul Irving and Senate Sergeant-at-Arms Michael Stenger delayed pursuing the proper authorization of the National Guard.
Irving told House Republicans that his staff as well as members of the House Administration committee began planning for January 6 weeks before the protest. Jamie Fleet, a security staffer for both Pelosi and the committee overseeing Capitol functions, told the January 6 select committee that he started preparations for January 6 in the summer of 2020.
When the building was breached at around 2:15 p.m., Congress was not voting to certify the electoral college results at the time, a common misperception. Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Arizona) were in the process of disputing the election outcome in Gosar’s home state, a process permitted under the Electoral Count Act. The joint session of Congress technically had been adjourned an hour earlier so debate could begin.
For all the wasted energy spent over the past two years that democracy almost died on January 6, the chaotic protest only delayed the certification ceremony for seven hours. Joe Biden officially was declared president at 3:00 a.m. the next day.
The surveillance video viewed by Carlson’s team has not been made available to defense attorneys, arguably in violation of...

Visage à trois #1324

Three Videos For Your Viewing Pleasure:

Three Additional Bonus Videos:

Quick Hits Of Wisdom, Knowledge And Snark #983

The Price of Eliminating Consequences

Recently there were some remarkable online videos of a good Samaritan in Portland, Oregon, confronting shoplifters and forcing them to dump loads of their pilfered goods.

More stunning, however, was the sheer outrage—of the thieves!

They pouted. They screamed. They resisted. How dare anyone stop them from stealing anything they wished.

The criminals entertained no fear of any consequences for walking out with bags of things that were not theirs. They had no care that mainstreaming their habits would undermine the entire fabric of society.

What is common to the pandemic of smash-and-grab, carjacking, fighting on airliners while in flight, and deadly Saturday night shoot-outs is this same apparent assurance there will be no consequences.

That expectation of exemption is why the Antifa thugs in Atlanta were so bold in their latest violent attacks on the police.

And why not, after the 120 days of rioting, looting, arson, and assault in the summer of 2020, which resulted in few Antifa indictments, fewer convictions, and almost no imprisonments?

The “broken windows” theory of policing in the 1990s and 2000s showed how the failure to punish even minor infractions soon leads to escalation to more violent crimes.

The homeless take for granted that ancient rules forbidding urination, defecation, fornication, and injection on the sidewalks do not apply to them. Is it any wonder that they increasingly are not victims of circumstance but victimizers of innocent passersby?

Yet deterrence is not just eroded from the bottom up, but also from the top down—and by an elite who assume it will never be subject to the chaos it has wrought.

Former FBI Director Andrew McCabe admittedly lied on four occasions to federal investigators, apparently with the prescient expectation he would never be prosecuted.

The same hubris was true of former CIA Director John Brennan, who admittedly lied under oath to Congress—twice—with absolute impunity.

The former director of national intelligence, James Clapper, not only lied under oath to Congress, but crowed that he gave the “least untruthful” answer. He too faced zero consequences.

Could the FBI and the CIA recover their tarnished reputations if their directors knew in advance they would go to jail for lying under federal oath?

Sometimes the problem is not just the absence of sure punishment for criminal behavior, but the asymmetry of penalties.

Why are some violent criminals released from custody the very day they punch, club, or shoot innocents, while others committing lesser offenses are not?

Nations are no different from people. Without expectation of a severe reaction to their provocations, they only escalate their aggression.

Why are athletes who choose not to be vaccinated barred from competing in the United States, while 6 million to 7 million illegal entrants were waved in without passports, vaccinations, or COVID-19 tests?

And once those millions south of the border saw a few thousand illegally cross with impunity shortly after President Joe Biden was inaugurated, then they followed en masse.

Why does the Mexican government shrug when the United States asks it not to greenlight illegal immigration?

Why does Mexico City tolerate factories inside Mexico producing lethal fentanyl pills for export northward that kill over 100,000 Americans a year?

What sort of deterrence would stop millions from illegally entering the United States, or Mexican-manufactured fentanyl from killing more Americans in the last decade than all the dead in all our wars since World War II?

Should the United States tax the $60 billion in remittances sent back yearly to Mexico, mostly by those who are here illegally and so often subsidized by our own state and federal entitlements?

Should America declare cartels international terrorists, extradite them, and bar all their accomplices and abettors from the global banking system?

China knowingly sends Mexico the raw ingredients of fentanyl, believing it is a win-win strategy of enormous profits and lots of deaths of...