Category: Crime
Yesterday in the news. Thanks to Joe My God for the posts I linked to here. This was my morning reading.
Read the full article. Watch all of the LOL clips.
The book further claims that the Queen believed that Trump and Melania must have “some kind of special arrangement,” considering his flagrant serial adultery.
Sentencing will be determined next week.
As you can see below, Reimer’s first arrest last year resulted in a money beg from a major right wing Canadian outlet.
Reimer’s previous non-drag related convictions resulted in sentences totally nearly three years.
As I said last month, it appears that the office of Secretary of State John Thurston [photo] deliberately withheld the above-cited rule about petition bundling. Thurston was a pastor before entering politics.
Classic Tom the Dancing Bug
Tom the Dancing Bug by Ruben Bolling for August 22, 2024
Paxton Raids Election Offices In Major TX Blue County
Paxton is a well known corrupt partisan hack. He is a complete culture warrior trying to turn the clock back to 1950 if not back to 1900. He wants rights only for white straight cis men. Women are to be controlled and used by men. There will be no LGBTQ+ people allowed in pubic or in society. They will hide and be afraid. As for non-whites. They won’t have rights nor ability to rise in society, business, or anything amounting to making gain for themselves. He wants them to be segregated and below every white person. Texas is not in play, it will go red and vote republican, so why raid the offices of the blue democratic leaning districts. To give credence to the upcoming cries of the election was rigged and election fraud when tRump and the republicans lose the election. They are doing everything they can to set the stage for what they fear most, loss of power, loss of the ability to rule over everyone else. Hugs. Scottie
The Hill reports:
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s (R) office executed search warrants in one of the state’s largest urban counties — and biggest Democratic strongholds — where it alleges vote tampering.
On Tuesday the attorney general’s office searched offices in Bexar County, the state’s fourth most populous county and the home of San Antonio. The office said the searches followed a two-year investigation, and that “secure elections are the cornerstone of our republic.”
The searches came amid a broader push by Paxton to prosecute election fraud — a campaign that in 2023 spent $2.3 million to prosecute just four cases, according to the Houston Chronicle.
Read the full article.
So, I’m taking my time, perusing
some headlines and click open my local e-newspaper, and holy cow what is news here today:
Two Sumner County residents arrested, Fentanyl seized, three migrants discovered inside vehicle’s trunk
August 21, 2024 Cueball
Sumner Newscow report — According to a news website in Del Rio, Texas near the U.S.-Mexico border, two people with Sumner County ties have been arrested for human smuggling.
In a report for the Eagle Pass News Leader, Maverick County Sheriff’s Office deputies successfully intercepted a human smuggling attempt, rescuing three illegal immigrants who were found crammed into the trunk of a car. The incident unfolded on Highway 277 North, where deputies stopped a blue Honda Accord with Kansas plates for a traffic violation.
The driver was identified as 29-year-old Jordyn Swift and her passenger as 32-year-old Joshua Michael Asbury, both from Caldwell. Upon conducting a thorough investigation, deputies discovered a bag of fentanyl hidden in Swift’s undergarments.
Further inspection of the vehicle led to the shocking discovery of three individuals concealed in the car’s trunk. The migrants were promptly rescued, and Swift and Asbury were arrested on charges of human trafficking and possession of dangerous substances.
Border Patrol agents arrived at the scene to take custody of the migrants and continue the investigation. This incident highlights the ongoing challenges law enforcement faces in combating human smuggling and the dangers posed by the trafficking of illicit drugs like fentanyl.
Two Sumner County residents arrested, Fentanyl seized, three migrants discovered inside vehicle’s trunk
Radio personality gets emotional while reading open letter to men by his female co-host
“To the good men out there, do something more.”
Jacalyn Wetzel 08.21.24
08.21.24
Radio host tears up reading open letter to men by female co-host
All across the globe, men and women have different experiences from childhood through adulthood. We are socialized differently which causes us to walk through the world differently. Since much of the world is still patriarchal, women’s lived experiences are vastly different than men’s. These different experiences can make it feel nearly impossible to understand what it feels like to move through the world as the opposite gender.
In Australia there has been an increase in violence against women. This prompted a popular radio show host, Carrie, from the “Carrie and Tommy Show” to write an open letter to men in Australia. But instead of reading it herself, she asked her co-host, Tommy to read her words.
“I wondered whether it’s time for you guys to stand up and speak up and speak loudly. And I think sometimes men don’t think about what it’s like to walk in the shoes of a woman. So I’m thinking if you read out the thoughts that I wrote down. I don’t know if it might mean more people will listen or if it might give a different perspective of what it feels like to be a woman in this country at the moment,” Carrie says to her co-host.
Tommy immediately obliges Carrie’s request and begins to read the letter. The co-host doesn’t make it too far into the letter before beginning to look visibly uncomfortable and before long he’s choking back tears.
“Not only do we have to sleep in fear of what possible man outside, or the man inside, or the taxi driver, the Uber driver, a former partner, a current partner, a man we’ve never met, we now have to be the ones to fix the issue too. No not all men are monsters but we live in fear of the ones who are. We change our behaviors for the bad men not the good ones because the risk is too high for us not to,” Tommy reads while attempting to hold back emotions.
The open letter is raw and full of struggles women face on a daily basis. Hearing it read by a man made some commenters feel appreciative of the way the two co-hosts used their platform to spread the message as well as being thankful that Tommy agree to read the letter.
“Thank you for using your platform to raise awareness of the severity of this issue,” someone writes.
“Extremely powerful.. I wish I had been more vocal… I wish I had left sooner, I wish I had him reported.… I wish a lot of things. I was scared, but I am alive.. and I will always protect and teach my daughters moving forward. Thank you for putting such a powerful message out there,” another person shares.
Turns out this moment was an amazing teaching moment for parents of boys, “my 14 year old son was in silence and almost in tears listening to your words. We had a fabulous conversation afterwards. Teaching our boys now, is such an important part.”
One woman is joining the chorus of asking the good men to help women advocate, “Carrie hit the nail on the head. I love the idea of having men we trust speaking for us to help us advocate even further. Us women worry every single day, multiple times during the day for our safety, without even realizing we’re doing it. Lock the car as soon as you get in it. Always making sure you’re not being followed. So so so many things we do for our safety that most men don’t even think about, ever. This video is so important.”
Letters from An American for August 16, 2024
There is a lot in this one! I bolded a few areas; those are my own emphases, rather than Dr. Richardson’s.
Letters from An American for August 16, 2024
by Heather Cox Richardson
Read on Substack
The complaint of Republican vice presidential candidate Senator J.D. Vance (R-OH) last weekend on CNN that Democrats are bullying him by calling him weird has stuck with me. As I wrote at the time, Republicans have made punching down their stock in trade for decades, and Vance’s complaint suggests that the Democrats are finally pushing back. It strikes me that behind this shifting power dynamic is a huge story about American politics.
Since the 1950s, those determined to get rid of business regulation, social welfare programs, government infrastructure spending, and federal protection of civil rights have relied on a rhetorical structure that centers “real” Americans who allegedly want nothing from government and warns that un-American forces who want government handouts are undermining the country by bringing socialism or racial, gender, or religious equality.
In 2024, that rhetoric is all the MAGA Republicans have left to attract voters, as their actual policies are unpopular. Yesterday, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump told reporters at his Bedminster availability that to win the 2024 election: “All we have to do is define our opponent as being a communist or a socialist or somebody that’s gonna destroy our country.”
But it is not just Trump. A MAGA pundit has called Vice President Harris “Hitler and Stalin combined but times 200,” and on Wednesday, Republicans in Minnesota nominated Royce White as their candidate for the U.S. Senate. “We face an enemy that intends to bastardize our citizenship through an idea called globalism,” White has said. “We must begin to understand how the global affects the local and take a stand for God, Family, and Country.” White has also said that “women have become too mouthy,” and that “Donald Trump could get up on stage, pull his pants down, take a sh*t up at the podium, and I still would never vote for you f*cking Democrats again.”
The rhetorical strategy setting up Republicans against a dangerous “other” was behind Trump’s demand that Republicans in Congress kill a bipartisan border bill so that Trump could continue to demonize immigrants. You could see that demonization of immigrants today in Vance’s straight-up lie that Vice President Kamala Harris “wants to give $25,000 to illegal aliens to buy American homes.” In fact, Harris today called for Congress to expand plans already in place in the Biden administration, and none of those plans call for giving money to undocumented migrants.
Also in that vein today was the announcement of Representative James Comer (R-KY), chair of the House Oversight Committee, that he is opening an investigation into Minnesota governor Tim Walz’s work in China. Walz is the Democratic vice presidential nominee. He went to China in 1989 as part of a teach-abroad program and went on to coordinate trips for students in China, becoming a vocal advocate for human rights in that country as leaders cracked down on opposition. But by suggesting this cultural exchange is nefarious, Comer can seed the idea that Walz is somehow operating against the interests of the United States.
This longstanding rhetoric that positions Republicans as true Americans defending the country against those who would destroy it has metastasized into the determination of MAGA Republicans to replace American democracy with a Christian nationalism that cements the power of white patriarchy. Vance has been in hot water for his derogatory remarks about “childless cat ladies”; interviews have resurfaced in the past few days in which he embraced the idea that the role of “the postmenopausal female” is to take care of grandchildren.
The New College of Florida is in the news today for illustrating the logical progression of the idea that Republicans must protect the nation from those who would destroy it. The New College of Florida was at the center of Republican governor Ron DeSantis’s program to get rid of traditional academic freedom. He stripped the New College of its independence and replaced officials with Christian loyalists who tried to build a school modeled after those that Viktor Orbán’s loyalists took over in Hungary. New College officials painted over student murals celebrating diversity, suppressed student support for civil rights, and voted to eliminate the diversity, equity, and inclusion office and the gender studies program. Faculty fled the New College, and more than a quarter of the students dropped out. To keep its numbers up, the school dropped its admission standards.
Yesterday, Steven Walker of the Sarasota Herald-Tribune reported that the school cleared out the Gender and Diversity Center, throwing the books it had accumulated into a dumpster. Officials said the books are no longer serving the needs of the college: “gender studies has been discontinued as an area of concentration at New College and the books are not part of any official college collection or inventory.”
The image of piles of books in a dumpster in the United States of America is not easily forgettable.
But the dominance rhetoric of the MAGA Republicans was never just about political power. Political power always went hand in hand with corruption. A new book by Joe Conason called The Longest Con notes that the modern right-wing movement has its roots in the promise of grifters after World War II to protect America against the communists they insisted were infiltrating the country. Their promises to defend true Americans against an enemy was always about getting cash out of the deal.
Conason emphasizes how drumming up fears of an “other” was a deliberate grift to put money into the pockets of those who told small donors that their dollars were vital for defending the United States. The biggest prize for the extremists, though, was the control of government purse strings that allowed them to turn federal and state largesse toward their own cronies. Conason notes that under President Ronald Reagan, Republicans’ cuts to government oversight and reliance on the private sector to regulate itself, along with their belief that unfettered capitalism was a form of resistance to communism, led to a boom in corruption.
That corruption has continued in the Republican Party, largely unaddressed as politicians insisted that those calling it out were simply un-American malcontents engaging in political hits against good, patriotic Americans. In contrast, as any corruption on the Democratic side can be expected to be sliced and diced in public, the Democrats have stayed relatively clean.
And this is why Vance’s comment about Democrats bullying him jumped out at me. Republican dominance is cracking as Trump struggles and Vance offends people, and as that dominance falls away, the many things it covered are starting to get attention—among them, stories of Republican corruption. And they’re doozies.
On Sunday, for example, Garrett Shanley of the Independent Florida Alligator, the student newspaper of the University of Florida, reported that when former senator Ben Sasse (R-NE) took over the presidency of the University of Florida, he “channeled millions” to his Republican allies and to secretive contracts. In 17 months he more than tripled spending from his office, with most of the money going to his former aides and political friends, most of whom continued to live and work outside the state. Sasse was appointed in November 2022 in an opaque hiring process and stepped down unexpectedly in July, citing family issues, although Vivienne Serret of The Independent Alligator reported that DeSantis allies on the Board of Trustees forced him out.
One of the biggest stories in the country these days is the corruption scandal in Ohio, in which dark money groups led by the FirstEnergy utility company worked with former Ohio House speaker Larry Householder to put into office politicians who, thanks to about $61 million in bribes, backed a $1.3 billion bailout for FirstEnergy paid for with tax dollars.
On Monday, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost agreed to settle the scandal. FirstEnergy will pay a $20 million fine, an amount that Marty Schladen of the Ohio Capital Journal notes is less than one-third the amount FirstEnergy spent to bribe legislators, and a fraction of the money ratepayers have had to pay because of the corrupt legislation the bribes paid for.
Nothing better illustrates the grift at the center of today’s MAGA Republicans than Donald Trump’s Big Lie that he actually won the 2020 election and that it was stolen from him by those dangerous “others,” the Democrats. The Big Lie enabled the Trump team to continue soliciting donations in order to fight for the White House. According to Conason, Trump and his fellow election deniers pocketed $255.4 million between the 2020 election and the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol to stop the counting of the electoral votes that would make Democratic candidate Joe Biden president.
On Monday, jurors found former Colorado election clerk Tina Peters guilty on seven counts in relation to her compromising of her county’s election system. Peters was determined to get voter information to My Pillow chief executive Mike Lindell, a key Trump ally, in order to prove the Big Lie. She is facing more than 22 years in prison.
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Notes:
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy8xqy0jv24o
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/08/16/tim-walz-james-comer-china-00174403
https://people.com/j-d-vance-post-menopausal-female-podcast-interview-8696246
https://newrepublic.com/post/184926/florida-new-college-ron-desantis-book-ban
Joe Conason, The Longest Con: How Grifters, Swindlers, and Frauds Hijacked American Conservatism (St. Martins: 2024).
https://www.comicsands.com/royce-white-resurfaced-women-mouthy-2668973149.html
https://www.cbsnews.com/minnesota/news/royce-white-republican-nomination-us-senate/
https://www.alligator.org/article/2024/08/reason-behind-sasse-departure
https://www.axios.com/local/denver/2024/08/12/tina-peters-election-tampering-colorado-jury-verdict
https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/kamala-harris-maga-jezebel-apocalypse-rcna164922
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patriottakes/status/1823742686228336772
How pit bulls got a bad reputation
New data shows violent crime dropping sharply in major U.S. cities
https://www.axios.com/2024/08/12/violent-crime-harris-trump-election
Illustration: Maura Losch/Axios
New preliminary data from major U.S. cities shows a sharp drop in violent crime in the first half of the year — more than 25% in some communities — as the COVID-era crime wave recedes.
Why it matters: The drop in violent crime puts a serious dent in one of the most frequently used lines of attack by former President Trump and his allies, who have sought to tie Democrats to the issue since 2020.
- It also gives Vice President Kamala Harris, a former prosecutor in San Francisco and California attorney general, a potent defense against attacks from the right on crime.
By the numbers: An Axios analysis of data from the Major Cities Chiefs Association found an overall 6% decline in violent crime among 69 cities during the first six months of 2024 compared to the same period last year.
- 54 of the 69 major cities in the report saw drops in violent crime — defined as homicide, rape, robbery and aggravated assault — in the first half of 2024, according to the Axios review.
- Columbus, Ohio, experienced the largest percentage decline in violent crime in the nation, with a massive 41% drop so far in 2024. Omaha, Nebraska, was second with a 30% decrease.
- Miami and Washington, D.C., so far, have seen 29% declines in violent crime.
- Austin, Texas, saw a 28% drop, followed by New Orleans with a 26% decrease. Both cities have been under fire for rising crime rates in recent years.
The intrigue: The Axios review also found that the number of homicides in the 69 reported cities fell by more than 17% during the first half of 2024 compared to the last period last year.
- Boston experienced a dramatic 78% drop in homicides.
- Philadelphia was among others that saw a big fall in homicides, with a 42% decrease in 2024.
Between the lines: The Major Cities Chiefs Association’s preliminary data did not include New York City — the nation’s largest city — since it did not submit violent crime numbers to the organization for the first half of 2024.
- Data from New York City, which is released on its own website, couldn’t be compared to other cities in this report.
- The NYPD’s communications team — seeking to shape discourse around crime in New York — has taken a substantially more aggressive stance with politicians, the media and members of the public this year.
State of play: President Biden immediately seized on the new preliminary violent crime numbers showing a decline to tout the Our American Rescue Plan’s assistance to police and gun violence legislation.
- “Americans are safer today than when Vice President Harris and I took office,” Biden said in a statement.
- “I will continue to urge Congress to fund 100,000 additional police officers and crime prevention and community violence intervention programs, and make commonsense gun safety reforms such as a ban on assault weapons.”
The other side: Trump has repeatedly posted misleading claims on social media that Harris has helped free people the Trump campaign described as dangerous criminals, according to the Washington Post.
- “Harris is a pro-criminal extremist,” Trump campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt told the Post.
- Trump also has falsely claimed that many migrants who have or are trying to cross the border are coming from mental institutions and will commit violent crimes in large numbers.
Reality check: An Axios review of crime data along the U.S.-Mexico border found that those cities have some of the nation’s lowest violent crime rates.
The bottom line: Facts and data about crime are important, but history shows political campaigns can ignore the facts to exploit people’s fears about crime to change the narrative.
Scottie's Playtime 