Archive for August, 2020

Governor Charlie Baker is placing all of his state under double secret probation

Posted: August 13, 2020 by Jon Fournier in Uncategorized
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After a very modest and short lived increase in the number of Coronavirus cases in the state of Massachusetts, Governor Baker took a hissie fit.  He held a press conference where he harangued all of us for our bad behavior and announced that he is putting an indefinite halt to his painfully slow reopening process.  We are now stuck at part 1 of phase 3 of his plan and will not move on to part 2 of phase 3 until he gives it his personal approval.  In the mean time, thanks to his so expertly crafted reopening plan, Massachusetts is stuck with the nation’s highest unemployment rate. 

This WHDH News article discusses a very troubling new wrinkle to Governor Baker’s  Coronovirus response plans, a wrinkle that totalitarian dictators have used a great many times.  Our law enforcement agencies will now monitor us to make sure our behavior meets the standards of conduct laid down by our imperious leader, the great and terrible Governor Baker.

Baker also announced the formation of a an enforcement and intervention team, which will be tasked with ramping up enforcement in key communities and evaluating rising trends such as new positive cases and the percentage of positive tests.

Public safety officials, including state and local law enforcement, now have the jurisdiction to enforce safety orders and crack down on events hosted in violation of the orders, according to Baker.

“These teams will coordinate an increased enforcement effort across the state to assure businesses and residents are aware of and are following the COVID-19 orders,” Baker said. “By authorizing state and local police to enforce these orders, we can not only increase the number of people who will be out there to enforce these measures but also ensure that are penalties for those who refuse to make the adjustments that so many people in Massachusetts have made and continue to make.

Those who fail to comply with the orders will be subject to fines or cease and desist orders

Taking another page from totalitarian leaders Governor Baker announced  travel ban

Gov. Charlie Baker on Friday announced a new order mandating a 14-day quarantine for anyone who travels into Massachusetts from a high-risk state in an effort to curb the spread of COVID-19.

Beginning on Aug. 1, high-risk travelers who come into the Bay State will need to quarantine for 14 days or produce a negative coronavirus test, according to Baker.

Our right to travel where ever we wish to is one of our most important rights, interfering with it is a major injustice.  Living our lives free of government snooping and government interference has always been something that sets the citizens of the US apart from the citizens of totalitarian nations.  That has all changed with this Coronavirus pandemic thanks to terrible governors such as Charlie Baker.  I am shocked and saddened at all of the people in my state who blindly submit to this type of injustice.

Pro-Forma Policing

Posted: August 13, 2020 by datechguy in Uncategorized

To maintain at all times a relationship with the public that gives reality to the historic tradition that the police are the public and that the public are the police, the police being only members of the public who are paid to give full-time attention to duties which are incumbent on every citizen in the interests of community welfare and existence.

Sir Robert Peel’s (the founder of Modern Police) Policing principles #7

Yesterday I alluded to the police not going hard on those who use force, even lethal force defending themselves in places like Seattle where they have been forced to retreat. Let me give you an example of how I think this will work from something that happened in my own life.

About 15 years ago or so my youngest was briefly in the same school where my wife was school nurse, One day I got a call from the VP at the school. He was called into the office one day because he had hit another kid. It turned out the kid had said something about his mother (my wife) and he slugged him.

I went in to see the vice principal and when he objected to my sons actions I bluntly told him what the rules I laid down for my sons years ago concerning fighting at school:

  1. If the other guy is armed don’t fight under any circumstances.
  2. If the other guy throws the 1st punch: fight.
  3. You are not allowed to throw the 1st punch UNLESS the other guy insults your Mother or Grandmother. In that case you are not only authorized to throw the 1st punch your are expected to.
  4. You are not allowed to hit a girl even IF she throws the 1st punch or insults your mother or grandmother.

I told the VP that while I understand he has to enforce the rules and will not complain if he does but as far as I was concerned at home he would not be punished for his actions he would be commended for them.

I further informed the VP that if faced with the same circumstances at school again he is under my orders to do the exact same thing.

Needless to say the VP was rather surprised at my take and said that while he would have to punish my son he would take steps to make sure the provocation was not repeated. As I was leaving he walked to the door with me and in a low voice told me he hoped his sons would stand up for their mother like mine did.

In the end my son got a light pro-forma punishment, neither the kid he slugged nor any other said another word about his mother and the next year I had him in a Catholic School.

That’s how I think such things will work when people decide to reclaim their duty as citizens and when people loudly complain, and they will, the police will note said complaint, and ignore it because this is the society they have voted for.

I Think that Jazz Shaw’s Has Nailed it on Seattle

Posted: August 12, 2020 by datechguy in Uncategorized

In the final paragraph of this piece:

I’d wish the residents of Seattle good luck with this mess, but I’m fresh out of sympathy. They keep electing the same people to the City Council so they’re getting precisely what they asked for. You made your bed. Now you can sleep in it, assuming someone doesn’t set it on fire in the middle of the night.

Eventually I suppose the people of Seattle will get sick of being oppressed or terrorized, when they do the end result isn’t going to be pretty. In the words of Glenn Reynolds:

Is this a boon to the criminal class? Only in the short term.

The thing to remember is, ultimately, police aren’t there to protect the public from criminals, but to protect criminals from the public. Before the invention of modern police by Robert Peel in London in the early 19th Century, the public dealt with criminals mostly on its own, and usually harshly. Arrest by the police and trial before a court was a big improvement over mob justice.

And here is a question for our friends on the left, how anxious do you think the police that remain are going to be to arrest a citizen who blows one or more of these criminals away while protecting himself or his family?

I suspect not very.

Hope or Hezbollah?

Posted: August 11, 2020 by chrisharper in war
Tags: ,

By Christopher Harper

For nearly a decade, I lived and traveled into Beirut—a time that molded me into a journalist.

In Beirut, you worked hard and played hard. Almost every day, journalists went into a dangerous city, where many thousands of people died, and almost every night, they retired to the bar at the Commodore Hotel.

My wife Elizabeth and I arrived in Beirut in 1979, where we lived for two years. After that, we spent many days back in Lebanon during a variety of news stories, including the Israeli invasion of Lebanon. We returned in 2011 during the Arab uprising to see Beirut had risen from the ashes, with restaurants and businesses booming from an economic resurgence.

Although we both loved the city and made friends with whom we remained close for many years, recent events did not surprise us.

Lebanon has existed for decades without a government. When it had a good leader like Rafic Harari, a businessman and prime minister, he ended up dead in 2005 as the victim of assassination. Ironically, last week’s explosion occurred just as a United Nations tribunal was set to determine the guilt or innocence of those suspected of killing Harari. See https://www.reuters.com/article/us-lebanon-tribunal-hariri-idUSKCN2512IC

For the past year, Lebanese have been protesting the current government for its corruption and inability to deal with day-to-day issues, such as garbage collection. As an example, my former colleague can only received $500 a month from his ABC News and government pensions because the government has placed severe restrictions on the country’s banking system.

Although the Lebanese president, Michel Aoun, is a Christian—as delineated in the country’s constitution–he is beholden to Hezbollah, the Shia militia, for his power. He remains in power despite the resignation of the prime minister and the cabinet.

Hezbollah has links to Iran and Hamas and is considered a terrorist organization by the U.S. government. Hezbollah was behind the 1983 attack against the U.S. Marines that left more than 200 dead and the hijacking of TWA 847 in 1985 that left a U.S. sailor dead. The group has a vast militia, which rivals the country’s army, and has engaged in a variety of battles with Israel.

More important for Lebanon, Hezbollah helped create a corrupt and negligent political system that created the lack of enforcement at the port and allowed the storage of 2,700 tons of ammonium nitrate.

Moreover, a new report by the Foundation for Defense of Democracies asserts that Hezbollah siphons off billions of dollars from around the world. Money is laundered through Lebanon, allowing Hezbollah to function as a kind of parallel state, one with its financial and social services. See https://www.fdd.org/analysis/2020/08/04/crisis-in-lebanon/

When my wife and I lived in Lebanon, the country embraced the song “I’ll Will Survive” as it national anthem. The resignation of the government may be a step toward survival, but Hezbollah still has a choke hold on the country. No survival will occur until the organization no longer holds significant power in Lebanon.

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