Posts Tagged → crime
The Real Avengers
You can count on your right hand the number of real-life big-time times that the Good Guys have come back from apparent defeat, and gone on to defeat the Bad Guys. Depending upon how you qualify what is big-time, maybe you can count them on two hands. But not too many more than that.
Let’s try: A couple of Biblical-era wins, like King David’s defeat of Saul at the foot of Mount Gilboa, which incidentally looks today the same as the farmland there looked three thousand years ago, and the Maccabees defeating the Seleucid Greeks and their liberal Jewish allies…add these to the signing of the Magna Carta, the French Revolution, the American Revolution, the American Civil War, World War II, and now, I think, something of the same magnitude, which is yesterday’s completed appointment of The American Avengers, which is really the crowning achievement of President Donald Trump’s miraculous return to the White House.
We are talking about yesterday’s selection of Dan Bongino as deputy director of the FBI, which is now headed by Kash Patel, today being his first full day in that office. With US Attorney General Pam Bondi already working overtime for the American people, America now has a true American Avengers team that is set to re-set the anti-democracy situation that brought the American republic precariously close to termination in the past few years, and return power and decision making to We, The American People. Radical transparency in government activity is already underway, and what we are seeing is not pretty.
Yes, I recognize that leftists and liberals and partisan Democrats see things differently. To paraphrase our impressive VP, I don’t care, Margaret. The way that leftists and liberals and partisan Democrats see things makes absolutely no sense from any angle.
Every time Donald Trump got closer and closer to winning back the White House over the past year, the more and louder the left bleated that “We are losing our democracy,” while simultaneously censoring, auditing, canceling, de-banking, firing, and jailing their political opponents. Nothing comes close to losing democracy like cutting out your opponent’s tongue and putting him in jail on fake charges, which is what the Democrat Party was doing daily to Americans and to other oppressed peoples around the world, using taxpayer money via the rancid USAID, no less.
Anyhow, with these three proven heroes at the helm of American justice, we should expect to see Biblical-style results. Remember that Democrat Party mantra, No one is above the law. We are probably now going to see a hell of a lot of people who thought they were above the law, and whose evil sins were hidden by a politicized and corrupt mainstream media, finally get held accountable.
A couple times a week over the past month, people with open minds have been shocked but not surprised at the new recordings of federal workers bragging about how many tens of billions of American taxpayer dollars have been siphoned off, stolen, and deliberately mis-spent on purely partisan and zero-benefit policy activities over the past few years, even over the past few months and weeks. James O’Keefe at OMG and O’Keefe’s old Project Veritas both are catching federal employee criminals laughing about their rip-off exploits, on camera.
This morning I listened to a brief interview with a senior US Marshals Service employee, who ran into serious and un-earned Human Resources trouble there because of the deep, deep rot in that important branch of government. His story is just one guy in an agency with probably a hundred such guys, maybe more. Multiply his story across the federal government….Which is to say that whatever shocking financial crimes Elon Musk’s DOGE has daily revealed, there is a LOT LOT more criminal activity just flush throughout the entire federal government. Our government is rife and filled to the gills with criminal activity, and The American Avengers are going to have their hands full bringing all of these bad people to justice.
Be prepared, because I don’t see Pam Bondi, Kash Patel, or Dan Bongino giving up on holding bad people accountable. The next few years are going to be much more exciting than some fake Hollywood action movie, that’s for sure.
Remember how FBI employees put then- Congresswoman now Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard on the Do-Not-Fly list because she stepped off the Democrat Party plantation?
Kash Patel is the new FBI director, on a mission from God
As soon as Kash Patel was confirmed by the US Senate as the next FBI director, suddenly Democrats were calling to end all of the investigations that had defined Washington DC for the past eight years. Wonder why…
One meme that says everything about Josh Shapiro
PA governor Josh Shapiro is on the short list to be Kalamity Kamala’s VP running mate. Well, I don’t agree with a lot of Shapiro’s actual policies, although I did like some of the policies that he ran on and then discarded after getting elected.
One incident really speaks volumes about Josh Shapiro’s horrible character, and that is the coverup of the Ellen Greenberg murder in Philly. You can read all about this sweet girl’s horrendous homicide in all kinds of news outlets, just don’t use Google because that search engine is terribly compromised.
The short story is that Ellen was murdered with a knife in her kitchen, and yet her patently obvious murder was inexplicably changed to “suicide”.
Most suspicion is focused on Ellen’s fiance at the time of her death, Sam Goldberg, because all of the crime scene evidence points directly at him. Ellen’s body was covered in bruises, the kind that come from physical abuse. It is really emotionally painful stuff to look at, those autopsy drawings and pictures. I knew Ellen, and she was a wisp of a beautiful and gentle creature. She did not deserve to be physically abused nor murdered.
Josh Shapiro fits into this because as PA AG he deliberately allowed the coverup of Ellen’s murder to happen, and then blocked it from being revisited years later when public pressure and legal challenges mounted to get all of the facts out of the recalcitrant Philly police.
Why would Shapiro be such a piece of sh!t? Because he was then and is now personally close with the uncle of Sam Goldberg, attorney James Schwartzman, a big and generous political donor to Shapiro’s many political campaigns. James Schwartzman and his lawyer son Kamian Schwartzman were both called by Sam Goldberg right before Sam Goldberg called 911 to report his fiance’s murder.
Try to make sense of that…calling two different lawyers in your family before you call 911 to report a murder, which Sam Goldberg laughably described to the 911 dispatcher as “Ellen stabbed herself.”
The Philadelphia DA at the time ended up going to federal prison not much later for bribery. To my knowledge no one has asked him what he knows about this rotten situation. I tried several years ago, and he broke off with me, a friend of many decades. It is going to take real legal force to re-open this murder case and bring justice to gentle Ellen.
So now that Shapiro is up for operating on the national stage, new focus has been brought to this obvious murder and to the coverup that Shapiro oversaw on behalf of one of his big donors, the uncle of the murder suspect.
In sweet Ellen’s memory, I would like to contribute a meme about this murder and coverup. The meme, below, uses one of the forensic drawings done to show the many stab wounds to Ellen’s head and neck. Let’s circulate this meme and help Josh Shapiro’s career go exactly where it should have gone long ago: To Hell.
Lawfare, lawfare shalt thou pursue …?
Lawfare is everywhere this week. It is being used so much by so many people in so many places around the world you would think it must be a Biblical commandment. But we know lawfare is wrong, it is evil, it is unjust. Lawfare is the height of corruption, because it grossly misuses the justice system to achieve grossly unjust results.
Lawfare is a conjunction of law and warfare. It is the use of law and the criminal justice legal system to make war on a political opponent. Lawfare is the purposeful mis-use of the criminal justice and legal system to achieve political outcomes that the voters will not provide and that are not actually warranted.
Until the two sham “impeachment” hoaxes against President Trump (the second attempt wasn’t even close to a real impeachment, especially because the Chief Justice did not preside over the process), I don’t think America had ever really seen lawfare. The original model for using lawfare was established back in the old Soviet Union (“Show me the man and I will give you the crime“) and then in post-World War II Eastern Europe, when the communists of Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Poland, and Yugoslavia falsely accused their political opponents of all kinds of nonsense crimes and then jailed or executed them. Russia has used lawfare continuously up until recent days when political opposition leader Navalny was jailed, and died in jail.
This model is what the current crop of lawfare is based on.
As rare as it was in Western Civilization, political lawfare is now all the rage in America and Europe. It is a reflection of how little political leaders respect the law, how little they fear the voters, how sleepy the voters are, and how focused the leaders are on concentrating their power, at any cost to society. Think about how horrible it is to see a good person political candidate or an already elected leader locked up in jail just so they pose no threat to the power of the current strongman or corrupt political system. Well, that is not just happening in some third-rate country at the end of the world, like Venezuela, it is happening in Brazil, and it is actually happening here in the land of the free, America.
President Trump is the one being unfairly dumped on the most, like Neo in The Matrix movie, where the endless Agent Smiths endlessly attack him and try to overwhelm him. Trump is being hounded by endless ridiculous civil suits and totally fake criminal persecutions on made-up nonsense charges using unprecedented novel interpretations of rarely used laws. No fair minded person can look at these unprecedented lawsuits against Trump and say “Yeah, this has happened before, and this is normal, right and just.”
Phony and corrupt lawfare cases are under way against Republicans (people guilty of simply engaging in political activity the Democrat Party does not like, or politicking while Republican) in key swing states Michigan, Arizona, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, etc. Some of this lawfare is so bad, so evil, like where the FBI created the fake militia group they used to falsely threaten a governor, that at least one case has spawned its own movie.
So successful and easy is the lawfare model that other countries and even the United Nations are starting to use it. Now, a radical Muslim (Kamil Khan of the ICC) and the son of Nazis (German leader Olaf Scholz) have ganged up to arrest the elected leader of Israel. Yes, the International Criminal Court is issuing warrants for the arrest of Israeli leaders (Jews) for the “crime” of resisting Muslim genocide of the Jewish People, and for the crime of self defense while Jewish.
Spain is also now openly advocating for the destruction of Israel, 468 years after expelling all of its Jews.
You think Gaza is a killing field? OK, maybe it is. But if Hamas stops shooting rockets into Israel from schools, and stops shooting guns from hospitals, and stops using family homes as military bases, then there will be very, very little collateral damage. But Hamas is causing civilian casualties, and blaming it on Israel. That is not an Israeli crime, that is a Hamas crime, and it is a fiercely evil corruption of law to turn these facts upside down.
Not to mention that all of the Muslim nations have continued to rack up huge human rights violations with no accountability, no ICC, no arrest warrants, no protests anywhere for that matter. Kurdistan is huge, and the Kurds deserve their sovereignty, and Kurdistan is a real issue, but not one Gaza protestor knows or cares where Kurdistan is or what the plight of the Kurds is.
You can’t make this stuff up if you tried. Sadly, this isn’t imaginary fiction, it is fact, it is actually happening right now. And it tracks right with the past, where in the 1930s and 1940s Muslim leaders worked closely with Germany’s Adolf Hitler to murder as many Jewish civilians as possible, including Jews living in Muslim countries. We are talking about civilians, not combatants, just regular people with the “wrong” religion.
Their crime was breathing while Jewish. And so is Netanyahu’s “crime” this week the same thing. Very similar to President Trump’s “crime” of campaigning to Make America Great Again.
Kurdistan is a real political place, with a long history, and a unique Kurdish People who live there and speak Kurdish. They have been fighting Iran, Iraq, Syria and Turkey militarily and through lawfare for their independence since 1920. Where are the ICC warrants for the Turkish leaders committing war crimes against the Kurds? Where are the American student protests?
Two Israeli soldiers hold the Kurdistan flag, because they know that just eighty years ago the Jews were in the same vulnerable position the Kurds are in today. Natural friends. Turkey and Syria use lawfare to artificially steal Kurdish homeland, while Iran and Iraq just keep trying to genocide them all
Kurds and Jews are natural allies in their defense against Muslim Arabs who want to genocide both groups using lawfare as the justification
Interesting choice of special prosecutor ya got there, Biden
Special Prosecutor Robert Hur, China’s man on the ground with the Biden Crime Family
Over the past few months those Americans paying attention to the hijacking of America have watched as Resident Joe Biden illegally avoided scrutiny for illegally hiding top secret national security documents in his private residences. And then his attorneys admitted he had them, but it was just a simple mistake.
Never mind that Joe Biden never held any official position that allowed him to possess such classified information. President Trump was president and thus able to de-classify whatever documents he wanted to and could take them with him to wherever he wanted to take them.
Unlike Joe Biden, who stored his illegal caches of classified documents haphazardly in unsecured garages, bedrooms, offices, etc, President Trump kept his in a locked room that he had shown to the FBI when they inquired.
Mind us all, the FBI has never before inquired about the documents taken home by a president, nor shown the intense interest in them after the president had declared his candidacy again. Curious. And on second thought, not curious, but brazenly lawless behavior by the FBI, then and especially now a partisan and armed arm of one political party that illegally uses its law enforcement powers to punish its political opponents.
So now much is being said about the special prosecutor who interviewed Joe Biden, and who despite repeatedly saying that Biden has dementia and is feeble minded, also declined to press charges against Biden for doing much worse than anything Trump has been accused of.
If you study even cursorily the ways of China, from thousands of years ago to the present, we will find a common practice of humiliating enemies and allies alike, wherever possible. And it is in this tradition that special prosecutor Robert Hur both denigrated the openly doddering Biden and also let him off the legal hook. You see, Special Prosecutor Robert Hur is China’s man overseeing the management of China’s biggest asset, Resident Joe Biden.
How does it feel, Mister and Missus America, to see our biggest enemy operating so brazenly on our soil, running our corrupt leaders like they are little toy soldiers?
Biden lies, America dies
Joe Biden has been a well documented serial liar and plagiarist his entire long career. The citations for these immoral and non-stop character flaws are too numerous to put here; curious readers can simply use just about any search engine EXCEPT Google to discover them (try using the website-only search engines at The Gateway Pundit and Breitbart). And despite being “an elderly man with a feeble mind” as a US Special Prosecutor wrote this week while evaluating Biden for violations of confidential records law, Biden still knows how to blatantly lie on demand.
Even today Joe Bribem blamed President Trump for the wide-open American border. Which is either old crazy man talk, or just another lie meant to deflect criticism from this unbelievably corrupt and illegitimate regime. After all, it is Biden himself who opened the border to anyone with two feet who wants to walk across it, without any vetting or testing. And it is Biden himself who sued Texas to stop them from blocking off the Texas border to illegal immigrants.
It is Biden alone who is responsible for the estimated 18 to 20 million illegal border jumpers now freely roaming America in the past three years, many of whom are committing horrific crimes of violence. And it is Biden alone who has been giving these lawbreakers my and your taxpayer money in the form of cell phones, health care, and even spending cash. So it is a huge lie for Biden to blame anyone else for this crisis. And crisis it is: Public health and disease crisis, public school crisis, crime crisis, public sewer and water crisis, hospital crisis, you name it, this influx of illegal people is stressing every fiber of the American social fabric.
America is dying. It is dying mostly because of the lies that deflect from the lawless actions of criminals like Joe Biden. And it is also dying from the lack of re-action by disinterested bystanders, like most of the elected Republicans across the country. There is no way to know what comes out of this situation, except that whatever expectations, hopes, dreams, plans, and investments we had in October 2020 are now over. That was I guess a sort of Phase II of America, and we are now in a Phase III post-Constitution America, where our founding documents are meaningless to 90% of our elected officials, and the oaths of office of that 90% are meaningless, and where the rules and procedures and laws that governed our courts are tossed aside to suit the whim of brazenly politically active judges at every level.
So Biden lied, the rule of law died, America died, and now what do we do?
That curious Rural-Urban divide thing
That curious Rural-Urban divide thing is really bugging me, and I want to share some personal experiences and observations about it with you.
If we could just please get away for one minute from the Justice Sonia Sotomayor bribery scandal, please. Yes, far-left Justice Sonia Sotomayor took over THREE MILLION DOLLARS IN BRIBES from Penguin Random House to protect Penguin Random House when their critical lawsuit arrived before the US Supreme Court, and no, Sotomayor did not step aside and recuse herself or anything high-minded like that. She just blatantly ruled in favor of her three million dollar friends at Penguin Random House books, like nothing was the matter. Even though this is very much The Matter because bribes are a big no-no.
With all of the talk these days about ethics on that Most High and Illustrious Court, we would think that Justice Sotomayor’s blatant and impeachable criminality would be the main public subject of ridicule and hate these days. But we would be wrong, because evidently America’s urban people are really hating the rural people right now, instead, and they would rather discuss Naughty Rural People than that crooked, lying, cheating, impeachable Justice Sonia Sotomayor.
OK. So be it.
Seems like the general happiness, low crime, and high quality of life among rural residents is drawing the vengeful eye of the jaded urbanite. Rural people hunt, own lots of guns, commit almost no crimes with said guns, and yet are being told by the angry urbanites that they must nonetheless give them all up, and get in line for their creepy crawly bug breakfast.
Also bothering the Most High, Superior, Better Edumacated and Definitely Unhappy urbanites are things like “rural people smell bad”, “rural people drive large pickup trucks that expel a lot of carbon”, “rural people cut down trees and own chainsaws”, and a real big complaint is that rural people drive tractors and spread animal manure on fields. Pee-yew it stinks and is dirty! Stop it!
I know that in a rural bar a person could sit down over a cold Coors Lite or a delicious Yuengling Lager and have a reasonable, quiet conversation with a clueless-but-judgmental urbanite about how the rural people grow all the food and fiber and pretty wood that the urban people eat and use, and that rural people fill their stomachs with clean and cleanly killed wild game instead of mass-murdered industrial factory beef and chicken, and that rural guns hardly hurt anyone. But such a conversation is about as likely to happen as Justice Sotomayor is likely to resign her corrupt big ass from the US Supreme Court.
Liberal urban elites are similarly mysterious to rural hunters and their neighbors. For example, most American urban areas are crime ridden hellscapes with high taxes, high cost of living, low quality of life, poor public services, and yet…all the “educated” “knowledge jobs” are located in these sh*tholes. Supposedly these catastrophic urban areas are elite and nonetheless superior to rural places. They just are.
The real question I see is whether or not an urban person can overcome their prejudices, rise above their own fragile ego, and move to a healthy mental place (please do not move to my physical place, unless you become a NRA Life Member) that works for them and for rural people. The live-and-let-live nature of rural life tells us that rural people don’t sit in judgment of others, they are simply happy when left to themselves. It’s a pretty cool way to live, and mystified urban people could learn a thing or three from them.
Step one in your urban person learning process? Leave us the hell alone. Mind your own damned business, quit criticizing us, and stop telling us how to live while your own communities and people are in massive disarray and melt-down.
Step two, if you move to our rural communities because they are pretty, undeveloped, safe, and friendly, do not continue to vote and behave the way you did in the urban sh*thole place you just ran away from. Your former urban jackass lifestyle ruined your former hometown, and we don’t want any of it polluting our little slice of heaven out here in the sticks. So, if you move to a rural place, register as an Independent voter, buy some guns, learn to hunt, become self-reliant and less judgmental, and learn to hear what other people think. You might come around to thinking a US Supreme Court justice taking bribes is a bad thing.
PA lost a 2A warrior
Kim Stolfer died two days ago, and if you love freedom and liberty, you will miss him, even if you did not know him.
If you ever participated in an annual Second Amendment rights rally at the state Capitol in Harrisburg, then you responded to Kim’s call.
Kim was an effective fighter in every way, most especially for our individual Second Amendment rights. Among a bunch of effective organizations, he also founded Firearm Owners Against Crime, of which I am a life member. FOAC became the de facto PA-oriented 2A group in Pennsylvania, despite the presence of the NRA, PFSC, and other organizations purporting to represent gun owner’s interests, simply because Kim and his passionate FOAC members just would not ever back down. They lobbied and litigated for freedom at the municipal and state level, most notoriously to obtain, and then to maintain, state pre-emption for all firearm laws.
Thanks to Kim and FOAC, Pennsylvania does not have a crazy quilt patchwork of gun regulations and laws that change dramatically from one municipality to the other. Imagine (for example) driving the short distance from Wayne County to Northampton County with a normal gun permitted in one place, but which is outlawed in the other. Merely having such an outlawed gun in the latter location could result in your arrest, detainment, and life-changing prosecution, for the simple “crime” of casually changing your nearby venue. No society can exist this way with any regulations or laws, and thanks to Kim, you Pennsylvanians are not living this way, either.
I personally knew Kim from both 2A activism and wildlife management policy. As FOAC’s city-dwelling litigant against Harrisburg City’s illegal and lawless anti-gun ordinances, I was his devoted servant on the former; and as a conservationist, I was his opponent on the other. Kim advocated for leaving many more deer than I believe the farming and natural landscapes can sustain. We maintained a warm friendship nonetheless for a long time.
Below is a photo I took of Kim at the 2021 2A rights rally in Harrisburg. Kim is unfurling the incredibly long list of existing gun regulations Pennsylvanians (and citizens in most other states) are already subject to, making the point that even more plus additional plus extra gun control measures are not needed, because they don’t do anything to stop crime. If politicians want crime reduced, all they have to do is apply any number of existing gun control laws.
But as we already know, people advocating for more gun control are not interested in controlling crime. Many gun control advocates are actually against applying the law and reducing crime. Rather, they are fiendishly focused on controlling YOU.
Rest in peace, great warrior Kim. We appreciate everything you did for all of us.
It is important to note that throughout Kim’s many legal battles to protect your 2A rights, he had right at his side a devoted and exceptional lawyer, Josh Prince. Josh is a refreshingly competent candidate for Commonwealth Court.
Every Second Amendment 2A Gun Rights lover in Pennsylvania must cast their/ your vote for Josh Prince on May 16th.
Kim Stolfer unfurling a loooong list of existing gun control laws. At the podium next to him is attorney Josh Prince, now a candidate for Commonwealth Court. Photo by Josh First
Kim’s official obituary:
Kim Stolfer, age 68, of South Fayette, Pennsylvania, passed away on Saturday, April 15, 2023 at home surrounded by his family after a hard-fought battle with cancer.
Born November 7, 1954 in Pittsburgh, Kim was raised by his late mother, Charlotte (Moser) Stolfer. Kim was a 1972 graduate of Carlynton High School in Carnegie.
At the young age of 19 Kim became a Marine sending money home to his then juvenile sister Rose to help care for their then ailing mother. The Marine Corps vocational test scores showed his aptitude in verbal skills, organizational skills, and problem-solving, so they put him through aircraft and powerplant mechanic school and he was assigned as a crew chief on a CH-47 Chinook helicopter. Like many veterans, war molded him from his late teen years into adulthood, and he saw and did more than he ever said.
Kim was crew chief of the last American helicopter to leave Vietnam. Due to a communications error, military personnel and civilians were left behind at the American Embassy in Saigon after the “official” last helicopter departed with the Ambassador. Kim’s CH-47 evacuated those left behind as Saigon fell in South Vietnam.
Following his military service Kim went on to work and serve his country as a body and fender repairman for the United States Postal Service. He retired in 2009 as shop keeper after 30 years of service.
Kim found a love for shooting sports through Greater Pittsburgh Trap & Skeet Club, where he participated in recreational and competition shooting including IPSC practical pistol, rifle and shotgun. He co-founded Shooters Active in Firearms Education (S.A.F.E.) and became active throughout the Pennsylvania region teaching NRA-certified firearms safety and concealed carry classes through various sportsman’s clubs and police departments.
Kim was a founding member of both the Greater Pittsburgh Trap & Skeet Club and the Allegheny County Sportsmen’s League (ACSL) club’s legislative affairs branch, which got him involved in leadership positions in the Allegheny County Sportsmen‘s League (ACSL) and the Pennsylvania Sportsmen’s Association (PSA). His efforts evolved into Firearms Owners Against Crime (FOAC-ILLEA).
Kim took his oath to defend the Constitution seriously and was an effective adversary of elected officials and government employees who violate their oaths. He was a well-spoken advocate for personal freedoms as well as for holding criminals accountable. Kim wrote and or co-authored, dozens of pieces of statewide legislation over the years, many of which are now current law, including the Castle Doctrine law and Preemption Enhancement law.
He is survived by his loving and devoted wife of 36 years, Michelle (Pozzi) Stolfer; his son, Jason Stolfer; his step-son, Michael (Emily) Pozzi; his granddaughters, Paige and Gabriella Pozzi; his beloved sister, Rose (Mike) Johnson; his niece and nephew, Samantha (John) Rothka and Paul (Jennifer) Milavec; and many loved great nieces and nephews.
The family will receive friends and patriots at Thomas-Little Funeral Home, 305 Main St., Imperial, PA on Wednesday, April 19th from 2-4 p.m. and 6-8 p.m. and on Thursday, April 20th from 12-2 p.m. A service to honor and remember Kim’s life will be held at 2 p.m. on Thursday at the funeral home.
The family would like to express their thanks for the wonderful help and care given by Gallagher Hospice. He will be sorely missed by his family, friends, allies, and patriots. We are all diminished by his passing.
In lieu of flowers, the family requests that donations be made to FOAC-ILLEA https://foac-illea.org/ in memory of Kim’s life and legacy.
New York City is dangerous and dirty
In the past three years I have had the unhappy necessity of visiting Manhattan a number of times for business and family. Last June was the last time I went, and hopefully the last time I have to be there until the place is cleaned up from top to bottom.
Last June I took the pickup to move our daughter out. She lived in New York City for eight years, from undergrad through dental school, and until the last couple of years she enjoyed her experience tremendously. But when we had loaded the last of her things into the bed of the truck, she got into the cab and said “I can’t wait to leave Manhattan. It’s so sad, because I used to love this place. But now it is dangerous and dirty and I want out. Let’s go.”
Manhattan is now looking like its worst days back in the 1970s and 1980s before Rudy Giuliani was elected mayor. Trash is blowing around everywhere, thugs hang out and loiter and saunter along every street and park bench, homeless bums are living in the parks and on building steps. People are being attacked on the sidewalks by demented mental patients prematurely released before their treatments are completed. People exit a restaurant and are immediately punched, kicked, and robbed by young people who laugh about it.
The police do nothing about this dangerous chaos because the Manhattan district attorney believes that holding criminals accountable for their violence and destruction is somehow mean, or wrong. And so the criminals now rule the streets, as an official policy.
The old Diamond District on 47th Street is a shell of its former self. A thousand years of jewelry making and watch making and world class talent all concentrated into one city block is now gone, because some communist in power decided that all this material excess violated some notion of “equity,” and so the jewelers and watchmakers were driven out. It is a sad ghost town now.
An old friend of mine who lives in Manhattan complained about how her own restaurants, which her architect husband had designed, and into which she had invested great amounts of time and money, were torched and looted in the riots of 2020. When I asked her if this destruction was a result of political failure, she went straight to blaming the Bad Orange Man. Who does not live in NYC, was not on city council or mayor of said city, and who had no control over the policing of Manhattan’s streets. It is impossible for me to understand the mental state of a person who appears sane but who reflexively blames their own mistakes on someone hundreds of miles away with no involvement in the matters that have made said person so unhappy.
So long as the citizens of New York City continue to believe they can vote for self-destructive policies and for the political candidates who promote them, and yet expect a different outcome than the mess we see, then Manhattan will continue to descend into madness and filth.
Making matters worse, the prior administration of mayor “Bill DeBlasio” (this is his fictitious name), had embarked on one of those “It only makes sense on paper and in terms of vague feelings” massive landscape changes. Such as turning streetside parking all over the city into un-used bike-only lanes and on-street dining for restaurants. Even going so far as to fill in empty spaces where people used to park with gigantic flower pots and concrete containers. Anything to make NYC unfriendly to car drivers.
This makes no sense, because Americans in general and visitors to New York City in particular still drive cars. But such is the power of blind ideology: “Because all cars are bad, then places to park cars must also be bad.” This is crazy stuff, and it has resulted in a congested city being even more congested, even less user friendly and less accessible than it used to be. Which was difficult enough. If this gigantic failure is how you measure success, then further natural failures will continue to follow. As we see even right now today, failure is considered success in Manhattan.
I am glad I do not live there and don’t have to go there.
The concrete planters need a place to park where cars should be able to park. Because “cars are bad”
Median areas that used to offer car parking and delivery vehicle offloading are now clogged with concrete in order to stop “bad cars”
Rental bikes lined up in the most expensive and colorful virtue signal possible. No one uses these. But someone somewhere feels good about the symbolism
An empty and unused bike lane where cars used to park. Cars still need parking spaces, but don’t expect to find them in Manhattan, where virtue signaling is most important
Go ahead and make sense of NYC’s parking regulations. Try.
Restaurants have fully enclosed “outdoor” dining in the street, where cars used to drive and park. The cars still need to drive and park. Just more congestion and more exhaust fumes trying to navigate all the pointless virtue signaling
SBF arrest timed to block his testimony
How many high crimes can one political party commit before people say “Enough already!”?
As if it wasn’t enough to have Sam Bankman-Fried (“SBF”) create, run, and crash FTX, thereby losing billions of dollars of Americans’ personal savings and retirements funds, now we see the evidence that FTX was actually a Democrat Party fundraising machine from the very beginning. Its entire purpose seems to have been to funnel enormous illegal donations to Democrat Party candidates and their allies.
But SBF was arrested the other day, just one day before he was scheduled to appear before the US Congress to answer questions about FTX. Now that he is arrested and in jail, conveniently charged by the Biden Administration with all kinds of financial crimes (that he did because the same exact people (like SEC chairman Gary Gensler) now charging him enabled him to do it in the first place), SBF cannot and won’t answer any questions. We will never know what he was thinking when he set up FTX with all kinds of help from people now running the Biden Administration.
Kind of interesting how this works, don’t you think?
And I think it’s rotten, too. America is being utterly raped in every way – financially, culturally, economically – right in front of our faces. And nobody does anything about it. The same perpetrators just keep on perpetrating.
