Protest and threats of violence shut down a conservative event at California University.

Breitbart editor Milo Yiannopolius. Washington Post/Getty. 

Protests, fights and threats of violence have canceled yet another conservative event at a California college. Washington Post. Breitbart editor Milo Yiannopolius, along with "Pharma Bro" Martin Shkreli, were to speak at University of California's Davis campus. Violent protests broke out before the speech was to begin and the College Republican group that had invited the men to campus was forces to cancel the event because police could no longer guarantee the safety of the speakers and the students that wanted to see him. On Saturday Yiannopolius and his supporters held a rally to protest the treatment they received. 

Breitbart has their own articles on the initial protests that shut down the event and a photo gallery of Yiannopolius's 2nd rally. 

My Comment:

First of all, I apologize for the obviously biased sources for this article. Breitbart is obviously biased in favor of Milo since he works there and the Washington Post article has several incorrect, arguably libel worthy, falsehoods in it. Milo and Shkreli aren't white nationalists and aren't racist under the actual definition of the term. Milo is anti-feminist and anti-Muslim but to describe him, and the alt-right as a whole (which Milo isn't even a member of), as white nationalist is not only incorrect, it's begging for a libel suit. Milo and Shkreli weren't banned for harassment either, they were banned for making fun of  liberal celebrities (Milo rightly made fun of Ghostbusters star Leslie Jones while she was having a meltdown on twitter and Shkreli was banned after he asked a reporter on a date and photoshopping a safe for work picture of the two of them together). 

Despite the obvious bias in all the articles cited, these really were the best of bad options. The Washington Post article was the only one that kept the liberal hand wringing about Milo and Shkreli to a minimum and the only other conservative source I could find was The Daily Caller, which I don't link to due to the intolerable amount of clickbait found on the site. It's pretty bad that I couldn't find an unbiased source here and it says a lot about the state of journalism today. Maybe my google-fu is weak but finding unbiased sources shouldn't be this hard... 

As for the cancellation itself, this incident continues a long history of leftist violence at conservative events. The current generation of young liberals don't seem to understand the concept of free speech. In the past the left would defend people as odious as the Westboro Baptist Church, who would go so far as to protest military funerals. Sure there was counter-protests but the idea that they should be banned completely wasn't a leftist idea back then. It was one of the few things I admired in liberals and the fact that they have abandoned it in favor of full on censorship is very, very sad. 

I don't think there is anything that Milo Yiannopolius has said that is so bad that he should be shut down. Indeed, even though I don't agree with everything he has said and done, he still has freedom of speech. His ideas deserve a fair hearing and to see his events shut down is very disappointing. I won't defend Martin Shkreli's action as a pharmaceutical CEO, but, again, he has free speech as well and I haven't heard any of his beliefs that are really all that far from the mainstream. Of course I don't think anyone should be shut down, regardless of their views. I have even said that radical groups like Black Lives Matter and ISIS deserve free speech, though I have no respect for either group. 

And I doubt most of these protesters had ever even read or listened to anything that these two men have written or spoken. I have for both and I have never found anything they said to be racist. I'm more confident about Milo then Shkreli, but as of this writing I haven't found anything they said to be genuinely racist. Milo is anti-Muslim, and both of them are against whatever the current wave of feminism is, but neither Muslims or feminists are a race so neither is racist. You could argue that those positions are unacceptable, or even bigoted, but that isn't want the protesters were yelling at these events. 

Once again I have to say that these protesters are doing way more damage to their cause then they realize. Not only do Republicans hate seeing this kind of thing, they are also propping up people like Milo. Remember, the primary reason I came to support Donald Trump openly (as opposed to voting for him if I had to) was the violence at his rallies that were, as we later found out, being paid for and planned by the Hillary Clinton campaign. Most Republicans are big on law and order and to see it flaunted in such a way just reinforces our support for our president. Like one of the Milo supporters said, this wasn't a protest, it was a Trump 2020 rally... 

And I shouldn't have to point this out, but Milo Yiannopolius and Martin Shkreli are both, for lack of a better term, attention whores. They both thrive on controversy and attention and these protesters are giving them what they want. If the left really wanted to get rid of them both they would just ignore them. Remember, both of these men came to prominence due to huge media scandals (Gamergate for Yiannopolius and Shkreli for his medical scandal) and if those things had been handled in a more rational manner, without endless virtue signaling, neither would be anything other then a footnote. 

So why doesn't the left just ignore Milo? Because they can't help themselves? My theory is that these protests are too tempting a target for the social justice wing of leftism. Virtue signaling is a huge thing for these people and it is way more important to signal that you aren't racist than actually doing something productive. Dogpilling on someone that they perceive to be racist is kind of the whole point. What's the point of being anti-racist if you can't get attention and praise for it? 

Of course Milo knows this and he is using it to his advantage. His whole argument is that the social justice side of the left is a bunch of children throwing temper tantrums whenever something doesn't go their way. To disprove this argument, every time he gives a speech the left throws a temper tantrum, proving his argument right. 

This also gives Milo's fans proof that he could be right about other things. I'm not going to spend time defending or criticizing his views on Islam and feminism, but you can't argue that the left's attacks on him make those ideas more acceptable on the right. After all, if he is being silenced, and he is correct about how and why the left is attacking him, then maybe his ideas might be correct after all? Though the left's goal here is to shift the Overton Window to the left, I see this backfiring on them. The right is having a renaissance right now due in large part to this kind of behavior. People like to back the underdog and right now that is the domain of the right side of the political spectrum. 

Indeed, I think that is a large part of the reason that Donald Trump won. He got bashed by everyone, left and right, and was able to win. People liked him because they saw that he was getting attacked by the same people that had been attacking middle America for years. Had the left treated him with respect and like a serious candidate, there is a chance that he would have lost. 

As for Milo, I expect this pattern to continue. He's been doing these speeches for quite some time now and there usually are a few protesters at all of his events. Most of the time it's peaceful and ends quickly and I expect that will remain the case as long as he's not in California. If he ever comes to one of the colleges I live near, I might go see him, just for the experience. My schedule will probably not allow it, but I think he's an interesting man, despite his many flaws. I do worry about these protesters, but I think in this part of the country, people are more sensible... 

Cop, wounded in a gun battle and being beaten, saved by a citizen with a gun.

Emergency personal respond to the scene. NBC News/AP.

An armed civilian is being credited for saving the live of an Arizona cop who had been ambushed and shot. NBC News. The director of the Arizona Department of Safety thanked the man, who has not been identified. The Arizona State Trooper was responding to reports of shots fired when he found a rolled over vehicle. He then came under fire and was shot. The suspect approached the officer and began to smash his head into the concrete. The passing motorist retrieved his gun and shot the suspect, killing him, and then a 2nd good Samaritan called for assistance on the trooper's radio. A 2nd person, a woman believed to be involved in the roll over accident, was killed as well. No information has been released about the civilians in this case, other than the man who shot the suspect was traveling to California with his wife. 

My Comment:

Once again someone has proven the value of having armed citizens. Though the details in this case haven't been fully reveled, it's clear that this man saved the life of that cop. Not everyone would do something like this. A lot of people would just keep driving. More caring people might not have intervened but they probably would have called for help. It takes someone special to actually help someone in danger like this. 

I think that the defense of others aspect of gun ownership and carrying firearms has been downplayed. Most arguments for and against gun ownership and concealed carry are about self defense, not defending others from violence. But people have used guns to defend others. It's not just about self defense it's about helping others as well. 

I have to wonder what the suspect's problem was. We probably won't know for a while what was going on. Both the suspect and the woman were killed. I am wondering what the woman's role on this was I don't know if she was a fellow victim of the suspect or an accomplice. Either way, it's a tragedy that she died as well. My guess was that she was either in the car with the suspect, who was shooting randomly before they crashed, or the suspect was shooting at her car. Bad luck in either scenario for that woman... 

As for the suspect, who knows why he did what he did. He might have been mentally ill, or on some hard core drugs. I know some drugs, like PCP, can cause violent, irrational behavior, so it's a possibility. It could even have been a politically motivated attack. The police have been attacked quite often lately and there are many people out there that hate cops. There is a tiny chance that this could even have been an attempted terror attack, though one wonders why he didn't come up with a better plan. We won't be able to tell what happened for sure for some time. And with the suspect dead, we may never know what he was thinking. 

I think that things would have ended differently if this had happened in another state. Arizona has pretty open gun laws that allowed this man to have a gun in his car. If this incident had taken place in California or in any of the states with bad gun laws, it's pretty clear that at the very least the cop would have died. Perhaps more would have too, we still don't know what the suspect's goal was, if indeed he had one. 

I always think it is important to cover cases of defensive gun uses, both in the United States and throughout the world. Somehow I have never found the "nightmare scenario" that gun control supporters like to bring up. They always expect these kinds of incidents to end with a massive gun battle where everyone shoots everyone else because nobody has a functioning brain. In this case the cops didn't shoot the civilian who shot the suspect because the weren't idiots. During the Dallas attack, cops didn't shoot the protesters that were open carrying. And during many of the cases where a terror attack happened, cops did not mistake the defenders with the attacker. 

Indeed, I have covered multiple cases on this blog where gun owners have saved lives. In some cases the gun owner ended the situation entirely. In other cases gun owners have bought time for others to escape, sometimes even at the cost of their own lives. Either way lives have been saved by gun owners. Despite the hysteria from the anti-gun crowd, time and time again it has been shown that guns can save lives.  

Fake news! CNN and Buzzfeed release an obviously fake report about Donald Trump being a Russian agent.

Screencap from 4chan.org. 

As you are well aware of CNN and Buzzfeed have released their latest attack on President Elect Donald Trump. The document, created by a ex MI6 agent as opposition research for GOP anti-Trump forces, alleges that Donald Trump was some kind of compromised Manchurian Candidate for the Russians. It can be read here. The scandal, embarrassingly enough, has trended on Twitter with hashtags referencing one of the most stupid and disgusting claims in the document. Supposedly Donald Trump had been in Moscow in a bugged room and had insisted that a bunch of prostitutes pee on a bed because Barack Obama had slept in it at one point and that the Russians were blackmailing Trump because of it. This led to #GoldenShowers trending on Twitter... and yes I am serious.

That alone should tell you that the story is fake. It sounds like bad fan fiction right? Well that's because there is a good chance that it is just that. 4chan's political board, /pol/, is claiming that one of their posters was the one responsible for the pee story at the very least. 

The short version is that one of their posters, in a long con trolling game, convinced Rick Wilson (above), a GOP strategist and the guy behind the Ted Cruz sex scandal, that they had insider info about Trump. Wilson is a huge anti-Trump pundit and even went so far as to insult Trump's online supporters, calling them childless losers who masturbate to anime. Understandably upset by that description, /pol/ has been trolling him since his appearance on MSNBC. Supposedly, at least one poster was able to convince Wilson that his story was legit and it somehow got included into the report, which was created by an ex-MI6 operative named Christopher Steele. The entire thing was an attempt to discredit Rick Wilson and they happened to get CNN and Buzzfeed, two other organizations hated by /pol/, as collateral damage. 

How true is it? I have no idea. /pol/ thinks it is true, but they have been wrong before and there isn't conclusive evidence that the poster(s) in question did what they have claimed to have done. There are a lot of posts in the archive that seem to point in that direction, but no smoking gun or proof that this was anything other then big talk on the internet. What is needed is a series of posts that accurately describe what happened or proof, such as an e-mail between the poster and Wilson, that the poster actually did what he claimed to do. Neither of those things exist and the posts that have been found, while fitting the timeline, aren't rock solid proof. 

I tend to believe it though. Why? Because the pee accusations (and God does it feel stupid to write those words) are something that sounds like it was made up on 4chan. It reads like bad fan fiction used to troll people and I would not be surprised if that is what this is. We probably won't ever know for sure unless the poster comes out and proves it, but until that happens this is all just speculation. If it is true though, let it be known that /pol/ is the most influential and effective political forum in existence. 

Even if the 4chan angle is false, it was pretty obvious that this document would not hold up under scrutiny. Russia has said that the entire thing is BS. There are several obvious errors in spelling and facts that were very easy to check out. The most glaring is that the writer spelled Russia's largest and most famous bank as "Alpha Bank" instead of "Alfa Bank". One of the more scandalous accusations, that Trump's lawyer was in a meeting in Prague to work with the Russians was easily debunked when the lawyer in question said that he had never been to Prague and had been at USC during that time.   

updated: USC baseball source confirmed to me a few minutes ago that Cohen and his son visited on the 29th of August https://t.co/3MOKfc7kNO

— Rosie Gray (@RosieGray) January 11, 2017

And if you even think about the accusations for a moment, they make zero sense. How did Russia know five years ago that Donald Trump was even going to run? Why would they want to blackmail him without any idea that he was going to be president in five years? How could they have possibly known that his chances of winning were that good and that by hacking the DNC they would help him win and not one of his rivals? And if they had bugged a hotel room where Barack Obama was staying, isn't he compromised too?  And, if all that was true, why on earth didn't Hillary Clinton's campaign release this information before the election? Why? Because none of it is proven.

The story does not hold up under simple logic. So why on earth did CNN and Buzzfeed release it? That's a very good question. Other journalists, including ones from anti-Trump outlets like Mother Jones, passed on this story because even they knew that it was bunk. Nothing in it was verified and much of it was completely unverifiable. One of the rules of journalism is that you don't release damaging accusations like that without verifying it first.

Buzzfeed and CNN broke that rule. CNN reported the story first. They did not mention the direct accusations but did say that Trump had been informed of this document's existence during the Russian hacking briefing. That was false according to NBC News. Indeed, from what it sounds like the CIA just wanted to tell Trump that someone was spreading this document around, not that they believed it was accurate, and they didn't even do that correctly. Trump found out about the document from someone else. Buzzfeed decided to double down on CNN's mistake and released the document with a disclaimer that it couldn't be verified and contained obvious errors. They said that they wanted the people to decide for themselves.

This is not how you are supposed to do journalism. You don't just release stuff without verifying it first and you don't make up lies about people. CNN and Buzzfeed both broke journalistic ethics with this story and I sincerely hope that they both go out of business. I already considered both companies to be completely without journalistic value before this incident but this confirms it for me. I will never again visit either site or watch CNN on tv. Unfortunately, since that was my policy before this incident, I don't think my boycott will have much of an effect. The only reason both companies did what they did is to de-legitimize Donald Trump before he even has a chance to do anything as president.

In the end this probably helps Donald Trump long term. Right now his name is being drug through the mud, even more than it has during his past phony scandals. When this story collapses, and it is beginning to already, he is going to be bullet proof. Every single time someone reports negatively on Trump now, people are going to have this incident in the back of their mind. People now know that the media is willing to break every ethical rule in the book just to get Donald Trump and there is no reason for them to believe them even if a real scandal does come up. So if Buzzfeed's goal was to make Donald Trump completely immune to criticism, well, good going guys. Mission accomplished.

People are going to love the fact that Trump bashed both Buzzfeed and CNN today. Even though Trump's approval ratings aren't great, the approval ratings for the media is even lower and this may even help him once the storm blows over. People want a guy that will punish liars and snakes and right now it's Trump who is taking that role, not the media.

And I also think that this is the last in a long line of nails in the coffin of traditional journalism. There is no way these outlets can survive if they keep posting crap that is easily debunked in a day. People already hate the media but this seems like a "crossing the Rubicon" moment. There is no going back from this and I think people are going to distrust the media for a long time. I, for one, have vowed to never trust a news story critical of Donald Trump without verifying the facts myself because I know that I can't trust the media to do so. I may end up just tuning these kinds of accusations out entirely. They have called wolf far too many times...

Of course there still are a lot of people that believe the documents. A disturbing number of them are verified on Twitter... I can't really explain why other then conformation bias. They really want to believe that Donald Trump is some kind of Manchurian candidate and that he's also secretly a pervert. It fits their world view too perfectly. I guess quite a few of them know that the document is bunk but choose to believe it anyways...

And for the record, even if everything in the document was completely true, I would still have voted for Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton. Better a Russian puppet with weird sexual practices than a nuclear war with Russia that none of us would survive any day of the week. And if Russia really was blackmailing Trump, they no longer have any ammunition.

Dylann Roof sentenced to death...

Dylann Roof mugshot. NBC News. 

I'm going to skip the normal format this one because I think I pretty much summed up this situation in a previous post. I don't have a whole lot to add but I did want to mention that Dylann Roof was sentenced to die today in court.  

I am, of course, happy about this outcome. Though I have mixed feelings about the death penalty, I do think that if anyone ever deserved it, Dylann Roof does. He's a racist, a terrorist and, quite frankly, an idiot. He killed a bunch of older people that were kind enough to open the door to him and let him worship with them. He repaid that kindness with murder. And he did it in hopes of fermenting a civil war based on race. He failed but it's impossible to argue that his goals weren't evil 

I do have to wonder about something though. Roof made no effort to defend himself at the sentencing portion of the trial. My question is maybe he wants to die? I don't think he feels any guilt for what he did and I don't think he thinks he deserves to die for it. Indeed, he still seems to think that what he did was the correct thing and that he had "no choice" but to murder a bunch of people.

Why then, would he want to die? My guess is he wants to be seen as a martyrdom for white nationalism. If that's his plan he's even a bigger idiot then I thought. He isn't going to be seen as martyr, he's going to be seen as a murder. Even if a race war were to break out, and I don't see that happening anytime soon, people wouldn't love the guy that forced it to happen. 

And I don't think even white supremacists like Roof. There may be a few that hate black people that much, but I think even most racist people understand that the people Roof killed were innocent. And even if they don't, its also undeniable that this attack lowered the reputation of white supremacists even lower then it was before, which is no small feat. It's bad publicity for a group that already has terrible publicity. I think even among racists, Roof is persona non grata.

I am hoping that there won't be any other Dylann Roof's. I think the death penalty might help a bit with that. Unlike the Norway attacker, Anders Breivik, Roof won't be able to spend the rest of his life getting attention in prison. Roof is going to die and though it will take some time, the only thing that can save his life now is the abolition of the death penalty. I don't see that happening anytime soon. It will take some time but sooner or later, Roof will die... 

US commando raid in Syria targets ISIS leadership.

A US serviceman holds up an ISIS flag captured and damaged in the raid. AFP. 

A US raid in Syria against ISIS leadership is being described as a success. AFP. The attack was conducted by US special forces tasked with eliminating ISIS leadership and occurred near the besieged city of Dier Ez Zor. Reports about the potential casualties in the raid. The US denies that as many as 25 ISIS fighters were killed and more were captured in the raid, saying that the reports were exaggerated and that no one had been captured in the raid. The raid targeted a small convoy of ISIS leaders en route to Dier Ez Zor from Raqqa, the capital of the Islamic State. The raid reportedly consisted of at least four helicopters, including at least one Apache gunship.

My Comment:

Very interesting. This raid was pretty dangerous, if, for no other reason, it happened relatively close to the front lines between ISIS and the Syrian regime. From the article it sounds like the Syrians were aware that a raid was going on but not who was conducting it. If the Syrians had felt like doing so they could have launched missiles and shot those helicopters down. It would have been an extremely stupid thing for them to do so but you never know... 

We have had a couple of dangerous incidents in the Dier Ez Zor area before. Last fall we "accidentally" killed quite a few of their troops in a misguided air raid. The front lines in the area aren't well defined and there was a chance that would could have stirred up a hornets nest. There was certainly a chance that we could have gotten our intelligence wrong and ended up striking Syrian forces by mistake again. 

Thankfully, I think this raid happened far enough away from the front lines that the above concerns didn't really apply. The area between Raqqa and Dier Ez Zor is largely open dessert, which is the prefect place to stage a commando raid. The convoy would be isolated from other ISIS fighters and would not have time to be reinforced before the raid was over with. 

My guess is that this raid consisted of a couple of Apache attack helicopters and a couple of transport helicopters. The Apaches were there for air support while the transport helicopters landed the commandos. My guess is that they had drone coverage as well, after all, they knew that this convoy was heading out. The commandos probably then disabled the vehicles and shot or otherwise killed the ISIS fighters. 

Who was the target? I am guessing it wasn't ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. I don't think he has any reason to be going to Dier Ez Zor and even if he was I think we would have heard something about it now. Though I guess if the raid could have went crazy. We could have blown him up with a Hellfire missile or something and haven't been able to identify the body, but even then, I think we would have been informed. Plus I have heard that he is in Mosul, Iraq, directing the ISIS response to the battle there. 

Instead it was probably one of al-Baghdadi's commanders that was targeted. Probably one of the senior leadership people or a group of them together. Killing them would have an obvious benefit during upcoming battles against ISIS. Even though ISIS's ability to replace troops has decreased, it is still better for them to lose low ranking soldiers then higher ranking leaders like this. They don't have the ability to replace the people that they lose and the chances are that they won't have anyone near as competent as the leaders they lose. It's also possible that the people that were killed were part of the civilian government of ISIS or were part of ISIS's planning division looking to launch more terror attacks. 

What I want to know is why we didn't either capture the enemy instead of just killing them. If these really were high ranking leaders, why couldn't we take them and interrogate them? Doing so would be an intelligence coup and could greatly help us in the upcoming fight against ISIS. Or if gathering intelligence wasn't a goal, why not just kill these guys with a drone or the Apache helicopters. 

My guess is that we needed proof of death for the guys that we killed. We needed to identify them and doing a drone strike probably wouldn't help that if the fighters were blown to bits. That tells me that these guys were important and probably high up in the ISIS chain of command. It's also possible that was the goal but since ISIS fighters tend to be die hard true believers, it was too hard to take them down safely...