On August 11, 1972, the last of American ground combat troops exited South Vietnam.
And for one thing, don’t ever shy away from our progressive values: one person’s socialism is another’s neighborliness.
Minnesota Governor Timothy James Walz on a group fundraising chat dubbed “White Dudes for Kamala Harris” (July 29, 2024). Gov. Walz is the recently-selected running mate of current Vice President Kamala Harris, who usurped the re-election campaign of President Joe Biden. All three belong to the Democratic Party and both candidates on the current slate appear to be socialists of some sort.
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Big Story: Body Cam
Since Paul Jacob’s Wednesday column, “Unburdened by the Leftism,” in which he mentioned the big story sidelined by the Democrats and media, more information about the July 13th attempted assassination of Donald John Trump — said “big story” — has come out.
One significant revelation has been the body cam footage of the local police who had encountered someone “on the roof” that the head of the Secret Service was “too steep” to place a sniper upon. The policeman caught on vidcam complains that he had warned the Secret Service before the event that the building should have been protected by a sniper:
“I (expletive) told them they need to post the guys (expletive) over here. I told them,” one video records a local police officer saying. “The Secret Service. I told them that (expletive) Tuesday.”
“Body cam footage from Trump assassination attempt: ‘I told them … Tuesday,’ says police officer,” Deseret News, August 9, 2024.
Paul has advocated for body cam usage since the Ferguson shooting, and this footage from the local police may be crucial to unraveling the mysteries of July 13th.
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Walt Whitman
Wonderful cities and free nations we shall fetch as we go.
Walt Whitman, Song of Myself (1855; 1881)
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Independence
On August 10, 1809, Ecuadorians attempted independence from Spain with the Declaration of Independence of Quito, but failed with the execution of all the conspirators a few days less than a year later.
Independence was finally achieved in 1822.
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The Developer’s Lot
If you’re going to own things, don’t own them in New York City.
This town is an epicenter of official looting, as, for instance, what the city’s Parks Department is doing to “perplexed plaintiff” Theodore Trachtenberg.
Trachtenberg owns a lot in New York, on which he hopes to build housing. Before he could proceed, he had to remove a tree from the lot.
“Therefore,” the city — the Parks Department, the city, it’s all the same gang — is fining him $230,000.
Why? Well, they want money is why. If you can invest in NYC housing, this means you have money.
If a little girl without money were to pluck a dandelion in her back yard, Parks would fine her only a
Trachtenberg is suing. The filing says: “Parks did not plant the tree, has never performed any work on, nor took care of the tree, nor has even registered it on its online resource called NYC Tree Map.”
The insanity is slightly complicated by a claim that two small trees on a nearby sidewalk were damaged by the work.
“The ownership of those two trees is not being contested, but the damage is,” says Mikhail Sheynker, Trachtenberg’s lawyer. Sheynker says he hasn’t observed the damage that the city describes.
But he has observed that in the 1990s, “the Parks Department didn’t really issue fines over trees. But they figured out this is a moneymaker.”
Trachtenberg should have developed a tract in some other burg.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Louis-Ferdinand Céline
I warn you that when the princes of this world start loving you it means they are going to grind you up into battle sausage.
Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Voyage au bout de la nuit (1932; Journey to the End of the Night, 1934).
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Gandhi & Yeltsin
On August 9, 1942, British forces arrested Mahatma Gandhi in Bombay, spurring the Quit India Movement into nationwide action.
In 1999, Russian President Boris Yeltsin fired his Prime Minister, Sergei Stepashin, and his entire cabinet.
The Institute for Free Speech and its clients, Connecticut State Senator Rob Sampson and former Connecticut State Senator Joe Markley, have won a long-awaited judicial victory.
The Connecticut Supreme Court affirmed that it was okay for the senators to criticize the state’s governor at the time, Dannel Malloy, in a campaign mailer. The State Election Enforcement Commission had contended otherwise.
In 2014, Markley and Sampson had collaborated on a mailer to defend their anti-big-spending, anti-big-taxing views against those of the governor. According to the Commission, the mailer thereby violated the state’s campaign finance law. The reason: it benefited the governor’s political opponent.
That opponent supposedly should have paid a third of the cost of the mailer.
By the agency’s anti-speech reasoning, any statements in any campaign mailer that might somehow benefit some political candidate in the state — even a citation of the Declaration of Independence or a logic- (as opposed to fact-) check — would violate campaign finance law.
Certainly, were the principles of logic widely disseminated in the state, this would pose a grave danger to a huge majority of candidates.
The SEEC fined Sampson and Markley.
Now the state supreme court has ruled that doing so violated the First Amendment; “candidates must be able to communicate where they stand on issues in relation to other candidates and public officials. . . .”
Good. But couldn’t the judgment have come quicker? The same court issued an interim ruling back in 2021. The justices could have clobbered the SEEC’s lunatic presumption back then.
Freedom of speech delayed is freedom of speech denied.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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“Johnny Nolan”
I wonder what people did before they invented coffee.
Johnny Nolan, a character in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1945, directed by Elia Kazan, written by Tess Slesinger and Frank Davis, performed by James Dunn); based on the novel of the same name by Betty Smith (1943).