Posted in The Watcher's Council
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The Forum, Rome, Italy
credit: wikipedia.en
Every week on Monday, the WoW! community and our invited guests weigh in at the Watcher’s Forum, short takes on a major issue of the day, the culture, or daily living. This week’s question: How would you rate Trump’s performance after six months?
Don Surber: My 401-k — fully invested in Bogle’s S&P 500 stock index fund — is up 15% since Election Day.
860 regulations are gone.
Posted in The Justine Damond Case
Damond, her fiance Don,(center) and his son, Zach
As I’ve previously noted, establishing an accurate time frame is absolutely essential to any police involved shooting investigation. The Minneapolis local CBS affiliate, using all resources available to them, has assembled this time frame:
Posted in Culture
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What is the nature of man? Is man inherently good or evil? Given the opportunity to do good, when no one else is around to take notice, how does man respond? Or does the answer depend on the situation? In this heartbreaking and rage provoking case, the answer seems clear. Florida Today reports:
Posted in The Watcher's Council
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As regular readers know, I’m a founding contributor at Wow Magazine, a collaboration of some of the most insightful writers on the Internet–or elsewhere, for that matter. Here are some current articles at Wow I’m sure you’ll find interesting. As I’ve often noted, Wow should be on your daily “to read” list (NOTE: I don’t link here to my own articles on WoW. I post them on SMM the day after they appear on WoW, and the SMM articles are usually updated as new developments crop up):
Ch-Ch-Ch Changes…Sean Spicer is Out, Anthony Scaramucci Is In
Why John McCain Should Learn To Keep His Mouth Shut…For His Own Good
Posted in The Justine Damond Case
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BCA, Betsy Hodges, Don Damond, Islam, Janee Harteau, Justine Damond, Minneapolis, Mohamed Noor, MPD, race
Justine and Don Damond
Barack Obama caused a great deal of damage. Much of that damage is only now becoming apparent, and more will become apparent in the future. It will take many years to reverse the damage, and some may never be reversed; it has become the new normal. The Holder and Lynch Departments of Justice worked tirelessly to hamper the police, to make it impossible to do their jobs. They worked no less tirelessly to immunize criminals, particularly black criminals, from arrest and punishment. The Obama Administration worked on the state and federal levels to all but shutter prisons, to eliminate bail for violent felons, and to impose insane consent decrees on police agencies. It’s little known the DOJ had an office of race hustlers that were sent out to communities like Sanford, Ferguson, Baltimore and others, not to assist law enforcement, but to help BLM, other social justice warriors, and to help organize protests. They provided not only federal funds, but expertise and political arm twisting.
Posted in The Justine Damond Case
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BCA, Betsy Hodges, deadly force, Fred Bruno, Justine Damond, Matthew Harrity, Minneapolis, Mohamed Noor, MPD, Muslim, race, Robert Bennett
Justine Damond
For the time being, the initial deluge of new information in this case seems to have slowed, which is generally the way of such things. In this article, I’ll take advantage of that relative lull to explain an issue that will largely determine whether any charges are filed–or should be filed–and the outcomes of any criminal or civil trial: the law of deadly force.
In article 2 of this case, Police Panic, I wrote of Officer Matthew Harrity’s attorney’s assertion of officer reasonableness:
Posted in The Justine Damond Case
Justine Damond
As expected, additional information in the Justine Damond case is rapidly coming to light. Let me, however, caution you yet again, gentle readers. We are still far from certainty about much of what happened in Minneapolis on July 15. When a definitive version of the incident is released by the police, and I suspect that won’t take long, I’ll surely have to revise some early details and assumptions. Let us begin, courtesy of The Daily Mail, with Damond’s 911 call that began the chain of events ending in Damond’s death:
Posted in The Justine Damond Case
Justine Damond
As regular readers know, I often write on police misconduct, or accusations of the same. In reporting on such things, I rely on what I’ve come to call my “cop sense,” which is rather like Spiderman’s “spidey sense.” I primarily rely on media reports, which are often wrong, and my experience as a police officer. Often, what isn’t said or done by the police or local politicians speaks more loudly and accurately than what is said or done.
In the Erik Scott case, early reports set off my cop sense. Everything about that case sounded wrong. It smelled like a police cover up from the first article I read, and so it was. In the Freddie Gray case, it was the opposite. It smelled like a political witch hunt against innocent officers, and so it was. The same was true of the Michael Brown case. In the Brown and Gray cases, race was a significant factor. Brown and Gray were black, and the officers involved–mostly–were white. As one might imagine, race hustlers rode those narratives for all they were worth, but in both case, the rule of law ultimately prevailed.
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Anne Applebaum, Dana Loesch, Deroy McKesson, Joanne Chesimard, NRA, progressives, Sean Davis, Sean Spicer, the left
Dana Loesch, exploding Progressive heads without firing a shot
As a teacher of high school English, I labor ceaselessly to ensure my students are not only capable of reading the words on the page, but accurately understanding not only their denotations–dictionary definitions–but their connotations–the ideas and images the words invoke–as well. This is not always easy. Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is an obvious example.
It would be hard to imagine a more effective argument against the dehumanization and institution of slavery than Huck Finn. I doubt any book did more to change minds and to cause Americans to see blacks as human beings, particularly considering the time, than the book Ernest Hemingway called the inspiration for all American novels. Yet, it remains, year after year, among the books people most attempt to ban. Too many supposedly educated adults see in the book racism and a variety of other evils that simply don’t exist. One could attribute this to the fact some people are simply incapable of understanding satire, but where the Left is concerned, their motivations are much deeper, and more sinister.
23 Sunday Jul 2017
Posted in Humor
credit: boreme.com
As the Justine Damond case is occupying much of my time for the moment, I thought you might like to begin this week, and the next two weeks, with my all time favorite student comic writings. I’m sure the time necessary to devote to that case will soon slacken and I’ll return to my weekly education articles on Mondays, but in the meantime, have fun!
My kids, in their attempts at serious, academic writing, are often inadvertently hilarious. It’s been two years since my last posting of some of my favorites, so I thought you, gentle readers, could use a good laugh to get your weeks off to a light-hearted start. So for the next three weeks, a reiteration of some of my favorites.
I’ve been collecting the inadvertently funny things my students write for nearly 20 years. Some are the result of typographical errors, others an artifact of limited vocabularies running headlong into earnest attempts to expand them. Others are the unintentional marriage of two different concepts like this one:
Uh, right…
Perhaps we will never know why Shakespeare wrote the tragedy of Romeo and Juliet the way that he did. It will remain a mystery to the world. But I know one thing. If he did go out in public, tomorrow, and pull his pants down, people would applaud.
That delightful juxtaposition of seemingly exclusive ideas was the result of a discussion of Julius Caesar, a mention of Romeo and Juliet, and a daily saying by Edna St. Vincent Millay simultaneously written on the chalkboard:
A person who publishes a book willfully appears before the populace with his pants down…
I’m still not sure from where the applause came.
For this week, and two weeks to follow, enjoy my all-time favorites courtesy of my wonderful and endlessly fascinating students! Continue reading
As regular readers know, I’m a founding contributor at Wow Magazine, a collaboration of some of the most insightful writers …
Every week on Monday, the WoW! community and our invited guests weigh in at the Watcher’s Forum, short takes on …
In the first four articles in this series–available here, here, here and here-I explored many issues relating to mandatory, high stakes testing. However, I’ve yet to …
I find myself, virtually daily, amused and annoyed by the dim-witted emanations of the self-imagined elite of the media and …
