[northjersey.com] After a detective was shot and killed in a Jersey City cemetery, a raging shootout broke out Tuesday between police and two suspects about a mile away, with hundreds of rounds exchanged over two hours as a bustling neighborhood was transformed into a deadly battlefield.
By the time it ended, six people were dead — the detective, two suspects who fired at police from inside a small supermarket, and three bystanders who had been inside the store when the shooting began.
The detective was identified as Joseph Seals, a father of five from North Arlington who was part of a department tasked to get guns off of the city's streets. Seals was on duty and in plainclothes when he was shot by at least one of the suspects at Bayview Cemetery.
"We believe he was killed while trying to interdict these bad guys," said Jersey City Police Chief Michael Kelly.
Authorities said they did not know why the detective was there but that they were looking into whether it was part of an investigation. They said a stolen U-Haul truck that possibly contained an explosive device was found and removed from the area.
Kelly said he had "no inkling on motive."
The federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives was on the scene along with the FBI. The U.S. Attorney's Office in Newark said on social media that it was part of the investigation along with state and local authorities.
#1
Given where gun violence most frequently occurs and by whom. Why haven't the LSD's addressed the real problem where it would have most impact?
Instead of seeking to confiscate the firearms from the 99% +/- of owners never have fired shot at another human in civilian life in other than self-defense.
Is it because most the problem are their voter base?
[Washington Examiner] A woman in Illinois is accused of stealing at least $1.5 million in food, mostly chicken wings, from one of the state's poorest school districts.
Vera Liddell, the former food service director of Harvey School District in a Chicago suburb, allegedly took over 11,000 cases of chicken wings she ordered for the district with school funding, according to a report.
Liddell, 66, began stealing the food during the height of the pandemic, the report noted.
"The food was never brought to the school or provided to the students," court records relating to the incident noted.
Liddell allegedly started her thievery of chicken wings while the district was providing pickup meals during remote student learning, prosecutors said.
#5
That's thrice in three days y'all got me thinking about Johnny Cash's One Piece at a Time. Guess I'll take the hint and go listen to the damn thing. Also bought to mind a wholesale theft of band instruments many years ago, and resultant "is nothing sacred?" hubbub down at the poboy shop.
Fun fact - in February 2018, Harvey became the first city in Illinois to have its revenue garnished by the State in order to fund the city's pension liabilities which were severely underfunded.
How did the Harveyites deal with this issue? The city laid off a lot of employees (including some of the 'ghost' ones).
AND since 2007, Harvey has refused to audit its municipal finances as required by the state. The Illinois Securities and Exchange Commission believes there was "a scheme to divert bond proceeds for improper purposes."
Good times, good times....
Posted by: Mullah Richard ||
02/01/2023 16:19 Comments ||
Top||
#7
I never had chicken wings in the cafeteria of any school I ever attended. The food service staff at CWRU had a magical way with fried chicken and ribs.
Probably all banned since Big Mike's school lunch debacle.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
02/01/2023 16:20 Comments ||
Top||
#3
Reminds me of the Federal AG out here who Obama dismissed cause he was trailing Bill Richardson (former governor and early endorser of Obama) for 'pay for play'. He said the corruption was just as bad in the state as in Illinois, it's just that those who play in the game are willing to sell out for much lower amounts.
#4
Report is the gun guy handed B. the gun and said "Cold".
Like to know how that happened.
Posted by: Richard Aubrey ||
02/01/2023 8:03 Comments ||
Top||
#5
My take: Alec Baldwin will get a fine and 1 to 2 years Probation. The Armorer will get hanged, drawn and quartered ...unless Alec needs to buy her off then minimum jail time and a fat cash-filled envelope with a NDA so she doesn't write a book.
#7
He certainly made a bad mistake. Everything he has done since that point has been horrifying to watch. He is now in the Kevin Spacey category of pariah talents. He will still act but few will be willing to pay to see his work. Mostly he will complain going forward.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
02/01/2023 22:08 Comments ||
Top||
#8
Saw a report baldwin was distracted with his cell phone during the safety briefing. I'm not sure who released that but I suspect the armorers people.
[IsraelTimes] Victim taken to hospital with concussion and broken nose; police holding 19-year-old suspect on assault and robbery, may add hate crime charges
A man who was beaten at a supermarket in a Washington, DC, suburb says his attacker used antisemitic epithets and was encouraged by others who invoked Kanye West, the antisemitic celebrity.
The police in Montgomery County, Maryland, said in a press release that the victim said he had approached a group of people tossing fruit at other customers and stealing doughnuts last week at a Giant supermarket in Gaithersburg, Maryland, and rebuked them.
“I went up to one of them and I said, ‘There are people starving in Ukraine and yet you are having a food fight and you know what you just did right there, you know what it’s called? It’s called elder abuse,'” the victim, who declined to provide his name, told NBC’s Washington affiliate. “They started yelling obscenities at me, saying… ‘Fight him, fight him!'”
“I unzipped my jacket and prepared to defend myself, and that’s when he saw my Star of David and said, ‘Let’s go, Jew,'” the victim said.
The man was quickly overpowered by the suspects. His glasses fell off after he sustained a first punch and he subsequently lost his vision as his attackers pinned him down and repeatedly struck him.
“They ganged up on me and they said, ‘Get him for Kanye.’ And I had one person sitting on my legs, two people covering my torso, and one person covering my head and upper shoulders,” the victim told NBC.
Now known as Ye, West, a billionaire rapper and designer, last year embarked on a spree of public antisemitism that caused his past praise for Adolf Hitler to be revealed. His name has become a rallying cry for extremist trolls.
The Montgomery County victim was hospitalized with a concussion and a broken nose.
Police arrested one of the suspects, 19-year-old Eugene Thompson, who was found at a McDonald’s nearby with the victim’s keys in his possession. Thompson was being held without bail on assault and robbery charges. Police said they are investigating whether to add hate crime charges.
Meanwhile, the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington has offered up to $5,000 for information leading to the arrest and indictment of those responsible for several recent incidents of antisemitic vandalism and graffiti incidences in Montgomery County.
[ZERO] China’s state-run medicare program recently failed to reach an agreement with Pfizer to import more Paxlovid, claiming the COVID-19 treatment drug is too expensive. This is despite the drug being offered to the state at a reduced rate in comparison with that offered to other developed countries. Lack of Paxlovid will leave only Azvudine, an anti-HIV drug the Chinese communist regime rushed through development and re-branded as an anti-COVID drug, as a treatment option.
IVERMECTIN IN INDIA AND PERU
When the Delta variant broke out in 2021 across India, many states offered ivermectin population-wide. The efficacy of ivermectin in treating early and mild COVID-19 infections was confirmed in large states such as Uttar Pradesh—home to 241 million residents—where the use of the prophylactic dramatically reduced both the infection rate and the death toll.
Even among frontline health care workers, ivermectin proved to be an effective prophylactic against COVID-19. One study with 3,532 frontline health care workers from the All India Institute of Medical Sciences Bhubaneswar found that two doses of oral ivermectin (300 μg/kg given 72 hours apart) as chemoprophylaxis among health care workers reduced the risk of COVID-19 infection by 83 percent in the following month.
In Peru, mass ivermectin treatments were conducted through a broad-scale effort called Mega-Operación Tayta, or MOT for short. Operation MOT was led by the Peruvian army and involved 10 states, where the excess death rate saw a sharp decline with an average of 74 percent over 30 days. In 14 states where ivermectin was administered locally, the mean reduction in excess deaths over 30 days compared with deaths was 53 percent.
Lima, the capital of Peru, where the distribution of ivermectin was restricted, saw only a 25 percent reduction in excess deaths. The findings of researchers, detailed in the diagram below, show infection numbers, deaths, and fatalities across Peruvian states which implemented ivermectin (blue) and those which did not (red). The conclusion is that a reduction in deaths correlated with the distribution of ivermectin with a statistically significant p-value of less than 0.002.
[An Nahar] Kuwait's caretaker cabinet submitted a draft 2023-2024 budget on Tuesday projecting a growing deficit with bigger state spending and lower oil revenues.
The budget deficit will swell to five billion dinars (more than $16 billion) for the year starting in April, up from the $10.3 billion predicted for the current fiscal year, the finance ministry said.
Spending will rise by 11.7 percent to more than $86 billion, with 80 percent going on civil service wages and public subsidies.
Revenues -- 88 percent of which come from oil -- are projected at around $63.8 billion, a 16.9 percent drop.
Oil revenues alone are expected to fall by 19.5 percent. They were calculated based on a price of $70 per barrel -- lower than last year's prices -- and an output projection of 2.6 million barrels per day.
Kuwait, a major oil producer and member of the OPEC cartel, has the Gulf's only fully elected parliament but it has long been mired in political difficulties.
The draft budget was submitted after the cabinet resigned last week, three months after it was sworn in to fight corruption and manage state finances.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/01/2023 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[11124 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
Third Country Nationals (TCN) slave indentured servant labor pool may have to take cuts. The Filipino Community must be scrambling.
#2
Kuwait production has rebounded to 2013 levels after decrease caused by covid issue. Kuwait playing America's gain, GDP remains relatively stable but government budget increases arithmetically.
[An Nahar] U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin on Tuesday said the United States will increase its deployment of pronouns advanced weapons such as fighter jets and bombers to the Korean Peninsula as it strengthens joint training and operational planning with South Korea in response to a growing North Korea ...hereditary Communist monarchy distinguished by its truculence and periodic acts of violence. Distinguishing features include Songun (Army First) policy, which involves feeding the army before anyone but the Dear Leadership, and Juche, which is Kim Jong Il's personal interpretation of Marxism-Leninism, which he told everybody was brilliant. In 1950 the industrialized North invaded agrarian South Korea. Twenty-one countries of the United Nations eventually contributed to the UN force opposing the invasion, with the United States providing around 90% of the military personnel. Seventy years later the economic results are in and it doesn't look good for Juche... n nuclear threat.
Austin made the comments in Seoul after he and South Korean Defense Minister Lee Jong-Sup agreed to further expand their combined military exercises, including a resumption of live-fire demonstrations, and continue a "timely and coordinated" deployment of U.S. strategic assets to the region, according to their offices.
Austin and Lee also discussed preparations for a simulated exercise between the allies in February aimed at sharpening their response if North Korea uses nuclear weapons.
Austin's trip comes as South Korea seeks stronger assurances that the United States will swiftly and decisively use its nuclear capabilities to protect its ally in face of a North Korean nuclear attack.
South Korea's security jitters have risen since North Korea test-fired dozens of missiles in 2022, including potentially nuclear-capable ones designed to strike targets in South Korea and the U.S. mainland.
South Korea and the United States have also been strengthening their security cooperation with Japan, which has included trilateral missile defense and anti-submarine warfare exercises in past months amid the provocative run in North Korean weapons tests.
In a joint news conference following their meeting, Austin and Lee said they agreed that their countries' resumption of large-scale military drills last year, including an aerial exercise involving U.S. strategic bombers in November, effectively demonstrated their combined capabilities to deter North Korean aggression.
The allies had downsized their training in recent years to create room for diplomacy with North Korea during the Trump administration and because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
"We deployed fifth-generation aircraft, F-22s and F-35s, we deployed a carrier strike group to visit the peninsula, you can look for more of that kind of activity going forward," Austin said.
He said the U.S. commitment to protecting its allies with its full range of military capabilities, including nuclear ones, remains "ironclad."
Posted by: Fred ||
02/01/2023 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[11127 views]
Top|| File under: Commies
[NavalNews] The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) ran a wargame of China invading Taiwan in the year 2026 and the U.S. and its allies responded to this fictious Chinese aggression. The wargame was played 24 times and these are CSIS’s wargame scenario analysis, findings, and recommendations.
The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) wargame panel consisted of Mark Cancian, Lt Gen David A. Deptula USAF (Ret.), Becca Wasser, and Professor William S. Murray.
The CSIS wargame scenario of a Taiwan invasion by China took place in the future year of 2026 and was played in 2022, giving four years from 2022.
Mark Cancian, Senior Adviser, International Security Program, and the host of this CSIS webinar held LIVE on January 9, 2023 said that the wargame was played 24 times by CSIS and came to two conclusions: China was unlikely to succeed in occupying Taiwan and the cost of war for all sides was high with estimates of 10,000+ total casualties. The U.S. lost 10-20 warships, two aircraft carriers, 200-400 warplanes, and around 3,000+ troops were killed in three weeks of fighting.
China loses 90% of its amphibious fleet, 52 major surface warships, and 160 warplanes were lost.
CNN summarizes the unclassified CSIS wargame in their January 10, 2022 video shown here.
This CSIS webinar video story has been edited for clarity and brevity. The entire CSIS wargame scenario report can be found here. “China achieves too little too late,” CSIS surmised regarding the wargame scenario on why China was unlikely to succeed in its objective of occupying Taiwan permanently. Four critical conditions were discovered by CSIS to achieve this outcome:
Taiwan must resist the invasion.
The U.S. must intervene immediately.
The U.S. must conduct military operations from Japan.
The U.S. must have an adequate supply of Anti-ship missiles.
One of the surprising findings was that 90% of allied aircraft was destroyed on the ground by Chinese missile attacks and that the current range of allied warplanes was a severe limitation.
The CSIS wargame also did factor in strikes against mainland China, mainly using airpower, and noted that the risk of a nuclear confrontation was a possibility. Certain aspects were “not thoroughly mentioned” or “off the table” by CSIS such as Chinese attacks on the continental United States and also nuclear weapons. This was mainly a conventional wargame fought in the air and at sea around Taiwan.
The key strategy recommendation is to make Taiwan a “porcupine,” too stiff and prickly with defensive weapons that an invasion would be deemed too costly.
Mark Cancian would make a wargame finding and then pass the finding to the panel members for discussion. Below are their observations.
[Washington Examiner] Jane Sullivan Roberts, the wife of Chief Justice John Roberts, could face an ethics inquiry by the Justice Department.
A former colleague of Jane Roberts is asking for an inquiry after claiming that the chief justice's wife had been paid millions in commissions to place lawyers at firms — some of which have business before the Supreme Court, according to a letter obtained by the New York Times.
Jane Roberts had given up her career as a law firm partner to become a high-end legal recruiter to avoid conflicts of interest after her husband joined the Supreme Court.
The colleague, Kendal Price, 66, a lawyer in Boston, argued that justices should be required to disclose more information relating to their spouses' work. While he did not cite any specific Supreme Court decisions, he expressed concern that having a financial relationship with law firms that argue before the court could affect or appear to affect the justices' impartiality.
"I do believe that litigants in U.S. courts, and especially the Supreme Court, deserve to know if their judges’ households are receiving six-figure payments from the law firms," Price wrote.
Price and Jane Roberts previously worked as legal recruiters for Major, Lindsey & Africa, a global firm based in Maryland. Price was fired in 2013 and sued the firm, Jane Roberts, and another executive over his dismissal, per the New York Times. So he's a bitter asshole. No fan of Roberts, but I don't see his legal case
He lost the case, but documents from the case show commissions to Jane Roberts between 2007 to 2014. Six-figure fees are credited to Jane Roberts for placing law partners at firms, including $690,000 in 2012 from one match.
Jane Roberts, who now works at Macrae out of Washington, D.C., previously said that she handled conflicts on a case-by-case basis, taking care to avoid matters with any connections to the chief justice's work and refraining from working with lawyers that had active Supreme Court cases.
Patricia McCabe, spokeswoman for the Supreme Court, said in a statement to the New York Times that all justices were "attentive to ethical constraints" and complied with financial disclosure laws.
McCabe said the chief justice and his wife consulted the code of conduct for federal judges and an advisory opinion from 2009. The opinion said a judge "need not recuse merely because" their spouse had worked as a recruiter for a law firm with issues before the court.
In annual disclosures, Chief Justice Roberts listed his wife's employers but not her clients or earnings. He provided a brief description of "attorney search consultants — salary." However, in his letter, Price wrote that this description can be misleading because salaries are "guaranteed and steady" but commissions "depend on cultivating and capitalizing on relationships in order to consummate particular deals."
Chief Justice Roberts has never recused himself from a case during his time on the Supreme Court.
Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said in a statement that Price's letter raised "troubling issues that once again demonstrate the need" for ethics reforms to "begin the process of restoring faith in the Supreme Court."
#1
I am almost positive that this is how DC works. Spouses take full advantage of their partners position, knowledge and status. Paul Pelosi is a recent example.
Nothing to see here, Roberts always refers to the constitution for his decisions. /s
#4
...There's also the possibility that the Democrats will grasp at ANY straw to get rid of a Justice. Ginny Thomas' alleged crimes were a nothingburger, Kavanaugh's intended assassin was dumb enough to get caught (and he's also the subject of a hit piece 'documentary' coming up this spring)...they know that the odds are against them in '24, so they're willing to try anything.
[via OTP] Dallas-based startup Colossal Biosciences, the first company to specialize in "de-extinction," the use of genetic engineering technology to bring back hybridized clones of extinct species, announced $150 million in new funding Tuesday devoted to bringing back the dodo.
[IndianPunchline] Vietnam sees a shared future with China.
The resignation of Vietnam’s President Nguyen Xuan Phuc a fortnight ago had an inevitability about it. The media was rife with speculation for weeks implicating Phuc’s close family members in corruption scandals.
Several dozen officials, including two deputy prime ministers, were earlier removed from their positions in major scandals of price fixing and kickbacks for Covid-19 test kits, as well as bribes for seats on charter flights returning Vietnamese citizens to the country during the pandemic.
The decade-old anti-corruption drive by Vietnamese Communist Party (CPV) General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong gained momentum in recent years and seems motivated by concerns strikingly similar to those voiced by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and Xi Jinping. Fundamentally, the impetus behind it is the CPV’s legitimacy as the ruling party.
The CPV’s priorities have changed following decades of impressive economic growth. Vietnam is second only to Hong Kong and Singapore in economic dynamism in the region. Being an economy heavily dependent on trade and foreign investment, promoting a healthy environment for businesses by curbing rampant corruption is an urgent necessity in order to attract foreign investors at a time when global manufacturers have sought to diversify their supply chains away from China.
Again, problems in economic development can lead to dissatisfaction among the people and affect social stability, slowing down economic growth and ultimately lead to loss of people’s trust in the CPV’s legitimacy. The 2021 Corruption Perceptions Index by Transparency International, the Berlin-based think tank, ranked China as 66th among 180 countries and Vietnam 87th, but in scores, China secured only 45 points out of 100 and Vietnam 39.
Curiously, the joint statement issued after Trong’s visit to Beijing in November — the first foreign dignitary to visit China after the CCP Congress in October — listed “prevention and control of corruption and negative phenomena” among areas of cooperation between Vietnam and China. The CPV is adopting China’s anti-corruption campaigns, and reportedly requested China to train its cadres to conduct anti-corruption investigations.
Chinese-style governance practices are present in Vietnam too —growing control over the internet, strengthening of the party’s power, greater state presence in the economy and rollback of the widespread influence of business sector. Last year, 539 party members were prosecuted or “disciplined” for corruption and “deliberate wrongdoings”, including ministers, top officials and diplomats, while police investigated 453 corruption cases, up 50 per cent from 2021.
#1
I saw this reported nowhere:
The resignation of Vietnam’s President Nguyen Xuan Phuc a fortnight ago had an inevitability about it. The media was rife with speculation for weeks implicating Phuc’s close family members in corruption scandals.
Several dozen officials, including two deputy prime ministers, were earlier removed from their positions in major scandals of price fixing and kickbacks for Covid-19 test kits, as well as bribes for seats on charter flights returning Vietnamese citizens to the country during the pandemic.
#4
Seeking, it took the Vietnamese "...a thousand years to evict the Chinese occupiers" (as told to a visiting US general by a senior NVA officer as to why they were positive they could outlast the US after outlasting the French). No, the Vietnamese don't trust the Chinese even 'as far as they could throw them'.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[northjersey.com] After a detective was shot and killed in a Jersey City cemetery, a raging shootout broke out Tuesday between police and two suspects about a mile away, with hundreds of rounds exchanged over two hours as a bustling neighborhood was transformed into a deadly battlefield.
[IsraelTimes] Victim taken to hospital with concussion and broken nose; police holding 19-year-old suspect on assault and robbery, may add hate crime charges
...hereditary Communist monarchy distinguished by its truculence and periodic acts of violence. Distinguishing features include Songun (Army First) policy, which involves feeding the army before anyone but the Dear Leadership, and Juche, which is Kim Jong Il's personal interpretation of Marxism-Leninism, which he told everybody was brilliant. In 1950 the industrialized North invaded agrarian South Korea. Twenty-one countries of the United Nations eventually contributed to the UN force opposing the invasion, with the United States providing around 90% of the military personnel. Seventy years later the economic results are in and it doesn't look good for Juche...
[Washington Examiner] Jane Sullivan Roberts, the wife of Chief Justice 
