[PJ] Charlie Kirk has been shot and killed on a college campus in Utah. He was not a criminal. He was not a violent man. He was a husband, a father, and a political speaker—whose greatest offense was daring to speak his mind in front of students. His blood spilled not because he stole, not because he assaulted, but because he expressed ideas that others could not tolerate.
What kind of America are we living in when a man is murdered for his words?
The America we inherited was built on the premise that disagreement was not only tolerated, it was celebrated. Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas clashed in open-air debates that drew thousands. Ronald Reagan and Tip O’Neill battled fiercely by day, then shared a drink by night. Even in the turbulent 1960s, when Vietnam and civil rights tore the nation apart, the norm was protest, not assassination.
Free speech was not a gift—it was a promise. The First Amendment guarantees that even the most offensive, provocative, or unpopular speech must be answered with more speech, not with force. That is what made America exceptional: words, not bullets, ruled the public square.
But Charlie Kirk’s death shows we’ve crossed a terrible line. We can no longer disagree without violence. The Left has spent years recasting conservative speech as "hate speech," and hate speech as violence. That rhetorical trick has deadly consequences. If speech is violence, then silencing speakers—even by physical force—becomes "self-defense."
Update from the Wall Street Journal at 12 :40 p.m. EDT:
Ammunition in Charlie Kirk Shooting Engraved With Transgender, Antifascist Ideology: Sources. Investigators found ammunition engraved with expressions of transgender and antifascist ideology inside the rifle that authorities believe was used in the fatal shooting of Charlie Kirk, according to an internal law-enforcement bulletin and a person familiar with the investigation.
The older-model .30 caliber hunting rifle was discovered in the woods near the scene of Wednesday’s shooting at Utah Valley University, wrapped in a towel with a spent cartridge still in the chamber, the sources said. There were also three unspent rounds in the magazine, all with wording on them.
All Charlie Kirk posts moved to Page 1: Fifth Column, except Opinions and WoT Background stories.
#4
Former ESPN anchor Sage Steele has issued a direct call for all major American sports leagues to “release statements & send condolences” to the family of murdered conservative activist Charlie Kirk, “kinda like you did when career criminal George Floyd died.”
#7
Charlie Kirks death and the American left's decent into political violence. There, fixed that headline. The right has yet to resort to violence, but I'm afraid this will come sooner than later and the violence will be unmanageable... Pray for calm.
Posted by: 49 Pan ||
09/11/2025 10:51 Comments ||
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#8
The stoning of St Stephen was political violence. It did not have the desired effect, nor will this assassination.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
09/11/2025 12:14 Comments ||
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#9
The right has yet to resort to violence
Many of us are callused and have a high threshold. The 'fast-to-action' days have passed. But I'll tell you, my head is bumping on the ceiling.
[ZERO] The venture capitalist "besties" of the All-In Podcast gathered in Los Angeles earlier this week for their latest summit, where Elon Musk joined via video link to discuss hot topics ranging from Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and humanoid robots to Starlink, declining birth rates, and the broader demise of the West.
All-In Podcast hosts welcomed Elon Musk via the video link, where Jason Calacanis wasted no time, opening with: "So, no more Washington, D.C. - you're back at work. Any lessons from your time in D.C.?"
"The government is basically unfixable," Musk said while reflecting on the lessons he learned from heading up DOGE for several months, adding, "It was a hell of a side quest."
In fact, much of DOGE has been wound down. Musk's small strike teams across federal agencies failed to uncover the promised $2 trillion in fraud and waste; so far, that figure stands around $206 billion. In reality, DOGE was likely more about neutering the Democratic Party's decades of corruption, cutting off funding lines such as gutting USAID and rolling the shell of it into the State Department under Secretary of State Marco Rubio's control.
Back to Musk. He told the hosts of All-In, "If you look at our national debt, which is insanely high. The interest payments exceed the defense department - I guess sorry war department - budget and they keep rising. If AI and robots don't solve our national debt, we're toast."
#2
Once again, the 'government' in the phrase "Government is Basically Unfixable" is too general.
Some parts of the government work. The Passport Office, the Patent Office and several others.
The leftist infiltrated and/or occupied parts of govt such as EPA, Dept of Education, etc. have many, many divisions and branches which need to be pruned or eliminated.
Posted by: Lord Garth ||
09/11/2025 9:56 Comments ||
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#3
Ref #1: FDR, the Dem president who ended up being "President for Life" (Died in his 4th term) took the US off the gold standard.
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited. by Malek Dudakov
[REGNUM] A serious crime crisis has brought the United States to the brink of civil confrontation. A major scandal erupted around the death of a 23-year-old Ukrainian refugee in North Carolina. That would be poor Ms Iryna Zarutska
She was stabbed to death on a train for no apparent reason by an African-American criminal with obvious mental health issues. He personifies everything that is wrong with America's current law enforcement system.
Sadly true.
The criminal had been arrested 14 times for various serious crimes, such as assault and armed robbery, and was released without bail all 14 times.
The tragic situation in North Carolina has gone beyond the traditional local crime news and become part of the national conversation.
After all, the murdered woman was a refugee who had left for the United States in search of a better life after the Ukrainian crisis began. And in the end, she met her death in her new homeland, becoming a victim of the so-called “progressive policy” in the law enforcement sphere.
In recent years since the BLM pogroms, the essence of this policy has been to reduce the police force, decriminalize many articles of the criminal code, and release as many criminals as possible. The result has been a record rise in crime in 30 years.
The number of murders in the US alone has jumped by about 40% since 2019. In North Carolina, the current Democratic governor, Roy Cooper, liked to boast about how he was fighting “injustice” and releasing minorities from prison.
Local authorities tried for a long time to block the publication of the video of the attack on the refugee. For an obvious reason - it shows an unprovoked murder committed by a person who should not be free. When the video finally leaked onto the Internet, many liberal media initially tried to ignore it. After all, the situation is very politically incorrect - a black man kills a white woman.
Only later, when the tragedy began to be discussed at the White House level, was the press forced to at least somehow begin to comment on it. But even then, from a very specific angle - like, too many surveillance cameras have appeared in the US now, and they often fuel racist sentiments. Especially when crimes are committed by African Americans.
And this really does happen quite often.
For example, blacks account for about half of all murders committed in the United States. Although they make up about 13% of the US population. Democrats do not like such statistics and call the discussion of them racist. Although without a discussion of how to reduce the crime rate in the African-American community, it is simply unrealistic to solve the problem of rampant crime.
Trump's team began to focus on fighting crime after the migrant riots in Los Angeles, when the National Guard and Marines were sent to the city. Local authorities were strongly against the military-police operation and even tried to sue Trump, but to no avail. Then the troops were brought into the American capital, the District of Columbia, which suffers greatly from crime.
The effect of the militarization of the US capital was indeed quite rapid — during the three weeks of the military operation in Washington, not a single murder was committed. The criminals hid, afraid of a clash with armed National Guardsmen. Now they mainly clean up trash and entertain tourists — there are no other tasks left.
And no less large-scale operations lie ahead in other problematic American megacities: Chicago, Baltimore and New Orleans.
Trump promises to purge these cities of criminals, migrants and cartels. Along with the troops, immigration agents are sent there to raid illegal immigrants.
Democrats are already accusing Trump of turning immigration enforcement into a secret service loyal only to him. Its staff has been significantly increased, and the fighters against immigration have been given more weapons, funding and powers.
As for the National Guard forces, first of all, they use troops from Republican states, to whom there are no questions about subordination. For example, the National Guard from the state of Texas, which de facto occupies the largest city in Illinois, can be equipped to "storm" Chicago.
In some ways, it brings back memories of the situation after the American Civil War, when the Northern army occupied the southern states as part of the reconstruction policy. Only now everything has turned around.
However, this militarization also has obvious risks.
For example, the escalation in the Gulf of Mexico against cartels could suddenly spiral out of control and lead to conflict with entire countries like Venezuela. Cartels in Mexico could launch an asymmetric war against the United States using drones, turning border areas into a permanent war zone.
As for American megacities, criminals will try to hide for a while and not get into trouble. Therefore, the number of crimes committed will definitely go down at the moment, which the Trump team will be able to call its big victory. However, without addressing the structural reasons for the rise in crime, the effect may be short-lived. After all, criminals can be arrested, but local courts will then release them.
The level of inequality in American society is rapidly growing, and this always contributes to the rise of crime.
The White House hopes to use political pressure to force Democrats at the local level in major US cities to toughen up the fight against crime. Otherwise, they are promised to cut off federal grants, without which Democratic megalopolises will definitely not be able to survive.
The same Los Angeles is very much hoping for government assistance in the matter of restoring the burned-out areas. Chicago is on the verge of bankruptcy and becoming Detroit. In Baltimore, the recently collapsed bridge also needs to be restored with the support of the federal authorities.
In turn, the Democrats hope to simply sit out Trump's military campaign and wait for everything to return to normal.
After all, sending troops to US megacities is not a cheap matter. Hundreds of millions of dollars are spent weekly on maintaining National Guard forces there. It is hardly possible to keep them on city streets indefinitely. Sooner or later, the troops will have to be withdrawn, after which crime will once again raise its head. And the Democrats will try to simply not change anything.
Take the example of Brazil, where military operations in favelas are constantly taking place, bringing only temporary success. A somewhat similar fate should be expected in American cities, which can now give a head start to many locations in Latin America in terms of crime rates. And local authorities will continue to hide crimes and falsify statistics so that they do not look so sad.
The last time the crime surge seen in the US in the 1970s and 80s was stopped was in the 90s, thanks to a sharp tightening of the screws and the filling of prisons with criminals. But then a consensus emerged in American society on the need to fight back against crime and street gangs. The large-scale riot in Los Angeles in 1992 also helped to shape it.
There is no such consensus now, and Trump has to overcome countless obstacles in his attempts to restore order in the country.
Therefore, the question remains open whether it will be possible to seriously deal with crime in the USA now. Or the situation will continue to develop into a sluggish civil confrontation, only now with the participation of military forces in the form of the National Guard. The second option seems more likely in the conditions of the current split and Balkanization of America.
He yelled out “I got the white girl!” What the hell are we talking about? it’s not racial??? He did get recorded on audio saying that. But he did say it calmly like it was a good thing
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited. by Leonid Tsukanov
[REGNUM] Israel has upped the ante in its conflict with Hamas. On September 9, IDF aircraft attacked the Qatari capital, Doha, where a meeting of the movement's political branch (the so-called Politburo) was taking place.
Moreover, shortly before the attack, Hamas leaders received security guarantees from the United States and gathered together to discuss (and perhaps even adopt) a new version of the “Trump peace plan” for Gaza.
Now, however, it appears that the diplomatic track will be relegated to the background for a long time.
OPERATION PEAK FIRE
The operation to eliminate key Hamas functionaries (dubbed “Peak Fire” in operational reports) traditionally began with a campaign to lull people’s vigilance.
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar suddenly announced that Tel Aviv is ready to accept the terms of the US "peace plan" for the Gaza Strip and move the conflict into a diplomatic channel. This was the first such statement by the authorities of the Jewish state, which had previously rejected negotiations without preliminary concessions from Hamas.
However, Saar's speech, which began with the thesis "The war could end tomorrow," turned out to have an ominous subtext.
Neither Washington nor Doha considered the game of meanings.
Moreover, the United States (via Qatar) persuaded the political leadership of Hamas to meet to discuss a new "peace plan." The participants in the meeting were guaranteed security and immunity, and so the Palestinians accepted the invitation without asking any questions. The meeting was attended by those functionaries who had previously coordinated the work of the resistance from Turkey.
A few hours later, Doha was rocked by explosions: IDF aircraft struck the Hamas headquarters. The raid involved about 10 fighter jets equipped with advanced missile and bomb systems. The strikes were carried out in a “carousel” (from Saudi Arabian airspace), with an interval of several seconds, which created additional chaos at the site of the attack.
Qatar's air defenses were unable to react to the threat - Patriot systems identified the Israeli aircraft as "allied", confusing them with American ones, which allowed the IDF to approach the Qatari-Saudi border without additional maneuvering.
However, even after the aircraft's affiliation was identified, there was no order to repel them: in Doha, they thought until the very end that the IDF was "covering its tracks" before entering Iran or Yemen, where increased Israeli activity had already been observed.
When the true purpose of the attack became clear, there was no longer any point in “catching up” with the retreating strike group. Doha and other Arabian monarchies could only complain about the incident to Washington and demand explanations from Tel Aviv.
OPERATIONAL DOUBTS AND THE RESULT ON THE GROUND
As reported by Israeli media, citing the Cabinet of Ministers, the operation to eliminate the Hamas Politburo was postponed several times “due to operational doubts” – including uncertainty that aircraft would be able to freely enter the airspace of a neutral country.
It is also noteworthy that this time the operation was directed jointly by the military (Air Force, military intelligence AMAN) and counterintelligence (Shabak), and was therefore positioned as “counterterrorist”.
Israel's foreign intelligence service (Mossad), which had long been at the forefront of the fight against the Palestinian resistance (and had carried out operations to eliminate its key functionaries), was opposed.
According to intelligence officers, the chances of destroying the entire Politburo at once (even if they gathered in one place) were “extremely low.”
As a result, the attack on Doha was coordinated simultaneously from two operational points: the Kirya command complex (army) and the Shin Bet headquarters (intelligence services). The link between them was Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose appointees (Defense Minister Israel Katz and Shin Bet chief David Zini, respectively) developed the overall outline of the operation.
The rest of Israel's "War Cabinet," without whose participation such decisions, theoretically, cannot be made, learned about the raid on Doha from the media.
The strike on the gathering place of Hamas leaders was relatively effective.
According to Israeli statements, several important figures in the movement were killed at the scene: one of the leaders of Hamas and its key negotiator, Sheikh Khalil al-Haya, his son Humam, the head of the political office (secretary) of Hamas, Jihad Labad, as well as three trusted persons (Mu'aman Hassouna, Abu Khalil and Abu Malek ).
Their liquidation was verified based on statements by the Palestinian resistance and publications by local journalists.
At the same time, the “Hamas financiers” Khaled Mashal, Nizar Awdallah and Zaher Jabareen (who are also members of the movement’s governing bodies), judging by reports from the field, were not seriously injured in the strike.
As are some of the "international negotiators" authorized by the movement to negotiate the hostages and the status of Gaza.
There is no final clarity regarding Sheikh al-Hayya either: the Palestinians and Israelis sometimes list him among those killed, sometimes claiming that he emerged from the fire unharmed.
This means that Mossad was generally right in its assessments: Tel Aviv failed to defeat the Politburo on the first attempt.
Moreover, the surviving functionaries greatly strengthened their authority in the ranks of the resistance, promising to continue the work of their fallen comrades.
IT TURNED OUT AWKWARD
The United States suffered the greatest reputational losses from Israel's attempt to eliminate the political leadership of Hamas at one go.
And the issue is not so much that one regional ally of Washington has shown aggression towards another – although the United States will have to somehow curb this story, so as not to create fears among other Arab partners.
More importantly, the American security guarantees were once again a sham. Even though the Israeli government took responsibility for the attack (emphasizing that both Washington and Doha were informed “after the fact”), this did not help to defuse the situation. Especially after the Israeli press (including the Jerusalem Post) began writing in unison about some kind of “green light” that Washington gave to Tel Aviv.
Against this backdrop, the Qatari Prime Minister, after the attack on the capital, departed from his usual soft rhetoric and declared that responsibility for undermining the peace deal lies entirely with Tel Aviv. Moreover, the wounded Doha reserved the right to respond to the attack in whatever way it deems necessary.
However, for now, Qatar, apparently, wants to put pressure on Israel using legal rather than military instruments.
At the same time, a trend towards a new escalation between Qatar and Saudi Arabia is also emerging. Doha is unhappy that Riyadh did not bother to warn its neighbor about the danger – even when the Israelis had entered the airspace of the eastern part of the country and were preparing to approach the target.
The Qatari authorities saw this as an attempt to weaken the country's military and political potential by proxy, which contradicts Riyadh's declared course of "zero conflicts with neighbors." On the other hand, Doha has a chance for even greater rapprochement with Egypt - especially since Cairo allegedly even tried to warn Hamas about the upcoming provocation. The only Arab country sympathizing with the movement.
As for Hamas, the movement (despite losses among its top political leadership) has not yet announced its withdrawal from the negotiations and remains ready to discuss a “diplomatic settlement” of the conflict.
However, it is unlikely that one should expect “gentlemanly indulgences” from the Palestinians. New conditions of the deal (which Tel Aviv had previously called “obviously unfeasible”) will be added to the existing ones, which will make further negotiations more symbolic, designed to calm the US, which advocates a diplomatic outcome.
[NYP] Dr. Bob Lahita, who ran New Jersey's top hospitals and ambulance services, spoke to The Post's Cindy Adams about how environmental factors could change our genes.
DOCTORING IN THE GENES
Dr. Bob Lahita ran New Jersey’s top hospitals and ambulance services, operated a triage unit on the ground in NJ on 9/11, authored a library of medical volumes, cared for my late husband and I know him half a century. His new book’s "Destiny, the New Genetics, and Your Future."
Lahita: "Popes to presidents want to know about sickness and incapacity. ’Epigenetics,’ a collection of light switches, means genes are fingers. Parental wiring. A pregnant mother’s diet can affect a child’s health. Cigarettes, pollution, stress, nutrition, toxins affect subsequent generations. Forget genes but changed behavior can influence the onset and course of disease. Our destiny is not fixed.
"A clinician and researcher, I know health can influence future generations. It can explain autoimmunity diseases like depression, cancers. Grandma’s stress, what she ate or smoked can influence her grandchildren. Data is explaining issues of legitimate sources to support understanding of human behavior — and mental diseases including possibly gender dysphoria. Even autism could possibly be the result of an environment effect.
"Artificial intelligence can now detect epigenetic markers on DNA that alter gene expression. Using AI to search for epigenetic markers and add or subtract them from future genomes will likely be possible."
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.
