[HotAir] The 4th of July parade in Highland Park, Illinois had barely gotten started yesterday when shots began ringing out from a rooftop near the parade route. By the time it was finished, six were dead and 38 more were injured, many seriously. The hospitalized victims reportedly range in age from 8 to 85. The police had soon identified a suspect, Robert Crimo III, a self-styled rapper who went by the name "Awake." Crimo was later spotted in his vehicle and taken into custody following a brief chase. Browsing through his social media history, most of which has since been taken down, authorities seem to be asking how nobody saw this coming. (WGN-TV)
Robert "Bobby" Crimo III, the suspect in the Highland Park parade shooting Monday was taken into custody around Monday evening.
Crimo was a prolific poster online where he apparently went by the name "Awake the Rapper." His videos foretell his alleged violent acts. In one, he appears to be dramatize a school shooting. In another video, Crimo appears to animate his own demise in a confrontation with police.
His postings informed the operation to arrest him.
Crimo’s attack will no doubt renew the debate about so-called "red flag" laws and what can be done about people who openly provide all sorts of indications that they may become dangerously violent. The shooter’s rap videos seemed to show all of the signs you would expect. One of them depicted a mass shooting at a school while another featured a cartoon version of Crimo being killed in a standoff with law enforcement.
The alleged shooter did more than post rap videos, however. He hosted a Discord channel where his "fans" would engage in discussions of violence and mass shootings. Crimo frequently posted on topics including death, murder, and suicide. He rarely posted about politics, but there were allegedly a couple of photos and videos suggesting he was a fan of Donald Trump.
It would seem that all of the signals were there and had been for several months at least. But what, if anything, could anyone have done to stop him? Thus far, the only thing officials are saying is that Crimo was "known to law enforcement." But there is no confirmation that he had a criminal record that would have prevented him from purchasing a firearm, though that may come to light later. We also don’t know if he even legally owned the rifle that was recovered from the scene of the shooting. More at the link.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
07/05/2022 08:58 ||
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#1
Hot Air article so I didn't give them a click.
His father owns a deli in Highland Park. Was that the roof he shot from? If not, who's roof and how did he get access. If the owner allowed him access, we better see some serious accessory / conspiracy charges.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
07/05/2022 12:19 Comments ||
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#2
access ladder to the roof is how he got up there.
Posted by: Chris ||
07/05/2022 12:34 Comments ||
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#3
Wore women's clothing.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
07/05/2022 12:51 Comments ||
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#4
^ So do jihadis trying to slip away.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
07/05/2022 13:17 Comments ||
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#5
I believe in the idea of an "access ladder" that isn't locked from above like a fire escape like I believe in the Tooth Fairie...
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
07/05/2022 13:38 Comments ||
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#6
I see them all over the place.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
07/05/2022 16:15 Comments ||
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#7
From the Stupid Proposed New Laws file: Ladders will be restricted to only 9 rungs, only firefighters will be able to carry high capacity ladders…..
[Babylon Bee] NEW YORK, NY — Just days after being sentenced to 30 years in prison, R. Kelly walked free this morning after it came to light that he was actually one of Ghislaine Maxwell's clients, and therefore protected from any consequences of his actions.
"We are so, so sorry for the embarrassment we have caused Mr. Kelly," said lead prosecutor Dean Baker. "We remain deeply committed to protecting the identities of the powerful men who used Ms. Maxwell's services to sexually abuse minors. We apologize to Mr. Kelly for the mistake and have booked him a nice trip to a private island as recompense."
While grateful for his quick release, Mr. Kelly reportedly plans to sue the state. "Yes, I absolutely participated in the trafficking and sexual abuse of young women over decades," said Mr. Kelly in a statement. "But hey, we've all agreed to just pretend that Ms. Maxwell trafficked girls to 'no one'. Since I am one of her clients, the state was never supposed to reveal my identity and ruin my good name."
Mr. Kelly had avoided telling prosecutors about his connection to Ms. Maxwell as his knowledge of the names in her book would put him at risk. "Obviously, the people on that list have the power to take you out if they think you might talk," said Mr. Kelly. "Which is why I'm getting on a plane right away and getting out of the country."
At publishing time, Mr. Kelly was seen boarding a private jet with a pilot named Hill R. E. Clintonovich.
[Townhall] Jump out of a perfectly good airplane, charge a machine gun nest, be stationed at Ft. Irwin — these are just three of the myriad miseries American patriots are willing to endure to defend our country. But today's military is asking too much of our young people, as evidenced by the crashing recruitment rates that threaten to deplete a military already running short of soldiers. Have our young people suddenly turned from heroes to zeros, ne'er-do-well heirs of the brave warriors who confronted the forces of tyrannical gun control at Lexington and Concord?
No. The kids are alright. The problems lie echelons above.
Here's a little leadership secret that's actually not a secret at all to competent commissioned and non-commissioned officers. There are no bad cohorts of soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines, Coast Guardsmen and whatever the hell Space Force people are called. There are only bad leaders, and we have the worst military leadership in American history, starting right at the top with a commander-in-chief who is less like Ike than Beavis.
But come on, that's a naive hope. What happens historically in this case is that the powerful will hire mercenaries to do the killing for them. Blackwater, Triple Canopy, Wagner Group...does it really matter? They're all the same in the end.
[Epoch Times] The flurry of rulings from the Supreme Court has everyone’s head spinning. The most significant among them, even if it doesn’t capture all the headlines, is West Virginia v. EPA. The majority opinion is impressive, but the part I found truly wonderful is the concurring opinion by Justice Neil Gorsuch.
This is where we see things headed, toward a major and much-welcome curbing of the power of the administrative state.
Just to review what this thing is, it’s an unelected bureaucracy that rules the country without oversight from voters or legislatures. For well over 100 years, most courts have given it a pass, just assuming that the "experts" in the bureaucracies are handling things just fine, faithfully interpreting legislation, and merely creating rules for easy compliance.
Generations have gone by as this fourth branch of government has grown in size, scope, and strength. For the most part, its baneful impositions have been felt by one business or one industry at a time. You have heard the stories. The car dealer complains about how the Department of Labor is making him crazy. The machine-parts manufacturer is going bonkers about letters from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. The energy company can never satisfy the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
They are stories and we find them unfortunate, but we’ve generally avoided thinking of these as systematic, all-pervasive, and truly dangerous to the idea of freedom itself. However, there are some 432 of these agencies. The authors of the Declaration of Independence noted their existence back in the day when they accused the English king of having "erected a Multitude of new Offices, and sent hither Swarms of Officers to harass our People, and eat out their Substance."
They fought a revolution to end the tyranny but now we have a home-grown form, starting in 1883 with the Pendleton Act and continuing throughout the 20th century as each new administration creates its own bureaucracy.
The thing has taken on a power of its own. Strangely, the topic hardly comes up at all during elections, and that’s for a reason. Politicians running for office like to advertise their power to make change. They might even believe it. In reality, though, elected officials have very little influence over the conduct of public life relative to the administrative state.
As Trump found, not even the president is a match for the deep state.
Here’s what has happened since March 2020: The beast showed its face. Seemingly out of nowhere, these strange agencies and people for whom we never voted were ruling our lives. They restricted travel, forced us to cover our faces, closed our churches and schools, and forbid our businesses from operating unless they were big enough to afford a powerful lobbying arm in Washington. The whole scene was appalling. It caused many people—including some earnest judges—to take notice....
#1
Laws & Reg's should ONLY passed by Elected Representatives, not DC deep pocket appointed officials that always seem to make more than their "official" salary.
#2
^ This. The more a person yammers about "democracy," the less interested they actually are in having the public vote on issues affecting their governance.
If everything was decided by binding plebiscite, from declarations of war to who is a dog catcher in the USA, I guarantee you leftists would often hate the results.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
07/05/2022 7:46 Comments ||
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#3
No regulation without legislation.
Posted by: James ||
07/05/2022 11:51 Comments ||
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And no legislation without representation (that includes you, courts of America who want to legislate from the bench).
#5
Considered a “subject matter expert” by the feds it was a little disconcerting how willing they were to accept “proposed wording” for regs to avoid negative economic impact. Nice that they took my recommendations into consideration but that implied they did the same for other bozos too. Kinda explains in a nutshell the conflicting paragraphs in final issues. The regulators were not only too lazy to write the regs, they were too lazy to proofread them
[Amazon] They landed in a dust storm so thick the chopper pilot used dead reckoning and a guess to find the ground. Welcomed by a band of heavily armed militiamen, they climbed a mountain on horseback to meet the most ferocious warlord in Asia. They plotted a war of nineteenth-century maneuvers against a twenty-first-century foe. They trekked through minefields, sometimes past the mangled bodies of local tribesmen who’d shared food with them hours before. They saved babies and treated fractures, sewed up wounded who’d been transported from the battlefield by donkey. They found their enemy hiding in thick bunkers, dodged bullets from machine-gun-laden pickup trucks, and survived mass rocket attacks from vintage Soviet-era launchers. They battled the Taliban while mediating blood feuds between rival allies. They fought with everything they had, from smart bombs to AK-47s.The men they helped called them brothers. Hollywood called them the Horse Soldiers.
#2
The idea of grabbing the Taliban bigs and bin Laden (we did not for sure know where he was on 9/12) is certainly attractive.
All that said, making a big ash tray there on 9/12 would probably have paid a lot of dividends compared to the endless war on terror, segue to war for liberal democracy in Ukraine today.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
07/05/2022 12:26 Comments ||
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[BriefingsForBritain] Putin's original plan for Ukraine has failed. His response is escalation. The outcome is unclear. But the range of options is not unlimited, and history suggests the likely possibilities based on the way Russian statecraft and war operate. What is the best available outcome out of a range of imperfect ones? Finnish Solution: keep portions of Donbas and Crimea and a landbridge - formal treaty, recognized boundaries
Cyprus Solution : keep more territory than in the Finnish solution but part of the Russian kept territory will be unrecognized internationally
Posted by: Lord Garth ||
07/05/2022 00:00 ||
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Failed?, hardly. Western media delusions. This will be done when Putin's Russia decides (Putin's replacement could be far more hostile). Cyprus solution is no solution. Just an eternal conflict. Nothing was resolved. Greeks and Turks have an eternal hatred. The gas fields might be the flash point for the future.
That is kinda sorta true. A neutral Ukraine, not part of NATO, with no foreign troops or large standing army, and all that chaos in the Donbass sorted out - yeah, that did not work out. So it is on to Plan B - secure defensible positions and fix Donbass. That seems to be working.
BLUF:
[Townhall] American Airlines is not the bad guy in this story; the cuts are in response to a regional pilot shortage affecting the entire industry, which could last for a long time.
But as the very phrase "get rid of the losers" implies, many influential people in elite institutions just shrug off or ignore the economic and emotional effects that this kind of thing has on a small-to-medium-sized city. It is much like when they shrugged when manufacturing, opportunity and stability left such cities between 30 and 50 years ago.
When an airport stops serving your city, it denies the region's industries (and travelers) the use of the aviation network, the common denominator that determines successful business and tourism across the country and the globe.
And it creates yet another small death to places that are trying to recover from a series of other small deaths they have endured over the years due to automation and destructive trade deals and the loss of Fortune 500 companies keeping their headquarters in their hometown; there were seven located here in Toledo until the late '70s.
#1
If it's still running, every politician in Washington should be directed to travel the 'daily' Amtrak from Manassas, VA to Atlanta, GA. It's a long, 9.5 hour slog, as the tracks are rickety. You'll be able see the underside of small towns and cities along the way. Mile after mile of closed factories and businesses. The ghost towns of what was once industrial America.
Posted by: Bobby ||
07/05/2022 8:49 Comments ||
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#5
Can solar-powered electric airplanes be next?
It would be fun to do the math and see how many square feet of solar panels equals one Pratt & Whitney jet engine.
I'd put my money on nuke-powered airplanes. "But what about the radiation?", you ask. Come on, man! Since when have the airlines cared about passenger comfort?
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
07/05/2022 9:14 Comments ||
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Don't be silly, SteveS. The solar stuff goes up in space and beams collected energy down to the surface, tracking just ahead of each aircraft. Updrafts ensue, et voila: practical passenger sailplanes! Additional selling point: demining, like in that Bond flick with Halle Berry.
I follow this group on Facebook. They do good work, working with Russians as well as local authorities.
[LegendaArchaeology] In early June Legenda proudly took part in a recovery operation that harks back to the most chilling events of World War II - The Holocaust.
The sad story we became involved in starts back in the hot summer of 1941. German troops had entered Latvia only a week after the launch of Operation Barbarossa and on July 1 Riga had fallen. Less than 10 days later the whole of Latvia was fully under German control.
#1
My father was born in Riga in 1919. In 1934 his widowed mother emigrated with him to British Mandate Palestine. I don’t know how it was for him in Israel, but after he arrived in America in the late 1950s he had nothing to do with anyone from the old country. Said they were all antisemites. This story may have played into that opinon.
[OneIndia] The Islamic holy warriors have a pan-India reach and operate through dozens of fronts across 23 states
India has been battling against radicalised and bully boy groups since independence. They claim to speak for interests of Kashmiris, Moslems, Sikhs, Assamese, Naxals, Manipuris, Tripuris, Nagas, Bodos and Garos but actually fight for independence, establishing dictatorship of the proletariat or converting India into Dar-al-Islam (Islamic land). As of now, 79 of them stand proscribed, 107 are either talking to the government or observing ceasefire and 76 are still active.
But there is a difference. Islamic holy warriors have Pan-India reach and operate through thousands of sleeper cells and dozens of fronts across 23 states. Other outfits are confined to small areas and, hence they are containable.
Continued on Page 49
[Free Beacon] A prominent financial services firm promotes divestment from companies that help the Israeli government combat Palestinian suicide bombers, according to an independent investigation conducted by a Washington, D.C. think tank.
Morningstar Inc., a financial research firm that advises investors, is accused in a new report from the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) of downgrading companies that help Israel combat terrorism, including those that work on the country’s security barrier built to stop Palestinian suicide bombers from attacking cities. Ratings produced by Morningstar and similar research firms act as a primary guide for investors and can greatly impact how a company is valued.
The author of the FDD report told the Washington Free Beacon that Morningstar’s practices comprise a key pillar of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement—which wages economic warfare on Israel—and could force states with anti-BDS laws to cut ties with Morningstar.
Unilever just spent a year enjoying that attention... before they surrendered.
FDD concluded that Morningstar’s ratings are "driven by a quantifiable bias against Israel" and that the company "risks running afoul of numerous state statutes" meant to curb support for the BDS movement.
The focus on Morningstar stems from its 2020 acquisition of Sustainalytics, a research firm that rates companies based on their social values. Following Morningstar’s acquisition of Sustainalytics, watchdog groups including NGO Monitor and JLens accused Morningstar of allowing its research arm to promote the BDS movement through ratings that negatively impact companies working with Israel. These claims prompted the Illinois Investment Policy Board to initiate an investigation into the company’s practices. They are also fueling calls for at least 34 other states with similar anti-BDS laws to cut ties with Morningstar.
This is where we remind the business world that there is a cost to playing games that annoy half the customer base.
Faced with concerns from its own shareholders, Morningstar insisted in March 2021 that it was not unfairly targeting companies that work with Israel. But the Illinois investigation into its actions prompted the company to hire an outside law firm, White & Case, to conduct an investigation into Sustainalytics’s business practices. That report was published earlier this month and touted by Morningstar as proof it does not discriminate against the Jewish state.
"This investigation concludes that Morningstar’s Sustainalytics products do not recommend or encourage divestment," the report reads.
Golly — the hired guns say what the hiring company wants said.
[REI] While many people consider unplugging to be an essential part of immersing themselves in the natural world, it’s also true that there might come a time when one truly needs to call for help. Smartphones, which are seemingly in-hand 24/7, are a tempting solution, but 911 networks offer limited connectivity in Ma Nature’s domain.
When you’re on an outdoor adventure, PLBs and satellite messengers are your two best options for sending distress signals.
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.
[Epoch Times] The flurry of rulings from the Supreme Court has everyone’s head spinning. The most significant among them, even if it doesn’t capture all the headlines, is West Virginia v. EPA. The majority opinion is impressive, but the part I found truly wonderful is the concurring opinion by Justice Neil Gorsuch. 
[Amazon] They landed in a dust storm so thick the chopper pilot used dead reckoning and a guess to find the ground. Welcomed by a band of heavily armed militiamen, they climbed a mountain on horseback to meet the most ferocious warlord in Asia. They plotted a war of nineteenth-century maneuvers against a twenty-first-century foe. They trekked through minefields, sometimes past the mangled bodies of local tribesmen who’d shared food with them hours before. They saved babies and treated fractures, sewed up wounded who’d been transported from the battlefield by donkey. They found their enemy hiding in thick bunkers, dodged bullets from machine-gun-laden pickup trucks, and survived mass rocket attacks from vintage Soviet-era launchers. They battled the Taliban while mediating blood feuds between rival allies. They fought with everything they had, from smart bombs to AK-47s.The men they helped called them brothers. Hollywood called them the Horse Soldiers.
[REI] While many people consider unplugging to be an essential part of immersing themselves in the natural world, it’s also true that there might come a time when one truly needs to call for help. Smartphones, which are seemingly in-hand 24/7, are a tempting solution, but 911 networks offer limited connectivity in Ma Nature’s domain.
