First Car

Posted by Oppo on 22 February 2024, 6:00 pm

Conservatarian shared this:

“Not to brag, but my first car was a Chevy Vega. And not just the sedan. The 2-door station wagon baby!”

. . . .Which got me thinking.

What was the first car you bought — really bought, and did not inherit?

(I only qualify it thus, because I personally went through numerous hand-me-downs, before I bought one with my own cash.)

I am not sure. My memory conflates different cars. I think it was a tan, 2-door, hatchback Honda Accord, manual 5-speed. What a glorious thing for a high-school(?) or college (?) guy to have! Independence! But I also had a green Bug around the same era. $500 bucks it cost me. What an un-Biden time it was!

What do you credit as being your first car?

Your Honor, I Must Object

Posted by Oppo on 22 February 2024, 4:00 pm

Damn near had a habeas corpus.

Judge Judas:

Modus Operandi? Pennsylvania Judge Suspected of Shooting Boyfriend…Five Years After Shooting Her Former Husband
Jonathan Turley | February 18, 2024 | Jonathan Turley

Dauphin County Magisterial District Judge Sonya M. McKnight, 57, is facing a case of modus operandi this week. However, the suspect showing the alleged pattern of criminal conduct is herself. McKnight is accused of shooting her ex-boyfriend in the head while he slept. The shooting took place five years after McKnight was cleared in the shooting of her former husband in the groin.

Michael McCoy, 54, was left blind in one eye and, according to the New York Post, McKnight tried to convince him that he had shot himself while he was sleeping.

…

McCoy said that he went to bed around 11:00 p.m. only to wake up later with “massive head pain” and unable to see. He said that McKnight came into the bedroom and asked, “Mike, what did you do to yourself?” …

For an alleged accidental shooting, the shot was remarkably well placed and should have been lethal. The bullet entered McCoy’s right temple and exited his left temple. He is still blinded in his right eye.

Police found a gun registered to McKnight and her hands tested positive for gunshot residue.

McKnight was also accused of lying about her movements. She told police that she did not leave the home but that is contradicted by a neighbor’s security camera. McCoy is reportedly suspicious that the judge may have followed him to the tavern.

McKnight is now suspended from the bench . . .

Oh. Goodie! Some progress is being made in our judicial system! But gunning for Trump is still admissible.

The arrest has brought new attention to the 2019 case.

Her former husband, Enoch McKnight, was shot in the groin after a history of domestic disputes and protective orders. He was helping McKnight move her furniture out of the home when he was shot. She had reportedly asked him to come over to help her. He claimed that she shot him and called him a “cheater.”

It is not clear from accounts of what her defense was in the earlier incident, . . .

. . . because courts don’t keep records of trials . . .

. . . but no charges were filed.

Beware of what this judge chambers.

Just a Reminder

Posted by Oppo on 22 February 2024, 3:00 pm

Biden Imprisons His Rivals Until They Die, Too
Townhall | 02/21/2024 | John and Andy Schlafly

The hue and cry about the recent death of Putin critic Alexei Navalny in a Russian prison overlooks that Biden and the Deep State are trying to imprison Trump until he dies, too. Anti-Trumpers in our country have been misusing the legal system with a vengeance ever since Trump defeated Hillary Clinton in 2016.

…

Biden’s prosecutors demanded a 33-year prison sentence for Enrique Tarrio for a January 6-related protest even though Tarrio was not even at the Capitol that day. Tarrio received a 22-year sentence, while other Trump supporters were sentenced to more than 15 years and it seems likely some will die in prison as Navalny did.

One killed himself.

And the White House Continues With Its Big, Beautiful Wall — Around the White House — To Keep Illegal Invaders Out

Posted by Oppo on 22 February 2024, 2:00 pm

Chicago Mayor Extends Contract on Anti-Crime Program That He Campaigned Against As Racist
Jonathan Turley | February 17, 2024 | Jonathan Turley

… this week saw a particularly confusing moment when, after calling the anti-crime program ShotSpotter “racist,” Johnson asked the company to extend its contract beyond the upcoming Democratic National Convention. So Johnson will put an end to this supposedly racist program but only after the Democratic luminaries (and the most violent summer months) have passed. …

… Johnson first declared that ShotStopper was racist because it spots more shots in minority neighborhoods and is used by police to justify … investigations or charges.

The program has been widely credited for reducing violence and crimes. …

So ShotSpotter is now being extended for seven months. Johnson says that the police will then be transitioned away from the technology.

Why not spend another couple of million dollars on a “Robocop” robot to patrol sidewalks — but not stairs?

Remember Ukraine?

Posted by walruskkkch on 22 February 2024, 1:30 pm

Well it doesn’t look good for those plucky Ukrainians. Are they worth a further 100 Billion plus? How do you all feel about it?

The Russian Winter-Spring 2024 Offensive Operation on the Kharkiv-Luhansk Axis

Support ISW

Riley Bailey and Fredrick W. Kaganwith Nicole Wolkov and Christina Harward
February 21, 2024

Russian forces are conducting a cohesive multi-axis offensive operation in pursuit of an operationally significant objective for nearly the first time in over a year and a half of campaigning in Ukraine. The prospects of this offensive in the Kharkiv-Luhansk sector are far from clear, but its design and initial execution mark notable inflections in the Russian operational level approach. Russian efforts to seize relatively small cities and villages in eastern Ukraine since Spring 2022 have generally not secured operationally significant objectives, although these Russian operations led to large-scale fighting and significant Ukrainian and Russian losses. Russian forces likely pursued more operationally significant objectives during their Winter-Spring 2023 offensive, but that effort was poorly designed and executed and its failure to make any substantial progress precludes drawing firm conclusions about its intended goals. Russian offensives to this point have generally either concentrated large masses of troops against singular objectives (such as Bakhmut and Avdiivka) or else have consisted of multiple attacks along axes of advance that were too far away to be mutually supporting and/or divergent. The current Russian offensive in the Kharkiv-Luhansk sector, by contrast, involves attacks along four parallel axes that are mutually supporting in pursuit of multiple objectives that, taken together, would likely generate operationally significant gains. The design of this offensive operation is worth careful consideration regardless of its outcome as a possible example of the Russian command’s ability to learn from and improve on its previous failures at the operational level. Russian tactical performance in this sector, however, does not appear to have improved materially on previous Russian tactical shortcomings, a factor that may well lead to the overall failure even of this better-designed undertaking.