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“…It is difficult to change a narrative once it has been established in the public’s mind.
A narrative was firmly fixed by the media, activists and rioters prior to the trial of Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin, which opened Monday. Mr. Chauvin is charged with murdering George Floyd.
Many people have seen the nearly nine-minute video of Mr. Chauvin pressing his knee on Mr. Floyd’s neck while Floyd pleaded, “I can’t breathe.”
What they may not have seen, and the jurors should view, is a much longer treatment of the scene that begins with a store owner approaching a police officer, claiming a man, later identified as Floyd, had passed off a counterfeit $20 bill. The owner points to a car across the street. He says the man is in it.
In a video compilation from police body cameras, bystanders and a shop camera, Floyd is in an agitated state, first saying, “please, don’t shoot me,” then refusing to put his hands on the steering wheel and later resisting officers. He occasionally appears incoherent and struggles with officers attempting to place him in a police car.
The entire video has been analyzed by George Parry, a former chief of the police Brutality/Misconduct Unit of the Philadelphia District Attorney’s office from 1978 to 1983.
Mr. Parry says that when the first officer (not Mr. Chauvin) approaches Floyd, he asks him to put both hands on the steering wheel. When he doesn’t the officer views him as “noncompliant” and draws his service revolver which, he says, is standard practice in such situations. As soon as Floyd places both hands on the wheel, the officer holsters his gun.
From there, the video shows the officer moving Floyd to the sidewalk. “He was noncompliant throughout this procedure,” says Mr. Parry. Floyd was not under arrest, but he was in custody and officers then began to conduct an investigation into what happened in the store. This included another officer interviewing two people in the car with Floyd. “They were trying to determine why Mr. Floyd was behaving in a noncompliant, bizarre and incoherent manner,” says Mr. Parry.
After noticing foam around Floyd’s mouth, one of the officers asks Floyd if he had taken drugs. Floyd responded he had been “hooping,” which is defined as “putting drugs in the anus, resulting in a quick and intense high.”
When the officers attempted to place Floyd in a squad car pending information about the drugs he had taken and the reaction they produced, Floyd screamed he was claustrophobic and again resisted.
The video shows he was then taken out of the car and police complying with his request to lie down. Before lying down, according to Mr. Parry, Floyd shouted seven times that he couldn’t breathe.
It was at that point Officer Chauvin begins to kneel on Mr. Floyd’s neck, which Mr. Parry says, “is entirely consistent with what is taught” at the Minneapolis police department academy.
The video shows Mr. Chauvin’s knee going up each time Floyd attempted to raise his head, indicating, says Mr. Parry, that Mr. Chauvin “was not using brute force.” When officers noticed Floyd deteriorating “they placed another call for an ambulance” with a higher priority code. When it arrived, Floyd appears to have stopped breathing.
The Hennepin County medical examiner determined that Floyd had a “fatal level” of fentanyl in his system. The report also found that “Floyd had a ‘heavy heart’ and ‘at least one artery was approximately 75 percent blocked.’” Floyd also had a history of severe coronary artery disease and hypertension, which, along with the drug and his agitated behavior, likely contributed to his death.
Mr. Parry claims prosecutors withheld this information for nearly three months as riots erupted in Minneapolis and elsewhere. Such behavior is normally considered prosecutorial misconduct.
Watch the video, read the medical examiner’s documents and see how the original narrative was wrong. Will jurors succumb to political pressure and the threat of more rioting, or will they examine the entire video and make their decision based on evidence?
We will soon know…”
“…They are Democrat propagandists and should be treated as such.
The great comedian Chris Farley had a recurring “Saturday Night Live” sketch in which he nervously and incompetently interviewed celebrities. “Remember when you were with the Beatles? … That was awesome!” he “asked” Paul McCartney in 1993, after fidgeting for a suitably awkward amount of time. “Yeah … it was,” replied McCartney, who played it straight.
That happened for real last Thursday, but without any self-awareness or comedy, when the entire White House Press Corps either effusively praised or more-than-gently handled President Joe Biden for the duration of his first press conference. Biden had his own struggles in the slow and painful press conference, repeatedly having to read off notecards to get through the few mild foreign policy topics, and occasionally getting lost in “rhetorical cul-de-sacs,” as Fox News’ Bret Baier kindly put it. But somehow it was the media performance that stood out as particularly cringe-inducing.
“[T]he perception of you that got you elected — as a moral, decent man — is the reason why a lot of immigrants are coming to this country and entrusting you with unaccompanied minors,” PBS’ Yamiche Alcindor, the second “reporter” to be called on, asserted Farley-style. Comedian J.P. Sears joked, in a sketch offering constructive notes for the “people running Biden,” that Alcindor sounded like she was worshiping a dictator, and suggested that reporters go ahead and leave the over-the-top compliments out of their questions…”
“…School districts are slowly beginning to reopen in-person instruction after being closed for nearly a year—or, in many places, for over a year. While this is a wonderful development, it will never erase what parents experienced last year: uncertainty, inconsistency, and, in some cases, ineptitude from public schools.
The events of the last year have demonstrated to many families that public schools are not always the reliable institutions many thought they were. It also opened their eyes to just how powerful the teachers unions are, and revealed what many already suspected: that their modus operandi is not to support teachers who want to teach but to score political wins.
Thankfully, in response to these disappointments, multiple state legislatures are undertaking one of the biggest expansions of school choice in history…”
Related:
Legislators Override Kentucky Governor’s Veto of School Choice Bill
“…This vague definition of extremism opens the floodgates for political demonization. What does it mean to say that Marines cannot advocate for organizations that “advance efforts to deprive individuals of their civil rights”? Which rights are in question? Can Marines advocate for gun control groups that want to weaken Americans’ civil right to gun ownership? Can Marines advocate for pro-life groups that seek to undermine a woman’s “right” to abortion under Roe v. Wade (1973)?…”
“…San Diego parents who are fighting in court to get their kids back in school in person are now outraged to learn that kids who just came over the border are getting in-person instruction from some of the very teachers union members who have said the COVID-19 pandemic is too dangerous for in-person learning.
Fox News reports that the San Diego County Office of Education said it was “providing the educational program for the unaccompanied migrant children” because “we have a moral obligation to ensure a bright future for our children.”
The “moral obligation” to teach the San Diego citizen students in-person was left on the cutting-room floor somewhere between trips to court and labor negotiations over COVID fears.
Happily, teachers’ fears are now miraculously extinguished as some of them will be spending spring break teaching the children who were just brought by cartels and other nefarious characters to flood the border and come into the US illegally…”
“…Admin breaks promise to not offer sanctions relief until Iran negotiates
Congressional Republicans are calling the Biden administration’s reported plan to roll back sanctions on Iran before it commits to renewed diplomatic talks an unacceptable concession that will only embolden the hardline regime and reward its bad behavior.
As Iran continues to balk at U.S. proposals for direct negotiations on a deal, the Biden administration is becoming desperate. American officials are now said to be offering Iran immediate relief from tough economic sanctions in exchange for commitments to scale back portions of its nuclear program and halt enriching uranium to levels needed for a weapon, according to Politico. That proposal, Republican foreign policy leaders told the Washington Free Beacon, breaks multiple promises from Secretary of State Antony Blinken to not lift sanctions until Tehran agrees to sit down with the United States and other world powers. Republicans also are learning of the proposal via media reports, highlighting the administration’s continued efforts to conceal its diplomatic pursuits from critics in Congress…”
https://twitter.com/AsianDawn4/status/1376406876921810946
Hat tip to Kane
This is one of those moments it’s fair to point out Kamala Harris is not a mom. She never raised children let alone tried to balance work and taking care of kids not to mention manage the joke of remote learning. She’s an empty suit in every way— https://t.co/AMXRFLjKBE
— Julie Kelly 🇺🇸 (@julie_kelly2) March 29, 2021
Americans voted for this
“…The World Health Organization’s latest COVID-19 data from both European nations presents a stark difference between how they responded to the pandemic — and which response was the proper one.
There I was, scrolling through my MeWe timeline, minding my own business (and trying to avoid doing any actual work) when I came across this gem of a chart.
The data contained is current as of March 19, 2021.
As you can see, Sweden got its COVID cases out of the way early, without any economy-destroying shutdowns or liberty-destroying personal restrictions. Czechia went entirely the other direction, yet even now cases are spiking…”
Property contains 119 rooms, including 14 guest bedrooms and 35 bathrooms
“…Blair House, right across Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House, has been called “the world’s most exclusive hotel.”
The massive complex of four townhouses is used as a state guest house to host visiting dignitaries and other guests of the president.
“The property contains 119 rooms, including 14 guest bedrooms and 35 bathrooms, among other functional spaces. At 70,000 square feet, Blair House is larger than the White House,” the General Services Administration says on its webpage.
But it’s reportedly not Vice President Kamala Harris’ cup of tea.
While Harris took office on Jan. 20, she and her husband have not moved in to the vice president’s mansion because it is being renovated. CNN went so far as to say that the couple is “living out of suitcases.”…”