Wondered what Martin Gugino, 75, was doing  when he walked up to the Buffalo police, who pushed him away. With them advancing, why did he in effect try to stop them? Well it seems there was method in his madness. 

During his effort Gugino was attempting to capture the radio communications signature of Buffalo police officers. CTH [Conservative Tree House, this blog] noted what he was attempting on Thursday night as soon as the now viral video was being used by media to sell a police brutality narrative. [Thread Here] Today, a more clear video has emerged that shows exactly what he was attempting

In this slow motion video, you see Gugino using a phone as a capture scanner.  You might have heard the term “skimming”; it’s essentially the same.  Watch him use his right hand first to scan the mic of officer one (top left of chest).  Then Gugino moves his hand to the communications belt of the second officer. [emphasis added]

What was he up to?

This capture of communications signals [explained in detail here] is a method of police tracking [that is, the tracking of police] used by Antifa to monitor the location of police. In some cases the more high tech capture software can even decipher communication encryption allowing the professional agitators to block (black-out), jam, or interfere with police communication. In addition, many police body-cams are bluetooth-enabled which allows syncing.

Watching the video, you see a 3rd policeman charging up to Gugino, apparently once he saw what he was doing — basically an act of terrorism — and joined in pushing him away. It was comparable to his grabbing for a policeman’s gun, and the cops had to stop him.

Trump caught this, assessed it shrewdly, and tweeted his assessment, to the horror of his enemies in the media.

via Buffalo Officials Duped By Professional Antifa Provocateur – Arrest and Charge Two Police Officers – Righteous Police Team Stand Together and Walk Out… | The Last Refuge

. . . blocking their progress, as seen in the video, even putting a hand out and touching one of them as they moved along. What was he thinking?

The special response unit was formed in 2016 and is deployed to manage mass demonstrations and riots. They are the first line of defense and best trained officers in the department for these situations, according to [John Evans, PBA president.]  and other police sources. Their training includes pushing through crowds in order to maintain control. [Emphasis added]

“Don’t put them out there if you don’t want them to do the job,” Evans wrote in a text to Investigative Post. “This is an example of officers doing exactly what they’re supposed to and then getting charged. It’s so wrong.”

No wonder the whole unit resigned when two of them were suspended  — and later were charged. Why was the man getting in their way? Was he carrying his protest too far and trying to stop them?

What if he had obstructed their path by lying down? Instead, he went at them, not of course to punch or push them but to put his hand on one or two of them, thus presumably preserving his nonviolent status — maddeningly so — but clearly interfering.

The cops were acting as trained to keep the crowd back. He tried to stop or delay that. One hand went out to push him away, and backing away several steps on the force of that, he lost balance and went down.

This is all to judge from the video. Does anyone else know what he was attempting?

via Police crowd-control unit resigns in protest – Investigative Post

Schools full of masked men, women, and children?

The CDC guidelines for opening schools recommend keeping desks 6 feet apart, closing shared spaces like playgrounds and dining halls, and mandating masks for staff and children. These guidelines are excessive and create a culture of fear.

Which is what we have now.

With a few rare exceptions, the conversation about opening schools back up in the fall so far is dominated by short-term symbolism. [Emphasis added]

Absent some realistic plan to prevent its spread, we will continue to spin our wheels [ditto], remain stuck in idealism, and still impose huge costs on the most vulnerable among us. Sooner or later realism must take hold.

Symbolism has its uses, but this isn’t one of them. Message is: Get real.

via Masking Kids: Safety without Efficacy – AIER

(Some-)Black-Lives-Matter street crowds , broke the embargo. paved the way

Trump will be particularly eager to get on the road in light of recent polls. The RealClearPolitics average of polls shows Biden with an eight-point lead over the president — up from a 4.4-point lead in May.

Yes, Biden has plenty of weaknesses — his support appears soft and less dedicated than Trump’s — but eight points is a lot. For Trump, the return to the campaign trail represents a way to make up the ground lost in three horrendous months. He’s ready to get back. [Emphasis added]

!! via Byron York’s Daily Memo

What the heck. Give criminals a chance. See what happens.

One feature of our current politics is how quickly bad events trigger a rush to bad policies. So it is that the response to the killing of George Floyd has sprinted past police reform to “defund the police.”

Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti wants to redirect $150 million from public safety to social programs, and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey was hooted from a protest on the weekend because he admitted he didn’t want to defund the police.

City Council members now pledge to dismantle the force whether he wants to or not.

via Defund Police, Watch Crime Return – WSJ

Shocking, eh?

To stop COVID-19 dead in its tracks, many governors, mayors and superintendents are threatening to keep schools closed this fall, failing to consider the greater harm that comes from refusing to open them.

Check out this scientist’s argument.

via TheHill

NPR knows how to go after a guy. For instance, this hardball question to a Brooklyn College prof, who wrote a book about it:

“People ask the question, without police, what do you do when someone gets murdered?” asked NPR’s Leah Donnella. “What do you do when someone’s house gets robbed? What do you say to those people who have those concerns?”

You know, the oddball down the street who gets all flustered when his house gets robbed.

OK, but she did ask, and as you see, he got right down to it:

“Well, I’m certainly not talking about any kind of scenario where tomorrow someone just flips a switch and there are no police,” he began. [No switch-flipping!] “What I’m talking about is the systematic questioning [the best kind] of the specific [another best kind] roles that police currently [not in the long-ago] undertake, and attempting to develop evidence-based alternatives so that we can dial back our reliance on them. And my feeling is that this encompasses actually [!] the vast majority of what police do. We have better alternatives for them.” [Name one?]

Wins him points in the faculty lounge every day.

via Byron York’s Daily Memo

Of course not.

Consider the “senseless violence” that occurs on American roads every year. We should do whatever we can if it saves just one life, no?

Let’s see.

In late July 2012, a pickup truck packed with twenty-three people veered off a Texas highway and crashed into two trees.

Nine people were injured in the crash, but they were the lucky ones. The other fourteen occupants of the truck were killed. In the aftermath, bodies lay everywhere. Among the dead were two children. Alcohol was not involved, and there was no evidence of another vehicle at the scene. The weather at the time of the crash was dry and clear.

So why was the call for legislation not swift and immediate after such a terrible event? Because people knew that these sorts of things happen from time to time, and there is little, if anything, that legislation can do to change that.

Oh no! Say it ain’t so? Well . . .

. . . .  We could address automotive deaths at any time if we were truly committed to doing so. One piece of legislation could virtually guarantee that no one would ever die on American roads again. All we would have to do is to reduce the speed limit on every road in the country to five miles per hour. That would save more than just one life.

Of course, everyone knows that imposing a national speed limit of five miles per hour is ludicrous. It also would do more harm than good.

Think about it. The cost of policing would rise dramatically because almost everyone would want to drive much faster than five miles per hour. This would leave fewer police resources available for preventing and investigating other crimes. Few people would have the time to commute more than five miles or so, and even a commute that short would take two hours every day.

But the law would do more than upend lives. We might all starve because we would have profound difficulties keeping grocery stores stocked with food. We would also have trouble getting people to lifesaving medical care quickly. Many people would, in fact, die because we passed a law intended to save lives.

Fact is,

THERE’S NO WAY AROUND TRADE-OFFS

The “if it saves just one life” argument is usually nonsense. All human actions involve trade-offs. As the speed-limit example illustrates, a gain in one direction inevitably leads to losses in another. There is probably no such thing as a law that universally saves lives. There are only laws that save lives in one place in exchange for losing lives in another.

You mean . . . ?

When politicians say, “If it saves just one life,” they can appear to care deeply while simultaneously absolving themselves of the responsibility of crafting a rational response to a difficult issue. It allows them to trade on emotions instead of facts.

Well, some of them are good at that. Let’s, as hip people say, “Let’s unpack that.”

If we really believed that any law is justified if it saves just one life, we would require all Americans to pass a mental health evaluation on a regular basis or be institutionalized (more than 38,000 Americans commit suicide annually). We would outlaw all motor vehicles (almost 35,000 Americans die in vehicle accidents annually). We would require all houses to be single-story structures (more than 26,000 die in falls annually).

We would ban alcohol (almost 17,000 die annually from alcohol-related liver disease).

Oops, we tried that, didn’t we?

We would require people to be certified as swimmers before allowing them into any large body of water (more than 3,500 die from drowning annually). We would prohibit women from getting pregnant unless they had no family history of birth complications (more than 900 American women die in childbirth annually).

Of course, none of these things will ever happen, nor should they. Life is full of dangers that cannot be legislated away.

And THERE’S NOTHING WE CAN DO ABOUT IT!

via The “If It Saves Just One Life” Fallacy – Intercollegiate Studies Institute: Think. Live Free.