My thanks to the SHR Media Network for allowing me to broadcast in their studio and over their air twice weekly, Tuesdays and Thursdays, as well as appear on the Sack Heads Radio Show™ each Wednesday evening.
Tuesday night at the Saloon we devoted the entire first hour to an interview with Ken McClenton, owner of TECN, which is The Exceptional Conservative Network. Ken quantifies himself as an urban conservative whose mission is to spread the good news of Christianity, Conservatism, Capitalism and Constitutionalism throughout the world. He is devoted to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness and believes that in order to save the United States, we must mutually pledge our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor to save urban America.
Ken grew up in a conservative Washington, DC household where education was valued and both parents instilled in Ken a thirst for knowledge, a love of the Bible, respect for others. At the age of 5, Ken was reading the Bible and preaching. He has a very deep interest in history and the law. He overcame a speech impediment by emulating Walter Cronkite. His father worked three jobs in order to put Ken into private school and, with that, Ken learned sacrifice, diligence, hard work and discipline.
In the 4th Grade, Ken told his father: “some day Dad, while you clean the floors of the US Senate, some day I’ll be able to speak from them.” Ken unequivocally states that his father is the most brilliant man he’s ever met to this day.
Instead of taking her family to the park, Ken’s mother took Ken to the library, saying “you ain’t gonna be like the rest of ’em. You’re going to be different.” Ken realized that the world isn’t fair, and that you can exceed the expectations of others while still being who you are.
He says he’s a “much better father than I am a husband.”
Then there was tragedy.
Ken had his entire life changed in 2015 when his lost his 27-year-old daughter, Charnice, to DC gun violence. His daughter was used as a human shield between two warring gang factions and was then dropped to the street, discarded, when she was hit.
“I’m almost home, Mom. I’m coming home,” Charnice texted that night.
She went home, indeed, just not in the way anyone anticipated that night.
I read the article and I was embarrassed for law enforcement. DC law enforcement let Ken and his family down abysmally.
The suspects were, as of this writing, never identified, found or held to justice. Charnice was waiting for her husband to come and never found him, cut down.
Ken didn’t rail against firearms manufacturers. He became more stolid, more resolute, determined to never give up, never give in, never give over.
God has comforted, matured and prepared Ken for battle, using him as His vessel.
Finally, we wrapped up the show with a discussion of the First Amendment and how we are in danger of losing the First in the United States.
Please join me, the Bloviating Zeppelin(on Twitter @BZep and on Gab.ai @BZep), every Tuesday and Thursday night on the SHR Media Network from 11 PM to 1 AM Eastern and 8 PM to 10 PM Pacific, at the Berserk Bobcat Saloon — where the speech is free but the drinks are not.
As ever, thank you so kindly for listening, commenting, and interacting in the chat room or listening via podcast. Thanks to the folks who rolled over from Ken McClenton’s chatroom to my own — every chat participant is valued here at the Saloon.
Want to listen to all the Berserk Bobcat Saloon archives in podcast? Go here.
Killed by Leftists, Demorats, Progressives, anarchists and, of all people, aided and abetted by the American Media Maggots.
Whose speech and freedoms will likewise be suppressed.
This used to be true. Is it now?
And even some Republicans who lack actual testosterone or estrogen.
Wait. I take that back. Too many Republicans operate on estrogen though they appear as males.
Stop. Perfect time for this video.
So why the big concern over freedom of speech? Because of past, recent and continuing incidents involving the lack of it on American college campuses. This video summarizes appropriately.
That was the view of a college professor, who accurately reflects the views on way too many American college and university campuses today. Most of these are, of course, funded by American Taxpayer cash.
Your First Amendment freedoms are at stake.
Further, your overall American freedoms are also at stake which, of course, is what makes this nation more exceptional than most any other.
What other nation has this:
Amendment I
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
Leftists and Demorats will tell you our nation is evil on its face and is everything but exceptional.
But where do Leftists or Demorats actually mention freedom? Where is it that they wish to add to your freedoms in any fashion, instead of removing them? Removing them and then occasionally selling them back to you at a massive profit? Come on, Al Gore only wants $15 trillion of your taxpayer dollars.
Those freedoms buttressed and solidified by the sacrifice of 419,000 US soldiers and civilians in WWII. Yet what passes for state-of-the-art thought on US freedom of speech today by a politician — a Demorat politician mind you — is this.
He couldn’t be more wrong. The First Amendment exists not to protect pablum speech, but specifically challenging speech.
First, let’s be honest: there is no real definition for “hate speech.” It, like pornography, is in the eye of the beholder. The unsaid crux of the biscuit is, naturally: just who determines “hate speech”? That is the key.
Courts have ruled that the First doesn’t protect outright threats, speech that would tend to provoke a personal fight, and child pornography. “Hate speech” is not included as an exception.
KKK speech is protected. Symbols, like a burning cross, are protected. The Westboro Baptist Church is protected.
The Supreme Court has established a general principle that a government administrator can’t decide to charge a group a higher fee for event security based on anticipated public reaction to the content of the event, and a lower court found that this applies to colleges, too. So if Berkeley is basing its security decisions on what it expects Coulter to say, that could pose a problem.
We heard what one professor thinks of free speech. Another example of what passes for state-of-the-art thought on US freedom of speech today by “educators” is this, from the NYTimes.com:
What ‘Snowflakes’ Get Right About Free Speech
by Ulrich Baer
Widespread caricatures of students as overly sensitive, vulnerable and entitled “snowflakes” fail to acknowledge the philosophical work that was carried out, especially in the 1980s and ’90s, to legitimate experience — especially traumatic experience — which had been dismissed for decades as unreliable, untrustworthy and inaccessible to understanding.
Translated: the surfeit of emotional, sensitive snowflakes are in fact traumatized by certain speech. Their horror should not be delegitimized.
The recent student demonstrations at Auburn against Spencer’s visit — as well as protests on other campuses against Charles Murray, Milo Yiannopoulos and others — should be understood as an attempt to ensure the conditions of free speech for a greater group of people, rather than censorship. Liberal free-speech advocates rush to point out that the views of these individuals must be heard first to be rejected. But this is not the case. Universities invite speakers not chiefly to present otherwise unavailable discoveries, but to present to the public views they have presented elsewhere. When those views invalidate the humanity of some people, they restrict speech as a public good.
Translated: censorship isn’t really the removal of free speech; it’s a guarantee not to offend. Offense is a much worse condition than that of the removal of speech itself. Restricted speech is a “public good.”
But listen to this.
In such cases (“when those views invalidate the humanity of some people”) there is no inherent value to be gained from debating them in public. In today’s age, we also have a simple solution that should appease all those concerned that students are insufficiently exposed to controversial views. It is called the internet, where all kinds of offensive expression flourish unfettered on a vast platform available to nearly all.
Perfect. Who needs actual speech? In public? Just go to the internet. Meanwhile, we as Leftists will keep our politically-correct stranglehold on what it is you can hear and read.
The great value and importance of freedom of expression, for higher education and for democracy, is hard to overestimate. But it has been regrettably easy for commentators to create a simple dichotomy between a younger generation’s oversensitivity and free speech as an absolute good that leads to the truth.
Again, Leftists proving there is no real “good” or “bad.” There are simply events that occur on a sliding scale created of their own highly-informed thinking.
We would do better to focus on a more sophisticated understanding, such as the one provided by Lyotard, of the necessary conditions for speech to be a common, public good. This requires the realization that in politics, the parameters of public speech must be continually redrawn to accommodate those who previously had no standing.
You see? A “sophisticated understanding.” This is akin to saying that because some poor people cannot actually afford to go out and purchase a firearm, we need to eliminate the Second Amendment.
The idea of freedom of speech does not mean a blanket permission to say anything anybody thinks.
Uh, yes it is. You lie. The exceptions are delineated above as determined in US courts.
It means balancing the inherent value of a given view with the obligation to ensure that other members of a given community can participate in discourse as fully recognized members of that community.
Now it gets grotty. At first blush the paragraph above is nothing but mush. I provide this accurate translation for you: if only one of a delineated set of protected species are offended, even in the slightest, that speech is deemed hateful.
Free-speech protections — not only but especially in universities, which aim to educate students in how to belong to various communities — should not mean that someone’s humanity, or their right to participate in political speech as political agents, can be freely attacked, demeaned or questioned.
Translated: speech is now hateful when you question someone.
Here is a sentence that doesn’t even warrant reproducing in its entirety.
Unlike today’s somewhat reflexive defenders of free speech. . .
“Reflexive defenders of free speech.” In times past that was considered a positive feature, a wonderful attribute. Now, according to “educators,” that’s a glitch, a quirk, a serious problem requiring repair.
What is under severe attack, in the name of an absolute notion of free speech, are the rights, both legal and cultural, of minorities to participate in public discourse.
Please tell me, ladies and gentlemen, where the rights, both legal and cultural, of minorities to participate in public discourse are being quashed? Examples please. Be specific.
We should thank the student protestors, the activists in Black Lives Matter and other “overly sensitive” souls for keeping watch over the soul of our republic.
Of course. Thanks, Berkeley and other US universities, for rioting and burning and blockading and threatening so that opposing views cannot be remotely considered on campus. They really are “closed campuses” with regard to alternate views, theories and speech. Closed. Walled off. It is truly suppression by violence. On the part of Leftists.
Here is what Judge Andrew Napolitano said of this specific editorial.
Light to make the cockroaches scatter.
You know you have a serious problem when even Bill Maher skewers Leftists blocking free speech.
That’s an individual on a TV show. What happens when you have a mammoth tech giant like Google censoring from within? From DCClothesline.com:
Google’s Schmidt: “We’re Not Arguing For Censorship, We’re Arguing Just Take It Off The Page”
by Chris Menahan
Google is not going to “censor” their search results, they’re just going to take search results “off [their] page” to “essentially have you not see it.”
Say what?
In a video from March 23 that’s just now going viral, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt was asked by Fox Business’s Maria Bartiromo how they plan to deal with extremist content. Eric Schmidt responded by mixing in “fake news” with “extremist things” and suggested their computer algorithms will determine what’s true:
“My own view on most of this sort of extremist things as well as fake news in general is that it’s essentially a ranking problem. We’re very good at detecting what’s the most relevant and what’s the least relevant. It should be possible for computers to detect malicious, misleading and incorrect information and essentially have you not see it. We’re not arguing for censorship, we’re arguing just take it off the page, put it somewhere else.”
Read that again. “We’re not arguing for censorship, we’re arguing just take it off the page, put it somewhere else.”
And this isn’t censorship how? You’re taking it off the page. Where “else” are you putting it?
You see, of course, just who makes this determination of censorship or hate speech, yes? Me? No. You? No. Leftists.
As far as Leftists are concerned, it is precisely your freedoms that put the world in its predicament today.
It is your freedom of speech that suppresses any number of individuals and makes them feel less a person. It is your Second Amendment that stacks bodies like cordwood and forces young black males to kill each other in large urban venues. It is your ability to drive where you want when you want that has polluted our skies and clogged our cities. It is your ability to eat what you want that has resulted in obese young people and poor people. It is your freedom to manufacture goods and create a mighty industrial base that has resulted in competition globally, which is a terrible idea and rife with pollution, greed, capitalism and consumerism. It is your freedom to regulate borders which has resulted in people unable to enter the US and partake of the Free Cheese available within. It is your freedom to be independent and sovereign which has closed off globalism and failed to consolidate power into a smaller, brighter, more enlightened band of clear-thinking individuals. It is the freedom to embrace religion which creates societal judgments which conflict with secularism. Islam not included.
When you have no Second Amendment, you have no First Amendment. When you have no First Amendment you have no freedom whatsoever.
As Europe is in a terrible cultural war with globalism and sovereignty, so is the United States.
“Hate speech”? I think you know who determines that and why.
Baltimore Police Working To Retain Officers Despite High Crime & Overtime Issues
by Mike Hellgren
BALTIMORE (WJZ) — There’s growing concern over a shortage of police officers in Baltimore City. Despite ramping up recruiting efforts, there’s still big turnover in the department.
For only the second time in the last two decades, Baltimore hits 100 homicides before the end of April.
The murder rate is up 30 percent over last year — a grim milestone. The murder that pushed the city over the 100-mark happened on Lombard Street, one of the busiest intersections downtown.
The number of officers is at its lowest point that it’s been in the past decade, which has become cause for concern.
The city is operating with hundreds of fewer officers than at any point over the past decade.
Considering Baltimore PD, the city itself, its contentious relationship with its mayor and attorney general, this is not a shocking situation with which the police department finds itself.
The department is spending almost $1 million dollars a month just on overtime to keep up.
That’s what immediately occurs when you have insufficient personnel to cover various shifts and assignments. It’s a stopgap measure and usually challenges the budget of the applicable city or county. It’s also a measure that generally irritates the specific county supervisors, city mayors or managers involved.
This is very telling information with a rather insightful statement proffered from a citizen.
It’s noticeable to community activist Ericka Alston-Buck, with Penn-North Kids Safe Zone.
“When I walk up to one of the officers, the first thing I ask is what district are you out of, because 9o percent of the time, they’re not a western district officer, so everyone is working overtime.”
“There needs to be something attractive about being a police officer here in Baltimore City. I don’t see the attraction,” she says.
Apparently neither do a lot of other people.
Because these days that, above, is the attraction. Translated: not so much. How many Millennials and GenZr’s are interested in that kind of confrontation, with no reaction allowed?
What to do? I know. Relax standards. Hello, anyone remember Rampart?
A bright spot now for recruitment efforts: Maryland regulators just relaxed standards for marijuana use, making more people eligible to become officers.
Outstanding. More officers laboring under the influence of THC. Good for the manufacturer of Doritos, perhaps.
The beginning salary for a city officer is just under $49,000 plus benefits.
That’s what starting custodians make in California schools. Custodians who have no responsibility to wield power, arrest people or utilize deadly force.
This at a time when Baltimore just hit 100 homicides prior to the end of April, up 30% from last year at the same time. But pay close attention; the issue in Baltimore isn’t about pay necessarily. It’s about applicants. There aren’t enough. They can’t fill the positions they already have, much less attempt to expand the department.
Why would that be?
It stems from a number of factors, to include Black Lives Matter and the “hands up don’t shoot” lie.
The Ferguson Effect is another factor as the label of “overpolicing” has been charged to American departments. The uptick in the shootings of officers is also an issue, not necessarily the consequence of a given call but specifically the ambushing and targeting for assassination of police officers while on duty.
Some in Chicago, for example, are even calling for the entire defunding of the Chicago Police Department.
Following the Freddie Gray death, state attorney general Marilyn Mosby charged seven Baltimore Police officers, five of whom are black. Not one officer has been found guilty, and charges were dropped entirely on three of the officers. Over policing? How about Mosby’s over-charging? A federal judge in January allowed a suit against Mosby for malicious prosecution to proceed.
People are now concluding there are too many marks in the negative column as opposed to the positive column regarding a police officer career in the city of Baltimore.
But it isn’t only Baltimore affected. Police recruiting around the country is down and becoming quite difficult. The attrition rate for police officers (14%) is higher than both nursing (12%) and teaching (13%). Pay, “disqualifying behaviors,” and credit problems are also issues,
This all gets down to riots, this gets down to crime, and this gets down to war. What commonality do rioters, criminals and despots have? They are all predators of opportunity and weakness.
With that in common, what happens when people stage a riot and there is no one to respond? What occurs when there is a crime and there is no one to respond? What happens when there is a war and there is no one to defend the nation?
What happens when you run out of Sheepdogs to defend the Sheep against the wolves?
Ask the citizens of Berkeley on Saturday, April 15th, when Americans were left to fight it out on the streets of the United States as law enforcement officers were either forced to or willingly allowed violence to occur directly in front of their eyes.
This is the continuation of a series of posts dealing with issues where some individuals in the United States government are attempting to hold at least a portion of the rest of the federal government accountable and responsible for its actions and inactions. The public displays we find, however, are not unlike the most bizarre of Kabuki Theater or Theater of the Absurd.
Here, Jason Chaffetz expects some kind of accountability or responsibility from the DoD, or Department of Defense.
Please remember, ladies and gentlemen, these are your federal tax dollars either
By my draft research, which I’m opening up for crowd-sourcing on GoogleDocs, Soros has funded, or has close relationships with, at least 56 of the march’s “partners,” including “key partners” Planned Parenthood, which opposes Trump’s anti-abortion policy, and the National Resource Defense Council, which opposes Trump’s environmental policies. The other Soros ties with “Women’s March” organizations include the partisan MoveOn.org (which was fiercely pro-Clinton), the National Action Network (which has a former executive director lauded by Obama senior advisor Valerie Jarrett as “a leader of tomorrow” as a march co-chair and another official as “the head of logistics”). Other Soros grantees who are “partners” in the march are the American Civil Liberties Union, Center for Constitutional Rights, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. March organizers and the organizations identified here haven’t yet returned queries for comment.
Pants on Fire claim that George Soros money went to Women’s March protesters
by Jan Greenburg, January 25th
According to several blog posts, the women’s marches around the country did not reflect grassroots concern over the policies of President Donald Trump. Rather, they were the work of the liberal billionaire philanthropist George Soros.
In this fact-check, we focus on whether Soros money went into the pockets of protesters.
There is no evidence that’s true.
Politifact attributes the lie to “bloggers.” The last time I checked, the New York Times wasn’t “some blogger.” Politifact’s foundational objection is that the author isn’t a Lockstep Leftist but a woman who has done her research. Please read her entire article.
Leftists cannot even agree on the facts.
That’s no real shock. Facts are challenged every day. Facts should be challenged every day. Hence, individuals themselves can now be, in their own small way, journalists with the video and camera options they have in their phones.
The point is, “fake news” is another meme created by Leftists to benefit Leftists in the face of so many possible sources of news today. The biased American Media Maggots are losing their tenuous grip on what comprises “real news” and, simultaneously, they are literally hemorrhaging cash and readers. They are petrified with fright because they are losing their “gatekeeper” status on the news. That is a loss of money andpower.
When the ship is capsizing and you are facing the possibility of drowning, you’ll do anything to stay alive.
My thanks to the SHR Media Network for allowing me to broadcast in their studio and over their air twice weekly, Tuesdays and Thursdays, as well as appear on the Sack Heads Radio Show™ each Wednesday evening.
devoted to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness and believes that in order to save the United States, we must mutually pledge our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor to save urban America.
gang factions and was then dropped to the street, discarded, when she was hit.
Killed by Leftists, Demorats, Progressives, anarchists and, of all people, aided and abetted by the American Media Maggots.
Those freedoms buttressed and solidified by the sacrifice of 419,000 US soldiers and civilians in WWII. Yet what passes for state-of-the-art thought on US freedom of speech today by a politician — a Demorat politician mind you — is this.
He couldn’t be more wrong. The First Amendment exists not to protect pablum speech, but specifically challenging speech.
I didn’t think so.
Because these days that, above, is the attraction. Translated: not so much. How many Millennials and GenZr’s are interested in that kind of confrontation, with no reaction allowed?
This is the continuation of a series of posts dealing with issues where some individuals in the United States government are attempting to hold at least a portion of the rest of the federal government accountable and responsible for its actions and inactions. The public displays we find, however, are not unlike the most bizarre of Kabuki Theater or Theater of the Absurd.