Fatal Policy Failure (With Addendum)

Sheriff Scott Israel's own words in July 2016:

My innovative initiatives also helped keep children in school and out of jail, greatly expanding the juvenile civil citation program and making issuance of civil citations mandatory for BSO deputies.

When "one more chance" became one chance too many....

THIS is why Nikolas Cruz was able to buy a weapon.

In a sane world, he would not have been eligible after so many calls to police for violence and other alarming behavior.

Talk to the liberals that run Broward county. #ParklandShooting #2a #JoinTheNRA #browardcowards #2a pic.twitter.com/UZe4NMNKOO

— Steph (@steph93065) February 24, 2018

What happened at Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, on February 14, 2018, was the perfect storm of deadliness and complicity.

As alluded to in the above Tweet, there is more — much more — to the systemic failure than FBI missteps and the Boward Police Department's botched visits to the Cruz home.

From this source:

...2011/2012 Broward County School administration made a policy decision to block the arrests of students in order to improve their education statistics....

Read the rest HERE.  This is a must-read!

This kind of coverup goes in many a public school system.

I know for a fact that the school systems here in the D.C. Metro Area have the same policy of obfuscation — and for the same reason as above. Mustn’t let the real-estate taxpayers know what is going on in the public schools systems which taxpayers fund.

And private schools can be complicit, too. I've also seen that complicity.

Since I began my teaching career in 1973, here are a few of the crimes that I've personally seen schools sweep under the rug, often to protect the schools' reputations:

the gang rape of a teacher at back-to-school night

dealing cocaine on campus

assault with a deadly weapon on one school campus but never reported to the school to which this student transferred, and the student soon after the transfer, assaulted another student with a deadly weapon

emotionally disturbed students who are inappropriately mainstreamed committing assault on campus during the school day

allowing one diagnosed sociopath to continue classes in the mainstream classes for at least two years after the diagnosis, of which the administration was fully aware.

Additional reading HERE, not the same link as the previous link in this blog post.

Should not these school policies and police-department policies be addressed and revised?  Such revision is in the Public Interest (Mustang's site).

ADDENDUM
Interesting list:

What other mass shootings has an AR-15 - or similar rifle - been used in?

February 24, 1984: Tyrone Mitchell, 28, killed two and wounded 12 at a Los Angeles school before killing himself

October 7, 2007: Tyler Peterson, 20, killed six and injured one at an apartment in Crandon, Wisconsin, before killing himself

June 20, 2012: James Eagan Holmes, 24, killed 12 and injured 58 at a cinema in Aurora, Colorado

December 14, 2012: Adam Lanza, 20, killed 27 people in Newtown Connecticut, before killing himself

June 7, 2013: John Zawahri, 23, killed five and injured three in Santa Monica, California, before he was killed

March 19, 2015: Justin Fowler, 24, killed one and injured two on a street in Little Water, New Mexico, before he was killed

May 31, 2015: Jeffrey Scott Pitts, 36, killed two and injured two at a store in Conyers, Georgia, before he was killed

October 31, 2015: Noah Jacob Harpham, 33, killed three on a street in Colorado Springs, Colorado, before he was killed

December 2, 2015: Syed Rizwyan Farook and Tashfeen Malik, 28 and 27, killed 14 and injured 21 in California, before they were killed

June 12, 2016: Omar Mateen, 29, killed 49 and injured 50 at an Orlando nightclub, before he was killed

October 1, 2017: Stephen Paddock, 64, killed 58 and injured hundreds at a music festival in Las Vegas, before he killed himself

November 5, 2017: Devin Kelley, 26, killed 26 at a church in Sutherland Springs, Texas, before he was killed

Notice the time gap toward the beginning of the list: 1984-2007. Why did that time gap occur?

The City Of Lights?

Paris can't deal with all the migrants. The city of lights is becoming the city of migrant ghettos pic.twitter.com/f7cHt0yKEC

— Voice of Europe (@V_of_Europe) February 12, 2018

Related: EU official says migrant ghettos will become ‘a nuclear bomb in the future’:

The European Commissioner wants to spend millions of the EU’s cohesion policy budget to boost social integration

Putting yet another burden on the taxpayers in a futile attempt to see that Moslems assimilate into European society!

Essential reading...Islam: The Enemy of Democracy and Freedom at A New Dark Age Is Dawning.

Musical Interlude

(For politics, please scroll down)

Enjoy this lovely piece by the English composer Edward Elgar (1857-1934):


According to the YouTube blurb:

Elgar wrote this piece for his friend Augustus Jaeger, who encouraged him to continue when about to give up composing after a fit of depression.

"Nimrod" is Variation IX of Elgar's Enigma Variations. Here is the entirely of the Enigma Variations, conducted by Elgar himself (Royal Albert Hall Orchestra, 1926):

"We have a Right to be Here"

By Silverfiddle

WaPo writer/explainer Robert Samuelson’s wizened, world-weary hound dog countenance reflects the gravity and reality of the subjects he mines.

Here are a few eye-opening quotes from his article discussing the outlines of an immigration deal.

Imported Poverty

"From 1980 to 2016, the number of people with incomes below the government poverty line rose by 11.3 million (from 29.3 million to 40.6 million). Fully two-thirds of those, or 7.6 million, were Hispanic. Much of this increase clearly reflected the impact of immigrants and their children."

Entrepreneurship

"One area where immigrants shine is entrepreneurship. […] about one-quarter of company founders were immigrants."

2016: Record Number of Immigrants

"…new immigrants in 2016 totaled nearly 1.8 million, which -- if confirmed by the final count -- would tie with 1999 as the highest in history."

Immigrants and Offspring: 25% of US Population

"As a group, there are now more than 43 million immigrants in the United States, legal and illegal, representing about 13 percent of the population […] The U.S.-born children of immigrants constitute a group almost the same size. This means that about a quarter of the total U.S. population are either immigrants or their offspring."

What do you think? 

I think we are losing our nation and our birthright, and the nation is devolving into what good immigrants are trying to escape.

I think there is no way in hell we will deport 20 million people, and yes, it's at least 20 million illegal immigrants here, probably way north of that.  

Pass a DACA deal, what about the parents? We aren't sending them back.

Does our government have the right...

... to limit how many people enter? How many become citizens?

... to decide what type of people enter? By religion? By nationality? By ethnic group? Gender? Age?

 How much is too much?

Recommended Reading (With Addendum)

Perhaps you have heard about this Facebook post by Kelly Guthrie Raley, a Teacher of the Year at a Florida middle school.  For those of you who do not have access to Facebook, below is the entire rant, dated 8:25 A.M., February 15, 2018, the day after the Parkland massacre (emphases mine):

Musical Interlude

(For politics, please scroll down)

Close your eyes, clear your mind, and listen to Selection 6 of Tchaikovsky's Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom (1878):

Translation:

We who mystically represent the Cherubim,
and who sing to the Life-Giving Trinity the thrice-holy hymn,
let us now lay aside all earthly cares
that we may receive the King of all,
escorted invisibly by the angelic orders.
Alleluia

Hideous Savagery! (With Addenda Related To The February 14 School Massacre In Florida)

(with a hat tip to Infidel Bloggers Alliance)

Brian Roberto Varela (above, left); Alyssa Mae Noceda (right)

Horrific!  

Barbaric!

Sick, Sad And Twisted: Washington Teen Allegedly Rapes A Girl Dying Of An Overdose Before Using Her Thumb To Break Into Her Phone:

Happy Valentine's Day! (With Addendum)

[For politics, please scroll down]

Vintage Valentine Card

Retro love song from 1954, when the lyrics were discernible:

Addendum: Three Centuries of Valentines Offer 12,000 Ways to Say ‘I Love You’: Look inside a vast collection of cards, from as early as the 1680s, featuring pop-ups, cutouts and Civil War soldiers.

For Black History Month

From Booker T. Washington's My Larger Education, Being Chapters from My Experience (1911):

I am afraid that there is a certain class of race-problem solvers who don’t want the patient to get well, because as long as the disease holds out they have not only an easy means of making a living, but also an easy medium through which to make themselves prominent before the public.

More from Booker T. Washington at Wikiquote.

Also see Booker T. Washington's essay The Awakening of the Negro, published in The Atlantic in September 1896.

Musical Interlude

(For politics, please scroll down)

Enjoy these rousing fanfares and marches from centuries ago: Symphonies And Fanfares For The King's Supper - performed by the Collegium Musicum De Paris, Roland Douatte, conductor. J. J.  Some of the tunes no doubt will be familiar to you:


Index for the above pieces:

J.J. Mouret 1632-1738): Fanfares For Violins, Oboe, Bassoons, Trumpets And Percussion

F Couperin (1668-1733): La Steinkerque

J.B. Lully (1632-1687): March Of The King's Musketeers And March Of The Grey Musketeers; Fanfares For The King's Tournament Of 1686

M.R. De Lalande (1657-1726): Symphonies For The King's Supper

A. Philidor (c. 1652-1730): March For Four Timbales

J.B. Lully (1632-1687): March Of The Turenne Regiment

The Lexicon

Somewhat, a break from politics. I use the word somewhat because many politically-oriented words have been co-opted over the past several decades. Before expounding upon the changes in politically-oriented words, please watch the video below, which offers some interesting observations about words which have changed meanings over the centuries:


Now please provide your observations as to how politically-oriented terminology has been co-opted by the opposition and thus reduced "the conversations" to blather.

My input...

Immigration Policy: Here's An Idea (Note The Addendum)

Let’s just have the same immigration laws and border control restrictions that Mexico has... pic.twitter.com/CqqqbfI5Cm

— James Woods (@RealJamesWoods) January 24, 2018

Time for the United States to apply reciprocity!

Related: Third DACA recipient in a week arrested on human smuggling charges.

ADDENDA

Mexican immigrant without license accused in DUI death of Colts linebacker Edwin Jackson: Authorities try to deport Alex Cabrera Gonsales

Correction to the above: Man accused of killing Colts' Edwin Jackson, Uber driver is undocumented immigrant, has been deported twice (with thanks to commenter Fuelonda Feier below). Excerpt:

Police have confirmed that the driver who is held in the death of Indianapolis Colts linebacker Edwin Jackson and Uber driver Jeffrey Monroe was an undocumented immigrant who used a fake name and has been deported twice in the past.

Indiana State Police detectives have determined the driver was 37-year-old Manuel Orrego-Savala, a citizen of Guatemala. He gave police the alias Alex Cabrera Gonsales after the early Sunday crash that killed Jackson and Monroe.

"Orrego-Savala is in the United States illegally and has previously been deported on two occasions, in 2007 and again in 2009," Sgt. John Perrine said in a statement. "State police investigators are working with U.S. Federal Immigration Officials and they have placed a hold on Orrego-Savala."

This is the truck that the illegal alien was driving:

Musical Interlude

[For politics, please scroll down]

One example of the "fascination with all things Araby"* during the Romantic Period, Alexander Borodin's haunting tone poem In the Steppes of Central Asia:

[about the above piece]

* from Raphael Patai's The Arab Mind

"The Memo"? Updated

Could this be true? If so, the federal bureaucracy has become rogue agencies and, possible, traitors in that they broke their oaths to uphold the Constitution of the United States (hat tip to Infidel Bloggers Alliance for the short video below):

.@MonicaCrowley: "This is the first of several memos. As bad as bad as this memo might be, my understanding is that there is worse coming down the pike." pic.twitter.com/yeZxHEKBJQ

— FOX Business (@FoxBusiness) February 1, 2018

The minute that any member of any branch of our gubmint doesn't want WE THE PEOPLE to have access to something, WE THE PEOPLE should demand to have access to that something. After all, all of our elected gubmint officials are supposed to be the elected public servants of WE THE PEOPLE.

Update:

The memo's text is HERE. So far, that site hasn't crashed. HERE is the Scribd link, which stays up or goes down according to how busy the traffic is.

Immigration Straight Talk.

[posted by Silverfiddle]

Conversation here in the Untied State of America suffers from a lack of candor. Not in Norway.

The country’s outspoken immigration minister, Sylvi Listhaug, on the best way to help genuine refugees...

Integration

‘We have a big challenge now to integrate those with permission to stay in Norway to make sure they respect Norwegian values,’ she says. ‘Freedom to speak, to write, to believe or not to believe in a god, how to raise your children.’

Understanding

‘Much of the Middle East and Africa is fragile. People have difficult lives but can see via mobile phones that life in the West and in Europe is quite different. So I understand why they would like our life, our kind of standards. But it’s not sustainable to integrate so many.’

Morality

‘For me it’s a moral issue as well. You can’t just help the ones you see. You have to think about the millions you don’t see and that have a very difficult life in the world.’

'...for the price of helping 3,000 young people here, we could help 100,000 children in other parts of the world.’

Refugee Crisis Human Trafficking

‘But when people travel through 20 countries to come to a safe haven, I think people can see that this is not right. You could have a safe haven in your neighbouring country, so why go so far?’

‘Why should we have a system that works for the people who have money [to pay for the journey] while the rest of the refugees and people in need don’t have the money to go?’

Much of the world is broken. What is the best way to help people?

Timeless Twain — And An Important Question

Wisdom for our times — maybe for all time!

Click directly on the graphics below to enlarge them.

John Adams put a similar sentiment this way:

But this question keeps occurring to me...

What happens to a nation when so many of her citizens lose faith in their representatives' ability to govern?

Musical Interlude

[For politics, please scroll down]

One of Arvo Pärt's most famous pieces:

[about the Estonian composer Arvo Pärt (1935-present)]

[about Tabula Rasa - "Ludus," which offers this information about the piece's reception and application:

In an article in The New Yorker in December 2002, music critic Alex Ross discussed the use of Tabula Rasa in palliative care for AIDS and cancer patients facing the end of their disease. Caretakers working with the AIDS patients would often be asked to play the "angel music," which was the dying patients’ name for the second movement of Tabula Rasa, "Silentium"]

Tabula Rasa - "Silentium":

Is This True? Was It Merely Braggadocio?

"An insurance policy," over 50,000 missing text messages, and a "secret society" — all within the FBI?

Please note the following two Tweets:

So the gap in Strzok-Page texts begins right after their "secret society" discussion and ends just as Robert Mueller is being appointed Special Counsel. I'm sure it's nothing.

— John Sexton (@verumserum) January 23, 2018

.@SenRonJohnson on alleged 'secret society' mentioned in @FBI agents' texts: "That 'secret society' - we have an informant that's talking about a group, they were holding secret meetings offsite." #SpecialReport https://t.co/0NPVFhqWiY pic.twitter.com/NaXelnfaJP

— Fox News (@FoxNews) January 23, 2018

Related...If This is True, Our Republic is at an End: Either the FBI engaged in partisan behavior or partisans are trying to undermine basic institutions of law and order by Erick Erickson. Excerpt (emphasis mine)

...[T]he reality is this: if FBI agents collaborated to fabricate or exaggerate allegations about Donald Trump and/or tried to bring down his Presidency through partisan motivations, it is game over on the republic. If the civil institutions we have put in place to ensure law and order apart from politics are infiltrated by politics, there really is no turning back. We are already at a "they started it" mentality in our politics and this will just escalate the breakdown. We have already seen this in the IRS twice in the past fifty years, first with Nixon then with Obama, and the second time was largely given a pass by press.

There are now real and troubling allegations stemming from text messages that include agents meeting to discuss an "insurance policy" and agents meeting in a secret society. There are possible missing or willfully deleted text messages.

To be sure, and this is very important, there is also a lot of partisan exaggeration by people trying to protect the President. There is a lot of conflation. But there are serious allegations and there is enough evidence now that we need an investigation. I do not believe we need a special counsel as it would only serve to undermine the existing special counsel and would be seen as such. The Department of Justice should investigate and fully and publicly release its findings.'...

Read the rest HERE.

What say you about "the insurance policy," over 50,000 missing text messages, and a "secret society" — all within the FBI — and apparently related to the 2016 Election?

Recommended Reading

See The History of Fake News in the United States from The Daily Signal.

Excerpt:

...[I]ntentionally misleading news has been around since before the invention of the printing press. In fact, our Founding Fathers grappled with this very issue when they created our system of government. They saw that while it was tempting to censor fake stories, ultimately, the truth was more likely to be abused by an all-powerful government arbiter than the filter of unimpeded popular debate. Attempts to weed out factually incorrect news reports can quickly morph into fact-checking and manipulating differences in opinion....

Read the rest HERE.

Does the Digital Age (or anything else) upend the precedents cited in the linked essay?

Musical Interlude

(For politics, please scroll down)

Some musical beauty for this weekend. Close your eyes, and listen:

About this performance of Ralph Vaughan Williams's Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis:

The BBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by Andrew Davis at Gloucester Cathedral, where in 1910, it was played and conducted for the first time by composer Ralph Vaughan Williams.

Some more information about this piece is HERE.

The Authorized King James Version of Psalm 2:1-2, to which Tallis's original tune is connected:

Why do the heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain thing?

The kings of the earth set themselves,
and the rulers take counsel together,
against the Lord, and against his anointed.

Read the entirety of Psalm 2 HERE.