Washington Democrats Want To Make Armed Self-Defense Illegal At Dangerous Bus Stops
While violent criminals in Seattle have no compunction about carrying weapons wherever they go, Washington Democrats want to strip law abiding citizens of the ability to match force in self-defense in various public places.
As journalist Jason Rantz notes;
Their newest bill bans weapons, including legally purchased guns and knives, at bus stops and transit centers.
SB 5444 isn’t just an overreach; it’s a direct attack on law-abiding citizens. And it disproportionately affects those demographics the Democrats always claim to champion. The irony is as thick as it is infuriating.
While current law prohibits weapons in courtrooms, bars, and other restricted areas, the new bill adds several new categories of prohibited areas, such as public libraries, zoos, aquariums, parks, community centers, and other public buildings – which emboldened criminals will promptly ignore as they prey on victims.
The bill prohibits full-time mass transit users from carrying weapons for self-defense, depriving low-income residents of their right to bear arms.
According to Rantz, western Washington saw a spate of high-profile violent crimes in 2023 – many of which occurred in places that SB 5444 would rob law-abiding citizens of the ability to match force with assailants.
Sound Transit’s light rail is dangerous to ride. Here, a prolific offender is accused of randomly stabbing a stranger in Seattle. The transit riders come to the man’s rescue, risking injury to death in doing so. They’re heroes. pic.twitter.com/2fgVVXcBSF
— Jason Rantz on KTTH Radio (@jasonrantz) August 6, 2023
In November, a 21-year-old man was murdered on the metro – shot dead as he was apparently sleeping. That same month, a 64-year-old man was stabbed after getting off a Metro bus in Seattle. In the Parkland area of Seattle, two young men were shot dead last year at a bus stop across the street from an elementary school.
Rantz further notes that Seattle mass transit is unsafe, period – and Democrats want to eliminate ‘reasonable means of defending ourselves.’
Washington Democrats routinely push legislation making it easier for criminals to suffer fewer — if any — consequences for their crimes. But at least the rest of us have been left with means to protect ourselves and our families from the criminals Democrats keep out of jail. But if this bill passes, we’ll again be sitting ducks.
It’s unclear what bill sponsor State Senator Javier Valdez (D-Seattle) hopes to accomplish. He did not respond to a request for comment. It’s safe to say the intent is not to add more jail time to criminals caught with weapons because that’s already against the law, and Democrats are pushing legislation that lessens punishment for gun-related crimes. This specifically targets law-abiding citizens, disproportionately impacting low-income communities that rely on mass transit. -mynorthwest
According to King County Metro data, law-abiding black residents will be most disadvantaged by the new bill, as they are more likely than white people to ride the bus.
NATO Officially Mobilizes 90,000 Troops To Prepare For War With Russia, Warns Jack Posobiec
Russian FM Says West Is Aware Zelensky Getting ‘Out of Control’
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in fresh Thursday statements says the West is trying to reign in Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky as he’s doing everything possible to stamp out dissent and cling to power, including canceling an expected presidential election this year.
Lavrov characterized the situation as one wherein America’s man in Kiev is increasingly “out of control” but that his Western backers “would have liked to have more flexibility,” according to state media translation of the new remarks.
The Russian top diplomat further said that all the latest rhetoric coming from the Ukrainian presidency’s office “only reflects the wish of that individual and his associates… to keep power as much as they can.”
That’s when Lavrov asserted that having Zelensky run a re-election campaign “would put him more in line with Western interests, because he has been increasingly getting out of control.”
However, this claim is uncertain given that all commentary on this matter by the Biden administration as well as US mainstream media has focused on justifying the election cancelation based on there being martial law and a state of war in the country. Biden officials have previously stated that it would not be practical, and even logistically impossible, to have fair elections.
Thus the US has defended these anti-democratic moves of Zelensky at every turn. It’s also an open question of whether there will even be parliamentary elections, which was due to change over this year. However, US officials do seem open to entering serious negotiations to end the war, behind the scenes at least, given Ukraine’s mounting battlefield losses.
Lavrov’s critique came as Zelensky is seeking to push an unrealistic peace plan at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos. To review:
Zelensky’s plan requires a full Russian withdrawal from the territory it has captured since February 2022, Russia giving up Crimea, war crimes tribunals, and Russia paying reparations to Ukraine. Kyiv has no shot at implementing any aspect of the Peace Formula since its counteroffensive failed, and Ukrainian forces are now focused on defense and facing manpower shortages.
Despite the reality on the ground, Zelensky’s “Peace Formula” has received backing from the US and other Western nations. “There was the most representative meeting of national security advisors regarding the implementation of the Peace Formula. More than 80 countries and international institutions were represented,” Zelensky said in Davos.
Given these latest words of Zelensky, it remains clear that Kiev’s plan is a non-starter for Moscow, and for the war to end Ukraine will have to at the very least recognize Russian possession of Crimea, and likely the four annexed territories as well.
?? While Zelensky is on a begging trip around the world, at home, Ukrainians are being kidnapped and sent to the front to be used as cannon fodder in America’s proxy war against Russia.
— Gabe (@GabeZZOZZ) January 18, 2024
Ukrainians don’t need more weapons! They need negotiations and a new president‼️ pic.twitter.com/vXnJ1apxLW
Meanwhile, Zelensky has continued pushing hard for the Western allies to give his forces more advanced weapons, including longer range missiles and advanced fighter jets. Yet public opinion polls in the West have continued to show Zelensky’s popularity is slipping.
NATO Officially Mobilizes 90,000 Troops To Prepare For War With Russia, Warns Jack Posobiec
“Food Deserts” Rise In Democrat Run Cities As Grocers Leave In Droves
The panic is palpable.
Democrat-controlled cities across the nation are experiencing something they might never have experienced before: Consequences for their terrible criminal prosecution policies. And, they don’t like. Not one bit.
Democrats have argued for the past couple years that crime rates are actually falling in the US compared to previous decades, but this does not seem to be represented on the streets as retailers in numerous metro areas are closing up shop after many years of operations due to increasing theft. If crime rates are falling, why are so many businesses leaving blue areas?
Boston, for example, has been bleeding retailers in recent months, with companies like Walgreens closing down four stores in the area in a single year. Residents and officials are “outraged”, arguing that these companies have a civic duty to stay and service communities in need. It’s estimated that Massachusetts retailers are losing more than $2 billion per year to criminal theft. Maybe if the community stopped robbing them on a daily basis, these companies wouldn’t feel the need to shut down.
Walgreens is closing its 4th location in Boston in the black area of Roxbury, a neighborhood plagued by theft.
Residents are outraged and shocked.
Former NAACP president to stores: “Do what’s right for these communities and beyond just your bottom line” pic.twitter.com/tFSZYVQq9I— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) January 16, 2024
The series of closures in Boston is similar to what is happening in San Francisco, with some neighborhoods slowly but surely losing nearby access to grocers. Companies have in some cases tried to hide the reason for shutting down (high crime) by suggesting that they are “improving” the area by opening land up for development, but locals know the real cause.
Conclusion – Crime is not falling at all in leftist run cities. Crime rates rely on reports and arrests. If leftist officials are making policies which discourage arrests and reporting, then crime rates go down – It’s like magic.
Due to changes in the way data is being collated by the FBI during the covid years, many major cities are not actually required to provide full crime rate information until 2024-2025, and quite a few are taking advantage (at least 30%). San Francisco will not be reporting complete crime stats until 2025.
This means that when Democrats argue that crime is going down (ostensibly because of their leadership), this is based on a false and incomplete picture of the data. Lack of data, as mentioned, is also coupled with lack of arrests, lack of prosecution, and the consistent release of repeat offenders in blue cities. Lack of arrests and convictions does not mean there’s less crime.
Again, using San Francisco as an example, the police department’s closure rate on cases remains dismal because the city’s District Attorney refused to prosecute; for every 100 suspects arrested, three are charged and one is convicted. Until he was recalled in a July 8, 2022, election, San Francisco’s DA was Soros-backed radical leftist Chesa Boudin. The Soros connection is widely considered one of the prime indicators of crooked DA’s and prosecutors, as well as high crime rates for a city.
Soros DAs run several other major prosecutorial offices, including Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, Austin, Dallas, San Antonio, St. Louis, New York, Baltimore, Albuquerque, Orlando, and three urban counties in Northern Virginia. In Massachusetts, Soros-backed federal prosecutor Rachael Rollins was forced to resign after the Department of Justice’s Office of the Inspector General and the Office of Special Counsel released devastating reports outlining her serious ethical lapses and partisan political activity. It’s not surprising that wherever Soros influenced DAs and prosecutors run things, food deserts seem to follow.
Once this dynamic of corruption is understood, it becomes clear why so many grocers and retailers are uprooting their stores and leaving. It’s no longer profitable to stay because Democrat city governments have chosen criminals over businesses.
NATO Officially Mobilizes 90,000 Troops To Prepare For War With Russia, Warns Jack Posobiec
No More Research on Cellphone Radiation and Human Health, Government Says
The National Toxicology Program (NTP) has no plans to further study the effects of cellphone radiofrequency radiation (RFR) on human health — even though the program’s own $30 million study that took about 10 years to complete in 2018 reported evidence of cancer and DNA damage.
The NTP said in an updated January 2024 fact sheet that it was abandoning further investigation because “the research was technically challenging and more resource-intensive than expected.”
For decades, the NTP has been the premier governmental testing program for pharmaceuticals, chemicals and radiation, according to Devra Davis, Ph.D., MPH, a toxicologist and epidemiologist who served on the board of scientific counselors for the NTP when it was launched in the 1980s.
Commenting on the news, Davis said, “It is the ultimate arrogance and folly to stop doing research on this major growing environmental pollutant, precisely when we have ample evidence of harm.”
Davis has authored more than 200 peer-reviewed publications in books and journals, ranging from The Lancet to the Journal of the American Medical Association.
In February 2023, she and her colleagues published a review of more than 200 studies that linked wireless radiation to negative biological effects including oxidative stress and DNA damage, cardiomyopathy, carcinogenicity, sperm damage, memory damage and other neurological effects.
They will soon publish a “major new article” in Environment: Science and Policy for Sustainable Development journal about “new science” on RFR and call for precaution, she said.
Davis — who also is the founding director of the Board on Environmental Studies and Toxicology of the U.S. National Research Council at the National Academy of Sciences and the founder and president of Environmental Health Trust — called out the U.S. government for failing to ensure that wireless radiation is safe:
“The government’s decision to stop funding research on cellphone radiation is consistent with the Chinese proverb ‘If you don’t want to know, don’t ask.’
“The US government has a variation of that in the policy of, ‘don’t ask, don’t tell.’ If you don’t want to know whether cell tower radiation is having a biological impact, stop doing the research!”
Miriam Eckenfels-Garcia, director of Children’s Health Defense’s (CHD) Electromagnetic Radiation (EMR) and Wireless program, told The Defender:
“Discontinuing government-funded research because it is ‘technically challenging’ and ‘resource-intensive’ is not what we expect from government agencies that are supposed to protect people from the harms of big industry.
“This research is important so that people can make informed decisions when it comes to the use of technology.”
W. Scott McCollough, lead litigator for CHD’s EMR cases, agreed. “I am concerned that the absence of evidence will be contorted into a claim of evidence of absence.”
As of early last year, the NTP was still conducting RFR research. A February 2023 fact sheet said scientists had “overcome several technical issues” and developed a better system for exposing animals to RFR for their studies.
NTP said researchers were “now making progress” on four research goals:
- Determining the impact of RFR exposure on behavior and stress.
- Conducting physiological monitoring, including evaluation of heart rate.
- Investigating whether RFR induces heating.
- Further evaluating whether RFR exposure causes DNA damage.
In its January 2024 fact sheet, the NTP reported the researchers had “tested the new exposure system … in vivo rodent studies” and that their research was “complete.”
The NTP did not say whether the researchers had achieved those four research goals and, if so, what the results were. It did, however, make clear that its previous studies — which used 2G and 3G cellphones — “do not apply” to 4G or 5G technologies.
The Defender reached out to NTP’s press office for clarification about why the new fact sheet appears to contradict the NTP website (updated Jan. 8, 2024) on cellphone radiation research which says NTP still has “current research efforts,” however NTP did not respond by our publication deadline.
The NTP’s discontinuation of its RFR research suggests the U.S. government has no intention of studying the possible biological effects of 5G.
Meanwhile, researchers such as Davis continue to say there is reason for concern. Davis pointed out that infertility clinics ask men about their wireless devices and cellphone habits:
“They tell them to take these phones off their bodies and out of their pockets because there is evidence … where the greater the exposure, the lower the sperm count, and the poorer the sperm quality.
“This has been repeatedly shown in studies with human sperm done under controlled conditions, as well as cross-sectional studies.”
“In fact,” she added, “whether the government stops doing the research or not, there is a massive study underway because we have billions of people being exposed to ever-increasing levels of wireless radiation throughout the world. Millions of American children are exposed every day in classrooms.”
“The only problem is there is no control group anymore, which will make it difficult, but not impossible, to discern the impacts of wireless radiation,” Davis said.
What NTP’s 2018 study found
As The Defender previously reported, NTP researchers in 2018 concluded there was “clear evidence” that male rats exposed to high levels of RF similar to those emitted by 2G and 3G cellphones developed cancerous heart tumors, and “some evidence” of tumors in the brain and adrenal gland of exposed male rats.
Davis said NTP’s conclusions were consistent with and corroborated dozens of other studies. “It wasn’t like it [the NTP study] was a one-off study,” she said.
Once the word got out that the findings of the NTP study were positive — meaning the government researchers had found an association between cellphone radiation and the growth of cancerous tumors — the telecommunication industry “started its tactics” to suppress the findings, Davis said.
Davis has been researching those tactics for more than a decade. She is the author of “Disconnect: The Truth About Cell Phone Radiation, What the Industry Is Doing to Hide It, and How to Protect Your Family.”
Instead of the NTP study report being released in 2016, when it was first ready, she said, the telecom industry exerted pressure to subject the study’s conclusions to an unprecedented level of scrutiny.
“When the first drafts began to circulate internally, it was elevated for a peer review unlike any that has ever been conducted in the history of the entire program — and I can say that with great certainty. No other compound or substance [studied by the NTP] has ever been subject to this level of peer review,” Davis said.
A panel of external scientific experts convened for a three-day review of the study and its conclusions in March 2018.
However, rather than downplaying the study’s conclusions, the experts concluded that the scientific evidence in the study was so strong they recommended the NTP reclassify some of its conclusions from “some evidence” to “clear evidence” of carcinogenic activity.
To date, more than 250 scientists — who together have published more than 2,000 papers and letters on the biologic and health effects of non-ionizing electromagnetic fields (EMFs) produced by wireless devices, including cellphones — signed the International EMF Scientist Appeal, which calls for health warnings and stronger exposure limits.
NATO Officially Mobilizes 90,000 Troops To Prepare For War With Russia, Warns Jack Posobiec
New Evidence Proves J6 “Pipe Bomb” Was Inside Job
Harrison Smith of The American Journal presents new information showing the Jan. 6 pipe bomb suspect was likely some sort of government asset as they’ve yet to be tracked down by Biden’s dragnet.
One odd development came recently when internet users pointed out the J6 pipe bomb itself looked almost identical to the pipe bombs the FBI uses in its training exercises.
Has anyone ever pointed out that the J6 pipebomb looks almost identical to the ones the FBI uses in training?
— Jack Poso ?? (@JackPosobiec) January 18, 2024
Look at the end cap and timer
Sent in to Human Events from a source pic.twitter.com/TMY5mbB0Fu
Also, Revolver News‘ Darren Beattie posted a lengthy thread on ? Thursday sifting through footage showing peculiar behavior by law enforcement as they “discovered” the pipe bomb.
Below, courtesy of Thomas Massie, is the most damning and explosive J6 footage yet released.
In my view this will end up demolishing the Regime’s J6 narrative and with it a major pillar of Dem’s 2024 strategy.
You paying attention Kamala? pic.twitter.com/1LuNm6pGdB— Darren J. Beattie ? (@DarrenJBeattie) January 18, 2024
Watch: The View Scrambles to Spin Kamala Harris’ ‘Scared as Heck’ of Trump Remark as ‘Brave’
The left-wing propagandists on ABC’s The View defended Biden VP Kamala Harris after she admitted in an appearance the previous day that she’s scared of the prospect of having to run against Donald Trump and his formidable MAGA political machine.
On Thursday, View co-hosts took turns explaining what Harris meant when she said she was “scared as heck,” going on to fear-monger to viewers that Trump obviously represents an existential threat to the country and democracy.
“You know, you folks are the snowflakiest people I’ve ever seen,” co-host Whoopi Goldberg said, addressing conservatives who criticized Harris for attempting to spread fear of a second Trump term.
“You don’t know what she’s scared of. You don’t know? You haven’t been listening to what this man has said he’s going to do on day one? How he’s treated women? You don’t think we’re uncomfortable when somebody, says, yeah, I’m the guy that got rid of Roe v. Wade? What do you mean, ‘What are you scared of?’”
“Kamala basically, she’s not personally scared,” clarified Joy Behar. “She’s scared for the country because the country will have a problem if he is in office, and he also will go after his enemies.”
“Hello?” Behar added, pointing towards her co-hosts suggesting Trump considered them his “enemies.”
Co-host Sunny Hostin chimed in claiming she was happy “the second most powerful person in the world” was telling her to be afraid.
“I want the second most powerful person in the world – who happens to be a woman – [to] tell me, be very, very afraid,” Hostin ridiculously claimed.
The segment ends with Goldberg claiming it’s actually “brave” of Harris to be “scared.”
“There’s nothing wrong with being afraid,” Goldberg told viewers, turning the spin up to full-blast. “It’s what makes you get up and make a change. So, don’t think that because somebody says they’re afraid, it’s a bad thing. There’s nothing shameful about being afraid. I think it is kind of brave to say you’re afraid.”
As usual, the left-wing media is running cover for the Biden admin after Harris landed herself in hot water by uttering yet another dumb remark.
NEW – Kamala Harris is “scared as heck.”pic.twitter.com/xtQiGHBYDy
— Disclose.tv (@disclosetv) January 17, 2024
But there’s actually good reason for her to be scared, not because Trump will imprison corrupt Democrats when he takes office, but because he looks increasingly likely to re-take the White House and force the Biden regime out of power.
H/t: Newsbusters.org