Monday on Power 105.1 FM’s “The Breakfast Club,” Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) said she was focused on the 2018 midterm election to help get people elected who she described as having “the courage” to enact specific gun control measures.
This is Willie and his wife.
This is Kamala and her husband.
Harris said, “In this discussion when we are talking about school safety, there are things we need to address that include thinking about why this is an issue. And part of it is that we have not passed meaningful, smart gun safety laws in this country. Let’s talk about that. Let’s talk about how the NRA has grabbed people by different parts of their body and caused people to have a lack of courage. Again, another false choice. I’m in favor of the Second Amendment, and I also want smart gun safety laws. Assault weapons should not be walking the streets of a civilized country. We should have universal background checks.”
She added, “We have had all these tragedies. And I’ll say to you, we don’t need another tragedy to act. We have got a good list of tragedies. So it’s not like we are waiting for the tragedy to act. We have that. We are not waiting for good ideas. The good ideas have been had—universal background check—we need an assault weapons ban. The missing ingredient to get something done is for Congress to act, bottom line. And that’s where I would say, OK what can we as people who want to encourage Congress to act do? What can we do? Let’s focus on the 2018 elections. Let’s focus on electing people who have the courage and getting rid of people who don’t.”
Update, 7:15 PM Eastern: CBC News posted video of the police confrontation with the suspect, who can be heard yelling “Kill me, I have a gun in my pocket, shoot me in the head!” and brandishing an object at the officers.
Update, 7:05 PM Eastern: “Our thoughts are with all those affected by the terrible incident at Yonge and Finch in Toronto. Thank you to the first responders working at the scene – we’re monitoring the situation closely,” Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said via Twitter.
Sunnybrook Hospital reports that ten victims were brought to its trauma center. Two of them died, five are in critical condition, two are in serious condition, and one is in fair condition.
Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale described the incident as an “attack,” but would not confirm whether it has been classified as a terrorist attack. As a precaution, security has reportedly been increased at the Air Canada Center in downtown Toronto for the Stanley Cup playoff game tonight.
Update, 7:00 PM Eastern: NBC News reports that Minassian “allegedly researched and chatted online about the Isla Vista killings from 2014.”
The Isla Vista massacre near UC Santa Barbara was a carefully prepared killing spree perpetrated by 22-year-old Elliot Rodger using a vehicle, knives, and firearms. Mental illness, a keen interest in Nazi Germany, and rage at women because he couldn’t get a girlfriend were all cited as motivating factors for Rodger.
Update, 6:45 PM Eastern: CBS news has claimed to have identified the driver of the van as 25-year-old Alek Minassian while U.S. sources have told Reuters that terrorism is the leading theory for the motivation for the attack. Toronto police have not confirmed the identity of the suspect in the attack and a press conference is scheduled for later this evening.
Canadian broadcaster CTV has confirmed that Minassian is the suspect in police custody, though Toronto police claim that he was not previously on their radar.
NEW: 25-year-old Alek Minassian identified as the suspected driver who ran down pedestrians in Toronto, killing at least 9, sources confirm to CBS News. https://cbsn.ws/2vEzXHN
#BREAKING: CTV News has confirmed the driver of the van allegedly involved in this afternoon’s deadly incident is named Alek Minassian. Sources say he is not known to police and motive for the incident is not yet known.
Police in Toronto reported multiple injuries and fatalities after a white van struck pedestrians at the busy intersection of Yonge Street and Finch.
The incident occurred in the early afternoon at the intersection which lies close to the Finch subway and bus station, one of the busiest transport hubs in the city of Toronto. One suspect appears to have been arrested.
Newstalk 1010 reports that up to 9 people are dead following the attack.
Witnesses told local TV crews that the driver was traveling at around 45 miles per hour, “crumbling up people” and taking the action “intentionally”.
Natasha Fatah
✔@NatashaFatah
Eye witness telling local TV the driver was driving at least 70 or 80km an hour on the sidewalk. Witness in tears said driver was “crumbling up people” “this person was intentionally doing this”
Photos, which has been posted online show multiple people on the ground as a result of the incident. The Toronto subway system, known as the TTC, has shut down service to Finch station in response.
Toronto police are now reporting multiple fatalities following the incident which has seen a man, described as being “Middle-Eastern” in appearance, arrested a short distance away.
Natasha Fatah
✔@NatashaFatah
#BREAKING Witness to truck ramming into pedestrians tells local Toronto TV station that the driver looked wide-eyed, angry and Middle Eastern.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau gave a brief statement to the media in the houses of parliament in Ottawa, sharing his condolences for the victims and their families. “Obviously we’re just learning about the situation in Toronto. Our hearts go out to anyone affected. We’re going to obviously have more to learn and more to say in the coming hours,” he said.
Amanda Ferguson
✔@CityNewsAmanda
#UPDATE: Toronto Police confirm a van mounted the curb and hit a number of pedestrians. The driver fled the scene. Police later located the vehicle at Yonge and Sheppard. Driver is in custody, alive, and no motive at this point @Citynews
Alex Shaker, who was driving at the time of the incident and witnessed the van hit multiple people, told CTV News: “He started going down on the sidewalk and crumbling down people one by one. He just destroyed so many people’s lives. Every single thing that got in his way.” Shaker also claimed that one of the victims had been pushing a children’s stroller.
The Associated Press
✔@AP
BREAKING: Police in Canada say van that struck 8 to 10 people in Toronto found and driver in custody.
They Should Give This Crazy Mofo The Death Penalty.
For the latest on the Waffle House shooting, read Monday’s live updates.
Nine months before the police said he opened fire with an AR-15 rifle on a Waffle House in Nashville, killing four people, Travis Reinking wanted to set up a meeting with the president of the United States.
That, at least, is what he told officials when they charged him with unlawful entry after he crossed an exterior security barrier near the White House complex in July, records show.
That arrest was only the latest of Mr. Reinking’s several run-ins with the authorities. Police reports show family members expressed concern for his welfare after an extended time exhibiting delusional behavior, including his belief that the entertainer Taylor Swift was stalking him and hacking his phone and Netflix account.
After his arrest for the White House episode, Mr. Reinking, 29, who lived in Morton, Ill., was forced to surrender three rifles and a handgun to officials in August. Somehow he got them back — the authorities in Illinois said on Sunday that the circumstances were unclear — and in the fall, he moved to Nashville.
On Sunday, he pulled up to a Waffle House in the Antioch neighborhood of Nashville around 3:19 a.m., sat in his pickup truck for about four minutes and then opened fire, the police said.
Don Aaron, a spokesman for the Metropolitan Nashville Police Department, said at a news conference on Sunday that after leaving the restaurant, Mr. Reinking shed his jacket. In it were two magazines of AR-15 ammunition.
The police credited a customer with averting further bloodshed. The customer, James Shaw Jr., 29, seized the moment when he saw Mr. Reinking apparently trying to reload his rifle. Mr. Shaw burst out from behind a swinging door where he had been hiding, wrested the weapon away and threw it over a countertop.
“I kind of made up my mind, because there was no way to lock that door, that if it was going to come down to it, he was going to have to work to kill me,” Mr. Shaw said at the news conference.
NEW: Photo of the rifle used by suspect who walked into a Nashville Waffle House naked and opened fire, killing 4 and wounding 7. pic.twitter.com/4Y583cKDR9
Mr. Reinking fled on foot, and apparently returned to his apartment nearby to put on pants. He was last seen shirtless and shoeless, Police Chief Steve Anderson said. Investigators had yet to determine a motive for the killings.
Officials could not fully explain how Mr. Reinking regained possession of his weapons after they were taken away following his episode near the White House last year, which prompted federal authorities to work with county officials in Illinois to investigate Mr. Reinking. The Tazewell County Sheriff’s Office in Illinois gave the weapons he owned — including the AR-15 he took to the Waffle House on Sunday — to his father.
Sheriff Robert M. Huston of Tazewell County said in a news conference on Sunday that while Mr. Reinking “voluntarily surrendered” the weapons on Aug. 24, his father had a firearm owner’s identification card and a legal right to take the weapons.
“He was allowed to do that after he assured deputies that he would keep them secure and away from Travis,” Sheriff Huston said. “We have no information about how Travis came back into possession of those firearms.”
The police in Nashville indicated that Mr. Reinking’s father returned the weapons to his son. The father, Jeffrey Reinking, could not be reached for comment on Sunday.
Even before he went to Washington, Mr. Reinking had a history of encounters with law enforcement in Illinois.
The news and stories that matter to Californians (and anyone else interested in the state), delivered weekday mornings.
According to one sheriff’s report from May 27, 2016, he “was delusional and believed the famous entertainer, Taylor Swift, was harassing him via stalking and hacking his phone.” It added that he said he found Ms. Swift at a Dairy Queen in Morton and chased her before she disappeared.
Mr. Reinking’s family members said he had had these delusions since August 2014. The report noted that “Travis is hostile towards police and does not recognize police authority.”
In another episode on June 16, 2017, in Tremont, Ill., the police responded to a complaint that Mr. Reinking, wearing a woman’s pink housecoat, jumped into a pool and began arguing with lifeguards to get them to fight with him. No one at the pool wanted to press charges, the report said.
James Shaw Jr., who is being hailed as a hero after he disarmed a gunman at a Waffle House, spoke Sunday at a news conference in Nashville. He said he decided, “If it was going to come down to it, he was going to have to work to kill me.”
Mr. Aaron said Mr. Reinking was believed to have moved to Nashville in the fall and worked in the crane and construction industries. Mr. Reinking was fired from a job about three weeks ago and found a new job, Mr. Aaron said, but had not been seen at work since Monday.
The authorities said Mr. Reinking could still be in possession of a handgun and a rifle, which Chief Anderson described as “more of a hunting-type rifle than an assault rifle.”
The Nashville police identified the four people who died as one Waffle House employee, Taurean C. Sanderlin, 29, of Goodlettsville; and three customers: Joe R. Perez, 20, of Nashville; DeEbony Groves, 21, of Gallatin; and Akilah Dasilva, 23, of Antioch.
Jennifer Wetzel, a spokeswoman for Vanderbilt University Medical Center, said one wounded victim was in critical condition and another was in critical but stable condition. Two other victims were treated for minor injuries and discharged from TriStar Southern Hills Medical Center in Nashville, said Katie Radel, a spokeswoman there.
Waffle House restaurants are open 24 hours and speckled throughout the South, especially along the interstates.
The gunfire on Sunday was the latest burst of violence at one of the chain’s outposts. In January, an altercation at a Waffle House in Missouri turned fatal when a security guard opened fire. And a deadly shooting outside a location in Florida that same month recently led to a lawsuit.
Still, Sunday’s attack was especially jarring in its method and magnitude.
Walt Ehmer, the company’s chief executive, said it was a “very sad day” and thanked Mr. Shaw. “You are a hero,” he said. “You’re my hero.”
But Mr. Shaw demurred. “I’m not a hero,” he said, adding that he acted out of self-preservation.
Sarah Maria Beach, 45, faces up to a year in federal prison if convicted of assault
Beach, an American expat living in London, was on a flight to Salt Lake City
She allegedly threw coffee on passengers and assaulted a US Air Marshal
Beach also allegedly overturned a drink cart and ran up and down the aisle
Sarah Maria Beach, 45, an American expat living in London, faces misdemeanor assault charges which were filed in US district court in Utah on Thursday
A rowdy passenger aboard a Delta Airlines flight from London to Salt Lake City has been arrested for allegedly assaulting a US Air Marshal and throwing coffee on passengers.
Sarah Maria Beach, 45, an American expat living in London, faces misdemeanor assault charges which were filed in US district court in Utah on Thursday.
News of Beach’s arrest was reported by KSL.com.
Prosecutors have alleged that Beach threw coffee on passengers during the flight, overturned a drink cart, and ran up and down the aisle of the plane.
Flight attendants asked air marshals who were sitting in the back of the plane to help subdue Beach, according to the criminal complaint.
After Beach calmed down, she was seated next to one of the air marshals, who escorted her to the bathroom three times.
After she came out the third time, she allegedly jumped on the air marshal’s back and grabbed his head, neck, and jaw.
+2
Beach allegedly behaved rowdily while on a Delta Airlines flight from London to Salt Lake City. Delta planes are seen at Salt Lake City International Airport in this 2015 stock image
Another air marshal came to his colleague’s aid and pulled Beach off of her, the government alleges.
Beach was then handcuffed for the remainder of the flight.
Where is the collusion investigation on Christopher Steele a spy from Britain?
The former British spy who wrote the infamous dossier has been ordered to appear for a deposition in a lawsuit over the salacious document filed in the U.S.
A British court ordered Christopher Steele to testify about his role in compiling the dossier, which alleges that the Trump campaign colluded with the Russian government during the 2016 presidential campaign.
Steele’s report was funded by the Clinton campaign and Democratic National Committee. BuzzFeed News published the 35-page document in Jan. 2017.
Aleksej Gubarev, a Russian businessman named in the dossier, is suing BuzzFeed in Florida and Steele in London. The dossier claims that Gubarev was recruited as a Russian spy and that his web hosting companies were used to infiltrate the DNC’s computer systems.
Gubarev’s lawyers have tried for months to force the London-based Steele to provide a deposition for the lawsuit against BuzzFeed, which is being heard in federal court in Florida.
Steele has resisted the efforts to provide a deposition, arguing that Gubarev’s lawyers are attempting to use his deposition in the BuzzFeed case in order to collect information for use in the lawsuit pending against him in the U.K.
But a British judge sided against that argument.
A judge on the Queen’s Bench Division of the High Court in London ruled, “it is obvious that the author of the paragraph complained of in the Florida proceedings would be a relevant witness in defamation proceedings which are entirely based on the allegations in that paragraph, in a jurisdiction where the plaintiffs have to prove that the allegations are false,” Fox News reported.
Evan Fray-Witzer, a lawyer for Gubarev, praised the decision.
“We’re thrilled that the English Court has ordered Mr. Steele to sit for his deposition,” Fray-Witzer said. “It was always amazing to us that he could talk as freely as he has to reporters around the world about the dossier, yet refuse to sit for a deposition about the same topics.”
Fray-Witzer told The Daily Caller News Foundation a date has not been set for the deposition, but will likely be held within the next 4-6 weeks.
Fray-Witzer says that his team recently narrowed the scope of the information it sought from Steele. The former MI6 officer has asserted that his deposition could put dossier sources in danger.
Fray-Witzer says that his team has agreed not to ask Steele about his sources. He also says that Steele has chosen not to appeal the decision. “Buzzfeed published information about Mr. Gubarev and his companies that was unverified and untrue and they seem to be hoping to scuttle the deposition of the person most positioned to testify to those facts,” he told TheDCNF.
Gentleman’s Quarterly has proposed refashioning contemporary culture by unmooring it from the past, a feat that can be accomplished — in part — by updating lists of required reading to fit the modern Zeitgeist.
In their essay titled “21 Books You Don’t Have to Read Before You Die,” the editors of GQrecommend rewriting canons of Great Books by swapping out works that are hard to read, dangerously backward, or politically incorrect with more contemporary works that conform to the values and sensibilities of the modern cultural elite.
So, out with Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea, and of course, the Holy Bible, and in with chick-lit, inclusive language, edgy plots, and entertainment purged of traditional values or outdated suppositions about the human person, family, and society.
The Great Books are taken down in one fell swoop. “Some are racist and some are sexist, but most are just really, really boring,” we learn.
First among these “overrated books” is the Bible, for which the GQ editors reserve some particularly choice epithets. It is “repetitive, self-contradictory, sententious, foolish, and even at times ill-intentioned,” or, in a nutshell, “certainly not the finest thing that man has ever produced.”
As a substitute, why not read Agota Kristof’s The Notebook, the editors suggest, “a marvelous tale of two brothers who have to get along when things get rough.”
Their scorn extends well beyond the Good Book, however.
Pulling no punches, GQ says that the “cowboy mythos” of Lonesome Dove, for example, “with its rigid masculine emotional landscape, glorification of guns and destruction, and misogynistic gender roles, is a major factor in the degradation of America.”
Instead, we are told to read The Mountain Lion by Jean Stafford, which “acts in many ways as a strong rebuttal to all the old toxic western stereotypes we all need to explode.”
Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye, on the other hand, “is without any literary merit whatsoever” and therefore should be replaced by Olivia, the Sapphic story of a British teenage girl who falls in love with her teacher Mademoiselle Julie.
Goodbye to All That, by Robert Graves, is definitely out, since it is “incredibly racist.” If one really must read about war, a more sanitized option is Dispatches by Michael Herr — we are told — which properly conveys “the cruelty and violence of modern warfare.”
And so, on and on.
One reads that Ernest Hemingway, with his “masculine bluster and clipped sentences” should give way to kinder, gentler writers. The Old Man and the Sea can be fruitfully substituted by The Summer Book, a “heartwarming” series of vignettes about a grandmother and granddaughter living on a remote Finnish island that “teaches us what it is to be in sync with the world.”
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn gets the axe, of course (“Mark Twain was a racist”), as do The Bible, Henry James’ The Ambassadors, Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, and Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Try reading instead Mary Gaitskill’s Veronica, we are told, “in which emotions are so present and sensory they almost hold a physical weight.”
The exercise seems aimed primarily at avoiding contact with antiquated beliefs, racist language, and sexist assumptions.
In keeping with similar crusades on college campuses, it also seeks to bring in many more female writers, which GQ seems to think especially necessary for domesticating its predominantly male readership. Of its original list of 21 “required” works, not one is written by a woman. The new list, on the contrary, is dominated by women authors.
It is also noteworthy than its original list, GQ includes not a single volume from antiquity or even the Renaissance. Unlike the Great Books, here there is no Homer, no Plato, no Greek drama, no Virgil, no Dante, no Cervantes, and no Shakespeare.
Of course, different strokes for different folks. Everyone interested in literature has his own list of favorites that merit wider circulation as well as a similar list of “highly acclaimed” works that could just as well be forgotten. The core of the GQ proposal, however, is the surgical excision of books that serve to keep traditional values alive.
As simple as it is straightforward, GQ’s plan follows the tried-and-true political strategy of Antonio Gramsci, the Italian communist mastermind who explained in great detail how to overcome a “cultural hegemony” by replacing it with a new one (counter-hegemony).
According to Gramsci, society can only be changed by changing culture, and this can only be accomplished by developing a new cultural hegemony, which is necessarily rooted in folklore, popular culture, and religion.
The brave new world that the cultural left wishes to establish cannot come about as long as “folklore” (which includes art, literature, history, and other sources of national identity) remains rooted in the ideas and values of the Judeo-Christian West.
Only when a new set of values has been adopted and assimilated as a “commonsensical world view” to which any thinking person is expected to spontaneously adhere, can we say that the cultural hegemony has been successfully changed.
The original collection called The Great Books of the Western World, brainchild of Robert Hutchins and Mortimer Adler of the University of Chicago, was presented at a gala party in the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City, on April 15, 1952.
In his speech, Robert Hutchins, president of the University of Chicago, spoke glowingly of the project, underscoring its utility for the preservation of the culture of the west.
“This is more than a set of books, and more than a liberal education,” he said. “Great Books of the Western World is an act of piety. Here are the sources of our being. Here is our heritage. This is the West. This is its meaning for mankind.”
GQ’s proposal can only be viewed in these terms. It is not about suggesting more “entertaining” literature. It is about changing the cultural hegemony for the generations to come.
