This is Euclid Avenue near East 105th Street in Cleveland, OH. This picture was taken sometime in 1911, two years prior to the start of income taxes.
According to liberals, this picture should not exist, because it is only through the theft of people’s income that things get built.
During his acceptance speech this past Thursday night in Cleveland, at the closing of the 2016 Republican National Convention, Donald Trump used the word “violence” a total of eleven times. The word “freedom” was used just once, and it was used in context of “freedom” from free international trade.
In contrast Sen. Ted Cruz, in his speech on the Convention’s third night, used the word freedom twenty-one times and the word “violence” just once.
Trump’s speech, which clocked in at 1 hour and 15 minutes, was a full on display of a spoiled egotistical madman demanding to be anointed into the highest office in the most powerful nation in the world. The Republican Party’s nominee painted a picture of an America that is under siege from urban crime, terrorism and rampant immigration.
Trump’s portrait is of an America that is fraught with rising homicide rates, filled with Americans being killed by those entering the country illegally. It was a portrait of an America that looks more like the events of the Purge film series then the America I see everyday when I step out of my door to head to work.
Trump’s entire speech was completely devoid of any substantial details as to how he would get anything done, just threats and points on how the government should be made bigger and stronger and given more authority with him at the head of it controlling every part of American life.
It has become a sad occurrence over the course of the last few Presidencies that political figures have been likened to evil dictators of the past. The code pink left during the administration of George W. Bush had constantly compared him to Hitler, leftist ideologues have a long history of trying to compare Republicans to Nazis, and they have always been wrong.
Republican’s have always, or at least have claimed to, stand up for the limited government, free market principles outlined by our Founding documents — principles that are against everything the Nazi’s (National Socialists) stood for.
Enter Donald Trump.
In 2016 the Republican Party has abandoned all pretenses of being the principled party of limited government, free people and free markets. This could not be anymore evident by the uproar over Sen. Ted Cruz’s great convention speech and the warm embrace of Donald Trump.
Sen. Ted Cruz urged Republicans to “Stand and speak, and vote your conscience. Vote for candidates up and down the ticket who you trust to defend our freedom… (so that) we will be able to say, ‘Freedom matters… ‘” and Trump’s supporters took it as an attack on their candidate. What does that say about Trump’s base, it says that they know that Trump is not a person of conscience or is principled enough to defend the Constitution.
Now under the reign of Donald Trump, the Republican Party now embraces liberal concepts of federal wage controls and fighting the “gender wage gap.” Trump’s Republican platform embraces a “do as I tell you,” message to private business and anti-free trade policies that will increase the cost-of-living for all Americans.
Some of the same useful idiots who were attacking Bernie Sanders for his socialist policies are now embracing Donald Trump for openly supporting those same policies. In the same way the hardline enforcers of long gone socialist regimes attacked anyone who would dare speak ill of the Dear Leader — Trump’s New Republicans have gone nuts on Ted Cruz for standing up for liberty, because if you are not for Trump you must be defeated.
Trump laid out an argument for unlimited government under a single man, but don’t worry he’s not a tyrant, he’s a “Republican.”
Thanks to the Republican party, a party that helped to fight the Cold War, Donald Trump is frighteningly close to achieving his vision for Trump style National Socialism. Donald Trump is a threat to not just everything that the Republican Party was founded on, but he is an threat to everything our Founding Father’s held near and dear. The Republican Party itself and the misguided idiots who claim to be liberty loving conservatives, yet look at Trump through the eyes lovestruck teenage girl looking at the latest teen idol, deserve just as much blame for allowing this to happen as Trump has for leading the charge.
Congratulations Republicans, you have become everything you have claimed to hate. It’s not Socialism, its “Republican Socialism”.
Emanuel Smith, 60, charged with inducing panic and criminal trespass after making Ebola joke at Horseshoe Casino on Wednesday October 15, 2014.
A felony, a freaking felony? That’s ridiculous.
From my local bird-cage liner, The Plain Dealer:
CLEVELAND, Ohio – Bond is set at $10,000 for a Cleveland man charged with inducing panic after being accused of telling a Horseshoe Casino worker that he was gambling to avoid his Ebola-stricken ex-wife.
Hours after news broke Wednesday that a Dallas nurse diagnosed with Ebola had visited Cleveland, Emanuel Smith, 60, told a table games dealer that he was dodging a sick ex-wife who traveled to Cleveland from West Africa, according to the Ohio Casino Control Commission.
Smith, a former Cuyahoga County employee, visited the casino by himself. He and his ex-wife do not have Ebola and have not traveled to Africa, according to local officials.
Defense attorney Kathleen DeMetz said the exchange has been blown out of proportion.
“People were having a general discussion about the current situation,” she said. “He made a comment regarding his former wife who had traveled to Africa sometime in the past and that he tries to stay away from her.” Read More…
James O’Keefe of Project Veritas & Captain Bob Swiney
Thankfully the “terrorist” in question was only someone in a cheap costume shop ninja outfit and there was no Ebola virus, it was just a video depicting a possible scenario. Does the above headline, or another headline similar to it have the chance of one-day coming true? It’s a possibility, at least according to James O’Keefe of Project Veritas.
Last month, O’Keefe, who gained national attention in 2008 with the under-cover video that lead to the eventual disbanding of ACORN, released a video depicting him crossing the southern border from Mexico. In this video he was wearing an Osama bin Laden mask as he walked across the Rio Grande River.
Last week he came to Cleveland.
According to O’Keefe:
It was so easy to cross into the United States from Mexico, we began asking questions about the Northern border. After all, British intelligence believes more than 500 British citizens have joined ISIS, and British citizens can enter Canada without a visa.
O’Keefe rented a bout from Fishfull Thinking Charters in Eastlake, OH and on September 5th, filmed a video depicting an ‘Ebola infected ISIS terrorist’ with a bag full of ricin entering the US from Canada across Lake Erie and walking into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame unchecked.
The video itself is really cheesy, but facts behind it are chilling.
In an interview with my local bird cage liner, The Plain Dealer, captain Bob Swiney (the charter-boat captain) said that they did not actually cross into Canada, stopping halfway across Lake Erie & turning around. To cross the border they would have had to “self report,” by calling the border patrol and having everyone’s passports ready.
“I am not going to sacrifice my captain’s license for that,” said Swiney, who agreed it would be possible for terrorists to enter the United States by coming across Lake Erie from Canada.
He classified the video as a “tongue-in-cheek” dramatization of a potentially serious problem, but said he doesn’t know of any “quick and easy” way to improve security.
“Whatever you do, it will require manpower and dollars,” said Swiney. “I think we need to get a lot smarter about what we protect and how we protect it.”
I live in the town that the boat was chartered from, I have been on Lake Erie & have never seen the Border Patrol, but have seen how easy it is to cross the border unchecked in either direction. While I lean libertarian for a large amount of issues, it is scenarios such as this, where I differ with the open-border nutjobs.
I say bring our soldiers home from that hell-hole in the Middle East, we shouldn’t have another American soldier sent back to his parents in a pine box draped in a flag just so we can nation-build over there. Bring our boys and girls home, put them on both the southern & northern borders and make them tighter then a frog’s waterproof ass.
At about 1:40 a.m. on Thursday, South Euclid, OH police responded to a call at the Walmart Supercenter on Warrensville Center Rd where a 23-year-old woman and her 20-year-old boyfriend were caught by security guards attempting to steal sex toys.
Via Cleveland.com:
A security guard told police he saw the couple put the stolen items in the woman’s purse. The couple paid for a few other items in the self-checkout lane and then tried to leave, reports said.
The woman became verbally aggressive before police arrived, reports said. Police finally were able to calm her down and she turned her purse and the stolen items in to the police.
The total value for the stolen goods was about $30.
The word Walmart used in the same sentence as the words “sex toys” is just something I’m having a hard time wrapping my head around.
Cleveland City Councilman Zack Reed, booking photo from his 10-day jail sentence for his third drunken driving conviction 09/25/2013
In an effort to curb violent gun related crime in the City of Cleveland, Ward 2 City Councilman Zack Reed is proposing to ignore the basic 4th Amendment rights of all Americans and implement a “stop & frisk” policy in the Cleveland Police Department. Reed’s idea, which is not yet an official piece of legislation that has even been proposed to City council, comes on the heels of a very violent Monday night which saw four men injured in four separate gun-related incidents.
In an interview with WKYC’s Tom Beres, Reed said:
“We’ need to get in their face. Let them know if you are carrying a gun we are going to get it. You commit a crime you are going to jail. We are going to do all these aggressive things to put in their mind this is not the Wild Wild West.”
As a Clevelander, albeit one that has moved out and escaped to the suburbs and as a decent human being, I can sympathize with Councilman Reed’s desire to make the streets of my hometown safe for everyone. However, as is typical of the idiotic politicians that make up Northeast Ohio, Reed’s idea is not just an ass backwards way of trying to solve the gun violence problem, its also unconstitutional.
Thanks to the Fourth Amendment:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
The key words there are “unreasonable” and “probable cause.” The type of “stop & frisk” situations that would be used, much like the policy that was used in New York City until it was struck down by a Federal Judge would neither be “reasonable” or take legitimate “probable cause” into account. Time and time again studies have shown that the type of “probable cause” used by police officers is their suspect being young, black and in the inner city.
On October 31, 1963, in Cleveland none-the-less, Police Detective Martin J. McFadden saw three men loitering in front of a jewelery store near E. 13th and Euclid Ave. and peering into the windows. Believing that a robbery was about to take place, McFadden approached all three, identified himself as a police officer and then patted them down. During his search he found weapons on two of the three men and they were eventually charged with and convicted of carrying concealed weapons.
The law at the time only allowed police to stop a suspect after a crime was committed, the convicted men appealed their case and it eventually made its was to the United States Supreme Court. In a landmark decision on June 10, 1968, Chief Justice Earl Warren delivered the court’s opinion that McFadden’s action, called a “Terry Stop” after one of the suspects, was justifiable.
Councilman Reed says that he wants to put in the minds of the criminals in Cleveland that “this is not the Wild Wild West.” The problem with the version of “stop & frisk” that Reed wants to implement, the same version that was struck down in New York is that it is “Wild Wild West” law enforcement. In New York much of the time not only was there no “reasonable” suspicion used in patting down American citizens, but no suspicion at all was used.
On NYPD’s stop & frisk program, via the American Prospect:
At the core of the constitutional challenge to the department’s practices is a comprehensive study by Professor Jeffrey Fagan at Columbia University. Fagan’s study provided overwhelming evidence that New York’s aggressive stop-and-frisk policy was arbitrary and discriminatory. The sheer numbers are staggering—more than 5 million searches have been conducted under the current policy. Nearly 90 percent of the searches did not turn up anything that could justify any kind of arrest or summons. Blacks and Latinos comprised 87 percent of those searches.
More in-depth analysis confirms what the general numbers suggest. Fagan’s study found that a minimum of 6 percent of searches were “apparently unjustified.” As Scheindlin observes, the 6 percent of unjustified stops is a floor rather than a ceiling. Scheindlin made extremely charitable assumptions—including taking the unchallenged reports of officers at face value. The percentage also doesn’t consider the occasions in which a stop-and-frisk goes unreported.
Even if we were to assume that “only” 6 percent of searches were completely unjustifiable, this still represents 200,000 people whose rights were violated. The number of people subject to unjustifiable searches is certainly far higher. For example, Fagan did not classify searches justified by the officer solely based on allegedly “furtive movements” by the suspect, although it is clear that this is reasoning that cannot meet the “reasonable suspicion” standard. Virtually anybody can be accused of “furtive movement,” and the standard is so useless that Fagan’s study showed that people who displayed “furtive movements” were actually less likely to be arrested than those that did not.
What’s even worse is that the arbitrary searches are not distributed randomly. Racial minorities are searched far out of proportion to their percentage of the populations. New York City has defended this by arguing that racial minorities are also disproportionately represented among those arrested for violent crimes. Scheindlin disposes of this defense by noting that since nine out of ten people stopped are innocent, this defense is irrelevant. Moreover, “[t]he NYPD carries out more stops where there are more black and Hispanic residents, even when other relevant variables are held constant.” The singling out of racial minorities cannot be justified.
Given the data, Scheindlin had little choice but to find that the stop-and-frisk policy violated the Fourth Amendment as well as the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment. A large number of searches have been conducted without reasonable suspicion, and these suspicionless searches have disproportionately targeted racial minorities. Of 19 individual stops, the court found that 9 of the stop-and-frisks were unconstitutional, 5 of the frisks after stops were unconstitutional, and 5 were constitutionally permissible.
Instead of trying to find actual ways of influencing the culture and dealing with the root problems of crime and poverty in the inner-city Zack Reed’s idea would only take away the rights of every citizen in an effort to weed out the bad apples, turning the city into a NAZI-style police state. I’m sorry Zack Reed but the Fourth Amendment applies to everyone, white guys in the suburbs like myself and minorities in the inner-city as well.
On July 8, 2010 I was stabbed in the back. Not physically of course, no blade pierced my skin, no blood came pouring out of any open wound. The pain and agony of that metaphorical stab wound was very real however, or at least as real as sports fan emotions can get.
LeBron James, Northeast Ohio’s own chosen one, the kid who grew up in Akron and played his High School ball at St. Vincent-St. Mary’s and then jumped straight to the pros to play for his hometown team had left us. He had promised to bring us championships while lighting the city up like Las Vegas — instead he left us standing at the doorway in our prom dress, waiting for that limo to take us to the dance. It would never come, because he stiffed us for the hotter girl… and did it on National TV.
In the days and weeks leading up to what would become known as “the decision,” I had become convinced that James would be leaving. I had just thought that it was going to be to New York, where Knick fans had spent most of LeBron’s first 7 season’s in Cleveland calling it a forgone conclusion that “King James” would go play in the basketball “Mecca” of Madison Square Garden or possibly Chicago who had a real good young team, battled LeBron’s Cavaliers in the playoffs and were just a piece away.
I had made my peace with it, it would suck and I would be pissed at him, but hey he was a free agent and here in Cleveland we are already used to losing big-time free agents (Albert Belle, Jim Thome, Manny Ramirez…). Then came word that LeBron had decided that he was going to go on National TV on ESPN and announce his decision in front of the whole wide sports world.
What had previously been a guaranteed lock in my mind, the peace that I had made in knowing that he was leaving has disappeared. I mean what kind of person would book a 1-hour long special on prime time television, to tell not just the team that he played for but the team he played for in the region that he grew up in, his HOMETOWN team — that he was leaving. Who would do that, what kind of arrogance does that take?
I couldn’t believe it, Cleveland had finally won, our hometown hero was staying here to fulfill his promise to us. Then I turned on ESPN, saw Jim Gray ask the question and then heard LeBron James say those infamous words, “..I’m gonna take my talents to South Beach.”
What? What the fuck even?
In one fell swoop all of Northeast OH felt that warm blood pour out of that metaphorical stab wound — that we received with the entire world watching.
To add insult to injury in the days, weeks and even years after “the Decision” national media figures in the sports world talked down on Cleveland for the way we reacted. Really? How the fuck did you expect us to react? “Thanks for leaving us hanging LeBron and fucking us over on National Television, good luck in Miami, we love you.”
That’s not how sports work, and EVERYONE KNOWS IT. If it had been any other city any other fanbase that was stabbed in the back by their HOMETOWN HERO in the manner that LeBron stabbed us in the back, the reaction WOULD HAVE BEEN THE SAME. Not only that but everyone would agree that the fans were right in their response.
But hey, we’re Cleveland, you’ve got to be tough to be from Northeast Ohio.
Flash forward to four years later, time heals all wound, including metaphorical sports stab wounds. Cleveland has had, Red Right 88, The Drive, The Fumble, The Move, The Shot, The Jose mesa choke job, The Decision and now… “The Letter.”
Via Sports Illustrated:
Remember when I was sitting up there at the Boys & Girls Club in 2010? I was thinking, This is really tough. I could feel it. I was leaving something I had spent a long time creating. If I had to do it all over again, I’d obviously do things differently, but I’d still have left. Miami, for me, has been almost like college for other kids. These past four years helped raise me into who I am. I became a better player and a better man. I learned from a franchise that had been where I wanted to go. I will always think of Miami as my second home. Without the experiences I had there, I wouldn’t be able to do what I’m doing today.
…
When I left Cleveland, I was on a mission. I was seeking championships, and we won two. But Miami already knew that feeling. Our city hasn’t had that feeling in a long, long, long time. My goal is still to win as many titles as possible, no question. But what’s most important for me is bringing one trophy back to Northeast Ohio.
I always believed that I’d return to Cleveland and finish my career there. I just didn’t know when. After the season, free agency wasn’t even a thought. But I have two boys and my wife, Savannah, is pregnant with a girl. I started thinking about what it would be like to raise my family in my hometown. I looked at other teams, but I wasn’t going to leave Miami for anywhere except Cleveland. The more time passed, the more it felt right. This is what makes me happy.
To make the move I needed the support of my wife and my mom, who can be very tough. The letter from Dan Gilbert, the booing of the Cleveland fans, the jerseys being burned — seeing all that was hard for them. My emotions were more mixed. It was easy to say, “OK, I don’t want to deal with these people ever again.” But then you think about the other side. What if I were a kid who looked up to an athlete, and that athlete made me want to do better in my own life, and then he left? How would I react? I’ve met with Dan, face-to-face, man-to-man. We’ve talked it out. Everybody makes mistakes. I’ve made mistakes as well. Who am I to hold a grudge?
LeBron James was a free agent in 2010, he had every right in the world to leave Cleveland, Northeast Ohio and the Cavaliers organization. We in turn as fans had EVERY RIGHT to be pissed off and angry about it.
The WAY he went about leaving us put a whole lot of extra sting into that metaphorical stab wound. This letter that LeBron James wrote even without the part about “coming home,” is everything I have wanted to hear from him since he left.
He has truly realized that he was a douchebag in the manner he left, but is not sorry for leaving, nor should he be that was his right as a free agent.
He also admitted that us as fans had the right to feel pissed off about it.
This is NOT about the money, he WOULD have made a WHOLE LOT MORE in MIA or elsewhere.
I think he realized what most of us in Northeast, OH know, but many refuse to admit.
There’s no place like home.
Who am I to hold a grudge?
As a long suffering Cleveland sports fan, I think its about time my home town removes the “Progress and Prosperity” from its flag and replace it with something more appropriate.
For more Click Here.
