There is a concerning free speech case out of Tennessee where a retired police officer was arrested after posting anti-Charlie Kirk messages on the Internet. Larry Bushart, 61, of Lexington, Tennessee, was arrested for threatening a mass shooting at a school, but the cited messages do not support such a claim. Indeed, his comments appear to be protected political speech under governing Supreme Court precedent.
I have written about Charlie’s legacy fighting for free speech and how recent terminations and cancel campaigns of his critics dishonor that legacy.
Bushart is clearly one of the unhinged voices on the Internet who trolls and inflames others. At his arrest, even Bushart admitted that he is a bit of “an a**hole,” but insisted that he is not a criminal. He appears correct on both counts.
Bushart was charged Sept. 22 with making threats of mass violence at a school. However, he is not scheduled for a preliminary and bond hearing until December 4th. That delay is also troubling since his bond is set at an astronomical $2 million.
Bushart is a former police officer with the Huntingdon Police Department and was arrested after posting on a Perry County community Facebook group page. There was a planned vigil for Kirk in Linden, Tennessee, on Sept. 23.
Perry County Sheriff Nick Weems accused Bushart of posting what he called “hate memes” about Kirk’s death. Weems correctly noted that such memes are not illegal, but one appeared to cross the line in his view.
One meme showed Trump saying, “We have to get over it,” a direct quote from the president after a January 2024 school shooting in Perry County, Iowa , that left one dead and seven wounded.
The phrase “This seems relevant today” appears above the photo.
The Tennesseean‘s Angele Latham found that the meme was “posted numerous times across multiple social media platforms not connected to Bushart going back to 2024.”
However, Bushart was quickly visited by the police. Undeterred, he posted on the account: “Received a visit from Lexington PD regarding my posted memes.”
He was later arrested on a charge of Threats of Mass Violence on School Property and Activities. A conviction could bring as much as six years in prison.
The U.S. Supreme Court has previously protected hyperbole and rejected claims that political speech could fall under the true threat exception to the First Amendment. In Watts v. United States, a protester claimed that, if drafted, “the first man I want to get in my sights is [then-President Lyndon Johnson].” The court insisted that it was not a “true threat” but rather “a kind of very crude offensive method of stating a political opposition to the President.”
Watts established that a true threat had to be established according to three factors: (1) the context of the statement or statements in question; (2) the conditional nature of the supposed threat; and (3) the reaction of the recipient or listeners.
One recent case could be weighed in the Bushart matter.
In 2023, in Counterman v. Colorado, Billy Raymond Counterman was accused of stalking after he sent thousands of messages over two years to a female musician on Facebook. It included menacing references to her car and movements.
A state appellate court upheld the conviction on the basis that a person could “reasonably perceive” the messages as a threat.
The Supreme Court reversed and ruled that the threats did not have to meet an “objective” standard, but could be sustained by showing Counterman’s state of mind, a “subjective standard.” Under the standard laid out by Justice Kagan, the government must prove recklessness, but not necessarily intent: “The State must show that the defendant consciously disregarded a substantial risk that his communications would be viewed as threatening violence.”
However, the Court expressed concern over the chilling effect of prosecutions in cases of vague threats: “The speaker’s fear of mistaking whether a statement is a threat; his fear of the legal system getting that judgment wrong; his fear, in any event, of incurring legal costs — all those may lead him to swallow words that are in fact not true threats.”
In prior cases, the Court also adopted a protective stance, requiring more than how words or actions were perceived. In Virginia v. Black (2003), the Court upheld the criminalization of cross burning when the act was intended as a threat: ‘True threats’ encompass those statements where the speaker means to communicate a serious expression of an intent to commit an act of unlawful violence to a particular individual or group of individuals.”
Likewise, in 2015, the Supreme Court reversed a conviction in Elonis v. United States, involving a man who had posted rap lyrics on Facebook that appeared to threaten his ex-wife and others. The Court rejected jury instructions that required only that the jury find that he communicated what a reasonable person would regard as a threat.
The Tennessee case appears to fall substantially short of these prior cases.
Weems insisted that he posted the picture “to indicate or make the audience think it was referencing our Perry High School. This led teachers, parents, and students to conclude he was talking about a hypothetical shooting at our school. “(people) reached out in concern.”
However, that interpretation was not shared by others who commented on the posting, including critics. It was viewed by many as simply Bushart dismissing the killing of Kirk as something that we “should get over.”
The question is what clarity is necessary to sustain a criminal charge. Bushart has a protected right to rail against Kirk and, in his words, be “an a**hole.”
The case is likely to focus on the political speech element, including Weems’s own writings on Kirk. After the assassination, Weems mourned the loss and warned about the “evil” in our midst. “Evil could be your neighbor,” he wrote. “Evil could be standing right beside you in the grocery store. It could be your own family member and you never even know it.”
In a video, an officer explains to a confused Bushart what he is being charged with: “Threatening Mass Violence at a School.”
“At a school?” Bushart responded, and the officer added, “I ain’t got a clue. I just gotta do what I have to do.”
Bushart then said: “I’ve been in Facebook jail but now I’m really in it,.I may have been an a**hole but…”
Bushart would have to post a bail of at least $210,000 to get out of jail.
I do not see how this charge can be sustained on these facts. Given the free speech concerns, the long delay in getting before a judge is even more troubling.
The Perry shooting was in the city of Perry, which is in Dallas County. There is no Perry County, Iowa.
Ridiculous. You don’t suppress this guy’s free speech; you retaliate with some free speech of your own to humiliate him, or, better yet, just ignore it as the pathetic musings of a senile old man.
He would not “post bail” of $200,000+ to leave jail.
The bail bond company would guarantee the bail
This guy would forfeit $200,000, irretrievably, to get out on the bail bond company guarantee.
It is a punishment prior to conviction above and beyond the potential sentence and will remain a punishment even if the charges are dropped.
Hunter was a piker compared to the MAGA king of grift.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-family-global-crypto-cash_n_69016671e4b0522875e88258
4 USELESS YEARS UNDER BIDEN AS PRESIDENT(PUPPET)
HAHAHAHA. Huff& Puff. We they not sold off because of the lies they told
People still go to huff piss? I’m just curious to know how many times they have to be wrong before you stop going to them?
Hunter was a grifter loser, Trump’s a great president-huge difference
Unless they had a signed warrant, by a judge, based on probable cause, then they have to give the guy a “Probable Cause” hearing with 48 hours, a so-called “Gerstein Hearing”. Don’t know how they can hold him until December 4, 2025, without a probable cause hearing.
They probably cannot hold him that long, but they can do as much damage as possible before letting him go. No doubt he’s gotten a rectal exam and a freezing cold shower. OTOH, if the judge really like Charlie Kirk, a judge can simply rubber stamp “Probable Cause” on a ham sandwich.
Go see how Jan 6 protesters were treated by the Marxists prosecutors, judges, and jailers in DC.
This one strikes homes to me as this is in my old neck of the woods. I grew up in that area. What concerns me is that law enforcement and the legal community in that area is mostly inept. This is the same area where it took three years to find the remains of Holly Bobo and where the alleged perps were convicted without any real evidence connecting them to the crime – and one of the witnesses has since recanted and said he made up his testimony. BTW, there ae a lot of Kirks in that area although I don’t know if there is any connection to Charlie. Personally, I can see where someone would become totally frustrated due to all the memorial services, etc. that have been held for Kirk, who was actually a political activist and, contrary to what the good professor claims, was beginning to turn away from the idea of free speech in favor of the same “Christian” nationalism that drove some of my ancestors to leave Europe, specifically Germany. Incidentally, there was an FBI attack on someone in that same general area although it didn’t attract a lot of media intention. I suspect he’s going to be railroaded and sentenced to Outer Mongolia.
“who was actually a political activist and, contrary to what the good professor claims, was beginning to turn away from the idea of free speech in favor of the same “Christian” nationalism ”
There’s some Democrat Kluxxer false flag BullSchiff, right there.
The problem with lyin’ and denyin’ like a proud Biden is that Charlie Kirk was very well known by many many people. As a result, lying about him doesn’t have much hope of success.
How come Cuba isn’t the 51st state yet?
I should be able to go on a road trip to Cuba as easily
as I can to Georgia.
Give us your address and we’ll pick you up and take you on a Caribbean boat ride.
Let me think about it.
My address is 1060 W Addison St, Chicago, Illinois.
Shohei, is that you?
You live at Wrigley Field?? LOL
Wow. Many of you are more reasonable than I assumed you would be. Kudos to you.
When there are ample inflammatory outrages let us not apply enforcement in the spirit of the United Kingdom
The US judiciary is full of itself and out of control. Clearly, if we care about protecting freedom of speech for all Americans, we need to protect our a**holes from judges who are perverting the law, pervert judges, as it were. Most if whom are Legtists, BTW.
The judicial branch possesses no executive power.
Because the judicial branch desires executive power, it believes it may assign itself executive power.
A lowly judge just ordered U.S. Border Patrol Commander Gregory Bovino, who is subject to the executive power of the president, to perform in a specific manner and to appear in her courtroom.
The judicial branch just usurped and exercised executive power that it does not possess and that is vested solely in a president of the United States.
The judicial branch is incapable of reading the Constitution with comprehension.
The judicial branch must be impeached and convicted.
“The judicial branch must be impeached and convicted.”
The Crazy Democrat Good Ideas Fairy has obviously pissed in your brain.
How about we split it down the middle and just impeach and remove the Democrat appointed ones?
Then give it six months to see how the judicial branch is performing.
The judicial branch has the undisputed and absolute power to command the appearance of any person whomsoever, whose testimony is required.
Meanwhile, Israel is back to aggressively bombing Gaza, proving the fact that there was never a “peace agreement”—just a ceasefire–at least the third ceasefire that didn’t hold, and never will hold until or unless the US cuts off money, bombs and weapons to Israel. But the wealthy Jews who give lots of money to Trump will prevent this from happening, and that’s who Trump listens to, so there will be more death and starvation in Gaza. Proving also that Trump’s overheated rhetoric about the dawning of some new age in the Middle East was just BS. No Nobel Peace Prize.
Rabble:
Gigi, why don’t you be a dear and 1) get those of us of drinking age another beer, definitely not whatever you’re on, and 2) tell us what the justification is for their strikes. AFAIK, it’s because Hamas delivered fake remains, including bits of soldiers that had been mostly returned 2 years prior. But, of course, I’d love to hear what your demented reality says the ‘truth’ is.
Hamas is a Palestinian Sunni-Islamist nationalist political and militant organization; the Gaza Strip is home to over 2 million Palestinians.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
“Israel Gaza: Hamas raped and mutilated women on 7 October”
“I spoke with at least three girls who are now hospitalised for a very hard psychiatric situation because of the rapes they watched.”
“They pretended to be dead and they watched it, and heard everything. And they can’t deal with it.”
– BBC, 5 December 2023
“the Gaza Strip is home to over 2 million Palestinians.”
Those are Arabs. There is no such thing as a “Palestinian” – other than the evil creation of Yassar Arafat’s terrorist mind.
Would you like to recite the names of some of the historical “Palestinian” leaders? The names of those Caliphs, Imams, Mullahs, Ayatollahs, etc?
My 1950s bible includes a then current map of the region, including the land called Palestine, where the Palestinians lived until the European Zionists arrived with European weapons and started killing the Arab locals, forcing many to flee Palestine. There doesn’t need to be a government of Palestine for there to be Palestinians any more than there needed to be a single North American government over the Native Americans for them to exist. Prior to the bloodshed and terrorist attacks by the Zionists on the locals, including bombing of food markets, there was no Israel. That wasn’t in existence until the Zionists made it up.
“My 1950s bible includes a then current map of the region, including the land called Palestine, where the Palestinians lived until the European Zionists”
The LAND had that name on it? The name the British assigned it after defeating the TURKS who occupied it in WWI, about 30 years earlier? After centuries of TURKISH subjugation by occupation? It wasn’t Arab nomadic tribes that occupied and controlled that land; it was TURKS.
I don’t believe you actually have a Bible, but let’s give you a shot if you do have one. Find the first reference in your Bible to when the HEBREWS (i.e. Jews) occupied that land.
Then tell us, chapter and verse so we can see for ourselves where the “Palestinian” people are mentioned. How about telling us where your 1950’s bible names a Palestinian Ayatollah, Caliph, Mullah, King, Emperor, etc as the ruler of the Palestinian people.
Bonus marks if you can find a single reference to Muslim Arabs, whether or not anywhere near Judea and Samaria.
Triple score if you can find the words “West Bank” after the references to Judea and Samaria.
This should be interesting! Because my bible, a family bible I have inherited from the 1880’s – one of the big ones with the lineage of the family written by hand by each generation the bible passed through – has no maps with “Palestine” in it. I can check and see if it has any references to “Palestine” once you tell me which chapters and verses to look at.
North America doesn’t have a Ayatollah, Caliph, Mullah, King, Emperor, etc as the ruler of the North Americans.
The old name was Philista; not strange that 3000 years have seen that altered. What was Great Britain called 3000 years ago? Do Britains not have a heritage going back that far just because the name changed?
It was also called Canaan.
https://www.kingjamesbibledictionary.com/Dictionary/Palestine
https://biblehub.com/topical/p/palestine.htm
hc.edu/museums/dunham-bible-museum/tour-of-the-museum/bible-in-america/bibles-for-a-
young-republic/judea-palestine-or-the-holy-land/
“The following geographical description of “Judea, Palestine, or the Holy Land” is taken from an 1801 Bible published by Matthew Carey, but was found in many Bibles during this period.”
“My 1950s bible includes a then current map of the region, including the land called Palestine, where the Palestinians lived until the European Zionists arrived with European weapons and started killing the Arab locals,…”
You’re an idiot. When you read about the Palestinians in the 1950s, even in the NYTimes, those were the Jewish farmers building the country known as Israel. If you met an Israeli Jew born at that time, his birth certificate would read Palestinian.
Why are the Anonymous writers on this blog so unknowledgeable about history?
The area the British named “Palestine” was almost completely empty, outside the major towns, until the zionists came and built an economy that attracted Arab immigration.
And the zionists didn’t start “killing the Arab locals” until those locals started killing them and they had to defend themselves.
The Zionists bombed food markets. For centuries a small number of Jews lived there alongside everyone else. It’s only when the Zionists decided they needed everyone else to leave that violence broke out.
Many of the arabs living in Israeli land arrived when the Israeli farmers and industrialists made the desert green and livable. The Arabs came to make their lives better.
“Meanwhile, Israel is back to aggressively bombing Gaza, proving the fact that there was never a “peace agreement”
Meanwhile… in the Soviet Democrat New Hitler Youth Movement Borg: how DARE Israel bomb our mostly peaceful Arab Hamas terrorists after they murdered two IDF soldiers and fraudulently provided body parts that weren’t from the Israeli hostages they murdered in cowardice handcuffed deep in terror tunnels.
Hamas is recruiting due to many recent openings… any particular reason you haven’t signed up?
Almost certainly the IDF didn’t hit anyone who was involved; just any women and children nearby in as great a number as they could.
Imagine a bank is robbed so police bomb the bank as a warning to bank robbers not to do that.
Recall when IDF gunned down a couple of escaping hostages, stripped to the waist to show no bomb vest, hands high, and begging for rescue in Hebrew? Just blew them away because, well, they might have been Palestinians and IDF would rather risk killing innocent Jews than passing on the chance to kill a couple of Palestinians.
If you want an explanation of the world as seen through the eyes of the Democrats’ New Hitler Youth Movement, who better to explain what the IDF is doing to deal with their murderous hajji Arab terrorists in Gaza!
IDF killed 7000 Palestinians and took another 7000 as hostages without trial or charge in the decade before Oct 7th. Maybe some were actually terrorists, but some were foreign journalists wearing PRESS jackets under conditions where anyone with a sight line could see that.
Here’s the secret sauce.
Israeli conservatives are in power because they promise to protect the people of Israel. To do that, they need an enemy to protect the Israelis from. The best way to get an enemy is to run military raids into Gaza and kill children for tossing rocks at tanks. The best way to prevent that from being widely known is to kill the journalists who go there to report on it. Every year for a decade they have killed half as many Palestinians as Israelis were killed on Oct 7th, in a population 1/5th the size.
If all of Gaza said, here’s every rock, every pebble, every gun, every knife, everything sharper than a spoon, we give up; on that day Netanyahu would drop cluster munitions on hospitals and child care to make them ready to fight again.
If Netanyahu wipes Gaza and the West Bank clean of Arab life, then there is no immediate enemy and the conservatives cannot stay in power, which is why Netanyahu hasn’t done that. However, now, with Trump in office backing him, well, that’s a lot of ocean front property.
If he finishes them off or drives them into the sea or against the guns in neighboring countries wlll he then antagonize Iran? Syria? Jordan? In addition, Netanyahu views everyone who is not Jewish as being subhuman and therefore torturing them is just fine. If God didn’t want Palestinians to suffer God would have given them nuclear weapons.
The secret sauce you brag about is that you are like a terrorist. You hide yourself among a bunch of other anonymous figures, blow yourself up, lie, and keep facts from ever reaching your eyes. We should not forget that your most prominent feature is cowardice.
Sigh. I actually agree that it is ludicrous to do this to him for what he said, no matter how abhorrent, and all of it was abhorrent, this is not a sane person. Still: our modern left promotes this as a virtue, something to emulate.
I do not want censorship, I want more moderate people to find their spines and actually stand for something. The modern left are a bundle of idiots paired with cowards. This is the sort o clearly troubled person they would celebrate as a hero, and that is a fact.
Jonathan Turley! Our SUPERIOR COURT SYSTEMS in California are completely corrupted to TARGET wealthy ELDERLY PEOPLE to drain generational wealth from families and individuals! The Mexican Cartels have operatives INSTALLED AS EMPLOYEES of the COURTS! The D.A.s like DIRTY JOYCE DUDLEY are TAKING MILLIONS into SECRET SLUSH-FUND accounts INSTEAD of PROSECUTING ORGANIZED CRIME—all organized and illicit white collar crimes GO UNDETECTED and UNSCATHED… this is Newsome’s California—a literal cluster-f**k of GRIFT.
I am COAST AUDITS on YouTube! I am an uneducated, single mother who is LAWFARED by the corruption because of 20CV03544 in the Santa Barbara County Superior Court. But wait! That Dirty D.A. Joyce Dudley ATTACKED ME FIRST with 20CV02746!!! Organized Criminals RUN the whole State of California. ¡PLEASE! ¡SEND FEDS! Send HELP!
(((this is NOT a joke.)))
I don’t like this guy but I have no doubt we have to protect our a**holes from prosecution for ugly but noncriminal speech.
As we see in Europe, sooner or later everyone gets a turn at being the a**hole subject to prosecution.
Then freedom dies.
Thank God for thinkers like Professor Turley for making the danger clear.
How can there possibly be “ugly,” “criminal,” “noncriminal” et al. speech in America if the 1st Amendment to the Constitution provides the freedom of speech without qualification, causing that freedom to be absolute?
The freedom of speech is not absolute, and no one has ever claimed it is. There are well known exceptions for defamation, true threats, fraud, incitement (as narrowly defined by Brandenburg), breach of copyright, obscenity, and speech integral to criminal conduct (e.g. bank robbers plotting their crime).
This person’s speech was NOT a true threat (or even a threat at all), and thus was NOT criminal.
“At his arrest, even Bushart admitted that he is a bit of “an a**hole,” but insisted that he is not a criminal. He appears correct on both counts.”
Well said and I agree professor. The judge should drop the whole thing tomorrow.
Yep,
OT
“Goofy Gavin” Newscum sued for the “Palisades Fire.”
He should be hanged.
There goes 2028!
At least Kamalala assured us, “I am not done.”
America feels much better knowing that.
I agreed that what the man said was despicable but also protected. I, for one, am all for people like this being able to speak freely so we know who they are. There is an old saying, “When people tell you who they are, believe them.” This requires that we let them tell us.
Well the left has been arresting and locking people up for what they called hate speech for years, so now it’s there own fault.
I do agree with you there is free speech in this country and it doesn’t matter if it’s hateful. False and speech to incite the exceptions.
No, the left has not been locking people up for “hate speech”. They have been yammering about it and pretending it’s not protected, but you can’t come up with more than isolated cases (if even that) of them ever actually locking anyone up for it. It just doesn’t happen with any significant frequency, if at all.
False speech is NOT an exception. False speech that doesn’t fall under one of the known exceptions is fully protected
“Hate speech” is irrefutably unconstitutional.
The judicial branch enjoys no power to “interpret,” a word which appears nowhere in the Constitution, and “precedent” and “doctrine” do not constitute a corpus juris.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
1st Amendment
Congress shall make no law…abridging the freedom of speech….
Meanwhile, George can make all of the arbitrary, unwritten laws that he wants.
“That dudn’t make any sense.”
– George W. Bush
_____________________
Why don’t you cite the Constitution wherein the freedom of speech is abridged and “hate speech” legislation is constitutional?
Oh, that’s right, you can’t.
No, “hate speech” is not unconstitutional. NO speech is unconstitutional. The constitution doesn’t regulate speech; on the contrary, it protects it.
The constitution explicitly vests the federal courts, both supreme and inferior, with “the judicial power”, which IS the power to interpret the law, to say what the law is. No other entity is empowered to do so.
Congress may indeed not make any law abridging the freedom of speech. But laws against unprotected speech, such as fraud, do not abridge the freedom.
Actually it is not an old saying.
Maya Angelou said, “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time,” when talking with Oprah on her show.
It was in reference to people who say one thing, but their actions prove them to be duplicitous, especially in relation to racism.
Who in the world is Maya Angelou?
She was a poet
But you didn’t know it.
“She was a poet
But you didn’t know it.”
If she had talent like Robert Frost or Rudyard Kipling… then maybe people wouldn’t have to ask who she is. Now it turns out she was a self important black female poet whose shtick was Obama’s “systemic white racism”. In writing not just one, but SEVEN, autobiographies of her life she seems to have been more narcissistic and self-centered than even Obama and Mad King GeorgeX.
When you write that you hate the white half of the country and should be adored by those who are of the Black Liars & Marxists mentality… why would anyone claim to be confused because the majority of the country who didn’t buy into her Black Supremacy shtick ignored her, and therefore don’t know they’re supposed to celebrate her as her crowd demands they do.
Michael Jordan has never claimed to be a poet. But despite that, he was smart enough to know that white Americans and conservative constitutional families also buy tennis shoes.
How dare she write books that sell well enough to make writing more books worthwhile!
From the Wiki article:
She published seven autobiographies, three books of essays, several books of poetry, and is credited with a list of plays, movies, and television shows spanning over 50 years. She received dozens of awards and more than 50 honorary degrees. Angelou’s series of seven autobiographies focus on her childhood and early adult experiences. The first, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969), tells of her life up to the age of 17 and brought her international recognition and acclaim.
So the first was simply the first installment of a series and stopped at 17 years old.
Each was a segment of her life:
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969): Up to 1944 (age 17)
Gather Together in My Name (1974): 1944–48
Singin’ and Swingin’ and Gettin’ Merry Like Christmas (1976): 1949–55
The Heart of a Woman (1981): 1957–62
All God’s Children Need Traveling Shoes (1986): 1962–65
A Song Flung Up to Heaven (2002): 1965–68
Oh, you’re right.
My bad.
I think they had a poetry reading in South Park or Watts a few years back which she attended.
Your bad indeed. Normal Americans actually recognize names like “Robert Frost” and “Rudyard Kipling” from grade school.
If you’re a product of Chicago’s failing schools, then you MIGHT recognize the name of a fellow racist and Black Liars & Marxists communist that cosplays as being a “poet”.
All while it/hers/they’s life work is not just one autobiography, but SEVEN!
She does know that there is a Communist Useless Idiot born every minute to prey on.
What he said could not have been despicable, by definition, as it was a quote from Trump.
When Trump tells you who he is, believe him.
As time passes it seems to me that the Charlie Kirk assassination and the 17 year saga of hiding and slow-walking the Epstein disclosure is simply about protecting Israel and, secondarily, the powerful people in the US, and elsewhere, who have been compromised by Israel.
The picture as I see it, no proof, just an emergent image:
1) Israel/Mossad sees everything and everyone as a potentially existential threat.
2) Controlling US politics and policy is the only way to be sure of US support.
3) Epstein/Maxwell were set up by Mossad and wealthy benefactors as a honeypot op to implement the necessary control.
4) The honeypot op was allowed by US intel because it likely shared enough with US intel to be seen as a useful tool.
I think that Israel’s strategic decision to control US policy contained the seeds of their own destruction. Too many Americans have died implementing stupid foreign policy on behalf of Israel. The American government has been demeaned. Given the recent brutality on the part of both sides in Gaza, Americans are becoming justifiably biased against both participants. If and when the American people are shown the true nature of this nefarious crap, Israel will be kaput. The stupid part of this is that honest diplomacy would probably have sufficed.
So here we are with lunatic Lefties chanting in favor of Hamas and those on the Right cheering a not so morally wonderful Israel when neither is if any benefit to this nation.
I am disappointed in President Trump’s reluctance to expose as much as possible of the corruption in our government while he has the chance.
Let the chips fall where they may, America will be stronger for it.
So basically you are just an anti-semite.
If every Jewish person on Earth disappeared tomorrow the rest of us would all live in peace and harmony in paradise, right?
Same lies I have been hearing my whole life and I am not Jewish but a Christian.
If you do not agree with my assessment of the data and the likely fallout you are certainly free to critique my opinion and state your own.
Instead, you have chosen to call me an antisemite, imply I wished for Jewish genocide, and accused me of lying.
Distrusting the Israeli government is not antisemitic. Tell me, which governments do you trust?
Saying that disclosure of Israeli meddling in American politics will have fallout is not claiming that if all Jews were gone the world would go all kumbaya. How you read that into what I said is a total mystery.
And exactly what lies did I voice as part of my opinion?
You are a simpleton and a fool if you are what you claim to be and a terrible operative if you are not.
You are an antisemite, and literally everything you wrote in your comment at 11:35 AM was a lie.
I simply laid out a working hypothesis that is consistent with what I have observed over a number of years. It was not presented as truth therefore it is not a lie.
In honor or your illiteracy let’s throw the dancing israelis of 9-11 into the pot.
Your peyot are showing.
It is not a hypothesis, it is a paranoid antisemitic fantasy. It is inconsistent with the known facts. And you did more than lay it out, you made false factual statements to support it, i.e. lies. Every one of your alleged facts is a lie.
Mossad created a fake beeper company, complete with online advertising, to sell bomb-laden beepers to Hezbollah in a decade long plan to maim as many in Hezbollah as possible. They created a production line to build batteries with integral explosives and changed the software in the beepers so that they could be detonated with a phone call.
They have planted compromising software on phones in use by journalists and politicians the world over to gather intelligence on who is making calls and who they are calling. There is evidence that this same software was sold to Saudi Arabia and was used to locate Khashoggi, the journalist who was chopped into pieces and sent in diplomatic bags back to the Kingdom.
It’s not paranoia when there is evidence it’s true.
AIPAC doesn’t “buy” politicians. That is expensive. What they do is promise to put massive funding into the campaigns of opponents and let it be known that politicians who don’t go along will be smeared as anti-Semitic. Sort of a carrot and stick where the carrot is replaced with a second stick. The NRA did a similar thing – point to a few hundred million in cash and say they will spend it all on the opposition and threaten to tell all their members that their target was against the 2nd amendment. If the target folds, almost no money is spent.
A lot of American Jews and those Jews in Israel really hate the Zionists controlling the Israeli government and that the American Conservative Jews are manipulating politics via AIPAC.
None of what you wrote supports your paranoid antisemitic fantasy.
“If you do not agree with my assessment of the data and the likely fallout you are certainly free to critique my opinion and state your own.”
When you claim that Israel has bought American politics and party leaders like Obama, Biden, AOC, Bernie Sanders, Tlaib, etc, I’m not sure whether you’re anti-Semitic.
You could just be a simpleton and fool. Or perhaps just an angry liar. Or a mixture of both, whether or not that was also accompanied by anti-Semitism.
If Israel ceased to exist and the majority of the Zionists went back to the European and West Asian countries they or their ancestors recently came from, then the West would have no more interest in dropping bombs in the Middle East than they do about genocide in Ethiopia.
The main reason radical Evangelicals are so involved in the Jewish mystery of the Middle East is that Armageddon cannot happen until all the Jews are reunited in Israel and then obliterated. Once that happens the real Christians will be called into Heaven while everywhere else the Antichrist will reign fire and torture on those who remain. Christians seem to enjoy the idea that others will suffer in agony for eternity while they will be eating ice cream with Jesus in Heaven.
This is nonsense. Most American Evangelicals are philosemites because the Bible says that God will bless those who bless the Jews and curse those who curse them. And they support Israel because God gave the land to the Jews, so it belongs to them.
OldFish has quite an imagination. He’s been living under KAOS command. In his world, every shadow hides a grand conspiracy, and Maxwell Smart is apparently running U.S. foreign policy from a shoe-phone. Fish’s reality never penetrates the cone of silence.
My outline is not in conflict with what is known and I don’t consider it particularly imaginative but rather a straightforward working theory.
There are legitimate questions regarding the Kirk killing. The BS in the air is nauseating.
And what exactly by way of deception do you think Epstein was up to?
The ad hominem attacks are dull.
Your “outline” is completely in conflict with what is known, and is nothing but an antisemitic fantasy, just like the Protocols.
Old Fish, my reply wasn’t meant as an ad hominem attack. I thought your imagination was running a bit wild, so I answered in the same spirit. Had you included facts, I would have addressed them directly. You are right to be suspicious of all governments, including ours, but singling out Israel automatically invites closer scrutiny of the rest of your claims.
“You think Israel’s strategic decision to control U.S. policy contained the seeds of their own destruction.”
You can say that, but it’s a stretch. The U.S. is the senior partner in the relationship, and Israel frequently yields to U.S. pressure, often at its own expense. In multiple wars, the U.S. forced Israel to stop short of complete victory. Otherwise Israel would have been in Damascus and Cairo. In the current war, Biden prevented Israel from fully defending itself, and even Trump placed limits on Israel’s military actions, though with more understanding.
“Given the recent brutality on both sides in Gaza, Americans are becoming justifiably biased against both.”
You are equating Hamas’s brutality with Israel’s effort to preserve civilian life. War is brutal, but Hamas launched missiles from hospitals and schools to prevent Israel from targeting military assets. They used women and children as shields and openly admitted civilian deaths benefited their strategy. We now see more of Hamas’s internal brutality in its executions of dissenters. Israel, in contrast, repeatedly warned civilians before strikes and worked to minimize casualties. Multiple military experts have stated that no modern army has taken more precautions in urban combat to avoid civilian deaths. Trying to portray both sides as equally brutal isn’t supported by the facts.
I disagree with other points you raised, but we can discuss those separately if you wish.
I’m not going to write an academic paper with footnotes.
I stated my opinion as to the picture I see considering what I have seen over the many years, a gestalt as it were. If my conclusions bother some people I don’t give a flying leap at a rolling donut.
Next, I was not assigning measures of brutality to both parties and comparing them quantitatively. Both party’s actions are brutal and there are people here who sympathize with different sets of victims.
If I were running Israel I would be inclined to wipe out everyone in Gaza and take the land. It’s a combination of revenge and biotribal liebensraum.
If I were a “Palestinian” I would probably wage war on Israel for stealing land, boxing me in on land and sea and just generally being dicks.
I am neither an Israeli nor a muslim in Gaza. I am an American. I have no particular sympathy either way and I consider both parties and their forever conflict a threat. That conflict is is the poster child for a foreign entanglement to be avoided at all costs. We need to cut it loose and walk away. Plenty of big trouble right here at home that needs our resources.
BTW, what, *exactly*, do you think Epstein and his handlers and benefactors were up to?
Also BTW, have you ever fired a 30-06? Do you really think that at 150 – 200 yards a round that can kill a bear or an elk or shatter a cow’s femur would stop in a human neck? Who thought up that absolute nonsense and expected the public to buy it? We’re being played. No two ways about it. Why? It all comes down to who is being protected. Don’t like my guess?
Is your guess Erud Barak or every US politician whisked away on an Israeli junket after winning their election?
Remember the Liberty!
There is no such person as “Erud Barak”. Once is a typo, three times is enemy action. That you repeatedly refer to such a person proves what a moron you are.
I think S. Meyer is Israel first. .. which, somehow, he equates with Judaism first?
Moreover, Israel [and Judaism], per S. Meyer, is in partnership with the U.S. (see above) .. . sure, Israel may be only the ‘Jr. partner’, but no pesky FARA registrations are required.
There are still approximately 2million people left clinging to life in Gaza, most of the them women and children, that ‘Hamas are using as human shields’.
———
That was not a 30.06 round that killed Charlie Kirk.
* I think 22yr. old Tyler Robinson is going to need a new lawyer .. . maybe a new Judge.
“That was not a 30.06 round that killed Charlie Kirk.”
Exactly
Cui Buono?
Ive shot many a deer and hog with a 30.06. It all depends on the round, if it wee a soft tip core lokt hinting load it is designed to mushroom. They also sell soft points that do same but are less expansive. Shot a deer through the lungs and it was the diameter of a pencil going and coming. If it were a full metal jacket it is non expansive and does same and if it hits bone it will deflect and sometimes shrapnel out into fragments moving in a different direction. There is also the question as to grain size of the bullet, typically a 150-180gr projectile. It’s a wicked round and has alot of knockdown power, yes it could have done what we’ve seen on poor Charlie. Still seems there’s more than meets the eye…
“I think S. Meyer is Israel first… which, somehow, he equates with Judaism first?”
Ignorance seems to be your dominant trait. Israel is a country. Judaism is a religion that began over 3,000 years ago in the lands of Israel, including Judea and Samaria.
The United States has partnerships with many nations; NATO is one example. What you question is normal to anyone with even a basic grasp of how the world works. You don’t have that grasp; you float on thin slogans and conspiracies instead of substance.
“There are still approximately 2 million people left clinging to life in Gaza.”
Yes, they cling to life hoping they aren’t killed as human shields or shot in the head by Hamas.
Spare us the theatrics. Your “concern” is propaganda, not compassion.
If they are killed then they are not functioning as shields. There are other militant factions in Gaza besides Hamas and they have been fighting among themselves for a long time; some are the ones who fired rockets when Hamas declared that Hamas would not fire rockets. This was an effort of the other factions to get IDF to do their dirty work.
” This was an effort of the other factions to get IDF to do their dirty work.”
I love the Ignoratti with closed eyes, ears, and brain who can see everything.
Any Israeli agents in the USA are subject to FARA just like anyone else. And they comply. Most of the people you accuse of being agents of the Israeli government are nothing of the kind. In particular, AIPAC is an American organization, not an Israeli one, and does not represent the Israeli government in any way. It is no more subject to FARA than is the NRA or the ACLU or any other American lobby group. And lobbying is an activity explicitly protected by the constitution.
Old Fish, there are no academic papers needed here; the data is already established. Some of your points don’t line up with the facts, though you are entitled to your opinion, and I respect that. I don’t want anyone to die, but Hamas’s ideology openly calls for wiping out the Jews and then targeting the West. You can read it in the Hamas Charter as it explicitly calls for killing Jews and destroying Israel. You can also see it in the almost continued attack by Hamas on the civilians living across the border. (Isreal removed all forces and settlers from Gaza in 2005.)
“If I were a ‘Palestinian’ I would probably wage war on Israel for stealing land, boxing me in on land and sea and just generally being dicks.”
The land is disputed, not stolen. When you ask many Palestinians where their families came from, you often find roots in North Africa, Egypt, and elsewhere. Many moved to the area decades ago because Jewish development created jobs and stability.
Historically, after the Ottoman Empire collapsed, Britain administered the Mandate and had legal authority to divide the land. They created Trans-Jordan (modern Jordan) as part of that process. If someone wants to reject Israel’s borders, they must also reject the borders of Jordan, Syria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and others, because they were all drawn in the same way.
Most Arabs left during the 1948 war expecting to return after an Arab victory, encouraged by Arab leadership, including the Grand Mufti, who also aligned himself with Hitler to exterminate the Jews. Some left out of fear, some due to fighting. That is the messy truth of war. Meanwhile, Jews in Arab countries were forced out under threat of death, and those numbers were nearly the same. Those Jews were never allowed to return or compensated.
One more point. If not for Israel’s restraint, and U.S. pressure limiting Israel’s ability to finish wars, these conflicts could have been concluded much faster. Outside powers never allowed Israel a decisive victory, which is a major reason the wars kept recurring.
And yes, like you, I am grateful to be an American. This is the greatest country in the world. I don’t think you’re coming from a bad place. You clearly care about America and don’t want foreign interests shaping our policy. I respect that. But understanding the actual history matters. The U.S.–Israel relationship isn’t based on manipulation but shared democratic values, strategic threats, and long historical reality. Knowing that doesn’t weaken your America-first perspective, it strengthens it by keeping it grounded in fact instead of noise.
So Epstein is a nothingburger? I doubt it, and as of even date my outline seems to fit.
Old Fish, I don’t know enough about Epstein to comment decisively, but the evidence I see to date appears to be that Epstein is a nothingburger in international politics.
Epstein had no connection to Israel whatsoever. Your fantasy that he was a Mossad agent or something is a pure antisemitic blood libel.
“You can read it in the Hamas Charter as it explicitly calls for killing Jews and destroying Israel.”
Yet Hamas has no possible way to accomplish that. The number killed on Oct 7th, an attack that took 3 years to put together, was about 1,500, or an average of 500 per year. The population of Israel has been increasing by 100,000 a year for decades, so Hamas managed to set that population growth back by less than 6 days after 3 years of planning; certainly not a reversal and definitely not a possible destruction of Israel. It was an attack that could not be repeated if Israel simply put up a more modern fence against the “existential threat.”
What a stupid comment. Maybe someone should shoot only one of your family, every week or so.
“I have no particular sympathy either way and I consider both parties and their forever conflict a threat. That conflict is is the poster child for a foreign entanglement to be avoided at all costs.”
It takes a world class retard, a simpleton – or perhaps an anti-Semite – to think that the nation howling “Death To The Great Satan” is just “a foreign entanglement” that if we ignore and don’t farm out our dirty work to Israel to deal with them, will lead to a cost like another 9/11 that we should happily accept.
Been using 30-06s since 1963 to shoot everything from bighorn sheep to grizzly and white tail deer. Your knowledge of terminal ballistics and firearms is right up there with Dennis McIntyre telling us an AR-15 would “totally destroy a deer”.
No. I don’t like your guess – I laugh at the fact you’re willing to hook up with GeorgeX in a special idiotogracy.
The intense response to criticism of Israel is interesting.
We were lied by zionist neocons of questionable loyalty into 8 years and 4800 deaths in Iraq. Our farmed out troops did their duty. Our politicians comitted an unpardonable offense against the troops and the Constitution. Shared democratic values?
You may be an expert but I still say a 30-06 at 140 yards acting as some claim it did is a fluke, not the norm.
I would not use SP 223 to hunt deer. That would be marginal and possibly cruel. Go with the bolt 30-06 or 308 or 243.
SP 223 for the coyotes? Sure, but I’ve watched at night with a thermal unit and they stay away. That leaves ARs for the range and the inevitable Zombie Apocalypse. At least they look cool.
You seem to think that being suspicious of Israel places me in a bin with the Leftists Georgebot and Dennistoid. Your assumption of lockstep uniformity of America First people is a blind spot. I think that Israel is more a liability than an ally. You’re certainly entitled to your own opinion.
“We were lied by zionist neocons of questionable loyalty”
Old Fiah, you’re taking frustration with particular individuals and then expanding it to an entire group, and that never leads to clarity. Not all Jews are Zionists, not all Zionists are neocons, and Jewish identity isn’t a political category. Judaism is a religion and a people, with Jews from the Middle East, Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Americas. If the issue is with specific policymakers or political philosophies, then address that directly rather than categorizing millions of people who have nothing to do with it.
“I think that Israel is more a liability than an ally.”
That isn’t antisemitic. You’re entitled to that opinion. I disagree, but I’d rather hear your reasoning than assume your motives. Nations can be assets in some situations and challenges in others; a truism for every ally we have.
Since we’re discussing Israel’s place in the world, a brief point of context:
The modern State of Israel was formed when the British Mandate was divided into two states, Jordan as the Arab state, and Israel as the Jewish state. Israel then survived three major wars and many smaller ones, often against overwhelming odds. Israel meets every standard of state legitimacy and has fought simply to survive. The surrounding region includes over twenty Muslim-majority countries, several of which have historically sought its destruction.
Israel has a right to exist. But that doesn’t mean every decision it makes is above criticism. I welcome a discussion on where you see liabilities or disagreements. That is a valid policy debate. I just prefer we use grounded facts and avoid grouping people based on identity instead of actions.
The flaw in your comment is that I never grouped things the way you suggest.
It was primarily zionist neocons who killed our troops in Iraq. Nowhere did I say “all” A are B.
My opinion is that the US invaded Iraq FBO Israel. Meaning the government of Israel.
Here’s an interesting watch.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=gN4NAqeBeCc
Is this entirely true? I do not have a conclusive answer.
Does it represent how I think the Israeli government(and every other government for that matter) operates. Absolutely. Yes.
“The flaw in your comment is that I never grouped things the way you…”
Old Fish, you are intelligent enough not to play word games.
“It was primarily Zionist neocons who killed our troops in Iraq. Nowhere did I say ‘all’ A are B.”
Was the President of the United States a Zionist neocon (the second Iraq war)? He was not Jewish, and I do not think he was a Zionist. Also, the main architects Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Wolfowitz, and Feith were a mix of backgrounds, not all Jewish and not all Zionists.
Yes, some Jews were neocons and influenced White House policy, but the majority of Jews were against the war, and the majority of Israelis were against it as well. Pew polling showed most American Jews opposed the war, and Israeli officials publicly warned the United States that removing Saddam would strengthen Iran.
We can say that many Zionists and non-Zionists, Jews and non-Jews, neocons and non-neocons opposed the war and supported the war. You are using selective nonsense.
It was not in Israel’s interests for the United States to destroy Iraq. The greater threat was Iran, and Iran was strengthened by the Iraq war under GWB. Iran supported Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis in Yemen.
Iran went from contained to empowered after Iraq fell, which harmed Israel’s security position. Also, Saudi Arabia and other Arab governments pushed Washington harder on Iraq than Israel did.
I looked at the video you suggested, but it talked about Charlie Kirk. You need to provide the points and a time stamp. If we are going to assign blame for Iraq, it belongs to U.S. intelligence failures and bipartisan votes in Congress, not Israel.
Old Fish, here are three questions you should ask yourself and kindly respond to.
1) If Israel wanted the Iraq War, why did its leaders warn the U.S that. it would strengthen Iran?
2) If Israel controls U.S. policy, why didn’t the U.S. attack Iran at that time?
3) Why do you ignore the role of Saudi and Gulf lobbying for the war?
Israel has never acted with brutality, but on the contrary, with stupidly excessive humanity. In the IDF’s entire history it has NEVER ONCE targeted a civilian. It strikes only legitimate military targets, and tries far more than it should to avoid collateral damage to civilians.
It’s not always successful because it’s impossible to avoid such damage entirely. But it shouldn’t be trying at all. No other army in the world ever has or ever will. We certainly never did when we bombed Germany or Japan. Nor should we have.
Israel SHOULD treat its enemies the way we treated Germany, because there’s little difference between “Palestinian” civilians and German ones; what difference exists goes the other way. There were genuinely innocent Germans; there are no innocent “Palestinians” over the age of reason.
But it doesn’t. It goes out of its way to spare them, criminally risking its own soldiers’ lives for that purpose. If I were in charge in Israel I would put the government and military commanders on trial for the murder of Israeli soldiers whose lives were wasted to protect the enemy.
Nor has any “Palestinian’s” land ever been stolen. Israeli law respects property rights, and its courts enforce them ruthlessly. Every “Palestinian” landowner is protected by the law. The government can only take property for pubic use, and with full compensation, and even then only after jumping through the artificial hoops the leftist judiciary erects for no reason but to obstruct the government and treasonously aid the enemy.
If you’re talking about sovereignty over territory rather than ownership of land within it, the Arabs have no right of sovereignty whatsoever. The San Remo conference, which is the last body to make a resolution binding under international law regarding the territory, resolved that it would all be dedicated to a Jewish homeland, and that the Arab inhabitants would have their civil rights protected, but not their political rights, because they had none.
“In the IDF’s entire history it has NEVER ONCE targeted a civilian.”
Except for killing the two escaping Jewish hostages who were begging for rescue when they were killed by the IDF.
It may be they never “targeted a civilian” but they absolutely targeted buildings they knew had civilians in them. What is more true is that the IDF doesn’t care if there are civilians or not that are being targeted, as long as they can claim they think they are not targeting civilians. Like dropping a JDAM into a bank robbery – the building collapses killing every hostage there, but the bomb was only targeting the bank robbers. See, simple, Not the bomb’s fault the hostages were killed.
You think a tragic friendly-fire mistake proves Israel intentionally targets civilians? That’s like seeing a firefighter kick down the wrong door in a blaze and shouting, “Aha! He hates saving people!” That is the depth of your analysis. You need to close your mouth to protect what’s left of your credibility. Your analysis is that shallow.
A video that was made shortly after appeared to show that the round hit the chamfered edge of the body armor that Charlie was wearing. It’s a low-profile armor and the chamfer is there to ease the transition from the thicker part to make it less noticeable. Hitting the edge robbed the round of most of the energy, turning it into flattening the round and deflecting it upwards to the next and towards the base of the skull.
The video includes a frame where the top edge of Kirk’s shirt moves straight up, the direction a deflected round would take.
It makes sense that the result would be a massive neck wound from the flattened round but, deflected up, that flattened round would be slowed or entirely stopped by the bottom of Kirk’s skull and not exited. Damage to the spinal cord would drop him immediately and that appears to be what was seen.
All the analysis videos seem to have been removed from the normal sites on the internet.
Fully defending itself against what, exactly? After the attacks Hamas withdrew entirely. There was no further attack on Israel. Israel could have sealed the breech, much like a levee is sealed to stop a flood.
What Israel did was not defense. It was a terrorist attack on an impoverished and bottled up civilian population under the guise of blood-lust revenge, ultimately to ethnically cleanse the area of those civilians and justify putting up golf courses and luxury apartments and hotels. The previous inhabitants could die under the bombing, be cut down by snipers while trying to get to food, starve to death, die from disease due to a lack of medical care, or somehow migrate either into the ocean to drown or through some narrow opening with more snipers on the path to some other country. Whichever way, they were to leave the open air prison that Israel had established decades ago.
Oh, that human shield thing? Israel placed their most critical military base in the middle of a large suburb. Is it different when Israel does what they claim Hamas does? The warnings were because the IDF doesn’t see the people as human shields. The warnings are to make sure they minimize Hamas casualties and maximize deaths of the old, the ill, and others unable to rapidly move, and destroy as much civilian belongings as possible. Hamas will move their fit male soldiers and weapons in no time, but the civilians? They are screwed. And after, there is no place for those civilians to come back to and no place for them to go.
The Hamas strategy only works due to the barbarism of the IDF.
1. There’s nothing wrong with revenge.
2. Where does the USA put its military bases? In the middle of the desert?!
OMG
Lets hear it for LA Calif. Elect wire thief has gotten so bad AT&A is losing thousands of dollars every month.
Buy the way, look who is Governor & mayor are.
I tried to find Mr. Bushart’s actual words and the Times of India had some information. Mr. Bushart is a troll of conservative posts and has been for some time. He trolls the people he lives around and Sheriff Weems was a participant in the Kirk memorial. The sheriff took notice of Bushart’s posts. On the day he was arrested he posted 100x some articles said.
George, take notice…
The bail is excessive. They’re taking their time in Tennessee.
^^^ He’s a curmudgeon. He enjoys little cruelties of trollism. Probably dislikes hypocrits as irritants.
People forget the GOP is filled with RINOs (aka democrats) especially in Tennessee.
Who gets to say what a “true republican” is?
If you’re arresting someone for speaking, you’re not a republican. How’s that?