Category: A Victory!
Bruce McLaughlin Jr. is shown in an undated photo provided by the Pickens County, S.C., Sheriff’s Office.
Authorities say McLaughlin, who escaped from a South Carolina jail Tuesday, Dec. 4, 2018, was shot and killed by a woman after he kicked open the backdoor of her home. (Pickens County Sheriff’s Office via COLUMBIA, S.C.)
An inmate who had escaped minutes earlier from a county jail in South Carolina was shot and killed by a woman after he kicked in her back door, the local sheriff said.
The inmate was still in his orange jail jumpsuit and had grabbed a knife sharpening tool from the woman’s kitchen in Pickens as he headed toward her bedroom around 3 a.m. Tuesday, Pickens County Sheriff Rick Clark said.
“This was a big guy. If she hadn’t had a weapon there’s no telling what would have happened,” Clark said. “I gave her a big hug. I told her how proud I was of her.”
Last American president to actually win a war has passed on
Former President George H.W. Bush, who fought in World War II as a naval aviator and as the 41st president from 1989 to 1993, led American forces to decisive military victories over major powers including Iraq and Panama, died peacefully on Friday night at his home in Houston. He was 94 years old.
Bush began his long and distinguished career in public service as a sailor in 1942, when he enlisted in the Navy to avenge Pearl Harbor. By 1943, he was the youngest Naval aviator, flying a Grumman Avenger torpedo bomber against the Empire of Japan. He flew 58 combat missions and was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for heroism after being shot down and rescued by a submarine.
“They wrote it up as heroism,” Bush later told his biographer of the medal, “but it wasn’t — it was just doing your job.” His other military decorations included three Air Medals and the WWII Victory Medal.
After graduating from Yale, making a fortune in Texas oil, and serving as a congressman, director of the CIA and vice president under Ronald Reagan, Bush ascended to the presidency as a Republican in 1989. Within months, he ordered U.S. forces to invade Panama. The invasion toppled a generic Latin America dictator who may or may not have worked for the CIA and was a forgettable success. But the move was widely praised at the time for giving the military a “soft ball” to help it get over its post-Vietnam malaise.
By the end of 1989, probably because the Commies thought Reagan was still president, the Soviet Union crumbled. Sensing decisive victory was at hand, Bush skillfully talked Russian leaders into signing a “strategic partnership agreement” in which Russia threw in the towel in the Cold War in exchange for American promises that NATO would not expand even “one inch eastward.” This landmark agreement paved the way for NATO to expand 500 miles eastward towards Moscow and incorporate a dozen post-Soviet states, securing peace in Europe for generations.
Bush won his second war in the Middle East in 1991 after Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. In response, Bush assembled an international military coalition to expel the Iraqi invaders from Kuwait and shake the Vietnam Syndrome once and for all. American forces and their allies charged across the desert and killed tens of thousands of Iraqis, liberating the small kingdom and keeping the price of oil reasonable. In the victorious aftermath of the war, American held its last unironic military parade.
Scholars agree that Bush’s victories enabled the military achievements of his successors. His actions to secure the contemporary rules-based international order and establish lasting American hegemony laid the foundation of contemporary American foreign policy.
“He is the reason we have enjoyed three decades of unfettered strategic raiding by U.S. forces in the Balkans, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and probably some places you couldn’t even find on a map,” said Luke Schumacher, an international relations scholar at the University of Chicago. “As we all know, those actions which have secured core American national interests. We would not be here without George H.W. Bush.”
President Donald Trump, among others, has praised Bush’s legacy.
“You know, he got shot down — and you know how I feel about people who got shot down — and we could have beat Japan sooner, but, in the end, he was a winner,” Trump told reporters at the White House. “And who doesn’t love winning? America loves winners.”
Bush began his long and distinguished career in public service as a sailor in 1942, when he enlisted in the Navy to avenge Pearl Harbor. By 1943, he was the youngest Naval aviator, flying a Grumman Avenger torpedo bomber against the Empire of Japan. He flew 58 combat missions and was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for heroism after being shot down and rescued by a submarine.
“They wrote it up as heroism,” Bush later told his biographer of the medal, “but it wasn’t — it was just doing your job.” His other military decorations included three Air Medals and the WWII Victory Medal.
After graduating from Yale, making a fortune in Texas oil, and serving as a congressman, director of the CIA and vice president under Ronald Reagan, Bush ascended to the presidency as a Republican in 1989. Within months, he ordered U.S. forces to invade Panama. The invasion toppled a generic Latin America dictator who may or may not have worked for the CIA and was a forgettable success. But the move was widely praised at the time for giving the military a “soft ball” to help it get over its post-Vietnam malaise.
By the end of 1989, probably because the Commies thought Reagan was still president, the Soviet Union crumbled. Sensing decisive victory was at hand, Bush skillfully talked Russian leaders into signing a “strategic partnership agreement” in which Russia threw in the towel in the Cold War in exchange for American promises that NATO would not expand even “one inch eastward.” This landmark agreement paved the way for NATO to expand 500 miles eastward towards Moscow and incorporate a dozen post-Soviet states, securing peace in Europe for generations.
Bush won his second war in the Middle East in 1991 after Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. In response, Bush assembled an international military coalition to expel the Iraqi invaders from Kuwait and shake the Vietnam Syndrome once and for all. American forces and their allies charged across the desert and killed tens of thousands of Iraqis, liberating the small kingdom and keeping the price of oil reasonable. In the victorious aftermath of the war, American held its last unironic military parade.
Scholars agree that Bush’s victories enabled the military achievements of his successors. His actions to secure the contemporary rules-based international order and establish lasting American hegemony laid the foundation of contemporary American foreign policy.
“He is the reason we have enjoyed three decades of unfettered strategic raiding by U.S. forces in the Balkans, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and probably some places you couldn’t even find on a map,” said Luke Schumacher, an international relations scholar at the University of Chicago. “As we all know, those actions which have secured core American national interests. We would not be here without George H.W. Bush.”
President Donald Trump, among others, has praised Bush’s legacy.
“You know, he got shot down — and you know how I feel about people who got shot down — and we could have beat Japan sooner, but, in the end, he was a winner,” Trump told reporters at the White House. “And who doesn’t love winning? America loves winners.”
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It's Official now!
My Heart goes out to the respectable Gun Owners of Washington State! But at least somebody up there has a couple of brass ones & a brain! Grumpy
REPUBLIC, Wash. – In this small town, near the Canadian border, Police Chief Loren Culp has become a celebrity after announcing he would not enforce a new sweeping gun control law passed by state voters in November.
“I felt it was such a blatant disregard for constitutional rights that I felt like I had no choice but to stand up for the people that I served, and that’s the citizens of Republic,” Culp said.
Initiative 1639 touches on many areas of gun control. It bars 18 to 20 year olds from buying semi-automatic rifles and makes it a potential felony if your gun ends up in the wrong hands.
The law also creates enhanced universal background checks, mandates firearms training before buying a semi-automatic weapon and defines an assault rifle as “any rifle which utilizes a portion of the energy of the firing cartridge to extract the fired cartridge case and chamber the next round, and which requires a separate pull of the trigger to fire each cartridge.”
Voters across Washington state approved the measure 59-41. But in Ferry County, which includes Republic, nearly three out of four voters opposed it. Republic Mayor Elbert Koontz is among them.
“Everybody in Republic has a gun,” said Koontz. “We don’t have a giant crime rate because nobody in their right mind would come to a house where people have guns and know how to use them.”
Chief Culp went even further than saying he would not enforce Initiative 1639, he also drafted an ordinance that would make Republic a gun rights sanctuary city. It would bar city employees from enforcing any gun law that infringes on the Second Amendment right to bear arms. When Culp announced his proposal to a recent city council meeting, most of the 250 residents attending gave him a standing ovation. It was a massive turnout, considering the city’s population is about 1,000 people.
But in Seattle, the reaction was very different.
“We are a society built on the rule of law,” said Renee Hopkins, CEO of Alliance for Gun Responsibility, which led the campaign for I-1639. “If we have leaders that are responsible for ensuring the laws are enforced, picking and choosing which laws they get to enforce, we have a huge problem.”
The 2nd Amendment Foundation, based in Bellevue, Wash. with 600,000 members nationwide, has joined the National Rifle Association in suing the state of Washington, seeking to overturn the new gun control measure. Its leader sees poetic justice in the political right getting into the sanctuary business, which up until now has been reserved for illegal immigrants.
“I guess it’s a little unprecedented,” said Alan Gottlieb, President of the 2nd Amendment Foundation. “We’re moving into some unchartered territory in terms of defense of rights. In politics, there’s always pushback. When you try to take people’s rights away from them, they rebel. And that’s what you see in Republic, Wash.”
The gun rights sanctuary city ordinance will be discussed at the next city council meeting. Councilmember Rachel Siracuse isn’t sure which way she’ll vote. She is concerned that passing the ordinance might cost Republic much-needed state funding, or lead to a costly lawsuit.
“I want to support our Second Amendment rights with all that I am, but yet I also want to protect our little city,” said Siracuse.
The city council could vote on the measure before the new state gun law goes into effect January 1, 2019. The state’s attorney general, Democrat Bob Ferguson, is a gun control supporter. His office said he would review the ordinance if it passes.
Words fail me on how to express my admiration for this guys guts and courage! Grumpy
