Some could label this post as, “An example of unintended consequences.” I chose the one above because it’s shorter and I really don’t believe the ‘Effect’ is unintended. What am I talking about? Baltimore…and by extension, all the large, liberal controlled cities.
There is a story out today about Baltimore. One headline laments the rising murder rate in Baltimore after the riots. The other headline for the same story reports the reluctness of the police to enter the riot areas.
Alarming Surge In Murders And Shootings In Baltimore
May 18, 2015 11:03 PM
BALTIMORE (WJZ) — City crime spike. A dramatic increase in violence in Baltimore. Dozens of shooting and murders in the last few weeks following the riots last month.
Christie Ileto reports some are concerned police are hesitant to crack down after six officers were charged in the death of Freddie Gray.
…
“People have said its because morale is down, or it’s because the officers were charged. We don’t know that,” said Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake.
While city leaders are working to curb the rash of bloodshed.
A Baltimore police officer who chose to remain anonymous says the Freddie Gray case impacted policing.
“If you want them to be proactive in patrolling and trying to catch people, I could see them not being interested in doing that,” the officer said.
William Scipio heads Sandtown’s Resident Action Committee–an area once at the heart of April’s unrest.
Ileto: “When was the last time you’ve personally seen an officer in Sandtown?”
Scipio: “Since the riots.”
Is anyone really surprised? Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake has tied the hands of the police. The residents know they can prevent arrest and charges by filing a complaint. Why should the street cops risk jobs and their lives when they know the city administration will not back them and will, instead, file criminal charges against them doing their jobs?
Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake should not be surprised. Cause. Effect.
***
Have you heard the term, “Wookie suiter.” The term started as a joke a number of years ago. It was intended to ridicule some self-serving, fringe “patriots” who saw conspiracies at every term.
It was a joke a decade ago. It isn’t today. Now, there are so-called conservative websites whose sole purpose is to promote conspiracy theories—and a growing number of people are buying their claims hook-line-and-sinker.
The current conspiracy du jour is the Army’s Jade Helm training exercise. Every year the Army conducts training in various states among the citizenry. The Army has done so for decades, at least since the 1970s.
On occasion, the Army has asked veterans and military retirees to help with the training; in some cases acting as the OpFor, or the Opposing Force. I remember one occasion when I was a member of Air Force MARS, some MARS members were asked to use their amateur radio HF mobile stations to simulate insurgent radio stations.
Idiots, like Alex Jones and his InfoWars website, has been stoking the coals since the Army announced Jade Helm. I see photos claiming to find Army vehicles hidden in the woods along with train-loads of trucks, MRAPs and Humvees on railroad sidings. Strangely, most of these photos are a decade or more old, some since the build-up for the first Gulf War. But, the conspiracy websites aren’t interested in the truth. It’s all about web hits and revenue from advertisers created by those web hits.
The conspiracy theorists overlook one thing. Jade Helm doesn’t start until August 15. the Army doesn’t have the resources to hide all those vehicles now. Their budget has been cut. Leaving the vehicles exposed for a couple of months is a guarantee they won’t start come August.
Another item these conspiracy theorists overlook is their belief the Army would obey orders to start rounding up American citizens without cause. Even today, with the politicized Army command structure, few officers would obey such orders.
Obama, Distrust, and the Armed Forces
By Russ Vaughn, May 19, 2015
I recently wrote a piece here about the Jade Helm military operations scheduled to be conducted across large areas of the U.S. this summer. A few irresponsible conservative web sites are using these routine military training activities to frighten citizens in the selected areas into believing the federal government is planning an armed takeover of their locales. I warned in that previous article that neither the training operations nor the alarmed citizenry are anything new; the U.S. Army has conducted such training for decades and there has always been some civil protest. I made jumps into civilian areas and ran ops back in the 1960’s. But this time, through the wide reach of the Internet, the fear factor among the citizenry has been driven through the roof.
I’m a conservative, registered Republican who has been a contributor of conservative themed articles here at American Thinker for a decade. I’m also a ground combat veteran of Vietnam who spent much of his post-college career marketing to the military, a job that took me to Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine installations all across the country and overseas. I have shared many meals and happy hours with enlisted personnel and officers, during which many frank, forthright discussions were held regarding politics and the political leadership of the times.
Not once in almost five decades of my association with the military have I heard any serving member or veteran agree that he would take up arms against fellow Americans to impose the political will of a sitting president. Conversely, I’ve heard many times that an order to do so would be considered unlawful and refusable. When the Jade Helm article was cross-posted at my favorite soldiers’ blog, This Ain’t Hell, I was gratified to see that the majority of comments there, almost all from still-serving service members or veterans, validated that belief.
That was in stark contrast to the reaction here at American Thinker. Comments here were almost universally negative with my denial that the operation was a federal takeover of Texas and Utah by Obama being heavily ridiculed. Even readers who normally post supportive comments on my writings, sometimes even thanking me for stating their views, called me a naïve fool and a dupe of the Obama administration. It was a bit of a downer until those military comments began coming in later at the soldier’s blog, reaffirming my faith in my fellow warriors. Clearly, distrust of Obama is very strong on both sites; the difference being the troops trust our troops.
One of the evidentiary cudgels that was used on me here at AT was the militarization of local and state level police departments in recent years and how those forces, using military weapons would join with the military forces of Jade Helm to suppress, oppress, even imprison dissenters in Texas and Utah. I found that ironic in that I have written articles here in the past critical of this heavy arming of civilian law enforcement. On that topic, the primarily civilian readership here at AT and the military followers of TAH were in agreement that this practice needs to be curtailed. It was only some law enforcement officers at both sites who accused me of ignorance or treachery and even among that cohort, some LEO’s agreed with my premise.
Today the Obama administration, in a move no doubt attributable to the increasing level of conflict between law enforcement and the black community, announced it will cease supplying certain surplus military weaponry, such as tracked armored vehicles, weaponized aircraft and grenade launchers among numerous other items including, for suspect reasons, bayonets. Some surplus weaponry already distributed may be recalled and future use of military weaponry may be restricted by federal guidelines. Of course, the administration is hiding behind the skirts of a federal commission that recommended these changes in federal policy after a lengthy study that was initiated after the Ferguson incident.
The column continues on the American Thinker website. It thoroughly debunks the conspiracy theorists. But there will always be that segment who would rather believe in myths than realities. I call them the Tin-Foil Hat Brigade.
Tuesday night, the 
Yesterday, 
Bundy sat across from a reporter for the NYT, the most vicious, calculating, untrustworthy, and dishonest nest of vipers in the entire U.S. media network, and talked straight to him about matters of import and controversy, under the impression that he would understand and transmit his thoughts the way that he actually expressed them.
A parting note.