'Come here!': the man who chased away the Christchurch shooter

UK Guardian



"When the gunman advanced toward the mosque, killing those in his path, Abdul Aziz did not hide. Instead, he picked up the first thing he could find, a credit card scanning machine, and ran outside screaming: “Come here!”

"Aziz, 48, has been called a hero for likely preventing more deaths during Friday prayers at the Linwood mosque in Christchurch after scaring the gunman off.

"But Aziz, whose four sons and dozens of others remained in the mosque while he faced off with the gunman, said he believed it was what anyone would have done.

"The gunman killed 50 people after attacking two mosques in the deadliest mass shooting in New Zealand’s modern history.

Christchurch shooting: Ardern says 'manifesto' sent to office minutes before massacre

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"The gunman is believed to have killed at least 41 people at the Al Noor mosque before driving about 5km (3 miles) across town and attacking the Linwood mosque, where he killed seven more people. One person died later in a hospital, and police announced Sunday that a 50th body had been found.

"Tarrant, 28, has been charged with one count of murder in the killings. Police said it was likely more charges would follow.

"Latef Alabi, the Linwood mosque’s acting imam, said he believed the death toll would have been far higher if it had not been for Aziz’s actions." . . .

Victims of the NZ mosque massacre

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It Wasn’t Comey’s Decision to Exonerate Hillary – It Was Obama’s

As we also now know – but as Obama knew at the time – the president himself had communicated with Clinton over her non-secure, private communications system, using an alias. The Obama administration refused to disclose these several e-mail exchanges because they undoubtedly involve classified conversations between the president and his secretary of state. It would not have been possible to prosecute Mrs. Clinton for mishandling classified information without its being clear that President Obama had engaged in the same conduct. The administration was never, ever going to allow that to happen.

Earl of Taint

Andrew C. McCarthy  "The thing to understand, what has always been the most important thing to understand, is that Jim Comey was out in front, but he was not calling the shots.

On the right, the commentariat is in full-throttle outrage over the revelation that former FBI Director Comey began drafting his statement exonerating Hillary Clinton in April 2016 – more than two months before he delivered the statement at his now famous July 5 press conference.

"The news appears in a letter written to new FBI Director Christopher Wray by two senior Senate Judiciary Committee Republicans, Chairman Chuck Grassley and Senator Lindsey Graham. Pundits and the Trump administration are shrieking because this indicates the decision to give the Democrats’ nominee a pass was clearly made long before the investigation was over, and even long before key witnesses, including Clinton herself, were interviewed.

"It shows, they cry, that the fix was in!

"News Flash: This is not news.

"Let’s think about what else was going on in April 2016. I’ve written about it a number of times over the last year-plus, such as in a column a few months back:

On April 10, 2016, President Obama publicly stated that Hillary Clinton had shown “carelessness” in using a private e-mail server to handle classified information, but he insisted that she had not intended to endanger national security (which is not an element of the [criminal statutes relevant to her e-mail scandal]). The president acknowledged that classified information had been transmitted via Secretary Clinton’s server, but he suggested that, in the greater scheme of things, its importance had been vastly overstated.

A Lesson in Socialism for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

American Spectator

A fundamental underpinning of any economy is a certain scarcity. Here is why:

American Thinker  "Newly elected congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez now appears ubiquitously in the news.  At the end of February, she made headlines in a dispute with Ivanka Trump.

"Ocasio-Cortez's professional persona is a Millennial socialist who openly advocates for socialist policies.  One of these socialist policies concerns the notion of a guaranteed income and jobs for all.  She says:

It's wrong that a vast majority of the country doesn't make a living wage.  I think it's wrong that you can work 100 hours and not feed your kids.  I think it's wrong that corporations like Walmart and Amazon can get paid by the government, essentially experience a wealth transfer from the public, for paying people less than a minimum wage.

. . . 
 . . . "Ultimately, labor, tragedy, and scarcity are the terms of our existence.  So long as socialists refuse to accept that it is the common doom of man that we must labor, socialism will always fail.

We can never eradicate scarcity; we must accept it.  We can never change the human condition to utopian; we must accept its tragic nature.  We can never invalidate Original Sin and its punishment, labor; we must accept that every attempt to cure it will only introduce additional miseries than had we accepted its terms from the beginning.

"The next time someone advocates a living wage, guaranteed jobs, and any other socialist ideals, remember Kipling's dire warning:

And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!

References

Burke, E. (1797). Letters on a regicide peace. Indianapolis, IN: The Liberty Fund.

Melzer, A. (1990). The natural goodness of men: On the system of Rousseau's thought. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago.