Wokappopotamus Loses

In case you haven't heard the wonderful news, Oberlin College is finally ponying up the now $36.59 million dollar judgment to Gibson's Bakery.

"But what's with the headline, Pauli? What the hell are you talking about?"

I got the nickname Wokappopotamus from this Rate My Professor's page for Meredith Raimondo. She is really the big, big loser of the moment, whether she would admit it or not. The nickname is from an obviously fake review, but oh well.

Meredith Raimondo is the former Vice President and Dean of Student Affairs at Oberlin who distributed flyers condemning Gibson's Bakery as a "RACIST establishment with a LONG ACCOUNT of RACIAL PROFILING and DISCRIMINATION".

It was Meredith Raimondo who egged on students to slander and libel Gibson's with a bullhorn.

It was Meredith Raimondo who did all these things in her official capacity as a representative of Oberlin College, causing all the pain and suffering of the bakery owners and eventually causing the original judgment of $32 million to be leveled in the original 2019 case, and my guess is that it was Meredith Raimondo whose shear insolence and intransigence led to refusal to pay and appeals which increased the price tag by over $4.5 million.

There was never any evidence provided for this "long account of racial discrimination". And this was all occasioned on a refusal to admit that some kids are bad and sometimes they actually steal stuff.

It is highly unlikely that this will hurt Oberlin College financially that much which has an endowment of over $1 billion. But it is a huge victory for Truth, because now supporters of the Truth can point to this court victory and say "Look --we can still win in court." It is too bad it has to come to this, but here we are.

I would love to hear what certain people at Oberlin say about Meredith Raimondo behind closed doors. She basically came in and stood behind an obvious lie, and then she puts the school's name on the lie, and then she lied long-form, in court and she LOST the college $36+ million. What did it gain or would it have gained the school if the judge had ruled that no slander or libel occurred? I can only think of one thing, and that is respect among other liars, mostly of the liberal persuasion.

The award for my favorite summation of this hard-fought victory goes to Daniel Suhr in his article:

When universities cross that line to actively back such protests, they have to own the results. Responsible adults in charge of billion-dollar institutions should not lightly accuse beloved small businesses of racism because their spoiled students feel entitled to shoplift scot-free.

Amen, buddy.

Ferguson Witness Dorian Johnson Lied

It's OK to lie about what happened at a crime scene because, you know, white people. They're scum; down with 'em! If your lie ends up starting the avalanche whereby your entire town is destroyed... oh well, I guess.

Riots broke out in Missouri this past week in large part based on the eyewitness testimony of Dorian Johnson, who saw his friend Michael Brown shot and killed by local police. According to USA Today, Johnson claims Brown was fleeing and the officer shot him in the back.

According to Johnson, the officer pursued Brown and fired another shot. which struck Brown in the back. He said Brown turned and faced the officer with his hands raised.

However, this testimony contradicts the autopsy report by New York City’s former chief medical examiner, Dr. Michael Baden. Dr. Baden told The New York Times the autopsy found that Brown was struck 6 times — four shots in the right arms and two in the head. The final bullet hit Brown in the top of the head indicating his head was bent forward.

Baden said, “It can be because he’s giving up, or because he’s charging forward at the officer.”

If you watch the entire USA Today video you see that he isn't just lying, but he's crafted an entirely different story about the events than what most likely happened. Did the policeman really use the F word? Doubtful. Also you have to notice the crocodile tears near the end of the clip. I call fake. This Dorian Johnson character absolutely failed his audition.

Ferguson Protest Leader Has Car Stolen During “F*ck the Police” Rally

Too, too funny.

Elizabeth Vega is one of the Ferguson protest leaders. She protested at sports venues and attempted a banner drop. She co-led the St Louis Symphony interruption, was arrested at the pumpkin smashing, yelled at the St Louis Post Dispatch protest, and helped block traffic with her freakshow in Clayton yesterday.

While yelling “F*ck the Police!” apparently her car got stolen.
Do you think she’ll file a police report requesting they help her now?

Her tweets expressing anger that Nixon called a state of emergency in part due to the rising crime and criminal elements associated with the protests are interspersed with others decrying the car theft.

No justice? Well at least you get poetic justice.

It was probably a white person who did this. I mean, most of the pictures on the Grand Theft Auto game are of white people.

David French explains what reasonable response should mean

David French explains why wiping out Hamas would be perfectly reasonable for Israel to do.

When an enemy force consistently and deliberately does all that it can to terrorize and kill as many of your citizens as possible, with no regard for the difference between military and civilian targets, the “reasonable” thing to do is obliterate that enemy. Destroy it. There is nothing unreasonable about self-defense, and there is nothing unreasonable about destroying an armed enemy force. In fact, our own military has a long and proud history of destroying enemy armed forces, and our nation and the world tend to achieve far better outcomes when our military is given the free hand to do the truly reasonable thing: defeat the enemy.

But since we’re defining “reasonable,” let’s also define “unreasonable.”

It is unreasonable to expect Israel to exercise more restraint than the United States would under similar circumstances. It is unreasonable to demand that Israel abide by made-up rules of “proportionality” that we’ve rightly rejected for our own armed forces. It is unreasonable to assume that the so-called “honest broker” role requires this nation to blind itself to truth and violate its own laws by funneling hundreds of millions of dollars per year to a terrorist “unity” government.

The world will never be free of violence, but a world with no Hamas would be better than a world with Hamas. That's for sure.

I've always thought the Israelis are far too nice to people who behave like wild animals.

H/T ACLJ.

Maybe I'll try to go get a picture

Judge Pinkey Carr strikes again.

A man who threatened police was expected to hold a sign calling himself an "idiot" as part of his sentence today, but Richard Dameron, 58, did not show up at the scheduled time of 7 a.m.

Dameron was found guilty of making threatening 911 calls to Cleveland Police. In addition to a 90-day jail sentence, Dameron was sentenced to hold up a sign of apology across the street from the Second District Cleveland Police station for three hours beginning Monday morning.

The sign was to reportedly read: "I apologize to Officer Simone, his family, all law enforcement officers and Ms. Adkins for threatening to kill them. I was being an idiot and it will never happen again."

I like her idea. It sort of hearkens back to the Order of Penitents in the Early Church who I've heard were sometimes required to hold a sign relating the nature of any public sins. But that wasn't on the Wikipedia page.

Wait... here's a picture of the idiot sign.



I hope Pinkey is only the Judge's nickname and not the result of her parents being Happy Days fans.

Intention: Stop the Aggressor

I believe that, in general, all men with families should own a firearm and learn how to use it properly as a part of a comprehensive defense strategy against aggressors. I say "in general" because there people who are so uncomfortable with the concept of a firearm due to misinformation and propaganda that they can be excused from this duty out of ignorance. But I also personally feel the weight of the duty to combat this ignorance.

I also believe that Catholics should be in the forefront of the defense of the right to bear arms in our country. Based on constant teaching and summarized in the following catechism points, the Church has always upheld the right to the use of means such as firearms for legitimate self-defense.

2263 The legitimate defense of persons and societies is not an exception to the prohibition against the murder of the innocent that constitutes intentional killing. “The act of self-defense can have a double effect: the preservation of one’s own life; and the killing of the aggressor. . . . The one is intended, the other is not.”

2264 Love toward oneself remains a fundamental principle of morality. Therefore it is legitimate to insist on respect for one’s own right to life. Someone who defends his life is not guilty of murder even if he is forced to deal his aggressor a lethal blow.

If a man in self-defense uses more than necessary violence, it will be unlawful: whereas if he repels force with moderation, his defense will be lawful. . . . Nor is it necessary for salvation that a man omit the act of moderate self-defense to avoid killing the other man, since one is bound to take more care of one’s own life than of another’s.

2265 Legitimate defense can be not only a right but a grave duty for one who is responsible for the lives of others. The defense of the common good requires that an unjust aggressor be rendered unable to cause harm. For this reason, those who legitimately hold authority also have the right to use arms to repel aggressors against the civil community entrusted to their responsibility.

The description of the killing of the aggressor not being intended is worthy to note, because it exactly ties in to a point I heard reiterated often in one of the self-defense courses I took. The instructor started with a trick question "Do you shoot to kill or to wound?" The answer is "neither—you shoot to stop."

To the ignorant, shooting to stop rather than to kill might sound like a distinction without a difference. This is because the "knowledge" most people have about fire-fights is garnered from film dramatizations on television or in movies. Someone shot by one round from a high-powered rifle often flies back 5 feet which completely goes against real-life experience, not to mention several dozen or so laws of physics. Someone running toward you can be hit in the chest several times and yet still have enough oxygen in his brain to reach you and slit your throat with a credit card shiv. This is why emptying a magazine into an attacker to stop him is not considered excessive but necessary.

I could go off on this tangent even more, but let it suffice to ask if you really think that the "good guy" is always a better shot in real like like he is in the movies. My point is to show how practicing self-defense with a firearm, as it is presented by the NRA and other groups, lines up with the classic double-effect principle espoused by the Catholic Church. Death is the second, unintended effect, and learning to shoot accurately should never be equated with becoming a killer.

Any prudential argument against personal gun ownership must provide an alternative method for stopping a criminal aggressor. To date, I haven't really heard one that doesn't smack of fantasy and wishful thinking. A politically liberal Catholic friend of mine once said to me "I'm for gun control. People should rely more on their guardian angels for protection." Well, his major premise—we should rely on the protection of the angels—is correct. But I have seven dependents who all have guardian angels. How does anyone know they didn't all team up and make sure their pater familias possessed the means and the will to use lethal force to defend them from criminal aggressors? Spiritual beings like angels—as well as God himself—normally rely on human agency. You might as well argue that a man could either work for a living or trust God to provide food on the table. Obviously the angels-only strategy is based on an either-or fallacy which religious people routinely dismiss.

The only other alternative means I can think of have to do with martial arts or non-lethal weapons. These are simply not plausible for most people and would require almost a devotion to techniques that would be prohibitive for men raising a family. Guns level the playing field in a remarkable way.

My intention of writing this post is to counter the troubling statistic that 62 percent of Catholics favor more gun control measures, the highest among religious groups. The problem is, I fear, more ignorance; broadly put I support regulations dealing with guns, e.g., felons should not be able to buy weapons, etc. But looking at the actual Feinstein proposals which require destroying weapons upon the death of the owner and you can see that confiscation is the end goal. There is no way these measures can be called sensible, and it is frightening that anyone is proposing them and calling upon religious support for them.

I plan to write many more posts here on this topic of America's First Freedom. I'm not worried that people may see this as "gun-nuttery" or obsession. I'll preemptively cop the Limbaugh plea that I'm just trying to be equal time on this. The real nuts in this "debate" are those who know that stricter gun control laws will not prevent violence but try to pass them anyway. I hope none of the US Bishops fall into this category but are only being utopian and impractical. The truth is I am a total fanatic about my family, and about all other fathers and their families. So I'm going to tag all these posts with the tag Defending Your Family. Because that is what it is really all about.

We are assuredly not alone in this philosophical struggle. Here are a few more good reads on the topic with plenty more to come:

Jimmy Akin: The Right To Keep and Bear Arms

Matt Abbott: Catholics and Gun Ownership

Cruel and Unusual? Or Right and Just?

We report. 

A woman who was caught on camera passing a Cleveland school bus on the sidewalk, while the bus was loading and unloading kids, was ordered by a judge to stand at the intersection and wear an "idiot" sign.

Shena Hardin, 32, appeared in Cleveland Municipal court Monday after being cited for driving along the sidewalk to avoid a school bus.

The judge sentenced Hardin to pay $250 in court costs and suspended her license for 30 days and more.

Hardin must also stand at the intersection of E. 38th Street and Payne Avenue wearing a sign next Tuesday and Wednesday that says "Only an idiot drives on the sidewalk to avoid a school bus." She has been ordered to wear the sign from 7:45 a.m. to 8:45 a.m. both days.

You decide.

Note that this was not a one-time occurrence. Amazing.