Random News and Notes 5 August

On this Date:

• 1762- Russia, Prussia and Austria sign a treaty agreeing on the partition of Poland.
• 1763 – Colonel Henry Bouquet decisively defeats the Indians at the Battle of Bushy Run in Pennsylvania during Pontiac‘s rebellion.
• 1815 – A peace treaty with Tripoli–which follows treaties with Algeria and Tunis–brings an end to the Barbary Wars.
• 1858 – The first transatlantic cable is completed.
• 1861 – Congress adopts the nation’s first income tax to finance the Civil War.
• 1864 – The Union Navy captures Mobile Bay in Alabama.
• 1892 – Harriet Tubman receives a pension from Congress for her work as a nurse, spy and scout during the Civil War.
• 1914 – The first electric traffic signal lights are installed in Cleveland, Ohio.
• 1914 – The British Expeditionary Force mobilizes for World War I.
• 1914 – The German assault on Liege Belgium begins.
• 1915 – The Austro-German Army takes Warsaw, in present-day Poland, on the Eastern Front.
• 1916 – The British navy defeats the Ottomans at the naval battle off Port Said, Egypt.
• 1921 – Mustafa Kemal Ataturk is appointed virtual ruler of the Ottoman Empire. He leads the transition of the Ottoman Empire into a secular state called Turkey.
• 1926 – Illusionist Harry Houdini escapes an underwater coffin after 91 minutes.
• 1941 – The German army completes taking 410,000 Russian prisoners in the Uman and Smolensk pockets in the Soviet Union.
• 1951 – The United Nations Command suspends armistice talks with the North Koreans when armed troops are spotted in neutral areas.
• 1962 – Actress Marilyn Monroe dies under mysterious circumstances.
• 1963 – The nuclear test ban treaty between the US, Great Britain and Soviet Union is signed. The treaty prohibits the testing of nuclear weapons in outer space, underwater, or in the atmosphere.
• 1964 – President Lyndon Johnson begins bombing North Vietnam in retaliation for the Gulf of Tonkin incident and asks Congress to go to war against North Vietnam.
• 1965 – CBS news shows pictures of men from the First Battalion, Ninth Marines setting fire to huts in the village of Cam Na, six miles west of Da Nang.
• 1981 – President Reagan fires 11,500 striking air traffic controllers.

We start the news with some primary election results. 5 states held primaries yesterday; Michigan, Missouri, Kansas, Virginia and Washington. There were a couple of important results. In Michigan, and this one hurts for content reasons, Indian (dot not feather) Shri Thanedar lost his primary to challenger Donavan McKinney.

Also in Michigan, DSA commie Abdul El Sayed is claiming victory over ‘moderate’ Haley Stevens. This one is not official and is very close. Whoever wins will face Mike Rogers in the general.

In another loss that will bother me for content reasons, squad member Cori Bush – who lost her Congressional seat to Westley Bell – lost to him again last night in the race for Missouri’s 1st CD. Maybe she’ll go away for good now.

In more election related news, Republican Rep. Chuck Edwards (NC-11) announced early Wednesday that he is withdrawing from his reelection campaign. Edwards was the subject of a House ethics probe for sexually harassing staff. The committee recommended censure for the two term Rep.

Edwards was struggling to be competitive with his Dem challenger before the report.

This one is . . .

Mount Vernon is a small – ~70,000 residents – city in Westchester county NY, just to the north of NYC. A police official from Mount Vernon Jennifer Lackard, was arrested early Tuesday at her Bronx home alongside her 20-year-old son Chase after a June 29 gang-related shooting near East 162nd Street and Grand Avenue. Seems she was the getaway driver.

Court documents show texts between them coordinating the getaway, with her husband James driving beforehand and Jennifer taking over to speed back home; no one was hurt in the incident captured partly on surveillance. Both she and Chase face charges like attempted murder and gun possession. Chase has a history of police encounters, including being shot in 2024 and a prior gang incident. The Mount Vernon PD fired her tout suite.

All eight Flock license plate reader cameras in Winona, Minnesota, were cut down and stolen between July 29 and August 1, 2026, by sawing poles at the base. For those who don’t know, Flock cameras are solar-powered ALPR (automated license plate recognition) systems that scan and track vehicle plates in real time. They can be used to track stolen cars and you doing nothing in particular.

Anyway, I have some issues with these cameras. They are – at least in this man’s opinion – an unconstitutional privacy intrusion. Under no circumstances should the government be able to track my location in real time without a judicial order, and that is exactly what Flock cameras do. Worse, they store that data and use it to build a profile on you.

Oh, and in case I wasn’t clear, well done that man.

An Illegal alien from Jordan was arrested in Mokena Illinois a couple of days ago. Police arrested 31-year-old Hamed M. Alsaidi after finding eight Molotov cocktails and a hand-drawn map referencing the Orland Park Prayer Center and a Metra train station in his backpack.

Alsaidi, an inadmissible alien who entered the U.S. illegally in March 2024, had given officers a false name and faces charges of felony unlawful weapon possession and misdemeanor obstruction. A Will County judge released him pretrial under the SAFE-T Act with GPS monitoring.

We do not have to live like this.