https://twitter.com/DailyCaller/status/1288144511433150464
https://spectator.us/lunacy-largely-peaceful-protest-riots-orwell/
The great conundrum facing the anti-American left at the moment is how to react to the violent protest ripping up various Democratic-run cities. What is the preferred narrative? The two main choices are 1) it’s all peaceful protest, the ‘right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances’? or 2) let ’er rip: we’re out there destroying stuff and hurting people because the country’s falling apart and the sooner the better. Just so, a contributor to the Oregonian, announcing his fears of an impending ‘anti-democratic, racist police state’, wondered whether he would find ‘the courage to resist racism and fascism’, by which I suspect he means a free, open, and democratic election in which a candidate he does not favor has the indelicacy to win.
For it should go without saying that the overriding criterion for choosing which narrative to plug is this: which story will do the most damage to Donald Trump and Republican prospects in the November election?
By and large the media has opted for option one, reasoning that most people, taking note of the Democratic character of all the most serious sites of mayhem, might forget to blame Donald Trump for the rampaging fiends tearing up our cities and shooting toddlers, policemen, stray pedestrians and each other.
https://spectator.us/jaccuse-smear-john-kass-chicago-tribune-george-soros/
Last week, the Chicago Tribune’s most prominent writer, John Kass, wrote a column decrying the rise in urban violence. Its compelling title: ‘Something grows in the big cities run by Democrats: an overwhelming sense of lawlessness.’
In today’s woke world, it is risky to speak such hard truths about gang shootings, unprosecuted shoplifting, looting, carjackings and more. This rising lawlessness is often cloaked in the language of protest, racial justice and income equality. Speaking out against it runs real risks. You might be doxxed, your home tagged with graffiti, or your family threatened. If you are a columnist, like John Kass, you might face ostracism from left-wing colleagues, attacks by the reporters’ union, and concessions to the mob by your paper’s editor, Colin McMahon.
The dispute began when the union representing Tribune writers (of which Kass is not a member) decided to go after him, full-bore. Their false charge was…wait for it…Kass’s column was anti-Semitic. Why? Because Kass noted that a major accelerant of urban violence has been the weak response by public officials, especially state and local prosecutors. Some of those prosecutors won office as part of a progressive political movement, specifically focused on winning control of prosecutors’ offices. That quiet movement had met with a lot of electoral success. One of its major supporters and funders is George Soros. Soros’s family background is Jewish.
https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/more-praise-for-mike-gonzalezs-the-plot-to-change-america/
This penetrating and insightful book — with the secondary title, “How Identity Politics Is Dividing the Land of the Free” — has already been favorably reviewed by us here. It also features a nice blurb from Rich Lowry (“an incisive, unsparing treatment of identity politics”), as well as from Michael Barone and Ben Shapiro. So it hardly needs my endorsement. But the publication date is this week, and I’d like to add briefly my enthusiastic two cents.
As the title of the earlier NR review indicates, the book’s principal theme is identifying “The Intellectual Roots of Today’s Identity Politics.” A second strong theme — as you would expect from the author, a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation and a Cuban emigre to boot — is a critique of the results of this Left-rooted sickness. And Mr. Gonzalez’s third theme is prescriptive: He aims to answer the question, posed in a different context over 100 years ago by a rather influential leftist, “What is to be done?” As the author succinctly puts it:
To achieve that end [i.e., to defeat the plot to change America], the most urgent tasks are to expose myths, reveal what really happened, explain why it is urgent to change course, and offer a strategy to do so. Though we should not fool ourselves into thinking it will be easy to eliminate identity politics, we should not overthink it, either. Identity politics relies on the creation of groups, and then on giving people incentives to adhere to them. If we eliminate group making and the entitlements, we can get rid of identity politics. Explaining all this is this book’s main goal.
That’s from the introduction, by the way; if you’re able to read that (and the conclusion) online, you should, since it will persuade you better than anything I can write to read the rest of the book.
https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/07/democrats-make-mockery-of-barr-hearing/
Barr brings out the worst in them, which is saying something.
If it’s a “hearing,” Bill Barr asked with an irked tongue in cheek, “aren’t I the one who’s supposed to be heard?”
His frustration was more than justified. Judiciary Committee chairman Jerry Nadler (D., N.Y.) and the other Democrats who control the House demanded for months that Barr come to a “hearing” and “testify.” But of course, it wasn’t anything like an actual hearing, and they didn’t want him to testify — as in actually answer questions. The session was a coveted election-year opportunity for Democrats to berate the attorney general of the United States in five-minute installments, accusing Barr of corruption, perjury, violating his oath, betraying the Constitution — at one point, even of killing thousands of COVID-19 victims (apparently, by being attorney general during a pandemic).
Especially at the beginning of the hearing, Barr easily parried the hostile questions — soliloquies with question-marks at the end. He picked apart their misstatements and disingenuous premises, and answered with aplomb. Democrats thus dropped the threadbare pretense that this was a hearing. In the main, the rest of the afternoon was devoted to raging, mock-anguished perorations about how Trump is a dictator and how Barr is helping him destroy our democracy.
These were punctuated by the occasional petulant demand that Barr answer “yes or no” a question that was either loaded or incoherent. When Barr would begin to answer, there would be foot-stomping, indignant, “I’m reclaiming my time” interruptions, claims that there was no question pending (usually after a question had just been posed), and then more Democrat filibustering about how the American people could clearly see that Barr was afraid to answer their questions . . . that they wouldn’t let him answer.
It was an embarrassing spectacle.
https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/attorney-general-william-barr-excellent-witness-hostile-hearing/
The Barr hearing wasn’t very edifying, in large part because Democrats were utterly committed to keeping him from saying anything. One of them would make a sermonettte, pause to ask Barr a hostile question, and then angrily interrupt him when he started to answer, accusing him of taking up valuable time. Then, the sermonette would start up again.
One thing was definitely established, though — Democrats fervently believe that federal officers are attacking peaceful protesters in Portland.
Here is a typical riff from Representative Pramila Jayapal complaining that federal officers weren’t called in to crack down on anti-Whitmer protesters in Michigan:
Jayapal paints a highly misleading picture of the Michigan protesters, but, whatever you think of them, they weren’t attacking federal property or federal officers — the rioters in Portland are.
In general, Barr is an excellent witness. He’s sober, usually doesn’t let his irritation show (although he will spin his pen faster), never says more than he has to, and knows more than anyone else in the room.
It’s a tribute to how good he is that Democrats were desperate never to get caught up in a genuine back-and-forth with him
https://amgreatness.com/2020/07/27/brookings-institution-flush-with-qatari-cash-nevertrump-donors/
Accepting millions from a state sponsor of terrorism, foisting one of the biggest frauds in history on the American people, and acting as a laundering agent of sorts for Democratic political contributions disguised as policy grants isn’t a good look for such an esteemed institution.
One would be hard-pressed to name a more influential think tank than the Brookings Institution. The Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit routinely ranks at the top of the list of the best think tanks in the world; Brookings scholars produce a steady flow of reports, symposiums, and news releases that sway the conversation on any number of issues ranging from domestic and economic policy to foreign affairs.
Brookings is home to lots of Beltway power players: Ben Bernanke and Janet Yellen, former chairmen of the Federal Reserve, are Brookings fellows. Top officials from both Republican and Democrat presidential administrations lend political heft to the organization.
From 2002 until 2017, the organization’s president was Strobe Talbott. He’s a longtime BFF of Bill Clinton; they met in the 1970s at Oxford University and have been tight ever since. Talbott was a top aide to both President Bill Clinton and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Talbott, who translated Nikita Khrushchev’s memoirs 50 years ago, is widely considered an expert on Russia. According to a 1994 Washington Post profile, Talbott’s dream job was ambassador to Moscow. Instead, he advised Clinton on Russia policy as his deputy secretary of state.
But Talbott’s interest in all things Russian is facing new scrutiny that threatens to tarnish Brookings’ stellar reputation—its role in perpetuating the Trump-Russia collusion hoax. As I wrote last week, the Lawfare blog, a project of Brookings, was a repository of collusion propaganda for nearly three years.
Brookings-based fellows working at Lawfare were the media’s go-to legal “experts” to legitimize the concocted crime; the outlet manipulated much of the news coverage on collusion by pumping out primers and guidance on how to report collusion events from Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s appointment to his final report.
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16279/iran-mullahs-excited
The ruling mullahs of Iran are excited. They are convinced that a new US president, like his previous boss, former President Barack Obama, will throw them the lifeline so badly needed for their survival, their hold on power, and their ability to advance their nuclear and other imperialist plans — both in Venezuela against the United States, and in the Middle East.
Iran’s economic conditions have become so dire that even some officials are warning of possible revolt and the collapse of the Islamic Republic.
It is important to note that without Iran’s financial and military assistance, many militia and terror groups could not survive. As Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, admitted, “… Hezbollah’s budget, its income, its expenses, everything it eats and drinks, its weapons and rockets, are from the Islamic Republic of Iran.”
One of the best gifts that the ruling mullahs of Iran can receive is if Joe Biden, former Vice-President, becomes president of the United States.
https://amgreatness.com/2020/07/27/chicago-mayor-orders-removal-of-christopher-columbus-statues-in-the-city/
Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot (D-Ill.) has ordered the removal of several statues of iconic explorer Christopher Columbus, after violent protests at the monuments have seen police attacked by Antifa and Black Lives Matter terrorists, as reported by the Chicago Tribune.
Following the outbreaks of violence, Lightfoot ordered city workers to remove the Columbus statues located in Grant Park and Arrigo Park, with both memorials coming down early Friday morning, in the dead of night.
Lightfoot attempted to justify the city-sanctioned iconoclasm with a statement, claiming that the move was made “in response to demonstrations that became unsafe for both protesters and police…this step is an effort to protect public safety and to preserve a safe space for an inclusive and democratic public dialogue about our city’s symbols.”
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/07/defunding_school_police.
Craziness now exits on an industrial scale but among all foolish ideas, none is stupider than trying to defund police departments, particularly where poor people, disproportionately African Americans, depend on policing. Yet, just when it seems that this insanity cannot get worse, it does, and the latest madness concerns extending defunding demands to include school police. The Klan’s Imperial Wizard must be thrilled by a policy that will further undermine the education of African Americans. Do anti-cop crusaders honestly embrace the Rousseauian fantasy that children naturally soak up knowledge if only left on their own?
This defunding effort is not as preposterous as it might initially appear. Milwaukee schools have already terminated their relationships with the city’s police department while Portland. OR schools removed armed police officers from schools. Denver, Co has likewise banned police from its schools, a policy also enacted by Minneapolis and St. Paul, MN. The LA school district cut $25 million in policing funds from its budget while in Berkeley the cut was 50%. Declining municipal budgets may encourage yet more reductions especially if justified by “racial justice.”
To understand this crusade, consider an article in Colorlines, a radical black magazine. “Black and Brown Students Are Organizing to Remove Police From Their Schools” outlines the campaign and notes this to be an ongoing quest. To quote:
Law enforcement has had a brief yet abusive relationship with American public schools, spurring the terrorization of Black and Brown students and increased interaction with law enforcement at a young age. The rationale behind police in schools has always been for the “safety” of children. Yet, since police have shown up, the school to prison pipeline has strengthened, putting young children into the legal system and criminalizing their oftentimes normal behavior. (Italics added)
In resistance, youth and student organizers have taken to school board meetings and the streets to fight for the removal of police from schools in line with the national call to defund the police,,,
In other words, no rational reason exists for this policing since, allegedly, African Americans behave themselves, so policing just unfairly criminalizes innocent people of color, an argument identical to what Black Lives Matter activists insist — inherently racist cops routinely murder blameless blacks.
