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Ruth King

Bullets and Baseball on the Fourth of July Remembering two Independence Days a generation apart, when shots rang out at two New York stadiums. Clark Whelton

https://www.city-journal.org/html/bullets-and-baseball-fourth-july-16005.html

On Tuesday, July 4, 1950, a New York Giants baseball fan named Bernard “Barney” Doyle was sitting in the grandstands at the Polo Grounds in uptown Manhattan, waiting for a Giants–Dodgers doubleheader to begin. Doyle, a 53-year-old ship’s carpenter and freight worker from New Jersey, had attended early mass that morning to give himself plenty of time for the drive into the city. The showdown between crosstown rivals was sure to be a sellout.

Seated next to Doyle, who had earned a niche in sports history managing the early career of heavyweight boxing champ James J. “Cinderella Man” Braddock, was 13-year-old Otto Flaig, a neighbor’s son. At 30 minutes past noon, as the Dodgers took the field for batting practice, Doyle leaned forward in Seat 3 of Row C in Section 42 and started to say something to young Otto. But before he could speak, he lurched backward in his seat, stone dead.

At first, the ballpark cops suspected a heart attack. Then they noticed the hole in Doyle’s left temple. The game went on as Doyle was carried out of the stadium, though several members of the overflow crowd were said to have scuffled over his empty seat. An autopsy showed that the Giants fan from Jersey had been struck by a .45 caliber bullet. Otto Flaig, who had missed death by inches and whom the cops said complained about missing the doubleheader, did not hear any shots. Neither did anyone else in Section 42. The bullet, detectives quickly realized, must have been fired from Coogan’s Bluff, the rocky escarpment that rose above the western end of the Polo Grounds.

Sometimes called “Tightwad Hill” because thrifty Giants fans atop the precipice preferred a partial view of the ballfield to the price of a ticket, Coogan’s Bluff was home to several apartment buildings on Edgecombe Avenue, which runs along the ridgeline. For two days, detectives scoured the neighborhood and the apartments before a tip led them to a 14-year-old boy named Robert Peebles. They found various weapons in the apartment where Peebles lived, and he confessed to firing the fatal shot. Six months earlier, he told the police, he had found the .45 in Central Park, with one bullet remaining in the magazine. He had been waiting to celebrate the Fourth with a bang. After climbing to the roof of 515 Edgecombe Avenue, he looked down on 49,000 fans jam-packed into the Polo Grounds, aimed the pistol into the air, and pulled the trigger. A few seconds later, 1,200 feet away, Barney Doyle fell dead. Peebles said that when he heard what happened, he threw the gun away. It was never found.

Richard Carranza’s Deflections New York’s schools chancellor foregoes educational progress for cheap talk about bias.Ray Domanico

https://www.city-journal.org/richard-carranza-racial-bias

Speaking at a recent middle school graduation, New York City Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza said, “We’re going to move the agenda to serve our students, and people that have been very comfortable for a very long time doing absolutely nothing for the children that they’re supposed to serve are going to feel uncomfortable.” Talk like this is cheap, and Carranza’s approach—mandatory anti-bias training and charges that the opposition is racist—is deflection. He’s covering up his lack of a programmatic approach to school improvement and the mayor’s abandonment of any meaningful school accountability. 

Quality is distributed inequitably within New York’s school system, but not because of deep-seated racial bias among employees. Rather, it is the outcome of specific policies and programs that could be changed if the political will existed to do so. For 40 years, each of Carranza’s predecessors pursued policies that they believed would improve educational outcomes for the city’s low-income minority children. Some were successful, others less so, but all were dedicated to educational equity. Carranza speaks constantly of his experience as a minority, as though he were the first to hold the chancellor’s job in New York—but two-thirds of his predecessors dating back to 1978 were minorities, too.

Carranza does differ from them in one significant way: he has yet to articulate an approach to identifying the policies and people that stand in the way of meaningful school improvement. A generation ago, then-mayor Ed Koch’s first chancellor, Frank Macchiarola, centered his efforts around affirmations that “all children can learn,” and that “it is the responsibility of the public-school system to promote learning and equality for all children.” These statements, made in 1978, stood in direct conflict with the consensus among policymakers and social scientists that schools have little effect on student outcomes, relative to a student’s family background. 

Media Oddly Forgetting Jeffrey Epstein’s Role in the Clinton Global Initiative Daniel Greenfield

https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/274237/media-oddly-forgetting-jeffrey-epsteins-role-daniel-greenfield

After burying the Jeffrey Epstein story in the Clinton era, the media is suddenly very interested in Jeff.

When last we saw him, the Lolita Express cretin had gotten the world’s cushiest jail sentence courtesy of the local Dem establishment which failed to act. The case was escalated to the federal level only because the local Dem establishment insisted on offering him a slap on the wrist.

But the original villain in this story is former Palm Beach County State Attorney Barry Krischer.

Acosta shouldn’t have been in the position to consider the Epstein case. Krischer got it first, and it was handed to the Palm Beach County prosecutor on a platter by the Town of Palm Beach Police…

But Krischer chose not to direct-file charges in the case.

Instead, his office presented the case to a grand jury, which meets behind closed doors, and hears only the evidence the prosecutor decides to reveal.

Krischer’s office presented evidence from just one of the girls, and the grand jurors, obviously unaware of the scope of the case, decided to charge Epstein with a single misdemeanor count of “solicitation of prostitution.”

That charge alone ought to turn your stomach.

European Union: Toward a European Superstate “The EU is a Sham Democracy” Soeren Kern

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14503/european-union-towards-superstate

German Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen, nominated to be the next President of the European Commission, has called for the creation of a European superstate. “My aim is the United States of Europe…” she said in an interview with Der Spiegel. She has also called for the creation of a European Army.

Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel, nominated to be the next President of the European Council, has said that Eastern European countries opposed to burden-sharing on migration should lose some of their EU rights. He is also a strong proponent of the Iran nuclear deal.

Spanish Foreign Minister Josep Borrell, nominated to replace Federica Mogherini as High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, is a well-known supporter of the mullahs in Iran. Borrell has also said that he hopes Britain will leave the EU because it is an impediment to the creation of a European superstate.

International Monetary Fund Managing Director Christine Lagarde, nominated to be the next President of the European Central Bank, has supported U.S. President Donald J. Trump’s trade war with China. “President Trump has a point on intellectual property. It is correct that nobody should be stealing intellectual property to move ahead…. On these points clearly the game has to change, the rules have to be respected.”

“The best cure for Europhilia is always to observe the EU’s big beasts at their unguarded worst… unencumbered by any attachment to democracy, accountability or even basic morality… [W]e witnessed rare footage of the secretive process that propels so many retreads and second-rate apparatchiks into positions of immense power in Brussels and Frankfurt, utterly disregarding public opinion…. Everything that is wrong with the EU was shamelessly on display.” — Allister Heath, The Telegraph.

After weeks of frenzied backroom wrangling, European leaders on July 2 nominated four federalists to fill the top jobs of the European Union. The nominations — which must be approved by the European Parliament — send a clear signal that the pro-EU establishment has no intention of slowing its relentless march toward a European superstate, a “United States of Europe,” despite a surge of anti-EU sentiment across the continent.

Following are brief profiles of the nominees for the top four positions in the next European Commission, which begins on November 1, 2019 for a period of five years.

Burkina Faso: Losing Sovereignty to Terrorists by Lawrence A. Franklin

BURKINA FASO USED TO BE NAMED UPPER VOLTA BEFORE GAINING INDEPENDENCE FROM FRANCE IN 1960.THE NAME ADOPTED IN 1984 MEANS “THE LAND OF INCORRUPTIBLE PEOPLE” HMMMM…RSK

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14504/burkina-faso-terrorists

The progression of terrorist advances in Burkina Faso has reached such major proportions that in January, a state of emergency was imposed on 14 of its provinces, where the situation is so bad that it is too dangerous for children to go to school for fear of attack.

Unless international and NATO efforts are successful in transforming Burkina Faso’s army into a more adequate defense force, the country is likely to succumb to ungovernable chaos.

Burkina Faso’s army desperately needs to begin instituting political and social reforms. This, in tandem with complementary efforts by the U.S. State Department and European foreign ministries, is a necessary step towards retarding the onslaught of terrorist networks.

If Burkina Faso does dissolve into total chaos and loses its sovereignty to terrorists, its equally vulnerable neighbors will surely soon follow.

The West African country of Burkina Faso continues to be plagued by terrorist attacks committed by groups affiliated with al-Qaeda and ISIS. The attacks — on churches, restaurants, embassies and military outposts — not only highlight the inadequacy of the country’s security forces, but threaten the sovereignty of the landlocked former French colony, located on the southern edge of the sub-Saharan Sahel region.

In June 2017, the United Nations Security Council adopted Resolution 2359, “affirming its strong commitment to the sovereignty, independence, unity and territorial integrity of Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Niger, [and] expressing its continued concern over the transnational dimension of the terrorist threat in the Sahel region.”

A PERSPECTIVE ON ISRAEL From a relatively poor country to one of the 25 richest in the world. Joseph Puder

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/274219/perspective-israel-joseph-puder

To many, Israel today is the Start Up nation, a wealthy, and a militarily powerful state. It did not become that overnight. Some radicals anti-Israel voices describe Israel erroneously as “white.” The facts however are different. There are over one hundred thousand immigrants from Ethiopia, African economic migrants in the thousands, and Mizrahi Jews from the Arab Middle East, who comprise about half the population. Israelis of all colors and creeds made the desert bloom, overcoming the hardships of wars, terror, and absorbing millions of Jewish refugees without any natural resources.

Known today for its unique entrepreneurial and innovative spirit, Israel started its independence in 1948 as a country bereft of natural and financial resources. A pervasive joke in the country went like this… “Moses made a mistake in direction. Instead of leading the Israelites from the Sinai to the Land of Milk and Honey northeast of the Sinai, he should have gone East across the Red Sea to Saudi Arabia. That way, we would have oil and wealth.”

Joking aside, the Jewish State in the early years had no monetary reserves, little economic infrastructure, and few public services. In the 1950’s the government instituted rations known as the “Tzena” (austerity) era. Families were allocated food stamps that allowed them to buy limited amounts of sugar, flour, and oil, as well as eggs a month. Meat was rationed as well, and red meat was rare and expensive to serve at the time. As a small child in the 1950’s and early teenager in the 1960’s, I remember the paucity of toys available for children. This reporter played with matchboxes which became imaginary Israeli tanks that liberated Auschwitz and saved the Jews. I grew up with families of Holocaust survivors including my own. Their ordeals shaped the minds of children, including this reporter.

When British Justice Died Another guilty verdict for Tommy. Bruce Bawer

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/274221/when-british-justice-died-bruce-bawer

Trial by trial, imprisonment by imprisonment, dishonest news report by dishonest news report, the miserable bastards who make up the British establishment are steadily transforming Tommy Robinson, a working-class husband and father from Leeds, into an imperishable symbol of the quiet determination, indomitable courage, and love of liberty for which Britain used to be known but which that selfsame establishment has labored effortfully to stamp out during these opening chapters of the Islamization of that once-great nation.

Even those of us who have been closely following Tommy’s treatment by the British courts during the past couple of years – and who, perusing the charges against him, have recognized just how outrageously he has been treated by a judiciary committed not to justice but to the silencing, and if possible personal destruction, of this latter-day Jeremiah – were stunned by the verdict handed down on Friday after a two-day trial.

This was a rehearing of the same case that last year landed Tommy in prison (more specifically, in what amounted, in violation of the Geneva Convention, to solitary confinement), an ordeal from which he emerged, after two months, looking physically and psychologically all but broken. The charges themselves were absurd to begin with: he was taken into custody near the courthouse in Leeds, where he was doing a live report on Facebook video about an “Asian grooming-gang” (i.e. Muslim child-rape) prosecution that was underway inside. He didn’t do or say anything that any BBC or Guardian journalist in similar circumstances might do; but he was arrested anyway – on the grounds that his reporting from out on the street had somehow threatened to prejudice the trial going on inside the building – and was charged with contempt of court.

The speed with which he was tried, convicted, and incarcerated after his arrest in Leeds – the whole process took just a few hours – shocked observers who still thought of British justice as something serious and worthy of respect. His release from prison two months later came after the Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales, in an unusually blistering ruling, declared that the court proceedings against him had been illegitimate in a number of ways, and ordered his immediate release.

Stupid polling propaganda tricks continue By Thomas Lifson

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/07/stupid_polling_propaganda_tricks_continue.html

They’re at it again.

Politico’s Playbook presents poll results showing that the 5 leading Democrats in their presidential field all beat Trump. Only a generic “socialist” fails to beat him… but even the socialist ties the president.

But Richard Baehr examines to poll’s internals and writes:

Note that they list the results for all voters.  That means including adults who are not registered.   Pollsters rarely even show these numbers.  Using registered voters, Trump does much better.  Among likely voters, better still.

So why does Politico highlight all adults?

I can’t imagine why….

Maybe the Government of Qatar knows?

Why Big Tech Should Not Be Viewed as a Private Business By David Solway

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2019/07/why_big_tech_should_not_be_viewed_as_a_private_business.html

“Thus, there is no viable argument against redefining the censorious, viewpoint-discriminating Big Tech consortiums as public utilities. They may not be knitting networks, but they have the power and ability to unravel a nation. ”

Should First Amendment rights be extended to Big Tech corporations to publish and censor as they please?  This is a question that has agitated the discussion on whether antitrust legislation should be applied to infogiants such as Google, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, Amazon, Pinterest and many others that have cornered the market on a public resource, information, and an essential human activity, the consumption of information. A solution to the problem of data sequestration and restricted access practiced by these companies is to rebadge them either as publishers or, alternatively, as public utilities.

These entities are protected by Section 230 of Title 47 of the United States Code, which allows them to “restrict access to or availability of material that the provider or user considers to be obscene…or otherwise objectionable” (italics mine). This provision has become, in effect, a license to censor expressions of opinion that run counter to the convictions and political views these companies promote. The First Amendment argument absolving Big Tech from complicity in monopolizing political discourse is succinctly summed up by a commenter to an article I recently posted in which I advocated antitrust legislation with respect to social media. He writes, in part:

“A private company…is exercising its First Amendment rights to do whatever the hell it wants short of libel and slander and incitement to violence…No private company has the obligation to carry content which it opposes ideologically. No private company has the legal obligation to be content-neutral… [T]hat would be a blatant violation of its free speech rights. The government can neither suppress nor compel speech nor demand ideological neutrality from private entities…Changing the rules to subvert the Constitution by defining companies you don’t like as “utilties” or “publishers” is the kind of fascist trick the left is always trying to get away with.”

The Hate-Crime Epidemic That Never Was: A Seattle Case Study by Wilfred Reilly

https://quillette.com/category/features/

The Seattle Times recently reported that an epidemic of hate crimes is taking place in the Emerald City. According to the newspaper, more than 500 bias incidents were reported to Seattle police in 2018 alone, and this figure represents “an increase of nearly 400 percent since 2012.” However, this widely circulated claim is, at the very least, misleading. An examination of the Seattle data indicates that fewer than 40 actual criminal cases resulting from real, serious hate incidents were successfully prosecuted between 2012 and 2017. This provides an excellent case study of how media coverage of flash-point issues such as hate crime can—whether intentionally or not—sensationalize and exaggerate the urgency of social problems.

In the Times piece, headlined “Reported Hate Crimes and Incidents up Nearly 400% in Seattle Since 2012,” reporter Daniel Beekman suggests that the problem continues to get worse, estimating that since 2017 alone, hate cases have jumped 25 percent. He also reports that “community organizations say hate crimes are a serious issue,” and cites sources claiming that “more support from the city” is needed to battle hate crime. Beekman’s tone is relatively measured. But others have delivered more alarmist takes, creating fear that minority residents may be swept up in an “epidemic” of hate.

A look through the data that has been made available from Seattle’s office of the City Auditor reveals that there is little basis for panic. First, most of the situations contained in the 500-plus documented incidents for 2018 turned out not to be hate crimes at all. Out of 521 confrontations or other incidents reported to the police at some point during the year, 181 (35 percent) were deemed insufficiently serious to qualify as crimes of any kind. Another 215 (41 percent) turned out to involve some minor element of bias (i.e., an ethnic slur used during a fight), but did not rise to the definition of hate crime. Only 125, or 24 percent, qualified as potential hate crimes—i.e., alleged “criminal incidents directly motivated by bias.” For purposes of comparison: There are 745,000 people living in Seattle, and 3.5-million in the metro area.