RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.city-journal.org/article/lying-by-omission

Ta-Nehisi Coates’s recent appearance on CBS News has ignited yet another round of controversy. This time, the firestorm surrounded the network’s Tony Dokoupil, who dared to ask Coates challenging, if obvious, questions. Those who treat Coates as a modern-day prophet claimed that the anchor’s behavior crossed the line into insensitivity, and even racism.

What followed was ritual humiliation. CBS subjected Dokoupil to what can only be described as a struggle session, bringing in DEI consultants to “educate” him on the acceptable bounds of discourse and the proper body language to maintain when talking to an exalted minority guest. This is the state of modern journalism: the slightest challenge to the progressive narrative results in swift reeducation efforts.

A review of the substance of the underlying exchange, and the baffling explanation Coates offered in defense of his unfairness toward Israel, illuminates why there has been such a rush to reframe his CBS appearance as a hostile confrontation.

Dokoupil’s first comments and question challenged the broadside against Israel contained in Coates’s new book, The Message. “The content of that section” on Israel, noted Dokoupil, “would not be out of place in the backpack of an extremist.” “Why does Ta-Nehisi Coates . . . a very talented, smart guy, leave out so much?” Dokoupil asked. In a book largely about Israel’s security practices and their supposed excesses, the anchor pressed, “Why leave out that Israel is surrounded by countries that want to eliminate it? Why leave out that Israel deals with terror groups that want to eliminate it?” These are crucial questions that Coates must have anticipated receiving from even a friendly interlocutor. Dokoupil offers one more natural follow-up for the author, who cannot find the slightest justification for Israel’s security measures: “Is it because you just don’t believe that Israel, in any condition, has a right to exist?”

Coates’s response was puzzling, but revelatory:

I would say the perspective that you just outlined—there is no shortage of that perspective in American media. . . . I am most concerned, always, with those who don’t have a voice, with those who don’t have the ability to talk. I have asked repeatedly, in my interviews, whether there is a single network [or] mainstream organization in America with a Palestinian-American bureau chief or correspondent who actually has a voice to articulate their part of the world. . . . The reporters of those who believe more sympathetically about Israel and its right to exist don’t have a problem getting their voice out. But what I saw in Palestine . . . those were the stories that I have not heard.

In these few lines, Coates channels rhetoric that he has employed throughout his career—a nebulous invocation of marginalized peoples (here, Palestinians) and a claim that their members are denied a platform in the American public sphere.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/urban-violent-crime-surged-40-percent-beginning-in-2019/

The further removed we are from the presidential debate, the clearer it is that ABC’s David Muir’s “fact-checking” of former President Trump’s remarks on surging crime was outrageous.

In insisting that “the FBI says overall violent crime is coming down in this country,” Muir relied on FBI statistics that, at best, showed a marginal one-year drop — down 3 percent nationwide from 2022 to 2023. Even if the bureau’s numbers were arguably reliable, such a reduction would be negligible. In reality, though, the FBI’s numbers are not reliable. And most significantly, Muir ignored the trajectory of the past five years, which tells a dramatically different story in major American cities — almost uniformly run by Democrats.

There, violent crime has, indeed, surged.

Jeffrey Anderson led the Justice Department’s Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) during Trump’s administration. Unlike Muir, he is a reliable source, both on overall trends and the flaws of FBI crime-statistic reporting — beginning with the rudimentary fact that the bureau is an investigative agency, not a statistical agency.

Writing in the City Journal, Anderson explains that if we start with 2019 — right before the radical Left’s George Floyd riots and the toxic combination of the defund-the-police movement and the Progressive Prosecutor Project of non-enforcement policies — and then run the numbers through 2023, there was “a whopping 40 percent surge in urban violent crime” (emphasis added). During the same timeframe, urban property crime increased by 26 percent.

Anderson is relying on the BJS’s National Crime Victim Survey. The NCVS is a Nixon-era crime measuring tool. It is the gold standard because it grapples with the fact that most crime — probably about 55 percent — goes unreported. By searching for victims, rather than recording only crimes that are reported to the police, it provides a more accurate depiction.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2024/10/ron_desantis_shows_the_country_how_it_s_done.html

Amid all the shambles, disorganization, delays, and waste seen any time the federal or many state governments gets involved in something, we have Florida’s Gov. Ron DeSantis to demonstrate what competent leadership looks like.

He’s like a breath of fresh air.

According to TIPP Insights which had an excellent rundown of all the competent things DeSantis actually did — providing fuel, restoring electric power, setting up shelters, and actually yanking open a closed landfill through a wise use of eminent domain so that hurricane debris could be dumped there to clear the roads for first responders:

DeSantis’s 15-minute address was a masterclass on what the government could and should do. Even the late Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman, a bitter critic of all governments, would have been impressed [though he would likely have been upset to know that the storm’s name coincided with his].

DeSantis was a picture of quiet efficiency, a master conductor of a disparate orchestra with hundreds of thousands of players. He starkly contrasted with Vice President Kamala Harris, who tried to show leadership on a Zoom call with senior federal officials also preparing for Hurricane Milton.

During the recent hurricane emergencies, DeSantis got immediately involved in protecting the state, having already been prepared for it, and then in help during the storm and after the storm. It’s a big job, given the double natural disasters he’s been dealing with.

But he got to it, and even delivered extra help to other states that didn’t prepare as well as he did, such as North Carolina, delivering massive amounts of temporary bridging so that rescuers could deal with washed away roads and bridges, rescuing the injured, delivering supplies, and getting others out of those areas.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-biden-teams-disastrous-performance-on-disaster-relief/

White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre has been promoted to the position of senior adviser to the president while continuing to serve as press secretary for the remainder of President Biden’s term. Ms. Jean-Pierre proved once again during her October 7th White House press briefing why the most accurate title for her service to the Biden-Harris administration is Chief Propaganda Officer. She resorted to the Biden-Harris administration’s customary accusation of “misinformation” when asked why the Biden administration is providing additional money to Lebanon while North Carolina residents in need are not getting enough federal disaster relief in the wake of Hurricane Helene. Ms. Jean-Pierre charged that the question asked by Fox News reporter Peter Doocy was premised on misinformation:

PETER DOOCY: President Biden is fond of saying, “Show me your budget and I will tell you what you value.” If he has money for people in Lebanon right now without Congress having to come back, what does it say about his values — there’s not enough money right now for people in North Carolina who need it. That’s not misinformation.

KARINE JEAN-PIERRE: Wait, no it is, your whole premise of the question is misinformation, sir. Yes, it is…the way you’re asking me the question is misinformation. There is money that we are allocating to the impacted areas, and there’s money there to help people who truly need it. There are survivors who need the funding — who need the funding, and it’s there.

PETER DOOCY: You can’t call a question that you don’t like “misinformation.”

The Biden-Harris administration believes that it can do so by weaponizing the words “misinformation/disinformation” to discredit and even censor any information that contradicts their party line. Vice President Kamala Harris and other senior members of the administration are beating the “misinformation” drum while spreading misinformation of their own. Contrary to their claims that the hard-hit communities in western North Carolina are getting all the federal resources they need, folks on the ground who are suffering say otherwise. North Carolina residents have been without adequate basic necessities, such as food, water, shelter, and means of communication, for too long. They have been relying primarily on volunteers and each other to deal with the destruction left behind by Hurricane Helene.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) does not have enough funding to make it through the rest of the hurricane season, according to Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. Moreover, as of October 6th, only nine percent of FEMA staff members were available to deal with Hurricane Milton or any other natural disaster to come, according to the agency’s daily operations briefing cited by the New York Times.

Yet despite all this, Vice President Kamala Harris proudly announced that her administration is sending nearly $157 million in additional assistance to Lebanon to meet the “essential needs” of the Lebanese people.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21004/lebanon-aid-hurricane-helene

“To that end, the United States will provide nearly $157 million in additional assistance to the people of Lebanon… This additional support brings total U.S. assistance to Lebanon over the last year to over $385 million.” — Vice President Kamala Harris, X.com, October 5, 2024.

$385 million for an Islamic terrorist state.

$20 million to Hurricane Helene survivors.

According to Joe Biden, there’s just no money for hurricane victims.

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas claims that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is running out of money. (And not because it blew through $1.4 billion on illegal aliens, that’s dangerous misinformation.)

While there’s not enough money for hurricane victims in America, after Israel took out Hezbollah Islamic terrorist leaders, Vice President Kamala Harris announced on October 5:

“The people of Lebanon are facing an increasingly dire humanitarian situation. I am concerned about the security and well-being of civilians suffering in Lebanon and will continue working to help meet the needs of all civilians there.

“To that end, the United States will provide nearly $157 million in additional assistance to the people of Lebanon for essential needs such as food, shelter, water, protection, and sanitation to help those who have been displaced by the recent conflict. This additional support brings total U.S. assistance to Lebanon over the last year to over $385 million.”

$385 million for an Islamic terrorist state.

But there’s a bold press release out at FEMA declaring that the “Biden-Harris Administration Provides More Than $20 Million to Hurricane Helene Survivors, Ongoing Search and Rescue Operations Continue in North Carolina”.

$20 million to Hurricane Helene survivors.

$157 million to Hezbollah.

Those Hezbollah votes in Dearborn, Michigan don’t come cheap.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-danger-of-the-secularist-sensibility/

Last week, Israel’s Minister of Defense, Benny Gantz, wrote an op-ed for the New York Times asking the question, “What were Hamas’s leaders hoping for, and what are Iran’s leaders seeking to achieve?” The answer began with a conversation that revealed the central problem with the West’s understanding of Islamic jihadism, one that still vitiates our foreign policy and plans for dealing with Muslim aggressors: our modernist inability to take religion seriously.

“What the Israeli military and political establishment failed to understand,” Gantz writes, “in part, was the extent to which Hamas was driven by the goal of waging religious war. ‘The intel was there, but I underestimated the jihadi component of Hamas’s and Sinwar’s calculus,’ a senior Israel Defense Forces intelligence commander told me early in the war, referring to Yahya Sinwar, Hamas’s leader.”

This mistake in divining the motives of militant Islam marks the U.S. conflict with Iran and its revolution and “goal of waging religious war.” For example, in 1979 when the Ayatollah Khomeini returned to Iran to direct the revolution, Jimmy Carter’s National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, as David Farber reported, in a meeting with Carter “soft-pedaled the specific threat of ‘Islamic fundamentalism’ to American interests.” Brzezinski also viewed the revolution with Western eyes. The religious revolution would falter, he argued, and require secular technocrats and experts, which would dilute and marginalize the clerics.

In an even greater failure of imagination and projection of Western principles, Brzezinski advised that the U.S. should “pursue relations with individual Muslim countries on the basis of shared interests, but our emphasis on moral as well as material values, our support for a world of diversity, and our commitment to social justice should place us in a strong position to deepen our dialogue with the Muslim world.”

https://www.city-journal.org/article/the-lessons-of-october-9

October 7, 2023, was a Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath. It was also the festival of Shmini Atzeret. The following day, October 8, was Simchat Torah, another holiday on which observant Jews are forbidden from using electronics. (In Israel, the two holidays are celebrated together in one day, while outside the Holy Land they are split in two.) Consequently, it was not until after nightfall on October 8, here in New York, that I and many of my fellow Jews could take stock of the horrors that Hamas had inflicted in Israel’s south.

By then, the story on the home front had already shifted from one abomination to another. In the hours and days following the massacre, rape, and kidnapping of thousands of Israeli civilians—while babies, Holocaust survivors, and American citizens were being kidnapped and secreted through tunnels in Gaza—thousands of people took to the streets of cities throughout the West to celebrate these atrocities. These demonstrators—wrongly called “protesters,” since Israel’s military response had not yet begun—expressed support for the destruction of Israel “by any means necessary.” This is old news by now, yet it still shocks the conscience.

Many Jews and decent American citizens were horrified and confused by these displays, which have only escalated over time. They remain horrified by the thought that so many people who live among us—some citizens, even—would kick Jews and Israeli Americans while they were down. The dominant moral idea of our age presents itself in terms of concern for the downtrodden: those vulnerable or in pain receive deference and space to grieve, while others must refrain from “punching down.”

On October 8, 2023, we Jews thought, consistent with this ethos, that our pain and vulnerability would invite sympathy and solidarity. By the time daylight had broken on October 9, however, we realized we were wrong. We could no longer deny that weakness only emboldened those who hate us. Our blood was in the water, and our enemies took that as a sign to attack. To those who believe that Jews should leave Israel and “go back to Poland,” as we have gotten used to hearing, our pain is a sign that they are succeeding in their efforts to make our lives miserable until they get what they want. These are old-school bullies in progressive attire.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2024/10/hilarious_job_numbers_from_the_bureau_of_labor.html

“And remember: recently, the Department of Labor said it overestimated jobs by 881,000 in a year.  It is sad when so many trust government numbers when they are so consistently wrong.”

As the media campaign so vigorously for Democrats and cheer how great the Biden-Harris policies have been, suddenly, the Department of Labor comes out with an unemployment report that blows away expectations. 

Biden and Harris were out bragging as a significant number of people still can’t pay their bills without running up new debt or going delinquent on the debt they already had. 

Supposedly, 254,000 jobs were created in September.  Isn’t that amazing, that this report came out one month before the election? 

Of course, the media gave the headline number and never got into the details.

Here is one important detail: government jobs showed a gain of 785,000 because of the second biggest seasonal adjustment on record.  (It is easy to manipulate numbers when you have “seasonal adjustments.”)  This would mean that private-sector employment declined 531,000 with seasonal adjustments.  I would say that is not too much to brag about.  Somehow, the voters don’t get to see that number, but they know that the economy has sucked the past four years because they can’t pay their bills. 

https://amgreatness.com/2024/10/07/we-are-in-need-of-renaissance-people/

The songwriter, actor, country/western singer, musician, U.S. Army veteran, helicopter pilot, accomplished rugby player and boxer, Rhodes scholar, Pomona College and University of Oxford degreed, and summa cum laude literature graduate, Kris Kristofferson, recently died at 88.

Americans may have known him best for writing smash hits like “Me and Bobby McGee” and “For the Good Times,” his wide-ranging, star-acting roles in A Star is Born and Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, his numerous solo albums, especially with then-spouse and singer Rita Coolidge, and the country group super-quartet he formed with Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, and Willie Nelson.

In other words, Kristofferson was a rare Renaissance man who could do it all in an age of increasingly narrow specialization and expertise.

At certain times throughout history at particular locales, we have seen such singular people from all walks of life.

Classical Athens produced polymaths like Aristotle—tutor to Alexander the Great, logician, student of music, art, and literature, educator, think-tank founder, biologist, philosopher, and scientist. Later Greeks like Archimedes and Ptolemy, as men of action, mastered six or seven disciplines and applied their abstract knowledge in ways that made life easier for those around them.

The late Roman Republic was another cauldron of multitalented geniuses. It produced the brilliant stylist, historian, politician, and consummate general Julius Caesar, as well as his republican archrival Cicero—politician, philosopher, orator, master stylist, lawyer, and provincial governor.

Turn-of-the-century Victorian Great Britain produced giants like Winston Churchill—prime minister, statesman, essayist, historian, orator, strategist, and wartime veteran. As Britain’s war leader, between May 10, 1940, and June 22, 1941, he, almost alone, resisted the Axis powers and prevented Adolf Hitler from winning the war.