RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://bariweiss.substack.com/p/the-real-story-of-the-central-park?token=

Amy Cooper was not the internet’s first “Karen” — the pejorative used for a demanding, entitled white woman. But as the Central Park dog walker who called the police on a black birdwatcher last year, she quickly became the paragon of the archetype.

In a video that went instantly viral, we watch as she summons law enforcement to protect her from the man, whose race she mentions three times in a matter of moments: “I’m going to tell them there’s an African-American man threatening my life.”

Just over a minute long, the video flooded social media alongside a second one filmed that same day: the horrifying footage of a Minneapolis police officer kneeling on the neck of a man named George Floyd.

The conflation of these two stories in the public imagination began almost immediately — and not without cause. The Central Park video looked really bad. 

Many accused Amy Cooper of “weaponizing white tears.” They said she was deliberately attempting to sic racist cops on the birdwatcher, Christian Cooper (no relation). Comparisons to Emmett Till were instant.

“It’s important for us to remember that what happened to George Floyd is what Amy Cooper would have wanted to happen to Christian Cooper,” as one YouTuber put it, reflecting a sentiment echoed broadly across Twitter and beyond.

The outcry was overwhelming, and it was supercharged by the mainstream press. The New York Times ran a dozen stories, letters, and Op-Eds in the first week alone. A rattled Gayle King said it felt like “open season” on black men, with Amy “nearly strangling her dog to falsely accuse another black man.” Trevor Noah said that Amy “blatantly knew how to use the power of her whiteness to threaten the life of another man and his blackness.”

By the next day, Amy Cooper had been doxxed, had surrendered her dog, had lost her job, and had issued a half-hearted defense followed by an abject apology. Christian Cooper would go on to become a minor celebrity, penning a story for D.C. Comics inspired by the incident, heralded across the media and even by Joe Biden. “You made an incredible contribution at a very important moment,” the future president said.

https://melaniephillips.substack.com/p/the-wests-tsunami-of-antisemitism?token=

In this podcast with Allen Roth, president of Secure America Now, I discussed the “tsunami” of antisemitism in the west and the inadequacy of the responses to it. Forming an “axis of evil that spans continents,” an unholy alliance has developed between leftists and Islamists. Worse still, cultural and political leaders in both Britain and America have been paralysed into virtual silence by moral and cultural relativism, which prohibits any criticism of the developing world; while the campaign against “Islamophobia,” which is used to suppress any criticism of the Islamic world however well-founded, has further colonised the minds of untold thousands.

I also talked about the supine response of Jewish community leaders in both Britain and America. Some are too frightened to tell the truths that urgently need to be told to counter the demonisation and delegitimisation of Israel, including making known the unambiguous anti-Jewish incitement that is pumped out by the supposedly moderate Palestinian Authority. Many others have themselves signed up both to the false narrative about Israel and to the wider onslaught upon truth and morality in the west, which means that tragically they do the Jew-haters’ dirty-work for them.

These Jewish leaders are gripped by the perennial diaspora fantasy that if they only do this or that they will fit in and be accepted and will never again be the victims of prejudice. But bitter history tells us that “fitting in” is always made conditional on something — a lesson that today’s diaspora Jews still refuse to learn.

Please click on the arrow above the picture to listen to the podcast.

https://abcnews.go.com/US/ny-ag-probe-finds-cuomo-sexually-harassed-multiple/story?id=79240764

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo was found to have sexually harassed multiple women, including current and former state employees, New York State Attorney General Letitia James announced Tuesday morning after a four-month probe into the allegations.

In at least one instance, the investigation determined that the governor sought to retaliate against a woman who leveled accusations against him, identified in a report released by the AG’s office as Lindsay Boylan.

According to James, the probe found that Cuomo and his staff fostered a toxic work environment. Cuomo, in a statement released after James’ announcement, denied any wrongdoing.

The attorney general’s 168-page report, released during her press conference, determined that “the governor engaged in conduct constituting sexual harassment under federal and New York State law.”

“Specifically, we find that the Governor sexually harassed a number of current and former New York State employees by, among other things, engaging in unwelcome and nonconsensual touching, as well as making numerous offensive comments of a suggestive and sexual nature that created a hostile work environment for women,” the report said.

At Tuesday’s press conference, employment discrimination attorney Anne Clark, one of the investigators assigned to lead the probe, presented a litany of findings from the report, including specific examples of the governor making suggestive comments and engaging in unwanted touching that eleven women — some named, others anonymous — found “deeply humiliating and offensive.”

In an instance involving one of Cuomo’s unnamed executive assistants, the governor was found to have “reached under her blouse and grabbed her breast,” according to the report.

https://amgreatness.com/2021/08/02/another-partisan-stunt-by-the-u-s-capitol-police/

Harry Dunn began his testimony last week before the January 6 select committee by asking for a moment of silence in honor of Brian Sicknick.

The U.S. Capitol police officer, testifying under oath, claimed his “fallen colleague . . . died from injuries he sustained in the line of duty defending the Capitol of our beloved democracy.” The committee members and the audience complied.

Dunn’s remark, quite simply, is a lie. Brain Sicknick, 42, died on January 7 of a stroke caused by blood clots near his brain, a tragic and untimely death that the District of Columbia medical examiner did not tie to the events of the previous day.

It is just the latest example of how the U.S. Capitol Police, a federal agency funded by American taxpayers, has taken a leading role in fabricating the mythology of January 6. 

Top brass and rank-and-file officers such as Dunn intentionally continue to mislead the public about what happened that day—especially through the falsehood that Trump fanatics killed a cop during the Capitol protest. “Officer Sicknick was responding to the riots on Wednesday, January 6, 2021, at the U.S. Capitol and was injured while physically engaging with protesters,” according to a press release issued January 7, 2021. “He returned to his division office and collapsed.  He was taken to a local hospital where he succumbed to his injuries.”

Tuesday’s testimony by Dunn and fellow Officer Aquilino Gonell added to the long list of theatrics and political stunts involving Capitol Police officers related to January 6. For the past several months, this rogue agency has acted as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) political enforcers rather than as an objective law enforcement agency.

USCP captured at least 14,000 hours of video from January 6 but refuses to make the footage available to the public. The agency also is attempting to withhold recordings from defense counsel and the news media. An affidavit filed in March by the department’s general counsel confirmed the footage will remain “in the legal control” of USCP.

As part of the legislative branch, the USCP is exempted from Freedom of Information Act rules. No one can legally demand access to the tapes. The agency insists the massive trove of video must remain under seal in order to prevent would-be insurrectionists “who might wish to attack the Capitol again.”

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/08/the_headline_says_it_all_over_1000_victims_126_dead_just_2_convictions_6_years_of_mass_shootings_in_chicago.html

Parts of Chicago no longer are governed by the rule of law. In place of ordered civilization, criminal gangs operate with impunity, the residents living in a state of terror, afraid to tell police anything that would aid in capturing the criminals. The true exercise of power is in the hands of those who would be called warlords in other contexts, but (at least for now), the term is too harsh for most ears.

The Chicago Sun-Times has produced a stunning story capturing the extent of lawlessness today, with both granular detail and an overview. After describing one mass shooting:

About two hours after the shots rang out, an alarming dispatch pierced through police radio: Another mass shooting had just rocked the Marquette Park neighborhood, roughly six miles away.

Three alleged gang members had sprayed bullets at a crowd hanging out in the 6200 block of South Artesian Avenue, enjoying the summer night. Twelve people were hit, among them Nyoka Bowie, 37, who suffered a fatal gunshot wound to her chest. Like Grimes and many other victims of mass shootings — defined by the Sun-Times and some researchers as incidents in which four or more people are wounded — she apparently was not the intended target.

In both cases, there was a large number of witnesses and surviving victims, yet no arrests have been made. That is all too common in Chicago, where police say they do not prioritize the cases despite the especially harsh toll such shootings have on a community.

Only one person has been charged in any of the at least 39 mass shootings so far this year, according to a Sun-Times analysis of city data and court records.

https://amgreatness.com/2021/07/31/when-will-the-covid-revolt-come/

The most cheerful headline I have seen in weeks was on Glenn Reynolds’ New York Post column: “No, Karen, we’re not masking again.” I hope he is right. I do wonder, though. I have no doubt that the second part of his headline—“A winning GOP message for 2022 [and] beyond”—is correct. At least it’s correct if it is expressed as a conditional: It would be a winning strategy were it adopted. As Reynolds notes, “There is a great deal of pent-up frustration and resentment over the inconvenience, the loss of freedom and the general climate of hectoring that the government’s pandemic response has created.” Indeed. And he’s right, too, that 

It’s irritating to be lectured by officials who claim to be smarter than you. It’s infuriating to be lectured by government officials who claim to be smarter than you—but clearly aren’t.

The on-again/off-again claims on masks and vaccination are just part of it. Tired of masks? Get vaccinated, they told us. Now they’re saying wear a mask, even if you’ve been vaccinated and even if you’re associating with others who’ve been vaccinated.

And there’s talk of more lockdowns, which a growing body of scientific evidence suggests were perfectly useless and downright harmful.

As Molly Bloom exclaimed in a different context, Yes, Yes, Yes!

But to return to the question of hope, I am reminded that hope was said by some cynics to have been the last evil in Pandora’s pithos. It seems like only yesterday—in fact, it was just this past May—that both the president and the vice-president of the United States insisted that (as Joe himself put it) “Folks, if you’re fully vaccinated—you no longer need to wear a mask.” 

Of course, that was more than a year after “15 days to slow the spread,” Anthony Fauci’s steady stream of contradictory, though authoritatively delivered, advice, not to mention the recent advent of (cue the scary music) The Delta Variant.  

It was the New York Post, again, that cut to the chase on the latest (unless we’re on to the epsilon variant already) with its cover of July 30. “Insanity!” read its oversized headline and below was a large grid with a tiny bit of the upper right square marked. Of the 161 million people who have been vaccinated, only 5,601 have been hospitalized with the new version of the virus. Of those, only 1,141 have died. That’s .0007 percent. (And how old, one wonders, were those who succumbed and from what comorbidities did they suffer?)

Now it turns out that the latest CDC advice was based largely on an outbreak at Provincetown after the informal party time of “Bear Week” in early July. Andrew Sullivan treated the news with some portion of the skepticism it deserves. In fact, as another commentator pointed out, what the Provincetown outbreak really shows is that “even under perfect conditions for a superspreader event, the vaccine works spectacularly well.”

But even to talk about studies and statistics and “expert” advice is to assume that we are talking primarily about an issue of public health. We aren’t. Consider this list from Jim Treacher: 

https://www.wsj.com/articles/senate-infrastructure-deal-pay-fors-republicans-joe-manchin-11627940099?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

West Virginia Democrat Joe Manchin and his Senate Republican friends are stressing that their infrastructure deal is “fully paid for.” Read their lips: No new deficit spending. Read their bill: It relies to a great degree on savings and revenue already baked into the fisc or that are unlikely to happen.

Deficit financing is better than increasing taxes, and Republicans at least jettisoned the taxes (until Democrats raise them in their budget reconciliation bill). They also deep-sixed President Biden’s plan to give the IRS $40 billion to harass small businesses, which Democrats claimed would raise hundreds of billions of dollars in new revenue. Their IRS stimulus was dubious, but so are most of the bill’s remaining offsets.

Start with using 10 years of savings from various programs to offset five years of spending. This includes extending by a decade a guarantee fee that government-sponsored enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac charge on mortgages they back.

Congress imposed the 10-basis point fee in 2011 to cover the cost of the government backstop on Fan and Fred. Extending the fee through 2032 is expected to raise $21 billion, but the taxpayer costs will be far greater if the housing giants start to lose money again after the Biden Administration takes steps to ease underwriting standards.

Then there’s magical Medicare accounting. The bill would extend Medicare provider payment cuts by a year through 2031, just inside the 10-year budget window. Senators are counting that as saving $9 billion, but Congress is almost certain to override this provision once hospitals squawk, as they surely will.

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/08/03/biden-attacks-alarmist-covid-news-stories-even-as-he-stokes-them/

CNN might be a horribly biased and woefully unreliable news organization these days, but its reporters do know how to convey the White House propaganda well. Case in point is the story posted on CNN’s website over the weekend about how the Biden administration is desperately trying to get the news media to stop playing up the risk of the Delta variant.

“The White House is frustrated with what it views as alarmist, and in some instances flat-out misleading, news coverage about the Delta variant,”  reported Oliver Darcy over the weekend. “That’s according to two senior Biden administration officials I spoke with Friday, both of whom requested anonymity to candidly offer their opinion on coverage of the CDC data released that suggests vaccinated Americans who become infected with the Delta coronavirus variant can infect others as easily as those who are unvaccinated.”

Darcy goes on to provide a multitude of examples of how the White House berated various news agencies for their coverage of the CDC report that prompted its mask-wearing mandate for vaccinated people.

After the New York Times tweeted that “The Delta variant is as contagious as chickenpox and may be spread by vaccinated people as easily as the unvaccinated, an internal C.D.C. report said,” a White House staffer responded:

CNN’s Brian Stelter also parrotted the White House talking points on his weekend show.

“It is time for a reset. A reset in how COVID-19 is covered by the media,” Stelter said.