RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.city-journal.org/ferguson-effect-inner-cities

It took several months for the first iteration of the Ferguson Effect to become obvious. Michael Brown was fatally shot by a Ferguson, Missouri, police officer in August 2014, triggering local riots and a national narrative about lethally racist police. Officers backed off proactive policing in minority neighborhoods, having been told that such discretionary enforcement was racially oppressive. By early 2015, the resulting spike in shootings and homicides had become patent and would lead to an additional 2,000 black homicide victims in 2015 and 2016, compared with 2014 numbers.

Today’s violent-crime increase—call it Ferguson Effect 2.0 or the Minneapolis Effect—has come on with a speed and magnitude that make Ferguson 1.0 seem tranquil. George Floyd’s death at the hands of Minneapolis police in late May was justly condemned—but the event has now spurred an outpouring of contempt against the pillars of law and order that has no precedent in American history. Every day, another mainstream institution—from McDonald’s to Harvard—denounces the police, claiming without evidence that law enforcement is a threat to black lives.

To be sure, the first manifestation of the Black Lives Matter movement had a mouthpiece in the Oval Office, lacking now. It doesn’t matter. Presidential imprimatur or no, the reborn Black Lives Matter has gained billions of dollars in corporate support, more billions in free round-the-clock media promotion, and a ruthless power to crush dissent from the now-universal narrative about murderous police bigots. During the two weeks of national anarchy that followed the death of George Floyd, cops were shot, slashed, and assaulted; their vehicles and station houses were firebombed and destroyed. American elites stayed silent. Since then, police have continued to be shot at and attacked; the elites remain silent. Monuments to America’s greatest leaders are being defaced with impunity; anarchists took over a significant swathe of a major American city, including a police precinct, without resistance from the authorities. And a push to defund the police gains traction by the day.

The world knew her as “Aunt Jemima,” but her given name was Nancy Green and she was a true American success story. Born a slave in 1834 Montgomery County, KY, she became a wealthy superstar in the advertising world, as its first living trademark.

While in Kentucky, Green was employed by Charles Walker, then an attorney and later a distinguished Circuit Judge. She moved with the family to Chicago just after the Great Fire in 1872.

Walker heard that a friend was looking for a model for the Aunt Jemima character, and he suggested Green who, by that time, had served the family for many years. She was instantly recognized with the characteristics the guy was looking for… charisma, humor, and a fantastic cook. 

Green was 56-yrs old when she was selected as spokesperson for the new ready-mixed, self-rising pancake flour and made her public debut in 1893 at the World’s Fair in Chicago. She demonstrated the pancake mix while serving up thousands of pancakes… and became an immediate star.  She was a wonderful storyteller, her personality was warm and appealing, and her showmanship was exceptional.  Her exhibition booth drew so many people that special security personnel were assigned to keep the crowds moving. 

https://www.newsweek.com/trashing-leaders-home-weakens-america-abroad-opinion-1514542

Many historians rank Woodrow Wilson “among the nation’s greatest leaders,” the trustees of Princeton University-where Wilson was president before becoming New Jersey’s governor and America’s president-wrote the other day, “and credit him with visionary ideas that shaped the world for the better.”

Indeed, Wilson’s “14 Points” for a post-World War I world set the stage for the rules-based global order that his successors created after World War II, his League of Nations laid the groundwork for a more effective (though hardly perfect) United Nations and his call to make the world “safe for democracy” was the precursor for America’s post-World War II efforts to promote freedom abroad.

All of that, however, didn’t stop Princeton’s trustees from voting to remove Wilson’s name from its School of Public and International Affairs and one of its residential colleges, due to the ugly racism that Wilson espoused and which shaped some of his domestic actions as America’s president.

Princeton’s decision is understandable, coming at a powerful moment of national reckoning over race, but it nevertheless should give us pause. Like the efforts to topple monuments of all kinds, it reflects a broad push to judge our past wholly through a racial lens and to disdain all the notables of our past who don’t measure up to today’s new standards-whatever the notables’ other virtues and accomplishments.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2020/07/01/trump_from_great_disruptor_to_great_protector_143591.html

Our America First movement faces a fulcrum moment. After achieving the incredible upset of seizing the presidency from the conventional interests that dominated United States politics and media for decades, now President Trump can advance to the next step of his historic quest: transitioning from the Great Disruptor to the become the Great Protector of the American people, particularly the middle class.

The disruption emanated from the profound frustration of working-class citizens witnessing a continual erosion of their political agency and their standard of living. The shock of Trump’s triumph compelled a needed wholesale reshaping of national politics, including a de facto takeover of the Republican Party by believers in American nationalism. In reaction, the media mouthpieces of the established political and administrative classes went to war with the president, and he returned rhetorical fire, with fervor. Simultaneously, the enmity of the entrenched administrative powers of our capital commenced seemingly endless investigations and frivolous prosecutions of Trump allies and, ultimately, the president himself.

Despite the systemic upheaval, tangible policy achievements abounded, particularly a rollback of the regulatory state, smart trade accords, and the confirmations of hundreds of conservative judges. Nonetheless, the consternation and agitation have intensified in this election year, as an increasingly polarized country battles over first principles. As necessary as the disruption was, our nation cannot remain in this embattled space; it’s too chaotic.

Therefore, the next natural iteration of the movement lies in President Trump becoming the Great Protector, a leader promoting a second term agenda that guards the economic and legal rights of the masses.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/steele-testimony-fbi-coordinated-closely-with-state

The Department of State worked closely with the FBI on the bureau’s investigation of the Trump campaign and its work with former British spy Christopher Steele, the author of the infamous dossier, according to Steele’s recent testimony in a UK court.

Steele told the court he became convinced over the course of the summer and fall of 2016 that the two departments were closely coordinating. By the time he met State Department official Kathy Kavalec in October of that year, it was “very clear that FBI and State Department were both consulting each other and discussing the whole issue of engagement with us and our investigation,” Steele said, according to court transcripts obtained by The Epoch Times.

Steele was questioned at the Queen’s Bench court in London on March 18 as part of a lawsuit against his company, Orbis Business Intelligence Ltd., brought by three Russian businessmen affiliated with Alfa Bank. One of the installments of Steele’s report accused the men of funneling large amounts of “illicit cash” to then-Saint Petersburg Mayor Vladimir Putin in the 1990s. 

“My understanding was that Kathy Kavalec, who raised I think the Alfa issue with us in this meeting in October, had been closely coordinating with the FBI and the FBI knew that we were having the meeting and so on and so forth and that they were jointly working on this material.”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/summer-of-unrequited-love-11593559035?mod=opinion_lead_pos2

City officials on Tuesday began removing the barricades surrounding Seattle’s self-styled Capitol Hill Organized Protest zone, or CHOP, potentially spelling the end of that three-week experiment in alternative urban living. Supporters lost no time identifying the malign force responsible for that fledgling nation’s quick descent into lawlessness and violence: “capitalism.”

So declared City Council member Kshama Sawant, in response to four shootings in 10 days within CHOP, a six-block area in Seattle that occupiers had cordoned off and blocked police from entering. The most recent shooting, on Monday, killed a 16-year-old boy and left a 14-year-old in critical condition.

Ms. Sawant explained on Twitter that the “tragic” killing “highlights capitalism’s brutality & endemic violence.” A CHOP supporter, Ms. Sawant declared: “Our movement rejects insinuations & falsehoods perpetuated by corporate & conservative media that this violence is outcome of CHOP or of our movement.” And here we thought CHOP was a demonstration of what was possible when men and women abandoned the evils of democratic capitalism.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/07/present-moment-has-set-blacks-back-half-century-dennis-prager/

The “protesters” who destroy and loot think their victim status allows them to destroy and loot. The man identified as the president of the greater New York Black Lives Matter, Hawk Newsome, recently told Fox News: “If this country doesn’t give us what we want, then we will burn down this system and replace it. All right? And I could be speaking … figuratively. I could be speaking literally. It’s a matter of interpretation.”

In a report yesterday on a police shooting of a robber who resisted arrest and reached for an object in his waistband, the San Diego Union-Tribune quoted a protest organizer: “If this young man was robbing, that means his state and his government failed to provide him with the resources he needs.” When you feel you are a victim, you are allowed to rob.

Take the constant, often absurd, charges of racism at the most benign comments. If you say, for example, that you see nothing wrong with the picture of Uncle Ben on a box of rice, you will be accused of racism. As a result, most whites understand they can no longer speak truthfully or from the heart in the presence of a black American. It is hard to imagine a worse recipe for genuine relationships between the races. Whereas the great majority of whites, and even most blacks, thought white-black relations were good and improving when Barack Obama assumed office, a minority of both groups think so today.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/07/flowers_for_teddy_r.html

As the wacko Evangelical guy across the street from our Defend Teddy Roosevelt rally Sunday afternoon loudspeakered: “It ain’t the color of your skin, it’s the color of your sin,” a clever assonance-rich meme that sounds good and means not that much, except to say that in his considered religious consideration, we were “worshiping a graven image” (!) and had better repent.

Something finally roused the conservatives from their  pandemic poufs and couches. The media were there, certainly, interviewing such firebrands as Gavin Wax, whose NY Young Republicans blast emails  say they spearheaded the rally. Ages were everything from teenagers to hoary-headed, bushy-bearded elders. All ethnicities were represented.

And thanks to social media and  high-temperature-stoked choler, hundreds showed up in the hottest day, at the hottest hour, without a cloverleaf of shade, in front of the revered (until now) American Museum of Natural History, whose high-salaried pooh-bahs had decided, without permission or notification of the city — on whose land the museum has long stood — to remove the equestrian statue of our most popular president, who died 21 years before the statue made its iconic appearance on the noble plinth greeting millions from all corners of the world.

The president of AMNH, Ellen Futter, has become as toxic as a thrice-used face mask.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-06-30/u-s-consumer-confidence-posts-biggest-increase-since-late-2011

U.S. consumer confidence rose in June by more than forecast as optimism increased amid business reopenings, though sentiment remained well below pre-pandemic levels.

The Conference Board’s index jumped by 12.2 points to 98.1, the biggest one-month gain since late 2011, according to a report Tuesday. The median estimate in a Bloomberg survey of economists had called for a reading of 91.5.

https://ruleofreason.blogspot.com/2020/06/lopsided-joe-biden.html

Biden wants to convert the country, once a free one, into a nation of mask-wearing lepers. The Hollywood Reporter writes:

Soon-to-be Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden said he would use his power to require Americans to wear face masks in public.

According to KDKA, Biden said:

“I would go back to making sure that everybody had masks, that you had PPE lined up, making sure we stockpile all the things that we need and we don’t have now. The one thing we do know, these masks make a gigantic difference. I would insist that everybody in public be wearing that mask. Anyone to reopen, it would have to make sure that they walked into a business that had masks.”

The difference is imaginary and specious, as I’ve written before.

Ken Rice of KDKA asked Biden if he could use his federal leverage to mandate it in which Biden responded “yes”.

Rice then pressed Biden if he would use it.

Here’s the exchange:

Rice: Would you?

Biden: Yes, I would from an executive standpoint, yes I would.

Victor David Hanson, on Ruth King, explains Biden’s state of mind better than I can:

“Joe Biden is tragically suffering a mental eclipse and sliding away at a geometric rate. Understandably, his handlers have kept him out of sight. He stays off the campaign trail on the pretext of the virus and his age-related susceptibility to COVID-19 morbidity.

“I say “pretext” without apology. Quarantine should not have otherwise stopped Biden over the past three months from doing daily interviews, speeches, and meetings. But each occasion, however scripted, rehearsed, and canned, would only have offered further daily proof that Biden is cognitively unable to be president or indeed to hold any office.