RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://thefederalist.com/2020/08/02/with-bill-maher-bari-weiss-condemns-cancel-culture-as-social-murder/

Former New York Times Opinion Editor Bari Weiss appeared on HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher” Friday night criticizing cancel culture and calling it “social murder.” 

“It’s not just about punishing the sinner. It’s not just about punishing the person for being insufficiently pure. It’s about this sort of secondary boycott of people who would deign to speak to that person or appear on a platform with that person,” she said. “And we see just very obviously where that kind of politics gets us. If conversation with people that we disagree with becomes impossible, what is the way that we solve conflict? It’s violence.”

Maher invited Weiss and Harper’s Magazine columnist Thomas Chatterton Williams to the show after both signed the “Letter on Justice and Open Debate” published by Harper’s Magazine. In the letter, 150 “elites in academia and media” explain that limiting the “free exchange of information and ideas” could be detrimental to self-government and the writing profession.

“The way to defeat bad ideas is by exposure, argument, and persuasion, not by trying to silence or wish them away. We refuse any false choice between justice and freedom, which cannot exist without each other. As writers we need a culture that leaves us room for experimentation, risk taking, and even mistakes. We need to preserve the possibility of good-faith disagreement without dire professional consequences,” the letter reads.

On Maher’s show, Weiss described the intentions of the letter in more detail and clarified the distinction between criticism and cancel culture. 

“What we’re trying to say with the letter — and what Thomas did in forming it — was saying what’s happening now with this growing culture of illiberalism is different from criticism,” Weiss explained. “Thomas and I, you, Bill, we’re used to criticism. Criticism is kosher in the work that we do. Criticism is great. What cancel culture is about is not criticism. It is about punishment. It is about making a person radioactive. It is about taking away their job.”

https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/510073-supreme-court-declines-to-halt-trump-border-wall

The Supreme Court on Friday declined to block the Trump administration from using $2.5 billion in reallocated Pentagon funds to build a U.S.-Mexico border wall.

In a 5-4 ruling that broke along ideological lines, the court’s conservative majority denied a bid by interest groups to halt construction after a federal appeals court last month said the use of defense funding for the project is illegal. The court’s four more liberal justices dissented from the ruling.

The Sierra Club, American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and other challengers had asked the justices to lift their order from last July that allowed President Trump to begin spending the funds while legal challenges proceeded through the courts.

But the Friday ruling means the court’s July 2019 order, also decided 5-4, remains in effect despite a ruling by a federal appeals court in California last month that Trump’s diversion of defense, military and other funding was unconstitutional.

Justice Stephen Breyer, in dissent, said he feared the majority’s ruling “may operate, in effect, as a final judgment.”

Legal challenges arose early last year after Trump declared a national emergency at the southern border to free up additional funding. That came after a congressional spending bill allocated some $1.3 billion for border security, far short of the nearly $5 billion Trump said was needed to complete his signature project.

Chicago: 139% Increase in Murders in July, 75% Climb in Shootings

Denver: Murder Rate Up 40+ Percent

New York: More Shootings So Far This Year Than In All of 2019

Portland: July Killings Most in 30 Yrs

St. Louis: Two Shot, One Killed as Homicide Rate Continues to Climb

Minneapolis surrenders to the criminals By Thomas Lifson(https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/08/minneapolis_surrenders_to_the_criminals.html)
Louisville Black Lives Matter Using ‘Mafia Tactics’ on Hispanic Business Owners By Rick Moran (https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/rick-moran/2020/08/02/louisville-black-lives-matter-using-mafia-tactics-on-hispanic-business-owners-n741579)

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16301/black-lives-matter-part-ii

A recent survey by the Pew Research Center found that more than two-thirds of Americans support the Black Lives Matter movement. While Gatestone Institute and doubtless many others wish that blacks and all minorities benefit from the equal opportunities and protections offered by the U.S. Constitution, the high level of backing raises the question: How much does the public really know about BLM?

BLM’s leaders openly admit that they want to abolish the nuclear family, police, prisons and capitalism.

Black Lives Matter uses Thousand Currents, which is an IRS-approved 501(c)(3) organization, as its fiscal sponsor. Donations made on the Black Lives Matter website are processed by the left-wing ActBlue Charities, a donation platform affiliated with the Democratic Party, and then transferred to Thousand Currents, which then distributes them back to Black Lives Matter.

“If this country doesn’t give us what we want, then we will burn down this system and replace it. All right?… I just want black liberation and black sovereignty, by any means necessary.” — Hawk Newsome, leader of BLM’s Greater New York chapter, New York Post, June 25, 2020.

BLM is also obsessed with U.S. President Donald J. Trump, who, arguably, has done more for African Americans than any other president in recent memory.

“In reality, this has nothing to do with black lives and everything to do with liberal Marxist anarchists having hijacked, as they always do, an important social issue with which they will undermine the very communities and people they claim to represent.” — Tammy Bruce, US commentator, The Washington Times, June 14, 2020.

Multinational companies, philanthropic foundations and private citizens have been donating tens of millions of dollars to Black Lives Matter (BLM), and a recent survey by the Pew Research Center has found that more than two-thirds of Americans support the BLM movement.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/08/understanding_the_gravity_of_the_russia_hoax.html

One of the claims Democrats love to tout about the Obama administration is that it was “scandal free.” For those who paid attention to the IRS targeting, Benghazi, Fast & Furious, and the cash smuggled to Iran, to name just a few illegal and/or immoral activities, that was always a peculiar boast. The Obama administration was up to its eyeballs in scandals. It was Obama who finally said what had really happened, which was that “We didn’t have a scandal that embarrassed us.”

In other words, the issue wasn’t that the administration was scandal-free. The issue was that the media protected the administration from voters’ wrath should they learn about those scandals.

The Russia Hoax has benefitted from the media’s continued unwillingness to report on Obama-era scandals. When it looked as if the Russia Hoax could achieve a coup against the Trump presidency, members of the press developed a form of Tourette syndrome that saw them obsessively mouth “Russia, Russia, Russia” all day, every day.

However, when Robert Mueller’s handpicked Democrat-friendly team, despite two years and 35 million dollars, was unable to find a smidgen of proof that Trump or his administration had colluded with the Russians, leftists inside and outside of the media fell silent. Sure, they’ll still raise the fact that Trump, at a press conference, said, “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 [Hillary Clinton] emails that are missing,” but their hearts aren’t in it.

They know that normal people understand that Trump was making a pointed joke about the fact that the Russians, the Chinese, and every other hacker on earth had read through Hillary’s emails for years. Aside from leftists being utterly humorless, the media learned that raising this statement periodically was chum to the true believers but not very interesting to anyone else.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/07/why-seth-rogens-anti-israel-rant-matters/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=article&utm_campaign=river&utm_content=top-bar-latest&utm_term=fifth

He overlooks the reasons Israel was founded in the first place, and what makes it unique today.

You probably won’t be surprised to learn that Seth Rogen has, at best, a facile understanding of basic history, faith, or politics. We shouldn’t expect anything else. His job is to act. The problem, though, is that Rogen increasingly feels the need to share his illiterate opinions about serious issues with millions of people.

This week, in an appearance on Marc Maron’s popular (and excellent) podcast, Rogen claimed he was “fed a huge amount of lies about Israel” growing up, and he now questions the legitimacy of the Jewish state’s existence.

Why does it matter? Well, Maron has more downloads than any cable news-show host has viewers. More than the top-rated Tucker Carlson. More than the entire slate of CNN hosts on any given evening. We should assume that a number of his listeners — many of them young and ordinarily uninterested in politics — might take a stoner’s quasi-coherent ideas seriously.

Opinions like this one:

To me it just seems an antiquated thought process. If it is for religious reasons, I don’t agree with it, because I think religion is silly. If it is for truly the preservation of Jewish people, it makes no sense, because again, you don’t keep something you’re trying to preserve all in one place — especially when that place is proven to be pretty volatile, you know? “I’m trying to keep all these things safe, I’m gonna put them in my blender and hope that that’s the best place . . . that’ll do it.” It doesn’t make sense to me. And I also think that as a Jewish person I was fed a huge amount of lies about Israel my entire life! They never tell you that — oh by the way, there were people there. They make it seem like it was just like sitting there, like the f***ing door’s open. They forget to include the fact to every young Jewish person.

https://www.city-journal.org/community-based-proactive-policing-works

Many advocates of “defunding the police” contend that too many police encounters with civilians concern trivial matters. Defunding proponents worry that poor decisions by officers can escalate tensions and lead to unnecessary uses of force. They argue that the police mandate should be more narrowly focused on responding to “serious” crimes, especially violent felonies. All other matters should not be considered police business. This premise has gained a receptive hearing in our political climate. Most people instinctively support the idea of leaving management of serious felonies to the police, who are certainly less likely to get into trouble if their job is simply to arrest violent felons.

But American policing has tried this idea before, and the results were disastrous for communities and police agencies alike. If history is any guide, confining police focus to serious crimes will do little to manage those offenses—and the strategy may further damage the relationship between police and citizens.

In the early 1900s, American policing was in turmoil. Political patronage largely determined which officers were hired, fired, and promoted. Officers themselves were often underqualified, poorly trained, and inadequately supervised. The mid-twentieth century saw a wave of policing reforms across the United States. Reformers sought to remove corrupting influences and to professionalize police with a more specific mandate. Thus was born the image of the “professional crime fighter”—the impartial law enforcement officer, objectively remote from citizens, who could bring to justice those accused of serious crimes. Radio cars, the 911 system, and “rapid response” emerged as the primary means to carry out this narrowly defined mission, which contained within it the seeds of future problems. “Police business” meant serious crime, and “real police work” meant patrolling in cars, waiting for calls about felonies in progress. Officers were discouraged from paying attention to minor disorder and other community problems. Citizen requests for assistance with such issues were thus easily ignored, dismissed as “social work,” or hastily (and ineffectually) handled.

https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2020-7-31-new-york-in-financial-fantasy

The blue state progressive political model consists of an endless list of government spending and redistribution programs, expected shortly to deliver perfect fairness and justice among all people, all financed by an assumed ever-increasing gusher of tax revenues. Then along comes the coronavirus: the productive economy gets intentionally suppressed, tax revenues plummet, and then what? Are we now expected to cut back on the government programs so recently touted as the sine qua non of human moral advancement? Worse, are public servants — those selfless individuals giving their lives to the righteous cause of human advancement through government spending — now to be laid off? Or have their pay or benefits reduced?

All of the blue states are currently facing this circumstance to greater or lesser degree, but none more so than my home state of New York. A June Report from researchers at Arizona State and Old Dominion Universities, cited at Bloomberg here, projected an annualized average decline in tax revenues among the states of 20%, but with New York leading all states with a projected 40% decline in tax revenues. Even if the decline turns out to be well less than the 40%, we’re still talking about a large part of the support for most-expensive-in-the-nation spending programs in areas like Medicaid, housing, and K-12 education. What’s the plan, Governor Cuomo?

Good New Yorker that he is, Cuomo’s brain is just incapable of contemplating substantial cuts to state spending or the state workforce, even in areas like Medicaid and K-12 education where our state spends double or more per capita the average of the other states. Nor are meaningful tax increases really an option — we’ve basically already maxed out on the potential for squeezing big money out of a handful of the richest citizens. So there’s really only one option: the federal government just has to step up and pay our bills.