RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://amgreatness.com/2020/06/04/social-justice-cancels-social-distancing/

And just like that, social distancing is canceled. At least for some.

After submitting to house arrest orders for the past three months in order to stop the spread of the novel coronavirus, Americans may have noticed a slight change in the rules this past week. There are no duct-taped outlines on city streets telling unruly mobs protesting the death of George Floyd where to stand. Rioters are not instructed to loot stores in opposite directions on downtown streets in order to avoid contact. Face coverings are optional but certainly useful when attempting to avoid identification by local law enforcement.

Drs. Deborah Birx and Anthony Fauci are not seizing the White House press podium to lecture lawless thugs about keeping grandma safe from COVID-19. Social media shamers, the same ones who just a few weeks ago were publicly denouncing fun seekers in the Ozarks, are in silent solidarity with social distancing rulebreakers in downtown Chicago, Minneapolis, and New York City. The Atlantic isn’t accusing Democratic leaders of unleashing “an experiment in human sacrifice” and CNN’s Chris Cuomo isn’t calling groups congregating to break windows at pricy boutiques and assault police officers “fools” for not staying six feet apart.

In fact, the rules have changed so much and so quickly that the very same “experts” who demanded we adhere to unproven (and possibly counterproductive) social distancing dogma now explain why these rules don’t equally apply. 

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/06/defense-arson-and-looting-weapons-against-joseph-klein/

Massachusetts Democratic Attorney General Maura Healey hailed the acts of arson occurring across the country as some sort of symbol of regeneration. In a speech she delivered to the Boston Chamber of Commerce on June 2nd, Healy said, “Yes, America is burning, but that’s how forests grow.” She later tweeted that “we must seize the opportunity we have right now to build anew in ways that rid us of the institutionalized racism that’s led to America burning today.”

Healey’s first duty as attorney general is to uphold the laws of her state and prosecute criminal violations. Arson is a serious crime. Arsonists must be arrested and prosecuted, whether they are agitators of the left or right. There is no legal defense that excuses arson because the arsonists believe they are fighting “institutionalized racism.” What’s next – that looting is a legitimate form of wealth redistribution to combat what some social justice advocates have called “racial capitalism”? It’s time to send Healey packing for inciting violence and dereliction of duty.

Massachusetts Republican Party Chairman Jim Lyons struck the right chord with his response to Healey’s outrageous forest fire analogy:

“By choosing to highlight this insane analogy, it should be clear to Massachusetts residents that no matter what else Democrats like Attorney General Healey say, they will always condone mob tactics. The Radical Democrats, led by the likes of Attorney General Healey, sat back and watched as cities went up in flames over the weekend, and are now openly admitting that this is all part of their plan to fundamentally change America by any means possible. This is no way to honor the memory of George Floyd, or correct the problems that led to his unjustified killing.”

1,000 “public health professionals, infectious diseases professionals, and community stakeholders.” The letter argues that it’s okay if the current protests/riots spread COVID-19 because racism is itself a public-health issue that needs to be addressed.

Let’s take that argument seriously for a moment and ask a follow-up question: Why, then, was there so much criticism of the anti-lockdown protests? The premise of those protests was that continuing lockdowns caused far more economic damage than was necessary. If anything is a public-health issue, surely record unemployment, social isolation, and bans on people going to hospitals for non-urgent care should count.

Well, here is how the letter distinguishes between anti-racism protests and anti-lockdown protests:

. . . [W]e do not condemn these [anti-racism] gatherings as risky for COVID-19 transmission. We support them as vital to the national public health and to the threatened health specifically of Black people in the United States . . . . This should not be confused with a permissive stance on all gatherings, particularly protests against stay-home orders. Those actions not only oppose public health interventions, but are also rooted in white nationalism and run contrary to respect for Black lives.

It’s difficult to understand how any reasonable person could have committed those words to print. Even just, “Yeah, we’re hypocrites, so what?” would have been a more satisfying response.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/06/project_veritas_begins_its_antifa_expose_.html

Project Veritas ought to be called Project Fortitudo so as to recognize the mind-boggling bravery of an undercover operative who infiltrated the Rose City Antifa organization in Portland, Oregon, one of the oldest active Antifa groups in America. The anarcho-leftist Antifa specializes in violent street fighting, putting at extreme risk anyone who goes into the group with a hidden camera.

That’s the risk a Project Veritas investigator took, beginning sometime in the past, but at least eleven months ago. (To protect the investigator’s identity, the year in which he began his undercover operation is bleeped out.)

Although Antifa has leaped to prominence in the past few days, as it’s joined forces with Black Lives Matter to wreak havoc in American cities, conservatives have been aware of it for some time. For most of us, Antifa became a concern beginning with the Berkeley rioting when the Berkeley Republicans invited conservative speakers, such as Milo Yiannopoulos or Ben Shapiro, to the UC campus. Even the Washington Post noticed that Antifa had a problem.

Antifa members showed up and engaged in extreme violence, including setting fire to the campus. As a hint that Antifa is the paramilitary arm of the Berkeley Democrat party, the mayor told the police to stand down as Antifa and other leftist organizations beat conservatives with poles, pepper spray, and fists. Rose City Antifa gets the same sweet treatment from Portland’s mayor.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/who-the-looting-ruins-11591313813?mod=opinion_lead_pos3

Luis Tamay is an immigrant with an Ecuadorean restaurant in Minneapolis. Zola Dias is the black owner of a clothing store in Atlanta. Sam Mabrouk has a denim shop in Columbus, Ohio. They’re only a few of the people whom intellectuals overlook whenever they rationalize rioting or say that property destruction isn’t violence.

“Seventeen years of work is gone,” Mr. Tamay told the Minneapolis Star Tribune after his restaurant, El Sabor Chuchi, burned to the ground. When the rioting began, he stood watch. But last Friday he obeyed curfew, believing that the National Guard would control the streets. Then on Facebook he saw video of his restaurant on fire. He told the newspaper he didn’t have insurance because it was too expensive.

Safia Munye, a Somali immigrant in Minneapolis, opened Mama Safia’s Kitchen in 2018 with money saved for retirement. When the pandemic arrived, NPRreported, she couldn’t afford both insurance and to pay her workers. She did the latter. Now the restaurant is wrecked, but she’s hardly the intended target of George Floyd protesters. “My heart is broken. My mind is broken,” she said. “I know I can’t come back from this. But this can be replaced. George’s life cannot. George’s life was more important.”

In Atlanta, Zola Dias lost more than $100,000 in goods from his clothing store, Attom. “I’m very emotional when I talk about it because I put my soul and life in this business,” he told the Atlanta Business Chronicle. “I just want to tell people to go and vote. That’s the only way to stop it and make a change.”

https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2020/06/04/on-racism/print/#comments_controls

“Where do we see evidence of white supremacists? Are statues of Grant, Sherman, and Sheridan being pulled down? Is the Lincoln Memorial covered in graffiti?  Are white supremacists rewriting American history in the universities and at the New York Times? Where are their magazines and newspapers? Who are their representatives in government and media? What is the power of such an invisible group?”

If white people are racist, how was Obama twice elected president of the United States?  That such questions do not occur to those shouting “white racism” indicates weak minds, the presence of anti-whites out to make mischief, and people who speak on the basis of an unexamined assumption that has been drilled into their heads.
The unexamined question is: Are white people racist by nature?  Those who say whites are racist by nature simultaneously claim that hundreds of thousands of Lincoln’s soldiers died in order to free black people from slavery and that white people in the North carried on a relentless long war against white people in the South for the benefit of black people.  

It is these same racist white people who passed the 1964 Civil Rights Act 56 years ago and permitted the establishment of racial quotas and contract set-asides for blacks that gave blacks rights and privileges that white people do not have. 

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/right-from-wrong-ellen-degeneres-george-floyd-and-iyad-al-halak-630423

SADLY, LOVE, peace and communication are far from the minds of the looters who have been destroying storefronts and stealing anything they can lay their hands on.

World-famous television host Ellen DeGeneres could not have predicted what was in store for her this week when she posted a message of mourning over the brutal killing in Minnesota of hitherto unknown African-American George Floyd.

On May 30, five days after Floyd was dealt a slow and sadistic death blow by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin – while three of his fellow men-in-blue stood by and did nothing – DeGeneres tweeted: “Like so many of you, I am angry and I am sad.
People of color in this country have faced injustice for far too long. For things to change, things must change. We must commit ourselves to this change with conviction and love.”DeGeneres is a brilliant comedian, but her followers did not find the tweet the least bit funny. Nor did they consider it appropriate. On the contrary, they took great offense to her wording.

“This statement is meaningless and a back door to All Lives Matter,” one person responded. “For things to change, we must first acknowledge specifically that #BlackLivesMatter.”

https://thefederalist.com/2020/06/04/bill-de-blasio-is-a-cowardly-tyrant-fueling-new-yorks-demise/

In Bill de Blasio’s world, during a pandemic, rioters have a right to non-peaceable assembly, but law-abiding religious believers have no right to meet peacefully.

The grave injustice inflicted upon one person is now being compounded into a grave injustice for millions of New Yorkers.

It took decades to bring New York City back from the brink — facing crime, squalor, and bankruptcy — to the peace and prosperity that has marked it since Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s tenure. Today, Mayor Bill de Blasio seems intent on sending the city back to the bad old days, threatening to undo decades of progress while operating under the banner of “progressivism.”

The twin crises of the Chinese coronavirus and the present rioting and looting have created the perfect storm for the city’s demise. In response to the Wuhan virus, New York City committed willful economic suicide, and in response to the current lawlessness, NYC called for curfews it failed to impose, encouraging its descent into chaos.

While the crippling coronavirus shutdown can perhaps best be attributed to incompetence, there is no such excuse for permitting New York’s streets to become a war zone. The latter represents a failure of the most basic duty of our elected officials to protect our lives, liberty, and property.

The Mayor Has Failed His Most Basic Tasks

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/06/new-floyd-murder-charges-will-be-tough-to-prove-and-may-imperil-good-cops/

In a politically charged case, it is more important, not less, to get the charges right.

Prosecutors in Minnesota have filed an amended complaint against Derek Chauvin for the killing of George Floyd, adding a second-degree “felony murder” charge. This dangerously flawed theory could be used to portray any police restraint of a resistant suspect as criminal assault.

The amended complaint against Chauvin also re-alleges the two homicide charges originally filed last week: third-degree “depraved indifference” murder and second-degree manslaughter, both of which better fit the facts of the case while posing no risk of criminalizing the legitimate use of force by good cops.

Separately, the other three fired Minneapolis police officers involved in the killing have been charged, after a week of demands by the Floyd family, as well as intense anti-police rhetoric (and worse) by Black Lives Matter activists and protesters.

Tou Thao, J. Alexander Kueng, and Thomas Lane are charged with aiding and abetting both second-degree murder (the new charge against Chauvin) and manslaughter. Weirdly, under the circumstances, the three are not charged with the “depraved indifference” murder count; nor are they accused of committing manslaughter as principals — they are charged only as aiders and abettors, a theory that does not jibe with a negligence charge such as second-degree manslaughter (which is negligent homicide under Minnesota law).

COVID-19 has proved to be a crisis not only for public health but for public policy. As credentialed experts, media commentators, and elected officials have insisted that ordinary men and women heed “the science,” the statistical models cited by scientists to predict the spread of contagion and justify the lockdown of the national economy have proven to be far off-base.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York complained this week about the “guessing business” experts had presented to him dressed up as scientific fact: “All the early national experts [said]: Here’s my projection model. Here’s my projection model,” Cuomo said. “They were all wrong. They were all wrong.”

Neil Ferguson of Imperial College London, whose computer modeling of the coronavirus predicted up to 2.2 million U.S. deaths. He has since resigned.

A computer model produced by statisticians at Imperial College London had an outsized effect on government policy, predicting up to 2.2 million American deaths from the new coronavirus and as many as 9.6 million people requiring hospitalization. Instead, emergency rooms and hospital beds in all but the few hardest hit cities remained empty; rather than being overwhelmed by cases, many doctors and nurses found themselves out of work.

As the staggering social and economic costs of shutdown have become painfully clear, the failure of the models to accurately anticipate what would happen is raising questions about their use to justify life-altering public policies.

If computer models projecting the near-term future of an epidemic were so wrong, what does that mean for the far more complicated computer models predicting the far-off future of the entire planet?