RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://thejewishvoice.com/2020/06/blm-protesters-storm-beverly-hills-neighborhood

Police made several arrests after a group of Black Lives Matter protesters marched through a Beverly Hills residential neighborhood Friday night.

“Videos and photographs of the mob flooded social media as they shouted various messages throughout the residential neighborhood and tore down American flags,” the Daily Wire reported.

Human Events Managing Editor Ian Miles Cheong shared footage of protesters shouting “Eat the rich!”:

Ian Miles Cheong
@stillgray
Black Lives Matter mob shouts “eat the rich” as they march down a residential area in Beverly Hills. They’re coming for your homes.

https://www.algemeiner.com/2020/06/15/the-new-iconoclasm-down-with-jefferson-up-with-sharpton/
Rarely a week passes without dramatic pictures on TV and in the press of sledgehammers taken to heroes of the Old Confederacy, along with new “replacement” sculpture and statuary to Black Lives Matter (like the formidable slab within full view of the White House itself) and already on the list of Places to See in Washington, DC. We will, no doubt, soon see statues of Rev. Al Sharpton alongside of, or even replacing, those of Martin Luther King, Jr. The Reverend Sharpton is the titular and also unchallenged leader of Black Lives Matter, now turning the country upside down to express its indignation over the murder in Minneapolis and its (supposed) epitome of police brutality towards black Americans.

The Rev. Sharpton was a constant presence in the White House during the presidency of Barack Obama, and has been treated with oily sycophancy by every major Democratic candidate for that party’s nomination. (When Sharpton’s acolytes in Black Lives Matter shouted down Bernie Sanders at a Seattle rally, the candidate reacted with instant compliance, and surrendered the microphone to them.) He has taught leading Democrats, at nearly all levels of the party, to view crime as a problem of prejudiced and brutal police, not of ruthless and pitiless criminals.

Do Americans know much about Sharpton, the unquestioned leader of Black Lives Matter, an organization now carrying all before it, including governors of states and mayors of cities? He first came to prominence for his central role in the assaults on Jews in 1991 in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn. It has been called by historian Edward Shapiro “the only antisemitic riot in American history.” This has not prevented Senator Elizabeth Warren from calling Sharpton a paragon who has “dedicated his life to the fight for justice for all” or ex-candidate Kamala Harris from exuding about how much he “has done … for our country.” And so on ad infinitum, ad nauseam.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/06/police-reform-and-the-making-of-a-racism-narrative/

This narrative is driving the nation to ruin.

Have you seen that mountain of evidence that Derek Chauvin is a racist? Me neither.

In that regard, I’m like the Wall Street Journal’s fearlessly fact-driven Jason Riley. Did some shred of racial animus motivate the since-fired Minneapolis police officer’s killing of George Floyd? For the moment, we have no proof of that — just a racialist narrative built on the happenstance (no reason to believe it’s more than that right now) that Chauvin is white and Floyd was black.

These days, alas, mere happenstance is enough to tear this nation asunder.

As an old investigator, I am intrigued by the fact that Minnesota attorney general Keith Ellison has refused to disclose police body-cam video of the moments leading up to Chauvin’s disturbing neck hold. Ditto the fact — highlighted in my analyses of the charges filed against the arresting officers (here and here) — that the state’s minute-by-minute recitation of probable cause omits whatever went on between Floyd and police inside the squad-car. Surely, if they helped the prosecution’s police-brutality allegations, those gaps in the complaint would have been filled.

Similarly, the fact that Minnesota police procedures permitted the use of neck holds for suspects resisting arrest has disappeared from the reporting. No chatter permitted, either, about the facts that Floyd (a) had a significant criminal record (though no new charges in recent years), (b) was suspected of passing a small amount of counterfeit money at the time of his arrest, and (c) was high on fentanyl and methamphetamine — a toxic combination whose ingestion was particularly dangerous for a person with his heart conditions.

Silence on these matters is partially explained by the admirably widespread desire not to besmirch a tragic victim, as well as the Left’s more-narrow determination to martyr Floyd for purposes of their police-racism narrative. The subject is also verboten, though, because the police were inconveniently recorded discussing their fear that Floyd might be experiencing excited-delirium syndrome. When police suspect that dangerous condition, their training calls for restraining the arrestee until emergency medical personnel arrive.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/understating-black-on-black-murders/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=homepage&utm_campaign=river&utm_content=featured-content-trending&utm_term=first

About three weeks ago, we published my column, “The ‘Institutional Racism’ Canard.” In it, I made a point about black-on-black murders, drawing on FBI statistics from 2016. Though the data I drew from the published stats was accurate, there are caveats that I did not explain. When additional information is factored in, the problem is even worse than I suggested.

Specifically, I noted that Powerline’s Paul Mirengoff had drawn on FBI crime statistics for 2016 in support of the proposition that “of 776 black-white homicides, blacks committed 533 and whites 243.” I ended the paragraph with my own observation: “Neither of these numbers, by the way, nor their combined total, comes anywhere close to the number of blacks killed by blacks: a staggering 2,570 — the overwhelming majority male.”

We are going to remove that sentence, with a reference to this Corner post. As noted above, it accurately reflects what is set forth in the relevant table of the FBI’s 2016 crime statistics (Expanded Homicide Data Table 3), but it could be misleading. As an explanatory note explains, Table 3 “is based on incidents where some information about the offender is known by law enforcement.” That is, it “excludes data when the offender, age, sex, race, and ethnicity are all reported as unknown.” Moreover, Table 3 includes only murders where a single offender is known to have killed a single victim; that, too, omits a significant number of murders from the chart. Consequently, Table 3 breaks down only 6,676 murders that occurred in 2016.

As the FBI explains elsewhere in its compilation, however, there were an estimated 17,250 murders in the United States that year. In 7,881 of these, the victim was black.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/06/why-is-andrew-cuomo-bragging/

New York’s governor surveys the smoldering wreckage of the hardest-hit state and declares victory.

Andrew Cuomo is spiking the football, dunking the basketball, and dashing around the soccer field taking off his shirt. He’s spraying champagne all over Albany. He’s Muhammad Ali standing over the crumpled form of Sonny Liston in 1965: Boom, take that, coronavirus. Woo-hoo! Victory! Only 31,000 deaths. New York suffered through the equivalent of 9/11 times 11 but . . . yay?

“You played politics with this virus and you lost,” Cuomo said in an interview Thursday, referring to Florida governor Ron DeSantis, with whom Cuomo is engaging in a bizarre feud to rival his utterly nonsensical ongoing war with fellow liberal Democrat and New York City mayor Bill de Blasio. “It’s now undeniable this country paid a terrible price,” Cuomo continued, suggesting . . . what? That other states lacked the sage wisdom of Andrew Cuomo, slayer of the coronavirus? Thirty-one thousand New York families would like a word.

Last week, Cuomo saluted himself as he celebrated several weeks of encouraging coronavirus trends in his state by saying there was no longer a need for his daily press briefings, a habit for 111 days. “We showed that in the end, love does win. Love does conquer all — that no matter how dark the day, love brings the light,” he said. “That is what I will take from the past 111 days. And it inspires me and energizes me and excites me.”

https://nypost.com/2020/06/25/getting-realistic-about-the-coronavirus-death-rate/

With coronavirus infections rising again across the nation, the question of just how lethal the ­virus is has become more crucial than ever.

Early in the epidemic, public-health experts feared the virus might kill up to 2 percent of those infected, potentially causing millions of deaths in the United States and tens of millions worldwide. Those terrifying estimates prompted the lockdowns that have done incalculable harm to the economy, shattered small businesses and left children traumatized and untold numbers suffering from brutal isolation.

But we now know much more about the virus. And we know its lethality is lower than we originally feared — and highly concentrated in the very elderly and people with serious health problems.

In fact, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ­esti­mated in May that the coronavirus kills about 0.26 percent of the people it infects, about 1 in 400 people. New estimates from Sweden suggest that only 1 in 10,000 people under 50 will die from the virus, compared to 1 in 14 of people over 80 and 1 in 6 of those over 90.

Estimates for the coronavirus’ lethality have fallen so sharply because calculating the ­so-called infection fatality rate requires scientists and physicians to know both the total number of deaths and the total number of people infected.

https://amgreatness.com/2020/06/25/obama-and-his-gang-of-untouchables/

In the 1987 classic “The Untouchables,” federal crime fighters take on legendary mafioso Al Capone and the Chicago mob during the Prohibition era. At the time, Capone controlled every power base in the city—from local newspapers to sitting judges. The film spawned a famous line—“he pulls a knife, you pull a gun”—from the scene where Sean Connery’s character explained how to overcome Capone and his thugs.

The term “The Untouchables” referred not to the Chicago mafia but to Eliot Ness’ incorruptible gang of cops. In the Obama era, however, that term is flipped on its head. It applies to the former president himself and his own sort of mob—a broad syndicate of henchmen, including corrupt cops, who continue to serve their Don and enrich themselves in the process. Barack Obama still calls the shots and pulls the strings while his goombahs in the news media, federal government, and Democratic Party carry out his orders. 

“If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun,” Obama said in 2008, cribbing Connery’s line, during his first campaign for president. It was a warning that the Chicago-machine raised politician would use any weapon at his disposal to defeat his foes—which is exactly what he did.

And it’s the reason why to this day, Obama and his consigliere, Joe Biden, escape any culpability for the biggest shakedown in U.S. political history—the attempted hit on Donald Trump. After getting away with what would have been presidency-ending scandals for anyone else—illegal gun-running in Mexico, intimidating Tea Party activists with the IRS, shipping billions to Iranian mullahs, and lying about a terrorist attack to avoid losing re-election—Obama and Biden knew they could pull off one more caper. But this time, Obama’s lackeys didn’t just ignore or excuse his bad behavior, they were in on it. Now they are trying to hide the evidence.

Despite a steady flow of evidence confirming that Obama’s White House directed the operation to infiltrate, spy on, and sabotage Trump’s presidential campaign and then employ those same forces against Trump after he won, the media refuses to report any of it. Notes released this week once again reveal that the targeting of Lt. General Michael Flynn, Trump’s incoming security advisor, was openly discussed during a high-level Oval Office meeting in early January 2017 with Obama, Biden, James Comey, Susan Rice, and Sally Yates.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/06/flynn-highlights-new-strzok-notes-in-urging-dismissal-of-case/

Strzok’s notes are significant in what they confirm, but they probably do not reveal anything new.

Well, there is lots going on in Flynn World.

The president’s former national-security advisor, Michael Flynn, is obviously elated that, on Wednesday, a three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit granted his petition for a writ of mandamus — i.e., it instructed District Judge Emmet Sullivan to grant the Justice Department’s motion to dismiss the case against him. I have a column about the ruling up on the homepage.

As reported by NR’s Zachary Evans, moreover, Flynn defense lawyer Sidney Powell has filed an intriguing supplement the defense’s concurrence in the Justice Department’s dismissal motion. The supplement, also filed on Wednesday, includes notes said to have been handwritten by Peter Strzok, then a top FBI counterintelligence agent (and, of course, later fired for sundry misconduct).

It is being widely reported that the notes concern a now infamous White House meeting about Flynn that took place on January 5, 2017. (I began writing about that meeting as soon as we learned about it in early 2018, and it is central to my book about the Trump–Russia investigation, Ball of Collusion). The meeting included the top political and law-enforcement leadership of the Obama administration — President Obama, Vice President Biden, national-security advisor Susan Rice, deputy attorney general Sally Yates, and FBI director James Comey — notwithstanding the insistence of Obama apologists that the administration did not permit law enforcement to be influenced by politics. (I would counter that mixing the two was the administration’s M-O).

I suspect the Strzok notes are about the January 5 meeting, too. There is, however, confusion on this point.

The short supplement Ms. Powell filed states that Strzok’s notes are “believed to be of January 4, 2017” (emphasis added). Now, Powell received these notes from the Justice Department as part of its continuing review of the Flynn case (which was prosecuted by special counsel Robert Mueller’s staff). Obviously, she is privy to more information about the case than we are, and we do not know what, if anything, DOJ told her about the provenance of the notes. That said, I am skeptical about the January 4 dating.

Only in Seattle do the tree trimmers make $160,000 per year!

Today, our investigation is an Editor’s Pick at Forbes: Why Seattle And Their Police Department Is In Trouble.

Our auditors dug into how Seattle is actually spending taxpayer dollars. We found: 

tree trimmers lopped off $160,604
the chief librarian made $197,704
electricians earned $271,070
electrical lineworkers made $307,387
police officers earned up to $414,543 

Last year, 601 city employees out-earned the mayor ($199,593), and the mayor out-earned 49 out of 50 state governors (top pay: $202,000).  

The city council member ($131,336) leading the charge to defund the police made more than the members of the New York general assembly — the most highly compensated state legislature in the country ($130,000). 

Read our breaking oversight piece at Forbes where we outline all the details.