RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/08/let-them-boycott/

No one is saying athletes should not have social consciences or forums to express their political views. But the game is not such a forum, not if they expect people to attend or tune in.

O stensibly, the NBA boycotts, which other sports are adopting, are illogical. But then, the animating concept behind the player protests — “systemic racism,” derived from the smear that the nation’s police forces are hunting down young black men — is irrational, a triumph of distorted narrative over critical thinking. Why should the boycotts be any different?

For a work stoppage to be successful, it has to withhold something the potential consumer wants. Or, at least, wants badly enough to be depressed by its absence. Big-time professional sports has been that something for a long time. The sand is running out of the hourglass, though, and that won’t change if the players don’t figure out why.

With some exceptions, the astronomically paid athletes are inexperienced in anything other than their sport — understandably so: They are young, and it takes full-time dedication to compete at their elite level. They are ill-informed, or flat uninformed, about the phenomena they claim to be animated by. They do not approach public policy with an open mind. That, too, is not their fault. Modern-era education has supplanted critical thinking with tribalism, grievance-mongering, and hostility to the free exchange of ideas and viewpoints. It seems paradoxical, given how self-regarding athletes tend to be, but marination in progressive tropes has left them devoid of self-perception. The wealth, the adulation, and the open doors enjoyed by the players, a large percentage of whom are African American, defy the Manichean tale they parrot about America.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/cuomo-gets-a-nursing-home-inspection-11598655585?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo has resisted inquiries by the press and his own Democratic Legislature into how his policy of returning Covid-19 patients to nursing homes contributed to an untold number of elderly deaths. But New Yorkers may finally get an honest accounting thanks to the Trump Justice Department.

Justice on Wednesday sent letters to Mr. Cuomo and the governors of Michigan, Pennsylvania and New Jersey requesting virus data from their nursing homes. DOJ says it wants to determine whether the states’ orders “requiring admission of COVID-19 patients to nursing homes is responsible for the deaths of nursing home residents.”

To recap: Mr. Cuomo decreed on March 25 that “no resident shall be denied re-admission or admission to [a nursing home]” because of a virus diagnosis. And he prohibited homes “from requiring a hospitalized resident who is determined medically stable to be tested” for the virus before admission. The other governors issued similar orders.

They were understandably worried that hospitals would be overwhelmed, so they pushed to discharge elderly patients as soon as they were medically stable. But as it turned out, 15% of New York hospital beds and 10% of its intensive-care units remained unoccupied at the Covid-19 peak. Other states also had spare capacity.

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

A store owner’s interaction with a respectful police officer ought to have been over quickly but is now another act in the left’s grievance theater.

Mostly lily-white Tiburon, in Marin County, is being roiled by a black store owner’s claim that a police officer racially harassed him. In advance of a town hall to discuss the matter, town officials have released footage from the officer’s video camera. It is illuminating, to say the least, and shows the breakdown in civil order when people no longer respect a community’s police officers.

As a starting point, you need to understand that the small town of Tiburon, which is one of the wealthiest communities in America, is also one of the most tightly policed. The police make sure that the residents and businesses are safe and sound.

The historic downtown is filled with pricy boutiques for residents and tourists alike. One of those pricy little boutiques is a store called Yema, owned by Yema Khalif and Hawi Awash, a husband and wife partnership. He’s from Kenya; she’s from Ethiopia. Both are black.

At around 1:00 a.m., on August 21, the entire downtown was shut down, except for Yema, where the owners and an employee were working late. When an officer knocked on the door to check that everything was okay, Yema answered it but refused to provide any information about who he was or why he was in the store. From the first, he was incredibly rude and defensive in response to very polite questioning:

Look at this whole thing from the officer’s perspective: In a business community that shuts down at 9 p.m., he sees unusual activity in a store. The person who opens the door refuses to provide any information. That instant hostility alone arouses suspicion. For all that the officer knew, the people in the store were robbers, or there was a hostage situation. After all, an owner would usually be grateful to know that the police were looking out for his business.