Category Archives: crime
Defund Police to Avoid Trouble and get Votes
New York City just defunded its police to the tune of $1 billion. That’s 17% of the law enforcement budget. Murders there are up 21% over a year ago but the funds will be redirected to social services.
“It’s almost like someone thinks there’s a benefit to keeping people divided.” That’s the last line of Matt Taibbi’s Rolling Stone critique of the #1 best seller “White Fragility”.
American Taliban Re-writing History Again
The American Taliban set out to remake the world 20 years ago. John Walker Lindh graduated from high school, converted to Islam and made his way to Afghanistan where he joined the Taliban. However, his adventure ended abruptly after 9/11/2001. U.S. forces captured him during fighting in a prison uprising near Mazar-e Sharif. The American Taliban then went on to serve another 17 years in an American prison.
In addition to harboring Osama Bin Laden, the Taliban was best known at the time for blowing up buddhist statues. Coming from Marin County, California, I would have figured Lindh to be more suited for the Buddhist side of things.
Power Politics Go Around and Come around
Power politics drove the Covid-19 crisis. Governors used police power to lock down the economy and flatten the curve. The curve flattened. But then a new crisis arrived – the police killing of George Floyd – and power shifted to a new group.
Blue states pride themselves for their liberal governors, big-city mayors, police chiefs and state attorneys general. But progressive urban bastions like Los Angeles, New York, Minneapolis and Philadelphia are also the ground zero sites of arson, violence and looting, where racial relations are the worst.
Victor Davis Hanson – The Bitter Irony of Revolutions
Go ahead, Throw a Brick, You’ve Been Through a Lot
Throw a brick. You’ve been through a lot this spring.
But, remember, it’s better to light a candle than curse the darkness. Oh, wait, I just looked it up and that might be a Chinese proverb. It’ll have to be quarantined.
How about this? It’s better to throw a brick at your own TV than your neighbor’s TV. What could be more American?
Could be the first step back to sanity.
Shared Famous Last Words: I Can’t Breathe
George Floyd isn’t the first guy whose last words at the hands of the police were “I can’t breathe.” Eric Garner said the same in 2014 as his breath slipped away while being choked by a cop.
Famous Last Words
Both men were big and black, and protests and riots soon followed. But that’s not all they had had in common. Garner was busted for selling single untaxed cigarettes. In Floyd’s case it was passing an allegedly fake $20 bill.
The Fed has printed fake money to the tune of $3 trillion just since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Maybe racism isn’t the only thing here to take your breath away.
