Enjoy a break from politics and spending time with your family. Here’s George Winston’s version of “The Holly and the Ivy” off his landmark album December:
Merry Christmas!
Merry Christmas!
December 25th, 2014Gentry Liberals vs. The Police That Protect Them
December 23rd, 2014The classic saying is that a conservative is a liberal who’s been mugged. Judging from how many liberals have been saying how much they hate cops, I would guess that very few have been mugged in recent years. Chalk that up to falling crime rates, which in turn was helped along by aggressive “broken windows” policing like that which helped bring crime under control in Guliani-era New York City.
Given how many on the identity politics left were chanting “Dead Cops” in recent weeks, it looks like they’ve forgotten (or simply don’t care) what it took to bring those crime rates down. Which brings us to the recent police shootings.
Former NY Police Commissioner Howard Safir noted: “Michael Brown and Eric Garner died resisting arrest. Officers Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu died doing their job. It is a very important distinction.” Further:
The national dialogue on proper and effective policing has been totally distorted. Activists purporting to represent the majority of the black community have been bolstered by a 24 hour news cycle that gives them unwarranted credibility. I do not believe for one minute that Al Sharpton represents the feelings of most hardworking, law abiding black American families. I know through dozens of community meetings during my time as NYC Police Commissioner that what the black community wants most is what we all want—a safe environment in which to live their lives.
Snip.
Does that mean that there are not serious incidents of police abuse or misjudgment? Of course there are. When they take place we should investigate them thoroughly and prosecute and punish those who committed the wrong doing. We should not burn down buildings and murder police officers.
When Ismaaiyl Abdulah Brinsley brutally executed Officers Ramos and Liu he did so in an atmosphere of permissiveness and anti-police rhetoric unlike any that I have seen in 45 years in law enforcement. The rhetoric this time is not from the usual suspects, but from the Mayor of New York City, the Attorney General of the United States, and even the President. It emboldens criminals and sends a message that every encounter a black person has with a police officer is one to be feared. Nothing could be further from the truth. We will never know what was in the mind of Brinsley when he shot officers Ramos and Liu. However we do know that he has seen nothing but police bashing from some of the highest officials in the land.
You could chalk some of that bashing up to the usual Democratic hostility to working class men, but this goes much deeper. The radicals who now make up the ideological core of of the Democratic Party never got over their hatred of the police, still viewing them as agents of oppression and “The Man”–even though, with Obama and Holder in office, they are in fact “The Man” themselves these days. But who could have possibly imagined that the same activists who chanted “Free Mumia!” would one day chant that they wanted “dead cops,” or that the members of Occupy would delight in publicly defecating on cop cars? Also remember that Obama’s pals in the Weather Underground were always far more adept at killing policemen like Brian McDonnell and Waverly Brown than they ever were at effecting political change.
The likes of Obama, Holder and Sharpton have continually inflamed racial tensions by hyping otherwise nationally insignificant stories like Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown in order to continue milking minority grievances and keep them voting Democratic. When it comes to standing with grievance-mongering Social Justice Warriors, or standing with cops, the Democratic Party elite has chosen to stand with the Al Sharptons of the world.
If Democrats want a rerun of the sixties and early seventies, they shouldn’t be surprised when voters in 2016 treat them the same way they treated George McGovern in 1972.
Texas Economy Continues to Kick Ass
December 22nd, 2014Two bits of news dropped right after I put up the most recent Texas vs. California update.
First, Texas added 34,800 nonfarm jobs in November, and 441,200 more jobs year-over-year, more than any other state. And this happened despite the drop in oil prices.
One reason Texas does so well is that it has the highest level of economic freedom of any state (tied with South Dakota).
Needless to say, those two facts are strongly correlated. In the long run, free states produce jobs and economic activity while less free states produce dependency and stagnation.
(Hat tip: TPPF.)
LinkSwarm for December 19, 2014
December 19th, 2014I trust everyone reading this has already heard about Sony Picture’s spinelessness in cancelling their release of The Interview, and Paramount’s even more-spineless refusal to allow theaters to show Team America: World Police in its place. This would be good reason to avoid paying for any Sony or Paramount products any time in the near future. And Cuba is a topic for another time. So here’s a quick look at the rest of what’s been happening the week before Christmas:
I am not exaggerating when I say it is the closest thing to Kafka’s The Trial I have ever witnessed, with editors and administrators giving conflicting and confusing advice, complaints getting “boomeranged” onto complainants who then face disciplinary action for complaining, and very little consistency in the standards applied. In my short time there, I repeatedly observed editors lawyering an issue with acronyms, only to turn around and declare “Ignore all rules!” when faced with the same rules used against them.
Boko Haram Murders 32, Kidnaps 185 Women and Children
December 18th, 2014After pointing out that mass jihadist violence was common two days ago, Nigeria’s Boko Haram decides to underscore my point:
Boko Haram insurgents kidnapped at least 185 women and children, and killed 32 people in a raid in northeastern Nigeria this week, local officials and residents said.
Gunmen in pickup trucks attacked the village of Gumsuri, just north of Chibok, on Sunday, shooting down men before herding women and children together.
“They gathered the women and children and took them away in trucks after burning most of the village with petrol bombs,”
This actually happened a few days before the Peshawar school attack, but the village was remote enough that word is only trickling out now.
And speaking of the Peshawar massacre, a Taliban spokesman said killing women and children is just fine and dandy with Islam:
“The Mujahideen were instructed to only kill the older children. The Peshawar attack is in complete accordance with the Prophet’s teachings because when the Prophet killed the Jewish Tribe of Banu Qurayza, he put the same guideline, that only the children who have hair below their belly button (pubic hair) are allowed to be killed. Killing of women and children is also in accordance with the teachings of the Prophet.”
Got that? “Killing of women and children is also in accordance with the teachings of the Prophet.” Any questions?
(Hat tip: Jim Treacher’s Twitter Feed.)
Texas vs. California Update for December 17, 2014
December 17th, 2014Time for another Texas vs. California update:
District Court Declares Obama’s Illegal Alien Amnesty Unconstitutional
December 16th, 2014Today “a federal court in Pennsylvania declared aspects of President Obama’s executive actions on immigration policy unconstitutional.”
From the text of the decision: “The Court holds that the Executive Action is unconstitutional because it violates the separation of powers and the Take Care Clause of the Constitution.”
Note: This is different than the D.C. District Court, which has also agreed to consider whether Obama’s amnesty is unconstitutional.
It looks like all those liberal pundits opining that “Oh, it will be years before the case works its way through the court system, by which time it will be too late” to undo the amnesty may be mistaken…
(Hat tip: Instapundit.)
How Many People Were Killed By Islamic Jihadists Yesterday?
December 16th, 2014If you answered “two,” thinking of the Sidney siege, BZZZZPP! I’m sorry, you don’t win the microwave.
The answer would be “a minimum of 143,” given that the Taliban killed some 141 (a death toll that continues to rise) at a school in Pakistan yesterday. They burned a teacher alive and beheaded children.
You know: the usual.
And I wouldn’t be surprised if I missed a dozen or more jihad-related killings the barely made local international papers, much less the ones not reported on.
If that happened in the U.S., the freakout would go on for weeks on end. But pretty much a week doesn’t go by that Jihadists don’t carry out a school killing somewhere in Nigeria or Kenya or wherever. Indeed, attacks on schools are part of the standard Jihadest blueprint for terror.
Blow-back must be a bitch for the Pakistani Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), who played a key role in creating the Taliban and supporting various jihadist activities. (Remember where Osama Bin Laden was found?)
Mike Brown: A Not-So-Gentle Giant
December 15th, 2014This video, reportedly of Freguson’s own Mike Brown (and it does look a great deal like him) presents an glimpse of him distinctly at odds with the “Hand up don’t shoot” crowd’s characterization of him as a “gentle giant”:
Usual caveats for things found on the Internet apply.
According to the YouTube description for the video: “All the old gentleman was doing was passing out Jesus flyers.”
“Mike Brown was a gentle giant.” Except when punching people and taking their stuff…