Compliance is Complicity

Article by Danl Hull in "RedState":

This week in the Midwestern state in which I live the governor propounded an executive order mandating that all citizens must wear masks at all times when in public. This order goes into effect at midnight on July 3rd.  While there are any number of sheriffs who have said they will not enforce this mandate, there are plenty more who are waffling or making excuses. What then should a citizen do?

Let me preface my arguments by saying that I understand the fear that the DNC’s propaganda arm has been stirring up among citizens over the COVID-19 situation. I am also sympathetic to those most at risk who could be endangered by catching this particular version of SARS. And I’m not opposed to the mitigation of risk through minor inconveniences that don’t trample civil liberties. But none of that changes the fact that, in this case, compliance is complicity.

First, let me lay out the constitutional case. Nowhere in the United States Constitution (or the constitution of my state) is the government given the power to confine people to virtual house arrest if they refuse to wear the clothing that the government mandates. If the state told you that all women had to wear dresses if they wanted to leave their homes, would that be acceptable? If they suspended the First Amendment “until further notice”, would that be OK? Pretending that a “state of emergency” allows the government to remove your constitutional rights for an unlimited amount of time without recourse is nonsense. Whatever “precedent” might say, if our rights are that easily suspended, then for all intents and purposes, they’re neither “ours” nor “rights.”

Dig into this more and you can see that almost every right guaranteed by the constitution is under threat here. Free exercise of religion is suspended on the whims of godless leftists who believe they have the power to tell you when and where and how you can gather. Freedom of speech is eliminated as people who protest these illegal actions are arrested (why is it that peaceful protesters on the right get arrested, but rioting antifa thugs are allowed to skate?–that’s a rhetorical question.) The right to peaceably assemble is curtailed under the nonsensical dual excuses of social distancing and “bending the curve.” The ability to petition the government is removed as those trying to be heard by legislators are hauled off for violating these unconstitutional orders. In more rabid leftist states the Second Amendment, already on shaky ground, is abolished for the duration of the “emergency.” Need I go on?

Aside from this clear violation of constitutional principles,  the fact that the so-called experts have been wrong at literally every step of the Chinese Lung AIDS outbreak is an important part of my calculations. In March, we were told that up to two million people would die, just in California, if we didn’t shut down the American economy. Now we’re being told that it is completely unnecessary to close businesses if we just wear masks. Well, which is it? If masks were sufficient, why did they insist on killing off nine million jobs? If a complete shutdown was necessary, then masks aren’t going to prevent the spread of Wuhan flu any better in July than they did in March. Clearly there’s something else going on here besides “science” and “medicine” and it isn’t very flattering to the doctors and scientists who are making these wildly contradictory claims.

Next I’d like to address the slippery-slope argument. As this current situation has shown, if you give the small-minded people who are drawn to politics a little power, they’ll misuse it. And if you don’t actively resist their small violations of your rights, they’ll turn the heat up and up and up until the water is boiling–though you never noticed it getting warmer. First, they abused the electorate’s naivete and confusion over The ‘Rona to close small businesses (while leaving big corporations untouched). Then, when an open revolt seemed imminent (remember the peaceful but armed reopen protests?) they said everything was going to be OK with a “phased reopening.” But a funny thing happened on the way to the “reopening”–it turned out that the government decided that there were too many new cases (odd how increased testing turned up more cases, isn’t it?) and while the fatality rate remained low such a crisis could not be allowed to go to waste. So new mandates–including my state’s mask mandate–were put in force. What’s next then? An executive order requiring anyone in public to wear Hazmat Level A suits? To bathe in sanitizer twice a day?

Finally, to the point raised in the title. I often tell my children that their actions are sending signals. If they ignore a sibling, the signal they are sending–whether they mean to or not–is that they don’t care about that child. If you comply with these illegal and unconstitutional orders, you also are sending a signal to those who are no longer our countrymen. And the message contained in that signal is that if they scream “health crisis” loud enough you will comply with whatever order they give. And in complying, you become complicit in the further deterioration of the rule of law in our once-great republic. Because in this case, for all the reasons outlined above, compliance is complicity.

As for myself, I will not comply. If a company asks me to leave their premises because I don’t have a mask on, I’ll go because I believe in private property rights. But if a police officer wants to arrest me because I’m not going to give an inch to people who would happily use the excuse of a pandemic to send us all to the guillotine, I may write my next diary from jail. So be it.

https://www.redstate.com/diary/riderdan/2020/07/02/compliance-is-complicity/

UK police arrest ‘iconic’ criminals in biggest ever operation after encryption breakthrough

July 2, 2020
By Michael Holden
LONDON (Reuters) – British police said on Thursday they had carried out their biggest operation ever, arresting “iconic” figures and smashing thousands of conspiracies including murder plots after infiltrating a communications service used by criminals.
The National Crime Agency (NCA) said the cracking of the encryption used by EncroChat, which offered a secure mobile phone instant messaging service and was used by criminals to coordinate their activities, had allowed detectives across the country to make almost 750 arrests.
The agency said it also meant a specialist team had been able to stop rival gangs carrying out kidnappings and executions, “successfully mitigating over 200 threats to life”.
“Together we’ve protected the public by arresting middle-tier criminals and the kingpins, the so-called iconic untouchables who have evaded law enforcement for years, and now we have the evidence to prosecute them,” said NCA Director of Investigations Nikki Holland.
The NCA said it had been working with international partners since 2016 to crack EncroChat which it described as a bespoke encrypted global communications service used exclusively by criminals.
Two months ago, French and Dutch investigators infiltrated the platform, which had 60,000 users worldwide and around 10,000 in the United Kingdom and shared the data via Europol, allowing the authorities to monitor criminals’ messages and movements.


EncroChat, which has now been shut down, had advised its users to throw away their handsets on June 13 after realising it had been compromised.
However, British police have made 746 arrests, claimed 54 million pounds ($67 million) in criminal cash, seized 77 firearms, including an assault rifle and sub-machine guns, and more than two tonnes of drugs, the NCA said.
It added that entire networks had been dismantled in the most significant operation of its kind. Other European law enforcement agencies have also used the information to target crime groups.


https://www.oann.com/uk-police-arrest-iconic-criminals-in-biggest-ever-operation-after-encryption-breakthrough/

Another 'Accident' at Iran Nuke Site

Article by Rick Moran in "PJMedia": 

Working at a nuclear facility in Iran is hazardous to your health.

Following a huge explosion at an underground site in the mountains east of Tehran last Friday — a site suspected of harboring secret nuclear research — the AP reports that fire and an explosion hit the Natanz nuclear facility yesterday. U.S. analysts believe the site was a new centrifuge production plant.

Either Iranian scientists are unlucky or incompetent, or someone is targeting the Iranian nuclear program and trying to eliminate it piece by piece.

The Atomic Energy Organization of Iran sought to downplay the fire, calling it an “incident” that only affected an under-construction “industrial shed,” spokesman Behrouz Kamalvandi said. However, both Kamalvandi and Iranian nuclear chief Ali Akbar Salehi rushed after the fire to Natanz, which has been targeted in sabotage campaigns in the past.

Kamalvandi did not identify what damaged the building, though Natanz governor Ramazanali Ferdowsi said a “fire” had struck the site, according to a report by the semiofficial Tasnim news agency. Authorities offered no cause for the blaze, though Iran’s state-run IRNA news agency published a commentary addressing the possibility of sabotage by enemy nations such as Israel and the U.S. following other recent explosions in the country.

It should be noted that these facilities routinely use extremely volatile chemicals and gasses which, unless handled properly, can cause a tragedy. But the coincidence of two Iranian nuclear sites being hit by fire and explosions within a matter of days leads to the inescapable conclusion that these may very well not be accidents, but deliberate efforts to sabotage the Iranian nuclear program.

If the fire did, indeed, target a centrifuge manufacturing facility, that could set back Iranian efforts to build a bomb by several months, maybe a year. These are the advanced centrifuges that President Obama allowed the Iranians to develop in small numbers in the nuclear deal. The Iranians never paid any attention to that part of the deal and were building the centrifuges as fast as possible. The Stuxnet virus took out hundreds of them They are three times more efficient at enriching uranium than the old ones, meaning they could, with enough of the new centrifuges, enrich enough bomb-grade uranium to build a weapon in a matter of weeks, not months.

This is certainly reason enough to go after the centrifuge facility if true.

The site of the fire corresponds to a newly opened centrifuge production facility, said Fabian Hinz, a researcher at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in Monterey, California. He said he relied on satellite images and a state TV program on the facility to locate the building, which sits in Natanz’s northwest corner.

David Albright of the Institute for Science and International Security similarly said the fire struck the production facility. His institute previously wrote a report on the new plant, identifying it from satellite pictures while it was under construction and later built.

Iranian nuclear officials did not respond to a request for comment about the analysts’ comments. However, any damage to the facility would be a major setback, said Hinz, who called the fire “very, very suspicious.”

These facilities are probably among the most closely guarded in Iran. Penetrating them would be daring, indeed. I doubt whether the Mossad or the CIA have invisibility cloaks, so the most likely scenario would be that one or both agencies turned an employee of the facilities who carried out the sabotage.

It’s fanciful of course, and the first place the Iranians will look for traitors is among their own people. But however it was done, if it was done, you have to admire the chutzpah in carrying it out.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/rick-moran/2020/07/02/another-accident-at-iran-nuke-site-n599851

Black Lives Matter Gets Just One Thing Right: The United States Is Profoundly Broken

 
 Article by Clint Fargeau in "RedState":

Demonstrators hold signs and shout in Portland, Ore., during a protest over the death of George Floyd, who died May 25 after being restrained by police in Minneapolis. (AP Photo/Craig Mitchelldyer)
 
For all its imbecility and racism (the real kind), Black Lives Matter articulates one message that resonates across the political spectrum: the United States is profoundly broken. It resonates because it is true.

Lest you think I’m suffering a Marxist psychotic episode, let me clarify: the United States is broken by the standards of its own *founders*, and it has nothing to do with race.

Nearly every harbinger of the republic’s implosion prophesized by the founders has come to pass. Our laws and legal system have grown so vast, overcomplicated, and burdensome that no citizen without expensive legal muscle can navigate the maze or know what’s expected of him–an eventuality about which James Madison cautioned. The popular moral and religious counterweight to the government’s secular liberalism has evaporated, as John Adams worried it might. Thomas Jefferson’s concern that the legislature would devolve into a tool of majority tyranny has come to pass in spades. Rivalries among American groups have resulted in toxic sectionalism and the rejection of American unity, just as George Washington feared. The list goes on and on.

Were any of the founders alive today, he might well say: “They’re tearing down my statue? That’s a relief! I don’t want a statue in a country that has come to resemble nightmares I had during the Constitutional Convention. You lot should go back to the King of England and beg him to take you back.”

BLM was not the first to popularize America’s brokenness. Donald Trump beat them to it in his own subtle way, but stated the problem without denigrating some or all of the American people. Trump said, “Make America Great Again.”

Think about it: what kind of country needs to be made “Great Again”?

A  country in less than great shape.

THE DECONSTRUCTION PRESIDENT

President Trump’s message resonated with tens of millions of disillusioned conservatives. What BLM is doing for the left with its accusations of “systemic racism” Donald Trump accomplished for the rank-and-file right with his accusations of systemic conservative failure-ism–or in his non-academic lingo, ‘LOSING.’

Trump attacked not just the left but also the Mitt-Romney-and-National-Review weenie conglomerate, who spend their careers figuring out how to garnish progressivism so that conservative voters will swallow the liberal frankfurter without a fuss. In Donald Trump’s formulation, it wasn’t just the left in America that was broken; it was the right as well, and that made for a broken government–though not necessarily for a broken populace.

Polite think-tank conservatives want reform; but reform works on institutions that are *deformed*. The United States government is not deformed–it’s broken, lying in scattered pieces. Recent symptoms include: Congress has largely ceased to perform lawmaking and spends its time bickering and posturing. The Justice Department and its FBI subsidiary have suffered an infestation of political activism. The Supreme Court and federal judiciary now fill in for Congress and make laws rather than interpret them. A zombie administrative state controls the lives of Americans like a network of cartels. Don’t even get me started on the dysfunction and corruption within government-adjacent institutions like nonprofits, university systems, and mega-corporations.

Donald Trump may wind up being know as the president of Deconstruction, as President Ulysses S. Grant was know for Reconstruction after the Civil War. Trump’s peculiar genius lies not in recognizing the need for deconstruction of the government–the Joe on the street, progressive or conservative, sense that much–but rather in his tactic of allowing the government to *deconstruct itself*. Like a conductor who wants to stop a runaway orchestra, all the president need do is wave his hands so that the instrument sections conflict with one another, then step back and watch the arguments erupt.

The president’s deconstructive strategy is hard to bear, because it grinds against the all-too-human need for harmony and stability at any cost. Many Americans can’t stand the conflict. Rod Dreher at The American Conservative writes:

The other night, Tucker Carlson mentioned that Donald Trump laughed about this kind of thing, and said something to the effect of let the progressive cities destroy themselves. Understandable, said Tucker, but inexcusable: no American president should talk this way. He’s right. Along those lines, no American should merely laugh this off. It came upon Minneapolis very fast. Do not take this lightly.

What Carlson and Dreher fail to grasp is that the musicians have become so refractory that they dictate what tunes they will and won’t play, abuse the conductor and audience, and seize the concert hall. It’s not just bass ackwards; it’s unsustainable. Americans now live as hostages to institutions that were supposed to serve and protect them. If something is not done to disrupt the spiral, the orchestra will be hanging audience members and one another with piano wire very soon.

The likes of Dreher and Carlson want a broken system to drag itself along so that they do not have to face the discomfort, uncertainty, and hard work of reconstituting the nation’s institutions from the ground up. This is not to cast aspersions on these men in particular. Both have done good work, and like many in the conservative establishment, they do not want to lose what they possess by stepping into the unknown.

That said, a reckoning is coming whether they like it or not.

THE END IS NEAR

The signs of the times proliferate. Black Lives Matter now functions as an emergent de-facto political party, and some leaders are calling for them to separate from the Democratic Party and make it official. The trumpets and trombones are no longer content to be members of the brass section; they are separating into sheep and goats. Meanwhile, more and more conservative commentators are excoriating the establishment GOP for their hand-sitting and white-flag-waving, even as institutions and public monuments to their ideals figuratively and literally shatter on the pavement.

Congressional conservatives and the neocons have gone the exact wrong way. They have pandered to progressives by kneeling in print or fronting bills about police reform and renaming military bases, thus conceding the country is broken in the way BLM and their fellow travelers say. They so far refuse to follow the president’s lead and declare that the United States is broken for the vast majority of Americans of both sexes and every skin color. This is a terrible strategic mistake by establishment conservatives.

Today, only the very wealthy and the technocratic/managerial upper class in the United States experience reliable prosperity and security, a responsive government, a comprehensible legal system, a wholistic culture, and a commodious society. Everyone else is struggling to figure out how to resuscitate the American dream or just scrape by. The formerly hale and robust American middle class is scrambling to avoid melting into the lower class and vanishing. The lower class for their part are scrambling to avoid falling into third-world poverty, a modern-day multi-generational serfdom.

Were establishment conservatives instead to drop the ‘America is just fine because it’s not North Korea yet’ act, they would find themselves inundated with popular support and attention. They could very well suck the wind out of BLM’s Marxist, racist, prevaricating sails. The hugely successful lie peddled by BLM is that black Americans are the only ones really suffering from the effects of a broken system on account of their race. A grain of truth–the broken system part–keeps this lie afloat. The solvent to this lie happens to be the full truth: 90% of ALL Americans are worried and suffering, and no party speaks for them the way BLM purports to for black Americans.

https://www.redstate.com/diary/clint-fargeau/2020/07/02/black-lives-matter-gets-just-one-thing-right/

Hugh Downs, longtime TV personality, dead at 99

Michael Starr for the NY Post

Hugh Downs,
longtime TV personality,
dead at 99

Hugh Downs in 2012

By Michael Starr • July 2, 2020

Hugh Downs, the avuncular, versatile TV personality, whose career stretched back to the birth of television, died at his home in Scottsdale, Arizona, on Wednesday. He was 99.

Downs’ long TV résumé encompassed both news and entertainment. He hosted NBC’s “Today” show from 1962 to 1971, was late-night host Jack Paar’s longtime announcer/sidekick on “The Tonight Show,” appeared in dozens of commercials and even hosted the daytime quiz show “Concentration” for over a decade.

Downs was perhaps best known as the co-host of ABC’s newsmagazine “20/20,” teaming with Barbara Walters, with whom he’d worked at “Today.” They also co-hosted the short-lived syndicated daytime show “Not for Women Only.”

His TV career began in 1950 as an announcer for the NBC soap “Hawkins Falls” and never seemed to stop until he retired in 1999.

In 1985, Downs was certified by the Guinness Book of World Records as holding the record for the most hours on network commercial television (over 15,000) — a record that stood until it was broken by Regis Philbin in 2004.

His wife, Ruth Shaheen Downs, died in 2017 at the age of 95. They were married for 73 years.

Downs is survived by his daughter, Deirdre; his son, Hugh R. “H.R.” Downs; two grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.

Hugh Downs in 1961

Hugh Downs in 1970

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The Source of BLM’s Super-Power

Lloyd Marcus for American Thinker

The Source of BLM's Super-power

Lloyd Marcus • July 1, 2020

Americans are not afraid of the cowardly mob of domestic terrorists known as Black Lives Matter. Thank God we hung tough in not allowing Democrats and fake news media to repeal our Second Amendment right to bear arms. Everyday Americans are scratching their heads, terrified, and livid over BLM's extraordinary political power.

Who has gifted this anti-American racial hate group the power to destroy monuments with impunity -- the power to intimidate politicians to swiftly remove monuments BLM deem offensive -- the power to silence any opposition by getting people fired – the power to demand that airports, colleges and etc. be renamed – the power to demand that politicians grovel while kneeling in worship to BLM? The short answer to the source of BLM's super-power is fake news media.

Fake news medias' bogus reporting has corporations and politicians believing a majority of Americans are filled with white guilt and therefore support BLM and their absurd demands. Consequently, whatever BLM wants, BLM gets. Supportive and fearful corporations have given BLM $400 million to bludgeon mainstream America into surrendering to BLM's mission to transform America into a socialist/communist nation.

Everywhere I turn, I hear extremely angry and frustrated Americans screaming for someone to begin telling BLM, “Hell No!”

I salute Mayor Ben Rozier of Bloomingdale, Georgia for kicking off the pushback by refusing the city council and BLM's demand that he resign for his truthful post on Facebook. Mayor Rozier's post is titled “Privilege.”

“What is privilege? ... Privilege is wearing $200 sneakers when you’ve never had a job. Privilege is wearing $300 Beats headphones while living on public assistance. Privilege is having a Smartphone with a Data plan which you receive no bill for.

“Privilege is living in public subsidized housing where you don’t have a water bill, where rising property taxes and rents and energy costs have absolutely no effect on the amount of food you can put on your table.

“Privilege is the ability to go march against, and protest against anything that triggers you, without worry about calling out of work and the consequences that accompany such behavior.

“Privilege is having as many children as you want, regardless of your employment status, and be able to send them off to daycare or school you don’t pay for.

“Privilege is sending your kids to school early for the before school programs and breakfast, and then keeping them there for the after school program... all at no cost to you... paid for by the people who DO HAVE TO DEAL WITH RISING TAXES AND COSTS! ...you know, us so called ‘PRIVILEGED’ the ones who pay while you TAKE TAKE TAKE!”

BLM protesters' and the Bloomingdale city council's heads exploded over Mayor Rozier daring to state the truth. Anarchists deem speaking the truth unacceptable.

I have witnessed at first hand the truthfulness of Mayor Rozier's post. In 1993, I resigned from my position as art department supervisor at WJZ-TV in Baltimore to pursue a career as a singer/songwriter. Shockingly, the IRS immediately hit me with a huge self-employment tax.

My cousin Tom was a lifelong drug addict and serial impregnator, causing numerous out-of-wedlock births. Tom invited me to see his new free government-funded townhouse. He also received free drugs for his addiction, along with healthcare and food stamps. I thought, “The government is actually funding this guy's irresponsible lifestyle choices.” Tom was a black man living a privileged life. Meanwhile, the government was financially penalizing me for branching out on my own.

BLM protesters are all over media absurdly claiming that all whites enjoy unfair white privilege and attacking them for it.

I thought about a wonderful kindly elderly white gentleman whom I will call “Pop.” With all the wicked BLM craziness going on, I will not mention his name. I learned that Pop is a beloved legend in the tiny town Mary and I moved to a few years ago.

Several months ago, when I first met ever-smiling Pop, we were outside a local store. He said, “At nine years old, I milked nine cows every morning before school and nine cows after school. My pay was $5 a week.” I thought, “I guess this guy never got the memo about his white privilege.”

Recently, I bumped into Pop at the post office. He grabbed my hand giving me a hearty handshake, “How you doin', young man?” Pop walks in tiny baby steps. He said, “I cut four lawns this morning.” I asked, “How in the world did you find energy to do that? Pop chuckled, “I'm only 89 years old.” This is a man who has worked hard his entire life and simply does not know any other way to live.

BLM claiming that Pop owes them and must kneel to them because of his white privilege is absurd. But most of all, BLM's demands are evil. Everyday Americans must say, “No!” putting an end to BLM's takeover of America immediately.

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President Trump Interview on Current Political Events – 

COVID-19, Economic Reopening, Stimulus, Russia Nonsense, Joe Biden

President Trump holds an interview with Fox Business News’ Blake Burman. The president hits on a variety of current headlines including ongoing COVID-19 mitigation, a potential fourth round of stimulus, the nonsensical Russia conspiracy nonsense and the 2020 election campaign.

Leftist Destroy Abolitionist Statues Because...

Emily Jashinsky for the Federalist

Leftists Destroy Abolitionist
Statues Because Scorched Cultural
Earth Is Their Only Option

July 1, 2020 By Emily Jashinsky

“Who even is this guy?” one Wisconsin protester asked, staring down at the toppled statue of Hans Christian Heg, an abolitionist leader who fought and died for the Union in the Civil War.

It’s a baffling but instructive image. Why would antiracism protesters target Abraham Lincoln, let alone daring 19th-century abolitionists? In being toppled by supposedly antiracist protesters, Heg is accompanied at least by John Greenleaf Whittier and Matthias Baldwin, among the other memorials to worthy causes swept up in this fervor.

The reason is that our iconoclasts of 2020 do not care. This is about leveling each and every institution and rebuilding America from scratch, not making repairs. That’s why the counterproductive destruction of abolitionist monuments is actually useful to observers—it reflects the broader incoherence of the ideology driving this potent wave of iconoclasm.

Critics of academia have for years carefully dismantled the faulty logic underpinning abstract poststructuralist Ivory Tower doctrines like intersectionality and critical race theory. Plainly, they do not make sense, and regularly dissolve when applied to reality. But because they insist on a progressive-or-bigot binary, slowly these ideas intimidated and persuaded people of good faith into submission.

How, for instance, does intersectionality explain video The Federalist captured last week of a white woman in luxury athleisure harassing a working-class black female cop for being a racist? It does not. This is an ideology that classifies all dissent as bigotry and violence, whether the dissenter is black or female or working class.

These protesters might not be so good at making people root for them. https://t.co/YmekJYmGsL

— Megyn Kelly (@megynkelly) June 27, 2020

While political moderates were not paying attention (or mocking the concerns of conservatives), a much more radical strain of progressivism was developing in academia, ultimately migrating into the newsrooms and boardrooms of our world. What we’re experiencing now is society hurtling past the point of critical mass.

It’s this ideological incoherence that fuels, for instance, the mass corporate pandering to a movement set on the destruction of capitalism, cheered on by so-called anti-capitalists. Try to square that circle.

Of course, not every person who embraces this worldview is out toppling statues of abolitionists, or would even agree with that strategy. Those who embrace it, however, are helpfully illuminating the incoherence of their motivating worldview. They are blowing up American culture because that is the logical conclusion of an ideology that trains adherents to see every institution as soaked in white supremacy. Scorched cultural earth is their only meaningful tool of reform.

Fighting white supremacy by destroying monuments to its enemies remains wildly stupid. But at least it’s honest.

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NYPD Police Retreat in the Face of Taunting City Hall Protesters

 

Article by Rick Moran in "PJMedia":


The breakdown of law and order in the cities is accelerating with very little resistance from city officials or police.

In New York City, protesters set up a crude camping area outside of city hall, pushing their “defund the police” agenda. They have regularly assembled in front of the city hall building to shout their slogans and shake their fists at police.

The protesters assembled several makeshift barricades that the cops finally began to remove yesterday. In this series of tweets courtesy of Shelby Talcott, the police are shown being provoked, but mostly maintaining their cool.

More and more have arrived at Occupy City Hall and are taking back the barriers that protesters made for the encampment pic.twitter.com/JZRqWeYd01

— Shelby Talcott (@ShelbyTalcott) July 1, 2020

https://twitter.com/i/status/1278268337924030466

Shelby Talcott

 @ShelbyTalcott

Incredibly tense as protesters and cops stand off just around 6 this morning in NY. Fights are ensuing on the ground ... I’m on top of a bus.

 

 https://twitter.com/i/status/1278269722618970112

Ian Miles Cheong

@stillgray

NYPD leave their positions at City Hall in NYC, leaving it to Antifa and Black Lives Matter at the new CHAZ.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1278334083462950916


Radio host Dan Bongino tweeted, “We’re entering Snake Pliskin territory in New York City. Such a disgrace.”
New York Post:

“Whose streets? Our streets!” roared the protesters as they filled the sidewalks.
Another clip shows protesters mocking cops and singing, “Na na na na, hey hey hey, goodbye” as the officers approach the arch at 1 Centre Street.
As was the case Tuesday, tensions came to a head when protesters became enraged as police removed barricades they had illegally set up.

It’s unknown who ordered the retreat. Whoever did probably figured the risk of a serious confrontation outweighed anything gained by retaking control of the area directly in front of the most sensitive power center in the city.

During the 1968 Democratic convention, when protesters in Chicago approached the hotel where Hubert Humphrey was staying — the nerve center of the campaign and where the Democratic National Committee was meeting — Chicago police pushed back. The protest organizers were hoping to provoke a riot by tossing rocks, stones, and bags of human feces and urine at police.

What they got was a phalanx of beefy Chicago cops wading into the crowd swinging their nightsticks. The cops were undisciplined — a “police riot” as it was referred to in the official report — but the fact is, thousands of protesters were moving toward the nerve center of democracy. The hotel had to be protected.

One wonders if city hall is seen by the political elites as 
expendable.

Officers are shown pushing through the crowd as the protesters shove back, some using their umbrellas to block or strike cops. One cop can be seen grabbing a person’s umbrella and throwing it on the ground.
One person claimed on Twitter that the NYPD stormed the protesters’ camp “full of aggression, looking to agitate,“ as “many where [sic] serving breakfast and cleaning.” But the video doesn’t back up that claim. All that is seen is police officers facing demonstrators who are camped out on the sidewalk.

As Heather Mac Donald points out in this excellent piece in City Journal, the entire establishment appears to be surrendering.

Meanwhile, criminal-justice leaders themselves are surrendering. The New York Police Commissioner has disbanded the department’s most effective tool for getting illegal guns off the street, the plainclothes Anti-Crime Unit. Officers across the country are being told to ignore low-level offenses, and urban D.A.s are refusing to prosecute public-order arrests, on the ground that Broken Windows policing is racist—until, that is, an outbreak of particularly irksome disorder becomes too widespread, as is the case with the current fireworks discharges. The head of the Lieutenants Benevolent Association in New York has advised its members to use their “utmost discretion” in responding to fireworks complaints unless New York mayor Bill de Blasio “unequivocally commits to having our officers enforce fireworks infractions AND the District Attorneys verbally commit to processing fireworks offenses” (emphasis in original). Otherwise, warns the LBA president, officers are merely being set up for a new slew of phony civilian complaints.

Mac Donald is not optimistic:

These are no longer the warning signs of a possible breakdown of civilized life. That breakdown is upon us. If local and national leaders are unable to summon the will to defend our most basic institutions from false and inflammatory charges of racism, they have forfeited their right to govern. Unless new leaders come forth who understand their duty to maintain the rule of law, the country will not pull back from disaster.

The video of police abandoning the streets to the likes of Black Lives Matter and Antifa is one of the most disturbing images seen so far. It makes one wonder if anyone, anywhere will ever try to stop the madness. Each incident emboldens the mob to go further.

Eventually, ordinary citizens will take matters into their own hands — as they’ve done throughout American history when leaders have failed them.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/rick-moran/2020/07/02/nypd-police-retreat-from-taunting-city-hall-protesters-n598978

Biden: I Am ‘Constantly Tested’ For Cognitive Decline

Jonah Gottschalk reporting for The Federalist

At his first press conference in nearly three months, presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden said he is “constantly tested” for mental decline. The answer came in response to a question from one of the few reporters allowed into the conference.

“Some have speculated that you are subject to some degree of cognitive decline,” the Fox reporter said. “I’m 65. I don’t have the word recollection that I used to have, I forget my train of thought from time to time. You got 12 years on me, sir. Have you been tested for some degree of cognitive decline?”

Biden first tried to interrupt the reporter, and began calling him “a lying dog-faced—” before chuckling and letting him finish the question. He then answered, “I’ve been tested, and I’m constantly tested.”

Who has been responsible for constantly testing Biden, as well as the test results, have not been revealed. The campaign has not yet responded to The Federalist’s request for comment about whether these tests and their results will be released now that that the former vice president is on the record saying they happened.

After confirming his own testing, the presumptive Democratic nominee went on to challenge Trump to some measure of IQ test. “All you gotta do is watch me, and I can hardly wait to compare my cognitive capability to the cognitive capability of the man I’m running against.”

The comments seemed to echo Trump’s previous challenge to Secretary of State Rex Tillerson for an IQ test, which the mainstream media readily condemned. No mainstream media outlet besides Fox covered Biden’s remarks.

In addition to talk of mental fitness, the two men fighting for leadership of the country have each said they would have beaten the other up in high school.

Jim Jordan Discusses House Judiciary Effort to Impeach Bill Barr

The plan to impeach Bill Barr was clearly visible several months ago. A preemptive strike to diffuse the pending findings of the investigation by USAO John Durham.

The Attorney General has accepted an invitation to testify before the committee on July 28th.  If there is going to be a summer show-down between the AG and political operatives -including Lawfare- within the Judiciary committee, that hearing is likely to be the spark.

New York COVID Compliance Authority Issue Subpoenas Requiring Forced Depositions With Contact Tracers

Comrades, the ministry of COVID compliance in New York has now been given permission to issue subpoenas requiring the general public to comply with COVID compliance contact tracers.  Any New Yorker who refuses to answer the interrogation questions by the COVID compliance police is now subject to arrest.

You do not have the right to remain silent, and everything you say will be guaranteed to be used against you as the state takes control over your life.

The process of “Contact Tracing” permits the state authority to identify the travel, contacts and associated risks presented by anyone who tests positive for the COVID-19 virus.

A positive test now results in a new class of citizen, considered of such a significant risk that their constitutional rights are suspended.   Thus, it is in the interest of state security for the state to have legal authority to compel compliance with questioning.

Additionally, if a parent tests positive, it may become necessary for the state to control that person’s activity; which may include the removal of any children into the care of the state; saving the minor child from the risk their parent(s) represent.  There is a myriad of new roles and responsibilities for the state in the life of a person who tests positive.

NEW YORK – Officials in New York’s Rockland County said Wednesday they are being forced to issue subpoenas to compel people to speak to contact tracers about a coronavirus outbreak because they are not speaking voluntarily.

The country’s health commissioner, Patricia Rupert, said at a news conference that subpoenas are being issued to eight people who were infected at a recent party in Clarkstown, N.Y., north of New York City, but who are refusing to cooperate with contact tracers seeking to interview them to determine who else they were in contact with and could be at risk of spreading the virus.

The drastic step of issuing subpoenas in a contact-tracing investigation illustrates a problem officials have cited around the country, that many people are not answering their phones or cooperating when contact tracers try to talk to them.

Public health officials say contact tracing is a key step in slowing the spread of the coronavirus. The process interviews infected people about who they have been in contact with so that those people can be notified and asked to quarantine for 14 days to prevent further spread of the virus. (read more)

Big Tech is working to facilitate the effort of the State, and will assist the COVID compliance police with identifying your travel.  If you resist the efforts of the tracers to identify your location; and/or if you resist the effort of the state to place you into a quarantine facility; you will likely be identified as a subversive citizen, an “enemy of the state.”

We might anticipate to see an underground railroad for those attempting to avoid capture.  This is all becoming very disconcerting….  Where does it end?

Democrats Want a Second American Revolution — a Socialist One

Article by Robert Kraychik in "Breitbart":

Democrats are advancing a socialist revolution to “correct” the original American Revolution, said Breitbart News Senior Editor-at-Large Joel Pollak, author of Red November: Will the Country Vote Red for Trump or Red for Socialism?, offering his remarks on Ezra Levant’s eponymous Rebel News show.

Levant invited Pollak’s assessment of the upcoming 2020 presidential and congressional elections.

“We are staring down the barrel of a ‘Red November,’ and I don’t see how we recover from that politically if [Donald] Trump loses because Democrats have made it clear … they’re not interested in solving the problem they’ve identified with policing. They just want the issue, and that tells me they want to keep fomenting this sort of unrest.”

They started defunding the police in various cities. They’ve abandoned policing in the Oakland [Unified] School District. They’re disbanding the police in Minneapolis. They are cutting a billion dollars from the New York City police budget, and even that’s not enough for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, so they’re going to dismantle institutions of law and order.

“Finally, they are going to permanently alter the rules of the game. The proposal to make Washington, DC, at least partially a state — to make a 51st state — was passed by the House of Representatives, last week. They know it’s not going to pass the Senate under Republican control, but if Democrats win the White House, the Senate, and the House they will pass D.C. statehood.”

Pollak noted that Democrat plans to grant statehood to Washington, DC, would amount to a de facto addition of two Democrat senators given the district’s partisan composition.

“They will create a 51st state, which they can do under the Constitution, and that will mean a permanent additional two senators from the Democratic Party because D.C. is so heavily Democratic,” explained Pollak. “They will elect two senators from this tiny, tiny, state [which would] be smaller than most American cities [that] will create an almost permanent majority for Democrats in the Senate.”

Pollak warned, “What they’re going to do is a complete socialist revolution. Before, I thought maybe it was a little whimsical to suggest that. Now I believe it’s 100 percent true.”

Pollak remarked, “They’re going to create a new Democrat-held Senate. They’re going to knock away the filibuster to get rid of minority protections in the Senate, and they’re just going to pass whatever they want. It’s going to be Green New Deal, amnesty for illegal immigrants, you name it. This is going to be a socialist revolution. They’ll rewrite the histories afterward so that those of us who remember things a little differently will be called racists. We won’t be published; we won’t be heard.”

“They will tell themselves, the country, and the world that this was the second American Revolution, that this was the socialist revolution to correct all of the flaws in the original model. That’s what they can taste already. That’s what they feel is happening.”

Pollak went on: “The Democrats want a second American Revolution, and on current trends, they’re going to get it unless there’s a silent majority out there that stands up, that connects to one another despite the attempts to shut down social media, to shut down the Reddit pages, to kick people off Twitter, to ghettoize people in conservative-only media spaces.”

Pollak added, “If people can overcome that, and people can still go into the voting booth or vote by mail, if they have the courage to do it without fearing that their votes are not going to be counted because of all the schemes the Democrats have cooked up for coronavirus, then Trump can be reelected. He will probably be reelected again as a minority president in the sense that he won’t win the popular vote. He’ll have to win the electoral college.”

Supporters of President Donald Trump are anxious given ongoing unrest, assessed Pollak, warning that Democrat control would lead to an extension of political intimidation and persecution of those dissenting from left-wing orthodoxy.

“Right now the pressure on [Trump] and his supporters is so relentless that this feels like a bitter and difficult struggle,” Pollak stated. “The feeling of being under siege is palpable, and we are living through a time of terror that will only get worse. The violence may stop. The riots may stop. Protests may stop, but the fear will continue if Democrats win.”

Pollak determined, “I do think this is a world historical moment, that the success or failure of our democracy depends on this election. I didn’t think that you could get more consequential than 2016, but I do think this is a test of whether we can keep this republic. You know, Nancy Pelosi likes quoting Benjamin Franklin, ‘A republic, if you can keep it.’ She’s busy destroying it, and that quote is the tribute that vice pays to virtue.”

The future is not predetermined, maintained Pollak.

“Essentially we’re in a situation where the country is going to sink if Democrats win,” Pollak said. “They’ve made their intentions absolutely clear. We’re facing a second American Revolution. It’s something that worries us constantly now on the right, and a lot of the anxiety you see comes from a productive place. People are anxious about finding solutions for this. There’s still time to turn it around.”

“The degree of isolation that individuals feel right now comes out of a sense of being unable to communicate with one another through the media [and] through social media,” Pollak observed. “The search engines have changed. Google and others are quashing traffic, so we are engaged in a war where almost all of the weapons are on the other side and all we have are principals and reason.”

https://www.breitbart.com/2020-election/2020/07/01/joel-pollak-democrats-want-a-second-american-revolution-a-socialist-one/

Unstable BLM Supporter Threatens Stabbing Spree To Prove TikTok Wokeness – Gets Fired, Blames World

This story is quite an encapsulation of modern Millennial life.

A now famous young woman named Claira Janover wanted to share the depth of her wokeness with her social media tribe. Ms. Janover used TikTok to record her video rant where she promised to go on a stabbing spree to kill anyone who says “all lives matter.”

According to her plan, Claira Janover, who is a graduate of Harvard University, felt her social community would enjoy her stabbing spree idea and the subsequent applause would help fill the void she carries in her life.  Go figure.

However, after outlining the approach she would take in order to support the Black Lives Matter community, her employer didn’t think it was a good idea to keep around a young woman who just promised to go on a stabbing spree.  So they fired her.  Imagine that.

Understandable.

Rather than reevaluate the instability of her stabby killing pledge. Ms. Janover goes back on TikTok to cry to her tribe about being fired for supporting Black Lives Matter; because conservatives or something.

New York – […] “Standing up for Black Lives Matter put me in a place online to be seen by millions of people,” a teary Claira Janover said in a new video posted Wednesday afternoon. “The job that I’d worked really hard to get and meant a lot to me has called me and fired me because of everything.”

Janover’s LinkedIn account lists her as an “incoming government and public business service analyst” at Deloitte, a UK-based accounting firm.

During the video, Janover gestured to what appears to be a page from the company’s website, and noted that she was axed “even though they claim to stand against systematic bias, racism and unequal treatment.”

Janover — who graduated from Harvard in May with a degree in government and psychology — went viral after posting a video to the platform railing against people with “the nerve, the sheer entitled caucasity to say ‘All Lives Matter.’” (read more)

Yeah… There’s a generation of people who are growing up on social media, and have absolutely no sense of self-awareness.   Their unquenchable thirst for tribal acceptance is the dominant goal in their life.

This weird psychological disorder seems to create a disconnect between their interactions on-line, in cyber reality, and the needed norms and stability within real life interactions, relationships and employment.   Toxic instability jumps into actual behavior as the difference between their devices and real world encounters is blurred.

Very odd.

Hey Millennial-types, if you are wondering how come you are not able to achieve anything in life... watch this. If you relate to it, that's why. No employer would ever intentionally hire this level of toxic instability. https://t.co/oRCxWQecaA

— TheLastRefuge (@TheLastRefuge2) July 2, 2020