Bad versus Dirty

No, this posting  is not about Stormy Daniels. It's about law enforcement.

Dirty cops are not the same as bad cops. Bad cops are depicted by the Black Lives Matter mob as out to kill young unarmed black men without cause ... based on the "Hands Up, Don't Shoot" fiction coming out of the Ferguson, Missouri (justifiable) shooting of Michael Brown. Yes, there are some rogue cops but they are few and far between.

Dirty cops are much more dangerous and prevalent ... particularly at the FBI. They are the likes of the FBI's  original blackmailing and tone-setting director,  J. Edgar Hoover and, much later, its sanctimonious director, James Comey and his band of henchmen inside Obama's bureau (Strzok, McCabe, Orr, Page, etc.) who used the raw power of their positions to subvert honest law enforcement for political purposes. Truly sinister, corrupt and despicable ... and dirty.

Will the Trump administration and Congress be able to cleanse this agency of all this filth? If Jeff Sessions at the Justice Department  can pull this Aegean task off, they should rename the FBI building after him instead of Hoover.

Cause and Effect

Crime rates across the United States are on the rise ... murders, robberies, rapes and other violent crimes are returning to major urban areas after decades of decline ... for instance see this: Washington Post Story. Why might this be so? Here are a few possible causes:

- The Ferguson Effect ... police forces across the nation have seen how they have been castigated and placed in legal jeopardy by what happened in Ferguson, Missouri in late 2014 and in Baltimore, Maryland over a year ago. As a result, there is a growing reluctance to engage in forward-leaning law enforcement. This, in turn, relieves the pressure on would-be criminals with obvious results.

- Illegal immigrants represent a disproportionate percentage of criminals in this country ... see: Powerline Blog Revelations. And being that our current administration is encouraging more illegal immigration, this suggests that this problem can only get worse.

- Above and beyond this inherent illegal immigrant problem, such immigrants who are convicted criminals are being released back into the general population (instead of being deported) in record numbers as part of Obummer's Screw America policy ... see: A Clowder of Cats.

- There is a false narrative being propagated that the sentence reform laws of the 1990s were unfair to minorities and, as a consequence, there is increased pressure, particularly in California to spring many "non-violent" criminals from prison. What is overlooked is that a great many of the violent crimes of these freed felons had been plea-bargained down prior to conviction and sentencing. So we are allowing our bleeding hearts to inflict more bleeding elsewhere on our citizenry.

So, in a few years time, we well could be suffering through another epidemic of violent crimes ... and, if we are lucky enough to have a Republican president, the lame stream media will then have a convenient leader to blame falsely. (If, God forbid, Hellery is in the White House, they will blame Bush '43.)

Pigs in a Blanket

President Obama has labeled the execution-style shooting of a Texas Deputy Sheriff as "completely unacceptable." In his signature distracted and perfunctory way our president then added that this was "an affront to civilized society" ... see: Breitbart Story. No, Mr. President, chewing gum in school is "unacceptable." Pulling your sister's pigtails is "unacceptable." You have a staff of highly-paid and talented writers who, I am sure, could come up with a better adjective than "unacceptable."

How about "craven" or "heinous" or "cowardly" or "gutless" ... or even "lily-livered?" This kind of soft-spoken cerebral response to this Texas shooting by our president I think speaks volumes to those in the Black Lives Matter movement who believe that the police should be "pigs in a blanket" and they should "fry like bacon." Has the president made any comments about this pond-scum movement ...  or has our Justice Department sent a phalanx of investigators to Texas like it did in Ferguson? Making his administration's sly response to this Black Lives Matter movement so invisible only encourages more of the same.

Wait and see.

Love Is All You Need

In a previous blog post I had expressed concerns about the possible dire consequences of the Charleston church shootings ... see: Snapped. Although President Obama's angry remarks were not specifically inciting, he did try to make political hay against the Second Amendment. And, so far, Al Sharpton has been pretty taciturn over this incident  Dylann Storm Roof, the white shooter, however has been caught and already plead guilty to trying to start a race war with his killing of nine black parishioners.

And how have the people of Charleston reacted to this act of terrorism? They have, for the most part, exhibited their Christian faith with love and forgiveness ... hear: CNN Audio ... in stark contrast to those in Ferguson and Baltimore. In a way this is a minor miracle ... one which may go a long way toward healing the racial divides that have been festering in this country after the election of our first black president. If this trend of gentle forgiveness in the face of evil continues, then there is still hope for an eventual reconciliation of our races.

Snapped

A white man in his early twenties clearly snapped yesterday ... going into a black church in Charleston, South Carolina last night and shooting and killing at least nine worshipers ... see: Washington Post Article. The suspect, as of this posting, is still at large, therefore the exact motivation for these murders is not clear ... although one must surmise that there is a large racial component to them.

Is this tragedy a tipping point in the seven-year deterioration of race relations in the United States? I surely hope not ... but I can clearly foresee the coming storm of protesters and pundits trying their very best to make it so ...  to include Al Sharpton and maybe even President Obama (if he behaves true to form). In contrast, the national media did very little to inflame people after the Fort Hood massacre ... with a larger number of victims. They know well how to perform their craft.

There must be a lesson to be learned here ... which I seriously doubt will be heeded. And that is that racing baiting for whatever purpose is evil ... and likely to cause great societal dislocation. The radical Muslims can stir the pot enough to get Major Nidal Hasan to attack innocent soldiers at Fort Hood ... just like a backlash to the incidents in Ferguson and Baltimore probably caused a clearly deranged man to kill innocent worshipers in Charleston.

I passionately decry what just occurred in Charleston and my heart bleeds for the victims ... but I also condemn those wild-eyed crazies who would take this tragedy as an opportunity to incite violence as an appropriate response ... and believe me I expect a large parcel of such miscreants.

[crickets]

ISIS, representing the religion of peace, has recently executed in excess of 300 Yazidi (quasi-Christian sect) prisoners in northern Iraq ... read all about the Islamic State's barbarism in the: UK Daily Mail Story.

Once more, what was President Obama's reaction to such an atrocity?

[crickets] ... or if you want the real thing: Crickets.

I suppose had it happened in Ferguson or Staten Island or Baltimore ...

Cops

"Whatcha goina do when they come for you?"

In the past, I have watched many episodes of "Cops" on reality television and realize the stress and dangers faced by our police every day. Just so far this year at least 36 cops have died in the line of duty ... see: Officer Down Memorial Page.

The police are like any other segment of society ... full of heroes and knaves. Obviously that North Charleston cop is a knave and deserves the full weight of the his punishment. That Ferguson cop was characterized as a knave by a bunch of knaves. And I'm a little conflicted by those Staten Island constabularies. They clearly used far too much force for such a petty crime. However, I suspect that Eric Garner was also probably too fragile health-wise to be in such a tussle.

The obvious lesson to be drawn from all this cop-baiting rhetoric is that, if a law-enforcement officer asks you to comply with an order ... even if he is wrong ... do it. If you chose not to comply, you really are playing with fire. There are numerous remedies to be invoked later on if your rights have been abused.

Just call Al Sharpton, Bill de Blasio or Eric Holder.

Presidential Library

Pretty soon President Obama has to decide where his presidential library is going to be located. There are a number of possibilities and, to help him in this decision, I would love to get the readers of this blog to weigh in on which is their preferred choice. Therefore, either choose one of the options below ... or, offer an alternative:

- Chicago, Illinois

- Tehran, Iran

- Honolulu, Hawaii

- Cambridge, Massachusetts

- Havana, Cuba

- Nairobi, Kenya

- Ferguson, Missouri

- Jakarta, Indonesia

- The Gates of Hell

Or, given his plutocratic tendencies, maybe all of them  ...

Hands Up

Two white police officers were shot late last night in Ferguson, Missouri and are in very serious condition. They, with a number of other officers, were standing outside the police headquarters during a night of celebratory protests after the police chief of Ferguson had resigned earlier in the day. Three shots then rang out from across the street clearly targeting these police officers ... see: Reuters Story.

Many reliable witnesses swore that these policemen had their hands in the air.

Al Sharpton's is traveling to Ferguson to assess the situation for reverse racism ... as is Attorney General Holder ... on the advice of Mayor Bll de Blasio of New York City..

Stupid Statistics

With great fanfare and a slavishly uncritical media, outgoing Attorney General, Eric Holder, tried to make up for his department's lack of prosecuting that Ferguson, Missouri police officer, Darren Wilson, by making the case that the whole Ferguson police department was a bunch of racists. One particular he stated was that although Ferguson is 63% black, 86% of all traffic stops there were of black people ... ergo the police force is singling out blacks ... exhibiting their inherent racism ... see: New York Times Story. This kind of statistic proves absolutely nothing ... other than it might be that blacks disproportionally break Ferguson's traffic laws. Conveniently, A.G. Holder does not look into this possibility.

If Holder had instead stated that 39% of all Ferguson residents were under the age of 30, yet 56% of all traffic stops were people in this age group ... would this mean that the police there were discriminating against young people? Of course not ... so why are we subjected to his racist statistical extrapolation? Clearly the American public has had the drum-beat of these type of racist accusations for many years without any serious rebuttal ... and thus, we now accept such media tripe as gospel.

Yes, Holder's quoting of some racists e-mails does indicate that there are some bad apples in the Ferguson police department ... but the entire organization? I am more than certain that there is an undercurrent of anti-white police officer rhetoric circulating among Ferguson's young black community. Does this make the entire black community there racists? Of course not ... as was proven during the grand jury testimony when many blacks came forward with testimony which went against the "Hands up, don't shoot" perpetuated myth.

Also the Ferguson police department is faulted for not having proportional representation of the town's races. If this type of statistical syllogism has any merit, then why cannot one say that since 78% of NBA players are black whereas blacks represent only 12.3% of the U.S. population ... that this basketball association is exhibiting reverse racism? Can it not be that black players just tend to be better at this sport?

Why don't we look at such statistical misdirection in the face and conclude that Al Sharpton, Eric Holder and much of the media are also exhibiting as much or more racist tendencies than the Ferguson police department?

One might also read Paul Mirengoff's analysis of this statistical silliness in Powerline Part I . Watch for Part II.

Open Wound

It seems that the black deaths in Ferguson and on Staten Island have given President Obama an opportunity once again to pull the scab off of the wound of racism in the United States. In the current issue of People magazine both Barack and Michelle Obama recount what they have seen as racist encounters in their past lives ... see: People Magazine Teaser. I'm not saying that these things didn't happen. I'm sure that they did. However, I know I have been socially slighted in the past and I suspect that most people of all races have had such tactless incidents. But when a black person sees every possible faux pas as a racial slight, then I think we are in for a very long process before our racial wounds over-heal.

And this is particularly true of our president and first lady. President Obama promised, with his election, to usher in a post-racial society. Instead, he has taken every opportunity to escalate any conflict involving a black person into a federal case. Can he not see that many of the demonstrations and riots of these past months are as a result of his two-faced rhetoric? No wonder that the race-baiter extraordinaire, Al Sharpton, is his close advisor and a frequent visitor to the White House.

One can only conclude that the degeneration of race relations we are currently experiencing has been a real goal of our president all along. So sad ...

Afterward: For equivalent perceptions on this same subject see: Powerline Blog.

Choke Hold

I have not followed the Eric Garner police “choke hold” death on Staten Island, New York as closely as I followed the Michael Brown shooting death in Ferguson, Missouri. Therefore, upon reading the Diplomad’s studied opinions on these same two grand jury decisions, they sound to me quite reasoned and reasonable. Consequently I think that the grand jury in New York may have erred and the one in Missouri was quite correct … see: The Diplomad's Thoughts . The grand jury in New York probably should have at least rendered a bill of aggravated assault.

But unfortunately what’s done is done.

Gravitas

Charles Barkley

Rush Limbaugh posed a question on his radio show yesterday, "Who is the only respected black leader who can speak out truthfully about the situation in Ferguson without being vilified in the national media?" The answer, after a bit of filler tease, was Charles Barkley ...  who had just called the recent looters in this St. Louis suburb "scumbags" ... see: Breitbart Article. (Although Bob Beckel did take a shot at Barkley last night on "The Five" on Fox ... perhaps because he had listened to Limbaugh?)

Now for the much more revealing question ... who was the last black person with sufficient gravitas and courage to speak out about the excesses and dislocations within the black community? Scroll down for the answer ...

Bill Cosby

Black Eye

What is happening in Ferguson, Missouri is sad but typical of the human lot. We homo sapiens act before all the facts are known ... and, even when we start to know the facts, if they don't agree with the then-established popular narrative, we still often ignore them.

One can watch this failing being repeated in this suburb of St. Louis ... a cop shoots and kills an "unarmed black 'gentle giant' who was trying to surrender with his hands up" and a racially-motivated series of spontaneous demonstrations occur ... then riots .... then looting ... then shootings and arrests ... then wall-to-wall media coverage ... then ill-informed comments by politicians and spot-light grabbers ... then come the race baiters and the professional agitators ... then professional football teams show solidarity with the dead man ... then (all too) slowly the facts seem to be emerging ... many of which contradict the original story.

This same kind of scenario was frequently repeated in the South during the reign of Jim Crow ... often resulting in lynchings, another form of mob injustice. It took many generations and a book about the death of a mockingbird to dispel these atrocities.

What happens next in Ferguson? Either quality leadership takes hold and sanity slowly returns to the situation ... or such leadership takes a hike (or plays golf) and this ugliness can grow to frightening national proportions. Then, it is not just the policeman shooter who gets a black eye in this tragedy (see: NY Post Story), but most others involved too ... the neighborhood, the media, the local police, the state police, the state governor, our Justice Department, our national leaders, our president.

How many times does this silliness need to be repeated? I guess I answered this question in my firsts sentence ... apparently it's in our DNA ... maybe after some more generations and a book?

"A lie travels halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to put its pants on." -- Winston Churchill