How Covid-19, BLM protests and a liberal mayor are turning the city into a no-go zone as murders skyrocket, shops are looted and 500,000 middle-class residents flee

Carl Zimmer:

“…A stretch of DNA linked to Covid-19 was passed down from Neanderthals 60,000 years ago, according to a new study.

Scientists don’t yet know why this particular segment increases the risk of severe illness from the coronavirus. But the new findings, which were posted online on Friday and have not yet been published in a scientific journal, show how some clues to modern health stem from ancient history.

“This interbreeding effect that happened 60,000 years ago is still having an impact today,” said Joshua Akey, a geneticist at Princeton University who was not involved in the new study.

This piece of the genome, which spans six genes on Chromosome 3, has had a puzzling journey through human history, the study found. The variant is now common in Bangladesh, where 63 percent of people carry at least one copy. Across all of South Asia, almost one-third of people have inherited the segment.

Elsewhere, however, the segment is far less common. Only 8 percent of Europeans carry it, and just 4 percent have it in East Asia. It is almost completely absent in Africa.

It’s not clear what evolutionary pattern produced this distribution over the past 60,000 years. “That’s the $10,000 question,” said Hugo Zeberg, a geneticist at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden who was one of the authors of the new study…”

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I posted a couple days ago about the need to withhold judgement on Ghislaine Maxwell until more of the facts become apparent. I standby that. This Tweet by Wretchard is another way to view the Epstein/Maxwell thing. I think Wretchard is correct. Elite western society is a hollow shell, a fraud. It is inhabited by seemingly successful people who inside are narcissistic and corrupt. Their left ideology fails them in the critical moment and they drift into self-hatred. They project that hatred on the country, or anybody nearby. I reject the elite left.

J.R. Dunn:

“…The story was that one day, late in the Civil War, an extremely tall, extremely thin man appeared on the road passing the farm or plantation to which they were bonded. He was bearded, all dressed in black, and wore a tall stovepipe hat that accentuated his height.

The slaves came together to watch the man pass. Sometimes, one of them would offer him a dipper of water from a well, which he would drink, and then touch his hat in thanks before going on his way without a word. The slaves would watch him walk on until he finally vanished.

That’s right. In the midst of the most vicious war this country ever fought, smack in the heart of enemy territory, thousands of people saw Abraham Lincoln passing by.

What possible explanation is there for this? These people weren’t lying. They weren’t telling tall tales. Some of them swore they saw him personally, touched his frock coat as he passed them. And these people, ancient in years and facing death, truly believed what they were saying.

In fact, there is no rational explanation. It goes far deeper than logic, to the very basis of the human spirit. It comes from the yearning for contact with the saintly, for an engagement with the transcendental. The slaves knew that a titanic conflict was taking place that would affect their fates in total, and about which they could do little. They doubtlessly worried, and brooded, and wondered, very likely to the point of the unbearable. And then one day, the Emancipator himself appeared on their country road, to relieve their fears by his very presence, to brush them with greatness, and leave them forever changed.

The left can do their worst. They can destroy and vandalize. They can frighten the timid gnomes of Boston into taking down a statue honoring the Emancipation, one of this country’s highest moments. They can dynamite Mount Rushmore (as, no doubt, some maniac is even now planning to do).

But they can’t erase that vision, or close that road, or halt the Man in the Tall Hat from his long journey, as he beckons us to follow him to points unknown, to futures unconceived, and to places that we have yet to build…”

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Taxpayers pay millions per year for multiple retirement plans serving already wealthy legislators

On the night of 2–3 July, 2020, hundreds of antifa militants attacked the federal courthouse in downtown Portland in the name of Black Lives Matter. They attacked responding police officers with glass bottles, rocks, a knife and more. After breaking the building’s glass doors, they launched mortars inside, starting a fire. This video is the morning after.

This is what’s left of the Portland elk fountain after antifa militants set it on fire in the name of Black Lives Matter. The flames severely damaged the base of the statue, causing the city to remove the elk over fears it could topple over and injure someone. No suspects have been identified despite the vandalism occurring within sight of police for hours.

Hat tip to Kane

That looks like Nathan Bedford Forrest to me. Joe does have history with KKK Democrats.

How Our Anti-American Education System Made Riots Inevitable

Rioting social justice warriors are remaking the world as they see fit, consistent with what they’ve been taught from K-12 to the highest echelons of learning.

We are seeing the fruits of allowing extremists to teach our children and to take over and exclude other points of view from national systems and institutions. It must stop.

Sohrab Ahmari:

“…America is not in the middle of a revolution — it is a reactionary putsch. About four years ago, the sort of people who had acquired position and influence as a result of globalization were turfed out of power for the first time in decades. They watched in horror as voters across the world chose Brexit, Donald Trump and other populist and conservative-nationalist options.

This deposition explains the storm of unrest battering American cities from coast to coast and making waves in Europe as well. The storm’s ferocity — the looting, the mobs, the mass lawlessness, the zealous iconoclasm, the deranged slogans like #DefundPolice — terrifies ordinary Americans. Many conservatives, especially, believe they are facing a revolution targeting the very foundations of American order.

But when national institutions bow (or kneel) to the street fighters’ demands, it should tell us that something else is going on. We aren’t dealing with a Maoist or Marxist revolt, even if some protagonists spout hard-leftish rhetoric. Rather, what’s playing out is a counter-revolution of the neoliberal class — academe, media, large corporations, ‘experts’, Big Tech — against the nationalist revolution launched in 2016. The supposed insurgents and the elites are marching in the streets together, taking the knee together…”

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Roger Kimball:

“…Donald Trump did not mention Lincoln’s First Inaugural address in his speech commemorating the spirit of American Independence at Mount Rushmore on Friday night. But the president’s speech—perhaps his most forceful and eloquent to date—vibrated with the same energy and existential commitment that fired Lincoln in March 1861.

Lincoln came to office at a time of crisis. His election had precipitated the secession of seven Southern states. His inaugural address was both a plea for conciliation and unity as well as a warning that violence would be stopped with force. “We are not enemies, but friends,” Lincoln said.

Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.

Donald Trump issued a kindred invitation to unity in the midst of conflict. The signing of the Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia in July 1776 was a world-historical event. It represented, the president rightly said, “the culmination of thousands of years of Western Civilization—and the triumph not only of spirit, but of wisdom, philosophy, and reason.” At the center of the triumph was the animating possession of liberty, made possible by the unanimous affirmation of the principles Thomas Jefferson articulated in the Declaration: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights .

The president’s speech was a passionate celebration of American freedom and American greatness—a greatness, he noted, that was embodied by the sublime majesty of the heads of Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, and Teddy Roosevelt sculpted into the granite pinnacle of Mt. Rushmore.

But just as Lincoln spoke on the eve of civil war, so Donald Trump spoke in the midst of widespread and organized violence against the emblems and the spirit of the American promise. “[T]here is,” he warned, “a growing danger that threatens every blessing our ancestors fought, struggled, and bled to secure.”

Our nation is witnessing a merciless campaign to wipe out our history, defame our heroes, erase our values, and indoctrinate our children. Angry mobs are trying to tear down statues of our founders, deface our most sacred memorials, and unleash a wave of violent crime in our cities. Many of these people have no idea why they are doing this, but some know exactly what they are doing. They think the American people are weak and soft and submissive. But no, the American people are strong and proud, and they will not allow our country, and all of its values, history, and culture, to be taken from them.

I might just say “Amen!” and be done with it. But the president was not content with generalities. He sees deeply into the nature and the source of the forces besieging our country, and he is refreshingly forthright and specific about describing the malady and outlining his intended response…”

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I found myself judging this case without evidence. Dershowitz provides some evidence and some sound advice.

Alan Dershowitz:

“…My wife and I were introduced to Ghislaine Maxwell by Sir Evelyn and Lady Lynne de Rothschild, and we subsequently met her on several occasions — generally in the presence of prominent people such as Bill and Hillary Clinton, Nobel Prize-winning scientists, presidents of universities, and prominent academic and business people. We never saw her do anything inappropriate. We knew her only as Jeffrey Epstein’s thirty-something girlfriend.

Now she stands accused of serious crimes allegedly committed a quarter of a century ago. Like every other arrested person, she must be presumed innocent. Many in the public however, will presume her guilty because of the portrayal of her in the Netflix series about Jeffrey Epstein. But no one should believe anything they saw in that series, because it was based largely on the accounts of two women with histories of making dubious accusations.

Let’s begin with Virginia Roberts Giuffre, who has alleged she was trafficked to Prince Andrew by Epstein and Maxwell, for which she claims she was paid $15,000. But she also has said — as I argue in a civil action against her — that she met Al and Tipper Gore on Epstein’s island (for this and other revelations she was paid $160,000). She describes the incident in great detail, but the truth is that neither of the Gores have ever met Epstein and were certainly never on his island. She has also made accusations against former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, former majority leader of the US Senate George Mitchell, former US Representative to the UN Bill Richardson, owner of L Brands Limited Leslie Wexner, and many others who have categorically denied these accusations. Her own lawyer has acknowledged that an 11-year investigation disproved the accusations against these prominent people.

Finally, she claimed to have sex with me on six or seven occasions, although she had previously admitted in her own words that she never met me or even heard of me. Her own lawyer has admitted that she was ‘wrong…simply wrong’ in accusing me, since my travel records prove that I could never have been in the places she claimed to have met me. She admitted to her best friend that she was pressured to falsely accuse me by her lawyers who were trying to secure a billion-dollar settlement from Leslie Wexner.

I presented all this documentation to Netflix and they promised to show it to their viewing audience, but they broke their promise and withheld it.

Another Netflix witness is a woman named, Sarah Ransome. But Netflix failed to disclose that in the run-up to the 2016 election Ransome wrote dozens of emails to the New York Post claiming to have sex tapes of the two ‘pedophiles’ who were running for president, namely Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, as well as sex tapes of Richard Branson and others. She also claimed that Hillary Clinton ordered the CIA to kill her and to destroy her tapes. The Post of course did not run that story. She subsequently admitted she had ‘invented’ that story; there were no sex tapes.

Netflix also had all this information and promised to show it, but again they refused because they did not want their viewers to see anything that challenged the credibility of the lying witnesses who were central to their one-sided narrative.

So everyone should keep an open mind about Maxwell as they should about others who have been accused by Epstein’s alleged victims. The truth-testing mechanisms of cross-examination and confrontation must be employed against these witnesses, as they are against other accusers. Only after a full trial, in which both sides are presented should reasonable people come to conclusions about Ghislaine Maxwell.

In addition to presenting factual defenses, Maxwell’s lawyers may argue that the Statute of Limitations have expired on these 20-plus year allegations. They may also argue that Maxwell is protected by Epstein’s original plea deal that expressly included Maxwell as someone who received immunity. So stay tuned. The case against Ghislaine Maxwell is far from over…”

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Joey Chestnut downs record 75 wieners in Nathan’s hot dog eating victory

“…Joey Chestnut repeated as men’s champ at Nathan’s Famous July Fourth hot dog eating contest Saturday in Coney Island, gobbling a record 75 wieners and buns in 10 minutes en route to an astounding 13th Mustard Yellow Belt.

Chestnut, 36, whose powerful chops earned him the nickname “Jaws,” turned candy apple red as he shoved dog after dog in his mouth, gorging at a blistering pace — at one point clearing 10 meat sticks and buns a minute as he shattered his 2018 record of 74…”

 

Trump Defends America’s Heritage on the Fourth of July, New York Times Loses Its Mind.

South Dakota governor Kristi Noem gives a speech before Trump at Mt. Rushmore.

“Rather than looking to the past to help improve our future, some are trying to wipe away the lessons of history. Lessons we should be teaching to our children and to our grandchildren. This approach focuses exclusively on our forefather’s flaws but it fails to capitalize on the opportunities to learn from their virtues. Make no mistake, this is being done deliberately to discredit America’s founding principles by discrediting the individuals who formed them so that America can be remade into a different political image.”