Snopes Admits Obama Had Betsy Ross Flags, But Says They’re Racist, Anyway

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HP, Dell, Microsoft, Moving Production Out of China

Wilfred Reilly:

“…The Seattle Times recently reported that an epidemic of hate crimes is taking place in the Emerald City. According to the newspaper, more than 500 bias incidents were reported to Seattle police in 2018 alone, and this figure represents “an increase of nearly 400 percent since 2012.” However, this widely circulated claim is, at the very least, misleading. An examination of the Seattle data indicates that fewer than 40 actual criminal cases resulting from real, serious hate incidents were successfully prosecuted between 2012 and 2017. This provides an excellent case study of how media coverage of flash-point issues such as hate crime can—whether intentionally or not—sensationalize and exaggerate the urgency of social problems.

In the Times piece, headlined “Reported Hate Crimes and Incidents up Nearly 400% in Seattle Since 2012,” reporter Daniel Beekman suggests that the problem continues to get worse, estimating that since 2017 alone, hate cases have jumped 25 percent. He also reports that “community organizations say hate crimes are a serious issue,” and cites sources claiming that “more support from the city” is needed to battle hate crime. Beekman’s tone is relatively measured. But others have delivered more alarmist takes, creating fear that minority residents may be swept up in an “epidemic” of hate.

A look through the data that has been made available from Seattle’s office of the City Auditor reveals that there is little basis for panic. First, most of the situations contained in the 500-plus documented incidents for 2018 turned out not to be hate crimes at all. Out of 521 confrontations or other incidents reported to the police at some point during the year, 181 (35 percent) were deemed insufficiently serious to qualify as crimes of any kind. Another 215 (41 percent) turned out to involve some minor element of bias (i.e., an ethnic slur used during a fight), but did not rise to the definition of hate crime. Only 125, or 24 percent, qualified as potential hate crimes—i.e., alleged “criminal incidents directly motivated by bias.” For purposes of comparison: There are 745,000 people living in Seattle, and 3.5-million in the metro area.

Even that 125 figure represents an overestimate, at least as compared to what most of us imagine to be the stereotypical hate crime (of, say, a gang of white racists beating up someone of a different skin color). Seattle’s remarkably broad municipal hate-crime policies cover not only attacks motivated by racial or sexual animus, but also those related to “homelessness, marital status, political ideology, age and parental status.”

Indeed, if there is a single archetypal Seattle hate incident that emerges from this data, it would seem to involve a mentally ill homeless man yelling slurs at someone. According to the City Auditor, 22 percent of hate perps were “living unsheltered” at the time of their crime, 20 percent were mentally ill, and 20 percent were severely intoxicated…”

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Common Sense

Paul Bedard:

“…Americans by a wide margin agree with President Trump that the upcoming 2020 census should ask a citizenship question.

The latest Economist/YouGov poll found that 53% feel it should ask the question versus 32% who don’t.

The survey asked: “Do you think the federal government should or should not ask people whether they are American citizens as part of the 2020 census?”

• • Should ask 53%
  • Should not ask 32%
  • Not sure 14%

The Supreme Court has rejected including the question in a form the administration proposed but left the door open to another version. And Trump is considering changing the version…”

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I never get tired of watching this. I love it.

 

“Carrying the Apollo 11 Saturn V space vehicle and mobile launcher, the transporter inches its way to the hardstand atop Launch Complex 39A where it positioned the 12.5 million-pound load on support pedestals. (Unfueled Saturn V weighs 1/2 million pounds.) Rollout began at 12:30 p.m. EDT today, and was completed at 7:46 p.m. The transporter carried the vehicle along the 3.5 mile crawlerway at an average speed less than one mile per hour. The 363-foot-high space vehicle is to launch Apollo 11 Astronauts Neil A. Armstrong, Michael Collins and Edwin E. Aldrin, Jr., on the Nations’ first manned lunar landing mission.”

 

 

 

 

M3 Bradley Fighting Vehicles assigned to 1st Battalion, 16th Infantry Regiment, 1st Armored Brigade Combat Team, 1st Infantry Division cross the Danube river during the culminating exercise of Saber Guardian 19 at Bordusani Romania, June 20, 2019.

Obama’s DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson: The Democrats’ Immigration Rhetoric Is Essentially a Declaration of Open Borders Which Would Cause Mass Illegal Immigration to Explode

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US Army to drop ‘US’ from name over past links to slavery

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Related:

I am not a fan of Kanye West, But I admire his willingness to buck the tide of celebrity conformist opinion.

James Delingpole:

“…The key moment comes when Kanye, after discussing his bipolar disorder (which he refuses to treat with drugs, preferring to enjoy what he calls ‘ramping up’), chooses (in his oblique, meandering way) to lament the climate of fear that has been generated among men in the witchhunt atmosphere of #MeToo.

Letterman looks uneasy at this — you can see his cowboy boots jittering nervously — as well he might. Every self-respecting celebrity in the US knows that #MeToo is the pure, saintly and cleansing force that quite properly dragged patriarchal America kicking and screaming by the testicles from the male chauvinist dark ages. So Letterman — warily, for Kanye is black and Letterman certainly wouldn’t want to be caught playing his white privilege card — says: ‘I would submit that it is not equal by any equation to the fear women feel being the other side of that.’

This triggers affirmatory whoops from the impeccably left-liberal New York audience. Letterman knows his crowd: the kind of people who don’t want jokes that make you laugh, just ones that enable you to applaud the politically correct sentiment. It’s a form of bullying, disguised as tolerance. With the subtlest of passive-aggressive menace, Letterman is signalling to Kanye: ‘Sir, you may be exceedingly famous and conveniently African American, but you just entered forbidden territory, so back to the plantation, boy!’

Kanye, gloriously, doesn’t fold but doubles down. He breaks into his shy, gnomic smile and goads Letterman by invoking the name of liberal New York’s Antichrist, Donald Trump. ‘Did you vote for him?’ Letterman asks. ‘I’ve never voted for anyone in my life,’ says Kanye. ‘Then you don’t have a say in this,’ finger-wags Letterman — a fatal error. ‘Oh,’ says Kanye and then — adopting the mannerism of a dumbo from the Deep South — waves his hands and says: ‘You got me!’

It’s the most extraordinary few minutes, a minuet of death. Letterman affects to laugh, the audience laughs, Kanye laughs. But behind the smiles and the apparent bonhomie, a vicious duel is taking place and Kanye is winning hands down. I can’t think of a single other celebrity in the world who would have had the balls to do what Kanye does in this interview: challenge the entertainment industry’s oppressive left-liberal consensus; speak out for Donald Trump; rail against the stifling constraints on freedom of speech that is rendering so much unsayable. Maybe you need to be a huge rap star to get away with such things. But how many other huge rap stars would have had the originality of thought even to try?…”

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