Great article from a sharp gal. Worth clicking over.

Heather Mac Donald:

“…The truth: as instances of actual racism get harder and harder to find, the search to find such bigotry becomes increasingly frenzied and unmoored from reality.

Smollett made a not-irrational wager that a patently preposterous narrative about an anti-black, anti-gay hate crime at 2 A.M. in subzero Chicago would be embraced by virtually the entirety of the mainstream media, leading Democratic politicians, Hollywood, and academia, with no one in these cohorts bothering to fact-check his narrative or entertain even armchair skepticism toward it. He also presumed, again with good reason, that to claim victim status would catapult him to the highest echelons of public admiration and accomplishment. And he was right. Kamala Harris and Cory Booker called it a “modern-day lynching.” Joe Biden warned that “we must no longer give this hate safe harbor,” his implication being that we need to stop winking at such racist attacks. If Beale Street Could Talk’s Barry Jenkins lamented, “This what all that hateful mongering has wrought. Are you PROUD???”  Good Morning America interviewed Smollett without asking a single critical question about his story.

The examples are as numerous as the retractions will be minimal…”

Original

BEN SHAPIRO:

“…On January 29, 2019, Chicago Police opened a hate crime investigation into the alleged assault of Empire actor Jussie Smollett. Smollett, who is black and gay, alleged that two men approached him at 2 a.m. in Chicago, where they shouted “f*****” and “n*****,” tried to wrap a noose around his neck, and poured bleach on him. He also told TMZ that the men shouted, “This is MAGA country.”

The story received unending press. The Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), tweeted, “The racist, homophobic attack on [Smollett] is an affront to our humanity.” Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ) called it a “modern-day lynching.” Congresswoman and Fresh Face™ of the Democratic Party Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez slammed anyone who questioned the story, tweeting, “The attack was not ‘possibly’ homophobic. It was a racist and homophobic attack.”

The media ran with the story. Good Morning America hosted Smollett, where he maligned anyone who asked questions as a racist and a homophobe. CNN’s Brooke Baldwin stated, “This is America in 2019.” Celebrities parroted their support for Smollett, with many blaming President Trump and Vice President Pence for the attack.

The story was a hoax.

That same night, a Jewish man in New York was beaten by three thugs. Nothing was stolen. The attack was caught on video.

Outside of a report in The Jerusalem Post, the story received virtually no attention.

This isn’t the only story of anti-Semitism in New York. Not by a long shot. Two weeks before that beating, a Jewish man, 19, was “violently assaulted” as he walked past a local laundromat by a group of teenage black males. In December, a 16-year-old Jewish teen spent a week in a hospital after being beaten by two other teens; witnesses said that the teens screamed “Kill the Jew.” The NYPD categorized the attack as “gang related” rather than a hate crime, angering Jews in the area. This weekend, vandals shattered the window of a Chabad in Bushwick as the rabbi and his family slept inside….”

Original

Surge in Ivy League anti-Trump courses, ‘imminent apocalypse,’ ‘fascism.’

If any of that was true, these nitwits would not be offering these courses for obvious reasons.

Salena Zito:

“…Tito Brown can’t imagine driving a perfectly good thing out of a town that hasn’t had a perfectly good thing come its way in a very long time.

At least, a perfectly good thing the size and scope of the Amazon headquarters that ideological politics drove out of Long Island City on Thursday, when Democrats including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., danced on the grave of the deal as Amazon walked away from the New York project.

Brown doesn’t really get that. He governs a city with a declining population, a 40 percent poverty rate, and would welcome the opportunity for a project such as Amazon to have considered locating here.

“Oh, any time I can get regional and/or economic growth in my community, I would absolutely want that here,” he said. “It’s budget time.”

Ocasio-Cortez, who has become the leader of the left-wing insurgency within the Democratic Party, slammed the plan in a tweet the moment it was announced in mid-November last year.

She initially said the response to the Amazon announcement from her constituents was outrage, arguing that the tax breaks Amazon would receive should be spent by city and state officials on the subway system and communities instead of billion-dollar corporations.

Which isn’t how tax breaks work. It’s not like there is a pile of money they would hand to Amazon that could have been spent on the subway system, but that is a story for a different day.

What this moment signifies in the Democratic Party is one that has been in existence for several years, but the party establishment and ruling class have been unwilling to face: the leftist populism punching up to take the reins of the party…”

Original

Satire, but is it?

Nation’s Liberals Devastated After Learning Hate Crime Didn’t Actually Happen

Good article. Worth clicking over.

DOV FISCHER:

“…When Ocasio-Cortez speaks, she reflects not only an element of Personal Stupid, but she also reflects a generation of college graduates who literally do not know what World War II was, what Hitler and Stalin were, what mass genocide and Golodomor and Holocaust are. That was part of the bounty of White Male Privilege…”

Original

ROBERT STACY MCCAIN:

“…Four below zero — that’s how cold it was at 2 a.m. in Chicago on Jan. 29, when actor Jussie Smollett claims he was the victim of a racist, homophobic hate crime perpetrated by two white Trump supporters. There were many reasons to be skeptical of Smollett’s story, but the fact that Chicago was experiencing a “polar vortex” of arctic cold was high on the list of doubts. Even if you could believe that two right-wingers would be stalking a not-very-famous actor in downtown Chicago, waiting for a chance to attack him on his way back from a wee-hours trip to a sandwich shop, why would they be doing this in -4°F weather?

Smollett’s story never made sense, and it came completely unraveled last week after Chicago police apprehended two of the Empire actor’s friends when they flew into O’Hare Airport, returning from a trip to Nigeria. According to reports by Chicago’s WBBM-TV and other outlets, brothers Abimbola “Abel” Osundairo and Olabinjo “Ola” Osundairo were paid $3,500 by Smollett to stage the fake hate crime. Police have not yet filed any charges or given an official explanation of exactly what happened, and Smollett’s attorneys issued a statement Saturday asserting his innocence, but there is now every reason to believe that the whole thing was a complete hoax. If this proves to be the case, will any of the liberals who rushed to exploit Smollett’s tale face any consequences for smearing Trump supporters?

Consider, for example, what Stephen Colbert did on The Late Show. Two days after Smollett claimed he was attacked, Colbert invited lesbian actress Ellen Page onto the CBS program to blame the Trump administration, and particularly Vice President Mike Pence, for “what happened the other day to Jussie.” After describing Pence’s conservative policies as having “hurt LGBTQ people so badly,” Page said: “Connect the dots. This is what happens if you are in a position of power and you hate people and you want to cause suffering to them — you go through the trouble, you spend your career trying to cause suffering, what do you think is going to happen?” This was either deliberate slander, or evidence of insuperable stupidity, but neither Colbert nor Page have acknowledged any error, because they don’t have to. Presumably, the advertisers and executives at CBS have no problem paying Colbert to falsely blame Republicans for a “hate crime” that turns out to be a hoax, and Page knows that every liberal in Hollywood will applaud her “courage” for insulting the vice president…”

Original

And

Two years were wasted on this investigation to find out what most people already knew.

• Senate Finds No Direct Evidence of Trump-Russia Collusion

And look who else was cleared.

• Investigation Clears Covington Catholic Students, “No Evidence of Offensive or Racist Statements”

Now let’s look at some real collusion.

• Andrew McCabe: DOJ considered how to remove Trump under 25th Amendment after Comey firing
• Alan Dershowitz: Yes, Using the 25th Amendment to Oust Trump is an Attempted Coup

Here we go.

• Trump will sign omnibus, then declare National Emergency to get border wall built
• Trump Declares National Emergency to Stop ‘Invasion of Our Country With Drugs, Human Traffickers’

No jobs for you!

• Ocasio-Cortez Victory: Amazon Won’t Build Headquarters in New York City
• Amazon, Others Rip Into Ocasio-Cortez After Company Flees NYC Deal, Taking 25k Jobs With It

It didn’t work.

• Minnesota Jewish Leaders Attempted an Intervention With Ilhan Omar Last Year

Lovely.

• Report: Rep. Rashida Tlaib Penned Column for Anti-Semitic Farrakhan Publication in 2006

The truth comes out.

• Democrats Come Out in Support of Taking Down Existing Border Barriers

Surprise!

• Antifa Mobster Arrested for Allegedly Taking Part in the Assault of Two Marines Was a Go-To Democrat Activist

World news.

• India Vows Revenge After Deadly Islamist Terror Attack
• Report: Egypt pumped deadly gas into tunnel between Gaza and Sinai, killing two
• EU Election: Study Says Right-Wing Gains Could ‘Paralyze’ the Bloc

Branco cartoons!

• Branco Cartoon – Justice for Some
• Branco Cartoon – Blowhard

Original

PAST PERFORMANCE IS NO GUARANTEE OF FUTURE RESULTS:

Shot: Police sources: New evidence suggests Jussie Smollett orchestrated attack.

—CNN, tonight.

Chaser: Don Lemon Says He Texts Jussie Smollett Every Day Following Attack.

—Entertainment Tonight, Tuesday.

Hangover: Cameron Gray collects a ton of tweets on the alleged Jussie Smollett attack that might not age well.

–Twitchy, Thursday.

UPDATE: “As the Smollett tale unravels, MSM hasn’t been this blindly wrong about a story that smears Trump supporters in *checks watch* 3 weeks. #Covington”

Ed Driscoll strung this together

Reporters Shopping With Kamala Harris Offer A Preview Of 2020 Coverage

Ocasio-Cortez Declares Victory Over The Modern-Day Equivalent Of Slavery: Jobs