Handwritten notes from Peter Strzok disclosed by DOJ in federal court yesterday show that the operation against Michael Flynn was ordered by President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden in the Oval Office on January 5, 2017. pic.twitter.com/wBABLCdxO5
According to Strzok's notes detailing the January 5 meeting, Joe Biden ("VP") explicitly mentioned using the Logan Act to go after Flynn, and Obama explicitly directed James Comey ("D") and Sally Yates ("DAG") to investigate Flynn and use "the right people" to go after him. pic.twitter.com/rboF4ju4ks
4/ Strzok and told of Jan. 5 oval office meeting and to NOT close Flynn investigation. THIS IS HUGE b/c it tells what "really" happened. And it wasn't "by the book" it was "the right people."
— šŗšø Mike Davis šŗšø (@mrddmia) June 24, 2020
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5/ And it wasn't concern that Flynn was passing on CI to Russia, but nothing wrong with calls. And Obama and Biden were in on it. So now read this: https://t.co/fvJnH659zK
Pay attention people of color. This is how they keep you under thumb, by shooting down reforms that would help you. They would rather see you continue to suffer with the status quo than allow their political opponents score any points. You mean nothing to them. You’re just a means to an end.
“Earlier today I wrote about Nancy Pelosiās claim that the Republican police reform bill in the Senate was tantamount with trying to get away with the murder of George Floyd. That statement came in advance of a filibuster today to prevent passage of the motion to proceed on the bill. The vote did take place and, as expected, Republicans fell a few votes short of the 60 needed to move forward.
Afterwards, Sen. Tim Scott, who has led the push for the GOP bill, gave a lengthy speech about what had just happened. In his view, itās clear that the objections Democrats had to the bill were never sincere. As he put it, āThe actual problem is not what is being offered it is who is offering it.ā He went on to say that Democrats were clearly worried that Republicans might be seen as responsive to the issues of black voters. And thatās something they donāt want the country to see.
Sen. Scott explained how every time Democrats brought an objection to him he offered an amendment to fix the problem and promised to support it. āSen. Schumer sent a letter tellingā¦Sen. McConnell there are five things in the legislation that needed to be improved,ā Scott said. He continued, āI said lets give them the five amendments. I sat down with more Senators and they said āWait, wait! Itās not just five, thereās twenty.ā I said how about twenty amendments. And they walked out.ā
A bit later he added, āTheir answer to me was āYou canāt offer us 20 amendmentsā¦because Mitch McConnell wonāt give you 20 amendments.ā I spoke to Mitch McConnell, he said āYou can have 20 amendments.’ā
Sen. Scott gave examples of some of the specific objections Democrats made to his bill. For instance, they said his bill didnāt collect enough data on police use of force. Scottās response was, āPut it in an amendment and Iāll support it.ā
āThey said we need you to ban no-knock warrants because of the Breonna Taylor situation. I said āUour bill does not ban no-knock warrants for the Breonna Taylor situation. Your bill bans it for federal agents.ā Thereās not a secret service agent showing up at Breonna Taylorās door. That was a local police department. So the fact is they are saying they want to ban no-knock warrants knowing they cannot ban no-knock warrants tells me that this is not about the underlying issue.ā
There was a similar argument involving chokeholds. āThey said you donāt ban chokeholds. I was like, I could have sworn I banned chokeholds in there somewhere. And then I read the bill. They donāt ban chokeholds on the local level or the state level. Do you know why? Thereās this little thing called the constitution. They canāt ban chokeholds. Eric Garnerās situation would not have been cured by their ban on chokeholds because their ban on chokeholds were for? Federal agents.ā
Eventually, Sen. Scott said it dawned on him what the real problem was. āI finally realized what the problem is, Mr. President. The actual problem is not what is being offered it is who is offering it. Took me a long time to figure out the most obvious thing the room,ā he said.
āI believe if weād gotten on the bill we would have passed this bill. But that is the problem by the way,ā Scott said. āWhat I missed in this issue is that the stereotyping of Republicans is just as toxic and poison to the outcomes of the most vulnerable communities in this nation. Thatās the issue.ā”
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Democrats are the problem, not part of the solution.
NASCAR. The media. Bubba Wallace. LeBron James. Social media. The NFL.
The alleged hate crime that catapulted NASCAR and Bubba Wallace to Page 1 of the news cycle was debunked by internet sleuths in less than 24 hours and the FBI in 36.
Two days after issuing a statement that a hanging noose had been discovered inside the garage of half black/half white driver Bubba Wallace, NASCAR released a follow-up statement:
āThe FBI has completed its investigation at Talladega Superspeedway and determined that Bubba Wallace was not the target of a hate crime. The FBI report concluded, and the photographic evidence confirms, that the garage door pull rope fashioned like a noose had been positioned there since as early as last fall. This was obviously well before the 43 teamās arrival and garage assignment.ā
The website theconservativetreehouse.com figured this all out Monday night, posting video footage and pictures documenting that the garage at Talladega had a hanging pull rope with a small noose big enough for a hand in 2019.
Itās mind blowing that NASCAR couldnāt deduce this Saturday night when a Bubba Wallace team member spotted the rope and labeled it proof of racial intimidation.
āMind blowingā isnāt the right description. Itās impossible to believe it took the FBI to solve this mystery. Thereās a level of willful ignorance that can only be reasonably explained by NASCARās desperation for relevance and traction at a time when all sports leagues and their television partners are hemorrhaging money. NASCAR leaned into the noose story because it was good for business, good TV.
Anti-black racism is the preferred plotline of Netflix, CNN, Twitter, Hollywood, ESPN, FOX Sports, MSNBC, professional athletes, The New York Times, The Washington Post and now every sports league looking for favorable coverage.
Go ahead, demonize NASCAR. Its history makes it an easy, worthy target. But willful ignorance is driving the decision-making of every sports league, including the NFL and the NBA.
The Black Lives Matter movement has provoked nationwide chaos, violence and rioting across this country. The movementās founders have publicly admitted the ideology driving BLM is Marxist. Marxism is the political theory of Karl Marx, the father of communism. Karl Marx preached against religion. He argued that religion is a tool used for the exploitation and stupefaction of the working class. Communist countries traditionally impose atheism as the religion of the state.
The ideology driving BLM directly contradicts traditional American values, the values long celebrated in sports. ”
Tuesday the San Francisco 49ers unveiled a Black Lives Matter flag at Levi Stadium next to the American flag. From Roger Goodell on down, the NFL has accepted Black Lives Matter as its lord and financial savior. BLM sent its only begotten son, Colin Kaepernick, to save us all from sin. This week Brett Favre spoke in tongues, analogizing Kaepernickās sacrifice to NFLer-turned-soldier Pat Tillmanās.
This is willful ignorance. Itās being embraced across sports, across America. The American media have imposed race and politics as our new religion. Many people who claim Christianity and other religions as their faith have in reality prioritized race and politics well ahead of God. They talk and worship race and politics daily, hourly. From their Twitter pulpits, they use race to evangelize for their political beliefs while rarely ever evangelizing for God.
Thatās why any alleged sighting of racism is treated as a miracle that cannot be questioned. If you question it, you run the risk of being castigated as a non-believer at the Secular Church of Social Media. “
As reliably as children being fooled by Santa Claus, the news media has once again been duped by an obviously false story that fit their favorite narrative about race. Last year, it was the Jussie Smollett fiasco, which I was one of the first media commentators to call out as lacking credibility. Today, in a very different but similar story, we have learned that, contrary to an enormous amount of media outrage and moralizing, black NASCAR driver Bubba Wallace was not the victim of a noose-related hate crime.
For those who have somehow missed it, over the weekend NASCAR dramatically and declaratively announced that Wallace had been the target of a ānooseā found in his garage at the Talladega speedway in Alabama. This was just before a high-profile race on that track that took place on Monday.
When I first heard of the story, I assumed there must be a photo of the noose in question, and was very curious to see how someone could be both so incredibly awful, and well as insanely stupid, as to do something so horrifically racist to a black driver. It quickly became obvious, however, that there was no public photo, and my spidey senses began to tell me that something about this story was just not correct.
Here was my first of many tweets asking for people, and specifically the media, to please not rush to judgment on a story where there could be multiple other scenarios that make far more sense than the narrative that was been very widely reported, as if it was a certifiable fact: āSince many noose-related stories turn out to be frauds/misunderstandings, there should be skepticism here. It is a garage. A rope tied like that wouldnāt even be noticed in someone elseās stall or at another time. Of course thereās no time to wait for facts before assuming racism!ā Not surprisingly, I was attacked on Twitter for the next two days for being, at best, stupid, and, at worst, racist.
However, the lack of a photo was so inexplicable that it appeared obvious to me that this could have been a misunderstanding (under the presumption that if the noose/scene was really unambiguous, we absolutely would have seen a photo immediately). In these times of extreme racial tension, and after NASCAR had just announced it was completely banning the Confederate flag from its events, it seemed to me that someone may have seen a simple rope with an open knot at the end of it, panicked, and then once the ānooseā narrative got started, there was no way to contain it, especially in this current media atmosphere. (For context, there have been two noose stories here in California over just the past week that have turned out not to be hate crimes.)
Unfortunately, the modern news media, particularly the sports media, does not pause for even a moment to consider other possible explanations, especially on stories that fit their agenda. ESPN in particular now appears to have only one gear, and no brakes, when it comes to reacting to stories that have either a racism or sexual abuse element to them.
So, led by ESPN, instead of doing basic journalism and waiting for at least some actual facts to come in, the entire industrial media complex rushed to judgment and allowed virtue-signaling to completely overtake any sense of rationality, or even basic common sense. It never even seemed to occur to them that, with track access extremely limited due to COVID-19, catching someone who did this would be incredibly easy and, therefore, someone who works in the NASCAR community would have to be willing to destroy their entire life in order to make an incredibly stupid and racist gesture.
But having no photo, no rational theory for how or why this happened, and no suspect, is no longer any sort of hurdle for the modern news media to become deeply invested in an enticing narrative, no matter how nonsensical. In this case, NASCARās perceived race issues, and the fact that this happened in Alabama, made it particularly easy for critical thought in the liberal media (and yes, the sports media is at LEAST as liberal as the āmainstreamā media is) to be instantly thrown out the car window.”
“If you were watching MSNBC last Sunday, you may have seen Imani Perry, professor of African-American studies at Princeton University, and wondered, as I did, Why do I know that name?
Professor Perryās delightfully original point was that we need to āthink in serious contemplative ways about the depth of American inequality.ā
So perhaps we know her from her incisive commentary! I certainly havenāt heard anyone talk about American inequality. It really made me think.
But then I suddenly realized itās that Imani Perry! The one who nearly destroyed a policemanās life by falsely accusing him of racism!
Back in February 2016, Perry launched a series of tweets, alleging the following:
ā She was āarrested in Princeton Township for a single parking ticket three years ago.ā
ā She was cuffed ā FOR A PARKING TICKET ā and not allowed to make a phone call āso that someone would know where I was.ā
ā āI was afraid,ā she wrote. āMany women who look like me have a much more frightening end to such arrests.ā
Oh my gosh, she could have been killed!
ā She was āworking to move from being shaken to renewing my commitment to the struggle against racism & carcerality.ā
Naturally, her story became instant international news. The president of Princeton leapt to her defense, firing off a letter to the chief of police, demanding an investigation. (I know Perry is a professor, but youād think that, by now, more people would say, Letās wait for the facts.)
Perry attributed the universal acceptance of her story to her āsmall buildā and her association with āelite universitiesā such as Princeton.
Just a thought, but it might also be because sheās black.
The Princeton police spent several days investigating before finally releasing the dashcam footage. Iām hoping they dragged it out to allow public outrage to reach maximum velocity.
Perry wasnāt arrested āfor a single parking ticket three years ago.ā After being stopped for going 67 mph in a 45 mph speed zone, officers ran her name and discovered her license had been suspended. She was arrested for driving with a suspended license.
The officer was almost comically polite to the professor. He gently explained to Perry that because of her suspended license, āWhat youāre going to have to do is come with us, itās $130, so if you have that money weāll be able to post and weāll be able to get you right back out.ā He offered to drop her at the university, saying, āYou really shouldnāt be driving because of your suspended license.ā
He informed her that police are required to cuff anyone being transported to the station and assured her that no one would have to know. As for not being allowed to make a phone call, he clearly told her that once they got to the station, āYou can make as many phone calls and texts as you want.ā
A policeman was kind to her, so Perry turned around and accused him of racism, secure in the knowledge that no one would dare challenge whatever she said.
It would have been firing offense for him, but not for her. She is still gainfully employed as a Princeton professor ā and a sought-after guest on MSNBC and NPR! (It must be because of her āsmall build.ā)”
As with the Weather Underground, America’s privileged are now lashing out at their own self-loathing.”
“Depicting revolutionary France, Dickens wrote, āSix tumbrils roll along the streets. Change these back again to what they were, thou powerful enchanter, Time, and they shall be seen to be the carriages of absolute monarchs, the equipages of feudal nobles, the toilettes of flaring Jezebels, the churches that are not my fatherās house but dens of thieves, the huts of millions of starving peasants!ā
Today Americaās tumbrils are clattering about, carrying toppled statues, ruined careers, unwoke brands. Over their sides peer those deemed racist by left-wing identitarians and sentenced to cancelation, even as the evidentiary standard for that crime falls through the floor. Rioters over the weekend destroyed a statue of Ulysses S. Grant, the general who finished off the Confederacy. Falsehoods and innuendoes outpace the truth: in Oakland, a panic arose over what were supposedly nooses in a public park; turns out they were just exercise equipment that had been there for months. But no matter. Americaās Jacobins are in no mood to reason. As in Dickensā France, genuine social problems have mushroomed into a national orgy of self-harm.
But who are these cultural revolutionaries? The conventional wisdom goes that this is the inner-cities erupting, economically disadvantaged victims of racism enraged over the murder of George Floyd. The reality is something moreā¦bourgeoisie. As Kevin Williamson observed last week, āThese are the idiot children of the American ruling class, toy radicals and Champagne Bolsheviks playing Jacobin for a while until they go back to graduate school.ā Most of the culling is taking place not in the streets, but in the faculty lounge, the corporate boardroom, the upstart real estate firm with a socially conscious Twitter footprint and a penchant for Mean Girls GIFs. The most high-profile casualty so far isnāt even a person but a maple syrup, Aunt Jemima, whose threat to world peace seems rather manageable.
Such superficial victories are a clear sign of the bourgeoisieās soft hand. Meaningful police legislation, the kind that might prevent future George Floyds, currently being worked on by serious reformers, is a difficult push. Whereas reducing policymaking to maximalist slogans is easy; spray-painting a statue is even easier; whining about a visage on a syrup bottle is easier still. And ease is the currency of these weekend warriors, these erstwhile stoppers of Kony. Who is the face of their revolution? Itās tempting to name Melissa Click, the white (check) communications professor (check) who at a 2015 protest over racial issues (check) exhorted others (check) to beat up a student journalist. (Click was later fired for her misconduct by the University of Missouri, only to be scooped up by Gonzaga. The culling, it seems, only ever goes in one direction.)”
“It was inevitable that the wave of destructive rioting and looting that has swept through cities that are almost all governed by progressive Democrats, triggered initially by outrage over the sickening death in police custody of George Floyd, would be compared to the American urban riots of earlier generations. But the parallels miss profound differences in the underlying economic and social dynamics.
The Detroit and Newark riots of 1967 and the Los Angeles riot of 1992, for example, took place in cities suffering from the effects of deindustrialization. Los Angeles is not often thought of as a major manufacturing center, but Southern California had a flourishing aerospace industry that went into decline following the Cold War. The children and grandchildren of prosperous industrial workers found themselves stranded in urban regions whose economies shriveled as manufacturing shut down or moved elsewhere.
The violent riots that have taken place in cities like New York are quite different. Most of the cities that are being trashed by opportunistic looters, leftist radicals and criminal gangs lost significant manufacturing long ago. Some of them, like Washington, DC, were never industrial centers. These post-industrial cities are centers of finance like New York, tech like San Francisco, or government like Washington, not centers of physical production, most of which in the 21st century takes place on cheap land on the outskirts of cities or in rural areas.
The economy of Americaās major hub cities is based not on profits from the sale of manufactured goods, but on economic rents of various kinds. Interest payments flow to financiers on Wall Street. Royalties for the use of intellectual properties flow to Silicon Valley tech firms and individual tech tycoons. Similar royalties flow to the Hollywood-based entertainment industry. Social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter and search engines like Google derive quasi-rents from their near-monopolies of online advertisements.
These three industries ā Wall Street, Silicon Valley and Hollywood ā provide the donor base for the Democratic party, a political machine that has virtually unchecked one-party control of most larger cities in the United States. Industries that make physical products and engage in physical services ā national manufacturing, oil and gas, agribusiness, logistics ā tend to contribute to the Republican party.
The political economy of Americaās progressive Democratic cities is an extreme version of the very trickle-down economics that Democrats like to denounce. Financial rents and intellectual property payments flow from around the US and the world to billionaires and firms in New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles and other āblueā cities. Some of the rents that go to the Democratic rich are then shared as payoffs to constituencies that get out the vote for Democratic machine politicians, of which the most important are the public-sector employee and teachersā unions. Urban police unions, whose members are heavily working class and often conservative, sometimes have a tense relationship with left-liberal Democratic machines.
Another important constituency of the urban Democratic patronage machine in big cities and college towns consists of the college-educated professionals who work in the nonprofit sector, the media and the universities. These sectors depend on grants from billionaires like George Soros, Michael Bloomberg and Tom Steyer, as well as new organizations like Sorosās Open Society foundations, the Gates Foundation, Bloomberg Philanthropies, the older Ford and Rockefeller Foundations and major finance firms and tech firms.”
To paraphrase Mean Girls; Stop trying to make Obamagate happen; its not going to happen.
The real scandal is America’s response to Coronavirus — its as if America gave up and is contend to let the positive cases pile up. Trump’s plan is to stop testing then nobody will know. Imagine if it was that easy — just don’t get a test and you won’t get a disease. The US now has a higher per capita rate than any other western country. The only countries with a higher rate is the Persian Gulf countries, Peru, and Chile. The Persian Gulf has to do with the poor living conditions of the migrant labourers not the Arab citizens. In deaths per capita, the US has past the Netherlands and is slowly catching up to France with only Spain, UK, Belgium, Italy and Sweden ahead. The death rate is these countries is slowing down to almost zero while the US is still having new cases and people in critical condition.
Despite a pandemic raging through the country, the Republican party continues to chase Obama and trying to make political gains instead of taking care of the nation.
Both the Democrats and Republicans are engaging in political grandstanding. Police reform, for the most part, can’t happen on the federal level.
The rentiers essay you posted is something I can agree with and where Marxists and classicla economists also agree. Rentiers are for the most part a leech in the economic system — they collect “rents” from copyright, property, commissions, etc but rarely actually produce something or contribute. There are differing views of how to prevent it but the main Republican and Democratic leaders do not offer solutions. However, its interesting to note AOC won her primary against an opponent who was heavily supported by Goldman Sachs and other financial industry firms. If the rentier class is opposed to AOC maybe she has some ideas to keep them in check and limit the leeching.
BTW, Trump relaxed the Vlocker Rule today and bank/finance stocks soared. Banks can now use gov’t insured deposits to engage in risky venture investment funds. After the initial profit taking, the gov’t will again pick up the tab. And more wealth will be transferred from the people/govt to the wealthy elite. We don’t learn from history. The rentier class will leech even more.
Here’s another article about that Nascar noose incident. . .
“Phelps said that the internal probe learned that the noose was not present at the beginning of the October Cup Series weekend at Talladega, but was there at the end. However, he said there isnāt enough evidence to determine who created it or why. The NASCAR investigation also looked at 1684 garage stalls at tracks across the country and found only 11 with pull-ropes that had knots tied at the end, but the one in Wallaceās garage was the only one that looked like a noose.
Wallace said he was āembarrassedā by the incident, but relieved to know it wasnāt targeted at him. He never saw the noose in person, which he told ESPN was discovered by an African American member of his team who reported it to NASCAR. Phelps said he is bothered that it hadn’t registered with anyone sooner, but reconfirmed that Wallace’s team had nothing to do with it, which has been alleged by some on social media.”
Wandering Views 
The biggest political scandal in US history, and it goes all the way to the top.
Further proof Obama and Biden were neck deep, and further proof Comey is a lying traitor.
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Biden lied.
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Pay attention people of color. This is how they keep you under thumb, by shooting down reforms that would help you. They would rather see you continue to suffer with the status quo than allow their political opponents score any points. You mean nothing to them. You’re just a means to an end.
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“āThe Actual Problem Is Not What Is Being Offered It Is Who Is Offering Itā”
https://hotair.com/archives/john-s-2/2020/06/24/sen-tim-scott-democrats-dont-want-republicans-seen-responsive-black-voters/
“Earlier today I wrote about Nancy Pelosiās claim that the Republican police reform bill in the Senate was tantamount with trying to get away with the murder of George Floyd. That statement came in advance of a filibuster today to prevent passage of the motion to proceed on the bill. The vote did take place and, as expected, Republicans fell a few votes short of the 60 needed to move forward.
Afterwards, Sen. Tim Scott, who has led the push for the GOP bill, gave a lengthy speech about what had just happened. In his view, itās clear that the objections Democrats had to the bill were never sincere. As he put it, āThe actual problem is not what is being offered it is who is offering it.ā He went on to say that Democrats were clearly worried that Republicans might be seen as responsive to the issues of black voters. And thatās something they donāt want the country to see.
Sen. Scott explained how every time Democrats brought an objection to him he offered an amendment to fix the problem and promised to support it. āSen. Schumer sent a letter tellingā¦Sen. McConnell there are five things in the legislation that needed to be improved,ā Scott said. He continued, āI said lets give them the five amendments. I sat down with more Senators and they said āWait, wait! Itās not just five, thereās twenty.ā I said how about twenty amendments. And they walked out.ā
A bit later he added, āTheir answer to me was āYou canāt offer us 20 amendmentsā¦because Mitch McConnell wonāt give you 20 amendments.ā I spoke to Mitch McConnell, he said āYou can have 20 amendments.’ā
Sen. Scott gave examples of some of the specific objections Democrats made to his bill. For instance, they said his bill didnāt collect enough data on police use of force. Scottās response was, āPut it in an amendment and Iāll support it.ā
āThey said we need you to ban no-knock warrants because of the Breonna Taylor situation. I said āUour bill does not ban no-knock warrants for the Breonna Taylor situation. Your bill bans it for federal agents.ā Thereās not a secret service agent showing up at Breonna Taylorās door. That was a local police department. So the fact is they are saying they want to ban no-knock warrants knowing they cannot ban no-knock warrants tells me that this is not about the underlying issue.ā
There was a similar argument involving chokeholds. āThey said you donāt ban chokeholds. I was like, I could have sworn I banned chokeholds in there somewhere. And then I read the bill. They donāt ban chokeholds on the local level or the state level. Do you know why? Thereās this little thing called the constitution. They canāt ban chokeholds. Eric Garnerās situation would not have been cured by their ban on chokeholds because their ban on chokeholds were for? Federal agents.ā
Eventually, Sen. Scott said it dawned on him what the real problem was. āI finally realized what the problem is, Mr. President. The actual problem is not what is being offered it is who is offering it. Took me a long time to figure out the most obvious thing the room,ā he said.
āI believe if weād gotten on the bill we would have passed this bill. But that is the problem by the way,ā Scott said. āWhat I missed in this issue is that the stereotyping of Republicans is just as toxic and poison to the outcomes of the most vulnerable communities in this nation. Thatās the issue.ā”
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Democrats are the problem, not part of the solution.
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I was surprised to see this coming from Whitlock. He’s usually as liberal as it gets.
https://outkick.com/fakenoose-story-proves-racism-is-our-new-religion/
“The #FakeNoose story makes everyone look bad.
NASCAR. The media. Bubba Wallace. LeBron James. Social media. The NFL.
The alleged hate crime that catapulted NASCAR and Bubba Wallace to Page 1 of the news cycle was debunked by internet sleuths in less than 24 hours and the FBI in 36.
Two days after issuing a statement that a hanging noose had been discovered inside the garage of half black/half white driver Bubba Wallace, NASCAR released a follow-up statement:
āThe FBI has completed its investigation at Talladega Superspeedway and determined that Bubba Wallace was not the target of a hate crime. The FBI report concluded, and the photographic evidence confirms, that the garage door pull rope fashioned like a noose had been positioned there since as early as last fall. This was obviously well before the 43 teamās arrival and garage assignment.ā
The website theconservativetreehouse.com figured this all out Monday night, posting video footage and pictures documenting that the garage at Talladega had a hanging pull rope with a small noose big enough for a hand in 2019.
Itās mind blowing that NASCAR couldnāt deduce this Saturday night when a Bubba Wallace team member spotted the rope and labeled it proof of racial intimidation.
āMind blowingā isnāt the right description. Itās impossible to believe it took the FBI to solve this mystery. Thereās a level of willful ignorance that can only be reasonably explained by NASCARās desperation for relevance and traction at a time when all sports leagues and their television partners are hemorrhaging money. NASCAR leaned into the noose story because it was good for business, good TV.
Anti-black racism is the preferred plotline of Netflix, CNN, Twitter, Hollywood, ESPN, FOX Sports, MSNBC, professional athletes, The New York Times, The Washington Post and now every sports league looking for favorable coverage.
Go ahead, demonize NASCAR. Its history makes it an easy, worthy target. But willful ignorance is driving the decision-making of every sports league, including the NFL and the NBA.
The Black Lives Matter movement has provoked nationwide chaos, violence and rioting across this country. The movementās founders have publicly admitted the ideology driving BLM is Marxist. Marxism is the political theory of Karl Marx, the father of communism. Karl Marx preached against religion. He argued that religion is a tool used for the exploitation and stupefaction of the working class. Communist countries traditionally impose atheism as the religion of the state.
The ideology driving BLM directly contradicts traditional American values, the values long celebrated in sports. ”
Tuesday the San Francisco 49ers unveiled a Black Lives Matter flag at Levi Stadium next to the American flag. From Roger Goodell on down, the NFL has accepted Black Lives Matter as its lord and financial savior. BLM sent its only begotten son, Colin Kaepernick, to save us all from sin. This week Brett Favre spoke in tongues, analogizing Kaepernickās sacrifice to NFLer-turned-soldier Pat Tillmanās.
This is willful ignorance. Itās being embraced across sports, across America. The American media have imposed race and politics as our new religion. Many people who claim Christianity and other religions as their faith have in reality prioritized race and politics well ahead of God. They talk and worship race and politics daily, hourly. From their Twitter pulpits, they use race to evangelize for their political beliefs while rarely ever evangelizing for God.
Thatās why any alleged sighting of racism is treated as a miracle that cannot be questioned. If you question it, you run the risk of being castigated as a non-believer at the Secular Church of Social Media. “
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How?
Same way they always do, because they buy it without facts, because they desperately want it to be true. It fits with their preconceived stereotypes.
https://nypost.com/2020/06/23/how-did-the-media-get-duped-again/
“Here we go again ā¦
As reliably as children being fooled by Santa Claus, the news media has once again been duped by an obviously false story that fit their favorite narrative about race. Last year, it was the Jussie Smollett fiasco, which I was one of the first media commentators to call out as lacking credibility. Today, in a very different but similar story, we have learned that, contrary to an enormous amount of media outrage and moralizing, black NASCAR driver Bubba Wallace was not the victim of a noose-related hate crime.
For those who have somehow missed it, over the weekend NASCAR dramatically and declaratively announced that Wallace had been the target of a ānooseā found in his garage at the Talladega speedway in Alabama. This was just before a high-profile race on that track that took place on Monday.
When I first heard of the story, I assumed there must be a photo of the noose in question, and was very curious to see how someone could be both so incredibly awful, and well as insanely stupid, as to do something so horrifically racist to a black driver. It quickly became obvious, however, that there was no public photo, and my spidey senses began to tell me that something about this story was just not correct.
Here was my first of many tweets asking for people, and specifically the media, to please not rush to judgment on a story where there could be multiple other scenarios that make far more sense than the narrative that was been very widely reported, as if it was a certifiable fact: āSince many noose-related stories turn out to be frauds/misunderstandings, there should be skepticism here. It is a garage. A rope tied like that wouldnāt even be noticed in someone elseās stall or at another time. Of course thereās no time to wait for facts before assuming racism!ā Not surprisingly, I was attacked on Twitter for the next two days for being, at best, stupid, and, at worst, racist.
However, the lack of a photo was so inexplicable that it appeared obvious to me that this could have been a misunderstanding (under the presumption that if the noose/scene was really unambiguous, we absolutely would have seen a photo immediately). In these times of extreme racial tension, and after NASCAR had just announced it was completely banning the Confederate flag from its events, it seemed to me that someone may have seen a simple rope with an open knot at the end of it, panicked, and then once the ānooseā narrative got started, there was no way to contain it, especially in this current media atmosphere. (For context, there have been two noose stories here in California over just the past week that have turned out not to be hate crimes.)
Unfortunately, the modern news media, particularly the sports media, does not pause for even a moment to consider other possible explanations, especially on stories that fit their agenda. ESPN in particular now appears to have only one gear, and no brakes, when it comes to reacting to stories that have either a racism or sexual abuse element to them.
So, led by ESPN, instead of doing basic journalism and waiting for at least some actual facts to come in, the entire industrial media complex rushed to judgment and allowed virtue-signaling to completely overtake any sense of rationality, or even basic common sense. It never even seemed to occur to them that, with track access extremely limited due to COVID-19, catching someone who did this would be incredibly easy and, therefore, someone who works in the NASCAR community would have to be willing to destroy their entire life in order to make an incredibly stupid and racist gesture.
But having no photo, no rational theory for how or why this happened, and no suspect, is no longer any sort of hurdle for the modern news media to become deeply invested in an enticing narrative, no matter how nonsensical. In this case, NASCARās perceived race issues, and the fact that this happened in Alabama, made it particularly easy for critical thought in the liberal media (and yes, the sports media is at LEAST as liberal as the āmainstreamā media is) to be instantly thrown out the car window.”
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More fake racism….
https://townhall.com/columnists/anncoulter/2020/06/24/great-moments-in-racism-the-dash-cam-tapes-n2571274
“If you were watching MSNBC last Sunday, you may have seen Imani Perry, professor of African-American studies at Princeton University, and wondered, as I did, Why do I know that name?
Professor Perryās delightfully original point was that we need to āthink in serious contemplative ways about the depth of American inequality.ā
So perhaps we know her from her incisive commentary! I certainly havenāt heard anyone talk about American inequality. It really made me think.
But then I suddenly realized itās that Imani Perry! The one who nearly destroyed a policemanās life by falsely accusing him of racism!
Back in February 2016, Perry launched a series of tweets, alleging the following:
ā She was āarrested in Princeton Township for a single parking ticket three years ago.ā
ā She was cuffed ā FOR A PARKING TICKET ā and not allowed to make a phone call āso that someone would know where I was.ā
ā āI was afraid,ā she wrote. āMany women who look like me have a much more frightening end to such arrests.ā
Oh my gosh, she could have been killed!
ā She was āworking to move from being shaken to renewing my commitment to the struggle against racism & carcerality.ā
Naturally, her story became instant international news. The president of Princeton leapt to her defense, firing off a letter to the chief of police, demanding an investigation. (I know Perry is a professor, but youād think that, by now, more people would say, Letās wait for the facts.)
Perry attributed the universal acceptance of her story to her āsmall buildā and her association with āelite universitiesā such as Princeton.
Just a thought, but it might also be because sheās black.
The Princeton police spent several days investigating before finally releasing the dashcam footage. Iām hoping they dragged it out to allow public outrage to reach maximum velocity.
Perry wasnāt arrested āfor a single parking ticket three years ago.ā After being stopped for going 67 mph in a 45 mph speed zone, officers ran her name and discovered her license had been suspended. She was arrested for driving with a suspended license.
The officer was almost comically polite to the professor. He gently explained to Perry that because of her suspended license, āWhat youāre going to have to do is come with us, itās $130, so if you have that money weāll be able to post and weāll be able to get you right back out.ā He offered to drop her at the university, saying, āYou really shouldnāt be driving because of your suspended license.ā
He informed her that police are required to cuff anyone being transported to the station and assured her that no one would have to know. As for not being allowed to make a phone call, he clearly told her that once they got to the station, āYou can make as many phone calls and texts as you want.ā
A policeman was kind to her, so Perry turned around and accused him of racism, secure in the knowledge that no one would dare challenge whatever she said.
It would have been firing offense for him, but not for her. She is still gainfully employed as a Princeton professor ā and a sought-after guest on MSNBC and NPR! (It must be because of her āsmall build.ā)”
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Aka: Antifa.
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/here-come-the-bourgeoisie-bolsheviks/
“Here Come The Bourgeois Bolsheviks
As with the Weather Underground, America’s privileged are now lashing out at their own self-loathing.”
“Depicting revolutionary France, Dickens wrote, āSix tumbrils roll along the streets. Change these back again to what they were, thou powerful enchanter, Time, and they shall be seen to be the carriages of absolute monarchs, the equipages of feudal nobles, the toilettes of flaring Jezebels, the churches that are not my fatherās house but dens of thieves, the huts of millions of starving peasants!ā
Today Americaās tumbrils are clattering about, carrying toppled statues, ruined careers, unwoke brands. Over their sides peer those deemed racist by left-wing identitarians and sentenced to cancelation, even as the evidentiary standard for that crime falls through the floor. Rioters over the weekend destroyed a statue of Ulysses S. Grant, the general who finished off the Confederacy. Falsehoods and innuendoes outpace the truth: in Oakland, a panic arose over what were supposedly nooses in a public park; turns out they were just exercise equipment that had been there for months. But no matter. Americaās Jacobins are in no mood to reason. As in Dickensā France, genuine social problems have mushroomed into a national orgy of self-harm.
But who are these cultural revolutionaries? The conventional wisdom goes that this is the inner-cities erupting, economically disadvantaged victims of racism enraged over the murder of George Floyd. The reality is something moreā¦bourgeoisie. As Kevin Williamson observed last week, āThese are the idiot children of the American ruling class, toy radicals and Champagne Bolsheviks playing Jacobin for a while until they go back to graduate school.ā Most of the culling is taking place not in the streets, but in the faculty lounge, the corporate boardroom, the upstart real estate firm with a socially conscious Twitter footprint and a penchant for Mean Girls GIFs. The most high-profile casualty so far isnāt even a person but a maple syrup, Aunt Jemima, whose threat to world peace seems rather manageable.
Such superficial victories are a clear sign of the bourgeoisieās soft hand. Meaningful police legislation, the kind that might prevent future George Floyds, currently being worked on by serious reformers, is a difficult push. Whereas reducing policymaking to maximalist slogans is easy; spray-painting a statue is even easier; whining about a visage on a syrup bottle is easier still. And ease is the currency of these weekend warriors, these erstwhile stoppers of Kony. Who is the face of their revolution? Itās tempting to name Melissa Click, the white (check) communications professor (check) who at a 2015 protest over racial issues (check) exhorted others (check) to beat up a student journalist. (Click was later fired for her misconduct by the University of Missouri, only to be scooped up by Gonzaga. The culling, it seems, only ever goes in one direction.)”
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The rioters and the rentiers.
https://spectator.us/rioters-rentiers-democratic-city/
“It was inevitable that the wave of destructive rioting and looting that has swept through cities that are almost all governed by progressive Democrats, triggered initially by outrage over the sickening death in police custody of George Floyd, would be compared to the American urban riots of earlier generations. But the parallels miss profound differences in the underlying economic and social dynamics.
The Detroit and Newark riots of 1967 and the Los Angeles riot of 1992, for example, took place in cities suffering from the effects of deindustrialization. Los Angeles is not often thought of as a major manufacturing center, but Southern California had a flourishing aerospace industry that went into decline following the Cold War. The children and grandchildren of prosperous industrial workers found themselves stranded in urban regions whose economies shriveled as manufacturing shut down or moved elsewhere.
The violent riots that have taken place in cities like New York are quite different. Most of the cities that are being trashed by opportunistic looters, leftist radicals and criminal gangs lost significant manufacturing long ago. Some of them, like Washington, DC, were never industrial centers. These post-industrial cities are centers of finance like New York, tech like San Francisco, or government like Washington, not centers of physical production, most of which in the 21st century takes place on cheap land on the outskirts of cities or in rural areas.
The economy of Americaās major hub cities is based not on profits from the sale of manufactured goods, but on economic rents of various kinds. Interest payments flow to financiers on Wall Street. Royalties for the use of intellectual properties flow to Silicon Valley tech firms and individual tech tycoons. Similar royalties flow to the Hollywood-based entertainment industry. Social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter and search engines like Google derive quasi-rents from their near-monopolies of online advertisements.
These three industries ā Wall Street, Silicon Valley and Hollywood ā provide the donor base for the Democratic party, a political machine that has virtually unchecked one-party control of most larger cities in the United States. Industries that make physical products and engage in physical services ā national manufacturing, oil and gas, agribusiness, logistics ā tend to contribute to the Republican party.
The political economy of Americaās progressive Democratic cities is an extreme version of the very trickle-down economics that Democrats like to denounce. Financial rents and intellectual property payments flow from around the US and the world to billionaires and firms in New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles and other āblueā cities. Some of the rents that go to the Democratic rich are then shared as payoffs to constituencies that get out the vote for Democratic machine politicians, of which the most important are the public-sector employee and teachersā unions. Urban police unions, whose members are heavily working class and often conservative, sometimes have a tense relationship with left-liberal Democratic machines.
Another important constituency of the urban Democratic patronage machine in big cities and college towns consists of the college-educated professionals who work in the nonprofit sector, the media and the universities. These sectors depend on grants from billionaires like George Soros, Michael Bloomberg and Tom Steyer, as well as new organizations like Sorosās Open Society foundations, the Gates Foundation, Bloomberg Philanthropies, the older Ford and Rockefeller Foundations and major finance firms and tech firms.”
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To paraphrase Mean Girls; Stop trying to make Obamagate happen; its not going to happen.
The real scandal is America’s response to Coronavirus — its as if America gave up and is contend to let the positive cases pile up. Trump’s plan is to stop testing then nobody will know. Imagine if it was that easy — just don’t get a test and you won’t get a disease. The US now has a higher per capita rate than any other western country. The only countries with a higher rate is the Persian Gulf countries, Peru, and Chile. The Persian Gulf has to do with the poor living conditions of the migrant labourers not the Arab citizens. In deaths per capita, the US has past the Netherlands and is slowly catching up to France with only Spain, UK, Belgium, Italy and Sweden ahead. The death rate is these countries is slowing down to almost zero while the US is still having new cases and people in critical condition.
Despite a pandemic raging through the country, the Republican party continues to chase Obama and trying to make political gains instead of taking care of the nation.
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Don’t watch auto racing and especially NASCAR — going in circles all day… never say the point. But the tweets you’ve posted in the last few days might be questionable — I’m thinking especially one with the handle Kung Flu accusing Wallace and NASCAR of race baiting. Kettle meet pot in that particular case. Here’s NASCAR’s point of view which is contraidicts most of the stories I seen here
https://www.espn.com/racing/nascar/story/_/id/29364817/nascar-releases-image-noose-found-bubba-wallace-garage-says-concern-was-real
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Both the Democrats and Republicans are engaging in political grandstanding. Police reform, for the most part, can’t happen on the federal level.
The rentiers essay you posted is something I can agree with and where Marxists and classicla economists also agree. Rentiers are for the most part a leech in the economic system — they collect “rents” from copyright, property, commissions, etc but rarely actually produce something or contribute. There are differing views of how to prevent it but the main Republican and Democratic leaders do not offer solutions. However, its interesting to note AOC won her primary against an opponent who was heavily supported by Goldman Sachs and other financial industry firms. If the rentier class is opposed to AOC maybe she has some ideas to keep them in check and limit the leeching.
BTW, Trump relaxed the Vlocker Rule today and bank/finance stocks soared. Banks can now use gov’t insured deposits to engage in risky venture investment funds. After the initial profit taking, the gov’t will again pick up the tab. And more wealth will be transferred from the people/govt to the wealthy elite. We don’t learn from history. The rentier class will leech even more.
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Here’s some good news I think everyone will agree
https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/439425-johnny-cash-statue-to-replace-confederate-figure-on-capitol
I can listen to this daily and it still gets me
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Here’s another article about that Nascar noose incident. . .
“Phelps said that the internal probe learned that the noose was not present at the beginning of the October Cup Series weekend at Talladega, but was there at the end. However, he said there isnāt enough evidence to determine who created it or why. The NASCAR investigation also looked at 1684 garage stalls at tracks across the country and found only 11 with pull-ropes that had knots tied at the end, but the one in Wallaceās garage was the only one that looked like a noose.
Wallace said he was āembarrassedā by the incident, but relieved to know it wasnāt targeted at him. He never saw the noose in person, which he told ESPN was discovered by an African American member of his team who reported it to NASCAR. Phelps said he is bothered that it hadn’t registered with anyone sooner, but reconfirmed that Wallace’s team had nothing to do with it, which has been alleged by some on social media.”
https://www.foxnews.com/auto/nascar-releases-photo-noose-bubba-wallaces-garage
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Thanx HRW.
Me too, Johnny. .
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