Posts Tagged ‘riot’

Is China Backing Antifa/BLM?

Thursday, September 17th, 2020

Is China backing the Antifa/#BlackLivesMatters riots in America?

In some cases, the answer appears to be yes:

The CPA was founded in San Francisco in 1972 during the heady days of the Marxist-oriented Asian American Movement, and today it also has a very active chapter in Boston. From its start, it has been a promoter of the People’s Republic of China.

According to an authoritative 2009 Stanford University paper tracing its early days to the present, and which can be found on Marxist.org, “The CPA began as a Leftist, pro-People’s Republic of China organization, promoting awareness of mainland China’s revolutionary thought and workers’ rights, and dedicated to self-determination, community control, and ‘serving the people.’”

The CPA, continued the paper, “worked with other pro-PRC groups within the U.S. and San Francisco Bay Area … Support for the PRC was based on the inspiration the members drew from what they saw as a successful grassroots model that presented a viable alternative to Western capitalism.”

One of the ways it did this was by holding “film screenings that were open to the public, sometimes showing Chinese films as well to facilitate understanding of the country’s revolutionary ideas. … CPA also took the lead with groups such as the U.S.-China People’s Friendship Organization to celebrate China’s National Day on Oct. 1”.

To this day, the CPA continues to be a partner of the PRC in the United States. Three years ago, the Boston chapter teamed up with China’s Consulate General in New York to offer Chinese nationals the opportunity to renew their passports, getting praise from China’s official mouthpiece, China Daily.

Last year, the CPA sponsored the raising of the PRC’s flag for the first time ever over Boston’s City Hall to honor the takeover of China by the Chinese Communist Party, just as the Stanford paper says has been its practice from the beginning, but this time drawing protesters. The event was organized, again, with the Chinese Consulate. Consul General Sun Guoxiang was on hand to say that, “The common interests are far more important than differences between U.S. and China.”

CPA co-founder Lydia Lowe also spoke at the event, reminding her audience that “McCarthyism is behind us. The Cold War is behind us.” In an essay she authored with other people on the Marxist revolutionary site LeftRoots last year, Lowe sounded as though she wanted to start another Cold War, writing that she wanted Asians to play a role in creating a “revolutionary strategy” that would achieve a “fundamentally different society.”

And CPA drew praise from China’s mouthpiece China Daily just a few weeks ago, for taking part again in Black Lives Matter demonstrations in San Francisco.

It is clear, then, that CPA works with China’s communist government, pushes its agenda here in the United States, and is regularly praised by China’s state-owned mouthpieces. It is clear, too, from, this perspective, why the CPA would sponsor a new enterprise by BLM founder Alicia Garza: they espouse the same desire for world communism.

Garza sits atop a worldwide revolutionary empire, starting with the Black Lives Matter Global Network she founded, which now has 15 chapters in the U.S. and several more all over Canada, Australia, and Europe. As Foreign Affairs wrote in its September/October issue, “Today, BLM has a global network of dozens of chapters. This number will likely grow exponentially in the coming years.”

Garza is also behind the Movement for Black Lives, with its 50 domestic organizations. In July she said, “We helped to also pull together an ecosystem that was much broader than the organization that we founded, and that ecosystem is called the Movement for Black Lives and it is taking the world by storm.”

Movement for Black Lives is unabashedly anti-capitalist, saying on its website, “we are anti-capitalist. We believe and understand that Black people will never achieve liberation under the current global racialized capitalist system.”

All of which has been covered here before.

Some other data points:

  • China has been vocal in its support for #BlackLivesMatter…at least here in America.

    Since protests erupted after George Floyd, an African American, died in police custody on May 25 in the U.S. state of Minnesota, the Black Lives Matter movement has drawn international headlines for its push to address systemic racism in America.

    Chinese officials have also championed the movement, seeing it as a way to criticize the United States for its track record on human rights issues after months of scrutiny over Beijing’s crackdown on pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong.

    “Racial discrimination is a long-lasting problem in the United States,” said Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian in June. “Black lives matter and their human rights should be guaranteed.”

    Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying tweeted “I can’t breathe,” a reference to George Floyd’s last words, as her response to U.S. State Department spokesperson Morgan Ortagus’ criticism of Beijing’s Hong Kong policy.

    Xinhua, the state-backed media outlet, claimed in a report that “the United States is in pain, anger and the widest unrest for decades over racial injustice,” adding African Americans have suffered disproportionately high death rates from the COVID-19 outbreak.

    Chinese media have heavily covered the protests and unrest in American cities, painting them as a failure of the country’s democratic system.

    It wouldn’t surprise me if Chinese media paid more attention to the riots in Portland and Seattle than America’s own “mainstream” media.

  • “Did the Chinese Consulate in Houston Clandestinely Work to Stoke Racial Tensions in U.S.?”

    According to Asia analyst Gordon Chang, the Chinese consulate in Houston, recently ordered closed by the state department, may have been clandestinely supporting various protest groups in the United States with the goal of stoking racial violence.

    Chinese consulates across the country have come under renewed scrutiny in recent months as several high-profile hacking jobs targeting Americans were exposed. Just recently, two college-age hackers were arrested by the FBI and charged with several cybercrimes.

    The Chinese consulates in America have become nests of spies and saboteurs, so it shouldn’t surprise us that they are carrying out directives of the Chinese Communist government to weaken and divide America by stirring the pot of racial division.

  • And don’t forget the many parallels between antifa tactics and the Chinese Cultural Revolution.

    zthe goal of the Cultural Revolution was to eliminate what Mao called the “Four Olds.” The four olds were Old Customs, Old Culture, Old Habits and Old Ideas—everything that pre-dated communism in China. Mao saw them as a threat to his communist rule, so he unleashed the Red Guards to eliminate them. The Four Olds had to be replaced with new customs, new culture, new habits and new ideas—communist customs, communist culture, communist habits and communist ideas.

    The Red Guards didn’t start out by killing people and destroying property. They started out with intimidation to back up Mao’s cultural revolution to change place names, especially street names. People even changed their own names so as to break with any association with the Four Olds.

    The movement escalated from there. Anyone who seemed to cling to any of the Four Olds was harassed and intimidated. Property damage was next. Examples of old Chinese architecture began to be targeted for destruction by Red Guard mobs. Chinese literature books were seized by the Red Guard and burned. Artwork was destroyed by gangs of thugs who would go into homes to search for anything considered Old. The Red Guards ransacked homes of those who were not considered reliable supporters of the communist party. Ancient, sacred Chinese temples were destroyed. Cemeteries were desecrated and corpses were even dug up and torn apart. Monuments were taken down.

    Does any of this sound familiar to you?

    I’m sure it does. And that’s not surprising.

  • Former FBI assistant director of intelligence Kevin R. Brock thinks antifa and #BlackLivesMatter are tools for both China and Russia to undermine the superpower status of the United States:

    Here’s what years of intelligence collection by the FBI and other parts of the intelligence community have long determined: China and Russia know they cannot defeat the United States militarily or economically. Yet, the elimination of the U.S. as a superpower that impedes their communist vision remains their goal.

    Both China, which has thieved its way to faux prosperity, and Russia, with its perpetual inferiority complex fueling its tiresome resentments, have pinned their hopes on dividing Americans, on pitting us against each other as a means of breaking a unified national will and rendering us dispirited, unable or unwilling to respond to their future hegemonies. And disinformation campaigns accentuating America’s faults historically have been a favored strategy, particularly by Russia.

    Both of those countries are well aware that the most convenient way to divide Americans is along racial lines, since the United States is orders of magnitude more racially diverse than any nation on earth. Americans are hyper-sensitized to charges of racism because ours has been a long struggle to create a country where an unprecedented collision of races, creeds and cultures could coexist under an ideal of individual liberty. Given mankind’s history, it’s a miracle we’ve had any success at all.

    And so, accusations of racism in our country are a damning cudgel, an effective wedge to both arouse suspicions and chill dissent. There is no greater shame today than to stand accused of committing the mortal sin of racism.

    That is why we are seeing an expansion of the definition of racism and “hate speech” by a class of accusers who really don’t have racial justice as their primary goal. Charges of racism have become the most effective way to eliminate resistance and to censor or cancel voices opposed to a totalitarian worldview.

    Accordingly, racism now ostensibly exists in the packaging of products, in tweets about the national anthem, and in how images of Jesus are depicted. The Smithsonian Institution recently asserted that evidence of racism is found in traditional values, such as delayed gratification and the nuclear family. If that’s true, then, yes, racism is surely systemic — it’s in the very air we breathe. But it is not true. It is a lie told by those who want us to believe that America is broken and needs to be replaced.

    Who are these people who have wrested away legitimate racial justice narratives in order to advance their own agenda? They are the discredited remnants of failed economic Marxism who have pivoted to a vision of cultural Marxism that no less subjugates the rights and freedoms of individuals to control by the state. They have scurried from the wreckage of pure communist ideology into academia and various media, powerful platforms to indoctrinate minds and control narratives.

    Their young proxies are the radical or anarchist interlopers such as antifa, surfing on the backs of actual racial justice protesters. These black-clad, masked marauders of the far left showed up to suck media attention from legitimate protesters by starting fires, destroying businesses and attacking police. Their demographics are readily noticeable: young, mostly white, many from privileged suburban families and fresh from college campuses that filled their minds with false tales of totalitarian nirvana. After exercising their destruction, they Uber back to their own safe neighborhoods, far from the ones they just helped destroy.

    None of this is conclusive proof that China created antifa/#BlackLivesMatter, or that China is the only backer of it (George Soros’ financial backing is well-documented), or even the only foreign backer, but the fact that a hostile foreign Communist government is backing a hostile, violent Communist movement in America would seem to be important news.

  • Minneapolis: Cold Feet On Police Defunding?

    Wednesday, September 9th, 2020

    Remember how Minneapolis citizens were going to get to vote on whether to abolish their police department or not? It turns out that Minneapolis City Council is incompetent as well as insane. The Minneapolis Charter Commission voted against having the defund proposal on the ballot in November, mainly because the City Council didn’t provide a real plan for a post-police public safety:

    The current charter, which serves as the city’s constitution, requires Minneapolis to keep a police department with about three officers for every 5,000 residents.

    Before the City Council can remake policing, they must amend the charter.

    The City Council sought a charter amendment that would establish a Department of Community Safety and Violence Prevention, which may or may not include law enforcement officers.

    Some members of the Charter Commission proposed their own amendment that would preserve the police department, but eliminate the current charter mandate to fund a specific number of officers. The commission rejected its own amendment while also extending their review of the City Council’s proposal.

    Charter Commission Chairman Barry Clegg said the commission was not given enough time to study the City Council’s proposal before their deadline to get it on the ballot.

    “The council came to us at the very last minute, and in fact, the council suspended its own rules to get in under the timeline,” Clegg said. “We said, ‘No, we’re going to do our job. Our job is to review this proposal, our job is to gather public input and that’s what we’re going to do.’”

    (Wait, “we’re going to divert all that sweet police money into the palms of my far left cronies” doesn’t count as a plan? Imagine my shock.)

    Now that same City Council is getting cold feet about their own insanity:

    The city council at the epicenter of the national unrest over policing and the death of George Floyd once promised to lead other cities to a police-free Utopia. Three months later, without any plans to accomplish it and with residents and investors balking at the prospect, the Minneapolis City Council’s abolition movement has “lost momentum,” the Star Tribune reports:

    The Minneapolis City Council’s resolve to end the city’s police department has lost momentum, the result of the failure to get the question before voters in November and council members’ diverging ideas on the role of sworn officers in the future.

    In the three months since nine council members pledged to end the department following George Floyd’s killing, the city has experienced a surge in violent crime, another night of unrest and blowback from residents who felt they had been left out of the initial conversations about change.

    Some council members have remained consistent in their statements about policing, while others have softened their rhetoric, saying now that they do envision officers as part of any revamping of public safety.

    So the vote to defund the police won’t actual defund the police, making the Minneapolis City Council, in addition to being insane and incompetent, a bunch of damn liars.

    Minneapolis was one of the cities hit with still more rioting after the Jacob Blake shooting, and parts of downtown remain boarded up:

    Hot Air further notes:

    Perhaps the voters in Minneapolis should be talking about getting rid of [City Council President Lisa] Bender and the rest of the city council. Even if some think abolishing the police is a good idea, Bender and her cohort are clearly incompetent at it. For the vast majority of the voters, however, the radical plan from Bender et al to leave them at the mercy of violent criminals without any hope of protection should be disqualifying.

    If any of these council members get re-elected, then Minneapolis deserves the impoverishment and collapse that will follow.

    (Hat tip: Stephen Green at PJMedia.)

    The Hotfoot Serenades

    Sunday, September 6th, 2020

    So an antifa moron managed to set another antifa moron’s feet on fire with a Molotov cocktail in Portland.

    And the meme video remixes are epic.

    And, inevitably:

    Alas, no one seems to have done a remix to The Crazy World of Arthur Brown’s “Fire.” Somebody should get on that…

    BidenWatch for August 31, 2020

    Monday, August 31st, 2020

    Biden’s phony-baloney polls are running behind Hillary’s phony-baloney polls of four years ago, more China policy weakness, more anti-police rhetoric, and Slow Joe comes in many days and dollars short denouncing the antifa/#BlackLivesMatter riots. It’s this week’s BidenWatch!

  • “Biden Is Under-Performing Hillary Clinton in Battleground States She Lost.”

    On election day, Hillary Clinton polled 6.5 points ahead of Trump in Wisconsin in the Real Clear Politics average (an aggregate of polls). Trump ended up winning the state by 0.7 points. Biden currently leads by 3.5 points in Wisconsin in the RCP.

    The story is the same in North Carolina and Michigan. In North Carolina Trump lead Hillary by only 0.8 points on election day but ended up winning by 3.6. Biden is tied with Trump currently in the polls. In Michigan, Clinton lead by 3.6 points on election day, but Trump won by 0.3. Biden currently leads by 2.6 points.

    Or more accurately, “supposedly leads.”

    If we measure Hillary’s polling averages as of August 26th instead of election day, as the National Review’s David Harysanyi notes: Biden is +5.5 in Pennsylvania today [the 26th]. Hillary was +9.2 the same day in 2016. Florida is the only battleground state where Biden (+3.7) is outperforming Clinton (+2.7).

  • More on the same theme:

  • This Is How Biden Loses:

    In mid-August, a Pew Research Center poll found that the issue of violent crime ranks fifth in importance to registered voters—behind the economy, health care, the Supreme Court, and the pandemic, but ahead of foreign policy, guns, race, immigration, and climate change. The poll found a large partisan gap on the issue: three-quarters of Trump voters rated violent crime “very important,” second behind only the economy. Nonetheless, nearly half of Biden voters also rated it “very important.” Other polls show that, over the summer, Biden has lost some of the support he gained among older white Americans in the first months of the coronavirus pandemic.

    With some exceptions, the media have been reluctant to shine a bright light on the summer’s violence—both the riots and the concurrent spike in violence. The New York Times ignored or downplayed the subject for weeks. One of its first major articles appeared in mid-August, under the headline “In the Wake of Covid-19 Lockdowns, a Troubling Surge in Homicides.” The piece argued that the crime surge had to do with the end of the lockdown that coincided with the beginning of summer, citing the skepticism of criminologists that “the increase is tied to any pullback by the police in response to criticism or defunding efforts,” and pointing to economic disruption and the spread of despair. But it also offered a different explanation, contradicting the thesis: “Police officials in several cities have said the protests have diverted officers from crime-fighting duty or emboldened criminals.”

    After the 2016 election, the Times admitted that it had somehow missed the story, and it earnestly set about at self-correction. Like many other outlets, the paper sent reporters to talk to Americans who had put Trump in the White House. It was a new beat, almost a foreign bureau—heartland reporting—but that focus soon faded as the president’s daily depredations consumed the media’s attention. This election year, news organizations grown more activist might miss the story again, this time on principle—as they avoid stories that don’t support their preferred narrative. Trump supporters are hoping for it.

    I think I speak for all Trump supporters when I say hat we want a news media that honestly and fairly reports the news. But that ship sailed a long, long time ago. (What was the last Republican President who got unbiased reporting in the media? Eisenhower?) But I do agree that the MSM’s unsuccessful attempts to enforce preference falsification turns out to be a major advantage for Republicans.

    (Hat tip: Chuck DeVore.)

  • Speaking of Chuck DeVore, he has a piece on how well President Trump is doing when it comes to foreign policy, how bad Biden’s foreign policy record has been, and how weak Biden is on China:

    Biden’s lifetime of foreign policy miscues include:

    • Opposing Ronald Reagan’s military buildup and the Strategic Defense Initiative
    • Voting to invade Iraq in 2002, saying in 2003, “I voted to go into Iraq, and I’d vote to do it again.”
    • Early support for the 1999 bombing of Serbia which pushed Serbs to back the authoritarian leader there while stifling the nascent pro-democracy movement.
    • Criticism of President Trump’s authorization to kill Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani, the head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the man responsible for paying bounties to the Taliban for the killing of American troops in Afghanistan.
    • Advising President Obama to wait for more information before approving the raid that killed Osama bin Laden in 2011—advice, that if acted upon, might have led to bin Laden’s escape.

    Reviewing Biden’s campaign statements and materials for clues on his foreign policy proposals suggests a Biden administration would major on the minors. In a sprawling 4,444-word essay entitled, “Why America Must Lead Again,” Biden sets out his vision. He mentions China 13 times:

    • Suggesting U.S. tech giants shouldn’t be aiding China’s repression.
    • Claiming his foreign policy will help the middle class “…win the competition for the future against China or anyone else… (author’s italics).”
    • Saying “There is no reason we should be falling behind China or anyone else (author’s italics) when it comes to clean energy, quantum computing, artificial intelligence, 5G, high-speed rail, or the race to end cancer as we know it.”
    • That, “The United States, not China, should be leading…” with new trade deals.
    • Admitting that “The United States does need to get tough with China…” or else China will “…keep robbing the United States and American companies of their technology and intellectual property,” with the best way to address the challenge being to “…build a united front of U.S. allies and partners to confront China’s abusive behaviors and human rights violations, even as we seek to cooperate with Beijing on issues where our interests converge, such as climate change, nonproliferation, and global health security.”
    • Working with “…China, to advance our shared objective of a denuclearized North Korea…”
    • Ensuring that “the rules of the digital age (aren’t) written by China and Russia.”
    • And working with China on climate change.

    Absent is any mention by Biden of China’s massive military build up of modern missiles, ships, aircraft, and space systems and its growing willingness to use that military power against virtually all neighboring nations. It’s as if, by closing one’s eyes to the threat, one can wish the dragon away.

    So while the People’s Republic of China under the Chinese Communist Party is methodically preparing for a military conquest of the free island of Taiwan, to slice off more Himalayan territory from India, to take islands from Japan, Malaysia, Vietnam, and Indonesia (all while holding the U.S. military at bay with an increasing array of long range missiles), Biden stresses the importance of climate change and getting the Chinese to use less coal.

    President Trump is paying attention to the true nature of the existential threat from communist China, while Joe Biden focuses on lesser irritants from an earlier era.

  • More on the same theme:

    The Democratic Party’s presidential nominee Joe Biden is “dangerous” when it comes to offshoring American jobs and because of his past relationship issues with China, and the United States needs a tough president like Donald Trump to stand up against the country’s bullying behavior, White House trade adviser Peter Navarro said Friday.

    “The problem with Joe Biden is he has a record, 44-year record,” Navarro said on Fox News’ “America’s Newsroom.” “In 2001, he voted to allow China into the World Trade Organization. That created a tsunami of offshoring, where we lost over 70,000 factories and 5 million manufacturing jobs. This also happened on his watch when he was vice president.”

    Meanwhile, the Chinese Communist Party is trying to “bully this country into submission through threats on Huawei and medical supplies,” Navarro said.

    “What we learned from this pandemic is we need to bring home our supply chains and manufacturing, not just for our essential medicines or medical supplies like masks or medical equipment like ventilators but for everything,” Navarro said. “China is bullying Australia right now for daring to question how that virus was created. Australia wants to do an investigation of China about where the virus came from. The next thing you know China is punishing Australia and New Zealand. It is a bully.”

    (Hat tip: Director Blue.)

  • No post-convention bump for Biden. “Getting no boost after a convention has happened only a few times in modern Democrat Party history. By John Kerry in 2004 and George McGovern in 1972. Kerry ended up losing to George W. Bush and McGovern got thrashed by Nixon in an historic landslide beaten only in scale by Presidents FDR and Ronald Reagan.” (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • “C-SPAN Had So Many Democrats Calling In Support For Trump That They Had To Change Their Protocol“:

    C-SPAN changed their open phone line labels after an overwhelming number of Democratic viewers called on Wednesday night proclaiming their support for President Donald Trump in the upcoming election.

    “I’m a longtime Democrat, born and raised … After watching tonight … I have made up my mind. I am definitely gonna vote for Donald Trump,” said one of the many voters who dialed in.

    Before the Republican National Convention, C-SPAN’s open phone lines were labeled as open for “Democrats,” “Republicans,” and “Other” viewers to call into and share their opinions on-air. After Trump’s acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention, however, C-SPAN received an influx of callers who identified as Democrat but said they would be voting for Trump in November.

    Due to the increasing nature of these calls, the network adjusted the phone lines to encompass those who “Support Trump,” “Support Biden,” and “Support Others.”

    (Hat tip: Instapundit.)

  • The RNC destroyed Biden’s basement campaign. Also: conservatives dominate Facebook’s top ten links list? I had no idea. But look at this:

    Ben Shapiro is doing the work of thousands!

  • Is Joe Biden for or against defunding the police? Yes:

    We should begin with Joe Biden who said he would redirect budgeted police money to non-police areas. That’s right. Biden made that statement on July 8, when he replied, “Yes, absolutely” to an interviewer who asked him, “But do we agree that we can redirect some of the funding?”

    But this defunding of the police, or “redirecting” as Biden spins it, contradicts a June 8 statement by his campaign claiming that Biden “does not believe that police should be defunded.”

    When that contradiction and doublespeak raised eyebrows, Biden then reversed on both prior positions, claiming he would give more money to the police to handle the “god-awful problems” they face in the line of duty. Talk about a pandering, wishy-washy politician who will say anything to get elected. Can anyone believe Biden now?

  • “Police group leader calls Biden-Harris ‘most radical anti-police ticket in history.'”

    The president of the top lobbying group representing police and law enforcement officers tore into Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden and his running mate, Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), at the Republican National Convention on Wednesday, calling them the “most radical anti-police ticket in history.”

    Michael McHale, the president of the National Association of Police Organizations, decried what he described as a rash of violence against police officers in recent months and railed against “failed” elected officials in cities such as Minneapolis, New York and Chicago who he said had made “the conscious decision not to support law enforcement.”

    Biden, he said, would follow their lead.

    “Joe Biden has turned his candidacy over to the far-left, anti-law enforcement radicals,” he said. “And as a senator, Kamala Harris pushed to further restrict police, cut their training, and make our American communities and streets even more dangerous than they are.”

  • Nor are they attempting to lower the rhetoric:

  • Biden finally denounces all the antifa/#BlackLivesMatter violence and rioting, many days and dollars too late:

  • Biden and Harris want to monkey with your 401Ks. I don’t know a single person who contributes to a 401K who goes “You know what the problem is? I’m just saving too much in taxes!”
  • Now Nancy Pelosi is saying Biden shouldn’t debate Trump.
  • Speaking of Slow Joe, here he confuses Jacob Blake with Kyle Rittenhouse:

    Plus he doubled-down on the “very fine people” hoax yet again.

  • Know all that “Trump won’t conceded if he loses” rhetoric from the left? Still more projection: “Hillary Clinton: Biden should not concede under any circumstances.”
  • Nothing says you’ll fight for black people quite like being endorsed by white supremacist Richard Spencer. Hey, the MSM insisted on linking this loon to the Republican Party for four years, so it’s only fair Republicans return the favor.
  • Who watches the watchmen? “‘Factcheckers’ Keep Lying about Biden’s Abortion Position.” (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.”)
  • Slow Joe update:

  • Heh:

  • Noted for the record: “Joe Biden to visit Southwestern Pennsylvania Monday; location, details not announced.” My experience has been that most presidential campaigns announce a time and place for a candidate’s appearance well more than a day in advance.
  • Good question:

  • The new pieties:

  • Lyin Joe:

    

  • Michael Moore thinks President Trump is going to win again. He was right about this in 2016 as well. “The Biden campaign just announced he’ll be visiting a number of states— but not Michigan. Sound familiar?”
  • Speaking of Michigan: Trump 47, Biden 45. It’s almost like the working class is never returning to the Democrat Party. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • Epic comeback:

    

  • Boom:

  • Heh:

  • Heh 3:

  • “Biden: ‘My Doc Says I Don’t Have Alzheimer’s, Dementia, Or Alzheimer’s.'”
  • Also, I note for the record that no notable Kamala Harris links made their way across my desktop this week. I wasn’t trying to exclude them, but after the DNC was over, it seemed like the media universe at large just sort of lost interest in her. She generates a palpable lack of excitement.

    Like BidenWatch? Consider hitting the tip jar:





    The Portland Mystery

    Sunday, August 30th, 2020

    Night after night, Portland’s Democratic mayor Ted Wheeler allows antifa/#BlackLivesMatter rioters to run wild in his city, carrying out organized criminal campaigns of violence. Last night, a man wearing a “Patriot Prayer” hat was murdered there.

    The question is: Why?

    What’s in it for Wheeler?

    We know why Multnomah County District Attorney Mike Schmidt refuses to press charges against rioters: because that’s what DAs backed by George Soros money do.

    President Donald Trump is not a fan of the way Wheeler has handled the crisis:

    President Trump ramped up his attacks against Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler (D) on Sunday after a person was killed in the Oregon city following skirmishes between supporters of the president and Black Lives Matter demonstrators.

    Trump did not address the incident, however he posted multiple tweets claiming that tensions in the city demanded federal intervention. In response to a tweet documenting clashes between Trump supporters and counterprotesters, the president claimed that it was a result of incompetence from the mayor.
    “The big backlash going on in Portland cannot be unexpected after 95 days of watching and incompetent Mayor admit that he has no idea what he is doing,” Trump said. “The people of Portland won’t put up with no safety any longer. The Mayor is a FOOL. Bring in the National Guard!”

    He added in a separate tweet that Wheeler was “incompetent, much like Sleepy Joe Biden,” referencing the Democratic presidential nominee.

    “Our great National Guard could solve these problems in less than 1 hour,” he said. “Local authorities must ask before it is too late. People of Portland, and other Democrat run cities, are disgusted with Schumer, Pelosi, and [their] local ‘leaders.’ They want Law & Order!”

    This follows an appeals court lifting a stay against federal law enforcement in Portland.

    Even more puzzling: Those same antifa/#BlackLivesMatter rioters he refuses to reign in seem to hold Wheeler in contempt as well, as they occupied his condo lobby and demanded his resignation.

    Rose City Antifa has been around since 2007, and has not been shy about stating their goals in Portland: It’s the violent overthrow of the United States.

    Weirdly, Wheeler is running for reelection at the same time he allows riots to continue night after night, against runoff opponent Sarah Iannarone, who is evidently even more pro-rioter than he is.

    Even Portland’s Democratic governor Kate Brown says enough is enough. And this despite Oregon State Police ceasing to protect the besieged Mark O. Hatfield U.S. Courthouse in downtown Portland.

    So the question remains: How does Portland’s Democratic mayor Ted Wheeler benefit from rioters continuing to assault police officers and commit other felonies in downtown Portland?

    What’s in it for him?

    LinkSwarm for August 28, 2020

    Friday, August 28th, 2020

    Greetings, and welcome to another Friday LinkSwarm! The Republican National Convention finishes up and more news of those “fiery but peaceful” riots.

  • Here’s President Donald Trump’s full nomination acceptance speech from the RNC:

  • The PJ Media crew live-blogged night four of the RNC. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • Victor Davis Hanson on what the riots are really about:

    As with most cultural revolutions that wish to start things over at “year zero,” the violence is aimed at America’s past in order to change its present and future.

    The targets are not just the old majority culture but also classical statues and buildings, hallowed institutions, religious icons, the renowned names of streets and plazas, and almost every representation of tradition and authority.

    For the majority of Americans who do not buy into the revolution, it all seems so surreal — and hypocritical.

    Only a despised, dynamic American economy allows millions to divorce from it for a summer of protest.

    A ridiculed U.S. Constitution ensures that looters and arsonists have due process.

    The Bill of Rights guarantees peaceful assembly and electrically amplified profanity rarely protected elsewhere.

    Affirmative action; federally ensured and subsidized college grants and loans; and cheap smartphones, headphones and laptops all give youth choices unimagined in the past.

    No matter — cultural revolutions are incoherent and nihilist.

    Those who signed up for the Jacobin Reign of Terror wanted violence, not a constitutional republic to replace the French monarchy.

    The Bolsheviks were less interested in substituting an elected prime minister for the Russian czar than in grabbling power and murdering millions of their enemies.

    Mao Zedong did not just hate the warlords, landlords, Mandarins and Nationalists. He wished to reinvent 1 billion Chinese in his own narcissistic image by first killing millions.

    There is, of course, reason to oversee the police more effectively.

    Universities are partly culpable for a collective $1.4 trillion in student loan debt.

    Globalization eroded the middle class. Inner-city America is far too violent — and far too neglected.

    But these are not the apparent concerns of those who carry off shoes and phones in U-Hauls, kick the unconscious on the pavement, destroy art and sculpture, or seek to torch public buildings with public servants inside.

    The point of the mob is to wipe out what it cannot create.

    It topples what it can neither match nor even comprehend.

    It would erode the very system that ensures it singular freedom, leisure and historic affluence.

    The brand of the anarchist is not logic but envy-driven power: to take it, to keep it, and to use it against purported enemies — which would otherwise be impossible in times of calm or through the ballot box.

    (Hat tip: Director Blue.)

  • “There’s little wrong with President Trump that more Trump couldn’t solve.”

    More fundamentally: where do you think the country would be without him? Even if you’re disappointed with less than 200 miles of wall, remember that leading Democrats not only insist that every single new inch is a moral atrocity, they want to tear down sections that already exist.

    Think the trade agenda is progressing too slowly? Well, President Trump already renegotiated two of our worst trade deals. How many new, bad ones do you think a Hillary administration would have signed by now? Trump not tough enough on China for you? A little too much talk about his “good friend” Xi Jinping? I sympathize. But he’s still done more than all the last four presidents combined. More than that, he’s reversed the China policy of the last four presidents combined. Have you heard how Joe Biden kowtows to China?

    And I know that some will insist that, so long as a single American soldier, sailor, airman, or marine is deployed anywhere in the Middle East, then Trump has failed—or worse, betrayed them. But in fact, the president has mostly succeeded at the tasks he promised for that region: defeating ISIS, revitalizing our alliances while requiring more from our allies, and prudently disengaging from existing conflicts while not starting any new ones.

    All of these trends, changes, policies, and initiatives, and many others—however incomplete—would be reversed in the event of a Trump loss. The ruling class would hail the president’s defeat as a historic repudiation of his (allegedly) “racist and xenophobic” vision, etc., as a vindication of every charge and complaint they’ve made against him and his supporters since Day 1. Their goal would be to erase the last four years and the 2016 election as if they never happened. If think-tank conservatives want above all to get into a DeLorean and go back to 1985, the ruling class wants to cram America into a Prius and force us back to 2015. And then resume the trajectory the country had been on back then, i.e., the road to woke managerial tyranny.

  • Password is: “Enthusiasm Gap,” with six times as many CSPAN viewers for the RNC than the DNC. (Hat tip: Ann Althouse.)
  • President Trump’s poll numbers rise in swing states. Adjust by the usual 3% polls historically favor Democrats over election results, and Trump is tied or ahead in all of them. And that was before the RNC. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • Another look at the rioting in Kenosha.
  • Video of Kyle Rittenhouse exercising his right of self-defense:

  • Reporter robbed at gunpoint during riot.
  • Newspeak from CNN: “Fiery but peaceful protests.” At this point, all of us should just start pelting CNN reporters with garbage.
  • CNN’s inadvertent open mic:

  • “CNN Hires This Is Fine Dog To Report On Riots.”
  • Sadly true:

  • This is how cities die: “Shaken by summer looting in affluent neighborhoods, some Chicagoans are moving away.”
  • Jerry Seinfeld tries to refute that New York City is dead piece, but it just amounts to “New York is awesome and we’re tough” yadda yadda, and doesn’t address the insanely high taxes or actually changes in economic justification that used to make living in the city a requirement that isn’t there anymore. (Hat tip: Ann Althouse.)
  • Powerline has additional thoughts on that New York Times article mentioned yesterday that shows that, amazingly, riots, looting and arson aren’t popular with average Americans.
  • Baltimore Sun slams Maryland Republican congressional candidate Kimberly Klacik for blaming Baltimore’s dysfunction on Democrats. They said that was “ludicrous and overly simple,” which I guess is a synonym for “true.”
  • “The Post Office Conspiracy Is First Class Stupidity“:

    If you believe the mainstream media, Donald Trump is involved in a nefarious scheme to somehow make the USPS into something inefficient and incompetent, which comes close on the heels of his plot to make the sun start setting in the West. If that’s his plan, he already pulled it off decades before he first hit the cover of the New York Post. We conservatives think the president has done a lot of great stuff since humiliating Felonia Milhous von Pantsuit in 2016, but not even the most hardcore Trump Train engineer would go as far as Trump’s frothy pie-holed critics and credit the president with the mastery of time and space.

    The correspondence conspiracy is pretty much liberal Q, except the eccentric Q folks at least like America.

    And here’s a special shout-out to the Democrats pushing this intellectual fentanyl for deciding it is a good idea to choose the competence of the post office as their hill for the crusty crustacean’s campaign to die on. Please, continue pointing to the USPS as an example of what you’ll make the entire government into if we’re dumb enough to elect Gropey J. Good thinking, because if there’s anything that real people outside the MSNBCNN bubble love, it’s the post office. It’s the federal DMV, except with stamps.

    Snip.

    What is clear is that the real goal of this conspiracy theory is to launch a preemptive attempt to find another excuse for a Democrat defeat. Last time it was PUTIN PUTIN PUTIN and this time it’ll be POSTAGE POSTAGE POSTAGE.

    Apparently, his plan is to somehow make it so the post office will be unable to deliver vote by mail ballots in order to prevent Democrats from winning the election that their senile old weirdo nominee is in the process of blowing. It might be interesting to examine the details of this conspiracy theory if there was even a coherent conspiracy theory to examine, but there’s not. It’s mostly “Trump bad!,” then low and undecipherable mumbling, then “And that’s how he will steal the election!”

    The specifics of the alleged plot, to the extent you can identify them, are puzzling and elusive. What exactly is Trump going to do again? Is he going to order the mailmen to toss ballots in the shredder? Seems like it would be hard to pull off that flex with all those crack journalists out there. We are also told that he is rounding-up blue mailboxes from America’s street corners, and that this has been going on for a couple of decades is only further proof of his evil plan, somehow. What is not clear is how this might work in practice – so, the idea is that the Democrat voter comes home, ballot in hand, weeping because there are no blue mailboxes anymore to place his ballot into, and then he walks back inside his house past … his own mailbox? And then he just gives up? He sits at his dinner table, head in hands, sobbing at his inability to figure out how to drop a piece of correspondence into the postal system?

  • “New Jersey Election Invalidated Because of Mail-In Voter Fraud.”
  • Related: “Man Arrested in L.A. for Voting 3 Times as His Dead Mother.
  • Good news! Yaser Abdel Said, the man accused of murdering his own two daughters in an Islamic honor killing, has finally been apprehended after a 12 year manhunt.
  • Texas Democrats sue to keep the Green Party off the ballot in November. Remember: When Democrats say they support equal ballot access, they don’t really mean it.
  • University of Arizona stops a Wuhan coronavirus outbreak before it starts.
  • Interesting data on how UK Labour Party has become markedly unpopular in ever-younger age groups:

  • President Trump to the press:

  • Reporter: Why are the NBA’s ratings down? Expert: Woke politics and China. Reporter: Do you have any idea? Expert: Woke politics and China. Any idea at all? Expert: WOKE POLITICS AND CHINA! Reporter: 😑.
  • Palantir’s CEO Alex Karp has has had enough of Social Justice Warriors in Silicon Valley.
  • Dwight has a four part video series on The Falkland Islands War up.
  • Speaking of Dwight, he might appreciate these annotated lyrics to the C.W. McCall song “Convoy,” since we recently watched the movie of the same name. (Brief review of the movie: Deeply flawed but weirdly compelling.)
  • Captain Kirk brings the fire:

  • “Arkham Board of Health Feedback On Miskatonic University’s Draft Plan for a Safe Campus Reopening.”
  • “Did Democrats Sacrifice Several Goats To Satan At The DNC? Fact Check: FALSE. They Actually Sacrificed Just One Goat.”
  • “Facebook Now Allows Users To Flag Anything They Disagree With As ‘Literally Hitler.”‘
  • Speaking of Facebook, everyone hates their new interface. Me included.
  • Kenosha Burning

    Thursday, August 27th, 2020

    Antifa/#BlackLivesMatter rioters seem determined to riot in every city in America (or at least every Democrat-controlled city), and this week it was the turn of Kenosha, Wisconsin, a city of some 100,000 on the shores of Lake Michigan between Chicago and Milwaukee, two other cities that have gotten to experience the same violence.

    Kenosha, WI is under siege by mobs of violent rioters, looters, vandals, and arsonists. The mainstream media is spinning this as a normal reaction to the police shooting of Jacob Blake, but it’s obviously a gang of criminal thugs wreaking havoc and destroying lives and livelihoods because they can. No matter the impetus, this is not okay.

    The man over whom rioters were destroying Kenosha was a repeat offender wanted on 3rd degree sexual assault charges and accused of rape.

    However, things have obviously changed in the political landscape, because after two days of letting rioters run free, Wisconsin’s Democratic governor Tony Evers accepted President Donald Trump’s offer to send federal law enforcement officers to help stop the riots.

    Some video:

    Even the New York Times has the gall to say “The politically calculated warnings of President Trump and the Republican Party about chaos enveloping America should Democrats win in November are reverberating among some people in Kenosha.” I guess “politically calculated” is newspeak whenever a Republican says something that’s obviously true. The actual-reportage-mixed-with-special-pleading continues:

    While many demonstrators have been peaceful [the ritual invocation!], others have set fire to buildings. At least four businesses downtown have been looted. Men armed with guns have shown up to confront protesters, leading to the shooting of three people, two of them fatally.”

    In Kenosha County, where the president won by fewer than 250 votes in 2016, those who already supported Mr. Trump said in interviews that the events of the past few days have simply reinforced their conviction that he is the man for the job. But some voters who were less sure of their choice said the chaos in their city and the inability of elected leaders to stop it were currently nudging them toward the Republicans.

    And some Democrats, nervous about condemning the looting because they said they understood the rage behind it [drink!], worried that what was happening in their town might backfire and aid the president’s re-election prospects.

    Yes, that’s the big problem! Not the arson, looting and murder in Democrat-run cities, but the possibility that people might vote against Democrats!

    That’s the real unforgivable crime.

    The same concern is expressed by leftwing CNN hack Don Lemon.

    CNN’s Don Lemon said Tuesday night that Democrats “ignoring” riots in some U.S. cities represents a “blind spot” for the party, and called on Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden to address the problem because it is “sticking” in polling and focus groups.

    The perspective comes after deadly violence continued in Kenosha, Wis., with three shot and two dead amid rioting following the police shooting of Jacob Blake.

    Lemon called Kenosha a “Rorschach test for the entire country” during his handoff with 9 p.m. anchor Chris Cuomo.

    “It’s showing up in the polling. It’s showing up in focus groups. It is the only thing right now that is sticking,” Lemon said ahead of “CNN Tonight” on Tuesday. “The riots and the protests have become indistinguishable.”

    Maybe that’s because they’ve gone hand-in-hand from the very first, when radical Marxists saw George Floyd’s death, idle hands from the lockdown and widespread masking as an opportunity both to sow chaos, and to radicalize black Americans just when polls were showing President Trump managing to gain a larger share of their support.

    “I think this is a blind spot for Democrats. I think Democrats are ignoring this problem or hoping that it will go away, and it’s not going to go away,” [Lemon] added before arguing the violence needs to be addressed by Biden before the election.

    “The problem is not going to be fixed by [Election Day],” said Lemon. “But what they can do, and I think maybe Joe Biden may be afraid to do it … he’s got to address it. He’s got to come out and talk about it.”

    “And they’re rioters, not protesters. They’re criminals,” he added.

    Imagine that.

    People have finally said “Enough!” Both in Kenosha and elsewhere.

    The only reasons why the riots have been allowed to go on as long as they have is Democratic mayors, prosecutors and governors refused to let police restore order, either because they agreed with the goals of the rioters, found the riots politically useful, or lack the courage to confront leftwing radicals (“no enemies on the left”). Where police have been allowed to use sufficient force to maintain public order (including, ironically, Austin; good thing Texas has a Republican governor), either the riots stopped or protests were never allowed to escalate into riots in the first place.

    Order cures disorder, and the very first role of government is securing the life, liberty and property of its citizens.

    Democrats forget that at their (and the nation’s) peril.

    Edited to add: Saw this on Twitter this morning:

    Denver’s Turn In The Riot Barrel

    Sunday, August 23rd, 2020

    Saturday night, downtown Denver got to experience the same joy that antifa and #BlackLivesMatter has brought to places like Minneapolis, Portland and Seattle.

    Several dozen people, some donning shields and helmets, and police clashed at the headquarters of the Denver Police Department on Saturday night.

    A group had organized a protest to start at 8 p.m. in response to an incident earlier this week when police and others clashed as the city removed people experiencing homelessness from a camp near 29th and Glenarm. A flier told people to “bring your gear.”

    Sometime before 9 p.m., a van arrived to provide some of the people with shields. As the people marched toward the Denver police headquarters, Denver7 reporters witnessed people with a bat and an ax.

    The group expressed various motives: defunding or abolishing the police, ending homeless sweeps, stopping racism, justice for Elijah McClain and more, including several who said they were there for vandalism and were done with peaceful protesting, according to crews at the scene.

    But McClain’s mother earlier this week disavowed rallies like the one Saturday night, and she and others held a peaceful rally in memory of her son earlier in the day.

    McClain was a black man killed in police custody in 2019. As in Portland and Seattle, there seem to be few if any black people involved in these riots, just white leftwing radicals attacking police and destroying property.

    Some raw footage:

    These riots aren’t about police brutality, they’re about a hard-left, anti-police activism that’s rejected by the overwhelming majority of American citizens.

    In Austin, state troopers and APD quickly clamped down on this stupidity before the idiots could do much damage. Other cities should follow their lead

    Is New York City Dead Forever?

    Saturday, August 22nd, 2020

    In the wake of this post on how the Wuhan coronavirus, widespread antifa/#BlackLivesMatter looting, and the general rise in crime and disorder under the mayorship of Bill de Blasio have sent citizens feeling, comes a new piece saying that not only is New York City dead, it’s dead forever:

    I love NYC. When I first moved to NYC it was a dream come true. Every corner was like a theater production happening right in front of me. So much personality, so many stories.

    Every subculture I loved was in NYC. I could play chess all day and night. I could go to comedy clubs. I could start any type of business. I could meet people. I had family, friends, opportunities. No matter what happened to me, NYC was a net I could fall back on and bounce back up.

    Now it’s completely dead. “But NYC always always bounces back.” No. Not this time. “But NYC is the center of the financial universe. Opportunities will flourish here again.” Not this time.

    “NYC has experienced worse”. No it hasn’t.

    A Facebook group formed a few weeks ago that was for people who were planning a move and wanted others to talk to and ask advice from. Within two or three days it had about 10,000 members.

    Every day I see more and more posts, “I’ve been in NYC forever but I guess this time I have to say goodbye.”

    He says people move to New York City for three reasons: business, culture and food, and all are dead.

    Midtown Manhattan, the center of business in NYC, is empty. Even though people can go back to work, famous office buildings like the Time Life skyscraper is still 90% empty. Businesses realized that they don’t need their employees at the office.

    In fact, they realize they are even more productive without everyone back to the office. The Time Life building can handle 8,000 workers. Now it maybe has 500 workers back.

    Snip.

    Another friend of mine works at a major investment bank as a managing director. Before the pandemic he was at the office every day, sometimes working from 6am to 10pm.

    Now he lives in Phoenix, Arizona. “As of June,” he told me, “I had never even been to Phoenix.” And then he moved there. He does all his meetings on Zoom.

    I was talking to a book editor who has been out of the city since early March. “We’ve been all working fine. I’m not sure why we would need to go back to the office.”

    One friend of mine, Derek Halpern, was convinced he’d stay. He put up a Facebook post the other day saying he might be changing his mind. Derek wrote:

    “In the last week:

    • I watched a homeless person lose his mind and start attacking random pedestrians. Including spitting on, throwing stuff at, and swatting.
    • Ive seen several single parents with a child asking for money for food. And then, when someone gave them food, tossed the food right back at them.
    • I watched a man yell racist slurs at every single race of people while charging / then stopping before going too far.

    And worse.

    I’ve been living in New York City for about 10 years. It has definitely gotten worse and there’s no end in sight.

    My favorite park is Madison Square Park. About a month ago a 19 year old girl was shot and killed across the street.

    I don’t think I have an answer but I do think it’s clear: it’s time to move out of NYC.

    I’m not the only one who feels this way, either. In my building alone, the rent has plummeted almost 30 percent – more people are moving away than ever before.

    Snip.

    People say, “NYC has been through worse” or “NYC has always come back.”

    No and no.

    First, when has NYC been through worse?

    Even in the 1970s, and through the 80s, when NYC was going bankrupt, and even when it was the crime capital of the US or close to it, it was still the capital of the business world (meaning: it was the primary place young people would go to build wealth and find opportunity), it was culturally on top of its game – home to artists, theater, media, advertising, publishing, and it was probably the food capital of the US.

    NYC has never been locked down for five months. Not in any pandemic, war, financial crisis, never. In the middle of the polio epidemic, when little kids (including my mother) were going paralyzed or dying (my mother ended up with a bad leg), NYC didn’t go through this.

    This is not to say what should have been done or should not have been done. That part is over. Now we have to deal with what IS.

    In early March, many people (not me), left NYC when they felt it would provide safety from the virus and they no longer needed to go to work and all the restaurants were closed. People figured, “I’ll get out for a month or two and then come back.”

    They are all still gone.

    And then in June, during rioting and looting a second wave of NYC-ers (this time me) left. I have kids. Nothing was wrong with the protests but I was a little nervous when I saw videos of rioters after curfew trying to break into my building.

    Many people left temporarily but there were also people leaving permanently. Friends of mine moved to Nashville, Miami, Austin, Denver, Salt Lake City, Austin, Dallas, etc.

    As for culture, author James Altucher owns a standup comedy club in New York City.

    We have no idea when we will open. Nobody has any idea. And the longer we close, the less chance we will ever reopen profitably.

    Broadway is closed until at least the Spring. Lincoln Center is closed. All the museums are closed.

    Forget about the tens of thousands of jobs lost in these cultural centers. Forget even about the millions of dollars of tourist and tourist-generated revenues lost by the closing of these centers.

    There are thousands of performers, producers, artists, and the entire ecosystem of art, theater, production, curation, that surrounds these cultural centers. People who have worked all of their lives for the right to be able to perform even once on Broadway whose lives and careers have been put on hold.

    I get it. There was a pandemic.

    But the question now is: what happens next? And, given the uncertainty (since there is no known answer), and given the fact that people, cities, economies, loathe uncertainty, we simply don’t know the answer and that’s a bad thing for New York City.

    Right now, Broadway is closed “at least until early 2021.”

    As for food:

    My favorite restaurant is closed for good. Ok, let’s go to my second favorite. Closed for good. Third favorite, closed for good.

    I thought the PPP was supposed to help. No? What about emergency relief? No. Stimulus checks? Unemployment? No and no. Ok, my fourth favorite, or what about that place I always ordered delivery from? No and no.

    Around Late May I took walks and saw that many places were boarded up. Ok, I thought, because the protesting was leading to looting and the restaurants were protecting themselves. They’ll be ok.

    Looking closer I’d see the signs. For Lease. For Rent. For whatever.

    Before the pandemic, the average restaurant had only 16 days of cash on hand. Some had more (McDonalds), and some had less (the local mom-and-pop Greek diner).

    Yelp estimates that 60% of restaurants around the United States have closed.

    My guess is more than 60% will be closed in New York City but who knows.

    I think this 60% figure is inaccurate, at least for the nation as a whole, a telephone-game misunderstanding of 60% of Wuhan coronavirus restaurant closures being permanent and only 40% temporary. But it says nothing about restaurants that stayed open during the crisis (if only for takeout). But it wouldn’t shock me if that 60% closure figure is accurate for New York City (and even higher in Manhattan).

    He also talks about college students staying away and the collapse of the real estate market.

    His conclusion:

    OK, OK, BUT NYC ALWAYS COMES BACK.

    Yes it does. I lived three blocks from Ground Zero on 9/11. Downtown, where I lived, was destroyed, but it came roaring back within two years. Such sadness and hardship and then quickly that area became the most attractive area in New York.

    And in 2008/2009, much suffering during the Great Recession, again much hardship, but things came roaring back.

    But…this time it’s different. You’re never supposed to say that but this time it’s true. If you believe this time is no different, that NYC is resilient, etc I hope you’re right.

    I don’t benefit from saying any of this. I love NYC. I was born there. I’ve lived there forever. I STILL live there. I love everything about NYC. I want 2019 back.

    But this time it’s different.

    One reason: bandwidth.

    In 2008, average bandwidth speeds were 3 megabits per second. That’s not enough for a Zoom meeting with reliable video quality. Now, it’s over 20 megabits per second. That’s more than enough for high quality video.

    There’s a before and after. BEFORE: no remote work. AFTER: everyone can remote work.

    Everyone has spent the past five months adapting to a new lifestyle. Nobody wants to fly across the country for a two hour meeting when you can do it just as well on Zoom. I can go see “live comedy” on Zoom. I can take classes from the best teachers in the world for almost free online as opposed to paying $70,000 a year for a limited number of teachers who may or may not be good.

    Everyone has choices now. You can live in the music capital of Nashville, you can live in the “next Silicon Valley” of Austin. You can live in your hometown in the middle of wherever. And you can be just as productive, make the same salary, have higher quality of life with a cheaper cost to live.

    Snip.

    And then people will ask, “wait a second – I was paying over 16% in state and city taxes and these other states and cities have little to no taxes? And I don’t have to deal with all the other headaches of NYC?”

    Because there are headaches in NYC. Lots of them. It’s just we sweep them under the table because so much else has been good there.

    NYC has a $9 billion deficit. A billion more than the Mayor thought they were going to have. How does a city pay back its debts? The main way is aid from the state. But the state deficit just went bonkers. Then is taxes. But if 900,000 estimated jobs are lost in NYC and tens of thousands of businesses, then that means less taxes unless taxes are raised.

    Does the author overstate the case? Slightly. His pieces focuses on upper and upper middle class reasons to live in New York, but the port of New York/New Jersey is the third largest in the country, and neither the port nor its many blue collar jobs are going away anytime soon. And someday Broadway and other in-person cultural events will come back, even if much demolished. But it is indeed very possible that New York City has already peaked, and could lose 1-3 million of its population in the near-term.

    And all this to still achieve the highest coronavirus death rate in the country. Thanks, Andrew Cuomo!

    Democratic office-holder incompetence, Chinese coronavirus, high taxes and social justice have finally struck New York City a more devastating blow than Osama bin Laden ever could.

    Scenes From The Destruction of New York City

    Sunday, August 16th, 2020

    The New York City riots were just a blip in the largest series of coordinated antifa/#BlackLivesMatter riots sweeping the country then, but this video indicates that the looting and destruction in de Blasio’s New York City was far more more extensive than the media let on.

    I had a friend who recently visited NYC, and he says from the Holland Tunnel to the Williamsburg Bridge through lower Manhattan almost everything was still boarded up and covered with graffiti, with lots of trash on the sidewalk. “Looked like a scene from an early Scorsese movie.” Is it any wonder that people are fleeing the city in droves?

    It’s not just a few Upper West Siders who are fleeing New York: Moving companies say they’re swamped with calls from residents looking to ditch the city — even though the COVID crisis has waned.

    One likely reason: The virus was but the last straw; New Yorkers are fed up with the shootings and lootings, homelessness on the streets, sub-par online schools, sky-high taxes and the sheer obliviousness of pols like Mayor Bill de Blasio and Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

    Snip.

    It’s been “insanely busy,” Roadway Moving president Ross Sapir told Fox. Indeed, he says this has been the busiest summer ever for the company. “For the last three months, we couldn’t keep up with demand.”

    Oz Moving says the number of relocations continues to rise at a “substantial rate.” It was booked to capacity earlier in the year than in any of the previous 27 years.

    United Van Lines, too, cites a whopping 95 percent spike, year over year, in interest in moving out of Manhattan between May and July, versus just 19 percent nationally.

    Sure, many of those who’ve headed out were merely trying to escape COVID, which socked the city in the spring. Some may even return; a reported spike in storage-space business is a sign they will.

    Yet the fact that the rush for the exits continues to grow, even as new coronavirus cases have plummeted, suggests other reasons. Like the crime wave: The number of shootings per day, for instance, has doubled since last year. Other crimes are up, too.

    City and state officials have fueled crime, setting inmates at jails and prisons free and handcuffing cops, and they refuse to do anything meaningful to roll it back. Prosecutors, too, are declining to prosecute. Judges are letting suspects walk.

    Last month, Bronx Criminal Court Judge Jeanine Johnson released an illegal-immigrant rape suspect, on no bail. Last year, she let a convicted killer and reputed gangbanger walk bail-free after a gun bust.

    Quality of life has plunged, as well. Even the owner of an Upper West Side hotel the city’s now using to house homeless derelicts has put his nearby mansion up for sale, as The Post reports Wednesday.

    Lousy schools and even worse online classes provide yet another reason for folks to skedaddle.

    Ditto for high taxes, which de Blasio — and fellow Democrats in the Legislature — are itching to raise even more.

    It’s so bad that Andrew Cuomo is begging rich New Yorkers to return.

    It took 30 years and Rudy Giuliani to rescue New York City from its reputation as a crime-ridden hellhole. It’s taken Bill di Blasio, George Soros and one disasterous year to undo all that.