Should Never Have Been a Trial From the Very Beginning!

Chauvin trial judge to defense: Maxine Waters’s big mouth may end up getting this trial thrown out on appeal

ALLAHPUNDIT Apr 19, 2021

Man oh man. Maxine Waters getting Derek Chauvin sprung from prison was a plot twist I did not see coming.

But as you’ll see, the judge has a point. Hopefully the jury’s following the rules about not reading the news while the trial’s going on. But if, by accident, one or more of them stumbled across an account of Waters urging protesters to be “more confrontational” if Chauvin is acquitted, well, what conclusion might they reasonably draw from that?

They have to convict him or else Minneapolis will burn. A member of Congress is telling them so. Can’t have a fair trial when that’s the case, can you?

Actually, you can, Judge Cahill goes on to say. He denied Chauvin’s motion for a mistrial, reasoning that he trusts that the jurors are insulating themselves from media right now and probably haven’t heard of Waters’s comments — and even if they have, she’s just one congresswoman. (When a president, Richard Nixon, pronounced Charles Manson guilty while his trial was ongoing in 1970, the remark nearly resulted in a mistrial.) The judge just sat through several weeks of emotional testimony, knows how hard it would be to find and empanel a new jury untainted by bias at a second trial, and doubtless knows full well what the public reaction would be were he to declare a mistrial at this late stage of the proceeding. No way is he pulling the plug now.

But an appellate court might, he allows. The higher courts won’t be as invested as he is in believing that a trial over which he presided was completely fair.

Except … the appellate judges aren’t going to want to spring Chauvin either if he’s convicted, right? Again, they know the price civil society will pay if he’s freed on a technicality, especially if a prominent African-American congresswoman is blamed for that technicality.

Ultimately, I think, the best argument against the idea that Waters prejudiced the jurors is the fact that they, the judge, the appellate courts, and everyone else in the state of Minnesota already fully understood that things will get, shall we say, “more confrontational” if Chauvin’s acquitted. All she did was acknowledge a universally recognized reality. How prejudicial can it be to say “the sky is blue”? Two clips for you here.

https://hotair.com/allahpundit/2021/04/19/chauvin-trial-judge-to-defense-maxine-waterss-big-mouth-may-end-up-getting-this-trial-thrown-out-on-appeal-n384390

Which of Our Presidents DESTROYED Our Once Sound Negro Christian Family?

When Black Lives Matter and Matter and Matter…

By Jeremy Egerer at American Thinker:

I believe that black lives matter — but when it comes to Black Lives Matter, a little proportion goes a long way in society.  You have to realize how small you are to be a big deal in my book.  You have to play by the rules like the rest of us, or we have no choice but to consider you a menace. 

The man who puts himself or his race above the rules isn’t a victim.  He’s an oppressor.  He robs a woman, or drives trashed, or beats up children, and then tells cops to shove it — and when the cops shove him, we find out how special he really is.  Privileged, even.  Way beyond the rest of us.  An Arab man was killed by two black girls, and they got off the hook, and nobody knows his name.  But we know Jacob Blake’s and George Floyd’s names — even though they had a history of hurting women.

The knee-jerk reaction here would be to wish equality for everyone else.  But why would I want that?  What man in his right mind would see a drunk and belligerent redneck getting pulled over and wish him a safe journey?  Who would turn the cop in if he beat him?  White people especially know that one criminal isn’t worth burning a whole city — especially not your city.  Not when it’s filled with your people’s businesses, filled with your kids’ schools, filled with your neighbors’ churches.  Do black lives matter too much?  Will there ever be a point when the black criminals feel safer than the cops?  Should there ever be a point?  And if we do reach this criminal’s utopia, what happens to the rest of us?

I blame this whole train of events on our ridiculous sense of empathy.  First off, we taught our kids, from cradle to grave, in movies and grade schools and speeches and literature, that white people hurt black people.  Second, we taught our kids that to feel for other people, people different from yourself, and underdogs, generally, is the highest use of your pity.  Pitying people like you?  That’s selfish.  Pitying “others”?  What a great person you are. 

In reality, it makes you a terrible person.  “Compassion first,” or “radical empathy,” is the main virtue of the degenerate.  To prove this, consider that all the other virtues require some talent.  Prudence, or knowing what to do and when, requires not only brains, but knowledge and experience.  Justice requires a sense of balance, and harmony, and a willingness to forgo your own advantage for the sake of a group — a keeping your word even when it kills you.  Fortitude means you know what you ought to do, and you have the strength to carry it out, and even to take a beating for it.  Temperance means you like to have a good time and play with a good idea, but you know when to cut it short so you don’t ruin other things.  These virtues bleed into each other and support each other, and each of them takes lots of practice.  They’re revered wherever you go, and they are the only reason, alongside luck, that any society happens to get anywhere.  The more of them you have, the less compassion you actually need. 

None of these is required to look “compassionate.”  You just pick a target — any target — any down-in-the-dumps junkie, any 900lb woman on a motor-scooter, any black criminal, any gang-banging border-jumper, any man failing badly to be a woman, then you look at everyone else, and you tell “your” people to do something about it.  And if they don’t do it, you tell them all they’re selfish.

The fact is that you are the selfish one — and a master at  sleight-of-hand.  After all, you’ve picked this 1% of 1% and told everyone else to change the world for them.  If rules are in the way, you throw away the rules — no matter how foundational.  If someone doing well has something, you take it away — regardless of whether he earned it.  You force everyone to change his life, and you convince yourself you’re not an ass because you’re doing it for someone else.  If it were for you, well, that would be selfish.  But pick any random nobody to do it for — the more obscure, the better — and you’re not selfish at all.  You’re a saint.

Doing this requires no talent.  You don’t have to be wealthy, or useful, or beautiful, or intelligent, or even particularly good to others to jump on board the compassion bandwagon.  Anyone of any station can jump on board this train, and anyone can invent a new train to jump on.  The newer the train, the more random the sufferer, the more trendy the pity-party, the higher the “virtue” — the better the saint.  

Thus, the movement to “liberate” and “raise up” the underdog is constantly degenerating.  Yesterday, it was for Martin Luther King, Jr., a man of substance and genius who was kicked for the color of his skin.  Today, it’s for George Floyd, who died of an overdose while resisting arrest.  The need to look compassionate — cheap and runaway vanity, at bottom — means that the need to create victims always exists, even when the class of alleged victims have already been saved.  The worst of us want to look like the best of us, and their grasping at a mass-manufactured dignity, the Gucci-knockoff brand of spiritual greatness, means that sufferers and martyrs are churned out en masse — each one less legitimate than the last.  

Meanwhile, family businesses are torched.  Neighborhoods are terrorized and destroyed.  Real martyrs, people who were working hard and minding their own business, or policemen doing their jobs, or good men protecting their neighborhoods, are beat up, or put in jail, or murdered, or have their families doxxed — just because they don’t fit the victim du jour‘s profile.  To empathize more radically is confused with having more empathy, but the fact is that you’ve merely shifted whom you empathize with — generally from people you should care about to people you shouldn’t.

This victim in reality, the guy who never caused any trouble, and many times the guy who stood up for the rest of us, is bulldozed without any empathy, without any backstory, without any pity.  The fact is that every victim du jour needs a villain or you can’t be a hero; and that for every manufactured pity-party a lynch mob is set upon an innocent.  The game has both a positive side and a negative.  One man is raised up, and another man is cut down.  Both sides of the story are never told by the “compassionate.”  No rationale is given for the so-called “oppressor’s” behavior, no support for his family when he loses his job and gets thrown on the street, or into a prison.  The so-called villain is a villain because that’s who he is.  The so-called victim, a person with no personal dignity or talent — I would even say value — has a long, sad, and manufactured backstory, sometimes reaching back centuries.  Empathy is a one-way street, these days, and the person who’s going the other way gets run over.

Is this the kind of society we want to live in? 

Jeremy Egerer is the author of the troublesome essays on Letters to Hannah, and he welcomes followers on Twitter, and Facebook.

THE ANSWER FOR THE TITLE QUESTION ABOVE…….Lyndon Baines Johnson! When President, he pushed an easily passed law led by Democrats, which gave Federal funds to help support single black males, so enticing that the once very devoted Negro family male figure began to divorce in order to enjoy receiving these Federal Funds set aside only for singles. Johnson was a big government money spender, a southern Texan who was a long time white racist Democrat in his years gone by! He meant no harm passing the legislation. It was meant to aid young colored families when Moms were Mothers and Dads brought home the bacon.

Lousy, Creepy Dem Governor Goes Weepy Too!

BY SCOTT JOHNSON at Power Line:

FROM THE BIZARRE TWIN CITIES HELLWORLD (7)

At the heart of the bizarre Twin Cities hellworld is Minnesota Governor Tim “tear down this” Walz. Today Tim is tearful. He called a press conference this afternoon to display his emotions and offer his characteristic deference to the mob throwing its weight around in the Twin Cities.

Walz mouths the obligatory platitudes about “systemic racism.” He asserts that Daunte Wright died “for a simple traffic violation.” He even calls this a “simple truth,” even though it is a blatant lie. He yammers on at painful length in his characteristic Joe Isuzu style demanding that citizens defer to the demands of the mob.

Walz called on Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey and St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter to make a few remarks. Both Frey and Carter are key players in the bizarre Twin Cities hellworld over which Walz presides. They go well together.

Carter begins his remarks with a quotation from Chief Justice Taney in the Dred Scott case. Taney’s doctrine in Dred Scott has now been endorsed as something like the official historical teaching of the Biden administration even though it was persuasively repudiated by Abraham Lincoln and defeated in our great Civil War, not to mention the related constitutional amendments. Carter continues his remarks with another gratuitous contribution to the forces arrayed against a fair trial for Derek Chauvin at the precise moment the jury has commenced its deliberations in his case.

MAXINE WATERS….ONLY IN AMERICA!!!

Guess what Maxine Waters requested before going to Minneapolis

JAZZ SHAW Apr 19, 2021 at Hot Air:

AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez

As Karen recently pointed out, Congresswoman Maxine Waters decided to try “taking it to the streets” (apologies to the Doobie Brothers) in Minnesota, inciting people to further unrest unless Derek Chauvin is found guilty in the killing of George Floyd. She’s received more than a little fully justified pushback over that trip, but the initial reporting missed out on some details that offer context and a glimpse at how sincere Representative Waters is about being “with the people” in this struggle. For example, she wanted to get out there among the “peaceful protesters” and lend her voice to the movement. But as Katie Pavlich pointed out at Townhall, she must have had at least some concerns. Otherwise, why would she have requested a police escort and security personnel?

New documents obtained by Townhall show Democratic Congresswoman Maxine Waters requested an armed police escort to Minneapolis over the weekend, where she called for violent activists to “stay in the streets” during a protest against law enforcement.

Waters flew from Dulles International Airport to Minnesota-St. Paul International Airport on Saturday, April 17, just days ahead of a verdict in the George Floyd, Officer Derek Chauvin trial.

That night, Waters went to meet with protestors and demanded a guilty verdict for Chauvin “or else.”

“I know this, we’ve got to stay in the streets,” Waters said to a group of activists. “We are looking for a guilty verdict.”

Katie has a photo of the original document requesting a police escort at the link above. There must have been a serious amount of concern about her safety among “her people” out in the streets to justify going to those measures. But she’s never been one to let a little hypocrisy ruin a good show.

Thinking about the total breadth of this story, there really was some remarkably tone-deaf action taking place. Let’s stop for a moment and consider what Waters was really asking of her escort. She wanted armed police to ride along and keep her safe so she could stand out in the streets to call for the incarceration of a police officer and complain about police violence. I can only imagine how thrilled the officers must have been to get tagged for that particular duty.

Meanwhile, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy sounds like he’s had about enough of this nonsense.https://platform.twitter.com/embed/Tweet.html?dnt=true&embedId=twitter-widget-0&features=eyJ0ZndfZXhwZXJpbWVudHNfY29va2llX2V4cGlyYXRpb24iOnsiYnVja2V0IjoxMjA5NjAwLCJ2ZXJzaW9uIjpudWxsfSwidGZ3X2hvcml6b25fdHdlZXRfZW1iZWRfOTU1NSI6eyJidWNrZXQiOiJodGUiLCJ2ZXJzaW9uIjpudWxsfX0%3D&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=false&id=1383944906637414406&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fhotair.com%2Fjazz-shaw%2F2021%2F04%2F19%2Fguess-what-maxine-waters-requested-before-going-to-minneapolis-n384309&sessionId=8da30866abb1fcae8900afa526982fdb4d3996b7&siteScreenName=hotairblog&theme=light&widgetsVersion=ff2e7cf%3A1618526400629&width=550px

Lee Zeldin appears to agree.

Due to the continued dangerous and toxic incitement to violence by Maxine Waters, she should be immediately removed from Congress. Her rhetoric is poisonous.

— Lee Zeldin (@RepLeeZeldin) April 19, 2021

It remains to be seen how effective Maxine Waters was in her presentation. If Derek Chauvin isn’t convicted of the most serious charges against him (which still seems unlikely) and the streets of the city begin going up in flames and the police come under attack, perhaps she will prove more influential than I would have imagined. After that, however, the congresswoman might find it a bit harder to scrape up uniformed volunteers to serve as her escort in the future.

Surprise? Biden a Twit or Worse as President? Americans Are Unhappy with America!

Liz Peek: Biden’s weak poll numbers – here’s why many Americans unhappy with president, radical policies

Deeper dive into the numbers suggests support for the president is lukewarm

 By Liz Peek at | Fox News

Trump backers speak out in focus group.

Do not believe the polls. 

Liberal news outlets are reporting with smug satisfaction that President Joe Biden is earning rave reviews. A recent headline from NBC News is typical: “Polls show Biden reaping solid approval ratings with popular policies.”  

They want us to believe that Biden’s progressive juggernaut is wildly popular, and that the president’s obvious inadequacies are a figment of right-wing imagination. They want us to think that common-sense Americans are OK with having our schools closed and our borders open, that we are on board with declaring our country racist and allowing riots to wreck our cities. They want us to believe that Biden is way more successful – already – than President Trump ever was. 

It is not true. None of it. 

For instance, Gallup’s most recent “Satisfaction with the United States” survey shows that 32% of the nation is “satisfied” with the way things are going, while 67% is dissatisfied. At this date in Trump’s presidency, the reading was almost exactly the same: 32% satisfied, 66% dissatisfied. And by the way, that figure reached 45% in February of last year, under Trump, a score not once recorded during President Obama’s eight years in office. 

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That’s one indicator that the country is not entirely copacetic with current events. But, let’s look at those polls. It is true that Biden’s top-line poll numbers look all right. 

One of the polls cited by NBC is by Quinnipiac, which shows 48% of respondents approving of the president’s job performance while 42% disapprove.  

But a deeper dive shows only 34% of the sample “strongly approve” of Biden while 36% “strongly disapprove.” Among all-important Independents, 27% approve “strongly” while 38% disapprove “strongly.”  

Those tallies suggest support for the president is lukewarm. Lukewarm doesn’t get people to the voting booth, especially in off-year elections. 

Meanwhile, the trends of these ratings are not favorable. The “strongly disapprove” category among registered voters has grown steadily from 32% in February to 38% last week while the number “strongly approving” dropped from 38% to 35%.  

Moreover, since he was inaugurated, Quinnipiac reports that Biden’s ratings on honesty and leadership have fallen, and the number of voters who think (rightly) that the president is dividing the country has jumped. 

Bottom line: voters are tepid on this president, as they always have been.

NBC also cites a Marist/NPR poll that just came out showing 52% of registered voters approving of Biden while 41% disapprove. Again, the number “strongly approving” is 26% while 31% “strongly disapprove.” 

Bottom line: voters are tepid on this president, as they always have been. Remember that 58% of the people who voted for Biden were voting against Donald Trump rather than for Joe Biden; that is a fact. 

The liberal media is excited to see progressives in charge of the White House and rolling out an agenda of controversial policies that they support. Convincing Americans that packing the Supreme Court, junking the filibuster, outlawing right-to-work states, banning voter IDs or defunding the police are perfectly reasonable ideas is easier if the left-wing media pretends such policies are popular. They are not.  

For example, NBC cites enthusiasm for Biden’s $2.3 trillion jobs plan, but fails to note that people like the program as long as they don’t have to pay for it. Funding it through higher corporate taxes or hiking taxes on high earners is acceptable, but few want to pay increased tolls (31%) or higher gas taxes (29%).

A more recent survey from CNBC shows only 36% of Americans support the infrastructure plan, beating out those who disapprove (33%) by only three points – within the margin of error. Thankfully, a majority of those surveyed (55%) is worried about deficits.  

NBC’s piece contains only a glancing reference to Biden’s “unpopular handling of the border” and explains that dealing with people entering illegally “wasn’t something [Bide] put on his early to-do list, but which is now something he clearly owns.”  

That is a lie; on Biden’s first day in office he stopped construction on Trump’s border wall and within two weeks signed an executive order overturning other measures his predecessor took to stem the overwhelming flow of undocumented migrants. Biden “owns” the border mess for good reason. 

We don’t need polls or NBC to tell us that the Biden team senses danger. Consider Biden’s flip-flop on the refugee issue. The White House announced Friday they would maintain Trump’s cap of 15,000 on refugees allowed to enter the country, even though Secretary of State Antony Blinken told Congress in February that the administration would admit up to 62,500 in the current fiscal year. 

Naturally, progressive hell-fire rained down on the White House, which then within hours reversed its position and announced that there would be an increase in the cap after all. 

Why would Biden be forced into such an embarrassing about-face? Because he (or whoever) knows that the border disaster is taking a serious toll on his popularity, and that opening the doors to a flood of refugees would further infuriate millions of Americans. 

The NBC authors cheerily summarize: “Bottom line: Biden has been careful not to push policies that aren’t significantly popular with the public. (In fact, more controversial proposals to expand the Supreme Court and advance reparations bills are not coming from the White House.)” 

But wait – isn’t Biden in charge? If offensive ideas like packing the court gain steam, isn’t that on his watch and should he not be held accountable? Americans will think so.  

IS Derek Chauvin A VICTIM OF THE TIM WALZ DEM STATE RUSSIAN LAW STYLE?

Navalny heads to a hospital… finally

JAZZ SHAW  at HotAir:

(AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko)

Over the weekend, we learned that Russian dissident Alexei Navalny was pretty much on death’s doorstep following nearly three weeks on a hunger strike that resulted in a condition that could produce a heart attack at any moment. At the time, I wondered about two things. First, would Navalny actually continue with his protest until he died, making himself a martyr in the fight against Vladimir Putin’s corrupt regime? And second, would the Russian government do anything to prevent that since Putin obviously wants him dead anyway? Both of those questions appear to have been answered last night. The famed Putin critic is being moved to another prison with full hospital services and Navalny has agreed to begin undergoing a regimen of vitamins to provide him with some level of nutrition.

The Russian state penitentiary service said Monday a decision has been made to transfer imprisoned Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who is in the third week of a hunger strike, to a hospital.

The announcement comes two days after Navalny’s physician said his health was deteriorating rapidly and the 44-year-old Kremlin critic could be on the verge of death.

The state prison service, FSIN, said in a statement that Navalny would be transferred to a hospital for convicts located in another penal colony in Vladimir, a city 180 kilometers (110 miles) east of Moscow. According to the statement, Navalny’s condition is deemed “satisfactory” and he has agreed to take vitamin therapy.

Reading further into the details, it sounds as if the decision to taper off the hunger strike wasn’t originally Navalny’s idea. He released a statement through his attorneys saying that prison officials had informed him that they were going to put him in a straightjacket and begin force-feeding him “imminently” unless he cooperated. I suppose the prospect of some intravenous vitamin therapy sounded better than having a tube shoved down his throat. But it’s also a fairly clear indicator that the Russian government didn’t want to wind up with Navalny’s blood on their hands in such a public fashion… or at least not yet.

The timing of these events is probably not coincidental. On Wednesday, Vladimir Putin is scheduled to give his annual state of the nation address. Alexei Navalny’s supporters are already calling for massive protests in the streets on that day, causing embarrassment for the Kremlin just as Putin is telling everyone how wonderfully everything is going. Putin has already declared these protests to be illegal and thousands of Navalny’s supporters have been arrested, including his wife and his brother. (Both were later released.)

While Putin has clearly grown tired of his relentless critic, he seems to possess at least enough self-restraint to not take out Navalny in such a crude and obvious fashion with the eyes of the world upon him. Keep in mind that before heading off to serve his sentence, Navalny joked with his supporters, saying he had no plans to commit suicide, that he would be “very careful” going up and down staircases, and that he had “the cardiovascular system of a cosmonaut,” so people shouldn’t believe any stories about him suddenly having a heart attack. That last bit is particularly ironic since cardiac arrest was one of the dangers his own doctor was warning about over the weekend.

I still wouldn’t be very confident that Alexei Navalny is out of the woods. Transferring him from one Russian prison to another doesn’t guarantee that the treatment he’ll be receiving will be much better. And it’s a virtual certainty that Putin ordered Navalny’s assassination once already, so he’s unlikely to give up on his plans entirely. He’s probably just waiting for a less inconvenient time and hoping the national and global attention being paid to Navalny’s situation will die down a bit.

Maxine Waters has now brazenly admitted that, regardless of the facts being introduced and weighed in the balances of our justice system right now in Minneapolis, she is “looking for a guilty verdict.”

‘Stubborn Things,’ and the Chauvin Trial

By William Sullivan at American Thinker:

Consider two contrasting quotes on how reason and passion relate to truth in a society.

The first is (or once was, anyway) quite famous amongst Americans, spoken by Founder John Adams during his defense of the British soldiers accused of murder in the Boston Massacre of 1770:

Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.

The second is from a figure of whom few alive could claim ignorance.  As Jonah Goldberg relates in his book, Liberal Fascism:

[Adolf] Hitler mocked those who believed that arguments and reason should trump the naked power of the people. When four renowned economists sent Hitler a letter disputing his socialist schemes, Hitler responded, “Where are your storm troopers?  Go on the street, go into folk meetings, and try to see your standpoint through. Then we’ll see who’s right — we or you.” [Emphasis added]

Here are represented two arguments — one for, and one against, the practical and moral supremacy of a society where truth and justice is informed by reason and evidence rather than the passions of a mob.

In his life, John Adams knew the weight of his actions in defending the British soldiers whom his community wanted nothing more than to see hanged.  In Adams’ appraisal of the evidence, the British soldiers were not murderers, but were acting in defense against a violent Bostonian mob.  There was an immediate propaganda war which  ensued for several months, with a British commission’s report titled “A Fair Account of the Late Unhappy Disturbance in Boston in New England,” and a Boston committee (with aid of Adams’ famous cousin, Samuel) providing an official account that branded the event for the quarter-millennium that followed, “A Short Narrative of the Horrid Massacre in Boston.” 

Adams earned no love, at the time, from his community for taking up the cause of the hated soldiers’ defense in the trial that occurred several months later.  But he heroically committed to the task, anyway.  He successfully petitioned the judge to host the trial in a different venue, believing, probably correctly, that the impartiality of a local jury ruling upon the guilt of British soldiers who’d killed Bostonians would be compromised. 

Adams later referred to this choice to successfully defend the soldiers as “one of the best Pieces of Service I ever rendered my Country. Judgment of Death against those Soldiers would have been as foul a Stain upon this Country as the Executions of the Quakers or Witches, anciently.”

When it comes to an individual’s guilt or innocence, when his life hangs in the balance, it is better that facts and evidence should inform our reason, Adams argued, even when the evidence leads to judgements which may not satisfy our collective passions.

That’s one vision of what justice in America is meant to be, and it’s an idea that is clearly enumerated in the Constitution.  What we’re seeing today around the Chauvin trial appears to be the other — that the passions and naked power of the people, as represented by loud populist rhetoric and violent mobs, should be the true arbiters of truth and justice.

Today, we all know that it’s virtually impossible for Derek Chauvin to receive a fair trial in Minneapolis.  But we are holding the trial in a city that is held by the mob anyway. 

And we all know that the de facto storm troopers promoting the BLM cause will set the city alight if the trial doesn’t produce a judgement that Chauvin is guilty of having murdered George Floyd.  As the Daily Wire reports, model and BLM activist Maya Echols told the world in a now-removed video, “if George Floyd’s murderer is not sentenced, just know that all hell is gonna break loose. Don’t be surprised when buildings are on fire. Just sayin’.”

More prominent activists in the news media, like Christine Emba at the Washington Post, also desire to see Derek Chauvin punished, and openly admit that they’re not interested in the facts or evidence of the trial.  Emba says that this could have been that “moment of national catharsis” that politicians and pundits “begged for” after the political riots of last summer that left many dead, countless injured, and $2 billion in property damage (read: terrorism).  Instead, it’s “a mere background to more of the same.”  “More of the same,” she implies here, is the institutional protection of a racist white police officer.

Congresswoman Maxine Waters has now brazenly admitted that, regardless of the facts being introduced and weighed in the balances of our justice system right now in Minneapolis, she is “looking for a guilty verdict.”  And if she doesn’t get a “verdict that will say guilty, guilty, guilty,” then she says that activists “got to get more active” and “more confrontational” in the streets to “make sure that they know we mean business.”

Celebrities, the media, and politicians are openly proclaiming that they are not interested in facts or evidence, only the retribution that they passionately seek.  All this is predicated upon the suggestion that the Chauvin trial serves as America’s reckoning, and the supposedly racist Chauvin is to be sacrificed as a stand-in for a supposedly racist America and its supposedly racist police infrastructure.

It requires repeating that the incident in question had nothing to do with racism.  No one has been able to produce a single convincing piece of evidence to suggest that Chauvin’s actions were motivated by Floyd’s race.  But this is not the point.

There were those in 1770 who wanted to make the Boston Massacre trial a referendum on the British policy of quartering soldiers in colonial homes.  But Adams heroically ensured that the trial was about the guilt or innocence of those individuals for the crime of murder, refusing to allow them to be punished as stand-ins for the British government’s policies.

Derek Chauvin should be tried for the crime of which he is accused, not as a stand-in for the mob’s presumption of America’s racism in policing.  And unlike Christine Emba, many Americans have been watching the trial, and have paid attention to the evidence.  Reasonable doubt appears to have been presented, and, “if the verdict were based solely on legal merits,” writes Andrew Branca at Legal Insurrection, there is “more than enough reasonable doubt to be unable to vote guilty.”

Ultimately, though, this is up to a jury of Chauvin’s peers to decide, and Branca suggests that the “political and social dynamics” may be enough to “drive this train clear off the rails.”

So, the question is — can the facts be “stubborn things” in America when witnesses who support Chauvin’s defense have pigs’ heads and blood slathered on their former homes as a threat, or when legions of anti-American BLM and Antifa storm troopers stand ready to attack innocent Americans and burn down the jurors’ city, and countless other American cities, if the mob doesn’t get the lynching it desires?  More importantly, if we no longer live in a country where facts can be “stubborn things,” and where the passions of a violent mob have supplanted facts and evidence, in what kind of country do we now live?

We may need to brace ourselves and be prepared to speak loudly in defense of facts and evidence, and in favor of reason over passion, because are likely about to discover the answer to both those questions.

Photo credit: YouTube screengrab (cropped)

Ditsy Lefty Joe Continues His Presidential Confusions….

White-flag Joe, flapping in the breeze for the left on refugee admissions

By Monica Showalter at American Thinker:

Joe Biden is getting pathetic.

He’s flapping in the breeze on the border crisis, flipping and flopping on whether the record number of illegal migrants surging our border amounts to a crisis, and shifting his stance on how many refugees he plans to force on America, like it or not.

According to John Solomon’s JustTheNews:

President Biden on Saturday called the historic border surge a “crisis” for the first time, even as he pushed ahead with plans to increase the caps for refugees admitted into the United States.

”We’re going to increase the number [of refugees],” he said at a news conference. “The problem was that the refugee part was working on the crisis that ended up on the border with young people. We couldn’t do two things at once. But now we are going to increase the number.”

Anyone have any idea what that explanation means? I don’t. Anyone think Joe knows? Me, neither.

He’s been all over the place on the question of admitting illegals and refugees to the U.S. which has led to the current chaos. Here’s his flappy record, according to Politico, which began its headline with ‘Broken promise’:

Biden had promised during the campaign to increase the number of refugees allowed into the United States to 125,000.

But wait!

…in February, he changed that number to more than 60,000 for the current fiscal year.

Then there was this on Friday, according to the New York Post:

President Biden has opted to retain the Trump administration’s 15,000 cap on refugee admissions to the US despite earlier proposing that the cap be expanded to 62,500.

Oh, but wait again:

Just hours after President Joe Biden signed an executive order that would retain the Trump administration’s 15,000 person cap on refugee admissions Friday, the White House reversed course on the matter, apparently caving after facing strong backlash from Democratic lawmakers. 

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki announced late Friday that the White House will unveil a number higher than the 15,000 cap on May 15. That came about two hours after Biden signed an order maintaining the 15,000 cap.

Anyone think this clown knows what he is doing? That’s four stances in the three miserable months he’s been in office, and the flip-flops are coming faster now. 

What exactly was behind his temporary shift toward maintaining President Trump’s perfectly reasonable 15,000 cap on refugees into the states?

Most likely, it was polls. Around the time the first backtrack took place, a Feb. 10 Morning Consult poll came out, finding that of all of Joe’s blizzard of executive orders at the time, the one that galled the voters the most “by a wide margin” as they stated, was his decision to open the gates wide to third-world refugees:

A new Morning Consult/Politico survey shows 48 percent of voters oppose Biden’s plan to allow as many as 125,000 refugees to seek safe haven in the United States during the upcoming fiscal year — a historic high that represents a whiplash change from the historically low 15,000-person limit for the current fiscal year — and fewer than 2 in 5 voters support it. That makes the Feb. 4 order the least popular of 28 executive actions tracked by Morning Consult since Inauguration Day by a wide margin.

Many of this bunch are poorly vetted, and some have become famous for their ingratitude, such as Rep. Ilhan Omar, incapable of happiness in the U.S. and desperate to make America more like her native Somalia. Others have professed a love for terrorism, such as the Tsarnaev charmers who carried out the Boston Marathon bombing. Open the gates to refugees and getting more of that is the likely root of the unpopularity of the Biden diktat.

The pressure not abating, Biden extended his supposed opposition to more refugees further, saying he wanted to keep President Trump’s limits.

That set off a bomb of a reaction among leftists, particularly the activist non-government organizations that thrive on big-dollar, no-bid refugee “assistance” contracts, which certainly keep their leaders in mansions.

Stuff like this:

“He’s basically broken his promise, and he’s abandoned his commitment,” Jenny Yang, senior vice president of advocacy and policy at World Relief, said in an interview earlier on Friday. –Politico

In addition to congressional advocacy, Jesuit Refugee Service/USA will continue to keep pressure on the executive branch of government and will encourage those awaiting action to continue the process of vetting and to “keep the hope alive,” she said.

Despite the frustration, she said reasons for optimism remain.

Earlier this month, Biden released his preliminary discretionary budget, which included $10 billion in humanitarian assistance for refugees, victims of conflict and displaced persons, along with $4.3 billion for the Office of Refugee Resettlement in order to rebuild its capacity.

“There’s significant movement in the right direction for longer-term progress,” said Rosenhauer. “But it’s the immediate progress we need now.”

-NCR

[Bethany Christian Services vice president Nate] Bult said many of the evangelicals he’s spoken to who voted Democrat for the first time in 2020 because Biden promised to rebuild the refugee program “are feeling betrayed.” –Politico

The average NGO salary in the refugee resettlement sub-speciality, according to Glassdoor, is $51,000. A refugee-resettlement intern at the big-dollar International Rescue Committee makes $53 an hour. Obviously, the creatures at the top make more. A lot more.

A rice bowl has been threatened. And according to Politico, Biden has been put “on notice.”

The radical left in Congress joined the lefty party, too, smelling future Democrat voters, if the Somali ballot-harvesting scandal in Minnesota is any indication:

A CNN headline read: ‘Unacceptable and unconscionable’: Democrats slam Biden for initial decision not to raise refugee cap

It included this sort of tripe:Rep. Pramila Jayapal, chairwoman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said in a statement, “It is simply unacceptable and unconscionable that the Biden administration is not immediately repealing Donald Trump’s harmful, xenophobic, and racist refugee cap that cruelly restricts refugee admissions to a historically low level.”The Washington state Democrat went on to say, “By failing to sign an Emergency Presidential Determination to lift Trump’s historically low refugee cap, President Biden has broken his promise to restore our humanity.” –CNN

“Upholding the xenophobic and racist policies of the Trump admin, incl the historically low + plummeted refugee cap, is flat out wrong. Keep your promise,” Ocasio-Cortez tweeted. –CNN

Omar complained and yelled racism, too.

So, Joe flip-flopped back to his original stance of admitting any and all refugees to the U.S.

Politico noted that at least part of the problem was more than just polls, (although I believe that polls had a role in the first flip-flops). Politico noted that the Department of Health and Human Service’s Department of Refugee Resettlement was so busy changing diapers and tending to the needs of tens of thousands of surging new illegally present child migrants coming up from the southern border that the agency didn’t have time to process actual refugees, given that the child migrant invitation from Joe pretty well encouraged the line-cutting. The regular refugees have been forced to cool their heels and the private refugee agencies with the big-dollar salaries, have been put on hold, too, which would explain some of the discontent. It rather figures.

What’s most evident here, though, is what a flip-flopping weakling Joe Biden is. He’s easily pressured by money-hungry refugee resettlement groups, as well as the Squad in Congress, even when their demands run against what’s possible in his own government agencies, and by what’s going on in polls. Polls in fact, only marginally matter to him, this fiasco demonstrates, certainly not as much as the demands of the radical far left, whose desires are paramount.

When they are at odds, the rabid left wins — every time. Biden is just an instrument for them to use as they see fit.

As for polls, well, they’re polls. Biden doesn’t do polls. He already knows that voter sentiment doesn’t matter, because the press will cover for him, and the sleazy Democrat operatives can change any election result for him. That’s the one thing that’s a certainty to him. Why pay attention to polls when cheating his way to victory is all he needs to do? 

It shows how bad this dynamic is. It’s not just that cheating leads to more cheating and a disregard for the will of the American people, it leaves Biden effectively a chew toy for the pitbulls of the radical left, flipping and flopping, a white flag of surrender flapping in the breeze.

What a sorry spectacle. 

Image: Pixy.org / public domain

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