If you thought The Star Spangled Banner is the National Anthem, the NFL wants to abuse you of the notion: As The Hill explains
The performance of “Lift Every Voice and Sing” at Sunday’s Super Bowl marks the first time the Black National Anthem has been performed on-field at the NFL’s championship game.
Actress and singer Sheryl Lee Ralph belted out the song prior to kickoff on Sunday.
“It is no coincidence that I will be singing the Black National Anthem, Lift Every Voice and Sing at the Super Bowl on the same date it was first publicly performed 123 years ago (February 12, 1900),” the “Abbott Elementary” star wrote on Twitter prior to her performance.
“Happy Black History Month,” Ralph added
The historic performance was the first time the song has been performed in an official capacity on a Super Bowl game field. Two years ago, Alicia Keys first performed the ballad during a pre-recorded Super Bowl broadcast. In 2022, singer Mary Mary gave a performance of the song from outside of the Super Bowl stadium in Inglewood, Calif., notes Billboard.
The anthem, written by NAACP leader James Weldon Johnson, rose to prominence during the Civil Rights Movement when it was commonly used as a “rallying cry,” notes the NAACP.
The song was performed on Sunday prior to the National Anthem, which was sung by country star Chris Stapleton.
The Black National Anthem, superior lyrically and musically to The Star Spangled Banner, is not The national anthem And it .would more appropriately
be called the Negro National Anthem as Time magazine implied upon noting
Before long, “Lift Every Voice and Sing” would become, in
Perry’s words, “a universal signifier of Black identity.” It was sung at church
services, civic organization meetings, pageants and graduations; it anchored
Emancipation Day and Negro History Week celebrations and daily school rituals.
“I sang the Negro National Anthem when I was hungry,”
Congresswoman Maxine Waters wrote in Lift Every Voice and Sing: A Celebration
of the Negro National Anthem, edited by Julian Bond and Sondra Kathryn Wilson.
“I sang the Negro National Anthem when my tooth was hurting because of an
exposed cavity—I sang the Negro National Anthem when I did not know there was a
future for a little black girl with twelve sisters and brothers.”
Demonstrating that wokeism and hyper-nationalism do mix, the National Football League can promote the Pentagon in a
pretentious flyover by the US Navy featuring an all-female cast of pilots. It has the same right
to feature Lift Every Voice and Sing, even in the same context as the Star Spangled Banner.
But as this corporate decision exemplifies, legal is not always
wise. The Black National Anthem, the
Negro National Anthem, or the African-American National Anthem (the song is not
a response to the experience of Jamaicans or Haitians in the USA) is not a
national anthem. It is no mere semantics to note that there is no nation of Black, neither here nor on any
continent; the song applies to a people, not a nation. Similarly, there could not be a Protestant or
Catholic national anthem, nor a woman's or men's national anthem.
The song was sung immediately
before, and juxtaposed, with the Star-Spangled Banner. Yet, it is not akin
to the USA's national anthem, nor to the national anthem of Canada, played
adjacent to The Star Spangled Banner at some National Hockey League games.
The purpose of any nation's national anthem is to offer a
unifying message, one meant to unite individuals of all ethnic and economic
backgrounds- in this case, to bring together all Americans as Americans. It
shouldn't be left to the likes of Lauren Boebert, of all people, to point out
the obvious: "America has only one NATIONAL ANTHEM" (emphasis hers). If a stopped clock can be right twice a day, Representative Boebert can be right at least once a year.
There is not, cannot, and should not be any white
national anthem, Italian-American national anthem, Norwegian-American national
anthem, or Black National Anthem. However imperfect a vehicle The Star Spangled
Banner is to unite Americans. it is presently the one and only national anthem in the
United States of America. Live with it.
Malcolm Nance, the former Navy officer, counter-intelligence
expert, and most recently, volunteer with the Ukrainian armed forces, got the
Tyre Nichols question (at 6:29 on the video below) on Friday night'sReal Time
overnight segment. After remarking that Nichols would have been treated
differently had he been white, Nance commented
You know, the issue here isn't about the color of the
policemen. The issue is that the tactics, techniques, procedures and training
of these law enforcement officers on these special team, uh, you know way back
when I went through a SWAT officers' course with Capitol Hill police and some
other police forces that were there to learn how to be SWAT cops. The
techniques that we were shown back then were not always guns forward all the
time. Now the average police officer is trained to believe that his, you know,
number one job is to come home at night. I agree with that a thousand per cent.
But there are jobs, there are things there are just clearly require an intervention
that does not require you to draw your weapon.
After host Bill Maher responded, Nance noted "there is
a color issue within law enforcement, altogether." Maher asked "even
though they're cops?" and Nance answered
Yeah, because they're cops. It's a mindset- the same way we
have in the military. We have a mindset, right? I think policing has moved so
far away from community service toward self-preservation. Uh, they go to
courses like the "on killing program" on how to do self-preservation,
how to battle like a special forces soldier. What they need to do is to start
thinking more along the beat cop. You know, protecting the community by knowing
the community and not seeing. I don't understand...
As Nance obviously would understand, the departments could
begin by not attaching to specialized street crime squads intentionally ferocious names such as the Memphis Police Department's "Scorpion." The
aggressive tactics are so notorious – and so similar – that
in many cities they're known as "jump-out boys" for the way officers
spill out of their cars to accost people during stops. In Chicago, such units
have contributed to residents seeing the police as "an occupying
force" that make some neighborhoods feel like "an open-air
prison," the Department of Justice found in 2017.
"They patrol our streets like they are the dog catchers
and we are the dogs," one Chicago resident told investigators.
If it's understood, as Nance does, that reconnecting with
the community is critical, the problem is broader than the apparently brutal tactics
of some street crime units. However, some authorities seem not to understand
this as
Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland said on Thursday he supports
Police Chief CJ Davis’ decision to reassign SCORPION Unit officers after she
said Tuesday at Memphis City Council that at least 30 officers have been
reassigned to other specialized units.
“They’re moving into other organized crime units, such as
auto theft, task force, and those other areas,” Davis said. “These were
individuals not involved in this incident.”
The “incident” Davis referred to was the Jan. 7 traffic stop
by SCORPION Unit officers that led to the death of Tyre Nichols....
Mayor Strickland said under Chief Davis’ leadership, the
city has asked the Department of Justice and the International Association of
Chiefs of Police to do an external review of the department’s operations and
make recommendations.
The solution for medium and large cities is embedded in
Nance's assertion "What they need to do is to start thinking more along
the beat cop. You know, protecting the community by knowing the
community."
Breaking up much of a large police department
into specialized units runs completely counter to the concept of knowing the
community. If officers are assigned to
auto theft and other units, they are necessarily not being assigned to a
neighborhood. Neither they nor the other officers will become as familiar with
a particular neighborhood as they would if they were assigned by area, not
function.
These units are specialized and the root of
"specialized" is "special." Put police into specialized
units, and they will come to think of themselves as special. Most of them will not consider themselves
above the law, nor will more than a small minority impose the beatdown on a
citizen akin to that of Tyre Nichols. But many will consider themselves better than their colleagues and the residents they should be expected to serve and protect.
If "community policing" is to be more than a
cliche, major police departments can begin by reversing the trend toward
specialized units or squads and encourage the immersion of their officers in
the community.
This is how politicians should be interviewed- not only
Republicans but also Democrats, and not only by CNN's Kaitlan Collins. But in
this case it was she and in the wake of President Joe Biden's State of the Union address on Tuesday, Scott was the a prime, and deserving, target.
In this interview, Florida senator Scott insists that
President Biden has cut Medicare, though he is careful not to say “cut Medicare
benefits.”In a fact check on Thursday, CNN noted that deputy director
of the Medicare policy program at the Kaiser Family Foundation, Mark
Cubanski explained that the Inflation Reduction Act’s
projected prescription drug savings of $237 billion will largely come from
three particular provisions. None of these provisions cuts Medicare benefits.
One provision allows the federal government, starting in
2026, to negotiate with pharmaceutical companies over the prices of certain
high-cost drugs for Medicare. Another requires the drug companies to pay
rebates to Medicare if the price of certain drugs rises faster than inflation.
A third provision delays, until 2032, the implementation of a Trump
administration rule that had never taken effect and already been postponed until
2027. That rule, which would have effectively banned rebates from drug
companies to insurers and pharmacy benefit managers, had been expected not only
to increase Medicare spending but to force Medicare beneficiaries to pay higher
premiums.
So, again, not even the cost-saving parts of the law are
Medicare cuts. And then there are the additional provisions Cubanski mentioned
above, which will add expenditures to the government but save seniors money –
such as the new $35-per-month cap on out-of-pocket spending on insulin and a
new $2,000-per-year cap, starting in 2025, on out-of-pocket prescription drug
spending in Medicare Part D.
Scott insists that he hasn't endorsed benefit cuts. At 6:10
of the video with Collins, he states
I've been clear. I will not reduce Social Security or
Medicare benefits. Alright? I've been clear. And I was in my plan. Congress
needs to fix Med- make sure that Medicare and Social Security survive.
Sen. Rick Scott says "no," it wasn’t a mistake to propose a plan that would require all legislation, including that relating to programs like Social Security and Medicare, to sunset unless Congress reauthorizes them. Our full interview this morning: pic.twitter.com/wOxxApUCpR
It is an article of faith- or at least, it seems to be- of
Republicans that Medicare and Social Security will die on the vine (i.e., not
survive) unless benefits are slashed. There is a little bit of logic there.
Scott, as with some of his GOP colleagues, says he will never vote to raise
taxes. If Congress does not increase the maximum annual wage- now $160,200-
that's subject to Social Security tax, the trust fund eventually, in a matter
of decades, will run out.
The cap, as Senator Bernie Sanders and other Democrats have
long advocated, could be increased or (as it should be) eliminated altogether.
That's a bridge to decency Republicans will not cross.
Senator Scott knows that cutting, or decreasing, benefits
won't fly politically. Therefore, he wants to sunset "entitlements"
(earned benefits) which- in the short term- does not necessarily cut
benefits. A lot of voters don't know
what sunsetting is (and it's not an actual word). Elderly individuals, the Florida senator believes, may believe it wouldn't happen for awhile, and Republicans have been trying for
years to condition young people to accept as inevitable that Social Security,
if not Medicare also, won't last forever.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, if he's not lying
through his teeth, is not keen on Scott's plan. That's for now, though.
Republicans in the House of Representatives, which the GOP controls, are
unpredictable, and ghastly. So it
becomes essential for President Biden, as he did in his State of the Union
address, to tell the public that some Republicans want to sunset the program and tie that to a decrease in benefits. And it can only help if journalists,
such as Kaitlan Collins did one fine Thursday morning, persist in asking the
uncomfortable questions.
She has reason to be. There were a few issues Biden did not
handle particularly well but his segment on the two most popular entitlement
programs- Social Security and Medicare- was a tour de force. Amid cheers from Democrats and jeers and
various expressions of disapproval from Republicans, Biden stated
Let’s commit here tonight that the full faith and credit of
the United States of America will never, ever be questioned.
Some of my Republican friends want to take the economy
hostage — I get it — unless I agree to their economic plans. All of you at home
should know what those plans are.
Instead of making the wealthy pay their fair share, some
Republicans, some Republicans, want Medicare and Social Security to sunset. I’m
not saying it’s the majority.
Let me give you — anybody who doubts it, contact my office.
I’ll give you a copy — I’ll give you a copy of the proposal. That means
Congress doesn’t vote — I’m glad to see — no, I tell you, I enjoy conversion.
You know, it means if Congress doesn’t keep the programs the
way they are, they go away.
Other Republicans say — I’m not saying it’s a majority of
you, I don’t even think it’s even a significant — but it’s being proposed by
individuals. I’m not — politely not naming them, but it’s being proposed by
some of you.
Look, folks, the idea is that we’re not going to be — we’re
not going to be moved into being threatened to default on the debt if we don’t
respond.
Folks — so folks, as we all apparently agree, Social
Security and Medicare is off the books now, right? They’re not to be — all
right. We’ve got unanimity.
Social Security and Medicare are a lifeline for millions of
seniors. Americans have to pay into them from the very first paycheck they
started.
So tonight, let’s all agree — and we apparently are — let’s
stand up for seniors. Stand up and show them we will not cut Social Security.
We will not cut Medicare.
Those benefits belong to the American people. They earned
it.
And if anyone tries to cut Social Security, which apparently
no one’s going to do, and if anyone tries to cut Medicare, I’ll stop them. I’ll
veto it. And look, I’m not going to allow them to take away — be taken away.
Not today. Not tomorrow. Not ever. But apparently it’s not
going to be a problem.
Not now, it's not. In
the video below, Representative Boebert can be seen claiming the President
"lied about Republicans wanting to cut Medicare and Social Security. We
made it very clear tonight that is off the table." President Biden had noted "some Republicans want Social
Security and Medicare to sunset. I'm not saying it's the majority." A moment later, he even conceded "I
don’t even think it’s even a significant — but it’s being proposed by
individuals."
Those individuals would include Wisconsin Senator Ron
"Moscow" Johnson, who in a podcast last summer
suggested that Social Security and Medicare be transformed
into programs whose budgets are appropriated by Congress on an annual basis. He
pointed out that budgets for the Defense and Veterans Affairs departments are
approved as discretionary spending.
“What we ought to be doing is we ought to turn everything
into discretionary spending so it’s all evaluated so that we can fix problems
or fix programs that are broken, that are going to be going bankrupt,” Johnson
said. “As long as things are on automatic pilot, we just continue to pile up
debt.”
More radically, Utah Senator Mike Lee, in remarks he had made at a campaign event in 2010 and revealed in a video resurfacing last year, had stated (at 2:48 of the video below)
I'm here right now to tell you one thing you probably have
not heard from a politician: It will be my objective to phase out Social
Security, to pull it up from the roots and get rid of it. People who advise me politically always tell
me it's dangerous and I tell them "In that case, it's not worth my running.'
That's why I'm doing this, to get rid of that. Medicare and Social Security are
of the same sort, they need to be pulled up.
That seems pretty clear, but more significantly- and in line
with Johnson's position-
Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) on Wednesday defended his proposal
to sunset all federal legislation after five years and slammed President Biden
as “confused” in response to Biden’s claim at the State of the Union address
that some Republicans want to sunset Social Security and Medicare.
“In my plan, I suggested the following: All federal
legislation sunsets in five years. If a law is worth keeping, Congress can pass
it again,” Scott said in a statement following Biden’s address to a joint
session of Congress.
Scott last year rankled Republicans when he rolled out a
12-point policy agenda that included the sunset proposal, which Democrats
promptly began using as ammunition in the midterms.
“This is clearly and obviously an idea aimed at dealing with
all the crazy new laws our Congress has been passing of late,” Scott added,
denying Biden’s claim Tuesday evening that Republicans want to end Social
Security and Medicare.
Biden said that “instead of making the wealthy pay their
fair share, some Republicans, some Republicans want Medicare and Social
Security to sunset,” eliciting loud boos from GOP lawmakers in the
chamber.
Some House Republicans have floated the idea of reforms to
entitlement programs as part of debt ceiling negotiations, though Speaker Kevin
McCarthy (R-Calif.) and others insist cuts aren’t on the table.
Speaking over the raucous response, the president insisted,
“Anybody who doubts it, contact my office, I’ll give you a copy — I’ll give you
a copy of the proposal.”
“It is being proposed by individuals. I’m politely not
naming them, but it’s being proposed by some of you,” Biden said.
That barb infuriated Scott, the former chairman of the
National Republican Senatorial Committee, who called the claim “a lie” and “a
dishonest move … from a very confused president.”
“I will not be intimidated by Joe Biden twisting my words,”
he declared and pushed back by arguing that Democrats effectively cut Medicare
when they gave the federal government power to negotiate lower prescription
drug prices in the Inflation Reduction Act.
This was a position Scott advocated as the chairman of the NRSC. Nonetheless, he accuses Biden of twisting his words while Scott acknowledged that he proposed "that all
federal legislation sunset(s) in five years. So he quotes his own report
proposing exactly what the President maintained (some) Republicans want to do, a magnificent self-own.
Late last month,
Kevin "don't call me Joe" McCarthy was asked on Face the Nation whether he would
"consider any reductions to Social Security and Medicare" and
responded "No. Let's take those off the table."
Nevertheless, when a few details of the secret deal
negotiated by McCarthy to win the vote to become Speaker leaked, Vox's Andrew
Prokop reported
McCarthy commits that House Republicans will create a plan
for a balanced federal budget within 10 years, including “long-term reforms” to
mandatory spending programs (entitlements like Medicare, Social Security, and
Medicaid), as well as capping discretionary spending where it was during the
first fiscal year of the Biden administration.
The long-term reforms pledged by McCarthy certainly sound
like an effort to reduce outlays for Social Security and Medicare benefits over
the long term. On Face the Nation, McCarthy, agreeing to take reductions
"off the table," was probably referring to immediate cuts to appear
in the upcoming budget. However, he was not foreclosing the likelihood of those
"long-term reforms" in earned benefits, or what Republicans like to
label "entitlements."
"Not today. Not tomorrow. Not ever," the President
vowed. The GOP knows not to advocate
reductions in benefits for today's senior citizens because old people vote. But they've been talking for decades about
"strengthening" or "protecting" those pesky
"entitlements," which to everyone involved in the issue is shorthand
for pulling the rug out from under future beneficiaries.
Whether Lauren Boebert is aware of the recent politics
surrounding the matter, and thus intentionally deceptive, or is merely a useful
idiot is undetermined. But taking a knife to the programs long has been on the Republican's wish list, a
little less attainable after Tuesday's State of the Union address.
The answer is "of course, he can" On January 29, during
his regular stint as a panelist on This Week with or without George
Stephanopoulos, Chris Christie argued
Donald Trump "can't win a general election" — as
evidenced by his failure in 2020.
"And that's not speculation," Christie, a former
Trump supporter, said in an appearance on ABC's This Week on Sunday.
"That's based upon the polling that I was privy to pre-the 2020 election
and what we saw actually happen in the 2020 election. And it's only gotten
worse since then."
Christie said that the failure of Trump-endorsed candidates
in the 2022 midterm elections is further proof that support for the former
president is eroding.
"We could go through the entire list — loser, loser,
loser, loser — and I think Republicans are recognizing that," Christie
said of Republicans like Blake Masters, Kari Lake and Doug Mastriano — all of
whom lost their races in 2022.
Calling them "bad candidates," Christie noted
those Republicans were both endorsed by Trump and echoed his false claims that
the 2020 election was rigged against him.
Chris Christie on Trump: "I've said over and over that he can't win a general election, and that's not speculation. That's based upon...what we saw actually happen in the 2020 election. And it's only gotten worse since then." Trump's record is losing. pic.twitter.com/mBInyWscZA
— The Republican Accountability Project (@AccountableGOP) January 30, 2023
“Joe Biden is not an exciting candidate. He’s old. He’s
boring. And the American people are not relating to him,” Christie said Sunday
on ABC’s “This Week. “That was the same in 2020 but he was running against
someone who was so toxic that he won anyway.”
Asked if Trump could beat Biden in a rematch next year,
Christie responded: “I don’t think so.”
Christie’s views on Trump’s chances were echoed by New
Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu, who said on ABC that the results of the 2022
midterms showed that the former GOP president could not win another term in the
White House.
“Trump is going to be seen as a very extreme candidate,”
Sununu said. “The country is going to push back against it. If we just look at
the results of three months ago, and that shows you where extreme candidates
are going to end up falling. It can’t get done.”
So two prominent Republicans, both of whom are considered
possible candidates for the Republican presidential nomination, agree that
Donald Trump would likely lose if nominated.
Even less likely is that they have a clue or, if they do,
that they're being straight with the public (and any GOP presidential nominee
must be straight). The day before their
Sunday appearances, we learned of an ABC News/Washington Post poll which found
that Republicans don't want Trump nominated and Democrats don't want Biden
re-nominated.
Things have been looking up for the incumbent lately,
particularly with strikingly good economic news, and Biden received his highest
approval mark in that survey since April, 2022. However, approval was only 42%. And
matched against Trump in a rematch, Biden was preferred by only 45% of
respondents to 48% for the ex-President.
That's a very bad number for the incumbent- and a good
number for Donald Trump. Nonetheless, it is of greater importance that
In a hypothetical rematch, Trump held a 48 percent to 45
percent advantage over Biden, an outcome that is within the new poll’s margin
of error of 3.5 percentage points.
Biden also garnered a 42 percent approval rating in the poll
of 1,003 people, his highest mark in the ABC-Washington Post poll since April.
Just the day before, an MSNBC blogger noted of the New Hampshire governor
during last year’s Gridiron Club dinner for Washington
insiders, he quipped that Trump was “crazy” (using some colorful language).
“I don’t think he’s so crazy that you could put him in a
mental institution,” he said, according to Politico. “But I think if he were in
one, he ain’t getting out!”
Sununu soon said he had just been joking, and he has
repeated that caveat several times since. But on Thursday, he took the
backpedaling into overdrive.
During a CNN interview, Sununu vowed to support Trump should
he win the Republican nomination for president next year. Sununu said whoever
the Republican nominee is will be “better than any of the Democrats that would
likely sit in that presidential seat.”
Asked about his having called Trump crazy, Sununu replied:
“Yeah, that was funny. It was a roast! It was a funny joke!”
Weak-kneed politicians such as Chris Sununu, who has pledged to support Trump if nominated, and Chris
Christie, who won't say, want the media to know that they really, really don't like Donald
Trump. But at the very least, they admire him.
If it becomes clear sometime in the first half of 2024 that Trump will
become the GOP nominee, the Chrises and virtually every single Republican will
line up to support him. A choice between country and party is no choice at all
for most of them which, more than any poll 21 months out from the election, is the reason Donald Trump could be re-elected.
Give New York Times columnist Bret Stephens his due. Back
before black lives matter was a thing, and criticism of that thing would get a
person banished from every place left of Fox News, Stephens recognized Black
Lives Matter had "some really thuggish elements in it.".
In June of 2020, the Times disavowed an op-ed it had
published in which Republican senator Tom Cotton had suggested that federal
troops be used to break up violent George Floyd protests. In his column,
Stephens argued that Cotton's op-ed "doesn't lie in its goodness or
rightness" but in the Senator "being a leading spokesman for a major
current of public opinion."
In the spring following the protests, Stephens had noted
"anti-racism is a great simplifier- good and evil, black and white"
and "effective policing requires that cops gain the trust of the
communities they serve while recognizing that those communities are ill served
when cops are afraid to do their jobs."
So Stephens is no johnnie-come-lately. Alas, his truth-telling became mangled when he appeared on Friday
evening's Real Time. Prompted by Bill Maher's interview a moment earlier with
former Minneapolis police chief Medario Arrondo, at 16:57 of the video below,
the columnist can be seen contending "We also have to bear in mind
particularly at moments like this that 99.5 per cent of police officers do
their job honorably and courageously." Fortunately, Maher responded
"first of all, let's just say you're pulling that number out of your
ass."
Not content with being rebuked in the show itself, Stephen
(at 9'45 below gave it another shot in the Overtime segment (B.S. as Stephens,
B.M. as Maher, M.A. as "Rondo" Arradondo):
B.S.: Can I have one
question?
B.M.: Very briefly.
B.S.: Rondo, what
percentage of cops are good cops?
M.A.: Oh, the vast majority of the men and women who put on
that uniform and serve their communities.
B.M.: O.K., but he said 99.5 on the show. It's just a number
we don't have.
B.S. It's a figure
of speech.
B.M.: It's not a figure of speech. That's a number.
B.S.: It was intended
that way.
Of course, it's a number, however Stephens may have intended
it. If it were only a figure of speech, did Stephens mean 99%? 90%? How about
65%? The latter number would have still represent a greater percentage of
employees being "good" than in a lot of workplaces. There was no need
to exaggerate. "Most police officers are dedicated" alone would have
been a bold statement in mainstream media if made during the period when Tom
Cotton wrote his op-ed.
More substantive was the assertion made by Stephens at
18:24 of the show itself, when he said
Every week a cop in America is shot and killed- every single
week and this is a conversation we're not having but every police officer is
very well aware that he's going on on a squad car and he's getting out taking a
risk, and he's putting his life on the line and they deserve a lot more respect
than they get.
Maher responded "they, first of all, get a lot of
respect. A lot of people in this country are always bowing and scraping to
them."
That's objectively accurate. At the time of the G.F.
protests, far fewer people (especially in polite company) responded with the
obvious "all the lives matter" but with "blue lives
matter"- which is true. bit not a logical retort. Apples and oranges.
That's difficult to quantify, with facts and figures
unavailable actually to prove who is right. Fortunately, that's not the case
with the claim(s) that "every week, a cop in America is shot and killed-
every single week."
In 2022, 231 law enforcement officers were killed in the
"line of duty," 64 of them by gunfire. In 2021, 73 officers were
"feloniously killed," an increase of 27 from the 48 killed in 2020.
In 2017, there had been 46 "feloniously killed" and in 2012, 48.
Over the years, on average approximately one police officer
a week is shot and killed, although it's undoubtedly not "every single
week" because in some weeks there would be more than one fatality, in
other weeks, none. It's difficult to determine if the greater number recently
represents a pattern in the 22nd most dangerous job in the country. Even if it does, however, that alone does not indicate
little, or declining, respect for police in a country of over 350 million people.
In some quarters, there is unjustified hostility toward the
police. It was evident in the summer and early autumn of 2020, when virtually
no one dared admit to it. (The field of skepticism should not have been left to
the overwrought and bigoted Tucker Carlson.)
There is still hostility, an anger which goes far beyond the 40, 50, 60,
or even 70 law enforcement officers who will be killed by firearm this
year. But it does no good to exaggerate
wildly the number of "good" cops, nor to imagine that the public as a
whole afford them no respect.
The ballooning billions in money and munitions the United
States is sending to Ukraine is motivated by a Democrat revenge fantasy aimed
at taking out Vladimir Putin – as payback for stealing the 2016 election from
Hillary Clinton, Tucker Carlson said Monday night.
The Fox News host laid out the case in his opening
monologue, peppered with clips of Democratic leaders saying that “total
victory” is the only outcome they seek in the bloody conflict. Carlson set out
to define what they mean by that, even as the U.S. has already sent around $30
billion to uphold Ukraine’s so-far successful defense....
“That is why they are taking us to war with Russia,” he
said. “There are a lot of things going on here, but at some level, the core
motivation is just that simple. It’s not about ‘saving democracy,’ please. We
know it’s not about protecting the sacred borders of a sovereign country; we
know the Biden Administration doesn’t are about those principles because they
run our country and we see how they act.”
Of course, this is nonsense. Assisting Ukraine with military hardware without sacrificing the lives of our own citizens. is essential to a democratic nation's
effort at staving off conquest from a totalitarian state and helping blunt
Vladimir Putin's further designs on eastern Europe.
We know also because if Democratic officials wanted to
punish anyone for upending Hillary Clinton's presidential bid in favor of
Donald Trump, they wouldn't have to go abroad and spend billions of dollars to
do so. They could more cheaply target a party more responsible than Russia
for putting Mr. Trump into the White House. In an article ripping The New York
Times for its devastatingly misleading coverage late in that campaign, in which
the Times inaccurately claimed that Hillary Clinton and not Donald Trump was
being investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Will Bunch reminds
us
It was arguably the most consequential “October Surprise” in
the history of American presidential elections. In the waning days of the 2016
race, with polls showing Hillary Clinton clinging to a lead over Donald Trump,
two last-minute stories broke that rekindled on-the-fence voters’ ethical
doubts about Democrat Clinton and quashed a budding scandal around her GOP
rival.
Except the “October Surprise” was no surprise to one key
player: Rudolph Giuliani, the ex-New York City mayor and Trump insider who
later became the 45th president’s attorney. Late that month, Giuliani told Fox
News that the trailing Republican nominee had “a surprise or two that you’re
going to hear about in the next few days. I mean, I’m talking about some pretty
big surprises.”
Just two days later, then-FBI director James Comey revealed
the bureau had reopened its probe into Clinton’s emails, based on the possible
discovery of new communications on a laptop belonging to disgraced New York
politico Anthony Weiner. The news jolted the campaign with a particularly
strong boost from the New York Times, which devoted two-thirds of its front
page to the story — and the notion it was a major blow to Clinton’s prospects.
It was later reported that Comey was motivated to make the
unusual announcement about the laptop because he feared leaks from the FBI’s
New York field office, which, according to Reuters, had “a faction of
investigators based in the office known to be hostile to Hillary Clinton.”
Indeed, Giuliani bragged immediately after that he had sources in the FBI,
including current agents.
The supposed bombshell — it turned out there was nothing
incriminating or particularly new on the laptop — wasn’t the only FBI-related
story that boosted Trump in the homestretch of the 2016 campaign. On Oct. 31,
citing unnamed “intelligence sources,” the Times reported, “Investigating
Donald Trump, F.B.I. Sees No Clear Link to Russia.” That article defused a
budding scandal about the GOP White House hopeful — at least until after
Trump’s shock election on Nov. 8, 2016. In the coming days and weeks, the basis
of that Times article would melt, but by then the most unlikely POTUS in U.S.
history was ensconced in the Oval Office.
There are many reasons for Trump’s victory, but experts have
argued the FBI disclosures were decisive. In 2017, polling guru Nate Silver
argued that the Comey probe disclosure cost Clinton as many as 3-4 percentage
points and at least 1 percentage point, which would have flipped Pennsylvania,
Michigan, and Wisconsin and handed her the Electoral College.
If Democrats wanted to seek and destroy anyone for
turning the election around, they probably would have focused on the FBI. They could have turned on it but instead have
consistently supported the bureau- while Republicans have been on the attack- for the past several years. Bunch adds
This week’s stunning corruption charges against a top FBI
spymaster who assumed a key role in the bureau’s New York office just weeks
before 2016′s “October surprise” — an agent who by 2018 was known to be working
for a Vladimir Putin-tied Russian oligarch — should cause America to rethink
everything we think we know about the Trump-Russia scandal and how it really
happened that Trump won that election.
The government allegations against the former G-man Charles
McGonigal (also accused of taking a large foreign payment while still on the
FBI payroll) and the outsized American influence of the
sanctioned-and-later-indicted Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska — also tied to
U.S. pols from Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort to Senate GOP leader Mitch
McConnell — should make us also look again at what was really up with the FBI
in 2016.
Recognizing that The Times should apologize for its role in
"this fiasco," Bunch argues that The Times should apologize for its
"flawed coverage" in this "fiasco," which can be attributed
to "its near certainty that Clinton would win and a desire to show its
aggressiveness toward a future president seemed to have skewed its
coverage."
There were some individuals, probably Rudy Giuliani and
Charles McGonigal among them, who did not harbor that certainty that Hillary
Clinton would win the election.
Giuliani, a former US Attorney for the Southern District of New York and
McGonigal, a high-ranking FBI official in the New York office, had in common
one thing- the New York field office of the FBI.
The decision of director James
Comey to publicize widely an investigation of Hillary Clinton while hiding one
of Donald Trump is the major reason the former Senator and Secretary of State
lost the presidential race to a corrupt businessman and accomplished
actor. Besides whitewashing history, the failure of the news media
to acknowledge the connection between the Federal Bureau of Investigation
and the election outcome has given dishonest individuals such as Tucker Carlson license
to undermine support given by the USA, and especially the Democratic Party. to
the people of Ukraine.
