Posted by Scott Johnson
City Journal’s Myron
Magnet argues that President Obama has set back race relations in the United
States by 50 years and accordingly deserves recognition as America’s
worst president. Toward the end of his column Magnet observes:
True
to form, Obama went into grievance-mongering mode on July 7, commenting on the
killings of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile by cops in Louisiana and
Minnesota. He noted that “all of us as Americans should be troubled by these
shootings, because these are not isolated incidents. They’re symptomatic of a
broader set of racial disparities that exist in our criminal justice system.”
And he went on to detail law enforcement’s racial disparities, as if there were
not even more stark and troubling racial disparities in lawbreaking. His
familiar conclusion: “If you add it all up, the African American and
Hispanic population, who make up only 30 percent of the general population,
make up more than half of the incarcerated population. Now, these are
facts. And when incidents like this occur, there’s a big chunk of our fellow
citizenry that feels as if because of the color of their skin, they are not
being treated the same. And that hurts.”
Obama’s cause, as it
turns out, is represented by the racial arsonists of the Black Lives Matters
crowd.
Obama therefore counsels the group and speaks on its behalf. Obama took time
out in Spain on Saturday to render advice. The White House has posted the text
of Obama’s statement and answers to questions; the Washington Examiner extracts
relevant in its
report:
“Whenever
those of us who are concerned about failures of the criminal justice system
attack police, you are doing a disservice to the cause,” Obama said in remarks
to reporters in Spain, where he is traveling. “Any violence directed at police
officers is a reprehensible crime and needs to be prosecuted,” he said.
Even
rhetorically, if we paint police with a broad brush, or “say things that are
stupid or imprudent,” it risks losing ground for the reform cause, Obama said.
“In
a movement like Black Lives Matter, there are always going to be folks who say
things that are stupid or imprudent or over-generalized or harsh,” Obama said.
“And I don’t think that you can hold well-meaning activists who are doing the
right thing, peacefully protesting, responsible for everything that is uttered
at a protest site … I would just say that everybody who’s concerned about the
issue of police shootings or racial bias in the criminal justice system, that
maintaining a truthful and serious and respectful tone is going to help
mobilize American society to bring about real change. And that is our ultimate
objective.”
With his characteristically perfect timing, coincidentally,
Obama declared, “You’re not seeing riots.” Later
that day, however, we were seeing riots right here in St. Paul.
In his remarks in
Spain Obama decried “the larger, persistent problem of African Americans and
Latinos being treated differently in our criminal justice system.” Yet there is
no disparate treatment; this is Obama’s big lie. It’s
not just Obama’s, of course, but Obama has adopted it as his own and turned
it to his own uses. It’s all about “fundamental transformation.”
Racial disparities
permeate the criminal justice system. They do not derive from police misconduct
or a broken criminal justice system. They derive from underlying behavioral
disparities. Racial disparities in the criminal justice system reflect the
underlying behavioral disparities. Obama’s “cause,” as he refers to it, is
founded on a poisonous lie.
Obama and his
Attorney General are responsible for the operation of the criminal justice
system on the federal side. You’d have a hard time understanding that from
Obama’s condemnation of the criminal justice system. Nevertheless, the
racial disparities that Obama decries permeate the federal justice system as
well as those of the states — and for the same reasons.
In her testimony to
the Senate Judiciary Committee this past October, Heather Mac Donald made this
elementary plea: “[L]et me say that the committee would provide an enormous
public service if it could rebut the myth that the criminal justice system is
racist.” The same point applies many times over to Obama, but he prefers to
stand on the big lie for its many and varied uses.
______________________POWERLINE
Posted by Paul Mirengoff
Before he received
his just reward, Micah Johnson left no doubt about why he had gone on his
killing spree in Dallas. Johnson wanted to kill white people, especially
white officers, he
told the police officers who were closing in on him.
Clearly, Johnson
hated white people. He was driven by racism.
Johnson’s statement
wasn’t good enough for President Obama, though. According
to Obama, it is “very hard to untangle the motives of this shooter.”
Nonsense. One might discuss
the origins of Johnson’s intense hatred for whites and whether mental illness
contributed, as Obama seemed to suggest. But Johnson’s motive is clear. It’s
as clear as Dylann Roof’s motive for killing blacks in Charleston, South Carolina
— a motive no one had trouble untangling.
By making such a
foolish statement, Obama loses credibility. He creates the impression that
he’s glossing over obvious black racism, which ought to disqualify him from
being taken seriously when he talks about race relations, and will disqualify
him in the view of many whites. (This may be why the mainstream media doesn’t
seem to be reporting Obama’s statement.)
Not to be outdone,
Jeh Johnson, Obama’s head of DHS, stated
today that “it’s still relatively early” to conclude that Micah Johnson’s
shooting were a hate crime. CBS’s John Dickerson asked:
You
said there’s no link to a terrorist organization here, but the shooting in
Dallas was by any definition terrorism and a hate crime, wasn’t it.
Johnson replied:
Well,
there’s still an investigation being conducted by the Dallas police department
and the FBI supported by many resources from the local government and the
federal government. So it’s still relatively early.
What does Johnson
think will occur in the investigation to show that Johnson didn’t commit a hate
crime? Will the “many resources” of the government put the killer back together
again so he can take back his acknowledgment that he wanted to kill whites?
Jeh Johnson isn’t
stupid and neither is President Obama. They deny the obvious because they
are unwilling to speak honestly about race when black racism is involved.
I won’t try to
untangle the motives behind this dishonesty. I do know this: racially
motivated dishonesty by national leaders won’t improve race relations; it will
only make them worse.
POWERLINE
Posted on by John Hinderaker
Hundreds of Black
Limes Matter rioters shut down Highway 94, a major interstate that connects
Minneapolis and St. Paul, for several hours last night. The rioters bombarded police with chunks of concrete, pieces
of rebar and other hard objects, injuring 21 police officers. One policeman suffered a broken vertebrae when a
concrete block was dropped on his head from above. Around 100 rioters were
arrested.
Policemen ultimately
dispersed the rioters with pepper spray.
St. Paul Police Chief
Todd Axtell was
outraged:
“This
is the first time in my 28 years we have observed this level of violence toward
our public servants,” Axtell said. “It’s really a disgrace.”
The
chief said the protesters “turned into criminals. I am absolutely disgusted,
[and] I am not going to tolerate it.
Let’s hope not. Let’s
hope they don’t continue to tolerate the shutting down of major highways,
either.
When mass murderer
Micah Johnson struck during a Black Lives Matter protest in Dallas, a stark
line was drawn between the peaceful protesters–everyone except Johnson–and the
murderer. But it doesn’t take long for those lines to be blurred. Many of
the hundreds of rioters who closed down Highway 94 were evidently willing to be
murderers, as their concrete blocks and rebar could easily have killed one
or more policemen. In truth, on the Left there is not a sharp division between
the violent and the non-violent, but rather a continuum that runs from
demonstrators to protesters to rioters to looters to rock throwers to arsonists
to killers. There is no such thing as a political Left without violence.
Rest assured that we
will see plenty more violence before the Black Lives Matter movement has
served its political purpose and is put to rest.
