Crime rates rise as a result of their policies.
June 3, 2021
ITEM #1: Democrats have been shamelessly playing politics with public safety for a long time now.
And the disastrous consequences continue to add up.
Tucker Carlson ran an eye-opening segment on this on his show earlier this week, and we can’t urge you strongly enough to watch it. It’s available here.
In particular, Carlson took aim at the left’s attempts to attribute the recent, staggering rise in crime rates to the coronavirus pandemic:
"Right, it must have been the pandemic. It makes sense because we forced everyone to stay home. That’s why there are so many people on the street shooting each other and pushing strangers into oncoming subway cars. Does that make sense to you? No, it doesn’t make sense to anyone. But thankfully experts soon emerged to explain why something so obviously untrue must in fact be true.
"'Because the stresses of the pandemic are everywhere,' explained a former CIA officer called Jeff Asher to the New York Times, 'you are seeing this everywhere.'”
Carlson points out the obvious problem with that argument:
"Except we’re not seeing it everywhere, that’s not true.
"The coronavirus may be global, but rising crime rates are not global. Police in Canada reported that crime fell by 18 percent between March and October 2020. In the U.K., crime saw its biggest annual decrease in a decade. In Sweden and Russia, crime dropped too. Even in Mexico, which is in the middle of a drug war, there were fewer homicides in 2020 than there were in 2019. For normal countries, the pandemic meant more Netflix and less killing.
"But not here. In the United States, the opposite happened. A lot of Netflix, even more killings. You're seeing the data on your screen now; it's from a nonprofit called The Council on Criminal Justice and researchers at the University of Missouri. It shows the average weekly homicide rate in 21 major cities. Killings spiked in late May, well after the pandemic began.
"According to the Council on Criminal Justice, 'Homicides, aggravated assaults, and gun assaults rose significantly beginning in late May and June of 2020. They jumped by 42% during the summer and 34% in the fall when compared to the summer and fall of 2019.' So far this year, these sad trends have continued.
"Murders are up 800 percent in Portland, 56 percent in Minneapolis, 27 percent in Los Angeles, 22 percent in New York, and 40 percent in Philadelphia."
Carlson continued:
“So you have to ask yourself, because your life may depend on it, why is this country different from Sweden, Russia, and Mexico? You know the answer. It’s not COVID. It’s that in our country, stupid, malicious people took full control — the Democratic Party took full control of the country — and their policies resulted in a huge number of killings.”
The segment includes a mash-up of Democrats calling for a “reimagining” of public safety. The ramifications are far from imaginary.
More Carlson:
“Well, they definitely reimagined public safety, they made the public much less safe. According to a report in Axios, 20 major U.S. cities have slashed their police budgets in the last year — they defunded the police. Collectively, they’ve cut more than $840 million from law enforcement.”
We have to ask: How many lives must be lost, and how many livelihoods have to be destroyed, before the radical leftists running today’s Democrat Party are ever held to account for their unconscionable recklessness?
ITEM #2: We found this next one funny … though apparently not for the reasons at least one person intended.
Fox News’ Brandon Gillespie reports:
"A Wall Street Journal columnist mocked Vice President Kamala Harris' Friday commencement speech at the U.S. Naval Academy in a piece centering on the 'face-plant' joke she told about solar panels.
"Editor-at-large and Fox News contributor Gerry Baker referred Monday to Harris' speech as 'one of the worst 2021 commencement speeches,' and provided what he jokingly pictured was the process her staff went through to write the one-liner that appeared to go over with a thud.
"'Just ask any Marine today, would she rather carry 20 pounds of batteries or a rolled-up solar panel, and I am positive she will tell you a solar panel — and so would he,' Harris quipped at the commencement to a near silent response, with the exception of her own well-known laugh.
"'Have you heard the one about the Marine with the rolled-up solar panel?' Baker wrote, before saying Harris' attempt at humor 'wasn't exactly Bob Hope and the USO.'
"'The rest of the audience looked like they wanted to crawl under the nearest solar panel,' he jokingly added."
We’d suggest Harris give up comedy and stick to her day job, but we’re not so sure she’s cut out for that, either.
ITEM #3: Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Cullors is stepping down as the group's executive director, Thomas Barrabi reports, "amid questions about her finances."
Barrabi adds:
"Cullors, 37, told the Associated Press on Thursday that she was leaving the position to focus on other projects, including the release of her second book and a television deal with Warner Bros. She held the top post at Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation for more than five years."
Cullors also bemoaned what she described as “right-wing attacks that tried to discredit my character.”
Let’s take a closer look at that character, shall we?
Barrabi notes that:
“Cullors' finances drew attention in April after the New York Post reported she had purchased four homes for $3.2 million. The report prompted Hawk Newsome, the head of Black Lives Matter Greater New York City, to call for an 'independent investigation' into the foundation’s finances. …
“Critics have pointed out that Cullors bought the high-end homes despite referring to herself as a 'trained Marxist' in the past.”
Other recent revelations about Cullors include her calling for the end of Israel in 2015, and a video of her expressing enthusiasm over a book that echoed the writings of Mao Zedong.
In other BLM-related news:
“The founder of Black Lives Matter (BLM) in St. Paul, Minnesota, recently released a video in which he called out the group's ‘ugly truth,’ by which he meant their positions on family and education.
"‘In 2015, I was the founder of Black Lives Matter in St. Paul,’ said Rashad Turner, who now leads the pro-school choice group Minnesota Parent Union.
"‘I believed the organization stood for exactly what the name implies — Black lives do matter. However, after a year on the inside, I learned they had little concern for rebuilding Black families,’ he added.”
In the video, which is available here, Turner highlights BLM’s call to "disrupt the nuclear family structure” and doesn’t hold back in his criticism:
"‘And they cared even less,’ Turner added, ‘about improving the quality of education for students in Minneapolis. That was made clear when they publicly denounced charter schools alongside the teachers' union.’
"’I was an insider in Black Lives Matter and I learned the ugly truth — the moratorium on charter schools does not support rebuilding the Black family. But it does create barriers to a better education for Black children.’"
The mainstream press has showered endlessly fawning coverage on BLM from Day 1, and in doing so has willfully ignored the reality of the group’s nature. Finally and fortunately, the truth — the ugly truth, in Turner’s words — is starting to get out.
ITEM #4: Ready for some more word games from the mainstream “news” media?
Fox News’ Joseph Wulfsohn reports:
"The media appeared to have downplayed the migrant status of the murderer who was convicted in the brutal 2018 killing of 20-year-old college student Mollie Tibbetts.
"Cristhian Bahena Rivera was found guilty of first-degree murder on Friday after a two-week trial in Davenport, Iowa, in a case that drew national attention because of the suspect's immigration status.
"However, media outlets are burying the fact that Rivera was in the country illegally when he murdered Tibbetts.
"'Farm worker found guilty of killing University of Iowa student Mollie Tibbetts,' CNN wrote in its headline.
"CNN's report didn't mention that the convicted murderer was an 'undocumented immigrant' from Mexico until the fifth paragraph.
"The AP similarly ran the headline, 'Farm laborer convicted in 2018 stabbing death of Iowa runner.'
"'The verdict came after a two-week trial at the Scott County Courthouse in Davenport, in a case that fueled public anger against illegal immigration and concerns about random violence against women,' the AP reported in the fourth paragraph."
Talk about burying the lead!
ITEM #5: And lastly, the award for “most overdue and pathetic news story correction” goes to … the Washington Post.
Fox News reports:
"The Washington Post issued a correction 15 months after alleging Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., was peddling a 'debunked' 'conspiracy theory' about the origins of the coronavirus pandemic.
"Much of the media last year was quick to dismiss the possibility that the virus stemmed from a leak from the Wuhan Virology Lab in China, a theory that was promoted by top Republicans including Cotton and then-President Trump and then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
"Over the weekend, however, the Post revised the February 2020 report which had the headline, 'Tom Cotton keeps repeating a coronavirus conspiracy theory that was already debunked.'
"'Earlier versions of this story and its headline inaccurately characterized comments by Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) regarding the origins of the coronavirus,' the correction read at the top of the report. 'The term “debunked” and The Post’s use of “conspiracy theory” have been removed because, then as now, there was no determination about the origins of the virus.'
"The headline was changed to 'Tom Cotton keeps repeating a coronavirus fringe theory that scientists have disputed.'"
Notice how even the “corrected” version of the headline is still an attempt to spin the story to cast Cotton in a bad light.
Cotton, who is part of the speaker lineup for the 6th Annual Basque Fry in Gardnerville on August 14, was among the first to challenge the conventional wisdom about the virus’ origin, and the evidence continues to vindicate his skepticism. We’re sure he’ll have a thing or two to say on the matter when he joins us at Corley Ranch, and you can reserve your spot to be there as well by clicking here.
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