Just released! Nike Commemorative Shoes

Ed. here. If it were up to Walt, we'd just repost articles from the Babylon Bee, "your trusted source for Christian satire". Every day. But that wouldmean he would never have to write anything again. It's bad enough that I let him get away with just a big picture or two, earlier this week. That said, some of BB's stuff is just too good not to share with you. Like this.

Taken from "Nike Releases Commemorative Shoe To Honor Looters", 2/6/20. Keep up the good work, Bee people!

It was inevitable: Al Sharpton to eulogize George Floyd

It had to happen. The only strange thing is that it took so long! When I first wrote about the inevitable "protests" (read: race riots) that followed the killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis cop (see "There's gonna be riotin', by George!", WWW 28/5/20), I said "The 'Reverend' Al Sharpton is expected to jet into the Twin Cities today to add his voice of reason to the clamour."

If you don't know who "Reverend Al" is, Google his name + Tawana Brawley. Way back in 1987, Ms Brawley, then a black teenager (no longer a teen but still black), said she had been raped and kidnapped by a group of white men in Dutchess County, NY. Her story of being attacked, scrawled with racial slurs, smeared with feces and left beside a road wrapped in a plastic bag made front pages across the nation, especially after "Reverend Al" took up her case.

Unfortunately for him and for her, a special state grand jury later determined that Ms Brawley had fabricated her claims, perhaps to avoid punishment for staying out late. In 1998, Steven Pagones, who was the county prosecutor at the time, won a defamation suit against Mr Sharpton, Ms Brawley and her attorneys, who had accused Pagones of being among Brawley's attackers.

NPR quotes the Village Voice as saying that "Sharpton has since paid off his [$65,000] debt with money raised by his supporters." Ms Brawley was ordered to pay $190,000, which, with interest, had grown to a debt of more than $430,000 by 2013. By that time, Mr Pagones had received about $3700, less than 1% of what he was owed. How much has been paid since is a mystery.

But I digress. I was talking about the latest appearance of "Reverend Al". I was only wrong about the timing. (Lifetime pct .980.) He is at the top of the card -- chief eulogist -- for the memorial service for George Floyd, which will take place at North Central University in Minneapolis at 1300 CDT. The family's lawyer, Algonquin J. Calhoun, will also speak. Don't miss it.

History repeats itself

I've been reading Niall Ferguson's monumental work The War of the World: Twentieth-Century Conflict and the Descent of the West (Penguin 2006), and, in the Epilogue, came across the following passage.

On January 20, 1969, it was becoming hard for Americans to feel optimistic.... American society itself seemed to be fragmenting. There were race riots in the inner cities and demonstrations in the universities; young fought old, black fought white, redneck fought hippy, student fought cop. Race was one of the main bones of contention.

What's the significance of 20 January 1969? That was the date of Richard Nixon's inauguration.

Footnote: In the very last paragraph of The War of the World, Niall Ferguson wrote (in 2006, remember): [H.G. Wells's] The War of the Worlds remains science fiction. The War of the World is, however, historical fact. Perhaps, like Well's story, ours will be ended abruptly by the intervention of microscopic organisms like the avian influenza virus, which could yet produce a worse mutation and pandemic than that of 1918. Until that happens, however, we remain our own worst enemies.

Black Lives Matter doesn't matter any more!

Looks like last night was comparatively peaceful across the Excited States of America. Not so much rfioting and looting as on the weekend and Monday. I expect today we'll see images of good citizens pitching in to clean up the debris left behind by even peaceful "protesters". I predict that 90% of those shown in such photos will be white. Lifetime pct .976.

You realize, gentle reader, that all the commotion in America's cities is not about George Floyd, police brutality, or even racial inequality, about which the SJWs have been moaning for two centuries.

Black lives do not matter! At least, not to antifa types, the mostly white leftists who are the real "protesters". What we are seeing is a well-organized, well-funded, violent campaign to overthrow the government of the USA. Well... not the whole government... just the man at its head, Still-President Trump.

The bad news for them -- good news for the USA -- is that the protests-cum-riots are having the opposite effect from that intended. They have all but insured the November re-election of the Donald! (Lifetime pct still .976.) I have to admit that Mr Trump hasn't come through the Covid-19 Dempanic covered with glory. But the rioters have effectivelyl ended the lockdown by defying it, and the rest of us figure that if they can take to the streets without worrying about getting the virus, we can take to the beaches!

As well, the media hysteria about "anti-black racism" has all but totally displaced the media hysteria about the Dempanic. And in this chapter of the soap opera that is American politics, President Trump is the one who looks like a hero -- the only one standing up for law and order, while dozen of weak-willed and weak-kneed Democratic politicians fall all over themselves to signal virtue and pander to the anti-American agitators.

I am now the only one who thinks that the "protesters" will succeed in keeping President Trump in the White House. Let me share a few well-chosen words from "Seven Thoughts on the Civil War the Other Side Wants So Badly", by Scott McKay, in The Spectator, 2/6/20.

The police can handle these rioters if they're allowed to. If the police can't, in some circumstances, the National Guard certainly can. This isn't some invading army; it's the dregs of society who have been induced into the streets for free air fryers from Target. The slightest application of law enforcement muscle will put this rioting down.

[On why the areas trashed by the riots won't ever be rebuilt] At the end of the day, everybody figures this is an area where the locals were so stupid and so disrespectful that they looted and burned down the very shops that kept the neighborhood going. And who wants to do business with such people?

You don't have to go any further back than 1968 to know that when America gets its fill of domestic violence and insurrection, it votes for the most conservative candidate it can find. How do you think Richard Nixon, who was the political version of a broken-down claiming horse who had lost an election for the governorship of California just a few years earlier, rolled into the White House like a tsunami? Nixon was the law-and-order candidate. It didn't really matter what else he was; the Silent Majority gave him the job and a mandate to put an end to The Sixties.

Democrats have been trying to recreate The Sixties ever since, and the public has been trying to tell them The Sixties weren't all that awesome.
Trump is going to law-and-order this all the way home. It’s an easy play for him. Trump’s response hasn’t been perfect, but he’s going to dominate the discussion the longer this goes. Do Democrats really think they’re going to beat him without even denouncing the riots? Are they that stupid?

Of course they are. Of course they are.

Well said, Mr McKay. Couldn't have said it better myself. [You got that right! Ed.]

Darkness falls on St. Louis

See "'Mayhem': 4 police officers shot during long night of violence and destruction in St. Louis", St Louis Post-Dispatch 2/6/20.

Darkness falls on New York

Darkness falls on Washington