Dem mayoral candidates now stressing law and order over BLM, 'defund the police'
In big-city mayoral elections, attracting enough votes to win apparently matters.
In city after city, Democrats who previously heeded Black Lives Matter’s calls to "defund the police" by reducing law enforcement budgets or reallocating police funds to other uses are now stressing crackdowns on crime as Election Day nears, The Washington Post reported Saturday.
"Mayors aren’t stupid, and they understand if taxpaying residents of their city start leaving, as they did in the 1970s, the whole city is endangered," Ned Hill, an Ohio State professor who studies city politics, told the newspaper.
Debates on addressing lawlessness are also taking place in cities without competitive elections, the report said.
The Democrats in cities such as New York City, Buffalo, Cleveland and Seattle may simply be reacting to the data, according to the Post, which cited last week’s Pew Research Center poll that showed 47% of Americans want police to receive more funding, not less.
That figure was up from 31% last June, amid racial justice protests, the Post reported.
U.S. cities saw killings rise by 30% in 2020 – representing the largest single-year spike since the federal government began tracking the information in the 1960s, the newspaper reported.
Perhaps reflecting the shift in voter sentiment, New York City’s Democratic mayoral nominee, Eric Adams, is a former NYPD captain, while GOP nominee Curtis Sliwa is a longtime anti-crime civic activist.
Even progressives are making adjustments, according to the Post.
In Buffalo, far-left mayoral candidate India Walton – a community activist backed by U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y. – now emphasizes better police accountability and roles for mental health professionals in reducing crime rather than her previous calls for defunding police and profanity-laced shouting during anti-police protests, the Post reported.
Nevertheless, Walton is trailing Byron Brown, Bufffalo's incumbent Democrat mayor, by 17 points in a recent poll despite having defeated Brown in a June primary. Brown is now trying to retain his office as a write-in candidate.
"Mayoral candidates are being compelled to respond to realities on the ground," Bruce Katz, director of the Nowak Metro Finance Lab at Drexel University, told the Post.
In Portland, Oregon, which last year saw a string of more than 100 days and nights of civil unrest, even Democrat Mayor Ted Wheeler – who was reelected last year -- has changed his view of some issues regarding law enforcement.
In September, Wheeler admitted that a "hands off" approach to policing for an August clash of opposing protesters was "not the right strategy," Fox News previously reported.
But low police morale resulting from last year’s the "defund the police" movement has been blamed for Portland’s struggle to recruit officers for its resurrected gun violence unit.
Last week Portland police Chief Chuck Lovell stressed the importance of staffing the unit after the city saw 19 shootings over a 54-hour period.
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Biden Admin’s Attempt to Bully Israel Via ‘Difficult’ Phone Call Fails Miserably
Efforts by Secretary of State Antony Blinken to stop Israel from building more housing in the West Bank have failed, according to a new report.
A report in the Times of Israel, citing the Walla news site, said Blinken spoke with Defense Minister Benny Gantz and scolded Israel for moving ahead with new housing that it has been planning.
On Sunday, Israel announced that it was moving forward with work to create 1,355 housing units in the West Bank, according to the Associated Press.
On Wednesday, Israel’s Defense Ministry’s higher planning council officially backed plans that had been in the works for 3,000 new homes in the West Bank, according to the Times of Israel.
The Times reported that “three unnamed Israeli officials familiar with the call” said Blinken told Gantz that Israel’s plans were “unacceptable.”
“The Americans gave us a yellow card,” a senior Israeli official is quoted as having said after the call.
The report said that Israel should consider what the Biden administration thinks when it acts in the future to add settlements.
Gantz offered soft words to Blinken saying Israel would consider what the Biden administration might have to say, according to the Times.
The Blinken call came after days of American disapproval.
When news of the new housing first emerged, Michael Ratney, America’s top diplomat in Jerusalem, called Israeli official Shimrit Meir to complain, in a conversation Axios said its sources described as “difficult.”
On Tuesday, U.S. State Department spokesman Ned Price said during a briefing that the Biden administration was “deeply concerned about the Israeli Government’s plan to advance thousands of settlement units tomorrow, Wednesday, many of them deep in the West Bank.”
“We strongly oppose the expansion of settlements, which is completely inconsistent with efforts to lower tensions and to ensure calm, and it damages the prospects for a two-state solution,” Price said.
On Friday, Price made a similar statement, but targeted both Israel and the Palestinian Authority. Tuesday’s statement only chided Israel.
“We are concerned about the announcement of a meeting next week to advance settlement units deep in the West Bank, and believe it is critical for Israel and the Palestinian Authority to refrain from unilateral steps that exacerbate tension and undercut efforts to advance a negotiated two-state solution,” Price said on Friday, Axios reported.
The scolding of Israel comes at a time filled with a lot of anti-Israel sentiment. Douglas Schoen and Andrew Stein noted in an Op-Ed in the New York Post that these feelings against Israel have “even infiltrated US policymaking, sending an even louder message and carrying real consequences for Israel.”
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CNN Outfoxed: Conservative Programs Occupy Nearly Every Slot in the Top 15 Most Popular News Shows
It’s a good time to be a conservative cable news network, despite what the liberal media overlords want you to believe.
Tuesday was a particularly strong day for Fox News, as the network took 14 of the top 15 top cable slots, with “The Five,” “Tucker Carlson Tonight” and “Hannity” being the top three, according to Nielsen Media Research.
Fox News is offering its audience an alternative to most of the establishment media’s talk and opinion programs, which are acting as if former President Donald Trump is still in office.
They are likely attracting conservatives and even moderates who are looking for criticism of the Biden administration as opposed to praise from lapdog Beltway journalists.
People tuned into liberal media religiously from the moment Trump announced his candidacy in June 2015, and the circus raged on throughout his tenure in the White House in order to provide negative coverage around the clock.
Outside of primetime talk shows, CNN’s “New Day” morning show is suffering a serious ratings decline.
In the Nielsen rating without repeats, “New Day” ranked below the top 70 shows on cable news on Tuesday, and it has experienced a 40 percent decline in ratings since Brianna Keilar began co-anchoring the program in April.
On Wednesday, the show had its lowest viewership in six years, mustering only an average of 304,000 viewers, Nielsen data suggests.
By contrast, “Fox and Friends” has pulled in over 1.3 million viewers on Wednesday, a clear display of a much larger fanbase.
It should be no surprise that in a nation where the majority of the establishment media leans left, the right-leaning cable networks, which are fewer in number, would perform better.
Newsmax also made waves with its rankings as well, as its shows are also consistently making it in the top 70 on cable as the network caters to a populist right audience.
Establishment outlets used to include more political perspectives in their programming, but they have grown increasingly partisan.
Many Americans do not want to hear sugarcoated talking points about the Biden White House, especially given the current economic issues consumers are facing.
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The End of American Courage
It’s “the ability to disregard fear.” That’s how the Oxford Dictionary defines courage. There are many things of which we’re fearful, and whether or not we face most of them is unimportant. Disregarding a fear of spiders to kill one doesn’t constitute courage. The Oxford Dictionary places the definition in context by further stating “the courage to act on one’s beliefs.” And in their beliefs is where Americans have faltered.
The definition of belief is “a person’s religion; religious conviction.” Our personal beliefs are arguably the most sacred part of us, and not having the courage to act upon them indicates we truly don’t possess them.
Over the centuries, Americans have demonstrated such courage to defend their beliefs in the face of grave dangers. Over the decades, however, Americans seem to have become alarmingly disenchanted with the idea of courage, much less religious conviction. As a result, America now stands on the threshold between preservation and neglection.
The Undermining of American Courage
Today, we’re too smart for religious convictions or belief in God. And that in itself is just the problem—not that we don’t believe in God, but that we sense our national brilliance can’t allow such a concession.
The argument for our brilliance is not even personal, but collective. It’s the idea that we, on an individual level, may not be that smart, but those in charge—those at the highest levels of science, academia, and law—know better than we do. They’re our collective thought process, and if they suggest that God is a fictional aspiration we should relinquish, then we believe they have a valid point, even if we decide to hold on to our belief.
This is how the demise of any society begins. We’re told what to think. Even if we choose to do otherwise, we’ve allowed something just as deadly to poison our individuality: we’ve allowed the powerful and the brilliant to suggest they can at least attempt to dictate our patterns of thought.
These dictatorial powers harnessed by corporate executives, tenured professors, mainstream journalists, sinister psychologists, and egotistic bureaucrats have made the average American sense—even if subconsciously—that perhaps it’s best they don’t have a say in the local conversation, much less the national one. So Americans have learned to self-censor. In other words, Americans have silenced their beliefs.
The Result of Silence
This current stream of soft dictatorship is reminiscent of what Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn expressed during a speech he gave in London in 1983:
“Over half a century ago, while I was still a child, I recall hearing a number of older people offer the following explanation for the great disasters that had befallen Russia: ‘Men have forgotten God; that’s why all this has happened.’”
Now, to make such a statement meant that “God” had actually not been “forgotten.” What it indicates is that those personal beliefs were no longer consequential. They meant nothing. Those beliefs were no longer tolerated being discussed with anyone outside their immediate and trusted circle, and even that was risky.
By the time this statement had been made, the Russian Revolution had accomplished its objective to not merely crush opposition, but also to crush the very idea of becoming the opposition. The only way to become the opposition is to discuss opposition in the marketplace of ideas. A democratic society can’t last—indeed, it won’t last—if the marketplace is shuttered.
A comparison between Stalinist Russia and modern America is unfair because they’re clearly not equivalent. This is why the statement that Solzhenitsyn heard as a child is so important. Solzhenitsyn was born in 1918, a year into the Revolution. The older people he overheard had witnessed the devolvement of the Russian Empire into the USSR. So they understood “why all this ha[d] happened.”
This is the potential equivalent of Stalinist Russia. What will our grandchildren overhear in the years to come?
Democracy Depends on the Marketplace of Ideas
The idea of “God” was the fundamental basis for Englishmen coming to these shores. George Washington considered religion and morality two “indispensable supports” that held up America’s foundation. Many other Founders felt the same.
The marketplace has introduced many terrible ideas that have moved America away from God. The devolvement has no doubt been a long process. From the theory of evolution taking over as the only scientific reason for human existence to embracing the idea that human existence is arbitrary and can be aborted with little to no objection. From the idea that women can’t legally have the same rights as men to the absurd suggestion that surgically women can become men (and vice versa).
The list of ideas that have been inflicted on American society is ongoing and at times devastating. This doesn’t mean that these types of ideas should be shouldered for eternity. Bad ideas should be allowed a spot in the marketplace. It’s the only way to spot the good from the bad. The problem is when the powers advocate bad ideas, introduce them to society, and then force that society to engage in those ideas (whether they believe in them or not is also inconsequential).
The danger Americans face, which is equivalent to Stalinist Russia, is that the opportunity to circumvent bad ideas is becoming more and more restricted. It’s reminiscent of another Solzhenitsyn quote: “Beaten down, sickly, virtue has now been allowed to enter in all its tatters and sit in the corner, as long as it doesn’t raise its voice.”
If logic and reason, along with faith and virtue, are no longer allowed spots in the marketplace, then we doom our grandchildren to soon overhear our frightening statements.
In this day and age, perhaps more than any other time in American history (and I don’t write that haphazardly), we need American courage. We must conduct ourselves according to the dictates of our consciences.
It’s time to voice our beliefs and preserve that for which we stand. This is not a time to compare modern America with Stalinist Russia. It’s a time to compare America with what those older Russians witnessed at the beginning.
If we fail to do so, it will be the end of American courage. And without that, it will lead to the end of America altogether.
https://www.theepochtimes.com/mkt_morningbrief/the-end-of-american-courage_4074605.html
****************************************My other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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