RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-virus-lab-theorys-new-credibility-11622066808?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

President Biden on Wednesday ordered U.S. intelligence to dig deeper into the origins of Covid-19, a reversal after he reportedly ordered a State Department investigative unit shut down. Mr. Biden is trying to cover for his embarrassing closure of the investigation because the dam has finally broken on the evidence that the virus may have escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV). The shame is that it took so long because the suspicious facts have been apparent from the start.**

In January 2020, international media began reporting about a virus spreading in the Chinese city of Wuhan. “The coronavirus could result in a global pandemic,” said Sen. Tom Cotton on Jan. 30, 2020. “I would note that Wuhan has China’s only biosafety level-four super laboratory that works with the world’s most deadly pathogens to include, yes, coronavirus.”

The world would learn more about Covid-19—and the WIV. But it was always reasonable to ask if the virus came from a nearby lab that handled dangerous viruses. On Feb. 6, 2020, Botao Xiao of the South China University of Technology posted a paper concluding the virus “probably originated from a laboratory in Wuhan.” But the Chinese government strictly controls research into Covid-19’s origins, and the molecular biomechanics researcher withdrew his publication.

The Communist Party then went on offense, with Beijing’s ambassador to the U.S. declaring that lab-leak theories were “absolutely crazy” and could “fan up racial discrimination, xenophobia.” After Mr. Cotton responded by calling on China to “open up now to competent international scientists,” the media chose denial: “Tom Cotton keeps repeating a coronavirus conspiracy theory that was already debunked” (Washington Post) and “Senator Tom Cotton Repeats Fringe Theory of Coronavirus Origins” ( New York Times ).

https://www.wsj.com/articles/cities-reverse-defunding-the-police-amid-rising-crime-11622066307?mod=hp_lead_pos5

One year after the movement to “defund” law enforcement began to upend municipal budgets, many American cities are restoring money to their police departments or proposing to spend more.

In New York City, Mayor Bill de Blasio said he would reinstate $92 million for a new precinct after scrapping the project last summer. The mayor of Baltimore, who led efforts as a city councilman to cut the police budget by $22 million last year, recently proposed a $27 million increase.

After attacks on Asian-Americans and a rise in homicides in Oakland, Calif., city lawmakers in April restored $3.3 million of the $29 million in police cuts, and the mayor is now proposing to increase the department’s budget by $24 million. Los Angeles’s mayor has proposed an increase of about $50 million after the city cut $150 million from its police department last year.

In the nation’s 20 largest local law-enforcement agencies, city and county leaders want funding increases for nine of the 12 departments where next year’s budgets already have been proposed. The increases range from 1% to nearly 6%.

Many U.S. cities are led by Democrats who supported protesters’ calls to defund the police—a term that activists have used in different ways, including to push for simply shrinking the size of police forces but also shifting resources from law enforcement to social services. The demonstrations, led by Black Lives Matter and allied groups, followed the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer last year.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/05/a-closer-look-at-the-legacy-of-george-floyds-death/

It is right to condemn excessive police force. To turn Floyd into a hero of a racialized morality play is inane.

T oday marks one year since the death of George Floyd in police custody — I can never get used to invoking the term “anniversary” in connection with such dark events. There is, as one has come to expect, no shortage of vaporous talk about Floyd’s “legacy.” We should not, however, conflate the man with the event.

Floyd should not have died as he did. For their complicity in his demise, four former Minneapolis police are being held accountable, beginning with Derek Chauvin, who was convicted last month. Still, a stubborn fact remains: Floyd bore significant responsibility for the tragedy that unfolded.

There was probable cause that he committed a crime. He was not profiled or otherwise singled out for harassment by police officers acting on suspicions rooted in “systemic racism.” To the contrary, a local food-store merchant complained to police that Floyd had passed a counterfeit $20 bill. That complaint was based on a report by the young black cashier who handled the transaction and whom Floyd willfully put in an unfair position — either speak up or be personally liable for the store’s loss. Before calling the police, store employees, including the cashier, twice implored Floyd (who was parked outside) to come inside and settle the problem that he had caused. He refused. And although Floyd had serious health issues — e.g., an enlarged heart, hypertension, narrowings in major passages near his aorta, and a recent bout with COVID — he continued to abuse illegal narcotics and was at the time ingesting a potentially deadly combination of fentanyl and methamphetamine.

Floyd was a tragic figure, but not an admirable one. What happened last Memorial Day was not his first run-in with the law — far from it. In the decade beginning in 1997, when he was 23, he was arrested at least nine times. Several of these resulted in criminal convictions, generally for small-time narcotics and theft offenses. The resulting prison stints were usually short. But not all of them.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/05/bidens_unconscionable_validation_of_antisemitism.html

It is hardly a new phenomenon that the American left has over time become so radical that a vicious form of anti-Semitism has become its norm.  The Democrat party could, once upon a time, be counted upon to firmly support Israel against its enemies here and abroad, but no more.  The party now openly embraces proud anti-Semites like Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, and AOC.

Just the other day, Tlaib harangued Biden for thirty minutes on the tarmac at Detroit Airport.  She supports the terrorist organization Hamas and was furious that Israel was so effectively defending itself.  Biden praised her “passion” without a word of support for Israel.  Biden had recently handed over $234,000,000 to the Palestinians, which they promptly used to attack Israel.

Iran was and is completely on board, using Hamas as its proxy.  And even as twenty to thirty percent of their rockets fell on their own people, Hamas, as usual, using its civilian population as human shields, the Democrats still supported the terrorists.  They even voted against sanctioning foreign entities that provided financial aid to Hamas!  They voted against providing additional funding to Israel for the Iron Dome missile defense system.

The despicable AOC and her Squad have introduced a resolution that would block arms sales to Israel.  As any sentient person should know, there is no moral equivalency between Israel and Hamas.  And as everyone should also know, the destruction of Israel is the essence of Hamas’s charter.

Throughout the Hamas/Israel violence, Biden offered no support for Israel beyond his mild “Israel has a right to defend itself.”  In effect, he succumbed to Tlaib’s shrieking pro-Palestinian rant.  So, with the permission granted by default to anti-Semites everywhere, attacks on Jews are occurring everywhere.