'Orange Man Bad!'

At the Other McCain, "‘Orange Man Bad!’ Trump Still Living Rent-Free in the Left’s Collective Head."

Quoting Glenn Reynolds, who quotes the article on the "Progressive Meltdown":

Woke white people are annoying, stupid, and frequently vicious. Fortunately they’re also usually self-destructive and incompetent. But ultimately, this is just Trump exercising a magical power to destroy his enemies via their own ideology:

Sooner or later, each interview for this story landed on the election of Trump in 2016 as a catalyst. Whatever internal tension had been pulling at the seams of organizations in the years prior, Trump’s shock victory sharpened the focus of activists and regular people alike. The institutional progressive world based in Washington, D.C., reacted slowly, shell-shocked and unsure of its place, but people outside those institutions raced ahead of them. A period of mourning turned into fierce determination to resist. Spontaneous women’s marches were called in scores of cities, drawing as many as 5 million people, a shocking display of force. (Their collapse in a heap of identitarian recriminations is its own parable for this moment.)

 

How Meltdowns Brought Progressive Groups to a Standstill at a Critical Moment in World History

At the Intercept, "Elephant in the Zoom":

EVERYONE ACKNOWLEDGED THAT Zoom was less than ideal as a forum for a heartfelt conversation on systemic racism and policing. But the meeting was urgent, and, a little more than two months into the Covid-19 lockdown, it would have to do.

During the first week of June 2020, teams of workers and their managers came together across the country to share how they were responding to the murder of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis and to chart out what — if anything — their own company or nonprofit could do to contribute toward the reckoning with racial injustice that was rapidly taking shape.

On June 2, one such huddle was organized by the Washington, D.C., office of the Guttmacher Institute, the abortion rights movement’s premier research organization.

Heather Boonstra, vice president of public policy, began by asking how people were “finding equilibrium” — one of the details we know because it was later shared by staff with Prism, an outlet that covers social justice advocacy and the impacts of injustice.

She talked about the role systemic racism plays in society and the ways that Guttmacher’s work could counter it. Staff suggestions, though, turned inward, Prism reported, “including loosening deadlines and implementing more proactive and explicit policies for leave without penalty.” Staffers suggested additional racial equity trainings, noting that a previous facilitator had said that the last round had not included sufficient time “to cover everything.” With no Black staff in the D.C. unit, it was suggested that “Guttmacher do something tangible for Black employees in other divisions.”

Behind Boonstra’s and the staff’s responses to the killing was a fundamentally different understanding of the moment. For Boonstra and others of her generation, the focus should have been on the work of the nonprofit: What could Guttmacher, with an annual budget of nearly $30 million, do now to make the world a better place? For her staff, that question had to be answered at home first: What could they do to make Guttmacher a better place? Too often, they believed, managers exploited the moral commitment staff felt toward their mission, allowing workplace abuses to go unchecked.

The belief was widespread. In the eyes of group leaders dealing with similar moments, staff were ignoring the mission and focusing only on themselves, using a moment of public awakening to smuggle through standard grievances cloaked in the language of social justice. Often, as was the case at Guttmacher, they played into the very dynamics they were fighting against, directing their complaints at leaders of color. Guttmacher was run at the time, and still is today, by an Afro Latina woman, Dr. Herminia Palacio. “The most zealous ones at my organization when it comes to race are white,” said one Black executive director at a different organization, asking for anonymity so as not to provoke a response from that staff.

These starkly divergent views would produce dramatic schisms throughout the progressive world in the coming year. At Guttmacher, this process would rip the organization apart. Boonstra, unlike many managers at the time, didn’t sugarcoat how she felt about the staff’s response to the killing.

“I’m here to talk about George Floyd and the other African American men who have been beaten up by society,” she told her staff, not “workplace problems.” Boonstra told them she was “disappointed,” that they were being “self-centered.” The staff was appalled enough by the exchange to relay it to Prism.

The human resources department and board of directors, in consultation with outside counsel, were brought in to investigate complaints that flowed from the meeting, including accusations that certain staff members had been tokenized, promoted, and then demoted on the basis of race. The resulting report was unsatisfying to many of the staff.

“What we have learned is that there is a group of people with strong opinions about a particular supervisor, the new leadership, and a change in strategic priorities,” said a Guttmacher statement summarizing the findings. “Those staff have a point of view. Complaints were duly investigated and nothing raised to the level of abuse or discrimination. Rather, what we saw was distrust, disagreement, and discontent with management decisions they simply did not like.”

A Prism reporter reached a widely respected Guttmacher board member, Pamela Merritt, a Black woman and a leading reproductive justice activist, while the Supreme Court oral arguments in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization were going on last December, a year and a half after the Floyd meeting. She offered the most delicate rebuttal of the staff complaints possible.

“I have been in this movement space long enough to respect how people choose to describe their personal experience and validate that experience, even if I don’t necessarily agree that that’s what they experienced,” Merritt said. “It seems like there’s a conflation between not reaching the conclusion that people want and not doing due diligence on the allegations, which simply is not true.” Boonstra did not respond to a request to talk from either Prism or The Intercept.

The six months since then have only seen a ratcheting up of the tension, with more internal disputes spilling into public and amplified by a well-funded, anonymous operation called ReproJobs, whose Twitter and Instagram feeds have pounded away at the organization’s management. “If your reproductive justice organization isn’t Black and brown it’s white supremacy in heels co-opting a WOC movement,” blared a typical missive submitted to and republished on one of its Instagram stories. The news, in May 2022, that Roe v. Wade would almost certainly be overturned did nothing to temper the raging battle. (ReproJobs told The Intercept its current budget is around $275,000.)

That the institute has spent the course of the Biden administration paralyzed makes it typical of not just the abortion rights community — Planned Parenthood, NARAL Pro-Choice America, and other reproductive health organizations had similarly been locked in knock-down, drag-out fights between competing factions of their organizations, most often breaking down along staff-versus-management lines. It’s also true of the progressive advocacy space across the board, which has, more or less, effectively ceased to function. The Sierra Club, Demos, the American Civil Liberties Union, Color of Change, the Movement for Black Lives, Human Rights Campaign, Time’s Up, the Sunrise Movement, and many other organizations have seen wrenching and debilitating turmoil in the past couple years.

In fact, it’s hard to find a Washington-based progressive organization that hasn’t been in tumult, or isn’t currently in tumult. It even reached the National Audubon Society, as Politico reported in August 2021:

Following a botched diversity meeting, a highly critical employee survey and the resignations of two top diversity and inclusion officials, the 600,000-member National Audubon Society is confronting allegations that it maintains a culture of retaliation, fear and antagonism toward women and people of color, according to interviews with 13 current and former staff members.

Twitter, as the saying goes, may not be real life, but in a world of remote work, Slack very much is. And Twitter, Slack, Zoom, and the office space, according to interviews with more than a dozen current and former executive directors of advocacy organizations, are now mixing in a way that is no longer able to be ignored by a progressive movement that wants organizations to be able to function. The executive directors largely spoke on the condition of anonymity, for fear of angering staff or donors.

“To be honest with you, this is the biggest problem on the left over the last six years,” one concluded. “This is so big. And it’s like abuse in the family — it’s the elephant in the room that no one wants to talk about. And you have to be super sensitive about who the messengers are.”

For a number of obvious and intersecting reasons — my race, gender, and generation — I am not the perfect messenger. But here it goes anyway...

Keep reading.

 

NRA Darling Sensation 'Alpha Addy'

At the Los Angeles Times, "She's a YouTube sensation and NRA darling: Meet 9-year-old sharpshooter 'Alpha Addy'":

Nine-year-old Addysson "Addy" Soltau became a YouTube sensation after learning to shoot three years ago. Now she's the darling of the NRA https://t.co/C46BKEDEm5 pic.twitter.com/sW3pFPTgch

— Los Angeles Times (@latimes) May 6, 2018

The gap-toothed 9-year-old girl walked the floor of her first National Rifle Assn. convention, her blond ponytail bobbing above earrings fashioned from bullet casings.

When Addysson "Addy" Soltau arrived at the Smith & Wesson booth, she gravitated to a sleek silver .22 semiautomatic Victory pistol, a James Bond-style gun with a silencer attached. It was just out of reach. So her godfather lifted it from the wall and handed it to the girl, who gripped and sighted along the gun like a pro. She already shoots an M&P 15-22 rifle hanging nearby.

"That's actually your next gun," her godfather, Johnny Campos, said of the pistol. Addy gaped, overjoyed.

"Alpha Addy" became a YouTube sensation and NRA darling after she started shooting three years ago, one of many competitive girl shooters who buck not only gun culture stereotypes, but the youth-driven gun control movement that sprung up after the deadly mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., this year.

The NRA doesn't track the number of young female shooters, a spokesman said, but as the number of women with guns has grown, they are inspiring their daughters. The National Shooting Sports Foundation says there's been a 77% increase in female gun ownership since 2005, with 5.4 million women participating in target shooting.

All of the youth celebrities at this weekend's annual NRA convention in Dallas, which was expected to draw more than 80,000 people, were female. Keystone Sporting Arms, which sold the Crickett and Chipmunk starter rifles at the convention under the banner "Never too young to understand freedom," sells as many pink and turquoise guns as the traditional colors, staff said. On Sunday, families with children flocked to the Dallas convention center for NRA Youth Day.

Many who stopped at the JM4 Tactical booth where Addy was greeting fans Sunday were parents and girl shooters who recognized her from her videos. A video of her rapidly reloading at home has more than 30 million views; she has 14,000 Facebook followers, 5,600 on Instagram and nearly 300 subscribers on YouTube, where the lead video shows her target shooting to the tune of Miley Cyrus' "Wrecking Ball."

Addy was inspired by 17-year-old Katelyn Francis, a female competitive shooter she saw featured on NRATV while her godfather was babysitting her in San Antonio. Then she found the YouTube channel of Faith and Jenna Collier, sisters in nearby Austin who were about her age, and asked if she could shoot too.

Campos, 28, a retired Marine, agreed to coach her.

"She had never been around firearms. I didn't own any. Her parents didn't. This all started because she showed an interest," he said.

Addy's parents, who work at an education company, had their doubts.

Keep reading.

Responding to CNN

At Instapundit, "THE NRA RESPONDS TO CNN: This is a lemon."

No Apologies: The NRA Stands Up for Truth (VIDEO)

The NRA's been in the eye of the storm for decades, so the latest attack on spokeswoman Dana Loesch is par for the course.

I posted earlier here, "WATCH: Dana Loesch Takes on Critics Who Accuse Her of 'Inciting Violence' in New Video for the NRA," and "Dana Loesch Slams 'Fake Feminists' Behind Anti-NRA Women's March (VIDEO)."

But see Legal Insurrection, "Dana Loesch Slams 'Fake Feminists' Behind Anti-NRA Women's March (VIDEO)."

And here's Grant Stinchfield for the NRA:

Defund Planned Parenthood

Via Debra Burlingame, on Twitter:

pic.twitter.com/4Xpfr133gT

— Debra Burlingame (@DebraBurlingame) June 22, 2017

Dana Loesch: 'We the People' Have Had It with the New York Times

Following-up, "Dana Loesch: 'Old gray hag, we're coming for you...' (VIDEO)."

Dana Loesch: 'Old gray hag, we're coming for you...' (VIDEO)

Heh.

I love this!

At Instapundit, "THE STRUGGLE AGAINST FAKE NEWS: NRA-NYT war escalates: ‘Old gray hag, we’re coming for you’."

And here's the irrepressible Dana Loesch, for the National Rifle Assocation:

Black Assailants Responsible for Nearly 40 Percent of Premeditated Ambush Killings of Police Officers Since 2002

Well, so much for image of the angelic "unarmed" black male relentlessly targeted by "racist" cops.

Frankly, it's more likely the other way around.

At LAT:

These are the killers cops fear most https://t.co/ZG6kYklapl

— Los Angeles Times (@latimes) October 10, 2016

Taleeb Starkes: Black Lies Matter

Here's the dude's book, at Amazon, Black Lies Matter: Why Lies Matter to the Race Grievance Industry.

And watch, via Prager University:

Killings in Chicago Hit a 20-Year High (VIDEO)

Following-up from last night, "The Ferguson Effect Hits Chicago."

Via Hot Air, "BBC Video: The lost streets of Chicago."

The Ferguson Effect Hits Chicago

From Heather Mac Donald, at the Wall Street Journal, "The Black Body Count Rises as Chicago Police Step Back":

‘The streets are gone,” Dean Angelo, president of the Chicago police union, told me last month. The night before, Aug. 14, a Chicago police officer’s son had been killed in a shooting while sitting on his family’s porch, one of 92 people killed in Chicago during the worst month for homicides in the Windy City since July 1993. The August victims who survived included 10-year-old Tavon Tanner, shot while playing in front of his house (the bullet ripped through Tavon’s pancreas, intestines, kidney and spleen); an 8-year-old girl shot in the arm while crossing the street; and two 6-year-old girls.

On Sept. 6, a 71-year-old man was accosted by a teen on a bike while watering his lawn. The robber demanded the man’s wallet and when he refused shot him in the abdomen, then grabbed his wallet before pedaling away.

By Sept. 8, nearly 3,000 people had been shot in Chicago in 2016, an average of one shooting victim every two hours. Five hundred and sixteen people had been murdered. Gun homicides and non-fatal shootings were up 47% over the same period of 2015, which had seen a significant rise in crime over 2014.

“There is no way out of this shooting spree,” Mr. Angelo said. His despair is understandable, because Chicago is the country’s most-glaring example of what I have called the “Ferguson effect.” Chicago officers have cut back drastically on proactive policing under the onslaught of criticism from the Black Lives Matter movement and its political and media enablers.

In October 2015, Mayor Rahm Emanuel told U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch during a crime meeting in Washington, D.C., that the Chicago police had gone “fetal,” and were less likely to interdict criminal behavior. That pull-back worsened in 2016, with pedestrian stops dropping 82% from January through July 20, 2016, compared with the same period in 2015, according to the Chicago police department. The cops are just “driving by people on the corners,” Mr. Angelo says, rather than checking out known drug dealers and others who raise suspicions. Criminals are back in control and black lives are being lost at a rate not seen for two decades.

Chicago’s cops are responding to political signals from the most powerful segments of society. President Obama takes every opportunity to accuse police of racially profiling blacks and Hispanics. The media, activists and academics routinely denounce pedestrian stops and public-order enforcement—such as dispersing crowds of unruly teens—as racial oppression intended to “control African-American and poor communities,” in the words of Columbia law professor Bernard Harcourt. Never mind that it is the law-abiding residents of high-crime areas who beg the police to clear their corners of loiterers and trespassers.

Further discouraging proactive policing in Chicago is a misguided agreement between the Illinois American Civil Liberties Union and the city that allows the ACLU to review every police stop. The police are also experiencing fallout from City Hall’s mishandling of the unjustified fatal police shooting of Laquan McDonald in October 2014.

Chicago cops regularly encounter aggressive hostility when they leave their vehicles. In August a Chicago Tribune reporter filmed a group of teens taunting officers for over an hour while the cops investigated a shooting on the West Side. “F--- the police!” went one chant. “Get the f--- off my block!” came another insult. Someone fired off shots in a nearby alley for the fun of seeing cops run toward another possible victim. “Run, b----, run!” a shirtless male shouted as the officers took off in a sprint.

Three gangs—the Vice Lords, Black Disciples and Four Corner Hustlers—reached a pact in August to assassinate Chicago officers, according to a police departmental alert. The National Gang Intelligence Center has also picked up on plans to shoot officers.

The media blame poverty, racism and a lack of government services for the growing mayhem...

It's a freakin' war on there!

More.

Plus, Ms. Mac Donald's book, The War on Cops: How the New Attack on Law and Order Makes Everyone Less Safe.

Milwaukee Riots After Police Shoot and Kill Black Armed Suspect (VIDEO)

There's not a lot of news coverage of the rioting, actually.

I had on Fox News for about a half-hour, and not even a short blip of a report.

I suspect folks have gotten so used to blacks burning down cities that it's hardly news anymore. Besides, getting the news out there would destroy the left's "Black Lives Matter" narrative (and help Donald Trump).

Rioters screamed "Black Power!" as a fillin' station went up in flames.

Obama's America.

See the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, "Calm restored at scene of unrest as Clarke calls for National Guard," and "Man shot by Milwaukee police subject of witness intimidation case."

More at Twitchy, "Rioters make Milwaukee ‘like a war zone’ after police shooting of armed suspect [photos, video]."

And there's video here, at Ruptly, "USA: Angry protesters burn petrol station after police shoot and kill man in Milkwaukee."

Korryn Gaines Shooting in Baltimore (VIDEO)

Did you hear about this?

It's not getting as much attention as some of the other police shootings. This one's extremely interesting, though. The woman basically taunted and threatened the cops until they shot and killed her.

And she had a history of abusing the police too.

At Twitchy, "Shaun King posts videos from #KorrynGaines’ social media accounts, but they don’t show what he says they show."

Plus, "The #KorrynGaines shooting is worse than you probably know":

During the standoff between Korryn Gaines and the Baltimore Police Department on Monday, officers took the unusual step of contacting Facebook and having the social media company temporarily suspend her account while negotiations were taking place.

This has produced a stunning backlash, with some going as far as to accuse Facebook of helping “Baltimore police kill” the young woman...

And watch, at CBS News 13 Baltimore, "Police: Armed Woman Killed In Shootout With Police; 5-Year-Old Injured," and "Police: Followers Urged Woman Live-Streaming Standoff to Defy Officers."

#BlackLivesMatter Coalition Makes Demands, Wants Reparations for Slavery

Check out the title, heh: "A Vision for Black Lives: Policy Demands for Black Power, Freedom and Justice":

Black humanity and dignity requires black political will and power. In response to the sustained and increasingly visible violence against Black communities in the U.S. and globally, a collective of more than 50 organizations representing thousands of Black people from across the country have come together with renewed energy and purpose to articulate a common vision and agenda. We are a collective that centers and is rooted in Black communities, but we recognize we have a shared struggle with all oppressed people; collective liberation will be a product of all of our work.

"Collective liberation."

That's revolutionary rhetoric.

They're communists.



At AP, "Groups affiliated with Black Lives Matter release agenda":

The agenda outlines six demands and offers 40 recommendations on how to address them. To address criminal justice reform, for example, organizers are calling for an end to the type of militarized police presence seen at protests in cities like Ferguson, and the retroactive decriminalization and immediate release of all people convicted of drug offenses, sex work related offense and youth offenses.

The group also is calling for the passage of federal legislation, already proposed in Congress, that would create a commission to study reparations for descendants of slaves...

Saying #AllLivesMatter Is a Racist White Supremacist 'Rallying Cry' on Social Media

The Black Lives Matter movement is about anti-white racism and black supremacy, and if any leftist steps out of bounds they'll be destroyed.

Here's the background at USA Today, "#AllLivesMatter hashtag is racist, critics say."

And J.Lo's in trouble for tweeting #AllLivesMatter, at PuffHo:

J.Lo tweets out #AllLivesMatter, internet turns against her https://t.co/ieDhN2dFpQ pic.twitter.com/ira7bn12XX

— HuffPostEnt (@HuffPostEnt) July 12, 2016

J.Lo deleted the tweet soon after it was posted, but forgot about the other time she used your racist uncle’s rallying cry on Instagram. Nuzzled in between the caption #filltheworldwithmusicloveandpride and #JLin in a promotion post for her new single is #alllivesmatter, the social media movement that erases the specificity of the black experience in this country.

Tomi Lahren Blames Barack Obama, 'Two Black Attorney Generals', for Inciting Dallas Shooting (VIDEO)

Via Heat Street, there's video at the post:

Lahren blamed President Obama and "two black attorney generals" for the country's mounting racial tensions. https://t.co/tL3qzy1cJM

— Heat Street (@heatstreet) July 12, 2016

Previous Tomi Lahren blogging's here.

Obama on #Dallas: It's hard to 'untangle the motives of the shooter...' (VIDEO)

Actually, it's not.

He said he wanted to kill white people, especially white cops.

Not hard at all.

But see the clip from Obama's comments at the NATO summit, here.

And more, via CNN:



O again pushes the lie that blacks in the criminal justice system face "disparate" treatment.

Those kind of comments are what's driving the divisions of this nation. There's your division right there.

Will the Cycle of Black Violence Change the Election Campaign?

From Cathleen Decker, at the Los Angeles Times, "Analysis: Will the violence across America change the presidential campaign?":

Crises that arise during presidential campaigns often define the candidates.

Will this horrific week prove to be the crucible of the current campaign?

Violence has shuddered through America since Tuesday: First, two controversial shootings by police of African American men, captured on cameras and spread on social media; then the assassination of at least five Dallas police officers and the wounding of others by a sniper after a peaceful march protesting the earlier deaths.

At the very minimum, the bickering between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton has been temporarily overshadowed, much as it was less than four weeks ago when a single assailant killed 49 people and wounded more than 50 others in an Orlando, Fla., nightclub.

That pause proved temporary and for all its horror, had little effect on the presidential race.

But in past decades, dramatic disorder has had a political impact. The convulsions of protests and violence in 1968 — albeit occurring in a vastly different country — helped swing the presidential election that year  to the law-and-order candidate, Republican Richard Nixon.

The effect of the latest outbreak may be fully determined only when more specifics are known about the Dallas attack.

Already, however, the three days of shootings have served as a reminder of how events outside the campaign can overwhelm the carefully plotted strategies of the candidates. For a time, at least, the question of whom Trump will pick as a running mate and the details of Clinton’s handling of classified information in her emails while secretary of State seem unlikely to attract much attention.

Whether the effect goes deeper and persists also will depend on how a polarized public — and the candidates — frame the week’s deadly events with their fraught elements of racial tension and maintenance of public order.

Both candidates began shaping their responses — and the public’s view of events — on Friday.

Trump, who cancelled a planned Florida event, has built much of his campaign around the idea that America is no longer “safe.” He couples his denunciations of illegal immigration with claims that American cities are places of danger where his audiences — mostly older, white and nonurban — would rightly fear to walk.

He could benefit if voters see this week’s killings as part of a general picture of national chaos — a crisis of authority requiring a tough response.

In a statement released early Friday, Trump largely cast the events in that vein, saying it was necessary to “restore law and order” and “the confidence of our people to be safe and secure in their homes and on the street.”

But he also used terminology rare for a candidate who has been criticized for months for using divisive racially-inflected rhetoric — and one who regularly lauds police while dismissing complaints about police violence.

He called the shootings by police of African American men in Louisiana and Minnesota “senseless” and said they remind “us how much more needs to be done.”

“Our nation has become too divided,” Trump said, adding that “racial  tensions have gotten worse, not better.”

More.

Tomi Lahren at Politicon

She spoke on the panel with Mary Katharine Ham.

And previously, "Tomi Lahren Calls #BlackLivesMatter 'the New KKK'."