Marriage and Kids vs. Dogs and Netflix

I'd like to see actually statistics on this, but if it's anywhere near majority opinion, we can be relieved that humans will die out by self-extinction over the near few generations.

My god, what is wrong with these people?

It's Lauren Southern, in the U.K.:

The DeVos Apocalypse

From Daniel Henninger, at WSJ, "Charters are eroding the Democratic urban base of teachers and black parents":

Shocking video from @abc7news: Betsy DeVos being physically blocked, followed, and taunted by protesters at a DC school

Share this widely pic.twitter.com/t8PUox6k0H

— Cameron Gray (@Cameron_Gray) February 10, 2017

The extraordinary battle over Betsy DeVos’s nomination to be secretary of education is the defining event of the Trump presidency’s early days.

As presented, the DeVos confirmation appeared to be a standard partisan conflict between Democrats and Republicans, or in the conventional update, all that’s good and all that’s Trump.

But something deeper was at stake here, which is why the Democrats raised the nomination for a second-level cabinet post to a political apocalypse.

The person who introduced Mrs. DeVos at her confirmation hearing was former Democratic Sen. Joe Lieberman from Connecticut, arguably the last of the unequivocal Democratic moderates. In the confirmation vote, every Democrat opposed Mrs. DeVos, including Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota.

The issue presumably at the center of this nomination fight is the future of the education of black children who live in urban neighborhoods.

During a strike in the 1930s, a miner’s wife wrote a song that became a Democratic anthem, “Which Side Are You On?” The question remains: Which side are you on?

A standard answer is that the interests of the Democrats and the teachers unions are conjoined. Still, many of us have wondered at the party’s massive resistance to public-school alternatives and most reforms.

Beneath that resistance sits a grim reality: Many urban school systems are slowly dying. As with the decline of the industrial unions, the Democrats’ urban base of teachers is disappearing by attrition. The party is desperate to hold on to what’s left, and increasingly that includes its bedrock —black parents.

Enrollment in many urban schools has been declining for years. It’s down significantly in Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Chicago, Detroit, Kansas City and elsewhere. Falling alongside have been membership rolls in urban teachers unions, notably in Michigan and Wisconsin, two Trump pickups this election.

Families who could afford it have moved away. Many adult blacks stayed behind and, inexorably, the education of their children fell behind, a fact documented annually year after year. By the way, good public teachers got trapped, too. Some of the best lost heart and left, replaced by less able teachers, some grossly so.

For parents of children in the nation’s suburban public schools, none of this mattered much, so sustained political support for reform of city schools was never very deep. But in the cities, dissent rose.

The charter-school movement emerged first in Minnesota in 1991. Wisconsin passed the first school-choice legislation in 1989, authored by a Democratic black activist named Polly Williams. Some of us thought then that Polly Williams was the start of a new, bipartisan civil-rights movement. How naive we were.

The movement persisted. According to a 2016 study by the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, using state databases, these are the percentages of students now enrolled in public charters only:

In now-famous Flint, Mich.: 53%. Kansas City: 40%; Philadelphia: 32%; the District of Columbia: 45%; Detroit: 53%.

In Louisiana, which essentially abandoned its failed central-administration model after Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans charters are at 92%.

The steady migration of poor families to these alternatives is a historic saga of social transformation. It happened for two reasons: to escape public-school disorder and to give their kids a shot at learning.


This is one of greatest civil-rights stories since the mid-1960s. And the Democratic Party’s role in it? About zero. Other than, as in the past two weeks, resistance...

Hat Tip: RCP.

Police Charge Black Female Student for KKK Threat Made at Arundel High School (VIDEO)

Man, I would not want to live in Baltimore.

And remember, it's all hoaxes all the time on the left. The real political violence we're seeing is black on white, leftists on Trump supporters.

At CBS News 13, "Police Charge Student for Threat Made at Arundel High School."

Added: The threats were made on Twitter; see the screencaps here.

Manhunt Still Underway for Suspect Accused of Murdering Orlando Police Officer: Reward Raised to $100,000 (VIDEO)

We should be having nationwide protests against the demonic murderers of police officers, especially black police officers.

This is horrific. The suspect's still on the loose.

At the Orlando Sentinel, "Orlando police killer reward raised to $100,000; suspect still on run."

Chicago Facebook Beating and Torture Video: Window Into a Depraved Culture

I though of Heather Mac Donald almost immediately when the story broke.

No one's got this beat nailed down better than she does.

At City Journal, "A Window Into a Depraved Culture."

There's no easy block quotes, so read it all at the link.

And don't forget Ms. Heather's wonderful book, The War on Cops: How the New Attack on Law and Order Makes Everyone Less Safe.

A Window Into a Depraved Culture https://t.co/LNDiVXRV9E

— Manhattan Institute (@ManhattanInst) January 10, 2017

Blacks in Chicago See Neighborhoods Beset by Crime, Isolation, and Worry

Well, once again, to slightly paraphrase Glenn Reynolds, "WHY ARE DEMOCRAT-RUN CITIES SUCH CESSPITS OF OFFICIAL FEAR, CRIME, AND NEIGHBORHOOD INSECURITY?"

Seriously, this is just terrible.

At the New York Times, "For Black Chicagoans, Isolation, Frustration and Worry":

African-Americans in Chicago see their neighborhoods beset by crime, isolation and worry https://t.co/nnbNLduJeO

— The New York Times (@nytimes) May 6, 2016

Chicago, unsettled by a crime wave and a troubling police shooting, is in a grim mood. The outlook is clearly bleaker in some areas than others. African-Americans, especially, see their neighborhoods as beset by crime, bad schools and a host of obstacles to a better life for their children.

A survey of 1,123 Chicagoans from April 21 to May 3 found a majority of every race agreeing that the city has veered off course and that the mayor is not addressing their needs.

But when it comes to life in their neighborhoods, people in different groups describe substantially different experiences. Crime, for instance, is a greater concern for blacks in particular.

And in a city with a history of racial segregation, blacks see their neighborhoods as more isolated than people of other races do.

But the worst thing about their neighborhoods, and one of the biggest contrasts between blacks and other races in the poll, had to do with children.

When it comes to raising children, blacks and Hispanics see obstacles that most whites aren’t worried about.

Blacks and Hispanics are more likely to say they want to get out of their neighborhoods, and indeed, out of Chicago entirely.

Click through to view all the graphic data.

Poorest Sections of Los Angeles Blighted with Most Illegal Dumping, Littter, and Decay

To slightly paraphrase Glenn Reynolds, "WHY ARE DEMOCRAT-RUN CITIES SUCH CESSPITS OF OFFICIAL POVERTY AND ENVIRONMENTAL VIOLENCE?"

At the Los Angles Times, "Cleanup need urgent on 4% of L.A. streets: New database to guide cleanup efforts":

New data reflects what many have long said: Poorer areas of LA have most trash on streets https://t.co/8dS0Kr43ZD pic.twitter.com/UAn4FlX67p

— Los Angeles Times (@latimes) April 9, 2016

A new database measuring garbage on more than 9,100 miles of Los Angeles streets and alleys shows poorer areas of the city see more illegal dumping and litter than affluent ones.

City officials on Friday released details on the far-reaching study, which is designed to help guide the city sanitation bureau to prioritize the grimiest areas and send clean-up crews there.

More than 370 miles of roads and alleys in L.A. — or 4% of all city blocks — were found to be so dirty that they require immediate cleanup, according to the rating system released by the city Friday. An additional 42% of road miles need some form of service.

A little more than half of the dirtiest streets are in Central, East and South L.A. But pockets of filth were found across the city, including east San Fernando Valley, Venice and Wilmington, the analysis found.

Officials aim to clean all the dirtiest locations by 2018, a spokeswoman for LA Sanitation said.

“Prior to this, we had no data to really look [at] to intelligently deploy resources,” said Leo Martinez, who oversees solid resource operations for the bureau. “This has given us an incredible amount of knowledge.”

A Times data analysis last year found that cleanup of illegal dumping in many poor areas of L.A. lagged behind wealthier neighborhoods.

The findings of the database are not surprising for residents in some working-class neighborhoods, who say that dealing with street trash is a frustrating part of everyday life. Some expressed disappointment about the city's inability to clean up streets...

Treasons of the Democrats

From David Horowitz, at FrontPage Magazine:

The Bolshevik leader Leon Trotsky once described Stalinism as “the perfect theory for glueing up the brain.” What he meant to dramatize was the fact that a regime as monstrous as Stalin’s, which murdered 40 million people and enslaved many times more, was nonetheless able to persuade progressives and “social justice” advocates all over the world to act as its supporters and defenders. These enlightened enablers of Stalin’s crimes included leading intellectuals of the day, even Nobel Prize winners in the sciences and the arts like Frederic Joliot-Curie and Andre Gide. Brilliant as they were, they were blind to the realities of the Stalinist regime and therefore of the virtues of the societies they lived in.

What glued up their brains was the belief that a brave new world of social justice – a world governed by progressive principles - existed in embryo in Soviet Russia, and had to be defended by any means necessary. As a result of this illusion, they put their talents and prestige at the service of the totalitarian enemies of democracy, acting, in Trotsky’s words, as “frontier guards” for the Stalinist empire. They continued their efforts even after the Soviets conquered Eastern Europe, acquired nuclear weapons and initiated a “cold war” with the West. To the progressives seduced by Stalinism, democratic America represented a greater evil than the barbaric police states of the Soviet bloc. Even half a century later a progressive culture still refers to the formative phase of the Cold War as years of a “Red Scare” – as though the fifth column of American progressives whose loyalties were to the Soviet enemy, whose members included Soviet spies, was not a matter of serious concern, and as though a nuclear-armed, rapacious Soviet empire did not pose a credible threat.

How were these delusions of otherwise intelligent and well-intentioned people possible? How were otherwise informed individuals able to deny the obvious and support the most brutal and oppressive dictatorship in history? How did they come to view a relatively humane, decent, democratic society like the United States as evil, while regarding the barbarous communist regime as its victim? The answer lies in the identification of Marxism with the promise of social justice and the institution of progressive values, which will take place in a magical socialist future. Defense of the progressive idea trumped recognition of the reactionary fact.

Once the Stalin regime was identified with the imaginary progressive future, everything followed – its status as a persecuted victim, and its adversary’s role as a reactionary force standing in the way of the noble aspiration. Every fault of the Stalin regime, every crime it committed if not denied by progressives was attributed to the nefarious actions of its enemies, most glaringly the United States. Once a promise of redemption is juxtaposed to an imperfect real world actor, all of these responses become virtually inevitable. Hence the glueing of the brain.

The Soviet Union is gone, and history has moved on. But the Stalinist dynamic endures as the heritage of a post-Communist left, which remains wedded to fantasies of an impossibly beautiful future that bring it into collision with the flawed American present. This left is now the dominant force in the Democratic Party. Its extreme disconnect from real world realities is encapsulated in its support for the transparently racist movement called Black Lives Matter, which attacks law enforcement and defends street predators, excusing their crimes with the alibi that “white supremacists” create the circumstances that make them commit criminal acts. This extremist movement has the “strong support” of the entire spectrum of the “progressive” left (including 46% of the Democratic Party, according to a Wall Street Journal/NBC news poll).

Black Lives Matter is a movement built on the fiction that police have declared an open season on innocent blacks. According to progressive fictions, police are the agents of a “white supremacist society” – a claim alone that should make one wary of the sanity of those who advance it. Facts belie the very basis of the claim that there is open hunting season on African Americans. African American males, accounting for 6% of the population are responsible for more than 40% of violent crimes. But a Washington Post report on all 980 police shootings of 2015 reveals that only 4% of fatal police shootings involved white officers and black victims, while in three-quarters of the incidents, cops were either under attack themselves or defending civilians,” in other words,” as Michael Walsh observed in the NY Post, they were “doing their jobs.”

One such job done by Officer Darren Wilson in the suburb city of Ferguson, Missouri, became the launching point for the Black Lives Matter movement and its malicious claim that innocent blacks were being wantonly gunned down by racist police...

Still more.

Ferguson Effect: Violent Crime Surged 20 Percent in Los Angeles in 2015 (VIDEO)

At the Los Angeles Times, "Crime in Los Angeles rose in all categories in 2015, LAPD says":

For the first time in more than a decade, all categories of crime rose across Los Angeles in 2015 as police struggled to get control of the problem, according to LAPD data.

Violent crime in L.A. climbed 19.9% and property crime increased 10.3% through Dec. 26 compared with the same period last year, according to the police data. It marked the second year in a row that violent crime rose, but the first time since 2003 that both violent and property crime rose.

The increases follow more than a decade of steep declines in crime, particularly in homicides. Police officials said the recent upswings should be viewed in that larger context.

“We ask people to keep this in perspective,” said Assistant Chief Michel Moore, who oversees the Los Angeles Police Department's crime-tracking unit. “The city is not on fire, the city is not falling into the ocean.”

Still, the increases have sparked concern in neighborhoods across the city, including Southside areas that have seen jumps in gang-related homicides as well as more affluent areas where residents have complained about thefts and car break-ins...

More.

PREVIOUSLY: "Leftists and Their Media Lackeys Have Launched Campaign to Deny the 'Ferguson Effect'."

Leftists and Their Media Lackeys Have Launched Campaign to Deny the 'Ferguson Effect'

From Heather Mac Donald, at WSJ, "Trying to Hide the Rise of Violent Crime":

Murders and shootings have spiked in many American cities—and so have efforts to ignore or deny the crime increase. The see-no-evil campaign eagerly embraced a report last month by the Brennan Center for Justice called “Crime in 2015: A Preliminary Analysis.” Many progressives and their media allies hailed the report as a refutation of what I and others have dubbed the “Ferguson effect”— cops backing off from proactive policing, demoralized by the ugly vitriol directed at them since a police shooting in Ferguson, Mo., last year. Americans are being asked to disbelieve both the Ferguson effect and its result: violent crime flourishing in the ensuing vacuum.

In fact, the Brennan Center’s report confirms the Ferguson effect, while also showing how clueless the media are about crime and policing.

The Brennan researchers gathered homicide data from 25 of the nation’s 30 largest cities for the period Jan. 1, 2015, to Oct. 1, 2015. (Not included were San Francisco, Indianapolis, Columbus, El Paso and Nashville.) The researchers then tried to estimate what 2015’s full-year homicide numbers for those 25 cities would be, based on the extent to which homicides were up from January to October this year compared with the similar period in 2014.

The resulting projected increase for homicides in 2015 in those 25 cities is 11%. (By point of comparison, the FiveThirtyEight data blog looked at the 60 largest cities and found a 16% increase in homicides by September 2015.) An 11% one-year increase in any crime category is massive; an equivalent decrease in homicides would be greeted with high-fives by politicians and police chiefs. Yet the media have tried to repackage that 11% homicide increase as trivial.

Several strategies are employed to play down the jump in homicides. The simplest is to hide the actual figure. An Atlantic magazine article in November, “Debunking the Ferguson Effect,” reports: “Based on their data, the Brennan Center projects that homicides will rise slightly overall from 2014 to 2015.” A reader could be forgiven for thinking that “slightly” means an increase of, say, 2%. Nothing in the Atlantic write-up disabuses the reader of that mistaken impression. The website Vox, declaring the crime increase “bunk,” is similarly discreet about the actual homicide rate, leaving it to the reader’s imagination. Crime & Justice News, published by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, coyly admits that “murder is up moderately in some places” without disclosing what that “moderate” increase may be.

A second strategy for brushing off the homicide surge is to contextualize it over a long period. Because homicides haven’t returned to their appalling early 1990s or early 2000s levels, the current crime increase is insignificant, the Brennan Center and its media supporters suggest, echoing an argument that arose immediately after I first documented the Ferguson effect nationally.

“Today’s murder rates are still at all-time historic lows,” write the Brennan researchers. “In 1990 there were 29.3 murders per 100,000 residents in these cities. In 2000, there were 13.8 murders per 100,000. Now, there are 9.9 murders per 100,000 residents. Averaged across the cities, we find that while Americans in urban areas have experienced more murders this year than last year, they are safer than they were five years ago and much safer than they were 25 years ago.”

The Atlantic is similarly reassuring about today’s homicide rate: “The relative uptick”—which, again, the magazine never specifies—“is still small compared with the massive two-decade drop that preceded it.” True enough, though irrelevant—good policing over the past two decades produced an extraordinary 50% drop in crime. America isn’t going to give all that back in one year. The relevant question: What is the current trend? If this year’s homicide and shooting outbreak continues, those 1990s violent crime levels will return sooner than anyone could have imagined.

The most desperate tactic for discounting the homicide increase is to disaggregate the average. “Fears of ‘a new nationwide crime wave’ are premature at best and wildly misleading at worst,” asserts the Atlantic, because the “numbers make clear that violent crime is up in some major U.S. cities and down in others.”

But such variance is inherent in any average. If there weren’t variation across the members of a set, no average would be needed. Any national crime increase or decrease will have counterexamples of the dominant trend within it, yet policy makers and analysts rightly find the average meaningful. The Ferguson effect’s existence does not require that every city experience depolicing and a resulting crime increase. Enough cities—in particular, those with significant black populations and where antipolice agitation has been most strident—are experiencing murder increases that cannot be ignored.

Baltimore’s per capita homicide rate, for example, is now the highest in its history, according to the Baltimore Sun: 54 homicides per 100,000 residents, beating its 1993 rate of 48.8 per 100,000 residents. Shootings in Cincinnati, lethal and not, were up 30% by mid-September 2015 compared with the same period in 2014. Homicides in St. Louis were up 60% by the end of August. In Los Angeles, the police department reports that violent crime has increased 20% as of Dec. 5; there were 16% more shooting victims in the city, while arrests were down 9.5%. Shooting incidents in Chicago are up 17% through Dec. 13...

Still more.

And see, "America's Legal Order Begins to Fray — #FergusonEffect."

Graduation Rates Rise, But Fewer Students Ready for College-Level Academic Work

The story's out of Greenville, S.C., so you can guess the race of the students who're graduating underprepared.

At the New York Times, "As Graduation Rates Rise, Experts Fear Diplomas Come Up Short":

GREENVILLE, S.C. — A sign in a classroom here at Berea High School, northwest of downtown in the largest urban district in the state, sends this powerful message: “Failure Is Not an Option. You Will Pass. You Will Learn. You Will Succeed.”

By one measure, Berea, with more than 1,000 pupils, is helping more students succeed than ever: The graduation rate, below 65 percent just four years ago, has jumped to more than 80 percent.

But that does not necessarily mean that all of Berea’s graduates, many of whom come from poor families, are ready for college — or even for the working world. According to college entrance exams administered to every 11th grader in the state last spring, only one in 10 Berea students were ready for college-level work in reading, and about one in 14 were ready for entry-level college math. And on a separate test of skills needed to succeed in most jobs, little more than half of the students demonstrated that they could handle the math they would need.

It is a pattern repeated in other school districts across the state and country — urban, suburban and rural — where the number of students earning high school diplomas has risen to historic peaks, yet measures of academic readiness for college or jobs are much lower. This has led educators to question the real value of a high school diploma and whether graduation requirements are too easy.

“Does that diploma guarantee them a hope for a life where they can support a family?” asked Melanie D. Barton, the executive director of the Education Oversight Committee in South Carolina, a legislative agency. Particularly in districts where student achievement is very low, she said, “I really don’t see it.”

Few question that in today’s economy, finishing high school is vital, given that the availability of jobs for those without a diploma has dwindled. The Obama administration has hailed the rising graduation rate, saying schools are expanding opportunities for students to succeed. Earlier this month, the Department of Education announced that the national graduation rate hit 82 percent in 2013-14, the highest on record.

But “the goal is not just high school graduation,” Arne Duncan, the departing secretary of education, said in a telephone interview. “The goal is being truly college and career ready.”

The most recent evaluation of 12th graders on a national test of reading and math found that fewer than 40 percent were ready for college level work. College remediation and dropout rates remain stubbornly high, particularly at two-year institutions, where fewer than a third who enroll complete a degree even within three years.

In South Carolina, even with a statewide high school graduation rate of 80.3 percent, some business leaders worry that not enough students have the abilities they need for higher-skilled jobs at Boeing, Volvo and BMW, which have built plants here in recent years. What is more, they say, students need to be able to collaborate and communicate effectively, skills they say high schools do not always teach.

“If you look at what a graduation diploma guarantees today,” said Pamela P. Lackey, the president of AT&T South Carolina, “the issue is we have a system of education that prepares them for a different type of work than we have as a reality today.”

Still, there is no single reason these rates have increased.

Economists point to a decline in the teenage pregnancy rate, as well as a reduction in violent crime among teenagers. Some districts use data systems to identify students with multiple absences or failed classes so educators can better help them. And an increasing number of states and districts offer students more chances to make up failed credits online or in short tutoring sessions without repeating a whole semester or more.

States also vary widely in diploma requirements. In California, South Carolina and Tennessee, the authorities have recently eliminated requirements that students pass exit exams to qualify for a diploma. Alaska, California, Wisconsin and Wyoming demand far fewer credits to graduate than most states, according to the Education Commission of the States, although local school districts may require more.

According to one analysis of requirements for the class of 2014, 32 states did not require that all graduates take four years of English and math through Algebra II or its equivalent, which is often defined as the minimum to be prepared for college.

“Students and their families rely on and trust the high school diploma as a signal of readiness,” said Alissa Peltzman, the vice president of state policy at Achieve, a nonprofit that performed the study. “It needs to mean something. Otherwise, it’s a false promise for thousands of students.”

Over the past decade in California, several large urban districts adopted coursework guidelines aligned to entrance requirements at the state’s public universities. Los Angeles initially required that students earn at least a C in those classes, but the number of students on track to graduate plummeted. Now grades of D or higher are accepted...

I'd bet reduced standards are the No. 1 factor in reduced college readiness. Certainly in California, if not the country as a whole. I mean, sheesh, a passing grade is a D for college credit, even in my political science classes.

But continue reading.

And it's interesting to note the inequality implications when comparing these less-well-off urban schools with affluent suburban ones, like the New Jersey school district where the battles are over whether students are pushed to get an A+ in calculus, rather than an A.

LAUSD Teachers Reeling from 'Restorative Justice,' with Unruly Students Escaping Consequences for Their Actions

Tell me about it.

"Restorative justice" approaches on campus have basically repealed actual consequences for student misbehavior. It's been like this at my college for awhile, and it's not even formal policy. All kids have to do is cry "racism" and they'll get off scot-free.

Thank the radical left, and the Democrat Party, for this.

At LAT, "Why some LAUSD teachers are balking at a new approach to discipline problems":

In a South Los Angeles classroom, a boy hassles a girl. The teacher moves him to the back of the room, where he scowls, makes a paper airplane and repeatedly throws it against the wall. Two other boys wander around the class and then nearly come to blows.

"Don't you talk about my sister," one says to the other. The teacher steps between them.

When she tries to regain order, another boy tells her: "Screw you."

It's another day of disruption on this campus in the Los Angeles Unified School District, which has been nationally hailed by the White House and others for its leadership in promoting more progressive school-discipline policies. The nation's second-largest school system was the first in California to ban suspensions for defiance and announced plans to roll out an alternative known as restorative justice, which seeks to resolve conflicts through talking circles and other methods to build trust.

The shift has brought dramatic changes: Suspensions districtwide plummeted to 0.55% last school year compared with 8% in 2007-08, and days lost to suspension also plunged, to 5,024 from 75,000 during that same period, according to the most recent data.

The district moved to ban suspensions amid national concern that they imperil academic achievement and disproportionately affect minorities, particularly African Americans.

But many teachers say their classrooms are reeling from unruly students who are escaping consequences for their actions.

They blame the district for failing to provide the staff and training needed to effectively shift to the new approach — and their complaints are backed up by L.A. schools Supt. Ramon Cortines. He said the new discipline policies, which were pushed through by the Board of Education and former Supt. John Deasy and which he supports, were poorly executed. He compared the implementation to the flawed effort to equip students and teachers with Apple tablets.

"I will compare it to the iPad," Cortines said. "You cannot piecemeal this kind of thing and think it is going to have the impact that it should have. Don't make a political statement and then don't have the wherewithal to back it up."

Keep reading.

And flashback, "'Restorative Justice' at Beach High School Questioned Amid Breakdown of Discipline."

'Something Deeply Disturbing Is Happening All Across America...'

From FBI Director James Comey, speaking at the University of Chicago Law School,  October 23rd, "A chill wind has changed police behavior, and now violent crime is rising. Its victims are almost entirely young black men":

Part of being clear-eyed about reality requires all of us to stare—and stare hard—at what is happening in this country this year. And to ask ourselves what’s going on.

Because something deeply disturbing is happening all across America. I have spoken of 2014 in this speech because something has changed in 2015. Far more people are being killed in America’s cities this year than in many years. And let’s be clear: far more people of color are being killed in America’s cities this year. And it’s not the cops doing the killing.

We are right to focus on violent encounters between law enforcement and civilians. Those incidents can teach all of us to be better. But something much bigger is happening. Most of America’s 50 largest cities have seen an increase in homicides and shootings this year, and many of them have seen a huge increase. These are cities with little in common except being American cities—places like Chicago, Tampa, Minneapolis, Sacramento, Orlando, Cleveland, and Dallas.

In Washington, D.C., we’ve seen an increase in homicides of more than 20% in neighborhoods across the city. Baltimore, a city of 600,000 souls, is averaging more than one homicide a day—a rate higher than that of New York City, which has 13 times the people. Milwaukee’s murder rate has nearly doubled over the past year.

And who’s dying? Police chiefs say the increase is almost entirely among young men of color, at crime scenes in bad neighborhoods where multiple guns are being recovered.

That’s yet another problem that white America can drive around, but if we really believe that all lives matter, as we must, all of us have to understand what is happening. Communities of color need to demand answers. Police and civilian leaders need to demand answers. Academic researchers need to hit this hard...

I'm not holding my breath, but keep reading.

Obama Fuels Flames of Anti-Cop Movement

Following-up from yesterday, "Rise Up October — March Against Police Brutality in New York City (VIDEO)."

From Michael Goodwin, at the New York Post:

At a White House discussion about improving the  relationship between police departments and  black Americans, President Obama declared that “the moment is here.”

He meant a chance for big change, and that’s the problem. The change he and his allies are achieving is like throwing gasoline on a raging fire.

Consider that at about the same time the nation’s first black president was speaking to police chiefs and prosecutors, a group called Black Lives Matter was denouncing police brutality in Times Square, real and imagined. In another sad coincidence of timing, they marched as the city was mourning the murder of NYPD Officer Randolph Holder, the fourth New York City cop killed in 11 months.

Officer Holder was black, as is his alleged killer, but that mattered not a whit to the protesters. One told Fox News that she hopes Holder’s family “realizes that his life is included in the ‘Black Lives Matter’ slogan.”

“We’re talking about black bodies being persecuted across the world,” she added.

This is nonsense on steroids, yet these are the president’s shock troops. Obama and confidante Valerie Jarrett earlier met with the radicals leading the Black Lives Matter movement and encouraged them to keep going, the group has said.

Obama, at last Thursday’s event, praised the group again while also claiming that “everybody understands that all lives matter.

Everybody wants strong, effective law enforcement. Everybody wants their kids to be safe when they are walking across the street. Nobody wants to see police officers who are doing their jobs fairly hurt. Everybody understands it’s a dangerous job.”

His saying so doesn’t make it true. The anti-police movement sweeping urban areas proves that many people actually don’t want strong law enforcement, and don’t have any respect for police work. Many, including those Obama met with, appear to hate all cops.

Yes, they hate them, and they want them dead --- exactly the opposite of Obama's mealy-mouthed words.

But keep reading.

Rise Up October — March Against Police Brutality in New York City (VIDEO)

Stay classy, progs.

Here's a slideshow, "Rise Up October anti-police brutality protest held in New York City."

And at Twitchy, "‘There’s your racial divide’: Greg Gutfeld notes the irony in New York anti-police rally."

Also at the New York Post, "Protesters flip off NYPD days after cop slay."

Today's cover: Quentin Tarantino rants at "stop police terror" rally https://t.co/ypCCXr4CPb pic.twitter.com/f8XXHWJ3uq

— New York Post (@nypost) October 25, 2015

Obama's Tragic Let 'em Out Fantasy

A most excellent analysis, from Heather Mac Donald, at the Wall Street Journal, "The president leads the charge to cut the prison population, but mass incarceration isn’t the problem. Rising crime is."

Belligerent #BlackLivesMatter Protesters Test City Leaders in Los Angeles (VIDEO)

Following-up from Tuesday, "Mayor Eric Garcetti Flees 'Chaotic' Town Hall Meeting After Being Swarmed by Angry #BlackLivesMatter Protesters."

And now there's more, at the Los Angeles Times, "L.A. leaders struggle with disruptive 'Black Lives Matter' protests."

Plus, video, "Protesters Mob L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti Over Escalating City Violence."

Mayor Eric Garcetti Flees 'Chaotic' Town Hall Meeting After Being Swarmed by Angry #BlackLivesMatter Protesters

I swear these people are animals. Even far-left Los Angeles Mayor Garcetti was frightened for his life.

At the Los Angeles Times, "Garcetti abruptly leaves South L.A. forum because of Black Lives Matter protesters."

Via Twitter.

Obama's Justice Department to Release 6,000 Prisoners, the So-Called 'Non-Violent' Drug Offenders

I'm obviously not so thrilled about this, but Obama promised a fundamental transformation, so there you go.

At the New York Times, "6,000 Inmates to Be Freed as U.S. Tries New Tack on Drugs."

Also at Pajamas, "Happy Halloween! Feds to Release 6,000 Prisoners at End of Month."

FLASHBACK: From Heather Mac Donald, at City Journal, "Is the Criminal-Justice System Racist?"

Far-Left Politics and the Obama Justice Department

At WSJ, "Notable & Quotable: Justice and the Obama Justice Department."

It's from Michael Mukasey, at the September issue of Hillsdale College's Imprimis magazine, "Justice and the Obama Justice Department."