Sunday 6 June 2021

Daily Digest

Daily Digest

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Manchin Makes It Official

Posted: 06 Jun 2021 03:09 PM PDT

(John Hinderaker)

Now that they control Congress, although by the barest of margins, the Democrats can do considerable damage. But for their long dreamt-of power grab–adding more states, packing the Supreme Court, institutionalizing electoral fraud–they need to break the filibuster.

Ending the filibuster would require the votes of all 50 Democratic senators. That has always seemed unlikely, and yesterday Joe Manchin made it official in an op-ed in a local newspaper. Manchin said that he will not vote for H.R. 1, the Universal Voter Fraud Act, nor will he vote to end the filibuster:

Democrats in Congress have proposed a sweeping election reform bill called the For the People Act. This more than 800-page bill has garnered zero Republican support.
***
The truth, I would argue, is that voting and election reform that is done in a partisan manner will all but ensure partisan divisions continue to deepen.

With that in mind, some Democrats have again proposed eliminating the Senate filibuster rule in order to pass the For the People Act with only Democratic support. They've attempted to demonize the filibuster and conveniently ignore how it has been critical to protecting the rights of Democrats in the past.

As a reminder, just four short years ago, in 2017 when Republicans held control of the White House and Congress, President Donald Trump was publicly urging Senate Republicans to eliminate the filibuster. Then, it was Senate Democrats who were proudly defending the filibuster. Thirty-three Senate Democrats penned a letter to Sens. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. and Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., warning of the perils of eliminating the filibuster.

I don’t think Kyrsten Sinema would have voted to end the filibuster either, but now it is official. Unless something changes dramatically, it appears that the Democrats’ most grandiose dreams are dead for the time being.

Dems to Selves: Was It Something We Said?

Posted: 06 Jun 2021 11:23 AM PDT

(Steven Hayward)

The New York Times reports today on an unintentionally hilarious and revealing internal study a consortium of Democrat-aligned consulting groups have produced concerning the fact that aside from Joe Biden, Democrats performed very poorly in the last election. There is special worry over the “overperformance” of Trump and Republicans with hispanics and blacks, which isn’t supposed to happen according to Democratic “emerging demographic majority” dogma that says if “we label you BIPOC, you have to vote for us.”

This comes on top of the news from out of McAllen, Texas, a city that is 85 percent hispanic and which Biden and Hillary Clinton carried easily, but which yesterday elected a Republican mayor by a wide margin. Maybe ignoring the crisis at the border is starting to boomerang on Democrats?

The Times story, “Democratic Report Raises 2022 Alarms on Messaging and Voter Outreach,” includes gems such as this:

A review of the 2020 election, conducted by several prominent Democratic advocacy groups, has concluded that the party is at risk of losing ground with Black, Hispanic and Asian American voters unless it does a better job presenting an economic agenda and countering Republican efforts to spread misinformation and tie all Democratic candidates to the far left. . .

In part, the study found, Democrats fell short of their aspirations because many House and Senate candidates failed to match Joseph R. Biden Jr.'s support with voters of color who loathed Mr. Trump but distrusted the Democratic Party as a whole. Those constituencies included Hispanic voters in Florida and Texas, Vietnamese American and Filipino American voters in California, and Black voters in North Carolina. . .

Quentin James, the president of the Collective PAC, said it was clear that "some of the rhetoric we see from coastal Democrats" had been problematic. Mr. James pointed to the activist demand to "defund" the police as especially harmful, even with supporters of policing overhauls.

"We did a poll that showed Black voters, by and large, vastly support reforming the police and reallocating their budgets," Mr. James said. "That terminology — 'defund' — was not popular in the Black community."

I suspect the problems Democrats are starting to have with minority voters goes well beyond the “defund the police” stupidity. I am guessing many hispanics, who endlessly hear Democratic leaders chant “black lives matter,” rightly wonder—what about us? I doubt they are impressed by being “included” in the broad BIPOC banner the left is offering them as a consolation prize. Are Asians being beat up largely in Democrat-run cities (and mostly by blacks the data suggest) really fooled by the left’s attempt to attribute anti-Asian bigotry to Trump? Are there really gangs of MAGA-hat wearing marauders in Oakland and San Francisco targeting Asians?

Stay woke, Dems. It’s working so well for you.

Video Highlights: Maher on Colleges, J.P. Sears on CRT

Posted: 06 Jun 2021 06:40 AM PDT

(Steven Hayward)

Once again Bill Maher went off the liberal script and attacked universities in his closing monologue in his latest Friday night HBO show, and if you look past his gratuitous insults of Florida, Republicans, etc., it is striking how much he sounds like someone who reads City Journal. I do notice that audience reaction to this one is noticeably more tepid than some of his other recent attacks on the left. I have a theory that since comics like Maher employ a writing staff to help develop and refine material, he must have hired a semi-conservative writer on his staff a while back. I’ll be curious to find out who this person is. (As usual, language warning.)

Next up, the great J.P. Sears works his usual magic on critical race theory:

Looting for Winston Smith or someone like him (3)

Posted: 06 Jun 2021 05:58 AM PDT

(Scott Johnson)

I want to add more notes to our coverage of Winston Boogie Smith, the target of a North Star Fugitive Task Force arrest operation that cornered him at the top of the parking ramp adjacent to Uptown’s Seven Points (better known as Calhoun Square). Smith appears to have engaged in a gun battle with members of the task force when they sought to arrest him on an outstanding warrant this past Thursday afternoon.

• Doing the work that the Star Tribune won’t do, Kyle Hooten provides background on the deep thoughts of Winston Smith in the Alpha News story “Minneapolis man shot by police published plans for 'war' to kill cops.” Subhead: “Winston Smith asked protesters to target police from the rooftops and bring bombs to rallies.” Kyle’s story is documented with social media including two Instagram videos.

• Alpha News has also posted the video below of the rioting in Uptown late Friday night and early Saturday morning. This is what it looked like at one of Minneapolis’s prime intersections.

• As usual, the Star Tribune obscures a rounded view of what’s going down in Uptown in Smith’s honor. Maya Rao had the help of two other reporters for the story on last night’s festivities in Uptown: “Protesters converge for third night at Uptown spot where Winston Smith was killed.” Subhead: “Crowd vandalizes site of law enforcement team’s killing of Winston Smith.” Let us observe, Star Tribune style, that the protests “veered into vandalism.”

• One has to get to paragraph 15 of Rao’s story to be reminded: “Authorities say they recovered a handgun and spent shell casings from Smith’s car, suggesting that he fired a weapon at some point.” The Star Tribune is exercising extreme epistemological caution on the chain of events leading to Smith’s reported death.

• Rao’s story is thin and inadequate, but she has an excuse. She was busy on the story “Three shot to death overnight in Minneapolis; officer shoots, wounds suspect in one homicide.” Subhead: “Two of the three people killed were bystanders watching street racing.”

• For those not in the know — the so-called “street racing” with “hot-rodders,” as the Star Tribune refers to them, is conducted by gangs with stolen cars and unlawful firearms.

• The tweet below gives us a look at one of the “hot-rodding” events cum shootout in Minneapolis last night.

• My first friend in life lives in Uptown. Yesterday he wrote me regarding Uptown Crime on Facebook: “This is the page that I follow for the most accurate accounts of what is going on in my neighborhood and how safe it is on a daily/nightly basis.”

• Uptown Crime is run by Steve Taylor. On Friday Taylor caught up with Minneapolis City Clowncil President Lisa Bender for a gonzo street interview. It is posted here on Uptown Crime and is accessible via the tweet below.

• Yesterday morning the United States Attorney’s Office sent out this statement to media:

The North Star Fugitive Task Force (the "Task Force") is a U.S. Marshals-led Task Force, established pursuant to federal law, that locates and apprehends fugitives in the District of Minnesota.

The Task Force is comprised of members of local, state and federal law enforcement who partner to arrest the state's most violent fugitives.

The Task Force adopts warrants issued by state and local courts for pending criminal charges, probation violations, or failures to comply with court-ordered conditions.

Task force officers (TFOs) are state and local law enforcement officers who receive special deputations from the U.S. Marshals Service. While on a task force, these officers can exercise U.S. Marshals' authorities, such as being able to cross jurisdictional lines to apprehend violent fugitives. Nationally, these critical partnerships result in the arrest of nearly 100,000 violent fugitives each year.

In October 2020, the U.S. Department of Justice issued a Body-Worn Camera (BWC) policy to permit TFOs to utilize body-worn cameras on federal task forces. In February 2021, the U.S. Marshals Service began to phase-in this policy, which continues to be implemented in the District of Minnesota.

The statement’s concluding paragraph reiterates what we already know: “The Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension is leading the investigation into the officer involved shooting incident that occurred on June 3, 2021 in Minneapolis, Minnesota.”

D-Day at 77

Posted: 06 Jun 2021 05:14 AM PDT

(Scott Johnson)

My Dartmouth classmate John Floberg recently retired after a distinguished career in neurology. We took Professor Peter Bien’s freshman seminar on Politics and the Novel together during our first term at the college. John is originally from Chicago but we reconnected in the Twin Cities through Power Line 40 years after our studies with Professor Bien.

Following in a family tradition, John served as a commissioned Navy officer after our graduation. In 2016 John sent me this Daily Journal article about his father’s service on D-Day and his sister Anne Wilson’s then upcoming visit to the Normandy beaches where John and Anne’s father fought. Please check out Corey Elliot’s excellent story on Frederic Floberg, the executive officer on PC-565.

The story concludes: “Anne Wilson has a copy of the D-Day orders passed onto her father's ship in May of 1944. Here is the briefing all members of the United States Navy received just two weeks before D-Day, June 6, 1944.” I thought readers would enjoy a look at this bracing call to duty:

27 May, 1944.

Secret

From: Naval Commander, Western Task Force

To: ALL HANDS

1. We of the Western Naval Task Force are going to land the American Army in France.

2. From battleships to landing craft ours is, in the main, an American Force. Beside us will be a mainly British force, landing the British and Canadian troops. Overhead will fly the Allied Expeditionary Air Force. We all have the same mission — to smash our way onto the beaches, and through the coastal defenses, into the heart of the enemy's fortress.

3. In two ways the coming battle differs from any that we have undertaken before: it demands more seamanship, and more fighting. We must operate in the waters of the English Channel and the French coast, in strong currents and twenty-foot tide. We must destroy an enemy defensive system which has been four years in the making, and our mission is one against which the enemy will throw his whole remaining strength. These are not beaches held by apathetic Italians or defended by hasty fortifications. These are prepare[d] positions, held by Germans who have learned from their past failures. They have coastal batteries and mine fields; they have [illegible] and E-boats and submarines. They will try to use them all. We are getting into a fight.

4. But it is not we who have to fear the outcome. As the German has learned from failure, we have learned from success. To this battle we bring our tested methods, with new weapons, and overwhelming strength. Tides and currents present a challenge which, forewarned, we know how to meet. And it will take more than the last convulsive effort of the beaten "master race" to match the fighting spirit of the American Navy. It is the enemy who is afraid.

5. In this force there are battleships, cruisers, and destroyers. There are hundreds of landing ships and craft, scores of patrol and escort vessels, dozens of specials assault craft. Every man in every ship has his job. And these tens of thousands of men and jobs add up to one task only — to land and support and supply and reinforce the finest army ever sent to battle by the United States. In that task we shall not fail. I await with confidence the further proof, in this the greatest battle of them all, that American sailors are seamen and fighting men second to none.

6. Captains will please publish this letter at quarters on the day that the ships are sealed; then post on bulletin boards; and remove and burn prior to sailing.

A.G. Kirk (Commander, U.S. Navy)

John noted that you can find part of the rest of the story on page 369 of Stephen Ambrose’s D-Day, June 6, 1944, where Ambrose quotes ship’s cook Exum Pike. Pike’s quote concludes: “I have often told my two sons that I have no fear of hell because I have already been there.”
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