"No justice, no peace!" they shout. Then they break windows.
It makes me furious.
But then I watch the video of the Minneapolis cop kneeling on George Floyd's neck, while Floyd repeatedly says, "I can't breathe," and three other officers just watch.
Dear law-abiding Americans:
You have done nothing wrong.
Being white is not a crime. Being a Trump voter is not a crime. Being a police officer sworn to "protect and serve" every day is not a crime. Being a non-white police officer proud to uphold and enforce law and order is not a crime. Being a black or brown or yellow American who rejects excusing criminal behavior is not a crime.
The recovery stage for our economy is finally here, and now the policy priority has to shift to getting people back on the job and getting businesses up and running. The best incentive to get businesses hiring again and get workers off unemployment is to suspend the payroll tax for the rest of the year.
On the fifth night of rioting, looting and arson in Minneapolis, the criminal elements were driven from the streets.
By whom? By the same cops who had been the constant objects of media derision and mob hatred.
I shouted the text of my latest story about the invasion from a Palm Pilot into a balky Iridium satellite phone. It was at least my third attempt, and the battery was dying. A Village Voice employee assigned to take dictation on the other side of the world interrupted me.
"I don't understand," she said, irritated. "Why don't you just go to Kinko's and email it to us?"
America faces a contagious infection: partisanship. Consider the responses to a poll question about treating the COVID-19 virus with the long-approved and widely used drug hydroxychloroquine.
A Morning Consult poll shows 52% of Republicans supporting the drug and 16% against. At the same time and in the same country, 56% of Democrats opposed it, and 13% were in favor.
In his half-century in national politics, Joe Biden has committed more than his fair share of gaffes. Wednesday, he confused Pearl Harbor Day, Dec. 7, 1941, with D-Day, June 6, 1944.
The more serious recent gaffe, a beaut, came at the close of a recent contentious interview with black activist Charlamagne tha God.
Early in the primary season, Republican pollster John Couvillon noted that President Trump’s "unshakable" rapport with the Republican Party’s base may be leading GOP partisans to do something unusual historically: turn out in uncontested primaries.
Look out. An "army of contact tracers" is about to be unleashed on America. Corporations, political lobbyists and government bureaucracies all win. Privacy, freedom and family autonomy all lose. Big time.
We have a choice!
Next presidential election, we don't have to decide between two big-spending candidates, neither of whom has expressed much interest in limited government.
Is the U.S. up for a second Cold War -- this time with China?
What makes the question newly relevant is that Xi Jinping's China suddenly appears eager for a showdown with the United States for long-term supremacy in the Asia-Pacific and the world.
America is starting to reopen for business across the country -- except for a handful of states where lockdown orders are expected to remain in place for weeks to come. With very few exceptions, the cities and states that have ordered their businesses to remain comatose and their millions of workers to go without paychecks are blue, blue, blue. This list includes New York, New Jersey, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Illinois, California and Oregon. They all have Democratic governors.
The corporate conservatives who control the Democratic Party are suffering from cheaters' remorse.
The DNC and its media allies (NPR, CNN, MSNBC, The New York Times, The Atlantic, Vox, etc.) subverted the will of primary voters, undermining initial front-runner Sen. Bernie Sanders in order to install the worst candidate of the 20 centrists in the campaign.
When a Wall Street Journal editorial warned this week against any precipitous U.S. withdrawal that might imperil our gains in Afghanistan, an exasperated President Trump shot back:
"Could someone please explain to them that we have been there for 19 years. ... and except at the beginning, we never really fought to win."
Do you remember the 1957-58 Asian flu? Or the 1968-69 Hong Kong flu? I do. I was a teenager during the first of these, an adult finishing law school during the second. But even though back then I followed the news much more than the average person my age, I can't dredge up more than the dimmest memory of either.
— History, and the president’s own public statements, suggest that the Trump-Pence ticket will stick together in 2020.
— The last time an elected president running for reelection changed his running mate was Franklin Roosevelt way back in 1944.
— But there are some reasons to believe that Trump could revisit his running mate choice between now and the Republican National Convention.
I'm glad the FBI was able to crack the iPhones of the Pensacola naval air base shooter, which confirmed that radicalized Royal Saudi Air Force second lieutenant Mohammed Saeed Alshamrani had communicated with al-Qaida to carry out a "special operation." Three young American patriots died in Alshamrani's December 2019 attack. The more information we have to prevent the needless slaughter of U.S. military members on U.S. soil the better.
The government has closed most schools.
So, more parents are teaching kids at home.
Usually, when a CEO severely underperforms peers, he or she is fired or handed a gold watch and given a quick retirement party. In the Democratic Party, a rotten performance is a qualification for the presidency.
I'm referring to the bizarre infatuation inside Democratic circles with New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo as a possible replacement for Joe Biden at the top of the ticket. Democratic operatives are increasingly nervous that the party has tethered itself to a fatally flawed nominee. Cuomo is now heralded as the sure bet to beat President Donald Trump this November.
On March 24, President Donald Trump said he wanted the country and the economy "opened up and just raring to go by Easter."
Easter came and went. And Trump was mocked for being aspirational and unrealistic. Yet, with Ascension Thursday at hand, 40 days after Easter, the president seems to have been ahead of his time.
