“I am afraid of the police, not the protesters”

That’s it, in a nutshell.  That’s the worry of a resident of Mong Kok, a major shopping and residential neighborhood on the mainland side of Hong Kong, as she prepared to join a protest last weekend.

That worry comes against the backdrop of Hong Kong police using tear gas and truncheons in attempts to break up peaceful protests throughout Hong Kong as those protests have grown over the last several weeks, with those police using isolated incidents of protestor violence as their excuse.  Keep in mind, too, that these protests originated as a response to the Hong Kong government’s attempt to pass a law demanded by People’s Republic of China President Xi Jinping and his Communist Party of China, a law that would have allowed any accused Hong Kong citizen or visitor to be seized and shipped into the PRC proper for trial.

That worry comes against the backdrop of Hong Kong police standing by, keeping watch, while criminals beat protestors in a subway station in an earlier protest in this sequence of protests.

That worry comes against the backdrop of violent suppression attempts by the PRC Hong Kong police against protests in Mong Kok in 2014 and 2016.

That worry comes against Xi’s sub rosa threats of military intervention in Hong Kong:

Chinese officials have said its military, which has a garrison in Hong Kong, could restore order if called upon by Hong Kong’s leadership.
The military recently released a propaganda video depicting Chinese soldiers practicing to do just that.

It’s a valid worry as Hong Kong’s legitimate leadership is in the streets protesting the actions of the PRC’s government-in-residence in Hong Kong.

It’s a valid worry as the Xi presses his government’s disregard of the transfer agreement the UK and the PRC signed 22 years ago and increases his government’s direct control over and destruction of the semi-autonomy of Hong Kong and his direct attacks on the freedoms of the Hong Kong people.

Trump’s Dispute with Cummings

Rebecca Ballhaus and Catherine Lucey asked whether President Donald Trump’s tweets about Congressman and House Oversight Committee Chairman Elijah Cummings (D, MD) were personal.

After Cummings’ scurrilous attack on the integrity—and the humanity—of DHS Secretary Kevin McAleenan followed by Cummings’ cowardly denial of any opportunity to respond by McAleenan, you bet Trump’s response was personal.

But its more: Trump’s tweet barrage against Cummings is deeply personal because Cummings’ despicable behavior and his terrible failure to perform for his constituents is deeply personal. It’s real people in those terrible Baltimore slums—real constituents of Cummings—who Cummings personally is abusing with his failure to perform. I grew up in Kankakee, and Chicago’s South Side slums were never this bad in terms of living conditions.

As to Trump speaking particularly against minority lawmakers, as Ballhaus’ and Lucey’s subheadline had it, this is plainly erroneous. Trump is criticizing lawmakers. The only ones bringing up their “minority” status are these two authors. Why is that, I wonder?

Or, do Ballhaus and Lucey really think House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D, CA) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D, NY) are minority lawmakers? Or Congressman Eric Swalwell (D, CA)?

The Judge Misunderstands

“America, love it or leave it.”  Judge Andrew Napolitano says this about that statement:

The phrase itself—with its command of the government’s way or the highway—admits no dissenting opinions, suggests that all is well and proper here, and insinuates that moral norms and cultural values cannot be improved. The phrase itself is un-American.

This is nonsense, and Napolitano is projecting, or he’s dissembling. The phrase has no government’s way or the highway meaning, and it calls forth dissenting opinions.  Especially contrary to Napolitano’s distortion, the phrase insists not only that “norms and cultural values” can be improved, but that those with dissenting opinions have an obligation to offer their ideas for solutions.  And thereby does not at all suggest that “all is well and proper here.”  In fine, it demands, all it demands, is American-ness—loyalty to America.

Except in the fetid imaginations of the Left, and apparently of Napolitano.

The phrase simply suggests that if a man is miserable here, he’s free to leave, and it wonders why he does not.

Of course, loving America necessarily includes wanting to make us better, which involves praise for the things we are doing better or already do well, and criticism of those things we do wrong or not well enough, while offering solutions for the corrections.

But if all a man wants to do is sit in the safety of the sidelines and carp and wallow in the misery of his location, why stay? We don’t have walls keeping anyone in. Why shouldn’t the man go somewhere where he will not have to face the misery, which is all that he sees?

As to the torrent of hatred Napolitano fears has been unleashed, that certainly has been.  The loosening of the fetters began with Obama’s and his Party henchmen’s open contempt for bitter religion- and gun-clinging denizens of flyover country.

They were loosened very much further with Obama’s State Department Secretary and staffers insulting the intelligence of Americans by insisting that the terrorist murders in Benghazi were the result of a YouTube movie

The fetters were taken off altogether by then-Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton calling tens of millions of Americans irredeemably deplorable racist, misogynistic, Islamophobic homophobes.

The sharks of hatred currently are chummed by the racist and anti-Semitic statements of Progressive-Democratic Congresswomen Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, and Ayanna Pressley, Congresswomen and behaviors that Party actively condones if not openly embraces.

America, love it, indeed, and help us do yet better.  Or leave, if you’re so miserable and find us to hateful.

Bigotry or Cowardice

You decide.  In connection with a UEFA Europa League qualifying match between Israel’s Maccabi Haifa and RC Strasbourg, in Strasbourg, France, the French police barred the Maccabi fans from waving the Israeli flag or wearing club or Israeli paraphernalia in the area around the stadium.

Because of, claimed the police,

fears of violence following anti-Semitic actions against fans of the Israeli club.

On top of that,

Just 600 Haifa fans were allowed into the Stade de la Meinau for the match.

In other words, the Strasbourg police either restricted the Israelis out of bigotry, or they surrendered to anti-Semitic terrorist wannabes.

It was only after extensive objections from the Israeli government and the Maccabi fans that the police relented. Sort of.

…fans could now wave the Israeli flag inside of the venue starting around 6:30 p.m. local time. However, the restriction was kept in place outside the stadium and on the streets of Strasbourg[.]

Either way, this stinks. And restrictions of any sort never should have been retained. It never should have happened, and it mustn’t be allowed to happen again.  Nor bigotry nor cowardice can be allowed to prevail.