NEW SOCIALIST “IT GIRL” CONTINUES TO PAY DIVIDENDS: AOC: New York City crime spike possibly due to people failing to pay rent or shoplifting out of hunger.

As Noam Blum of Tablet tweets, “‘Ackshually these are bread riots’ is quite the take.” And it gets worse!

UPDATE: (Via Dan Foster):

FAUCI HAS UNDERPERFORMED IN GENERAL: Fauci ‘not 100 percent right’ about COVID-19 spike, top US testing official says.

ESPN SUSPENDS REPORTER OVER ‘F— YOU’ EMAIL TO JOSH HAWLEY: REPORTS.

ESPN reportedly suspended NBA insider and reporter Adrian Wojnarowski after he sent an email to Republican Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley reading, “F— you.”

The Republican senator asked NBA Commissioner Adam Silver last week if he would allow players to wear jerseys with the message: “Free Hong Kong.” Hawley was criticizing the league after officials announced “pre-approved phrases” would be allowed on the back of jerseys while “censoring support” for law enforcement and criticism of China, according to Fox News.

Wojnarowski responded to Hawley with the two-word email, which Hawley shared on social media. The columnist soon issued an apology for the message.

“I was disrespectful and I made a regrettable mistake,” Wojnarowski wrote in a message he shared on Twitter. “I’m sorry for the way I handled myself and I am reaching out immediately to Senator Hawley to apologize directly. I also need to apologize to my ESPN colleagues because I know my actions were unacceptable and should not reflect on any of them.”

The New York Post reported Sunday that ESPN suspended Wojnarowski without pay. Outkick also reported that he was suspended.

Hawley’s response?

Given that Disney owns ESPN, he’s speaking rhetorically, of course:

Earlier: China’s Long Tentacles Extend Deep Into American Media.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Six Great Midsize Pistols.

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THEY TOLD ME IT WAS JUST ABOUT CONFEDERATE GENERALS: Virgin Mary statue set on fire at Boston church, officials say.

IN THE INTEREST OF RACIAL PROGRESS, IT’S BEST TO AVOID ANY PUBLIC DEPICTIONS OF BLACK PEOPLE: Vermont Law School To Paint Over Mural Celebrating State’s Role In The Underground Railroad And Abolitionist Movement Because Depiction Of Blacks ‘Made Some People Uncomfortable.’

TWO NEWSOMS IN ONE!

Shot: Coronavirus scofflaws arrested, criminally charged as California cracks down.

—The L.A. Times, April 4th.

Chaser: California to release 8,000 inmates in attempt to combat COVID-19 spike in prisons.

—The Blaze, yesterday.

WE NEED TO MATCH THAT WITH A SYSTEM TO ENSURE THAT WHO AND CHINA DON’T LIE ABOUT IT FOR A MONTH: Experts pitch surveillance system to detect viruses before next pandemic.

AUTHORITIES SEIZE RIFLE FROM COUPLE IN INCIDENT WITH BLM, MEDIA ATTACKS THEM, BUT THEY DO GET SOME SURPRISE HELP:

It’s not clear whether or not the McCloskeys still have any arms to defend themselves, there were reports the pistol Mrs. McCloskey had is with their attorney.

But in a Facebook post, a local gun store, Alien Armory Tactical, put its money where its mouth is and offered the couple a free new AR-15 if they wanted it. The store scolded the police for going along with the warrant.

To the couple that had this warrant served, please come on by our shop and we will gladly rearm you with a brand new ar15 for (FREE) thats right if you see this post contact our page and we will gladly assist you with a replacement for you to protect your private property for FREE! Also we will assist you with some FREE firearms training so if anything were to happen you will be better prepared, we will take you with your brand new ar15 and show you how to be better prepared! Thank you from your friendly neighborhood watch.

Nice move! Hopefully, the couple is able to take advantage of it.

Earlier: “Kimberly Gardner, one of four Democrats running for St. Louis circuit attorney in the Aug. 2 primary, is taking heat for a new political ad paid for with money from a national super PAC that is at least partly funded by liberal billionaire George Soros.”

BRUCE BAWER: The Unbearable Whiteness of Being.

WELL, THEY DON’T MIND CLEMENCY FOR THEIR ALLIES, ONLY FOR THEIR ENEMIES: Obama Granted Clemency to Terrorists and Traitors, But Democrats Are Angry About Roger Stone.

HEY MARXISTS, YOU DON’T HAVE TO TEAR DOWN NATIONAL MONUMENTS:

The Soviets changed the capital city from St. Petersburg to Moscow, and they renamed St. Petersburg Petrograd. They entirely reworked the system of government, killed the royal family, instituted atheism as the official religion and massacred Russian Orthodox priests, and more. They destroyed churches, synagogues, and mosques and unleashed the terror of secret police on the citizens.

Yet the Soviets also took pride in Russia’s history, and restored the great palaces of the Czars.

In fact, the Soviets arguably represent the exact opposite of their modern wannabes wreaking havoc on the streets of America today. The Marxist agitators with antifa and Black Lives Matter propose unserious “reforms” like abolishing the police (which didn’t even work in Seattle’s CHOP antifastan) while destroying national monuments in a lawless abandon, while the Soviets perpetrated devastating oppression on the Russian people while restoring some of the Czar’s magnificent palaces.

Now, I’d gladly take the fringe antifa over an official atheist Marxist tyranny that murders its own people and unleashes a secret police. I only mention this contrast to point out that the Soviets would likely mock their modern wannabes and to illustrate that even the most virulent Marxists don’t have to engage in the disgusting kind of vandalism America is witnessing today.

In fact, it likely undermines their cause.

To which the statue-smashing far left would likely reply, “See? We told you that true socialism has never been tried!”

Tyler O’Neil’s article is just for our VIP members; please use the discount code LOYALTY if you’ve been thinking of becoming a supporter.

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NO, IT DIDN’T START WITH TRUMP: Fight Club: Rivalries in the White House form Truman to Trump. While reading Tevi Troy’s excellent history of infighting at the White House, I found myself thinking of John Bolton, the new media darling now that he has turned on Trump. Troy describes how Eisenhower’s secretary of state, John Foster Dulles, alienated Harold Stassen and other foreign-policy colleagues with his unremitting arrogance: 

According to Stassen, “My best summary of Dulles is that he always knew he was absolutely right. Further, he knew that anyone who disagreed with him was, of logical necessity, always wrong. And finally, he could not understand how anyone could dare question the fact that he was always right.” It wasn’t just Stassen who had a problem with the priggish Dulles, though. As Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas once said, “I’m not sure I want to go to heaven. I’m afraid I might meet John Foster Dulles there.” Some U.S. allies had misgivings about Dulles as well. Harold Wilson, a British member of Parliament and future prime minister, once mocked Dulles’s propensity to try to be everywhere all the time: “I heard they are inventing an airplane that can fly without Dulles! They hope soon to get it into production.” Winston Churchill himself once famously mocked Dulles via declension: “Dull, Duller, Dulles.”

Read the whole thing.

THE CORBYNIZATION OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY CONTINUES APACE: Understanding the collapse of liberal Zionism. Peter Beinart claimed to speak for Jewish critics of Israel. Now he wants to replace it with a binational state, leaving Jews defenseless. Is anyone really surprised?

Related: Twitter thread from Jeff Goldstein of Protein Wisdom:  

I have heard weak condemnation of the anti-Semitic rants of those in the National Farrakhan League from a few of these erstwhile woke Uber-prog scolds; others have been largely silent.

As Mitch Albom points out in a column today, this very conspicuous variance in responses is not only troubling, it’s terrifying.

What it says to Jews is this: “stop whining. We progressives are trying to help black folk!”

It is paternalistic, but hardly surprising….

Here’s Albom’s column: DeSean Jackson’s anti-Semitic remarks is hateful to all.

SCIENCE, UNSETTLED: ‘Aerosol boxes’ meant to protect COVID health teams may be dangerous.

ROB LONG: The Devil Wears Prada: CDC Edition.  

Miranda Priestly: (eyes flash, angry muffle)

Subtitle: “Something funny?”

Andrea: (shrugs, makes equivocating rumbles from behind her mask)

Subtitle: “No, no, nothing. Y’know, it’s just that both those antiviral caftan hoods look exactly the same to me. Y’know, I’m still learning about all this stuff.”

Miranda Priestly: (short angry bark)

Subtitle: “This ‘stuff’?”

The room freezes. Terrified assistants, eyes darting in terror.

Miranda Priestly: (a series of muffled words and noises conveying contained rage)

Subtitle: “Oh . . . okay. I see. You think this has nothing to do with you. You go to your closet and you select, oh, I don’t know, that drab blue mask, for instance, because you’re trying to tell the world that you take yourself and COVID-19 too seriously to care about what you put on your face to hold the droplets in. But what you don’t know is that that mask is not just blue, it’s not turquoise, it’s not lapis, it’s actually cerulean. And you’re also blithely unaware of the fact that, in 2020, Oscar de la Renta did a collection of cerulean face wraps. And then I think it was Yves Saint Laurent . . . wasn’t it? Who showed cerulean military nose plugs?”

Miranda holds up an antivirus caftan.

Miranda Priestly: (a soft aside muffle to an assistant)

Subtitle: “I think we need some nose plugs here.”

Heh. Read the whole thing.

USA TODAY FACT-CHECK TWEET CLAIMS TRUMP CAMP SHIRTS ‘FEATURE’ ‘NAZI SYMBOL:’

But over an hour and a half after their initial tweet, the paper had to issue this statement: “Clarification: The claim that Trump 2020 has put out a T-shirt with a symbol similar to a Nazi eagle and is being criticized for it is true. Worth noting, the eagle is a longtime US symbol, too.”

In response to the paper’s outlandish tweet, they were rightly ridiculed with other images of eagles hold round objects such as the Marine Corps’ eagle, globe, and anchor, an Obama campaign logo, the official of Nancy Pelosi’s office (eagle and a globe), and stamps from the U.S. Postal Service.

Upon clicking on their “fact-check” article, it became clear that what they fact-checked wasn’t whether or not the campaign was selling a shirt with a Nazi symbol, but rather, they ridiculously fact-checked how the campaign was accused of such a thing.

“The paper wanted so desperately to have a ‘true’ associated with a Trump/Nazi controversy that they ‘fact-checked’ the existence of the controversy, not whether or not the image was Nazi related. Pathetic.”  The “Worth noting” self-own is a nice touch, however.

BIGGEST FEDERAL UNION LEADERSHIP IS CESSPOOL OF SEXUAL ABUSE ALLEGATIONS: The American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) is being sued by a group of career civil servants in federal court for multiple allegations that 16 high officials repeatedly committed sexual abuse of subordinates, then covered it up.

WHY I SIGNED THE HARPER’S LETTER:

In 1996, the late great Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami was on stage taking questions at the Lincoln Center in New York City after the premiere of his film Through the Olive Trees, when someone asked why he had used classical music (a piece from Concerto for Oboe and Strings by Domenico Cimarosa) in a movie that was set in a small village in northern Iran? Kiarostami turned to me, his translator for the hour, and said, in his soft voice and even softer manner, “Tell him classical music has long ceased to belong to the West. It belongs to the world now.”

That exchange, the way Kiarostami disabused the audience of the notion that music knew borders or that great ideas, once invented, remained the “property” of one nation or region, was on my mind when I signed the “Letter on Justice and Open Debate,” which ran in Harper’s Magazine last Tuesday. What I saw at the heart of the text was a defense of American democracy, which no longer belongs solely to America. For every activist on the streets of Hong Kong, every feminist in the prisons of Saudi Arabia, and every interned Uighur in China, America and its democracy remain, for better or worse, the last hope. Are they naïve and misguided? Right or wrong? It does not matter. Those who are suffering under tyrannies around the world, who are trying to imagine a different future for themselves and their fellow citizens, do not dream of Moscow, Beijing, or any nation in Europe. Just as little girls in the far corners of the world who do not even speak English want to dance like Beyoncé, and just as the youth living under prohibition in the Middle East huddle together to secretly watch bootlegged copies of Hollywood films, activists everywhere look to America, and dream of this democracy.

Read the whole thing.

A CORONAVIRUS CHART THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA DOESN’T WANT YOU TO SEE. “Does Axios consider the United States to have lost the war on H1N1? I’m asking for a friend.”

Read the whole thing.