The Video vs. The Media

Yesterday Reason posted an article about the incident at the Lincoln Memorial. The magazine took the time to analyze the entire video of the incident.

This is the entire video as posted at YouTube:

Here are the key points of the video as noted by Reason:

Phillips enters the picture around the 1:12 mark, but if you skip to that part, you miss an hour of the Black Hebrew Israelites hurling obscenities at the students. They call them crackers, faggots, and pedophiles. At the 1:20 mark (which comes after the Phillips incident) they call one of the few black students the n-word and tell him that his friends are going to murder him and steal his organs. At the 1:25 mark, they complain that “you give faggots rights,” which prompted booing from the students. Throughout the video they threaten the kids with violence, and attempt to goad them into attacking first. The students resisted these taunts admirably: They laughed at the hecklers, and they perform a few of their school’s sports cheers.

It was at this moment that Phillips, who had attended a nearby peace protest led by indigenous peoples, decided to intervene. He would later tell The Detroit Free Press that the teenagers “were in the process of attacking these four black individuals” and he decided to attempt to de-escalate the situation. He seems profoundly mistaken: The video footage taken by the black nationalists shows no evidence the white teenagers had any intention of attacking. Nevertheless, Phillips characterized the kids as “beasts” and the hate-group members as “their prey”:

“There was that moment when I realized I’ve put myself between beast and prey,” Phillips said. “These young men were beastly and these old black individuals was their prey, and I stood in between them and so they needed their pounds of flesh and they were looking at me for that.”

Again, all the evidence suggests that Phillips got it backward.

He also claimed that he heard chants of “build the wall.” While I cannot rule out the possibility that some of the kids indeed chanted this—those who were wearing MAGA hats are presumably Trump supporters—I did not hear a single utterance of the phrase in the nearly two hours of video footage I watched. Admittedly, the kids do a lot of chanting and it’s not always possible to tell what they are saying. Their stated explanation is that they engaged in a series of school sports chants: That’s what one student told a local news reporter. His account largely tracks with the video.

“We are an all-male school that loves to get hyped up,” said this student. “And as we have done for years prior, we decided to do some cheers to pass time. In the midst of our cheers, we were approached by a group of adults led by Nathan Phillips, with Phillips beating his drum. They forced their way to the center of our group. We initially thought this was a cultural display since he was beating along to our cheers and so we clapped to the beat.” According to this student, the smiling student was grinning because he was enjoying the music, but eventually became confused, along with everyone else. (Indeed, multiple people can be heard to shout, “what is going on?”)

It would be impossible to definitively state that none of the young men did anything wrong, offensive, or problematic, at some point, and maybe the smiling student was attempting to intimidate Phillips. But there’s shockingly little evidence of wrongdoing, unless donning a Trump hat and standing in a group of other people doing the same is now an act of harassment or violence. Phillips’ account, meanwhile, is at best flawed, and arguably deliberately misleading.

Unless other information emerges, the school’s best move would be to have a conversation with the boys about the incident, perhaps discuss some strategies for remaining on perfect behavior at highly charged political rallies—where everybody is recording everything on a cell phone—and let that be the end of it.

The writer accurately sums up the situation:

The boys are undoubtedly owed an apology from the numerous people who joined this social media pile-on. This is shaping up to be one of the biggest major media misfires in quite some time.

This is what a media mob looks like, and provides us with another reason to distrust the media.

 

 

Yes, We Are Bailing Out Detroit

Yesterday the Daily Caller reported that despite denials by the White House, Washington is bailing out Detroit. The bailout of $100 million is being described as “blight remediation.”

The article reports:

…it (the $100 Million) allows the city’s new managers to reshuffle more cash into the city employees’ pension funds, which were looted by city and union officials for several decades.

The stealth bailout was exposed by the Detroit Free Press, which said the $100 million would be taken from the so-called “Hardest Hit Fund.” That fund was created by the administration in 2010 to counter the disastrous implosion of the federally-inflated real estate bubble.

Evidently the “Hardest Hit Fund” had been drained over the years by unconventional practices, including the periodic payout of funds to employees in years when the funds’ value were boosted by Wall Street investments.

Keep in mind that the stock market has been in fairly good shape over the last few years due to the influx of money from quantitative easing. That should have kept the funds viable had they been handled properly.

The article further reports:

Detroit has been under Democratic control since the departure of Louis Miriani in 1962, when the city’s residents had the nation’s highest per capita income.

The city crashed in the 1970s, amid racial acrimony and incompetent management at the city’s vital auto plants.

Many other cities and states face severe pension difficulties. They’re led by Chicago and Los Angeles, where Democratic control has boosted the pensions of government employees.

Michigan’s Republican governor, Rick Snyder, has promised to send $350 million in state funds to the city.

It matters who runs your city. Part of the problem is unfunded liabilities (large pensions promised to union government employees). In order to get our cities and states under financial control, we need to make sure that the promises we make to our municipal and state employees are paid for at the time the promises are made. The federal government can print money–states and cities cannot.

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Volkswagen Employees Have Rejected The United Auto Workers Union

The Detroit Free Press posted an article today about the vote by workers at the Volkswagen plant in Tennessee. The workers voted against the United Auto Workers Union (UAW).

The article reports:

Volkswagen has said it favors the creation of a German-styleworks council,” which gives workers a voice on a variety of product and other decisions. Under U.S. law, a union must represent employees for a company to form a works council.

But Snyder voted against the UAW because, he said, Volkswagen is the best employer he’s ever worked for.

“How is somebody here really supposed to know what a works council is going to be like?” Snyder said. “You can have somebody tell you one thing and somebody tell you another thing. Nobody really knows.”

I think that is a really smart statement. The UAW has played something of a role in the bankruptcy of Detroit. They are not totally responsible, but they are not totally innocent either.  I think this vote represents a realization by the workers that they have been treated fairly by the management of Volkswagen and they do not want to risk their current benefits. Unions have traditionally had a role to play in American industry, but many of the benefits of unionization have been taken over by the government. The government now monitors working conditions, waste disposal, and benefits–all things the unions were originally involved in. Unfortunately the unions have become political organizations with overpaid leadership that lives far above the living standard of union members. They have become no different than the corporations and corporate fat cats they continually criticize.

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Rest In Peace, Alex Karras

The Detroit Free Press is reporting today that Alex Karras died today in Los Angeles.

The article describes Alex Karras in the weight room :

“He was 6-2, 260, and in the weight room, he never lifted weights,” Walker (longtime linebacker Wayne Walker) said. “Once a year, he’d come in, smoke a cigar, trim down to his shorts, get under the barbell and bench-press 300 pounds twice. He’d dress, and you’d never see him in the weight room again.”

The article further reports:

“He was a giant of a man with a big heart, a great sense of humor, and very grounded outlook on life,” actor Emmanuel Lewis, who played Karras’ adoptive son, Webster, told si.com. “He might have towered over you . . . but he had a knack of being able get down to your level without being small about it.”

Alex Karras will be missed. He was one of the true gentlemen in the game of football.

 

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This Trial Could Be Very Interesting

A Delta Airlines Airbus A330-323E landing on r...

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On Thursday, the Detroit Free Press posted an article about Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, also known as the underwear bomber, who has asked to be released from prison because, as he states, “all Muslims should only be ruled by the law of the Quran.” That is a very interesting statement when you look at it.

The article reports:

Abdulmutallab, who has insisted on representing himself, is scheduled to go to trial Oct. 4 on charges he tried to blow up a passenger airliner with 279 passengers and 11 crew members on Christmas Day 2009 with a bomb in his underwear.

Au­thorities have said that Abdulmutallab is an al-Qaida operative trained in Yemen for the sui­cide mission, which was foiled when a passenger subdued Abdulmutallab. He is facing nu­mer­ous criminal charges, including conspiracy to commit terror­ism. 

One of the tenets of the law of the Quran is jihad. The Hadiths (sayings of Mohammed) and interpretations of the Quran command Muslims to carry out jihad until all of the Dar al-Harb (the House of War, where shariah law is not enforced) is brought under the domination of Dar al-Islam (the House of Islam, where shariah law is enforced). In other words, Abdulmutallab was obeying shariah law when he tried to blow up that airplane. Under shariah law, he is not only not guilty of a crime, he is to be commended.

It will be interesting to watch this case unfold. What was needed here was the military trial of a terrorist. This man is a soldier in the war against the infidels. Unfortunately, under the Obama administration, he will be tried in a civilian court.

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