Rick Santorum claims Obama 'exacerbated racism' long before Trump

Washington Examiner  "Former Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., claimed Sunday that Barack Obama "exacerbated racism" by aligning himself with anti-police activists whenever people of color were targeted by law enforcement during his presidency.

"Santorum made the comment during a CNN segment about President Trump's success in 2016, and whether he capitalized on Republican backlash to the first African-American president.

" 'You elect the first black president and there was an uproar. ... What Donald Trump did was he tapped into it," Karine Jean-Pierre, a spokeswoman for the progressive group Move On, said during the segment." . . .

. . . "He continued, "Many people saw Barack Obama ... doing more to exacerbate racism. Every time someone of color was involved, he took the side, many times, against the police."

" 'He did it over and over and over again," Santorum said claiming Obama could have "brought this country together" if he had adjusted his response to certain tragedies while in office.

"The tense exchange between Santorum and Jean-Pierre came in response to questions about a new book by former White House deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes. In it, Rhodes claims Obama once suggested he may have pushed Americans "too far" in racial politics and the culture wars." . . .

Sailor Pardoned By Trump Plans To Sue Obama, Comey

Daily Wire

"A former Navy sailor who was prosecuted by the Obama Administration for taking photos of classified sections of the submarine where he served, and was later pardoned by President Trump, is taking aim at former President Barack Obama, former FBI director James Comey, and the Justice Department, suing them for treating him differently than they treated Hillary Clinton after she left classified information at risk.

"As Fox News reports, Kristian Saucier served one year in prison after federal prosecutors argued he had endangered national security by taking photos of the submarine's propulsion system and reactor compartment and then obstructed justice by destroying a laptop and camera. Saucier claimed he wanted the pictures for service mementos. He was pardoned by Trump in March and plans to claim in his lawsuit that Obama and the other defendants treated him with unequal protection under the law.

"Saucier's attorney, Ronald Daigle, told Fox News “We’ll highlight the differences in the way Hillary Clinton was prosecuted and how my client was prosecuted. We’re seeking to cast a light on this to show that there’s a two-tier justice system and we want it to be corrected.' ” . . .

Starbucks Employees Say 'Bias' Training Was Mostly Anti-Cop Propaganda

Blue Lives Matter "Philadelphia, PA – Employees of color who attended the highly-publicized “unconscious bias training” for Starbucks employees on Tuesday have reported it was more of a lesson on police brutality than anything else.

"Starbucks closed 8,000 stores for several hours on May 30 to facilitate seminars for its employees after the coffee shop was at the forefront of a racial controversy in April.

"“It felt like we were off task the entire time because we didn’t reflect on the situation itself,” a black 18-year-old Starbucks employee called “Tina” told Philadelphia Magazine.

“ 'The training materials focused a lot on police brutality, which had nothing to do with the incident that happened,” Tina said.

"She was referring to the incident that occurred at a Philadelphia Starbucks on April 12 when two black men were arrested for trespassing after employees called the police because they hadn’t purchased anything and refused to leave.

"On that occasion, despite the controversy that surrounded their ejection from the coffee shop, no force was used to remove the men, and there have been zero allegations of police brutality." . . .

Confronted about Monica Lewinsky in light of #MeToo, Bill Clinton displays an attitude that had me gasping aloud in disgust.

Althouse  "That's the "Today" show, this morning, I believe. The interviewer is Craig Melvin, whose demeanor is rock solid. I'm not seeing the whole interview, but from this clip, I would criticize Melvin for focusing only on what Clinton did to/with Monica Lewinsky. Ask him about Paula Jones (not to mention the others)!

"Bill Clinton focuses on himself and acts like the debt he owed his lawyers — $16 million — is commensurate with the harm he did to the women. That's not enough for #MeToo purposes (and it was never enough for me).

"And Bill says it's already been litigated and 2/3 of Americans agreed with me. But that can only mean that 2/3 of Americans thought that he shouldn't be removed from office because of the asserted offense (basically only perjury in a deposition in a civil lawsuit). The American people haven't agreed with him that it's okay to treat women like that.

"And then Bill starts chuckling, in his trademark Southern manner, over the good he's done for women. The tone, the fake casualness, and the reliance on his idea that we have the idea that he's a good guy — it's just so disgusting." . . .

California and Conservatism

Victor Davis Hanson

. . . "Is there some hope? A recent April poll from the liberal UC Berkeley Haas center proved a shock in reporting that 24 percent of the survey’s participants agreed that it’s “very important” for the U.S. to increase deportations of undocumented immigrants, while 35 polled said it was “somewhat important” — an aggregate majority result expressing a desire for future legal immigration only. The poll included a majority of Hispanic residents, upon whose schools, communities, and social services open borders and illegal immigration most heavily fall. Currently there are early pushbacks against the new steep gasoline taxes; high-speed rail, whose half-built overpasses are our modern Stonehenge, has lost most public support.

"What, then, is the chance of California’s recalibrating as a conservative state? It largely hinges on meritocratic, measured, diverse, and legal immigration that studies show most successfully leads to assimilation, intermarriage, and integration, a melting pot that makes residents see their particular tribal affiliations as incidental rather than essential to their characters.

"When that happens, millions of Californians of all backgrounds will more likely vote for issues such as reducing taxes, encouraging energy development and middle-class housing construction, and investing in infrastructure such as freeways and reservoirs (rather than building impossible utopian high-speed rail projects), reforming pensions, curbing teacher unions, and allowing more charter schools and school choices. In other words, the present-day Democratic voter will someday question why such high sales, income, and energy taxes result in such poor social services, as the state’s highways and schools rank near last in the nation." . . .

Left buys into fake news about Martha Stewart refusing Trump pardon

Rich Terrell

Monica Showalter  "So did Martha Stewart refuse President Trump's pardon of her, on a maliciously prosecuted insider stock trading case, based on her progressive views? Nope, not to anyone's knowledge.

"But a satirical news site put that out there and sure enough, out on Twitter and elsewhere, much of the left bit into the fake news and passed it around. Obviously, the satirists knew the left would believe it." . . .

"What Trump did, in fact, was a bipartisan thing, given that Stewart is a friend of the Clintons and holds Democratic views, something she never allows to pollute into her magazine. For most people, this is fine, and the selective prosecution she got was bad stuff. Trump fixed it, Stewart has accepted it (a thank you would be nice, but let's not get ahead of ourselves) and now she gets her life back as it was. Above all, Trump's pardon was based on a sense of justice, not her being a member of the right party, as Obama would have required. Can you imagine Obama pardoning a Republican? Never would have happened, and never did happen. Republicans, such as Dinesh D'Souza, were special targets of Obama's prosecutorial apparat, and to correct that injustice, Trump to his credit pardoned D'Souza, too. Obama, by contrast, pardoned mainly drug dealers and petty criminals, along with a few favorites. Trump's pardon power extends to actual cases of injustice in the judicial system, and sends a message to selective prosecutors ambitious for headlines that their efforts may be junked." . . .