Last week was a bad one for Democrats. First, video surfaced of a black man beating multiple elderly white people in a nursing home in Detroit. The attacks overwhelmed the senses of many who watched the videos. One wishes to un-see such blatant evil.

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has been roundly criticized for her decision to send COVID+ patients to nursing homes, one of several Democrat governors to do so.

Yes, the abuser was COVID-19 positive.

Jadon Hayden was known to have tested positive for the virus and was, unfathomably, under quarantine in the nursing home. Whitmer is earning her new nickname, "Heil Whitmer", more and more with each passing day of the pandemic. As CDMedia has reported, the group of Democrat governors who specified that nursing homes had to accept COVID patients contributed to a rise in the virus death toll, and a slew of hospitals received more funding as a result.

An elderly woman was another of Hayden's victims. Yes, we've all heard of elderly abuse in nursing homes, but this is a boxing match, not nasty comments or passive aggression.

From COVID-19 To Foot-In-Mouth Disease

The other very bad look for Democrats last week: Joe Biden's "you ain't black" comment during an interview with rapper and social critic Charlamagne Tha God. The comment was part of the embattled presidential candidate's opinion that if a black person votes for President Trump, they are somehow less black, less of a black person. It set off a three day-long Twitter trend of #YouAintBlack, and countless anti-Biden memes.

It was a tough few days for Biden, with no end in sight. Until...

Karen To the Rescue

Two things happened to change the national conversation on race. First, "Central Park Karen." New Yorker Amy Cooper was playing with her illegally unleashed dog when Christian Cooper, who is unrelated, objected to her behavior and took a cell phone video of Ms. Cooper calling the police.

The media, and to be fair, most of the public, immediately sided with Mr. Cooper over Ms. Cooper. Her hysteria in the video contrasts sharply with Mr. Cooper's calm voice. She fit neatly into a trending social class of white women who call the police on black men over trivial matters: "Karens." He fit generally into an old, long suffering and troubled social class: the black male.

Ms. Cooper was fired from her job as a portfolio manager at Franklin Templeton Investments, she has since surrendered her dog for adoption, and the city council is discussing banning Ms. Cooper from Central Park. For life.

Say what you will about Ms. Cooper's actions, but she was vilified and tried in the court of public opinion based on a video that starts in medias res. "I know what I saw" was a common refrain from Twitter users. Really? Despite not seeing what preceded it?

Approached, videoed, and uploaded on Monday morning, jobless, pet-less, and receiving death threats by Tuesday afternoon.

Alas, it turns out the case isn't so open-and-shut. After two days of reflection, people are beginning to ask some difficult questions. Not quite conspiracy theory-level difficult, but some details are awfully curious here. Mr. Cooper was out birdwatching when he decided to be a bit of a Karen himself, asking Ms. Cooper to leash her harmless dog.

When she explained why she didn't, he threatened her. In his own words: "Look, if you're going to do what you want, I'm going to do what I want, but you're not going to like it."

Then he produces a dog treat? Aside from the sheer oddity of carrying dog treats when you don't own a dog, what was his intent? Why would he want the dog to come closer to him? "...but you're not going to like it" must have been ringing in her ears.

For Ms. Cooper to call the police may have been an overreaction, but there are plenty of questionable characters in Central Park. Solo males with "treats" for other people's dogs with whom they are arguing? Yes, that's definitely on that list.

To complicate matters, Mr. Cooper is a progressive activist. As reported by NewsOne:

According to GAY USA, Cooper was a co-chair of the board of directors of the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) in the late ’80s, “at a time when GLAAD was still a grass-roots, New York-based group organizing protest rallies against anti-gay violence, actions against the New York Post for its homophobic coverage, and television appearances to correct misleading programming about LGBT lives.”

Chris also brought his activism to the comic book world. While he worked as a writer and editor for Marvel Comics, he was the assistant editor to the comic book that featured Marvel’s first out superhero. He also is the creator of Marvel’s first lesbian central character. He eventually created and authored the Internet’s lamented LGBTQ superhero epic “QUEER NATION: THE ONLINE GAY COMIC”.

Christian also put in work on the governing level when he organized the political action committee (PAC) No More REPublicans Toying with Your Life (No More REPTYLs) in response to the continued suppression of basic LGBTQ legislation in New York State by the Republican majority in the state’s senate.

Sounds like Mr. Cooper has an axe to grind wherever he goes.

And yes, he did threaten her. And she threatened him. Ultimately, they're both at fault. So why is he celebrated as a "black gay icon" and she's now an unemployed "racist"? Because of the perception that police would "SWAT" Mr. Cooper. And, crucially, that Ms. Cooper would comprehend this danger: that the NYPD would have arrived and gunned him down...in Central Park.

The reality: police interaction in Mayor Bill De Blasio's New York is far more peaceful than outsiders might expect. It is the NYPD who wear restraints, their powers curtailed by a mayor more interested in perception than reality. Violent crime is on the rise again in NYC. Cops there are suicidal, not homicidal.

The most likely outcome of Ms. Cooper's 911 call: an officer arrives, asks the two unarmed, well-educated parties what transpired, and sends them both on their way with a warning to Ms. Cooper.

Because Ms. Cooper continued to speak to someone who was recording her, her life is in shambles. Approached, videoed, and uploaded on Monday morning, jobless, pet-less, and receiving death threats by Tuesday afternoon.

Ms. Cooper even used the politically correct "African-American" term to describe Mr. Cooper. Not "black man," and certainly not any slurs. Providing a description to a 911 operator is part of the protocol.

Using PC terminology doesn't lend the speaker immunity anymore, if it ever did. Cooper was fired without any reasonable hearing or discussion, a knee-jerk corporate reaction from the human resources department. She was a sacrifice on the altar of what I'll call the New Fairness Doctrine: any action by a white person that could be interpreted as racist is automatically granted that status by the press, and amplified by politicians.

Take a look at the headlines: when it comes to racism, the media (and the mayor) are judge and jury:

De Blasio is so incredibly odious. What a divider, failing to see any nuance whatsoever.

“The video out of Central Park is racism, plain and simple,” de Blasio tweeted. “She called the police BECAUSE he was a Black man. Even though she was the one breaking the rules. She decided he was the criminal and we know why.”

--Bill De Blasio

Do I side with Ms. Cooper? No. I live in New York, less than a mile from the Ramble. Both of these people are annoying. The casual scofflaw who flies into hysterics at the slightest sign of a threat, and has an Instagram account for her dog where she writes posts in his "voice"...and the chip on Chris Cooper's shoulder, an activist just looking for a confrontation so he can feel he did his daily part for the "resistance."

They likely vote the exact same way.

The immediacy of Ms. Cooper's demise should stand as a warning to all. The ground has shifted during the pandemic. The leftist media are hungry to elevate and push any story that takes eyes off of a COVID+ black man beating elderly whites, any story that makes #YouAintBlack stop trending.

Unsolicited advice: if anyone points a camera in your face, ask yourself if it's worth the consequences of potential worldwide media coverage. The Central Park Karen story trended #1 in Australia. A story about a man and a woman arguing about park leash laws went viral...in a different hemisphere.

Walk away from the camera lens. Solve it another time, a different way.

Minnesota Not-So-Nice

The next racially charged event: riots in Minneapolis, Minnesota over the death of George Floyd. This is a story actually worthy of media attention. A police officer knelt on a handcuffed man's neck until he died of asphyxiation.

As a result, people protested in Minneapolis. Officers, likely angry over the hasty firing of their four fellow officers present at the scene, retaliated against the angry mob with rubber bullets and tear gas. It's a far cry from Lake Woebegone.

This hits close to home for me, having lived in Minneapolis for many years. I went to college, tended bar, worked for a private school, then a financial services firm based in the city, and bought my first home there. What transpired over the past three days is not the Minneapolis I know.

As CDMedia has reported, Minneapolis is not all Mary Tyler Moore tossing her hat in the air. Once the anti-Semitic capital of the U.S., it has made news lately for its large Somali population in the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood, aka Little Mogadishu, and the subsequent election of Muslim Keith Ellison to the House of Representatives (he is now the Minnesota Attorney General), followed by Ilhan "Gal Qaeda" Omar.

Tensions between Minneapolis police and the black community have grown steadily for some time. Minneapolis is very progressive, but it is also quite segregated. The black community, minus the Somali faction, lives almost entirely in North Minneapolis.

Be it zoning or keeping troubled cops on the squad, Democratic Mayor Jacob Frey isn't taking any responsibility for his police department.

“For five straight minutes a white officer on our police department pressed his knee into the neck of a black man who was handcuffed, who was no threat and was articulating very clearly how he was impacted, how his physical health was being damaged and how he couldn’t breathe,” Frey told reporters yesterday.

Riots blossom and looters flourish in progressive cities in an ugly, predictable cycle. An event occurs that stirs black community passions. Demonstrations grow, nerves fray. Afraid to enforce the rule of law for fear of angering their base, politicians allow riots to occur, order police to stand down. Sensing the lack of repercussions, citizens are more likely to riot the next time.

Minneapolis, and indeed, much of the United States is a tinderbox for melee. Locked inside for months, fearful of deathly predictions, cut off from grounding institutions such as their churches, people are angry and restless. A white cop killing a black man on a public street is the perfect catalyst to start a civil war, a race war.

Too perfect, perhaps.

In fact, all of it feels off. CDMedia is especially wary of "coincidences" that change news cycles. The moment conservatives get a win against the creeping globalist agenda, against the destruction of American values, loud distractions tend to pop up quickly, as if by design. And they are covered endlessly by mass media in lockstep, rote fashion.

What happened in Minneapolis was homicide, not negligence, according to Frank Figliuzzi, former Assistant Director of the FBI. He appeared on MSNBC Tuesday to make the following claim:

"Well, you're right, the Minneapolis police officers responding here seemed to have turned a call for forgery in progress into a murder in progress. I watched in its entirety the publicly posted video. Nicolle, what I saw was homicide taking place. There's very little doubt that that officer will be charged at some point with either homicide or manslaughter."

Figliuzzi is who MSNBC trots out when they need an opinion on U.S. intel. He's not exactly a household name, but to be fair, CNN has a corner on the former-spook department. Open a YouTube window and search Figliuzzi's name. The list of clips is a mile long: Trump Crossed A Line, Trump Using Barr, Trump Compromised Himself With Russia--stuff like that.

The thing is...Figliuzzi may be correct about George Floyd. If you watch the videos carefully, it's difficult to defend Officer Derek Chauvin's actions. I'm not here to do so. Still, it is curious that he and three other officers were fired almost immediately. That's not how these things work.

Think of every other case like this. The officer is suspended from duty, all evidence is reviewed, all sides are heard, a conclusion reached soberly, not in the heat of the moment. Here's a protocol for what happens after an officer shoots someone. None of these steps were taken before four officers were fired, no toxicology report, nothing.

Further, as ABC reports, kneeling on a suspect's neck is legal in Minneapolis:

In Minneapolis, kneeling on a suspect's neck is allowed under the department’s use-of-force policy for officers who have received training in how to compress a neck without applying direct pressure to the airway. It is considered a “non-deadly force option,” according to the department’s policy handbook.

--ABC News

Bear in mind, I'm not arguing for Chauvin. I think he knowingly killed Floyd. He has had disciplinary issues during his career. I just want to know what his motivation was, and if he has had any unusual contact with suspicious parties recently. Any large financial events, be it a windfall or unforeseen loss.

Consider:

• Floyd was initially handcuffed while still in his automobile, while seated. I've never seen that happen.
• After he was cuffed, he was allowed to sit on the sidewalk for several minutes.
• He was then walked roughly 100 feet away to another squad SUV, where he was knelt upon and killed.
• The kneeling happened after backup had arrived. Why not just put him in the squad car?

Why are so many details incongruent?

The Plague of Looting Spreads To a Formerly Great City

And now we have looting and rioting in another of America's cities. Such behavior does nothing for race relations, and whereas some whites in Minnesota will simply bend over further in an effort to fix things, others will become more cynical.

Predictably, the lines are drawn. Patriots for order and justice, and everyone else for a new flat-screen TV and some Nikes.

What To Watch For

So now what? The key figures and issues to study, in descending order of importance:

• Former Officer Derek Chauvin is the fulcrum of the Floyd case. His future hangs in the balance more so than anyone else. Does he have any unsavory political affiliations?
• Will Chauvin "commit suicide" before trial?
• Were the protests stirred into riots by Soros-funded groups Black Lives Matter and/or Antifa? This debacle has all the markings of Soros involvement, including the actual graffiti.
• Will Jadon Hayden's trial reveal anything about his motivations? How did he come to be quarantined in a nursing home with a COVID+ diagnosis? Was Whitmer intentionally spreading the virus?

• Let’s Be Honest…Criminal Democrats Are Killing Americans For Power
• Listen Here, Boy: Joe Biden Is Racist. So Is The Democratic Party