The Morning Briefing: The Summer of Love Sure Has a Lot of Violence and Murder

Endless Summer, But Not the Good Kind

Wishing all of you a joyous Tuesday, Kruiser Morning Briefing readers.

How is everyone’s Summer of Love working out so far?

Yeah, that’s rhetorical.

As this year moves into its seventeen-thousandth month it gets to be more of a crap shoot looking at the news every day. Alas, it is part of the job. We’ve reached a point this summer where the days in March and April, when we were only worrying about dying from the plague, seem rather halcyon now.

A couple of posts grabbed my attention yesterday that indicated we may not be reaching our potential as a species and that Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan was way off with her prediction about how this summer was going to play out.

Bryan highlighted an article from the Wall Street Journal that had some disturbing numbers about the rise in murder rates in many of America’s major cities:

Rarely do we witness cause and effect so clearly.

Mayors and city councils everywhere are lurching to the far-left fringe, dismissing the majority’s concerns over crime, defunding and demoralizing police, and empowering violent criminals. That’s the cause. The effect is rising murder rates in Democrat-run cities all over the country. Americans are dying.

Thanks to “defund the police” and the Democrat cities going along with it, violent crime, including homicide, is surging in most of America’s largest cities. While the raw numbers are terrible for Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, and other very large cities, it’s Austin, Texas, that’s leading by percentage increase year over year.

Cheery, no?

Megan had more Summer of Murder news from — shocker — Portland:

The city of Portland was forced to disband its Gun Violence Reduction Team at the order of the City Council in response to protests demanding they defund police. Since then, Portland has seen more killings in one month than in the last thirty years.

This is an inconvenient double snapshot of the the way life will be all of the time if Babbling Joe gets elected in November. While not all of the cities experiencing spikes in murder rates are run by Democrats, most of them are. Biden has already proven that he’s on board with the BLM cop-hating vibe and it’s a safe bet to assume that whichever commie female he picks for a running mate will be far worse. She will also be president by February of next year, which my make the summer of 2021 even worse.

Of course, it’s not just murders that are going up in some of these places. Portland has been an all-around you-know-what show for a couple of months now. Amid all of this insanity, many of these cities are still talking about defunding the police and replacing them with hippie feel-good social workers. Should be fun the first time one of them tries to break up a domestic disturbance with a hug.

If this summer has been any indication, the healing will not begin posthaste just because the cops are hampered by idiot liberals, although those liberals will keep insisting that will be the case.

As the summer winds down, we have no guarantees about a return to anything resembling normalcy. It we don’t have the usual end of summer traditions like students returning class, people might get even crankier. Who knows? Maybe we’ll end with fall riots instead of football.

Mayor Jenny’s Summer of Love dream was always ridiculous, but I’m going to be wishing for a less murder-y finish to the year.

A guy can dream.

A Big Thank You

There is some good news this summer. The Morning Briefing just followed up a record-breaking traffic month in June with another one in July. I am deeply grateful to all of you for making this regular reading. I am going to keep tweaking it here and there to make it interesting and I appreciate feedback.

Another Cold-Take From the Never-Brain-Cell Clown

If early voting is underway before the scheduled debates, then it seems unfair to early voters to have those debates as scheduled. But so much work went in to the schedule that it seems unfair to change it. So I guess the fairest thing might be to skip the debates this year. 🤷‍♂️ https://t.co/Y4JccPbKtE

— Bill Kristol (@BillKristol) August 4, 2020

Bee Me

Democrats Propose New Debate Format Where Biden Is Tied Up Backstage With His Mouth Duct-Taped Shut https://t.co/iFKkZ5eFQR

— The Babylon Bee (@TheBabylonBee) August 3, 2020

The Kruiser Kabana

Sign of the times.

pic.twitter.com/493L9QKj2g

— Archillect (@archillect) August 3, 2020

My curve feels properly flattened.

___

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PJ Media Senior Columnist and Associate Editor Stephen Kruiser is the author of “Don’t Let the Hippies Shower” and “Straight Outta Feelings: Political Zen in the Age of Outrage,” both of which address serious subjects in a humorous way. Monday through Friday he edits PJ Media’s “Morning Briefing.” His columns appear twice a week.