NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

IF I AM NOT FOR MYSELF: MARILYN PENN

Posted By on July 18th, 2016

Caving to pressure from 800 alumni of Ramaz, Rabbi Haskel Lookstein, retired principal of the prestigious New York yeshiva, canceled his agreement to deliver a prayer at the Republican National Convention. Many questions arise from both the alumni petition and the rabbi’s decision to withdraw.

Considering that we are living in the most potentially dangerous moment of Israel’s existence, that anti-semitism is rampant throughout Europe, the Middle East and significant institutions in the U.S., and that the Democrat administration has spearheaded a deal with a country openly committed to obliterating Israel, one can only gasp at the lack of concern for these vital issues in the alumni petition. Instead, the former students are primarily incensed at Trump for being racist, misogynistic and daring to suggest that some citizens in this country are “less than others.” For starters, one would hope that any intelligent high school graduate would agree that we should all consider convicted criminals and terrorists as less than others. The language of the petition is as woefully trite as its cliched sentiments: “Rabbi Lookstein, all the good work you’ve done in your life – everything you’ve done for your community, for the plight of Soviet Jews – will be flushed down the toilet for 10 minutes on stage in Cleveland.” Is this the best that the alumni of an outstanding school could pen?

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

CNN Headline: Albanian Couple Arrested in France Attack JUlia Gorin

Posted By on July 18th, 2016

Pamela Geller already has it. There are no details other than six are in custody for the crowd-mowing jihadi attack in Nice last week. The estranged wife of the Albanian man involved has been released and is not a suspect.

Pamela correctly interprets the media’s use of the word “Albanian” as planting doubt about the Muslimness of everyone involved. It was something that Jim Jatras and I mentioned on her radio show in 2007 — namely that the term “ethnic Albanian” became useful during the 1999 conflict, to not turn Westerners off from helping the Muslim side in the conflict against the Christian-Serbs we were setting up as the villain.

But recall that we witnessed the disappearance of the word “Albanian” from articles in the early 2000s, when the news coming out about them was less flattering than their plight as innocent victims of bloodthirsty Christians (e.g., drugs, prostitution, jihad, gangs). Instead, terms like “Yugoslavs” were used, and sometimes “Kosovars,” since no one would know what that was despite our having waged our last pre-9/11 war there, the war that closed the 20th century. The foreshadowing war (of what was to become commonplace in this century: pro-jihad NATO war).

In other words, after working so hard to prop up ethnic identity in multi-national Yugoslavia and dismantle that country into ethnically pure, Western-dependent statelets, our officials and media found themselves embarrassed by their clients, and started shrouding their ethnicity.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

WHY BLACK LIVES DON’T REALLY MATTER TO THE LEFT — ON THE GLAZOV GANG

Posted By on July 18th, 2016

And make sure to watch the special edition of The Glazov Gang that was joined by BattleCat, a pro-American activist whose videos can be seen on her YouTube Channel BattleCat Avenger.

BattleCat came on the show to discuss Obama’s Islamic and Racist Agenda. She called out the Radical-in-Chief on the malice behind his efforts to flood the U.S. with Muslim refugees without any screening, to pour fuel on the fire of racial tensions, and to aid and abet the myriad enemies of American freedom and security.http://jamieglazov.com/2016/07/17/why-black-lives-dont-really-matter-to-the-left-on-the-glazov-gang/

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

William B. Scott*: How to Stop the Killing

Posted By on July 18th, 2016

Foreward: Merely a week after addressing the murderous attack on police officers in Dallas, Tx. President Obama was condemning a similar killing in Baton Rouge, La. The attacks on the police In both instances were unprovoked and pre-mediated. Today, Obama said, “We don’t need inflammatory rhetoric. We don’t need careless accusations thrown around to score political points or to advance an agenda. We need to temper our words…” Too bad he didn’t temper his rhetoric after the killing in Dallas. Instead, he used the opportunity to advance his agenda on “gun control” and “racial disparities in our criminal justice system.”

The President calls for unity and for finding solutions to the tension between the black community, which he helped fuel, but offers none.

William B. Scott, a former flight test engineer and Aviation Week editor, who is a Fellow at the ACD, proposes the following:

“The horrific murder of five Dallas police officers and the wounding of another seven last week triggered a profound sense of deja vu. Three years ago, I predicted this would happen, if cops continued to shoot and kill “civilians.”

Since 1 May 2013, police officers have killed at least 3,702 people. As of July 10th, they’d killed 610 so far in 2016—and the total climbs every year.

[H]ere’s the issue that makes this a national security concern… If all these factors come together under the right circumstance—something as abominable as Steele’s execution—all hell will break loose, and uncontrollable violence will spread across the country. …We’d have a full-blown revolution on our hands. Whole cities would be torched, and we’d incur thousands of casualties. The stock market would crater, people would be afraid to go to work…. Hell, son, America as we know it would cease…to…be!” From Chapter 10, pg. 181-182 of my novel, “The Permit”:

We’re not there yet, but we’re close.

I do NOT condone the targeting and killing of police officers! But I damn sure understand why it’s happening. As our nation mourns the five officers killed in Dallas, let’s not lose sight of the fact that cops are killing an average of 3.3 people per day, every day of the year—and getting away with it 99 percent of the time.

BOOKS Comments turned off

A New Way of War Review: Matti Friedman, ‘Pumpkin Flowers: A Soldier’s Story’ David Isaac

Posted By on July 17th, 2016

In Pumpkin Flowers, Matti Friedman provides a brief, finely written account of an army outpost in Israel’s security zone in southern Lebanon in the 1990s and the men who served there. ‘Pumpkin’ was the outpost’s name, while ‘flowers’ was the Israeli army’s code word for wounded soldiers. The term, writes Friedman, reflects “a floral preoccupation in our military intended to bestow beauty on ugliness and to allow soldiers distance from the things they might have to describe.” The Pumpkin itself was far from poetic, a “rectangle of earthen embankments the size of a basketball court” where there was “nothing unnecessary to the purposes of allowing you to kill, preventing you from being killed, and keeping you from losing your mind in the meantime.”

Born and raised in Toronto, Friedman had only been in Israel a year and a half when, at the age of 19, he was stationed on that hill. While he tells a personal story, the parts of the book where he describes the endless waiting, the bursts of combat, and the yearning for home contain a universal message that applies to every soldier in every war on every battlefield. Friedman himself only enters the book about halfway through. In order to give a fuller account of life on the Pumpkin, he starts with the story of Avi, one of the soldiers he would eventually replace. Although Friedman did not know Avi, he was given access to his letters and discovered that the soldier wrote almost as well as he did.

In February 1997, only a month away from discharge, Avi died in a mid-air collision between two IDF helicopters ferrying troops to their outposts on the security zone. All 73 aboard the two helicopters were killed. Although Hezbollah would take credit for Israel’s withdrawal from Lebanon, it was this accident, Friedman says, that shifted Israeli attitudes against the occupation. People began to believe the security zone was killing more people than it was saving—that instead of being a solution to a problem, it was itself the problem.

Friedman, who went up to the Pumpkin in 1998, offers not a hint of braggadocio about his own experiences, although it is clear he acquitted himself well under fire. He writes that a simple message hung from the wall of every outpost: “The Mission: Protecting the Northern Communities.” By the time Friedman left, he admits he no longer believed the message. “[B]y this time, like many Israelis I had replaced one simple idea —‘the Mission: Protecting the Northern Communities’—with another, that ceding the security zone to our enemies would placate them.” Israel pulled out of Lebanon only a few months after Matti completed his service on May 24, 2000.

BOOKS Comments turned off

EDGAR DAVIDSON: THE ANTISEMITE TEST

Posted By on July 17th, 2016

Confronting antisemitism and Israel hatred http://edgar1981.blogspot.com/

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Invisible Men: Black Victims of Black Killers Remain in the Shadows America was rocked by the deaths of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, two black men killed by police in early July, but what of the other 21 black men killed on those two days? By Deroy Murdock

Posted By on July 17th, 2016

The whole world is watching videos of two men recently killed by cops. Meanwhile, nearly two dozen black men killed almost simultaneously — but not by police — remain virtually anonymous.

Police officers fatally shot Alton Sterling and Philando Castile in, respectively, Baton Rouge and near Minneapolis. While extenuating circumstances may exonerate officers Blaine Salamoni and Howie Lake of Louisiana and Jeronimo Yanez of Minnesota, the ubiquitous videos of their deaths make Sterling and Castile look like the victims of dreadful police training, trigger-happiness, toxic over-reaction, racism, or perhaps an amalgam of these elements. While facts ultimately may prove otherwise, for now, both incidents seemingly went very wrong. If so, justice should prevail, and these officers should be punished.

But on July 5 and 6 — as these tragedies unfolded — at least 21 other black men were murdered across America. Their killers were not cops. Several were fellow black men. One was a Hispanic teenager. The others could have been white, but that’s unlikely.

While news outlets from California to Calcutta have discussed Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, the names of these dead men barely have been whispered since their funerals:

From left: Taekwon Commodore with his two children; Domonic Norton; Gerard Foster

Jamal Brown, 20, allegedly shot and killed Taekwon “Tee Kay” Commodore, 28, on July 5 in Brownsville, Pa. Police say that these two black men and others argued about a robbery, and then Brown began shooting into the air. When the crowd scattered, Brown allegedly shot at those who ran and fatally hit Commodore.

“His personality, smile and happiness were infectious to us all,” Commodore’s loved ones wrote on a GoFundMe.com appeal to cover his funeral expenses. (So far, donors have met $340 of the $4,000 goal.) “And his laugh. . . . you can never forget his laugh,” it continues. “He leaves behind his amazing music and realistic lyrics, but more importantly, he leaves two beautiful baby boys behind. Two baby boys left without a father. That’s all his loved ones have left of him.”

Police are seeking a black man named Davon Burden, 27, in connection with the shooting death of Domonic J. Norton, 28, on July 5 in Fort Wayne, Ind. Burden was convicted in 2010 of possessing a gun with obliterated identification marks.

POLITICS Comments turned off

Hillary Clinton’s Greatest ‘Accomplishments,’ Annotated What do honest Abe or Ike amount to compared with our presumptive Democratic nominee? By David French

Posted By on July 17th, 2016

Surveying the entire history of the American presidency, from George Washington to Thomas Jefferson to James Madison to Abraham Lincoln to Ulysses S. Grant to Dwight Eisenhower and beyond, President Obama recently declared that he doesn’t think “there’s ever been someone so qualified” to be president as . . . Hillary Clinton.

She didn’t lead American forces to victory in the Revolution. She didn’t write the Declaration of Independence. She didn’t write the Bill of Rights. She didn’t lead the Union to victory in the Civil War or the Allied forces to victory in the world’s worst war. Her accomplishments must be greater — her leadership even more magnificent.

Worried that I’d overlooked her greatness, I scurried over to Hillary’s website to feast my eyes on her “7 biggest accomplishments.” Valley Forge? The Starks have seen colder winters. The Declaration of Independence? White man’s words. Normandy? A beach vacation. Behold the greatness that is Hillary Clinton, in her campaign’s own words — with a few modest annotations following.

1. Fought for children and families for 40 years and counting.

After law school, Hillary could have gone to work for a prestigious law firm, but took a job at the Children’s Defense Fund. She worked with teenagers incarcerated in adult prisons in South Carolina and families with disabled children in Massachusetts. It sparked a lifelong passion for helping children live up to their potential.

Well, not all children:

POLITICS Comments turned off

Michael Warren Davis Far-From-Dead White Males

Posted By on July 17th, 2016

US politics has long been shaped by policies specifically crafted to win the fealty of recognised minorities — a logic that assumes the largest single electoral demographic can be ignored at best or, just as often, actively disparaged. Donald Trump has shot down this canard.
Much – probably too much – has been made of Donald Trump’s popularity with the Alternative Right (or Alt-Right), an internet-based network of white nationalist trolls. They serve has his praetorian guard on Twitter, dividing their time equally between harassing his opponents and composing propagandic memes. Indeed, the myth of the Angry White Man has been enlisted by Trump’s opponents more than all the cracks about bad hair and orange skin put together. But the role that race and gender has played (and continues to play) in Trump’s ascendency can’t be waved off so easily. A new poll by the Pew Research Center shows that Trump leads among college-educated white men, 49% to 42%. Compare this to an earlier Pew poll’s finding that whites overall prefer Trump 51% to 42%, and men overall prefer him 49% to 43%.

Before going on, let’s take a moment to reflect on one fact: Hillary Clinton leads among blacks (91% to 7%), Hispanics (66% to 24%), and women (59% to 35%) – statistics her political and media allies tout with orgiastic relish. That a candidate appeals to protected identity groups is meant to be inherently appealing. These groups are basically assumed to be an on the side of the angels, and politicians are expected to tailor their policies accordingly. Indeed, one of the great identity crises raging in the GOP is whether Republicans should make themselves more agreeable to Hispanics or blacks. That blacks and Hispanics are simply incorrect for voting overwhelmingly Democratic never occurs to the Republican establishment. If the conservative message doesn’t resonate with minorities, their thinking goes, then there must be something wrong with conservatism.

That vacuous, pliable attitude is dangerous in itself, and there’s no need to dwell on it at any great length. Everyone knows that pandering to race and gender is deplorable; it’s just a matter of whether or not you’re willing to commit deplorable acts in order to get elected.

Politicians and commentators are, however, loathe to discuss a candidate’s appeal to white men one way or the other. It’s impossible to say that appealing to whites – still by far the largest ethnic group in the United States – is intrinsically negative. Then again, appealing to them can’t be intrinsically positive either: political correctness won’t allow it. Ditto for gender: appealing to men isn’t usually considered a thing to be condemned, but the PC censors would never allow it to be regarded as a thing to be applauded either. To all intents and purposes, the white male vote is purely incidental.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Congressman: Visa Overstays Not Reported to Homeland Security By Nicholas Ballasy

Posted By on July 17th, 2016

WASHINGTON — Rep. Kenny Marchant (R-Texas) said the Department of Homeland Security and U.S. consulates do not communicate with each other about individuals who have overstayed their visas.

“A big problem in my district is visa overstays. I mean, it is rampant,” Marchant told PJM during an interview on Capitol Hill.

Marchant also told PJM people are staying in the U.S. on many different types of expired visas.

“They’re enrolling in college for one semester, paying the tuition and they’re gone,” he said. “So, we found out that there is actually no communication between Homeland Security and each of the consulates that issue the visas. We don’t know who is overstaying their visas.”

Marchant said the U.S. consulates that issue the visas to foreigners should be required to report visa data to DHS.

“Just a list. Here’s how many people we gave visas to, here’s how many came back, here’s the people that never came back,” he said, explaining the kind of information the consulates should provide.

“Now that presents a problem — now where are you going to go? Are you going to round them up? I don’t know but we should at least know who they are,” he added.

Marchant, a member of the House Committee on Ways and Means, said some people visit his district office with expired visas and ask his staff for help.

“They just boldly walk in the front door — demand and say, ‘my visa is expired, I need you to write a letter for hardship.’ Our staff is trying to say we are obligated by law to report you to the INS because you are here illegally and we are not going to help you. If you want to pursue this further and open a case we are going to have to report you to the INS,” Marchant said, referring to the Immigration and Naturalization Service that was split into three agencies under the Bush administration: U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP).

“I’m all for legal immigration – most of the immigrants in my district are legal, but visa overstays are a huge problem,” he added.