Displaying posts published in

May 2022

The Mass Shooting Blame Game The despicable rush to blame a deranged killer on Republicans

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-massacre-blame-game-buffalo-shooting-payton-gendron-democrats-media-race-11652825519?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

American politics these days never fails to meet the public’s low expectations. The latest example is the transparently political attempt by Democrats and their media allies to blame political opponents for the murderous rampage of Payton Gendron in Buffalo.

As so often these days with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez looking over his shoulder, the exploiter in chief is New York Sen. Chuck Schumer. He used the moment to blame the Democratic Party’s recently unveiled, and focus-group tested, election campaign theme: “MAGA Republicans.”

“Every time MAGA Republicans or pundits vilify wrongly immigrants and call them invaders, every time they falsely claim that millions of undocumented people cast ballots in our elections, and every time loud bigoted voices bemoan the disintegration of an imagined ‘classic’ America, the subtext is clear: these hard-right MAGA Republicans argue that people of color and minority communities are somehow posing a threat—a threat—to the American way of life.”

He added: “This is replacement theory in a nutshell. It is a dangerous and a deeply anti-American worldview. It’s poisoning people’s minds who spend hours wandering the darkest wastelands of the internet.”

We’ve supported immigration longer than Mr. Schumer has been in Congress, and politicians should be careful in their rhetoric. But note his logic of massacre causation: Political opposition to unchecked immigration, or support for ballot integrity and American values, drove Payton Gendron to kill 10 African-Americans at a Buffalo supermarket. Oh, and Mr. Schumer also threw in Fox News (where we have a TV show) as fellow travelers in domestic terrorism.

ELECTIONS 2022 PRIMARIES

Pennsylvania GOP Senate Primary Race Too Close to Call

By Caroline Downey

Trump-endorsed celebrity surgeon Mehmet Oz currently has a razor-thin margin of less than a thousand votes over hedge-fund executive Dave McCormick.

Madison Cawthorn Loses North Carolina GOP House Primary Challenge after Scandal Pile-Up

By Caroline Downey

Cawthorn lost to state senator Chuck Edwards after a series of scandals shook his budding political career.

Trump-Backed Doug Mastriano Wins Pennsylvania GOP Primary for Governor

By Caroline Downey

Mastriano defeated a crowded field of eight challengers, including second-place contender former U.S. Representative Lou Barletta.

John Fetterman Wins Pennsylvania Democratic Senate Primary after Suffering Stroke

By Caroline Downey

Fetterman is currently projected to win by more than 30 percent over second-place finisher U.S. representative Conor Lamb.

Judge Jackson Won’t Say Dobbs Leak Is Wrong and Won’t Object to Protests at Her Soon-to-Be Colleagues’ Homes Andrew McCarthy

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/judge-jackson-wont-say-dobbs-leak-is-wrong-and-wont-object-to-protests-at-her-soon-to-be-colleagues-homes/?

Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, who will replace Justice Stephen Breyer on the Supreme Court after the current term ends in a few weeks, sat for an interview by the Washington Post. She was asked about the leak of Justice Alito’s draft opinion in the Dobbs abortion case, and the consequent demonstrations at the homes of several justices — Chief Justice John Roberts, as well as conservative justices identified in media reporting as having voted with Alito to overturn Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey.

Here’s the relevant excerpt from the interview:

Q: What was your response when you when you saw the draft leak [of a Supreme Court opinion that would strike down Roe v. Wade]?

A: Everybody who is familiar with the court and the way in which it works was shocked by that. Such a departure from normal order.

Q: Do you think it was a good thing or a bad thing?

A: I can’t answer that.

Q: What do you think about peaceful protests outside of Supreme Court justices’ homes?

A: I don’t have any comment.

This ranges from somewhere between cowardly and sinister, much like the failure of the justices to issue a joint statement that echoes the chief justice’s condemnation of the leak and statement of determination to identify the leaker, and that condemns the protests, which violate federal law.

Princeton Preparing to Fire Tenured Professor for Opposing Far-Left Activists

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/princeton-preparing-to-fire-tenured-professor-for-opposing-far-left-activists/?utm_

Classics professor Joshua Katz, one of the few academics who spoke out against the extremist mobs that formed in the wake of the George Floyd slaying, has been targeted for loss of tenure and firing by Princeton president Christopher Eisgruber, according to a report by Washington Free Beacon reporter Aaron Sibarium.

Katz ran afoul of the hard left after he wrote:

The Black Justice League, which was active on campus from 2014 until 2016, was a small local terrorist organization that made life miserable for the many (including the many black students) who did not agree with its members’ demands. . . . Recently I watched an “Instagram Live” of one of its alumni leaders, who—emboldened by recent events and egged on by over 200 supporters who were baying for blood—presided over what was effectively a Struggle Session against one of his former classmates. It was one of the most evil things I have ever witnessed, and I do not say this lightly.

Katz added, “the BJL went after one fellow black student with particular vigor, verbally vilifying her in public at every possible opportunity, calling her all sorts of unsavory epithets and accusing her of  ‘performing white supremacy.’ Other students, as well as faculty and administrators, were accused, without evidence, of being ‘racists’ and ‘white supremacists.’”

Because Katz has tenure, he (at least in theory) can’t be fired for ideological nonconformism, but Sibarium suggests Eisgruber has found a pretext: bringing up a long-settled question of a consensual sexual relationship with a student more than a decade ago. Professors are barred from dating undergraduates, but Katz was already disciplined for this after an investigation in 2018, and agreed to take a year of unpaid leave as punishment.

Will 2022 Vote Be Fair? Nearly A Third Of Americans Say No: I&I/TIPP Poll Terry Jones

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/05/18/will-2022-vote-be-fair-nearly-a-third-of-americans-say-no-ii-tipp-poll/

Will America’s elections in November be fair and free of fraud? Unfortunately, nearly a third of all Americans believe the answer is “no,” the latest monthly I&I/TIPP Poll found, suggesting that the November mid-term congressional elections could be among the most closely scrutinized in recent history.

The May poll asked 1,320 Americans, “Generally speaking, how confident are you that votes will be cast and counted accurately in the November elections?”

Among those responding, 61% said they were either “very confident” (36%) or “somewhat confident” (25%).

On the other hand, 31% said they were “not confident, with 20% saying they were “not very confident” and 11% saying they were “not at all confident.”

Put another way, nearly one out of three voters believe our coming mid-term elections will not be fair, a perhaps disappointing result in a country that has long prided itself on having clean, transparent and honest elections.

Lawyers for Radical Change The legal profession, once a guardian of republican government, is now a force for social upheaval. John O. McGinnis

https://www.city-journal.org/lawyers-for-radical-change

The transformation of the legal profession marks a fundamental change in American democracy. In the republic’s early days, lawyers provided ballast for stability and served as an anchor against excessive populism. The judiciary’s sober attachment to formal order was a primary reason for giving it the power to review the constitutionality of legislation. Law was the profession most likely to preserve the enduring framework of republican government against the mutable passions of the hour.

Nowadays, lawyers are a force for often-radical progressive change. Nothing symbolizes that shift better than the American Bar Association. Once an embodiment of conservatism, it has been captured by the Left. Its resolutions at its annual meeting constitute a wish list of Democratic Party proposals. It also deploys its influence in the accreditation process of law schools to make them even more monolithically left-wing than they already are.

The reasons for the shift lie, at least in part, in the reorientation of lawyers’ interests. Since the birth of the modern regulatory state, lawyers are no longer primarily the allies of commercial classes, as they were in the early republic, but instead the technocrats and enablers of regulation and redistribution. The more the nation intervenes in economic affairs to regulate and redistribute, the greater slice of compliance costs and transfer payments lawyers can expect to receive. Thus, they cannot be counted on as supporters of property rights or even of a stable rule of law. Their interest lies frequently in dynamic forms of legal transformation and the uncertainty they bring. Far from supporting a sound, established social order, they are likely to seek to undermine it. Only an ideological attachment to older forms of legal orders, like that which Federalist Society members manifest, can call lawyers back to the essential role they play in the civic life of our republic.

Today’s American Bar Association uses its accreditation power to make law schools monolithically left-wing.

Ultra-MAGA? More Like Ultra-Incompetent. Scott McKay

https://spectator.org/ultra-maga-more-like-ultra-incompetent/

Remember Anita Dunn? You might have heard the name once or twice.

The legacy corporate media, particularly on the East Coast, has here and there delivered puff pieces touting Dunn as an expert message-maker and political brain. She, in her role as a publicity generator, probably planted those. Her firm SKD Knickerbocker is known as one of the more expensive PR and publicity firms in New York.

That would indicate Anita Dunn is good at her job. But don’t be quite so sure about that.

If you remember all the way back to the beginning of when anybody had heard of Anita Dunn you’ll likely remember this… HERE. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2FVEe7wCzs

When that video surfaced at the beginning of the Obama administration, Dunn was quietly packed off from her government job and she set out on her private-sector course. It turns out that you can go quite far as a Maoist in today’s Democrat Party, but not if the general public is made aware of it.

It scares the fish away.

So Anita Dunn’s greatest failing as a message-maker came from telling too much truth.

Perhaps she’s learned from that, but either way, the smoking ruins of Team Obama, which now exists as Team Biden, have brought Anita Dunn back for another colossal PR gaffe. It turns out that Dunn was the architect of the classic blunder in which Joe Biden was trotted out to assail Donald Trump, and the new wave of confrontational conservative (or revivalist, as I continue to put it) political candidates plying their trade in races across the country as Republicans prepare to retake majorities on Capitol Hill, as “Ultra-MAGA” extremists.

President Joe Biden’s “ultra-MAGA” label was the result of a six-month research investigation led by top Democratic operatives searching for an edge in the November elections, according to a new report.

The performative outrage over Tucker Carlson He’s being blamed for the Buffalo shooting despite never being mentioned by the killer: Stephen L. Miller

https://spectatorworld.com/topic/the-performative-outrage-over-tucker-carlson/

On February 12, 2013, Christopher Dorner, a former police officer, committed a string of murders around Los Angeles. The multiple killings spurred a days-long manhunt that ended with his suicide in a cabin. Previously Dorner had sent a manifesto to Anderson Cooper of CNN, whom he praised, along with several other CNN and MSNBC personalities. “Willie Geist, you’re a talented and charismatic journalist,” he proclaimed.

“Chris Matthews, Joe Scarborough, Pat Harvey, Brian Williams, Soledad O’Brien, Wolf Blitzer, Meredith Viera, Tavis Smiley, and Anderson Cooper, keep up the great work and follow Cronkite’s lead. I hold many of you in the same regard as Tom Brokaw and the late Peter Jennings.” he wrote.

He even went on to praise then-Vice President Joe Biden: “Mr. Vice President, do your due diligence when formulating a concise and permanent national AWB plan. Future generations of Americans depend on your plan and advisement to the president. I’ve always been a fan of yours and consider you one of the few genuine and charismatic politicians. Damn, sounds like an oxymoron calling you an honest politician. It’s the truth.”

What Are Harvard Students Taught About Israel?by Moshe Phillips

https://www.algemeiner.com/2022/05/16/what-are-harvard-students-taught-about-israel/

Much has been written about the recent endorsement of BDS by the editors of The Harvard Crimson, the Harvard student newspaper. But how do you suppose Harvard students got that way? Could it have anything to do with the professors who are teaching them about Israel?

Let’s consider Derek J. Penslar, who is Harvard’s William Lee Frost Professor of Jewish History. His areas of specialty are the history of Zionism and Israel, as well as related topics in modern Jewish history.

Penslar, who happens to be Jewish, has been very successful in his academic career. He has had a string of prestigious named professorships — first at Indiana University, and then at the University of Toronto, before moving up to Harvard. He has published books with prominent academic presses, and articles in well-known scholarly journals. He serves on the editorial boards of several Israel-related academic journals. He is frequently interviewed by the news media and invited to lecture at various Jewish institutions.

All these credentials give us a sense of professor Penslar’s prominence in his field. But what exactly does he think about Israel? What does he teach his students? What message does he convey when he speaks to the Jewish community?

In an interview with London’s Jewish Chronicle on March 14, 2013, Penslar said: “What happened to the Palestinians [in 1948] wasn’t genocide. It was ethnic cleansing.”

That’s a lie. Israel didn’t commit genocide, and it didn’t commit ethnic cleansing. There was no mass murder of the Arabs. There was no mass expulsion of the Arabs.