RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-oldest-hatred-1540760984

The massacre at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh is an awful reminder that there are human hatreds far more virulent and ancient than those that animate our current political divisions. The killer of 11 human beings on the Sabbath Saturday morning was an anti-Semite who was out to kill Jews.

“All Jews must die,” alleged killer Robert Bowers yelled as he burst into a religious service and opened fire. As our friends at the New York Sun note, anti-Semitism is not aimed at Jewish behavior, or support for Jewish immigration, or support for Israel. Robert Bowers simply hated Jews.

This irrational hatred is one of humanity’s oldest and manifests itself in murder almost daily in the Middle East. Jews are killed simply because they are Jews, as they have been throughout history. This is why millions have sought refuge in a Jewish state, Israel, and also in the religious protections embedded in the Constitution of the United States.

The outpouring of support and grief for the victims of the Pittsburgh massacre is a reminder of America’s unique role as a refuge for the world’s religious. Muslim states often persecute non-Muslims as well as Muslims who do not share their brand of Islam. China persecutes people of all faiths. America protects them.

The U.S. has seen an increase in anti-Semitic acts in recent years, according to the Anti-Defamation League. But there are still fewer in America than in most of the rest of world, and the sources of anti-Semitism range across the political spectrum, including some on the right like Robert Bowers but also from the pro-Palestinian left, especially on university campuses.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/the-anti-semitic-mass-murder-attack-in-pittsburgh/

Eleven people were killed and six others wounded or otherwise injured when an anti-Semitic terrorist opened fire at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh Saturday morning.

As of this writing, the murder victims, all adults, have not yet been publicly identified. Four of the wounded have been described as police officers.

The shooter, who has been identified as Robert Bowers, 46, is in custody. He is said to have shouted, “All Jews must die!” during the shooting spree. The attack occurred a little before 10 a.m. on Saturday morning. The synagogue is in the Squirrel Hill section of eastern Pittsburgh, a predominantly Jewish neighborhood. Typically, the New York Times reports, there are about 75 people gathered for Saturday Shabbat (Sabbath) observance. There is usually no security, except for high holy days when the number of worshippers swells to well over a thousand.

Bowers surrendered after a shootout with police during which he was apparently wounded. He initially encountered police as he was fleeing the synagogue. He retreated back into the building during the gunfire, barricading himself in a third-floor office.

Several reports indicate that Bowers maintained a social-media account that was rife with anti-Semitic slurs and conspiracy theories about Jews. In the hours before the shooting spree, he apparently posted about a Jewish nonprofit organization called “HIAS”:

HIAS likes to bring invaders in that kill our people. I can’t sit by and watch my people get slaughtered. Screw your optics, I’m going in.

The term “invaders” apparently refers to refugees in the United States. A few weeks back, Bowers apparently authored a post objecting to a Shabbat ceremony HIAS was planning for refugees around the country: “Why hello there HIAS! You like to bring in hostile invaders to dwell among us?” Bowers’s social-media account, which has now been taken down, was on a network called “Gab,” which the Times says describes itself as a free-speech haven.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/271760/alleged-fake-bomber-fillipino-ex-con-who-claimed-daniel-greenfield

I don’t think there’s a profile that fits this guy. There’s no point in even bothering to try.

He identified on Twitter with the “WeUnconquered SeminoleTribe”. His LinkedIn page connects him to the Philippines. He was allegedly a former male stripper.

Career decision of becoming a Horse Doctor was always a love for animals, which were here first and never do anything to anyone. And respect all living things. My family very sound Sayoc name in Medical field Grandfather Col. Baltazar Zook Sayoc that perfect the conversion oriental eye to Americanize. The first plastic surgeon to be observed by 8 million people in NY city Hospital. He over through Communist Philippines liberated island. He built all hospitals in Philippines islands and sets standards highest level. Most surgeon use his instruments which are patented. And a lot surgeon use today. Also Sayoc intl. schools marshals arts Kali that used to over throw communist party . Also one 5 Hero’s disciplinary my mother Madeline Sayoc Giardiello First president Pharmacy Cosmetic Association, Who Who Business Women of Year, Soul buyer consultant for Home Shopping Network, head number 1 marketing consul in World Aventura Marketing consul, up for city counsel women Aventura,

This doesn’t sound like English as a first language. Or it could just be mental illness.

At least one of his businesses seem to have involved male burlesque dancers. And he has an extensive criminal record for pretty much everything. The media is going to cynically try to connect him to Trump and Republicans, but he seems to have been a mentally unstable man with a lot of anger and obvious personal issues.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/271762/opening-package-plot-lloyd-billingsley

This week suspicious, potentially explosive packages were sent to former presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, former vice president Joe Biden, former CIA boss John Brennan (via CNN), former DNC boss Debbie Wasserman Schultz, former Attorney General Eric Holder, Rep. Maxine Waters, billionaire George Soros, and actor Robert De Niro. Warnings that more packages had been sent turned out to be true.

On Friday, authorities intercepted suspicious packages sent to senators Cory Booker, Kamala Harris, former national intelligence director James Clapper, and billionaire Tom Steyer. Like the first group, all are prominent Democrats and critics of President Trump.

FBI director Christopher Wray described the packages as improvised explosive devices and not “hoax devices,” though according to a U.S. News report it was unclear whether they could be detonated. To date, none of the devices exploded and no one has been harmed, but Wray believes “we’ve caught the right guy.” That turned out to be Cesar Sayoc, 56, and the establishment media cranked out stories on what was known about him.

CNN reported that his van featured images of President Trump as well as a sticker reading “CNN Sucks.” A Facebook video “showed the bomb suspect in a MAGA hat at Trump rally in 2016” and Sayoc was a “registered Republican.” Sayoc also had a criminal record, with arrests for bomb threats, grand theft, battery, fraud, drug possession and probation violations. His lawyer Ronald S. Lowy told CNN Sayoc “didn’t fit it” and he questioned Sayoc’s ability to execute a scheme of explosive devices.

The New York Times learned that Cesar Altieri Sayoc’s father was from the Philippines and his mother from Brooklyn. He “frequently posted in right-wing circles and shared conservative news stories and condemnations of liberal politicians.” Relatives told the Times Sayoc was a body builder who had worked as a male stripper. He had money, lost it, and “wasn’t the most stable guy in the world.” A hairdresser described him as “very antisocial” and “a loner” who lived in his van. Sayoc was not quoted in the article.

https://www.city-journal.org/metoo-movement

History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes.” We don’t know for sure whether it was Mark Twain who came up with that bon mot, but it has proved useful enough to deserve a creator of that stature. It comes in particularly handy in times like these, when many seemingly unprecedented events turn out to have familiar echoes from the past.

Such is the case with the #MeToo movement. Extraordinary as this post–Harvey Weinstein moment may seem, it’s not the first time that American women have risen up to protest male misbehavior. During the nineteenth century, women were in the vanguard of reform movements dedicated to fighting licentiousness, most of it male, and much of it sexual. If you squint hard enough to blot out the Victorian archaisms, these #MeToo prototypes can yield considerable insight into today’s reckoning.

Sociopolitical movements like #MeToo have taken root in many parts of the world, but no soil has been quite as fertile for them as that of the United States. Alexis de Tocqueville was struck by this peculiarity of American life during his canonical visit in 1831. “Not only do [Americans] have commercial and industrial associations in which all take part,” he wrote, “but they also have a thousand other kinds: religious, moral, grave, futile, very general and very particular, immense and very small.” The Frenchman had a theory about the origin of this early form of community organizing: in a democracy, he suggested, where, unlike aristocracies, power was diffuse, individuals had to join together in groups to wield any influence over their social arrangements. Associations—particularly in the Northeast and the Midwest—were a civic by-product of America’s brand of equality, freed from feudal, hierarchical memory.

If the 26-year-old wunderkind noticed the role that women were playing in these democratic associations, he didn’t mention it. Yet women were the majority, as well as the most energized, of converts during the Second Great Awakening, and they brought their enthusiasm to great moral causes of the era, beginning with a battle against prostitution, a fact of collective life in those days. Ladies of the night were ubiquitous in ports where sailors and other male transients congregated; according to historian Stephen Mintz, as many as 10 percent of women in antebellum cities at least occasionally walked the streets. In an economy that had yet to create jobs for textile “mill girls” and telephone operators, the world’s oldest profession was one of the few available to single women without means. It was a more lucrative choice than the even more prevalent domestic service, though it was not unknown for servants themselves to freelance during free hours. During the Great Awakening, evangelical ministers denounced the practice, but it was their female congregants who turned the cause into a Tocquevillian movement: in 1834, they founded the Female Moral Reform Society in New York. Within a few years, the society had 400 chapters, mostly in northeastern and midwestern states.

https://pjmedia.com/trending/law-enforcement-update-on-pittsburgh-synagogue-shooting/

Law enforcement officials gave additional insight into Saturday’s shooting at a Pittsburgh synagogue in an afternoon press conference.

Pittsburgh public safety director Wendell Hissrich told reporters, “There were 11 fatalities as a result of the shooting incident” perpetrated by Robert Bowers, 46, of Pittsburgh. Hissrich added, “There were no children” among the victims.

“At 9:55 this morning,” Hissrich said, “calls were received at the Allegheny County Emergency Operations Center that an active shooter was inside the building.”

“Apparently, an initial contact between the subject and the officers occurred, injuring two of the officers. Two additional officers were injured during the altercation — those were SWAT officers,” he continued. “Multiple agencies responded to this incident this morning and without their courage, this tragedy would have been far worse.”

In addition to the 11 fatalities, there were six people injured, including four police officers, he said. That number does not include the suspect.

Pittsburgh police chief Scott Schubert said that he arrived at the scene shortly after the shooting. “Watching those officers run into the danger to remove people to get them to safety was unbelievable,” he said, noting that the injured officers and SWAT team members are in stable condition at area hospitals.

FBI Special Agent Bob Jones described the attack as the “most horrific crime scene I’ve seen in 22 years with the FBI.” Members of the Tree of Life synagogue “conducting a peaceful service in their place of worship were brutally murdered by a gunman targeting them simply because of their faith,” he said. CONTINUE AT SITE

https://www.wsj.com/articles/after-the-mail-bombs-1540595085?cx_testId=16&cx_testVariant=cx&cx_artPos=1&cx_tag=contextual&cx_navSource=newsReel#cxrecs_s

We suppose it was only a matter of time before the hyperpartisan forces now driving American politics overwhelmed the reality of events. With this week’s pipe bombs, that moment may have arrived.

The reality, previously known as the facts, is that for days this week public critics of President Trump received what appeared to be bombs in the mail. On Friday federal authorities arrested a Florida man, Cesar Sayoc, and charged him with crimes related to the mailed bombs. He appears to be a supporter of Mr. Trump.

By any measure, these packages represented a grave public threat. So it was astonishing, even by current standards, to see this threat degenerate immediately into the familiar and crude narrative of the Democrats versus Donald Trump. Congressional leaders Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi asserted in a joint statement, even after a calming presidential statement, that “the President has condoned physical violence and divided Americans.” A New York magazine headline online Friday read: “Trump’s party is the petri dish for diseased minds that grew Cesar Sayoc.”

On June 14 last year, James Hodgkinson—the left-wing mirror image of the apparently right-wing Cesar Sayoc—opened fire with a rifle into the Republicans’ Congressional softball practice. Two Capitol police shot him dead. Earlier, Hodgkinson had posted on Facebook: “Trump is a Traitor. Trump Has Destroyed Our Democracy. It’s Time to Destroy Trump & Co.” Hodgkinson was an ardent supporter of Senator Bernie Sanders. We cite the Hodgkinson shooting not for the purpose of establishing moral equivalence between these two events, but to make clear that both came from the country’s extreme lunatic fringe.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/3-growth-if-we-can-keep-it-1540595205

Can economic growth from tax reform and deregulation stand up to the headwinds from higher interest rates, tariffs and perhaps a Democratic Congress? That’s the question we take away from Friday’s strong but somewhat disappointing report on economic growth in the third quarter. The answer isn’t obvious.

The Commerce Department reported that the economy grew at a robust 3.5% in the third quarter, a mild slowdown from 4.2% in the second. Consumer spending led the way with a 4% increase rooted in a tight job market and wage gains that have bolstered economic confidence. The economy has now grown by 3% over the last 12 months.

The U.S. economy hasn’t grown at 3% in a calendar year since 2005, and that is now achievable this year. Barack Obama has recently been claiming credit for this faster growth as he campaigns for Democrats, but that boast is right up there with his promise that if you like your health plan you can keep it.

It’s clear that the Republican policy mix of tax reform, deregulation and general encouragement for risk-taking rescued an expansion that was fading fast and almost fell into recession in the last six quarters of the Obama Administration. The nearby chart tells the story that Mr. Obama and his economists won’t admit. Soaring business and consumer confidence have been central to this rebound.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2018/10/andrew_mccabe_the_deep_state_henchman.html

The process by which the FBI and Department of Justice were corrupted into serving as political attack machines for the Democrats is finally coming into focus. In an article in The Hill that is today’s read of the day, a retired senior FBI executive puts together the evidence already on the record to offer a roadmap of how the politicization of these powerful bureaucracies was accomplished.

Kevin R. Brock, who is identified as “former assistant director of intelligence for the FBI, was an FBI special agent for 24 years and principal deputy director of the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC),” sees Andrew McCabe as the point man, pulled up through the career bureaucracy of the bureau by his mentor, James Comey, who was, after all, an outsider political appointee in need of a henchman to implement his political machinations. Once Comey was fired, McCabe became the key figure leading the law enforcement branch of the Deep State’s resistance to Trump.

This is an article that deserves to be read in full, but here are a couple of tidbits to entice you, demonstrating the wit and experience that Brock brings to the subject.

According to FBI executives, Comey personally fast-tracked McCabe’s career into the deputy director position. McCabe was not happy that the president fired his boss and that Rosenstein provided the ammo.

Comey, who has urged America to vote Democrat, apparently liked what he saw in McCabe, who was overseeing the Clinton email investigation in the Washington Field Office, even though his wife, a Democratic candidate for Virginia Senate, had accepted over $1 million bundled together by longtime Clinton loyalist Terry McAuliffe for her campaign just two weeks prior to the 2015 election that she lost.

http://thefederalist.com/2018/10/26/know-suspected-package-bomb-sender-far/

A man has been arrested in connection to the packaged bombs sent to prominent Democratic leaders Friday morning. Authorities say DNA evidence linked 56-year-old Cesar Altieri Sayoc, of Florida, to the dozen packages with explosive devices sent earlier this week to Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, George Soros, Joe Biden, CNN contributor John Brennan, among others, CBS news reports.

A van reportedly confiscated by the FBI that is believed to belong to Sayoc displayed numerous decals depicting targets on liberal leaders, including Clinton. Sayoc reportedly used to work as a stripper and “lived like a gypsy,” the Washington Examiner reported.

“He really couldn’t find his niche in life, and I guess he found it now,” Sayoc’s former employer Tony Valentine told the Examiner. “Back in the ’90s, he was running around from Minnesota to the Carolinas to Florida. He was like a gypsy.”

Sayoc is a registered Republican who has been arrested numerous times, including an arrest in 2002 for attempting to use a bomb. NBC News reports Sayoc was living out of his van and showering at the gym. A cousin of the suspect called him “a lost soul,” according to The Guardian.

“He’s been in the strip clubs since he was 22, that was his life,” the relative told The Guardian. “He was a male dancer and he wanted to be a wrestler. He was taking steroids. He was all buffed up….He was built like a rock.”

Democratic strategist Rochelle Ritchie claims Sayoc threatened her via Twitter after she appeared on Fox News.