NEWS YOU CAN USE? Don’t Get Caught by the Cultural Appropriation Police This Halloween, Follow These 4 Easy Tips! “Don’t commit the ultimate Halloween faux pas of cultural appropriation.”
I’m dressing up this year as Bucky Goldstein.
Archive for 2018
October 29, 2018
NEWS YOU CAN USE: These 18 Economy Cars Don’t Suck.
AT AMAZON, save in Car Care.
TONY KATZ: Jews Must Defend Themselves. Now. “This is not about ‘gun violence.’ This is about those who naively, ignorantly or ideologically think they can preserve humanity without guns.”
What happened in Pittsburgh is my nightmare scenario. For a few years now, on my radio shows in Indianapolis, I have said as loud and as clear as I can that any Jew who attends religious services without a firearm is risking their life and the lives of the ones they love.
But, in truth, I’ve never said it so kindly. I’ve said that nothing in America is more of a soft target than a synagogue on a Friday night or a Saturday morning. I discuss all houses of worship; synagogues, churches, mosques – they are all soft targets. I have argued that laws that prevent carrying a firearm in a house of worship where there is also a school are wrong, and should be changed (and, if necessary, ignored.)
The purpose of being trained and carrying a firearm is to protect yourself AND the ones your love. That means children: your children. Why would you ever put yourself in a position not to protect them? Why, as a society, would we ask this of any parent or guardian?
Indeed.
WHICH IS TOO BAD, BECAUSE THEY’RE WORLD-CLASS IDIOTS: When it comes to vaccines, celebrities often call the shots. “Today, stars use their platforms to question the safety of vaccines, for childhood diseases like measles and for seasonal maladies like the flu. In 2007, the MTV star Jenny McCarthy appeared on “Oprah” to say her ‘mommy instinct’ told her that the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine had caused her son’s autism. Other celebrities who have come out against vaccinations include Charlie Sheen, Alicia Silverstone, and Rob Schneider. Robert De Niro, who has a son on the autism spectrum, has also questioned the safety of vaccines. . . . Medical experts and public health agencies say that danger is reflected in the resurgence of vaccine-preventable diseases that had been eradicated in some countries. For example, Europe is in the midst of a raging measles outbreak, with 41,000 cases, a record high, and 40 deaths so far this year. A primary culprit is parents’ refusal to vaccinate their children, said the World Health Organization.”
THIS, TOO, WILL BE BLAMED ON TRUMP’S “CLIMATE OF HATE,” OF COURSE: Shots Fired into GOP Campaign Office in Florida.
Flashback to the bullet-riddled Bush/Cheney headquarters in Knoxville, 2004.
THE NEW CIVILITY: Blackburn says ‘angry mob’ interrupted rally in Tennessee with Lindsey Graham.
Security officers forcibly removed several people from Blackburn’s “Get Out The Vote” rally with Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., on Sunday evening after several “appalling” and “despicable” disruptions, according to the 2018 Senate candidate’s campaign.
Blackburn, the state’s Republican nominee in the upcoming Senate race, said protesters threw punches and shouted in the midst of a moment of silence for the victims in Pittsburgh, where 11 Jewish worshipers were fatally shot Saturday.
Charming.
OVERDIAGNOSIS: Parents, don’t be so quick to jump to an ADHD diagnosis.
KURT SCHLICHTER: Democrats Blaming Normal Americans for Nuts Will Blow Up In Their Faces at the Ballot Box.
We’ll find out soon enough.
BESIDES TRUMP, IT’S ALSO THE FAULT OF FOX NEWS, RIGHT-WING RADIO: Leave it to Michael Moore to reveal the deepest of secrets. This time it’s that “angry right-wing men” are responsible for political violence in America, thanks to Fox News and conservative Talk Radio.
If you don’t believe it, just watch ABC, NBC, CBS, MSDNC and CNN for, oh, maybe five minutes and you will surely hear the best and brightest among us reinforcing Moore’s rant, uh, analysis. Just think how much simpler everything is when the smart people do all of our thinking for us!
I HAVE ENOUGH DANGEROUS AND EXPENSIVE HOBBIES: The 10 Best Buys in Motorcycles for 2019.
NEWS YOU CAN USE: Illinois is a Mess. Here’s Why.
NEW JERSEY STAR LEDGER EDITORIAL HEADLINE: Choke it down, and vote for Menendez.
Found via Dan McLaughlin, who tweets, “The level of moral compromise involved in supporting Menendez is pretty well illustrated by this headline.”
That the paper’s online slogan is “True Jersey” is a nice added touch. Just think of the media as Democratic operatives with bylines, and it all makes sense.
21ST CENTURY PROBLEMS: Woman Who Had Belly Button Removed Now Says She Regrets Procedure. “I wanted to dehumanize myself in a symbolic way, I wanted to do something controversial.”
SMART: RNC Contacts 15.7 Million Hispanic Voters Ahead of Midterms. “Republicans say 1 out of every 4 voters contacted are from Hispanic communities.”
The RNC says it has already seen results from the 15.7 million contacts it has made in the Hispanic community either by phone or in person. It points to an uptick in President Donald Trump’s approval rating among Hispanics, which it credits to both its outreach and to successful policies.
“The effective policies of the Trump administration on behalf of our community have led to record low unemployment of 4.5 percent and as a result, increased support from Hispanic voters across the country,” said Yali Nuñez, the RNC’s director of Hispanic media. “We remain focused on advocating for policies and candidates that empower the Hispanic community.”
Take no voter for granted — particularly the ones the other side does.
NICE: Navy Destroys Ballistic Missile Target in Successful Interceptor Test.
U.S. sailors aboard the Arleigh Burke-class destroyer John Finn destroyed a target Friday with the latest version of the Standard Missile-3 interceptor during a flight test off the coast of Hawaii.
The ship launched the SM-3 Block IIA guided missile, which then successfully intercepted a medium-range ballistic missile target deployed from the Pacific Missile Range Facility at Kauai, Hawaii, according to a U.S. Missile Defense Agency press release.
Mark Wright, a spokesman for MDA, confirmed that the SM-3 Block IIA impacted with the target.
“It’s a kinetic kill vehicle, meaning it has to slam into the target, not just explode near it,” he told Military.com.
Built by Raytheon, the Block IIA can be deployed on land as well as at sea.
China’s neighbors and our easternmost NATO allies ought to be buying Aegis Ashore systems as quickly as we can build them.
WITH NO PENALTY FOR BEING WRONG, THEY HAVE NO SKIN IN THE GAME: When Government-Backed “Nudgers” Go Bad.
DAVID WOLPE: The Misguided Rabbis Of Twitter: Calls to excommunicate pro-Trump Jews are not simply wrong. They’re poison.
So when I see major American Jewish figures tell me that my congregants are illegitimate, my blood boils a little bit. After the tragedy in Pittsburgh, perhaps because I spend so much of my time at the bedside of the sick and dying, I expected that the first impulse of Jews in particular would be to simply offer messages of sorrow and condolence.
It’s what I imagined I would read when I opened “A prayer for Squirrel Hill— And for American Jewry” from Franklin Foer, whom I know somewhat and have always respected. Instead, I read this: “Any strategy for enhancing the security of American Jewry should involve shunning Trump’s Jewish enablers. Their money should be refused, their presence in synagogues not welcome.”
In other words, more than half of my Shabbat morning congregants, and in some more traditional synagogues, almost all of them, should have the doors barred against their entry. Jews who make minyans, pay shiva calls, underwrite nursing homes and kindergartens — people who make Judaism possible, with their flawed but real human presence, for other people — should be cast out of our midst because of the levers they pull in the privacy of a voting booth. And what, after all, would a Jew who fled from Iran know about anti-Semitism — or protecting the Jewish community?
As Shabbat ended in Los Angeles, a city where in 1999 there was a terror attack against a Jewish Community Center, I saw this from another reporter whose work I have always esteemed very highly, Julia Ioffe: “And a word to my fellow American Jews: This President makes this possible. Here. Where you live. I hope the embassy move over there, where you don’t live was worth it.”
The calculation here, I suppose, is that people voted for Trump to get an embassy move and their vote proxy murdered other Jews. How careful should one be, should a distinguished reporter be, when accusing others of such enormities, even indirectly? How do people think this message will fall on the ears of those who fled from Iran, to be told that they are in fact guilty in the death of Pittsburgh’s Jews?
Or — even more shamefully — on the ears of Judah Samet. Mr. Samet, a Holocaust survivor, escaped death by 4 minutes because he was a little late to shul. He is also a strong supporter of Trump. Frank, Julia: Would you stand before this 80-year-old man, not in a tweet or online piece, but face to face, and tell him he is responsible for the death of his friends, the people with whom he prays each Shabbat? Would you bar him from the shul where he almost died, again, at the hands of Jew haters? Really? And that would make us the righteous ones?
For some, righteousness just means whatever advances the leftist cause at the moment.