Archive for 2019

OPEN THREAD: Just do it.

JEFF DUNETZ: The Democrats Make It Official: Jews Don’t Matter.

It’s the Corbynization of the Democratic Party, to borrow Bret Stephens’ phrase regarding Ilhan Omar’s intentions. It’s also a combination of intersectionality and anticipating where future votes are coming, as Neo wrote:

I don’t think Democrats much care if they lose the Jewish vote, because the number of Jews in the US is small and highly concentrated in places that are and will remain Democratic enclaves even without the Jewish vote. Plus, many Jews today are secular and have replaced any allegiance to Judaism with an allegiance to leftism, so perhaps this won’t even alienate them. I also believe that most of the Jewish donors to the Democratic Party are probably more of that latter frame of mind, and therefore perhaps the calculation is that the party can afford that, too—although I would imagine some of the leaders of the party (Pelosi and Schumer) are none too happy about the possibility of the loss of support.”

Pelosi and Schumer have made a cynical calculation that “Progressive” urban Jews won’t be leaving the Democratic party anytime soon no matter what Omar says, and sadly, they’re likely correct.

OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, OUR OLDEST SERVING SUPREME COURT JUSTICE EVER: Born this day in 1841, he lived to be two days shy of 94. For a sense of how long that is, consider this: As a boy, Holmes shook hands with a Revolutionary War veteran; as a Supreme Court Justice, one of his law clerks was Alger Hiss.

By the way, if you think Holmes was a civil libertarian, read this essay on Holmes by H.L. Mencken.

 

DISPATCHES FROM THE HUMAN SHIELDS: “Adults won’t take climate change seriously. So we, the youth, are forced to strike,” notes a headline at [checking notes] the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

Go on strike, kids! The adult who takes climate change the most seriously – to the point where she views it as the moral equivalent of war – says you only have 12 years of life left. Might as well enjoy what time you have left.

Flashback: Michelle Malkin on ”Prop-a-palooza: The Use and Abuse of Kiddie Human Shields.”

FUNNY HOW THIS KEEPS HAPPENING. Ilhan Omar backtracks, claims media distorted Obama remarks.

“Exhibit A of how reporters distort words. I’m an Obama fan! I was saying how [President] Trump is different from Obama, and why we should focus on policy not politics,” she tweeted, referring to an interview published earlier in the day by Politico Magazine.

She included a nearly two-minute recording of her interview. But the audio clip essentially confirmed that her quotes, though edited, were accurate.

Unexpectedly. That pesky “different experience in the use of words” just keeps tripping her up for some strange reason.

THE CHUTZPAH OF THE ADL’S JONATHAN GREENBLATT: Twitter: “Those who truly care about the Jewish community shouldn’t politicize .”

The ADL under former and long-time president Abe Foxman was liberal-leaning, but overall was a reasonably fair and nonpartisan broker in antisemitism controversies.

Former Obama staffer Greenblatt, who had no prior experience in Jewish communal work, has spent the last several years making the ADL more and more partisan, culminating in early 2017, when various ADL officials publicly blamed Trump for bomb threats to Jewish institutions that turned out to have nothing to do with him or his supporters. To my knowledge, no one at the ADL was fired or otherwise disciplined for this remarkable display of partisan bias that undermined the organization’s credibility.

The ADL also exaggerated its antisemitism stats last year to create a false impression of a massive increase in antisemitic incidents under Trump, in particular by including the bomb threats in its tally even though it knew by then that they were not antisemitic in origin.

Greenblatt is nevertheless right that we shouldn’t politicize antisemitism. But to suddenly announce that conclusion when Democrats are under fire, after wildly politicizing antisemitism in opposition to Trump, takes some chutzpah.

 

QUIETLY ARMED: Of wolves and sheepdogs. “I protect my flock because I am part of the flock, and I leave the sheepdogging to others. My goal is to quietly live my life and to be sheer bloody hell on anyone who would cause us harm. I’m not a sheepdog outside of the flock, I’m a ram who’s inside the flock, looking to butt heads with the best of them, should the need arise.”