THE COUNTRY’S IN THE VERY BEST OF HANDS: Yes, Democrats spent FEMA money on illegal immigrants.
UPDATE:
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 6, 2024
Archive for 2024
October 6, 2024
SO SOMEBODY’S HAVING FUN IN THIS ELECTION, AND IT’S NOT KAMALA:
BREAKING: Elon Musk spotted at the Steelers game in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 🔥 pic.twitter.com/ATTYhCfJDe
— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) October 7, 2024
WELL, YOU KNOW, THEY LITERALLY DID. MORE THAN ONCE.
And there it is. He’s accusing his political opponents of trying to kill him. He’s telling his voters that those of us who oppose him politically are trying to kill him. He’s using the assassination attempt to incite his voters to violence. There is no bottom with him. https://t.co/S4yZRDbejC
— Joe Walsh (@WalshFreedom) October 5, 2024
I remember when Joe Walsh wasn’t a lying moron. Or, at least, he wasn’t making it obvious.
OPEN THREAD: Ring out the weekend.
THE NEW SPACE RACE: Blue Origin to debut 2nd human-rated New Shepard rocket on Oct. 7 launch.
DONALD TRUMP AND FRANKLIN GRAHAM talk about North Carolina and disaster relief.
VACCINES USED TO LAST A LONG TIME: Mpox vaccine protection fades within 1 year, boosters needed.
THE DEMOCRATS ARE THE PARTY OF ANTI-SEMITISM: WATCH: On Eve of October 7th, Kamala Harris Refuses to Call Israel Our Ally During ’60 Minutes’ Interview.
EVERYTHING IS GOING, ER, SWIMMINGLY: The E.V. Flameout.
IN VINO, VERITAS: Did She Really Just Say That?: Hillary Clinton Lets the Cat Out of Bag on Dems and Controlling Speech. “Total control.”
KAROL MARKOWICZ: I have spent the last year angry at Jews.
Jews are traditionally liberals, that’s true, but we’re not traditionally stupid. We can see with our eyes who is on our side and the lack of gratitude from Jewish organizations, because they still hope that their political team will someday take them back, is abominable.
There were the galas, for example, thrown by many Jewish organizations. I don’t begrudge anyone pretty dresses and rubber chicken or self-congratulating awards. It was a tough year and the people who helped us get through it, standing up for Jews in general and Israel in particular, should be singled out for praise.
But where were the invites and awards for the conservatives who had unwaveringly stood by us? Where was Megyn Kelly? Where were Clay Travis and Buck Sexton? Dan Bongino? Xaviaer DuRousseau? Erick Erickson? Dana Loesch? Glenn Beck? Guy Benson? Sohrab Ahmari? Stephen “RedSteeze” Miller? Kurt Schlichter? Mary Katharine Ham? Pretty much everyone on Fox News? I only leave off Douglas Murray because he did get one from the country of Israel and one from the Manhattan Institute for his “unwavering defense of Western values,” which is for something even wider than just his defense of Israel and Jews, and Meghan McCain because she got one from the right-leaning magazine Algemeiner Journal. They both deserve even more.
My list of well-known non-Jewish conservatives, with giant platforms, who spent the year standing up for Israel and for Jews in America, could go on and on. These people went above and beyond and got no official thank you from the American Jewish community at all, not a single Jewish organization celebrated them. It’s sickening. These mensches didn’t benefit one iota from standing with Jews and with Israel. They took shots for us, they suffered abuse for us. They’ll say they don’t need the praise. They did it because it was right. But how dare we not say thank you? Throw your Tikkun Olam in the nearest trash can and learn Hakarat Hatov. And then wonder: where is the similar cadre of liberal writers and media personalities to defend you? It does not exist. Face it.
And that’s before we get into the moguls and the politicians. If there was a non-Jewish leftist billionaire who went to Israel, wore the dogtags, he would be headlining every major Jewish event. But it was Elon Musk so that didn’t count? Nearly every Republican politician effusively stood up for Israel and demanded the protection of American Jews. Where is Ted Cruz’s award? Ron DeSantis’s? Tom Cotton’s? Where is Donald Trump’s?
We know why. Most Jewish organizations are dinosaurs, committed to Democrats just as the Democrats make clear they are not at all interested in them. That’s the problem with tying your religion to a political party. The political party can tell you that your enemies, who want to destroy you and murder your children, “have a point” and you’ll just take it.
The late Charles Krauthammer’s Law still has an iron grip over American politics two decades after he wrote, “To understand the workings of American politics, you have to understand this fundamental law: Conservatives think liberals are stupid. Liberals think conservatives are evil,” Krauthammer wrote in 2002.
THE CORBYNIZATION OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY CONTINUES APACE: Watch: Kamala Won’t Say Whether Bibi Is ‘Real Close Ally’ of US.
PEAK GRAUNIAD REACHED: How Israel has made trauma a weapon of war.
A slick, high-priced television production. Speeches from top officials. A live audience of thousands. A unified show of collective sorrow and military resolve.
That is how the Israeli government hoped to mark the passing of one year since Hamas’s surprise and bloody attacks last 7 October. But little has gone according to plan.
Many of the families of people killed or taken hostage on that day have come out forcefully against the state-sponsored event, saying pageantry can wait until after the government secures a hostage deal and faces an independent investigation of its own failures before, after and on that day. Some parents have forbidden the government of Benjamin Netanyahu from using their children’s names and images.
Several of the kibbutzim that suffered the greatest losses have said they will boycott. Instead, they will gather in their communities to collectively grieve their loved ones, and remember their hostages, in “intimate, sensitive” rituals. In response, the minister responsible for the ceremony has nixed the live audience while seeming to dismiss the families’ objections as “background noise”. This has led to even fiercer denunciations on social media, with some of Israel’s top celebrities pledging their support to a rival commemoration.
For the government, “everything is a show”, said Danny Rahamim, a member of Kibbutz Nahal Oz.
That may be, but it seems certain that on 7 October, the official show will go on. Indeed it is nearly impossible to imagine a world in which the Netanyahu government – and the legacy Jewish organizations that echo its messaging around the world – would resist the chance to use the potent date as a megaphone to broadcast the same story about the attacks that we have all heard many times before.
It’s a simple fable of good and evil, in which Israel is unblemished in its innocence, deserving unquestioning support, while its enemies are all monsters, deserving of violence unbounded by laws or borders, whether in Gaza, Jenin, Beirut, Damascus or Tehran. It’s a story in which Israel’s very identity as a nation is forever fused with the terror it suffered on 7 October, an event that, in Netanyahu’s telling, will be seamlessly merged both with the Nazi Holocaust and a battle for the soul of western civilization.
In Germany, they speak of a Staatsraison, or reason of state – and in recent decades, its leaders have said that reason is protecting Israel. Israel has a Staatsraison too, related but different. Officially, it is Jewish safety. But integral to the state’s conception of safety is Jewish trauma. Building shrines to it. Erecting walls around it. Waging wars in its name.
As Mark Steyn once wrote, “The old joke — that the Germans will never forgive the Jews for Auschwitz — gets truer every week.”
I SERIOUSLY DOUBT IT, BUT THE E.V. BUBBLE SEEMS TO BE DEFLATING: Can “The Grid” Handle America’s Switch to EVs? We Ask An Expert.
READER FAVORITE: 1,500 Sq.Ft Energy Star Dehumidifier for Basement with Drain Hose. #CommissionEarned
WHY SHOULD THEY BE DIFFERENT THAN THE U.S. GOVERNMENT: Nissan is speeding toward a financial cliff. Can they turn things around in time?
READER FAVORITE: Anolon Advanced Home Hard-Anodized Nonstick Skillets. #CommissionEarned
MY LATEST SUBSTACK ESSAY: Schrodinger’s Election. (Bumped).
I’M GOING WITH A TENTATIVE YES: Is big tech harming society? To find out, we need research, but it’s being manipulated by big tech itself.
HOW IT STARTED: Biden is planning for a Great Society 2.0.
—Headline, the Washington Post, March 17th, 2021.
How it’s going: Horrifying moment protestor self-immolates outside White House.
A protestor attempted to self-immolate outside the White House during a Pro-Palestinian rally.
Samuel Mena Jr. was seen trying to light himself on fire in Lafayette Park, where a large number of protestors were gathered on Saturday.
Pictures taken at the scene by the White House capture the harrowing moment Mena’s arm ignited in flames.
Mena, who claims to be a ‘visual storyteller’, was seen waving his burning arm through the air as he shrieked in pain.
In the pictures, police officers are seen approaching cautiously as efforts are made to assist him.
Shortly after Mena set his arm ablaze, bystanders rushed to pour water on him to extinguish the flames.
* * * * * * * * *
Mena claims to be a graduate of The Walter Cronkite School of Journalism at Arizona State University.
He describes himself as a production specialist who is currently ’employed as a Photojournalist for AZFamily Channels 3 and 5.’
Mena also claims to have done freelance videography for Arizona PBS and editing for RightThisMinute. He says that he has ‘collaborated’ on news stories that have aired on PBS Newshour.
His X.com profile is a picture of him smiling in front of the Palestinian Flag with the words ‘from the river, to the sea’ above it.
Before the rally on Saturday, he posted that he would ‘be streaming live from the White House exterior on Instagram.’
In another post on the same day, he wrote: ‘End settler colonialism.’
—The London Daily Mail, yesterday.
To give credit where it’s due, back in the 1960s, protestors who self-immolated were made much sterner stuff – they were able to actually finish the job.
New York Jets head coach Robert Saleh sparked controversy during the team’s NFL game against the Minnesota Vikings in London on Sunday.
The 45-year-old was spotted on the sidelines at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium wearing a Lebanese flag below the Nike logo on the sleeve of his team hoodie.
The night before Sunday’s game – the first of the NFL’s international fixtures this season – Israeli bombing continued on Beirut, the Lebanese capital, amid the Israel-Hezbollah war.
The Hezbollah stronghold in south Beirut was hit by more than 30 strikes overnight, which were heard across the city, with smoke still seen billowing from the site after dawn, Lebanon’s official National News Agency said.
Saleh, who is of Lebanese heritage, previously wore a similar patch last October but his decision to bear the flag Sunday raised eyebrows as the anniversary of the beginning of the war in Gaza approaches.
Saleh’s clothing in the wake of the attacks left NFL fans divided on social media with many furious, while others defended his right to express pride in his heritage.
‘Robert saleh p***ing off a lot of the Jew York community with the Lebanon flag on his top no doubt,’ one social media user shared to X, formerly known as Twitter.
‘What a t**d that guy is,’ another added, while a third wrote: ‘I hope they leave Hezbollah Sally in London when the Jets come back to New York.’
The Jets suffered humiliation at the hands of the Vikings throughout the first half of Sunday’s game, risking a blowout defeat until a last-gasp touchdown on the brink of halftime.
And some social media users claimed that Saleh’s political stance would not help his job security.
‘Bigger issue is the Lebanese flag on saleh’s sleeve,’ one fan said, replying to another post criticizing the Jets’ performance.
‘I am not sure that Robert Saleh wearing the Lebanese Flag, which he obviously added on his own, is going to help him with his ownership as his team gets embarrassed again,’ another added.
For what it’s worth, the Jets wound up losing today’s game to the Vikings 23-17.
While the NFL largely curtailed the kneeling during the National Anthem and overt wokeness, starting in 2022, the league began allowing players the option to “proudly wear a helmet decal of the country or territory’s flag that represents their nationality or cultural heritage.”
The American flag was added to NFL helmets after the September 11th terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. (Remember when we all put American flag stickers on our cars’ rear bumpers?) Naturally, the Roger Goodell-era NFL had to dilute that patriotic message. They either didn’t think through what would happen, or didn’t care that their decision would eventually lead to today’s headline.