A RANDOM RANT:

Let me get this straight. Saudi Arabia sponsored the 9/11 hijackers, stones rape victims to death for being unchaste, hangs people for being gay…and NOW you’re upset with them?
What changed?
Oh….

SURELY THERE MUST BE A WAY TO DRAG TRUMP INTO THIS: Jerry Wolkowitz, a freelance photographer who prosecutors say was brutally beaten and assaulted because of his race, has died six months after the attack in the parking lot of his apartment.

“The investigation determined that the defendant targeted the victim because of his race,” Swendeman said at the time, adding that Hubbard, who is black, and Wolkowitz, who is white, did not know each other.”

SEEMS LIKE A GOOD TIME TO REVISIT ONE OF MY OLDER COLUMNS:

While we were mesmerized by the president and CNN’s Jim Acosta trading petulant barbs, Carlos Domínguez Rodríguez, a 77-year-old political reporter in Mexico was stabbed in his car by masked men 21 times as his family watched in horror.

IS THERE NO LIMIT TO THIS MAN’S EVIL?

“With the president’s signature Thursday, the Music Modernization Act is officially the law of the land. As we celebrate the harmony and unity that got us here, we applaud the efforts of the thousands of performers, songwriters, and studio professionals who rallied for historic change to ensure all music creators are compensated fairly when their work is used by digital and satellite music services,” Neil Portnow, President and CEO of the Recording Academy said in a statement.”

UNHINGED, MUCH? No surprise to IP readers, but you have to wonder when will Democrats realize that they need to put a leash on some of their people. Avenatti is taking a little bit of flak, rightly IMHO, but this is way over the top.

(I’m opposed to doxxing, so I redacted the phone number).

JOURNALISTS KEEPING THEIR PRIORITIES STRAIGHT: According to my research, the meaningless “toilet paper stuck to Trump’s shoe” item was republished thousands of more times than one of their own being murdered in a Saudi consulate.

That’s just sick.

CONGRATULATE ME! I was finally blocked by a privileged old white male Ivy League lawyer whose firm smeared Monica Lewinsky and Kathleen Willey beyond the scope of decency, are big DNC donors, and of course pump out shit-tons of anti-Kavanaugh posts, but more than happy to take $6.75 million defending sex traffickers of underaged women!
You gotta love the law racket!!
#MeTooUntilItAffectsMyIncome

BRAVE LITTLE SJW’S (But not at their own expense):  So a flock of screaming women descended upon the Yale Club in NYC to protest Kavanaugh’s n̶o̶m̶i̶n̶a̶t̶i̶o̶n̶ ̶  mere existence:

“Asked why the DSA planned the protest to wind up in front of the Yale Club, Paradis said it was because “Kavanaugh is really a symbol of elite power that feels impunity, not just to sexually assault women but to take away rights from women, working class people, and to destroy democratic representation in this country.”

But it’s been a dirty little secret of the left that Yale itself is named after a man who made a fortune in the slave trade working for the East India Company. Which leads one to wonder while the Yale faculty and many alums — our moral and intellectual betters — are busy posturing about “injustice”, why aren’t they tearing down statutes of Eli Yale and demanding the name be changed to Audre Lorde or Angela Davis University? I mean, is there no greater oppression of women, working class people, and to democratic representation than slavery?

My bet? Because the market value of the coveted Yale degree would turn to dog poop in 15 minutes. Boola boola, indeed.

LIBEL LAWYER LIBBY LOCKE NAILS IT: One of the lawyers who held Rolling Stone accountable for their agenda-driven smear on a college administrator sees commonalty with the bizarre attacks on Judge Kavanaugh.

 “Within hours of being accused of an unsubstantiated and uncorroborated three-decades-old assault, Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s reputation as a highly respected jurist with an unblemished personal record was permanently damaged. Many rushed to declare Judge Kavanaugh guilty merely because he had been accused. Democrats all too happily called for him to withdraw his Supreme Court nomination, while his accuser’s lawyer basked in the left’s glory for slowing a Supreme Court nomination that seemed a sure thing.”

As the Professor says, “Read the whole thing.”™

HOW THE CHEESE-EATING SURRENDER-MONKEYS PLAN TO CONTROL YOUR SPEECH: And they are going to get away with it, I’m afraid. My column in The Daily Caller explains:

“[T]he EU is trying to flex its censorship muscles around the world. Unfortunately, the EU has decided to redesign the information superhighway with a series of landmines, speed bumps and exit ramps to Speech Jail.”

IRONY, AS SEEN ON FACEBOOK: Two “progressives” trying to get around The Washington Post‘s paywall. Yeah, I’m pretty sure all this socialism talk is about free stuff.

“SHUT UP”, THEY EXPLAINED: Politico reporting that “Paul Manafort’s pro-Ukraine campaign reached the top of the White House, with one of the members of his lobbying effort meeting President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden in 2013, according to new court documents released Friday.”

Court documents and filings with the Justice Department previously revealed some of the members of Manafort’s Hapsburg Group and showed that they met with dozens of members of Congress, congressional staffers and Obama administration officials. But Friday brought the first indication that the campaign stretched to the top of the U.S. government.

Be careful what you ask for.

HOW MANY LEFTIES DOES IT TAKE TO CHANGE A LIGHT BULB? That’s not funny! Actually this fellow on the Australian Broadcasting System *does* have a sense of humor…and a lot of common sense:

“Don’t get me wrong, I love left-wing values and hope that one day they’ll win out across the globe. It’s just that on that day, I don’t want any left-wing people alive to see that happen. Why? Because we’re f*cking useless.”

SEE? SOCIALISM WORKS! It’s magic! Material goods just appear out of thin air!

WHO WATCHES THE WATCHMEN? My column this week about the abandonment of self-appraisal by modern media.

“But I think President Trump’s greatest mistake is calling the press “the enemy of the people.” When you look at the way journalism has abandoned their promise of self-accountability, it may be more accurate to say that “the press is the enemy of the press.” As far as credibility goes, these are mostly self-inflicted wounds. To be sure, Trump has cleverly milked this populist view for all it’s worth, but there are a lot of moving parts to the all-time low esteem in which journalists are held.”

CREDIT WHERE IT’S DUE: Heaven knows, PEN International often sounds like it was written by the old TASS editors, and they often have trouble with allowing viewpoints that differ from theirs (libertarian, conservative) but when they’re right, they’re right. PEN’s Chief Executive Officer Suzanne Nossel wrote in Foreign Policy magazine that:

In demonstrating that a company as mighty as Google was unable to resist the allure of the Chinese market, despite the terms of entry, Beijing will advance its campaign to remake global internet governance on its own terms. The utopian notion of an internet that unifies people across borders, fosters the unfettered flow of information, and allows truth and reason to triumph is already under attack on multiple fronts. The trade-off, to date, has been that countries insistent on controlling the internet have had to forfeit access to the world’s most powerful and innovative online services in favor of local providers.

To be fair, Google is not the only company to sell its soul to China for filthy lucre. Faux social justice warriors Apple and Starbucks come to mind, as does Bloomberg, who happily agreed to filter out delivery of news to China that made the government uncomfortable, despite a spate of editorial resignations.

IT’S SO GODDAM OFFENSIVE I ALMOST DIDN’T WANT TO PUBLISH THIS: I suppose it’s inevitable, but the sanctity and pain of this day really shouldn’t be turned into political fodder. This is just plain disgusting.

OK, I ADMIT IT: I’m in love.

I, too, am a senior Trump administration official. I proudly serve in this administration, and I enthusiastically support most of its decisions and the direction it is taking the country. But I don’t agree with the president on everything. When there is disagreement, there is a right way and a wrong way to address it. I pick up the phone and call him or meet with him in person.

To quote Rick Springfield, “where can I find a woman like that?”

BE NOT AFRAID: I’ve written before about how jihadists and anti-Semites have mastered the PR game and co-opted the alleged intelligentsia of Oxbridge and the extreme US left.

But take heart: an Op/Ed in yesterday’s WSJ points out that smugness, a false sense of superiority and a compliant liberal press are all they have. The facts speak for themselves:

In 2012 [Corbyn] approved of a mural that grotesquely depicted Jewish bankers, and he did not reverse himself until earlier this year…In 2012 he appeared on Iranian television to celebrate the release of Palestinian terrorists by Israel in a painful prisoner exchange with Hamas. He referred to the returning convicts as “brothers.”

And most sickening of all:

In 2014 he laid a wreath at the graves of terrorists involved in the murder of Israeli athletes at the Munich Summer Olympics in 1972.

You know, I’m not a Trump guy, but you’ll see no pictures of him hugging an avowed segregationist.

**CORRECTION: last line changed to more accurately describe Strom Thurmond’s legislative history***

WORLD CLASS SPIN: According to The Boston Globe, a lie isn’t a lie unless it makes a difference.

“In the most exhaustive review undertaken of Elizabeth Warren’s professional history, the Globe found clear evidence, in documents and interviews, that her claim to Native American ethnicity was never considered by the Harvard Law faculty, which voted resoundingly to hire her…”

Glad they cleared that up.

SLATE NOW HIRING BLIND PHOTO EDITORS: I, for one, support hiring physically challenged people. Or perhaps that thing on the left side of his desk is actually the Weather Control/Time Warp device he bought from Dick Cheney.

IF IT WERE RUSSIA, THE SCREAMS WOULD BE UNBEARABLE: A refreshingly honest Op/Ed moment at The Washington Post, where a former political prisoner rightly (IMHO) chides Google for being evil a.f. and cozying up to China.

In prison I labored secretly for months to secure a forbidden shortwave radio, which I kept hidden in a used milk carton. I listened to programs like Voice of America and Radio Free Asia at night while wrapped under my quilt, the speaker pressed close to my ear at the lowest possible volume. Having had my freedom denied me by the Chinese Communist Party, the news of this upstart tech company risking lost revenue to do the right thing gave me real hope […] And then came news about Google’s work on a censored search engine (code-named “Dragonfly”). After my initial shock wore off, I found myself wondering what had occurred to cause the company to shed its defining principle in such a blatant fashion. Does Google really want to become a tool of the dictatorial communist regime?

“Don’t Be Evil?” That’s so 90’s. The fact is most of Congress and K Street are bought and paid for by China, and the more people see Putin hiding in their closet, the more China will be able to strengthen its economic, military and social engineering hegemony.

BACK TO THE FUTURE: Boston TV reporter gets punked.

**Bonus Update: the twitterverse weighs in.

REPOSTED FROM YESTERDAY: I’m not surprised that my friends in MSM have not said a word about this. Maybe because it’s indefensible?

The [Post’s] lawsuit drops this stunning little nugget into their complaint: “[T]here is no evidence of a newspaper or other website being unwittingly manipulated by illegitimate foreign political advertising.”

They might want to talk to their editors, who have been publishing reams of stories about how web manipulation robbed them of their preferred candidate’s rightful place.

DEMOCRACY DIES IN DARKNESS: But The Washington Post’s income thrives in it. My latest column for The Daily Caller.