“ZIONISTS” SUPPRESSING FREE SPEECH AGAIN? Elder of Ziyon: Detroit imam says Jews prostitute their women to gain power. Don’t worry, no antisemitism to see here, I’m sure if you gave the imam a chance to apologize, he’d say he meant “Zionists paid by AIPAC,” not “Jews.” Claims of antisemitism are just the Zionists trying to suppress free speech on behalf of Israel.

HOW TRUMP GETS REELECTED: Trump won in 2016 because a large chunk of those who strongly disapproved of him disliked his opponent even more. Progressive activists seem determined to provoke a repeat.

THIS PETER BEINART COLUMN HASN’T AGED WELL:

But instead of admitting his mistake, Beinart engages in a rather peculiar form of whataboutism. Apparently, Americans have no business criticizing a congresswoman for anti-Semitic statements unless they are equally critical of Republicans who defend Israel regarding policies that Beinart disagrees with.

THIS IS NOT YOUR FATHER’S ACLU: The ACLU has never been the paragon of civil libertarian virtue that it’s pretended to be, and, as I documented in my book You Can’t Say That!, in the 1970s began its descent from a liberal civil libertarian organization to mass membership left-leaning organization with a particular interest in civil liberties.

Nevertheless, if you had told me twenty years ago that the ACLU would go so hard-left that the director of the ACLU’s Human Rights program would be publicly defending anti-Semitism, I wouldn’t have believed you. Then again, ACLU founder Roger Baldwin went through a Stalinist phase for a decade or so, so perhaps the ACLU is returning to it roots.

UPDATE: RELATED: ACLU RIP

THE WHOLE AIPAC THING IS  A DEFLECTION: Why Rep. Omar was accused of indulging in anti-Semitic rhetoric: “So the anti-Semitic implications of Omar’s initial tweet are rather clear: ‘[House Minority Leader] McCarthy isn’t criticizing me because it’s an obvious political move for a Republican to criticize anti-Semitism among Democrats, but because he’s been bought off by Jewish money.'”

INCONVENIENT TRUTHS: NY Times: Tech is Splitting the Workplace in Two.

The article focuses on Phoenix, Arizona, as an example of a city in which high-tech is prominent, but the percentage of workers in low-skilled, low-wage jobs hasn’t move for forty years. The implied solution, of course, is government intervention.

You might think it would be impossible to write a lengthy article of this sort *without even mentioning* the huge influx of low-skilled labor from Mexico to Arizona in that timeframe, well over 50% of whom have been undocumented since 1990. You might think so, but you’d be wrong.

Putting aside what one thinks of immigration, legal or otherwise, it seems rather obvious that if a city is consistently importing poorly-educated workers who don’t speak English, most of whom have no legal residency status and cannot work legally, the percentage of workers in low-skilled, low-wage jobs is going to stay high.

AN EVENING IN THE LIFE OF AMERICAN POLITICS:

Rep. Omar: Regarding Israel, Congress has been bought off by “Benjamins”

Sensible Twitter: Suggesting that Congress’s policy on Israel is based primarily on campaign donations, especially when public opinion is staunchly pro-Israel, sounds kinds anti-Semitic, especially coming from someone who has made anti-Semitic comments in the past

Counter-twitter reaction from the left: Everyone knows that she was referring to how Israel uses AIPAC to buy off Congress

Sensible twitter: AIPAC doesn’t give money to candidates, and as an American organization all its donations come from Americans, not Israel or Israelis

Counter-twitter: Whatever, money from pro-Israel groups, then

Sensible twitter: You mean she’s saying that the 0.2% of campaign money that pro-Israel groups give, $10+ million out of $5+ billion, is enough to buy off the entire Congress?

Counter-twitter (covering ears): La La La, I can’t hear you.

NARRATOR: NORTHAM IS STILL GOVERNOR, AND STILL HAS A 2-1 APPROVAL RATING AMONG VIRGINIA DEMOCRATS:

THE ISLAND FORMERLY KNOWN AS “SCHLEPROCK”:  The Tiny Island with its own Personal Cloud.

THE NEED OF SOME TO FIT EVERY CONTROVERSY INTO A “RACIAL” BOX APPROACHES A PSYCHOLOGICAL DISORDER: “Palestine” is a not a racial justice issue.

LIZ’S LIES: Senator Warren claimed that she listed herself in the minority section of the law school professor directory because she wanted to meet other professors with Native American heritage. That was a lie, because the directory didn’t specify that she is Native American, just a member of an unspecified “minority” group.

She also claimed that she never tried to use Native American heritage for career advantage. Another lie; Harvard boasted when it hired her that it hired a “woman of color,” and who else could have been the source of that information?  Plus, she mysteriously stopped listing herself as a “minority” law professor just after Harvard hired her.

Finally, she asserted that she had never claimed to be an American Indian. Strike three, as we know thanks to the the Washington Post today.

UPDATE: In fairness to Warren, I’ve seen many secondary sources stating that she never claimed to be an American Indian/Native American, but I nevertheless am not 100% sure she ever said that she’s never claimed to be an American Indian, as opposed to never claimed to be citizen of a tribe, or never claimed to be an Indian to help herself get a job. But you, like me, are probably having a hard time believing that she would put herself in the law school directory as a minority, and list herself as an American Indian on her bar registration card, but not let it be known to potential law school suitors that she was “woman of color” eligible for affirmative action.

FURTHER UPDATE: Warren claimed she never used her Native American heritage “for anything.” 

MORE SIGNS WE ARE DESCENDING INTO IDIOCRACY: Mary Poppins branded racist by US academic – for ‘blacking up’ in iconic sweeps’ rooftop scene.

SPEAKING OF OFFENSIVE PHOTOS OF DEMOCRATIC POLITICIANS INDULGING RACISM:

I assume Northam’s photo was meant to be a joke, though in very poor taste. Obama is smiling, but I don’t think it’s a joke.

Meanwhile, the standards on past indiscretions confuse me. If we had had a picture of Ted Kennedy driving a car off a bridge and leaving his passenger to die while he planned a cover up, would he have had to resign?

SINCERE QUESTION: Sincere question: Did any of the experts who are now saying the “polar vortex” increasingly coming south is a result of climate change (in particular, polar ice melting due to warming) *predict* this would be a result of climate change before it happened? If so, it would give me much greater faith in their understanding of climate change. If not…

THE COMEY EFFECT HAS BEEN GREATLY EXAGGERATED: It seems to have become an article of faith among Democrats and progressives, even statistically-oriented ones like Nate Silver, that the Comey letter on Clinton’s emails, released on October 29, 2016, swung the election to Trump. Given how close the election was, almost any minor event could have swung the election. But the evidence that the letter had a significant effect, e.g., swinging the popular vote by 3 or 4 points isn’t there. Consider my Facebook post from Monday, October 30, 2016:

BUT IT WON’T STOP THE USUAL SUSPECTS FROM CLAIMING THAT ISRAEL IS USING “EXCESSIVE FORCE AGAINST CIVILIAN DEMONSTRATORS”: Examination of the list of fatalities in the “return marches” reveals that most of them are operatives of terrorist organizations, about half of whom affiliated with Hamas

WHO WOULD HAVE PREDICTED IN 1945 THAT THE UK’S LABOUR PARTY WOULD BE THE CLOSEST IDEOLOGICAL DESCENDANT OF THE NAZIS IN THE WEST? British t.v. presenter Rachel Riley describes the anti-Semitic abuse she’s encountered since publicly criticizing rampant Jew-hatred in Labour. Transcript here.

BECAUSE THEY NEED THERAPY: Conor Friedersdorf: This is How the Left Destroys Itself. Conor asks why so many on the left get caught up in politically counter-productive overreaction to the Covington kid. A lot of it is revenge fantasy against some obnoxious jerk from middle or high school. The “smirking” Covington kid (or Brett Kavanaugh before him) becomes a stand-in for the hated adolescent alpha, who probably was as bad as they remember. They couldn’t retaliate properly then, so they publicly join a twitter mob that fantasizes about committing violence, while engaging in doxxing designed to effectuate it. Of course, Nick Sandmann was not actually one’s high school tormentor, and getting caught up in this sort of psychological drama is a good way to alienate those who notice the gap between the vitriol and the evidence purportedly justifying it.

HEY! Want to get outraged over a video that’s not taken wildly out-of-context, involves people who are actually powerful, and, if that’s your cup of tea, still has a juvenile white male villain?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=kjpNyvw9Z84

There are some Americans out there who are actually *unhappy* when what normal people would think of as good news is revealed. They are upset and even in denial when it turns out  that a horrific gang rape at U. Va or by the Duke Lacrosse team never happened, or that a bunch of white kids didn’t surround and threaten a “Native American elder,” or that the Trayvon Martin case didn’t involve a white man shooting a black kid unprovoked, or that a deranged Israeli,  not a dangerous white supremacist cabal, was responsible for a series of bomb threats to Jewish institutions, because they want reinforcement for their worldview that demands that the U.S. be a dystopian hatefest. These are some of the worst people in the United States

I’ve found myself arguing on social media with seemingly otherwise intelligent people who claim that someone wearing a MAGA hat is properly seen as a “threat” and a supporter of “racial oppression” by many. I noted that (a) wearing a MAGA hat just means some combination of “I like Trump” and “I am patriotic,” which applies to about 43% of the population; (b) the kids from Covington High School may not have even meant that much, as they probably just picked up the hats as souvenirs on their DC school trip; (c) that almost a million of these hats have been sold, and reported acts of violence by people wearing the hats are non-existent or close to it. I’ve been told in return that “threat” doesn’t mean threat of physical or verbal abuse, though it’s not clear what it does mean. And that the subjective intent of even 99% of the wearers has nothing to do with whether the hat is properly seen as a symbol of racial oppression. Sigh.

WORST “DE-ESCALATION EXPERT” EVER: Susan Schorn: I’ve been avoiding chiming in on the Maga-hat-wearing larval Catholics. Because nothing says “de-escalation” like analogizing high school kids on one side of a public dispute to immature insects. The far left has become such a parody of itself, if it were a parody people would think it’s too unrealistic.

NETANYAHU’S STRATEGIC GENIUS?: After Chad ties restored, Israel set to host Mali’s PM in coming weeks.

I have lots of reservations about the Israeli PM, but credit where credit is due. He has a strategic vision for the country, which he has been pursuing relentlessly:

(1) Preserve and expand market reforms to increase Israel’s wealth, thereby making emgiration less attractive, and immigration more so. Since 2001, Israel has moved from number 40 in the world in per capita nominal income to 20th.

(2) Expand ties with Arab neighbors who have a common fear of Iran and a common impatience with Palestinian extremism and intransigence. Reports of not-so-secret secret meetings of Israeli officials with Arab officials from countries with no diplomatic relations with Israel are frequent (e.g.).

(3) Instead of relying on fair-weather friends in Europe, expand diplomatic ties with India, China, and, as in the headline above, African countries, including Muslim-majority countries.

(4) Very much under the radar (because there is no domestic political gain from doing so), take significant, expensive measures to integrate the Arab population of Israel into the economic mainstream, including aggressive civil service hiring, additional spending on infrastructure in Arab towns, and perhaps most important, significant steps taken to close the education and career prospects gap between Arab and Jewish residents of Israel. If successful, such steps will dampen irredentist and secessionist views within the Arab population.

Admittedly, some of Bibi’s successes have been more luck than skill–Trump beating Clinton, and the fall of the Muslim Brotherhood government in Egypt were two very fortuitous events from his perspective. And he doesn’t seem to have any clue about what, if anything, can be done to alleviate the long-term conflict with the Palestinians, or how to stop the slide in Israel’s support among U.S. Democrats. But his successes shouldn’t be underestimated.

THE CAUSE THAT NEVER SHUTS UP: Michelle Alexander’s Call to “Break the Silence [on Palestine]” is New York Times’s Latest Israel Smear.

The op-ed pages of the Times, Washington Post, and other major media outlets are wide open to those on the ideological left who hate Israel regardless of whether, as in the case of Alexander, they have no particular expertise on the subject of the Arab-Israeli conflict. The media especially love the supposedly anguished “as a Jew” pieces, in which Jews, generally with no connection to the Jewish community and with no record of ever having been sympathetic to Israel, purportedly express anguish about how “as a Jew” they just can’t tolerate Israel’s alleged misbehavior anymore.

Do the Israel-haters even recognize the irony of constantly whining about about how their perspective is “silenced” from the op-ed pages of the world’s most influential newspapers?

RANDOM THOUGHT: The folks who worry about “toxic masculinity” tend to be the most gung-ho about giving women with gender dysphoria testosterone shots and fake penises. Hmmm.