AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD: FBI Races Past Protesters Screaming ‘Kill The Jews’ To Arrest Woman Praying Silently Outside Abortion Clinic.
Author Archive: Ed Driscoll
October 24, 2023
UPDATE NEWSPEAK DICTIONARIES ACCORDINGLY: New York Magazine Writer Splits Hairs Between ‘Beheaded’ Babies and Babies That ‘Were Found Headless.’
MEGAN RAPINOE, WHOSE FIANCÉE IS ISRAELI, RAISES MONEY FOR GAZA AFTER HAMAS TERRORIST ATTACK: “While Rapinoe, a gay woman who would likely be killed in Gaza, is raising money for the area, she doesn’t seem to have any interest for the good people of Israel. There’s no tweets on her X account referencing Israel, Hamas or raising funds or the Israelis under attack. In fact, she hasn’t tweeted at all since the attack happened.”
UNEXPECTEDLY: California governor visits China and says his state will always be a partner on climate change.
The governor of California opened a weeklong trip to China on Monday with an assurance that his state will always be a partner on climate issues no matter how the U.S. presidential election turns out next year.
Considering its long tradition of Potemkin environmentalism, California taking its climate change cues from the CCP would be a definite step in the right direction for the now beleaguered former golden state: China’s new coal power spree continues as more provinces jump on the bandwagon.
October 23, 2023
AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD: Victoria’s Secret Quietly Cancels New Lizzo Lingerie Line.
The nation’s largest drugstore chains, Rite Aid, CVS and Walgreens, will shutter more than 1,500 stores, leaving millions of Americans without access to healthcare in ‘pharmacy deserts.’
Rite Aid said it will close 150 of its 2,100 US locations after they filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy earlier this month.
The pharmacy chain has been unable to settle hundreds of lawsuits that accused them of overprescribing opioids and has struggled to keep up with competitors.
A slew of drugstore chains slashing their locations has left millions of people living in areas where it’s difficult to obtain medication, areas known as ‘pharmacy deserts,’ according to JAMA Network.
As Lawrence Person noted last month: Defund The Police + Decriminalize Shoplifting = “Food Deserts.” And “pharmacy deserts” as well. And where the drugstore is still open in an urban area, everything behind locked shelving, encased in plastic anti-theft containers, or both:
An off-duty pilot has been charged with 83 counts of attempted murder — after he allegedly tried to crash a San Francisco-bound Alaska Airlines flight by shutting off the engines.
The pilot, identified by police as Joseph David Emerson, 44, was sitting in the cockpit’s jump seat — located behind the captain and the first officer — when he tried to activate the jet’s fire suppression system midflight, the airline said in a statement.
If he was successful, he would have cut off the flow of fuel to the engines.
“When pulled, a valve in the wing closes to shut off fuel to the engine. After they are pulled, some residual fuel remains in the line, and the quick reaction of our crew to reset the handles restored fuel flow and prevented fuel starvation,” an Alaska Airlines spokesperson explained.
The flight’s captain and first officer managed to subdue the suspect Emerson, who was off-duty but authorized to sit in the cockpit as an employee of the airline.
Flight 2059 was being operated by Horizon Air, a regional carrier owned by Alaska Airlines. It took off from Everett, Wash. shortly before 5:30 p.m. Sunday.
More here: Who is pilot Joseph Emerson? Pleasant Hill [CA] neighbors say he’s ‘very friendly.’
Emerson is currently in custody at the Multnomah County Detention Center in Portland with no bail, jail inmate records show. He was booked into jail on 83 counts of first-degree attempted murder, 83 counts of reckless endangerment, and one count of endangering an aircraft.
Charges were referred to the Multnomah County District Attorney’s Office for review. He is slated to be arraigned in court at 2:05 p.m. Tuesday.
The Port of Portland Police Department, FBI, TSA, FAA, and Multnomah County District Attorney’s Office are investigating the incident.
I’ll be very curious to hear if a motive is ever released after the investigation.
THE DAY THE DELUSIONS DIED: A lot of people woke up on October 7 as progressives and went to bed that night feeling like conservatives. What changed?
When Hamas terrorists crossed over the border with Israel and murdered 1,400 innocent people, they destroyed families and entire communities. They also shattered long-held delusions in the West.
A friend of mine joked that she woke up on October 7 as a liberal and went to bed that evening as a 65-year-old conservative. But it wasn’t really a joke and she wasn’t the only one. What changed?
The best way to answer that question is with the help of Thomas Sowell, one of the most brilliant public intellectuals alive today. In 1987, Sowell published A Conflict of Visions. In this now-classic, he offers a simple and powerful explanation of why people disagree about politics. We disagree about politics, Sowell argues, because we disagree about human nature. We see the world through one of two competing visions, each of which tells a radically different story about human nature.
Those with “unconstrained vision” think that humans are malleable and can be perfected. They believe that social ills and evils can be overcome through collective action that encourages humans to behave better. To subscribers of this view, poverty, crime, inequality, and war are not inevitable. Rather, they are puzzles that can be solved. We need only to say the right things, enact the right policies, and spend enough money, and we will suffer these social ills no more. This worldview is the foundation of the progressive mindset.
By contrast, those who see the world through a “constrained vision” lens believe that human nature is a universal constant. No amount of social engineering can change the sober reality of human self-interest, or the fact that human empathy and social resources are necessarily scarce. People who see things this way believe that most political and social problems will never be “solved”; they can only be managed. This approach is the bedrock of the conservative worldview.
Hamas’s barbarism—and the explanations and celebrations throughout the West that followed their orgy of violence—have forced an overnight exodus from the “unconstrained” camp into the “constrained” one.
On the flip side, as Don Surber writes: The Nazis are winning — society accepts and promotes anti-Semitism again. “I was lectured long and often last year about how Ukraine was a fight for democracy even as Zelensky banned opposition parties and shut down elections. Here we have a legitimate democracy — Israel — facing an existential threat from rapists and executioners and I do not hear anyone in Washington talking about democracy. But they go on and on and talk about proportionate punishment as if Palestinians are just unruly children and not cutthroats who want to destroy Israel and kill Jews from the river to the sea. German Nazis used education camps to indoctrinate their youth. American Nazis use Harvard.”
Related:
Brief reminder that Jews are the second most frequently targeted group for hate crimes in the United States. Muslims are #15.*
*as measured by incidents reported to the FBI. https://t.co/xEOiACc087
— Charles Fain Lehman (@CharlesFLehman) October 23, 2023
Earlier: Reaction to Hamas massacre shows it’s time to decolonize the campus.
Iowahawk suggests something a bit more drastic:
This poll could be cited as justification for bulldozing every college in America https://t.co/eW91W8JcBP
— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) October 23, 2023
UPDATE: KJP’s whataboutism was in accordance to the prophecy:
It's hard to stay ahead of reality at The Babylon Bee. We had this written last night only to wake up and see the White House doing exactly this before we had the chance to publish pic.twitter.com/Xheyvt2CrB
— Joel Berry (@JoelWBerry) October 23, 2023
GROUNDBREAKING: Glamour’s ‘Women of the Year’ Are All Women.
What happened: A women’s fashion magazine, Glamour, honored its “Women of the Year” award winners at a swanky gala in London last week.
- All of the winners were actually women.
- The magazine’s “Women of the Year” honorees included female actress Millie Bobby Brown, female actress America Ferrera, female singer Leigh-Anne Pinnock, female actress Ariana DeBose, female singer Halle Bailey, female actress Lily Allen, female singer Olivia Dean, female actress Hannah Waddingham, female influencer Fats Timbo, female reality star Georgia Harrison, and a group of female soccer players.
Why it matters: It’s a courageous (and potentially problematic) departure from contemporary social trends. In recent years, most “women of the year” lists were considered—by the people who care about such things—to be insufficiently “inclusive” if no transgender individuals were represented.
Flashback: Bourgeois is the new transgressive.
DISPATCHES FROM AL SHARPTON’S CHANNEL: MSNBC’s Mehdi Hasan Is Back on Air and as Anti-Israel as Ever.
Mehdi Hasan and his disproportionate disdain for the world’s only Jewish-majority state are once again front-and-center at MSNBC.
After a brief hiatus, Hasan, who previously worked at Al-Jazeera, the de facto mouthpiece of the Qatari government, has returned with his typically misleading rants — buoyed only by his British accent — in tow.
Reacting to President Joe Biden’s Oval Office address on Chris Hayes’ show late last week, Hasan rejected Biden’s comparison between Hamas and Russia, instead submitting that the real similarities lie between Israel and Russia.
“It’s interesting that he decided to do a whole thing about Hamas and Russia, and linking them together. It was slightly Axis of Evil-y, putting them together, cause they’ve really got very little in common just when you look at them,” argued Hasan. “Because a lot in the rest of the world would say ‘Okay, if you’re gonna compare Ukraine and Israel,’ Biden and a lot of people in America may see Ukraine and Israel as the same. A lot of people around the world see Russia and Israel the same.”
“Israel is the occupier of the West Bank and Gaza,” he insisted, apparently unaware that Israel unilaterally pulled out of Gaza in 2005.
Why is Comcast such a cesspit of anti-Semitism?
JEFF DUNETZ: What Hamas Wants. “Why can’t world leaders understand that Hamas wants to drive Israel ‘into the sea’ and kill all the Jews? Don’t believe me, believe Hamas; below are excerpts of the Hamas charter.”
DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE: Israel removes Greta Thunberg from school curriculum over anti-Israel post.
The Education Ministry has said it will remove any reference to climate activist Greta Thunberg after she published a post over the weekend holding an anti-Israel sign reading “stand with Gaza.”
“Hamas is a terrorist organization responsible for the murder of 1,400 innocent Israelis, including children, women, and the elderly, and it has abducted over 200 people to Gaza,” the ministry said. “This stance disqualifies her from being an educational and moral role model, and she is no longer eligible to serve as an inspiration and educator for Israeli students.”
Thunberg faced criticism over the weekend from hundreds of Israeli climate activists after she posted on X that “today we strike in solidarity with Palestine and Gaza. The world needs to speak up and call for an immediate ceasefire, justice and freedom for Palestinians and all civilians affected.”
I’m glad to see the Israeli Education Ministry belatedly coming to its senses, but why were there “references” to her in the first place?
‘F*** JEWS:’ Antisemites Vandalize the Office of Bari Weiss’s Media Outlet.
Vandals wrote a vulgar antisemitic message outside the office of Bari Weiss’s publication the Free Press last week, the latest example in a string of antisemitic incidents that have taken place in American cities and on college campuses since the brutal Hamas attack on Israeli civilians earlier this month.
Weiss, who worked at the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times before launching her own media outlet, revealed Sunday on X that she had discovered the message “F*** Jews” scrawled on the wall outside of her Los Angeles office.
“This was scrawled outside of our offices this week,” she said. “If the antisemites who did this think it will intimidate me and the journalists of @TheFP, they don’t know me, they don’t know us, and they have no idea what we stand for.”
This was scrawled outside of our offices this week.
If the antisemites who did this think it will intimidate me and the journalists of @TheFP, they don’t know me, they don’t know us, and they have no idea what we stand for. pic.twitter.com/2CsIqrqz5V
— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) October 22, 2023
Weiss’s publication is vocally pro-Israel and has taken a stand against the antisemitism that’s flared up in the U.S. since the Hamas attack. She started the Free Press after publicly resigning from role as a writer and editor in the opinion department, citing “bullying by colleagues” and an “illiberal environment.” Some of the bullying she faced, she has revealed, was driven by her unapologetic support for Israel, which is informed by her own Judaism.
If you’re scrawling “f*ck Jews” graffiti on a wall, it’s definitely time to ask yourselves, “Are we the baddies?”
TO BE FAIR, IT’S DIFFICULT TO INSULT OFFICE MATES: Associated Press Won’t Let Reporters Call Hamas a Terrorist Organization.
Instead of referring to Hamas—which earlier this month killed hundreds of innocent civilians, including children in an unprompted attack on Israel—as a terrorist group, the outlet says journalists should call its members “militants.”
“Terms such as Hamas fighters, attackers or combatants are also acceptable depending on the context,” the Associated Press style guide states.
The Associated Press did not respond to a request for comment.
Bucking the “terrorist” label is one in a series of strange decisions by the Associated Press, which include once sharing office space in Gaza with Hamas. That office, which the AP used for 15 years, was destroyed by Israeli airstrikes in May 2021. The Israeli Defense Force stated the building contained Hamas operatives and weapons, as well as an office for Islamic Jihad, another terrorist organization based in Gaza.
Flashback: Israel Shared Intelligence to Us Showing Hamas Operated Inside Building Where AP, Al-Jazeera Had Offices.
REVOLT: SPLC Union Speaks Out on Hamas-Israel War as Southern Poverty Law Center Remains Silent.
UPDATE (FROM GLENN): This would be enough to get the SPLC put on an SPLC hate list, if anyone there had ever voted Republican.
TRUTH IN ADVERTISING: Nooo. Really? Climate Pledge Arena in Seattle Has Electrical Issues.
IS THE NEW YORK TIMES A LIBERAL NEWSPAPER? OF COURSE IT IS: NYT: A Week Later, Hamas “Fails to Make Case” that Israel Struck Hospital; UPDATE: “Editors Note”?
Marry yourselves to terrorists in haste, repent at leisure? The New York Times has all but redefined ‘leisure’ in this old axiom with its ever-so-slow retreat from its initial report that Israel bombed a hospital in Gaza.
A week ago, the NYT and every other American media outlet swallowed that Hamas claim without question while sourcing it from “Gaza’s health ministry. Even after Israel provided video of the failed rocket launch by Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) and radio communications from Hamas confirming the incident as friendly fire, American news media declared that the IDF hadn’t “proven” their case.
Now, a week later, the ‘Paper of Record’ grudgingly admits that the claim came from Hamas and never did have any evidence supporting it. The headline itself is a marvel in the annals of modified limited hangouts (via Power Line):
As America’s Newspaper of Record reported last week: New York Times Patiently Awaiting Zoom Call From Hamas To See What They Should Print Today.
(Classical reference in headline.)
THIS IS CNN: CNN Tries to Explain What’s Going on in Israel, but There’s a Slight Problem With That Map.
We’ve seen a lot of bad reporting when it comes to the Israel-Hamas war so far.
We saw it particularly when it came to the Gaza hospital explosion. A lot of the media just reported what Hamas told them uncritically, and without knowing the facts. Even when an IDF spokesperson called the BBC out on its reporting about the hospital incident after more evidence came out and showed it wasn’t an Israeli airstrike, the BBC host wouldn’t take responsibility for what they had done. That was symbolic of media in general, which varied from not correcting their false reporting to stealth editing after they were called out on it.
Is it any wonder Americans so distrust media now with examples like that? The hospital incident was only the latest in a long history of problematic media reporting. When they wouldn’t even check facts before running with the story, as you saw in that case, you know there’s a problem with basic journalism.
But CNN somehow managed to be even more incompetent, on Sunday during its reporting, and in a way that many people immediately picked up on.
Here’s the map they threw up on the screen as they were talking about aid to Gaza.
They don't only lie.
They can't even show a proper map of #Israel.
FYI @CNN:
1) #TelAviv is located on the beach.
2) Sderot is nearby #Gaza.
You can't deliver correctly even the simplest things & you wish us to believe a lot more difficult stuff you report on!?#IStandWithIsrael pic.twitter.com/Mhnw1xE5hI— Ariel Aharonovich (@AAharonovich) October 22, 2023
Missed it by that much:
CNN doesn't even know where Israel's cities are located. It's like putting New York in California, and Miami in Montana 🤣 pic.twitter.com/O1Goq38C7X
— Dr. Eli David (@DrEliDavid) October 22, 2023
FASTER, PLEASE: US universities lose millions as donors pull funding over Hamas stance.
Donors are withdrawing millions of dollars in planned funding to punish US universities for their responses to Hamas’s attack on Israel, in a stand-off over free speech, higher education funding and academic leaders’ public responsibilities.
Billionaire benefactors including Apollo Global Management’s Marc Rowan and Limited Brands founder Leslie Wexner have called for stronger condemnation of Hamas and antisemitism by universities, and tougher action against students protesting against Israel. Law and investment firms have threatened to rescind job offers they had made to students, or not hire protesters when they graduate.
The pressure has left universities including Harvard, Stanford and the University of Pennsylvania struggling to contain a growing crisis, with some revising earlier statements to be more outspoken.
Others — including free speech advocates and the University of North Carolina Wilmington — have defended principles developed in the 1967 Kalven report for the University of Chicago and since used more widely that colleges should commit to academic freedom and insist on “institutional neutrality on political and social issues”.
On Tuesday, Liz Magill, president of the University of Pennsylvania, said: “Penn stands emphatically against the terrorist attacks by Hamas in Israel and against antisemitism”, but acknowledged “we should have communicated faster and more broadly about where we stand”.
Her declaration came too late for donors, including Ronald Lauder, the cosmetics heir, who criticised a recent Palestinian literature festival held on campus and said he would pull funding. Others withdrawing support included venture capitalists David Magerman and Jonathon Jacobson, and Jon Huntsman, the former US ambassador to China and ex-governor of Utah, who said he was “closing his checkbook”.
Which is why: So Far UPenn Leading In Race to Lose Donors Over Support For Hamas.
October 22, 2023
DAVID THOMSPON: Broadcasting An Attitude.
And then acting all surprised. Via the comments, a conundrum for our times:
Hire or fire? 🔥 pic.twitter.com/6RdKKS4heF
— 🌈 Tess T. Eccles-Brown, PhD (@TTEcclesBrown) October 21, 2023
In the comments, Jen replies,
Never mind the ‘f*ggot’ necklace, the bullring might as well say MASSIVE LIABILITY, DO NOT EMPLOY.
The above does seem to be yet another variation of, “I’ve chosen to send a round-the-clock provocative, anti-social message. Why are people noticing my round-the-clock provocative anti-social message?”
As always, life imitates Gary Larson’s classic The Far Side cartoon:
