Showing posts from April, 2019

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Courage and Cowardice on the Last Day of Passover in California

John T. Earnest came to a small synagogue in a small California city of 50,000 with a rifle and big dreams of killing Jews. In a manifesto posted on 8chan, he boasted, "I would die a thousand times over". The Neo-Nazi wannabe killer listed Adolf Hitler as his inspiration. "My act will inspire others to take a stand as well,” he wrote in his manifesto. “And when this revolution starts gaining traction (if I am not killed) I expect to be freed from prison and continue the fight.” Inside, an elderly Rabbi, a 60-year old woman, an 9-year-old girl, and other Jewish worshipers celebrating the final day of Passover showed him the true meaning of courage. The older congregants in the sanctuary of Chabad of Poway, the city’s sole Orthodox Jewish synagogue, were reciting Yizkor, the prayer for deceased loved ones, an occasion that can summon even the most secular Jew to the synagogue, while the younger children were playing in the synagogue’s hall. Had Earnest opened fire

Should Cory Booker Pay Slavery Reparations to Himself?

Senator Cory Booker has promised to introduce a bill to study a proposal for slavery reparations. The bill will be a companion to a bill by Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee who had once declared on the House floor, “I stand here as a freed slave.” Since Sheila also believed that there are two Vietnams, that the Constitution is 400 years old, and that Neil Armstrong planted a flag on Mars, that may have been metaphor or the addled understanding of a woman who confused Wikileaks and Wikipedia. Booker, who claims to care about the victims of sexual violence, might have been dissuaded from backing a bill introduced by a politician who was recently forced to resign from chairing the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation after firing a woman who was raped by one of her subordinates. But Senator Booker has never found a principle that he wouldn’t passionately embrace and betray. Just to make Booker’s move even dirtier, the reparations bill dated back to Rep. John Conyers, who was forced to resi

Raise Taxes on Everyone Richer Than Me

"Nobody should earn more than a million dollars," Bernie Sanders declared in 1974. During his original Senate run, the socialist candidate claimed that “concentrations of wealth” were the greatest threat to America and could be ended with a 100% tax on wealth over $1 million a year. In 2016, Bernie Sanders made over $1 million. He didn’t self-impose a 100% tax on his own wealth. That same year he gave less than 1% of his income to charity and bought a third home. As a young man, Bernie had claimed that a million was more money than anyone could spend in a lifetime. Now that he had a million, he discovered just how many things he could enjoy spending all that filthy lucre on. In the early days of his campaign, Bernie’s fans touted him as the sort of ordinary guy who flies coach and gets scrunched in there with the rest of us. Then the money began pouring in and Bernie chartered a Delta 767 and took a jaunt to the Vatican to meet Pope Francis with the mostly empty plane s

Escape From New York 2021

In the movie Escape From New York, the island of Manhattan was walled off and mined. For its fortieth anniversary, New York City will try to recreate its plot by walling off parts of Manhattan with toll booths. The walls of toll booths to impose congestion pricing on the locals will fulfill the dream of former Mayor Bloomberg whose wildest ideas now seem downright tame to the new Dem radicals. You could try to bypass the toll booths along 61st Street by taking an Uber, but good luck. New York City has also been leading a crackdown on ridesharing on behalf of taxi drivers who began committing suicide because they were no longer able to overcharge, rip off and rob tourists. Uber will be capped, taxed and pushed out of the city along with all the other cars to encourage people to use public transportation. Unfortunately, public transportation doesn’t work anymore. You can still ride a bike, if you don’t mind suffering bruises, bumps and skull fractures. The New York City subwa

3 Muslim Terror Plots Targeted Synagogues in 3 Months

On Wednesday, April 3, FBI agents converged on a Bozeman shooting range and took Fabjan Alameti into custody. Alemati, an Albanian Muslim, had traveled from New York to Montana. "When the time will come for us to hunt them down, I will stand over them while I piece their bodies with hollow tips," the Islamic terrorist had boasted in February. "Inshallah, we take as many kuffars (non-Muslims) with us." He had told a government informant back in January that his potential targets included military and government targets, as well as a “Jewish temple”. Alameti’s terror plot back in January was the second such Islamic terror plot that month. On December 14, 2018, Hasher Jallal Taheb was discussing some of the targets he had scouted in Washington D.C. They included the White House, the Lincoln Memorial, and a specific synagogue. In the middle of January, Taheb was arrested over in Georgia. Taheb and Alemati had a number of similarities. Both men were twent

From Slavery to Freedom

As another Passover begins, the echoes of "Once we were slaves and now we are free" and "Next year in Jerusalem" resound briefly and then fade into the background noise of everyday life. We can board a plane tomorrow and fly off to Jerusalem. Some of us are already there now. But will that make us free? Since Egypt we have become slaves again, lived under the rule of iron-fisted tyrants and forgotten what the very idea of freedom means. And that will likely happen again and again until the age ends. What is this freedom that we gained with the fall of a Pharaoh and the last sight of his pyramids and armies? Freedom like slavery, is as much a state of mind as a state of being. It is possible to be legally free, yet to have no freedom of action whatsoever. And it is possible to be legally a slave and yet to be free in defiance of those restrictions. External coercion alone does not make a man free or slave, it is the degradation of mind that makes a m

There's No White Privilege, Only Racial Differences

White privilege, the hottest racist idea since cross-burnings at midnight and photos with Farrakhan, is a subject of academic study and media discourse. It’s hard to escape its pernicious message that an entire race is tainted by virtue of its skin color and that the accomplishments of any individual white person are due, not to his or her efforts, but to race, skin color, and a national infrastructure of white supremacism. But who actually believes in white privilege? A recent Pew race relations survey notes that white people are the least likely to believe that being white helps one get ahead in life. Racial activists see such results as proof of white privilege. Only white people, they insist, could be so oblivious to their racial privileges in the face of the oppression of non-whites. Your skin has to be whiter than vanilla not to realize how badly all the oppressed races have it. So, who does believe in white privilege? According to the survey, the race most likely to beli

Media Dwells on Threats to Rep. Omar, Ignores Threats to Republicans

In early April, a man was arrested after making a threatening phone call to Rep. Ilhan Omar’s office. Also, around that same time, a woman was arrested for sending a white powder to Senator Susan Collins’ office. The Collins letter claimed that it was coated in ricin and declared, “Good luck to you Susan, in the next life.” Another letter implied that it had a fatal dose of anthrax inside. After the senator’s husband opened the letter, hazmat teams went to the house. Her husband and the dog, a lab named Pepper, had to be quarantined. A screening system was set up at the local post office where employees also feared being exposed to hazardous materials. The attacker is allegedly a member of the leftist Green Party who was angry about the senator’s vote to confirm Justice Kavanaugh. The same media outlets that have behaved as if Rep. Omar might be killed at any moment because she received a threatening phone call have showed very little interest in a potential anthrax or ricin attack

Money in the Toilet

The fastest rising item in the country isn’t gold or bitcoin, it’s the cost of a public bathroom. In ’08, a San Francisco Weekly article fumed that a park restroom in Golden Gate Park was costing taxpayers $531,219. Fast forward, a decade later the cost of a park restroom in the Golden Gate Boathouse had ballooned to $2 million or $4,700 per square foot. The modern bathroom had a third All-Gender option that the ’08 bathroom didn’t. But adding a non-gender shouldn’t have quadrupled the price. Inflation would have kept the cost well below a million. Why did a 15-foot by 28-foot bathroom cost millions? Part of the answer may be that San Fran privileges minority businesses and requires that 15% of work hours be carried out by “disadvantaged” workers. New York City’s bathrooms were always pricey. In ’08, they ran to a million. A recent report noted that the overpriced real estate market had pulled off a new high with a $6 million bathroom. Fit not only for a king, but for Steve

What If You Hold a 2020 Kickoff Rally and No One Comes?

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand was going to launch her kickoff rally right in front of President Trump’s front door. “No other candidate has done something like this,” she bragged. “We’re rallying at Trump’s doorstep to send a message loud and clear: We’re together, we’re brave." By the time she showed up in front of “Trump’s doorstep” at the Trump International Hotel off Manhattan’s Central Park, the President of the United States was traveling back from Florida to Washington D.C. He was nowhere near the hotel where Gillibrand had decided to “confront” him. There was nothing “brave” about venturing into the Upper West Side, where the locals would rather commit ritual suicide with a spork or shop at Walmart, before voting for Trump. Starting your rally in a place where Hillary Clinton won 80% of the vote isn’t brave. It’s cowardly. Gillibrand would have shown more courage by going back to her old district where Hillary only won 54% of the vote. But instead her campaign threw