“YOU CAN’T LOATHE COLBERT ENOUGH,” SAYS CHRISTIAN TOTO, BUT YOU CAN CERTAINLY TRY: Colbert Defends Anti-Israel Protests, Shamed Anti-Lockdown Voices. “Far-Left host ignores violence, antisemitism and other hallmarks of pro-Palestinian riots.”
May 2, 2024
READER FAVORITE: Apple AirPods Pro (2nd Generation). #CommissionEarned
‘MORNING JOE’ MIKA HAS A MELTDOWN WHEN AL SHARPTON COMPARES CAMPUS RIOTS TO JAN. 6:
MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” got both sides of the aisle going this morning.
Joe Scarborough said that Democrats needed to call out the campus chaos more than they have been doing. Not only hasn’t there been a loud outcry by Joe Biden or many Democrats, but some Democrats, like the members of the Squad, have even expressed support for the radicals. He claimed they had to push for a ceasefire.
Al Sharpton stepped on the narrative big time, comparing the campus riots/violence to Jan. 6.
“How do the Democrats, how do all of us on that side, say January 6 was wrong if you can have the same pictures going on, on college campuses, you can lose the moral high ground? Sharpton asked.
That’s when Mika Brzezinski had a meltdown. “Good Lord, don’t make a parallel to January 6th!” co-host Mika Brzezinski said in response. “For some reason, that’s not allowed.” Whoops, she just said the quiet part out loud — you aren’t supposed to be saying that, Al!
To coin a popular Insta-phrase, we’ve descended into some sort of bizarre hell-world in which Al Sharpton is a voice of sanity.
It’s simple. It was purchased with Arab money. Oh, Academia was primed for that sort of crap, since those beliefs are its default, but for a long time was some rough balance. Academia actually had a vibrant, if small conservative/libertarian presence. They also had brains, so their influence was out of proportion to their numbers.
But oceans of oil money began to flood the hallowed halls of our elite (and not so elite) institutions. It paid for endowed chairs for anti-American and anti-Israel professors. It paid for embedded Islamic Studies departments. It paid for university-affiliated NGOs carefully putting forth the pro-Islam/anti-West cant. And it paid for full-fare students from those oil-rich countries, plumping the coffers of these schools with cash that had a catch.
That catch was simple. Make Islam and the savage authoritarians in the Arab world objects of admiration rather than disgust.
Plus this from Melanie Philips: “The significance of these campus insurrections is far greater than support for Hamas or even murderous hatred of the Jewish world. The universities have become ground zero for the Muslim Brotherhood’s strategy of Islamising the west.”
Of course, any attempt to root out this malign foreign, anti-Western influence will be met by cries of “ISLAMOPHOBIA!” helpfully amplified by the universities.
WELL, JUST LOOK AT CAMPUSES TODAY: ChatGPT shows better moral judgment than a college undergrad. If it’s better than an undergrad, it’s probably twice as good as a faculty member. And three times as good as an administrator. . .
WHAT TWO-TIERED JUSTICE SYSTEM? Alvin Bragg May Not Prosecute Pro-Palestinian Rioters Who Occupied Columbia University.
21ST CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: Dobbs didn’t cause the birth dearth. “It is a step in the right direction that liberal columnists such as Catherine Rampell are not only acknowledging that birthrates are declining in the United States but also admitting it is a problem. Unfortunately, Rampell then reverts to fact-free blind partisanship by blaming the Republican Party for the phenomenon.”
That’s the usual progression. First, there is no problem. Second, there is a problem, but it’s the Republicans’ fault. But the facts are different: “The 17 states with the highest general fertility rates are all designated by Cook Political Report as Republican, or GOP-leaning, including such Republican strongholds as North Dakota, Nebraska, Louisiana, Utah, and Texas. By contrast, the bottom six states — and nine of the ten states with the lowest fertility rates — are all either Democratic or Democratic-leaning. … Only two Democratic states have birthrates above the national average, compared with 20 Republican states with above-average fertility.”
SEND WEAPONS, NOT MEN: Macron Says He’ll Consider Deploying Troops in Ukraine in Specific Circumstance.
LINCOLN’S PRAYER FOR AMERICA: Today is the National Day of Prayer among millions of Evangelical Christians, Catholics, conservatives and anybody else who wants to send up appeals for divine intervention to save this country. Lincoln’s prayer in 1863 on the first National Day of Prayer seems especially relevant these many years later.
RECREATE ’68 — YOU’RE REALLY DOING IT WRONG:
The next generation of leaders pic.twitter.com/pZ7trKm0Cf
— Elder of Ziyon 🇮🇱 (@elderofziyon) May 2, 2024
And in some cases a lot of snacks:
Hey we noticed you from across the renaissance festival Palestine encampment and really liked your vibes. pic.twitter.com/ul3hJBKMBD
— Stephen L. Miller (@redsteeze) May 2, 2024
CORN, POPPED: House Republicans Just Put Democrats in a Real Bind.
WELL, YES: Most gun ‘magazines’ are high capacity, 11 rounds or more. Like basically every other gun control talking point, the “high capacity magazine” thing was a lie.
I CAN’T RECALL AN UPWARD REVISION SINCE TRUMP WAS IN OFFICE: US Factory Orders Rise In March… But February Saw Yet Another Downward Revision. “This is the 17th monthly downward revision in the last 22 months… come on!!!”
TRUNALIMUNUMAPRZURE! Biden May Have Just Created an International Incident With Comment Insulting Our Allies, Japan and India.
“One of the reasons why our economy’s growing is because of you and many others. Why? Because we welcome immigrants,” Biden said at a Washington fundraising event for his 2024 re-election campaign and marking the start of Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander Heritage Month.
“Why is China stalling so badly economically, why is Japan having trouble, why is Russia, why is India, because they’re xenophobic. They don’t want immigrants. Immigrants are what makes us strong.”
* * * * * * * * *
Um buried lede here is that Biden is admitting the border invasion is intentional https://t.co/jm9eJ0QLqm
— Oilfield Rando (@Oilfield_Rando) May 2, 2024
He really is: Biden-Harris HQ Is Campaigning for Donald Trump Again.
Trump: Look at Paris. Look at London. They're no longer recognizable. I'm going to get myself into a lot of trouble, but you know what? That's the fact, they are no longer recognizable. We can't let that happen here pic.twitter.com/sRr6pdU2rb
— Biden-Harris HQ (@BidenHQ) May 1, 2024
Flashbacks:
● Jared Bernstein, member of Biden’s Council of Economic Advisors: “One thing we learned in the 1990s was that a surefire way to reconnect the fortunes of working people at all skill levels, immigrant and native-born alike, to the growing economy is to let the job market tighten up. A tight job market pressures employers to boost wage offers to get and keep the workers they need. One equally surefire way to sort-circuit this useful dynamic is to turn on the immigrant spigot every time some group’s wages go up.”
● Former Trump administration senior adviser Stephen Miller: Biden’s Immigration Plan Would “Erase America’s Nationhood.”
● “Labour wanted mass immigration to make UK more multicultural, says former adviser. Labour threw open Britain’s borders to mass immigration to help socially engineer a ‘truly multicultural’ country, a former Government adviser has revealed.”
Related: Japan won’t forget Biden’s ‘xenophobia’ accusation.
The other possibility is that he just went off script, and his inner grouchy grandpa persona leaked out. His summit with Kishida was all of three weeks’ ago, so it is understandable if he has forgotten about it. And perhaps he has been binge-watching the remake of Shogun on those long spells at his Delaware retreat and imagines it still to be the Edo period.
Whatever the explanation, two things are certain. Firstly, this won’t be forgotten any time soon — the Japanese have only just about forgiven the Democrats for Bill Clinton skipping the country on an Asian tour in 1998 (the “Japanese passing” incident). And Donald Trump just made a load of new friends in Japan.
But, look on the bright side! Unlike Papa Bush, during a key milestone on his way to losing reelection, Biden only metaphorically vomited on Japan.
UPDATE: Biden’s base hands Trump another campaign ad:
This image is Trumps most powerful attack ad – handed to him on a silver platter by radical progressives. pic.twitter.com/AMThqWPZ2r
— Meghan McCain (@MeghanMcCain) May 2, 2024
READER FAVORITE: 10-Minute Strength Training Exercises for Seniors: Exercises and Routines to Build Muscle, Balance, and Stamina. #CommissionEarned
THERE HE GOES AGAIN: Antony Blinken’s Big, Stupid Middle East Trip. “Poor SecState Blinken — never the sharpest penny in the pantry — finds himself tasked with the impossible.”
I SUSPECT THE REASON IS THAT PHARMA CAN NOW MAKE MONEY OFF OF IT: “I remember when it was socially and politically unacceptable to say anything making a problem out of women’s hormones, especially to say that they are skewing us mentally. What’s going on?”
BIDEN STILL STUCK IN “VERY FINE PEOPLE ON BOTH SIDES” MODE: Biden Satisfies No One With Lackluster Speech Decrying ‘Antisemitism & Islamophobia:’
Summary: Last night, CNN spent its prime time segment decrying the Democratic president’s “radio silence” on the Gaza-related campus protests and chaos. MSM pundits have pointed to his lack of leadership as violence at times erupted from UCLA to Columbia to a number of elite schools.
As expected, Biden began by trying to chart a kind of middle course condemning “antisemitism” and “Islamophobia”… though many conservatives have pointed out it’s only the former they are seeing evidence of during these campus protests.
“Dissent is essential to democracy. But dissent must never lead to disorder or denying the rights of others… no place for hate speech in America,” Biden said. “Denying the rights of others” appears a very vague reference to students occupying buildings, and denying the ability of tuition-paying students to go to their classes, libraries, or to take exams.
“In moments like this, there are always those who rush in to score political points. But this isn’t a moment for politics. It’s a moment for clarity. So let me be clear…Violent protest is not protected. Peaceful protest is.”
“Destroying property is not a peaceful protest, it’s against the law. Vandalism, trespassing, breaking windows*, shutting down campuses, forcing the cancellation of classes and graduation. None of this is a peaceful protest, threatening people, intimidating people,” Biden said.
We should note that Biden’s ‘middle way’ attempt (akin to “good folks on both sides” rhetoric that the Left gets angry about) is unlikely to satisfy either side. In the end, this lackluster speech is not going to make the encampments disappear, or the protesters disperse.
* Wait until Biden discovers what his vice president was doing in 2020:
Prior to today’s typically lackluster speech, the Washington Free Beacon dubbed Biden “The Invisible President:”
We’re not in the business of offering political advice to President Joe Biden, but it is hard to miss his absence from the situation. The New York Times calls him a “bystander,” and the president has forsaken the bully pulpit for strongly worded statements meted out through various spokesmen. “The president believes that forcibly taking over a building on campus is absolutely the wrong approach,” the spokesman, John F. Kirby, told reporters hours before officers cleared the hall. “That is not an example of peaceful protest.”
Good to know. The chaos engulfing the campuses is but a first foretaste of the bitter cup which will be proffered to Biden at the Democratic convention this summer, when the same protesters, with degrees from the same “elite” institutions bring their “peaceful” protest tactics to Chicago intent on wreaking havoc.
Biden wants to blend into the curtains.
And ultimately, at least on this issue, he still does, which seems an odd stance for someone who’s ideology believes that “silence=violence,” and who tweeted in 2020 (or far more likely whose handlers tweeted):
And as a result, the increasingly Corbynized left are at an inflection point: Democrats enter panic mode as Gaza protests erupt.
On the other hand though, Biden, through his silence, is creating a path for both sides of the aisle to move forward in agreement! ‘F*ck Joe Biden’ Chant Unites Pro-Palestinian and Counter-Protesters at University of Alabama.
THE NEW SPACE RACE/EASTER EGG: China Releases CGI Video of Moon Base and It Contains Something Very Strange. “The video is also raising eyebrows for a bizarre cameo: a NASA Space Shuttle taking off from a launch pad in the distance.”
ROBERT SPENCER: Why Is the Pro-Palestinian Encampment Craze Sweeping Our Colleges? “Not only is it not spontaneous, it’s clearly orchestrated from outside the colleges and universities where the encampments have sprung up.”
BENJAMIN KERSTEIN: This is the way 1968 ends…
The most powerful and influential form of radicalism in the Western world today has no real name in the United States. It does in France, or at least its adherents do: les soixante-huitards, “the ‘68ers.”
The term refers to the radicals who took part in the 1968 student riots in Paris, as well as their ideology and the movements that emerged out of it: Third-worldism, environmentalism, anti-Americanism, anti-racism, etc. In many ways, the ethos of this kind of 1968ism defines the modern left. It has rarely achieved outright political power; it rarely wins elections; but it exercises hegemony over culture and higher education, as well as the activist industry.
The ‘68ers may go unnamed in the US, but their influence is no less powerful. Above all, their primary post-1968 tactic has met with more success than in perhaps any other country. They called it “the long march through the institutions,” though it was essentially a barely modified adaptation of the old communist tactic of “entryism.” Put simply, it involves the infiltration by radicals of more moderate institutions to conquer and colonize them. Once successful, they use the facade of moderation and the prestige of these institutions to consolidate power and pursue radical ends.
It hardly needs to be said that the American ‘68ers’ greatest success was in academia. During the 1960s, American radicals realized the power of the campus. They mobilized thousands if not millions of students, most of them wholly ignorant of the ideologies they claimed to advocate, in service of the movement to destroy South Vietnam and install a communist government in its place. In many ways, they succeeded.
Along the way, they also destroyed the Democratic party for a generation, committed numerous acts of terrorism, and forged a counterculture that continues to wield immense cultural power even after the passage of half a century.
And unless fiercely resisted, all that was just the warm-up.
Do read the whole thing.
WHY IS WESTMINSTER COLLEGE SCARED OF STRONG, INDEPENDENT BLACK PEOPLE? Black conservative YAF event canceled after university obstacles.
SHOCKED FACE NOT ACTUALLY REQUIRED: You Won’t Believe What RFK Jr. Said About ‘Red State People.’