May 2, 2024

‘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.

Posted at 2:50 pm by Ed Driscoll

CBD ASKS: How have America’s universities become hotbeds of rabid Islamist rhetoric, foaming-at-the-mouth Jew-hate, and flat-out anti-American insanity?

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.

Posted at 2:49 pm by Stephen Green

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.”

Posted at 2:00 pm by Glenn Reynolds

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.

Posted at 1:45 pm by Mark Tapscott

RECREATE ’68 — YOU’RE REALLY DOING IT WRONG:

And in some cases a lot of snacks:

Posted at 1:35 pm by Ed Driscoll

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.”

* * * * * * * * *

He really is: Biden-Harris HQ Is Campaigning for Donald Trump Again.

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:

Posted at 12:30 pm by Ed Driscoll

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.

Posted at 12:00 pm by Ed Driscoll

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.

Posted at 10:41 am by Stephen Green

CALIFORNIA KILLING FAST FOODS: That $20-per-hour minimum wage for fast-food outlets in California is rapidly wreaking havoc on an industry already suffering due to inflation, over-regulation and social disintegration, according to Issues & Insights:

“The $20-an-hour wage floor foisted on California’s fast-food restaurants, dubbed with the innocent-sounding moniker Assembly Bill 257, was signed into law last fall. It didn’t take long to become a disaster…

“Those who are losing their jobs in this new higher-wage environment are those most easily replaced, with the lowest productivity — which usually means minority youths with minimal education and little or no work skills. In short, the most vulnerable among us…

“Because of escalating costs, many restaurants are also adding ‘ordering kiosks,’ basically firing workers and replacing them with user-friendly computer terminals. And, to repeat, this was even before the law went into effect. In the coming weeks and months, expect more job devastation, business closures and sharply higher prices paid by consumers.”

Posted at 10:05 am by Mark Tapscott