Ivy league students and far-left politicians call conservatives Nazis - but don't condemn Hamas, killers of Jews
The Left have long ago taken leave from reality
If you thought the idiotic bile, the bizarre rationalizations, the inane whataboutism from the Left over the Hamas slaughter of Israelis had run its course – think again.
None other than Democratic Socialist hero Senator Bernie Sanders has joined the chat.
In a dizzying statement full of equivocation and gross omissions on Wednesday, Sanders demanded that Israel’s response to the terrorist massacre be reigned in.
He accuses the Jewish State of a ‘war crime’ and ‘serious violation of international law’ by cutting off its supply of food, water and power to Gaza. ‘Children and innocent people do not deserve to be punished,’ he writes.
Of course, they don’t, Senator. And neither does Israel target civilians.
But what’s so strange about his statement is that he doesn’t say much about the Israelis indiscriminately killed.
There’s nothing of the credible reports of children beheaded by Hamas savages, women raped and burned to death, threats to execute hostages, including defenseless elderly, young festival-goers and the disabled.
There’s scant recognition of the undeniable mass slaughter of Jews.
It’s outrageous. Sanders accuses Israel of ‘war crimes’ but soft-pedals on Hamas?
What must be shouted – loud and clear by all – is these terrorists can never again be allowed to walk this Earth. But in Sanders’ nauseatingly cautious prose, he fails to even come close to saying that.
President Joe Biden mustered an outright condemnation of these barbarians. Why can’t he?
This moment demands moral clarity – not confusion, caveats and obfuscation.
Now, it may be easy to dismiss the scribblings of a wild-haired, 82-year-old, Soviet-sympathizer from Vermont as the raving of a fringe lunatic. But Sanders is no backbencher.
He won nearly 30 percent of the Democratic electorate in the 2020 primaries. In 2016, he came even closer, with almost 45 percent of the vote against Hillary Clinton.
Sanders is the face of raging Left-wing progressivism and America must now admit that a large part of that movement is viciously anti-Israel and possibly even worse.
You need look no further than Sunday's rally of the Democratic Socialists of America in New York City’s Times Square.
Holding signs that read ‘When people are occupied, resistance is justified,’ they marched through the streets of the city with the largest Jewish population in the world.
One protestor waved a swastika displayed on his smartphone.
Up until this week, six Democrat members of Congress were DSA members. So far only one has resigned from the organization and it took their most prominent member, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortes, two whole days to condemn this disgusting display of hatred.
But will she now step down from the DSA, too?
Witness the social media postings of the Chicago chapter of Black Lives Matter on Tuesday. They tweeted an image of a paragliding soldier with a message of support for the Palestinians – an obvious reference to the murder on Saturday of 260 innocent people at the Nova music festival, after armed Hamas terrorists had flown in from across the border.
Pure filth also continues to pour from the most elite American universities.
At Harvard, 31 student groups signed on to an outrageous statement holding Israel 'entirely responsible for all unfolding violence', while similar sentiments have been expressed at Columbia, the University of Virginia and other so-called institutions of higher-learning.
How did we reach this point where the most educated stare into the face of evil and somehow fail to see it?
The college students that regularly denounce Trump supporters and everyday run-of-the-mill conservatives as Nazis won’t condemn the actual killers of Jews.
Is this what the progressive movement has become?
To switch on television is to witness the unbelievable: Liberal American news anchors and guests defending terrorists.
Barely before the bodies had gone cold, CNN's Fareed Zakaria invited a Hamas apologist on his Sunday show to spew incredible lies, utterly unchallenged.
‘Hamas mainly attacked military establishments, military installations,’ the flak for rapists and kidnappers said, ‘and most of the people they have arrested and taken as war prisoners are military people. I do not accept [they are] attacking any civilian.’
How ridiculously, insultingly untrue. That interview remains on Zakaria’s Twitter feed even today.
The New York Times refers to Hamas savages in its copy as ‘fighters’ or ‘militants.’
The cowardly Gray Lady cannot bring herself to call those who executed possibly the most gruesome terror attack in history what they clearly are – terrorists.
Meanwhile, MSNBC’s Ayman Mohyeldin took things a bit further, arguing Monday that the brutal slayings were the fault of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for running a ‘Jewish supremacist’ government.
It was so bad on the Lefty news channel that the Anti-Defamation League's Jonathan Greenblatt, who spends most of his time attacking Republicans, scolded MSNBC live on MSNBC.
‘Who is writing these scripts – Hamas?’ he asked, ‘When we say this was an escalation, that it was bound to happen, I’m sorry, this was a massacre.’
Again and again – we heard the rationalizations.
Only when the horrific details – the beheadings, the child murder – became too terrible to ignore did some of the anti-Israel fanatics move off their talking points and concede the terrible truth.
But, not all of them.
On Wednesday, Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib was followed through the hallways of Congress by journalists and peppered with questions.
‘Congresswoman, Hamas terrorists have cut off babies’ heads and burned children alive. Do you support Israel’s rights to defend themselves against this brutality?’ a reporter asked.
Silence.
‘You can’t comment about Hamas terrorists chopping off babies’ heads?’
Silence.
‘Congresswoman, do you have a comment on Hamas terrorists chopping off babies’ heads? You have nothing to say about Hamas terrorists chopping off babies’ heads?’
Tlaib – clearly uncomfortable – kept walking.
But the answer should have been simple: I condemn Hamas. They must be destroyed. Why couldn't she say it? Why can’t they all say it?
There is evil in this world, even when it is committed by those the Left views as victims of capitalism or Western progress or colonialism. Anyone who cannot or will not call it out for what it is has no place in our public discourse.
Hamas wants one thing – to exterminate Jews.
Anyone who tries to rationalize or overlook their atrocities belongs in the dustbin of history along with the Nazis.
It is that serious. It is that terrifying.
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Rhode Island Town Defies Mob, Erects Columbus Statue
If we really want to make America great again, we need to elevate what is good and noble about us and defy those who insist on tearing down our past.
On Monday, designated as Columbus Day, the town of Johnston, Rhode Island, unveiled a statue of Christopher Columbus in a local park. A few protesters turned up, but they were drowned out by the hundreds who gathered to celebrate.
The statue of Columbus had been removed from Providence, Rhode Island, in the summer madness of 2020 after being defaced repeatedly by vandals.
The statue was created by Auguste Bartholdi for the 1892 Columbian Exposition in Chicago marking the 400th anniversary of the explorer’s voyage. It later was moved to Providence and remained there until city leaders ultimately surrendered to the mob.
But I’ll give them credit in one sense: They didn’t melt down the statue, as others planned to do.
Former Providence Mayor Joe Paolino went a step further. He bought the statue and donated it to the town of Johnston, population under 30,000.
“It means a lot,” Johnston Mayor Joseph Polisena Jr. said in September about the statue’s pending arrival in his town.
“You know, we have a high percentage of Italian Americans here in Johnston, but it goes beyond Italian-American history,” Polisena said. “It’s worth history. It’s important, and I don’t think the majority of people want to see the statue melted. So we’re very grateful to Mayor Paolino for donating it to Johnston.”
The Washington Examiner reported that Johnston officials put a fence around the Columbus statue, made of bronze and standing nearly 7 feet tall, and added a 24-hour security system to protect the work from further vandalization.
Good for Johnston. Maybe this will start a trend.
As I wrote in my book “The War on History: The Conspiracy to Rewrite America’s Past,” we have every reason to continue celebrating Christopher Columbus. It was his bold expedition into the unknown of the vast Atlantic Ocean that ultimately led to the creation of the United States and countless other countries in the Americas.
Columbus brought Christianity to the Americas too, another reason for the Left’s contempt.
Columbus was flawed—as all men are—but he was a great man, maliciously and falsely maligned first by the Ku Klux Klan in the early 20th century and now the Left in the 21st. If we all believe that it is right and good that our country exists, then it is right and proper to celebrate the brave explorer who made it possible.
Several years ago, I speculated that Columbus Day may soon come to an end in this country. As the generation raised on Marxist historian Howard Zinn came of age without a foundation of informed patriotism, eliminating Columbus Day seemed to be inevitable.
The modern West is full of navel gazing, self-doubt, narcissism, and ingratitude. In that climate, young fanatics with disordered souls turned on the great figures of our past and marked them for destruction. Our corrupted institutions gladly placated and followed the mob, much as the intellectual elites of the French Revolution followed the Parisian mob to their doom.
The institutional capitulation has been total.
Yet there are countless Americans who never gave up on the old republic that once proudly embraced the symbol of Columbia.
I offer that putting up a Columbus statue—surely slated for destruction, warehousing, or placement in a woke museum to “contextualize” and shame the Italian explorer—in a Rhode Island town is a noble act of defiance.
It’s also a sign that perhaps the revolutionary fever of 2020 is beginning to break, if not in the institutions then among the people.
Ibram X. Kendi, the Rasputin of “anti-racism,” has proven to be the con artist peddler of ideological pseudoreligion that he always was. His gazillion-dollar anti-racism center at Boston University wasted tens of millions of dollars and has been accused of misusing its ample funds.
The New York Times even published an editorial suggesting that maybe Kendi’s ideas aren’t the best and that promoting racism in the name of racism might be a tad problematic.
https://www.dailysignal.com/2023/10/11/rhode-island-city-defies-mob-erects-columbus-statue/
**************************************************Rent Control Is a Disaster. Don't Let It Spread Across the Nation.
America's renters -- more than one-third of the nation's households -- are in for trouble. Left-wing politicians are demanding rent regulation from coast to coast. Wherever it is adopted, the result will be a disastrous reduction in the rental housing supply, leaving renters desperate for places to live.
New York City is the poster child for the failures of rent regulation. The U.S. Supreme Court is currently mulling a challenge to the constitutionality of the city's rent regime.
Whatever the justices decide, the public needs to consider less destructive, more targeted ways to help low-income people pay for housing. The court of public opinion needs to consider these facts.
Fact No. 1: Rent regulation isn't targeted to the poor. In New York City, there's no means test. What you need is luck or connections. The mean income of a rent-stabilized apartment dweller is $47,000, but census data shows that tens of thousands of them earn more than $150,000 year. Some occupants use what they're saving on rent to pay for a weekend place in the Hamptons or New England.
The pols don't object --- a sure sign they're calling for rent regulation to help themselves politically, not the poor.
In New York City, 44% of rental apartments are regulated by the Rent Guidelines Board, established in 1969, which sets the maximum amount landlords are allowed to raise the rent. Those limits apply to all buildings of six or more units built before 1974.
In 2022, the RGB set the maximum rent hike at 3.25% on one-year leases, and this year at 3%. Never mind that last year, fuel costs to heat the buildings soared 19% and overall inflation hit 8.3%.
The decisions are political, not economic. Many Democratic politicians vilify building owners as "greedy landlords" and depict themselves as the champions of the downtrodden. It's a scam.
Fact No. 2: Winners and losers. The winners are the lucky few with rent-regulated apartments, and the pols who count on an army of tenant activists to turn out at the polls. The losers are the 56% of renters who don't score a regulated apartment and have to scour neighborhoods for an unregulated place they can afford. They're paying more.
Why? Because regulation causes some landlords to walk away, reducing the overall supply of apartments. The laws of supply and demand mean rents go up. New Yorkers in unregulated apartments are paying the highest rents in the U.S. for a one-bedroom apartment. They are the real victims, and they should be furious.
Yet the left-wing press pretends rent control offers only benefits. The New Republic warns that the Supreme Court challenge threatens "laws that have benefitted the city's tenants for generations." Sorry, untrue -- only some tenants, and not always the neediest.
It's economic madness. The saner way to help those who need assistance paying rent is with a voucher. We offer the needy SNAP debit cards to help them pay for groceries. No one slaps price controls on grocery stores or designates certain stores as "regulated," forcing them to sell at below cost.
Yet New York forces certain landlords to pay what should be a public cost shared by all, an argument made to the court.
Fact No. 3: The Marxist fantasy that rent regulation will help the poor is spreading across the U.S. and Europe as well. Maine and Minnesota have enacted laws allowing municipalities to impose rent regulations. In November 2024, California voters will be asked to approve a proposition allowing local governments to add additional restrictions to the state's existing rent caps.
The laws of supply and demand are international. Berlin froze rents in 2019 and the rental supply plummeted, according to the Ifo Institute, a think tank.
Yet London's Mayor Sadiq Khan is calling for freezing rents for two years. London provides housing vouchers to the poor -- a smarter approach -- but when the city froze the voucher amounts during COVID, fewer apartments were available in the price range. The answer is to raise the voucher amount. Freezing rents will only make the shortage worse
Ignore the demagogues. The evidence is in: Rent regulation is a political scam. There are better ways to help Americans afford a place to live.
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To Protect and Destroy
What happens when police, trying to catch a bad guy, destroy your house? This happens surprisingly often.
In my new video, Los Angeles print shop owner Carlos Pena describes how a man running from police knocked him to the ground and then ran inside his shop.
"I didn't know what was going on until I saw the SWAT team showing up," says Pena. They launched "31 or 32 rounds of tear gas into my shop."
When the SWAT team finally broke in, the suspect had already escaped.
When Pena was finally allowed to return to his shop, he discovered that the SWAT team's tear gas had wrecked all his equipment.
Pena assumed they would reimburse him. Federal marshals gave him a form to fill out about damages. "I got a little happy! ... I itemized everything that was damaged."
But the marshals rejected his list. They said it was because he didn't include a precise total. So he added it up and resubmitted.
"A couple months later I got another letter of denial," says Pena. This time, the marshals simply said they "were not responsible" for the damage. They told him to pursue his claim with the city.
He did. But the city told him their SWAT team is "immune."
Pena thought he'd finally get paid when "the new mayor of Los Angeles' assistant called (and said), 'The mayor is very interested in helping you.'" Half a year later, the mayor still hasn't helped.
Pena tried the city council. "They just gave me numbers to call. When you call, they refer me to somebody else. It's unbearable."
It is. A city destroys his business, and then ignores him.
We asked Los Angeles officials for a comment. They didn't respond.
An attorney at the Institute for Justice, Jeffrey Redfern, says what happened to Pena is unconstitutional. He's taken Pena's case for free.
"But police sometimes do need to wreck a house to get the bad guy," I tell Redfern.
"Absolutely," he replies. "We're not suggesting that police did anything wrong. But if they destroy property, they must compensate innocent owners. Then the city can decide what policies it wants to adopt."
Maybe next time they'll shoot in a little less tear gas?
"When they get to offload these costs to random, unlucky individuals," says Redfern, "they don't have to do that kind of cost benefit analysis."
But the Institute for Justice lost a similar police destruction case in Colorado.
"The city did not compensate the owner at all," says Redfern. "It's absolutely crazy. The court said because law enforcement is doing this for the public good, it wouldn't be fair to force them to compensate people. But that's the entire point of the Takings Clause!"
The Takings Clause is the part of the Fifth Amendment that says government can't take or destroy private property without "just compensation."
"If the government takes your house to build a road or a school," explains Redfern, "you get compensation because it's not fair for you to bear that burden alone."
But Pena and his family must bear the burden of his lost business alone. He now works out of his garage, but he's lost most of his customers. His wife had to go back to work as a house cleaner to try to make ends meet.
"It sickens me to know that this can happen to you when you are doing everything right," says Pena.
https://townhall.com/columnists/johnstossel/2023/10/11/to-protect-and-destroy-n2629640
****************************************My other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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Kristina Pimenova, once said to be the most beautiful girl in the world. Note blue eyes and blonde hair
Bliss: What every woman wants: to feel safe and secure in the arms of her man. Robert Irwin and Rorie Buckey. See 
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