God bless this man and his congregation.

Yisroel Goldstein, rabbi of Chabad of Poway:

“…The ambulances had not yet arrived. We all gathered outside. I don’t remember all that I said to my community, but I do remember quoting a passage from the Passover Seder liturgy: “In every generation they rise against us to destroy us; and the Holy One, blessed be He, saves us from their hand.” And I remember shouting the words “Am Yisrael Chai! The people of Israel live!” I have said that line hundreds of times in my life. But I have never felt the truth of it more than I did then…”

Original

JOHN HINDERAKER:

“…The White House Correspondents’ Association held its annual dinner Saturday night. Who knew? With President Trump and all senior members of his administration staying away, the event passed unnoticed. But Emily Zanotti has an account:

President Donald Trump announced several weeks ago that he would not appear at the annual event…for the third year in a row. For the first time, however, the president said all senior members of the White House staff will “boycott” the event.
***
That decision came after [Sarah] Huckabee Sanders endured cruel taunts at the hands of last year’s featured speaker, comedian Michelle Wolf. Fearing no Trump administration associate could show up at the WHCA dinner without being personally attacked, despite a longstanding tradition of good-natured ribbing between the press and the president through dueling speeches, the White House simply stopped RSVPing to the event.

Good for them. In response, the Correspondents’ Association dispensed with the usual “comedian.”

The White House Correspondents’ Association responded by making swift changes to the event’s lineup, substituting historian Ron Chernow for the expected comedy act, but it did not tempt the White House back to the dinner.

Interesting that with the White House not in attendance, the Association saw no point in hiring a comedian. Instead, the event turned gloomy.

President of the White House Correspondents’ Association, Olivier Knox, first delivered what Grabien News termed a “dark sermon” on the state of the First Amendment and the all-encompassing fear journalists who cover the president are now feeling.

Fear? Oh, please. Reporters and editors pretend to believe that the First Amendment is somehow in danger from the Trump administration, but they know better. Their real complaint is that the president has used his own right of free speech to expose their mendacity.

“I don’t want to dwell on the president,” Knox said. “This is not his dinner. It’s ours, and it should stay ours. But I do want to say this. In nearly 23 years as a reporter, I’ve been physically assaulted by Republicans and Democrats, spat on, shoved, had crap thrown at me. I’ve been told I will never work in Washington again by both major parties.”

Apparently being physically assaulted, spat on, shoved, threatened, etc. didn’t scare Knox. But Trump does?

“And yet I still separate my career to before February 2017 and what came after,” he continued. “And February 2017 is when the president called us the enemy of the people. A few days later my son asked me, ‘Is Donald Trump going to put you in prison?’ At the end of a family trip to Mexico he mused if the president tried to keep me out of the country, at least Uncle Josh is a good lawyer and will get you home.”

So we are to understand that journalists’ “fears” are based on the musings of small children? Needless to say, the Trump administration has not imprisoned any journalists, nor could it.

Ron Chernow joined in the gloom:

Historian Ron Chernow, perhaps best known for his biography of Alexander Hamilton which inspired the hit musical, also delivered a dark and ominous speech, comparing Trump’s relationship with the press to that of past presidents.

“George Washington felt maligned and misunderstood by the press, but he never generalized that into a vendetta against the institution,” Chernow told the audience.

Unlike Washington’s immediate successor, John Adams, who actually did jail a journalist.

Chernow then cautioned the audience to continue to report on the White House’s factual errors, lest the White House be allowed to whip the people into a frenzy for political gain — as though the press, which just spent the last 22 months pursuing an ultimately non-existent Trump-Russia election conspiracy, was blameless.

What chutzpah! Just about every liberal journalist in America should cover himself in sackcloth and ashes, repent, and take a vow of silence for at least the duration of the Trump administration.

“H.L. Mencken once warned of a political system that would ‘keep the populace alarmed by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.’ We simply cannot allow the press to become an imaginary hobgoblin exploited for political gain.”

Got that? Our “mainstream” press, which has long been biased but is now virtually demented, is an “imaginary hobgoblin.” Keep telling yourselves that, reporters. No one else is listening.

Related:

“…It’s wrong to think of them as an industry, or even as an institution. They’re a middle-school style clique, whose members’ chief goal is to perform for the approval of other clique members…”

Glenn Reynolds

The effects of Iranian influence

Adam Kredo:

“…International peacekeepers stationed in Lebanon have confirmed Israeli intelligence showing the Iranian-backed terror group Hezbollah has been operating several tunnels along Israel’s northern border, a tactic used by this group to conduct terrorist raids.

The United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, or UNIFIL, has confirmed the existence of at least five separate tunnels running between Lebanese and Israeli territory.

These types of underground bunkers have been used by Hamas and other terrorist groups to transport weapons and militants into Israeli territory in order to conduct attacks and kidnappings. Hezbollah, with Tehran’s backing, has also adopted this technique in a bid to cause further chaos on Israel’s northern border.

Israeli military officials forwarded to UNIFIL information on at least six separate tunnels, five of which the international group has been able to independently confirm…”

Original

Brazil is heading in the right direction

Marcos da Rocha Carvalho:

“…If Jair Bolsonaro continues to push for privatization in infrastructure and a drastic reduction in red tape, then foreign investment will likely follow…

…Israel was Bolsonaro’s first stop outside the Americas. The visit was staunchly criticized by Lula da Silva’s former ally in the region: Hamas. If Bolsonaro seems chummy with Netanyahu, then keep in mind that the prime minister was the first Israeli leader to attend a Brazilian presidential inauguration. Lula da Silva had very different connections in the region; he infamously called Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi his “brother, mentor, and teacher.”

The other pivot Brazil’s foreign policy has taken lies closer to home. On a recent visit to Chile, South America’s most open and liberalized economy, Bolsonaro’s meeting with Chilean president Sebastián Piñera served to further cement a free-trade agreement between both countries, which is yet to be ratified by each nation’s congress. Bolsonaro and Piñera also unveiled the founding of Prosul (Prosur in Spanish), a convening of South American nations dedicated to expanding much-needed free trade within the continent. Paulo Guedes, Brazil’s newly minted minister of the economy and a University of Chicago graduate, is pushing for greater trade liberalization, one of Bolsonaro’s key campaign promises. This visit also served to put an end to Brazil’s involvement in the Union of South American Nations, which was largely viewed in Brazil as an attempt by Venezuela to spread its influence around the continent…”

Original

This is a great article by Mollie Hemingway that I previously linked to. You should click over and read it. The entire sorry and disgraceful episode was repeated against Bret Kavanaugh. Media attempts to rewrite history will fail as long as reporters like Hemingway are around.

Joe Biden On Anita Hill In 1998: ‘She Was Lying’

Universities now requiring loyalty oaths taken to ‘diversity’

Secularism is religion

Joel Kotkin:

“…It’s far too early to predict which party will win next year’s election, but not too early to announce the national media as a clear loser in terms of national influence and prestige.

Pew reports that millennials have become as negative about major media as older generations, with their rate of approval dropping from 40% in 2010 to 27% today. Gallup tracks a similar pattern, finding 70% losing trust in the media, including nearly half of Democrats.

As Trump backers never cease to point out, the Mueller report undermined the supposedly rock solid case for “collusion.” Whatever the truth, a solid majority of Americans believe the Russiagate brouhaha was politically motivated. Some progressives, like Rolling Stone’s contributing editor Matt Taibbi, believe Mueller represents “a death-blow for the reputation of the American news media.”

Ironically, Trump, the man the media wanted to bring down, was largely their creation. At a party in 2016, my wife and I were regaled by a CNN account executive crowing about the company’s strategy of using Trump rallies, at the exclusion of others, to boost ratings. Once having created President Frankenstein, CNN then tried to keep up the ratings by chronicling his disposal — this worked for MSNBC which, unlike CNN, never much pretended to be an objective network. Today, CNN’s audience share has fallen below not only leader Fox, but MSNBC, Home and Garden, Discovery and Food networks…”

Original

2020 Dems Condemn “Gun Violence” Instead of Anti-Semitism After Synagogue Attack.

Guns don’t kill Jews. Anti-Semites do.

PG&E appears to be doing everything in their power to drive themselves out of business. My guess is highly educated progressives are in control of the company.

“…When dangerously high winds arise this year, the utility says it will black out fire-prone areas that are home to 5.4 million people

No U.S. utility has ever blacked out so many people on purpose. PG&E says it could knock out power to as much as an eighth of the state’s population for as long as five days when dangerously high winds arise. Communities likely to get shut off worry PG&E will put people in danger, especially the sick and elderly, and cause financial losses with slim hope of compensation.

In October, in a test run of sorts, PG&E for the first time cut power to several small communities over wildfire concerns, including the small Napa Valley town of Calistoga, for about two days. Emergency officials raced door-to-door to check on elderly residents, some of whom relied on electric medical devices. Grocers dumped spoiling inventory. Hotels lost business.

PG&E is “essentially shifting all of the burden, all of the losses onto everyone else,” said Dylan Feik, who was Calistoga city manager until earlier this month…”

Original

JAZZ SHAW:

“…This is just a fun story from the Daily Caller to help you digest your meal. As we discussed here previously, Joe Biden made the curious decision to focus his entire announcement video on Charlottesville, igniting another round of debate over the President’s comments during that period. Much of it centered on Trump’s (correct) claim that he had been referring to protesters who were there opposing the decision to take down a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee.

Lee is, of course, a hated figure for anyone who wants to talk about the Civil War, slavery and all the rest. But it wasn’t always that way. The DC takes us for a stroll down memory lane to 1975. That was when Biden (and nearly everyone else in the House and Senate) voted to restore the citizenship of General Lee. Ah… it was a glorious time to be alive, wasn’t it?

Former Vice President Joe Biden was a part of the 94th Congress that voted to restore Confederate General Robert E. Lee’s citizenship over 100 years after his death, and yet Biden attacked President Donald Trump’s support of the general in his campaign announcement video earlier this week.

On Thursday, Biden entered the presidential race, and he used Trump’s words about a statue of Lee and the people who attended the Unite the Right rally in August 2017 as the focal point for his announcement video…

While many have begun criticizing the dead former Confederate leader, in 1975 the Senate, which included freshman Democratic Delaware Sen. Joe Biden, unanimously approved the reinstatement of General Robert E. Lee’s citizenship to the U.S…

Lee died in 1870 without citizenship.

Independent Virginia Sen. Harry F. Byrd spearheaded the push for reinstating Lee’s citizenship posthumously, and it passed through both chambers after the House, voting 407 to 10 in favor of the reinstatement on July 23, 1975.

So as the debate continues, how exactly do Biden and the Democrats plan on playing this one? (By the way, Patrick Leahy was there for the Lee citizenship vote too.) I believe that the Democrats have already established under the new rules of play that you’re not allowed to say “that was another time,” or “that was then and this is now.” There is no statute of limitations on doing anything insensitive on the civil rights front.

So with that in mind, Biden has to stand against the wheel and account for that vote, right? Sounds like something that would be totally disqualifying if he had an R after his name. But this is the primary season and plenty of young Democrats are trying to nab the nomination for themselves. Would any of them be so rude and discourteous as to bring up Biden’s vote on General Lee? I wouldn’t put it past them.

Robert E. Lee died 149 years ago. He fought for the South and he lost. Nobody left alive today was ever oppressed by him and he’s just part of the country’s history. A big part of it, really. I’m left wondering what the old warhorse would say if he could come back today and see that his name was still being tossed around in a heated debate. Part of me likes to think that he’d probably crack open a bottle of bourbon, light up a cigar and let a big smile creep across his face…”

Original

“Handsome Her, the lesbian vegan cafe that charged men 18% extra because men earn more than women, shut down after two years.”

I am so old I can remember when the media proclaimed Trump a sexist, a woman-hater, a jew-hater, an hispanic-hater, etc.—oh well.

“…President Trump has seven women currently serving as senior White House advisers — more than any of his three predecessors.

At the same time in their presidencies, Barack Obama had five; George W. Bush three, and Bill Clinton five.

The report, in the Washington Examiner, notes that presidents who served before Clinton appointed so few women to top jobs that Trump’s record may be higher than that of any chief executive in history.

Trump’s appointees are: White House press secretary Sarah Sanders; counselor to the president Kellyanne Conway; CIA Director Gina Haspel; Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen; senior adviser Ivanka Trump (the president’s daughter); Director of Legislative Affairs Shahira Knight, and Director of Strategic Communications Mercedes Schlapp.

The president had an eighth until last December, when UN Ambassador Nikki Haley resigned…”

Original

JOE BIDEN ON ANITA HILL IN 1998: ‘She Was Lying.’

All the torpedoes the Democrats put in the water to sink Trump are circling back and taking out Democrats—and it is the funniest thing in the world!

https://youtu.be/kPZTmEG0MB8

SUCKING IN THE ‘70s:

● “Joe Biden Viewed Gays in Government as ‘Security Risks.’ 1973 comment came as gay rights activists pushed to reverse ban against holding gov’t jobs.”

● Joe Biden embraced segregation in 1975, claiming it was a matter of ‘black pride.’

● “In 1975 the Senate, which included freshman Democratic Delaware Sen. Joe Biden, unanimously approved the reinstatement of General Robert E. Lee’s citizenship to the U.S.”

Jim Geraghty asks, “Is Joe Biden the Next Jeb Bush? Or the Next Hillary Clinton?,” adding, “Like Hillary, Biden has a habit of ignoring or hand-waving away his past stances when they’re inconvenient.”

Ed Driscoll strung this together