Wages of Bigotry?

It seems that some Americans are waking up to the institutional bigotry of the Progressive-Democratic Party, an awakening triggered by the blatant disregard for Party antisemitism that House Progressive-Democrats proudly displayed in their refusal last month to censure Congresswoman Ilhan Omar (D, MN) over her anti-Semitic statements.  In that instance, Party chose, instead, to pass a heavily diluted resolution “disapproving” of bigotry in “all its forms,” but refusing to name the names of bigots in its own house.  Some Americans with Jewish heritage and religion are speaking up with dismay.

Mark Schwartz (D) Deputy Mayor of Teaneck, NJ:

We felt we had a home there [in the Party].  And now we feel like we have to check our passports.

Jordan Manor, a “gay Jewish Israeli-American” of Manhattan:

 The party I thought cared about me seems to disregard me when it comes to my Jewish identity.

Mark Dunec, Livingston, NJ, consultant and 2014 Progressive-Democratic candidate for Congress:

I’m physically afraid for myself and for my family.  I see my own party contributing to the rise of anti-Semitism in the United States.

A teacher in Queens has rejected Omar’s—and by extension, Pelosi’s—defense that Omar just didn’t know any better.

The fake defense she doesn’t know what she’s saying? I don’t believe it.  This is a grown woman and a member of Congress. Trying to excuse this as naivete is inexcusable.

It isn’t just anger, either; many are acting.  The Queens teacher has quit Party and now is registered as an Independent.  Allison Gangi of Manhattan, too:

The watered-down resolution triggered my decision to walk away from the Democratic Party.

That Teaneck Deputy Mayor?

Our only question now is, do we start voting Republican, or do we become Republicans?

And others, like this one, see the danger explicitly:

I’m homeless. I don’t think I can vote for Trump, even though he’s great for Israel.  But as a Jew, I can’t see a way to support the Democratic Party. It’s supporting your own destruction.

Alphabet Objects

Alphabet, through its Google subordinate, objects to the White House’s and JCS’ characterization of it as aiding our enemy, the People’s Republic of China.

An anonymous (perhaps because he’s speaking without Google management’s permission, perhaps because he, or that management, is embarrassed by his claims) Google spokesperson said

We are not working with the Chinese military. We are working with the US government, including the Department of Defense, in many areas including cybersecurity, recruiting and healthcare.

Yet Alphabet has withdrawn Google from working with our defense establishment on drone or artificial intelligence technologies that could be used for active defense of our nation.

On the other hand, Alphabet has engaged Google with the People’s Republic of China for work supporting PRC government censorship via a censored and censorable version of a search engine for use in the PRC.  Alphabet has engaged Google with the PRC for work on aspects of AI—ostensibly for that censorable search engine—that can be used by the PRC’s People’s Liberation Army for its own defensive and offensive operations.

Gillibrand Declares

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D, NY) has entered the Progressive-Democratic Party’s primary contest for President.  Her statement of entering can only show her campaign to be satirical rather than serious.

We need a leader who makes big, bold, brave choices. Someone who isn’t afraid of progress. That’s why I’m running for president.

Bold choices.  Like the one she made during the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings in which she rejected the American legal position of innocent until proven guilty and replaced it with her own legal theology of guilty by woman’s accusation.

Progress: to boldly run before the wind—wherever it blows.  She was for the 2nd Amendment, even getting an A rating from the National Rifle Association, before she was against it.  Indeed, the political winds changed her course so sharply that an ardent anti-gun Progressive-Democrat, then-Congresswoman Carolyn McCarthy (D, NY) advised her

Don’t change your mind so fast—learn the issue first[.]

But Gillibrand had learned the issue quite clearly: the issue that her political fortune depended on her new position, whatever “new” might work out to.

She was against same-sex marriage as a Representative—insisting on having civil unions—before she was for them as a Senator.

On immigration, she was against amnesty for illegal immigrants as a Representative—in any of its many forms—before she was for it—in any of its many forms—as a Senator. As a Representative, she favored deputizing local policemen to act as immigration agents before, as a Senator, she was for abolishing ICE.

She was staunchly pro-Israel, even as a Senator, insisting there should be no daylight between the US and Israel on matters related to Iran, before she moved away from Israel, supporting ex-President Barack Obama’s (D) and Motorboat Skipper and part-time Secretary of State John Kerry’s (D) nuclear weapons deal with Iran.  She’s become an ardent supporter of Tamika Mallory, Bob Bland, Carmen Perez, and Linda Sarsour—all of whom are themselves public and ardent supporters of Louis Farrakhan.

She even took money from the Clintons to support her various campaign expenses—and then she said Bill Clinton should have resigned over his…affair…with Lewinski.

Regardless of one’s own position on any of those questions and others, Gillibrand will take the one that benefits herself politically, and she’ll take it the moment the wind shifts.

Who can trust such a one?

When the Bad Man Comes

Forty-nine people were murdered in their house of worship in Christ Church, New Zealand last Friday. The thug

slaughtered worshipers at Al Noor [mosque] in a roughly two-minute rampage within that building. He then left for about two minutes before re-entering the building and firing on people on the ground for a further minute.

Left and came back.  Then he drove five miles across town to another mosque and started in again.

The butcher was active for thirty-six minutes before police arrived—that’s thirty-six minutes from the first call to the police, not from the start of the shooting.

When the bad man comes and seconds count, the police will be only minutes away.

Our Progressive-Democrats want to disarm us with their idiotic gun “control” laws.  New Zealand’s gun laws already require a citizen to satisfy the local police in order to get permission to bear any arm at all, and they want to tighten gun laws further.

The nature of this pseudo-logic is succinctly laid out by Rogério Mendonça of Brazil’s Chamber of Deputies, the lower house of the Brazilian Congress:

The logic of the left is always the same: if a crazy guy uses guns to kill people, the solution is to take guns away from people who have nothing to do with what happened[.]

This would be criminal were it not so self-evidently insane.

Mendonça then supplied the right answer:

Now imagine if a decent person had been armed at that school [referring to a Brazilian school attack in which eight children were murdered]. They could have stopped the attack from ending in the bloody way it did.

Just as is often done in the US; after all, the first responders are those already at the scene.  However, these successful defenses don’t get the publicity that mass killings in gun free zones get.

A Thought on Ol’ Beto

The Wall Street Journal had one, and so do I.

The question now that he’s running for President is whether his elusive idealism can triumph in 2020 over the Democratic Party’s socialist and identity politics vanguard.

And he seems to be good at fund-raising; although I’m not convinced one way or the other based solely on his Senate campaign in 2018.

While he lost to Mr Cruz by three points, he won 59% of voters under 44, 51% of college graduates, 65% of moderates, and 62% of single women.

He got these numbers because Cruz was not all that popular in those demographics, not because ol’ Beto was attractive to them.  Besides that, he’s earned the frustration and ire of his fellow Progressive-Democrats with his refusal to share his remaining campaign millions with those fellows.

But the remark that drew my attention was the one with which the WSJ opened its piece, this subheadline:

He’s the fresh, elusive outsider like Carter, Clinton, and Obama.

No, Hamlet on the Rio Grande is just an attention whore like Joe Biden, only less smooth.

Robert Francis O’Rourke has little chance of surviving the primaries, especially once Party’s identity politics starts taking him to task over his Hispanic cultural appropriation.

Still, Republicans need to take him seriously, especially were he to survive the primaries.  That’s the path to easily despatch him, as he should be over his vague (because they’re not thought out, not because they’re tactically vague) ideology that contrasts with his thoughtless concretenesses like tearing down barriers that channel illegal aliens, drug smugglers, human traffickers.

It’s dangerous to underestimate even agonizing Hamlets.