Posted on May 6, 2024 by Steven Hayward in Loose Ends

Loose Ends (252)

• Remember when Mitt Romney was dubbed a moral monster for putting his family dog on the roof of his family station wagon? Good times, good times!

• But regarding Joe Biden’s vicious rogue dogs Commander and Major (who bit 25 people at the White House before being banished), I demand proof-of-life evidence they are still alive. Maybe we’re going to learn that Gov. Noem’s doggie degringolade is a 3D chess move to expose another Biden mishandling of things.

• Does anyone else think that Trump might actually want to be sent to jail by the judge? It would be the only thing the country talks about 24/7 for the next several news cycles. People might even start to forget about Kristi Noem’s caninicide.

• Will the Dem convention in Chicago in August be a repeat of Chicago 1968? The pro-Hamasniks want it to be, and are apparently organizing. But conventions today, not to mention police tactics, have evolved since 1968 (a much wider perimeter around the convention hall and main hotels for one thing), but a man can hope, can’t he?

Norman Mailer in 1968:

Children and youths, and middle-aged men were being pounded and gassed and beaten, hunted and driven by teams of policemen who had exploded out of their restraints like the bursting of a boil. . . It was as if war had finally begun, as if the gods of history had come together before the television cameras of the world and the eyes of the campaign workers and the delegates’ wives and half the principals at the convention . . . as if the Democratic Party had broken in two before the eyes of the nation.

Let’s hope for a repeat of this feel-good story.

• So now Columbia University has canceled commencement ceremonies. Just as USC already did. Columbia and USC say “safety” and security are the reasons, but I think they really know that, like Michigan over the weekend, the ceremony will be disrupted by protesters among the students. The simple expedient of revoking the diplomas of any protesters seems not to have occurred to anyone, but then you wouldn’t expect it among the spineless invertebrates that run our universities.

But there is perhaps an upside to this. Graduates will be spared the banal bromides of the liberal commencement speakers (like Hillary Clinton or Oprah Winfrey, or Ohio State apparently) typically featured at elite college commencements. I actually pity the poor graduates whose commencements go ahead as usual because the parade of leftist speakers this year will surely reach for some profound bromide about the current moment, and come up with cliches so embarrassing that, to borrow Ray Bradbury’s famous phrase, they won’t even make a sub-moron’s mouth twitch.

Maybe Columbia and USC graduates should breathe a sigh of relief.

Posted on by John Hinderaker in Arab Israel conflict, Biden Foreign Policy, Gaza, Kamala Harris

Long-Delayed Gaza Attack Under Way

After a long delay, apparently caused at least in part by opposition from the Biden Administration, Israel has finally begun to attack the Hamas stronghold of Rafah. The move on Rafah was, or should have been, inevitable: Israel can only win the war if it crushes Hamas, and it can’t do that without attacking the terrorist organization’s final redoubt. To me, it seemed that the delay in going into Rafah was a mistake. Israel’s offensive lost momentum, and its enemies had time to regroup and plan new strategy. But Netanyahu’s administration is weighing many factors that are unknown to the rest of us.

As soon as Israel issued instructions to inhabitants of Rafah to move to a safer location, evidently in preparation for an attack, Hamas pretended to accept the terms that Israel had offered for a cease fire. It was a typical Hamas ploy, intended to sow confusion and score political points. And it seems to have worked to a considerable degree. Not only has Joe Biden again called Netanyahu to repeat his opposition to a move on Rafah, but various parties are scrambling to analyze offers and counter-offers to evaluate the significance of Hamas’s purported acceptance of Israel’s terms–an acceptance which is obviously fictitious. Gazans, meanwhile, are lighting fireworks and celebrating in the streets.

That isn’t the worst of it, as Israelis, including families of hostages held in Gaza, are blocking roads and otherwise demonstrating in support of a demand that Israel’s government accept Hamas’s terms.

Hamas is in the same situation as pretty much every party that is losing a war and wants the fighting to stop. There is a clear path to a cease fire: all Hamas needs to do is surrender and put down its arms. For reasons I can’t explain, international pressure is entirely on Israel, the victim of the October 7 massacres and the winner of the ensuing war, to give up its war aims, rather than on Gaza to surrender. This is a perverse response to which Israel, and only Israel, is subject.

In my opinion, Israel should rapidly pursue the war to a successful conclusion, killing all Hamas fighters who do not surrender and imprisoning those who do. The IDF will of course try to minimize civilian casualties, but they are up against Hamas’s strategic goal of maximizing casualties. And in any event, in Gaza it is often hard to tell who is a “fighter” and who is a civilian. Whatever happens, all casualties on both sides are exclusively the fault of Hamas and its civilian Gazan supporters, i.e., a majority of Gaza’s population.

Finally, an absurd coda was added to all of these events when reporters asked Kamala Harris to comment on Hamas’s purported acceptance of Israel’s cease fire terms. To be blunt, the woman is an idiot:

“Shrimp and grits.” Momentous events are occurring, and Harris hasn’t a clue, and obviously isn’t in the loop.

Posted on by Lloyd Billingsley

Take a Look Around You Boy

“The song of the sixties is over,” noted Peter Collier back in 2018, “but the melody lingers on.” Consider, for example, Barry McGuire’s “Eve of Destruction” from 1965. The “Eastern world” was exploding, and if “the button is pushed” there would be no one to save, so “take a look around you boy, it’s bound to scare you, boy.” That invites a look around America in 2024.

China and Russia have nukes, and Iran is working three shifts to develop a nuclear weapon, courtesy of the composite character president David Garrow described in Rising Star: The Making of Barack Obama. As Tablet’s David Samuels noted in “The Obama Factor,” an interview with Garrow, the composite character was obsessed with the Iran deal, and “helped precipitate the disaster we are living through now.” That was before 10/7, the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust.

Mobs of neo-Nazi leftists now occupy college campuses across the land, but they are hardly the only concern. As Victor Davis Hanson notes “we are now well beyond the dangers of open borders, ten million illegal aliens arriving since the Biden inauguration.” The Biden Junta let in the 10,000,000 – about the population of Tajikistan – with no criminal background checks. Ponder the possibilities for violent crime, conventional sabotage, car-bombs and worse. Nuclear landmines are easily transported, and rumors of Soviet-era nuclear “suitcase bombs” have surfaced in the Ukraine conflict.

The prospect of those weapons deployed stateside is bound to scare you, boy, and as Barry said,  “there’s no runnin’ away.” Fortunately, the famous sixties’ poster provided guidelines on what to do in case of a nuclear attack:

Posted on by Steven Hayward in The Daily Chart

The Daily Chart: Bidenflation Compared

From our friends at the Committee to Unleash Prosperity, some measures of the magnitude and persistence of inflation under President Biden and previous presidents. But remember, Joe told us that “Milton Friedman isn’t running the show any more.” Someone forgot to tell this to inflation.

Chaser—Slow Joe might not want to count on a rate cut from the Fed just yet:

Posted on by Steven Hayward in Academic left

Consequences for Columbia

Thirteen federal judges have written to Columbia University to announce that, absent major changes, they won’t hire any Columbia graduates—from the law school or the undergraduate college.

Here’s the letter:

More of this, please.

Posted on by Steven Hayward in 2024 Election

Prepare for Mass Hysteria and Exile!

Every four years we hear Alec Baldwin, Babs Streisand, Michael Moore and other flaky leftists say they will leave the country if a Republican wins the presidency, and one of these days they may actually mean it, though I doubt it. I recall my mentor Stan Evans joking that “I voted for George W. Bush because Alec Baldwin said he’d leave the country. Which just goes to show that pragmatism doesn’t work.”

Anyway, this Tweet thread from a former hive-mind journalist Michelle Kosinski is just too delicious not to celebrate:

A few weeks ago, I had dinner with a few couples, friends of friends, all American. All were well-educated and successful in careers. They seemed great! On the surface. For like an hour. But slowly, over a few drinks, they began to let slip their true MAGA natures….

One of the couples each attended top ivy league colleges. But now that it was university time for their own kids, they were adamantly NOT letting them apply to any ivies. And were weird about explaining why. Though the kids were double legacies. Okayyy… moving on…

The next crew suddenly busted out with air quotes when mentioning climate change. Again, these are otherwise smart people. Not scientists, clearly. But educated. And the dude took seething umbrage when my friend mentioned the damage Trump had done and vowed to continue to do.

The others– when they realized that a few in their presence came armed with (gasp) actual facts (NO!)– quickly changed the subject and nervously said they don’t want to talk politics. They realized they would be eviscerated on all idiotic points, especially on the economy.

As it went on, my friends and I realized we were surrounded by otherwise carefully closeted MAGAts. It’s funny how the extremist or just wrong beliefs can’t help but leak out, even when you least expect them, and from people you least expect. They are out there.

This dinner continues to haunt me. They all seemed so… normal. When I asked the couple who were my old friends how THEY didn’t know, they said that in their upscale FL neighborhood, people are extremely careful not to ever broach or debate the subject. This is not healthy.

If a dinner party “continues to haunt me,” just imagine how she’s going to react the morning after the election? I’d reserve my one-way flight to Denmark right away.

Posted on by Scott Johnson in Hamas, Israel

To whom it may concern

Prime Minister Netanyahu gave a speech at Yad Vashem at the start of Holocaust Remembrance Day events in Jerusalem yesterday evening. Israel Hayom observes that “[t]he speech took an unusual turn when he shifted language since Netanyahu normally does not use this forum to speak in English.” This is what he had to say to whom it may concern in the English-speaking world:

Eighty years ago in the Holocaust the Jewish people were totally defenseless against those who sought our destruction. No nation came to our aid.

Today, we again confront enemies bent on our destruction. I say to the leaders of the world: No amount of pressure, no decision by any international forum will stop Israel from defending itself.

As the prime minister of Israel – the one and only Jewish state – I pledge here today from Jerusalem, on this Holocaust Remembrance Day: If Israel is forced to stand alone, Israel will stand alone. But we know we are not alone because countless decent people around the world support our just cause. And I say to you: We will defeat our genocidal enemies. Never Again is now.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has posted the full text of Netanyahu’s remarks here and it is worth reading in its entirety. I have posted video of the English portion below via the Prime Minister’s X account.