Friday, April 26, 2024
Will there be a Biden-Obama Ticket? More.
I wake up many mornings thinking of the hostages in
Gaza. It would be interesting to drive one of those
sign trucks with a good sound system around the
Upper West Side for a few days playing the raw 10/7
video.
A good meme would be side/side pics of little kids
training with rifles and anti-tank weapons in the early
2000's and the savages coming over in powered
parachutes: "It's the same picture..."
https://x.com/karol/status/1782382667289301433?
s=46&t=UKXO38RhBpK5y4MY5xV34g
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HOOVER DAILY REPORT
by Chester E. Finn Jr. via Thomas B. Fordham Institute How about a ceasefire in the civics wars? Possibly even a peace treaty? This could turn out to be easier to achieve than pausing the conflict in Gaza (or Kashmir or Sudan or…). The world’s big fights generally arise from opposed interests and disputes over fundamentals ++++ |
The NYT's reported Biden had accepted the challenge to debate Trump. The White House staff must be cringing. Perhaps, instead of debating Trump, Biden will carry out his threat to take Trump behind the school house yard and beat him up like a youthful school boy that he ain't.
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The Counter-Revolt Finally Begins
Columbia, Yale and NYU camp out while the rest of the U.S. flees from wokeness.
By Daniel Henninger
Wonder Land: Columbia, Yale and NYU camp out while the rest of the U.S. flees from wokeness. Images: AFP/Getty Images Composite: Mark Kelly
Before this column ends, we’ll get to the unmissable fact that anti-Israel, often antis-Semitic, protests are proliferating at what we amusingly choose to call our most “selective” universities—Columbia, Yale, New York University, Stanford, Berkeley. For the moment, add these North Face tent protests on $75,000-a-year campus quads to the sense among the American public that their country is running off the rails.
A list of the phenomena laying us low includes: wokeness, DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion), defund the police (a depressing subset of wokeness), conspiracy theories, head-in-the-sand isolationism and a self-centered political polarization typified—from left to right—by Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Cori Bush, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Matt Gaetz and Lauren Boebert.
Ironically this time of year is associated with hope, amid spring and college graduations—except at the University of Southern California, which, fearing trouble, canceled its commencement speakers and told honorary-degree recipients not to show up.
Setting silenced USC aside, a hopeful note one hears at college commencements is that the American system is self-correcting, that despite recurrent stress, it always rights itself. Opinion polls suggest few believe this anymore but—happy spring—it looks as if we may be on the brink of a real counter-revolt against the craziness.
Last week in the hopelessly gridlocked House, Republican Speaker Mike Johnson, facing threats to his job from the chaos caucus, cast his lot with the enough-is-enough caucus. The House passed bills to sustain allies in Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan. Congress isn’t dead—yet.
Blue states and cities that looked willing to collapse rather than defend their citizens have begun to push back against progressives’ pro-criminal and antipolice movements.
At the urging of Gov. Kathy Hochul, New York’s just-passed state budget includes measures to crack down on shoplifting. Assaulting a retail worker will be a felony. Larceny charges can be based on the total goods stolen from different stores. Progressives in the state’s Legislature opposed the measures. Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle Parker, elected in January on restoring law and order (yes, it can be a Democratic issue), last week announced a plan to support policing in the most crime- and drug-plagued neighborhoods.
March seemed to be a tipping point. The hyperprogressive Council of the District of Columbia, in a city that had become an embarrassing carjacking hellhole, passed an array of anticrime measures. Oregon’s Legislature voted to reverse the state’s catastrophic three-year experiment with drug decriminalization. San Francisco voters approved two measures proposed by, of all people, Mayor London Breed, to ease restrictions on policing and require drug screening for welfare recipients. The results in Los Angeles County’s primary for district attorney strongly suggest progressive George Gascón will be voted out in November.
In all these places, the reversals by elected officials are driven by the prospect of voters’ turning them out of office. That is the U.S. political system trying to right itself.
In California, a safety coalition has collected about 900,000 signatures to reverse parts of Proposition 47, the state’s now-notorious 2014 decision to reduce some theft felonies to misdemeanors. This week, the U.S. Supreme Court’s conservative majority appeared sympathetic to overturning a Ninth Circuit decision that bars cities and towns from enforcing vagrancy laws. Though the case emerged from Grants Pass, Ore., which is trying to ban homeless encampments, about three dozen elected officials and organizations in California filed briefs arguing that the Ninth Circuit’s ruling made cleaning up the streets almost impossible.
News stories since the start of the year have noted that many private companies are rethinking policies on DEI, partly under legal pressure, such as the Supreme Court’s decision last year to strike down the use of race in college admissions.
Some in the corporate DEI movement thought they were immune to restraints. No longer. Companies are rediscovering that the constituency most needing inclusion is their customers. The loudest shot across the bow came last week, when Google fired 28 employees after some staged sit-in protests at its New York and California offices over a contract with Israel’s government. Google’s firing statement describes “completely unacceptable behavior.” No one saw that coming.
All this adds up to a nascent counter-revolt against America’s lurch toward self-destruction. The exception is elite U.S. universities. Their leadership has seen itself as answerable to no one and politically immune.
Robert Kraft, a Columbia grad and owner of the New England Patriots, said this week he will no longer give the school money “until corrective action is taken.”
If big donors ever regain control of these so-called selective schools, a suggestion: Firing the president won’t close the barn door. Instead, fire the admissions office. What a tragedy to think how many serious high-school students were rejected by Columbia, Yale and NYU, edged out by non-useful idiots whose chosen major is the political structure of re-education camps.
Someone has to be a lagging indicator, and these schools are it.
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Normally, I have an opinion about America's future which may or may not prove correct. Today I am confused about the future but predicting what will happen, in either case, is easy. If the radical haters win, our republic is over. However, if the radicals lose our republic America will never return to what it is was meant to be, and once was, because too much water has been spilled.
It is ludicrous to believe the world will follow our nation as before. The mass media is untrustworthy, education, at all levels, has been destroyed, every institution has either been corrupted or taken over by neo-Marxists. Corporate America has given up on capitalism and America's upbeat attitude has been crushed.
Tornados prove how quickly what takes decades to construct can be destroyed in the blink of the eye. Franklin has been proven omniscient. because we thought we could defy the phrase:
"Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers."
This phrase starkly highlights the modern tendency to expend our energy and potential in the pursuit of material gain. This observation emphasizes how individuals channel their time, effort, and creativity into accumulating wealth. In this sense, Wordsworth showcases the paradox of materialism.
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Will there be a Biden-Obama Ticket allowing Obama to become president for a third term because there are no constraints on Obama serving as Vice President and then becoming president by way of the office of the Vice President should Biden win and then resign?
Wild? Yes. But Democrats will stop at nothing and with Obama on the ticket he could change the election results by beating Trump.
Basically, Obama is already running The White House through his staff surrogates.
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China Is Winning The Higher Education Battle. Much More.
More Accumulated Pesach Memos.
Hezbollah’s vast subterranean network in Lebanon is in a different league
Brig. Gen. (res.) Ronen Manelis says the tunnel system is ’10 levels above anything we have come across in Gaza.’
By Nadav Shragai, 4/25/24
WATCH: IDF pounds Hezbollah weapon depots
April 25, 2024
Mass exodus of Gazans from Rafah as IDF operation looms
200,000 Gazans have evacuated Rafah as IDF prepares to enter final Hamas stronghold.
By David Rosenberg, 4/25/24
WATCH: NYU professor – ‘Israel isn’t allowed to win a war’
NYU professor Scott Galloway slams the ridiculous double standards applied only to Israel, Jews, and the IDF.
April 25, 2024
From Herbert Marcuse to Jew-hatred
By Derek Hunter
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Dear Dick,
The threats of violence against Jewish students that we have recently witnessed on campuses across the country are signs of a moral darkness spreading out across the land. It's alarming enough to those Jewish students at Columbia, Yale, and the dozen other campuses where activists have established encampments from which they hound and harass the Jews in their midst. But the presence of these activists—and the universities that accommodate them—is an evil loosed upon all Americans. One of the lessons of Jewish history is that once a society allows anti-Semitism to metastasize, more rapid social decline will soon follow.
But in the face of this vile assault on our values and institutions—greatly worsened by the moral cowardice and confusion of so many university leaders—Tikvah students and alumni are courageously standing up for Jewish dignity.
At Columbia, opposition to the insanity and essential reporting on it has come from sophomore David Lederer. David got the attention of the media when he posted on X the results of a "social experiment": He took an American flag to a New York "pro-Palestine" rally to see what reaction he would receive. See for yourself what happened.
Also at Columbia, junior Michael Lippman took his school's president to task in the pages of the Wall Street Journal, and Dore Feith, in National Review, clarifies the larger menace these protests pose beyond the Jewish community.
At Yale, Sahar Tartak and Gabe Diamond have been at the forefront of the fight. You can see Sahar argue her case on Piers Morgan and read the harrowing account of the assault she suffered in the Free Press. You can hear Gabe's account of the rot at Yale in the Wall Street Journal and, in a piece that anticipated the latest swell of anti-Jewish terror weeks before it broke out, in the pages of the Hill.
Daniel Samet, in National Review, warns activists against trying to sow disorder at his campus, the University of Texas at Austin, as they've already done elsewhere.
At Princeton, Alexandra Orbuch and Darius Gross explain the effects of anti-Semitic hysteria on the educational purposes of the university.
At George Washington University, Sabrina Soffer—who months ago gave an unforgettable speech at the March for Israel in Washington—continued her prolific writing about the state of the American campus with her own recent piece in the Hill.
And at Cornell, Ari Kapelyan helped organize the Jewish Unity Rally that took place on April 14.
These young women and men exemplify Jewish moral confidence and bravery in the face of intimidation. They embody Tikvah at its best—alumni of our Beren Summer Fellowship, members of our Beren Collegiate Forum, attracted to Tikvah by their desire to learn about Jewish history and the majesty of Jewish civilization, and now in the arena of action rising to Jewish responsibility.
Tikvah's opponents know this about us. I happened to see Tikvah singled out by the anti-Semitic activists at, of all places, Princeton University. On their list of demands, here we are, at #8:
"Princeton must stop sponsoring and facilitating Birthright Israel trips and Tiger-Trek Israel, and end its relationship with the Tikvah Fund."
What our critics fail to grasp is that our calling and our purpose is defined by education, not activism. And one habit we've learned from wrestling with great texts and big ideas is to seek out the truth. These students, and many others in our network, have come to cherish what they have inherited as Jews and Americans. They have come to see the truth about how precious these inheritances are, and that is why they are moved to defend them.
Alongside moral formation and civilizational inspiration, we're working hard to make sure that these students don't feel alone on their campuses. The purpose of the Beren Collegiate Forum is to link up the many Tikvah students at various institutions, and to help forge the bonds of friendship among them. We've now got Tikvah chapters up and running at over twenty campuses, and we plan to expand to 50+ chapters in the year ahead. We will always stand behind our students, wherever they are.
Yet we also wonder: Hasn't the time come for Jewish talent, energy, money, creativity, and leadership to build new and better institutions of higher learning, or to migrate to those citadels that value what the Jewish people have meant to Western civilization? Hasn't the time come for a new exodus?
With best wishes for a Shabbat Shalom and a happy rest of Passover,
Eric Cohen
CEO, Tikvah And:
My fellow Americans:
This is Vivek Ramaswamy. I hoped to email you on a lighter note but I didn’t have another choice with everything happening right now.
The unholy alliance between Joe Biden, the corrupt Deep State, the DC Swamp, the Liberal Media, and the Radical Left Democrats is a national disgrace.
We, the American People, will never forget what they’ve done to us. Luckily, we have a plan to stop these radicals who:
– Desecrated Easter Sunday with wokeism
– Arrested the leader of the Republican Party
– Removed Trump from the ballot in key states
– Raided Mar-a-Lago with armed agents
– Censored Conservative voices
– Spied on Catholic worshippers
– Gutted election integrity measures
– Peddled the Russia Hoax for years
– Threw open our border to illegals
– Abandoned Americans in Afghanistan
– Caved to the Chinese Communist Party
– Moved to pack the Supreme Court
– Forced propaganda into classrooms
And the list goes on and on and on! Never before in the history of the world has a truly great country fallen so far from grace in such a short time. If the Radical Left Democrats somehow win control of the White House, the Senate, and the House… America will be lost forever.
I know this to be true. You know it too. But when everything is on the line, moments like this separate the strong from the weak. And make no mistake – the future of our country hangs in the balance.
That’s why I’m partnering with Majority Leader Steve Scalise for the FIRST TIME. Together, we’re rallying the STRONGEST American Patriots from across the country and building the biggest surge of grassroots support this country has ever seen.
If you consider yourself a strong American Patriot – like the two of us do – I’m personally asking for your full commitment right here and right now.
The resources we collect today will help build the largest GOP voter turnout operation in history, deploy an army of volunteers in swing districts, run hard-hitting ads in battleground states, harvest ballots where it’s legal, and help make this the most secure election EVER.
THAT is how Conservatives will win in a landslide…
THAT is how we take control of the White House, Senate, AND House…
THAT is how we stop the Radical Left Democrats from destroying America…
THAT is how we save our country as we know it…
AND THAT is how we send shockwaves through the heart of the Deep State, DC Swamp, and Liberal Media…
I’m asking for 100% participation from every strong American Patriot reading this. If that’s you, we need your help for the sake of the country. It’s the only way we win. So what do you say? Can we count on you?
If you can’t afford to pitch in $100 or $50 right now, I understand completely. If you can spare JUST $5 or $10, it will still go a long way in the fight for what we believe in. I only ask that everyone contributes SOMETHING.
No matter what, I’m honored to fight alongside you.
Thanks for all you do,
Vivek Ramaswamy
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And:
Consul Update Edited
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