Elder of Ziyon is one of the must goes for news of Israel’s war with Hamas. A few days ago they had a post of an interview with a man named Dr. Harold Rhode who holds a doctorate in Islamic history, lived in Muslim lands for a very long time and has been an advisor on the middle east for more than a quarter of a century. His perspective on what’s going on is the type of info people need if they want to understand Hamas et/al:
And the peace we are looking for is that you will stop fighting, and we will stop fighting, and everyone will live together in peace. But the Muslims do not have a concept like that. They won’t stop until the whole world will be Muslim. They follow what their prophet Muhammad did. He signed a 10-year ceasefire with Quraysh. After 2 years, Muhammad realized Quraysh had weakened — so he attacked them, and won. There is a classic Latin phrase “Bellum omnium contra omnes, pace inter omnes interpellatur,” that war is the natural state of man, interrupted by periods of peace.
We do not look at life like that, but historically most people do. From a Muslim point of view, they can agree to have relations with their enemies — whether they be Muslims, Jews, or anybody else. They can make temporary agreements just like their prophet did. Those agreements can be renewed, renewed, and renewed. But to think that the Saudis see peace the way we Jews see it is a pipe dream.
In 1949, after Israel’s War of Independence, there was a peace conference in Rhodes. The Arabs insisted the borders be called “ceasefire lines” and not borders. The situation was not set in stone. Arabs do not have the concept that when the fighting is over, we can be friends
To them the war never ends which is why you must never show weakness. That’s also why the “protestors are shoving western cities around. As long as their response if weak they will assert themselves, once you respond with strength and it cost them something, then it will change.
For theses reasons none of our parishes, clergy, parish leadership, and staff as official, public representatives of the Catholic Church, can support, or publically [sic] be affiliated with CUSH.”
Father Reesman said the following to KCE Monday evening:
” [The letter] was shared first with the pastors of Saint Mark and Saint Mary’s Parishes before it was made public, and after I had first discussed the issue with them. If there are any ongoing questions from the parishes or their leadership about the contents of this letter, we will handle them on a case by case basis.”
It seems when you push back against gay porn in schools and drag queen story hours, good things happen which is what happened when the folks at Mass Resistance got involved.
Speaking of Push back some armed home invaders got some pushback last week that left one dead, two arrested and the family safe. A sheriff evaluated what they family did and gave it a thumbs up
I like the way Dave and Susie handled this attack. It appears that they must have discussed home invasions and developed a plan. Not responding verbally to the home invaders kept the crooks wondering where their victims might actually be located. And blocking the door with the couch caused their attacker to focus on that chore instead of keeping his full attention focused on looking for victims. Susie gets points for maintaining an open line of communications with the 9-1-1 dispatcher. And Dave was also very smart to put his gun down and meet the police officer with empty hands. Latest reports are that police investigators see no legal problems for Dave & Susie and, in addition, a series of other home invasions may be cleared by this shooting and the subsequent arrests.
Loftis announced that South Carolina will divest $105 million worth of Disney debt securities due to concerns over the company’s leadership and its embrace of ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) principles.
Loftis said Disney has abandoned its fiduciary duty to shareholders in favor of ESG, which he defined as a “speech and behavior code that was … created by the left and delivered to everybody else.”
“The sane, sober, talented, mature people are gone, and now you have the gender studies crowd running Disney,” Loftis said, “That’s why their movies are flops and their market cap, I think, is about half what it used to be. It’s a tremendous loss to America — we all grew up on Disney,” he added.
Note the argument made, not because Disney is woke but because “woke” costs them cash. That’s the type of pushback shareholder listen to.
Finally the Harvard Crimson published a dissenting opinion calling for President Gay to go.
We are tired of reading about Harvard’s failures every time we check the news. We are sick of reporters hassling us for interviews in the Yard. We don’t want to return home for break and get pestered by friends and family, asking what is happening on campus or how we’re holding up in this awful environment. Our classes and our studying should not be interrupted by noisemakers and megaphones. Signing an affirmation that we will follow the Harvard College Honor Code before we take our final exams should not feel like a farce.
Students are not the only ones frustrated. Faculty are concerned with her academic misconduct too, though many refuse to go on the record, perhaps for fear of the consequences (a fact the Board’s opinion notes but seems not to take to heart).
Donors are tripping over each other to sever ties with the University. A senator has written in the Wall Street Journal that he was accosted in Widener Library. Congress has launched — and now expanded — an investigation into Harvard. Early application numbers have dropped sharply compared with peer institutions, perhaps in response to the turmoil.
It’s that pushback that is the real driver here and is the only thing that drives leftists away.
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“Some men see things as they are and say, ‘Why?’ I dream things that never were and say, ‘Why not?’” Robert F. Kennedy Sr.
“When people fear the government, there is tyranny. When government fears the people, there is liberty.” Thomas Paine.
Former Chicago alderman alderperson Edward M. Burke, who for much of his–wait for it–54 years as a member of Chicago’s City Council, was the second-most powerful politician in the city, because he was the chairman of that body’s Finance Committee.
Last week Burke was convicted on over a dozen corruption and racketeering charges. Burke, according to federal prosecutors, abused the powers of his office to shakedown businesses, such as the owner of a Burger King restaurant in his ward who was told by Burke if he wanted a construction permit, he needed to retain the alderman’s law firm.
Burke is appealing his guilty verdict of course. Once the appeals are exhausted, barring a successful appeal, the lifetime politician is likely headed to prison.
I’m not a lawyer–so forgive my naivete here. Then again, since I’m not an attorney–and not enmeshed in the gears of the rotten system–maybe I’m the right person to tackle this subject.
For thirteen years of Burke’s crooked career, I was a resident of Chicago. Because I was denied honest services by Burke, so that gives me standing to sue Burke for damages. Right?
Wrong.
Qualified immunity protects public officials from such suits. My interpretation of the legal concept–again, I’m not an attorney—is that if officials, let’s say the head of a state highway department, fears being sued over a possible bridge collapse, it may mean that no new bridges are built.
Back to Burke.
It’s difficult to see where Burke’s public career as an alderman alderperson began and where his private legal practice ended. It was a hybrid beast. In short, Burke was running a racket.
So, since a jury ruled that Burke was using his public office for private gain, why should qualified immunity protect him?
Why shouldn’t Burke, and other corrupt Illinois pols such as former governors Rod Blagojevich and George Ryan, be subject to taxpayer lawsuits? Or class action lawsuits?
“To join this lawsuit now–call the 800 number on the bottom of your screen–time is limited! Make that politician pay!”
Taking my idea to the federal level, there’s a recent case with bribery allegations against a sitting US senator and his wife. I mean, I’m just saying…
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if crooked pols could be sued for every penny they have? And their vacation homes? And their gold bars?
Everything!
That just might scare these pols into honesty.
Change the law. Or laws.
Drop qualified immunity for crooked public officials. Call it–ahem–Ruberry’s Law. Consider it my Christmas gift this year.
Back to Illinois.
As Illinois’ SAFE-T Act law–which by the way I believe it should be repealed–was being drafted, dropping qualified immunity for police officers was suggested. So clearly, at least in Illinois, qualified immunity is not sacred.
Last Thursday, Chicago’s new mayor, Brandon Johnson, the candidate of the far-left Chicago Teachers Union, held a press conference. It was one of those dog-and-pony shows, also in attendance was the city’s police superintendant, Larry Snelling a Johnson appointee, and other municipal officials.
Armed with brochures, Johnson unveiled the “People’s Plan for Community Safety.” Who are the people that devised the plan? Presumably that group doesn’t include cops and crime victims, and it almost certainly doesn’t include the South Side family who had two cars stolen in separate incidents last month. One theft was a carjacking that was captured in a horrifying video.
Crime was the main campaign issue in this spring’s runoff election for mayor. Paul Vallas, a moderate Democrat, promised to beef up law enforcement. It was the center piece of his lackluster campaign. Johnson, appealing to his African American and leftist whites, vowed to attack crime at the root causes–just like the outgoing mayor, Lori Lightfoot.
Predictably, Johnson and the other city officials at the presser focused on the “root causes” of Chicago crime.
From the event’s press release:
There is a shattered sense of safety in Chicago that has been driven by decades of purposeful disinvestment in our communities. It is time for a new community safety approach – one that addresses the root of the problem by investing in our people and neighborhoods to secure a safer Chicago for generations to come. The People’s Plan for Community Safety calls upon our entire city, and especially those most impacted by violence, to create solutions together.
Lightfoot’s failures as mayor went beyond law enforcement. But Chicago tried the healie-feelie approach to crime under Lightfoot. It didn’t work.
Chicagoans voted to double-down on dopey.
Commenting the next day on the Morning Answer with Dan and Amy, co-host Dan Proft threw a penalty flag at Johnson’s root causes crimefighting strategy. Reminding listeners that Johnson is half of a two-parent household, Proft said Johnson is focusing on the wrong root causes.
Indeed.
A few days earlier in the Wall Street Journal, Proft noted, Jason L. Riley pointed his finger at the true root cause of rising crime rates, the proliferation of fatherless households since 1960. Referring to what is known as “the success sequence,” Riley wrote:
A decade ago, New York City launched a campaign to combat teen pregnancy. It featured ads on buses and subway cars that read: “If you finish high school, get a job, and get married before having children, you have a 98% chance of not being in poverty.”
He continued:
We could use more of that moralizing from public officials, whether the issue is solo parenting, substance abuse or crime. The success sequence works to keep people not only off the dole but also out of trouble with the law. High-school graduates and children raised by both parents are much less likely to end up in jail. “Virtually every major social pathology,” political scientist Stephen Baskerville writes, “has been linked to fatherless children: violent crime, drug and alcohol abuse, truancy, unwed pregnancy, suicide, and psychological disorders—all correlating more strongly with fatherlessness than with any other single factor, surpassing even race and poverty.”
Chicago, and most American large cities, as well as many suburbs and rural communities, have been on a failure sequence for decades.
I’m not claiming to have the answers to turning around the failure sequence, ignoring the problem, along the lines of placing electric tape over the check engine light on your car when it flashes, of course means more failure. And yes, there are single moms who do a stupendous job raising kids.
One time-tested way out of poverty is quality education. Utilizing education to achieve success worked for that Founding Father without a father, Alexander Hamilton.
But Johnson, a former Chicago Public Schools teacher who was a longtime paid organizer for the Chicago Teachers Union, even while serving as a Cook County commissioner, remains overly loyal to the CTU.
Also last week, the Chicago Board of Education, which includes six Johnson appointees, approved a resolution, in the name of equity of course, that has long been on the CTU’s anti-education wish list, removing the ability of students to attend high schools–better high schools–outside of their neighborhoods. Most of the students who benefit from the doomed program are minorities. Of low-income 11th-grade CPS students, less than 20 percent of them score at grade level in reading and math.
In another attack on students, the state’s private school tuition tax credit program, the Invest in Kids Act, which was signed into law six years ago by a Republican governor, will be allowed to expire next year.
Chicago–and Illinois–are focusing on the wrong root causes.
“That son of a bitch Castro is sh*ttin’ all over us.” US Immigration officer speaking to Tony Montana (Al Pacino) in the movie Scarface.
And now Nicolás Maduro, Venezuela’s son of a bitch strongman, is defecating on America.
Where is the mainstream media on this story?
In the Chicago area, where I live, the MSM is asleep at the wheel. Chicago’s woke daily newspapers, the Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Sun-Times, the latter laughingly calls itself “the hardest-working newspaper in America,” are the worst violators of committing the sin of omission in regard to media bias.
Television and radio websites here are a bit better, but if you want to get the feel of what the Joe Biden’s migrant crisis has done to the Chicago area, there is only one website to visit, CWB Chicago, which works a heck of a lot harder than the leftist Sun-Times.
Here are some headlines from CWB Chicago from just the last six months:
As for those links, while the alleged criminals are all referred to as “migrants,” it’s not always stated in these reports where they are from. That being said, in every case where a nationality is named, every time they are listed as Venezuelan.
Before you call me a racist, bigot, hater, or whatever, I want to make a couple of things clear. I believe that most of the people who Joe Biden all-but-invited into our country who have crossed the Rio Grande have come here with good intentions–mainly to make an honest living.
Most, of course, does not mean all. And some migrants have been the victims of crimes committed by other migrants–or by non-migrants. Yes, I am aware that many migrants in Chicago live in wretched conditions, including inside police stations and at O’Hare Airport.
My ethnic background is Irish. If these were migrants from Ireland or my wife’s native Latvia–instead of Venezuela or wherever–I’d still be reporting on the resulting crime wave.
That being said, this migrant crime wave, which of course is not limited to the Chicago area, seems to be driven by recently arrived Venezuelan migrants.
Joe Biden and the Democrats have waved in millions of people into America who we know little about, including many criminals.
The Biden Wave needs to stop.
As for these crooked migrants, they need to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, which in Cook County, Illinois, may often be just a slap on the wrist. If found guilty, they should be turned over to ICE officials and put on the fast track for deportation.
These migrants are guests in America.
One more thing: Build the wall.
John Ruberry, whose wife is an immigrant, regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.
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