Archive for the ‘politics’ Category

By John Ruberry

In terms of numbers and in geographic reach, America is possibly suffering from its worse outbreak of anti-Semitism ever. I’m referring of course to the pro-Hamas and anti-Israel protests at many colleges. Many of these “spontaneous” events are illegal encampments filled with similar tents, exact-copy signs, that are populated with angry students and other interlopers chanting the same slogans.

Fortunately, for now at least, the worst outrages at these hate rallies are isolated incidents.

Last month, a protester at George Washington University held a sign with a Palestinian flag and “the final solution.” At Columbia, a protest leader, the pronoun challenged Khymani James, was banned from campus after a video surfaced where, James declared, “Zionists don’t deserve to live.”

Also at Columbia, a knucklehead there screamed, “Go back to Poland, go back to Belarus” at pro-Israel counter protesters.

Can you imagine the uproar–it would be a well-deserved one–if someone screamed, “Go back to Africa” to Black protesters? The Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division would be there at Navy Seals speed.

The head of the Department of Justice is Merrick Garland, the US attorney general. When the situation fits, he likes to remind people that he is Jewish and had two members of his family perish in the Holocaust.

Last year, when questioned about the infamous FBI memo that suggested Catholics who favor traditional Latin mass services could connected to “the far-right white nationalist movement,” Garland responded emotionally. “The idea that someone with my family background would discriminate against any religion is so outrageous,” he said, “so absurd.”

In March, in an address to the left-leaning Anti-Defamation League’s Never is Now Summit, Garland was more specific about his family and the Holocaust.

“My family fled the pogroms of Eastern Europe at the start of the 20th century,” he said. “My grandmother, who was one of five children born in what is now Belarus, made it to the United States, as did two of her siblings.”

“The other two did not,” the AG continued. “They were killed in the Holocaust.”

Oh yeah, Belarus, the same place the hater at Columbia said, along with Poland, Jews should return to.

Garland is a native of Lincolnwood, Illinois, a Chicago suburb. He graduated–as class valedictorian-from Niles West High School in nearby Skokie. It was in Skokie, several years after Garland’s graduation, where Neo-Nazis attempted to march. Thousands of Holocaust survivors lived in Skokie at the time; Garland almost certainly was classmates with children of survivors of the Shoah.

Why hasn’t Garland specifically and forcefully spoken out against the anti-Semitism at these pro-Hamas protests? His boss, President Joe Biden, hasn’t either, of course.

When the time is right–or better, when the politics are right–Garland speaks out against anti-Semitism.

But is Garland even running the Justice Department? In the May 3rd Chicago Way podcast hosted by John Kass, the great Charles Lipson, a professor emeritus of political science from the University Chicago, had this to say about Garland: “The attorney general’s office right now is being running by a woman named Lisa Monaco, she’s the number two-person, Merrick Garland’s not doing anything.”

Well, he can do something now. Garland can unequivocally denounce the anti-Semitic protests at college campuses and the Biden administration’s weak response to them.

And then resign.

It’s up to Garland to convince me that he’s not a coward.

John Rubery regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.

What is: “How do you know when a person’s national political career is toast?”

The story in question Is it time to ban pit bulls?:

Let’s take a look at the numbers. Between 2005 and 2017, at least 433 Americans were killed by dogs. And guess what? Pit bulls were responsible for a whopping 66% of these deaths. Pit bulls — a breed that makes up only 6% of the dog population in the U.S. — is causing the majority of fatal attacks.

It’s not even just humans who are suffering at the jaws of these dogs. In 2017 alone, pit bulls were responsible for the deaths of 13,000 dogs, 5,000 cats, and 20,000 horses and other farm animals.

Those are numbers Kristi Noem can only dream of.

I’m sorry but when you see this kind of joke in stories that begin with a police officer having to shoot a dog you’re finished politically whether you know it or not.

She might be able to be a Senator out of her state but VP or P not a chance.

As for the substance of the story in question, remember that the Pit Bull is so named because they were bred to fight in a pit:

The term “Pitbull” is derived from the dog breed that was utilized for bull-baiting, which took place in a “pit.” This violent sport involved pitting dogs against bulls, and the dogs were specifically bred for their strength, tenacity, and determination. This is why the name “Pitbull” became associated with these dogs.

Bull-baiting was a popular blood sport in the 19th century, particularly in the United Kingdom. The purpose was to test the dog’s ability to restrain and subdue a bull, which earned them a reputation as powerful and aggressive animals. Although bull-baiting was later outlawed, the association between Pitbulls and their historical past persisted.

I have no opinion on the matter one way or the other but for the record my next door neighbor has a Pit Bull called Kuz who greets me every day with loud barks and a wagging tail so I don’t know what end to believe. The dog absolutely loves DaWife.

Clemenza gets it

Michael: How bad do you think it’s gonna be?

Clemenza: Pretty goddam bad. Probably all the other Families will line up against us. That’s all right. These things gotta happen every five years or so, ten years. Helps to get rid of the bad blood. Been ten years since the last one. You know, you gotta stop them at the beginning. Like they should have stopped Hitler at Munich, they should never let him get away with that, they was just asking for trouble.

The Godfather 1972

One of the best commercials that I ever saw comes from my youth. It was for the Fram Oil Filters. In it a mechanic is doing expensive engine work on a car that didn’t have the oil changed regularly. The message was very simple and direct. Spend the money for an oil change and filter now or pay me later for engine work.

That’s what instantly comes to mind when I saw this story

Bragg, who is currently prosecuting the case against former President Donald Trump, did not respond to multiple requests for comment from the Daily Caller News Foundation asking whether pro-Palestinian protestors arrested on Tuesday would be charged.

The New York Police Department (NYPD) arrested 119 protestors at Columbia on Tuesday night, along with 173 protestors at the separate City University of New York (CUNY) protest, where students occupied an administration building.

“Given his track record and the political nature of the events, I would be surprised if the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office prosecuted the charges in a serious manner,” Cornell Law School professor William Jacobson told the DCNF. “The charges are likely to be dropped against most perpetrators, and drastically reduced for others under an agreement that would see the charges eventually expunged.”

“In New York City, unfortunately, this type of weak prosecution agenda encourages more crime,” Jacobson continued.

Alas as Professor Jacobson own blog can attest to. These actions are not confined to Columbia & New York City, Northwestern, U Chicago, Rutgers, UCLA, Brown, U Wisconsin (where students chanted “Heil Hitler” at Jewish Students are among the colleges that these mobs have occupied. At Portland State police found “improvised weapons” and Drone footage shows the mob at UCLA being trained in hand to hand combat.

As James Woods notes, these were not “spontaneous protests”

Brings to mind the pallets of bricks that oddly found themselves delivered in the path of BLM riots years ago. Robert Spencer elabortates:

Not only is it not spontaneous, it’s clearly orchestrated from outside the colleges and universities where the encampments have sprung up. New York City Mayor Eric Adams has acknowledged that “professionals” were involved in the Columbia University encampment. Another sign that this isn’t exactly a grass-roots movement is the fact that a large number of the pro-Hamas protesters have identical tents. Which well-heeled leftist bought them? We don’t know and may never know, but someone certainly appears to have done some buying in bulk. 

Still, the movement needed foot soldiers. The cadres had to be recruited and indoctrinated. That has been the work of the Middle East Studies Association (MESA), the professional organization of Middle East Studies professors at colleges and universities nationwide.

Now in Red states folks like Ron DeSantis are enforcing the law, but in blue states the police didn’t start moving in until the visuals were polling bad for Democrats or when people started fighting back and leftists were getting beaten.

The administrators of many of the universities hosting these encampments have either been too fearful to act or actually sympathize with the pro-Hamas brownshirts. They allowed not just the tent occupation on a public university campus to fester, but even with evidence of brownshirts’ being trained …

… never called for any measures to clear this out until a group of Jews decided maybe “Never again” was now.

And, suddenly, Karen Bass noticed.

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass vowed Wednesday to prosecute pro-Israel vigilantes who attacked the illegal “Palestine Solidarity Encampment” at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) overnight.

Beating a Jewish girl and sending her to the Hospital, No big deal. Fighting back against those who beat her when the authorities take no action? That’s beyond the pale.

What’s worse is the selective prosecutions:

And let’s be clear, too, that Governor Hairgel Newsom said nothing until yesterday, too, when so-called vigilantes decided to go where law enforcement refused to go.

This is how a high trust society is destroyed. There would have been no vigilante action if our Dear Democrat Betters like Bass, Newsom and UCLA brass had done their job. Let’s see who is really legally punished by Soros-puppet DA Gascon after the dust has settled. We saw lots of arrests after the 2020 fiery, but mostly peaceful riots but close to no convictions. Hamas brownshirts who blocked the Golden Gate bridge have had no charges filed.

The FBI is too busy with grandmas who spent ten minutes walking between velvet ropes on Jan 6 or keeping tabs on observant Catholics to be bothered when anti-Western Hamasholes shutdown taxpayer-funded university campuses.

The good folks at Citizen Free Press put it perfectly

The bottom line is selective enforcement of the law combined with allowing people to get away with violence while going after those who try to stop it will cause the former to become bolder and the latter eventually deciding going the full Popeye deciding:

The end result what happened in Israel. They took it and they took it and they took Hamas figured they could continue to strike until they finally figured they could get away with killing thousands and kidnapping hundreds without issue.

That’s when Israel finally decided: That’s all I can stands I can’t stands no more and full scale war in Gaza is the result.

That is what is coming here. As a nation we have a choice, we can enforce the laws and stop this nonsense now while the price is low, or we can allow these thugs to operate without consequences until people get killed and when that happens people are going to decide: “That’s all I can stands I can’t stands no more.”

And that’s when you discover what happens when a highly armed population reaches that point. That’s when these thugs discover what Glenn Reynolds has been saying for years, that Police exist to protect criminals from the rest of us. Or as John Wayne illustrated so well.

The biggest irony is these Jew Hating Nazi’s (because that’s what Hamas supporters are) in the same position that Hitler was when he was moved to occupy the Rhineland in 1936 and America’s Universities city and state governments are in the position of England and France who could have stopped Hitler cold if they had acted:

A German officer assigned to the Bendlerstrasse during the crisis told H. R. Knickerbocker during the Spanish Civil War: “… we knew that if the French marched, we were done. We had no fortifications, and no army to match the French. If the French had even mobilised, we should have been compelled to retire.” The general staff, the officer said, considered Hitler’s action suicidal.[62] General Heinz Guderian, a German general interviewed by French officers after the Second World War, claimed: “If you French had intervened in the Rhineland in 1936 we should have been sunk and Hitler would have fallen.”[63]

Right now if these thugs are prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law with the same vigor as the Biden Administration went after the J6 folks who didn’t do a 1/10 of what these people did they can be stopped and a bloody 2nd American civil war or a modern version of the Lincoln County Wars can be avoided.

If not then one day people will write about our government and administration what William Shriver Author of The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich wrote about Britain and France’s inaction during the 1936 Rhineland crisis.

in March 1936 the two Western democracies, were given their last chance to halt, without the risk of a serious war, the rise of a militarized, aggressive, totalitarian Germany and, in fact – as we have seen Hitler admitting – bring the Nazi dictator and his regime tumbling down. They let the chance slip

So what will be be America will we prosecute & stop them with little risk now or we let them continue with no consequences till we have to kill them later in a horrible Civil War later?

By John Ruberry

Kim Foxx, the state’s attorney of Cook County, is the chief prosecutor in Chicago and its inner suburbs. 

The George Soros-funded catch-and-release Democrat has been a disaster for Cook County residents, except for the many criminals living here.

Nationally, the leftist ideologue is best known for botching the Jussie Smollett case. Yeah, I keep bringing that up, largely because Foxx supposedly throws a fit whenever her name is attached to the hate-crime hoaxer. 

Feel her rage.

By throwing his considerable weight around, both literally and symbolically, Illinois’ governor, JB Pritzker, who hopes to run for president in 2028, brought the 2024 Democratic National Convention to Chicago. This may prove to be Pritzker’s undoing. Chicago was hit hard by riots after the George Floyd murder, and the crime rate in Chicago and its core suburbs has soared since Foxx took office in 2016.

Fortunately, Foxx chose not to run for a third term. 

The campaign to succeed her was essentially a referendum on her time as state’s attorney. The winner by a hair was Eileen O’Neill Burke, who said at the end of a debate, “If you like the way things are going right now, you have a candidate in this election. It isn’t me.”

Last week, the Chicago Tribune reported that Foxx will get a little tougher in prosecuting crime. “You may not be aware, but for the last four years the public policy of the Cook County state’s attorney’s office has been not to prosecute criminal violations tied to protests and demonstrations,” the Trib’s left-of-center editorial board wrote, “if the office deems those actions ‘peaceful.'” 

“That means the office as a matter of policy won’t prosecute protesters arrested for disorderly conduct,” the op-ed continued, “unlawful gathering or criminal trespass to state-supported land, among other laws.”

As people with common sense–that is, non-leftists–know, small-time violators of the law sometimes become felons. Peaceful protests, or what liberal journalists laughingly call “mostly peaceful protests” sometimes become quite violent ones. 

Foxx’s end-of-term conversion does not mean she’s been suddenly blessed with wisdom. Crime is a very serious problem in Chicago. Nationally, liberal apologists for criminality regularly tell us that the crime rate in major cities is going down, but not only do they use the COVID year of 2020 as a comparison point, they ignore Chicago. While murder the murder rate is down slightly in Chicago, other crimes are becoming more numerous. Foxx is largely to blame, but Chicago’s mayor during the pandemic, Lori Lightfoot, as well as her neo-Marxist successor, Brandon Johnson, should hold their heads in shame too.

Instead, Foxx has cynically, in regard to DNC protesters, decided to do her job. 

Leftists are obsessed with history repeating itself. Looking past the calm 1996 Democratic Convention, they fear a repeat of the riot at Grant Park during the 1968 DNC, when Mayor Richard J. Daley’s angry cops beat up hippie protesters as millions of voters watched on television. Liberals blame that chaos for Richard Nixon’s victory that fall. 

At a protest earlier this month Joe Iosbaker, a left-wing gadfly, offered an ominous warning with a couple of questions. “Have you heard that the Democratic National Convention is coming to Chicago? Are we going to let ’em come here without a protest? This is Chicago, goddamn it — we’ve got to give them a 1968 kind of welcome.”

Foxx doesn’t want to be blamed for Donald Trump defeating Joe Biden in November. She cares more about her political party than fulfilling the duties of her job.

Pro-Hamas and anti-Israel protests are regular disturbances in downtown Chicago. Protesting, both peaceful and “mostly peaceful,” has become a habit in the city. Throw into the mix Chicago’s violent crime epidemic, and the result will be a vile stew that is set to turn toxic in late August, when the DNC convenes at the United Center.

Foxx’s “conversion,” in my opinion, will prove to be too little–too late.

Let the bad times roll. History will repeat itself in Chicago.

After the DNC leaves, Foxx can return to not prosecuting protesters who break laws until Eileen O’Neill Burke is sworn in.

John Ruberry regularly blogs in Cook County at Marathon Pundit.