Tom Hagen:Well, I say yes. There is more money potential in narcotics than anything else we’re looking at now. If we don’t get into it, somebody else will, maybe one of the Five Families, maybe all of them. And with the money they earn they’ll be able to buy more police and political power. Then they come after us. Right now we have the unions and we have the gambling and those are the best things to have. But narcotics is a thing of the future. If we don’t get a piece of that action we risk everything we have. Not now, but ten years from now.
The Godfather 1972 Emphasis Mine
Boston Common 2018 leftist “anti-racists” mob a guy wearing an Israeli flag
There is an interesting piece at Hotair concerning Pittsburgh and change in (almost all) Democrats concerning the aftermath of the Tree of Life Synagogue shooting titled: Is Pittsburgh still stronger than Hate? by Salena Zito. She talked about the unity against the slaughter of Jews and the Pittsburgh stronger than hate campaign which isn’t what it once was:
…seemingly everywhere you went, the Pittsburgh Stronger Than Hate logo, which cleverly had the Steelers’ distinctive mineral elements as part of the design, was on T-shirts, kippahs, lawn signs, hoodies and more.
Recently, however, Pittsburgh became the site not of strength and unity but of hatred and division. A group of over 300 far-left activists established a Gaza solidarity encampment on the private property of the University of Pittsburgh, and the community has not been the same since.
You see the Ghastly Tom Hagen Math has caught up with Pittsburgh and math being math it’s unrelenting:
Right now the left has the Gays and the Transgenders and the Hollywood elites & media in which they are overrepresented and they figure that’s the best things to have, but in America Islam is a thing of the future. In 20 years the children of Muslims now being raised on the tenets of Sharia law in America will be old enough to vote and Democrats going to make sure they get those votes when the time come, not now but 10-20 years from now.
And if that means more LGBT Americans have to live in fear during those two decades, well it’s small price to pay for power.
Given the rise of “Queers for Palestine” It seems the LGBT community has seen the tiger charging and decided their immediate goal is to run faster than the Jews in order to be eaten last.
Meanwhile Democrats with power can also do the math and with new math comes new priorities:
Both the city of Pittsburgh and Allegheny County leadership were noticeably mute in the first 30 hours, with both Mayor Ed Gainey and Allegheny County Chief Executive Sara Innamorato, the latter having her early political success as a member of the Pittsburgh Democratic Socialists, saying absolutely nothing for over a day.
When Gainey finally did offer a statement, it was through the Pittsburgh Public Safety spokesperson who wrote that the “encampment/sit-in at the University of Pittsburgh is strictly taking place on private campus property.”
As one elected Democrat who asked not to be identified said to me in a fit of frustration, “If the KKK had been doing this at Pitt, private property or not private property, I can guarantee you Gainey would be there in a heartbeat.”
Jewish progressive Democrats don’t seem to get it:
“The swiftness of it when you think of it is head-turning,” DePasquale said. He said no matter what happens on social media, he will always stand up for what is right when it comes to any religious group.
“I am all for standing up for the First Amendment,” he said, adding that calling for the end of Jewish groups or intifada is beyond a bridge too far.
Pennsylvania state Rep. Abigail Salisbury, a Democrat, Jew and proud progressive, who Gainey, Innamorato and Rep. Summer Lee (D-Pa.) recently unsuccessfully tried to oust in a Democratic primary, (emphasis mine) said on Facebook, “It seems that many people expect Jews to sit quietly with our hands folded and allow others to tell us what is antisemitic. We won’t.”
They don’t see the math behind all of this both those Democrats who denounced hate all those years ago who now wanted the pesky Jew defeated see Muslims who want Jews dead as the future of their party:
For every Frankel, Heisler, Salisbury and DePasquale, there were the posts or retweets by Lee, county Councilwoman Bethany Hallam and city Councilwoman Barb Warwick that cut to the heart of Salisbury’s post.
Warwick, who tried but failed to introduce a Pittsburgh City Council ceasefire resolution and represents Squirrel Hill, issued a statement that said in part that the words “intifada” and “from the river to the sea” hold different meanings to different groups.
Could you imagine Democrats supporting someone who defended the Confederate battle flag saying it meant different things to different people?
The truth is that this is all about timing. It’s likely true that Mayor Gainey would have acted if the KKK was behind the camps today, but I suspect if the KKK ran such a camp in say 1920-1950 when the KKK was a political powerhouse within the Democrat party then I suspect Mayor Gainey would have acted much as he did now. And it goes without saying if Gainey was mayor of a city in the deep south during that period he might have joined the encampment itself.
You see the Democrat party needs to explain to Jewish Democrats like Frankel and Salisbury the real mathematical and demographic principle that’s in play here and nationally among Democrats. This principle can best be expressed by rephrasing Lincoln famous speech concerning his priority being not abolition but union. It would go something like this:
Our Paramount goal is to elect democrats and is not to prevent or enable the slaughter and/or oppression Jews in Israel or America
If we can elect democrats by protecting Israel and Jews in America from slaughter or oppression we will do it
If we can elect democrats by enabling the slaughter or oppression of Jews in Israel and America we will do it.
and if we can elect democrats by enabling the slaughter and/or oppression of Jews in some places while protecting Jews from slaughter and/or oppression in others we will do that too.
Now there was a time when such a manifesto might have been unacceptable to Democrats and to some like Senator John Fetterman who was Lt. Gov of Pennsylvania at the time of the Tree of Life Synagogue slaughter such a position still is but to those more “pragmatic” democrats in a party that his largely secularized such position doesn’t pay any percentages. Islam is a thing of the future and the Democrats want those young voters from large families who are now calling for the slaughter of Jews in their camp.
I’m sure that someone can be sent privately to Frankel, Heisler, Salisbury and DePasquale that none of it is personal, it’s strictly political business.
Closing thought #1: The real irony here is that many of these progressive Jewish democrats fought hard to secularize the nation and the laws to push Christian faith out of the public square and out of their party. In retrospect that might have been a bad idea.
Closing thought #2 One of the most interesting things about this development is how it crystalizes the Democrat’s war on the past. They were against anti-Semitic hate when it didn’t cost anything politically but now demur when it does. It’s very telling.
If you want to figure out which democrats would have stood against the KKK when it was electorally dangerous to do so (1920-1950) look at the ones who have stood against the anti-Semitic encampments all over blue states & universities and if you want to figure out which Democrats will be making excuses for those who who will be lynching Jews and throwing gays off the roofs of tall buildings in blue America in twenty years look at those who are not.
Closing thought 3: I personally saw all of this coming in Boston 6 years ago when organizers of an “anti-nazi” protest had to hold their people back from beating a person wearing an Israeli flag.
Now they don’t feel they need to so do anymore.
UPDATE: Here is an article title that nobody born in 1963 ever expected to read:
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.
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.
BREAKING🚨: Using a drone I was able to get EXCLUSIVE UCLA Pro Palestine encampment footage. They are TRAINING protestors in hand to hand combat as LAPD expected to tear down the encampment as soon as tonight, and potential fights with police expected.
— Anthony Cabassa (IWA) (@AnthonyCabassa_) May 1, 2024
As James Woods notes, these were not “spontaneous protests”
These campus riots have been spontaneous eruptions of support for Hamas terrorists. Luckily 500 professionally printed protest signs showed up unannounced out of nowhere! 😂 pic.twitter.com/caHr9dar1b
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.
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
Let's play a game called 'if this happened on J6'…
— Citizen Free Press (@CitizenFreePres) May 3, 2024
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?
King Richard: Well, sir rascal, tell me, who are you?
Robin Hood:I’m called Robin Hood.
King Richard: It seems I’ve heard of you.
Robin Hood:Nothing good, I hope.
King Richard: Oh, now I remember. How does your loyalty to Richard set on a killer of knights, a poacher of the king’s deer and an outlaw?
Robin Hood:Those I’ve killed died from misusing the trust that Richard left them. And the worst rogue of these is the king’s own brother.
King Richard:Oh, then you blame Prince John.
Robin Hood:No, I blame Richard. His task was defending his people instead of deserting them to fight in foreign lands.
King Richard: What? You’d condemn the Holy Crusades?
Robin Hood:I’ll condemn anything that leaves the task of holding England to outlaws like me.
The Adventures of Robin Hood 1938
Yesterday I talked about the pampered college radicals who never had to deal with responsibility in their lives and contrasted them to my father. Today I want to talk about the some of the folks responsible for them.
For many years a group of us decided the culture wars were worth fighting. We bemoaned the idea that children were no longer disciplined. We scoffed at the idea that everybody got a participation trophy, we bemoaned the culture of death and the removal of God from the public square.
And when we warned that being American was not enough to guarantee our freedoms, that people had to be taught and encouraged and educated about how and why we were the richest and most powerful country that ever existed, that if we did not do so our society would fail that the laws of cause and effect had not been repealed. What happened? We told to shut up.
We were trying to turn back the clock, we were out of step with the times, we were on the wrong side of history. I remember years ago at a Tea Party event there was a “mainline” conservative who came down on us who fought the culture war hard. We were told those fight cost votes that the GOP needed and if we just kept our mouths shut about the culture we would win. They didn’t believe that it would come to this, that the fight wasn’t worth having. They wanted us to keep still. They didn’t realize what Andrew Breitbart always noted, that politics was downstream from culture.
These folks share a good chunk of the blame for what’s happening today but that’s not the biggest irony of the situation.
The biggest irony of all of this is that the primary targets of these attacks. The Jewish students on campus, come primarily from families who embraced the culture wars, who had to problem with restricting conservatives speakers and demonizing conservatives. Who treated Tea Party rallies and the people who attended, people who left their venues cleaner than they found them as the epitome of evil. They are among the folks who enabled the left wing ideologues, who supported the redefinition of marriage, man and woman and who though both the campus, media, both news and entertainment and via large corporations gave into to the radicals in order to be considered part of the proper crowd.
And when conservatives were banned on campus or shouted down for years they at best said nothing or at worst agreed. The worst of their wrath were saved for people like, Pam Geller and Robert Spencer and Bridgette Gabriel and David Horwitz who saw what was coming and warned them of the anti-Semitism of the left. They were labeled as purveyors of “hate speech” to be shunned and banned.
Pam, Robert, Bridgette and David would have likely given anything to be wrong about what was coming but they were rejected like the Prophet Jeremiah and treated as such.
Now the whirlwind is upon those who rejected them and all that remains is to decide what they consider a worse fate:
To be hounded, threatened and attacked by anti-Semites who want them dead OR
Or to admit they were wrong about us and Join the side of folks they hated & vilified for years.
I honestly don’t know which choice they will take.
Q: How can you tell if President Trump has a Chance of winning a state with a Democrat Governor?
A: If said governor publicly opposes the move in Colorado, odds are Trump would have zero chance of carrying their state.
Although in fairness in Gavin Newsom’s case, the voting process in California is so corrupt that even if Trump was polling in the 60’s the chances of him winning would be under 50-50
RFK Jr. has been denied Secret Service Protection for the 3rd time by the Biden Administration, or whoever is actually making those decisions in the administration.
I suspect that it’s a question of keeping the left’s violent base happy because after this video
Amazing video of RFK Jr.
“I don’t know what it is, but everything in your mind is telling you to blame Israel”
Is there *anything* the Palestinians could do without some people blaming Israel? Fun hypotheticalpic.twitter.com/lwtXVu2oim
They would be really pissed if old Joe didn’t let them get a crack at him.
Oh and we’ve had the first American Hostage held by Hamas who has died offically
The IDF says that 73-year-old Gadi Haggai, who was abducted by Hamas on Oct 7, was murdered. The terror group is still holding his body in Gaza. pic.twitter.com/dGfAKsiZ3Q
Biden was in office when American Hostages were taken once before but neither those hostages nor the dozens of Americans killed by Hamas on Oct 7th are newsworthy to the left or a source of outrage for the Media/left.
Of course for the left/media American lives don’t matter unless their deaths can be blamed on the right people do they?
It hit me today that I have a few Jewish relatives as one of my nephews married a nice Jewish girl and have a fair sized family.
Haven’t seen him in years and the kids are now grown but I’m hoping they aren’t getting trouble where they are.
Of course if anyone decided to harm any of them the real question would not be what would happen to such people, it would be a question of which grandparent on my nephew’s side would take vengeance, the special forces one or the Sicilian one. I suspect the special forces one would be quicker but the Sicilian one would be more memorable and lasting.
As a devout Catholic I of course could not condone either but if it did happen the Sicilian in me would be nodding. Personally I don’t think vengeance is worth losing one’s soul over.
And finally on a financial note a lot of folks in LA are celebrating the signing of Ohtani to his $700 million dollar deal but I suspect the folks in Sacramento are horrified at the deal’s structure because of the precedent it might set:
Ohtani this month agreed to play for the Dodgers for a decade at $70 million per season, but from 2024-33, he’ll draw just $2 million per season. Ohtani is deferring $680 million — more than 97 percent of his earnings — until after his 10-year deal with the Dodgers expires, when that money comes back to him in equal annual payments from 2034-43.
When Ohtani receives the bulk of the money, he’ll no longer be under contract with the Dodgers; experts say that the structure of the contract appears likely to save Ohtani between $90 and $100 million in state taxes, so long as he lives outside of California when the deferred money is paid out.
Another key component in potential tax savings is how he has timed the deferral payments, spanning a decade. A 1996 federal law forbids states from taxing retirement income on out-of-state residents when payments are made in “substantially equal periodic” amounts over at least 10 years
Athletes playing on California teams are the one set of millionaires not in a position to leave the state, but if they go the Ohtani route, not only will they wisely have funds to live on when their playing days are done but will keep the state from taking the bulk of their cash when they do.
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