Los Angeles is experiencing an increase in its rat population:
At a press conference at Los Angeles City Hall on Tuesday, DeMaio there were two particular reasons behind the rodent explosion.
“First, the homeless population increase, which provides a source of food which supports population growth,” he said. “Second, many local governments, including Los Angeles, have banned the most effective practices for detecting and eradicating rats.”
Nice going.
Iran appears to have seized a British tanker.
This is a relatively recent story, so go there for updates.
A Whitehall source told the Telegraph of the Stena Impero: “It does look like it has been hijacked. Ships don’t follow that pattern. It turned right and straight into Iranian waters. It is really concerning that this has happened.
“It looks on the face of it as though the Iranian Revolutionary Guard have boarded and taken a UK-flagged ship. It appears to be linked to events around the Grace 1 tanker.”
British authorities seized the Iranian Grace 1 supertanker off the coast of Gibraltar on July 4, on suspicion it was carrying crude to Syria in violation of European Union sanctions.
The fate of the tanker has been at the centre of escalating tensions between the UK and Iran…
They (we’re primarily talking about Pelosi here, but I doubt she was alone in her decision) didn’t have to do it. After all, they started out either ignoring them or belittling them.
But they chose to defend them in response to Trump. Why?
Although Pelosi had earlier pointed out that the Four were only four votes, she had to already have been well aware of how many members of the House were in solidarity with them. It doesn’t seem to have been a majority, as Wednesday’s “impeach Trump” vote failure amply demonstrates. So, what gives?
I’ve heard people say in explanation, “Bernie Sanders changed the party.” No he didn’t. He did well in 2016, much better than expected, but he didn’t change anything except perceptions. What he did do was to move the Overton Window way to the left, and the sky didn’t fall. So it became possible for a candidate to voice leftist beliefs and think that he/she still had a chance of support on a national level.
If Sanders had actually run in the general election of 2016 instead of Hillary, how would he have done? No one knows, although he polled quite well (so did she). It’s too late now for him to win the nomination in 2020, because he’s got fresher leftist competition, but the party is very afraid of losing his enormous bloc of leftist supporters—and that of AOC and the Four—by not defending the Four.
But still, Pelosi’s original calculus about this was different. Not too long ago she didn’t seem to think it was necessary to defend them much, and she seemed to believe that marginalizing them would be good. She must have known (or believed) that siding with the Four might cost the eventual Democratic nominee (and those Democrats running for Congressional seats) dearly in the general. A great many Democratic voters have gotten way more leftist than the general public seems to be ready to tolerate yet, despite decades of the Gramscian march that has helped swell the ranks of the left immeasurably, particularly among young people, so Pelosi knew a candidate must beware of appearing too leftist.
So, what’s going on? One thing I noticed is that a possible turning point occurred when AOC played the race card against Pelosi herself, saying, “the persistent singling out … it got to a point where it was just outright disrespectful … the explicit singling out of newly elected women of color.”
The initial reaction was for many fellow-Democrats to jump to Pelosi’s defense. Why, the very idea of using racism accusations as a tool like that! Shocking! Of course, it’s the favored tool against the right and Democrats have no problem with it when it’s used that way. But against Pelosi? Not done, except by the Four.
Initially it seemed that Pelosi had won that round, too. But it may nevertheless have struck some sort of fear in her (at least, that’s my theory), because it told her that the Four were going to strike back with every weapon at their disposal rather than give in. Pelosi well knows the potency of the race card with the Democratic voters; there is probably no worse charge. So she was wary.
Then, when Trump singled out the Four (without naming them, but he certainly was talking about at least one of them, Ilhan Omar), and did it in terms the left wanted to cast as irredeemably and vilely racist, Pelosi almost had to defend them or risk a racist accusation herself, and risk losing the votes of the racial groups on which the Democrats now depend for victory.
Pelosi may well end up tacking back and forth between supporting the Four and keeping them in check, for the rest of the 2020 election cycle.
[ADDENDUM: In addition, some House members from deep blue districts are probably afraid of being perceived as insufficiently leftist, and of being primaried by younger and more telegenic Justice Democrats. So they may desert Pelosi, as well. Is even Pelosi immune, in her own district, if she decides to run for re-election?]
Scherie Murray, a Republican challenging AOC for her House seat, almost certainly doesn’t have a chance of winning a district with so few Republican voters. But Murray is a very impressive candidate, and if AOC keeps on the path she’s currently on, who knows?
Miller also may be somewhat immune from charges of racism or being anti-immigration, although hers is a “black face” that speaks with a voice that isn’t the sort of “black voice” that Ayanna Pressley wants to hear.
So meet Scherie Murray, a black woman born in Jamaica who came here at the age of nine:
Commenter “Cornhead,” aka Dave Begley, reports on his blog about Joe Biden’s recent Iowa appearance.
Even though I wrote an earlier post today about the allegations that Ilhad Omar is guilty of multiple legal violations, including marrying her brother in order to commit immigration fraud, this article at PJ by David Steinberg on Omar deserves a new post of its own.
It’s titled “Ilhan Omar Happened Because Media Chose to Lie to You.” Steinberg is the writer who’s been investigating Omar for years, and trying to inform the press in order to publicize her history and the suspicious elements in it. All to no avail. He also wrote this post at Powerline that I linked to in my earlier post today on the topic.
Busy guy.
And if you read that PJ article, you can well understand why Steinberg is on fire with this. He’s been working for years on getting the word out, and has been continually frustrated by the MSM’s refusal to cover the story.
Here’s an excerpt from Steinberg’s PJ piece:
Three years ago, most American newsrooms picked Ilhan Omar — despite her crawling Jew-hatred and evidence of an extensive criminal past — to be the transcendent face America needed to fight bigotry and federal corruption. Reporters apparently chose to lie about Omar to help birth a more trusting country…
In the first hours after Omar was elected to Congress in November 2018, the media — literally, the media in its entirety — made a similar choice…
No outlet besides the Star Tribune seems to bear more fault for marching national disgrace Ilhan Omar into office, where she promptly stirred a global rise in anti-Semitism. Yet in finally covering Omar’s past, the Star Tribune did not mention the reporters whose work comprised virtually the entire case against her. Or that it had seemingly done nothing with our private offers to share evidence.
We were referred to as nameless “conservative activists.”
Similarly, the Washington Examiner — having mostly passed on our Omar story for three years until the Star Tribune deemed it an acceptable topic — flew a reporter to Minneapolis. The reporter published an article on Omar which was a duplicate of virtually all of our work as well. It was touted by the reporter as an “EXCLUSIVE”. The reporter praised herself on social media for flying to Minneapolis and finding so much evidence in just 48 hours.
Please read the whole thing.
It illustrates the old adage (well, not so very old—written 6 years ago—but oft-quoted) by Iowahawk:
Journalism is about covering important stories. With a pillow, until they stop moving.
— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) May 9, 2013
I’ve been following the ongoing reports about that question at Powerline for at least a year, but I’ve not focused on it before because it seems to me it’s been very much up in the air. Things have heated up a bit lately, though—partly, of course, thanks to Donald Trump’s offhand remark, which was probably very well-planned and timed. So here’s a link to the latest Powerline article.
I’m not even going to try to attempt to summarize it; it’s too complex, and cannot be understood without reading the entire thing. It makes a strong case but not a 100% convincing one. I don’t know what I think, but I do know that it doesn’t sound at all like a crackpot theory. Whether it’s true or not should be investigated further, although because of certain difficulties inherent in the history of convoluted relationships and name changes, the only way to determine the truth or falsehood of the claim would probably be a DNA test that’s almost certainly not going to occur.
The entire story has been predictably labeled by the MSM and the left as “unfounded” (see this as well as this). However, although it is certainly unproven, it is certainly not “unfounded,” as a perusal of that Powerline article will tell you. There is plenty of credible evidence to support it and it remains to be seen whether it is true.
By the way, what Trump actually said was this:
“There’s a lot of talk about the fact that she was married to her brother. I know nothing about it.”
He added, “I don’t know, but I’m sure that somebody would be looking at that.”
I can’t argue with a single word of that, except perhaps the word “sure.” I’m not sure that anyone with any authority and power will actually be looking into it, although maybe Trump is correct even on that score.
Now, you might say that it’s “unpresidential” to bring up such things. But if one’s antagonist is possibly a tax cheat, a perjurer, and guilty of immigration fraud through a bogus marriage to her own brother, it’s worthy of mention as warranting further investigation.
Trump is already known for strategically bringing up something potentially damaging to an opponent, often with even less evidence—in some cases far less evidence, such as his ridiculous and vile charge concerning Cruz’s father and the Kennedy assassination, made by Trump during the 2016 campaign season. It’s not my favorite trait of Trump’s, to say the least. But in the case of Omar’s shady history he has a great deal more evidence and a great deal more ground to stand on in making his suggestion that this set of circumstances regarding Omar should be investigated.
It should.
…much more often than previously thought:
Researchers watched footage and coded the nature of the conflict, the number of direct participants in it, and the number of bystanders. Bystanders were defined as intervening if they attempted a variety of acts, including pacifying gestures, calming touches, blocking contact between parties, consoling victims of aggression, providing practical help to a physical harmed victim, or holding, pushing, or pulling an aggressor away. Each event had an average of 16 bystanders and lasted slightly more than three minutes.
The study finds that in nine out of 10 incidents, at least one bystander intervened, with an average of 3.8 interveners. There was also no significant difference across the three countries and cities, even though they differ greatly in levels of crime and violence.
Instead of more bystanders creating an immobilizing “bystander effect,” the study actually found the more bystanders there were, the more likely it was that at least someone would intervene to help.
Fascinating, and heartening.
The article doesn’t say (and I can only find an abstract of the study) whether the cameras were visible, but my guess is that they were not easily visible and that bystanders did not know they were being filmed. Awareness of the cameras might have influenced the results, however, if the cameras were obvious.
In addition, I’d like to know much more about the typical situation and typical intervention, as well as characteristics of those who intervened. Young or old, for example? More men or more women, and did the different sexes intervene under different circumstances? Did it matter if there was a perceived danger to the person intervening, of if physical strength was needed? Did it matter if the dispute was between adults, a man-woman couple, two men, two women, or if teens or children were involved?
But only those voices she wants to hear:
Like Pressley, the race-obsessed left thinks of people only insofar as they fit into racial- and gender- and sexual-orientation-based categories. You are your category; you are not an individual made of many facets.
And the Party wants to take from each according to his/her category. Like a colony of ants:
Ants form colonies that range in size from a few dozen predatory individuals living in small natural cavities to highly organised colonies that may occupy large territories and consist of millions of individuals. Larger colonies consist of various castes of sterile, wingless females, most of which are workers (ergates), as well as soldiers (dinergates) and other specialised groups. Nearly all ant colonies also have some fertile males called “drones” (aner) and one or more fertile females called “queens” (gynes). The colonies are described as superorganisms because the ants appear to operate as a unified entity, collectively working together to support the colony.
And who determines what is a “brown voice,” a “black voice,” a “Muslim voice,” or a “queer voice” (I assume we also might have feminist voices and transgender voices, but no other voices allowed)? Why, august leaders like Pressley, that’s who.
If I were a Democrat at this point I would run for the hills. But then again, I once was a Democrat and I already ran for the hills. My guess, however, is that most Democrats will probably never see that video of Pressley or read about her speech. And some, if they do, will probably nod their heads in agreement. After all, isn’t Pressley just saying that the Party wants people practiced in the art of goodthink, who understand how to extract full value from the history of oppression of the group of which they are members?
Which brings us to this [emphasis mine]:
REPORTER: Do you think you’re winning this political fight?
TRUMP: I do think I’m winning the political fight?
REPORTER: Why?
TRUMP: I think I’m winning it by a lot.
REPORTER: Why?
TRUMP: I think that they are not espousing the view of our country. The four Congresswomen. I think that they’ve said horrible things that the press doesn’t cover. I think you should try covering it.
When you look at some of the things they’ve said, they’re unthinkable. If somebody else or me or anybody else said things like that, eh, it would be historic. So you ought to look at some of the horrible statements because there’s never been statements like that.
Don’t sit on a hot stove till the press features what these women actually say, such as Pressley’s remarks to Net Roots. And I would add the following to what Trump said to that reporter: So I challenge you to show Pressley’s remarks at Net Roots about what sort of voices they want and don’t want. Show it over and over in your broadcasts, and see what people think. Are you going to do that?
Also, here’s a black voice Pressley probably won’t want to hear:
Can someone ask #AyannaPressley how a Black voice sounds?
Here’s the latest edition of #blackfacesblackvoices
I’m not sure if she’ll approve, but I did my best. ? pic.twitter.com/yqeNuHvB9a
— Shemeka Michelle (@ShemekaMichelle) July 17, 2019
[Hat tip: Artfldgr.]
It’s often instructive to hear what people say when talking among themselves rather than to the public at large.
Thus, note what what Ilhan Omar said when addressing a leftist group known as Netroots Nation:
“There’s a constant struggle oftentimes with people who have power about sharing that power. We are not really in the business of asking for the share of that power. We’re in the business of trying to grab that power,” she said.
That’s just a statement of a truth any observer can already see quite clearly. But at least it’s honest. It’s also a statement that isn’t limited to their plans for the Democratic Party, not by a longshot.
Not only does it say a lot about what the “squad” (I prefer to call them the Gang of Four) plans for the Democratic Party if they ever succeed in their power grab, it’s what they plan for the country if they ever succeed on a nationwide level.
It’s not just Omar by any means. Here’s Ayanna Pressley at the same conference:
…the people closest to the pain should be the closest to the power.
In other words, intersectional victimhood is a huge qualification for holding office and dictating policy. She also said this:
We don’t need any more any brown faces that don’t want to be a brown voice. We don’t need any more black faces that don’t want to be a black voice.
Here Pressley is continuing and expanding on a theme that’s been a leftist message for many years—if a “person of color” is not ideologically pure, then he or she doesn’t count as a person of color and has no right to power.
I really cannot think of a more racist and controlling (anti-free-speech) statement recently by someone in public office, although I’m sure I could find one if I really looked hard. But I can almost guarantee it would have been made by a Democrat, not a Republican. Race is almost everything to this group and confers on members of designated victim groups the right to power, but “people of color” can lose that designation if they think for themselves and don’t follow the party line.
These Four are race-obsessed and power-obsessed. That’s true of most of the left and the majority of the Democratic Party these days, but the Four are far more up-front about it, at least when talking to supporters. They also have zero regard for the process by which this country functions, if it happens to get in their way. Orderly transfer of power? Don’t make me laugh. Whether it be the election of someone they don’t like, or whether it be the internal rules about gaining power in the House, they want to circumvent them in order to grab what they want ASAP.
And for style points, I nominate Rashida Tlaib: “We’re going to impeach the m’effer, don’t worry.”
The Four feel somewhat immune because they are on top in the all-important intersectionality sweepstakes. As women and “people of color” they are “women of color,” and feel that this status inoculates them because they belong to so many designated victim groups at once.
[NOTE: Please see this for a talk by Professor William Jacobson of Legal Insurrection, on the subject of the connection between intersectionality and anti-Semitism.]
Quite a few people have observed that the Democratic House was quick to condemn Trump for a “racism” not actually contained in his tweets, and yet have not condemned Ilhan Omar for her anti-Semitic remarks.
It’s unsurprising; double standards are the name of the game.
But that’s not the only way in which anti-Semitism enters into this. In all the furor over Trump’s tweets, I haven’t seen too much about the thrust of many of them (and of his other recent remarks on the so-called “squad”), which had to do with the squad’s anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism. Clearly, Trump is calling attention to that particular aspect of the “squad’s” political stance.
“When I hear the way they talk about our country, when I hear the anti-Semitic language they use, when I hear the hatred they have for Israel, and the love they have for enemies like al-Qaeda, then you know what, I will tell you I do not believe this is good for the Democrat party,” Trump said.
The left says this move of Trump’s is an error (like everything else he does):
The claim that Jews are not loyal to the countries in which they reside is one of the hoariest, most pernicious of anti-Semitic slurs. Malleably affixed to a diasporic people, the accusation oozes from the left and right fringes of the political spectrum. Omar recently attributed her colleagues’ support for Israel to campaign donations and implied that American Jews “push for allegiance to a foreign country.”
In other words, author James Kirchick feels that people will hear what Trump has to say on this and see it as just as spurious and falsely defamatory as the old “Jews have dual loyalties” accusation. It’s an interesting theory of Kirchick’s, but I think it’s just a way to reassure himself and his readers, because there’s one large difference between Trump’s accusations and the “Jews all have dual loyalty” accusations: Trump is basing his statements on the actual words of Ilhan Omar and crew. There’s a whole lot of evidence.
Nor is Trump suggesting, when he says they should go back and help their countries of origin and then come back here and show us how it’s done, that they have a dual loyalty. He’s actually closer to suggesting the opposite—that he wished they had more of a dual loyalty, but they don’t.
What they do have a loyalty to is the destructive leftism and hatred of the places they came from, characteristics that have kept those places mired in violence and economic failure, and yet they continually criticize their adopted country the US as being tremendously racist and oppressive.
The left is counting on slogans and the MSM to get them through this. Maybe they’re correct; maybe the cries of “Trump is a racist” will win the day with the public. Probably most people don’t go back to see or hear what Trump actually said rather than what the Democrats and the MSM say he said. But if they did—and if they checked out what the squad members say—they’d see how truly awful the actual views of these four women are.
It has nothing whatsover to do with race; it has everything to do with what they think. The left has been labeling all criticism of a so-called “person of color” (defined as suits the left’s needs of the moment) as racism for a long time, and perhaps the Overton Window on “racism” has shifted enough to make their message of victimhood palatable. Or perhaps people have finally wearied of it.
Trump may also be appealing to Jews to leave the Democratic Party and vote for him in 2020. I don’t know if this sort of thing will accomplish it, but I doubt it, because it usually takes more than that to change a lifelong political position. He’s also appealing to a group that already does support him, in the main: those Christians who are staunch defenders of Israel. But they were already pretty firmly in his camp.
[NOTE: Please see this for a talk by Professor William Jacobson of Legal Insurrection, on the subject of the connection between intersectionality and anti-Semitism.]
On Monday I wrote:
I don’t think I’ve had a student anxiety dream in many years. Maybe there are some perks to getting this old. I do recall that, a decade or two ago, I had the student anxiety dream as usual—about math, like most of the others. And then, as I was sitting in my chair in that classroom, the following thought dawned on me: I have a law degree. I must have graduated from high school, and from college, and from law school. So I don’t have to have this dream anymore.
Apparently my psyche thought that was remarkably humorous. So humorous it was going to teach me a lesson.
Last night I had a dream.
I dreamed I was somewhere in a distant city. I was at some get-together, meeting people (my memory of that part is vague; but the dream itself was not). Several of the people there told me that the very next day they were driving to attend what would be my college reunion (I won’t say what year, but a biggie). Would I like to come along? I could hop in and be there easily, tomorrow.
It sounded very tempting. I’ve never been to one of my college reunions. And then I remembered.
I had a big exam coming up tomorrow. And so I had to decline.
Ha-ha-ha, neo old girl! You think that you don’t have to have this dream again? Apparently you do, and it will now include the fact that you’ve already graduated from college. It will be incorporated into the dream, and it won’t matter because exams are still coming.