The trouble with the San Diego synagogue shooting narrative

The New Neo Posted on by

(1) An armed man (an off-duty border guard) and an Iraq War veteran both charged the shooter and may have helped prevent further carnage.

(2) The shooter was a white supremacist, yes, but he hated Trump for Trump’s support of Israel.

Those are inconvenient truths for the left, and although they won’t stop them from using the shootings for the usual agenda, they certainly put a little cramp in their style.

The story of the Iraqi vet is interesting:

Stewart, 51, was in the back of the room when the shots rang out, he told reporters. The veteran said his military training kicked in.

“I ran to fire. That’s what I did. I didn’t plan it. I didn’t think about it. It’s just what I did,” he said.

Stewart said he started yelling expletives at the gunmen, who stopped shooting when he heard Stewart’s voice….

Stewart said he served in Iraq from March 2003 to April 2004. He had also been a bomb disposal tech in the Navy, and joined the Army after the September 11 terrorist attacks.

“I never thought I’d hear gunfire again,” he told the Union-Tribune.

It seems that the gun may have jammed, or perhaps Stewart wouldn’t be around to tell his story. Then again, in the confusion of such a scene, and with a fairly inexperienced and rattled gunman, an aggressively charging member of the congregation might be an unexpected challenge.

Stewart ended up following the gunman to his car:

Get down!” and “I’m going to kill you,” Stewart said he yelled.

According to the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department, the suspected gunman fled the synagogue to a nearby vehicle. Stewart was in close pursuit.

“Stewart caught up to the vehicle as the suspect was about to drive away,” the department said in a statement.

Stewart said he began punching the shooter’s window when Morales told him to get out of the way.

“He yelled, ‘Clear back, I have a gun,'” Stewart said. Then, Morales began firing.

The gunman got away, but the description of the car was what allowed the police to stop him.

Morales was the off-duty border control agent. And he has a very interesting story, too:

[Rabbi] Goldstein said Morales recently discovered his Jewish roots and traveled more than three hours from El Centro to pray with the congregation. The rabbi recalled telling Morales, “Please arm yourself when you are here. We never know when we’ll need it.”

If you follow genealogy, you may know that people who are of Spanish or part-Spanish descent—as the name “Morales” implies—often find when they do DNA testing that they have some proportion of Jewish DNA, sometimes a significant amount (the reason has to do with the history of Jews in Spain, the expulsion and the conversos; for a fuller treatment please see this). I am guessing that was the case with Morales, and he decided to embrace that aspect of his identity and attend services in a synagogue.

In addition, we have the prescient rabbi, who asked Morales to carry a weapon while in the synagogue. It paid off.

As for point #2, the Trump-hate of the shooter, we have this:

The evil psychopaths who shot up the synagogues in Poway and Pittsburgh undoubtedly share a number of traits in common, but prominent among them is unremitting hatred of Donald Trump. The Poway shooter put it — how shall we say it — in succinct terms, calling the president a “Zionist, Anti-White, Traitorous, C*cksucker.” His Pittsburgh doppelgänger was almost as disgusting.

Despicable as they are, these two creatures can’t really be accused of Trump Derangement Syndrome, because, unlike many in mainstream media, they are at least somewhat correct in their assessment. Trump is pro-Israel, indeed likely the most pro-Israel president since Truman…

The left is fond of calling Trump a white supremacist and/or saying that white supremacists adore him and are empowered by him. No, they don’t and no, they’re not.

Synagogue shooting in San Diego

The New Neo Posted on by

One person has been killed and three are hospitalized with what is described as non-life-threatening injuries when a man entered a San Diego Chabad synagogue during services on the last day of Passover and opened fire.
The mayor of San Diego is labeling it a hate crime:

[Mayor] Vaus said he considered it a hate crime “because of statements that were made when the shooter entered.”

The mayor said the congregation was targeted by “someone with hate in their heart … towards our Jewish community and that just will not stand.” The congregaton “took security very seriously,” he said.

“I also understand from folks on the scene that this shooter was engaged by people in the congregation and those brave people certainly prevented this from being a much worse tragedy,” Vaus told CNN.

It’s a good thing they’re taking security very seriously, and all congregations both Jewish and otherwise had better take it very seriously, too.

[NOTE: Odd how even before I heard of this attack today, the theme of the day had already emerged.]

And then they came for the Christians and the white people

The New Neo Posted on by

I just finished a post about an anti-Semitic cartoon published in the international NY Times. But the left certainly isn’t stopping at anti-Semitism; Jews are just the proverbial canaries in the coal mine. You no doubt have noticed that Christians and white people (especially white men) have been fair game for quite some time, too.

But it’s getting worse. Or you might say it’s getting more open, in that coal mine known as modern-day academia.

First let me give a little background on this story. Tim Wise has (please see *NOTE below) has the following resume as an anti-racism (that is, pro-diversity) educator, activist, and speaker:

Since 1995, he has given speeches at over 600 college campuses across the U.S. He has trained teachers, corporate employees, non-profit organizations and law enforcement officers in methods for addressing and dismantling racism in their institutions.

So Wise has been instrumental in shaping—or trying to shape—the minds of both students and adults, in a diverse (to coin a phrase) group of settings. These sorts of trainings are very popular and have been for quite some time, with the alleged goal of fostering tolerance and understanding and acceptance of diverse opinions, races, colors, lifestyles, sexes/genders, and creeds.

But Wise draws the limits at Christians and white people, for whom he has the harshest of words. Here’s a Facebook post of his from September of 2015, which I will now proceed to render in full:

This is America…people basing their beliefs on the fable of Noah and Ark, or their interpretation of Sodom and Gomorrah…rather than science or logic…If you are basing your morality on a fairy tale written thousands of years ago, you deserve to be locked up…detained for your utter inability to deal with reality…NO, we are not obligated to indulge your irrationality in the name of your religious freedom…but we will provide you a very comfortable room, against which walls you may hurl yourself hourly if your choose. Knock yourself out….seriously, knock yourself out, completely, for weeks at a time…I’m sorta kidding but not by much…I don’t believe lunatics like this should be locked up, but I do think they have to be politically destroyed, utterly rendered helpless to the cause of pluralism and democracy …the world is not theirs. They have no right to impose their bullshit on others. They can either change, or shut the hell up, or practice their special brand of crazy in their homes…or go away. Their choice. And this argument applies to any fundamentalist religionist of any faith who thinks they have a right to impose their beliefs on a secular, pluralistic society. Go away.

Now, I’m all for the separation of church and state, as are the vast vast majority of Christians in the US, as well as Jews and even ultra-Orthodox Jews. In fact, as far as I know, most of the countries these days that are theocracies are Muslim ones (although just now I did a quick search of Wise’s work, so far I haven’t found mention of that, although I suppose I might have missed something).

Wise recently was the keynote speaker at Harvard’s annual diversity conference. He apparently kept his anti-Christian views quiet during his speech, but aired some of his other views [emphasis mine]:

President Donald Trump is and “always was” racist, Wise said. His election shows that “this country is more sexist and more racist than I realized.”…

Wise sought to clear up purported misconceptions about educating people on equity, inclusion and solidarity. It is “not about shaming people, it’s asking [them] to be responsible, responsive and accountable” for their advantages, Wise said…

Higher education has actually been too successful in this regard, prompting white people to “hoard” their privileges upon realizing they exist, Wise said. In other words, white people are inclined to “internalize superiority.”

Academic institutions have an obligation to embrace the struggle for social justice and solidarity, “not just at the level of rhetoric but policy” as well, Wise said.

“Schools must make mission statements up to date,” and be “willing to say what it means to operationalize” the implementation of inclusive ideals.

He set out vague admission and graduation requirements in order to achieve this mission. Admissions offices must consider applicants under the mind-set that “if you’re not down with this mission, then you don’t actually fit in with us as an institution.”

Current students should pay their dues by proving that they’re committed to “this mission” by way of “community service requirements … relevant to solidarity.” If they don’t meet this standard, “then you don’t graduate,” he advocated.

There’s plenty more at the article if you follow the link, but I think you get the idea.

It’s an old idea. Leftism has long had two major characteristics (among others): leftist movements tend to be rabidly anti-religion as well as deeply desirous of total control over people’s lives and thoughts. These two things are not unrelated, because in a sense the left wants to replace religiousness with its own brand of fundamentalism.

Whether these twin elements combine to lead to actual mass imprisonment and murder when leftists come to power or whether their emphasis is on “re-education” and discrimination without so much actual murder, or whether both are equally favored, leftists want to get the job done. And freedom of speech, thought, and religion are just small casualties along the path to the Utopia they plan (with themselves in charge, of course).

The fact that this man was the keynote speaker at a Harvard conference supposedly on tolerance and understanding is both ironic and completely unsurprising, as Orwell could have told you. The left is very very dangerous, and the Gramscian marchers are entering the stadium for what they believe will be the final push.

*NOTE: On the Spectator thread, there was a commenter pointing out that Wise is Jewish. First of all, even if he were Jewish, that says nothing about the fact that his views are not at all common among Jews and are absolutely not sanctioned by Judaism in any way shape or form.

But Wise is not Jewish in any sense of the word as I understand it. If you look at his heritage, he has three non-Jewish grandparents and one Jewish one. The Jewish one was his paternal grandparent, and Judaism is not transferred through the paternal line. Not even the vile Nazis, who were very intent on learning who was Jewish and who was not, would have considered Wise Jewish. Under their reprehensible Nuremberg laws Wise would have been a “mixed race (second degree)” and approved for Reich citizenship.

According to Wikipedia, Wise himself has apparently “referred to himself as Jewish and as an anti-Zionist Jew but does not practice Judaism.” I can’t quite parse that, but I will add that whether or not he himself says he’s Jewish, the combination of his non-Jewish ethnicity (one paternal grandparent who is Jewish) as well as his belief system (doesn’t practice Judaism) wouldn’t make him any sort of Jew with which I’m familiar, not even a secular one.

The New York Times morphs into Der Stürmer

The New Neo Posted on by

You think I exaggerate? Not much. Take a look for yourself:

The cartoon, apparently by a Portuguese artist named Antonio Espresso, depicted a blind Donald Trump, resplendent in the kippah he wears at all times except when the cameras are near, being led by Benjamin Netanyahu in the form of a sausage dog, wearing the Star of David dog collar that all sausage dogs wear.

Please read the whole thing. And take a good look at the cartoon, which appeared in the Times’ international edition. In the Spectator article about it, Dominic Green obwerves the tepid nature of the Times’ note and retraction of the cartoon.

The note from the Times purporting to explain what happened called it “offensive” and an “error of judgment.” That was about it; not even an apology, and certainly no one was named as the culprit or culprits who made that error, or what might happen to them, or why the Times originally decided this would be a nifty thing to run—only in the international edition and not the US edition, which I think is an interesting decision to have made in light of the history of anti-Semitism.

Green writes the note the Times ought to have written but never will. It reads this way:

We ran a blatantly anti-Semitic cartoon. At a time when anti-Jewish violence and incitement is at levels not seen since 1945, we chose to place gutter racism on our pages. We did this because plenty of our editors share the prejudice of this cartoon; if in doubt, look at our unsigned editorials.

We’re so soaked in this that none of us thought that it might be an error to publish a cartoon with clear precursors in fascist, communist, Arab nationalist and Islamist propaganda. Rather than explain this away in the passive tense, we’re going to name the editors who signed off on this cartoon, and fire them.

[NOTE: For those who don’t get the title reference, please see this.]

The Day Collusion Died

The New Neo Posted on by

Commenter “AesopFan” and some others have called my attention to this song parodist, Don Caron. Funny stuff.

Unfortunately, it will take more than the Mueller report to drive a stake through collusion’s heart, and the obstruction vampire is alive and well and living in the Democratic Party:

Program to desegregate San Francisco’s schools has made them more segregated

The New Neo Posted on by

I can’t say that the results of this attempt at intervention are especially surprising:

San Francisco allows parents to apply to any elementary school in the district, having done away with traditional school zoning 18 years ago in an effort to desegregate its classrooms. Give parents more choices, the thinking was, and low-income and working-class students of color like Cinthya would fill more seats at the city’s most coveted schools.

But last month, Cinthya’s parents, who are Hispanic, found out she had been admitted to their second-to-last choice, a school where less than a third of students met standards on state reading and math tests last year. Only 3 percent were white.

Results like these have soured many on the city’s school enrollment plan, which is known here as “the lottery” and was once considered a national model.

“Our current system is broken,” said Stevon Cook, president of the district Board of Education, which, late last year, passed a resolution to overhaul the process. “We’ve inadvertently made the schools more segregated.”

But this is San Francisco, and the NY Times reporting on it. So the solution being discussed? More Draconian measures that will also fail to benefit anyone, we can safely predict, and will harm the entire system much as forced busing did in Boston in the 1970s. I described that process in great detail here, and it was a resounding failure for all concerned.

But that dismal track record is unlikely to discourage the powers that be in San Francisco:

Parental choice has not been the leveler of educational opportunity it was made out to be. Affluent parents are able to take advantage of the system in ways low-income parents cannot, or they opt out of public schools altogether. What happened in San Francisco suggests that without remedies like wide-scale busing, or school zones drawn deliberately to integrate, school desegregation will remain out of reach.

Hey, I’ve got an idea! Outlaw private schools! That’ll do the trick, I’m sure.

More:

The district’s schools were more racially segregated in 2015 than they were in 1990, even though the city’s neighborhoods have become more integrated, research shows. That pattern holds true in many of the nation’s largest cities, according to an analysis by Ryan W. Coughlan, an assistant professor of sociology at Guttman Community College in New York…

While black children were slightly less racially isolated in 2015 than in 1990, that was largely a result of their lower enrollment in the district, Professor Coughlan said — a change driven by astronomical housing costs…

Even the school district has acknowledged that a system of geographically zoned schools would most likely create more racial integration than the current, choice-driven approach.

There are several reasons the system has not worked as intended. One is a lack of transportation. Fewer than 4,000 of the district’s 54,000 students ride a bus to school. The city’s busing program was reduced in 2010, during the last recession, and has not been restored.

Much much more at the link.

Back to the cosmology drawing board

The New Neo Posted on by

I’ve had many occasions over the years to quote this line from “Hamlet,” and I’m going to do it again:

There are more things in heaven and Earth, Horatio, / Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

It was true in Shakespeare’s day. And it’s true now:

The universe is getting bigger every second. In fact, it’s expanding at a much faster rate than it should [according to conventional predictions]…

When scientists look at what was going on 13 billion years ago, via Planck, and then extrapolate that into the present, the results don’t match what Hubble sees today. For several years, there’s been an assumption that the disagreement is due to a lack of precision in the measurements. But as scientists have fine-tuned their tools, the discrepancy has remained. On Thursday, researchers using Hubble said the chances the mismatch is some sort of user error or fluke have gone from 1 in 3,000 to 1 in 100,000…

Riess says the discrepancy strongly suggests there’s a piece missing in the puzzle that scientists have put together over the years to model the history of the universe.

Oh, I wouldn’t doubt it. And I’d wager it’s more than “a piece.”

Time—way past time—to take a good long look at John Brennan

The New Neo Posted on by

In a Russiagate story full of abominable characters, John Brennan may just be one of the most odious.

I’m written before about Brennan’s history (here). Suffice to say it’s shocking that he ever rose to become director of the CIA. And yet rise he did.

Brennan has long been one of Donald Trump’s most vocal and accusative (Treason! Treason!) opponents. But apparently he also had a role behind the scenes in Russiagate :

Brennan’s personal role in the Trump-Russia collusion saga dates back to at least the summer of 2016 (and perhaps even earlier) when he met with a top British intelligence chief to discuss Trump’s supposed ties to the Russians. Around the time of that meeting, and following its conclusion, American and foreign spies began to make contact with members of the Trump campaign, with some claiming to have access to Russian secrets involving the Hillary Clinton campaign. Brennan later seemed to take credit and defend the espionage operation, which again, relied on the dossier to legitimize spying on Americans.

Brennan, as CIA director, reportedly inserted the Clinton-funded-and-manufactured Steele dossier into a draft version of the highly scandalous Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) on Russian interference, which was published under the auspices of Donald Trump’s political opponents in early January 2017, just two weeks before President-elect Trump took office.

Victor Davis Hanson lays it out, too:

Former CIA Director John Brennan is a paid analyst for MSNBC who often railed about Trump’s “treason” and predicted his indictment. Yet Brennan has lied under oath to Congress on two occasions. He likely misled Congress about his role in trafficking in the Steele dossiers. And Brennan’s CIA may well have helped the FBI use informants abroad to entrap Trump campaign aides in efforts to find dirt on Trump.

So here’s the question: will anything happen to Brennan as a result? We’ve all seen the ability of wrongdoers of the Deep State variety to evade all consequences (think, for example, Lois Lerner). Will the same be true of Brennan, who may have orchestrated the attempted coup through clandestine means?

This is at least somewhat encouraging:

Joe di Genova says an individual report from the IG is coming on James Comey, complete with criminal referrals and that he has so much on John Brennan, he will need five lawyers. As a former US attorney, there is no doubt that di Genova has his sources and he says that Comey and Brennan will both be indicted. In both cases, it will involve the cover-up of Hillary’s crimes and trying to enact a coup against President Trump based on a document paid for by Clinton and the DNC.

I’ll believe it when I see it.

I know I should write a post about Biden entering the race…

The New Neo Posted on by

…but I can’t quite bring myself to do it. (I refer you to this and this.)

Biden’s candidacy fills me with a powerful feeling of weariness as well as repulsion. The weariness is a very similar feeling to one I had during the 2016 campaign when I tried to write about Jeb Bush.

Not that Biden is Jeb Bush. But they engender at least some of the same reaction in me, which is basically: why would anyone want this person to be president?

Of course, if by some strange alchemy Jeb Bush were running against Joe Biden, I’d happily vote for the former over the latter. But still, they give me the same impression of general mediocrity as thinkers and as politicians. I think it’s a sign of the extreme weirdness and leftism of the Democratic field that Biden is the front-runner and might even remain so.

By the way, although Bernie Sanders makes Joe Biden look a tiny bit young (which is quite a feat), Joe Biden makes Trump look positively fresh as a daisy. Sanders is 77 years old now and Biden is 76, whereas Trump is a mere 72. And the election’s not for a year and a half, so they’ll be that much older.

Will liberals stop trusting the MSM?

The New Neo Posted on by

Matt Taibbi thinks so, and he thinks the media coverage of the Mueller report will have been instrumental in fostering that lack of trust:

News audiences were betrayed, and sooner or later, even the most virulently Trump-despising demographics will realize it and tune us out. The only way to reverse the damage is to own how big of a screw-up this was, but after the last three years, who would hold their breath waiting for that?

I agree with Taibbi that the MSM will not be doing that. But I don’t know what I think about his contention that “even the most virulently Trump-despising demographics will realize” that they were lied to about Trump and Russiagate. His article, which appeared in Rolling Stone, has no comment section, so it’s hard to gauge the tenor of what the responses would be from the periodical’s mostly-liberal readership.

But if I had to guess, I’d say that the number of Trump-haters who realize they were duped by the MSM will be vanishingly small. Maybe I’ve gotten too cynical, but I certainly haven’t seen a lot of soul-searching or mind-changing on this. Yes, the media’s stock has fallen even on the left and not just the right. But that doesn’t necessarily lead to mind-changing and the rejection of the basic message, or to trust of a source from the right such as National Review or Fox News.

Taibbi is about as far from a Trump supporter as you can get, and he is definitely not a Republican either (see this). But his outrage in the article is at the stupidity and mendacity of the press, and he is clear-sighted enough to see their errors in covering Russiagate. His interest doesn’t seem to be that people should have a change of political heart; his concern seems to be about the ever-falling reputation of the press, one they have justly earned.

How large can the “voting rights for terrorists” crowd be?

The New Neo Posted on by

I don’t think Bernie Sanders did himself any political favors when he said that even the Boston marathon bomber should have the right to vote. What constituency is he appealing to, besides hardcore libertarians?

It’s not that his argument lacks all merit. I don’t agree with Sanders—I think that certain crimes should mean that a person has forfeited the right to vote along with certain other rights, such as the right to roam freely around among us. But I well understand his argument, which he expressed this way. I just think it’s not going to wash with the vast vast majority of people, even many who otherwise support Sanders:

“This is a democracy and we have got to expand that democracy, and I believe every single person does have the right to vote,” he said, adding, “Even for terrible people, because once you start chipping away and you say, ‘Well, that guy committed a terrible crime, not going to let him vote. Well, that person did that. Not going to let that person vote,’ you’re running down a slippery slope.”

He slammed Republican governors for blocking access to the ballot box for felons, in what he described as an effort to disenfranchise voters and influence elections in their favor. “They come up with all kinds of excuses why people of color, young people, poor people can’t vote. and I will do everything I can to resist that,” he said.

Vermont and Maine are the only states that allow incarcerated felons to vote, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Massachusetts is among 14 states, along with the District of Columbia, that automatically reinstate voting rights to felons released from prison. Other states have additional restrictions, including bans on voting while a felon is on parole or probation.

I’m not the only person noting that Sanders’ extreme position is a sort of political poison of the self-inflicted kind (not that it is likely to deter his most fervent supporters—and does he really have any other kind?):

“You’re writing your own opposition ad against you,” CNN host Chris Cuomo said.

And Sanders gave this answer:

“I think I have written many 30 second opposition ads throughout my life,” Sanders replied. “This will just be another one of them.”

Well, that’s certainly true. But for most of his career he’s been in liberal/left cocoons. This is the national stage, which he entered only during the 2016 campaign. Sanders may not really want to win and actually become president; after all, he’ll be 79 by Election Day 2020. He may not think he can win. Or, he may think he can win with exactly the formula he’s had all his life, as an extreme leftist, and that his hour is finally at hand and he can let it all hang out in terms of voicing the extreme positions that made him what he is.

At any rate, his remarks have the function of moving the Overton window for the other candidates, stating the most extreme positions so that their own positions won’t seem quite as far left as they actually are. He is the lefty-ist leftist of all in that great big “who can be the furthest left?” competition that the Democratic Party has become:

Asked similar questions at CNN town halls later on, Democratic candidate and South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg said he disagreed, arguing that losing the right to vote is one of the penalties inmates should face while incarcerated. California Sen. Kamala Harris said she believed “we should have that conversation.”

Harris’s polls must have told her that such a “conversation” is political cyanide, because she backtracked from that stance the very next day and declared that murderers and terrorists should “be deprived of their rights.”

I have to say that I am heartened by the Democrats’ infighting and voicing of off-putting positions (at least I think they’re off-putting; I sincerely hope so). I would rather have them state their extremism rather than hide it, wait till they’re elected, and then pursue far more extreme policies than the ones they’ve owned up to. Of course, many of them are probably still on track for that. How far left are they really, in their heart of hearts? Extremely far. Will the American public reject this leftism? That remains to be seen, but I have hopes.