The Rose Garden and White House happenings: Listening to voters’ concerns
mtierney said:
Funny, you mention Nikki Haley, I would like her as a VP choice!
I think Nikki is more presidential material than Trumpenstein. Just goes to show where your head is at.
If mtierney's experience as a news-gatherer and editor counted to for anything, mtierney would fact-check the very first 2 paragraphs of that article and realize instantly that it's not worth publishing.
"Here are two things that actually happened in our world.
In 2020, veterans of the U.S. intelligence establishment, including three former CIA chiefs and 48 others, deliberately lied about Russia being behind the Hunter Biden laptop."
DaveSchmidt said:
I’m still pretty sure I got all three the first time.
No, you missed one, sorry. But it just might be a word that you use frequently and/or see in print routinely, so there is that….
Meanwhile, the violence in our newsfeed makes is too depressing for playing games ….
mtierney said:
I would think a person who repeatedly calls anyone who has a different take on a topic a liar would get a tad tiresome and very old, very quickly.
...
do you actually believe this? that I call someone a liar when their opinion is not mine?
do you believe that facts exist?
do you believe that truth exists?
do you believe that liars exist?
because it doesn't look like it.
mtierney said:
No, you missed one, sorry. But it just might be a word that you use frequently and/or see in print routinely, so there is that….
Meanwhile, the violence in our newsfeed makes is too depressing for playing games ….
Today in Hunter Biden news -
"A federal appeals court on Wednesday rejected a bid to release from jail a former FBI informant who is charged with fabricating a multimillion-dollar bribery scheme involving President Biden’s family. Alexander Smirnov‘s lawyers had urged the California-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to overturn a lower court judge’s order that the man remain behind bars while he awaits trial. But a three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit said the lower court was right to conclude Smirnov is a flight risk and there are no conditions of release that would reasonably assure he shows up in court. ..."
'Smirnov was arrested in February on charges accusing him of falsely telling his FBI handler that executives from the Ukrainian energy company Burisma had paid President Biden and Hunter Biden $5 million each around 2015. The claim became central to the Republican impeachment inquiry of President Biden in Congress."
Back in the real world, in a nutshell, there are facts….
The Cookie-Cutter Campus Protests
Columbia’s Gaza encampment invaded Hamilton Hall this week via Instagram.
By Daniel HenningerFollow
May 1, 2024 at 5:28 pm ET
There must be something in the gene pool of the hard political left in this country. Eventually, the violence arrives.
On Saturday, Columbia University administrators wrote in an email that they wouldn’t call in the New York City Police Department to avoid “further inflaming” what was happening on their besieged campus. Columbia President Minouche Shafik, they said, was “focused on de-escalating the rancor on Columbia’s campus.” Naturally, the unrestrained left escalated.
Early Tuesday morning, pro-Palestinian activists wearing masks and all-black antifa-like clothing broke into and took over Hamilton Hall, believe it or not home to Columbia’s still-extant Classics Department. The militants set up barricades, smashed windows, everything we’ve come to expect.
At 9 o’clock that evening, the NYPD arrived in massive numbers, entered Hamilton through a second-floor window, arrested the “students,” and put them on police buses. With luck, they’ll actually be prosecuted by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and expelled from Columbia. These cops were once called New York’s Finest, and this was one of their finest hours.
So it really is 1968 all over again or, more relevant, 2020 and the George Floydprotests. The Floyd protests spread almost instantaneously to hundreds of U.S. cities, just as the so-called Gaza solidarity encampments sprouted on many campuses. It isn’t spontaneous. This is modern protest as produced by the cookie cutter of social media.
At 1 a.m. Tuesday, a group called Columbia University Apartheid Divest posted on Instagram a call for an “urgent mobilization” at Hamilton Hall. Earlier, the group said: “We will not move until Columbia meets our demands or we are moved by force.” This was effectively a mini-Hamas strategy—give the authorities no choice but to come after you. It’s the most basic flip-the-script tactic: The perpetrators of mayhem transform themselves into camera-ready victims of “state violence.”
Anarchy like this is an opportunity for the U.S.’s enemies, and one hopes the FBI and Department of Homeland Security have this Palestine-justice activity on its radar. Why wait for another domestic act of terror to happen?
The encampments’ defenders will say that is an overreaction, that despite the violence at Columbia and UCLA, their protests are only about conditions in Gaza. The fact remains that Gaza is inseparable from Hamas and Iran, two entities in a network dedicated to attacking the U.S. Add to that the revived terrorism units of Islamic State. All of a sudden, we have pro-Palestinian encampments spread across a country with a porous, overwhelmed southern border. Not to worry?
It is worth addressing the notion that most of the student protesters are peaceful kids moved only by concern for the Gazans. For some, possibly so. Still, we live in an age in which media drives everything, and it is difficult not to see how adeptly the media has been manipulated to shape public impressions of the encampments.
Almost every time a pro-Gaza student gets access to a media microphone, one hears a bland commitment to nothing more than easing the suffering of Palestinian women and children. It sounds rote, almost scripted. What seems to be going on here is a conscious strategy to establish an equivalence of sincerity—a facade of empathy is always mandatory now—between the pro-Palestinian students and the Jewish students resisting antisemitism on these campuses.
The protesters know that their highly theatrical encampments will generate interviews. If they can repeat earnest declarations of humanitarian concern often enough, an equivalence of sincerity between them and Jewish students will come to dominate the media narrative. That equivalence in turn achieves another goal: suppressing the historical context of these campus protests.
The impossible mission of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations is defined by the names of history: Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama; Israeli prime ministers Yitzhak Rabin, Ehud Barak, Ariel Sharon and Benjamin Netanyahu. Palestinians’ interests for decades were represented by the ever-unreliable PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat and now the 88-year-old, near-irrelevant Mahmoud Abbas. The list of negotiated-and-violated agreements is long: Oslo, Gaza-Jericho, Wye, Sharm El-Sheikh, Camp David, Annapolis.
The students’ naiveté and willful “river to the sea” ignorance about the realities of the Middle East peace process is the benign explanation. More cynical is what has emerged the past week as the activists’ primary interest: forcing university endowments to divest from Israeli companies.
This has little to do with the aftermath of Oct. 7. The anti-Israel BDS movement—boycott, divestment, sanctions—emerged around 2005. Its most pernicious tactic was to ban Israeli scholars from conferences at U.S. universities and elsewhere. When people say antisemitism has been building in universities for years, this is what they are talking about. BDS made Israelis shunned, second-class citizens of the academic community.
Then there’s Joe Biden. Because his re-election team assumes an equivalence between younger Democratic voters and the Gaza encampment occupants, the American president has himself become a hostage to the hardest of the U.S. hard left. He won’t cross them, and they know it.
When Mr. Biden gets to Chicago in August for the Democratic convention, uber-left Mayor Brandon Johnson won’t have the cops’ back the way New York’s Eric Adams did this week. On current course, the Biden candidacy could die this summer in Chicago.
Early Tuesday morning, pro-Palestinian activists wearing masks and all-black antifa-nd Security have this Palestine-justice activity on its radar. Why wait for another domestic act of terror to happen?
From wsj, posted above by mtierney: "There must be something in the gene pool of the hard political left in this country. Eventually, the violence arrives."
Hmm, so far, from what i've seen/heard (granted, not following this closely), the violence (leaving aside vandalism at Columbia and elsewhere, which was wrong and should be reimbursed by those responsible) has been on the part of police invited to campus by administrators, and in the case of fighting at UCLA, was initiated by counter-protesters.
I'll pass over the "gene pool" of 1/6/2021, Charlottesville, Oklahoma City....
In regard to the goals/demands of the protesters, i'll just say the US relationship with Israel's government has been due for review for quite a while. It's unfortunate for review to be forced just after Israel has been attacked, but here we are.
considering your well documented aversion to any facts which dispute your opinions (as opposed to opinions that oppose your opinions - not the same thing) or the opinions you promulgate in this thread, your answers are unsurprising.
mjc said:
From wsj, posted above by mtierney: "There must be something in the gene pool of the hard political left in this country. Eventually, the violence arrives."
I mean, it’s worth noting that the violence at U.C.L.A. started with a brutal assault by a group of Pro Israel thugs. Not people I would ordinarily associate with “the Left”.
One thing I've notice, mtierney, is that you never post actual news articles, only opinions. Even when you post from news organizations such as NYT, WSJ, etc, it's always from the opinion section, never from the actual news division.
ETA
I guess one exception is when you post polling results, though I've never understood what you are trying to say by doing so.
PVW said:
One thing I've notice, mtierney, is that you never post actual news articles, only opinions. Even when you post from news organizations such as NYT, WSJ, etc, it's always from the opinion section, never from the actual news division.
ETA
I guess one exception is when you post polling results, though I've never understood what you are trying to say by doing so.
apropos my immediately prior posts, it's clear that mt doesn't make much of a distinction between facts and opinions. they seem to carry equal weight.
Funny that my critics here (just about everyone) complain that I frequently submit opinions on current events from the NYT and WSJ. Most of us consumers of news about what’s happening worldwide, and in the USA, are feed such stories 24/7 on our TVs, smartphones, and even in old-fashioned print media.
We know the visuals of the tumult on college campuses across America, but the analysis is lacking. These students, committing the chaos, are also expecting the President to cancel student loans? Who will pay to clean up and repair university damage? The irony is that these students — among the hard-core ”actors” and infiltrators stirring the pot — very likely won’t bother to vote!
How much does a pop-up tent cost? Will unsuspecting parents be seeing strange charges on their credit cards? Or are outsider supporters footing the bill?
Just read that Russia, China and Iran are enjoying the show of chaos on our campuses.
So, you are correct in noting I frequently post “opinions and political analysis” here, more than news accounts — we all have watched them over and over again and we know the story.
By chance, I starting watching “The girl from Oslo” series on Netflix last evening. The action covers a kidnapping incident in Eqypt of hostages in exchange for an ISIS leader in prison in Sweden. The scenes filmed in Gaza — and throughout the region — are now replaced by destruction and piles of rubble.
mtierney said:
So, you are correct in noting I frequently post “opinions and political analysis” here, more than news accounts — we all have watched them over and over again and we know the story.
See that's the thing -- the things you post are so often divorced from the facts that either you don't know the story, or you do and are choosing dishonesty.
mtierney said:
So, you are correct in noting I frequently post “opinions and political analysis” here, more than news accounts — we all have watched them over and over again and we know the story.
See that's the thing -- the things you post are often so divorced from the facts that either you don't know the story, or you do and are choosing dishonesty.
more WSJ Opinion…
Biden Fails the Campus Protest Test
His fear of taking on the crazy left poses a real threat to his re-election chances.
By
Kimberley A. StrasselFollow
May 2, 2024 at 5:15 pm ET
Joe Biden has an unfailing ability to make a bad political situation worse. He’s doing it again with campus upheaval, potentially elevating the issue into an intraparty war and a re-election threat.
A coddled coterie of malcontents—initially centered at elite universities—spent April taking over buildings, shutting down classes, and hurling antisemitic slurs in the name of “pro-Palestinian” activism. Politically, the obvious response was always simple. Neither the masked mob, nor their cause, is remotely popular.
A CAPS/Harris survey finds 80% of Americans side with Israel against Hamas. Pollster Mark Penn told the Hill that figure has “not budged” since campus protests began. Seventy-eight percent say Hamas must be removed from running Gaza; 67% say Israel is trying to avoid casualties; a majority in every group 35 and up says a cease-fire should happen only after Hamas has released hostages and been removed from power. Few Americans feel a connection to indulged college students directing invectives at Jews and erecting “intifada halls.”
Most politicians got it and quickly condemned the agitators and the hate speech. Republicans and Donald Trump got it. Even many Democrats got it, including governors and mayors who’ve assisted in clearing encampments. But Mr. Biden? He initially felt obliged to pair his condemnation of antisemitism with a condemnation of “those who don’t understand what’s going on with the Palestinians,” whatever that means. As the violence escalated, Mr. Biden finally, briefly and hastily on Thursday condemned the campus “chaos,” yet notably refused to make the moral case for his support of Israel and its war against terrorists—the policies sparking mob chants of “Genocide Joe has got to go.”
The muddled message flows from Mr. Biden’s fear of taking on his party’s small, loud and influential crazy left. That includes New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who bewailed police action at Columbia University as a “nightmare in the making,” and Sen. Bernie Sanders, who has doubled down on support of demonstrating students and accused the Jewish state of “ethnic cleansing.”
Mr. Biden usually has strength in numbers from a party that routinely genuflects to the left. This time, a healthy portion of Democrats were quick to sense the political danger of siding with petulant agitators, some of whom openly endorse Hamas. Mr. Biden’s continued failure to take a strong side has left each of them to forge his own path, encouraging what is now open warfare in his party and stoking the mob, while leaving him with a muddied position that earns him credit from no one.
Online, Rep. Jared Moskowitz (R., Fla.) recently took a shot at Mr. Sanders for being “quiet” on antisemitism, drawing an angry Twitter rebuke from AOC. Twenty-one congressional Democrats—including former Majority Leader Steny Hoyer—this week sent a letter demanding Columbia disband its encampment, which is a “breeding ground for antisemitic attacks.” The obvious question: Why only 21? New York Mayor Eric Adams on Wednesday forcefully backed his police, who had cleared campuses. He called out the “outside agitators” working to “radicalize young people” and labeled “despicable” those who would replace American flags with Palestinian ones. He faced liberal jeers and catcalls.
The buzz is no longer about threats to Speaker Mike Johnson. Mr. Biden has instead given Republicans a rare issue on which to unite. That included the House passage on Wednesday, 320-91, of a bill that defines antisemitism for the purpose of Education Department decisions on university funding. The bill was introduced by Republican Mike Lawler and had 15 Democratic co-sponsors. The headlines are now about the 70 Democrats who voted no (along with 21 Republicans).
Evidence is mounting that campuses have been targeted by professional mob agitators, who sense White House weakness and are already gearing up to descend on Democrats’ Chicago convention in August. This recalls the party’s 1968 convention, the violence of which cemented a view of a lawless country under Democratic rule and aided Richard Nixon’s election victory. Mr. Biden used the 2020 George Floyd protests to great effect against Mr. Trump—both egging them on and reveling in the White House’s inability to restore order. Now who owns the chaos?
That’s the biggest threat brought on by Mr. Biden’s failure to defend his own policies forcefully. The president desperately wants the youth vote, but his tiptoeing is costing him the support of millions of Americans who are already disgusted by the wokeism of higher education, soaring tuition bills, and Mr. Biden’s student-loan gifts. Many have children or grandchildren at college who are being robbed of classes, finals and, potentially, graduation ceremonies.
Mr. Biden’s repeated failures to take a stand against his left’s worst instincts are directly related to his current abysmal approval ratings. It isn’t quite too late for him to step up as a leader, but it soon may be.
Like most of those Wall Street Journal opinion pieces, this is just random shouting collected under a headline, it's not any kind of a coherent, logical discussion of the facts.
mtierney said:
more WSJ Opinion…
Biden Fails the Campus Protest Test
His fear of taking on the crazy left poses a real threat to his re-election chances.
By
Kimberley A. StrasselFollowMay 2, 2024 at 5:15 pm ET
mtierney said:
more WSJ Opinion…
Biden Fails the Campus Protest Test
His fear of taking on the crazy left poses a real threat to his re-election chances.
By
Kimberley A. StrasselFollow
...
geez.
you really need to up your game here. so tiresome.
do you really not read anyone with actual insight?
PVW said:
See that's the thing -- the things you post are often so divorced from the facts that either you don't know the story, or you do and are choosing dishonesty.
killing the messenger , because you hate the message, is older than dirt, PVW.
mtierney said:
PVW said:
See that's the thing -- the things you post are often so divorced from the facts that either you don't know the story, or you do and are choosing dishonesty.
killing the messenger , because you hate the message, is older than dirt, PVW.
now you're just pulling our legs, right?
pretending you or your compatriots give a hoot about misstatements is just hilarious.
mtierney said:
killing the messenger , because you hate the message, is older than dirt, PVW.
You’re misapplying the idiom, which is about bearers of bad news, not bearers of falsehoods and easily punctured opinion.
Just because I can, here are photos of the region.. that very old pick-up truck, fitted out with wooden benches, no seatbelts, took us across the desert….
mtierney said:
PVW said:
See that's the thing -- the things you post are often so divorced from the facts that either you don't know the story, or you do and are choosing dishonesty.
killing the messenger , because you hate the message, is older than dirt, PVW.
Who are you a messenger for? Nobody is telling you what to post -- these are decisions you're making on your own. And you are choosing to post things that are untrue.
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I’m still pretty sure I got all three the first time.