Joel B. Pollak - Page 288

The most outrageous thing about President Barack Obama’s “extremism” summit Wednesday was not that it failed to identify Islamic terror as the primary threat. Nor was it that there were several Muslim representatives with extremist views present. Nor was it that the president still refuses to acknowledge ISIS (or ISIL) as “Islamic”—even while referring to it by an acronym whose first letter stands for “Islamic.”

SACRAMENTO, California — Breitbart California marked its first year on the statewide media and political scene with a happy hour across the street from the State Capitol on Tuesday evening. A bipartisan crowd of legislators, staffers, political activists, journalists, think-tank scholars and well-wishers joined the Breitbart California staff at Chops Sacramento.

The mainstream media are reporting the “standoff” over gay marriage in Alabama as if the state’s Chief Justice, Roy Moore, is the reincarnation of (Democrat) George Wallace, standing in the schoolhouse door, defying the federal government over desegregation. The meme suits the gay rights movement perfectly, as activists have long likened the struggle for marriage to the struggle against Jim Crow anti-miscegenation laws. Yet Moore is simply following the Constitution, not defying it.

The State Department spokesperson has the task of defending the president’s foreign policy more often than any other government official. During President Barack Obama’s first term, that unenviable task fell to the opaque Victoria Nuland, whose redeeming feature was that there was a spine behind the smokescreen. (“F*** the E.U.,” she famously said, albeit in private, on Russia and the Ukraine.) Not so with successors Jen Psaki and Marie Harf, the clueless defending the hopeless.

The circle of caring and empathy often extended by liberal Americans to all and sundry is not as universal as it seems. It tends to exclude those who take pride in fighting for their country and their values–as well as those who are under attack and have no choice but to fight. And it often excludes pro-Israel Jews, and Israelis.

The pair of deadly shootings on Saturday in Copenhagen–one at a free-speech debate, one near a synagogue–reprise last month’s terrorist attacks in Paris by targeting journalists and Jews once more. If, as suspected, the shootings are the work of Islamic terrorists, it is clear that the West faces an enemy determined not only to kill, but to destroy our core values. That, in turn, means that the West must wage ideological war against radical Islam. “Pinpoint” air strikes are not enough.

The shocking triple murder of three young Muslims in North Carolina may yet turn out to be a hate crime. However, police say the cause was a dispute with the alleged killer over a parking space. A neighbor has said he was an “equal opportunity” hater. And the alleged killer, an atheist with a progressive political bent, had apparently backed the controversial “Ground Zero mosque” on social media when conservatives had opposed it. So the evidence of a hate crime appears weak, thus far.

I lifted the .45 semi-automatic, charged it, and aimed at the base of his throat. I squeezed the trigger, and put a bullet through my mark as the Springfield XD kicked sharply.My next shot was left of center, above the right lung, as I struggled to recover my aim. My next shots, though, were right where I wanted them: above the hands, through the heart, between the eyes. At the signal, we retrieved our targets, perforated Hitler caricatures with the words “Never Again” in Gothic script.

David Carr, a media columnist for the New York Times who sought to understand conservative media, died suddenly on Thursday night after collapsing in the Times newsroom. Carr was both a critic of, and a friend to, conservative new media, and was one

Celebrity gossip site TMZ.com approached Malcolm X’s daughter Ilyasah Shabazz and asked her about the “N-word” in hip hop. Shabazz agreed that the widespread use of the word was “ridiculous,” but added that white people should be able to use it in hip hop music as well: “If you’re going to use it, then everybody should be able to use it, right?” she said.

The student council of the Durban University of Technology has voted to demand the university expel Jewish students who do not support the Palestinian cause.

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker holds a wide lead over all other likely Republican presidential candidates among California’s likely Republican primary voters, according to a new poll conducted by the California Political Review.

Despite all we already know about the so-called Islamic State terrorist organization, the murder of American Kayle Mueller still manages to be shocking. And her defiant declaration of faith, in a letter to her family, is both heartbreaking and uplifting. Her death–which ISIS had the nerve to blame on Jordanian bombing–cries out for vengeance, not just “justice”–the term the president chose, one that may denote retribution but might also offer the undeserved dignity of civilian trial.

A controversial referendum that reduced prison sentences for several categories of minor criminal offense is being blamed for a sharp rise in crime in parts of California, according to Seattle-based Fox News correspondent Dan Springer.

President Barack Obama’s attempt to dismiss the antisemitic terror attack on a kosher supermarket in Paris last month as a “random” shooting turns out to be more than a gaffe: it is administration policy.

The strong opposition to Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to Congress on March 3 is making an important speech even more so. The address, on the eve of a grim nuclear deal with Iran, and against overwhelming political pressure at home and abroad, may be the most important speech on geopolitical affairs since Ronald Reagan’s remarks at the Berlin Wall in 1987. It is also already a turning point in Jewish history.

Barack Obama lied about his opposition to gay marriage, according to David Axelrod’s new memoir. The revelation is reported by Time magazine’s Zeke Miller as: “Axelrod: Obama Misled Nation When He Opposed Gay Marriage In 2008.” But that headline could just as easily have read: “Obama Misled Nation About His Faith,” since Obama claimed his opposition to gay marriage was based on his religious views.

The Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) has accused Jewish critics of Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to Congress of repeating the mistakes of the Nazi era.

President Barack Obama has called the terror attack on Jews in a kosher supermarket in Paris last month an act of random violence, rather than a terror attack or an antisemitic attack. Obama’s remark appears in an interview with Matt Yglesias of Vox.com. The president calls the attackers “violent, vicious zealots who behead people or randomly shoot a bunch of folks in a deli in Paris.” He elides past the religion of the attackers or the victims in an attack that claimed four innocent lives.

Americans–particularly conservative Americans–are accustomed to seeing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a strong international leader. He is “the Churchill of our time,” says talk radio’s Mark Levin. Yet Netanyahu struggled to win re-election in 2013, and faces stronger headwinds than ever as new elections approach on Mar. 17. Here are the top five reasons he may lose, and be replaced by opposition leaders Isaac Herzog and Tzipi Livni (who would rotate the leadership).

New polls indicate that the surge enjoyed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in polls over the past two weeks may be ending. A survey of likely voters by the Times of Israel showed Netanyahu’s opposition, the Zionist Union, headed by opposition leader Isaac Herzog, now has a small but significant lead. In addition, among the roughly 1 in 4 voters still undecided before the Mar. 17 elections, more are leaning towards the opposition than Netanyahu’s Likud.

Secretary of State John Kerry held a surprise meeting Sunday with his Iranian counterpart, Javad Zarif, in Munich–the city made infamous for “appeasement” after the western powers granted Hitler part of Czechoslovakia in 1938. Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told his Cabinet that he intended to resist the deal that Kerry and Zarif were striking.

There are probably some friends of Israel who oppose Netanyahu’s speech out of a sincere concern that he might alienate the Obama administration. Some of those calling upon him to cancel, like Herzog, have personal political gain in mind. And some, like Rabbi Jacobs and the Democrats in Congress, seem more worried about the political embarrassment to President Barack Obama that might result from Netanyahu exposing the failure–and danger–of Obama’s Iran policy.

When Neel Kashkari made his ill-fated run for governor last year against popular incumbent Democrat Jerry Brown, many thought Kashkari’s real goal was establishing his statewide credentials so that he might challenge for Senate once one of the two long-serving incumbents retired. But Kashkari said this weekend that he would not challenge for the open seat being vacated by Barbara Boxer, according to the Sacramento Bee, meaning that no Republicans have yet declared for the race.

Despite a supposed White House policy against meeting foreign leaders facing elections, Vice President Joe Biden and Secretary of State John Kerry both met with Israeli opposition leader Isaac Herzog in Munich on Saturday. Herzog is the main rival of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the Mar. 17 election, and his supporters played up the meeting as evidence that Herzog is more respected by the Obama administration and world leaders in general than Netanyahu.

National Security Advisor Susan Rice formally released President Barack Obama’s new National Security Strategy at the Brookings Institution on Friday, to mixed reviews. The document repeated many of the president’s controversial claims from recent days, such as that talks have “stopped the progress of Iran’s nuclear program.” One element of the strategy is already obsolete: it commits to “seek a stable Yemen” on the day Iranian-backed rebels have taken control of the country.

Despite–or perhaps because of–the outrage of the Obama administration and left-wing Democrats in Congress, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his Likud party continue to surge in Israeli polls, reaching their widest lead of the election thus far, according to a Jerusalem Post/Maariv Sof Hashavua poll. The poll, which shows Likud leading its closest rival by four seats in the 120-seat Knesset, is the widest lead that the Likud has enjoyed leading up to the Mar. 17 election.

President Barack Obama told the National Prayer Breakfast that Americans ought to be humble in the fact of radical Islam, because “people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ” as well. In addition to offending much of his audience and some of the nation with his sophomoric moral relativism, the president also obscured a fact that ought to be obvious but is rarely spoken aloud: that as far as the world’s religions go, Christian civilization has done the most to advance freedom.

President Barack Obama offered the nation a lesson in moral relativism at the National Prayer Breakfast on Thursday, when he admonished Americans not to “get on our high horse” about radical Islam because “people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ,” including here in the United States. Obama’s statement was both immoral and insensitive, and appeared to excuse the grotesque atrocities carried out by radical Islam, as well as his own passivity in responding.

The terrorist group known as Islamic State (or ISIS, ISIL, and Daesh) has publicly screened its film of a captured Jordanian pilot being burnt alive inside a steel cage. The gruesome movie, which originally appeared on the Internet, was shown on giant video screens in the Syrian city of Raqqa to crowds shouting “God is Great” at the moment of the pilot’s painful death.

Newly-inaugurated Illinois governor Bruce Rauner is the state’s first Republican governor in 12 years. In a state suffering the worst fiscal crisis of any in the Union, save perhaps California, the billionaire businessman is expected to restore sound principles to state management. Yet in his first “State of the State” address, Rauner failed to mention the words “pension,” “debt,” or “deficit”–and focused on other issues, including labor union reform and a proposed minimum wage hike to $10.

The purported deal would offer the U.S. only 20% of what it wants, and would seem to confirm reports from Israeli sources last week that Iran will receive 80% of what it wants. Once, the U.S. had agreed that a bad deal would be worse than none.

Elementary schools in the inner-city Los Angeles neighborhood of Compton have a far higher vaccination rate than schools in wealthy Beverly Hills, state data show. The rate in Compton is 93.80%, near the 2013-14 national median of 94.7%, with one school at 100%. In Beverly Hills elementary schools, the rate is a mere 78.33%, creating the conditions for an outbreak.

A Los Angeles Times report released early Wednesday morning reports that many child care facilities in Los Angeles have alarmingly low vaccination rates–some reportedly as low as 51%. The report indicates that private schools have lower vaccination rates than public schools, as wealthier parents opt out of inoculation for communicable diseases like measles.

Democrats seized on Tuesday’s Obamacare repeal vote in the U.S. House of Representatives to raise cash, sending a slew of fundraising spam to their email lists, raising the alarm–and raising potential millions of dollars from alarmed supporters.

On Tuesday evening and Wednesday, Jews across California and the world will celebrate Tu B’Shvat (literally, “the 15th of the Hebrew month of Shvat”), the “New Year for trees.” The holiday roughly coincides with the appearance of the first spring blossoms in Israel–as well as in California, large portions of which enjoy a similar climate to that of the Holy Land. In recent years, the religious holiday has been overtaken by environmental themes–and, lately, by anti-Israel activists.