Joel B. Pollak - Page 297

Former Los Angeles mayor Antonio Villaraigosa has decided not to run for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by liberal Democrat Barbara Boxer after 2016. With strong support among Latino voters in California, Villaraigosa was seen as a major potential threat to Attorney General Kamala Harris, who was the first to declare for the seat.

The whiz kids of Silicon Valley are celebrating the GOP’s apparent collapse on Net Neutrality. The New York Times exults: “the little guys appear to have won.” It omits that the “little guys” are some of the richest people in America, and–by their own lights–the smartest. The odd thing is that the nerds who have an app for everythng seem to be unable to explain what Net Neutrality actually is, and why we need it. Case in point: Tuesday’s epic failure by Tumblr CEO David Karp on CNBC.

The Black Conservatives Fund (BCF), a political action committee (PAC) that declares it is “committed to turning out the black vote and elect black conservatives at every level of government,” has launched a fundraising drive around an effort to draft former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to run for U.S. Senate in California to replace retiring Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA). A recent poll showed that Rice outperformed all other candidates, actual and potential, from either major party.

A new Field Poll reveals that a majority of California registered voters still have a very positive view of Gov. Jerry Brown–even though a similar majority also believes he spends too much money on big government projects the state cannot afford.

The family of Kayla Mueller, the American hostage and humanitarian who was killed by ISIS earlier this month, has launched a new 501(c)3 charity in her memory. The charity, Kayla’s Hands, was announced by the family in an interview with NBC News that aired on the Today show Monday morning. It links to a website that promotes causes with which Mueller had worked, including the International Solidarity Movement, a radical pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel organization.

Despite the presence of Republican presidential contenders in the Golden State this weekend, a pair of Field Polls released late last week look grim for the GOP. One shows President Barack Obama’s approval rating among likely voters in the Golden State rising to 57%, “the best appraisal of Obama in over two years by Californians.” The other shows that fewer than one in five Californians approve of Congress, and a near-majority say Republican control of both houses of Congress is a bad thing.

On the eve of his historic, controversial, and critically-important address to Congress next week, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu faces a small-ball political barrage in Israel. His party, the Likud, lost a challenge against a U.S.-funded left-wing group, V15. The Prime Minister is being investigated for allegedly pocketing the deposits on beverages served at his residence, and his rivals are blaming him for rising housing prices in Israel, documented in a new report.

Former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani thinks that President Barack Obama doesn’t love America, and has now said so in public. He’s repeated the claim, several times, as he has been forced to defend it. Predictably, Democrats have seized on

The Obama administration has no shame whatsoever about its denialist approach to radical Islamic terror. Rather than admit that its conference on “violent extremism” was, at best, window-dressing after the embarrassment of avoiding the Paris anti-terror march, it is attempting to turn political correctness into a foreign policy doctrine. The latest example is Secretary of State John Kerry’s “plan” for fighting “violent extremism,” published Thursday in the Wall Street Journal.

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.”

The leader in the race to replace retiring U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) in America’s most liberal state is… Republican Condoleezza Rice, according to a new Field Poll released Wednesday. Rice, the former Secretary of State and Stanford don, is backed by 49% of voters–ahead of Attorney General Kamala Harris, the liberal Democrat who was the first to declare.

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.

Presidents Day 2015 comes in the midst of an upheaval about the state of U.S. foreign policy, and particularly regarding the State of Israel, whose Prime Minister will arrive in two weeks to deliver what will amount to a rebuke of President Obama’s negotiating stance on Iran. As this particular holiday lends itself to ranking the presidents from best to worst, it is worth considering how they compare on relations with Israel, which has been–despite ups and downs–a staunch ally since 1948.

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.

Nobel laureate and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel has confirmed that he will attend Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to a special joint session of Congress on March 3, despite the objections of some Jewish leaders.

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.