Friday, April 18, 2025

Victor Davis Hanson explains what's Happening in IV League Schools.

"They Can't Hide It: Something HUGE is Happening in America..."

UPDATED: Israel Understands the Enemy It Faces — Do the Rest of Us?

Douglas Murray   

"In 2023, a month after the October 7 massacre, another actress, Susan Sarandon, addressed an anti-Israel protest near Bryant Park in Manhattan. At that protest, the crowds chanted “From the river to the sea,” “Israel is a racist state,” and “There is only one solution — intifada, revolution.” It was a reminder, if such was needed, that there is always a type of Westerner who is desperate to see the land soaked with blood — so long as it is not their own."


Iran against the West   "Today the government most responsible for spreading the accusation that Israel is expansionist and colonialist is the revolutionary Islamic government in Iran, which has spent recent years assiduously expanding its colonies. What has Gaza become but a colony of Iran? What has Iraq become since Iran moved into the vacuum left by America after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein? Or Yemen? Or Syria, into which Iran had poured Hezbollah and other forces? Iran and its proxies and mouthpieces in the West have spent years accusing Israel of being a colonial, expansionist state while all the time expanding and colonizing everywhere they can reach in the region. Why did the mullahs order Hezbollah to engage in the Syrian civil war except to prop up Syria as a forward base of Iran? And what of Lebanon, which even in 2006 still had a government able to distance itself from the actions of Iran’s army, Hezbollah. By the time Hamas started its October 2023 war against Israel and Hezbollah joined in, Lebanon had become practically a colony of Iran — with Hezbollah ruling the country by terror and setting up its weaponry among Lebanese civilians. For years Hezbollah had set up checkpoints at Beirut Airport for passport control and had acted as the government of that country, whether the people wanted that or not. And there is much evidence that they do not.

"Despite this, many Western intellectuals and journalists celebrated the flight of Khomeini from Paris. Among them was Michel Foucault, the left-wing French philosopher, who saw Khomeini as bringing a spiritual revolution to Iran that would finally do away with the Western sins of capitalism and materialism. Richard Falk, professor emeritus at Princeton, greeted the Iranian Revolution by reassuring readers of the New York Times that the depiction of Ayatollah Khomeini “as fanatical . . . and the bearer of crude prejudices seems certainly and happily false.” In a subsequent piece for Foreign Policy (“Khomeini’s Promise”), Falk added that “Khomeini’s Islamic republic can be expected to have a doctrine of social justice at its core; from all indications it will be flexible in interpreting the Koran.”  

'It was soon proved that nothing could have been further from the truth. From 1979 to the present day, the revolutionary Islamic government in Tehran has subjugated the Iranian people, condemned women to second-class status, imprisoned and tortured Iranian students, and instituted public hangings for people accused of “crimes” such as homosexuality. The hope that, given time, a “moderate” Iranian revolutionary leader would emerge proved false. And while the new government in Iran railed against the West for the sins of “colonialism” and much more, the regime spent its decades in power taking over not just Iran but the wider Middle East'

"Everywhere the same rule holds. Groups like Hamas that delight in their bloodlust accuse the Israelis of being insatiable killers. Palestinian groups and their supporters who encourage their youth to view death through “martyrdom” as the highest form of valor claim that the Jews are bloodthirsty child-killers. People who use rape as a weapon of war accuse the Israelis of insatiably raping prisoners in Israeli jails."



CA Gas Prices Are Set to Surge Due to Newsom's Latest Failure; Chevron Exec Says State Is 'Uninvestable'

 Jennifer Van Laar  The old "greedy oil companies" routine again; always bought by those who vote Democrat. TD

"As to separation between California prices and the prices in the rest of the United States, we can offer the following information. For Valero, California is the most expensive operating environment in the country and a very hostile regulatory environment for refining. California policy makers have knowingly adopted policies with the expressed intent of eliminating the refinery sector.


"While gas prices in much of the country have gone down since their highs earlier this year, gas prices in California are soaring again, with prices almost exactly $1 per gallon more than they were a month ago. The average price in Los Angeles County was $6.41/gallon as of Sunday, October 9, while the statewide average was $6.33, 
according to AAA.

"Since polls show this is one issue that does move the needle with California voters, while Gov. Gavin Newsom doesn’t seem to feel threatened by his GOP challenger, state Sen. Brian Dahle, he knows that his supermajority in both legislative houses could be threatened if potential voters are angry enough to make it to the polls.

"So, in his trademark style, Newsom is “taking action.” First, he angry tweeted, but after being asked what he was going to actually do about it, well, of course, he’s going to call for a new tax. On the oil companies. To put money back in *our* pocket. Pretty sure that’s not how that works, but the bigger issue for Gavin is that the legislature has already adjourned for the year.

"Once that was pointed out to him, he called for a special session of the legislature, to convene — a  month after the election. Given that Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon appointed a commission to study the issue (to great fanfare) back in May and we’ve heard absolutely nothing from them, it seems that California Dems aren’t really interested in the true answer and would rather just blame “greedy oil companies” and tax them." . . .

Hot Takes: Chris Van Hollen Gets Hit With Intense Backlash for Bizarre Optics of Meet With Abrego Garcia

Nick Arama; RedState

These people vote!


New Info About Kilmar Abrego-Garcia's Arrest - and Who He Was With - Should Humiliate Dems (But It Won't)

Chris Van Hollen Digs That Hole Deeper As He Makes Another Statement About Bringing Abrego Garcia 'Home'

4D Chess: Bukele Lets Van Hollen Meet With Abrego Garcia for Damning Pics That Blow Up Dem Narrative   . . ."He probably also stops a stream of other Democrats from coming down as well with this action. But we'll see. 

"Now, Democrats are going to have to deal with the picture of one of their senators meeting with this character. 

"How's that going to run in the midterms? Not well for the Democrats with all the things that have come out now on Abrego Garcia. "

 


Scott Jennings rips apart CNN panel's desire to bring MS-13 associate back to US   . . ."I see the pictures tonight, and I think, 'Boy, the party of women is really covering themselves in glory.' I don't understand why the American left falls in love with the worst people. You've got a gangbanging, human-trafficking, wife-beating illegal alien and a United States senator with a ludicrous display in El Salvador having mai tais. I do not get it," Jennings said." . . .

Rubio: To Protect Free Speech, The Censorship-Industrial Complex Must Be Dismantled

 The Federalist  

"We are not afraid. At her birth, America was a lone beacon of freedom to the world. If necessary, we will happily be that lone beacon once again."


"During his historic comeback campaign in 2024, President Trump vowed to close the book on a dark chapter in America’s constitutional history: the weaponization of America’s own government to silence, censor, and suppress the free speech of ordinary Americans. The American people responded to this promise by giving President Trump a landslide victory last November.

"Everything this administration has done since then has been laser-focused on fulfilling the promises made during that campaign. Today, it is my pleasure to announce the State Department is taking a crucial step toward keeping the president’s promise to liberate American speech by abolishing forever the body formerly known as the Global Engagement Center (GEC).

"GEC was supposed to be dead already. But, as many have learned the hard way, in Washington, D.C., few things ever truly die. When Republicans in Congress sunset GEC’s funding at the end of last year, the Biden State Department simply slapped on a new name. The GEC became the Counter Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference (R-FIMI) office, with the same roster of employees. With this new name, they hoped to survive the transition to the new administration.

"Today, we are putting that to an end. Whatever name it goes by, GEC is dead. It will not return.

"Over the past half-decade, bodies like GEC, crafted by our own governing ruling class, nearly destroyed America’s long free speech history. The enemies of speech had new lingo to justify their authoritarian impulse. It was “disinformation,” allegedly pushed by nefarious foreign governments, that was the No. 1 threat to “our democracy.” To protect “our democracy,” this “disinformation” had to be identified and stamped out.

"GEC’s history shows the pernicious way Washington turns laudable public goals into a means of entrenching its own power and rolling back the freedom of regular Americans. GEC began life in 2011 as the Center for Strategic Counter Terrorism Communications (CSCC). CSCC’s purpose was to monitor the narratives of Al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations and advise the American government on what counterterrorist narratives to use in response." . . .

E Pluribus Loot’em

 Ann Coulter

 "When a mistaken decimal point on a shipping invoice netted them an unwarranted $5,000, the sisters realized that no matter what number they entered, it would be paid, no questions asked."


"It’s understandable that Democrats are fuming about Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency ferreting out waste, fraud and abuse, inasmuch as the people committing the waste, fraud and abuse are their constituents. What I can’t understand is why they’re saying so out loud.

"The Democrats claim there’s no “waste, fraud and abuse,” and if there is, it’s minuscule — infinitesimal — and if there’s an occasional overpayment, we have inspectors general coming down with a claw hammer on the miscreants — or at least they were, until Trump fired them! (Technically, he fired 17 out of 70 inspectors, and I’m sure every last one of them was absolutely vital.)

"Basically, they’re staking their claim on the idea that the government is a streamlined, well-oiled machine. The only step that would “actually” combat waste, fraud and abuse, Democrats say, is to “invest in a skilled workforce.” (“Invest” meaning, raise the salaries of federal government employees and, no, this has nothing to do with the fact that government unions give 99% of their political donations to us.)

"The left’s full-throated defense of federal waste reminded me of my “Excellence in Government” file.

"It’s been busting at the seams lately, with the addition of the trillion dollars stolen from COVID relief funds. For perspective, that’s more than we’ve given to Volodymyr Zelenskyy, more than it cost Jeff Bezos to send the Real Housewives into orbit, and is nearly as much as California’s Reparations Committee decided was owed to the state’s black residents." . . .

Pretending to be providing meals for low-income children, the Somalis collected hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars, which they spent on luxury cars, multiple homes, expensive jewelry and other purchases that are not remotely meals for low-income children. (They didn’t scam the Payment Protection Plan because so few Somalis in Minnesota had jobs even before the pandemic that it wouldn’t have been believable.)

In trouble? Find yourself a Democrat judge

"This would mean even if we shut down our entire federal court system to do nothing else the process that the Democrats demand would take multiple centuries to complete. Which Democrats understand. Because they don’t want any aliens removed. They want them all registered—to vote. The judicial process is for Americans. Immediate deportation is for illegal aliens.

Broc Smith

Leftist judges are planning to run out the deportation clock  "The way our immigration system should work is for people outside of America to seek permission to come in. If there’s a genocide or famine problem somewhere in the world (as opposed to an “I don’t like my poverty-stricken country” problem), the president can officially open America’s doors to those refugees. When a relatively small number of people circumvent those rules, they can be deported instantly if they don’t claim refugee status and be reasonably processed through the courts if they do.

"The Democrats stood that system on its head. They opened the borders, flooding the country with tens of millions of illegal aliens. Biden then issued ex post facto announcements that entire nations’ worth of illegal aliens were refugees because of their specific country’s poverty and crime—a standard that means the entire Third World is entitled to refugee status. Now, leftist judges are usurping entirely the Executive’s Article II authority over the border.  

"Trump wants to reverse this trend, but judges are standing in the way. From the Supreme Court down, they say that those people who illegally entered America by the tens of millions and those among them who were granted ex post facto amnesty by the hundreds of thousands are all entitled to individual hearings." . . .