◆ Here is the New York Times front page on the web, November 1, noon
See if you can find the missing words
That’s right: they completely omit ISIS, Jihad, “Islamic Extremism.”
They simply use the word “terror,” as they do with the shootings in Las Vegas.
They omit the political/religious motivation.
◆ Deadly ISIS attack on innocents near 9/11: European-style vehicle attacks on soft targets come to America
Followed ISIS instructions on conducting a truck attack “to a t”◆ Media bias: Here is the New York Times front page on the web, November 1, noon
See if you can find the missing words
That’s right: they completely omit ISIS, Jihad, “Islamic Extremism.”
They simply use the word “terror,” as they do with the shootings in Las Vegas.
They omit the political/religious motivation.
◆ Chuck Schumer says “don’t politicize” this incident
◆ Trump issues a flurry of tweets
◆ More as we learn more
Hat Tip to
◆ x
◆ x
Here is the Washington Post headline:
“A year ago, 49 people died at Pulse nightclub. Today, Orlando remembers”
Perfectly appropriate headline for a sad, human-interest story.
Their emphasis on remembering and mourning is good. That’s important for all of us.
What’s not good is the Post’s deliberately omitting the source of terror.
When they finally mention that a killer came to the Pulse nightclub, they intentionally mislabel as a “madman with a gun.”
That’s political spin–and it tarnishes serious reporting.
Here is the Post’s mischaracterization:
For 12 years, the club grew into an integral space for the gay community, one shattered within a matter of minutes by a madman with a gun. –Washington Post
Comment: I understand the focus of the article is on “remembering,” not analysis.
But they do mention the attack–and, when they do, they deliberately mischaracterize it.
It was not a “madman.” He had a purpose–a political/religious one.
He came to kill infidels in the name of Islam, as his terrorist movement interpretted it.
We need to speak clearly about that.
At the same time, we must not tar Muslims (or members of any religion) who go about their lives peacefully and honorably.
I write about these issues at Real Clear Politics: An Islamic Terrorist by Any Other Name (link here)
Topics and articles chosen with care. Linked articles in bold purple
◆ Tillerson, Mattis turn up the heat on Iran. Says it is still sponsoring terrorism throughout the Middle East (Washington Post)
But they do not want to overturn the nuclear agreement. They see cheating at the margins but not full-frontal violations
Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis slammed Iran as a destabilizing influence, particularly in Yemen, during a visit to Saudi Arabia. “Everywhere you look, if there’s trouble in the region, you find Iran,” Mattis told reporters.
This week, the Trump administration said it will undertake a comprehensive, 90-day review to judge whether lifting sanctions on Iran serves U.S. interests. So expect to hear more about this topic in the coming months.
In the meantime, amid all the criticism, here’s a development worth noting: Iran has met all of its commitments under the nuclear deal so far, the administration officially told Congress this week. –Washington Post
◆ 
The sheer fun of reading a slash-and-burn column. Not good as a steady diet, but, like cheese cake, great fun as an occasional treat.
Here’s Howie Carr’s take-down of Elizabeth Warren and her new book. The succession of nicknames alone is worth the read, and so is his parody of what she claims is her favorite curse word: poop. Really. That, she claims, is a f*^king curse word. (My own is “drat.”) Howie’s column is here. (Boston Herald)
This is a rough week for Chief Spreading Bull to be starting her tour of the trustafarian gated communities and alt-left fake-news media that are her main, make that only, constituencies. The authors of the Hillary campaign post-mortem, “Shattered,” are also making the green-room rounds. Ditto Bernie Sanders and the DNC’s Dumb and Dumber — Tom Perez and Keith Ellison.
That’s a lot of poop for the non-working classes to be wading through, but nevertheless, she will persist. . . .
“Trump slammed back at me repeatedly,” she says on page 226, “hitting me over and over with his lame nicknames.”
Like, what, Liewatha? What kind of poop did he hit you with? Was it something about your, ahem, Native American heritage? Why no mention of that anymore? She’s still demanding that the president release his taxes. Maybe he should agree to — right about the time she puts out her employment applications to the two Ivy League law schools that hired her as a
“woman of color.” –Howie Carr
Comment: Cowabonga.
◆ Scott Walker continues policies opposing mandatory unions, this time on state construction projects 
(Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel)
Contractors won’t have to work with unions on taxpayer-funded building projects and parents will have an easier time getting an anti-seizure drug derived from marijuana, under legislation Gov. Scott Walker signed Monday.
The measure on labor agreements, which passed the Legislature on party-line votes, is the latest in a series of moves to roll back union power by Republican lawmakers in recent years. –Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel
Comment: Wisconsin rises, Indiana Rises, Illinois sinks, California Sinks. Notice a pattern? Local voters do.
◆ Terror and the Fresno Murders: A comment
Kori Ali Muhammad has admitted killing three people–he was caught in the act–and said he wanted to kill more “white people.”
Police has said that, although he yelled “Allahu Akbar,” his crime was based solely on race, not Islamic terror.
What he did IS terrorism, in the sense that he meant to cause terror and did.
The question is whether it is connected to the broader movement of Islamic terror, included “inspired” lone-wolf actions.
Right now, it is hard to know whether he yelled the Arabic phrase as
Since he has already begun talking, he might say more about his motivations. We’ll gain other information, too, as police uncover his internet search history, personal and political affiliations, and more.
As Fresno police and the FBI release their findings, we will gain a sense of how these murders are is connected to the larger Islamic terrorism issue, as well as Muhammad’s hatred of white people.
◆ Hillary campaign working to discover who leaked embarrassing info for new book, Shattered (NY Post’s Page Six)
We’re told the details in the book, which depicts the campaign as inept, “could only have come from someone in the inner circle.” Dennis Cheng, the finance director of Clinton’s presidential campaign, has been sending out messages to determine where the leaks come from.
One source said, “The knives are out to find the people who spoke about the campaign to the authors of this book. –NY Post
Comment: In other news, the Adlai Stevenson campaign is doing a “top-to-bottom look at why we lost and what to do next.”
♦♦♦♦♦♦♦
♥ Hat Tip for helpful suggestions:
◆ Bryan Caisse for the Howie Carr piece on Elizabeth Warren
Topics and articles chosen with care. Linked articles in bold purple
◆ Repeal and Replace goes down to the wire. Vote postponed Thursday, will happen Friday
The Washington Post reports the President gave holdouts a clear choice: “Trump delivers ultimatum to House Republicans: Pass health-care measure on Friday or he’ll move on”
The move was a high-risk gamble for the president and the speaker, who have invested significant political capital in passing legislation that would replace the 2010 Affordable Care Act. For Trump, who campaigned as a skilled negotiator capable of forging a good deal on behalf of Americans, it could either vindicate or undercut one of his signature claims. If the measure fails, it would be a defeat for Trump in his first effort to help pass major legislation and it may also jeopardize other items on his wish list, including a tax overhaul and infrastructure spending.
Defeat would also mean that Obamacare — something that congressional Republicans have railed against for seven years — would remain in place. –Washington Post
◆ Democrats Plan to Filibuster Supreme Court nominee, Neil Gorsuch (New York Times)
To break the filibuster, the Republicans need 60 votes and, according to the NYT, they don’t have the 8 Democrats they need to do that.
Comment: Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer is playing to his enraged, activist base. I see two main consequences, one for elections, two for the Senate.
◆ The NYT’s spin misses the main story:
Their headline: Devin Nunes Puts Credibility of House Panel He Leads in Doubt
The real headline story: Devin Nunes says he has hard evidence the Trump Transition team was spied on; Hints at “smoking gun” connecting spying to Obama Administration (ZipDialog post)
Nancy Pelosi clearly did not like Nunes’ doing this. She called him a stooge. Presumable the 4th one.
◆ London’s terror killer identified as Khalid Masood Now, the Brits want to know how he slipped through their net (Independent, UK)
Comment: Actually, he slipped through the net twice. The intel services didn’t connect his name to terrorism; they just knew him as a criminal. At this point, nobody knows whether he was connected to a wider network or not. Second, Masood slipped through an open gate and got very near Parliament itself.
That said, British and European counter-terrorism services face overwhelming tasks. Decades of anti-Western immigrants, who have failed to assimilate, have been systematically ignored by political leaders who thought–quite wrongly–that “nobody would come to Britain [or Belgium or France or ….] unless they wanted to become like us.” Nope. And simply celebrating it as “multiculturalism” turned out to be a catastrophic failure, as Theresa May has recognized.
This problem goes far beyond beefing up domestic intelligence and policing. That’s part of the answer, but the problem is much larger.
◆ Former Russian lawmaker, critical of Putin, gunned down in broad daylight in Ukraine’s capital, Kiev. (CNN) Denis Voronenkov joins a long line of former Putin critics. The suspected killer was himself killed by Voronenkov’s bodyguard.
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko called Thursday’s killing a “Russian state terrorist act” on Twitter, and described Voronenkov as “one of the key witnesses of the Russian aggression against Ukraine” — referring to Russia’s 2014 annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea region and a subsequent war with pro-Russian rebels. –CNN
Ukraine’s president called it an “act of terrorism.”
Comment: This killing makes Pres.-elect Trump’s excuses for Putin, especially those in his 2017 Super Bowl interview with Bill O’Reilly, all the more noxious (Transcript here)
“But he’s a killer though,” O’Reilly said. “Putin’s a killer.”
“There are a lot of killers,” Trump responded. “We’ve got a lot of killers. What do you think — our country’s so innocent.”
◆ Bright Future for Solar Energy in India: Hopes for a booming domestic market and exports of solar panels manufactured there (Business Insider) PM Narendra Modi wants to spend over $3 billion aiding the industry. In a country where some 300 million are not connected to the grid, the government hopes to draw 40% of its energy from renewables by 2030.
♦♦♦♦♦♦♦
Topics and articles chosen with care. Linked articles in bold purple
◆ Health Care Bill in the Intensive Care Unit.
Doubts Ryan and Trump have the votes to pass the bill in the House, but the arm twisting continues to move Freedom Caucus members to the “yes” side.
If the vote is postponed, you will know Ryan did not convince enough members on the party’s right.
The New York Times has the most accurate headline: Leaders Struggle to Unite House Republicans Behind Health Bill. The words in the article are “uncertain fate.”
◆ Islamist attack near Big Ben and Parliament kills 5, including a police officer, and injures dozens
The extent of the terrorist’s support network and connections are being investigated urgently by British police and intelligence units.
Prime Minister Theresa May was resolute in response, saying Parliament would not postpone its Thursday session.
Comment: Before becoming PM, May was in charge of Britain’s homeland security and was highly regarded in the position. She’s the ideal politician to lead her country through this difficult time.
◆ “House Intelligence chair says Trump campaign officials were ensnared in surveillance operations” (Washington Post)
The chairman of the House Intelligence Committee on Wednesday accused U.S. spy agencies of abusing their surveillance powers by gathering and sharing information about President Trump and his transition team, an unproven charge that was quickly embraced by the White House but threatened to derail the committee’s investigation of possible Trump campaign ties to Russia.
Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), one of Trump’s closest allies on Capitol Hill, said he was alarmed after seeing intelligence reports disseminated after the Nov. 8 election that made references to U.S. citizens affiliated with Trump, and possibly the president-elect himself. –Washington Post
His Democratic counterpart on the committee, Adam Schiff, immediately blasted Nunes for revealing this to Trump and to the public before disclosing it privately to fellow committee members.
Comment: I watched CNN’s take on this. It skimmed over the issue headlined in the Washington Post and, instead, emphasized Adam Schiff’s position that Nunes had destroyed the investigation and that an independent commission was now needed. The cable channel virtually ignored the substance of Nunes’ comments, which implied that some intelligence agencies did collect information on Trump campaign officials and might have shared it within the Obama White House, a serious charge.
CNN panelists kept emphasizing the Russia investigation and suggesting that Trump’s impeachment was a real possibility if collusion was found. The CNN story is here.
◆ “Iran Charges Russia with Selling Out its Air Defense Secrets to Israel” (Popular Mechanics)
An engineer with Tehran’s Ministry of Defense alleged that codes forcing anti-aircraft missiles to treat hostile Israeli fighters as friendly were sold to Tel Aviv, effectively neutralizing Syria and Iran’s S-300 surface-to-air missile systems.
An Iranian official, described by the Jerusalem Post as a senior member of Iran’s Defense Ministry, told the Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Jarida that Russia had sold “codes” to Israel that identified Israeli aircraft as friendly. The codes were used by Israel to prevent its aircraft from being targeted. Israel has flown dozens of air raids over Syria, and despite advanced air defenses, only the latest raid, flown last Friday, involved an actual missile launch. –Popular Mechanics
Comment: Well, those allies in the Syrian fight seem to have some differences.
Hard to know if the Iranian charges are true, but it is known that the Israelis generally have good relations with Russia and have worked assiduously to make sure Israeli planes do not create problems for Moscow when they fly over Syria to interdict Tehran’s shipments to Hezbollah in Lebanon. Hezbollah is a client Iran supplies with lethal tools to threaten Israel. Israel, in turn, tries to prevent those ships as they transit Syria, and it wants to do so without creating conflicts with Moscow.
◆ “New research identifies a ‘sea of despair’ among white, working-class Americans” (Washington Post)
Sickness and early death in the white working class could be rooted in poor job prospects for less-educated young people as they first enter the labor market, a situation that compounds over time through family dysfunction, social isolation, addiction, obesity and other pathologies, according to a study published Thursday by two prominent economists [Anne Case and Nobel-prize-winner Angus Deaton] –Washington Post
Comment: This confirms what Charles Murray wrote in his pathbreaking book, Coming Apart. Murray, you will recall, is the scholar whose presence at Middlebury College set off left-wing students, who rioted, prevented him from speaking, and injured Prof. Allison Stanger, who was escorting him.
◆◆◆◆◆◆◆
Hand-picked and farm-fresh–
⇒Linked articles in bold purple
◆ The “inspired” has expired: “I’m here to die in the name of Allah,” and the attacker did just that at Paris Orly Airport (CNN)
◆ 
Chuck Berry, who helped create rock-and-roll, dead at 90. A full account here at ZipDialog, along with a recording of Johnny B. Goode.
◆ Trump wants to build a wall 30 feet high that is hard to climb or cut through and looks good from the US side, according to contract notices posted on a US Government website. (Associated Press) There will be automated gates for people and vehicles.
The government will award a contract based on 30-foot-wide sample walls that are to be built in San Diego. –AP
Pres. Trump’s proposed budget included an initial $2.6 billion request. The total cost is expected to be $12-15 billion.
◆ Hillary Clinton says she is “ready to come out of the woods.” (New York Times)
Comment: The woods are overjoyed.
◆ Republican House bill on healthcare would allow states to tailor some requirements, including whether to require able-bodied adults to work or engage in some substitute, such as volunteer work or education.
Here is how the Washington Post headlines that news. You be the judge if this is a fair headline:
“Republicans threaten to deny poor people medical care if they aren’t working” (Washington Post headline)
Many forms of public assistance, including food stamps, require recipients to work, look for work, volunteer or participate in vocational training. The work requirements vary from one program to the next and have varying requirements vary by the program and traits of the recipients, such as their ages and whether they have children.
Yet when it comes to health insurance, such requirements would be nearly impossible to enforce, conservative and independent experts on the Medicaid program said Friday. –Washington Post
Comment: If you wondered what Harry Reid is doing after retirement, he’s writing headlines for the Washington Post
◆ Parody Song: “I’ve Got Friends in Safe Spaces”
Come on in and let’s be cozy. Showin’ off participation trophies
Watching CNN in safe spaces –Chad Prather and Steve Mudflap McGrew
◆ Finally, Donna Brazile admits that she was cheating at CNN.
She was doing it to help Hillary but still won’t admit that. (She says she did it to make “all our candidates look good.” A bald-faced lie. What did you leak to Bernie, Donna?)
Of course, Hillary still won’t admit she received the questions in advance.
♦♦♦♦♦♦♦
A Palestinian terrorist in Jerusalem did what Jihadis have done in Germany, France, Canada, and elsewhere. Sometimes they use cars, sometimes small trucks or large ones, sometimes even bulldozes.
In Jerusalem this week, the Islamist attacker had a good job and family, so the familiar media tropes did not apply.
Here is the disturbingly-biased BBC tweet describing the attack:
Notice:
Everything about this attack–from the earliest information–indicated a terrorist attack, designed to kill Jews. That is the painful truth the BBC tweet deliberately obscures.
That’s not reporting. That’s editorializing.
As the Jewish Press put it, the only thing missing here is the BBC not calling city “Al Quds.”
The underlying BBC story’s first sentence described what really happened, though it still does not call it terror.
The BBC tweet is shameful. It deliberately obscures the truth, protecting Islamists, demeaning Israelis killed by them.
♦♦♦♦♦♦♦
♦ Hat tip to my friend, Marcia Sukenik Weiss, for alerting me to this tweet.
Hand-picked and farm-fresh–
⇒Linked articles in bold purple
◆Pres. Obama reversed decades of US policy and allowed a Palestinian-initiated, Arab-backed initiative attacking Israel to pass the UN Security Council without a US veto. Obama’s parting stab at Israel is facing backlash from all Republicans and some Democrats, says The Hill.
A characteristic comment on the Republican side is that of Paul Ryan, who calls Obama’s move “absolutely shameful.”
Comment: My initial judgment is that Pres. Obama’s move will have a major impact on the political alignment of Jews. It will reinforcement the movement, which began under Obama, of the Democratic Party siding with the anti-Israeli left in the US and Europe, and that, in turn, will accelerate the movement of non-secular US Jews away from the Democrats and toward the Republicans.
The fact that Democrats are even considering Rep. Keith Ellison, a former follower of Louis Farrakhan and still a speaker at events aimed at delegitimating Israel, is another blow to the decades-long connection between Jews and the Democratic Party.
Obama’s move will also deepen the division among Jews, pitting the secular, social-justice left, which has little interest in Israel and is deeply critical of its security and settlement policies, and the more traditional, observant community, which sees a rising global threat to Jews and believes Israel is a Jewish homeland under threat from radical Islam and a hostile global left, centered in Europe and US universities.
Bottom Line: Obama’s move harms Israel and harms the Democratic Party. Like so many of Obama’s policies over the past eight years, it is a political mistake that will cost his party for years to come.
◆ The latest Jihadi attack in Berlin will change German policies in two major ways, writes Joseph Joffe in The Guardian
Joffe notes that the surveillance policies were already under pressure from Putin’s spying, but the need for change is more compelling now.
◆ Another politically-connected religious leader scamming the public; this time it is a Hasidic rabbi. (NY Daily News)
◆ How can the Inuit survive cold temperatures so well? The answer, according to a new study, may lie in some genetic inheritance from a now-extinct variant of humans, gone for 500,000 years. (NYT; link corrected)
♦♦♦♦♦♦♦
Hand-picked and farm-fresh–
⇒Linked articles in bold purple
◆ Utter failure in Berlin: They blame it on incompetence but political correctness also played a major role, say Rachel Ehrenfeld and Stephen Bryen (American Center for Democracy)
German security agencies failed to arrest/deport Anis Amri, the Tunisian criminal, asylum seeker with known ties to radical Islamists groups, who was overheard volunteering as a suicide bomber. Apparently, their political correctness, enforced by government policies and decades-long pressure from rapidly growing Muslim communities yielded the Islamists’ desired results. Videos from ISIS instructing jihad-by tracks attacks, especially during the Christian holidays were ignored, as were last month’s U.S. warning. Incredibly, no efforts were made to even secure open Christmas markets. –Rachel Ehrenfeld and Stephen Bryen
◆ A serious inquiry into the relationship between radical Islam and the western nation-state. (Daniel Johnson in The New Criterion)
The present confrontation between Islam and the West is thus not, strictly speaking, a clash of civilizations, but the attempt to impose a theocratic religion upon a secular civilization, if necessary by force. This is asymmetrical warfare in the widest possible sense . . . . It is all the more acute because the secular West is reluctant to face the fact that it is faced by a holy war for which it is almost entirely unprepared. –Daniel Johnson in The New Criterion
◆ Not since Nixon has a President faced such a tough China challenge, says Evan A. Feigenbaum of the Carnegie Endowment (National Interest) The major change, he says, is that for four decades the US has assumed a “successful” China would be good for the U.S. Not anymore.
◆ An amazing behind-the-scenes story about Obama + Palestinians versus Israel + Egypt + Trump. The Times of Israel reports that Pres. Obama was about to change long-standing US policy toward Israel at the UN and was working with the Palestinians to do it. The Israelis, they say, blocked it by going to Trump, who worked with the Egyptians to block it.
Comment: This action by a president-elect is extremely rare, but then, so was Obama’s plan to flip US policy.
◆ The Iran Deal Pres. Obama negotiated is the lynchpin of his foreign policy. But, says Lee Smith, it is fundamental mainly because it reorients US alignment in the region, much closer to Iran and away from the Saudis and Israel. Trump will face hard decisions in dealing with Iran, but he will begin with a very different approach. Obama gave significant carrots to Iran, just to keep them negotiating. Trump thinks that’s the opposite of smart negotiations. (Tablet)
♦♦♦♦♦♦♦
♥ Hat Tip for helpful suggestions:
◆ Ed Lasky for two stories, one on the Iran Deal, the other on the UN, Obama and Israel
