Gun Free Zone

A friend of mine sent me this article from Fox 5 NY.

Rabbi beaten with stone in Brooklyn hate crime attack

The NYPD was investigating a violent hate crime attack against an Orthodox Jewish rabbi in Brooklyn.

The 63-year-old, identified as Rabbi Avraham Gopin, was assaulted in Rochester Park in Crown Heights at about 7:40 a.m. on Tuesday morning.

Police say a man threw a rock at the rabbi.  The victim began to argue with the suspect, who began to punch him in the face.

New York City Councilman Chaim Deutsch says the rabbi suffered a broken nose and had several teeth knocked out. Gopin remained hospitalized at Maimonides Hospital on Tuesday evening.

Gopin’s son-in-law, popular Hasidic singer Benny Friedman, said Gopin was doing OK, despite the injuries that also included stitches on his head and lacerations on his body.

Seth Mandel, the Jewish reporter for the Washington Examiner went off on Twitter about this attack (unrolled for your reading convenience).

De Blasio won’t lift a finger, media yawn—the Jews of Crown Heights should be carrying.
ADL can only be shamed after so much blood spilled into a halfhearted act while its director goes on Al Sharpton’s show and encourages others to do the same.

If it can’t be blamed on right-wingers, the modern Jewish establishment sits on its hands while Jews are publicly stoned.

I have worked with and around the major Jewish organizations my whole life. So it pains me to point out the obvious: they are doing absolutely nothing about the wave of violence. Jews are telling me they’re taking off their yarmulkes on the subway platform. In New York City.

The attacks are against those clearly wearing Jewish attire, so most Jews don’t see anything different about their daily commute, while their Orthodox neighbor has to go incognito for fear of being thrown in front of a train.

Every single head of every single major Jewish organization—without exception—should feel ashamed to their core. Every single one. Yes, ADL is guiltier than most, but that doesn’t absolve you. Enjoy your half-mil salaries while this goes on.

Leave you with this: Everybody knows. Everybody knows. Everyone. No one gets a pass: Why Does No One Care About Violence Against Orthodox Jews?

Exactly this. I guess if you haven’t been pelted with rocks from passing cars in suburban New Jersey while walking home from shul you might not realize what the rest of us deal with.

NYC has essentially rendered 2A irrelevant, disarming the Jews they won’t help. Permits should be applied for by everyone, some are bound to be given access to their constitutional right. Form larger and more active shmira orgs. Become police officers.

And bring in the Israelis.

Lobby for security grants for cameras and more lights. Train neighborhood watch groups and give them whatever weapons are actually legal in NYC. Provide walking groups as much as possible to and from shul. Run for local office.

And make the phones at the ADL, Conference of Presidents, Federations/JCRC etc off the hook. Show up at the offices. Call them out publicly. And make sure every person in America knows Bill de Blasio won’t do something about this.

Look at every neighborhood where incidents have happened, look up their local, city, state and national representatives. Look at their party registration. Then make the Republican and Democratic Jewish groups take a break from sniping at each other on twitter and speak up.

Sorry to be a broken record on this, but: we’re living in a world only Jabotinsky understood.

Mandel is exactly, 100% right about everything that he says.  Most non-Orthodox Jews don’t care about attacks on Orthodox Jews.  The few that do bite their tongues about it for political reasons.

New York City has pretty much made concealed carry impossible and that needs to change.

The is allowing this to happen.

Jews need to do a better job of maintaining their own security because nobody is coming to help them.  This really applies to all people.

There are some things that Mandel left out of his Twitter rant that needs to be mentioned.

The people who are attacking Orthodox Jews in Brooklyn are not white supremacists.  They are overwhelmingly black teenagers and a few Muslims.  When this is discussed, it’s almost always in the form of “disagreements between the black and Jewish communities” and not anti-Semitic hatred.

In the Progressive hierarchy, Blacks and Muslims rank higher than Jews (especially Orthodox Jews) so this goes mostly unaddressed.

The Froward addresses this (article from Mendel’s thread)

It’s time we talk about how people love to hate Orthodox Jews.

It happens all the time. And it starts with casual rhetoric, as all things do. I witness it personally, often as the only Orthodox Jew in liberal spaces. “Did you know that there are some Orthodox rabbis whose expertise is in financial ethics in Jewish law?” I once remarked to another journalist, years ago.

“Orthodox rabbis who have financial ethics?” The colleague laughed. “What’s that, like stealing everyone’s money?”

It was just a joke. But it’s never just a joke. I hear this sort of banter far too often, thanks to the strange place I’m in as an Orthodox Jewish journalist. It’s my job to be openly critical of my own community when necessary, pointing out internal wrongdoings. And then, I must watch, anguished, as those who hate us take up that criticism of the dregs of our society and twist them into dangerous blanket statements that besmear entire communities.

Those who hate us abound. The Orthodox are the Jews of the Jews. We are othered, shamed, and ridiculed for our religious practices — by non-Orthodox-Jews and non-Jews alike. And that rhetoric often escalates into downright dehumanization.

Why will no one speak up on our behalf? Why don’t people rush to call out these hate crimes? Instead, they won’t even call it a hate crime. We have to hear them call it a mugging, or tell us it wasn’t due to the black hat or yarmulke — but actually due to a development, the schools, measles outbreaks, tax evasion, don’t you know.

Why won’t anyone speak up? Is it because they do not see Orthodox Jews as real Americans, as citizens deserving of the right to live safely in their communities? Are we too “other,” too “apart,” “disloyal,” to earn the privilege of peaceful existence? Is it because we are politically inconvenient?

Those are all dog whistles for what is at the heart of this: A deep, centuries-old discomfort with the religious Jew. The Jew who, though a proud American citizen, refuses to assimilate entirely; the Jew who insists on her own identity and practices.

Now, more than ever, Orthodox Jews will need the mobilization and support of secular and progressive Jews. Put political affiliations aside, and focus on the fact that in broad daylight, innocent Orthodox Jews are getting attacked — while politicians sit idly by.

Our secular brethren may walk in the street and have the luxury of blending into the crowd, as anonymous New Yorkers, but we wear our identities on our sleeves. And this puts us at the very front lines of anti-Semitism in the United States today.

What will it take to get you to pay attention?

The answer is simple.

Jew-haters target the Orthodox because they are visibly Jewish.  Every anti-Semitic cartoon and trope about Jews who look like Jews and are insular and not integrated into society caricature the Orthodox.

Why the Secular or Progressive Jewish community fails to stand up for the Orthodox is that the Secular or Progressive Jews are not Jews.  They are Bagel Bolsheviks or  Lox Liberals or Schmaltz Socialists (a Jews play on Limousine Liberals and Champagne Socialists).  They are Leftists and identity more strongly with that then they do the Jewish Community.

The Orthodox are overwhelmingly Conservative.  If not true Republicans, they are far more Conservative than Progressive Jews.  So when a Progressive favored minority violently attacks a Conservative Jew who is unabashedly Jewish, the Progressive Jew is inclined to side the way of other Progressives and not with their fellow Jew.

That is why the ADL, the wretched hive of Progressive Jewish scum and villainy, responds to an attack on Jews by holding a press conference with the instigator of tow American Programs: Al Sharpton.  Because the best way to fight anti-Semitism is to hold up the man responsible for the Crown Heights Riot and Freddy’s Fashion Mart arson.

The Progressive Jews activists and donors to Democrat politicians of New York City do not are about the attacks on Orthodox Jews and so chose not to use their influence to help.

Consider this: 53% of Jews voted for Mayro Bill de Blasio.

Just before the election of de Blasio in 2013, the New York Post published this article:

No way de Blasio missed Sandinistas’ anti-Semitism

In the wake of a short Post article noting that Bill de Blasio ignored (at best) the anti-Semitism of the rulers of Nicaragua during his 1988 visit there, his supporters have insisted the Sandinista junta wasn’t anti-Semitic. In fact, the record is clear — and ugly.

When it came to the 50 Jews in a few families who made up Nicaragua’s entire Jewish community, the Sandinistas had only scorn and hostility, even before taking power.

In December 1978, during Friday night services, a host of Sandinistas arrived in trucks and firebombed the only synagogue in Managua. As the congregation ran outside, the guerrillas forced them back in at gunpoint.

Guerrillas shouted, “Death to the Jews. What Hitler started we will finish.” Others yelled, “Judaism and Somozaism [after the then-ruler, Anastasio Somoza] are the same thing.”

A bunch of Socialists who hate Jews attacking Jews, this is… history repeating itself.

Ideologically, the Sandinistas had very close ties with both Moammar Khadafi’s Libya and Yasser Arafat’s PLO. A Sandinista cadre took part in the 1970 hijacking of an El Al airliner. The Sandinistas also fought alongside the PLO in its bid to overthrow the king of Jordan in the same year.

Both Libya and the PLO gave the Sandinistas economic and military aid after they gained power. Nicaragua became the first Central American nation to give the PLO diplomatic representation, at a time when it was listed officially by the United States as a terrorist group.

Jew-hating Muslims supporting Jew-hating Socialists.  I haven’t seen this since the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem giving support to Adolph Hitler.

Indeed, in 1988, the very year young Bill de Blasio traveled to Nicaragua, he could have read a major Rand Institute report, which noted the “support, training and arms furnished to the Sandinistas by the Palestine Liberation Organization.”

So when de Blasio went to the country, the evidence about Sandinista anti-Semitism was easy to find. This might be excused as a young man’s folly, were it not for Bill de Blasio’s continuing pride in the support he gave to Marxist Nicaragua decades ago.

So all evidence indicates that Bill de Blasio is a six-foot five-inch pile of Jew-hating Communist shit.  This is probably why he has no interest whatsoever in protecting the Orthodox Jews of New York City.

The Orthodox are not just Jews but the wrong kind of Jews.  Not just are they hated by typical Jew-haters for being obviously Jews, but they are hated by Leftist Jews for not being Progressives.  There are no Progressive political points to be scored protecting the Orthodox so they are left to get beaten bloody, and being subjects of the tyranny of New York City, they can’t even arm themselves against violent, life-threatening attacks.

Because nobody in power cares, this will continue.

The Progressives of New York and the surrounding areas will eventually do what the Leftist of Europe have done, make their area Judenfrei by ignoring attacks on Jews by other minorities.  That, I belive, is their goal.

If you are at all familiar with media trends online, one you will know about is “Republicans Pounce.”  The best single description of Republicans Pounce comes from (of all places) Urban Dictionary:

A headline in a newspaper or other article that describes Republicans (or other right-leaning individuals) attacking a Democrat (or other left-leaning individual) when that Democrat commits a misdeed. Always written by a reporter with left-wing political views, it will attempt to frame the Republicans as overzealous, and will either downplay, ignore, or excuse the Democrat’s misdeed. Commonly done by the New York Times or Washington Post, it is often viewed as a sign of the bias within the media.

“Republicans pounce! On Democrat caught murdering young woman.”

Both Commentary Magazine and the Washington Examiner have good pieces on this media phenomenon.

A few weeks ago, I wrote a post about a ridiculous brief that several Senate Democrats wrote to the Supreme Court, in which they basically threatened it over a New York City gun rights case.  The brief, which was so bad that the Wall Street Journal called it “an enemy of the court” brief as a parody of it being an amicus curiae (Latin for “friend of the court) brief, pretty much said that SCOUTS has become too partisan and if they decided for gun rights that the Democrats would pack the court or send all the Republican-appointed justices to lower courts.

Recently the Republicans sent a letter to the court as a response to the Democrats threat.  The Republicans had the temerity to remind the court that the judiciary is independent of politics and that the Republicans won’t let the Democrats threaten the Court.

The Republicans are right and that they ended with an RGB quote is icing on the cake.

Keep in mind, Republicans pounce.  This is how this was reported on by the media:

Republican senators just sent the US Supreme Court a strange letter

US senators, Democrats and Republicans alike, are in a huff over a Second Amendment case in the Supreme Court. The gun-rights matter, raised by the New York Rifle and Pistol Association and stemming from a New York City law, is inspiring unusual writing from both sides of the political aisle.

The latest missive to the court, submitted yesterday, comes in the form of a letter from Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell and 52 colleagues. It is basically about politics, not the law.

No, the letter is exactly about the law and the Court should follow the law and not worry about politic.

In fact, McConnell expresses no opinions about the issues in the case but reminds the justices that they are an independent body, not subject to pressure from politicians (a fact that they are surely aware of and an assertion that seems suspect coming from that particular writer).

Which is the job of the Supreme Court and which McConnell was affirming.

McConnell’s letter isn’t so much to the justices, however, despite being addressed to the court. It’s really a response to an amicus brief filed earlier in the month by five Democratic senators who believe the high court should consider the case moot.

This is how the Democrats amicus brief is introduced in the article.  You know, the brief that was a partisan smear of five of the nine Justices on the bench, questioning the integrity of the Court, and threatening the Court if it decides against the Democrats in NYC.

That brief wasn’t strange or political in any way.  The Republicans telling the Court to ignore that brief and to do their job as an independent third branch of the government is strange.

The filing from the Democrats noted poll results showing that many Americans believe the justices are political actors, which undermines the legitimacy of their decisions. It alluded to restructuring the bench and asserted that the court “is not well.”

“The implication is as plain as day,” McConnell’s letter states, “Dismiss this case or we’ll pack the court.” His letter goes on to express fear that Americans will be unable to trust the court—a claim not so different from the ones Democratic senators made in their brief—if the justices seem to be responding to politicians’ concerns.

So the Democrats say that every conservative victory is proof that SCOTUS is biased, and the court is illegitimate and needs to be restructured.

The Republicans say that they still have faith in the court the and the court bowing to a threat of restructuring will destroy its credibility.

The media doesn’t condemn the Democrats for their smears or threat but does condemn the Republicans for telling the Court not to worry about threats.

Damn the Republicans are pouncing hard on Democrat attacks on the checks and balances of the Constituion.

McConnell and his colleagues only expose their own distrust of the justices, as well as an inflated sense of self-importance, by urging the justices to “fulfill their oaths to faithfully and impartially follow the law.” In this sense then, signatories to the letter committed perhaps an even more egregious sin than the brief they discredit.

The Democrats “only expose their own distrust of the justices, as well as an inflated sense of self-importance, by urging the justices to” do what the Democrats want or suffer the wrath of the Democrats with an unprecedented upheaval of the Court.

In no rational universe is what the Republicans did a worse sin than what the Democrats did.  I’ve seen lawyers (one was mentioned in the WSJ article) say that if they were not Senators and wrote such a brief to the Court, they would be removed from the Federal Bar.

The Republicans’ letter didn’t even claim an interest in the case and so made no legal arguments—thus, their missive simply wastes court time and resources.

Yeah, that’s a waste of the court’s time and not the Democrat’s threat.

As this case moves forward, the narrative has been set.  Any victory for gun rights will be proof that the Court is biased and political and needs to be punished by the Democrats.

Any counter-argument to such threats to the checks and balances of our system will be Republicans pouncing.

And they wonder why “fake news” resounds so much with the Right in this country.

I woke up late this morning and made a beeline for the computer to see what was going on.  My heart jumped a wee bit between checking that it now had sustained winds of 145 mph (also known as Cat 5, AKA “Eff your Hurricane code, it is coming down) and that it may not be landing near me. In fact, it may not do it at all.

This is a scary bastard

I have delayed the installation of the hurricane panels for 24 hours to see if this sucker actually moves north enough for my paranoia.  Till then, I’ll let the missus continue with the praying.

UPDATE

Some models are now saying winds dropping to Cat 4 and then Cat 3. Fingers crossed or the Bahamas will get badly remodeled.

Ignore the tire. 😀

I am getting closer to the hardest part of the checklist: Waiting.

I found 2 extra gas cans last night and decided that it would not hurt to add 10 more gallons to the supplies.  South Floridians are officially driving in the polite/aggressive mode which means they will cut ou off, but won’t shoot/machete you outright.

Kidding aside, there is palpable anxiety which leads to people making dumb decisions like playing chicken with a shopping cart and cutting off the gas station line.

The black car had tried to cut in front of the truck whose owner went mad max and would not let him. The whole pack behind closed ranks to keep the interloper out and he was not happy at all which is why I started taking pictures.

Then something smart happened: the moment the line moved, the guy in the white car allowed the black car to go in effectively defusing any situation that may have risen in the contest of genitalia.

And that was the move to make.

Your number one philosophy for personal security should be a life long commitment to avoidance, deterrence, and de-escalation.

Avoidance: The act of avoiding or keeping away from (Three Stupid Rule.) If you can safely retreat from the encounter, by all means do so. For instance, if you are out for a walk and feel threatened or intimidated by an occupant of a car, you should retreat in the opposite direction that the car is traveling.
Deterrence: The act of discouraging someone from taking hostile action against you by being aware of them and their possible intent.
De-escalation: The act of decreasing in intensity. To not let your ego or emotions get the best of you, to refrain from escalating the problem into more than it already is. As a CCW you may need to back down from non-life threatening, argumentative encounters in order to not allow things to spiral out of control.
When these things do not work, then and only then may you need to show or use the gun. Just because we are carrying does not mean that we need to use the gun. You want to do whatever is reasonably possible to avoid using the gun. But when your well researched, well thought out “line in the sand” has been crossed you need to act without hesitation.

Roger Phillips.

I was reviewing the latest tracks and wind predictions for Dorian and I know I am going to get hit with Hurricane-Speed winds.

It seems the center lands well away from us down here, but we are going to be still 50-70 miles for which a tornado is just a mention in the news up north, but with a hurricane means you are in the crap, just not full power. Hurricanes re just too big not to get tagged.

And the estimated winds are not making me a happy human:

A Category 4 denotes winds of 130 to 156 mph or “I am gonna rip your roof off” winds. The sudden drop in the graphic corresponds to the moment the hurricane’s center hit land and starts losing strength, which according to the predictions/guesses is going to take 12 to 14 hours to occur.  And during that time ALL MODELS predict a turn north so Darien will become God’s Roomba and screw with Central Florida. You may want to invest in Orange Juice Futures.

Still in DEFCON 3.  See you guys later.

From Fox News:

Omar calls for UN to handle migration crisis at the southern border

Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., told a Minneapolis audience this week that the United Nations should be brought in to oversee the migration crisis at the southern border.

“We should do what any other country does, by dealing with this situation in a serious way,” she told the audience on Tuesday. “So we have to bring in the United Nations High Commissioner on Refugees – an agency that has the expertise and the training to handle massive flows of refugees humanely.”

Here is the video:

Just out of curiosity, what world does Ilhan Omar live in?

Does she really believe that the UN is “an agency that has the expertise and the training to handle massive flows of refugees humanely?”

Because I don’t think that is accurate.

Remember that it is UN Peacekeepers, the famed Blue Helmets that maintain the refugee camps.

A short search of the kinds of shit they get up to in refugee camps is pretty awful.  UN Peacekeepers and civilians have committed a huge number of rapes of refugees, and because of international law, they cannot be punished for rape by the country they are serving in.

Ilhan Omar complains about the conditions South American migrant children are kept in at US detention facilities, so she wants to bring in the same UN that was responsible for mass child rape are refugee centers in Africa.  That wasn’t an isolated event.  Multiple refugee camps across Africa in different conflicts had an epidemic of UN Peacekeeper child rape.

There is nothing the UN is capable of doing humanly.  When sent to Haiti after a natural disaster, UN Peacekeepers and civilians hoarded food and medical supplies and traded them for sex.

Congresswoman Ilhan Omar really wants me to believe that the only way for the United States to regain the moral high ground over African nations is to let the corrupt, child-raping Blue Helmets take over the detention centers on our southern border.

No member of the US Congress should ever invite the UN to police this nation and erode our sovereignty, but she did.

This is truly disgusting.  Not just does she demonstrate incredible ignorance of just how terrible the UN is, she clearly has the radical Left-Wing mindset that values the unaccountable bureaucracy of the UN over the United States.