May 9, 2024 — Scott Johnson
President Biden publicly acknowledged his betrayal of Israel’s effort to Israel’s anticipated offensive in Rafah in an interview with Erin Burnett on CNN. The CNN story on the interview is here. As a practical matter, Biden supports Hamas. Biden opposes Israel. Biden’s declaration of “ironclad” support for Israel is “inoperative,” to borrow a term from Watergate. On Tuesday Biden gave a Holocaust Remembrance Day speech decrying those calling for “the
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May 9, 2024 — Scott Johnson
I wrote about my friend Scott Sansby last year in “My friend Scottie.” We have been friends since my family moved from Moorhead to St. Paul in 1958. In other words, we have been friends since the Eisenhower administration. Scottie has an incredibly wide network of friends and admirers, but we stayed best friends through high school and have remained friends ever since. I share so many memories with Scottie
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May 8, 2024 — Scott Johnson
I want to add this footnote to my adjacent post on “The campus seen.” We can’t understand what’s happening in the current eruption of anti-Semitism on campus without understanding what has happened at Columbia University. Columbia University is ground zero of the intifada revolution. The video below features the deep thoughts of Columbia president Minouche Shafik in the satirical context afforded by reality. Want a good laugh this morning? Watch
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May 8, 2024 — Scott Johnson
I want to note a few reports on the campus scene. Attention must be paid. The scene should not be unseen. I have been asking who is behind the kill the Jews crowd on campus. Park MacDougald takes a comprehensive look in his May 6 Tablet column “The People Setting America on Fire.” It is the best effort yet to turn over the rocks and look underneath. Park, by the
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May 8, 2024 — Scott Johnson
President Biden chose to revise and extend his mealymouthed comments on anti-Semitism with a 1600-word speech at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Annual Days of Remembrance Ceremony yesterday. The White House has posted the text of his remarks here. The speech seems to me late and wanting. Revisiting the history of the Holocaust, Biden referred to “the perils of indifference, the complicity of silence in the face of evil that
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May 7, 2024 — Scott Johnson
President Biden is confused. Israel appears to have commenced its long-delayed operation to take Hamas’s refuge in Rafah. John noted it here yesterday. With its “ceasefire deal” card Hamas plays the press for willing tools — because they are. They can’t be that stupid. Biden spoke yesterday with Prime Minister Netanyahu by telephone. The White House has posted its readout of the phone call here. After an exchange of pleasantries,
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May 7, 2024 — Scott Johnson
Mario Torres is the Columbia custodian depicted in the viral photograph that I posted via X here. The photo shows him fighting off one of the thugs breaking into Hamilton Hall last week. I commented that he deserves recognition as a man of the year. He is so much better than the pathetic institution he serves. Now Free Press’s Francesca Block has tracked him down for an interview that is
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May 6, 2024 — Scott Johnson
Prime Minister Netanyahu gave a speech at Yad Vashem at the start of Holocaust Remembrance Day events in Jerusalem yesterday evening. Israel Hayom observes that “[t]he speech took an unusual turn when he shifted language since Netanyahu normally does not use this forum to speak in English.” This is what he had to say to whom it may concern in the English-speaking world: Eighty years ago in the Holocaust the
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May 6, 2024 — Scott Johnson
Senator Tom Cotton appeared for an interview by ABC’s Jonathan Karl on This Week yesterday (transcript here). I missed it. You missed it. We all missed it. The interview proceeded in the form of cross-examination. Karl sought to put words in Cotton’s mouth or elicit his agreement to the axioms planted in his leading questions. He wants his colleagues to know he’s working hard on behalf of the Democrats. Addressing
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May 5, 2024 — Scott Johnson
Based on two official Israeli sources, Barak Ravid reports at Axios that the Biden administration put a hold on a shipment of American ammunition to Israel. The Biden team of course opposes Israel’s long-delayed operation to clear the last Hamas redoubt in Rafah. Ravid adds this: Last Wednesday U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken visited Israel and had a “tough” conversation with Netanyahu regarding a possible Israeli operation in Rafah,
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May 5, 2024 — Scott Johnson
The Middle East Forum’s Dexter Van Zile visited Gaza Solidarity Encampments in Boston/Cambridge at Emerson College, MIT, and Harvard (he didn’t make it into Harvard Yard). MEF has posted his report “Students for Justice in Palestine Grooming American Students for Intifada: A First Person Account.” Who are these people? What do they want? What do they have to say? Who funds them? It’s an enterprising report. I am sorry to
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May 5, 2024 — Scott Johnson
John Pizzarelli and Jessica Molaskey celebrated the centennial anniversary (on April 28) of the birth of Blossom Dearie on yesterday’s Radio Deluxe show (posted here). With her girlish voice, I thought the first time I heard her, some creative genius must have come up with that stage name. But no, Margrethe Blossom Dearie was her real name. I was introduced to her late in life courtesy of Pete Lee’s Bop
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May 4, 2024 — Scott Johnson
Mason Goad is a research fellow with the National Association of Scholars. Yesterday he visited the Kill-the-Jews crowd’s Gaza Solidarity Encampment at George Washington University, a mile from the White House, and posted a photo thread here on X. To borrow a phrase, the hate is too damn high! Goad sets the scene with this photo featuring the revolutionary who has donned a mask to protect his identity. Another mask
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May 4, 2024 — Scott Johnson
Students of ancient American history may recall the Northwest Ordinance of 1787. The Northwest Ordinance covered the territory out of which Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin were ultimately carved. It guaranteed religious freedom (Article 1) and prohibited slavery (Article 6) in the territory. Adopted by the Confederation Congress, it is one of the four founding or organic laws of the United States. See generally Richard H. Cox, Four Pillars
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May 3, 2024 — Scott Johnson
In the eruption of support for Hamas and hatred of the Jewish people at Columbia University’s Gaza Solidarity Encampment, we have discovered a humorous sidebar. Olivia Reingold originally dredged up lost-and-found entries from the mixed-up files of the encampment and posted them on X. I’m in the lost and found chat for Columbia’s encampment, where a comrade is currently freaking out that their other comrades might steal their Adderall prescription.
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May 3, 2024 — Scott Johnson
President Biden read a perfunctory statement yesterday addressing “recent events on college campuses.” That’s how the statement referred to the calls for intifada revolution and the occupation of university quads by mobs supporting Hamas. The brief statement ran to fewer than 500 words. It would have been better if it had been zero. This is how it began, according to the White House transcript: Before I head to North Carolina,
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May 3, 2024 — Scott Johnson
Ammo Grrrll is not among those CHOOSING “VICTIMHOOD” FOR FUN AND PROFIT. She writes: Let us assume for the moment that a woman who has 20 years of experience as an executive secretary, types 100 wpm, can take shorthand like a tape recorder, and is smart as a whip, discreet, well-groomed, and pleasant to all is also a few pounds north of what is an acceptable weight for a woman
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