October 07, 2024

On October 7, A Few Thoughts On "Islamophobia"

October 07, 2024/ Francis Menton

Today is the first anniversary of the massacre perpetrated by Hamas on Israel. One year ago today, about 1200 hundred people were killed in the surprise attack, and about 250 taken hostage. Almost all of those killed or taken hostage were civilians, and the large majority were either women, children, or the elderly. About 100 remain as hostages today.
This sad occasion gets me to thinking about the term “Islamophobia.” I don’t even remember this term existing in my youth. This piece in The New Republic in 2011 traces the origin of the term to the 1970s. But from those relatively recent origins, the term “Islamophobia” has risen fast in the ranks of the epithets generally used to condemn non-conformists to the progressive project as evil people. Other such terms include racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia, and trans-phobia.
Why is the term “Islamophobia”?

October 05, 2024

"Bias" Of Debate Moderators In Their Own Words

October 05, 2024/ Francis Menton

Usually, I don’t waste much time watching the presidential or vice-presidential debates; but on Tuesday I watched most of the vice-presidential debate between J.D. Vance and Tim Walz. I applaud Vance on a skilled performance.
But I particularly want to comment today on the overt hostility that Vance faced from the moderators, which is unfortunately typical of the hostility of the corporate media toward all Republican candidates.
If you watched some or all of the debate, you probably came away with a general impression of the moderators attempting to help Walz; but without a transcript it is difficult to remember specifics.
Fortunately, CBS has produced a transcript of the debate. So I thought it might be informative to go through the transcript and compile some of the more absurd efforts of the moderators to give a boost to Walz.

October 01, 2024

October 01, 2024/ Francis Menton

Back in July, I had a two posts (here and here) comparing the then candidates for President, Biden and Trump, on the issue of who is the greater “threat to democracy.”
The posts reviewed actions of each candidate that may be viewed as such threats. For Trump, those things included J6, plus seeking legal advice and then bringing litigation as to what he claimed was fraudulent conduct in the 2020 election; for Biden, the things included having the prosecutors bring phony criminal charges against political adversaries, engaging in a systematic effort with social media platforms to suppress the opposition’s speech, extra-constitutional expansion of the regulatory state, hundreds of billions of federal dollars to fund the political Left, the student-loan-forgiveness vote buying program, and opening the southern border.
Whew — quite a list! Obviously, the contest wasn’t close.
But now comes to my attention another whole category of threat to democracy emanating from the Biden-Harris Administration. This is one I have been somewhat aware of, but I have not been fully aware of the vast extent and systematic nature of the effort. Likely, this category is the worst of all the threats discussed in the extent to which it represents fundamental attack on the constitutional structure.

September 27, 2024

September 27, 2024/ Francis Menton

Does the indictment of Eric Adams represent a bona fide prosecution of a dishonest politician, or is it mainly retribution against a political opponent by a deeply corrupt DOJ and FBI?
As several commenters on yesterday’s post noted, we have come to a very sad point when our first thought upon an indictment of a politician is that it may well represent the deep state using its powers to take out a political opponent. But after four years of the deeply politicized Biden-Harris-Garland Justice Department, that’s where we are. And it is entirely appropriate for the citizenry to evaluate the present indictment in light of the DOJ’s conduct throughout the course of this administration.
Unlike my usual approach, I wrote the post yesterday immediately after learning about and reading the indictment, and before allowing any time for things to settle down. Today many other voices have weighed in. In this post I’ll consider a few of them.
But the bottom line is, there is every reason to believe that this indictment is mostly politically motivated, and has little or nothing to do with fighting real corruption.

September 26, 2024

September 26, 2024/ Francis Menton

The answer to the question is that it’s not a close call. The Biden-Harris DOJ/FBI is far more corrupt.
For the latest evidence, consider the new federal criminal case against New York City Mayor Eric Adams. Yesterday, a federal grand jury, acting at the behest of the Biden-Harris Department of Justice and FBI, handed down an indictment of Adams. The indictment was then released today. The full text can be found here.
Plenty in the Democrat Party media took the occasion to credit the work of the feds and jump all over Adams.

September 24, 2024

September 24, 2024/ Francis Menton

It’s Climate Week here in New York, and you can feel the excitement.
The UN General Assembly is in town, and simultaneously something called the “Climate Group” (“Our mission is to drive climate action. Fast.”) is holding some 600 (!) events to promote policies that they somehow believe will “save the planet.”
At one of these events yesterday, New York Governor Kathy Hochul showed up to deliver what she probably thought was a significant policy speech. The Governor’s web page describes the speech this way: