Went there today looking for the scoop on Orthodox efforts to take over a neighborhood in Toms River NJ, the way they have completely taken over Lakewood NJ and many places in the lower Hudson Valley (linked on Drudge).
A check of FailedMessiah.com reveals there have not been any important posts since Scott Rosenberg left in January.
There’s a media mystery developing around the anonymous new owners of the muckraking blog FailedMessiah, and growing signs the site’s harsh criticism of the Orthodox community may be permanently silenced.
Shmarya Rosenberg, who ran FailedMessiah singlehandedly for more than a decade, announced February 2 that he was moving on. Days later, questions about the blog’s new owners are multiplying, and one Orthodox website has suggested that an Orthodox businessman bought FailedMessiah to “pull the plug” on Rosenberg’s hard-hitting reports on the community.
In a post on February 3, the new owners said they were “a group of people dedicated to protecting the reputation of the Orthodox Jewish community,” but did not identify themselves by name…
An unsigned post on the Orthodox website OnlySimchas.com reported “rumors” that California nursing home magnate Shlomo Yehuda Rechnitz was among the buyers of Rosenberg’s site. Rechnitz, 44, is an enigmatic ultra-Orthodox businessman, a major donor to Orthodox charities and yeshivas, and the son-in-law of Rabbi Yisroel Belsky, a leading ultra-Orthodox rabbi who died this January.
Rechnitz recently made headlines when he bought Powerball tickets for all his employees in his California nursing homes. One nurse briefly thought she won a slice of the $1 billion prize, but it turned out to be a hoax.
Rechnitz has shown a tendency to be gently critical of the Orthodox community. In early January, while accepting an honor at a gala dinner for a Lakewood, New Jersey yeshiva that he had funded, he attacked of Lakewood’s Orthodox schools for excluding some students. Days later, he issued an apology, saying that he had not meant to insult any rabbis or yeshiva heads.
Meanwhile, Rechnitz’s nursing homes are facing heavy scrutiny from state and federal regulators in California, according to a lengthy June report in the Sacramento Bee. According to the paper, three of Rechnitz’s 81 California nursing homes have been kicked out of the federal Medicare program in recent years, a highly unusual and drastic step. In the Sacramento Bee story, Rechnitz says that his regulatory problems are the result of bad relationships with state officials.
In its February 4 post, OnlySimchas suggested that Rechnitz had bought FailedMessiah to throttle its reporting. “The rumors claim that allegedly Rechnitz was simply fed up with the amount of hatred towards his fellow Jews, and simply could not bear to watch it continue,” OnlySimchas wrote. “If Rechnitz had any hand in the deal to have [FailedMessiah] pull the plug, his share in [heaven] will have just grown to an unimaginable level.”
It is just not possible for two people, let alone two countries, to have identical interests. That’s why all relationships have varying degrees of tension. We don’t see the world identically.
America has no vital strategic interests in the Middle East aside from assurance of an oil supply if needed.
If America shifts away from Israel, the Jewish state could form an alliance with Russia. Many Israelis have come from Russia in the past three decades.
Israel depends on an America that asserts itself abroad. Israel needs bipartisan support. It needs stable, predictable American foreign policy. It desires candidates who sing Israel’s praises as often and as loudly as they can. Mr. Trump, who looks poised to capture the Republican Party’s nomination, offers Israel none of those. Mr. Netanyahu has every reason to be concerned and disappointed by what the American political system has produced this election cycle…
Israel’s government hoped a new president would restore a more traditional definition of friendship — one based on mutual trust and support. But if the choice comes down to Mrs. Clinton or Mr. Trump, that’s unlikely. From a President Clinton, Israel’s hawkish government would come under more of the same pressure it received from the Obama administration. From a President Trump … anything is possible.
The rocky relations of the Obama era have damaged the American-Israeli alliance and eroded Israel’s standing in Washington and around the world. Four — or eight — more years of bickering could cause even more lasting damage to the one foreign relationship that is truly critical to Israel’s future.
Posted inIsrael|Comments Off on Are Israel’s Interests Identical To America’s Interests?
Most people prefer to be around their own kind. When people have a choice, they avoid diversity. They live, work, worship and socialize with their own race.
The right to freedom of association is being taken away from us. As that one freedom goes, so must the rest. Or to say it a different way, a barometer of diminishing freedoms in a multi-cultural society is the ever-diminishing freedom of association.
NYDN: De Blasio is pushing two zoning plans needed to achieve his goal of building 80,000 new affordable apartments and preserving another 120,000 existing ones.
One, known as mandatory inclusionary zoning, would require developers to include affordable housing in projects that need city approval, with options starting at setting aside 25% of apartments for people making an average of $46,000 for a family of four.
That has prompted protests from critics who say apartments are needed for people who make less than that. The levels may be adjusted in negotiations with the City Council before a vote by the end of March.
Posted inAmerica, Articles|Comments Off on Freedom Of Association
* Went to a southern university around the same time. Was a fraternity member.
We all KNEW it was a hoax from the minute the story came out. The reason why isn’t very PC, but it’s the truth — sexual market value and peer posturing.
A bunch of handsome white athletes at a prestige school for smart kids all get together… and they demonstrate sexual interest in a poor black stripper in front of each other? Um. No. A nude Beyonce clone wouldn’t get aggressive attention in that room. And what were the odds that a stripper in Durham, North Carolina would look like Beyonce?
We all KNEW that they wouldn’t have requested a black stripper. That it had to be a mixup.
I remember when the photos of that evening came out and all the guys looked bored, sad, annoyed about what the stripper looked like. “Surely this will end now,” I thought. So obvious. And yet it got dragged out for another 8 months.
* I remember watching the sordid saga unfold — it was then that I realized that narratives create news stories and not vice versa.
After witnessing the UVA rape hoax and the Michael Brown fiasco, I’m not optimistic that this lesson will ever remain in our society’s institutional memory.
* And the dozens of Duke faculty members that signed on to the witch-hunt paid the price by losing their positions, right?
No? They paid no price at all?
Oh, I forgot. These are Leftists, and constraints like honesty, justice and integrity are too passe for them to observe.
And the ruling class wonders why a person with Trump’s defects is so attractive.
* One of the interesting angles to all of this is that hoaxes are easier to pull in the mass media age than in the prior age. The old line from Twain was that the truth was just getting out of bed by the time a lie was half way around the world. Today, the lie is an axiom by the time the truth stirs.
Just look at the Michelle Fields hoax from last week. She rolled out a whole media campaign on twitter and then the cable news shows. David French at National Review on-line, a lawyer supposedly, wrote a long piece on Friday falling for the whole thing.
Are people more gullible now? How has the media saturation turned us into rubes?
* If three black members of Duke’s basketball team had been accused of gang-raping a white stripper under otherwise identical circumstances, they wouldn’t have even been arrested -so preposterous were the allegations. And feminists would not have protested. Feminists wouldn’t protest even if a white student at Duke was gang-raped by black students who were guilty beyond any doubt -just as feminists never expose the horrific realities of the 50-year pandemic of black males raping and gang-raping white females.
* Leftists don’t usually notice anti-male and anti-white bias. When it’s undeniable then they simply rationalize it.
To unequivocally condemn anti-white and anti-male bias is to strike the leftist house of cards at its very foundation, and cannot be permitted if the structure is to remain standing.
* It’s almost like there is an thread in the undercurrent that binds these isteve topics into a cohesive political philosophy. Oh yea…”hate whitey” …it’s the logical opposition to that world view. And people are still confused by Trump’s popularity.
* Despite the hostility and frequently bizarre, anachronistic, ahistorical or even outright nonsensical paranoia to which many blacks are prone, one cannot help but respect them for their keen sense of racial awareness (or semblance thereof).
If only five percent of whites chose to advocate for white interests as vehemently as the average black advocates for black interests, our race problems could find a durable resolution within a generation.
* Their sense of racial awareness consists mostly of resentment towards whites and and delusions of being victimised by them. Remember they murder each other far more than they kill members of other races. In a sense, it’s their lack of racial awareness that brought them to America. People with strong racial solidarity and empathy don’t sell each other as slaves.
* Yea, the whole case is at a visceral level pretty messed up. Duke’s nickname was already “University of New Jersey in North Carolina” so there was already a bunker mentality in the student body that was greatly aided by the wet campus policy and 3 year on campus living requirement. We literally at times felt like we were some beachhead of carpetbaggers and California invaders in this dark jungle. At least in the Mid 2000s, this was before a lot of Durham’s redevelopment/gentrification. This literally made the Lacrosse players “us” in the awful game of us vs “them.” I’m just surprised at how so many liberal college students could hate the media so much at that time.
On a side note, funny enough. the celebrations when Nifong was disbarred, spent a night in jail, and sued to the point where he even had to give up his family guitar passed down generations definitely showed some class solidarity. For a few nights over my years at Duke, I swear 90% of the student body would vote Republican if it meant watching Nifong squirm. I’d say the campus would usually only vote 30% Republican. [30% of total males in Greek life with near monolithic Right wing support, and 50% total females in Greek life with about half Republican leanings].
* I knew it was a fake immediately because Mangum said she was raped orally by one of the men. I don’t know much but i know that’s not how men do their raping.
* Perhaps being a white man at Duke during that incident sharpens the appreciation of what’s in store for white men in the vibrant diverse future that, so-far, only Mr. Trump has shown any inclination in delaying.
* Even Feminists believe race trumps gender. Feminists do not hate White men because they are men, they hate White men because they are White. Hence why Feminists feel zero hatred towards Muslim rapists and African American rapists for example.
No Feminists in the media like Hillary Clinton and Gloria Steinem came out and called the Rotherham incident involving Pakistani pimps and underage White girls a war on women.
* It would appear Lee Kwan Yew is proven right yet again. Donald Trump is almost without question the most pro-Black candidate in living memory, offering with border closing and protective tariffs to vastly increase and secure Black people’s AA and social spending and status within America. And yet, most hate him with a passion because he generates White working class support and threatens the consensus that every White person must submit to any Black person.
Really, it is ridiculous how pro-Black Donald Trump really is with his policies.
* Anyone who has gone to a top ranked NCAA school knew that the Duke case was a fraud the minute they heard it. My large private school has had a top five men’s lacrosse program for decades, not to mention a basketball team that makes it to the NCAAs nearly every year with a few final four finishes and decent football. The athletes, especially of the prestige programs, like Duke’s lacrosse team, have women throwing themselves at them – they don’t need to slum it with a black stripper. The girls in my dorm made their way through the football team, checking off various players from the program they’d slept with.
* How much does the average black person advocate for black interests on a day to day basis? I suspect the default level of black and Hispanic group interests is more or less the normal level for humans everywhere. There has been a decades-long campaign to tell blacks and Hispanics that race-based politics are good and right, and to tell whites that race-based politics are wrong and evil, and we can see the impact of that on everyday politics.
Personally, I’d rather we all adopted the rule that race-based politics are a bad thing–I think it tends to leave everyone voting for the crook “because at least he’s our crook.” (See the operation of the DC government for an example of why I think this.) But it’s pretty obviously unreasonable to have the rule that race-based politics are okay for everyone except whites.
* The nature of living in a bubble is that you have no idea how nutty or vile your ideas sound to someone outside your bubble.
Posted inAmerica|Comments Off on The Tenth Anniversary Of The Duke Lacrosse Rape Hoax
Reddit post: At 2:30 p.m., I arrived at the Donald Trump rally located at the UIC pavilion in Chicago, IL. There was light police presence at the Blue Line station, and the pavilion was short walk away. There I waited in line for about an hour until making it to the front doors, going through a security scanner, and finding a seat in the main hall.
For nearly two hours the pavilion filled until it neared capacity. It was clear that protesters were seated around the room, given easily away by their manner of dress. Most of the Trump supporters, being suburbanite or small town white people from outside of Chicago, were dressed strikingly normal—jeans and t-shirts, yoga pants or dresses, and the occasional suit.
The first protesters began around 5:30 when two young white males pulled off their coats to reveal t-shirts with anti-Trump slogans. At this point I noticed the police presence inside the rally was a mere 8 police officers, bolstered with hands-off event staff.
Before 6:00 p.m., a man spoke on the microphone and requested that rally attendees do not touch or harm protesters who interrupt the event. He reminded the protesters that Donald Trump supports the first amendment as much as the second.
Following this was a string of smaller incidents, such as people holding up improvised signs and shouting.
One entire bleacher row was filled with protesters and they began chanting and throwing around torn up signs.
A few people who began standing up and screaming, and were slowly escorted out by police. The police kept leaving the protesters unattended throughout this, taking 4-8 officers to escort protesters out one at a time.
A black man in a black jacket ran up to the front stage, bumped into the podium, and attempted to speak, but was wrestled down by two men in suits. As they escorted him through the crowd, he took a swing at a Trump supporter. The men escorting him were incredibly gentle and restrained themselves from using any force.
Then voice came on and declared that the event was postponed. A few minutes later, they informed us that Trump had landed in Chicago and spoken to Chicago Police officers, and that due to safety concerns, the rally was canceled.
At this point, the protesters began to descend into chaos. Aside from a few mild “TRUMP” and “USA” chants, the Trump supporters were mostly quiet and bewildered as the protesters began to scream, chant, and run around the main floor area in a huge pack, flipping off the rally attendees and swearing at them. There were a few tense altercations between the two groups, but from what I saw at this point, no violence.
The rally was instructed to leave the pavilion, and I have to admit, the Chicago Police messed up bad here.
We walked straight out of the building and into enormous packs of protesters screaming at us, with little police presence to protect the Trump supporters.
Following this, I wandered the protest grounds to see what was going on. My memory is a bit jumbled at this point because I was so pumped up, but let me string together the events as clearly as possible:
Many of Trump propaganda signs, most commonly depicting him as Adolf Hitler, but others showing him with a small penis, simple signs of text English and Spanish, signs.
Young women shouting anti-white racial epithets.
“THE PEOPLE ARE UNITED. WE WILL NOT BE DIVIDED” being shouted at Trump supporters who holed themselves up in a parking garage, quietly fearing for their safety. Another good one by the protesters was “FREEDOM FIRST! FREEDOM FIRST!” Strangely enough, there were a good amount of signs calling for peace and freedom. Lots of peace signs being flashed with the fingers.
A single white Trump supporter who held up a sign and stood quietly as three dozen people surrounded him, smiling and screaming, snatching and pushing at him until he had to run for police cover. Someone grabbed his American flag and threw it on the ground and he fought to recover it. The police escorted him away.
Two young men, perhaps 17-19, standing quietly as they waited for a ride home. They were wearing their MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN hats, looking terrified as people cursed and swore at them, and occasionally threw furious challenges for debate. The two young men held their ground. Only once did one of those hats come down, and it quickly went back on again.
A general atmosphere of pleasure and happiness from the protesters. A common chant was “WE WON!” and “WE STOPPED* TRUMP!” It honestly felt like a social event for the protesters. There was plenty of mingling
Plenty of shouts at Trump protesters that Trump and his supporters are not welcome in Chicago. I challenged one on the first amendment. He said he does not consider himself an American and continued insulting the grizzled old white man he was arguing with.
Extremely inefficient police presence. The cops were lined up on their horses or standing behind barricades, but generally were not present where Trump supporters were being hounded and occasionally struck by protesters.
The protesters were primarily composed of millennial-aged: white hipsters, African Americans, Hispanics, and Muslims. Some of the protesters were teenagers below voting age.
The protesters flew a big set of American, Mexican, and Puerto Rican flags. There were lots of small American and Mexican flags too. *The Trump supporters mostly fled for safety immediately. You have to understand, they were outnumbered by thousands of protesters.
There was media presence, but not as much as you’d think. Plenty of areas where chaos was going on had no media nearby. The reporters were mostly getting people to talk to them off to the side where nothing was going on, or focusing ongoing debates between Trump supporters and rally members.
A small amount of the protesters were smoking weed. (I have nothing against this personally, just included for accuracy.)
Plenty of chants for “BERNIE! BERNIE! BERNIE!” Some Trump supporters looked at each other in bewilderment. “But Bernie Sanders isn’t even running against Donald Trump,” was the common sentiment.
Edit: The Trump supporters had a general trust for the police, while the protesters saw their presence as antagonistic. This is especially interesting to me, because as a foreigner and person of color I am generally afraid of police.
Closing statement:
Obviously I did not see everything that occurred as I wandered the protest grounds outside the cancelled Chicago rally. What I did see, however, was fear. Fear from the rally attendees for their immediate safety, and fear of Donald Trump from the protesters.
More than that, I feel that I experienced today, for the first time in my life, true totalitarianism and authoritarianism, expressed laterally from citizen to citizen, in order to silence opinions from being shared. This enforcement was shared through sheer numbers and intimidation, and in a few cases, violence.
People brought their children, loved ones, and friends to attend the Trump rally. I saw an older Asian man and his white wife in attendance, and the looks on their faces when the rally was declared cancelled almost broke my heart. I saw scared children clinging to their parents’ sides as they exited the building to the screams of protesters. I saw a quiet, but excited crowd of Donald Trump supporters get thrown out of Chicago.
Worst of all, I saw the first amendment trampled, spit on, and discarded like trash.
This cannot go on. As I finish this, I feel a sense of utter dread and hopelessness for what is becoming of the youth in this country, particularly those of the regressive left. So polarized has political opinion become, that dissenting thoughts on college campuses are now seen as hateful. These people deal in absolutes. They are right, and whatever means they must take to achieve their ends, they will do it. They will not stop themselves from violence or censorship. They will do it, and they will call hell down upon you if anyone dare does upon them the same.
Tonight I went to the Trump Rally to hear the thoughts of not only the man who was supposed to come and speak, but the people who support him. I found respect. I found calmness. I found peace.
The truth is, I am a legal immigrant, not a US citizen. I am not American. I am not white. I cannot vote.
After tonight, I support Donald Trump.
* What’s interesting here is that the Left are quite happy to fight and intimidate their opposition, while the Right isn’t. What’s obviously concerning is that many of the right were cowered by their tactics. The establishment is letting this happen. I’m afraid that we might live to see the truth of Jefferson’s aphorism that the manure of liberty is blood. The goons won’t stop with kind words alone.
* These are socially marginalized college “students” (that’s a fancy way of saying young people who can’t get dates) play-acting Europe 1848, Russia 1917, the Paris Commune, etc. I’m not sure they’re really calling for workers’ of the world to unite since I’m sure most actual “workers” wouldn’t want to be in the same room with these people (they’re weird, they stink). It’s street theater. It’s not that different for them than going to see some band nobody’s ever heard of or a poetry reading (do they still have those?) Most of their “classmates” go to the football game; they get a buzz out of disrupting almost anything normal.
This is why the MSM’s treatment of these people is exasperating to me. They make it sound like the best and brightest young people, our “college students,” got wind of Generalisimo Benito Hitler staging a violent coup on their campus, and as much as it pained them, they just had to drop the calculus book to express their disapproval in a “protest.”
* I still find it amazing that the press can’t distinguish between Trump’s thugs meeting to enjoy each other’s company in peace, and BLM’s and La Raza’s thugs coming to a Trump meeting. The media wants to portray as innocent victims those arriving with the expressed purpose of shutting Trump up and dispersing his supporters.
Shakespeare provides us with a framework to consider the problem: “Here lies the water. Good. Here stands the man. Good. If the man go to this water and drown himself, …he goes. Mark you that. But if the water come to him and drown him, he drowns not himself.”
* Listen Bernie Sanders actually saying that Trump must control all of his supporters, but that he, Bernie Sanders, cannot be asked to take responsibility for his own supporters. Unbelievable.
Posted inAmerica|Comments Off on What Really Happened In Chicago Friday Night?
"This guy knows all the gossip, the ins and outs, the lashon hara of the Orthodox world. He’s an [expert] in... all the inner workings of the Orthodox world." (Rabbi Aaron Rakeffet-Rothkoff)
