Eyes wide shut

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A poll taken last week of Jewish voters showed that they still vastly prefer Biden to Trump, 61% to 23% (with another 10% saying they’ll vote “for someone else”.

And my guess is that, regardless of who they choose for President, an even larger percentage will vote to return their Democrat senators and congressmen to office, because it can’t happen here.

But …

Masked anti-Israel protesters take over NYC subway car, tell ‘Zionists’ to raise their hands: ‘This is your chance to get out.’

Masked anti-Israel protesters took over a New York City subway car on Monday and demanded to know if there were any “Zionists” on the train — then warned them: ‘This is your chance to get out.”

The sickening moment came after protesters rallied in Union Square Park in Manhattan and held up a banner that read “Long live October 7.”

One antisemitic demonstrator at the event yelled that he wished “Hitler was still here” to “wipe out” the Jews.

And it’s a good thing we don’t have any Somalians in this country:

No Somalians nor, thanks to Biden’s secured border, any other muslim terrorists.

NBC News: 8 suspected terrorists with possible ISIS ties arrested in New York, L.A. and Philadelphia, sources say

Eight men from Tajikistan with potential ties to ISIS out of central Asia were arrested over the weekend in New York, Philadelphia and Los Angeles, three people familiar with the matter told NBC News on Tuesday.

The suspects had been on the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force radar and were arrested by personnel with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, better known as ICE, the sources say.

All eight men crossed through the southern border into the United States and their criminal backgrounds checks came back clean at the time they crossed the border, according to two officials familiar with the matter.

At least two of the men crossed the border in the spring of 2023 and one of those men used the CBP One app, created by the Biden administration to allow migrants to book appointments to claim asylum, those officials say. 

The FBI’s Joint Terrorism Taskforce has been aware of a potential terror threat originating in central Europe and began monitoring these men as part of that investigation, three sources say. 

A senior U.S. official says the FBI was monitoring the group for several months and kept close tabs on their activities. 

While they have not been charged with a terror connection or plot yet, the FBI alerted ICE they should be arrested because of potential ties to ISIS and they were arrested on immigration charges, two sources say. They are currently detained and are facing removal proceedings before an immigration judge, and they could later face terrorism related charges, two sources say. 

“Over the last few days, ICE agents arrested several non-citizens pursuant to immigration authorities," the Department of Homeland Security and FBI said in a joint statement on Tuesday. "The actions were carried out in close coordination with the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Forces. The individuals arrested are detained in ICE custody pending removal proceedings.”

Two people familiar with the matter say the same intelligence that led to the surveillance and arrests of these eight men led to the arrest in April of an Uzbek man in Baltimore with an alleged ISIS connection. 

This article was originally published on NBCNews.com

Well, of course he was — it's California, Jake

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don’t shoot!

77-year-old Oakland homeowner arrested for murder after shooting crowbar-wielding burglar

According to the report, three criminals drove a stolen car up to his home armed with a crowbar and a replica firearm [with the intention, no doubt, of inquiring whether he’d like to buy some Girl Scout cookies — Ed]. The elderly man shot one of the criminals and held his gun on the remaining two until police arrived.

The cops then arrested the homeowner and are holding him on suspicion of murder.

Silly old man, he should just hire guards, as 78-year-old (!) Goldie Hawn in now doing.

Goldie Hawn says 'LA is terrible' after becoming victim to multiple home break-ins in 4-month span

Hollywood's bright lights are fading fast for Goldie Hawn, and she's ready to get the heck out of Dodge.

The actress, 78, admitted her home in Los Angeles was "robbed once" recently while she was out to dinner for a few hours with Kurt Russell, her partner of over 40 years.

"What if we couldn't live in LA, where would we live? We both decided, I think it's Palm Desert. … It's so safe," Hawn reminisced about her dream location to plant new roots while appearing on the SiriusXM podcast "Let's Talk Off Camera with Kelly Ripa." 

"It's just 'cause L.A. is terrible. I mean, we were robbed once."

The Academy Award-winning actress explained that she and Russell were "gone two hours and 20 minutes" before returning home to a seemingly normal situation. 

"We came back and went in the house. I went up to the stairs and I walked into my closet. I just lost it," Hawn said. "They had broken in from the balcony to our bedroom, our closets."

Hawn added, "And they completely knocked down my door, which is a safe door, so they're very, very sophisticated, and they got a lot of my goodies, if you know what I mean."

Despite the traumatic event, the "First Wives Club" star attempted to put the incident in the past and was convinced the robbery was just a one-off.

"So, I'm thinking, 'Oh, my God, so the chances are, I guess that's it,'" she said. "It's gotta be. The odds are that's not gonna happen again."

Four months later, Hawn was alone at home with just her dog when she heard a startling noise in another room. 

"I hear this big thump upstairs — and I was alone; Kurt wasn't there — and I went, 'What the hell was that?'" she said. 

"It was just like, was that a sonic boom? Did somebody jump somewhere? And as it turned out, the next day, we discovered that they were trying to get in my bedroom while I was in the house."

"That's terrifying," Ripa said before Hawn responded, "I couldn't believe it. What is happening here?"

Ripa asked if she had any further protection in place following the break-ins. 

"I've had a guard, especially when I'm alone now," Hawn said. "I'm never without a guard. We have a nice relationship with our guard."

What self-proclaimed compassionate liberals refuse to acknowledge is that when they free criminals to go about their business, it’s the poor who are left defenseless; Goldie can hire guards or move to Palm Springs to escape, but the peasants have no such options.

So, not much different than much of the rest of the country

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Chicago Doubles Education Spending, Tragedy Ensues.

Stephen Green, PJMedia

Illinois Policy just issued a report showing that while CPS has doubled spending per student since 2012, grades are down by 60-80%, depending on the subject. "Just 1-in-4 CPS students can read or perform math at grade level," the report says. "The percent of students enrolling in college after high school graduation is decreasing. And for those who do enroll, another study found many are struggling to finish college in four years – just 30% get their bachelor’s in four years compared to 47% nationally."

≥≥≥

  • In 2023, 26% of students in grades 3 through 8 across all of CPS could read at grade level and about 18% could do math proficiently. For 11th grade CPS students, only 22% could read at grade level and 19% do math proficiently.

  • CPS’ failure to engage students shows in the chronic absenteeism rate. Chronic absenteeism has skyrocketed. 

  • According to ISBE data, 86.3% of teachers in CPS were rated as proficient or excellent in 2023, down from 91.4% in 2019. Yet many students in CPS are struggling to reach proficiency in core subjects.

There's much more at the link, all of it tragic. An entire generation of Chicago students is failing — and being failed by their schools and, let's be brutally honest, by their families. 

If you're thinking that CPS must be seriously underfunded to achieve such dismal results, you must have been living in a cave for the last 40 or 50 years. CPS will spend a jaw-dropping $29,028 per student this year. My family lives in a lovely exurb of Colorado Springs and our district spends roughly one-third of what CPS does — $10,214 per student — and we get much better results. It isn't about the money. It rarely is.

≥≥≥≥

Let me tell you the dirty little secret about K-12 education spending. The teachers' union and/or your local government constantly play the same game. First, they like to boast that the district spends X number of dollars per student. With the very next breath, they'll complain that X number of dollars isn't enough. For next year, they'll need X+Y, where Y is equal to whatever they think they can squeeze out of you, the taxpayer.

Lather, rinse, repeat because the year after next, they'll demand X+Y+Y.

"It's for the children," they'll remind you.

But it isn't. Absolutely nothing like $29,028 goes to educating each student. While there's been an explosion in pricey education administration, the number of dollars that actually reach the classroom — books, supplies, furniture, teachers' salaries, etc — is more or less stagnant. Public education is no longer about educating students. It's about shoving ever-increasing amounts of taxpayer money into administrators' gaping maws. 

Green writes, “An entire generation of Chicago students is failing — and being failed by their schools and, let's be brutally honest, by their families” — I’d say, especially families; if parents don’t value education, don’t keep their kids off the street at midnight, and let them skip half the school year, then the failure of those children is preordained. The Jews in New York’s lower east side in the early 1900s and the Asians of today saw education as their children’s path out of poverty, and it worked, and still works, for the most part. Of course, if the schools those children are sent to are hellholes of rioting students and “participation trophy” standards (New York State Democrats have just eliminated Regents exams and will no longer issue diplomas marking achievement, just, essentially, certificates of attendance), then insisting that one’s children attend them is useless. Enter, charter schools.

The hysterical leftists at Axios imply that this is a bad thing; I think it's great news, if true

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learned his lesson

Snotty Philistine has sent along this rant from Axios:

Behind the Curtain: Trump allies pre-screen loyalists for unprecedented power grab

Former President Trump's allies are pre-screening the ideologies of thousands of potential foot soldiers, as part of an unprecedented operation to centralize and expand his power at every level of the U.S. government if he wins in 2024, officials involved in the effort tell Axios.

Why it matters: Hundreds of people are spending tens of millions of dollars to install a pre-vetted, pro-Trump army of up to 54,000 loyalists across government to rip off the restraints imposed on the previous 46 presidents.

  • The screening for ready-to-serve loyalists has already begun, driven in part by artificial intelligence from tech giant Oracle, contracted for the project.

  • Social media histories are already being plumbed.

What's happening: When Trump took office in 2017, he included many conventional Republicans in his Cabinet and key positions. Those officials often curtailed his behavior and power.

  • Trump himself spends little time plotting governing plans. But he is well aware of a highly coordinated campaign to be ready to jam government offices with loyalists willing to stretch traditional boundaries.

If Trump were to win, thousands of Trump-first loyalists would be ready for legal, judicial, defense, regulatory and domestic policy jobs. His inner circle plans to purge anyone viewed as hostile to the hard-edged, authoritarian-sounding plans he calls "Agenda 47."

  • The people leading these efforts aren't figures like Rudy Giuliani. They're smart, experienced people, many with very unconventional and elastic views of presidential power and traditional rule of law.

Behind the scenes: The government-in-waiting is being orchestrated by the Heritage Foundation's well-funded Project 2025, which already has published a 920-page policy book from 400+ contributors. Think of it as a transition team set in motion years in advance.

  • Heritage president Kevin Roberts tells us his apparatus is "orders of magnitude" bigger than anything ever assembled for a party out of power.

"History doesn't repeat itself, but it often rhymes" — Mark Twain

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822 North Street has just been listed for sale for $7.495 million. This same house sold new in 2002 for $7.5 million (after beginning at $9.250), then again in 2012 for $6.5, and sold again in 2017, when the owner tried for $7.250, eventually gave up, and auctioned it off for $4.480. The current listing states that a new roof and mechanicals have been installed, but buyers don’t pay for that type of “improvement” — they expect the rood not to leak and the heating and air conditioning to work — but the market is certainly different now, and so theses owners may see that 2002 price again.