The stand-up comedian Robert Klein once did a routine about antisemitism on a college campus, recounting his own days as a student at Alfred University in western New York State.  In Klein’s telling, he was regularly chased across campus by students yelling “Jew boy, Jew boy!”  How much of Klein’s routine may be attributed to artistic license remains to be seen.  All good comedy springs from true to life experiences, many of which were traumatic.  I’m sure this story is no exception.  The problem is that Robert Klein did that routine some 40 years ago, long before the so-called liberals, or progressives, or whatever euphemisms by which you care to call them, had had an opportunity to expose past bigotries, and had instilled the supposed tolerance for minority groups which they’ve always pretended to champion.  The sad truth however, is that although the Left pretends to be dedicated to stamping out injustice, its true goal is the suppression of any opinion that conflicts with its agenda.  Witness the current disgraceful examples of rampant antisemitism on college campuses across America.  The U.S. support for Israel following the October 7th Hamas attacks, which resulted in the murders of more than 1,400 Israelis, the taking of hundreds of hostages, and the wholesale rapes and murders of countless Israeli women has sparked unprecedented antisemitic attacks and protests in cities and on campuses from coast to coast.  While most older Americans support Israel by a wide margin, most young people oppose Israel’s military response to the unprovoked attacks, in effect siding with the Hamas terrorists who butchered babies.  Jewish students on college campuses have reported fearing for their safety, as mobs of pro-Palestinian protestors have harassed them, chanting, “Kill the Jews!”  And such protests aren’t going on in some rural backwater location, but have happened in New York City, home to more Jewish residents than any place outside Israel.  This perverted generation gap, while disgraceful, shouldn’t come as a surprise.  Older Americans support Israel because they either lived through, or were taught about the Holocaust, and experienced events like the 6 Day War, at a time when the reporting of the news wasn’t distorted by Woke journalists, or the outright media liars who populate newsrooms today.  And you really can’t blame the young for having a distorted view of events, because they are the victims of decades of educational malpractice, courtesy of an educational system that hires only leftist ideologues, and teaches “history” from the perspective of Communist Howard Zinn, whose textbook, A People’s History of the United States, teaches American history from the Marxist perspective, as the struggle of the oppressed against the oppressors.  That’s not the way it happened, but these kids have heard nothing other than that tripe all through school.  Add to this, the transformation of colleges from centers of learning and discourse to higher education brainwashing academies, and the shameful poll results make sense.  In the so-called elite colleges, only leftists need apply, only leftists are hired and advanced, and the narrow-minded faculties of these institutions stifle all dissent in the name of Woke purity.  Under these conditions, the students don’t have a chance.  But what of the professors and administrators?  As attorney Joseph Welch famously asked of Senator Joseph McCarthy, “Have you no sense of decency, at long last?” On a quiet Saturday morning, Hamas terrorists invaded Israel, raping, kidnapping and murdering as they went.  They killed infants in horrific fashion.  Try as protestors might to deny the truth, we know these things happened, because the murdering bastards videoed their deeds.  Then, released hostages recounted weeks of repeated rapes.  Last week, the presidents of Harvard, Penn and MIT testified before a House Committee about the antisemitic protests on campus.  Congresswoman Elise Stefanik asked the group a seemingly simple question, “Will admissions offers be rescinded or any disciplinary actions be taken against students or applicants who say ‘from the river to the sea’ or ‘intifada,’ advocating for the murder of Jews?”  Not one of them could bring themselves to condemn the student behavior.  None said disciplinary action would be taken.  One of them actually said, “It depends on the context.”  Please tell me what context in the world could possibly justify calls for genocide, accompanied by the blatant bias, intimidation tactics being tolerated by these schools.  Instead, these collegiate cowards hid themselves behind the First Amendment.  It’s funny how these Woke imbeciles only acknowledge a right to free speech when they’re the ones who are speaking.  Don’t forget, these are the same bastards who hound conservative speakers off the stage, and who have no regard for free speech, should someone dare to call a screwed up snowflake by the wrong pronoun.  Apparently a pronoun offense violates their precious college speech codes, but calls for mass murder – well not so much.  We really should have expected no more from this crowd.  After all, each of them came up through the same Leftist tenure system.  The truth is, if they condemned the student protestors, the Commie faculties probably would go on strike in solidarity with their fellow travelers.  Then again, is “fellow” appropriate?  Maybe it should be “non-binary travelers.”  Anyhow, the stupidity of this trio of college bigwigs was so stunning that even the leftist media had to admit they made a mistake.  Well, let me rephrase.  CNN said they “made a fatal error,” but not because what they said was outrageous and totally wrong.  The CNN take was that you “should know your audience.”  Translation – They could have crafted better lies and evasions, knowing they were before Republicans on the Committee who actually can tell right from wrong.  It had to be pretty bad though, because even the White House (not Old Joe, a spokesperson) called them out, “It’s unbelievable that this needs to be said:  calls for genocide are monstrous and antithetical to everything we represent as a country.  Any statements that advocate for the systematic murder of Jews are dangerous and revolting — and we should all stand firmly against them, on the side of human dignity and the most basic values that unite us as Americans.”  Such clarity and common sense can only mean one thing – an election is near.  There have been repercussions.  The Penn president was forced to resign that post when an incensed donor pulled a promised $100 million donation.  Free speech is fine, but business is business.  This shameful event exposes the the true face of higher education.  Simply replacing one Woke idiot with another isn’t a solution.  It took 100 years to reach this low point.  At least there no place to go but up.

President Kennedy’s Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission was an attorney by the name of Newton Minow.  I noticed that Mr. Minow passed away earlier this year.  Minow surveyed the content being broadcast on television in 1961, and was not pleased.  He’s best known for a challenge he made to TV executives, in which he urged them to sit down and watch their stations for a full day, “without a book, magazine, newspaper, profit-and-loss sheet or rating book to distract you.”  “I can assure you that you will observe a vast wasteland.  You will see a procession of game shows, formula comedies about totally unbelievable families, blood and thunder, mayhem, violence, sadism, murder, Western bad men, Western good men, private eyes, gangsters, more violence and cartoons. And endlessly, commercials — many screaming, cajoling and offending.”  I think we all can agree that, in the intervening 62 years, TV has only gotten worse.  In 1961 TV was an uncomplicated medium.  In the New York market, where I grew up, we had access to the greatest number of TV stations.  That number was 7.  That’s right, 7 different channels to choose from.  And better yet, we got to watch them on a grainy 19 inch (or smaller) black and white screen, on which the picture periodically jumped, rolled, or disappeared, necessitating the manipulation of rabbit-ear antennae.  We thought it was magical.  Now, I have hundreds of channels, broadcast in high definition, plus untold numbers of streaming services, and there’s still little content worth watching.  One of my many misapprehensions about the state of the world in general is the mistaken notion that, as the decades passed, Man would grow gradually more civilized.  There’s no evidence of that.  Quite the opposite.  The recent events in the Mideast, and the rampant violence in our own country lead one to the inevitable conclusion that the basic nature of Man has advanced little over the years.  For all the technological advancement, Man has simply traded his club in for nuclear weapons.  And television, in what some have called the Information Age, is less informative, and more mindless, banal, sadistic, violent, and offensive than it was when Minow panned it so long ago.  It’s really remarkable.  Newton Minow complained about 1960’s game shows, some of which were pretty silly.  Who could have predicted that in 2023, there would be a Game Show Network, dedicated to rerunning 60 year old games?  You’d have thought that today’s Woke leftist imbeciles would have cancelled game shows by now.  Games are contests, after all, and these are the same people who don’t let their children keep score in their games, lest little Johnny suffer a fatal blow to his inflated sense of self-worth.  The Left may reject the concept of winners and losers, but it occurred to me that just about everything on the air in our current Vast Wasteland has been turned into a game show.  There used to be cooking shows, where the hosts actually taught you how to cook.  Now every cooking show is a contest: Holiday Baking Challenge; Beat Bobby Flay; Chopped; and so on.  What’s the point of a cooking show where four strangers, using a strange kitchen, and limited ingredients, race to see who can make something edible in 15 minutes?  Nothing is learned, and then you’re one hour closer to death.  The History Channel used to air shows about actual history.  Not anymore.  Now, it has shows about lumberjacks and trucks driving on ice.  Instead of the shows about the history of weapons, there’s one where contestants vie to forge swords.  It’s a history game show.  But why?  Remember Minow’s complaint about formula comedies about unbelievable families?  The lack of imagination in Hollywood has led television producers to recycle the same sitcoms, again and again, with the same lame, tired situations.  Given current standards, The Beverly Hillbillies represented the height of culture.  And don’t get me started on the level of violence.  In the past, travel shows highlighted interesting locations.  Today, it’s The Amazing Race, where groups of annoying, insufferable people rush past all scenic and cultural sites to get the next clue, all in pursuit of the almighty dollar.  Travel used to be broadening.  Now it’s just another game show.  From the beginning of TV, there were soap operas on the air.  But now, even this genre has become a mindless contest, witness The Bachelor; The Bachelorette; and so on, ad infinitum, until you want to retch.  Romance is now another game show, only now so vulgar and graphic that even Jim Lange (The Dating Game) would blush.  Finally, remember the variety shows that used to be on TV?  Ed Sullivan, Dean Martin, and many others would host the biggest names in entertainment on a weekly basis.  Now, the most popular performers wouldn’t be caught dead on TV; not when their world tours bring in billions of dollars.  As a substitute for real talent, we have been given dozens of amateur hour contests, starting with American Idol, which wasn’t half bad, and devolving to such spectacles as The Voice, You Think You Can Dance, and an all-time low, The Masked Singer.  I regularly ask the rhetorical question, “Who watches this crap?”  But somebody must be watching it, because it keeps coming back.  I can only conclude that our society has devolved in the past 60 years.  In 1961, Newton Minow was speaking for the literate Americans of the day, who were being served what was decent programming, but who felt TV could provide more than it was offering.  The early programming must have been good, because people are now paying streaming companies to access decades-old reruns.  The difference is that the current crop of TV crap is being served to generations of dumbed-down, self-absorbed, semi-illiterates, many of whom, sadly enough, have gone to college.  This class of people, to whom the late writer Jean Shepard referred as Slobus Americanus, willingly consume this tripe, complete with an even greater number of screaming, cajoling, and offensive endless commercials, because they just don’t know any better.  They tolerate human waste on their streets, so why not broadcast waste on the screen.  Sad to say, television continues to be a Vast Wasteland.  The difference is that today’s viewers are content to watch the mindless sewage, as long as they can do so on an 82 inch screen.

We’ve all experienced the pain that comes when an aged parent is not longer able to take care of himself or herself.  The question raised is, “Whatever will we do with Grandpa?  America is experiencing that very problem on a national level. Whatever shall we do with the current president of the United States, Corrupt Demented Imbecile Joe Biden?  Democrats are feeling the pain most acutely.  For Democrats, Joe Biden was a convenient means to an end – the removal of Donald Trump from the White House.  Old Joe served that purpose, but it now looks like he’s outlived his usefulness to the Democrat Party, and it may be time for him to go.  The problem, of course, is the impending presidential election, now only eleven months away.  Despite the best efforts of delusional Democrats and their lying media lapdogs to convince Americans, in Animal House fashion to, “Remain calm.  All is well,” the electorate knows that all is not well, and it’s anything but calm.  Joe Biden’s poll numbers, which never were very good, have become absolutely abysmal of late.  His approval rating stands at 39%, while 57% disapprove of just about everything Joe’s doing or has done.  Biden is 15 to 28 points underwater on every issue, including the economy, foreign policy, and national security.  Just as Il Duce Obama predicted, you can’t underestimate Joe’s ability to fuck things up.  The withdrawal from Afghanistan was a mess.  Joe’s energy policy caused raging inflation.  The border has ceased to exist.  There’s war in Ukraine and Israel.  The Chinese are threatening to take over the world.  Biden is placating them.  The North Koreans are acting up.  Biden does nothing.  The Iranians are bankrolling Mideast terrorists.  Biden is sending them money and has lifted sanctions, permitting them to get billions in oil revenue.  All this would be bad enough if Biden also wasn’t a doddering, mumbling, stumbling, decrepit old fool, who has trouble just standing upright.  And then there’s the little problem of the 50 years of Biden family corruption, evidence of which is so relentlessly dripping out that even the equally corrupt media can’t continue to suppress it.  The problem for Democrats isn’t that Biden is inept, senile and corrupt.  They’re willing to put up with that for another four years, the country be damned.  The problem is that they may not be able to get Old Joe reelected.  Recent polls are discouraging.  Some national polls even have put Trump and Biden even, or Trump slightly ahead.  If true, that would doom Biden’s reelection.  A recent New York Times/Siena College poll of battleground States is more alarming for Democrats.  Trump leads Biden in Arizona (49% to 44%), Georgia (49% to 43%), Michigan (48% to 43%), Nevada (52% to 41%) and Pennsylvania (48% to 44%).  Even more distressing is the erosion of support for Biden among traditionally reliable Democrat voters.  Biden’s support among non-white voters is down by 33%.  Young voters, who Biden won by 20% in 2020, now narrowly favor Trump.  Add to this over 70% of voters who say Biden is too old to be president, and this is really bad news for Democrats.  Another recent schism for Biden is over the war in Israel.  Jewish voters traditionally vote for Democrats.  Biden voiced support for Israel, and that seems to have angered other Democrats, many of whom appear to be supporting the Hamas terrorists over the Israelis.  Massive Palestinian protests have broken out nationwide.  Biden is caught between two voting blocs, and he can’t please either one.  The thing that you must never forget, however, is that Democrats will stop at nothing to stay in power.  Any candidate who seems vulnerable will be thrown overboard.  We’ve seen that in New Jersey.  In 2002, Senator Robert Torricelli had corruption problems.  He was in danger of losing reelection.  It was past time to legally replace Torricelli.  No problem.  Democrats raised Frank Lautenberg from his crypt, and he replaced Torricelli on the ballot.  This violated every election law in the State, but the State Supreme Court approved it anyway, and Democrats stayed in office.  Unpopular presidents are no exception.  Democrats are ruthless, and they know they have to do something.  But what to do?  It’s December, and time is growing short.  If Democrats hope to put another candidate on State primary ballots, the deadlines for filing for those elections begin this month.  If Biden decided not to run today, there may not be enough time to get it done.  If Biden is renominated and later decides he can’t run, Democrats could choose a new candidate at their August convention in Chicago.  That’s cutting it close, and presents potentially devastating problems.  Who do they choose?  There would be a fight.  If they overlook Kamala, they alienate black and female voters.  Add to this the constant gunfire in Chicago, the inevitable Palestinian protests, and the ever-present hooded bastards of Antifa, and Chicago convention 2024 could closely resemble Chicago 1968, complete with riots and tear gas.  One can only hope.  And the overriding problem for Democrats is that Joe Biden has shown absolutely no inclination that he’s thinking of leaving; just the opposite.  He’s stubborn.  He doesn’t want to go, and he has selfish reasons for staying.  Hesitancy to to give up power is only part of it.  The evidence of his family’s corruption is real.  If Biden can’t control the Justice Department, he and other family members could be indicted.  Old Joe could do a convincing Vinny the Chin impression and escape prosecution, but not the others.  Democrats have a dilemma.  They won’t stand by and risk losing, but if Joe won’t step aside, then what?  Because Democrats are no better than common mobsters, one potential solution comes to mind.  Before I say this, let me go on record that I pray every night for Joe Biden’s continued health, because keeping him on the ballot may be the Republicans’ only hope.  I want no harm to come to Joe so he can remain on the ticket.  But as mobsters are fond of saying, “Accidents happen.”  Joe could trip and fall at any time, making room for another candidate.  Democrats surely would prefer a martyr to a failure.  And I put nothing past them.  They’re capable of doing just that.  They could even arrange for him to “trip over” his dog, Commander, who has bitten about a dozen Secret Service agents.  That would be poetic justice.  Let’s hope I’m wrong.  I’m calling for a national day of prayer for Joe Biden to stay upright and on the ballot.  That, and a couple of third Party candidates could get Trump reelected.

This is a short week, so I’ll keep this week’s offering short and sweet.  Yesterday was Thanksgiving Day.  The usually accepted, that is to say, artificial story of the origin of Thanksgiving is that in 1621, the Pilgrims of the Plymouth Colony celebrated their first harvest by inviting the Wampanoag Indians to a feast.  The part of the story that was left out was retold by the late Rush Limbaugh on his radio show.  Rush recounted that the original charter of the Pilgrims called for the colony to be administered as a commune, in which no colonist owned any private property.  The Pilgrims survived, but remained near starvation until William Bradford decided to trash the commune system.  Bradford realized that people could not be expected to do their best work without incentive, so Bradford unharnessed the power of free enterprise by introducing the capitalistic principle of private property.  If people had a stake in the outcome, they worked harder.  Hard work in one’s self-interest led to prosperity, and the prosperity that was created by capitalism is the engine that made the United States the envy of the world.  That’s the story they don’t teach in school.  In fact, that’s the story that the Socialist’s who’ve been running our schools for a hundred years have been suppressing.  Because the truth is that, but for the capitalist system embraced by William Bradford so many years ago, America wouldn’t have the wealth that the Woke imbeciles are trying to steal from us today.  Early on in our republic, presidents declared days of thanksgiving.  In 1817, New York adopted an annual Thanksgiving holiday.  In 1863, Abraham Lincoln set the Thanksgiving holiday as the last Thursday in November.  It stayed that way till 1939, when the last Thursday in November was November 30.  A group of retailers, worried that the late Thanksgiving would hamper holiday sales, asked FDR to move Thanksgiving up a week to extend the holiday shopping season.  FDR agreed, and since 1939, Thanksgiving falls on the second to last Thursday of the month.  As with most of our holidays, we’ve largely abandoned the original meaning of Thanksgiving, which involved thanking God for providing what was necessary for survival.  Nowadays, we have the 99 year old Macy’s parade, followed by multiple football games and the conspicuous consumption of thousands more calories than we need, or are good for us.  Regardless of the fact that we’ve lost the true meaning of the holiday, we still have many things to be thankful for.  We should be thankful to have our families around us, or at least  the ones we can stand to tolerate around the table.  But most of all, we should be thankful that next year we’ll have an opportunity to remove the Woke imbeciles from office and rededicate our government to sanity, where the truth is the truth and the law is the law.

On October 7, an army of Hamas Islamic terrorist scum crossed the border from Gaza into southern Israel and carried out barbaric attacks against Israelis.  At least 1,400 Israeli men, women, and children were slaughtered, and hundreds taken hostage.  The dead and captured included 32 dead Americans and an unknown number of American hostages.  Attacking Israel is nothing new for members of Hamas, whose most popular hobby is constructing missiles to be fired over the Israeli border.  But October 7 wasn’t isolated attack; it was a well planned, coordinated invasion, made to start a war, and carried out with a brutality reminiscent of the Medieval Crusades and Nazi Germany.  Indeed, many commentators, including Mark Levin, have taken to calling the Hamas murderers Nazis, and that’s not just hyperbole.  In point of fact, the comparison of the Hamas maniacs to Nazis is all too apt.  Adolph Hitler’s Germany persecuted Jews, and tolerated Christian religions to the extent that they could be used to foster Nazism as the true State religion.  Hitler’s relationship with Muslims was something else again.  Hitler admired Islam, telling Albert Speer, “It’s been our misfortune to have the wrong religion.  Why did it have to be Christianity, with its meekness and flabbiness?”  He considered Islam a Männerreligion—a “religion of men.”  The “soldiers of Islam” received a warrior’s heaven, “a real earthly paradise,” which Hitler argued, was much more suited to the “Germanic temperament” than the “Jewish filth and priestly twaddle” of Christianity.”  In 1941, Hitler met with the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem.  The Mufti, al-Husseini, told Hitler that the Arabs and Germans had common enemies in the English, Jews and Communists.  The Mufti, who also called on Benito Mussolini, shared the Nazi goal of “uncompromising war against the Jews,” and he called on Arabs to kill Jews.  The Muslim Brotherhood, founded in Eygpt in 1928, was trained in the tactics of guerilla warfare by Nazi commando leader Otto Skorzeny.  This was basic training for those who later became Islamic terrorists.  One of Skorzeny’s students was Yassar Arafat. We’re told that Islam is a religion of peace, and for most adherents that’s true.  However, whatever one’s view of Islam, it’s fair to say that Islam is not now, nor has it ever been known for its tolerance.  That’s not a criticism, it’s just a fact which certainly isn’t unique to Muslims.  The history of Christianity surely is marked by episodes of extreme intolerance and cruelty in the name of God.  Untold thousands were hacked to death by Crusaders who were sent out to kill with Papal blessings.  The Massacre at Beziers is a good example.  During the Albigensian Crusade in Southern France in 1209, soldiers asked the Papal Legate, Amalric, how to distinguish the heretics from the faithful.  The priest told them, “Kill them all.  God will know his own.”  That advice was a far cry from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, but religions have a habit of evolving, or perhaps devolving from “love thy neighbor” to “kill the stranger.”  Muslims are no exception.  Hatred of Jews was not a founding principle of Islam.  Far from it.  Muhammad considered Jesus to be the greatest of God’s messengers, and preached tolerance for “People of the Book” (Muslims, Christians and Jews).  Among his 9 wives, Muhammad numbered a Jewish woman and a Coptic Christian.  After Muhammad’s death in 632 things changed.  The truth is that Muslims don’t just consider non-Muslims to be infidels; they’ve been fighting amongst themselves for 1,400 years.  When Muhammad died, his friend Abu Bakr became the Islamic leader, or Caliph.  Some Muslims, now called Shiites, believed that the line of succession should run from Muhammad’s cousin Ali, instead of through Bakr.  War broke out.  This 7th Century schism was led by the so-called Kharijites, who divided Muslims into two groups, those who agreed with them (The People of Heaven), and those who disagreed (The People of Hell), which sounds a lot like today’s Democrat Party.  Anyhow, the first four Caliphs were murdered, and Shiites and Sunnis have been fighting ever since.  Mideast violence also is nothing new.  Muslims opposed the creation of a Jewish State, and have fought several wars against Israel since 1948.  The Palestinians, who could rightly be considered the locusts of the Muslim world, sow violence and dicontent wherever they go.  They turned Lebanon from a peaceful Mediterranean country into a terrorist Hellhole.  They tried to overhtrow the King of Jordan.  Consequently, they’re not welcome in any Arab State.  Israel agreed to a Palestinian homeland 23 years ago.  Yassar Arafat vetoed the agreement.  In 2005, Israel gave the Palestinians control of Gaza.  The next year, in their one and only election, Palestinians chose Hamas to govern them.  Therefore, the calls for freedom for Palestine shouldn’t be directed at Israel.  When you hear calls for “a two State solution,” remember that they’re one State short.  Palestinians rejected Statehood in 2000, and chose Hamas instead.  The Hamas Charter consists of 36 Articles, all of which promote the goal of destroying the State of Israel.  One of the Articles says, “There is no solution for the Palestinian problem except by Jihad (holy war).”  There’s no negotiating with that.  Since October 7, Israel has been waging war against Hamas.  It’s been ugly and bloody, but they have no choice.  What has disgusted me more than anything else has been the reaction to Israel’s defense of their homeland in this country.  You expect blatant anti-Semitism from the Muslim world, but the attacks on Israel and Jews on our college campuses is a disgusting reminder of the educational malpractice that has been perpetrated on our children by the Woke imbeciles who populte college faculties.  They employ the tactics of the Left, preferring mindless chanting to truth, and consider facts to be mere annoyances to be denied or ignored.  The Hamas butchers produced videos of their own atrocities.  Those videos are in the public domain.  Reportedly, journalists from CNN and other outlets went along with the terrorists on their raids.  Yet, again reminiscent of the Holocaust, some blue and green haired college educated dolts have had the gall to express doubt whether Hamas really attacked Israel.  Congresspersons, mostly from the Squad, are calling for a cease fire, which would permit Hamas leaders to escape and rearm.  Maybe thjey should be renamed the Jihad Squad.  Israel has remained steadfast.  Corrupt Demented Imbecile Joe Biden and filthy company have wavered, calling for a pause in the fighting.  They’re torn between courting the votes of Jewish Americans, and trying to appease Muslim voters.  If we’re lucky, this rift will tear the Democrat Party apart, just in time for the 2024 election.  Hopefully, the Palestinian protesters will use their 1,400 year old feud do for Democrats what what they did for the Lebanese.  Palestinian unrest could be the 2024 version of the Wuhan virus for Democrats.  Meanwhile, let’s hope the Israelis are able to eradicate the Hamas virus from their borders.  Those cockroaches need to be hunted down and exterminated.