Things People Blame the Jews For, Volume XL: Weed

Andrew Anglin. chieftain of the neo-Nazi website Daily Stormer, has a message for his followers regarding who controls the legal marijuana industry. Give you one guess:

“It is personally disgusting to me that we are condemning a generation of children to grow up baked in this noxious substance. But there is now huge public support for it,” website editor Andrew Anglin complained in a post about the Trump administration potentially pushing back against marijuana consumption and distribution. “Most of the marijuana industry, I can assure you, is run by Jews.”

Sadly for Anglin, it seems like many of his followers like toking up and so are resistant to the message that they have fallen under the thrall of the Jew-agenda. As one of Anglin's followers put it in eloquent rejoinder: "I enjoy cannabis and I'm not some filthy fucking hippie … or some faggot libertarian or [civic nationalism] cuck."

Can't wait to see how this debate plays out.

The Humiliation of The "Responsible" Republicans

I firmly believe that the "responsible" Republicans -- those who didn't already start on the Trump/Bannon side of the Party -- are deeply humiliated that Donald Trump is now the standard-bearer for their party.

It's embarrassing that a man whom everyone -- including his closest confidants -- agrees is a complete idiot has become the Republican mascot.

Of course, nobody likes being humiliated. But rather than taking aim at the actual root problem -- that they're Republicans in a world where Donald Trump is the Republican Party -- they're instead lashing out against those figures who are keeping Trump's mendacity and incompetence in the public eye.

This is how we get Senators Grassley and Graham -- often thought of as members of the "responsible" GOP wing -- requesting a criminal investigation of the author of the Steele Dossier. This is how we get Speaker Paul Ryan backing Trump water-carrier Rep. Devin Nunes over the Department of Justice regarding access to classified documents in the Russia probe (Nunes recused himself from that investigation after being accused of disclosing classified information; the House Ethics Committee cleared him last month). We see it in the ongoing efforts to discredit virtually our entire law enforcement apparatus as it continues to zero in on Trump administration malfeasance. We see it in the flatly incredible pivot back to LOOK AT HILLARY'S EMAILS in a last-ditch attempt to deflect attention.

They know that they're in bed with a bad guy. I have no doubt they find it deeply shameful. But instead of manning up and actually working to extract themselves from the situation, they're instead more upset that everyone keeps on talking about it. What they want is to return to a state of blissful -- if not ignorance, than at least quiescence -- where Trump's obvious deficiencies can be laughed off as within the bounds of normal politics, and they can just pass tax cuts and gut health care without having constant whispers of "is the Republican Party fiddling while American burns" hovering in the background.

It won't work, of course. It isn't Comey, or Mueller, or Rosenstein, or the FBI, or the DOJ, or the mainstream media, that is the root of their humiliation. It all boils down to the fact that they're Republicans in a period where Donald Trump has ascended to the fore of the Republican Party. So long as Trump is still in charge and still a Republican in good standing, he will continue to do things that will humiliate other members of his party.

The only question is how much damage the so-called "responsible" Republicans will do in their desperate attempt to avoid responsibility and pretend like if they close their (and everyone else's) eyes, this will all go away.

The Other Voting Rights Travesty

One interesting aspect of studying "anti-discrimination" issues in America is the degree to which Indigenous rights are frequently simply forgotten. In Australia, New Zealand, or to a lesser extent Canada, indigenous issues often occupy a substantial part of the attention of scholars in this area, but in the United States Native Americans are completely overlooked. An American law student, for example, will invariably get a significant education in the history of civil rights legislation and jurisprudence spanning the entirety of American history. But one can get an entire American legal education at most schools and pretty much never read a case that is primarily about Native American law.

On that note, I found very interesting this New York Times article about renewed pushes in Native communities to get and protect their right to vote. Whether the demand is opening polling stations in remote areas where Native Americans often live, to contesting gerrymandered districting lines which deprive Native Americans of proportionate representation, to ensuring that Native Americans have equal access to the necessary infrastructural prerequisites to voting (e.g., adequate postal service in vote-by-mail communities, or available registration offices in places that require voter ID), Native voting rights issues overlap with but are also distinct from the more familiar set of problems that are present in the race field.

Anyway, the article makes for a good read. Recommended.

And To Think, For a Minute I Thought Roy Moore Really *Did* Have a Jewish Friend

As you might recall, at the tail end of his campaign Roy Moore's wife Kayla tried to refute allegations that he was antisemitic by saying their "attorney is a Jew". This set off a media manhunt to figure out who the Jew in question was, and my prediction was that whoever it was, he'd turn out to be a Messianic Jew -- which is to say, not really Jewish at all.

Sadly for me, it looked like I was wrong: reporters discovered that Richard Jaffe -- who defended the Moore's son Caleb on drug charges -- was Jewish (actually Jewish) and so likely the man in question. While disappointed that my take didn't pan out, I took solace in the fact that Jaffe was a longtime friend and backer of Moore's Democratic opponent, Doug Jones.

But twist! Now Kayla is back in the news and claiming that Jaffe was not the Jew she was referring to. The suspect is still at large; and the hunt is back on!

Now two thoughts occupy my mind:

(1) I cannot believe this is still a story.

(2) Given that at least some of Moore's "Jewish" friends and Rabbis are indeed actually Messianic, I'm thinking that my original prediction has new life within it.

UPDATE: And boom goes the dynamite.

The West Coast is the Best (Target for a North Korean Nuclear Apocalypse) Coast

After many wonderful travels around the country to see family and friends -- in Fort Walton Beach, in Coral Gables, in Boca Raton, and in Chicago -- I'm now finally back home in Berkeley, California to begin the year 2018.

These travels make me miss my own time living in the middle of the country. Less because Chicago is so much better than the Bay Area (though it is), and more because Chicago is far less likely to be incinerated in an atomic holocaust after the President of the United States decided to get into a Twitter war with North Korea over who has a "bigger" nuclear button.

Anyway, Happy New Year!