Tuesday Potpourri

Being as tomorrow is a holiday, it will require a more festive post. That means, I am shifting my Wednesday potpourri to Tuesday this week.

First, a high school teacher offers this comment to Jake at Omni American:

I hate to say it, but I think the reason high school students no longer like English class is because they've stopped teaching the classics and switched to not-so-great recently written books that are supposed to be 'relevant' to their experiences.

Second, Nick Sortor reports on the latest terrorist bombing in Stockholm, Sweded. It is an obvious consequence of the fact that the good Swedish people chose to open their country to masses of migrants-- who did not speak Swedish and who had no intention of assimilation.

A bomb has just exploded in central Stockholm, per @visegrad24 There were a RECORD 149 confirmed explosive attacks in Sweden in 2023, the vast majority of which are carried out by immigrant gangs. THIS is why we need mass deportations in America. Can ANYONE imagine 149 explosive attacks in New York City in a single year? Because that’s what’s coming.

Third, Democrats are agonizing over their serial losses in the last election. As for why it happened, one Rob Schneider offered this analysis:

You lost because you tried to convince the American people that it was racist to close the border and not let people come in illegally to rob and murder them. You lost because no one gives a **** about the term ‘Latinx.’ You lost because your Justice Department called parents who showed up at school board meetings terrorists just for not wanting pornography in their children's classrooms.

Fourth, Politico convened a focus group to address the issue of Democratic Party decline.

Here are some excerpts:

When asked to compare the Democratic Party to an animal, one participant compared the party to an ostrich because “they’ve got their heads in the sand and are absolutely committed to their own ideas, even when they’re failing.” Another likened them to koalas, who “are complacent and lazy about getting policy wins that we really need.” Democrats, another said, are “not a friend of the working class anymore.”

Most people are simply too afraid to denounce the candidate who was leading the Democratic Party in the last election. Still…,

Even though the focus group voters did not solely blame Harris for their distaste of the Democratic Party, they also weren’t happy about her candidacy. Participants described her as “inauthentic,” “very dishonest” and “did not seem competent.”

“It seemed like a lot of what she came out and said wasn’t really off-the-cuff, wasn’t coming from her,” said another man who voted for Biden in 2020 and Trump in 2024. “Seemed like every interview, every time she came out and talked about something, it was planned out and never her thoughts, didn’t seem genuine to her thoughts, whereas, Trump, even though you never really knew what he was going to say, when he was going to say it, it was always him and genuine to what he thought, so that’s what swayed me.”

Fifth, the safest city in the world today is Budapest, Hungary. Why should this be the case? Well, its leader, Victor Orban, refused to open the doors to illegal migrants.

David Goldman reports:

Budapest is the safest major city in the world thanks in large part to PM Orban's immigration policy.

Roger Kimball adds this:

Viktor Orbán is a hero. That some people demonize him as an authoritarian or even "fascist" tells us a lot more about those hurling the insults than it tells us about Orbán or Hungary.

Sixth, Libs of Tik Tok reports on the situation in the New York City subway system and our governor’s reaction to it:

Hours after a migrant lit a woman on fire and watched her burn to death on the subway, Governor Kathy Hochul is posting staged photos on the subway boasting about how safe it is. Unreal.

And, the governor was claiming that her placement of new cameras in the subways helped to catch the perpetrator.

I may be overreading, just a bit, but this incident probably marks the end of the political career of one Kathy Hochul.

Seventh, here’s a quiz for today. What do you think of when you hear the name Amelia Carter?

Amelia Carter was the name of the victim of the Guatemalan migrant.. She was 29 years old and was white. Thus, no one dares mention her. The crime does not fit the narrative. Of course, she was neither drunk nor homeless.

Seventh, meanwhile in the cable news wars, CNN and MSNBC are bleeding audience.

CNN reportedly wrapped up 2024 with the lowest audience numbers in its history. This is despite election years usually drawing more audience to news outlets in general.

From December 26, 2023, through December 15, 2024, CNN averaged just 93,000 viewers in the key 25-54 demographic and 488,000 total viewers, according to Nielsen Media Research as reported by the Washington Examiner. This trailed Fox News, which dominated with 1.46 million total viewers.

The poor performance follows disappointing election night coverage, where CNN drew 5.1 million viewers—a massive 44 percent drop from its 2020 election coverage. In comparison, Fox News attracted 13.6 million viewers during the same event.

CNN wasn’t the only left-wing media outlet that had struggles this year. MSNBC averaged 86,000 viewers in the 25-54 demographic but outperformed CNN in total viewers with 806,000. Reports on Thursday revealed MSNBC requested pay cuts from anchors Joy Reid and Stephanie Ruhle to retain their roles, following a $5 million salary reduction for Rachel Maddow.

Eighth, Daniel Greenfield explains that in the Middle East, everything means the opposite of what it says. No area of the world suffers more from journalistic and political gaslighting.

Even as Islamic Jihadists are taking over Syria, ethnically cleansing Kurds and terrorizing Christians, the media is hailing the new “inclusive” regime which “liberated” Syria.

The regime is indeed inclusive if you consider bearded men with assault rifles to be the measure of inclusivity. And terrorizing minorities to be the exciting new diversity.

“This victory, my brothers, is a victory for the entire Islamic nation,” Abu Mohammad al-Jawlani, the leader of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), a former Al Qaeda and ISIS allied group, declared in the Umayyad Mosque. The mosque is a symbol of the old Caliphate and it echoed the speech given by his old friend, the former ISIS Caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, in Mosul’s Great Mosque of al-Nuri declaring his own caliphate. But it will no doubt be a most inclusive caliphate.

As Jawlani had previously said, “some people limit the issue of implementing the rule of the sharia to just imposing some of the Hudud punishments, chopping off hands, stoning whomever, whipping someone who drinks alcohol, and so on. But this is a very basic part of the very big concept of implementing the rule of the sharia.” There’s a lot more to Sharia Islamic law than just chopping off hands but you have to work on the basics of hand chopping before going big.

Syria’s newly appointed Prime Minister Mohammad al-Bashir appeared in front of a white Jihadist flag with the Islamic declaration that rejects all other religions except Islam. Bashir’s credentials include a degree in Sharia Islamic law and membership in the Muslim Brotherhood’s ‘Syrian Salvation Government’. After saving Syria from Assad, who will save it from the saviors?

Secretary of State Blinken is going on a tour to persuade the Turks and their Jihadis to establish an “inclusive” government in Syria. But inclusivity now means Sunni Jihadis backed by Turkey repressing and killing everyone else. This will be a fundamental liberating change from the old order in which Shiite Jihadis backed by Iran repressed and killed everyone else.

Words in the Middle East however have a way of meaning different things than they do over here. It’s not just “inclusive” that has a whole other dictionary entry.

Ninth, via Mario Nawfal, the latest from Argentina. That is, the latest from libertarian president Javier Milei:

IN 2025, WE’LL SLASH EVEN MORE REGULATIONS AND TAXES "We’ve made our first big cuts, and now we’re going deeper. In 2025, we’ll continue removing regulations, pushing economic freedom further.

This year, we jumped 70 points in economic freedom—going from the bottom 35 to the middle—but we’ve only implemented a quarter of the reforms.

We’ll advance privatization, deepen labor reforms, and eliminate 90% of taxes—not revenue, but the number of taxes-- moving to a simplified system with no more than six taxes.