They haven't forgotten
To many Vietnam veterans, actress Jane Fonda is still "Hanoi Jane" for actions they consider abetting the enemy during the Vietnam War. So they didn't let a recent opportunity to protest her go by.
The actress had made a $100,000 contribution to a "Flip the 49th" congressional district group organized to support an opponent against Republican U.S. Rep Darrell Issa of California, himself a Vietnam-era veteran.
Protesters gathered last week outside Issa's California office and held signs saying "Adios Issa," "Disarm Hate" and "Stop Trump, Defeat Issa."
The veterans, meanwhile, opposed them, shouting through a megaphone, "Democrats, Democrats, you should be ashamed, taking Commie money from Hanoi Jane." They also played Lee Greenwood's "Proud To Be an American."
Issa went out to greet the veterans and sent several tweets about it, noting Fonda was "a traitor who sold out our POWs in Vietnam and TO THIS DAY says she 'isn't proud of America.'" He repeated the charge to the Washington Free Beacon, saying, "Hanoi Jane is a traitor - she was a traitor during the Vietnam War and you cannot undo being a traitor. ... I entered the Army in 1970, and we consider her a traitor and that's not going to change. Anyone who thinks she's not a traitor can vote for the Democrats."
Streeeeeeeetching truth
You have to laugh at the left's reaction to "Fire and Fury," the newly released gossip book about part of the first year of the Trump administration. As parts of its were released last week and shown to be false or misleading, left-leaning reporters began to tread a careful line. Typical of that was MSNBC host Stephanie Ruhle, who said she'd spoken to people in the White House who said, "Even if not all of it is true, the spirit of the book is and it's troublesome."
Later in the day, she was reduced to: "A lot might not be true in the book. But, boy, even if some of it is, it's a wow."
Wow, indeed. Gossip is and always will be titillating. But not necessarily true.
Campus intellectuals
The terms "snowflake," "trigger warnings" and "safe space" took on new meanings in 2017 as college students in some places became afraid of things as harmless as their shadow and were told by professors they had every right to be afraid of people, parties and policies with which they didn't agree.
Last week, Campus Reform released a video that featured its "Top 5 Triggered Campus Liberals in 2017."
The list included a University of California, Riverside, student who stole a conservative student's "Make America Great Again" hat and refused to give it back because it represented "genocide"; a University of Illinois graduate instructor who challenged conservative students to a fight, charged them and knocked a student's phone off his hand before being arrested; a Fordham University student-run coffee shop that evicted conservative students because they were wearing "Make America Great Again" hats and Donald Trump campaign clothing and supposedly making other students uncomfortable with their presence; a Portland State University student who masked his face with pantyhose and splashed a campus pro-life display with paint before being detained; and a student at Western Washington University who reacted to the presence of a Trump sign on campus by continually screaming at the sky.
Let them eat cake
If a Democratic U.S. president praised the Iranian people who recently have been protesting their repressive government, that president would be met with no end of support from the media. When that president is Republican Donald Trump, not only does he not receive support but even the motives of the poverty-protesting people are suspect.
The New York Times, for instance, sought to imply the protesters were at fault with a tweet that linked to an article titled "Deadly Iran Protests Prompt Warning of Harsher Response." The tweet said, "Iranian authorities have clamped down on Tehran after demonstrators across the country ignored calls for calm."
The tweeted responses were rapid and wicked. Among them: "Ignored calls for calm? Is that what you're going with? Wow. It's almost like you're supporting the Iranian government more than you do the American government."
Meanwhile, in discussing the protests and Iran's use of its money on terrorism instead of spending it on needs in the country, a correspondent for left-leaning MSNBC couldn't bring himself to properly describe what the money was being used for.
"There is truth that the Iranian people did not reap the benefits of what was supposed to be a windfall of money," said Ayman Mohyeldin on "Morning Joe," "and that has been a consistent argument made by American critics of the Iran nuclear deal, that the money that the Iran government was going to receive was probably going to be diverted and used in those endeavors in Syria, Lebanon, and Yemen."
Those "endeavors," just for the record, have helped back Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad in the country's civil war, support the Lebanese terror organization Hezbollah and funded missiles to Houthi rebels in Yemen.