Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat tackled a knife-wielding Palestinian on a stabbing spree who had just attacked a Jewish man, and it was all caught on camera. A security camera in Jerusalem captured the moment Sunday just after an 19-year-old Palestinian attacked a Jewish man and in the process of searching for more victims.
“I felt a sharp blow in my stomach,” said Abraham Goldstein, the victim. “I began shouting that there was a stabbing and that they should move away, then he came to stab me again and I blocked him with my tefilin.”
Mayor Barkat lunged at the man he called a “terrorist” and, together with his bodyguards, took the man down near Jerusalem’s City Hall. Barkat can be seen in this video wearing a white shirt and lunging at the suspect, who was standing in what is typically a very busy intersection.
“[W]hen I was on my way to the office for a meeting, while we were at the junction right next to City Hall, my driver and my team noticed something happening in the junction,” Barkat told reporters two hours after the incident. “So, I got out of the car with my bodyguard, and we approached the scene and noticed a terrorist with a knife in his hand.”
Barkat explained that his bodyguard, Asaf Na’amani, drew and cocked his handgun, which caused the Palestinian man to drop the knife. At that point Barkat and his bodyguards took him down.
“The mayor and I jumped on him and wrestled him to the ground,” said Na’amani. “In our world, there’s no such thing as hesitation — there’s only yes or no.”
A second video — shown above — offers a close-up view of Barkat and his bodyguards around the stabbing suspect when he was on the ground. Barkat then attends to the stabbing victim, an ultra-Orthodox Jewish man who was moderately wounded according to police.
“Without thinking, my bodyguard took out his weapon, and when he aimed at the terrorist, the terrorist dropped his knife and we immediately tackled him to the ground to make sure that he could not continue with the terror attack,” Barkat told The Jerusalem Post. “It’s clear to me that if the terrorist had continued stabbing, he would not be alive right now. But because he dropped the knife we overpowered the terrorist.”
Police later identified the attacker as a 19-year-old Palestinian who was in Israel without a permit.
“Meanwhile, after the press conference concluded, one attendee expressed the sentiments seemingly shared by most of the journalists in the room. ‘I guess this makes him Super Mayor,’” wrote a Jerusalem Post reporter.
Barkat, 55, served as an officer in the paratroopers’ brigade. A former high-tech entrepreneur, he was elected as Israel’s mayor of Jerusalem in 2008.
Director Alejandro Inarritu (L) embraces actor Edward Norton after their movie “Birdman” won the Oscar for best original screenplay at the 87th Academy Awards in Hollywood, California February 22, 2015. REUTERS/Mike Blake
“Birdman” won for Best Picture at the 87th Academy Awards hosted by Neil Patrick Harris, beating out main rival “Boyhood.” The film’s director and screenwriter Alejandro Iñárritu also won in the directing and screenwriting categories, making “Birdman” the night’s big winner.
“Two Mexicans in a row, that’s suspicious I guess,” Iñárritu quipped after the award’s presenter and friend Sean Penn came out with, “Who gave this son of a bi**h his green card?”
The reference refers to Mexican director Alfson Cuaron, who won for “Gravity” in 2014.
Eddie Redmayne won the Oscar for Best Actor for his portrayal of Stephen Hawking in “The Theory of Everything,” beating out co-favorite, “Birdman” star Michael Keaton.
“This Oscar – wooow!” Redmayne exclaimed before continuing more soberly. “This belongs to all of those people around the world battling ALS. It belongs to one exceptional family, Stephen J. Hawking and children.”
Julianne Moore, a Hollywood favorite for her past role as former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, which was not favorable to the former Alaskan governor, received a standing ovation for winning the Academy Award for her leading role as a woman suffering from Alzheimer’s disease in “Still Alice.”
“I read an article that said that winning an Oscar could lead to living five years longer,” Moore said. “If that’s true I’d really like to thank the academy because my husband is younger than me.”
That Oscar, for Best Supporting Actor, went to J.K Simmons for his role as a domineering music teacher in “Whiplash.” It was the first Oscar nomination for Simmons, 60, a longtime character actor. The actor appears in the Farmer’s Insurance commercials, as well as the journalist in the “Amazing Spiderman” movies.
Patricia Arquette spiced things up a bit when she won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for her role in “Boyhood,” a movie shot over a 12-year span. Arquette, who was bleeped out for cursing in her first couple of words, dedicated her win to “to every woman who gave birth,” stating “it’s our time to have wage equality once and for all and equal rights for women in the United States of America.”
The evening started off slow, as one major award was president in the first hour and 15 minutes. Neil Patrick-Harris immediately addressed the drummed up controversy over the color of the nominees (yes, really). Nearly all of the major nominations this year went to white people.
“Tonight we honor Hollywood’s best and whitest, sorry I mean brightest,” he joked.
He then melted the ice further when he was joined by Anna Kendrick and Jack Black, and together they broke into the night’s big opening number “Moving Pictures,” a dance number that the Tony’s host has become famous for doing.
But it is John Travolta that everyone is talking about this morning, and it isn’t because they were praising his past performances.
First, in this cringe-worthy picture, Travolta is seen leaning in to kiss a visibly creeped out Scarlett Johansson. Travolta’s hand-placement appears to be unnerving to her (no shocker).
Then, after mistakenly calling Idina Menzel “Adele Dazeem” at last year’s awards, the “Let It Go” singer asked her dear friend “Glam Gazingo” to join her on the Oscars stage, bumping a sheepish Travolta.
“I deserve that one,” Travolta admitted. He then awkwardly clutched Menzel’s face and said, “But you, you look darling my beautiful, my wickedly talented Idina Menzel – is that right?”
A creeped out Menzel answered, “You did it! That was so good. Not like it’s going to follow me around for the rest of my life.”
“I know, tell me about it,” Travolta joked before asking Menzel to announce the winner for Best Original Song.
Host Neil Patrick Harris also took a poke at Travolta.
“Benedict Cumberbatch,” said Harris. “It’s not only the most awesome name in show business, it’s also the sound you get when you ask John Travolta to announce Ben Affleck.”
List of winners at Sunday’s 87th annual Academy Awards
Best picture: “Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance).”
Actor: Eddie Redmayne, “The Theory of Everything.”
Actress: Julianne Moore, “Still Alice.”
Supporting actor: J.K. Simmons, “Whiplash.”
Supporting actress: Patricia Arquette, “Boyhood.”
Directing: Alejandro G. Inarritu, “Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance).”
Foreign language film: “Ida.”
Adapted screenplay: Graham Moore, “The Imitation Game.”
Original screenplay: Alejandro G. Inarritu, Nicolas Giacobone, Alexander Dinelaris Jr. and Armando Bo, “Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance).”
Animated feature film: “Big Hero 6.”
Production design: “The Grand Budapest Hotel.”
Cinematography: “Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance).”
President Ronald Reagan, left, the conservative standard-bearer with deep libertarian notes, and President Barack Obama, right, who wants to be the liberal big government standard-bearer, with deep modern liberal notes, which Reagan said resembles fascism.
As a fiscal policy economist who believes in individual liberty and personal responsibility, I have two goals.
But I continue with my Sisyphean task. And part of my efforts include educating people about the Rahn Curve, which is sort of the spending version of the Laffer Curve. It shows the non-linear relationship between the size of government and economic performance.
Simply stated, some government spending presumably enables growth by creating the conditions (such as rule of law and property rights) for commerce.
But as politicians learn to buy votes and enhance their power by engaging in redistribution, then government spending is associated with weaker economic performance because of perverse incentives and widespread misallocation of resources.
I’ve even shared a number of videos on the topic.
The video I narrated explaining the basics of the Rahn Curve, which was produced by the Center for Freedom and Prosperity.
Now we have another video to add to the collection.
Narrated by Svetla Kostadinova of Bulgaria’s Institute for Market Economics, it discusses research from a few years ago about the “optimal size of government.”
If you want to read the research study that is cited in the video, click here. The article was written by Dimitar Chobanov and Adriana Mladenova of the IME
The evidence indicates that the optimum size of government, e.g. the share of overall government spending that maximizes economic growth, is no greater than 25% of GDP (at a 95% confidence level) based on data from the OECD countries. In addition, the evidence indicates that the optimum level of government consumption on final goods and services as a share of GDP is 10.4% based on a panel data of 81 countries. However, due to model and data limitations, it is probable that the results are biased upwards, and the “true” optimum government level is even smaller than the existing empirical study indicates.
Two points in that excerpt are worth additional attention.
First, they understand that not all forms of government spending have equal effects.
Spending on core public goods (rule of law, courts, etc) generally are associated with better economic performance.
Spending on physical and human capital (infrastructure and education) can be productive, though governments often do a poor job based on a money-to-outcomes basis.
Most government spending, though, is for transfers and consumption, and these are areas where the economic effects are overwhelmingly negative.
So kudos to the Bulgarians for recognizing that it’s particularly important to restrain some types of outlays.
The other point that merits additional emphasis is that the growth-maximizing size of government is probably far lower than 25 percent of economic output.
Here’s what they wrote, citing yours truly.
…the results from the above mentioned models should not be taken as the “true” optimal level of government due to limitations of the models, and lack of data as already discussed. As Dan Mitchell commented, government spending was about 10% of GDP in the West from the end of the Napoleonic wars to World War I. And we do not have any data to think that growth would have been higher if government was doubled or tripled. However, what the empirical results do show is that the government spending should be much less than is the average of most countries at the moment. Thus, we can confidentially say the optimum size of general government is no bigger than 25% but is likely to be considerably smaller because of the above-mentioned reasons.
And here’s their version of the Rahn Curve, though I’m not a big fan since it seems to imply that government should consume about one-third of economic output.
I much prefer the curve to show the growth-maximizing level under 20 percent of GDP.
Though I often use a dashed line to emphasize that we don’t really know the actual peak because there unfortunately are no developed nations with modest-sized public sectors.
Even Singapore and Hong Kong have governments that consume about 20 percent of economic output.
But maybe if I someday achieve my goal, we’ll have better data.
And maybe some day I’ll go back to college and play quarterback for my beloved Georgia Bulldogs.
P.S. Since I shared one video, I can’t resist also including this snippet featuring Ronald Reagan talking about libertarianism.
What impresses me most about this clip is not that Reagan endorses libertarianism.
He had a much greater depth of knowledge than even supporters realize. Which also can be seen in this clip of Reagan explaining why the Keynesians were wrong about a return to Depression after World War II.
And click here if you simply want to enjoy some classic Reagan clips. For what it’s worth, this clip from his first inauguration is my favorite.
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker speaks with reporters at the conclusion of the opening session of the National Governors Association Winter Meeting in Washington, Saturday, Feb. 21, 2015. (Photo: AP/Cliff Owen)
Left-wing media attention has turned to Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, a potential Republican candidate for president whose stock has risen in recent weeks. Following a headline-grabbing performance that prompted PPD to name the two-term governor the event’s biggest winner, the DMR Poll found Walker surged to the top in the first-in-the-nation caucus.
While PPD has named Walker the most likely 2016 dark horse, his rise to the stature of a serious top-tier candidate has been an alarming surprise to the liberal “mainstream” media. Now, they are predictably commencing with their systematic attack on the man who took on the progressive establishment in an otherwise progressive state — though shifting rightward — and won.
And they are doing so because they are terrified of Gov. Scott Walker.
First, they attempted to tie Walker to the Obama-Giuliani controversy over whether or not the president loves America.
In an interview with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Friday, Walker was asked if “America’s Mayor” Rudy Giuliani was out of line saying he doesn’t believe President Obama loves America the way other past Republican and Democratic presidents did, statements he has since reinforced with substantive argument.
“I’ve said repeatedly that (Giuliani) can speak for himself,” Walker said of the former NYC mayor’s comments at a fundraiser for the governor earlier this week. “The president can defend that.”
“Do you think the president loves America?” the paper pressed, to which the governor responded:
I assume most people in this country love America. And to me I don’t think it’s worth getting into the battle over whether he does or he doesn’t. He can handle that himself. I know I do. And I know there are great people in this country who love this country and who … feel this country’s exceptional and it doesn’t necessarily align by party. I think there are Republicans and Democrats and plenty of people in between. I’ve never asked the president so I don’t really know what his opinions are on that one way or another.
Walker — who is currently in Washington for a weekend meeting of governors — further gave a response to The Associated Press, who apparently has nothing better to report on.
“You should ask the president what he thinks about America,” Walker fired back at the AP reporter.
Now, in an even more ridiculous exchange during an interview with the Washington Post, Dan Balz and Robert Costa asked Gov. Walker whether he believes Obama is a Christian. Balz cleverly noted in his follow-up hit piece Sunday that Obama “recently talked about his Christian faith at the National Prayer Breakfast.”
So what? He also attended a church that regularly preaches “God-damn America.”
What is behind the left-wing media rush to tarnish Gov. Scott Walker? Fear. Though the GOP bench in 2016 will be the deepest in at least two cycles, many of the other Republican hopefuls are not battle-tested. Further, his surge in recent polling is both nationwide and in key traditionally blue states liberals are quietly worried they can no longer hold onto in the post-Obama era. Demographically speaking, the very voters that are endangering Democrats’ grips on these states are the very ones who handed Walker three electoral victories for governor in four years in a state that hasn’t voted Republican on the presidential level since 1984.
And, unlike Jeb Bush, Gov. Walker has a good deal of room left to rise.
“Quinnipiac University polls in Colorado, Iowa and Virginia found that Walker had ‘the lowest name recognition’ of any candidates tested,” Balz noted. That’s certainly less true Iowa now, but as a whole the governor must see his favorability ratings rise disproportionate to his unfavorable ratings. It is a crucial time for him and other little-known GOP hopefuls. As voters get to know him, it is more likely than not a majority will come to like him. Walker is a scary talented retail politician, and Democrats know that if they want to destroy him now, just as they successfully tarnished the last grave threat — New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie — they must do it now.
Thus, with the media doing their part and carrying the Democratic Party’s water, the race to define Gov. Scott Walker is underway.
This week on FOX News Sunday, George Will, Kirsten Powers, Kimberly Strassel, and Peter Baker discuss Rudy Giuliani, Clinton taking foreign donations and more.
More than 1,000 people formed a “ring of peace” around the Norwegian capital’s synagogue, an initiative taken by young Muslims in Norway after a series of attacks against Jews in Europe, in Oslo, Saturday, Feb. 21 2015. Norway’s Chief Rabbi Michael Melchior sang the traditional Jewish end of Shabaat song outside the Oslo synagogue before a large crowd holding hands. (AP Photo/Hakon Mosvold Larsen / NTB Scanpix)
Muslim youths gathered hand-in-hand Saturday to form a “ring of peace” around Oslo’s Jewish synagogue in Norway following deadly shootings at a free speech event and at a synagogue last weekend in neighboring Denmark.
Officials said Omar Abdel Hamid El-Hussein, 22, a Danish citizen of Palestinian origin, was the shooter at last Saturday’s attacks, during which two men were killed, including one guarding a Copenhagen synagogue.
But in a powerful show of solidarity, the Muslim youths who organized the event said they aren’t going to let Islamic terrorists claim the mantle of Islam and rose up in defense of Norway’s Jewish community.
“We want to demonstrate that Jews and Muslims do not hate each other,” Zeeshan Abdullah, 37, said to those who gathered at the event. “We do not want individuals to define what Islam is for the rest of us. This shows that there are many more peace-mongers than warmongers. There is still hope for humanity, for peace and love across religious differences and background.”
Norwegian Jewish community leader Ervin Kohn said the demonstration against anti-Semitism “fills us with hope” especially because “it’s a grassroots movement of young Muslims.”
“Islam is about protecting our brothers and sisters, regardless of which religion they belong to. … Islam is about rising above hate and never sinking to the same level as the haters,” read an advertisement for the event, according to the Times of Israel. “Islam is about defending each other.”
Speaking at the Iranian-American Community symposium, America’s Mayor Rudy Giuliani tore into Obama’s policies on Iran and Islamic extremism. The former New York City mayor spoke with passion, flat-out rage and was on the verge of tears several times, ripped apart President Obama’s policies on terrorism and Iran
The speech, which was actually on Feb. 13, 2015, was given at the symposium “Countering Islamic Fundamentalism, and a Nuclear-Armed Iran” in Phoenix, Arizona. Giuliani rattled off a list of attacks and victims of Islamic extremism before slamming the administration’s policy of prioritizing political correctness over protecting American citizens.
“They have in common a movement the President of the United States will not recognize,” Giuliani said. :They have been murdered, they have been slaughtered, they have been raped, they have been tortured, they have been beheaded, they have been burned by a movement that the President of the United States will not recognize. What is wrong with him?”
Giuliani drew criticism and incessant mainstream media attention after saying the he didn’t think President Obama loved America the way other presidents, both Republican and Democrat, have loved the country. He doubled-down on that claim, adding he didn’t hear the love of America in his words nor see it in his policy, a reflection that America is ultimately a force of good in the world.
“Is there no passion? Is there no passion for the lives of these innocent people? Is there no caring for them? Do you know what the slaughter at Fort Hood was described as? Workplace violence. Workplace violence,” he said in disbelief. “This is a captain in the United States Army who had become a jihadist two years before, who was communicating with Afghanistan and Pakistan and Yemen. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out the cause for which he was murdering. He told us, ‘Allah Akbar.’ But the President of the United States doesn’t see the connection. Just the other day he called the slaughter of those Jewish people in France a random act. Mr. President, wake up! Come off the golf course. Come back on earth. These people have all been murdered by a movement.”
Speaking on the Iran nuclear negotiations, he said the administration is unjustly upset because Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “wants to come here and defend his country” against a man who “announced that he wants to destroy the state of Israel.”
“Believe me, when I was Mayor of New York, if someone threatened to destroy New York City I would go anywhere, any place, any time, and I wouldn’t give a damn what the President of the United States thought, to defend my country,” Giuliani shouted. “That is a patriot. That’s a man who loves his people. That’s a man who protects his people. That’s a man who fights for his people. Unlike our president. Twelve red lines to Saudi Arabia. Twelve red lines, they all turned pink, and the last one turned yellow. He backed down to Assad 12 times. You don’t think that had a connection to what Putin did in Crimea?”
Giuliani drew a distinction between the repeated failures to enforce self-imposed red lines and Putin seizing the Crimea (and now eastern Ukraine), stating Putin “looked one time at Obama and he said, ‘I can take advantage of this man, because he is weak.'”
Last week, Ukrainian troops retreated from the strategic town of Debaltseve in the eastern part of country only days after the United Nations and the Obama administration claimed the cease-fire between the Russian-backed separatists and the western-backed Ukrainian government was holding.
“So we are here to appeal to you. We know your senators, particularly Senator McCain understands this as well or better than I do,” Giuliani added. “The President of the United States should not be allowed to reach an agreement with Iran without presenting it to the United States Congress. “This is not, this is not a dictatorship. this is not a country run by one man. This is not a country run by one branch of the government. The Congress of the United States speaks for the people of the United States.”
Pat Buchanan, Eleanor Clift, Mort Zuckerman and Tom Rogan discuss President Obama’s summit on violent extremism, Jeb Bush on terrorism, Netanyahu and regulations.
On HBO’s Real Time Friday, Bill Maher discussing the semantic battle over ISIS’ ideology, said “this idea that we cannot even call it Islamic terrorism seems Orwellian to me.”
Other panelists included Elahe Izadi, Bill Nye and Rob Reiner.
“This idea that we cannot even call it Islamic terrorism seems Orwellian to me,” Maher said. “It seems like we’re paying a very high price for this which is we can’t discuss it even rationally. Can’t we at least say that there are a number of factors that are involved? And the religion is certainly one of that.”
Maher and the panelists also disputed President Obama’s assessment that poverty and education are the main drivers of violent extremism, which is the term the administration chose to use rather than radical Islamic extremism.
“[President Obama] presented this idea that it’s poverty and education. It is poverty and education, also. But why are they impoverished and uneducated? It’s mostly because of the religion. That’s mostly why,” Maher argued. “The U.N. did a study in 2002, they found out that only 300 books had been translated into Arabic that year. In madrassas they only teach one book — I don’t have to tell you which one.”
Loretta Lynch is sworn in to testify before a Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing on her nomination to be U.S. attorney general on Capitol Hill in Washington January 28, 2015. (PHOTO: REUTERS/KEVIN LAMARQUE)
Attorney General nominee Loretta Lynch is now under fire from Sen. David Vitter, R-LA, of the Senate Judiciary Committee for her involvement in the Obama administration’s decision not to prosecute HSBC (NYSE:HSBC) for laundering funds for Mexican drug cartels and Middle Eastern governments, such as Iran.
WND first broke the detailed accounts of whistleblower John Cruz, a former HSBC employee, who has attempted to hold the international bank accountable for its laundering practices by handing over documents and voice recordings to multiple government agencies that have so far been sent right back to the bank’s own internal investigators.
Lynch was the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York who worked with the Department of Justice to give the bank a “deferred prosecution” settlement, in which the institution agreed to pay a $1.9 billion fine and admit “willful criminal conduct” in exchange for avoiding Department of Justice (DOJ) criminal investigations. The branch conveniently already had $2 billion set aside for such purposes when the deal was finalized.
Cruz alleges — with over 1,000 pages of evidence and secret audio recordings, alongside federal prosecutors — that HSBC laundered funds for customers in Cuba, Iran, Libya, Sudan and Burma. Such transactions were possibly made through a systematic identity theft scam operation involving American citizens’ personal information.
Lynch previously acknowledged that HSBC “routinely did business with entities on the U.S. sanctions list,” adding that the bank evaded the sanctions “by disguising the source of funds so the payments would go through.” Yet, Lynch and DOJ officials allowed HSBC employees to get off with a payment to the government and no risk of prison or criminal trials.
Cruz’s information and documentation went unexplored and he was never contacted by Lynch throughout her investigation of the bank by the Justice Department.
In fact, the mainstream media largely ignored Lynch’s role in the cover-up of the U.S. bank’s money-laundering scandal. In addition, there has been no questioning as to why criminal charges weren’t pursued by Lynch for HSBC’s Swiss arm, which illegally helped clients, some of them American, evade taxes. This CNN Money report left out any mention of Lynch and the U.S. whistleblower’s accounts that are now under investigation on the heels of her confirmation to be the chief law enforcement officer of the U.S. government.
Progressive Democrats, with the exception of Sherrod Brown, are now silent on the HSBC scandal, choosing not to call out the president’s nominee for her failure to prosecute white-collar criminals. Even Elizabeth Warren has called for criminal charges without challenging Lynch and the Justice Department, who have so far let 5 years pass without serious action taken since the information broke.
By contrast, Vitter and Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, are leading an investigation into Lynch’s negotiation with the world’s second largest bank.
“Why, nearly five years after the DOJ became aware of the tax evasion scheme, have no criminal charges been brought?” Sen. Vitter asked, adding he believes the fine was “a slap on the wrist, and would cast serious doubt on Ms. Lynch’s capacity to serve as our top law enforcement official.”
President Obama in November praised Lynch for prosecuting “mobsters and drug lords and terrorists.” Lynch was more recently known for supervising a team that indicted Rep. Michael Grimm, R-N.Y., on fraud, tax evasion and perjury charges.
Today, Lynch is now in the hot seat for failing to prosecute some of the world’s most powerful bankers illegally involved with drug lords, Swiss bank accounts, terrorists and tyrants.
“If Loretta Lynch and DOJ swept under the rug a serious money laundering scheme involving Mexican drug cartels and terrorist organizations, we need to know a heck of a lot more about it,” Vitter said.
Republicans must continue to grill Lynch over what she knew about the tax evasion charges and when she became aware of it so the American people can know that no bank is in fact “too big to jail.”
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