Displaying the most recent of 92136 posts written by

Ruth King

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

You Hate Trump? We’re dealing with destructive narcissism. by Dennis Prager

By on September 13th, 2024

https://www.frontpagemag.com/you-hate-trump/

A great many Americans claim that they cannot vote for former President Donald Trump because they loathe him.

That was also their argument in 2016 and 2020.

That argument was childish in 2016 and 2020, and it remains childish in 2024.

I say “childish” because mature people don’t vote on the basis of whom they like. They vote on the basis of which candidate is best for their country. As I asked both eight years ago and four years ago, other than friends and a spouse, whom do you choose based on how much you like a person? Do you choose your surgeon on that basis? If you or a loved one had cancer and were presented with a choice of two surgeons, one known to be an honorable man and loyal husband, the other known for his abrasive personality and for being a womanizer but also known as one of the best cancer surgeons in the country, which would you choose?

We all know the answer. So, why would you choose a president based on marital fidelity or personality traits?

Though they always mention Trump “the liar” (as far as truth-telling is concerned, Trump is Abe Lincoln compared to President Joe Biden), Trump “the adulterer,” Trump “the mean,” and now Trump “the felon” (although no one can tell you what he was charged with), Trump haters would respond that those are not the only reasons why they would never vote for Trump. He is, they constantly tell us, a threat to democracy.

Trump haters have to say that — because they know that merely listing his alleged and actual obnoxious personal traits makes them look foolish. The problem, however, is that the claim that Trump would end democracy in America is baseless. He was already president for four years, and he in no way threatened democracy. Of course, Trump haters will point to Jan. 6 — and only to Jan. 6, because they have no other example from all four years of the Trump presidency of Trump allegedly threatening democracy.

Continue reading →
WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Identity politics is destroying Barcelona Catalan separatists have prioritised their luxury beliefs over the real needs of locals. Maria Reglero

By on September 13th, 2024

https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/09/12/identity-politics-is-destroying-barcelona/

Barcelona has been in the news this summer for its many anti-tourism protests. Local residents have been firing water guns and blocking hotel entrances in protest against ‘over-tourism’ and its impact on living conditions.

In some ways this is not surprising. In Barcelona, there are already over four tourists for every local and this is only set to increase. Spain is soon expected to become the world’s No1 tourist destination. By 2040, it is predicted to receive 110million tourists a year, surpassing France (105million) and the United States (100million). Of course, tourism brings huge economic benefits, but the pressures it can place on accommodation and infrastructure have gone completely unaddressed by politicians. And this is far from the only issue plaguing Barcelona.

Catalonia, of which Barcelona is the capital, is ruled by a political class with a pathological obsession with identity politics. Catalonia’s elites have for years promoted the idea of Catalan identity as a nationality – through public schools and state media – rather than as a regional identity within Spain. In Barcelona, a city that was built with the help of migrants from other parts of Spain, this has been particularly divisive.

Nowhere is this clearer than through the Catalan secessionists’ weaponisation of language. Despite both Spanish and Catalan being official languages of the region, children whose mother tongue is Spanish are excluded by design from the public-school system. Since the 1980s, children have been taught exclusively in Catalan from ages three to seven. Spanish is introduced in the second year of primary school, but even then, Spanish classes are limited to two or three hours per week. Until recently, before a 2021 Supreme Court ruling, Spanish was taught as if it were a foreign language and other school subjects were generally not taught in Spanish at all.

It’s fair to say that this system puts native Spanish speakers – a substantial minority – at a disadvantage. It is particularly tough for those with special needs, who consequently aren’t given the same level of support as Catalan speakers.

Continue reading →
ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Warming Alarmists Again Give Away Their Real Objective

By on September 13th, 2024

https://issuesinsights.com/2024/09/13/warming-alarmists-again-give-away-their-objective/

What do the climate activists really want? Do they have nothing more in mind than a noble crusade to prevent the burning sky from falling on us? Or is the global warming scare just another piece of the revolution? It’s of course the latter. We know this because they’re constantly telling us it is.

The most recent admission comes from Los Angeles Times environmental reporter Rosanna Xia, whose exhausting essay under the headline “To fix climate anxiety (and also climate change), we first have to fix individualism” was posted on Wednesday – yes, Sept. 11.

Xia dwells a great deal on “climate anxiety” caused by environmental events that have afflicted the planet since its creation but are now blamed on human progress through the combustion of fossil fuels. She worries “we’ll never go back to normal” without defining sufficiently “normal” – maybe because in a world that has never stopped changing there is no normal. She is angry, frustrated, helpless and exhausted. Earth is so doomed that she questions “whether I could ever justify bringing my own children into this world.”

And the answer to all this? Diminish individualism and elevate the collective.

Xia approvingly quotes Sarah Jaquette Ray, whom she identifies as a “an environmental humanist who chairs the environmental studies program at Cal Poly Humboldt,” which tells us a lot about the state of academia.

Continue reading →
ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Heather Mac Donald Candidate, Moderate Thyself Conservatives are right to complain about the blatant bias of ABC’s debate moderators, but the bigger problem was Donald Trump’s undisciplined performance.

By on September 13th, 2024

https://www.city-journal.org/article/a-trump-harris-debate-scorecard

Yes, the moderators of ABC’s debate between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris were egregiously biased in favor of Harris. Yes, Harris recycled patent lies about Trump without the slightest pushback from the referees—that Trump has embraced the supposedly infamous Project 2025, that he supports a national abortion ban, that he called the anti-Semitic and racist demonstrators in Charlottesville in 2019 “fine people,” that he refused leases to black would-be renters. (The New York Times lauded the ABC team as a “model for real-time fact-checking.”)

But a low-information voter who, incredibly, still has not made up her mind about the election could easily decide for Harris on the basis of Tuesday’s debate. Trump put all his worst traits on display—his narcissism, his gratuitous nastiness, and above all, his penchant for using hyperbole as a substitute for argument.

Conservative commentators have been busy collecting examples of ABC’s shocking partiality. The following set-up, from the worst offender of the two moderators, David Muir, is particularly hilarious in its sycophantic delivery to Harris of a soft pitch over home plate:

[Trump] said he didn’t say that he lost by a whisker. So he still believes he did not lose the election. That was won by President Biden and yourself. But I do want to ask you about something that’s come up in the last couple of days. This was a post from President Trump about this upcoming election just weeks away. He said, “When I win, those people who cheated,” and then he lists donors, voters, election officials, he says “Will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, which will include long-term prison sentences.” One of your campaign’s top lawyers responded saying, “We won’t let Donald Trump intimidate us. We won’t let him suppress the vote.” Is that what you believe he’s trying to do here?

Continue reading →
IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

Texas City Shuts Down Hotel Occupied by Venezuelan Gang After 693 Police Calls Residents have until 10 a.m. on Sept. 12 to vacate the hotel.By Darlene McCormick Sanchez

By on September 13th, 2024

https://www.theepochtimes.com/us/texas-city-shuts-down-hotel-occupied-by-venezuelan-gang-that-sparked-almost-700-police-calls-5721851?

Texas authorities say they are shutting down a crime-ridden hotel housing Tren de Aragua gang members and investigating the gang’s criminal involvement in other cities.

El Paso County Attorney Christina Sanchez filed a lawsuit on Aug. 27 to close the Gateway Hotel on Stanton St. in downtown El Paso, Texas, for multiple code violations, noting 693 police and service calls to the location over the past two years.

The lawsuit names as defendants the Gateway Hotel; Gigante Enterprises LLC, which owns the business; and hotel owner Howard Yun.

Tren de Aragua gang members have occupied the Gateway Hotel since at least June, according to court documents obtained by The Epoch Times.

Elhiu Dominguez, special projects coordinator with El Paso County, told The Epoch Times that a judge granted an order to close the hotel by Sept. 12.

The temporary injunction signed by District Judge Maria Salas-Mendoza will shut down the hotel pending a Dec. 9 hearing on a permanent injunction. Residents will have until 10 a.m. on Sept. 12 to vacate the hotel.

Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan gang with an estimated 5,000 members, is feared in Latin America and has been connected to murder, drugs, and human trafficking.

Their members are believed to be taking advantage of the border crisis chaos, illegally slipping across the U.S. southern border.

Continue reading →
ISRAEL Comments turned off

Hamas makes half billion from ‘humanitarian’ aid, pays its terrorists By David Isaac

By on September 13th, 2024

https://www.jns.org/hamas-makes-half-billion-from-humanitarian-aid-pays-its-terrorists/

Hamas has profited by at least a half billion dollars from humanitarian aid entering the Gaza Strip, Channel 12 reported on Tuesday.

Approximately 200 aid trucks enter the Palestinian enclave daily. “It’s actually become the main oxygen pipeline for the terrorist organization,” reported Channel 12‘s Almog Boker.

Hamas steals the humanitarian aid and sells it to the population. It then uses the money to finance recruitment, Boker said, noting that 3,000 terrorists have been added to Hamas’s payroll in northern Gaza.

Israelis on both right and left have condemned the ongoing aid theft by Hamas, their anger rekindled by last week’s murder of six Israeli hostages in captivity.

The Tzav 9 (“Order 9”) protest group has led the movement against Jerusalem’s decision to allow humanitarian aid to enter the Strip.

“It is up to the entire nation to stand up so that this miserable and intolerable reality will end. We’ve been saying this all along: we cannot on the one hand fight the enemy and on the other hand feed it and give it the oxygen it needs to fight us another day,” the group said.

“We understand the civilians need humanitarian aid and we are not against it—but where Hamas is in place—no aid should pass,” it added.

Although the estimated $500 million that Hamas is reaping was first reported back in May, the government treats the aid as proof of its positive conduct towards Gazan civilians, with spokespeople for the Prime Minister’s Office regularly counting off the number of trucks entering the Strip during press briefings.

However, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed the issue of Hamas exploiting aid for its benefit at a Sept. 4 press conference in Jerusalem, promising that Israel would in time strip the terrorist group of its ability to use the aid for financial gain.

Continue reading →
ISRAEL, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Normalizing Atrocities Landmarks of shame. by Bruce Thornton

By on September 12th, 2024

https://www.frontpagemag.com/normalizing-atrocities/

Hamas’ orgy of rape, murder, and callous, indiscriminate cruelty such as mutilation, torture, burning alive, and beheadings that began last October 7 and is continuing almost a year later, marks an escalation extreme even by the standards of that blood-stained region. Morally horrific have been the “protests” on prestigious U.S. university campuses, abetted by simpatico, or cowardly, professors and administrators. These riotous displays also feature property damage, record-breaking assaults against Jews, and chants explicitly or implicitly calling for another Holocaust, and celebrating the Nazis’ Final Solution.

Yet another landmark of shame has been the covert and overt support for Hamas by European governments and the E.U., including America’s president who for electoral gain poisoned the materiel support given to Israel, and is still pressuring Israel’s government to come to an agreement with genocidal murderers, instead of destroying them and degrading their capacity to slaughter more innocent Israeli citizens.

What the West has done is to normalize unspeakable atrocities, and legitimize blatant antisemitism that in the postwar period used to be a hatred mainly typical of marginalized political freaks. How does that transformation––from a widely proscribed and condemned hatred, to one exuberantly flaunted during protests, and legitimize by government policies––happen? And what has to change to put such beliefs back into the realm of cranks and conspiracy mongers?

The first question has a general answer found in humanity’s universal practice of dehumanizing enemies. Historically, human beings’ default stance toward strangers and those different from one’s tribe is distrust and dislike, if not hatred. The idea of our elite’s “citizen of the world” cosmopolitanism arose in ancient Greece, but parochial loyalties and hatreds remained powerful in Greek poleis. The tendency to prefer those like ourselves, whether culturally, politically, ideologically, or ethnically, is particularly obvious today in political factions, and ideological identity politics. Like James Madison’s “factions,” this tendency is “sown in the nature of man.”

A byproduct of this sorting is some level of dehumanization. In a relatively peaceful society such as ours today, the “other” is typically identified linguistically by insulting or demeaning epithets, on the left many of them compounds sporting the suffix “-phobic.” Sometimes metaphors using animals or insects make the dehumanization explicit. All such insults, however, don’t necessarily lead to mass murder or other atrocities. Pace wannabe censors, words are not violence. But heinous actions by definition are, and such crimes invariably call on a catalogue of dehumanizing epithets.

The pro-Hamas protests and display of support, however, are extreme even by the standards of advocacy apparent during the antiwar protests in the Sixties or during the post 9/11 wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. For example, antiwar activists, many of them Marxists, did give aid and comfort to the enemy, lied about the actions of our troops, and worked to discredit the war in the minds of voters and Congressmen.

Continue reading →
ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Fair Debate Moderators Would Have Fact-Checked Harris on These Misleading Claims By Alex Welz

By on September 12th, 2024

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/fair-debate-moderators-would-have-fact-checked-harris-on-these-misleading-claims/

The ABC anchors never disputed any of Vice President Kamala Harris’ claims.

Guns

On gun control, the vice president claimed, “We’re not taking anybody’s guns away” and pointed out that both she and her running mate, Minnesota governor Tim Walz, are gun owners.

In late 2019, though, Harris publicly claimed, “We have to have a buyback program, and I support a mandatory gun buyback program.” Neither moderator probed deeper into her sudden policy shift on the position.

As a senator in 2019, Harris signed onto a bill that would have banned so-called “assault weapons,” a category that encompasses the most commonly owned rifle in America, the AR-15. And at a rally just a month ago, Harris vowed to sign into law a ban on such weapons if she’s elected in November.

The moderators failed to raise Harris’s record in the Senate and the positions she’s taken on the stump this cycle.

Abortion

The moderators also passed up an opportunity to drill down on what, if any, abortion restrictions Harris supports, allowing her to simply deny that abortions were ever performed in the final trimester.

“I absolutely support reinstating the protections of Roe v. Wade,” said Harris when asked if she would support any restrictions on abortion.

Although Trump remained uncommitted on vetoing a prospective national abortion ban, Harris refused to oppose abortion in “the eighth month, ninth month, seventh month” when challenged directly by the former president, simply replying, “C’mon.”

“Under Roe v. Wade, you could do abortions in the seventh month, the eighth month, the ninth month,” Trump said. Harris interrupted him: “That’s not true.”

Roe v. Wade requires a “health exception” up until the point of birth. But the definition of “health” under that framework extends to “mental health, financial concerns, and familial circumstances,” according to the pro-life Charlotte Lozier Institute.

Continue reading →
NATIONAL SECURITY AND DEFENSE, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

China’s Weapons of Choice: First Wuhan Covid, now Fentanyl-Laced Drugs by Lawrence Kadish

By on September 12th, 2024

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20932/china-weapons-fentanyl

We can debate the economy, decry the border mocked by illegal immigrants, and step around the criminally deranged allowed to stagger through our streets, but it is the deliberate and calculated effort to destabilize our nation through fentanyl that is the dagger thrust toward the heart of America.

In a national survey conducted by the respected polling company McLaughlin & Associates, it was revealed that a third of those voters asked acknowledged they know of someone who has been harmed by fentanyl. Consider that number: over 100 million people have seen the devastating impact of this drug. It reflects a crisis that makes the past plagues of heroin and cocaine a side show.

Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) Administrator Anne Milgram acknowledged as much earlier this year when she stated:

“The shift from plant-based drugs, like heroin and cocaine, to synthetic, chemical-based drugs, like fentanyl and methamphetamine, has resulted in the most dangerous and deadly drug crisis the United States has ever faced.”

As presidential candidate Donald Trump connects with the American people on issues vital to our shared future, he needs to pledge as central to his next administration the defeat of the fentanyl scourge stalking our land. To do so will require him to confront the global supplier of that poison: China.

Continue reading →
ISRAEL, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The New UK Government’s Anti-Israel Policy Is a Disgrace by Con Coughlin

By on September 12th, 2024

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20926/uk-anti-israel-policy

The pretence that the UK’s new Labour government has moved away from the blatant anti-Semitism that was rife under former leader Jeremy Corbyn has been brutally exposed by the actions of David Lammy, the party’s new Foreign Secretary.

It was during Corbyn’s stint as Labour leader that his party faced constant accusations of anti-Semitism. A damning report produced by the Jewish Labour Movement in 2019 said the party harboured “endemic, institutional anti-Semitism” and that there was “overwhelming evidence that anti-Semitic conduct is pervasive at all levels of the party.”

Having been a close political ally of two prominent Labour politicians accused of anti-Semitism, it is hardly surprising therefore that two of Lammy’s first initiatives since his appointment as Labour’s new foreign secretary in July have been aimed at discrediting Israel.

His [Lammy’s] first act was to withdraw the British government’s official objection to attempts to persuade the International Criminal Court to issue an injunction for the arrest of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on war crimes charges.

At the same time Lammy confirmed that the UK was to restore its funding to UNRWA, the UN agency responsible for supporting Palestinian refugees, after support for the organisation was withdrawn by a number of countries — including the US — over claims its staffers were directly involved in the October 7 attacks carried out by Iranian-backed Hamas terrorists against Israel.

https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/hamas-israel-attack-united-nations-unrwa-0ec8d325

Lammy has now added to his anti-Israel stance by suspending a number of UK arms contracts to Israel, a decision that was announced on the same day that Israel buried the latest group of hostages to be murdered by Hamas terrorists, a decision that was denounced as “shameful” by Netanyahu.

Continue reading →