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Ruth King

Ramaswamy Defies New York Times Narrative: Suspends Campaign, Backs Trump The New York Times doesn’t get it. That’s one more reason why it is an increasingly parochial publication that speaks only to a shrinking coterie of pampered, irrelevant dittoheads. Roger Kimball

https://amgreatness.com/2024/01/21/ramaswamy-defies-new-york-times-narrative-suspends-campaign-backs-trump/

No one was surprised that Vivek Ramaswamy decided to suspend his campaign for the presidency after his poor showing in Iowa. Although he was by far the most rhetorically nimble of the GOP candidates, it had long been clear that this was not his moment. His showing in the Iowa Caucus—he came in a distant fourth with about 7 percent—quantified that truth.

Not that Vivek is going anywhere. He will not be the GOP presidential candidate in 2024.  But by immediately suspending his campaign and enthusiastically endorsing Donald Trump after Trump’s stunning, blow-out victory in Iowa, Vivek guaranteed that he would have an important role to play in Trump’s campaign and, should Trump be reelected, in the second Trump administration.

The New York Times did not like that Vivek endorsed Trump. Veteran readers of our former paper of record can already tell from the headline and subhead of the story that reported the news. “Vivek Ramaswamy, Wealthy Political Novice Who Aligned With Trump, Quits Campaign.” “Wealthy,”  eh? “Quits,” you say? Beginning rhetoricians should be set the task of rewriting that headline for some progressive plutocrat.  Then they should try their hand at rewriting the subhead: “A self-funding entrepreneur, Mr. Ramaswamy peaked in late August but deflated under attack from his rivals. He dropped out after the Iowa caucuses and endorsed Donald J. Trump.”

I think it was a writer for Time magazine who, back in the day, illustrated the point by noting the difference in tone between “Truman slunk from the room to huddle with his cronies” and “Ike strode from the chamber to confer with his advisors.” Truman and Ike were doing the same thing, but the description of their activities cast them in very different rhetorical spaces.  The Times obviously had Vivek slated for a Truman-like role.

Consider the first sentence of the story: “Vivek Ramaswamy, the 38-year-old entrepreneur and political newcomer who briefly made a splash with brash policy proposals and an outsize sense of confidence, dropped out of the race for the Republican White House nomination after a disappointing fourth-place finish in the Iowa caucuses.” “Newcomer,” “briefly,” “brash,” “outsize,” “disappointing.” You see where this is going.

Fani Willis’s romance keeps the ‘Get Trump’ efforts entertaining She hired her boyfriend, Nathan Wade, as chief prosecutor to go after Trump Roger Kimball

https://thespectator.com/topic/fani-willis-romance-keeps-get-trump-nathan-wade/

Some enterprising entrepreneur ought to find a way of collecting a cover charge for the entertainments that the Get Trump concession is currently offering the public free and for nothing.

At the moment, the first of my two favorite forays into the twilight zone are the defamation case brought by E. Jean Carroll against Trump. Carroll claims that sometime, she cannot remember exactly when, but it was about thirty years ago, Trump sexually assaulted her in a fitting room at the swank department store Bergdorf Goodman in Manhattan. A New York jury found Trump guilty of defamation and sexual abuse (but not rape) and ordered him to pay Carroll $5 million of the crispest. Now she is back asking for more. Who knows whether she will get it. Stand by and pass the popcorn. 

Then down in Georgia, site of one of the four major lawfare assaults to damage Trump and make him radioactive to the electorate, Fani Willis, the district attorney, is after the former president because — it is alleged — he tried to overturn the 2020 election. How did he do this? By telling the secretary of state Brad Raffensperger that “I just want to find 11,780 votes.” The conversation was taped and the New York Times went to town with it, claiming that Trump “pressured” Raffensperger to manufacture the votes. 

Vocabulary quiz: what is the difference between the words “find” and “manufacture?” Use each in a sentence. 

That’s not the sort of test the Times is likely to pass. Remember back during the 2016 presidential election campaign when Trump said, referring to Hillary Clinton’s “lost” emails, “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing.” The Times instantly accused him of “essentially urging a foreign adversary to conduct cyberespionage against a former secretary of state.” It reminded me of the passage in The Pickwick Papers when Pickwick’s landlady, Mrs Bardell, brings suit for breach of promise because of a couple of letters like this: “Dear Mrs. B. — Chops and tomato sauce. Yours, Pickwick.” “Gentlemen,” said the lawyer for the plantiff Bardell, “what does this mean? Chops and tomato sauce. Yours, Pickwick! Chops! Gracious heavens! and tomato sauce! Gentlemen, is the happiness of a sensitive and confiding female to be trifled away, by such shallow artifices as these?” Ha, ha, ha. 

The anti-Trump legal fraternity needs lawyers like that chap.

Green Rolling Blackouts Crushed Canada during a Winter Storm By Andrew Follett

https://www.nationalreview.com/2024/01/green-rolling-blackouts-crushed-canada-during-a-winter-storm/?utm_source=

When Albertans most needed their energy, wind and solar ensured there wasn’t enough to go around.

Centrally planned “green” solar and wind power are simply not reliable when they’re needed the most. A recent wave of blackouts and brownouts in the Canadian province of Alberta proves it.

“With temperatures near minus 45 [Celsius, minus 49 Fahrenheit] over the weekend even colder in some parts of Alberta and virtually no wind or solar showing up on the grid, Alberta issued an electricity advisory asking its residents to conserve electricity to avoid brownouts,” Ontario energy minister Todd Smith said in a Facebook video. Smith happened to be in Edmonton, Alberta, to announce a deal between the provinces to construct a small modular nuclear reactor.

The Alberta Electric System Operator (AESO), which manages the province’s grid, began a series of declared states of emergency last Friday. The grid fluctuated throughout the crisis until this past Monday. Energy supply repeatedly collapsed and residents were repeatedly asked to conserve electricity by shutting off essential services.

The province has massively invested in green energy. Three quarters of Canada’s new wind and solar generation is based there. But fewer than 1 percent of both Alberta’s 4,481 potential megawatts of wind power and 1,650 of solar power could operate when the province most needed electricity. Essentially all of the province’s solar- and wind-power plants were offline. Greatly increased energy demand for electric heat pumps, cars, and even phone batteries, which work far less efficiently in cold weather, ensured disaster.

Grammy-Nominated Artist Releases 10/7 Protest Song ‘We Are Not Ok’by Ari Blaff

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/grammy-nominated-artist-releases-10-7-protest-song-we-are-not-ok/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=homepage&utm_campaign=river&utm_content=featured-content-trending&utm_term=second

Grammy-nominated recording artist John Ondrasik, known by the stage name “Five for Fighting,” released a protest song condemning skyrocketing antisemitism across America and the glorification of Hamas and its atrocities committed on October 7.

“We are not all right,” the song opens, “When we see young girls pulled from their homes, and dragged to the streets; when we see grandmothers being pulled away to children shot in front of the family.”

“We are not all right when right here in the city of New York you have those who celebrate at the same time when the devastation is taking place,” the music video continues showing footage of violent pro-Palestinian protesters spliced with Hamas atrocities against Israeli civilians.

“This is a time for choosing,” Ondrasik sings against bodycam footage of Hamas terrorists committing atrocities on October 7. “This is a time to mourn. The moral man is losing,” the song continues.

Moshe Dann: Can Israel win the war against terrorism? As long as Palestinian Arabs engage in terrorism and advocate murder and genocide, their demands for a state are immoral and irrelevant, and those who ignore this are complicit.

https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/383932

Most (if not all) countries go to war to win; Israel, however, is different. First, neither Israel nor the PLO conceives of the conflict as a war, since they have mutual ongoing political, security, and economic interests; terrorism, therefore, is seen as part of an ongoing relationship.

Until Oct 7, Israeli leaders assumed that this was also true for Hamas.

This leads to the second reason: Before October 7, Israel was not fighting Hamas to destroy terrorism, but to prevent attacks, neutralize or arrest terrorists, and then, temporarily, return to a “status quo.” That’s why warnings about what Hamas was doing were ignored by Israel’s political, military and security leaders; they duped themselves.

Hope-doped, drugged by self-assurance, and seeking to appease the Obama/Biden administrations, the EU, the UN and the international community, some of them accepted “the two-state-solution” (2SS) . They failed to understand that the conflict is not over territory, but is – as Hamas proclaims – a religious war to eliminate Israel. That explains why Palestinian Arab leaders consistently reject offers of statehood in return for recognizing Israel’s right to exist, and why they continue to launch terrorist attacks against Jews. They are engaged in a “holy war” against Jews and Zionists as “invaders” and “occupiers of Palestine” – all of it.

That is a call for genocide.

Attempts to reduce, or “manage the conflict” by making concessions, therefore, failed because of an unwillingness to understand what the PLO, Hamas and other terrorist organizations want. Despite ongoing terrorism during the 1990’s, Israeli, European, and American leaders promoted a “peace process,” the Oslo Accords.

As Yasser Arafat admitted, it was only a step towards his goal of destroying Israel.

Although the Abraham Accords were a sign of hope, they had no effect on the terrorist war against Israel. Meanwhile, Iran, Qatar, Turkey, and other Muslim countries poured billions into Hamas’ war efforts. Distracted, Israeli leaders ignored what was going on in Gaza. Self-assured, they refused to accept reality

‘We Have to Kill Those Who Preach Christianity’: The Persecution of Christians, December 2023 (Christmas Edition) by Raymond Ibrahim

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20322/persecution-of-christians-december

“About 37 [Christian] individuals, primarily women, children and the disabled, were burned to death in their homes…. ” — christianpost.com, December 30, 2023, Nigeria.

“Christian leaders in Nigeria have said they believe herdsmen attacks on Christian communities in the Middle Belt are inspired by their desire to forcefully take over Christians’ lands and impose Islam….” — morningstarnews.org, December 26, 2023, Nigeria.

“[I]t is also the existence of disbelief itself that is a ‘grievance’,” — Aymenn Jawad al Tamimi, December , 2023, Philippines.

[I]n Austria, on Dec. 9, Heiligenkreuz Abbey received a bomb threat by phone. Police later confirmed that it had an “Islamist overtone”. The caller had said “Convert to Islam, or I’ll bomb you away!”…. Father John Paul commented: “[I]t encourages us even more to pray and work for peace, healing and reconciliation.” — puls24.at, December 11, 2023.

“Reports include statements like, ‘We have to kill those who preach Christianity, and these Christians have no place in Mauritania.'” — persecution.org, December 13, 2023.

Two Christian evangelists, Joseph and Isaac, after Muslims beat them for quoting the Koran, spent Christmas Day in jail for “blasphemy.” The report does not indicate which verses were deemed so objectionable, or why. — morningstarnews.org, December 22, 2023, Uganda.

According to a January 2 report: “Three migrants who allegedly planned an attack on Cologne Cathedral are free again. A judge let them go after just one night in custody.” Pictured: Police conduct security checks on visitors at Cologne Cathedral on December 24, 2023 in Cologne, Germany, after indications of an Islamist terror threat. (Photo by Andreas Rentz/Getty Images)

The following are among the abuses and murders inflicted on Christians by Muslims throughout the month of December 2023.

Maj. Jamal Abbas, 23: Grandson of prominent Druze officer Killed in combat in Sheikh Ijlin in Gaza on November 18

https://www.timesofisrael.com/maj-jamal-abbas-23-grandson-of-prominent-druze-officer/?utm_medium=email&_hsmi=290654609&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-

Maj. Jamal Abbas, 23, a company commander in the 101st Battalion of the Paratroopers Brigade, was killed in combat in Sheikh Ijlin, in the southern Gaza Strip on November 18.

Abbas was born into a family of high-ranking military officers from the Druze village of Peki’in. His grandfather, retired Col. Gideon Abbas, is among the first Druze soldiers to attain the rank of brigade commander in the IDF.

Jamal’s father, Col. Anan Abbas, followed suit and rose to the rank of colonel while serving in the Northern Command.

“I grew up with the state and I was beaten even before the establishment of the state by the legion stationed here in the area. They suspected me of passing on information. I still felt the pain in my body from back in 1948,” Gideon Abbas said.

Abbas still, however, became an active member of the Druze Scouts Association in Israel and decided to join the army in 1960, at the age of 22. He raised his children with the army, taking them to military training and occasionally the Lebanese border during his service.

“I raised them this way, that they should be fighters and officers… I always believed in their abilities and believed that they should serve the country like everyone else,” he said.

EITAN FISCHBERGER:Violent Pro-Palestine Demonstrations Are Not a Bug They’re a feature of a dangerous new politics

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/violent-pro-palestine-demonstrations?utm_medium=email&_hsmi=290654609&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-

Anarchic, pro-Palestinian rallies have continued to intensify across the United States ever since Oct. 7, when Hamas massacred 1,200 people and took another 240 hostage. These nationwide protests, marked by highly disruptive tactics, have raised critical questions about the nature of protest, the boundaries of dissent, and the willingness of Western governments to assert and protect basic social values. When one delves deeper into the protesters’ driving ideology, it becomes clear that mass disruption is not a byproduct of their agenda, but the agenda itself.

These groups’ tactics have included blocking roads to international airports on New Year’s Day; endangering passenger planes by launching balloons over the runways; blocking highways that delayed the delivery of organ transplants to hospitals; illegally occupying a House office building near the U.S. Capitol; vandalizing stores supposedly complicit in Israel’s “genocide” of Gaza; disrupting the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade and Christmas tree lighting ceremonies in major cities; and storming the World Trade Center, defacing public monuments, targeting a cancer hospital, and attacking the White House gates while screaming “Allahu akbar” and “intifada revolution.”

What drives these protesters to such extremes, and convinces them to opt for such woefully misguided methods that—by disrupting the lives of ordinary people—appear to be counterproductive to their cause?

At the forefront of these demonstrations are various Islamic organizations often linked to the Muslim Brotherhood, as well as fringe Jewish anti-Zionist groups championing progressive causes such as climate justice and women’s rights. These groups find common ground in an ideology, ostensibly influenced by works of the French Martinican psychiatrist and post-colonial writer Frantz Fanon, that sees “liberation” and “decolonization” as a global revolutionary struggle and perceives their disruptive actions as a vital component of it. They believe that by obstructing crucial social services and public spaces, they effectively challenge superstructures deemed oppressive. This worldview is predicated on the notion that any inconvenience caused to innocent individuals is justified in the pursuit of societal transformation; their obstructive protest methods aren’t a defect, but a requirement of this worldview.

The myth of ‘the Muslim world’ The Israel-Hamas War has exposed the danger of Islamic identity politics. Brednan O’Neill

https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/01/20/the-myth-of-the-muslim-world/

This week, the idea of ‘the Muslim world’ took one hell of a beating. The notion of an ummah has been left in tatters. The fantasy of a global people with shared interests and experiences – almost an Islamic class – is now surely kaput. For while woke activists in the West might still speak of Muslims as a bloc, if not a blob, elsewhere in the world Muslims are at war. Two of the most powerful Muslim-majority nations, Iran and Pakistan, got dangerously close to all-out conflict this week. Tell me: who should the ‘Muslim community’ in Britain or the US or Canada support in this violent border skirmish?

For years, there’s been a gaping disconnect between the way Western observers speak about Muslims and the actual Muslim experience. Between our elites’ reduction of Muslims here in the West to a single entity, a throng that believes the same things and feels the same pain, and the growing Balkanisation of the Muslim-majority world. The West’s guardians of opinion often slam celebs for treating Africa as a single country, and yet they’re equally guilty of flattening out the religious, cultural and territorial complexities of the Muslim experience. Their rush to fashion a new oppressed class, a people they might marshal as part of their indictment of the wickedness of the West, has ironically denuded Muslims of their diversity, and even their humanity.

This disconnect has really come to life in recent weeks. All the talk in right-thinking circles in the West has been of Muslim unity. Both ‘the Muslim community’ over here and ‘the Muslim world’ more broadly are as one in their rage with Israel and love for Palestine, we’re told. Reuters used the sweeping term ‘Muslim animosity’ to describe the vibe in both the West and the East. Media outlets in the US and Europe frantically report that ‘Muslim voters’ might ditch Joe Biden over his support for Israel and turn against Labour in the UK, on the basis that Keir Starmer has been insufficiently pro-Palestine. That term, ‘Muslim voter’, conjures up an image of a samey, single-issue citizen, faithfully traipsing to the polling booth to register the uniform ‘animosity’ his kind feel.

Things are more complicated. They always are. Guardianistas might get a kick from reporting on the anti-Israel, anti-West fury of ‘the Muslim world’, but they’re rather more coy on the brazen failure of that world to offer assistance to civilians in Gaza. Egypt, for instance, which borders Gaza, is flat-out refusing to take refugees from the Israel-Hamas War. They’d pose a security threat, apparently. Countless lives could have been saved had Egypt permitted the construction of refugee camps in the Sinai. We hear little of Egypt’s complicity in Gazans’ suffering, however, because our activist class prefers the moral thrill of cheering on ‘Muslim animosity’ towards Israel and the West to the hard task of analysing Arab states’ fatal betrayal of the Palestinian people.

Hunter Biden’s laptop is real, but Joe’s guardians in the press are working hard to hide the truth Welcome to the latest chapter in today’s age of ‘advocacy journalism’ By Jonathan Turley

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/hunter-bidens-laptop-real-joes-guardians-press-working-hard-truth

After years of suppressing the story and casting doubts over its authenticity, last year many in the media belatedly and reluctantly acknowledged that the Hunter Biden laptop is real. 

Some of us reached that conclusion years ago due to the self-authenticating emails confirmed by third parties. However, the denials and doubts have continued, including most recently by Rep. Dan Goldman, D-N.Y., in congressional hearings. The Department of Justice has now again confirmed the authenticity of the device and added details on why these denials are unsupported.

This week, the Department of Justice confirmed that the laptop had been authenticated through forensic examination and a search warrant on Hunter’s Apple iCloud. Hunter’s electronic devices were backed up on the cloud and the DOJ said that “the results of the search were largely duplicative of information investigators had already obtained from Apple.”

That is only the latest such confirmation, but many continue to desperately cast doubts about the laptop, which Hunter himself said might be the product of Russian intelligence. Once again, the last dogs in this fruitless fight are the most partisan among us. Rep. Goldman, for example, recently lambasted witnesses who referenced the laptop and challenged the credibility of a journalist who cited the laptop.

Goldman suggested that Hunter’s infamous laptop may have been “manipulated,” while speaking at a House Judiciary Committee hearing last week. 

Goldman attacked journalist Michael Shellenberger and declared:

“You have no idea, you know hard drives can be manipulated. Hard drives can be manipulated by Rudy Giuliani or Russia. There is actual evidence of it, but the point is it’s not the same thing.”