RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/biden-to-visit-israel-on-wednesday-blinken-announces/

Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced Monday evening that President Joe Biden will visit Israel on Wednesday to meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

“On Wednesday, President Biden will visit Israel. He’s coming here at a critical moment for Israel, for the region, and for the world,” Blinken said during an official address following a meeting with Netanyahu on Monday evening local time.

“He is coming here to do the following: First, the president will reaffirm the United States’ solidarity with Israel and our ironclad commitment to its security,” Blinken said. “President Biden will again make clear, as he’s done unequivocally since Hamas’s slaughter of more than 1,400 people — including at least 30 Americans — that Israel has the right, and indeed the duty, to defend its people from Hamas, and other terrorists, and to prevent other attacks.”

The secretary of state reiterated later in his speech the need to alleviate growing concerns about access to food, water, and energy in the Gaza Strip. “It is critical that aid starts flowing to Gaza as soon as possible,” Blinken said. However, “we share Israel’s concern that Hamas will take control of the aid that enters Gaza,” he added, asserting that the United States will seek to prevent the terrorist group from pilfering any supplies.

According to Blinken, the United States plans to help create “safe zones” within Gaza where civilians will be protected and humanitarian aid will flow unimpeded.

While visiting the region, President Biden is expected to stop in Amman, Jordan, to meet with regional political leaders, including Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas, Egyptian president Fattah el-Sisi, as well as King Abdullah II of Jordan.

News outlets have reported that the development appears to signal the postponement of Israel’s invasion of the Gaza Strip. Israel Defense Forces troops and reservists have been massing along the southern border since the October 7 surprise attack by Hamas.

Earlier in the day, New York governor Kathy Hochul announced her intention to visit Israel to underscore her commitment to the Jewish state. “Tomorrow, I’ll be traveling to Israel for a solidarity mission where I plan to meet with diplomatic leaders and communities who have been devastated by the horrific Hamas attacks,” the Democratic governor said.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/ron-desantis-is-a-man-of-action-not-just-words/

Most politicians blather and bloviate; that style tends to work electorally. Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida is notably — and problematically for his national prospects — not one of them. He doesn’t do stand-up-comedian-style rallies or engage with ease in light banter. He doesn’t get up on a debate stage and start spouting half-considered college-dorm political theories. Instead, Ron DeSantis thinks and acts, and in his actions proves why people longing for executive competence in the White House continue to look to him as a better leader for the Republican Party than Donald Trump.

Aside from all the other madness that ensued after the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, tens of thousands of Americans were left stranded in Israel, their flights canceled under wartime conditions. On Thursday, DeSantis signed an executive order authorizing the state of Florida, under its emergency-management laws, to extract as many Floridians as possible. His enemies soon dismissed “DeSantis Air” as little better than a crass publicity stunt. Ex-GOP congressman Adam Kinzinger, always eager for that next cable-news booking, haughtily mocked him, sounding like a Saruman-possessed King Theoden: “You have no power here!”

I hope DeSantis — like Gandalf in the The Two Towers — has released Kinzinger from his nihilistic delusions, because it turns out that a man with a plan and an idea of what can be achieved can get real things done. Last night, “DeSantis Air” landed in Tampa with 270 Americans aboard. All of them are grateful to be here, and they have the governor and his team to thank for the logistical work in getting them back without the State Department charging them thousands of dollars for the privilege. Those are concrete results, as measured in the real lives of American citizens. The guy gets things done.

What has depressingly gotten lost in the miasma of this ridiculous 2024 presidential campaign is that this is basically all Ron DeSantis does, all the time. DeSantis’s gubernatorial record has been covered in great detail here at National Review — his Covid and educational records are two highlights, and his natural-disaster management has been sterling as well — but simply consider what he has done since Hamas’s attack on Israel, balancing both the campaign trail with his duties as governor, to appreciate his abilities as an executive in charge of his brief. With the same executive order he used to authorize the above airlift, DeSantis also immediately ordered Florida state troopers to bolster security for Jewish schools and synagogues. Are you worried about the rising tide of antisemitism in academia across the country, as you very much should be? Not long ago, DeSantis appointed former Nebraska senator Ben Sasse the head of the University of Florida, and Sasse has fully justified his confidence, with a response to the Hamas atrocities that was the single most dignified public statement from a major university in the entire nation.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/matt-margolis/2023/10/16/mccarthy-predicts-jim-jordan-will-be-elected-house-speaker-n1735341

Former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) expressed his confidence that Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) will secure the necessary votes to win election as the next House Speaker. McCarthy shared his optimistic view during an appearance on “Fox & Friends.”

“I feel very good about where Jim Jordan is at. He has been an integral part of our team when we took the majority, helping us get the majority,” McCarthy told host Brian Kilmeade. “The real challenge here is, and I know a lot of people out there are afraid that will Republicans break off and go work with Democrats, the only reason anybody’s even talking about that is because eight Republican members worked with every single Democrat to remove me from speaker and put us into this tailspin and all based upon keeping government open.”

Jordan secured the Republican nomination for speaker on Friday, 124-81, but 55 House Republicans indicated that they wouldn’t support Jordan in a full House vote. Jordan can only lose four votes and still win the speakership.

For our VIPs: What the House GOP Can Learn From the Democrats

A floor vote is expected on Tuesday, and I wish I could be as confident about the outcome as McCarthy is. For starters, it’s not clear what, if anything, has changed since Friday. I can’t even argue that McCarthy might have inside knowledge on which to base his optimistic prediction because, frankly, his recent record on predicting the outcome of a vote hasn’t been very good. When Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) first pushed to oust McCarthy, the then-speaker shrugged off Gaetz’s intentions, predicting he’d ultimately keep his job.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/ta-nehisi-coates-signs-letter-defending-hamas/

You may remember Ta Nehisi Coates as America’s most prominent literary racist until Ibram X. Kendi came around.

He’s the guy who got a ton of awards for writing in “Between the World and Me” that the police officers and firefighters who died on September 11 “were not human to me. Black, white, or whatever, they were menaces of nature; they were the fire, the comet, the storm, which could — with no justification — shatter my body.”

Now he’s taking that moral triumph and signing on to a letter, alongside Richard Ford, Molly Crabapple, China Miéville and a whole bunch of writers you don’t know, attacking Israel for bombing Hamas.

After 400 or so words attacking Israel, the letter gets around to mentioning what started all this only at the end.

“On Saturday, after sixteen years of siege, Hamas militants broke out of Gaza. More than 1,300 Israelis were subsequently killed with over one hundred more taken hostage—some of them friends and family of signatories to this letter. We deplore the loss of all innocent life and now, as we write this letter, Israel is executing the largest expulsion of Palestinians since 1948 as it bombs Gazans without discrimination.”

https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/4259079-cotton-calls-for-deportation-of-foreign-nationals-who-support-hamas/

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) sent a letter to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) on Monday calling for the deportation of foreign nationals who support Hamas. 

In the letter addressed to the agency’s secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas, the GOP senator urged the department to deport any foreign nationals who have expressed support for Hamas’s attacks on Israel, including international students studying in the U.S. 

“I write to urge you to immediately deport any foreign national—including and especially any alien on a student visa — that has expressed support for Hamas and its murderous attacks on Israel,” Cotton wrote. “These fifth-columnists have no place in the United States.” 

The letter, obtained by The Hill, comes as activists and college students across the U.S. have faced pushback after organizations at multiple colleges put out statements that have been characterized as defending the killings in Israel.

Cotton suggested that the DHS starts with deporting international students who signed or approved the letter from the Harvard Palestine Solidarity Committee. 

“Swiftly removing and permanently barring from future reentry any foreign student who signed onto or shared approvingly the anti-Semitic letter from the Harvard Palestine Solidarity Committee on October 7 would be a good place to start,” Cotton wrote.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/matt-margolis/2023/10/15/yikes-biden-glitches-so-badly-during-a-speech-that-his-wife-has-to-rescue-him-n1735187

Joe Biden spoke at the Human Rights Campaign’s annual dinner Saturday night, and the news from that event was not that he was interrupted by a pro-Hamas protester but the fact that he glitched so badly that his wife Jill Biden had to come up on stage to rescue him.

One notable glitch took place when he accused “Extreme MAGA Republicans” of “trying to undo virtually every bit of progress we’ve made,” including banning “Pride flags from flying on public lands.”

“Who the hell—” Biden started to continue, before apparently drawing a blank as to what he was trying to say.

Biden was hardly finished. He went on to make an outlandish claim that gay people are being thrown out of restaurants. He claimed, “When a person can be married in the morning and thrown out of a restaurant for being gay in the afternoon, something is still fundamentally wrong in this country — and that still exists!”

Where exactly has this happened? The way Biden tells it, this is endemic in the United States. Curiously, there are ample examples of conservatives being refused service and thrown out of restaurants, such as Fox News’s Gianno Caldwell, who was kicked out of a restaurant in North Miami, Fla., by the owner over his conservative views earlier this year, while Sarah Huckabee Sanders and her family were kicked out of a Virginia restaurant in 2018 because she was working for Trump at the time.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2023/10/15/the_sick_alliance_between_the_left_and_muslim_extremists_149901.html

The virulent anti-Israel protests across America and Europe throw a glaring light on the bizarre alliance between left-wing activists and militant Muslims. That odd combination has been the bedrock of political activism at universities and in the streets for years. It began in universities, where it now dominates political discourse, threatens Jewish students, and intimidates anyone brave enough to voice their dissent. We can now see how it has spread far beyond the campus.

What makes the alliance so strange are the deep-seated differences between leftists and Muslim fundamentalists over core beliefs.

The left supports women’s rights and full equality in the workplace and public sphere. Militant Muslims oppose them.

The left supports gay rights and gay marriage. Militant Muslims toss gays off buildings. None would dare hold a public march in Pakistan, Iran, or Saudi Arabia.

The left supports abortion rights. Militant Muslims oppose them.

The left supports religious freedom, including the right to reject religion altogether. Militant Muslims believe heretics should be executed.

The left rallies against book banning. Militant Muslims embrace it for any book they believe insults Islam or supports Israel.

The left opposes the death penalty. Militant Muslims endorse it and praise their governments for using it.

These beliefs are not marginal for either group. They are foundational, and they are profoundly opposed to each other. Still, the two groups have formed a long-standing alliance. How do they deal with these profound differences? And why are they allied?

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2023/10/14/why_the_woke_support_hamas_149903.html

In the wake of the barbaric attack on Israel, many Americans have been shocked, angered, and disgusted to see woke organizations express anything other than condemnation for Hamas. On campuses and in our communities, students and organizations like Black Lives Matter have expressed support for the butchers of Jews. Meanwhile, all too many campus leaders, formerly so quick to condemn even the hint of racism, can barely muster even weak condemnation of such savagery. Many Americans find themselves shaking their heads in dismay.

Where does this blindness come from? Why are so many people who think of themselves as crusaders for justice so misguided?

It is a complicated story. But one key part of that story is the way that civil rights, which began as a cause, became an ideology. Eventually that ideology metastasized into “anti-racism,” a radical legal doctrine that scholar John McWhorter suggests is nothing less than a secular “religion.” The once-noble cause of civil rights changed. No longer merely about ending specific acts of discrimination in voting, employment, and public accommodations, it became a crusade to rectify the wrongs of slavery, Jim Crow, and the lingering legacy of institutional racism. In the view of 21st century progressives this entailed transforming America and the world. It is a reminder that even good things if done in the wrong way, or carried to excess, can turn bad.

The 1964 Civil Rights Act makes it illegal to discriminate against someone due to their “race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.” In subsequent decades we have added more categories, notably sexuality, disability, and gender identity. Those categories are “protected classes” in law. But it didn’t take long for the legal category to be transformed into a moral category. Certain people were regarded as having special protections. In the decades since 1964 we have created an ever-expanding and ever more influential bureaucracy of DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) workers dedicated to this task.

But there is a problem, especially as the number of protected classes grows, and as the number of non-white Americans grows. (When the 1964 Civil Rights Act passed, whites were roughly 88% of the population. They are roughly 60% today.) What to do when a member of one protected class mistreats or discriminates against another? To cite one infamous example, early civil rights activist Stokely Carmichael said that “the only position for women in the SNCC [Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee] is prone.” So Carmichael was both a fighter against segregation and a sexist pig.

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/10/16/majority-of-voters-not-satisfied-with-bidens-efforts-on-russia-ukraine-war-ii-tipp-poll/
With the world’s attention still riveted by Hamas’ terrorist attacks against Israel, the death and destruction of the Russia-Ukraine war, now in its 21st month, goes on. During the conflict, President Joe Biden has put the U.S. forward as a potential peace broker. Do average Americans believe his plan is working?
To find the answer, the October I&I/TIPP Poll asked voters: “How satisfied are you with the Biden administration’s efforts to find a settlement to the Russia-Ukraine conflict?”
The response, after more than $113 billion in U.S. military and humanitarian aid, is not much. Among those responding to the I&I/TIPP Poll, conducted from Sept. 27-29 among 1,378 adults, just 34% said they were either “very satisfied” (11%) or “somewhat satisfied” (23%).
More than half of respondents — 53% — described themselves as either “not very satisfied” (22%) or “not at all satisfied” (31%). Another 12% said they were “not sure.” The poll has a margin of error of +/-2.7 percentage points.

As is usually the case in these days of highly partisan politics, the major parties and independents show sharp differences over Biden’s efforts to end the Russia-Ukraine war. Democrats (61% “satisfied,” 27% “not satisfied”) strongly support Biden, while Republicans (12% “satisfied,” 83% “not satisfied) overwhelmingly reject Biden’s efforts so far.
Independents again represented a kind of middle ground between the two parties, with 29% “satisfied,” but 53% calling themselves “not satisfied.”
Indeed, among all possible responses, “not at all satisfied” was No. 1 at 31%.