NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Fight Against Treachery by Lawrence Kadish

Posted By on July 31st, 2024

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20821/fight-against-treachery

One does not need to embrace religion to recognize that something beyond our understanding saved former President Donald Trump from death. With the FBI confirming that it was, in fact, a bullet that came to within millimeters of a fatal head wound, Trump has survived an assassination attempt that would have changed the course of American history.

Some call it divine intervention. Others chalk it up to simply fate. It reminds us of those Americans who went to work in the Twin Towers on the morning of 9/11 and those delayed in transit. Today, we each must reflect on the forces that had an assassin miss his target by a literal hair’s breath.

Trump, shaking off the shock of a failed assassination attempt with an appeal to “fight,” stood tall, with blood on his face, his fist in the air and an appeal to “fight,” in defiance of treachery. It was a response that will go down in history.

Not so fortunate was an extraordinary firefighter, Corey Comperatore. As shots rang out at the rally, he lay across his family to protect their lives, taking a fatal bullet. Two others who attended the rally were severely wounded. We are praying for their swift and full recovery.

It may have been divine intervention that saved Donald Trump, but freedom is the Almighty’s gift enshrined in American values, Declaration of Independence, Constitution and Bill of Rights. Americans should be forever grateful to the founding fathers for their breathtaking wisdom and foresight.

FOREIGN POLICY, ISRAEL Comments turned off

Why Has the Biden Administration Donated Close to One Billion Dollars in “Aid” to Hamas since the October 7 Massacre? by Robert Williams

Posted By on July 31st, 2024

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20811/biden-administration-donates-to-hamas

Since October 7…. the total of US taxpayer funds donated to Gaza as a reward since the massacre on October 7 to $896 million, or close to a billion dollars.

A lawsuit, brought in December 2022 and updated in March 2024, by Rep. Ronny Jackson and victims of terror attacks in Israel, alleges that President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken “knowingly and unlawfully” provided more than $1.5 billion in aid to Gaza and the West Bank since taking office. Biden and Blinken have “known for years” that the US aid is providing “material support” for Hamas’ “tunnels, rockets, weapon procurement, and command and control infrastructure,” among other terror structures, the lawsuit stated.

The Biden administration has sought to have the case dismissed twice but failed. On June 28, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas ruled that the lawsuit can proceed, and that there is evidence the Biden administration continued awarding taxpayer cash to UNRWA even after Congress blocked funding to that group due to its support for Hamas’s military infrastructure.

In short, the Biden administration has donated less to Sudan and DRC Congo combined, where a total of nearly 50 million people face starvation, than to Gaza, where 2 million people face no such thing. What is going on? And where is Congress?

According to FBI director Christopher Wray, “the actions of Hamas and its allies will serve as an inspiration the likes of which we haven’t seen since ISIS launched its so-called caliphate years ago.” Iran, officially labeled the world’s leading sponsor of state terrorism by the 2023 US annual Terrorism Report, calls the US “the Great Satan” and continues to vow “Death to America.”

Blinken casually announced in a July 19 interview that Iran had reduced the time it would need to create sufficient fissile material for a nuclear weapon “to one to two weeks.” He then went on to gaslight the audience by claiming that the Biden administration has been “maximizing pressure on Iran across the board.”

Why is the Biden administration, under the pretense of “humanitarian aid,” drowning these terrorist enemies of America in US taxpayer money? And what, if anything, is Congress going to do about it?

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Clips Of Harris Talking Are The New ‘Cheap Fakes’

Posted By on July 31st, 2024

https://issuesinsights.com/2024/07/31/media-now-calls-harris-clips-cheap-fakes/

Credit where due, the New York Times published a report on Monday noting that Kamala Harris has a lot of far-left baggage that she will be struggling with now that the Democratic Party has anointed her as its presidential candidate.

Indeed, she does. And there are reams of videos showcasing her extremist views across the board, fracking, defunding police, abortion, amnesty for illegals, socializing medicine.

But then the Times manages to sabotage its own reporting with this line: “video clips of her old statements and interviews are being weaponized as Republicans aim to define her as a left-wing radical who is out of step with swing voters.” (emphasis added)

Seriously? Showing video clips of Harris when she last ran for president constitutes “weaponizing” them?

This is from the same people who routinely misquote Donald Trump, make up quotes entirely, or try to spin something Trump said as a joke into a national crisis.

In any case, Republicans aren’t weaponizing anything. They are just doing what reporters should be doing, but won’t – informing the public about a person who completely flamed out in her first run for president and whom Biden picked as running mate solely to meet his self-imposed quota.

In a normal presidential campaign, pressing a candidate to justify, defend, or explain away previously expressed views is precisely what the press would do. They’re doing that right now to J.D. Vance.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The hypocrisy of Australia: Condemning Israeli ‘settlers’ while settling Aboriginal land

Posted By on July 31st, 2024

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-812412

Australia, an entire country founded on settler violence, is imposing sanctions on a handful of Israelis whom it accuses of “settler violence.” Talk about hypocrisy!

The Australian government has announced that it is penalizing seven Israeli “settlers” and a youth group that it suspects of clashing with Palestinian Arab rock-throwers.

Folks who live in the “land down under’ know something about “settler violence.” The first foreigner to “discover” Australia was a violent settler named Cap. James Cook. Kids around the world today are taught that he was a famous explorer. And that he was. But the indigenous peoples of the South Pacific remember him a little differently.

In 1770, Cook and his settler gang landed in New Zealand, where they murdered at least eight members of the indigenous Maori tribe. Then they headed west to Australia, landing there on April 29 and shooting a member of the Dharawal/Eora nation who opposed them. It would not be the last act of violence by the Cook settlers.

Eight years later, violent British settlers established a penal colony in Australia. European criminals were not the only dangerous import. The settlers also introduced tuberculosis, smallpox, and measles.

Australia is almost three million square miles in size. That’s 350 times the size of Israel. You’d think the violent British settlers who took over Australia could have left at least part of the country to the indigenous tribes, known as the Aboriginals. But no, the settlers had to have the entire thing. So they expanded, and they expelled, and they murdered. Within a century, the Aboriginals, who had numbered 750,000, were down to less than 100,000.

What was it like for victims of British settler violence in Australia? Hannah McGlade, a member of one of the Aboriginal tribes, the Kurin Minang Noongar, spoke about it at a United Nations forum last year.

ELECTIONS, ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Kamala Harris: Climate Alarmist, Energy Luddite Succeeding in destroying a nation’s economy. by Chris Talgo

Posted By on July 31st, 2024

https://www.frontpagemag.com/kamala-harris-climate-alarmist-energy-luddite/

Thanks to the Biden-Harris administration’s pea-brained energy policies, American families have spent more than $2,500 in higher energy prices since 2021.

Specifically, as detailed in a new policy analysis by The Heartland Institute, under the Biden-Harris administration, energy prices have soared across the board.

In fact, over the past three years, residential electricity prices have increased 23 percent, industrial electricity prices have increased 19 percent, home heating oil prices have increased 69 percent, oil prices have increased 52 percent, natural gas prices have increased 32 percent, and gasoline has increased $0.97 per gallon, or 42 percent.

These steep price increases for energy have taken quite a toll on hardworking Americans, who are also facing persistent inflation outside the energy sector.

To put these statistics in perspective, consider:

“After three years of Biden’s energy policies, the average U.S. driver has spent at least an extra $548 per year in higher gasoline costs while the average household has expended $318 in higher electricity costs.”

Moreover, “Households that use natural gas have spent an extra $586 over the past three years, and those using home heating oil have paid a whopping $3,068 more.”

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

The Dangers of a President Kamala The coming election: Our Republic’s last chance? by Bruce Thornton

Posted By on July 31st, 2024

https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-dangers-of-a-president-kamala/

As of now, Vice President Kamala Harris looks to be Donald Trump’s opponent in November. She’s secured the pledged support of enough delegates to the DNC for the nomination, and Biden’s $100 million war chest for now will go to her campaign, on top of the donations starting to pour in, and the Democrat Committee’s $91 million. Murkier are her chances against Donald Trump, who leads her in head-to-head polls, and whose campaign has been turbocharged by a spectacular Republican convention and a unified party.

But as Hillary Clinton learned in 2016, and Joe Biden just a few weeks ago, events and contingencies we often cannot predict can change everything in a day. That’s why in politics, as in war, one should heed Sun Tzu’s advice to “know your enemy as you know yourself.”

Harris’s weaknesses are well known from her stints as the District Attorney for San Francisco, Attorney General and Senator for California, and Vice President. All three offices are revealing of her leftist bent, “woke” prejudices, and big-government proclivities, but the latter is the most important job for revealing what kind of president she’ll be.

She is certain to follow Biden’s tax-spend-redistribute economic policies. As the Wall Street Journal writes, “So mark her down as endorsing the spending blowouts that caused inflation, the Green New Deal, entitlement expansions and student loan forgiveness. Until she says otherwise, we should also assume she’s in favor of Mr. Biden’s $5 trillion tax increase in 2025.”And don’t expect a President Harris to increase much-needed defense spending to restore our military’s dangerous deficits in both personnel and materiel.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Settler Colonialists In Israel And The United States Francis Menton

Posted By on July 31st, 2024

https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2024-7-29-settler-colonialists-in-israel-and-the-united-states

Of all the epithets of the left that don’t make any sense, the term “settler colonialist” is one of my favorites. We live in a world where the ability of people to relocate, even to places thousands of miles distant, has increased greatly over time. These days, many millions of people per year pick up and relocate, or try to relocate, from one country to another. By far the biggest mass migrations going on currently are into the U.S. and into Europe from various poorer countries. This November 2023 piece from NPR puts the number of “migrants” crossing the U.S. Southern border illegally in 2023 at about 2.4 million. That would be in addition to about 1 million legal immigrants to the U.S. each year. The European Commission at this site from April 2024 gives a figure of 42.4 million people living in the EU who were not born there, about 9% of the population. That would suggest something like 1 million or so new arrivals per year.

So are all these people “settler colonialists”? Try to find that term applied to any of these millions of annual migrants, and I will bet that you cannot. The legal entry of millions into the United States, and the illegal invasion of millions more, is cheered on by all on the left. Meanwhile the derogatory term “settler colonialist” is reserved for much smaller numbers of migrants who have been designated as disfavored based on criteria that I have never seen rationally articulated.

And yet, find yourself in a disfavored group making a relocation, and get ready for an unrelenting stream of invective. Of course, Jews are the ultimate such disfavored group.

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Liz Peek: America, meet ‘Immaculate Kamala’ – the liberal media’s latest creation

Posted By on July 31st, 2024

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/america-meet-immaculate-kamala-liberal-medias-latest-creation

With the efficiency of a mob boss scrubbing a hit site, Democrats are cleaning up after Kamala Harris. They are deep into reinventing the presumptive Democrat nominee, lying about her background, removing damaging evidence of her hard-core leftism and presenting to the world, like a proud mom showing off her newborn, a fresh and unsullied face. 

Introducing Immaculate Kamala, an entirely fabricated creation of the left-wing media.

Confused voters must be wondering: why has Kamala Harris been judged one of the most unpopular vice presidents in history? How is it that Democrat kingmakers reportedly conspired for months to eject her from the ticket?    

The liberal media is good at this, and have turned the political conversation on its head in just a few weeks. It seems like yesterday that Donald Trump was cruising to victory in November – some were talking”landslide.” The disastrous debate which revealed Joe Biden’s incapacity, the attempt on the former president’s life, his brave response and a stunningly effective convention showed the GOP united, for once, and poised to clobber the incumbent. 

But now we read the polls are tightening, Harris is hauling in big campaign bucks, rebuilding the Obama coalition, and strengthening her grip on young, female and minority voters. We also read that Republicans are distorting her record. Voters disgusted by the failures of the Biden-Harris administration over the past three and a half years are being told their judgment (and recollections) about Harris are wrong, that she had little influence over decision-making in the White House. 

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Draining the Swamp Is Now a Job for Congress By Mark Pulliam

Posted By on July 31st, 2024

https://tomklingenstein.com/draining-the-swamp-is-now-a-job-for-congress/

Wading into the confusing abyss of administrative law, on June 28 the U.S. Supreme Court, by a 6-3 vote, overruled the much-criticized 1984 decision in Chevron, restoring the bedrock principle—commanded by both Article III of the Constitution and Section 706 the 1946 Administrative Procedure Act—-that it is the province of courts, not administrative agency bureaucrats, to interpret federal laws. This may sound like an easy ruling, but the issue had long bedeviled the Supreme Court. Even Justice Antonin Scalia, an administrative law expert, supported Chevron prior to his death in 2016. In Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, Chief Justice John Roberts sure-footedly dispatched Chevron.

If, as I wrote for The American Conservative in 2021, “Taming the administrative state is the issue of our time,” why did the Supreme Court unanimously (albeit with a bare six-member quorum) decide in Chevron to defer to administrative agencies interpretations of ambiguous statutes, and why did conservatives — at least initially — support the decision? In a word, politics. In 1984, the President in charge of the executive branch was Ronald Reagan, and the D.C. Circuit — where most administrative law cases are decided—was (and had been for decades) controlled by liberal activist judges. President Reagan’s deputy solicitor general, Paul Bator, argued the Chevron case, successfully urging the Court to overturn a D.C. Circuit decision (written by then-Judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg) that had invalidated EPA regulations interpreting the Clean Air Act. Thus, in the beginning, “Chevron deference” meant deferring to Reagan’s agency heads and their de-regulatory agenda.    

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Kamala Harris’s ‘Only Path’ To Destroy Israel by Bassam Tawil

Posted By on July 30th, 2024

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20820/kamala-harris-destroy-israel

What is insupportable is that Harris completely ignored that the Palestinians of the Gaza Strip are suffering because of a war initiated by Hamas. She could have done many Palestinians a favor had she called on Hamas to relinquish control over the Gaza Strip and stop using its people as human shields in its Jihad (holy war) against Israel.

Harris seems not to know or to have forgotten — either is not excessively impressive — that on October 6, 2023, there was a ceasefire in place between Israel and Hamas. Hamas broke it.

“Sometimes, on happier days, I like to comment on the remarkable similarities between Singapore and the Gaza Strip. Both are self-governing city-states located at key crossroads of world trade on the opposite ends of the Continent of Asia. Both combine density of population with a significant urban buildup and dramatic natural advantages, including a high-quality harbor. And yet, due to differences in civil culture and governance, Singapore has been built into the trade hub of East Asia. Gaza, as Saturday’s (October 7, 2023) events have demonstrated to the world, has chosen another path: becoming a terrorist dystopia like the benighted lands formerly under ISIS (Islamic State).” — Bassam Eid, Palestinian human rights activist, Newsweek, October 9, 2023.

The October 7 massacres, if anything, demonstrate why the creation of a Palestinian state is actually a surefire way to perpetuate the Palestinian jihad against Israel, as well as instability and insecurity throughout the Middle East. China, Russia, North Korea and Iran are watching and taking note that unacceptable behavior goes blissfully unpunished.

Hamas…. did not spend millions of dollars to boost the Palestinian economy or give young Palestinians in the Gaza Strip employment prospects. Rather than constructing a medical facilities or educational institutions, Hamas opted to build hundreds of tunnels to smuggle weapons, attack Israel, and shelter its terrorists and leaders.

[I]f and when a Palestinian state is established, as Harris and the Biden administration insist, it will be controlled by the same murderers, rapists and terrorist jihadists.

This is the time to remind Harris that Hamas’s charter views the Jihad as the way to take all of “Palestine” from the Jews and to destroy Israel. Harris sees a Palestinian state as the “only path” to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The Palestinians, on the other hand, view the establishment of such a state as the first step towards eliminating Israel. The Hamas charter begins with a quotation attributed to Muslim Brotherhood founder Hassan Al-Bana: “Israel will arise and continue to exist until Islam wipes it out, as it wiped out what went before.”

Harris’s remarks regarding a Palestinian state are seriously problematic: they send a message to the Palestinians and others that the US is happy to reward them for terrorism and the October 7 atrocities. Instead of talking about a Palestinian state, she should have told the Palestinians that they will never achieve a state as long as they back Hamas or vow to destroy a UN member state. Harris should also have warned the Palestinians that they will never be granted their own state unless they recognize Israel’s right to exist as the ancestral home of the Jewish people, stop radicalizing their youth, and renounce violence and terrorism.

By advocating an end to the war in the Gaza Strip, Harris is asking that Israel, by allowing Hamas to remain in power, submit itself to unending jihadist attacks. What country would do that?

Demanding a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip is comparable to calling for an end to the US war on Al-Qaeda and ISIS. Unfortunately, destroying Hamas’s military capabilities and removing it from power is the only realistic option. Failure to achieve those two goals will only embolden Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, Russia, Iran and other global aggressors waiting in the wings.