ANTI-SEMITISM, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

What do Men Want? It Sure Isn’t Harris Roger Franklin

Posted By on October 14th, 2024

https://quadrant.org.au/features/america/2024-election-blog/

The rain that devastated  Appalachia’s hollers was petering out by the time what was left of Hurricane Hellene barrelled up the Mississippi Valley’s eastern flank and ran out of puff for good in northern Ohio. But we still got five inches in half that many days — drizzle when it wasn’t pelting and a chill at dawn that recommended a jumper for the first time in what is a fast-faltering Indian summer.

Another downpour was hammering the motel when the TV news cut to footage from New York of thousands filling Fifth Avenue, waving Hamas flags and mourning among so many other unholy recent martyrs the man who in 1983 sent a fellow death cultist to blow up 238 of their fellow Americans in their Beirut barracks. Decades later, back in 2001, thousands dusted white with shock and ash trudged north along the same Fifth Ave from the piles of the Twin Towers. But today, not even a full generation later, people who might quietly have cheered those earlier  massacres were openly and aggressively making common cause with the latest iterations of the original 9/11 monsters. You see and hear some odd and wonderful things in New York, but a 20-block ‘*f***  you’ never seemed likely, especially in this most Jewish of diaspora cities. Not until October 7, 2023, when anti-Semitism came out from under its rock.

Here in Toledo, though, all is quiet. Well almost quiet, the News from Detroit, two hours to the north over the nearby Michigan border, tells of anti-Semitic pamphlets turning up on scores of driveways in the comfortably middle-class suburb of Farmington, about 20 miles from Motor City’s gutted heart. But it wasn’t much more than a police blotter item as far as the papers’ news editor was concerned. Nothing much to dwell upon, not when the country’s best universities are seeing the same and worse displays of enthusiasm for rapists and butchers. So the pamphlets, which also turned up in their hundreds in two other nearby towns, weren’t man-bites-dog stuff, just business a bit more than usual in a state where pro-Hamas/Hezbollah barrackers were chanting  ‘Death to America’ in gorgeously multicultural Dearborn. Also  getting a run on that recent afternoon’s Koranic concert card, a reminder that Allah wants Jews to get what’s good for them wherever they be found. You can understand why the Detroit News back-benchers gave the story just eight column inches and buried it on page four. When something is commonplace, what’s the news in it?

As Kamala Harris and the census-crunchers running her ground game see it, being nice about Islam is a requisite courtesy on the path to Inauguration Day.

MEDIA Comments turned off

The Obscene Public Humiliation Ritual of CBS’s Tony Dokoupil Jeffrey Blehar

Posted By on October 14th, 2024

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/the-obscene-public-humiliation-ritual-of-cbss-tony-dokoupil/

EXCERPTS

The mainstream media has been afire over the past week about a major internal controversy at CBS, where CBS Mornings anchor Tony Dokoupil has been called on the carpet, publicly upbraided by his own network, and forced to apologize to his colleagues, all for the crime of asking literary activist Ta-Nehisi Coates a series of challenging questions.

In fact, I already covered many of those angles half a month ago. For those unfamiliar with who Ta-Nehisi Coates is, or the public controversy surrounding his new book The Message — in which Coates, after a ten-day visit to Israel as part of a “Palestine Festival of Literature” junket, concluded pre–October 7 that the Jewish state was illegitimate, identical to the Jim Crow South yet worse, and must be abolished — I invite you to read my piece about him from late September.

To summarize: Coates is an overpromoted naïf with profoundly radical priors and a proud ignorance of history — this is in fact part of his purported appeal, the supposedly untutored “freshness” with which he approaches things — a black autodidact whose ability to write passable prose got him advanced to the forefront of American racial, political, and literary discourse during the ferment of the later Obama era. After accumulating a mountain of elite hosannahs — to the point of literary deification — he ducked out of the public conversation, but has now re-emerged to use that moral capital to plead for the elimination of Israel in the wake of the October 7 massacres.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

More DOJ And FBI Corruption Francis Menton

Posted By on October 14th, 2024

https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2024-10-12-more-doj-and-fbi-corruption

A couple of weeks ago I posed the question of whether the recently-initiated federal prosecution of New York Mayor Eric Adams is legitimate, or whether it is yet another instance of abject corruption by our Department of Justice and FBI, in this instance pay-back by the prosecutors for Adams’s criticism of the regime’s immigration policies. To help you as you ponder that question, it might be useful to look at a few other things that the DOJ and FBI are recently up to.

As Item Number 1, Justice “Special Counsel” Jack Smith chose the date of October 2 — 34 days before the upcoming election — to file his brief laying out his reasons why ex-President Trump does not qualify for immunity from prosecution under the Supreme Court’s July 1 ruling in Trump v. United States. Smith’s brief, which is 165 pages long, was then promptly unsealed by the District Judge in the case, Tanya Chutkan. I am not going to quote from it here, but it is fair to say that the brief goes out of its way to be as inflammatory as possible against the former President.

In a New York Times op-ed on October 9, Professor Jack Goldsmith of Harvard Law School raises completely legitimate questions about the timing of the filing. Note that Goldsmith is no fan of Trump. From the op-ed:

[T]he timing of the release should receive more scrutiny, because the Department of Justice should not have allowed the information to be disclosed so close to Election Day. This event is the latest of many examples of Biden administration officials paying insufficient public attention to executive branch rules that are designed to ensure that prosecutions are, in appearance and reality, conducted fairly and apolitically. . . . It is . . . vital . . . for the executive branch to take scrupulous care to assure the public that the prosecutions are conducted in compliance with pertinent rules. On this score, Mr. Smith has failed. . . . The filing is in clear tension with the Justice Department’s 60-day rule, which the department inspector general has described as a “longstanding department practice of delaying overt investigative steps or disclosures that could impact an election” within 60 days of an election.

IMMIGRATION, MEDIA Comments turned off

‘Do You Hear Yourself?’: Vance Blasts ABC Host for ‘Nitpicking’ Trump’s Rhetoric on Immigration Haley Strack

Posted By on October 14th, 2024

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/do-you-hear-yourself-vance-blasts-abc-host-for-nitpicking-trumps-rhetoric-on-immigration/

Ohio Senator and Republican vice-presidential candidate J. D. Vance, in an interview on Sunday morning, blasted ABC News anchor Martha Raddatz’s criticism of Donald Trump’s comments on immigration, days after the former president had claimed that Aurora, Colo., has been “invaded and conquered” by illegal immigrants.

Trump’s claim that the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua has taken over apartment complexes was labeled “grossly exaggerated” by Aurora’s mayor, Raddatz pointed out.

“Well, Martha, you just said the mayor said they were exaggerated. That means that there’s gotta be some element of truth here,” Vance said. “Of course, President Trump was actually in Aurora, Colorado, talking to people on the ground, and what we’re hearing is people are terrified by what has happened with some of these Venezuelan gangs —”

Raddatz interrupted the candidate.

“Senator Vance, I’m going to stop you because I know exactly what happened. I’m going to stop you. The incidents were limited to a handful of apartment complexes, and the mayor said, ‘Our dedicated police officers have acted on those concerns.’ A handful of problems,” Raddatz said.

“Only, Martha? Do you hear yourself?” Vance responded. “Only a handful of apartment complexes were taken over by Venezuelan gangs, and Donald Trump is the problem, not Kamala Harris’s open border? Americans are so fed up with what’s going on, and they have every right to be,” Vance responded. “I really find this exchange, Martha, sort of interesting because you seem to be more focused with nitpicking everything that Donald Trump has said rather than acknowledging that apartment complexes in the United States of America are being taken over by violent gangs.”

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

The Strange, Mythological Campaign of Kamala Harris Harris is distancing herself from her record, misrepresenting her past, and shifting blame for policy failures onto Donald Trump, creating a disconnect between her actions and campaign messaging. By Victor Davis Hanson

Posted By on October 14th, 2024

https://amgreatness.com/2024/10/14/the-strange-mythological-campaign-of-kamala-harris/

Increasingly, little if anything remains real about the Harris campaign.

Take ideology and the issues.

It is now well known that Kamala Harris was rated as the most left-wing of all current senators, including Bernie Sanders—according to GovTrack, a non-partisan compiler of evaluators in Congress. The Voteview project found her voting record the most liberal of all senators of the 21st century, except for radical Elizabeth Warren.

Harris as vice president in a 50/50 Senate has proven the decisive passing vote on more deadlocked bills than any other vice president in history—all thirty-three of them proudly progressive legislation. She has done more to ensure left-wing government at the national level than any prior vice president.

Indeed, Harris, as both a California state official and its senator, and as vice president, has for some thirty years championed almost every issue dear to the left—Medicare for all, an end to private health care plans, banning fracking, mandatory EV requirements, unrestricted abortion, wealth taxes, income and inheritance tax hikes, defense cuts, price controls, open borders, ending the border patrol, stopping all deportations, opposition to a border wall, mass amnesties, free transition surgeries for illegal aliens, and mandatory buyback of semi-automatic firearms.

In most of these cases, Harris not only voiced support but did so proudly and emphatically in front of hard-left constituencies. She has declared that she is a radical and woke.

During the 2020 Antifa and BLM riot after the death of George Floyd, Harris unabashedly helped to raise bail for arrested violent demonstrators in Minnesota. Indeed, she went on national television to warn the nation that the protests were a “movement” that would not and should not stop.

Given such a long record, Harris should have been proud of her politics, which had done so much, especially over the last four years, to change the very nature of the nation. Why, then, is she not campaigning on the allegedly superior record of the Biden administration, the innate advantages to voters of the progressive project, and the need to implement a further left-wing agenda? Rather than promising “change,” should she not be advocating “four more years of the same?”

Answer—Joe Biden has proven to be one of the most unpopular presidents in history. His approval ratings hover around 40 percent, and less on the very left-wing policies he and Harris implemented.

So, Harris is not proudly boasting of her past efforts to open wide the southern border, to support defunding the police, or to call for reparations. Instead, she has renounced most of her prior radical agendas and embraced their antitheses. In eerie examples of projection, whatever particular unpopular policy is most associated with Biden-Harris, she claims Trump, out of office since January 2021, was responsible for the fiasco.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Sheriff: Possible Third Trump Assassination Attempt Thwarted

Posted By on October 14th, 2024

https://www.newsmax.com/politics/sheriff-coachella-checkpoint/2024/10/13/id/1183910/

Sheriff Chad Bianco of Riverside County, California, said he may have prevented a third assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump after stopping a man at a road checkpoint who was allegedly in possession of an illegal firearm, or firearms, and fake rally passes.

On Saturday, just before 5 p.m, deputies assigned to Trump’s security detail for his Coachella Valley rally stopped the driver of a black SUV, Vem Miller, 49, half a mile from the rally entrance, according to a press release from the Riverside County Sheriff’s Office. Miller “was found to be illegally in possession of a shotgun, a loaded handgun, and a high-capacity magazine,” as well as fake press and VIP passes.

“We probably stopped another assassination attempt,” Bianco said, according to the New York Post.

The sheriff’s office said that Miller was taken into custody “without incident” and booked at the John J. Benoit Detention Center for “possession of a loaded firearm and possession of a high-capacity magazine.”

He was released Saturday on $5,000 bail and is scheduled to appear at the Indio Larson Justice Center on Jan. 2, 2025.

ELECTIONS, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The KISS Of Death: The Case Against Kamala In Six Simple Numbers Bob Maistros

Posted By on October 14th, 2024

https://issuesinsights.com/2024/10/14/the-kiss-of-death-the-case-against-kamala-in-six-simple-numbers/

KISS. The age-old, sage advice to Keep It Simple, Stupid.

With voting already underway, the Trump-Vance campaign has at its disposal a historically simple case to drop the KISS of death on Kamala Harris’ candidacy.

Six numbers utterly disqualify the most inadequate, incompetent, ineffectual, insubstantial candidate ever put forward by a major party for the office of president of the United States of America.

These numbers must be repeated, daily, by the two members of the Republican ticket and every imaginable surrogate between now and the final closing of the final polling place November 5.

Here we go:

$17,080

Kacklin’ Kamala laments “so many Americans trying to make it all work every day … sitting around their own kitchen tables and facing their own financial pressures.”

You bet. And she knows exactly why. According to the House Budget Committee, that $17,080 was, as of this summer, the annual Harris-Biden “inflation tax” on the average American household. A number that has only grown since, despite a supposed “cooling” that did not preclude continued leaps in food, shelter, medical, and apparel costs in the latest Consumer Price Index report.

NATIONAL SECURITY AND DEFENSE Comments turned off

US national security mandates regime-change in Iran Ambassador (Ret.) Yoram Ettinger,

Posted By on October 13th, 2024

http://bit.ly/3zYf5Nw

The US State Department has rejected the regime-change option (which would gratify most Iranians) since 1978/79, when Iran’s Ayatollahs seized power, assisted by the State Department, which had stabbed the back of the Shah, who had been America’s Policeman in the Gulf.

Instead, the State Department has embraced the diplomatic option, which has generated hundreds of billions of dollars to the Ayatollahs – notwithstanding their systematically anti-US policies – facilitating their surge from a non-leadership regional stature in 1979 to global prominence, militarily and diplomatically in 2024. Furthermore, the diplomatic option has substantially upgraded the Ayatollahs’ support of terror entities such as Hezbollah, Hamas and the Houthis.

*In 2024, independent of potential nuclear capabilities, the conventional military capabilities of Iran’s Ayatollahs constitute the most critical epicenter of anti-US global terrorism, drug trafficking, money laundering and the proliferation of advanced missiles and predator unmanned aerial vehicles. 

The Ayatollahs’ conventional capabilities are a clear and present danger to the US homeland (e.g. proliferation of sleeper cells on US soil and the tight collaboration with Mexico’s drug cartels) and national security. Since the early 1980s, the Ayatollahs have severely eroded the US’ strategic posture in Latin America. In addition, the Ayatollahs pose an imminent lethal threat to every pro-US Arab regime, especially the oil-producing regimes (e.g., Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Bahrain), aiming to seize control of 48% of the global oil reserves.

*In 1978/79, the State Department deluded itself that Ayatollah Khomeini would be controlled by moderate advisors, distancing himself from Moscow, focusing on introducing liberty to the Iranian people, refraining from the exportation of the Islamic Revolution, evolving into an Iranian edition of Ghandi.

In 1978/79, the State Department policy doomed the pro-US Iran, transforming it into a venomous anti-US octopus with its tentacles stretched from the Persian Gulf, through the Middle East and Africa to Latin America and the US homeland.

ELECTIONS, MEDIA Comments turned off

The Hill Liz Peek: Desperate Democrats cry “misinformation” to silence criticism of Kamala Harris

Posted By on October 13th, 2024

https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/4928306-desperate-democrats-cry-misinformation-to-squash-criticism-of-kamala-harris

For days now, the liberal media and its Democratic allies have seemed much more concerned about Republicans spreading “misinformation” than about the real-life suffering of North Carolinians.   

For proof, look no further than this blizzard of headlines — all from Politico:  

“The worst I have ever seen’: Disinformation chaos hammers FEMA”
“After the deluge, the lies: Misinformation and hoaxes about Helene cloud the recovery” 
“Elon Musk is piling onto all the hurricane disinformation, hampering relief efforts” 
“FEMA director on misinformation: ‘Truly dangerous narrative’” 

Politico is certainly not alone, ABC ran with this story on Tuesday: “Ahead of election, experts warn Hurricane Helene misinformation is ‘just the beginning.’” 

CBS contributed this one on Monday: “Misinformation has surged following Hurricane Helene.” 

 That’s the same CBS that reportedly doctored video of Kamala Harris’s “60 Minutes” interview to make the Democratic candidate appear more intelligent. So their concern about misinformation is apparently episodic.

It’s almost as though a memo went out to Democrat-friendly media allies, prompting a concerted pushback against criticism of the Biden-Harris White House’s response to Hurricane Helene. It’s not surprising. 

The pile-up of delayed, tone-deaf and embarrassing responses to the devastating storm from the administration and Kamala Harris has been damaging; her team is desperate to contain the damage. 

P.C.-CULTURE, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Canada’s woke Stasi An elderly school trustee who questioned trans ideology has been subjected to a legal witch-hunt.

Posted By on October 13th, 2024

https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/10/13/canadas-woke-stasi/

Under other circumstances, former school trustee Barry Neufeld may have retired as one of your curmudgeonly, albeit amusing, elderly neighbours, equipped with a brash sense of humour, a glass of wine and a cigarette. Had he not introduced himself at a recent panel event I spoke on in Victoria, British Columbia (BC) about the harms of gender-identity ideology, I would never have pegged him as a supposed hate-monger. He seemed rather jovial, in fact. Yet the Canadian media and some of Canada’s most powerful unions see things differently. They have made Neufeld their nemesis.

Neufeld is now in his seventies. His troubles began in 2017. This was when he discovered a new gender-identity curriculum for kids coming down the pike in his school district of Chilliwack, BC. This was the year that the SOGI (Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity) 123 programme was implemented in public schools across the province, with the aim of making classrooms more ‘inclusive’ for LGBT-identified kids. That same year, Bill C-16 was passed by the national parliament, adding ‘gender identity’ to the list of protected characteristics under the Canadian Human Rights Act. Both pieces of legislation were introduced with little public debate and most Canadians were completely unaware of what was even happening.

But Neufeld noticed and spoke out on Facebook, criticising SOGI 123 for instructing ‘children that gender is not biologically determined, but is a social construct’. ‘At the risk of being labelled a bigoted homophobe’, he wrote, ‘I have to say that I support traditional family values and I agree with the [American College of Pediatricians] that allowing little children to choose to change gender is nothing short of child abuse’.

After facing backlash, he apologised a couple of days later ‘to those who felt hurt’ by his opinion. He explained that ‘I am critical of an educational resource, not individuals. Those who have worked with me for over 24 years know that I do believe in inclusion and a safe learning environment for all of our students.’ Yet he didn’t relent, adding: ‘SOGI 123 resources need to be reviewed by engaging parents and teachers in conversation… before full implementation.’

This didn’t happen, of course. This is never how the trans issue has been handled by the Canadian government and its state-funded institutions. Rather, gender-identity policy and legislation have been slipped in under the radar. By the time most of the Canadian public noticed, it was far too late.