FOREIGN POLICY, ISRAEL Comments turned off

Biden Administration Gives Another $100 Million for Terror: Prefers Aiding Palestinian Terrorists Such as Hamas to Supporting Israel by Con Coughlin

Posted By on July 24th, 2024

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20814/biden-administration-gives-100-million-for-terror

Nothing better illustrates the perversity of the Biden administration’s attitude to the Gaza conflict that, at the same time that Washington is limiting arms exports to Israel, the US is increasing its aid to the Palestinian Authority.

One of the key lessons that the US should have learned from Hamas’s deadly terrorist attack against Israel on October 7… is that aid donations made by foreign donors invariably end up being used to fund Palestinian terrorists.

With awkward timing, the Biden administration announced its latest $100 million aid package for the Palestinians just as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was preparing to leave for his visit to Washington this week.

While aid officials blame Israel and the continuing war in Gaza for preventing the delivery of vital supplies from reaching Palestinian civilians, the real culprit is Hamas, which controls all the delivery networks. This means that much of the aid is diverted to those who support its terrorist operations.

Biden may have announced his intention to not seek re-election, but so long as his administration remains in power, there appears little prospect of any dramatic revision taking place to its deliberately icy — and potentially dangerous — attitude not only towards Israel’s offensive against Hamas in Gaza, but also its turning a blind eye toward Iran’s destabilizing nuclear weapons, possibly coming soon, with the missiles to deliver them to the Middle East, Europe, and — from Latin America and the Caribbean — to the United States.

Nothing better illustrates the perversity of the Biden administration’s attitude to the Gaza conflict that, at the same time that Washington is limiting arms exports to Israel, the US is increasing its aid to the Palestinian Authority.

One of the key lessons that the US should have learned from Hamas’s deadly terrorist attack against Israel on October 7, in which 1,200 Israelis were murdered and more than 250 taken captive and held as hostages in Gaza, is that aid donations made by foreign donors invariably end up being used to fund Palestinian terrorists.

Prior to October 7, key supporters of Hamas, such as Iran and Qatar, sent hundreds of millions of dollars to Gaza, and claimed it was to be used for humanitarian purposes such as funding schools and hospitals.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Curious Case of the Missing President. Oliver Wiseman

Posted By on July 23rd, 2024

https://www.thefp.com/p/the-curious-case-of-the-missing-president?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=260347&post_

But first, a simple question about the leader of the free world. 

On Monday afternoon, Joe Biden’s doctor, Kevin O’Connor, composed a memo designed to reassure the American people. The president, who tested positive for Covid six days ago, has completed his tenth dose of Paxlovid, he wrote, and “his symptoms have almost completely resolved.” O’Connor reiterated that Biden “continues to perform all his presidential duties.”  

After that letter was released, everyone here at The Free Press still had the same question: Where the hell is the president?

If Joe Biden’s decision to step down was extraordinary, so was the manner of his announcement. At this dramatic denouement of his fifty-year career in Washington, he declared the end of his reelection bid by tweeting out a letter. Since then, nothing. Or almost nothing. Late on Monday afternoon, he phoned his former campaign headquarters, now Kamala Harris HQ. “I know yesterday’s news was surprising and hard for you to hear, but it was the right thing to do,” Biden said on the call. 

But we still haven’t seen the president in days. 

Last Wednesday, Biden flew from Las Vegas, where he had been campaigning, to his beach house in Rehoboth, Delaware. It was there that he isolated and stewed, alongside only his immediate family and closest advisers, and reportedly came to the decision to step down. According to the White House daily schedule, the president will reemerge this afternoon and return to Washington. 

ISRAEL Comments turned off

The ICJ rejects international law The label of “occupation” apparently justifies the international community’s desire to aid and abet Hamas. Fiamma Nirenstein

Posted By on July 23rd, 2024

https://www.jns.org/the-icj-rejects-international-law/

What a pleasant thrill to see the most commonplace prejudices confirmed by the august body of the International Court of Justice. The United Nations’ top court—so noted for its love for Israel—just reached the single most unsurprising ruling in history: That Israel is the illegal occupier of the territory of a non-existent Palestinian entity.

The ICJ, which appears indifferent to the encouragement and collaboration it offers to global antisemitism, had already decided a few months before that Israel might be guilty of a genocide that the ICJ invented out of whole cloth. It must have taken enormous pleasure in offering Hamas a new and generous gift. The Palestinian Authority, of course, declared the ICJ’s decision a historic turning point. If it was referring to the total self-abasement of the “international community,” it is quite correct.

“Occupation” is a remarkable word. In the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it means absolutely nothing. It is a buzzword that signals a self-granted if baseless moral superiority. By saying the magic world, one is suddenly a defender of the oppressed and dispossessed. You are in favor of self-determination, of course, though this elides the fact that, in this context, self-determination means Hamas’s “right” to determine itself on massacring civilians, taking hostages and digging tunnels beneath civilian areas—all with total impunity.

Indeed, the U.N.’s own Secretary-General António Guterres stood tall the day after Hamas’s genocidal attack on Oct. 7 to blame everything on “Palestinian suffering”—that is, the creation of the State of Israel.

That Israel’s existence is firmly based on international law means nothing to Guterres or anyone else in the “international community” because, despite their pious moaning, they do not believe in international law. For them, it is only a weapon they can use on behalf of Hamas—nothing more.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Unburdened by What Has-Been? by Mark Steyn

Posted By on July 23rd, 2024

https://www.steynonline.com/14465/unburdened-by-what-has-been

~Now that Kamala is unburdened by that has-been and before whoever’s holding Joe Biden releases another not-quite-proof-of-life audio recording, let’s go back less than a month to when this started – the June 27th debate and the formerly loyal press corps’ amazing synchronised-shivving routine. As I wrote back then about the sudden outbreak of “third-rate dinner theatre”:

So why weren’t they able, after a week-and-a-half of dosage experimentation, to shoot the stiff enough of the juice to pass him off as being back in his State of the Union top-of-the-game mode?

As my former GB News colleague Neil Oliver observed long ago on The Mark Steyn Show, formulating a useful rule of contemporary politics:

This is happening because they want it to happen.

Just so. Over at Powerline, Steven Hayward wonders:

Was Biden set up? For more than a year, quite a lot of observers have confidently predicted that Biden would not be the nominee, and that the Democratic establishment would swap him out at an opportune moment…

But the scheme needed a catalyst to work. That catalyst was obviously the June 27 debate. It was the earliest presidential debate ever, before either candidate was formally nominated… If that debate hadn’t happened until late September, as is typical, it would have been too late.

True. And throughout that debate every Deputy Assistant Under-Staffer of Media Liaison was texting and/or DM-ing his most biddable press hack:

WHITE HOUSE CONTACT: So how d’you think it’s going?

WORTHLESS HACK: Oh, I think His Majesty’s new suit is pretty sharp…

WHITE HOUSE CONTACT: Really? You didn’t notice that the Emperor has no clothes?

WORTHLESS HACK: Well, yeah, but don’t worry, I’m not going to be saying that…

WHITE HOUSE CONTACT: Actually, we’d like you to…

WORTHLESS HACK: Are you sure? You mean one of those tentative ‘Granted he may have lost a step since he first debated Robert C Byrd on Saturday Night Klanbake in 1943’-type pieces..?

WHITE HOUSE CONTACT: Nah, just go full train-wreck. I can give you Macron and Meloni’s direct lines if you need some deep background…

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Similarities between Alexander Hamilton and JD Vance By Howard Richman

Posted By on July 23rd, 2024

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2024/07/similarities_between_alexander_hamilton_and_jd_vance.html

The childhoods of Alexander Hamilton and JD Vance were quite similar, and the similarities don’t end there. Both had the strong writing skills, energy, industry, and intelligence which led others to take them under their wings and advance their careers. Both had stints in the American military and became proponents of peace through strength, and both became huge proponents of American manufacturing as a key to America’s future prosperity.

Their Childhoods

Both spent their early years in households with mothers who were involved in affairs, even when living with someone else. Hamilton’s mother was even imprisoned by her second husband for adultery. Similarly, Vance’s mother had drug-addiction-related affairs with one man after another.

Both were rescued from their chaotic households when they were in their early teens, and then bloomed in their stable new households. Alexander was rescued (after abandonment by his supposed father James Hamilton, the death of his mother, and suicide by his guardian cousin) by the man who, according to Ron Chernow author of the biography Alexander Hamilton, was likely his real father.

Vance was rescued by his family-centered grandmother whose tough love gave him a sense of determination and responsibility. In his vice-presidential acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention on July 18, he told how his tough grandmother had ended one of his friendships:

She once told me, when she found out that I was spending too much time with a local kid who was known for dealing drugs, that if I ever hung out with that kid again, she would run him over with her car and she said, “JD, no one will ever find out about it!”

Literary Skills

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

There is nothing ‘graceful’ about Biden’s withdrawal from the race This whole unsightly circus has exposed the moral rot of the Democratic establishment. Brendan O’Neill

Posted By on July 23rd, 2024

https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/07/22/there-is-nothing-graceful-about-bidens-withdrawal-from-the-race/

And so the spin begins. Within minutes of Joe Biden announcing that he was dropping out of the presidential race, his sycophants were gushing over his ‘grace’. The New York Times marvelled like a wide-eyed idiot at the ‘historical rarity’ and ‘fundamental humility’ of a president bowing out for the good of the nation. Celebs lauded his ‘integrity’ in stepping down to ‘save democracy’. He has restored ‘honesty’ to politics after years of ‘scandal and chaos’, said Mark Hamill, as if Old Joe was Obi-Wan Kenobi to Trump’s Darth Vader. One Democratic governor hailed Biden for setting the ‘ultimate example’ to the American people. That example being what, exactly? That you should stubbornly stay in your job even when you know you can’t do it any more?

The propaganda machine is in full swing. The spindoctors are working overtime. They’re determined to depict Biden’s retreat from the race as an act of unparalleled altruism. As a brave effacement of the self in order that democracy might yet live. As something ‘utterly extraordinary’, in the words of the NYT. Be awed at the ‘bigness of what Biden just did’, it says. Get a room. History is being rewritten in real time. And we cannot let it stand. Not in order that we might kick Biden when he’s down, but in order that we might uphold the truth. The truth here being that Biden’s late retreat, and his anointing of Kamala Harris as his rightful successor, speaks not to the integrity of his administration but to its chaos and corruption.

The speed with which Biden’s relinquishing of his candidacy has been turned into a tale of ‘integrity’ should horrify everyone who cares for truth. It is three weeks – three long weeks – since he took to the stage of that CNN debate and shocked the world with his confusion and incapacity. And in those three weeks we all saw him furiously cling to the Oval Office desk. We all watched him haughtily dismiss concerns that he was no longer fit for office. We all heard that Jill Biden was batting aside his critics – from George Clooney to Barack Obama – as just so many Brutuses come to remove her perfectly capable husband. Grace? Humility? This was one of the most unseemly spectacles of jealous power preservation of modern times.

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

The Joe Biden debacle shames the Democrats His chaotic withdrawal from the presidential race has exposed the cynicism and dishonesty of the party elites. Sean Collins

Posted By on July 23rd, 2024

https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/07/22/the-joe-biden-debacle-shames-the-democrats/

So, he finally caved. On Sunday, Joe Biden announced he was dropping out of the 2024 race for the White House. This followed weeks of intense pressure on him from Democratic Party bigwigs, who were shocked into action after his disastrous debate performance on 27 June.

Biden’s decision is historic – there has never been a withdrawal from a US presidential contest so late in the process. It reveals a Democratic Party in shambles, trying to pick up the pieces before November’s ballot. This chaos is an indictment of both Biden and his party’s elites.

By running for re-election, Biden selfishly put himself above the party. Back in 2020, he claimed he was just a transitionary figure, a defence against Donald Trump’s re-election and a bridge to the future Democratic Party. That implied he would not run for a second term. But then he proceeded to do just that. He (and his family) knew that he, as an 81-year-old, was no longer physically and mentally up to the job. Yet the vain Biden thought that, even as a shuffling old man, he was the only one in the country who could now beat Trump in 2024.

The party’s leaders – among them the old guard of Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi, as well as current congressional leaders like Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries – are as much, if not more, to blame for this debacle. They have also known – for years! – about Biden’s declining health and diminishing faculties. They were quite happy to have a puppet in the White House who would do what he was told. They cynically thought they could continue to get away presenting this Weekend at Bernie’s frontman for re-election in 2024. Rather than have a messy primary contest, they cleared the way for Biden to enjoy a virtual coronation as the party’s nominee again, without any real debate or contestation (which would have revealed Biden’s poor state).

Biden was made the presidential nominee in spite of a majority of Democratic voters saying, for many months, that Biden was too old to run again. Now, in forcing Biden to withdraw from the race via behind-the-scenes pressure, the party elites will no doubt claim that they are simply following the will of their voters. But what the country is seeing is an incumbent president, whom party members still voted for in the primary, being brought down by a palace coup. And this is happening in the party that says it is defending democracy.

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Another Reason To Vote For Trump

Posted By on July 23rd, 2024

https://issuesinsights.com/2024/07/23/another-reason-to-vote-for-trump/

Late last year, Donald Trump said if he wins in November, he will on day one close the border and “drill, drill, drill.” He’s now added to that list a promise to “end the electric vehicle mandate” upon taking office. It will be refreshing to have a president who isn’t beholden to crackpot activism.

“I will end the electric vehicle mandate on day one,” Trump said last week during his acceptance speech, “thereby saving the U.S. auto industry from complete obliteration which is happening right now and saving U.S. customers thousands and thousands of dollars per car.”

Four months ago, the Biden administration’s Environmental Protection Agency finalized a new emissions rule that requires “up to two-thirds of new cars and trucks sold in the U.S. to be electric vehicles (EVs) in eight years.”

It was of course heralded as “one of the most significant climate regulations in the nation’s history,” “a day to celebrate” and “a positive step forward in protecting communities.”

So it’s just that easy to set the world on its proper course. It seems that anyone could do it.

But there’s much more to this issue.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Big Divide For every retiree hitting the cruise ship circuit or playing golf, many others have learned too late that they may have to work much longer than they anticipated. By Christopher Roach

Posted By on July 23rd, 2024

https://amgreatness.com/2024/07/23/the-big-divide/

Whether the economy is currently bubbling along or facing a slowdown, a slow-motion disaster is about to create a real crisis for the government, our future politics, and the shrinking middle class. Half of households have no retirement savings.

This is just one of many shifts in the economy that reflect the declining fortunes of the middle class. Wages have remained mostly flat for most workers—particularly those without a college degree—since the early 1970s. Recent high rates of inflation further cut into the ability of the self-identified middle class to make ends meet. But the biggest change has been the abolition of employer-provided pensions and their replacement with rickety and self-managed 401k savings plans.

All of this will only get worse over the next few decades. Social Security benefits are currently extremely modest. For those who do not own homes, rising rents will further cut into their ability to maintain a toehold on middle-class existence, assuming they can remain housed at all.

Who Gets to Retire?

It’s easy to think this is extreme, as retirement looks pretty good for most baby boomers. They are the wealthiest generational cohort, often benefiting from pensions, which are supplemented by real estate holdings, 401Ks, and IRAs. This prosperity is distributed unevenly, however.

For every retiree hitting the cruise ship circuit or playing golf, many others have learned too late that they may have to work much longer than they anticipated. The game changed abruptly during their lifetimes, as major companies shed defined benefit plans and replaced them with voluntary retirement accounts managed by workers. As this momentous change took place, the urgency of the moment was not impressed upon workers, and generational optimism blinded many to the difficult road ahead.

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Biden Anoints Kamala What will change? by Joseph Klein

Posted By on July 23rd, 2024

https://www.frontpagemag.com/biden-anoints-kamala/

President Joe Biden abandoned his reelection campaign on July 21st following weeks of intensive pressure to quit from members of his own party. President Biden promptly endorsed his vice president Kamala Harris to run as the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee against former President Donald Trump.

Kamala Harris, who had all along praised Joe Biden’s mental acuity and fitness for office, lauded her boss’s “patriotic” decision to drop out of the race. Was she part of the coverup of President Biden’s cognitive decline, waiting in the wings to take his place at the top of the ticket?

And what happened to the existential importance in this election of saving democracy that President Biden and Vice President Harris have spoken so frequently about? The millions of votes for President Biden in the Democrat primaries and caucuses have been nullified. Kamala Harris is being anointed by the party power elites, even though she showed her weakness as a presidential candidate previously by bowing out during the 2020 Democrat presidential nomination campaign before any votes were counted.

Kamala Harris has also been an utter failure as vice president. She completely flubbed, for example, her only major substantive assignment as the border czar. Now she will have to shoulder full responsibility for the estimated twelve million or more illegal immigrants who entered the country during the Biden-Harris administration’s time in office due to the administration’s open border policies.

Why not simply release Biden’s delegates in an open convention after a series of town halls with the leading Democrat candidates for the top spot, as some Democrat strategists have suggested, rather than hand the nomination over to Ms. Harris?

The answer is that Kamala Harris, a woman of color, embodies the Democratic Party’s ethos of identity politics and diversity, equity, and inclusion. Democracy must give way to DEI. Besides, Ms. Harris can be counted on to continue the disastrous policies of the Biden-Harris administration so admired by the progressive base, but with even more of a left-leaning bent and hostility towards Israel.