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July 2024

A Big Win for Israel by Harold Rhode

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20796/a-big-win-for-israel

Reprinted by kind permission of JNS.

Following Israel’s recent strike on Houthi targets in Yemen, White House National Security Communications Advisor John F. Kirby said: “We did not participate in today’s Israeli attack on Yemen and did not help Israel.”

This is wonderful news. It shows to the Iranians, Arab states and others that Israel is an independent actor, not a “client state” of America. It also demonstrates that Israel is willing to go it alone against the advice or demands of the Americans.

It shows the Sunni Arab countries that Israel is a reliable partner against the Iranian regime because Israel will do what it must to protect itself and stop Iran and its proxies. As Israel’s Minister of Strategic Affairs Ron Dermer often says, even if the Sunnis can’t have the 800-pound gorilla (the U.S.) to defend them against Iranian aggression, the 250-pound gorilla (Israel) has proved a reliable alternative.

What more can we learn from Israel’s attack on the (Shi’ite) Houthis?

First, the distance between Iran and Israel’s target in Hodeida, Yemen (about 2,000 kilometers) is beyond the flight range of the F-35 fighter jet. That means the Israelis had to refuel during the trip. Since America didn’t help them, the Israelis either figured out a way to do so by themselves or another country (Saudi Arabia, perhaps?) may have allowed them to refuel in or over their country or elsewhere. This is devastating news for the Iranians.

The flight distance between Israel and Hodeida is the same as between Israel and most of Iran. Tehran, for example, is only 1,200 kilometers from Israel. Thus, the strike is a serious warning to Iran. Iran’s government talks a big game, but given Iranian and Arab culture, when people brag about their abilities, they usually do so out of fear. They hope their enemy will be deterred. Thus, such braggadocio amounts to saying, “Hold me back because I’m afraid my enemy will destroy me.”

Israel’s raid and the damage it caused to the Shi’ite Houthis has allowed the Sunni Yemenis, who are the majority of the country’s population and formerly ran the country, to raise their heads in revolt. There are suddenly many more videos on X showing Sunnis revolting against the Houthis and Iran.

CHAPTER 28: Pantheism, Gnosticism, and Marxism Space Is No Longer the Final Frontier—Reality Is (forthcoming release August 2024) by Linda Goudsmit

https://goudsmit.pundicity.com/27919/chapter-28-pantheism-gnosticism-and-marxism

Pundicity page: goudsmit.pundicity.com  and website: lindagoudsmit.com 

Gnosis is the Greek word for knowledge. Gnosticism is an ancient ideological genus with many species, pantheism being one of them. Gnosticism is a paganistic, pantheistic, polytheistic cosmology. A cosmology is an account of the origin of the universe. The tenets of Gnosticism are rooted in dualism, and are diametrically opposed to Judeo-Christian doctrines and morality. Gnostic tenets are the ancient source of modern anti-Semitism, population control, abortion, embryonic/fetal research, eugenics, transhumanism, and New Age ideologies.

Judeo-Christian philosophy and beliefs are consistent with the Aristotelian “principle of non-contradiction.” In reference to George Orwell, this means that in the Judeo-Christian tradition, up is not down, black is not white, war is not peace, and ignorance is not strength. Life in the Judeo-Christian world is rooted in objective reality. In Gnosticism, just as in Orwell’s 1984, up is down, black is white, war is peace, and ignorance is strength. Such contradictions and dualities are foundational to its beliefs and teachings.

Bioethicist and professor of philosophy Dr. Dianne Irving provides an extraordinary and impassioned analysis of the importance of understanding ancient Gnosticism and its massive influence in contemporary America in her 2006 article, “Gnosticism, the Heretical Gnostic Writings, and ‘Judas’.”[i] She states:

It is a moral crime that the on-going spread of Gnosticism—both ancient and post-Christian—is not identified or acknowledged in most “ethical” treatises, religious/secular “teachings” or the media. To not know or understand what Gnosticism is, is to be incapable of putting a name and a face on, questioning, or evaluating one of the most pervasive and influential mythological ideologies in our global society today.

Understanding the fundamentals of Gnosticism will help the reader identify its underlying connections to Marxism. Remember, Karl Marx was never an economist, as Dr. James Lindsay reminded us in Chapter 11; he was a theologian. As Lindsay told the European Parliament on March 29, 2023:

He [Karl Marx] wanted to produce a religion for mankind that would supersede all of the religions of mankind, and bring him back to his true social nature…and at the end of history mankind will remember that he is a social being and we will have a socialist society—a perfect communism that transcends private property.

Lance Morrow Pride Goeth Before a Withdrawal Joe Biden was too stubborn and selfish to bow to reality until he had no choice.

https://www.city-journal.org/article/pride-goeth-before-a-withdrawal

Smart lad, to slip betimes away, From fields where glory does not stay, And early though the laurel grows, It withers quicker than the rose.

The lines are from A. E. Housman’s poem “To an Athlete Dying Young.” Joe Biden is not an athlete dying young. He is a president, leaving old, at a shockingly late moment in the drama of the year 2024, just weeks before the Democratic convention. He should have slipped away a few years ago. 

About the dead, one must speak nothing but good. About Joe Biden in his withdrawal from the presidential race, commentators for now are saying nothing except that it was a difficult, poignant, and self-sacrificing deed, touched by nobility. His bombshell on a Sunday afternoon in July broke an unbearable tension in what used to be called the public mind—a tension compounded, week after week, by footage of the president walking stiffly, staring blankly, fumbling his words, and staggering as he ascended the short stairs onto Air Force One. His June 27 debate with Donald Trump was excruciating to watch. So it was that the announcement of his departure—not merely from the 2024 race but from a long and complicated public life—produced a kind of dazed relief. The first reactions were generous and grateful. And yet there was a note of nil nisi hokum in the air. 

It’s said that no president can be properly judged until 30 years have elapsed from the time he left office. By that rule, Joe Biden cannot be correctly evaluated until 2054 or thereabouts. 

For the moment, it would be well to remember that the incredible mess of American politics in the summer of 2024 is the doing not only of the egregious Donald Trump but also of a stubborn, prideful, selfish Joe Biden and his wife Jill and the rest of the Bidens, and his closest aides. In this debacle, Biden’s laurels are withered; he does not deserve much glory. In the wake of his reluctant departure from the race, he leaves a squalor of conspiracy theories and the scandal of his having persisted for so long. Conservative historians will write him off as an incompetent, while progressives—after overpraising his accomplishments—will recall him as the one who left the Democratic Party in chaos and, as may be, delivered the country to the carnivore Donald Trump.

Some New Twists in the Election After Biden Drops Out Matt Margolis

https://pjmedia.com/matt-margolis/2024/07/21/new-twists-in-the-election-after-biden-drops-out-n4930935

In the hours since Joe Biden conceded defeat in the 2024 election to Donald Trump, there have been a lot of weird things happening. For starters, Kamala Harris is now working to secure support for her presidential bid. Some Democrats, like the Clintons, have endorsed her. Others, like the Obamas, have instead expressed support for some kind of process to select a new ticket.

Manchin 2024?

Perhaps the weirdest thing is that Sen. Joe Manchin (I-W.V.) is now considering reregistering as a Democrat and running for the party’s presidential nomination.

CNN’s Jake Tapper was first to break this development:

This was confirmed by Sam Stein of The Bulwark & MSNBC:

I really don’t believe that Manchin is a viable Democratic candidate, but if he does announce his candidacy it might make it easier for other Democrats (who might actually have a chance) to jump in as well.

Newsom makes his move

Shortly after the news broke that Biden was dropping out, California Gov. Gavin Newsom made a curious move.

A Decade of Conspiracists? Can we cease the charge of Trump the fascist since it has not only been proven false but has revealed far more about the authoritarian and conspiratorial nature of the accusers than their target? By Victor Davis Hanson

https://amgreatness.com/2024/07/22/a-decade-of-conspiracists/

Who has most peddled conspiracy allegations the last nine years—all of them false and nearly all of them influencing national elections and public policies?

Once a target is constructed as Hitlerian, almost any means necessary to quash that perceived existential threat become justified. And we have seen a lot of them in the last nine years.

Russian collusion did not work. Christopher Steele was a fraud. Robert Mueller came up empty.

The Alfa Bank ping caper was a myth.

The Russian laptop disinformation was a lie and ruined the reputations of the “51 former intelligence authorities” who sanctioned it.

The first Trump impeachment was a strictly partisan vote, activated when Trump lost the House and Mueller had come up empty.

Only ten Republicans impeached Trump a second time; the Senate again acquitted then-private citizen Trump.

January 6 was a buffoonish riot. In magnitude and lethality, it marked only a fraction of the destruction in lives and property of the green-lit Antifa-BLM-organized 120-day “summer of love” of rioting, violence, and arson of 2020.

The post facto militarization of Washington into an armed camp, the presence of FBI informants on Capitol grounds, the decision not to beef up security forces, the weird effort to suppress videos of the riot and congressional testimonies and evidence, the promotion and canonization of the reckless officer Byrd who lethally shot an unarmed Ashli Babbitt, and the use of solitary confinement for the arrested, long detentions without trials, and inordinately harsh prison sentences (in comparison to the nearly 14,000 arrested in 2020 who were mostly released) will remain controversial until freedom of information suits release the full story of the day’s events and aftermath.

Sixteen states, in an unprecedented move, tried in vain to remove Trump from the 2024 ballot. All failed. If they had succeeded, elections as we know them would have ceased to exist.

Four prosecutorial teams, local, state, and federal, sought to bankrupt, jail, or render Trump inert during the 2023-2024 campaign cycle. All will likely fail—but risk opening a new chapter of tit-for-tat lawfare in lieu of relying on the voters to choose their own president.

The entire meme of Trump, the fascist who will institute a dictatorship, has likewise boomeranged.

Democracy is dying in darkness, given the current Democrat insider machinations of removing by diktat President Joe Biden. He won the most delegates in the Democratic “primaries”—but now apparently must be dropped either because he is behind in the polls or mentally unfit to remain a candidate or both. Stealth donors and covert politicos in the shadows—not transparent primaries and elected delegates—run the party that “defends democracy.”

But note those on the left would allow Biden to remain our president for the next six months in his debilitated state, but not to continue as their (losing) candidate. The quest for progressive power always trumps the collective interest of the nation: he’s not fit for me but fit enough for thee.

The recent assassination attempts to kill Trump likewise failed. The eerie laxity of the Secret Service and the Biden administration’s long stonewalling to prevent adequate protection for candidates Trump and Robert Kennedy, Jr., will be long examined.

No one has ever apologized for any of the above, although all were unprecedented efforts to use the courts, the administrative state, and the media to do what they feared the people might not through voting.

When Democrats Incite an Assassination By J.B. Shurk

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

I monitor a lot of lefty chat rooms to see how the Marxist Borg is processing new information.  Wading through a sewer of fractured psyches is borderline torture, but it’s helpful to watch the commie hive mind in action.  The hogwash that self-described “smart people” claim to believe would make you cry for the sorry state of public education.

After the assassination attempt on President Trump, I tiptoed back over to Club Xanax to see how that hellscape was holding up.  By far, the great majority of leftists were flipping out that the gunman had been unsuccessful.  Reading through such hateful sludge masquerading as higher-order thinking is a chilling reminder that these terrorists-in-training have no qualms about putting us in shallow graves, so that they might build their rancid “Utopia” right atop our bones.  They are sick people with sick thoughts who express support for some very sick things.  But what else would one expect from a crowd of kooks who think pedophilia is no big deal but that meat-eaters should be hanged for heating the planet?

There’s no obvious way to reason with a bunch of psychologically damaged misfits who dress up in black hoodies and surgical masks before burning down churches in the name of “fighting fascism” because these yahoos abandoned reason a long time ago.  Case in point: the same sickos who spent two days hopped up on a rage bender after President Trump’s would-be assassin failed to fulfill their dark fantasies turned around and started complaining that conservatives were using “dangerous” language by implying that leftists are complicit.

What did they mean?  They didn’t like that Trump-supporters were saying, “They tried to bankrupt him; they tried to imprison him; and now they tried to kill him.”  “Who is this they,” the loony left collectively shrieked.  “It was totally a lone gunman with bad aim,” they continue to howl.  Democrats and their Antifa shock troops have been calling Donald Trump “Hitler” and demanding that he be “eliminated” for eight long years, and the moment someone listens to them, those verbal hitmen are downright offended that anyone might hold them personally responsible.  Sure, they’d gladly imprison anybody who dared to “mis-gender” a fifty-year-old creeper hanging around little girls, but to point an accusatory finger toward the leftist fifth column encouraging violence against conservatives is beyond the pale.  As I said, cuckoo commies abandoned reason long ago.

It does make you think.  Right now, lawfare assassin Jack Smith is arguing in front of black-robed tyrant Judge Chutkan that the once-and-future President Trump should be tossed in the hoosegow for daring to question the legitimacy of the 2020 election and “inciting” the so-called Capitol “insurrection” on January 6, 2021.  Anybody with a brain knows that there was never an insurrection, that President Trump never encouraged any criminality of any kind, and that trampling on a president’s right to free speech pretty much assures that the rest of us will soon be prosecuted for our political speech, too.  

Haley Strack: Obama Declines to Endorse Kamala Harris to Succeed Biden, Predicts ‘Outstanding Nominee’ Will Emerge

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/obama-declines-to-endorse-harris-in-statement-praising-biden-withdrawal-predicts-outstanding-nominee-will-emerge/

As Democrats unite around Vice President Kamala Harris as the party’s presumptive nominee in the aftermath of Joe Biden’s withdraw from the presidential race, Barack Obama steered clear of endorsing Harris on Sunday, instead alluding to the possibility of an open primary.

The former president, who retains considerable influence in the party he once led, began by praising Biden’s decision to withdraw from the race as an act of public service.

“It’s a testament to Joe Biden’s love of country — and a historic example of a genuine public servant once again putting the interests of the American people ahead of his own that future generations of leaders will do well to follow,” Obama said.

Obama expressed confidence in Democratic leaders’ ability to “create a process from which an outstanding nominee emerges” but pointedly declined to endorse Harris.

“I believe that Joe Biden’s vision of a generous, prosperous, and united America that provides opportunity for everyone will be on full display at the Democratic Convention in August,” Obama said. “And I expect that every single one of us are prepared to carry that message of hope and progress forward into November and beyond.”

Biden quickly endorsed Harris for president when he withdrew from the race on Sunday and lent her his “full support.” Former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton also endorsed Harris in a joint statement posted to X, saying that “we are honored to join the President in endorsing Vice President Harris and will do whatever we can to support her.”

Kamala Harris is Hamas’ useful idiot The vice-president is a major liability for the Biden campaign – and is harming relations with Israel Nile Gardiner March 2024

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/us/comment/2024/03/27/kamala-harris-hamas-useful-idiot-rafah-invasion-israel/

As the Biden Presidency continues to sink at a rapid pace, with nearly two thirds of Americans now believing the country is on the wrong track, Kamala Harris is unwittingly doing her best to speed its demise.

Her latest television interview, with ABC News, can only be described as a train wreck that cements her reputation as a calamitous vice president. The interview followed her recent gaffe-ridden visit to Puerto Rico, where Harris cluelessly applauded anti-American protesters singing a song in Spanish accusing her administration of war crimes.

In yet another damaging blow to relations between the Biden Presidency and the Israeli government led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Harris warned Israel against a military offensive in Rafah, while ludicrously boasting “I have studied the maps.” Harris, whose expertise on the Middle East is close to zero, saw fit to berate America’s closest ally in the region on its own counter-terrorism policy. The arrogance was breathtaking, and the ignorance of the complexities on the ground simply stunning.

Harris has been one of the least impressive vice presidents in US history. Her vacuous policy statements and speeches frequently display a staggering lack of knowledge. Her handling of the southern border crisis as the White House’s “border czar” has been an absolute disaster, with over nine million illegal migrant crossings since she and Joe Biden took office in January 2021.

Many Americans I have spoken to genuinely fear her one day taking over the presidency. With good reason. The only thing more embarrassing for the Biden presidency than Joe Biden himself are the media utterances made by his deputy, Kamala Harris.

Biden won’t seek second term His fate was that of Wile E. Coyote over the precipice: Charles Lipson

https://thespectator.com/politics/biden-confirms-second-term-dropping/

President Biden’s announcement that he will not seek a second term — and his endorsement of Kamala Harris — came after weeks of increasing pressure from Democratic Party insiders, alarmed that voters had finally discovered what they had known for months. Joe Biden is a shell of the man he once was. Voters knew it — and they wouldn’t vote for him. Voters also knew they had been lied to by the White House, Biden’s political allies and the mainstream media, not once or twice but for years. Whatever credibility those sources still had is gone and, with it, a major prop in the Democratic coalition. The cumulative result was almost certain to cost Democrats not only the White House but the House and Senate, as well. Biden dropping out is unlikely to help. 

Biden’s inglorious exit evoked the fate of that great cartoon character, Wile E. Coyote. His futile pursuit of the Road Runner usually ended with Wile E. running off a cliff but remaining suspended in mid-air until he looked down. When he finally looked, he began plummeting to the canyon floor, far below. 

That was Joe Biden’s ultimate fate. He was as slow to grasp it as Wile E. Coyote. He ran off the cliff after his catastrophic debate performance against Donald Trump. For weeks he refused to look down. He wouldn’t look when his wife helped him walk down a few stairs after the debate. He wouldn’t look when President Obama had to guide him off the stage at George Clooney’s star-studded fundraiser in Los Angeles. He wouldn’t look when major donors reported their shock at his frail appearance and began closing their checkbooks. He wouldn’t look as he stumbled through recent interviews. He wouldn’t look as more elected officials began calling for him to end the race for reelection. The canyon was too far below. It was far better to try and stay suspended in mid-air. 

Kamala Harris Will Be Burdened By What Has Been

https://issuesinsights.com/2024/07/22/kamala-harris-will-be-burdened-by-what-has-been/

On YouTube, there is a four-minute video that is nothing but Vice President Kamala Harris repeating this empty phrase: “What can be, unburdened by what has been.”

But no matter how many times she utters this idiotic mantra, Harris will, in fact, be heavily burdened by the disaster that has been the Biden administration. Burdened by her own dismal record as vice president. And burdened by the fact that she is so uniquely unqualified to be leader of the free world.

To say Harris is an empty pantsuit is an insult to empty pantsuits.

As we put it in an editorial a year ago:

Biden’s reelection campaign recently described Harris as a ‘powerful and effective messenger.’ Sure. Like when she says ‘As the name suggests, community banks are in the community.’ Or, when she says that ‘present culture is the way we express how we’re feeling about the moment, and we should always find times to express how we feel about the moment.’ Or … well, as Harris might put it, there are endless examples of her vapidity that stretch on without limit because there’s no end to them.

As we put it in an editorial we posted last week and updated over the weekend:

It might seem impossible, but she would be an even worse president than he was.

No matter how much Harris tries to distance herself from Joe Biden, she will carry the burden of answering for this failures. Among them:

The border crisis. One of the few jobs Biden gave her to do was stem the flow of illegal immigrants. She blathered on about “root causes,” after which 10 million or so illegals crossed the border and her “leadership role” was quietly memory-holed.

The economy. Harris will have to defend Biden’s economic record – inflation, falling real wages, widespread dissatisfaction.