Displaying posts published in

August 2024

This Week Today | Current Events from Israel Rabbi Ben Packer

https://mailchi.mp/dd9d88d97a17/israel-current-events***

Gaza
There were serious developments in Gaza this week. First of all, 6 dead bodies of Israeli hostages were retrieved by the army from a tunnel. It was already known that 5 of the 6 had been killed. It was suspected that the 6th was killed, but hadn’t been confirmed. All 6 had been kidnapped alive from communities adjacent to Gaza on Oct. 7th. It is unclear as to how they all were killed, but there are suggestions that at least some of them were killed by IDF attacks near the tunnel where they were being held. There are some on the left who are blaming Prime Minister Netanyahu for this, but that just shows how crazy and bitter these people are. 

In a bit of a surprise move, Israeli forces pushed through a section of the Gaza Strip (Kissufim) all the way to the beach this week. This is the third corridor that crosses the entire Strip that has been created by the IDF since the beginning of the current conflict. It’s unclear what exactly precipitated the move, but is likely connected to a recent uptick in rocket fire. In the areas of the other two corridors (Netzarim in the middle of the Strip and Philadelphia in the south bordering Egypt), the IDF continued this week to eliminate terrorists and destroy tunnels. It was announced this week that over 150 tunnels in the Rafiach area have been destroyed so far. Two reserve soldiers were tragically killed this week in the Netzarim corridor by a roadside bomb. Another soldier was also killed while engaging terrorists. 

The hostage negotiations appear to be deadlocked. Hamas refuses to agree to a deal in which Israeli forces remain in Gaza. So far, Prime Minister Netanyahu has refused any scenario where troops are pulled out of certain areas, like the Netzarim and Philadelphia corridors.

The DNC, Lies and Videotape Democrat fakery and media silence. by Lloyd Billingsley

https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-dnc-lies-and-videotape/

This summer marks 20 years since an Illinois state senator calling himself Barack Obama delivered the keynote address at the Democratic National Convention. This year’s DNC confirms that the more accurate designation is DSM – the Dictatorship of the Subjunctive Mood now spreading reality dysphoria across America.

The Illinois senator told the nation his father was a Kenyan goatherd who went to school in a tin-roof shack. He rode that story into the US senate and in 2008 ran for president, promising a fundamental transformation of the United States of America. In the 2017 Rising Star: The Making of Barack Obama, David Garrow confirmed what others had already revealed, that the vaunted Dreams from My Father was a novel, not an autobiography or memoir, and the author a “composite character,” one of the numerous fakes on the political scene.

Under DSM, a politician can make false claims with little if any challenge from the establishment media. For example, Sen. Elizabeth Warren built a career on the false claim that she was a Cherokee Indian. The honorable course would be to resign but the Massachusetts Democrat went on to run for president.

Sen. Richard Blumenthal claimed he served in Vietnam, a claim that was exposed as false by the New York Times. That prompted no resignation from the Connecticut Democrat, who in 2017 demanded that Trump attorney general pick Jeff Sessions return an award from the David Horowitz Freedom Center. Consider also Delaware Democrat Joe Biden.

Even hagiographical hooey like Mark Bowden’s 2010 “The Salesman” outed Biden as a poor student and semi-literate plagiarist. Biden did better as a serial prevaricator, falsely claiming that his first wife was killed by a drunk driver, that his son Beau was killed in Iraq, that he acted as a liaison for Golda Meir during the Six Day War, and so on. Such fakery made Biden a natural choice for the composite character.

As vice president, Biden “got China” and the “Big Guy” ran the business operations through son Hunter, dealings now coming to light in more detail. Biden also had leverage with Ukraine, using his power to get a prosecutor fired. In classic corrupt style, the Delaware Democrat used the power of his office to enrich himself and his family.

A Deep Dive into a Harris Word-Salad Why her handlers are keeping her sequestered from the media and voters. by Bruce Thornton

https://www.frontpagemag.com/a-deep-dive-into-a-harris-word-salad/

Recently Larry Elder provided us with a sample of Kamala Harris’s thinking on various issues. A deep dive into one will demonstrate why her handlers are keeping her sequestered from the media and voters.

Here’s one from the year of her stillborn 2020 presidential primary, when she didn’t get a single vote, and from which she had to ignominiously withdraw:

“So, there’s a big difference between equality and equity. Equality suggests, ‘oh everyone should get the same amount.’ The problem with that, not everybody’s starting out from the same place. So, if we’re all getting the same amount, but you started out back there and I started out over here, we could get the same amount, but you’re still going to be that far back behind me. It’s about giving people the resources and the support they need, so that everyone can be on equal footing, and then compete on equal footing. Equitable treatment means we all end up at the same place.”

The first problem is Harris’s typical simplistic and redundant writing style. Phrases like “same place,” “back there,” “equal footing,” “equitable treatment” are vague. We assume she’s talking about socio-economic status and education, which leftists and progressives claim are products of the unjust political and economic order and “systemic” oppression. Since these are the keys to success, “resources and support,” i.e. transfers of money, or subsidized goods and services, must be provided to peoples so “we all end up in the same place” ––in other words, equality of result rather than opportunity, the fly in this word salad.

This sentiment is important, since it lies behind numerous dysfunctional leftist policies, and has been obvious in Democrats’ policy proposals since FDR, and took a quantum leap during Barack Obama’s presidency. Today, they have moved even farther left during the Biden-Harris administration, which along with Harris’s vice-president candidate Tim Walz, promise to leave centrism and common sense completely behind, damaging even further our economy and national character in the pursuit of correcting what is called “income inequality.”

Don’t Forget What Harris And Biden Have Done To The Country

https://issuesinsights.com/2024/08/22/dont-forget-what-harris-and-biden-have-done-to-the-country/

When Americans listen to Kamala Harris’ acceptance speech tonight, they need to tune out the thrill-up-the-leg praise from the media and the audience’s stream of verbal bouquets and ask themselves one question: Are they better off today than they were four years ago. For all but a few, the answer would be resounding “no.”

In the only debate between President Jimmy Carter and challenger Ronald Reagan in the 1980 campaign, just days before the election, Reagan asked what the Harvard John F. Kennedy School of Government called “one of the most important campaign questions of all time:

“Are you better off today than you were four years ago?” 

Voters said no, and sent Reagan to the White House with 489 electoral votes and sent Carter home with 49.

Forty-four years later, the question is still relevant, and still yields the same response, because:

The unemployment rate was 4.3% in July 2024 – the fourth straight month it has increased – compared to 3.5% in February 2020 when politicians and unelected public health officials began choking the economy with pandemic lockdowns. Even though that comparison is bad enough, it’s somewhat misleading, because there are 5 million fewer Americans in the labor force than there were just before the lockdowns. Adjusting for that, the real unemployment rate, which has never been below 4% while the Biden-Harris regime has been in office, would be 5.2% today.