Displaying posts published in

August 2024

Deep State Plutocrats Have Nowhere to Hide By J.B. Shurk

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2024/08/deep_state_plutocrats_have_nowhere_to_hide.html

The worst mistake the Deep State ever made was to turn conservatives against Big Business.  Traditionally, fighting corporate power was the purview of the political left.  Conservatives have generally backed “free markets” because they despise socialism’s predilection for choosing economic winners and losers.  Conservative voters have long seen government regulation as more of a threat than Wall Street wheeling and dealing.  

This makes sense.  American conservatives largely embrace the principles of the Founding Fathers’ laissez-faire liberalism, and many share policy preferences that overlap with today’s self-described libertarians.  For conservatives, the left’s “politics of envy” is unappealing.  The left’s desire to redistribute private property within some sort of Marxist system is seen as a dangerous impulse toward legalized theft.  The left’s love for collectivism over individual freedom is regarded as insidious.  Voters who support limited government do not tend to care how Sam Walton became a millionaire.  They are much more likely to applaud individual success as the product of hard work and innovation.

Times are changing, though.  Over the last forty years, middle-class Americans who put their faith in “free markets” have gotten smacked upside the head by corporate interests time and again.  The savings and loan scandal, pension scams, derivatives-juiced market crashes, the housing collapse, the offshoring of good jobs, tech bubbles, predatory lending, reverse mortgages, and countless other corporate schemes have left working-class Americans in dire straits.  All of these various gut punches have produced a kind of “awakening” among “live free or die” Americans: “free markets” are an illusion, and the economic game is rigged.

Veterans Will Not Be Fooled By Tim Walz A choice made out of Kamala’s fear. by Kurt Schlichter

https://www.frontpagemag.com/veterans-will-not-be-fooled-by-tim-walz/

Kamala Harris’s disastrous and cowardly choice of Tim Walz as her running mate over Josh Shapiro – who was the logical pick and was shamefully passed over because he is Jewish – is simply more of the same with her. He’s a choice made from fear. She feared somebody who would be competition. She feared somebody who would be smarter, which really limited her choices. So she chose this guy, who no doubt told her exactly what she wanted to hear. This is her modus operandi. She’s afraid. She operates from fear, and now she has exactly the kind of sergeant major she wants by her side – one who will be sure to enable her worst instincts all the way to defeat.

You just know that Walz being in the Army checked a box for her – DEI hacks love checking boxes – and she didn’t look any deeper than that. No one around her did either. None of her flunkies ever served. None of them understand. They just thought that they could flash some pictures of Walz in his uniform strutting about, and that would be enough to nail down the votes of all the rubes with DD 214s. But what you don’t know can hurt you. And what she doesn’t know is that Tim Walz is going to alienate vets, except for the pinko blue falcons like the loathsome Vindmans and those Twitter goofs who insist you shouldn’t have an AR15 because they are experts, having once qualified “marksman” on an M4.

You can Google “blue falcon” if you want. Just don’t do it with kids around or on your employer’s computer.

Civilians aren’t going to understand this. It’s a veteran thing. Civvies will look at pictures of him in his BDUs or ACUs and think he looks STRAC. But vets know what they see when they look at this guy and it’s not good.

Walz’ Former Superior: He ‘Quit’ Rather Than Deploy, And Went Over My Head to Get Out Ed Morrissey

https://hotair.com/ed-morrissey/2024/08/10/walz-former-superior-he-quit-and-went-over-my-head-to-do-so-n3792960

We covered this a couple of days ago based on a clip, but the entire interview with retired Minnesota National Guard Command Sergeant Major Doug Julin is worth watching. CNN’s Laura Coates spent ten minutes on Thursday night trying to defend Tim Walz through most of it, but Julin would not be deterred. Not only did Walz know that his unit would be deployed when he suddenly retired, Walz back-doored Julin in applying for retirement, he explains, leaving his unit in the lurch. 

And there’s a reason Walz did that — a very clear reason, Julin points out:

COATES: Is your concern that it’s — oh, go ahead. I do want to ask this question quickly, Sergeant Major, and I appreciate your time, but is your — [crosstalk] — concern about the manner in which he did not speak to you or his decision to retire, which he, as we’ve talked about, he would have been entitled to do, which causes the most concern? Because that is the focus that so many people are wondering about, whether he has done something wrong in service or done something personally to offend you.

JULIN: No, he did something wrong in service, as I stated before. He knew the policies and procedures and how we go to leadership and address issues or discuss issues and concerns out there. Again, backing up, he had told me, no, I’m going forward, we’re going to go with the battalion, and go from there. So, I’m under the believing, he told me he was going forward. I’m underneath that believing that he’s going forward. He went around me, which he should have addressed it with me so he could help me with some things out there.

A Campaign Of ‘Joy’? 

https://issuesinsights.com/2024/08/14/a-campaign-of-joy/

The Democratic talking points were issued and the media enthusiastically accommodated: The Harris-Walz campaign is now a moveable feast of joy. But there’s nothing even remotely joyful about Kamala Harris’ and Tim Walz’s political orientation. Their positions are founded on militancy and just plain meanness.

The media are nothing but shills for the Democratic Party. They are so willing to please that they will run with whatever theme the party tells them to. Take a look at recent headlines. 

“Harris Used to Worry About Laughing. Now Joy Is Fueling Her Campaign,” says the New York Times.

“Harris is pushing joy,” according to the Associated Press’ surely unbiased reporting.

The British Guardian swears that the “Democrats’ joy is unconfined,” while ABC News wants Americans to know that “early Harris-Walz rallies feature big crowds, talk of ‘joy.’”

National Public Radio says “Harris and Walz reintroduce joy,” as the Washington Post declares that “​​Harris and Walz seize on joyful message in contrast to darker Trump themes.” And from Salon’s perspective, “Vibes matter: Trump can hardly restrain his jealousy over the Harris campaign’s joy.”

Sleep Walking into WW3 Brought to you by the Biden-Harris catastrophe. by Kenneth R. Timmerman

https://www.frontpagemag.com/sleep-walking-into-ww3/

Donald Trump has warned several times over the past few weeks that we are closer to World War III today than at any time since the end of the Second World War.

It’s a theme he’s been sounding off and on for the past two years, but lately he’s making the threats to our security caused by Biden-Harris policies the central theme of his events.

“I think our country right now is in the most dangerous position it’s ever been in from an economic standpoint, from a safety standpoint,” the former president warned at a press conference recently at Mar-a-Lago. “Both gangs on the street and frankly gangs outside of our country in the form of other countries that are frankly very powerful.”

The problem comes down to leadership, the former president said. The Biden-Harris team have “no clue” about American power or world affairs.

Democrats just laughed at the former president, still drunk with the euphoria of having convinced Old Joe to bow out of the presidential race.

But the challenges to America’s security are very real, and it’s not just Donald Trump who is warning about them.

The congressionally-mandated Commission on the National Defense Strategy just issued a 114-page report that buttresses Trump’s concerns for the future of our nation.

Dhimmi Britain Sinks into Authoritarianism, Death to Free Speech by Robert Williams

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20852/britain-authoritarianism-free-speech

The teenage son of a Rwandan migrant family stabbed three little girls to death at a Taylor Swift-themed dance workshop in Southport, a city near Liverpool, on July 29. The murders triggered protests and riots by Britons who have apparently had enough.

Within a day of the first protests, Prime Minister Keir Starmer gave a speech in which he barely mentioned the murdered little girls, yet painted those who protested as “far right thugs…” He added that he was creating a special Violent Crime Unit, dedicated to fighting — guess who — the protesters.

Incredibly, Starmer’s first act after the murders was not, as one might expect, to deal with concerns over the safety of British citizens, but to dedicate funds to new emergency security for mosques.

Starmer could have stopped the demonstrators in their tracks by listening to — and addressing — the concerns of “ordinary” people in the wake of the murders. Instead, he chose to brand them as “far right thugs”, thereby inflaming an entire country…

Police further inflamed matters by setting their dogs on harmless protesters, arresting many, and handcuffing a 73-year-old lady with a pacemaker who had never been arrested before, and was guilty of just peacefully protesting the murders of young girls.

“I’m 73 years old and I’ve here because of them babies that has died and I’m being arrested,” said the woman, who was surrounded by riot police.

In Plymouth, according to one report, while leftist radicals were destroying a church… police were not stopping the radicals, but instead beating the protesters.

The director of public prosecutions of England and Wales, Stephen Parkinson, chillingly warned that sharing and retweeting online material of the riots was a serious offense that would lead to arrest.

So, retweeting posts on X now gets you sent to the pokey. A Muslim brandishing an AK-47 assault rifle on social media, however, while threatening to blow people’s heads off, is apparently acceptable.

What the police did not do was arrest the gangs of armed Muslim men who took to the streets across British cities. In Birmingham, Bolton, and Middlesbrough, “Muslim patrol” members beat white people, whom they accused of being part of the anti-mass migration protests.

Why were no police officers present? When West Midlands police were asked why they did nothing about “an awful lot of people armed with various weapons” (Muslim gangs) in Birmingham, the answer was that the Muslim communities had been allowed to “do their own policing”.

“We have really strong business and community relations [with Muslim communities]… we had the opportunity to meet with [Muslim] community leaders, meet with [Muslim] business leaders… to kind of understand the style of policing that we needed to deliver…” — West Midlands Police Superintendent Emlyn Richards.

He [Richards] then went on to note that the counter-protesters (the Muslim gangs) had “the right intentions” and that only “a small minority” of people had been intent on causing “either criminality, disorder or fear within our communities.”

Curiously, British police did not acknowledge “right intentions” of those protesting the Southport murders and that only “a small minority” had engaged in violence and riots against the police, hotels hosting illegal migrants, and mosques.

Contrary to what the police said, Muslim “elders” appeared to incite members of their community in Birmingham, telling them to “protect the house of Allah” against the “far right” and messaging Starmer that they were fully able to “defend themselves”.

The Chief Constable of the West Midlands… released a video statement addressed to the Muslims in the region, greeting them deferentially with “Salam Alaykum,” and reassuring them of the police’s support and giving “huge thanks” to their “elders” for their “cooperation.”

Using the ongoing protests across Britain to crack down — one-sidedly — on basic rights, Starmer has successfully exacerbated racial conflict, inflamed tensions, created division, penalized free speech and neatly sneezed at legitimate concerns.

Hamas ‘Politicians’ and Terrorists: No Difference Between Them by Bassam Tawil

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20853/hamas-politicians-terrorists

The fact that Sinwar was elected shows that Hamas’s political and military branches are the same. It also demonstrates that when it comes to Islamist terrorist organizations, there is no difference between a political and military leader. By electing Sinwar as its “political” leader, Hamas itself is stating that it does not distinguish between a politician and terrorist.

Has anyone ever considered referring to Osama bin Laden and Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the heads of Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State (ISIS), as the “political leaders” of their respective organizations?

In addition to Haniyeh, Hamas’s “political bureau” consists of several figures such as Khalil al-Hayya, Khaled Mashaal, Musa Abu Marzouk, Ghazi Hamad, and Taher a-Nunu who have long been advocating the armed struggle against Israel and glorifying acts of terrorism against Israelis.

“For the BBC, Ismail Haniyeh was ‘moderate and pragmatic;’ for the rest of us he was a monster,” commented British author and journalist Stephen Pollard. He pointed out that Haniyeh had recorded the following message to the Palestinians from his luxurious home in Qatar: “We need the blood of women, children, and the elderly of Gaza…so as to awaken our revolution spirit.”

“Haniyeh was indeed ‘moderate’. The total number of Jews murdered by Hamas does not come close to six million.” — Stephen Pollard, British author, thejc.com, July 31, 2024.

Now that Sinwar has joined Hamas’s inner circle of “political” figures, it is reasonable to presume that he too will be dubbed by the Western media as a “moderate” and “pragmatic” Palestinian leader.

What comes next? Will the Biden-Harris administration and other Western governments rush to discuss with the newly elected Palestinian leader and mass murderer the creation of an independent Palestinian state that will be used by the Iranian regime and its terror proxies, including Hamas, to destroy Israel?

The Iran-backed Palestinian terrorist group Hamas has chosen arch-terrorist Yahya Sinwar, the mastermind of the October 7, 2023, atrocities against thousands of Israelis, as the chairman of its “political bureau.” Sinwar, who has been hiding in the Gaza Strip since the Hamas-led attack, will take over from Ismail Haniyeh, the former chairman of the group’s “political bureau,” who was killed in the Iranian capital of Tehran on July 31.

Theater of the Absurd, Harris-Walz Edition The strategy of the “Harris-Walz” campaign depends on people being dazzled by their theater of the absurd. Both candidates claim now to believe things they have spent the last decades attacking. By Roger Kimball

https://amgreatness.com/2024/08/11/theater-of-the-absurd-harris-walz-edition/

H. L. Mencken apparently never quite said that “No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.” He said lots of similar things, however, and I like to think he would have been proud of being the sort of chap to whom people attributed such astringent mots.

He would also, I feel sure, regard the theater surrounding the Kamala Harris-Tim Walz campaign as a test case of the proposition.

Last week in this space, I pointed out the irony of the Sudden Harris Ascendancy Syndrome.  Here she was, one of the least popular figures on the American scene—someone, moreover, whom everyone, no matter their political coloration, regarded primarily as political life insurance for Joe Biden—and yet, Wham!, the very moment Biden resigns, her media reconstruction begins in earnest.

I almost wrote “media rehabilitation,” but that would not have been quite right. We say that someone is rehabilitated when he has fallen from a previous state of health, competence, or popularity.

Kamala Harris has never been competent or popular.  So what the media has done to or with her these last couple of weeks is more of an outright fabrication project. In part, as I wrote last week, it is a product of “magical thinking,” the belief, or at least the hope or pretense, that by saying something is so, you magically make it so.

The primary aim of this bit of theatrical slight-of-hand is positive.  It is to make people believe, for as long as they inhabit this theater of the absurd (the show runs, by the way, until November 5) that the person answering to the name “Kamala Harris” is not against fracking, though her doppelgänger, who existed until July 21 when Joe Biden dropped out of the race, was adamantly against fracking.

Our Three Silent Mice The president, the Democratic presidential candidate, and the vice presidential nominee all either cannot or will not speak casually and publicly to elected representatives, reporters, or the people. By Victor Davis Hanson

https://amgreatness.com/2024/08/12/our-three-silent-mice/

Biden

President Biden was forced, unceremoniously and unwillingly, to abdicate from his impending reelection nomination. Since then, we have neither seen nor heard much from our sitting President. He has vanished, poof, gone.

This is quite unusual if not alarming. Unlike prior to the June 27 debate, the left now makes no effort to hide Biden’s debility. Indeed, it accepts the reality that an infirm Biden might not be able to finish out his remaining six months. Yet it still cannot decide whether the nation’s exposure to a President Harris prior to November 5 would lend her the advantage of incumbency or (more likely) ensure her defeat given global exposure to her puerility.

In the past, when a vice president took over the party nomination from his sitting president boss, the lame duck president was nonetheless evident and in charge until the duration of his tenure.

When Lyndon Johnson belatedly decided not to run for reelection in 1968, he claimed that he needed to devote his full attention and remaining months to finding a solution to the then-raging Vietnam War. Indeed, Johnson sought to steal interest away from his often-underappreciated vice president, Hubert Humphrey, and the latter’s ongoing (and failed) bid as the Democratic nominee to replace Johnson.

Ronald Reagan was still very busy in 1988 in his last six months as president—even as his sitting “a thousand points of light” vice president, George H.W. Bush, became the Republican nominee and was fixated on campaigning to replace Reagan.

At times in late 2000, during the waning days of Bill Clinton’s administration, a restless, lame duck Clinton seemed almost to compete for the spotlight with his then vice president, party nominee, and would-be Democratic presidential replacement Al Gore.

The vanishing Biden caught another case of COVID in mid-July shortly after his disastrous and historically early presidential debate with Trump. And in the subsequent month, Biden simply disappeared.

He is rarely seen, more rarely heard, even as Iran has promised a theater-wide war against Israel, Putin has more frequently threatened to escalate Russian attacks to existential levels, and the economy has witnessed dramatic stock shocks, dismal job news, and increasing talk of an impending recession.

Americans have wondered what happened to their president. Apparently, Biden was deemed unfit by his party bosses and donors to remain its nominee but still considered hale enough to continue for half a year as America’s president.

Rumors swirled that a depressed, embittered, and unwell Biden was in seclusion licking his wounds, acidic over being betrayed by his erstwhile allies—the Obamas, former speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority leader Chuck Schumer, the left-wing squad, a traditionally obsequious and in-the-tank left-wing media, and perhaps his replacement, the machinating Vice President Kamala Harris.

Biden gave a so-so endorsement of Harris. After that pro forma act, he has somehow evaporated in a fashion that has left the White House even more vacant than during the octogenarian Biden’s prior three years of customary three-day workweeks.

Harris Campaign Tries to Straddle the Fence on Israel-Hamas War But it’s obvious which way Kamala leans. by Joseph Klein

https://www.frontpagemag.com/harris-campaign-tries-to-straddle-the-fence-on-israel-hamas-war/

Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democrat Party’s nominee for president, is trying to walk a political tightrope on the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza. On the one hand, to court as many moderate Jewish voters as possible, she repeats her canned statement of support for Israel’s right to defend itself, even going so far just recently to brand Hamas as “terrorists.” But at the same time, she is also currently entertaining the idea of an arms embargo against the Jewish state, according to pro-Palestinian advocates who spoke with her just before her campaign rally last week in Detroit, Michigan.

In which direction will Harris go if she is elected president? Her pattern of past actions and statements point to her leaning into the pro-Hamas wing of the Democrat Party.

For example, Harris has expressed support for the anti-Israel, anti-Semitic protestors on college campuses, declaring that they are “showing exactly what the human emotion should be, as a response to Gaza.” She chose to snub Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to a joint session of Congress, rather than attend in her capacity as president of the Senate.

In her first consequential decision as the Democrats’ presidential nominee, Harris pleased the Democrat Party’s left-wing, progressive base by skipping over Pennsylvania’s Governor Josh Shapiro to be her running mate. Instead, she selected left-wing radical Governor Tim Walz of Minnesota. Pro-Hamas agitators had conducted a “No Genocide Josh” campaign against Shapiro, a Jew who supports Israel. Not wanting to risk losing the votes of Arab and Muslim Americans, concentrated in such battleground states as Michigan, Harris gave the Jew-Hating “No Genocide Josh” crowd what they wanted.

“A man is known by the company he keeps,” as the saying goes, and Walz kept company with radical Muslim cleric Asad Zaman, who expressed solidarity with Palestinians on the very same day Hamas led the savage genocidal attack inside Israel. The Washington Examiner reported that as governor, Walz hosted Imam Zaman of the Muslim American Society of Minnesota at least five times. “Imam Zaman has a troubling history of playing into classic anti-Jewish themes and justifying violence against Israel,” an Anti-Defamation League spokesperson told the Examiner.