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August 2024

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Kamala Harris and the tyranny of vibes Harris and her online acolytes are the weirdest people in politics. Brendan O’Neill

By on August 13th, 2024

https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/08/12/kamala-harris-and-the-tyranny-of-vibes/

“The new politics of vibes is even more degraded than the politics of personality. That political style of the 1980s and 90s also spoke to a decline in democratic seriousness, where politicians would seek votes less on the basis of what they believed than on their spin-doctored pose as intimate, authentic ‘good guys’. But at least they tried to connect with us, at least they talked to us. Aloof, inscrutable ‘brat’ Kamala is something far worse – a politician without substance or personality. Bereft of both vision and character, all she has to offer is strange vibrations.”

I was thinking the other day: what do I know about Kamala Harris? Off the top of my head, no Googling, I know she was the attorney general of California. I know she locked up lots of people for marijuana violations. I know she likes Venn diagrams. I know she didn’t fall out of a coconut tree. I know she’s ‘brat’, though I don’t know what that means. I know her ceaseless cackle will haunt me to my grave. I know she’s unburdened by what has been. And I know she was the border czar, even if she herself seems to have forgotten that fact.

And that’s it. That is the long and short of my knowledge about the possible future leader of the free world. You could torture me for days and I wouldn’t be able to tell you her positions on the big issues presidential candidates once held forth on. Iran, say. Or global trade. Or job creation. I’m open to the possibility that this is partly down to my lack of reading, but there’s also more to it than that. The truth is Harris is a wholly new kind of politician. One who’s not meant to be known but felt. It’s less her policies we’re meant to be wowed by than her vibes. Brace yourselves: America might soon be ruled by a meme made flesh.

Getting back on to Google, I was relieved to find I am not alone in my ignorance of Harris’s political beliefs. Even Americans are in the dark. ‘Why Kamala Harris’s Politics Are So Hard to Pin Down’, says a headline in the Atlantic. She’s the ‘mystery commander in chief’, says the Wall Street Journal. She’s basically asking Americans ‘to elect her to find out what she really believes’. She’s such a politics void you can project whatever damn fantasy you like on to her. To the radical left, she’s a ‘cop’. To the Very Online right she’s an unhinged Marxist who will defund the police and hand the streets over to BLM. Guys, she can’t be both.

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MY SAY: Comments turned off

VACATION TIME AUGUST 8-14

By on August 7th, 2024

No Ruthfully Yours until August 14

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

Telling Their Story: Israeli Warriors in a Political Game by Nils A. Haug

By on August 7th, 2024

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20844/israeli-warriors-in-political-game

[T]he Biden-Harris administration has not only been vacillating on military support for Israel, but also endeavouring to micromanage Israel’s war operation. A tragic outcome of these haphazard policies is that they are resulting in more deaths, prolonging the war and delaying Hamas’s release of the hostages.

The vacillation and political gamesmanship by the Biden-Harris team have only encouraged Iran to develop its nuclear weapons for what the mullahs apparently plan to be the destruction of Israel and ultimately the US.

Instead of deterring Iran, the Biden-Harris administration has been promoting a deal for Israel to surrender more of its already miniscule territory to Hezbollah-controlled Lebanon. Why Israel or any country would ever willingly agree to such stupidity is never asked.

“Since October 7th, Hezbollah has fired 7,000 drones, missiles, and rockets at Israel. Yet Israel is the one accused of ‘escalation.’ Israel may be the only nation on earth that would be accused of escalation after daring to defend itself against 7,000 mass murder attempts by the world’s most heavily armed terrorist organization. The absurdity of the double standard has become too glaring to ignore.” — US Congressman Ritchie Torres, D-NY, x.com, August 3, 2024.

Countless civilian deaths in both Israeli and Gaza have doubtless resulted from signals sent by the Biden-Harris administration that they are hostile to Israel, determined to have Hamas win, and still fund Iran.

In addition, the Biden-Harris administration has delayed weapons for Israel, and warned that “the U.S. will not take part in a counter-offensive against Iran.” Iran’s ruling mullahs could only conclude that the Biden-Harris administration was done with Israel and sending them and their proxies… a green light to escalate their attacks.

Although the US finally sent 12 destroyers to the region… in general, the Biden-Harris administration’s approach has been to undermine Israel’s efforts to defend itself and rescue its hostages — some of whom are also US citizens — and strengthen Iran’s and Hamas’s commitment finally to “wipe Israel off the map.” After all, why should they agree to a ceasefire if the US keeps insisting on a ceasefire that assures them they will win?

In addition, civilian deaths would have been dramatically reduced on both sides, and the hostages released. Instead, the US has been engaging in political games — as it is doing with Ukraine’s efforts to defend itself against Russia — all while people are being killed.

Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas clearly feel no pressure from the US to cease their relentless attacks. They are right: there has been none.

“Islamism has never ceased to threaten the West, and there have been numerous terrorist attacks—and thwarted attempts—in France, Belgium, and Spain in recent years… At what point in history did we decide that it is more important to protect the aggressor than the attacked?” — Itxu Díaz, Spanish author, tabletmag.org, May 23, 2024.

“They are fighting like lions in these alleys, under constant threat. They are heroes. This is not a simple war,” recalled Lt. Col. Almog Rotem, a battalion commander in the Israel Defense Forces, about what is faced by his soldiers in the Rafah campaign, in Gaza. “This was a severe event that should never have happened but did. We’re in a grueling, challenging war…. My heart goes out to the families of the fallen; we will… complete the mission…. Not a single soldier has said, ‘I don’t want to continue.'”

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ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Geese, Tarts and Presidential Politics Roger Franklin

By on August 7th, 2024

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/america/2024/08/geese-tarts-and-presidential-politics/

EXCERPTS:

Loose talk of that sneering variety is, of course, to be deplored. That she should be the victim of vile slut shaming is beyond unfair, as Media Watch‘s Paul Barry gallantly observed in his defence of the lady’s reputation and wits. After all, nobody drags out Donald Trump’s love life to use against him. Well not often anyway, and when they do it’s for a damn good New York reason, like the ‘vivid memory’ of a mad woman who paints trees blue and believes he molested her in a department store so long ago she can’t recall what she was wearing, the month of the traumatic assault or even the year.

Those are the rules of the game if you’re targeting Donald J. Trump. But a fierce, independent, ambitious, modern African-American woman should never, ever be judged for falling in love with an older gentleman. That he happened to be a dispenser of favours, sinecures, wealth and power was but a happy coincidence and cannot be held against her, for who can tell where love will take root? Nor that he was married with children, for this was San Francisco in the Nineties and who is to judge what conduct is and isn’t cool? The 29-year-old assistant district attorney was just restarting her career after a successful second shot at the California bar exam when Willie Brown, 30 years her senior, the original Slick Willie, touched her as if with a wand. Up she floated, and floated, and has kept right on floating ever since, with only the one setback, the thwarting of her 2020 ambitions.

Today (Aug 7), Ms Harris has announced her running-mated, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz (pronounced walls). Almost certainly she when she makes the formal announcement a few hours from now she will not take questions from the press. That has been the recent pattern, responding only to the odd shouted query that slips past the cordon of her keepers at an unguarded moment. There was one of those incidents on Friday night when her handlers allowed their charge to stray too close to the press mob covering the return of Vladimir Putin’s hostages and one of the hacks tossed her a Dorothy Dixer. She had done well minutes earlier, a competent performance with a vacant, slightly rocking Joe Biden standing mute as a drugstore Indian (above) as she rattled off the TelePrompter’s lines. Then came her unscripted response to the US-Russia prisoner swap:

“This is just an extraordinary testament to the importance of having a president who understands the power of diplomacy and understands the strength that rests in understanding the significance of diplomacy.“

If you say so, dear.

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ELECTIONS Comments turned off

When the Twin Cities Burned, Tim Walz Dithered by Ryan Mills

By on August 7th, 2024

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/when-the-twin-cities-burned-tim-walz-dithered/

It was 6:29 p.m. on the last Wednesday in May 2020, when Minneapolis mayor Jacob Frey phoned Minnesota governor Tim Walz. Riots had erupted the day before over the police killing of George Floyd, and the city was overwhelmed.

Frey pleaded with Walz to call in the National Guard.

Less than three hours later, the city made a written request to Walz’s office for 600 guardsmen to help quell the chaos that was engulfing the Twin Cities.

Rioters were burning buildings. They were shooting at police officers and attacking them with Molotov cocktails, fireworks, bricks, and bottles filled with cement. At least three people died during the riots.

Faced with one of the most serious public emergencies in Minnesota history, Walz froze.

“He did not say yes,” Frey said of his request to Walz. “He said he would consider it.”

The far-left governor did not agree to call in the Guard until late the next day, according to a blistering postmortem, the Review of Lawlessness and Government Responses to Minnesota’s 2020 Riots, released in October 2020 by the Minnesota senate.

Instead of sending in the 600 guardsmen that Minneapolis had requested, Walz sent in only 100 late that Thursday. The Guard wasn’t fully mobilized until Saturday, four days after the first building burned, according to the senate review.

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ANTI-SEMITISM, MEDIA Comments turned off

The New Yorker’s Fact Crisis Is Masha Gessen’s performative anti-Zionism an exception to the magazine’s commitment to factual accuracy and independent style, or a reflection of broader decay David Mikics

By on August 7th, 2024

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/arts-letters/articles/fact-crisis-at-the-new-yorker

It was a commonplace among right-minded people at the dawn of the 20th century that hatred and bigotry were the products of ignorance and would be eliminated through the sanitary means of education. Unfortunately, the horrors of the 20th century would prove this theory to have been radically false. Even the horrors of the Holocaust failed to immunize Western societies against the plague of antisemitism, which is clearly thriving in major Western culture centers to an extent that Victorian optimists and post-Holocaust pessimists alike would find incredible.

So how did so many intelligent people go wrong? In the case of plain old bigotry, they missed the fact that hatred and resentment are at least as foundational to the human psyche as love or the desire for social progress. It is also clear that antisemitism is distinguished from other tribal hatreds and bigotries by the fact that it is a conspiracy theory, and conspiratorialism in societies, institutions, and individuals has an inherent tendency to become more extreme and deranging over time rather than less so. That’s because, by substituting a cosmos of false causes for real ones, conspiracy-theorizing traps its victims in a mirror world in which they progressively lose hold of demonstrable relationships between causes and effects. The more deranged the sufferers become, the more dissonance they feel, and the angrier they get at those they hold responsible for their ills—and, in their minds, the world’s ills. Entire societies—the Spanish Empire, czarist Russia, 20th-century Germany—can descend into the pit of conspiratorial antisemitism and never be heard from again. Which is why normal people who don’t ordinarily give a hoot one way or another about Jews and Israel should greet the yearlong orgy of deranged Jews-are-Nazis pronouncements from the country’s leading universities and culture organs with alarm.

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ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Cori Bush Loses Her Primary Chris Queen

By on August 7th, 2024

https://pjmedia.com/chris-queen/2024/08/06/live-results-kansas-michigan-missouri-and-washington-primaries-n4931388
BIG BREAKING NEWS: Our friends at Decision Desk HQ have declared Wesley Bell the winner of the Democrat primary in Missouri’s 1st District, which means that Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.) has lost!

The Squad is now a little less Squaddy. And that’s a good thing.

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

Middle East at the Boiling Point—Israel Already Told: Don’t The West chooses dishonor, and gets war. P.David Hornik

By on August 7th, 2024

https://pdavidhornik.substack.com/subscribe?utm_source=email&utm_campaign=email-subscribe&r=8t06w&next=https%

Biden said to tell Netanyahu US won’t support Israeli response to an Iran attack (JNS.org)

“Let me be crystal clear…. If you launch a big attack on Iran, you’re on your own.”

So President Biden reportedly told Prime Minister Netanyahu on the night of April 14—when Iran launched over 300 missiles and drones at Israel, an attack that was almost totally rebuffed by Israel and a coalition the US had put together to help protect it.

The New York Times report goes on:

Mr. Netanyahu pushed back hard, citing the need to respond in kind to deter future attacks. “You do this,” Mr. Biden said forcefully, “and I’m out.” Ultimately, the aides noted, Mr. Netanyahu scaled back his response.

Less than four months later and—surprise, Iran, possibly in tandem with Hizballah and other proxies, is believed to be preparing an even bigger attack than that of April 14. After all, it paid no price for the April 14 attack. Israel indeed “scaled back its response” with a single strike on an Iranian air-defense system on April 19. Netanyahu, who “cit[ed] the need to respond in kind,” was right that a much greater response would have been needed “to deter future attacks.” But it’s too late for that now, and we are where we are.

Both Iran’s April 14 attack and its presumed upcoming attack were triggered by Israeli assassinations of terror leaders. Iran is trying to establish a new normal: Israel had better remove this weapon—assassinations of major terror leaders—from its arsenal, because otherwise it will find itself each time under a vastly larger, potentially devastating attack. Such assassinations, however, have been an important weapon for Israel for decades.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Joe Biden and the Dems’ Supreme Court “Reform” The war on our Constitution and Bill of Rights. by Bruce Thornton

By on August 7th, 2024

https://www.frontpagemag.com/joe-biden-and-the-dems-supreme-court-reform/

Joe Biden may be a “political corpse,” but he has six months to get off a Parthian shot or two. He’s already taking aim at the Supreme Court––one of our most important branches of government for protecting citizens and their unalienable rights from the lust for power of the rest of the federal government and their encroaching tyrannical ambitions.

Biden launched this attack––endorsed by the Democrat Party and its probable presidential candidate Kamala Harris––in a column for the Washington Post, where he claimed, “What is happening now is not normal, and it undermines the public’s confidence in the court’s decisions, including those impacting personal freedoms. We now stand in a breach.” Having ginned up a “crisis” that can’t be let to go to waste, Biden is calling the assault a “reform” comprising 18-year term limits for justices; and government oversight, external to the Court itself, to investigate and punish dubious charges of “corruption.”

The Wall Street Journal stated the obvious: “This is an invitation for partisans to besiege the Court with complaints, however trivial.” For example, the judge on Trump’s trial for allegedly mishandling classified documents has received “more than 1,000 complaints in a week as part of what it called an ‘orchestrated campaign.’” Biden’s offensive against the court is not about some “crisis of ethics” and holding “corrupt” justices to account, but making it easier to discredit and recuse conservative justices and originalists who believe that the Constitution means what it says. These so-called “reforms” are political weaponss for illegal meddling in the Court’s decision-making in order to protect progressive policies and culture-war preferences.

This attempt of the executive branch to bend the highest court to its political will is not new, but rather reflects the progressives’ technocratic and tyrannical impulses blocked by the Constitution’s separated and balanced government powers and enumerated rights.

In 1937 Franklin Delano Roosevelt, his New Deal schemes blocked by a court with conservative leanings, tried to weaken the court with the Judicial Reform Act that allowed the president to appoint up to six new justices, one for every sitting justice over 70 years old. This attempt to neuter one-third of the government died in the Senate Judiciary Committee Report: “It is a measure which should be so emphatically rejected that its parallel will never again be presented to the free representatives of the free people of America,” the Committee concluded.

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ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Walzing With Kamala With Tim Walz, Harris placates party anti-Semites – and doubles down on radicalism. by Lloyd Billingsley

By on August 7th, 2024

https://www.frontpagemag.com/walzing-with-kamala/

Kamala Harris has selected Minnesota governor Tim Walz as her running mate, a choice that left many pundits puzzled. For the real deal on Walz, consider Powerline’s John Hinderaker, a Minnesotan quite familiar with Kamala’s VP choice:

“I think it was a process of elimination,” writes Hinderaker, “Mark Kelly seemed like a strong candidate, until it came out that he invested in a spy satellite company with the Chinese.” Harris wanted Josh Shapiro, “but at the eleventh hour, helped by an essay Shapiro wrote when he was in college, the anti-Semites blocked him.”  That left Tim Walz, “a small-minded, mean-spirited man,” who will fit well with the Harris ticket.

“He ran a basement campaign for re-election in 2022,” Hinderaker recalls, “refusing to show up for debates with Republican Scott Jensen after the first one went badly. So Jensen was left debating an empty chair.” Walz was also “largely responsible for the George Floyd riots that devastated Minneapolis and other cities, because he dithered for days rather than calling out the National Guard. By his own admission, he held off out of sympathy for the rioters’ cause. We are still living with the consequences.”

On Walz’s watch, Hinderaker notes, “Minnesota became a high-crime state for the first time ever.” Before Harris picked Walz, Powerline’s Scott Johnson, also a Minnesotan, wrote a Free Beacon piece headlined “Take My Governor – Please.”

After Biden’s debate with Trump, Walz was one of those contending that demented Joe was still “fit for office.” As Johnson explains, “Walz knew he was lying. Walz knew we knew he was lying. He casts the pale shadow of a man incapable of embarrassment and presents as an example of life imitating art, in this case the advertising art that created Joe Isuzu.”

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