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September 2024

FOREIGN POLICY, ISRAEL Comments turned off

It Is Biden and Harris Who Are Not Doing Enough to Free the Hostages by Alan M. Dershowitz

By on September 23rd, 2024

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20952/biden-harris-hamas-hostages

Why should Hamas agree to a ceasefire when its refusal is blamed on Israel by the president of the United States? In addition, when Biden blames Israel, he encourages other allies, such as Great Britain, Canada, France and Germany, to do the same.

[Biden] blamed Netanyahu alone without even mentioning Hamas. And this was after Hamas terrorists had murdered six hostages, including an American.

Although Biden did say that the Hamas killers would pay a price for the murders of the hostages, he did not say that Iran— which controls Hamas— would pay any price, including increased sanctions, or worse, unless the hostages, including the Americans, are released, unharmed, immediately.

[Biden and Harris] should warn Iran that if Hamas harms any American hostages, we will regard that as an attack on the US that warrants a military response against Iranian military targets.

Instead, Biden is demanding that Israel compromise its security by allowing Hamas to return to its terrorist tunnels under the critical Philadelphi Corridor.

Iran’s proxies are its human shields. Unless Iran itself is punished for the terrorism of its surrogates, the mullahs will have no incentive to stop, and we, the Middle East, and South America will all be less secure – especially after Iran unveils its nuclear bombs.

Biden should be placing maximum pressure on the criminals — Hamas and Iran — who continue to endanger our citizens and those of our ally. Instead, he is pressuring and blaming the victim, Israel, which has no control over the perpetrators.

When Iranians took American diplomats hostage in 1979, and then ordered its surrogates to kill hundreds of US Marines in Lebanon in 1983, it essentially declared war on our nation. Now their surrogates have kidnapped and murdered more Americans. Our responses to these acts of belligerency have been woefully insufficient. Instead, the Obama administration enriched the Iranian mullahs in exchange for a controversial nuclear deal that would have enabled Iran to have as many nuclear weapons as it liked after about a dozen years…

The message sent by this administration’s weakness and lack of will is being heard loud and clear not only by Iran but by our other enemies as well.

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ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Levitation 101 Victory for the Democrats will depend on the perpetuation of the illusion that Kamala Harris is in any way a plausible candidate for the presidency of the United States. By Roger Kimball Roger Kimball

By on September 23rd, 2024

https://amgreatness.com/2024/09/22/levitation-101/

Every honest commentator, and even some dishonest ones, acknowledges the supreme oddity of Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign.

As has been oft remarked,  the oddity begins with the campaign’s origin.  Exactly how is it that Kamala Harris even became the candidate?  By what process was Joe Biden, the undisputed winner of the Democratic primary, ousted, eliminated and defenestrated from contention?  The rumors and stories are plentiful, but the actual facts—to say nothing of the dramatis personae behind the facts—remain obscure.

But somehow, exactly two months ago, Joe Biden raised his sleepy head in Rehoboth Beach and announced his departure from the campaign but not, pointedly, from the presidency. (Will that happen before January 20, 2025?  I wonder.)

No sooner had the public begun to get its head around that surprise than they were hit with an even bigger one: Biden’s replacement would be Vice President Kamala Harris.  How did that happen?  Who voted for her? Shhh!  Some questions are mood breakers, and it was clear from the get-go that the Harris campaign was going to have to depend heavily, some experts say nearly exclusively, on mood.

In the weeks since July 21, when Biden made his fateful announcement, there has been a lot of Dr. Johnson’s dog about the Harris campaign.  When it came to female preachers, Dr. Johnson said, we are reminded of dogs who can walk on their hind legs.  They do not do it well, but we are surprised they can do it at all.

Mindful of Harris’s, er, challenges in public speaking and responding ex tempore to questions from interviewers,  her handlers have been assiduous about keeping her out of such dangerous situations. The more she vocalizes (I almost said “talks”), the more damage she does to her candidacy. Her embarrassing performance on a ninety-minute livestream exchange with Oprah Winfrey in Detroit a few days ago underscored the problem.

Even Winfrey, a prominent anti-Trump Harris supporter, seemed taken aback by her guest’s incoherent flights of flaccid, cringe-making glossolalia. Harris supporters just winced and bit their tongues while critics pounced upon and ridiculed the seeping, leaking emission of empty saccharine vocables.

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FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

An America First Foreign Policy By James E. Fanell and Bradley A. Thayer

By on September 23rd, 2024

https://amgreatness.com/2024/09/22/an-america-first-foreign-policy/

America First is America’s traditional foreign policy, and only President Trump offers the possibility of returning the United States to its traditional principles.

A major component of Americans’ decision-making as they go to the 2024 polls will be foreign policy. That is entirely appropriate, first, because of the importance of what happens abroad to Americans’ lives. Americans should remember Leon Trotsky’s purported observation that “you might not be interested in war, but war might be interested in you.” That is, the world is a dangerous place. There are many people who wish to destroy America. They need to be met not by attempting to hide from them or with rainbow flags, but with the force of a Mike Tyson punch to the face. Second, this election provides Americans a choice between an America First foreign policy or the disastrous alternative of President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris’s administration. In this essay, we offer our interpretation of an America First foreign policy and what it means for Americans.

Based on the past three and a half years of performance, the Biden-Harris regime has sustained a foreign policy, largely born from the Obama administration, that ignores the existential threat posed by the People’s Republic of China (PRC), undermines our allies like the Philippines, distances itself from key partners like India and Taiwan, fuels the Russo-Ukrainian war, punishes Israel, embraces the Islamic Republic of Iran, and supports international organizations like the World Health Organization (WHO) and international agreements like the Paris Climate Agreement that advance the PRC’s interests. All of which has undeniably damaged the sovereignty and national security of Americans. In addition, there is the joint domestic-foreign policy issue of America’s open borders. The Biden-Harris administration has imported 12 to 15 million people from around the world in almost four years, and tens of millions more will certainly enter the U.S. if Harris is elected.

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ELECTIONS, MEDIA Comments turned off

Cooke: The Oprah Interview Eliminated All Pretense — the Press and Harris Are on the Same Side By Sarah Schutte

By on September 21st, 2024

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/cooke-the-oprah-interview-eliminated-all-pretense-the-press-and-harris-are-on-the-same-side/

National Review senior editor Charles C. W. Cooke, on today’s edition of The Editors, said the upside of Kamala Harris’s interview with Oprah Winfrey was that viewers got to see clearly the case of “an interviewee and an interviewer who were manifestly on the same side.

“I really do appreciate,” he said, “that the press is at long last cut out the pretense in that Oprah Winfrey spoke at the Democratic Convention and endorsed Harris. And that is the default position of most journalists, but they’re just not honest enough to make it clear.”

Cooke pointed out that the interview, in which Harris was asked how she would bring down prices, “really verged into metaphysical . . . almost poetry. And Winfrey sat there and said, ‘Yes, yes, mm, mm, mm, mm, yes, mm.’

“It’s absurd,” Cooke said. “I am aware by now that people are voting against, and that they are going to pretend, whether they’re Republicans or Democrats, that their candidate is therefore fine, but they’re not, they’re not fine. Kamala Harris is not an acceptable candidate for president of the United States. She can’t answer elementary questions. She can’t talk. And the reason that she can’t talk is because she can’t think. . . . The mouth follows the mind.

“There are lots of people in this country with whom I strongly disagree who are able to present their worldview in a manner that is comprehensible and even compelling. But she is not one of them.”

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Hezbollah History Lesson Andrew McCarthy

By on September 21st, 2024

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/hezbollah-history-lesson/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=homepage&utm_campaign=right-rail&utm_content=corner&utm_term=first

It’s hopeless, I know, but I still think the progressive Democrats fretting over collateral damage from Israel’s highly discriminating and proportionate “grim beeper” operation could benefit from a history lesson about Hezbollah’s barbaric treatment of Americans. I’ll have more on that over the weekend, but for starters, I’d recommend this 2015 piece by Matthew Levitt, an excellent analyst at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. It’s about the kidnapping, torture, and murder of William Buckley, the CIA’s station chief in Lebanon — i.e., the chief sent to set up a new station after Hezbollah, then led by Imad Mugniyah, bombed the U.S. embassy in Beirut. Here’s a bit of it:

Buckley was tortured, reportedly by both Lebanese and Iranian interrogators. Another hostage, David Jacobsen, later recounted that Buckley occupied a cell separated from his own by a thin wall. “It was apparent that he was very sick. I could hear him retching between coughs.” Another hostage held with the two men recalled Buckley hallucinating. Once, in the bathroom, Buckley apparently announced, “I’ll have my hot cakes with blueberry syrup now.”

Hezbollah reportedly sent three different videotapes of Buckley being tortured to the CIA, each more harrowing than the next. These would become part of CIA lore, passed down from hardened case officers to new recruits, and the agency would not soon forget what Hezbollah did to one of their own.

By some accounts Buckley was moved through the Beqa Valley and transferred to Iran; others say he was buried in an unmarked grave in Lebanon. Mughniyeh’s Islamic Jihad Organization announced it had killed Buckley in October 1985, but fellow hostages would later reveal he had died months earlier as a result of the torture he endured, possibly at the hands of Imad Mughniyeh himself. According to former hostage David Jacobsen, when Buckley died in captivity, reportedly from drowning in his own lung fluids as a result of torture, it “really shook up our kidnappers.”

Years after Mugniyah was assassinated in 2008 (the tail end of the Bush-43 administration), it was revealed that he’d been killed in a joint CIA-Mossad intelligence operation. Prior to 9/11, he had more American blood on his hand than any jihadist — and lots of Israeli blood, too. He’d been a key planner in Hezbollah’s infamous 1983 attack on a military barracks in Beirut that killed 241 Marines.

Another planner of that attack was Fuad Shukr, on whom our government had offered a reward of $5 m

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IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

Report: Border crisis ‘damage that will take decades to remedy’ By Shirleen Guerra |

By on September 21st, 2024

https://www.thecentersquare.com/national/article_d1961ee6-768f-11ef-bb02-637c4a3826cd.html

A comprehensive new report from a U.S. House committee accuses the Biden administration of “the worst border crisis in American history.”

Crisis By Design, as titled by the Republican majority on the House Homeland Security Committee, details how the administration has handled the crisis on the southern border since the 2020 election.

“Even if not one more inadmissible alien crossed our borders for the remainder of Biden and Harris’ term, the millions they have already allowed into our country have done damage that will take decades to remedy,” chamber committee Chairman Dr. Mark Green, R-Tenn., said.

According to the report, since February 2021, there have been 8.2 million crossings at the southwest border. Other borders and ports of entry raise the total crossings to 10.1 million, the report said. By the end of the Biden administration, the report estimates an estimated 11.6 million encounters nationwide.

This is a 274% increase from the 3.1 million encounters from 2017-20, according to the report. The numbers do not include the 2 million encounters known as “gotaways.”

The Center Square has reported that actual illegal border crossings now surpass 12.5 million under the Biden administration. The Center Square includes “gotaway” data of illegal border crossers who successfully enter the U.S. between ports of entry and are not apprehended. U.S. Customs and Border Protection does not release gotaway data publicly; The Center Square receives the data from a border patrol agent in the field.

“Simultaneously, transnational criminal organizations like the Mexican criminal cartels and violent gangs have been enriched and empowered by record profits from drug trafficking and human smuggling,” the report says. “They funnel those blood-bought dollars into their ever-expanding operations in American cities and throughout the hemisphere.”

Many Border Patrol agents have been pulled from the border and are not enforcing U.S. immigration laws, instead processing and releasing those crossing the border per Biden policies, the report says.

Human cost to Americans and migrants alike, the report says, is incalculable as fentanyl and people continue to be smuggled over the border, killing thousands.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Interview on Unherd: On State Department Censorship and Blacklisting Gabe Kaminsky and I speak with Emily Jashinsky of Unherd about the Global Engagement Center (GEC), a State Department entity engaged in censorship and financial blacklisting Matt Taibbi

By on September 21st, 2024

https://www.racket.news/p/interview-on-unherd-on-state-department

Last Friday, Josh Christenson at the New York Post published “State Department tried to discredit reporters, Republican pol over conservative ‘blacklist.’” The article described an internal memo showing the State Department strategizing public relations responses to the Washington Examiner’s Gabe Kaminsky, me, and Republican congressman Jim Banks.

The memo criticizes Banks in an extremely devious way. The Indiana Republican last February was quoted by Gabe in the Examiner saying the Biden administration appeared to be “knee deep” in efforts to “crack down” on speech.

The State Department memo listed the Banks quote among its list of criticisms to answer. However, the agency didn’t quote the Examiner. It claimed to be quoting the Russian news agency RIA-Novosti, giving the impression that Banks offered his criticism of Biden in Russian state media:

The State Department memo

But Banks never spoke to RIA-Novosti, or any Russian agency. His quotes only appear in wholesale Russian translations (read: thefts) of Gabe’s Examiner article. The State Department and its counter-messaging arm, the Global Engagement Center, wanted so badly to create the impression Banks acted in service of Russian propaganda that they forgot to use the original Banks quote, instead re-translating the Russian version back to English. This resulted in the quote being reproduced incorrectly, ironic given GEC’s ostensible mission.

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ELECTIONS, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Kamalism Will Destroy America By Tom Klingenstein

By on September 21st, 2024

https://tomklingenstein.com/kamalism-will-destroy-america/

My purpose here is to establish that we are in a war, and explain how we must fight. Because fighting effectively depends heavily on President Trump, my remarks also constitute the case for Trump, a case that has nothing to do with his policies but everything to do with his character and personality. These fit the crisis we face.

In May of 1940, conquering German armies were only separated from Britain by the English Channel. Britain had 350,000 men trapped in Dunkirk. The Luftwaffe controlled the air.  America, despite Churchill’s urgent pleas, would not provide desperately needed military assistance. This was Britain’s darkest hour.

Fortunately, the British dug deep into their national grit and almost overnight conjured up a largely civilian armada, which rescued their men at Dunkirk.  Britain would have fallen without the resolve of its people. America may not have been far behind. Today, a deadly enemy besieges America. But unlike 1940 Britain, America has not yet grasped the magnitude of its danger. Our home is under attack. 

‘Home’ was the theme of the recent Republican convention. This theme was nicely encapsulated by the 98 year-old marine and D-Day veteran who said, “America is our home.” But largely missing at the convention was mention of the mortal danger that today threatens our home. Our American home is what our enemy wants to destroy. Our home is what we must fight for.

Unfortunately, our enemy does not yet even have a name. We need one. For the moment let’s call the enemy “Kamalism.” Trump is a great namer — maybe he will come up with a better one. You can’t defeat an enemy if you can’t name it. 

The 2020 riots showed Kamalism in action. The regime’s paramilitary operation, BLM and Antifa among others, sparked the fire that lit the riots; the regime’s intellectuals justified them; corporations and foundations funded them; the media covered them over; politicians fanned the flames; and the regime’s justice apparatus, including Kamala herself, freed law breakers. Even the military got into the act, denying Trump needed resources.

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ELECTIONS, ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Liz Peek: Why is Kamala Harris keeping voters in the dark on her energy agenda?

By on September 21st, 2024

https://thehill.com/opinion/energy-environment/4888721-kamala-harris-energy-policy

Almost nothing could be more important to the future of American workers than access to affordable energy. This is why Vice President Kamala Harris needs to come clean about her energy policy. 

Kowtowing to the climate zealots currently running unchecked in the Biden-Harris White House will lead to soaring electricity costs and clobber our country’s ability to compete in the industries of the future such as artificial intelligence.  

Harris has reversed herself on a number of issues, but none as critical as her stance on energy and on fracking.  

While in 2019 she promised to ban fracking, today her campaign says she’s changed her mind. She hasn’t explained why she flip-flopped. She doesn’t need to; we know she needs to win the Pennsylvania’s electoral votes to win the election, and fracking is a large source of employment and revenues in the Keystone State. Therefore, Harris is playing nice and not threatening to put some 400,000 workers out of the job.  

Conservatives don’t believe Harris. Apparently, neither do progressives. Green New Deal enthusiast Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), recently said, “On climate, on abortion, on racial, LGBTQ issues, we are absolutely in agreement on her agenda.” Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said that in walking back many of her progressive positions, Harris was just “doing what she thinks is right in order to win the election.” 

In her debate with Donald Trump, Harris touted the record oil production that has occurred during the Biden-Harris administration. And it is true: output recently reached a new high of 13.2 million barrels per day, finally topping the 13 million per day peak recorded when Trump was president. That achievement, however, comes in spite of her and her boss’s efforts, not because of them. 

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IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

Retired Border Patrol chief: ‘Each time we asked for help in dealing with a new issue, it fell on deaf ears’ By Monica Showalter

By on September 21st, 2024

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2024/09/retired_border_patrol_chief_each_time_we_asked_for_help_in_dealing_with_a_new_issue_it_fell_on_deaf_ears.html

Just how lawless has the Harris-Biden administration been on the border? A recently retired Border Patrol chief from the San Diego corridor described it in detail in a House hearing, which is explosive

According to The Center Square:

Retired San Diego Border Patrol Chief Patrol Agent Aaron Heitke said he was instructed by the Biden administration to not publicize arrests of illegal border crossers identified as “Significant Interest Aliens” with ties to terrorism.

Heitke testified before a U.S. House Committee on Homeland Security hearing on Wednesday about how Biden-Harris “open border policies have undermined our safety and security.”

“We had an exponential increase in Significant Interest Aliens … with significant ties to terrorism,” illegally entering in the U.S. Customs and Border Protection San Diego Sector, he said.

Prior to the Biden-Harris administration, the sector averaged 10 to 15 SIAs per year. “Once word was out that the border was far easier to cross, San Diego went to over 100 SIAs in 2022, way over 100 SIAs in 2023 and more than that this year,” he said.

“These are only the ones we caught,” meaning the number likely is higher because of the volume of gotaways, those who illegally cross the border and are not apprehended.

“At the time, I was told I could not release any information on this increase in SIA’s or mention any of the arrests,” Heitke testified. “The administration was trying to convince the public that there was no threat at the border.”

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