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February 2025

We’re the flood; we’re the day after Ruthie Blum

http://‘We’re the flood; we’re the day after’ – JNS.org

Anyone belittling U.S. President Donald Trump’s plan for post-war Gaza should observe the spectacle of Hamas monsters and their ardent supporters gathering in droves to terrorize each hostage before his or her release, while asserting “victory” over the “Zionist enemy.”

The latest example of this travesty—the least of what the kidnapped Israelis and foreign nationals have been subjected to during their captivity—was displayed on Saturday. Hate-filled Gazans of all ages, sporting Hamas’s signature green headbands, cheered while Eli Sharabi, Or Levy and Ohad Ben Ami were led to a podium and forced to put on a performance for jihadist propaganda purposes.

Hanging from the stage was a banner with the Hebrew phrase, “Total victory,” the vow-turned-slogan reiterated by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as the goal of the war. On each side were posters of “martyred” Hamas commanders. The graphic setup wasn’t merely an expression of ridicule; it also conveyed that the West is no match for enemies who glorify death.

The backdrop for the horrific scene of the emaciated victims, alongside their rifle-wielding brutalizers who shoved microphones and cameras in their faces, was a massive banner. It contained a fist and Palestinian flag next to a sentence in Arabic, Hebrew and English—the latter poorly translated—reading: “We’re the flood; we’re the day after.”

How To Commit Democratic Party Suicide The Democrats’ radical overreach, election losses, and Musk-fueled government exposés have left them flailing, doubling down on failure instead of recalibrating for a political comeback. By Victor Davis Hanson

https://amgreatness.com/2025/02/10/how-to-commit-democratic-party-suicide/

The Democratic Party is polling about 31 percent approval, a near-historic low.

Despite enjoying a huge lead in fundraising, legacy media favoritism, and incumbency, in the 2024 election, Democrats lost the White House to Donald Trump. Ever since, they have offered nothing new, no novel agenda, no innovative policies—nothing other than screaming that they are loudly against everything and anything that the president is for.

In the past, what did they accomplish by following their prior two impeachments with attempts to de-ballot Trump? Who thought sending an FBI swat team to raid Trump’s home or waging five lawfare civil and criminal suits and issuing 91 felony indictments against him would win over the public?

Was conducting a media barrage of Hitler-Trump invectives, or lowering the bar of demonization that likely led to two assassination attempts of Trump a good way to win an election?

Apparently not, given the Democrats have now lost the presidency, the House, and the Senate. The Supreme Court is conservative. They have no power to subpoena anyone; they cannot block any nomination. Much of their old administrative state control is eroding. All the main issues—the economy, energy, border security, illegal immigration, crime, DEI/woke, and foreign policy—poll against the Democrats. The more they shouted that biological men must be able to compete as transgendered females in women’s sports, the more that 80% of the public disagreed, women were turned off, and the absurd idea was exploded by Trump.

The power of the administrative state, the legacy network news, print media, and Silicon Valley’s social media and search engines, the billions that poured into the Biden and Harris campaign all went for naught.

The efforts of moderators to warp debates, of network news to edit out unfavorable Harris or Biden comments, of leftists to cancel, deplatform, ostracize, censor, and shadow ban their enemies have failed. More likely to succeed now are numerous lawsuits against leftwing media for chronic defamation and censorship.

Given that collective meltdown, what would a sane Democratic Party do?

What USAID’s Dark Dollars Did to Brazil Augusto Zimmermann

https://quadrant.org.au/news-opinions/world/what-usaids-dark-dollars-did-to-brazil/

Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, commonly known as Lula, is a far-left politician who served as the 35th president of Brazil from 2003 to 2010. His government is notoriously responsible for the severe undermining of fundamental human rights in Brazil, especially free speech and property rights. Curiously, however, there was a decisive external element in the re-election of this far-left politician.

In July 2021, then-president Joe Biden sent CIA director William Burns to Brazil to meet with senior officials. During the meeting, Burns warned President, Jair Bolsonaro he should “stop casting doubt in his country’s [electronic] electoral process”.[1] A month later, US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan also visited Brazil to issue a similar warning: do not even dare even to question the reliability of the electronic voting system.[2] Then, in June 2022, at a Summit of the Americas meeting in Los Angeles, the Biden administration repeated the same warning: the US would not tolerate anyone casting doubt on the reliability of electronic voting machines.[3]

As these threatening messages came before the election they amounted to a warning of dire consequences should anyone in Brazil contest the transparency of electronic voting machines. On September 28, 2022, the US Senate approved a resolution threatening the suspension of US-Brazil relations in case of any questioning of the security of the electronic voting system, “otherwise the US must consider its relations with the Brazilian government and suspend cooperation programs, including in the military area”.[4] As reported by Revolver,

The Biden administration mounted a sustained pressure campaign aimed at Brazil’s military, which began as early as 2021. The effort, as first reported in Folha de São Paulo and also covered by Foreign Policy, involved explicit public warnings by US senators about not respecting election results as well as continuous back-channel conversations to make clear that a democratic rupture would leave Brazil isolated on the international stage—and lead to a downgrade of US-Brazil security cooperation, which is highly valued by Brazil’s military establishment.[5]

As also reported by Revolver,

The campaign involved the US White House, State Department, CIA, Senate, and—notably—the Pentagon. In retrospect, including that last agency may have been the Biden administration’s most decisive move. U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin was employed as Biden’s chief public emissary to Brazil’s generals.

It was a natural choice given the tense relationship between Biden and Bolsonaro, the latter of whom followed Trump’s lead in parroting falsehoods about supposed fraud during the 2020 US presidential election. Austin was also a more credible interlocutor since Brazil’s military was the intended target of the U.S. campaign.[6]

This helps explain why, after just a few outlets called the Brazilian presidential election on October 30, 2022, the Biden Administration almost immediately orchestrated a formidable international embrace of the former president. In an official statement, Biden contended that Lula had won “following free, fair, and credible elections”.[7] Quickly afterwards, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, French President Emmanuel Macron, and British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak all released similar statements congratulating Lula. “The people of Brazil have spoken”, claimed Trudeau, writing within an hour and a half of the result.[8]

As can be seen, the controversial election of the notorious ex-convict and far-left politician was strongly encouraged by the oligarchical leadership of the world. However, millions of Brazilians have protested  Lula’s alleged victory. The spontaneous mass-movement has no defined national leader.[9] These grass-roots protests are solely motivated by a strong — and reasonable — belief that the latest presidential election in Brazil suffered from massive electoral fraud. However, writing on his X account, President Macron, reacting to the protests in Brazil, stated that President Lula can count on France’s “unfailing support”.[10]

Iran: Fear and Braggadocio by Amir Taheri

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21379/iran-fear-and-braggadocio

In a year or so, Khamenei has tried to repackage those setbacks as great victories for his now defunct “Axis of Resistance.” His assumption was that if the worst came to the worst, he would play his joker: signaling readiness to revive the defunct Obama “nuclear deal” with a shaky Biden administration keen on securing any deal with Tehran to justify Kumbala’s “greatest diplomatic achievement.”

Here is the ayatollah’s latest masterpiece:

Iranian “Supreme Guide” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s great masterpiece.

After weeks of speculation about “Supreme Guide” Ali Khamenei’s strategy for dealing with the new Trump administration in Washington, it seems that he has opted for a cocktail of tantalizing pledges and boastful threats. Tehran circles sum the posture up with a simple formula advanced by Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi: We don’t want war but are ready for it!

The signal that the Supreme Guide has decided to authorize new talks about his nuclear project but is also preparing for a putative war with the US or Israel came with a poem he put in circulation last week.

Khamenei has been writing or, as his unkind critics suggest, committing poetry since he was in his teens in the 1950s. But he has always been reluctant to offer his oeuvre to the public, refusing to publish a diwan as even the greenest saplings in the garden do.

Thus, those who follow his poetic career know that he publishes a poem only when a major challenge faces him or the regime he inherited from another poet, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

The latest poem is a sonnet (ghazal in Persian and Arabic) of 14 rhyming hemistiches or seven lines (be it in Persian and Arabic) and is supposed to depict the poet’s inner struggle with rising fears and persistent doubts.

The message it wishes to pass is one of steadfastness regardless of the Islamic Republic’s recent setbacks in Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and parts of Yemen held by Houthis.

Kindergarten Konstitutional Law Comes To The Southern District Of New York Francis Menton

https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2025-2-8-kindergarten-konstitutional-law-comes-to-the-southern-district-of-new-york

In yesterday’s post, reviewing a Washington Post op-ed by Ruth Marcus that called efforts by the duly-elected President to direct the bureaucracy to implement his policies a “power grab” and an “onslaught against the government itself,” I described the piece as reflecting “kindergarten-level constitutional analysis.” After all, my 6 year old first-grader grandson is fully capable of reading the first sentence of Article II of the Constitution (“The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America”) and figuring out that this guy is given the sole and full power to direct the executive branch of the federal government. Nothing about the elected President exercising such powers is or can be a “power grab.” If you are somehow unable to grasp that simple proposition, you therefore must be at sub-first grade level of comprehension, and thus kindergarten level, at the highest.

Well, today Kindergarten Konstitutional Law came to the Southern District of New York. In response to a motion made by some 19 states (all Democrat-led), a Southern District Judge named Paul Engelmayer issued a Temporary Restraining Order preventing President Trump and Treasury Secretary Bessent from “granting access” to Treasury Department payment systems to anyone other than “civil servants with a need for access to perform their job duties.” Here is a copy of Judge Engelmayer’s Order. Looking at the language of the Order that I just quoted, it seems to mean quite clearly that even President Trump and Secretary Bessent themselves are enjoined from looking at the line-by-line details of who is getting paid by the Treasury. Why? Because the information is “sensitive.” I’m not making this up.

So who is this Engelmayer guy? You will not be surprised to learn that he is someone with the highest of the high credentials of the super-elite who claim the prerogative to run the federal government outside of any democratic control. Here is a Wikipedia biography of Engelmayer. (The bio contains a prominent caveat that “a major contributor” to the bio “appears to have a close connection” to the subject. I take that to mean that Engelmayer probably wrote the thing himself, so you can take it for what it’s worth.). The bio says that Engelmayer is a summa cum laude graduate of Harvard College, and a magna cum laude graduate of Harvard Law School. He clerked on the D.C. Circuit, and then for Thurgood Marshall at the Supreme Court. He served as a prosecutor in the Southern District of New York, and did a term with the Solicitor General’s office in Washington during the Clinton administration. And at some point he slid seamlessly into the job of Managing Partner of the New York office of Wilmer Hale. He was named to the Southern District bench by President Obama in 2011.

A Victory for Women Athletes

https://www.nationalreview.com/2025/02/a-victory-for-women-athletes/

As long as we’ve had organized sports, no one thought it would be a good idea for men to compete against women, until the last several years. As part of the trans craze, male athletes infiltrated women’s competitions, teams, and locker rooms. The consequences were woeful, and sometimes, men claimed a spot on each rank of the podium in women’s divisions. Now, President Trump has intervened with his aptly named executive order, “Keeping Men out of Women’s Sports.”

Trump has already been fighting the pervasive gender ideology through his executive actions. On Inauguration Day, he signed an order on “gender ideology extremism” that directed all federal agencies and employees to operate on sex-based definitions of words like “male,” “female,” “men,” “women,” “boys,” and “girls.” On January 28, Trump signed the order on “chemical and surgical mutilation” that protects children from the medical abuse that is often wrongly branded as “gender-affirming care.” The recent executive order, announced on Wednesday, takes drastic action to ensure that Title IX promotes equal opportunity and equal protection in sports on the basis of sex rather than gender — and universities or athletic associations that don’t comply will likely suffer a painful punishment.

In his order, Trump directed the secretary of education to pursue action against educational institutions or sports associations that either require women to compete against males or undress in their presence. Moreover, all executive departments and agencies are empowered to rescind funding to programs that similarly violate these sex-based protections. The Department of Justice is instructed to coordinate and provide the necessary resources to enforce these policies. But perhaps only minimal enforcement efforts will be needed, since it seems that even the most high-profile organizations have already proposed plans to make changes. For example, the NCAA announced that women’s competitions would be limited to athletes who were born female.

Who are the Terrorists Whom Israel is Freeing? Grotesquely lopsided exchanges.Hugh Fitzgerald

https://www.frontpagemag.com/who-are-the-terrorists-whom-israel-is-freeing/

Israel has committed itself to freeing 1,900 Palestinian prisoners, including many who are serving life sentences for multiple murders. And for these 1,900, Israel is getting back a mere handful of hostages — likely no more than fifty remain alive of the 98 hostages Hamas supposedly still holds — all of them innocents. Perhaps you’d like to see what 80 of those prisoners are guilty of, to begin to appreciate the danger inherent in this grotesquely lopsided exchange. How many of these terrorists will use their freedom to murder again? 82% of the 1,027 Palestinians who were freed in order to obtain the release of one soldier, Gilad Shalit, in 2011, went right back to murdering Israelis. More on these arch-criminals — their names, their crimes, their victims — can be found here: “The names and crimes of 80 dangerous terrorist murderers being released by Israel,” by Itamar Marcus and Ephraim D. Tepler, Palestinian Media Watch, January 24, 2025:

As Israel celebrates the release of three of the hostages kidnapped on October 7, 2023 and anticipates the release of 30 more over 42 days, every Israeli dreads the consequences of the dangerous price extorted from Israel by Hamas.

Israel has agreed to release over 1,900 terrorists, including many murderers, such as Wael Qassem, who is serving 35 life sentences.

General Security Service Director Ronen Bar told Israel’s security cabinet last week that 82% of the 1,024 terrorists released in exchange for Israeli hostage Gilad Shalit in 2011 “returned to terrorism.” The leaders of Hamas who planned and led the October 7 massacre were released terrorist prisoners. Thousands of Israelis have been murdered as a direct result of previous terrorist-hostage exchanges.

To display the nature of the danger, Palestinian Media Watch has prepared a list of the names of 80 of the terrorist murderers to be released with descriptions of some of their crimes.

Note that among those being released are terror commanders who planned and organized murders by suicide bombing, shooting, and stabbing; bomb builders; and terrorists who murdered with their own hands by stabbing and shooting. As in the past, the majority of those being released now will return to their former positions and be the leaders and foundation of Palestinian terrorism for years to come.

Trump Has an Opportunity in Asia Central Asia has long been a blind spot in U.S. foreign policy. by Ivan Sascha Sheehan

https://www.frontpagemag.com/trump-has-an-opportunity-in-asia/

Marco Rubio’s confirmation for Secretary of State is most noteworthy for its bipartisan acceptance. While his confirmation hearing did not feature clickbait shouting matches, it did include a unique vision for furthering American interests in a region that the United States has largely neglected: Central Asia. During his testimony, Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Senator Steve Daines (R-MT) discussed the region’s potential for realizing President Donald Trump’s policy priorities, especially with regard to energy and containing China.

Central Asia – which includes the countries of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan – must be a strategic focus of American policy. The region offers a wealth of existing and untapped energy resources, both hydrocarbons and the critical minerals vital for high-tech and green energy. It is bordered by China, Afghanistan, Iran, and Russia – making it crucial to many of America’s core foreign policy priorities.

However, Central Asia has long been a blind spot in U.S. foreign policy. Within the labyrinthine bowels of the State Department, it has been repeatedly shuffled between different bureaus. American diplomats and experts working on the region often do so as a byproduct of prior education in Soviet studies, insufficiently grasping the region’s needs and challenges. U.S. policy in the region needs a shakeup.

After the Soviet Union collapsed, the United States focused on the region’s most urgent necessities. Relations with Central Asia initially focused on denuclearization, economic liberalization, and arms control. After 9/11, the focus shifted towards removing the Taliban in Afghanistan, rooting out al Qaeda, and the Global War on Terror. Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and other Central Asian states supported these security efforts by working alongside the United States.

Central Asia remains receptive to American foreign policy. When the trade war with China began, Central Asian states did not help China avoid tariffs. Many states in the region are eager for trade and investment, not handouts, and even when the United States erected tariffs, they maintained a low-tariff regime and welcomed American exports. This is not just for economic reasons but geopolitical ones: to reduce dependency on Russia and China.

Democrat Leader Wants Leftists to Fight Trump’s Policies ‘in the Streets’ The leftist lust for violence appears yet again. by Robert Spencer

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm-plus/democrat-leader-wants-leftists-to-fight-trumps-policies-in-the-streets/

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries has called upon people to fight the “extreme MAGA Republican agenda” not just “legislatively” and “in the courts,” but “in the streets.” The Trump White House has demanded that Jeffries apologize, but so far he has not done so, and it is unlikely that he will. It makes sense that he wouldn’t. After all, how can he apologize for echoing a call that numerous leftists have made in recent years?

According to a Friday report in the New York Post, Jeffries and Congressional Black Caucus Chair Yvette Clarke (D-Race Hatred) were criticizing Trump for his handling of the helicopter/plane collision in Washington when a reporter asked Jeffries about New York City Mayor Eric Adams, who has been showing dangerous signs lately of not showing the unremitting hostility to Trump that the left requires.

That was not a question Jeffries wanted to address. He said: “I’ll have more to say about the future of the mayorship of the city of New York at the appropriate time.” Jeffries then changed the subject, and began expatiating on how leftists should be responding to this moment of deep crisis for their socialist internationalist agenda.

Jeffries continued: “Right now, we’re going to keep focused on the need to look out for everyday New Yorkers and everyday Americans who are under assault by an extreme MAGA Republican agenda that is trying to cut taxes for billionaires, donors, and wealthy corporations and then stick New Yorkers and working class Americans across the country with the bill. That’s not acceptable. We are going to fight it legislatively. We are going to fight it in the courts. We’re going to fight it in the streets.”

This was the minority leader of the House of Representatives, someone who is supposed to want to be invested in the safety and wellbeing of Americans, issuing an open call for violence. White House deputy press secretary Kush Desai declared: “While President Trump remains focused on uniting our country and delivering the mandate set by the American people, the House Minority Leader, Hakeem Jeffries, incites violence calling for people to fight ‘in the streets’ against President Trump’s agenda. This unhinged violent rhetoric is dangerous. Leader Jeffries should immediately apologize.”

RealClearFoundation Launches the Journal of the Academy of Public Health

https://www.realclearscience.com/articles/2025/02/05/realclearfoundation_launches_the_journal_of_the_academy_of_public_health_1089515.html

The RealClearFoundation announces today the launch of the Journal of the Academy of Public Health, a revolutionary new scientific journal publishing cutting-edge, peer-reviewed and open access research from the world’s leading scholars of epidemiology, vaccinology, global public health, health policy and related disciplines.  

The Journal was co-founded by Dr. Jay Bhattacharya of Stanford University and Dr. Martin Kulldorff, formerly of Harvard University. Their shared vision is presented in Dr. Kulldorff’s inaugural paper, “The Rise and Fall of Scientific Journals and a Way Forward.” 

The Journal of the Academy of Public Health is led by Dr. Kulldorff and Dr. Andrew Noymer, of UC Irvine, as co-Editors-in-Chief. Drs. Kulldorff and Noymer are joined by an Editorial Board of leading public health scholars from a diversity of countries and research specialties, including Dr. Sunetra Gupta of Oxford, Dr. John Ioannidis of Stanford, and Dr. Peter Gøtzsche of the University of Copenhagen. Dr. Bhattacharya is on leave from the JAPH.  

The inaugural issue of the Journal of the Academy of Public Health, published online today, includes original peer-reviewed research as well as essays on the state of public health as a global discipline and a review of previously published vaccine literature.