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.

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

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.

VACATION TIME AUGUST 8-14

No Ruthfully Yours until August 14

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

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.'”

Geese, Tarts and Presidential Politics Roger Franklin

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.

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

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.

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

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.

Cori Bush Loses Her Primary Chris Queen

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.

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

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.