NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Christopher F. Rufo A Compromised Secret Service The agency has sacrificed its basic mission on the altar of DEI.

Posted By on July 16th, 2024

https://www.city-journal.org/article/a-compromised-secret-service

It was a shot heard around the world. 

On Saturday, a gunman whom the FBI has identified as Thomas Matthew Crooks fired a burst of rifle shots at former president Donald Trump, grazing his ear and nearly killing him. The attempted assassination is an historic, and perilous, moment. We’ll get commentaries and investigations, and the government will announce reforms.

But amid all the chaos weaves the thread of another story, one that reveals a mounting problem in our political life. A surprising number of the Secret Service agents protecting the former president were women. And, according to video recordings of the scene, many did not acquit themselves favorably.

Scene one: after President Trump ducks, a group of agents leaps to him and protects him with their bodies. A female agent who rushes to the stage acts bravely, without a doubt, but the point of the “huddle” is to protect the president. The agent was much shorter than President Trump, leaving his head and neck exposed after he stood up.

Scene two: as Trump enters the escape vehicle, a female Secret Service agent fumbles her gun and cannot find her holster; another female agent appears confused and, in the moment of crisis, decides to use both of her hands to put on her sunglasses; a third looks frightened and uncertain.

These agents wear the typical Secret Service outfits—Kevlar vests pressing against white shirts; black blazers with gold pins; dark sunglasses—but to an impartial observer, they do not appear to have the same poise, confidence, and strength as the male agents around them.

The obvious question: Why so many female agents? The answer, unfortunately, is the same as in many other institutions: DEI. The Secret Service has highlighted “diversity” as a key priority and its director, Kimberly Cheatle, named to the position in 2022, has pledged to increase dramatically the number of women in the ranks.

This is official policy. The Secret Service openly boasts that it “prioritizes recruiting women candidates” and has formulated an “affirmative action” plan to increase the number of women, LGBT, Native Americans, and other identity groups.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Heather Mac Donald Edge of the Abyss Our divides are as much epistemological as political.

Posted By on July 16th, 2024

https://www.city-journal.org/article/political-rhetoric-and-the-trump-assassination-attempt

By December 2023, the Biden campaign’s frequent equation of Donald Trump with Adolf Hitler had caught the attention even of some in the mainstream media. “In most situations, comparing a political opponent to Adolf Hitler might seem like an extraordinary step,” wrote Politico. “For Joe Biden’s campaign, it has become part of the routine of running against Donald Trump.” CNN predicted that the Trump-is-Hitler “attack line” would likely be “central” to the president’s efforts to win reelection. Other outlets contributed their own Trump-Hitler comparisons. The New Republic’s June 2024 issue, a special report on “American Fascism,” showed a blended image of Trump and the Führer on its cover.

It was not even necessary to make an explicit Hitler comparison; the similarities were too obvious. Robert Kagan told the Washington Post’s Jonathan Capehart that Trump was a “natural dictator.” If you “give him unchecked power in the United States, I think any sensible person would find that a frightening proposition.” Americans are whistling past the graveyard, Kagan warned. All checks on presidential power will be impotent against Trump’s attacks on the Founder’s constitutional order, he declared.

“Existential threats” can seem to demand a different set of rules from those governing ordinary political life. Had the July 20, 1944, assassination plot against Hitler been successful, the plotters would have been greeted across the world as heroes.

Thomas Matthew Crooks, who missed blowing out Donald Trump’s brain by a few inches and who murdered a Trump supporter instead, may have thought of himself as just such a hero-in-waiting.

So now we gaze into the abyss. Every act of political violence opens up the prospect of the collapse of civil order. When political disagreement becomes lethal and political leaders risk their lives to run for or occupy political office, we trade the civil peace bequeathed to us by centuries of Western civilization for Third World anarchy.

BOOKS, ISRAEL Comments turned off

Now Available–the Kindle Edition of My Memoir, Israel Odyssey From tranquil upstate New York to the tumultuous Land of Israel. P.David Hornik

Posted By on July 16th, 2024

https://www.amazon.com/Israel-Odyssey-P-David-Hornik-ebook/dp/B0D2QG46RX https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/israel-odyssey-p-david-hornik/1145635457?ean=9781504096751

Almost ten years in the making, here at last is the Kindle edition of Israel Odyssey—my memoir of making aliyah from upstate New York to the Land of Israel (the print edition comes out on September 10). Almost ten years—not because it’s a long book (it’s about 200 pages in print), but because it went through a process of revisions, re-revisions, revisionings, recasting, revamping—whatever, until I realized I had to quit at some point and go with what I had.

That event of aliyah happened almost exactly 40 years ago—in September 1984. Which means the story leads from the post-Holocaust, post-establishment-of-Israel era of American Jewry; to the still-socialist, comically inefficient (but at last beginning to reform) era of 1980s Israel—marked also, of course, by a Lebanon war and a First Intifada; and through some more tumultuous decades up to the October 7 shock and the very difficult and challenging reality of today.

It’s about, that is, how those historical phenomena interacted with my own story, affecting me on personal, artistic, and spiritual levels, leading me to thoughts and conclusions I couldn’t have imagined in tranquil upstate New York. Israel Odyssey is, I hope, a good read if you’ve made aliyah, are considering aliyah, or are just interested in a personal narrative with an emphasis on emigration and its powerful effects. Of course, I’ll be posting about the print edition when it comes out on September 10.

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

The Biden Titanic Victor Davis Hanson

Posted By on July 16th, 2024

https://victorhanson.com/the-biden-titanic/

Joe Biden’s escalating dementia and the long media-political conspiracy to hide his senility from the public are the least of the Democrats’ current problems.

Biden’s track record as president may be more concerning than his cognitive decline. He has literally destroyed the U.S. border, deliberately allowing the entry of more than 10 million illegal aliens. His callous handlers’ agenda was to import abjectly poor constituencies in need of vast government services without regard for the current struggles of a battered American middle class and poor.

The widespread poverty of a vast new cohort of illegal immigrants could serve as indictments of a “racist,” “unequal,” and “unfair” America—as if the residents of East Palestine, Ohio or inner-city Chicago had anything to do with the centuries-long corruption and oppression of Mexico and Latin America that daily drives thousands of their own poorest citizens northwards to a society founded on very different ideas than those of their homelands.

Note that the left, neither in Mexico nor in America, never asks why millions of these impoverished people prefer to break into a supposedly racist America. Much less do they even distinguish those principles and values that once made America prosperous, free, and secure from their antitheses that have sadly made much of Latin America mostly poor, without freedom, and insecure.

Biden inherited near-zero real interest rates and inflation at 1.4 percent. Almost immediately, in nihilistic fashion, Biden did to a sound economy what he had done to a secure border. So, he recklessly printed money at a time of spiraling, quarantine-ending demand and supply chain disruption. Middle-class wages never caught up with Biden’s inflation, as prices for key staples are nearly 30 percent higher than when he took office.

The cost of servicing the ballooning national debt at high interest is now nearly $1 trillion per year. The world abroad is aflame, lit by Biden’s inexplicable withdrawal from Kabul, his mixed signals to Vladimir Putin on the eve of his invasion of Ukraine, his deliberate alienation of Israel, his appeasement of Iran and China, and his cuts in the defense budget, coupled with his woke war on mythical “racists” in the military.

ANTI-SEMITISM, MOVIES AND TELEVISION Comments turned off

Back to Berlin “Just remember, for remembering, we honor the dead and save them from dying again in oblivion.” by Mark Tapson

Posted By on July 16th, 2024

https://www.frontpagemag.com/back-to-berlin/

Since the October 7 terror attacks in Israel, anti-Zionism has surged on both the Left and the Right. While decent people of the world reeled in horror at the atrocities committed by Hamas, left-wing Jew haters throughout the Western world took to the streets to celebrate the terrorist group’s savagery and to call for the eradication of Israel. This has given right-wing antisemites the cover to came out of the woodwork and cluster around online influencers like slimy Nick Fuentes and grifter Candace Owens.

Speaking of Owens: her latest antisemitic inanity is her defense of Nazi “Angel of Death” Josef Mengele’s medical experiments on Birkenau prisoners, claiming that the reports of his sick experiments on twins, for which there is abundant documentation, are so “completely absurd” that they sound suspiciously like “bizarre propaganda.” “Why would you do that?” she wondered conspiratorially. “Literally, even if you were the most evil person in the world, that’s a tremendous waste of time and supplies.” It’s truly depressing to realize that Owens, who fancies herself to be such a free-thinking individual that she is neither a “flat-earther” nor a “round-earther,” has over five million followers on X (formerly Twitter), a significant number of whom are loud-and-proud anti-Zionists.

The point is, Jew-hatred and Holocaust denial have gone shockingly, unapologetically mainstream. So forgive the belated review of a six-year-old film, but now seems an especially urgent and relevant time to bring attention to an underappreciated Holocaust-related documentary of unexpected emotional power called Back to Berlin, which cuts through the usually overwhelming statistics of the victims of Hitler’s Final Solution, by highlighting the personal stories of a small number of Holocaust survivors and their families.

In this 75-minute film from 2018, cameras follow eleven Israeli Jews on an epic 2015 motorcycle trek from Tel Aviv to Berlin – nearly 3000 miles across nine countries. Their mission is to follow in the footsteps – or the tire tracks, if you will – of an original batch of eleven Jewish bikers who traveled that route to participate in the infamous 1936 Olympic Games, where Hitler himself was in attendance.

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Isn’t This What The Left Wanted?

Posted By on July 16th, 2024

https://issuesinsights.com/2024/07/16/isnt-this-what-the-left-wanted/

Like Robert Redford’s character in “The Candidate” — who unexpectedly won a U.S. Senate race and then bewilderedly asked “What do we do now?” — the Democrats, the media, the Hollywood-celebrity industrial complex, and the leftist-dominated professoriate are in a similar position. They have to wonder what to do next after their wish that someone would take out Donald Trump was attempted and failed.

In the hours after Trump was shot in a botched, but only by millimeters, assassination bid, the media scolds began to insist that we must “take down the temperature.” President Joe Biden followed that with a national address Sunday in which he said “we must stand together” as Americans. Trump is reportedly revising his convention speech to focus on unity, believing that he has now been given “a chance to bring the country together,” rather than Biden’s failings.

While Biden struck the right tone in his Oval Office speech, let’s not pretend that the political left hadn’t been looking for any way possible to “stop Trump,” even if that meant in the minds of some on that side that he had to die. And they almost got what they wanted.

Trump is still alive, though, leaving the Democrats in a thorny “now what?” situation.

We don’t doubt that many of the left who fantasized about Trump taking a fatal bullet, such as John McWhorter, are now feeling some remorse. But for every one of those there are too many who were frustrated that the would-be assassin missed his shot by the smallest of margins.

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Is Trump’s Pick Of J.D. Vance A Political Masterstroke? The Answer Is Yes

Posted By on July 16th, 2024

https://issuesinsights.com/2024/07/16/is-trumps-pick-of-j-d-vance-as-his-running-mate-a-political-masterstroke-the-answer-is-yes/

Former President Donald Trump’s selection of Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance might surprise you, but it shouldn’t. The 39-year-old first-term senator is a solid, smart pick who will not only bring youth, energy and vigor to the ticket, but also a wealth of hard life experience, highly unusual for someone so young.

Trump’s announcement gave the bare bones of why he selected Vance over the many others who vied to be his running mate:

After lengthy deliberation and thought, and considering the tremendous talents of many others, I have decided that the person best suited to assume the position of Vice President of the United States is Senator J.D. Vance of the Great State of Ohio. J.D. honorably served our country in the Marine Corps, graduated from Ohio State University in two years, Summa Cum Laude, and is a Yale Law School Graduate, where he was editor of The Yale Law Journal, and president of the Yale Law Veterans Association.

All excellent qualifications.

But there is a lot more to Vance, whose life story would fill a book. Indeed, it already has: His memoir of his hardscrabble, troubled childhood in a single-parent household headed by a drug-addicted mother, “Hillbilly Elegy,” became a surprise best-seller in 2016, the same year Trump first won election.

While much of America didn’t know who Vance was, Trump did. Vance’s book, better than any other, explained why Trump had such a fanatic following in America’s rural and industrially ravaged heartland.

It was that book, and Vance’s own experience, that won him the backing of Trump for a 2022 run for an open U.S. Senate seat in Ohio. Vance won.

Now, with Trump’s announcement, Vance (born during the Reagan administration) becomes the first millennial to have a spot on a major-party presidential ticket. He’s part of a shift from the current political gerontocracy that rules Washington to a new generation of leaders who will inherit America’s most serious problems. Vance is in the vanguard.

MY SAY: Comments turned off

No room at the inn? By Ruth King

Posted By on July 15th, 2024

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2024/07/no_room_at_the_inn.html

Recently a friend arrived in New York with reservations at a “boutique” midtown hotel in Manhattan. Reservations were hard to obtain for a five-day visit as tourist season has recovered from pandemic-driven downturns. Early next morning he checked out, describing all-night noise in the halls with garbage and bottles strewn about. Getting reasonable priced hotel rooms was impossible and he left the city earlier than scheduled.

Since 2022, under “The Sanctuary Hotel Program,” hotels that agreed to shelter illegals received $139 and $185 a night per room, occupied or not, under a $980 million contract with the city. When thousands of illegals began to arrive in New York City, many hotels, from swanky to just passable, began sheltering illegals and dramatically cut rooms available to tourists.

Under its Right to Shelter policy, New York City guarantees housing and social services for illegals and in May 2023, the once stately and elegant Roosevelt Hotel, which was closed during the COVID pandemic, reopened as a registering service for immigrants providing health evaluations and supplies and aid in registering minors in public schools. 175 rooms for children and families grew to approximately 850 with maximum capacity causing overcrowding and straining all essential facilities. The hotel was totally trashed and closed. Mayor Eric Adams demanded temporary suspension of the Right to Shelter policy, but extended a city contract with more hotels for immigrants which was enthusiastically backed by the hotel unions and industry.

This was supposed to finish this year but will now end in August 2026 and cost a total $1.365 billion — almost five times the original price tag of $237 million.

Since 2022, approximately 90 thousand immigrants have come to New York City, which expects to welcome an estimated 64.5 million tourists in 2024.

What could go wrong? Everything did, and the New York Times noted: 

Two years in, as the city’s peak tourism season is about to begin, the migrant crisis has helped dramatically shift the hotel landscape in New York. The conversion of hotels to shelters has sharply decreased the supply of rooms just as tourist demand has risen, nearly to prepandemic levels, and is projected to match a record high.”

By June 2024, one of every five New York City Hotels is now a illegal shelter. The cost to the city is $10 billion for three years billed to taxpayers, and illegals continue to pour into New York city boroughs and suburbs. The city government now pays about $385 a night per migrant family that needs housing and feeding.

The average daily rate for a hotel stay in New York City climbed to $301.61 per person in 2023. At the same time, in 2024 uncontrolled immigration and the alleged right to shelter have caused a paucity of rooms available to tourists who are vital to New York’s economy including restaurants, theaters, shops, and transportation.

The spillover is also straining health services, public schools, social services, and housing.

Occupancy in hotel rooms for illegals causes a loss of 16,532 hotel rooms, leaving only 121,677 hotel rooms for visitors.

At present in New York City, the planned 47 hotels in various stages of plans, permits, and construction, will add 7,655 rooms, but who knows how many illegals will arrive through our porous and uncontrolled borders, and how many hotels will yield to the pressure and guaranteed income and become shelters.

If you are lucky enough to get a hotel room, while walking there you will encounter homeless Americans, including veterans who are neglected and abandoned without funding and succor. No room at the inn for them and no American plan.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Hamas’s ‘Popularity’: Attempt To Deceive The American Public? by Bassam Tawil

Posted By on July 15th, 2024

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20786/hamas-popularity-attempt-to-deceive-the-american

“If you notice, there is a growing dissatisfaction in the West Bank, from the Palestinians, about Hamas,” Biden said during a press conference. “Hamas is not popular now.”

It seems that Biden does not want the American people to be aware that most Palestinians in the West Bank are enthusiastic supporters of Hamas, as that would discourage them from endorsing his idea of creating a Palestinian state there.

The broad support Hamas enjoys among the Palestinians, including those who live in the West Bank, means that a Palestinian state would be ruled by the same terrorists who masterminded and carried out the October 7 atrocities against Israelis.

Biden appears to be convinced that hiding the fact that most Palestinian people support Hamas from the American people will make it easier for him to promote the delusional idea of pressuring Israel to accept a state that is controlled by Hamas and other Iran proxies, including Hezbollah and Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

Hamas is not only deeply committed to refusing Israel’s right to exist, it has also openly announced that it will use a Palestinian state in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and Jerusalem as a springboard to eliminate Israel and kill as many Jews as possible.

Biden’s claim that Hamas is “unpopular” among the Palestinians in the West Bank, in fact, actually contradicts analysis by US intelligence agencies showing that Hamas’s popularity has significantly grown after the terrorist group’s attack on Israel….

The latest poll, released on July 10, 2024, showed that since the October 7 attack, satisfaction among the Palestinians in the West Bank with the “performance” of Hamas murderers and rapists has risen to 82% .

When asked who the public would prefer to control the Gaza Strip after the current war, 71% of Palestinians in the West Bank chose Hamas compared to 46% in the Gaza Strip.

The reason Hamas has such high popularity among the Palestinians is because it seeks to destroy Israel though jihad (holy war).

With respect, President Biden, it was after its members murdered, sexually assaulted, tortured, and abducted hundreds of Israelis on October 7, that Hamas became even more popular among the Palestinians.

It is time for Biden and his administration to come clean with the American people about the Palestinians: the majority of them favor destroying Israel and killing Jews.

Where does US President Joe Biden obtain his knowledge on the Palestinians is a question that has to be asked, especially in light of his recent statement regarding the popularity of the Iran-backed terrorist group Hamas.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

An Indomitable Spirit Rich Lowry

Posted By on July 15th, 2024

https://www.nationalreview.com/2024/07/an-indomitable-spirit/

Donald Trump never blinks.

There’s nothing that’s happened to Donald Trump since his rise to political prominence that has made him blink, and now we can add to the list an assassination attempt.

Trump displayed remarkable sangfroid in the immediate aftermath of an effort to murder him? Yes, of course, he did. He insisted on not leaving the stage before he’d made a gesture of strength and resilience? Well, what would you expect? He took a nightmarish attack against him and turned it into an iconic image that will cement his status as a populist legend? Are you surprised?

Trump’s extraordinary reaction in Butler, Pa., was entirely in character.

This is a man with an indomitable spirit that has seen him through business reverses, tabloid scandals, and innumerable battles with all comers over the decades. Like most anything else, this quality has its downsides — it can lead him to persist in error, or insist on his own reality — but he wouldn’t be on the cusp of the presidency again without it.

If Trump has never shown any sign of cracking under pressure, it’s because he simply doesn’t feel pressure like a normal person. A fatalism combined with a faith that he’ll find a way out of any fix means that he doesn’t lose sleep over anything.

Although there were any number of controversies during his presidency that would have cracked or worn down a more conventional politician, he carried on as usual. Over the last two years, his partisan opponents have thrown criminal charges at him that carry the risk of him spending the rest of his life in prison; sure, he’s fought the charges like a caged animal, yet he’s never seemed down or frazzled. And now this.

After spending so much time displaying coolness under metaphorical fire, he displayed coolness under actual fire.

A cliché in sports about particularly assured players is that they “slow the game down.” Trump, at his best, does the same thing, and we saw it on the stage in Butler. Whereas he could be forgiven for being confused and in shock after the shooting, he didn’t lose sight of the need to show that he was unbowed, to reassure his supporters, and to project strength.