NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Americans Are Essential — Not Their Government By J.B. Shurk

Posted By on October 30th, 2023

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/10/americans_are_essential__not_their_government.html

The House has a new speaker, and now attention returns to whether a government “shutdown” can be averted before November 17.  If only the American people could place the federal government in lockdown just as the unaccountable bureaucracy did to them during COVID’s oppressive hysteria.  (So much for the people being in charge, eh?)  In response to our unmanageable debt problem, there is an online meme that is spreading faster than Biden’s human trafficking business at the border: Government Shutdown — Fifteen Days to Flatten the Curve.

Sounds like a good plan.  Shut ’er down, and we’ll see where we are in a couple weeks.  If the debt and deficit haven’t improved, we’ll just have to keep the federal government in lockdown until our unsustainable spending problem is finally under control.  For all those highly paid, partisan bureaucrats worried about their sinecures, stop being so selfish!  We’re all in this together, after all.  The experts are working at the speed of economics!

Edward Holman says it best: “Had we merely refused to raise the debt ceiling one day forty years ago, the following morning Congress would have been forced to pay the debt service because we have always collected FAR more in tax revenue than needed to service the debt.”  Americans should call the government’s “bluff that we would all drown in a lake of fire” if the Leviathan doesn’t get everything it demands.  In other words, until the federal government gains basic arithmetic and accounting skills and learns to live within a budget, shut ’er down!

But how would the war hawks continue funding death and mayhem in Europe if they can no longer use American tax dollars to pay Ukraine’s government workforce and public sector pensions?  Military strategist Larry Johnson has a good idea: President Volodymyr Zelenskyy should “make the rounds in Hollywood pitching a new soap opera — As the War Turns.  It would be the story of a beleaguered Jewish comedian thrust into the seat of power, backed up by Nazi hordes, acquiescing to be the sock puppet of a malevolent Uncle Sam in exchange for a steady supply of Colombian cocaine and bags of cash.”  Hollywood could fund WWIII all by itself!

Seriously, should American taxpayers be funding Ukrainian retirements when pension plans in the United States have been so mismanaged and dangerously underfunded that the next stock market quake will likely wipe out half of Americans’ own retirement nest eggs?

FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

A Therapeutic Middle East Versus A Tragic One The tragedy is that realist deterrence is moral, while naïve appeasement is immoral By Victor Davis Hanson

Posted By on October 30th, 2023

https://amgreatness.com/2023/10/30/a-therapeutic-middle-east-versus-a-tragic-one/

Classical diplomacy warns leaders to be neither obsequious and appeasing abroad, nor gratuitously boastful and hard-headed.

The usual advice is don’t-tread-on-me resoluteness, or what Teddy Roosevelt characterized as “speak softly and carry a big stick.” The alternatives – whether “speak loudly and carry a twig,” “speak softly and carry a twig,” or “speak loudly and carry a big stick”- are far worse.

Our current diplomats have unfortunately forgotten that golden mean of guarded language backed with credible warnings of overwhelming force. And the result is a verbal mess, backed by impending attacks called off, confusion, and harsh rhetoric rather than quiet retribution.

Biden and his team give us endless variations on the same loud threat to Iran along the following lines: “If outside actors are considering widening the war, DON’T!” They accompany this by reacting only four times to 83 documented acts of Iranian aggression directed at U.S. forces, by greenlighting a $6 billion ransom to Iran and by lifting sanctions, resulting in a $50 billion Iranian oil windfall.

As a general rule, the more one side appeases the other, or is humiliated, or is shown to be weak or naïve, the more likely it is that the tentative party will vainly seek to restore lost deterrence by ever-tougher language—even though it must know that these ever-increasing verbal threats are becoming increasingly empty. Threats and taunts are like inflation: the more they are issued without reliable backing, the more worthless they become.

The murdered dead were not even buried in Israel, when the Biden State Department’s Palestinian Affairs bureau issued a call for a ceasefire—a plea followed by a similar one in a joint communiqué from Turkey’s Recep Erdogan and Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

Did such calls win either empathy from Hamas or prompt agreement from Israel to transcend any idea of meting out justice to the killers of more than 1,000 of their own? Or were they simply revelations of cluelessness along with an empty signal of “concern?”

Did Secretary Blinken’s invitation to American regional embassies to lower their flags to half-mast to commemorate civilian causalities in Gaza—unfortunately timed to the false news reports of an IDF strike on a hospital—win respect or cool tensions?

In Blinken’s words, the gesture was intended “to observe national periods of mourning following an official proclamation by the host government with respect to the loss of innocent lives at the Al Ahli hospital blast on October 18.” Did that U.S. “concern” work? Did protests abroad wane? Was Biden never snubbed? Did U.S. host countries express loud thanks?

Which was the more likely reaction from Hamas to Blinken’s act of magnanimity?

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Our Response to China Must Be Overwhelming, Not ‘Proportional’ by Gordon G. Chang *****

Posted By on October 30th, 2023

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20107/china-overwhelming-response

Biden meeting Xi at this time would be a mistake…. Anything Beijing wants cannot, by definition, be good for America.

How, exactly, can Biden “stabilize relations” with a militant regime that has declared America to be its enemy?

Worse, China’s regime thinks it is already at war with the U.S.

Now, therefore, is the time to use all the resources of the federal government. The Secretary of the Treasury, for instance, can designate, pursuant to Section 311 of the USA PATRIOT Act, Chinese banks to be of “primary money laundering concern.” Designated banks can no longer clear dollar transactions through New York, where every dollar transaction clears.

Such designations would put the large state banks out of business everywhere outside China. If large state banks were to fail, so would China’s state-dominated banking system. The failure of the banking system would undoubtedly mean the end of the Chinese economy and financial system. The end of the political system would soon follow.

On October 24, a Chinese J-11 fighter jet recklessly maneuvered within ten feet of a U.S. Air Force B-52 bomber flying in international airspace over the South China Sea, endangering the crew of the American plane. There have been provocative Chinese intercepts of U.S. planes and vessels in the global commons for decades, but now the pace of the belligerent actions has increased.

What was the response of the Biden administration?

President Joe Biden has desperately tried to arrange a meeting with Chinese ruler Xi Jinping. They have finally agreed in principle to meet next month in San Francisco during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit. The agreement came during the just-concluded visit of Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi to Washington. Wang met with Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

John Tierney Harvard’s Double Standard on Free Speech At the university, you’re free to excuse Hamas’s atrocities, but don’t dare say anything that offends leftists.

Posted By on October 30th, 2023

https://www.city-journal.org/article/harvards-double-standard-on-free-speech

After Harvard student groups blamed Israel for Hamas’s atrocities, the global backlash was so fierce that the university’s president, Claudine Gay, released a video statement that in some ways proved even more puzzling. “Our university rejects the harassment or intimidation of individuals based on their beliefs,” she said. “And our university embraces a commitment to free expression. That commitment extends even to views that many of us find objectionable, even outrageous.”

Really?

This was news to the scholars with unpopular views at Harvard who have been sanctioned by administrators, boycotted by students, and slandered by the Crimson student newspaper. And it was certainly news to anyone who follows the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression’s annual analyses of threats to free speech on campus.

In this year’s FIRE report, Harvard’s speech climate didn’t merely rank dead last among those of the 248 participating colleges. It was also the first school that FIRE has given an “Abysmal” rating for its speech climate, scoring it zero on the 100-point scale (even that was a generous upgrade, as its actual composite score was -10). That dismal distinction made headlines last month across the United States, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia—but not on the Harvard campus. The Crimson didn’t even publish an article in its news section, much less an editorial; Gay didn’t make a statement, either.

Once upon a time, journalists and scholars on both the left and right were staunchly devoted to free speech and academic freedom, if only out of self-interest. Liberals like Nat Hentoff of the Village Voice defended the rights of Klansmen and Nazis because they knew the First Amendment was their profession’s paramount principle. But in the past decade, that bipartisan devotion has been disappearing, particularly at elite colleges. Harvard’s journalists and scholars adopted the principles that Hentoff criticized in the title of one of his books: free speech for me, but not for thee.

Leftists are free to stir controversy without fear of punishment from Gay and other administrators, and they can count on the Crimson to defend them. Jewish groups on campus were outraged last year when the Palestine Solidarity Committee’s annual spring event, Israeli Apartheid Week, featured lurid murals accusing “Zionists” of being “racists” and “white supremacists.” The Crimson’s editorial board promptly declared itself “proudly supportive” of the murals and the international BDS (Boycott, Disinvestment and Sanctions) campaign to make Israel a pariah state. When that editorial stirred further outrage and accusations of anti-Semitism, the Crimson’s president issued a statement proclaiming the newspaper’s commitment to “freedom of expression.”

But that commitment vanishes when the campus’s leftist majority gets angry. The targets of their anger have received, at best, no support from the Harvard administration or the Crimson. At worst, those voices find themselves denounced, investigated, disinvited, or punished by administrators, and they have endured the Crimson’s outrageous campaigns to silence, sanction, and banish them.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Gov. Ron DeSantis to Newsmax: There’s ‘Sickness on These College Campuses’ By Eric Mack

Posted By on October 30th, 2023

https://www.newsmax.com/newsmax-tv/ron-desantis-israel-college/2023/10/28/id/1140065/

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis blasted woke antisemites and anti-Zionists in American colleges, the media, and the “worthless” United Nations on Saturday on Newsmax.

“I don’t care what some imbecile on a college campus says; I don’t care what liars in the media say; and I certainly don’t care what worthless institutions like the United Nations say: We are going to stand with Israel in this dark hour for them,” DeSantis told “Saturday Report.”

DeSantis, who is campaigning for president and speaking Saturday in the Las Vegas gathering of the Republican Jewish Coalition Conference, hailed his state for having revoked Florida college students’ “privilege” to support Hamas in the war against Israel over “material support to terrorism.”

“You may have a right to say certain things, but that’s material support to terrorism if you’re saying you’re part of what they’re doing, so we deactivated the Students for Justice in Palestine and were the first state to step up to the plate and do that,” DeSantis told host Rita Cosby before his RJC address.

“I was the first candidate to say that if you have foreign visa holders out there making common cause with Hamas, I’m canceling their visa and I’m sending them back,” DeSantis added. “That’s a bare minimum.

“They don’t have a right to be here on a student visa. It’s a privilege to be here on a student visa. There’s a lot of Americans that would probably want those slots. There’s other foreign nationals who actually like the United States who would probably want [one].

“They have no right to have those visas, and if they’re going to make common cause with terrorism, we are going to eject.”

The problem on college campuses in sharing anti-Israel progressive narratives has been building for a long time, according to DeSantis.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Make Pro-Hamas Countries That Fund American Universities Fess Up Clifford Smith

Posted By on October 30th, 2023

https://www.nationalreview.com/2023/10/make-pro-hamas-countries-that-fund-american-universities-fess-up/

We need to know more about the support that nations such as Qatar, which offers material and financial aid to Hamas, are sending to U.S. colleges

After the mass terrorist atrocity along the Israel/Gaza border on October 7, we had the horrific sight of radicals on American campuses siding with Hamas. For example, some student organizations have overtly engaged in clear victim-blaming. One Cornell professor even overtly celebrated Hamas murders. This kind of extremism has caused some businesses to run for the hills; they’ve withdrawn job offers and  threatened to never hire the students involved. Some prominent foundations and wealthy, influential individuals, including former Utah governor and ambassador Jon Huntsman, have canceled their donations to colleges and universities. Former Harvard president and Clinton- and Obama-administration veteran Larry Summers declared himself “sickened” as well as “disillusioned and alienated” by how his former university handled this issue.

It is nearly impossible to know all the factors that play a role in this sort of radicalization and pro-terrorist sentiment on campus, alongside the administrators’ sympathy and acquiescence. But one thing is a simple fact: American universities receive massive sums of money from countries that openly support Hamas and terrorism more broadly, and we know very little about what these countries are getting for their money. We need transparency about these transactions. Fortunately, just days after the attack, the House Education and Workforce Committee rolled out legislation, months in formation, to help address this problem.

Make no mistake, this is a big issue. The tiny, oil- and natural-gas-rich country of Qatar is one of the most profligate Hamas-supporting nations in the world.

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

David Mamet: Jews Should Stop Voting for Democrats, Sending Children to ‘Antisemitic’ Colleges David Mamet

Posted By on October 30th, 2023

https://www.breitbart.com/entertainment/2023/10/29/david-mamet-jews-should-stop-supporting-democrats-sending-children-to-antisemitic-colleges/

Renowned playwright David Mamet appeared this week on the Fox News Channel and urged fellow Jews to cease their support of Democrat lawmakers and reconsider sending their children to what he described as “antisemitic” colleges in response to rising anti-Israel sentiments on American campuses following Hamas’s shocking terror attack on the Jewish state.

BILL HEMMER: You spend a lot of time in New York and you’ve written a lot about the Jewish experience in New York is so unique. You recently wrote a piece titled “How the Democrats Betrayed the Jews.” What do you mean by that?

DAVID MAMET: I’m a conservative. I used to have a lot of liberal friends, but I don’t know where they are. Maybe they lost my number. I have a lot of conservative friends who are not Jewish, and at certain points, they all get this look on there face and I know what’s going to come next. They ask the question: I thought Jews were smart, why do they go with the liberals?

And the answer is that we Jews aren’t smart, we’re actually stupid. We’re great at self-reliance because we never had anyone to rely on. But when it comes to getting into a group, with the exception of the state of Israel, we say, “I don’t want to be identified. Leave me alone.”

[…]

What I suggested in the article is, Thanksgiving’s coming up, when your kids come home from college, don’t send them back. Stop funding antisemitic hatred and calling it, “Oh, it’s a good place to meet people.” Because for a Jew to send his or her son or daughter to these elite institutions because they’re going to make connections is the same thing as putting their daughter in a brothel because they’re going to meet powerful men there. It doesn’t make sense and we’re going to have to assert ourselves.

FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Is Americans’ Love Affair With NATO Alliance Over? I&I/TIPP Poll Terry Jones

Posted By on October 30th, 2023

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/10/30/is-americans-love-affair-with-nato-alliance-over-ii-tipp-poll/

Whether it’s the Russia-Ukraine war, or the Israeli-Hamas war, NATO remains a big part of U.S. decision-making. Indeed, the U.S.-led postwar alliance has lasted 75 years, and it’s fair to say that nearly everything the U.S. does overseas involves NATO, directly or indirectly. But increasingly, average Americans are uneasy about the alliance, the latest I&I/TIPP Poll shows.

A significant number of Americans, though not yet a majority, feel the burdens of the U.S.’ NATO leadership as unfairly distributed, according to the online I&I/TIPP Poll of 1,378 adults taken from Sept. 27-29

The first question was elemental: “Does the U.S. participation in NATO increase or decrease the likelihood of U.S. getting involved in a military conflict?”

A surprising plurality of 38% answered “increase,” while 15% responded “decrease” and 19% said “no impact.” Another 28% said “not sure,” making it the second-largest answer. The poll has a margin of error of +/-2.7 percentage points.

This was the rare question in which political affiliation didn’t make too much of a difference. While 34% of Democrats said NATO raises the chance of war, that response wasn’t too far below the Republicans (44%) or independents (38%).

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Iran’s Fellow Traveler in Mexico City President López Obrador seems to be playing footsie with Iranian allies. By Mary Anastasia O’Grady

Posted By on October 30th, 2023

https://www.wsj.com/articles/irans-fellow-traveler-in-mexico-city-obrador-latin-america-migration-3f551ffe?mod=opinion_featst_pos1

The high cost of declining American power in the world is being felt in the Middle East and Ukraine. But it doesn’t stop there. Iran is moving into the Western Hemisphere with no effective pushback from Washington. The latest trouble comes from the U.S.’s North American neighbor, Mexico.

In response to a U.S. request that Mexico set up migrant-processing centers funded by Washington, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said no earlier this month. Instead, he proposed a regional summit, excluding the U.S. and Canada, to discuss the migration crisis.

Last week, at the gathering with representatives of 10 Latin American governments, Mr. López Obrador gave President Biden the middle finger. Not literally, but the effect was the same.

A photo taken at the meeting features a smiling Mr. López Obrador with pro-Iranian dictators Miguel Díaz-Canel of Cuba and Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro alongside Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro, a former terrorist and a card-carrying Israel hater.

Honduras’s President Xiomara Castro, a Cuba sympathizer and wife of Manuel Zelaya, the former Honduran president who famously tried to extend his elected term with help from Hugo Chávez, was also in the picture. So too was Haiti’s acting Prime Minister Ariel Henry.

This gang of six, according to the Spanish daily El Pais, were the heads of state who drafted the communique that emerged from the AMLO-organized conclave held in the state of Chiapas. It blames U.S. sanctions against Cuba and Venezuela for the migration crisis and demands they be lifted unconditionally. The group also wants debt restructuring. Mr. López Obrador used the event to complain that the U.S. spends too much on defense and not enough to help its neighbors.

FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Biden’s Hamas conundrum The president’s continued reliance on his anti-Israel, pro-Iran officials is not merely a policy disaster. It is a political problem.Caroline B. Glick

Posted By on October 30th, 2023

https://www.jns.org/bidens-hamas-conundrum/

Since Oct. 7, American Jews have seen their civil rights trampled every day. Jewish students are subjected to constant intimidation, assault, battery and threats from Hamas supporters on campus. From coast to coast, the stories are depressingly similar. University authorities refuse to protect them from their pro-Jewish genocide peers.

Then, too, on Thursday, the New York Police Department told the Jews of Brooklyn to stay off the streets on Shabbat afternoon. Pro-Hamas will be demonstrating, and the police said that they will be unable to protect Jewish residents as the terror supporters march through their neighborhoods.

How is this happening? How is it that at a time of maximum peril, law-enforcement bodies are doing all but nothing to defend the Jewish community? Why is the FBI not arresting terror supporters as required under U.S. law? Why is the U.S. Justice Department not directing local authorities to defend the Jews?

A good place to begin to look for answers is the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. That powerful division is led by Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke.

Clarke’s appointment in 2021 caused an uproar in Jewish circles because she has a record of anti-Semitic activism and was an ardent supporter of the pro-Hamas, anti-Jewish Black Lives Matter movement.

In 1994, as the head of the Black Students Association at Harvard Law School, Clarke invited Wellesley College Professor Tony Martin to speak at Harvard. Martin had just written a Protocols of the Elders of Zion-style anti-Semitic book called The Jewish Onslaught.

Clarke defiantly defended Martin at the time and attacked the Jewish students who expressed concern about her move. She never apologized for her actions. Instead, ahead of her Senate confirmation, she told progressive, anti-Israel Jewish reporters and activists that she “regretted” the invitation. That was enough for them to declare that the allegation that Clarke remains hostile towards Jews is slander.

U.S. President Joe Biden has a problem. He staffed his administration at all levels and across departments with hardened ideologues, many of whom have records of hostility towards Jews and support for Hamas, Iran, and other terror groups and regimes. Under Biden, these officials have advanced his Middle East policies that until Oct. 7 were largely aligned with the interests of Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas and the Houthis.