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Woodward’s War: Deeply Damning, But Not to Trump By John D. O’Connor

Posted By on November 1st, 2024

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2024/10/woodward_s_war_deeply_damning_but_not_to_trump.html

Bob Woodward, a past master at the art of marketing bestsellers by reflecting the Democrat zeitgeist, tries his best in his latest offering, War, to put a good face on Biden-Harris incompetence in the Afghanistan, Ukraine, and Israel conflicts. Although Donald Trump was not a government actor during these events, War inserts vignettes purporting, unsuccessfully, to contrast Trump’s unfitness with Biden’s putative steadiness.

Woodward tries but fails to claim that it is Trump’s alleged instability that threatens our fragile world, and not the ineptitude of the senile, perpetually unintelligent Biden. But to his great credit, the dogged reporter in Woodward overcomes the mediocre polemicist. He simply cannot hide Biden’s abject, foolish incompetence in these conflicts, nor can he conceal, try though he might, Trump’s commonsense assessments of the same events. While hoping to help Biden’s political fortunes, his book is a thinly-veiled but strangely ineffective diatribe against the “fascist” former President he awkwardly stumbles to depict.

Before delving into Biden’s actions, we should recall the wise assessment of the well-respected Robert Gates, former CIA Director and Secretary of Defense in the Obama Administration. Biden, Gates wrote in his 2015 book, had been consistently wrong on every national security and foreign policy issue throughout his long tenure in D.C. Moreover, Biden had long been reputed by his colleagues to have been the least intelligent legislator in Congress.

Given Biden’s recently acknowledged mental incompetence, Woodward tries to contextualize it as a recently-developed condition, with only isolated “early markers” in preceding years. But, again, Woodward’s solid factual recitations are far more skillful than his partisan shadings of them.

BOOKS Comments turned off

The Campaign against Justice Gorsuch’s New Book Is an Embarrassment By Dan McLaughlin

Posted By on November 1st, 2024

https://www.nationalreview.com/2024/10/the-campaign-against-justice-gorsuchs-new-book-is-an-embarrassment/

An effort to discredit Justice Gorsuch is overhyped and misleading.

The patently coordinated progressive campaign to delegitimize the Supreme Court by personal attacks on the six conservative justices never sleeps. It’s Justice Neil Gorsuch’s turn again in the barrel. Progressives have tried out a number of themes against Gorsuch over the past seven years, to little effect: that he’s arrogant, that he talks too much, that he’s a bad writer, that he’s a plagiarist, or that he did something wrong by selling a house to a Democratic lawyer through an anonymous LLC at below the price he was asking before he joined the Court. Those attacks having gotten nowhere, one of the themes they are still pushing is that Gorsuch misrepresents facts in his opinions.

Given little to work with on this front, they have settled on Gorsuch’s new book, Over Ruled: The Human Toll of Too Much Law, which he co-wrote with a former law clerk, Janie Nitze. Gorsuch and Nitze argue that the explosive growth of federal law has costs not only for liberty and small government in general, but for the individual people who find themselves on the business end of all these rules and the people who enforce them.

Ruth Marcus of the Washington Post branded it “Justice Gorsuch’s book of fish tales.” An attempted smackdown by Ankush Khardori of Politico was headlined “Neil Gorsuch’s New Book Is an Embarrassment.” Their primary charge is that Gorsuch left out important facts from the stories he tells in the book, chiefly the story of fisherman John Yates. But Marcus and especially Khardori are the ones who should be embarrassed. They are straining to miss the point — and Khardori’s piece is full of its own distortions. I’ll discuss below why Khardori and Marcus are off base on the Yates case. In a second part, I’ll cover the other scraps that they throw at the wall and why Khardori’s past record and his behavior in this episode make him an especially unconvincing advocate against Gorsuch on this score.

Facts and Figures

MEDICINE AND HEALTH, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Thumb on the Scale Public trust in science is eroding, thanks to the scientific establishment’s recent forays into partisan politics. By Joel Zinberg M.D.

Posted By on November 1st, 2024

https://www.city-journal.org/article/waning-public-trust-in-science

Americans’ trust in the scientific establishment took another hit last week with the revelation that a prominent advocate of adolescent transgender treatments had suppressed the findings of her federally funded research showing that puberty blockers did not improve mental health in children with gender distress. Johanna Olson-Kennedy worried that the study’s findings would be “weaponized” by opponents of the transgender treatments she promotes. This reinforces suspicions that scientists and their publications are less interested in the search for truth than they are in promoting progressive political causes.

This advocacy extends to partisan politics itself. In only the second presidential election endorsement in its history, Scientific American urged readers to “Vote for Kamala Harris to Support Science, Health and the Environment.” Two months earlier, Nature, the prestigious British science publication, extolled Harris’s background as the daughter of a scientist and her support for diversity initiatives in STEM, a single-payer health insurance program, abortion rights, and climate change, enthusing that her candidacy has “stirred optimism among scientists.”

Both publications broke with their traditional nonpartisanship in 2020 when they endorsed Joe Biden. Similarly, the normally nonpolitical New England Journal of Medicine published an October 2020 editorial castigating the Trump administration and unfavorably comparing its pandemic response to that of China, which “chose strict quarantine and isolation.” Trump administration officials, the editorial alleged, were “dangerously incompetent. We should not abet them and enable the deaths of thousands more Americans by allowing them to keep their jobs.”

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Purging Jews From the Arts by Seth Mandel

Posted By on November 1st, 2024

https://www.commentary.org/seth-mandel/purging-jews-from-the-arts/

Sally Rooney is a clarifying figure in the literary world. She does not go for complexity or nuance, and she doesn’t like to leave herself open to interpretation. Rooney has now written the same novel four times, likely to avoid any possible confusion over what it is she wants to say. And rather than hide behind some disingenuous claim of “just anti-Zionism,” she does things like oppose her last novel’s translation into Hebrew, an act of overt hostility to Jews and only Jews.

So it’s no surprise to find Rooney’s name atop a McCarthyite attempt to purge the arts of the People of the Book. What’s more interesting is to see who else jumps on Rooney’s straight-talk express and whether the wider societal reaction reaches a fraction of what it ought to be.

Hundreds of writers have joined what is framed as a boycott but is actually the institution of a global loyalty oath for Jews. The novelist Rachel Kushner, whose new book contains a rather creepy rant aimed at French Jewish intellectual Bernard-Henri Levy, is one of the more famous of Rooney’s inquisitors. Junot Diaz, like a once-famous emo act reuniting for a Gen X nostalgia tour, is on there as well.

Lee Child, creator of the Jack Reacher novels, is not on there. He objected to the purge, as did Lionel Shriver and Howard Jacobson. The crux of the loyalty test is as follows:

“We will not cooperate with Israeli institutions including publishers, festivals, literary agencies and publications that:

“A) Are complicit in violating Palestinian rights, including through discriminatory policies and practices or by whitewashing and justifying Israel’s occupation, apartheid or genocide, or

“B) Have never publicly recognized the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people as enshrined in international law.”

You are to be unpersoned, that is, if you write about Israel without denouncing the Jewish state—a rule that is intended to disqualify Jewish writers of any and every nationality—or if you are Israeli and have not renounced your country and your people, like any Good Jew apparently would. Israelis are currently under fire from seven fronts in a war that began with an explicitly genocidal invasion by Iranian proxies, and if you do not do something to help the cause of exterminating your own people, you are heretofore banished from the arts.

ELECTIONS, NATIONAL SECURITY AND DEFENSE Comments turned off

America’s Adversaries are Rooting for Kamala Harris In Kamala Harris, America’s adversaries see a president who would be substantially weaker Joe Biden, whom they can easily manipulate and defy to destroy the U.S.-led global order. By Fred Fleitz

Posted By on November 1st, 2024

https://amgreatness.com/2024/11/01/americas-adversaries-are-rooting-for-kamala-harris/

Although America’s ferociously anti-Trump media refuses to admit it, there is a powerful group of people who cannot vote in the U.S. presidential election but are rooting for Kamala Harris to win: the leaders of China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, terrorist groups, and other U.S. adversaries.

America’s adversaries took full advantage over the past three years of a sharp decline in American global influence and deterrence. This resulted in new wars and massive terrorist attacks, including Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, a surge in provocations and threats by China against Taiwan and in the South China Sea, the October 7, 2023, Hamas massacre against Israel, a new 7-front war against Israel, a dangerous increase in Iran’s sponsorship of terrorism and major gains in its nuclear weapons program, a huge increase in North Korean missile tests, 11 million illegal migrants crossing our southern border, and other threats.

On top of this, a dangerous new Russia-China-Iran-North Korea axis began during the Biden years. Russia and China greatly strengthened their diplomatic, military, and economic ties. Iran has been providing Russia with missiles and drones for the Russian military to use in the war in Ukraine. North Korea has provided Russia with missiles, ammunition, and troops for this war. Russia has provided North Korea with missile technology. China, Russia, and Iran have held joint military exercises. There are reports these states may also hold a military exercise with North Korea.

However, despite the deterioration of the U.S.-led global order since 2021, America’s adversaries see even greater opportunities to exploit U.S. weakness under a Kamala Harris presidency.

There are two reasons for this. One reason is that the damage Joe Biden could do to U.S. national security was limited because many of President Trump’s successful national security policies were difficult for Biden to cancel or roll back. For example, the historic Abraham Accords, which normalized Israel’s relations with four Arab states, survived the Biden years despite President Biden’s inept, anti-Israel policies. The Biden administration wanted to move the U.S. embassy in Israel out of Jerusalem and create a consulate in Jerusalem for Palestinians but was thwarted by opposition from Israeli officials and members of Congress. Although Biden criticized the Trump administration’s sanctions against Iran and tariffs against China during the 2020 presidential campaign, he kept most of them in place.

Similarly, although Biden strongly condemned Trump’s withdrawal from the disastrous 2015 nuclear deal with Iran and could have rejoined it with the stroke of a pen, Biden instead unsuccessfully attempted to negotiate a new nuclear deal with Iran. This isn’t to say Biden’s policies to appease Iran and not enforce U.S. oil sanctions were not terrible—they were. But they could have been much worse.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Rx for America by Lawrence Kadish

Posted By on November 1st, 2024

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21074/rx-for-america

In the autumn of 2024, there are many things to consider about the future of our nation, as citizens of the greatest nation on earth will soon be exercising their right to choose our next leader.

Among the challenges:

The fate of 21st century nations will rise or fall based on their access to energy. Those leaders who fail to see this simple but stark reality will preside over the decline and fall of their nation.

As a result, the United States faces a crucial decision this Election Day: Which president will recognize that truth and act upon it in a world where enemy states seek to control strategic energy reserves?

Fracking technology has made the United States not only capable of being energy independent, but an exporter of energy to allied nations equally concerned about their fate. Rather than allow the full might of America’s fossil fuel industry to power our society, however, the Biden-Harris administration has preferred to find reasons to curtail, inhibit, and harm this industry’s ability to do so. The Biden-Harris Administration apparently prefers to pursue a “green energy” agenda dictated by so-called “progressives,” with wind and solar alternatives that could not possibly meet the demands of an energy-hungry nation.

The energy policies of this White House are reflective of a still-larger failure at a time when our nation finds itself at a critical turning point in history. No country has ever spent or taxed itself into prosperity. Washington needs to use the next four years to lower taxes and dispense with the federal regulations that are now throttling growth.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Europe’s German Problem by Drieu Godefridi

Posted By on November 1st, 2024

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21075/europe-german-problem

With Merkel gone, Germany finds itself on an accelerating trajectory of impoverishment.

One might have hoped that the German Right would learn a few lessons from the Merkel disaster. It has not.

The European People’s Party (EPP), the largest political group in the European Parliament — in which the CDU is a member party — appointed Ursula von der Leyen as head of the European Commission. Under her leadership of the European Union, the economy is collapsing, industry is disappearing and Islamism is proliferating. Supposedly, all of that does not matter because Europeans have the Holy Grail: the “energy transition” to a “zero-carbon” Europe, and more regulations than all the other civilizations combined.

Unfortunately, that policy is an absolute myth. “Zero-carbon Europe”, a physical impossibility, will never happen. Even if it did, it would make no difference to the global explosion in CO2 emissions. Europe accounts for just 8% of global CO2 emissions. Even if Europe ceased to exist, it would make little difference to global CO2 emissions. They would continue to grow on all five continents.

To get Germany and Europe out of this rut, would it not be more constructive for the CDU to consider governing with the AfD?

Today, Germany embraces the ideologies of “green energy” and a zero-carbon society — a society that no longer emits CO2. Germans seem serious about ideology; they seem serious about everything. Once they buy into an ideology, it might be hard to change their mind.

This is how Chancellor Angela Merkel came to power (2005-2021). Many forget that she did not emerge from the extreme green left, although judging by her record, one might think so. She came, in fact, from the CDU/CSU, Germany’s “center-right” party.

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Biden Calling Trump Supporters ‘Garbage’ Says All You Need To Know About Today’s Dem Party

Posted By on November 1st, 2024

https://issuesinsights.com/2024/11/01/biden-calling-trump-supporters-garbage-says-all-you-need-to-know-about-todays-dem-party/

It seems everyone but the Democrats have had a bit of fun with President Joe Biden’s insulting characterization of former President Donald Trump’s supporters as “garbage” (and, yes, he did mean Trump’s supporters, not Trump himself). Not so funny is what it shows about the Democrats, who seem to loathe any American who doesn’t support them.

It started with a bad joke told by a comedian, one of 30 warmup speakers at Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally, who referred to Puerto Rico as a “floating island of garbage.” Trump didn’t make the remark, nor did he approve of it.

“This joke does not reflect the views of President Trump or the campaign,” Trump campaign senior adviser Danielle Alvarez said.

But in a phone call with an Hispanic voter group, Biden unleashed a tirade: “The only garbage I see floating out there is his (Trump’s) supporters,” he said. “His demonization of Latinos is unconscionable and it is un-American.”

In fact, Trump demonized no one. But Biden did, namely the 74 million-plus people who voted for Trump in the last election, and the millions more who will vote for him this time around.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The Biased Media: What They Make It Their Business Not to See by Bassam Tawil

Posted By on October 31st, 2024

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21072/erdogan-turkey-kurds-hypocrisy

“Turkey is bombing and massacring Kurds tonight. No protests, no marches, no media coverage, no condemnations from UN, no ICC arrest warrants for Erdogan. Since 1914 Turkey has killed over 1.5 million Kurds. Stop Kurdish genocide.” — Hemdad Mehristani, researcher, X, October 23, 2024.

If Turkey has the right to respond to a terrorist attack by bombing dozens of targets belonging to Kurdish militants in Iraq and Syria, why is Israel being condemned for responding to the October 7 Hamas-led atrocities against its own citizens? Just because of the “two-state solution”: Michigan and Minnesota?

Not only is Erdogan lying when he accuses Israel of “genocide,” but he is also proving that he is a big hypocrite. If he is really worried about the safety of the Muslims in the Gaza Strip, why does he continue to support Hamas, while denying Israel the right to defend itself against Islamist terrorism? If he believes that he has the right to bomb Kurdish militants in Syria and Iraq, why is he denouncing Israel for taking the same action against Palestinian Islamist terrorists?

The complicit silence of the anti-Israel groups on US university campuses towards Turkey’s crimes is simply evidence of a staggering racism and hypocrisy.

Earlier this month, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan accused Israel of committing “genocide” in the Gaza Strip in its counterterrorism operation against the Iran-backed Hamas terrorist group. Hamas had launched the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, murdering 1,200 Israelis, wounding thousands, and kidnapping more than 240 hostages. Erdogan, whose country has been hosting and supporting some of the leaders of Hamas, threatened that Israel will “eventually pay the price for this genocide.” He added: “There will be no peace in the world without accountability for the genocide in Gaza.”

Erdogan is currently facing the same charges he has leveled against Israel. The only difference is that many in the world are silent when Turkey targets the Kurds in Syria and Iraq, but continue to protest against Israel for defending itself against Hamas murderers and rapists responsible for the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Christopher F. Rufo How Gender Ideology Captured the State Department An executive order prompted the agency to recast its mission.

Posted By on October 31st, 2024

https://www.city-journal.org/article/how-gender-ideology-captured-the-state-department

The U.S. Department of State is charged with advancing American interests abroad through complex and delicate diplomatic missions, as well as maintaining the safety of those missions and the Americans serving them.

The institution’s lodestar should be the national interest, but under President Joe Biden, the State Department has demoted that critical objective in favor of a new global agenda: to spread radical gender theory to foreign nations.

The shift began at the top. President Biden and, in turn, the apparatus beneath him led America’s leftward charge on the world stage. Upon taking office in 2021, the administration used the previous year’s racial unrest as a pretext to issue a slew of executive orders and memoranda entrenching left-wing ideologies in all levels of the federal government, under the guise of “diversity, equity, and inclusion,” or DEI.

As part of this initiative, the White House required each federal agency to submit detailed DEI progress reports regularly, appoint a chief diversity officer, and create “Agency Equity Teams,” whose leaders were tasked with “delivering equitable outcomes.” These requirements contributed to what the president called “an ambitious whole-of-government equity agenda.”

The gender component of this agenda spread to the State Department through the president’s “Memorandum on Advancing the Human Rights of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, and Intersex Persons Around the World.” Published in February 2021, this memorandum directed State and other agencies to monitor closely and report on the “LGBTQI+” policies of our allies, to “broaden the number of countries willing to support and defend” the radical Left’s understanding of gender—for example, by funding pro-transgender “civil society advocates” in order to shift public opinion in those countries—and to tie in the principles of gender theory to America’s foreign-aid programs.

If necessary, the memo maintained, agencies should use “the full range of diplomatic and assistance tools” to ensure foreign governments’ compliance with this agenda, including “financial sanctions, visa restrictions, and other actions.”