FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Debate Fireworks Reflect Growing Divide over Biden’s Failed Ukraine Policy Congress could end military aid to Ukraine starting in early 2024 By Fred Fleitz

Posted By on August 26th, 2023

https://amgreatness.com/2023/08/25/debate-fireworks-reflect-growing-divide-over-bidens-failed-ukraine-policy/

With the apparent failure of Ukraine’s spring/summer offensive and the Biden Administration’s refusal to offer a peace plan, President Biden’s latest request for $24 billion in emergency aid for Ukraine landed with a thud on Capitol Hill. If approved, total U.S. aid to Ukraine since the war began in 2022 would reach $135 billion.

Sharp divisions over the Ukraine War at this week’s Republican primary debate reflect similar differences in Congress, with the two leading candidates critical of continuing U.S. military support. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis opposed more funding unless European states stepped up to “pull their weight.” Businessman Vivek Ramaswamy said he would immediately cut off U.S. military aid.

Former President Trump has taken a slightly different approach, calling on Congress to withhold military support for Ukraine until the Biden administration cooperates with congressional investigations into his son Hunter’s business dealings. The former President also has said that if elected, he would negotiate a quick end to the war.

Several debaters strongly disagreed with cutting off U.S. support for Ukraine, with former Vice President Mike Pence, former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, and former Governor Chris Christie arguing that U.S. aid to Ukraine is crucial to the security of the United States, and NATO.

Although Congress is likely to approve the Biden Administration’s new Ukraine spending request, there is growing opposition by lawmakers and the American people over continuing to spend huge amounts of tax dollars on a war they view as an endless conflict in which no vital U.S. interests are at stake.

Biden Administration officials in the spring were optimistic that billions of dollars of additional military aid from the U.S. and European states would lead to a successful counteroffensive, enabling the Ukrainian army to retake a significant amount of territory and force Russia to the bargaining table. It didn’t happen. Russian forces had ample time to prepare a dense network of defensive structures to hold their ground, and Ukraine did not receive the type and quantity of weapons it needed—especially airpower.

President Biden finally agreed to Ukraine’s request to provide it with F-16 fighters in May. But the aircraft did not arrive in time for the counteroffensive and likely will be unavailable until next spring due to delays in training Ukrainian pilots.

The Washington Post reported on August 19 that a new intelligence community assessment does not anticipate Ukraine’s counteroffensive to make significant gains on the ground before the fighting season ends in early November. Although this conclusion tracks with other accounts, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said this week, “We do not assess that the conflict is a stalemate. We are seeing [Ukraine] continue to take territory on a methodical, systematic basis.”

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

The Paths Forward for the GOP Presidential Field DeSantis is most likely to defeat Biden By Josh Hammer

Posted By on August 26th, 2023

https://amgreatness.com/2023/08/25/the-paths-forward-for-the-gop-presidential-field/

Wednesday evening’s much-anticipated first Republican presidential primary debate came and went without an obvious “winner” or dominant figure. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, the onstage front-runner given the conspicuous absence of former President Donald Trump, performed ably with numerous compelling and substantive answers, but pre-debate expectations were high enough – and his national horse race polling deficit with Trump wide enough – that it was left unclear whether such a performance might suffice.

Some of the second-tier candidates, such as former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley, likely outperformed; some, such as Haley’s fellow South Carolinian, Sen. Tim Scott, likely underperformed. And there was the glib charlatan Vivek Ramaswamy, whose egomania and insufferably grating nature were finally exposed before a national television audience; his personal favorability polling metrics have cratered, accordingly.

Of those who participated, DeSantis was the steadiest hand and delivered the best performance overall. He was righteously indignant when such indignation was called for, and he reminded the viewers of his transformative governing track record in Florida at the right moments. It would have been gratifying to see DeSantis knock down Ramaswamy a few notches, but the governor came across as competent, untouched, and above the fray. A post-debate Fox News focus group and most available post-debate polling revealed DeSantis as the most popular choice when those who had watched the debate were asked to identify the “winner.”

But it was not a thoroughly memorable or dominant performance, either — not exactly a first-round, Mike Tyson-style knockout blow. And a certain Palm Beach denizen, now fending off four separate criminal indictments from this most vindictive of regimes, was notably absent from the Milwaukee melee. More data is needed before offering any firm conclusions, but it is difficult to foresee the next batch of polls moving the needle a great deal. It must also be noted that a multicandidate debate format simply does not play to DeSantis’ strengths as a politician; he has many strengths, but this is just not one of them. So perhaps we cannot reasonably expect more than Wednesday’s cool, composed and low-key winning performance in future crowded debates. The question thus becomes whether, at this current trajectory, “slow and steady” will indeed “win the race,” as Aesop once taught.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Iran’s Religious Influence Spreading throughout the United States by Majid Rafizadeh

Posted By on August 26th, 2023

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19922/iran-religious-influence-us

The Iranian regime is advancing its ideology and increasing its influence in Shia mosques throughout the United States, while the Biden administration is sitting idly by, presumably still seeking to return to a disastrous nuclear deal, lift sanctions against Iran, and fund the regime to launch more terrorist attacks, further repress its own citizens, and pave the way for it legally to obtain an unlimited supply of nuclear weapons.

“In four separate cases, recent reports have illustrated the Iranian regime’s influence on multiple Shi’a mosques and religious institutions in the United States. This is unacceptable.” — Letter from nine US House Representatives to Attorney General Merrick Garland and Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines, June 28, 2023.

“This appears to be part of a network of regime-sponsored mosques acting as agents for a foreign adversary. The radical ideology being promoted by this regime preaches hatred not only towards Jews, Christians, and Westerners but also to Sunni Muslims and fellow Shi’a Muslims who do not accept the regime’s ideology.” — Letter from 9 US House Representatives to Attorney General Merrick Garland and Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines, June 28, 2023.

We are fortunate enough in the US to have freedom of religion enshrined in the First Amendment to the Constitution.

All the same, Americans might like to be aware that there are clergy in the US whose goal it is to take the beliefs you now hold away from you and replace them with their own?

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Israel’s protest movement; an identity crisis The danger of the anti-government protest movement is that it has introduced a form of paganism into its political goals Moshe Dann

Posted By on August 26th, 2023

https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/376071

The protest movement in Israel has succeeded in mobilizing many thousands of people against the current government. It claims to be “protecting democracy” by trying to stop judicial reforms. Its agenda, however, includes a wide range of issues and seeks to implement “liberal and Progressive” policies that are often in conflict with traditional Jewish values and Zionism. The struggle, therefore, is not only about judicial reforms, but Israel’s identity as a Jewish state.

The word “Jewish” appears many times in Israel’s Declaration of Independence; “democracy,” however, doesn’t appear once. The reason is that the drafters – while respecting democratic norms and values – wanted to protect Israel’s uniqueness as the “homeland of the Jewish people,” and Zionism. This priority has been questioned in the past by Israeli leftists, and has now become the raison d’etre of the current protest movement.

What has emerged as a protest movement against the government and judicial reforms is the extent to which the Labor Party and its affiliates control social and economic institutions. The Histadrut, for example, which controls nearly all labor organizations in Israel, wields enormous power and influence. Support for the protest movement by former and current military leaders who identified with the Left has created havoc in the IDF. The entire judicial system has been compromised. Most Israeli colleges and universities are complicit. The media is leading the bandwagon of disinformation.

The crisis in Israeli society was examined by Rabbi Prof Eliezer Berkovits in two important essays he wrote nearly 50 years ago: “On Jewish Sovereignty” (1975) and “The Spiritual Crisis in Israel” (1979) which are included in his “Essential Essays on Judaism” (2002) edited by David Hazony.

In the first, he wrote about the Covenant which links the Jewish people with God, and with Eretz Yisrael as the place where their destiny would be realized. “Those Jews who separate Judaism from Zion, Tora from the land of Israel, gives up both Tora and the land … They have surrendered, as a matter of principle, Judaism’s raison d’etre, which is fulfillment in history.”

EDUCATION Comments turned off

‘Not a Fundamental Right’: Maryland Court Strikes Down Parents’ Request to Opt Kids Out of LGBT Curriculum By Haley Strack

Posted By on August 25th, 2023

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/not-a-fundamental-right-maryland-court-strikes-down-parents-request-to-opt-kids-out-of-lgbt-curriculum/

A Maryland district court denied parents’ appeal to reinstate an opt-out policy in Montgomery County Public Schools on Thursday.

The case, Tamer Mahmoud v. Monica B. McKnight, hinged on whether the district’s May decision to rescind its opt-out policy for LGBT curricula violated parents’ right to direct the religious instruction of their children.

The court concluded that, “the plaintiffs’ asserted due process right to direct their children’s upbringing by opting out of a public-school curriculum that conflicts with their religious views is not a fundamental right.”

Parents sought a preliminary injunction that would authorize opt-out options once school begins on August 28, which judge Deborah Boardman also denied:

“Because the plaintiffs have not established any of their claims is likely to succeed on the merits, the Court need not address the remaining preliminary injunction factors. Nonetheless, because a constitutional violation is not likely or imminent, it follows that the plaintiffs are not likely to suffer imminent irreparable harm, and the balance of the equities and the public interest favor denying an injunction to avoid undermining the School Board’s legitimate interests in the no-opt-out policy . . . The plaintiffs seek the same relief pending appeal as in their preliminary injunction motion: an injunction that requires the Board to provide advance notice and opt-outs from instruction involving the storybooks and family life and human sexuality. For the reasons stated in this opinion, the Court cannot conclude the plaintiffs are likely to succeed on the merits of an appeal. The plaintiffs’ request for a preliminary injunction pending appeal is denied.”

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

China’s Influence Activity in the US Is Unprecedented by Robert Williams

Posted By on August 25th, 2023

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19921/china-influence-activity-us

[President Joe] Biden’s closing the China Initiative played, of course, right into the Chinese Communist Party’s hands.

While the Biden administration worries about political correctness, the Chinese Communist Party is successfully using every means at its disposal to weaken the US in all fields.

“[A] significant portion of America’s intellectual and political elites share the responsibility for perpetrating key CCP propaganda agendas, including misleading the American public to minimize the degree to which the PRC is still a country ruled by a Marxist-Leninist communist party. The manipulation of language is a prime example of this endeavor.” — Miles Maochun Yu, Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution, hoover.org, May 5, 2021

The FBI has named China as “a grave threat to the economic well-being and democratic values of the United States” and said that confronting this threat is “FBI’s top counterintelligence priority.” However, instead of focusing all available resources on countering this “grave threat” from the CCP on all fronts, the Biden administration has been busy institutionalizing woke ideology in the federal bureaucracy — including in the military….

The Biden administration, under an executive order issued in February 2023, now requires all federal agencies to present annual “equity action plans” in order to “advance an ambitious, whole-of-government approach to racial equity and support for underserved communities.” Since Biden became president, the military alone has spent close to 6 million hours on diversity, climate change and “extremism.”

The other focal point for the Biden administration has been mitigating “climate change” – all while China, during 2022, has been approving the construction of two new coal plants per week.

The US under Biden is arguably not even close to countering the threat that China poses or perhaps even properly understanding it.

The Biden administration has unfortunately shown itself to be unable to stop, or even limit, China’s continued rise. On the contrary, the connections of Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, to China could mean that the US president is beholden to the Chinese Communist Party.

Meanwhile, at a recent press conference, when asked whether the administration is concerned that Hunter Biden’s ties to China “pose a national security issue,” White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan replied, “I don’t have any comment on that.”

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Grading the First Peanut Gallery Debate Vivek was the single exception to an underwhelmingly mediocre debate By Eric Lendrum

Posted By on August 25th, 2023

https://amgreatness.com/2023/08/24/grading-the-first-peanut-gallery-debate/

While the eyes of well over 160 million people were on the highly-anticipated interview between President Donald Trump and Tucker Carlson, the undercard debate of also-ran candidates proved very telling in its own way, often at the expense of the GOP.

With a single exception, all of the candidates onstage proved to be underwhelmingly mediocre, presenting plenty of platitudes but no clear vision for a country in desperate need of a tectonic shift in leadership. As such, all but one of the candidates should receive no higher than average marks after this performance.

Individual Scorecards

Vivek Ramaswamy: A

The man who had the most to lose at the debate tonight wasn’t the Governor of Florida. It was the one and only man who has been steadily rising in the polls leading up to tonight. Despite having high expectations, he met and surpassed them in spades.

Vivek Ramaswamy openly acknowledged his dilemma that many Republican voters still might know who he is, with a lighthearted self-deprecating joke about “this skinny guy in the middle of the stage with a funny last name,” before launching into his opening remarks. This tactic served to defuse any lingering confusion over what kind of a man he truly is, and dictated his tone throughout the rest of the night: Willing to talk about serious issues, but also capable of remaining lighthearted even when the knives came out.

In many ways, Vivek felt like a stand-in for Donald Trump circa 2015, taking the most flak from rival candidates and effortlessly withstanding all of it. He laughed off multiple attacks from Christie, Pence, and Haley, often firing right back with even more devastating one-liners.

He called out the rest of his opponents as “super PAC puppets,” and when his unapologetic response to the “global warming” question was to call it a hoax and declare that he was the only candidate on the stage “who isn’t bought and paid for,” he clearly riled up the moderators so much that the entire conversation suddenly shifted: The moderators proceeded down the rest of the stage not asking the other candidates about global warming, but instead asking the question “Are you bought and paid for?” Game, set, match: Vivek Ramaswamy effortlessly changed the entire conversation with just one smooth response, laughing as all of the other candidates – as well as the moderators – were seething.

The first attack of the night was launched against Vivek by Mike Pence, quickly setting the tone of the debate with Vivek as the underdog. Poking fun at the increasingly absurd political language used by everyone else, Vivek joked that he “didn’t exactly understand Mike Pence’s comment” criticizing him on Social Security and Medicare, before saying “I’ll let you all parse it out.” Pence’s response of “I’ll go slower this time” came across as extremely condescending and thus earned requisite boos from the audience, and it only got worse from there.

BOOKS Comments turned off

French Fry Leadership An interview with the author of a book about profiting through service. by Jason D. Hill

Posted By on August 25th, 2023

https://www.frontpagemag.com/french-fry-leadership/

Bruno Hilgart began his management career as a 16-year-old hourly team member at a major QSR (Quick Service Restaurant) Brand in 1981. After graduating high school in 1983, he was promoted into his first management position just after his 18th birthday and became the General Manager of his first location as a 20-year-old in January 1986. He spent the next 26 years growing along with the company and in January 1996 was promoted to be the face of the franchise, serving in the role of leading the company as Director of Operations and Marketing until March of 2012.

I recently interviewed him about his recent book, French Fry Leadership: How to Attain Profits Through Serving People.

Hill: Bruno, your new book is a very well-written one that explains, in short chapters, definitive steps to achieve profits by adhering to a leadership philosophy you’ve developed after over 35 years in the restaurant business. But your story is an interesting one. You never went to college, and you were a restaurant manager by the time you were 20. Where did that confidence to be a leader so young in life come from?

Hilgart: My confidence to be a leader at such a young age came from the work ethic I was taught by my parents and knowing at a young age that if I wanted anything in life I was going to have to earn it. My family did not have much money, so I got a paper route at 12 years old. My work ethic was noticed by my customers by the feedback and the tips I received. This built my confidence. As a 14-year-old busboy, my boss and the servers noticed my work by giving me more hours and sharing more tips with me than the other busboys. I also had success playing baseball and basketball and was an overall natural athlete who loved to compete. The environment and culture at the first Burger King restaurant that I began working at while a junior in high school also recognized my work, which led to them trusting me with additional responsibilities at a young age. The owner was a college athlete, so we meshed well there, too.

Hill: You challenge and debunk a lot of popular business myths out there. One is that people do not quit their jobs—rather, they quit their bosses. Is this really the case, even if they have a desire to self-actualize beyond the scope of their current employment?

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

India’s Battle Against Jihad Why it’s of critical importance for both Asia and the West. by Uzay Bulut

Posted By on August 25th, 2023

https://www.frontpagemag.com/indias-battle-against-jihad/

Despite historical persecution, ethnic cleansing campaigns, as well as ongoing pressure at the hands of jihadists supported by Pakistan, Jammu and Kashmir remains part of India, whose sovereignty in the region helps improve the civil rights of the residents, enables it to battle the Islamist threat, and enhances stability in South Asia.

Today, Jammu and Kashmir is demographically majority-Muslim, but it is within the borders of India, which has millennia-long historic and spiritual ties with the region.

Indigenous Hindus are the original inhabitants of Kashmir and possess a unique ethno-religious culture existing for more than 5,000 years. Kashmir had a majority Hindu population ruled by Hindu kings until the 14th century when Muslims from Central Asia invaded the region.

Under Islamic rule, Hindus in Kashmir were subjected to persecution. In the early 1800s, Sikh rulers controlled the region, and then a Hindu dynasty from the mid-1800s through 1947.

In 1947, the Princely State of Jammu and Kashmir became part of the secular Republic of India. Shortly thereafter, Pakistani Armed Forces invaded the area. In response, Indian Forces deployed to counter Pakistan’s attacks. In Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, the areas of Kashmir which remained outside of India, thousands of Hindu families were forced to flee for their lives.

In 1948, the UN Security Council passed Resolution 47 urging the Pakistani military to withdraw. Pakistan, however, refused.

Since then, Pakistan has increased its military presence and fomented unrest and terrorism in the region. Thousands of civilians have been killed in terrorist acts carried out by militant groups supported by Pakistan.

IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

The Problem With Biden’s Plan to House Illegal Aliens Another racket designed for very clear purposes. William Davis

Posted By on August 25th, 2023

https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-problem-with-bidens-plan-to-house-illegal-aliens/

Faced with an unrelenting surge of foreign nationals coming to the southern border, the Biden Administration has devised a new plan: More comfortable housing for people in the country illegally.

The White House is requesting roughly $1 billion in funding to set up new housing for illegal aliens while their overwhelmingly illegitimate asylum claims play out in the courts. Under the administration’s plan, beneficiaries of this new program would be free to go where they wish during the day, but would have to check in and stay the night in their houses, according to Axios.

But, here’s the kicker. According to the Washington Free Beacon, the language of the White House’s proposal would allow Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to use any of its funding on housing for illegal aliens instead of enforcement. The use of the funds would be at the discretion of anti-borders Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. One can only imagine how Mayorkas is salivating at the potential opportunity to use his agency’s funding to further his anti-borders agenda.

As former Acting ICE Director and Immigration Reform Law Institute Senior Fellow Tom Homan put it, this program would “would serve as yet another enticement, another magnet that will bring more families to our borders.”

If this new housing program were to take effect, it would serve as further encouragement for foreign nationals to make the dangerous journey through Central America to the U.S. The Biden Administration spent the first half of 2023 concocting schemes to artificially lower the number of illegal crossings at the southern border, but those numbers still skyrocketed by more than 30 percent last month. The promise of new and improved housing for illegal aliens will surely cause those numbers to soar even higher, empowering the cartels, and causing many migrants to die in the process, while further disrupting border communities already overwhelmed by the crisis.