NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

What Was So Different This Time About Trump’s Election? Welcome relief. by Victor Davis Hanson

Posted By on December 24th, 2024

https://www.frontpagemag.com/what-was-so-different-this-time-about-trumps-election/

In the weeks before the 2016 Trump Electoral College victory, Donald Trump was polling between 35 and 40 percent.

He would average only about 41% approval over his tumultuous four-year tenure.

No one knows what lies ahead over the next four years. But for now, Trump already polls well over 50% approval.

His inauguration in a few weeks will likely not resemble Trump’s 2016 ceremony.

In the 2016-7 transition, Democratic-affiliated interests ran commercials urging electors to become “faithless,” and thus illegally to reject their states’ popular votes and instead elect the loser, Hillary Clinton.

Massive demonstrations met Trump on Inauguration Day.

In less than four months after assuming the presidency, Special Counsel Robert Mueller was appointed to investigate the hoax of Russian collusion.

That wasted 22-month, $40 million investigation found no collusion, but did derail the first two Trump years.

What followed the collusion ruse was a consistent effort to undermine the Trump presidency — two subsequent impeachments, the laptop “disinformation” hoax, the COVID-19 nationwide lockdown, and news suppression of any mention of the Chinese lab origin of the virus or questioning the closing of schools.

In the Trump administration’s last summer of 2020, 120 days of riot, arson, looting, assault, and murder followed, with the denouement of the January 6 turmoil.

In contrast, the 2024-5 Trump transition has all but assumed the presidency. Over 100 foreign leaders have elbowed each other to be invited to Mar-a-Lago or to phone in their congratulations to the newly elected Trump.

Remember that in 2016 the Left screamed “Logan Act” if a Trump transition appointee even talked with foreign officials.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

How to Get Wokeness Out of Schools By Jordan Adams

Posted By on December 24th, 2024

https://tomklingenstein.com/how-to-get-wokeness-out-of-schools/

When Glenn Youngkin cast his vision for education by saying, “We need to be teaching students how to think, not what to think,” he expressed a common conservative understanding. But this is not quite right. Although conservatives must ensure schools teach students how to think, and it’s quite impossible to teach students what to think or to conclude, they must use their authority unashamedly to establish whatstudents in America’s public schools think about. 

Curriculum — what students learn — lies at the heart of education. It’s why schools exist. But for many American schools today, curriculum is full of critical race theory, historical revisionism, and graphic, sexualized content.

The thirty-odd states with conservative governors, state superintendents, or state boards of education and the 9,000 school boards in Trump-voting districts across the country should be working immediately to fix that, providing an education that is woke-free, academically effective, and pro-America. 

Can conservatives actually change what students learn about in America’s schools? Yes, but it’s not easy. Conservatives must understand how Leftist ideology gets into schools in the first place before they can create the plan for getting it out.

How Woke Ideology Gets into Schools

NATIONAL SECURITY AND DEFENSE Comments turned off

Jihad Never Sleeps Nor does our willful blindness. by Bruce Thornton

Posted By on December 24th, 2024

https://www.frontpagemag.com/jihad-never-sleeps/

The age of modern jihadism began in 1928 with the creation of the Muslim Brotherhood, itself a reaction to the collapse of the Ottoman Caliphate in 1924. Eighty years later Osama bin Laden called that event a “catastrophe” and a “humiliation and disgrace,” for it marked the culmination of the infidel West’s domination of Islam, the religion of some of the greatest warriors in history.

The purpose of the Muslim Brotherhood was to restore Islam to the global power and dominance of Christendom it had wielded for a millennium; and to return Islam to its divine destiny, which founder Hasan al-Bana wrote is “to dominate not to be dominated, to impose its laws [Sharia] on all nations, and to extend its power to the entire planet.”

Most Westerners didn’t notice or think about the loss of the Caliphate and the epochal shift in the geopolitical order, especially since their secularist culture had relentlessly been diminishing the role of Christianity in our culture and civilization. By the Thirties, Hilaire Belloc could write, “Millions of modern people . . . have forgotten all about Islam. They have never come in contact with it. They take for granted that it is decaying, and that, anyway, it is just a foreign religion which will not concern them.”

Despite the gruesome bloody reminders on 9/11 that jihadism and Islam were still a threat, many of our credentialed cognitive elites dismissed criticism of Islam’s doctrines, especially jihad, as Islamophobic slanders and bigotry. Moreover, although the outcome of Hamas’ butchery on Oct. 7 last year seems to be a failure, it is itself an object lesson in the continuing danger of jihadist violence. The collapse of Bashar al Assad’s regime in Syria, mostly at the hands of jihadist forces, should be a warning that jihad never sleeps, and we should not blind ourselves to its nature as documented in Islam’s doctrines and historical practice.

MEDIA Comments turned off

CNN Sees Lowest Ratings in Network History in 2024

Posted By on December 24th, 2024

https://hotair.com/headlines/2024/12/22/cnn-sees-lowest-ratings-in-network-history-in-2024-n3798138

CNN reportedly wrapped up 2024 with the lowest audience numbers in its history. This is despite election years usually drawing more audience to news outlets in general.  

From December 26, 2023, through December 15, 2024, CNN averaged just 93,000 viewers in the key 25-54 demographic and 488,000 total viewers, according to Nielsen Media Research as reported by the Washington Examiner. This trailed Fox News, which dominated with 1.46 million total viewers.   

The poor performance follows disappointing election night coverage, where CNN drew 5.1 million viewers—a massive 44 percent drop from its 2020 election coverage. In comparison, Fox News attracted 13.6 million viewers during the same event.   

CNN wasn’t the only left-wing media outlet that had struggles this year. MSNBC averaged 86,000 viewers in the 25-54 demographic but outperformed CNN in total viewers with 806,000. Reports on Thursday revealed MSNBC requested pay cuts from anchors Joy Reid and Stephanie Ruhle to retain their roles, following a $5 million salary reduction for Rachel Maddow.  

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Old Saint Knick: Washington Irving’s Antidote To Woke Paul F. Petrick

Posted By on December 24th, 2024

https://issuesinsights.com/2024/12/24/old-saint-knick-washington-irvings-antidote-to-woke/

According to Walter Russell Mead’s recent analysis, “One way to read Trump’s second victory in three elections is that the movement for a post-American America with a successor ideology and post-Judeo Christian cultural and ethical foundation aimed at fundamentally changing American society has reached its sell-by date.”

Do not hold your breath.

The demise of “Woke” has been greatly exaggerated. The unfortunate truth is that the Woke Era, under which the great mass of Americans has been harassed since the reelection of Barack Obama, is merely the latest spasm of the puritanism that has periodically plagued the body politic since the English Civil War. The particular issues change, but the insufferable moralization and coercive war on preexisting cultural traditions and symbols are always recognizable.

Fortunately, Wokeness does appear to be receding at the moment, the antidote having been provided by a New Yorker who “looked at things poetically rather than politically” and “revered the past and the stability that a sense of the past provides.” No, I am not referring to Donald Trump, but another Knickerbocker — Washington Irving.

Born in 1783, the year of victory over the British, Irving’s life would span the entire antebellum period of American history. Fittingly named after the father of his country, Irving would go on to establish himself as the Father of American Literature. He believed that America’s puritanical impulses stunted healthy cultural development, a belief developed in rebellion against a puritanical upbringing under Irving’s strict Presbyterian father.

“I have no relish for Puritans either in religion or politics, who are pushing for principles to an extreme, and overturning everything that stands in the way of their own zealous career,” wrote Irving. Instead, Irving had faith in tradition, where “population, manners, and customs remained fixed.” And nowhere is Irving’s impact on American traditions greater than in the way we celebrate Christmas.

MY SAY: Comments turned off

HOLIDAY GREETINGS FROM RUTHFULLY YOURS

Posted By on December 23rd, 2024

WITH ADMIRATION AND APOLOGIES TO CLEMENT CLARK MOORE WHO WROTE “TWAS THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS” IN 1822. RSK

TIS CHRISTMAS AND CHANUKA ON THE TWENTY FIFTH OF DECEMBER

NOT WITNESSED SINCE  2005 FOR THOSE WHO REMEMBER.

STOCKINGS ARE HUNG AND LIGHTS SHINE BRIGHT ON CHRISTMAS TREES.

THE MENORAH IS LIT TO HONOR THE WAR ON WOKE BY THE MACCABEES.

KITCHENS WILL BE REDOLENT WITH TURKEY HAM AND BISCUITS.

JEWISH “PLAT DU JOUR” IS POTATO LATKES AND BRISKETS.

BUT THE DEMS WILL JUST SULK AND WHINE AND TOSS

ANGRY AND HUMILIATED BY ELECTORAL LOSS.

INSTEAD OF RANCOR THEY SHOULD APOLOGIZE

FOR SCHIFFSTORMS AND SUFFERING CAUSED BY THEIR LIES.

A SENSE OF TREPIDATION HANGS IN THE AIR.

FOUR YEARS OF DAMAGE, TOO MUCH TO REPAIR.

A CABINET AND APPOINTMENTS WERE FORGED IN RECORD TIME

TO FIX THE ECONOMY, FOREIGN POLICY, IMMIGRATION AND CRIME.

VIVEK AND MUSK ARE MARKING THE GLUT,

OF ALL THE WASTE THEY WILL HAPPILY CUT.

BUT I DESPAIR DAILY WHEN READING THE NEWS,

OF THE GROWING WAVE OF HATRED OF JEWS.

SO, I WAS DEEP INTO CHECKING INTERNET CHATTER

WHEN OUT ON THE STREET THERE AROSE SUCH A CLATTER.

TO THE WINDOW I FLEW LIKE A FLASH

TORE OPEN THE CURTAIN AND THREW UP THE SASH.

A HUGE RED TENT WAS RISING TO PROTECT EVERY COLOR, FAITH, AND RACE.

FOR THOSE WHO CHERISH OUR COUNTRY ARE THE REAL AMERICAN FACE.

I AM OPTIMISTIC WITH A GOOD DOSE OF CHEER

I WISH YOU ALL JOYFUL HOLIDAYS AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR!

RUTH KING

ANTI-SEMITISM, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

NGOs Driving Antisemitism in Europe and around the Globe: Part I by Robert Williams

Posted By on December 23rd, 2024

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21228/ngos-driving-antisemitism

Samidoun (“Steadfast”), a “Vancouver-based terrorist group,” was founded in 2012 — ostensibly to “assist Palestinian prisoners” — by members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a designated terrorist organization in the United States, European Union and Canada. In practice, Samidoun is a front for the PFLP.

Who funds this terrorist-supporting madness? Samidoun, which does not publish any donor information, has a financial sponsor in the US, the Alliance for Global Justice, a registered 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization that reportedly works to bring about a communist revolution through building coalitions of organizations, many involved in pro-Hamas activity, and, according to its own website: “We also act as fiscal sponsor to over 90 economic, social justice and human rights projects around the world that do not have their own tax-exempt status.”

Who funds the Alliance for Global Justice? According to Influence Watch, several of the same megadonors that fund the Democratic Party in the US, such as George Soros’ Open Society Foundations, and the Tides Foundation.

The Tides Foundation, which was once described as a “charitable money laundering” organization, and was previously supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, also sponsors anti-Israeli groups such as Jewish Voice for Peace and IfNotNow, both of which are active in the ongoing protests. The Alliance for Global Justice also receives funds from the Arca Foundation, Surdna Foundation, Public Welfare Foundation, and the Brightwater Fund.

The support for groups such as Samidoun by the Alliance for Global Justice led to demands to revoke its tax-exempt status…. It is now six months later, and the IRS has done nothing.

Antisemitism in the West, which has risen to unprecedented levels since the October 7 attacks on Israel, is being deliberately driven by non-governmental organizations (NGOs) with links to Palestinian terrorist organizations.

One of the most active NGOs, Samidoun (“Steadfast”), a “Vancouver-based terrorist group,” was founded in 2012 — ostensibly to “assist Palestinian prisoners” — by members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a designated terrorist organization in the United States, European Union and Canada. In practice, Samidoun is a front for the PFLP. The PFLP is an active terrorist organization, which participated in the October 7, 2023 atrocities, including in hostage taking, and shared celebratory videos and other material of the massacres online.

HISTORY Comments turned off

Things Worth Remembering: Winston Churchill’s Christmas Message to America Douglas Murray

Posted By on December 23rd, 2024

https://www.thefp.com/p/douglas-murray-things-worth-remembering-winston-churchill-christmas-message-america

As we near Christmas, I am reminded of the wonderful, 393-word speech delivered by the inimitable Winston Churchill on Christmas Eve of 1941. He spoke from the South Portico of the White House, in the midst of war.

You may recall that I opened the second year of “Things Worth Remembering” with the eulogy given by Churchill on the occasion of his political rival Neville Chamberlain’s funeral, in November 1940.

I am returning to Churchill now because he’s simply the best English-speaking orator of the last century, and because his words and his sense of moral urgency feel especially necessary, as the multipronged war for Western civilization that we find ourselves in grinds on like an acephalous beast. There have been moments in this civilizational struggle—which extends from the Ukrainian forests to the tunnels of Gaza to the Christmas markets of Europe—when I have wondered whether we would prevail. If only, I’ve thought, we had our own Churchill to lead us.

The story behind Churchill’s Christmas Eve speech perfectly captures something essential about the man. Two days earlier, the British prime minister stepped off a plane at an airfield near Washington, D.C., where he was warmly greeted by the American president, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. “I clasped his strong hand with comfort and pleasure,” Churchill later recalled.

It had been just over two weeks since Imperial Japan had attacked Pearl Harbor, leaving nearly 2,400 Americans dead. Within days, the United States, along with Britain, was officially at war with the Japanese and Nazi Germany.

Churchill’s visit to the United States was meant to be for strategizing: Should the Allies prioritize defeating Japan or Germany? Where should they focus their manpower? And so forth.

But the British prime minister was also keen on solidifying the alliance between the U.S. and Britain, and he obviously wanted to signal to the whole world—starting with Adolf Hitler—that the Western democracies were now united in their mission to crush the Axis.

There was, as always with Churchill, a subtle psychology at work—an awareness of the emotions and competing interests preying on those around him. He had a knack for harnessing those emotions and interests in a constructive way—one, in this case, that might save civilization.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

No Daniel Pennys: Migrant sets woman on fire in New York subway as cops bumble and Gov. Hochul touts making subway ‘safer’ By Monica Showalter

Posted By on December 23rd, 2024

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2024/12/no_daniel_pennys_migrant_sets_woman_on_fire_in_new_york_subway_as_cops_bumble_and_gov_hochul_touts_making_subway_safer.html

In a grotesque confluence of all the horrid doings in wokester New York City, a Guatemalan migrant brazenly set a woman on fire in broad daylight in the New York subway just to watch her burn, and no Daniel Pennys came forward to stop the barbaric crime.

According to the New York Post:

A Guatemalan migrant has been arrested for allegedly lighting a sleeping subway rider on fire in Brooklyn on Sunday morning — then watching as his innocent victim burned to death in what the police commissioner called “one of the most depraved crimes one person could possibly commit.”

The savage killing — which happened at about 7:30 a.m. on an idling F train at the Coney Island-Stillwell Avenue station — shocked commuters, MTA workers and NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch, who said Sunday that the heinous crime “took the life of an innocent New Yorker.”

“As the train pulled into the station, the suspect calmly walked up to the victim, who was in a seated position at the end of a subway car … and used what we believe to be a lighter to ignite the victim’s clothing, which became fully engulfed in a matter of seconds,” Tisch said at a press conference.

Patrolling cops smelled and saw the smoke, then followed it to the flame-covered woman, the commissioner said. 

They extinguished the blaze, but the victim died at the scene.

Horrifying video obtained by The Post showed the suspect calmly looking on as flames consumed the still-unidentified woman, who stood inside the open subway car door.

MEDIA Comments turned off

Harry Stein Don’t Expect Media Apologies—Ever—for the Duke Lacrosse Case The journalists and outlets that helped mobilize the hysteria back in 2006 shrug at Crystal Mangum’s belated admission of the obvious: it was all lies.

Posted By on December 23rd, 2024

https://www.city-journal.org/article/dont-expect-media-apologies-ever-for-the-duke-lacrosse-case

For the legacy media, the recent admission by Crystal Mangum, the accuser in the infamous 2006 Duke lacrosse case, that she had fabricated accusations of rape against three players on the university’s team, was at best a one-day story. While Mangum, a deeply troubled woman serving a long stretch at the North Carolina Correctional Institution for Women for killing a boyfriend five years after the Duke case, was clearly sincere in her contrition, opining on the podcast Let’s Talk with Kat that “saying that they raped me when they didn’t . . . was wrong” and “I made up a story that was wasn’t true because I wanted validation from people and not from God,” it hardly qualified as stop-the-presses news. That the allegation was false had long ago been established beyond question. The boys were fully exonerated and had reached a financial settlement with Duke for the school’s appalling response to the allegation. The hyper-ambitious rogue district attorney who in his zeal to nail them withheld key evidence of their innocence had been disgraced and disbarred.

So in that regard, it makes sense that in most accounts of the belated confession, it would come across as an out-of-the-blue footnote to a half-forgotten story, with a paragraph’s review of the case providing background for the uninitiated. The New York Times’s brief story, by Jenna West of The Athletic, does not even appear in the pages of the paper, just online.

In brief, the coverage conveyed not even a fleeting sense of what the Duke case meant at the time, how fully the story gripped the nation, dividing Americans by race and class; how, indeed, it anticipated much of what was to follow in the Trayvon Martin case; in Ferguson, Missouri; in the furious aftermath of the death of George Floyd; and, hardly least, in exposing the rot at the heart of two of America’s key institutions that has since become ever more apparent—academia and journalism.

All these years later, the media’s perfunctory coverage of Mangum’s admission is telling precisely because of what, given the calamitous mis-coverage of the original story, it so conspicuously lacks: self-awareness and accountability.