ABC Pays the Price for George Stephanopoulos’s Partisan Irresponsibility Jeffrey Blehar

https://www.nationalreview.com/2024/12/abc-pays-the-price-for-george-stephanopouloss-partisan-irresponsibility/

The fickle gods of irony are at work on this one.

As God is my witness: I didn’t even know ABC was being sued by Donald Trump.

Did you? I missed the story completely in late March. I went back to check on what I was doing then, and the answer was writing about “Bloodbathgate,” so I don’t have much of an excuse. (To recall that trifling fake-news kerfuffle from the early campaign is to remind ourselves of how much this election cycle has spiritually aged us.) But, yes, Trump sued ABC News for defamation on March 19, and just yesterday ABC News announced a shockingly large settlement agreement: They will pay him a whopping $15 million — though as a face-saving gesture they are being allowed to pay it to his presidential library as opposed to Trump himself.

It’s all the more hilarious of a victory because I never saw it coming: Trump just got ABC News to agree to being one of the single largest corporate donors to the eventual Official Museum of MAGA Studies. They’re building his library! (To complete the victory, ABC will also cover Donald Trump’s attorneys’ fees, a concession that surely occasioned an enormous sigh of relief from Donald Trump’s attorneys.)

The instigating event actually took place on March 10, when South Carolina representative Nancy Mace appeared on ABC’s This Week, a show that, while I was growing up in the D.C. area, was distinguished by the precise, elegantly patrician demeanor of its host, David Brinkley. Brinkley was famous as one of the last news anchors to insist on writing all of his own copy, which is why it bore such a distinct tone.

Nowadays This Week is the province of diminutive ex–hatchet man George Stephanopoulos, a nasty little Dökkálfr who graduated from slandering groped women on behalf of Bill Clinton and his “bimbo eruptions” during the 1992 campaign to gently condescending to the nation in a grizzled sneer on Good Morning America — and did all this so quickly that nobody ever stopped to point out that he simulates genuine human warmth as convincingly as AI depicts floor gymnastics. Stephanopoulos has never pretended to be a journalist: He is a Democratic partisan who holds his position because of his unthreatening height and professional connections with establishment power brokers, not his insight or tendency to ask probing questions.

Turkey’s Syrian Jihadists Take Over Syria: Kurds, Half a Million Christians Under Intolerable Threat by Uzay Bulut

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21215/turkey-syria-jihadists

A former branch of Al Qaeda, in 2018, HTS [Hayat Tahrir al-Sham] was officially designated a terrorist organization by the US government. HTS, which cooperates with the Turkish military and Turkish-backed groups in Syria, is committed to establishing an Islamist state across Syria, at least for a start.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Al-Jolani are now making all sorts of human-rightsy promises that they know the West likes to hear – just as Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini did before he took over Iran, and as the Taliban did before they quickly demolished 20 years of US human rights progress in Afghanistan.

Just as Iran is the Shiite “head of the octopus” whose tentacles consist of Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, and other assorted militias, so Erdogan is the Sunni “head of the octopus” in Syria. While everyone is busy staring at rival terrorist groups in Syria, it is crucial not to forget for a minute the country backing them: Turkey.

Erdogan’s dream has always been “the liberation of Jerusalem”…. A Sunni jihadi Syria provides a conveniently straight path to fulfill that long-term dream.

The Assad family’s rule of Syria, which lasted more than 50 years, collapsed on December 8. Jihadist forces took control of Damascus after President Bashar al-Assad escaped to a luxurious life in Moscow. Today, roughly half a million Christians and 2.5 million Kurds in Syria face a future of persecution and abuse at the hands of jihadist terrorists.

The offensive launched by the jihadists of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), formerly the Syrian branch of al-Qaeda, began on November 27. These terrorists, backed by Turkey, first captured Aleppo and a string of other towns and cities in a matter of days, before converging on Damascus.

Since 2017, HTS has been the dominant Islamist militia in Syria. A former branch of Al Qaeda, in 2018, HTS was officially designated a terrorist organization by the US government. The group’s name, Hayat Tahrir al Sham, means “Organization for the Liberation of the Levant,” meaning much of the Middle East, including Israel, Lebanon and Jordan. Since 2019, HTS, working with Turkey, has controlled northern Idlib through the so-called “Syrian Salvation Government” (SSG). Now, as Turkey and the HTS plan to “reshape Syria,” both Kurds and Christians find themselves under siege.

100,000 Voices Show the Real South Africa at FNB Stadium Chief Rabbi Goldstein VIDEO

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_M43-fAZm8

Dec 12, 2024 #RealSouthAfrica #UnityAndFaith #FNBStadium

At FNB Stadium, I stood before 100,000 members of the Zionist Christian Church on a national prayer day hosted by The Patrice Motsepe Foundation on Sunday, 1 December 2024. In my speech I shared core values of Judaism, Israel, and Jerusalem – values deeply rooted in Biblical truths – and witnessed an extraordinary response from the audience – a reminder that the people of South Africa stand for something far deeper than political narratives suggest. This day reaffirmed an essential truth: the South African people are not their government. While political leaders may send one message, the people of South Africa stand with us on the values we hold sacred. ✨ In this video, you’ll see: • The incredible unity of 100,000 South Africans embracing shared faith and values • A powerful example of how faith and hope transcend politics • A reminder that we have allies in the heart of South Africa 📌 Watch and experience the energy of that day for yourself. Share this moment of optimism and unity.

Judge Glock Why the Working Class Rejected Bidenomics Blue-collar and nonprofessional voters understood that Democratic economics supported college-educated elites.

https://www.city-journal.org/article/blue-collar-workers-reject-bidenomics

Since the election, commentators have pondered why the Biden administration’s left-wing and pro-union economic policies failed to win over working-class Americans. Many argued that Democrats’ cultural radicalism turned off those who would otherwise have embraced Bidenomics. While these voters were certainly angered by Democrats’ leftward turn on issues ranging from crime to gender ideology, they were at least as dismayed by the party’s economic policies. Even beyond the detrimental impact of inflation, nonprofessional Americans saw that the Left’s programs were not taking their concerns into account. Bidenomics was a big-government program, but it aimed to benefit a well-educated elite, not blue-collar workers and those of modest means. These Americans noticed.

Consider President Biden’s student-loan-forgiveness program. Though the Supreme Court struck down his larger plan, by election time Biden had successfully forgiven more than $175 billion in loans—over a tenth of all outstanding federal student debt. These subsidies for the college-educated were his most important executive effort; Vice President Kamala Harris pledged to continue student loan relief if elected.

The so-called Inflation Reduction Act was another bid to appeal to the well-educated. The law devoted hundreds of billions of dollars to support these voters’ climate obsessions and spending habits—for instance, by subsidizing electric vehicles. Far from being a populist giveaway, more than half the act’s estimated costs came from tax incentives to green corporations. This spending undermined workers in traditional hard-hat industries, such as automotives and fossil fuels.

Biden’s policies benefited industries with workers more likely to hold college degrees. The CHIPS and Science Act, for example, directed tens of billions of dollars in grants and subsidies to the semiconductor industry. With 25 percent of its members holding graduate degrees, the semiconductor workforce is much better educated than the general population. The industry estimated that the act will create jobs for tens of thousands of Ph.D., master’s, and bachelor’s degree holders.

President Trump’s celebration of the heroism of Daniel Penny will inspire others By Rajan Laad

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

It was May 1, 2023, at roughly 2:00 p.m. in New York City. 

Daniel Penny, a 24-year-old United States Marine Corps veteran, had embarked on a train at the Second Avenue station heading to the Broadway-Lafayette Street station.

Just before the train was about to depart, a 30-year-old homeless man, Jordan Neely, burst into the train and began shouting. 

One witness, Juan Alberto Vázquez, a freelance journalist, said Neely started screaming, “I don’t have food, I don’t have a drink, I’m fed up. I don’t mind going to jail and getting life in prison. I’m ready to die.”  

The memory of a 2022 subway shooting was most likely fresh in the passengers’ minds. This was when a masked Black supremacist, 62-year-old Frank James, threw smoke grenades and fired his handgun in the New York City subway. The act of terrorism caused 29 people to be injured, and this included victims who were hit by direct gunfire, while others were affected due to smoke inhalation.

Back to 2023.

The situation inside the train was volatile, and perhaps Neely would have engaged in acts of terrorism like Frank James did.

Journalist Vázquez also revealed that Neely took off his jacket and threw it to the floor, causing other passengers to move away from him fearing their well-being. Other witnesses said that Neely made “half-lunge movements” at other passengers and was within “half a foot of people.” Witnesses said Neely tossed garbage at other passengers and even began approaching people in a threatening manner. A mother with a child testified that Neely charged at passengers, and she shielded herself and her child behind a stroller, believing she might die. Another witness heard Neely say, “Someone is going to die today.”
Moments later, Daniel Penny approached Neely from behind and placed him in a chokehold. Penny restrained the miscreant after the train had reached its next stop, Broadway-Lafayette Street. Other passengers held the doors open to prevent it from moving. Penny released Neely only after the New York City Police (NYPD) officers arrived on the scene by which time Neely was unconscious it was reported that his pulse was still felt. 

The Mystery in the Skies and the Shift on the Ground Drones may be swarming the skies, but the real buzz is America’s cultural and political counter-revolution taking flight. By Roger Kimball

https://amgreatness.com/2024/12/15/the-mystery-in-the-skies-and-the-shift-on-the-ground/

Maybe the mystery of the drones swarming over New Jersey and elsewhere will be solved by the time you read this. Some timid souls suggest that they are from a “foreign entity,” maybe an “Iranian mothership” bobbing in the Atlantic somewhere off the East Coast of the United States. The Pentagon denied the existence of the fecund Iranian naval vessel. “There is no Iranian ship off the coast of the United States,” a Pentagon spokesman said, “and there’s no so-called mothership launching drones towards the United States.”

That news saddened me, in part because I was looking forward to circulating the word “mothership.” It has a certain sci-fi aura that seems in keeping with these paranoid times. And let’s face it, the combination of “Iranian” and anything martial reinforces the minatory nimbus.

All is not lost, however. For although there is no Iranian familial ship disgorging drones, I am in a position to report, from the very highest authorities, that the drones are in fact the advance scouts of an alien invasion. I cannot promise that Joe Biden, current President of the United States, will behave as did Bill Pullman in Independence Day, but I have managed to retain my serenity in the face of this existential threat.

I am a little less serene about the news that Joe Biden has pardoned or commuted the sentences of 15,000,000 people.

You see how rumors get started. It was the largest single orgy of presidential commutations and pardons in history, but it encompassed only about 1,500 people. Or, if you count Hunter Biden, 1501.

Anyway, there is a certain giddiness wafting across the fruited plain these days. People who say that it is because of the election of Donald Trump are not wrong, exactly, but I do suspect that they mistake the catalyst for the ensuing transformation.

Are the Years of Madness Ending? The welcomed counterrevolution is one of restoration. No one knows quite what is ahead, but all know that it is at least better already than the current nightmare. By Victor Davis Hanson

https://amgreatness.com/2024/12/16/are-the-years-of-madness-ending/

Never in U.S. history has a president-elect been welcomed as the real president before his January 20 inauguration. And never has the incumbent president so willingly surrendered his last two months in office and all but abdicated—to the relief of his nation and the rest of the world.

One reason so many are welcoming Trump’s return is the universally desperate hope that his election spelled an end to a collective madness at home and its ripples abroad during the last four years. And why not?

Nations overseas had never quite witnessed anything like the lethal August 2021 American flight from Afghanistan. That utter humiliation and impotence of the U.S. military likely signaled to Russia there would be no consequences if it invaded Ukraine—and it did; to Iran that it could now unleash Hamas and Hezbollah on Israel—and it did; and to China that it could daily threaten Taiwan and send a spy balloon across the United States with impunity—and it did.

The result was the current global chaos perhaps not seen since the late 1930s when a confused United States was similarly a bystander to the rise of bellicose regimes and wars. The Biden administration shrugged that the Red Sea, the Black Sea, the South China Sea, the Straits of Hormuz, and the Eastern Mediterranean Sea all became dangerous to the U.S. Navy and unsafe to world shipping.

A disparate group of nuclear and near-nuclear powers—Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran—are either at war with Western allies or threatening war with them. Their confidence was predicated on the assumption that the U.S. after 2020 was engaged in a Maoist-like cultural revolution that warred on its own security, energy, military, universities, and social unity—and would continue with a second Biden term.

The Biden-era cultural revolution has done great damage to the United States. The U.S. border was systematically and deliberately destroyed to allow some 10-12 million illegal entrants to pour into the U.S. without legality or background checks. Never has an outgoing administration spitefully sold taxpayer-purchased border wall material for pennies on the dollar—rather than see it used for the purposes for which it was purchased.

World Court Targets the Jewish State of Israel for Defending its Citizens A kangaroo court’s shameful rulings against the Jewish state. Joseph Klein

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm-plus/world-court-targets-the-jewish-state-of-israel-for-defending-its-citizens/

The globalist ideal of international courts such as the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and the International Criminal Court (“ICC”) adjudicating disputes under “international law” impartially and fairly is at odds with their disgraceful decisions. Both international courts have turned into Kafkaesque tribunals that Israel-haters exploit to demonize, delegitimize, and discriminate against the Jewish state.

This article discusses how the ICJ, which is part of the United Nations system, has become a linchpin in the reprehensible lawfare strategy to handcuff Israel from defending itself against ruthless terrorists bent on its destruction. A subsequent article in this series will focus on how the International Criminal Court has been similarly weaponized for malicious purposes against Israel.

The International Court of Justice kicked off 2024 by issuing its scurrilous January 26th provisional ruling, which allowed South Africa’s complaint it filed accusing Israel of committing genocide against the Palestinians living in Gaza to move forward. The ICJ ruled that it had jurisdiction to hear South Africa’s accusations against Israel that it is violating the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide:

“The Court considers that, by their very nature, at least some of the provisional measures sought by South Africa are aimed at preserving the plausible rights it asserts on the basis of the Genocide Convention in the present case, namely the right of the Palestinians in Gaza to be protected from acts of genocide and related prohibited acts…and the right of South Africa to seek Israel’s compliance with the latter’s obligations under the Convention.”

By allowing South Africa to regurgitate anti-Israel propaganda advanced by Hamas and its supporters, as if these smears had any basis in fact or law, the ICJ has made a mockery of true justice.

Article II of the Genocide Convention prohibits its member states from committing certain acts with the “intent to destroy in whole or in part a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such.” (Emphasis added)

Yep – Still the Smartest Guy in the Room By Joan Swirsky

https://www.thepostemail.com/2024/12/15/yep-still-the-smartest-guy-in-the-room/

How did President-elect Trump become a billionaire?

How did Donald J. Trump, billionaire businessman, bestselling author, mega-successful TV star, become President of the United States in 2016?

How did President-elect Trump defy, confront, and prevail over a malevolent Deep State cabal, an American government steeped in collusion, a craven leftwing media, and a mountain of lawfare attacks to win––overwhelmingly––his second bid for POTUS?

I always called him the smartest guy in the room. And I suspect that most people would answer those questions––either proudly or grudgingly––by agreeing that his intelligence and also his drive, instincts, charisma, and sheer bravado are the magic ingredients of his blazing success.

BUT…UH-OH!

So, why are some sophisticated, knowledgeable and longtime devoted Trump supporters, including seasoned conservative journalists, now suspecting that Mr. Trump is either:

A closet Democrat.
Controlled Opposition, essentially playing on the same team as his globalist opponents.
A guy who values loyalty to a fault… overlooking clear conflicts-of-interest and potential moles and saboteurs in his midst.

Everything in the Middle East Means the Opposite The easy way to make sense of Syria, Gaza, Lebanon and Israel by Daniel Greenfield

ttps://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21225/middle-east-definitions

After saving Syria from Assad, who will save it from the saviors?

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is going on a tour to persuade the Turks and their Jihadis to establish an “inclusive” government in Syria. But inclusivity now means Sunni Jihadis, backed by Turkey, repressing and killing everyone else. This will be a fundamental liberating change from the old order, in which Shiite Jihadis, backed by Iran, repressed and killed everyone else.

Turkey bombing and displacing Kurds in Syria is considered “inclusivity”, but Israel bombing Hamas and Hezbollah terrorists in Gaza and Lebanon is termed “genocide”.

“Genocide” is another of those many words that have different meanings in the New Middle East Dictionary. Amnesty International has come under fire for changing the definition of “genocide” in order to be able to accuse Israel of it.

War becomes genocide. But only in the case of Israel. Meanwhile, actual genocidal efforts by Hamas on October 7, 2023, and by Turkey in Syria to target ethnic groups, are redefined as “liberation”.

Over 1 million tons of food have entered Gaza since October 7, 2023. That’s half a ton for every terrorist supporter. Half a ton of food for every man, woman and child is… “starvation.”

The Arab Spring redefined Islamist takeovers as “democracy movements”.

When Muslim Jihadis commit genocide, it becomes liberation. And when anyone fights back against them, it’s genocide.

Redefinition makes everything in the Middle East factually opposite, to make it morally opposite.

Even as Islamic Jihadists are taking over Syria, ethnically cleansing Kurds and terrorizing Christians, the media is hailing the new “inclusive” regime which “liberated” Syria.

The regime is indeed inclusive if you consider bearded men with assault rifles to be the measure of inclusivity. And terrorizing minorities to be the exciting new diversity.