Wednesday, October 30, 2024

Why Kamala Struggles to Be Credible

 

As Vice President Kamala Harris slips in the polls, the Democratic National Committee/Harris campaign/mainstream media fusion talking points become even more absurd.

Claiming that JD Vance and Donald Trump were “weird” did not work—especially given the genuinely odd behavior of vice presidential candidate Tim Walz and would-be first gentleman Doug Emhoff.

Nor was the next Harris meme convincing: that the frenetic and nonstop Trump was somehow “exhausted,” “senile,” and “confused.” Voters know the workdays of the younger Harris are usually far shorter—or sometimes not workdays at all.

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But Harris also falsely claimed the physically and mentally challenged President Joe Biden was, in her words, “absolutely authoritative” and “very bold and vibrant.”

Now Harris asserts that Trump is a “fascist,” a “dictator,” and “unfit” for office. But this new talking point will also not stop the Harris campaign’s hemorrhaging—and for a variety of reasons.

First, voters see the election as a conflict of two absolutely antithetical visions.

On the one hand is the prior, concrete Trump 2017-20 record: border security; no major wars abroad; calm in the Middle East; a deterred Russia, Iran, and China; low inflation; low interest rates; lower crime; lower taxes; strong deterrent military—and opposition to mandatory electric vehicle mandates, biological males competing in women’s sports, and the woke/diversity, equity, and inclusion agenda.

On the other hand is the Biden-Harris 2021-2024 record: the unchecked entry of 12 million to 20 million illegal aliens and a destroyed border. People still struggle under Biden-Harris’ earlier hyperinflation and high interest rates. The horrific regional wars in Ukraine and the Middle East continue. Biden-Harris embraces the unpopular woke/DEI agenda.

Harris herself knows that the Biden-Harris years were a failure. That is why she has shed almost all of the administration’s hard left-wing agendas—policies she has embraced for much of her adult life.

So suddenly, in the last 90 or so days, Harris has completely flipped and flopped.

Now she is for more funding of, not defunding, the police. She pivots for a secure border, not 20 million illegal aliens pouring across it. Harris brags about fossil fuel energy, not banning fracking; she’s for increasing, not cutting, defense.

In fact, several endangered incumbent Democratic senators in swing states are claiming more allegiance to Trump’s issues than identifying with Harris and her unpopular record as vice president.

Voters likely conclude that if Trump doubles down on his record, while even Harris and many senators temporarily piggyback on it, then it must be more effective and popular than Harris’ own.

Second, Harris now claims Trump is a fascist and insurrectionist.

But mouthing “Jan. 6” ad nauseam no longer persuades voters that Trump is a danger to anyone. They recall that Harris bragged of the far more violent demonstrations of 2020—five killed, $2 billion in damage, 1,500 law enforcement officers injured, 14,000 arrested—and said that the unrest would not and “should not” stop, while drumming up support to bail out jailed violent protesters.

Nor does the slur that Trump is a fascist resonate. The Obama-Biden and Biden-Harris administrations weaponized the CIA and FBI to interfere in the 2016 and 2020 elections by peddling the fake “Steele dossier” and suppressing all the embarrassing news about Hunter Biden’s incriminating laptop.

Trump certainly didn’t coordinate, as Biden did, with local, state, and federal prosecutors to wage lawfare prosecutions to destroy his political opponents. He didn’t use the FBI to partner with social media to suppress the news.

Neither Trump nor his supporters tried to remove Biden from state ballots.

The House’s Republican majority didn’t impeach Biden twice despite the Biden family’s corruption and Joe Biden’s unlawful, decadeslong removal of classified papers to several insecure private residences.

Trump and the Republicans never coercively removed the party’s primary-winning nominee. They didn’t nullify the will of 14 million primary voters. And in backroom fashion, they didn’t anoint a candidate who had never entered a single primary in her life.

Nor did Trump support packing the Supreme Court. He doesn’t seek unconstitutional means of destroying the Electoral College. He isn’t demanding an end to the Senate filibuster or the creation of two new states to obtain four partisan Senate seats.

Third, as for Trump being “unfit” and lacking “decorum”? It depends on what the Biden-Harris standards were.

Having a trans activist reveal his breasts on camera at a White House “pride party”?

Biden’s reportedly calling Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “a f—ing idiot” and “son of a b–ch?” Bragging about locking Trump up, while waging lawfare against him?

Unleashing son Hunter Biden with impunity to shake down foreign governments?

The Nov. 5 election will not be decided on these empty talking points or fake, media-generated narratives.

Instead, only two criteria matter: Which candidate’s past record and current agenda best appeal to voters? And which candidate seems the most authentic and genuine?

How the Biden-Harris Admin Diverted Billions From Scientific Research Funds to Promote DEI

 

A damning new report found that the Biden-Harris Administration may have illegally diverted billions of dollars from scientific research funds to promote woke diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives.  

American First Legal launched an investigation into the politicization of billions of dollars in federal research funds by President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris to promote their dangerous DEI initiatives after Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation Ranking Member Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) released a bombshell report. 

The legal group filed a lawsuit against the National Science Foundation (NSF) for illegally obscuring the employment records of its agency officials who approved the grants. The lawsuit claims the Biden-Harris Administration used more than a quarter of NSF’s funding to financially support left-wing ideological agenda items described under the disguise of “academic research.” 

Immediately upon taking power, the Biden-Harris White House created a task force on “scientific integrity” to provide “a review of the impact on [the] scientific integrity of diversity, equity, and inclusion practices” at all science-related agencies. Later, the White House and NSF ordered agencies to “[i]ncorporate DEIA [Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility] considerations into all aspects of science planning, execution, and communication.” 

The Biden-Harris Administration has hijacked billions in federal taxpayer funds meant for important scientific research to promote anti-intellectual, anti-science, and anti-American DEI and leftist ideology. Awarding taxpayer dollars to radical initiatives in the name of “science” is the height of government weaponization, waste, fraud, and abuse. AFL will keep fighting to expose the Biden-Harris Administration’s racism, to stop the misuse of taxpayer funds, and to protect the integrity of our taxpayer-funded research enterprise.

Earlier this month, Cruz revealed that NSF gave more than $2.05 billion in federal funding to thousands of scientific research projects that push DEI initiatives, or as Cruz described, “neo-Marxist perspectives about enduring class struggle.” Between January 2021 and April 2024, more than 32,000 Prime Award grants were approved, and by 2024, 27 percent of all new grants that promoted DEI initiatives totaled $2.05 billion. The report noted that “social justice”-related grants amounted to $1.6 billion.

Corruption of science https://t.co/x9RVMnUKbO— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 30, 2024

Cruz’s report pointed out that most of the “extreme research proposals were led by principal investigators who also promote radical perspectives through on-campus activism and in their classrooms.” 

Some examples from the report are listed below: 

In 2023, NSF awarded Georgia Institute of Technology’s (Georgia Tech) Kelly Cross $99,791 to “disrupt[] racialized privilege in the STEM classroom” by acknowledging “Whiteness and White Supremacy” are “deeply ingrained in the past, present and future of U.S. Higher education.” 

In 2022, NSF awarded San Jose State University $401,744 for an ongoing project to “transform[] science teaching and learning through empowering teachers and students as climate justice action researchers and change agents.” The project is meant to foster the “development of a hub for justice-centered science education and will produce school-based materials and professional development activities that examine the interwoven nature of climate justice and racial justice.

Take 2 Million Immigrants and Call Me in the Morning

 

At this point, the only thing we know for sure about the presidential election is that if Donald Trump loses, it will be because of his personality, and if he wins, it will be because of immigration.

I know this because the media are publishing almost as many stories about the wonders of immigration as they are about Trump being Adolf Hitler. The New York Times, The Washington Post, NPR, MSNBC, the lickspittles at Cato — you can’t open your computer or turn on the TV without encountering a tidal wave of lies about our beloved immigrants. (Former Washington Post readers, you’ll just have to take my word for it.)

In the Times, Linda Qiu produced a whopper of an article purporting to refute Trump’s malicious nonsense about immigration, and as an immigrant herself, she must be completely unbiased, so I’ll use that as my template.

Qiu begins with the silly claim that Trump and his vice-presidential nominee, JD Vance, blame everything on illegal immigrants. (Her article is already hanging in my Museum of Straw Man Arguments.)

“Be it gun violence, high housing costs, long wait times at emergency rooms or an impending depletion of disaster relief funding,” she writes, “Mr. Trump and Senator JD Vance have offered the same diagnosis: All are because of unauthorized immigration.”

Well, maybe not exclusively because of illegal immigration. (Only RACISM can be blamed for everything.) But while immigration is not 100% responsible for these problems, it’s hard to think of anything that’s been made easier to solve by dumping millions of uneducated, poverty-stricken, non-English-speaking people on our country.

Nevertheless, Qiu claims Trump and Vance are not merely overstating the case, but are completely wrong. You see, she has “experts.”

One “expert,” Ieva Jusionyte, a professor at Brown University, said, “Vance is not correct that there is an influx of illegal guns from Mexico … It is simply not a thing.”

I totally trust someone who says, “it is simply not a thing.” If she threw in “not on my bingo card” or “saying the quiet part out loud,” she’d have sold me right there.

Except Jusionyte’s claim is absurd. Where do liberals imagine criminals get their guns? According to the Department of Justice, the guns used in crimes mainly come from illegal sources, to wit: people involved in the sale of illegal drugs, markets for stolen goods and other criminals or criminal enterprises. (How about the much-maligned gun shows? A grand total of about 0.8% of guns used in crimes come from gun shows. Ninety percent of guns used in crimes do not come from any retail source at all.)

As it happens, Mexican cartels are a gigantic criminal enterprise right on our border. They move enough fentanyl, synthetic methamphetamine and other drugs into our country to kill about 100,000 Americans every year. But, according to Jusionyte, not guns — no sir! Perhaps cartel enforcers protect their “multibillion-dollar narco empire” (New York Times) with complaints to the HR department.

The Times’ Qiu cites other “government data and experts” who claim we’re the ones sending guns to the cartels. (NYT rule: Always blame Americans.)

Liberals have been pushing this lie for 20 years. They finally got so desperate that Barack Obama’s attorney general, Eric Holder, had to start putting U.S. guns directly into the hands of Mexican drug cartels so that Democrats could blame innocent American gun dealers. (For my younger readers, look up “Operation Fast and Furious.”)

Except Holder got caught, so the Democrats’ next idea was to dummy up a phony study that’s been refuted a million times, but was bought hook, line and sinker by the crack Times reporter.

Citing “U.S. and Mexican governments and independent researchers” — I just hope the independent researchers use phrases like “that’s not a thing” — Qiu somberly reported that “about 70 percent of firearms recovered at crime scenes in Mexico came from the United States.”

That is precisely the opposite of the truth — also my idea for the Times’ new motto.

Mexico doesn’t send all guns retrieved from crime scenes to the U.S. for tracing, only the ones with serial numbers, indicating they came from the U.S. About 70% of guns used by Mexican criminals have no serial numbers and no conceivable connection to the U.S., and, therefore, were never sent to the U.S. for tracing.

It’s only among the roughly 30% that were sent to the U.S. that a majority were traced to the U.S. That’s the Democrats’ big gotcha: Guns from the U.S. were traced to the U.S.! It’s a miracle! On the other hand, more than 80% of all guns found at Mexican crime scenes were not from the U.S.

This is the sort of stupid game liberals play to try to convince us that all guns are bad and all Mexicans are good — definitely better than Americans, with their nasty gun culture.

As for housing, anyone with the intellect of a parakeet ought to be able to grasp that more people in need of housing will inevitably drive up the price of housing. It’s called the Law of Supply and Demand. If Qiu has figured out a way to repeal that law, she should publish immediately. Not only will she win a Nobel Prize in economics, but everyone in the world can have beachfront property and a classic six on Park Avenue.

On the other hand, if she hasn’t repealed the law of supply and demand, Qiu is, in fact, dumber than a parakeet.

Finally, of course mass third world immigration harms our schools, hospitals, Social Security, disaster relief and every other service meant for the American people. First, there are the gobs of money required to accommodate millions of non-English speakers — like bilingual teachers, doctors, nurses, law enforcement officers, court translators, etc. All mandated by law.

But also, since 1970, we have been deliberately bringing in the poorest, least-educated people in the world. They don’t come close to making enough money to pay for the massive amounts of services they consume. Every additional schoolbook, teacher, bus driver, janitor, hospital bed, catheter, liver transplant — that’s on you, taxpayer. (If Kamala Harris is elected, you’ll be on the hook for illegals’ transgender operations, too.)

Not surprisingly, a majority, 54%, of immigrant-headed households are on welfare, compared to only 39% of U.S.-born households — i.e., the people government assistance was intended to help. For illegal immigrants, the figure is 59%. It might be time to update liberals’ favorite cliche to, “We’re a nation of immigrants on public assistance.”

What happened to the claim that immigrants, especially illegals, aren’t allowed to collect welfare? Oh, yeah, that’s a lie.

Among other free stuff, illegals get free school breakfasts and lunch, as well as women, infants and children (WIC) benefits, plus emergency room care for all their medical needs. Some states give illegals Medicaid and SNAP. Most important, illegals simply need to drop a baby, and they can immediately start collecting full welfare on behalf of their allegedly, but not really, “American citizen” kid.

Since the left will not stop bringing in the third world until our country is the same as every other country and there’s no reason for anyone to come here, we don’t have much of a choice on Tuesday.


nobody dating on eharmony

 

I was on eharmony for couple of months, and its similar to okcupid where no woman wants to date. Apparently women don't like my G rated introduction. I see women of every education and sexual orientation on here. I was looking at Taylor the fiend and Better Bachelor on youtube where women from the city (liberal Twin Cities and subbergs have high body counts and go to clubs/bars.

My cousin Uli had a black girlfriend for 5 months who he met at a Roberts, Wisconsin bar and they were distancing from one another. He had her over at his house. He was a part of the Lions club and bowled. He lived in an apartment and had a painter job and played Diablo 4 and watched Hulu.

Thursday, October 24, 2024

Kamala's Insane Talking Points

 

As Vice President Kamala Harris slips in the polls, the Democratic National Committee/Harris campaign/mainstream media fusion talking points become even more absurd.

Claiming that JD Vance and Donald Trump were "weird" did not work --especially given the genuinely odd behavior of vice presidential candidate Tim Walz and would-be First Gentleman Doug Emhoff.

Nor was the next Harris meme convincing that the frenetic and non-stop Trump was somehow "exhausted," "senile," and "confused." Voters know the workdays of the younger Harris are usually far shorter -- or sometimes not workdays at all.

But Harris also falsely claimed the physically and mentally challenged President Joe Biden was, in her words, "absolutely authoritative" and "very bold and vibrant."

Now Harris asserts that Trump is a "fascist," a "dictator," and "unfit" for office. But this new talking point will also not stop the Harris campaign's hemorrhaging -- and for a variety of reasons.

First, voters see the election as a conflict of two absolutely antithetical visions.

On the one hand, is the prior Trump 2017-20 concrete record: border security, no major wars abroad, calm in the Middle East, a deterred Russia, Iran, and China, low inflation, low interest rates, lower crime, lower taxes, strong deterrent military -- and opposition to mandatory electric vehicle mandates, biological males competing in women's sports, and the woke/DEI agenda.

On the other hand, is the Biden-Harris 2021-2024 record: the unchecked entry of 12-20 million illegal aliens and a destroyed border. People still struggle under Biden-Harris's earlier hyperinflation and high interest rates. The horrific regional wars in Ukraine and the Middle East continue. Biden-Harris embraces the unpopular DEI/Woke agenda.

Harris herself knows that the Biden-Harris years were a failure. That is why she has shed almost all of their hard left-wing agendas -- policies she has embraced for much of her adult life.

So suddenly, in the last 90 or so days, Harris has completely flipped and flopped.

Now she is for more of, not defunding, the police. She pivots for a secure border, not 20 million illegal aliens pouring across it. Harris brags about fossil fuel energy, not banning fracking, and for increasing, not cutting, defense.

In fact, several endangered incumbent Democratic senators in swing states are claiming more allegiance to Trump's issues than identifying with Harris and her unpopular record as vice president.

Voters likely conclude that if Trump doubles down on his record, while even Harris and many senators temporarily piggyback on it, then it must be more effective and popular than Harris's own.

Second, Harris now claims Trump is a fascist and insurrectionist.

But mouthing ad nausaem "January 6th" no longer persuades voters that Trump is a danger to anyone. They recall that Harris bragged of the far more violent demonstrations of 2020 -- 35 killed, $2 billion in damage, 1,500 law enforcement officers injured, 14,000 arrested -- that the unrest would not and "should not" stop, while drumming up support to bail out jailed violent protestors.

Nor does the slur that Trump is a fascist resonate. The Obama and Biden-Harris administrations weaponized the CIA and FBI to interfere in the 2016 and 2020 elections by peddling the fake Steele dossier and suppressing all the embarrassing news about Hunter Biden's incriminating laptop.

Trump certainly did not coordinate, as Biden did, with local, state, and federal prosecutors to wage lawfare prosecutions to destroy his political opponents. He did not use the FBI to partner with social media to suppress the news.

Neither Trump nor his supporters tried to remove Biden from state ballots.

The Republican House majority did not impeach Biden twice despite the Biden family's corruption and Joe Biden's unlawful, decades-long removal of classified papers to several insecure private residences.

Trump and the Republicans never coercively removed the party's primary-winning nominee. They did not nullify the will of 14 million primary voters. And in backroom fashion, they did not anoint a candidate who had never entered a single primary in her life.

Nor did Trump support packing the Supreme Court. He does not seek unconstitutional means of destroying the Electoral College. He is not demanding an end to the Senate filibuster or the creation of two new states to obtain four partisan senate seats.

Third, as for Trump being "unfit" and lacking "decorum," it depends on what were the Biden-Harris standards?

Having a trans activist reveal his breasts on camera at a White House "pride party?"

Biden's reportedly calling Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu "a f--ing idiot" and "son of a b--ch?" Bragging about locking Trump up, while waging lawfare against him?

Unleashing son Hunter Biden with impunity to shake down foreign governments?

The election will not be decided on these empty talking points or fake media-generated narratives.

Instead, only two criteria matter: Which candidate's past record and current agenda best appeal to voters? And which candidate seems the most authentic and genuine?

Latest Poll of Young Black and Latino Male Voters Has to Embarrass Dems

 

That’s brutal. No matter how you cut it, the fact that Democrats have lost significant ground with black and Latino male voters must embarrass the Democrats. For many, I’m sure they dismissed the polls as outliers. It can't be ignored in the two-week stretch here. Trump looks like he will have the best performance with black voters since Nixon (via Politico): 

A new poll that includes large oversamples of young voters of color shows Donald Trump has massively increased his support among groups that he previously performed poorly with in 2020. 

[…]

The GenForward survey, which ran from Sept. 26 to Oct. 6 by the University of Chicago and included 2,359 eligible voters 18 to 40 years old, included some fascinating findings: 

  • A quarter of young Black men are supporting Trump. (Black men overall backed President Joe Biden nearly nine to one in 2020.)
  • 44 percent of young Latino men said they'd back Trump, an improvement over the roughly 38 percent who backed him in 2020.
  • For her part, Harris is at 58 percent with Black men, 37 percent with Latinos and 57 percent with Asian American and Pacific Islander men.
  • Kamala Harris is doing incredibly well among women of color. A majority of Black (63 percent), Asian American and Pacific Islander (60 percent) and Latina (55 percent) women say they will vote for Harris.
  • White women are nearly evenly split between Harris (44 percent) and Trump (40 percent). 

Yet, Harris remains underwater with black women compared to Biden’s 2020 numbers. 

Nate Cohn at The New York Times offered five reasons why we’re seeing a shift with these key Democratic voter groups:

  1. They don’t mind the alleged dog whistles
  2. Hope and Change is dead
  3. They’re concerned about the economy
  4. They’re not offended; they’re entertained
  5. Trump is ‘normal’ to these voters now

Harris: The First Amendment Must Take a Back Seat to This 'Fundamental Freedom' for her Banana Republic madness

 

In an interview with NBC News on Tuesday, Vice President Kamala Harris lamented America's divisive politics, arguing that her desire to 'turn the page' is really about "closing the page" -- whatever that means -- on "an era that suggests Americans are divided."  It's true that Americans are divided.  Figures in both major political parties and across the political spectrum bear some responsibility for that reality, including both her and her opponent.  Part of the polarization and acrimony is stoked and fueled for cynical purposes.  But a lot of it is simply a reflection of profound differences on policies and values.  Voters have divergent views on what they want the country to look like, what sort of leaders they want to wield power, and what our priorities should be.  Part of the genius of our founding is that America's system of government was designed to push many important decisions on such matters down to the state and local level, allowing people to shape their communities in alignment with their values.  This allows those disaffected by what's happening around them to either seek and make change close to home, or have an option to resettle in a community that may be a better fit.  


Kamala Harris holds a top-down, command-and-control worldview.  She is a California leftist whose vision for the country, as repeatedly articulated and illustrated during her start-from-scratch presidential campaign in the 2020 cycle, is to impose California's hardcore brand of identity-driven leftism upon the rest of the country.  She was a zealous advocate for bans, mandates, and all manner of state coercion -- as long as such blunt instruments served her ideological agenda.  During her current, truncated, election-nullifying, plug-and-play presidential campaign, she is trying to pretend the previous version of herself doesn't exist, or is temporarily irrelevant.  She doesn't believe any of those things anymore, or won't pursue them in office, anonymous aids assure us through journalists.  When given opportunities to explain -- really explain -- any of these supposed flip-flops, however, Harris has steadfastly declined.  Her answers are either vague and non-responsive, or simply non-existent.  She would very much like middle-of-the-road voters to believe that she's not the extremist she ran as last time (and the Senator she governed as).  She's more of a pragmatic Democrat who just wants to bring us all together, you see.  Kind of like Joe Biden promised to be.  But not quite like him, per se.  Let's not talk or think about him, please.  

She would also prefer to opt out of any insight into what she actually believes, or why, or why that has (ostensibly) changed so dramatically in such short order.  She does not appreciate your questions about it, thank you very much.  But amid her jarring policy makeover, and her phony hand-wringing about unity and "closing the page" on divisiveness, there's one issue on which she is truly passionate.  She is a fanatical enthusiast on unlimited abortion-on-demand, at any stage of pregnancy, funded by taxpayers.  She has occasionally been asked if she could name a single limitation or restriction on abortion that she might support.  She has deflected away from this challenge because the ghastly truth, based on legislation she has championed, is that she emphatically opposes any conceivable limitation.  Thus, in the very same interview in which she bemoaned our tragic divisions, she promptly rejected a modest abortion olive branch floated by the NBC journalist.  Might she be comfortable with 'religious exemptions' on abortion, Hallie Jackson asked, referring to allowing religious practitioners and institutions like Catholic hospitals to decline to provide, finance, or otherwise participate in abortions?  Answer:


As many people have observed, Harris frames unlimited abortion as a "fundamental freedom," but not religious freedom.  Her worldview, as modeled in her state, are deeply hostile to a core tenet of the First Amendment.  She and her fellow leftists eagerly would, and have, trample on actual fundamental American freedoms, in the name of unfettered abortion.  She is so, ahem, pro-"choice" that she believes all of us should pay for other people's elective abortions, without any restrictions, and that religious and other conscientious objectors to abortion, which literally stops a human heart, within the healthcare space must be forced to participate in abortions.  No exceptions.  No exemptions.  She even selected a running mate who repealed protections for infants born alive during failed abortions, and who eliminated laws barring coercing women into abortions.  "Choice," you see.

The Supreme Court, at least as it's currently composed, would likely have something to say about this radical, disturbing vision if or when Harris tried to crush the First Amendment in service of her abortion fanaticism.  But Harris has also embraced Supreme Court "reform," including expressing an openness to the Banana Republic madness of packing the Court by adding additional seats.  Her running mate recently confessed to leftist donors in California that they all know the Electoral College should be done away with, too.  Among many other reasons, when the 2024 Democratic ticket tries to pose as the guardians of institutions and "our democracy," they do not deserve to be believed or taken seriously.  It's also why when Trump-skeptical conservatives and independents are lectured about how 'important' it is to support Harris in this election, supposedly for the security of those cherished institutions and norms, rejecting those insulting sermons is an easy, principled, rational call.

For Kamala Harris, Abortion Isn’t About Freedom; It’s About Force

 

Democratic Party presidential candidate Kamala Harris has struggled to articulate issues that resonate with voters in the campaign’s final days. Other than bland assurances about “an opportunity economy” and growing up “a middle-class kid,” the only issue Harris seems both emphatic and explicit about is abortion.

At a recent rally in Wisconsin, Harris was once again promoting the need for a federal law “codifying” Roe v. Wade when two college students shouted out, “Jesus is Lord!” In response, Harris joked, “Oh, you guys are at the wrong rally. … I think you meant to go to the smaller one down the street.”

The “official” line is that this was a jab at former President Donald Trump’s upcoming event in Detroit. But the impromptu message was not lost on Americans: People who think Jesus is Lord apparently don’t belong at Harris’ campaign events and rallies where attendees do believe that Jesus is Lord will be smaller than those where Harris is the keynote.

Mm-kay.

There are other buried messages in Harris’ constant drumbeat of abortion, abortion, abortion. She casts it as a matter of personal freedom, arguing that women should have the right to “control their own bodies.” But if Harris finds her way into the White House — and certainly if President Harris has a Democrat-controlled Congress willing to do her bidding — abortion will not be a matter of freedom but a matter of force.

Harris was uncharacteristically overt about this during a recent interview with NBC News’s Hallie Jackson. When Jackson asked whether Harris would support “religious exemptions” for opponents of abortion, Harris was adamant: “I don’t think we should be making concessions when we’re talking about a fundamental freedom to make decisions about your own body.”

Pressed by Jackson about the limitations that might come with a Republican-controlled Congress, Harris would brook no compromise. “(A) basic freedom has been taken from the women of America: the freedom to make decisions about their own body,” Harris insisted. “And that cannot be negotiable.”

One need only look at Harris’ record as California attorney general to see what she means when she says abortion is non-negotiable.

When California’s Reproductive FACT Act became law in 2015, Harris, as AG, issued a statement praising the law and taking credit for its co-sponsorship. The law targeted pro-life pregnancy resource centers, mandating that they promote abortion clinics (on penalty of heavy fines if they refused). It was struck down as unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court in NIFLA v. Becerra in 2018.

Harris also targeted pro-life activist and investigative journalist David Daleiden, who obtained shocking undercover footage of Planned Parenthood abortionists bragging — in public — about selling the organs and body parts of aborted fetuses, some past viability. Harris had Daleiden’s home raided, arrested him, charged him with multiple felonies (which even the Los Angeles Times called a “disturbing overreach”), seized the damning footage (which has since been released), and changed the law to make similar recordings illegal.

Harris’ disregard for the religious freedoms of medical care professionals will not be limited to abortion. Anything she claims is a “right” will be justification for comparable government coercion, including the chemical castration and physically mutilating surgeries of so-called “gender-affirming care,” assisted suicide, and euthanasia. Physicians who refuse to perform these procedures will have their licenses revoked. Nurses who refuse to help will be fired. Hospitals and clinics that object will be shut down.

In this respect, Harris will be following in the footsteps of former President Barack Obama, whose administration forced religious institutions — including orders of Catholic nuns — to offer abortifacient contraception and surgical sterilization as part of the insurance coverage they provided for their employees, a policy that prompted lawsuits by the University of Notre Dame and the Little Sisters of the Poor, among other religiously affiliated organizations.

After years of litigation, the U.S. Supreme Court also struck down the Obama administration’s regulations, ruling that they provided inadequate conscience protection.

(Side note: Obama has been dragged out to stump for Harris in an obvious attempt to prop up her flagging poll numbers. At a campaign appearance earlier this week, Obama said, “I don’t understand how we got so toxic and just so divided and so bitter.” Seriously? Here’s a clue: Calling those who disagree with you “bitter” people who “cling to their guns or their religion” and then using government power to force them to violate their religious beliefs is a good recipe for toxicity and division.)

Former Hawai’ian congressional Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, who left the Democratic Party two years ago and endorsed Trump earlier this year, announced that she had officially joined the Republican Party at a Trump rally in Greensboro, North Carolina, this week. In Gabbard’s announcement, she called the Republican Party “the party of the people, the party of peace … the party of equality, the party of common sense.” Gabbard lamented the changes in the Democratic Party, describing it as “completely unrecognizable.”

She’s not alone. Traditional and social media are filled with the personal accounts of former Democrats — politicians like former presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and U.S. Sens. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, academics Alan Dershowitz and Bret Weinstein, journalists Matt Taibbi and Ana Kasparian, and countless ordinary people — who are disgusted that the Democratic Party has become the party of corporate power and government abuse: censorship, deliberate disinformation, political persecution, weaponization of law enforcement and constant war.

Harris may have thought it funny to tell two Christian boys they were at “the wrong rally.” But if you’re a Democrat who’s also a practicing Catholic or Christian, a member of any faith tradition that holds life to be sacrosanct, or simply an American who believes strongly in the individual freedoms guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution, you’re not only at the wrong rally; you’re in the wrong party.

Team Harris’ Campaign of Condescension Draws Pushback

 

The election is finally shaping up to be not only liberal Democrat Kamala Harris versus conservative Republican Donald Trump.

Instead, it has become a larger contest between those who talk down to their fellow Americans and those who are increasingly sick and tired of being lectured.

How smart is it, for example, for Harris supporters to claim nonstop that ex-President Trump is a fascist dictator—and thus, by extension, those also who vote for him?

Female voters poll in favor of Harris. Trump enjoys a similar, although likely somewhat smaller, majority margin of male voters.

Yet Harris—along with campaign surrogates Barack Obama and Bill Clinton—has been lecturing both black and white male voters nonstop that they are misled.

Or they supposedly suffer from false consciousness—as if they have no clue that Harris and her progressive agenda are really in their own self-interest.

Such haughtiness reached a zenith when Harris ran ads of actors costumed as supposedly working-class men. They voiced scripted talking points to prove that “real” men are progressive Harris supporters.

But the actors were so patently ridiculous, their canned lines so unreal, that most viewers likely thought the ads were run by Trump himself—to show how arrogant, out-of-touch elites must imagine how the so-called “clingers” and “deplorables” think and talk.

The Trump campaign also tries all sorts of strategies to win over female voters, from promising to rectify the Biden-Harris hyperinflation to reducing spiraling crime in towns and cities.

But one method it avoids is claiming women are ignorant of their real self-interest and deluded by Harris, accurately assuming that a candidate does not win voters by belittling their intelligence.

Harris and Obama both dressed down black men, claiming they are especially culpable for not voting en masse for Harris—even though a far higher percentage of black males will vote for Harris than for Trump.

This hectoring the electorate on its supposed ignorance or moral shortcomings has become a Harris campaign trademark.

To Harris, objecting to 10 million to 12 million foreign nationals entering the country illegally without background checks during the Biden-Harris administration is supposedly a sign of a lack of compassion.

And claiming that a current declining rate of illegal immigration should allay voters’ supposed paranoias utterly ignores the millions of illegal aliens who were all but welcomed in by Biden-Harris before the 2024 election cycle.

Voters are also talked down to ad nauseam that they do not appreciate the Biden-Harris economy, given the rate of inflation is falling.

True. But most voters go shopping in a manner politicians do not.

So, they resent such top-down sermons. They know best that prices for staple foods, fuel, insurance, and housing have spiked by some 20% to 30% since 2021—and stayed astronomically high.

Currently, the auto industry is in crisis. Its huge inventory of electric vehicles sits unwanted and unsold. Harris and the Left, remember, mandated all sorts of EV standards in their war against the internal combustion engine.

Then the proverbial people revolted against the comparatively limited range of EVs and the difficulty in finding accessible and quick-charging stations.

So, the free market and consumer demand ignored the increasingly strident lectures.

Likewise, Harris pontificated that crime that had spiked from 2021 to 2023 is now not all that bad.

But voters know all too well that their major cities are now unsafe. They sense one reason this year that crime is not soaring as it was two years ago is because it had gotten so bad that any further commensurate increases would have made life utterly unlivable.

The Harris campaign was further hurt by past videos that keep popping up of Harris lecturing voters about how they either must think correctly or remain cluelessly selfish or ignorant.

So, a recent clip surfaced on Columbus Day 2021 of Harris lecturing America about Western civilization’s “shameful” sins in discovering the New World.

Another video reveals Harris warning the country in 2020 on national television that the massive post-George Floyd demonstrations—that had turned violent and deadly—would not and should not stop, as if the country had to pay collective penance for its sins.

This 2024 race may be becoming analogous to an October 1980 teachable moment.

Then a preachy and sanctimonious incumbent President Jimmy Carter—ahead in the final October polls over challenger Ronald Reagan—finally turned off voters for good.

The previously underdog Reagan won in a landslide for a variety of reasons. But certainly, one explanation was that the electorate had finally collectively shrugged off their weariness. They were sick and tired of Carter’s downer lectures about how they were wrong and culpable.

Reagan, however, reminded voters that America was better than all of the alternatives, needed not be perfect to be good, and had nothing to apologize for.

The same contrast will likely determine the election of 2024.

Wednesday, October 16, 2024

How to Blow Up the Middle East War in 5 Easy Steps

 

When Joe Biden became president, the Middle East was calm. Now it is in the midst of a multifront war.

So quiet was the inheritance from the prior Trump administration that nearly three years later, on Sept. 29, 2023—and just eight days before the Oct. 7 Hamas massacre of Israelis—Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, could still brag that “the Middle East region is quieter today than it has been in two decades.”

So, what exactly happened to the inherited calm that led to the current nonstop chaos of the present?

In a word, theocratic Iran—the nexus of almost all current Middle East terrorism and conflict—was unleashed by Team Biden after having been neutered by the Trump administration.

The Biden-Harris administration adopted a five-step revisionist protocol that appeased and encouraged Iran and its terrorist surrogates Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis.

The result was a near guarantee that something akin to the Oct. 7 massacres would inevitably follow—along with a subsequent year of violence that has now engulfed the Middle East.

First, on the 2020 campaign trail, Biden damned longtime American ally Saudi Arabia as a “pariah.”

He overturned the policies of both the previous Obama and Trump administrations by siding with the Iranian-supplied terrorist Houthis in their war on Saudi Arabia.

Biden accused the kingdom of war crimes, warning it would “be held accountable” for its actions in Yemen. Biden-Harris took the murderous Houthis off the U.S. terrorist list.

Almost immediately followed continuous Houthi attacks on international shipping, Israel, and U.S. warships—rendering the Red Sea, the entryway to the Suez Canal, de facto closed to international maritime transit.

Worse still, by the time of the 2022 midterms, when spiraling gas prices threatened Democratic congressional majorities, Biden opportunistically flipped and implored Saudi Arabia to pump more oil to lower world prices before the November election. Appearing obnoxious and then obsequious to an old Middle East ally is a prescription for regional chaos.

Second, Biden-Harris nihilistically killed off the Trump administration’s “Abraham Accords.” That diplomatic breakthrough had proved a successful blueprint for moderate Arab nations to seek detente with Israel, ending decades of hostilities to unite against the common Middle East threat of Iran.

Third, Biden begged Iran to reenter the appeasing, so-called Iran Deal that virtually had ensured that Iran would eventually get the bomb.

Worse yet, it dropped oil sanctions against the theocracy, allowing a near-destitute Iran to recoup $100 billion in profits. And it green-lighted $6 billion in hostage ransoms to Tehran.

An enriched Tehran immediately sent billions of dollars in support and weapons to the anti-Western terrorists of Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis to attack Israel, Americans, and international shipping. Iran soon began partnering with China and Russia to form a new anti-American axis.

Biden-Harris also fled abruptly from Afghanistan, abandoning billions in weapons and American contractors. The humiliation thus virtually destroyed American deterrence in the Middle East, inciting enemies and endangering friends.

Fourth, Biden-Harris restored hundreds of millions of dollars in aid to the West Bank and Gaza, but without any guarantees that the Palestinian Authority and Hamas would desist from their past serial terrorist acts.

In the case of Hamas, U.S. and Western “humanitarian aid” simply freed up more fungible dollars in Gaza to arm Hamas and to expand its subterranean tunnel complex essential to its Oct. 7 massacres and hostage-taking.

Fifth, from the outset of the ensuing increased tensions, Biden-Harris began pressuring the Israelis to act “proportionally” in responding to the massacre of some 1,200 Israelis and nearly 20,000 missiles, rockets, and drones launched at their homeland from Iran, the Houthis, Hamas, and Hezbollah.

Such straitjacketing of our closest Middle East friend further signaled the Iranian-backed terrorists that there was now “daylight” between the U.S. and its closest regional ally. That opportunity provided still further incentives for Iran to test just how far it could safely go in attacking Israel.

But why did Biden-Harris so foolishly ignite the Middle East?

In part, the administration naively tried to resurrect the old, discredited Obama administration notion of “creative tension”—of empowering a rogue Iran and its terrorists to play off Israel and the moderate Arab regimes, as a new sort of balance of power in the region.

In part, Biden-Harris was caving to increased antisemitism at home and the rise of powerful, pro-Palestinian groups on U.S. campuses and in critical swing Electoral College states.

In part, Biden-Harris was naive and gullible. The two bought into the anti-Americanism and anti-Israel boilerplate of our enemies. So, they thought to make amends by seeing Iran and its terrorists as the moral equivalent of democratic, pro-American Israel.

Their malignant legacy is the current Middle East disaster.

Try a Little Honesty About Israel

 

Both the Harris-Walz presidential ticket and now lame-duck President Joe Biden keep insisting that they are Israel’s best friend.

A snarly Biden recently bragged at a contentious press conference, “No administration has helped Israel more than I have. None, none, none. And I think [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu] should remember that.”

Yet the thin-skinned and triggered Biden’s prickliness poorly hid—or perhaps revealed—the truth: This current administration knows that it is responsible for the current explosion of the Middle East and the particular dilemmas of Israel.

Biden further revealed his blame-gaming of the Israeli government when asked another loaded question about purported Netanyahu election interference, saying, “Whether he’s trying to influence the election, I don’t know.”

Election interference?

Biden apparently forgot who just flew Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy into swing-state Pennsylvania, just as early and mail-in voting there began, to lobby for more aid even as he trashed candidates Donald Trump and JD Vance to a left-wing magazine.

Recently, Democratic candidate Vice President Kamala Harris refused to say whether the Netanyahu administration is even an ally of the United States.

Her Democratic running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, could not state whether the Democratic ticket would approve of an Israeli response—by either targeting the Iranian nuclear bomb program or its oil fields and exporting facilities—to some 500 Iranian missiles and rockets that hit the Jewish state.

Another Bob Woodward racy and gossipy tell-all book just appeared. It alleges that Biden despised Netanyahu and has reportedly smeared him to aides: “That son of a b—-, Bibi Netanyahu, he’s a bad guy. He’s a bad f–king guy!”

What are we to make of this Biden-Harris-Walz mess?

It is an election year and one of the closest races in modern memory. Biden and his would-be successors, Harris-Walz, know that support for Israel is a bipartisan cornerstone of U.S. foreign policy and critical for Democratic unity.

Yet they feel they must also pander to anti-Israel, Muslim-American voters who may determine the Electoral College votes of critical swing-state Michigan.

Democratic politicos square that circle by claiming they support Israel—despite damning the conservative Netanyahu. That way they seek to blame Netanyahu for alienating Arab and Muslim-American voters, while they do not alienate left-wing Jewish and pro-Israeli Democrats.

For all the invective, a demonized Netanyahu is now regaining public support in Israel. The Israeli public approves of his near-destruction of Hamas, the ongoing brilliant Israeli emasculation of Hezbollah, and Israel’s revelations that the once widely feared terrorist regime in Iran may in fact well prove to be a paper tiger.

Biden national security adviser Jake Sullivan admitted just eight days before the Oct. 7 massacres that “the Middle East region is quieter today than it has been in two decades.”

His boast was an admission that Biden and Harris had inherited from the prior Trump administration a stable Middle East.

So, what blew up Sullivan’s quietude?

Certainly not Netanyahu or Israel in general.

It was the terrorists of Hamas who surprise-attacked and killed 1,200 Israeli civilians during peace and a Jewish holiday.

Their slaughtering, torturing, raping, and hostage-taking revealed a level of precivilization barbarism rarely seen in the modern era.

Israel was simultaneously targeted by rockets from Hamas and Hezbollah that would eventually number more than 20,000.

It did not respond to the bloodbath with a full-scale invasion of Gaza until Oct. 27, some three weeks after the slaughtering.

During that interim, for most of the Muslim world and both U.S. Muslim communities and on American campuses, there was rejoicing at the news of slaughtered Jews.

For over three years, the Biden administration had signaled Israel’s enemies that it no longer acted like a close ally of the past.

After it all, Biden-Harris lifted sanctions on a hostile Iran, giving it $100 billion in oil windfalls. It begged Iran to reenter the disastrous Iran deal. It abandoned the Abraham Accords. It lifted the terrorist designation from the terrorist Houthis. It restored fungible aid to the Hamas tunnel builders. It gave new aid to Hezbollah-controlled Lebanon.

Israel’s enemies got the Biden message: Attack the Jewish state, and perhaps Americans for the first time in a half-century may not really mind that much.

And so they did, in unison.

Rather than admitting their own role in igniting the Middle East, Biden and Harris now blame the victims of their own incendiary foreign policy.

The final irony?

Israel has concluded that Biden-Harris foolhardiness can be toxic and endanger its very survival—and so, will not agree to its own suicide.

Instead, Israel seeks to finish a multifaceted war it did not seek. And one of whose beneficiaries from Israeli blood and treasure will be the U.S. itself, given Israel is now systematically weakening America’s own existential enemies.

Tuesday, October 08, 2024

Do We Want a Constitutional Government or Not?

 

“The government of the United States is a definite government, confined to specific objects.  It is not like the state governments, whose powers are more general.  Charity is no part of the legislative duty of the government.”

“I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents.”

Sadly, the answer to the question that is the title of this column is “no,” Americans no longer want a constitutional government (at least not our current Constitution), nor do we have such.  The author of both the quotes above is James Madison, the man given most credit for writing America’s Constitution.  If anyone should know what the Constitution means, it’s because he wrote it.   Please note his words carefully—“Charity is no part of the legislative duty of government.”  Indeed, (the second quote), where is the Constitution clause giving the national government the right to spend taxpayer’s money on charity?  As Madison said, the states can do it; that’s what the 10th Amendment authorizes.  However, nothing in the Constitutionally given powers to Congress says anything about spending taxpayer money on charity.  So says James Madison, the main author of our Constitution.

Republicans—most of them—have been gleefully bashing the Biden administration for being slow in responding to the needs of people in southern states due to the damages caused by Hurricane Helene.  “Where is the federal government?”  “They don’t care about red states,” and there is probably much truth to that.  Americans now believe when there is a national catastrophe, that the feds are supposed to jump in with whatever money is necessary.  Remember George W. Bush and Hurricane Katrina?  He moved too slowly and was crucified for it.  Charity is now a power of the national government.

Where did we get that?  Certainly not from the Constitution, James Madison being our witness.  But then, 99% of what the federal government does today couldn’t be found in the Constitution if you read it until your eyeballs fell out.  Washington, D.C., except in some structural matters that do not relate directly to power, pays absolutely no attention—none, zero, zilch—to what the Constitution actually says.  And that applies to all three branches—Congress, the President, AND the Supreme Court.

There were reasons why our Founders did not assign charity as one of the powers of the national government.  They knew history and the tendency of government to grow in power at the expense of the freedoms of the people, and they intended to try to prevent that.  They also understood that charity and welfare were no business of government, and for very good reasons.  And those reasons mostly have to do with the nature and object of government and what government can and cannot do effectively.

Our Founding Fathers well understood that the nationalization of government is the nationalization of force because everything the government does is by force or the threat thereof.  Citizens know that paying taxes is necessary, but we don’t generally do it out of the goodness of our hearts, and most of us try to pay as little as possible.  But there is this thing called the “IRS.” They don’t ask for charity, and they don’t politely request we cough up our hard-earned cash.  And then say, “Oh, it’s ok if you don’t, it’s your choice.”  There is force behind everything the government does.

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And force is the very antithesis of charity.  “We are going to force you to be charitable.”  That is an oxymoron if ever one existed.  And so, the Founders didn’t put “charity” in the Constitution.  If we want the national government to force us to be charitable, which our Founders didn’t, then we need to put that in the Constitution.  Otherwise, don’t ever say the United States government has a Constitutional right to provide charity for hurricane victims.  Such is NOT in our Constitution.

The Founders also understood quite well that the people (especially government) who give you money can control you, can tell you what to do, and if you don’t do it, they can take away the money (or, in the case of government, worse than that).  Power-loving politicians know this principle very well.  Government telling you what to do isn’t exactly “freedom.” Every dime the government takes from me is one dime more power they have, and one dime less free I am.  Government takes, it doesn’t give, and when it DOES give, it is only because it has first taken something from us, thereby lessening our freedom by just that much.  And, to get what government gives us we have to do what government tells us.  You want government charity?  Then you’ll have to do what government tells you to do.  And “a government big enough to give you everything you want is strong enough to take everything you have” (Thomas Jefferson). 

Helping people in distress is certainly a very good, and needed, thing.  But it isn’t in the Constitution as a power given to the national government.  Charity comes from the heart, which a government does not possess.  Individuals, churches, charitable organizations—these are the groups, historically, helping the needy in times of distress, and millions of Americans have graciously and generously done so in the recent hurricane.  That’s as it should be.

My only point in this essay is, if we want Washington to do so much of our charity for us, then the Constitution needs to be amended to add that power, from the states, to the national government.  That’s what the Constitution says.  And then we’ll have to expect our government to grow in power at the expense of our freedom.  Which is exactly what is has done over American history.        

And that is exactly what our Founders warned us about and why we fought a civil war.

Kamala Just Gave the Wrong Answer on The View

 

Vice President Kamala Harris is in New York City Tuesday, a stop on her friendly media tour this week, and gave an interview to the ladies of The View. 

Throughout her campaign, which started in July when President Joe Biden abruptly left the 2024 campaign trail and she quickly ascended as the Democratic nominee, Harris has attempted to distance herself from Biden’s record — a record that is very unpopular with voters. 

Kamala Harris: “They’ve been very vague on the VP’s agenda because she’s trying to run away from the unpopularity of the Biden agenda and she can’t fall back on her 2019/2020 stances because they are very far left and unpopular with those outside of… pic.twitter.com/JrV4LGO1gk— TV News Now (@TVNewsNow) August 19, 2024

Today, she fully embraced the Biden-Harris White House tenure and the Trump campaign took notice. 

“If anything, would you have done something differently than President Biden during the past four years?”

KAMALA: “There is not a thing that comes to mind.”

🚨🚨🚨 pic.twitter.com/kvS3zkMc4p— Trump War Room (@TrumpWarRoom) October 8, 2024

Harris’ comments come as Trump continues to lead with swing state voters on top issues of the economy and illegal immigration. Biden’s approval continues to sit in the high 30s and low 40s. 

The president’s party has never (at least back to 1980) won another term in the White House with so few Americans saying the U.S. is on the right track (28%, today).

The average when the prez party loses (25%) is far closer to today’s number, though there is a bit of a twist. pic.twitter.com/hZtWRMW9mn— (((Harry Enten))) (@ForecasterEnten) October 4, 2024

How Is Anyone Backing Kamala?

 Nice President Kamala Harris spent some time on “60 Minutes” talking about…well, I don’t really know.

I know she was asked a bunch of questions and gave responses, but that didn’t clarify anything for anyone, really. In fact, following up on the discussion here a couple of days later, I’m left wondering who in the world is voting for her.

RealClearPolitics shows the race between her and Donald Trump is neck and neck, with her having a slight edge but inside the margin of error, so someone is saying they support her, but I’m left wondering why.

I get that Donald Trump is loud, brash, and annoys a whole lot of people. I’m not a fan of his style of politics in the least, though at least his policies are generally a far cry better than anything the Democrats have offered. That’s even true of the issues I don’t agree with him on if I’m being fair, though that’s all beside the point.

But while she was asked questions on “60 Minutes” and gave responses, she didn’t answer all that much. It was just the latest example of word salad from the league leader in that category.

And this is just after Harris’ interview on a podcast called “Call Her Daddy,” which, let’s just note, has nothing at all to do with parenting.

These, however, are two of the very few interviews the vice president has given, and based on the nothingness that comes out of her mouth, that was probably the smartest tactical decision her campaign could have made.

Harris also tried to pick a fight with Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, saying he was ducking her hurricane-related calls.

Of course, President Joe Biden says he’s talked to DeSantis and offered support should the state need it with Hurricane Milton bearing down on it.

This isn’t the first time the president has stepped all over one of Harris’ talking points, either. Couple these with her claims that she worked at a McDonald’s that literally no one can prove she worked at. Not even a former coworker stepped up and said, “Yeah, I worked with her.” Nothing.

The media is largely silent on fact-checking the next Anointed One that no one seems to actually like, but if Trump gets a little boisterous or his running mate, Senator JD Vance, engages in some hyperbole about eggs, everyone comes out of the woodwork to debunk what they said.

Which might well explain much of it. 

Kamala Harris lacks substance in almost every way, but because she’s presented as if she’s the messiah for democracy, a lot of the lemmings who simply do as the media tells them will trot out to vote. I just can’t see how anyone can look at her, follow the campaign, and still decide she’s the best choice.

It boggles the mind that anyone could be that stupid.

Then again, a lot of those folks don’t know what bathroom to use or what a woman is, so I don’t see why I’m so surprised.

Mayorkas Was Questioned If FEMA Has Enough Resources for Hurricane Milton. Here’s What He Said.

 

Category 4 Hurricane Milton is closing in on Florida this week. This comes just after Hurricane Helene wreaked devastation in North Carolina and other areas of the southeast. 

Last week, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas admitted that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) did not have long-term funding to help the victims of Hurricane Helene. As Townhall reported, over a billion FEMA dollars were spent on illegal immigrants in recent years.

“We are meeting the immediate needs with the money that we have. We are expecting another hurricane hitting,” Mayorkas said, according to the Associated Press. “FEMA does not have the funds to make it through the season.”

“The New York Times is reporting that FEMA is running out of staff to respond to this hurricane that seems to be barreling towards Florida…Does FEMA have what it needs to respond to the storm?” former White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki asked Mayorkas on MSNBC.

“Yes it does, quite clearly. Everybody should rest confident that FEMA has the resources. We already have 900 personnel deployed, prepositioned, in Florida. People who are responding to Hurricane Helene…We are there. We have search and rescue teams, the Army Corps of Engineers are there. We are ready. We have the personnel…We can respond to multiple events at a single time.,” Mayorkas stated.

.@SecMayorkas to @jrpsaki: “You and I both remember a time when an extreme weather event actually brought people together. Now, unfortunately, tragically, quite frankly, it is politicized… the people who are victimized by the natural disaster are the ones who will suffer.” pic.twitter.com/z0RocPxva3— Inside with Jen Psaki (@InsideWithPsaki) October 8, 2024

Last week, Townhall covered how several whistleblowers have come forward alleging that FEMA misappropriated funds in the wake of Hurricane Helene. This was outlined in a letter to Mayorkas from Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL). 

“FEMA has wasted taxpayer funds, misappropriated funds, and left other federal, state, and local responders without deployment orders on the ground,” the letter stated. “As reported and further confirmed by my office, hundreds, if not thousands, of service members were deployed by the Department of Defense to North Carolina and have say idle, waiting for FEMA.”

“We have confirmed FEMA employees deployed, on the clock, awaiting orders in hotels. FEMA pre-disaster aid was withheld, exacerbating the emergency. It is also public that NGOs have purchased airline tickets for migrants through the use of FEMA funds,” it added. 

“The aftermath of Hurricane Helene is a major disaster, and your waste and unpreparedness are leaving Americans in distress – unable to access food, water, or medicine – and expecting help, with none coming,” it continued.

BREAKING: FEMA whistleblowers have come forward alleging that the agency misappropriated funds in the wake of Helene, withheld pre-disaster aid, and that first responders and service members have been waiting in hotels without deployment orders. pic.twitter.com/uf0XrspRTz— Greg Price (@greg_price11) October 4, 2024

Harris Has a New Excuse for Her Policy Flip Flopping

 

During an interview with 60 Minutes Tuesday night, Vice President Kamala Harris gave a new excuse about why voters don’t trust her latest and superficial policy positions. 

This might be the worst television interview by a candidate in U.S. presidential history.

Bill Whitaker: “You’ve changed your positions so much that no one believes anything.”

Harris: “Well, I’m the vice president and I travel a lot.”pic.twitter.com/5T33OawnD5— Tim Murtaugh (@TimMurtaugh) October 8, 2024

The explaination comes after months of Team Harris desperately trying to walk back far left positions espoused by the presidential candidate during her failed 2020 campaign and her record as the most progressive member of the U.S. Senate – even beating out self proclaimed socialist Senator Bernie Sanders.

Former President Donald Trump responded to the interview on Truth Social. 

“The Interview on 60 Minutes with Comrade Kamala Harris is considered by many of those who reviewed it, the WORST Interview they have ever seen. She literally had no idea what she was talking about, and it was an embarrassment to our Country that a Major Party Candidate would be so completely inept. In addition, her Incompetence on ‘helping’ people through the devastation of Hurricane Helene is being reviewed as, by far, the Worst in American History, even worse than Katrina – If that is possible! I can’t imagine anybody living in North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Florida, or Tennessee, voting for her,” Trump said. 

“Pollsters are saying that the anti, or negative, Vote in those places, and even places not affected but with people watching what took place, will be heavily against her. This is good news because November 5th is the Most Important Day in the History of our Country, and we cannot bear four more years of Incompetence. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!” he continued. 

Harris is on a friendly media blitz this week as she continues to lose ground in polling among key demographics. 

Swing State polls show Harris losing Latino men, WATCH: pic.twitter.com/QSbTeod4zQ— Brian Kilmeade (@kilmeade) October 8, 2024

Wednesday, October 02, 2024

Understanding the Orthodox Christian worldview motivating Vladimir Putin in war with Ukraine

 

It seems a good, if not vital, moment to try and look beyond the narrow analysis of the dreadful war in Ukraine provided by the vast majority of our politicians and mainstream media, given the current conflation of related and significant events all happening around the same time.

Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky is currently visiting the US to drum up further military support for his beleaguered country – including being able to fire western missiles deep into Russia – while Russian President Vladimir Putin is again warning that the nuclear option is not off the table if Russia feels threatened enough, and Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump is saying that if he becomes the next US President he will end the war in Ukraine.

Ten years or so ago, a popular documentary film on prime-time Russian television drew attention to the lessons for Russia about the fall of Byzantium. It was from Byzantium that missionaries had brought the Orthodox faith to Russia in the 10th century, and it was to the Byzantine Emperors that the Tsars of Russia had traced their line of descent, all the way back to Constantine the Great.

The film The Fall of an Empire: The Lessons of Byzantium claimed that the foundations of the modern West’s banking system derive from the Fourth Crusade’s loot of Constantinople in 1204, and also that a significant factor in the Empire’s final collapse had been its impoverishment by rapacious Western oligarchs through aggressive exploitation of trade concessions granted to them in 1082 by a cash-strapped Byzantine Emperor.

Constantinople’s sack in 1204 remains firmly embedded in the consciousness of the Orthodox East, partly because it so weakened Byzantium to the point that its final collapse became inevitable, causing Christendom’s centre of gravity to shift westward, but also because of the barbaric savagery of the Crusaders, who looted their way across Constantinople in a manner even the Vandals and Goths would have found unpalatable.

Although the Byzantines recaptured Constantinople from the Crusaders in 1261, the West’s collective failure to honour the agreement they made with the Byzantines at the Council of Florence in 1449, and to provide them with military assistance against the advancing armies of Mehmet the Conqueror, was a further contributory factor in Constantinople’s final fall to the Ottomans in 1453.

A particular source of scandal for the Orthodox East is that the Crusaders had been engaged in a Holy War. The concept of Holy War has never really been accepted by the Orthodox East, which is why Patriarch Kyrill’s support for the Russian invasion of Ukraine is so controversial within the Orthodox world.

In the West, however, since at least the time of St Augustine and his Just War Theory, later expanded on by St Thomas Aquinas in Summa Theologica, there has long been an acceptance that there are circumstances in which war can be justified, one example of which is if the war is to be fought for the “common good”.

The Byzantines avoided war as much as they possibly could, relying on diplomacy and the use of bribery instead, in order to achieve their foreign policy objectives. However, they did also accept that there are circumstances in which the oikoumene – the ordered hierarchy of subordinate, Orthodox Christian states bound by a common allegiance to the Emperor of Byzantium – might use armed force in order to protect the integrity of its people.

Importantly, as far as the Byzantines were concerned, the Empire existed not for the purposes of material profit, or for political and social “progress”, but rather to provide the basic material conditions within which the Emperor’s subjects could pursue their one, over-riding duty and purpose in life – the quest for deification (theosis), or union with God. This quest required that a man be able to master himself to the extent that he ceased to be a creature of appetite.

The Byzantines strongly believed that one of the Emperor’s sacred duties was to act as the katechon, “the one who withholds” (2 Thessalonians 2: 6-7), a biblical concept developed by the Byzantines into a political philosophy, according to which the Emperor’s most sacred duty was to act as a restraint on the rise of the Antichrist. Any threat to the existence of the Empire, so long as the Empire was led by an Emperor mindful of his duty to act as a katechon, raised, in the view of the Byzantines, the possibility of the victory of the Antichrist.

Russian President Vladimir Putin is regarded by some in the Orthodox world as a 21st-century katechon, a view of Putin that is obviously very different to the one that prevails in decision-making circles in the West and among our media.

Despite recent claims in various Western press outlets that Putin dabbles in the occult, and likes to discuss nuclear weapons policy with Mongolian shamans – as described in a recent story by UK media The Times – it is an undeniable fact that Putin is a practicing Russian Orthodox Christian, who regularly attends the Divine Liturgy, and takes guidance from Orthodox spiritual directors, known as starets, as well as from his confessor Father Tikhon Shevkunov, who directed the film The Fall of an Empire.

In much the same way that many in the Orthodox world believe that, in order to weaken the Byzantine Empire – and maximise profit – the late medieval West instigated the separation of Serbia and Bulgaria from the Empire, so too, in around 2004, the great Russian writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn warned Vladimir Putin that the US-led, neo-liberal West would set about Russia’s dismemberment by encouraging its “Balkanisation”.

Solzhenitsyn said that this policy would be justified in the name of liberal “progress” – an encouragement of the “rights” of the constituent parts of the Russian Empire to exercise the principle of self determination, and break away from Russia. In actual fact, some would argue, that dismemberment of Russia would have nothing to do with high moral principle, and everything to do with weakening Russia’s sovereignty in order to open it up to commercial exploitation by outside interests.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn, initially an atheist and later a Russian Orthodox Christian, stands within the “Slavophil” tradition of Russian intellectuals – a core belief of this tradition being that the Russian people are a Chosen People, with a unique destiny to act as a catalyst for the spiritual transformation of the world. Much of the reason for this ancient belief derives from the “Russian situation” on a boundary between East and West – long regarded as a necessary preliminary for the emergence of a new civilisation.

“Sophisticated” people in the West, of course, scoff at the idea of a people having a unique, God-given destiny, but plenty of the greatest intellectuals produced by Russia, including, for example, FM Dostoevsky and Vladimir Soloviev, fully subscribed to such a view of Russia as the bearer of a messianic mission.

If a people believe that they are descended from God, and not so much from apes, then it is not surprising perhaps if they believe that they have a God-given destiny to fulfil in life.

The Slavophils of the nineteenth century were especially exercised with the problem of how best to respond to the Enlightenment-conditioned ideas that began to penetrate Russia from the West in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

They firmly believed that the Russian Orthodox faith is a purer, spiritually superior interpretation of Christianity than Westernised versions, and that Russia, which even at the end of the 19th century had not yet fully industrialised, was in a strong position. This was due to its unique situation as a Christian country on the boundary between East and West, and it being in a position to learn from the mistakes made by the West during the latter’s process of rapid industrialisation, which the Slavophils believed had led to a degradation of European character, intelligence and creativity.

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The Slavophils were not imperialists – in fact they were probably more akin to the “off-the-grid” hippy types and eco-warriors of our times. Many, if not most, were, like Alexei Khomiakov, who had served in the Imperial Guard, high-minded, country gentlemen, nourished by the ascetic traditions of their Orthodox faith, with a deep love and respect for what they saw as the exemplary character of the Russian peasantry.

The Slavophils were absolutely determined to resist any attempt to Westernise Russia. Khomiakov, for example, was famous for wearing a kaftan when visiting his club in Moscow, rather than the Western-style frock coat that Peter the Great had ordered on the gentry as part of his efforts to Westernise and “modernise” Russia.

The Slavophil vision for Russia was of a trans-national, decentralised Russia, based around a network of village republics, rather like Gandhi’s vision for a post-independence India, all held together under the leadership of a father figure, the Tsar Autocrat, protector of the Orthodox faith, spiritually bound to the service of his people through the act of solemn anointing at his coronation.

The Slavophil vision for the world was of a universal brotherhood of man, as outlined so eloquently, for example, by Dostoevsky in his famous “Pushkin Speech”.

It is said that when Solzhenitsyn met Putin in 2000, there was a meeting of minds about how best to rebuild Russia, although it is also said that Solzhenitsyn later expressed disappointment at Putin’s failure to properly prioritise action to prevent impending ecological catastrophe.

Putin, for his part, was especially impressed by Solzhenitsyn’s focus on what Solzhenitsyn called “The Great Catastrophe of the 1990s”, which was one way of describing the fact that, following the collapse of the Soviet Union, 25 million Russians had suddenly found themselves cut off from their homeland.

The question that Solzhenitsyn believed Russians must ask themselves was, “shall our people be or nor be?” Solzhenitsyn believed that the Russian people were not so much an ethnic identity as a spiritual consciousness, and that any dismemberment of the Russian people, via, for example, the break up of the union of the Slavic people, would lead to the ultimate death of a unique spiritual consciousness – with all the negative consequences that loss would bring to the world as a whole.

In the light of all this it is not unreasonable, therefore, to understand Putin’s “special operation” in Ukraine, the place where the Russian people were first united by the Christian faith, in terms of an attempt by Putin to protect Russia’s particular spiritual consciousness, which Solzhenitsyn believed will wither away and die if Russia’s leaders allow it to be dismembered.

The French playwright Honoré de Balzac once said that “behind every fortune there is a crime”. One of the justifications for Byzantine autocracy was that it was needed to act as a check against the kind of oligarchic corruption that had helped bring about the collapse of pagan Rome.

Although the Russian aristocracy was hated by many for having allowed itself to become heavily Westernised, many Russian aristocrats only ever spoke Russian when dealing with their servants, and there was an undeniably close link between the Russian peasanty and the Tsars. It was Tsar Alexander II, for example, who had forced the emancipation of the serfs, and it was to the Tsars that the peasantry would directly appeal when they felt that their rights were being undermined by government elites in St Petersburg.

One of the themes of the campaign leading up to the US presidential election this November is widespread distrust of what President Trump has called the “Washington Swamp”, which Robert F Kennedy Jr believes has been pervaded by corporate corruption and subsequently caused innumerable harm to the physical and environmental health of the US.

At the same time, vice presidential candidate JD Vance is known to have been involved in conversations about whether or not America’s pursuit of economic growth, the cornerstone of corporate profit, really is conducive to the nation’s health.

If the Republicans win the next US presidential election, there may well emerge a strong degree of synergy between the anti-establishment policies of President Trump, Vice President Vance, John F. Kennedy Jr and President Putin, all of whom bear a deep distrust of global, oligarchic elites – the kind of elites that brought both Byzantium, in the late Medieval Era, and Russia in the 1990s, to their knees.

And the kind of elites, as some in the US are arguing, who, driven by a deluded faith in the false of gods of economic growth and human “progress”, are more than capable of bringing America to its knees.