Tuesday, October 17, 2023

Buyer’s Remorse Strikes Americans Who Voted for Biden

  Intellectual Takeout

"Anyone who has ever bought something only to hate it once they got it home is familiar with the concept of buyer’s remorse. Sadly, the regret felt after making a bad purchase also applies to the world of politics.

"The difference is that politicians, once elected, cannot be returned for a refund. And the damage they inflict on their constituents or nation can linger on for years, long after they have left office. Which is why many American voters, when faced with the reality of the Biden Presidency, are now having second thoughts about voting the man into office.

Biden’s fast-sinking ship of state

"Truth to be told, this process actually started fairly early on in his Presidency as shown by a series of Gallup polls, which show that, while Biden did initially enjoy a 56 percent approval rating generally (60 percent among younger voters), support for him quickly dropped so that by March 2022 his overall support had fallen by 14 percentage points to 42 percent. This drop was particularly worrisome in light of the even greater declines seen among some key demographics – namely, Millennials and Gen Z voters (down 19 and 21 percentage points respectively), African-Americans (down 21 points) and Hispanics (down 20 points).

"Since that time, Biden’s approval rating has remained stuck at around the 40 percent mark, even dropping below that recently. While this is close to the level experienced by Presidents Trump and Obama at the same point in their Presidencies, there are a number of red flags unique to Biden. One is the steep decline in support seen among independents – which fell from 61 percent in January 2021 to 39 percent in August 2023. Another is the softness in support from young Hispanics and African-Americans. And then there is the ongoing flight of working-class voters to the Republicans." . . .

Hamas went too far

[Bill Ackman] later tweeted, “Something is profoundly wrong with the state of universities in America when the Palestinian President disavows Hamas while student groups from some of our most prestigious universities support the terrorists.” 
John Cusack, pro-Hamas

 The October 7 atrocities have the American press playing it straight. Sorta.

Just the News reported, “The main Associated Press reporter in Gaza covering the war was suspended from his duties while the wire service looks into his previous social media posts, which include comments calling for the fall of Israel and comparing the world’s only Jewish state to Nazis.

“Issam Adwan has made numerous comments against Israel, which were highlighted last week by Honest Reporting, an Israel media watchdog.

“In an October 2022 post on X, formerly Twitter, Adwan said that Israel was a ‘racist regime that is so similar to the Nazis.’ The post has since been deleted.

“In another post from October 2022, Adwan said: ‘The Palestinian revolt against the Israeli oppression will be a triumph sooner rather than later. No matter how strong or well-supported by the other tyrants, every colonial system will be overthrown.’

“He also reposted a statement from the BDS movement, a group that calls for the end of economic relations with Israel, accusing Israel of poisoning the wells of Palestinians. The trope of poisoning the wells goes back to when Jews were blamed for purposely spreading the Bubonic Plague in the 14th century, according to the American Jewish Committee.”

"14th century?

"I thought jihadists were stuck in the 7th century. Well, that is progress, I suppose.

"But the real progress is by AP, which for years shielded the military intelligence apparatus of Hamas from Israeli bombing by locating AP’s Gaza City bureau there in the Hamas building. Finally, Israel had enough.

"Reuters reported on June 8, 2021, “Israel’s military said on Tuesday that a tower block in Gaza housing the U.S.-based Associated Press which was destroyed in an Israeli air strike was also used by the enclave’s Islamist rulers Hamas as an electronic warfare site." . . .

Monday, October 16, 2023

Your Tax Dollars At Work: Financing Virulent Antisemitism On Campus –

Issues & Insights (issuesinsights.com)

Even children!


. . ."Sen. Marco Rubio had it right when he said: “Across America, college students on federal taxpayer-subsidized student (loans) celebrated the murder of Jews.”

"Many of these students have been radicalized by faculty and staff that your tax dollars are also supporting.

"A report from the AMCHA Initiative, which tracks antisemitism on U.S. college campuses, tell us that “160 academic departments at 120 U.S. colleges and universities issued or endorsed wholly one-sided, anti-Israel statements containing rhetoric that meets the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism.”

"It says that these faculty members are “instigating, inspiring, encouraging and modeling the playbook for students to follow.” Recent examples:

  • Last week, a Stanford lecturer made Jews in his class stand in the corner, saying that is like what Jews were doing to Palestinians. Stanford suspended the teacher.
  • University of California Santa Cruz’s Critical Race and Ethnic Studies department issued a statement saying: “What we are witnessing needs to be understood in the context of 75 years of settler colonial displacement, military occupation, and enclosure.”

"Then there’s the army of “diversity, equity, and inclusion” staff members at colleges, who despite their titles are also fueling the hatred of Jews." . . .

Students who called for Jewish slaughter absolutely should pay the price - American Thinker   "A spirited debate broke out between Megyn Kelly and Vivek Ramaswamy and between Kelly and Candace Owens regarding what should happen to the college students who signed letters and took to the streets last week to say that Israelis deserved their rape, torture, murder, and kidnapping and that we should affirmatively support the sadists who target civilians. Kelly thinks that the people who made these statements should find that it affects their futures in seriously negative ways. I agree completely. Ramaswamy and Owens say that they should be cut some slack because all of us have dumb ideas. Both are wrong. However, Owens did make an important point that deserves to be recognized, which is why I’m writing here.

"The trigger for the back and forth was that Vivek Ramaswamy said that companies erred when they said that they would take into account the students’ views when the students came knocking at their doors looking for employment. Kelly rightly blew him out of the water, saying that views as toxic as theirs deserve immediate consequences: . . ."

. . .

It’s The Border, Stupid!

 Brian C. Joondeph - American Thinker

Illegal migrants are overwhelming American cities. Even sanctuary city virtue-signaling Democrat officials have had enough, including New York City Mayor Eric Adams saying that the “Migrant crisis will destroy New York City.” He left out the slow destruction of the rest of America.

. . ."Yet we still have a wide-open border. The Biden administration and Democrats want this, replenishing their voter rolls so they don’t have to fabricate as many ballots and votes in future elections. Republicans have done nothing to stop it, beholden to their Chamber of Commerce donors seeking cheap labor.

"When President Trump tried to build a border wall, the GOP-controlled House and Senate, directed by Speaker Paul Ryan, “reneged on a deal to fund the border wall,” according to then-President Trump.

"Fentanyl is also crossing the border, with 110 thousand American overdose deaths in 2022, almost twice the casualties in one year compared to the nearly 20-year American involvement in Vietnam. Fentanyl deaths each year are the equivalent of 35 9/11s.

"Remember the outrage over the actual 9/11? There should be 35 times more, not less, outrage over American deaths due to our nonexistent border.

"Illegal migrants are overwhelming American cities. Even sanctuary city virtue-signaling Democrat officials have had enough, including New York City Mayor Eric Adams saying that the “Migrant crisis will destroy New York City.” He left out the slow destruction of the rest of America." . . .

But after events in Israel last week, the terror threat is a clear and present danger to America. Migrants are unvetted and released into the country. Are those with bad intentions gathering and preparing, ready to kidnap, rape, and brutally murder innocent children and young adults as Hamas did in Israel?

Hard Evidence Warranting The Impeachment Of Joe Biden –

  Issues & Insights (issuesinsights.com)

Hard Evidence Warranting The Impeachment Of Joe Biden – Issues & Insights (issuesinsights.com) "In a staggering act of journalistic deceit, the New York Times is reporting that Republicans launched an impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden without any “evidence of financial wrongdoing or corruption by the president.” Similar statements have been made by a massive array of media outlets and Democrat politicians.

"In reality, overwhelming proof of Joe Biden’s corruption and wrongdoing has been found, including hard evidence like written records and corroborated testimonies from first-hand witnesses. Collectively, at least 12 sets of documented facts leave no reasonable doubt that Biden participated in his son’s illicit business deals, bribed foreign officials, and obstructed justice.

"Moreover, no less than three major defenses of Biden are demonstrably false.

1) “Don’t Mention Joe”

"Joe Biden claimed at least eight times that he had nothing to do with his son Hunter’s business dealings and never even spoke to Hunter about them. For example, he told a group of reporters on August 28, 2019:

I have never discussed with my son, or my brother, or anyone else, anything having to do with their businesses, period.

"In May 2017, two of Hunter’s business partners exchanged several WhatsApp messages about the Biden family’s involvement in their dealings, and one of the partners wrote to the other:

Don’t mention Joe being involved, it’s only when u are face to face, I know u know that but they are paranoid.

2) “A Chairman’s Role”

"In 2023, the business partner who was on the receiving end of the “Don’t mention Joe” message stated:

The American people don’t fully appreciate yet the key role Joe Biden played in the Biden family global influence-peddling… I would equate it to a chairman’s role in a traditional business structure.

3) “The Big Guy”

"In May 2017, the same partner who wrote “Don’t mention Joe” sent an email to Hunter and two of their other partners in which he proposed how the “equity” of a joint venture with a Chinese energy company named CEFC would be “distributed.”. . .

Much more detail here at Just Facts Daily

Top Associated Press reporter in Gaza suspended for comparing Israel to Nazis, calling for its fall

He compares Israel to the Nazis; wouldn't Adwan consider that to be a good thing? TD

  Just The News

Posts from the reporter include accusations that Israel poisoned wells and that the country operates a "racist regime that is so similar to the Nazis." 

 "The main Associated Press "The reporter in Gaza covering the war was suspended from his duties while the wire service looks into his previous social media posts, which include comments calling for the "fall" of Israel and comparing the world's only Jewish state to Nazis.

"Issam Adwan has made numerous comments against Israel, which were highlighted last week by Honest Reporting, an Israel media watchdog.

"In an October 2022 post on X, formerly Twitter, Adwan said that Israel was a "racist regime that is so similar to the Nazis." The post has since been deleted.

"In another post from October 2022, Adwan said: "The Palestinian revolt against the Israeli oppression will be a triumph sooner rather than later. No matter how strong or well-supported by the other tyrants, every colonial system will be overthrown."

"He also reposted a statement from the BDS movement, a group that calls for the end of economic relations with Israel, accusing Israel of poisoning the wells of Palestinians. The trope of poisoning the wells goes back to when Jews were blamed for purposely spreading the Bubonic Plague in the 14th century, according to the American Jewish Committee.

"During a 2019 Facebook Live, Adwan said: "I'm telling you that to reach a solution, at some point, that this apartheid regime of Israel should fall, and the land should return to its owners.' " . . .

Our Post-Hamas Wreckage; Middle East policy is in ruins

BLM was always a corrupt, disingenuous operation—the craftier successor to the Jesse Jackson/Al Sharpton 1980s corporate shake-downs. But it is has finally jumped the shark with its sick support for Hamas murderers (note its recent posters glorifying Hamas’s hang-gliding butchery).

  Victor Davis Hanson   "As Hamas goes, so with it go many of the following related Western pretensions.

"The Passions of 9/11, Redux

"It has been 22 years since we saw crowds throughout the Middle East celebrating the murder of 3,000 civilians—and since newspapers had daily “idiot watch” notices of American intellectuals defending radical Islamist mass murderers. And now the madness is back again, and we are witnessing the recrudescence of normalizing radical Islamic terrorists abroad.

"I suppose the theory is that no one in America cares much about radical Islamists foaming at the mouth, whether abroad or here. And the result is that they are empowered and their defense of murder is growing—yet its hubris will earn an almost-certain response, an anger slowly but insidiously growing at radical Islam.

A Middle East Policy in Ruins 

"The current Biden appeasement of Iran and gift of billions of dollars in aggregate to the West Bank and Gaza are now, by bipartisan consensus, unsustainable. The only supporters of that lethal madness left are the embarrassments of BLM, the Squad, the Democratic Socialists of America, and the campus crowd.

"Their collective hatred of Jews and Israelis was manifested in their delight over the post mortem mutilations of murdered women and children. And why—even before Israel had responded with air attacks—were leftists and Islamists suddenly celebrating the news of the executions of more than 1,200 Jews? It was instinctual, a Pavlovian response.

"Even some leftist Democrats were shocked by their own constituents, whom they had created. Biden still might cling to his past destructive Middle East policies (and I expect him to restrict the Israelis within days after they begin to go in full force into Gaza), but the idea of continuing aid to the West Bank and Gaza or of “normalizing” relations with theocratic Iran will now be rightly seen as a suicidal delusion." . . .

"Docile Democrats will turn on the Israelis just as Obama did." . . .

‘Israel has a moral right to finish the job and the West has a moral duty to support it.' . . ." I learned how different the East was from the West when I unexpectedly found myself held captive in Kabul long ago. I lived in a polygamous household and was an eye-witness to Islamic gender and religious apartheid in action. I had never before encountered such woman hatred, and casual, acceptable, cruelty. My appalled reaction to women in burqas, being literally forced to sit at the back of the bus was scorned as some kind of “American hysteria.” My mother-in-law harassed me every day because I refused to convert to Islam; she also tried to kill me. I wrote about this in An American Bride in Kabul.

"However, when I returned to America, the land of liberty and libraries, no one—and I mean absolutely no one—neither my college peers, nor professors—were willing to believe what I had to say. Everyone believed that all people are the same i.e. are all heirs to the Western Enlightenment and as such, believe in fairness, equality, human rights, logic, science—and want peace.

"Even Nazis? I’d ask. Even Stalin’s or Mao’s communists? Even Hirohito’s Japanese warriors? How about the honor killers of women? It made no difference. They refused to condemn Evil. They prided themselves on their multi-cultural relativism.

"And now, here I am, once more, telling presumably anti-racist/anti-colonial Americans and Israeli leftists, feminists, politically correct woke-a-doodles, that Israeli civilians are not to blame for Hamas’s high-tech pogrom/terrorist attack; that nothing justifies their being slaughtered in their beds, raped, kidnapped, tortured, murdered; in fact, that Israel itself is not guilty of the alleged crimes that Jew haters insist justifies what Hamas did." . . .

INDICTMENT?! CBS Stunned Biden & Trump Should Be Treated Equal

. . .be treated any differently than Donald Trump,” Turner added. “Why would he? Just because he's President or because he's a Democrat? And that’s how the Department of Justice has been acting. They need to be treated the same.”  

Daily Gouge

 Newsbusters   "Equal justice under the law is a difficult concept to understand for CBS Face the Nation moderator Margaret Brennan. During an interview Sunday with Republican Congressman Mike Turner, Brennan seemed stunned that he called for both President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump to be treated the same for mishandling classified documents. 

" 'You were talking about classified documents, mishandled by the current president, and you said that when it came to Biden and Trump, they're both equally egregious with equal classification issues. This past week, President Biden was interviewed by special counsel Robert Hur,” Brennan noted.

"She then asked “Will there be legal consequences? Will your committee do anything to act on this? I mean, what exactly do you mean equally egregious?” 

"Turner responded frankly which seemed to irk Brennan: 

Well, when you look at the documents, both the classification level and the subject matter, both sides, Trump and Biden's documents, if they had been released in the public or gotten into the hands of nefarious parties, would be damaging to the United States national security. When I look at those documents, there are documents on both sides, equally egregious, that would have negative consequences to our means, methods, techniques and our allies. In this instance, I think President Biden needs the same consequence that they pursue with President Trump. The actions are the same. And in this instance, if you notice—

"Brennan jumped in to ask incredulously: “Indictment?” 

“He was a serial classified document hoarder,” Turner said about Biden. “I reviewed documents that were from all the time that he's been in government. This really is a very serious breach by President Biden.” . . .

Comer: Joe Biden Potentially Kept Sensitive Docs Linked to Family Business (breitbart.com)  . . .“[T]he Biden family received millions of dollars from foreign sources while President Biden served in public office and afterwards,” Comer prefaced, adding:

If any of the classified documents mishandled by President Biden involved countries or individuals that had financial dealings with Biden family members or their related companies, the Committee needs access to that information to evaluate whether our national security has been compromised" . . .

Bookworm Beat

When Seconds Count, the Police Are Only Minutes Away


 The American Spectator | USA News and Politics   "My grandmother’s grandmother, Martha Heard, was by all accounts a formidable woman. During the lawless period after the Civil War, a gang of rowdies turned up at Grandma Heard’s door. Knowing that her husband was away on business, they’d decided to help themselves to a store of good tobacco he was known to keep. “Miz Heard,” they shouted, “we want to try some of your husband’s tobacco, you bring it out here or we’ll have to come get it.” Grandma told her children to hide, then took a shotgun from its place by the front door and stepped out on the porch to confront the men. Aiming the shotgun at the loudmouth leader, she told them to leave. He scoffed and said, “There’s just one of you and one gun, you can’t shoot us all.” To which she replied, “That may be, but it’s you I’m aiming at.” Her resolution, and the big shotgun won the day. “Let’s go somewhere else, boys,” said the leader. “I know her and she’ll do it.”

"I’ve been thinking a lot about Grandma Heard lately, as I read more and more articles chronicling the precipitous decline in police response times. In Portland, Oregon, where support for the police tanked at the height of the “defund the police” movement, overall response times more than doubled between 2016 and 2022, from an average of 8.1 minutes to an average of 16.4.  Since 2022, and despite belated efforts to hire more officers, response times in Portland remained stagnant, creating what some described as a “public safety crisis.” The situation in Oakland, California has been recently described as “abysmal,” with response times to high-priority violent crimes increased by more than 50 percent between 2018 and 2022, with no improvement in sight. " . . .

In their rush to support Hamas, leftists expose the sociopathy behind their politics

Andrea Widburg - American Thinker

Hamas’s sadistic attack has had the virtue of revealing to many on the left (especially Jews) that they have been part of a sociopathic cult. Maybe it will bestir some of them to leave that cult and embrace truth and objective virtue.


"There’s a saying that hypocrisy is the tribute that vice pays to virtue. In other words, a hypocrite knows that virtuous principles have value, so he hides behind virtuous words even as he engages in contrary behavior. But what do you call it when people boldly abandon their principles out of political opportunism? I call that cultural and political sociopathy. Hamas’s sadistic raid on Israel has exposed to many people the sociopathy that guides the Democrat party and its fellow travelers on the left.

"Writing on X, Robert Sterling assembled an incredible laundry list of the rules that leftists have insisted that Americans must live by. At least since 2020, and in many cases years or even decades earlier, these are the rules controlling college and university campuses, media outlets, and political elections. However, on October 7, 2023, when Hamas attacked Israel, the rules changed, big time." . . .

Alex Marlow: Joe Biden Bears Responsibility for Hamas’s Terror Attack on Israelis (breitbart.com)   . . . [Biden's] Afghanistan withdrawal strategy lead to chaos, horror, and death – including for children and American servicemen. His Ukraine/Russia policy undoubtedly played a major role in Putin’s decision to invade. China has routinely humiliated the U.S. on the world stage. Biden is more responsible than any single person for the humanitarian crisis at the U.S./Mexico border. His efforts to keep America’s Southern border opens confirms that, stunningly, national security is simply not a priority for the U.S. President.

So, yeah, he’s wrong on every major foreign policy decision.

He staffed his foreign policy machine with grifters, dissemblers, and ideologues. Those who didn’t spend the Trump years hawking their services to the highest bidder were perched at think tanks, where they were no less at the mercy of foreign interests. Just last week, the Pentagon announced a probe into a Biden appointee over her cozy relationship with Iranian officials while promoting the nuclear deal as a scholarly “expert.”

Once in power, these phony “experts” have rarely even hinted at progress toward Middle East peace of any kind.

In fact, the region has been markedly more chaotic than the relative calm of the Trump years.

 

Once, the Cousin of Daniel Pearl Was a Peace Advocate: Read His Powerful Story of Confronting Darkness

And it seems Mr. Benjamin isn't the only one who sees through the propaganda to the reality. As Nick Arama informed us only this morning, none other than Senator Chuck Schumer, he of threatening the Supreme Court fame, got a taste of his own medicine, and maybe a little reality check of his own. And Bonchie tells us how some pro-Hamas students may find their prospects dimmed when their support for horror comes to light -- and that's good. 

 RedState   "His reality check didn't happen overnight, though; it began 10 years ago, he wrote.

In March 2003, I turned 13 and celebrated my bar mitzvah in Walnut Creek, California. By Jewish tradition, I became a man. But the ceremony felt redundant; I had already grown up. Only one year earlier, my older cousin, Daniel Pearl, an investigative journalist for The Wall Street Journal, was kidnapped and beheaded by Islamist jihadis while on assignment in Pakistan.

His killers, like the Hamas killers of last weekend, proudly released a video documenting Danny’s murder. Among Danny’s last words were, “My father is Jewish. My mother is Jewish. I am Jewish.” At first, I was in shock—how had my own cousin become a player in such a large international nightmare? Why did people get murdered simply for being who they are? In this case, for being Jewish?

"Here, even at 13, Mr. Benjamin was doing what so few people today seem to do; that is, to question their own assumptions and biases. That was the beginning.

When I immigrated to Israel at the age of 18 and enlisted in the Israel Defense Forces, I was still driven by ideals. I thought I could promote more goodwill with our Palestinian neighbors. Serving in a combat unit based on the Gaza border, I witnessed the release of the kidnapped Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, held for five years by Hamas, when his freedom was exchanged for more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners. One for 1,000. Despite my many criticisms of the Israeli government, I recognized then how much Israel valued the life of every soldier.



Thus, the Gaza attack can be traced to Tehran’s panic over progress made between Israel and Saudi Arabia on a “normalization” agreement.

"And what is very sad, as the U.S. Secretary of State, Antony J. Blinken has revealed, a Holocaust survivor in a wheelchair was dragged into Gaza and was taken hostage. Thus, on these days we are with Israel. Solidarity with Israel, we are all Jews!"  Dimitris Eleas

The real problem is Iran - American Thinker  “Stand against Hamas’ terror or stand with them,” was the title of an article in New York Daily News a few days ago.

"It is exactly like this. It is not easy to understand what the people who govern Gaza really think. In the wake of Hamas's recent terror attack on Israel, it's clear that Hamas’ ultimate goal is to commit again a genocide against the Jewish people. It openly wants to do it, as is written in its founding documents.

"Hamas, unlike its secular rival, Fatah, has declared that Israel has no right to exist. And sadly, Israel did not see “the strategic meaning of the rhetoric of Hamas” said Shlomo Avineri, a former Israeli officer and political scientist. For Hamas “every civilian is a soldier; this was not rhetoric but identifying the vulnerability of the Israeli communities inside Israel,” he added.

"IDF, Mossad, and Shin Bet were focused on individual terrorism in the West Bank. And that was a fatal mistake. To gather intelligence is an art, but to gather intelligence from the Arabs is on another level. What come to my mind on this are some words by a Greek-French philosopher: "[The Arabs] present themselves as History’s eternal victims" (Cornelius Castoriadis, 1991). 

"We need somehow to look at history and a particular letter by Stuart Gottlieb – a professor who teaches at Columbia University – to the New York Times.

Re “The Yom Kippur War Led to Peace. This One Can, Too,” by Bret Stephens (column, Oct. 9):

"The 1973 Yom Kippur War led to peace because the parties involved recognized and accepted a new status quo in the Middle East. In 1967, Israel upended the status quo with a stunning military victory, including the seizure of the Sinai Peninsula from Egypt." . . .