Republic Vs Democracy. Amb. (Ret.) Ettinger, Western Wisdom vs. Middle East Reality. 125th Day. More.

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Voters Now Question Elections.

There are many reasons why voters now question election results. The 2 most important, in my view, are as follows:

1) Over time, American's have allowed fascist neo-Marxists, who fear our republic , to systematically radicalize the election process through propaganda and other illegalities.

2) Voters are turned off  by  politicians who place their own narrow interests above  our nation's  and  spend tax payer monies without regard to their fiduciary responsibilities

Additionally, we no longer  trust election results because of radical changes in the election process.  Furthermore, a  growing number of voters no longer  go to the polls. They rely upon "gatherers" which lends itself to fraudulent behaviour. 

Finally, voting lists are rife with names of former voters who either have passed away and/or no longer reside where the voting rolls previously recorded their address.

The recent SCOTUS "Colorado" hearings was a beautiful example of how the 3rd branch of government protects us from the unruly.  There was little evidence of partisanship or political bias.  Each Justice was all into the law, bending over to interpret what each believed was meant.  It truly was our republic at it's very finest, functioning as it was meant  and as our "founding fathers" wanted. 

It is critical  voters be informed,  be motivated by a degree of patriotism as they cast their ballots.

Sustaining our republic is not an easy task.  We can lose the splendor it has taken over 200 years to create in the blink of an eye. Lamentably,  that seems to be the path we are currently following.  We must alter and mend our ways.

POGO was right.  The enemy is us!

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And:

JUDICIARY Supreme Court Appears Poised to Back Trump in Ballot Challenge Case   READ MORE Finally: Mollie Hemingway sums up  ‘everything wrong’ with US  elections – and it’s glorious “Today, the American system of self-governance is under attack. Instead of an election day where everyone votes at the same time and with the same full set of information, votes are counted quickly and everyone promptly knows and trusts the outcome, we now have lengthy election seasons that can last months prior to and even after election day,” Hemingway testified in front of Congress. “The situation is so absurd that we have presidential and gubernatorial debates weeks after some people have already voted instead of having total security and a verifiable chain of custody for ballots being issued, cast, and counted,  she reflected. Hemingway went on to discuss the voter rolls across the nation that time and again fail to be cleansed of those who have passed away or have moved. “We flood addresses across the country with tens of millions of unsupervised mail-in ballots months ahead of elections frequently to locations from which voters, if they’re even alive, have long since moved, instead of having an election administration that is rigorously nonpartisan and impartial under the law,” she noted. “We have allowed the private takeover of government election offices by bipartisan oligarchs and their armies of activists who use those offices and their authorities to tilt the election toward favored candidates instead of voters being able to vote for the candidate of their choice,” Hemingway pointed out. She then alluded to the communist tactics of the Left who have tried every dirty political trick in the book to keep former President Trump from running because they fear he will win again. They have also ostensibly tried to destroy him and his family financially in order to push him out of the presidential race. “Powerful interests backed by wealthy oligarchs are working to remove the most popular candidate and the ruling party’s chief opponent from the ballot in a move reminiscent of Soviet Russia,” Hemingway said. “And if that weren’t enough, instead of the top candidates chosen by the people being able to fully engage in a vigorous campaign heading into an election, we have one side actively attempting to throw its opponent in prison and bankrupt his family. Again, reminiscent of Soviet Russia instead of a system of rule of law that gives Americans the same rights and due process,” she continued. Hemingway goes on to elaborate on the persecution of conservatives, especially Trump, using a rigged court system and a lapdog media to achieve their ends. “The Department of Justice and other partisan actors are prosecuting their opposition, whether powerful or lowly, and doing so in places where partisan juries will ensure a quick conviction instead of a free and independent press that shares news and information to help inform voters,” she contended. “We have a press that is almost exclusively the arm of one political party and is so corrupt that it is willing to perpetrate hoax after hoax against opposition party members instead of a vibrant public square where Americans can debate issues and express their strongly held views,” the conservative author charged. Hemingway then delved into the political censorship that exploded under President Biden and how politics and Big Tech have joined forces to silence those who don’t share their views. “We have an elaborate Censorship Industrial Complex where the government works hand in hand with tech oligarchs to suppress and blacklist debate on all the important issues that contribute to election outcomes,” she asserted. “This is something I know firsthand because our government worked with tech companies to censor me for my election reporting. Allowing just one of these attacks to infect our electoral system would be a crisis. Allowing all of them at the same time is an existential threat to our system of self-government,” Hemingway pounded home. She went on to reference her best-selling book, “Rigged” and how it had been co-opted by those seeking political gain and power. “I reported on a new phenomenon in the 2020 election that has already severely eroded trust and needs to be addressed decisively in the last presidential election, nonprofit groups with very strong ties to the Democrat Party and funded by one of the world’s wealthiest and most powerful men,” she stated. “Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg took over government election offices most notably in the Democrat areas of swing states. Since then, the efforts by partisans to further infiltrate government election offices to ensure favorable outcomes have only increased,” Hemingway remarked. She emphasized at the end of her testimony that the “private oligarch takeover of our elections is a threat to our system of self-government.” That is a sentiment shared by many conservatives who have shown proof over and over again of the threat while leftists brand them election deniers.

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The recent US and UK strikes in Yemen… Might have just given the world a glimpse of the ultimate game-changer in warfare.

Rumors are swirling that these strikes showcased the groundbreaking next-gen weapon… A joint masterpiece by the US and Israel. The show of force in Yemen could be a demonstration of its unmatched capabilities. The US Army's ambition to 'build a lot of them very quickly' isn't just talk. Brace yourself for the details of this revolutionary weapon. Dive in here >> +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Conventional Western wisdom vs. Middle East reality Ambassador (ret.) Yoram Ettinger, “Second Thought: a US-Israel Initiative”   Prof. Bernard Lewis, who was a leading authority on Islam and the Middle East, shed light on a cardinal aspect of the frustrating, complicated and inconvenient reality of the Middle East: "If the fighters in the war for Islam are fighting for God, it follows that their opponents are fighting against God…. In the classical Islamic view, the world is divided into two: the House of Islam… and the House of Unbelief, which it is the duty of Muslims ultimately to bring to Islam…. The struggle between these rival systems has now lasted for some 14 centuries…. America has become the archenemy, the incarnation of evil, the diabolic opponent of all that is good… of Islam…." *Western conventional wisdom has been based on the assumptions that Middle East violence is despair-driven; that radical Middle East dictators can be induced to subordinate their radical ideologies to dramatic financial benefits (“money talks”); and that significant gestures and concessions could motivate rogue Middle East leaders to embrace peaceful coexistence, compliance with agreements, adoption of human rights and democracy, to depart from fanatic ideologies, and to join the “multilateral/cosmopolitan club.” *In order to advance its well-intentioned assumptions, Western conventional wisdom has consistently overlooked the 1,400-year-old shifty, unpredictable, violent, totalitarian, intolerant, anti-“infidel” (Islam vs. the West), anti-“apostate” (Shiite vs. Sunni), fragmented, volcanic and frustrating nature of Middle East (intra-Arab and intra-Moslem) reality. It has also overlooked the supremacy of fanatical ideologies over financial benefits in shaping the policy of Iran’s Ayatollahs, the Moslem Brotherhood, Hezbollah, Hamas and the Palestinian Authority, as reflected in their (K-12) school curriculum, mosque sermons and constitutions/charters. *Western appeasement of Shiite, Sunni and Palestinian terrorism has ignored the well-documented fact, that terrorists bite the hands that feed them, as demonstrated by the Mujahideen (who were assisted by the US to drive the USSR out of Afghanistan and proceeded to carry out 9/11), Iran’s Ayatollahs (who were critically assisted by the US to topple the Shah of Iran and proceeded to become the lead  anti-US terrorist and drug trafficker) and the Palestinian leadership (which was hosted by Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon and Kuwait and proceeded to subvert and terrorize them). *In defiance of Western conventional wisdom, the inherent hostility toward the “infidel” West, and especially “the Great American Satan,” has been a dominant feature of fundamental Arab and Islamic education, culture and politics, fomenting epicenters of global anti-US terrorism. *Notwithstanding Western conventional wisdom-driven gestures, Islamic terrorism has haunted the US since the Barbary pirates in the beginning of the 19th century, irrespective of US policy, and independent of the identity of the US President. Thus, it afflicted the US during Presidents Trump (e.g., the Hudson River Park terrorism murdering 8), Obama (e.g., the Orlando terrorism murdering 49), G.W. Bush (9/11 murdering 2,977), Clinton (e.g., the car-bombing of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania murdering 300), Reagan (e.g., the blowing-up of PanAm-103 murdering 257), etc. *9/11 underscored the determination of Islamic terror regimes to engage the US in their battle to bring the “infidel” West to submission, irrespective of the US' intent to disengage from Afghanistan, Iraq and the Middle East at-large. These rogue regimes view the US’ disengagement, isolationism and gestures as symptoms of Western battle-fatigue and the erosion of a posture of deterrence, which intensifies terrorism and shifts the battle gradually to the US mainland (e.g., Iran’s and Hezbollah’s sleeper cells in the US and collaboration with Latin American terror organizations and drug cartels). *Islamic terrorism is not driven by despair, but rather by the imperialistic vision of Islam as the only legitimate religion, divinely-ordained to bring “apostates” and "infidels" – especially the US - to submission, peacefully or militarily. *The following examples demonstrate the unbridgeable gap between Western conventional wisdom (WCW) and Middle East reality: <While WCW believes in the separation of state and church and secular policy making, Islam believes in the dominance of religion in domestic and foreign policy-making, civic life, justice, law and order, education, culture, peace, war and geo-strategy. <While WCW is preoccupied with the present and the future, the Middle East is preoccupied with the past 1,400 years as a base for future undertaking. For instance, WCW shapes its positive attitude toward the proposed Palestinian state according to future, speculative scenarios (e.g., peaceful coexistence), but the Arabs shape their indifferent-to-negative attitude toward the proposed Palestinian state according to the subversive and terroristic Palestinian track record in the intra-Arab sphere. <While WCW underscores give-and-take, Islam is determined to bring the adversary/enemy (especially the “apostate” and “infidel”) to submission, peacefully or militarily, employing dissimulation, in order to mislead naïve opponents. <While WCW refers to the Arab-Israeli conflict as “the Middle East conflict,” 11 million Muslims have been killed since 1948, of which 35,000 - 0.3% - were related to Arab-Israel wars. <While WCW assumes that the Palestinian issue is the crux of the Arab-Israeli conflict, a crown-jewel of Arab policy makers and a core cause of Middle East turbulence, no Arab-Israeli war was every triggered by the Palestinian issue.  No Arab country has ever flexed a military muscle, or a substantial financial muscle on behalf of the Palestinians.  No Israel-Palestinian war has ever expanded into a regional war, and no major Middle East turbulence has ever erupted due to the Palestinian issue. <While WCW has focused on the Arab talk, which embraces the proposed Palestinian state, the Arab walk refrains from advancing the cause of a Palestinian state. It is consistent with Aa dominant Middle East motto: on words one does not pay custom. <While WCW assumes that ceasefire agreements advance the cause of peace, and peace accords end hostilities and the state of war, Islam considers ceasefires (especially with “infidels”) as an opportunity to regroup for the next phase of a perpetual war until submission of the enemy.  Peace accords are viewed (especially with “infidels”) as temporary ceasefires, serving the cause of the Moslem party, to be abrogated upon amassing sufficient power to bring adversaries to submission. *The self-destructive nature of WCW (e.g., the 45-year-old diplomatic option toward Iran in defiance of Iran’s rogue track record) is exposed by the march of Middle East facts. *The attempt to subordinate Middle East reality to WCW, was compared by Prof. Elie Kedourie – who was a leading historian of the Middle East – to trying to make water run uphill. Support Appreciated  ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

HOOVER DAILY REPORT

School Choice Is The Solution To Teacher Strikes

by Corey DeAngelis, Dean McGee via The Wall Street Journal [Subscription Required] In Newton, Mass., an illegal work stoppage kept kids out of class for two weeks ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++  Israel’s 125th   Day of War By Sherwin Pomerantz ON the 125th day of the war fighting continues unabated in Gaza while skirmishes on the northern border with Lebanon continue as well.     Israel has flatly rejected the latest offer by Hamas with the Prime Minister calling it delusional.   Even President Biden in his remarks on Wednesday at the White House said it was “over the top.”  Secretary of State Blinken, in Israel now for the 5th time since October 7th, agreed that there were elements of the offer that were non-starters for Israel but that there may be a pathway to finding common ground.   Saudi Arabia is hosting a summit on the Gaza war on Thursday with the participation of the foreign ministers of four other Arab countries.  Two senior Arab diplomats said that the agenda for the Riyadh conference includes stepping up pressure for a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, which runs counter to Jerusalem’s goal of defeating the terrorist group, the Times of Israel reported.  Additionally, the ministers are slated to discuss plans to rehabilitate Gaza after the war and further integrate Israel into the region.   The top diplomats from Egypt, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar will be in attendance at the meeting, which has not been publicized. They will be joined by Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud. Hussein al-Sheikh, a top aide to Palestinian Authority chief Mahmoud Abbas, is also expected at the summit. Another topic to be discussed is reforming the P.A. in a significant way to facilitate its return to governing the Gaza Strip, an idea promoted by the United States but opposed by Israel, given Ramallah’s support for terrorism.   One of the diplomats said the Arab countries taking part in Thursday’s summit don’t want Hamas to play a role in the governance of Gaza after the war but believe the terrorist group will survive the war in some form and this will need to be accepted to advance the Strip’s rehabilitation.   For the first time since the start of the war, an IDF intelligence officer has resigned stating that he failed in his duty by not being aware of what was being planned for October 7th.  Nobody in the political echelon has seen fit to take such direct responsibility and resign.    Future Leadership       Today we feature someone from the arts who has been an analyst of the Israeli scence for many years.   An Israeli historian and journalist, Gershom Gorenberg has been covering Middle Eastern affairs for three decades. Gorenberg's latest book is War of Shadows: Code Breakers, Spies, and the Secret Struggle to Drive the Nazis from the Middle East. War of Shadows demolishes myths of World War II in the Middle East and solves the mystery of the spy affair that nearly brought Rommel’s army and SS death squads to Cairo and Jerusalem.   Gorenberg's last book was The Unmaking of Israel, on challenges to Israeli democracy and the history behind them. He is also the author of The Accidental Empire: Israel and the Birth of the Settlements 1967-1977 and The End of Days: Fundamentalism and the Struggle for the Temple Mount, and coauthor of Shalom Friend, a biography of Yitzhak Rabin that won the National Jewish Book Award.    Gorenberg is a columnist for the Washington Post and a senior correspondent for The American Prospect. He has written for The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic Monthly, The New York Review of Books, The New Republic, Foreign Policy and other leading publications in North America, Europe and the Middle East. He holds degrees from the University of California at Santa Cruz and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.   As we begin the new Hebrew month of Adar I which, according to tradition is to be one of the happiest months of the year, we hope that it will live up to its name and not wait for Adar II, the month in which the holiday of Purim occurs.  This year is a leap year in the Hebrew calendar where a full month is added to compensate for the difference between the lunar and Gregorian calendars.  So, we have two chances to be happy and look forward to an end to the hostilities and the return of the hostages. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ The Absurd Democrat Border Con. It remains unclear why Biden and Homeland Security Chief Alejandro Mayorkas destroyed what Trump had achieved. Why would they ensure such misery for both Americans and millions of illegal migrants?  By Victor Davis Hanson Posted By Ruth King https://amgreatness.com/2024/02/08/the-absurd-democrat-border-con/ In 2021, Joe Biden opened wide an inherited, secure southern border that had finally stopped mass illegal immigration. When he overturned Donald Trump’s efforts, a planned flood of over 8 million illegal immigrants entered the U.S. Almost all arrived without background checks, health screening, or vaccination certificates—but with massive needs for free housing, education, healthcare, and food entitlements and subsidies. For four years, Donald Trump battled the courts, his Democratic opposition, and the open-border establishments within his own party to ensure legal-only immigration. Somehow, he rebuilt some of the old porous border fence. He had begun to build his long-promised new wall to the Gulf of Mexico. He had ended Obama-era catch-and-release. Would-be refugees had to apply for asylum in their home country. Trump leveraged Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador to police his own border and stop cynically transiting millions of illegal aliens into the U.S. There was general Democratic Party opposition to all of Trump’s measures, both through Congress and via the courts. For the last three years of Biden’s mass influx, the left has applauded open borders. That is, until late last year, when overwhelmed southern border state governors began busing and flying illegal immigrants en masse to northern sanctuary-city jurisdictions. For years, these sanctuary zones had preened their liberality about open borders. They smeared as “racists” and “xenophobes” any who insisted on legal-only immigration. But now they were subject to the real-life ramifications of their own destructive ideologies. Major blue-state cities like Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C., became outraged that they were inundated with tens of thousands of immigrants, all without legality, veritable identification, or background checks. Some proved violent. Others crowded out scarce resources essential to millions of inner-city poor. The liberal architects of illegal immigration are usually rich and powerful enough to be insulated from the consequences of their utopian policies. But not so their poor or minority constituents. They deal first-hand with spiking crime, appropriation of their parks and civic centers, and restricted access to now overwhelmed social services. So the once open-border Democrat Party and Joe Biden are in a quandary. They now fear mass defections of core Latino and Black voters in an election year. But how can they square the circle of insisting on open borders with the need to appear to their own voters as determined to close them? We saw the absurd answer this week. Shameless Democrats tried to enlist naïve and foolish Republicans to bail them out with a “comprehensive immigration bill.” It was really designed to keep the border open while spending billions of dollars to facilitate more rapid and orderly transits—and more substantial welfare support for millions of illegals here and still to come. Now Democrats, in lunatic fashion, claim that anyone who did not sign on to codify and regulate illegal immigration was responsible for their own deliberate open border policies in the first place! To add insult to injury, they next sought to piggyback their toxic immigration bill onto massive aid for Israel and Ukraine. It was a transparent effort to blame any Republicans for harming Israel and aiding Putin, should they not sign on to a more efficient open border. The real agendas of the bill’s supporters were absolutely no return to Trump’s legal-only immigration and a secure border. That simple solution requires no new legislation and almost no new spending. But it does imply acknowledgement that the hated Trump had solved the problem executively—and that admission is apparently taboo. Finally, public outrage from the left and conservative anger at foolish and naïve Republican enablers stopped the bill. Still, it remains somewhat unclear why Biden and his Homeland Security chief, Alejandro Mayorkas, destroyed what Trump had achieved. Why would they ensure such misery for both American hosts and millions of illegal immigrants? Did they want new long-term constituents, given that their neo-socialist agendas cannot win over a majority of current Americans? Is importing millions of the poorest and most in need on the planet a way to ensure a still larger Great Society of entitlements and, with it, higher taxes on the “filthy rich?” Do they assume that America’s increasingly non-Election-Day balloting ensures far less authentication and rejection of mail-in ballots, and thus it will be relatively easy for non-citizens to vote? Many, left and right, make no effort to hide their desire for cheap imported labor—even though the current labor participation rate is only 62 percent of the potential American workforce. Finally, one might expect this artifice from the left that is wedded to open borders. But why some establishment Republicans aided and abetted these disingenuous efforts is yet another reminder why the doctrinaire Republican Party had to be reinvented by Donald Trump. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ BIDEN'S METAL DETERIORATION IS WORSE THAN REVEALEDAND IT HAS TO BE DRIVING THE WHITE HOUSE NUTS. +++ https://townhall.com/tipsheet/spencerbrown/2024/02/08/special-counsel-says-biden-is-an-elderly-man-with-poor-memory-n2634991 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ I ATTENDED A DINNER TONITE AT WHICH TOM FITTON WAS THE SPEAKER. I AM A SUBSCRIBER TO HIS JUDICIAL WATCH  BECAUSE HIS ORGANIZATION DOES WHAT OUR MASS MEDIA USED TO DO - PROTECT CITIZENS FROM GOVERNMENT CORRUPTION.  NOW THE MASS MEDIA ARE AS CORRUPT AS OUR GOVERNMENT. === Left Wants to CONVICT Trump BEFORE Election!   Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton joins Benny Johnson on "The Benny Show" to discuss the Fulton County Case against Donald Trump, Colorado's decision to remove him from the ballot, and whether Trump will be convicted before Election Day, PLUS so much more!  +++ Taken by my photographer friend. +++ Hatred is hard to eliminate.  Israel has no choice but to go the route and that is more than I can say for Biden. If this president had guts and understand what to do it would both assist Israel and help our own nation but he is in la la land and should have been impeached but the GOP aren't capable of having courage either. Last night (Feb 8) I attended a dinner at which Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, spoke.  He is clear eyed and his organization has become the nation's sole ombudsman having replaced the mass media who used to care about our nation and kept an eye on government corruption. America has peaked and remains in a very dangerous and vulnerable position. Our adversaries have been seeking our downfall for decades and have accomplished a significant part of their goal. "Woe is us." +++ US intelligence: Israel not close to eliminating Hamas New York Times reports that US officials have even raised doubts about whether the destruction or elimination of Hamas is a realistic objective. US intelligence officials told members of Congress this week that Israel had degraded Hamas’ fighting capabilities but was not close to eliminating the group, The New York Times reported on Thursday. This is in line with the IDF's prediction that the war could take a year. It took the forces fighting ISIS nine months to overcome the terrorist organization and it took several years for the Allied forces to defeat the Nazis. According to the report, American officials have raised doubts about whether the destruction or elimination of Hamas is a realistic objective, given it operates like a guerrilla force, hidden in a network of tunnels that are difficult to penetrate. Weakening the combat strength of the group may be a far more achievable goal, US officials have said. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said last month that Israel had destroyed two-thirds of Hamas’ fighting regiments, but American officials quoted by The New York Times have said privately that their estimates are lower, and perhaps only a third of Hamas fighters have been killed. In either case, Netanyahu has said many times that the goal is the destruction of Hamas fighting capability. Before the war, estimates of Hamas’ fighting strength ranged from 20,000 to 35,000. Israel estimates it has killed over 10,000 Hamas terrorists so far and that it has incapacitated 18 of the 24 Hamas battalions. And: Boy was Fournier right! +++ Trouble By  Erick-woods Erickson Ron Fournier is a veteran Washington reporter who once wrote at The Atlantic and then served as Washington Bureau Chief for the Associated Press. He once told me that what he always found most interesting in political coverage was not what partisans said about each other, but what partisans said about their own side. A Republican offering up critiques of his own side was more newsworthy than Republicans offering critiques of Democrats. Democrats offering critiques of Democrats was more newsworthy than Democrats offering critiques of Republicans. His point has stuck with me, and I noticed the public silence of Democrats overnight after revelations that the Special Prosecutor found Joe Biden too mentally unsound to stand trial for what would otherwise be prosecutable crimes. In fact, they are the crimes for which the Biden Administration intends to prosecute Donald Trump. There is a noticeable public silence. But privately, Democrats are growing increasingly alarmed. Barack Obama already told Joe Biden that Obama did not think Biden’s team was proficient enough to run against Trump. Obama urged Biden to move his top people to the campaign. Instead, last night, Biden held a press conference to insist his memory was fine and confused the Presidents of Mexico and Egypt. Members of the press rushed to Biden’s defense, claiming this was a common faux pas, but it did not help him after the Special Prosecutor portrayed him as a doddering old fool prone to forgetfulness. That reinforces his political team is not competent. Biden’s team won’t let him do a Super Bowl interview. They won’t let him have long, free press interviews with unscripted questions from reporters not pre-screened and sorted. Every red flag about Biden is now suddenly up at once. The public thinks he is too old, and the Special Prosecutor thinks Biden is not mentally fit for trial. That raises too many questions. It was political malpractice for Biden’s team to rush him into a press conference where he confused the Mexican and Egyptian Presidents. It shows Barack Obama’s concerns are well-founded. For me, at least, it was notable overnight that Democratic strategists who had been open in the past with their concerns about Biden were noticeably quiet. They know they have a problem. They just are not sure how to proceed. Their problem is made worse by Kamala Harris being America's most unpopular national politician. They cannot toss Harris. They cannot bypass her for the nomination even though so many think Andy Beshear of Kentucky would be a better nominee. They think Gavin Newsom is too progressive for swing state voters. Democrats are in a real bind. The President of the United States could not remember when he served as Vice President. He could not remember when his son died. He could not remember basic questions. The White House defense is that the Special Prosecutor interviewed Biden after the Hamas attack on Israel — which suggests Biden’s memory melts down under pressure. Biden’s lawyers had to revise their statement insisting Biden is mentally competent because to claim he is would open him to prosecution. We are now in a world where the Biden Administration is prosecuting the Republican rival for his handling of classified documents while passing on prosecuting Biden for the same thing because they believe the former is competent to stand trial and the latter is too senile. Do they really think this is a winning argument for 2024? Don’t look now, but Trump is already leading in the polls in most swing states. All the Democrats who insisted the 25th Amendment needed to be deployed against Trump are strangely silent as the sun rises today. But the Biden Justice Department has determined Joe Biden is too mentally impaired to stand trial. That is a really big deal. So, he should lead the nation? This is where we are. Trump literally has bragging rights that the Biden team thinks he, not Biden, is mentally competent. Well done, Democrats. Both parties have become cults of personalities, but only one is mentally competent to stand trial — and that’s based on the judgment of Joe Biden’s Justice Department, which finds Joe Biden is not the competent one. Additionally, think of all the reporters who have covered for Biden’s decline. They will be compelled to attack the Special Prosecutor to distract from their water carrying. Consider just Greg Sargeant who used to be at the Washington Post and is now at the leftwing New Republic. He is now actively arguing Biden’s memory is not the big story. It's hard to believe the Washington Post let that genius go. So much of the White House press corp and the MSNBC cohort have protected Biden and are now angry the Special Prosecutor spoke truthfully about what they have tried to cover up. Perhaps the spirit of Aloha will resolve this issue. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++  More Biden/Blinken nonsense.   If your next door neighbor wanted to kill you, burn your house down and the police kept telling you to believe they were your friends and you could trust their word, I suspect you would quit calling 911 +++ The Empty Sloganeering of a ‘Two-State  Solution’ By Danielle Pletka Posted By Ruth King The Palestinian people are pawns, props in a local, regional, and global game that puts their real interests last. It is beyond ironic that the vile attacks of October 7 have revived the notion of a two-state solution to the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians — an idea that was, until that moment, politically moribund. Of course, such a “solution” was far from Hamas’s aim, but it remains the only idea available to the lazy diplomatic and peace-processing class. The two-state idea serves the aims of political leaders in the United States and Europe flailing for a response to the far Left’s anti-Israel-driven outrage over the war in Gaza. It answers the mail to the demand to “do something.” But the one question no one has bothered to ask is, Is it good for the Palestinians? And the short answer to that question is no. “Two-state solution” is part of the lexicon of sloganeering-cum-politics that includes “black lives matter,” “defund the police,” and “cease-fire now.” And like all of those reductionist bumper stickers, it crumbles under scrutiny. The evolution of each of these ideas is predicated on a grain of truth: Of course black lives matter. There is indeed police brutality. A cease-fire now would indeed end the fighting in Gaza, albeit briefly. And a two-state solution would certainly satisfy the symbolic demands for a Palestinian state. Also true of these parallel political constructions is that the slogan has precious little to do with the actual lives it purports to value. The Black Lives Matter movement, while soothing to upper-class suburban whites focused intently on their virtue and their Land Rovers, has enriched a few grifters at its heart and delivered shockingly little to the actual blacks who live in America’s cities and are disproportionately victims of crime, beset by poor schooling, drugs, broken families, and more. Ditto the mindless effort to slash police budgets in the unreasoned hope that by destroying the instruments of law enforcement, somehow there would be fewer incidents of police brutality. Instead, as numerous failed experiments in a light police footprint have demonstrated, crime has skyrocketed, businesses have been forced to shut down, and cities like Portland, Ore., San Francisco, Oakland, and Washington, D.C., have spiraled into dystopia. Back to the Palestinians. They are people before they are a nation or a movement. And like the hapless props for the various other slogans/movements, their fate is of little genuine interest to their putative champions. To be pro-“Palestine” has come to mean little more than to be anti-Israel, shortchanging the very people such a position is intended to support. A little history: Arab opposition in 1948 to the United Nations partition plan for British mandatory Palestine marks the moment the pro-Palestine movement trumped the welfare of actual Palestinians. Ignominious losses by Arab armies to the newly born State of Israel resulted not in a smaller Palestinian state but in no Palestinian state at all. Neither Jordan nor Egypt evinced any interest in creating a “Palestine” from the land they occupied after losing the first war waged against Israel. The rise of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and various other “liberation” movements similarly focused not on the actual lives of Palestinians but on the “virtue” of killing Israelis and other Jews. Indeed, we have those movements and later additions like Hamas and Hezbollah to thank for the identification of the Palestinian cause with terrorism worldwide. Worse still, the PLO maintained its death grip on the reins of the Palestinian cause by insisting that no Palestinian move into permanent housing or demand equal rights in the Arab lands they occupied, thereby creating permanent stateless “refugees.” How was this about the betterment of Palestinian lives? Of course, it wasn’t. Even after the 1993 Oslo Accords, which created the Palestinian Authority and transferred limited autonomy over parts of the West Bank and Gaza Strip to PLO chairman Yasser Arafat, the question of Palestinian well-being at the hands of their own masters never entered the equation. Israeli treatment of Palestinians has always been front and center — and that is not unreasonable. But Arab and Palestinian leaders’ treatment of Palestinians has been a matter of supreme indifference to Western champions of the cause. Even the United Nations agency mandated to care for the welfare of the Palestinians, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, became a tool of extremists, focused on teaching radical Islamism and antisemitism. UNRWA employees have been caught participating in and celebrating the October 7 attacks, a far cry from their mandate to support the humanitarian needs of Palestinians. Indeed, UNRWA has for decades relegated its charges to endless refugee status, discouraging them from naturalizing — if permitted — in the countries where they live and forcing them to subsist rather than thrive. In fact, the Palestinian people have no real champion. Palestinians turfed out of Kuwait in the hundreds of thousands in 1991? Whatever. Palestinians discriminated against in Lebanon, barred from intermarriage with citizens, forbidden from entering certain professions, and barred from land ownership? Meh. And in the West Bank and Gaza? Corruption, declining levels of education, collapsing economic security, Islamist indoctrination, murder, kidnapping, and crime . . . all at the hands of the PLO in the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza — from which Israel withdrew in 2005? Blame the Jews. If, for once, the Palestinian people themselves were the priority, rather than their terrorist and criminal leaders, and if, for once, the two-state-solution movement — which has morphed into Israel-hatred over support for Palestinians — took a back seat to the well-being of the population, there might actually be a pathway to a viable Palestinian state. Right now, however, the Palestinian people are pawns, props in a local, regional, and global game that puts their real interests last. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ As I and POGO have been saying for years: +++ America Is in Deep Trouble Column: The president weakens America for a chance at reelection By Matthew Continetti The 2024 election took another unpredictable turn on February 8 when Justice Department special counsel Robert Hur concluded that President Biden had willfully retained and disclosed classified information but did not deserve prosecution because a jury would see him as a "well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory." The special counsel report reinforced GOP criticisms of a two-tier system of justice while amplifying widespread doubts that Biden is up to the job of president. And how did Biden respond? With a defiant, combative statement and press conference where he read from notes, caustically dismissed the report's findings that his memory is fading, insulted reporters, and then, in unscripted comments, confused the presidents of Egypt and Mexico and said that Israel's response to the Hamas atrocities of October 7 has been "over the top." It may have been the worst Oval Office address in my recollection. Only Bill Clinton's "I did not have sex with that woman" screed springs to mind as competition. In a spur-of-the-moment decision, Biden tried to debunk concerns over his age and ability—and promptly confirmed our worst fears about what is happening inside the White House. Now we know why his staff has kept Biden under wraps. Why he won't do a Super Bowl pregame interview—reaching the massive NFL audience on an unofficial holiday—for the second straight year. It's not just that his aides worry he'll confuse Travis and Taylor. They're petrified he might cause a national security crisis. Here's why America is in trouble. We are headed toward a general-election showdown that the public would prefer to avoid. And the Democratic incumbent's condition is growing worse. Americans aren't the only ones who read Hur's report or watched Biden's televised meltdown. America's enemies did too. The world was a dangerous place before this afternoon. It has grown more dangerous since. There's another reason for concern. Who is running the White House? It is hard to believe it is the sad and defeated man who addressed the nation Thursday evening. As Biden's situation has worsened, he's become more reliant on the progressive Democratic base. His latest policy blunders have weakened the country to further his bitter hopes of a second term. On January 26, for example, the Biden administration said it would freeze permits for Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) export projects. The decision was jaw-dropping. Cheap and bountiful energy is the basis of strong, noninflationary economic growth. America's shale revolution creates jobs, made this country "energy independent," and built the world's biggest LNG export industry. American LNG is cleaner than oil and coal. It contributes to global security by offering our allies and partners an energy source derived from a commercial republic under the rule of law. American LNG shielded Europe from Russia's oil and gas weapon. It's a classic tale of American innovation and entrepreneurship making the world a better place. What's not to like? A lot, it turns out—if you are a climate catastrophist bent on crippling America's domestic production of carbon fuels. The sort of person who funds Joe Biden's campaigns and serves as a political appointee in his administration. Exactly the type that the president fears. The green-energy lobby scares Biden. He could spend more time crowing about the tremendous amount of carbon-based energy produced during his tenure. It might improve his numbers. Yet he remains silent. Why? Not just because he keeps out of the public eye. Because of the potential backlash from greens who finance the Democratic Party and micromanage his environmental, industrial, transportation, and tax policies. Biden plays their game. Kills the Keystone Pipeline. Closes the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling. Drains and fails to replenish the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. Restricts offshore drilling. And now, with this latest move, hampers a key node of the world economy, empowers Russia, Venezuela, and Iran and other autocratic energy producers, shifts LNG transport lanes toward a Houthi-terrorized Red Sea, and denies Americans jobs and a better standard of living. Just to rustle up some votes. Brilliant, Joe. Executive orders can be reversed, but a fractured foreign policy is hard to repair. Especially if that policy is, as Secretary of State Antony Blinken put it this week during his fifth trip to the region since the October 7 terrorist attack on Israel, "a concrete, time-bound, irreversible path to a Palestinian state." Blinken is delusional. There won't be a Palestinian state so long as Israel considers one to be a security threat. And it is the height of folly to push Palestinian statehood as Israel conducts an existential war against Hamas, readies its forces against Hezbollah, and cracks down on brewing threats in the West Bank. As the U.N. and UNRWA are exposed as dens of anti-Semitism and complicity in violence against Jews. As America sinks into low-intensity conflict with Iran's proxies in Syria, Iraq, and Yemen. Like many secretaries of state, BIinken wants to recapitulate Henry Kissinger's legendary shuttle diplomacy of the mid-'70s. Back then, the late, great American statesman traversed the Greater Middle East and laid the foundations for peace between Israel and Egypt. Blinken has replaced shuttle diplomacy with shuffle diplomacy: He limps from country to country, getting nowhere. Worse, Blinken indulged in some appalling moral equivalence while in Tel Aviv, saying, "Israelis were dehumanized in the most horrific way on October 7. The hostages have been dehumanized every day since. But that cannot be a license to dehumanize others." As if there were any similarity, in any respect, between the atrocities Hamas committed that day and since and the way in which Israel has behaved as it tries to minimize civilian casualties and deliver aid—that Hamas steals—to Gaza. Worse yet: Biden's comment that Israel's response has been "over the top." Is he serious? Domestic politics explains Blinken's and Biden's remarks, their frenzied pursuit of a Palestinian mirage, and the general incoherence of President Biden's actions in the Middle East. Biden is petrified that Arab Americans living in Michigan won't vote for him in November, thereby cracking the Blue Wall and handing the election to Trump. He assumes their votes can be bought by pandering, by removing the conditions for Palestinian statehood, by taking a tough rhetorical line against Israel. That's why Samantha Power engaged in her own version of shuffle diplomacy this week, flying to Dearborn as Tony "Too Nice" Blinken flailed overseas. Here I thought this was another case of a troubled incumbent flailing to command events. What the Hur report and the Biden speech reveal is far more troubling. Remember the liberal media catchline during Trump's presidency? "This is not normal." Yes, indeed. America is in deep trouble. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++