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With what is happening to this republic you would think Republicans should be advancing but they seem to be stuck in neutral. McConnell remains anxious to blunt Trump. Meanwhile, Trump, who claims he loves America, and I do not doubt he does, cannot bring himself to rise to "statesman" and announce he is not running in 2024.
While I am on the topic of our "healer" president you might enjoy this new movie about "papa's pothead.
My Son Hunter Full Trailer | MySonHunter.com
And:
Hunter Biden’s Crimes May Have Been Censored By Media In Plot Against Trump
(JustPatriots.com)- During a recent interview, author Sam Harris sparked outrage over claims that the attempts to suppress the reporting on Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop before the 2020 election was “warranted” because Donald Trump had to be defeated.
In a now-viral interview from the TRIGGERnometry podcast, Harris scoffed at those who objected to social media shutting down the New York Post’s reporting on Hunter’s laptop. He pointed out that those who called it a “left-wing conspiracy to deny the presidency to Donald Trump” were right, but added that he believed “it was warranted.”
Harris said he didn’t care what was on Hunter’s laptop and said even if Hunter Biden had “corpses of children in his basement,” he wouldn’t have cared because beating Trump was all that mattered.
Harris said he supported the efforts to cover up the reporting.
When one of the interviewers, Konstantin Kisin, expressed dismay over what Harris was saying, the author argued that the only thing that mattered was keeping Trump from winning a second term, claiming it was akin to trying to prevent an asteroid from “hurtling toward Earth.Why Hunter Biden's Crimes Were REALLY Covered U
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Meanwhile, the former president has turned into the equivalent of "The Pied Piper."
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Inching closer to war?
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Signing of Iran Deal Inches Closer as Regime Ramps Up Uranian Enrichment
Edited by: TJVNews.com, 8/31/22
Iranian leaders feared former President Donald Trump, and after the killing of a top Iranian general, Tehran adhered to the terms of the nuclear deal, a former top Israeli national security official said Tuesday, according to a report on the World Israel News web site.
Speaking with Channel 14, Jacob Nagel, former chief of Israel’s National Security Council and former acting National Security Advisor to then-Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said that President Trump’s dramatic steps vis-à-vis Iran kept the Islamic regime in compliance with the nuclear deal – even after the U.S. withdrew from the agreement. CONTINUE
And:
A Deal Based on Lies: The Iran Nuclear Agreement Will Make War More Likely
by Richard Kemp
Under the proposed renewed nuclear deal, Iran can legitimately commence operation of advanced uranium enrichment centrifuges in two years, all the while working flat out to develop nuclear-capable ballistic missiles that, along with its terrorist activities, are not covered at all in the agreement.
As Western governments quake in the face of Russian nuclear threats, they are on the verge of striking a deal that will give Iran that same power over them.
Even after six months of war in Europe, they cannot seem to grasp the parallels between the two. Putin risked invading Ukraine because of Western weakness and appeasement, naively welcoming Russia back into the family of nations after it devoured large parts of Ukraine in 2014, while at the same time filling its war chests with ever more billions of euros from energy exports to Europe.
Iran has been waging war non-stop on the West and its allies in the Middle East since the Islamic Revolution in 1979. Appeasing Tehran by endorsing its nuclear programme and handing it billions of dollars from sanctions relief will likewise empower and encourage the ayatollahs to greater aggression even than hitherto. These are the effects of the proposed nuclear deal brokered by the EU, Russia and China. Why is it brokered by the EU, Russia and China? Because the United States was outrageously banned from direct negotiations by Tehran. It is not outrageous that Iran demanded it, but that the US tolerated its own exclusion.
The feeble mantra of the apologists for President Joe Biden's JCPOA 2.0, a desperate attempt to revive President Barack Obama's failed agreement from 2015 that paved the way to an Iranian nuclear bomb, is "a bad deal is better than no deal". Well, no it is not, and the deal that is about to emerge will be even worse. The argument of the "bad" dealers is that it buys time for the West, with Micawberish optimism that "something will turn up". This thinking is clear from Biden's preposterous hope that he can "lengthen and strengthen" the deal once it has been struck. But optimism is not a strategy and it certainly is not a strategy for dealing with a violent and volatile revolutionary regime dedicated to the destruction of the Jewish state, which it sees as the proxy of its ultimate enemy, America.
While in office, Obama declared that Iran would not be allowed to build nuclear weapons on his watch. He must have known that the only way to prevent that was through military action or perhaps crippling sanctions, but was unwilling to do either and the result was the JCPOA, which kicked the problem down the road onto someone else's watch.
Unfortunately the road was short — and is now shorter still. The sunset clauses in Obama's JCPOA are not going to be extended in this new deal, and that means Tehran can legitimately commence operation of advanced uranium enrichment centrifuges in two years, all the while working flat out to develop nuclear-capable ballistic missiles that, along with Iran's terrorist activities, are not covered at all in the agreement. At best Biden's new deal just boots the can down the road to his own successor.
The "buying time" argument, and indeed an argument for any agreement, only works if you do not understand Iran and are naive enough to believe the regime will honour what it agrees to. You only need to look across the border at the equivalent jihadist entity next door in Afghanistan, which Biden assured us was somehow reformed and had undertaken not to allow Al Qaida to rebuild its base there, only to find a year later its leader living and plotting in Kabul under the protection of the Taliban leadership.
The reality that the optimistic and the unschooled fail to grasp is that the regime in Tehran will ignore constraints imposed by the deal that it does not like. That is what it did with the original JCPOA and its other international undertakings including the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty that it has frequently breached, confirmed again earlier this year by the International Atomic Energy Agency.
As Mossad chief David Barnea said a few days ago, the deal is "based on lies".
Tehran will continue to develop the nuclear capability that it sees as its right — deal or no deal — at the speed it wants until it is physically stopped from doing so. Whatever shape Biden's deal takes there are only downsides for the West and the Middle East and only upsides for Tehran. Signing the deal will give Iran renewed legitimacy (while getting Biden and his European friends off the hook of having to confront reality). More than that, according to Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid, Tehran will receive $100 billion a year as a result of lifted sanctions.
Those dollars will enable Iran to speed up its nuclear programme, including development of ballistic missiles capable of launching nuclear warheads not just across the Middle East but also to Europe and the US. Those dollars will boost Iran's regional aggression, threatening Saudi Arabia and the UAE from Yemen, threatening Israel from Lebanon, Syria and Gaza, and threatening the US, Europe and the world with its global network of terrorist proxies and followers. This violent malignity, which will shift into overdrive with a massive cash injection, was most recently exhibited by Tehran's proxies in Gaza launching thousands of missiles at Israel in August, by rocket attacks in Syria that wounded US servicemen just a few days ago, by the attempt to murder Salman Rushdie in the US and by recently-revealed Iranian assassination plots against former members of the Trump administration. All that while dictating terms at the negotiating table.
Missing no opportunity to exploit Western spinelessness, there is also a significant upside for Tehran's ally Russia, which has been in bed with America, Europe and Iran over the negotiations while at the same time inflicting untold violence in Ukraine. Released from sanctions, Iran will be used as an economic refuge by Moscow to evade its own international sanctions. It will be no comfort to Western citizens to know that their governments are taking action that will ease Russian pain while they themselves endure enormous economic suffering as a result of the very restrictions Putin will bypass.
Under the draft deal, Iran will be able to retain the uranium that it has been illicitly producing since the original JCPOA, enriched beyond any requirements for a peaceful nuclear programme. In a twist that many will find shocking, it seems likely that Russia — despite its own repeated nuclear threats — will be handed control of this existing uranium stockpile. Taken together with the benefits that will accrue to China also, which last year concluded a long-term economic agreement with Iran, this deal clearly runs counter to American and European national security interests as well as Israel's. This is not a strategic misjudgement that might only be discovered downstream; it is blatantly obvious today.
As the deal legitimises the Islamic Republic, it will delegitimise the vital efforts of those who have no choice but to deal with it or risk annihilation. Sometimes with US and British assistance, Israel has been conducting a long-term covert campaign to contain and delay Iran's nuclear project. This campaign, which must continue, will be seen in a different light by Western governments once the deal is in place — a deal that they will be every bit as desperate to be seen publicly to succeed as they have been to bring it about.
Twice before, Israel has saved the world from nuclear catastrophe in the Middle East, by bombing an Iraqi nuclear reactor in 1981 and a Syrian reactor in 2007. Both raids were condemned by world leaders at the time, who only later came to comprehend the enormity of what they had been delivered from. Imagine the reactions of Western governments to such action against Iran when a deal is in place. Destroying the Iranian nuclear infrastructure, while at the same time defending against the inferno Tehran will seek to unleash using its Hizballah proxies in Lebanon, will be a challenge infinitely greater than that faced by Israel in Iraq or Syria.
This chilling scenario — for which the world will pay a very high price — is about to be made more likely by the ill-judged actions of governments in America and Europe, which lack the resolve and courage to apply sufficient economic pressure and military deterrence to put a stop to Iranian nuclear ambitions. Instead, as they did in response to Russian aggression, they are again opting for appeasement, the opium of the faint-hearted.
Colonel Richard Kemp is a former British Army Commander. He was also head of the international terrorism team in the U.K. Cabinet Office and is now a writer and speaker on international and military affairs. He is a Jack Roth Charitable Foundation Fellow at Gatestone Institute.
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Biden’s Choice: Semi-Fascism or American Socialism
By Daniel Henninger
He has chosen Independence National Historical Park in Philadelphia to give a much-hyped speech Thursday on MAGA and the “continued battle for the soul of the nation.” At a Democratic rally last week he went deep into his MAGA well, likening it to “semi-fascism.”
One has to admit that “MAGA” sounds weirdly sinister, like the old political joke about a candidate who railed that his opponent’s sister was a “known thespian.” Mr. Biden surely knows (or maybe he doesn’t know) that MAGA stands for Make America Great Again. What’s not to like about that, other than the guy who’s making money selling red MAGA hats?
We’re in an election cycle, so on cue the Democrats roll out the Donald J. Trump monolith to frighten the population. Mr. Trump himself never looks a gift horse in the mouth.
Politicians go negative because negative works. The pity here is that this November’s elections are indeed important because the first two years of Mr. Biden’s presidency have become consequential.
Inflation is the No. 1 issue on voters’ minds now. But in 2020 the top issue was the Covid-19 pandemic. Whichever candidate won would be responsible for reviving post-pandemic America by addressing the multiple disruptions to the country’s economic and social life.
Mr. Biden ran and won as a moderate. His presidency’s policies have not been moderate. The Democratic Party’s two leading moderates are Sens. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, who spent most of the past two years opposing Mr. Biden’s policy goals, which quickly became contiguous with the party progressives Mr. Biden ran against—Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.
Let’s get in the semi-spirit of this semi-moment by suggesting that the Biden-Sanders-Warren Democrats now stand for semi-socialism. And that their method for putting much of their policy objectives in place is semi-authoritarianism, which its proponents simply call “bypassing Congress.” That would be the legislative branch that is the product of millions of individual votes.
The Supreme Court’s recent message in West Virginia v. EPA was that “bypassing Congress” can be, at the least, unconstitutional.
Another word in our politics that is supposed to invoke abhorrence is “polarization,” as if it were only the result of bloody-minded politicians. But the policy initiatives of the Biden presidency prove the two parties are far apart, and that the choices voters need to make about their future are increasingly stark.
The historians who told Mr. Biden in March 2021 to “go big” like Franklin Roosevelt knew what they wanted—a U.S. economy actively directed by government rather than shaped by private economic choices.
For the Biden White House, addressing the country’s immediate post-pandemic problems—high inflation, labor-market distortions, supply-chain impediments—is a secondary concern, at best. Instead, they are implementing policies on an array of longer-term goals, such as healthcare, climate, education and financial regulation.
The new legislation will let Medicare introduce price controls on pharmaceuticals. The bill spends $369 billion to achieve far-in-the-future climate goals, primarily with tax credits for electric vehicles and federal subsidies for renewables. Some $80 billion for IRS enforcement will target the small and medium-size businesses attempting to recover from the pandemic’s government-ordered dislocations. As justification for Mr. Biden’s massive student-loan forgiveness order, the administration cited the fig leaf of a Covid “emergency,” though in fact this policy goal predates the pandemic.
To reduce the suppressive effects of regulatory excess on private economic activity, the Trump administration introduced “one-in, two-out” streamlining, where for every rule added, two had to be repealed. The Biden government rescinded that initiative.
Despite the pain of higher costs for gasoline, home heating fuels and indeed a historic energy-related crisis in Europe over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the administration has implemented policies to eliminate the U.S. fossil-fuel industry by banning pipeline construction and shutting in production leases.
The scale of Mr. Biden’s use of executive orders is unprecedented, making the issue of semi-authoritarianism at least a talking point. The political left of its nature recognizes no limits on public power. But other than world wars, it isn’t clear the American people consider relentless benevolent statism to be inside this country’s traditions, as Mr. Biden now enthusiastically believes.
Congressional Republicans are losing ground in polls partly because of abortion but largely because the party out of power has no public self-definition. Newt Gingrich, along with the visionary Republican Rep. Dick Armey, overcame that minority substance problem before the 1994 midterms by issuing the Contract With America.
But an unexpected opportunity has emerged. Mr. Biden, by blurting out unscripted what he and many progressive Democrats believe—that much of the country is now semi-fascist—has opened a door to debating whether his presidency is semi-socialist. And whether that’s where America wants to go.
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Why do Jews who worship social justice support social injustice?
Liberals are backing open borders and loan bailouts that hurt working-class Americans and could lead to a massive wealth transfer from the less well-off to the more prosperous.
By JONATHAN S. TOBIN
(August 30, 2022 / JNS) For most American Jews, the core of their Jewish identity revolves around ideas relating to social justice rather than thinking about Israel or observing Jewish religious laws and traditions. That has long been obvious to observers of a community, the majority of whose members have either discarded religion from their lives altogether or who affiliate or identify with liberal denominations of Judaism. This was confirmed again by the most recent definitive study of American Jewish life conducted by the Pew Research Institute and published in 2021.
That study revealed that when asked to define what being Jewish means to them the most popular answers were, in this order: remembering the Holocaust (76%), leading an ethical and moral life (72%), and working for justice and equality in society (59%). Far down the list were more ideas that are more particular to Jewish existence: caring about Israel (45%), being part of a Jewish community (32%), and dead last and falling below things like having a sense of humor (32%) and eating traditional foods (20%) was observing Jewish religious law (15%).
Given the demographic makeup of American Jewry is predominantly secular that makes sense. Those who identify in some way as being Jewish generally see themselves as part of a community that, while obliged to remember past tragedies affecting their relatives, are primarily interested in ideas that align with their liberal political beliefs.
While Judaism contains elements that are both sectarian and apply only to Jews, as well as universal values, most contemporary American Jewish discourse outside of the Orthodox world revolves around the pursuit of social justice. Liberals are entirely correct to label that quest as quintessentially Jewish though it has often led them to prioritize issues that are secular over those that are related to the security and survival of Jews in a hostile world.
The debate over the wisdom of those priorities is one that conservatives and the more religiously observant may take issue with. But the question to ask about all of this is whether in an era of political realignment, Jews who say they are motivated by a desire to advance social justice are actually supporting policies that do the opposite simply because of partisan loyalties and personal interest.
As astonishing as it may be to those who came of age politically in the 20th century or even the first decade of the 21st, the party once seen as the defender of the working class—the Democrats—is now one that seems to appeal most to the highly educated and the upper classes, and the one that used to be the party of Wall Street—the Republicans—is now one that seems to appeal primarily to the working class.
Given that American Jews are among the most highly educated people in the country—as well as, on balance, more likely to be well off than poor—it is unsurprising that this means that while some groups on both sides of the spectrum are figuratively crossing the aisle, the overwhelming majority of Jews remain firmly in the Democratic column.
Since Jewish Democrats believe that places them firmly on the side of social justice, there is little reason to believe that most of them will be part of the shifting landscape of American politics. Yet even if we must concede that this is an unalterable fact of life, it still begs the question as to why so many of them are supporting some of the most regressive ideas and policies proposed in living memory.
One example is the widespread hostility among liberal Jews towards any measures that are taken to halt illegal immigration into the country. Citing the religious obligation to care for “the stranger,” Jews were among the most hostile to former President Donald Trump’s efforts to build a border wall and to deter, if not shut down, the flood of people pouring over America’s southern border without the legal right to do so. Jewish groups didn’t just support proposals for amnesty for the illegal immigrant population; many employed inappropriate Holocaust analogies and compared those defying the rule of law to those who fled the Nazis. Yet even those who made no egregious comparisons of economic migrants from Central America to Anne Frank believe that President Joe Biden’s decision to more or less halt the enforcement of immigration laws and downgrade border security that amounts to an open borders policy is a matter of social justice.
Yet few, if any, of them stop to think that while their lives and livelihoods are unaffected by the hundreds of thousands entering the country in this manner, those who live in border communities and states are having a very different experience as drug trafficking and violence go hand-in-hand with those who profit from illicit border crossings. Nor do they ponder the fact that poorer and working-class Americans, including minorities, are the losers in this exchange. Though support for a steady supply of cheap labor is, as it always has been, enthusiastically supported by Wall Street, it is low-wage workers who are disadvantaged by this situation.
Perhaps even more egregious is the enthusiasm among liberal Jews for Biden’s most recent policy initiative: a plan to “forgive” what amounts to approximately $330 billion in student loan debt. This is being sold as a way to help struggling Americans deal with the exorbitant costs of higher education as well as helping those on the lower end of the economic scale since there are income limits on whose debts can be written off by the taxpayers.
That claim is among the most disingenuous assertions in recent political history.
While this will likely help a lot of Jewish families, it must also be understood as a massive wealth transfer from the working class and the uneducated to those who either now or in the future will be upper middle- or upper-class citizens. Fully 70% of those who will benefit the most from this policy will be those in the top 60% of Americans by income. Top earners now have a far greater share of student loan debt than those at the bottom.
In an act of perhaps unintentional irony, Harvard Law School Professor Lawrence Tribe took to Twitter to thank Biden for a policy that will be “good news for thousands of my former students.” They should be grateful. But no one should confuse a policy that will benefit some of the most privileged and ultimately wealthy people at the expense of the hard-earned taxpayer dollars paid to Washington by truck drivers, food servers and manual laborers, with justice. It’s nothing less than Robin Hood in reverse.
That this federal spending spree will also help fuel the record inflation the country is currently experiencing, which also disproportionately impacts the poor and the working class, only adds to the injustice and manifest unfairness of this scheme.
Of course, if we really wanted to do something about the cost of college—a genuine problem, as tuitions have risen in recent decades far beyond the inflation rate—we could force institutions of higher education to be accountable rather than pour more federal money into them which only encourages them to continue to overcharge students for degrees.
Seen in that light, it makes it difficult to take a lot of the rhetoric about the imperative to pursue social justice from Jewish liberals seriously. When it comes to government-provided student loans, they are merely pursuing their own self-interest. The same applies to their open borders stands. Far from defending Jewish values about helping the less privileged, what they are doing is supporting ideas that make America less fair for those on the bottom and better for those on the top. You can call that a lot of things, but none of them have anything to do with justice.
Jonathan S. Tobin is editor-in-chief of JNS (Jewish News Syndicate). Follow him on Twitter at: @jonathans_tobin.
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