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Monday is the anniversary of my Aunt. Jano was my mother's sister. She, too, loved family and loved life.
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Fetterman proves the lesser man:
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John Fetterman: The Midterms’ October Surprise
By withholding crucial information about his health, the candidate has likely ensured a GOP Senate win in Pennsylvania.
By Daniel Henninger
Wonder Land: Debates between John Fetterman and Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania, and Kathy Hochul and Lee Zeldin in New York City highlight that while voters are looking forward, the Democratic Party is still relying on Donald Trump to secure midterm results. Images: AP Composite: Mark Kelly
The 2022 midterm election just got its October surprise: John Fetterman.
Mr. Fetterman, Pennsylvania’s lieutenant governor, suffered a stroke in May days before he won the Democratic Senate primary, and a question since has been whether his recovery was sufficient to eliminate the stroke’s effects as a voter concern.
The answer on display Tuesday evening is that Mr. Fetterman’s recovery is so poor that it’s now likely to be the primary factor in the outcome of this race.
No one watching this debate could have been unmoved by Mr. Fetterman’s struggle to articulate his views. GOP nominee Mehmet Oz, to his credit, made virtually no reference to the problem. The moderators raised the issue of “fitness to serve,” asking why Mr. Fetterman hadn’t released his medical records. He replied that “my doctor thinks I’m fit to serve.”
After Mr. Fetterman in early summer withdrew for months from campaigning, some Pennsylvania Democrats pressed him on the question of whether he should step aside and let an alternative candidate step in, such as Rep. Conor Lamb. Mr. Fetterman insisted he was up to completing a Senate campaign.
He went into this debate in a virtual polling tie with Mr. Oz. The debate ended with Mr. Oz delivering a strong, comprehensive closing statement, which heightened the hour-long contrast with Mr. Fetterman’s difficult performance. It’s now likely the Republicans will hold the Pennsylvania seat and win control of the Senate. Withholding crucial information from voters is a time bomb. This one detonated.
One thing the debate made starkly clear is the awful consequences of super-early voting laws. More than a half million people in Pennsylvania have voted already. Second thoughts? Forget it.
Pennsylvania was one of two significant debates Tuesday. The other was between New York state’s Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul and GOP Rep. Lee Zeldin. Notwithstanding Mr. Fetterman’s personal challenges, both were valuable political events.
Sitting through the two 60-minute debates (and in truth, an hour is just about enough), I think any viewer would have seen that an array of substantive policy distinctions exists between these two parties.
For the past two years, Democrats and pundits have tried to tee up the Republicans as the “party of Trump,” with President Biden using his office to ridicule the “MAGA Republicans.” The idea has been that any thinking voter should stop thinking about voting for Republicans because their politics starts and ends with something called “Trump.”
These two debates showed that isn’t true. Mr. Zeldin gave an intriguing answer when Mrs. Hochul demanded—“yes or no”—if he thought Mr. Trump was “a great president.”
Mr. Zeldin’s answer was that he had worked with Mr. Trump to fight the MS-13 Salvadoran gang on Long Island, move the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem, push the Mideast Abraham Accords, thwart the Iran nuclear deal and fight the Covid pandemic. Gov. Hochul replied lamely, “I take that as a resounding yes.” But which of those five Trump administration policies does she disagree with? Viewers were left to guess.
Inflation is the election’s No. 1 issue, but it interestingly didn’t dominate either debate. Both Messrs. Oz and Zeldin pressed the issue of crime, but the sleeper economic issue turned out to be fracking.
Fo progressives, fracking for natural gas is by now an act of pure environmental evil. Mr. Oz returned repeatedly to support for fracking, including building pipelines and a refinery in Philadelphia to ship liquefied natural gas to Europe.
Mr. Fetterman’s worst moment may have been his attempt to become a pro-fracker despite clear evidence he has opposed it in the past. “I do support fracking,” he said. “I support fracking, and I stand, and I do support fracking.”
Mr. Zeldin cited the economic boost that the “extraction of natural gas”—long banned by Gov. Andrew Cuomo—would give the state’s Southern Tier, near Pennsylvania.
On crime, Mr. Zeldin constantly asked Gov. Hochul why she won’t talk about locking up criminals. An exasperated Gov. Hochul finally said, “I don’t know why that is so important to you.” Expect to see that soon in a Zeldin TV commercial.
Crime gives Mr. Zeldin a shot at winning in a blue state. To do that, he needs a strong majority of independents and support from moderate-to-conservative Democrats.
Gov. Hochul can’t win without solid turnout by New York City’s Democrats. Since succeeding Mr. Cuomo, she has done or said nothing that might alienate the city’s condominium progressives.
Her routine equivocation in the debate—“I’m working on it”—let Mr. Zeldin appear to be on offense throughout. But Gov. Hochul’s protective blandness doesn’t give progressives much incentive to turn out. Indeed, progressive politics is looking more than ever like a liability if one has to run in a close election. Ask Stacey Abrams.
A final thought. The Democrats’ decision to load up so much of this election on “Trump” has been a mistake. Voters are looking forward. Mr. Trump’s greatest contribution to the Republican Party could lie in doing just enough to keep the Democrats’ bulls charging toward his cape unto exhaustion, while Republican candidates go about winning on their own merits.
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Why Democrats Are Losing the Midterms
With Trump out of the spotlight, voters are focusing on how far left the Democratic Party has turned.
By The Editorial Board
Commentary on Tuesday night’s Pennsylvania Senate debate is mostly about Democrat John Fetterman’s unfortunate struggles communicating in the wake of his May stroke. But for our money the most telling moment was Mr. Fetterman’s response to a question about his previous opposition to fracking for natural gas. It sums up why the election tide is moving against Democrats and may cost them the House and Senate.
“I’ve always supported fracking,” Mr. Fetterman said when pressed by a moderator. He later added that, “I do support fracking and I don’t, I don’t—I support fracking, and I stand, and I do support fracking.”
His stumbles over his real position is understandable because his pro-fracking conversion, if that’s what it is, is recent. “I don’t support fracking at all and I never have,” Mr. Fetterman told a YouTube channel in 2018 when running for lieutenant governor. “And I’ve, I’ve signed the no fossil fuels money pledge. I have never received a dime from any natural gas or oil company whatsoever.”
In 2016 Mr. Fetterman said in a comment on Reddit that “I am not pro-fracking and have stated that if we did things right in this state, we wouldn’t have fracking.” He added that he had “signed the Food and Water Watch’s pledge to end fracking.” Republican Mehmet Oz hammered Mr. Fetterman on the old quotes in Tuesday’s debate.
The point isn’t about catching a politician in a flip-flop. The Fetterman contradiction shows how Democrats are in trouble because they nominated too many candidates whose views on crime, immigration, climate and the economy are all but impossible to defend in competitive races this year.
Democrats are finally paying for their sharp left turn during the Trump Presidency. That turn began in earnest with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s 2018 primary victory in New York over party war horse Joe Crowley. That scared Democrats nationwide, and it caused many to adopt positions well to the left-of-center to avoid Mr. Crowley’s fate.
The left turn didn’t matter in 2018 as voters came out to put a check on Mr. Trump’s chaotic governance. It mattered more in 2020, especially after the “summer of love” riots following George Floyd’s murder. “Defund the police” cost the party House seats. But Mr. Trump was still the main election issue, and Democrats played down their left turn by nominating the reassuring Joe Biden, who promised to work with Republicans and unite the country.
Democrats have tried mightily to drag Mr. Trump back into the 2022 campaign, and Mr. Trump has often obliged by meddling in GOP primaries on behalf of weak candidates. But he isn’t on any ballot next month. Voters have thus had the chance to focus on the record of the Biden Democrats in office, and the policy views of Democratic challengers.
If Democrats lose the Senate, they’ll regret in particular that they nominated far-left candidates like Mr. Fetterman and Mandela Barnes in Wisconsin. Mr. Fetterman tries to come across as the working man’s candidate, but his history against fracking pits him against the blue-collar workers who man the drilling rigs and sand trucks in Pennsylvania. It puts him on the side of climate elites in the big cities. It is also a killer issue when inflation and energy prices are soaring.
Crime is another issue where Democratic excess has left candidates asking voters to deny what they see with their own eyes. In Tuesday’s New York gubernatorial debate, Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul declared that anyone who commits a crime in the state faces “consequences.” But voters know that simply isn’t true, and Ms. Hochul couldn’t defend the state bail law that gives judges too little discretion to jail repeat offenders.
Ms. Hochul’s campaign boils down to declaring that Republican Lee Zeldin is a fan of Mr. Trump, opposes abortion rights, and favors gun rights. That may be enough to get her over the finish line in the heavily Democratic state. But Mr. Zeldin has a chance because Ms. Hochul refused to move to the center as she worked to prevent a primary challenge from Attorney General Letitia James.
The Trump Presidency caused many people to lose their minds, Democrats and the media most of all. The normal party checks on radical policies vanished as opposition to Trump became the party’s self-defining political mission. Perhaps a drubbing on Nov. 8 will jolt the party back to reality.
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Terrorism continues to escalate in Israel:
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Terrorist kills Israeli 50-year-old, injures three in Saturday terror attack
The terrorist, Muhammad al-Jabari, belonged to a terror group claiming to be affiliated with Hamas's al-Qassam Brigades.
The 50-year-old victim of the Saturday evening terror attack in Kiryat Arba has been identified as Ronen Hanania, and his funeral is expected to take place later in the day on Sunday.
In addition to Hanania, three others were injured after a terrorist, later identified as Muhammad al-Jabari, opened fire at Israeli civilians and security forces at a checkpoint in the West Bank settlement of Kiryat Arba, near the home of Otzma Yehudit MK Itamar Ben-Gvir on Saturday night, according to the IDF Spokesperson's Unit.
A Magen David Adom medic was seriously injured in the attack and was being treated at Shaare Tzedek Medical Center. As of Sunday morning, he was sedated and intubated and in a serious, but stable, condition.
Two others in light condition were treated at Hadassah Ein Kerem Medical Center and were released from the hospital overnight. A 37-year-old Palestinian was also injured and was evacuated by Israeli forces to be treated in the territories under the auspices of the Palestinian Authority.
A large force from the Israel Police and Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) arrived at the scene, Maariv reported. The assailant was killed by a civil security officer, the IDF said, with scans ongoing to determine whether more terrorists were involved in the attack.
Alongside the civilian security officer was an off-duty IDF officer from the Golani Brigade, the IDF said on Sunday morning. The officer, who lives in the vicinity of the terror attack, heard the gunshots and arrived on the scene, working with the civilian officer to kill al-Jabari.
"The security guard was hit, I returned fire and went to pull him back," the Golani Brigade officer, whose identity remains anonymous, said in a video statement released by the IDF.
MDA medic Yisrael Lior, who was present at the scene of the attack, stated on Saturday night that he arrived with another medic to the scene at the Ashmoret checkpoint in Hebron and saw a man who had been shot in a car.
"While I was running to get medical equipment, I heard the medic I was with shouting "I'm injured. [They're] shooting at me,'" said Lior. "We took cover and while I was providing life-saving treatment to the medic I was with, we called in additional forces and after they arrived, we evacuated the injured person from the vehicle and the medic I was with to the hospital."
Terrorist reportedly affiliated with Hamas
Muhammad al-Jabari was named as the terrorist who carried out the attack. A group calling itself Aswad al-Haq and claiming to be a part of Hamas's al-Qassam Brigades announced that al-Jabari was a member of the group but that the attack had not been carried out under commands from the group. The Aswad al-Haq group was reportedly established just last week.
Gantz, Lapid hold situation assessments
Defense Minister Benny Gantz held a situation assessment on Saturday night with IDF Chief of Staff Aviv Kohavi and Shin Bet head Ronen Bar. Gantz stressed that operational steps needed to be taken in accordance with the situation.
Prime Minister Yair Lapid carried out a situation assessment after the attack and ordered that security forces in the area be reinforced.
"I share in the grief of the family of the person murdered in tonight's attack. There are no words that can comfort you at this difficult time. I wish a speedy recovery to the injured," said Lapid. "We will act with all the tools at our disposal and we will not allow terrorism to raise its head"
Ben-Gvir wasn't targeted in terror shooting, security forces say
Despite initial reports, the shooting was not directed at the Ben-Gvir’s home like he claimed but rather at a military checkpoint near the settlement.
Ben-Gvir’s family and the other residents of Kiryat Arba were told to stay inside as Israeli security forces investigated.
“My family is currently being secured under a shooting attack on our home in Givat Avot,” Ben-Gvir wrote on Twitter. “We’re listening to the instructions from security forces.”
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As dictators age they become more dangerous and unpredictable because they fear time is against their ultimate objective.
I believe this is one of the most serious threats the Iranian Ayatollahs have faced and the and the West must take advantage of the opportunity being created. Biden is not the man to be involved.
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- U.N. Says Israel Must GIVE UP Its Nuclear Weapons; Iran Gets a Pass?
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America and the World Must Stand with Iran’s Freedom Revolution
By Caroline Glick
What is happening in Iran is a revolution, not a protest movement. If the Iranian people overthrow the theocratic regime that has ruled their country since 1979, their achievement will be the single most significant event in the Middle East in generations.
Consider the stakes. The ayatollahs’ regime is the world’s greatest state sponsor of terrorism. The regime funds, arms, trains, and directs terrorist organizations and cells in nearly every country in the world. Iran apparently passed the nuclear threshold this year, which means the ayatollahs are now capable of developing nuclear weapons at will. Iran has an advanced ballistic missile industry and fields missiles capable of hitting targets in most of Europe. As Russia’s deployment of Iranian-supplied attack drones in Ukraine demonstrates, Iran also functions as a lead arsenal for anti-Western autocracies.
Iran is one of the main reasons the U.S. lost its wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Iran supported and assisted the Taliban and al-Qaeda from the outset of the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan. Iran also organized, armed, and directed both the Sunni and Shiite insurgencies in Iraq.
Through terror proxies in Yemen, Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, the Palestinian territories, and beyond, Iran is behind almost every war and ongoing military conflict in the Middle East. Iran also targets the U.S. via allied governments and terror cells all throughout Latin America.
The Iranian regime has mortgaged its future to China, empowering China to push its weight around in a manner that threatens the United States’ core interests in the Middle East. Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February, Iran has facilitated Russia’s evasion of Western economic sanctions.
If the Iranian regime survives the current revolution, with or without the Biden administration’s nefarious nuclear deal, Tehran will either become a nuclear-armed state in the next year or so, or there will be a major Middle Eastern war—or both. The economic and strategic costs of such a war would be devastating for both the region and the West.
On the other hand, if the revolution is successful, Iran will become a different place. The sort of Iran that will arise over time is unknowable. But a few things are clear. The revolutionaries act under the banners of women’s rights, ethnic minority rights, and above all, freedom and democracy. The revolutionaries reject what Masih Alinejad, a leader of Iran’s revolutionary movement, has referred to as the three ideological pillars of the regime: institutional misogyny, hatred of the U.S., and hatred of Israel.
So at a minimum, we can expect that a free Iran will end the Khomeinist regime’s support for international terrorist organizations, and that it will not threaten to annihilate its neighbors with nuclear weapons. It will not view itself as at war with the United States. Twenty-one years after the 9/11 attacks, the head of the global terror snake, so to speak, will have been cut off.
The stake we all have in the revolution’s success is, therefore, obvious.
Iranian lobbyists and their aligned media are insisting that the current revolution in Iran is merely a protest movement like the others we have seen over the years. The people in the Iranian street, they say, are merely interested in governmental reform.
This is a lie.
The people right now on the streets of Iran’s cities, from one end of the country to the other and in every ethnic province, are calling for the regime’s overthrow. They are not simply calling for an easing of restrictions on women’s freedom, or cultural autonomy for Iran’s ethnic minorities. They are not simply demanding the payment of pensions, or better working conditions and pay. They demand a new, democratic, human rights-respecting regime.
There is no way to know whether this revolution will succeed or fail. History has seen far more revolutions fail than succeed. But given the stakes, it is equally obvious that the only reasonable policy at this time is for all of us, from all sides of the political and ideological spectrum, to put our full support behind the revolutionaries. Such a policy would involve, among other things, expelling all Iranian diplomats from their posts worldwide; placing personal sanctions on all regime leaders; ending—rather than postponing or conditioning the continuation of—the current U.S.-led nuclear negotiations, which, if successful, will have little influence on Iran’s nuclear weapons program, but will serve to enrich the regime with hundreds of billions of dollars; providing safe and open internet connections to the Iranian people; and providing whatever materiel is necessary to the revolutionaries to facilitate their efforts.
Additionally, operations against Iran’s nuclear installations would both serve as an expression of support for the revolutionaries, and delay or eliminate one of the gravest strategic threats posed by the Iranian regime to the world.
Distressingly, rather than take these actions, the Biden administration speaks out of both sides of its mouth. Last week, Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with regime opponents and lobbyists in the same meeting at the State Department, and referred to both as civil society representatives. Due to this moral and diplomatic equivalence, the move was a transparent signal to the regime that the Biden administration is not supporting the revolutionaries. It was also a means to legitimize the regime’s supporters.
Wearing State Department-minted badges of legitimacy, these Iranian regime lobbyists and supporters in turn have briefed friendly reporters with claims that the administration must not sanction the regime, because it will only harm the protesters. According to the lobbyists, the Biden administration should also maintain its policy of realigning U.S. Middle East policy toward the Iranian regime through its nuclear appeasement and lifting of sanctions, because diplomacy is the only answer.
The Biden administration is maintaining its policy of supporting the Iranian regime, even as the mullahs’ security forces murder, torture, and terrorize the Iranian people, because the administration is so blinded by its zealous anti-colonialist ideology that it cannot see or understand what is actually happening. Like the Obama administration before it, the Biden administration subscribes to a Manichaean, anti-colonialist worldview that believes anti-Western revolutionary regimes like the Iranian regime are authentic representations of righteous hatred of the West.
Former President Barack Obama, President Joe Biden, their Iran envoy Robert Malley, Blinken, and their advisors and aides cannot understand that the oppressed people of Iran can be free of hatred of the West and even seek friendship and cooperation with the likes of Israel and the United States. As Obama explained last week, he refused to support Iran’s 2009 Green Revolution because he feared that U.S. support for the revolutionaries would discredit them. Obama—like Biden today—could not countenance the notion that the Iranian people themselves do not hate America. An oversimplified anti-colonialist ideology doesn’t allow for the possibility that a more nuanced state of affairs can exist.
The anti-colonialist creed of the Biden administration and its progressive supporters dictates that the only possible policy for dealing with “legitimate” regimes, such as the Iranian regime, is to appease them through payouts and strategic concessions. The nuclear deal, which does both of these things, is a perfect expression of the anti-colonialist foreign policy.
Under the circumstances, Congress and the American public should stand with the Iranian revolutionaries and demand that the Biden administration see the truth. For the first time since Iran’s Islamic Revolution in 1979, we have a real chance of seeing this toxic regime fall. Every possible effort must be made to help make this possibility a reality.
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Hooray for Jimmy who launched Government's Education Department. From that moment on education began a downward spiral. Also thank the labor Union in charge and it's fraudulent leadership:
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Here’s what’s happened under Randy Weingarten
Statistics are coming out from the department of education that 130 million Americans can’t read at the most basic level.
32% of 4th graders
24% of 8th graders
19% of high school graduates.
Schools are changing their grading standards to close the gap.
(C) grade is now 44% to 64%. That was an F when we were in school.
(B) is 64% to 84%
(A) is 84% to 100%
Below 24% is an (F).
It’s the new silent epidemic so if children are getting an average of 30 that’s gets them a (D) which allows them to pass and move to a University.
We’re at the highest levels of anxiety ever with young children exacerbated by the pandemic and the US government need to solve this problem very quickly.
On the World stage the USA is currently :
13th in Reading
18th in Science
37th in Math
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I am continuing to read Bibi's auto-biography and heartily encourage you do same. It is delightful, full of interesting insights and information.
Bibi believes Israel must be willing to take the initiative, as I do and this is why his election is critical at this time. I can think of no better time for Israel to attack Iran than now. The Iranians have had it and are at "The Tipping Point."
How Smotrich and Ben Gvir led an uprising, wrapped in a bear hug, against Netanyahu
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Is this the kind of lawyers we want to breed in America? Were I dean at Berkeley I would throw them out of the school. As I recall, in the '60's this is were free speech rally's took place. How times have changed. This is now where hateful radicals go to school.
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Congressman Brad Sherman’s Statement Condemning the Abhorrent Decision by Berkeley Student Groups to Exclude Jewish and Pro-Israel Speakers
(OCTOBER 31, 2022 / CONG. BRAD SHERMAN PRESS RELEASE)
I am outraged and disappointed by the decision of 14 student groups at the UC Berkeley School of Law to pass a bylaw that would effectively end Jewish participation in their organizations. This new bylaw, which bans the participation of speakers that “support Zionism”, would prevent figures such as President Biden or Berkeley Law’s own Dean Erwin Chemerinsky from speaking at these events simply because they believe that Israel has a right to exist. This shameful bylaw not only undermines students’ First Amendment rights but also effectively bars nearly all of Berkeley Law’s Jewish students from having equal access to student organizations.
For too long, we have given antisemitism a pass when its proponents label it as anti-Zionism. 95% of American Jews hold views that may fall under the definition of Zionism, which is simply the belief that the Jewish people should have statehood – just like the Ukrainian people, the Armenian people, or any other nation. To oppose the national self-determination rights of only the Jewish people has always been and will always be antisemitic.
This unacceptable decision comes at a time where antisemitic speech and incidents are on the rise in California and across the country – with antisemitic incidents in 2021 hitting the highest amount ever recorded in the United States. California ranked the third highest in number of antisemitic incidents last year, which of course includes the shocking incident in Spring of 2021 where several people waving Palestinian flags beat diners in a Los Angeles sushi restaurant while chanting “death to Jews” and “Free Palestine.” There have also notably been a flurry of antisemitic incidents across Los Angeles just this week and in Berkeley over the summer.
The Jewish community knows all too well that antisemitic rhetoric like that used by the 14 Berkeley Law clubs can escalate into acts of hatred. While I appreciate Berkeley Law Dean Erwin Chemerinsky rightfully calling the adoption of this exclusionary bylaw “troubling”, more must be done. UC Berkeley touts free speech as one of its “most cherished values.” However, the adoption of this bylaw makes it so that many students, particularly Jewish students, will not be able to access student organizations that their tuition funds as a result of those students exercising their free speech rights. As a result, the funding and registered status that Berkeley provides to these student organizations must be made conditional on this discriminatory and antisemitic bylaw being revoked.
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