.jpg)
Dear Dick, Israeli soldiers fought in a tunnel 60 feet under Khan Yunis, killing a number of Hamas operatives. The soldiers confronted booby-trapped passageways, bombs and reinforced doors. Once through the tunnel shaft, the IDF uncovered a small, caged area where hostages had been held. Inside the area were drawings from a five-year-old Israeli girl who had been held there before being released. Intelligence suggests that as many as 20 hostages were held inside the tunnel, which was connected to the home of a Hamas commander. Below is footage taken by IDF soldiers inside. |
|
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Americans Must Choose Between Civilization—or Its Destroyers; By Victor Davis Hanson
Nihilism is the religion of the Left. Anarchy is now at the core of the new Democratic Party.
If the Left wished radically to alter the demography of the U.S., it could have expanded legal immigration through legislation or the courts.
Instead, it simply erased the border and dynamited federal immigration law.
By fiat, nihilists ended the wall, and stopped detaining and deporting illegal aliens altogether.
Or was it worse than that when candidate Joe Biden in September 2019 urged would-be illegal aliens to "surge" the border?
As a result, through laxity and entitlement incentives, 8 million illegal entrants have swarmed the southern border under the Biden administration.
They are swamping border towns, bankrupting big-city budgets, and infuriating even Democratic constituencies.
The same nihilism applies to crime.
In the old days liberals gave light sentences to criminals or reduced bail. But today leftist prosecutors do not even seek bail. They hardly prosecute theft or random assaults.
Criminals are arrested and released the same day. Is the nihilist plan to destroy the entire body of American jurisprudence, and to ensure "equity" in being victimized?
Is the woke idea that all Americans -- inclusive of diverse Beverly Hills elites, Hollywood celebrities, or members of Congress alike -- must share victim equity, and thus experience first-hand street robbery, car-jacking, smash-and-grab, and home invasion?
The United States can produce annually more natural gas and oil than any nation on earth. It once pioneered nuclear power. It has vast coal reserves and sophisticated hydroelectric plants.
The old idea was to use these unmatched resources to transition gradually to other cleaner fuels such as hydrogen, fusion power, solar, and wind. That way consumers would still enjoy affordable energy. And the United States could remain independent of coercion by the oil-producing Middle East.
But that was not the nihilist way.
Instead, the left deliberately cut back on pipelines, new energy leases, and fracking. It bragged of an upcoming ban on fossil fuels. In drought-stricken, energy-short California, the state is blowing up, not building new dams.
Is the nihilist agenda to punish with bankruptcy the energy-using middle class?
Is the hope that Americans will have to beg the Saudis, Iranians, Venezuelans, and Russians to pump more of the hated goo for our benefit so we would not have to dirty ourselves helping ourselves?
When Joe Biden entered office in January 2021 the U.S. was naturally rebounding from more than a year of Covid-enforced lockdowns.
Overtaxed supply chains were still fragile. Pent-up demand was soaring. Consumers were flush with government cash. Trillions of dollars had been printed and infused into the economy to ward off a feared recession.
All economists advised not to increase the deficit, spike further consumer demand, and expand entitlements.
Instead the Left did just the opposite.
Four-trillion dollars were printed and distributed. In no time, Americans, recovering from Covid, next experienced the worst, but entirely preventable, inflation in 40 years.
Three years later prices on staples remain 30-40 percent higher than when Biden took office. Mortgage rates tripled.
Abroad the nihilism is even more inexplicable and terrifying.
All nations suffer military setbacks. But none in memory have shamefully hightailed out of a theater as we did from Afghanistan.
Few countries could even imagine discarding billions of dollars of weapons and hardware into the hands of the terrorist Taliban, or abandoning a $1 billion new embassy, and a huge, remodeled air base.
Why did the administration simply allow a huge Chinese spy balloon to float and photograph leisurely over the continental U.S.?
Naive countries might endure two or three attacks on their overseas bases without serious retaliation. But how could the U.S. military permit 135 rocket barrages by Iranian-supplied terrorists on American soldiers without a major and sustained response?
Is the point to humiliate our own troops? To destroy what is left of U.S. deterrence?
Popular culture is especially captive to leftist nihilism.
It is not enough to object to a statue or artwork. Instead, without deliberation or public input, they must be defaced or destroyed, all the better stealthily and by night.
After the massacres of October 7 -- but well before Israel had even responded to the barbaric invasion -- thousands of students swarmed their elite universities cheering on the violence.
And what so exhilarated them?
The nihilist, ghoulish beheading, torture, mutilation, mass rape, dismemberment, and necrophilia of unarmed, civilian Israeli elderly, women, children, and infants.
In sum, we are witnessing an epidemic of leftist nihilism similar to the 16th-century European mad wave of iconoclastic destruction of religious art.
Or is the better parallel the suicidal insanity that Mao Zedong unleashed during his cultural revolution of the 1960s?
The old politics of right versus left, and Republican opposed to Democrat have now given way to a new existential struggle: Americans must choose between civilization -- or its destroyers.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Absolutely outrageous:
+++
‘Traumatic Brain Injuries’
Iranian-backed militias mount another missile attack on U.S. forces.
U.S. Central Command said in a statement that “most of the missiles were intercepted by the [al-Assad Airbase] air defense systems while others impacted on the base. Damage assessments are ongoing.” It added that “a number of U.S. personnel are undergoing evaluation for traumatic brain injuries. At least one Iraqi service member was wounded.”
This appears to be one of the largest of the 140 or so attacks by Iranian-backed militias since Oct. 7 against the U.S. in Iraq and Syria. The U.S. has responded a few times against the militias inside Iraq and Syria, as it has against the Houthi militia targeting commercial ships and U.S. naval assets in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden. The attempt to restore deterrence hasn’t worked.
That may be because the instigator of all this is Iran. None of these militias would stage these attacks without knowing they have the support of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. If Iran thinks the U.S. won’t put Tehran’s military or commercial assets at risk, it has no incentive to stop the militias from attacking American targets.
The U.S. Commander in Chief is supposed to protect U.S. troops from having to risk “traumatic brain injuries” from enemy assault. Where is President Biden?
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Worse than useless. We need to leave and turn it over to China and the Palestinians.
+++
UN: No indication Hamas was building elaborate tunnel system
“To think that the U.N. had any understanding of what was … any information about those operations, I think, is: No is clearly the answer for that,” said a U.N. spokesman.
Despite the presence of a Hamas terror tunnel system in the Gaza Strip now thought to be larger in scale than the London Underground, the United Nations insists it had no idea the tunnels were being built.
Asked on Wednesday whether, given the United Nations’ sizable presence in Gaza via a variety of agencies, there had been any indication to the global body that tunnels were being constructed underground, a spokesman for U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres said, “No is clearly the answer for that.”
Spokesman Stephane Dujarric told reporters that “it seems to me that all this infrastructure was built in a highly secretive way.”
However, officials from the U.N. Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) sounded the alarm on the presence of tunnels under U.N. facilities twice in 2017, and again in 2021 and 2022.
UNRWA alone has 13,000 employees in more than 300 facilities across Gaza. At least a dozen other U.N. agencies operate in Gaza. It has been well-documented that many U.N. employees in Gaza have professional and personal ties to Hamas.
Still, Dujarric insisted that the United Nations was unaware of the sophisticated labyrinth of tunnels being dug and fortified throughout Gaza.
“I mean, just to see it as an observer, to think that the U.N. had any understanding of what was … any information about those operations, I think, is: No is clearly the answer for that,” he said.
A senior official from the World Health Organization also insisted that none of its staffers saw any evidence of a Hamas presence at Gaza’s Shifa Hospital, despite video footage showing terrorists whisking hostages into the facility on Oct. 7 with no pushback from hospital staff.
Subscribe to The JNS Daily Syndicate by email and never miss our top stories
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Truer words were never written! That is why terrorists take hostages. Gives them leverage and they know Western culture cares about human life and will buckle.
+++
Poll: IDF Must Not Stop the Fighting in Exchange for the Hostages
By David Israel
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Th retired Dean of Yale's Law School was my dean at the Univ. of Miami Law School and also taught . Wesley was wonderful and had he been dean when Congress pummeled the 3 Ivy presidents he would not have waffled. Even Shawn, Wesley's Irish Setter, would have known better.
These people really live in Ivy Towers and become dis-attached from reality.
+++
https://nypost.com/2024/01/21/news/controversial-yale-law-school-dean-up-for-university-presidents-slot/
Yale Law dean whose controversies include meager response to campus antisemitism now ‘frontrunner’ to become president
By Jorge Fitz-Gibbon
The controversial dean of the Yale Law School, who turned the other cheek to students’ anti-Semitic concerns on campus, is now the “frontrunner” to take over as president of the prestigious Ivy League School.
Heather Gerken has been immersed in a series of scandals at Yale since taking over the law school reins in 2018 — but is reportedly at the top of a list being considered by a presidential research committee, according to the Washington Free Beacon.
Gerken most recently came under fire for advising Jewish students who were concerned about a spike in antisemitism on campus after the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel to seek counseling, the outlet said.
“She would be the worst choice out of all the current faculty,” one Yale student told the Free Beacon. “Her handling of campus politics has been abysmal.”
The controversy comes amid growing concern across the country over a rise in anti-Semitism on college campuses, which has already forced two high-profile university presidents — Claudine Gay at Harvard and Liz Magill at the University of Pennsylvania — to step down from their posts.
The Yale seat is up for grabs because the current president, Peter Salovey, is stepping down — with Gerken now seen as the “frontrunner” for his seat, sources told the outlet.
Heather Gerken has been in the middle of a string of scandals since taking over as Yale Law School dean in 2018. @GerkenHeather / X
Gerken, the first woman to head the school’s law school, faced calls to step down in 2021 for coming down hard on a Native American student who used the word “trap house” in a party invitation.
The law school chief claimed the term had “racial connotations,” and school officials even drafted the letter of apology and forced the student, Tret Colbert, to sign it.
“I was told that things might ‘escalate’ if I failed to apologize,” Colbert blogged at the time.
“I was told that an apology would be more likely to make the situation ‘go away,’ and it was implied there would be lingering impacts to my reputation because the ‘legal community is a small one.'”
Gerken worked to integrate diversity and inclusion programs at Yale, hiring a diversity trainer in 2021 to conduct a mandatory “antiracism workshop” for incoming students, the outlet said.
Still, when a conservative speaker, Kristen Waggoner, was shouted down while speaking on campus, Gerken took no action against the offending students — despite the school’s free speech policy.
Gerken also feuded publicly with law school professor Amy Chua, a conservative voice on campus who recommended promising students for clerkships with right-leaning judges — including Yale Law School alumn Brett Kavanaugh, who now sits on the US Supreme Court.
The controversy prompted dozens of federal judges to refuse to accept clerks from the law school, including Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals Judge James Ho.
“Yale presents itself as the best, most elite institution of legal education,” Ho wrote at the time. “Yet it’s the worst when it comes to legal cancellation.”
According to a subsequent lawsuit, Gerken stripped Chua of a teaching spot and pressured to students to provide false testimony against the professor.
Then last year, Jewish students urged the law school to take a stronger stand against antisemitism that blew up on campus following the sneak attack on Israel by Hamas terrorists.
Gerken’s response was to have her secretary draft a letter acknowledging only that “these are deeply challenging times” and counseling the students to seek counseling.
However, sources told the Free Beacon that Gerken has clout with the school administration because of her friendships with several wealthy alumni who are backing her push for the presidency.
Neither Gerken nor the Yale presidential search committee responded to requests for comment from the Free Beacon, the outlet said.
An official list of candidates for the post has not been made public, but sources said Tamar Szabo Gendler, dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, is also in the running
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Trump will prove better than the doubters believe but they will always expect more because they are so skeptical. No one can be worse, more dangerous than Biden.
+++
The 2024 Republican Choice
A second, chaotic Trump term, or a new conservative beginning?
The polls show Americans want to move on from President Biden, and Republicans have a choice to make about the alternative to offer voters in November. Will it be the prospect of a second Donald Trump term, with its inevitable turmoil and polarization, or will the GOP look forward to forge a new conservative governing coalition?
That’s the essence of the choice facing Republicans as New Hampshire holds its primary on Tuesday. The Trump campaign, the press and the Biden Democrats say the race is over. Mr. Biden wants Mr. Trump as the nominee because he believes Mr. Trump is the easiest to beat. But before the die is cast, it’s worth thinking about the risks GOP voters would be taking, both in November and in a second term if by some chance Mr. Trump defeated Mr. Biden.
The election risks are sitting in plain sight. Mr. Trump faces 91 felony charges in four different indictments. You can think the indictments are politically motivated and an awful precedent, as these columns have argued. But they exist, and amid the legal battling a jury could convict Mr. Trump by the summer.
Then what? Mr. Trump would never withdraw. But no fewer than 31% of Iowa caucus voters said in the entrance poll that a conviction would make Mr. Trump unfit for the White House. That would mean Mr. Trump can’t win. GOP voters would have played into Democratic and media hands.
If Mr. Trump does somehow win, Democrats predict a second Trump term will end in dictatorship. But that undersells the resilience of American institutions, which have held up so far against the stress test of Mr. Trump and his enemies, including the riot of Jan. 6, 2021. Congress responded quickly and ratified the Electoral College votes. The plotters were a rump group opposed across the government. There was nothing close to a coup d’état.
The better question in our view is whether Mr. Trump can deliver the policy and political victories that GOP voters want. There are many reasons to think he can’t.
Start with the fact that Mr. Trump would be an immediate lame duck. He can’t serve more than one more term, and if he does win it will be narrowly with little political capital. He has never reached an approval rating above 50%, and his rolling seven-week RealClearPolitics average favorability is 41.5%. If there’s a strong third-party ticket, he might win with the smallest plurality since 1912. Mr. Trump would lack the most potent presidential power—the ability to persuade.
Republicans are favored to win a Senate majority, albeit narrowly. But the House is up for grabs and could easily go Democratic. If the first term is a guide, Democrats will oppose anything Mr. Trump proposes that isn’t one of their priorities. Mr. Trump could use executive power to repeal Mr. Biden’s regulations and appoint judges. He could approve drilling for domestic energy in particular. But if Democrats control either house of Congress, conservative legislative priorities would be dead on arrival.
Trump supporters say his first term was successful until the midterms and Covid, and it was on the economy, deregulation and judges. But tax reform was teed up for him by years of spade work in the House GOP. The Federalist Society gave him a list of judges to nominate and Mitch McConnell moved them through the Senate. A GOP Senate could still confirm judges, but the current Republican House can’t pass a budget, much less come up with a governing agenda for 2025.
One reason is the intellectual confusion of the Trump-era GOP. There’s nothing like the unified agenda that Ronald Reagan carried into office after 1980, or even Mr. Trump after 2016. Republicans favor lower taxes, but Mr. Trump wants to raise the price of every import with a 10% border tax. They want to reduce the national debt but he won’t touch entitlements. They favor “peace through strength” but won’t seriously increase defense spending. The MAGA GOP has no desire to limit government but wants to use it for its own political purposes.
Mr. Trump says he now knows from hard experience how to manage the executive branch, but his governing style is undisciplined to say the least. The internal opposition will still be implacable, the leaks unending, the press relentlessly hostile. This is another reason the Trump-as-Hitler fears are implausible.
It also isn’t clear Mr. Trump could attract first-rate advisers. The lure of power is strong, but anyone who takes a job had better have a lawyer on retainer. No conservative who wants a career in the law is likely to accept a job in the White House or Justice—not after what Mr. Trump asked his lawyers to do after the 2020 election.
Looking ahead, a second Trump term would surely mean a Republican wipeout in the 2026 midterms. The Senate map that year tilts strongly Democratic. There would be no more Supreme Court confirmations. If the GOP takes another MAGA turn in 2028, the stage would be set for Democrats to run the election table, break the Senate filibuster, and pack the Court.
***
The failing Biden Presidency obscures all of this for millions of GOP voters, who see a Trump victory as a return to better, pre-Covid times. This misses that Mr. Biden’s failure presents the GOP with an historic opportunity. The President hasn’t fulfilled his promise of a return to normalcy and instead has delivered more polarization. Bidenomics hasn’t lifted real incomes, while the world is more dangerous than at any time since the 1930s.
But a Trump victory will bring no return to normalcy, nor the “unity” he sometimes mentions before he denounces some other former ally. A different GOP nominee would shake up political categories, win independents, and offer a better chance at a conservative restoration.
If Republicans nominate Mr. Trump again, that’s democracy—the worst system except for all the others. But our unhappy guess is that, sooner or later, the choice will end in tears for his voters.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++
No comments:
Post a Comment