Displaying posts published in

April 2024

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Is The Great Illusion In Ruins? The long-awaited Great Fundamental Transformation finally got its moment, crashed, and now has torched the nation—middle-class Americans most of all. By Victor Davis Hanson

By on April 8th, 2024

https://amgreatness.com/2024/04/08/is-the-great-illusion-in-ruins/

In 2021, Joe Biden was elected after a bitterly fought campaign that deposed the incumbent Donald Trump. Democrats eventually captured, for a time, both the House and Senate, ensuring the most left-wing government in modern American history.

Americans were then set to witness a great experiment. For the first time in their lives, a truly radical socialist program would supposedly fundamentally transform the way America dealt with the border, immigration, the economy, race relations, foreign policy, energy, law enforcement, crime, education, and social questions such as religion, gender, abortion, and schooling.

In a sense, we were all to be lab rats of sorts, to be experimented on by the radical left and their various critical theories. Now in the last year of the Biden term, we can see the results of that experiment—and the unfortunate disasters that followed.

But first, how was such a radical move to the left even possible in a center-right America?

The Democratic nominee, Biden, had earlier united the left, but only through a Faustian deal. The handlers of a nearly non compos mentis Biden had ushered all his 2020 primary rivals out of the primary races in unison.

But in exchange for their exits that ensured Biden the nomination, the left took over his general campaign—in which Biden was virtually relegated to his basement—and then set his agenda.

Who was running things?

The mysterious architects of White House ideology included, inter alia, the omnipresent, now-Washington-DC-dwelling Obamas, the old socialist gadfly Bernie Sanders, the fossilized tribunes of the black and Latino congressional caucuses, the DEI firebrand Squad, and the neo-socialist scold Elizabeth Warren.

Continue reading →
ISRAEL Comments turned off

Democrats Play Into Hamas’s Hands Cutting off weapons to an ally in wartime would be the definition of betrayal.

By on April 8th, 2024

https://www.wsj.com/articles/democrats-play-into-hamass-hands-israel-war-weapons-c079fb94?mod=opinion_lead_pos2

The late, great Middle East scholar Bernard Lewis liked to quip that while it is dangerous to be America’s enemy, it can be fatal to be its friend. That sad wisdom comes to mind as leading Democrats increase their pressure on Israel to end the war against Hamas before the terror group is defeated.

The latest sunshine ally is Nancy Pelosi. The former House Speaker joined a letter signed by 40 House Democrats urging President Biden to stop transferring weapons to Israel. In the wake of the mistaken bombing on a relief convoy, the Members write, “we strongly urge you to reconsider your recent decision to authorize the transfer of a new arms package to Israel, and to withhold this and any future offensive arms transfers until a full investigation into the airstrike is completed.”

You’d think the U.S. never made a mistake that killed civilians in wartime. They ignore the Hellfire missile attack that killed seven children as the U.S. sought to avenge the deaths of 13 Americans in Kabul as Mr. Biden pulled U.S. forces from Afghanistan in 2021.

Israel has a history of accountability for such mistakes, and officers in charge have already been cashiered. That’s more than can be said for the U.S. failure in Afghanistan.

Mrs. Pelosi joins Democratic Sens. Chris Van Hollen, Bernie Sanders and others in urging conditions on U.S. support unless Israel obeys their military commands. Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has ordered the Israeli people to elect a new government, pronto.

Continue reading →
WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The Silky Hand of Qatar Targets Jordan by Bassam Tawil

By on April 8th, 2024

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20551/jordan-hamas-muslim-brotherhood

The Jordanian authorities have accused the Muslim Brotherhood and its offshoot, Hamas, of seeking to destabilize security inside the kingdom.

Behind both Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood, of course, is the terrorist-sponsoring emirate, Qatar, and its propagandizing television bullhorn, Al-Jazeera.

Jordan’s leaders are doing exactly what many other Arab regimes and heads of state have long been doing: radicalizing their people and inciting them to violence against Israel as a means of distracting them from problems at home.

The Arab leaders want their people to be busy hating Israel. Otherwise, the people might demand democracy, transparency and accountability from the corrupt Arab rulers.

Their Jordanian majesties apparently seem to have forgotten that if Israel were not protecting them, their own Palestinian population would have overthrown them or assassinated them long ago, as they did to the king’s grandfather, King Abdullah I.

[Queen Rania] has also apparently forgotten is that it is Hamas that is using its own citizens as human shields and stealing and hoarding the humanitarian aid in the hope that the blame will be assigned to Israel – as it all too often unfortunately is.

“It is no longer a secret that there are two parties that have interests in creating tension in the region and moving to a new front: the Muslim Brotherhood and Iran. They share the same agenda: destabilizing the Arab states. Since the beginning of the Gaza war, we have seen that the Hamas leadership is trying to mobilize the Jordanian street and is trying to drag the Jordanians into the war by any means.” — Munif Al-Harbi, Saudi political analyst, aawsat.com, April 1, 2024.

If Jordan’s King Abdullah and his wife want to avoid chaos in their kingdom, and a rather unpleasant outcome for themselves, they would do well to stop playing into the hands of the radical Islamists by inciting the Jordanian people to violence against Israel.

However, behind the incitement to violence that is empowering the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas — and destabilizing the area — lies the silky hand of Qatar.

Jordan’s leaders are doing exactly what many other Arab regimes and heads of state have long been doing: radicalizing their people and inciting them to violence against Israel as a means of distracting them from problems at home.

The Jordanian authorities have accused the Muslim Brotherhood and its offshoot, Hamas, of seeking to destabilize security inside the kingdom. The accusation came in the aftermath of recent demonstrations in the capital Amman and other parts of Jordan in support of Hamas and in condemnation of Israel. The demonstrators are demanding that Jordan shut down the Israeli embassy and cut all ties with Israel.

Continue reading →