The recent assassination of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran has sent shockwaves through the Middle East, potentially derailing ceasefire negotiations and risking a wider regional conflict.…

The recent assassination of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran has sent shockwaves through the Middle East, potentially derailing ceasefire negotiations and risking a wider regional conflict.…

Politics Trump Is Right About McKinley “The most underrated president” was a model of successful governance in a world in flux. Donald Trump has weighed in on a presidential legacy, albeit not his own. In a wide-ranging July 16, 2024 interview with Bloomberg, Trump proclaimed William McKinley “the most underrated president.”  Trump is right. McKinley, who guided the ship of state at the dawn of the 20th century, is the most underrated chief executive in our nation’s history. And in many respects his presidency can serve as a model for a United States that is once again undergoing seismic changes. McKinley is largely forgotten today. Presidential historians often rank him in the middle of the pack. Such rankings are colored by a deep liberal bias—a February 2024 survey put FDR first and Trump dead last—but they do illustrate that McKinley is neither hailed for his greatness nor lamented for his failures. Rather, he’s just overlooked.  Part of this is due to the man himself; even in his own lifetime McKinley was regarded as somewhat bland. McKinley’s lack of personal papers and, as one biographer noted, his “tendency to listen as much as talk” also contributed to his obscurity. But it is also the result of his premature death. McKinley was murdered by an anarchist, Leon Czolgosz, on September 6, 1901, a mere six months into his second term. Some presidential assassinations grant their victims a level of immortality. Lincoln and John F. Kennedy come to mind. But others consign the dead to oblivion.  Indeed, for more than a century, McKinley has been overshadowed by his larger-than-life successor, Teddy Roosevelt. TR was young, dynamic, and image-conscious. He knew how to court the press and provide good copy for reporters. Roosevelt was 42 when he took office and seemed to embody the youthful nation that he led. He was also famously hyperactive and, at times, erratic.  The stolid McKinley was Roosevelt’s opposite. He was unknowable. The wife of one of his rivals in Ohio politics, Joseph Foraker, once charged that McKinley was a man of “masks,” his inner thoughts and emotions well concealed. Roosevelt’s own daughter, Alice Roosevelt Longworth, famously said that her father wanted to be the “the corpse at every funeral, the bride at every wedding, and the baby at every christening.” By contrast, the unassuming McKinley exuded the air of a man just happy to be invited.  Roosevelt took the helm right as America became a world power. He was the perfect president for the new media age. TR’s exploits, from hunting exotic creatures to brokering peace between Russia and Japan, served as perfect fodder for press barons like William Randolph Hearst. But McKinley was popular in his lifetime, and he built the edifice that TR stood on. His death prompted widespread mourning. McKinley was the only president between Ulysses Grant and Woodrow Wilson—a span of nearly forty years—to be elected to two terms. And his electoral victories over his Democratic opponent, the perennial candidate, William Jennings Bryan, were resounding. In fact, they reshaped the American landscape.  McKinley’s 1896 victory over Bryan is widely regarded as one of a handful of political realignments in U.S. history. Modern Republican strategists like Kevin Phillips, who advised Richard Nixon, to Karl Rove, George W. Bush’s guru, have cited the 1896 realignment as a model—and for good reason. From 1896 until Franklin D. Roosevelt’s election in 1932, Republicans occupied the executive branch for all but eight years. The sole Democratic occupant, Woodrow Wilson, only took office thanks to a split in the Republican party created by TR in 1912. McKinley, Phillips noted, was the “political architect who ended the two-decade national stalemate” that had existed since 1876, “turning a weakened Civil War coalition to a new full-fledged industrial GOP majority,” thereby making him “the most important nineteenth-century Republican after Lincoln.” McKinley remade the GOP, and “he did so by beating, rather than submitting to, the Eastern machine forces.” And, as Phillips observes, McKinley did so by expanding the GOP to include a broader working-class constituency. “Not since Lincoln, who publicly upheld unions…had a Republican nominee so embraced labor.”  McKinley famously embraced tariffs, but he also focused on jobs and employment—“the full dinner pail,” as it was called. By fighting for a conservative working-class party, McKinley was doing what Benjamin Disraeli had done three decades before in the United Kingdom. But while Disraeli is regarded as a seminal figure, McKinley is depicted as an unsophisticated Midwestern rube, his triumphs the fruit of the labor of others. Indeed, historians have often presented McKinley as incidental to the realignment that he helped forge. They portray wealthy industrialists and key advisers like Mark Hanna as being more responsible for McKinley’s electoral accomplishments. The notion that McKinley was weak and the tool of greater men was pushed by his contemporary enemies and has endured for years afterward. McKinley, of course, wasn’t around to dispute the portrayal. Indeed, one later historian, noting that events always seemed to go McKinley’s way despite his lack of a heavy hand, referred to the 25th president as a “tantalizing enigma.” McKinley, the former editor of The American Conservative Robert Merry observed, “never moved in a straight line, seldom declared where he wanted to take the country, [but] somehow moved people and events from the shadows. He rarely twisted arms in efforts at political persuasion, never raised his voice in political cajolery [and] didn’t visibly seek revenge.” Nonetheless, “he always seemed to outmaneuver his rivals and get his way.” McKinley, Merry pointed out, was the “architect of the American century.” As the historian Lewis Gould has observed, McKinley should be regarded as the first modern president. He significantly expanded, and reorganized, the White House staff, bringing it into the modern era. Dwight Eisenhower, a career military officer, was the first president to formally create the office of Chief of Staff. But the office has its origins in the McKinley administration, when the former Ohio governor chose George Cortelyou to be his private secretary. Prior presidents had secretaries, of course. But Cortelyou’s flair for organization and expansive powers were noteworthy. A man who was working as a post office clerk a mere decade before McKinley elevated him would eventually go on to become the U.S. Secretary of Commerce and Labor, the Secretary of Treasury, and the head of the Republican National Committee. As Phillips noted in his 2003 biography, McKinley was the first president to extensively use the telephone, develop systematized press operations, to have a news summary, and to make the White House a news center. The Spanish–American War would be the first conflict to be managed from a White House war room connected to military headquarters in Washington and the field by telephone and telegraph. Both in the 1896 campaign and afterward, McKinley used new media’s power in innovative ways. McKinley also traveled broadly. Prior to his assassination, he was planning trips that would have made him the first president to travel abroad—trips that he thought reflected America’s newfound power and status. McKinley was unique in another respect. He was one of the few occupants of the Oval Office to be a successful wartime president. Despite later portrayals, McKinley wasn’t an avowed imperialist; he had qualms about the annexation of Hawaii and was hardly pushing for U.S. involvement in the conflict with Spain. Yet once he had decided on the use of force, he wanted it to be overwhelming.  In foreign affairs, McKinley wasn’t a bully, as Bryan and other critics alleged, but he wasn’t a man for half-measures either. As he said in his inaugural address: “We want no wars of conquest; we must avoid the temptation of territorial aggression. War should never be entered upon until every agency of peace has failed; peace is preferable to war in almost every contingency.” McKinley, the last veteran of the U.S. Civil War to occupy the White House, once told the White House physician: “I have been through one war; I have seen the dead piled up; and I do not want to see another.” The 25th president not only reshaped American domestic politics, but he also reoriented U.S. foreign policy. As Phillips notes, “he helped to shape and preview America’s early-twentieth-century alliances and hostilities: on one hand, entente with Britain and an off-and-on commitment to the territorial integrity of China, and on the other, mounting Caribbean and Pacific tensions with Germany and Japan.” In shoring up relations with Britain, McKinley helped set the stage for what would become the fabled and long-enduring “special relationship.” McKinley took office when the international system was in flux. Old empires, like Spain, the Qing dynasty in China, and the Ottoman Empire, were on their way out, while new powers, notably Germany and Japan, were rising. He presciently recognized the growing importance of what today is called the Indo-Pacific. McKinley helped reshape American foreign policy for a new era. Given his deserved reputation as a fierce proponent of tariffs—Trump lauded him as the “tariff king”—it is unsurprising that McKinley viewed foreign affairs through the prism of markets and trade. McKinley pushed for trade reciprocity, prioritizing access for U.S. exports. McKinley was an advocate for both American manufacturing and the working man, viewing both as key to the nation’s health. For McKinley, military power was inseparable from economic power—a truism that American leaders today would do well to remember. John Hay, a one time secretary to Abraham Lincoln who served as McKinley’s ambassador to Great Britain before becoming his, and then TR’s, secretary of state, had this to say: “In dealing with foreign powers he will rank with the greatest of our diplomatists. It was a world of which he had little special knowledge before coming to the presidency. But his marvelous adaptability was in nothing more remarkable than in the firm grasp he immediately displayed in international relations. In preparing for war and in the restoration of peace he was alike adroit, courteous and far-sighted.” High praise from someone who served, and intimately knew, both Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt. Sometimes the man makes the moment, and sometimes the moment makes the man. McKinley can’t fairly be said to have done either. But the man was right for the moment. He changed both America itself, as well as America’s place in the world. And his presidency, with all its enduring successes, should serve as a model for his successors. The post Trump Is Right About McKinley appeared first on The American Conservative.

Foreign Affairs The Ukrainian War Effort Is Going Nowhere Fast The U.S. and Europe must wrap up their dangerous proxy war as soon as possible.  (paparazzza/Shutterstock) As the United States and its European allies continue to provide Ukraine with the wherewithal to kill Russian soldiers and strike ever deeper in Russian territory, the potential for retaliatory escalation creeps higher. Kiev is of course entitled to respond harshly to Moscow’s invasion. As it is doing so with Western weapons, however, Russia has increasing reason to treat NATO countries as formal belligerents, with potentially catastrophic results. The New York Times reported that Russia’s Defense Minister Andrei Belousov recently called Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin “to relay a warning, according to two U.S. officials and another official briefed on the call: The Russians had detected a Ukrainian covert operation in the works against Russia that they believed had the Americans’ blessing. Was the Pentagon aware of the plot, Mr. Belousov asked Mr. Austin, and its potential to ratchet up tensions between Moscow and Washington?” Austin apparently denied U.S. responsibility, but he would do so whatever the truth. Belousov’s question demonstrated the increasing risk of Washington’s proxy war. Unfortunately, the Biden administration’s assurances carry little weight given its outsize role in the conflict. America’s presence in Ukraine was great at the start and has grown along with the conflict. Public claims of responsibility for killing Russian generals and sinking Russian ships confirmed Washington’s participation. Moscow’s failure to retaliate led some observers to view Russia’s President Vladimir Putin as a paper tiger, though Austin reportedly “warned his Russian counterpart not to threaten U.S. troops in Europe amid rising tensions in Ukraine.” However, with its forces on the advance Moscow would be foolish to risk triggering full-scale allied intervention. Better to take a slower, more expensive win than gamble everything on a U.S. climbdown. In contrast, had Kiev come close to achieving the expansive objectives growing out of its early success—ousting the Russian leader, overthrowing the Russian regime, and even breaking up the Russian federation—it is doubtful Putin would have been so reticent in using his nation’s superior firepower. Those who assure us that he would never do so are the same people who were certain he would never invade Ukraine. In the meantime, Kiev is suffering badly. Its manpower losses have been much greater than reported. A Ukrainian legislator admitted that his government “vastly downplayed the war’s true toll.” American estimates are more than double the number stated by President Volodymyr Zelensky, and they also are probably too low. Moreover, Kiev’s recruiting travails have been much noted, with even the medically unfit being conscripted, and the government facing increasing draft resistance. Also notable is Russia’s artillery and air superiority. And there is more.  Writing of Ukrainian commander-in-chief Oleksandr Syrskyi, the Guardian’s Luke Harding reports:  Two and half years into Vladimir Putin’s full-scale onslaught, he acknowledges the Russians are much better resourced. They have more of everything: tanks, infantry fighting vehicles, soldiers. Their original 100,000-strong invasion force has grown to 520,000, he said, with a goal by the end of 2024 of 690,000 men. The figures for Ukraine have not been made public. “When it comes to equipment, there is a ratio of 1:2 or 1:3 in their favor,” he said. Since 2022 the number of Russian tanks has “doubled—from 1,700 to 3,500. Artillery systems have tripled, and armored personnel carriers gone up from 4,500 to 8,900. “The enemy has a significant advantage in force and resources.” Even when Ukraine has been notably innovative, such as in drone warfare, Moscow has gained some significant advantages, admitted Ukraine’s Col. Vadym Sukharevsky, who heads his nation’s Unmanned Systems Forces. Reported the Economist,  Initially it was Ukraine that got ahead, developing an army of cheap, small drones to counter Russia’s overwhelming artillery and missile advantage. That has since changed. Now, enemy drones outnumber Ukrainian ones six to one. But superior tactics and innovation still keep Ukraine competitive. Ukraine tends to be first in developing and adopting new technologies, driven by a policy of diversification. Russia’s advantage in mass production means it can adapt and scale up much faster. Although none of this means Kiev cannot win, it continues to lose ground and its notable successes, such as against the Russian Black Sea fleet, do not retrieve land losses. Deeper strikes into Russia and increased attempts to isolate Crimea are likely to spark more aggressive retaliatory attacks rather than strategic retreats. With the failure of Western sanctions to break the Russian economy, Moscow remains better able to absorb the costs of continuing war. Absent direct allied entry into the war, Ukrainian victory remains a long shot. Yet proposals for Washington and Brussels to adopt a peace strategy trigger frenzied wailing and gnashing of teeth in both capitals. President Joe Biden and congressional leaders continue to pledge their support for the war. In mid-July the administration announced the multilateral “Ukraine Compact,” through which it would “Support Ukraine’s immediate defense and security needs, including through the continued provision of security assistance and training, modern military equipment, and defense industrial and necessary economic support,” and more. Before that the president called Zelensky “to underscore the United States’ lasting commitment to supporting Ukraine.”  In Europe assorted European Union and national governments sharply criticized Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, whose nation holds the rotating 6-month presidency, for traveling to Moscow to talk peace. Reuters reported that Orban’s efforts “sparked fury among many EU governments and officials.” The European Parliament passed a resolution criticizing Orban for his “uncoordinated and surprising visit” and reaffirmed the “unwavering commitment of the EU to providing political, financial, economic, humanitarian, military and diplomatic support for as long as it takes to secure Ukraine’s victory.” Unfortunately for Kiev, the legislators provided more verbiage than artillery shells. In contrast, broader public opinion is becoming more skeptical of a potentially endless war. A new report from the European Council on Foreign Relations found an important divergence between Ukrainian and European attitudes toward the conflict: “Ukrainians want weapons in order to win, while most Europeans send weapons hoping this will help lead to an acceptable eventual settlement.” Continental skepticism toward the war is likely to continue rising as politics shifts rightward. Moreover, almost half of Ukrainians back peace negotiations with Moscow. While most still expect victory, the number prepared to make concessions for peace is increasing. According to the Times of London, “One in three people, or 32 per cent, now say that they would agree to cede territory to Moscow to bring about peace, according to the Kiev International Institute of Sociology. The figure this time last year was 10 per cent.” If Russian advances and Ukrainian losses continue, this shift is likely to continue. In principle, enhancing Ukrainian bargaining leverage is a sensible strategy. Nevertheless, since the invasion, Kiev’s position has steadily weakened, except for the relatively brief 2023 counteroffensive. Ukraine’s maximum strength was in early 2022, before Russian tanks rolled. Yet the U.S. would not even consider discussing Kiev’s prospective membership. Ukraine also was well-positioned during the Istanbul negotiations shortly after Moscow’s attack. At that point the former’s main concession for peace would have been a promise of neutrality. Alas, the Western allies, pushing their own objectives, most importantly weakening Russia, encouraged Kiev to reject this apparent opportunity to settle. With every passing day Moscow’s forces are acquiring more territory while Ukraine’s military is weakening and its home front is suffering. No current plans, either aid from Europe or action by Kiev, appear likely to reverse the war’s course. To continue a fight in which Ukraine is the battlefield and Ukrainians are suffering most of the casualties and destruction in hope that allied Wunderwaffe, delivered in sufficient quantities and time, will lead to a miraculous victory, appears delusional. If the allies are not willing to risk World War III and enter the conflict—as they should not!—they should shift their priority to restoring peace. That requires engaging Russia diplomatically and negotiating a new security structure that simultaneously preserves Ukraine’s independence and respects Moscow’s security interests. The U.S. and Europe should offer restoration of Russian assets and elimination of economic sanctions as inducements for an acceptable settlement. Territorial losses by Ukraine—of areas severed in 2014 as well as more recently conquered—look inevitable. Kiev could choose to fight on, of course, but the allies should make clear that it would be on its own.  Russia’s invasion was unjust, though encouraged by reckless allied policy, but funding a perpetual war for the return of Ukraine’s lost lands is not in the West’s interest. Indeed, with the persistent risk of escalation atop the costs of ongoing combat, continued fighting is in no one’s interest, other than America’s and other nations’ major arms-makers. Ukraine’s former military commander, Valery Zaluzhny, inadvertently made the case for peace when he forecast a new world war: “Is humanity ready to calmly accept the next war in terms of the scale of suffering? This time the Third World War? Free and democratic countries and their governments need to wake up and think about how to protect your citizens and their countries.” The Russo–Ukrainian conflict is a humanitarian disaster. It also risks unleashing global nuclear war. Belousov’s phone call should wake up slumbering officials in Washington. The U.S. is engaged in hostilities against the Russian Federation. The combat is indirect, but real, with Americans responsible for thousands of Russian deaths and mass destruction of materiel. The slope toward full-scale war grows ever more slippery. It is imperative to end the Ukraine imbroglio before it spreads. The post The Ukrainian War Effort Is Going Nowhere Fast appeared first on The American Conservative.

Politics Respect Parents’ Childcare Choices The Biden-Harris administration’s childcare proposals disregard what Americans actually want. Credit: Leon Neal/Getty Images “One of the most urgent things that parents and families need is affordable childcare,” Vice President Kamala Harris declared earlier this year. If this sounds like Obamacare for childcare, you’re not far off. And much like with left-wing healthcare proposals, Harris made a crucial omission. Parents and families don’t just need lower childcare prices—they also need their caregiving choices to be respected. On that front, the Biden-Harris administration has plenty of room for improvement. Just look at how they’ve framed the “caregiving crisis” since the outbreak of Covid-19. Their “Build Back Better” agenda promoted extraordinary subsidies for professional center-based childcare, while offering no support to parents who prefer other arrangements, such as stay-at-home parenting, care provided by a relative (e.g., a grandparent), or care shared among neighbors, church members, etc. They’ve also consistently sought to increase degree requirements, pay, and benefits at childcare centers to draw more workers into that industry. This simultaneously raises costs for families that use center-based care, while pushing a one-size-fits-all “solution” that ignores families’ actual preferences and needs. As the economic policy think tank American Compass reports, most Americans don’t want to rely on childcare centers. They prefer stay-at-home parenting or relative caregiving by close to 10 percentage points. And low-income and working-class Americans—those most in need of the government’s help—are the least favorable to center-based care. Virtually everyone agrees that support for families should increase, but what Democrats miss is that families also have a palpable desire for flexible support.  Why won’t the left respond to this desire? The answer is a mixture of elite bias and bad economics. Of all Americans, only the upper class idealizes dual-income households and childcare centers—but it’s exactly that upper class which has captured the Democrat Party. Liberal policymakers are similarly influenced by their obsession with economic efficiency. When you measure everything by its contribution to the Gross Domestic Product, it’s easy to judge caring for children at home as a step down from spending that time at work.  But conservatives are charting a better course. By increasing federal funding for childcare, we can show that we put families first. And by reforming that funding to give families more options, we can show working parents that their voices are heard. My Respect Parents’ Childcare Choices Act is a comprehensive bill designed to accomplish both these goals. On the one hand, my bill would increase annual authorized funding for the Child Care and Development Block Grant by $5.25 billion, allowing more families to receive vital assistance. On the other hand, it would ensure that funding is allocated in the form of childcare vouchers, which allow parents to pay relative caregivers just the same as they pay childcare centers. Married parents could also use these vouchers to support at-home parental care, as long as they work a combined total of 40 hours per week. In addition, my bill would protect faith-based childcare providers from unfair discrimination and prevent newly married couples from losing childcare benefits. This is the kind of policy proposal America requires—one that is sensitive to families’ realities, and one that will not cost taxpayers a penny. My Respect Parents’ Child Care Choices Act would pay for itself by eliminating the Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit, a program that costs $5.3 billion per year, but ignores single-earner families and primarily benefits the upper class.  I call on my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to turn this bill into law. I call on Harris and the rest of the Biden administration, too. If they really believe childcare is “one of the most urgent things that parents and families need,” they should be open to increasing childcare funding in a manner consistent with Americans’ wants and needs. The only alternatives are blatant paternalism and hypocrisy. The post Respect Parents’ Childcare Choices appeared first on The American Conservative.

"I feel like music can be anything." The post The Big Moon’s Juliette Jackson on her favourite Pixies song: “They prove that music can go anywhere” first appeared on Far Out Magazine.

The fan favorite annual event is back and is including some new stars for 2024.

At an event hosted by the National Association of Black Journalists today, Donald Trump sparked shrieks of outrage from the press for suggesting that Kamala Harris may not always have been as “black” as she now claims to be. “I’ve known her for a long time indirectly,” Trump said of Harris. “And she was always of Indian heritage and she was only promoting Indian heritage. I didn’t know she was black until a number of years ago when she happened to turn black, and now she wants to be known as black. So I don’t know, is she Indian, or is she black? … Because she was Indian all the way, and then all of the sudden she made a turn and she became a black person.” As amusing as the right-on-cue hysterics were — White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre fumed that Trump’s comments were “completely insulting and repulsive” — the talking point about Harris’ “blackness” is part of a broader pattern of quixotic right-wing lines of attack on the presumptive Democratic nominee. (Trump, to his credit, has largely avoided the worst of these; his remark today was largely a passing aside). The Right’s problem is not that it is skewering Harris for her left-wing racialism, or her desire to elevate black interests above those of the nation, or her steadfast commitment to the most poisonous features of the contemporary Left’s hostility to white people; if anything, the Right isn’t emphasizing any of those enough. The Right’s problem is that when it does bring up race, it often does so in a feeble, impotent, and ultimately self-defeating fashion. As an empirical matter, Harris is half-black, insofar as “black” is an actual racial category denoting Sub-Saharan African ancestry. Her mother is Indian; her father is Jamaican. (A Jamaican immigrant might not qualify as “African-American” according to the broader socio-cultural category of black American identity, but that’s largely irrelevant, for our purposes). Harris attended Howard University, a historically black college in Washington, and was widely touted as the first “black woman” on a major-party presidential ticket in 2020. Various right-wing influencers have obsessively latched onto trying to somehow prove — though it isn’t clear to whom — that she isn’t black, with everything from old headlines about Harris becoming “the first Indian-American senator” to the vice president’s birth certificate. But to what end? The simple truth is that as a political matter, at least, it literally does not matter whether Kamala is black, or black “enough,” or black in the specific way that she should be black. Black voters are going to vote for her in overwhelming numbers, as they have for every Democrat since (at least) Harry Truman. While there is no public opinion data available on exactly how black the black electorate believes Kamala to be, one suspects that the share of black voters who are suspicious of her racial identity is commensurate to (or lower than) the share of blacks who vote Republican — i.e., 10 to 15 percent, at best. The idea that Kamala might not be black would strike most normal voters, of any and every race, as bizarre. She looks black, she sounds black, and the media says she’s black; for all practical political purposes, she is black, regardless of what the feverish right-wing hunt for her precise genetic admixture turns up. Insofar as there is a coherent justification for the Right’s quest to disprove Kamala’s blackness, it tends to be presented as a kind of haphazard appeal to black voters. This is why a cadre of prominent black conservative influencers — most of whom derive their income from constantly assuring their predominantly white audience that actually, it’s the Democrats who are the real racists — have latched onto this talking point, implicitly selling their conservative fans on the fantasy that black voters are going to back the GOP en masse: “One of the worst kept secrets is Black voters actually hate Kamala Harris because she is not Black,” wrote self-proclaimed “Iconic OG Black Gay Veteran Republican Icon” Rob Smith. “Kamala isn’t even Black … Why in the f*** would we vote for her?”, declared Lavern Spicer. “Kamala ‘Not Black’ Harris believes that inviting Megan Thee Stallion on stage to shake her bottom … will win her the black vote,” sneered C.J. Pearson. “DOES SHE THINK WE’RE DUMB?” Even if black voters were convinced by these appeals — and they won’t be — they would vote for Kamala Harris for the same reason that an overwhelming share of Hispanics voted for Barack Obama in both 2008 and 2012. Obama’s “coalition of the ascendant” was (and still is) meant to tap into the awakening power of the “New America” — the rising tide of blacks, Hispanics, gays, women, and elite white liberals who sought to replace the primarily white, Christian, straight, and male political and cultural establishment that has presided over the nation, in some form or manner, since before the Founding. Constituents within this coalition are united not because a particular figurehead at any given moment looks like them (although that never hurts), but because they share a social, political, economic, and cultural interest in the campaign to wrest power from the hands of the Old America. They have the same enemies, and for that reason, they stick together, no matter how much energy the Right expends trying to persuade them otherwise. But the Right continues to devote an inordinate amount of time to trying to persuade them anyways, because many members of the conservative establishment have — perhaps unbeknownst to them — internalized the premises and formulas of the Left, even as they publicly rage against them. Republicans are desperate to be “diverse,” and are embarrassed by the overwhelming whiteness of their political base. (In his post-Congress apology tour, Kevin McCarthy routinely repeated the complaint that Democrats “looked like America,” while Republicans looked like “the most restrictive country club in America”). They are so eager to avoid being accused of “racism” that they often willingly commit acts of political self-immolation to prove as much, only to find — to their astonishment — that the Left still accuses them of racism anyways. The good news is, whenever the GOP (and the Right more broadly) decides it would like to win again, there is still a mass political constituency waiting for them out there in the hinterlands. If conservatives want to hunt, they should go where the ducks are. READ MORE: Biden Puts Supreme Court on Ballots as His Name Comes Off Them Even More Echoes of 1968 The post Hunting Where the Ducks Are appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

The day I knew the media would stop at nothing to destroy Donald Trump was back in 2016 or so when they declared he is a Neo-Nazi anti-Semite. He sent out a thing showing Hillary with a sheriff’s badge, and they said the six-pointed badge was a Jewish star of David. Then CNN and the New York Times dug up some New Jersey LGB activist (the years before “T,” “Q,” and “+” were added), who briefly was spokesman for some extreme-left group with “Anne Frank” in its name, and he did the media circuit declaring that the Trump administration was “infected” with anti-Semitism. I sat there, watching and reading this garbage, and knew right then that Trump would be in for a tsunami of hateful fake news the next eight years. Remember: Jews are the canary in the coal mine. For more than a century, coal miners have been putting a respective canary in their respective mines because most humans cannot detect, until too late, when the mine fills with deadly carbon monoxide. So the canary is there as a life saver. If it is talking, they are fine. If it suddenly dies, they realize the mine is filling with carbon monoxide, and they get out. The canary, not volunteering to do so, gives its life to save theirs. So it is with Jews. Jews do not volunteer for that role, but that role often volunteers Jews. When a stable society starts going after Jews, 100 out of 100 times it will not stop with Jews. Some will feel bad for the beaten or dead Jews, but they will not realize that they are next. It’s been going on for 3,000 years. To keep this to a shorter version: The tsars went after Jews with pogroms. In time, all the non-Jewish Russians got buried under tsarist oppression. The Communists came in and went after the Jews, closing all synagogues and yeshiva schools, and arresting and executing rabbis and others. Eventually, Stalin was murdering everyone. Hitler went after Jews, and no one did a damn thing to stop him. In the end, 40–50 million died. Arabs started hijacking Israeli planes, and others felt bad for the poor Jews. Now everyone is stuck with metal detectors. When it happens to Jews, know with certainty that it soon is coming to a theater near you. So I knew he was in for a tough ride when the Anne Frank garbage started. All the years of NBC adulation for The Apprentice, the gratitude of New York City for that ice skating rink, the admiration over all those hotels, casinos, and golf courses were over. Jews were the canaries. I am national vice president of an organization of 2,500 Orthodox rabbis. We lead a flock of more than a million Jews. No group ever can claim 100 percent same-thinking membership except in elections in Putin’s Russia and in the Ayatollahs’ Iran. But we million represent the strongest, largest, most cohesive body of Trump supporters — and conservative Republicans, in general — in America. No one gets more frustrated than we when we see a Bernie Sanders, Chuck Schumer, Ben & Jerry, George Soros, and Doug Emhoff characterize themselves as Jews. To coin a phrase: “Not In Our Name.” Those characters do not observe the Jewish Sabbath according to its laws. They do not eat kosher. They are proud of children who marry homosexuals or lesbians (Schumer) or anti-Israel Arab Muslims (Soros) or, simply, non-Jews who would pressure the hell out of Israel while their children raise money for “Palestinians”(Emhoff). Trump does not reject a characterization by a proud Jewish radio interviewer who calls Jews like Doug Emhoff  “crappy Jews”? We rabbis, because we do not use adjectives like that when describing Jews, do not say it that way. So all we can say is: Amen. Amen. Amen. I have written a million articles and have delivered hundreds of speeches over the years discussing the phenomenon of the Jewish suicide liberal. I will keep it short here. You can google for the longer versions. More than 90 percent of all Jews in America trace their arrival here to grandparents and great-grandparents who arrived between 1881 (when Tsar Alexander II was assassinated) and 1914 (when America closed the gates to all immigration, fearing a Communist invasion amid the Russian Revolution and the outbreak of World War I). Republicans of that era discriminated brutally against those Jews, albeit in a subtle, gentlemanly way. They barred Jews from hotels and country clubs. They imposed quotas barring Jews from colleges and grad schools. Jews who were among the few who did get in and earn advanced degrees could not get jobs in their fields of study. Jews who graduated medical school could not get admittance privileges in hospitals. Jews who graduated law school could not get into law firms. We were treated like blacks and could not even rent homes in many parts of the country. The only difference between us and blacks is that blacks could not tolerate it and got angry and have remained angry and expect reparations and affirmative action and DEI. By contrast, Jews — after 3,000 years of this — expected it. We were just thankful we could worship openly, slaughter kosher meat, and circumcise our newborn boys without pogroms. Instead of reacting with anger, keeping score, and expecting recompense, we dealt with it in our way. We laughed and joked about it. They say we have big noses (unlike, say, Richard Nixon, Arabs, and Persians)? Or that we are cheap (unlike the non-Jews who wake up at 3 in the morning to get in line for a Black Friday sale or who wait to buy at Columbus Day, Presidents Day, and July sales events)? Okay, we have jokes about that. And we did what we always do: If the Other will not give us a fair chance, we will do an end run within the law: We will get so educated that they cannot afford to keep us out. We will start our own law firms and build our own hospitals. We will build our own hotels and country clubs, and we will start our own industries. As blue jeans got big, Levi and Calvin Klein and Ralph Lifshitz (changed to Lauren) and Sergio Valente (i.e., Eli Kaplan) raced in. Upgraded, premium ice cream? Burt Baskin, Irv Robbins, Ben Cohen, Jerry Siegel, Ruby and Rose Mattus (Haagen-Dazs) jumped in. My uncles started a florist business; soon, it grew to employ several in the large family. While the white-shoe Republicans were rejecting and mocking us, the wily Democrats were playing the ethnic card as they do now with blacks, Hispanics, and whoever else they can DEI. In those days, they played the Irish, Italians, Germans, Poles, and Jews. They welcomed us and gave us jobs. They even recruited us to run for office on their tickets. So the immigrants of 1881–1914 went Democrat. It is just like the Dixie South, who went Democrat for other reasons. What else would make sense? Once a population group adheres to a party, it sticks with the party for over a century like barnacles — long after the party reverses policies with the other party. It makes no sense, but these are proven facts. The White Christian conservative church-goers of the South, who attached to the Democrats during the slavery years in 1860, still were voting only Democrat 120 years later, until Reagan ran against Carter in 1980. I have listed in past articles the remarkable record that seven different Bible Belt White Christian southern states of Dixie still were electing only left-wing Democrats for governor and their respective two U.S. senate seats for 120 years, sticking the Reagan they loved with a Democrat Congress. Jewish voting patterns are exactly the same as everyone else. Jews arrived later, so are changing later, beginning with the Orthodox. People take time to switch. Jews personally knew their Democrat council member, mayor, governor, or U.S. senator. He ate at their homes, kissed their babies, attended their banquets. The Republicans were AWOL. Habits die hard. Look at the White Bible Belt Southern Christians from 1860 to 1980. We now live in an era of devout Catholics and fallen Catholics. We million-plus Jews of faith and religious devotion to G-d are amazed when people point to Soros, Schumer, and that garbage alone. We don’t say it out loud — because we are polite and not in the mood for a pogrom here right now — but I don’t care, so I’ll say it: All the LGBTQ garbage and “gay marriage” and despicable Drag Queen mockeries of The Last Supper and perversion of public schooling of children and abortion-on-demand, even in the ninth month and even after birth, happened because a Catholic president, Joe Biden, and Catholic speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, and a whole litany of Catholics led the charge to immorality. And, before Protestants say, “Yeah, it was the Catholics,” the Clintons are Protestant, and likewise were Lyndon Johnson, Jimmy Carter, Virginia former Gov. Ralph Northam, and Obama (whatever the heck he is). So we Jews of faith and devotion wonder: If the Vatican bans homosexuality and “gay marriage,” and abortion, all immorality, then what’s with the most powerful Catholics in this country? One after another: Nancy Pelosi, Joe Biden, former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, former New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, John Kerry, Sen. Tim Kaine, Robert O’Rourke, the Castro Brothers, Xavier Becerra, Sen. Dick Durbin, the Kennedy family of Massachusetts, Sen. Patty Murray, Sen. Ed Markey, Sen. Jack Reed, former Sen. Bob Menendez, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, dozens of pro-abortion House members like Ted Lieu of California, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel, and just so many others are among American leftist celebrities, entertainers, and media personalities. Devout Catholics, Protestants, and Jews of faith and Biblical adherence all share the identical pain, wanting to shout to the Heavens: “NOT IN OUR NAME!” But we cannot get recognized for our love of G-d and commitment to morality and decency because the media wing of the Democrat Party shut us out. Non-observant Jews vote in almost the same percentages as do non-devout Catholics. The media does not know how to count and survey Jewish voters. Seriously — How do the pollsters determine the person they are surveying is a Jew? Paul Newman? No. The daughter of Kamala Harris’s husband? No. Joy Behar? No. The Three Stooges? Yes! (nyuck, nyuck, nyuck). Do pollsters require the guy to present his circumcision? Do you know how to tell a Jew from a non-Jew? (Not a joke; no punchline.) They ask, and the leftist says “I’m Jewish.” But if his mother is not Jewish, then he is one of yours, not one of ours. For 3,300 years, that has been the only recognized definition of a Jew. At least half of the people who affiliate with “Reform Judaism” are intermarried with non-Jewish offspring. Even many of their rabbis are not. Gallup, Reuters/Ipsos, NYT/Siena, Quinnipiac, and Rasmussen do not get to determine who is Jewish. The Chief Rabbinate of Israel gets to determine. Many Jews are so freaked out by double standards that exist that they determine the best way to avoid discrimination is by overtly projecting themselves as “not one of them.” But how can they do that when everyone knows they are one of them? They say, “I may be Jewish, but I am anti-Zionist.” That’s what it was in the 1950s. But the Arabs and real Jew-haters have co-opted the “anti-Zionist” badge. So the Schumers and Ben & Jerry types now say “I hate Netanyahu. Now can I be your majority leader and join your club? I even vote Democrat! See? My concern is not Israel but plastic straws.” The Democrats of Elizabeth Warren, Chris Van Hollen, Nancy Pelosi, and The Squad may abandon Schumer for left-wing Catholic Dick Durbin if that Jew backs Israel too strongly. So Schumer and Jerrold Nadler, who fears being primaried out by an Ocasio lieutenant, grasp onto power by saying the Israelis should overthrow democratically elected Netanyahu, and then Schumer grills cheese on a raw burger. The others are the same: the Spielbergs, the Streisands, the whole bunch of them, are terrified of being blacklisted. So they are silent over the campus riots or, instead, belch that they “oppose anti-Semitism — and Islamophobia.” Get it? That way they are allowed to remain in Hollywood. President Trump is 100 percent correct when he says that a Jewish voter who now votes blindly Democrat, just by course of habit and not by virtue of carefully comparing the Trump record with the Obama and Biden records, needs to have his head examined. He is right. When he says that Kamala Harris is anti-Jewish, he is right. When they come back and say, “But she is married to a Jew,” and he retorts that Emhoff is a “crappy Jew,” he is absolutely right. Amen. When he says, of American Jews who vote for Democrats who hurt Israel, that “they are disloyal to Israel,” he is right. The left-wing media race to quote left-wing Jews who call that “anti-Semitic.” They never quote the 40 percent-and-growing population of Jews — Torah-observant, American-patriotic — who respond “Amen!” The scared and fearful assimilating knee-jerk woke Jews go into conniptions: “Oh no, the neo-Nazis will say we are not loyal to America. Trump is ruining us.” Fools. The Neo-Nazis say it anyway. We are blessed in America that, while our allegiance is only to America, we also can be loyal to our heritage. Of course American Jews are connected to the Land of our Patrarchs and Matriarchs. Non-Jews don’t need Trump to know that. Of course Trump is right. What is so great about him is that he bypasses political correctness and says what is. When he says people like Soros and Bernie Sanders hate their religion, of course that is true! Anti-Semitic? Watch this Mark Levin clip, where he reads from an American Spectator article by this writer. Ninety percent of Orthodox Jews know that Trump gets us, and we get him. It took 120 years for the White Protestant Christians of the Deep South to move to the GOP. If you saw the RNC, the Jewish transition is in progress. Millions of Jews agree with Trump’s criticisms of the “crappy” ones. Amen. Subscribe to Rav Fischer’s YouTube channel here at bit.ly/3REFTbk  and follow him on X (Twitter) at @DovFischerRabbi to find his latest informative and inspiring classes, interviews, speeches, and observations. READ MORE: The Path to Beating Harris Here’s How to Break Up the Squad, St. Louis. Vote Against Cori Bush. Mr. Netanyahu Goes to Washington, and Mr. Biden Comes to Jesus The post Millions of Jews Agree With Trump’s Criticisms of the ‘Crappy’ Ones appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.