Here’s another informative video that offers in-depth commentary it’s hard to find elsewhere. If you’re impatient with podcasts, just go to “settings” and listen at higher speed:
And then there’s this (hat tip: commenter “miguel cervantes”):
Day Before Biden Admin Announced It Would Withhold Weapons From Israel, It Issued Sanctions Waiver To Allow Arms Sales to Qatar and Lebanonhttps://t.co/odOK77ORCS
— Washington Free Beacon (@FreeBeacon) May 9, 2024
Biden’s betrayal of Israel has so many dimensions, so many heinous ill effects, that’s it’s hard to contemplate them without falling into fury. One of the many aspects of it is his own naked ambition and lack of principle, which has always been his hallmark during his long life in the public arena.
And by the way, I continue to disagree with everyone who says he doesn’t know what he’s doing and merely recites the words of others. I have long said that although it’s very clear that Joe Biden is very cognitively challenged compared to just a few years ago, he still has plenty of agency and his brain is not so far gone that he’s unaware. Plus, he was Obama’s VP from 2009 to 2017, in full possession of whatever were his native faculties, and he did Obama’s bidding on this and on just about every other topic.
So this is not some recent thing nor is it the result of his age-related cognitive problems. It’s a result of who he is: a corrupt and ambitious viper – or weasel, if you prefer – who would sell out anyone for a dime or for career advancement.
Which brings us to a famous exchange from A Man For All Seasons. No, it’s not the one I often post here, about “cutting down” the laws. It’s this one:
That’s where I got the idea for the title of this post. Biden has betrayed Israel, the Jews, the US, the West, and Congress to win the presidency (he thinks) by winning the votes of the Muslims in Michigan who would dearly love to see Israel and the Jews destroyed, and the US and the West in their current forms as well.
But as I already wrote, this is nothing new for Biden; he earlier acquiesced to Obama’s anti-Israel and pro-Iran and anti-American policies and has been intent on implementing them in his own presidency. And yes, he’s got a lot of help and advice from both Obama and major players in the State Department and in both administrations. But I don’t let Joe off the hook; not at all.
Here’s a good summary [hat tip: commenter “sdferr”) of just how pernicious Biden’s current position on Israel/Hamas is. You might call his policy “stupid” also – and it is – but Biden and company are both knaves and fools. Some excerpts:
Biden says he wants a hostages-for-prisoners deal/ceasefire. But by pressuring Israel he emboldens Hamas to make unrealistic demands.
Biden says he wants a two-state solution with a “revitalized”Palestinian Authority (PA) in charge of Gaza. But by saving Hamas he ensures it will block Fatah (the ruling party in the PA) from gaining a foothold in Gaza. …
Biden says he wants to alleviate the humanitarian suffering in the Gaza Strip but by precluding a ceasefire deal and emboldening Hamas, he prolongs the war and therefore the suffering. …
Biden says he wants to free the hostages (some of whom are Americans) but his strengthening of Hamas’s negotiating hand ensures that Hamas will demand more in return for each hostage — at every step of the way. …
Biden says he wants to stop the Houthi attacks on commercial shipping, but by emboldening Hamas he emboldens the Houthis.
Biden says he wants to end the Israel-Hezbollah war, but his reduced support for Israel emboldens Hezbollah. …
Biden wants Tehran to help prevent a regional war, but by emboldening all elements of the “Resistance Axis,” his policy has the effect of widening the war. …
Biden says he stands against antisemitism, but by, in effect, accusing Israel of inexcusable brutality against innocent woman and children, he places the authority of his office behind the blood libel of the age.
Biden says he wants normalization between Israel and the Saudis, but by weakening Israel he makes it less attractive as a partner. …
… [Biden’s] personalized attacks on PM Netanyahu encourage the opposition to try to bring him down.
I would add that Biden’s betrayal of an ally in a time of great need undermines any remaining faith in America as an ally.
And Biden’s refusal to give Israel wartime aid that Congress has authorized is grounds for impeachment. Remember? And of course Ukraine wasn’t at war back then, nor was the pause permanent (see this):
Pausing congressionally approved weapons to an international ally for domestic political purposes was an impeachable offense 5 years ago. That happened.
They all know it. They all know what's happening. Now pay attention to why it's not being covered that exact same way. https://t.co/nKGbAVg5sq
— Stephen L. Miller (@redsteeze) May 9, 2024
Interestingly enough, even Newsweek has published an opinion piece claiming that Joe’s refusal to arm Israel at this point is impeachable:
The Biden administration has put a hold on a shipment of military aid to Israel in a nakedly political attempt to win votes in key swing states. Presidents have been impeached for far less.
The Impoundment Control Act of 1974 (ICA) governs the control of funds appropriated by Congress. It was enacted to reassert Congress’ power of the purse and prevent the president from simply substituting their own funding decisions for those of Congress. While it was once an obscure rule on governing spending, the masses may remember it for its brief starring role in the first impeachment of President Donald J. Trump. As the Democrat-led impeachment inquiry report explained:
President Trump ordered the suspension of $391 million in vital military assistance urgently needed by Ukraine, a strategic partner, to resist Russian aggression. Because the aid was appropriated by Congress, on a bipartisan basis, and signed into law by the president, its expenditure was required by law. Acting directly and through his subordinates within the U.S. government, the president withheld from Ukraine this military assistance without any legitimate foreign policy, national security, or anticorruption justification. The president did so despite the longstanding bipartisan support of Congress, uniform support across federal departments and agencies for the provision to Ukraine of the military assistance, and his obligations under the Impoundment Control Act.
And of course, as I already said, the Ukraine war hadn’t started (although there had been ongoing hostilities for years) and the pause was quite temporary. Biden’s behavior is far worse.
I doubt he’ll be impeached and if impeached I strongly doubt he’ll be removed – unless the Democrats want to be rid of him. I think many dearly would love to be rid of him if they could swing it, and if they could find a replacement they thought would garner more votes in November. Short of that, Joe’s staying – and doing more and more damage with every passing day.
I noticed a discussion in the comments about whether RFK Jr. was against vaccines more generally, or just the newer technologies (the latter of which I assume refers to mRNA vaccines like COVID). I’m highlighting my answer in this separate post because I want to point out something that some of you may not know about doing online searches.
If you’re researching a question like that – involving the past – in a regular search of course you’re going to get recent articles for the most part, and they will discuss the COVID shot. But you can do a custom search for earlier dates in order to filter the recent pieces out. In Google, this is done under “tools,” and in DuckDuckGo you’ll see an option that says “any time” and under that you’ll see you can do a custom search.
When I search between the year 2000 and January of 2019 for “RFK Jr. and vaccines,” plenty of articles pop up that seem relevant. Here’s one of them, for example. It’s from October of 2015, and it’s entitled, “Robert Kennedy Jr. warns of vaccine-linked ‘holocaust’.” An excerpt [emphasis mine]:
With lawmakers [in California] preparing to vote on a bill blocking parents from skipping vaccinations for their children, prominent vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr. arrived at the Sacramento screening of a film linking autism to the vaccine preservative thimerosal and warned that public health officials cannot be trusted.
“They can put anything they want in that vaccine and they have no accountability for it,” said Kennedy, who walked onto and left a Crest Theater stage to standing ovations, of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Wednesday afternoon will see the first hearing for a bill eliminating the personal belief exemption parents can cite in order to avoid vaccinating their kids. Senate Bill 277 was prompted by soaring exemption rates in some schools districts and outbreaks of long-dormant diseases like measles and whooping cough.
Kennedy has credited the film Trace Amounts with helping to persuade lawmakers to halt a vaccination measure in Oregon. Advocates offered free Trace Amounts tickets to every California lawmaker, visiting offices in the State Capitol on Monday to drop them off. Three rows cordoned off for lawmakers sat empty on Wednesday evening, though some staff members attended.
The overwhelming scientific consensus supports vaccine use and dismisses any serious side effects. Multiple studies have rejected any link between the mercury-containing chemical thimerosal and autism. Nevertheless, vaccine manufacturers have removed thimerosal from nearly all childhood vaccines (some influenza vaccines are the exception) and a California bill further barred thimerosal content. In light of those facts, SB 277’s author called Kennedy’s continued activism disingenuous.
“I think it is dangerous that he is spreading misinformation about something that’s very important for public health,” Sen. Richard Pan, D-Sacramento, a pediatrician, said in an interview. “Autism rates have continued to rise even though we are not using thimerosal in vaccines for children,” he added. “We still haven’t figured out exactly what causes autism. We do know it’s not vaccines.”
The vaccine/autism connection is bogus. I have written several posts on the subject of autism; for example this one on the vaccine connection and this one on the rising number of diagnoses of autism and why this might be happening.
Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. experienced a series of health issues in recent years, including an abnormality that he said was caused by a worm that entered his brain and then died, The New York Times reported on Wednesday.
In 2010, Kennedy, now 70, experienced severe memory loss and mental fog, he said in a deposition two years later. According to the Times, he consulted top neurologists familiar with the medical history of his uncle, the late Sen. Ted Kennedy, who had died of brain cancer in 2009. A New York doctor, after reviewing a scan of his brain, told him that his health issues could be “caused by a worm that got into my brain and ate a portion of it and then died,” Kennedy said in the 2012 deposition, which concerned a divorce from his second wife, Mary Richardson Kennedy. Robert Kennedy said at the time that his earning power had been negatively affected by the cognitive issues, the Times reported.
So he said this during his divorce proceedings. Now he’s saying he’s fine.
And here’s more than you probably want to know about the brainworm situation:
But, speaking generally, [Dr.] Hotez said people with pork tapeworm infections in their brains — a condition known as neurocysticercosis — more commonly experience seizures and sometimes need to be on anti-seizure medication for a long time because when the worms die, they form a calcified cyst in the brain that can cause the brain to release inflammatory chemicals called cytokines.
The connection to memory problems and dementia is under study, Hotez said. Those symptoms are also associated with mercury poisoning, and Kennedy told the Times that at the time he was diagnosed with that ailment, he was consuming high quantities of tuna and perch.
“Yeah, the worms are not feeding the brain. They are living in the brain,” Dr. Hotez said. The worms get nutrients from the body, but they are not eating the brain tissue, he said.
I’ve never thought that RFK Jr. was playing with a full deck. But I doubt this worm thing has much to do with it.
I know; vipers don’t have hands and can’t stab you in the back, so it’s a mixed metaphor. But Biden – or his controllers – and the State Department are indeed backstabbing vipers.
You can find articles on the subject of what’s been going on with the fake “hostage deal” that Hamas says it agreed to: this gives many details, and this describes the Biden administration’s role. From the latter article:
[Biden] is doing everything he can, including threats of cutting off certain military weapons, diplomatic maneuvers at the United Nations and duplicitous efforts to push through an agreement with the terrorist group, to save Hamas from defeat just when Israel put it on the ropes.
Biden has essentially been playing a double game on the war with Hamas since Oct. 7. …
he’s put the full force of American influence behind an effort to broker a ceasefire deal with Hamas that will essentially hand the terror group a victory in the war it started.
The terms of the proposed deals that Washington has backed are appalling. They call for the release of some hostages, but only a percentage of those Hamas is still holding under who knows what horrible conditions. And the pressure that Washington has exerted on Netanyahu to take a deal on virtually any terms and conditions—along with the way it has coordinated this with Hamas’s ally, Qatar—has given the terrorists all the leverage. That’s why Hamas continues to turn down even the most lopsided of agreements; its leaders are convinced that Biden will not let them be defeated. That means they think they can hold out for a deal that will end the war and return the situation to the pre-Oct. 7 status quo in Gaza and still not give up all the hostages, let alone be held accountable for mass murder.
Even when it comes to the surge in antisemitism in the United States, the gap between Biden’s Holocaust speech rhetoric and the reality of his policies grows wider every day. He may have chided the pro-Hamas protests for their violence, rule-breaking and antisemitism. But the only people trying to hold the universities accountable are his Republican opponents.
As for the bogus “deal” and the negotiations around it, We have these competing claims:
Israeli officials claim the Biden administration knew about the changes during the negotiations process but didn’t brief Israel before Hamas announced it accepted it on Monday.
A senior U.S. official pushed back saying “American diplomats have been engaged with Israeli counterparts. There have been no surprises.”
I know which source I find more trustworthy.
And Caroline Glick has much to say, all of it worth listening to:
Meanwhile, the Rafah offensive begins. And the Biden administration continues to withhold arm shipments (probably unconstitutionally, since Congress voted to send them), acting as though Israel is the US’s wayward child needing guidance from the holier-than-thou Americans – who have had a higher civilian-to-military kill ratio in the US’s wars against jihadis than the Israelis do in this highly challenging war against Hamas.
The whole thing makes me think of the famous 1975 headline about Ford and NYC: “Biden to Israel: Drop Dead.” I would go further and say: “The world to Israel: Drop Dead.”
There are so many things wrong with this trial that it’s hard to know where to start. But here, Dershowitz focuses on the latest developments:
Donald Trump writes, in his own inimitable fashion:
It is a really bad feeling to have your Constitutional Right to Free Speech, such a big part of life in our Country, so unfairly taken from you, especially when all of the sleazebags, lowlifes, and grifters that you oppose are allowed to say absolutely anything that they want. It is hard to sit back and listen to lies and false statements be made against you knowing that if you respond, even in the most modest fashion, you are told by a Corrupt and Highly Conflicted Judge that you will be PUT IN PRISON, maybe for a long period of time. This Fascist mindset is all coming from D.C. It is a sophisticated hit job on Crooked Joe Biden’s Political Opponent, ME!. Judges Engoron and Kaplan, also of New York, are equally Corrupt, only in different ways. What these THUGS are doing is AN ATTACK ON THE REPUBLICAN PARTY, AND OUR ONCE GREAT NATION ITSELF. OUR FIRST AMENDMENT MUST STAND, FREE AND STRONG. ‘GIVE ME LIBERTY OR GIVE ME DEATH!'”
Some people would no doubt like to oblige, and give him death rather than liberty. Others are perfectly fine with cutting down all the laws in the US to get after the Orange Devil, Trump.
Are the Democrats determined to martyr Trump? Or to highlight him as a hero defending liberty? Do they actually plan to jail him for contempt, or imprison him on – excuse me – trumped-up charges?
A park in Chico, the city where Gerard lived after the Paradise fire:
Or alternatively, Devil’s Island will do.
If Trump actually were to be sent to Riker’s, I wonder if the inmates would greet him with cheers and applause.
I also wonder how many people realize how terrible Bragg’s case is, or if they understand that Trump would be sent to Riker’s for exercising his right to speak about the kangaroo trial in which he is a defendant.
Or whether they understand what a prior restraint is.
Alan Dershowitz understands:
And I think the judge understands. He just thinks he can get away with it – and maybe he can. He’s certainly gotten away with it so far, and every day he can silence and/or punish Trump is a day for celebration on the left.
Way too many people believe the ends justify the means and are not even interested in hearing about the danger connected with the means being used.
Help me out. He looks a bit familiar, but I find him hard to place.
Remember this? ??
1995. Senator Biden proposes a constitutional amendment making it illegal to damage the American Flag, for any reason at all.https://t.co/ngBiYz2fz9— Donna Marie (@sabback) May 7, 2024
A number of people have suggested I read this Substack essay by Richard Pollock, a left-to-right changer who was an Alinskyite leftist radical back in the 60s and 70s. My impression on reading that one essay is that he’s something like David Horowitz, although Pollock doesn’t describe what caused his change (a story in which I’d be especially interested).
The main thrust of Pollock’s essay is to explain that today’s radical demonstrators have been trained according to the Alinskyite rules of their elders in the Movement – the Movement being leftism in general. The basic rule is that truth doesn’t matter – “truth” is a shape-shifter that requires no consistent principles other than dedication to the left and the cause. That’s why the contradiction between, for example, upholding the rights of gay people and supporting those who would throw them off roofs can be safely ignored. It simply doesn’t matter to the left.
This isn’t really news (see this post of mine from 2009), but it’s always good to remind people. That 2009 post contains a quote from Hilton Kramer (written in 1984) that I reproduce here. It speaks of “Stalinism” but it is true of radical leftism in general, including its current manifestations:
It is in the nature of Stalinism for its adherents to make a certain kind of lying—and not only to others, but first of all to themselves—a fundamental part of their lives. It is always a mistake to assume that Stalinists do not know the truth about the political reality they espouse. If they don’t know the truth (or all of it) one day, they know it the next, and it makes absolutely no difference to them politically. For their loyalty is to something other than the truth. And no historical enormity is so great, no personal humiliation or betrayal so extreme, no crime so heinous that it cannot be assimilated into the ‘ideals’ that govern the true Stalinist mind which is impervious alike to documentary evidence and moral discrimination.
No crime so heinous that can’t be assimilated into their “ideals.” That’s a perfect description of what’s happening with the pro-Hamas crowd – although these days I might take issue with the idea that they all know the actual truth about what Hamas is and what Hamas does. I think many really are “useful idiots” – or ignorant youths who have been carefully taught by many leftist mentors who feed them lies. By the time they get to the point of demonstrating for Hamas, the lies are so entrenched that “documentary evidence” to the contrary is merely brushed away as lies.
That’s why I often use the term “Orwellian reversal” to discuss the pro-Palestinian propaganda. It’s a characteristic of the left in general, and preys on the uncurious young who swallow it whole. And why are these young people so eager to believe? I think that for many it takes the place of religion or of love of family, and it gives them a feeling of structure, meaning, and community that they haven’t gotten until now.
Which leads me to offer another quote I’ve posted on this blog many times before. It’s from Milan Kundera’s Book of Laughter and Forgetting:
Circle dancing is magic. It speaks to us through the millennia from the depths of human memory. Madame Raphael had cut the picture out of the magazine and would stare at it and dream. She too longed to dance in a ring. All her life she had looked for a group of people she could hold hands with and dance with in a ring. First she looked for them in the Methodist Church (her father was a religious fanatic), then in the Communist Party, then among the Trotskyites, then in the anti-abortion movement (A child has a right to life!), then in the pro-abortion movement (A woman has a right to her body!); she looked for them among the Marxists, the psychoanalysts, and the structuralists; she looked for them in Lenin, Zen Buddhism, Mao Tse-tung, yogis, the nouveau roman, Brechtian theater, the theater of panic; and finally she hoped she could at least become one with her students, which meant she always forced them to think and say exactly what she thought and said, and together they formed a single body and a single soul, a single ring and a single dance.
The pro-Hamas demonstrators are circle dancing. Their teachers have taught them lies and they believe those lies, but even evidence of truth will not sway them from the compelling and magic and satisfying dance.