Will Trump's angry, vengeful rhetoric amount to anything? Trump is angry at everyone .....

 “Every American knew, or should have known. The man elected president is a depraved and brazen pathological liar, a shameless con man, a sociopathic criminal, a man who has no moral or social conscience, empathy, or remorse. He has no respect for the Constitution and laws he will swear to uphold, and on top of all that, he exhibits emotional and cognitive deficiencies that seem to be intensifying, and that will only make his turpitude worse. He represents everything we should aspire not to be, and everything we should teach our children not to emulate. The only hope is that he’s utterly incompetent, and even that is a double-edged sword, because his incompetence often can do as much as harm as his malevolence. His government will be filled with corrupt grifters, spiteful maniacs, and morally bankrupt sycophants, who will follow in his example and carry his directives out, because that’s who they are and want to be.” 

 

Trump Has Many Grudges. Now He Has a Chance To Act on Them.

 

In his second term, the former and future president will have more freedom to follow his worst instincts.

"If there is an advantage to electing a preening, petty, thin-skinned, whiny, vindictive, vacuous, mendacious, boorish bully" to the White House, I wrote in November 2016, "it may be that he prompts a reconsideration of the absurd hopes and cultish veneration that surround the presidency." I suggested that "a ridiculous president will encourage Americans to take the presidency less seriously."

That did not quite work out as I hoped. Although Trump was predictably ridiculous as president, the comedy turned to tragedy by the end of his term, when rioters outraged by his stolen-election fantasy stormed the U.S. Capitol, interrupting the congressional ratification of Joe Biden's victory. To this day, Trump insists, against all evidence, that he actually won reelection in 2020. The voters who returned him to office this week either agree with him or think it does not really matter whether the president is dishonest or deluded enough to stick with that preposterous story four years later.

In addition to his claim that systematic election fraud deprived him of his rightful victory in 2020, Trump has accumulated many other grievances in the last eight years. The question now is whether and how he will use the powers of the presidency to act on his grudges. Trump has pitched various ideas that should worry libertarians, including broad, heavy tariffs and mass deportation of unauthorized U.S. residents. But his authoritarian impulses, exemplified by his repeatedly expressed desire to punish his political opponents once he is back in power, should trouble everyone who values civil liberties and the rule of law.

Trump is still angry at the Democratic operatives who supposedly helped install an illegitimate president. "If we win, and when we win, we're gonna prosecute people that cheat on this election," he said in September. "And if we can, we'll go back to the last one too." Given all the wild fraud allegations that Trump embraced in 2020, who knows what that means?

Trump is angry at Biden, whom he blames not only for stealing an election but also for instigating two federal indictments against him. Trump has repeatedly vowed to investigate Biden for alleged corruption. "I will appoint a real special prosecutor to go after the most corrupt president [in] the history of the United States of America, Joe Biden, and the entire Biden crime family," Trump promised at a June 2023 rally. "I will appoint a real special prosecutor to investigate the Biden bribery and crime ring," he reiterated at another rally later that month.

After Vice President Kamala Harris replaced Biden as the Democratic presidential nominee, Trump was angry about the sudden switch, and he began imagining criminal penalties for her. Harris "should be impeached and prosecuted" for her complicity in the Biden administration's border policies, Trump said at a rally in September.

Trump is angry at Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg. In his 2024 book Save America, Trump complained that Zuckerberg "steered [Facebook] against me" during the 2020 election. He added a warning: "We are watching him closely, and if he does anything illegal this time he will spend the rest of his life in prison."

Trump is angry at everyone who supported his second impeachment, which was amply justified by his reckless conduct before and during the Capitol riot. He is especially angry at the House select committee that investigated the riot and issued a scathing report recommending criminal charges against him. In March 2023, Trump said the committee's members "should be prosecuted for their lies and, quite frankly, TREASON!" A year later, Trump declared that former Rep. Liz Cheney (R–Wyo.), who served as the committee's vice chair after joining nine other Republicans in supporting his impeachment, "should go to jail along with the rest of the Unselect Committee!"

Trump is angry at Special Counsel Jack Smith, who obtained two federal indictments against him: one alleging that he illegally tried to reverse the outcome of the 2020 election, the other charging him with improperly retaining classified records after leaving the White House. Trump has said Smith, whom he accuses of "illegally leaking to the press," "should be prosecuted for MISCONDUCT."

Trump is more justifiably angry about his 34 felony convictions in New York, which were based on a vague, convoluted, and legally iffy theory aimed at punishing him for paying off a porn star to keep her from talking about a sexual encounter with him. He thinks Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, like Smith, should be prosecuted for leaks.

Trump is angry about New York Attorney General Letitia James' civil fraud case against him, which resulted in a staggering (and puzzling) $364 million disgorgement order issued by judge Arthur Engoron. At a rally in January, Trump said James and Engoron "should be arrested and punished accordingly."

Trump is angry at news organizations for covering these and other controversies in ways that made him look bad. They are "enemies of the people," he says, and their sins against him are so egregious that they should have to pay him damages, relinquish their broadcast licenses, or suffer other, ill-defined penalties for "fake" news coverage, "election interference," and "illegal political activity." Trump also has said that protesters who burn the U.S. flag and Supreme Court critics who try to influence its decisions should go to jail.

Is Trump serious about any of this? "If you're president again," conservative talk show host Glenn Beck asked him in August 2023, "will you lock people up?" Trump's response: "The answer is you have no choice, because they're doing it to us."

Last June on Fox News, Sean Hannity practically begged Trump to give a different answer. "People are claiming you want retribution," Hannity said. "People are claiming you want what has happened to you done to Democrats. Would you do that ever?"

Trump responded by complaining that "what's happened to me has never happened in this country before," adding that "it has to stop." Hannity took that as a disavowal of retribution, and Trump seemed to confirm that interpretation by saying his critics were wrong to think "you will use the system of justice to go after your political enemies," as Hannity put it. Then Trump spoiled the assurance by adding, "I would have every right to go after them." Although "I know you want me to say something so nice," he said, "I don't want to look naïve."

As Trump sees it, he has been a victim of "hoaxes" and "witch hunts" throughout his relatively short political career, all orchestrated by a Democratic cabal dedicated to his destruction. The conspirators, whom he variously describes as "communists," "Marxists," "fascists," "radical left lunatics," "sick people," and "vermin," constitute "the enemy from within," a category that Trump defines broadly enough to include political opponents such as Rep. Adam Schiff (D–Calif.) and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D–Calif.).

Will Trump's angry, vengeful rhetoric amount to anything? There are several reasons to think it might.

During his first term, Trump was restrained by calmer, more experienced officials who pushed back against hotheaded proposals such as yanking broadcast licenses from news outlets that offended him and shooting protesters or migrants in the legs. But Trump did not like being told what he could not do. According to John Kelly, Trump's second chief of staff, his former boss did not even comprehend the idea that his subordinates had a higher duty than obedience to his will.

This time around, Trump is apt to rely on advisers who are less inclined to question his instincts. To give you a sense of what that could mean, Boris Epshteyn, a lawyer who played a key role in Trump's attempts to reverse the 2020 election results, is reportedly a contender for White House counsel. Former Vice President Mike Pence, who resisted Trump's pressure to intervene in the January 2021 tally of electoral votes, has rebuked his former boss for asking him to subvert the Constitution. By contrast, Pence's replacement, Sen. J.D. Vance (R–Ohio), says he would have been happy to do Trump's bidding.

Trump also may be emboldened by the July 2024 Supreme Court ruling that embraced a broad version of presidential immunity from criminal liability for "official acts." The Court explicitly said that shield encompasses communications between the president and the Justice Department, one of the chief ways that Trump could make life unpleasant for his critics.

In his second term, Trump won't have to worry about jeopardizing his reelection by openly targeting his political opponents. But if he is nevertheless concerned about the potential political consequences, there are subtler ways he can punish his enemies, such as using his wide discretion to impose tariffs and selectively relieve favored businesses of their burdens.

Maybe Trump will give up his grudges and let bygones be bygones in the interest of bipartisan comity. But that would require self-restraint, charity, and considered judgment—qualities he has rarely demonstrated.

 

https://reason.com/2024/11/06/trump-has-many-grudges-now-he-has-a-chance-to-act-on-them/?

In Related News - Felons & Sex Offenders From Around The World Flood The Messiah With Paperwork!

 

Our greatest and most dangerous crisis is the decay of effective leadership at all levels of our national life, something that makes both our foreign and domestic problems, serious as they are, significantly more daunting than they should be.

‘After you, Teddy!’ A 1912 illustration from Puck magazine showing Theodore Roosevelt on his way to the ‘Hall of Fame,’ passing between two rows of kings, emperors, military leaders, statesmen, and others

 

America’s Crisis of Leadership

 

How Teddy Roosevelt can help save us from our Marie Antoinette problem

 

The biggest single crisis facing the United States on the eve of the election does not come from Kamala Harris or Donald Trump. It does not come from our enemies abroad. It does not come from our dissensions at home. It does not come from unfunded entitlement commitments. It does not come from climate change. Our greatest and most dangerous crisis is the decay of effective leadership at all levels of our national life, something that makes both our foreign and domestic problems, serious as they are, significantly more daunting than they should be.

Average confidence in institutions ranging from higher education to organized religion rests at historic lows, with fewer than 30% of respondents telling Gallup pollsters that they have “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in major American institutions. Only small business, the military, and the police inspire majorities of the public with a high degree of confidence; less than a fifth of Americans express “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in newspapers, big business, television news, and Congress. 

Much of the country’s political and intellectual establishment responds defensively to numbers like this, blaming falling confidence on the corrosive effects of social media or the general backwardness and racism of the American public. The East German communist hacks Bertolt Brecht satirized also blamed their failings on the shortcomings of the masses: “The people have lost the confidence of the government and can only regain it through redoubled work.”

While social media is problematic, and not every citizen of the United States is a model of enlightened cosmopolitanism, America’s core problem today is not that the nation is unworthy of the elites who struggle to lead it. That superficial and dismissive response is itself a symptom of elite failure and an obstacle to the deep reform that the American leadership classes badly need.

Signs of elite failure are all around us. In foreign policy, the field I follow most closely and one in which I myself have not been error-free, the American establishment fundamentally misjudged the global economic and political situation over the last generation, thinking that the world had entered a posthistorical utopia even as China and Russia laid the foundations for a formidable challenge to the American order. NAFTA was going to make Mexico more democratic, reduce cross-border migration, and enrich American workers. Conferring permanent most-favored nation status on China and admitting it to the World Trade Organization was going to turn it into a peaceful and law-abiding member of international society. It was certainly not going to create a new communist superpower determined to challenge the United States around the world.

Since 1945, the most powerful armed forces in the world have only won one war (the Gulf War against Iraq). A massive, sustained and very public Chinese military buildup failed to elicit a coherent response from the American side. As a result, the balance of power in the western Pacific shifted dangerously in China’s favor, increasing the risk of catastrophic great power war. Twenty years of earnest attempts to build civil society in Afghanistan collapsed ignominiously when the Taliban stormed back into power in 2021. Decades of illusory “democracy promotion” by American diplomats and philanthropists failed to stem a very real “democracy recession” as the rule of law retreated around the world.

Much of what distressed establishment figures deplore as “isolationism” is nothing more than a well-grounded skepticism about the competence of American civilian and military leadership in international affairs. For many in the foreign policy establishment, it is easier to condemn the shortsightedness of neo-isolationism than to ask why as individuals and as a class we have made such major and such costly mistakes for so long and in so many parts of the world.

Signs of elite failure are all around us.

It is much the same at home. The intellectual and moral collapse of the public health authorities in the face of the COVID pandemic deeply damaged public trust. The instinctive response of many in the news media to rally around a misguided establishment, while also marginalizing critics and skeptics further poisoned the wellsprings of public trust. The rising (and in my view tragic) popularity of trends like generalized vaccine skepticism fills the vacuum created by the absence of confidence in public health leadership.

More profoundly, the failure of American society to respond effectively to widespread and deeply damaging phenomena like the fentanyl plague reflects the inadequacy of leadership in all walks of life. Spending political capital on affirming trans students by making tampons available in boys’ bathrooms in public schools while the opioid epidemic kills more Americans every year than the Vietnam War killed in nearly a decade strikes many sensible people as a sign of derangement. Are they wrong?

“Trust the technocracy” and “invest in institutions” is the message Americans hear from establishment media. But the state of our society does not inspire confidence. Key social programs ranging from Medicare and Social Security at the federal level to civil service pension programs in many cities and states are seriously underfunded and set on fiscally unsustainable paths. Infrastructure construction has become almost impossibly expensive. The urban doom loop of higher costs driving higher taxes driving business and residents out of the cities spirals relentlessly without much pushback from a Democratic Party ostensibly committed to bettering the lives of the poor.

Per-student costs continue to skyrocket in many school systems even as students score poorly on standardized tests. The higher education system saddles too many young people with unpayable debt. Graduates of a handful of prestigious universities often enjoy undeserved access to desirable jobs, but many of those universities have lost sight of the values it is their duty to uphold. When a president of Harvard University can be credibly charged with plagiarism, the signs of decadence and decay are unmistakable.

The policies that contributed to the housing boom of the early 2000s and that were adapted in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis were equally misguided, and the costs fell primarily on vulnerable families on the margins of the housing market. Home ownership, which is the foundation of middle-class prosperity and American political stability, is increasingly unaffordable for young families. At the same time, the weakening of labor unions has left millions of Americans without the support and protection that, imperfect as the old labor movement was, organization and solidarity gave to union members. The rise of identity politics testifies to the declining ability of American leaders to gain trust that crosses ethnic, racial, or gender lines, and the resulting fragmentation makes America harder to govern and deepens existing fissures in American life.

Americans are not wrong to believe that this level of comprehensive strategic and political failure across so many dimensions of our national life is unacceptable. They are right to withdraw their confidence from institutions and a leadership class that seems both unusually incompetent and indecently self-interested. But populism is better at expressing dissent than at planning for success. And the leadership problem transcends the division between populists and the current establishment. Populism too needs leaders, and many of those coming forward as would-be tribunes of the people are at least as poorly prepared for real leadership as the fumble-fingered elites they hope to replace.

While the American leadership class has been failing the test of history, not all of its sectors are equally culpable. When it comes to scientific and technological accomplishment, American culture continues to produce geniuses of all kinds. Although the rise of scientific fraud and the reproducibility crisis in certain disciplines points to some concerning trends, America’s failure point is not in the STEM disciplines. The failures come from where the wonders of technological progress intersect with the dysfunction of daily life. Our failure points are in the worlds of culture and social organization, not in the worlds of tech and hard science. 

Nor is the leadership crisis entirely our fault. Countries around the world suffer from a leadership deficit in these difficult days; one big reason is that the disruptive consequences of the Information Revolution make the tasks of leadership objectively more difficult. When transformational changes are surging through the economy and society, it is much harder to lead institutions from the federal government to a local middle school. Every firm, every political party, every school or university, every religious institution, every family, and anyone trying to make a living or invest for the future must cope with the unpredictable changes rippling through every society in the world.

And yet America’s leadership problem is only likely to become more acute as the international situation grows more challenging. In stable times, the need for effective leadership can recede into the background. But in crisis, institutions and societies with weak leaders often perish. Great Britain could survive the rule of sleek nonentities like Stanley Baldwin and Neville Chamberlain in the 1930s, but after Hitler’s blitzkrieg broke the allied lines in Europe, only Winston Churchill would do. Franklin Pierce and John Tyler might have been good-enough presidents for peaceful times, but it took an Abraham Lincoln to lead the country through the Civil War. Average leadership may work fine in average times. But extraordinary times demand more.

No matter who wins the election, a stormy period in American and world history lies ahead. Unless the quality of leadership in American life dramatically improves, the country could be heading toward some extremely dark hours.

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/america-crisis-leadership-walter-russell-mead

Meir Kahane EXPOSES The Ugly Truth About Arabs

There is a positive case to be made for the candidacy of Kamala Harris, but it is not as compelling as the negative one that has been building these last nine years against her opponent, Donald Trump.

 

Literally and Seriously

Why I Support Kamala Harris for President

Sam Harris Nov 4

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There is a positive case to be made for the candidacy of Kamala Harris, but it is not as compelling as the negative one that has been building these last nine years against her opponent, Donald Trump. When I think of Harris winning the presidency this week, it’s like watching a film of a car crash run in reverse: the windshield unshatters; stray objects and bits of metal converge; and defenseless human bodies are hurled into states of perfect repose. Normalcy descends out of chaos. In the same way, many of the reasons to hope for a future Harris administration bear the signs of a peculiar, counterfactual origin: the appalling prospect of Trump winning a second term as president of the United States.

For anyone who spent the last nine years mostly ignoring Trump, while watching in horror as the Democratic Party slid ever leftward toward the precipice, and the Great Wokeness beyond, the positive case for Harris must be made carefully, and with some casuistry. But it is simple enough to do. The truth of the matter is that the good woman was for every reasonable thing before she was against it—and she’s for these things again now, you can be sure. In fact, much the same can be said about the Democratic Party. I am willing to bet that there is not a single person within the Harris campaign, wielding authority sufficient to produce a cup of coffee, who has any doubt about whether we have a problem along our southern border. Nor will you find anyone willing to defund the police or to fund gender-reassignment surgeries for undocumented immigrants in detention. And there is probably no one on Earth who still believes that advancing a lab-leak hypothesis for the origins of Covid is “racist.” The spell cast in 2019 by blue-haired lunatics who identify as blue-haired lunatics has finally broken.    

If Harris loses tomorrow’s election, I might blame her and her team for avoiding a necessary series of “Sister Souljah moments”—where she could have made it clear how the pendulum of sanity had swung back, both within her brain and across the platform of the Democratic Party. And yet for anyone willing to see, it was clear from the beginning of her campaign that Harris had pivoted to the center of our politics. Despite the widespread psychosis on our college campuses, no one seriously confused about the events of October 7th was invited to address the Democratic National Convention—rather, the parents of an American hostage were, and they received a standing ovation. And though she would be our first woman president, there has been scant mention of this fact from Harris or her surrogates. Vice President Harris is not campaigning for the presidency like a leftwing activist, and there is no reason to believe that she would govern as one. If she wins on Tuesday, her first calls will probably be to allies like Liz Cheney, Adam Kinzinger, and Mark Cuban, and there will be no celebration with Rashida Tlaib or the rest of “the Squad.” However, if Harris loses, I have no doubt that the pendulum will swing outward again—because among his many pernicious influences on our society, Trump stands as living confirmation of the worst fears of the far left. Anyone who yearns to see our institutions break the grip of progressive orthodoxy should understand that the provocation of another Trump presidency is precisely what we do not need.

The positive case for Harris is simple: She will be a normal president, surrounded by normal experts, seeking normal political ends. The scientists she consults will be real scientists. The doctors, real doctors. Her administration will not be a 4chan thread come to life. Her foreign policy will not be made in consultation with podcasters who hock gold, ivermectin, and MREs. The notion of banning some vaccines will not receive serious consideration. Grifters and lunatics like Alex Jones, Tucker Carlson, and Candace Owens won’t be short-listed for weekends in the Lincoln bedroom. The final stage of her campaign wasn’t organized and funded by an increasingly erratic billionaire who hallucinates about the strategic replacement of white America, and she will owe him no debt of gratitude. The positive case for Harris is easy to make: She is a sane public servant who will be committed to the rule of law and the betterment of our society.

There is more to say about her opponent…   

There is one fact about Donald Trump that not even his most devoted fans can dispute: He is one of the most prolific liars our species has produced. The man lies about everything, great and small. He lies compulsively, incoherently, pointlessly, impossibly. Yesterday, Trump assured the audience at one of his rallies that there were no empty seats at his campaign events, when they could see with their own eyes that the arena in which they sat wasn’t full. Many people have claimed that there is a method to this madness—but there is no method, only madness. I am well aware, of course, that Steve Bannon declared the method—“flood the zone with shit”—the desired effect of which is to produce a state of panic, and finally futility, in one’s political opponents (and, above all, the media). I will grant the reality of the effect, but not the intentionality of any method. Trump simply vomits lies in all directions, exhausting anyone who would try to make sense of him. The fact that this has proven to be politically expedient in late-stage America doesn’t suggest that it is a conscious strategy. Trump lied with the same astonishing velocity long before he entered politics, and he just never stopped. I believe the truth about Trump is simpler and less Machiavellian: there is something wrong with his mind. During his four years in the White House, The Washington Post counted more than 30,000 of his lies and misleading statements. It’s an impressive number, but it doesn’t begin to indicate how corrosive Trump’s dishonesty has been to our politics.

It was Salena Zito who first observed that the media took Trump “literally but not seriously,” while his supporters took him “seriously but not literally.” However, it seems to have been Peter Thiel who transformed this clever phrasing into a formula for mass delusion. And it did not take long for a reflexive discounting of Trump’s stated desires, fears, beliefs, and intentions to destroy the Republican Party.

The former president now says that if elected to a second term he will use federal troops to forcibly expel as many as 20 million undocumented immigrants from the country. When I recently pointed out to a Republican friend how vicious and idiotic such a purge would be—because most of these people are performing essential work in our society, and millions of them have children who happen to be American citizens—he sought to put my mind at ease, deploying words one often hears in Trumpistan: “He’s just saying that. He’s not really going to do it.”

The problem, of course, is that just saying that should count for something. (Must I really spell this out?) Even pretending to aspire to so dystopian a project—separating families by the millions and herding doomed spouses, parents, and grandparents into internment camps, at the cost of hundreds of billions of dollars, while their American relatives weep—should be disqualifying in a presidential candidate.

But neither this observation, nor hundreds like it, has any effect on my friend. I’m now convinced that if Trump promised to round up millions of undocumented immigrants, kill them in slaughterhouses, and turn them into dog food, my friend would respond with the same breezy rebuttal: “He’s just saying that. He’s not really going to do it.”¹

I’ve had nearly a decade to contemplate this transformation in our politics, and I remain completely mystified by it.

If we cannot believe what the former president says, can we believe what others say about him? Of course not. And so, when the vast majority of Trump’s former cabinet members decline to endorse him, we can draw no conclusions at all. We shouldn’t care that nearly everyone who advised him during his four years in office, especially on national security, has condemned him as unfit to serve as Commander-in-Chief. These people include Jim Mattis (Secretary of Defense), Mark Milley (Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff), and H.R. McMaster (National Security Adviser)—and those are just the M’s. These men have told us what Trump is like behind closed doors—that he is “a moron” and “a fascist”, and that he expects our militarily leaders to swear loyalty to him rather than to the Constitution. These were the proverbial “adults in the room” who prevented Trump from doing despicable things, like ordering federal troops to shoot Black Lives Matter protesters “in the legs.” Some of the most respected military leaders of their generation, like four-star admiral William McRaven (Commander of United States Special Operations), have been sounding the alarm about Trump for years. In a letter addressed to the President, published in the Washington Post, McRaven wrote: “Through your actions, you have embarrassed us in the eyes of our children, humiliated us on the world stage and, worst of all, divided us as a nation.” This isn’t a controversial opinion among those who served during Trump’s first term.

But half the country does not take such warnings literally, seriously, or in any other way, believing them to be just more partisan noise. (Strangely, this noise is coming mostly from lifelong Republicans and members of the military who have every professional and personal incentive to keep silent.) So, once again, half the country intends to grant Trump more power and responsibility than anyone on Earth, despite knowing that his second administration would be staffed by loyalists, election deniers, and sycophants who have no reputations for competence or integrity to protect.

It is amusing in this context, with their powers of discernment so blissfully in eclipse, to watch Republicans find reasons to despise Vice President Harris. Trump escapes their merely mortal judgment like some force of nature, while Harris’s every word and glance are weighed with Talmudic severity and found wanting. If her laugh isn’t perfectly disqualifying, they detect a fatal difference in “authenticity” between the two candidates. I will admit that Harris can seem evasive in interviews, while Trump sometimes appears to be authentically what he is—a terrible human being.

But enumerating Trump’s many flaws leaves one vulnerable to charges of “elitism.” It seems that the moment we travel right-of-center in our politics there is no longer any place to stand from which to observe the obvious: that the former president embodies the kind of vanity, ignorance, lechery, and avarice encountered only in fairy tales—or scripture. Add to these foundational sins the man’s boundless capacity for lying, his obsession with celebrity, his casual cruelty, and his achingly bad taste—and most of your work still lies ahead of you...

We mustn’t ignore the stench of the carnival that follows Trump from room to room—for the former president is the very archetype of the impostor, the confidence man, the crackpot, and the peddler of quack cures. The sheer fraudulence of his every endeavor, reaching back decades, is breathtaking. His fake businesses, fake charities, fake university, and fake tan seem to be mere embellishments of some deeper deception lurking at the very center of his being. Trump wouldn’t hesitate to sell his farts in bottles if he could only find the time—but they would be fake farts and fake bottles.

Add to all his wheeling and dealing the multiple bankruptcies and countless legal entanglements—and all the groping and bullying and wheedling and chiseling—and wrap this sad frenzy of self-promotion, self-praise, and self-deception in a bad suit, made to measure for a rhinoceros, and there he is, hunching and scowling—the man in full.

Donald Trump is a game show host who was relentlessly marketed on television as a business genius for twelve years, and half the country bought the lie. The fact that he became President of the United States, and may yet do so again, is surely the greatest imposture in American history.

But, again, my “elitism” is showing. It is now considered indecent to demand a modicum of integrity, or even moral sanity, in a presidential candidate.  

Of course, the gravest problem with Trump is that, as president, he refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of power. He then made every effort to steal the 2020 election—while claiming, against all evidence, that it was being stolen from him. Anyone who watches the HBO documentary Stopping the Steal should recognize Trump’s election denial for what it is: one of the most malignantly selfish acts in the history of our country. And the fact that Trump persists in denying the outcome of the 2020 election—and is clearly preparing to reject the result of the current one, should he lose again—represents a continuous provocation to political violence.

I can only say, as I contemplate the fragile miracle of our democracy on the eve of this election, that I find it impossible to believe we will return this man to power.

But we will soon see what happens and know the truth about ourselves…

Hitler phones Trump

NOVEMBER 4 - FINAL POLL

The ADL is Correct that Antisemitism is Rising — But the Main (and Most Dangerous) Source Isn’t the Left, It’s Always Been the Right

https://religiondispatches.org/the-adl-is-correct-that-antisemitism-is-rising-but-the-main-and-most-dangerous-source-isnt-the-left-its-always-been-the-right/?utm_source=email&utm_campaign=daily

 

Trump or Kamala? Ben Shapiro and Sam Harris Debate. Two Great Debaters & Jewish Minds - Ben Wins on Verbal Gymnastics, Sam Harris Wins On The Facts, Reality & The Danger That is Trump!

On Tuesday, Rabbi (Reservist) Avrohom Goldberg Z"L, 43 years old with 8 children, widow Rachel, issued a second request — that ultra-Orthodox yeshiva students join the army, even as their political and rabbinical leadership have been doing its utmost to maintain the ultra-Orthodox community’s thoroughly un-Jewish exclusion from military or national service.

A plea from the bereaved heart of religious Zionism

 

 

 

Encouraging Israeli leaders to pay condolence visits, the family of Rabbi Avraham Goldberg, 43, a Jerusalem father of eight and much-loved teacher at the Himmelfarb school who was killed fighting in southern Lebanon this weekend, made a highly unusual request: Politicians from across the spectrum would be welcome… provided they paired up, one for one, with somebody from across the aisle.

This request, issued in the spirit of Goldberg’s own efforts to bridge gaps and build bonds within our people, was indeed heeded, with several Knesset members recognizing the importance of the plea and partnering up to attend the shiva.

MKs from coalition and opposition parties on October 28, 2024, attend the shiva in Jerusalem of the family of Rabbi Avraham Goldberg, 43, who was killed fighting with the IDF reserves in southern Lebanon

On Tuesday, his widow Rachel issued a second request — that ultra-Orthodox yeshiva students join the army, even as their political and rabbinical leadership have been doing its utmost to maintain the ultra-Orthodox community’s thoroughly un-Jewish exclusion from military or national service.

Political extortion has enabled this perversion of Jewish values and Orthodox Jewish principles to persist for decades, its disgraceful inequality eating away at Israeli society. But the injustice that sees much of Israel risking life and limb while also financially subsidizing the fastest-growing sector of the populace — which insists on playing no practical role in protecting the country, and in some cases mocks and derides those who do — has never been as divisive and manifestly untenable as it is today, more than a year into a multifront war. What began with the cataclysmic deaths of some 1,200 people in the Hamas invasion continues to exact a terrible price, with some 70 soldiers — including many, many reservists like Goldberg — losing their lives this month alone.

 

https://israel365news.com/397432/5-stunning-art-prints-that-bring-israels-spirit-into-your-home/?
 

https://www.timesofisrael.com/the-next-round-in-iran-gaza-after-unrwa-and-a-war-widows-plea-for-the-haredi-draft/?utm_source=The+Daily+Edition&utm_campaign=daily-edition-2024-10-30&utm_medium=email

Lichtman predicts Kamala Harris will win in November

 

Historian Allan Lichtman has insisted that he stands by his prediction about who will win the 2024 presidential race despite recent polls – and revealed that he has “never experienced” so much “hate” in an election cycle.

Lichtman is known as the “Nostradamus” of polling due to the fact he has correctly predicted the results of nine out of 10 presidential elections since 1984.

His method for forecasting the race so accurately is known as “The Keys to the White House,” a system he devised with the Russian academic Vladimir Keilis-Borok in 1981.

And despite the polls, which show the race is now tighter than ever between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, Lichtman stands by his prediction that the Democrat will win the White House in November.

“My prediction has not changed,” Lichtman said on his YouTube channel.

“I have frequently made my prediction correctly in defiance of the polls, it’s based on 160 years of precedent.”

Lichtman conceded, however, that there is always a possibility he could be wrong.

“The keys are very robust,” he said. “But it’s always possible that something so cataclysmic and so unprecedented could change the pattern of history.”

The academic strongly defended his method, which looks at 13 factors from the president’s party’s standing in the House of Representatives to the health of the domestic economy, any record of scandal, social unrest, or foreign policy disasters during their tenure, and the comparative charisma of the two candidates to decide the victor, applying “true” or “false” designations to each category.

“My predictions have stood the test of time, my indicators have always been right,” he said. “The keys are very objective and quantitative.”

Lichtman maintained his method and predictions are “totally non-partisan,” highlighting how he correctly predicted the “two most conservative presidents of our time,” referring to Ronald Reagan when he was elected for the second time in 1984 and Trump in 2016.

But this year the historian has received an unprecedented amount of hate in calling the election for Harris, he revealed.

“I have never experienced anything close to the hate that has been reaped upon me this time,” he told NewsNation’s Chris Cuomo.

“I’ve been getting feedback that is vulgar, violent, threatening, and even beyond that, the safety and security of my family has been compromised.”

The professor said previously that eight of the 13 keys currently yield “true” answers, suggesting a Harris triumph and another four years in power for the Democrats.

“Foreign policy is tricky, and these keys could flip,” Lichtman said.

“The Biden administration is deeply invested in the war in Gaza, which is a humanitarian disaster with no end in sight. But even if both foreign policy keys flipped ‘false’, that would mean that there were only five negative keys, which would not be enough for Donald Trump to regain the White House.”

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/allan-lichtman-trump-harris-nostradamus-pollster-predictions-b2637999.html

It’s about time – Smotrich urges Haredi community to share in Israel’s defense --- Israel’s survival depends on unity. To endure, all communities, including the haredim, must embrace the task of defending Israel, not just for the state but as a sacred duty.

*One year later: 12,000 injured soldiers in Gaza and Lebanon, 761  dead - The Chutzpah Of Hiding In A Yeshiva Is an Abominable Travesty* 

 

HAREDI VISION &THEIR TUNNEL

ENOUGH WITH THE DRAFT-DODGING -THIS IS NOT VIETNAM"  

THE HAREDI leadership argues that it is forbidden to draft yeshiva students whose Torah is their profession and that they defend the State of Israel through their studies."

 

Finance Minister Smotrich emotionally calls for shared IDF responsibility among the haredi community, emphasizing unity for Israel’s defense and survival.

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich seen during a funeral of a slain IDF soldier

 

Yesterday, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich (Religious Zionist Party) took the floor at the Knesset in a rare display of raw emotion. As he began speaking about the toll borne by the religious-Zionist community in the IDF, the weight of his words caught up to him.

His voice broke, and he fought back tears as he acknowledged the disproportionate sacrifices made by religious-Zionist families, many of whom have lost fathers, sons, and brothers on the battlefield. For a man known for his unwavering rhetoric, the tears spoke louder than his words – a call from deep within for unity, a demand for shared responsibility.

Smotrich’s plea was, in part, a response to the mounting frustrations within his own constituency. Religious Zionists from across the spectrum have voiced their exhaustion. They’ve spent months in reserve duty, pulled from their families, their spouses, their children and, at times, even their grandchildren.

The demands of this prolonged conflict are taking a visible toll. Many are struggling, both physically and emotionally, stretched thin by the intense burden they’ve shouldered in defending Israel’s borders. Smotrich’s words echoed their plea: The weight of defense should not rest on a single community alone.

The ideological gap between Israel’s religious-Zionist and haredi (ultra-Orthodox) communities is stark. Religious Zionists see IDF service as an extension of their faith and a biblical duty to defend the Jewish homeland, blending traditional values with support for the modern state. Meanwhile, many in the haredi community emphasize Torah study as their ultimate form of service, viewing it as spiritually sustaining Israel and justifying limited participation in secular obligations such as military duty.

THE HAREDI leadership argues that it is forbidden to draft yeshiva students whose Torah is their profession and that they defend the State of Israel through their studies.

 

Over time, this has created a divide, with haredim often shielded from the responsibilities that secular and religious-Zionist Israelis bear – an imbalance Smotrich now seeks to change.

Smotrich urges Haredi IDF participation

Smotrich’s plea for haredi participation in the IDF reflects a sentiment that has simmered beneath the surface for decades: that every citizen’s contribution is necessary for Israel’s survival. The Torah commands us to protect human life above all else. In times of danger, it allows even those deeply immersed in religious study to put aside their books and take up arms if it means protecting their fellow Jews.

In fact, the Talmud is clear that saving a life transcends nearly all other commandments. For this reason, the religious-Zionist community has always seen IDF service as a natural extension of its beliefs. For the haredi community, however, the idea that young men studying Torah should set down their learning to join the army is deeply challenging and has fueled resistance.

Smotrich’s emotional appeal must serve as a turning point. It’s no longer sufficient for the haredi community to rely on a narrow interpretation of its role within Israeli society. The defense of Israel, a nation constantly under threat, demands the participation of all its citizens, whether through military service, national service, or other forms of support.

This call to action is not an affront to their values but rather a reminder of an essential Jewish principle: that the preservation of life overrides almost all other commandments. When lives are at risk, the duty to defend becomes a priority for everyone, regardless of sect or ideology.

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We stand with Smotrich in his call for shared responsibility in Israel’s defense – a moral imperative beyond military needs. The haredi community,  can now embrace this duty to protect. Smotrich’s call may be overdue, but it’s crucial, and all Israelis must rally to ensure everyone shares this responsibility.

His tears signaled a larger truth: Israel’s survival depends on unity. To endure, all communities, including the haredim, must embrace the task of defending Israel, not just for the state but as a sacred duty.

It took him too long to get to this conclusion, but it’s about time. Better late than never. Smotrich, listen to your constituents, and listen to a majority of Israelis looking for a solution: haredi enlistment in the IDF.

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Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook viewed military service as a collective mitzvah that requires individuals to set aside personal pursuits to protect Israel. He believed that defending the Jewish people and homeland is a sacred duty that can supersede even Torah study, as it sanctifies God’s name. He established modern day religious Zionism, and this should be your moral compass. 

 

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-826520?