With a week to go before the election, the Regime Media hold out hope against hope that they can get their hands on a good Trump-adverse story, hopefully one that might damage him in key swing states. The fallout from comic Tony Hinchcliffe’s controversial set at Madison Square Garden is the latest such instance. Watch as CBS Evening News anchor Norah O’Donnell hypes grievance:     NORAH O’DONNELL: With just eight days to go before Election Day, both candidates are in battleground states tonight, as President. Vice President Kamala Harris is barnstorming across Michigan with three events, and former President Donald Trump is in Georgia. But tonight, there is fresh backlash against Trump's rally in New York City on Sunday, including for many top Republicans who are distancing themselves from the vile, racist, and sexist comments that were made. Tonight, CBS News has learned that the campaign claims they struck jokes that contained the C-word. We have new reporting tonight about that process, in addition to Trump's unusual ättacks on Vice President Harris, the rally featured a comedian who repeatedly insulted Puerto Rico, and today is refusing to apologize. Puerto Rico is an American island -- let me say that again. Puerto Ricans are American citizens and the island is a U.S. territory, and there are about 1 million Puerto Ricans living in battleground states where both candidates are vying for the Latino vote. The hopium wafting throughout the media being that Hinchcliffe’s set might anger Puerto Ricans in Pennsylvania to the point of holding the state and therefore clinching the election for Vice President Kamala Harris. Let this serve as your periodic reminder that the media truly do not care about Puerto Rico unless it is in service of the ongoing agenda. So it is that Hinchcliffe’s set is pushed to the moon. Even though it was NOT delivered by Trump. None of that matters. Over at ABC World News Tonight,  a similar tone prevailed. DAVID MUIR: We begin tonight with the race for president, just eight days to go. In fact, one week from tomorrow night, we'll be on the air with our Election Night coverage. Already tonight, 45 million Americans have cast their ballots. Tonight, both candidates with their closing arguments, their final sprint, and former President Donald Trump and the fallout tonight, the backlash over racist and sexist comments and jokes about Latinos and Puerto Ricans, delivered at Trump’s major rally in New York. Former First Lady MelanIa Trump, in a rare appearance, introducing her husband, who was the last to speak. But it was some of the speakers invited by the campaign to speak before the former president, who made immediate headlines including this comedian and what was said about Latinos and Puerto Ricans. Some of it too profane to play on TV. This all played out as Vice President Kamala Harris was visiting a Puerto Rican restaurant in Philadelphia, reaching out to voters. Tonight, the Vice President saying Americans are exhausted by the divisive rhetoric, and now the influential performer Bad Bunny sending out Kamala Harris's message to 46 million followers. And what the Trump campaign is now saying about all this. A recurring theme throughout these reports is the idea of Bad Bunny’s endorsement being spontaneous to the Hinchcliffe set. But it wasn’t. On the same day Bad Bunny shared Kamala Harris’s plan for Puerto Rico (which, it could be reasonably argued, was a copy/paste off of the Black plan”), BB leaned towards the communist running for the island’s governorship. This aspect goes unmentioned. Here’s how NBC Nightly News correspondent Garrett Haake contributed to these ongoing narrativ GARRETT HAAKE: The Puerto Rican vote could prove pivotal in Pennsylvania. The biggest swing state. Where some 300,000 voting age Puerto Ricans could cast ballots. Our recent poll shows among Latinos overall Harris leads, but Trump performs better with Latino men, splitting the vote with Harris. Meanwhile, the MSG rally also featuring Trump supporter and billionaire Elon Musk. If it weren’t for Regime Media, we’d have none at all. Click “expand” to view the full transcripts of the aforementioned reports as aired on their respective evening newscasts on Monday, October 28th, 2024:  ABC WORLD NEWS TONIGHT 10/28/24 6:32 PM DAVID MUIR: We begin tonight with the race for president, just eight days to go. In fact, one week from tomorrow night, we'll be on the air with our Election Night coverage. Already tonight, 45 million Americans have cast their ballots. Tonight, both candidates with their closing arguments, their final sprint, and former President Donald Trump and the fallout tonight, the backlash over racist and sexist comments and jokes about Latinos and Puerto Ricans, delivered at Trump’s major rally in New York. Former First Lady MelanIa Trump, in a rare appearance, introducing her husband, who was the last to speak. But it was some of the speakers invited by the campaign to speak before the former president, who made immediate headlines including this comedian and what was said about Latinos and Puerto Ricans. Some of it too profane to play on TV. This all played out as Vice President Kamala Harris was visiting a Puerto Rican restaurant in Philadelphia, reaching out to voters. Tonight, the Vice President saying Americans are exhausted by the divisive rhetoric, and now the influential performer Bad Bunny sending out Kamala Harris's message to 46 million followers. And what the Trump campaign is now saying about all this. Rachel Scott leading us off with the Trump campaign in Georgia tonight. RACHEL SCOTT: Tonight in Georgia, former President Donald Trump gushing about his massive weekend rally at New York's Madison Square Garden. DONALD TRUMP: Last night, we had a great rally at Madison Square Garden. SCOTT: But that rally was marked by racism, sexism, and vitriol. Trump's campaign now on the defensive after speakers like this -- TONY HINCHCLIFFE: I don't know if you guys know this, but there's literally a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean right now. Yeah, I think it's called Puerto Rico. SCOTT: A Trump campaign spokeswoman saying "That joke doesn't reflect the views of President Trump or the campaign." But this speaker was invited by the Trump campaign and there was more than that. This is what he said about at Latinos overall. HINCHCLIFFE: These Latinos, they love making babies, too. Just know that. They do. SCOTT:  The rest of those words too profane to play. He also made a crude joke about black people and watermelons. And he wasn't the only person onstage to use racist language. Tucker Carlson mocking Kamala Harris, the first black and south Asian vice president. TUCKER CARLSON: Because she's just so impressive, as the first Samoan-Malaysian low IQ former California prosecutor ever to be elected president. SCOTT: Today, Vice President Harris firing back, accusing Trump of fueling hate and division, saying Americans are exhausted. KAMALA HARRIS: What he did last night is not a discovery. It is just more of the same and maybe more vivid than usual. Donald Trump spends full time trying to have Americans point their finger at each other, fans the fuel of hate and division. And that's why people are exhausted with him. SCOTT: Those words about Puerto Rico sparking particular outrage. While the rally was going on, Harris happened to be greeting voters at a Puerto Rican restaurant in Philadelphia. Her campaign releasing this video. KAMALA HARRIS: Puerto Ricans deserve better. SCOTT: Highly influential Puerto Rican superstar Bad Bunny then sharing it with his 46 million Instagram followers. HARRIS: There is so much at stake in this election for Puerto Rican voters and for Puerto Rico. SCOTT: He also shared this part of the video. HARRIS: I will never forget what Donald Trump did and what he did not do when Puerto Rico needed a caring and a competent leader. He abandoned the island, tried to block aid after back-to-back devastating hurricanes, and offered nothing more than paper towels and insults. SCOTT: In battleground Pennsylvania, Governor Josh Shapiro speaking directly to the state's half a million Puerto Rican residents. JOSH SHAPIRO: If Donald Trump really wanted to disassociate himself with that, the first thing he would have said when he came onto the stage at Madison Square Garden was, "Hey, listen, I heard that person's attempt at humor. It was not funny. I stand with the Puerto Rican community." He didn't do that. SCOTT: Sources tell ABC News that Donald Trump's campaign debated internally over whether to even send out a statement condemning those words calling Puerto Rico a floating island of garbage.”” And again, David, this is a comedian that was invited by the campaign to speak and he was not the only one who made racist, sexist, and crude remarks at that rally last night. The question now is whether it was even worth it, with just days to go until this election. Donald Trump has a rally here in Georgia tonight, and then tomorrow, he heads to all-important Pennsylvania, David. MUIR: Rachel Scott live in Georgia tonight with the Trump campaign. Rachel, thank you. CBS EVENING NEWS 10/28/24 6:30 PM NORAH O’DONNELL: With just eight days to go before Election Day, both candidates are in battleground states tonight, as President. Vice President Kamala Harris is barnstorming across Michigan with three events, and former President Donald Trump is in Georgia. But tonight, there is fresh backlash against Trump's rally in New York City on Sunday, including for many top Republicans who are distancing themselves from the vile, racist, and sexist comments that were made. Tonight, CBS News has learned that the campaign claims they struck jokes that contained the C-word. We have new reporting tonight about that process, in addition to Trump's unusual ättacks on Vice President Harris, the rally featured a comedian who repeatedly insulted Puerto Rico, and today is refusing to apologize. Puerto Rico is an American island -- let me say that again. Puerto Ricans are American citizens and the island is a U.S. territory, and there are about 1 million Puerto Ricans living in battleground states where both candidates are vying for the Latino vote. We were with Vice President Harris for much of the weekend as she rallied supporters in Texas and in Michigan. We will have more of our interview tonight. We have team coverage beginning with CBS's Nikole Killion in Georgia. Nikole, I understand you have new reporting on how those comments were vetted. Good evening, Nikole. NIKOLE KILLION: Good evening to you, Norah. Former President Donald Trump is calling Sunday's rally "great," however, CBS News has learned that his campaign is now trying to distance themselves from those comments, acknowledging that they vetted some of those jokes and even had to cut out a few profane lines. DONALD TRUMP: We have to get all the Christians to get out there and vote. KILLION: Former President Donald Trump sat down with faith leaders in suburban Atlanta. TRUMP: Well, I think this is a country that needs religion- it’s like the glue that holds it together.  KILLION: It was a dramatic turnaround in tone from his Madison Square Garden rally Sunday night. TRUMP: Nine days from now will be Liberation Day in America.  KILLION: The even was billed as the former president's closing argument. But instead, Trump was upstaged by his own speakers. DAVID REM: That she is the antichrist! KILLION: Who, one after another, hurled insults at Vice President Kamala Harris and other Democrats. GRANT CARDONE: Her and her pimp handlers will destroy our country. SID ROSENBERG: She is some sick bastard, that Hillary Clinton, hm? What a sick son of a [bleep]. KILLION: But it was comedian Tony Hinchcliffe who drew the most controversy. HINCHCLIFFE: There’s literally a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean right now. Yeah. I think it’s called Puerto Rico. KILLION: Over a series of crude and racist jokes. HINCHCLIFFE: These Latinos, they love making babies too. Just know that. (VIDEO SWIPE) Cool Black guy with the thing on his head? (VIDEO SWIPE) We had a Halloween party last night, we had fun. We had fun carving watermelons together, it was awesome. KILLION: Today, Vice President Kamala Harris slammed the Trump event. KAMALA HARRIS: Donald Trump spends full time trying to have Americans point their finger at each other, fans the fuel of hate and division, and thats why people are exhausted with him. ‘KILLION: President Biden, early voting in Delaware, also didn't hold back. JOE BIDEN: Just simply embarrassing, beneath any president. KILLION: The Trump campaign says that those jokes do not reflect the former president's views, but some sources tell CBS Nnews that they are concerned about some of the fallout from that rally and that it could potentially have a negative impact on the campaign in these final days. Norah. O’DONNELL: Nikole Killion. Thank you. NBC NIGHTLY NEWS 10/28/24 6:31 PM LESTER HOLT: Good evening and welcome. We have begun the last mile on the road to The White House. With just over a week to go, the finish line now in sight. And both Donald Trump and Kamala Harris focusing on their closing messages. The Trump campaign, however, also working to put some distance between itself and a campaign rally in New York City last night that sparked fallout across the partisan divide. When one of the rally speakers, a comedian, uttered a racist characterization about Puerto Rico along with other racist jokes targeting black, Jewish and Latino people. The lewd jokes being condemned by some Republicans as well as Democrats. The episode threatening to overshadow what is likely to be Mr. Trump's closing argument, that he will fix what Harris has broken. The Harris campaign quickly going on the offensive, seizing on the comedian's remarks as it prepares its own closing argument. It's where we start tonight with Garrett Haake. GARRETT HAAKE: Tonight former President Trump in battleground Georgia. DONALD TRUMP: I think it's going to be the most important election in the history of our country. HAAKE: It comes after Trump's massive rally packing Madison Square Garden in deep blue New York City. The start of his closing argument. TRUMP: On issue after issue Kamala broke it but I will fix it. We're going to fix it. HAAKE: Tonight the Trump campaign facing bipartisan backlash over racist comments from a comedian who spoke earlier, including this about Puerto Rico. TONY HINCHCLIFFE: I don't know if you guys know this but there's literally a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean right now. Yeah. I think it's called Puerto Rico? Okay. All right. Okay. We're getting there. HAAKE: Trump's campaign distancing itself saying, "This joke does not reflect the views of President Trump or the campaign." Today Vice President Harris going after Trump. KAMALA HARRIS It is absolutely something that is intended to and is fanning the fuel of trying to divide our country. HAAKE: Republicans blasting the comedian's comment too, including congresswoman Maria Salazar, calling it “disgusting”, saying it does not reflect GOP values.”” Florida senator Rick Scott saying “it's not funny and it's not true.” And now Puerto Rican music superstar and Harris supporter Bad Bunny weighing in, reposting to his 45 million Instagram followers Harris's message to Puerto Rico about Trump. HARRIS: He abandoned the island, tried to block aid after back-to-back devastating hurricanes. I'm very proud to have the support of folks like Bad Bunny and Jennifer Lopez and others, who were supporting me before that nonsense last night at Madison Square Garden. HAAKE: JD Vance today responding. JD VANCE: I haven't seen the joke. I'm not going to comment on the specifics of the joke. But I think that we have to stop getting so offended at every little thing in the United States of America. I'm just -- I'm so over it. HAAKE: Today in Pennsylvania reactions from Puerto Rican supporters of Trump. CUSTOMER #1: I didn't really get offended because I know people just like to gossip. HAAKE: And of Harris. RANDOM WOMAN: All disgusting rhetoric needs to be stopped. HAAKE: The Puerto Rican vote could prove pivotal in Pennsylvania. The biggest swing state. Where some 300,000 voting age Puerto Ricans could cast ballots. Our recent poll shows among Latinos overall Harris leads, but Trump performs better with Latino men, splitting the vote with Harris. Meanwhile, the MSG rally also featuring Trump supporter and billionaire Elon Musk. ELON MUSK: Massive crushing victory. Get everyone, friends, family, people on the street, put the signs up. Put the hat on. Let's go. HAAKE: Today Philadelphia's Democratic D.A. Filing a lawsuit to stop Musk's daily million-dollar giveaway to registered voters who sign his petition supporting free speech and the Second Amendment. The D.A. Calling it an illegal lottery. Musk has not responded. But President Biden did today. JOE BIDEN: I think it's totally inappropriate. HOLT: All right. Garrett joining us now. Garrett, what is Elon Musk saying tonight? HAAKE: Lester, his spokesperson responding to us today with simply a photo of the contest's most recent winner, suggesting he's not backing down. And tonight a Trump campaign source tells me that despite endorsing the former President, Nikki Haley and Trump are increasingly unlikely to appear together in this race’s closing days. Lester. HOLT: All right, Garrett Haake. Thank you.  

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Politics No Joy for Harris The vice president’s final stretch has been ugly and divisive. Credit: image via Shutterstock Kamala Harris spoke to supporters in Houston late last week. Thrusting her finger towards the crowd and declaring with thunderous conviction that Donald Trump will never be president again. Her eyebrows furrowed, her forehead creased, and she shouted “Never!” three more times.  She drew only a smattering of applause from the crowd that was gathered to see Beyonce. Outside the rally, a Harris supporter, perhaps inspired by the vice president’s fiery display, began yelling at the child of a Trump supporter in a stroller, only stopping when shocked bystanders stepped in to quell her fury. In another video, an elderly woman—apparently a notorious troublemaker in her neighborhood—rings the doorbell of a Trump supporter and berates the homeowner with a torrent of foul language.  All across America, Democrats are accusing their opponents of fascism, branding Republican voters with supporting the second coming of Adolf Hitler. The Democratic strategy of joy, it seems, has been abandoned. The late-stage shift in campaign rhetoric marks the 2024 campaign’s latest vibe shift. As their momentum continues to drag in the weeks since J.D. Vance’s debate performance, Democrats seem to have hit the panic button, opting to close their campaign with unprecedented rage rather than joy. The fury started with a thinly sourced, seemingly coordinated Atlantic story accusing Donald Trump of praising Adolf Hitler’s generals. The story, a cheap campaign slander if there ever was one, relied on unnamed sources. Shortly after, a smear campaign against Trump and his voters began, with outraged liberal pundits demanding voters believe and act on the Atlantic’s smear.  When the story failed to break through into the public consciousness, Democrats scrambled to lend it credibility. As if to underscore the death of yesterday’s Democratic Party, the Harris camp trotted out General John Kelly and Liz Cheney to rehash the flat narrative. Resistance liberals, who are now searching for WMDs in Iraq, seem to be the only crowd that bought the story. The smear campaign continued as Trump put on a gargantuan rally Sunday in New York City. Gathered at Madison Square Garden, the MAGA A-team, from Hulk Hogan to Bobby Kennedy Jr., made their penultimate pitches to the American people. Though the rally was nostalgic in nature, mostly featuring odes to Trump’s youth in the Big Apple, the media pressed ahead with their pre-selected narrative.  MSNBC covered the sold-out event with the chyron, “Trump’s MSG Rally comes 85 years after pro-Nazi rally at famed arena.” CNN dubbed the rally “dark and hateful.” The Harris campaign itself dubbed a bit from a famous comedian “a vile, racist tirade.” The left’s descent into the ethical abyss isn’t new, but it’s still jarring that editors encourage rank demagoguery in the aftermath of two assassination attempts on the 45th president’s life.  Contrast the Harris campaign’s close with the Trump campaign’s finish. Trump has repeatedly “broken the internet.” Clips of him serving fries at a Pennsylvania McDonald’s spread like wildfire on social media platforms such as TikTok, X, and Meta. A photo of Trump standing at the drive-through window, waving to a crowd of 28,000 cheering supporters, has already been transformed into countless memes. He followed this event with podcast appearances alongside The Undertaker, a famous pro wrestler, and amassed 30 million views on the comedian Joe Rogan’s podcast.  J.D. Vance followed a similar tack, recording a popular episode with comedian Theo Von, whose podcast often explores the impacts of drug addiction—a topic and audience that resonates with Vance’s background. We won’t know how effective the RNC’s humor strategy has been until November 5, but it’s certainly a contrast with the dread-inducing wrath of the DNC. The closing days of the 2024 campaign will be ugly. Democrats have cast aside their post-assassination attempt pleas for cooler rhetoric. Struggling in the polls, they have resorted to accusing conservatives of seeking to replicate our civilization’s gravest moral crimes. All pretense of institutional responsibility has been cast aside, along with any aspirations to national unity. Kamala Harris may yet become president, but her campaign foreshadows an unsettling future. For the American people, it’s all rather joyless.  The post No Joy for Harris appeared first on The American Conservative.

Foreign Affairs War and the Cost of Groceries Paying to fight other governments’ battles is a domestic issue and should be on November 5. Credit: image via Shutterstock During Wednesday’s CNN Town Hall, the Democratic presidential candidate, Kamala Harris, was asked a pretty straightforward question about progressives recoiling from the Biden administration’s apparent inability—or unwillingness—to use U.S. leverage with Israel to bring an end to the civilian carnage in Gaza. Asked what she thought about Democratic voters who say they are likely voting third party “or staying on the couch, not voting at all because of this issue,” the vice president told CNN’s Anderson Cooper, “I am not going to deny the strong feelings that people have. I don’t know that anyone who has seen the images, who would not have strong feelings about what has happened.”  “But I also do know that for many people who care about this issue they also care about bringing down the price of groceries,” she added.  Her attempt at a sleight of hand, abruptly shifting from the deaths of nearly 43,000 people and the displacement of an entire population of 2 million in the Gaza Strip, to the cost of milk and bread at Safeway, was one of the cringier moments of the evening. She followed that with a litany of attacks on Donald Trump, right down to his “fascist” assault on women’s reproductive rights, but never bothered to return to the main premise of Cooper’s question, which zeroed in on the anger coming from Arab-American voters in swing states like Michigan—and beyond—according to polls. But she isn’t all wrong. Americans are frustrated with the cost of groceries, despite what the mainstream media says is the “cooling” of inflation. They don’t feel the easing at the market, the gas pump, or at big box stores like Wal-Mart and Target, which for years had provided lower cost items for middle- and lower-income families. Harris can almost be forgiven for acting like a typical politician eager to tap-dance furiously away from an issue she can’t in good conscience explain or justify, but Cooper blew an opportunity to exploit her little awkward transition from the foreign to the domestic. They are one and the same, and if you don’t think that sending billions of dollars of weapons to Israel after years of sending arms and cash to Ukraine doesn’t in some way affect Americans’ consternation at the cash register, then we need to talk. In 2021, the average American family (the middle 20 percent of income earners) paid $17,902 in taxes to federal, state, and local governments—of that, $10,391 went to Washington and the federal bureaucracy. According to BLS data at this time, the “middle 20 percent” was a family earning between $46,500 and $78,000 a year. Some 60 percent of Americans believe their tax burden is too high and there appears to be no realistic plan for lowering it, at least not right now. High taxes for this income bracket means taking a bigger chunk out of their take-home pay, and, if that is not enough, they get whacked at tax time. That means paying for the basics—choosing between steak and ground beef, when to buy new clothes for the kids or pull the trigger on home repairs—can depend on how much is in the bank. Buying on credit, with interest rates still in the stratosphere, is the bleaker but still heavily used option, another layer of extraordinary burden on the family finances. So where American tax dollars go and how much should be of great interest to the voter. Since the Hamas attacks on Oct 7, 2023, the U.S. has given Israel $17.9 billion in military aid, according to the Costs of War Project at Brown University. This sum includes the annual $3.8 million Israel normally gets, plus a $14.1 billion supplemental package passed by Congress in April. The aid includes direct sales and drawdowns from Pentagon stockpiles, but most of the money is used for grants under the Foreign Military Financing program, which does not need to be paid back. According to the Stimson Center, Israel is eligible for “Cash Flow Financing,” which allows it to use these grants to finance multi-year purchases without having to pay for weapons entirely up-front. Typically, Congress would have to approve each major weapons transaction, but the Biden administration this year has greenlit hundreds under the $25 million threshold for reporting to Congress, so tons of weapons have literally flown to Israel under the radar of the legislative branch (not that lawmakers, even Democratic ones, have put up much resistance). The Costs of War report suggests that much of this might not be included in the $17.9 billion total. Israel isn’t sparing a cent. In its effort to “destroy Hamas,” by May of this year Israel had dropped more weight in bombs than what laid waste to Hamburg, Dresden, and London combined during the Second World War. As of December, Israel had fired 29,000 air-to-surface missiles at Gaza. Only half of them were precision guided; the rest were American-made “dumb bombs” that are indiscriminate in nature. At that point, some 18,000 people had been killed and 51,000 wounded in a matter of two months. In addition to the tens of thousands of missiles and bombs (all the way up to the 2,000-pound variety), shells, tank rounds, small arms, defense systems, shoulder-fired rockets, F-35s fighter aircraft, army vehicles, and even fuel provided, the U.S. more recently gave Israel its most advanced missile defense system, the THAAD (Terminal High Altitude Area Defense), which costs U.S. taxpayers anywhere from $1 billion to $1.8 billion per battery. The Pentagon is also sending 100 military personnel to man the system. This gets to the U.S. cost of the war: it has been estimated that Washington has spent an additional $4.9 billion increasing its own military presence in the Middle East in the last year, including leading a “coalition” of countries against the Houthi attacks on commercial shipping in the Red Sea. The Houthis say they won’t stop until Israel stops blasting away Palestinians in Gaza. Rather than use the leverage of billions of dollars in aid to push for a ceasefire to end the civilian bloodshed, the U.S. appears content to fire off $2 million missiles at cheap Houthi weapons that seem to be in endless supply over the last year. All of this activity—which, as Israel has stepped up its bombing campaign of Lebanon, and now Iran, appears to be unending—is in addition to the $175 billion in military and other aid that U.S. taxpayers have given for the war in Ukraine since 2022. Despite some efforts to push the conflict towards a negotiated solution, the Washington establishment, apparently undeterred by domestic fiscal considerations, is gung-ho to keep fueling it “for as long as it takes.” Does anyone ask how long Americans “can take it”? While most pundits are correct that voters will more likely have the economy than foreign wars at the top of mind when they vote, others, including Harris, are dead wrong when they suggest one doesn’t have anything to do with the other. We are all paying for it. Other than printing more money (which yes, Washington does), Uncle Sam will need tax revenues to keep funding these conflicts at the pace they are going today. Higher “prices at the grocery store” might be easier to stomach if we knew that our hard-earned income wasn’t being sent to fight other governments’ battles with no effort or influence put to ending them. In fact, the generous and unconditional nature of our giving has had the opposite effect. Israel has expanded its bombing campaign to five countries total—all while American taxpayers are being taken to the cleaners. The post War and the Cost of Groceries appeared first on The American Conservative.

Politics The Biden-Harris Administration Risks Another 9/11? The administration refuses to reevaluate its easy-admission border policies, despite the identification of hundreds of terrorist suspects in the waves of illegal immigrants entering the country.  Credit: image via Shutterstock The proximate cause of the 9/11 catastrophe was the failure of U.S. border security. Specifically, the terrorist attackers succeeded in their suicide mission because U.S. government agencies failed to manage the national watchlist that would have easily identified the 9/11 operational ringleader, Mohamed Atta. That history is why the recently released report of the House Subcommittee on Immigration Integrity, Security, and Enforcement deserves serious attention. The report makes clear that since the Biden-Harris administration began opening the border, U.S. authorities have encountered at least 382 illegal immigrants listed on the national terrorist watchlist. This alarming datapoint has apparently failed to capture the White House’s attention or convince senior administration officials to reevaluate their border management.  It is sobering to compare this moment with the period before 9/11. Like then, Washington’s leadership today appears heedless and shortsighted in managing the terrorist threat to the homeland. As before 9/11, the White House assumption today appears to be that our counterterrorism protective measures are working well enough.  The 382 number in the report is just the tip of the iceberg; the figure represents illegals that U.S. authorities actually encountered and identified in the terrorist database. There are also the “got-aways,” the estimated 1.9 million illegal migrants who entered the country without any official contact whatsoever. Unlike with legal immigrants, whom U.S. consular officials normally pre-screen in their home countries, these uninvited border-jumpers enter our country as complete unknowns.  Declining to lock down the border, the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas accepts this inflow because rendering “social justice” for foreigners who seek to enter our country is a higher priority for him than national security. Such a cavalier approach is a poke in the eye to a once bipartisan (but clearly now stone-cold dead) consensus on U.S. counterterrorism strategy. The Mayorkas approach appears uniquely impervious to the painful lesson of the fanaticism and death-dealing creativity of the 9/11 attackers. Examining the parallels requires a look back at the devious Atta, the indispensable 9/11 ringleader who successfully entered the U.S. multiple times while planning the hijackings. The fact that the CIA knew exactly who Atta was before the attack but did not share that information with U.S. immigration authorities and the State Department is the main reason the federal government today undertakes, with all its imperfections, its massive terrorist watchlisting program.  My own small piece of the Mohamed Atta story began in the first chaotic days after the 9/11 attacks, when I was an American diplomat in Germany. Soon after the commercial passenger jets crashed into the Twin Towers and Pentagon, frantic U.S. investigators pieced together that Atta had been crucial to the success of the hijackings. In those first panicky days, a worldwide request went out for all possible information on Atta, with a focus on Germany, where the mass killer had lived for years.  In the U.S. consulate in Leipzig, I received a telephone call from a contact in the local American missionary community explaining he knew Atta. The young Latter-day Saint indicated he clearly recognized Atta’s photo, recently broadcast to the world. The missionary explained he had met Atta in Germany’s university scene, where the two had often crossed paths; in happenstance encounters they had debated each other and proselytized among German and foreign students.  An Egyptian national, Atta had cleverly used his status as a foreign student in Hamburg to recruit for Bin Laden’s Al Qaeda’s terrorist network all across Germany. Like the rest of the planet, I had seen that Atta was a fanatical killer, but in the phone call, I also learned he had been unusually smart and even personable and persuasive, speaking excellent German and mustering an impressive knowledge of world religions.  Atta was formidable, the kind of kamikaze adversary who literally gave his life to attack the U.S. homeland. His story should remind us of the dangers that a handful of dedicated terrorists can inflict on our country because of unmanaged borders. Today, one wonders if Mayorkas ever ponders that fanatics of Atta’s caliber could be sprinkled in among today’s waves of unknown immigrants. In the first days after 9/11, the German press chased the Atta story. Media sources inside the German police made it indisputable that the CIA also knew perfectly well who Atta was, having thoroughly surveilled him when he lived in Hamburg and as he moved around Germany. That disquieting fact was largely downplayed in Congress’s post-mortem on the terrorist catastrophe, because back at home the agency had moved swiftly to protect its professional reputation.   In the aftermath, reconstructing the frightful events, most observers would rightfully have expected that the CIA should have obviously shared their crucial information on Atta with the State Department (which issued Atta’s student visa for a flight school) and U.S. immigration officials (who regularly cleared Atta through the airports). Sharing such identity information is the essence of good watchlisting, and there was in fact a functioning U.S. terrorist watchlist process before 9/11, although few at Langley took it seriously.  Institutionally, the CIA of that day had other priorities, although Langley officials were certainly aware that Atta flew in and out of the U.S. The agency’s security oversight happened not only with Atta, but with other key 9/11 plotters. The short explanation on why the CIA did not share is likely a combination of bureaucratic incompetence, a lack of imagination, and secret mission arrogance.   No one in Langley thought through the risk of letting a fanatic like Atta run loose in our country; the agency’s officers in the field, devoted patriots to a person, were doubtless calculating that, by not disclosing Atta’s arrival in the U.S., they were protecting a future opportunity to penetrate his network and maybe recruit an insider. In retrospect, they simply did not have the imagination to see the grave danger that Atta actually represented.  In our current national moment, the Mayorkas version of this same official shortsightedness is his wokeism, i.e., that rendering social justice on behalf of millions of foreigners who seek to enter the country is worth running the risk of allowing in another Mohamed Atta. The 9/11 details fade with each passing year, and Mayorkas and his team simply cannot imagine the scenario. The clear lesson is that competent U.S. government watchlisting could have easily deterred Atta and kept him out of our country. Without Atta holding the suicide hijacker teams together, the 9/11 attacks almost certainly would not have been so destructive as they were and very probably could have been prevented altogether.   Congress and the White House did almost nothing to punish the federal bureaucracy’s incompetence and failure. Secretary of State Colin Powell fired an assistant secretary, probably the only senior official across the entire federal government to get sacked for the 9/11 disaster. The CIA’s George Tenet would survive and thrive, going on to orchestrate the U.S. intelligence community’s “finding” that the dictator in Iraq had developed weapons of mass destruction.  Congress and the White House turned the disaster into an opportunity to massively increase spending, expand government snooping, and launch a war in Iraq—all to compensate for what was in fact a simple government failure: botched watchlisting. The irony is that in the wake of the 9/11 panic, even the watchlisting snafu was not efficiently and nimbly fixed, but was instead radically remade with a massive FDR-LBJ-style tsunami of big government.  Washington spent billions and hired thousands of new federal officials. Most pertinently to watchlisting, Congress created new security agencies such as the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) and the Terrorist Screening Center (TSC).  Both were established to collect and manage the world’s most sophisticated terrorist database. The idea that failed government operations could have been improved by insisting on new efficiencies and better use of existing resources and personnel was probably laughed out of the room. Today there are more than 2.5 million identities on the national terrorist watchlist. Foreign names around the world linked to terrorism activities are hoovered up by U.S. officials, and those efforts are amplified with considerable electronic capabilities. Critics argue that too many names have been put into that massive database. That criticism is a fair one. The system is a function of the fact that the database contains “known or suspected” terrorists, and the “suspected” category is vast.   Today, this sheer volume of watchlisted identities probably contributes considerably to Mayorkas’s cavalier attitude that just because an encountered illegal immigrant is in the database does not make that person a “real” terrorist. How else could our DHS secretary rationally argue that he should not immediately seal the border?   It is impossible to know what actual self-deception is running through the reckless thinking of Mayorkas and his senior team to justify their continued unprecedented policies of ushering in literally thousands of unlawful immigrants each day. They continue to implement policies that encourage more to come.   Today, as we approach the U.S. presidential elections, new waves of tens of thousands of illegals, sheltering in Tapachula, Mexico, are starting to make their way to the southern border, all with the quiet approval of Mexican authorities. Whether Vice President Kamala Harris wins or loses the White House, fresh hundreds of thousands will appear this winter, all attempting to enter the country. Whatever motivates Mayorkas, there is good cause to fear that he is engaged in the same kind of hubris and foolishness that was at the root of the CIA’s decision not to act on Atta’s presence in our country in the summer of 2001. It is irresponsible risk-taking.  The post The Biden-Harris Administration Risks Another 9/11? appeared first on The American Conservative.

Some star-crossed inspiration. The post Debbie Harry on the two artists who helped “to break” Blondie first appeared on Far Out Magazine.