Harris’ ‘Two-State Solution’ Would ‘Wipe Israel Off the Map’

It’s been almost a year since the Hamas terrorist organization attacked Israel on Oct. 7. The massacre left over 1,200 people dead and over 200 kidnapped—including women, men, and children. Since the attack, the Biden administration has made its support for a two-state solution clear. And now, with Vice President Kamala Harris running as the 2024 Democratic presidential nominee, it appears nothing has changed.

During Tuesday’s debate between the vice president and the Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, Harris restated her support for a cease-fire and two-state solution, which, as Family Research Council President Tony Perkins explained on Thursday’s episode of “Washington Watch,” would ultimately “transfer the geographical heart of the state of Israel, Judea and Samaria, to the Palestinians.”

Harris declared, “We must chart a course for a two-state solution, and in that solution, there must be security for the Israeli people and Israel and an equal measure for the Palestinians.” But experts on the ground in Israel like Caroline Glick say that a two-state solution is not a viable option.

First, Glick emphasized on “Washington Watch” how Harris’ comments during Tuesday’s debate are likely to “lower her level of support” in Israel. As a senior contributing editor at the Jewish News Syndicate, Glick and her colleagues have been conducting polls “of Israeli sentiments regarding the presidential race.” As she stated, after their most recent update shortly before the presidential debate, “Trump was leading by more than two-thirds of Israelis supporting him over Kamala Harris.” She added, “I assume that next week when we poll that question,” the results will be similar.

Glick further noted that Harris made potentially “the most hostile statement ever made by a major presidential candidate, by a nominee of one of the major parties, regarding Israel in history. … Her hostility toward Israel was stunning.”

Glick explained how the attack on Oct. 7 was the “most sadistic” slaughter Israel has seen, and yet, Harris’ stance seems to reflect that she sees a cease-fire as a way to “pay the Palestinians.” And while it is true that many Palestinian civilians have died over this past year, Glick asserted that this was still “very much an invasion of Palestinian society into Israel, not just Hamas.”

According to Glick, some military estimates found that out of the 10,000 people that entered Israel from Gaza during the attack, 5,000 to 6,000 were Hamas members, and the rest were Palestinian civilians. And so, Perkins noted, when considering the fact that Harris wants a solution that’s in “equal measure for the Palestinians,” it becomes even clearer how the Biden-Harris administration’s “support of Israel has been tepid at best.” Moving forward, he asked, is it possible policies under a potential Harris-Walz administration would be “even more indifferent toward Israel or outright hostile?”

In response, Glick emphasized how, should Harris get elected, America could expect to see more hostility toward Israel. “I think that what Kamala Harris showed at the debate … is that an America under her presidency will not allow Israel to do anything beyond intercepting missiles en route to Israel” and will not allow the Jewish state to take “offensive actions against our enemies, whether it’s Iran or the Palestinians or Hezbollah.”

Glick pointed out how Harris said she “will always support Israel’s right to defend itself,” but that doesn’t change the fact that “the United States right now continues to embargo 2,000-pound bunker buster bombs to Israel, because they don’t want us to take offensive action that will effectively diminish the capacities of our enemies.”

Returning to the topic of the two-state solution, Perkins addressed how the land in question includes a “small strip of the Gaza Strip,” the home of the people attacking Israel. Considering this, he asked, how would Israel be able to defend itself if its land “is given away to a hostile entity?”

“It can’t,” Glick said somberly. “It manifestly cannot do so.” Which is “the problem,” she added, because “people talk about the two-state solution as if this is some sort of responsible policy, but it’s not.” Rather, it establishes “a Palestinian state, causing Israel to renounce our rights to our biblical homeland” and paves the way for “Israel to be defeated.”

Glick concluded, “[G]iving people whose goal in life is to annihilate the Jewish state and the Jewish people … sovereignty over the West Bank of the Jordan of Judea and Samaria” means “giving them the keys to the realm. You are telling them, ‘Go ahead, wipe Israel off the map.’

https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/09/16/expert-harris-two-state-solution-would-wipe-israel-off-the-map/

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What doesn’t kill Trump makes him stronger

As if there hadn’t been enough drama in America in 2024, Donald Trump has survived another assassination attempt.

The attempted killing of the 45th president at his golf course in Palm Beach, Florida yesterday afternoon was not nearly as threatening as nine weeks ago in Butler, Pennsylvania. Secret Service, who have faced so much criticism for their failings in Butler, found the would-be killer’s weapon before he was able to target Trump, shots were fired, and the suspect appears to have been arrested fleeing the scene.

What took place in Florida will show voters that a lot of people want Trump dead

It’s still big news. Questions will rightly be asked as to how an armed man was again able to get so close to Trump. At a press conference yesterday, an official said that, had Trump been a sitting president, the entire course would have been secured in advance. Given the recency of the last attempt of Trump’s life, that seems an oversight. Trumpworld is already suggesting it is another conspiracy.

That may be more mad talk – yet the incident could still prove to be a major moment in the presidential campaign, chiefly because it brings to mind the ongoing threat to Trump’s life. And it will remind voters of his narrow escape in Pennsylvania and his extraordinary courage under fire.

After all the drama surrounding Kamala Harris’s elevation to the top of the Democratic ticket, Trump’s ‘fight fight fight!’ response that Saturday evening in July had somehow faded from the public consciousness.

Last week, in the debate in Pennsylvania, Trump said ‘he probably took a bullet to the head’ because of Biden and Harris’s inflammatory rhetoric against him. But the remark was largely ignored. Most commentary focused on his poor debate performance and Trump tirades about rallies and Haitians eating pets in Ohio.

Yet what took place in Florida yesterday will show voters that a lot of people want Trump dead. That will probably boost his appeal among people who don’t. Trump is an extraordinary political candidate, who thrives off enmity, and whatever doesn’t kill him makes him stronger. Sure enough, last night the betting markets improved in Trump’s favour.

https://www.spectator.com.au/2024/09/what-doesnt-kill-trump-makes-him-stronger/

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‘The Science’ Lights Their Last Bit Of Credibility On Fire For Kamala Harris

Scientific American, a supposedly prestigious science magazine founded in 1845, lit a fire to its last shred of credibility Monday by endorsing Kamala Harris for president.

The journal has only made presidential endorsements twice, the first time being in 2020 when the editorial board backed then-candidate Joe Biden, a very erudite and scientific man with the scholarly sensibilities of a Victorian gentleman. In an equally fawning and delusional endorsement, the editors at Scientific American practically salivate at the idea of a Kamala presidency.

“She pushes policies that boost good jobs nationwide by embracing technology and clean energy,” they write of Harris. “She supports education, public health and reproductive rights. She treats the climate crisis as the emergency it is and seeks to mitigate its catastrophic storms, fires and droughts.” (Click HERE to sign up for John’s weekly newsletter)

The editors also note that as president she would be “relying on science” (read, “left-wing orthodoxy”), “solid evidence” (read, “data and numbers cooked by hacks and government bureaucrats”), and a “willingness to learn from experience” (we’d hope so, but read, “complete lack of self-awareness”).

On Donald Trump, however, the editors argue that he “endangers public health and safety and rejects evidence, preferring instead nonsensical conspiracy fantasies.”

Trump “goads people into hate and division, and he inspires extremists at state and local levels to pass laws that disrupt education and make it harder to earn a living,” they write, breathlessly.

I’m not here to debunk every point the editors make in support of Harris, and I’m not here to argue why a Trump presidency would be good for science (who’s sitting in the Oval Office should really have no bearing on whether science flourishes in America). That would take far too long, and far too many Zyns, and I frankly don’t care.

I simply want to point out the utter absurdity that a journal of science, certainly one that seeks to maintain its authority and credibility in a social media world where former credible authorities have been all but destroyed, would ever want to jump into politics in such a crude, pedestrian manner for such an unimpressive and unintelligent candidate.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, former Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, testifies before the House Select Committee on the Coronavirus, Washington, DC, June 3, 2024. Fauci was to many, the public face of government response to the coronavirus and a frequent target of Republican lawmakers’ ire arising from the shutdown.

Aside from virtue signaling and making themselves feel morally superior, what is the upside of Scientific American endorsing a political candidate? No voter cares about what they have to say about politics, and no swing voter in Pennsylvania or North Carolina will read their litany of propaganda and say to themselves, “Well, sheeit, that’s the one. Harris for president.” They are only harming themselves, and for a magazine that was recently dunked on by a former columnist for being too left-wing, this is not the move. (RELATED: Former Columnist Exposes Scientific American’s Sudden Descent Into Left-Wing Ideology)

For a long time, it seems, ‘The Science’ has been turning into a refuge for careerists and hacks, ideologues and do-gooders, bureaucrats such as Tony Fauci or C-list actors such as Bill Nye, all of whom have the combined mental acuity of a braindead cow. Maybe this has always been the case, throughout all of history. Maybe ‘The Science’ was the Catholic Church when Galileo challenged its biblical worldview. Maybe ‘The Science’ hated the fact that Albert Einstein was just a humble patent clerk, a lone wolf working on the periphery of institutions.

I don’t know. What I do know is that, when a history of science in the 21st Century is written, Scientific American will be but a footnote, if that.

https://dailycaller.com/2024/09/17/scientific-american-kamala-harris-endorsement/

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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:

http://jonjayray.com/covidwatch.html (COVID WATCH)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)

https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)

https://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

https://john-ray.blogspot.com/ (FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC -- revived)

http://jonjayray.com/select.html (SELECT POSTS)

http://jonjayray.com/short/short.html (Subject index to my blog posts)

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Americans Are Losing Hope in the American Dream

The “American dream” has long been a cornerstone of our national identity—the idea that any citizen of the United States, regardless of upbringing or background, can work his or her way to prosperity. It is why nearly 1 in 5 businesses in the country are owned by first-generation Americans. It is borne out in the sharp increase over the past 20 years in college students from economically distressed households. It is also reflected in the “income advancements” we have seen among American families over the past 30 years.

Despite the upward mobility experienced by millions, the American people are losing hope. In newly released polling data published by our organization, the Joseph Rainey Center for Public Policy, 66% of Americans polled believe the concept of the American dream has become “less attainable” over the last 10 years. Only 9% of Americans think the dream has become more attainable.

About 40% of American voters say the American dream is out of reach for them, with young people most likely to agree. It is also a pessimistic sentiment more pronounced for black Americans, who were the least likely to say they have achieved it.

Overall, only 1 in 5 of voters believe they have reached the American dream.

While it is disappointing to see Americans lose hope, it is also an expected outcome after the surging inflation of the past several years. Prices of goods are up an average of 20% since President Joe Biden took office. An analysis published by the U.S. Senate Joint Economic Committee late last year estimated that, due to inflation, the average household would need to spend an additional $11,434 annually just to maintain their same standard of living they had prior to January 2021.

The situation has become so dire for some that it was recently reported that more Americans are being forced to choose between paying for food and paying their energy bills. One mother admitted to CBS News, “Sometimes I have to choose whether I’m going to pay the light bill, or do I pay all the rent or buy food or not let my son do a sport?” This is the crushing reality for far too many families as they have tried to stay afloat while coping with the 40-year-high inflation that has gripped prices nationwide.

Homeownership—long considered a staple of the American dream—has also become more difficult for families to achieve. Soaring interest rates, needed to curb runaway inflation, have increased mortgage rates, creating an affordability crisis. A CNN poll found that the overwhelming majority of Americans currently renting “would like to buy a home but can’t afford one.” More than 50% of those asked feel they’ll never be able to own their own home.

It is estimated that due to the rising mortgage interest rates and property costs, “home buyers now need to earn $47,000 more than they did in 2020”—an increase of 80%—to be able to comfortably buy a home, according to a report by Zillow. This is demoralizing for those simply trying to purchase a family home.

All these factors are making Americans less optimistic about their future and their children’s future. Our polling found that more than 50% of Americans believe the United States will be worse off down the road. This national pessimism is toxic for the future of America. If we are going to course correct and deliver a tomorrow that inspires today’s workforce, we need smart policies that will help families climb out of the financial hardships they have had to face over the past several years.

To restore faith in the American dream, we must re-imagine it for today’s world. At the Rainey Center, we have focused our commitment on advancing innovative and actionable solutions that demonstrate a capacity to address some of the nation’s most complex challenges, from advocating for economic empowerment to boosting domestic energy production.

One of the crucial policies we have advocated for is permitting reform, which includes commonsense measures that will lower energy costs for families, lead to more infrastructure development, and reduce bureaucratic red tape. It is also a policy that has broad bipartisan support from the American people—and voters want to see reform, so it is easier to build infrastructure in America. The next administration should immediately move to deregulate energy production and invest in energy innovation to reverse the current economic trend.

The path forward requires policies that both preserve the integrity of the American dream and make it accessible once again. By encouraging fresh ideas, institutions like the Rainey Center—in their collaboration with policymakers at every level of government—can lay the foundation for a new era of opportunity—one where all Americans, regardless of background, can share in the promise of prosperity. Only by embracing bold, inclusive solutions can we ensure the dream remains a tangible goal for future generations.

https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/09/13/americans-are-losing-hope-american-dream/

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Kamala Harris, Pro-Crime Candidate for President

The negative effects of California’s Proposition 47 are well known—a surge in theft, chaos, and lawlessness. Prop 47, a ballot measure approved by voters in 2014, reclassified nonviolent larceny as a misdemeanor so long as the value of the goods stolen is less than $950.

This results are seen in horrifying videos of criminals brazenly riding bikes into drugstores and plundering shelves, stealing bags full of merchandise while impotent clerks and security guards haplessly watch the crime unfold.

What’s less known is that Vice President Kamala Harris was a key champion of getting Prop 47 approved.

Progressives like Harris often bemoan what they describe as “food deserts,” a lack of grocery stores offering more healthy foods in poorer areas.

The truth is, politicians such as Harris who encouraged the very lawlessness that drove out the drugstores and grocery stores don’t advise constituents to stop looting. They punish business owners instead.

The good thing is that California voters have a chance to repeal Proposition 47 through a countermeasure this fall called Prop 36. If voters approve the ballot question, Prop 47 will die.

Harris, however, wants to impose her terrible California worldview nationwide. Harris, the state’s former attorney general, supports ending cash bail for violent criminals.

Democrats’ presidential nominee even helped raise bail money for violent rioters in 2020, including murderers and serial domestic abusers in Minnesota during the George Floyd riots. Sadly, one of those criminals Harris helped free from jail went on to kill someone.

Harris claims to be a candidate of law and order, yet she proposed allowing dealers to sell drugs without fear of criminal prosecution. She prefers that drug dealers face charges only after the third time they are arrested.

“Kamala Harris was the most liberal and progressive district attorney I worked with in over 30 years in the SFPD,” said Kevin Cashman, former deputy chief of the San Francisco Police Department.

Now that’s a difficult title to claim in a liberal city like San Francisco.

But this title makes sense when you know that Harris released a violent MS-13 gang member, Edwin Ramos. Ramos was convicted of murdering a father and his two sons after being released.

Harris shielded illegal immigrant drug dealers from prison. She wiped clean their criminal records and coddled them with job training, even as millions of U.S. citizens are unemployed. Unfortunately, one of these illegal aliens violently assaulted a woman, fracturing her skull.

Harris refused to seek the death penalty against cop killer David Hill. Even the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., disagreed with Harris’ blatant disregard for the law. She criticized Harris for it.

Harris allowed criminals who punched and spit on cops to avoid jail time.

As district attorney of San Francisco, Harris was weak on gun-carrying criminals. The San Francisco Chronicle reported in 2006: “Police have also challenged Harris over whether she is living up to her promises to get tougher on gun crimes.”

Harris also failed in the courtroom as a prosecutor. San Francisco Weekly reported in 2010: “In the first quarter of 2010, things got worse. During that time, Harris’ office secured guilty verdicts in just 53 percent of its felony trials —a remarkable figure, revealing that defendants accused of serious crimes who took their case to trial had an even one-in-two shot at winning an acquittal.”

Harris’ record as San Francisco district attorney, The Washington Free Beacon reports, includes “lenient plea deals and probation for a string of career criminals—a serial domestic abuser who later murdered his girlfriend, a repeat felon who gunned down a newspaper editor in Harris’ hometown of Oakland, and others.”

Harris was such a crime-friendly district attorney, SF Gate reported, that San Francisco police were forced to do an “end run around Harris’ office by taking several gang-related homicide cases to federal prosecutors.”

For the first time in the history of California, which was founded in 1850, the state is losing a congressional district. That means California is losing people big time.

Residents are fleeing California’s crime for places such as Florida and Texas because of Harris’ failed policies and governance, in San Francisco and statewide.

If Harris becomes president, Americans will have nowhere else to flee because she’ll be running the entire country. We deserve better.

https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/09/14/kamala-harris-pro-crime-candidate-for-president/

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Cracking The ‘Semantic Games’ Media Use To Make Kamala Look Good

A couple of months ago, everyone agreed Kamala Harris was the worst VP in American history. Now, she’s heralded as the Savior of the Republic.

At first glance, that’s seemingly all it took. After a couple of months of media praise, Harris is up in the polls as the American people seem to have forgotten her long history of radicalism and failure. But is it really that simple?

The Daily Caller’s new documentary, “Cleaning Up Kamala,” shows that the media didn’t simply will this new, “joyful” Kamala into existence. They followed a carefully planned formula to deceive the American people.

Democrats and the media love to talk about The Big Lie: the idea that you can simply repeat a lie over and over again until people believe it. Yet like most things with the Democrat-media complex, this is bait and switch.

Don’t fall for it. Their own lying is far more subtle. As the Daily Caller’s investigative team shows, their lies use “semantic games” to spin half-truths into larger, false narratives. Often, the broad takeaway inverts reality entirely.

Take the lie that Kamala Harris never had anything to do with the Defund the Police movement.

We all know she spent the violent Summer of 2020 cagily tip-toeing around left-wing radicalism. We know she supported the Minnesota Freedom Fund, which bailed rioters out of jail. Yet PolitiFact, one of the nation’s most prominent mainstream fact-checkers, called Donald Trump a liar when he said she supported the Defund the Police movement.

How’d they pull this one off?

Here’s Trump’s full quote:

“They want to defund, she [Harris] wants to defund the police, now she’s pulled back on it,” Trump said at a rally. Note that he uses the past tense.

Now, compare that to was Harris’ said in interviews during the Summer of Love:

“This whole [Defund the Police] movement is about rightly saying we need to take a look at these budgets and figure out whether it reflects the right priorities. For too long, the status quo thinking has been you get more safety by putting more cops on the street. Well, that’s wrong,” Harris said on CNN.

This seems to jive with what Trump’s saying. So how does PolitiFact explain rating Trump’s quote as “mostly false?” It all comes down to tenses. They called him a liar for using the present tense, saying Harris “wants” to Defund the Police, even though he clarified that she’s since changed her mind, apparently. Yet they ignore the immediate contextualization in order to call him a liar.

“They know what they’re doing, and unfortunately, a lot of these fact checking websites are getting away with it,” explains Amber Athey, Washington Editor of The Spectator.

This obscures the whole debate about how Harris’ policies evolved, or what they even are. What we should be talking about is how Harris flip-flopped; was she lying then, or if she’s lying now? Instead, the onus falls on Trump. Countless people see this “fact check” and rest assured that Trump is the liar. Harris’ lies aren’t just irrelevant, they all but cease to exist.

As always with Democratic lies, a half-truth inverts the broader reality. The liar gets off scot-free and the truth teller is branded a liar.

This is just one of the many tricks the media re-brand used to re-brand Kamala Harris as a modern day messiah. Watch “Cleaning Up Kamala” today to discover all the dirty tricks they have up their sleeves.

https://dailycaller.com/2024/09/16/media-kamala-harris-daily-caller-documentary/

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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:

http://jonjayray.com/covidwatch.html (COVID WATCH)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)

https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)

https://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

https://john-ray.blogspot.com/ (FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC -- revived)

http://jonjayray.com/select.html (SELECT POSTS)

http://jonjayray.com/short/short.html (Subject index to my blog posts)

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Trump’s road map for taking ‘woke’ out of American education

Donald Trump is vowing to take what he describes as wokeness out of America’s schools if he is elected president. He and allies have a road map for doing so.

The former president has said he would deploy federal powers to pressure schools and universities that he considers to be too liberal. One strategy that he has described would launch civil-rights investigations of schools that have supported transgender rights and racial diversity programs. Another tactic would use the college accreditation system, which sets standards for schools, to scale back diversity goals.

Conservatives have previously decried the use of federal agencies – sometimes derisively called the “deep state” – by Democrats. Now, Trump and his allies have suggested they want to turn the tables.

Unlike many of Trump’s other education proposals — including punishing schools that require vaccines, creating an anti-”woke” online university, and instituting “universal school choice” — these new tactics wouldn’t require state or congressional cooperation. They would likely kick up a legal fight, from school systems, universities and LGBTQ advocates, among others.

In speeches, Trump has also repeatedly pledged to abolish the Education Department.

Trump representatives pointed to his campaign website when asked for further details.

Critical race theory targeted

“Our public schools have been taken over by the radical left maniacs,” Trump said in a campaign video earlier this year. “We will cut federal funding for any school or program pushing critical race theory.” Conservatives have used the term “critical race theory” as a catch-all for liberal ideas about race.

Trump’s platform promises to investigate “any school that engages in race-based discrimination,” though it doesn’t specify which programs he would target.

Several common practices in schools might be subject to scrutiny, said R. Shep Melnick, a professor at Boston College who has studied civil-rights law. Those could include initiatives focused on helping Black or Hispanic students succeed in class; diversity offices that cater mainly to non-white student groups; and lessons on white privilege.

Since last year’s Supreme Court decision banning affirmative action in college admissions, conservatives have brought lawsuits against race-conscious access programs that they say discriminate against white and Asian people.

The threat of an investigation can be as effective as an actual inquiry, according to legal analysts. A few high-profile cases could cause many institutions to change their practices.

“There’s a chilling effect here that cannot be understated,” said Jasmine Bolton, a former civil-rights lawyer in the Biden administration’s Education Department.

‘Transgender insanity’ and Title IX

The Biden administration has interpreted Title IX — the 1972 law that bars sex-based discrimination in educational institutions — to protect transgender people, too. (This rule has been halted by courts in much of the country.)

By contrast, Trump has criticised what he describes as “transgender insanity” in schools. He has suggested that he would flip the Biden’s interpretation of Title IX to say that certain accommodations for transgender people would amount to sex-based discrimination. Trump’s campaign site says he would use the law to bar “men from participating in women’s sports.” In 2020, the Trump administration threatened to pull federal funding from some Connecticut schools over a policy allowing transgender girls to play on female sports teams. Upon taking office, the Biden administration dropped the effort.

Sarah Parshall Perry, a former Trump administration Education Department official and a legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation, said a Title IX violation could occur “when we find biological girls” losing access to “privacy or private spaces,” such as when transgender students use bathrooms or locker rooms aligned with their stated gender identity.

Accreditation as a ‘secret weapon’ Conservatives have criticised accreditation agencies — which set standards for colleges and control access to federal student-aid dollars — as being meddlesome, particularly in campus diversity initiatives.

The agencies are granted recognition by the Education Department, with the help of an advisory committee. Some have called on schools to close gaps in minority graduation rates, or explicitly support the concept of equity.

Trump has signalled intentions to give schools more wiggle room on diversity efforts by up-ending that accreditation system, a tactic he has called his “secret weapon.” Analysts have said such a move could include stripping recognition from some agencies, approving more alternatives, or loosening their watchdog mandates.

Michael Poliakoff, a member of the accreditation advisory committee, and head of the conservative-leaning non-profit American Council of Trustees and Alumni, called accreditors “intrusive” and “micromanaging” and said they have grown overly prescriptive.

Poliakoff’s group served on the advisory board of the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, considered by many conservatives as a blueprint for the next administration, although Trump has disavowed it.

The Education Department under Trump limited accreditors’ oversight authority in 2019, including by allowing colleges to get approval from accreditors outside their regions.

Legal fights ahead A new Trump Education Department might face legal hurdles. The Supreme Court recently stopped giving agencies, such as the Education Department, broad leeway in interpreting federal law. Future high-court decisions on transgender rights and race-based policies could affect how the next administration enforces civil-rights law.

Alberto Carvalho, superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District, the country’s second-largest, said he is troubled by Trump’s education promises and would be willing to fight them in court. The district receives hundreds of millions in federal dollars.

“We would pursue every opportunity available to us to defend, to protect, to assert the rights of our students,” he said. “I think that we would not be alone in this.”

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/the-wall-street-journal/trumps-road-map-for-taking-woke-out-of-american-education/news-story/f014506837937dbe6ed269d6a7764d11

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Independent and Undecided Voters Largely Aligning with Trump Post-Debate

Tuesday night’s debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump has been touted as either a draw or a Harris victory by mainstream media pundits, but Independent and undecided voters saw the evening differently. Multiple polls are showing that a majority of undecided voters either decided on backing Trump or leaned towards that decision following the debate. Reuters conducted interviews with a focus group of 10 undecided voters, six of whom said that they would support Trump following the debate. Only three said they would back Harris, while a final voter was still undecided.

“Harris and Trump are in a tight race and the election will likely be decided by just tens of thousands of votes in a handful of battleground states, many of whom are swing voters like the undecided voters who spoke to Reuters,” the news agency noted. “The Trump converts said they trusted him more on the economy, even though all said they did not like him as a person. They said their personal financial situation had been better when he was president between 2017-2021,” Reuters continued, adding, “Four of those six also said Harris did not convince them she would pursue different economic policies than Democratic President Joe Biden, a Democrat they largely blame for the high cost of living.”

Most of the undecided voters interviewed by Reuters said that Harris spent too much time attacking Trump and was “vague” on her own policies. “I still don’t know what she is for. There was no real meat and bones for her plans,” 61-year-old Floridian Mark Kadish told Reuters. Robert Wheeler, a 48-year-old Nevadan, told Reuters that he had been leaning towards Harris prior to the debate but decided on Trump after watching the vice president’s performance. “I felt like the whole debate was Kamala Harris telling me why not to vote for Donald Trump instead of why she’s the right candidate,” Wheeler commented.

The New York Times also interviewed a slate of undecided voters, most of whom were unimpressed with Harris’s showing on debate night. Most voters said that Harris “did not seem much different from Mr. Biden,” and while they acknowledged that Harris “laid out a sweeping vision to fix some of the country’s most stubborn problems,” she offered no details or “fine print” regarding how she would achieve that vision.

While most undecided voters named by NYT simply remained undecided following the debate, a number skewed in favor of Trump. Keilah Miller, a 34-year-old black woman living in Milwaukee, said she had been leaning toward Harris but was disappointed by the vice president’s debate performance. “Trump’s pitch was a little more convincing than hers. I guess I’m leaning more on his facts than her vision,” Miller said. “When Trump was in office — not going to lie — I was living way better. I’ve never been so down as in the past four years. It’s been so hard for me.”

Voter analysis from Fox News also found that Independent voters supported Trump’s positions, expressed in the debate, on immigration and the economy. Even Democrats liked what Trump had to say about taxes, jobs, and inflation. Pollster Lee Carter told Fox News, “Independents are tracking very much with Republicans. They’re looking for a couple of things. They’re looking for answers on immigration, they’re looking for answers on the economy. They want to hear that things will get better for them and they also want change from what is happening right now.” Carter continued, “One of the most important things they were looking for last night from Kamala Harris is how are you going to make it different?”

A post-debate poll from CNN found that while a majority (63%) of voters said that Harris did better overall, Trump performed better on issues of the greatest importance to voters. Trump garnered a 20-point lead (55% to 35%) over Harris when voters were asked who would do better on economic issues, and an even-wider 23-point lead (56% to 33%) on immigration issues. Trump was also ranked a better “commander-in-chief” (49% to 43%) than Harris.

As polling data comes trickling in, Harris has requested a second debate against Trump. So far, the 45th president has refused to commit to a second debate, posting on Truth Social, “In the World of Boxing or UFC, when a Fighter gets beaten or knocked out, they get up and scream, ‘I DEMAND A REMATCH, I DEMAND A REMATCH!’ Well, it’s no different with a Debate.” Trump added, “She was beaten badly last night… so why would I do a Rematch?”

https://washingtonstand.com/news/independent-and-undecided-voters-largely-aligning-with-trump-postdebate

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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:

http://jonjayray.com/covidwatch.html (COVID WATCH)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)

https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)

https://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

https://john-ray.blogspot.com/ (FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC -- revived)

http://jonjayray.com/select.html (SELECT POSTS)

http://jonjayray.com/short/short.html (Subject index to my blog posts)

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Exposing Chameleon Kamala Harris and the great US debate con job

Kamala Harris is attempting to win the US presidency via the most audacious identity theft in modern politics, as evidenced in her essentially preposterous performance in the debate with Donald Trump.

If Harris wins it will be a Harry Houdini moment of escapology, a politician escaping a lifetime’s ideological commitment and political values to campaign as somebody else entirely.

Except on abortion, where she’s making a strong and effective counter-proposal to Trump, Harris spent the debate both lying about Trump, just as he lied about her, and also ditching many of the policies and values that have defined her life and career.

Harris has been a strong advocate of gun control, including mandatory gun buybacks. But in the debate she declared: “Tim Walz (her vice-presidential running mate) and I are both gun owners. We’re not taking anybody’s guns away.”

She’s critical of Trump’s proposal for new tariffs, but as Trump pointed out, she and Biden kept all the tariffs he imposed during his first term and added some more. Are Trump tariffs bad, Biden/Harris tariffs good?

She’s been a super-keen green machine politician, net zero all the way, phase out fossil fuel, but quickly, and, until 2020, dead against fracking. Now she loves fracking.

Even more astonishing were her boasts: “I was the tie-breaking vote on the Inflation Reduction Act, which opened new leases for fracking.” Similarly, she and Biden oversaw “the largest increase in domestic oil production in history” and “the US must reduce its dependence on foreign oil”. She also boasted the US now produced more gas than ever before.

All this is a bizarre turnaround, and surely equals Trump’s many policy flip-flops.

The official position of the Biden administration is to phase out fossil fuels, not produce record amounts of them. The only reason the Inflation Reduction Act had provision for three new offshore oil and gas leases is because Joe Manchin, the retiring conservative Democrat senator from West Virginia, refused to vote for the act and its attendant five-year plan otherwise.

The Biden administration fought Manchin’s initiative, but gave in because there was no other way to get the legislation passed. So Harris is boasting about championing provisions she strongly opposed.

That’s chutzpah.

Had the debate moderators had the slightest interest in consistency, they would have fact-checked Harris on this, or on the many straight-out lies she told.

She said Trump left office with the highest unemployment rate since the Great Depression. That’s just untrue. The unemployment rate when Trump left office was 6 per cent. That’s nowhere near the highest level since the Great Depression.

Don’t get me wrong. Trump told loads of lies himself. He claimed, for example, that inflation under Biden was the worst in America’s history. That’s absolute nonsense. At its highest point under Biden, inflation was way below levels in the 1980s and the 1920s.

Harris in the past championed decriminalising illegal entry into the US. Now she styles herself a tough border enforcer. Previously, she favoured cutting defence spending. Now she pledges to the US having the strongest, “most lethal” military in the world. She once opposed private health insurance, now she’s all for it. There are countless other examples of Harris abandoning a solid left-wing past for what are almost notional centre-right positions.

To some extent, this is just the normal jigging and jagging of democratic politics, vastly exaggerated. To adapt Bismarck, politics is like a sausage. If you want to enjoy eating it, don’t look too closely at how it’s made.

However, the dynamics of the presidential debate, and the election generally, which is still desperately balanced and way too close to call, reveal deeper structural dynamics in US politics and society that have not been fully recognised.

For a start, Harris’s new positions indicate that on many points of policy and ideology, Trump has won the argument. Trump is probably the least intellectual of any modern US major party presidential candidate. Yet he has in several areas not only disrupted, but revolutionised the accepted wisdom on key policy positions.

Both sides of US politics now view China essentially the way Trump does, as America’s single most formidable and dangerous strategic competitor.

Harris had almost nothing to say about climate change, and certainly no mention at all of that nebulous security blanket, the rules-based international order, but she did want America “to win the competition with China”. Similarly, as outlined above, for the moment at least she’s embraced Trumpian energy policy. She’s newly tough on the border with Mexico. She doesn’t like Trump’s new tariffs but loves his old ones and wants to use tariffs and industry policy to repatriate manufacturing jobs to America.

Second, Harris is receiving lavish, in my view almost wholly unjustified, praise for her debate performance because her supporters feel she disconcerted and discomfited Trump.

Not for substance. Pay attention to the customarily savage dog that hasn’t barked. Harris can turn on a dime to embrace Trump-lite positions on illegal immigration, guns, defence, China, even Israel, and there’s no blowback from the left.

Of course, she plans big tax ­increases on corporations and the rich, which Trump certainly doesn’t favour. But just the statement that as president she would always ensure Israel has the means to defend itself would have been enough to earn Biden the epithet “Genocide Joe” and would be regarded as one step from fascist militarism from Trump.

But Harris gets a clear pass. This is partly because the left of the Democratic Party, and American society generally, doesn’t believe a word of Harris’s new centrism, and thinks if she becomes president she’ll govern as a committed progressive.

That’s the likely reaction of many working-class voters in Pennsylvania and other Midwestern battleground states. If you really want a pro-fracking, gun-toting, oil drilling, border-controlling president, is Kamala Harris your pick?

Harris has stolen some of Trump’s clothes, but she looks weird in them.

The lack of left-wing blowback to Harris’s sharp rightward tilt in the debate offers a clue to another element of America’s deep social and political polarisation. Both sides of US politics have convinced themselves that the other side is so inherently, quintessentially, at its very core, evil, that anything goes in defeating them.

When Trump first emerged, he did break numerous norms that hadn’t been broken before, especially in the way he lied and abused people. Democrats are now convinced Trump is uniquely evil in the history of America. In fact, Democrats demonised George W Bush and Ronald Reagan in similar fashion, though less intensely.

But Democrats and their media backers have got into such a moral panic over Trump that they now fully equal him in their own ­norm-breaking, such as through politicised legal prosecutions, politicised mis-use of intelligence agencies, rank unprofessionalism amid much media, and much more.

For the bulk of the American left, Harris telling brazen lies, and adopting positions at odds with everything she and they believe in, (which she’s likely to drop 10 minutes after election), is acceptable because it serves the higher purpose of defeating Trump.

What’s a white lie, or a phony policy, compared with stopping the greatest threat to democracy in American history, after all?

Trump and his supporters are just as bad and have their own ends-justify-means apologies for Trump’s lies and excesses. Their version of the syndrome has it that America is failing, enduring a uniquely dangerous moment, because of the politics-as-usual Washington swamp, led by left-wing Democrats.

That’s why both sides of US politics see the same debate in such radically different ways. For Trump supporters, there was just the usual bit of Trump linguistic imprecision and overstatement in a noble battle to save America. For Harris supporters, a fine leader may need to stoop to dissembling and verbal gymnastics to preserve democracy itself.

Both sides see themselves fighting a moral crusade of purpose that involves moral compromise of methods. In reality, the two sides of politics are routinely behaving worse than at any stage in more than half a century.

This also reflects the culture. Reality has become fluid, the culture plastic. Social media, with its toxic fantasies, is ubiquitous. No one believes in objective truth. There’s no cultural penalty for lying.

The big issue where Harris confronts Trump with strong disagreement is abortion. Harris told numerous lies about this issue during the debate and in her Democratic Convention conference speech. She claims Trump plans a national ban on abortion. That’s not true. Trump has been consistent in wanting the issue resolved, democratically through legislatures and referendums, at the state level. Harris claims Trump wants to limit the availability of IVF fertility treatments. Also not true. Trump has promised to have all IVF treatments paid for by the federal government, or by mandated insurance companies.

Harris and Biden, on the other hand, take the most liberal position regarding abortion law, believing there should be no legal restrictions at all. Many state Republican legislatures, following the overturning of the Roe v Wade ruling, and the subsequent Supreme Court decisions which further liberalised the law, are imposing, or trying to impose, abortion restrictions.

Conservatives have had a bitter experience over abortion politics since Roe v Wade was overturned in June 2022. Conservatives long argued that the intensely divisive abortion issue, in which both sides passionately and conscientiously believe they’re defending fundamental human rights, should not be decided by courts but by the democratic political process.

In 1973, when Roe was decided, the courts were more liberal on abortion than the society. Not now. A big majority of Americans, it seems, are substantially if not completely laissez-faire on abortion. This shatters a familiar conservative myth, that there is a vast silent majority of social conservatives in society who are manacled by government rulings and regulations, and if liberated to vote on an issue will generally vote conservative.

This is true on some issues, but absolutely wrong on others. It’s certainly wrong on abortion. A better social issue for conservatives politically was the Supreme Court ending race-based affirmative action. This resulted from a legal case brought by Asian students against discrimination in favour of African-American students. Like the Australian referendum vote against the voice, it wasn’t born of racial hostility but of a desire to affirm universal citizenship and diminish, if not abolish, the divisive civic role of race.

There could be two Supreme Court vacancies in the next presidential term, which provides a huge motive for conservatives to work for Trump’s election.

So who will win?

At time of writing the RealClearPolitics poll average has Harris fractionally leading Trump, 48.4 to 47.3. Tellingly, on that vote, RCP has Trump winning the presidency in the Electoral College, by the tight margin of 281 to 257 (270 Electoral College votes are needed for the presidency). Just before the debate, a New York Times/Sienna poll put Trump 1 per cent ahead. Just after the debate, Policymarket has the race at 50/50.

The Economist/YouGov and Pew polls also call a dead heat. A number of polls have Harris slightly ahead. The RCP average may understate Trump because it includes some polls before the Harris bubble deflated a bit.

Harris is seen as the debate winner, though watching it I thought it a low-performance functional draw or even that Trump might have won narrowly. It’s unlikely to change votes hugely. Biden’s disastrous debate performance only resulted in a very slight drop in his vote. It was all the Democrats demanding he stand down that hurt his numbers more.

Harris got a big bounce from Biden withdrawing and her becoming the candidate, but no bounce at all from the Democratic National Convention. She has rigidly avoided interviews and even in 17 minutes of soft ball tripe from CNN managed to look meandering and vacant. She certainly did better in the debate.

Conventional wisdom thinks Harris needs a 51 or 52 per cent poll vote to be safely assured of victory.C There’s a small rural bias in the Electoral College (resulting from small states having as many senators as large states) which favours Republicans, but this isn’t the main reason Democrats sometimes win more votes but lose the presidency. Rather, Democrats win by huge margins in California and New York, while Republicans win by smaller margins in Texas and Florida. It’s like a parliamentary system. A party can “waste” votes in safe states.

Only seven battleground states are in play – Pennsylvania, Georgia, North Carolina, Michigan, Arizona, Wisconsin and Nevada. All other states are spoken for. The battleground states are almost all nearly dead even, with Harris having a small edge in Michigan and Wisconsin. RCP’s Electoral College model with Trump winning 281 to 257 has Harris winning Wisconsin, Michigan and Nevada, but Trump winning all the other battleground states. If everything else stayed the same and he lost either Pennsylvania, North Carolina or Georgia, he’d lose the election.

It’s desperately close. This could even explain Trump’s bizarre “illegal immigrants are eating pet cats and dogs” moment in the debate. Trump succeeds when he gets people to vote who don’t normally vote. Such a bizarre video clip could go viral in the wildest reaches of boys’ only digital swamplands – and lead to a few thousand more Trump votes.

Trump has one big advantage. The polls understated his vote by 2 per cent in the last two elections. If that holds, Harris would have to be much further ahead in the polls than she is now to win.

But Harris has one big advantage. She has much more money than Trump. Democrats, like the teals in Australia at the last election, have so much corporate backing they can hire more people to implement the all-important ground game.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/inquirer/exposing-chameleon-kamala-harris-and-the-great-us-debate-con-job/news-story/de5596246a5f4b1172bfe5bbb4a7591c

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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:

http://jonjayray.com/covidwatch.html (COVID WATCH)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)

https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)

https://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

https://john-ray.blogspot.com/ (FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC -- revived)

http://jonjayray.com/select.html (SELECT POSTS)

http://jonjayray.com/short/short.html (Subject index to my blog posts)

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