| From: Bill Wolf | 8/13/2024 9:42:41 AM | | | | | | Opinion
Free Expression
Trump Is Looking Like a Loser Again
About one third of his remarks at last week’s press conference were false, obtuse or lunatic.
By Gerard Baker
Aug. 12, 2024 12:10 pm ET
We need to talk about Donald.
We can complain all we like, as I have, that the coronation of Kamala Harris by deceitful Democrats and a complaisant media is depriving voters of any understanding of what they are being asked to vote for in November. But we can’t ignore the giant Republican problem either: None of us are in any doubt what we are being asked to vote for on the Republican ticket.
I watched in its entirety and then, perhaps hoping that the written version might yield hidden intelligence not evident to the ear, read the transcript of the press conference Donald Trump held at Mar-a-Lago last week. Houston, we have a problem.
Mr. Trump does deserve credit, as some have said, for showing up to meet the press, unlike his opponent—and in his case, facing brickbats from an almost universally hostile crowd, unlike the softballs that will doubtless be lofted Ms. Harris’s way when she eventually deigns to grant them an audience.
But, with apologies to Woody Allen, it isn’t true that 90% of being presidential is just showing up. Being impressed at the readiness merely to take questions is, if feminists will forgive me, a little like reacting in the way Samuel Johnson did when he saw a woman preach—“like seeing a dog walk on its hind legs. It is not done well but you are surprised to find it done at all.”
By my calculation, about one-third of Mr. Trump’s remarks fell into three categories: false, obtuse or lunatic.
I’m not even talking here about the usual grotesque hyperbolic assertions or baffling verbal manufactures, the finest of which last week was surely the description of “people dying financially because they can’t buy bacon.”
I am talking about things like these:
• The argument that he must have won Georgia in 2020 because he easily won Alabama and South Carolina, suggesting he thinks that Georgia—which has two Democratic senators, and which two Democrats have carried in the last eight presidential elections—is politically indistinguishable from states that no Democratic candidate has carried since 1976.
• The claim that the crowd at his Jan. 6, 2021, rally was as big as the one at Martin Luther King’s “I Have A Dream” speech in 1963.
• The assertion that everyone in America agreed that Roe v. Wade needed to be overturned.
We can add to this his failure to identify Gov. Tim Walz, Ms. Harris’s running mate, by name, but warning that this anonymous figure was “heavy into the transgender world,” a pregnant remark that conjured up an image of a slightly pudgy 60-year-old Minnesotan showing up for affairs of state in a tutu.
False, obtuse, lunatic. Often, like those Venn diagrams Ms. Harris is fond of, the remarks combined two of the three. On at least one occasion—Mr. Trump’s detailed recounting of an imaginary helicopter ride he took with Willie Brown, the former mayor of San Francisco—we got the full triple intersect.
This is all of a piece with his recent behavior—from his claim that Joe Biden will be back as the Democratic candidate to his insistence that the crowds at Ms. Harris’s rallies are enhanced by artificial intelligence.
We need to be clear about the problem. It isn’t, as some have suggested, that Mr. Trump has been wrong-footed by the Democrats’ switch from Mr. Biden to Ms. Harris. Nor is it a reflection of accelerated degeneration. The Trump of the past few weeks has looked and sounded more or less exactly like the Trump of nine years ago.
This is the problem. It is this Mr. Trump who lost the presidency in 2020. It is this Mr. Trump who lost the House in 2018 and the Senate in the Georgia runoff election in January 2021.
Why did he win in 2016? Because he was new and up against the most tediously familiar and disliked politician in America. Even then, he only squeaked past Hillary Clinton by a total of fewer than 90,000 votes in the three decisive states.
All this explains where we are now. This is the same old Mr. Trump, but this time he is up against something the American people are being sold as new. Those of us who have paid attention may know that Ms. Harris is a seasoned hard-liner with extreme views, but most voters don’t. They see a blank slate onto which they are being invited to project anything they like.
Mr. Trump’s performances as he traipses around the country again are reinforcing the illusion of that choice. Instead of telling them consistently and repeatedly what they are actually getting if they vote Democrat, he is merely reminding them what they will get again if they vote Republican.
Mr. Trump has unusual political skills. I don’t disdain the voters who have backed him as the way to express their disgust at a rotten, complacent political establishment—on both sides—that has dominated Washington for too long. I commend them.
But, if things don’t change, the ranks of those voters won’t be enough to outweigh others who simply can’t face another four years of the Trump show and will back even a party hack concealing her real politics simply to escape it.
wsj.com
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| From: Bill Wolf | 8/15/2024 9:45:00 AM | | | | | | Technology
Cybersecurity
‘Pig Butchering’ Online Scams Are Proliferating. Here’s Why They Work So Well.
It starts with an unsolicited text message. And then it’s all about gaining the victim’s trust.
Aug. 14, 2024 5:23 pm ET
wsj.com |
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| From: Bill Wolf | 8/20/2024 8:13:49 AM | | | | | | Exclusive: Conservative Republican endorses Harris, calls Trump a threat to democracy
Jamie Gangel Gregory Krieg
By Jamie Gangel and Gregory Krieg, CNN
Updated 9:43 PM EDT, Mon August 19, 2024
Retired federal appeals court Judge J. Michael Luttig, a prominent conservative legal scholar put on the bench by President George H.W. Bush, is endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris over former President Donald Trump, whose candidacy he describes as an existential threat to American democracy.
It will be the first time Luttig, a veteran of two Republican administrations, has voted for a Democrat.
“In the presidential election of 2024 there is only one political party and one candidate for the presidency that can claim the mantle of defender and protector of America’s Democracy, the Constitution, and the Rule of Law,” Luttig wrote in a statement obtained exclusively by CNN. “As a result, I will unhesitatingly vote for the Democratic Party’s candidate for the Presidency of the United States, Vice President of the United States, Kamala Harris.”
Luttig played a now famous role in persuading then-Vice President Mike Pence to defy Trump and certify the 2020 presidential election. In a series of tweets drafted at the request of Pence’s attorney, Luttig spelled out in stark terms the legal rationale for Pence to reject the former president’s attempt to overturn Joe Biden’s victory.
Since then, Luttig has emerged as a preeminent constitutional critic of Trump. In endorsing Harris, Luttig argues that partisan distinctions must, in this election, be set aside in order to prevent the “singularly unfit” Trump from returning to the White House.
“In voting for Vice President Harris, I assume that her public policy views are vastly different from my own,” Luttig writes, “but I am indifferent in this election as to her policy views on any issues other than America’s Democracy, the Constitution, and the Rule of Law, as I believe all Americans should be.”
Luttig’s scathing rebuke of Trump and endorsement of Harris underscores the depths of divisions between Reagan-and Bush-era Republicans and the modern, Trump-dominated GOP. The former judge is just as unsparing a critic of the Republican party as he is of Trump, whom together he says have launched “the war on America’s Democracy.”
The corrosive effects, he adds, will echo through generations.
“Because of the former president’s continued, knowingly false claims that he won the 2020 election, millions of Americans no longer have faith and confidence in our national elections, and many never will again,” Luttig writes. “Many Americans – especially young Americans, tragically – have even begun to question whether constitutional democracy is the best form of self-government for America.”
The stakes, Luttig argues, are as high now as in the late 18th century, when the country’s founders and authors of the US Constitution – including Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson, typically political foes – joined together to voice concern over the potential emergence of an authoritarian demagogue.
“The time for America’s choosing has come,” Luttig writes. “It is time for all Americans to stand and affirm whether they believe in American Democracy, the Constitution, and the Rule of Law, and want for America the same – or whether they do not.”
Though this will be Luttig’s first time pulling the lever for a Democrat in any election, he has, in the aftermath of January 6, 2021, come out in support of some decisions by the Biden administration. He wholeheartedly endorsed the 2022 nomination of now-Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson to the high court, even calling out Republicans who said they would not vote to confirm her.
“The President knew at the time that there were any number of highly qualified black women on the lower federal courts from among whom he could choose – including Judge Jackson – and Republicans should have known that the President would nominate one of those supremely qualified black women to succeed Justice Breyer,” he wrote at the time.
Luttig now joins a number of high-profile Republicans endorsing Harris, including former members of Congress Joe Walsh, Barbara Comstock and Adam Kinzinger.
Kinzinger, now a CNN contributor, will have a high-profile speaking slot this week at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.
Former Georgia Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan, also a CNN contributor, endorsed Harris at the end of July in an Atlanta Journal-Constitution op-ed.
Her campaign, he wrote, was “the best vehicle toward preventing another stained Trump presidency.”
Speaking to CNN, Luttig said his decision to publicly back Harris was a matter of knowing “right from wrong” – and acting in accordance.
“In my faith, we believe that we will one day answer for our wrongs. I have always tried to live my life in anticipation of that day. Imperfectly, to be sure. But I have tried,” an emotional Luttig said. “My endorsement of the Vice President was the right thing to do. It would have been wrong for me to stay silent, and I believe I would have one day had to answer for that silence.
“It’s really that simple.”
cnn.com |
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| From: Bill Wolf | 8/23/2024 10:05:35 AM | | | | | | Kamala Harris Gets Off to a Strong Start
Her DNC speech was fine, but the race remains a toss-up. It’s all going to come down to policy.
By Peggy Noonan
Aug. 23, 2024 12:57 am ET
Kamala Harris’s speech was fine, and delivered with assurance. I prefer “Ask not what your country can do for you” to “Never do anything half-assed,” but tastes vary. Too soon we were hearing phrases like “assure access to capital.” The text didn’t have the feeling of a story being told from some previously unknown inner depth. It stuck to résumé values and life experiences, rather than a sharing of her thinking. I’m not sure it advanced her position with those who aren’t already with her.
There is a small but persistent cloud that follows her, which can be distilled down to the idea that she was swiftly and mysteriously elevated to her current position, that we don’t know everything about how that happened, and that people aren’t fully comfortable with it. I don’t think she succeeded in lightening or removing the cloud.
The convention itself was a great success, with some sharp and memorable moments. The crowd chanting a full-throated “Bring them home” when Jon Polin and Rachel Goldberg made an eloquent, pitch-perfect appeal for the hostages taken by Hamas on Oct. 7, including their son, Hersh Goldberg-Polin, 23. Seventeen-year-old Gus Walz crying, pointing at his father at the podium, and saying, “That’s my dad” was another. The fabulously human and hokey roll call of the states—unexpectedly, my eyes filled as they played “Born in the U.S.A.” and Gov. Phil Murphy spoke one of New Jersey’s unofficial anthems: “We’re from Jersey, baby, and you’re not.”
The convention’s overall impression was summed up by a relative who, watching on the second night, observed: “This is what they’re saying: ‘We’re a grand coalition, we’re more of a vibe than a party, and we’re not him.’ Plenty of people will want to join that.”
There was hunger—“We’ll sleep when we’re dead”—and boldness, too. They stole traditional Republican themes (faith, patriotism) and claimed them as their own. Also impressive was the degree to which they cast a magic conjuring sorcery spell in which viewers got the feeling the whole purpose of the Democratic Party is to break away from a grim and doom-laden reigning regime . . . when they’ve been in charge for 3½ years.
Something else. The Democratic Party has more substantial characters of recent American history to parade around on stage. The Clintons, the Obamas, Jesse Jackson, who, whatever your view of him, was there, on the balcony at the Lorraine Motel, when Martin Luther King was shot. This conveyed a party with a storied past, and if you join it you’re joining something real. The Republican Party, in its great toppling, has rejected its past. You lose something when you cast your history aside, and all you’ve got for prime time is Trump sons.
And now the race. It’s a toss-up, no one knows where this is going.
Ms. Harris is limited in this respect: She never had to be anything but a person of the left to rise in the Democratic bastion of California. She never had to talk to a conservative or a Republican. What she had to do to succeed in her Democratic state was juggle different party coalitions. She could commiserate with big donors at a Bel Air fundraiser and roll her eyes at some reference to those Democratic Socialist of America types. Yes, they get a little carried away. She could meet with members of a progressive social-justice organization and roll her eyes again when they complained of donor clout: Look, we have to live in the real world; we need money to do what’s right. That’s where her political muscles were developed.
This week she appeared before some smallish crowds and gatherings, holding a mic, walking along a stage, and speaking publicly in a way that might have been planned but wasn’t scripted. And here you saw her limit as a public figure: Unscripted, she’s word-saying. She isn’t having a thought and looking for the right words to express it, she’s saying words and hoping they’ll amount to a thought. She isn’t someone who never had a thought. She seems more like someone who has learned to question whether her thoughts should be expressed.
She’ll have to get over that. She just did a pretty good job of talking to America. Now she’ll have to do it every day.
Donald Trump is famously off his game. He knows his old insult shtick isn’t working. Some of his supporters say, “All he has to do is read from the teleprompter!” but they’re wrong. He’s no good when he reads from the prompter, he doesn’t respect what’s on it. It bores him, and he talks like a tranquilized robot. He knows what he does well—shock, entertain, mention two or three big issues. He’s having trouble making a stinging critique of Democratic policy because he’s insulted everything over the years, and when he says something’s bad now it just seems part of his act and doesn’t land.
You can see him at the podium mentally ruffling around in his toolbox, looking for the right wrench or hammer. Will he find it? Or revert to form and do “Commie Kamala” and “Low IQ”? His fortunes may depend on the answer.
Trump supporters have too much invested in what a disaster Ms. Harris’s campaign was in 2019, and it was. They expect a repetition. But five years ago she was a lone rider out there on her own. This time she’s vice president, with a wholly committed party behind her and a deep bench of expertise. Trump people assume she’ll have a series of gaffes, and they’ll just have to say, “See?” They think in the Sept. 10 debate he’ll walk in like the Hulk and squish her like a peanut. I’m not sure this will happen. She’ll show discipline this time.
Her people will figure out how to finesse the question of giving interviews. Maybe they’ll start with a star-struck and sympathetic local reporter, to build her confidence. Maybe they’ll graduate to a sit-down with a rising network star (old phrase!) who very much wants to be a White House correspondent and tailors his questions accordingly. As for news conferences, maybe there won’t be a big one, or three, but a series of five-minute “impromptu” ones, perhaps near the plane, where reporters won’t get to plan or strategize questions. Maybe the relative regularity of it, and the unofficial character of it—her hair blowing in the wind—will start to give the impression she does a lot of press conferences.
In any case, her weak points aren’t really what the Trump people think—popping off in arias that go nowhere, fumbling when pressed. Her real weak point is policy. She will be perceived by many voters as farther to the left than they want to go.
One of the reasons Democrats had such unity this week is that with Ms. Harris’s elevation, the progressives kind of won a long struggle. The moderate Hillary Clinton was defeated by the seemingly more progressive Barack Obama in 2008. The moderate Joe Biden beat all comers to his left but, in his economic and social policy, tugged progressive because that’s where the rising power in his party was. Ms. Harris is of and from that rising power. We’re going to start hearing the phrase “pragmatic progressive” in the coming months.
This is going to be all about policy.
wsj.com |
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| From: Bill Wolf | 8/24/2024 10:08:49 AM | | | | | | 'I Cannot Understand Putin’s Hold on Trump’
In an exclusive excerpt from his new memoir, H.R. McMaster details the clashes over Russia that led President Trump to fire him as national security adviser.
By H.R. McMaster
Aug. 23, 2024 11:00 am ET
H.R. McMaster is a retired U.S. Army lieutenant general who served as U.S. national security adviser in 2017-18. This essay is adapted from his new book, “At War With Ourselves: My Tour of Duty in the Trump White House,” published Aug. 27 by Harper (which like The Wall Street Journal is a division of News Corp).
From the beginning of my time as President Donald Trump’s national security adviser, in February 2017, I found that discussions of Vladimir Putin and Russia were difficult to have with the president. Trump connected all topics involving Russia to special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of Russia’s attack on the 2016 U.S. presidential election and the allegations (which were found to be false) that the Trump campaign, including the president himself, had “colluded” with Russia’s disinformation campaign to sway the election toward Trump.
Since Trump’s election, Democrats and others opposed to Trump kept looking for evidence of collusion or corruption with Russians or for compromising information—such as that in the discredited Steele dossier, a document filled with false allegations about Trump that was funded by the Hillary Clinton campaign and presented to the FBI as fact. All this had created opportunities for the Kremlin.
Like his predecessors George W. Bush and Barack Obama, Trump was overconfident in his ability to improve relations with the dictator in the Kremlin. Trump, the self-described “expert dealmaker,” believed he could build a personal rapport with Putin. Trump’s tendency to be reflexively contrarian only added to his determination. The fact that most foreign policy experts in Washington advocated a tough approach to the Kremlin seemed only to drive the president to the opposite approach.
President Donald Trump talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin at an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Vietnam, November 2017. Photo: mikhail klimentyev/sputnik/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
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| To: Graystone who wrote (11485) | 8/31/2024 11:06:21 AM | | From: Joachim K | | | | A little more than 200 Gazans have arrived in Canada under special visa program:
IRCC Arrivals have increased four-fold since the program's expansion in late May
Rahim Mohamed
Published Aug 30, 2024 • Last updated 1 day ago • 3 minute read
534 Comments
Immigration Minister Marc Miller speaks to reporters in Ottawa, on June 18, 2024. Photo by Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press/File
OTTAWA — More than 200 Gazans have arrived in Canada under a special temporary residency program launched in January, according to Immigration Refugees and Citizenship Canada.
“As of August 24, 2024, 209 people have arrived in Canada under the temporary public policy,” wrote IRCC spokesman Jeffrey MacDonald in an email to the National Post.
This is a four-fold increase in arrivals since late May, when the program’s cap was expanded from 1,000 to 5,000 visas. At the time, officials said that 41 displaced Gazans had arrived in Canada, receiving visas under both the new policy and a pre-existing one.
MacDonald said that getting eligible Gazans out of the war-torn enclave is a major barrier to their resettlement in Canada.
“We have put forward names of people who passed preliminary eligibility and admissibility reviews to local authorities for approval to exit Gaza,” said MacDonald. “However, Canada does not control (how) or when someone can exit Gaza.”
The Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt has been closed since being seized by Israel in early May. Even so, MacDonald stressed that Israel has been cooperating with Canada’s request to facilitate the exit of Gazans with extended family members in Canada.
MacDonald said that 478 people who left Gaza on their own have been approved to come to Canada but did not say how many of them have made it to the country. He also disclosed that 673 temporary resident visas have been approved for Palestinians outside of Gaza since the Oct. 7 attacks, through pre-existing IRCC programs.
He did not elaborate on how many of the non-Gazan visa holders have arrived on Canadian soil, saying only that they are “able to travel to Canada.”
MacDonald said the slow trickle of arrivals hasn’t dampened interest in the temporary residency program.
“We have received a large volume of web form submissions,” wrote MacDonald. “As of August 24, 2024, there are 3,920 applications accepted into processing.
“These (temporary resident visa) applications are being reviewed to determine eligibility and preliminary admissibility.”
MacDonald said that all Gazans who wish to take part in the program must undergo a security screening but didn’t provide details about the process.
A mandatory background information form for applicants between the ages of 14 and 79 requires they disclose social media accounts but doesn’t include any direct questions about affiliations with Hamas, ISIS and other groups Canada considers terrorists.
A second IRCC spokesperson, Isabelle Dubois, said that the background information form and other self-reporting will be used to screen applicants while they are still in Gaza.
“By using the enhanced biographic information applicants provide, we are able to conduct preliminary security screening while people are still in Gaza,” Dubois wrote in an email to the National Post on Thursday.
She added that candidates who are able to leave Gaza will have their biometrics collected in a third country.
“(B)iometric (fingerprints and photo) checks are one of the best methods to identify people who may be inadmissible or pose a threat to Canada,” wrote Dubois.
A Leger-Postmedia poll released this week found that Canadians are ambivalent about the expanded Gazan visa program, with two-thirds saying they’re not confident that migrants arriving in Canada as a result of the war in Gaza are being properly screened by Canadian officials.
The concerns over the vetting of Gazan migrants come amidst a political firestorm surrounding father-son terror suspects Ahmed Fouad Mostafa Eldidi and Mostafa Eldidi.
Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc appeared before the House public safety committee on Wednesday to answer questions about how the elder Eldidi was granted refugee status, and later Canadian citizenship, after allegedly being shown dismembering a hostage in a 2015 ISIS propaganda video.
National Post
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| From: Bill Wolf | 9/6/2024 8:48:58 AM | | | | | | Trump wants to put Musk in charge of government efficiency
by Nick Farrell on06 September 2024
What could possibly go wrong?
Republican US presidential hopeful Donald Trump wants to put the man who stripped Twitter of 71 per cent of its value and turned it into a haven for right-wing groups to be in charge of government efficency.
Trump said he would establish a government efficiency commission headed by billionaire supporter Elon Musk if he wins the 5 November 5 election.
People with knowledge of those conversations have told Reuters that Trump had been discussing the idea of an efficiency commission with aides for weeks. His Thursday speech, however, was the first time he publicly endorsed the idea.
It was also the first time Trump said Musk had agreed to head the body. Trump did not detail how such a commission would operate, except to say it would develop a plan to eliminate “fraud and improper payments” within six months of being formed.
“I will create a government efficiency commission tasked with conducting a complete financial and performance audit of the entire federal government,” Trump told an audience that included his former treasury secretary, Steve Mnuchin, and financiers Scott Bessent and John Paulson.
Musk said on an August 19 podcast that he had conversations with the former president about the commission and would be interested in serving on it.
“I look forward to serving America if the opportunity arises,” the Tesla chief wrote on X on Thursday. “No pay, no title, no recognition is needed.”
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| From: Bill Wolf | 9/12/2024 7:51:03 AM | | | | | | A Catastrophic Debate for Trump
He was angry and fixated on the past, and he failed to define Harris or her policies.
By Karl Rove
Sept. 11, 2024 1:34 pm ET
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.
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Will this debate have an effect? Yes, though perhaps not as much as Team Harris hopes or as much as Team Trump might fear. But there’s no putting lipstick on this pig. Mr. Trump was crushed by a woman he previously dismissed as “dumb as a rock.” Which raises the question: What does that make him?
Mr. Rove helped organize the political-action committee American Crossroads and is author of “The Triumph of William McKinley” (Simon & Schuster, 2015).
wsj.com
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| From: Bill Wolf | 9/12/2024 8:28:10 AM | | | | | | I am the only lawyer in American history to serve both as White House counsel and as attorney general. So, while that does not make me special, it does give me a rather unique perspective about presidential decision-making and the necessity of electing a president who respects the rule of law to safeguard our liberties and way of life.
The American presidency is the most powerful position in the world. Of course, our constitution and laws, as well as institutions such as Congress and our courts, act as guardrails to that power. The law provides the certainty of accountability and fundamental fairness. Yet it is the president’s integrity, honesty and respect for our institutions that may be the most important and reliable check on abuses of power.
As the United States approaches a critical election, I can’t sit quietly as Donald Trump — perhaps the most serious threat to the rule of law in a generation — eyes a return to the White House. For that reason, though I’m a Republican, I’ve decided to support Kamala Harris for president.
politico.com
Opinion by Alberto Gonzales
09/12/2024 05:00 AM EDT
Alberto R. Gonzales served as U.S. attorney general and counsel to the president in the George W. Bush administration. |
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