Showing posts with label Mark Levin. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mark Levin. Show all posts

Monday, May 17, 2021

Wars and Rumors of Wars

Earlier this month an offensive started against Israel, requiring reprisal. In just days there had been hundreds of bombs launched at Israel. They have the Iron Dome, a defense system designed to take out missiles in the air, but there have been more than air attacks.

In the town of Lob, the mayor has asked for an emergency declaration and calls this a Kristallnacht-type event. Rioting has broken out. Synagogues have been burned, their Torahs taken from their arks and burned. Homes have had Molotov cocktails thrown through the windows. Hundreds of cars have been set on fire. Some Jews are removing mezuzahs from their doors to avoid being targeted.


Images of attacks in Jerusalem (top right) and Lob
screenshots from the Mark Levin Show

Mark Levin talked about the situation in Israel in a recent show. He gave it this perspective:

Now, think about that. These Israeli Arabs get to vote; they have due process rights; they have property rights. They have all the rights of Israelis. What do they do? They turn on the Israelis. They turn on the Jews. As if they’re Nazis, in this particular neighborhood and community. Burning down synagogues. Trying to hunt down the Jews in their homes. It’s almost instinctive. And these are mostly young Arab gangs that have coalesced and that are marauding through the streets of this town. And it’s become a problem, not only in this town, but in other towns, we’re told.

What would we do if we had attacks from over the border on our country? We would put a stop to it with force.

What if we had riots from among our citizens, looting and setting cars and businesses and homes on fire? Well, I would have thought we would send in troops to quell the emergency as Israel is doing. But the experience of the last year shows that, in some cities, they just call it the “summer of love” and tell the people not to complain and the media not to report on it. But in a sane world, we can see why New Jersey-sized Israel, surrounded by Arab countries, some of whom are aligned with Iran, would take action to defend themselves.

Levin started his show with this:

The Israeli government I have no doubt told them [the US], “Butt out; we’re going to handle this.” Because they know that Biden doesn’t have their back. And they know that the enemy, the Palestinian terrorists, Hamas, which is on our list as a terrorist organization—it works with Islamic Jihad. It works with Hezbollah. It works with Iran. All of our enemies.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said this in a speech this week (translated):

We are in the midst of a major campaign—Operation Guardian of the Walls. Yesterday and today the IDF [Israeli Defense Force] attacked hundreds of Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorist targets in the Gaza Strip. We have eliminated dozens of terrorists, including senior commanders. We have bombed Hamas command centers and toppled buildings that serve the terrorist organizations. We will continue to attack with full force. We have just finished a consultation and assessment of the situation with heads of the security establishment, and we made decisions. Hamas and Islamic Jihad have paid and—I tell you here—will pay a heavy price for their aggression. I say here this evening—their blood is on their heads.

Do we know what this suddenly upscaled civil war is about?

The immediate reason is probably because Israel's enemies can, because the weak US administration is not likely to fully support Israel—unlike the last administration, which brought multiple Middle-Eastern countries to sign peace deals with Israel.

Levin said this:

The Biden administration helped provoke this, as I said earlier, by giving hundreds of millions of dollars to the Palestinian Authority without strings attached. President Trump had cut it off, because he said they’re not willing to give up terrorism, among other things; they’re not willing to negotiate with the State of Israel over anything.

The Trump position was, Look, let’s make peace in the Middle East without the Palestinians, then. And that’s what happened. He said the Palestinians can’t be the trigger on whether or not there’s peace, because, if that’s the case, they’re always going to be able to blackmail; they’re always going to be able to resist; they’re always going to be able to slow down the process and make demands and so forth—when in fact there are Arab countries, Muslim countries, and Israel that can make peace. And want to make peace. And many of them did. And, but for Biden being president of the United States, it was felt that Israel was going to have a peace treaty with Saudi Arabia—because they have a common enemy in Iran.

Things are very different under a Biden administration than under a Trump administration. Popping up as if they have a right to are these faces of evil:


Known as "the squad" in Congress, Rashida Tlaib (left),
Ayanna Pressley, Ilhan Omar, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
Getty image, as screenshot on the Mark Levin Show

Levin says,

Have you listened to Rashid Tlaib? Have you listened to Omar? Have you listened to AOC and the things that they’re saying? They are a disgusting disgrace: Israel is an apartheid country, that they’re trying to kill and evict the Palestinians, and so forth and so on.

The Democrat Party has this cancer, this poison, within it. And rather than confront it, and rather than extinguish it, like with a fire extinguisher. What does it do? It pampers it, or pretends it doesn’t exist. It also exists within the Biden administration, which is really quite appalling. Not just Jen Psaki, the spokesperson for Joe Biden, but the National Security Advisor, the Secretary of State, the spokespeople at the Department of State, others who are leaking to the media—and the media’s doing it’s usual reprehensible job in turning Israel into the perpetrator and the terrorists into the victims. The terrorists know how to play our media. And the media want to be played.

One of them, probably Tlaib, complained that we are helping to arm Israel with the Iron Dome, but Hamas doesn’t have an Iron Dome, so to be fair we should provide them one. Hmm. How unfair is that? We don’t arm the aggressors of our allies? That's so evil of us it's no wonder the squad hates this country they claim to represent while speaking treason against us.

There was a tall building Israel knocked down in Gaza, in response. It housed the Associated Press office. It also just happened to house Hamas—and had for, oh, 15 years or so. The Associated Press was “Shocked! Shocked!” to learn Hamas was in the building—even though they acknowledged in 2014 that they knew it, and seemed to have no problem with that either before or after. So, maybe you’re not going to get honest reporting from AP.

The AP noted that lives could have been lost; they had many employees in the building, but were able to evacuate them in time. They don’t say how they accomplished that rescue.

Ahead of the return attack on Hamas, Israel sent out a message, repeated for half an hour, telling people to evacuate, because they were going to bomb the building. Israel, unlike practically any other fighting force in world history, goes out of its way to prevent loss of civilian life—hard to do since Hamas places itself in hospitals, elementary schools, and densely populated areas for the purpose of causing loss of life among their own people so that they can blame Israel.

When Hamas and Islamic Jihad choose a target, they don’t aim at military or strategic targets; they aim at high population centers.

The IDF put out this map. Note that Tel Aviv is the highest population center.

IDF shows where missiles are aimed at Israel.
Image found as screenshot on the Mark Levin Show.

Levin spent some time describing the Iron Dome defense system, including a video clip about that, where the narrator said:

It took just 3 years and about $200 million to develop this defense system. It relies on a radar that instantly detects when a missile has been fired. Algorithms quickly try to determine what type of projectile is in the air, and whether it’s heading for a populated or strategic area. If so, Iron Dome launches a missile of its own. It’s said that Iron Dome has taken down more than 1,000 missiles since it turned on in 2011.

I heard a report last week that the count of missiles launched at Israel since this siege began just days before was over 600. That was several days ago. In a week the Iron Dome has been up against an attack amounting to the sum total of its use during the past ten years. Israel fought off a fairly large attack in 2014, but this dwarfs that one. Later in that video they mention that it successfully wards off 90% of incoming missiles. That means somewhere beyond 60 missiles probably landed in Israel this week.

Levin interrupted the video here and pointed out that the Iron Dome technology was a legacy of Ronald Reagan:

President Ronald Reagan, Mark Levin
screenshot from the Mark Levin Show

Some of you who are my age, or even younger—this was the brainchild of Ronald Reagan. It’s called the Strategic Defense Initiative. And it was brought to the President at the time. People in his own party were skeptical. People at the Pentagon were skeptical. The media hated the idea, and we had article after article about how it was technologically impossible for a missile to hit another missile. And the Democrat Party tried to block it.

But Reagan was—if anything, he was steadfast. And he pushed the project. It wasn’t fully funded, but he pushed it throughout his eight years as president. It was pushed somewhat after that. And we now have this defense system. They called it Star Wars to mock him. “Oh, sure, sure, we can do this.” And I remember reading in the New York Times and other publications how you simply didn’t have the technology; it was impossible.

And, of course, as you’re developing technology, you have to try it out. They tried it out, and there were several failures. Again, the were mocked for the amount of money that was being spent. I want you to think about this. This is a defensive system that could knock a nuclear missile out of the sky that’s aimed for one of our cities. Democrats never supported it. The media never supported it. That’s insanity.

Now it exists.


Iron Dome mobile missile launcher
screenshot from Bloomberg video shown on the Mark Levin Show

Levin added:

A good chunk of the funding Israel gets it uses to advance their technology. Not for bullets. Some. But, to advance their technology, which they then turn around and give to the United States. So it’s really a two-way street. The Israelis can develop this stuff faster, because their bureaucracy and their people understand this is life and death. There’s an immediacy to it. Whereas, in our own country we have obstacle after obstacle after obstacle to getting these things done—including in the bureaucracy, but also the Democrat Party and the media.

So, US weakness has contributed to the current upheaval. But the longer-term excuse goes back to Israel’s birth and beyond.

If you need a review of Israel’s basic history—because you probably weren’t taught this in school—I wrote a 6-part series (each part relatively short) back in 2011:

·       Israel, Part I: Ancient History 

·       Israel, Part II: Zionism and Migration 

·       Israel, Part III: Conflict and Violence 

·       Israel, Part IV: Holocaust and Statehood 

·       Israel, Part V: Refugees and 1967 War 

·       Israel, Part VI: Continued Unrest 

Since that series, I’ve written occasionally on Israel, based on what was happening at the time. Here are a few:

·       Obama Bent on Stopping Israel, but Not Iran, March 12, 2012 

·       Civilization vs. Savagery in Israel, July 24, 2014 

·       Historic Day in Israel, May 17, 2018 

Besides Mark Levin’s show,  which is “Chaos in the Holy Land,” Ep. 814, on The Blaze, you might also want to see these:

·       Israeli Airstrikes in Syria as Rockets Target U.S. Troops in Iraq AGAIN” Erick Stakelbeck, Watchman Newscast, May 5, 2021 

·       Hamas is PUSHING Israel Into A Ground Invasion; Iran Using Onslaught as Dry Run?” Erick Stakelbeck, Watchman Newscast, May 13, 2021 

·       The War on Israel Ramps Up; Celebrities and the Left Melt Down” Stu Burguirre (on Facebook), The Blaze, May 17, 2021. 

I don’t know how exactly how this latest onslaught from Israel’s enemies will go. Either Israel will be able to quell the uprising, or it’s time to start watching for two prophets, who will hold off Israel’s enemies for three and a half years, just before things get really exciting (see Revelation 11). 

Thursday, February 4, 2016

Integrity

In∙teg∙ri∙ty  n.  1. The quality or state of being complete; unbroken condition; wholeness; entirety  2. The quality or state of being unimpaired; perfect condition; soundness   3. The quality or state of being of sound moral principle; uprightness, honesty, and sincerity—SYN. See HONESTY
Integrity is a good thing. A virtue. Something we value if we want thriving civilization.

So it’s something we want—need—in our leaders.

That’s why I was concerned a couple of evenings ago when I first saw the story that the Ted Cruz campaign had sent out a false story that Carson was dropping out of the race in order to persuade Carson caucus goers Monday night to change to Cruz. At the first moment I felt a sort of kick in the gut. But since I’ve done quite a lot of vetting of Senator Cruz—for years, since I vetted him when he ran for the Senate from Texas—I thought there must be something more to the story. And there was.

Much more detail came out yesterday. I didn’t do the original research on this; you probably heard it from several sources already. (Jennifer Burke at PolitistickMark Levin on his radio show, Dana Loesch on The Blaze,[i] for example). I’m not a news outlet. So after we summarize the story, we’ll get to the commentary.

Here’s the order of events.

Tweet, image from Politistick


CNN reporter Chris Moody heard from as-yet unidentified person in the Carson campaign that, instead of heading to New Hampshire and South Carolina, Carson was heading home to Florida for some R&R before Thursday's National Prayer Breakfast. He took this news and tweeted it. CNN then reported this on TV at 6:45 PM (Iowa time, so shortly before the Iowa caucuses began)—Dana Bash and Jake Tapper, during their Iowa Caucus coverage. The banner over their report said, “Campaign: Carson to take break after Iowa.” They noted that this was unprecedented for a presidential campaign—unless they were planning to drop out, they implied. So that was the natural speculation.

The Cruz campaign tweet, image from here

Five minutes later the Carson campaign began trying to clarify: they were heading to Florida to avoid a storm and to pick up some fresh clothes. Getting that clarification to spread took some time.

By 7:00 the Cruz campaign put out the news to precinct captions in Iowa, saying, specifically:

Breaking news. The press is reporting that Dr. Ben Carson is taking time off from the campaign trail after Iowa and making a big announcement next week. Please inform and Carson caucus goers of this news and urge them to caucus for Ted Cruz.
It was signed by Spence Rogers. Shortly afterward Iowa’s Steve King tweeted the same message, as did the Ted Cruz campaign, including a screen shot of the CNN story in the tweet.

The Rubio campaign also pushed the story. The evidence is a tweet by Rubio proponent Conrad Close.

Tweet, image from Politistick

This was posted at 7:29 Iowa time, Monday, as the caucuses started. Almost twenty-four hours later Rubio was on Fox News with Megyn Kelly, decrying the unfair dirty tricks of the Cruz campaign, righteously indignant, saying his campaign was above such things. The above tweet still existed at 7:29 PM Tuesday, during that interview, but disappeared at 7:30, which wouldn’t have been known if the Politistick writer hadn’t taken a screen shot.

Backing up to the Iowa caucuses. Going in, Carson was polling fourth; he came in fourth—with a higher percentage than predicted. There are no stories of visible scrambling and discussing the story among Iowa caucusgoers of Carson leaving. There was no visible exodus of Carson voters. Nor are there, to date, any anecdotal stories of individuals who changed because of the news story (or Cruz's campaign's passing it on, or Rubio's either) about Carson’s plans.

Following the outcome Monday, Trump even sounded somewhat subdued and humbled—honored to have come in second, which was more than originally expected. When asked about that low-key attitude change, he said he was trying to be a bit dialed back, and presidential sounding, because some people like that, he was told. The point is, Monday night he congratulated Cruz and was unaware of anything amiss in the caucuses.

The Cruz campaign didn’t lie. They didn’t stretch the truth. They repeated what was being told on the news, which is fair game. That is what we think the Rubio campaign was doing as well.

On Tuesday, after the Cruz campaign note came to the attention of Carson, he called it dirty tricks, and what you expect from politicians, and why we need a non-politician, etc. In other words, he took political advantage of the situation to advance his own campaign narrative.

Ted Cruz did what you would expect of someone with integrity. He apologized for the misunderstanding. Some people took this to be an admission of guilt. Later he clarified that there had been a misunderstanding based on the CNN news report (it wasn’t, by the way, the Cruz campaign’s misinterpretation, but the CNN reporter’s wording and subsequent speculation, which the Cruz campaign merely passed along as newsworthy), and his apology specifically was that, once they became aware of Carson’s clarification (which came to them during the heat of the ongoing caucuses), they didn’t send out a follow-up correction. They hadn’t said Carson was ending his campaign, but they were apologizing for not following up to say directly that Carson wasn’t dropping out.

Carson invokes his Christianity, and Cruz’s, and refuses to accept the apology.

Rubio, as noted above, decides Cruz’s note was purposefully deceptive, and fails to mention the use of the same information by his own campaign.

Trump opportunistically decides that a huge injustice has been done to his dear friend and fellow candidate, Ben Carson. So this is, in his opinion, a monumental bad deed done by Cruz personally, because he’s an evil person. And then it becomes about him. He decides to claim that a huge portion of Cruz voters resulted from this dirty fraud, and if it hadn’t been for this huge shift of voters from Carson to Cruz, Cruz wouldn’t have had a high enough percentage to beat Trump. So he calls for a redo of the entire caucus, or at least a negation of Cruz’s win—depriving him of his delegates, leaving Trump the winner. How convenient.

Back up to November, when Carson was leading in national polls. Trump trashed him daily in his ubiquitous media, going so far as saying he’s pathologically violent—incurable, like a pathological sex offender. Mark Levin catalogued those attacks on his radio show (particularly at 12 minutes in). That was what Trump calls fair. But what Cruz did was so costly to Carson that he should be disqualified entirely?

So, what we see is pretty much what we expect from all the characters, if we’ve been paying attention:

Cruz is gracious and meticulously scrupled. He has integrity, which we had supposed all along.

Carson is overly sensitive and politically inexperienced. A bad thing happened to him—apparently because of his own behavior, which had meaning that he did not anticipate. He’s angry at Ted Cruz in the moment and unwilling to forgive—for now. But I think, as things play out, and Cruz becomes the nominee, Carson will get over the immediate anger and disappointment and see things more clearly. He won’t remain unforgiving. I’m guessing that. Maybe he is just using this as an opportunity to get sympathy and invoke his “non-politicians are better” message. That is happening. But I think he really is a decent person who hasn’t yet grasped his own role in this kerfuffle. He doesn't appear to be fully in integrity at the moment, but I expect he will get there again.

Rubio may or may not be aware that his own campaign was doing precisely what he calls underhanded from the Cruz campaign. If he knows, he’s simply a slick liar when it comes to politics. If he didn’t know, he’s using this opportunity to attack an opponent in the race—because that is what politicians do. Lying about it is completely out of integrity. Taking advantage of it in a campaign is what politicians do, but I don’t like it. But it doesn’t make him worse than whoever our Democrat opponent will be. I’m giving the benefit of the doubt and guessing it's a political opportunity rather than outright lie, based on what we’ve seen of him in the past. So I don’t completely write him off, even though he’s not my choice. I’m hoping that years of experience will lead him to greater integrity.

Donald Trump is what we have come to expect: self-centered, opportunistic, lying, manipulative, a bully and a sore loser. He clearly doesn’t care about Ben Carson; we know that from his own voluminous words. He doesn’t know what fraud is in legal terms. But he’s willing to use his money to try to buy, through lawsuits or other means, the outcome he wants for his own advantage. Integrity is not a word we apply to Donald Trump. “The quality or state of being of sound moral principle; uprightness, honesty, and sincerity” is a definition that rarely intersects with him even tangentially.

One more mention about integrity: Rand Paul. He bowed out Tuesday (Santorum and Huckabee also bowed out). This presidential race wasn’t the right time for Rand Paul, as it was never the right time for his father. But he served a purpose in the conversation. The debate connects with the Constitution much more than it would have without Ron and Rand Paul input. Rand Paul and I don’t agree on everything. He’s libertarian, and I am not quite. But I believe the conversation needs to be between conservatives and libertarians talking about the Constitution. I think Paul has been honorable. He hasn’t been altering his message in a misguided attempt to get more mainstream voters. I appreciate his integrity in this campaign. It would have been a better political season if his message had been magnified in place of Trump’s. It is my hope that his followers will recognize Cruz as the closest to their cause.

Integrity is something we want and need in a leader, but it’s a rarity in politicians. Ted Cruz is a rarity. I’m glad the truth came out quickly this week, when his integrity was impugned. If it had been true—or unrefuted—it would have done more damage to Ted Cruz than anything said about Carson's going home after Iowa.



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