Two Critical Battles Lie Ahead For Trump

posted by Molly Slag at American Thinker 

If Donald Trump wishes to implement his Trump 2.0 agenda, he must first win two critical battles: The Battle of the Steal and the Battle of the Deep State.

Precisely because the Democrat Party successfully stole the 2020 election, they will be pulling out all stops to do it again. The Trump campaign and the Republican Party will be hard-pressed to “Stop The Steal 2024”, but stop it they must, and they are probably fully aware of the stratagems they face.

The Battle of the Steal

To win the Battle of the Steal, the Democrats have evolved two distinct modi operandi: the 3 a.m. strategy and the landscape strategy.

The 3 a.m. strategy derives from the Democrat belief (maybe it’s a fact) that Republicans misunderstand how elections are won. The Democrat perception is that the Republicans believe elections are won by having the most votes. The Democrats understand the contrary is true: Elections are won by having the most ballots. Ballots, not votes, decide elections.

The number of votes is limited by the number of voters: Only one vote per voter. But ballots can materialize out of thin air in whatever quantity is desired. That leads to a ballot-producing tactic: Stop the count at 3 a.m., assess how many votes are needed to prevail, conjure up however many ballots are required to close the gap, and at 6 a.m.—Presto!—Democrats win!

The key to the 3 a.m. strategy’s viability is that there is no gap so large that it is immune to ballot generation. No wonder Brian T. Kennedy, President of the American Strategy Group, warns against ignoring the 3 a.m. strategy.

The Landscape Strategy in the Battle of the Seal is called that because it is an exercise in shaping the electoral battleground.

While Biden was a candidate, the campaign functioned as a sort of sea anchor, preventing him from making dramatic moves as President. Now, having resigned from the campaign, Biden is free to do as he pleases without his actions affecting the campaign. Richard Truesdell and Keith Lehmann call this “Biden Unchained.”

How about universal amnesty allowing every illegal alien to vote? Could Biden get that through Congress? Well, it’s possible because the Democrats hold the Senate, and the Republicans hold the House by only nine votes.

Biden would only need to buy 10 House Rinos to make illegal alien votes a reality. And were congressional legislation to prove a bridge too far, why not simply use an administrative regulation promulgated by the Department of Homeland Security?

Packing the court—a long-standing Democrat dream—is also a real possibility.

The Battle of the Deep State

If Trump manages to win the Battle of the Steal, we know he has several pressing agenda items. These issues include but are not limited to rebuilding the military, assuring energy availability, rectifying the migration mess, fixing education, and the many problems that fall under the heading of “foreign affairs.”

But Trump knows from experience that merely taking his coffee in the Oval Office is not enough to enable him to work his will as President. Before he can do anything else, he must first seize the reins of the Executive Branch!

This is the Battle of the Deep State.

Until these reins are firmly in Trump’s hands, he cannot implement his agenda. However, the Deep State forces are already entrenching themselves in Executive Branch offices, placing land mines and booby traps, determined as they are to retain their present hold on the executive branch. Charles Burris tells us this will be the central conflict of Trump 2.0.

Richard Truesdell and Keith Lehmann argue that, between now and January 20, 2025,

We expect Deep State operatives to issue multiple layers of regulatory rules over this period in an effort to prohibit their firing or re-assignment by a Trump administration looking to reform a wildly expanded administrative state that fought the former president at every turn during his first administration.

Rabbi Shmuel Klatzkin drives home the point about what has been going on and what needs to be done:

The ruling political elites have soiled themselves with their lies. The bureaucrats who betrayed the Constitution whose power they have enjoyed and then usurped all stand naked in their incompetence, venality, and unfaithfulness, covered with their own filth. The people are seeing this. And day by day, they are slowly letting everyone grasp that they will have their say. They are ready to clean up the mess.

Trump knows all this. When Trump assumed office in Trump 1.0, he was a political novice. He was then bloodied, impeded, deceived, and betrayed. It will be a new and savvy Trump who takes office for Trump 2.0, a Trump who is acutely aware of the slings and arrows the deep state will deploy against him.

And he knows he must now assemble and deploy a battle force of Lovers of liberty and Devotees Of The Republic eager to proclaim, “This is our time!”

X22, On the Fringe, and more- July 30

 

Rage Against the Machine

posted by David Prentice at American Thinker 

This is not about the rock band.  It’s a phrase that should be a war cry against what has taken over the central governing powers of our country, what Vivek has called “the system”.  In this election cycle, we are not running against Joe, or Kamala, nor anyone personally.  We are running against an unusually coordinated series of institutions that seem to be in sync with each other in the worst of ways. A blob that has been captured by an inhuman, destructive, incompetent, vile ethos that seems to control it. 

In the end it does not matter whom the left chooses to push into the leader of this blob, be it Joe, Kamala, Michelle Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Gavin Newsom, or Gretchen Whitmer.  Somehow these have become indistinguishable as to who would be worse.  Elon Musk nails it when he speaks about the the woke mind set.  It’s a virus, infecting all good things in its path.  This mindset has deep dark traits, individually, as a group, and has infected our system in very negative ways.

This system began at our founding.  It had ideals and principles that were great, principles intended to keep the system small and controllable.  It was the genius of our constitution.  Separating and enumerating powers, setting forth the rights and principles we have or should aspire to.  Prescribing freedom, helping unleash the better angels of humanity to create a great civilization.  The system has weaknesses, our country has its fair share of warts, but in spite of the left trying to tear it down, it’s hard to deny there hasn’t been a better system in any other country.

When Vivek says we’re running against a system, I agree.  But we need to differentiate between what the left is doing with our original system, and Vivek’s verbiage.  The left is trying to twist our original system, warping it into a political, psychological and spiritual machine to dominate its opponents, rather than to use it to benefit the citizens of our country. 

This is a machine.  The leftist machine.  This is what we need to rage against, because they genuinely desire to push us into a dystopian future, one where they hold the reins of power.  The machine they have erected has several parts.  The first cog is controlling the reins of governmental power, warping the bureaucracies, the DOJ, the FBI, CIA into institutions they should not be.  Imputing ways of doing things contrary to their founding, contrary to the ideals of our nation’s founding, and of most of what the people in our country believe.  The left has effectively taken control of these organs, and now uses them to solidify their own power, and to try to destroy those who oppose them. 

Examples:  The current lawfare against Trump and others in his circle.  Charging them with felonies for essentially jaywalking, for doing things all administrations have done, pretending these are now crimes.  Literally trying to put their opponents in prison as third world countries and communists of all stripes have done in the past.  Using the bureaucracies to forward their pet nonsensical ecological ideas to destroy energy creation, to destroy our economy, and the capacity of so many of us just to keep up with living expenses.  Using our foreign policy institutions and the CIA to forward the goals of the corrupt and greedy military/industrial complex.  Pushing us towards WWIII without a sense of proportion as to what that would mean for the country and the world.  Opening the border to the control of the cartels, bringing us illegal drugs, human trafficking, the sex trading of children, and the intent to replace our country with citizens malleable to the whims of the left.

They are using psychology, or psyops to put their opponents (us) in a bad position and paint us in a bad light.  We are supposedly the ones who are the “existential threat to democracy”, extremists who...gasp...believe that the founding of our country was a good thing, had strong ideals, and made us a great nation.  How they pulled the trick of painting us as extremists, and themselves as moderate, measured paragons of virtue is beyond me.  The absurdity of those who believe that is stunning.  The same crowd that lied about Russian collusion, about the Hunter laptop, about the senility of Joe, and most everything else is the same crowd that calls us liars.

It is the manner of pushing their psyops that dredges up the third dimension of the machine.  There is this unusual hidden spiritual dimension of what they are doing.  This has been pointed out by Tucker Carlson, Jordan Peterson, Russel Brand, Candace Owens and so many others.  It’s an uncanny bent towards evil, manifesting itself into our institutions in surprising ways.  They are coming against the Judeo/Christian principles we were founded on in obvious and evident ways.  The left is showing its colors worldwide.  Just look at the ugly depictions in the opening ceremonies of the Olympics.  A mocking of the last supper with depictions of crazy, demonic and outwardly trans agendas being displayed.  This from the same group that sent grandmothers who were peacefully praying outside abortion clinics to years in prison while they gave murderers and violent criminals a pass.

This is a concerted effort by their media and tech toadies.  Normalize evil, genuine evil, and send normal into the outer edges of space where it cannot be seen.

It is this part of the machine that should have us all, not just concerned, but frantically adjusting our thinking.  We are crossing that line of good and evil.  No longer should we see them as simply incorrect, or that we have a difference of opinion.  Rather, we need to understand these leftists are playing with genuine evil.  Flaunting it, daring us to confront them or to say anything about it.

We have not seen this in our lifetimes.  Nothing like it has taken place.  Evil is displaying itself more openly every day.  With no apparent forethought or sense of shame.  CS Lewis wrote about this tendency in the last century.  He saw it quite clearly.  The merging of “science”, politics, the educational establishment and the darker demons of life.  He saw it all and described it well.  I don’t think he would be shocked to see how far this has progressed.

As for us modern normies, we should be outraged.  This is an attempt at an internal coup of our nation.  The machine believes it should own us, it should be able to, in the name of goodness, take down our minds, our lives, and what we believe in.  The machine has its digital imprint everywhere.  In our phones, all our technological communications devices.  It owns most of our media/tech complex.  It owns our educational system, and at its heart there is a darkness that thirsts for power, wealth, and recognition.

We can be happy for one thing.  They are not God.  Their power is fleeting, and not absolute in any sense.  The machine has stumbled, and is now vulnerable.  By showing itself for the evil that it represents, it is waking up too many of us to succeed.  Arrogance has brought a premature revealing of itself.  As a nation we are rising up.  They have cornered themselves.

Rage against them in a controlled manner.  Work to rid this stain from our nation.  Anything else would be a dereliction of our duties as people.

🎭 𝐖𝟑𝐏 𝓓𝓐𝓘𝓛𝓨 𝓗𝓾𝓶𝓸𝓻, 𝓜𝓾𝓼𝓲𝓬, 𝓐𝓻𝓽, 𝓞𝓟𝓔𝓝 𝓣𝓗𝓡𝓔𝓐𝓓

Welcome to 

The 𝐖𝟑𝐏 𝓓𝓐𝓘𝓛𝓨 𝓗𝓾𝓶𝓸𝓻, 𝓜𝓾𝓼𝓲𝓬, 𝓐𝓻𝓽, 𝓞𝓟𝓔𝓝 𝓣𝓗𝓡𝓔𝓐𝓓 

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Karma, Karma, Karma, Karma Kamaleon

posted by J.B. Shurk at American Thinker 

Knock, knock.

Who’s there?

Kamala.

Kamala who?

Whoever you need me to be.  Cackle cackle.

A mistress to a powerful San Francisco politician twice her age…or a vocal advocate for the “Me Too” movement.  

A tough-on-crime prosecutor…or a “Defund the Police” cheerleader.

A likable-enough pragmatist…or “the most liberal nominee in U.S. history.”

A defender of Israel…or a supporter of Hamas terrorists.

A second-generation immigrant proud of her Indian and Jamaican heritage…or a staunch member of the African-American community who affects a southern accent.

Joe Biden’s trusted “border tsar”…or someone who barely knows where America’s borders are.

Whoever Kamala Harris needs to be in order to advance her career prospects, she will do her best to pretend that is who she has always been.  Her problem — one she shares with many talentless politicians — is that she lacks both the brainpower and the charisma to convince others that she is more than an uninspiring hack.  Usually, such low-caliber politicos peter out in local precincts where could-a-been dreams go to die.  Kamala, however, has always had a knack for finding the right VIP to reward her ambition.

Let’s face it, she’s no Bill Clinton.  As vile as that perv has always been, Jeffrey Epstein’s favorite houseguest knows how to glad-hand with the best of them.  His aw-shucks “I feel your pain” approach to politicking took him far in life.  The secret to Slick Willy’s success is that he makes every person he meets feel special.  He shares private stories, asks personal questions, and seems genuinely interested in any stranger he meets.  That’s high-level tradecraft for a marquee politician.  

Bill’s wife, Hillary, has none of his natural instincts.  When she tells someone, “I feel your pain,” it’s usually because she’s holding the knife still stuck in that person’s back.  Nobody in D.C. trusts the Clintons, but plenty of people like Bill.  That’s the difference that put him in the Oval Office and kept her out.  

And if Hillary has made it as far as she has only because she hitched her wagon to the right star, Kamala has made it just as far by hitching and re-hitching her wagon from one star to the next whenever it was convenient.  She is an unusually empty human vessel who is willing to be whatever those with power need her to be.  

In this way, she is entirely different from Hillary.  Hillary struggles to accept that her achievements exist only because of Bill and finds it extremely difficult to “do the dance” in front of the right people in order to receive the rewards she feels she inherently deserves.  Hildebeest hates socializing with strangers (especially those without money or power) and is always one cocktail away from screeching, “I’m Hillary Rodham, and I should be president, dammit!”  Kamala, on the other hand, is willing to dance for just about anybody who can give her a leg up in life.  The thought bubble affixed above her head reads, “I will do anything to be president!”

Where Hillary and Kamala overlap, however, is critical: both are obvious fakes.  Nobody who witnesses their interactions with others walks away thinking that either is genuine or charming.  Nobody feels bigger in their presence.  Nobody feels drawn in by their leadership or personal appeal.  Hillary and Kamala are mediocre politicians who should have never risen higher than their local school board.  They are neither good nor gifted.  And their desperation for power reeks.

If Kamala is ultimately successful where Hillary was not — and becomes America’s first female president — it will be because Democrats have perfected their mail-in-ballot operations across the country.  In truth, Americans haven’t had honest elections for decades.  Without identification requirements in many jurisdictions that first establish whether a person is legally permitted to vote and without transparent procedures for verifying the authenticity of vote tallies, fraud has long been baked into the system.  With the transformation of Election Day into Election Season, the opportunities for political operatives to “cook the books” have greatly expanded.  With the collapse of in-person voting and the growing incentives for absentee voting, basic safeguards ensuring that real citizens are voting free of duress or reward have largely disappeared.  Mail-in-ballot fraud has simply amplified the corruption of an already corrupt system.  

So far, Democrats have gotten away with it.  They print millions of extra ballots and mail those ballots to unknown places without any procedures for verifying whether legally voting citizens have properly received them.  Political operatives collect those ballots and fraudulently fill them out.  Signature requirements (the bare minimum form of security necessary in jurisdictions that openly discourage in-person voting) are ignored.  Then more political operatives return those fraudulent ballots to unsecured drop-off boxes where no-one is around to enforce chain of custody rules.  It’s an ugly vote laundering operation that has only grown in scope and sophistication over the years.  And because courts have done little to curb the practice since Joe Biden’s mail-in-ballot “victory,” 2024 promises to be similarly tainted.

Still, Democrats can only steal November’s election if the American people find the results somewhat plausible.  One of the telltale signs of 2020’s election theft was the inconvenient fact that President Trump won almost every bellwether county (those jurisdictions that traditionally predict how an election will turn out) by double digits.  While Democrat operatives had sufficiently flooded Democrat-controlled cities in critical battleground states with enough fraudulent ballots to eke out a Dementia Joe “win,” they failed to fully cover their tracks.  

In 2024, the same cheaters will need to expand their cover-up operations in order to maintain an illusion of plausibility.  Their job will not be easy.  Because President Trump received more votes than any incumbent in American history (and more votes than any candidate other than those “awarded” to Joe Biden), Democrats will have to fabricate a lot of ballots in order to overcome Trump’s natural support.  The idea that Biden, a lifetime politician with lukewarm popularity, somehow won fifteen million more votes than either Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton did in the two previous elections never passed the smell test.  If Democrats are forced to manufacture so many ballots for Kamala that she receives twenty million or more votes than the Democrat demigod, Barack Obama, then a lot of Americans will cry foul.  

That’s not to say that they won’t try.  Right now the corrupt corporate media are producing nonstop propaganda in an all-hands-on-deck Establishment effort to convince Americans that Kamala’s public support is huge and growing.  The question is whether they can sufficiently manipulate public perception enough to make a Kamala “victory” appear remotely plausible.

Wall Street globalists will certainly do anything to assist Democrats’ pursuit of victory.  Why?  Because Biden’s VP (a woman whom he admittedly chose as his running mate because of her sex and race) has proven that she will do and say whatever she must to secure their patronage.  She will dump trillions into Green New Deal scams that line the pockets of the rich and curse the middle class with runaway inflation.  She will glorify the “climate change” priests and their false but lucrative “science.”  She will follow the military-industrial complex into tragic but profitable wars.  She will elevate race hustlers in the White House and work hard to divide Americans against each other.  She will coddle domestic and foreign terrorists while keeping Biden’s open borders open to tens of millions of additional unvetted illegal aliens.  Kamala is an empty vessel eager to assist the rich and powerful.

But Americans see a fraud.  They know she is a chameleon who will say anything.  And karma eventually comes for us all.

Liberal White Women Are the Worst

posted by Derek Hunter at Townhall 

Is there anything worse than white people? You likely wouldn’t be surprised to hear that at a dinner party thrown by leftists, especially now that they’ve ditched their rich old white guy for a rich younger woman of mixed ethnicity. Before last week, Democrats had to pretend to like white people, now they don’t. They’re still owned by rich, mostly white people, but none of them openly talk about their elite overlords, they just pretend that not being white or being a woman is “diverse,” even though being diverse requires multiple people, making it impossible for an individual to be it. 

But reality has never been a barrier for the left, on anything. If they were bound by the truth, Democrats would be silent. They aren’t about to let the facts stand in the way of a good story now. 

So, now that wildly unimpressive and unaccomplished Kamala Harris is their nominee, they are in need of something to distract from the fact that she got her start in politics as the side-piece of a married Democratic Party politician and powerbroker. They need a distraction from the fact that she has no children, only becoming a step-mom to her husband’s children when they were nearly adults and she Attorney General, while their real mother was still around (how much parenting do you think they needed at that age or would get from someone politically ambitious with a real mom in the picture? None?)

Race and gender are all they have.

The official representative of black women, MSNBC’s resident racist Joy Reid, has declared that black women are as excited as possible over the prospect of voting for someone who panders on their race and gender when it suits their political needs. OK, maybe she doesn’t put it that way, but that’s the effect of it. 

To Reid and her ilk, race is a weapon and a shield. The shield aspect is more important these days, as the weapon’s edge is about as dull as Joy’s intellect from overuse – the weapon part, not the intellect part, which presumably still has that “new intellect smell” and very, very low miles. 

It’s all Joy has, which is probably why she seems so unpleasant. There are still tens and tens of people who value what Joy and MSNBC have to say; black women happy to be have any shortcomings or career stumbles they may have explained away by “societal racism,” even though Joy managed to overcome a complete lack of talent, a privileged upbringing, Ivy League education and a “hacked” blog making her a homophobe, a tough case that even the FBI wasn’t able to crack.

It has not been easy for the official Democratic Party wrangler of black people for the prevention of individual thought and asking questions. Sure, it’s a long title, but it is an important one. 

Still, what about white women? The black women vote is important to Democrats, but there are a lot more white women out there; suburbanite empty-nesters devoid of meaning, single or in loveless marriages in desperate need of meaning. There are no answers at the bottom of an empty bottle of chardonnay, but they will keep asking the full ones those question anyway, just in case.

What are they to do?

It turns out the answer is easy. These racists can help Kamala win. 

All the guilt they are riddled with over the tax deduction they took when buying their hybrid can be alleviated by blind obedience to the Democratic Party and acceptance of just how horrible and racist they are. The Home Shopping Network doesn’t even offer this level of complete one-stop-shopping for answers to all your problems.

A kindergarten teacher and “social media influencer,” which means she’s likely indoctrinating 5-year-olds into progressive ideology rather than teaching, participated in a video conference to show white women how to help the Harris campaign, while still understanding that they suck because they’re white. 

This group included soccer player Megan Rapinoe, gun-grabber Shannon Watts, former singer Pink and other usual suspect leftists who think people should feel guilty about things they didn’t do and make it up to people who didn’t have things done to them. 

The chubby faced, condescending kindergarten teacher, some creatures called “Mrs. Frazzled” (never heard of her) came on and told these crackers they’d better learn their place. They need to help out Kamala, but only in a way black women approve of. “We need to use our privilege to make positive changes,” the chipmunk told the pathetic gaggle. 

“If you find yourself talking over or speaking for BIPOC individuals, or God forbid correcting them, just take a beat and instead we can put our listening ears on,” the white moron told the gathered idiots.

For the uninitiated, “BIPOC” means “black, indigenous, and other people of color,” because anyone not “black or indigenous” can just be lumped together since there aren’t enough of them to make a difference electorally, or something. 

But remember, this boob insists you can’t correct someone who is wrong if they are not white, so just put your listening ears on! I assume listening ears help you hear with your head up your ass. I looked it up and she’s married to an Indian man – which I’m sure she thinks imbues her with special empathy or something – and must defer to him on all matters or else she’s a racist, right? 

Honestly, these people are beyond stupid, they’re evil. They know what they’re doing and do it anyway, either for a sense of superiority or because they hate themselves. I think they need for former, but really should suffer from the latter because that’s how I feel about them. 

Liberal white women are the worst. Their existence is devoid of meaning, they have no original thoughts and seemingly only care about abortion (likely to try to normalize something they did that haunts them but they’ll never admit) and race, which is weird because the largest killer of black people in the country is abortion, right before the Godawful policies of the Democratic Party and other black people subjected to them. As evil as white women are, they don’t crack the top 10.

Of course, for that to matter, liberal white women would need to actually care about black people, not just view them as a means to an electoral end. They don’t. They’ve very progressive in the abstract, but will watch with an eagle eye through a crack in their drapes anyone darker than a 3-day tan who happens to walk down their street. If you want to see the real face of racism in the 21st century, look no further than the nearest white savior complexed Karen insisting she and other people like are the only ones who can save the minorities.

After 60 years of failure, you’d think they’d wise up. But that can only happen if you really care, which they clearly do not. 

Joe Biden Threatens Mike Johnson's Life in Incredibly Bizarre and Concerning Scene

Bonchie reporting for RedState 

With Kamala Harris now the presumptive Democratic Party nominee, it's worth remembering that the United States is still being actively run by a mentally deficient man who has no business anywhere near power. For now, Joe Biden is still the president, and he's as senile and corrupt as he's ever been. 

Providing a reminder of that was an incredibly bizarre and concerning scene on Monday. Standing on an airport tarmac next to Air Force One, Biden was asked about his newly proposed Supreme Court "reforms" being "dead on arrival" in the House of Representatives. The president then quipped, "That's what he is," referring to Speaker Mike Johnson. When pressed for clarification, he doubled down, saying, "He is dead on arrival." 

Before addressing what he said, can we just note Biden's physical appearance for a moment? Look at his hands. It's beyond obvious that he has Parkinson's disease. The frozen hands and stiff arm movements make it obvious, which is something an expert in the arena confirmed on NBC News back in July. For him to remain president is a scandal, and one Kamala Harris is complicit in.

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Parkinson's Expert Shocks NBC Viewers(normies not shocked), Compares Biden Health Cover-Up to a Soviet Psy-Op

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With that said, imagine if Donald Trump said any Democrat was "dead on arrival." Then imagine he was given a chance to clean up his comment and instead said the same thing again. CNN would be running 24-hour coverage. Multiple MSNBC hosts would be hyperventilating on air. The Post and Times would have two dozen op-eds lined up proclaiming the disqualifying nature of the violent threats. Congressional investigations would be launched.

Because it's Biden, though, the press simply ignores it outside of a few posts on social media by individual journalists. As far as they are concerned, the temperature has been lowered, and the soul of the nation restored because of the president's exit from the presidential race. He's a Democrat, and everything centers on ensuring Trump doesn't win another term. To call him out for this, regardless of how hypocritical it is not to, would help the wrong side, and they can't have that. 

So did Biden actually mean to threaten Johnson's life? I can't say for sure, but considering White House pool boy Andrew Bates quickly reposted the remark, it seems like the administration is endorsing it. 

Let's say he didn't mean it, though. That would mean he's such an invalid that he has no idea what he's saying at any given moment. Neither explanation is acceptable for a President of the United States. 

It is astonishing that Americans are still having trouble deciding whether to reward this administration by making Kamala Harris president. Everyone involved in this insanity needs to never work in public life again. Heck, I haven't even mentioned that the Supreme Court "reforms" Biden and Harris are pushing amounts to the stuff of totalitarian regimes. You get some decisions you don't like so you try to remake the court? Dictators around the world are blushing. 

November is coming, and voters have a chance to change course. If they don't, I shudder to think what things will look like in a few years.

State Department Issues Ominous Warning for Americans in Lebanon

Spencer Brown reporting for Townhall 

Without updating its official travel guidance for Lebanon which remains at only "Level 3: Reconsider," the U.S. embassy in Beirut on Monday released a semi-official warning for Americans in the country in the wake of a Hezbollah terrorist strike that killed teenagers on a soccer field in northern Israel over the weekend and as the IDF weighs its retaliatory options.

Assistant Secretary of State for Consular Affairs Rena Bitter delivered the video warning posted online in which she called Lebanon a "valued friend of the United States" and claimed "Washington is laser-focused" on the country essentially taken over by Iran-backed Hezbollah terrorists. 

The State Department, Bitter insisted, has "no higher priority than the safety and security of U.S. citizens overseas." After the Biden-Harris administration's chaotic and deadly withdrawal from Afghanistan, that's a tough claim to make. 

Calling the reality on the ground in Lebanon "complex" and "quickly changing," Bitter urged Americans in the country to "develop a crisis plan of action" and to "leave before a crisis begins," preferably via regular scheduled commercial flights. Anyone who doesn't leave while commercial air travel is available should "be prepared to shelter in place for long periods of time," Bitter warned. 

This warning from the State Department — which still hasn't updated its travel advisory since January 29 even as other Western nations told their citizens to evacuate earlier this summer — seems to be a bit late. 

On Sunday, the U.S. Embassy in Beirut issued a security alert calling attention "to the fact that amid heightened tension in the region, some airlines are adjusting their flight schedules in Lebanon." 

Air France, Turkish Airlines, Lufthansa, and Aegean Airlines were among the major carriers that canceled flights over the weekend. 

France's Telecom System Heavily Damaged by Sabotage: German Train Line Also Hit

streiff reporting for RedState 

Saboteurs cut long-distance fiber-optic cables in multiple areas in France Sunday, causing widespread disruption to internet services. This is the second significant act of sabotage targeting French infrastructure since the Olympic games began; the first such series of attacks targeted French high-speed rail service: see France's High Speed Rail System Is Disabled by Terror Attacks and There Is One Very Good Suspect.

A French police official said at least six areas were affected, which include the region around the Mediterranean city of Marseille, hosting Olympic football and sailing competitions. Telecom operators Bouygues, SFR and Free confirmed their services were affected, although no major disruptions have yet been reported on Monday. "It's vandalism," said Nicolas Chatin, spokesman for SFR, one of France's four biggest operators. "Large sections of cables were cut. You would have to use an axe or a grinder," he told Agence France-Presse (AFP). But the group minimized the impact of any disruption, saying that in the end only 10,000 fixed-line customers had been affected.

This comes at nearly the same time as a sabotage attack on the German railway system.

It was “clearly a deliberate act” in which crucial communication cables were “consciously and deliberately cut” in two separate locations, German Transport Minister Volker Wissing told reporters Saturday afternoon local time.

Deutsche Bahn, the country’s national railway operator, said that because of the damage to the cables, “which are indispensable for train traffic, Deutsche Bahn had to stop train traffic in the north for almost three hours this morning.”

It said the incident had disabled communication with trains and stranded thousands of passengers at the start of the weekend in the states of Lower Saxony, Bremen, Hamburg and Schleswig-Holstein. Traffic had resumed by late morning, according to the company, which warned that some disruption would persist.

France has arrested an "ultra-left activist" in connection with the railway sabotage.

French authorities have arrested an activist from an ultra-left-wing movement at a site belonging to national rail operator SNCF, days after sabotage attacks paralyzed the network at the start of the Olympic Games, a police source said Monday. The man was detained at Oissel in northern France on Sunday and had access keys to SNCF technical premises, tools and literature linked to the ultra-left, said the source, asking not to be named.

But it smells more like a scene out of Casablanca than a police operation.

Getting arrested at a rail line a couple of days after a major sabotage effort with the access keys, tools, and manuals necessary to replicate the previous day's work doesn't seem like the work of a supervillain.

This latest round of attacks on critical infrastructure, like the disabling of France's high-speed rail, doesn't seem linked to the Paris Olympics and comes without any claim of responsibility. The lack of a demand or reason essentially rules out most domestic extremist groups. It is almost as if someone was sending a warning to Paris.

Paris Olympics: Trump says opening ceremony was 'a disgrace'

 The former US president's reaction followed condemnation by catholic authorities, who said the show contained 'scenes of derision and mockery of Christianity.'  

Former US president Donald Trump on Monday, July 29, called the Olympics opening ceremony in Paris a "disgrace," after its creators came under fire for what some said was a show gone too far. "I'm very open-minded but I thought what they did was a disgrace," Trump told Fox News. 

His comments followed condemnation from Catholic groups and French bishops of a ceremony scene involving dancers, drag queens and a DJ in poses that appeared to recall depictions of the Last Supper, although organizers have said it was not meant to represent the religious setting. The sequence drew international criticism from Christian groups and far-right politicians on social media.  

When asked by host Laura Ingraham what he would do if he's reelected president in time for the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles, Trump replied: "We won't be having a 'Last Supper' as portrayed the way they portrayed it last night."  

Thomas Jolly, the director of the opening ceremony, later responded to criticism by saying he intended for the production to "reconcile" and "repair."  

https://www.lemonde.fr/en/sports/article/2024/07/30/paris-olympics-trump-says-opening-ceremony-was-a-disgrace_6704786_9.html

♦️𝐖³𝐏 𝐃𝐚𝐢𝐥𝐲 𝐍𝐞𝐰𝐬 𝐎𝐩𝐞𝐧 𝐓𝐡𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐝

 

W³P Daily News Open Thread. 

posted by DarkGoldenMan

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