Day: October 13, 2024

For decades, we have heard about and often ignored “the Silent Majority.” Time and again, Republican leaders have predicted that this seemingly mythical phenomenon was going to come to the fore and save the country from destructive Democratic policies.

At least in terms of the popular vote, that mythical creature has mostly remained in stealth mode, as the Democratic candidate has won the popular vote in seven of the last eight presidential elections.

Of course, our presidents are elected via the Electoral College, so the popular vote is not the final say. For the most part, the Democratic candidate has won the popular vote by crushing it in major cities and along the East and West coasts. Map-wise, most of the United States is still red.

For this election, I believe a new phenomenon is going to drive the vote for the Republicans and most especially for former President Donald Trump: the “scared majority” vote, which will actually show up at the polls.

I grew up in abject poverty as a child, and most of my contacts to this day are those in the working class or lower. While the entrenched elites from politics, academia, the C-suites, Hollywood and the media who live in bubbles of luxury and protection won’t notice, those Americans have never been more scared in their lives. Not only about their future, but about their present.

Those I speak with on a regular basis tell me they have never been so frightened about circumstances out of their control. Circumstances they believe were deliberately and politically exacerbated by the Democrats and most especially by the Biden-Harris administration.

There is something going on. These times do not feel like the others for the working class. They feel much more foreboding.

There are now so many “canaries in the coal mine” on this issue that they need to take a number to chirp out the first warning.

The first is that the Democratic Party used to be the party of the poor and disenfranchised. Now it is the party of uber-wealthy tech and big-pharma barons and power-hungry special interests.

As Robert F. Kennedy Jr. posted last week: “Paycheck-to-paycheck voters were once the rank and file of the Democratic Party. Now they are abandoning it, and with good reason.” We also have this recent headline from Newsweek: “I Raised Millions for Democrats. At the DNC, I Realized They’re the Party of the Rich.”

“Here’s the sad truth,” the author correctly states in the piece. “The Democratic Party has lost its way entirely. They mostly speak to the college educated, the urban and affluent, in their language. Their tone is condescending and paternalistic. They peddle giveaways to the college-educated like student loan forgiveness plans that disproportionately help their base, snubbing the majority of the country without a four-year degree, and then offer no tangible plans for true reform.”

Well, guess what? The “majority of the country” is not stupid. In fact, to survive as a working-class and disenfranchised voter, you actually have to be quite smart. Tens of millions of these Americans not only do understand the political games being played but realize that it is they who are paying the highest price.

The next “canary in the coal mine” is the International Brotherhood of Teamsters non-endorsement endorsement of Donald Trump. For the first time in over 20 years, the Teamsters did not endorse the Democratic candidate. Instead, their leadership chose to endorse no one.

Why? Because that leadership was shocked to find that almost 60 percent of its rank-and-file membership — those would be fearful working-class Americans — have indicated they are going to vote for Trump over Harris. What is noteworthy here is that when Biden was still in the race, Trump was actually trailing him, 44 percent to 36 percent. As with the 2020 Democratic presidential primary, the more Americans see of Harris, the less they like her or trust her.

That goes double when they realize that Harris refuses to do real interviews or hold an unscripted press conference. Those I speak with also raise the fear that she is hiding something while being controlled by others.

Next, we come to the “canary” reported by CBS News. Correspondent Adriana Diaz admitted that, while in swing-state Nevada, she could only find “one person” in each restaurant she visited who planned to vote for Harris, while the rest were “really excited” about Trump. This, she said, after “leaving no stone unturned” to find any Harris supporters.

These times are different. The fear is building. During that segment, voters expressed a fear of the failing economy, fear of crime, fear of out-of-control illegal immigration and fear of a world on fire. “Fear” is the dominant emotion.

Speaking of immigration, we have this bit of insulting double-speak from Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell blaming the massive influx of illegal immigrants for the rising unemployment rate. Said Powell: “If you’re having millions of people come into the labor force, then — and you’re creating 100,000 jobs — you’re going to see unemployment go up.”

I’ve got news for Chairman Powell: The tens of millions of “scared” voters are more than smart enough to realize those “millions of people” coming into the labor force did not let themselves into our nation. These working-class American citizens know those illegal immigrants were released into the country by the Biden-Harris administration.

Fear is real. Fear does motivate. Working-class Americans do fear that elite-enabling liberal policies beyond their control are robbing them of their quality of life now and well into their futures.

But many of these Americans have also realized that there is one way to combat that fear and regain some of that control by voting.

I predict that there is a reckoning coming in November from those tens of millions of scared voters. And I suspect that reckoning is going to produce a landslide victory for Trump.

Douglas MacKinnon is a former White House and Pentagon official.

The 15th-century explorer Christopher Columbus was a Sephardic Jew from Western Europe, Spanish scientists said on Saturday, after using DNA analysis to tackle a centuries-old mystery.

Several countries have argued over the origins and the final burial place of the divisive figure who led Spanish-funded expeditions from the 1490s onward, opening the way for the European conquest of the Americas.

Many historians have questioned the traditional theory that Columbus came from Genoa, Italy. Other theories range from him being a Spanish Jew or a Greek, to Basque, Portuguese or British.

To solve the mystery researchers conducted a 22-year investigation, led by forensic expert Miguel Lorente, by testing tiny samples of remains buried in Seville Cathedral, long marked by authorities there as the last resting place of Columbus, though there had been rival claims.

They compared them with those of known relatives and descendants and their findings were announced in a documentary titled “Columbus DNA: The true origin” on Spain’s national broadcaster TVE on Saturday.

“We have DNA from Christopher Columbus, very partial, but sufficient. We have DNA from Hernando Colón, his son,” Lorente said in the programme.

“And both in the Y chromosome (male) and in the mitochondrial DNA (transmitted by the mother) of Hernando there are traits compatible with Jewish origin.”

Around 300,000 Jews lived in Spain before the ‘Reyes Catolicos’, Catholic monarchs Isabella and Ferdinand, ordered Jews and Muslims to convert to the Catholic faith or leave the country. Many settled around the world. The word Sephardic comes from Sefarad, or Spain in Hebrew.

After analysing 25 possible places, Lorente said it was only possible to say Columbus was born in Western Europe.

On Thursday, Lorente said they had confirmed previous theories that the remains in Seville Cathedral belonged to Columbus.

Research on Columbus’ nationality was complicated by a number of factors including the large amount of data. But “the outcome is almost absolutely reliable,” Lorente said.

Columbus died in Valladolid, Spain, in 1506, but wished to be buried on the island of Hispaniola that is today shared by the Dominican Republic and Haiti. His remains were taken there in 1542, then moved to Cuba in 1795 and then, it had been long thought in Spain, to Seville in 1898.

Iran has denied reports about “secret documents” allegedly created by Hamas and later obtained by Israel linking the Islamic Republic to Hamas’ surprise attack on Israel last October.

On October 7, 2023, Hamas killed roughly 1,200 people in Israel and took some 250 hostage, according to Israeli officials. Almost 100 hostages remain in captivity, less than 70 of whom are believed to be alive. Israel subsequently launched its military operation in Gaza, which has killed roughly 42,000 Palestinians so far, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry based in the Hamas-led territory. Local health officials don’t differentiate between civilians and combatants but say many of those killed were women and children.

Just after the first anniversary of the Palestinian militant attack, The New York Times, in an article titled “Secret Documents Show Hamas Tried to Persuade Iran to Join Its Oct. 7 Attack,” revealed on Saturday what was said to be in the minutes of several secret meetings Hamas held in the lead-up to October 7 and later obtained by the Israeli military. The documents were said to show efforts by Hamas to persuade its allies, Iran and Hezbollah, to join in the attack.

Iran provides funding, weapons and training to Hamas and Hezbollah, according to a 2021 terrorism report by the U.S. Department of State.

In response, the Permanent Mission of the Islamic Republic of Iran to the United Nations told Newsweek on Saturday: “While Doha-stationed Hamas officials have themselves stated that they, too, had no prior knowledge of the operation and that all the planning, decision-making, and directing were solely executed by Hamas’s military wing based in Gaza, any claim attempting to link it to Iran or Hezbollah—either partially or wholly—is devoid of credence and comes from fabricated documents.”

Later that same day, The Washington Post published a separate article also citing alleged Hamas documents obtained by Israeli forces that appeared to show plans for an even larger-scale attack against Israel, as well as appeals by Hamas to Iranian officials for greater support. The report said it was unclear whether Iranian leadership was ultimately aware of the plots and cited Israeli and other Middle Eastern officials saying that Tehran expressed anger over not being informed of the attack launched on Oct. 7.

In a follow-up statement, the Iranian Mission told Newsweek: “We regard the Israeli regime as a mendacious criminal, anti-human entity and place no credence in their illusions. They have a long history of spreading falsehoods, fabricating already-counterfeit documents, and conducting deceptive psychological operations.”

Newsweek has reached out to Israel’s military via email for comment on Saturday during the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur.

According to the alleged meeting minutes cited by the Times, Hamas sent a top official to Lebanon in July 2023 to meet with a senior Iranian commander to request help with hitting sensitive sites at the beginning of the planned attack. The commander told Hamas that Iran and Hezbollah, a Lebanese militant group, were supportive of the attack in principle but needed extra time to prepare.

The purported minutes also planned a meeting for Hamas to further discuss the attack with Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s former leader who Israel killed in a strike last month. The minutes did not clarify if the meeting actually happened.

According to these documents, Hamas felt it had general support from its allies, but thought it might need to go through with the attack without their full involvement.

The trove reported on by the Washington Post included a document entitled “Strategy to build an appropriate plan to Liberate Palestine” that detailed Hamas plans to strike Israel from multiple fronts and also target skyscrapers, railways, a shopping mall, and theater, among other locations. The document deliberated on the feasability of converting fishing vessels to explosive-laden attack craft and deploying horse-drawn assault carriages, along with other schemes.

Meanwhile, tensions in the Middle East have been escalating—with fears of an all-out war between Israel, Iran, and Iran’s network of proxies known as the Axis of Resistance, which includes Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis in Yemen—after Hezbollah’s electronic devices exploded last month in a coordinated attack that it claimed Israel was behind. Israel has not taken responsibility for the attack that killed dozens and injured thousands more.

On October 1, Iran fired a barrage of nearly 200 missiles at Israel, most of which U.S. and Israeli officials said were intercepted. Iran said its attack was in retaliation for Israel killing the head of Hamas in Tehran in July, as well as the killing of Nasrallah along with a senior Iranian military official in Beirut last month and other operations tied to Israel in the region.

On Friday, the U.S. announced new sanctions on Iran’s “ghost fleet” of ships and companies connected to the country’s energy sector in response to the October 1 missile attack.

Update 10/13/2024 12:34 a.m. ET: This article has been updated to include additional reporting of alleged Hamas documents as well as further comment provided by Iranian officials.