COMMENTARY / OPINION
What child is this? TIERNEY’S REAL NEWS
DEC 25, 2023 – Today is December 25, 2023 AD – which stands for “in the year of the Lord” – as we celebrate the 2,023rd birthday of Jesus Christ. Whatever your beliefs – I have a story to tell you that just might transform your life!
You’ve probably heard of J.R.R. Tolkien, the English writer and scholar who wrote The Hobbit (1937) and The Lord of the Rings (1954–55) which went on to be the one of the best-selling books ever written, with over 150 million copies sold around the world in 30 different languages.
A film version of The Lord of the Rings, by director Peter Jackson, released in three installments in 2001–03, achieved worldwide critical and financial success. broke the one-billion-dollar barrier and won a total of 11 Oscars (something only two other films in history, Ben-Hur and Titanic, have accomplished) – including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay.
Lord of the Rings is deeply Christian, but not overtly so. And I think that is one of the reasons why it had such a broad appeal.
But what you probably didn’t know is that J.R.R. Tolkien convinced his friend C.S. Lewis to accept Jesus Christ as his Savior and Lewis convinced Tolkien to finish his books! According to Lewis, Tolkien was known for not finishing anything!
Early on a Sunday morning, September 20, 1931, three English professors took a stroll together on Addison’s Walk at the University of Oxford:
- 32-year-old C. S. Lewis
- 39-year-old J. R. R. Tolkien
- 35-year-old Hugo Dyson
Jonathan Pollard: Israel and the Northern Front [10:45] Machon Shilo 12/24/23
[Ed.: Jonathan for PM?]
Jonathan Pollard and Rabbi David Bar-Hayim on the Proposed Israel National Guard [11:36] Machon Shilo 12/24/23
Returning Gazans to evacuated areas – a recipe for disaster Dr. Aaron Lerner
Only if Gaza is completely razed can the thought of returning there be entertained. Response to a letter in Arabic by Israel’s NSC head.
Dec 25, 2023, 7:05 AM (GMT+2) – I’m going to be sending this message out in English and Hebrew so that it is easy to forward.
I am taking this unusual step because there is talk that we are going to buckle to American pressure to allow Gazans to return to areas north of Wadi Gaza without properly processing those areas.
The best solution for Gaza is for the world that so supports it to take in its residents, as Nikki Haley suggested. But if that does not happen:
Let’s be clear about the situation in the areas we have “cleaned out”.
We remain profoundly clueless regarding what is in those areas that we have yet to find.
And to make matters worse: the more dangerous the hidden strategic stockpiles and tunnels are, the fewer Gazans know about their existence making it very likely that none of the terrorists we have captured may even know about them, even if they wanted to tell us.
Allow the Gazans back into this area and we have no idea what we will face there in the very near future.
I get no comfort from Defense Minister Galant’s assurances that the areas would be under “a different leadership, elements that aren’t threatening.”
If Mahatma Gandhi himself led the neighborhood, he would be no match for the Hamas terrorists readily willing to slaughter Gazans who decline to follow their instructions.
There is only one way to “sterilize” an area, and that is to raze all the buildings and literally shave off enough layers of land to expose any tunnel shafts, followed by pouring cement slabs to serve as both the foundations for new construction and to effectively seal off access to anything missed.
This process takes a fraction of the time of any other attempt to clear out weapons and tunnels at a considerably lower risk to our soldiers.
It also makes possible the implementation of a serious, well-organized, emergency construction program, rather than the structurally dangerous and terribly inadequate housing that the helter-skelter construction which would otherwise take place.
[Ed.: Joni Mitchell – Big Yellow Taxi (Official Lyric Video) ]
Ezri ToBe responds to President Biden for his libel against the Jewish settlers of Judea and Samaria [2:52]
December 18, 2023
[Ed.: There are no “innocent Palestinian civilians” and are are no “violent settlers in Judea and Samaria”. This is Obamas’ doublespeak blood libel fed to Biden.]
Rising from the ruins of a generation of failed Israeli security doctrine Caroline Glick
It will take years to correct the damage the generals wrought by reducing the size of the IDF and inducing its total dependence on the United States. Opinion.
Dec 23, 2023, 6:00 PM (GMT+2) – Caroline B. Glickis the senior contributing editor of Jewish News Syndicate and host of the “Caroline Glick Show” on JNS. She is also the diplomatic commentator for Israel’s Channel 14, as well as a columnist for Newsweek. Glick is the senior fellow for Middle Eastern Affairs at the Center for Security Policy in Washington and a lecturer at Israel’s College of Statesmanship.
(JNS) Two underlying assumptions guided Israel’s security establishment for the past generation. The first asserted that with the end of the Cold War, the era of conventional wars had ended. In the present age, brains, rather than brawn, would rule the roost.
The primary author of the “small and smart IDF” doctrine was Ehud Barak, who served as Chief of General Staff of the Israel Defense Forces when the Berlin Wall crumbled. In later years, the slogan was finessed.
A generation of IDF Chiefs of General Staff organized around the vision of a “small, technological and lethal army.”
As Maj. Gen. Yitzhak Brick, (retired) who served as the IDF ombudsman for ten years, has documented, operating under the spell of Barak’s doctrine, the IDF shut down multiple reserve divisions. It cut its artillery forces by 50%. Armored brigades were shut down. The reserve force was reduced by 80% between 2003 and 2017. The non-commissioned officer corps was gutted. The bulk of the IDF budget and nearly all the U.S. military aid were diverted to the Air Force—the strategic arm of the “small, technological and lethal” IDF.
The doctrine was repeatedly exposed as a farce. But to no avail. The air force didn’t defeat the Palestinian Arab terror factories in Judea and Samaria in 2002. The ground forces did. The air force never had a response to missiles from Hezbollah to the north and Hamas to the south. Without regional brigades defending the borders, Israel’s “peacetime” borders with Jordan on the east and Egypt at its west became highways for weapons smugglers
Tucker Carlson Visits Julian Assange [5:43] Tucker Carlson
December 22, 2023 – Tucker visits Julian Assange at the infamous Belmarsh prison.
The Great Taking – Documentary [1:11:56]
David Webb exposes the system the Central Bankers have in place to take everything from everyone.
Israel Iran War is (Terrifyingly) Inevitable The Tom Nash Report
0:00 – Introduction, 0:09 – Israel’s next war, 0:45 – Introduction to the larger geopolitical chess game, 1:07 – Iran’s goals for regional dominance, 2:00 – Shift in US policy with the Trump administration, 4:00 – The proposed EU-Israel-Saudi Arabia-India economic corridor, 5:02 – Iran’s response to geopolitical shifts, 6:26 – The ‘Ring of Fire’ strategy against Israel, 7:17 – US announcement of the economic corridor, 8:01 – Iran’s potential strategies against Israel, 9:00 – Discussion of the situation in Gaza, 10:00 – Prediction of a larger conflict involving Iran, 12:17 – Likelihood of direct conflict between Israel and Iran, 13:05 – The role of Hamas in regional dynamics, 14:00 – US and Iranian interests in delaying conflict, 15:18 – Conclusion
“I was wrong about Trump.” TIERNEY’S REAL NEWS
DEC 23, 2023 – This op-ed ran in the American Thinker and got virtually no play. It should have. It was the most read and shared article of the year on my website so I thought I would post it again. It’s a must read.
I know many people who say the exact same things about President Trump. I am glad M.B. Mathews had the courage to be open-minded and admit he was wrong!
I was wrong about Trump By M.B. Mathews
I recently wrote a column about why I believed Trump should not run in 2024. I was wrong. I allowed my distaste for Trump’s personality to override his virtues, which are considerable.
Some people want Trump without his vices. I was among them — until I watched and listened to Tom Klingenstein’s speech titled “Trump’s virtues.”
It was masterful and shamed me that I did not make the distinction between Trump’s character and his virtues, the former being deeply flawed, the latter being almost perfect.
I need to man up in my defense of the former President’s virtues. The speech was among the most pointed I have heard and deserves some exposure. Klingenstein says:
Other Republicans say some version of: “I like Trump policies but I don’t like the rest of him.”
This gets it almost backwards. Although Trump advanced many important policies, it is the ‘rest of him’ that contains the virtue that inspires the movement… Trump was born for the current crisis, a life and death struggle against a totalitarian enemy I call woke communism… that controls all the cultural and economic powers in America…
Trump revealed, not caused, the divide in this country.
In war, you must make a stand…
Trump is a manly man… traditional manhood, even when flawed, is absolutely essential… Trump plays to win… There are no clean hands in a fistfight…Trump is unreservedly, unquestionably pro-America… Trump is a refreshing break from the guilt and self-loathing that marks our age…
It is [the left’s] anti-Americanism that makes so many of us very angry: The Left have trashed America’s Founding and her history to the point where some believe it virtuous to hate America. Rather than advocating forgiveness for sins, the Left are advocating hair shirts, self-flagellation, and perpetual guilt. It is un-American and certainly un-Christian.
Victor Davis Hanson on Colorado Supreme Court Trump Ballot Ruling: ‘Does the Left See Where it is Taking the Country?’ By Mike Lachance
Dec. 22, 2023 9:10 pm – Conservative scholar and historian Victor Davis Hanson has weighed in on the Colorado Supreme Court’s decision to remove Trump from the 2024 ballot in a new column that poses some very important questions.
Hanson reminds readers that Kamala Harris supported the riots of 2020 and that Chuck Schumer threatened two justices on the U.S. Supreme Court and asks if those acts qualify as forms of insurrection.
He also wonders if the left realizes where all of this is taking the country.
Hanson writes at American Greatness:
Trump Derangement Syndrome became Orwellian with the recent ruling of the Colorado Supreme Court.
It approved the erasure of Trump from the Republican primary ballot in Colorado, by invoking Section 3 of the 14th Amendment.
That ossified clause was intended to bar any ante-bellum federal officials who joined the Confederacy from again holding federal offices after 1865.
Hanson compares the left’s outrage about January 6th to the BLM riots:
