Photo by CHANDAN KHANNA/AFP via Getty Images
Foreign desk: The Hamas ‘Death Cult’
“Not since the execution of Benito Mussolini” has the world been granted such a view of “the death of a fascist” as when footage showed Yahya Sinwar’s last breaths, observes Spiked’s Brendan O’Neill.
“In truth, Hamas aspires not to ‘free Palestine’ but to subjugate it” to the “dominion of Islamist diktat.” Palestinians are not “individuals deserving of life” but “martyrs.”
Fact is, Hamas is “a death cult”; it’s not statehood but death that is its “loftiest” goal.
Meanwhile, the terror group’s “hijacking of the Palestine issue is more than matched” by the “woke hijacking of it by the lost elites of the West,” who use it to express their “angst with the West.”
Palestinians are “physical fodder” for Hamas’ “holy warmongering” and “moral fodder for the virtue-signalling of the West’s elites.”
Media watch: Trump Gains Amid Harsh Coverage
Despite “unrelentingly negative coverage,” marvels the Washington Examiner’s Byron York, “the public views [Donald] Trump more favorably than it has since he entered politics.”
“Less than three weeks before Election Day, Trump’s unfavorable rating exceeds his favorable rating by just 7 points.”
He’s now “more popular at this point in the campaign than he was at this point in the 2020 campaign or the 2016 campaign.”
Meanwhile, Kamala Harris’ “momentum” has “stalled.” So the favorability “trend for Trump is up, and the trend for Harris is down.”
It’s an “extraordinary” development, given the “relentlessly hostile media” environment Trump has faced.
Eye on the economy: Kam the McDonald’s Killer
During his McDonald’s photo-op, Donald Trump “missed a bigger opportunity to highlight how Kamala Harris’s agenda endangers such jobs and franchise restaurants,” flags The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board.
“Start with the Biden National Labor Relations Board’s joint-employer rule,” which holds “corporate parents responsible for the labor practices of franchisees.”
This “would reduce franchisee autonomy and increase their costs,” leading to “fewer jobs.” Harris “also backed raising the federal minimum wage from $7.25 an hour,” possibly to $15 an hour — a recipe for “more jobless teens.”
Plus, the Democratic hopeful and other “progressives accuse McDonald’s of price gouging,” though its prices have increased in line with its costs, and the veep would punish such a practice by “fixing prices.”
McDonald’s and other franchisees “are on her target list. That won’t help low-income workers.”
SCOTUS beat: Beware the Lockstep Left
Ahead of the election, Democrats are “maintaining steady criticism of what Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has called a ‘MAGA Supreme Court,’ ” but “if lockstep voting and results-driven decision-making concern you, it isn’t the Republican-appointed justices you should worry about,” warns Ilya Shapiro at City Journal.
“The court leans right, yes, but it’s no monolith, and it clips the wings of aggressive conservative litigators and lower-court judges alike.”
Fact is, “only 11 of the 58 opinions in argued cases last term resulted in ‘partisan’ 6-3 splits and nearly half the decisions were unanimous.”
“There’s a lot of fluidity on the right, with varied interpretive methods,” and in reality, “it’s the Democratic appointees who vote as a bloc much more than their Republican-appointed counterparts,” and who are “geared toward specific policy outcomes — progressive ones.”
From the right: When Terrorists Face ‘Chaos’
“Israel is taking out nontraditional financial targets that Hezbollah has been relying on since many of its traditional ones have been sanctioned by the West,” notes Commentary’s Seth Mandel.
“Cutting a terrorist group off from its access to cash can be an organizational death sentence.”
Israel’s “asymmetric warfare” against Hezbollah and Hamas terrorists has created “chaos.” Citizens fear getting “too close to a Hezbollah soldier,” lest his pager explode.
“That same suspicion can curtail Hezbollah’s recruitment.” Until now, “Iran’s terror proxies have had all the advantages of actual nation-states with none of the limitations.”
Now that Israel appears to have turned the tables on Hezbollah and Hamas, “hopefully we’ll see plenty more of this, and not just from Israel.”
— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board