Mediaboss Marketing

US President Joe Bidens interview on Monday with pop culture journalist Speedy Morman, as well as the opening prayer at Mondays Republican National Convention and a Fox News interview with newly-minted Vice Presidential candidate J.D. Vance showed how differently the candidates will navigate the Israel issue until the November elections.

What became clear Monday is that Biden will express support for the Jewish state, though he will do so somewhat haltingly, carefully balancing it with empathy and support for the Palestinians.

The Republican ticket Donald Trump and Vance will express support for Israel without feeling the need to sound apologetic.

It all has to do with demographics.

Biden needs to play to the progressive wing of his party and needs to retain Arab American voters in Michigan, all the while not alienating Jews in the key battleground states of Pennsylvania, Georgia, and Arizona. That is a delicate balancing act.

On the other hand, Trump and Vance, without any expectations of securing either Arab or progressive voters, can voice full-throated support for Israel. This will not cost them any support with their base and who knows might draw a couple of percentage points of Jewish and pro-Israel supporters into the Republican tent that could make all the difference in a tight election.

All this came into focus on Monday when the Republican National Convention crowned Trump its partys nominee, and Trump tabbed Vance as his running mate.

The political minefield Biden will have to maneuver regarding Israel was on display in the interview taped with Morman on a platform of the youth-oriented Complex Networks that aired Monday.

Asked why he and the US are so supportive of Israel and why they provide billions of dollars of military aid, Biden started off the Mideast section of the interview by stressing he has only approved defensive weapons signaling that he understands supplying arms to Israel is a controversial issue among some Democrats, including many of those who watch Mormans interviews with celebrities, sports stars, and politicians.

I denied them offensive weapons they are using 2,000-pound bombs. I made it real clear that they cannot use weapons we provide them in civilian areas, the president stressed.

Pressed to explain why his and the USs support for Israel is so strong, Biden repeated what he has said numerous times in explaining his pro-Israel position: If there werent an Israel, every Jew in the world would be at risk. So theres a need for it to be strong and a need for Israel to be able to have, after World War II, the ability for Jews to have a place that was their own.

This response is one that dated the president, who is trying to fend off those claiming he is too old for his job. Biden is of an aging breed of Democratic Party leaders who lived in and remember a world without an Israel, and the horrific fate that befell the Jews in that world. His 27-year-old interviewer, and one assumes most of those watching, know not of this world, and it is unclear how much this argument resonates with them if at all.

You dont have to be a Jew to be a Zionist. A Zionist is about whether or not Israel is a safe haven for Jews because of their history of how theyve been persecuted, Biden added.

Then Morman asked him point-blank: Are you a Zionist?

That question has to be put into the context of how the word has been twisted over the last nine months into something ugly. Think of the masked hoodlums who a couple of months ago boarded a New York Subway and in an intimidating manner demanded that Zionists on the packed subway car identify themselves.

Yes, Biden to his great credit answered, then added something reflecting how he understands that the word has taken on a negative connotation among many, anticipating that this would be used against him in some of the progressive and Arab circles he was trying to woo. Now, youll be able to make a lot of that because different people dont know what a Zionist is, he said. Then he asked the interviewer: Do you know what a Zionist is?

To which, rather snarkily, Morman replied: I just ask questions, I dont answer them.

Tellingly, after declaring himself a Zionist, in his next breath Biden again revealing the need to play to a lot of different audiences said, By the way, Im the guy who has done more for the Palestinian community than anybody.

He mentioned that he ensured the Egyptians opened their border to Gaza to allow food and medicine through, and was the guy who has been able to bring together the Arab states to help the Palestinians with food and shelter. I mean, Ive been very supportive of the Palestinians, but Hamas, theyre a bunch of thugs.

Asked why, given these positions, Arab Americans or Muslims should vote for him, Biden said the same reason Arabs in the region support him: to keep peace, put things back together, to make sure there is a two-state solution in the region Ive been a strong supporter of that.

With this performance, Biden was clearly trying to be everything for everybody pro-Israel for Jews and Israeli supporters, sympathetic to the Palestinians, and a champion of a two-state solution to the progressives and Arabs.

The Republican Party, as it also became apparent on the first day of the convention in Milwaukee, is less encumbered by such considerations.

Consider a prayer on opening night delivered by Laura Levy, a Jewish Republican from Connecticut. Not only did she issue a prayer for victims killed and wounded in the attempted assassination of Trump, but also for the peace of Jerusalem and the hostages.

Lord our God, we pray for the peace of Jerusalem, your eternal city, and for all the children of Abraham. We remember and pray for freedom for the hostages kidnapped and held so cruelly against their will, Levy said. Lord, please keep them in your sight and hasten the day of their freedom.

It is difficult to imagine a similar prayer being delivered during prime time from the center stage at next months Democratic National Convention, where Israel will be a contentious issue sure to stir up angry debate between various wings of the party.

And then there is Vance.

In an interview with Fox Newss Sean Hannity, Vance who is among Republican isolationists but one who is robustly pro-Israel and thinks Israel is in a different category than other countries such as Ukraine voiced strong support for our ally Israel.

Biden, he said in an apparent reference to the delay of arms shipments and the presidents warnings to Israel not to go into Rafah several months ago, has made it harder and harder for Israel to win that war.

You want two things to happen: you want Israel to win that war, and as quickly as possible the longer it goes on the harder their situation becomes. And second, after the war, you want to reinvigorate that peace process between Israel, the Saudi Arabians, Jordanians, and so forth.

Note that Vance here, when talking about a peace process, said nothing about a Palestinian state, only about some kind of regional cooperation. He does not have a constituency to which he has to pledge allegiance to a two-state solution every time Mideast diplomacy is raised.

What Biden has done is the worst of all possible worlds, he contended. He has prolonged the war Israels war to actually take out Hamas but in the process has made it harder to move toward a sustainable peace.

Vance also added Iran into the mix. A lot of people recognize you need to do something with Iran, but not these weak little bombing runs. If you are going to punch the Iranians, you punch them hard.

He said that Trump did just that in 2020 when the US killed Iranian military leader Qassem Soleimani.

The most important diplomatic breakthrough of the Trump administration was the Abraham Accords, because if you want to change Iran, the way to do it is to one, withhold their oil money, which Biden has been bad about, and also enable the Israelis and Sunni Arab states to work together and provide a counterbalance to Iran. Joe Biden has done nothing. You have the infrastructure there to weaken Iran to strengthen our ally Israel and Joe Biden has done nothing with it.

Whether, as Vance said, Trump could reinvigorate a regional counterbalance to Iran is not clear or even whether that is possible without a pathway to a two-state solution. Nevertheless, Vances interview clearly demonstrates that he, the Republican Party, and presumably Trump are not encumbered by the same constraints as the current administration when discussing Israel, the Palestinians, Hamas, and Gaza.

Here is the original post:
Biden balances progressives on Israel; Vance doesnt and it shows - analysis - The Jerusalem Post

US primary insurer Progressive has reversed the previously announced reinsurance recoverable of $95 million under its per occurrence reinsurance contracts, as the firm remains close to reaching the annual retention thresholds under its 2024 catastrophe aggregate excess of loss contracts.

For May, Progressive reported net catastrophe losses of $722.1 million, leading the firm to record the above reinsurance recoverable of $95.1 million in its property segment.

As we covered back then, the net catastrophe losses for May translated to 12.3 loss ratio points, as losses and loss adjustment expenses for the month approached $4.8 billion.

Now though, it would appear Progressives ultimate net losses for May 2024 came in much lower than had been expected.

During June, we increased our Personal Lines loss estimates about $115 million, or 2.5 points for the month, and decreased our Property loss estimates a net $12 million, or about 4.7 points, relative to the May storms, Progressive said in its June results.

The firm continued, We also reversed the reinsurance recoverable of $95 million, which included losses and allocated loss adjustment expenses, under our per occurrence reinsurance contracts.

Since these storms occurred close to the end of the month, estimating the losses was challenging as virtually no claims had been reported at the time we estimated May results.

On a year-to-date basis as of June 30, 2024, we remain close to reaching the annual retention thresholds under our 2024 catastrophe aggregate excess of loss contracts.

Originally posted here:
Progressive reverses $95m May reinsurance recoverable - Reinsurance News

Rep. Steve Woodrow (D.-Denver) deleted his vicious X (formerly Twitter) post after running into a tempest of well-deserved outrage. But the fact that he posted the tweet in the first place offers some useful insights into the progressive gang that currently dominates Colorado.

After the failure of the assassination attempt against former President Donald Trump, most of us condemned the violence and condoled with Trump and his family. But Woodrow is not like the rest of us. Here was his response: The last thing America needed was sympathy for the devil but here we are.

For decent people, Woodrows tweet provokes the kind of revulsion we feel when we see a loathsome insect about to bite a baby. Let us, however, suppress our feelings and perform some entomology.

Consider first Woodrows equation between Trump and the devil. Although references to Satan are not common among progressivesthey are too secular for thatit is very common for them to confound conservatives and conservatism with evil. Thats why so many have called Trump Hitler and describe him as a fascist.

Of course, such comments are objectively absurd: When Trump was President, he was not a dictator. He was not as dedicated to smaller government as I would prefer, but he did work with Congress to lower taxes and deregulate. He certainly is not an anti-Semite: his own daughter is Jewishas is his son-in-law, whom he employed extensively in his administration. As President, Trump supported Israel a good deal more firmly than progressives do today.

Lets put this into perspective: Progressives have been slandering their political opponents this way for a very long time. Sixty years ago, they compared Senator Barry Goldwater (R.-Ariz.), the 1964 Republican presidential nominee, to Hitlerdespite the fact that Goldwater was half Jewish and about as libertarian as a national politician can be. Twenty years ago, they were defaming Republican President George W. Bush as Hitler. More recently, Hillary Clinton slimed nearly half the country as deplorables.

This sort of filth tells us more about progressives than about their targets. It tells us how they see the rest of us.

You may have heard the adage, Conservatives think liberals are stupid and liberals think conservatives are evil. Leftists equation of Republicans with the devil and with Naziism and fascism is emblematic of the latter half of the adage.

Im not a psychologist, so I wont try to identify all the reasons leftists think their opponents are evil. However, I think it has something to do with the bubble in which they live. Conservatives and moderates cannot escape the ubiquity of leftist propaganda. Leftists political messages are plastered even on our garbage truckswhere, perhaps, they belong. On the other hand, progressives can go through life without ever seeing Fox News, or the New York Post. They absorb unrebutted drivel served up by government-subsidized college professors and the mainstream propaganda media.

So I would not be surprised if Woodrow still believes Trump was elected in 2016 because he conspired with Russian oligarchs. And Id lay even money he continues to believe that in Charlottesville, Virginia, Trump proclaimed neo-Nazis and white supremacists to be very fine people. Even President Biden repeated that lie as recently as June 27.

You can see how a person absorbing such unrebutted propaganda might think Trump is diabolical.

As a former political activist, Ive long known that Progressives tend to accuse others of what they are doing themselves. In recent years, Ive noticed, this insight has become more widespread.

Thus, some of those who accuse Trump of being Hitler side with the Hamas neo-Nazis, or at least seek to compromise Israels ability to defend herself against them.

Moreover, progressives themselves comprise the major American political group most closely approaching fascism. You need only examine the record of the Biden administration to see this: Within the last three and a half years, the administration has relentlessly pursued policies traditionally associated with fascism: efforts to disarm American citizens; perversion of the legal system to attack political enemies; gargantuan interventions into the economy; sweeping presidential mandates issued without regard to Congress or the Constitution; and what one federal judge called arguably . . . the most massive attack against free speech in United States history. For more on this point, see here.

On the state level, Woodrow has been an enthusiastic participant in the Colorado legislatures quasi-fascist thuggery: intrusive regulations, efforts to disarm citizens, and the campaign to convert Colorado from one of Americas freest and most prosperous states into a Third World hellhole. Woodrow himself was a sponsor of the bag lawa measure that appears to have no coherent purpose other than (1) attacking an interest group leftists dont like and (2) making the rest of us suffer.

So progressive charges that conservatives are fascists looks somewhat like the psychological phenomenon of projection. Thus, Woodrow labels Trump as the devil, when by traditional measures his sides social agenda is what looks satanic: abortion so late as to constitute infanticide, child mutilation, attacks on conservative Christians, and (among some of his allies) support for Hamas.

Normal people reacted to the attempted assassination of another human being with sympathy and horror. But, again, this is what Woodrow said: The last thing America needed was sympathy for the devil but here we are.

Can you grasp the lack of human feeling behind such words?

Progressives advertise themselves as opposed to hate. Yet in my experience, some of them are very good haters. Theres a lot of hate in Woodrows post.

They also advertise themselves as caring. But their caring is highly selective: It seems to be limited to interest groups within their own political coalition and on their list of voting dependents. They care deeply for people who pursue outre or destructive lifestyles. But do they care about pious believers like Jack Phillips? Well, not so much.

As their constant efforts to subvert Colorados Taxpayers Bill of Rights (TABOR) demonstrate, they also care very little about those of us who have to pay for their escapades.

These conclusions about caring are not merely impressionistic or anecdotal. Surveys show marked differences in charitable giving among religious conservatives, secular conservatives, religious liberals, and secular liberals. Specifically, they show that religious conservatives are the most generous of the lot, while secular liberals are the least. Their principal medium of caring seems to be buying votes with other peoples money.

Woodrows post reminds us that Colorado has been hijacked by power-grabbers with no affinity for traditional American ideals, or for the Constitution, or for the rule of law, or for the values that shaped the American Westor, in some cases, even for obligations of basic humanity.

It will take a lot of work to reclaim our state. But I am certain we will do so.

Rob Natelson is senior fellow in constitutional jurisprudence at the Independence Institute in Denver and a former constitutional law professor at the University of Montana. He is the author of The Original Constitution: What It Actually Said and Meant (3rd ed., 2015) and a contributor to the Heritage Foundations Heritage Guide to the Constitution.

Our unofficial motto at Complete Colorado is Always free, never fake, but annoyingly enough, our reporters, columnists and staff all want to be paid in actual US dollars rather than our preferred currency of pats on the back and a muttered kind word. Fact is that theres an entire staff working every day to bring you the most timely and relevant political news (updated twice daily) from around the state on Completes main page aggregator, as well as top-notch original reporting and commentary on Page Two.

CLICK HERE TO LADLE A LITTLE GRAVY ON THE CREW AT COMPLETE COLORADO. Youll be giving to the Independence Institute, the not-for-profit publisher of Complete Colorado, which makes your donation tax deductible. But rest assured that your giving will go specifically to the Complete Colorado news operation. Thanks for being a Complete Colorado reader, keep coming back.

See the rest here:
Natelson: What Colorado Rep. Woodrows nasty Trump post tells us about progressives - Complete Colorado

(CNS): Opposition Leader Roy McTaggart is calling on the UPM government to make Caymans high street banks implement a mandatory, modern code of practice, amend the Registered Land Act to enforce mortgage-type security over real estate, and ask CIMA to review the fairness of fees charged and interest rates paid on deposits. After years of low interest rates, banks had increased fees to improve profitability. But with eleven hikes over the last two years, bank profits are soaring while borrowers are struggling.

A private members motion filed by the PPM leader and seconded by his deputy, Joey Hew, notes that the agreement by local banks to give a 30-day notice before increasing mortgage interest rates has expired, though it did nothing to help those with increased payments, putting homes at risk of foreclosure and forcing them to come to government when they cannot afford mortgage payments.

McTaggart said the Law Reform Commission has already initiated a public consultation to consider a new Registered Land (Amendment) Bill, which the government could adopt. The goal is to reform the foreclosure process and to streamline the provision impacting the charge of land to provide for a lending and pre-action protocol to better protect borrowers.

The opposition said they want the government to encourage the Cayman Islands Bankers Association to introduce a voluntary banking code that recognises the need for them to consider cases of financial difficulty sympathetically and positively, exploring options for alternative repayment arrangements for those in financial trouble. If not, the motion calls for government to consider legislation to provide for a mandatory code that will hold the banks accountable and protect their customers, especially those with mortgages.

The PPM members are suggesting that the code should be based on the one rolled out in the UK last year, which imposes a duty on banks to their customers, requiring them to deliver good outcomes and higher standards of consumer protection, including for loan foreclosures.

They have also called on the government to ask CIMA to review and report back to parliament by the end of this calendar year on the fairness of fees charged by retail banks and the fairness of interest rates paid on savings and other deposit accounts, ensuring that these rates and fees are fair and equitable for all customers.

While interest rates have reached the highest levels in decades for borrowers, the interest rate paid to customers with savings accounts or cash on deposit has barely moved from as little as 0.1% in some cases.

See the article here:
Progressives call for UPM to take on banks - Cayman News Service

Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) uttered the obvious logic that he wanted progressives to hear in case they want to vote against President Joe Biden or not vote at all. (Watch the video below.)

The lawmaker cited apathy and perhaps voters voting against their own self-interest as possible contributors to a Trump victory.

In an interview on Sunday with public affairs expert Mathew Littman for MeidasTouch, Lieu pleaded with unconvinced liberals to look deeply at their self-interests and embrace them. Casting a vote for Trump or any other candidate besides Biden out of disgust, or sitting out the election altogether, is inviting disaster on a volatile scale, Lieu said. That includes a possibly continued right-wing shaping of the Supreme Court.

Littman, a former speechwriter for Biden, noted the prospect of the Justice Department being gutted, opponents of the administration going to jail, and Trumps extreme immigration crackdown if apathy prevails.

Lieu took it from there.

Donald Trump incited an insurrection, an attack on our nations Capitol, he said. A hundred and forty law enforcement officers were assaulted and injured, some critically. And if he becomes president and he feels like he was rewarded for that behavior, what else do you think hes gonna do? He can do quite a bit, because in his mind, he incited insurrection and the American people made him president again. You think theres going to be anything to hold him back? I dont think so.

Low turnout could put Trump over the top, meaning bad news for progressives who voted and for those who stayed home.

Trump has hinted again at the possibility of violence if he loses the vote count.

If everythings honest, Ill gladly accept the results. I dont change on that. If its not, you have to fight for the right of the country, he told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel this week.

In another suggestion of upheaval if he were to lose, he told Time magazine that there would be no political violence if he wins the November election but if we dont win, you know, it depends. It always depends on the fairness of an election.

Read the original post:
Dem Lawmaker Speaks Fierce Logic On Trump That He Wants Progressives To Hear - Yahoo Singapore News