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October 2022

DeSantis Leads Democratic Challenger Among Hispanic Voters By Eric Lendrum

https://amgreatness.com/2022/10/25/desantis-leads-democratic-challenger-among-hispanic-voters/

With two weeks left to go until the 2022 midterms, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.) is currently leading Democratic challenger Charlie Crist (D-Fla.) with Hispanic voters in the state.

As reported by The New York Post, the latest poll from Telemundo and LX News shows that 51 percent of Floridian Hispanics would vote for DeSantis, while 44 percent support Crist. Only 4 percent remain undecided, with another 1 percent opting to support someone else in the race.

The poll’s findings further indicate that DeSantis will likely win re-election comfortably this year. By contrast, exit polling from the 2018 gubernatorial election showed DeSantis losing the Hispanic vote by 10 points to his Democratic rival in that election, former Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum.

Along more specific lines, DeSantis leads Crist by 50 points among Cuban voters, a significant voter bloc in Florida, with 72 percent to Crist’s 22 percent; Crist, by contrast, leads by a smaller margin among Puerto Ricans, with 59 percent to DeSantis’ 37 percent.

The two candidates are tied among female voters, at 48 percent each, and among voters aged 49 and younger, at 47 percent each. DeSantis leads among Floridians who were born in America, with 48 percent to Crist’s 47 percent, while maintaining a much more commanding lead among Floridians who were not born in America, with 56 percent to Crist’s 40 percent.

America’s ‘Acute’ Foreign Policy Disarray by Pete Hoekstra

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19034/america-foreign-policy-disarray

Saudi Arabia is deeply concerned… that the Iran agreement will soon be back on the table…. The Saudis quite correctly believe that that the new Iran deal, rather than stopping Iran from developing nuclear weapons, would actually pave the way to nuclear weapons, in addition to giving Iran’s despotic regime up to a trillion dollars — if the mullahs would please just not use the nuclear weapons on the Biden administration’s watch.

While the grisly murder of Osama bin Laden’s close friend Jamal Khashoggi was far from acceptable, the sad reality is that the Kingdom is no more guilty of unspeakable behavior than are Iran, Russia, China, North Korea, Turkey Venezuela, Qatar or a number of other nations that the Biden administration and the international community are cozying up to.

Many onlookers believe that the Saudi move is a direct signal to Biden about Saudi Arabia’s concerns over the “stalled” but apparently not-quite-ended-yet nuclear deal with Iran.

Although Biden supposedly will examine all aspects of the U.S.-Saudi relationship, he threatened the kingdom with “consequences” — reportedly by suspending arms sales — all because Saudi Arabia is trying to defend itself from being potentially obliterated by an openly hostile Iran.

The U.S. seeks to harshly punish any country opposed to U.S. efforts for a questionable nuclear agreement that would empower Iran, and vastly enrich it and its numerous terrorist proxies, including the Houthis, Hezbollah, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Through them, Iran is already effectively in charge of four countries in addition to its own: Lebanon, Syria, Yemen and Iraq.

If the U.S. really believes Russia is an acute threat, the U.S. should act as if it is and stop propping up Russia’s allies, such as Iran.

The U.S. should be working with countries in the Middle East to support efforts against Russia and Iran’s regime.

No wonder questions are being raised as to just how “compromised” Biden might actually be.

The U.S. would do well to stop this foolish obsession with getting a new Iran nuclear deal. It is inconsistent with the rest of America’s values, foreign policy and national security interests. Send a clear message to Russia, Iran’s mullahs, Europe, the Middle East — and, most importantly, to Iranian and American citizens — that the Iran nuclear deal, finally, is dead.

The confusion and lack of clarity in the current administration’s foreign policies are growing ever more dangerous for US national security.

Political Mislabeling: Violating the Public Trust by Lawrence Kadish

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19036/political-mislabeling

Buried within the volumes of federal statues is a regulation that allows the Department of Justice to pursue those who mislabel a food product with a penalty provision that warns the guilty party “shall be imprisoned for not more than one year or fined not more than $1,000, or both.”

Federal prosecutors will surely go after you if you mislabel fruit as organic when it is not.

In fact, state and federal law enforcement agencies have a blizzard of regulations they can harness when a manufacturer, company or individual engages in what can be described as deceptive consumer practices.

It would appear, however, that the one area not particularly well policed is Washington’s fondness for labeling things as they would like you to believe as opposed to what they are.

Take the president’s “Inflation Reduction Act.”

His plan allocates approximately $300 billion in “Deficit Reduction” and $369 billion in “Energy Security and Climate Change” programs over the next decade. It is a plan that will inundate the economy, already wracked with record inflation, with money still wet from federal printing presses. It is a plan that has no more connection to reducing inflation than the oil companies have in reducing their pump profits. It is a not so polite fiction and it begs the question: If we can go after someone who mislabels organic carrots, why can’t we pursue the type of political mislabeling that puts the nation’s economy at risk?

Equally questionable is how, where and by whom the billions inside the “Energy Security and Climate Change” program will be administered. Consider the credentials of President Joe Biden’s pick to direct this program, John Podesta.

If honesty in labeling was applied to Podesta’s resumé, it would be noted that he was Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager and founder of what The New York Times describes as a left-wing think tank. How is this political operative America’s choice to distribute what a cynic might describe as, potentially, one of the nation’s largest political slush funds in history? Were that the case, the idea of labeling it as a “climate change” fund would certainly be reason to open a file to investigate the suggestion of “consumer fraud.”

Special Counsel John Durham Discredits the Press The way back to sanity for America is for the media to rediscover its interest in truth. Holman W. Jenkins, Jr.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/durham-discredits-the-press-fbi-investigation-media-lying-trump-falsified-evidence-collusion-leak-illegal-informant-11666729641?mod=opinion_featst_pos1

“The collapse in societal trust that some perceive is, first and last, a collapse in trust in the media that creates the environment in which elites either get away with their lies or don’t. This has been a hell of a moment for our major press institutions to be overrun by epistemological chaos, to be tangled up in a foolish quest for “post-objectivity” that predictably (as with Trumpism) delivers the opposite of the desired result precisely because it discredits the media. It’s a hell of a time, while almost everybody worth reading heads to Substack, for our remaining news-reporting elites to be hiding behind “without fear or favor” when it’s the opposite of how they do business.”

Only John Durham can say why he proceeded as he did. The 45-year veteran prosecutor was assigned to examine the FBI’s decisions related to the Trump collusion investigation. Aside from an early guilty plea from an FBI lawyer who falsified evidence, he pursued only two outside informants for allegedly lying to the agency.

Some on the right blame him for not going after FBI officials directly, though it’s not clear what these officials might be charged with. Incompetence is not a crime. Illegal leaks are a crime but notoriously hard to prove in court.

The dumbest journalism, though, reasons (without saying so) that Mr. Durham is a colossal failure because he was somehow assigned, or assigned himself, to fulfill the fantasies of Donald Trump. An adjective-overloaded piece by Margaret Carlson in the Washington Monthly dissolves into nothingness when you realize how completely she relies on this premise without betraying any awareness that she’s relying on it.

My own guess is Mr. Durham viewed his informant indictments as merited but orthogonal to his larger purpose. He was counting on civil society, i.e., the press, to lead a necessary conversation about the FBI’s role in 2016 and after.

No, Professors, White Students Are NOT Inherently Racist Confronting the Left’s maze of linguistic distortions. by Rob Jenkins

https://www.frontpagemag.com/no-professors-white-students-are-not-inherently-racist/

One of the Left’s favorite tactics is to define or redefine a word to suit their purposes, then act as though that’s the only possible definition and the rest of us must simply go along.

Take “racism,” for example, or better yet “racist,” an epithet leftists love to hurl at anyone who disagrees with them or even at people they simply don’t like.

Indeed, Campus Reform and other conservative outlets have been reporting for years on university professors and administrators who insist that “all white people are racist.” The latest example comes to us from Dominican University in Illinois, which this fall will host a “White Accountability Group.”

There, white students will “explore how to recognize…white privilege [and] identify and interrupt internalized dominance”—because, you know, they’re all a bunch of racists.

But it’s true that all white people are racists ONLY if we accept the Left’s perverse definition. Otherwise, it’s pure nonsense.

Before we examine what leftists mean by “racism” and why they’re wrong, I’d like to look briefly at a few words they often use more or less interchangeably with “racism” but which don’t actually mean the same thing.

Netflix Obama Propaganda A close look at what Netflix is paying Barack and Michelle millions of dollars for. by John Stossel

https://www.frontpagemag.com/netflix-obama-propaganda/

Netflix is paying Barack and Michelle Obama millions of dollars to produce shows for them.

The latest Obama documentary series is “The G Word.” “G” for government.

As Netflix documentaries go, this one is remarkably stupid. It’s big-government propaganda.

Obama begins by claiming that he does his own income taxes, saying, “It’s actually easy.”

I think he’s joking, but it’s not clear.

“I’m amazing at them,” Obama continues hours later. “You can be, too, if you use the helpful tools found at IRS.gov.”

But that’s just silly. It’s so complex that millions of us pay to get help.

Obama’s series is hosted by silly comedian Adam Conover. Conover, correctly, calls himself “an idiot.”

He uses his time with the former president of the United States to make lame jokes and, at one point, to make sandwiches. He compliments Obama on how well he cuts the bread. It’s not funny.

Will We the People Step Up? The upcoming midterm elections will be a test of this ancient – and vital – question. by Bruce Thornton

https://www.frontpagemag.com/will-we-the-people-step-up/

Ever since ancient Athens, every election in states where all citizens have the right to vote is a referendum on the question whether or not the masses have the capacity to govern themselves. Indeed, as one historian argued, political philosophy was invented 2400 years ago to demonstrate that the answer is “no.” Ordinary people without wealth, education, or “the splendor in the blood,” as Pindar called nobility, by nature are incapable of managing the state, which requires, to paraphrase Woodrow Wilson, the “hundred who are wise” to rule over the “thousands who are foolish.”

The upcoming midterm elections will similarly be a test of this ancient question, perhaps the most consequential since World War II. For at stake may be the survival of our Constitutional order and its protection of our unalienable rights and political freedom, which have been under assault for a century now.

The stakes of this election have been raised by the excesses of the wide leftward swing of the Democrats away from the Constitution’s divided powers, jeopardizing the autonomy of civil society, individual rights, fiscal sanity, and reality itself. Indeed, so egregious and just plain lunatic are some of the policies and ideas promoted by the Dems, that their party should not just lose control of Congress, but see its leftward drift definitively repudiated.

Most of us can catalogue the manifest failures of this administration and Congress. Trillions of dollars in fiat money––like this summer’s $740 billion so-called Inflation Reduction Act, part of the $4 trillion Biden has blown in just two years––are the accelerant of the current inflation bonfire, the worst in 40 years.

This damage, moreover, is the result of transparently stupid policies. One key indicator of economic health is cheap energy, but it has skyrocketed in large part because of the suicidal war against domestic oil and natural gas production that just two years ago had made the U.S. a net exporter of energy.

Covering for Fetterman May Cost Media a Senate Seat Like most liars, the media lied itself into a much worse situation. by Daniel Greenfield

https://www.frontpagemag.com/covering-for-fetterman-may-cost-media-a-senate-seat/

The media could have pushed for the truth after Lt. Gov Fetterman’s stroke, instead, it continued to favor the woke Frankenstein because he had all the left views.

As the campaign continued, it doubled down on the cover-ups because the media was now stuck with a candidate that it was beginning to realize was broken, but was now the standard bearer of its party.

Up until the debate, the cover-up continued. Anyone in the media who insisted on asking questions about Fetterman’s functionality was threatened and smeared.

Then the debate arrived and Fetterman’s performance made it clear that there was something wrong there.

Now the media has defaulted to praising his “courage” for running and attacking anyone who points out the obvious as “ableist”.

This follows the familiar media cover-up pattern.

It’s absolutely not true
Maybe it’s a little true, but conservatives are blowing it out of proportion
It’s absolutely true and we should all embrace it

Much like drag queens in schools and the Taliban overruning Afghanistan, we’re in phase 3 now. Fetterman is clearly disabled, but that means he’s just like FDR and we should admire him. Maybe that position might have been respectable if it had been the default one all along.

The media could have pushed for the truth after Lt. Gov Fetterman’s stroke, instead, it continued to favor the woke Frankenstein because he had all the left views.

As the campaign continued, it doubled down on the cover-ups because the media was now stuck with a candidate that it was beginning to realize was broken, but was now the standard bearer of its party.

Up until the debate, the cover-up continued. Anyone in the media who insisted on asking questions about Fetterman’s functionality was threatened and smeared.

Then the debate arrived and Fetterman’s performance made it clear that there was something wrong there.

Now the media has defaulted to praising his “courage” for running and attacking anyone who points out the obvious as “ableist”.

This follows the familiar media cover-up pattern.

It’s absolutely not true
Maybe it’s a little true, but conservatives are blowing it out of proportion
It’s absolutely true and we should all embrace it

Much like drag queens in schools and the Taliban overruning Afghanistan, we’re in phase 3 now.

Fake Science Fuels Climate Extremism David Barker

https://www.aier.org/article/fake-science-fuels-climate-extremism/

“Follow the science,” we are told, especially the junk science that climate alarmists invent.  I recently debunked a piece of junk climate science whose alarmism was featured in the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, CNN, CBS, and elsewhere. The junk science was produced by the Federal Reserve. Fed officials claimed that warming will cut economic growth by a third, but my simple statistical analysis showed their results were within the margin of error and that minor improvements and new data flip their result!  

Mainstream economics shows that warming will have minor economic effects compared to the economic growth we expect over the next century. That is a problem for the climate lobby, which unfortunately includes the Fed. Since economic growth will swamp the economic effects of global warming, the Fed set out, it seems, to prove that warming will reduce growth. The fact that Florida, on average 26 degrees warmer than Michigan, has grown faster didn’t faze them.

The Fed isn’t the only institution to fall into chicanery. The study was published in a peer-reviewed academic economics journal, given wide media coverage, and cited in a congressional report to justify the Green New Deal.  Bogus research makes big splashes. But when it is debunked, there isn’t a ripple.  

The best economic model, validated by a Nobel Prize for William Nordhaus, shows that if nothing is done to reduce emissions, warming will reduce world GDP by about three percent by the year 2100.  If global GDP continues to grow at the rate it has been growing, then the world in 2100 will be five times richer than it is today. A three-percent reduction in GDP would make us 4.8 times richer instead of 5.0 times. Not exactly catastrophic! Mainstream economics doesn’t deny climate change and accepts that some policies to mitigate it might pass a cost-benefit test. But it does not predict a climate apocalypse, even if we do nothing.

Progressives Have Descended Into Madness — And Are Dragging The Rest Of Us With Them Bob Maistros

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/10/26/progressives-have-descended-into-madness-and-are-dragging-the-rest-of-us-with-them/

Demented

1 : mad, insane

2 : affected by or exhibiting cognitive dementia. Merriam-Webster

So America is really, truly, genuinely, actually, not kidding, experiencing a debate as to whether it is “ageism” or “ableism” to question the fitness for office of:

A soon-to-be octogenarian quasi-president who

habitually walks off podiums reaching out to shake hands with the air and then wanders around confused;
frequently interrupts himself mid-sentence when he lapses into incoherence;
regularly utters policy statements laden with global import that must be immediately walked back by White House staff; and
recently looked into the audience seeking a deceased politician – whose passing he was there to commemorate.

A candidate for United States Senate, the World’s Greatest Deliberative Body™, who

earlier this year suffered a massive, debilitating stroke yet refuses to release his medical records;
in his rare public appearances never fails to mangle multiple words, phrases and thoughts;
informed a liberal network reporter that he required a closed captioning device to comprehend her interview questions; and
required one in last night’s debate.

Puh-leeze. It is not discrimination in any way, shape, or form to expect that at a minimum, a president be sufficiently sentient to represent his nation with dignity on the world stage. Or a senator be capable of engaging intelligently with his colleagues, the public and the media without his spouse’s or technological intervention.

Rather, sophists’ attempt, on purely political grounds, to protect public figures who fall under the second definition of the term “demented” offered above is perhaps the most conclusive proof ever that the progressive movement has completely descended into the first.  And is slowly but surely dragging the rest of this once truly exceptional nation with it.