Displaying posts published in

October 2022

Is the Bottom Completely Falling Out for Democrats? Guy Benson

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/guybenson/2022/10/21/wave-watch-is-the-bottom-falling-out-for-democrats-n2614836

I’m not prepared to make declarative statements about how November 8th is going to go, and you know what they say about counting chickens.  But it’s increasingly looking like a red wave is cresting.  One of the questions I’ve been pondering for the last few months is whether 2022 will look more like 2018 (when the opposition party had a good night in the House, but underperformed in the Senate, due to various dynamics) or 2014 (when Republicans appeared to be underperforming through much of the cycle before a decisive break at the tail end made it political bloodbath).  Atmospheric clues and data breadcrumbs suggest that the latter historical analogue may end up looking more apt when the votes are counted in a few weeks.  Consider this:

Real Clear Politics’ Sean Trende calls this “a nice distillation of the ‘it is 2014 again’ theory of 2022.”  It’s far from guaranteed, but it’s compelling.  And if this is the Biden baseline, that’s dire territory for his party: 

The hallmarks of a substantial wave are cropping up everywhere.  Plausibly competitive races are looking…well, not:

Americans brace for steep winter heating bills as energy costs soar

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/inflation-heating-bills-this-winter-energy-costs-rising-2022/

Across the U.S., families are looking to the winter with dread as energy costs soar and fuel supplies tighten.

The Department of Energy is projecting sharp price increases for home heating compared with last winter and some worry whether heating assistance programs will be able to make up the difference for struggling families. The situation is even bleaker in Europe, with Russia’s continued curtailment of natural gas pushing prices upward and causing painful shortages.

In Maine, Aaron Raymo saw the writing on the wall and began stocking up on heating oil in 5-gallon increments over the summer as costs crept upward. He filled a container with heating oil as he could afford it, usually on paydays, and used a heating assistance program to top off his 275-gallon oil tank with the arrival of colder weather.

His family is trying to avoid being forced into a difficult decision — choosing between food or heating their home.

“It’s a hard one,” he said. “What are you going to choose for food, or what amount of fuel oil are you going to choose to stay warm?”

What’s driving up heating costs

A number of factors are converging to create a bleak situation: Global energy consumption has rebounded from the start of the pandemic, and supply was barely keeping pace before the war in Ukraine further reduced supplies.

The National Energy Assistance Directors Association says energy costs will be the highest in more than a decade this winter.

The Energy Department projects heating bills will jump 28% this winter for those who rely on natural gas, used by nearly half of U.S. households for heat. Heating oil is projected to be 27% higher and electricity 10% higher, the agency said.

ISIS Terrorists Living in Turkey – with Yazidi Captives by Uzay Bulut

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18972/isis-terrorists-turkey

In Ankara’s Sincan district, a 24-year-old enslaved Yazidi woman was rescued after her relatives in Australia (who themselves are asylum-seekers) purchased her freedom on the dark web. The woman was held captive in a house in Sincan for 10 months and systematically raped. Signs of torture in the form of cigarette burns and razor cuts were found on her body.

[A] secrecy order was placed on the indictment against those ISIS members who had kidnapped a seven-year-old Yazidi child to Turkey and listed her for sale. These are allegedly high-ranking IS members. They are currently living in Ankara and remain free.

[I]t is difficult to obtain data on the detained ISIS members from state authorities. When we ask questions to authorities, it is not possible to get an answer from them. — Hale Gonultas, Turkish journalist, interview with Gatestone Institute, October 2022.

“After I reported on Yazidi women’s sales on the dark web, Ankara Anti-Terrorism teams came to my house. They emphasized that the buying and selling of foreign nationals within the borders of the Republic of Turkey is a ‘human trafficking crime’ and they claimed that I supported human trafficking through the press by publishing such news.” — Hale Gonultas, interview with Gatestone Institute, October 2022.

” [V]ery little is being done…. I do not believe ISIS members should be able to settle anywhere, and police authorities should actively search for them in every country. At the same time, the rescue of innocent Yezidi captives should be an associated priority. This is for security and safety but also for humanitarian and human rights reasons. These missing Yezidis have suffered enormously, and their rights must not be ignored.” — Pari Ibrahim, executive director of Free Yezidi Foundation, to Gatestone Institute, October 2022.

ISIS terrorists are living and operating in Turkey, some with Yazidis abducted from Syria or Iraq. For years, these Yazidi children and women have been enslaved, raped and sold. Most are survivors of the 2014 genocide by ISIS in the Sinjar region of Iraq. Even though it has been more than three years since ISIS was ousted from the last of the territory it seized in Syria and Iraq, these crimes are still taking place now.

The Commie Train’s A’Comin’ China Railway Rolling Stock Corporation is a Chinese state-owned company controlled by the People’s Liberation Army. So why are American cities contracting with them for their rail cars?By Debra Heine

https://amgreatness.com/2022/10/20/the-commie-trains-acomin/

Several large American cities have contracted with a Chinese state-owned rail car manufacturer to design and manufacture subway cars for their subway systems, raising serious cybersecurity and human-rights concerns. Over the past eight years, China Railway Rolling Stock Corporation (CRRC) has secured more than $2.6 billion in federal transit contracts to provide passenger railcars in Los Angeles, Boston, Chicago, and Philadelphia.

Lawmakers from both parties have taken notice, and are now demanding that the Biden Administration take action to prevent a company that has links to the Chinese military from dominating the railcar market in the United States.

CRRC, the world’s largest rolling stock manufacturer, has a headquarters in Springfield, Massachusetts (CRRC MA), and a production facility in Chicago (CRRC Sifang America). The Chinese state-owned company is reportedly controlled by the communist People’s Liberation Army (PLA), and has been identified as a threat to U.S. economic and national security. CRRC also has been called out repeatedly for human rights and labor violations.

CRRC’s use of brutal, anti-competitive tactics has given it the ability to offer bargain-basement prices that U.S. transportation agencies have found irresistible. The company allegedly uses the slave labor of Uyghur Muslim minorities in its factories, and child labor to mine for a mineral used in manufacturing its railcars.

In April 2019, retired U.S. Army Brigadier General John Adams wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post advising the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority to reject CRRC’s bid for its next series of rail cars.

Profits at the Expense of Patriotism Is a Dangerous Game by Lawrence Kadish

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19009/profits-patriotism

Today’s American mega-billionaires need to think long and hard about where their allegiances lie: perhaps reciting the Pledge of Allegiance before our nation’s flag might be a good place to start.

If past history is any indication, their current corporate behavior will become their personal legacy illuminated under a harsh and revealing spotlight.

American industrial giants, General Motors and Ford, found that to be the case when lawyers dug through national archives in the 1990s and discovered documents that revealed how these two corporations had their German-based subsidies working hand-in-glove with the Nazi regime both before World War II and during the conflict.

Company spokesmen were quick to suggest that those firms were operating at a distance but researchers begged to differ. History records that there is reason to be skeptical of corporate “spin.”

IBM also found itself being questioned about its business relationship with the Nazi regime. A 2002 report that found that its computing machines helped the Third Reich managing to commit mass murder on an industrial scale.

Today, social media founders such as Mark Zuckerberg need to think long and hard about their corporate relationships with countries such as China — nations that seek to assume the role of a global superpower at the expense of the United States. Published reports reveal that Zuckerberg has long regarded China as a crucial market for his products, only to find that the Chinese may now be seeking to “out-Zuckerberg” him by developing their own online “virtual universe” – a massive undertaking that Zuckerberg has sought to introduce as his next very big (and presumably very profitable) venture.

What he and other corporate executives are learning is that profits at the expense of patriotism is a dangerous game to play. The dividends for such a strategy will eventually be revealed to all and history will ask, “At what price was your nation’s future put at risk?”

Civilization Cannot Exist Without Righteous Retribution The minimum standard for any culture to survive. by Kurt Schlichter

https://www.frontpagemag.com/civilization-cannot-exist-without-righteous-retribution/

The only thing about the fact that a jury found that the degenerate scumbag who murdered seventeen people should not be executed is that it was just one nimrod juror who held out not to give the vermin the death he deserves. Statistically, even in a red state like Florida, it’s difficult to find a group of twelve people without a moral illiterate or two. In blue venues, it’s hard to find any moral literates at all.

Here’s the thing – a civilization that cannot come up with the moral testicularity to execute a creature who murders over a dozen of its children is a civilization in serious trouble. The minimum standard for any culture that intends on surviving – and surviving means dealing with the barbarians within and without – is to take its own side in the fight for survival. Eventually, there will be a backlash. The only question is how ugly it will be.

This injustice in the Sunshine State – appropriately deplored by Governor DeSantis – is a symptom of the larger problem. You see it manifested across our culture – suicidal tolerance and performative forgiveness. In places like Chicago, New York, Philadelphia, and other blue cities – it is always blue cities – the inhabitants murder each other with glee. But more than that, they generally act like savages. We have all seen the videos. Random creeps menacing citizens on the subways, packs of thugs raiding convenience stores or shopping malls, pitched battles between groups of aspiring Einsteins in Walmarts, animals cold-cocking citizens who are simply minding their own business. But no one stops them. No one holds them to account. The cops’ shrug, because the blue politicians have told them to stand down. The answer to those of us who protest is always the same – shut up, racist, and also give us your guns so that you cannot defend yourself from what the government refuses to suppress.

39 Years after Marine Barracks Bombing in Beirut And the killers have still not been brought to justice. by Kenneth R. Timmerman

https://www.frontpagemag.com/39-years-after-marine-barracks-bombing-in-beirut/

Ken Timmerman’s 12th book of non-fiction, And the Rest is History: Tales of Hostages, Arms Dealers, Dirty Tricks, and Spies, was recently released by Post Hill Press. Timmerman was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006 and has covered the Middle East for 40 years.

This Sunday is the 39th anniversary of the Iranian attack on the US Marines barracks in Beirut, which took the life of 241 US Marines. It was the single largest loss of life in the history of the US Marine Corps since the battle of Iwo Jima.

Every year on this date families gather for memorial services around the country to commemorate the lives of these first American victims of Islamic Iran’s vicious, relentless, and still unending war on America.

The attack on the US Marines followed on the heels of the April 18, 1983, attack on the US Embassy in Beirut. In my new book, And the Rest is History: Tales of Hostages, Arms Dealers, Dirty Tricks, and Spies, I call these attacks the “first blood” in Iran’s unending war on America.

For years we have known the names of the main perpetrators. Until now, only one has been brought to justice: Imad Fayez Mughniyeh.

Prior to 9/11, he was the terrorist with the most U.S. blood on his hands. A Lebanese-born Shiite Muslim who worked in Yasser Arafat’s elite Force 17, he was hired by Iran as their chief overseas terrorist once Arafat was forced out of Beirut in September 1982.

Mughniyeh was quick to prove his worth to his new masters with a series of massive car bombs in Lebanon. The first, on Nov. 11, 1982, took down the seven-story Israeli military headquarters in Tyre, Lebanon, killing 67 IDF personnel and Border Guards.

Next was the April 18, 1983, bombing of the U.S. embassy on the Beirut corniche, which I witnessed first-hand. Sixty-three people perished in that blast, including seventeen Americans. Among them were Kenneth Haas and Robert Ames, the CIA’s top spies in the Middle East. Indeed. Mugniyeh’s target was a top secret meeting of CIA station chiefs from around the region. In a single blow, Iran decapitated the Agency’s intelligence apparatus in the region.

A Globalist Coup in Westminster? Six weeks in, the UK swamp brings down Liz Truss. by Bruce Bawer

https://www.frontpagemag.com/a-globalist-coup-in-westminster/

Given what’s happened since her death on September 8, it would’ve been fitting for Queen Elizabeth II, in her final days, to have said, in an echo of Louis XV, “Après moi, le déluge.” Because it’s taken no time at all, since her passing, for the British ship of state to run aground.

In her last official act, on September 6, the Queen invited Liz Truss to succeed Boris Johnson as PM. Johnson – whose Spectator columns I’d read with enthusiasm for years – had been swept into power in a 2019 election in which the Tories won an 80-seat majority. The mandate: to get Brexit done. Boris got it done – sort of – but otherwise, in many ways, he spectacularly betrayed basic Conservative principles.

Backed by many voters who hoped he’d be a British Trump, Boris did little or nothing to tackle his country’s version of the swamp. On his watch, English police ignored Muslim rape gangs and arrested law-abiding citizens for criticizing Islam online. Boris championed strict COVID lockdown rules and mandatory vaccination, but broke the lockdown himself and then lied about it – a move that was used as an excuse to give him the heave-ho.

For me, the big lesson of Boris’s downfall was that a terrific political journalist doesn’t necessarily make a decent prime minister. As it happens, during the last months of his premiership I was fitfully making my way through Charles Moore’s magnificent three-volume biography of Margaret Thatcher. What a woman! The more I read, the more I admire her. It really can feel as if she was born to be prime minister. She had what it took – unshakable core beliefs, strong self-discipline, excellent management skills, etc. – to rescue Britain from socialism and help bring down the USSR. Why wasn’t Boris able to do something similar for the UK – and the world – at a time when globalism was threatening liberal democracy? Could it be he just wasn’t wired for the job? Alas, some writers aren’t good for anything other than writing.

January 6 Committee Doubles as November 8 Committee Even after the Capitol riot show’s season finale, partisan programming may continue. James Freeman

https://www.wsj.com/articles/january-6-committee-doubles-as-november-8-committee-11666297630?mod=opinion_lead_pos11

If the average American voter cared about the Capitol riot committee, she might wonder whether the committee’s members or its targets are more loathsome. All along, citizens have had to either laugh or cry at the spectacle of federal election deniers leading an investigation of federal election denial. But is the partisan congressional committee now interfering in a state campaign?

As for the deniers conducting these proceedings, committee Chairman Bennie Thompson (D., Miss.) was among the 31 Democrats who sought to prevent the certification of the re-election of President George W. Bush in 2005.

Committee stalwart Rep. Jamie Raskin (D., Md.) has a long history of refusing to accept Republican wins. He recommended dismantling the Electoral College after the 2000 election and after the 2016 election he attempted to prevent the certification of Donald Trump’s victory and then boycotted the inauguration.

And who could forget Rep. Adam Schiff (D., Calif.), who helped poison our politics by spending years falsely claiming to have “more than circumstantial evidence” of Trump campaign collusion with Russia?

After this season’s final hearing was rescheduled to avoid competing for television viewers with hurricane coverage, one might have thought the partisan shenanigans were finally drawing to a close for this oddball committee comprised exclusively of Democrats and Democrat-approved Republicans. But now there’s a question involving the surprisingly tight gubernatorial race in New York.

The Tory Warning to U.S. Republicans Liz Truss is being made the scapegoat for failed tax-and-spend policies.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-tory-warning-to-u-s-republicans-11666305620?mod=opinion_lead_pos3

For the shortest-tenured Prime Minister in British history, Liz Truss sure has a lot of ignominy loaded on her shoulders. She’s apparently responsible for the fall of the pound, a looming recession, and the political demise of the Conservative Party. All accomplished in a mere 44 days.

Ms. Truss resigned as PM Thursday after a fiasco of a premiership, but the fault is far from hers alone. She is being made the scapegoat for the economic policy blunders that the ruling Conservatives have made over 12 years in power, and especially since 2019 under previous Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

Ms. Truss’s tax cuts lasted two weeks as a mere proposal and never even came to a vote in Parliament. She had told the Tory rank-and-file about her tax plans when she ran to succeed Mr. Johnson. The only surprise she offered in office was a cut in the top marginal income tax rate to 40% from 45%—about £2 billion in lost revenue in a year. Yet this supposedly was the nail that lost the shoe, that lost the horse, that lost the economy.

Ms. Truss certainly mismanaged her policy rollout. She didn’t prepare the country or her party to sell tax cuts after a decade of Tory tax-and-spend politics. She lacked an electoral mandate of her own and only narrowly beat former Chancellor Rishi Sunak in the PM contest. When markets fell after exotic pension fund schemes broke down amid rising interest rates, she lost her nerve. She sacked her first Chancellor and threw over her program. The Tory sharks then went for the kill.

But Ms. Truss didn’t create Britain’s 10.1% inflation rate (blame the Bank of England), didn’t produce energy shortages and price spikes (blame the last two Prime Ministers), and didn’t fail to supervise pensions so they wouldn’t gamble to get higher returns. All of that was in motion before she took office.

Rough political justice would now give the premiership to Mr. Sunak, whose policies contributed to this economic mess. Whoever gets the PM job may be volunteering for a suicide mission, as an election must be held by January 2025. Even the Labour Party could beat this pack of panicked Tories.

The dumbest argument is that Ms. Truss’s fall is a warning to U.S. Republicans not to cut taxes. Ms. Truss wanted pro-growth policies to counter the economic failures of the Boris Johnson Tories, who pursued the policies lauded by America’s big government conservatives: more welfare and healthcare entitlements, green energy subsidies, higher taxes on business, and easy money.

If Republicans want to end up like the Tories, they’ll follow the Boris Johnson-Rishi Sunak tax-and-spend model.