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October 2022

ELECTIONS, MY SAY: Comments turned off

MEMORY LANE: THE CRITICAL DEBATE BETWEEN INCUMBENT PRESIDENT JIMMY CARTER AND CHALLENGER RONALD REAGAN

By on October 9th, 2022

The old cliche: “The more things change the more they remain the same.” Ronald Reagan won by a landslide in 1980. This debate was critical in making the case for conservatism and the need for change.  Long but worth a read: rsk

“The candidates will debate questions on domestic, economic, foreign policy, and national security issues.

The ground rules for this, as agreed by you gentlemen, are these: Each panelist down here will ask a question, the same question, to each of the two candidates. After the two candidates have answered, a panelist will ask followup questions to try to sharpen the answers. The candidates will then have an opportunity each to make a rebuttal. That will constitute the first half of the debate, and I will state the rules for the second half later on.

Now, based on a toss of the coin, Governor Reagan will respond to the first question from Marvin Stone.

QUESTIONS

U.S. ARMED FORCES

Mr. Stone. Governor, as you’re well aware, the question of war and peace has emerged as a central issue in this campaign in the give-and-take of recent weeks. President Carter’s been criticized for responding late to aggressive Soviet impulses, for insufficient buildup of our Armed Forces, and a paralysis in dealing with Afghanistan and Iran. You have been criticized for being all too quick to advocate the use of lots of muscle, military action, to deal with foreign crises. Specifically, what are the differences between the two of you on the uses of American military power?

Governor Reagan. I don’t know what the differences might be, because I don’t know what Mr. Carter’s policies are. I do know what he has said about mine. And I’m only here to tell you that I believe with all my heart that our first priority must be world peace, and that use of force is always and only a last resort, when everything else has failed, and then only with regard to our national security.

Now, I believe, also that this meeting, this mission, this responsibility for preserving the peace, which I believe is a responsibility peculiar to our country, that we cannot shirk our responsibility as the leader of the Free World, because we’re the only one that can do it. And therefore, the burden of maintaining the peace falls on us. And to maintain that peace requires strength. America has never gotten in a war because we were too strong. We can get into a war by letting events get out of hand, as they have in the last 3 years under the foreign policies of this administration of Mr. Carter’s, until we’re faced each time with a crisis. And good management in preserving the peace requires that we control the events and try to intercept before they become a crisis.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Prudence Is a Virtue The ethical man is also the prudent man. Is Joe Biden prudent? Was it prudent to talk about the prospect of Armageddon? By Roger Kimball

By on October 9th, 2022

https://amgreatness.com/2022/10/08/prudence-is-a-virtue/

Joe Biden has me thinking about Aristotle. 

If that seems odd—and I understand that it does—consider Biden’s much publicized remarks last week at a Democratic fundraiser about “Armageddon.” Referring to Vladimir Putin’s veiled but increasingly strident threats to use “all the means at our disposal” to defend Russian territorial integrity, Biden went full-Cuban missile crisis on the assembled members of the great Democratic ATM: “We have not,” he said, “faced the prospect of Armageddon since Kennedy and the Cuban missile crisis.” 

Hmm.

Are we to infer that Joe Biden is like John F. Kennedy facing down Nikita Khrushchev? You might think that. I couldn’t possibly comment. 

Granted, the idea is preposterous in about 87 different ways. But perhaps Biden’s speechwriters wanted to plant a seed. Anyway, we are probably meant to keep JFK in the back of our minds. 

Biden did not actually cite the Book of Revelation, which identifies Armageddon as the site of the final battle between good and evil at the end of the world, but I have no doubt that the word “Armageddon” was echoing loudly down the corridors of the Kremlin. That, I am pretty sure, was by design. Did it have Putin polishing the launch apparatus on some of his 6000 nukes? I don’t know.

Probably, though, Putin’s lips were pursed when he heard Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the Ukrainian president and celebrated T-shirt model, call upon NATO to conduct “preventative action” against Russian targets to prevent their use of nuclear weapons in Ukraine.

I thought it was cute that Zelenskyy’s translator first said “preventative strikes” before correcting himself and substituting “preventative action.” 

Another seed planted. Was it deliberate? You tell me.

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

Thirteen judges say ‘no’ to Yale law grads By Monica Showalter

By on October 9th, 2022

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/10/thirteenjudges_say_no_to_yale_law_grads.html

Toxic school, toxic graduates.

Instead of learning how to behave professionally as lawyers at Yale law school, the storied and prestigious school, possibly the most prestigious in the country, has become a haven for wokester intolerance of the most infantile sort. Speakers are shouted down instead of debated through the ace legal reasoning they’re supposed to teach over there,dissidents are “canceled” and the radical student body in this atmosphere is making a noisy spectacle of itself.

It’s gotten so bad that judges are saying to themselves they want no part of this — and the rot is so deep the entire school is considered hopelessly tainted. Not surprisingly, Yale is now increasingly seeing its grads treated like pariahs by real-world judges. The tally of judges who have stated they will no longer hire Yale graduates as clerks is now 13.

According to legal blog Behind The Black (hat tip: Instapundit):

Following the public announcement by Judge James Ho of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit that he would no longer hire Yale graduates as law clerks because of that school’s enthusiasm for blacklisting and censorship, it appears that a dozen other judges have joined his boycott as well.

“Students should be mindful that they will face diminished opportunities if they go to Yale,” said a prominent circuit court judge, whose clerks have gone on to nab Supreme Court clerkships. “I have no confidence that they’re being taught anything.”

With one exception, the judges made clear this is a policy they are imposing on future—not current—Yale Law School students.

Ho’s public speech was even more harsh.

“Yale presents itself as the best, most elite institution of legal education. Yet it’s the worst when it comes to legal cancellation.” The school “sets the tone for other law schools, and for the legal profession at large. I certainly reserve the right to add other schools in the future. But my sincere hope is that I won’t have to. …”

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ELECTIONS, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

$370 Billion in Taxpayer Dollars for WHAT? The Matching Funds Fairness Doctrine by Lawrence Kadish

By on October 9th, 2022

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18967/370-billion-taxpayer-dollars

The recent Schumer-Manchin so-called Anti-Inflation Climate Bill and the actions of US President Joe Biden have seemingly resulted in a $370 billion slush fund in the hands of not a climate change expert, but a power broker, John Podesta, and will likely find its way into the 2022 and 2024 elections for Democrat candidates.

Accordingly, members of Congress must make a correction with a FAIRNESS DOCTRINE, allowing $370 billion in matching funds to be put into the hands of the Republican primary winners in order to level the playing field.

After all, if, in the run-up to the 2020 election, $419 million could swing votes to that extent, what will a thousand times that funding be able to buy?

Although private funding by Zuckbucks has been “banned or restricted” in quite a few counties or states, public funding has not been banned. And what do you know, thanks to Congress, here it is!

How it works, as Mollie Hemingway notes, is:

“Wisconsin [which Biden won by just 20,000 votes] is a prime example of how a supposed nonpartisan ‘get out the vote group’ really was a Democratic Party-aligned effort to flip a state back their way.

“The Center for Technology and Civic Life, funded by Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg and founded by three Democratic operatives, said their mission was to ensure voting could be ‘done in accordance with prevailing public health requirements’ to ‘reduce the risk of exposure to coronavirus.’

“But really they were infiltrating local election operations and pushing for as many Democrats as possible to vote by mail….

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ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Democrats Run a Network of Fake News Sites Designed to Promote Liberal Candidates: Sarah Arnold

By on October 9th, 2022

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/saraharnold/2022/10/08/democrats-run-a-network-of-fake-news-sites-designed-to-promote-liberal-candidates-n2614169?utm_campaign=rightrailsticky3

Democrat operatives are running a scheme to convince people in battleground states to vote Left. 

According to a shocking discovery by Axios, 10 swing states are being flooded with more than 50 local media outlets designed to promote liberal candidates. 

Each news outlet has a non-partisan sounding name such as the Milwaukee Metro Times, the Tri-City Record, and the Mecklenburg Herald, which all push a heavy Democrat message while bashing Republican candidates. 

The report reveals that the sites have just enough stories on local crime and sports to make them look like real local news outlets, however, the real mission is to hide subliminal messaging favoring Democrats. 

“Each follows a similar template: aggregated local news content and short write-ups about local sports teams and attractions — interspersed with heavily slanted political news aimed at boosting Democratic midterm candidates and attacking Republican opponents,” Axios said. 

The sites are reportedly run by a one-year-old Florida-based company called “Local Report,” and according to Axios, the sites may also be run by a progressive media company owned by a Hillary Clinton-affiliated investment firm called True Blue Media.

According to its “About Us” page, six American Independent (a progressive news outlet) writers have contributed to almost all of the articles on the sites. 

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ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Red Wave? Democrats Forced to Abandon Key House Races: Spencer Brown

By on October 9th, 2022

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/spencerbrown/2022/10/07/cash-strapped-democrats-to-abandon-key-house-races-n2614127?utm_campaign=rightrailsticky3

With barely more than one month remaining until the midterm elections, the leading entities tasked with helping Democrats win and retain seats in the House of Representatives say they are running out of money and scrambling to decide which Democrats get the remaining cash available to try and dampen the expected red wave heading for Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s gavel. 

Whining to The Washington Post, Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) Executive Director Tim Persico said there “are places that I don’t know if we are going to be able to get to” in order to help Democrats. “We are just getting outspent everywhere, so it is just a question of how much can we withstand.”

That makes the DCCC one of several groups WaPo said Friday morning were discovering they “lack the funds needed to fully contest all of their potentially winnable House races this cycle,” leading to “tough decisions about where to spend on television ads” as Democrats get outspent by GOP groups.

“The relative shortfall in outside spending is likely to leave some Democratic incumbents in contested races at sharp advertising disadvantages, while restricting the party’s ability to compete in open seats or to unseat Republican incumbents,” concluded The Post based on conversations with Dem groups.

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FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

How the US failed to stop OPEC from cutting oil production The administration’s foreign policy is seen as weak and feckless: John Pietro

By on October 9th, 2022

https://spectatorworld.com/topic/how-biden-failed-to-stop-opec-from-cutting-oil-production/

Near the top of President Biden’s to-do list for the past few months has been to keep gas prices down. On Wednesday, this was dealt a likely fatal blow by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), which, led by Saudi Arabia, agreed to cut its overall production by two million barrels per day.

In actuality, the cut will mean a reduction of more like one million barrels per day if it’s taken into account that OPEC has been underproducing compared to its previously stated production goals. Still, this is a significant cut, and the effects on oil markets are already being felt.

The Biden administration has been scrounging around for ways to get more oil onto the market and lower prices, from releasing tens of millions of barrels from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to chastising the oil producers themselves. In July, Biden went to Saudi Arabia in an attempt to smooth over America’s rocky relationship with Riyadh and get the Saudis to pump more oil (it seems neither succeeded).

Most egregiously, though, the administration is contemplating offering Venezuela sanctions relief as part of a deal to restart talks with the local opposition and — the real reason — to allow Chevron to produce oil in the country again. This is particularly troubling given that the regime in Caracas has no intention of giving up power and restarting “talks” is a useless gesture. Such a deal would project weakness at a time when projecting strength should be a top priority, as Russia’s war in Ukraine drags on and China threatens Taiwan.

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

Yair Lapid’s holiday bloopers Ruthie Blum

By on October 9th, 2022

https://www.jns.org/opinion/yair-lapids-holiday-bloopers/ 

During a memorial ceremony for Israel Defense Forces soldiers who fell 49 years ago in the Yom Kippur War, interim Prime Minister Yair Lapid made a blooper that gave his rivals further cause to ridicule him.

The Yesh Atid chairman took the opportunity of the somber event, held on Mount Herzl in Jerusalem, to talk about “societal unity,” a favorite campaign mantra of the parties in the anti-Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu camp. The point that the caretaker premier wanted to make was that the Israeli public had banded together when a coalition of Arab armies, led by Egypt and Syria, launched their infamous surprise attack on the country.

“When thousands of worshipers were torn from synagogue and forced to replace their tallit [prayer shawl] with uniforms and their tefillin [phylacteries] with rifles, they did not ask who was right-wing and who was left-wing, or who fasted and who did not,” he said of the response to the massive Oct. 6, 1973, assault, which began on the holiest day in Judaism.

“The religious person exiting the synagogue and the secular one teaching his children to ride bicycles [on the vehicle-free] streets all donned uniforms and headed shoulder-to-shoulder into battle,” he added.
What Lapid hadn’t realized was that tefillin aren’t laid on Yom Kippur or on any other holiday. Ditto where Shabbat is concerned. Woops.

In fairness, the former journalist-turned-politician—like many of his colleagues and much of the populace—is a secular Jew. And though he would have been taught some level of Torah in elementary school (he didn’t matriculate from high school), his unfamiliarity with the rituals of his religion isn’t terribly shocking.

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FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Thanks to the Biden Administration, Russia and Iran Are Closer than Ever by Majid Rafizadeh

By on October 8th, 2022

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18963/russia-iran-alliance

“I am absolutely sincere in this regard when I say that Iran got much more than it could expect [from the Biden administration]….. [The Iranian leaders] are fighting for [their] national interest like lions. They fight for every comma, every word, and as a rule, quite successfully.” — Mikhail Ulyanov, Russia’s chief negotiator for the US in the nuclear talks, The New York Post, March 12, 2022.

Russia, of course, is freely trading with Iran, in spite of sanctions against both countries.

Russia and the ruling mullahs of Iran are also ratcheting up their military cooperation in plain sight. The Iranian regime continues to provide Russia with military drones, which have inflicted significant damage on Ukraine — the first time Iranian weapons have been deployed on European soil….

“[N]ow we’re going to pay them hundreds of billions of dollars, and they’re going to have nuclear weapons within a short period of time. Honestly, they can’t be stupid; they must hate our country….” — Former President Donald J. Trump, iranintl.com September 4, 2022.

Thanks to the Biden administration’s weak, or absent, leadership, Russia and the regime of Iran’s mullahs have become closer, more emboldened and more empowered than ever.

The two bedfellows, the authoritarian regimes of Russia and Iran, are, thanks to the Biden administration, running the Iran nuclear talks, while the US waits out in the hall. Russia’s chief negotiator, Mikhail Ulyanov, earlier this year praised his Iranian “colleagues”:

“I am absolutely sincere in this regard when I say that Iran got much more than it could expect [from the Biden administration]. Our Chinese friends were also very efficient and useful as co-negotiators.”

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

It Takes Their Collective to Kidnap Your Child Parental rights provide the line in the sand over which, should the Left successfully cross, you will no longer be a parent or a sovereign citizen of a free republic. By Thaddeus G. McCotter

By on October 8th, 2022

https://amgreatness.com/2022/10/07/it-takes-their-collective-to-kidnap-your-child/

In what history will record as one of the most egregious perversions, the Left projects its own sins onto its victims to transmogrify progressive oppressors into faux victims. It is a personal and political justification and weaponization that, by its very audaciousness, can leave opponents momentarily dumbstruck. During their initial stupefaction, a dissenting citizenry is at the greatest risk of being subsumed by the Left’s repressive, collective insanity.

Often, the citizens find it impossible to believe what the Left is doing, as it is so mind-numbingly hard to comprehend rational actors engaging—indeed, celebrating—their outrageous conduct and injurious aims, while claiming to be victims. 

Parental rights prove both the point and provide the line in the sand over which, should the Left successfully cross, you will no longer be a parent or a sovereign citizen of a free republic.

Among those organizations captured during the Left’s long march through the institutions, three powerful entities are painting their outrageous actions as noble and themselves as victims; and they are demanding the Biden Administration’s politically weaponized Department of Justice stifle all dissent to these entities’ radical policies in support of surgically altering the sex of children.

Per the Daily Wire’s Ryan Saavedra:

The American Medical Association, American Academy of Pediatrics, and Children’s Hospital Association all signed the letter to U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland, urging the administration to ‘investigate the organizations, individuals, and entities’ that it claimed were ‘coordinating’ and ‘provoking’ outrage online directed at those providing the controversial services.

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