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Ruth King

Halloween comes late for Democrats The results not just in Virginia but New Jersey will haunt them for the next year By Charles Lipson

https://spectatorworld.com/topic/halloween-comes-late-democrats-mcauliffe/

When a Republican wins in a reliably Democratic state, it’s big news. That’s exactly what happened in Virginia on Tuesday, where newcomer Glenn Youngkin defeated former governor Terry McAuliffe. Youngkin won even though McAuliffe had a well-oiled political machine and high name recognition, and was campaigning in a state Joe Biden won by 10 points only a year ago.

Yet all those advantages were for naught. The Commonwealth will have a Republican governor for the first time in over a decade. It is likely Republicans will win the other two statewide races as well, for lieutenant governor and attorney general. They could even win the House of Delegates, which had been under firm Democratic control.

For Democrats, fright night stretched beyond Virginia into New Jersey, where as of press time the incumbent Democratic governor, Phil Murphy, is struggling to keep his position. The race is still too close to call.

Since Democrats easily carried both states in the last presidential and gubernatorial races, these results must send a shiver through the party. The Virginia race was particularly important. To understand its implications for 2022, we need to understand how Youngkin won.

The key was independent voters, especially the suburban voters who rejected Trump in 2020. Youngkin persuaded many of them, as Trump could not. The vote also demonstrates that Virginians are none too pleased with the performance of Democrats, who control both the state and national governments.

McAuliffe’s loss shows his party cannot recapture those disaffected voters by constantly asserting that their every opponent is a Trump wannabe or white supremacist. Instead, what they should do is to break free of their far left and put forward a moderate agenda. And they have to deliver effective results on the ground. Yet so far, national Democrats have delivered only failure: inflation, onerous mandates, empty store shelves, racially divisive school lessons, and a humiliating withdrawal from Afghanistan. Those are fierce headwinds for local candidates.

Reconsidering Colin Powell’s record on Israel and Iran Moshe Phillips

https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/316151

“Colin Powell was at times accused of being less than sympathetic to Israel, [but] that was not at all the case,” former Defense Department official Dov Zakheim recently claimed in the Washington Jewish Week newspaper. But a careful examination of Powell’s record shows that friends of Israel in the U.S. had legitimate concerns.

The well-known anecdotes about Powell speaking some Yiddish and serving as a “Shabbos goy” as a teenager are heartwarming. It’s too bad that this seems unrelated to interactions with Israel.

It was Powell who pressured Israel not to respond to Saddam Hussein’s Scud missile attacks during the Gulf War. As missile after missile struck the heart of Israel, as more than 4,000 buildings were damaged and 74 Israelis were killed, Israel’s hands were tied by Powell’s pressure.

In April 2001, Palestinian Arab terrorists in Gaza fired hundreds of rockets at Israeli kindergartens and kibbutzim. Israel hit back at the terrorists. Powell’s response? He publicly denounced Israel’s response as “excessive and disproportionate.”

Abraham Foxman, the longtime national director of the Anti-Defamation League, said Powell’s harsh criticism of Israel was an “overreaction” and “an erroneous judgment about the Israeli action.” Malcolm Hoenlein, executive Vice President of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, said Powell’s language “was inappropriate and subject to distortion by the media.”

‘From the River to the Sea’: Hamas Explains What British Students Want by Richard Kemp

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17908/hamas-british-universities-jews

This conference flies in the face of the gullible optimists who have suggested the terror group has somehow softened its stance on Israel. That narrative has been especially prevalent since the issuance of a political statement in 2017 that was designed to improve Hamas’s image by hoodwinking Westerners into thinking that the organization had reformed. While some pretend otherwise, this document did not supersede or amend Hamas’s 1988 charter which is explicit: “Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it.”

The 2017 document re-affirmed: “Hamas rejects any alternative to the full and complete liberation of Palestine, from the river to the sea”, to be achieved by “armed resistance”.

The 1988 charter also calls for the murder of Jews across the world, naked Jew-hate that was conveniently dropped from the 2017 statement. But in 2019, senior Hamas politburo member Fathi Hammad reiterated: “You have Jews everywhere and we must attack every Jew on the globe by way of slaughter and killing.”

Those arguing that the Palestinian Authority has a different agenda from Hamas are wrong. Despite extensive subterfuge for the consumption of the international community, including implausible claims of support for a two-state solution, the PA shares the same “river to the sea” doctrine for the destruction of Israel that British university students find so attractive.

[W]hen students and others call for “Palestine” to be free “from the river to the sea”, it is this fantasy that they embrace: Jews massacred, expelled, enslaved, hunted down or allowed a precarious subsistence as second class citizens in a repressive Islamic state.

Most recently, last week, more than 500 academics signed a petition attacking Glasgow University in Scotland for apologising over an antisemitic article published in a journal on the university website. Their concern was not the blatant antisemitism in the article but the fact that the university apologised for it.

In an era where opposition to racism and discrimination against all other peoples is rightly at the top of university authorities’ and students unions’ priorities, why does this not apply to Jews? Why are Jews the exception? Calls for the violent erasure of the one and only Jewish state is not only tolerated, it is actively encouraged by some professors, faculty bodies and students’ union leaders. This causes many Jewish students to apply only to the few universities which are known to be less intolerant. It is time for university authorities to put a stop to these vicious demonstrations of antisemitic hate, and if they fail to do so, for the government to start cutting their funds.

“Free, free Palestine — from the river to the sea.” I was met, as so often elsewhere, by this ubiquitous chant from the standard issue protesters when I arrived at the University of Essex in the UK to give a talk last week. What river? What sea? I doubt many of them knew. Most of these students are fed such slogans when they are coaxed to come out and demonstrate by the campus rabble-rousers — a little bit of animation to distract from the monotony of student life on an autumn evening.

To Protect Fauci, The Washington Post is Preparing a Hit Piece on the Group Denouncing Gruesome Dog Experimentations For years, the White Coat Waste Project was heralded by The Post as what they are: an activist success story uniting right and left. But now its work imperils a liberal icon. Glenn Greenwald

https://greenwald.substack.com/p/to-protect-fauci-the-washington-post?token=

Anger over the U.S. Government’s gruesome, medically worthless experimentation on adult dogs and puppies has grown rapidly over the last two months. A truly bipartisan coalition in Congress has emerged to demand more information about these experiments and denounce the use of taxpayer funds to enable them. On October 24, twenty-four House members — nine Democrats and fifteen Republicans, led by Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) — wrote a scathing letter to Dr. Anthony Fauci expressing “grave concerns about reports of costly, cruel, and unnecessary taxpayer-funded experiments on dogs commissioned by National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.” Similar protests came in the Senate from a group led by Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY).

The campaign to end these indescribably cruel, taxpayer-funded experiments on dogs has been underway for years, long before Dr. Facui became a political lightning rod. In 2018, I reported on these experiments under the headline “BRED TO SUFFER: Inside the Barbaric U.S. Industry of Dog Experimentation.” That article described “a largely hidden, poorly regulated, and highly profitable industry in the United States that has a gruesome function: breeding dogs for the sole purpose of often torturous experimentation, after which the dogs are killed because they are no longer of use.”

D.C. Jail Transfers Out 400 Prisoners for Disgusting, Inhumane Conditions—But Not a Single J6 Detainee By Megan Fox

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/megan-fox/2021/11/02/d-c-jail-transfers-out-400-prisoners-for-disgusting-inhumane-conditions-but-not-a-single-j6-detainee-n1529277

One of the political prisoners being held in jail for participating in the Capitol riot, Nathan DeGrave, sent a letter that was released on Twitter alleging horrific conditions in the D.C. jail for January 6 prisoners. DeGrave’s letter alleged “extreme medical neglect,” mental and physical abuse, “unlivable conditions,” dirty water, and starvation. His allegations resulted in a surprise inspection to back up his claims.

According to the Washington Post, “the unannounced inspection, from Oct. 18 to Oct. 23, began five days after a federal judge in Washington found the jail warden, Wanda Patten, and D.C. Corrections Director Quincy Booth in contempt of court in a case involving the alleged mistreatment of a detainee charged in the Capitol riot.”

Judge Royce C. Lamberth found that “jail officials ‘abused’ the civil rights of the defendant, Christopher Worrell,” due to neglecting his wrist injury that required surgery. Lamberth then called for a full investigation into the treatment of the J6 prisoners.

The surprise inspection by Lamont J. Ruffin, the acting marshal for U.S. District Court in Washington, has resulted in the transfer of 400 prisoners to a different facility, but none of them will be J6 detainees. According to the Washington Post, the inspection found “evidence of systemic mistreatment of detainees, including unsanitary living conditions and the punitive denial of food and water,” just like DeGrave’s letter claimed. Not only that, but the officials found “large amounts of standing human sewage… in the toilets of multiple occupied cells,” and staff members were observed “antagonizing detainees” and “directing detainees to not cooperate” with the inspectors.

The Injustices Facing J6 Protesters Are Warnings to You You are the threat to the America the Left wants. By Dan Gelernter

https://amgreatness.com/2021/11/02/the-injustices-facing-j6-protesters-are-warnings-to-you/

A Google news search for Nathan DeGrave will show nothing more recent than two weeks old. This is peculiar, given that his letter on the conditions at the D.C. Department of Corrections was published October 30 and should be the biggest story in America. 

DeGrave is a January 6 protester who has spent the last nine months in a special prison block at the D.C. Department of Corrections. He has not had a trial. He has not been convicted of the crimes with which he is charged. He is there for the purpose of keeping the rest of us at home. He is there as a reminder that, while the government may not care about violent crime on our streets, there is no limit to their brutality when their own power is threatened. 

The January 6 protesters were not, by themselves, a threat to that power. But inasmuch as they represent you and me and hundreds of millions of Americans who love their country, the government has taken it upon themselves utterly to destroy them—their lives, livelihoods, and health—as a warning to the rest of us. 

If you have not read DeGrave’s letter, you must. But these are the relevant points: Prisoners are subjected to a starvation diet under which DeGrave has lost 15 pounds and now fears he would be unrecognizable to his family. Sanitation is poor; mold and filth are everywhere. Raw sewage has overflowed the cellblock. Chronic sickness is pervasive. Medical conditions requiring breathing machines and medication are left untreated, while prisoners are forced to wear masks at all times (for their health!) or risk loss of privileges and physical abuse. 

The guards are all-powerful. They confiscate legal materials, prevent meetings with family and with attorneys (by requiring two-week COVID quarantine lockdowns after such meetings). They lock down the cells any time interviews about the prison appear on TV. The prisoners are prepared, says DeGrave, for more punishment in retaliation for his letter. 

The guards are mostly “migrants from Africa who have been conditioned to hate us, and hate America.” They have beaten prisoners for singing the National Anthem. A guard yelled “Fuck America!” and threatened to lock the prisoners down for a week if they ever sing the anthem again. A man who tried to organize a Bible study group was beaten nearly to death, and has been left permanently blind in one eye. The man’s name is Ryan Samsel. 

This is happening, not in North Korea nor the Sudan, but in the D.C. Department of Corrections on 14th Street NW, 12 blocks from the White House. 

It is not our purpose to comment on the charges these men face—and DeGrave’s charges may be more serious than he suggests in his letter. The point is that the conditions these men face are utterly inhumane. Cruel and unusual punishment is un-American, as is the concept of punishment without trial. But this treatment would be equally unacceptable for convicted criminals. 

The Pernicious Racism of ‘Anti-Racism’ The 10 worst instances of Critical Race Theory in our universities. Sara Dogan

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/11/pernicious-racism-anti-racism-sara-dogan/

The Top Ten

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis
University of Kentucky
University of Minnesota
Stanford University
Virginia Tech University
University of Tennessee-Knoxville
Texas Tech University
Arizona State University
University of Florida
University of California-Los Angeles

(Universities are not ranked within the top ten.)

Introduction

Over the last year, Critical Race Theory has become a household term, promoted by the left as essential to racial progress and denounced by the right as a racist throwback to the Jim Crow era of racial segregation.

Critical Race Theory (CRT) is a radical revision of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s dream that each American be judged “not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” While Dr. King and the leaders of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960’s promoted “colorblindness,” CRT insists on the exact opposite view, teaching that our character, our beliefs, and our place in society is predetermined by our skin color. By this reckoning, Whites are deemed to be inherently racist, born into a framework of “white supremacy” which infiltrates all American institutions. By contrast, racial minorities, and especially Blacks are regarded as perpetual victims of the “white supremacist” society into which they were born.

Taking its cues from Marxism, Critical Race Theory divides society into oppressors and the oppressed—categories which all-to-neatly correspond to whites and racial minorities. And just as with Marxism, CRT holds that the only way to truly eliminate racism is to destroy our institutions and rebuild them on the foundation of “racial equity.”

Investigate the White Coat Supremacist Gang of Four Turn the light on Fauci, Francis Collins, Nancy Messonnier, and the CDC’s Epidemic Intelligence Service. Lloyd Billingsley

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/11/investigate-white-coat-supremacist-gang-four-lloyd-billingsley/

“Neither NIH nor NIAID have ever approved any grant that would have supported ‘gain-of-function’ research on coronaviruses that would have increased their transmissibility or lethality for humans,” said National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins in a May 19 statement.

In October, weeks after Collins announced his resignation, the NIH admitted funding a “limited experiment” to test if bat coronaviruses were “capable of binding” to a human receptor.

That exposes National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) boss Dr. Anthony Fauci as a liar, but there’s more to the man. It was recently revealed that Fauci’s NIAID funded cruel experiments on beagles in a Tunisian lab. Any investigation of Fauci should consider his treatment of human beings, particularly in his home state of New York.

According to a January 30 report by state Attorney General Letitia James, thousands more nursing home residents may have died from COVID-19 than Gov. Andrew Cuomo publicly acknowledged. As investigators learned, nursing home deaths had been undercounted, even in facilities the state health department had made public.

As ProPublica noted, “the true death toll among nursing home residents was not mentioned in Cuomo’s much-publicized memoir on his leadership successes handling the pandemic.” The story launched an outcry, even among Democrats and the establishment media.

On February 15, Gov. Cuomo defended his pandemic response and the next day, Fauci appeared on CNN with Jim Scietto. Gov. Andrew Cuomo, Scietto recalled, had “argued that his state was following federal guidelines when he ordered those long-term care facilities to accept patients returning from hospitals. I wonder, can you clarify that. Was he really following federal guidelines to do this?”

Cancel Culture Eats Its Own Odds and ends, ends at odds. Larry Elder

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/11/odds-and-ends-ends-odds-larry-elder/

Why doesn’t President Joe Biden place illegal immigrants in college dorms? They would be around people who love them and want them here. They would get better food, housing and medical care. And they would get a firsthand look at the open-mindedness and tolerance of the young American Left.

Just as the welfare state changed the culture of out-of-wedlock births by incentivizing women to marry the government and men to abandon their financial and moral responsibility, free money and eviction moratoriums have changed the culture of work by reducing the stigma of not doing work.

Students in communist China study science, technology, engineering and math. Students in America study “critical race theory.” What could possibly go wrong?

It’s a shame Biden did not choose Sen. Bernie Sanders, D-Vt., for Housing and Urban Development Secretary. He could have explained how a socialist can acquire three houses.

If you are black and believe in hard work, accountability and personal responsibility, then you become the black face of white supremacy. If you are white and believe the same things, then you become the proof of white supremacy.

Another American Revolution in Virginia Racism loses, freedom wins. Daniel Greenfield

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/11/another-american-revolution-virginia-daniel-greenfield/

“What happens in Virginia will in large part determine what happens in 2022, 2024, and on,” Kamala Harris had declared while campaigning for McAuliffe.

For the first time in her life, she’s right.

The American Revolution was won in Virginia. As General Cornwallis surrendered at Yorktown to the American armies commanded by George Washington, the British band played, “The World Turned Upside Down.” The world turned upside down again in Virginia with a new revolution against the tyrannical rule that has gripped the state and the nation.

Glenn Youngkin, the Republican rebel, repeatedly invoked the spirit of Washington, Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe, those storied Virginian rebels, on the campaign trail and in his victory speech celebrating the political world turning upside down with the fall of Terry McAuliffe.

It’s impossible to overstate the shadow cast by McAuliffe, Bill Clinton’s consigliere, DNC chair, Hillary’s campaign co-chair, and former governor. Not all that long ago McAuliffe was being tipped for a White House run. Now he couldn’t even manage to get his old job back.

Youngkin’s victory in the gubernatorial race slew one of the last giants of Clintonworld.