Displaying the most recent of 90425 posts written by

Ruth King

Boycott-Barrett Ploy Shows Difference Between Democrats and Republicans By Andrew C. McCarthy

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/10/boycott-barrett-ploy-shows-difference-between-democrats-and-republicans/

It makes no sense to participate in the testimonial hearings that prove the nominee is highly qualified but then not show up for the vote.

I n a final infantile stunt, Senate Judiciary Committee Democrats boycotted this morning’s vote on passing Judge Amy Coney Barrett’s Supreme Court nomination out of committee and onto the floor. Barring some unforeseen setback, she is going to be confirmed for a seat on the Supreme Court by early next week.

The boycott was a pointless gesture because Republicans had the votes necessary to move Judge Barrett’s nomination forward. It was a radical break with democratic norms, by which we register dissent by voting nay, not by picking up our ball and going home like poorly raised children. Having crossed yet another Rubicon, Democrats will eventually learn, at some point when it really costs them (as has their eradication of the filibuster in confirmations), that what goes around comes around. And practically speaking, the boycott was self-destructive, coming only after the nominee had impressed Americans for two days with her intellect, poise, and good nature. Today, no one much missed them at a committee vote that was a foregone conclusion. Everyone, however, was watching on the two days when the Democrats deigned to show up, and Barrett reduced them to an intramural competition for coveted Ass-Clown of the Year honors.

Therein lies a telling difference between the two parties. To win, Republicans must be sound in pursuing their strategies because the media oppose them at every turn. They are thus fortunate to be led by a superb tactician, Senator Mitch McConnell. Democrats, by contrast, are cheered on by the media in pursuing their strategies, regardless of whether they are sharp or daft. They are thus spared the criticism that disciplines politicians to plan carefully.

If you’re the Democrats, and you’re willing to employ such extreme measures as boycotting hearings to try to stop Barrett, then the time to boycott is when she testifies. The point would be to prevent her from impressing the country with her temperament and legal acumen. By such a ploy, it might have been possible to delay the hearing — and delays that could defer a final vote on Barrett until after Election Day are Democrats’ only realistic shot at killing it.

Atlas shrugs The establishment doesn’t think he’s an expert. He disagrees Amber Athey

https://spectator.us/scott-atlas-shrugged-greater-restrictions/

Trust the experts’ is the battle cry of America’s elitists. After President Trump’s shock election in 2016 showed that Americans are sick of hearing from politicians, the politicized classes adopted experts as their proxy for power. Climate change ‘experts’ justify AOC’s radical Green New Deal with prophecies of planetary extinction. Foreign policy ‘experts’ claim America will destabilize the Middle East if, as Trump wants, we withdraw troops from Syria and Afghanistan. Medical ‘experts’ are wheeled out to justify increasing control over the lives of everyday Americans through draconian lockdowns, mask mandates and stringent travel restrictions.

Dr Scott Atlas, one of the newer members of the White House’s COVID-19 task force, is not an ‘expert’, according to the ever-changing standards of the establishment. He has only 25 years of high-level experience, including serving as the Chief of Neuroradiology at Stanford University Medical Center and crafting healthcare policy for over a decade. However, as his Wikipedia page condescendingly reminds us multiple times, Atlas is ‘a radiologist, not a specialist in public health or infectious diseases’, and thus his advice must be ignored. CDC director Robert Redfield was busted on a private phone call alleging that ‘everything he says is false’. Dr Anthony Fauci said on television he is ‘concerned’ about Atlas, the ‘outlier’ of the task force, spreading misinformation. Fox News’s Chris Wallace, who is also not an epidemiologist, mocked Atlas for predicting Trump would make a ‘full recovery’ after contracting COVID-19.

Twitter has joined the group of banshees trying to silence Atlas. The social media company blocked a post from him this week that said ‘Masks work? NO’, saying that it violated their policy on misinformation. Atlas says his tweet was intended to question public mask mandates, noting that they’re only useful when people are unable to social-distance.

There are plenty of other non-epidemiologists on the White House task force, such as labor secretary Eugene Scalia and secretary of agriculture Sonny Perdue. Pennsylvania’s health secretary Rachel Levine, who sent coronavirus patients back to nursing homes, has a medical background in pediatrics. New York’s governor, Andrew Cuomo, who signed an executive order doing the same, has no medical background at all. None of those people has been attacked by the public-facing health officials.

Now Corruption Story Is About Joe, Not Hunter How long can the media blackout continue? James Freeman

https://www.wsj.com/articles/now-corruption-story-is-about-joe-not-hunter-11603392288?mod=djemalertNEWS

At this hour many news consumers remain trapped behind the Silicon Curtain. Nevertheless word continues to spread about the Biden family business, thanks to an underground publication founded by Alexander Hamilton in 1801. The latest story from the New York Post, which shares common ownership with the Journal, comes courtesy of veteran columnist Michael Goodwin. He reports a statement from a Biden business partner who says that Joe Biden was involved in the family influence-peddling racket, including with China.

Mr. Goodwin reports a statement from Tony Bobulinski, a Biden business associate. The statement attributed to Mr. Bobulinski appears to confirm that contrary to his denials, Joe Biden was involved with his son Hunter’s business, and it was not a business in which a future president ought to be involved. The Bobulinski statement published by the Post reads in part:

I am the CEO of Sinohawk Holdings which was a partnership between the Chinese operating through CEFC/Chairman Ye and the Biden family. I was brought into the company to be the CEO by James Gilliar and Hunter Biden. The reference to “the Big Guy” in the much publicized May 13, 2017 email is in fact a reference to Joe Biden. The other “JB” referenced in that email is Jim Biden, Joe’s brother.
Hunter Biden called his dad “the Big Guy” or “my Chairman,” and frequently referenced asking him for his sign-off or advice on various potential deals that we were discussing. I’ve seen Vice President Biden saying he never talked to Hunter about his business. I’ve seen firsthand that that’s not true, because it wasn’t just Hunter’s business, they said they were putting the Biden family name and its legacy on the line.

Biden’s Character Campaign A more focused Trump tries to attack the Democrat’s strength.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/bidens-character-campaign-11603427398?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

President Trump came to the second and last presidential debate Thursday night trying to pin down Joe Biden on his policies and family’s business with foreign governments. Mr. Biden did his best to parry and duck, coming back time and again to his main themes of “character” and an end to divisive politics. With a solid lead, and more than 40 million votes already cast, Mr. Biden’s bet is that he can run out the clock.

Mr. Trump was both better prepared and more disciplined than in the first debate, and if he loses on Nov. 3 he will wish he had done that the first time. He offered the best defense we’ve heard him make of his coronavirus effort, focusing on the vaccines in development, his mobilization of resources in the spring, and the need to balance protection of the vulnerable with reopening the country.

Mr. Biden is his most demagogic when he addresses the virus, saying at one point that “anyone responsible for that many deaths should not remain as President.” We’ve criticized Mr. Trump’s inconsistent and sometimes Panglossian rhetoric, but calling him responsible for every American death is neither honest nor decent. Mr. Biden’s “plan” on Covid is essentially Mr. Trump’s with more prudent rhetoric and a warning to wear a mask. On potential future lockdowns, Mr. Trump says no while Mr. Biden says maybe.

How to Steal an Election – Part III by Chris Farrell

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16677/how-to-steal-an-election-part-iii

Here comes the offensive information campaign. Election night results indicate a Trump victory. The Left wants to keep counting and counting and counting ballots until they get the number that lets them claim victory — they want election “season.”

Trump and his campaign have sufficient state election returns and polling data to claim victory. Trump tweets: “VICTORY!” Twitter takes it down and locks his account, and those of his campaign. He goes out to the campaign hotel ballroom for a victory speech and only OneAmerica News Network carries the speech. Trump’s proclamations are branded “fake news.” Zero coverage. Networks and other news media outlets show poll workers and election officials counting and counting and counting “contested” ballots. The news media and the social media giants will not let Trump win. That is not the headline they will allow. Efforts by the Trump campaign to claim victory and certify election results are subjected to endless lawsuits — all of which are reported on by media outlets, because Trump has (supposedly) been caught cheating, of course.

You see how this plays out. When the truth cannot be reported, it is worse than being lied to about what is truly happening. The insidious plot of the Left can irretrievably twist the constitution and the nation in just a very few days. Fight for the truth.

We are less than two weeks from election day, so here is your final installment to help you understand the theft of the upcoming presidential election. We previously established the Left’s documented plan to disrupt the 2020 presidential election, and then examined some of the information operations techniques deployed against the American public to persuade and influence the election “season” ahead.

In the past few days, we have been treated to an information suppression operation by the Left and their public relations arm (the “journalists” of the news media and social media tech giants) — that perfectly demonstrates the countermeasures that can be deployed to actively deny the truth. This important defensive technique — swarming and shutting down reporting on a subject by furiously ignoring it, or reporting it as “debunked,” “discredited,” or “foreign intervention.” The offensive application is discussed below, but first, some context.

FBI Director Wray is Worse than Comey by Chris Farrell

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16674/fbi-director-christopher-wray

We must now come to grips with the likelihood that Wray is worse for the country than Comey.

Wray has an affirmative obligation to come forward with credible derogatory information and conduct appropriate investigations when presented with evidence. Even Comey did that. It now appears he stood on the sidelines and watched President Trump go through impeachment unjustly, while having credible reason to believe that Vice President Biden had actually done all of the very things Trump was falsely accused of doing. Wray had a legal obligation to tell the Attorney General, the President and the Congress. He had a moral obligation to tell the American people.

Wray’s record of non-performance was bad enough. Wray could not see the gross political bias in the FBI. He does not see voter fraud. Wray covers-up for corrupt FBI agents. He claims the violent domestic terrorist group Antifa is more of an ideology. These are astounding denials of documented facts.

Here is the bigger question concerning FBI Director Wray: What is going on within the FBI about which we have no idea? One is left to imagine the once vaunted Bureau as nothing but a rat’s nest of corruption populated by either political schemers or careerist ostriches obsessed with their pensions and post-retirement, FBI-referred jobs.

Christopher Wray assumed office as the eighth director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation on August 2, 2017. He was preceded by the odious coup-plotter James Comey. We must now come to grips with the likelihood that Wray is worse for the country than Comey.

The old adage that “the cover-up is worse than the crime” is applicable here. Comey’s plot was seditious. Wray’s conspiracy runs deeper. He adopted the wrongdoing of Comey and talked it away in Washingtonian passive voice: “mistakes were made.” Wray engaged in a program of damage control and institutional preservation for the disgraced FBI. He did not clean house and reform. Wray is acting as a legal obstructionist, fighting tooth and nail to keep the full story of the corrupt “Crossfire Hurricane” investigation of President Trump and his associates from the American people. FISA warrants are phonied-up and courts lied to repeatedly? Oh, that’s a “training” problem.

Palestinians: What Failure Looks Like by Khaled Abu Toameh

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16652/palestinians-failure-syria

The leaders did not travel to Syria to find ways to help the Palestinians living there.

It is one thing to fail your people by stealing the money that the international community sends to them. But it is another level of unacceptable indifference to turn a blind eye to atrocities committed against your own people by an Arab country.

By praising the Syrian government for “achieving security and stability,” the Fatah leaders are actually sending the message to Assad that he can continue to kill, imprison and torture Palestinians by the thousands.

By holding meetings in Damascus without discussing how to help their beleaguered people in Syria, Palestinian leaders are sending the message that thwarting peace plans and condemning Arabs for making peace with Israel take precedence over the safety of their people. In short, this visit marks another star “failure” of the Palestinian leadership.

When Arabs such as Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan bin Abdul Aziz denounce Palestinian leaders as “failures,” they are specifically referring to financial corruption, divisions among the Palestinians, ingratitude toward Arab countries that supported them financially and politically, and the many missed opportunities to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Recently, however, Palestinian leaders displayed another of their ongoing “failures” when they visited Syria, where, for the past nine years, thousands of Palestinians have been killed, wounded, displaced, arrested and forced out of their homes. The leaders did not travel to Syria to find ways to help the Palestinians living there.

This time, the Palestinian leaders, representing the ruling Fatah faction, arrived in Damascus during the first week of October for talks with leaders of Syria-based Palestinian factions on ways of achieving “national unity,” holding new elections for the Palestinian Authority (PA) presidency and parliament (Palestine Legislative Council) and “confronting Israeli-American conspiracies” against the Palestinian people.

Charities, China, and the Biden Family Grift by Julie Kelly

https://amgreatness.com/2020/10/21/charities-china-and-the-biden-family-grift/

Despite the Bidens’ moralizing about helping others, the nonprofits did little but help the Biden family. It’s almost like a family tradition.

A few days before the 2016 presidential election, outgoing Vice President Joe Biden and his wife, Jill, announced the formation of the Biden Foundation. “The Biden Foundation is an educational foundation dedicated to exploring the ways that everyone—no matter their income level, race, gender, age, or sexuality—can expect to be treated with dignity and to receive a fair shot at achieving the American Dream,” read the nonprofit’s press release dated November 5, 2016.

In the span of several weeks, the nonprofit quickly was seeded with millions of dollars in donations. A year-end disclosure report for 2016 showed $3.4 million in contributions; the group spent a few hundred thousand on expenses but awarded no grants that first year.

The practice of spending most of its money on salaries and expenses while directing little or nothing toward the Biden Foundation’s stated mission followed a pattern. During its brief three-year history, the Biden Foundation raised nearly $10 million but less than ten percent was awarded to other charities—and half of that meager sum was donated to another Biden-run nonprofit.

Although the Biden Foundation pledged to focus on the couple’s pet projects, a very small portion of the Bidens’ largess directly benefited any of those causes. Instead, the charity appears to have funded the Bidens’ pre-primary campaigning for president—most of the charity’s activities involved public speeches by Joe and Jill—while reaching out to key constituencies such as military families and gay rights activists. 

The charity launched an “LGBTQ Inclusion and Equity Initiative” with the YMCA. Biden was attempting to burnish his LGBTQ cred before announcing his candidacy. “[W]e will begin to change our culture to one of greater inclusion, empathy and understanding by enhancing the ability of YMCAs to serve LGBTQ youth and adults,” Biden explained in a May 2018 CNN column. The initiative generated lots of positive coverage for Biden as Democratic voters began to vet their party’s prospective presidential candidates.

The Biden Crime Family Comes Undone Say it ain’t so, Joe. Daniel Greenfield

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/10/biden-crime-family-comes-undone-daniel-greenfield/

The Biden family is notorious for being the crookedest clan not only in Delaware, but in D.C.

Delaware is a pretty small place, but D.C. is even smaller, yet the scope for corruption, unethical behavior, conflicts of interest, and even brazen thievery are far greater in Washington D.C.

And yet the Biden family stood out even there. To be born a Biden in the era after Joe switched his party affiliation, plagiarized his speeches, and inappropriately touched every woman or girl he could get his hands on in the state and the nation, was to be bred into dirty money.

Joe Biden was now asked in Wisconsin if Hunter had “profited off the Biden name”.

“None whatsoever,” the godfather of Delaware retorted. And the entire state laughed.

Say it ain’t so, Joe.

It doesn’t matter if you’re a Democrat or a Republican, in Delaware, everyone knows that the Biden name means money in the bank. Literally. Just ask MBNA, Hunter’s former employer, whose executives poured $200,000 into Joe’s coffers, and one of whom bought his house.

“Don’t worry about investors,” James Biden, Joe’s brother, famous for scoring a billion dollar contract to build houses in Iraq, told executives at Paradigm Global Advisors.  “We’ve got people all around the world who want to invest in Joe Biden.”

Beheaded Infidels Vs. Fear of Islamophobia Political correctness will ensure that non-Muslim heads continue to roll in the West. Raymond Ibrahim

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/10/beheaded-infidels-vs-fear-islamophobia-raymond-ibrahim/

An 18-year-old Muslim man beheaded a school teacher in France last Friday for showing cartoons of Islam’s prophet Muhammad to his students, in the context of discussing free speech and expression.

Some weeks earlier, another Muslim man killed an American citizen in Pakistan for also committing “blasphemy.”  The murdered man, Tahir Naseem, was actually being tried for blasphemy in a court room—which carries a maximum death penalty—when Faisal Khan, 15, walked in and opened fire on him.  While Khan “broke the law” by essentially jumping the gun, Pakistani law itself is sympathetic to the vigilante’s view that blasphemy is a crime, punishable by death.

In France, there is no blasphemy law and freedom of speech is or was once deemed an essential right of all citizens.  In this sense, then, the government of France, unlike the government of Pakistan, would obviously not hold Samuel Paty, the beheaded teacher, guilty of any blasphemy.

And yet the effective differences between France and Pakistan, within the context of these two crimes, seem to end there: while Pakistan and many other Muslim nations uphold Islam’s blasphemy laws, France and other Western nations pretend that Islam has no blasphemy laws.   After all, to acknowledge that Islam does indeed call for the punishment and death of blasphemers against Muhammad—to say nothing of any number of other “problematic” sharia stipulations, such as death for apostates—is to be “Islamophobic.”

In short, whereas Muslim nations like Pakistan actively affirm and uphold Islam’s blasphemy codes, Western nations like France passively acquiesce to them by pretending they don’t exist and therefore need no addressing.