Displaying the most recent of 90433 posts written by

Ruth King

“Political Realignment and the 2020 Election” Sydney Williams

http://www.swtotd.blogspot.com

There are roughly 250 million Americans of voting age, of which about 62%, or 155 million, actually vote.

Gallop, as of May 2020, showed 31% of Americans identify as Democrats, 25% as Republicans and 40% as Independents. Despite the growth in unaffiliated voters. the numbers lend credence to Nixon’s observation, quoted above, that both parties are “big tent” parties. It explains why neither Party has been extremist in governing…yet. 

But will that happy situation continue? There is reason for concern. There has been an inexorable trend toward big government. Ninety years ago, Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal expanded the role of government and he attempted to pack the Supreme Court. Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society further inflated government’s role, increasing dependency on “benevolent” government. George W. Bush introduced the concept of “compassionate” conservativism, a euphemism for a more dominant part to be played by government. Barack Obama, with his call for universal health care and his vision expressed in “The life of Julia” of cradle-to-grave government, wanted government yet more powerful. In 1930, government expenditures accounted for 11.1% of GDP. By 1960, that number was 15.1% and today spending by government approaches 40% of GDP – levels last seen during World War II.

Today’s Democrats, a Party once comprised of urbanites, private sector union members and leaders, immigrants, the poor and Dixiecrat segregationists, now encompasses suburban and coastal elites, Wall Street titans, tech company CEOs, globalists, academicians, government bureaucrats, public sector union leaders, the media and those in the entertainment businesses. Republicans, once the Party of fiscal conservatives, country club types, suburbanites, big business, religious conservatives and Wall Street, have become the Party of small business owners, the military, social and religious conservatives, “deplorables” (a catch-all phrase for working men and women throughout the nation, including those who believe in God, honor, duty, family and country), and a small number, like me, who put common sense above ideology.

Canceling Beethoven is the latest woke madness for the classical-music world Jonathan S. Tobin

https://nypost.com/2020/09/17/canceling-beethoven-is-the-latest-woke-madness-for-the-classical-music-world/?utm_campaign=iphone_nyp&utm_source=mail_app

Think some things are so beloved and essential to Western civilization they can’t be canceled? Think again.

If there’s anything we should have learned from months of “mostly peaceful” Black Lives Matter street protests, statue toppling and online mobs seeking to silence anyone who dissents against leftist narratives about “racism,” it’s that no one, living or dead, is safe from the attentions of woke fascists. Even Ludwig van Beethoven.

Beethoven’s work is not only at the core of the standard repertory of classical music; some of his most popular works have also become part of popular culture, their melodies recognizable even to those who’ve never heard an orchestral concert.

For the last 200 years, Beethoven’s compositions have also been symbols of the struggle for freedom against tyranny. The “Ode to Joy” from the conclusion to his Ninth Symphony remains the definitive anthem of universal brotherhood. It is no coincidence that the opening notes of his Fifth Symphony — whose rhythmic pattern duplicates the Morse Code notation for the letter “V” as in “V for Victory” — were used by the BBC for broadcasts to occupied Europe during the Second World War.

But to woke critics, Beethoven’s music has taken on a new, darker meaning. To musicologist Nate Sloan and songwriter Charlie Harding, stars of the “Switched on Pop” podcast produced in association with the New York Philharmonic, the Fifth Symphony is a stand-in for everything they don’t like about classical music and Western culture. As far as they’re concerned, it’s time to cancel Ludwig.

Why Is Biden So Frightened by a Drug Test? Drug screening is a routine practice among employers, including the federal government. by David Catron

https://spectator.org/biden-drug-test/

The federal government mandates that millions of Americans submit to drug screenings to qualify for certain types of positions. This includes members of the military and other employees of the Department of Defense. Yet 2020 Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden — a man who wants the voters to elect him Commander in Chief — called President Trump a fool on Monday for suggesting that they both submit to just a such a test before their first debate. Biden has responded equally defensively to requests that he produce a recent cognitive acuity test. This will inevitably cause voters to wonder what he’s hiding.

At least one Times columnist quite literally opined that he would prefer a cognitively impaired President Biden to the hated President Trump. 

The Democrats and the corporate media scoff at Trump’s drug test challenge as if it isn’t to be taken seriously. They dismiss it as if the president is merely trolling Biden. In reality, however, he is asking a serious question to which the voters deserve a serious answer. In the unlikely event that Biden somehow wins in November, he will have access to the nation’s nuclear launch codes. Does anyone reading this believe this is a good idea after witnessing his incoherent maunderings and erratic behavior? The most recent medical report we have on him was released last year, and it omits any serious assessment of his mental or emotional capacity to handle the office he seeks.

The president of the United States wields a level of power equaling the wildest fantasies of the most megalomaniacal Roman emperor, including a Praetorian Guard. In addition to commanding the most powerful military force on the planet, he will preside over the largest and most sophisticated state police apparatus in human history. He will have the alarming power to order drone strikes on anyone anywhere on the planet. Yet the media won’t discuss whether Biden’s age has affected his physical and mental fitness to serve. They weren’t always so reticent, as the New York Times clearly demonstrated after the 1984 Reagan–Mondale debate in Louisville, Kentucky:

The President seemed to lose his way in Louisville, got his figures mixed up, and didn’t seem to be mentally alert in dealing with Mr. Mondale’s arguments. This is being attributed by some to his advancing years.… What Louisville did was not to expose his age, which everybody knew, but to expose his mind, which the voters didn’t know. This is what has been covered up in the last four years by his amiable personality, and his superb reading of speeches from invisible mirrors, written and contrived by the best public-relations team ever to enter the White House.

Covid Puts the ‘I’ in the High Holy Days Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur aren’t the same without communal prayer. Rabbi Jonathan Sacks

https://www.wsj.com/articles/covid-puts-the-i-in-the-high-holy-days-11600383609?mod=opinion_lead_pos10

Lord Sacks was chief rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth, 1991-2013.

This year the Jewish High Holy Days will be like no other. Usually the synagogue is packed on Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur, with a buzz of noise that is not all prayer. The haunting call of the shofar, or ram’s horn, summons Jews to judgment. On Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, we are on trial—giving an account of our lives, confessing our sins endlessly, going through every letter of the alphabet, including not a few offenses many of us wouldn’t have had the time, energy or inclination to commit. It is powerful, purgative, and ultimately purifying. We need this annual reset of our lives.

The sense of closeness and intimacy that comes with the crowd makes these days what they are: “The glory of the king is in the multitude of people.” Yet that won’t be present this year. Almost everywhere, prayers won’t be like that at all. Some synagogues’ doors will remain closed. Others will have social distancing, face masks, restrictions on communal singing, and other necessary precautions that restrict the number of people present and their proximity to one another. For a community-minded faith like Judaism, this almost feels like an amputation. The services are bound to feel hollow and lacking in atmosphere. This isn’t how the Days of Awe are supposed to be.

In this respect, Judaism has much in common with other faiths. Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs and others have had to cancel or restrict public prayer when believers needed it most. All religious leaders have struggled to provide the comfort of faith, the uplift of prayer and the solace of sacred space. Yet Judaism, like other faiths, has proved creative in finding alternative ways to create moments of inspiration.

Whoops—We Found 1,666 Ballots Once more, New Jersey’s bad example is a lesson for everyone else.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/whoopswe-found-1-666-ballots-11600384516?mod=opinion_lead_pos4

New Jersey’s July 7 primary is two months in the rearview mirror. But officials in Sussex County, home to 140,000 people in the state’s northern tip, announced on Monday that they had discovered 1,666 ballots “in a bin that was mislabeled.” Whoops.

China, Once Germany’s Partner in Growth, Turns Into a Rival ‘China is not a developing country, not at all. It’s an established, top-notch manufacturing country’ By Tom Fairless

https://www.wsj.com/articles/china-once-germanys-partner-in-growth-turns-into-a-rival-11600338663

An informal partnership that kept Germany’s economy tethered to China’s for decades is unraveling, threatening Berlin’s—and Europe’s—post-pandemic recovery as the Asian giant stages a powerful comeback.

The relationship that saw Germany provide China with the machines to power its economy helped the German economy recover rapidly after the financial crisis. But German business leaders say the model is no longer working as China turns from partner to rival.

Germany should see its gross domestic product shrink by between 5.8% and 7.1% this year according to German public- and private-sector economists—better than most other Western economies but much worse than China’s expected 2.5% growth.

While Germany’s exporters are benefiting from a recovery in international trade, they aren’t getting the lift from China that they did a decade ago. In July, German exports were up from June but still 11% lower from a year earlier. China’s exports have exceeded last year’s levels for two months.

This divergence, economists and German business leaders say, is partly the result of Beijing’s strategy to encourage manufacturers to produce more sophisticated machinery that is more competitive with high-end German capital goods that were previously unmatched.

The EU: Hizballah’s Intersectional Partner by Richard Kemp

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16519/eu-hizballah-partner

The reality is, should the EU get its way, contrary to its claims to try and uphold the Good Friday Agreement, its demands would harm future prospects for peace and stability in Northern Ireland by undermining and destabilising the union.

Where does Hizballah get the weapons and explosives it is reportedly providing to the New IRA? Iran. The EU has been at the forefront of supplying funds to Iran, including cash used for its terrorist proxies across the Middle East and beyond.

The EU’s bungling foreign policy does not proscribe Hizballah in its entirety, mulishly maintaining a fictitious separation between “political” and “military” wings, despite the terrorist group’s own insistence that there is no distinction. Meanwhile Hizballah has attempted large-scale terrorist attacks in Britain, France and Germany….

[T]he EU falsely claims to uphold peace in Ireland while itself facilitating the greatest threat to that peace.

Intersectionality has become a cynical craze among woke activists determined to promote division and undermine the fabric of Western society. But long before these Johnny-come-lately militants launched their campaigns of disruption, cancelling all who disagree, doing their best to get dissenters fired and tearing down historic statues, other militants were putting their brand of intersectionality into action to kill, maim and destroy the targets of their own hatred.

Sinn Fein’s campaign of violence against the British state and the people of Northern Ireland, fronted by the Provisional IRA, lasted 30 years until their comprehensive infiltration by British intelligence, especially the Royal Ulster Constabulary Special Branch, forced them to lay down their arms under the Good Friday Agreement in 1998.

Sinn Fein-IRA’s intersectionality included close cooperation with a wide range of fellow terrorists, including the Basque separatist movement, ETA. For many years, Sinn Fein-IRA also colluded with terrorist gangs in the Middle East, themselves masters of intersectionality, sometimes crossing the Shia-Sunni divide as they still do today.

Perhaps the most significant of these unholy alliances involved Colonel Muammar Gadaffi’s regime in Libya. Gadaffi helped re-energise IRA terrorism in the mid-1980s by supplying cash and weaponry, including rifles, pistols, machine guns, rocket launchers, surface-to-air missiles, flamethrowers and high explosives. Four massive arms shipments from Libya — totalling more than 100 tons — made it through to the IRA strongholds and a fifth was intercepted by the French navy. These bombs and guns were used to murder large numbers of innocent people in Northern Ireland.

Why I am Suing CNN by Alan M. Dershowitz

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16520/cnn-lawsuit-dershowitz

Freedom of speech is designed to promote the marketplace of ideas. It is not a license for giant media companies to deliberately and maliciously defame citizens, even public figures.

So when CNN made a decision to doctor a recording so as to deceive its viewers into believing that I said exactly the opposite of what I actually said, that action was not protected by the First Amendment.

So I am suing them for a lot of money, not in order to enrich myself, but to deter CNN and other media from maliciously misinforming their viewers at the expense of innocent people. I intend to donate funds I receive from CNN to worthy charities, including those that defend the First Amendment.

Every American will benefit from a judicial decision that holds giant media accountable for turning truth on its head and for placing partisanship above the public interest.

I love the First Amendment, I support the First Amendment, I have litigated cases defending the First Amendment. I have written and taught about the First Amendment. And I was a law clerk for the Supreme Court when it rendered its landmark 1964 decision in New York Times v. Sullivan, which “protects media even when they print false statements about public figures, as long as the media did not act with ‘actual malice.'”

But I also understand the limitations of the First Amendment. Freedom of speech is designed to promote the marketplace of ideas. It is not a license for giant media companies to deliberately and maliciously defame citizens, even public figures. So when CNN made a decision to doctor a recording so as to deceive its viewers into believing that I said exactly the opposite of what I actually said, that action was not protected by the First Amendment. Here is what CNN did.

Two Campaign Workers for GOP Opponent of Minn. Rep. Ilhan Omar Shot, One Fatally, Amid Deadly Crime Wave By Debra Heine

https://amgreatness.com/2020/09/17/two-campaign-workers-for-gop-opponent-of-minn-rep-ilhan-omar-shot-one-fatally-amid-deadly-crime-wave/

Two campaign staffers for the Republican congressional candidate running against Democrat Rep. Ilhan Omar were shot in Minneapolis on Monday, one of them fatally.

A teenager and another individual who worked on Republican Lacy Johnson’s campaign were both shot outside of a gas station on Minneapolis’ north side. Andre Conley, a 17-year-old outreach coordinator for Johnson’s campaign, was killed in the attack. The other outreach coordinator was taken to the hospital in serious condition and is expected to survive.

Minneapolis has seen homicides spike 87 per cent in the wake of the George Floyd riots and the city council’s efforts to “dismantle the police.”

The staffers were not performing campaign duties at the time of the incident, the Johnson campaign said. According to police, one or more assailants opened fire on a group of people standing in front of the gas station and then fled on foot.

The Left’s Moral Compass Isn’t Broken In order to have a broken moral compass, you need to have a moral compass. Dennis Prager

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/09/lefts-moral-compass-isnt-broken-dennis-prager/

All of my life, I have said that the left’s moral compass is broken.

And all of my life, I was wrong.

Why I was wrong explains both the left and the moral crisis we are in better than almost any other explanation.

I was wrong because in order to have a broken moral compass, you need to have a moral compass to begin with. But the left doesn’t have one.

This is not meant as an attack. It is a description of reality. The left regularly acknowledges that it doesn’t think in terms of good and evil. Most of us are so used to thinking in those terms — what we call “Judeo-Christian” — that it is very difficult for us to divide the world in any other way.

But since Karl Marx, the left (not liberalism; the two are different) has always divided the world, and, therefore, human actions, in ways other than good and evil. The left, in Friedrich Nietzsche’s famous words, has always operated “beyond good and evil.”

It all began with Marx, who divided the world by economic class — worker and owner or exploited and exploiter. To Marx and to Marxism, there is no such thing as a good or an evil that transcends class. Good is defined as what is good for the working class; evil is what is bad for the working class.