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Ruth King

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Keep an Eye on the Michigan Senate Race Republican John James is the best Republican hope for a surprise pickup on Election Night.

By on October 26th, 2020

https://www.wsj.com/articles/keep-an-eye-on-the-michigan-senate-race-11603659430?mod=opinion_lead_pos5

Michigan hasn’t elected a Republican U.S. senator since 1994, and Republicans this year are working to save more than half a dozen seats in the upper chamber. But the Senate race in Michigan presents an unexpected pickup opportunity. Recent polls show Republican John James, a 39-year-old African-American Iraq war veteran, within striking distance of first-term Sen. Gary Peters and outperforming President Trump, who narrowly carried the state in 2016. The Real Clear Politics average has Mr. Peters leading 48.6% to 43.4%.

Mr. Peters, 61, was the only nonincumbent Democrat elected to the Senate in 2014. But his GOP opponent answered questions clumsily and repeatedly stumbled on the trail. Mr. James looks more formidable.

A Detroit native, he served eight years in the military before joining his family’s company, James Group International. He is now CEO of Renaissance Global Logistics, a subsidiary. Although he lost a 2018 challenge to Sen. Debbie Stabenow by 6.5 points, he was fighting a strong undertow: Democrats swept Michigan’s statewide offices, flipped two congressional seats and picked up five seats each in the state House and Senate.

Running on the same ticket as Mr. Trump may be both a blessing and curse. While the president may motivate Republican-leaning voters who didn’t turn out in 2018, he may do the same for Democrats. To flip the Senate seat, Mr. James will need to persuade moderates who dislike Mr. Trump but are leery of progressive policies.

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CHARLOTTE'S NEWS WEB, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The New Feudalism Jeffrey A. Tucker

By on October 25th, 2020

https://www.aier.org/article/the-new-feudalism/

On February 28, the idea of locking down and smashing economies and human rights the world over was unthinkable to most of us but lustily imagined by intellectuals hoping to conduct a new social/political experiment. On that day, New York Times reporter Donald McNeil released a shocking article: To Take On the Coronavirus, Go Medieval on It. 

He was serious. Most all governments – with few exceptions like Sweden and the Dakotas in the US – did exactly that. The result has been shocking. I’ve previously called it the new totalitarianism. 

Another way to look at this, however, is that the lockdowns have created a new feudalism. The workers/peasants toil in the field, struggling for their own survival, unable to escape their plight, while privileged lords and ladies live off the labors of others and issue proclamations from the estate on the hill above it all. 

Consider a restaurant at which I dined one week ago in New York City. The mask mandate is in full force except that diners can take them off once seated. The staff cannot. The wait staff of restaurants wear plastic gloves too. Here you have diners enjoying themselves with food and drink and laughter, many of whom work at home and have faced relatively less economic deprivation, which I assume given how much this class of diners is throwing around on evening revelry. 

Meanwhile, you have this wait staff and the kitchen staff too with their faces covered, their voices muffled, and forced into what seems to be a subservient role. They appear like a different caste. Society has decided to treat them as the ranks of the unclean. The lockdowns have turned a dignified equality that once existed between the staff and customers, all cooperating together to live better lives, and turned it into a theater for feudalistic absurdism. 

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The tragic fight over a Zionist leader’s resting place Moshe Phillips

By on October 25th, 2020

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/24211

In Jabotinsky’s case, the controversy over his re-interment, decades later, is also a matter of significance—and offers important lessons for our own era.

The anniversary of the passing of a Jewish leader is often an occasion to reflect on the deceased’s life and legacy, and the death of the Zionist leader Ze’ev Jabotinsky in August 1940 is no different. 

But in Jabotinsky’s case, the controversy over his re-interment, decades later, is also a matter of significance—and offers important lessons for our own era.

Jabotinsky was one of the most dynamic and influential Zionist orators of the 20th century. Speeches were vital for inspiring the masses—especially the downtrodden masses of interwar Eastern Europe. He exhorted the Jews of Russia and Poland to take pride in their heritage, to recognize that violent anti-Semitism was on the horizon, and to prepare to settle in the Land of Israel.

But Jabotinsky was much more than just a speechmaker; he also was a man of action. He was the founder, in 1917, of the Jewish Legion, the first Jewish military force in nearly two thousand years. He created the Haganah, in 1920, to protect the Jews of Palestine against Arab pogromists, and spent years in a British prison for the “crime” of organizing Jewish self-defense. He was the spiritual father of the Irgun Zvai Leumi, the underground Jewish militia that fought for Jewish independence.

Two of Jabotinsky’s most devoted followers, Jewish underground leaders Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir, would later serve as prime minister of the State Of Israel that their leader did not live to see.

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CHARLOTTE'S NEWS WEB, ELECTIONS Comments turned off

‘Buyer’s remorse’ in play after ‘can you change your vote’ surges in searched terms

By on October 25th, 2020

https://www.skynews.com.au/details/_6204456990001

A wave of voters searched ‘can you change your vote’ following the final presidential debate marking the most times its been searched this election campaign, according to Sky News contributor Lauren Southern. The election campaign is hitting its final stretch with less than ten days remaining in the battle for the presidency.

Democratic candidate Joe Biden still has a significant lead in all national polls and in many key state-wide polls, but the President’s campaign has kicked into gear since recovering from COVID-19. President Donald Trump was considered to have performed much better than in the first debate, showing more restraint than in his previous encounter with Mr Biden.

Ms Southern said Pennsylvania – which polls show will go down to the wire – was “one of the top places” where the search term ‘can you change your vote’ was used. Sky News host Rowan Dean said given many states in the US have begun pre-polling, it looks like Biden voters are getting “buyer’s remorse” after witnessing the debate.

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

The treason of the educational class Censorship of knowledge and ideas is now expanding from campus to schoolroom Melanie Phillips

By on October 25th, 2020

https://melaniephillips.substack.com/p/the-treason-of-the-educational-class?token

Bad ideas owe their advance into mainstream thinking not just to bad people but also to otherwise decent people going along with such notions out of cowardice or other weakness.

The censorship of any thinking which conflicts with the orthodoxies of identity politics is increasingly destroying the western university as the crucible of reason, along with its core purpose to advance knowledge through the free play of evidence, ideas and argument.

This closing of the western mind is now taking place inside schools too. In America, high-school officials are increasingly imposing censorship and speech regulation.  A Vermont district has fired a school principal, Tiffany Riley, for writing on Facebook that she didn’t agree with the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement. As the legal commentator Jonathan Turley writes:

Shortly after that posting, Mount Ascutney School Board held an emergency meeting to declare that it is “uniformly appalled” and that Riley was “tone deaf” for making such a statement. In what should now be a major free speech case, the Board unanimously voted to fire Riley, citing her “denigrating, derogatory, or contrary to the movement for social equity for African Americans, including the Black Lives Matter movement.” 

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Reflections on Solzhenitsyn’s Harvard Address written by Sergiu Klainerman

By on October 25th, 2020

https://quillette.com/2020/10/24/reflections-on-solzhenitsyns-harvard-address/

THIS SPEECH COULD NOT BE DELIVERED IN HARVARD TODAY…AN ACADEMIC OUTPOST OF NEO-MARXISM…..RSK
In his 1978 Harvard commencement address, A World Split Apart, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, a fierce enemy of the Soviet system, delivered a forceful and insightful critique of the West, a society which he characterized as spiritually weakened by rampant materialism. The man who, when forced to leave his own country four years earlier, encouraged his countrymen to “live not by lies”, gave us a magnificent lesson in how to not be blinded by our own sense of superiority, and urged us to ask hard questions about who we are and where we are going.

When I first heard this speech in 1978 as a young refugee from communist Romania, I was able to appreciate Solzhenitsyn’s address in terms of the competition raging then between the West and the East, but did not comprehend its larger meaning. Rereading it today, in the fall of the horrible year 2020, I find it truly prophetic. It is now painfully clear that, as Solzhenitsyn was able to discern 42 years ago, the West has been gradually losing the will and intellectual ability to defend itself, not so much against foreign armies as it may have appeared in 1978, but against an army of internal critics determined to demolish everything the West used to stand for.

In the central part of the address Solzhenitsyn said:

A decline in courage may be the most striking feature which an outside observer notices in the West in our days. The Western world has lost its civil courage, both as a whole and separately, in each country, each government, each political party, and, of course, in the United Nations. Such a decline in courage is particularly noticeable among the ruling groups and the intellectual elite, causing an impression of loss of courage by the entire society. Should one point out that from ancient times declining courage has been considered the beginning of the end?

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

France Recalls Ambassador to Turkey After Erdogan Says Macron Needs ‘Mental Treatment’ By Rick Moran

By on October 25th, 2020

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/rick-moran/2020/10/25/france-recalls-ambassador-to-turkey-after-erdogan-says-macron-needs-mental-treatment-n1085581

France’s President Emmanuel Macron has declared war on radical Islam and Islamic separatism in France following the beheading of a history teacher who became a target after teaching about the Mohammed cartoons. This has angered Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whose Islamist regime is at loggerheads with France and NATO over their spat with Greece over some islands.

Erdogan took Macron’s crackdown on radical Islam as an affront to Muslims and questioned Macron’s sanity for doing so.

CNN:

“What is Macron’s problem with Islam? What is his problem with Muslims?” Erdogan said, speaking at his Justice and Development Party meeting in Kayseri.

Erdogan added: “Macron needs some sort of mental treatment. What else is there to say about a head of state who doesn’t believe in the freedom of religion and behaves this way against the millions of people of different faiths living in his own country?”

Given that Erdogan’s own policies are an affront to freedom of religion, it’s so delicious that he’s oblivious to his own hypocrisy.

Naturally, the French government resented this insult and recalled its ambassador for “an evaluation.”

“Excess and rudeness are not a method. We demand that Erdogan change the course of his policy because it is dangerous in every way. We do not enter into unnecessary polemics and do not accept insults,” a spokesperson at the Elysée Palace, home of the French presidency, told CNN.

The spokesperson added that France was recalling its ambassador to Ankara for an “evaluation of the ongoing situation,” which they described as a “rare move.”

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ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Fauci Prepping for a Biden Victory Daniel Greenfield

By on October 25th, 2020

https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/2020/10/fauci-prepping-biden-victory-daniel-greenfield/

Don’t wear masks. Make everyone masks. Sure, why not? Just say it in a soothing voice with a pleasant bedside manner.

In a CNN interview on Friday, Fauci was asked if he thought Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden’s plan to fight for mandates on mask-wearing across the country would be helpful.  

Fauci told CNN’s Erin Burnett that it would be a “great idea” to have everybody wearing masks uniformly. He also responded to criticism that mandates on masks would be difficult to enforce. 

Everyone? In the entire country? Much of which, at a county level, has only experienced a limited infection impact?

As Fauci’s own mask-wearing, or lack thereof at sporting events, reminds us, he doesn’t believe any of this stuff.

But it’s the stupid thing that Biden has come up with on the advice of an advisor and donor base limited to the New York, San Francisco, and other big blue city crowd. And Fauci, readapting to the media’s expectations of a Biden victory, is all in on it.

“One of the issues though, I get the argument that ‘Well, if you mandate a mask, you’re going to have to enforce it and that’s going to create more of a problem,’” Fauci said. “Well, if people are not wearing masks, then maybe we should be mandating it.” 

This isn’t an actual thought.

But then again, Fauci doesn’t do actual thoughts. He does pleasantries. He never says anything substantial. Instead he says meaningless things, agrees with anyone he’s talking to, and does little expect give everyone the impression that he’s an empathetic professional, without actually substantiating that in any way. That’s what being a political doctor means.

All you can say about Fauci is that, unlike Birx, he’s better at faking warmth and relevance, but there’s still nothing there.

Fauci panders to anyone who’s in charge, and pivots from radically different views, because his goal is access to power, not to actually accomplish anything, but to be at the top of the heap.

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ELECTIONS Comments turned off

I Didn’t Vote For Trump In 2016, But I’d Crawl Over Broken Glass To Vote For Him Now…David Sound

By on October 25th, 2020

https://thefederalist.com/2020/10/09/i-didnt-vote-for-trump-in-2016-but-id-crawl-over-broken-glass-to-vote-for-him-now/

I don’t care about the tone of his tweets nor if his opponents think he’s rude. I’ve seen that he is a patriot who genuinely loves the United States of America and its people.

Even though I had voted for every Republican presidential candidate since 1980, I didn’t vote for Donald Trump in 2016.

Many Republican nominees had been huge disappointments to me, and I wasn’t going to vote for yet another GOP candidate I thought would betray my trust. I couldn’t imagine Trump as a genuine conservative who would champion limited government, respect individual freedom and liberty, and protect the unborn — but was I ever wrong. Although I didn’t vote for Trump in 2016, I would crawl over broken glass to vote for him in 2020.

In 2016, I was convinced Trump was just another New York liberal. On election night, however, I smiled. I was happy that at least Hillary Clinton wouldn’t be president, and I suspected that the next four years with Trump would at least be entertaining.

The primary reason I didn’t vote for Trump in 2016 was that I didn’t believe him. I didn’t trust that he would be pro-life, a non-negotiable issue for me. His bluster and bravado didn’t appeal to me. I took him literally but not seriously, in contrast to his supporters who took him seriously but not literally (credit to Peter Thiel for identifying this significant distinction).

By the time Trump took office, I was willing to give him a chance. He was the president, after all, and deserved the opportunity to prove himself. During the first year of his presidency, I was impressed by his commitment to keeping his campaign promises, unlike most politicians. By the end of 2017, I classified myself as a Trump supporter because of what he had already done as president.

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ELECTIONS Comments turned off

2016’s Reluctant Trumpers Are 2020’s Avid Trumpers By Charlie Gerow

By on October 25th, 2020

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2020/10/25/2016s_reluctant_trumpers_are_2020s_avid_trumpers.html
““It wasn’t until after he was president that I fully understood the power of Donald Trump’s message.” 

Four years ago, the media enjoyed covering the phenomenon of so-called Never Trumpers; Republicans who wouldn’t vote for Donald Trump.

There was speculation that these voters, many well connected to the Washington establishment, would put the icing on the electoral cake for Hillary Clinton. Of course, this notion proved fanciful. The Never Trumpers are back in 2020. They’re no greater in number, but the media has gobbled it up again.

But there’s another group of Republicans: those who enthusiastically supported GOP candidates other than Donald Trump before he was nominated. They remained cautious about Trump even after the Republican National Convention. Ultimately, though, they pulled the lever for Trump over Hillary. Call them “Reluctant Trumpers.”

They’re still around, too. But’s there’s a difference: they are now enthusiastic Trumpers. I know. I’m one of them.

Four years ago, I was national co-chair of Carly Fiorina’s fledgling campaign. She and I had served on the board of the American Conservative Union together, and I wanted a conservative candidate. Having supported conservatives since my days on Ronald Reagan’s campaign staff, I wasn’t yet convinced of the bona fides of former Democrat Donald Trump.

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