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Ruth King

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Liz Peek: Democrats’ democracy alarmism flops with voters

By on October 27th, 2022

https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/3707603-democrats-democracy-alarmism-flops-with-voters/

Several months ago, Democrats rolled the dice. They chose the issues they thought would help them prevail in the midterm elections, and they chose badly. Some of their decisions were, to be fair, inescapable. When the Supreme Court handed down its startling decision on Roe v. Wade, Democrats grasped the opportunity to burrow in on a social issue they hoped would energize their base, and especially young women.

But their other picks were entirely voluntary and, ultimately, wrong-headed. They decided to continue hammering former President Trump for every conceivable misstep, and to prolong the Jan. 6 hearings to remind voters not only that Trump was a menace but that his attempts to overthrow the 2020 election proved our very democracy is in peril.

This proved a bust. Most voters made up their minds about the riots at the Capitol months ago; the endless partisan congressional hearings into the matter have attracted a dwindling audience. Millions of Americans considered the hearings a political show trial, with no due process and no balance. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) departed from 200 years of precedence by not allowing the minority party to choose its own panel members. That was a mistake.

Meanwhile, the Biden White House delivered such a disastrous performance on the economy, the border, crime and inflation that Trump, despite his misdeeds, began to look better in hindsight. Ironically, he looked especially appealing because his social media presence was severely curtailed. Many voters began to forget why they rejected him in 2020.

Approval of the former president has actually increased while Speaker Pelosi’s chosen few rail on about the “insurrection” on Jan. 6. In a recent New York Times/Siena poll, Trump beats Joe Biden. Oops.

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CHARLOTTE'S NEWS WEB, ELECTIONS Comments turned off

A healthy Fetterman would have lost the debate too.His record and policies are indefensible. Teresa Mull

By on October 27th, 2022

https://spectatorworld.com/topic/healthy-fetterman-would-have-lost-oz/

The debate between Pennsylvania US Senate candidates Republican Mehmet Oz and Democrat John Fetterman, was, as The Spectator’s own Ben Domenech described it, “political malpractice.” Watching Fetterman mumble, stumble, stutter, and glitch his way through answers made Joe Biden on a bad day sound like FDR delivering his stirring “Fear Itself” speech. But stroke or no stroke, Fetterman has no record to laud, and the policies he promotes are indefensible.

Fetterman showed why he is unfit to serve right off the bat when the moderators (the real stars of the show) asked the candidates, “What qualifies you to be a US senator?” Both Oz and Fetterman seemed to confuse this basic question with “Why are you running?” and “Why is your opponent not qualified to be a US senator?” Nonetheless, Fetterman made a particularly obvious pass at the question. Rather than leading with any mention of his dozen years as mayor of Braddock, Pennsylvania, or of his time as lieutenant governor of Pennsylvania, Fetterman introduced what he calls the “Dr. Oz rule,” which means “when Oz is on TV, he’s lying.” (The “Dr. Oz rule” is also a type of rhetorical device most liberals are fond of using — when you don’t have anything substantial to say, just call the other side a liar/racist/sexist/etc.) Fetterman resorted to the “Dr. Oz rule” many, many, many times throughout the course of the one-hour debate.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Publishing Professionals: We Must Censor Amy Coney Barrett To Save Free Speech By: David Harsanyi

By on October 27th, 2022

https://thefederalist.com/2022/10/27/publishing-professionals-we-must-censor-amy-coney-barrett-to-save-free-speech/

More than 350 literary workers—agents, editors, publicists, and writers—have signed an open letter demanding Penguin Random House drop publication of Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s upcoming book. It should be noted, that there are some legitimate editors on the list, but many signees –-“Leslie” and editorial interns and so on –- are not exactly Nan Talese. And yet, the document, brimming with nonsensical, contradictory, confusingly reasoned claims, is a useful window into the increasingly authoritarian mindset of the cultural American left.

The letter argues that Random House has a duty to stop the publication of ACB’s book to save free speech. “This is not just a book that we disagree with, and we are not calling for censorship,” says the letter, titled “We Dissent.” “We cannot stand idly by while our industry misuses free speech to destroy our rights.” It quotes British leftist David Puttnam, who contends that the media has a duty to “balance freedom of expression with wider moral and social responsibilities.”

That’s the rub, of course: who gets to decide the contours of the “wider moral and social responsibilities” and the “misuses” of free speech? Even if we formed a consensus on those alleged duties, one of the reasons (real) liberals treat speech as a neutral principle is to protect dissent and challenge conventional wisdom. Rationalizing censorship as a means of protecting people from harmful ideas is as old as censorship itself.

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ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Joe Toomey’s Searing Indictment of President Biden’s Energy Policies By Robert Bryce

By on October 27th, 2022

https://www.realclearenergy.org/articles/2022/10/26/joe_toomeys_searing_indictment_of_president_bidens_energy_policies_861133.html With the midterm elections just two weeks away, it seems almost too easy to pick on President Joe Biden. His approval ratings are bad (about 38% of those polled approve of his job performance) and candidates from his own party are staying away from him. As ABC News reported recently, “Democrats in make-or-break races are […]

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ELECTIONS Comments turned off

US Midterms: Here Come the Republicans Roger Franklin

By on October 27th, 2022

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/america/2022/10/us-midterms-here-come-the-republicans/

Not long before I made the mistake last week of entrusting life and baggage to Philippine Airlines’ midweek flight from Melbourne to New York, a leftoid friend, one who pays far too much heed to the ABC, warned me that conservatives’ hope of the GOP sweeping both the House and Senate was likely to be dashed.

‘Well, yes, there’s always the possibility of massive electoral fraud, like in 2020,” I replied, all the while anticipating a heaved sigh of exasperation at my refusal to accept the absurdity of more Americans having voted for a dim and declining dodderer, a nailed plagiarist and serial fabulist, than for any other presidential candidate in American history. But that wasn’t what he meant.

“Abortion,” he said, “that will be the decider.”

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, as they say, and skerricks of alleged insight gained from the mainstream media’s narratives can only further cloud the perceptions of those whose left eye is pressed to a faulty telescope on the wrong side of the Pacific. Still, as one of those folks who rate the ABC Australia’s “most trusted” news source, you can understand why my friend labours under the abortion misconception.

Thing is, the ABC seems only ever to seek the perspectives of donors to the Democratic Party. Take this report, for example, selected at random from the national broadcaster’s archives after a site search on ‘Trump’. Both of the quoted people, documentarian Nick Quested and Stephen Vladeck, are donors, as can be easily easily established by consulting the OpenSecrets.org website, which catalogues who gives what to whom and how much.

Likewise with this report, in which a certain Mark Graber, a Maryland law professor, has this to say of Trump and Republicans: “[It] may be that the Trump wing of the Republican party is starting to lose some steam … This will help a whole lot in removing Donald Trump from the American political scene. But it’s likely to be a very slow removal.”

Professor Graber — surprise! surprise! — is yet another leftist who puts his money where his heart is.

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

How Americans, Europeans Embolden Palestinian Terrorism by Bassam Tawil

By on October 27th, 2022

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19045/americans-europeans-palestinian-terrorism

Instead of assuming its responsibility for halting terrorist attacks from areas under its control, the Palestinians continue to violate the agreements they signed with Israel.

In the Gaza Strip, the Palestinian Authority did not take real measures to stop Hamas from building a massive terrorism infrastructure. Hamas later used its weapons arsenal not only to attack Israel, but also to overthrow the PA regime and seize full control of the Gaza Strip.

The same scenario is now being repeated in the West Bank, specifically in areas controlled by Mahmoud Abbas’s security forces.

This is the twisted logic of the Palestinian leadership: Instead of denouncing the terrorists for targeting Israelis, as they have officially and repeatedly committed to doing, they lash out at Israel for defending itself against the current wave of terrorism.

When a senior Palestinian official such as Habbash says that the terrorists are entitled to carry out “resistance” attacks, he is actually telling them to continue targeting Israelis. Such statements are not only a violation of the agreements the Palestinians signed with Israel, but also incitement to launch more terrorist attacks against Israelis.

The Palestinian leadership, in a policy is known as “pay-for-slay,” already provides monthly stipends to Palestinian terrorists….. The families of the Nablus terrorists will also presumably benefit from these payments.

The Palestinian leadership’s endorsement and glorification of terrorism comes as no surprise. What is surprising – and intensely disturbing – is that those foreign governments that are providing financial and political aid to the Palestinian Authority, especially the Americans and the Europeans, are not calling out Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian leadership for their public support of terrorism and their ongoing breach of the agreements they voluntarily signed with Israel.

“We will not resort to weapons, we will not resort to violence,” Abbas declared in his last speech before the United Nations General Assembly, “we will not resort to terrorism, we will fight terrorism.” His words were directed to the international community, not to his own people.

The silence of the Americans and Europeans toward the actions and rhetoric of the Palestinian leaders is tantamount to a green light to the Lions’ Den and other terrorists to continue their terrorist attacks.

If the Biden administration and the Europeans believe that Abbas or any other Palestinian leader is going to stop a terrorist from murdering Jews, they are engaging in staggering self-deception.

The Lions’ Den is a new terrorist group based in the West Bank city of Nablus, which is controlled by the Palestinian Authority (PA). The group consists of dozens of gunmen affiliated with a number of Palestinian factions, including Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the ruling Fatah party headed by PA President Mahmoud Abbas.

The PA, which has hundreds of security officers in Nablus, has failed to take any measures to rein in the Lions’ Den terrorists, who have claimed responsibility for a series of shooting attacks against Israeli soldiers and civilians in the Nablus area over the past few weeks.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The China Lie Exposed By William Levin

By on October 27th, 2022

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2022/10/the_china_lie_exposed.html

The Chinese Communist Party has held only 20 party congresses in its history, one every five years, and few as notable as the just-concluded meeting at which President Xi Jinping claimed his unprecedented third five-year term. In a two-hour address, Xi aggressively signaled that China will focus on national security, invest in a “world class military,” “develop unmanned, intelligent combat capabilities,” and unrelentingly pursue the takeover of Taiwan under the banner of “reunification.”  All this against a backdrop of asserted rising external threats from the West and a forecast of “high winds, choppy waters and dangerous storms.”

It did not take long for Chinese investors to react. On Monday, the Hang Seng plummeted 6.4% (equivalent to a 2,000 drop in the Dow Jones index), for the largest one-day drop since November 2008. The index is down 42% for the year and within 2% of its 52-week low. In the tech sector, e-commerce giant Alibaba fell 10%, bringing its losses to more than $600 billion since it peaked in October 2020. Chip stocks are being dumped in response to expected U.S. export controls. The property sector is facing unrelenting pressure from massive over-building and excess debt. Chinese entrepreneurs are leaving the country. Official and unofficial accounts track massive movements of capital to havens outside of China. All in all, quite the contrast to President Xi’s boasting rhetoric of “the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.”

Hidden in the current malaise is a far more startling fact. The Hang Seng index is now officially flat since 1997. In the comparable period, even after U.S. market declines, the S&P index is up 3.2x, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq is up 5.9x. These numbers lay bare the fundamental lie that communism can coexist with, and channel free enterprise growth. Twenty-five years of stagnation, especially during the boom in technology, contradicts the narrative promoted by Chinese leadership, believed by many, that China will inevitably eclipse U.S. economic performance.  Doubling down, liberal pundits such as Thomas Friedman fawn over the command and control powers of the Chinese government, in contrast to our messy democracy, especially when it appeared China was in an unstoppable ascendency from the 1980s onward.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Gift Hillary Clinton Needs for Her 75th Birthday By Jack Butler

By on October 27th, 2022

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/the-gift-hillary-clinton-needs-for-her-75th-birthday/

“The best gift Hilary Clinton could give herself — and the rest of us — on her 75th birthday would be to remove herself from public life.”

Today is Hillary Clinton’s 75th birthday, as Luther noted. Earlier this week, the former first lady, U.S. senator, secretary of state, and current not-president celebrated with “about 100 of her top donors and longtime supporters at the St. Regis in New York to talk about her future,” Teddy Schleifer of Puck reported. No, she won’t be running for anything. But she is thinking about her legacy. So “she has been pitching donors on a new philanthropic entity called the Hillary Rodham Clinton Leadership Project,” according to Schleifer. He continues:

The new Clinton initiative will both highlight what Clinton has already done, particularly for women around the world, and serve as a new home for Clinton to talk about her own philanthropic work going forward—on democracy, global health and leadership development.

So Hillary spent her birthday figuring out how to profit from the same brand-driven, elite-level arbitrage that she and her husband have depended on ever since the end of his presidency. (And before that presidency’s end.) Points for consistency, I guess. What certain people and institutions see in Hillary, so much so that they continue to pointlessly reward and elevate her — as a paragon of “leadership!” — well after her political utility has expired, is beyond me.

When it seemed likely that she would become president, all those donations to the “Clinton Global Initiative” — since dried up — at least made a crude political sense, even as they were the quintessence of modern elite corruption. A President Hillary — just typing the words suffices to make one shudder, especially this close to Halloween — would be someone you’d want to have exchanged favors with. But failed-candidate Hillary? The one who spends her days stewing about the past and engaging in the same kind of election denialism she condemns when it comes from the other side? What’s the point?

Indeed, the best present Hilary Clinton could give herself on her 75th birthday would be to remove herself from public life. She should spend her remaining years in pleasant quietude, being with her grandchildren, going on walks, and tinkering with powered-exoskeleton builds. Her retirement would double as a welcome gift for the rest of us.

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ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Noncitizen Voting Is a Real Threat to Democracy Unless candidates commit to oppose noncitizen voting, it’s just more meaningless double-talk. By Brian Lonergan

By on October 27th, 2022

https://amgreatness.com/2022/10/26/noncitizen-voting-is-a-real-threat-to-democracy/

With a critical midterm election less than two weeks away, America is awash in rhetoric about voter suppression, election integrity, and “threats to democracy.” While those are serious issues, they have been invoked far too often lately by left-wing partisans as attack lines against opponents and to distract from their own political failures. Lost in the political spin and 24-hour cable news programming is a very real and underreported threat to our democracy: allowing noncitizens to vote in U.S. elections.

Noncitizen voting has become a priority agenda item for the anti-borders Left, right up there with blocking wall construction, advocating sanctuary laws, and counting noncitizens in the U.S. census. 

The motivation should be obvious by now. A large pool of noncitizens, most of whom have no understanding of America’s founding principles, can be easily swayed to vote a certain way in critical races. At that point, the floodgates can be opened for a slew of radical laws most Americans would not support.

Federal law prohibits noncitizens from voting in federal elections, but there is no such restriction for state or local elections. The activists have sought to exploit this gap as a first step to normalize noncitizen voting.

The effort to push through illegal alien voting is already underway and yielding results in deep-blue jurisdictions. Towns in Vermont, California, and Maryland currently allow noncitizen voting in local elections. The New York City Council had passed a law giving the right to vote in city elections to alien residents of the city who are permitted to work in the United States. A state court later struck down the law in June of this year.

The latest effort is taking place in our nation’s capital. The D.C. City Council passed a measure this month that would only require someone to live in the city for 30 days before registering to vote. The measure still requires a review by Congress and a signature from Mayor Muriel Bowser.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Switcheroos of the Two Parties The party of old left-wing progressives has become one of rich regressives. And once country-club Republicans are becoming a party of middle-class populists. By Victor Davis Hanson

By on October 27th, 2022

https://amgreatness.com/2022/10/26/the-switcheroos-of-the-two-parties/

Our two parties have both changed, and that explains why one will win, and one lose in the midterm elections.

The old Democrats have faded away after being overwhelmed by radicals and socialists.

Moderates who once embraced Bill Clinton’s opportunistic “third way” are now either irrelevant or nonexistent.

Once considered too wacky and socialist to be taken seriously, Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), the performance-art “squad,” the radicals of the Congressional Black Caucus, and Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and her hard progressive wing are today’s Democratic Party kingpins.

The alienating radicals of Antifa and Black Lives Matter often serve as the new party’s shock troops on the streets. They opportunistically appear to push the party to embrace no-bail laws, defunding the police, and the destruction of the fossil fuel industry. 

Since none of those positions poll even close to 50 percent with the public, the Democrats routinely either slur their opponents as racists, nativists, and climate denialists or obsess on another Trump psychodrama distraction from the Russia collusion hoax to the Mar-a-Lago raid.

What “blue dog” centrists are left in the Democratic Party either keep mum or, like Tulsi Gabbard, flee in disgust. 

Donald Trump also recalibrated the Republican Party and helped to turn it into a nationalist-populist movement that would rather win rudely than lose politely. The MAGA agenda pushed Jacksonian deterrence rather than unpopular nation-building abroad. It finally focused on fair rather than just free trade.  Republicans now unite in demanding only legal immigration and promoting domestic investment rather than globalist outsourcing and offshoring. 

In response, many of the old Bush-Romney country-club wing left in disgust. Others licked their wounds as fanatical NeverTrump something or others. 

Both parties have also been radically changed by additional issues of class, race, and wealth. 

Compare the income profiles of voters, whether by ZIP codes or congressional districts. A once lunch-bucket carrying, union member Democratic Party has become the enclave of three key constituencies. 

First, there is the subsidized and often inner-city poor. 

Second, the meat of the party, is the upscale, bicoastal professional and suburban credentialed classes. 

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