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Ruth King

Iran: Old Recipes From the Devil’s Kitchen by Amir Taheri

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19088/iran-recipes-devil

By the time of this writing, we had the names of 385 protesters killed, including 40 women and 32 children, and 7 security men. A further 12,500 people have been arrested, according to statistics presented to the International Committee of the Red Cross.

“People just don’t believe what our authorities say,” complains former Islamic Majlis (parliament) member Masud Pezeshkian.

Living in another time zone that bears no relation to reality, the Khomeinist regime is deeply anachronistic. It boasts about conquering the world for the Khomeinist version of Islam while not a single nation has bought or is likely to buy that bundle.

While it lives in another time, the Khomeinist regime also thinks it lives on another planet.

The Supreme Guide boasts of his imaginary triple alliance with China and Russia to “end American domination”. But the fact is that neither China nor Russia is prepared to put a penny into the Khomeinist begging bowl.

Even if it weathers the current storm, the Khomeinist system is on life-support and borrowed time.

Even in new versions, the old recipe from the devil’s kitchen won’t whet the Iranian people’s appetite.

The kitchen is the same, as is the chef. The ingredients are also the same. But when the witches’ brew is served in the restaurant, Chez Ayatollah, would-be clients reject it in disgust. This is the image that comes to mind as the Islamic Republic of Iran struggles to crush the latest popular revolt.

Thank God For These Horrible Democrats Derek Hunter

https://townhall.com/columnists/derekhunter/2022/11/06/thank-god-for-these-horrible-democrats-n2615531

It’s times like these when you yearn for the perfect words to explain not only how important it is to vote Tuesday, but also to properly describe just how awful the people you’re running against are. In the case of Democrats, unfortunately, the words needed to describe them tend to contain four letters and generally are slang for body parts or directions for action involving them. That makes them unusable in a family-friendly column, but I’m going to try to get around that as best I can and paint as accurate of a picture as possible about why we should be grateful for these horrible Democrats.

A fish rots from the head down, but in the case of Democrats that head is empty, or at least has forgotten where it is. Naturally, that head is on the scrawny neck of Joe Biden, a man so untrustworthy that it says “hello” you have to suspect he’s leaving. What kind of person thinks claiming “Ultra MAGA is a threat to the country” is a good strategy? “MAGA” stands for “Make America Great Again,” which if you’re pretending to like the country is rather difficult to demonize. Then again, Biden leads the party that has “America was never great” as a guaranteed applause line on the campaign trail, so nothing should surprise us.

In a last-ditch effort to save his worthless presidency, Biden declared the act of engaging in democracy to be a threat to it should the public dare vote against the wishes of Democrats. I’d call that verbal yoga, but yoga has value whereas Democrats and what they say do not.

The idea of declaring one of the two possible election outcomes to be invalid before any votes are counted should bother the people who claim to wake up screaming about “threats to democracy.” But those claims are as sincere as the election results in the old Soviet Union or Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. Yet, while calling anyone who opposes his failed policies “semi-fascist,” Biden is embracing the tactics of fascists throughout history. 

And so is every other Democrat out there, on the ballot or in the media. Any result not reflecting what Democrats want is a threat to democracy, according to these people. The only difference is they won’t have a firing squad outside your polling place ready to dispense their version of “democracy” should they discover you voted wrong, but that doesn’t mean they wouldn’t like to. Enjoy voting against them…while they still allow it and so they can’t disallow it in the future.

Whatever joy you experience Tuesday night, save an extra cup of “in your face” for Stacey Abrams and Beto O’Rourke. While those two are horrible people – having spent the last four years lying about and smearing Republicans, unchallenged, on cable news – beating them again should bring special joy.

Midterm Reflections If only more Democrats had paid attention. By Bruce Bawer

https://amgreatness.com/2022/11/05/midterm-reflections/

Was there really a time when an American election didn’t seem to be a matter of life and death—of choosing between a return to constitutional norms and continuing down a road of national suicide by ideology? Was there a time when a midterm election, for heaven’s sake, didn’t seem as vitally important as this one does—a time, moreover, when one was content to pay attention to the races in one’s own state and city and not bite one’s nails over any number of other races around the country?

One more question. Was there really a time when it wasn’t anywhere near as maddening as it is now that the voters in certain jurisdictions seem not to get it? How on earth, for example, can 54 percent of New Yorkers plan to vote for the ruinous Kathy Hochul? How can as many as 43 percent of Texans support Beto O’Rourke? In the race for governor of Arizona (and when on earth did any of us ever care about a gubernatorial election in Arizona?), how can the remarkable Kari Lake be neck and neck with the execrable Katie Hobbs? How can anybody in Florida be thinking of voting against Ron DeSantis? And however unpalatable Dr. Mehmet Oz may be, how could the Senate election in Pennsylvania actually be a toss-up between him and the psychologically debilitated basement radical John Fetterman? 

Yes, there are predictions of a nationwide red wave, even a red tsunami. Maybe those prognostications are correct. But even if they are, sheer abominations like Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y) will almost certainly remain in power. Why? Can anyone in Chicago be unaware of its current murder rate? How is it that the people living in the California cities most overrun with schizophrenic tent people and felonious illegals are the very voters most likely to pull the lever for Gavin Newsom, who’s largely responsible for it?  

On a podcast the other day, somebody recalled overhearing a comment at JFK Airport that went something like this: “Yes, Hochul is terrible, but I’ve never voted Republican in my life, and I won’t start now.” I spent most of my life in New York City, so I know plenty of people like that. But can even the most low-information, knee-jerk New York Democrat fail to understand that the two major political parties have undergone a drastic sea change? 

“That isn’t your grandfather’s Republican Party,” our beloved president keeps saying. He’s right! But not in the way he implies. The party of country-club elites and evangelical Christians has morphed into the party of middle-class families—including a growing number of blacks and Latinos. Bye bye, Strom Thurmond and Jesse Helms; hello, Tim Scott and Mia Love. Meanwhile, the Democratic Party has been captured by radicals like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), has a paramilitary wing in the form of Antifa and Black Lives Matter, and serves the interests of Silicon Valley, Hollywood, big media, Wall Street, and globalist corporations. 

How the Projectionist Game is Played. Part Three—Invoke the 25th Amendment! Victor Davis Hanson

https://victorhanson.com/how-the-projectionist-game-is-played-part-three-invoke-the-25th-amendment/

How many times since 2017 did we heard the cry, “25 Amendment!” to remove Donald Trump from office on grounds he was non compos mentis?

Immediately upon taking office Foreign Policy ran an essay by Obamaite Rosa Brooks outlining a way to remove him through a) impeachment, b) the 25th Amendment, or c) a military coup.

What were these reasons for thinking Trump was nuts? That he stood down Kim Jong-un and called him “little rocket man” (Was that a worse quip than Biden claiming we were on the edge of Armageddon, as he lowered the bar of nuke porn talk?)?

Then came the strange case of Dr. Bandy X. Lee, the Yale psychiatrist. In 2017, she organized a Yale medical school forum to call out the mental problems, supposedly, of President Trump (Lee had never met him. Much less had she first-hand diagnosed him of anything. Thus, she was essentially violating her own professional organization’s ethical guidelines of a medical professional diagnosing someone as impaired without a thorough examination.).

No matter. In psychodramatic rhetoric, Lee warned that our entire species was in danger due to Trump’s nuttiness (she is now quiet about the back-and-forth nuke talk between Putin and Biden over Ukraine). After editing a book on Trump’s supposed mental illness (again, she had never examined him), a dozen congressmen called upon her to offer yet a new diagnosis that Trump was dangerously on the brink. She became a media celebrity and the 25th Amendment became her calling card.

No, Free Speech Doesn’t Mean Porn In Schools By: Christian Winter

https://thefederalist.com/2022/11/04/no-free-speech-doesnt-mean-porn-in-schools/

Free speech is not freedom to degrade public morals and destroy the order necessary for liberty. Some speech is beyond the pale.

PEN America, an international advocacy group for free expression, recently published an updated report about “book banning” in America. The group claims that school districts choosing not to carry particular books in their libraries “threaten[s] free expression and students’ first amendment rights.” The most common books that school districts have restricted student access to include “Gender Queer,” “All Boys Aren’t Blue,” and “Out of Darkness.” These books have been criticized as pornographic and promoting LGBT content. For example, “All Boys Aren’t Blue,” a book aimed at adolescents, contains graphic descriptions of male homosexual sex.

PEN America argues that the removal of such books from school libraries “impede[s] free expression rights” and that such efforts do not “uphold free speech rights.” For PEN America, free expression rights “must be the bedrock of public schools in an open, inclusive, and democratic society.”

Such an understanding of free speech and free expression is wrong. Any sort of “free speech absolutism” that recognizes no limits is not the ideal for those concerned about ordered liberty. Men and women who care about their communities and their nation ought not to desire a public square that is laissez faire in its approach to speech. Just as true liberty is not license but liberty to do what is good, free speech is not freedom to degrade public morals. Speech expresses morals, and some morals — some ways of life — are beyond the pale for societies that are oriented to what is good and right and true.

Speech-Denying Nature Undermines the Nation

NY Dems to Double Down on Denying Crime Exists “A hysteria over crime that is uninformed and that has been debunked.” by Daniel Greenfield

https://www.frontpagemag.com/ny-dems-to-double-down-on-denying-crime-exists/

Shoot the messenger. Literally.

How ideologically deranged are Democrats? So much so that they’re not going to do a U-turn on crime, instead they’re going to blame those Democrats who actually talked about the problem.

Democratic officials and strategists in New York tell CNN they are bracing for what could be stunning losses in the governor’s race and in contests for as many as four US House seats largely in the suburbs.

With crime dominating the headlines and the airwaves, multiple Democrats watching these races closely are pointing to New York City Mayor Eric Adams, accusing him of overhyping the issue and playing into right-wing narratives in ways that may have helped set the party up for disaster on Tuesday.

“He was an essential validator in the city to make their attacks seem more legit and less partisan,” said one Democratic operative working on campaigns in New York, who asked not to be named so as not to compromise current clients.

As circular firing squads go, this one is insane.

Dems whose strategy failed are going to blame a guy who actually got elected. After their messaging strategy abysmally failed, they’re going to claim that it would have succeeded if Mayor Adams weren’t out there mentioning the existence of crime.

The assumption here is that New York voters are mentally retarded and that they aren’t reacting to crime based on their everyday experiences, but Adams press conferences.

Why these midterms will be the crime elections: Oliver Wiseman

https://spectatorworld.com/newsletter/the-crime-election/

The crime elections

The District of Columbia’s City Council might seem a strange place to start a political newsletter a few days out from the midterms. As Democrats will never miss an opportunity to remind you, voters in Washington, DC will not get a say in a race that will help decide control of Congress. But a meeting of city leaders this week is an instructive part a national story that will be central to next week’s vote.

On Tuesday, the DC Council voted 12-0 to support a rewriting of the capital’s criminal code. Reforms include reduced mandatory minimum sentences, the expansion of the right to jury trials for most misdemeanors, a broadening of the opportunities for early release and the elimination of accomplice liability in felony murder cases. The reforms are opposed by the District’s US Attorney, Matthew M. Graves, and police chief Robert J. Contee. Graves said that some of the provisions “could undermine community safety and impede the administration of justice in our courts.” Also opposed to the proposals as they stand: the city’s mayor, Muriel Bowser, who has said she will not sign them into law, but thinks some kind of reform is needed.

Crime is set to be a decisive factor in next week’s elections. It is the biggest reason why governors’ contests are closer than expected in Oregon and New York. It is the main line of attack in crucial Senate races in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. It is why Los Angeles might be about to elect a former Republican property developer as its mayor. Nationwide, it’s a major issue for swing voters and traditionally Democrat-supporting working-class voters. For some Democrats, this seems to be a head-scratcher: We’ve cut it out with calls to Defund the Police. We get it.

And this is why the DC story is so instructive. It’s not that Democratic leaders are actively defunding the police, or fail to appreciate, at least theoretically, that the issue is a major concern for voters. It’s that they time and again fail to act as though public safety is their number one concern. Violent crime is spiking in Washington. It is the city’s most pressing problem and should be its elected officials’ number one concern. In place of any sense of urgency or decisive action is a blue-on-blue debate about which criminal justice reform measures are worth keeping and which are worth watering down. The message to voters is clear: your worries about safety are not our top priority.

Across the country, the Democratic Party’s messaging on crime has been all over the place. First, the crime problem was nothing more than a Republican scare campaign: a racist figment of the right-wing imagination. When more and more Democrats acknowledged the problem, they made the slightly trollish claim that crime is actually higher in red states. Absent from their pitch to voters on one of the most important issues: a straightforward pledge to actually deal with the problem.

The policies responsible for the coming Democratic disaster Matthew Continetti

https://freebeacon.com/columns/crime-starters-usa/

New York governor Kathy Hochul is a case study in denial. The unelected Democrat is in trouble because she won’t acknowledge the danger of rising crime. When challenger Lee Zeldin, a Republican congressman from Long Island, brought up public safety during last week’s debate, Hochul scoffed. “I don’t know why that’s so important to you,” she said. She might as well have stuck her tongue out at voters. Support for Zeldin has surged in recent days.

Hochul may yet win. New York hasn’t voted for a Republican governor since 2002. Whatever the outcome — and Zeldin has a path to victory — the takeaway is clear: Crime is once again a matter of national concern.

Look at the polls. Sixty-one percent of registered voters told the Pew Research Center this month that violent crime is very important to their midterm vote. An October Gallup poll had crime in third place, after the economy and abortion. The October Fox poll showed that crime was second only to inflation in voters’ minds. According to another recent Gallup survey, a record 56 percent of Americans say there is more crime in their area than there was last year.

Hochul blames this sentiment on mass delusion. “These are master manipulators,” she told MSNBC on October 30. “They have this conspiracy going all across America trying to convince people in Democratic states that they’re not safe.” Hochul didn’t say who “they” are. She meant Republicans.

The truth is that Hochul is the one who’s out of touch. The reason voters are worried about crime is that crime has been rising. Sensational stories of subway murders, carjackings, kidnappings, and shoplifting are not isolated events. Murder and assaults have increased nationwide since 2019. Murder has dropped off somewhat since the beginning of this year, but the decline has been unevenly distributed and other forms of violent crime are going up. The lawlessness that spread across the country in 2020 hasn’t abated.

The Great Reset: A Perfect Storm By David Solway

https://pjmedia.com/columns/david-solway-2/2022/11/04/the-great-reset-a-perfect-storm-n1642854

Storms come in many forms and may consist of many different constituent elements, but when all these elements combine at the same critical moment, we call it a “perfect storm.” When such a storm is transposed analogically to the cultural, political, and economic realms, that is, when it seems to impact the entire social environment, we have no choice but to grasp its significance and prepare for its onset by taking protective measures.

Such a storm is now upon us. All its elements clearly point to an orchestrated intention; in other words, it cannot be an accident. And the intention we discern in the current historical moment, the underlying plan, would appear to lay the ground for what has been called a “techno-totalitarian digital dark age,” associated with the Club of Rome, the United Nations, and the World Economic Forum, that is, what has come to be known as the Great Reset — the corporate takeover of property, health, currency, travel, energy, and sustenance. The upshot involves a thorough restructuring of democratic society along neo-medieval lines, an elimination of the middle class, a two-tier political order, and a reduction of the global census.

The sinister elements composing this storm are readily observable to anyone paying attention:

The imposition of a viral pandemic and its official response — lockdowns, social distancing, masks, quarantines, medical apartheid — that effectively closed down the public life and economic structures of entire nations, leading to loss of livelihoods, physical and psychological illness, and spiraling suicide rates.
The mandating of novel genomic “vaccines” that are creating mass casualties, as witnessed in the phenomenon of SADS — Sudden Adult Death Syndrome — which came into prominence post-vaccine. The plethora of dissuasive “fact-checks” on social media and the Internet are further signs that we are living in an age of censorship. The correlation between SADS and the vaccine rollout is overwhelming and may even suggest a causal link. The massive rise in stillbirths may also be attributed to the vaccines.
A “climate change” policy entailing carbon taxes, bans on fertilizers, the shutting down of standard energy production, the marketing of costly and inefficient electric vehicles that threaten to deplete the power grid, and the legislating of largely unworkable and extortionate green renewables based on insecure and fabricated science and dodgy computer models, whose effect has been to impoverish both producers and ordinary citizens in bringing about a new and despotic dispensation.
Supply chain disruptions.
Government-induced food and fuel shortages.
Rampant inflation, pricing the necessities of life beyond the ability of vast numbers of people to afford them.
The official insistence on so-called “abortion rights.”
The focus on and pursuit of LGBTQ+, “non-binary,” transgender, and sexual indoctrination of preschoolers and minors, creating a growing cohort of human beings who do not reproduce, i.e., a condition of sterility.
The proposed creation of a cashless digital economy and the introduction of digital ID with the aim of establishing a China-style social credit system, depriving the individual of personal freedom and discretionary choice.
The initiating of proxy wars, as in Ukraine, further resulting in crippling forms of material scarcity, economic pain, and population stress.

Weaponizing Children By Karen McKay

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2022/11/weaponizing_children.html

In an Afghan cave, men slept rolled up in their patus, the thin woolen shawl that served as blanket, cloak, camouflage, shelter, shroud. In the dark, a small shape stirred and slipped silently out of its patu. There was no sound but snoring from the other shapes. The light from a small, dying fire reflected on a steel blade in the hand of the small shape, a boy of perhaps ten or twelve hard years.

He had wandered, a scrawny, dirty, barefoot kid, into the mujahed camp, starved, begging for food. The muj took him in, wrapped him in a patu, shared their food with him and treated his sores. The child’s pathetic story was a common one. Half of Afghanistan’s preinvasion population was dead or displaced. Many of the living were maimed, starved and sick, their orchards, crops, and livestock destroyed. 

This child was different. He was weaponized. He crept soundlessly, less than a shadow, in the dark toward the sleeping leader of this small band of fighters, approached from behind, grabbed the man’s beard and yanked the head back. With one quick move he sliced the exposed throat. He slipped toward the next target, but the man rolled over and opened his eyes. Before a question could form, the boy was out the cave’s mouth and melted into the night. Before the sun set again, he was back with his Spetsnaz handler. There are war dog handlers, and there were war child handlers in the Soviet army.

The Soviet attempt to make Afghanistan a captive nation by installing a puppet government in Kabul hadn’t worked out, so they went to Plan B: Invading the country, killing their puppet president, installing another, and then proceeding to systematically wipe out the indigenous population. “We only need ten thousand Afghans left alive to be administrators of the country,” a Soviet official said.

Thousands of Afghan boys aged four to eight were taken by the Soviet army to the USSR. Most of them would be trained as Communist cadre to rule a future Soviet Afghanistan. Some would be weaponized.

For both groups, the first phase of the training was the same: deprogram them as Muslims and sons of a mother and father, make them sons of the State and the State only. Islam demands modesty and forbids alcohol and drugs. The boys were forced to drink alcohol and use drugs until they had no moral resistance to them. They were conditioned to nudity and taught sex by mature female trainers who lay naked with them in bed. Every tie to the mores and customs of their ancestral culture was severed. Their memories of childhood were erased. They had new parents, new beliefs: the State and Marxism.

The children of the administrative group received a secular education to run a country, learned to be good atheists and Marxists. The other group were trained to kill.