RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://nypost.com/2020/10/17/joe-bidens-polling-lead-slips-in-wake-of-post-report

Joe Biden’s polling edge over President Trump eroded this week amid The Post’s scandalous revelations about his son Hunter’s foreign dealings — but the Democratic candidate still maintains a substantial lead.

The IBD/TIPP national tracking poll, released Saturday, puts Biden at 50 percent in the head-to head matchup, with Trump at 43 percent. The 7-point advantage is well outside the survey’s 3 percent margin of error.

But the poll of 1,009 likely voters saw Biden’s support slip by just over 2 percentage points since Monday — and found an increase of just under 1 percent for the incumbent.

The IBD/TIPP survey found strength for Biden among independent voters, who split their support between Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton in 2016, but now back the challenger by a 9-percent margin.

The results also hinted at the possibility of a substantial number of “shy Trump” voters in the electorate: while 47 percent of respondents said they believe that their neighbors are Trump voters, only 36 of them say they are surrounded by Biden backers.

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2020/10/come-the-moment-come-the-man/

Trump haters are most prevalent in the United States but they are everywhere, including in our midst. Troy Bramston was at again the other day in my morning Australian newspaper, the price of which has just risen by 17 percent. A case of getting less for more. “Biden in the White House would be good for us,” is its title. Aptly pedestrian for both the article and the writer.

Of course, Biden in the White House would be a disaster for Western civilisation and the Free World but, never mind, apparently, he “aligns better with the Morrison government’s international priorities.” What follows from Bramston is tendentious tripe and not fit to print. Like his Washington correspondent colleague, Cameron Stewart, his anti-Trump bias is regularly on tiresome show. But, let’s face it, Trump haters are a dime a dozen throughout the Australia media. More disconcerting is the way the hateful hacks have poisoned the opinions of ordinary people.

Best to regularly make a little list of the Donald’s dreadful deeds during what Bramston calls “Trump’s disastrous presidency.”

# He’s led the US into no new wars

# He’s routed ISIS (remember them?)

# He’s rebuilt the US military (you know, the military we depend upon)

# He’s stood up against China’s rapacious trade policies

# He’s forced NATO countries to front up more for their own defence

# He’s relocated the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem (long promised, never delivered until Trump) and recognised the Golan heights as being part of Israel (a must-have for Israel’s defence)

# He’s brokered peace deals between Israel and the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain (Nobel Peace Prize 2021?)

# He’s curbed illegal immigration, including with a wall (OK, the Mexicans didn’t pay for it)

# He’s replaced NAFTA with an improved trade deal with Mexico and Canada

# He reduced regulations and taxes, producing US energy independence and, before COVID hit, the lowest Black and Hispanic unemployment on record; combined with an upsurge in real wage growth

# He’s brought back manufacturing jobs when Obama and those in the know said it couldn’t be done

# He’s promoted and signed the First Step Act to lessen the over-incarceration of black offenders

# He’s established business opportunity zones in the inner cities to help minorities escape despair

# He’s supported school choice and charter schools for disadvantaged children

# He’s promoted and signed a bill to provide permanent funding for traditionally black colleges.

# He’s appointed objective federal judges and Supreme Court justices to defend the constitution, as distinct from politically motivated activists.

https://amgreatness.com/2020/10/17/they-are-ready-this-time-but-so-are-we/

If Donald Trump wins handily on November 3 but the Democrats refuse to acknowledge defeat, do not expect their opponents to go gently into that good night.

At some point in these pages, I have had occasion to quote both Walter Scott’s famous admonitory couplet (from his narrative poem Marmion): 

Oh, what a tangled web we weave

When first we practise to deceive!

And this excellent completion by J. R. Pope (“A Word of Encouragement”):

But when we’ve practiced for a while,

How vastly we improve our style!

Both main chapters of the anti-Trump fraternity—the to-the-manor-born aristocracy of left-wing political operatives who oppose Republicans reflexively and the life-peers, so to speak, of the NeverTrump gaggle, who just hate Donald Trump—have been practicing assiduously since at least 2016. 

Back then, and for some years following, the forces arrayed against Trump were formidable but complaisant. First, everyone knew that Hillary was going to win, so although Trump was thoroughly disreputable, he was also eminently ignorable since he could never win the election. 

When, by some drastic failure of the electorate, Trump did win, the complacency was only partially modified by the ensuing shock, followed soon after by rage. Robert Mueller would get him, good and hard, and as the dawn raids, indictments, and jail sentences piled up, many confident predictions floated up about the imminent demise of the Trump Administration. 

As victory continued to elude the anti-Trump forces, they gradually lost their complacency. The preposterous impeachment trial ginned up by the Democrats to punish Trump for talking on the telephone to the Ukrainian president was probably never intended to destroy Trump so much as hobble him in advance of the 2020 election. But the impeachment trial did reveal the incontinent fanaticism of the Left, their willingness to say anything, to do anything, to get their way. 

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/10/looking_on_the_bright_side_15_reasons_the_polls_may_be_wrong.html

When people ask me to predict whether Trump or Biden will win the election, I like to say that I don’t predict elections; I just worry about them. However, as a worrier, I’m always on the lookout for signs that will ease my worries. With the election only 17 days away, there are a surprising number of signs that Biden’s allegedly spectacular polling lead is illusory.

Before beginning this post about identifying positive trends, it’s important to remember that the polls – both state-by-state and national – are still showing Biden in the lead. Here’s a screengrab from Real Clear Polls with that information:

That’s the bad news. Here is the more cheering information:

1. The Biden campaign, which used the Wuhan virus as an excuse not to have any ground game, is suddenly sending volunteers to do door-to-door canvassing in Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Michigan, Nevada. You don’t do that if you’re confident you’ll win.2. Obama is hitting the campaign trail for Biden. That’s a sure sign of insecurity.

3. Biden’s campaign manager admitted that the pro-Biden polls are inflated.

4. Since the revelations about Hunter Biden hit the news, an IBD/TIPP poll shows that Biden’s support dropped by slightly over two percentage points, while Trump’s support rose by almost .6 percent.

5. There’s an interesting trend in voting by mail (“VBM”), a concept that Democrats were confident would benefit them. Unexpected numbers of Republicans are using VBM. The initial VBM numbers hugely favored Democrats and undoubtedly will continue to favor them. However, the number of Democrat VBM numbers is stagnant, while the number of Republican VBMs continues to rise.

6. Larry O’Connor has an interesting theory about why the polls are completely wrong, even though they’re now tapping the more reliable “likely voter” metric (as opposed to the “registered voter” metric). You should read his article, but here’s the gist:

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/10/cultural_amnesia_and_american_survival.html

Clive James’s 2007 book titled Cultural Amnesia: Necessary Memories from History and the Arts is a collection of artists and thinkers.  They are largely concerned with responses to “threats against freedom, mostly in the 20th century.”

As I leaf through it, I am astonished at the echoes of my own qualms as this country stands on the precipice of either remaining free or not.  I see Democrats and leftists invoking Nazism to describe conservatives in America, and I am reminded of Jean-François Revel’s words that “one insults the memory of the victims of Nazism if one uses them to bury the memory of the victims of communism.”  As leftists carelessly invoke Nazis to label “deplorables,” they totally disregard the evil of communism. 

Instead, the left and Democrats work assiduously to transform America into a socialist/communist country notwithstanding the millions who perished in communist countries and who continue to suffer even today.  It is vital to recall that in only ten years, Venezuela was irrevocably destroyed by socialism.  Yet Venezuela was once richer than China and Japan, and its currency was second only to the United States.  Moreover, Venezuela had an excellent health system.  No longer!

Moreover, Khmer Rouge (1975–1979) torturers had Western apologists in their corner who patently ignored the hideous torture, and as a result, “of 17,000 people who were interrogated in the S-21 camp in Phnom Penh, 16,994 died in agony.”  

While we are thankfully not at the level of the aforementioned groups, each time a picture of the Portland destruction and the people who gleefully beat and murder innocent people is shown, one is hard pressed not to see Brown Shirts operating with total license in Oregon.

Terry Gilliam, film director, is one of the artists featured in Cultural Amnesia.  His film Brazil is considered “one of the greatest political films,” wherein the “torture surgery contributes one of the most brain-curdling of the film’s many disturbing themes.”  He writes about “how the author of a state that rules by terror can detach himself from the brute facts.”  Whether it was Juan Perón or Hitler or the Soviet system or the Japanese army of the 20th century, the “organs” of power “were always, at the brute force level, staffed by otherwise unemployable dimwits.” 

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/10/is_a_vote_for_joe_biden_in_the_interest_of_american_jews.html

A recent study conducted by the Jewish Electorate Institute found that 67% of American Jewish respondents planned to vote for Joe Biden and 30% for President Trump.  Eighty-eight percent of those surveyed claimed to be pro-Israel and 64% said Israel is an important election issue.  Most ranked Biden higher on U.S.-Israel relations, the handling of anti-Semitism, and ensuring the security of the Jewish community.  The survey results are surprising, given Trump’s stellar record on Jews and Israel.  American Jews must reconsider, for Biden’s record and positions on critical topics belie these perceptions.

Record on Israel

Biden’s record should dispel any notions he is staunchly pro-Israel.  In 1982, testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations committee as a Democratic senator from Delaware, he argued with Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin.  He threatened to cut aid to Israel if settlement expansion continued in Judea and Samaria, shouting and banging the table when Begin wouldn’t budge.

In 2010, Biden upbraided Israel for building apartments in a Jewish section of East Jerusalem and opposed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s plan to extend sovereignty over Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria. 

In 2016, he pressured Ukraine, an abstainer, to vote for U.N. Security Council measure 2334, which identified the Jewish Quarter, the Temple Mount, and the Western Wall as located in “illegally occupied Palestinian territories,” an affirmation that defies historical fact.  UNSC 2334 also condemned Israel building settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.  Approval of the resolution emboldened the Palestinian Authority to call for the ethnic cleansing of Jews from Judea, Samaria, and the Jewish Quarter, reversing decades of U.S. vetoes against such moves.  That year, the U.N. General assembly passed 20 resolutions against Israel.  There were only six against other countries.

Biden’s anti-Israel stance is further confirmed by how the Obama administration interfered in the 2015 Israeli elections and tried to get Netanyahu defeated.  Obama and Biden tried to rupture Netanyahu’s governing coalition and move it to the left.  That year, the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations found the State Department had granted $350,000 to OneVoice, a radical anti-Israel organization that supports Hamas and the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement.  The funds were issued for a political campaign known as V15 or Victory 2015, a political campaign that used voter contacts and State Department-funded activists to defeat the incumbent government.  The Obama-Biden administration also published never-before-released details of Israel’s nuclear program, heedless of its profound impact on Israel’s security and the balance of power in the region.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/someone-elses-life-is-passing-before-bidens-eyes/

A story the Dem nominee offered at his recent townhall is almost certainly hogwash.

Sometimes when Joe Biden offers yarns about his childhood, I think of a Woody Allen bit from his stand-up days in which the comic tells the story of being invited to a Halloween party while visiting the Deep South in the early 1960s. Allen decides to dress-up as a ghost, and throws on a white sheet and sets off. Soon, a bunch of men also in white sheets drive up and order him to get in a car. A naïve Allen, assuming the group of people are also going to the party as ghosts, obliges.

Allen, of course, ends up at a Klan rally, where he gives himself away by “pledging” 50 dollars for the cause in the manner Jews donate at Temple during Rosh Hashana and other holidays. Facing the noose, Allen says:

And suddenly my whole life passed before my eyes. I saw myself as a kid again, in Kansas, going to school, swimming at the swimming hole, and fishing, frying up a mess-o-catfish, going down to the general store, getting a piece of gingham for Emmy-Lou. And I realize it’s not my life. They’re gonna hang me in two minutes, the wrong life is passing before my eyes.

https://pjmedia.com/election/tyler-o-neil/2020/10/16/vernon-jones-antifa-are-burning-black-businesses-and-nobody-holds-joe-biden-accountable-n1064598

On Friday, three prominent black supporters of President Donald Trump condemned Democratic nominee Joe Biden’s record on the black community in a press call. Trump campaign Senior Advisor Katrina Pierson, Georgia State Rep. Vernon Jones (D), and former NFL player Herschel Walker each claimed that Donald Trump “has done more for us in 47 months than Joe Biden has done in 47 years in public service.”

Toward the end of the call, Jones condemned Biden for refusing to condemn antifa and Black Lives Matter rioters and slammed the media for not asking Biden about them.

“Antifa are burning black businesses… and nobody holds Joe Biden accountable for that,” Jones declared. He lamented that “more black lives have been killed as the result of these riots and looting and shooting” than from police shootings of unarmed black men “but no one asks him about that.”

Instead, “the liberal media was calling it ‘peaceful protest.’” Jones called this a “black eye on journalism.”

Indeed, the destructive George Floyd riots have disproportionately damaged black communities in Kenosha, Wisc., Minneapolis, and Chicago. The riots destroyed black lives, black livelihoods, and black monuments. At least 26 Americans have died in the riots, most of them black.