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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION

50 STATES AND DC, CONGRESS AND THE PRESIDENT

LIGHTEN UP AMERICA! SYDNEY WILLIAMS

http://www.swtotd.blogspot.com

While Kamala Harris began her campaign with a promise of joy, it soon deteriorated into character smears against her opponent, with Ms. Harris calling him “fascist” and a “Hitler,” and with President Biden referring to Mr. Trump’s supporters as “garbage.” What makes the “fascist” label ironic is that, as Victor Davis Hanson wrote in last Thursday’s issue of American Greatness, “…he [Trump] has been the target of fascists machinations from her own party and supporters for nearly a decade.”

Mr. Trump has always appeared devoid of humor, except when polls swing his way. Writing in the current UK issue of The Spectator, Kate Andrews noted “…in the past few weeks, something has restored Trump’s humor.” As the audience left a recent rally in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, she quoted a man speaking to his family: “That was better than Netflix.”  Most of us smiled when Mr. Trump, wearing an orange reflector vest (and in response to Mr. Biden’s remark), jumped into a garbage truck in Green Bay, Wisconsin. Nevertheless, Mr. Trump does have a habit of calling his opponents names that would make Gordon Gekko blush. Amidst this war of words, America seems an unhappy place. Last Thursday, The Washington Post editorialized: “…in an increasingly angry nation…incidents of road rage escalate across the country.”  As in 1888 Mudville, there is little joy in the U.S. today.

Reflections on an American Saga When was the last time that a single name invoked such a wide array of emotions as the name Trump? By Eric Lendrum

https://amgreatness.com/2024/11/04/reflections-on-an-american-saga/

Regardless of whatever happens on Tuesday, the end of the 2024 election will have a bittersweet feel to it, for it will be the final chapter of Donald J. Trump’s story. Whether it is the end of the final chapter or just the beginning is up to us to decide.

But perhaps Trump can already claim victory, no matter who is ultimately declared the winner at the end of it all. And his would be a far greater victory than any one election result.

All Good Things

The future of the nation depends on the decision that will be made shortly. But, win or lose, it will not be the end of the United States of America. Not by a long shot. America is resilient, and no one personifies that titanic endurance like Donald Trump.

They hit him with a fake “Russian collusion” investigation, two impeachments, a Chinese virus, race riots, a stolen election, an FBI raid, dozens of bogus charges, a mugshot, a conviction in a kangaroo court, and multiple assassination attempts. But through it all, when there was doubt, he always ate it up and spit it back out. With nerves of steel and a heart of gold, he walked right through the fire every single time, refusing to quit until the race was finally over.

That is exactly why here, in the end, it is rather difficult to come to terms with the idea that President Trump’s political journey is entering its conclusion. He himself has said as much, admitting that he will not run for a fourth time in 2028 if this election is also stolen from him.

And, despite the left’s endless screeching about him being a “dictator in waiting” who may extend his time in office, it is clear to those with an IQ higher than room temperature that he will leave office in 2029, as he should, if he wins this election. In the end, the one and only thing that can bring Trump’s political journey to an end is the one thing he has always loved and respected the most: the will of the American people.

And so, win or lose, this will be the final election with Donald Trump’s name on the ballot.

This fact was not lost on me as I filled out my absentee ballot for the general election in the Commonwealth of Virginia. It was the sixth time overall that I had filled in the bubble next to his name, the culmination of his historic three consecutive successful runs for the Republican nomination. I found myself hesitating to fill out the ballot, only because I wanted to savor the act one final time.

From ‘Clingers’ to ‘Garbage’—Why the 16 years of Vilification? Derogatory labels highlight the cultural and socioeconomic divide between elite politicians and many Americans, particularly Trump supporters, who feel disrespected by these terms and policies. By Victor Davis Hanson

https://amgreatness.com/2024/11/04/from-clingers-to-garbage-why-the-16-years-of-vilification/

Who actually are the “garbage” people?

Are they one and the same with Joe Biden’s “semi-fascists,” “chumps,” and “dregs of society?”

Or Barack Obama’s “clingers?”

Do they include Hillary Clinton’s “deplorables” and “irredeemables?”

Are they FBI grandee Peter Strzok’s Walmart shoppers who “smell?”

Over the last decade-and-a-half, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, Harris-Walz, and a host of other self-described elites have variously invented a wide range of smears and slurs—but about whom exactly?

Who are these people that leftwing politicians have so vehemently derided—and why?

They include Trump supporters, of course, or what Biden also dubbed “ultra-MAGAs” and Tim Walz called “fascists,” now without the prior qualifying prefix “semi.”

In general, these adjectives of disdain denote about half the country according to the results of what will soon be the last three presidential elections.

This half is more rural than urban, characterized by larger than smaller families, more high-schooled diplomaed than college degreed, and more conventional and traditional than vanguard and trend-setting.

The Real Reason the Left Hates J.D. Vance He exposes what their ideology really is. by Tom Knighton

https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-real-reason-the-left-hates-j-d-vance/

Before he ever ran for public office, I read J.D. Vance’s book, Hillbilly Elegy. It had angered someone who got triggered pretty easily, so I wanted to read it for myself. What I got was an eye-opening and entertaining memoir of Vance’s childhood, some parallels with things I see in my own community, and a glimpse at just why the left would come to hate him so much.

The truth is that Vance is a lot of things that people want in a candidate. He’s young, well-spoken, intelligent, and understands the issues.

Your average leftist would hate him for that alone, but they have more of a reason.

You see, Vance represents just how much of their ideology is an absolute lie.

Many leftists like to argue that America is a nation of haves and have-nots and that the haves got there via things like inheritance, cronyism, and other nefarious methods. They want people to believe that the system is rigged against them and they can never make it out of poverty on their own. The idea of “pulling yourself up by your bootstraps” just isn’t realistic.

The problem is that Vance did just that.

He came from the lower socioeconomic strata. He joined the Marine Corps in order to pay his way through college. There, he worked his tail off to graduate with solid grades so he could go to law school at Yale.

Over my many years, I’ve seen a lot of leftists claim that getting out of poverty is all but impossible. Some have even claimed the military wasn’t an option for escape despite the fact that yes, it is, and it’s obvious to anyone who cares to look.

Vance shows that there’s a pathway toward college if you want it badly enough.

He went from relative poverty to being a venture capitalist, a United States senator, and possibly just a week away from becoming vice president of the United States.

What’s more, he did it without becoming a leftist like Barack Obama or Bill Clinton. He recognized the virtue of his own hard work and rather than pretend he’s some rare soul who made it out, he recognized that while others might not get quite where has, they can escape their poverty-stricken lives and become more of they’re willing to work for it.

They hate him because his very existence proves that what they’re peddling to millions of people is nothing more than nonsense.

Fascists All the Way Down Meet historical fascism’s true heirs.Bruce Thornton

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fascists-all-the-way-down/

In the famous anecdote usually attributed to Bertrand Russel, a scientist lecturing on the earth’s position in the solar system is corrected an old lady who says the earth is actually supported by a giant turtle. When the scientist asked what supports the turtle, she triumphally answered, “It’s turtles all the way down!”

Since the Twenties and the rise of Italian Fascism and German Nazism––which eventually become the main referent of the word––the term has become an all-purpose question-begging epithet so promiscuously abused in the Thirties that, as George Orwell said in 1944, “The word Fascism has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies something not desirable.”

As the word’s use by progressives and leftists––at this point synonyms for “Democrats”––have shown for decades, their understanding of conservatism’s principles and tenets is limited to the infinite regression of “fascists all the way down.” In this election season, they are binging 24/7 on “fascists” with plenty of “Hitlers” thrown in to ratchet up the evil quotient with evocations of genocide and the horrors of the death camps.

The problem is not just the blatant abuse of history, truth, and language, which since ancient Athens has been a habit typical of representative governments that give widely diverse citizens freedom of speech. The more pertinent and dangerous point about this misuse of “fascist” as a political smear is that it obscures how much American progressivism has in common with historical fascism––an oversight made worse by the left’s assumption that conservativism and capitalism are ideologically and organically fascist, and thus profoundly more unjust and dangerous than socialism and other forms of statism.

In reality, as Jonah Goldberg explained in his 2008 book Liberal Fascism, fascism is a phenomenon of the left, not the right––an “inconvenient truth,” Goldberg writes, “if ever there was one.”

It’s All About Control: The Elite Plan for the Great Food Reset By Janet Levy

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2024/11/it_s_all_about_control_the_elite_plan_for_the_great_food_reset.html

Besides ‘degrowth’ and ‘net zero,’ one other dangerous buzz phrase being bandied about by proponents of the Great Reset is “nature-positive food systems.”  The stated goal of moving to new food systems is to reduce nitrogen emissions, livestock production, and meat consumption.  This is to be achieved by consuming plant-based products, lab-grown foods, and insects (as a source of protein).  The moot question, however, is whether such a change is at all necessary?

The U.N., the World Economic Forum (WEF), the Rockefeller Foundation, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and other NGOs would have us believe so.  These institutions are controlled by the global elite, who aim to create monopolistic markets for themselves and enslave people, turning them first into captive consumers without choice, and eventually, without free will.  So, the U.N. and its co-conspirators have manufactured a food crisis, and by linking it to their other fabrication — an exaggerated climate crisis — they are using it to reset the world’s food system.

Their plan to “transition to net zero, nature-positive food systems by 2030” translates into a war on traditional farmers.  Unable to absorb the added costs of new regulations and controls, small, independent producers are being squeezed out of farming.  Their place is being taken by multinational agribusinesses.  Unchecked, these multinationals will dominate farming in a decade or two.

The Futile Quest for Equity By Robert Weissberg

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2024/11/the_futile_quest_for_equity.html

Being a pedestrian in New York City can be dangerous. As one headline put it, “Last Years was Deadliest in NYC Streets in Nearly a Decade.” Reckless drivers killed 124 pedestrians, 50 motorcyclists, and 19 bike riders. New York City has tried to reduce these fatalities with lower speed limits, cameras to catch those running red lights and clearly marked pedestrian safety zones.

Surprisingly, the city recently reversed course and eliminated the $250 fine for jaywalking or crossing against the signal. Why invite more deaths and injuries? According to city council member Mercedes Narcisse, “Laws that penalize common behaviors for everyday movement shouldn’t exist, especially when they unfairly impact communities of color,” and since in 2023, 90% of the issued tickets targeted black and Latino pedestrians.

Repealing the jaywalking law is about equity, as understood politically, and requires that all outcomes must reflect population proportionality, and if they do not, government must level them, or at least make it appear that differences are nonexistent. So, though we may be unable to stop unsafe behavior, government can keep such unequal behavior out of the public eye by decriminalizing it, even if imposing equity disproportionately harms the intended beneficiaries. Note. blacks nationally experience death when walking at a 118% higher rate than whites. The New York City law does not help anybody. It probably hurts blacks the most. The only beneficiaries are those made uncomfortable by encountering statistics depicting blacks and Hispanics in a bad light. Why not end poverty by eliminating economic data?

This example is only one of many equity crusades. The city has also relaxed enforcing the law against those not paying subway and bus fares since culprits were disproportionately black and Hispanic. That such fare avoidance may bankrupt the public transportation vital for the city’s poor is irrelevant. Furthermore, as in other cities, “broken windows” policing where minor offences such as public intoxication have been sharply reduced since too many blacks and Hispanics were arrested. New York City’s district attorney Alvin Bragg has “reduced” crime by not prosecuting offenders though actual crime remains rampant.

The equity battle goes beyond decriminalization. Many schools today no longer disproportionately punish blacks for misbehaving, regardless of their bad behavior, while adjusting test standards to eliminate gaps in academic performance.

Steyn on the Personal Toll of Lawfare

https://x.com/Hillsdale/status/1837909084084793523?utm_campaign=hc_current&utm_medium=email&_hsenc=p2ANqtz–

“You prove your innocence, but at the end you’re a charred, smoking lump, and so is your career and so is your savings account.” In this excerpt, Mark Steyn reveals the risks of facing an American justice system where the process is the punishment. Steyn’s entire talk and other events from Hillsdale’s 2024 Constitution Day Celebration are now available to watch. 

Remember the J6 Political Prisoners Eileen F. Toplansky

I always wondered how the Nazis and the communists could just take over a country of millions and then destroy the bodies and souls of the people.

In America, it is happening before our very eyes. In fact, the American Gulag is sadly alive and well.  At the Gateway Pundit site article titled “J6 Political Prisoner Jake Lang Thrown in Permanent Solitary Confinement”of October 24, 2024, one learns that

“The Biden-Harris regime has passed a red line that hallmarks all totalitarian regimes: persecution and torture.

“January 6 Political Prisoner Jake Lang has been thrown in solitary confinement permanently for posting a video from a secret contraband cell phone of himself praying, Holy Bible in hand, on the floor of his prison cell.

“Lang is a January 6 patriot and founder of the community fundraiser for all of the J6ers, SponsorJ6.com, who has spent nearly 1,400 days behind bars without a trial [emphasis mine]. Jake’s treatment has become an example of the egregious overreach of a weaponized federal government. For almost four years, he’s been incarcerated as a political hostage of the Biden-Harris regime, enduring unimaginable hardship, including over 900 days in solitary confinement.

Patriots are being urged to call the following and demand that all January 6 detainees be moved back into their own cell block C3B in the Central Treatment facility so as to avoid being further mistreated.

Thumb on the Scale Public trust in science is eroding, thanks to the scientific establishment’s recent forays into partisan politics. By Joel Zinberg M.D.

https://www.city-journal.org/article/waning-public-trust-in-science

Americans’ trust in the scientific establishment took another hit last week with the revelation that a prominent advocate of adolescent transgender treatments had suppressed the findings of her federally funded research showing that puberty blockers did not improve mental health in children with gender distress. Johanna Olson-Kennedy worried that the study’s findings would be “weaponized” by opponents of the transgender treatments she promotes. This reinforces suspicions that scientists and their publications are less interested in the search for truth than they are in promoting progressive political causes.

This advocacy extends to partisan politics itself. In only the second presidential election endorsement in its history, Scientific American urged readers to “Vote for Kamala Harris to Support Science, Health and the Environment.” Two months earlier, Nature, the prestigious British science publication, extolled Harris’s background as the daughter of a scientist and her support for diversity initiatives in STEM, a single-payer health insurance program, abortion rights, and climate change, enthusing that her candidacy has “stirred optimism among scientists.”

Both publications broke with their traditional nonpartisanship in 2020 when they endorsed Joe Biden. Similarly, the normally nonpolitical New England Journal of Medicine published an October 2020 editorial castigating the Trump administration and unfavorably comparing its pandemic response to that of China, which “chose strict quarantine and isolation.” Trump administration officials, the editorial alleged, were “dangerously incompetent. We should not abet them and enable the deaths of thousands more Americans by allowing them to keep their jobs.”