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.

Manchin’s rebuke shows how toxic Biden’s energy views are A Democrat was willing to blast them full-bore. By Charles Lipson

https://spectatorworld.com/topic/manchins-rebuke-shows-bidens-energy-views-are-toxic/

It’s not often that a senator launches a brutal, frontal assault on a president from his own party. It’s even rarer when he does it just before a national election. But that is exactly what West Virginia Democrat Joe Manchin just did to Joe Biden. At issue was Biden’s recent speech attacking coal, a bedrock of the West Virginia economy. Manchin was furious over Biden’s promise to shut down all of America’s coal-fired power plants.

That view might be red meat for Biden’s audience of green-power advocates and rich California donors, but it is poison in West Virginia. And it is those West Virginians who elected Manchin, the only Democrat still standing in a state that is now deep red.

Manchin didn’t just criticize Biden. He blasted him full-bore, and threw the lifeless carcass over his shoulder on the way back to the truck:

President Biden’s comments are not only outrageous and divorced from reality, they ignore the severe economic pain the American people are feeling because of rising energy costs. …Being cavalier about the loss of coal jobs for men and women in West Virginia and across the country who literally put their lives on the line to help build and power this country is offensive and disgusting. The President owes these incredible workers an immediate and public apology and it is time he learn a lesson that his words matter and have consequences.

The Return of Bibi Netanyahu Israelis finally sobered up and realized Netanyahu is the best candidate to steward the Jewish state on issues of law and order, public safety, national security, and even international diplomacy. By Josh Hammer

https://amgreatness.com/2022/11/04/the-return-of-bibi-netanyahu/

It turns out that, sometimes, the fifth time is a charm. With the final ballots now counted in Israel’s fifth national election in four years, the results are officially in: Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu, already the longest-serving prime minister in the 74-year history of the modern Jewish state, is set to return as premier. After four elections of decisively mixed results, where both the Right—which has been addled by its disgruntled “Never Netanyahu” camp—and the Left have consistently failed to secure a durable governing coalition, the Israeli people have finally spoken up loud and clear: Bring Bibi back.

What’s more, the final results are actually far clearer than many had expected. Some pre-election polls had Netanyahu’s Likud and its allied parties polling highly enough to secure a bare 61-seat coalition majority—Israel’s Knesset, or national legislature, has 120 seats—but others did not. In the final count, the Likud-centric rightist coalition will attain 64 seats. That may sound like a narrow winning margin, but compared to the previous four indecisive elections going back to 2019, that is a monumental victory.

Netanyahu’s 64-seat coalition, once formalized by President Isaac Herzog, will include 32 seats from Likud and 14 seats from Religious Zionism, a unity ticket headed by right-wingers Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir (the controversial newest star of the Israeli political scene). Netanyahu had deliberately snubbed campaign appearances with Ben-Gvir, who is typically derided by his detractors and a supine press as a “Kahanist.” Still, Religious Zionism ended up securing the third-most votes of any Israeli political party—behind only Likud and outgoing Prime Minister Yair Lapid’s center-left Yesh Atid. It is difficult to smear the third-highest-polling party in Israel’s frenzied multiparty parliamentary system as being replete with “bigots” or “Kahanists.” Indeed, all signs point toward Religious Zionism being a meaningful new player on the Israeli political scene; it is here to stay.

Remarkably, as Likud secured a durable majority and as Religious Zionism cruised to a third-place result, the Israeli Left’s now-decadeslong collapse was only further exacerbated. Labor, which dominated the first three decades of Israeli history, will have a minuscule four seats in the next Knesset. Far-left Meretz, moreover, did not even qualify for Knesset representation. The upshot is that this next governing coalition, and by extension the next Knesset, will likely be the most religious and the most right-wing in Israel’s history.

The CDC Has Lost All Credibility The Left’s politicization of the once-revered organization has morphed it into a haven for medical hacks and become a massive laughing stock. By Shawn Waugh

https://amgreatness.com/2022/11/04/the-cdc-has-lost-all-credibility/

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) voted 15-0 last month to add the COVID-19 mRNA vaccines to the recommended childhood schedule.

Given that the panel consists of card-carrying members of the Branch Covidian faith, the unanimous vote came as no surprise. In fact, some committee members voted via video conference while sitting alone in a room, wearing their masks.

Ironic, considering the CDC a month earlier had quietly stopped recommending that patrons and employees in healthcare facilities mask up.

But, forever masking is an essential pillar of the Covidian faith. It must be followed if members are to attain eternal life regardless of changing doctrine and new revelation from on high.

What Does the Vote Mean?

The actual recommendation from the CDC is that children begin getting COVID-19 inoculations at 6 months of age. 

The CDC quickly pointed out that the organization cannot issue specific mandates and that the panel’s recommendation serves only to “help streamline clinical guidance for healthcare providers by including all currently licensed, authorized and routinely recommended vaccines in one document.”

That may be technically true. We know, however, that COVID-19 jabs, regardless of their true efficacy, have become a sacrament within the Branch Covidian church. Moreover, the CDC has significant influence on states and healthcare facilities regarding vaccination schedules. States commonly use CDC guidelines to protect themselves from legal liability when implementing local regulations. So the CDC’s decision will undoubtedly lead Covidian governors to add the CDC’s recommendation to their states’ vaccination schedules. In turn, this will mean parents must have their children vaccinated if they want them to attend public school, daycare, and participate in sports.

The Danger of a “Sleeping” Nuclear Deal: Stronger Russia, China, North Korea, Iran by Majid Rafizadeh

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19079/iran-sleeping-nuclear-deal

In spite of US Special Envoy for Iran Robert Malley’s recently having said that the White House is not going to “waste our time” on the nuclear deal “if nothing’s going to happen,” he nevertheless stressed that the Biden administration is still committed to employing diplomacy, presumably to revive it at a later date.

Pelosi might recall that although a “deal” would professedly “prevent” Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, the reality is quite different. Iran is acquiring nuclear weapons — rapidly — with a deal or without one. Any “deal” appears simply a bribe to the Iranian regime please just not to use their nuclear weapons on the Biden administration’s watch.

Pelosi might also recall that the nuclear deal will reward Russia by allowing it to cash in on a $10 billion contract to expand Iran’s nuclear infrastructure. Russian President Vladimir Putin will most likely have a stake in the $10 billion contract.

Pelosi might even further recall that it was the nuclear deal that allowed the brutal regime of Iran freely and legally to export weapons to Russia, in the first place.

Any nuclear deal with Iran will not make the world a “safer place”. It will provide the Iranian regime with billions of dollars, help it to send more advanced weaponry to Russia to inflict even more damage on Ukrainians, pave the way for the ruling mullahs to legally obtain nuclear weapons, and strengthen America’s other adversaries, Russia, China and North Korea.

Now, why would the Biden administration want to do that?

The Biden administration is sitting idly by as the Iranian regime ratchets up, and keeps getting away with, both its attacks on its own fed-up populace, and its delivery of weapons to Russia — assisted, it seems, by China and North Korea.

Reason and Compassion on Gender Medicine Florida adopts the more cautious European model of pediatric care—and exposes American “gender-affirming” advocates as incompetent and dishonest. Leor Sapir

https://www.city-journal.org/floridas-reason-and-compassion-on-gender-medicine

Florida has decided to regulate medical care for gender-dysphoric minors. The state’s Boards of Medicine and Osteopathic Medicine ruled that the standard treatment for gender-dysphoric youth under 18 will no longer be puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones, but psychotherapy.

Contrary to the media frenzy that erupted, Florida is not planning to prevent minors already on the medical track from receiving hormones—what critics call “forcible detransition.” Instead, the new rule includes a grandfather clause, permitting these individuals to continue their medical transition. As for prospective cases, the Board of Medicine voted not to allow further pediatric procedures, while the Board of Osteopathic Medicine voted to allow them in exceptional cases under an Institutional Review Board-approved research protocol. If proponents of “gender-affirming” interventions want to assert that puberty suppression and cross-sex hormones are “medically necessary,” the onus should be on them to prove it using the standard techniques of scientific corroboration.

In short, Florida seems poised to adopt the Scandinavian—and, it appears, the British—model of caring for gender-dysphoric minors. Rather than imposing legislative actions that put politicians between the doctor and the patient, Florida decided to invoke the existing mechanism for the regulation of health practices, putting the decision in front of state medical boards. The Florida Medical Board’s five-hour televised discussion made it obvious that its practicing physicians are first and foremost professionals who understand the uncertainties of clinical care. Florida medical authorities’ nuanced decision is evidence of how reason and compassion can work in tandem.

How Grim Is the Outlook for Incumbents Polling below 50 Percent?By Jim Geraghty

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/how-grim-is-the-outlook-for-incumbents-below-50-percent/

As Greg Corombos observed on Wednesday, we’ve reached that time of year when the moment many of us type the letter “R” in a web browser, we automatically load the URL for the RealClearPolitics list of the day’s latest polls.

But there’s a school of thought that argues that what polling aggregates really give us is a sense of the level of support the incumbent enjoys. Incumbency carries a lot of advantages in American politics — usually, strong name recognition, some degree of public application of what one has accomplished in office, and significant advantages in fundraising. Most years, between 91 and 98 percent of incumbents get reelected.

There’s a rule of thumb that an incumbent who is polling above 50 percent is safe, and an incumbent polling below 50 percent is in trouble. After all, the voters already know who the incumbent is and what they think of him. If they don’t like him, they’re usually, at minimum, looking for other options.

For what it’s worth, way back in 2010, Nate Silver argued that “the incumbent 50 percent rule” was an oversimplification. “It may be proper to focus more on the incumbent’s number than the opponent’s when evaluating such a poll — even though it is extremely improper to assume that the incumbent will not pick up any additional percentage of the vote.” But I think most of us can agree that an incumbent would rather be above 50 percent than below it, and the higher your support in late polling, the better your chance of reelection.