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October 2020

THE 1619 CHRONICLES Bret Stephens *****

https://mailchi.mp/30f104131355/krd-new-bret-stephens-the-1619-chronicles?e=936

Bret Stephens takes on his own paper’s “1619 Project” in glorious form, exposing the many falsehoods and problems with it. Bravo! KRD

If there’s one word admirers and critics alike can agree on when it comes to The New York Times’s award-winning 1619 Project, it’s ambition. Ambition to reframe America’s conversation about race. Ambition to reframe our understanding of history. Ambition to move from news pages to classrooms. Ambition to move from scholarly debate to national consciousness.

In some ways, this ambition succeeded. The 1619 Project introduced a date, previously obscure to most Americans, that ought always to have been thought of as seminal — and probably now will. It offered fresh reminders of the extent to which Black freedom was a victory gained by courageous Black Americans, and not just a gift obtained from benevolent whites.

It showed, in a stunning photo essay, the places where human beings were once bought and sold as slaves — neglected scenes of American infamy. It illuminated the extent to which so much of what makes America great, including some of our uniquely American understandings of liberty and equality, is unthinkable without the struggle of Black Americans, as well as the extent to which so much of what continues to bedevil us is the result of centuries of racism.

And, in a point missed by many of the 1619 Project’s critics, it does not reject American values. As Nikole Hannah-Jones, its creator and leading voice, concluded in her essay for the project, “I wish, now, that I could go back to the younger me and tell her that her people’s ancestry started here, on these lands, and to boldly, proudly, draw the stars and those stripes of the American flag.” It’s an unabashedly patriotic thought.

[VIDEO] What if Biden and Harris Held a Campaign Event Together… And Nobody Showed Up? By Matt Margolis

https://pjmedia.com/election/matt-margolis/2020/10/12/videos-what-if-biden-and-harris-held-a-campaign-event-together-and-nobody-showed-up-n1039166

That is actually not a hypothetical question. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris held their first campaign event together in the battleground state of Arizona, and a local news reporter outside the event was left stunned at the lack of supporters rallying outside the event.

Trump campaign senior legal adviser Jenna Ellis noted that more people showed up to see her, Trump campaign director of strategic communications Marc Lotter, and senior adviser John Pence when they visited Arizona for an event.

While polls show Trump trailing in Arizona, the undeniable enthusiasm gap between Trump and Biden in this battleground state has me, for the first time, thinking that Trump might keep Arizona in the red this year.

Portland Rioters Topple Statues of Roosevelt and Lincoln, Smash Windows at Oregon Historical Society By Jeff Reynolds

https://pjmedia.com/uncategorized/jeff-reynolds/2020/10/12/portland-rioters-topple-statues-of-roosevelt-and-lincoln-smash-windows-at-oregon-historical-society-n1022591

On Sunday night, rioters in Portland, Ore., toppled statues of Abraham Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt and caused thousands of dollars’ worth of damage at the Oregon Historical Society. Declaring a day of action, the “indigenous wing” of antifa threatened violence to anyone caught live-streaming or recording video of their actions leading into Columbus Day.

After toppling the statues, rioters smashed windows at the Oregon Historical Society, an expansive museum on the South Park Blocks near Portland State University.The east side of the Oregon Historical Society building faces SW Broadway Street, a heavily traveled thoroughfare through downtown Portland. That side of the building has a large, multistory mural depicting events from Oregon’s history. Rioters defaced the mural by pelting it with paintball guns.

Rioters then moved on to cause serious damage to several businesses in downtown Portland.

German Journalist in DC Says He Received 3 Ballots in Mail, One for Dead Person By Petr Svab

https://www.theepochtimes.com/german-journalist-in-dc-says-he-received-3-ballots-in-mail-one-for-dead-person_3535708.html

A German journalist living in Washington who isn’t eligible to vote recently found three ballots in his mail.

Stefan Niemann is a United states correspondent for ARD, the German state-funded broadcaster.

On Oct. 10, he posted on Twitter a picture of a mail-in ballot for the upcoming election.

“The chaos that [President Donald] Trump lamented with the delivery of mail voting papers is here,” a translation of Niemann’s tweet says.

“I am not allowed to vote here. But three ballots came to my Washington address: for the previous tenant who moved five years ago, the landlady living in Puerto Rico, and her deceased husband.”

The tweet gained traction as Richard Grenell, former acting Director of National Intelligence and former ambassador to Germany, shared it on his Twitter the next day.

“German journalist living in the US (with no US voting rights) received multiple ballots in the mail,” he said. “This is outrageous.”

In another tweet, Niemann apparently responded to a comment.

“Yes, U.S. voters must first register and put a signature on file. What I’m saying is: the voter rolls are not up to date, also because registration systems are full of holes. Of course, there should be a comparison at the end so that everyone only votes once.”

Don’t Let the Media Win This Election By Frank Miele

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2020/10/12/dont_let_the_media_win_this_election.html

“It is hard for anyone who is not chained to a rock to fathom how millions of people can accept the anti-Trump narrative that is projected 24/7 from the studios of CNN, MSNBC, CBS, NBC and the rest. Don’t these millions of people — these “likely voters,” according to multiple polls — have any perspective?”

The mainstream media have always skewed left in the modern era, but that didn’t mean they were parasitic vampires who fed on the misfortune of others. When Ronald Reagan — the most conservative modern president  elected prior to Donald Trump — was wounded by a would-be assassin’s bullet in 1981, the media reported the event as a matter of national and historic significance. There was no glee and no speculation about President Reagan’s karmic responsibility for his near-death experience.

As a young liberal myself then, I experienced the horror of seeing our president shot on camera and the joy of seeing our president and his wife, Nancy, wave from the window of his hospital room several days later. The shooting was a moment of unifying grief, and the rapid recovery was a moment of triumph, not just for President Reagan, but for our people as a whole. Politics be damned.

Fast-forward four decades. Welcome to “Twilight of the Media: The Week of the Vampires.” When Donald Trump revealed that he had tested positive for coronavirus, the media spoke with almost one voice: Trump got what he deserved. That was the beginning of a week that represents what one can only hope is the low point in media distortion and Fake News, but may also justifiably be described as “situation normal.” It certainly made clear to me and many others what is at stake on Nov. 3.

Why Cancer is Called a Silent Killer by Linda Goudsmit

http://goudsmit.pundicity.com/24638/why-cancer-is-called-a-silent-killer

  http://goudsmit.pundicity.com

http://lindagoudsmit.com

Cancer has been called a silent killer because it kills its victims gradually without causing serious or alarming symptoms in the early stages. Cancer is not the only silent killer disease. High blood pressure, diabetes, coronary artery disease, even osteoporosis are considered silent killers because their early warning signs are disguised and diffuse, subtle symptoms that are often ignored until it is too late. So, programs of early detection have been instituted to oppose silent killers.

What about the body politic?

Wikipedia explains, “The modern understanding of the concept means a body politic comprises all the people in a particular country considered as a single group forming what we know as a nation.”

What are the silent killers of nations? What are the often ignored subtle and diffuse symptoms?

Silent killers attack the infrastructure of the body and its essential organs. So it is in politics. The U.S. Constitution is the infrastructure of the United States of America. Its central organs are the separated powers of the executive, legislative, and judicial branches. The silent killers attack them all.

Our Founding Fathers created the first government in world history based on individual freedom. Government of the people, by the people, and for the people, was a completely revolutionary concept of government because it completely rejected the binary structure of rulers and ruled. Monarchical England went to war against American independence and its founding philosophy. What happened?

America prevailed, grew and prospered because Americans, from the very beginning, were incentivized to work hard. They reaped what they sowed and developed a robust middle class enriched with private property. The middle class and private property distinguished American governance from every other society in the world. The middle class and its upward mobility made America great in the first place, and explains why the enemies of America target the middle class.

Senator Whitehouse’s Opening Salvo at Barrett Hearing: Dems’ Obamacare Diatribe By Andrew C. McCarthy

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/senator-whitehouses-opening-salvo-at-barrett-hearing-dems-obamacare-diatribe/

Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D., R.I.) is among the most insufferable hacks on Capitol Hill. It was he, recall, who suggested that energy companies should be sued under the federal racketeering laws for purportedly being “deniers” of climate change. He was also the laboring oar among a handful of Senate Democrats on an unhinged court amicus brief in a recent Supreme Court Second Amendment case, extortionately threatening that the Court could be “restructured” — translation: subjected to ruinous partisan court packing — if the justices continued what the senator portrayed as its Trump-era conservative drift.

So it comes as no surprise that Whitehouse’s opening statement in the confirmation hearing on Judge Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination to the Supreme Court was an absurd attack along lines I have previously described: Republicans are supposedly desperate to get Barrett on the Court so she can be the deciding vote to invalidate the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) in toto, including its guarantee of coverage for people with pre-existing conditions. Whitehouse’s diatribe was aimed less at Judge Barrett than at Senator John Cornyn (R., Texas.), a supporter of the district judge in Texas (a Bush-43 appointee), whose ruling is at the center of the case now before the Supreme Court.

There is no chance that the justices are going to invalidate the ACA. I doubt a single one would vote to do that. I repeat what I wrote about this nonsense two weeks ago:

The notion that Judge Barrett, or for that matter the other Trump appointees to the Supreme Court, are on the warpath against the Affordable Care Act is laughable. The ACA issue is being contorted into a convenient political talking point in the stretch-run of a presidential campaign because President Trump, foolishly and reportedly against the advice of Attorney General Barr, has supported a weak legal challenge to the law. The case is California v. Texas, and the justices are scheduled to hear arguments about it on November 10.

No, Judge Barrett Did Not Criticize the Affordable Care Act By Andrew C. McCarthy

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/no-judge-barrett-did-not-criticize-the-affordable-care-act/?utm_source=

Democrats are continuing their disingenuous strategy of framing Judge Amy Coney Barrett as President Trump’s stealth weapon, being rushed onto the Supreme Court by Republicans in order to kill Obamacare in a case the Court is scheduled to hear arguments in on November 10 (see my earlier post). In this vein, Senator Chris Coons (D., Del.) posits that Barrett has publicly criticized the Affordable Care Act. 

This is false.

As a judge, Barrett has not ruled on Obamacare. As a scholar, she has taken the firm position that a judge’s important but modest role is to say what the law is, not to formulate public policy. The best prediction of her position on legislation, therefore, is that its policy direction is for Congress to decide; the judge’s narrow role is to ensure that enacted law complies with constitutional requirements, regardless of its political or ideological bent. That, for what it’s worth is why I’ve predicted (see the earlier post) that neither Judge Barrett nor any of the eight justices currently sitting on the Court (including its four conservatives, two appointed by President Trump) would vote to invalidate Obamacare.

Senator Coons is apparently referring to an article – actually, a book review, “Countering the Majoritarian Difficulty” – that Judge Barrett, as a Notre Dame Law School professor, wrote for a scholarly publication of the University of Minnesota Law School in 2017. The article was not specifically about Obamacare. Instead, it arose out of a roundtable discussion in which several academics discussed Our Republican Constitution, an excellent, provocative book by Randy Barnett, a superb law professor at Georgetown.

‘Kinda Boring Out Here’ — Not A Single Person Showed Up to Biden Event In Arizona John Salvatore

https://flagandcross.com/kinda-boring-out-here-not-a-single-person-showed-up-to-biden-event-in-arizona/

It seems that most states have seen massive rallies with numbers in the thousands of people showing support for President Trump – even in deep blue states like California.

The same can’t really be said in favor of Joe Biden.

On Sunday, the Biden/Harris campaign learned just how popular they really are in Arizona.

The local Fox News anchor covering the “event” said, “I’m told by one of the Biden staffers, local staffers, that they kind of kept the details about the visit, as far as the timing and the exact location, they didn’t really want to give that out to the public, because they want to keep the crowds to a minimum. They realize we are in a pandemic and they don’t want a crowd of more than fifty people at any of their events.”

Uh huh.

Is Big Tech Breaking Campaign Finance Laws? Julie Kelly

https://amgreatness.com/2020/10/11/is-big-tech-breaking-campaign-finance-laws/

The president and the GOP should weigh all of their options on how to pursue legal recourse against these companies for openly campaigning on behalf of Democrats in possible violation of federal law.

A mayoral candidate in Texas was arrested October 8 and charged with 84 counts of mail application ballot fraud; Zul Mohamed, running for mayor of Carrollton, forged nearly one hundred voter registration applications. “At the time of arrest, Mohamed was in the process of stuffing envelopes with additional mail ballot applications for neighboring Dallas County,” law enforcement officials reported. He also was charged with 25 counts of “unlawful possession of an official mail in ballot” and faces up to 20 years in prison.

The incident was just one more in a string of reports last week about rampant voter fraud.

But facts are a tough thing for our Big Tech overlords to accept. The day after the Texas arrest, Twitter issued another election-related decree allowing the company to censor and suppress posts critical of mail-in voting. 

In September—the same month the company’s public policy director left to join Joe Biden’s transition team—Twitter announced a “Civic Integrity” policy informing users how the platform would be monitored before and after Election Day. “We will label or remove false or misleading information about how to participate in an election or other civic process,” the policy warns.

Posts deemed inaccurate about “election rigging, ballot tampering, [and] vote tallying” will be subjected to Twitter’s heavy hand. The new policy will enable Twitter censors to slap an alert that reads “This is disputed” and redirect users to what it considers “credible information.” An example cited by the company in its announcement shows a user comment flagged for expressing concern about unreliable results from mail-in votes.