RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.theepochtimes.com/after-fleeing-from-socialism-some-immigrants-fear-for-americas-future_3520553.html

MIAMI—A diverse group of supporters gathered outside President Donald Trump’s hotel in Doral, Florida, hoping to catch a glimpse of him during a recent Latinos roundtable event. Many were exiles from socialist or communist regimes such as Cuba and Venezuela.

This personal backdrop—many having fled to America—and the notion that the Democratic Party has been shifting further left, are key factors behind their support. The administration’s repeated sanctions against the regimes of Venezuela and Cuba helped solidify their decisions.

Jorde Lewis, a Venezuelan American, said he couldn’t comprehend why anyone from his home country would vote for the Democratic Party, since he believes they are “offering socialism.” A majority of Venezuelans live in poverty and millions have fled the regime.

“We left socialism to come to a capitalist state,” Lewis told The Epoch Times on Sept. 25. “I know exactly what it’s like to live under socialism, not to have food, not to have electricity.”

https://amgreatness.com/2020/10/01/big-techs-backing-of-the-transition-integrity-project-lacks-integrity/

During Tuesday night’s debate, while fielding yet another softball from moderator Chris Wallace, Joe Biden promised to accept the outcome of the 2020 presidential election. “I will accept it, and he will too,” Biden replied. “You know why? Once the winner is declared after all the votes are counted, that will be the end of it.”

But Biden, as usual, wasn’t telling the whole truth. The former vice president can publicly assure Americans he will abide by the voters’ decision this year because he knows his campaign team is part of a massive operation—cosigned by the most powerful media, business, and political interests in the country—performing Biden’s dirty work behind-the-scenes to make sure that he, not Donald Trump, takes the oath of office on January 20, 2021.

As I’ve reported for American Greatness, Democrats and NeverTrump Republicans earlier this year formed a group called the Transition Integrity Project, an outlandish misnomer, which has been “war gaming” a number of likely post-election scenarios. The same sore losers who, to this day, cannot accept the 2016 results fully intend to get their way this time around, the U.S. Constitution and boundaries of decency be damned.

According to its detailed battle plan, the Transition Integrity Project could extend Election Day all the way to Inauguration Day as it sows chaos across the country until Biden is installed in the White House, even if Trump is legitimately reelected. 

“The purpose of this report is not to frighten, but to spur all stakeholders to action,” TIP warned. “It is 2 [sic] incumbent upon elected officials, civil society leaders, and the press to challenge authoritarian actions in the courts, in the media, and in the streets through peaceful protest.”

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/trump-s-winning-voter-registration-battle-against-biden-key-states-n1241674

In the last few weeks, Joe Biden has led President Donald Trump by a fairly consistent 8-point average in national polls and has maintained leads in more than enough battleground states to win the Electoral College, including Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — all states Trump won in 2016.

But there are signs Trump’s ground operation is paying off when it comes to registering new voters in key states, an advantage that could become important if the race tightens before Nov. 3.

The Trump campaign has boasted that it knocks on more than a million doors a week, a claim that’s impossible to independently verify. In sharp contrast, the Biden campaign had ditched a ground game for virtual outreach, citing Covid-19 concerns — even though academic research has routinely concluded door-to-door canvassing is the “most consistently effective and efficient method of voter mobilization.” Only just now has the Biden campaign decided to restart its in-person voter contacts in some battleground states.

As deadlines approach, new data from the past few months shows Republicans have swamped Democrats in adding new voters to the rolls, a dramatic GOP improvement over 2016, even if new registrations have lagged 2016 rates across the board. It’s a sign that in a pandemic, Democrats are struggling to seize traditional opportunities to pad their margins, such as the return of students to college campuses.

Of the six states Trump won by less than 5 points in 2016, four — Arizona, Florida, North Carolina and Pennsylvania — permit voters to register by party. In all four states, voter registration trends are more robust for the GOP than four years ago.

http://www.swtotd.blogspot.com

Issues remain: COVID-19, the economy; riots in blue-run cities versus law and order, the Supreme Court, climate and the Green New Deal, illegal immigration, China, Russia and the Middle East. While voters know where Mr. Trump stands on these issues and what he has done, they received little insight as to what Mr. Biden would do. Mr. Trump was accused for not condemning far-right, white supremacists. That is not precisely true if one reads the transcript. Interestingly, Chris Wallace did not ask Mr. Biden to condemn left-wing extremists like Antifa, which is an “idea, not an organization,” according to Mr. Biden.

When I awoke on Wednesday morning, I received the following from a friend, a former British jurist now retired and living in Switzerland: “There can be no greater symbol of American decline than the sight of those two elderly gentlemen slugging it out without dignity or sell-restraint.”

It is hard to disagree with my friend’s assessment, and it is remarkable how far removed from Margaret Thatcher we have come. While it is likely that Mr. Trump did not pick up undecided voters, I suspect more damage was done to Mr. Biden. Mr. Trump played the role he has played for the past four and a half years – a crude, unabashed disruptor of political norms. On the other hand, Joe Biden, who has been largely invisible for the last few months, confirmed concerns of those who worry about his mental acuity. While most of his comments and answers were lucid, he stumbled over words and phrases, and his eyes, especially as time went on, took on a glazed, empty look. Mr. Trump is rude, while Mr. Biden is not well. The first we have known for years; the second we are just realizing.

https://pjmedia.com/vodkapundit/2020/10/01/crazy-moderator-of-second-presidential-debate-served-as-an-intern-for-joe-biden-n992980

C-SPAN’s Steve Scully, who will moderate the second presidential debate, got his start as a staff assistant in Sen. Ted Kennedy’s communication office, and prior to that worked as in intern in the office of then-senator Joe Biden.

The second presidential debate is scheduled for October 15, just two weeks from now.

Scully’s complete work and education records — both impressive — can be found here on his page at George Washington University’s School of Media and Public Affairs.

You might know Scully as the guy who handles C-SPAN’s open phone lines, a job he handles affably and with grace.

Scully is generally well-regarded in Washington and in the media, but out here where I am in flyover country, he may at least be seen as too chummy with Democrats to serve as an honest broker for the second presidential debate.

Tweets like this one from 2016, and currently making the retweet rounds, don’t help.

“Love,” really?

Whatever else you might say — and I nearly bit right through my tongue — that is not a good look for the supposedly non-partisan moderator of a presidential debate.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/10/on-court-packing-biden-is-afraid-of-losing-the-radical-left/

He knows Democrats are unlikely to have the votes to abolish the Senate filibuster and pack the Court. He’s playing coy on the issue to preserve his base.

 I t is always better to be ahead than behind, so former vice president Joe Biden is no doubt relishing the solid lead he maintains in national polls. But we don’t have a national election; we have 50 state elections, and the race is still tight in the battleground states, where every vote continues to count.

Consequently, Biden cannot afford to ignore the radical Left, which doesn’t have much enthusiasm for him, but is enthusiastic about defeating President Trump.

That is the main reason why Biden is dodging questions about whether he favors court-packing, which would require eradicating the Senate filibuster, which, in turn, would open the floodgates for the enactment of other radical elements of the Left’s agenda: government-monopolized health care, statehood for Washington, D.C. and Puerto Rico, the Green New Deal, Senator Elizabeth Warren’s Accountable Capitalism Act, etc.

When a politician is dodging a question, he is trying to fool somebody. On court-packing, it comes down to whether Biden is trying to string along his core left-wing supporters or dupe moderate voters (in particular, independents, centrist Democrats, and Republicans who have grown weary of the, shall we say, challenging Trump persona).

https://issuesinsights.com/2020/10/01/two-october-surprises-the-democrats-cant-do-anything-about/

Joe Biden wants the public to think the country is falling apart under President Donald Trump. COVID-19 is running rampant. The economy is in shambles. It’s all Trump’s fault.

“They’ve done nothing to help small businesses. Nothing. They’re closing,” Joe Biden said in the presidential debate on Tuesday. “He ought to get on the job and take care of the needs of the American people,” he said, referring to Trump.

But Biden will have to confront two major economic reports that both will provide very good news about the economic recovery from the pandemic shutdowns, which has been growing faster than economists had projected.

Both will come as surprises to a public that has been fed a steady diet of Democratic doom-and-gloom talking points.

On Friday, the Labor Department will release its September jobs report. The consensus among economists is that the economy created 850,000 jobs and that unemployment will drop to 8.2% from August’s 8.4%.

If that forecast holds up, it will mean the economy has created 11.5 million jobs in just five months – regaining more than half of the jobs lost during the shutdown.

Given that the jobs numbers have consistently come in better than economist projects, it won’t be surprising if unemployment falls below 8.2%.

Let’s compare. During the last recession, the economy shed had 8.7 million jobs when the job market bottomed out in February 2010 (even though the recession ended in June 2009).

https://www.wsj.com/articles/joe-bidens-obamacare-tax-avoidance-11601488381?mod=opinion_lead_pos6

Joe Biden slammed President Trump at Tuesday’s debate for both his tax policies and his personal tax management: “The tax code that put him in a position that he pays less tax than on the money a schoolteacher makes,” Mr. Biden said, “is because of him.” The reference was to the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which Mr. Trump signed in 2017.

The challenger also vigorously defended the Affordable Care Act, promising to “expand ObamaCare” and faulting Mr. Trump for supporting a legal challenge to it. “ObamaCare is personal to me,” Mr. Biden declares in a campaign ad.

Yet Mr. Biden has taken advantage of the tax code to avoid paying the taxes that fund ObamaCare. I reported in August that in 2017 and 2018 Mr. Biden and his wife, Jill, characterized large amounts of book and speaking income as corporate profits rather than taxable wages, allowing them to circumvent Medicare and ObamaCare payroll taxes, of 2.9% and 0.9% respectively, on that income. The Bidens released their 2019 tax return before the debate, and again they use this dodge.