Jeffrey Swindoll
Oct 23rd, 2021 10:14 pm
President Joe Biden is on a historic run … but not the good kind.
Biden started 2021 with a 56% approval rating. He’s now down 11 points (44.7%) in the third quarter of 2021 — the worst drop of any U.S. president since World War II.
https://issuesinsights.com/2021/10/25/epic-fail-vaccination-rates-now-lower-than-when-biden-took-office/
President Joe Biden continues to insist that his vaccine mandates have been a roaring success. The truth is far different. In fact, the only thing the mandate seems to have increased is the labor shortage and supply-chain crisis.
“It’s working. We’re making progress,” Biden said recently, pointing to the fact that daily cases had declined 47% and hospitalizations were down 38% in the previous month and a half.
Somehow, the army of media fact-checkers failed to notice that Biden was, shall we say, misleading the public.
First, Biden’s employer mandates still haven’t taken effect, since the federal rules governing companies with more than 100 workers have yet to be released. Biden’s mandate covering federal contractors doesn’t take effect until Dec. 8.
Second, the decline in new COVID cases started at the end of August, nearly two weeks before Biden’s Sept. 9 pronouncement, and hospitalizations and deaths have followed suit, as expected.
This bell curve pattern is the same thing COVID has demonstrated in the past – before vaccines were available or were widespread. Last winter, for example, new COVID cases peaked at the start of January and then plunged, at a time when a comparatively tiny fraction of the public was vaccinated.
The other inconvenient truth for Biden is that vaccination rates are no guarantee that COVID rates will decline. The United Kingdom, to cite on example, is right now experiencing a surge in COVID cases, even though 73% of its population is either fully or partially vaccinated.
In contrast, new COVID cases have been steadily falling in Mexico in recent weeks, where only 40% of the population is fully vaccinated and another 14% partially so.
https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2021/10/24/londons-khan-establishes-25k-grants-rename-streets-latest-blm-push/
London’s leftist mayor Sadiq Khan is making £25,000 grants available to change street names in a Black Lives Matter-inspired diversity drive.
The so-called “Untold Stories” grants are to be backed by a £1 million fund of public money, which campaigners will be able to use to hire consultants, remunerate impacted residents, and so on throughout the renaming process — which is not as simple as might be supposed, having an expensive knock-on effect on emergency and postal services, for example.
They will be administered by the Commission for Diversity in the Public Realm, established by Mayor Khan after the BLM violence sparked by the death of George Floyd in America crossed the Atlantic to decide whether monuments and memorials to historic figures deemed “problematic” by the modern left should be removed.
“London’s diversity is its greatest strength but for far too long our capital’s statues, street names, and buildings have only shown a limited perspective on our city’s complex history,” Khan asserted, in comments reported by The Telegraph.
“I’m determined to do everything I can to ensure our public realm presents a more complete picture of everyone who has made London the incredible city it is today,” he vowed.
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/10/obama_campaigns_for_mcauliffe_in_virginia_making_an_ass_of_himself.html
Terry McAuliffe, memorably characterized as “the unkillable cockroach of the Democratic Party” by PJMedia’s Stephen Kruiser, is not faring well in the polls in his campaign for governor of Virginia. Apparently, neither is New Jersey’s Democrat Gov. Phil Murphy, who’s also running for a second term as governor and who at last count had just a six-point lead, plus a toxic endorsement from The Nation, which declared him “the most progressive governor in America.” That won’t go over well in Jersey City or Weehawken.
Democrats think these elections are important to their wretched 2022 prospects in Congress and have whipped out their big guns — not flailing Joe Biden, of course — but Barack Obama. New Jersey’s a blue state that’s been the hardest hit by Democrat COVID policies, including the seeding of nursing homes with COVID patients, a man-caused disaster that killed off thousands of elderly people. It’s also been subject to tax hikes. Virginia’s a purple state and Obama’s the man who expanded Washington’s bureaucracies and handed its bureaucrats gargantuan salaries; creating Virginia’s Washington suburbs and turning the historically red state blue. Obama is there to remind such voters of all those good times.
He’s back, and spewing his banal platitudes as well as Trump hate, in the perfect picture of leftist establishment hypocrisy.
Start with the first forked-tongue idiocy, from Fox News:
Former President Barack Obama traveled to New Jersey on Saturday to campaign for Gov. Phil Murphy and claimed that he understands why Americans are questioning when COVID-19 mandates will end.
“The science says it’s the right thing to do,” Obama said in reference to COVID-19 mask and vaccine requirements to a crowd of Murphy supporters in Newark. “You do it because you’re not just protecting yourself, but people you love, people who are vulnerable. But, you know, I don’t know how folks just decide everything’s got to suddenly be political.”
“But I understand why people want to know when this is all going to end,” Obama added
It’s as if 2020 never happened. His argument, like a lot of them coming from him, is old and hackneyed. It’s what officials were saying back in March 2020 when the pandemic began. The nursing home seedings were just beginning and the bodies were being rolled out, but according to Obama, anything that comes out of the mouth of an incompetent, power-hungry bureaucrat with a one-size-fits-all mentality is ‘science.’
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/10/dartmouth_college_dems_try_to_shut_down_college_republicans_event_and_fail_badly_.html
Dartmouth College Republicans hosted three up-and-coming conservative voices in an event Sunday night. Remarkably, all three of these articulate, patriotic voices are young:
North Carolinian Madison Cawthorn is the youngest Congressional House Member in the nation at age 26;
Congressional hopeful and rising star Karoline Leavitt presents a very strong case (at age 23) why she should join him; and
Alex Bruesewitz (24) is a proven campaign strategist who schools career politicians.
But for the Dartmouth College Democrats, what united the three was their allegedly intolerable political views. Predictably, there was abundant vitriol.
The Dartmouth College newspaper attacked Madison Cawthorn with particular venom, listing an array of allegations and character attacks. The paper’s chief concern appears to be Cawthorn’s challenge of 2020 voting results:
….perhaps his most damaging statements target democracy itself. In the months and weeks following the November 2020 election, he promoted the baseless and absurd idea that the election was “stolen.” His dishonesty and apparent willingness to entertain violence if his party loses an election should be disqualifying for any reasonable conservative campus group.
….the College Republicans appear to be voicing their approval of his twisted and authoritari
Strange, the Democrats were quite vocal in their suspicions that the 2016 Trump win was less than trustworthy — the Democratic Party filed suit alleging Trump colluded with Russia and WikiLeaks to steal the election! They “targeted democracy itself!”
It is common for election losers to question election integrity (anyone remember the Gore/Bush decision?), a phenomenon termed:
…the “winner effect.” That is, those voters who support the winner in the election are more likely to believe their own ballots and the ballots of others were counted as intended, while those who supported the losing candidate are more likely to believe their votes were counted incorrectly.
Dartmouth Democrats don’t want young Republicans to speak unless the roster is first approved by Democrats as acceptable:
The Dartmouth College Democrats are deeply disturbed by the Dartmouth College Republicans’ chosen guests for their October 24th panel on “The Future of the Republican Party.” (snip) All three speakers perpetuate harmful rhetoric against immigrants and minority communities, continually question science, and deny that President Biden won the 2020 election. (snip) It is our belief that these speakers will contribute to division, encourage prejudice on campus, and foster a negative campus environment not conducive to open, honest, and mutually respectful conversation. (snip) We are especially concerned about their hateful views towards immigrants and the effect of that prejudice on immigrants and children of immigrants at Dartmouth.
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/10/a_culture_that_celebrates_fake_heroes_while_crucifying_real_ones_cannot_endure_.html
“Believe in something,” Nike told consumers in 2018, “even it means sacrificing everything.” The advertisement features former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick giving a stoic stare to those social justice warriors being spurred to buy the company’s product.
In what may be the swiftest example of the Mandela Effect taking hold on the American cultural psyche, many Americans believe that Colin Kaepernick was headlong into a promising NFL future when he boldly decided to take a knee during the National Anthem in order to protest police brutality, and for this crime against the political and social status quo, he was ostracized by the racist NFL and its fans.
The broad belief in this myth is much more pernicious and destructive, however, than our innocently misremembering that the Monopoly man wears a monocle.
And it is most certainly a myth. The reality is that on August 26, 2016, Kaepernick decided to sit on the bench during the Anthem, not kneel. Nothing ostentatious, and there was something almost childish about it, in fact. Perhaps he didn’t like being benched for Blaine Gabbert, who was, according to Mike Foss at USA Today, possibly “the worst quarterback employed by the NFL” at the time, before he goes on to explain that he might have actually been the second-worst quarterback — behind only the horrendously bad Kaepernick in 2015.
It wasn’t the first time that he sat during the Anthem, but it was the first time that reporters seem to have been struck by it enough to ask him about it. When asked why he didn’t stand, he famously said, “I’m not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color.”
BLM, the MSM, and SJWs rejoiced, of course. There were many critics, too (myself included), but the NFL didn’t exactly censure or oppress him in any way. They issued a statement saying that the league “encouraged” but didn’t “require” standing for the Anthem. The team and coach supported him. And eventually, he got his shot in the 2016 regular season (and earning about $17 million for his trouble), playing in 11 games. Unfortunately, the 49ers only won one of those games, and he went into free agency after that terrible season as the league’s most inaccurate passer of the previous two years, with nearly a quarter of his passes statistically categorized as “off-target” passes.
https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/gwendolynsims/2021/10/23/bidens-broken-border-a-crisis-by-the-numbers-n1526239
Friday afternoon, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) quietly released some truly startling Southwest border migrant encounter numbers.
Fox News reports that “a total of 192,001 migrants were encountered in September, slightly down (9%) from 209,840 in August and 213,593 in July.” September’s numbers, though, mean there were a total of 1,734,686 encounters at the border in Fiscal Year 2021 alone—the highest number of U.S. border encounters in a single fiscal year on record.
And don’t forget, these numbers are simply the “migrant” encounters that were recorded by the U.S. Border Patrol and the Office of Field Operations (OFO). Just imagine how many thousands more people entered the country illegally and undetected. Imagine how many of those were not only breaking our immigration laws, but are also violent and deviant criminals intent on doing Americans harm while the left feebly snivels and claims anyone who demands our border be secured and lawfully regulated is racist and hateful.
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/577995-six-big-off-year-elections-you
A pitched battle between former Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) and businessman Glenn Youngkin (R) promises to steal the headlines in November’s off-year elections, while a less competitive race between New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy (D) and former Assemblyman Jack Ciattarelli (R) is also drawing attention.
But around the country, voters head to the polls to pick winners in other critical contests, races that will highlight the divides between liberals and conservatives and, in some cases, mainstream Democrats and far more progressive candidates.
Here are the six other contests to watch in November:
Virginia’s House of Delegates
Whether McAuliffe or Youngkin takes the governorship next year, the winner’s ability to pursue his agenda will be determined in large part by the majority in the House of Delegates.
Democrats hold a 55-45 majority in the House right now, meaning Republicans need to pick up six seats to win back control. Some of the contests have attracted millions in spending, an unprecedented amount for what are ordinarily inexpensive contests.
Nearly two dozen seats fall in the battleground category of races that were decided by 10 points or fewer two years ago. Democrats hold 16 of those seats, and Republicans only six. Only five seats — four held by Republicans, one by Democrats — voted for the other party’s presidential contender last year.
The closest-fought districts are clustered in three broad chunks: One in the Northern Virginia exurbs, south and east of Arlington and Alexandria; one south of Richmond, stretching to the North Carolina border; and one around the Tidewater and Virginia Beach.
https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2021-10-23-progressive-craziness-of-the-day-critical-race-theory-in-k-12-schools-and-corporations
Yesterday I attended an in-person program at the Manhattan Institute with the title “Deconstructing Wokeness in K-12 and Corporate America.” There were two panels and a speech totaling close to three hours. Presenters included something of a who’s who of the movement opposing the spreading cancer of Critical Race Theory in schools and corporations: Christopher Rufo and Jim Copland of the Manhattan Institute, Vivek Ramaswamy (author of the new book Woke, Inc.), Paul Rossi (the guy who blew the whistle on CRT at Grace Church School, who is currently affiliated with the Educational Liberty Alliance), and Asra Nomani (Vice President of Parents Defending Education).
Finally, after more than a year and a half in virtual purgatory, we have resumed in-person events to discuss issues of public policy. The huge difference between in-person and virtual events is that at in-person events you get to meet the people who take important roles in contesting these issues. In addition to the presenters, several other notable participants in recent events showed up at yesterday’s event, for example Andrew Gutmann (the parent who blew the whistle on CRT at the super-snooty all-girls Brearley School on Manhattan’s Upper East Side) and Maud Maron (mother of four kids in New York City public schools, who spoke out against CRT and for her trouble has been ostracized at her job defending indigent criminal defendants at the Legal Aid Society).
But for today I’d like to highlight the work of Rufo. Here’s a picture of me with Rufo at yesterday’s event:
Over the past couple of years, Rufo has rapidly gained a reputation as the most important “investigative reporter” in the CRT arena. But in my discussion with him prior to the beginning of the formal event, he admitted that his “investigative reporting” substantially consists of just sitting at his desk and receiving a flood of submissions from around the country from outraged parents and corporate employees. He has a couple of junior staffers who work with him to review the submissions and rate them on a scale of how incendiary they are. Then he writes up articles consisting mostly of direct quotes of the submitted material.
Here is a sample of Rufo’s work from 2021. All of the pieces originally appeared in City Journal.
Cupertino, California. In a January 13, 2021 piece titled “Woke Elementary” Rufo quoted extensively from whistleblower documents provided by parents in this very-upscale Silicon Valley community that is home to the headquarters of Apple. What follows comes from a third-grade class at R.I. Meyerholz Elementary School. Excerpt:
[R]eading from This Book Is Antiracist, the students learned that “those with privilege have power over others” and that “folx who do not benefit from their social identities, who are in the subordinate culture, have little to no privilege and power.” As an example, the reading states that “a white, cisgender man, who is able-bodied, heterosexual, considered handsome and speaks English has more privilege than a Black transgender woman.” . . . Following this discussion, the teacher had the students deconstruct their own intersectional identities and “circle the identities that hold power and privilege” on their identity maps, ranking their traits according to the hierarchy.
It goes on and on from there. Rufo notes that the Cupertino community is 94% non-white (majority Asian) with a median household income of $172,000.
https://www.israelhayom.com/opinions/why-the-us-really-wants-a-palestinian-consulate-in-jlem/
The US Embassy in Jerusalem already provides consular services to the Palestinians. Why do they need an independent consulate in the same city?
The Biden administration is trying to partially undo one of Israel’s greatest diplomatic achievements of recent decades – the recognition of Israel’s sovereignty over all of Jerusalem by the US, followed by numerous other countries. The good news is unlike many diplomatic attacks, the Israeli government has the power to stop it.
The US is pushing to open up a new diplomatic office in Jerusalem – one that would be directed to the Palestinian Authority. The US Embassy in Jerusalem already provides consular services to the Palestinians. It is unheard of to have an independent consulate in the same city where a country has an embassy. The point of creating a separate consulate is to undermine former US President Donald Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem. But under international law, the US would need Israel’s permission for this move.
The US does not want to open a consulate merely to have a place for diplomatic liaisons with the PA. If that is all they wanted, they could easily do this by opening a mission in Abu Dis or Ramallah – where most other countries conduct their relations with the PA. Or they could reopen the Palestinian mission in Washington, DC, which Trump also closed. But by instead demanding that Israel accede to a consulate in Jerusalem, the administration is showing this is not just about having a convenient place for coffee with PA President Mahmoud Abbas.
Indeed, the purpose of opening the consulate is to recognize Palestinian claims to Jerusalem. If the PA has no legitimate claim to Jerusalem, there can be no reason to have a consulate there. To be sure, this is why opening the consulate is the main Israel-related policy demand of radically anti-Israel Rep. Ilhan Omar. Point of fact, former US Ambassador to Israel Daniel Shapiro made clear before the last US election that opening a separate consulate to the Palestinians would be designed to signal US support for a Palestinian capital in that city.
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