NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Rebellion Against ‘Woke’ Has Begun By Kevin Downey Jr.

Posted By on October 12th, 2021

https://pjmedia.com/columns/kevindowneyjr/2021/10/11/the-rebellion-against-woke-has-begun-n1523078

Say no to woke.

The left just hit a new level of “woke.” In California, of course.

Califonia law now requires stores to have a gender-free toy section. Is this for all of those kids who haven’t “decided” their gender yet? Is it another kiss on the ring of the holy, powerful, and yet painfully sensitive transgender crowd? Or is it the latest attack from the “woke”? I’m going with ring kissing and woke attack.

Pronouns

Remember when the left decided “misgendering” or “deadnaming” (referring to someone by their actual gender and given name) was offensive and potentially oppressive? We all needed to post our pronouns in our emails and on our Facebook pages. Do it or you’re a BIGOT.

“I have been saying for years that misgendering a trans person is an act of violence. When I say that I am referring to cultural and structural violence. The police misgendering and deadnaming trans murder victims as a matter of policy feels like a really good example of that cultural and structural violence.”  – Laverne Cox, trans actress

I never added my pronouns. Chances are you didn’t either. When leftists ask me what my pronouns are, I say: “Aunt Jemima and Master bedroom.” Then they leave me alone.

EDUCATION, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The State Does Not Own Your Children By Paula Bolyard

Posted By on October 12th, 2021

https://pjmedia.com/columns/paula-bolyard/2021/10/11/open-letter-to-parents-theyre-your-kids-not-wards-of-the-state-dont-let-anyone-tell-you-otherwise-n1523099

Moms and dads, you know what’s best for your own children. That’s long been my mantra, harkening back to my early blogger days when I fiercely defended a parent’s right to determine the course of his or her child’s education. Although I’m an unapologetic advocate for homeschooling, I recognize that it’s not the best option for every family. But regardless of my personal views, I trust you, as parents, to do what’s best for your own personal children. How you educate your children is none of my business, just like it’s none of my business whether you choose to breastfeed or bottle-feed or whether or not you believe in spanking. It’s not any of the government’s business, either. God gave your children to you, not to the state, and He’s tasked you, not the government, with the task of raising them.

I’m always disappointed when I hear parents ceding the education of their kids to teachers and school boards, believing that the schools know best. After all, many of you reason, teachers and administrators at your kids’ school have advanced degrees in education! Surely, they know better than you do what your kids need. Only trained professionals are qualified to decide what kids should be taught, right? And lest you think I’m exaggerating, this poll offers proof that many parents trust the schools more than they trust their own judgment:

That kind of hands-off approach mostly worked out when I was attending school in the ’70s and early ’80s, before the radicals came to power in academia and education. My parents didn’t have to worry that the schools were training me to become a socialist or to embrace Marxist ideology. We were in the middle of the Cold War, after all, and nearly everyone agreed that communism was bad and was the enemy of freedom.

No longer.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

How About Some Data COVID-19 Transparency?

Posted By on October 12th, 2021

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/10/12/how-about-some-data-covid-19-transparency/

Since the early days of the pandemic, the public has been misled and misinformed, the goalposts pulled down and taken out of the stadium, and the data too often puzzling. Much of the country has lost confidence in politicians and public health officials. It’s important to know if those doubts are legitimate or misplaced.

One route to the truth would be a federal grand jury probe that would determine if the case and death counts have been inflated and not reflective of reality.

Would it be a witch hunt? A political sideshow? No. It would be a sober and justifiable inquiry. The nation deserves to know if a crisis was manufactured or real. If the numbers are accurate, then a probe will go a long way toward restoring confidence in our public health officials. If they’re not, then someone needs to be held accountable for the errors, negligence, or intentional deception that hurt so many and divided a country.

“​​Public health policy must be based upon accurate and independently verifiable data to optimize outcomes and strengthen the public’s trust in the people leading them through this crisis,” say a couple of Republican legislators in Oregon who are asking the U.S. attorney there for an “independent state and/or special federal grand jury investigation” of the data.

“The ability to definitively diagnose who is infectious,” they continue, “and distinguish them from who is not is paramount in assessing the situation and ensuring the people in immediate need receive the skilled care they deserve.”

More than 1,700 Oregonians and 53,000 in total have signed the lawmakers’ petition.

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

VA Dems Want Last Minute Voting Rule Change Voting in the governor’s race began weeks ago but now they want to move the goalpost. David Catron

Posted By on October 12th, 2021

https://spectator.org/va-dems-want-last-minute-voting-rule-change/

Virginia’s gubernatorial contest between Republican Glenn Youngkin and Democrat Terry McAuliffe clearly has supporters of the latter worried. Recent polls show a far tighter race than they expected. Consequently, it was all but inevitable that McAuliffe’s allies would attempt to meddle with election laws using public health as a pretext. Sure enough, the Democrat-dominated Fairfax Board of Supervisors has asked Gov. Ralph Northam to waive the witness signature requirement that Virginia law stipulates for all absentee ballots. Board Chairman Jeffrey McKay insists that the waiver is necessary due to the threat of COVID-19, yet cases are declining.

The New York Times reported Sunday that Virginia’s cases and hospitalizations have declined 17 and 14 percent respectively during the past two weeks.  Moreover, Virginia’s state of emergency expired June 30 as did the numerous executive orders Gov. Northam issued pursuant to the pandemic. The sole Republican member of the Fairfax board, Pat Herrity, voted against asking Northam to issue such an extraordinary waiver, pointing out that voting has already been underway for three weeks: “To do this in the middle of an election process in the name of COVID is nonsensical.” He also emphasized election integrity: “Witness signatures are important as they provide another line of defense against voter fraud.”

Until last year, all absentee ballots cast in a Virginia election had to be signed by a witness confirming that the voter was indeed eligible to vote and legally registered. This long standing statute was temporarily suspended during the 2020 general election pursuant to concerns about the spread of COVID-19. The moratorium ended after the Commonwealth’s state of emergency was lifted, but Fairfax County has refused to give up its emergency powers despite a 21 percent decline in cases. Nonetheless, a recent statement by Virginia’s Department of Elections reiterates that “witness signatures are required on all absentee ballots.”

BOOKS Comments turned off

The Democrats’ dark campaign master by Byron York,

Posted By on October 12th, 2021

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/byron-yorks-daily-memo-the-democrats-dark-campaign-master

THE DEMOCRATS’ DARK CAMPAIGN MASTER. Mollie Hemingway’s important new book, Rigged: How the Media, Big Tech, and the Democrats Seized Our Elections , goes on sale tomorrow. In it, she covers the ways Democratic activists took advantage of the Covid pandemic to push long-sought changes in the ways people vote. They were enormously successful in some key states and left Republicans desperately playing catch-up.

For some Democrats, the effort was the culmination of a drive to bring down Donald Trump that began well before he took office. And for no Democrat was that more true than Washington lawyer Marc Elias.

What is really extraordinary, as Hemingway points out, is that one man, Elias, was responsible for both the Steele dossier, which was the covert Democratic disinformation operation designed to bring down Trump during the 2016 campaign, and those wide-ranging changes in state election procedures, designed to make sure he did not win reelection in 2020.

The dossier was one of the most successful dirty tricks ever. Elias, working on behalf of the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee, paid the oppo/attack firm Fusion GPS to enlist former British spy Christopher Steele to compile a list of false and slanderous allegations about then-candidate Trump.

There was the Michael-Cohen-in-Prague allegation. The Carter-Page-in-Moscow allegation. The “pee tape.” The Manafort fiction. The dossier was done in what looked like official intelligence-report style, relying on Steele’s credibility as a former British agent and FBI informant. Elias hit a home run when the FBI picked up Steele’s false reporting. Then the whole world found out about it when insiders leaked to CNN that then-FBI Director James Comey had briefed President-elect Trump about it. It was an extraordinarily damaging moment for the new president — all choreographed by Elias.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Revolt of the masses: The left has overplayed its hand By Robert Knight

Posted By on October 12th, 2021

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2021/oct/10/revolt-of-the-masses-the-left-has-overplayed-its-h/

I think the left is realizing it has a tiger by the tail. The people are getting uppity.

Parents are assailing school boards over critical race theory and transgender madness. So much so that the Biden Justice Department is sending out the FBI to investigate whether, as the National School Boards Association bombastically charges, some parents are guilty of “domestic terrorism and hate crimes.”

Boy, it’s lucky for those BLM/Antifa rioters in 2020 that they refrained from badmouthing teachers and school officials while torching the cities. Their “peaceful protests” might have been investigated.

Meanwhile, former Democratic Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, the Clinton bag man who is running again for his old job, stated, “I’m not going to let parents come into schools and actually take books out and make their own decisions.” He added, “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.”

This stuff ticks off parents, and GOP candidate Glenn Youngkin is taking full advantage. He is running ads accurately depicting Mr. McAuliffe as an authoritarian, anti-parent elitist.

Republicans are looking to take back Virginia in November and Congress in 2022. Democrats in districts carried by former President Trump are as nervous as a hockey goalie playing without a face mask.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Cancel culture is no laughing matter Ruthie Blum

Posted By on October 12th, 2021

https://www.jns.org/opinion/cancel-culture-is-no-laughing-matter/

 Comedian Dave Chappell’s latest Netflix special, “The Closer,” is making the rounds but not for its hilarity. No, its high ratings can be attributed to the venom that it has elicited from the mainstream press and social media.

Nothing piques curiosity more than public outrage, after all. There’s no doubt, then, that a huge portion of viewers tuned in just to see what all the fuss was about.
As a longtime fan of the irreverent performer’s, I would have watched the show anyway. But many of my peers hadn’t paid the slightest attention to Chappelle until the scandal erupted. Once it did, they rushed to join in the conversation by seeing the program for themselves.

Chappelle was already Enemy No. 1 in LBGTQ circles for his “transphobia.” He’s been raked over the coals by feminists for his ostensible disdain for women. Some whites, as well, don’t take kindly to the veteran black comic’s persistent mockery of them.

But this time, his jokes about Jews have aroused serious ire. The anger stems from two main passages of the hour-and-a-quarter-long act.
He leads in to the first anti-Semitic sequence by talking about the COVID-19 pandemic by insulting other groups.
“I don’t want you to worry about me,” he begins. “I’m vaccinated; I got the Johnson & Johnson vaccine. I’ve got to admit, that’s probably the most n**gerish decision I’ve made in a long time. … I walk in to the doc like, ‘Give me the third best option; I’ll have what the homeless people are having.’”
He goes on to say that he actually contracted the virus, which made him feel “gross.”
“I haven’t felt dirty like that in a long time,” he says. “Last time I can remember feeling dirty like that, man, I must have been a little boy … being molested by a preacher. But don’t feel bad for me; I liked it.”
He then recounts having had to quarantine for 10 days. Left alone in his room, he says, he watched videos, many of which, “sadly, were of black people beating up Asians for no reason.”

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

What Does Joe Biden’s Health Have to Do with the Future of Taiwan? by Pete Hoekstra

Posted By on October 11th, 2021

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17844/taiwan-biden-health

The Chinese communists very much want to gain control of Taiwan, and the current intelligence assessment that the Chinese leadership is probably looking at is one that spells opportunity—a weak President, wary of foreign military entanglements, whose political fortunes are crashing, and in their analysis the real possibility of a transfer of power to an even weaker and less popular vice president in Kamala Harris, who has little foreign policy chops.

The bottom line—the next year will be a high-risk period between China and the United States where serious miscalculations could take place. And that is why… the Biden Administration must send a clear signal of support now for Taiwan.

What is China planning? More than 150 air incursions into Taiwan’s Air Defense Identification Zone, testing Taiwanese response capabilities, strategies, timing and other military capabilities. Are these just Chinese war games or is China getting close to invading Taiwan? These are just some of the many questions that U.S. and other world leaders are grappling with as they try to determine the plans and intentions of China’s President Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party.

Understanding “leadership intent” is one of the key priorities for intelligence collection and analysis. It is safe to assume America’s intelligence agencies are doing this with China and the Chinese are doing the same with the U.S. So, what does that have to do with U.S. President Joe Biden’s health and communist China’s intentions when it comes to Taiwan?

The Chinese are making serious assessments about what they can expect from the U.S. and the Biden Administration if they invade Taiwan. What are the plans and intentions of the Biden administration in regard to China and standing alongside the government of Taiwan? And while many here may not be thinking about it, they are also assessing Biden’s health and how that may impact U.S. response and timing.

In my experience as a member of the House Intelligence Committee, I can say we did focus on the health and wellbeing of key foreign leaders. My committee was briefed multiple times on the likely death of Cuba’s Fidel Castro in the 10 years I served on the Committee. Highlighting how difficult this task was, let’s just say they were wrong multiple times before they eventually got the assessment right.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Sympathy for the Devil: Columbus Day and Why it Matters Joseph Bowman

Posted By on October 11th, 2021

https://townhall.com/columnists/josephbowman/2021/10/11/sympathy-for-the-devil-columbus-day-and-why-it-matters-n2597185

Today is the second Monday of October and thus is Columbus Day. For many of us, this is little more than a three-day weekend. However, it is seen as an unjust celebration of “whiteness” and imperialism for an increasing number of Americans and signifies how uniquely evil America is. This hatred for Columbus and the misunderstanding of what it is he did is nothing new. In fact, the earliest criticisms of Columbus were made about a century ago by the old Democratic party institution, The Ku Klux Klan. The Klan did not want Americans celebrating a southern European Catholic like Columbus. They argued America was a protestant country founded by Northern Europeans. Anti-Columbus sentiment has festered and grown because of the broader apathy of many Americans who see today as a mere excuse for a three-day weekend. Even Columbus himself did not quite understand the magnitude of his voyages. He went to his grave thinking he had discovered the West Indies and not an entirely new pair of continents. Columbus and his explorations matter, though, and not just for people from the United States.

One of the common dismissals of Columbus is that he never even set foot in America. Instead, he landed in the Bahamas. So why should we care about him? What sense does it make for Americans to celebrate an Italian explorer in the employ of Spain, landing in the Bahamas while searching for the Indies?

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Czech Voters Oust Communists From Parliament for First Time Since 1948 By Katabella Roberts

Posted By on October 11th, 2021

https://www.theepochtimes.com/czech-voters-oust-communists-from-parliament-for-first-time-since-1948_4041689.html

On Saturday, Czech voters booted the communists out of parliament for the first time since the end of World War II, voting out a party whose Soviet-backed predecessors ruled the central European nation with an iron fist from 1948 until 1989’s Velvet Revolution that ushered in democracy.

The Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia (KSČM) failed to retain enough seats to enter the Czech parliament for the first time since the formation of the Czech Republic in 1993 after Czechoslovakia was peacefully dissolved into two with the other state becoming Slovakia.

The KSČM took 3.62 percent of the vote, failing to meet the five percent mark needed to retain seats in both the house and the Chamber of Deputies.

Meanwhile, in a stunning upset, the SPOLU alliance, a liberal-conservative three-party coalition, captured 27.8 percent of the vote, beating Prime Minister Andrej Babis’ Action for Dissatisfied Citizens (ANO) 2011 party, which won 27.1 percent.

Another center-left-liberal coalition of the Pirate Party (PIR) and the Mayors and Independents party (STAN) received 15.6 percent of the vote, finishing in third place, as per the statistics office.

Ahead of the election, the SPOLU alliance vowed to form a coalition government with the Pirate/Stan coalition. Over the weekend, the alliance signed a memorandum on their intent to create a majority Czech government with the Pirate/STAN coalition.

The failure to secure enough votes comes amid waning support for the communist party who during their reign, jailed tens of thousands of people in forced labor camps in the 1950s and brutally repressed dissidents, including playwright-turned-president Vaclav Havel.