Donald Trump, Counterrevolutionary Victor Davis Hanson *****

https://amgreatness.com/2020/11/01/donald-trump-counterrevolutionary/

Against all the money and clout of America’s revolutionary forces, the counterrevolutionary Trump had only one asset, the proverbial people.

Until Donald Trump’s arrival, the globalist revolution was almost solidified and institutionalized—with the United States increasingly its greatest and most “woke” advocate. We know its bipartisan establishment contours.

China would inherit the world in 20 or 30 years. The self-appointed task of American elites—many of whom had already been enriched and compromised by Chinese partners and joint ventures—was to facilitate this all-in-the-family transition in the manner of the imperial British hand-off of hegemony to the United States in the late 1940s.

Our best and brightest like the Biden family, Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), Bill Gates, or Mark Zuckerberg would enlighten us about the “real” China, so we yokels would not fall into Neanderthal bitterness as they managed our foreordained decline.

We would usher China into “the world community”—grimacing at, but overlooking the destruction it wrought on the global commercial order and the American interior.

We would politely forget about Hong Kong, Taiwan, Tibet, and the Uyghurs. Hollywood would nod as it put out more lucrative comic-book and cartoonish films for the Chinese markets, albeit with mandated lighter-skinned actors.

The NBA would nod twice and trash a democratic United States, while praising genocidal China—becoming richer and more esteemed abroad to make up for becoming boring and poorer at home. The universities would nod three times, and see a crime not in Chinese espionage and security breaches, but in the reporting of them as crimes.

So our revolutionary role would be to play stuffy and snooty Athenian philosophers to the new muscular Roman legions of China.

Given our elites’ superior morality, genius, and sense of self, we would gently chide and cajole our Chinese masters into becoming enlightened world overseers and democrats—all the easier, the richer and more affluent Chinese became. 

For now, Trump has stopped that revolution.

Reflections on Sleepy Joe Exactly how and where will he lead us? Don Feder

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/11/plea-those-thinking-voting-sleepy-joe-don-feder/

The most important election of our lifetime – perhaps in all U.S. history — is upon us.

Here are some thoughts on the Democrat presidential candidate:

Spent 47 years in office without accomplishing anything noteworthy — who was ever and always a willing tool for the leadership of the Democrat Party.
 
Has become a bobble-head for the socialists who now run his party.
 
Took three months to issue a limp-wristed disavowal of the riots which are rocking our republic.
 
Equates occasional police misconduct with business districts in flames, nightly looting, the murder of cops, and assaults on innocent bystanders.
 
Thinks white supremacists pose a greater threat to America than Antifa, which he says is “an idea” not an organization. With Joe, you never know if he’s simply parroting progressive propaganda or really is that stupid.
 
Wants to demolish the border wall and defund ICE, and once called illegal immigration “a gift” – that keeps on giving for the left.
 
Said 150 million Americans died from “gun violence” since 2007 and 120 million of us died from COVID-19. There goes 80% of the population.
 
Does press availabilities where he takes two questions – from reporters he knows are friendly.

An Election and America’s Two Choices “We must rise again to take our stand for freedom, as in the olden time.” Bruce Thornton

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/11/real-choice-election-bruce-thornton/

When voters go to the polls, they will be choosing not just one man over another. They will be choosing either freedom and self-rule based on the Constitution; or “soft” servitude and tutelage under the technocratic pretensions of a managerial elite.

In other words, the ancient political choice that arose with the creation of citizens rule 2500 years ago––a choice based on whether we believe that ordinary people have the practical wisdom and common sense sufficient for self-government; or instead are incapable of knowing what’s good for themselves and the country, and so their freedom must be subordinated to the greater knowledge of credentialed professionals and “experts.”

Technocrats need power to achieve their aims, and for the last century we have seen that power grow into the federal Leviathan that has spread its regulatory tentacles and oversight into ever greater parts of our lives at the cost of our autonomy. Indeed, in just the past year during the pandemic, under the guise of “following the science” we have seen many states restrict or outright cancel some of our unalienable rights such as assembling, bearing arms, and practicing our faiths.

Indeed, the very structure of the Constitution itself has also come under assault. The brilliant solution to the diverse and clashing interests of the American peoples was the system of checks and balances in which, to paraphrase James Madison, ambition would be set against ambition. The tyranny of the masses would be checked with institutional “filtrations” of their power like the Electoral College, and the tyranny of the elites would be checked by regularly scheduled elections and the voters of the sovereign states, as well as by the Bill of Rights. The political freedom of all would thus be protected and preserved.

Trump: An appreciation, on a momentous eve By Richard Kantro

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/11/trump_an_appreciation_on_a_momentous_eve.html

“My sober thoughts on election eve are these:  in neither party has any other officeholder — I won’t tar him with the politicians’ brush — ever been as steadfast, resolute, and uncompromising against the weasel ways of entrenched partisan interests, whose snarling creatures now bare tooth and claw, shrieking and slavering to keep their purloined ill-gotten carrion of advantage, tenure, power, and wealth.  Nor has one ever called them out for what they are — thieves, corrupt criminals, communists, haters, lunatics, and traitors — as he is doing now.”

At this a pivotal moment in human history, internal forces are trying to bring America to her knees.  Should this happen, we would suffer grievously, and she would lose her historical power to deter the world’s worst malefactors from acting out, or at least from prevailing in their worst predations.  But even worse, the world would lose its only true fire of freedom, which — often unseen, unacknowledged, unheralded, and even more often excoriated — keeps the world from plunging into barbarous darkness.

Consider this:  Over the past five years — since the moment Trump came down the escalator — the most miserable miscreants in politics and showbiz have execrated him with a malevolence and melodrama never seen in the quarter-millennium of our history:  a frothing mass psychosis.  Literally overnight, the former welcome-anywhere celebrity-builder-billionaire became public enemy No. 1 in the minds and in the dirty mouths of the disaffected, the ambitious, the incapable, the scheming, the jealous, the evil, the nefarious, the weak-minded, and the just plain warped.

No matter.  In the nearly four years since he assumed office, Trump’s brilliant administrative achievements ‑‑ yes, brilliant! — have undone bad regulation, bad law, bad border security, bad trade, a bad economy, a badly frayed military, bad national morale, and more.

Countering ‘You Ain’t Black’ with the Facts By Janet Levy

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/10/countering_you_aint_black_with_the_facts.html

When comedienne Chelsea Handler noticed a pro-Trump tweet posted by her ex-flame 50 Cent, she became apoplectic and launched a bizarre social media crusade to change his mind.  Dripping condescension, she asked if he knew what his race was and insulted his intelligence, saying if he’s black he can’t vote Trump.  In an Instagram post, she addressed him “Hey f—–!,” offering to pay his taxes if he changed his mind on Trump.  And in an interview with Jimmy Fallon, she even dissolutely proffered renewed intimacy to 50 Cent: “I might be willing to go for another spin, if you know what I’m talking about.”

Her inability to accept that a black might support Trump is of a piece with presidential candidate Joe Biden’s comment to radio host Charlamagne tha God: “If you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t black.”  Like many liberals in the public sphere, Handler insists that American blacks should assert race über alles, and their candidate choice should be monolithic and unidimensional — Democratic, that is — based solely on loyalty to the color of their skin.

The false equation “black = Democratic” has long been taken for granted by the Democrats, who conflate blacks’ allegiance to their party with being true to their race.  American blacks who dare to break free of this shackling assumption end up facing the ostracism of “cancel culture.”  It’s an experience well known to black conservatives like Larry Elder, Candace Owens, Shelby Steele, and others.

George Soros’s Plan B If Biden Loses

https://townhall.com/columnists/frankwright/2020/11/01/george-soross-plan-b-if-biden-loses-n2579176?

Billionaire George Soros is spending big—$70 million at last report—to evict Donald Trump from the White House. The radical philanthropist vilifies Trump as nothing more than “an impostor and a con man and a would-be dictator.” He considers America’s 45th president a “danger to the world” who would like to establish a “mafia state” here at home.

Which is why Soros is determined to oust the president and push the “Big Guy”—aka Joe Biden—over the finish line in first place on Nov. 3. But what if Biden loses? Well, don’t expect Soros to give up and go home. 

George Soros has a plan B, and it’s already underway, insists Richard Poe, co-author with David Horowitz of The Shadow Party, an in-depth examination of Soros’ far-reaching influence. “George Soros is trying to steal the election,” Poe told D. James Kennedy Ministries, which produced the new, nationally aired documentary, Radical Billionaire: George Soros and the Scheme to Remake America. Poe claims Soros “has a whole crack team of experts, the top experts in the world…. And they are absolutely trying to steal this election.”

Soros is committed to Trump’s removal. He assured elites at Davos in 2018 that Trump is a “purely temporary phenomenon that will disappear in 2020, or even sooner.” That’s not an idle boast. Soros has an established record of driving leaders from power. Horowitz and Poe assert that “Soros’ Open Society Foundations have facilitated coups and rebellions in many countries, always ostensibly in the interests of ‘democratization.’”

Soros crowed in 2001 that his Open Society Foundations network has achieved “significant successes” in Slovakia, Croatia, and Yugoslavia where “civil society was mobilized to overturn … overcome, rather, an oppressive regime.” (see here at 22:25). Soros tried to catch himself, but “overturn” is correct.  That’s obvious from how Soros-financed forces were deployed in Yugoslavia and, later, Georgia to sweep rulers off the stage. 

Will America Hand Space Dominance to China? by Gordon G. Chang

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16718/space-dominance-china

Some believe the US space program should emphasize climate change research. If there is no overall increase in space spending, there will be less money for, among other things, defending American assets in space.

Brandon Weichert of The Weichert Report said in an interview with Gatestone that there might be a move to “staff the Space Force with people inimical to its mission.”

America is… in many respects behind Russia and China in the ability to fight “over great distances at tremendous speeds, ” as Space Force’s General John Raymond said in September.

Moreover, there are other policy proposals that would degrade America’s ability to defend itself…. Unfortunately, there are many who still believe America can come to agreement with China.

In space, almost everything has a dual purpose. Fisher, for instance, reports that China will put a laser on its upcoming space station for the announced purpose of eliminating space junk. Of course, such a laser is also capable of killing American satellites.

Other dual use items are Russia’s co-orbital “Space Stalkers.” In peacetime, they can be used to repair satellites. In wartime, Weichert says, “they can physically push U.S. satellites out of their orbits.” That would render America’s forces, and America itself, “deaf, dumb, and blind on land, at sea, in the air, and within cyberspace.”

In any event, neither Russia nor China honors agreements, especially arms control treaties.

China will be launching satellites almost every other week starting next March. In one instance the gap in next year’s frenetic schedule of launches will be only five days.

This year, through the end of September, China launched 29 satellites, more than any other nation. The U.S. was a close second with 27.

Beijing aims to widen its lead. Most observers worry that the Chinese regime is determined to get to the moon before U.S. astronauts return there, but another troublesome development is that China will quickly be filling up orbits with satellites.

Iran’s Mullahs are in Turmoil Thanks to America’s Current Policy by Majid Rafizadeh

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16722/iran-mullahs-turmoil

Iran’s currency, the rial, lost more than half its value so far just in 2020.

Iran’s regime is currently running a $200 million budget deficit per week and it is estimated that if the pressure on Tehran continues, the deficit will hit roughly $10 billion by March 2021. This deficit will, in return, increase inflation and devalue the currency even further.

Iran’s militia groups are subsequently receiving less funding to pursue their terror activities. This shortfall may be why, for the first time in more than three decades, Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, made a public statement asking people to donate money to his group.

Iran’s ruling mullahs desire to maintain the JCPOA. It not only provided their regime with many benefits including economic relief and global legitimacy; at the same time, it ignored Tehran’s military adventurism in the region, its ballistic missile program and its support for terror groups across the Middle East. Most importantly, the JCPOA also paved the way for Tehran ultimately to become a nuclear state.

The “maximum pressure” policy against Iran’s ruling mullahs is working and must absolutely continue.

The Iranian regime is in turmoil thanks to the “maximum pressure” policy implemented by US President Donald J. Trump against the ruling mullahs.

Iran’s currency, the rial, lost more than half its value so far just in 2020. That decline makes it one of the most worthless national currencies in the world. As of October 25, the rial traded on unofficial markets at 300,500 to the US dollar. The rate has pushed the Iranian authorities to agree on removing four zeros from its currency, which has gone into a virtual free-fall. Two years ago, one US dollar was worth nearly 30,000 rials.

Biden Flubs

https://freebeacon.com/2020-election/biden-flubs-his-way-through-elections-final-week/

Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden labored through the final full week of his campaign, failing to recall the sex of Kamala Harris’s spouse, the name of the current president, and how to spell “respect.”

Biden Has Earned 11 Pinocchios From Fact-Checkers During Coronavirus Crisis (April 2020)

https://freebeacon.com/2020-election/biden-has-earned-11-pinocchios-from-fact-checkers-during-coronavirus-crisis/

Presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden has been dinged several times by fact-checkers over claims he has made during the coronavirus crisis, including a total of 11 “Pinocchios” from the Washington Post.

Over the course of three weeks between March 13 and April 3, Biden was fact-checked five separate times for making false or misleading claims concerning the Trump administration’s handling of the pandemic.

A Washington Post fact check on March 13 awarded Biden four Pinocchios, the fact-checker’s most severe rating, for two manipulated videos the Biden campaign circulated.

Obsession: How the Media Keep Us Ignorant By Jeff Minick

https://www.intellectualtakeout.org/obsession–how-the-media-keep-us-ignorant/

Many people of all political persuasions, including myself, find much of the mainstream news opinionated and biased. Negative media coverage of President Trump, for example, ran as high as 99 percent in May.

This slanted news does serious damage to our republic. It’s divisive, but it also causes ignorance. Two days ago, I met a man in his mid-30s who gave me a blank look when I mentioned the scandal surrounding Hunter Biden’s hard drive. When I asked another woman, a Democrat, what she thought about the possibility of Joe Biden having dementia, she had no idea what I meant.

But there is a threat to an informed citizenry as great as prejudicial reporting: negligence. The MSM not only keeps us in the dark by their bigotry and their deliberate omission of certain stories, but also by their inability to broaden their reporting.

Since January, the media has focused continually on the pandemic sweeping the globe. They’ve battered us with statistics, with terrible stories of nursing home deaths, and with arrests made when a church or business opened, news seasoned with the opinions of “experts.”

The Black Lives Matter Movement with its protests and riots occasionally nudged aside the pandemic as worthy of reporting, but generally coronavirus remained front and center in the headlines. The nomination and confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court dominated the news for a few days, and with the election season, those who watch televised news find themselves now in a storm of opinions, polls, and speculations.

Meanwhile, this hurricane of headlines has swept away events taking place around the world.