How the Projectionist Game is Played. Part Three—Invoke the 25th Amendment! Victor Davis Hanson

https://victorhanson.com/how-the-projectionist-game-is-played-part-three-invoke-the-25th-amendment/

How many times since 2017 did we heard the cry, “25 Amendment!” to remove Donald Trump from office on grounds he was non compos mentis?

Immediately upon taking office Foreign Policy ran an essay by Obamaite Rosa Brooks outlining a way to remove him through a) impeachment, b) the 25th Amendment, or c) a military coup.

What were these reasons for thinking Trump was nuts? That he stood down Kim Jong-un and called him “little rocket man” (Was that a worse quip than Biden claiming we were on the edge of Armageddon, as he lowered the bar of nuke porn talk?)?

Then came the strange case of Dr. Bandy X. Lee, the Yale psychiatrist. In 2017, she organized a Yale medical school forum to call out the mental problems, supposedly, of President Trump (Lee had never met him. Much less had she first-hand diagnosed him of anything. Thus, she was essentially violating her own professional organization’s ethical guidelines of a medical professional diagnosing someone as impaired without a thorough examination.).

No matter. In psychodramatic rhetoric, Lee warned that our entire species was in danger due to Trump’s nuttiness (she is now quiet about the back-and-forth nuke talk between Putin and Biden over Ukraine). After editing a book on Trump’s supposed mental illness (again, she had never examined him), a dozen congressmen called upon her to offer yet a new diagnosis that Trump was dangerously on the brink. She became a media celebrity and the 25th Amendment became her calling card.

No, Free Speech Doesn’t Mean Porn In Schools By: Christian Winter

https://thefederalist.com/2022/11/04/no-free-speech-doesnt-mean-porn-in-schools/

Free speech is not freedom to degrade public morals and destroy the order necessary for liberty. Some speech is beyond the pale.

PEN America, an international advocacy group for free expression, recently published an updated report about “book banning” in America. The group claims that school districts choosing not to carry particular books in their libraries “threaten[s] free expression and students’ first amendment rights.” The most common books that school districts have restricted student access to include “Gender Queer,” “All Boys Aren’t Blue,” and “Out of Darkness.” These books have been criticized as pornographic and promoting LGBT content. For example, “All Boys Aren’t Blue,” a book aimed at adolescents, contains graphic descriptions of male homosexual sex.

PEN America argues that the removal of such books from school libraries “impede[s] free expression rights” and that such efforts do not “uphold free speech rights.” For PEN America, free expression rights “must be the bedrock of public schools in an open, inclusive, and democratic society.”

Such an understanding of free speech and free expression is wrong. Any sort of “free speech absolutism” that recognizes no limits is not the ideal for those concerned about ordered liberty. Men and women who care about their communities and their nation ought not to desire a public square that is laissez faire in its approach to speech. Just as true liberty is not license but liberty to do what is good, free speech is not freedom to degrade public morals. Speech expresses morals, and some morals — some ways of life — are beyond the pale for societies that are oriented to what is good and right and true.

Speech-Denying Nature Undermines the Nation

NY Dems to Double Down on Denying Crime Exists “A hysteria over crime that is uninformed and that has been debunked.” by Daniel Greenfield

https://www.frontpagemag.com/ny-dems-to-double-down-on-denying-crime-exists/

Shoot the messenger. Literally.

How ideologically deranged are Democrats? So much so that they’re not going to do a U-turn on crime, instead they’re going to blame those Democrats who actually talked about the problem.

Democratic officials and strategists in New York tell CNN they are bracing for what could be stunning losses in the governor’s race and in contests for as many as four US House seats largely in the suburbs.

With crime dominating the headlines and the airwaves, multiple Democrats watching these races closely are pointing to New York City Mayor Eric Adams, accusing him of overhyping the issue and playing into right-wing narratives in ways that may have helped set the party up for disaster on Tuesday.

“He was an essential validator in the city to make their attacks seem more legit and less partisan,” said one Democratic operative working on campaigns in New York, who asked not to be named so as not to compromise current clients.

As circular firing squads go, this one is insane.

Dems whose strategy failed are going to blame a guy who actually got elected. After their messaging strategy abysmally failed, they’re going to claim that it would have succeeded if Mayor Adams weren’t out there mentioning the existence of crime.

The assumption here is that New York voters are mentally retarded and that they aren’t reacting to crime based on their everyday experiences, but Adams press conferences.

Why these midterms will be the crime elections: Oliver Wiseman

https://spectatorworld.com/newsletter/the-crime-election/

The crime elections

The District of Columbia’s City Council might seem a strange place to start a political newsletter a few days out from the midterms. As Democrats will never miss an opportunity to remind you, voters in Washington, DC will not get a say in a race that will help decide control of Congress. But a meeting of city leaders this week is an instructive part a national story that will be central to next week’s vote.

On Tuesday, the DC Council voted 12-0 to support a rewriting of the capital’s criminal code. Reforms include reduced mandatory minimum sentences, the expansion of the right to jury trials for most misdemeanors, a broadening of the opportunities for early release and the elimination of accomplice liability in felony murder cases. The reforms are opposed by the District’s US Attorney, Matthew M. Graves, and police chief Robert J. Contee. Graves said that some of the provisions “could undermine community safety and impede the administration of justice in our courts.” Also opposed to the proposals as they stand: the city’s mayor, Muriel Bowser, who has said she will not sign them into law, but thinks some kind of reform is needed.

Crime is set to be a decisive factor in next week’s elections. It is the biggest reason why governors’ contests are closer than expected in Oregon and New York. It is the main line of attack in crucial Senate races in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. It is why Los Angeles might be about to elect a former Republican property developer as its mayor. Nationwide, it’s a major issue for swing voters and traditionally Democrat-supporting working-class voters. For some Democrats, this seems to be a head-scratcher: We’ve cut it out with calls to Defund the Police. We get it.

And this is why the DC story is so instructive. It’s not that Democratic leaders are actively defunding the police, or fail to appreciate, at least theoretically, that the issue is a major concern for voters. It’s that they time and again fail to act as though public safety is their number one concern. Violent crime is spiking in Washington. It is the city’s most pressing problem and should be its elected officials’ number one concern. In place of any sense of urgency or decisive action is a blue-on-blue debate about which criminal justice reform measures are worth keeping and which are worth watering down. The message to voters is clear: your worries about safety are not our top priority.

Across the country, the Democratic Party’s messaging on crime has been all over the place. First, the crime problem was nothing more than a Republican scare campaign: a racist figment of the right-wing imagination. When more and more Democrats acknowledged the problem, they made the slightly trollish claim that crime is actually higher in red states. Absent from their pitch to voters on one of the most important issues: a straightforward pledge to actually deal with the problem.

The policies responsible for the coming Democratic disaster Matthew Continetti

https://freebeacon.com/columns/crime-starters-usa/

New York governor Kathy Hochul is a case study in denial. The unelected Democrat is in trouble because she won’t acknowledge the danger of rising crime. When challenger Lee Zeldin, a Republican congressman from Long Island, brought up public safety during last week’s debate, Hochul scoffed. “I don’t know why that’s so important to you,” she said. She might as well have stuck her tongue out at voters. Support for Zeldin has surged in recent days.

Hochul may yet win. New York hasn’t voted for a Republican governor since 2002. Whatever the outcome — and Zeldin has a path to victory — the takeaway is clear: Crime is once again a matter of national concern.

Look at the polls. Sixty-one percent of registered voters told the Pew Research Center this month that violent crime is very important to their midterm vote. An October Gallup poll had crime in third place, after the economy and abortion. The October Fox poll showed that crime was second only to inflation in voters’ minds. According to another recent Gallup survey, a record 56 percent of Americans say there is more crime in their area than there was last year.

Hochul blames this sentiment on mass delusion. “These are master manipulators,” she told MSNBC on October 30. “They have this conspiracy going all across America trying to convince people in Democratic states that they’re not safe.” Hochul didn’t say who “they” are. She meant Republicans.

The truth is that Hochul is the one who’s out of touch. The reason voters are worried about crime is that crime has been rising. Sensational stories of subway murders, carjackings, kidnappings, and shoplifting are not isolated events. Murder and assaults have increased nationwide since 2019. Murder has dropped off somewhat since the beginning of this year, but the decline has been unevenly distributed and other forms of violent crime are going up. The lawlessness that spread across the country in 2020 hasn’t abated.

The Great Reset: A Perfect Storm By David Solway

https://pjmedia.com/columns/david-solway-2/2022/11/04/the-great-reset-a-perfect-storm-n1642854

Storms come in many forms and may consist of many different constituent elements, but when all these elements combine at the same critical moment, we call it a “perfect storm.” When such a storm is transposed analogically to the cultural, political, and economic realms, that is, when it seems to impact the entire social environment, we have no choice but to grasp its significance and prepare for its onset by taking protective measures.

Such a storm is now upon us. All its elements clearly point to an orchestrated intention; in other words, it cannot be an accident. And the intention we discern in the current historical moment, the underlying plan, would appear to lay the ground for what has been called a “techno-totalitarian digital dark age,” associated with the Club of Rome, the United Nations, and the World Economic Forum, that is, what has come to be known as the Great Reset — the corporate takeover of property, health, currency, travel, energy, and sustenance. The upshot involves a thorough restructuring of democratic society along neo-medieval lines, an elimination of the middle class, a two-tier political order, and a reduction of the global census.

The sinister elements composing this storm are readily observable to anyone paying attention:

The imposition of a viral pandemic and its official response — lockdowns, social distancing, masks, quarantines, medical apartheid — that effectively closed down the public life and economic structures of entire nations, leading to loss of livelihoods, physical and psychological illness, and spiraling suicide rates.
The mandating of novel genomic “vaccines” that are creating mass casualties, as witnessed in the phenomenon of SADS — Sudden Adult Death Syndrome — which came into prominence post-vaccine. The plethora of dissuasive “fact-checks” on social media and the Internet are further signs that we are living in an age of censorship. The correlation between SADS and the vaccine rollout is overwhelming and may even suggest a causal link. The massive rise in stillbirths may also be attributed to the vaccines.
A “climate change” policy entailing carbon taxes, bans on fertilizers, the shutting down of standard energy production, the marketing of costly and inefficient electric vehicles that threaten to deplete the power grid, and the legislating of largely unworkable and extortionate green renewables based on insecure and fabricated science and dodgy computer models, whose effect has been to impoverish both producers and ordinary citizens in bringing about a new and despotic dispensation.
Supply chain disruptions.
Government-induced food and fuel shortages.
Rampant inflation, pricing the necessities of life beyond the ability of vast numbers of people to afford them.
The official insistence on so-called “abortion rights.”
The focus on and pursuit of LGBTQ+, “non-binary,” transgender, and sexual indoctrination of preschoolers and minors, creating a growing cohort of human beings who do not reproduce, i.e., a condition of sterility.
The proposed creation of a cashless digital economy and the introduction of digital ID with the aim of establishing a China-style social credit system, depriving the individual of personal freedom and discretionary choice.
The initiating of proxy wars, as in Ukraine, further resulting in crippling forms of material scarcity, economic pain, and population stress.

Weaponizing Children By Karen McKay

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2022/11/weaponizing_children.html

In an Afghan cave, men slept rolled up in their patus, the thin woolen shawl that served as blanket, cloak, camouflage, shelter, shroud. In the dark, a small shape stirred and slipped silently out of its patu. There was no sound but snoring from the other shapes. The light from a small, dying fire reflected on a steel blade in the hand of the small shape, a boy of perhaps ten or twelve hard years.

He had wandered, a scrawny, dirty, barefoot kid, into the mujahed camp, starved, begging for food. The muj took him in, wrapped him in a patu, shared their food with him and treated his sores. The child’s pathetic story was a common one. Half of Afghanistan’s preinvasion population was dead or displaced. Many of the living were maimed, starved and sick, their orchards, crops, and livestock destroyed. 

This child was different. He was weaponized. He crept soundlessly, less than a shadow, in the dark toward the sleeping leader of this small band of fighters, approached from behind, grabbed the man’s beard and yanked the head back. With one quick move he sliced the exposed throat. He slipped toward the next target, but the man rolled over and opened his eyes. Before a question could form, the boy was out the cave’s mouth and melted into the night. Before the sun set again, he was back with his Spetsnaz handler. There are war dog handlers, and there were war child handlers in the Soviet army.

The Soviet attempt to make Afghanistan a captive nation by installing a puppet government in Kabul hadn’t worked out, so they went to Plan B: Invading the country, killing their puppet president, installing another, and then proceeding to systematically wipe out the indigenous population. “We only need ten thousand Afghans left alive to be administrators of the country,” a Soviet official said.

Thousands of Afghan boys aged four to eight were taken by the Soviet army to the USSR. Most of them would be trained as Communist cadre to rule a future Soviet Afghanistan. Some would be weaponized.

For both groups, the first phase of the training was the same: deprogram them as Muslims and sons of a mother and father, make them sons of the State and the State only. Islam demands modesty and forbids alcohol and drugs. The boys were forced to drink alcohol and use drugs until they had no moral resistance to them. They were conditioned to nudity and taught sex by mature female trainers who lay naked with them in bed. Every tie to the mores and customs of their ancestral culture was severed. Their memories of childhood were erased. They had new parents, new beliefs: the State and Marxism.

The children of the administrative group received a secular education to run a country, learned to be good atheists and Marxists. The other group were trained to kill.

Manchin’s rebuke shows how toxic Biden’s energy views are A Democrat was willing to blast them full-bore. By Charles Lipson

https://spectatorworld.com/topic/manchins-rebuke-shows-bidens-energy-views-are-toxic/

It’s not often that a senator launches a brutal, frontal assault on a president from his own party. It’s even rarer when he does it just before a national election. But that is exactly what West Virginia Democrat Joe Manchin just did to Joe Biden. At issue was Biden’s recent speech attacking coal, a bedrock of the West Virginia economy. Manchin was furious over Biden’s promise to shut down all of America’s coal-fired power plants.

That view might be red meat for Biden’s audience of green-power advocates and rich California donors, but it is poison in West Virginia. And it is those West Virginians who elected Manchin, the only Democrat still standing in a state that is now deep red.

Manchin didn’t just criticize Biden. He blasted him full-bore, and threw the lifeless carcass over his shoulder on the way back to the truck:

President Biden’s comments are not only outrageous and divorced from reality, they ignore the severe economic pain the American people are feeling because of rising energy costs. …Being cavalier about the loss of coal jobs for men and women in West Virginia and across the country who literally put their lives on the line to help build and power this country is offensive and disgusting. The President owes these incredible workers an immediate and public apology and it is time he learn a lesson that his words matter and have consequences.

The Return of Bibi Netanyahu Israelis finally sobered up and realized Netanyahu is the best candidate to steward the Jewish state on issues of law and order, public safety, national security, and even international diplomacy. By Josh Hammer

https://amgreatness.com/2022/11/04/the-return-of-bibi-netanyahu/

It turns out that, sometimes, the fifth time is a charm. With the final ballots now counted in Israel’s fifth national election in four years, the results are officially in: Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu, already the longest-serving prime minister in the 74-year history of the modern Jewish state, is set to return as premier. After four elections of decisively mixed results, where both the Right—which has been addled by its disgruntled “Never Netanyahu” camp—and the Left have consistently failed to secure a durable governing coalition, the Israeli people have finally spoken up loud and clear: Bring Bibi back.

What’s more, the final results are actually far clearer than many had expected. Some pre-election polls had Netanyahu’s Likud and its allied parties polling highly enough to secure a bare 61-seat coalition majority—Israel’s Knesset, or national legislature, has 120 seats—but others did not. In the final count, the Likud-centric rightist coalition will attain 64 seats. That may sound like a narrow winning margin, but compared to the previous four indecisive elections going back to 2019, that is a monumental victory.

Netanyahu’s 64-seat coalition, once formalized by President Isaac Herzog, will include 32 seats from Likud and 14 seats from Religious Zionism, a unity ticket headed by right-wingers Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir (the controversial newest star of the Israeli political scene). Netanyahu had deliberately snubbed campaign appearances with Ben-Gvir, who is typically derided by his detractors and a supine press as a “Kahanist.” Still, Religious Zionism ended up securing the third-most votes of any Israeli political party—behind only Likud and outgoing Prime Minister Yair Lapid’s center-left Yesh Atid. It is difficult to smear the third-highest-polling party in Israel’s frenzied multiparty parliamentary system as being replete with “bigots” or “Kahanists.” Indeed, all signs point toward Religious Zionism being a meaningful new player on the Israeli political scene; it is here to stay.

Remarkably, as Likud secured a durable majority and as Religious Zionism cruised to a third-place result, the Israeli Left’s now-decadeslong collapse was only further exacerbated. Labor, which dominated the first three decades of Israeli history, will have a minuscule four seats in the next Knesset. Far-left Meretz, moreover, did not even qualify for Knesset representation. The upshot is that this next governing coalition, and by extension the next Knesset, will likely be the most religious and the most right-wing in Israel’s history.

The CDC Has Lost All Credibility The Left’s politicization of the once-revered organization has morphed it into a haven for medical hacks and become a massive laughing stock. By Shawn Waugh

https://amgreatness.com/2022/11/04/the-cdc-has-lost-all-credibility/

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) voted 15-0 last month to add the COVID-19 mRNA vaccines to the recommended childhood schedule.

Given that the panel consists of card-carrying members of the Branch Covidian faith, the unanimous vote came as no surprise. In fact, some committee members voted via video conference while sitting alone in a room, wearing their masks.

Ironic, considering the CDC a month earlier had quietly stopped recommending that patrons and employees in healthcare facilities mask up.

But, forever masking is an essential pillar of the Covidian faith. It must be followed if members are to attain eternal life regardless of changing doctrine and new revelation from on high.

What Does the Vote Mean?

The actual recommendation from the CDC is that children begin getting COVID-19 inoculations at 6 months of age. 

The CDC quickly pointed out that the organization cannot issue specific mandates and that the panel’s recommendation serves only to “help streamline clinical guidance for healthcare providers by including all currently licensed, authorized and routinely recommended vaccines in one document.”

That may be technically true. We know, however, that COVID-19 jabs, regardless of their true efficacy, have become a sacrament within the Branch Covidian church. Moreover, the CDC has significant influence on states and healthcare facilities regarding vaccination schedules. States commonly use CDC guidelines to protect themselves from legal liability when implementing local regulations. So the CDC’s decision will undoubtedly lead Covidian governors to add the CDC’s recommendation to their states’ vaccination schedules. In turn, this will mean parents must have their children vaccinated if they want them to attend public school, daycare, and participate in sports.