ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Dead guy wins Pennsylvania race and ‘our democracy’ is saved By Eric Utter

Posted By on November 10th, 2022

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/11/dead_guy_wins_pennsylvania_race_and_our_democracy_is_saved.html

A Pennsylvania state representative who died last month was reelected on November 8 despite that fact.

You can probably guess the representative’s party affiliation. Yes, Democrat Anthony “Tony” DeLuca, who passed away October 9, won in a landslide, garnering over 85% of the vote. At the time of DeLuca’s death, it was too late for officials to change the election ballots, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported.

DeLuca, Pennsylvania’s longest-serving state rep, easily defeated Green Party challenger Queonia “Zarah” Livingston, who is alive. (Livingston is a far-left extremist who ran on a platform including “environmental justice,” and “ending the war on drugs.”)

This is the same state that elected John Fetterman, a man who lived with/off his parents until he was 50 and who has been afflicted with severe cognitive difficulties after suffering a stroke early in his campaign.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

How They Count Votes in Brazil Augusto Zimmermann

Posted By on November 10th, 2022

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2022/11/how-they-count-votes-in-brazil/

The second round of Brazil’s presidential elections was held on Sunday, October 30. The former president, Lula da Silva, who has served prison time for corruption, apparently won 50.90% of the vote and the incumbent, Jair Bolsonaro, received 49.10%. In other words, Lula was declared winner with less than 1 per cent lead over Bolsonaro. This is according to judges of the Superior Electoral Tribunal (TSE), Brazil’s top electoral authority. It was an unexpected comeback for the former president, who was directly responsible for the biggest series of corruption scandals in the nation’s history.[1] Lula is “back at the scene of the crime”, according to the description made not a long time ago by his own vice-president in the presidential ticket. According to J.R. Guzzo, one of Brazil’s most accomplished journalists, the 2022 election in Brazil has been “a legal and political fraud as we have never seen in this country”.[2]  In an article entitled De Volta à Cena do Crime (Back at the Scene of the Crime), he commented:

Lula returned to the presidency via the general collapse of the Constitution and Brazilian laws throughout the electoral process – the result of an unprecedented meddling of the judiciary, which was entirely illegal in each step of the process. The basic fact is that the judiciary, with Justice Alexandre de Moraes issuing orders and Lula in the role of its sole beneficiary, did everything it could for any neutral observer to conclude this was a rigged election … Basically, Supreme Court justices and its electoral arm, the Superior Electoral Tribunal, put together piece by piece a mechanism designed to favour the leftist candidate. The first step was for these unelected judges to simply overturn the four criminal convictions against Lula and, with it, perform the “magic” of disappearing with all the dirty record which precluded him from being a candidate.[3] 

But there is a rather decisive international element in Lula’s victory as well. Just after a few outlets called the election in Brazil, U.S. President Joe Biden orchestrated a rapid international embrace of Lula. In a statement released immediately after the result was officially announced, Biden claimed that Lula had won “following free, fair, and credible elections”.[4]  In short order, Canada’s Justin Trudeau, French President Emmanuel Macron, and British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak all released statements congratulating Lula. “The people of Brazil have spoken”, said Trudeau, writing within an hour and a half of the result.[5]

In August 2021, US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan visited Brazil to issue the following warning to the Brazilian president: do not even dare even to question the reliability of your country’s electronic voting system.[6] A month earlier, in July 2021, the newly installed Biden sent his CIA director, William Burns, to travel to the country to meet with senior Brazilian officials. During that meeting, the U.S. delegation warned the Brazilian government that President Bolsonaro “should stop casting doubt in his country’s [entirely electronic] electoral process”.[7] Next, at the June 2022  Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles, the Biden administration notoriously repeated the same warning that the U.S. government would not tolerate Bolsonaro casting any doubt on the reliability and security of the nation’s voting machines.[8] Since these messages came before the outcome of the election, this was a clear warning of dire consequences should the Brazilian president contest the alleged fairness and transparency of the electoral process

MOVIES AND TELEVISION Comments turned off

All Hail Peter Morgan! It’s high time for a miniseries about the highly imaginative creator of Netflix’s “The Crown.”  By Bruce Bawer

Posted By on November 10th, 2022

http://All Hail Peter Morgan! It’s high time for a miniseries about the highly imaginative creator of Netflix’s “The Crown.”  By Bruce Bawer

All hail the creative genius of Peter Morgan, who realized years ago just how big a market there was for movies, plays, and TV series about the House of Windsor. 

After a middling early career as a TV and film writer, Morgan hit pay dirt in 2006 with the movie “The Queen,” which garnered Oscar nominations for his screenplay as well as for best picture and nabbed Helen Mirren the best actress nod as Queen Elizabeth II. 

In 2013 came “The Audience,” Morgan’s West End and Broadway play consisting entirely of meetings between Queen Elizabeth II—again played by Mirren—and every last one of her prime ministers up to that date. 

Along the way, Morgan worked on other projects, including the play and movie “Frost/Nixon” and the Freddie Mercury biopic “Bohemian Rhapsody.” But like a moth to a flame, he kept returning to Buckingham Palace. In 2016 came his chef d’oeuvre, “The Crown”—the high-budget Netflix series that follows Queen Elizabeth II throughout her reign. 

“The Crown” is fun to watch, of course, and gorgeous to look at. But from the beginning it’s been criticized for taking outrageous liberties with the facts. Some of its most engaging sequences have turned out to be total fiction. For example, Elizabeth and Jackie Kennedy escaping from a posh reception at Buckingham Palace to bond cozily over the Queen’s dogs. Or Princess Margaret exchanging dirty limericks with LBJ at a White House dinner. 

Almost every scene involving Margaret Thatcher is not just pure invention but borderline calumny. Which isn’t surprising, given Morgan’s partiality to Tony Blair, who not only was the hero of “The Queen” but also was at the center of Morgan’s films “The Deal” (2003), and “The Special Relationship” (2010). 

The fifth season of “The Crown,” covering the 1990s, will debut on November 9—two months and a day after the Queen shuffled off this mortal coil. But Morgan and friends aren’t letting  her death cramp their style: the fabrications in this round of “The Crown” are reportedly more plentiful than ever. We’ll see Prince Charles intriguing against his mother and Prince Philip pressuring her to make nice with his mistress. Shades of “Richard III”! And that’s just the tip of the iceberg, apparently. 

No surprise, then, that there’s more outrage than ever about “The Crown’s” high hooey quotient. In a November 4 article at the BBC website, for example, one Hugh Montgomery posed what he described as “the big question of the moment,” namely: “should The Crown and its creator Peter Morgan be playing so fast-and-loose with the facts?” Morgan has already replied to that: five years ago, defending the liberties he’d taken thus far with the details of the Queen’s life, he said, “I think there’s room to creatively imagine, based on the information we have about her.” 

Well, given that sanction, I’ve come up with a TV project of my own: a miniseries about the life of Peter Morgan. Don’t think for a second that he doesn’t merit such treatment. After all, his oeuvre has had a huge worldwide impact. He’s played a major role in reshaping the reputations of several leading royals and prime ministers. 

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Tuesday Takeaways The under-polled voters were not silent, wary Trump supporters, but seething upscale women and college students. By Victor Davis Hanson

Posted By on November 10th, 2022

https://amgreatness.com/2022/11/09/tuesday-takeaways/ What, if anything, did the midterms tell us about the country—other than underwhelming Republicans could still take the House and Senate? During the COVID lockdowns, American elections radically changed to mail-in and early voting. They did so in a wild variety of state-by-state ways. Add ranked voting and a required majority margin to the […]

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Trump Wrongly Blamed for Subpar GOP Performance By Rick Moran

Posted By on November 10th, 2022

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/rick-moran/2022/11/09/trump-wrongly-blamed-for-sup-par-gop-performance-n1644514 The Republicans had a pretty good midterm election despite what pundits are claiming. The GOP must win three of the remaining four Senate races to win control of the upper chamber — a goal well within reach as Republicans lead in Nevada and Wisconsin. And the party is within spitting distance of a House […]

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Since Dobbs Decision Leak, Violence Against Pro-Lifers Was Over 22 Times That Against Pro-Choicers When you can’t risk admitting the truth. by John R. Lott, Jr.

Posted By on November 10th, 2022

https://www.frontpagemag.com/since-dobbs-decision-leak-violence-against-pro-lifers-was-over-22-times-that-against-pro-choicers/

After the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade leaked on May 3rd, news reports blamed abortion-related violence over the summer on pro-life supporters.

“[W]e have seen a steady rise in violence and harassment against providers from anti-abortion extremists who continue to be emboldened by the Supreme Court’s decision,” claimed Melissa Fowler, Chief Program Officer of the National Abortion Federation (NAF).

“People want me dead’: abortion providers fear violence after Roe overturned,” a headline in The Guardian read. Other news outlets, such as NBC News, also focused on the increased threat of violence against abortion providers. But national news sources don’t mention violence against people on the pro-life side of the debate.

It never made much sense, anyway. Why would a major win in the Supreme Court cause pro-life people to suddenly resort to more violence? The pro-choice people would be more upset and, presumably, more likely to lash out.

Using news searches and pre-existing data, the Crime Prevention Research Center, which I head, identified 135 attacks on pro-life entities and people between May 3 and September 24, 2022. By contrast, only six cases involve attacks on pro-choice people. That is a ratio of 22-to-1. And that may be an underestimate of the difference if the media is less likely to cover violence against pro-lifers.

All of the cases and links to the underlying news stories are available here.

ANTI-SEMITISM, EDUCATION Comments turned off

UC Berkeley Calls Cops on Protest Against “Jewish Free Zones” At Berkeley, banning Jews is free speech, protesting anti-Semitism isn’t. Daniel Greenfield

Posted By on November 10th, 2022

https://www.frontpagemag.com/uc-berkeley-calls-cops-on-protest-against-jewish-free-zones/

During the Black Lives Matter riots, UC Berkeley Chancellor Carol Christ endorsed police defunding. “Elements of our country’s law enforcement culture dehumanize some of the very people whose safety and wellness police officers are sworn to protect,” she falsely claimed.

Two weeks ago, UC Berkeley called the police on a conservative truck protesting campus antisemitism and the “Jewish Free Zones” erected by elements of its law school.

Berkeley Law School Dean Erwin Chemerinsky had claimed that the university couldn’t take any action against the “Jewish Free Zones” enacted by student organizations even as he admitted that they would bar 90% of Jewish speakers. “That is their First Amendment right. I find their statement offensive, but they have the right to say it. To punish these student groups, or students, for their speech would clearly violate the Constitution,” he argued.

That was in early October.

In late October, Chemerinsky responded to a truck rented by a conservative group protesting the “Jewish Free Zone” by threatening that, “we’re exploring whether there’s any action that can be taken against the Accuracy in Media for the truck.”

According to Chemerinsky and Berkeley, banning Jews is free speech, protesting the ban isn’t.

Chemerinsky described the ban of 90% of Jewish speakers as merely “offensive”, but condemned a protest against it as “despicable” and “outrageous behavior.”

Adam Guillette, the president of Accuracy in Media, had decided to challenge the culture of campus antisemitism by renting a truck to name and shame the students responsible for the  “Jewish Free Zones”.

It’s a tactic that has been successfully used by groups fighting antisemitism like Canary Mission.

Recalling his own student days, Adam told me that, “When I attended the University of Florida we dealt with the same sort of nonsense and our campus Jewish groups wouldn’t do a thing about it.

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Progressives Launch ‘Don’t Run Joe’ Anti-Biden Campaign By Liz Sheld

Posted By on November 10th, 2022

https://amgreatness.com/2022/11/10/morning-greatness-progressives-launch-dont-run-joe-anti-biden-campaign/ Election: Florida Republicans’ Historic Performance, By the Numbers Understanding the Underwhelming GOP Performance Democrats fortify their blue wall — and Electoral College math — for 2024 Minnesota elects first transgender state lawmaker Universal free lunch ballot measure passes easily in Colorado Rep. Kevin McCarthy has announced his bid for House Speaker ‘Vote Like A […]

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Biden’s ‘Jim Crow 2.0’ Dies in Georgia Voter turnout in the state exceeds the record of 2018, with no report of problems.

Posted By on November 10th, 2022

https://www.wsj.com/articles/joe-bidens-jim-crow-2-0-dies-in-georgia-voters-midterm-election-raphael-warnock-brian-kemp-stacey-abrams-11668035286?mod=opinion_lead_pos3 Control of the House and Senate still hangs in the balance, but one Tuesday result was clear: President Biden’s “Jim Crow 2.0” rhetoric about state voting laws was a nasty political distortion. The Georgia Secretary of State website reports that by Wednesday afternoon’s counting, 3,957,880 voters had cast a ballot in Tuesday’s election, slightly […]

FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Iran’s Ballistic Missiles and the Folly of Appeasement When regime-backed Houthi rebels fired on a base housing U.S. soldiers, Team Biden deflected. By Michael Doran and Can Kasapoğlu

Posted By on November 10th, 2022

https://www.wsj.com/articles/irans-ballistic-missiles-and-the-folly-of-appeasement-biden-classical-deterrence-defense-system-uae-saudi-arabia-houthis-khamenei-nuclear-deal-11668006270?mod=opinion_lead_pos8

The news that Iran’s contribution to Russia’s war effort in Ukraine will soon include ballistic missiles as well as kamikaze drones has alerted the world to the surprising advances the Islamic Republic has made in disruptive weapons technologies. To the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, these technologies are as important as its nuclear-weapons program.

One man who understands this better than most is Gen. Kenneth F. McKenzie, who retired in April as commander of U.S. Central Command, the military command responsible for the Middle East. Gen. McKenzie recently warned about the impact of Iran’s advances in ballistic missiles, cruise missiles and drones. “Over the past five to seven years, Iranian capabilities . . . have risen to such a degree that now they possess what I would call effective ‘overmatch’ against their neighbors,” he said on Oct. 6 at Policy Exchange, a London think tank. “Overmatch,” he continued, “is a military term that means you have the ability to attack, and the defender won’t be able to mount a successful defense.”

The Iranians essentially have established a balance of power that favors offensive action by Iran. Lopsided defense economics partially explain this: America and its allies spend more money—tens or hundreds of times more—to intercept Iranian missiles and drones than it costs Iran to build and launch those weapons.

More important, when combined in a large strike package, some of Iran’s missiles and drones will inevitably break through America’s defensive shield guarding its allies and military bases in the Middle East. The IRGC combines ballistic missiles, cruise missiles and drones in strike packages. Each of these systems have different flight characteristics, radar signatures and homing angles. When launched simultaneously they tax the sensors of missile-defense systems. Even the most sophisticated systems operating at peak performance can’t prevent at least some of Iran’s weapons, when launched in significant quantities, from hitting their targets.