“Who would have the audacity to run an election campaign with utter disregard for what the voters think and feel?” …That’s what Democrats are doing!…

ELECTIONS

Democrats Are Failing the Democracy Test

This Tuesday, as Joe Biden and the Democrats love to remind us, “democracy is on the ballot.” It’s just not in the way they think it is.

By Nicholas L. Waddy at American Greatness:

November 5, 2022

As Americans head to the polls on Tuesday, it is Democrats who are constantly reminding us of the virtues of American democracy, and how much that democracy is under threat from “ultra MAGA Republicans.” These deplorables routinely foment “insurrections,” deny people their right to vote, contest election results, and exult in hitting their enemies over the heads with hammers. 

In other words, Democrats’ closing argument in the 2022 election asks—actually, it insists—that Americans assume that the mild-mannered Republicans they encounter in daily life are actually bloodthirsty fascists.

Good luck with that!

The irony here is that Democrats themselves are attacking the foundations of democracy in so many ways, from their contempt for the “legitimacy” of the Supreme Court, to their advocacy and practice of federal government-Big Tech collusion to censor dissenting viewpoints, to their suppression of accurate, but critical, reporting on prominent Democrats, to their blithe acceptance of Mark Zuckerberg’s unprecedented financial and logistical intervention in the conduct of the 2020 election. And we haven’t even mentioned the rank absurdity of the Democrats’ central argument this election season: that only by ruling out of bounds the opposition party, and turning America into a one-party state, can we save “democracy”—as though pluralism and democracy had nothing to do with one another!

I wish to draw attention, however, to another galling and undemocratic feature of the Democrats’ thinking. It’s worth reminding ourselves, for starters, what democracy is. Democracy is a system in which the people rule, in our case by electing leaders who represent us and who, broadly speaking, run the country according to the people’s wishes.

So what, we should ask ourselves, do the people want?

The polls tell us, regularly and unambiguously, that what the people want right now is leaders who share their priorities and goals. At present, the American people rate inflation, crime, and border security as top-tier issues. You would expect, in a democracy, that current and aspiring political leaders would take the people’s views and concerns seriously. They would, among other things, talk about these hot-button issues and suggest ways to address the people’s concerns.

But not if they’re Democrats! Oh no. Democrats have decided that they know better than the American people, and that the priorities, goals, and even the darkest fantasies beloved of progressives ought to be topping the electoral agenda this fall.

Democrats don’t want to talk about inflation, crime, or the border. In fact, they become irritable and defensive when those issues are raised. Instead of addressing them head on and taking the concerns of the voters seriously, Democrats go back to their official playbook for 2022: they harp on the evils of Trumpism, January 6, “ultra MAGA” this and that, and abortion rights, which we are told are in great peril, especially in states like California and New York, even though everyone knows this is utter nonsense. Those deep blue states would sooner make Donald Trump their king than curtail abortion rights.

The point is that Democrats are utterly fixated on the themes that have been drilled into them by the news editors at CNN, MSNBC, and the New York Times. They have become so obsessed with the villainy of Republicans that they believe abortion alone can and will propel them to victory in 2022. They don’t care about the state of the economy, or the rise in crime, or the chaos at the border, because they haven’t been told to care about these things—and because to care about them would mean dealing with the elephant in the room: the quality (or lack thereof) of Democratic governance over the last two years, symbolized by the bumbling inadequacy of Joe Biden.

Who would have thought that in a democracy a political party would have the audacity to run an election campaign with utter disregard for what the voters think and feel? And yet that is exactly what the Democrats are doing.

On Tuesday, as Biden and the Democrats love to remind us, “democracy is on the ballot.” It’s just not in the way they think it is. The question Americans should be asking is: Will this country be ruled by the people, or will it be ruled instead by an elite of self-appointed “experts” and paragons of wokeness who talk down to us, and mock and intimidate us when we dare to dissent?

How Many Decades HAVE OUR DEMS OWNED THE FBI?

 NOVEMBER 6, 2022 BY JOHN HINDERAKER at Power Line:

CAN THE FBI BE SAVED?

On Friday, Republican House Judiciary Committee staff released a report titled “FBI WHISTLEBLOWERS: WHAT THEIR DISCLOSURES INDICATE ABOUT THE POLITICIZATION OF THE FBI AND JUSTICE DEPARTMENT.”

The report is 50 pages long, but it also includes an appendix of approximately 1,000 pages consisting of letters Judiciary Committee members have written to DOJ and the FBI, requesting information that, I take it, has rarely if ever been forthcoming. The report’s contents will not be surprising to anyone who has been paying attention. Its executive summary lays out these points:

• The FBI is artificially inflating statistics about domestic violent extremism in the nation. Whistleblowers have described how FBI leadership is pressuring line agents to reclassify cases as domestic violent extremism even if the matter does not meet the criteria. They also explained how the FBI is misrepresenting the scale of domestic violent extremism nationwide by categorizing January 6th-related investigations as organic cases stemming from local field offices, instead of all related to one single incident. In both ways, the FBI is fueling the Biden Administration’s narrative that domestic violent extremism is the biggest threat to our nation.

• The FBI is abusing its counterterrorism authorities to investigate parents who spoke at school board meetings. Whistleblowers disclosed how, shortly after the National School Boards Association urged President Biden to use the Patriot Act against American parents, the FBI Counterterrorism Division set up a special “threat tag” to track school board-related cases. Whistleblowers provided evidence of how the FBI opened investigations into one mom for allegedly telling a local school board “we are coming for you” and a dad simply because he “rails against the government” and “has a lot of guns.”

• The FBI has abused its foreign intelligence authorities to spy on American citizens, including people associated with the campaign of President Trump in 2016. These facts have been documented in Inspector General reports and Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court opinions, but there is little indication the FBI has changed—or is willing to change—course.

• The FBI is clearing the Bureau of employees who dissent from its woke, leftist agenda. The FBI is actively seeking to “purge” FBI employees holding conservative views—or, in President Biden’s view, those who are a “threat to American democracy”1— because they hold conservative views. The FBI has even taken retaliatory actions against at least one whistleblower who has spoken out.

• Whistleblowers have explained how the FBI’s “political meddling” “is dragging the criminal side [of the Bureau] down” as resources are “pulled away” from real law- enforcement duties. As a prime example, one whistleblower described how he was “told that child sexual abuse material investigations were no longer an FBI priority and should be referred to local law enforcement agencies” so that he could work a Washington-directed politically charged case instead. Such a mis-prioritization is not only a dereliction of duty, but it is a grave disservice to the victims of crimes that do not advance the FBI’s political agenda.

The FBI’s role in the Russia collusion hoax is, by itself, ground for radical reform of the Bureau. The recent revelation that the FBI offered Christopher Steele a $1 million bribe if he could come up with dirt on Donald Trump is the icing on the cake. A government agency this corrupt cannot be allowed to exist in anything like its present form.

I assume that we need a federal investigative agency of some kind. I don’t know what the legitimate contours of such an agency would be. But when Republicans take control of the House and the Senate in January, reform of the FBI, and the Department of Justice, should be high on their agenda.

“accounting for the Democrats’ well-known election tricks.”

November 6, 2022

Red Wave on the Sunset

By Clarice Feldman at American Thinker:

The internet this week is full of election projections and Elon Musk’s moves to clean up Twitter. Starting with the last item – Twitter — he’s just discharged 2700 employees, saving the company hundreds of millions of dollars in wages and perquisites, fired the board and made himself its sole member. A number of woke corporations, including General Mills and Volkswagen, have cancelled their Twitter ads. Musk seems to be interested in following a suggestion that he list all those cancelling companies which are trying to starve him of revenue so that consumers can decide if they wish to keep patronizing those companies that prefer censoring them to an open free-speech forum. Expect as well many tales of woe from discharged twitterati, because the Left enjoyed that they had — in addition to the mainstream media — captured a major source of alternate media, one that blocked, censored, and diminished the voices of those with different opinions and unheralded facts. They are truly sad to see this monopoly end.

It really does look like there will be a red tsunami at the polls, even accounting for the Democrats’ well-known election tricks.

Real Clear Politics’ latest projections on Saturday are that the Republicans will take 228 seats in the House of Representatives and 54 seats in the Senate. To have a real majority, considering the Stalinist-type lockstep voting of their opponents and the perfidy and stupidity of senators like Romney, Murkowski (where stacked voting may allow her an undeserved win) and Collins, they will need more than 51 seats to have an effective voting majority.

Political analyst Michael Barone, who is a reliable predictor of such things, confirms the Republican wave appears likely:

Meanwhile, as Democrats have pointed out, you see many more poll numbers from partisan Republican pollsters than partisan Democratic pollsters. But there’s a reason for that. As Republican pollster Bill McInturff argued, partisan pollsters and campaign clients don’t release unfavorable numbers. That’s an indication that Democrats have no good news to share. [snip]

But much of that [Democrat]money has been spent on ads concentrating on abortion and “preserving democracy” themes — themes that enthuse committed Democrats but have little appeal to others. Republican barrages on out-of-control inflation, out-of-control crime and out-of-control illegal immigration seem to move more votes.

You can see how the battleground has shifted by noting that Democrats are spending for Washington incumbent Patty Murray, a 59% winner in 2016, and in dozens of House races in Biden districts. Democrats in double-digit Biden districts are suddenly in peril and begging for contributions. [snip] These experts held sway in the 13 months from the onset of COVID-19 in March 2020 through the Black Lives Matter and antifa rioting that summer to the passage of the Biden $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief legislation in March 2021. The collateral damage from their actions still reverberates.

Caught on a political limb are Democrats who followed expert advice and endorsed things like school shutdowns and defunding the police — policies New York Magazine writer Jonathan Chait called the “indefensible and self-discrediting positions” of “the most unreasonable people on the Left” and Josh Barro called “dumbf— things The Groups signed up for in June 2020, because the people who staff The Groups are the most out of touch people on the planet.”

The answer for this political shift is best set forth even more succinctly  by Lord Conrad Black:

The mistakes President Trump’s enemies made were to put an incompetent into the presidency and in seeking the broadest  

possible coalition, to hand far too much authority to policy extremists.

On Tuesday, the people will speak and the correction of these errors will determinedly begin. Almost all the Trump-endorsed candidates will be victorious, he will take greater control than ever of the Republican Party, the Congress will undo what it can of the incumbent administration’s extravagance and will turn congressional investigative powers against Trump’s enemies. 

Wokeness is ending and will not be widely lamented. Close to half mistrust the last election result. 

The wave is not confined to federal posts. At the state levels, the coming shift seems apparent. RCP projects Republicans will take 31 governorships.

RCP compares the various pollster predictions with the results in 2016 so you can see which are the more accurate. Fox host Jesse Watters:

I have right here the most accurate and inaccurate list of polls in the last election. Their worst polls were Quinnipiac, CNN, L.A. Times, Washington Post, ABC, and Monmouth, and the New York Times. 

The most accurate: Atlas Intel, Trafalgar, InsiderAdvantage, and Harrison, and Rasmussen. 

Those are independent polls, people say they’re conservative-leaning but they actually speak to Republicans that won’t speak to mainstream pollsters. They’re saying there’s not going be a wave in Nevada… The Republicans are ahead in the Senate, the Republicans in the gubernatorial race, and every Congressional race there is either a toss-up or leaning Republican. 

If you’re a Democrat like Senator Claire McCaskill. you can deny what the most accurate polls and election observers like Barone say and cling to the belief they are in error. If you believe that, through a series of underhanded moves and illegalities caught too late to redress, the 2020 election was stolen and this one will be, too, have more faith. From what I can see on state levels, the Republicans have been far more proactive in catching and stemming a lot of the usual Democratic tricks like barring election observers, stacking the poll workers with their confederates, and stuffing mailboxes. They can’t catch them all, but if the number of angry voters who want the Democrats out of office is as large as predicted, the usual tricks will be less efficacious.

Will you have to stay up late Tuesday night to see the results? Probably not. In a wonderfully droll article at the American Spectator, Tom Raabe tells you how to find out what’s happening before the results are officially reported. He begins with, “John King is working the big CNN election map with a drink in one hand.” He ends with, “And, if we hear commentators from ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, MSNBC, and PBS expressing “serious concern about the integrity of this election,” we can probably sleep well.” His is a long list of accurate tells. 

Put out a big bowl of popcorn, grab your favorite libations, and be prepared for a karmalicious evening.

Why Are Today’s Dems SO CORRUPT, VULGAR, AND EVEN SAD?

NOVEMBER 6, 2022 BY SCOTT JOHNSON at Power Line:

FROM THE FETTERMAN RALLY

Brain-damaged Pennsylvania Democratic Senate candidate brought in the big guns, if I may use that term, to whip up turnout in their strongholds yesterday. When I say Fetterman is brain-damaged, that is a statement of fact. When I say “big guns,” that is a metaphor. The flags behind Fetterman fell as he introduced his biggest gun. Some choose to see the perfect timing of the flags falling as a metaphor. You be the judge.

https://platform.twitter.com/embed/Tweet.html?creatorScreenName=powerlineUS&dnt=false&embedId=twitter-widget-0&features=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%3D%3D&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=false&id=1588929317437771776&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.powerlineblog.com%2Farchives%2F2022%2F11%2Ffrom-the-fetterman-rally.php&sessionId=63cfa07f23e7d3b4ed3bcb9a4fa04c4340cac83f&siteScreenName=powerlineUS&theme=light&widgetsVersion=a3525f077c700%3A1667415560940&width=550px

See if you can follow Fetterman’s train of thought in the clip below.

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Forgive me for reiterating my five lines of doggerel for Fetterman:

A candidate named John Fetterman
Told us he was better, man.
So said his doctor’s letter, man.
Can he even knit a sweater, man?
He looks like a bedwetter, man.

I stand by my observations.

“the War Between Progressives -“

November 5, 2022

Our War of Words – Hint: We’re Losing

By Ned Barnett at American Thinker:

One of the major fronts on the war between progressives – who want to tear down and reshape America – against those of us who believe that America should be closer to what our Founding Fathers had in mind – can be defined as a War on Words. 

Sadly, this war is very real – and even more sadly, so far, we are losing that war.  Much of the progressives’ ability to succeed in forcing all of society to bow to their whims is that they have an almost unique ability to change the meaning of words – or even make up words – the better to suit their goals.  This is most evident in the vast expansion of the concept “hate speech,” speech made criminal because words don’t just inspire violence, they are violence, which is illegal.  From hate speech comes the concepts of “trigger words,” and “violence-free zones,” and long lists of words we may not say … unless we’re progressives, actively denouncing hate speech words.

Once progressives impose their new words and alternate meanings on us – usually starting with the dual conflict arenas – college campuses and the national news media – we conservatives seem remarkably unable to risk resisting the power of words.  

Unfortunately, words and meanings do have power, and whether consciously or because of an unconscious groupthink, progressives are indeed winning the war for the use of words and meanings to control society.

A recent weapon in the progressive’s War on Words has been their cancel culture.   This recent phenomenon has caused people – even people of real power – to lose their jobs, their reputations, their families.  Cancel culture is immensely violent – but since the warriors are progressive, “that’s O.K.” in a way it would never be acceptable if conservatives used the same words and tactics toward their own ends.

Bottom line: When we don’t resist, we cede to the progressives a power over their imposed cultural constructs, which in turn define the way we work, the way we live – and, literally – the way we think.

A few quick examples.  In one context, the word “choice” means having control over our bodies, meaning abortion.  However, in another context, choice means which schools our children attend.  Recently, this term has gotten more convoluted.  In the context of “choice” meaning the privacy of our bodies there’s abortion on demand.  However, bodily choice is also applied to personal choice in another realm – vaccinations against COVID-19 – and to progressives, choice suddenly means something else. Progressives assert that mere citizens don’t have the right to choose to NOT have their COVID shots.  Should we try to exercise our false choice to abstain from being forcibly vaccinated, we can be victimized by job loss, travel restrictions or other arcane discrimination.  But that’s O.K..  In this case, “choice” means the progressive left can force us to get shots because they have the “choice” to be safe from vaccine deniers.

Another example, the word “phobia.”  As defined by the Oxford Dictionary, phobia is “an extreme or irrational fear of or aversion to something.”  But the way progressives use phobia, when they apply it to their own core constituencies, it means “hatred against something.”  Hence, transphobia, which should mean “fear of trans” becomes “hate of all things trans.”  This usage has been extended to fatphobia and other new “phobia” words, standing any “hyphenated-phobia” word on its head.

Another widespread and egregious example is the word racism.  Until five minutes ago, racism had only described people who violently hated other people because of their race, not their actions.  Then, racist was easy to identify.  A racist actively discriminated against blacks or Hispanics, Asians, or “other” physically-identifiable groups.  In doing so, these haters used every tool from Jim Crow to Judge Lynch to enforce a harsh criticism against members of those “other” races.  The horrific Jim Crow and Judge Lynch excesses found in the Deep South after the Civil War, were also found in the North and Midwest – but not until after World Wars I and II.  During those two wars, while white men were overseas by the million, fighting against truly racist regimes in Germany and Japan, and white workers’ absence in factories required replacements.  Blacks abandoned share-cropper farms in droves, relocating for better-paying jobs in the North and Midwest.  This led to violence – not “violent words,” but violent actions.  These first manifested themselves in the early 1920s with the rebirth – in the North and Midwest – of the KKK.  The hatred and violence by some whites toward blacks became harsher during the Great Depression, when everyone was suffering.  Many unemployed whites asserted their superiority over blacks – often violently – in order to not feel like they themselves were at the bottom of society’s ladder.

However, blacks weren’t the only victims of violent racism.  The Klan also targeted Jews and eastern Europeans in the Midwest and North. Most Americans know of President Franklin Roosevelt’s decision to intern all West Coast Japanese – even Americans citizens born of Japanese parents or grandparents – into concentration camps for much of the Second World War.  But most don’t realize Japanese antipathy toward America’s racism stemmed from San Francisco’s 1904 demands to exclude Japanese immigration from the U.S., culminating in the “Gentlemen’s Agreement” of 1907, agreed to by President Theodore Roosevelt, which “voluntarily” curtailed Japanese immigration.  Despite the fact that Japan and America became allies during the First World War, the Gentlemen’s Agreement ultimately led to a ban of all Japanese immigrants, and was enacted as the U.S. Immigration Act of 1924.  The antipathy this aroused in Japan made the Pacific War between the US and Japan in 1941-45 all but inevitable.  The one-time allies hated each other, primarily because of racism.

Racism manifests as either physical violence or overt discrimination.  Violence is clear, but let’s consider overt discrimination.  In the late 1950s, lily-white Deerfield, Illinois won a Supreme Court decision that allowed the township to block the sales of “open housing” to blacks as long as the land was turned into public parks.  At the same time, the town of Cummins, Georgia had a public policy manifested by their slogan, “The sun never sets over a black head.”  More than 1,000 blacks were forcibly driven from the county in 1912, beginning with a lynching.  This ban remained in force for 75 years, until 1987.

The progressives have also succeeded in redefining recently created terms, such as “denier.”  Originally used to identify anti-Semitic propagandists who alleged that the Holocaust Hitler’s Germany – inflicted on six and a half Jews, along with Gypsies, homosexuals and other so-called sub-humans – never happened.  Hence “deniers.”  However, today’s progressives use that word to identify those who don’t agree with the groupthink that claims that the worst fears of climate change are not just wrong, but dangerous.  They go on to claim that no other perspective is possible, citing the ascientific notion of “settled science.” 

Etymology has remarkable power, when we let the progressives get away with this coup de main. A surprise attack on the way we form thoughts, as well as how words create actions – is has terrifying implications.  This is not new to progressives – but their use of it is unprecedented.  George Orwell’s most famous work, 1984, postulated a dictatorial state where thoughts are controlled by altering the meaning of words.  It gave us words such as Newspeak, Thoughtcrime, Crimethink, Doublespeak and Thought Police.

What is this War on Words?  An excellent example is the concerted effort to classify words as violence.  This is at the heart of the woke movement so prevalent on college campuses.

Ned Barnett is a long-time conservative political activist.

THE MAGNIFICENT MESSIAH!