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November 2021

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

How Much Cheating Is Enough? The Virginia election results offer us a misleading, illusory stability, if it leads Americans to believe that our elections can be trusted. By Dan Gelernter

By on November 17th, 2021

https://amgreatness.com/2021/11/16/how-much-cheating-is-enough/

The recent Republican victory in the Virginia gubernatorial race is the best thing that could possibly have happened for Democrats. Yes, we have a Republican governor in a state that was being rapidly dismantled by leftist insanity. But the election also undermines any sense of strategic unity for future election cycles. 

If the Democrats had succeeded in stealing the Virginia election, there could have been no faith in any future election. No reason to continue playing the game that Democrats are so busy fixing (often with Republican cooperation). Instead, a Republican victory makes for useful propaganda. It allows RINOs to argue that what America wants is less Trump and more traditional, middle-of-the-road politicians—the sort of people who play the Washington game and who sacrifice your freedom and spend your money so that they can remain in power. 

The Youngkin victory also becomes a weapon in the hands of both Democrats and corrupt Republicans who wish to undermine the 2020 fraud story. And it will encourage those with legitimate concerns about election integrity to think that the situation is under control, and that we can all relax again. Nothing could be further from the truth.  

Virginia was a case of the Democrats cheating, just not quite enough. New Jersey was a case of the Democrats cheating just enough. Every election, especially an off-year election, is a practice session for Democrats to fine-tune their vote-stealing strategy in preparation for the main event. It is a complex balance: Expectations have to be set correctly with the help of sympathetic pollsters. True results have to be projected in order to understand how many fraudulent votes will be required. (This is one of the main reasons election fraud relies on voting centers staying open late and counting operations being arbitrarily suspended—so that the required votes can be requested and delivered.) 

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Defending the Lies of The 1619 Project In the tradition of Howard Zinn, an historian condemns America. Mary Grabar

By on November 17th, 2021

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/11/coming-defense-nikole-hannah-jones-woody-holton-mary-grabar/

Nikole Hannah-Jones has a new defender of her 1619 Project, the hundred-page mishmash of essays, surreal “literary” contemplations on historical “moments,” and profiles, published as a special issue of the August 18, 2019, New York Times Magazine to “reframe” the American founding in 1619 as a “slavocracy”—pushed with prepackaged lessons to over 4,500 schools, as history—until lawmakers in some states started taking actions.   

He does not merely echo Hannah-Jones’s claims about white nationalism and January 6, as David Blight and Ron Chernow did on MSNBC. He is doing battle for the damsel who cries she is being attacked by “right-wingers,” white people who want to “censor” her truthful history because it makes their children “uncomfortable” as they are forced to read (falsehoods) about how their European ancestors kidnapped families from the interior of Africa and how Thomas Jefferson ran “forced-labor camps” for the enslaved whom he viewed as “subhuman,” the “one-fifth of the population within the 13 colonies struggl[ing] under a brutal system of slavery unlike anything that had existed in the world before.”

To Hannah-Jones, only a racist would object to their third-grader reading, about post-Civil War America, “In response to black demands for [their] rights, white Americans strung them from trees, beat them and dumped their bodies in muddy rivers, assassinated them in their front yards, firebombed them on buses, mauled them with dogs, peeled back their skin with fire hoses and murdered their children with explosives set off inside a church.”

This historian has been tweeting images of very old newspaper articles—from the eighteenth century—day by day. And he has vowed to do it till day 76. This is Woody Holton who is fighting Gordon Wood who had the temerity to, with four of his colleagues, write an open letter to the New York Times objecting to the statement by Hannah-Jones: “Conveniently left out of our founding mythology is the fact that one of the primary reasons the colonists decided to declare their independence from Britain was because they wanted to protect the institution of slavery.”

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

Racist CRT Lessons in Public School Classrooms How leftist race-baiters are violating public school children’s constitutional rights. Joseph Klein

By on November 17th, 2021

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/11/racist-crt-lessons-poison-public-school-classrooms-joseph-klein/

PEN America claims it is committed “to protect free expression in the United States and worldwide.” But PEN has taken a radical left turn in defending the teaching of critical race theory concepts even to elementary and secondary school students. PEN believes that bills introduced in at least 24 state legislatures against such racially divisive teaching are akin to censorship in violation of the teachers’ First Amendment rights. 

“These bills appear designed to chill academic and educational discussions and impose government dictates on teaching and learning. In short: They are educational gag orders,” PEN stated in its introduction to a report entitled “Educational Gag Orders: Legislative Restrictions on the Freedom to Read, Learn, and Teach.”

Far from legitimately defending free expression under the First Amendment, PEN is defending racially charged indoctrination of impressionable public school students as young as four or five years old. It is the students whose constitutional rights are being violated when they are pressured in class to internalize dogma that pits race against race and to even recite such racially charged rhetoric in front of other students.

K-12 teachers are perfectly free to advocate for critical race theory on social media and in whatever discussions they may have with other adults outside of the classroom. But the courts have not accorded educators the same freedom to force feed lesson plans based on critical race theory precepts upon elementary and secondary public school pupils.

These pupils are a captive audience. As one federal Court of Appeals decision put it, “Children who attend school because they must ought not be subject to teachers’ idiosyncratic perspectives.” The educators are not entitled under the Constitution “to present personal views to captive audiences against the instructions of elected officials.”

Under America’s federalist system, state elected officials have the authority to regulate public school education within their jurisdictions, including setting reasonable limits on public school curricula. State legislators can certainly use this authority to pass laws shielding children from being indoctrinated in public school classrooms, where they are captive audiences, with racial group identity ideology. Applicable statewide laws preempt left wing local school board decisions that are in direct conflict with those laws.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Culture Wars and the Degradation of Language Like truth, the integrity of words is another casualty of war. Bruce Thornton

By on November 17th, 2021

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/11/culture-wars-and-degradation-language-bruce-thornton/

From Thucydides to George Orwell, the degradation of language during war and political conflict has been recognized. As Thucydides wrote of the brutal and violent civil war in Corcyra, “Words had to change their ordinary meaning and to take that which was now given them.” Like truth, the integrity of language is also a first casualties in culture wars.

The culture war that has been waged for over half a century––and is now reaching a destructive absurdity in “wokism,” “cancel culture,” and blatant censorship and suppression of free speech––has made debased language one of its most important weapons. So insidious has been this process that even conservatives opposed to the progressive left’s illiberal and unconstitutional excesses legitimize these transformations of language by using that ideologically corrupted vocabulary.

Take, for example, using the word “gender” instead of “sex.” First introduced in the Fifties by sexologist and suspected pedophile John Money, this change in usage was popularized in the Sixties to reinforce the dubious idea that sex-identity is not binary by nature, but comprises multiple variations, just as linguistic gender is not restricted to masculine or feminine, but can classify nouns by other qualities such as “animate” or “inanimate.” Male and female, masculine and feminine thus are not facts of nature, but social, cultural, and political “constructs” that serve the interests of the prevailing regime of power.

In other words, using the word “gender” to mean “sex” insidiously reinforces the constructivist ideology underlying as well Marxist theory and its antihumanist economic and political determinism. It also gratifies modernity’s fatal hubristic conceit: that human reality can be manipulated, changed, and reinvented at will by “technicians of the soul,” as Stalin called the self-proclaimed improvers of human nature.

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ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Votes to count even if they are mailed in on napkins in Washington state (!!??)by Stephen Green

By on November 17th, 2021

https://pjmedia.com/vodkapundit/2021/11/16/insanity-wrap-voting-by-napkin-legal-in-seattle-n1533281

Things can get pretty complicated when a napkin is your primary means of data collection and storage.

But that won’t stop the wise people in charge of Washington State elections from accepting a napkin — yes, a napkin — as a legal ballot.

The Post Millennial reports that “Interesting voter protocols came to light during a recent election review training in Seattle.”

An individual getting trained asked the official a question which exposed questionable Washington state voting laws.

In regards to the example of the newspaper clipping under review, the individual asked the official with King County Elections:

“So, even if someone took a napkin and wrote the office, the race, and their selection, that would be enough?”

The official replied, “That would be enough and we would count that as a vote.”

Maybe it’s time to ask, “Is there anything under Washington State law that can’t be considered a legal ballot, and if not, why?”

Another question to ask is: “How bad are things for Democrats, really, when they have to enable this level of election fraud… in Seattle?”

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ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Which Will Be the ‘Party of the Parents’ in 2022? By Rick Moran

By on November 17th, 2021

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/rick-moran/2021/11/16/who-will-be-the-party-of-the-parents-in-2022-n1533288

It’s no secret that the gubernatorial elections in Virginia and New Jersey and electoral contests elsewhere came down to the “parent vote” — a bloc that Democrats felt they’ve controlled for decades. The Dems are the “party of education” after all, and the tens of thousands of politically active teachers never let us forget it.

But something happened on Nov. 2 that altered the ground rules and helped the Republicans dominate. And Democrats only have themselves to blame.

The party of lockdowns and school closings didn’t count on parents getting an eyeful of what public schools had been putting into the heads of their children during the pandemic. And parents of all races, all creeds were, in many cases, flabbergasted.

And now that schools are reopening — mostly — parents are being instructed to once again, sit on the sidelines and let the “experts” get back to propagandizing their children.

Not. Going. To. Happen.

Meanwhile, Democrats see the results of elections in Virginia and New Jersey as a fluke and that once parents come to their senses, they will reject the Republicans because of all the “free” goodies that Joe Biden is going to give them.

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FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Biden administration letting America’s nuclear superiority slip through our fingers By Francis P. Sempa

By on November 17th, 2021

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/11/biden_administration_letting_americas_nuclear_superiority_slip_through_our_fingers.html

The Pentagon’s annual report on China’s military included a section on the PLA’s nuclear buildup.  The report states that the People’s Liberation Army Rocket Force (PLARF) “is developing new intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) that will significantly improve its nuclear-capable missile forces.”  Nuclear warhead production has increased.  At least three new ICBM silo fields are being constructed, “which will cumulatively contain hundreds of new ICBM silos.”  The PLARF’s road-mobile DF-26 intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBMs) force is growing.

China plans to “modernize, diversify, and expand its nuclear forces,” including land, sea, and air-based platforms (the triad), according to the report.  The Pentagon estimates that by 2027, the PLARF will have at least 700 deliverable nuclear warheads and at least 1,000 deliverable nuclear warheads by 2030.  China’s ICBM force consists of CSS-10 Mod 2 missiles with a range of 11,200 kilometers, DF-41 missiles that can strike targets 12,000 kilometers away, and CSS-4 Mod 2 and Mod 3 missiles with a maximum range of 13,000 kilometers.  With these three missile types, China can deliver nuclear warheads to the entire continental United States, Alaska, and Hawaii.  Some of these missiles have MIRV capability, meaning they can deliver multiple warheads to multiple targets.

China’s nuclear weapons expansion has been characterized by the head of U.S. Strategic Command as “breathtaking,” a “strategic breakout” designed to give China a “coercive capability” to deter the U.S. from defending its allies against Chinese aggression.  Meanwhile, Russia is engaged in its own nuclear buildup, and it may eventually outnumber the U.S. in warheads by ten to one.  And China and Russia have gradually become strategic allies as both seek to undermine America’s role as the organizer of the liberal world order.

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BOOKS Comments turned off

Woke Racism: How a New Religion Has Betrayed Black America Hardcover –by John McWhorter

By on November 17th, 2021

https://www.amazon.com/Woke-Racism-Religion-Betrayed-America/dp/0593423062

New York Times bestselling author and acclaimed linguist John McWhorter argues that an illiberal neoracism, disguised as antiracism, is hurting Black communities and weakening the American social fabric.

Americans of good will on both the left and the right are secretly asking themselves the same question: how has the conversation on race in America gone so crazy? We’re told to read books and listen to music by people of color but that wearing certain clothes is “appropriation.” We hear that being white automatically gives you privilege and that being Black makes you a victim. We want to speak up but fear we’ll be seen as unwoke, or worse, labeled a racist. According to John McWhorter, the problem is that a well-meaning but pernicious form of antiracism has become, not a progressive ideology, but a religion—and one that’s illogical, unreachable, and unintentionally neoracist.
 
In Woke Racism, McWhorter reveals the workings of this new religion, from the original sin of “white privilege” and the weaponization of cancel culture to ban heretics, to the evangelical fervor of the “woke mob.” He shows how this religion that claims to “dismantle racist structures” is actually harming his fellow Black Americans by infantilizing Black people, setting Black students up for failure, and passing policies that disproportionately damage Black communities. The new religion might be called “antiracism,” but it features a racial essentialism that’s barely distinguishable from racist arguments of the past.
 
Fortunately for Black America, and for all of us, it’s not too late to push back against woke racism. McWhorter shares scripts and encouragement with those trying to deprogram friends and family. And most importantly, he offers a roadmap to justice that actually will help, not hurt, Black America.

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ELECTIONS Comments turned off

A Buffalo Saber to the Socialist Heart Leftists discover their ideas aren’t popular. James Freeman

By on November 17th, 2021

https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-buffalo-saber-to-the-socialist-heart-11637095885?mod=opinion_lead_pos11

A mayoral election in America’s 76th-largest city usually doesn’t exert much influence on national politics. “As Buffalo goes, so goes the country” is not something you hear every day from Larry Sabato or Norm Ornstein. But the recent repudiation of socialism by voters in a city that hasn’t elected a Republican mayor since the 1960s could have a far-ranging and beneficial impact.

In the immediate aftermath of this month’s crushing defeat for a radical Democratic nominee at the hands of a write-in candidate, many leftists decided to view the event as a political betrayal by moderate Democrats, or perhaps a dirty trick. A recent Journal editorial noted:

Witness the long knives coming out for Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown, who won an election against a left-wing favorite.
Mr. Brown won a fifth term after defeating Democratic socialist India Walton, who had beaten Mr. Brown in a June primary with promises to defund the Buffalo Police Department and put a moratorium on charter schools. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez campaigned for her.
The black mayor rallied labor unions, businesses and moderates with a write-in bid that won 59% of the vote. Progressives are now looking to take revenge. “The Democratic Plot to Stop a Socialist From Becoming Buffalo’s Mayor,” griped The New Republic. Larry Cohen, chair of the Sanders-aligned Our Revolution, says it’s “a disgrace” that Mr. Brown pulled the “stunt” of challenging a “working-class woman” primary victor. The left is organizing to banish Mr. Brown from the Democratic National Committee.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

FBI Whistleblower Claims DOJ Used Counterterrorism Tools against Parents in Response to School-Board Memo By Zachary Evans

By on November 17th, 2021

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/fbi-whistleblower-claims-doj-used-counterterrorism-tools-against-parents-in-response-to-school-board-memo/

Citing an internal email provided by an FBI whistleblower, Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee revealed Tuesday that the Bureau has created a system to track threats against school board officials and administrators, and accused Attorney General Merrick Garland of misleading lawmakers when he was asked about the subject during his previous testimony before the committee.

The FBI’s “Counterterrorism and Criminal Divisions created a threat tag, EDUOFFICIALS, to track instances of related threats,” according to the email. “The purpose of the threat tag is to help scope this threat on a national level and provide an opportunity for comprehensive analysis of the threat picture for effective engagement with law enforcement.”

The email was signed by Counterterrorism Division assistant director Timothy Langan, and former Criminal Division assistant director Calvin Shivers, who retired earlier this month.

In a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland, Representative Jim Jordan (R., Ohio), the ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, wrote that the whistleblower email “provides specific evidence” that federal law enforcement employed counterterrorism tools “against concerned parents.”

The FBI denied that it has targeted parents in a statement to the Wall Street Journal.

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