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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION

50 STATES AND DC, CONGRESS AND THE PRESIDENT

November-like chill places 100 million people under frost and freeze alerts KATHRYN PROCIV

https://www.aol.com/news/november-chill-places-100-million-142415893.html

More than 100 million people woke up Wednesday under frost advisories, freeze watches and warnings on what was expected to be the coldest morning of the week for the South and the coldest temperatures for most since the spring.

Due to the cold air mass plunging south before expanding east, southern cities actually woke up colder than northern cities. Dallas was colder than Boston, and Atlanta was colder than Cleveland.

For the first time on record, Birmingham, Alabama, hit 32 degrees before Billings, Montana, beating that notoriously cold city to the first official freeze of the season.

New York City’s Central Park dipped to 42 degrees, the coldest temperature since April 29, and Charlotte’s 30-degree reading set its fifth earliest freeze on record.

Most of the cold alerts expire by midmorning Wednesday, but some will linger through Thursday morning, especially across the Ohio Valley, the Gulf Coast and the Southeast coast.

D.C. Set to Allow Illegal Immigrants to Vote in Local Elections By Ari Blaff

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/d-c-set-to-allow-illegal-immigrants-to-vote-in-local-elections/?utm_source=

The D.C. Council, the legislative body representing Washington, D.C., sent a set of bills to Mayor Muriel Bowser’s desk on Tuesday, one of which will allow illegal immigrants to vote in local elections.

The bill allowing illegal immigrants to vote passed on a near-unanimous 12-1 vote following its first reading earlier this week, after languishing in the city council for a decade. It expands previous legislation which allowed green-card holders to vote.

Councilman Charles Allen, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, said he sponsored the bill because the issue of representation is “personal” to D.C. residents.

“In the District [of Columbia], we understand disenfranchisement,” Allen said during the committee vote.

“We know what it feels like to be taxed without representation. That people we didn’t elect make decisions that deeply affect our lives,” he said.

Local activist groups such as DC Latino Caucus as well as D.C. for Democracy were active in pushing for the issue. “Passage of this bill means that, for the first time in our lives, I and thousands of D.C. residents—immigrants who live, work, and pay taxes in the District—will be able to vote,” a local organizer and member of the Democratic Socialists of America, Abel Amene, said.

The only dissenting opinion upon first reading was councilwoman Mary Cheh, who understood it was an uphill battle. “Futility is not my goal here,” Cheh told the DCist. “Could someone who was put on a bus from Texas and dropped off at the vice president’s property … then vote in our local elections?” Cheh reportedly asked.

“Cheh’s ‘questions’ are rooted in age-old xenophobia and racism,” Amene wrote to the Washington Post following the vote. “Immigrants are not ‘complete strangers.’ They are our neighbors, family and friends.”

Maryland has been one of the states leading the charge to expand the vote to illegal migrants. If the bill is ratified, Washington D.C. will join neighboring Hyattsville and Takoma Park in having laws in place that will allow non-citizens to vote in local elections. New York City passed similar legislation to allow illegal immigrants to vote last year but it was struck down as unconstitutional by a state Supreme Court judge in June.

Texas Republican representative August Pfluger denounced the development. “If you’re in the United States illegally, you don’t have the right to vote—period. Liberals in Washington, D.C. who want to allow noncitizens to vote are putting the integrity of our election system at risk. My bill will put a stop to it. Americans deserve confidence in our elections and to know that only legal citizens are voting in the United States of America.” Pfluger introduced a bill last week to block the motion.

There are believed to be over 50,000 illegals in the District of Columbia. The bill was passed alongside another initiative that would make mail-in voting a permanent feature of elections.

As Michigan Dems Plot To Take Over Elections And Trans The Kids, Grassroots Activists ‘Stand Up’ To Fight By: Shawn Fleetwood

https://thefederalist.com/2022/10/19/as-michigan-dems-plot-to-take-over-elections-and-trans-the-kids-grassroots-activists-stand-up-to-fight/

‘If we don’t protect our children and our Constitution, then we have utterly failed,’ said Stand Up Michigan President Ron Armstrong.

With Election Day rapidly approaching, the fight for the soul of one of the country’s most contested battleground states is just starting to heat up. In Michigan, where Democrat Gov. Gretchen Whitmer is facing a tough general election challenge from Republican gubernatorial candidate Tudor Dixon, residents will be voting on two leftist-backed ballot amendments that carry serious ramifications — and one grassroots group is standing up to make sure they don’t pass.

The amendments seek to overhaul the state’s election systems and codify unlimited access to abortion into Michigan’s constitution, with the latter amendment covertly including a right for transgender-identifying minors to undergo sterilization without parental consent.

Known as “Proposal 2,” the first of the two initiatives would essentially legalize Democrats’ election-takeover policies throughout the state. If passed, the amendment would allow for “state-funded ‘absentee ballot drop boxes’ and ‘postage for applications and ballots,’” as well as allowances for private “donations to fund elections,” such as the “Zuckbucks” that were used to alter operations in state and local government election offices during the 2020 contest. Moreover, Proposal 2 would also “provide voters with a ‘right’ to fill out a single absentee ballot application ‘to vote absentee in all [future] elections,’” which would “keep mass mail-in balloting, the least secure form of elections, in place after such measures caused a chaotic 2020 election.”

It’s been two years since 51 intelligence agents interfered with an election — they still won’t apologize By Miranda Devine ******

https://nypost.com/author/miranda-devine/

Exactly two years ago, on October 19, 2020, one of the dirtiest tricks in electoral history was played on the American people by 51 former intelligence officials, who used the false alarm of “Russian interference” to stop Donald Trump winning a second term as president.

Using the institutional weight of their former esteemed roles, they signed a dishonest letter to mislead voters 15 days before the election, claiming that material from Hunter Biden’s laptop published by The New York Post “has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.”

In their expert opinion “the Russians are involved in the Hunter Biden email issue.”

Russia was “trying to influence how Americans vote in this election . . . Moscow [will] pull out the stops to do anything possible to help Trump win and/or to weaken Biden should he win.

“A ‘laptop op’ fits the bill, as the publication of the emails are [sic] clearly designed to discredit Biden . . . It is high time that Russia stops interfering in our democracy.”

It was all a lie. Their letter was the culprit “interfering with democracy” in broad daylight.

Not one of the 51 had seen any material from the laptop or bothered asking for it, but their letter, instigated by, signed and delivered to Politico by Democratic operative and former John Brennan aide Nick Shapiro, killed the story stone dead. It got candidate Joe Biden off the hook for the corrupt influence peddling scheme his family had been running through the eight years of his vice presidency.

The shameful letter was used by Joe Biden three days later, on October 22, to deflect Trump’s attack in their last debate.

Images and files revealing personal information were discovered on Hunter Biden’s laptop.

“There are 50 former national intelligence folks who said that what he’s accusing me of is a Russian plan . . . Four, five former heads of the CIA, both parties, say what he’s saying is a bunch of garbage . . . You know his character. You know my character. You know my reputation is for honor and telling the truth . . . The character of the country is on the ballot.”

Biden dismissed as a Kremlin smear all the evidence that was on his son’s laptop of dirty money from China and Russia, of all his meetings with Hunter’s overseas business partners, and all the lies he had told about his involvement in Hunter’s business deals.

Myth and ‘Following the Science’ The real nature of the apocalypse we’re facing. by Bruce Thornton

https://www.frontpagemag.com/myth-and-following-the-science/

Increasingly over the last few centuries, science has become the dominant narrative of the West. The spectacular success of natural science in understanding, controlling, and transforming the material world has given science an authority that transcends the old certainties of faith, custom, and tradition. These authorities are now seen as retrograde, illiberal, and dangerous, the realm of superstition and myths that impede the ultimate triumph of progress and the utopia our cognitive elite “brights” who “follow the science” will create once the forces of reaction and unreason are corrected or eliminated.

Yet human nature––“the crooked timber,” as Kant put it, from which “nothing straight can be made”––continues to thwart this optimistic orthodoxy, partly because of our own hubris. We arrogantly claim more knowledge and wisdom and certainty than we actually have, even when talking about the natural world, let alone the unpredictable springs and consequences of our frequently irrational choices and actions.  Hence the beliefs and ideals that we think are the fruit of science and reason, often end up to be the detritus of old myths we dress up in the formulas and rhetoric of science.

In a time like the present––with a brutally destructive, potentially nuclear war in Ukraine, a looming global economic disaster, and especially an energy crisis created by our own irrational or venal polices that confuse science and myth––such policies are increasingly suicidal.

The threats to energy supplies, and the punitive costs of the fossil-fuel products that comprise 80% of all the energy we use, are a lesson in the dangers of claiming the unearned certainty of our science, and substituting gratify myths for established facts. Indeed, our current energy difficulties are the direct consequence of the progressives’ feckless “green” energy cult of zero-carbon emissions, and its misguided attempts to replace cheap, abundant fossil fuels with unreliable, expensive “renewable” solar and wind power.

Pelosi’s ‘Winning’ Message To Voters: Quit Griping About Inflation

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/10/20/pelosis-winning-message-to-voters-quit-griping-about-inflation/

To all those suffering from skyrocketing prices, struggling to make ends meet, going to food kitchens to feed their families, breaking the bank just to fill up their tanks, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has a message for you.

Quit your griping and vote Democratic.

That is the “new and improved” messaging that Pelosi thinks will win over voters in November.

And no, we are not kidding. In an interview with Punchbowl News published on Wednesday, here’s what she said:

Inflation’s an issue, but it’s global. It’s global. … What’s [the Republicans’] plan? They ain’t got nothing. When you bring down unemployment, inflation goes up. … So, in any case, [President Joe Biden] brought unemployment [down], cut it in half. Inflation is there but it’s global and not as bad as it is in some countries. We’ll have to message it better in the next three weeks ahead. I think we’re in great shape. Other people don’t want to believe that.

Let’s break that down.

“It’s global.” Not exactly.

The U.S. inflation rate is worse than 13 of the G20 nations. Canada’s has been steadily declining since June. And several European countries are suffering higher prices thanks to their decision to impose the idiotic “clean energy” mandates Biden wants to import. Energy costs in Germany, for example, were up 44% in September.

In any case, telling people “everybody’s suffering, so don’t feel so bad,” is not what we’d call a winning message.

Who Denies Election Results? There is nothing “unprecedented” about challenging election results. And for Democrats, there’s nothing unprecedented in trying to manipulate them. By Victor Davis Hanson

https://amgreatness.com/2022/10/19/who-denies-election-results/

A Democratic myth has arisen that Donald Trump’s denial of the accuracy of the 2020 vote was “unprecedented.”

Unfortunately, the history of U.S. elections is often a story of both legitimate and illegitimate election denialism. 

The 1800, 1824, 1876, and 1960 elections were all understandably questioned. In some of these cases, a partisan House of Representatives decided the winner.  

Presidential candidate Al Gore in 2000 did not accept the popular vote results in Florida. He spent five weeks futilely contesting the state’s tally—until recounts and the Supreme Court certified it. 

The ensuing charge that George W. Bush was “selected not elected” was the Democrats’ denialist mantra for years.

In 2004, Senator Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and 31 Democratic House members voted not to certify the Ohio election results in their unhinged efforts to overturn the election. Those denialists included the current sanctimonious chairman of the January 6 select committee, U.S. Representative Benny Thompson (D-Miss). 

After 2016, crackpot Democratic orthodoxy for years insisted that Donald Trump had “colluded” with Russia to “steal” certain victory from Hillary Clinton. 

Clinton herself claimed that Trump was not a “legitimate” president. No wonder she loudly joined #TheResistance to obstruct his presidency. 

The serial denialist Clinton later urged Joe Biden not to concede the 2020 election if he lost.  

Also after 2016, left-wing third-party candidate and denialist Jill Stein vainly sued in courts to disqualify voting machine results in preselected states. 

A denialist host of Hollywood C-list actors in 2016 cut television commercials begging members of the Electoral College to violate their oaths and instead flip the election to Hillary Clinton. 

Clinton herself had hired foreign national Christopher Steele to concoct a dossier of untruths to smear her 2016 campaign opponent, Donald Trump. 

The FBI took up Clinton’s failed efforts. It likewise paid in vain her ancillaries like Christopher Steele to “verify” the dossier’s lies. 

The bureau further misled a FISA court about the dossier’s authenticity. An FBI lawyer even altered a document, as part of a government effort to disrupt a presidential transition and presidency. 

Democrats take ‘fake news’ to new lows By Jack Hellner

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/10/democrats_take_fake_news_to_new_lows.html

Democrats are expanding their misinformation campaign, devising new avenues to promote a false narrative. In a stunning revelation, The Washington Examiner reported that over the course of the last year, Democrats have launched fake “local media outlets” to swing elections in favor of their candidates. According to the article:

Democrats have launched a number of feigned local news outlets in key swing states as a way to push party-aligned content ahead of the midterm elections, according to reports.

At least 51 apparent local news outlets have cropped up in the last year across 10 battleground states under names such as the Milwaukee Metro times or the Mecklenburg Herald, according to Axios. The sites operate by aggregating stories about sports and other local news while mixing in heavily slanted political content propping up Democratic candidates.

They’ve stooped to literal fake news outlets to promote themselves, which some might consider election interference, all while they lecture the public about the threat of Republicans and continue with the January 6 theatrical performance.

WaPo — which seeks to elect Democrats and push the leftist agenda everyday — complains about newspapers who push a partisan agenda. They hilariously act like they are unbiased. Yet, the WaPo and the NYT both won Pulitzers for peddling lies about Russia collusion for years.

How many times does the media have to see the absolute corruption and partisanship of the FBI as they target Trump and other Republicans with fictional crimes, while protecting criminals like Hillary and Biden, before they tell the public the truth instead of pretending that they are apolitical and that no one is above the law?

We recently learned the FBI offered Christopher Steele $1 million to take a fictional dossier and “prove it” true. Even though the FBI knew it was a manufactured document paid for by Hillary and the DNC, they used it to lie to the FISA court as a pretense to spy and entrap. Why aren’t the FBI criminals, like Comey, in jail for committing a massive fraud on the American people? How much money?

How many instances of massive corruption does the media, FBI, and other Democrats need to see to care?

The media has known about the Biden family corruption long before they campaigned for him. Back as 2012, it appears the Biden family was actually colluding with Russian oligarchs:

A real estate company with ties to first son Hunter Biden received more than $100 million from a Russian billionaire for property investments across the US that date back a decade, sources have told The Post.

From Russia to the FBI, with Love How the FBI agent who spied for Russia set the stage for the FBI’s betrayal of the American people. by Lloyd Billingsley

https://www.frontpagemag.com/from-russia-to-the-fbi-with-love/

Igor Danchenko, the primary source for the infamous dossier deployed against Donald Trump in 2016, was acquitted Tuesday of lying to the FBI. If the verdict seems surprising, consider the back story. Danchenko, a Russian national, was once on the FBI payroll.

As Julie Kelly explains, that made the Russian part of the bureau’s untouchable “sources and methods,” protecting him and any documents referencing him from congressional and other outside scrutiny. That invites a look at another man on the bureau’s payroll, the FBI agent who spied for Russia and escaped scrutiny for 15 years.

According to the FBI, Robert Phillip Hanssen was “the most damaging spy in Bureau history,” arrested on February 18, 2001, and charged with espionage on behalf of Russia and the former Soviet Union. The FBI man, who swore an oath to enforce the law and protect the nation as an FBI agent, “provided highly classified national security information to the Russians in exchange for more than $1.4 million in cash, bank funds, and diamonds.”

Hanssen held “key counterintelligence positions” and beginning in 1985, he used encrypted communications, ‘dead drops,’ and other clandestine methods to provide information to the KGB and its successor agency, the SVR. The information he delivered compromised numerous human sources, counterintelligence techniques, investigations, dozens of classified U.S. government documents, and technical operations of extraordinary importance and value.”

What the Firing of Prof. Maitland Jones Says about Our Democracy Too many people have been let into the future. by Jason D. Hill

https://www.frontpagemag.com/what-the-firing-of-prof-maitland-jones-says-about-our-democracy/

The swift firing of the renowned chemist Maitland Jones by New York University is still being discussed in the academic world and even among the commentariat that generally would have moved on to the next topic the day after the event had occurred.

Perhaps there is something perturbing about an 85-year-old esteemed professor who had had a distinguished career at Princeton before joining NYU being fired under such nefarious circumstances. After 82 of his 350 students signed a petition complaining that his organic chemistry course was too difficult, and that they did not like the way he ran his course, he was discharged. They further claimed that he lacked empathy; empathy towards those students who had family problems and mental health issues. But basically, his workload was regarded as too demanding against the backdrop of myriad courses students had to take aside from chemistry.

That less than a quarter of his students (23.4%, actually), could marshal enough power to have him discharged from a career spanning over five decades is frightening and disgraceful. Not one of the students came forward and publicly identified him- or herself. They signed a petition anonymously—these cowardly perverse members of the Olympics Oppression team who fail to realize that college is designed to provide one with skill sets and information in particular fields and then to certify that the individual has mastered them. Universities and colleges, too, are not just educative institutions. They are ones that, in the ideal sense, weed out those who are unfit to be in them; that is, those who fail to qualify to meet the standards required to be certified as mastering the skills and knowledge in a field, whether it be in chemistry, medicine, history, nursing, the law, or philosophy. We are, though, wedded to the egalitarian progressive idea that everyone who enrolls in a university has a constitutional and democratic right to graduate. Hell hath no fury like a parent whose child, after repeatedly failing all his courses, is given an honorable and noble piece of advice: The academic life is not meant for you. You’re smart, and your smarts lie in a trade school. You’d actually make a superb plumber, or carpenter.

But back to Professor Jones. How did we arrive at a point in our society where 82 village idiots had the temerity to make such preposterous demands, and were granted the institutional power to have their intellectual superior fired from his professorship?