ELECTIONS, MEDIA Comments turned off

Twitter, Facebook Confess There Is No Evidence Of Russian Disinformation Behind Hunter Biden Story  By Jordan Davidson

Posted By on October 28th, 2020

https://thefederalist.com/2020/10/28/twitter-facebook-confess-there-is-no-evidence-of-russian-disinformation-behind-hunter-biden-story/

n Wednesday’s Senate hearing on Big Tech and Section 230, both Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg admitted that neither had any evidence that the New York Post’s reporting on Joe Biden’s knowledge of his son Hunter Biden’s foreign business deals is Russian disinformation.

“For both Mr. Zuckerberg and Dorsey who censored the New York Post stories or throttle them back, do you have any evidence that the New York Post story is part of Russian disinformation or that those emails are not authentic?” Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin asked. “Do you have any information whatsoever they are not authentic or they are Russian disinformation?

Dorsey and Zuckerberg both denied receiving any indication that the story was part of a Russian misinformation campaign.

Within days of the story’s censorship, Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe explicitly debunked the disinformation claims made by Rep. Adam Schiff, when he reported the intelligence community has no evidence that the bombshell story was a foreign attempt to spread misinformation and interfere in the U.S. election.

“Let me be clear,” he said on Fox News, “The intelligence community doesn’t believe that because there is no intelligence that supports that.”

“We have shared no intelligence with Chairman Schiff, or any other member of Congress that Hunter Biden’s laptop is part of some Russian disinformation campaign,” Ratcliffe clarified. “It’s simply not true.”

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Trump Is Doing Better In Michigan And Wisconsin Than Polls Suggest By Chris Bedford and John Daniel Davidson

Posted By on October 28th, 2020

https://thefederalist.com/2020/10/28/trump-is-doing-better-in-michigan-and-wisconsin-than-polls-suggest/

A week-long trip through these Midwest battleground states talking with ordinary people convinced us the polls aren’t telling the full story.

There’s something afoot in Michigan and Wisconsin. If you believe the polls, former Vice President Joe Biden is set to win both these states in November—battlegrounds President Donald Trump narrowly carried in 2016, and can ill afford to lose this time around.

Some pollsters say Biden is ahead by as much as 17 points in Wisconsin and a dozen points in Michigan, suggesting the Democrats have rebuilt their so-called “blue wall” in the industrial Midwest. If that’s true, the president’s path to reelection is in jeopardy. But then, the same pollsters also put Hillary Clinton comfortably ahead in both states just four years ago.

We just spent a week driving through Michigan and Wisconsin, talking with farmers, bartenders, politicians, priests, and ordinary voters, from suburban Detroit to western Wisconsin, and what we saw and heard left us with a very different impression: Trump’s support here is not reflected in the polls, and he might well win both states.

Just north of Detroit in Macomb County, which twice voted for Barack Obama but flipped for Trump four years ago, there were few signs of a robust Democratic ground game. We talked to one bar owner, a Democrat who volunteered for Obama’s reelection, who told us he’s worried Trump might win here again—not just because Trump supporters are so motivated, but because the neighbors and customers who tell him they’re not voting for Trump don’t seem excited about Biden.

ELECTIONS, IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

There Really Has Been a ‘Trump Effect’ on Immigration By Steven A. Camarota

Posted By on October 28th, 2020

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/10/there-really-has-been-a-trump-effect-on-immigration/#slide-1

And some American workers seem to have benefited.

Recently released Census Bureau data from the 2019 American Community Survey (ACS) show that in the first two years of the Trump administration, growth in the immigrant population (legal and illegal) averaged only about 200,000 a year, which stands in stark contrast with the roughly 650,000 a year from 2010 to 2017. The bureau refers to immigrants as “foreign-born,” which includes anyone who was not a U.S. citizen at birth — naturalized citizens, green card holders, long-term temporary visitors, and illegal aliens. It seems almost certain that the slowdown in growth was the result of Trump-administration policies.

One can debate whether this falloff in growth is a positive or negative development, but it is clear that the often-made argument that immigration is like a force of nature, largely driven by economics and outside the control of governmental policy, is false. Although the lower courts have fought the president at every turn, the federal bureaucracy has been resistive, many states have actively subverted the rule of law, and Congress has offered no help, changes adopted by the administration did reduce immigration — both legal and illegal.

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Hunter Biden on Tape? Recording purports to capture candidate’s son rambling about big Chinese business, disappearing partner, and a criminal trial. By Andrew C. McCarthy

Posted By on October 28th, 2020

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/10/hunter-biden-on-tape/

I n a newly released recording, a man purported to be Hunter Biden is heard rambling about (a) his legal representation of Patrick Ho, a convicted former Hong Kong official he refers to as “the f***ing spy chief of China”; (b) his business dealings with Ye Jianming, the corrupt Chinese high roller, whom Hunter describes as “my partner, who is worth $323 billion … and is now missing”; and (c) his complaints about his “best friend in business, Devon” — presumably, Devon Archer, the now-convicted fraudster who was Hunter’s business partner — who had “named me as a witness without telling me in a criminal case and my father without telling me.”

Quite the crowd the Bidens run with.

While no date has been given for this recording, I theorize that — assuming it is authentic — it happened in approximately May 2018, for reasons I’ll get to.

The recording is the latest installment of information presumably from Biden’s laptops, which is being rolled out by Raheem Kassam, using his new project, The National Pulse. Kassam is a British commentator and former UKIP party adviser who is close to Steve Bannon — Kassam ran Breitbart-London when Bannon was Breitbart’s executive director.

Bannon is currently facing federal fraud charges. He is, of course, a former White House adviser who had a falling out with President Trump but has retained ties with him. Bannon was one of the prominent Trump outside advisers (Rudy Giuliani being the other) whom the New York Post identified as having alerted the paper to the existence of the Hunter Biden materials. Kassam appears regularly on Bannon’s War Room broadcasts — and, indeed, they appeared together Tuesday and played what they represented to be the Hunter Biden recording.

CHARLOTTE'S NEWS WEB, ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Biden is Running a Protection Racket Sidney Powell

Posted By on October 28th, 2020

www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/10/biden_is_running_a_protection_racket.html?

Joe Biden’s big pitch is his promise to restore calm.  It’s a con.  It’s Antifa and Black Lives Matter — both on his side — that are stirring everything up.  He’s trying to run a protection racket: vote Democrat, or the chaos continues.

Biden talks of calm, but it is not Trump-supporters storming restaurants and other public places across the country to demand obeisance to their agenda.  Instead, from Washington to Kentucky to Florida, it is the “Black Lives Matter” movement — which Biden has made a centerpiece of his campaign — that has smashed up restaurants, threatened their owners, and demanded that diners raise the black power fist.  As one headline put it, “aggressive mob of white BLM protesters threaten and film white diners at DC restaurants and DEMAND they raise their fist and show solidarity with them…or else.” 

Biden speaks of tolerance, but it isn’t MAGA people marching into our schools, newsrooms, and even corporate boardrooms to demand absolute allegiance; it’s Biden-supporting leftists.  As President Trump warned in his Independence Day address at Mt. Rushmore, if you do not “perform its rituals, recite its mantras, and follow its commandments, then you will be censored, banished, blacklisted, persecuted, and punished.” 

Biden professes not to treat the other party as the enemy, but he demonizes his opponents whenever he opens his mouth.  Just this week, he called Trump-supporters “chumps.”  And his supporters call themselves “the resistance” — a term ordinarily used to describe armed insurgency against an occupying military power.

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Morning in America or mourning in America? Charles Lipson

Posted By on October 28th, 2020

https://spectator.us/morning-america-mourning-biden-trump-campaign-messaging/?

In the countdown to Election Day, the two campaigns are taking starkly different approaches.

Joe Biden is sitting on a lead in the polls, trying to run out the clock, while Donald Trump is making a frenzied dash for the finish line, selling optimism.

Both strategies make sense.

Like a football team leading in the final quarter, Biden’s goal is simply to keep the clock ticking down to zero. Nothing fancy. Just avoid mistakes and prevent the other team from getting the ball back.

To avoid those mistakes, Biden is rarely leaving his basement. When he does, his goal is less to rouse voters than to prove he’s still alive and capable of traveling across state lines. He speaks to small crowds and says whatever’s on the teleprompter. He avoids impromptu comments, where he repeatedly makes unforced errors, and refuses to hold press conferences, where he might face hard questions.

Avoiding press conferences has been easy. The COVID crisis has been a perfect excuse for Biden and Kamala Harris, his vice presidential candidate. Harris has not given a press conference since she was named several months ago. Joe has given very few and almost none recently. The supine media hasn’t pressed them.

Reporters aren’t demanding answers or making the candidates pay a price for the silent treatment. The reason is painfully obvious. It’s not just that most reporters and media operations consider the Democrats ‘our ticket’. That’s been true for decades. What’s different now is that they consider this particular Republican a danger to the Republic.

Protecting the country from another four years of Trump in the White House is a more important, more patriotic duty for journalists than their normal job of asking hard questions, demanding evidence and investigating big stories. That’s why, when reporters do get a rare opportunity to ask Joe Biden a question, they toss him softballs. That’s why, when CBS finally asked Harris a crucial question about how progressive she really is, they allowed her to wave it off. She laughed uproariously and, in a non-sequitur, started talking about her family heritage. For CBS, that was good enough. No follow up. They let stand her answer as a laugh.

CHARLOTTE'S NEWS WEB, ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Media Form a Praetorian Guard Around Biden by Don Feder

Posted By on October 28th, 2020

In ancient Rome, the Praetorian Guard was an elite unit of the Imperial Army that guarded the emperor. That’s the function the media serve for Democratic candidates. Never more so than in defending The Gaffer and assailing The President.

A study by the Media Research Center of ABC, NBC and CBS (July 29 through Oct. 20) shows that while coverage of Trump was 92% negative, coverage of Biden was 66% positive. Their adamant refusal to discuss Hunter’s laptop and Joe’s play-for-pay is only the latest example.

The new media – like Facebook and Twitter – are the Praetorian Guard’s high-tech auxiliary.

The media have also suppressed news of the insurrection in our streets, assaults on free speech wherever the left holds sway, Christian persecution in Islam, and the new anti-Semitism – here and abroad. If Kamala was writing the headlines, and Bernie was an anchor, it couldn’t get much worse.

I worked in a big city newsroom for 19 years. My memory goes back to the 1964 Republican Convention, when Goldwater delegates shook their fists at the press box.

It just keeps getting worse. Someday, somewhere, there has to be a reckoning.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Holocaust Denying Principal Does not Belong in Our Schools

Posted By on October 28th, 2020

https://www.peaceandtolerance.org/

On Monday, November 2, the Palm Beach County Public School Board will be holding a hearing on whether to terminate or re-hire William Latson, the former principal of Spanish River High School, who was fired after being caught saying that the Holocaust was not actually a crime. This will be our last chance to make sure that a man with such anti-historical, anti-Semitic delusions is kept out of a position of educational authority over developing minds — and does not receive a cent more of taxpayers’ money.

We call upon all concerned Palm Beach residents to attend the meeting in person, and tell the committee why terminating this man’s contract and not re-hiring him.

If you can come, please register as a speaker at the hearing by emailing Lauren Gross of the Gross Family Center for the Study of Anti-Semitism and the Holocaust at LAGpalmbeach@gmail.com.

If you do not live in Palm Beach, you can call the board’s office and leave a polite voice message at (561) 434-8000; please also email these a

ISRAEL Comments turned off

The Future of Arab Normalization with Israel by Alan M. Dershowitz

Posted By on October 28th, 2020

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16699/arab-normalization-with-israel

Israel is a stabilizing influence in an unstable region of the world. It is a democracy, a military and technological innovator, an economically advanced country. It can assist its new allies in each of these areas, as it has already begun to do even in the short time since normalization began.

This may be their last opportunity to achieve a reasonable two state solution. Israel’s Arab neighbors have demonstrated that the Palestinian cause is not as high on their agenda as it appeared to be in the past. These nations understand that the situation the Palestinians now find themselves in have been the result of self-inflicted wounds — most importantly an unwillingness to take yes for an answer when the Israelis have offered them statehood.

Even now, the Palestinian leadership refuses to sit down and negotiate with Israel. They must understand that they will not get a state as the result of the boycott movement, protests on university campuses or meaningless resolutions of the United Nations. Recent developments make it clear that statehood for the Palestinians will come only through negotiations with Israel.

Now that the Sudan has joined the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain in normalizing relations with Israel, the future seems bright for even more Arab countries to make peace with their former enemy. The big prize, of course, would be Saudi Arabia, and already we are hearing rumors from its leaders pointing in that direction. Even Lebanon, which currently houses Hezbollah, has dropped hints about possible peace overtures.

The possibility does exist that before long, most of the Sunni Arab states will recognize that their interests lie in a peace process with Israel. They will see the economic, technological, diplomatic and military advantages in having Israel as an ally instead of an enemy.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

See No Evil: Europe Supports Genocidal Regime in Iran by Benjamin Weinthal

Posted By on October 28th, 2020

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16697/europe-iran-regime

Swiss and German economic deals might be aiding Iran’s illicit nuclear weapons program…. The Swiss firm Ceresola TLS reached an agreement [in 2010] with the Rahab Engineering Establishment in Iran to deliver tunneling technology as part of a subway project. This is precisely the type of heavy earth-moving equipment Iran’s rulers need to burrow away nuclear facilities underground, as the regime did with the Qom and Natanz nuclear enrichment plants.

The German company Krempel delivered to two Iranian companies insulating pressboards that were incorporated into Iranian missiles armed with chemical warheads, which were used by the Syrian regime in a chlorine gas attack in January 2018. The attack resulted in 21 injuries, including six children.

The Association of Iranian Banks in Europe wrote in July: “45 percent of the EU exports to Iran came from Germany, which delivered goods worth 555 million Euro, with an increase of 31 percent compared to last year.”

Europe’s most powerful economic engine, Germany, and the rest of the EU have sadly opted to align themselves with the Islamic Republic of Iran on the pressing issues of Iran’s nuclear program, and its stomach-turning human rights record.

To better understand Europe’s current policy toward the Islamic Republic of Iran, it is worth citing an episode recounted in a 2006 essay by Iran expert Amir Taheri.

In 1984, Hans-Dietrich Genscher, then foreign minister of the Federal Republic of Germany and an ex-member of the Nazi party, traveled to Iran in an attempt to moderate the malign conduct of the then five-year-old revolutionary regime of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

Genscher declared his intention to engage in “critical dialogue” with the regime, but the notion sparked the joke that “critical dialogue” was really “an exercise in joint criticism, by the mullahs and the Europeans, of the Americans,” Taheri wrote. The German foreign minister announced at the time that his dialogue with Iran’s rulers was a success in “intensifying” political relations between then West Germany and the Islamic Republic.