ELECTIONS Comments turned off

If We’re Doing a Mask Mandate, Do It Right! Because “science.” By Julie Kelly

Posted By on October 27th, 2020

https://amgreatness.com/2020/10/26/if-were-doing-a-mask-mandate-do-it-right/

As predicted, this week is filled with fear and recriminations about COVID-19 as Election Day nears. The Biden campaign—cognizant of the fact that the Left has turned the president’s handling of coronavirus into his biggest political weakness—along with the unhinged news media, is exploiting every case and death in a ghoulish attempt to defeat Donald Trump on November 3.

The alleged “party of science” is condemning the president for failing to “control” the novel coronavirus, which is the most unsciency thing ever because it’s impossible to control a virus without the widespread use of immunizations over a long period of time and even that isn’t a guarantee. Only a few deadly viruses in history, perhaps unbeknownst to the Democratic Party’s credentialed class, have been completely eradicated.

The annual flu vaccine can combat just a handful of influenza strains. The Centers for Disease Control admits that “Flu viruses are constantly changing so it’s not unusual for new flu viruses to appear each year.” Despite Herculean efforts to “control” influenza, a vaccine is only about 40 to 60 percent effective. Millions of Americans still contract the illness and tens of thousands, including children, die each year. This year’s vaccine targets a form of the Hong Kong flu first identified in 1968, the year I was born.

But somehow, Donald Trump was supposed to contain, control, or completely stop a novel (that means new) coronavirus within a matter of months. Joe Biden warns that if he’s elected, he will initiate all sorts of virus-killing measures, most of which already have been implemented by the Trump Administration. “I’m going to shut down the virus not the country,” Biden, who it must be noted is not an epidemiologist, promised at last week’s debate.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

English Departments in the Ideological Thrall of Identity Politics When the curricula become all about “social justice.”Richard L. Cravatts

Posted By on October 27th, 2020

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/10/english-departments-ideological-thrall-identity-richard-l-cravatts/

In July, the English Department of the University of Chicago posted an odd statement on its website. In response to the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and the supposed “thousands of others named and unnamed who have been subject to police violence,” the department announced that, “For the 2020-2021 graduate admissions cycle, the University of Chicago English Department is accepting only applicants interested in working in and with Black Studies.” What is the motivation for the targeting of that particular area of study now? The statement, in the tortured language academia is so adept at generating, explains that English as a discipline “has a long history of providing aesthetic rationalizations for colonization, exploitation, extraction and anti-Blackness,” and is “responsible for developing hierarchies of cultural production that have contributed directly to social and systemic determinations of whose lives matter and why.”

Apparently, the Chicago faculty believe that it is part of the mission of the English Department to mobilize its intellectual resources to address social problems and that the work of “undoing persistent, recalcitrant anti-Blackness in our discipline and in our institutions must be the collective responsibility of all faculty, here and elsewhere,” as the statement pretentiously proclaims.

While some observers lauded the department’s decision to focus graduate study on Black Studies, critics, including University of Chicago’s own president, Robert Zimmer, were quick to question a department committing itself to a political movement and activism supporting it. “[S]ome members of the University community have expressed concern that the exclusive disciplinary commitment effectively represents a political test for admission,” Zimmer wrote, in responding to the controversy, and “[t]he idea or even implication that there would be a political criterion applied to admission to our doctoral program would be incompatible with the fundamental principles of our University.”

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Rep. Omar: Biden Will Turn Left After Election Daniel Greenfield

Posted By on October 27th, 2020

https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/2020/10/rep-omar-biden-will-turn-left-after-election-daniel-greenfield/

Nice of her to point this out to anyone deluded enough to think otherwise.

Rep. Ilhan Omar told “Axios on HBO” that given the way progressives have shaped Joe Biden’s policy platform, she and other members of “The Squad” expect a liberal turn from him if he’s elected.

Illiberal is the correct term.

“I know that when the policy platform was being put into place, a lot of our feedback was incorporated throughout his platform,” Omar said.

“We will have a cohort of progressives that are very clear about their objectives for wanting the implementation of Medicare for All and a Green New Deal and raising the minimum wage and not allowing for fracking,” Omar said.

“There has been a level of responsiveness … to the policies that we are advocating for that we know will have not just a future in his administration, but a future in the upcoming administrations after his,” she added.

So expect that ban on private health insurance and on any energy that doesn’t come from expensive Chinese solar panels. Along with millions of lost jobs.

And if Biden succeeds, then the socialist caucus will be influencing future Democrat administrations too.

MEDIA Comments turned off

The Dirty Deals of NPR Decades of gross bias and disinformation. Joseph Klein

Posted By on October 27th, 2020

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/10/its-time-defund-npr-joseph-klein/

National Public Radio (NPR) does not serve the American taxpayers who are paying its bills. Most recently, NPR did its part to shield Joe Biden from the fallout of the Biden family pay-for-access corruption scheme. That’s nothing new. NPR has long served as the leftwing progressive Democrat Party’s propaganda arm. Back in 2016, for example, NPR shilled for the disastrous nuclear deal pushed by the Obama administration, after receiving funding from a pro-nuclear deal advocacy group. It is long past time to end the gravy train and defund NPR.

On October 22nd, NPR’s public editor rationalized NPR’s decision to suppress coverage of the New York Post’s expose of the Hunter Biden e-mails implicating Joe Biden himself in his son’s business dealings. NPR’s managing editor Terence Samuel tweeted: “We don’t want to waste our time on stories that are not really stories, and we don’t want to waste the listeners’ and readers’ time on stories that are just pure distractions.” 

The Media Research Center retorted: “How exactly is doing what is supposed to be your job of reporting and investigating a story with credible sources to be a ‘waste of time?’

David Folkenflik, NPR’s media correspondent, tried to kill the messenger that broke the story on the e-mails which were reportedly recovered from Hunter Biden’s laptop computer. Folkenflik attacked the New York Post as “suspect” and speculated “whether those emails were somehow hacked and doctored, or completely fabricated.” Folkenflik repeated the baseless claim, debunked by the FBI and Director of National Intelligence, that the New York Post story may have been part of Russia’s disinformation campaign.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

French Outrage Will Samuel Paty’s beheading make any difference in Macron’s Islam policy?Bruce Bawer

Posted By on October 27th, 2020

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/10/french-outrage-bruce-bawer/

On October 2, as I reported here recently, French president Emmanuel Macron gave a major speech – well, a long one, anyway – in which he vowed, after years of passivity and appeasement, to get tough on Islam. This was no small promise. France is arguably Ground Zero for European Islam, whose adherents – now constituting roughly 10% of that country’s population – represent an existential threat to French secular governance, to French culture and the French language, to French law and order, to the survival of France’s welfare state and its national economy as a whole, and to the core Gallic values of liberté, égalité, fraternité.    

Exactly two weeks after Macron’s speech, an atrocity took place that seemed to challenge Macron to act upon his lofty words. Abdoullakh Abouyezidovitch Anzorov, 18, a Moscow-born Chechen who had lived in France since 2008, beheaded Samuel Paty, 47, a teacher of history and geography at a secondary school, the Collège du Bois d’Aulne, that is located in a Paris suburb. Anzorov then posted a picture of Paty’s severed head on Twitter.

Anzorov’s motive? During a class on freedom of expression, Paty had shown his students some of the famous cartoons of Muhammed that had been published to international outcry in 2005 in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten and later reprinted in Charlie Hebdo. According to the parent of one of Paty’s pupils, Paty had permitted Muslim youngsters to leave the classroom before he displayed the cartoons, saying, “Go out, I don’t want it to hurt your feelings.” That invitation proved to be insufficient, alas, to avoid offending Anzorov’s feelings.

Shortly after the murder, Anzorov was shot dead by police; at least 15 other people have since been arrested in connection with the crime. One of them, a parent of one of Paty’s pupils, had started an online campaign to demonize Paty and exchanged text messages with Anzorov before the murder; four of those detained were pupils at the school, including two pupils of Paty, aged 14 and 15, who were apparently paid by Anzorov to identify Paty outside the school; four were members of Anzarov’s family; and yet another was a noted Islamic preacher, Abdelhakim Sefrioui, who had made anti-Paty videos. Also in the wake of the murder, about 40 raids have been made on the residences of suspected radicals.

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Polling expert explains why polls are junk and why he’s betting on Trump

Posted By on October 27th, 2020

http://joannenova.com.au/2020/10/polling-expert-explains-why-polls-are-junk-and-why-hes-betting-on-trump/

55% of Americans are better off than they were 4 years ago. It would amazing for Trump to lose to one of the weakest, low charisma candidates a major party has ever run. But he is one man against a machine that includes the media, the judiciary, and the Tech Giants and a global pandemic.
The 900 hp passion of the Trumpers is swamping the pitiful gatherings for Harris-Biden. But how much does that reflect what the 10% in the middle are thinking?

Two experts with great track records predict the winner. One says Trump. One says Biden. One of them is much more convincing than the other.

It’s worth recalling Hillary was bleaching lap tops, and practically having seizures on camera, and she still won 60 million votes just like Donald Trump did. Enthusiam counts but it isn’t everything.

Trump had this election in the bag in January for his State of The Union, then all the normal election rules were tossed into orbit.

Barnes disassembles polling data like a machine

Ciara Haley and George Szamuely talk to renowned litigator and political analyst Robert Barnes about polls and why they are of such limited usefulness.

 This man owns polling analysis. The detail. The details! And all off the cuff…

h/t To WokeBuster and RickWill

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Anarchy in New York? One senses order slipping away. Seth Barron

Posted By on October 27th, 2020

https://www.city-journal.org/anarchy-in-new-york

After Attorney General William Barr designated New York, along with Portland and Seattle, as “anarchistic” cities, Gotham mayor Bill de Blasio expressed outrage. He characterized it as a political attack on “black and brown cities”—though Portland and Seattle are two of the whitest cities in the nation—and denied that New York is remotely lawless or otherwise anarchic. Now the mayors of the three jurisdictions, facing the loss of federal funding, have sued the administration, calling the designation false and illegal.

It’s true that New York City wouldn’t be confused for Tegucigalpa or Mogadishu. And its violent crime rate, while soaring, is still much lower than that of Baltimore or St. Louis, for instance. But comparing New York today with the New York of even a few years ago makes clear that the city is undergoing a serious fracturing of civic order—one trending toward further disintegration.

One late summer Sunday morning, Demetrius Harvard, a 30-year old Bronx man, stood on a subway platform in Greenwich Village and methodically threw construction material onto the tracks. Bystanders tried to stop him, and someone even went into the train well to remove the debris, but Harvard persisted in his sabotage. Eventually, he succeeded in derailing an uptown A train, injuring several passengers.

You had to read to the end of tabloid news reports to get the real story. Two weeks earlier, in the same neighborhood, Harvard had tossed a steel bench through a bus window. He was arrested, charged with criminal mischief, and immediately “ROR’d”—released on his recognizance—with no bail.

This cycle is now all too common in New York, where public order and safety have been buffeted by chaotic forces. Criminal-justice reform at the state level removed bail as an option for all but the most heinous charges. Locally, the NYPD has stopped enforcing many quality-of-life laws. The city council passed a law forbidding cops from applying pressure to the chest or back of an arrestee while trying to handcuff him, on the premise that this tactic is tantamount to asphyxiation; officers dealing with a resisting suspect would thus potentially face assault charges if they attempt to restrain him with vigor.

ELECTIONS, MEDIA Comments turned off

Piers Morgan slams CNN for cancelling his interview after he criticized them for not covering the Hunter Biden story because they fear ‘they might lose the Democrats the election’ if they did

Posted By on October 27th, 2020

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8873037/Piers-Morgan-slams-journalists-hyper-partisan-failing-cover-Hunter-Biden-STORY.html

Piers Morgan slammed CNN for cancelling his upcoming book promoting appearance on Reliable Sources this Sunday 
It came after he called US journalists ‘hyper-partisan’ during an appearance on Fox & Friends on Friday morning
He said the media is playing partisan politics by failing to cover a story about a laptop allegedly belonging to Hunter Biden with damning emails and photos   
Morgan told DailyMail.com that CNN was willing to interview him when he wrote negative Trump columns but not more positive ones
He added that he believes liberal networks have not investigated the Hunter Biden story because it could lead to Democrats losing the presidential election 

Piers Morgan has slammed CNN for canceling his interview with the network after he said they and other American news outlets were being biased for not covering a story about a laptop allegedly belonging to Hunter Biden. 

During an appearance on Fox & Friends on Friday morning, Morgan was played clips of journalists, including CNN’s Jake Tapper, dismissing the allegations as false.

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Left’s Post-Election Agenda: More Riots, ‘Truth Commissions,’ Other Punishment For Their Foes — That Means You

Posted By on October 27th, 2020

https://issuesinsights.com/2020/10/27/lefts-post-election-agenda-more-riots-truth-commissions-other-punishment-for-their-foes-that-means-you/

You hear it every day. Someone says, “I just want the election to be over,” hoping out loud that things will somehow “return to normal” once the 2020 vote ends. But it won’t. The left already has plans to ensure that.

By “return to normal,” of course, we refer to an America not so riven by politics that families and neighbors no longer talk to each other because of the deep political divide. An America where people again become friendly and human, politics recede in importance, the economy and schools reopen, and suspicion of others’ political motives fade into the deep background.

Sounds great, the fabled tolerant America of yore. But, sorry, whether Donald Trump wins or loses, the left has other plans.

And “normal” isn’t part of them. In fact, even if Trump wins in a landslide and Republicans win both chambers of Congress on his coattails, the left already has plans for “Trump II: The Disruption.”

No, this isn’t some dystopic fantasy. After four years of non-stop interference with Trump’s presidency by the Democrats, we know it’s a hard reality.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

China to Sanction U.S. Defense Contractors Supplying Weapons to Taiwan By Mairead McArdle

Posted By on October 27th, 2020

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/china-to-sanction-u-s-defense-contractors-supplying-weapons-to-taiwan/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=article&utm_campaign=river&utm_content=top-bar-latest&utm_term=first

China said Monday that it will sanction U.S. defense contractors including Lockheed Martin and Boeing’s defense division that are involved in Washington’s sale of weapons to Taiwan.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said the sanctions will also apply to Raytheon Technologies, among other “relevant American individuals” involved in supplying weapons to the small democratic state, which China claims as a territory.

The State Department last week approved the $1.8 billion arms sale to Taiwan of three weapons systems including sensors, missiles, and artillery.

“In order to safeguard national interests, China decided to impose sanctions on the American companies that were involved in arms sales to Taiwan,” Zhao said at a press briefing.

Zhao said Beijing “firmly opposes” the arms sales, which “severely damage Chinese sovereignty and security interests.” He called the sanctions “necessary measures” for “those individuals and companies who behaved badly in the process of the arms sales” and called on the U.S. government to “stop arms sales to Taiwan and stop any military interaction with Taiwan.”