Biden’s phony-baloney polls are running behind Hillary’s phony-baloney polls of four years ago, more China policy weakness, more anti-police rhetoric, and Slow Joe comes in many days and dollars short denouncing the antifa/#BlackLivesMatter riots. It’s this week’s BidenWatch!
On election day, Hillary Clinton polled 6.5 points ahead of Trump in Wisconsin in the Real Clear Politics average (an aggregate of polls). Trump ended up winning the state by 0.7 points. Biden currently leads by 3.5 points in Wisconsin in the RCP.
The story is the same in North Carolina and Michigan. In North Carolina Trump lead Hillary by only 0.8 points on election day but ended up winning by 3.6. Biden is tied with Trump currently in the polls. In Michigan, Clinton lead by 3.6 points on election day, but Trump won by 0.3. Biden currently leads by 2.6 points.
Or more accurately, “supposedly leads.”
If we measure Hillary’s polling averages as of August 26th instead of election day, as the National Review’s David Harysanyi notes: Biden is +5.5 in Pennsylvania today [the 26th]. Hillary was +9.2 the same day in 2016. Florida is the only battleground state where Biden (+3.7) is outperforming Clinton (+2.7).
In mid-August, a Pew Research Center poll found that the issue of violent crime ranks fifth in importance to registered voters—behind the economy, health care, the Supreme Court, and the pandemic, but ahead of foreign policy, guns, race, immigration, and climate change. The poll found a large partisan gap on the issue: three-quarters of Trump voters rated violent crime “very important,” second behind only the economy. Nonetheless, nearly half of Biden voters also rated it “very important.” Other polls show that, over the summer, Biden has lost some of the support he gained among older white Americans in the first months of the coronavirus pandemic.
With some exceptions, the media have been reluctant to shine a bright light on the summer’s violence—both the riots and the concurrent spike in violence. The New York Times ignored or downplayed the subject for weeks. One of its first major articles appeared in mid-August, under the headline “In the Wake of Covid-19 Lockdowns, a Troubling Surge in Homicides.” The piece argued that the crime surge had to do with the end of the lockdown that coincided with the beginning of summer, citing the skepticism of criminologists that “the increase is tied to any pullback by the police in response to criticism or defunding efforts,” and pointing to economic disruption and the spread of despair. But it also offered a different explanation, contradicting the thesis: “Police officials in several cities have said the protests have diverted officers from crime-fighting duty or emboldened criminals.”
After the 2016 election, the Times admitted that it had somehow missed the story, and it earnestly set about at self-correction. Like many other outlets, the paper sent reporters to talk to Americans who had put Trump in the White House. It was a new beat, almost a foreign bureau—heartland reporting—but that focus soon faded as the president’s daily depredations consumed the media’s attention. This election year, news organizations grown more activist might miss the story again, this time on principle—as they avoid stories that don’t support their preferred narrative. Trump supporters are hoping for it.
I think I speak for all Trump supporters when I say hat we want a news media that honestly and fairly reports the news. But that ship sailed a long, long time ago. (What was the last Republican President who got unbiased reporting in the media? Eisenhower?) But I do agree that the MSM’s unsuccessful attempts to enforce preference falsification turns out to be a major advantage for Republicans.
Speaking of Chuck DeVore, he has a piece on how well President Trump is doing when it comes to foreign policy, how bad Biden’s foreign policy record has been, and how weak Biden is on China:
Biden’s lifetime of foreign policy miscues include:
Opposing Ronald Reagan’s military buildup and the Strategic Defense Initiative
Voting to invade Iraq in 2002, saying in 2003, “I voted to go into Iraq, and I’d vote to do it again.”
Early support for the 1999 bombing of Serbia which pushed Serbs to back the authoritarian leader there while stifling the nascent pro-democracy movement.
Criticism of President Trump’s authorization to kill Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani, the head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the man responsible for paying bounties to the Taliban for the killing of American troops in Afghanistan.
Advising President Obama to wait for more information before approving the raid that killed Osama bin Laden in 2011—advice, that if acted upon, might have led to bin Laden’s escape.
Reviewing Biden’s campaign statements and materials for clues on his foreign policy proposals suggests a Biden administration would major on the minors. In a sprawling 4,444-word essay entitled, “Why America Must Lead Again,” Biden sets out his vision. He mentions China 13 times:
Suggesting U.S. tech giants shouldn’t be aiding China’s repression.
Claiming his foreign policy will help the middle class “…win the competition for the future against China or anyone else… (author’s italics).”
Saying “There is no reason we should be falling behind China or anyone else (author’s italics) when it comes to clean energy, quantum computing, artificial intelligence, 5G, high-speed rail, or the race to end cancer as we know it.”
That, “The United States, not China, should be leading…” with new trade deals.
Admitting that “The United States does need to get tough with China…” or else China will “…keep robbing the United States and American companies of their technology and intellectual property,” with the best way to address the challenge being to “…build a united front of U.S. allies and partners to confront China’s abusive behaviors and human rights violations, even as we seek to cooperate with Beijing on issues where our interests converge, such as climate change, nonproliferation, and global health security.”
Working with “…China, to advance our shared objective of a denuclearized North Korea…”
Ensuring that “the rules of the digital age (aren’t) written by China and Russia.”
And working with China on climate change.
Absent is any mention by Biden of China’s massive military build up of modern missiles, ships, aircraft, and space systems and its growing willingness to use that military power against virtually all neighboring nations. It’s as if, by closing one’s eyes to the threat, one can wish the dragon away.
So while the People’s Republic of China under the Chinese Communist Party is methodically preparing for a military conquest of the free island of Taiwan, to slice off more Himalayan territory from India, to take islands from Japan, Malaysia, Vietnam, and Indonesia (all while holding the U.S. military at bay with an increasing array of long range missiles), Biden stresses the importance of climate change and getting the Chinese to use less coal.
President Trump is paying attention to the true nature of the existential threat from communist China, while Joe Biden focuses on lesser irritants from an earlier era.
The Democratic Party’s presidential nominee Joe Biden is “dangerous” when it comes to offshoring American jobs and because of his past relationship issues with China, and the United States needs a tough president like Donald Trump to stand up against the country’s bullying behavior, White House trade adviser Peter Navarro said Friday.
“The problem with Joe Biden is he has a record, 44-year record,” Navarro said on Fox News’ “America’s Newsroom.” “In 2001, he voted to allow China into the World Trade Organization. That created a tsunami of offshoring, where we lost over 70,000 factories and 5 million manufacturing jobs. This also happened on his watch when he was vice president.”
Meanwhile, the Chinese Communist Party is trying to “bully this country into submission through threats on Huawei and medical supplies,” Navarro said.
“What we learned from this pandemic is we need to bring home our supply chains and manufacturing, not just for our essential medicines or medical supplies like masks or medical equipment like ventilators but for everything,” Navarro said. “China is bullying Australia right now for daring to question how that virus was created. Australia wants to do an investigation of China about where the virus came from. The next thing you know China is punishing Australia and New Zealand. It is a bully.”
No post-convention bump for Biden. “Getting no boost after a convention has happened only a few times in modern Democrat Party history. By John Kerry in 2004 and George McGovern in 1972. Kerry ended up losing to George W. Bush and McGovern got thrashed by Nixon in an historic landslide beaten only in scale by Presidents FDR and Ronald Reagan.” (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
C-SPAN changed their open phone line labels after an overwhelming number of Democratic viewers called on Wednesday night proclaiming their support for President Donald Trump in the upcoming election.
“I’m a longtime Democrat, born and raised … After watching tonight … I have made up my mind. I am definitely gonna vote for Donald Trump,” said one of the many voters who dialed in.
Before the Republican National Convention, C-SPAN’s open phone lines were labeled as open for “Democrats,” “Republicans,” and “Other” viewers to call into and share their opinions on-air. After Trump’s acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention, however, C-SPAN received an influx of callers who identified as Democrat but said they would be voting for Trump in November.
Due to the increasing nature of these calls, the network adjusted the phone lines to encompass those who “Support Trump,” “Support Biden,” and “Support Others.”
The top-performing link posts by U.S. Facebook pages in the last 24 hours are from:
1. Ben Shapiro 2. Ben Shapiro 3. Blue Lives Matter 4. Ben Shapiro 5. David J. Harris Jr. 6. Ben Shapiro 7. Ben Shapiro 8. SportsCenter 9. Shaun King 10. NPR
Is Joe Biden for or against defunding the police? Yes:
We should begin with Joe Biden who said he would redirect budgeted police money to non-police areas. That’s right. Biden made that statement on July 8, when he replied, “Yes, absolutely” to an interviewer who asked him, “But do we agree that we can redirect some of the funding?”
But this defunding of the police, or “redirecting” as Biden spins it, contradicts a June 8 statement by his campaign claiming that Biden “does not believe that police should be defunded.”
When that contradiction and doublespeak raised eyebrows, Biden then reversed on both prior positions, claiming he would give more money to the police to handle the “god-awful problems” they face in the line of duty. Talk about a pandering, wishy-washy politician who will say anything to get elected. Can anyone believe Biden now?
The president of the top lobbying group representing police and law enforcement officers tore into Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden and his running mate, Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), at the Republican National Convention on Wednesday, calling them the “most radical anti-police ticket in history.”
Michael McHale, the president of the National Association of Police Organizations, decried what he described as a rash of violence against police officers in recent months and railed against “failed” elected officials in cities such as Minneapolis, New York and Chicago who he said had made “the conscious decision not to support law enforcement.”
Biden, he said, would follow their lead.
“Joe Biden has turned his candidacy over to the far-left, anti-law enforcement radicals,” he said. “And as a senator, Kamala Harris pushed to further restrict police, cut their training, and make our American communities and streets even more dangerous than they are.”
Nor are they attempting to lower the rhetoric:
This statement is vile. It doesn't take down the temperature; it raises it. It explicitly jumps to conclusions in the absence of evidence. It's racial demagoguery of the highest order. And this is supposedly the man who will restore calm and normalcy to the country? pic.twitter.com/mWCtoxl4pd
.@JoeBiden did not condemn the riots in #Kenosha in his statement this morning, but condemned the police. Effectively, he gave a green light to the nationwide mayhem. Disqualifying. #2020
Biden and Harris want to monkey with your 401Ks. I don’t know a single person who contributes to a 401K who goes “You know what the problem is? I’m just saving too much in taxes!”
Nothing says you’ll fight for black people quite like being endorsed by white supremacist Richard Spencer. Hey, the MSM insisted on linking this loon to the Republican Party for four years, so it’s only fair Republicans return the favor.
Noted for the record: “Joe Biden to visit Southwestern Pennsylvania Monday; location, details not announced.” My experience has been that most presidential campaigns announce a time and place for a candidate’s appearance well more than a day in advance.
Good question:
At what point does anti-Trumpism cost too much for Democrats?
Cities are being destroyed. Businesses torched. Police officers attacked & even killed.
All because woke Democratic mayors and Governors are refusing to ask for the National Guard.
Biden voters threatening to burn down a church the day after the media went to bat for his catholicism will be a good photo op. https://t.co/wsuNvfQOyx
Joe Biden just went on CNN and alleged Kyle Rittenhouse was a member of an Illinois white supremacist militia. Does he have any evidence of that? What is their name?
Michael Moore thinks President Trump is going to win again. He was right about this in 2016 as well. “The Biden campaign just announced he’ll be visiting a number of states— but not Michigan. Sound familiar?”
Speaking of Michigan: Trump 47, Biden 45. It’s almost like the working class is never returning to the Democrat Party. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
Also, I note for the record that no notable Kamala Harris links made their way across my desktop this week. I wasn’t trying to exclude them, but after the DNC was over, it seemed like the media universe at large just sort of lost interest in her. She generates a palpable lack of excitement.
Night after night, Portland’s Democratic mayor Ted Wheeler allows antifa/#BlackLivesMatter rioters to run wild in his city, carrying out organized criminal campaigns of violence. Last night, a man wearing a “Patriot Prayer” hat was murdered there.
“I am not sad that a f—ing fascist died tonight,” says a woman at the antifa gathering in downtown Portland. The crowd laughs and cheers. The ID of the deceased is not confirmed but he is believed to be a Trump & blue lives supporter. #PortlandRiotspic.twitter.com/XV6471FSuF
President Donald Trump is not a fan of the way Wheeler has handled the crisis:
President Trump ramped up his attacks against Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler (D) on Sunday after a person was killed in the Oregon city following skirmishes between supporters of the president and Black Lives Matter demonstrators.
Trump did not address the incident, however he posted multiple tweets claiming that tensions in the city demanded federal intervention. In response to a tweet documenting clashes between Trump supporters and counterprotesters, the president claimed that it was a result of incompetence from the mayor.
“The big backlash going on in Portland cannot be unexpected after 95 days of watching and incompetent Mayor admit that he has no idea what he is doing,” Trump said. “The people of Portland won’t put up with no safety any longer. The Mayor is a FOOL. Bring in the National Guard!”
He added in a separate tweet that Wheeler was “incompetent, much like Sleepy Joe Biden,” referencing the Democratic presidential nominee.
“Our great National Guard could solve these problems in less than 1 hour,” he said. “Local authorities must ask before it is too late. People of Portland, and other Democrat run cities, are disgusted with Schumer, Pelosi, and [their] local ‘leaders.’ They want Law & Order!”
Weirdly, Wheeler is running for reelection at the same time he allows riots to continue night after night, against runoff opponent Sarah Iannarone, who is evidently even more pro-rioter than he is.
So the question remains: How does Portland’s Democratic mayor Ted Wheeler benefit from rioters continuing to assault police officers and commit other felonies in downtown Portland?
Antifa/#BlackLivesMatter rioters seem determined to riot in every city in America (or at least every Democrat-controlled city), and this week it was the turn of Kenosha, Wisconsin, a city of some 100,000 on the shores of Lake Michigan between Chicago and Milwaukee, two other cities that have gotten to experience the same violence.
Kenosha, WI is under siege by mobs of violent rioters, looters, vandals, and arsonists. The mainstream media is spinning this as a normal reaction to the police shooting of Jacob Blake, but it’s obviously a gang of criminal thugs wreaking havoc and destroying lives and livelihoods because they can. No matter the impetus, this is not okay.
The man over whom rioters were destroying Kenosha was a repeat offender wanted on 3rd degree sexual assault charges and accused of rape.
Even the New York Times has the gall to say “The politically calculated warnings of President Trump and the Republican Party about chaos enveloping America should Democrats win in November are reverberating among some people in Kenosha.” I guess “politically calculated” is newspeak whenever a Republican says something that’s obviously true. The actual-reportage-mixed-with-special-pleading continues:
While many demonstrators have been peaceful [the ritual invocation!], others have set fire to buildings. At least four businesses downtown have been looted. Men armed with guns have shown up to confront protesters, leading to the shooting of three people, two of them fatally.”
In Kenosha County, where the president won by fewer than 250 votes in 2016, those who already supported Mr. Trump said in interviews that the events of the past few days have simply reinforced their conviction that he is the man for the job. But some voters who were less sure of their choice said the chaos in their city and the inability of elected leaders to stop it were currently nudging them toward the Republicans.
And some Democrats, nervous about condemning the looting because they said they understood the rage behind it [drink!], worried that what was happening in their town might backfire and aid the president’s re-election prospects.
Yes, that’s the big problem! Not the arson, looting and murder in Democrat-run cities, but the possibility that people might vote against Democrats!
That’s the real unforgivable crime.
The same concern is expressed by leftwing CNN hack Don Lemon.
CNN’s Don Lemon said Tuesday night that Democrats “ignoring” riots in some U.S. cities represents a “blind spot” for the party, and called on Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden to address the problem because it is “sticking” in polling and focus groups.
The perspective comes after deadly violence continued in Kenosha, Wis., with three shot and two dead amid rioting following the police shooting of Jacob Blake.
Lemon called Kenosha a “Rorschach test for the entire country” during his handoff with 9 p.m. anchor Chris Cuomo.
“It’s showing up in the polling. It’s showing up in focus groups. It is the only thing right now that is sticking,” Lemon said ahead of “CNN Tonight” on Tuesday. “The riots and the protests have become indistinguishable.”
Maybe that’s because they’ve gone hand-in-hand from the very first, when radical Marxists saw George Floyd’s death, idle hands from the lockdown and widespread masking as an opportunity both to sow chaos, and to radicalize black Americans just when polls were showing President Trump managing to gain a larger share of their support.
“I think this is a blind spot for Democrats. I think Democrats are ignoring this problem or hoping that it will go away, and it’s not going to go away,” [Lemon] added before arguing the violence needs to be addressed by Biden before the election.
“The problem is not going to be fixed by [Election Day],” said Lemon. “But what they can do, and I think maybe Joe Biden may be afraid to do it … he’s got to address it. He’s got to come out and talk about it.”
“And they’re rioters, not protesters. They’re criminals,” he added.
Imagine that.
People have finally said “Enough!” Both in Kenosha and elsewhere.
“They’re with you” there has been zero effort from the heads of movement to denounce the violence. The media and members of Congress tells us we are conspiring if we mention it. We will hold them at their worlds-“silence is compliance”/“silence is violence” innocent ppl affected!
The only reasons why the riots have been allowed to go on as long as they have is Democratic mayors, prosecutors and governors refused to let police restore order, either because they agreed with the goals of the rioters, found the riots politically useful, or lack the courage to confront leftwing radicals (“no enemies on the left”). Where police have been allowed to use sufficient force to maintain public order (including, ironically, Austin; good thing Texas has a Republican governor), either the riots stopped or protests were never allowed to escalate into riots in the first place.
Order cures disorder, and the very first role of government is securing the life, liberty and property of its citizens.
Democrats forget that at their (and the nation’s) peril.
Edited to add: Saw this on Twitter this morning:
In #Kenosha there are dozens of destroyed buildings the corporate press has paid little to attention to as if they didn’t exist
So I set out to capture more of what the “mostly peaceful protesters” accomplished in the last 3 nights
I’ve been too busy to watch the RNC, but I have been watching selected videos and reading recaps, so here’s my recap of the recaps, starting with videos of some of the most notable speakers.
South Carolina Senator Tim Scott:
“In an overwhelmingly white district, the voters judged me not on the color of my skin but on the content of my character.”
“Our family went from cotton to congress in one lifetime.”
Running back legend Herschel Walker:
“I take it as a personal insult that people would think I’ve had a thirty seven year friendship with a racist. People who think that don’t know what they’re talking about. Growing up in the deep south, I’ve seen racism up close. I know what it is, and it isn’t Donald Trump.”
Maryland Republican congressional candidate Kim Klacik:
Democrats have controlled this part of Baltimore for over 50 years, and they have run this beautiful place right into the ground. Abandoned buildings, liquor stores on every corner, drug addicts, guns on the street: that’s now the norm in many neighborhoods. You’d think Maryland taxpayers would be getting a lot, because our taxes are out of control. Instead we’re paying for decades of incompetence and corruption. Sadly, the same cycle of decay exists in many Democrat-run cities, and yet the Democrats still assume black people will vote for them, no matter how much they let us down and take us for granted. We’re sick of it. We’re not going to take it any more.
Georgia Democratic State Representative Vernon Jones:
“Unfortunately, Democrats have turned their backs on our brave police officers. They call it defunding, and it’s a danger to our cities, our neighborhoods, and our children…Our police need more funding, not less.”
Maximo Alverez, entrepreneur and survivor of Cuban communism:
“The country I was born in is gone, totally destroyed. When I watch the news from Chicago, Seattle, Portland, and other cities, when I see the history being rewritten, I hear echoes of a former life I never wanted to hear again. I see shadows I thought I had outrun.”
Transcript of the McClokey’s speech: “Whether it’s the defunding of police, ending cash bails or criminals can be released back out on the streets the same day to riot again, or encouraging anarchy and chaos on our streets, it seems as if the Democrats no longer view the government’s job as protecting honest citizens from criminals, but rather protecting criminals from honest citizens.”
One major theme of the Democratic convention was that America is a racial hell-hole and Donald Trump is racist. It is quite typical for Democrats and other political groups to incite or exploit racial hatred, prejudice, or tension for political gain around the time of elections. While black voters are some of Democrats’ most reliable supporters, fear of a larger segment of them being recruited by Trump has led to particular hysteria among Democratic strategists this election season.
The typical Republican response is to cower in fear or respond defensively that they are not racist. But the first night of this convention was not that at all. At this convention, Republicans traded defense for offense.
Whether it was Jones or Klacik speaking about their frustrations with how Democrats handle race issues, Haley describing the racism she faced as a little brown girl growing up in South Carolina, Walker talking about how offended he gets when people claim his friend Trump is racist, or Scott describing how his family went from “cotton to Congress in a lifetime,” the speeches and rhetoric weren’t timid or tiptoeing around issues but tackling them head on. It was a surprising change of pace.
Saturday night, downtown Denver got to experience the same joy that antifa and #BlackLivesMatter has brought to places like Minneapolis, Portland and Seattle.
Several dozen people, some donning shields and helmets, and police clashed at the headquarters of the Denver Police Department on Saturday night.
A group had organized a protest to start at 8 p.m. in response to an incident earlier this week when police and others clashed as the city removed people experiencing homelessness from a camp near 29th and Glenarm. A flier told people to “bring your gear.”
Sometime before 9 p.m., a van arrived to provide some of the people with shields. As the people marched toward the Denver police headquarters, Denver7 reporters witnessed people with a bat and an ax.
The group expressed various motives: defunding or abolishing the police, ending homeless sweeps, stopping racism, justice for Elijah McClain and more, including several who said they were there for vandalism and were done with peaceful protesting, according to crews at the scene.
But McClain’s mother earlier this week disavowed rallies like the one Saturday night, and she and others held a peaceful rally in memory of her son earlier in the day.
McClain was a black man killed in police custody in 2019. As in Portland and Seattle, there seem to be few if any black people involved in these riots, just white leftwing radicals attacking police and destroying property.
Antifa has surrounded the Denver police department and is besieging it with fireworks. Looks like a sight similar to the federal courthouse in Portland. pic.twitter.com/REaysspRjQ
These riots aren’t about police brutality, they’re about a hard-left, anti-police activism that’s rejected by the overwhelming majority of American citizens.
Welcome to another Friday LinkSwarm! This one may be a little short because I was busy buying books last night. This roundup is also light on Democratic National Convention news because, really, who has time to watch that garbage?
Perhaps 70 percent of Trumpism remains a hodgepodge of Reaganism: strong defense, realist foreign policy, deregulation, smaller government, big deficits, tax cuts, energy growth, and stars-and-stripes traditionalism.
But it is the other unorthodox 30 percent that excited his base, terrified conservative apostates, and won Trump the 2016 election by energizing between 4 million and 6 million voters in swing states who had either given up on Republicans, or on elections altogether. NeverTrumpers talk of Trump’s demise and their own resurrection as Phoenixes to rebirth the GOP. They have no idea that those who despise them had ensured their Beltway-preferred candidates could rarely win; nothing has changed since.
Snip.
Most hated Trump not because he hated or ridiculed them, but because he found them useless, as we saw from the fixations of John Brennan and James Clapper to the dazed pundits of NeverTrump to the wise men of the retired military.
What created the hatred of Trump and his supporters, then, was not a rather heterodox political agenda (see below), but a style that took on the Left on its own terms, and shocked a Republican establishment—again not just by conjuring the specter of Lee Atwater, but by shrugging as irrelevant his ostracism by the traditional conservative beltway insider.
Overview of Trump economy snipped.
Joe Biden has claimed the recent historic establishment of diplomatic relationships between Israel and the United Arab Emirates was not of the Trump Administration’s own making, but the logical epilogue to years of hard Obama Administration foundational work.
Biden is right in a sense. For eight years, his Obama team sought to empower Iran—through the lifting of sanctions; through the flawed Iran Deal; through appeasement of Hezbollah, the Assads, and Hamas; through estrangement of the Arab Gulf States and Israel—all as a bizarre Persian/Shiite counterweight to the Sunni Arab world and the U.S.-Israeli special relationship.
Obama and Biden so succeeded that they drove Israel and Gulf States to seek an-enemy-of-my-enemy-is-my-friend realist partnership, whose fruition we witnessed last week.
We forget, however, when Trump entered office, that Israel was isolated. Egypt, Jordan, and the Gulf States were bewildered by U.S. neutrality in the Middle East. Iran was ascendant. The “jayvees” of ISIS had overrun much of Iraq with delusions of caliphate grandeur. The Ottomanizing Recep Tayyip Erdoğan was supposedly our new trusted “bridge” between East and West.
Less than four years later, Iran is isolated, broke, and a veritable client of China. ISIS was bombed out of existence. Israel and much of the Arab world are more worried about Iran than they are about each other. The Palestinians are not the key to regional peace. Turkey is recognized as the rogue that it had become while relations with Greece have warmed.
The United States is energy independent of the Middle East, as is Israel—because of the expansion of fracking and horizontal drilling that a Biden-Harris Administration claims would cease upon assuming office.
Snip.
For all the hoax of “Russian collusion,” Vladimir Putin is in terrible shape and has not fooled the administration as he did with “reset” in the Obama years. In the last four years, the United States upped sanctions on Russia, crashed the world export market of natural gas and oil so dear to Moscow, beefed up NATO spending, hectored Germany about its new energy dependence on Putin, increased U.S. military capability, reached out to frontline Eastern Europe, left an asymmetrical missile deal with Russia, obliterated Russian mercenaries in Syria, sold lethal weapons to Ukraine—even as the likes of James Clapper, John Brennan, James Comey, and an array of retired generals sermonized that Trump was a Russian “asset.” Translated that means the president who contained Putin they loathed, and the Obama presidency that empowered him they idolized.
Snip.
Trump is neither a traditional conservative in the Ronald Reagan mode nor a centrist establishmentarian Republican like John McCain or Mitt Romney. But he has done more culturally for the conservative cause than any president since Calvin Coolidge. Like him or not, he has appointed more constructionist federal judges at all levels than any prior Republican president in a single term.
He likewise has been more opposed than any prior Republican to the current culture of abortion on demand. His education secretary is trying to enforce the Bill of Rights on what have become sometimes neo-fascistic college campuses, and to discourage race-based set asides and de facto discrimination on the basis of race.
He is a defender of the police while acknowledging the need for greater oversight, and opposed both violence in the streets, and the appeasement of it by blue state governors and mayors. In some sense, there are no conservatives, either by temperament or by political ability, eager to stop the summer madness of statue toppling, arson, spiraling crime, shakedowns, cancel culture and the vows of Antifa and BLM that all this is the beginning of a complete rewriting of American history and a radical recalibration of our shared futures.
Between the abyss and what goes on in Portland and the Magnificent Mile, there is for the moment nothing else but Trump standing in the breach.
No president in the history of the Republic has ever been targeted for removal by the opposition party, the permanent bureaucracy, and members of his own party, and in such an illegal and unethical manner.
There was the first impeachment effort, the Beltway punditry in early 2017 calling for his removal by coup if necessary, the voting machine suits, the Clinton-Obama-Steele subversion of the Trump campaign and transition, the Hollywood assassination chic, the effort to take out former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, the farce of the 25th Amendment that included the bathos of high federal officials contemplating wearing wires in private conservations with the president to the psychodrama of Professor Bandy Lee testifying before Congress about Trump’s mental state, the silly Emolument Clause gambit (Trump has lost over $1 billion while in office and taking no salary), the subversion of the FISA courts, the Russian hoax, Robert Mueller’s two-year long and $35 million witch hunt, the fabricated Steele dossier implanted in the bowels of the Obama government and media, the one-phone-call impeachment circus, the revolt of the retired generals, and what has rightly lately been called “coup porn,” the hysteria over Ukraine and the caricaturing of Trump in 2020 as Typhoid Mary, Herbert Hoover, and Bull Connor as the Left weaponized the contagion, quarantine, and rioting.
The Left, the media, and the NeverTrump Right rarely now any more argue all of the above was warranted or based on verifiable wrongdoing, but see the mish-mash instead as a righteous “any means necessary” tactic to achieve the noble end of destroying a president that they detest.
That Trump is still standing is an unrecognized tribute to his resilience, stamina, and willpower to fight it out to the bitter end.
His critics say 2020 is not 2016. This time the polls are right on, not rigged by the sort who trafficked in absurd Russian hoaxes or were mesmerized by Michael Avanetti. The silent Trump voters no longer exist, they add. The suburban mom, we are told, fears Trump’s temper more than Antifa. The fence-sitter is bothered more by tweeting than Biden’s ever-longer moments of confused silence. And on and on.
Perhaps.
But Americans at some point empathize with an underdog fighter on behalf of what they fear may be a fading America, even someone they are not always fond of, but who does not give up when bullied and subjected to a level of unwarranted abuse that they themselves know they could never endure. The Left never wished to beat Trump at the polls (indeed they feared such an ordeal); they instead wanted to destroy his person, his family, and everyone who followed him.
That Trump withstood such illegal, unconstitutional, and unethical venom also says something about those who dished it out—and, in the end, did so viciously and yet so impotently.
One of the more perplexing things was the DNC giving a speaking slot to former Ohio governor and noted mailman’s son John Kasich. Kasich brings slightly less excitement than dryer lint to any gathering he graces but what was most amusing was that during the somnambulant lead-up to the DNC, the Democrats were acting like Kasich was a real big get for them.
He’s a milquetoast squish Republican whom no Republicans like anymore, so he tucked tail and went begging for attention crumbs from the Democrats, which is the way of the spineless squishes. After backstabbing his own party to score points with the Democrats and their flying monkeys in the media, Kasich then — as Matt details at Townhall — crapped all over his hosts by disparaging Bartender of the Year Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Speaking of the Russian collusion hoax, Kevin Clinesmith, the now Ex-FBI lawyer near the center of Crossfire Hurricane, just pled guilty, “admitting that he altered an email that he used to apply for a FISA warrant against former Trump-campaign adviser Carter Page…The guilty plea marks the first conviction in the probe of the Russia investigation led by U.S. Attorney for Connecticut John Durham.”
Of all of the Obama administration loyalists who contributed to the Russia collusion hoax, Clinesmith is the one most obviously guilty of a felony: he altered an email he received from the CIA to say that Carter Page was NOT a CIA source, when in fact the email said Page WAS a CIA source, and submitted that fake document to the federal court in order to obtain a FISA warrant. That is worth five years in prison and, of course, the end of his legal career. Clinesmith’s guilty plea is significant, in part, because he may be willing to implicate others who are higher in the DOJ chain of command.
— Waiting For Durham – Brian Cates (@drawandstrike) August 16, 2020
Ninth Circuit Court rules that magazine limit bans are an unconstitutional infringement of the Second Amendment. “It should be noted that this will likely go to a full hearing of the 9th Circuit, but it also should be noted that the court is now majority Republican-appointed. If a full hearing brings the same result, then this all but forces Chief Justice John Roberts to stop being a coward and to take this up.” Flipping the Ninth is a huge achievement for the Trump Administration.
The New York City riots were just a blip in the largest series of coordinated antifa/#BlackLivesMatter riots sweeping the country then, but this video indicates that the looting and destruction in de Blasio’s New York City was far more more extensive than the media let on.
New York City today, after the peaceful protests …
I had a friend who recently visited NYC, and he says from the Holland Tunnel to the Williamsburg Bridge through lower Manhattan almost everything was still boarded up and covered with graffiti, with lots of trash on the sidewalk. “Looked like a scene from an early Scorsese movie.” Is it any wonder that people are fleeing the city in droves?
It’s not just a few Upper West Siders who are fleeing New York: Moving companies say they’re swamped with calls from residents looking to ditch the city — even though the COVID crisis has waned.
One likely reason: The virus was but the last straw; New Yorkers are fed up with the shootings and lootings, homelessness on the streets, sub-par online schools, sky-high taxes and the sheer obliviousness of pols like Mayor Bill de Blasio and Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
Snip.
It’s been “insanely busy,” Roadway Moving president Ross Sapir told Fox. Indeed, he says this has been the busiest summer ever for the company. “For the last three months, we couldn’t keep up with demand.”
Oz Moving says the number of relocations continues to rise at a “substantial rate.” It was booked to capacity earlier in the year than in any of the previous 27 years.
United Van Lines, too, cites a whopping 95 percent spike, year over year, in interest in moving out of Manhattan between May and July, versus just 19 percent nationally.
Sure, many of those who’ve headed out were merely trying to escape COVID, which socked the city in the spring. Some may even return; a reported spike in storage-space business is a sign they will.
Yet the fact that the rush for the exits continues to grow, even as new coronavirus cases have plummeted, suggests other reasons. Like the crime wave: The number of shootings per day, for instance, has doubled since last year. Other crimes are up, too.
City and state officials have fueled crime, setting inmates at jails and prisons free and handcuffing cops, and they refuse to do anything meaningful to roll it back. Prosecutors, too, are declining to prosecute. Judges are letting suspects walk.
Last month, Bronx Criminal Court Judge Jeanine Johnson released an illegal-immigrant rape suspect, on no bail. Last year, she let a convicted killer and reputed gangbanger walk bail-free after a gun bust.
Quality of life has plunged, as well. Even the owner of an Upper West Side hotel the city’s now using to house homeless derelicts has put his nearby mansion up for sale, as The Post reports Wednesday.
Lousy schools and even worse online classes provide yet another reason for folks to skedaddle.
Ditto for high taxes, which de Blasio — and fellow Democrats in the Legislature — are itching to raise even more.
It took 30 years and Rudy Giuliani to rescue New York City from its reputation as a crime-ridden hellhole. It’s taken Bill di Blasio, George Soros and one disasterous year to undo all that.
Welcome to another Friday LinkSwarm! Peace has unexpectedly broken out in the Middle East, the science behind Beirut’s big boom, and more Democrats destroying their own cities.
It’s supposed to hit 105°F in Austin today. Stay frosty…
If Obama had done this, it would be front page news on every paper in America proclaiming what a “historic” peacemaker Obama was. Since no Democrat can take the credit, newspapers that hate Trump and Israel have been downplaying the news as much as possible.
Since people are always talking about “October Surprises,” here’s a possibility: Saudi Arabia and Israel signing their own peace treaty and full diplomatic recognition. Israel and the Saudis have been secretly cooperating against the Iran-Syria axis for quite some time. And now there are public signs of a thaw, including positive depictions of Jews in a new TV drama shown on Saudi TV.
New York’s richest people have fled during the lockdowns. If their kids’ tony public schools don’t offer personal instruction or look likely to maintain the chaos of rolling lockdown brownouts, those wealthy people have better choices. They can stay in their vacation houses or newly bought mansions in states that aren’t locked down. They can hire pod teachers or private schools.
And the longer they stay outside New York City and start to make friends and get used to a new place, the less likely they are to ever return. Cuomo is well aware of this.
“I literally talk to people all day long who are now in their Hamptons house who also lived here, or in their Hudson Valley house, or in their Connecticut weekend house, and I say, ‘You got to come back! We’ll go to dinner! I’ll buy you a drink! Come over, I’ll cook!’” Cuomo revealed in a recent news conference. “They’re not coming back right now. And you know what else they’re thinking? ‘If I stay there, I’ll pay a lower income tax,’ because they don’t pay the New York City surcharge.”
Reopening means swimming against their anti-Trump base and teachers union donors’ full-court press to amp school funding and slash teacher duties. That means the below-surface financial and political pressure Cuomo, Pelosi, and Schumer are under to make this kind of a reversal must be huge. It’s likely coming from not only internal polling but also early information about just how many people have left New York and New York City, as well as interpersonal intelligence from their influential social circles.
This means three things. First, the pressure to reopen schools is on everywhere now that New York is doing it. Second, Democrats’ hard opposition to school reopenings has been politically devastating. Third, all the push polls and media scaremongering promoting the idea that most parents shouldn’t and wouldn’t send their kids back to school have failed.
However, the people packing their bags are not coming to New York City — they’re fleeing it for good.
Due to increasingly squalid conditions on the Upper West Side, including two new homeless shelters packed with junkies and registered sex offenders, longtime dwellers are departing the Big Apple with no plans to ever return.
One of the Escape from New Yorkers is Elizabeth Carr, one of the area’s most vocal leaders in combating mounting crime in the well-heeled ‘hood. She was an administrator of the Facebook group NYC Moms for Safer Streets, and the face of a public-safety movement that has attracted thousands to demand better policing and city services.
“In the best of times, NYC is a hard place to live,” said Carr. “Now you have all this other stuff. It’s a question for families … to have to see a guy masturbating on the corner or explain to my kids while I’m buying diapers at Duane Reade why this guy wearing no shoes is collapsed on the floor and they’re doing CPR on him.”
She said she started planning to move before the COVID crisis and recent neighborhood developments, but officially put down stakes Sunday in North Carolina with her finance husband and three kids under 7.
“We reached our New York expiration date,” the former nonprofit exec, who’d lived on the UWS since 2007, told The Post from her new home 600 miles away. “Things weren’t heading in the right direction. What we’re seeing now isn’t at all surprising.”
Crimes committed over the past several days would’ve been unheard of a year ago in the quiet neighborhood that’s home to Lincoln Center and restaurants by Daniel Boulud. A 40-year-old woman was randomly stabbed in the 72nd Street subway station at noon Thursday; a 56-year-old man was sucker-punched while dining outdoors with his wife Wednesday night; photos were posted online of a man masturbating on the steps of the New York Historical Society; and onlookers witnessed an apparent overdose in the aisle of a Duane Reade across the street from the Lucerne Hotel.
The Lucerne, at 79th Street and Amsterdam, and the Hotel Belleclaire, at 76th Street and Broadway, were recently converted into homeless shelters, with nearly 300 vagrants between them. Ten of the men are registered sex offenders, including convicted rapists, child molesters and child-porn possessors — all living a block away from a school playground.
“Minneapolis Forcing Riot-Wrecked Businesses To Pay Property Taxes Before Getting Permits To Rebuild.” Pay property taxes for what, since they voted to disband the police. (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.) (Update: Fortunately, somebody handed the City of Minneapolis a clue-by-four.)
Florida Democrats have a problem: there were supposed to be more of them by now.
Following narrow losses in 2018 races for Florida governor and U.S. Senate, Democrats emerged from the midterms with a new resolve to register more voters in the nation’s largest swing state as a path to victory in 2020. Former gubernatorial candidate Andrew Gillum, fresh off a stinging 34,000-vote loss, vowed to “flip Florida blue” by registering or “re-engaging” 1 million voters, including 200,000 new Democrats added by the Florida Democratic Party.
But those initiatives fell well short of their goals. And with seven weeks until mail ballots go out in the Nov. 3 election between presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden and President Donald Trump, Florida Republicans are closer to parity in voter registration than they’ve been in decades — a dynamic that may portend yet another hard-fought, narrowly decided presidential election.
“We won the voter registration war,” Republican Party of Florida Chairman Joe Gruters said last week.
Voter registration — the grunt work of politics — sets the foundation for campaign season. For Florida Democrats, who historically have had a harder time turning out their voters than Republicans, it’s even more crucial.
When former President Barack Obama first won Florida in 2008, he entered the final months of the campaign with an advantage of more than 500,000 registered Democratic voters. That lead has steadily dwindled, dropping to about 259,000 in 2016, when Trump beat Hillary Clinton in Florida by 112,000 votes.
New data posted online Wednesday by the Florida Division of Elections showed that, as of July 20, when books closed on eligible voters for the upcoming Aug. 18 primary, Democrats led Republicans in the state by 240,423 people — about 5,000 fewer than at the same point in 2018.
The videos also show an unnervingly uniform hemisphere of white propagating outward from the blast site, a dome of vicious vapor that eventually hurtles toward every person filming and announces its arrival in the audio with a crash. This hemisphere is the pressure wave produced by the explosion.
No, it’s not a shock wave. It’s a pressure wave, and that key difference affects the number of casualties expected. A shock wave goes from zero pressure to its absolute maximum pressure in literally zero seconds. The impact of a pressure wave is like hitting the ground after rolling down a steep cliff; the force of a shock wave is like hitting the ground after falling through the air and reaching terminal velocity. High explosives produce shock waves; low explosives, like ammonium nitrate, produce pressure waves, which have a bit of slope to their shape, a period of time over which the pressure increases more gradually.
Shocks, because of their fascinating and complex physics, travel faster than the speed of sound, and they cause far more damage than pressure waves. Thankfully, we know this blast did not produce a shock because the speed of the water-vapor-filled white dome can be measured.
The speed of sound in air is 343 meters per second. Based on the viewing angle and distinctive red chairs pictured in some of the later frames, I traced one of the Beirut videos posted by The Guardian to its filming location on the rooftop terrace of La Mezcaleria Rooftop Bar, and measured it to be 885 meters from the center of the blast. From that vantage, the pressure wave can be seen neatly traveling from the center of the blast first to the point halfway between the end of the pier and the edge of the long, massive gray grain silo building, a distance of 151 meters, then to the end of the pier, 262 meters, then eventually to La Mezcaleria.
By measuring the times at which the pressure wave reaches these landmarks on the video, we know that, as it blazed down the pier, its rampage occurred at a speed of only 312 meters per second. That’s slow for a bomb. Then by the time the audible crash and mayhem reached the formerly peaceful and picturesque outdoor bar, it had slowed to at most 289 meters per second. The pressure wave, slower than the 343 meters per second speed of sound, caused destruction, horror, confusion, shattered glass, torn-apart flat surfaces, and disorientation for onlookers as their ears were subjected to the rapid pressure fluctuations. But a shock wave could have caused them to drop dead from lung trauma as they watched.
Snip.
Thanks to modern technology that charge size can be calculated scientifically too, even while waiting for more complete information to trickle out, using the size of the telltale crater. Analysis of the aerial photographs of the pier shows a crater in the range of 120 to 140 meters in diameter; blast physics mixed with history tell us that to carve a chunk that size from the side of the planet requires a charge equivalent to 1.7 to 5.4 million kilograms of TNT (that’s 3.8 to 11.8 million pounds for any Americans dragging their feet on converting to metric). For reference, the bombing of the Murrah Building in Oklahoma City in 1995 used the equivalent of 1.8 thousand kilograms of TNT. So, Beirut was at minimum a thousand times more boom than Oklahoma City.
DC comics decided it wanted to get woke, so it’s no surprise that Warner Media decided they needed massive layoffs.
It’s a “bloodbath” at the WarnerMedia-owned DC Comics, with the Editor in Chief, the Publisher, and one third of the editorial staff sacked.
Included in the sackings is — this is a rumor as of yet, not confirmed — leftwing SJW ideologue Andy Khouri, one of the absolute cancers killing the industry, who brought in GamerGate skel Zoe Quinn to “write” “comics” for DC, despite her having no comic book experience and no writing experience (outside Depression Quest and a failed kickstarter). Khouri filled DC’s Vertigo imprint with angry yet untalented SJW freaks; Vertigo was cancelled within a year.
DC had already laid off people last year, and now has to cut even more. Co-publisher Dan DiDio was fired last year, leaving the other co-publisher, Jim Lee, supposedly in charge; now Jim Lee has been pushed out of that position, though he’ll probably be kept in some other role. (He’s a major comic book artist.)
Why did this happen to DC Comics?
Let’s ask Wonder Woman and see if she can tell us.
Oh yeah, everyone involved in this deserved to lose their job:
America:
As a creative Director, this is one of the best ads I’ve ever seen and I’ve seen and worked on a lot across different industries.@realDonaldTrumppic.twitter.com/KcTje7ESIO
Driving back from a barbecue road trip Saturday, I saw a Trump 2020 billboard, which was simplicity itself:
TRUMP: JOBS
BIDEN: MOBS
This is pretty interesting:
Justice Kavanaugh issued a tactical nuke on George Soros & Globalism.
SCOTUS has ruled Organizations affiliated to the “Open Society” lose the protection of 1A and can be treated as international threats as this impacts supporters in the US and abroad.
— The Red-Headed Libertarian™ (@TRHLofficial) August 13, 2020
Google puts its thumb on the scale yet again:
I assumed this was a joke, but it’s real: if you Google “socialism and racism,” the top result you’re offered will be “capitalism and racism.” Big Tech gets more openly ideological by the day. And weird that one of the world’s most profitable companies hates capitalism so much. pic.twitter.com/vhSqflY74g
“I know just the thing to make him complete: Some bacon! I don’t know if it’s cooked, I don’t want to know if it’s cooked. All I need to know is that I get to give him some creepy bacon fingers!
Wants no part of the goat rodeo:
Good morning, Twitter. When you're just trying to get your drunk friend Steve home again and he wants no part of it. pic.twitter.com/5nQv467UnL
The huge hypocrisy of Democrats allowing #BlackLivesMatters protests during lockdowns.
How cops stood down during the protests and how the media lied about them.
“O.J. Simpson was mostly peaceful that night.”
“If you’re protesting, that’s First Amendment activity. If you break a window, you should go to jail.”
“At some point somebody has to restore some semblance of order.”
On White Fragility: “A greater pile of horseshit has never been produced by a bevy of horses.”
SJW/antiracists think that “meritocracy and individualism is an aspect of whiteness…in order to be anti-racist, you have to want to tear down the entire system. They literally say this.”
The garbage of the 1619 Project.
“The greatest predictor of poverty in America remains single motherhood.”
My biggest question, as it usually is when Rogan talks about poverty, is whether he’s read Charles Murray’s Losing Ground. If you’re concerned about poverty in America, that’s a bedrock text for understanding it…
Important tip: If you’re attacking police, looting and committing arson in the name of a radical Marxist ideology, honest law-abiding gun owners think you’re the bad guy and happy to see you get vanned. Enjoy 20 years in Club Fed to contemplate the errors of your ways.
https://t.co/oJFSBQcvK3 https://t.co/7DibWSRCSb
(@JackPosobiec) August 27, 2020
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(@MrRandem)