News of the Week for Oct. 11th<\/sup>, 2020<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Barrett confirmation likely to proceed as planned, no thanks to White House announcement event<\/a> Pack the Court with Underpants Gnomes<\/a> Republicans Are Winning the Barrett Confirmation Debate<\/a> Voters Back Barrett Confirmation by Double-Digit Margin in New Poll<\/a> Joe Biden Takes a Dark Turn on Blowing Up the Court<\/a> <\/p>\n <\/p>\n BLM divides white Americans more than anyone else<\/a> How to Get Shot by Police<\/a> Life on the Streets: A Cop Confesses What Policing Is Like in the Age of BLM\/Antifa<\/a> BLM ties to Marxist groups spotlighted in new video<\/a> UChicago activist group encourages students not to call the cops when they witness stealing<\/a> Marquette explores blacks-only housing plan, hate speech punishment<\/a> Cultural Revolution: Woke totalitarians have taken over campus<\/a> Letter Calls for Withdrawal of “1619 Project” Pulitzer<\/a> McCloskeys Indicted By Grand Jury (Plus An Added Charge Of Tampering With Evidence?)<\/a> Portland’s Mayor Now Trails Challenger, But\u2026<\/a> BLM mobs smash windows in residential homes during Wisconsin protests<\/a> The Campus Cultural Revolution Grinds On<\/a> UW Madison student government passes resolution supporting removal of Lincoln statue<\/a> Grazia magazine sacks its new ‘diversity champion’ for posting anti-Semitic Twitter rants \u2013 including one which read, ‘Auschwitz gas chamber music LMAO’<\/a> Which is it? 1619 or 1776?<\/a> <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Titans’ COVID-19 outbreak continues with staff member testing positive Sunday, threatening Bills game<\/a> <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Was It Voter Fraud Or A Case Of “Testing The System?”<\/a> Help Fight Against State-Sponsored Discrimination<\/a> The special interests behind Proposition 15<\/a> Drubbed in 2018, California GOP looks to regain House seats<\/a> USPS confirms ballots were dumped, said they have been delivered<\/a> Dem challenger for North Carolina Senate backs out of town hall after second cheating claim emerges<\/a> Did The Vice Presidential Debate Suddenly Become Far More Important?<\/a> Gallup: The Most Important Issue For Voters In 2020 Is \u2026<\/a> NBC News’ “Undecided” Voters Previously Featured as Biden Supporters on MSNBC<\/a> “International Intervention” in U.S. Elections Would Be a Disaster<\/a> Will Tillis’ Challenger Decide Control Of The Senate?<\/a> Trump Has a Lot of Passionate Fans in Los Angeles, but That Doesn’t Mean He’ll Win There<\/a> The Pence-Harris debate<\/a> Team Biden: Let’s Move The Town Hall Debate To The 22nd So That Trump Can Participate; Update: Team Trump Agrees, But\u2026<\/a> The Real Pence Audition<\/a> Montana Senate Poll: Daines 52 Percent, Bullock 43 Percent<\/a> Mike Pence Showed Trump How TV Debates Are Won<\/a> Marquette Poll: A Mask Mandate Is Popular in Wisconsin, Campaign Rallies Aren’t<\/a> Mail, Including Voter Ballots, Found Discarded In Twentynine Palms, Joshua Tree<\/a> Democrat Cal Cunningham Blames Sen. Thom Tillis for Affair Scandal as Campaign Implodes<\/a> Gallup: Majority says they’re better off than four years ago \u2014 but \u2026<\/a> ‘Worried’ Cruz Warns GOP Could Face ‘a Bloodbath of Watergate Proportions’ on Election Day<\/a> Mayoral Candidate in Texas Charged With Over 100 Counts of Voter Fraud<\/a> Frank Luntz: Undecideds in VP Debate Focus Group Found Kamala Harris “Abrasive and Condescending”<\/a> “Are You Better Off Than You Were Four Years Ago?”<\/a> October 15 Presidential Debate Officially Cancelled<\/a> Cal Cunningham Holds Disastrous Press Conference, Ensures Affair Scandals Will Not Go Away<\/a> Trump needs to shine the spotlight on Biden, not hog it<\/a> <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Philadelphia Sued Over Gun Permit Backlog<\/a> 22% of Gun-Owning Households Have Added A Gun Since Anti-Police Protests Began<\/a> Gun Ownership in a Time of Uncertainty<\/a> Gun sales see boom during pandemic<\/a> <\/p>\n <\/p>\n As wildfires Incinerate Four Million Acres, California Attempts to Protect Wildlife by Banning Rat Poison<\/a> NATO Secretary General: “NATO must combat climate change”<\/a> The West Intends Energy Suicide: Will It Succeed?<\/a> Do they really care about science ?<\/a> <\/p>\n <\/p>\n GOP congressman introduces revised Obamacare replacement bill<\/a> <\/p>\n <\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/impeachreno.org\/politicalhat\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/Newsboy.jpg\" "\\"News")
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<\/a>Supreme Court Vacancy<\/h1>\n
\nDemocrats are calling for a delay in the confirmation hearing of Amy Coney Barrett on the grounds that two members of the Senate Judiciary Committee \u2014 Mike Lee and Thom Tillis \u2014 have tested positive for the Wuhan coronavirus. This tactic comes as no surprise. I’m pretty sure that if roles were reversed, Republicans would be calling for delay on the same grounds.<\/p>\n
\nThe remarkable weakness of this Slate piece in favor of destroying the Supreme Court bolsters my suspicion that, while the idea is historically monstrous and all who favor it should be disdained, the chances of it actually happening are slim.<\/p>\n
\nA new Morning Consult poll shows that Republicans have made progress in the Barrett fight, perhaps unsurprisingly because Democrats have nothing on her<\/p>\n
\nMorning Consult reports: “Democrats are losing the Supreme Court messaging war, new polling indicates, with support for Judge Amy Coney Barrett’s confirmation trending in the GOP’s direction.”<\/p>\n
\nIt gets worse. For weeks, Joe Biden has refused to answer whether he intends to blow up the United States Supreme Court on the preposterous grounds that, if he does, journalists will write about it. Now, he adds that voters \u201cdon\u2019t deserve\u201d to know his position. This transmutes an untenable position into a downright nefarious one.<\/p>\n<\/a>Riots & Revolution<\/h1>\n
\nOur exclusive US polling of over 4,000 respondents, in partnership with Focaldata, contains a striking finding about how different groups are responding to current events in America. One of a series of statements under the heading “To what extent do you agree or disagree with the following statements about rioting” was the statement, “The ‘Black Lives Matter’ movement is dangerous.”<\/p>\n
\nTeenagers seem to be doing a seminar lately on this topic. For example, carjacking people at gunpoint? What do you think the odds are that a teenage boy is going to get away with this crime? He’s not an experienced driver, whereas the cops have logged many hours of training in pursuit tactics, with radio communications to assist them. And when the cops catch you, knowing that you have just used a firearm to commit a felony, do you think they they’ll leave their pistols in their holsters?<\/p>\n
\nEditor’s Note: “Brady White” is the pseudonym of an active-duty police officer. His column \u2014 or rant, as he prefers to call it \u2014 came to me from a trusted source. “Brady White” chooses to remain anonymous for reasons that will become clear as you read it. It has been very lightly edited for clarity.<\/p>\n
\n‘Anyone who takes a knee … is bowing to Chinese communism and terrorism’<\/p>\n
\nAbolish police by not calling them, activists say<\/p>\n
\nOne free speech group warns about punishing hate speech<\/p>\n
\nPodcaster Dave Rubin has the custom of going “off the grid” for a month each summer, to gain some perspective on changes. As a scientist who has been retired from the lab for more than ten years, I feel in a similar position vis-\u00e0-vis the state of academic science. To this campus Rip-van-Winkle, things now look very different. <\/p>\n
\nAn open letter released today and signed by 21 scholars and public writers calls on the Pulitzer Prize Board to rescind the Prize for Commentary awarded to Nikole Hannah-Jones for her lead essay in “The 1619 Project.” The letter is posted at the website of the National Association of Scholars here. (I am one of the signatories.)<\/p>\n
\nToday a grand jury indicted the McCloskeys for a June incident when a group of protesters walked onto their private property on their way to protest at the Mayor’s house. The McCloskeys cam out of their home armed with guns to protect their property. Trespassing charges against the protesters were all dropped but progressive DA Kim Gardner brought charges against the McCloskeys. <\/p>\n
\nWhen we were recording this week’s episode of War for the White House yesterday, the panel kicked around a question about whether or not the whole “law and order” push by the Trump campaign was fading from the media spotlight. One thing I found myself wondering was if all of the violence and riots in the streets might have less of an impact on the presidential race, but a bigger influence on state and municipal elections. Surely the business owners and residents who are watching their cities being burned and looted would hold their elected officials responsible for failing to keep them safe, wouldn’t they?<\/p>\n
\nBlack Lives Matter mobs protesting in Wisconsin over the decision not to charge a black cop for fatally shooting a gun-firing teen turned their rage on innocent homeowners \u2014 lobbing rocks through windows on a residential street.<\/p>\n
\nToday in cancel culture we return to the story of Bruce Gilley, a political scientist at Portland State University who has committed the heresy of saying some favorable things about colonialism. I wrote here in 2017 about the uproar over his academic journal article “The Case for Colonialism,” which a journal had to retract after it received death threats, among other things. I met Gilley for lunch shortly after that on a trip that passed through Portland, and I was delighted to find out that Prof. Gilley assigns one of my journal articles for a class he teaches on modern political thought. If defending colonialism didn’t get him in trouble with the Wokerati, this transgression surely would!<\/p>\n
\nThe University of Wisconsin-Madison student government recently voted to approve a resolution that supports the removal of the school’s famous Abraham Lincoln statue, arguing it serves as a remnant “of this school’s history of white supremacy.”<\/p>\n
\nStephanie Yeboah was hired as a contributing editor by magazine last month<\/p>\n
\nBret Stephens, in what may be his last NYT column, tracks the foundational rewriting of the 1619 Project.<\/p>\n<\/a>Corona Virus<\/h1>\n
\nAfter steps forward Friday and Saturday, the Titans took another step back Sunday.<\/p>\n<\/a>Election 2020<\/h1>\n
\nOne Florida Democrat came up with a clever way to pay homage to his deceased wife during the upcoming election. When ordering a mail-in ballot for himself, he decided to request one for her as well. The request was honored and he filled them both out and mailed them in. Unfortunately for 62-year-old Larry Wiggins, the discrepancy was noticed when the ballots arrived at the office of the Supervisor of Elections. Wiggins was investigated and arrested. The excuse he offered was a novel one, however. He wasn’t trying to commit election fraud. He was just “testing the system.”<\/p>\n
\nCalifornia’s Prop 16 would repeal Prop 209, which states as follows: “The state shall not discriminate against, or grant preferential treatment to, any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity or national origin in the operation of public employment, public education, and public contracting.”<\/p>\n
\nVoter interest in the 12 measures appearing on the November ballot is growing as election day gets closer. This is particularly true with Proposition 15, driven, no doubt, by the media attention and the amount of spending by both sides on political advertising.<\/p>\n
\nCalifornia’s tarnished Republican Party is hoping to rebound in a handful of U.S. House races but its candidates must overcome widespread loathing for President Donald Trump and voting trends that have made the nation’s most populous state an exemplar of Democratic strength.<\/p>\n
\nA North Jersey man posted a photo on Facebook on Friday of a large quantity of mail that includes a multitude of ballots, strewn adjacent to a dumpster.<\/p>\n
\nEd wrote on Saturday about the first cheating claim in the curious case of Cal Cunningham, a man presently distinguished by three things.<\/p>\n
\nThe title question is one being brought up in a USA Today editorial by Aaron Kall. Generally, ratings for the veep debate tend to be lower than the presidential confrontations, in keeping with John Garner’s proclamation that the vice presidency was “not worth a bucket of warm piss.” (The more polite version using the word “spit” was actually a misquote.) But have recent events dramatically changed this dynamic as Kall suggests? We’re talking about more than just network ratings here. He’s positing a situation where the voters are going to be paying a lot more attention because some of them will base their choice on the bottom of the ticket rather than the top.<\/p>\n
\nHas the American electorate turned the corner on 2020’s crises \u2014 and taken aim at their normal core focus? Almost thirty years ago, James Carville proved prophetic by telling Bill Clinton’s campaign team that “it’s the economy, stupid” when it comes to presidential elections. In a year that started out with impeachment and has featured a pandemic, an unprecedented shutdown and isolation, race-related riots, and crime spikes not seen in a generation, does that still hold true?<\/p>\n
\nQuestioners openly supported Dems prior to Florida town hall<\/p>\n
\nThere are many reasons to take issue with Peter Beinart’s provocative New York Times piece calling for “international intervention” in the aftermath of the November election. One important question, though, stands out: Just who, according to Beinart, should do the intervening? <\/p>\n
\nThe battle for control of the Senate next year has gotten a lot tighter than I would have projected as recently as the beginning of summer. Looking at the current state of play, The Democrats are in pretty good shape to lock up 49 seats barring any major surprises, while the GOP seems to have 48 that they should win. That leaves three seats up for grabs in Montana, Iowa and North Carolina. The Democrats need to win at least one of those if Joe Biden somehow takes the White House or two if Donald Trump secures a second term. One of the three just became a lot more problematic for Chuck Schumer and his friends, however.<\/p>\n
\nEvery now and then, you’ll see a demonstration of support for a Republican, like Trump, in some heavily Democratic area and some people will choose to interpret it as a sign that either there’s a silent majority being activated, or the area is turning less Democratic than it used to be, or it is an indication of some shocking Republican victory coming down the pike.<\/p>\n
\nThis was a real debate, a good debate. It was one of the best debates associated with a presidential election that I can recall.<\/p>\n
\nMy instinct when Trump announced that he was backing out of the virtual townhall debate this morning was that Biden should insist the show must go on, whether or not the president attends.<\/p>\n
\nIsaac Schorr argues that last night’s debate was “Mike Pence’s final audition for the 2024 GOP primary. He aced that audition, and very well could become president one day.” I agree that Pence generally did well, and reminded Republicans of what it is like to have a normal, competent, articulate spokesman for their ideas on the stage \u2014 while doing so in the person of a man whom Donald Trump’s most devoted supporters can trust not to throw the president under the bus. If a Republican primary was held today to replace Trump, Pence would surely be the frontrunner.<\/p>\n
\nA new poll of the Montana Senate race, conducted October 5\u20137 by Emerson, shows Republican incumbent Steve Daines leading his Democratic challenger Steve Bullock by 9 points<\/p>\n
\nAt some point during last night’s vice presidential debate, perhaps about 20 minutes in, it became clear that Susan Page wasn’t moderating the debate. Mike Pence was. <\/p>\n
\nBiden leads Trump 46 percent to 41 percent in the latest Marquette poll of likely Wisconsin voters. The results reveal that Trump’s populist instincts have led him to say and do some very unpopular things<\/p>\n
\nDiscarded mail, included voter ballots, were discovered Wednesday by a citizen in Twentynine Palms and Joshua Tree, according to San Bernardino County sheriff’s officials.<\/p>\n
\nCunningham: Tillis “has now resorted to trying to make this campaign about something other than the issues. But we know, I know, this campaign is about your hopes and your dreams.”<\/p>\n
\nIt’s the classic re-election question, and it produces a classic mixed-bag result for Gallup in its polling. Do Americans believe themselves to be better off than they were four years ago? That seems like a pretty dangerous question for Donald Trump and his campaign, given the COVID-19 pandemic and the economic devastation that the shutdowns have wrought.<\/p>\n
\nSenator Ted Cruz is warning Republicans that the election climate is “volatile,” but Donald Trump could still win the election by a large margin if voters are optimistic about the economy.<\/p>\n
\nWhen police arrested Zul Mirza Mohamed on suspicion of voter fraud Wednesday night, prosecutors say, the candidate for mayor in Carrollton, Texas, was stuffing envelopes with mail-in ballot applications to send to Dallas County.<\/p>\n
\n“if this is a battle over style and substance \u2026 this was Mike Pence’s night”<\/p>\n
\nFifty-six percent say yes, according to a new Gallup poll. In 2012, when Barack Obama was running for re-election, only 45 percent agreed. On the other hand, only 31 percent of Americans think the country is heading in the right direction, according to the RealClearPolitics average of polls. That figure has been underwater since June of 2009, when the news was that the Great Recession had ended, although it was as high as 40 percent just before the pandemic became the primary news story. In any case, the divergence between the Gallup number and President Trump’s approval ratings suggest his personal style is not doing him any favors. But to flip that around: Should Joe Biden be elected president primarily because voters dislike Trump’s personality, it would be a huge mistake for the Democratic party to think the country is begging to be led in a completely different direction. Democrats, of course, always mistake winning an election for a mandate for massive change.<\/p>\n
\nI’m sure Steve Scully is breathing a sigh of relief.<\/p>\n
\nCunnigham was asked four times if there were other women he’d had affairs with. He repeatedly refused to answer, instead telling reporters he had “taken responsibility for the hurt that I’ve caused in my personal life.”<\/p>\n
\nPresident Donald Trump needs to copy Joe Biden’s campaign strategy and disappear into a basement.<\/p>\n<\/a>Gun Rights<\/h1>\n
\nA few weeks ago we discussed the situation in Philadelphia, where prospective gun buyers (of the legal variety) are being told that they will have to wait for months or, in some cases, a year and a half to apply for a permit. The reason being offered by the city is that they have an unprecedented backlog of people looking to go through the application process and insufficient resources available to meet the demand because of the pandemic. That comes as little consolation to all of the people who have suddenly taken an interest in their Second Amendment rights as their neighborhoods are engulfed in flames and street violence.<\/p>\n
\nOver one-fifth of Americans who have a gun in their household have added one since the Black Lives Matter anti-police protests began in late May and feel safer because they’ve done so.<\/p>\n
\n“You don’t need a gun,” is one of the most popular arguments of anti-Second Amendment crowd. The right to bear arms, critics say, was invented by men in powdered wigs who owned flintlock muskets and didn\u2019t have a modern police force to protect them. My reductionist answer is, “better safe than sorry!” But Antonin Scalia Law School\u2019s David Bernstein has written an eye-opening paper on the upside of gun ownership during the recent deterioration of law and order. You can read the whole thing here.<\/p>\n
\nGun sales are way up this year. State police say, the third quarter of 2020 was the busiest in history for the state’s instant check system.<\/p>\n<\/a>Hide the Decline<\/h1>\n
Environment &
\n“Green Energy”<\/h2>\n
\nSacramento’s pursuit of green justice fails to protect both mountain lions and humans effectively.<\/p>\n
\nAccording to NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, “NATO must help to curb climate change for our security today and for the security of future generations.”, so “NATO must do more to fully understand and integrate climate change into our all aspects of our work”. <\/p>\n
\nSuicide is viewed as a crime in many countries. In a court of law, it is a serious charge and the evidence needs to be conclusive for such an accusation to stand (e.g., did you actually see him attempt to jump off the bridge?). But when societies (or at least their leaders) attempt it, one can say that it safely falls under the rubric of the sovereign right to misrule oneself. In the hallowed tradition of Western liberal democracy, so long as its political leaders are elected in free and fair elections, misrule leading to societal death by suicide is merely an unfortunate outcome of either gross negligence or culpable intention led by, say, a death-cult ideology. Nevertheless, let us proceed with the case for the prosecution.<\/p>\n
\n“Using longer sediment cores (888 cm) and more reliable age-control, this study revises and temporally expands a previous study from TPBH [the Bahamas] that underestimated the sedimentation rate. TPBH records at least 13?=?category 2 hurricanes per century between 1500 to 1670 CE, which exceeds the 9?=?category 2 hurricanes per century within 50 km of TPBH since 1850 CE. The eastern United States also experienced frequent hurricanes from 1500 to 1670 CE, but frequency was depressed elsewhere in the Atlantic Ocean. This suggests that spatial heterogeneity in Atlantic hurricane activity since 1850 CE could have persisted throughout the last millennium.”<\/p>\n<\/a>Obamacare<\/h1>\n
Government in Healthcare<\/h2>\n
\nWhile millions of Americans have lost their health insurance during the COVID-19 pandemic and differing healthcare policies have dominated the campaign trail, an effort to compromise on coverage is gaining momentum in Congress.<\/p>\n<\/a>War & Terror<\/h1>\n