Why I Am Voting

by John Porter: Someone said, "in just under three months the U.S. presidential election will be over."

It will not be the end of the world, but maybe the end of our nation, as we have known it.

I will not be voting for a man, per se. I am not rallying for a personality. I am not pushing a person. At this point, I will be voting for  the principles for which this country has stood since its founding. I will be voting for Constitutional government.

I will also be voting for:

• a strong and viable military
• a vibrant economy
• lower, reasonable income taxes.
• the right to keep and bear arms
• supporting our police officers and law and order
• the freedom to worship
• a national recognition of the founding of our nation on Biblical principles
• opportunities for anyone to rise above their circumstances and become successful to the best of their ability
• my children and grandchildren to be able to choose their own path in life including how and where their children are educated
• our borders to be open to anyone who wishes to enter under our immigration laws
• our borders to be closed to everyone who would circumvent or ignore those laws.
• the Electoral College to remain in place, so that a few heavily populated liberal centers do not decide the election and choose our president
• a Supreme Court that interprets the Constitution rather than rewrites it
• our actual history to be taught, with all of it’s warts, and not not erase it or revise it
• voting for the sanctity of life from conception to birth and after

Now, there are some things I will be voting against:

• open borders
• the burning, pillaging and destruction of our cities
• rampant welfare system that enslaves it’s recipients
• outlandishly higher income taxes
• socialism, in all of its forms, including health care
• redistribution & reparations
• governmental control of individuals and businesses through regulations
• pedophilia
• criminal releases before their sentence is served. I would rather pay for prison reform than see the criminals released to repeatedly commit the same crimes!

The bottom line: although I don’t give blanket approval to everything President Trump has done or said, I will be voting for him as president because he stands with me in all those things I will be voting for! 

Thus, I will be voting against Joe Biden and his party because they stand for and represent all those things I stand against! 

I would rather die on my feet fighting than to live on my knees in subjugation!  We only have until November 3, just under three months, to decide whether we want to live free under our Constitution or live in slavery under Socialism.

I have made my decision. Now, it for you to make your decision.
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John Porter is an Americans first, constitutional conservatives second. His allegiance is to the Constitution. He seeks to help save America from the grips of socialism and an all powerful, intrusive government, and from the evil of Islam. He is a contributing author to the ARRA News Service.

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Biden's Speech, Democrat Darkness, Pelosi Goes Postal

Gary Bauer

by Gary Bauer: Biden's Speech
Former Vice President Joe Biden did what he had to do last night. He delivered a coherent acceptance speech that made the case for his candidacy. His delivery was more than passable, and the media rejoiced!

Pollster Frank Luntz summed up the election well this morning when he said this:

"The Democrats are trying to make this a referendum on Donald Trump, not his policies, not the issues, but on Donald Trump himself. [Trump] needs to make it a referendum on Joe Biden's policies because his [Biden's] persona is very positive.

"[Voters] have to choose between Trump, who they agree with in terms of issues but disagree with his personality, or Joe Biden, who they like but don't agree with what he wants to do."

But I do take issue with something in Luntz's remarks. Voters inclined to think Biden is a decent man need to think again. There's a lot I could say about his speech last night, but I will focus on just three glaring lies.

• Biden again repeated the disgusting lie that President Trump called white supremacists and neo-Nazis at Charlottesville "very fine people." President Trump did not say that. He specifically said that they should be "condemned totally."
• Biden accused the president of turning "a blind eye to Russian bounties on the heads of American soldiers." This is another hoax. There were unconfirmed reports and the president was never briefed on them. But we do know that Iran was paying the Taliban to kill American troops, and Biden is silent about that. Worse, he wants to reward Tehran with another nuclear bailout deal.
• Biden also said that he would "not put up with foreign interference in our most sacred democratic exercise – voting." Well, that's exactly what the Obama/Biden Administration did when they discovered that Russia was meddling in the 2016 election. In fact, national security officials were ordered to "stand down."

Here are some additional observations about the Democrat National Convention.

• Democrats spent a lot of time showcasing washed up former Republicans who are now politicians without a party. They will never be accepted in the Democrat Party, and they have betrayed the party that made them who they are.
• They spent virtually no time presenting a platform or discussing policy ideas and a lot of time trying to politicize a virus. They claimed Trump did nothing and has no plan. That's false. (Here and here.)
• They offered no real solutions to the pandemic other than shutting the country down again, allowing no more than 10 people in churches and national masks mandates (presumably with criminal penalties), even though the science shows the virus does not effectively spread outside.
• More significantly, by the time the election is over and inauguration day has taken place, the odds are overwhelming that the coronavirus will be fading into the background as a sad chapter in American history. Before inauguration day, we likely will have not one but several vaccines. We likely will have multiple drugs to treat the virus. And the economic recovery will be well under way.

Democrat Darkness
The Democrats' dim view of our country was on full display all week. Biden continued the theme last night, suggesting that this election was a choice between darkness and light. Meanwhile, two huge issues were totally ignored -- the major darkness descending on us domestically and the darkness that is descending internationally.

The domestic darkness is what descends on our cities every night. It covers the spectrum from ideologically driven rioters and mobs that threaten civilization to the vicious drug cartels, crime syndicates and gangs that turn cities like Chicago into killing fields once the sun goes down.

The second great darkness comes from abroad. Communist China is rising economically and militarily. Joe Biden has said this is a good thing. It is not.

China is marrying technology with oppression in ways never before seen in the world. Politicians like Joe Biden have watched cluelessly as 60,000 U.S. factories closed and millions of jobs were sent to Chinese serfs. Not content to merely watch it happen, the Biden family figured out a way to get rich while it happened.

While the cultural left that lives within the Democrat Party has taught their children to hate our country, hundreds of millions of Chinese youth burn with a patriotic passion and believe their day to rule is coming soon. To Joe Biden, Kamala Harris and their party, this major threat was not worth one sentence.

Even when they were demagoguing the virus they could not bring themselves to call it by the country of its origin, communist China.

Good News
The latest readings from the U.S. purchasing managers index show surprisingly strong economic activity. The figure for the manufacturing sector hit 53.6 – the highest reading since January of 2019. The figure for the services sector hit 54.8 – highest since February of 2019. Both numbers were well above estimates.

In addition, sales of existing homes soared nearly 25% last month, posting the biggest monthly gains since 1968. And sales prices are also up 8.5%.

Along with last week's retail sales figures, which surged back to pre-pandemic levels – this is incredibly encouraging news, suggesting that the economic recovery is well on track.

Pelosi Goes Postal
Speaker Nancy Pelosi has cut short the August recess and called the House of Representatives back into session in order to pass an emergency bailout bill for the United States Post Office this weekend as her party obsesses over mail-in voting.

Needless to say, the optics of this move aren't good, and her party knows it. Democrats are blocking another stimulus deal for the economy and emergency aid for the American people while she wants to bail out the Post Office!

More than 100 House Democrats sent the speaker a letter this week urging her to consider adding some additional items for the American people and small businesses to her agenda, but so far "Postal Pelosi" has refused.

Referring to the stalemate in negotiations between the White House and congressional Democrats, Pelosi recently quipped, "We have a vast difference in our values."

I'd certainly say so. Billions for the Post Office and nothing for the American people.

Hypocrisy The Chicago Way
Twenty-one people were shot in Chicago not last weekend, but this <Wednesday. The shocking violence that used to be limited to the weekends is now becoming a regular occurrence.

Meanwhile, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot is in a heap of hypocrisy. She's taking heat for shutting down protests . . . in the neighborhood where she lives. According to reports, as many as 140 police officers are guarding the mayor's home.

High-end stores in the Miracle Mile can be looted. Ronald McDonald houses can be ransacked. Children can be gunned down in the streets every single day. But don't you dare think about protesting outside Mayor Lightfoot's home!

And Lightfoot is unapologetic. "I have a right to make sure that my home is secure," she said.

Really? Well, I'm sure every law-abiding resident in gun-controlled Chicago feels the same way. I'm sure Mark and Patricia McCloskey of St. Louis felt the same way when they tried to defend their home from a mob. Now they're being prosecuted by left-wing politicians like Lightfoot.
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Gary Bauer (@GaryLBauer)  is a conservative family values advocate and serves as president of American Values and chairman of the Campaign for Working Families

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Tags: Gary Bauer, Campaign for Working Families, Biden's Speech, Democrat Darkness, Pelosi Goes Postal To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!

The Light and the Darkness: Biden Got It Backwards

by Newt Gingrich: Vice President Joe Biden delivered the best speech of his career. It was so well written it could have been done by the speechwriters for Presidents Bill Clinton or Barack Obama. They are the two best orators in the modern Democratic Party, and the tone, pacing and word choices of Biden’s speech were worthy of their better performances.

Biden did not seem to have plagiarized any of the speech, which was a step up from his past performances. And, Biden delivered the speech well, with the right emotions at key points and the right forcefulness at other moments.

In fact, Biden did so well he put in sharp contrast how stiff and stilted Sen. Kamala Harris had been in her speech the night before. If you watch her acceptance speech carefully, it has the cadence and awkwardness of a high school valedictorian’s speech. At times she was clearly looking for audience affirmation that she was OK.

However, while the Biden acceptance speech was a tactical success and ended the Democrat’s convention week on a high point, it may have strategically set up the rest of the campaign to Biden’s enormous disadvantage.

His theme of “the light and the darkness” is a theme President Donald Trump should embrace, embellish upon, and emphasize again and again.

Let the American people decide where the darkness is and who is creating it.

Neither Biden nor Harris could comment about Antifa violence in Portland, which is now going beyond 90 days. Isn’t that part of the darkness?

Neither Biden nor Harris could comment on Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot announcing she had lost control of the city and was deploying police to protect her own block, saying:
“I have an obligation to keep my home, my wife, my 12-year-old, and my neighbors safe. The deployments that are there are there when they are necessary – it’s not a 24-hour thing and I think that residents of the city, understanding the nature of the threats that we are receiving on a daily basis, understand that I have a right to make sure that my home is secure.”Isn’t it darkness which leads to police protection for the elected aristocracy but increased danger and violence for everyday citizens?

In city after city, crime rates are skyrocketing, and assaults and homicides are rising rapidly. This is happening because of George Soros-supported, left-wing prosecutors are protecting criminals, and radical local politicians are seeking to defund (or in Biden’s clever language “reallocate money away from”) police departments. Where is the Biden-Harris condemnation of the growing crime and increasingly emboldened criminals in the cities their Democratic Party runs? Isn’t that part of the darkness?

Neither Biden nor Harris could comment on the darkness created by teachers’ unions. When the power-hungry union leadership threatens to cripple the future of children unless radical demands are met, the most Biden can say is we have to strengthen unions. But isn’t a power structure that cheats children in favor of blackmailing communities on political issues a part of the darkness?

Biden and Harris want us to believe that they are proud of America and want to unify Americans. Biden went so far as to even quote the Declaration of Independence (something which must have jarred the left-wing, anti-American part of his coalition). However, neither candidate could bring his- or herself to defend historic American statues and memorials or condemn those who break the law to destroy and deface them. Yet aren’t these radical forces of destruction an example of the darkness?

Biden’s speech talked about the importance of job creation, but his campaign promises massive tax increases, radical crippling of the fossil fuel industry, massive reregulation, and other job killing actions. Wasn’t the slow growth, high unemployment, and massive increase in dependency on government a major part of the darkness for American families?

Ironically, Biden quoted his father on the importance of a job as a source of dignity (sounding almost like Ronald Reagan as he said it). Yet, his policies would increase dependency, guarantee slow growth, and revert to hamstringing the economic future of minorities. Wouldn’t that be darkness for the families left behind?

By contrast, the Trump policies did lead to the lowest Black and Latino unemployment rates in history – and the fastest modern wage increases for workers at the bottom of the ladder. Shouldn’t these achievements be considered a sign of the light?

When Biden talked about the Chinese virus (albeit briefly), he made three major mistakes.

First, he promised to provide a slew of new equipment and technology to fight the virus – which President Trump already has underway. In fact, I don’t think there was a single thing in that section of the speech that the Trump Administration isn’t already doing. So, since that was going to be part of Biden’s light, shouldn’t it count as light when done by President Trump?

Second, Biden (and the Democrats in general) refuse to admit that the worst virus responses are in states run by Democrats – and that Gov. Andrew Cuomo in particular made policy mistakes which unnecessarily killed roughly 6,000 to 8,000 senior citizens and led New York state to represent about 20 percent of the virus deaths in America. It is odd that Democratic governors, with their much stricter shutdowns, have had more deaths than Republican governors who took more economically cautious approaches. Is having people still alive an example of light? Isn’t having people dying an example of darkness?

Third, the Obama-Biden record on managing a new virus was a disaster. As Kimberley Strassel reported: “Former Biden chief of staff Ron Klain said at Texas A&M in 2019: ‘We did every possible thing wrong. Sixty million Americans got H1N1 in that period of time, and it is just purely a fortuity that this isn’t one of the great mass-casualty events in American history. [It] had nothing to do with us doing anything right; just had to do with luck. If anyone thinks that can’t happen again, they don’t have to go back to 1918. Just go back to 2009, 2010. Imagine a virus with a different lethality, and you can just do the math.”

Biden misrepresenting, as usual, his role in virus management under Obama is darkness rather than light.

This thematic of light versus darkness was good for one night for the Democrats – but it was good for the rest of the campaign for President Trump and the Republicans.
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Newt Gingrich (@newtgingrich) is a former Georgia Congressman and Speaker of the U.S. House. He co-authored and was the chief architect of the "Contract with America" and a major leader in the Republican victory in the 1994 congressional elections. He is noted speaker and writer. This commentary was shared via Gingrich Productions.

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Tags: Newt Gingrich, The Light and the Darkness, Joe Biden, Got It Backwards To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!

WaPo Cheers Biden's Phony Call for Unity

. . . Does anyone remember how its editors treated President Trump's Inaugural Address?

by Nate Jackson: “Why Biden’s nomination is actually a bold choice.” Such was the headline from today’s hagiographic editorial by The Washington Post.

It began, “Promising that ‘united we can and will overcome this season of darkness,’ Joe Biden accepted on Thursday the Democratic nomination for president.”

Darkness was indeed a theme of Biden’s speech. He also blamed Donald Trump — though he never once named the president — of having “cloaked America in darkness for too long.” One might almost suspect that Biden was colluding with The Washington Post, which infamously introduced a new motto for the first time in 2017: “Democracy Dies in Darkness.”

For 140 years, the Post published without a motto. Just one month after Donald Trump’s inauguration, however, the paper — owned since 2013 by uber-leftist billionaire Jeff Bezos — decided it was time to stand against this particular president. Its Trump Derangement Syndrome has been about as bad as it gets.

Thus, all the Post could do was coo about how Biden “relentlessly pivoted back to a message of unity” while giving an “invitation to all Americans to join in a more hopeful vision [that] represents welcome and dramatic change.”

That combined with the paper’s dramatic shift in 2017 prompted your humble Patriot Post staff to locate The Washington Post’s 2017 editorial about Trump’s Inaugural Address, which also heavily promoted unity. The new president then declared:Whether we are black or brown or white, we all bleed the same red blood of Patriots, we all enjoy the same glorious freedoms, and we all salute the same great American flag.

And whether a child is born in the urban sprawl of Detroit or the windswept plains of Nebraska, they look up at the same night sky, they fill their heart with the same dreams, and they are infused with the breath of life by the same almighty Creator.The Post could do nothing but deride his speech. “Trump leaves America’s better angels behind,” it harrumphed. Trump did indeed paint a dark picture … of the deeds done by powerful establishment interests in the Post’s hometown of DC. But he could hardly have been more unifying for Americans who live outside the Beltway. Given that Biden has spent nearly 50 years in the nation’s capital, maybe that’s why it’s so clear he’s the WaPo’s man.

Some parting questions for the sagacious scribes on the Post’s editorial board: Have you bothered to look around at who is burning down American cities? Have you noticed who is fomenting that discord to win back power in Washington? For four years, the Democrats’ entire “platform” has been to sow fear, anger, and division in America. And the Leftmedia has gladly helped them do it.
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Nate Jackson writes for The Patriot Post.

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Tags: Nate Jackson, The Patriot Post, WaPo Cheers Biden's, Phony Call, for Unity To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!

Technology

by Kerby Anderson: Andrew McDiarmid is a media specialist at the Discovery Institute and author of a blog that attempts to apply biblical principles to technology. He was on my radio program recently to talk about an article posted on the Breakpoint website.

The global pandemic has affected our lives in countless ways. One of the most concerning is the reality that our screen time has skyrocketed. We are now relying on technology companies more than ever. He concludes that the “pandemic has given many tech companies a golden opportunity to solve our daily pain points and get us hooked on their products and services.”

This leads to an interesting irony. We have more digital technology available to us than ever before, but we seem more unhappy than ever before. “As Christians, we want to be a witness for Christ and use the gifts God has given us to live purposeful lives and build his kingdom. But when our use of technology becomes automatic and unthinking, our health and well-being” are at risk.

He recommends that we take stock of the technology we already have in our lives, especially the digital technology of gadgets and screens. Are we using technology tools merely to waste time? Do these new devices and services keep us from thinking for ourselves? Do they enable us to use our God-given abilities and spiritual gifts? Do these digital technologies help us to accomplish what God has called us to do?

These are good questions and require that we begin to set boundaries. He admits that “knowing where to draw the line between things you think through yourself and thinking you delegate to a computer can be difficult.” All of this requires thoughtful analysis of the tech tools you bring into your life and a careful evaluation of how you will be using them.
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Kerby Anderson @KerbyAnderson) is an author, lecturer, visiting professor and radio host and contributor on nationally syndicated Point of View and the "Probe" radio programs.

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Usurping Or Preserving Private Property?

by Gary M. Galles: Beginning Nov. 5, three centuries ago, Cato’s Letters appeared in the London Journal. In them, John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon set out “to maintain and expose the glorious principles of liberty, and to expose the arts of those who would darken or destroy them.”

Collections of Cato’s Letters, reflecting the ideas of John Locke, were widely circulated, admired and cited in England and the colonies. And they provided common ground and expression for colonists’ claims than England was refusing them their rights. In particular, Cato’s Letters’ defense of private property rights – the foundation of liberty – which so powerfully influenced our founding, merits revisiting before an election in which the security of our rights in ourselves and our property are a central concern.The sole end of men’s entering into political societies was mutual protection and defense; and whatever power does not contribute to those purposes is not government, but usurpation.

The security of [people’s] persons and property is their highest aim.

Preservation of [property] is the principal business of government.

If the people are suffered to keep their own, it is the most that they desire: But … they are frequently robbed by those whom they pay to protect them.

As the preservation of property is the source of national happiness; whoever violates property, or lessens or endangers it … is an enemy to his country.

Every plowman knows a good government from a bad one … whether the fruits of his labor be his own, and whether he enjoy them in peace and security.

One man is only safe, while it is in the interest of another to let him alone.

Nor could any man … have a right to violate the property of another … No man therefore could transfer to the magistrate that right which he had not himself.

The fruits of a man’s honest industry are [his] just rewards … as is his title to use them in the manner which he thinks fit: And thus … every man is sole lord and arbiter of his own private actions and property … no man living can divest him but by usurpation, or by his own consent.

The security of property and the freedom of speech always go together … where a man cannot call his tongue his own, he can scarce call anything else his own.

Every man is in nature and reason the judge and disposer of his own domestic affairs … Government [is] intended to protect men from the injuries of one another, and not to direct them in their own affairs.

Men have been knocked down for saying that they had a right to defend their property by force, when a tyrant attempted to rob them of it against law.

Let people alone, and they will take care of themselves, and do it best … without the magistrate’s interposition and penalties.

The privileges of … doing what we please, and of growing rich as we can, without any other restriction, other than that by all this we hurt not the public, nor one another, are the glorious privileges of liberty; and its effects, to live in freedom, plenty, and safety.

Where liberty is thoroughly established, and its laws equally executed, every man will find his own account in doing as he would be done unto, and no man will take from another what he would not part with himself…The property of the poor will be as sacred as the privileges of the prince, and the law will be the only bulwark of both. Every man’s honest industry and useful talents, while they are employed for the public, will be employed for himself.

Where there is liberty … people labor for themselves, and no one can take from them the acquisitions which they make by their labor.

To live securely, happily, and independently, is the end and effect of liberty … all men are animated by the passion of acquiring and defending property, because property is the best support of that independency.

Chose whether you will be freemen or vassals; whether you will spend your own money and estates, or let others worse than you spend them for you.

Dominion will always desire increase, and property always to preserve itself … by this struggle liberty is preserved.

To prevent the unfair gains and depredations of one another … is indeed the business of the government; viz. to secure to every one his own.

The first care which wise governors will always take is … to secure to them the possession of their property, upon which everything else depends.Cato’s Letters reflected Locke’s ideas of natural rights, and were, in turn, reflected in America’s founding. As we will vote just days from the tricentennial of the first installment, their commitment to the conjoined twins of liberty and private property merits serious reconsideration today. We should remember that someone who would undermine the rights of individuals to their property cannot defend, much less expand, our common liberty.
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Gary M. Galles is a professor of economics at Pepperdine University, Contributed to Issues & Insights.

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The Democrat Convention Ends...Finally!

Mike Huckabee

by Mike Huckabee: The Democrats’ virtual convention ended Thursday at nearly midnight, and never has the phrase, “Thank God it’s Friday,” held so much meaning. If you want to see the whole thing, you masochist, you, it’s here.

Here are the far more entertaining liveblogs of the highlights from PJ Media…

And from Townhall.com…

And here are five important takeaways from the final night:

I’m too burned out (and frankly, after four days of this dour, angry, bitter convention, just too weary and relieved it’s over) to go into detail about all of night four (although I will say they needed better joke writers).

If you saw any of the first three nights, it was mostly more the same. Lots of Trump-bashing and gloom and doom about America, with hardly a word about China or the shocking violence in the streets of Democrat-run cities. So I’ll concentrate on the “big reveal”: Biden’s acceptance speech. There was a lot of buzz beforehand, not so much about what he would say but how he would say it, or if he would get through it at all. So here are the two most important points:

1. He did a surprisingly good job of presenting the speech. It was a long speech (maybe too long), but he presented it well with no major gaffes and without wandering off-topic or the stage. He was emotional, at times angry (maybe too angry), but controlled and professional. He definitely allayed any fears that he might not be able to perform at least the Presidential function of reading a speech off a Teleprompter. That sounds like a low bar to clear (although it was Obama's chief skill), but it’s not meant as an insult: a lot of people were genuinely concerned that he couldn’t clear it, and he obviously did. I’m sure a big sigh of relief could be heard in the control room and in every Democratic household in America.

2. The substance of the speech is where the many problems lay. It was a mess of contradictions of things we all have lived through and of everything his fellow Democrats have said over the past three nights. Probably the most stunning “What the...?!!” moment was Biden’s claim that when he heard Donald Trump say there were “very fine people” among the violent neo-Nazis in Charlottesville, “at that moment, I knew I had to run.” Problem: Trump never said that.

Trump said he was sure there were fine people on both sides of the debate about removing a statue of Robert E. Lee, but as for neo-Nazis and white nationalists, they should be “condemned totally.” The quote Biden cited as the motivating factor for his run has long been verified even by liberal “fact-checkers” as fake news. So does this mean he’ll pull an Emily Litella; say, “Never mind!”; and quit the race?

This was especially stunning, considering much of Biden’s speech was an attack on Trump for allegedly not caring about “facts.” Biden’s speech was also rife with other claims that are wildly at odds with known facts. For instance, he claimed that Trump’s tax cut only benefited the rich (most of the benefits went to the middle class)…that he will ensure equal pay for women (we already have laws requiring equal pay for women)…that he will create a good-paying job through government investment in rebuilding our infrastructure and creating green energy (we heard that from Obama; it cost us hundreds of billions of dollars and even Obama admitted there were no “shovel-ready” jobs)…and that he will help workers by strengthening unions (that’s code for passing a national version of the widely-hated California law that’s destroying the state’s gig economy, putting musicians out of work, and killing Uber and Lyft in the state.) He also backs doubling the minimum wage, which has cost jobs and shuttered small businesses everywhere it’s been instituted. Real facts: under Trump, wages were rising for the first time in years, and the gains were greater among the bottom half of earners than the top half. That is, until a Chinese virus and Democrat Governors shut down the economy.

Perhaps Biden’s most stunning claim was that he will be a fighter to end the outsourcing of American jobs. This was the major issue that got Trump elected. Trump is actually bringing back jobs after years of outsourcing under Obama/Biden and previous Administrations. Fact: Biden was one of the biggest boosters of job-exporting legislation. He supported and promoted NAFTA, which cost us at least 5 million jobs and 50,000 manufacturing plants, including a Chrysler plant in Delaware that he’d promised would increase hiring. He supported normalizing trade with China, which cost us 3.4 million jobs. And he was pushing Obama’s Trans-Pacific Partnership that would have sent even more of our jobs to Asia if Trump hadn’t killed it.

He claimed that Trump has done nothing about the COVID-19 (Chinese) coronavirus except hope for some miracle to make it end (first time I’ve ever heard standard herd immunity described as a “miracle,” but okay.) Reminder: Biden criticized Trump for shutting off travel from China quickly, which was the most important factor in slowing the infection spread until we could prepare for it. Democrats predicted deadly shortages of ventilators and hospital rooms, which didn’t happen because of Trump’s actions; and a death toll of 2.2 million. Yes, there have been 170,000 deaths, which is horrible, but that’s the fault of China (and in large part, certain blue state Governors – two of whom were featured convention speakers - who insisted on putting coronavirus patients into nursing homes.) The US does not have the worst death toll in the world per capita, and we only have the largest number of deaths because we have a population of 320 million, and China is plainly lying about their death toll.

Biden claimed Trump does not listen to science. From Dr. Anthony Fauci: "The President has listened to what I have said... When I've made recommendations he's taken them. He's never countered or overridden me."

As for Biden’s bold plan to stop the virus – developing a test and forcing everyone to wear masks – there are already such tests (I drive down the street and see “Free COVID-19 tests” signs in front of every medical clinic), and he has no Constitutional authority to order everyone to wear masks. Also, five million people have NOT lost their health insurance. But a lot of people lost their policies when the Democrats passed Obamacare.

Biden claimed that kids suffer a “daily fear of being gunned down in school.” Putting aside that most kids aren’t even in school at the moment, thanks to teachers’ unions, school shootings are actually extremely rare. Although they might become less rare if Democrats defund the police and remove officers from schools. Right now, it’s far less dangerous to be in school than it is to venture into certain areas of any city that’s been run by Democrats for decades.

Biden claimed that he would not put up with foreign interference in our voting. Fact: Russia interfered in the 2016 election, and Obama and Biden did practically nothing. Well, they apparently did collude with some Russians to try to undermine the results of the election, but that’s another story.

Biden claimed that Trump will do away with the payroll tax, which will lead to cuts in Social Security. Fact: Trump has only called for a temporary suspension of the tax to help people get through the virus shutdowns. That would not affect Social Security, which has a $2.9 trillion surplus. Trump does want to do away with the tax permanently, but Congress would have to do that and arrange alternate funding.

Biden blamed Trump for this dark atmosphere of hate and negativity, even though it was the Democrats who started the “resistance” rhetoric the second Trump was elected, who have refused to accept his election, who attack him and his family 24/7/365, and who had just spent three and three-quarter nights relentlessly and hatefully bashing Trump, putting down America and its history, and painting anyone who opposes them as an angry, misinformed, racist, sexist, homophobic, Islamophobic, transphobic xenophobe. It was a pleasant surprise to hear Biden say he wants to reach out and be the President of all Americans, considering how many of us are the white supremacist spawn of an oppressive, unjust nation that’s responsible for all the evils of the past 400 years. And I’m glad he says he wants to help even those who didn’t vote for him. However, he’s running on a platform that will absolutely devastate most of those people.

One thing I learned when debating Trump myself in 2016 is that he doesn’t attack people who don’t attack him first. I followed Reagan’s 11th commandment and didn’t attack my fellow Republicans, and Trump didn’t attack me. Even though I’ve had occasion to criticize some of his comments and policies, we remain on good terms (I just taped an interview with him at the White House that will air this weekend on “Huckabee” on TBN.) It seems to me that Democrats hate him with the searing heat of a thousand suns for two real reasons: they can’t get over that Hillary lost, and Trump refuses to be a “typical Republican” and just stand there and take their unfair attacks. They would have us believe that he’s another Hitler, but they’ve compared every Republican President or nominee to Hitler or the Nazis since Truman did it to Thomas E. Dewey (only Eisenhower escaped it, but that was because he actually defeated Hitler, so even the Democrats didn’t dare try it.)

Trump actually punches back when he’s attacked, and Republicans aren’t supposed to do that. They’re supposed to be docile punching bags. That’s not Trump’s style, and frankly, it’s a big part of why the base supports him. They’re sick of being slandered as racists and fascists by people who really do act like racists and fascists. That’s where we got the term “crybullies.” Leftists love to attack others, but they cry “Bully” when anyone punches them back.

If today’s Democratic leaders really do care about all Americans and are willing to work across the aisle, then why is Nancy Pelosi citing ridiculous nonsense like the “Disappearing Mailbox Conspiracy” as a feeble excuse not to get back to work and pass extended coronavirus relief?

Speaking of Trump fighting back, here’s his response to Biden’s speech: "In 47 years, Joe did none of the things of which he now speaks. He will never change, just words!"

It is telling that, as several commentators pointed out, Biden has been in national politics for nearly half a century, but the Convention was all about the huge things he’s going to do, with almost nothing said about what he’s actually accomplished in all the years before.

TODAY'S DEMOCRATS ARE INSANE, THE NEVER-ENDING STORY...
“We Are What America Looks Like!” – Tuesday’s online Democratic Convention featured a panelist who wants to do away with police, ICE and prisons and who identifies as a “nonbinary/gender transcendent mermaid Queen-King.” Well, I guess that’s a voting bloc the Dems have a monopoly on. I know the Democrats will let people identify as anything, but claiming you’re a mermaid sounds like a fishy tale to me.

RIDICULOUS CLAIM
Since “Russian collusion” finally imploded, the Democrats’ new “Trump is rigging the election” hoax is a ridiculous claim that he’s gathering up all the mailboxes so Democrats won’t be able to mail in their ballots. If you’re dumb enough to believe that – or not to know that you can always mail a ballot at the post office, or just leave it in your own mailbox and the carrier will pick it up – then maybe you shouldn’t be voting at all.

Nancy Pelosi is trying hard to make a federal case out of it, but it’s so mind-bendingly stupid that not even the reliably liberal “fact-checking” sites can bring themselves to go along with it. For instance, here’s Politifact ruling that, no, a photo of a stack of mailboxes is NOT proof of “massive voter suppression.” It’s a photo of a company that refinishes old mailboxes for the Postal Service.

Politifact is so in the bag for the Dems that they had to stick into this story a line about Trump making a “false” claim that mail-in voting is rife with fraud (Okay, it’s rife with errors that give it a tremendous potential for fraud, is that precise enough? And of course, we all know voter fraud never happens. Oh, wait…)

But that still can’t balance out the sheer willful idiocy of this story. What’s next? “Hey, I found three stacks of crackers inside my Ritz box! It’s massive proof that Trump is trying to hide food from the poor!”

Probably shouldn’t even say that. Nancy will convene impeachment hearings.

AMNESTY
Just a warning that even if the Republicans keep the Senate, if Joe Biden gets into the White House, there’s going to be an amnesty for at least 11 million illegal immigrants, and here’s how it will happen.

VOTE-IN-PERSON
Speaking of the Democrats’ demand for mail-in voting, President Trump tweeted, “If you can protest in person, you can vote in person!” I don’t think he understands that the coronavirus can spread at polling places, but it doesn’t spread at anti-police protests. Why won’t he listen to the science?!!
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Mike Huckabee writes at MikeHuckabee.com.

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Is the Palestinian Veto Alive or Dead?

by Caroline Glick: Since Israel was established, the Palestinian veto doomed all efforts to forge peace between the Arab world and the Jewish state.

The Palestinian veto rests on a toxic proposition that Israel’s right to exist is contingent on its satisfaction of Palestinian claims against it. So long as the Palestinians say they are unappeased, Israel cannot expect the Arab world to either recognize or live at peace with it.

The very existence of the veto has ensured that the Palestinians will never be satisfied with any Israeli concession and will never agree to peaceful coexistence with the Jewish state. After all, their global and regional importance is a product of the veto. The Arabs, and much of the rest of the world support the Palestinians because they wield the veto. As holders of the veto, the Palestinians are viewed as the key — or the key obstacle — to Middle East peace. If they give up, or lose the veto, they will lose their position and power to enable or block peace and foment war and instability.

As for the Arab leaders, for generations the Palestinian veto was the key to their own power and stability. It enabled them to deflect the attention of their peoples and of the governments of the world away from their corruption, extremism and failure at home and abroad. It enabled them to scapegoat Israel blaming the Jewish state for the suffering and stagnation of their people.

Given its toxic power, abrogating the Palestinian veto has always been Israel’s highest goal. And given its centrality for both the Palestinians and the wider Arab world, for most Israelis, it seemed like a dream so impossible that it wasn’t even worth dreaming.

The peace treaties Israel signed with Egypt and Jordan were concluded while genuflecting to the Palestinian veto. Egyptian president Anwar Sadat signed Egypt’s peace deal with Israel only after he concluded a framework deal for Palestinian autonomy with then Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin.

King Hussein of Jordan only agreed to sign a peace deal with the Israeli prime minister Yitzchak Rabin after Rabin signed the Oslo peace deal with PLO chief Yassir Arafat on the White House lawn.

Since signing their peace treaties with Israel, Egypt and Jordan have continuously breached them by refusing to implement the clauses of their deals that require them to normalize their relations with Israel. Both use the Palestinian veto to justify their material breaches, which have reduced both “historic” treaties into little more than long-term ceasefires.

The big news last Thursday that with U.S. President Donald Trump’s mediation, Israel and the United Arab Emirates have agreed to develop full diplomatic ties is being presented as a strategic earthquake. This is so not because the announced deal advances commercial ties between the countries, nor is it being presented in this manner because the deal advances the Israeli-Arab campaign to prevent Iran from advancing its nuclear weapons program. While the deal does both of those things, it is being presented as a strategic earthquake because policymakers and commentators proclaim that it abrogated the Palestinian veto.

If these claims are true, then last Thursday Israel’s diplomatic standing was transformed. The most powerful and successful state in the Middle East is no longer a regional scapegoat.

There can be no greater blow to the likes of the UN and the BDS campaigners than that.

If the veto has been thrown into history’s trash heap, then Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu won’t simply be remembered as the greatest statesman Israel has known. He will be remembered as a diplomatic magician.

If the claims that the peace deal between Israel and the UAE killed the Palestinian veto are true, then President Trump has made a greater contribution to peace in the Middle East than all his predecessors combined.

Jimmy Carter may have mediated the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty of 1979, but according to members of Israel’s delegation to the peace talks, far from facilitating the deal, Carter used the Palestinian veto to try to block it.

Carter insisted that Israel and Egypt agree to an autonomy deal for the Palestinians and only conclude the peace deal between them, after it was finalized. The autonomy plan agreed to at Camp David formed the basis of the bloody Oslo framework for peace between Israel and the PLO 14 years later. Its trail of terror, anti-Semitism and suffering led to a 20-year impasse.

George H.W. Bush bowed to the Palestinian veto twice during his tenure. First Bush bowed to the veto by excluding Israel from his grand coalition against Saddam Hussein ahead of the Gulf War and by forcing Israel to stand down in the face of unprovoked Iraqi Scud missile attacks against it throughout the ensuing war.

After the war, Bush again bowed to the Palestinian veto in setting up the Madrid Peace conference and the subsequent negotiations between Israel and various Arab parties to reflect its position that Israel had to satisfy the Palestinians’ unsatisfiable demands as a condition for wider peace between Israel and the Arab world.

Bill Clinton and George W. Bush genuflected to the Palestinian veto by distinguishing between Palestinian terror against Israelis and all other terror against all other people.

As for Barack Obama, the former president’s entire Middle East policy was based embracing the Palestinian narrative that Israel’s right to exist was contingent on its willingness to concede to the Palestinians demands. That is, the Obama administration believed the Palestinian rejection of Israel was justified.

Trump is the first U.S. President who hasn’t used the Palestinian veto to pressure Israel. Instead, he has worked to cancel the veto and bring actual peace, based on shared interests between the Palestinians and the wider Arab world and Israel.

In light of the groundbreaking disparity between Trump’s approach to the Palestinian veto and that of his predecessors the central question when assessing the Israel-UAE peace deal is does it or does it not abrogate the Palestinian veto?

If it hasn’t ended the veto, then the deal is a positive development. But it isn’t a strategic earthquake. If it has ended the veto, then unlike the peace deals that preceded it, the Israel-UAE deal represents the start of a new era of stability and peace between the Arab world and the Jewish state. If the deal put the Palestinian veto out to pasture, then it is worthy of the name Ambassador David Friedman has given it “The Abraham Treaty,” as the children of Isaac and Ishmael accept once again their brotherhood.

There is only one way to test the nature of the deal: by assessing how it has affected Israel’s sovereignty plan.

Israel’s sovereignty plan as put forward by Netanyahu involves applying Israeli sovereignty to its communities in Judea and Samaria and to the Jordan Valley, Israel’s frontier zone with the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan in accordance with the vision for peace set out in Trump’s peace plan.

The press release the White House published last Thursday announcing the Israel-UAE the peace deal said, “As a result of this diplomatic breakthrough and at the request of President Trump with the support of the United Arab Emirates, Israel will suspend declaring sovereignty over areas outlined in the President’s Vision for Peace and focus its efforts now on expanding ties with other countries in the Arab and Muslim world.”

The statement’s meaning is unclear. UAE leaders claim that Israel’s sovereignty plan is dead in the water. If they are correct, then the Israel-UAE deal did not end the Palestinian veto. Israel did not receive “peace for peace” as Netanyahu and others claim. It received peace in exchange for the suspension of its sovereign rights in Judea and Samaria.

Netanyahu has minimized the significance of the UAE statements. He maintains that the sovereignty plan is still very much alive and will be implemented in due course in the not distant future.

Senior U.S. officials involved in the discussions that led to the peace deal including Friedman agree with Netanyahu. President Trump has given mixed messages on the issue. But in general, he has agreed that the sovereignty plan is not dead but merely “off the table for now.”

Problematically, Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and top advisor, and the U.S. official most closely identified with the peace deal has made statements more aligned with the UAE’s than with either Israel’s messaging or that of his administration colleagues.

In multiple statements in the days following the roll-out of the peace deal, Kushner has repeatedly said that the deal was born from the UAE’s desire to prevent Netanyahu from implementing the sovereignty plan. Kushner has said that the peace deal between Israel and the UAE advances the so-called “two-state solution,” which is predicated on the Palestinian veto.

Kushner has linked the deal to Israeli concessions to the Palestinians and indicated that Israel’s sovereignty plan in Judea and Samaria has indeed been cast to the wayside.

To be sure, Kushner’s statements have been gentler on Israel’s sovereignty plan than the UAE’s, but the overall impression they leave is the same: The peace deal is no earthquake. It preserves the Palestinian veto. Israel traded its plan to assert its sovereign rights in Judea and Samaria for peace with the UAE.

By diminishing the achievement thus, Kushner is singlehandedly shrinking what could be a strategic turning point into a mere speed bump on the road of chronic instability and bloodshed. Instead of upholding Trump as a statesman of historic proportions, Kushner reduces him to just another U.S. president bowing to the pathologies of the region rather than doing away with them.

It is important to note that the Palestinians aren’t the only ones who have wielded a veto. For the past 40 years, Israel has had a more limited, but still significant veto of its own. It has used its veto to mitigate the danger of the Palestinian veto and the Arab rejectionism it perpetuates. Israel’s veto has been its ability to block the sale of advanced U.S. military platforms to Arab states.

The UAE views its peace deal with Israel as a means to end Israel’s ability to block its purchase of F-35 fighter jets. Wednesday Trump indicated that the UAE’s assessment is correct when he said that the UAE’s request to purchase the fighter jets is “under review.”

If the peace deal abrogated the Israeli veto, then the notion it preserved the Palestinian veto makes even less sense.

And this is the heart of the matter. The only way the peace deal between Israel and the UAE will have lasting significance, and the only way it will distinguish Trump from his predecessors who all bowed before the Palestinian veto is if Israel implements its sovereignty plan before the presidential elections with Trump’s support. If the Palestinian veto is truly dead, then as Israel and the U.S. move forward with the sovereignty plan, they will continue to advance in their efforts to widen the circle of peace so notably advanced by the peace deal between Israel and the UAE.
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Caroline Glick is the Senior Contributing Editor of Israel Hayom and the Director of the David Horowitz Freedom Center's Israel Security Project. For more information on Ms. Glick's work, visit carolineglick.com.

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Free Lunch . . .

. . . Biden’s acceptance speech was full of empty promises and loads of phony compassion but compassion doesn’t pay the bills. Also, he never mentioned Cina or Democrat cities burning down.

Editorial Cartoon by AF "Tony" Branco

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Blue and Red America Differences Could Hurt Democrats

Michael Barone

by Michael Barone: Give Politico's chief Washington correspondent, Ryan Lizza, some credit. After Michelle Obama's speech capping the first night of the Democrats' virtual convention, he tweeted: "Story of an era in two convention speeches: Barack 04: 'There's not a black America and white America . ... there's the United States of America.' Michelle 20: 'my message won't be heard by some people' because 'we live in a nation that is deeply divided.'"

But who's to blame? Democrats like to load all the blame on President Donald Trump, and, despite their continued failure to cite evidence for his "racism," there's no denying his coarse insults have contributed to an increasing sense of national division.

Balance that off, however -- at least a bit -- by recognizing that bipartisan electoral politics inevitably divide a citizenry, as it has ours since former President James Monroe was reelected without opposition in 1820. That Era of Good Feelings ended four years later when a four-candidate deadlock made the House decide the election. It's been division ever since.

Then-Sen. Barack Obama's 2004 speech made an Illinois state legislator into a plausible presidential candidate, an African American whose election promised to smooth over racial divisions as the election of John Kennedy in 1960 smoothed over Catholic-Protestant divisions. Such hopes buoyed Obama's rapturous crowds from Denver's Mile High Stadium to Berlin's Tiergarten to Chicago's Grant Park in 2008.

The letdown came well before Donald Trump descended that Trump Tower escalator in June 2015. Gallup showed the percentage of Americans rating black-white relations as very or somewhat good plunging in Obama's second term, from 70% in 2013 to 51% in 2015. The 2014 exit poll showed 38% of voters believing "race relations in this country" had "gotten worse" in the last few years, versus 20% saying they'd "gotten better."

Plainly, there was a sense of disappointment, of optimistic and perhaps unrealistic expectations being unmet. Comments by the president and his appointees about incidents in Ferguson, Missouri, and elsewhere probably contributed to this. But it surely also reflected continuing poor conditions and relatively high crime rates in many (not all) predominantly black neighborhoods.

Distinctions between Catholics and Protestants became less visible after 1960. Distinction between blacks and whites did not after 2008.

And politically, the Obama presidency left us in an America very sharply divided into two countries. Responses to COVID-19 have widened the already sharp partisan differences between big cities and the countryside. Democrats have vastly overestimated the virus' death rate and its danger to people under 75, and have embraced stringent lockdowns and mandatory masking and social distancing. Republicans' estimates have been closer to reality, and Republican states like Florida, Texas and Arizona have taken milder measures.

Partisan media (and Democratic convention scriptwriters) have hailed Democratic New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, despite his persistence in sending infected patients to senior citizen homes and the resulting high death rates. They've denigrated Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, though his 450 COVID-19 deaths per million is a fraction of New York's 1,690.

There's also a vivid contrast between the "mostly peaceful" (translated into English: often violent) demonstrations in hip Portland and Seattle; the criminal mobs in Minneapolis and Chicago; and the relatively calm and intact exurbs and small towns.

You could argue that Democrats' extreme risk aversion and the resulting lockdowns have imposed hideous damage on Democratic turf. "New York City Is Dead Forever," read a headline by Manhattan comedy club owner James Altucher. With restaurants, bars, museums and clubs closed down; storefronts up and down the avenues boarded up; and giant office buildings near empty, a de-policed Manhattan has been transformed from a garden into a combat zone. Zoom technology threatens to make unnecessary the face-to-face interactions that have always drawn professionals there.

Teacher's union members' refusals to return to school, despite overwhelming evidence that kids don't get and don't transmit the virus, may end up promoting school choice. Colleges and universities going virtual may demonstrate their dispensability.

The partisanship that has made Democrats shun (and Republicans embrace) hydroxychloroquine has made Democrats, even those thronging to Black Lives Matter demonstrations, much more determined to vote by mail -- and prone to implausible U.S. Post Office conspiracy theories. The actual problem, misstated by Donald Trump, is that in many states, many ballots may be improperly filled out or not delivered on time. You can request a postal ballot in Michigan the Friday before the election. Good luck getting it delivered by Tuesday.

Democratic convention speakers are blaming Trump for not stamping out the virus, for the lockdowns' economic devastation and for intensified partisan rancor. He's made mistakes and missteps, but the charges are over the top. Maybe they're an attempt to cover up the differences between red and blue America, which don't work to Democrats' advantage.

Michael Barone is a senior political analyst for the Washington Examiner, resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and longtime co-author of The Almanac of American Politics.
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Michael Barone is a senior political analyst for the Washington Examiner, resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and longtime co-author of The Almanac of American Politics. H /T Rasmussen Reports.

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Will the Catholic Bishops Call Out Joe?

by Patrick Buchanan: During the South Carolina primary, Fr. Robert Morey of Florence denied Biden communion on the grounds he had excommunicated himself by taking the stand he has taken on the killing of the unborn… Had moral truth changed? Did Catholic teaching change? No, Biden changed.

As a cradle Catholic and recipient of Notre Dame’s Laetare Medal, Joe Biden is outspoken in declaring that the principles and beliefs of his Catholic faith guide his public life.

“Joe is a man of faith,” was a recurring theme at the Democratic convention that nominated him to become our second Catholic president.

Biden has often affirmed the centrality of his faith to his decisions in public life. In a video released on the eve of the convention, he credited Pope Francis and the nuns who educated him with making him the man he is today.

Yet, when the Supreme Court ruled in July that the Little Sisters of the Poor could not be forced, by an Obamacare mandate, to provide contraceptives to employees, Biden called the decision “disappointing.”

For Joe has evolved over a half-century. He is now an all-in Roe v. Wade Catholic who supports a woman’s right to abortion and believes the tax dollars of his fellow Catholics should pay for the abortions of women who cannot afford them.

This year, he changed his position and came out against the Hyde Amendment, which prohibits the use of tax dollars to pay for abortions.

What triggered Joe’s renunciation of his past support for the Hyde Amendment? Primary opponents Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris had battered him for it and Bernie Sanders had given Biden some tutoring in the new moral law of the Democratic Party.

Said the Vermont socialist, “There is no middle ground on women’s rights.” With that cuffing, Biden scurried off the middle ground and was all in.

“Circumstances have changed,” is how Biden explained his flip-flop.

Biden’s moral journey from right-to-life to pro-abortion Democrat has not gone unnoticed within the Church. A dozen years ago, when Biden was still a senator, a bishop in Scranton, with Joe in mind, declared:

“I will not tolerate any politician who claims to be a faithful Catholic who is not genuinely pro-life. … No Catholic politician who supports the culture of death should approach Holy Communion.”

During the South Carolina primary, Fr. Robert Morey of Florence denied Biden communion on the grounds he had excommunicated himself by taking the stand he has taken on the killing of the unborn.

“Holy Communion signifies we are one with God, each other, and the Church,” said Morey. “Any public figure who advocates for abortion places himself or herself out of Church teaching.”

Biden also supports the restoration of federal funds for Planned Parenthood, a provider of abortions. Nor is life the only issue on which Biden has taken his leave of the teachings of the Church in which he was raised.

n 1994, Biden voted to cut off federal funds to schools that teach an acceptance of homosexuality. In 1996, he voted for the Defense of Marriage Act.

Once he had become vice president in 2012, however, Biden even got out ahead of Barack Obama in urging that homosexual unions be granted the legal and social standing of traditional marriage.

Had moral truth changed? Did Catholic teaching change? No, Biden changed. The Catechism of the Catholic Church still declares “homosexual acts” to be “intrinsically immoral and contrary to the natural law” and describes “homosexual tendencies” as “objectively disordered.”

Biden once believed this, or said he did for most of his life, for that is the way he campaigned in Delaware and voted in D.C.

What has changed is the Democratic Party Biden now heads. The precepts of LGBT now dictate “moral truth” in the party and platform of Joe Biden who now calls transgender rights “the civil rights issue of our time.”

As Biden has turned his back on the teachings of the Church in which he was raised, the Church itself is coming under physical attack by the same radicals besetting civil society.

In Miami, a statue of Christ the Good Shepherd was lately beheaded. A statue of the Blessed Virgin inside a Boston church was set on fire, and another was desecrated in Tennessee. In Denver, the same headless fate befell a statue of St. Jude.

Statues of Fr. Junipero Serra, the priest who founded 17 missions from San Diego north to San Francisco, when California was under Spanish rule, have been under constant attack.

In St. Louis, a mounted statue in the city’s Forest Park of the 13th century Saint and King Louis IX, the French monarch for whom the city was named, who led the Sixth and Seventh Crusades, is under siege.

Radicals are even demanding that the city’s name be changed.

On right-to-life, the declared position of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops is clear: “Taxpayer dollars should never fund abortion.”

This unequivocal moral stance is being publicly repudiated and will be rejected, should he win the presidency on Nov. 3, by the professed believing and practicing Catholic, Joe Biden.

What, if anything, are the U.S. Catholic bishops going to say about this grave moral issue in the fall election? Or will they remain silent?
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Patrick Buchanan (@PatrickBuchanan) is currently a blogger, conservative columnist, political analyst, chairman of The American Cause foundation and an editor of The American Conservative. He has been a senior adviser to three Presidents, a two-time candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, and was the presidential nominee of the Reform Party in 2000.

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Cashill’s Unmasking Obama Book Is A Warning

by Cliff Kincaid: The lack of coverage in 2008 of the embarrassing facts in Barack Obama’s background, especially his deep personal relationship with a Communist mentor by the name of Frank Marshall Davis, stands as a sensational example of how dishonest the national media can be when they are determined to elect somebody.

Jack Cashill’s new book, Unmasking Obama: The Fight to Tell the True Story of a Failed Presidency, accurately describes Davis as “a bisexual Stalinist pornographer with a taste for underage sex partners.” If this is news to you, consider yourself a victim of the major media organizations that worked diligently to cover up the truth about our 44th president.

How could the facts about such a notorious presidential mentor be concealed from the American people? Cashill has the story, and I am right in the middle of it. But this scandal is only one of many that Cashill documents and dissects. It is a timely reminder of how scandalous Obama’s eight years in office actually were, raising the question of why he thought he could safely surface again in public—at the 2020 Democratic National Convention—to promote the Joe Biden candidacy.

Indeed, we are going through something similar this presidential year, as the major media work to elect Obama’s former vice president, Joe Biden, and sink Donald J. Trump’s bid for a second presidential term. Obama’s August 19 address at the Democratic National Convention, on behalf of Biden, was the clearest indication yet that Obama is working for a third presidential term. He wants vindication for his failed presidency and wants to use Biden as a front for the ultimate capture of state power for revolutionary purposes.

In addition to saving political face, Obama represents those here and abroad determined to reduce America to the status of a third-rate power, unable or unwilling to stop Red China’s advance.

President Trump has said that he wouldn’t have won in 2016 had it not been for Obama’s failed presidency. Cashill’s book is important to understanding why the American people were so desperate for an alternative such as Trump. People were fooled by Obama, his lies, agents, and apologists, but they eventually came to understand there was something sinister, even un-American, in the Obama presidency.

This was the result not only of Obama’s failed policies, but the facts about his real agenda that slowly but surely came to the public’s attention through alternative media, described as “samizdat” by Cashill. This is a reference to the unofficial and frowned-upon journalism that served as a channel for freedom fighters in the old Soviet Union. Indeed, he dedicates the book to his fellow “Lilliputians,” who dared to take on the Gulliver-type powers that be.

It gets to the point—and we have arrived at this point today in the United States—where the “official” outlets for the establishment are not believed anymore, and people are desperate and hungry for “alternative” voices. Hence, the major media and the Big Tech censors will want to destroy the Cashill book and, if that is not successful, censor any mention of it.

This book is an important lesson in the history of journalism and a case study of how the media lie to advance a political agenda. In effect, Cashill has analyzed in detail the nature of “fake news” that targeted the Trump presidency for destruction after the leftist media failed to elect Hillary Clinton.

While much of the book is a straightforward historical account of the effort to tell the truth about Obama, Cashill emphasizes the ongoing nature of the American samizdat, the forces which fought bravely to expose the Marxist revolutionary forces behind Obama’s “fundamental transformation” of America. Cashill was very much part of this, as he relates in the beginning how a Trump adviser at one point called him about the role of former communist terrorist and professor Bill Ayers in writing Obama’s 1995 memoir, Dreams from My Father. It was a claim picked up by Trump himself. Trump understood there was something fishy about Obama, Hillary, and the entire crew.

While Trump was attacked for bringing out surprising facts about Obama’s personal background, Cashill explains in detail how Obama’s political enemies – truth tellers in the conservative media and public interest groups – were arrested, harassed, threatened, or subpoenaed by various federal agencies “and unknown others.” This reflects support for the Obama presidency in what has become known as the Deep State or permanent bureaucracy. Others, such as myself, were labeled as “extremists” by private organizations that had ties to federal agencies. The aim in my case was to isolate me from other “responsible” conservative organizations and dry up my sources of funding.

Of course, this paralleled the effort by U.S. intelligence agencies and globalist organizations to destroy Trump himself once he became president.

The phrase “unknown others” is relevant today, as we continue to see the same forces behind Obama re-emerge to put Biden in the Oval Office and take out Trump, once and for all. New names and organizations, many traced back to billionaire George Soros, seem to surface on a regular basis.

In terms of unraveling the major cover-ups of the Obama presidency, while identifying those who worked against great odds to expose Obama’s lies, Cashill’s monumental work is heavily documented and should be required reading in journalism classes. Of course, that won’t happen as long as our major colleges and universities remain as Marxist Madrassas providing cannon fodder for Obama’s Marxist revolution.

Whatever the future holds, the forces of samizdat in America will soldier on, determined to expose and hold responsible those who are working to create a Marxist America.
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Cliff Kincaid is a veteran journalist, media critic, director of the AIM Center for Investigative Journalism, and writes for RenewAmerica.

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