Sunday, April 2, 2023

Post-Indictment Poll Has Trump Surging to Biggest Lead Ever Over DeSantis

Post-Indictment Poll Has Trump Surging to Biggest Lead Ever Over DeSantis

Nick Arama reporting for RedState 

I wrote on Thursday about a Fox poll that came out just before former President Donald Trump was indicted, but after the reports about it possibly happening had come out.

It showed that Trump was racing to a big lead. He had already been gaining in the numbers since January, but the news of the possibility of the indictment may have added even more to his lead, with Republicans likely coalescing behind him in the face of political targeting. The Fox poll found he was leading Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis by 30 points, 54 to 24 percent. DeSantis has not formally declared a run yet, although he has been making remarks like a guy who would be running.

So, what about polls after the election? What has been the effect of the announcement that the indictment is real?

A new Yahoo/YouGov poll shows that he’s now increased his lead over their prior poll numbers, surging to his largest-ever lead over DeSantis in their poll. They note that in February, DeSantis was leading in the poll, 45 to 41 percent. Then in a poll conducted two weeks ago, in a head-to-head matchup with DeSantis among registered Republicans or Republican-leaning independents, Yahoo had it at 47 to 39 percent, with Trump up by 18.

But now, after the news of the indictment became official, Trump is up in their poll by 26 points, 57 to 39 percent, in a one-on-one race. Adding in 10 others who are declared or likely to run, Trump has the majority support 52 percent, up from 44 percent, with DeSantis is only at 21 percent, dropping from 28 percent. Everyone else isn’t even close and is just in single digits.

By the same token, a full 54% of Republicans and Republican leaners would now prefer Trump to be the GOP’s 2024 presidential nominee rather than “someone else” (33%) — up from 51% Trump, 39% someone else last time.

The survey of 1,089 U.S. adults was conducted in the first 24 hours after a New York grand jury voted to indict Trump, as news about the case continued to break and sink in.

Trump’s favorable rating has also gone up with Republicans by 5 points, from 74 to 79 percent.

So what does that mean? We’re still a long way off from the 2024 race, and it will depend on how the case turns out, as that will also factor into the numbers. But as we’ve seen the case has more holes than Swiss cheese. So we’ll have to see how things break down, and you know that the Democrats will do all that they can to try to smear both Trump and DeSantis in the meantime, and perhaps agitate for a reaction regarding the indictment.

But what it does mean is that Republicans are rallying around Trump when they see the effort to get him. Folks on the right who are not Trump fans have been calling out the indictment as politically motivated. Even the Washington Post thinks that it’s all b.s., which says a lot.

But the indictment puts the battle into sharper focus for some, if Democrats are now at a point where they think they have the power to take down their political opponents. As Fox pollster Daron Shaw said about the Fox poll and the rumor of the indictment, it helps Trump in the polls because it “reanimates feelings that Trump is still fighting forces they see as corrupt and out of control.”



MAGA Right Knows Exactly What’s Up in Israel

There’s something vaguely familiar to the MAGA Right in the current struggles in Israel with the uniparty. 


JERUSALEM, Israel—What in the world is going on here? Political intrigue. A splintered conservative coalition. A fired minister. Soldiers disobeying orders to report for duty. “Day of Paralysis” protests with demonstrators shutting down traffic and a threatened general strike on the horizon. All of which is leading to a postponement, for now, of the government’s judicial reform proposal.

For the MAGA Right, it’s not hard at all to figure out what’s really happening. There’s no need at all to navigate the complex web of proposals, counter-proposals, cross-proposals, and compromise proposals on the issue.

We’ve seen it all before.

Start by substituting Israel’s with more familiar examples from our recent past. For example, substitute:

  • America’s practically self-parodying radical progressives and shrieking, harassing, and often-violent “Resistance” for Israel’s self-hating leftist parties and the protesters plaguing the land and storming police barricades outside the prime minister’s residence.
  • Card-carrying RINO members of the Washington uniparty for the Likud Members of the Knesset (MKs) deserting their party on its central issue, and White House staffers undermining the previous president for the Jewish State’s just- (and justly-) dismissed defense minister who led that charge.
  • Uncle Sam’s increasingly woke and limp military brass for the Israeli Defense Force members defying orders to report for duty—creating a “national security threat” cited by the defense minister in his waffle on reform.
  • An unaccountable U.S. Supreme Court taking on the role of super-legislature for Israel’s High Court of Justice—except that their judiciary has a lead role in appointing its own members, and its standard for overruling legislative enactments is even looser and more subjective, even as its role is more intrusive.
  • A rogue attorney general and Justice Department pursuing a two-tier justice system, and persecuting President Trump in particular on manufactured charges, for an Israeli counterpart similarly conjuring up crimes against that nation’s prime minister—except that this attorney is not even appointed by the government. Not to mention that rulings on the legitimacy of legislation by the government’s own “legal advisors” have the force of law.
  • And last but definitely not least, the beleaguered Donald Trump for the equally harassed, hounded, harried, hassled and hectored Benjamin Netanyahu—except that this assault has been prosecuted against the latter for the better part of two decades in and out of leadership.

But wait . . . there’s more! More basic tea leaf reading that makes analysis a snap for MAGA adherents. Take a gander at the language used by, and the emphases of, the respective sides.

On the Left, there’s a hyperfocus on the composition of the judicial selection committee. In other words, what players hold the power and where. The words “danger” and “threat” are sprinkled liberally throughout. They are just part of the rhetoric now, as when a brilliant academic who is participating in protests whispered to me over lunch, Netanyahu is “dangerous.”

To what? To “democracy,” of course. To hear reform opponents tell it, Israel is tumbling headlong into “dictatorship.” Which means what? Opposition to the Left.

But what about the Likud side? Here the central concern is “public representation.” Or more simply: “the voters”—as in being true to the will of and promises to the people who put you into office in the first place.

This is a concept MAGA conservatives know to be equally foreign to uniparty Republicans who unblinkingly sign on to $1.7 trillion “omnibus” monstrosities, multibillion-dollar semiconductor and infrastructure boondoggles and the like. Not to mention their waving through of funding for Planned Parenthood and woke agendas.

Deference to the will of the people is, apparently, equally inconsequential to the Likud deserters on judicial reform led by now ex-Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. Party members have their own epithet for such betrayals: “Bennettism,” after Naftali Bennett, a previous turncoat who formed his own party and abandoned his pledge never to form a government with leftists and, as it turned out, an anti-Zionist Arab party.

In reality, no one questions—and 78 percent of the Israeli public favors—some level of reform to address the Israeli High Court’s arrogation of power to itself through its appointment power. Its “reasonableness” standard is even vaguer and more subjective than the substantive due process so abused in the United States.

But this suits the Left just fine. Radical progressives there, as here, love having the judiciary do their dirty work for them, free of the mess and bother of compiling majorities or enacting legislation.

So how will the current impasse end when the reform bill is taken up again?

The truth is it will never end. No matter the outcome, the essential conflict will rear its hydra-head again and again in an endless array of forms and forums in both nations. Conservatives will win small and/or temporary victories before the Left’s full-court pressure wears them down or causes some splinter group to compromise in an endless longing for acceptance.

The radical progressive agenda will be driven relentlessly, inexorably, endlessly forward—abetted in both nations by the legacy media, corporate elites, and radicalized military leaders.

Meanwhile, these uniparties, permanent governments, and other elements of the elite ruling class will maneuver for, and even outright buy, the best seats at everyone’s table.

And the voters? Who?



Christian Patriot News, And we Know, and more- April 2nd

 




The Subordination of Church to State

Download the app—or else.


Rejecting the Enlightenment, the philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau argued for the imposition of a “civil religion”: a statist, secular dogma citizens are compelled to believe above all else. Where one’s religious beliefs did not impact the civil religion, Rousseau would deign to allow these subordinated beliefs. As a result, a person’s freedom of conscience is not respected; and those who dissent from the civil religion are subject to reeducation and other punishments, including death—i.e., “forced to be free” (i.e., punished and/or killed). 

The totalitarian regimes spawned by Rousseau’s anti-Enlightenment ideology have not always been so permissive regarding the freedom of conscience or religion. Murderous regimes, like the former Soviet Union, sought not only to subordinate religion to the state, but also to exterminate religious belief altogether. Today, even where religion is “permitted,” it is under attack, as in Nicaragua; or, worse, controlled by the state, such as in the communist nations of China and Cuba. In all such regimes, the end goal is abject secularization through the ultimate destruction of religious belief. There can be no belief in anything but the government; no faith in anything but the regime. 

Ever the leader in refining repression, Communist China is adapting the communications revolution not to expand liberty but to crush it, and to further the subordination of church to state. As Jonah McKeown of the Catholic New Agency reports

ChinaAid, a U.S.-based Christian charity, reported March 6 that the religious department of the provincial government of Henan is rolling out a system whereby all believers must make online reservations before they can attend services in churches, mosques, or Buddhist temples.

The reservations are to be made through an app called ‘Smart Religion’ developed by the Ethnic and Religious Affairs Commission of Henan Province. According to ChinaAid, applicants must fill in personal information, including their name, phone number, government ID number, permanent residence, occupation, and date of birth before they can make a reservation.

Only God needs to see if you’ve been to church, and He doesn’t need an app to know. The problem is that Xi Jinping and his Communist cadres do not believe in God, only in their Communist civil religion. And, in case there is any confusion as to the Communist regime’s rationale for developing and implementing their ironically named Smart Religion app, it is not for expanding the free exercise of religion or protecting the freedom of conscience: 

China’s Henan Daily reported that on Feb. 24 this year, Zhang Leiming, member of the Standing Committee of the Henan Provincial Party Committee and head of the United Front Work Department, went to the Provincial Ethnic and Religious Committee to investigate and pointed out that it is necessary to strictly manage religion in a comprehensive way, unite and guide the majority of religious believers to follow the Chinese Communist Party unswervingly.

Zhang makes it sound as if the Chinese Communist Party’s totalitarian war on faith and the freedom of conscience was not already oppressive enough, despite the fact that even state-approved churches’ doctrines are censored and believers watched. Now, people of faith will have to abet their own surveillance or face punishment by the regime. Download the app—or else! Worse, as the communist regime ultimately intends, believers can discard their religious faith and wholly submit to the CCP’s civil religion.    

To religious believers and all who believe in human rights, dignity, and democracy, Communist China is a cautionary tale of what could happen in the free world. But for the Left, Communist China is a roadmap.

The reason is obvious: the Left rightly regards freedom of conscience and religion as the primary obstacles to the imposition of its radical, statist agenda. If not wholly secularized already, the Left has accommodated its religious beliefs to the dictates of its radical political ideology. They insist everyone must do the same, demanding that those who disagree must subordinate conscience, faith, and action to the Left’s civil religion (and/or, in the interim, a revisionist leftist religious interpretation).

Daily, incessantly, and inveterately the Left seeks to impose its civil religion upon believers and every dissenter. If any dissent and/or resist, the Left’s cancel culture will punish them; and, further, already in some instances both in Europe and the United States, one will face civil and criminal sanctions. 

This is especially concerning here in the United States, where the God-given right of the free exercise of religion is explicitly—and the freedom of conscience implicitly—recognized, respected, and protected by the U.S. Constitution. Yes, the government is also prohibited from establishing a religion. Yet, refraining from naming a specific religion as the official state religion is not the same as permitting—let alone mandating—the rejection of religious belief and practice in public life. It is the distinction and difference between atheism and ecumenicalism—and it is lost upon the Left. Or is it? This distorted view of the establishment clause has furthered not only the “separation of church and state,” but the subordination of church to state

Why this dogged commitment by the Left to impose their civil religion? Because leftists have already subordinated themselves to their secular ideological dictates. Their religion gives their lives meaning, including a deluded sense of superiority that rationalizes away their totalitarian actions in the self-anointed pursuit of an alleged “liberation” for themselves and others. Ultimately and tragically for the Left, their civil religion is really their only religion. Thus, they seek the subordination of revealed religion to their secular religion, never realizing their compulsive quest for “liberation” is what seals their subordination to disorder.

As of yet, we haven’t crossed the religious Rubicon into a Leviathan world of atheism, totalitarianism, and barbarism. But we are on the bridge, being propelled forward by a secular Left that, with torches in hand, is determined to subordinate religion and the freedom of conscience to the ideological dictates of their statist civil religion; and to eradicate the religious foundation of Western Civilization with a virulence that would please Diocletian. 



Why Are Conservatives Talking About 2024 Instead Of The Wisconsin Supreme Court Election Next Week?

Prominent conservative figures should be using their platforms to shed a national spotlight on the Wisconsin Supreme Court race.



Though largely ignored by prominent conservatives on social media, there’s a critically important Supreme Court race happening in Wisconsin.

On Tuesday, Republican Daniel Kelly and Democrat Janet Protasiewicz will face off at the ballot box in an election that will determine the jurisprudence of the Wisconsin Supreme Court. While the body currently has a 4-3 conservative majority, a Protasiewicz win on Tuesday would allow Democrats to control the high court for the first time since 2008. With cases regarding abortion, election integrity, and governmental overreach having made their way to the high court in recent years, the outcome of Tuesday’s election remains significant.

Rather than using their influence to draw attention to this critically important race, however, many prominent conservative figures have spent the latter half of March discussing the 2024 GOP presidential primary. Take a trip to your favorite conservative influencer’s Twitter account and you’re bound to find numerous tweets pondering whether the nominee should be Donald Trump or Ron DeSantis — and none regarding the Wisconsin Supreme Court race.

The whole ordeal is a remarkable spectacle to witness, especially when considering that the 2024 primaries don’t start for several months. Moreover, the outcome of Tuesday’s Wisconsin election will have reverberating impacts on national and state politics that will be felt for years to come.

The Issues at Stake

Over the past several years, the court’s Republican majority has been crucial in upholding Wisconsin law.

In July, for example, the court ruled in a 4-3 decision that the Wisconsin Elections Commission had violated state law by authorizing the use of unmanned absentee ballot drop boxes during the 2020 election. Leading up to the 2020 contest, left-wing nonprofits funded by Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg poured hundreds of millions of dollars into local election offices in battleground states like Wisconsin. These “Zuckbucks” were used to advance Democrat-backed voting policies such as mail-in voting and the widespread use of ballot drop boxes. To make matters worse, the grants were heavily skewed toward Democrat-majority counties, essentially making it a massive Democrat get-out-the-vote operation.

The high court — once again in a 4-3 decision — separately ruled in March 2021 that Democrat Gov. Tony Evers violated state law by imposing and extending multiple Covid-related emergency orders without authorization from the state legislature. The order came after the court “previously ruled that Evers’s administration ‘overstepped its authority’ with a statewide stay-at-home order and failed to consult state legislators about the decision to extend it.”

With the U.S. Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade last year, abortion has also become a highly contentious issue at stake in Tuesday’s election. As noted by the Catholic News Agency, Wisconsin has a pre-Roe statute dating back to 1849 that bans abortion except in cases where the mother’s life is in jeopardy. While the law was deemed unenforceable after the Roe decision, the high court’s 2022 Dobbs ruling permitted the statute to come into effect. Evers and Wisconsin Democrat Attorney General Josh Kaul have since filed a lawsuit to try and overturn the law.

While Protasiewicz has not said how she would rule on the 1849 law if it was heard by Wisconsin’s highest court, she has voiced support for women being able to kill their unborn children and touted endorsements from pro-abortion groups. Meanwhile, Kelly has received the backing of notable pro-life groups such as Wisconsin Family Action, Pro-Life Wisconsin, and Wisconsin Right to Life.

Protasiewicz’s Soft-on-Crime Record

During her time as a circuit court judge in Milwaukee County, Protasiewicz has shown herself to be a radical, soft-on-crime leftist. Back in 2019, for instance, Robert Guzinski was arrested for raping a female military veteran in a bar alleyway. According to Fox News, the female victim told the court that “she suffered from physical injuries, nightmares and crippling anxiety from the attack, which resulted in months of therapy and a mental health-related hospitalization.”

Despite the horrific nature of the crime, Protasiewicz appeared to consider placing Guzinski on probation, saying, “Is probation appropriate for you, given the fact that you have so many pro-social characteristics? … I weigh that very, very carefully.”

“It’s not an easy call, Mr. Guzinski,” she said. “As much as part of me would like to place you on probation, I just can’t do that. … It’s not a probationary case.”

While Guzinski ultimately pled guilty to third-degree sexual assault — a crime punishable by up to 10 years in prison and a $25,000 fine — Protasiewicz gave him a light sentence of “2.5 years in prison, with credit for 52 days already served, followed by 2.5 years of probation.”

For other examples of Protasiewicz handing down light sentences to sex offenders, see here and here.

Conservatives Must Learn to Focus

The lack of awareness among prominent conservatives on what issues matter now is incredibly frustrating. Unlike Republicans, Democrats know exactly what time it is and are working overtime to wrest control of Wisconsin’s highest court.

In the lead-up to Tuesday’s election, Democrats have poured millions into the race to boost Protasiewicz. According to WisPolitics, Protasiewicz outraised Kelly “more than 5-to-1 in the latest reporting period, fueled by more than $8.8 million from the state Dem Party.” Outside leftist mega-donors have also injected millions into the state to help the Wisconsin Democrat, with billionaire George Soros donating $1 million to the Democrat Party of Wisconsin last month.

With so much at stake on Tuesday, prominent conservative figures should be using their platforms to shed a national spotlight on this critically important election. Instead, many are falling into the trap of prioritizing the next national election over state and local issues that can have lasting effects on the country. And whether they’d like to believe it or not, this kind of myopic worldview is why Republicans lose on major issues regularly.



Winsome Sears Smacks Down Bill Maher Guest Claiming Nashville Transgender Shooter Is Being 'Misgendered'

Winsome Sears Smacks Down Bill Maher Guest Claiming Nashville Transgender Shooter Is Being 'Misgendered'

Bonchie reporting for RedState 

Virginia Lt. Gov. Winsome Sears appeared on Bill Maher’s show on Friday night. Unfortunately, she had to deal with a guest at the table complaining that the transgender Nashville mass shooter was being “misgendered” and “dead-named.”

To summarize how that went, Sears was having none of it.

On Monday, a 28-year-old woman claiming to be a man entered a Tennessee Christian school and began shooting teachers and students. Before two police officers heroically rushed to the scene and took down the deranged murderer, six people were killed including three small children. Within days, police revealed that they had found a manifesto and that there was substantial reason to believe that the shooter’s trans “identity” played a role in her motivation. Further reports appeared to confirm that was true, though we are still awaiting the public release of the manifesto.

Incredibly, despite the story clearly being that a transgender person committed a hate crime against Christians, the press immediately began to paint the shooter and the broader “trans community” as the real victims. That included the White House, which spent all week claiming trans people are “under attack” and promoting the so-called “Trans Day of Visibility.”

That ridiculous theme continued on Maher’s show when a guest named James Kirchick, who writes for something called Air Mail, decided to chide people for “misgendering” and “deadnaming” the militant transgender shooter. He then snidely and confidently proclaimed that “if someone says they’re a man, they’re a man.”

Luckily, Sears was there to provide the much-deserved smackdown.

Let me help Kirchick out since he seems rather confused about life. No, you are not a man just because you say you are a man. Rather, there are biological realities. Gender is not a social construct, no matter how much the far-left insists it is. The shooter is not being “misgendered” because she was a woman.

Further, she is certainly not being dead-named, though the entire notion of dead-naming is ludicrous. As far as anyone can tell, the shooter never changed her name legally, therefore it is paramount for law enforcement and the press to use her real name to identify her. You don’t get to choose your name on a whim due to having a mental illness. There are actual legal hoops to jump through.

Regardless, I could not care less about offending the sensibilities of the now-deceased shooter nor of the transgender movement at large. I am not bound to abide by their delusions. I do not have to pretend biological reality doesn’t exist to appease them. Certainly, I don’t have to worry about affirming the gender hysterics of a mass murderer who took the room temperature challenge after murdering six people.

That Kirchick’s mind would even go to the place is disturbing, to say the least. Who thinks like that? Who wakes up in the aftermath of a mass shooting committed by a radicalized transgender man and decides that “misgendering” is the real issue? I’d suggest Kirchick take stock of his life because things have clearly gone off the rails.


🎶🎉 Happy 78th birthday to Linda/Hetty! 🎂🎶

 



Today, The powerhouse tiny lady who is still the only actor to win an Oscar for playing the opposite sex and went on to become the greatest part of the most popular NCIS spin off, turns 78! 🥳🎶 

It's been a long journey, 1 that's been filled with joy, laughter, OMG moments, and pain. But now, with the final chapter a month away, all the signs point to a very likely happy ending to a never ending charade brought on by incompetent writers and producers.

Thank you dear Linda, for 14 Seasons of the most powerful female NCIS leader ever!! 💗

#HettysHomecoming , #ThankYouLinda , #HettyLovesCallen

The Year of Living Dangerously (1982, Historic Oscar winning role)



The Bostonians (1983)


Dune (1984)



She-Devil (1989)


Space Rangers (1993, 1st Series Regular role and 1st time in a leadership role)


Pret a Porter (1994)


The Practice (1990's to early 2000's, Recurring role)


The Relic (1997)


NCIS LA 6x04 (Series Regular for all 14 Seasons)



WATCH: Transgender Militant Violently Attacks Man, Police Blame the Victim for His Own Assault

WATCH: Transgender Militant Violently Attacks Man, Police Blame the Victim for His Own Assault

Bonchie reporting for RedState 

Militant transgenderism has become a lot more visible over the last week after a transgender man killed six people, including three children at a Nashville Christian school on Monday.

Astonishingly, in the wake of that tragedy, the mainstream media and the White House have been hard at work trying to make the “transgender community” out to be the real victims. Just days after the shooting, multiple state Capitol buildings were stormed by left-wing activists, including transgender activists. The Biden administration then spent all of Friday plugging “Trans Visibility Day,” while largely ignoring the victims in Nashville.

Meanwhile, militant transgenderism continues to get more violent. In Canada, a counter-protester was assaulted by a transgender woman (i.e. a man). That would be bad enough, but it’s the police response that is truly mind-blowing and scary.

If you can’t watch the video, and I’d recommend you not given the language being used, what it contains is a man standing around doing nothing but filming while wearing a sign. The crowd begins to chant “f*** you” in his face, with one transgender activist getting especially close. Then, out of nowhere, that transgender activist starts assaulting him and trying to grab his camera.

According to reports, police not only did nothing, but they later bragged on camera about it, claiming that the victim had incited the attack.

Nowhere in the video is the victim “screaming” at the transgender activists. But even if he did so prior, how does that excuse a violent assault? I know Canadian laws aren’t the same as American laws, but I’m pretty sure assault remains a pretty straightforward crime in the Great North. If you physically attack someone, it doesn’t usually matter if they hurt your feelings beforehand. Yet, the cop in question smugly stands there, refusing to do anything.

This is just another example of the absurd ongoing attempt to make the increasingly hostile transgender lobby out to be victims. These people are not victims. They are deranged, mentally-ill individuals trying to force their delusions on everyone else under the threat of violence. The White House should be calling that out instead of celebrating it.

Ask yourself where this all leads. How will normal people react when pampered, politically connected groups of transgender activists continue to assault with their way of life, including physically? I’d suggest that leads nowhere good.

This isn’t about hate. It isn’t about forcing transgender people to live a certain way. What it’s about is a basic respect for objective reality. Men can’t become women, and it is not inciting violence to say that, nor is that an excuse for violence anyway. Something better change soon because these tensions are only growing.



The Peasants Are Revolting


For his monologue this week British Pundit Neil Oliver takes a walk around the globe to highlight how an increasingly awake global citizenry are revolting against the professional political class.

From France to the United States and Canada and all the way to Africa and throughout Europe, people are looking at the professional political class and rebelling against the desperate schemes of those barely clinging to power.  Many tremors and trembles are visible amid the action of the people and the responses from the elites that believe they rule them.  WATCH: