We’re now less than a week away from Election Day, with the Virginia gubernatorial race too close to call, and I want all my Virginia readers to prepare themselves psychologically for the nightmare ordeal of these final few days. The agonizing wait, constantly checking to see what new poll has been published, or what TV ad is rolling out — the last week of the campaign is always a nerve-wracking ordeal for political junkies.
President Joe Biden leaned into Terry McAuliffe’s core campaign strategy to tie Republican Glenn Youngkin to former President Trump and nationalize Virginia’s toss-up gubernatorial race.
“I ran against Donald Trump. Terry is running against an acolyte of Donald Trump,” Biden said to a crowd of about 2,500 braving a chilly, windy night in Arlington.
Not long ago, McAuliffe warned that Biden being “unpopular” meant that Democrats would have to work harder through “headwinds from Washington,” and Biden’s approval ratings have dipped further since then.
But with recent gubernatorial race polls showing a dead heat between the former Democratic governor, who is seeking a second non-consecutive term, and Republican Glenn Youngkin, a former private equity firm co-CEO, McAuliffe turned to Biden to give him a boost with one week before Election Day.
“Talk about an oxymoron: Donald Trump and election integrity,” Biden said, appearing to refer to Youngkin’s election integrity platform that he pushed during the Republican primary. “I can’t believe he puts the words Trump and integrity in the same sentence.”
Much of his speech was not about Youngkin but was a response to Trump and a defense of his performance as president.
“Trump likes to boast the single best measure of the economy is the stock market. I never thought that. Well, if that’s true, take a look at the stock market now. It’s higher than it’s ever been,” Biden said.
Biden’s second appearance in Virginia for McAuliffe, despite coming only barely across the river and just a stone’s throw from the Pentagon, demonstrates a full-court press approach among national Democrats in fear of losing the race in an embarrassing upset. A loss in Virginia, where off-year state elections have historically been a barometer for midterm elections, would damage Biden’s image and Democratic enthusiasm.
The president is just the latest in a parade of Democrats coming to stump for McAuliffe in the critical final weeks of the toss-up campaign.
Former President Barack Obama campaigned with McAuliffe in Richmond over the weekend, and Vice President Kamala Harris campaigned for McAuliffe last week in addition to filming a “Souls to the Polls” ad to be played at black churches.
The best way to react to this is to ignore it. Just go vote, and encourage your neighbors to do the same, and do your best to tune out the frantic chatter from the desperate Democrats. Read a book. Watch a movie. Do whatever it takes to calm your mind amid the campaign madness.
(Emerson – Virginia) Are you voting for McAuliffe/Youngkin/Blanding?
Another poll of # VAGov – from @WasonCenter Christopher Newport University – shows a very tight contest. Among likely voters McAuliffe 49% Youngkin 48%
Millionaire liberal Terry McAuliffe is not from Virginia. He’s from Syracuse, New York. He got his start in politics as campaign finance director for Jimmy Carter in 1980. He made $8 million from the Global Crossing scam. Trying to cash in on Obama’s “green energy” scam, McAuliffe “gave 32 wealthy Chinese nationals EB-5 visas in exchange for $560,000 investments into GreenTech Automotive,” which went bankrupt in 2018. There are all kinds of reasons not to vote for this sleazy swindling leftover from the Clinton era, but here’s the real deal-breaker: Terry McAuliffe is against school choice and he’s trying to send parents to prison for speaking out at public school board meetings, and yet NONE of his children have ever attended a Virginia public school.
Why would anyone ever vote for this corrupt hypocrite?
Say hello to Christian Redwine and, while you’re at it, you can also say good-bye, because he got shot dead by a police officer in 2016.
Although he was only 17, Redwine already had an extensive criminal record in November 2016 when he decided to steal a car and go joyriding with two friends. Redwine “had a lengthy juvenile record, including an 18-month sentence in a youth development campus,” a federal judge wrote in a recent court ruling related to the case. “He had also recently been charged as an adult with first-degree burglary, spent two months in jail, and been released on bond less than a week before the shooting.”
Maybe releasing criminals from jail is a bad idea, but on the other hand, keeping them in jail is expensive, compared to the cost of buying 21 rounds of pistol ammunition for a police officer, who can thereby guarantee that the hoodlum won’t steal any more cars.
Since the #BlackLivesMatter riots last year, I’ve done a lot of blogging about crime and law enforcement, mainly in an effort to counterbalance the anti-police narrative whereby activists magically transform criminals into victims of injustice. Because most of the cases I’ve highlighted involve black suspects, it may seem racist — “RAAAAACIST!” — to defend police against charges of “excessive force,” so I am grateful for those occasions when white criminals get themselves shot by cops. This gives me the opportunity to point out that I have no sympathy for criminals of any race — I am pro-police even when cops are killing white people.
Certainly, Christian Redwine deserved to be shot, as did the two other teenagers who were his passengers that night in November 2016.
Hunter Tillis (left); Hannah Wuenschel (right)
Redwine had just gotten out of jail, and was back home in Columbus, Georgia, with his grandmother, who had raised him. His grandmother’s live-in boyfriend had a small business selling used cars, which he kept parked at the house. Redwine’s 19-year-old cousin, Hunter Tillis, came over and the two of them began a two-day drug binge of over-the-counter cold medication, Xanax, marijuana and cocaine. Redwine’s girlfriend was at the house babysitting for the infant child of 19-year-old Hannah Wuenschel, but then there was an argument, and the girlfriend left with Wuenschel’s baby. So when Wuenschel arrived, the grandmother drove them to the girlfriend’s house “where Wuenschel got her son and brought him back to [the grandmother’s] house. She put the child to bed and smoked marijuana with Tillis and Redwine.” About 11 p.m., Redwine’s grandmother and her boyfriend went to sleep, and then Redwine got the keys to a Pontiac G-6 belonging to the grandmother’s boyfriend. Redwine had no driver’s license and no permission to take the car, but he took it, with Tillis and Wuenschel along for the ride.
The teenagers then apparently broke into two cars, stealing jewelry, a purse and other items. About 3:30 a.m., 911 got a call from the grandmother’s boyfriend, reporting the Pontiac stolen and identifying the three teenagers, saying he wanted them arrested:
The teens were on Gentian Boulevard when Redwine stopped at a shopping plaza, turned off his headlights, and tried to call his girlfriend.
He’d chosen an area rife with business break-ins. At 4:25 a.m., police Capt. Bill Turner, driving an unmarked Chevrolet Impala, saw the Pontiac and followed when Redwine pulled away.
Tillis told Redwine police were behind him. When Redwine confirmed an officer was tailing him, he raced away to the neighborhood around Hardaway High School, speeding so recklessly he had to use the emergency brake to turn.
The 911 center informed officers the Pontiac was reported stolen.
Tillis and Wuenschel later said Redwine was desperate to escape because he’d just been released from jail and swore he would not go back.
Redwine led police down Talbotton Road to Veterans Parkway and briefly lost them near Ashley Station Apartments. He stopped there and told Tillis and Wuenschel to get out if they wanted. Both refused, and police soon were back on Redwine’s tail as he headed into downtown toward the 13th Street Bridge to Phenix City.
[Columbus Police Officer Allan] Brown was at the Public Safety Center on 10th Street when he heard the chase was close by. He joined it, and was the lead police car when Redwine crossed into Alabama, speeding up to 98 mph as he headed west to U.S. 280 and turned back toward Columbus on the J.R. Allen Parkway.
The Pontiac hit 107 mph before Redwine abruptly exited onto Riverchase Drive and ran off the road into bushes in a front yard, with Brown right behind him.
Did I mention that Redwine’s cousin, Hunter Tillis, also had a criminal record, including charges of arson and burglary? Probably neither one of them should have been out on the street, but there they were, flying down the road at over 100 mph, with a teen mom in the front passenger seat, and multiple cop cars in their rearview mirror. They’d crossed the Chattahoochee River into Alabama, then doubled back, exited the freeway and ran off the road. Officer Brown pulled his car up behind and to the right of the Pontiac, which seemed to be stuck on the side of the road. Inside the Pontiac, Redwine told Tillis, “I ain’t going back to jail”:
Brown thought the Pontiac was wrecked and the driver would run away, so he quickly got out, anticipating a foot chase.
Brown drew his .45-caliber semi-automatic. Redwine looked at Wuenschel and said, “It’s them or me,” though she pleaded with him to give up.
“Nah, f—k that,” Redwine said. “You can either jump out or stay the f—k in the car.”
He shifted to reverse. Brown said he saw the white reverse lights come on, and believing Redwine would run him over, started shooting, firing 11 shots in three seconds as the Pontiac passed by.
Having emptied the gun, he put in a fresh clip.
Two of the first shots killed Redwine as the Pontiac backed across the road. Brown said he was blinded by the headlights, and believed the driver would try to run him over again. He fired 10 more shots, leaving Redwine with multiple wounds. Wuenschel was wounded in the first barrage, and Tillis was hit in the second. Both were hospitalized and arrested upon their release.
Twenty-one shots, dead car thief. I score that a “win” for the good guys.
You watch the dashcam video, and you’ve got to say that reloading the weapon and firing an extra 10 shots seems . . . excessive. If any Georgia cop had done that to a black teenager, Ben Crump would have been on CNN 24/7, and the looting and arson would have gone on for days. However, because the dead car thief was white, nobody outside the Columbus area has ever even heard of Christian Redwine.
A grand jury cleared Officer Brown of wrongdoing, but there was a civil lawsuit and last month a federal appeals court ruled in favor of Officer Brown, so he’s now in the clear, legally. The court ruling could be considered a precedent, establishing that cops have the right to shoot white car thieves. But I’m not a lawyer, and maybe I’m misinterpreting it.
Americans should be grateful to Christian Redwine, who boasted, “I ain’t going back to jail.” No, son, you’re going to hell. Bon voyage.
“It’s close,” Carville said. “Cook has it [as] a toss-up. If Cook has the race toss up — and Terry, by the way, has been blunt that we are in a very tight, race and Democrats need to be activated.” . . .
“It’s close. There’s no doubt about it, and I’m scared to death. And other Democrats should be. And the solution to that, if you know people in Virginia, call them and ask them to vote. If you are in Virginia, call and ask other people to vote. But the only thing that I can tell you, it’s a close race,” Carville said.
McAuliffe faced backlash for admitting during a debate that he doesn’t believe parents should tell schools how to teach their kids. He has since attempted to walk back his comments and explain his position. Williams acknowledged that is a hard sell.
“James, the rule of thumb in your line of work is that if you’re explaining, you’re losing,” [MSNBC’s Brian] Williams said.
First, let’s be honest — Carville isn’t “scared to death” because the race is “close,” but because he knows McAuliffe is losing.
If you live in the DC metro TV market, you can turn on any channel and see the evidence of panic among Democrats, who are absolutely saturating the airwaves with commercials accusing Youngkin of being some kind of dangerous extremist Trump clone. They wouldn’t be pouring tens of millions of dollars into this negative advertising blitz if they thought McAuliffe was merely in a “close race” with Youngkin.
If you study this closely, you realize that Biden suffered two separate downward trends. The first was in August, as a result of the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan, after which the numbers stabilized and then improved slightly in September before a second decline in early October. What caused that? Almost certainly, it was a result of the supply-chain crisis, which is causing shortages and spiking prices.
The downward pressure from Biden’s collapse is, however, only half the story of why McAuliffe is losing in Virginia. The other half of the story is that McAuliffe’s alliance with the teachers union in Virginia has put him on the wrong side of a parents’ rights controversy:
What seems to be the central issue in the campaign surfaced when the moderator [of the final Sept. 28 debate between McAuliffe and Youngkin] asked the candidates whether “protections for transgender students” should be determined at the state level or in each school district. Youngkin raised the issue of school districts not listening to parents when they objected to portions of the curricula, citing sexually explicit classroom content in Fairfax County. He clearly stated his position that parents are in charge of the education of their children. McAuliffe shot back, “I’m not going to let parents come into schools and actually take books out and make their own decisions. I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.” Needless to say, his statement is at the heart of a debate that is taking place in school board meetings nationwide after parents got a view into their children’s curricula thanks to distance learning during COVID-19. Many parents were horrified.
McAuliffe doubled down on the sentiment in subsequent interviews, and his poll numbers started to slide. Shortly after, Daily Wire broke a story out of Loudoun County, Virginia, setting the record straight about a viral video of law enforcement officers dragging a parent from a school board meeting. Activists used the video as fodder to support Attorney General Merrick Garland’s decision to direct the FBI and U.S. Attorneys’ offices to meet with local schools boards to assess terrorist threats.
As longtime readers know, my wife homeschooled our children for several years before we sent them to private Christian schools. This reflected an informed judgment based on direct experience. Most people (obviously including Terry McAuliffe) do not realize that it is the best educated and most conscientious parents who are offended by the arrogant claims of “expertise” made by public-school officials. Anyone who researches the subject will discover that, on average, as a group, education majors have the lowest SAT scores of any college graduates. If you have a degree in business management or engineering or whatever, you are certainly competent to judge the quality of curriculum and pedagogy in your child’s classroom and, as research about homeschooling shows, good parents are at least as capable of educating a child as most government-certified teachers. That’s from a strictly academic perspective; from a moral perspective, no credential can qualify any “expert” to tell a parent what their child’s beliefs should be.
Transgenderism is immoral because it is dishonest — a deception, an attempt to substitute make-believe for biological reality. One can speculate about the psychological causes of a desire to “be” (or rather, pretend to be) the opposite sex, but in practice, transgenderism is a sort of fraud, perpetrated for selfish reasons. In a free country, adults may do as they please in private matters, but the transgender cult seeks to force the public to cooperate with this deception; when taxpayer-supported public schools joined this effort, bad results could easily be foreseen.
We don’t know how the election will turn out in Virginia. There is abundant evidence that McAuliffe is losing, and that Youngkin is poised for an upset victory that will have nationwide impact, but it will be up to voters in Virginia to do the right thing. Pray for them.
Hours before actor Alec Baldwin fatally shot a cinematographer on the New Mexico set of “Rust” with a prop gun, a half-dozen camera crew workers walked off the set to protest working conditions.
The camera operators and their assistants were frustrated by the conditions surrounding the low-budget film, including complaints of long hours and getting their paychecks, according to three people familiar with the matter who were not authorized to comment.
The camera crew showed up for work as expected at 6:30 a.m. Thursday and began gathering up their gear and personal belongings to leave, one knowledgeable crew member told the Los Angeles Times.
Labor trouble had been brewing for days on the dusty set at the Bonanza Creek Ranch near Santa Fe.
Shooting began on Oct. 6 and members of the production said they had been promised the production would pay for their hotel rooms in Santa Fe.
But after filming began, the crews were told they instead would be required to make the 50-mile drive from Albuquerque each day, rather than stay overnight in nearby Santa Fe.
The cinematographer who was accidentally killed, Halyna Hutchins, had been advocating for safer conditions for her team, said one crew member who was on the set.
As the camera crew — members of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees — spent about an hour assembling their gear at the Bonanza Creek Ranch, several nonunion crew members showed up to replace them, the knowledgeable person said.
A member of the producer staff then ordered the union members to leave the set. She said if they didn’t leave, the producers would call security to remove them.
“Corners were being cut — and they brought in nonunion people so they could continue shooting,” the knowledgeable person said.
There were two misfires on the prop gun on Saturday and one the previous week, the person said, adding “there was a serious lack of safety meetings on this set.”
Baldwin was Executive Producer on this “low budget” film, so that he bears responsibility for conditions on the set. They were cutting corners to save money, so they brought in scabs to replace the union members on the crew, and this accidental shooting was the direct result.
Guns don't kill people. Hollywood hypocrites who hire non-union crews kill people.
If you’ve been paying attention to news from Atlanta lately, you know that the prestigious Buckhead district, one of the wealthiest ZIP codes in the South, is seeking to secede from the city, because crime has gotten totally out of control. So last week — Monday, Oct. 10 — there appeared in Atlanta media this weird report:
Police are trying to determine if a woman who died after being ejected from a Lamborghini in Buckhead was pushed out of the moving car.
Investigators said late Monday night the 28-year-old metro Atlanta woman, later identified as Catherine Khan, started fighting with a man. At some point, they both got into the Lamborghini, where police say the altercation continued.
When the vehicle reached the Buckhead intersection of the Peachtree Road and Piedmont Road, the woman was ejected from the Lambo.
Paramedics rushed her to Grady Memorial Hospital, where doctors sadly couldn’t save her life. Police said she wasn’t shot, stabbed, or run over by any other vehicles.
Detectives said it’s too early to know if the victim was pushed out of the Lamborghini or maybe jumped to escape the fight. They’re looking at nearby surveillance video and talking to witnesses, hoping to piece together what happened.
The victim, Catherine Khan, is a woman of Middle Eastern ancestry who was described in some outlets as an “Instagram model,” and this all seemed mysterious. I mean, Buckhead is pretty affluent, but how many Lamborghinis do you see on Peachtree Street? And this story that Khan was “fighting with a man” made it seem as if it might be some kind of relationship problem. But it turned out to be related to a theft outside the Buckhead restaurant where Khan worked as a bartender:
Alfred Megbuluba (left); Catherine Khan (right).
A warrant is revealing new details in connection to the death of a woman, who a witness said, was thrown out of a moving Lamborghini to her death.
According to a warrant from Fulton County, 31-year-old Alfred Megbuluba is accused of taking a wallet belonging to 28-year-old Catherine Khan before her death.
Inside the wallet, there was money valued under $1,500 and Khan’s credit cards, according to the warrant. The warrant states he later tried to use her card at a Chevron gas station shortly before her death.
Hours after turning himself in to Atlanta Police, Megbuluba made his first court appearance, where he was denied bond. At the hearing, Megbuluba’s attorney Steve Sadow waived the reading of the arrest warrant. . . .
The warrant further states, “Alfred Megbuluba, did commit the offense of murder when he unlawfully and with malice aforethought pushed Catherine Kahn out of his vehicle while it was in motion. Catherine died as a result of her injuries from being pushed out of the vehicle.”
Megbuluba faces felony murder, theft by taking, and financial transaction card theft charges.
In some ways, this only adds to the mystery: How is this guy, who lives in Lilburn in suburban Gwinnett County, driving a Lamborghini? And if you’re rich enough to be driving a Lambo, how is it that you’re stealing a woman’s wallet and using her credit card to buy gas?
And, really, if Lamborghinis are not commonplace on Peachtree Street, they’re certainly not seen very often in Lilburn. Something tells me we’re going to be learning a lot more about the background of Alfred Megbuluba who, needless to say, is not a native of Georgia. It appears that in 2015, he registered an LLC consulting company in Nevada, but that license lapsed in 2017 for some reason. I don’t know what kind of “consulting” he was involved in, but if he could afford a Lamborghini, it must have been quite lucrative. We shall see . . .
Virginia Gubernatorial candidate Terry McCauliffe (D) reportedly ended an interview at the half-way mark and berated the reporter for not asking “better questions.”
According to ABC7, the network had reporter Nick Minock conduct two interviews with the opposing candidates for governor – one with former governor Terry McCauliffe and the other with businessman Glenn Youngkin (R). To keep it fair and balanced, the interviews were to be 20 minutes apiece, wherein both candidates would be asked about their platforms. However, mid-way through McCauliffe’s interview, the former governor abruptly ended the discussion and scolded the reporter for not asking “better questions.”
“If you watch those entire interviews on our website, we do want to point out that the Terry McCauliffe interview is shorter than our interview with Glenn Youngkin,” said an ABC7 anchor during a Tuesday broadcast. “That was not by our doing.”
“Nick offered 20 minutes for both candidates exactly to be fair for the interviews,” he continued. “McCauliffe abruptly ended 7 News’ interview after just 10 minutes and told Nick that he should have asked ‘better questions’ and that Nick should have asked questions 7 News viewers ‘care about.’”
The footage of McCauliffe abruptly ending the interview and scolding the reporter can be viewed on the ABC7 website. The moment came shortly after journalist Nick Minock asked McAuliffe about vaccine mandates for children, which the former governor used to then segue into the subject of abortion:
[Youngkin] is a Donald trump right-wing agenda. He will ban abortions. Your viewers should be very clear on this. He wants to ban abortions here in Virginia. He says election integrity is the number one issue. No, it isn’t. Healthcare, COVID, education, job creation.
Just then, a McAuliffe staffer interjected to tell Nick Minock that he was “over time,” prompting the former governor’s exit.
“Alright, we are over. That’s it. That’s it. Hey I gave you extra time,” said the former governor. “C’mon man. You should have asked better questions early on. You should have asked questions your viewers care about.”
“Well, we did,” responded Minock.
Current polls show that McAuliffe and Youngkin are tied in a virtual dead-heat in the race to become the next governor of Virginia, with Youngkin having a slight edge.
“The poll, conducted October 11–13 among 1,095 likely voters, shows Youngkin with 48.4 percent support compared to McAuliffe’s 47.5 percent support, giving Youngkin a 0.9 percent edge,” Breitbart recently reported.
Here’s the awkward video of @TerryMcAuliffe walking out half way through what was supposed to be 20 minute interview with local ABC affiliate pic.twitter.com/EjQ6OL22Fo
We’re two weeks away from Election Day and, as I’ve said, D.C. metro TV markets are being saturated with McAuliffe ads attacking Youngkin as a Trump puppet — that’s actually the closing argument for the McAuliffe campaign, which can’t lay a glove on Youngkin otherwise. No wonder McAuliffe is losing: Biden sucks so bad, even a lot of Democrats must be thinking it wouldn’t be so bad to have a Trump puppet as governor.
You can tell by the TV ads that are running in the D.C. metro market that the Terry McAuliffe campaign is in deep trouble. The essence of the Democrat’s pitch, in the off-year gubernatorial campaign, is that Republican candidate Glenn Youngkin is a puppet of Donald Trump.
Let’s be clear about just who Glenn Youngkin actually is — a Richmond native who attended Rice University on a basketball scholarship (he’s 6-7), majored in engineering and management, and later got an MBA from Harvard. He spent 25 years with the Carlyle Group investment firm. If he is, or ever was, an extremist, nobody has discovered any evidence of this. Youngkin is Mister Clean, a calm and level-headed businessman without scandals in his past, and this is why the only way the McAuliffe campaign can try to attack him is by playing the “Orange Man Bad” card.
It should not be necessary for McAuliffe to attack Youngkin at all. A former governor, McAuliffe has near-100% name recognition in Virginia, while Youngkin is a little-known political newcomer. Virginia has been trending “blue” for the past 15 years; Hillary won Virginia 50%-44% in 2016, and Biden won the state by a 10-point margin last year.
Terry McAuliffe would have been cruising toward a November landslide, were it not for the disastrous failure of Joe Biden’s presidency. Since early August, Biden’s job-approval number in the RCP average has dropped about 7 points, while disapproval has risen by 9 points. Biden has been “underwater” in the polls for six weeks and, now that Americans are increasingly concerned abourt shortages of basic consumer goods because of the supply-chain issue, there is little hope of recovery.
Virginia Republican Glenn Youngkin holds less than a one-point lead over former Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) in the state’s gubernatorial race, according to a Trafalgar Group poll released Friday.
The poll, conducted October 11–13 among 1,095 likely voters, shows Youngkin with 48.4 percent support compared to McAuliffe’s 47.5 percent support, giving Youngkin a 0.9 percent edge.
The remaining respondents are split, 1.3 percent in favor of a third party or write-in candidate and 2.8 percent undecided. The third party candidate on the ballot, Princess Blanding, identifies as a Liberation Party member and will primarily serve as an alternative for Democrat-aligned voters. The poll’s margin of error is three percent.
Of the last three Trafalgar polls, this most recent one marks the first time Youngkin has led McAuliffe in the blue-leaning state. The last poll, taken at the end of August, showed McAuliffe with a slight edge over Youngkin, 46.6 percent to 46.3 percent. The one before that, taken in early July, had McAuliffe up by close to two points, 46.8 percent to Youngkin’s 45 percent.
McAuliffe said this month in candid remarks during a virtual rally with state Democrats that President Joe Biden, whose approval rating is hovering at record-low levels, is causing his campaign “headwinds.”
“But we’ve got to get Democrats out to vote,” McAuliffe said, per a clip of the event. “We are facing a lot of headwinds from Washington, as you know. The president is unpopular today unfortunately here in Virginia so we have got to plow through” . . .
Which is why Democrats are now saturating the TV airwaves with commercials depicting Youngkin as a Trump puppet — which might actually backfire, if you stop to think about it. After all, there must be a certain number of Biden voters who now feel “buyer’s remorse” over their role in electing this senile incompetent as president, so telling them that the Republican gubernatorial candidate is a Trump clone? No, that’s not necessarily going to make them want to vote Democrat again.
