Dems Rattled After NYT Poll Shows Trump Beating Biden In Majority Of Swing States

 Democrats are in panic mode after a NY Times poll released on Sunday shows Trump wiping the floor with President Biden in 5 out of 6 battleground swing states that Biden carried in 2020. In short, if the 2024 election were held today, according to the Times, Trump would absolutely clobber Biden.

According to the poll from NYT and Sienna College, Biden would lose to Trump by margins ranging from three to 10 percentage points among registered voters in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada and Pennsylvania, while Biden only leads Trump by 2% in the 6th state, Wisconsin.

As Axios sums up:

• Biden led Trump in Wisconsin but is down 4 points in Pennsylvania, 5 in Arizona, 6 in Georgia, 5 in Michigan, and 10 in Nevada.
• 71 percent said Biden was "too old," including 54 percent of Biden's supporters.
• Only 39 percent of those voters felt the same about Trump, who would be the oldest president ever inaugurated and has shared no details about his health.
• Swing state voters said they trust Trump over Biden on the economy by a 22-point margin, 59 to 37 percent.
• Trump and Biden are effectively tied among voters under 30 — a large shift from 2020.

What's more, Biden is also polling weaker than alternative Democrats - including Vice President Kamala Harris. According to the poll, Trump leads Biden by 5 points and Harris by 3, while a generic, unnamed Democrat would fare even better with an 8-point lead over Trump (13% better than Biden).

According to Democratic strategist David Axelrod, it's 'very late to change horses' in terms of Biden's 2024 run, and this poll will "send tremors of doubt thru the party.'

"The stakes of miscalculation here are too dramatic to ignore," Axelrod continued.

The @POTUS is justly proud of his accomplishments. Trump is a dangerous, unhinged demagogue whose brazen disdain for the rules, norms, laws and institutions or democracy should be disqualifying. But the stakes of miscalculation here are too dramatic to ignore.

— David Axelrod (@davidaxelrod) November 5, 2023

Former Obama senior advisor and Pod Save America host Dan Pfeiffer wrote a blog post on how Democrats should react to the "very bad NYT Poll," and said that he didn't want to sugarcoat it: "While some of Trump’s gains among Black, Hispanic, and young voters may be hard to believe, numbers like these are broadly consistent with the trendlines in recent polls. This poll shows that not only can Trump win, he might now be a slight favorite to do so. Even if we don’t take the results literally, we should take them very, very seriously."

In short, Democrats have to win back demographics they've lost since 2020:

Instead of doom-scrolling and tweeting through our panic, we should see this poll as a roadmap on how to reconstitute the anti-MAGA majority. We have to persuade the voters we have lost since 2020. Here’s one place to start. -Message Box News

Team Biden downplayed the poll, with re-election campaign spox Kevin Munoz telling Axios that "predictions more than a year out tend to look a little different a year later. Don't take our word for it: Gallup predicted an eight point loss for President Obama only for him to win handedly a year later."

"We'll win in 2024 by putting our heads down and doing the work, not by fretting about a poll," he continued.

Maybe that's why mercenary neocon Bill Kristol just told ol' Joe to pack it in?

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/democrats-rattled-after-nyt-poll-shows-trump-beating-biden-majority-swing-states

FDA Responds After Being Urged To Recall Pfizer's Vaccine Over DNA Fragments

  by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is refusing to recall the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine, promoting the view that the inclusion of a previously-undisclosed DNA sequence that leaves behind fragments is not of concern.

The FDA is not required to take the COVID-19 vaccine, or other COVID-19 shots, off the market, an agency spokeswoman told The Epoch Times via email.

"With over a billion doses of the mRNA vaccines administered, no safety concerns related to the sequence of, or amount of, residual DNA have been identified. With regard to the FDA-approved mRNA vaccines, available scientific evidence supports the conclusion that they are safe and effective," the spokeswoman added.

The FDA did not provide any evidence to back up its position.

The email came in response to 10 questions about the inclusion of the Simian Virus 40 (SV40) DNA sequence in the Pfizer-BioNTech shot.

The Epoch Times has submitted a Freedom of Information Act query to try to unlock when the FDA learned about the sequence, and from whom. The FDA denied expedited processing for the request, claiming there is not a "compelling need" to quickly provide the information.

Several foreign agencies, including Health Canada, have confirmed outside scientists' assessment that the vaccine contains the DNA sequence. They've also said BioNTech did not highlight the inclusion in regulatory filings.

The FDA would not answer a number of questions about the sequence, including when the agency learned about its inclusion and whether it learned about it from Pfizer or BioNTech .

BioNTech and Pfizer have not responded to inquiries.

The inclusion was first identified by Kevin McKernan, a former researcher and team leader for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Human Genome Project.

"Nothing will be identified if they continue to choose not to look," Mr. McKernan told The Epoch Times via email.

Dr. Robert Malone, author of "Lies My Gov't Told Me," in Washington on Dec. 19, 2022. (Jack Wang/The Epoch Times)

A number of scientists have said the inclusion raises major concerns, such as having potential for oncogenesis—or a process that leads to cancer—including Dr. Robert Malone, a vaccine expert whose work has been cited by Pfizer.

The inclusion means the Pfizer-BioNTech shot is "adulterated" and should be recalled, Dr. Malone told The Epoch Times.

Federal law states that the FDA can test drugs suspected of being adulterated. If the drugs fail to meet certain standards, and a health hazard is found, the FDA is directed to advise the manufacturer to issue a recall.

If the manufacturer then fails to issue a recall, "seizure should be considered," the law states.

"The general policy is that if there's adulteration and reasonable risk of toxicity, there must be immediate action," Dr. Malone told The Epoch Times. "This is a core mandate to the FDA from Congress to prevent adulteration of drugs, medical devices, and food. And then the next question is, is that adulteration? Is it associated with a reasonable risk of toxicity in humans? And my opinion is, absolutely."

Dr. Malone, after reviewing the FDA's response, said that regulators have not done their job.

"The normal process worldwide has been that that risk must be rigorously assessed proactively. But they haven't done it, and their rationale for not doing it is the reason why they were so adamant that this is not a gene therapy technology," Dr. Malone said.

Moderna has said that its vaccine meets the FDA's gene therapy definition, but regulators have defined the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna products as vaccines, avoiding questions about oncogenesis.

Why Was SV40 Included?

SV40 sequences have been used by biotechnology companies in drug products.

"Specific sequences for the non-infectious parts of SV40 are commonly present in plasmids used for manufacturing of biological active substances," the European Medicines Agency (EMA) told The Epoch Times via email.

The purpose is primarily to "drive very aggressive expression of a gene," Mr. McKernan told The Epoch Times.

EMA alleged that Pfizer considered the sequence "a non-functional part of the plasmid."

"If commonly used, then why are they included if they serve no function?" Dr. Malone wondered in a Substack post.

But the result is residual DNA left behind, according to testing. That could have negative effects, some scientists say.

David Wiseman, a former Johnson & Johnson scientist who conducted some of the testing, said that he's concerned the residual DNA pieces "could actually get into your genome."

If it does that, "it can disrupt gene regulation and potentially lead to the oncogenesis," Mr. McKernan said.

Phillip Buckhaults, professor of cancer genomics and director of the Cancer Genetics Lab at the University of South Carolina, said earlier this year that he tested vials of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine and detected DNA.

"I'm kind of alarmed about the possible consequences of this both in terms of human health and biology, but you should be alarmed about the regulatory process that allowed it to get there," he told the South Carolina Senate.

Mr. Buckhaults said the DNA "could be causing some of the rare but serious side effects like death from cardiac arrest."

He has encouraged regulators to test the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.

"This is probably not a problem, but it is surprising and therefore causing concern," Mr. Buckhaults wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter, tagging the FDA. "You should address with rigorous safety review ASAP."

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/fda-responds-after-being-urged-recall-pfizers-vaccine-over-dna-fragments

GOP on the verge of taking over Long Island offices with Ed Romaine favored in Suffolk County

 Republicans are on the verge of painting Long Island red.

The GOP is set to take control of all major offices on Long Island — with their candidate Ed Romaine favored to win the coveted Suffolk County executive seat in Tuesday’s election.

Romaine, the Brookhaven Town Supervisor since 2012,  faces off against Democrat businessman David Calone, a former federal prosecutor and businessman.

The winner will replace current Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone, a three-term Democrat who can’t run again because of term limits.

If Romaine wins, Republicans will have a clean sweep and dominate Long Island’s major offices — occupying both the county executive seats of Nassau and Suffolk, both district attorney’s offices, both comptroller’s offices and all four congressional seats.

Backlash over the Democrats’ cashless bail reform law helped propel GOP victories for Nassau County Executive and the two district attorneys in Nassau and Suffolk in 2021. 

“I’m very bullish on Ed Romaine’s chances. Ed Romaine seems to be in very good shape as long as he works hard to the finish line,” said former Long Island Rep. Lee Zeldin, the 2022 GOP nominee for governor who has stumped with Romaine.

While Gov. Kathy Hochul narrowly defeated Zeldin last year in a surprisingly close statewide race, Zeldin clobbered the Democrat on his home turf of Suffolk.

“Long Island will become the reddest it’s been in decades,” Zeldin said.

Former GOP Sen. Al D’Amato said, ” Ed Romaine will win.”

“Ed is respected across the board,” D’Amato added. “He’s a professional.”

Even Newsday, whose editorial board leans liberal, endorsed Romaine, making it much more difficult for Calone to gain traction, D’Amato noted.

Independent observers also give Romaine the edge, and said angst over the migrant crisis has Democrats playing defense.

https://nypost.com/2023/11/05/metro/gop-on-the-verge-of-taking-total-control-of-long-island-offices/

Midtown, Lower Manhattan foot traffic down 33% — one of worst post-COVID rates

 Foot traffic in New York City’s business districts is still down 33% from what it was before the COVID-19 pandemic — one of the lowest recovery rates in the country, a new survey reveals.

The University of Toronto’s analysis measured the number of visitors, including shoppers and tourists, plus residents and workers in the so-called “downtown” or business/tourist districts in major cities in the United States and Canada.

Lower Manhattan, including the Wall Street financial district, and Midtown, featuring Times Square, were considered the Big Apple’s “downtown” district for the study.

Researchers measured foot traffic through mobile phone presence, comparing March to mid-June in 2023 to the same period in 2019. 

New York’s 66% recovery rate ranked 54th out of 66 cities surveyed.

Las Vegas ranked first, having 103% of the foot traffic — or 3% more — from pre-pandemic. The gambling mecca was the only city to have more foot traffic than before the COVID-19 outbreak.

3

New York City came in 54th place for downtown recovery out of 66 cities.

University of Toronto

A researcher for the study suggested the societal shift to remote office work has caused a dramatic drop in foot traffic in Gotham’s business districts.

“We’ve been tracking since early 2022, and New York was an early comeback story – but then stalled,” said Karen Chapple, director of the University of Toronto’s School of Cities, to The Post. 

 “Part of this is due to commercial office tenants gradually giving up their leases,” she said.

The researcher did note that unlike earlier studies, her project excluded Hudson Yards because it is not traditionally considered part of Midtown.

Other major cities that recovered most or considerably more foot traffic from the pre-pandemic period compared to the Big Apple include Miami (92%), Nashville (88%), Atlanta (85%), Los Angeles (83%)  and San Diego (80%).

As with New York, there are other cities that have struggled to recover the pre-pandemic density in their central business district.

Chicago’s foot traffic was just 61% of what it was before the pandemic.

The recovery rate for Seattle and Minneapolis was under 60%.

3

Other non-downtown tourist areas in New York have seen a stronger increase in traffice.

Getty Images

High-tech San Francisco’s recovery rate was nearly identical to New York City’s — or 67%.

But the Partnership for the City Of New York, a major business advocacy group, questioned the accuracy of the University of Toronto’s data, citing more recent reports showing a stronger recovery in Manhattan’s key commerce and tourism districts.

Pedestrian foot traffic in Times Square averaged 285,000 in the last week of October 2023, or 80% of the pre-pandemic count of 356,000 during the equivalent week in 2019, it said.

In Downtown Brooklyn, monthly foot traffic reached 75% of pre-pandemic levels in June 2023.

“A lot of our pre-COVID foot traffic involved tourists, and international tourism is still down. We also have by far the densest concentration of office workers, so the hybrid work week has had a bigger impact here, with average weekday presence in the office [having] dropped from 80 % pre-pandemic to just under 60% today,” said Partnership CEO Kathryn Wylde.

Wylde also noted such studies don’t take into account the increase in foot traffic where many office employees now work and shop.

“On the other hand, the city has business districts across the five boroughs which have likely experienced an uptick in foot traffic as a result of work from home,” she said. “So I don’t think [the Big Apple’s] comparison with smaller cities with a single ‘downtown’ is a fair one.”

Broadway sales and attendance were at 85% and 81% of pre-pandemic levels, respectively, during the last week of October, the Partnership added.

Wylde pointed to other promising data points indicating a stronger recovery, noting that New York City’s regional airports had their busiest month in history, with more than 13.3 million passengers served in August and adding that the 192nd new business opened in Times Square in October, surpassing the 179 businesses that closed during the pandemic.

https://nypost.com/2023/11/05/metro/midtown-lower-manhattan-still-suffering-from-one-of-worst-post-covid-recovery-rates-in-us-survey/

Barack Obama does his coded version of ‘from the river to the sea’

 Barack Obama is not a learned man, but it’s a mistake to confuse that with stupidity. He is, in fact, an extremely clever man. Combine that cleverness with the fact that he truly dislikes Israel and has aligned himself with those countries and groups that wish to destroy the country, complete with the genocide of all of its inhabitants, and you end up with someone who covertly signals to Israel’s enemies his ideological allegiance with them, even while seemingly treading a morally meaningless line right down the middle.

Those of us who have paid close attention to Obama over the years know that he dislikes Jews and Israel. Here are just a few facts supporting that contention:

1. Jeremiah Wright, in whose church Obama sat for 20 years’ worth of Sundays, made no secret of his support for Arab “Palestinians” and the Nation of Islam. Once Obama became president, Wright blamed “the Jews” for his inability to get near a man who had decided his mentor was politically toxic.


2. In 2003, Obama attended a dinner honoring Rashid Khalidi, a mouthpiece for the PLO during the 1970s and 1980s, before Bill Clinton rehabilitated that terrorist organization. Obama apparently praised Khalidi so effusively that, to this day, the Los Angeles Times refuses to release an audiotape of the event.
3. One of Obama’s first official acts as president was to head to Egypt to give a speech to the Muslim world. During the speech, Obama claimed that the nation of Israel exists only as a sop to the Holocaust, something that denies the Jews’ 4,000-year connection to the land. He also said he supported a Palestinian state, something that, for the Palestinians, has always meant erasing a Jewish presence, with blood force if necessary.


4. Obama had a friendly relationship with Louis Farrakhan, who called Jews satanic and compared them to termites, called Judaism a “gutter religion,” and called Hitler a “great man.” Even the leftist ADL has conceded Farrakhan’s embrace of antisemitic tropes.


5. Obama worked hard to elevate Iran as a power in the Middle East, including making it possible for Iran to be days away from launching a nuclear weapon. He did this even though Iran has loudly and repeatedly voiced its desire to annihilate Israel. To this end, Iran has funded both Hamas and Hezbollah, which wage constant, genocidal war against Israel. Obama was unperturbed by Iran’s funding terrorism that also slaughtered U.S. troops or by the fact that Iran has officially been at war with America (“Death to America!”) since 1979.

These are just a few examples.

After Hamas’s maniacal, psychotic, brutal attack on Israeli civilians on October 7, Obama kept a very low profile. The other day, however, he agreed to give a full interview on the subject to Pod Save America, a left-wing media outlet.

Yesterday, the outlet released a snippet of the interview. Superficially, it sounds as if Obama is trying to split the baby. Everyone, he says, is at fault. It’s all very sad. Blah-blah-blah. But if you take a minute really to listen to what he says, a different message comes through:

Did you catch that little phrase in the torrent of pretend-neutral blah-blah? After acknowledging that “what Hamas did was horrific, and there’s no justification for it,” Obama says that “what is also true is that the occupation and what’s happening to Palestinians is unbearable.”

What occupation? Israel pulled out of Gaza in 2005, forcibly removing Jewish settlers and leaving behind lush greenhouses that the Arabs promptly destroyed. There is no “occupation” in Gaza.

If he’s talking about an occupation, Obama can only be referring to the same occupation Gaza and its terrorist inhabitants decry: namely, the Jewish presence on the land between “the river [Jordan] and the sea [the Mediterranean].” If you look at a map, and I’m sure Obama has, Hamas and its blood-thirsty adherents want it all, and they want it just like Gaza itself: Free of living Jews and preferably littered with the bodies of dead ones.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/11/barack_obama_does_his_coded_version_of_from_the_river_to_the_sea.html

Newsom signs $25 minimum wage law for all hospital workers, finds out will cost Cal. $4 b

 Governor Hairspray doesn't pay attention much to California's budget numbers when he signs off on a bill. It's as if putting on a green visor would mess up his costly coif.

So, in no surprise to the rest of us, Gavin Newsom was in for a surprise.

According to the Los Angeles Times:

SACRAMENTO —  

When Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a law that set a first-in-the-nation minimum wage for healthcare workers, three words in a bill analysis foretold potential concerns about its cost: “Fiscal impact unknown.”

Now, three weeks after Newsom signed SB 525 into law — giving medical employees at least $25 an hour, including support staff such as cleaners and security guards — his administration has an estimated price tag: $4 billion in the 2024-25 fiscal year alone.

Half of that will come directly from the state’s general fund, while the other half will be paid for by federal funds designated for providers of Medi-Cal, California’s Medicaid program, according to Newsom’s Department of Finance.

SB 525 is one of the most expensive laws California has seen in years and comes as the state faces a $14-billion budget deficit that could grow larger if revenue projections continue to fall short. It was one of several labor-backed measures the Democrat-controlled Legislature passed this year in what amounted to an unusually successful run for organized labor. What lawmakers didn’t fully account for, as they scrambled in the final days of the session to broker a deal between unions and hospitals to support the bill, was how much it would cost the state — or what might have to be cut to pay for it.

So now the state gets to pay the janitors, gardeners, Mexican cleaning ladies (yes, real ones, and they live in Mexico and commute), gift shop clerks, and anyone else in the employ of a hospital, $25 an hour, no exceptions, and no matter what the value of their jobs are in the free market.

What a great way to spend the state's revenue at a time of a $14 billion deficit. Now Newsom gets an $18 billion deficit, but when you have a billion here, a billion there, who's counting?

Except that the Times notes that services in other areas are going to have to be cut to "pay for" these inflated wages.

Meanwhile, as far as those $25 an hour hospital cleaning jobs go, get ready for it -- those menial jobs will suddenly become very politicized as to who gets one. You can bet that anyone who has such a job will be or become a very dedicated Democrat union operative and willing to do anything for them. Get ready for the beefed-up ballot-harvesting brigades, muscling unwilling voters in their homes to play ball for the Democrats.

It's simply outrageous, and it was a completely preventable problem.

Had Newsom examined the cost and benefit of raising gardeners' wages to $25 an hour, like any normal governor would do, he would have probably modified the bill to reasonable standards, or better still, just said 'no.'

But this was unions we are talking about, and this one the same SEIU union Newsom succored a few weeks ago when he appointed Laphonza Butler to the Senate seat vacated by the death of Dianne Feinstein, even though she was a resident of Maryland. Newsom couldn't find any black female Californians to take the job? Of course not.

Butler had spent most of her working career as an SEIU organizer and operative, so we can see the outlines of the pattern here, given that unions have tremendous power in the state of California.

Now they've left him with a $4 billion bill, which he will blithely sweep under the rug as he cuts vital services elsewhere in the state. CalFire, the mighty wildfire fighting state agency, get ready for your haircut. California Highway Patrol, get ready for budget cuts.

We all know who's going to get the short end of the stick in this one as gardeners now make white-collar salaries.

We can also look forward to higher health insurance bills as those higher costs make their way down to the insurance agencies. Somebody's going to be paying for it.

No wonder Californians are bailing out. California has lost 800,000 residents during these Newsom years from 2020-2023, according to CapRadio. Another chart, from the Public Policy Institute of California shows tremendous losses -- noting at the end that there's no end in sight.

Don't we pay these politicians to consider costs and benefits of various spending measures before signing on? Normal governors look at costs before they sign the bills, not the other way? Not to Newsom. He just goes along with what unions want ... and now expects that his next stop is the seat behind the desk in the Oval Office.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/11/newsom_signs_25_minimum_wage_law_for_all_hospital_workers_finds_out_afterward_it_will_cost_california_4_billion.html

'Target CEO has surprising words on retail theft'

 Target CEO Brian Cornell believes that the company has gotten a solid grip on tackling retail theft in its over 1,900 stores across the nation. In a new interview with CNBC, Cornell stated that elevating the conversation surrounding the issue has resulted in “real progress.”

“We’re really pleased with how some of the local DAs (district attorneys) are responding,” he said. “And our teams and other retail teams have actually been walking stores with local DAs to make sure they better understand the challenges we’re facing.”

His comments come amid a recent rise in retail theft across the nation over the past few years. In 2022, retail theft resulted in industry losses of $112.1 billion, compared to $93.9 billion in losses the previous year, according to the National Retail Federation.

On Sept. 26, Target announced that it was closing nine of its stores across four different states due to shoplifting. The company said that the rise in theft was “threatening the safety of our team and guests.” On Oct. 21, it closed three stores in California, three in Oregon, two in Seattle and one in New York City.

In Cornell’s interview with CNBC, he said that the company had no other choice but to close those stores, citing that it was a tough decision as the company’s overall goal is to open more stores across the nation.

“They were stores where we made big investments in additional asset protection. working with third-party security, we have used other devices to try to control theft,” he said. “But we closed those stores because we deemed it wasn’t safe for our teams to continue to operate in those environments. And it’s really hard to make a decision to close a store.”

He also said that the company doesn't have any plans to close more stores this year. 

Target also revealed in its announcement in September that it promised to invest in technology and coordinate with lawmakers and industry partners to make progress in tackling shoplifting.

In the interview, Cornell applauded the recent passage of the Inform Consumers Act. The legislation makes online transactions more transparent and helps to stop criminals from acquiring stolen or fake goods and selling them through marketplaces. He said that it will make it "much more difficult" for criminals to "monetize the goods that they’re stealing."

He also said that informing lawmakers that the impact of retail theft isn’t just financial has also contributed to the progress he has seen in curbing the issue.

“I think there is a societal impact here,” he said. “So you look at certain cities, where stores have been closing, those jobs go away, the tax dollars are gone, but importantly that local consumer doesn’t have access to the goods that they need.”

https://www.thestreet.com/retail/target-ceo-has-surprising-words-on-retail-theft