Wednesday, October 19, 2022

Good Vibes Outside Hate Conference

Nice photo from the Trans Maryland Dance Party held outside the UARE anti-trans rally at That's Amore tonight. Scowling faces indoors, happy faces dancing in the parking lot. (Photo tweeted by District 5 County Council candidate Kristin Mink.)

131 Comments:

Anonymous guys shouldn't dress like girls and play sports with them... said...


personally, I always used to like those gay rainbow flags but over the last year or so, they've added a side triangle with some seriously ugly colors

what the deuce?

anyway, why not include a picture of all those allegedly scowling faces inside?

could be your caricature is hyperbolized?

that would be the logical conclusion

it's actually not "hate" to value the concept of gender



October 20, 2022 6:47 AM  
Anonymous when the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie, that's amore............. said...

A Democratic myth has arisen that former President Donald Trump's denial of the accuracy of the 2020 vote was "unprecedented."

Unfortunately, the history of U.S. elections is often a story of both legitimate and illegitimate election denialism.

The 1800, 1824, 1876, and 1960 elections were all understandably questioned. In some of these cases, a partisan House of Representatives decided the winner.

Presidential candidate Al Gore in 2000 did not accept the popular vote results in Florida. He spent five weeks futilely contesting the state's tally -- until recounts and the Supreme Court certified it.

The ensuing charge that former President George W. Bush was "selected not elected" was the Democrats' denialist mantra for years.

In 2004, Senator Barbara Boxer, D-Calif. and 31 Democratic House members voted not to certify the Ohio election results in their unhinged efforts to overturn the election. Those denialists included the current sanctimonious chairman of the January 6 select committee, U.S. Representative Benny Thompson, D-Miss.

After 2016, crackpot Democratic orthodoxy for years insisted that Trump had "colluded" with Russia to "steal" certain victory from Hillary Clinton.

Clinton herself claimed that Trump was not a "legitimate" president. No wonder she loudly joined #TheResistance to obstruct his presidency.

The serial denialist Clinton later urged Joe Biden not to concede the 2020 election if he lost.

October 20, 2022 8:45 AM  
Anonymous when the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie, that's amore............. said...


Also after 2016, left-wing third-party candidate and denialist Jill Stein vainly sued in courts to disqualify voting machine results in preselected states.

A denialist host of Hollywood C-list actors in 2016 cut television commercials begging members of the Electoral College to violate their oaths and instead flip the election to Hillary Clinton.

Clinton herself had hired foreign national Christopher Steele to concoct a dossier of untruths to smear her 2016 campaign opponent, Trump.

The FBI took up Clinton's failed efforts. It likewise paid in vain her ancillaries like Christopher Steele to "verify" the dossier's lies.

The bureau further misled a FISA court about the dossier's authenticity. An FBI lawyer even altered a document, as part of a government effort to disrupt a presidential transition and presidency.

The Clinton-FBI Russian-collusion hoax was a small part of the progressive effort to warp the 2016 election result.

The Washington Post giddily bragged about various groups formed to impeach Trump in his first days in office, on the pretext he was illegitimately elected.

Rosa Brooks, an Obama Administration Pentagon lawyer, less than two weeks after Trump's inauguration wrote a long denialist essay in Foreign Policy outlining a strategy to remove the supposedly illegitimate president. She discussed the options of impeachment, the 25th Amendment -- and even a military coup.

When rioting exploded in the streets of Washington D.C. after the election results became clear, Madonna infamously shouted to a mass crowd that she dreamed of blowing up the White House, presumably with the Trump family in it.

Was that not the most violent form of election denialism?

The election denialist Stacey Abrams became a media heartthrob and left-wing cult hero. Abrams monetized her ridiculous denialism ("voter suppression") by stumping the country from 2018 to 2021 claiming, without evidence, that the 2018 the Georgia gubernatorial election was rigged. In truth, she lost by over 50,000 votes.

Time magazine's Molly Ball in a triumphalist essay bragged that in 2020 a combination of Big Tech money from Silicon Valley -- fueled by Mark Zuckerberg's $419 million infusion -- absorbed the balloting collection and counting of several key voting precincts weighed to help Biden.

Ball bragged of careful pre-election censoring of the contemporary news by Big Tech. Most notably, that effort spread the lie that the Hunter Biden laptop scandal was "Russian disinformation."

Left-wing interest groups modulated the often-violent Black Lives Matter and Antifa street protests of 2020 in efforts to aid the Biden campaign.

Ball summed up that left-wing election engineering effort as "a conspiracy unfolding behind the scenes" and called it "the secret history of the 2020 election."

So, who exactly were those "secret" warpers of the 2020 election?

As Ball put it: "A well-funded cabal of powerful people, ranging across industries and ideologies, working together behind the scenes to influence perceptions, change rules and laws, steer media coverage and control the flow of information."

It is entirely legitimate to question the probity and legality of those systematic left-wing efforts in key states to overturn long-standing voting laws passed by state legislatures.

Then followed an even larger effort to render Election Day a mere construct for the first time in American history. Over 100 million ballots were not cast on Election Day, the vast majority of them (and by design) Biden votes. Somehow customary ballot disqualification rates of mail-in ballots in some states plunged - even as their numbers exploded.

The scariest form of election interference was the 2020 "cabal." The FBI, Silicon Valley, street protesters, and the media all conspired to work for the "right result."

Apparently, that "conspiracy" was the denialists' response to the 2016 victory of Trump that they never accepted.

October 20, 2022 8:46 AM  
Anonymous I seem to recall a chant the Rumpie had that goes along with this said...


George Conway Says New Trump Ruling Contains 'A Smoking Gun'

The conservative attorney said a federal judge's ruling will be critical evidence for Georgia prosecutors.

Conservative attorney George Conway on Wednesday called information in a new ruling “a smoking gun” that effectively established former President Donald Trump committed perjury and other federal crimes.

U.S. District Court Judge David Carter handed down the ruling Wednesday, which ordered the release of emails between Trump and one of his attorneys, John Eastman, to the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

According to Carter, Trump signed a legal document claiming that the information he provided in a lawsuit challenging the results of the 2020 election in Georgia was true, even though the Eastman emails demonstrated he knew the numbers were wrong.

Conway said the development would be a smoking gun for the state prosecutor in Georgia, where Trump is under criminal investigation for election interference.

“What this is, is a smoking gun in Georgia because if you look at what the judge describes here of these emails is: they file a lawsuit, a state court lawsuit, [on] Dec. 4, making various allegations about dead people voting, about felons voting, about unregistered voters voting,” Conway told CNN’s Anderson Cooper. “And by the end of December, they’re aware that these allegations are false. And that’s the email that the judge quotes here.”

Conway read aloud part of the email, in which Eastman said Trump had been made aware that some of the allegations were inaccurate. Nonetheless, Trump’s lawyers then had him “file a federal lawsuit where Trump certifies, under oath, verifies under oath, that these allegations were in fact, true,” Conway said. “That’s perjury and that’s certainly evidence of federal crimes.”

“The Georgia investigation is very advanced and this is going to be a very important document in exhibit in the charges that I’m sure [the prosecutor] is going to bring,” he added.

October 20, 2022 9:31 AM  
Anonymous So many colors! said...

"personally, I always used to like those gay rainbow flags but over the last year or so, they've added a side triangle with some seriously ugly colors"

Don't worry, you can still proudly fly the old rainbow flag outside your house.

Within the LGBTQIA+ community over the past few years, after the success of passing gay marriage laws, that some segments of the community did not feel represented by the flag - in fact, some of the community felt that since gay marriage was now legal, some of the energy and push behind equality in the group had left, which is not surprising since much of the leadership of the group were cis-gendered, white males.

In order to make sure that the rights and asperations of people of color were represented, the black an brown colors were added. And as in the marriage equality fight, some of he LBG folks wanted to disown the T folks and only worry about advancing the marriage rights, the pink, white and blue colors of the trans flag were added on the side as well.

These are just small ways to help folks few more included and part of the effort, but it sends a positive message to think about how we can all move forward together.

Have a nice day.

October 20, 2022 9:42 AM  
Anonymous let's just stick with all the colors of the rainbow... said...


"In order to make sure that the rights and asperations of people of color were represented, the black an brown colors were added."

I see, it's a continuation of the effort of lunatic fringe gay activists to co-opt a clear moral issue, racism, and conflate it with their dubious cause

truth is, both blacks and Hispanics are less supportive of homosexual causes than rich white liberals

"And as in the marriage equality fight, some of he LBG folks wanted to disown the T folks and only worry about advancing the marriage rights, the pink, white and blue colors of the trans flag were added on the side as well."

well, the whole idea of transgenderism is sexist so yet another problem with the gay agenda

you guys just can't stay out of trouble

at least, you got past monkey pox!

LOL!

October 20, 2022 1:45 PM  
Anonymous I'm willing the bet the "Law and Order" party will defund this said...

There are so many Jan. 6 cases that the Justice Department doesn't have enough money to prosecute them all

The Justice Department is running out of money thanks to the overabundance of defendants who are being prosecuted for attacking the Capitol on Jan. 6.

According to NBC News, the Justice Department has asked for $34 million in "critically needed" funds to handle the thousands of rioters facing charges, court fees and more. According to those inside the DOJ, the caseload for prosecutors has doubled in the past year due to the arrest of more than 870 accused insurrectionists so far.

As an official explained it, "We don’t have the manpower."

It's also not clear whether the Justice Department will be able to get the funds necessary from Congress in the budget. With mere weeks ahead of an election, Congress is focused on keeping their jobs rather than doing their jobs. It's thought that the House will flip to Republicans, and already the Republican minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, is threatening to refuse to raise the debt ceiling.

“There are lots of requests,” House Appropriations NBC cited Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT). “We’re taking a look at all of them and seeing what makes it and seeing what doesn’t make it.”

"While a new crop of assistant U.S. attorneys filling temporary roles could help pick up the pace of arrests in the coming months, the long-term trajectory of the criminal probe depends in part on the fiscal year 2023 budget, which Congress is planning to pass in December, around the time the Jan. 6 committee is expected to issue its final report," said NBC News.

According to the request from the DOJ: “The cases are unprecedented in scale and is expected to be among the most complex investigations prosecuted by the Department of Justice."

If they don't get the money, they said that it could have a "detrimental impact" on U.S. Attorney's Offices around the U.S., which are funded by the DOJ. The department would have to make cuts to handle the prosecutions, which keeps vacancies back home.

Funding negotiations are expected to restart after the Nov. 8 election and they have until Dec. 16 to make it happen.

October 20, 2022 1:58 PM  
Anonymous Right-wing idiot doesn't realize the media he hates is owned by billionaires, some of them manipulating him to do stupid things said...


According to KING 5 News, the director of a school board in Orting, Washington has resigned following his arrest on felony charges stemming from his participation in the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

"Rick Slaughter resigned from the Orting School Board of Directors Wednesday after previously being arrested and charged for his involvement in the Jan. 6 Capitol riot," said the report. "Slaughter and his stepson, Caden Paul Gottfried, were charged earlier this month. Slaughter was charged with assaulting, resisting, or impeding law enforcement officers using a deadly or dangerous weapon, interfering with law enforcement officers during a civil disorder, and other felony and misdemeanor offenses."

Slaughter is one of more than 900 people so far charged in connection with the attack, with offenses ranging from misdemeanor trespassing and unlawful picketing, to violent assaults on police, to seditious conspiracy charges against leaders of paramilitary groups like the Oath Keepers.

"In my conversations with Rick, he expressed this decision was grounded in his love for his family," wrote Orting School Board President Carrie Thibodeaux in a statement. "As a Board, we remain committed to transparency and open communication lines between the District and the local community. While we appreciate Rick’s service to the District, we are also saddened by the hurt and frustration recent events have caused. This community, our schools, staff and students will continue to be at the heart of what we do, while building your trust and confidence."

According to prior reports, Slaughter, who ran for school board on a platform of stamping out mask mandates, "critical race theory," "disgusting" sex education, and "forced pronoun changes," was directly involved in assaults on law enforcement officers at the Capitol.

Arrest documents claim that Slaughter was “using his bodyweight to push against a line of officers,” used a pole to attack officers, and passed a chemical weapon to fellow rioters. According to the complaint, he could be heard on video shouting at police, “…You guys need to stand down. Just walk away nobody will f*cking hurt any of you… This is America. This isn’t f*cking right. You f*cking know it…. This has never been the America I ever f*cking known...”

Ironically, his campaign platform for school board also railed against criminal justice and policing reforms, saying, "[W]e should defund the media, not the police! We need public servants who are working to offer safety for all citizens without fear and propaganda.”

October 20, 2022 2:15 PM  
Anonymous go West, young man said...


Throughout much of the West, Democrats are floundering in key races they should not be having to fight to win.

Take Nevada, where Senator Catherine Cortez Masto should have been able to build on Harry Reid’s legendary political machine, and ought to have been able to marshal rock-solid union support in Las Vegas, to put away her challenger, the election-denying Adam Laxalt, months ago. Instead, with just weeks to go until the election, they’re in a dead heat, and Masto is the Democrats’ most vulnerable senator in the country. It’s also possible that an election-denying Republican will win the Nevada governorship as well. Polls show incumbent Democratic Governor Steve Sisolak and GOP Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombardo running even, and the state’s three Democratic members of Congress are also in tough reelection fights.

Nevada was hit particularly hard by Covid lockdowns, and the state’s tourism-based economy has not yet fully rebounded. The unemployment rate in Las Vegas, the epicenter of Democratic support in the state, remains at nearly 6 percent, and inflation throughout the southwest and mountain west remains far higher than the national average; between January 2021 and the summer of 2022, prices in Nevada increased by over 15 percent. And, rightly or wrongly, Democrats are blamed for these soaring prices.

Liz Truss or No Liz Truss, Things Are Bleaker in Britain Than Anyone Realizes
Look at Arizona, where Democratic gubernatorial candidateKatie Hobbs made the unfathomable decision to not debate her Republican opponent Kari Lake, and has watched her big summer-time lead in the polls evaporate in recent weeks.

Lake, an ex-Fox News anchor, is another election-denying Trumpite, who has fashioned an ever-more extreme political persona over the past months as she looks to turn Arizona into a political fortress for those who would overturn election results they don’t like and who has been labeled a threat to basic democratic norms by The Washington Post, The New York Times, and many other outlets. Liz Cheney has recently campaigned against Lake in Arizona, warning that her election would undermine basic democratic principles and institutions.

Despite all of this, Hobbs is struggling to gain traction. Her refusal to debate has presented her to voters as irremediably weak. And many of the pollsters and Arizona political insiders I have talked to in recent weeks say they now expect Lake to end up victorious. This is crash-and-burn politics of the worst sort and could lurch Arizona governance to the far-right.

In both Arizona and Nevada, Democratic strategists had hoped that strong popular support for abortion rights would translate to victories at the polls against deeply conservative, anti-abortion GOP candidates. Yet polling suggests that, even though abortion is indeed a major issue of concern for large numbers of voters, when push comes to shove Democrats are being hamstrung by fury at high inflation rates, especially at the huge cost that drivers must bear when filling their car tanks. Nevada’s gas prices, in particular, are more in line with California’s, which, at roughly $6.50 a gallon, are several dollars a gallon higher than in most other states.

October 20, 2022 6:36 PM  
Anonymous go West, young man said...

And witness Oregon, which has long been a reliably blue state, but where the Democrats’ gubernatorial candidate, Tina Kotek, is struggling to sprint ahead of the crowd in a three-way race. It’s entirely possible, according to the latest polling, that the anti-abortion Republican candidate, Christine Drazan, could win the election there with only a lick over one third of the vote.

In fact, for the past two months, not a single major poll has shown the Democrat ahead. It’s not that Drazan is raking in the numbers—few of the polls put her at above 36 percent. It’s more that Kotek isn’t giving vaguely liberal voters, who wouldn’t be caught dead voting for the GOP in a progressive bastion like Portland, a reason to chance their vote on her rather than the independent alternative. Now, it’s of course possible that, as the election nears, Kotek’s support will firm up and that of the third candidate, timber heiress and “self-described centrist” lawmaker Betsy Johnson, will dissipate; but it’s just as likely that Kotek will continue to slip as she tries to find a footing in an angry, anti-incumbent political environment.

And thus Oregon—which, with California and Washington, has been so vital to state-level efforts to tackle climate change, protect abortion access, expand worker rights, extend the social safety net, and support undocumented immigrants—could make a sharp tack to the right come November.

Kotek is tarred with all of outgoing governor Kate Brown’s perceived failures, as well as problems of a more local nature in Portland—in particular the belief, fueled by a rash of high-profile violent crimes over the past couple years, that crime is skyrocketing in Portland; a ham-handed move to “defund the police,” to the tune of $15 million, in the wake of the George Floyd protests; and a homelessness crisis that has seen parts of downtown turned into encampments and that has led to the filing of a lawsuit by residents who argue that tents on the sidewalks violate the Americans with Disabilities Act because they make it difficult for disabled people to navigate the streets.

Polling from earlier this year found that Kate Brown is the least popular governor in America. And her unpopularity is, it seems, carrying over to Tina Kotek, the longest serving speaker of the state House, who has as good a track record as anybody in the country at pushing progressive legislative priorities but who has been successfully branded by conservatives as a continuation of the Brown-era status quo. Astoundingly, only 5 percent of Oregon residents have a very positive view of Portland and since Kotek desperately needs Portlanders, who are exhausted by the homelessness crisis and the spike in shooting violence, to turn out en masse for her, that spells trouble.

There are lessons here: “Defund the police” was never going to be a politically viable slogan, and it oughtn’t to have been taken seriously by policymakers. Ceding central cities to homeless encampments, with all the disorder around drugs and mental illness that accompanies that, was never going to sit well with residents, and oughtn’t to have become the default in cities up and down the West Coast.

October 20, 2022 6:43 PM  
Anonymous go West, young man said...


Talking of lessons to be learned, I can’t end this wrap-up of western politics without at least a mention of the utterly dispiriting scandal consuming the Los Angeles City Council. To recap: Council president Nury Martinez, her fellow councilors Gil Cedillo and Kevin de León, as well as California Federation of Labor president Ron Herrera, were secretly recorded making extremely offensive comments during an under-the-radar meeting they held to talk about redistricting city council seats. Their aim, apparently, was to brainstorm ways to expand the number of Latino councilmembers elected. But they got sidetracked and ended up making a series of ugly racist comments, including about the Black son of fellow -councior Mike Bonin.

Cedillo was, in a previous political incarnation, a member of the state Assembly and then the state senate. De León used to be California’s senate president pro tempore. When Trump got elected, he fashioned himself one of the leaders of the political resistance. In 2018, after he had termed out, he ran a strong primary campaign from the left against Senator Dianne Feinstein in 2018. Both men cultivated an image that they were going places, that there was something of an inevitability to their political ascent up the California political ladder and, ultimately, onto the national stage.

Now, though, in the wreckage of this hot-mic scandal, it’s hard to see how any of these figures survive politically. So far, Martinez has resigned from the city council, and Herrera from his Labor Federation position. Cedillo and de León have, as of this writing on Wednesday night, refused to step down; yet the enormous pressure building on them to do so, from Joe Biden down to the demonstrators who have rallied around city hall repeatedly throughout this week, surely means that it’s a matter of when rather than if they go.

The damage will, however, remain. Rainbow coalitions are, by their nature, fragile things. When trust is undermined in the way that it has been because of this conversation, it becomes increasingly difficult to hold the disparate groups together.

October 20, 2022 6:43 PM  
Anonymous we thought Obama was an abatross and than, along came Slidin' Biden, the Big Guy... said...


No worries, Dems...

Obama's here to save the day!

LOL!!!!!!!!

Former President Obama will be campaigning in Nevada for Democratic candidates Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto and Gov. Steve Sisolak amid signs of a possible red wave in the state.

Obama will be campaigning for both incumbents who are locked in two competitive midterm elections on Nov. 1 in Las Vegas during a rally to encourage residents to vote early.

The former president is also expected to make several other campaign stops, including in Atlanta, Ga., on Oct. 28 and in Detroit, Mich., and Milwaukee on Oct. 29.

While President Biden has done some campaigning in states like Pennsylvania and Oregon, Obama’s travel suggests that the former president may be seen as a preferred Democratic surrogate over Biden, who is suffering from underwater approval ratings and has been blamed for economic turmoil.

October 20, 2022 8:09 PM  
Anonymous it's the inflation caused by the Big Guy, stupid... said...

As midterm congressional elections arrive, there’s new force to the old saw about facts, the law, and banging the table. Like a desperate attorney thumping furniture because the facts and the law undermine his argument, President Joe Biden’s Democrats are forced to make a lot of empty noise because empirical evidence and voter sentiment cut against them.

Red signals of imminent Democratic defeat are flashing everywhere.

In this week’s New York Times/Sienna College poll, 49% of likely voters — the most important category — said they’d vote Republican, compared to 45% choosing Democrats. That is a small lead but a solid one and, notably, a 5-point swing to the GOP in just a month.

The tide has turned since it inched in Biden’s direction over the summer, and it may be picking up the pace against his party — which is to be expected. As Election Day becomes less of a hazy prospect over the horizon and more an imminent date on the calendar, voters avoid being misdirected by extraneous issues and distracting noises from the party that has nothing good to say on the subject everyone cares about.

Karine Jean-Pierre, the hapless White House press secretary, unwittingly highlighted that in an answer at her press briefing. When a reporter noted, “18 months ago, when the president took office, inflation and gas prices started rising,” she blundered into an admission, replying, “18 months ago, the president signed the American Rescue Plan …” It was the neatest possible encapsulation of what voters are realizing — that Biden came to office with the economy in full recovery. All he had to do was stay out of the way, and he refused to do that.

Unemployment was already down from 15% to 6%, and inflation stood at 1.4%. No “rescue” was needed, and yet Democrats spent $1.9 trillion on left-wing pet projects, pouring excess money onto an acute shortage of goods and services, stoking inflation to 7% before the Ukraine war and the so-called “Putin price hikes” began. The Republican National Committee, grateful for Jean-Pierre’s gratuitous resupply of ammunition, tweeted out the video clip, which Arkansas Republican Sen. Tom Cotton and others retweeted. One almost feels sorry for the spokeswoman; it’s not her fault her boss dealt her such terrible cards to play.

October 21, 2022 5:45 AM  
Anonymous it's the inflation caused by the Big Guy, stupid... said...


By far, the most important issue for voters (44%) is inflation and the state of the economy, which even President Barack Obama’s Treasury Secretary Larry Summers says is being accelerated into a recession by Biden’s policies. A CBS/YouGov poll out Sunday shows that 7 in 10 voters blame Democratic policy for inflation, 45% blame the president “a great deal,” and 65% say the economy is getting worse.

When great swaths of voters, indeed nearly everyone, are noticing crossly that they’re paying 8.2% more across the board than they were a year ago and that core inflation is accelerating — it’s now 6.6% — despite scything interest rate increases from the Federal Reserve, they pay more attention to their rising credit card payments, mortgages, and car loans than to anything else.

Democrats try to gin up their base by saying the key issue this year is Republicans' restriction of abortion rights — Rep. Tim Ryan (D-OH) did so in his debate against J.D. Vance for a U.S. Senate seat in Ohio Tuesday night — but only 5% of likely voters agree that is their most important issue. That same New York Times poll shows independent women swinging by 32 points away from Democrats toward Republicans in the past month. So much for any issue pushing inflation and economic woe to the margins!

If Democrats were heading for an upset retention of the House next year, or if they really thought they were going to secure a majority in the Senate, which is divided 50-50 at the moment, Biden wouldn’t have found himself heading into blue-state Oregon last weekend to eat ice cream and try to sure up voter support for three-term incumbent Sen. Patty Murray (D).

Democratic pretensions of this year being about something other than their economic mismanagement and their boasts about how much the country likes what they have done over the past two years cannot conceal that the party of the Left has screwed up royally. Nov. 8 is long past the Democratic Party's sell-by date. And voters aren’t buying it

October 21, 2022 5:45 AM  
Anonymous Oops, nothing there either! said...

The appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate the origins of the FBI's long inquiry into the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia was provocative enough.

Then-Attorney General Bill Barr tapped John Durham, the top federal prosecutor in Connecticut, in 2019 just weeks after telling lawmakers he believed federal authorities spied on the former president’s campaign.

“I think spying did occur,” Barr told the Senate Judiciary Committee. “I’m not saying that it wasn’t adequately predicated. But I need to explore that.”

More than three years later, Durham’s inquiry, which former President Donald Trump promised would provide proof of a "deep state" vendetta against his presidency, has largely fallen short, leaving defense lawyers to question its origins.

A federal court jury in Alexandria, Virginia, delivered a stinging rebuke to the special prosecutor Tuesday, acquitting a researcher charged with lying to the FBI about the sources of information for a salacious and largely discredited dossier purporting to show Trump's Russia connections.

The verdicts in the case of Igor Danchenko, possibly the last prosecution involving Durham's team, marked the second jury acquittal in the three cases initiated by the special counsel. Last year, a former FBI lawyer was sentenced to one-year probation after pleading guilty to falsifying information used to justify the surveillance of a former Trump campaign adviser. There are no other Durham cases pending on the public docket.

October 21, 2022 9:08 AM  
Anonymous with this very unpleasing sneezing and wheezing the Democrap calliope crashed to the ground... said...


As crime rates increase, voters are blaming “woke politicians” and say it will influence how they vote during the midterm elections .

A recent Harvard-Harris poll showed that 64% of voters find the rise in crime to be the fault of “woke politicians,” with less than a third of respondents saying the country is “on the right track.”

While the economy remains top of mind for voters, 68% say crime is a “very important” consideration as they head to the polls.

Earlier this month, the FBI confirmed voters’ fears with the announcement of a jump in murders and car thefts .

October 21, 2022 4:32 PM  
Anonymous "Law and Order" Party keeps insisting it was a normal tourist day said...


The letter to Trump says he “purposefully and maliciously” spread lies about “fraud” in the election, tried to corrupt the Department of Justice into making false statements to help him, orchestrated and oversaw a scheme to submit fake electors to the National Archives and Congress, and pressured his own vice president to unilaterally declare him the winner of the election on Jan. 6, 2021.

It also notes that he filed “false information, under oath, in federal court,” and summoned his followers to Washington, D.C., “knowing they were angry and some were armed, [and] sending them to the Capitol.”

The letter specifically mentions his 2:24 p.m. social media post condemning Vice President Mike Pence for refusing to help further his scheme and then his failure to take any action “for hours” while his mob attacked the Capitol and he watched on television from the White House.

“We recognize that a subpoena to a former president is a significant and historic action. We do not take this action lightly,” the letter states, pointing out the previous presidents, including John Quincy Adams, Herbert Hoover, Harry Truman and Gerald Ford had all testified before Congress after leaving office.

The letter to Trump says he “purposefully and maliciously” spread lies about “fraud” in the election, tried to corrupt the Department of Justice into making false statements to help him, orchestrated and oversaw a scheme to submit fake electors to the National Archives and Congress, and pressured his own vice president to unilaterally declare him the winner of the election on Jan. 6, 2021.

It also notes that he filed “false information, under oath, in federal court,” and summoned his followers to Washington, D.C., “knowing they were angry and some were armed, [and] sending them to the Capitol.”

The letter specifically mentions his 2:24 p.m. social media post condemning Vice President Mike Pence for refusing to help further his scheme and then his failure to take any action “for hours” while his mob attacked the Capitol and he watched on television from the White House.

“We recognize that a subpoena to a former president is a significant and historic action. We do not take this action lightly,” the letter states, pointing out the previous presidents, including John Quincy Adams, Herbert Hoover, Harry Truman and Gerald Ford had all testified before Congress after leaving office.

The subpoena asks for 19 separate categories of records, including every communication he sent or received on Jan. 6, all his communications regarding the planning for that day, and his messages with others involved in his rally prior to the mob attack or his fake elector scheme, including Roger Stone, Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman, Mike Flynn, Sidney Powell, Patrick Byrne and others.

The subpoena specifically asks for any communications with the right-wing Proud Boys and Oath Keepers militia groups, and makes a point of asking for any communications that might have been sent through the encrypted Signal app.

The House panel unanimously voted last week to subpoena Trump, with Cheney calling him “Jan. 6’s central player.”

“We are obligated to seek answers directly from the man who set this all in motion, and every American is entitled to those answers,” Cheney said at the time. “The central cause of Jan. 6 was one man: Donald Trump.”

Trump, despite losing the election by 7 million votes nationally and 306-232 in the Electoral College, became the first president in more than two centuries of elections to refuse to hand over power peacefully. His incitement of the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol ― his last-ditch attempt to remain in office ― killed five, including one police officer, injured another 140 officers and led to four police suicides.

Nevertheless, Trump remains the dominant figure in the Republican Party and is openly speaking about running for the presidency again in 2024.

October 21, 2022 5:30 PM  
Anonymous Dems are going to be as sad as Eeyore in November 2022 said...


""Law and Order" Party keeps insisting it was a normal tourist day"

no one cares

A Red Wildfire will sweep across America a week from Tuesday

it's aleardy too late for the agenda

October 24, 2022 7:45 AM  
Anonymous Slidin' Biden really is doing a pretty crappy job... said...

whooops!

you guys actually have two weeks to prepare your apology to America for inflation, crime, and damaging the education of public-school children

my bad

didn't mean to steal an extra week for you to entertain your delusions..

October 24, 2022 11:00 AM  
Anonymous Republicans aren't the solutions to our problems, they ARE the problem said...

Sure, right after you and all the other right-wing trolls apologize for Trump's gross mishandling of the pandemic - not too long after he dismantled Obama's pandemic response office, putting over 20 million people out of work in one month, gaslighting the American public so profusely that millions of them still believe he somehow "won" the election with NO evidence of widespread voter fraud, and inspiring and instigating the first violent transfer of presidential power in American history.

And then you have the gall to call other people delusional.

Whatever you're smoking isn't legal in Maryland yet.

October 24, 2022 1:27 PM  
Anonymous The judge's wife still thinks 2020 election was stolen, what a dope said...

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas used the "shadow docket" on Monday to temporarily block a subpoena seeking to have Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., testify in a Georgia election case.

According to The Hill's John Kruzel, Thomas made use of the "shadow docket" to "unilaterally" block the subpoena.

"IT IS ORDERED that the August 15, 2022 order of the United States, District Court for the Northern District of Georgia, case No. 1:22-CV-03027, as modified by the district court's September 1, 2022 order, is hereby stayed pending further order of the undersigned or of the Court," the order said.

Thomas is responsible for emergency applications issued out of the federal 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, which includes Georgia.

The court has requested that the parties provide additional responses by Thursday, so more action on the case is expected.

October 24, 2022 1:33 PM  
Anonymous Republicans have passed their expiration date said...

A local newspaper issued a scathing takedown of Republican candidate Kris Kobach in an endorsement of his Democratic rival for Kansas attorney general.

The former Kansas secretary of state is running against Democrat Chris Mann for the state's top law enforcement job, and the Kansas City Star called out Kobach as "a political retread whose sell-by date has long since passed."

"Campaign insiders have promised he’s a more down-to-earth campaigner this year, less prone to the wild statements that characterized his previous failed bids," wrote the editorial board. "And yet, some redecorating has done little to improve his two galling liabilities in the race: his previous record as secretary of state, and his current campaign, which is so free of substance and so heavy with appeals to divisive social issues that it’s hard to imagine a less attractive candidate for the state’s top law enforcement office."

The newspaper compared Kobach unfavorably to Texas attorney general Ken Paxton or current Kansas attorney general Derek Schmidt, saying his obsession with prosecuting vanishingly rare cases of voter fraud undermined confidence in elections, as did his support for Donald Trump's election lies.

"By aligning himself with Trump in sowing endless doubt about the integrity of our elections, and in the 2020 presidential results in particular, Kobach has chosen to lend his support to the Big Lie — and that’s disqualifying for the office of attorney general, or should be," the editorial board wrote.

October 24, 2022 1:37 PM  
Anonymous Rick Wolfe said...


MAGA or moderate. That is the choice facing voters in New Jersey’s 7th congressional district in this November’s election, when we decide who will represent us for the next term in the U.S. House of Representatives.

On the ballot on Nov. 8, in the 7th Congressional District, are incumbent Tom Malinowski and his challenger Tom Kean Jr.

Tom Malinowski is a moderate Democrat who generally supports the core values of the Democratic Party but has not been in lock-step with President Biden on certain key issues, such as our withdrawal from Afghanistan and student loan forgiveness, and has publicly opposed extreme positions taken by far-left factions within the Democratic Party.

Tom Kean Jr. is running as a MAGA Republican, stating publicly that he “supports the Trump agenda” and “no matter what Trump does, Kean has his back.”

For many voters in NJ-7, the choice between Malinowski and Kean will be easy. Democrats and left-leaning Independents invariably will gravitate toward Malinowski. Far-right Republicans and the Trump-supporting independents invariably will gravitate toward Kean.

But what about voters like me — life-long and loyal, moderate Republicans who are not MAGA, who abhor the far-right positions of today’s Republican Party, but who have rarely if ever voted for a Democrat and disagree with the Democratic Party on certain key issues. Who do we choose?

If we vote for Kean Jr., we will be endorsing and emboldening the MAGA movement within our Republican Party. We will be supporting, and potentially giving control to, the right-wing faction of the Republican Party whose extremism is destroying our democracy. They use violence, not votes, to achieve their objectives, refer to rioters and racists as “patriots;” call climate change a farce and denigrate renewable energy; want to close our borders and isolate the United States from the rest of the world and will deprive women and others of their fundamental rights.

If we vote for Kean Jr., we will be supporting a career politician who during his 20 years in Trenton in the New Jersey Senate, including 14 years as minority leader, has done nothing to improve the quality of life of New Jersey residents. A candidate who is long on false promises, and short on delivering results. A candidate who, during his current campaign, has built a wall to shield himself from questions from the press and NJ-7 voters.

On the other hand, if we vote for Malinowski, we will be supporting a moderate elected official who, during the past four years, has delivered results, not false promises, to his constituents in NJ-7. Tom Malinowski has fought for and obtained millions of dollars of much-needed federal grants for municipalities in NJ-7.

When tropical storm Ida devastated portions of the district last year, he got FEMA aid for many homeowners whose homes were severely damaged by the historic flooding. And unlike Kean Jr., who avoids public appearances — other than photo opportunities — Malinowski has conducted over 130 public town hall events.

At the federal level, Malinowski has been involved with and supported legislation passed by the Democratic Party that kept COVID from destroying our economy; legislation that gave the president greater authority to seize Russian assets; legislation that will help fix our crumbling infrastructure and facilitate the construction of the Gateway Tunnel project; legislation that will bring high-paying jobs back to the U.S., including to New Jersey; legislation that will make the U.S. a leader in renewable energy; and legislation that will lower health care costs.

October 24, 2022 1:48 PM  
Anonymous Rick Wolfe said...


He is aligned with the Democratic Party in fighting to protect our democracy, voters’ rights and the fundamental rights of women and those the MAGA movement treats as outcasts. Perhaps, more importantly, as a moderate Democrat, Tom Malinowski will help reign in the far-left factions within the Democratic Party.

The ultimate outcome this November of the battle between MAGA and moderates here in NJ-7 likely will be decided by moderate Republicans and Independents.

We must act now to stop the MAGA movement. We can no longer support the extremists who have hijacked our Republican Party and have moved it so far to the right that it no longer represents our core Republican values. We cannot support a candidate -- Tom Kean Jr. -- who proudly proclaims that he will have Trump’s back “no matter what Trump does.”

This November, we moderate Republicans must choose Moderate over MAGA. We must support a candidate who shares many of our core values. We moderate Republicans must vote for Tom Malinowski.

Rick Wolfe, a Republican, an East Amwell Township council member, former three-term mayor and the founder of the New Jersey Moderate Party.

October 24, 2022 1:49 PM  
Anonymous Of course MBS likes Trump better - he let him get away with murdering a legal permanent resident of the US said...


Saudi Arabia's day-to-day leader reportedly pushed to cut oil production before the 2022 midterms after deciding that he "much preferred" former President Donald Trump over current President Joe Biden.

The Wall Street Journal reported that relations between Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and the American government soured after Trump left office.

"Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the kingdom's 37-year-old day-to-day ruler, mocks President Biden in private, making fun of the 79-year-old's gaffes and questioning his mental acuity, according to people inside the Saudi government," the report noted. "He has told advisers he hasn't been impressed with Mr. Biden since his days as vice president, and much preferred former President Donald Trump, the people said."

Saudi foreign minister, Prince Faisal bin Farhan, denied that Mohammed "had privately derided Mr. Biden or told aides he was unimpressed by him and favored Mr. Trump," the report added.

Led by the Saudis, OPEC+ announced this month that it would cut oil production by 2 million barrels per day despite inflation and the ongoing conflict in Ukraine.

Trump reportedly bragged about saving Mohammed after the crown prince was linked to the murder of an American journalist.

October 24, 2022 1:55 PM  
Anonymous Here's why conservatives are so sure they'll win elections in 2022 said...

Armed individuals dressed in tactical gear are surveilling ballot drop boxes in Arizona, raising concerns about intimidation during early voting in the midterm elections.

The Maricopa County Elections Department said two people with weapons were spotted at a mail-in ballot drop box in Mesa on Friday. The two wore masks to obscure their faces and left the area after the county sheriff’s office responded.

And on Saturday night, four people ― two of them reportedly armed with handguns ― got into a confrontation at the same drop box when another individual arrived and attempted to record their license plate information.

“He chased over at me and pushed me and grabbed me as I was pulling the cloth of his license plate to video his license plate,” the woman, who was dressed as a nun, told KTVK News.

“I just felt fair is fair — they’re videotaping voters’ license plates, so I didn’t think it was really a big deal to photograph theirs.”

Garrett Archer, a data analyst at Arizona’s KNXV-TV News, shared a photo of the obscured license plate in question, noting with some irony that the ballot-box watchers don’t want their own plates photographed.

Right-wing groups have been staking out ballot boxes across the country and taking photos of people and their license plates as they cast votes in next month’s elections, all with the explicit encouragement of Republican politicians.

Arizona GOP lawmakers have repeatedly urged the self-styled vigilantism, even calling on followers to install hidden cameras at ballot boxes and to trail voters to and from their cars.

Last week, the Arizona secretary of state referred a report of voter intimidation to the state attorney general’s office and the U.S. Department of Justice after a voter reported being “approached and followed by a group of individuals” while trying to drop off a ballot.

“We are deeply concerned about the safety of individuals who are exercising their constitutional right to vote and who are lawfully taking their early ballot to a drop box,” the Maricopa County Elections Department said in a statement.

“Uninformed vigilantes outside Maricopa County’s drop boxes are not increasing election integrity,” the department added. “Instead they are leading to voter intimidation complaints.”

October 24, 2022 3:26 PM  
Anonymous remember when Hillary said she lost because of Russian collusion with Trump: that was the Big Lie... said...


"have the gall to call other people delusional"

in a repressive woke environment, it takes gall to tell the truth

but Dems will lose both chambers of Congress in two weeks from tomorrow

drip,,drip,,drip..

October 24, 2022 10:09 PM  
Anonymous Lying GOPer Rubio piles on the lies said...

After a volunteer canvassing for Sen. Marco Rubio was assaulted Sunday night, the Florida Republican came out swinging on social media.

“Last night one of our canvassers wearing my T-shirt and a Desantis hat was brutally attacked by 4 animals who told him Republicans weren’t allowed in their neighborhood in #Hialeah #Florida,” Rubio tweeted on Monday. “He suffered internal bleeding, a broken jaw & will need facial reconstructive surgery[.]”

However, an incident report filed by the arresting officer and provided to The Daily Beast by the Hialeah Police Department makes no mention of a political motive, anyone saying anything about Republicans, or the other three people Rubio claimed were involved.

Javier Jesus Lopez, a 22-year-old warehouse worker who lives down the street from where the altercation took place, now faces a felony charge of aggravated battery. A phone number listed for Lopez in the incident report—which The Daily Beast has redacted from the document—went straight to voicemail Monday evening.

In an email on Monday, Sgt. Jose Torres of the Hialeah PD told The Daily Beast that the case is “open and active,” and that investigators “soon” expect to determine a motive. When Local 10 News asked Torres if the violence was political, he also said the investigation was ongoing, but as of Monday afternoon there was “no indication that is the case.”

October 25, 2022 8:57 AM  
Anonymous Rubio's White Supremist BS said...

The alleged attack on the Rubio volunteer occurred around 6:30 p.m. Sunday in a residential section of Hialeah, a city in Miami-Dade County of just under 225,000 residents. When police responded, the Rubio volunteer told officers that he had been “walking around the neighborhood handing out fliers when he came across [Lopez] who was blocking the sidewalk,” the incident report states.

“[Lopez] confronted the vic and stated that he could not pass through the sidewalk in front of his residence,” it continues. “Vic proceeded to walk towards the street to avoid the defendant at which point the defendant stated to the vic, ‘You can’t pass by here this is my neighborhood.’ Vic then stated to the defendant, ‘This is public property and I can be here if I want to.’”

At this point, Lopez and the volunteer “began to have a verbal dispute,” after which Lopez allegedly grabbed the man and “proceeded to slam him against the floor.”

That’s when a third man stepped in and kicked Lopez, the alleged attacker, in the face, but fled before police arrived, according to the incident report. Lopez then punched the Rubio volunteer “multiple times with closed fists… causing him to have a severe swelling on the right side of his face and his right eye being completely shut… [Lopez] continued striking the [volunteer] on his mouth causing a severe swelling and bleeding.”

Hialeah Fire Rescue Engine 2 responded to the scene to treat the Rubio volunteer’s injuries, concludes the report, which does not mention the volunteer being transported to the hospital. Lopez was taken into custody and “transported to TGK,” according to the report, using the acronym for Miami’s Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center.

The Rubio volunteer is not named in the incident report, but was later identified by Hialeah Mayor Esteban Bovo to CBS News as Christopher Monzon.

The Daily Beast was unable to reach Monzon, a reputed neo-Nazi who is well-known to anti-fascist activists who posted details of Monzon’s’ far-right bona fides online following Rubio’s tweet.

Miami Against Fascism 🌴☕️
@MIAagainstFash
Replying to
@marcorubio
FYI, this isn’t any ordinary canvasser.

This is Christopher Monzon, aka the “Cuban Confederate,” who marched alongside neo-Nazis at Unite the Right in 2017. And he’s deeply active in Miami GOP politics.
@MiamiDadeGOP
👋

Miami Against Fascism 🌴☕️
@MIAagainstFash
·
20h
🚨
Breaking news
With high confidence we are calling that the @marcorubio canvasser who was attacked + hospitalized last night was Christopher Monzon aka the “Cuban Confederate” who has a well documented history of advocating white supremacy — AND deep involvement in Miami GOP politics. twitter.com/marcorubio/sta…
12:51 PM · Oct 24, 2022
·Twitter for iPhone

October 25, 2022 9:09 AM  
Anonymous Merrick Garland....LOL!!!!!!!!!!! said...

Here's why conservatives are so sure they'll win elections in 2022:

1. the Dems have irresponsibly resurrected inflation after 40 years

2. crime is out of control ever since so many Dems embraced the defund the police rhetoric of BLM

3. border control is abysmal and an issue in key states

4. a generation of children was set back by irrational COVID lockdowns

5. a generation of children was set back by irrational CRT promotion

6. pro-life voters are more likely to vote than pro-choice voters and abortion is now a legislative issue

7. the excesses of the homosexual agenda have become apparent to all

October 25, 2022 9:23 AM  
Anonymous Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Goresuch laugh over a coupla of brewskies every happy hour... said...


With the midterm homestretch underway, Republicans appear to have momentum on their side in their quest to flip the Senate as three states move in their direction in a key forecast.

RealClearPolitics's Senate projection recently moved three battleground Senate races to the GOP: Arizona, Georgia, and Nevada. Meanwhile, FiveThirtyEight has tightened its projections for the Senate amid a deluge of polling showing the Republicans gaining ground.

"Was a bit skeptical of the GOP poll surge before, but I think the evidence for it is now pretty convincing, and if anything I'm more bearish on Democratic chances than our model is," FiveThirtyEight's Nate Silver tweeted.

October 25, 2022 9:32 AM  
Anonymous the scariest week of the year is really frightening Dems this year.... said...


The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), commonly referred to as "the nation’s report card" was just released and the kids are not all right.

NAEP released its first full report since 2019 this week, demonstrating a drop in math and reading scores for fourth through eighth graders.

In 2022, the average fourth-grade math score decreased to its lowest level since 2005 while the average eighth-grade math score hit its lowest level since 2003. Reading scores also dropped on average. It is no secret the decline in learning metrics is a direct result of school closures and remote learning during the pandemic.

October 25, 2022 10:07 AM  
Anonymous I wonder if TTFers agree with any part of the Constitution.... said...


All indications now are that the Democrats are finally about to pay for using Trump-hate as a substitute for governing for two years, just as for four years prior to that they used Trump-hate as a substitute for normal opposition.

The entire fabric of myths and frauds and defamations that the national political media have conveniently held up as a safety net for the Democratic Party and this terribly incompetent administration is about to disappear, and the Democrats will finally carry the can for 14 years of incompetence and venality—ten failed years under Obama and Biden, with a four-year interlude when frenzied antagonism to the Trump administration was a divertissement of shamefully unconstitutional and obstructive opposition.

The greatest liberation of all in the national purgation that now seems likely in the midterm elections in two weeks will be the debunking of the totalitarian fiction that the 2020 election was unquestionably fair. This fraud hangs around the neck of America like an albatross and has been repeated like a catechism by practically every member of the national political media for two years. The ranks of the Congress and of the nation’s governors will be crowded with highly motivated, capable, and ethically elected occupants who have campaigned explicitly and energetically on the alleged fraudulence of the 2020 presidential election result.

Most of the more knowledgeable upholders of this almost manifest untruth know that there were potentially millions of harvested ballots, that it was impossible to verify the authenticity of those alleged ballots, that a great many of them likely came in in huge bulk at the improvised dropboxes in the middle of the night, that 50,000 fewer Biden votes in Pennsylvania and any two of Arizona, Georgia, and Wisconsin would have given the election to Trump in the Electoral College

October 25, 2022 10:36 AM  
Anonymous the Biden crime family ain't above the LAW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! said...


Two weeks before the 2022 midterms, fear of crime is second only to worries over inflation and recession. Both issues – personal security and economic security – affect voters directly. They arise every time voters ride the subway, walk down a dark street, pay the cashier at the grocery, or fill up their truck. That’s why survey after survey says they are the top issues motivating voters this November. That’s bad news for Democrats. Pollsters say Republicans hold huge advantages on the economy, inflation, and crime, the issues that matter most to voters.

Since crime is essentially a local issue, why does it hurt Democrats running for national or statewide office? Because the Democratic Party has associated itself with the notion that “social justice” and “racial equality” require fundamentally changing policing and incarceration. The problem, they say, is police, not criminals. In practice, that means Democrats, especially progressives, favor weaker law enforcement, easier conditions for bail (even for those charged with violent offenses), and less funding for police officers. That message was encapsulated in the slogans “defund the police” and “reimagine policing,” which took hold in 2020 after George Floyd was killed by a Minneapolis cop.

Not all Democrats embraced this self-defeating fad. Joe Biden, notably, spoke out against it. But progressives marched in lock-step, and their policies became the party’s dominant message on crime. Not just dominant, uncontested. Left-wing prosecutors ran on that message, won in city after city, and implemented it with disastrous effects. They had strong backing from state and local Democratic politicians. Pushback inside the party was tepid, for fear of alienating white progressives as well black leaders and activists.

Now Democrats are stuck with the consequences on the streets and, soon, at the ballot box. The party’s “soft on crime” image has become a political albatross, which candidates cannot readily discard. They are weighed down for two reasons. First, they hold power nationally and in almost every major city, so voters hold them responsible for bad outcomes. The party’s unwillingness to enforce basic laws and protect the public is exemplified by the porous Southern border, a deliberate policy choice by the Biden administration. The result has been an unprecedented influx of illegal immigrants (some 2.4 million in the last fiscal year alone), plus a surge of deadly drugs. Mexican cartels have reaped billions in profits, five or six times as much as they made before Biden threw open the border.

October 25, 2022 10:56 AM  
Anonymous Outlook not so good said...

The Right Stuff, a dating app for Conservatives backed by Paypal co-founder Peter Thiel, has launched in the US.

The invite-only app designed for Republicans was first announced in August, with an ad featuring former White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany’s younger sister, Ryann.

It was designed by the staff of former US president Donald Trump, including Daniel Huff, who served in the Trump administration in the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

When the app was first announced, Huff told political newspaper/website The Hill that The Right Stuff “has really not been done before”.

“It’s an important, underserved market,” Huff said. “Liberals own the education, media corporations, and we can’t let them control our personal relationships.”

According to John McEntee, the app’s co-founder and former director of the White House Presidential Personnel Office (in the Trump administration), the former US president “thought it was a great idea”.

In an op-ed for Newsweek, McEntee wrote that Trump “was super excited about it and loved the name”.

Its website invites people to “Connect with people who aren’t offended by everything”, and “View profiles without pronouns”, while the app’s prompts include “January 6th was…” referencing the US Capitol Riots, and “Favourite liberal lie…”

Upon launch, The Right Stuff released an ad featuring Conservative women who said they were looking for “masculine men” or men with an “alpha-male vibe”.

Their other requirements included wanting children and their faith being important to them. The women also say that Conservative men “have better manners” and “understand their role in the relationship as a man”.

All of the women featured in the ad agreed that being a Democrat would be a red flag.

Women are incentivized to join the app with access to a premium membership for free – a benefit men have to pay extra for.

However, there are reports on social media that the app is predominantly full of men, so they have no women to match with. (The app is currently only geared for heterosexual couples.)

While the app is allegedly failing to attract Republican women, it has caught the attention of young liberals who are taking to social media to relentlessly mock it.

Social-media users were stunned by a TikTok video by Cheyenne Hunt-Majer, which claims that one of the first reviewers of The Right Stuff (which is only available in the US), said that using the aforementioned January 6th prompt resulted in a call from the FBI.

The reviewer, who alleged that they were contacted by the FBI, also claimed that the app was created by the “deep state” — a right-wing conspiracy theory about a secret network within the government that has been purported by Donald Trump.

Liberal social-media users are delighted with the idea that there appear to be no women on the app, and that the initial reviews suggest that the January 6th prompt is somehow a honey trap.

(However, the reviewers claiming to have been contacted by the FBI could very well be mocking the app’s members, too.)

Dean Obeidallah, a US comedian, joked about the type of person who might sign up for the app, referencing the Ku KluxKlan, and said: “The new conservative dating app called The Right Stuff has now launched. I hear your profile picture can be with hoods on or off. It’s your choice.”

Other liberals are choosing to see the benefits of having a Conservative-only dating app and welcoming the launch of The Right Stuff.

Twitter user Matt Perkins said: “I mock the conservative dating app The Right Stuff but there is one potential plus to it which is hopefully those conservative men stop going on other dating apps and stop harassing women who don’t share their beliefs.”

Meanwhile, Twitter user @7Veritas4 said: “In the News: Conservatives launch a dating site called ‘The Right Stuff’. Finally, there is a national registry of every guy you’d never want to be with.”

October 25, 2022 6:24 PM  
Anonymous i hope you're having fun said...


Students of military history understand that the real bloodletting starts when the losing side breaks ranks after its formations disintegrate and the cavalry sweeps in to mow down the fleeing survivors. It’s every man for himself, and the best the defeated individuals who were once part of cohesive units can hope for is not to end up one of the bodies left strewn across the battlefield. This is when the victor runs up the score. This is when the vast majority of casualties happen. This is a rout. And that’s pretty much where the Democrats are headed on November 8th, figuratively of course.

For the stupid people, we Republicans are the cavalry. For the really stupid people, cavalry is a highly-mobile fighting force, in ancient times mounted on horseback wielding lances, sabers, and sometimes bows or carbines. In the US Army, cavalrymen have given up their steeds but still wear bitchin’ headgear.

Those of us who have been through a few midterm election cycles understood how this was going to play all along. The fundamentals favor the out-of-power party. Here, the fundamentals broke into a pharmacy and stole all the steroids because the gross incompetence of Grandpa Badfinger has combined with the wine woman/globalist joint ideology that demands that the ruling caste make the normals suffer for their sin of not being in the ruling caste. These factors come together to make this election an inevitable Democrat disaster.

This is how it happens for the losing party. In the spring, there are rumors and hushed whispers among the cognoscenti about the coming of a wave. There is fear; this is used to stoke the donors into handing over more of their dollars to help stave off disaster. Then, in the dog days of August, there arises hope. Maybe, just maybe, it will not be a disaster. Perhaps we will defy history and not lose many seats; maybe we will even gain! Take that, fundamentals!

And then Labor Day happens and people begin to pay attention and the hope that was so hopeful at the end of the summer begins to dissipate. For a few weeks, until about mid-October, they tell themselves that nothing has changed since summer, that hope is alive, and that there will be no wave. And in mid-October, the signs become impossible to ignore.

The money dries up for the losing party, while the smart money flows to the winning one. Polls start changing, first one, then two, then all of them, all in one direction. We hear of the losing side making tough calls to abandon the weak to try and save a few of the less weak. Nothing goes right. Gaffes, mistakes, the occasional sex scandal. You can feel the gloom setting in. The cheerleaders begin hedging their predictions. When the Democrats are the losers, like in this cycle, the regime media begins walking back its official optimism to avoid total humiliation when the narrative it has been pushing for the last six months turns to ashes.

Then the ranks break. The solid front shatters. The rout begins.

We’re almost there. We are almost to the point of Democrat collapse.

October 25, 2022 8:01 PM  
Anonymous when the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie, that's amore'!!!......... said...


The White House has lowered its earlier optimism about the midterm elections and is now worried that Democrats could lose control of both chambers of Congress, administration officials say.

Recent polls have shown Democrats who once had comfortable leads in some Senate races on a knife's edge, and Senate elections that were considered toss-ups between the two parties now leaning Republican as high inflation persists.

The House of Representatives, which Biden and some allies and advisers predicted Democrats could hold earlier this year, is decisively swinging for Republicans, polling analysts including FiveThirtyEight say.

Losing control of one or both houses of Congress will profoundly shape the next two years of Joe Biden's presidency, with Republicans expected to block legislation on family leave, abortion, policing and other Biden priorities while pushing new laws to curb immigration and spending, using the debt ceiling as leverage.

Republicans are also expected to launch investigations into Democratic spending and the business dealings and private life of the president's son Hunter.

Biden predicted in May that his fellow Democrats would make gains in both the House and Senate, but he acknowledged last week that the race has tightened. "It’s been back and forth with them ahead, us ahead, them ahead," Biden said, adding the polls were "all over the place," and that he thought they would swing towards Democrats one more time before Nov. 8's elections.

October 25, 2022 8:45 PM  
Anonymous more if them polls that TTFers like so much... said...

Academic proficiency plummeted in 2022 to among the lowest on record following the coronavirus school shutdowns, and children in Democrat-run states where teachers union demands led to extended school shutdowns bore the brunt, data released Monday from a national test known as the “nation’s report card” showed.

The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) is administered to fourth and eighth graders every few years, allowing for a comparison of reading and math proficiency by state between 2019 — just before the pandemic — and 2022. The decline in math scores was the sharpest ever since the test began in 1990, and the average math scores were the lowest since 2005. The average eighth grade reading score was the lowest since 1998.

“Today’s NAEP results are the proverbial final nail in the coffin,” Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, a Republican who won election in 2021 in a blue-leaning state largely because of fury over Democrats’ education policies, said Monday. “If this doesn’t wake you up, then you’re clearly trying to cover up your own bad decisions. In the business world, if this was your report card, there would be an immediate change in management. You would be fired. And I think that’s what voters did.”

He said leaders kept “schools shut for an unnecessary amount of time, forcing students to learn through a screen and telling them that’s a meaningful education,” and that coronavirus decisions followed decades of similarly bad education decisions.

The map at the top of this article shows how badly the number of fourth-graders who scored at least “basic” in reading fell compared to before the pandemic in each state. Basic is the lowest of the three tiers — basic, proficient, and advanced — and those who do not have even basic reading skills by fourth grade are at risk of serious problems when it comes to employment and higher education later in life.

While almost all schools closed in March 2020, schools in conservative areas were often open for the following 2020-21 school year, while those in areas where teachers unions’ Democrat allies hold power were closed or in some sort of hybrid schedule for much of the year.

In the following chart, The Daily Wire plotted the same drop in reading scores according to how much of the 2020-21 school year the average student spent in actual, in-person school — as opposed to so-called distance learning that often consisted of little actual work, and with significant truancy from students. The state names are colored according to whether it had a Republican or Democrat governor at the beginning of the 2020-21 school year.

Clustered in the lower-left are Virginia, Oregon, Minnesota, Maryland, D.C., Nevada, and New York. That’s because all of them had among the longest school shutdowns — and drops approaching 9%. Only four states saw improvements in this measure of reading: Florida, whose schools remained open, Louisiana and Alabama, whose schools were also mostly open, and Hawaii — an outlier which saw improvement despite closed schools.

For the percent of time in-person, The Daily Wire drew from COVID School Data Hub, which tracked schools’ status across the country — though the average figure isn’t perfect since some decisions about remote learning varied across school districts and grade levels. Four states are also missing.

October 25, 2022 8:50 PM  
Anonymous more if them polls that TTFers like so much... said...


Here we have the same thing but for Grade 8 math. This time, we look at the drop in the percent who scored “proficient.” The even larger drops in this tier highlights that school shutdowns did not only harm students who were barely hanging on even before the pandemic, but were also devastating to previously good students.

Deep-blue states including Minnesota, Massachusetts, and Washington had drops of 12% — far more than states that spent more of the year in-person. Every state saw declines, but deep-red Alabama saw the smallest decline.

Though the scores are mostly at the state level, results are also provided for certain large cities. In Miami-Dade, Florida, 71% of 8th graders scored at least “basic” in reading, and in 2022, that actually rose to 72%. Meanwhile, in Chicago, the 2019 figure of 64% dropped to 61%. While Gov. Ron DeSantis ordered Florida’s schools open, the Chicago teachers union refused to work, claiming “The push to reopen schools is rooted in sexism, racism and misogyny.

October 25, 2022 8:51 PM  
Anonymous when the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie, that's amore'!!!......... said...


America is in the throes of a cultural and political war over gender ideology, featuring high-profile conflicts over everything from school curricula to athletics to pronouns.

But among the most explosive battles unfolding within the broader war is that over transgender children. In an inhospitable election year for the left, Democrats, far from being on the back foot, have pushed ahead on this front, including this fall in California, New York, and Virginia with moves to curb parental rights.

Days from the election, President Biden made clear the party’s broader position, telling a transgender activist that no state should be able to bar “gender-affirming healthcare” for kids.

That can include puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgeries to remove or replace breasts and genitalia. Promoting such treatment for the growing number of kids identifying as transgender are, on one side, the Biden administration; blue state governments; much, though not all, of the medical establishment; educators; and activists. Opposing them are red state governments acting on behalf of outraged or concerned parents and other constituents, and buoyed by dissenting doctors.

Divisions have deepened despite, as Reuters recently reported, a lack of “strong evidence of the efficacy” of the treatments at issue and despite their possible long-term consequences.

October 26, 2022 12:32 PM  
Anonymous more if them polls that TTFers like so much... said...


WASHINGTON, Oct 25 (Reuters) - President Joe Biden's approval rating edged closer to the lowest level of his presidency just two weeks before U.S. midterm elections that will shape the rest of this term, a Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll completed on Tuesday found.

The two-day national poll found that 39% of Americans approve of Biden's job performance, a percentage point lower than a week earlier.

Biden's unpopularity is helping drive the view that Republicans will win control of the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate on Nov. 8. Control of even one chamber of Congress would give Republicans the power to bring Biden's legislative agenda to a grinding halt. LOL!

Taking office in January 2021 in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, Biden's term has been marked by the economic scars, including soaring inflation. This year, his approval rating drifted to as low as 36% in May and June.

In this week's Reuters/Ipsos poll, one third of respondents picked the economy as the country's biggest problem, a much larger share than the one in 10 who picked crime. Only one in 20 pointed to the end of national abortion rights.

October 26, 2022 12:41 PM  
Anonymous Remember; 80 percent of the people polled say 100 percent of the polls suck. said...

It was just a matter of time before the anti-LGBTQ protests got violent. For months now, egged on by Republican leaders like Gov. Ron "Don't Say Gay" DeSantis of Florida, far-right groups have been mounting increasingly aggressive anti-queer protests under the guise of "protecting" children. By framing any expression of LGBTQ identity that occurs around kids as "sexualizing" children, groups like the Proud Boys have spent months targeting family-friendly Pride events and child-oriented events where drag performers read to kids from storybooks. Even though these events are deliberately sanitized and intended only to amuse children and adults by playing dress-up, lurid claims of "grooming" and pedophilia are being leveraged to send protesters into a frenzy. In some places, protesters are showing up with guns, threatening violence around the children they claim to be "protecting."

Unsurprisingly, then, one protest in Eugene, Oregon got violent this week. Worse, the queerphobic protesters have focused their ire on an 11-year-old child, doxxing her and putting her in danger, all while claiming to do it for her own good.

Sunday morning, a restaurant called Old Nick's Pub hosted a Drag Queen Story Time Brunch. The pub, like many across the country, hosts a mix of events that are sometimes family-friendly and sometimes not. Like the pub's other family-oriented events, such as their Saturday morning pancake party, Drag Queen Story Time is a kiddie event, where drag queens and little kids bask in their shared love of flashy clothes and acting goofy. Indeed, one of the performers is an 11-year-old drag enthusiast-turned-performer who has regularly turned out to entertain the other kids.

Far-right activists seized on the existence of this child as "proof" of their false claims that drag is an elaborate cover for more sinister activities. One woman, going by the name "Honey Badger Mom" on Twitter, posted pictures of the child and made hay out of the fact that, at night on different days, the pub hosts events that are more adult in nature.

Once it was discovered that, as Eugene Weekly reports, "a drag queen who has appeared in photographs" with the tween "was later arrested on charges of child pornography," all hell broke loose. Even though the family says the child has only had cursory contact with and has never been alone with the offender, that was all the excuse that the Proud Boys needed to go on an all-out attack. The offender worked at an elementary school, but the Proud Boys are not — yet — demanding that all education be shut down because some pedophiles find positions in schools. Similarly, there is no call for organized sports or churches to be shut down, even though both institutions have had highly publicized issues with child sex offenders finding employment within them.

Proud Boys and other anti-LGBTQ groups showed up at the drag show on Sunday and were met by a much larger group of locals there to show their support for the pub and their family-oriented events. The pub asked supporters to "keep things civil" because "[c]hildren will be present," but very quickly, according to The Register-Guard, things turned violent. Eugene Police report that firearms were being displayed by "both groups," and soon the two sides were throwing rocks at each other. Reporters snapped pictures of the Proud Boys and their allies firing paintballs at the pro-drag side. One man was taken to the hospital, but there were no arrests. Inside, the performers read books and sang children's music, keeping up a brave face.

"The issue here is they want to label queer people as pedophiles," the organizer of the event told the Eugene Weekly. He denounced the protesters for making children unsafe, despite claiming they wish to protect them.

October 26, 2022 1:40 PM  
Anonymous Remember; 80 percent of the people polled say 100 percent of the polls suck. said...

The family of the 11-year-old performer reports their child was "unable to attend school the entire week due to safety concerns, causing serious stress, trauma, and anxiety."

This violent protest came a mere two days after a similar event in Nashville, Tennessee, complete with the attacks on children's safety under the guise of "protecting" them. Matt Walsh, a far-right podcaster for The Daily Wire, led a protest against a children's hospital run by Vanderbilt University on Friday. The protest was called "Rally to End Child Mutilation," a misleading name meant to falsely imply the hospital is performing surgeries to alter the genitals of minors. In reality, the hospital never does such surgeries on people under 18, and the rare surgeries they do offer are more cosmetic in nature and only done for those over 16.

As Emily St. James of Vox explained in a recent article, refusing gender-affirming care to minors is not about "protecting" them, but about inflicting harm. "The risks of withholding gender-affirming care vary from patient to patient but often involve things like worsening anxiety, depression, and suicidality," Jack Turban, a professor of child and adolescent psychiatry at the University of California San Francisco, told St. James. As the article explains in great detail, the care trans children receive is slow-moving and cautious, largely focused on psychological therapy and the use of hormone blockers to delay puberty until the child matures to the point where they can start making more adult decisions about their bodies and self-presentation.

The bad faith that fuels this performative outrage is generally not hard to suss out. It appears Walsh doesn't just object to gender-affirming care for children, but to trans identities in general. On his Monday show, he blamed trans victims of murder for their own deaths by claiming "they engage in high-risk activities." His argument that older teens can't be trusted with even basic decisions regarding gender presentation is similarly suspicious. Walsh has previously argued that the category of "teenager" is a degenerate modern notion and we should return to the past, where "13-year-olds were expected to act like they're 23." Mostly, his interest was in pushing more teenage girls to marry and have babies. That he thinks teens are ready to be parents but not ready to identify as trans speaks not to a rigorous understanding of child development so much as an interest in forcing rigid gender roles.

Despite their claims to the contrary, these anti-LGBTQ protesters are harming, not helping kids. But there is one group being helped by all these conspiracy theories: Right wing Republican politicians exploiting disinformation about drag shows and trans medical care to stir up voters. Last week, the GOP nominee for governor of Pennsylvania, Doug Mastriano, falsely suggested a children's hospitial in Philadelphia was "grabbing homeless kids and kids in foster care, apparently, and experimenting on them with gender transitioning." Not one word of that is true.

Arizona's Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake made similar false allegations that drag queens are "grooming" children. In response, Phoenix-based drag performer Barbra Seville posted numerous photos of Lake standing with her in full drag. "Kari was a friend of mine," wrote Seville, whose real name is Richard Stevens. "I've performed for Kari's birthday, I've performed in her home (with children present,) and I've performed for her at some of the seediest bars in Phoenix." Lake, who was once a supporter of Barack Obama's, has been regularly accused of embracing far-right politics for cynical and opportunistic reasons. These photos only added more fuel to those suspicions.

October 26, 2022 1:41 PM  
Anonymous Remember; 80 percent of the people polled say 100 percent of the polls suck. said...

Earlier this month, reporters for NBC News detailed how at least 20 Republican politicians have repeated false claims that "K-12 schools are placing litter boxes on campus or making other accommodations for students who identify as cats." This urban legend is rooted in the same bigoted rhetoric that is being leveraged against drag performers and trans kids. The idea is that by "allowing" minors to identify as queer or trans, the door has been opened to all sorts of wild behavior, including "allowing" kids to identify as common housepets. Not only is it not true, but the rumor is also dehumanizing, as it equates being gay or trans with being a dumb animal. The talking point has echoes of GOP rhetoric in the earlier 21st century when politicians and conservative pundits routinely suggested that legalizing same-sex marriage would lead to people marrying "box turtles" or other such animals.

On the whole, the current anti-LGBTQ panic is reminiscient of the similar "Satanic panic" of the 1980s, when acccusations of ritual sexual abuse and murder were frequently leveled at everyone from daycare workers to heavy metal musicians. Then, as now, the paranoia was rooted in conservative Christian anger at social change — that's why the targets of those false accusations were people who made it easier for women to work outside of the home and those who made space for adolescent rebellion. The Satanic panic is also a reminder that moral panics and conspiracy theories create real victims. Numerous people were imprisoned based on false accusations of Satan worship. Communities and families were torn apart. Now it's happening all over again with a disinfo-fueled panic over drag shows and trans identities. Conservative pundits and politicians benefit, but innocent people — especially children — are increasingly suffering the violent consequences.


Read more about extremism targeting LGBTQ people and allies

Violence towards transgender people has increased dramatically, study finds

October 26, 2022 1:41 PM  
Anonymous remember when Hillary said she lost because of Russian collusion with Trump: that was the Big Lie... said...


"the current anti-LGBTQ panic is reminiscient of the similar "Satanic panic" of the 1980s"

actually, it's nothing like it

because it's actually happening

kids are being indoctrinated to believe homosexuality is normal

and if they don't agree, they are ostracized

and kids are being "treated" to help them change their gender

and girls sports are being decimated by guys who think they're girls and compete in girl sports

and girls are being made uncomfortable when guys who say they're girls are in their rest rooms and locker rooms

it's all true

October 26, 2022 10:49 PM  
Anonymous LOL, simply, LOL!!!!!!!.......... said...


Democrats are betting that President Biden and Vice President Harris can put Democratic Senate hopeful John Fetterman over the top despite a faltering debate performance that has operatives more worried than ever they could lose the pivotal race.

Biden and Harris will head to Philadelphia to campaign together on Friday, a rare occurrence for the duo who typically don’t travel alongside one another.

October 27, 2022 9:03 AM  
Anonymous all the old dudes, carry the news, all the old dudes... said...


President Biden has claimed states have no right to restrict treatments like hormone blockers or sex change operations for transgender children, claiming that recent measures passed by Republican-led legislatures were based in “fear.”

“I don’t think any state or anybody should have the right to do that. As a moral question or as a legal question, I just think it’s wrong,” Biden told transgender TikTok star Dylan Mulvaney during a NowThis News presidential forum that aired Sunday.

Mulvaney, who has been documenting their transition to more than 8 million followers on the platform, asked the president if he thought states “should have a right to ban gender-affirming health care.”

“It’s really important that we continue to speak out about the basic fundamental rights of all human beings, and the idea, the idea, that was going on, you know, in some states — I won’t get into the politics of it, but, some states, it’s just — it’s outrageous, and I think it’s immoral,” Biden added.

The GOP-led push to legislate transgender issues began with a 2016 North Carolina bill that required transgender people to use the public bathroom that corresponded to the gender on their birth certificate.

More recently, state and local lawmakers have sought to bar transgender "women" from playing on girls’ school sports teams, prevent classroom discussions of sexuality and sexual orientation and absolve teachers from using students’ preferred pronouns.

In April, Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladopo said minors experiencing gender dysphoria should receive counseling rather than undergo medical procedures, opposing guidelines issued by the Biden administration.

October 27, 2022 10:59 AM  
Anonymous the devastating damage liberals have inflicted on children in blue states... said...

The policies liberals have pushed on schools are a top issue for voters a week from Tuesday.

On Monday, America got a report card, and the results were pretty bad. There were alarming declines in math and reading skills among the country’s fourth and eighth graders, as assessed by the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP), which has been testing broad samples of elementary level students since the early 1990s. In this year’s test results, which are calculated as an average from 0 to 500, math scores dropped by five points for fourth graders, lower than all previous assessment years since 2005. Eighth graders’ math scores dropped by a whopping eight points compared to 2019.

Reading scores fared slightly better, with both fourth and eighth graders recording only three point drops compared to 2019. But for eighth graders, that score was lower than all previous assessment years going back to 1998. Even if you were to dice the scores by state, no single state in the country saw an increase in reading or math scores for either grade—it was all straight declines or no significant changes recorded.

Though test scores are simply one predictor of children’s success, they tend to reflect whether a student will finish high school, succeed in college, and earn a good living. At a national level, test scores can predict economic growth, which means learning loss could quickly become a serious problem not only for individual students, but for the future of the country as a whole.

But even though this year’s NAEP results are alarming, in many ways, they’re not all that surprising. America’s classrooms have gone through cataclysmic changes since 2020 with on and off in-person learning, online classes, and mandated quarantines, not to mention the nearly 200,000 children under 18 that have lost a parent or other in-home caregiver to COVID-19. That’s in addition to the severe teacher shortage, driven not just by burnout, but desire for better pay, the politicization of teaching and high turnover rates.

The federal government tried to remedy the situation by investing $123 billion in American schools, but research has shown at least $700 billion is needed to seriously offset COVID-19 related learning loss

October 28, 2022 5:54 AM  
Anonymous For red and blue America, a glaring divide in COVID-19 death rates persists 2 years later said...

Unvaccinated Americans are several times more likely to be hospitalized and die and those living in rural areas, as well as conservatives and Republicans, were among the most hesitant to be vaccinated, according to a September 2021 ABC News/Washington Post poll. For unvaccinated Americans, the decision to not wear a mask or follow other restrictions, ultimately caused increased transmission, which in turn, resulted in more severe outcomes, experts suggest.

The end result is a gulf in COVID-19 death rates between red and blue states, one that is particularly amplified when examining the most and least vaccinated states.

“In the United States, COVID-19 has become a political issue, and people's political beliefs strongly influence their behavior,” David Dowdy, an infectious disease epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, told ABC News. “Political divides in our thinking about COVID are much stronger than in many other countries.”

Though politicization of the virus likely played a significant role in the differing death rates, due to varying approaches to restrictions and vaccination efforts, experts say, a myriad of other issues also contributed, including access to adequate healthcare, and the disproportionate impact of the virus on communities of color.

Vaccination rates and receptivity to mitigation measures have also been influenced by factors including misinformation.

Cumulative death rates in red states 30% higher

It has been nearly a year since the COVID-19 vaccines became available to every American adult last April, after initially being offered to health workers and older populations, when supplies were still limited.

However, vaccination rates differ markedly between states that voted for former President Donald Trump, compared to those that voted for President Joe Biden, paralleling the partisan lines that have divided the country.

Data sourced from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows that the 10 states with the highest vaccination rates all voted for Biden in 2020, while nine of the 10 states with the lowest vaccination rates voted for Trump. The lone exception was Georgia, which narrowly went for Biden by less than a quarter of a percentage point.

October 28, 2022 9:10 AM  
Anonymous more of them polls that TTFers like so much...... said...


"The end result is a gulf in COVID-19 death rates between red and blue states, one that is particularly amplified when examining the most and least vaccinated states"

so what?

people can decide what risks they want to take

The most memorable moment of Tuesday’s fiery debate between New York governor Kathy Hochul and her Republican challenger, Lee Zeldin, centred on crime. After Zeldin hammered Hochul on bail-reform laws that put criminals back on the streets, one of the main themes of his campaign, Hochul seemed to admit more than she might have wished. ‘I don’t know why that’s so important to you’, she responded.

With Democrats like Hochul wondering aloud why anyone cares about repeat offenders roaming the streets, perhaps it is no surprise that the Republicans are seen by voters as the party that cares more about crime and has a better chance of tackling it. High-profile Democrats and progressives have repeatedly dismissed voters’ concerns about crime, casting the fears of regular Americans as a reflection of conservative fear-mongering.

You have to wonder, is it really wise to gaslight voters in this way? Is it wise to tell them they are wrong to care about what they are telling you they care about? Because they really do care about crime. According to Gallup, 80 per cent of Americans say that they are worried about crime, including 43 per cent of Democrats who worry about crime ‘a great deal’. A Morning Consult / Politico poll finds similar numbers. Over three-quarters of respondents say violent crime is a major problem in the United States, with 60 per cent saying crime would play a major role in who they vote for in November’s Midterms. And in a NewsNation poll of registered voters, over 85 per cent of respondents say crime is either somewhat or very important to their decision about who they would vote for.

Crime has become the new What’s the Matter with Kansas, except now instead of accusing people of being hypnotised by conservative media into ‘voting against their economic interests’, progressives accuse working-class Americans, who are experiencing a real rise in violent crime, of inventing the cars that have been jacked, the purses that have been snatched, the bruises they have sustained and the loved ones they have lost to a rising murder rate.

The latest tactic of the progressive blue-check Twitterati and liberal media zombies has been to point out that, since 2020, the murder rate has risen mostly in states that voted for Donald Trump. They have taken to calling the rise in crime the ‘red-state murder problem’, in order to reflect the fact that the top-10 murder rates in the US are almost all in states that Donald Trump won in 2020. This talking point came up during a gubernatorial debate in Oklahoma last week, when the Democratic candidate, Joy Hofmeister, pointed out that Oklahoma has a higher murder rate than New York.

Hofmeister is technically correct: Oklahoma does have a higher murder rate than New York. But this belies the fact that crime in red states is extremely concentrated – in cities with Democratic mayors and in communities representing a small minority of Oklahomans. And this is the part that Democrats don’t want to talk about.

October 28, 2022 9:33 AM  
Anonymous Lies, damn lies, and statistics said...

We can certainly talk about it, but you'll just twist the statistics to suit your propaganda.

It's still safer to live in a blue state than a red state because of the higher red state murder rate. That's the part republicans don't want to talk about.

October 28, 2022 10:17 AM  
Anonymous inconvenient truth about the blues... said...


"It's still safer to live in a blue state than a red state because of the higher red state murder rate. That's the part republicans don't want to talk about."

interesting

so, to be clear, you think letting criminals back out on the streets makes us safer?

October 28, 2022 10:34 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Nope.

October 28, 2022 1:13 PM  
Anonymous If a Trump supporter had a hammer..... said...

New details are still coming in on the assault of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's husband, and a new detail seemingly increases the likelihood that it was a politically motivated attack.

Sources who have been briefed on the attack CNN's Ana Cabrera, the alleged attacker shouted, "Where is Nancy?" at Paul Pelosi after breaking into his house.

Afterward, the assailant allegedly beat Pelosi with a hammer, which required him to be taken to a nearby hospital to receive medical treatment. Doctors say he is expected to make a full recovery.

Earlier on Friday, the Associated Press reported that law enforcement officials had learned that the assailant specifically targeted Pelosi's house, although they still have not released the attacker's identity.

Nancy Pelosi, who was a frequent target for violent rhetoric by multiple Trump supporters who rioted at the United States Capitol on January 6, was not present in the house at the time of the assault.

October 28, 2022 2:21 PM  
Anonymous for millennia, society has known that two genders are necessary to make a marriage said...


"Nancy Pelosi, who was a frequent target for violent rhetoric by multiple Trump supporters"

As opposed to the violent rhetoric directed at Supreme Court justices and Senators who confirmed them by multiple Trump supporters. Or when Steve Scalise was shot by a deranged Pelosi supporter. Or when it was recently disclosed that Pelosi said she would "punch" Trump if he came to Capitol Hill

The attacker was a nude activist who was once photographed unclothed outside city hall celebrating the homosexual wedding of a friend of his:

"David DePape was known in Berkeley as a pro-nudity activist who had picketed naked at protests against local ordinances requiring people to be clothed in public.

Gene DePape said the girlfriend whom his son followed to California was named Gypsy and they had two children together. DePape also has a child with a different woman, his stepfather said.

Photographs published by The San Francisco Chronicle on Friday identified DePape frolicking nude outside city hall with dozens of others at the 2013 wedding of pro-nudity activist Gypsy Taub, who was marrying another man. Taub did not respond Friday to calls or emails."

October 29, 2022 4:31 AM  
Anonymous NEVER FORGET THE GOP GANG'S ATTACK ON OUR DEMOCRACY ON JANUARY 6, 2021 said...

President Joe Biden on Friday called out the “despicable” attack on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband, Paul, directly tying the attacker's words to rioters' chants during the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol.

There’s reports “that the same chant was used by this guy that they have in custody that was used on January 6, the attack on the U.S. Capitol,” Biden said during an impassioned speech at the annual Pennsylvania Democratic Party’s Independence Dinner, where he and Vice President Kamala Harris were campaigning for Pennsylvania’s Democratic nominees.

The perpetrator's shouts of “Where’s Nancy?” during the home invasion early Friday morning echoed the chants of pro-Trump rioters who searched the Capitol's halls for the speaker in a bid to stop the certification of Biden’s 2020 victory.

“This is despicable. There’s no place in America. There’s too much violence — political violence — too much hatred, too much vitriol,” Biden said. “And what makes us think one party can talk about stolen elections, Covid being a hoax, [that it’s] all a bunch of lies, and it not affect people who may not be so well balanced? What makes us think that it’s not going to alter the political climate? Enough is enough is enough.”

Biden opened his speech asking the crowd to take a short pause to “send our love to Nancy Pelosi,” adding that he had spoken to the speaker and her husband “seems to be coming along well.” He later called on “every person of good conscience” to “clearly and unambiguously stand up against the violence in our politics, regardless of what your politics are.”

Earlier Friday, Harris blamed the current political climate for inspiring the attack, calling it “an act of extreme violence.”

“I think we’re looking at a time in our country where there is so much discourse that is fueled by hate and division,” Harris told reporters, “and anyone who professes to be a leader has to really understand the meaning and the impact of their words and their posture on things like this.”

Former President Barack Obama, who was speaking at a campaign event for Georgia Democratic nominees Sen. Raphael Warnock and Stacey Abrams Friday night, also called out those who “look to stir up divisions, or to make folks as angry and as afraid of one another for their own advantage,” adding that the dialogue is now “hyped up” on social media.

“The only way to save democracy is if we, together nurture it and fight for it,” Obama said.

October 29, 2022 7:23 AM  
Anonymous Idiots prove they can't distinguish between Free Speech and Hate Speech said...

Use of N-word on Twitter jumped by almost 500% after Elon Musk's takeover as trolls test limits on free speech, report says

After self-proclaimed "free speech absolutist" Elon Musk closed the $44 billion deal on Twitter, anonymous accounts set about testing the limits of the social media platform's moderation policies, The Washington Post reported.

The Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI), a research group that analyzes social media content to predict emerging threats, said that use of the N-word on Twitter increased by nearly 500% in the 12 hours immediately after Musk's deal was finalized.

The newspaper also noted that several online trolling accounts called on others to use racist language in the aftermath of the deal.

"Elon now controls twitter. Unleash the racial slurs. K---S AND N-----S," said one account, using slurs for Jewish and Black people, per the outlet.

"I can freely express how much I hate n-----s … now, thank you elon," another said, The Post reported.

Journalist David Leavitt also noticed an increase in accounts tweeting hate speech. He tweeted on Friday: "There's a massive flood of literally hundreds of people each minute using the N-word and rampant hate speech happening on Twitter right now post Elon purchase."

Twitter was also flooded with sexist and anti-LGBTQ messages, per The Post. Anonymous trolling accounts ran "tests" on Twitter's moderation policies by calling for the deadnaming of transgender people and the use of offensive terms, like "groomer," according to the report.

"Almost immediately I noticed an increase in anti-trans harassment, it's very visible," said Erin Reed, a trans activist and queer legislative researcher, per The Washington Post.

Some of the Twitter posts appear to have been organized on other platforms including 4chan, the NCRI said.

Alex Goldenberg, NCRI's lead intelligence analyst, told The Washington Post that "online trolls regularly test the limits of moderation." He added that the online trolls may be intending "to make as big a mess as possible for Twitter's new management."

Musk tweeted on Friday that Twitter will form a "content moderation council with widely diverse viewpoints." He added that major decisions on moderation won't be made until the council meets.

Nonetheless, conservative figures have celebrated the deal, suggesting that Twitter's new ownership will loosen the rules on content moderation and strengthen free speech.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene tweeted "FREEDOM OF SPEECH!!!!" on Thursday evening. On the same day, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz tweeted that Musk's purchase of Twitter was "the most important development for Free Speech in decades."

In the hours preceding the deal being closed, accounts for far-right figures appeared to see a boost in followers. Accounts belonging to Colorado Rep. Lauren Boebert and Arizona Rep. Kari Lake, for example, witnessed a surge in new followers in the 24 hours leading up to the deal being finalized, according to Memetica, a digital investigations company.

Thousands of new accounts were created during that period, The New York Times reported.

Memetica CEO Ben Decker told the newspaper the accounts that gained thousands of followers "are really well-known purveyors of disinformation, harassment, and hate."

October 30, 2022 10:56 AM  
Anonymous Even basket ball players can figure it out said...

NBA star LeBron James called on new Twitter owner Elon Musk Saturday to take action to address a disturbing explosion on the social media platform of the use of the N-word.

The Network Contagion Research Institute, which analyzes hundreds of millions of messages across social media platforms, discovered that use of the racist slur on Twitter spiked nearly 500% over the 12 hours after Musk closed the deal to purchase the company for $44 billion.

“I hope [Musk] and his people take this very seriously because this is scary AF. So many damn unfit people saying hate speech is free speech,” James tweeted.

Musk has railed in the past at Twitter’s content restrictions on misinformation and hate speech, characterizing it as biased and unjustified censorship. But unfettered content could be bad for his new business and even in some cases vulnerable to lawsuits.

Musk tried to reassure advertisers in a message last week that Twitter will not become a “free-for-all hellscape.” But users are apparently already challenging that promise.

Musk on Friday tweeted that he wouldn’t make any “major content decisions or account reinstatements” until a new “content moderation council” is convened.

October 30, 2022 11:10 AM  
Anonymous Conservatives keep saying they're not racists, but then stuff like this keeps happening said...


A Virginia man associated with the white supremacist Groypers movement who is accused of breaching House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s conference room and assaulting law enforcement at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 went on to work on Glenn Youngkin’s successful campaign for Virginia governor as an employee of the state Republican Party.

The government accuses Joseph Brody of Springfield, Va. and four other young, white men of entering the Capitol together and chanting, “Nancy, Nancy, Nancy,” before entering Speaker Pelosi’s office on Jan. 6. After leaving the building, the government alleges that Brody assisted another rioter in using a metal barricade to knock a Capitol police officer back to prevent him from securing the door. Later, the five men reportedly watched the destruction of media equipment, with charging documents indicating that Brody appeared to damage a corded phone while one of his codefendants looted a pair of headphones.

More than eight months later, Brody helped coordinate volunteers for Glenn Youngkin, the Republican nominee for governor of Virginia, in Fairfax County. A page on the Fairfax County GOP website inviting volunteers to knock on doors for Youngkin on Sept. 18, 2021, lists Brody as the contact for a location in Alexandria, along with a “virginia.gop” email address. Youngkin went on to win the election in November 2021, defeating Democratic opponent Terry McAuliffe, and securing a term as governor.

A spokesperson for Youngkin referred questions about Brody to the Republican Party of Virginia.

Ellie Sorensen, the press secretary for the state party, confirmed in an email on Wednesday that Brody was employed by party as a door-knocker for a month last fall. She added that Brody has not been employed by the party since then.

The America First movement, also known as the Groypers, coalesced under the leadership of Nick Fuentes, who attended the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Va. As the alt-right movement fractured under pressure from prosecution, litigation and antifascist opposition, Fuentes cultivated an optics-conscious brand of white supremacy that flourished by exalting Donald Trump while other extremist formations associated with the rally fell by the wayside.

In addition to Brody’s crew, at least two other Jan. 6 defendants are linked to the Groypers movement.

The statement of facts accompanying Brody and his codefendants’ charges notes that the five men “were associated with a group known as America First,” whose leadership “has espoused a belief that they are defending against the demographic and cultural changes in America.”

October 30, 2022 11:23 AM  
Anonymous we shook Dem's nerves and rattled brains. Too much woke made 'em go insane. We broke their will, what a thrill...goodness gracious!.......e said...

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) doesn’t remember when inflation and crime undid the last period of Democratic dominance and sustained liberal governance. She was born in 1989.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) is old enough to remember, but he was also a socialist at the height of the Cold War. He is committed, regardless of the electoral consequences.

President Joe Biden spent the bulk of his political career watching Democrats slide from New Deal and Great Society-era dominance, only to repeat the same errors that ushered in a string of Republican presidents, followed by the first GOP congressional majorities in 40 years.

The supposed advantage of nominating Biden, who will turn 80 after the midterm elections, was that having lived through this history, he might not be doomed to repeat it.

Democrats themselves chose Biden over more radical alternatives because they believed police-defunding, border-obliterating socialists and progressives would be unable to win a national majority, even during a pandemic.

Biden hasn’t been quite as leftist on policy as he could have been, though some of that is due to the constraints of governing with a 50-50 Senate. He has tried to thread the needle on crime, even as it continues to rage out of control in many cities, by positioning himself as pro-police. He has, however, remained stubbornly in denial about how piling trillions on top of trillions of dollars in new federal spending contributes to inflation. Biden even pretends he doesn’t want much spending at all.

But what really caused the country to turn away from the Democrats between the 1960s and the 1980s was their belief that voters concerned about public safety, inflation, and basic quality of life issues had ulterior motives. They were racist, selfish, acting out of white backlash before the vernacular switched to white privilege.

This made the most liberal Democrats unable to see that people were really worried about violent crime, high consumer prices, and the state of their neighborhoods and schools for non-nefarious reasons. Some of their mayors and other elected officials stopped taking these matters seriously enough to govern effectively, while others lost their vocabulary for talking about them in a way that made sense to the average voter.

That’s why liberalism went from being the ideology of the middle and working classes to a more elite phenomenon. Blue-collar workers voted for Presidents Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and Donald Trump. Biden often says today’s GOP is not your father’s Republican Party. But that is true of his own party as well.

October 30, 2022 12:33 PM  
Anonymous we shook Dem's nerves and rattled brains. Too much woke made 'em go insane. We broke their will, what a thrill...goodness gracious!.......e said...


Biden witnessed the exodus of voters from the Democratic Party during his early years in the Senate. He watched President Bill Clinton win some of them back. He served as vice president when President Barack Obama excited new voters. He was there when both men frittered away that goodwill, lost their congressional majorities, and were replaced by Republican presidents even after managing to get themselves reelected.

And yet, less than two weeks out from this year’s elections, Democrats stand on the precipice of defeat once again on Biden’s watch.

Biden pledged to unite the country, being a president for everyone in America, while routinely campaigning against nearly half the electorate as latent fascists. (When called out on this, he retreats to saying the mainstream Republican majority is merely under the control of latent fascists.)

He downplays public anxieties about inflation, gas prices, and the economy, which he describes as “strong as hell.” He says instead that democracy itself is on the ballot, characterizing voting laws compatible with high turnout and black electoral success as “Jim Crow 2.0.”

Democrats and pundits to Biden’s left are worse, to be sure. They find it suspect that parents are interested in what is taught in their childrens' schools or even whether those schools are open in the first place. They mock people who care more about the price of eggs or the availability of baby formula today more than the Capitol riot almost two years ago.

In Washington, Democrats seek to pour more fuel onto the inflationary fire with the claim that the solution is more spending. In blue cities, left-wing district attorneys are being lenient with criminals like the liberal judges who came before them a generation ago.

Barring a polling failure that would rival 2016 but in the opposite direction, Biden’s party is about to reap the electoral whirlwind largely for repeating past errors with a 2020s twist.

If only the party had an elder statesman who could have warned them

October 30, 2022 12:34 PM  
Anonymous It's the oil, stupid said...


Let's look at a bit of history here...

https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/inflation-rate-cpi#:~:text=U.S.%20inflation%20rate%20for%202020,a%200.31%25%20increase%20from%202017.

https://www.macrotrends.net/1369/crude-oil-price-history-chart

Criminal President Nixon up to August 1974:
Year Inflation Rate / Oil price
1971 4.29% Inflation
1972 3.27%
OPEC oil embargo:
Nov 1973 oil is at $27.87/barrel
1973 6.18%

By Jan 1974 oil is at $64.28/barrel - 2.3X higher than pre-embargo prices. A recession begins that lasts into 1975.
1974 11.05% Inflation

Criminal Pardoner Ford - Aug '74 - Jan '77
1975 9.14%
1976 5.74%
Oil prices are relatively stable but remain above $59/barrel.
Peak oil price in this time is $71.63/barrel in Sep '76

Evangelical President Carter
Feb '77 oil is at $69.81/barrel
1977 6.5% Inflation

Feb '78: $70.08/barrel
1978 7.63%

Jan '79: $64.74/bbl
1979 11.25%
Nov '79, a short recession begins with oil nearly doubling to $125.78/bbl in less than a year, shooting inflation up drastically.

Feb '80: $139.19/bbl Oil is now 5.5X more expensive than pre OPEC embargo prices of the Nixon years
1980 13.55% for the year.
Oil prices peak at $144.73 in Apr and recession ends within a couple of months

Alzheimer's President Ronnie Raygun

Feb '81: Oil prices start a long slow drop from $128.33/bbl
1981 10.33% inflation
A recession begins in roughly Jun of '81 w/ oil at $117.94/bbl

Jan '82: Oil is down to $106.53/bbl
Oil drops to a low of $89.46/bbl in Mar of '82 but quickly recovers.
Reccession ends in Sep of '82 at with oil at $108.03.
1982 6.13% Inflation

Jan '83: $94.66/bbl
1983: 3.21% inflation

By Mar of '86, oil drops to a low of $28.43/bbl, and coincidentally, inflation is also a a local minima of 1.9% in 1986. Funny how that works.

President Bush the First

A recession doesn't occur again until roughly May of '90 when oil jumps from $39.97/bbl to $88.30/bbl in Sep. By Feb of '91, oil has dropped by half to $42.19 and the recession is magically over.

Perhaps by now it shouldn't be a surprise that 1990 was also Bush I's biggest inflation year at 5.4% - higher than any inflation during the Clinton years which dropped as low as 1.55%... and yes, that correlates with with oil droping to a low of $20.31/bbl in Nov of '88.

Over the past 50 years, the biggest influence on US inflation has been the world price of oil.

In May of '22, just after Russia invaded Ukraine, it hit another local maxima of $116.39/bbl - nearly twice what it was during Trump before the pandemic, and 5.3X the low of $21.82 in Apr '20 when Trump's inept handling of the pandemic saw the US enconomy dump over 20 million people off payrolls.

Even if there wasn't a world-wide supply chain issue and inflation in nearly every other country on the planet, we can epect "inflation" because of oil price jumps alone, and OPEC committing to production cutbacks will make it even worse and extend it longer.

If you really want to stop inflation in the US, you either need to kiss a bunch of sandy ass in the middle east, or you need to wean our country off of fossil fuels. Burning more fossil fuels only makes us more dependent on them and subjects us to their production whims.

It is hard to visualize the text above, and the relationship isn't quite 1:1. However, the graph at the top of this article shows how well they correlate for the last 2 decades:

https://www.economicshelp.org/blog/167245/economics/the-relationship-between-oil-prices-and-inflation/#:~:text=Oil%20prices%20are%20an%20important,the%20economy%2C%20rate%20of%20growth.

Inflation rose faster than oil prices during the Bush II years, but slower under the Obama years. Perhap's you'll give Bush credit for tanking the economy for that. During the Trump years the correlation was essentially 1:1.

October 30, 2022 4:07 PM  
Anonymous i am your robot... said...

"Over the past 50 years, the biggest influence on US inflation has been the world price of oil"

hence, when Biden admitted he was purposely driving up oil prices to make alternative energy price competitive, he was admitting he was driving up inflation for the sake of climate change

the American voter net week will decide if they agree with that strategy

but I have a feeling I know how it will turn out

October 31, 2022 1:06 PM  
Anonymous Stop getting your news from Instagram said...

Viral Instagram Post: “Biden admits $5 is being done on purpose” and “this has been his plan all along.”

PolitiFact's ruling: False

Here's why: "Biden ADMITS $5 gas is being done ON PURPOSE!" the text accompanying a video in a July 7 Instagram post says. "This has been his plan all along."

"And when it comes to the gas prices, we’re going through an incredible transition that is taking place that, God willing, when it’s over, we’ll be stronger and the world will be stronger and less reliant on fossil fuels when this is over," Biden says in the clip.

This post was flagged as part of Facebook’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed.

The clip is authentic. We found the remarks in which Biden discussed gasoline prices on May 23. He was in Tokyo at the time, participating in a joint press conference with Japan’s prime minister, Fumio Kishida.

A reporter asked Biden whether a recession in the United States was inevitable after noting that "Americans are dealing with record-high inflation" and "there are just enormously high gas prices."

Biden replied that he didn’t think a recession was inevitable. After the reporter pushed him to explain why, Biden talked about new jobs around the country and a growing gross domestic product in the face of problems he said the rest of the world was also experiencing.

"Here’s the situation," he said. "And when it comes to the gas prices, we’re going through an incredible transition that is taking place that, God willing, when it’s over, we’ll be stronger and the world will be stronger and less reliant on fossil fuels when this is over."

But his subsequent comments make it clear he wasn’t suggesting that it was his plan to have high gas prices, as the post claims.

"And what I’ve been able to do to keep it from getting even worse — and it’s bad — the price of gas at the pump is something that I told you, you heard me say before, it would be a matter of great discussion at my kitchen table when I was a kid growing up. It’s affecting a lot of families. But we have released over 200 and, I think, 57,000 — million barrels of oil, I should say. Us and the rest of the world we convinced to get involved. It’s helped, but it’s not been enough."

He went on to say that "This is going to be a haul" and will "take some time."

"But in the meantime, it seems to me the best thing I can do — in addition to try to get the Middle Eastern countries, including OPEC, to raise their production of oil and move along that route — is to see to it that we continue to grow our economy, create jobs," Biden said.

More recently, Biden has said Americans will endure high gas prices for "as long as it takes" to keep Russia at bay — "so Russia cannot in fact defeat Ukraine and move beyond Ukraine," Biden said June 30.

He’s also proposed a three-month federal gas tax holiday and asked states to suspend their gas taxes to try to lower gas prices by $1 a gallon.

As we’ve previously reported, the country’s record-high prices at the pump followed a reduction of gasoline supplies as producers responded to the COVID-19 pandemic, when people weren’t traveling as much because of restrictions. As restrictions eased and the economy started to recover, production and supplies were slow to catch up to demand, and gas prices rose. The pandemic also affected supplies of necessary hardware for oil production, and there was a worker shortage.

October 31, 2022 8:03 PM  
Anonymous on the Dems' heads is a big ol' "L" - either for "liberal" or "loser"but they both mean the same thing... said...

2. All in on abortion.

Since they were flummoxed for answers on the economy, they attempted to change the question itself. That led Democrats to go all-in on abortion.

Searching for a lifeboat in early summer with a red wave on the rise, they clung to the Dobbs' decision like a life raft appearing from the sky. When the cards are stacked against you, you play the hand you’re dealt. I get that. But over and over, polling showed abortion simply wasn’t the dominant issue on voters’ minds. An August NBC News poll had the issue tied as the 6th most important nationally, below climate change and immigration. Voters in an October CBS News survey ranked it seventh. A New York Times poll found only four percent saw it as their top issue.

But partisan wish-casters masquerading as objective analysts denied reality. I’ll concede the issue’s salience could play a role on the margins in certain races here and there, but neglecting the number one issue in poll after poll – the economy – was a massive strategic error.

By the time the Democrats woke up as summer turned to fall, it was too late.

3. Dismissing crime

When all is said and done on Election Night, watch for crime to be the issue that played a large role in a host of races – particularly those in blue areas like Connecticut and, most notably, the New York gubernatorial race.

Just a few days ago, GOP candidate Rep. Lee Zeldin accused Democratic Governor Kathy Hochul of refusing to punish people who commit crimes. She casually dismissed it, responding, "I don't know why that’s so important to you."

When Democrats hear voters feel unsafe or crime has gone up, they do one of the following: dismiss it, accuse people of making it up, or break out the spreadsheets like a bunch of accountants to "well, actually" us into believing certain crimes in certain areas are not as bad compared to certain years.

Here’s the thing: you can parse all you want, but if people feel unsafe, it doesn’t matter what the exact statistics say. You can’t just dismiss it.

It’s the same as trotting out macroeconomic data to a mom paying more for groceries and uncertain about her job. You can’t quantify the anxieties someone faces on an Excel sheet. Telling them it’s all in their head is a recipe for disaster.

Throughout the 2022 campaign, Democrats missed the mark over and over. They compounded their tough environment with a series of strategic errors and misplaced priorities.

It didn’t have to be this bad. But thanks to their own incompetence, it will.

October 31, 2022 8:14 PM  
Anonymous when the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie, that's amore'!!!......... said...


In early November of 2010, Joe Biden, then vice-president, joined Barack Obama for his final rally at a large indoor arena in Cleveland ahead of what would be disastrous midterm elections for the Democrats.

But 12 years later as president, faced with another potentially dire rebuke for his party from American voters, Biden has adopted a much more cautious approach — avoiding big events with thousands of people in favour of smaller, less rousing interventions.

The stakes for the future of Biden’s presidency in the midterm elections remain very high: when Republicans win full control of Congress, the rest of his term in office will be consumed by congressional investigations and legislative stand-offs, with little chance that he can enact the rest of his agenda.

The outcome could also shape whether Biden follows through on what he has described as his intention to run for a second term in 2024. A better than expected performance by his party — such as limiting losses in the House of Representatives and preserving control of the Senate — may well embolden the president and give him the confidence to plough ahead with his plans for an eight-year presidency. But large-scale defeats could change that calculation.

“If it’s as bad as some people expect, there’s going to be a lot of chaos in the party. There are going to be demands from many different quarters for a complete change in the leadership — citing the gerontocracy that we currently have,” said Jim Manley, a Democratic strategist and former senior adviser to Harry Reid, the late Senate majority leader.

October 31, 2022 10:44 PM  
Anonymous Slidin' Biden really is doing a pretty crappy job.... said...


It was the mention of zip ties that got me thinking. Apparently the man who allegedly broke into the San Francisco home of Nancy and Paul Pelosi on Friday was carrying zip ties. A possibly crazed individual approaching the home of a powerful politician with plastic fasteners that can be used to bind a person’s hands – it was both a nightmarish prospect and a familiar one, too. Wasn’t another public figure in the US recently targeted by someone who had zip ties? And a gun, a knife, pepper spray and a crowbar? Yes. It was Brett Kavanaugh. But many don’t remember that. Because thanks to the media, certain acts of political hate get less traction than others.

People are rightly horrified by what happened to Paul Pelosi on Friday. David DePape allegedly broke into the Pelosi home and yelled ‘Where is Nancy?’. She wasn’t there. DePape then allegedly attacked Mr Pelosi, who is 82, with a hammer. Pelosi suffered a skull fracture and is still in hospital, though he is expected to make a full recovery. This was a horrific assault on an elderly person, as well as seeming to have been motivated by a deep political animus. Sadly, it was not a one-off. There was a creepily similar incident at the home of Supreme Court justice Brett Kavanaugh in Maryland in June.

A 26-year-old man from California travelled to Maryland allegedly with the intention of murdering Kavanaugh. That’s what he is charged with – attempted murder. He was armed with a tactical knife, a Glock 17 pistol, zip ties and other murderous paraphernalia. The difference between Kavanaugh’s alleged tormentor and the man who allegedly broke into the Pelosi home is that the former failed to gain entry. He spied two US marshals close to Kavanaugh’s home and called off his deadly mission. Kavanaugh was luckier than Paul Pelosi.

It is unquestionable that the assault on the Pelosi home has caused more waves and fury among the media elites than the mercifully thwarted attempted assassination of Kavanaugh did. The Kavanaugh incident swiftly faded from public consciousness. One observer wrote of the media’s ‘eerie silence’ on Kavanaugh. It was pointed out that the ‘attempted assassination of Brett Kavanaugh’ was being downplayed by the New York Times the very day after it happened. On the NYT’s homepage, the Kavanaugh story was 16th in order of importance, behind stories about the new Jurassic Park movie and Kelly Clarkson’s singing skills. In that day’s paper, it was on page 20. Nate Silver said it was ‘crazy’ that the targeting of Kavanaugh was not ‘treated as a bigger story’. ‘There’s often more bias in which stories are deemed to be salient than how they’re written about it’, he said.

That is well said. Media bias is apparent not only in the information and takes that the media publish but also in what the media decree to be important in the first place. And it would appear that the targeting of a right-wing, pro-life justice is less important – a lot less important – than the targeting of the home of a Democratic, pro-choice politician. Politics is clearly at play here. Kavanaugh’s moral outlook runs counter to that of the liberal media and coastal elites, and thus he makes for an unsympathetic character. Nancy Pelosi, on the other hand – she’s the crusading Democrat the chattering classes love. An assault on her home moves the liberal elites profoundly.

November 01, 2022 6:39 AM  
Anonymous Slidin' Biden really is doing a pretty crappy job.... said...


It is out and out political bias. It is morally shady, too – surely we can agree that all violent strikes against public figures are equally bad, equally deserving of concern and condemnation? The inequality in the media heat over Kavanaugh and Pelosi cannot be explained by the fact that actual physical force was used in the Pelosi incident. No, it speaks to a deeper rot in establishment circles, to the sad fact that morality itself now seems to have been sidelined by the demands and interests of the culture war. Even violence is now made ‘salient’ only if a useful political message can be attached to it; only if the culture warriors of the legacy media feel that their worldview will gain from drawing attention to the violent incident in question.

The play always seems to be as follows: attacks on right-wing politicians are treated as one-offs, carried out by unhinged individuals; attacks on leftish or liberal politicians, in contrast, are treated as symptomatic of broader political evils, as brutal manifestations of political rhetoric itself. So no ‘culture’ was held responsible for the targeting of Kavanaugh. Even though his attempted assassination followed the leaking of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v Wade and intense media criticism of pro-life justices. Even though his home had been besieged by protesters just a month before the alleged assassination attempt. None of that was seen as a factor. Culture played no part. Move on.

The reading of the Pelosi incident could not be more different. ‘The Republican Party and its mouthpieces now regularly spread hate and deranged conspiracy theories. It is shocking, but not surprising, that violence is the result’, said Hillary Clinton. ‘There were many hands on that hammer’, said CNN’s David Axelrod. Actor Rob Reiner said of the Pelosi attack that ‘Donald Trump is 100 per cent responsible for this’. 100 per cent. Some culture warriors are so determined to indict the right for random acts of violence that they end up absolving the violent person himself of responsibility. There is a deeply censorious urge behind these claims that right-wing rhetoric causes violence. It is a slippery call for controlling what can be said in the public sphere, on the basis that if we don’t then people will die.

Double standards always attend acts of violence now. When then Democratic congresswoman Gabby Giffords was targeted in a shooting in 2011, the prestige media pointed the finger of blame at Sarah Palin and various right-wing hotheads. Yet when a Bernie Sanders supporter opened fire at a charity baseball game in Virginia in 2017, hitting Republican congressman Steve Scalise, the prestige media acted as if it signified nothing at all, just insanity. They’re blatant about it. After the Pelosi attack, the Huffington Post’s White House correspondent, SV Dáte, said the people ‘bringing up the left-wing nut who tried to kill Steve Scalise… are missing the point’. The ‘former Republican president and current GOP leader [Trump] has been stoking political violence since 2015’, he said: ‘There is no [analogy] among Dems.’ In short, when you speak, there’s bloodshed; when we speak, there isn’t. Your words stoke evil, ours do good.

The culture war has created a media sphere so bereft of objectivity that violence itself is only focused on if it is judged to be politically useful. Indeed, if it turns out David DePape is a hippyish right-on weirdo, as some are reporting, we might even see the Pelosi incident slowly fade from view. This attack confirmed what we all know: that there are wicked people out there. But it has also shone a harsh light on the immoralities of a media elite that judges violence according to whether or not it has some political utility. This hypocrisy on violence shames America’s liberal establishment.

November 01, 2022 6:40 AM  
Anonymous when the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie, that's amore'!!!......... said...

The Biden administration’s proposal to rewrite the Department of Education’s Title IX regulation drew almost a quarter million public comments in September.

The swell of interest suggests that the public senses all that is at stake. The new rule will endanger young women where they should feel safest, deprive female students of educational opportunities, erode parental rights, and ultimately turn K-12 public schools into ideological training camps.

Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, which forbids discrimination based on sex, has long been interpreted as requiring school personnel to prioritize preventing sexual harassment. It is best known for equalizing opportunity in collegiate athletics for women. In recent years, however, the focus has been on campus investigations into sexual misconduct (and frequent due process failures by campus administrators).

By expanding the definition and scope of sexual harassment to include gender identity and sex characteristics and by broadening the definition of what counts as harassment, the proposed rule will require all schools that receive federal funds to make extraordinary accommodations for trans-identifying students.

The mandates are blunt, and the accompanying commentary is ambivalent about how biological female students will be affected. For example, instead of allowing schools to provide a private bathroom for trans-identifying students, the rule requires school officials to make female facilities available to biological male students. We already know from bathroom sexual assaults at schools that were early adopters of such reforms that this will create inexcusable threats to the safety and well-being of young women.

The proposed regulation will also undermine the core purpose of Title IX, which Congress passed to open educational opportunities to women. Owing in large part to the measure’s success, today, 47% of Division I college athletes (and 59.5% of all college students) are female. The Biden administration’s rule threatens to reverse that progress.

When female athletes do not feel safe competing against athletes with the size and strength advantages conferred by male puberty or do not feel comfortable changing in the same room with athletes sporting male genitalia, they will have a bona fide Title IX complaint — but they will be forced to make their case to the very offices working to redefine womanhood. And that is to say nothing of the female records that are already being erased by biological male athletes, or the opportunities that will be denied to them — to compete at the highest levels or earn college scholarships — as the number of biological males competing in female athletics increases.

November 01, 2022 6:47 AM  
Anonymous when the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie, that's amore'!!!......... said...


But the rule’s most profound consequences will be deeper yet. K-12 school districts have already interpreted nondiscrimination mandates as requiring school personnel to support students in their social transition from one gender to another — even when they know the student’s parents would object. As a result, schools are developing policies that forbid parental notification if parents might not support their child’s gender transition.

The proposed rule will also transform the intellectual environment in detrimental ways. In an attempt to prevent anti-trans harassment, the rule establishes processes and policies that make speech reportable supposedly only if it interferes with a student’s education. But in practice, this can mean the emergence of strict speech codes that impede on freedom of conscience. Already, eighth graders have been investigated for sexual harassment for refusing to use the plural pronoun “they” to refer to a classmate. When Florida passed a law strengthening parental rights, Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona issued a press release encouraging young children to report school officials to the Office of Civil Rights.

In practice, the regulation will be enforced in ways that require public schools to become places that celebrate gender transition enthusiastically while discouraging the kinds of conversation that young people facing anxiety about their gender or sexual identity might find (or claim to find) discomfiting. We are already seeing professors shunned — by their students — for daring to venture the opinion that biological sex differences are real. Who will dare to teach that biological sex differences are written into every cell’s chromosome when students and faculty begin reporting each other to the Title IX coordinator for venturing offensive ideas?

And that, ultimately, is the point: to engineer a new educational landscape that is fanatically hostile to traditional understandings of sex differences, family and sexual development.

The new, federally mandated gender identity narrative will advance the left’s ideological agenda but at immense cost to young people, especially girls. The explosion of gender dysphoria is disproportionately affecting young women (in the U.K., cases are up 4,400% over the last decade). Growing up is hard, especially in our social media age, even for the most confident young people.

For those who experience anxiety about their sexual identity or body image, the teenage years can be a terrible, emotionally taxing time. The last thing the national government should be doing is encouraging schools to teach anxious girls that becoming a boy is a simple way to solve those problems. In fact, they are the most in need of patient and understanding mentorship — loving mothers and role models — who can help them navigate the challenges of growing up so that they, too, can mature into confident, self-actualized women.

November 01, 2022 6:48 AM  
Anonymous Brett Kavanaugh was the final nail in the gay agenda coffin, next week he'll be hammered said...

one thing for sure:

after next Tuesday, there won't be any gay-happy legislation getting through Congress

LOL!

November 01, 2022 6:51 AM  
Anonymous 6.6 million views and counting said...



Stop what you’re doing and watch this complete takedown of
@HerschelWalker by pastor @jamalhbryant.
#WeDontNeedAWalker

6.6 million views


5:31 PM · Oct 30, 2022
·Twitter for iPhone

November 01, 2022 7:33 AM  
Anonymous I wonder if TTFers agree with any part of the Constitution.... said...


everyone agrees Walker is a flawed candidate

still, he's better than the alternative and can be controlled until the next primary

he's going to win, so get used to it

Chief Justice John Roberts on Tuesday put a temporary hold on the handover of former President Donald Trump's tax returns to a congressional committee.

Roberts' order gives the Supreme Court time to weigh the legal issues in Trump's emergency appeal to the high court, filed Monday.

Without court intervention, the tax returns could have been provided as early as Thursday by the Treasury Department to the Democratic-controlled House Ways and Means Committee.

Game over

by the time this is resolved, Congress will be in Republican hands and the committee will drop this politically motivated demand

November 01, 2022 10:12 AM  
Anonymous this year just doesn't seem to be liberals' day! .... said...


The Dem in Arizona has a 1.5% lead over the Republican. The libertarian candidate has 3% in most polls. The libertarian just dropped out and asked supporters to vote Republican.

OOPS!

Libertarian U.S. Senate candidate Marc Victor said Tuesday he was ending his campaign and asking his supporters to back Republican Blake Masters in a move that could nudge a narrow slice of voters in a race already expected to be close.

Victor, an attorney whose campaign to oust Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., was always a long shot, held a one-on-one conversation with Masters on Monday that convinced him the best option for people who share his outlook this year is Masters.

This comes one week before Election Day, giving some time for libertarians to know their candidate has thrown his support to the Republican.

Kelly mostly has maintained a narrow lead over Masters in polling, according to summaries collected by Real Clear Politics. But that lead has shrunk and some of Victor's share figures to now wind up in Masters' column.

Victor's support has ranged from 1% to 6% and averaged about 3% in polls taken since mid-October

November 01, 2022 11:50 AM  
Anonymous Thank you President Huckabee said...

The Hill
Warnock leads Walker by 3 points in new Georgia Senate poll
BY BRAD DRESS - 10/31/22 9:19 AM ET

November 01, 2022 11:53 AM  
Anonymous Second Herschel Walker Abortion Accuser Speaks Out In On-Camera Interview said...

In her first on-camera interview, the second woman to accuse GOP candidate Hershel Walker of paying for an abortion said she felt “threatened and I thought I had no choice.”

The woman alleged last week that Walker, the staunchly anti-abortion Republican nominee in the Georgia Senate race, had pressured her to end a pregnancy. The woman did not share her name or show her face at last week’s press conference, saying she was protecting her identity “for fear of reprisal against myself, my family and my livelihood.”

The woman appeared on camera for the first time during an interview that aired Tuesday on ABC’s “Good Morning America.”

The woman ― who was referred to as Jane Doe and remains anonymous ― said she got pregnant in 1993 during a six-year affair with Walker. At the time, the former NFL star was living with his wife in Dallas and playing for the Cowboys.

He “was very clear that he did not want me to have the child,” the woman told “Good Morning America.” “And he said that because of his wife’s family and powerful people around him that I would not be safe and that the child would not be safe.”

Walker has denied the allegations that he paid for abortions. His campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the new interview.

The woman said she didn’t want to go through with the procedure, but that Walker talked her into it. She said she felt “threatened” and “manipulated.”

“He came to my house and picked me up and drove me to the clinic,” she said shakily. “I went in alone and he waited in the car while I went in and had the procedure. And then I came out and he drove me to the drugstore, and then he took me home.”

She said Walker gave her cash to pay for it. Afterward, “everything shifted. He distanced himself from me almost immediately,” the woman said.

She provided evidence to support her claims, including photos of the two together and letters and cards signed with Walker’s signature flourish of the letter H.

The woman said she and Walker kept in touch here and there over the years and had last spoken in 2020. In last week’s press conference, she said she was an independent who voted for former President Donald Trump in the last two elections.

Walker is unfit to be a U.S. senator because “honesty matters,” she said on “Good Morning America.”

She is the second woman to accuse Walker of paying for an abortion. Last month, another woman said Walker reimbursed her for the procedure in 2009.

That woman, who said she was an ex, showed a signed and dated check and a get-well card from Walker as proof. The card was signed with a similar H. She said Walker urged her to end a second pregnancy in 2011 but she chose not to.

November 01, 2022 2:45 PM  
Anonymous homosexuality never produces life, two of 'em ain't ever a marriage said...


"Warnock leads Walker by 3 points in new Georgia Senate poll"

that's funny

RCP is projecting a GOP pick-up

as a matter of fact, they are projecting the GOP will have 54 Senators in January and Dems will have 46

LOL!

"Second Herschel Walker Abortion Accuser"

it doesn't matter

he's a sleaze ball but he can be counted on to vote the right way

Trump wasn't really a life-long committed pro-lifer, indeed he wasn't even a life-long Republican, but Roe would still be the law of the land without him

all politicians are sleaze balls

look at Pelosi, Schumer Schiff, AOC, et al

November 01, 2022 7:11 PM  
Anonymous when the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie, that's amore'!!!......... said...


"Thank you President Huckabee"

the sad lonely cry of those who thought Al Gore, John Kerry, and Hillary were big winners

they now think Warnock and Abrams are leading the race

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

November 01, 2022 7:15 PM  
Anonymous if Biden is innocent why not have Tara over for tea with Jill said...


https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2022/senate/nh/new-hampshire-senate-bolduc-vs-hassan-7379.html

looka likw the latest polls show the GOP up in the New Hampshire Senate race by 1

yikes!

that would make FIVE GOP pick-ups in the Senate

America is really mad at the Dumbocraps for reviving inflation after 40 years, jacking up the crime rate by irresponsibly indulging the defund-the-police movement, and knocking a year off the educational attainment of the nation's public school children

screwing up the economy, public safety, and our children's education

could it get any worse?


November 02, 2022 5:31 AM  
Anonymous Slidin' Joe Biden and his family are not above the law said...


We’re less than a week out from the congressional elections, and suddenly Democrats have discovered that their top issues for the past few months — democracy, abortion and their “historic legislative accomplishments” — are not the top issues for most voters. So, they decided to pivot to the economy. It hasn’t gone well.

First, House Majority Whip James E. Clyburn bungled an interview, telling MSNBC what the Democrats really knew about the inflationary impact of the American Rescue Plan: “All of us are concerned about these rising costs, and all of us knew this would be the case when we put in place this recovery program. Any time you put more money into the economy, prices tend to rise.”

Milton Friedman couldn’t have said it better. The pivot was already off track.

The next Sunday, Nancy Pelosi, doing mop-up duty after Clyburn’s misstep, offered up a truly astonishing response on “Face the Nation” when asked what Democrats can do to prevent a GOP takeover of the House, predicted by CBS. The speaker told Margaret Brennan, “The fact is that when I hear people talk about inflation … we have to change that subject.”

“The fight is not about inflation. It’s about the cost of living,” she said, an odd argument given that most people would see this as a distinction without a difference.

Pelosi put her bet on touting the Inflation Reduction Act to bring voters into the Democratic fold, urging people to “look at what we have done to bring down the cost of prescription drugs, to bring down the cost of energy and the rest in our legislation.”

Does she not understand that her party’s overspending and the bad policies are what helped push up the cost of energy and prescription drugs in the first place, along with food, rent, home prices and everything else blowing up family budgets?

Pelosi also came up with her own economic theory on the impact of low unemployment on inflation, saying, “But the point is that when you reduce unemployment, it’s inflationary. That is a fact.” Maybe in her universe.

Her assertion simply doesn’t hold water and begs a simple question. If Pelosi is right, then why was inflation at only 1.7 percent when unemployment first hit 3.5 percent during the Trump administration (September 2019), but three years later, in September 2022, unemployment finally got back to 3.5 percent, yet inflation was a staggering 8.2 percent?

The answer is also simple. Pouring more federal dollars into an already overheated economy is the cause of today’s inflation, not jobs.

November 02, 2022 6:23 AM  
Anonymous Slidin' Joe Biden and his family are not above the law said...


Despite the fact that Democrats knew their “recovery” plans were likely to increase inflation, they have spent the past few months promoting a base-driven national message that argued, “Donald Trump and MAGA Republicans are a threat to democracy, while Democrats will protect a woman’s right to an abortion and birth control and lower prescription drugs to help with inflation.”

In the latest “Winning the Issues” survey (Oct. 17-19, 1,300 registered voters), we tested that exact generic message against a Republican message focused on the economy and energy costs and found the GOP message outdid the Democrats’ by 9 points overall, 48 percent to 39 percent, and by 10 points with independents, 41 percent to 31 percent.

Even Democratic strategists have been waving red flags on their party’s messaging. Veteran political consultant Stan Greenberg offered up tough comments recently about Democratic messaging that emphasizes President Joe Biden’s so-called accomplishments. “It’s our worst performing message,” Greenberg told Politico’s West Wing Playbook. “I’ve tested it. I did Biden’s exact words, his exact speech. And that’s the test where we lost all of our leads. … It said to the voters that this election is about my accomplishments as a leader and not about the challenges you’re experiencing.”

But by Monday, it was Biden rolling out his new economic message in a campaign speech to the Democratic National Committee staff that took a slightly different tack. Like Pelosi, Biden took credit for what he and his supporters on the Hill say is incredible progress toward righting the sinking economic ship he inherited, but then, with all the audacity he could muster, the president actually told America that Democrats “are the ones that are fiscally responsible.”

Biden didn’t stop there. He took credit for “lowering” the deficit. “We’re investing in all of America,” he said, “reducing everyday costs while also lowering the deficit at the same time. Republicans are fiscally reckless, pushing tax cuts for the very wealthy that aren’t paid for, and [exploding] the deficit that is making inflation worse.”

But here again, as we’ve seen so many times in the past, Biden’s comments are factually inaccurate. In what appears to be his closing message, Biden now portrays himself as a fighter for lower deficits, when, in reality, 61 percent of the deficit reduction Biden claims actually came from increased revenues, not cuts in federal spending. And those increased revenues are the result, in large part, of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act still in effect, tax cuts he calls “fiscally reckless.”

The CBO’s preliminary revenue figures for 2022 show that revenues this year will be the highest in history, a 43 percent increase over 2020. Over that same time period, individual income tax revenues have increased a whopping 64 percent, while corporate revenues have increased 100 percent, to $425 billion. Biden’s corporate tax increases, passed as part of the Inflation Reduction Act this summer, don’t kick in until 2023.

Meanwhile, as Democratic leaders throw one economic message after another at the wall and hope something sticks, voters are going to the polls knowing one thing for sure: Inflation has been at 8 percent or higher for the past seven months, and the Democrats’ answer seems to be, let’s “change that subject.”

November 02, 2022 6:24 AM  
Anonymous funny thing is: the GOP is glad that all Dems did was tall about January 6 and abortion...LOL... said...


Top Democratic officials, lawmakers and strategists are openly second-guessing their party’s campaign pitch and tactics, reflecting a growing sense that Democrats have failed to coalesce around one effective message with enough time to stave off major losses in the House and possibly decisive defeats in the tightly contested Senate.

The criticisms by Democrats in the final days of the midterm elections signal mounting anxiety as Republicans hammer away with attacks over the economy and public safety. For weeks, Democrats have offered a scattershot case of their own, accusing their opponents of wanting to gut abortion rights, shred the social safety net and shake the foundations of American democracy.

Yet as the country struggles with high gas prices, record inflation and economic uncertainty, some Democrats now acknowledge that their kitchen-sink approach may be lacking.

Even among the kibitzing chorus, there’s little agreement over exactly what could cost the party control of Congress. In areas where victory depends on high Black voter turnout, Democrats worry that they are not mobilizing that constituency. Others say there has been too much focus on abortion rights and too little attention on worries about crime or the cost of living. And across the country, Democrats point to an inadequate economic message and an inability to effectively herald their legislative accomplishments.

“The truth is, Democrats have done a poor job of communicating our approach to the economy,” said Rep. Elissa Slotkin, D-Mich., who is in one of this year’s most competitive races. “I have no idea if I’m going to win my election – it’s going to be a nail-biter. But if you can’t speak directly to people’s pocketbook and talk about our vision for the economy, you’re just having half a conversation.”

Slotkin is far from alone in her criticism.

Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., has sounded alarm bells that Democrats are struggling to motivate working-class voters. Former President Barack Obama, who is traveling the country to campaign in some of the tightest races for Senate and governor, urged Democrats not to be “a buzz kill” by making people feel as if they were “walking on eggshells” when it came to issues like race and gender.

And several prominent Democrats have worried that their party has not fully acknowledged the pain of rising prices – or effectively pointed the finger at Republicans over the higher costs

November 02, 2022 8:03 AM  
Anonymous more comedy from the Dems... said...


Is recent Virginia history repeating itself in New York ? Will a Republican candidate for governor win an upset victory because the favored Democrat reveals a breathtaking nonchalance toward the issue voters care about most?

Gov. Kathy Hochul may have just gifted deep blue New York to her challenger Rep. Lee Zeldin by displaying glaring indifference about the state’s soaring crime rate.

If she has, it will replicate former Gov. Terry McAuliffe’s monumental gaffe in 2021, when he accidentally told the truth and revealed that he neither understood nor cared about parents’ deep anxiety over Virginia schools indoctrinating children with extreme left-wing propaganda on race and gender.

In a prime-time debate against then-businessman, now-Gov. Glenn Youngkin, McAuliffe said, “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.” This crystalline statement of Democratic insouciance toward ordinary people’s interests detonated like a grenade. Youngkin could hardly have believed his ears or his luck. His campaign rolled the tape again and again in TV commercials, dooming the hapless blue candidate in a blue state.

Now, Hochul has done something very similar in New York. The big issue in this case is a ubiquitous sense of threat felt by peaceful and law-abiding citizens because crime is surging. The concern is spread statewide but most acute in left-liberal New York City, where robbery has increased by 38% in the past year, grand larceny by 35%, and burglary by 31%. Numbers like those will depress turnout for Democrats where they most need enthusiasm.

But the numbers give only a general impression of massive deterioration and don’t reflect either the horror or the causes. A Wall Street Journal article cites an example that fills in this blank: A man called Adam Benfield allegedly shot his wife dead in Buffalo last month while their children watched, and he did so a day after he’d been released on domestic abuse charges because state law prevented the judge from setting bail. All over the country, cities and states run by Democrats are allowing criminals to roam free and unpunished, and crime rates are spiking as a result.

In a recent gubernatorial debate, Zeldin talked of a crime emergency in New York and said the state’s voters are “not being represented by this governor [Hochul] who still, to this moment … hasn’t talked about locking up anyone committing any crimes."

Hochul’s revealing and perhaps fateful reply was, “I don’t know why that is so important to you.” The catastrophe of this answer for Democratic hopes comes in several parts. First, it identifies the Republican as the candidate who wants to hold criminals accountable for wrongdoing and punish them with jail time. Zeldin’s campaign could not have made the point more favorably.

Second, Hochul’s phrasing, though common, was clumsy. She intended to express contempt for the person who disagreed with her, but what she actually said was that it was she, not he, who didn’t understand. We’ve all been in arguments where our antagonist thinks he or she looks smart saying, “I don’t understand why ...” But it’s odd to believe this reflects badly on anyone but the person saying it. Are New Yorkers supposed to admire Hochul for her bewilderment?

Third, and perhaps most importantly, Hochul admitted not only that she does not understand and Zeldin does. But by failing to understand after being in office for more than a year during which crime was on the front page every day, she implicitly also admitted that she has not been listening to voters. They have been voicing rage and dismay, and she is supposed to represent them, but she hasn’t noticed or bothered to learn why they feel the way they do.

It can be no surprise, therefore, that Zeldin has pulled ahead of Hochul 48.4% to 47.6% in the latest Trafalgar Group poll .

November 02, 2022 8:09 AM  
Anonymous when will TTF apologize to the children whose lives have been irrevocably harmed?... said...


Believe it or not, American Federation of Teachers chief Randi Weingarten on Monday tacitly acknowledged that keeping schools closed during the pandemic was a mistake. Miracles happen, apparently. But she also now wants parents—especially if they’re voters next week—to forgive her and her political allies without seeking an apology or holding them accountable. Sorry, that lets them off way too easy.

“I agree,” Ms. Weingarten tweeted a link to a piece in The Atlantic by Emily Oster, “Let’s Declare a Pandemic Amnesty.” The article argues that Americans should forgive experts and government leaders for their mistakes during the pandemic.

Ms. Oster cites school closures as one example: “There is an emerging (if not universal) consensus that schools in the U.S. were closed for too long: The health risks of in-school spread were relatively low, whereas the costs to students’ well-being and educational progress were high.” (In the summer and fall of 2020, Ms. Oster herself favored opening schools.)

However, she adds, “in spring and summer 2020, we had only glimmers of information. Reasonable people—people who cared about children and teachers—advocated on both sides of the reopening debate.”

That’s awfully generous to Team Shutdown, which included all of the progressive great and good and nearly all of the media. Yet it was clear by summer 2020 that children were at extremely low risk for severe illness. They were also struggling with remote learning, as were their parents. All efforts should have been made to reopen schools, as Florida did in August 2020, and to keep them open.

But the teachers’ unions lobbied hard to keep them closed and succeeded in far too many places where they dominate local and state politics. Many big city school districts didn’t reopen until spring 2021. Chicago didn’t offer full in-person learning until last fall. The results in lost learning have been catastrophic.

Ms. Oster pardons Ms. Weingarten because “on every topic, someone was eventually proved right, and someone else was proved wrong” and “in some instances, the right people were right for the wrong reasons.” You can guess who the right people are.

This plea for forgiveness would be more plausible if the shutdown lobby had shown more willingness during the pandemic to listen to other arguments that proved to be right. Instead they dismissed and tried to discredit the authors of the Great Barrington Declaration who argued for focused protection of the most vulnerable while opening schools. Tech platforms censored them.

Ms. Oster says “most errors were made by people who were working in earnest for the good of society.” But the teachers unions intentionally misled the public by hyping the virus risks for children. They did this to extort more money from Congress to “safely reopen” and compensate for learning losses from the shutdowns. Democrats gave them $122 billion last March, only about 15% of which was spent during the 2021-22 school year.

“Getting something wrong wasn’t a moral failing,” Ms. Oster writes. But in Ms. Weingarten’s case, it was.

One certainty: The left will never forgive the shutdown dissenters, notably Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, for being right.

November 02, 2022 12:51 PM  
Anonymous Colorado River conditions are worsening quicker than expected. Feds prepare to step in. said...

Running out of time and options to save water along the drying Colorado River, federal officials said they’re considering whether to release less water from the country’s two largest reservoirs downstream to Arizona, California and Nevada.

Without enough snow this winter, the water level at Lake Powell — the country’s second-largest reservoir — will drop below a critical level by next November, according to a new report from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation. Below that point, the Glen Canyon Dam will no longer be able to generate electricity and experts worry whether conditions will worsen to the point that the structure will no longer be able to send water downstream at all.

Conditions on the Colorado River are worsening quicker than expected. The seven states in the river basin made little progress saving water over the summer and Colorado is heading into its third La Niña winter in a row, likely indicating below-average snowpack. A worst-case scenario, once considered only as a hypothetical, now presents a very real threat.

“It’s going to be ugly,” Mark Squillace, a water law professor at the University of Colorado, said. “The bottom line is there just isn’t going to be enough water available.”

The path forward for Reclamation, the states and dozens of Native American tribes is narrowing, Brad Udall, a water and climate scientist with Colorado State University, said, calling the implications “beyond serious.”

If the federal government comes in too strong, requiring massive cuts to water use, the entire scheme could devolve into a morass of expensive and time-consuming lawsuits, Udall said. Not strong enough and the river dwindles further, endangering the way of life for more than 40 million people and an estimated $1.4 trillion chunk of the national economy.

Reclamation officials announced Friday that they will consider whether to turn down the faucet for downstream states next year and in 2024. A draft plan should be ready by spring.

“The Interior Department continues to pursue a collaborative and consensus-based approach to addressing the drought crisis affecting the West,” Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland said in a news release. “At the same time, we are committed to taking prompt and decisive action necessary to protect the Colorado River and all those who depend on it.”

See also: Brookings: The Trump administration’s major environmental deregulations
https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2020/12/15/the-trump-administrations-major-environmental-deregulations/

November 02, 2022 12:52 PM  
Anonymous Who needs democracy when you can ensure single party rule? said...


Tim Michels, the Republican nominee for governor of Wisconsin, promised a group of supporters this week that the GOP would seize permanent control of the state if he is elected in next week’s midterms.

“Republicans will never lose another election in Wisconsin after I’m elected governor,” the multimillionaire construction executive said during a campaign stop on Monday.

The Republican Accountability Project, which works to elect GOP candidates who accept Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory and reject Donald Trump’s voter fraud lies, said Michels was “saying the quiet part out loud” with his comments.

Michels and incumbent Democratic Gov. Tony Evers are neck and neck in the race, per polling. Republicans control the state Senate and Assembly. A victory for Michels could have huge consequences for the outcome of the 2024 presidential election.

Evers responded to Michels’ comment with a reminder for voters.

“Folks, we’ve known this for awhile — Tim Michels is a danger to our democracy,” the governor tweeted. “When you head to the polls on Election Day, remember that we’re fighting to protect our democracy, voting rights, and free, fair, and secure elections.”

November 02, 2022 6:05 PM  
Anonymous good good good good vibrations, a wop wop, excitations............ said...


More of them polls TTFers like so much!

With just six days left until the November 8 midterms, polls show Republicans are enjoying a last-minute wave of voter enthusiasm that will carry them to victory in the Senate and House of Representatives.

The GOP had for months been forecasted to take back the House, but Democrats saw hope in enough Senate races to avoid a foregone conclusion of total defeat.

As of Wednesday, however, that appears to have changed.

Rising crime and concerns about the state of the economy - including inflation - appear to have won out as the top issues for likely voters.

Polls have projected a discontent among Americans with how Democrats have handled both. The vast majority of surveys show voters favor the GOP to oversee them.

Republicans are now projected to pick up four seats in the Senate, according to RealClearPolitics, for a total of 54 GOP lawmakers to 46 Democrats - including the two Independents that caucus with the left.

The poll aggregator's latest analysis shows Republicans flipping Senate seats in Nevada, New Hampshire, Georgia and Arizona. All four states have Democratic incumbents being challenged by GOP candidates aligned with Donald Trump.

Democrats are not forecasted to pick up any seats, according to the analysis.







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Continue reading

November 03, 2022 9:48 AM  
Anonymous I tried to warn you: no one is going to vote on Jan 6 or abortion. You didn't listen and now your future looks really grim... said...


More of them polls that TTers like so much.

A new CNN national poll paints a very grim portrait of the electorate for Democrats, with any number of warning signs that suggest the 2022 midterms are shaping up to be very tough for their side.

I went through the data and pulled out five numbers that are particularly troubling for Democrats with just six days left before the election.

1) 42%: That’s President Joe Biden’s job approval rating among likely voters in the new poll, down from 46% in a CNN poll completed in September and early October. Even more concerning for Democrats should be the fact that while just 17% of likely voters strongly approve of the job Biden is doing, a whopping 47% strongly disapprove – a major passion gap.

2) 61%: That’s the number of likely voters who say that Biden hasn’t paid enough attention to the most important problems facing the country. Just 39% say that Biden has the right priorities. Call this the “out of touch” question – and it’s never good for a politician to be on the wrong side of it. By way of context, in a poll conducted by CNN just before the 2018 midterm elections – where Democrats gained a net of 40 House seats – 40% of total respondents said Trump had the right priorities for the country.

3) 51%: That’s the number of likely voters who say the economy is the key issue in determining their vote. Abortion – at 15% – is the only other issue that ranks in double digits. That is proof positive that we are in for another “it’s the economy, stupid” election. And that bodes poorly for the party in power – especially when you consider ongoing concerns about inflation and the price of gas. Meanwhile, Republicans have been hammering away for months at what they describe as Biden’s poor handling of the economy. Among likely voters who say the economy is their top concern, 71% say they plan to support the Republican candidate in their House district.

4) 28%: That’s how many likely voters say things are going “very” or “fairly” well in the country. More than 7 in 10 (72%) say things are going “pretty” or “very” badly. This suggests that this is an electorate hungry for a course correction, which, given that Democrats control the White House, House and Senate should be very good news for Republicans.

5) 75%: Three quarters of likely voters say the economy is in the midst of a recession. Whether the economy is headed for a recession is a matter of debate, but what is not up for debate is how voters are perceiving economic conditions. (See #3).

The picture that emerges from the poll is an electorate deeply concerned about the state of the economy and not at all convinced that Biden is concentrating on it as much as he should. The poll also reveals that the anti-Biden voters are far more passionate than the pro-Biden voters, a mismatch that often predicts a turnout disparity.

The poll, in sort, reads like something close to a worst-case scenario for Democrats. And with less than a week until Election Day, it’s not at all clear what they can do to change it.

November 03, 2022 10:57 AM  
Anonymous Dems shudder at the fate that awaits.... said...


Brown University economist Emily Oster made a splash this week with her provocative and prescient Atlantic article imploring Americans to “Declare a Pandemic Amnesty,” forgive and forget the transgressions of the past 2 ½ years and move on with love in our hearts. American Federation of Teachers union leader Randi Weingarten enthusiastically echoed the sentiment.

But parents are not ready to forgive Randi — or the politicians who enabled her.

In late September 2021, parents across the country watched a promising and groundbreaking town hall entitled “A Safe and Healthy Reopening of Our Schools.” #OpenSchools parents organized it with Randi Weingarten and four mutually agreed-upon medical experts. It was our first opportunity for a real dialogue with Weingarten, by then widely understood to be the one making chief decisions about resuming normalcy in America’s public schools and a close confidante of our new president, Democrat Joe Biden.

By then our children had been through the ringer. Since March 2020, when schools first closed for “two weeks to flatten the curve,” normalcy had not returned. In New York City and most urban areas, schoolkids were still forcibly masked, routinely tested and quarantined. While restaurants were open, school lunch was eaten on distanced, frozen ground, even on the coldest days. The Two-Case Rule caused havoc for hundreds of thousands of New York City public-school families, forcing entire school campuses to shut down (even co-located schools in the same building) if two unrelated cases were found.

Contrary to the carefully curated narrative, we were not following “The Science,” which showed that schools were actually the safest place to be. This was clear by the lack of mass destruction from open schools across Europe and England, where children were not masked, distanced or forced to endure subhuman conditions in school buildings.

In blue urban areas with outsized teachers union influence — New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Oakland, Baltimore — things were dismal. Those who could flee to charters, private or parochial schools or leave the cities altogether left — understandably. Children were treated like viral vectors, and the leader of one of the nation’s most powerful teachers unions was doing little to help. Even then, we knew this was politics, not science. Meanwhile, my niece and nephew in the United Kingdom had been in school most of the year with minimal disruption and little-to-no-masking. Parents were desperate for change.

When President Biden took office, he promised schools would reopen during his first 100 days as president. This political fiction ignored the reality that even at the time, nearly 18 million children (about 36%) already had access to full-time in-person learning — they just happened to be almost exclusively in Republican-leaning areas.

Three hundred days post-inauguration, while children were finally back in school even in blue areas, draconian mitigations continued with no end in sight. So parents took the lead, inviting two of our most prominent scientists, Tracy Beth Hoeg and Jay Bhattacharya, to present Randi top research to try to restore evidence-based normalcy in schools.

By the time the roundtable came around, parents already had pretty low expectations. Hearing the two politicized experts — Irwin Redlener, a Clinton appointee, and Patrice Harris, a psychiatrist — talking about school safety, we knew we were in trouble. Not one of Weingarten, Redlener and Harris were even aware children were still being forced to mask outside. And contrary to the evidence, they insisted that masks were a panacea keeping kids safe.

Was the conversation being had in good faith?

November 03, 2022 7:48 PM  
Anonymous Dems shudder at the fate that awaits.... said...


I reached out to Randi asking to meet, and, to her credit, she agreed. On Nov. 7, 2021, we had drinks in Manhattan. I was there to plead our children’s case.

We were 18 months into the pandemic. Our kids were still suffering in school, discouraged from talking to one another, socialization disrupted. Parents across the country, from both sides of the aisle, were growing alarmed by children’s mental health, which was deteriorating rapidly as they navigated daily a sea of masked faces. I had become a single-issue voter, though back then I still naïvely believed that my party — the Democrats — would fix things.

When I presented Randi with the data on masked versus unmasked school districts, she told me, “Well, you have your experts, and I have my experts.” I explained how important faces and restoration of normalcy were for our children. She pushed on about “safety.” I asked if she could help get schools to normal. She made me an offer I couldn’t refuse: If I could show her evidence that mask-optional schools were safe, she would present my proposal to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as a potential off-ramp. She also asked me to tweet that I had met with her, to show she was working with parents and taking our views into consideration. I tweeted and got to work.

As I worked on the off-ramp plan, I watched as Randi continued to posture about masking’s importance and “staying safe” on social media. I knew that parents were on our own and that come the midterms, I would be a single-issue voter — our kids were on the ballot, and I would do anything to restore them to normalcy.

Our kids are still suffering, and our schools are still not restored to normalcy. In New York City, school athletics and extracurriculars just resumed last month due to Democrats’ punitive vaccine mandates. Parents are still largely unwelcome — and unvaccinated parents are fully barred. Parent-teacher conferences remain virtual. Parents have to fight for crumbs, and kids are still hostage to politically motivated policies.

Talk of amnesty is premature and, quite frankly, reeks of politics once again. On Tuesday, Nov. 8, we must show Randi we are the single-issue voters we said we were. I, a registered Democrat, will vote for Lee Zeldin.

After Election Day, we must do an autopsy and acknowledge what has been done and who is responsible. We must see good-faith actions to reopen our public schools to all families. Then we will gather our children around us, and talk of amnesty can, in earnest, begin.

November 03, 2022 7:50 PM  
Anonymous for millennia, society has known that two genders are necessary to make a marriage said...


the Fauci investigation begins in January

November 03, 2022 7:51 PM  
Anonymous Conservatives ban books about the Holocaust so folks won't recognize their "anti-wokeism" looks a lot like fascism said...


Doughnut shop that hosted drag event vandalized for second time, Oklahoma video shows

A Molotov cocktail was thrown inside the broken window of an Oklahoma doughnut shop, just days before it was set to host its second event put on by drag queens. The Oct. 31 vandalism of The Donut Hole in Tulsa is the second time the store has been met with a suspected hate crime in a matter of weeks. Video shows someone smash a window of the business, then light a Molotov cocktail and throw it into the shop at around 2am.

The culprit, who was wearing a red baseball cap with white lettering and a mask, ran away after throwing the explosive. KOTV reported the person also put “a letter with anti-LGBTQ rhetoric on the door of a neighboring business.” The person responsible will face charges of arson and endangering human lives, the TV station reported, citing city fire officials.

Shop owners said the damage was minimal, but it’s the second time in two weeks that the store has been vandalized. On Oct. 15, windows were shattered in what the store called “malicious acts.” The first attack coincided with an art installation held at the shop by The Queens Dirty Dozen, which is run by drag queens. More than 500 people attended the event, according to The Donut Hole.

The idea behind the art event was inspired by Daniel Gulick, who helped transform The Donut Hole into The Queens Dirty Dozens. Drag queens passed out doughnut sculptures with bright coloring or phrases written on them.

The following day, owners of The Donut Hole found their business broken into, with a window shattered, KTUL reported.

The Queens Dirty Dozen had plans for a second event at the shop, but it was canceled following the second act of vandalism. There were going to be 300 free donuts passed out at the event as a thank you for the support they received after the first incident. “My art installation was the catalyst for these horrible acts,” said Daniel Gulick, who hosted the event. “I know I’m not responsible, but I can’t help but take some of the blame for these things. It’s a terrible feeling.”

Tulsa firefighters have a person of interest from the latest arson case, according to Tulsa World. It’s unclear if the first incident and second were carried out by the same person.

REACTION FROM TULSA COMMUNITY

The Brookside Business Association, which oversees the Brookside district within Tulsa, said it was “heartbroken” by the vandalism. “No matter in what ways we may disagree with others, violence will never be the right response,” the association said. “We, as a business association representing Brookside, unconditionally and unequivocally, condemn these destructive actions and behaviors.”

The Queens Dirty Dozen started a GoFundMe for The Donut Hole to repair the initial vandalism. The window was quickly paid off, but the fundraiser stayed online so the store could benefit a greater purpose. “All extra proceeds will be given to the Tulsa Equality Center to help spread acceptance, tolerance and love,” The Donut Hole said. “These malicious acts have resulted in thousands of dollars going towards the cause this entire event was meant to support. Love wins.”

November 04, 2022 7:31 AM  
Anonymous Conservatives ban books about the Holocaust so folks won't recognize their "anti-wokeism" looks a lot like fascism said...


ATTACKS AGAINST DRAG COMMUNITY

As drag has become more mainstream, so too have acts of violence and aggression against the community.

“There is a bigger backlash against drag queens, there is a bigger backlash against the LGBTQ+ community and people of color, no matter what group you are in,” Bella Naughty, a drag queen based out of the Washington, D.C. area, told the Washington Post. “We are in it not just for drag, but for the greater picture.”

In one recent incident, dozens of people — some brandishing guns — protested outside a Drag Queen Storytime event in Eugene, Oregon, in October, Oregon Public Broadcasting reported. Rocks and smoke bombs were thrown during the protests.

The Oregon protests and vandalism at The Donut Hole in Tulsa are among the latest examples of hostility against the drag community, which also include death threats against an Alabama animal rescue that held a drag queen story time, McClatchy News reported.

Drag queens have also become a frequent target of conservative politicians, including Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. He has called for the prosecution of drag queens performing in front of children, calling their behavior “grotesque (and) disturbing.”

“They’re afraid of the stigma of what a drag queen is, which in (their minds) is over-sexualization and sexual puns,” New York-based drag queen Diamante Habibi told The Guardian. “But we know how to work with audiences. What’s for the 21 and plus is for 21 and plus, what’s for children is for children.”

November 04, 2022 7:34 AM  
Anonymous more of them polls that TTFers like so much...... said...


"Conservatives ban books"

you lose people every time you bring this up because you have to be pretty delusional to believe books are banned in America

November 04, 2022 10:44 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

US libraries face ‘unprecedented’ efforts to ban books on race and gender themes

Books for children and young adults containing themes of race, gender and sexual identity received an “unprecedented” number of challenges last year, the American Library Association (ALA) has said, reflecting a growing national trend of attempted censorship.

The challenges came from conservative parent groups and others. In some cases, the group says, librarians and elected officials were threatened with violence by members of the Proud Boys and armed activists at school board and library board meetings.

In a report released to coincide with next week’s Banned Books Week, the ALA also said that challenges from January to August this year were already running significantly higher than 12 months ago and are on course to surpass the 2021 figure.

In all, the ALA revealed, there were 681 attempts to ban or restrict library resources in schools, universities and public libraries, seeking to remove or restrict 1,651 different titles, in the eight full months of the year so far.

In 2021, there were 729 attempts to censor library resources, targeting 1,597 books. James LaRue, executive director of Colorado’s Garfield county public library district, said the numbers pointed to “a surprisingly consistent and coordinated campaign of censorship”.

“In addition to the increase in challenge volume, the scope of challenges also expanded,” said the ALA, which has announced the theme of the week will be “Books Unite Us. Censorship Divides Us.”

“More than 70% of the 681 attempts to restrict library resources targeted multiple titles. There were instances where hundreds of titles were challenged at a time, and made districtwide as opposed to at a specific school.

“In the past, most challenges to library resources only sought to remove or restrict a single title.”

The figures mirror those of other groups that have monitored escalating efforts by rightwing politicians and activists to censor literature in schools.

In April, Pen America, a non-profit organization that works to protect freedom of expression in the US, reported that 1,586 bans were implemented in 86 school districts across 26 states in the nine months to the end of March.

The ALA’s office of intellectual freedom (OIF) said the challenges have become increasingly hostile, documenting 27 instances of police reports filed against librarians over books they had on the shelves.

“Threats against library workers grew more frequent. Proud Boys and armed activists protested at school and library board meetings,” the report said.

LaRue added: “Some of those challenging books have adopted tactics of intimidation, threatening board members, superintendents, principals, teachers and librarians with recall, firing and, increasingly, criminal prosecution for distribution of materials alleged to be ‘obscene’, ‘harmful to minors’ or ‘pervasively vulgar’.

“To date, neither local prosecutors or law enforcement agencies have pursued these complaints, on the grounds that, in fact, no crimes were committed.”

The challenges reported to ALA in 2021, it said, represented the highest number of attempted book bans since the list began more than 20 years ago.

Leading with 120 challenges was Gender Queer, Maia Kobabe’s 2019 autobiography about growing up with a non-binary identity. Speakers at a school board meeting in Illinois called it “pornographic” and “a form of grooming”, though ultimately the book was not banned.

Also on the top 10 most challenged list were Lawn Boy by Jonathan Evison, This Book Is Gay by Juno Dawson and All Boys Aren’t Blue by George M Johnson. All have LBGTQ+ themes.

November 04, 2022 12:40 PM  
Anonymous Conservatives ban books about the Holocaust so folks won't recognize their "anti-wokeism" looks a lot like fascism said...

A Tennessee school board voted unanimously to remove a Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel about the Holocaust from its curriculum earlier this month over concerns about offensive words.

The 10-member board of education in McMinn County, about 60 miles south of Knoxville, voted Jan. 10 to remove the book “Maus,” by Art Spiegelman. The book in graphic form depicts Nazis as cats and Jews as mice. It received a special Pulitzer Prize in 1992.

School board members raised concerns over a handful of vulgar words, such as “goddamn,” deemed inappropriate for the eighth grade, as well as a depiction of the author’s mother naked, rendered as a mouse.

The book was an “anchor text” for McMinn County’s eighth-grade English language arts instruction. News of the decision was first reported by the alternative publication The Tennessee Holler.

Spiegelman, who wrote and illustrated the book based on his parents’ experience in Nazi-occupied Poland and later at Auschwitz, told CNBC he was baffled by the decision.

“I’ve met so many young people who … have learned things from my book,” he said, calling the decision “Orwellian.”

The most recent school board vote came ahead of International Holocaust Remembrance Day (Jan. 27), marking the 77th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.

School boards in politically conservative districts across the nation are reexamining their curriculums because of parent objections that children might find the materials anxiety-provoking.

Most of the objections center on race, gender or sexual orientation. In last fall’s Virginia governor’s race, Glenn Youngkin, who won the race, ran an ad in which a parent supported banning Toni Morrison’s masterpiece “Beloved” from schools. The book speaks in explicit terms about the effects of slavery in the United States.

Some of those efforts to ban books have focused on critical race theory, an academic theory that some conservatives have said causes children to be taught that America is a wicked, racist country.

Last month, a Texas school district pulled 400 books from library shelves to review them, after a Republican state lawmaker sent a letter inquiring about a list of more than 800 titles.

The president of the American Federation of Teachers, Randi Weingarten, who is Jewish, tweeted: “Yes it is uncomfortable to talk about genocide, but it is our history and educating about it helps us not repeat this horror.”

November 04, 2022 12:43 PM  
Anonymous homosexuality can't produce life, why would we call that a marriage? said...


determining what material is appropriate for children is not "banning"

again, this is how Dems have lost voters

November 04, 2022 12:50 PM  
Anonymous when the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie, that's amore............. said...


Democrats across the country scrambled Thursday to bolster candidates in places President Slidin' Biden carried safely in 2020, the latest sign of panic that they could face major losses in next week’s midterm elections.

Vice President Clueless Harris and former secretary of state Hillary Plastered Clinton held a joint rally in an effort to rescue New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D), who faces a close race in a state Republicans haven’t won in two decades.

That oughta scare the hell outta 'em!

LOL!

Slidin' Biden traveled to New Mexico and Southern California to support vulnerable Democratic incumbents — bypassing Arizona and Nevada, where officials fear he could be a drag on senators in tight races.

That oughta scare the hell outta 'em!

LOL!

Slidin' Biden and Clueless Harris plan to spend part of the weekend in Illinois, boosting House candidates in suburban districts that have been trending back toward Republicans since 2020.

That oughta scare the hell outta 'em!

LOL!

As Republicans have focused on inflation and crime to go on offense in Democratic territory over the past month — competing in traditionally blue districts in California, Oregon, New York, Illinois and elsewhere — there’s a growing sense among Democrats that there’s little they can do at this point to combat the combined forces of history and economics.

November 04, 2022 1:34 PM  
Anonymous Republicans cynical manipulation of voters reveal how little they think of them, and how desperate they are to maintain power at any cost said...


GOP Rep. Dan Crenshaw: Election Deniers Admit It's A Lie Behind Closed Doors

Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas) revealed what election deniers actually say behind closed doors as a slew of reality-defying candidates run as Republicans in next week’s 2022 midterms.

“It was always a lie. The whole thing was always a lie. And it was a lie meant to rile people up,” the Texas Republican said of the lie that Donald Trump was cheated by widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election during the latest episode of his “Hold These Truths” podcast.

“I’ve talked about this ad nausea, it really made me angry,” the former Navy SEAL told election reform advocate Nick Troiano. “Because I’m like, the promises you’re making that you’re gonna challenge the Electoral College and overturn the election, there’s not even a process for you to do that. It doesn’t even exist.”

“So I was like, ‘What the hell are we doing?’ And I would tell that to people kinda behind closed doors too. Especially a lot of the rabble-rousers, like the political personalities, not even the politicians,” he said.

Crenshaw recalled “arguments behind closed doors in the Republican Party before that.”

The lawmaker continued:

But even just the others, they’re like, ‘Yeah, we know that, but we just, you know, people just need their last hurrah. Like, they just need to feel like we fought one last time. Trust me, it’ll be fine.’ And I was like, ‘No, it won’t. That’s not what people believe and that’s not what you’re telling them. And maybe you’re smart enough to know that but like …’ So we have a lot of people in the political world that are just willing to say things they know aren’t true, they know aren’t true. It’s a huge manipulation.

Crenshaw, in the aftermath of the 2020 election, supported a Texas lawsuit that challenged Trump’s defeat, but he’s now a fierce critic of those who falsely claim Trump was the election winner.

November 04, 2022 3:37 PM  
Anonymous Dem monopoly control of inner cities has led to poverty and racism said...


“It was always a lie. The whole thing was always a lie. And it was a lie meant to rile people up,”

yes, but it wasn't the Big Lie

the Big Lie was when Hillary said she only lost in 2016 because Donald Trump colluded with Russia

and her lie had much more devastating consequences

another Big Lie is CRT, which led to the defund movement, which has endangered all Americans

frankly, our politics is riddled with lies, the majority of which are pushed by Democraps

November 05, 2022 4:17 AM  
Anonymous when the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie, that's a GOP vict'ry'!!!......... said...

In 2020, the Democratic advantage among Hispanic voters declined by 16 points relative to 2016. On the eve of the 2022 election, that advantage is set to decline substantially once again.

This is obviously bad for the Democraps’ immediate electoral prospects. But it also cuts the ground out from under their leading electoral theory of the case: that the “rising American electorate”, with a starring role for the burgeoning ranks of minority voters, will deliver them victories in the future. It is overwhelmingly Hispanics who are driving the increase in the nonwhite population and if they continue moving toward the GOP—as they are and in a big way—the whole theory falls apart.

It is becoming clearer and clearer that Democrats have seriously erred by lumping Hispanics in with “people of color” and assuming they embraced a litany of liberal causes around race and other issues that are dear to the hearts of Democratic activists. This was a flawed assumption. In reality, Hispanic voters are overwhelmingly an upwardly mobile, patriotic population with practical and down to earth concerns focused on jobs, the economy, health care, effective schools and public safety.

Much to the merriment of conservatives, President Slidin' Biden on Thursday made his second trip to California in less than three weeks in the hopes of boosting Democrap House members whose reelection chances are sinking amid soaring gasoline and grocery prices, rising homelessness, and a spike in violent crime.

Top political analysts moved the race for control of the 49th District to a “toss-up” from its previous “leans Democrap” status. On Tuesday, Levin was among the candidates the Democrap Congressional Campaign Committee identified as requiring “immediate resources” to win their seats.

As part of a four-state, three-day campaign swing that began in New Mexico, Slidin' Biden delivered a 50-minute address to a sparse crowd in a gymnasium in Oceanside, a heavily Latino, working-class area of the mainly affluent coastal district.

“This guy delivers,” Slidin' Biden said. “And he’s fighting to protect democracy.”

But far from Biden throwing a life vest to Levin, district voters across the political spectrum said the commander in chief’s visit will make them more compelled to vote Republican.

“I don’t really get behind the whole traveling roadshow thing with politicians, because the reality is, their being here or being in Washington or another state … we already know what their political beliefs are. We already see the work that they haven’t done,” Bob Bulduc said Thursday outside a Shell gas station a few miles from where Slidin' Biden was scheduled to speak.

November 05, 2022 4:45 AM  
Anonymous when the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie, that's a GOP vict'ry'!!!......... said...


Slidin' Joe Biden and the Democraps have a big problem. It isn’t just that they stand to lose in the midterm elections and maybe the Presidency in 2024. They stand to lose much more than that. They stand to lose everything.

The American people, by now, have had enough. They’re sick of cowards who cannot stand up to the activists who control them. They’re not just sick of them in Washington. They’re sick of them everywhere. They’re sick of being told what they can and can’t say, what they can and can’t think.

In 2020, a New Woke Order exploded on the streets. It looked a lot like the rehearsal at Evergreen and across many college campuses all over the country. The activists have been loud and powerful. They have captured corporate America and nearly every cultural institution in the country. And they’ve captured Slidin' Joe Biden and the Democraps.

Their activism has all but wrecked Hollywood movies; almost every network or streaming series is infused with their doctrine. It is inescapable. It’s in public schools, museums, fast food advertising, library reading lists, and sports. Most of us are developing an immunity to anything we think might be “woke,” and we will avoid it as much as possible.

Most of us know that if there is some message buried in a book or a movie, we’re going to resent being drawn in for yet another lecture on how to be better, how to do better, and how to reorder our thinking to satisfy their unending critiques. It’s so bad that someone should start a website called “Is it Woke”? That would save consumers a lot of time and trouble.

The only reason we don’t hear about it more is that any dissent is viciously attacked until an apology is squeezed out like the last bit of toothpaste in an empty tube. It is too much trouble to endure all of that panic and hysteria. So most people keep their heads down and hope it will pass.

Slidin' Joe Biden doesn’t yet understand this. Most Democraps don’t.

In the closing days of campaign season, Republicans have unmistakably retained single issue superiority at almost every level—particularly given crippling levels of inflation, the worst border crisis in American history, and skyrocketing crime rates. But to be most effective in winning over voters, GOP candidates’ closing message ought to explain why Democrap members of Congress and state-level officeholders would vote so completely in favor of policies that have generated these crises. In other words, Republicans need to give voters what they crave most—context, and a narrative to accompany it.

The GOP should make explicit what voters implicitly know—and Democraps, in the ultimate political boomerang, have handed them precisely the catchword to explain it. For the bulk of the campaign cycle, rather than focusing on the multitude of issues on the minds of ordinary American citizens, Democraps have opted to highlight the supposed “extremism” of Republicans as a last-ditch effort to circumvent a much-anticipated red wave. Seen most memorably in Slidin' Joe Biden’s now-infamous September 1 remarks in Philadelphia all the way up to his Wednesday speech at Washington’s Union Station, in which he indignantly smeared half the country as an existential “threat to democracy” (again) and virtually declared Republican voters to be enemies of the state, Democraps have spared no effort in leveling charges of extremism against their political opponents. But although Democraps may have first injected the “extremism” theme into the campaign, in the closing days and weeks of the election season, the tables have turned—and the left’s groundless charges of “extremism” can serve as the political boomerang Republicans can use to cement their congressional majorities on Tuesday

November 05, 2022 4:50 AM  
Anonymous when the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie, that's a GOP vict'ry'!!!......... said...

Inflation is hampering Joannah Schumacher’s attempt at being a better citizen.

High gas prices have forced the Sparks, Nevada, resident to cut back on the number of seminars she attends as co-head of an effort helping people communicate with elected officials. She felt ashamed recently when she filled her car up with subsidized gas courtesy of a local nonprofit.

“I became the person who was being served,” she told USA TODAY. “But I just couldn't turn it down. That was my ability to go to multiple locations with a full tank of gas.”

The increasingly expensive cost of living is why Schumacher will be voting a straight Republican ticket this election unlike prior elections where she evaluated candidates based on the principles they stood for regardless of party. While she's now the head of the Nevada Republican Assembly, she's had a history of voting for Democraps, Republicans, independents, Libertarians and Green Party candidates.

A resident of a swing county in a swing state, she recognizes how crucial her vote is. Nevada voters will decide which party runs the Silver State, and they could determine whether the GOP wins back full control of Congress, including the Senate. Polls show gubernatorial and senatorial races in Nevada moving toward the GOP.

Inflation is undeniably high. And it’s having a direct effect on this year’s midterm election where control of Congress and dozens of governors’ mansions are at stake.

The gas Americans are filling their cars with to get to polling sites is costing nearly 20% more than last year. This comes as prices for goods and services are up 8.2% compared to last year. That's nearly a 40-year high.

President Slidin' Joe Biden and congressional Democraps passed the hilariously-named Inflation Reduction Act which expanded Medicare benefits and increased home energy tax credits and rebates for Americans who purchase certain clean-energy appliances among other measures. No Republican lawmaker in the House or Senate voted for it – and many claimed the avalanche of new federal spending would only worsen inflation.

“Inflation remains the dominant economic concern for Americans,” a Pew Research Center survey of registered voters released Oct. 20 found. “In fact, the three top concerns, among seven items included, relate to prices – for food and consumer goods (73% are very concerned about this), gasoline and energy (69%) and the cost of housing (60%).

November 05, 2022 5:08 AM  
Anonymous when the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie, that's a GOP vict'ry'!!!......... said...

Around the corner from the Milwaukee Public Market, Eden Haynes recalled seeing a DoorDash worker's car stolen — while her children were in the car.

The carjacker shot an off-duty detective in the abdomen before fleeing the scene, according to CBS58.

"It's been a crazy year," Haynes, a formerly Democrap voter, told CBS News.

In Wisconsin's Senate race between Republican Sen. Ron Johnson and Democrap Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes, crime and public safety is among the top concerns for voters. In an October CBS News poll, crime ranked third, behind the economy and inflation, when it came to "very important issues" for likely voters. And 42% of registered voters said Johnson's policies would make them "more safe from crime."

Conversations around Sherri Bukovskey’s kitchen table are much like yours. A dental hygienist from Maine, Sherri remembers the days not long ago when she could keep her home toasty warm in the wintertime for half the price it would cost today. She remembers when no one in her neighborhood would even consider foregoing medication in order to afford their weekly grocery bill — a decision that recently only the poorest of America’s poor had to make, but that is becoming more and more common across America today.

According to the National Energy Assistance Directors Association, more than 20 million American households (1 in 6 American homes) are struggling to meet their home energy bills, the worst crisis the group has ever documented.

Why are American families facing this energy-driven inflationary spiral? Well, prices have surged because President Slidin' Joe Biden’s policies essentially guaranteed they would surge. When there is a shortage of a product in demand, the price of that product increases. Fossil fuels are clearly in high demand and limiting the supply of such fuels obviously increased the costs.

Slidin' Biden made his devastatingly bad policies on oil production crystal clear from the beginning of his run for the presidency. Recall that during the 2020 campaign, Slidin' Biden told a young supporter "look in my eyes" as he said, "I guarantee you we’re going to end fossil fuels." That statement wasn’t one of the all-too-common Slidin' Biden gaffs. In a February 2020 rally he stated very clearly from prepared remarks, "We are going to get rid of fossil fuels."

And there you have it.

Today, tight diesel and natural gas supplies threaten to exacerbate already sky-high inflation and supply chain issues, devastating American families. According to data the Department of Energy released last week, our diesel supply (essential for supply chain transportation) is down to 25 days, the lowest level on record going back to 1993. For people in the Northeast, who depend on diesel to heat their homes in the winter (like Sherri Bukovskey), supplies have dropped to a third of their typical levels for this time of year.

The situation is critical. To address the existing and pending crises Slidin' Biden’s anti-fossil fuel policies have caused, it seems obvious that the president should unequivocally admit the error of his ways and tell American bankers, asset managers, administration officials, and environmentalists to get out of the way because America needs more oil now!

November 05, 2022 5:18 AM  
Anonymous grim future for the gay agenda - two house of Congress, SCOTUS, governor mansions, state legislators, twitter...checkmate! said...


https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/other/2022-generic-congressional-vote-7361.html

November 05, 2022 10:02 PM  
Anonymous Choice! said...

RNC chair says committee can’t pay Trump’s legal bills if he announces 2024 run


November 06, 2022 1:05 PM  
Anonymous Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington has something to say said...

Legal experts claimed Sunday that Donald Trump had admitted his guilt in the classified White House documents case for the second night in a row.

In his Miami rally on Sunday, Trump mentioned "the very famous raid on Mar-a-Lago — the document-hoax case."

"No other president has ever done this. Presidents leave. They take things. They take documents. They read them," said Trump. "Nobody else has ever gone through this. This is a charade."

According to the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, "the Constitution (Article I, Section 9) prohibits anyone in the US Government from receiving a personal gift from a foreign head of state without the consent of Congress. Today, the handling of gifts from a foreign official to any Federal Government employee, including the President, is largely governed by the Foreign Gifts and Decorations Act of 1966 and further legislation passed in 1977."

The way the system works is that "gifts" and documents pertaining to the administration are displayed in presidential libraries under the purview of the National Archives. Presidents are allowed to access their documents for up to 12 years after their presidencies for the purpose of writing books etc. They can work with the Archives to get access to those documents. So, if Trump wanted to see that information, he would call his person at the Archives and he could read them at the Archives or any secure facility that is set up anywhere in the country.

What Trump did that is different from every other president is that he skipped those steps and simply took everything with him, telling his aides "they're mine."

Hearing the audio of the speech in Miami, anchor and legal contributor Katie Phang called it "More and more admissions…"

"Here's Trump apparently admitting to illegally taking top secret documents when he left the White House," said CREW, the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.

Legal Affairs Editor at Condé Nast, Luke Zaleski, characterized it like this: "So Trump stole state secrets and evidence of his crimes in a dual act of obstruction and espionage after committing obstruction and treason and abuse of power after taking office with criminal foreign interference he solicited/accepted after committing fraud and money-laundering?"

Andrew Weissmann, the former FBI counsel and prosecutor for special counsel Robert Mueller, said earlier this week that "Trump publicized the Mar-a-Lago search to boost his sagging Republican fortunes. He will do the same when he is indicted by DOJ and GA. That is why these prosecutors must build a bulletproof case and carefully lay out facts to convince the *sliver* of persuadable Rs of Trump guilt."

The comments from Trump are similar to those made in Pennsylvania the previous evening. Stumping for Mehmet Oz, Trump explained, "I can't even tell you what is on those planes. It might be top-secret, they might say, he violated a document. Every other President takes their documents. I’m the only one. I can’t have a document."

National security lawyer Brad Moss encouraged Trump, "keep talking. Just keep talking."

November 07, 2022 11:33 AM  
Anonymous remember Brett Kavanaugh? he was the final nail in the gay agenda's coffin said...


"He will do the same when he is indicted by DOJ and GA"

he won't be

for the same reason Hillary wasn't prosecuted for mishandling classified data

it doesn't really matter if the material was paper or electronic

and Trump had the authority, because he was elected, to declassify material

Hillary, who has never won a national election, didn't

November 08, 2022 1:47 AM  
Anonymous you have to wonder if Dems will ever win again, after they are thrown out of Congress today.... said...

If there were a way to illustrate the beginning, middle, and end of this election cycle in four powerful moments, I’d start with the faces of the men and women working on the construction of the Keystone pipeline, and the owners of the small businesses who supported them, that I witnessed days after President Joe Biden terminated their livelihoods.

These are people who work with their hands in the harshest of weather conditions digging trenches, cleaning feeder pipes, laying concrete, ensuring the proper fittings on the connecting pipes, and loading and unloading heavy materials by hand. That's not including the faces of the people who run the motels, diners, machine shops, and barber shops and the mechanics who make sure they are fed, housed, cleaned, and able to get home when the job is done.

The next image in my coverage of these first two years of the Biden administration captured the true beginning of his descent away from the public. It happened while I was driving past the town square in Independence, Missouri, and saw 13 empty chairs sitting in a semicircle at the base of the lowered American flag in front of the Old Jackson County Courthouse, with each chair bearing the name of one of the 13 soldiers lost in Afghanistan during Biden's bug-out from that country.

It was in the days and weeks after Aug. 26, 2021, when the nation lost those service members during Biden's botched withdrawal, that the media and the Democratic Party as a whole failed to understand the mark that moment had on the American psyche. It was a shift away from the party in power and the president, whose credibility since then has never stopped slipping away.

Almost exactly one year later, at Philadelphia's Independence Hall on Sept. 1, 2022, Biden gave a very dark speech, with two Marines flanked on either side of him, about how half of this country is racist, extremist, and wants to upend democracy as we know it. That speech was a turning point against the Democrats, negating any advantage they hoped to gain in response to the Supreme Court's anti-abortion Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization decision.

In between, I’ve covered families struggling to make ends meet to pay for gas for their cars, maintain their farms, keep their businesses open as costs crush their profits, or find anyone willing to work for them.

I’ve watched parents distraught and ultimately bullied by education-union members for their concerns about their children’s curriculum or books in the library; I’ve seen them struggle along with their children as they try to catch up in school or listened to them talk about their college-age children who are adrift and without purpose.

November 08, 2022 2:05 AM  
Anonymous Right wingers keep getting worse said...

Bond was set Monday morning for a Morgan Twp. man arrested on suspicion of murder after his neighbor was found shot to death Saturday in Okeana.

Austin Gene Combs, 26, was booked into the Butler County Jail at 8:25 p.m. Saturday. Bond was set at $950,000 Monday during a video arraignment at the Butler County Historic Courthouse.

Anthony Lee King, 43, died of multiple gunshot wounds and his death was ruled a homicide, according to the Butler County Coroner’s Office.

Combs was taken into custody after deputies called for a shooting at 11:46 a.m. and found King dead outside, according to the sheriff’s office.

Combs was armed with a gun, deputies said.

Family members called 911 after hearing shots and finding King unresponsive and bleeding in the back yard.

The family told the dispatcher neighbor had confronted him before about some perceived political affiliation.

“My neighbor just shot my dad,” a male tells dispatchers.

His father is in the backyard and he is not breathing, the son says.

The suspect, “just walked back on to his property,” he tells the dispatcher.

According to the son, the neighbor “has come over multiple times making statements. He’s insane.”

The caller’s mother is sobbing in the background and the dispatcher tells them to stay inside and keep the doors locked.

The victim’s wife then tells the dispatcher they were cutting grass and working in the yard when she came inside to let the dog out. That’s when she said she heard gunshots.

“I look in the backyard and that man is walking away from my husband and my husband is on the ground,” the woman says “He has come over like four times confronting my husband because he thought he was a Democrat, Why, why … Please, I don’t understand.”

Combs was taken into custody in a Jeep at the Ohio 126 West of Chapel Road. Both Combs and his father were in the vehicle.

November 08, 2022 11:56 AM  
Anonymous No signs of 'Red Wave' that Republicans expected said...

Donald J. Trump wasn’t on the ballot Tuesday, but he’d spent the past two years behaving otherwise, aiming to deliver key victories to a Republican Party from which he’s likely to seek, once again, a presidential nomination.

Several battleground races remained too close to call early Wednesday, but it was clear there would be no “giant red wave” that Mr. Trump had spent weeks pleading with his supporters to deliver.

In some key states, Trump-backed candidates lost or were faring poorly. In Pennsylvania, the Democrat Josh Shapiro won the governor’s race against the Republican Doug Mastriano, while the Democrat John Fetterman defeated Mehmet Oz, a Republican, to flip control of a U.S. Senate seat. In Michigan, Tudor Dixon, Mr. Trump’s pick in the governor’s race, came up short in her bid to unseat Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.

In Arizona, where Kari Lake and Blake Masters had campaigned together as “America First” candidates in Mr. Trump’s mold, both were behind in their races for governor and Senate, respectively, although results were too close to call.

Some of Mr. Trump’s candidates fared well, such as J.D. Vance, the Republican Senate nominee in Ohio. And the candidate in whom Mr. Trump was most personally invested, the former football player Herschel Walker, whose Senate candidacy in Georgia has been rocked by allegations that he had encouraged women to have abortions that he paid for, appeared poised to force a runoff.

One of the party’s biggest victories of the night came in Florida, where Gov. Ron DeSantis won re-election with margins that Republicans hadn’t seen there in two decades.

Unlike four years ago, when Mr. Trump’s endorsement helped lift Mr. DeSantis’s underdog campaign, the governor didn’t seek the former president’s help for re-election. Mr. DeSantis was the target of a derisive nickname from Mr. Trump in the final days of the race.

Mr. Trump targeted Mr. DeSantis in part because the governor is widely viewed as the leading alternative to the former president for the Republican nomination. Mr. DeSantis hasn’t said whether he would run for the White House, but Mr. Trump — who is expected to announce his third consecutive presidential bid next week — has told reporters that he viewed Mr. DeSantis as a competitor.

The close races on the rest of the electoral map confounded Mr. Trump. At an election-night party at his Mar-a-Lago resort, he was not particularly interested in addressing the crowd, according to a person familiar with the events. He did deliver brief remarks, and one of the few people he praised was Katie Britt, the Republican Senate candidate from Alabama whose victory was seen as a foregone conclusion.

November 09, 2022 6:51 AM  
Anonymous AP: Dems show surprising strength; control of Congress unclear said...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Control of Congress hung in the balance early Wednesday as Democrats showed surprising strength, defeating Republicans in a series of competitive races and defying expectations that high inflation and President Joe Biden’s low approval ratings would drag the party down.

In the most heartening news for Democrats, John Fetterman flipped a Republican-controlled Senate seat that is key to the party’s hopes of maintaining control of the chamber. It was too early to call critical Senate seats in Wisconsin, Nevada, Georgia and Arizona that could determine the majority. In the House, meanwhile, Democrats kept seats in districts from Virginia to Kansas to Rhode Island, while many districts in states like New York and California had not been called.

Democrats also were successful in governors’ races, winning in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania — battlegrounds critical to Biden’s 2020 win over former President Donald Trump. But Republicans held on to governors’ mansions in Florida, Texas and Georgia, another battleground state Biden narrowly won two years ago.

With votes still being counted across the country, Republicans still had the opportunity to win control of Congress. But the results were uplifting for Democrats who were braced for sweeping losses, and raised questions about the size of Republicans’ governing majority if they win the House.

Rep. Kevin McCarthy, the Republican poised to be House speaker if the GOP takes control of the chamber, was optimistic the GOP would take control, telling supporters, “When you wake up tomorrow, we will be in the majority.” Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said, “While many races remain too close to call, it is clear that House Democratic Members and candidates are strongly outperforming expectations across the country.”

The outcome of races for House and Senate will determine the future of Biden’s agenda and serve as a referendum on his administration as the nation reels from record-high inflation and concerns over the direction of the country. Republican control of the House would likely trigger a round of investigations into Biden and his family, while a GOP Senate takeover would hobble Biden’s ability to make judicial appointments.

Democrats were facing historic headwinds. The party in power almost always suffers losses in the president’s first midterm elections, but Democrats had been hoping that anger from the Supreme Court’s decision to gut abortion rights might energize their voters to buck historical trends.

In the Pennsylvania Senate race, Fetterman had faced questions about his fitness for office after suffering a stroke just days before the state’s primary, but nonetheless bested Republican Dr. Mehmet Oz in a major rebuke to Trump, whose endorsement helped Oz win his competitive primary.

“I’m so humbled,” Fetterman, wearing his signature hoodie, told his supporters early Wednesday morning. “This campaign has always been about fighting for everyone who’s ever been knocked down that ever got back up.”

Democrats also held a crucial Senate seat in New Hampshire, where incumbent Maggie Hassan defeated Republican Don Bolduc, a retired Army general who had initially promoted Trump’s lies about the 2020 election but tried to shift away from some of the more extreme positions he took during the GOP primary. Republicans held Senate seats in Ohio and North Carolina.

November 09, 2022 7:20 AM  
Anonymous History was made last night said...

History was made in a number of races on Tuesday.

As soon as the polls closed in Maryland and Massachusetts, both state’s gubernatorial races were called for groundbreaking candidates. In Maryland, Democrat Wes Moore will become the first Black governor in the state’s history, and Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey, also a Democrat, is the first woman elected governor in the Bay State. She also will be the first openly gay woman to serve as governor of any state. (Massachusetts previously had a female acting governor, Jane Swift, who finished former Gov. Paul Cellucci’s first full term after Cellucci, a Republican, resigned to serve as ambassador to Canada under then-President George W. Bush.)

Salem, Mass., Mayor Kim Driscoll will serve as Healey’s lieutenant governor, making them the first women to serve as governor and lieutenant governor of the same state. Massachusetts also elected Democrat Andrea Campbell to be its first Black woman to serve as state attorney general.

In Vermont, Democrat Becca Balint defeated Republican Liam Madden in the state’s at-large congressional race and will become the first gay member of Vermont’s congressional delegation.

In Arkansas, the Republican nominee for governor, former White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders was declared the winner by the Associated Press, making her the first woman to be elected governor of that state. Sanders is the daughter of former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee.

The Senate race in Alabama has been called for Republican Katie Britt, who won the race to succeed retiring Republican Sen. Richard Shelby. Britt — who had once served Shelby as his chief of staff — is the first woman elected to the Senate from Alabama. (Two women previously represented Alabama in the Senate, but both were appointed to fill vacancies and never won election.)

In New Hampshire, Democrat James Roesener became the first transgender man elected to a state legislature in U.S. history.

And in Pennsylvania's 12th District, Democratic congressional nominee Summer Lee is expected to become the first Black woman to represent Pennsylvania in Congress. Her Republican opponent Mike Doyle has conceded the race and Lee has declared victory, as she is ahead by roughly 17 percentage points with three-quarters of the votes counted in the heavily Democratic district.

November 09, 2022 7:59 AM  
Anonymous Trump-supported Candidates Are Casting Doubt on Election Results and Refusing to Concede said...

Republicans spent much of Election Day planting seeds of suspicion about the integrity of the nation’s election systems. As the results began to trickle in, GOP candidates made it clear that they plan to harvest their crop, especially in races that remain undecided or where the margins were narrow.

Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake, whose race against Democrat Katie Hobbs remained too close to call as of early Wednesday morning, took to the stage in Scottsdale, Arizona, to suggest the election may not have been on the level. “Two minutes into voting, we had people being told, ‘Well, you’re going to have to put your little ballot over here into another box,” she said, referencing technical issues at Maricopa County voting places earlier on Tuesday.

Lake added that “the fake media over there tried to tell us we were wrong for asking questions about our elections.”

Elsewhere in the country, two high-profile Republican gubernatorial candidates, both of whom spent their campaigns pushing 2020 election fraud conspiracies, have waited to concede their races despite the results being called by reputable networks.

“Have faith,” Doug Mastriano, said onstage in Camp Hill, Pennsylvania. “We’re going to wait until every vote counts.” Mastriano has been trailing Democrat Josh Shapiro by double digits.

In Grand Rapids, Michigan, a similar scene played out, with Tudor Dixon, whose loss to incumbent Governor Gretchen Whitmer has now been projected by multiple networks, telling supporters that “this race is going to be too close to call despite what Fox [News] thinks.”

Both Dixon and Mastriano have been staunch promoters of former President Donald Trump’s claims that the 2020 election was rigged. Mastriano was heavily involved in efforts to create a fake slate of electoral college electors in Pennsylvania in an effort to overturn the election results, and has indicated that as governor he would use his power to appoint Pennsylvania’s secretary of state — who oversees elections — in Republicans favor.

Similarly, Dixon boosted claims of fraud against Trump, indicating on multiple occasions that she believes “that there was enough fraud in the election that we have to be very concerned,” and that the extent of the unproven misconduct was enough to cost Trump the election.

By contrast, Democrat Tim Ryan gracefully conceded his loss for a seat in the Senate to Republican J.D. Vance late on Tuesday.

“The way this country operates is that when you lose an election you concede,” he said. “You respect the will of the people. We can’t have a system where if you win it’s a legitimate election and if you lose someone stole it.”

November 09, 2022 8:11 AM  
Anonymous Thanks Alito for this Happy Roevember! said...

Voters across the country delivered a series of decisive victories for abortion rights on Tuesday in the first nationwide election since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June.

The biggest surprise came in Republican-leaning Kentucky, where an antiabortion amendment was defeated, clearing a potential path for abortion access to be restored in a state with one of the country’s most restrictive bans.

In Michigan, where Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) was reelected in part by presenting herself as a champion of abortion rights, voters approved a ballot initiative that will enshrine the right to abortion in the state constitution — preventing a 1931 abortion ban from taking effect.

And in North Carolina, Republicans failed to win a veto-proof legislative supermajority, ensuring that Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper will continue to have the power to block abortion restrictions in a state that has become a critical access point for people seeking abortions across the Southeast.

The string of abortion rights successes affirmed a political trend that emerged in August, two months after the fall of Roe, when voters in conservative Kansas rejected an antiabortion amendment similar to the one that was defeated in Kentucky. The results showed how even as GOP lawmakers have seized the moment to enact more restrictions, much of the public sees the issue differently — with about 6 in 10 midterm voters saying abortion should be legal in all or most cases, according to exit polls.

Network exit polls also found that almost 3 in 10 voters nationally said abortion was the most important issue in their vote, and that about 4 in 10 voters nationally said they were “angry” that Roe was overturned.

A “unifying message” was emerging from the 2022 midterms, said Tamarra Wieder, state director for Kentucky Planned Parenthood Alliance Advocates: “Abortion transcends party lines.”...

November 09, 2022 9:33 AM  
Anonymous It's morning again in America said...


Fox News Wonk Can't Get Over 'Absolute Disaster' For Republicans In Election

Fox News contributor Marc Thiessen on Tuesday gave an analysis of Republicans’ performance in the election that sounded more like a death knell.

Thiessen, a former speechwriter for President George W. Bush and now a Washington Post columnist, decried the absence of the predicted “red wave” and called the night an “absolute disaster” for the GOP.

Fox News political anchor Bret Baier asked Thiessen to process Democrat John Fetterman’s triumph over Republican Mehmet Oz in the Pennsylvania Senate race, but Thiessen went further afield. Baier wondered how inflation, crime and President Joe Biden’s low popularity could have failed to deliver GOP dominance.

Thiessen did not hold back.

“That is a searing indictment of the Republican Party,” he said. “That is a searing indictment of the message that we have been sending to the voters. They’ve looked at all of that, and looked at the Republican alternative, and said no thanks. The Republican Party needs to do a really deep introspection look in the mirror right now because this is an absolute disaster for the Republican Party and we need to turn back.”

[Yeah, like the Republican Party is really known for deep introspection! They'd rather have a colonoscopy. They're going to do the same thing they've done for years - conclude that they just weren't hard right enough and double down on extremism - DeSantis 2024!. It has never occurred to them that large chunks of the country simply aren't Florida, and will fight tooth and nail to keep from becoming Florida.]

Thiessen assailed “radical candidates” who “put the Republican Party in a terrible position.”

[Someone has to say it. The "red wave" many not even make a good trickle; it was aborted late in the third trimester. Right now it's just a few dark spots.]

November 09, 2022 9:49 AM  
Anonymous Don't cry for me, Arizona! said...

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — Has there ever been a more rage-filled celebration?
Arizona Republicans up and down the ballot gathered at a resort here for a unified election night “party.” But things didn’t go as planned.

The Fox News election-night coverage, playing on the jumbo TV screens here, carried unwanted news that the great “red wave” had not materialized across the country, at least not yet. And here in Arizona, where the GOP nominated MAGA-inspired election deniers for governor, senator, secretary of state and other positions, hopes for early victories on election night had vanished.

The organizers took the Fox News coverage off the big screens and played music instead. They played the Village People’s “YMCA” — twice. Shuttle buses full of partygoers began to filter out, and by 10 p.m. the crowd had thinned considerably. The celebration, if it came at all, would be delayed.

Instead, Arizona’s MAGA Republican leaders brought fury and fanaticism on election night.

They eschewed basic decency. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is “losing the gavel but finding the hammer,” Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) told the crowd, joking about the attack on Pelosi’s husband that left him with a fractured skull — just as GOP gubernatorial nominee Kari Lake did a week earlier. The crowd laughed.

They stoked paranoia. “By attending this event you have increased your chance of an FBI raid by about 50 percent,” the emcee, Benny Johnson, said.

They hurled insults every which way. “Merrick Garland needs some new pantyhose.” “Beto [O’Rourke] is a furry.” Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) is a “little man” whose “ears don’t match.” President Biden is a “lost child” with a “very dirty diaper.” Democrats are “lunatics.”

At a time that typically calls for magnanimity and reconciliation, they instead cried out for vengeance. When Anthony Fauci’s name was invoked, they chanted “Lock him up!” They vowed to be a “nightmare to Joe Biden” and to impeach his aides. “Sorry libs,” sneered the emcee. “Sucks to suck.”

They boasted about the radicalism they represented. “We have remade this party in our image,” said state party chair Kelli Ward, “of people who aren’t going to take any crap.”

November 09, 2022 10:00 AM  
Anonymous Don't cry for me, Arizona said...

“Who’s ready to elect a bunch of radical Republican conservatives?” asked another speaker. The crowd roared.

And they repeatedly invoked the latest MAGA conspiracy that Election Day glitches with voting tabulators in Maricopa, the behemoth Phoenix-area county, were a “criminal” attempt to commit “fraud” against Republicans.

Never mind that the glitches didn’t cause a single ballot not to be counted, nor a single voter to be denied the right to vote. And never mind that the county officials overseeing the election (lustily booed by the MAGA crowd) are Republicans.

It was an appropriately ugly end to this grotesque campaign, just one last attempt to generate disgust — not just toward Democrats but toward the democratic process.

Armed men in tactical gear staked out ballot drop boxes in Democratic areas of Maricopa in a blatant attempt to intimidate voters. In Cochise County, GOP leaders attacked a judge for political bias after their scheme to hand-count all ballots was shot down. There was a break-in at Democratic gubernatorial nominee Katie Hobbs’s office, followed by receipt of white powder by mail at Lake’s. Maricopa’s sheriff, warning political leaders not “to incite violence or riots” with false claims, sent extra police to polling places, and barricades went up around elections offices.

For the Arizona GOP’s “Election Night Watch Party,” Lake, GOP Senate nominee Blake Masters and other Republicans arranged a joint celebration at the Scottsdale Resort at McCormick Ranch in this upscale suburb.

After a campaign against supposed Democratic “elites,” Republican elites celebrated in style. A procession of luxury cars — BMW, Lexus, Mercedes, Tesla, even a Rolls-Royce — dotted the valet line in the conference resort’s manicured driveway, lined with palm trees. VIPs who paid $500 a head were whisked off to a private reception, and higher rollers who shelled out $1,000 for the “private experience package” to another.

Hoi polloi , for $20 a ticket, squeezed into the back of the ballroom near the media or watched on jumbo screens in two courtyards (“Paradise Park Lawn”) strung with bistro lights. They could partake of the included pizza bar and a crudite display worthy of Mehmet Oz, but the 12-year-old Glenlivet at the cash bar was $12 a shot. A man wearing a brick-patterned novelty suit explained his costume to me: “It’s a border wall!”

“We’re going to see a red tsunami!”

“This is a red tide coming in.”

“We’re riding the red wave here.”

A few minutes after 10 p.m. local time, Kari Lake took the stage with a fresh stream of invective: “Corruption.” “Cheaters and crooks.” “BS and garbage.” “Incompetent people running the show in Arizona.” “Propagandists.” “Fake media.” “Incompetency.”

“We will take the victory when it comes,” she told them. “We will not stop fighting until we have every legal vote counted.”

She departed quickly, and Twisted Sister’s “We’re Not Gonna Take It” blasted from the loudspeakers.

On the ballroom stage, the speakers seemed impervious to the developing trend of the evening:

November 09, 2022 10:07 AM  
Anonymous Oil companies LOVE "inflation" said...


Major oil companies saw profits soar in the third quarter of 2022, continuing a trend of massive industry profits even as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine causes soaring prices for consumers.

Exxon Mobil on Friday morning reported its highest earnings ever at $19.7 billion for the quarter, while Shell reported its second highest of $9.5 billion.

Exxon Mobil’s quarterly profits surpassed the second quarter’s $17.9 billion, beating analyst projections by about $4 billion. The company said on an earnings call that its profits were boosted by record levels of Permian Basin oil and gas production, close to 560,000 barrels per day.

Shell, meanwhile, announced profits of $9.5 billion for the quarter the previous day. Chevron also beat expectations, raking in $11.2 billion in the third quarter, also its second-highest quarter ever.

Exxon has been able to offset whipsawing oil prices largely through liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports. LNG demand has surged in Europe after the EU ended imports from Russia. As a result, companies in the U.S. have seized the opportunity.

Biden has repeatedly exhorted the industry to lower consumer prices in response to these earnings, particularly since the announcement by the OPEC+ bloc that it will cut oil production.

On Thursday, the president blasted Shell’s announcement that it will buy back $4 billion in stock over the remainder of the year.

“That’s more than twice of what they made in third quarter of last year. And they raised their dividends as well, so the profits are going back to their shareholders instead of going to the pump and lowering the prices,” Biden said Thursday in remarks in Syracuse, N.Y.

The president also took aim at Exxon on Twitter after CEO Darren Woods defended the company’s quarterly dividend as returning their profits to customers.

“Can’t believe I have to say this but giving profits to shareholders is not the same as bringing prices down for American families,” Biden’s presidential account tweeted.

Democrats in Congress, meanwhile, called for a windfall profits tax on big oil companies during the summer, when consumer gas prices hit all-time highs.

“Not in a legal definition, but in most people’s minds, what’s happening with refined products, profits and margins probably qualifies as a windfall,” Tom Kloza, global head of energy analysis at the Oil Price Information Service, told The Hill in an interview.

“The optics are pretty bad,” Kloza added. “Record profits … aren’t exactly being cheered by a population that says, hey, we need a break from inflation.”

Moreover, he said, “if you were to have a virtual map of what’s occurred so far in the month of October, which is outside the realm of the third quarter profits, the numbers aren’t just off the charts, they’re off the wall the charts are on.”

Q2 and Q3 2022 profits are nearly 3 times the best quarterly profits since 2018:

https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/wrapup-global-oil-giants-rake-massive-profits-third-quarter-2022-10-28/

Oil companies are shipping record amounts of oil out of the US and making record amounts of profit on it. In the meantime, Republicans are trying to convince you the Biden is the one responsible for high gas prices. It make you wonder how much the oil companies pay Fox news.

There are 2 major things that can keep oil companies from jerking US consumers around at their pleasure:

1: Switch to electric vehicles as quickly as possible.
2: Break up big oil companies into many smaller corporations that have to compete more with each other.

November 09, 2022 5:00 PM  
Anonymous Oil companies LOVE GOPers too said...



https://www.opensecrets.org/industries./recips.php?ind=E01++

The top 20 recipients of political contribution from the oil and gas industry include 3 Democrats (IF you count Manchin as a Democrat) and 17 GOPers.

November 10, 2022 6:30 AM  
Anonymous Humpty Trumpty Torched By Murdoch Media: ‘Perfect Record Of Election Defeat’ said...

The New York Post hit the former president with a blistering front page: Humpty Trumpty.

The Wall Street Journal declared him to be the GOP's "biggest loser."

The Rupert Murdoch-owned New York Post and Wall Street Journal ― both previous boosters of Donald Trump ― put the blame for the GOP’s less-than-stellar showing in the 2022 midterm elections squarely on the former president and his choice of candidates.

On its Thursday front page, the Post depicted Trump as the hapless nursery rhyme character Humpty Dumpty. “Don (who couldn’t build a wall) had a great fall — can all the GOP’s men put the party back together again?” the tabloid newspaper asked:

Don (who couldn't build a wall) had a great fall. Can all the GOP's men put the party together again?

Analysis from Post columnist John Podhoretz declared the GOP’s “red trickle” in the elections was down to Trump’s “terrible candidates” who “dragged Republicans down.”

On Wednesday, the Post suggested Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) was “DeFUTURE” of the GOP with this front page. DeSantis is widely tipped to run for president in 2024 and convincingly won reelection this week.

The Journal’s editorial board, meanwhile, on Wednesday dubbed Trump “the Republican Party’s biggest loser.”

“Trumpy Republican candidates failed at the ballot box in states that were clearly winnable,” the board wrote. “Since his unlikely victory in 2016 against the widely disliked Hillary Clinton, Mr. Trump has a perfect record of electoral defeat.”

Read the Journal's full editorial here

November 10, 2022 7:04 AM  
Anonymous Breaking News said...



The S&P 500 surged 5.5%, in its best day since April 2020, as investors seized on data showing inflation might be slowing.

November 11, 2022 6:03 AM  
Anonymous Message to the TTF troll said...

On election day 2022, you called yourself "you have to wonder if Dems will ever win again, after they are thrown out of Congress today...."

It's good to note you have fallen silent as you hopefully try to reassess just exactly how mistaken you have been.

I suggest all long-term liars do the same.

November 11, 2022 8:55 AM  
Anonymous No wonder Gallup reported Confidence in US Supreme Court Sinks to Historic Low said...

Four Supreme Court justices under scrutiny for attending right-wing gala: Three of the four Supreme Court justices in attendance were nominated by Donald Trump

Four U.S. Supreme Court justices attended the black-tie dinner gala at the first Federal Society convention since the court overturned Roe vs. Wade in its controversial Dobbs vs. Jackson Women's Health decision.

Associated Press correspondent Mark Sherman reported Justices Samuel Alito, Amy Coney Barrett, Neil Gorsuch, and Brett Kavanaugh were in attendance at the group's 40th-anniversary celebration.

Sherman noted it is four-fifths of the majority of the court that overturned Roe. Controversial Justice Clarence Thomas was the fifth.

Three of the four justices in attendance were nominated by Donald Trump.

"Leonard Leo, [Federalist Society] co-chair, helped Trump vet judicial nominees. Group says it's independent of partisan politics," Sherman reported. "But there is close alignment with GOP priorities."

Former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance wondered if the justices at the dinner had forgotten their job.

"As with so many of our institutions, the judiciary can only do its work when the public has confidence in it," Vance noted. "Some of our judges seem to have forgotten that and that they have life tenure to serve the American people, not the political agenda of the people who put them in place."

November 11, 2022 9:16 AM  
Anonymous homosexuality never produces life, two of 'em ain't ever a marriage said...

"It's good to note you have fallen silent as you hopefully try to reassess just exactly how mistaken you have been"

well, I was indeed surprised that Americans chose not to completely throw the failed bums out but it wasn't exactly a ringing endorsement of Dems

polls don't show a surge of support for Biden and his evil minions

the biggest problem is what McConnell mentioned a while back: poor candidates like Dr Oz and Hershel Walker

still, it looks likely that the Biden agenda will be neutralized by conservative control of the House

Senate control also isn't settled yet, waiting for Nevada

Republicans are currently winning the national popular vote for the House in Tuesday's midterm elections by a large margin, according to the latest data from the Cook Political Report.

Specifically, GOP candidates have so far received 50,672,592 votes, or 52.3% of the total ballots cast as of this writing. Democrat candidates, by comparison, have so far received 44,802,597 votes, or 46.2% of the total.

So, enthusiasm for Dems isn't really present

in certain places, they just preferred them to most of the Trump miscreants that were somehow nominated

"I suggest all long-term liars do the same."

no one lied about anything, you slobbering jackass

"Four U.S. Supreme Court justices attended the black-tie dinner gala at the first Federal Society convention since the court overturned Roe vs. Wade in it controversial Dobbs vs. Jackson Women's Health decision."

why shouldn't they?

the Federalist Society works to protect the Constitution, just like they do

"Former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance wondered if the justices at the dinner had forgotten their job.

"As with so many of our institutions, the judiciary can only do its work when the public has confidence in it," Vance noted. "Some of our judges seem to have forgotten that and that they have life tenure to serve the American people, not the political agenda of the people who put them in place.""

they are serving the America people by protecting the Constitution from Dems who want to re-interpret it to fit their partisan agenda

FORMER U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance is projecting

U.S. attorneys are supposed to serve the American people, not the political agenda of the people who put them in place

November 12, 2022 6:06 AM  
Anonymous One man argues Roe gives full control to women while leaving men out of reproductive decisions that directly affect them. Men who do not wear a condom decide pregnancy is OK every time. said...

"polls don't show a surge of support for Biden and his evil minions"

According to your pre-election day comments, "polls" supposedly showed a red wave or tsunami that did not materialize.

Let's examine a few of your pre-election red wave polling comments, shall we?

On October 20, 2022, you posted, "Former President Obama will be campaigning in Nevada for Democratic candidates Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto and Gov. Steve Sisolak amid signs of a possible red wave in the state."

On October 25, 2022, you posted, “This is how it happens for the losing party. In the spring, there are rumors and hushed whispers among the cognoscenti about the coming of a wave….For a few weeks, until about mid-October, they tell themselves that nothing has changed since summer, that hope is alive, and that there will be no wave. And in mid-October, the signs become impossible to ignore.”

On October 31, 2022, you posted, “Searching for a lifeboat in early summer with a red wave on the rise, they clung to the Dobbs' decision like a life raft appearing from the sky.”

Then on Roevember 3, 2022, you claimed “With just six days left until the November 8 midterms, polls show Republicans are enjoying a last-minute wave of voter enthusiasm that will carry them to victory in the Senate and House of Representatives.”

And on Roevember 5, 2022 “Democraps have opted to highlight the supposed “extremism” of Republicans as a last-ditch effort to circumvent a much-anticipated red wave.”

Meanwhile, in the only "poll" that counts for the Senate seat in Arizona, Senator Mark Kelly wins in Ariz., pushing Democrats closer to keeping Senate

November 12, 2022 7:07 AM  
Anonymous GOP's pick for Georgia Senate, Herschel Walker "We've got enough trees. Don't we have enough trees around here?" said...

"well, I was indeed surprised that Americans chose not to completely throw the failed bums out but it wasn't exactly a ringing endorsement of Dems "

Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_midterm_election#Historical_record_of_midterm

I can't wait to see those TBD spaces filled in with historic numbers for the party in power, the Democratic party!

Nevada's Senate race remains too close to call -- not much of a red wave there, huh?

And of course, loser Trump will blow the Dec. 6 Georgia run-off for the GOP, since all he can do is cry about his 2020 loss over and over....

November 12, 2022 7:27 AM  
Anonymous Universal masking leads to fewer covid cases in schools, study finds said...

Public schools that continued to require students to wear masks reported fewer coronavirus infections, my colleague Donna St. George reports. The study was based on schools in the Boston area and found ending mask requirements was “associated with an additional 45 coronavirus cases per 1,000 students and staff members,” St. George writes.

The research, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, adds to well-documented evidence supporting mask-wearing to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends people ages 2 and older wear masks indoors and in public spaces when they are in settings where infection rates are high.

Reinfections with the coronavirus can still prove dangerous in unvaccinated, vaccinated and boosted people, Ariana Eunjung Cha of The Washington Post reports.

Researchers analyzed the medical records of 5.8 million patients at the Department of Veterans Affairs. They found that nearly 41,000 people with reinfections “tended to have more complications in various organ systems both during their initial illness and longer term, and they were more likely to be diagnosed with long covid than people who did not get another infection,” Cha writes.

A growing body of research shows an increased risk of covid-related complications with every reinfection. Health experts worry that repeat infections can worsen long covid symptoms.

Other important news

Infants younger than 6 months, who are not eligible for the coronavirus vaccine, have high covid-related hospitalization rates compared with other children.

Covid patients treated with the antiviral Paxlovid were less likely to suffer from long covid symptoms, my colleague Frances Stead Sellers reports.

See: The New England Journal of Medicine: Lifting Universal Masking in Schools — Covid-19 Incidence among Students and Staff

November 12, 2022 7:59 AM  
Anonymous Somehow conservatives are surprised to learn that most women don't want the government controlling their bodies said...

"in certain places, they just preferred them to most of the Trump miscreants that were somehow nominated"

I love how you typed this like you had no idea that it was miscreants like you that nourished their development.

The lack of self-awareness is mind-boggling.

Keep making up stuff for the "culture war." It works so well for you.

November 12, 2022 8:01 AM  
Anonymous Voters elect more LGBTQ candidates to office said...

When James Roesener answered the phone to speak to a reporter on Thursday, it was impossible not to hear his smile.

Roesener, a 26-year-old high school graduate and store manager in Concord, N.H., was two days removed from making history: becoming the first out transgender man to ever be elected to a state legislature...

According to the Victory Fund, an LGBTQ political PAC that tracked queer and trans candidates across the country, out of 714 out LGBTQ candidates who appeared on Tuesday’s ballot, 436 won their races, with the possibility of even more gains in the coming days. (As of Friday morning, 25 races were undecided.)

It was also the first time out LGBTQ candidates were on the ballot in all 50 states — as well as D.C., Guam and the U.S. Virgin Islands. But their unprecedented success comes at a time when LGBTQ rights are at risk across the country.

Some of these trailblazing candidates will work in statehouses that have made curbing the rights of LGBTQ people a legislative priority. Others will be in a position to help codify more LGBTQ protections. As many of these barrier breakers come to terms with their historic success and what it means to their communities, they must also look ahead to what’s next.

The midterms brought more good news for LGBTQ candidates beyond their record wins. Nevada voters passed an Equal Rights Amendment that is considered the most comprehensive in the nation, prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and “gender identity or expression,” among other attributes. And there were cisgender candidates who pledged to protect queer and trans people, such as Pennsylvania Gov.-elect Josh Shapiro, who were embraced by large shares of voters.

Leigh Finke, a state representative-elect in Minnesota, expected that she and other LGBTQ officials would “have to fight like hell to protect the rights we have.” Finke is the first out trans woman to be elected to the Minnesota state legislature. Her run was inspired by fears that the statehouse would move in the direction that others have — toward curbing the rights of trans people.

But this week, Democrats notched major wins in Minnesota, maintaining their majority in the Minnesota House, flipping the Senate and reelecting Democratic Gov. Tim Walz. What’s more, all the out LGBTQ candidates on the ballot (11 total) won their races, said Finke.

“What I expected to be the case in Minnesota was a new group of queer people would come into a minority situation in the House or Senate and we would have to fight like hell to protect the rights we have. And that didn’t happen,” Finke said.

Now, Finke said, LGBTQ groups in the legislature can focus on protecting and advancing their rights, not defending them.
“The landscape has just completely changed,” she said. “I’m so excited and so eager to get in and do the work for our community.”

November 12, 2022 11:13 AM  
Anonymous Merrick Garland....LOL!!!!!!!!!!! said...

"According to your pre-election day comments, "polls" supposedly showed a red wave or tsunami that did not materialize"

good point

it's hard to rely on them

still, even here in deep blue MC, I hear little enthusiasm for Biden

"I can't wait to see those TBD spaces filled in with historic numbers for the party in power, the Democratic party!"

unless Dems pull a surprise in the remaining uncalled races, they will have less power than before the mid-term

seems odd excuse for the current Dem Carnivale

"And of course, loser Trump will blow the Dec. 6 Georgia run-off for the GOP, since all he can do is cry about his 2020 loss over and over...."

well, the good sign is that the party is turning on him

so, this is probably better for the GOP that this happened now, making him easier to stop in the more consequential 2024 election

so, the GOP takes the House of Reps, giving it the ability to block Biden's socialist agenda, and maybe turn him into a post mid-term Bill Clinton

and the biggest drag on the party, Trump, is taken down a few notches

not such a bad place to be

"Universal masking leads to fewer covid cases in schools, study finds"

also, fewer flu, cold, pneumonia, RSV cases

so, let's just force kids to wear masks forever, even though they're at little risk, right?

glad this insanity didn't rule when we were kids

"Somehow conservatives are surprised to learn that most women don't want the government controlling their bodies"

good thing for Dems that unborn children can't vote

fringe liberals might be surprised to learn that most unborn kids don't want the government allowing their bodies to be killed

"I love how you typed this like you had no idea that it was miscreants like you that nourished their development.

The lack of self-awareness is mind-boggling."

risible, coming from you

"Keep making up stuff for the "culture war." It works so well for you."

truth is its own reward

try it

"Roesener, a 26-year-old high school graduate and store manager in Concord, N.H., was two days removed from making history: becoming the first out transgender man to ever be elected to a state legislature..."

oh, yeah

sounds highly qualified

November 14, 2022 11:32 AM  

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