That's Amore Restaurant in Rockville to Host Anti-Trans Hatefest
A rightwing Montgomery County group, reasoning that it's racist to say that some white people are racist, has trademarked the name United Against Racism in Education, or UARE. Last summer they distributed flyers accusing some county Board of Education candidates of promoting Critical Race Theory in local schools. [EDIT:The group also supported some far-right school board candidates. All their candidates lost, except Esther Wells who made it through the primaries]. UARE members distributing the flyers are quoted as saying said they believe the candidates they endorsed would remove curriculum that "includes anti-whiteness." See, they're united against racism, uh huh.
UARE is expanding its bigotry umbrella now beyond racism to organize a local attack against transgender people, with an event planned next week -- Wednesday the 19th -- at That's Amore in Rockville. That's Amore seems to be making a reputation for itself as the go-to meeting spot for Montgomery County Republicans. Which can't really be very profitable.
According to UARE's flyer, this event is titled, "True Stories About Transgenderism," with the subhead, "It can happen to your loved ones!"
Three speakers are listed. Nicole Eckenrode is promoted as "The mother of nine children. Learn how her oldest son was Brainwashed into the GENDER IDEOLOGY." Eckenrode appears to be the owner of a Kensington gym, who last summer was quoted in the news complaining about vaccine mandates. Apparently she has rejected one of her children for failing to meet normative expectations, and blames their transition on something she calls "gender ideology," which brainwashes people.
Lisa Ruth is the second speaker, the poster calls her an "Entrepreneur and Working Mother. Talks about the Transgender Crisis in Maryland public high schools." I think it is a pretty good bet that this is the same Lisa Ruth who with her husband runs the Bruster's Real Ice Cream franchise in Annapolis. After the George Floyd killing, Ruth's husband posted on social media: "If u act like an animal.. u get treated like an animal" followed later by "#WhatLivesMatter." Bruster's issued a statement that said "On behalf of Bruster’s Corporate and the entire franchise community, we do not share the views of this individual franchisee..." The Capital Gazette wrote that Lisa and her husband "have posted [online content] in the past critical of national Democratic figures, President Barack Obama, former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton." So, yeah, another expert on gender identity.
Finally, the headliner will be Brandon Showalter, described by the Daily Wire as "a senior investigative reporter on sexual ethics and the trans movement at The Christian Post." He is a professional hater who can tell you hundreds of reasons why transgender people are evil. There is a long interview with him HERE, if you have the stomach for it.
To people like Brandon: you can believe whatever you want to believe about anybody you want. But transgender people have not asked you for advice, and their choices about how to live are none of your business. That's all. If for some reason you can't stand it when someone is happy in a way that is different from you, that is not their problem, it's you. You can believe stupid things but our community will not allow you to actively make life miserable for our neighbors and friends. It doesn't matter what you believe, just mind your own business.
A quick look at Google shows That's Amore has hosted events for Reardon Sullivan, Republican candidate for County Executive; Jonathan Jenkins, Republican candidate for Congress; Dan Cox, Republican candidate for governor; and held the only Republican forum for Maryland Attorney General, as well as a previous UARE "racism event." I could not find mention of any Democratic groups meeting there, ever. They decide how to run their own business, but this is not doing anything for my appetite, if you know what I mean.
Gender identity is a matter of normal variation in the population. Everybody's got some yin and yang in them, sometimes more of one than the other. If you are transgender then you have given some careful thought to questions of gender and self-presentation, including questions about having to deal with ignorant people, and you are making personal decisions that make your life better. If you are not transgender then it is just not your business. Does it make you uneasy? Is it hard for you to understand? Nobody cares. Just go away and mind your own business.
"Transgenderism" is not an ideology, not an ism, it is not even a word. Sometimes the gender that the doctor wrote on a birth certificate when a baby first popped out was wrong. This incorrect assignment can happen a lot of ways, it doesn't matter, the correction is to change the assignment and help the person adjust where their physiology is out of whack, not to shame the person into living a lie.
The UARE Anti-Trans meeting, promoted by the Montgomery County Republican Party, will be held 6:30-8:30PM, Wednesday, October 19th, at That's Amore, 15201 Shady Grove Road, Rockville. They have the right to express their beliefs, but the rest of us have a right to protect our community from this sort of poison.
posted by JimK at 11:48 AM
53 Comments:
As Republicans and Democrats fight for control of Congress this fall, a growing collection of conservative political action groups is targeting its efforts closer to home: at local school boards.
Their aim is to gain control of more school systems and push back against what they see as a liberal tide in public education classrooms, libraries, sports fields, even building plans.
Once seen as sleepy affairs with little interest outside their communities, school board elections started to heat up last year as parents aired frustrations with pandemic policies. As those issues fade, right-leaning groups are spending millions on candidates who promise to scale back teachings on race and sexuality, remove offending books from libraries and nix plans for gender-neutral bathrooms or transgender-inclusive sports teams.
Democrats have countered with their own campaigns portraying Republicans as extremists who want to ban books and rewrite history.
At the center of the conservative effort is the 1776 Project PAC, which formed last year to push back against the New York Times’ 1619 Project, which provides free lesson plans that center U.S. history around slavery and its lasting impacts. Last fall and this spring, the 1776 group succeeded in elevating conservative majorities to office in dozens of school districts across the U.S., propelling candidates who have gone on to fire superintendents and enact sweeping “bills of rights” for parents.
In the wake of recent victories in Texas and Pennsylvania — and having spent $2 million between April 2021 and this August, according to campaign finance filings — the group is campaigning for dozens of candidates this fall. It’s supporting candidates in Maryland’s Frederick and Carroll counties, in Bentonville, Arkansas, and 20 candidates across southern Michigan.
Its candidates have won not only in deeply red locales but also in districts near liberal strongholds, including Philadelphia and Minneapolis. And after this November, the group hopes to expand further.
“Places we’re not supposed to typically win, we’ve won in,” said Ryan Girdusky, founder of the group. “I think we can do it again.”
In Florida, recent school board races saw an influx of attention — and money — from conservative groups, including some that had never gotten involved in school races.
The American Principles Project, a Washington think tank, put a combined $25,000 behind four candidates for the Polk County board. The group made its first foray into school boards at the behest of local activists, its leader said, and it’s weighing whether to continue elsewhere. The group’s fundraising average surged from under $50,000 the year before the pandemic to about $2 million now.
“We lean heavily into retaking federal power,” said Terry Schilling, the think tank’s president. “But if you don’t also take over the local school boards, you’re not going to have local allies there to actually reverse the policies that these guys have been implementing.”
In a move never before seen in the state, Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis endorsed a slate of school board candidates, putting his weight behind conservatives who share his opposition to lessons on sexuality and what he deems critical race theory. Most of the DeSantis-backed candidates won in their August races, in some cases replacing conservative members who had more moderate views than the firebrand governor.
The movement claims to be an opposing force to left-leaning teachers unions. They see the unions as a well-funded enemy that promotes radical classroom lessons on race and sexuality — a favorite smear is to call the unions “groomers.” The unions, which also support candidates, have called it a fiction meant to stoke distrust in public schools.
In Maryland’s Frederick County, the 1776 group is backing three school board candidates against four endorsed by education unions. The conservatives are running as the “Education Not Indoctrination” slate, with a digital ad saying children are being “held captive” by schools. The ad shows a picture of stacked books bearing the words “equity,” “grooming,” “indoctrination” and “critical race theory.”
Karen Yoho, a board member running for re-election, said outside figures have stoked fears about critical race theory and other lessons that aren’t taught in Frederick County.
The discourse has mostly stayed civil in her area, but Yoho takes exception to the accusation that teachers are “grooming” children.
“I find it disgusting,” said Yoho, a retired teacher whose children went through the district. “It makes my heart hurt. And then I kind of get mad and I get defensive.”
In Texas, Patriot Mobile — a wireless company that promotes conservative causes — has emerged as a political force in school board races. Earlier this year, its political arm spent more than $400,000 out of $800,000 raised to boost candidates in a handful of races in the northern Texas county where the company is based. All of its favored candidates won, putting conservatives in control of four districts.
The group did not respond to requests for comment, but a statement released after the spring victories said Texas was “just the beginning.”
Some GOP strategists have cautioned against the focus on education, saying it could backfire with more moderate voters. Results so far have been mixed — the 1776 Project claims a 70% win rate, but conservative candidates in some areas have fallen flat in recent elections.
Still, the number of groups that have banded together under the umbrella of parental rights seems only to be growing. It includes national organizations such as Moms for Liberty, along with smaller grassroots groups.
“There is a very stiff resistance to the concerted and intentional effort to make radical ideas about race and gender part of the school day. Parents don’t like it,” said Jonathan Butcher, an education fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation.
The foundation and its political wing have been hosting training sessions encouraging parents to run for school boards, teaching them the basics about budgeting but also about the perceived dangers of what the group deems critical race theory.
For decades, education was seen as its “own little game” that was buffered from national politics, said Jeffrey Henig, a political science and education professor at Columbia University’s Teachers College who has written about outside funding in school board elections. Now, he said, local races are becoming battlegrounds for broader debates.
He said education is unlikely to be a decisive issue in the November election — it’s overshadowed by abortion and the economy — but it can still be wielded to “amplify local discontent” and push more voters to the polls.
Republicans are using the tactic this fall as they look to unseat Democrats at all levels of government.
In Michigan, the American Principles Project is paying for TV ads against the Democratic governor where a narrator reads sexually explicit passages from the graphic novel “Gender Queer.” It claims that “this is the kind of literature that Gretchen Whitmer wants your kids exposed to,” while giant red letters appear saying “stop grooming our kids.”
Similar TV ads are being aired in Arizona to attack Sen. Mark Kelly, and in Maine against Gov. Janet Mills, both Democrats.
"Republicans have given up on Democracy so they're out to indoctrinate your kids in school"
Wow! Indoctrination by woke teacher unions has been going on for decades
how out of teach with reality can one TTFer be?
"As Republicans and Democrats fight for control of Congress this fall, a growing collection of conservative political action groups is targeting its efforts closer to home: at local school boards."
well, that's an exercise in democracy
so, sounds like Republicans have not given up on it
you should apologize to the blog for your lie
"Once seen as sleepy affairs with little interest outside their communities, school board elections started to heat up last year as parents aired frustrations with pandemic policies."
yes, liberal school boards did incalculable damage to the education of children
the reckoning is coming early next month
"As those issues fade, right-leaning groups are spending millions on candidates who promise to scale back teachings on race and sexuality,"
the "teachings" you refer to are indoctrination
"remove offending books from libraries"
reading material for student should be age-appropriate
if you don't understand that, you don't belong on a school board
"and nix plans for gender-neutral bathrooms or transgender-inclusive sports teams."
kids can wait until they're of age to begin playing make believe with gender
"Last fall and this spring, the 1776 group succeeded in elevating conservative majorities to office in dozens of school districts across the U.S., propelling candidates who have gone on to fire superintendents and enact sweeping “bills of rights” for parents."
well, that's an exercise in democracy
so, sounds like Republicans have not given up on it
you should apologize to the blog for your lie
"the group is campaigning for dozens of candidates this fall. It’s supporting candidates in Maryland’s Frederick and Carroll counties, in Bentonville, Arkansas, and 20 candidates across southern Michigan"
well, that's an exercise in democracy
so, sounds like Republicans have not given up on it
you should apologize to the blog for your lie
"if you don’t also take over the local school boards, you’re not going to have local allies there to actually reverse the policies that these guys have been implementing.”
well, that's an exercise in democracy
so, sounds like Republicans have not given up on it
you should apologize to the blog for your lie
"The foundation and its political wing have been hosting training sessions encouraging parents to run for school boards,"
well, that's an exercise in democracy
so, sounds like Republicans have not given up on it
you should apologize to the blog for your lie
"For decades, education was seen as its “own little game” that was buffered from national politics,"
sad that liberal wokesters had to bring politics to schools
"He said education is unlikely to be a decisive issue in the November election — it’s overshadowed by abortion and the economy — but it can still be wielded to “amplify local discontent” and push more voters to the polls.
Republicans are using the tactic this fall as they look to unseat Democrats at all levels of government."
well, that's an exercise in democracy
so, sounds like Republicans have not given up on it
you should apologize to the blog for your lie
In fact the owners of That's Amore are all-in with the rightwing agenda. Here is a social-media message by the owner last month, after one of their "racist events."
"That's Amore Grill and Bar
I spoke to you earlier today. My Name is Nicole Sadeghi, I am the owner of Thats Amore Restaurant. I am a mother of 2 sons that recently graduated from the MCPS. I am sad that this CRT being taught in school did not come to light many years ago, when it all truly started. I can most certainly assure you I would have been right there, involved with these "racist, separatist, anti trans, bigots" that you accuse these folks to be . I used to naively believe that it is just ignorance you suffer from but am now quite sure that all you "espouse is who you are. My sons and their many friends would come home from school and tell me some pretty crazy things they were being exposed to. They laughed at the ridiculousness of it all and questioned the validity. They are now attending college in some pretty liberal schools and continue to understand that the bias and ridiculous of the curriculum."
"That's Amore are all-in with the rightwing agenda"
opposing an agenda is not an agenda
Ms Sadeghi is right. CRT is chock full of lies and is being pushed on America's students
TTFers have gone from proclaiming the CRT is not taught in public schools to now asserting it is racist to oppose CRT
Trump Supporter Busted For Blowing Up Own Camper Van, Claiming It Was Biden Voters
A man in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota, claimed a blaze outside his own home was started because of his support for former President Donald Trump.
But, it’s now emerged, he set the fire himself.
In September 2020, Denis Molla alleged his camper van was torched and graffiti saying “Biden 2020” and “BLM” was spray-painted on his garage door because of the Trump 2020 flags he had on display.
The day after the inferno, Molla appeared on local television in an emotional interview to recall seeing three people running away from his home before the vehicle exploded ― and that in the immediate aftermath he’d just been focused on getting his two children, aged 2 and 5-months, and their puppies safely out of the property.
On Tuesday, Molla pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court to one count of wire fraud after “filing fraudulent insurance claims for a staged arson,” according to a statement from the Department of Justice.
“In reality, Molla started his own property on fire and spray painted the graffiti on his own garage,” it said.
Molla received around $61,000 in insurance payouts and $17,000 in donations via a GoFundMe crowdfunding page, per the report. His sentencing date has not yet been set.
Zero in Montgomery County.
See:
https://www.mcgop.com/elected_officials
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) told police officers that he didn’t understand why they didn’t open fire on rioting Donald Trump supporters who stormed the U.S. Capitol last year, according to a new book.
“You guys should have shot them all in the head,” Graham is quoted as saying, per excerpts shared by Politico on Friday. The senator, who is often a key ally to the former president, reportedly made the remarks at a meeting with law enforcement four months after the Jan. 6 insurrection in Washington.
“We gave you guys guns, and you should have used them,” Graham reportedly added. “I don’t understand why that didn’t happen.”
Michael Fanone, a former D.C. Metropolitan Police officer who was badly beaten by Trump supporters during the riot, recalled the exchange in the book “Hold the Line: The Insurrection and One Cop’s Battle for America’s Soul,” due out Tuesday.
Fanone also recalled Graham threatening to end a meeting with the bereaved mother of a Capitol Police officer — Brian Sicknick, who died after the riot — “right now” if she continued to speak badly of Trump.
Graham has not commented on the claims.
Fanone, a one-time Trump voter, has become a fierce critic of Republican hypocrisy over the riot and GOP attempts to downplay the violence. He resigned from the police last year and is now a CNN contributor on law enforcement issues.
Graham routinely condemned Trump before his 2016 election victory but went on to become one of his staunchest supporters. After the riot, Graham said “enough is enough” on the Senate floor and appeared to cut ties with Trump — but he’s since cozied back up to the former president.
He’s an election falsifier who recklessly promoted lies about the 2020 presidential race long after it was clear Donald Trump lost.
He’s a science fabulist who suggested, without evidence, that the COVID-19 vaccines could make the pandemic worse and who repeatedly touted unproven remedies for the disease — from Ivermectin to mouthwash.
He's tried to rewrite the sordid history of the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, claiming the attackers were "people that love this country, that truly respect law enforcement, would never do anything to break the law."
He suggested the government should rewrite the rules for the two government programs seniors rely on most — Medicare and Social Security — making them subject to annual political fights in Congress rather than mandatory payments as promised.
For years, Ron Johnson has demonstrated that he should be retired to his family's seaside Florida home — and not representing Wisconsin in the U.S. Senate. Voters should send him packing this November.
Here are eight reasons:
He wants to upend Medicare and Social Security
Johnson said recently that Medicare and Social Security should be subject to annual budget deliberations, which would be a drastic change for a pair of essential social insurance programs and could put them at risk.
Americans pay into both programs and qualify for benefits when they reach retirement age. They are set up like insurance plans and offer a guaranteed benefit. That's why they are treated by the government as mandatory spending. Treating them as “discretionary spending” would subject them to annual partisan squabbles and could put the guarantees promised to seniors at risk.
Though there are legitimate concerns about future funding of both programs, neither is in imminent danger. Medicare is funded through 2028 and Social Security through 2035, according to government projections. In the past, Congress has been willing to work out solutions rather than continually blast campaign rhetoric. It has resolved funding problems without resorting to drastic steps.
His office was involved in Trump's ‘fake elector’ scheme
Johnson's office was involved in an attempt to pass a document regarding “Wisconsin electors” to then Vice President Mike Pence just minutes before Congress was to ceremonially certify the election on Jan. 6. Johnson’s explanations for what happened — and for what he and his staff knew — don’t add up.
Trump and his lawyers were pushing a wild scheme to replace authentic electors — the people selected based on citizens' votes — with sycophants who would flip the results in battleground states to Trump. That corrupt plan could have erased the choice made by voters and potentially handed the presidency to Trump if enough swing states flipped. Trump lost the popular vote by 7 million votes nationwide and in the Electoral College 306-232. The Trump scheme was treasonous.
He refused to tell the truth about the 2020 presidential election
Johnson spent weeks questioning the validity of the election despite evidence showing conclusively that Joe Biden had won the presidency. He held a one-sided hearing allowing Trump’s lawyers to air allegations of fraud that had already been rejected by dozens of courtrooms across America, including both Republican and Democratic judges and even federal judges appointed by Trump.
Johnson’s role in amplifying lies about the election — including his threat to challenge the ceremonial counting of electoral votes in Congress — encouraged Trump supporters to believe the result could be overturned and contributed to the tragedy at the Capitol.
On Jan. 6, 2021, Johnson did not vote against objections to Joe Biden's victories in Arizona and Pennsylvania after the deadly sacking of the U.S. Capitol interrupted Congress' tallying of Electoral College votes. Up until the insurrection, Johnson publicly stated he intended to vote in favor of challenges to state-certified votes.
Johnson knew better.
About two weeks after the election, he acknowledged that Joe Biden had won the election, according to the former Brown County Republican chairman. And in August of 2021, Johnson was recorded saying that Trump lost Wisconsin simply because he underperformed other Republicans on the same ballots in the same election. "He didn’t get 51,000 votes that other Republicans got, and that’s why he lost," Johnson said.
Now Johnson refuses to say whether he would accept the outcome of the November election once the results are certified, the Wisconsin State Journal reports.
We cannot elect people to office who do not honor the results of elections and still expect to hold onto our democratic republic. It's that simple. Even citizens who don't like his opponent should withhold their vote for Johnson on this point alone — to ensure our government derives its power from the consent of the governed.
To ensure, as Republican President Abraham Lincoln put it, "that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth."
He repeatedly downplayed the seriousness of the attack on the U.S. Capitol
Johnson claimed the rampage "didn’t seem like an armed insurrection.” This was despite the fact that five people died, rioters called for the deaths of Vice President Mike Pence and leaders of Congress, weapons were found on attackers and stashed nearby, and organized white nationalists led violent charges against Capitol Police and forced their way into the building, using flagpoles, bear spray, fire extinguishers and other blunt objects as weapons.
Johnson later said those who attacked the Capitol, “were people that love this country, that truly respect law enforcement, would never do anything to break the law.” If that wasn’t bad enough, he added this racist remark: If the protesters had been “Black Lives Matter and Antifa protesters,” he said. “I might have been a little concerned.”
With a wink and a nod, Johnson was voicing support for the white supremacists who led the attack on the Capitol.
It's worth noting: One of the people at the scene that day, a top lieutenant to the Proud Boys chairman, pleaded guilty last week to seditious conspiracy in connection with the riot at the Capitol.
He made sure his ultra-wealthy donors got a giant tax break
Johnson forced changes to the 2017 Republican tax overhaul that benefitted some of the nation’s wealthiest people, including himself and his own donors.
In 2021, ProPublica revealed how Wisconsin’s Republican senator ensured donors got a massive tax break in a bill the party claimed was a “middle-class tax cut.” Thanks to Johnson's last-minute threat to vote against the legislation, a huge portion of its billions in savings ended up going to just 82 of America's wealthiest families.
Three of the senator's top donors — billionaires Diane Hendricks and Dick and Liz Uihlein — were on the short list of those who gained the most. ProPublica reported that the tax break Johnson muscled through "could deliver more than half a billion in tax savings for Hendricks and the Uihleins over its eight-year life."
And now, as Johnson comes under criticism during his reelection campaign for leveraging a tax break for the uber-wealthy who need it least, he accuses his critics of "class envy."
Hendricks and the Uihleins continue to invest in Johnson, funding attack ads against his challenger, Democrat Mandela Barnes.
He has displayed a stunning lack of interest in creating jobs in the state he represents
After Oshkosh Corp. said in June it intended to make vehicles for the U.S. Postal Service at a new facility in Spartanburg, S.C., U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin and others stepped in to try to bring those 1,000 jobs to Wisconsin.
Johnson stepped aside.
"It's not like we don't have enough jobs here in Wisconsin," Johnson said. He said the company was best suited to decide where to locate the jobs.
"I wouldn't insert myself to demand that anything be manufactured here using federal funds in Wisconsin," Johnson said.
He was a super spreader of disinformation during the pandemic
Johnson used his perch as a U.S. Senate committee chair to promote the use of Ivermectin as a coronavirus therapy even though the manufacturer itself said there was no evidence it worked. He touted the anti-malarial drug hydroxychloroquine as a treatment though studies found it wasn’t effective.
Johnson questioned the need for masks — and later questioned the safety of COVID vaccines themselves and declined to be vaccinated, even though all the evidence has shown masks help slow the spread of disease and that the vaccines are safe and effective.
Johnson asserted that gargling with mouthwash can kill the virus that causes COVID-19, an outlandish claim the makers of Listerine and medical experts quickly debunked.
Johnson claimed "athletes are dropping dead on the field" after receiving the COVID-19 vaccination, an utter fabrication.
And he falsely claimed that unvaccinated people around the world were being put into “internment camps,” earning him a “Pants on Fire” rating from PolitiFact.
He’s a climate change denier
From his first run for office in 2010, Johnson has thought that he knew better than the vast majority of scientists who study climate change.
During a meeting with this editorial board that year, Johnson claimed the impact of humans on the climate hadn’t been proven. It was “far more likely,” he said then, that “it was sunspot activity or something just in the geologic eons of time where we have changes in the climate.”
And last year, he told a Republican group, "I don't know about you guys, but I think climate change is — as Lord Monckton said — bullshit."
In fact, more than 99.9% of peer-reviewed scientific papers agree that climate change is mainly caused by humans burning fossil fuels and increasing the amount of carbon and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, according to a 2021 survey of 88,125 climate-related studies.
It should come as no surprise that Johnson has taken hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations from people employed by or associated with the fossil fuel industry.
The bottom line
You'll notice Johnson is not touting a long record of accomplishments in his ads for re-election. Instead, he and his supporters have attacked his opponent — a Black man — as "different" and "dangerous."
So, what has Johnson delivered for Wisconsin after 12 years in the Senate (the equivalent of three presidential terms)?
Earlier this year, he touted two accomplishments:
• The Trump tax cut that he, in fact, blocked until it was amended to deliver enormous new breaks for his top donors and 80 other ultrawealthy American households.
• A 2018 "Right-to-Try bill" that allows terminally ill patients to try experimental treatments not yet approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
In fact, Ron Johnson is the worst Wisconsin political representative since the infamous Sen. Joseph McCarthy. Johnson in the past promised to serve no more than two terms. Voters should hold him to that pledge in November.
"Republican public office holders in Montgomery County Maryland said...
Zero in Montgomery County"
there are also none in North Korea
what's your point?
Montgomery County which was once the leader in the region, before Dems' exerted monopoly control, has declined overall and is now surpassed in many categories by Fairfax, Howard, and Loudon counties
great job, Dems
not easy blowing it when you have the advantage of Federal jobs base to keep the economy floating
"Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) told police officers that he didn’t understand why they didn’t open fire on rioting Donald Trump supporters who stormed the U.S. Capitol last year"
I don't know if opening fire was the right thing but DC has a lot of experience handling huge crowds with some potentially explosive elements usually mixed in
why did they fail so badly that day?
it's a good question
"a Capitol Police officer — Brian Sicknick, who died after the riot"
but he didn't die because of the riot
from CBS news:
"Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick died of natural causes a day after defending the Capitol during the January 6 assault, the D.C. medical examiner's office announced Monday. Sicknick was previously believed to have died from injuries sustained during the riot.
Sicknick died from strokes, the chief medical examiner's office said in a report summary, citing "acute brainstem and cerebellar infarcts due to acute basilar artery thrombosis.""
"Johnson spent weeks questioning the validity of the election despite evidence showing conclusively that Joe Biden had won the presidency"
don't get me wrong
I think Biden won the election
still, saying there is "evidence showing conclusively that Joe Biden had won the presidency" is false
evidence is necessarily lacking because voter verification rules were loosened because of pandemic protocols
"evidence is necessarily lacking because voter verification rules were loosened because of pandemic protocols"
No.
Mail-in ballots were still verified by signatures and addresses, and they did find evidence of several Republicans committing voter fraud.
It is entirely possible that they didn't find evidence of wide-spread voter fraud by Dems simply because they didn't do it.
Lack of evidence isn't evidence that they just didn't catch it.
Stop trying to undermine the legitimacy of our elections.
https://lostnotstolen.org/
Lost, Not Stolen
The Conservative Case that Trump Lost
and Biden Won the 2020 Presidential Election
As part of his post-election attempts to retain the presidency, Donald Trump and his supporters filed 64 cases containing 187 counts in the six key battleground states, in addition to utilizing some of the recount and contest procedures available to them under state law. The former president maintains to this day that the 2020 election was stolen and the results fraudulent.
This Report takes a hard look at the very serious charges made by Trump and his supporters. The consequences of a president and a major party candidate making such charges are monumental. If true, our electoral system is in desperate need of repair. If not true, that must be said because such false charges corrode our democracy and leave a significant share of the population doubting the legitimacy of our system, seriously weakening the country. To have 30 percent of the country lack faith in election results based on unsubstantiated claims of a “stolen” election is not sustainable in a democracy, and it discredits the political party making those charges. We hope that setting out the full record in this Report will help restore faith in the reliability of our elections.
The full pdf report is available at the link for the name above.
"Mail-in ballots were still verified by signatures and addresses"
not adequate, or "conclusive"
voting in person and with privacy is the only way to have "conclusive evidence"
"It is entirely possible that they didn't find evidence of wide-spread voter fraud by Dems simply because they didn't do it."
I agree
"Lack of evidence isn't evidence that they just didn't catch it."
well, I never claim to have evidence, you did
and said it was "conclusive"
that's false
"Stop trying to undermine the legitimacy of our elections."
I'm not doing that
as long as Dems resist sensible voter integrity rules, the public will always have doubts
that undermines "the legitimacy of our elections."
"well, I never claim to have evidence, you did
and said it was "conclusive"
that's false"
That was the Wisconsin Editorial Board that claimed "conclusive" evidence, not me.
However, most reasonable people rest assured that the precincts all around the country that certified their votes, with both D and R observers, multiple audits and recounts in several states, and debunking of hundreds of false right-wing election fraud claims amounts to evidence beyond a reasonable doubt that Biden won the election.
"I'm not doing that"
Actually you are.
Let me try to explain this in a way you just might be able to grasp the concept.
It is no secret, in fact it has become a running joke that the most adamant anti-gay pastors and activists are often found out later to be pedophiles or sexual abusers.
Given your frequent anti-gay animus, one wouldn't be surprised if people suspected you were secretly a pedophile or sexual predator.
I have no evidence that you ARE a sexual predator, but I don't have any proof that you aren't either - and you fit the mold for those loud creeps that are found out later.
But if every time conversations about you come up, a large percentage of the people (say 30%) bring up the idea that they've never been able to prove you're not a sexual predator, that becomes the first thing many people will think about you.
But you already knew that - that's why you try to delegitimize LGBT people with all of your degrading comments about them and their relationships. It's why conservatives label the left as "groomers" for teaching kids age-appropriate material about trans and gay people. You know that if you slander them enough and put enough doubt into folks minds about their motivations, you can fulfill your hetero-supremacy dreams.
It's not about having enough proof - it's about sowing enough doubt. That is your modus operandi.
"That was the Wisconsin Editorial Board that claimed "conclusive" evidence, not me"
OK, then what they said is false
do you agree with them?
"However, most reasonable people rest assured that the precincts all around the country that certified their votes, with both D and R observers,"
when someone drops a ballot in the mail, or a special box, or gives them to some organizer to deliver for them, there is generally no R observing - only a D
how does that give voters confidence?
"Let me try to explain this in a way you just might be able to grasp the concept."
well, what's missing from your analogy is the fact that I'm nit the one who made an assertion
I said all along that I think Biden won
you are the one asserting it is so demonstrably clear
it isn't, though, because voter integrity rules were compromised
"Given your frequent anti-gay animus"
actually, I have none
I'm a libertarian
but I don't support the government endorsing homosexuality by giving gay couples a state-issued marriage certificate or going to schools and indoctrinating children about the normality of homosexuality
there's nothing "anti-gay" about that
"one wouldn't be surprised if people suspected you were secretly a pedophile or sexual predator"
well, TTFers have claimed that I must be gay if I don't support the gay agenda but I don't think any of you have said this before
"I have no evidence that you ARE a sexual predator, but I don't have any proof that you aren't either"
obviously,
and I could say the same about you
"and you fit the mold for those loud creeps that are found out later."
frankly, I think that's false
well, I disagree with the gay agenda, I never use derogatory language or epithets
I discuss my viewpoint calmly and rationally without insults, which, let's be honest, is what really infuriates you
"It's why conservatives label the left as "groomers" for teaching kids age-appropriate material about trans and gay people"
well, if "groom" means indoctrinating to a fringe viewpoint, it's accurate
"You know that if you slander them enough and put enough doubt into folks minds about their motivations, you can fulfill your hetero-supremacy dreams."
ah, let's have an example of this "slander" you refer to
U.S. wholesale prices rose 0.4% in September, signaling little progress in the Federal Reserve’s fight to vanquish high inflation.
Economists polled by The Wall Street Journal had forecast a 0.2% gain. The actual amount was double that..
The increase in wholesale prices over the past year, meanwhile, is 8.5%. Inflation is still running near a 40-year high.
A separate measure of wholesale prices that strips out volatile food and energy costs also increase 0.4% last month, the government said Wednesday. That was a larger than expected.
The change in wholesale prices offers clues on how much inflation is increasing. The consumer price index due on Thursday gives a better idea of how much the cost of living is going up for U.S. households.
Big picture: The Fed’s belated but aggressive strategy to raise interest rates to reduce Slidin' Biden's inflation hasn’t shown much effect so far. Prices are still rising rapidly.
Energy prices also rose for the first time in three months — and they are likely to add to inflation in the upcoming months.
The cost of services, meanwhile, also moved up 0.4%. Service inflation has risen sharply in the past year and is harder to reverse, making it a particularly big worry of the Fed.
Inflation further down the pipeline showed little sign of rapidly easing price pressures.
The wholesale cost of partly finished goods and raw materials both increased and have climbed at double-digit percentage rates in the past year
The post-COVID recovery has run out of steam and the global economy is stalling, with many countries already in or on the brink of outright recession amid heightened uncertainty and rising risks. The October 2022 update of the Brookings-Financial Times TIGER indexes shows that growth momentum, as well as financial market and confidence indicators, have deteriorated markedly around the world in recent months.
A series of self-inflicted wounds, ranging from China’s zero-COVID policy to the United Kingdom’s fiscal recklessness, piled on top of persistent supply chain disruptions and the protracted war in Ukraine, have severely constricted space for policy maneuver. High and persistent inflation worldwide, and the actions by central banks to rein it in, are depressing economic activity, dampening household and business confidence, and roiling financial markets.
Major advanced economies such as the eurozone, Japan, and the United Kingdom have been dented by various adverse external shocks, often compounded by sluggish and tepid policy responses, throwing their growth trajectories off kilter. Many developed markets are now facing the combination of steep currency depreciations (relative to the U.S. dollar), rising government bond yields, strained public finances, and tightening policy constraints that have long characterized periods of economic and financial stress in emerging market economies.
The U.S. economy is rife with conflicting signals. Consumer demand remains strong and employment has continued to grow at a reasonably healthy pace. At the same time, GDP growth is anemic while inflation remains high by any measure, leaving the Federal Reserve with little choice but to hike rates further despite the tightening of financial conditions resulting from the stronger dollar and falling values of financial assets.
Energy supply disruptions are fueling inflation and constraining growth in European economies, with prospects of energy shortages in the winter damaging private sector confidence. Emblematic of the stresses on the U.K. economy, the plunge in the pound sterling’s value reflects a combination of these adverse external circumstances, the ongoing fallout from Brexit, and undisciplined fiscal policies. Many European countries face added concerns about populist policies that could increase the risks to fiscal and financial stability...
A few months ago, monkeypox regularly made headlines as a major new disease outbreak. Then it largely vanished from the news.
What happened in the meantime? The virus receded: Since a peak in early August, reported monkeypox cases in the U.S. have fallen more than 85 percent through yesterday.
The rise and fall of monkeypox provide lessons on the spread of diseases — an aspect of public health that experts acknowledge we still know far too little about. Covid has made clear that much of the world was not prepared for a deadly pandemic. Monkeypox, while nowhere as dangerous as Covid, can shed light on our vulnerabilities (as my colleague Apoorva Mandavilli explained).
Today’s newsletter will look at why monkeypox declined, and what that might mean for future outbreaks.
...the virus still regularly spreads in western and central Africa, where it was first found in humans and has never been fully contained — putting it one flight away from the U.S. or Europe. “I don’t see any progress on addressing that,” said Dr. Céline Gounder, a senior fellow at the Kaiser Family Foundation. (The U.S. is working with Japan to distribute more vaccine doses globally, Politico reported yesterday.)
The good news: This year’s outbreak has made officials take monkeypox more seriously. So if it does come back, the country may be more prepared to deploy vaccines and take other steps to fight it. But success depends on how people react.
Prices consumers pay for a wide variety of goods and services rose more than expected in September as inflation pressures continued to weigh on the U.S. economy.
The consumer price index increased 0.4% for the month, more than the 0.3% Dow Jones estimate, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. On a 12-month basis, so-called headline inflation was up 8.2%, still hovering near the highest levels since the early 1980s.
Excluding volatile food and energy prices, core CPI was even higher for the month, accelerating 0.6% against the Dow Jones estimate for a 0.4% increase. Core inflation was up 6.6% from a year ago, the biggest 12-month gain since August 1982.
"World economy battered by high inflation and stalling growth"
this in no way excuses our slidin' President
we are the largest economy in the world and the way our economy is managed effects everyone else
Biden unnecessarily borrowed trillions in his first month merely to compete with the Trump administration and, to add fuel to the fire, has followed a policy to make fossil fuels as expensive as possible in order to transform our society to alternative energy
this has add an adverse effect on the the US economy AND the world economy
"A few months ago, monkeypox regularly made headlines as a major new disease outbreak. Then it largely vanished from the news.
What happened in the meantime? The virus receded"
this outbreak was almost exclusively among male homosexuals
there's a significant of them that engage in random promiscuity
it probably just ran through most of them, or they changed behavior for a time
it was never really a threat to heterosexuals or homosexuals who stay monogamous
it was a very easy disease to prevent
just a few weeks left
then, the Dems will be soooooo embarrassed
House control.......gone
Senate control......gone
White House.....unable to get anything passed
Congressional investigations......Hunter and the Big Guy!!!!!!!!!!!
Watchers of the looming midterm elections could see the whites of Democrats’ eyes even before the Bureau of Labor Statistics unwrapped September’s dreadful 8.2% headline consumer price inflation number on Oct. 13.
Blue party big cheeses know that despite Joe Biden’s happy-clappy summer inching above 40% public approval — a “small step for man, one giant leap for [this president]” — Democrats will probably go down to House and Senate defeats on Nov. 8.
Desperate people lose their grip on reality, and Democrats get desperate when power is being pried from their grasp. Their hope is fading however much they smile bravely. In his weekly Wall Street Journal column, Karl Rove noted that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) is fighting her understandable despondency by making fanciful predictions of a history-defying victory for the incumbent majority.
Her boast that “we will hold the House by winning more seats” is worth as much as her 2016 comment, “Donald Trump is not going to be president of the United States. Take it to the bank. I guarantee it;” ie., nothing.
Further down the left-wing pecking order, MSNBC’s show host Chris Hayes offered glib and unpersuasive reasoning why an awful economy and roaring inflation should make voters keep Democrats in power. His theory is that “if Republicans win control of one or both houses of Congress, they will do everything in their power to sabotage the economy” because that would help their chances of winning back the White House in 2024.
The problem with this theory is that it isn’t future GOP policy but the current Democratic government, specifically Biden’s incontinent spending, that has produced the monthly inflation gut punch inflicted on wage earners and consumers.
Voters know this very well. Pollster Echelon Insights found back in March 2021, when Biden and the Democrats sprayed $1.9 trillion on an overheating economy with their “American Rescue Plan,” that 52% of voters were “extremely concerned” or “very concerned” that the splurge would “lead to increased inflation, driving down the value of a paycheck and driving the cost of living up for every American.”
A further 22% were somewhat concerned, so a total of 74% of voters knew better than the Democrats, and they are unlikely when casting their ballots next month to let the party of the Left off the hook for the fiasco it has wrought.
Inflation is even worse than the 8.2% suggests. Core inflation rose to 6.6%. This suggests Federal Reserve interest rate hikes aren’t yet cooling the price rises so recklessly stoked by the party running Congress. It means we can look forward to a longer period of expensive money, dwindling purchasing power, falling savings and investments, and higher mortgage rates.
The party that told us the fiscal fairy tale of Modern Monetary Theory, with its vistas of unlimited consequence-free borrowing, has dropped the massive bill for its folly into the laps of Americans. And in just a couple of weeks, those same Americans have their chance to exact the political price that Democrats owe.
KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — Denny Dalliance had long worried about what would happen if he fathered a child because his job as a truck driver keeps him away from home most of the week.
But after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June, the 31-year-old Independence, Missouri, man decided it was time to take action — and jumped at the chance to sign up for a free vasectomy.
“These are grim circumstances under which I made this decision,” he said as he drove a load of cardboard boxes through Kansas this week.
The vasectomy he is scheduled to get next month is part of an effort that involves Planned Parenthood and a physician with a mobile vasectomy clinic. Sixty vasectomies will be offered over three days in and outside Planned Parenthood clinics in St. Louis, Springfield and Joplin to uninsured patients during the first week of November amid what the clinics say is a surge in demand for the procedure.
Dr. Esgar Guarin then plans to take his mobile clinic — a vehicle decorated with large images of sperm that his friends have jokingly dubbed the “Nutcracker” — on the road the following week to offer 40 more free vasectomies in several towns across Iowa.
Guarin also plans to offer discounted vasectomies that month at his regular clinic in the Des Moines area.
The efforts are part of World Vasectomy Day, originally a single-day event that now includes a year-round focus and a host of activities in November.
“It’s a very particular moment in reproductive rights in the United States. And we need to talk about it,” he said, adding that vasectomies are performed far less often than the tubal ligation method of female sterilization, even though they are cheaper, have a shorter recovery time and require local, rather than general, anesthesia.
Guarin, who serves on the medical advisory board for the World Vasectomy Day, helped offer vasectomies last year at the Planned Parenthood in St. Louis to raise awareness about the procedure. The effort was so popular that the decision was made to expand it to other cities even before the toppling of Roe sent demand soaring.
In July alone, Planned Parenthood of the St. Louis Region and Southwest Missouri performed 42 vasectomies, compared with 10 in the same month last year. Female sterilizations rose to 18 that month from just three in July 2021.
The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists has been hearing similar reports from across the country that more patients are seeking tubal ligations. It is too early for any post-Roe national numbers on permanent sterilization, said Laura Lindberg, a professor at Rutgers University’s School of Public Health in New Jersey.
Planned Parenthood, for instance, doesn’t have national sterilization numbers available for this year yet. However, its national web page has seen a 53% increase in vasectomy information searches over the past 100 days, a spokesperson said.
Data from Google Trends shows that searches about vasectomies briefly spiked after the leak of the draft majority opinion in the Dobbs case but then reached their highest level in the days after the Supreme Court released its decision in late June.
Dr. Doug Stein, a urological surgeon in the Tampa-St. Petersburg, Florida, area, said patient registrations for his practice tripled immediately after the Dobbs decision, with many patients under the age of 30.
“I think everybody is busier since the Dobbs decision,” said Stein, who co-founded World Vasectomy Day.
Dr. Arnold Bullock, a St. Louis urologist who does about 35 vasectomies a month said that before the Supreme Court decision, patients waited about a month for the procedure while the wait now is two to three months.
In Texas, Dr. Koushik Shaw said his Austin Urology Institute saw a spike when state enacted a strict abortion law last year and another, larger one after the U.S. Supreme Court decision, so that it’s now doing 50% more procedures. He said many are for men who don’t want children and saw access to abortion as another option should birth control not work as planned.
“It really pushed family planning to the forefront of people’s thoughts,” he said of the loss of abortion access.
Lawmakers are responding to the growing demand. A California law that will take effect in 2024 will make vasectomies cheaper by allowing patients with private insurance plans to get the procedure at no additional cost other than what they pay for their monthly premiums.
Dr. Margaret Baum, the medical director of Planned Parenthood of the St. Louis Region and Southwest Missouri, will be partnering with Guarin to provide the free vasectomies. She has had many conversations with patients about permanent sterilization in recent months and said there is a sense of urgency.
“I think people are afraid, No. 1, about abortion not being accessible, which is a very real and legitimate fear and in the reality for a large part of folks in our country. And then I think people are also really afraid that what else might be next,” she said.
A vasectomy involves cutting and sealing the tube that carries sperm, preventing it from entering ejaculate fluid. Baum said she chats with patients to keep them calm, sometimes turning on a playlist that includes “Great Balls of Fire” and “The Nutcracker Suite.” Most patients are fully recovered in a couple of days.
Dalliance, the truck driver, said he didn’t want to thrust the responsibility of birth control on partners anymore, especially with abortions harder to get. His home state of Missouri was among the first in the country with a trigger law in effect to ban abortions at any point in pregnancy.
“I don’t want to come off as though I’m like unhappy to be doing this, but this is a situation where my hand kind of got forced with regards to the Roe v. Wade decision,” he said.
“I feel like that, with the extreme cost involved with having a child in the United States, I kind of got priced out,” he said. “And so this is me cashing out my chips as it were. It’s the right ethical decision for me, but it’s not one that’s made lightly.”
"In Texas, Dr. Koushik Shaw said his Austin Urology Institute saw a spike when state enacted a strict abortion law last year and another, larger one after the U.S. Supreme Court decision, so that it’s now doing 50% more procedures. He said many are for men who don’t want children and saw access to abortion as another option should birth control not work as planned.
positive development
the egregious, and now trashed, Roe v Wade led too many to regard killing unborn children as a legitimate form of birth control
“One of my objectives, quite frankly, is to lock Willie Horton up in jail.” —Joe Biden, Senate Judiciary Committee Chair, bragging Democrats were tougher than Republicans on criminals, 1990
The nation’s 2022 top-tier fear is crime. Three quarters of Americans say violent crime is a major problem, and getting worse. Democrats’ cashless bail laws, attacks on police, and other liberal soft-on-crime policies have unleashed unrestrained criminality across the country, particularly in Democrat-run cities, where dangerous criminals are no longer locked up in jail. At all. “Arrested-and-released” is now the most common phrase in every crime article.
And this is not just theory to people, or some kind of political talking point. According to a recent Golden/TIPP poll, a record 16 percent of Americans themselves or a family member have been victims of crime — and the distressing numbers are particularly elevated among African Americans, Hispanics, and urban voters, where close to 25 percent — one in four — are crime victims
No one expected the Federal Reserve to be able to smother inflation swiftly. But after seven months of rapidly rising interest rates, the central bank has hardly made a dent.
Thursday’s look at the September consumer price data shows we’re not much better off now than we were in March, when the Fed began its aggressive monetary tightening. Back then, overall consumer prices were up 8.5% year over year. Now, they’re up 8.2%.
Core prices, which exclude volatile food and energy categories and are widely seen as a more reliable barometer of underlying inflation, hit 6.6% annually in September — their highest since 1982.
“This inflation report today was an unmitigated disaster,” wrote Christopher S. Rupkey, chief economist at Fwdbonds, a financial markets research company. “It shows whatever Fed officials are doing, it is just not working.”
The Fed has doubled down on its plans to wring inflation from the US economy by any means necessary, deploying massive interest rate hikes in the hopes of damping demand for goods and services.
Yet despite raising rates at an unprecedented speed, there’s little sign of prices easing up.
Thursday’s hotter-than-expected inflation report is the last major economic snapshot Fed policymakers will take in before their next meeting at the start of November, and all but guarantees another 0.75% rate hike. Investors are now pricing in a 97% chance of a fourth-straight increase of three-quarters of a percentage point.
Voters are in a pessimistic mood as they head into the November midterm elections, deflated by rising gas prices and sinking personal finances.
Recently hopeful that high gas prices and inflation would be temporary, as the Biden administration had claimed, the switch back to higher prices has voters sour again, and that will result in Democrats paying a price at the polls.
“Voters have been pessimistic about the economy throughout 2022. However, there was a notable decline in pessimism over the course of the summer as gas prices fell. More recently, as gas prices have gone up again, economic pessimism has increased as well,” said pollster Scott Rasmussen.
More than any other issue, personal finances are driving voters in an election reminiscent of the 1992 contest when former President Bill Clinton’s chief strategist James Carville famously wrote on a campaign office whiteboard, “The economy, stupid.”
The memo said, “The single most important indicator of how people will vote is related to personal finances. Currently, just 21% of voters say their personal finances are getting better, while 47% say their finances are getting worse. That’s a net -26 points.”
The generic congressional vote did shift back to the left as gas prices dropped a month ago, but that has shifted again to the right.
“When gas prices started to increase again, pessimism about personal financial trends rose to the current levels of -26. Once again, it is no coincidence that Democrats lost ground on the generic ballot during this same time frame,” said Rasmussen.
Here are the points driving voter pessimism:
-Fifty-nine percent say they expect gas prices in their area to go up during the next month.
-Three out of 4 (76%) voters say that grocery prices have gone up. Sixty percent expect further increases.
-Fifty-seven percent of voters say that the United States is currently in a recession.
-Thirty-five percent rate their personal finances as good or excellent. That’s down 11 points from last summer.
-Just 21% rate current economic conditions as good.
=Just 28% of voters say they’re better off than they were two years ago.
Say goodnight: The party’s over.
by SARAH LONGWELL OCTOBER 17, 2022 5:25 AM
Ben Sasse is retiring from the Senate at the youthful age of 50. We know why. Politicians who thought they could wait out Trump now see the writing on the wall.
The party’s over.
For years we watched the GOP defenestrations: Will Hurd, Jeff Flake, George W. Bush, the memory of John McCain, Paul Ryan, Liz Cheney, Adam Kinzinger, and any other Republican who stood up to Donald Trump—or even just opposed Trump’s attempted coup. Some fell on their swords. Some were tossed aside involuntarily. The result was the same.
Simultaneously, we watched the progress on the other side of the spectrum as normie Republican moderates such as Lindsey Graham, Kevin McCarthy, Elise Stefanik, Ronna Romney McDaniel, and J.D. Vance became unquestioning Trump maximalists.
What these two dynamics proved was a simple fact: In the Republican party as it is currently constituted, political power emanates completely and totally from Donald Trump.
With vanishingly few exceptions, a Republican cannot be openly opposed to Trump on any grounds—even on simple matters of fact, such as who won the 2020 election—and retain political power. Some especially skillful Republicans have managed to advance by being generally positive, but largely silent, about some aspects of Trump. But the Republicans who have advanced most are those who broadcast, in the most vehement and submissive modes possible, their total subservience—not just to the MAGA agenda, but to Trump the man. In all policies, ideas, facts, and forms.
The end result of this truth is that it has driven the Good Republican—that rare animal who was supposed to be the post-Trump future of the GOP—to near extinction.
For a while, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis was supposed to be the Good Republican: a fusion candidate and progenitor of the post-Trump future. Now it turns out that he is a despicable human being, a performative culture warrior who uses the levers of government against companies who engage in speech he doesn’t like and treats refugees as pawns in his political troll game. He keeps a keyboard-warrior press secretary who screams “groomer” at anyone who disagrees with her boss. Oh, and he’s campaigning for Pennsylvania gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano, a committed election denier who not only attended January 6th, but bussed others there as well.
So: Not a Good Republican.
But he’s not the only disappointment.
The vast majority of the 2022 Republican nominees this cycle have echoed Trump’s lies about the 2020 election. Many refuse to say if they will certify results they do not like in future elections. Which is extremely bad, but they’re the Trumpy Republicans. We expect that.
What many of us did not expect was that Team Normal would be so happy to support these maniacs.
Just look at the Good Republican governors (several of whom I’ve been championing for years): Chris Sununu, Doug Ducey, Brian Kemp, and Glenn Youngkin. None of them were overtly opposed to Donald Trump. But they didn’t jump on the election denial bandwagon and, for the most part, still sounded like the decent conservatives of yore—just with an extra side of red meat.
But now every single one of them is campaigning either for or with an election-denying lunatic. Ducey, along with the Republican Governors Association, has thrown in with Kari Lake. Sununu has embraced election conspiracist Don Bolduc in New Hampshire. Kemp is campaigning with the pro-coup GOP nominee for lieutenant governor and supporting the supremely unqualified and scandal-ridden Herschel Walker.
“But they have to,” you say. “What are they supposed to do? Not support the other Republicans on the ticket?” That’s my point. To be a Republican in good standing today, you have to make a devil’s bargain.
And Glenn Youngkin? Holy crap. He’s the term-limited governor of Virginia. There’s zero reason for him to be in Arizona stumping for the BDE candidate who wants to jail her political opponents.
So what happened? What was the extinction event for Good Republicans? Ultimately, it’s the end-stage of what I call the Republican Triangle of Doom™: The toxic and symbiotic relationship between GOP voters, GOP elected officials, and the right-wing infotainment media.
Except that there’s a very good reason: Glenn Youngkin isn’t campaigning to help Kari Lake. It’s the opposite. He’s trying to hug Lake in the hopes that her radioactive Trump energy will contaminate him. Youngkin is trying to make up for having been a Good Republican. Because he realizes that’s a dead end.
It works like this: Hardcore base voters want to watch media that confirms all their priors and then some. —> So fringe media outlets get traction with Republican audiences. —> GOP politicians need to go on these media outlets in order to reach base voters. —> The more politicians go on these fringe shows, the more mainstream these outlets become. —> Which creates competition for right-wing news outlets that are one standard deviation more sane, forcing those media outlets to get crazier just to stay on par.
Over time, the whole mutually reinforcing, mutually radicalizing process creates the conditions necessary for 70 percent of the Republican party to sincerely believe that Joe Biden is an illegitimate president due to a rigged election. It’s hard to blame voters for believing a lie when every politician they see and media personality they trust is repeating it.
Normal GOP politicians who don’t want to swim in the right-wing infotainment cesspool are deemed traitors for throwing in with the “corporate media” and so lose credibility with GOP audiences. Which makes it virtually impossible for them to have a future in the Republican party.
Even those who are relatively adept at straddling the line, like Sununu and Kemp, aren’t likely to have national futures, despite being popular governors in purple states.
Which brings us to the central flaw in the thinking of the post-Trump wishcasters.
They contend that people opposed to Trump need to cut Ron DeSantis and Glenn Youngkin some slack for campaigning with election-denying conspiracists like Doug Mastriano and Kari Lake. Without these accommodations, the argument goes, you can never elect a Republican who can incrementally walk the party back to sanity.
But The Republican Triangle of Doom™ runs in the other direction. And the reality is that these supposedly Good Republicans aren’t going to drag the party toward them. They’re the ones who are going to move. After all, the hard-right MAGA types aren’t the ones compromising.
Think of it this way: Did Glenn Youngkin move Republican voters? Or did Republican voters move Glenn Youngkin?
Ask Kari Lake. She knows.
And that’s the choice for the remaining Good Republicans. You can play ball with the base, with Trump, with Bannon, with Lake, with your new lunatic colleagues.
Or, like Ben Sasse, you can tap out.
Either way, you can’t ignore the truth: The Good Republicans are gone. Probably for good.
good Dems gave up 20 years ago
there are none left
every election, the polls claim Dems are gaining momentum until a few weeks before the election, when the story flips
The economy and inflation are the dominant issues three weeks out from the midterm congressional elections, dooming Democrats’ chances of maintaining control of Congress, according to a string of new polls released in the last few days.
Widespread impressions of the economy as bad and worsening, combined with dissatisfaction with President Joe Biden and the way things are going in the country, suggest that the nation’s overall political mood is tilting increasingly in Republicans’ favor.
A CBS News/YouGov survey released Sunday finds 65% of voters feel the economy is getting worse and 68% say the Biden administration could be doing more to combat inflation. In a New York Times/Siena College poll released Monday, 64% of likely voters say the United States is heading in the wrong direction, with the economy (26%) and inflation (18%) the only issues named by double-digit shares of likely voters as the most important problem facing the country today, with all other issues at 8% or less. And 70% of registered voters say they are dissatisfied with the way things are going in the US today, according to an AP-NORC survey out Monday, including majorities across party lines.
A CNN poll released last week found that 9 in 10 registered voters called the economy important to their vote. Those registered voters who consider the economy extremely important to their vote break sharply toward the Republican in their districts, 53% to 38%.
The same survey showed that 48% of likely voters backed the Republican nominee across the competitive congressional districts that will ultimately decide control of the House, while 43% in that group backed the Democrat. Registered voters in those districts were more likely than those nationwide to consider economic concerns deeply important to their voting decision, and those voters break even more sharply toward the Republican nominee (56% to 30%).
Republicans enter the final weeks of the contest for control of Congress with a narrow but distinct advantage as the economy and inflation have surged as the dominant concerns, giving the party momentum to take back power from Democrats in next month’s midterm elections, a New York Times/Siena College poll has found.
The poll shows that 49% of likely voters said they planned to vote for a Republican on Nov. 8 to represent them in Congress, compared with 45% who planned to vote for a Democrat.
With inflation unrelenting and the stock market steadily on the decline, the share of likely voters who said economic concerns were the most important issues facing America has leaped since July, to 44% from 36% — far higher than any other issue. And voters most concerned with the economy favored Republicans overwhelmingly, by more than a 2-1 margin.
President Biden and Democrats are facing serious political headwinds driven by high inflation, an erratic stock market and deepening recession fears as they attempt to defend their majorities in the House and Senate.
The latest inflation report will cost the president and his party dearly, all while deepening the risks facing the US economy.
Consumer prices rose 8.2 percent over the past 12 months and 0.4 percent last month alone, according to consumer price index data released Thursday by the Labor Department.
Rising prices for food, shelter, health care and travel weigh on household budgets.
Retail sales also flattened out in September, according to data released Friday by the Census Bureau, as more Americans pull back their spending amid rapid price growth.
“Inflation is the main factor that is determining how much shoppers are willing to spend. Households are tapping into savings, accessing credit and reducing their savings contributions as they meet higher prices head on,” explained Jack Kleinhenz, chief economist for the National Retail Federation, in a Friday analysis.
The financial squeeze is also straining voters’ faith in Biden and Democrats’ ability to lead the U.S. out of the mire.
Only 28 percent of Americans believe the United States is headed in the right direction, according to a poll conducted by The Economist and YouGov earlier this week.
Americans overwhelmingly believe that the U.S. has a serious problem with controlling its southern border as a record flow of illegal immigration leaves many scratching their heads over whether immigration laws are enforced at all. With midterm elections just around the corner, which party has the edge on this key issue? According to October’s I&I/TIPP Poll, the answer is Republicans.
For October’s public opinion survey, I&I/TIPP asked voters a simple question: “Which party would do a better job of securing the border?”
More Americans picked the Republican Party (43%) over the Democratic Party (34%), the online poll of 1,376 adults taken from Oct. 5-7 showed.
White voters overwhelmingly believe the GOP (50% support) will do a better job on border security than Democrats (28% support).
Hispanic voters preferred Republicans (38%) to Democrats (36%) when it came to border security.
Black Americans overwhelmingly approved of Democratic border policies (58%) compared to Republican policies (20%).
We also asked voters about another contentious point, namely: “Do you support or oppose building a wall along the border with Mexico?”
By 57% to 33%, Americans overwhelmingly support building a wall.
One evening a few weeks ago, about 100 young people ransacked a Wawa convenience store in Philadelphia. The mob stole merchandise, knocked over shelves and threw food and drinks around, leaving the store looking like a natural disaster had hit it. Many got their phones out to record the madness. As chaos reigned, a young woman twerked on a counter. Fighting spilled out into the parking lot.
The rampage in Wawa mirrored an incident in Philadelphia a month earlier, when dozens of youths trashed the Zion Cuisine restaurant in the Germantown area of the city. Teens flipped tables, broke glasses and threw chairs at the staff. And scenes such as those at Wawa and Zion Cuisine are not unique to Philadelphia – they are happening all over America. Two weeks ago in Virginia, a group of teens assaulted a movie-theatre employee while ransacking a concession counter.
Since 2020 and the George Floyd riots, there have been spikes in assaults, burglary, robbery and car thefts. Homicides jumped up 29 per cent in 2020 and rose again by 4.3 per cent in 2021. Crime is also a concern shared by many Americans. A Morning Consult poll finds that more than three-quarters of voters think violent crime is a major problem in the United States. And another poll, from Monmouth University, finds that crime is the second-highest priority, after inflation, for all voters going into the Midterms.
It is the randomness of the damage and violence stands out. There were no obvious reasons for the ransackings – beyond a nihilistic desire to destroy. And it is all captured on phones for the fun of it.
The disorder is everywhere. Innocent pedestrians on the streets of New York and other cities get sucker punched by attackers, often for no apparent reason. Carjackings by juveniles are skyrocketing in Washington, DC. In Brooklyn, a man shot and killed a McDonald’s worker after his mother complained about being served cold French fries.
A visible marker of social disorder is the phenomenon of mass shoplifting in pharmacies and other retail stores, which is happening so often that it is becoming normalised. Videos capture people filling huge bags with goods and facing no resistance from staff as they stroll out the door. Stolen items are then resold on the streets, on eBay or, in the more sophisticated operations, relabelled and shipped overseas. Pharmacy chain Rite-Aid reported in September that it had lost $5million in stolen goods in the prior three months. Last year Walgreens was forced to close more than a dozen of its stores in San Francisco due to shoplifting.
It’s clear what has triggered the recent spate of crime – the riots following the death of George Floyd in May 2020. Those political protests very quickly degenerated into anti-social destructiveness, causing billions of dollars of damage and resulting in dozens of deaths. That rioting was tolerated – indeed celebrated – by liberals. In many places, the authorities sent a clear signal that it is okay to tear things down – anything goes. When social order was not enforced, a wave of homicides and other crimes followed.
Immediately following the riots, Democratic Party officials began adopting a range of policies favoured by the Black Lives Matter movement, such as demonising and defunding the police, ending cash bail and ‘decarceration’ – that is, reducing the number of violent offenders in prison. Whether through design or not, police numbers in many cities have declined significantly since 2020. Philadelphia has a critical shortage of officers with 500 unfilled vacancies. Los Angeles has lost 700 officers since the riots. Police are often slow to respond to reports of crime, if they respond at all. According to Chicago Sun-Times, police made arrests in just 12 per cent of reported crimes last year, which is the lowest level in Chicago history.
Leftist prosecutors have overridden criminal laws passed by state legislatures and have instead simply decided to stop enforcing many offences, on the grounds that the laws have a racist impact. In Philadelphia, district attorney Larry Krasner has overseen a 70 per cent decline in prosecuting felonies and misdemeanours. Krasner’s negligence has led to the highest murder rate in Philadelphia’s history, a record number of carjackings and a wave of theft and other crimes. In San Francisco, former district attorney Chesa Boudin adopted no-cash bail, reduced incarceration and other BLM policies. He also declared he would not prosecute street offences, such as public camping, public urination and blocking sidewalks. After having to live with the effects of Boudin’s policies – which led to an increase in murder, burglaries, car theft and homelessness – even the people of this most liberal of cities could no longer tolerate him. Boudin was recalled from office by voters in June.
While these policies are advocated in the name of ‘anti-racism’, they are often not popular among black Americans. Research by Zach Goldberg finds that white Democrats are the strongest supporters of defunding the police, while black Democrats express much weaker support for cutting law-enforcement policies.
Most voters don’t have an ideological agenda and those who live in high-crime areas experience the bad effects of not enforcing the law. In contrast, guilt-ridden Democrats appear to have adopted a saviour complex towards black people. As Goldberg notes, in the aftermath of George Floyd, white Democrats have become ‘fixated on distinguishing themselves as “good white people”, who are doing something (however counterproductive) to protect minorities from the “racist” institutions that “victimise” them. The downside of de-policing either doesn’t register, is rationalised or dismissed altogether.’
Serious spikes in crime and social breakdown are happening and it is not racist to notice. No one, whatever his or her background, wants to live in a society where stores get trashed by rampaging teens or people are subject to random violent attacks just for walking down the street. Affluent people can insulate themselves from this disorder – whether by living in safer areas or by hiring private security – but most people have to live with the consequences of the elite’s misguided policies.
American society is breaking down because the people in charge won’t enforce the law. The authorities have abdicated their responsibilities. Ordinary people will need to take matters into their own hands. They can start by exercising their democratic rights to hold those officials to account.
GOP Rep. Mayra Flores’ surprise win in the special election for the U.S. House seat in Texas’ 34th Congressional District this past June is looking more and more like a canary in a coal mine for the upcoming 2022 midterm elections. Ms. Flores won the race convincingly in a reliably blue district where the Democratic incumbent won with 55% of the vote just two years ago.
When Politico asked recently “Is the Dobbs effect fading?” they really should have asked if the liberal media-fed outrage of Dobbs was fading. Either way, the answer is an emphatic yes. Unfortunately for desperate Democrats, the 2022 election isn’t about the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision and the left’s extreme abortion position any more than it’s about the riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. The 2022 midterms are about the wrong track America is on under total Democratic control. A Joe Biden-inspired malaise has set in around us — high inflation, high crime, high gas prices, open borders and more pessimism and division among our citizens than ever.
In poll after poll, we see the exact same thing. The most important issue on people’s minds is the economy and the sky-high high cost of living caused by President Biden’s irresponsible out of control spending bills.
Brian Kemp, Stacey Abrams clash in Georgia's gubernatorial debate
Recent headlines such as “Biden hit on economy as more say finances poor,” “Wholesale prices rose 0.4% in September, more than expected as inflation persists,” “$4 gas could be coming — again” and “U.S. mortgage interest rates rise to highest level since 2006” are what’s weighing on hardworking American families, not abortion or the Jan. 6 political witch hunt in Congress.
And to make matters worse for Mr. Biden and congressional Democrats, the latest consumer price index report showed an explosive 8.2% increase in inflation from this time last year — a constant reminder of the catastrophe that’s taken hold in America. If you live in Arizona, Georgia, New Hampshire or Nevada, Sens. Mark Kelly, Raphael Warnock, Maggie Hassan and Catherine Cortez Masto must be held accountable for making this inflation nightmare a reality with their votes enabling the failed Biden agenda.
Some things are hard to hide. If Biden’s inflation and energy fiascos poll high, illegal immigration is close behind. Anecdotal data – arguably more reliable this cycle than polls – suggests Americans are seething.
Five major factors show how distressed Americans are about Biden’s open misrepresentations about the border, illegal immigration, and the devastating impact Democrat policies are having on the nation.
First, rather surprisingly, Independents – and moderate Democrats – are fed up with Biden’s “spit show,” an invalid, recurring claim that the border is secure. Americans know it is not. In a recent poll, 50 percent of Americans think Biden must do more, 55 percent of Independents, 76 of Republicans.
Despite Harris and Biden claim that the “border is secure,” data does not lie, nor do planeloads of non-English-speaking illegal immigrants all over the US. Like Lyndon Johnson pretending no one cared about Vietnam, or the “body count” favored us, Americans know truth. They did then, do now.
Truth is Biden and Senate Democrats are “all in” for soft-shoeing illegal immigration. They accept the wrong-headed premise that major laws do not need enforcing on humanitarian or political grounds.
Thus, laws are not enforced that prevented release of non-adjudicated asylum-seekers (who often disappear), assured asylum seekers remained outside the US pending adjudication, or were vetted.
Anecdotally, are Americans ticked off? You bet. Notably, shipping illegals to the swanky Democrat getaway Martha’s Vineyard resonated. More reliably, Americans are concerned about issues tied to illegals (even in New York City), links to drug trafficking, record overdoses, homelessness, and crime.
Second, naturalized Americans – including Hispanic citizens – are sick of the double standard. As midterms approach, many are tipping hard to their conservative values, including public health and safety, faith and gun rights, preservation of traditional values around family, work, faith, and females.
Misunderstood by Democrats, Hispanic Americans are not “all-in” for illegal immigration, Hispanic or other. They do not favor devaluing the traditional family, Christian faith, citizenship, hard work, safety on the street or quality of public education. They are not about “wokeness.”
This is a major misfire, and Midterms will show – an opening salvo – that this radical tip left by all Democrats is not accepted by Americans who came here from Cuba, Colombia, Panama, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Venezuela, Peru, and other countries, most of whom prioritize faith, family, safety, education, and hard work. They did not come to America to live in Venezuela.
Third, illegal immigration is playing big as more families are losing kids to drugs, not in small numbers but in whopping, un-hidable, heartbreaking numbers. Drug overdose deaths from foreign-source, high-potency, interdict-able drugs – hit more than 107,000 last year, a 15 percent jump over 2020.
This is a huge deal, since loss of a child is devastating – not just to those 214,000 parents, 428,000 grandparents, millions of siblings, cousins, friends, teachers, and all who know the child, but to whole communities – where the news, no matter how we dull ourselves, is an earthquake.
This is what the glib, rich, inoculated, indifferent leaders – at all levels – do not get. They do not understand their policies have consequences, sometimes devastating ones, and that drug trafficking, abuse numbers, deaths from overdoses, kid suicides, drugged driving, and loss of kids – hits hard.
The Biden Administration and Congress are out to lunch. The cotton-mouthed talk from Senators about spending money means nothing, when they are AWOL in the battle to save kids and communities. Like everything else, they “fob it off” on someone else, no accountability, another thing people are sick of.
Fourth, illegal immigration will play big because education – the quality of America’s public education – is sinking, not because any illegal immigrant is not a worthy soul, but because we are pouring these souls into a highly stressed system, no assimilation, no legal citizenship, no understanding where understanding counts. Biden, Harris, and the billion-dollar congressional leaders just do not care.
Words are cheap. Teachers – and I come from a long history of them – are under intense pressure, as are schools, administrators, communities that fund them with property taxes, states that must pay.
Notably, Illegal immigration does no one any good in the educational sphere. It degrades education for those legally here, naturalized and born, while degrading the larger system nationally.
Annually America absorbs many foreign immigrants – legally. They become highly productive, usually patriotic members of society, learning history of the country, civic duty, English, working legally, and raising their kids to do the same. That is not what we are doing when we sweep illegals in.
Finally, midterms will “out” the enormity of this issue, how distressed Americans are by the Biden and Democrats’ illegal immigration policies, for one more reason. Americans value and respect the law.
When a Vice President can say, in effect, “mass amnesty” and “just make them citizens,” like a finger snap does it, or when a President vilifies the Supreme Court and circuit courts for saying immigration laws must be enforced, something is wrong. Americans respect the law. When their leaders do not, that is a flashing red signal.
So, net-net, Americans are not stupid, indifferent to their lot or traditions. They love their faith, speech, voting rights, self-defense, educational opportunities, and everything tied up in public health, safety, education, and law.
On illegal immigration, like the economy’s stunning mismanagement, Americans are watching. More to the point, they are seething. Watch this issue knock Democrats over in Midterms, wave meeting wave. Somethings are hard to hide.
a lot of great posts today...
President Biden and his political allies have repeatedly described former President Trump and his allies as threats to the foundations of America, warning democracy itself is at stake and positioning themselves as its savior.
According to one poll released last month, preserving democracy is a top issue in this year's election, particularly among Democrat voters.
Ironically, however, a range of recent polling suggests that by seeking to prosecute, silence and stigmatize their political opponents as anti-democratic "extremists," Biden and other Democrats are arousing fears among voters that it is they themselves who are acting in heavy-handed ways alien to the American democratic tradition.
Last month, Biden delivered a speech in Philadelphia vilifying Trump and the Make America Great Again movement aligned with him. "Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our Republic," he declared.
Biden clarified that "not every Republican, not even the majority of Republicans, are MAGA Republicans" before adding: "But there's no question that the Republican Party today is dominated, driven, and intimidated by Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans. And that is a threat to this country."
Biden went on to say that MAGA Republicans don't respect the Constitution or the rule of law, echoing claims he's made several times during his presidency describing Trump and his supporters. In one case, he called them "semi-fascist."
A majority of Americans, however, disapproved of Biden's speech in Philadelphia as itself divisive, dangerous, and going too far, according to multiple polls.
One of the surveys found a striking 62% of independents said Biden's address was "a dangerous escalation in rhetoric and designed to incite conflict amongst Americans." A mere 31% of independents said it was acceptable rhetoric during an election year.
Meanwhile, in a new poll conducted by the Trafalgar Group for the Association of Mature American Citizens, a majority of respondents, 51%, said they "believe the Biden administration has crossed an important ethical line in pursuing political opponents."
Just 41% rejected the statement.
A striking 54% of independents agreed the Biden administration has crossed an ethical line, indicating disapproval of alleged government overreach extends beyond Republicans.
Even more staggering, 74% of Hispanic voters answered "Yes" when asked if the administration has gone too far.
President Biden will travel to Rehoboth, Delaware, this weekend – not Arizona or Ohio or Nevada or anywhere else where his party desperately battles on behalf of candidates critical to maintaining Democratic control of the U.S. Senate.
Republicans couldn’t be happier to point out the obvious: A president whose job approval rating is under water is not in high demand in the stretch run of the midterm elections.
“Joe Biden's unpopularity follows him wherever he goes,” Ronna McDaniel, the chairwoman of the Republican National Committee, told RealClearPolitics, “and Democrats know their unwavering loyalty to Biden is their biggest liability.”
White House strategists read the same public opinion polling Republicans do. According to the RealClearPolitics Average, for instance, more Americans disapprove of the president’s job handling, 53.7%, than approve, 43.3%. The fear among Democrats is that a party leader with those numbers may do more harm than good if he hits the campaign trail on behalf of a candidate struggling to pick up or maintain a seat in Congress.
By contrast, Republicans would love to see more of him. One senior GOP strategist practically invited the president to rally on behalf of his vulnerable colleagues, offering to lay out “a welcome mat, an open sign, or even a red carpet: whatever it takes to get Joe Biden on the road for down ballot Democrats.” This isn’t likely to happen, the strategist joked, because Biden “is as a toxic as your last relationship.”
When pressed about what the president’s political schedule would look like in the closing weeks before the midterms, given that Biden hasn’t attended many rallies or done much of the traditional political fare, White House officials have acted as though a president’s coattails – or lack thereof – is somehow a strange new political topic. White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told one reporter inquiring about Biden’s schedule that it was “a bizarre question.”
Because the Biden administration entered office determined to do everything differently from the previous administration, its major policies have become tangled knots of self-contradiction. Since the Democratic Party had so heavily invested in the evil of Russia and President Trump's supposed coziness with the Kremlin, (a complete and defamatory fiction), it was peculiar and absurd that Russia was invited to act as the intermediary of the United States in the new administration's poorly thought out ambition to put the nuclear arms deferral agreement with Iran, back together. This was a bad idea in all respects as that agreement was one of the most disadvantageous international agreements ever made by the United States, and along with Obamacare and the Green Terror, was the principal heritage of the Obama era. In exchange for the release of over $100 billion of Iranian assets that had been frozen and the drastic reduction of seriously inconvenient sanctions on Iran, that country would defer development and deployment of nuclear-tipped intermediate and long-range missiles for ten years, more than seven of which have now elapsed. Once Russia invaded Ukraine and the Biden administration correctly determined to assist Ukraine in its defense, (after discovering the inaccuracy of Joint Chiefs’ Chairman General Mark Milley’s prediction that Russia would overwhelm Ukraine within two weeks), the continued role of Russia as a representative of American interests opposite Iran was outrageous.
As summer ended and President Biden stared down the barrel of a 20 percent deficit in his approval ratings, the Democratic strategists reached for the only partially successful election argument they have had for the past eight years: mudslinging, and especially the pseudo-prosecutorial mudslinging of Donald Trump, which produced the farce of the intrusion and occupation at the former president’s home in Palm Beach. This vigorously jostled the hornets’ nest and America was reminded that when Trump was actively involved in public life, his opponents attacks and his responses, amplified by the anti-Trump media reminded the voters of the chaos that accompanies the Trump phenomenon: swamp-dwellers don’t want the swamp drained. This cut Biden's disapproval deficit approximately in half, but Trump's counsel achieved the tactical victory of shutting the nonsense down by pushing it onto a special master. Normal criteria for electoral preferences returned and in October, the Democratic ship returned to sinking mode.
Biden wants to campaign, in his desultory and malapropistic fashion, but most Democratic candidates don't want him; they want Obama. But Obama doesn't want to campaign, presumably because he does not wish to be identified with the impending disaster. But he did manage a few ventilations of the worm-eaten fraud that the Republicans are a threat to democracy. The Democrats oppose the verification of ballots and have become helplessly addicted to ballot harvesting and their ubiquitous partisans in the media and academia revile any dissent from the great woke liberal death wish as Fascism. Confused though many of them are, the people know better.
The administration passionately believes that America should permit anyone in the world, no matter how incapable of contributing usefully to America, or even steeped in criminality or drug addiction, should be admitted to the country, but not openly as a matter of declared policy, but rather in a defiant flood of illegal migrants swarming across the southern border to the background noise of the nodding idiot of a Homeland Security secretary, repeating the Goebbels-like mantra: “The border is closed.” Hypocritical northern Democratic mayors professing to lead sanctuary cities, proclaim emergencies in their metropolitan areas of many millions of people when southern governors send them one tenth of the number of illegal migrants who arrive in the modest sized city of El Paso, Texas, every day. The regime is calling for volunteers in the defense Department to come to the border to assist in providing clothing, counseling, and other assistance to illegal migrants. The function of that department is the defense of the country, and particularly its borders, not social assistance for those who enter the country illegally. It is reminiscent of then senator Kamala Harris’ question to General James Mattis at his confirmation hearing as Defense secretary in 2016 of what, under his leadership, would be the Pentagon's policy toward global warming. A gentlemanly officer, Mattis resisted the temptation to reply that it was something like the U.S. Senate's view of goldfish.
Oil: the administration has declared war on the American oil and gas industry, has reduced production by 3 million barrels a day and squandered the status of an oil-self-sufficient country that Trump had gained for it for the first time since the Truman presidency. This resumption of dependence on foreign oil has caused a rise in the price of oil that has largely financed the Russian invasion of Ukraine that the United States has rightly contributed tens of billions of dollars to Ukraine to resist. Energy Czar John Kerry, in perhaps the most fatuous foreign secular pilgrimage since Jane Fonda's visit to Hanoi, has gone to Beijing to beg the lords of the Middle Kingdom to reduce carbon emissions. Having condemned the house of Saud as moral pariahs, Biden made his own pilgrimage there to request that they reduce their own profits by raising production to assist the United States, despite its ungenerous references to the Saudi leaders. Quite commendably, they reduced production instead, causing the vacuous spokes-nincompoops of the administration to imply that the United States might humble itself next before the squalid Marxist dictatorship of Venezuela, while punishing the Saudi's by refusing to sell them military equipment. This powerful retaliation would transfer $100 billion of revenue for the defense production industries of the U.S. to other suppliers, probably led by America's true friends in the Kremlin and the inner-city of Beijing.
This is a stupefyingly incompetent administration with no possible precedent since President Buchanan sat pitifully in the White House as the southern states seceded from the Union. Only about a third of Americans seem to approve of the regime and that is a levitation as perilous as the flight of the airship Hindenburg, and only explicable by the rabid partisanship and substantial ethical bankruptcy of most of the national political media. It is all the distracted nonsense of a self-destroying society. The thought that is clearly rising in the American national mind and can only become more irresistible as the days of election approach and pass, is to throw them out, while they still can, throw them all out, bag and baggage, foot, horse and guns.
The Republican Party is on the cusp of a substantial midterm election victory that could rival their wins in 1994 and 2010.
There has been a 3-point swing to Republicans in generic-ballot polling in just the last month, according to the RealClearPolitics average. Democrats led by as much as 1.3 points in September, but as of Monday, Republicans were up by 1.8.
A late September ABC News/Washington Post poll found the Republican advantage concentrated where it’s needed most. The GOP had a 5-point lead among likely voters nationwide, but a 21-point margin in “competitive” congressional districts. Other battleground-district polls, from CBS News, Economist/YouGov and CNN, showed the GOP with a much narrower lead, but a consistent one.
What does that mean for seats? The House’s current breakdown is 220-212 in favor of the Democrats, with three vacant seats. A majority of a full House is 218. As of Sunday, RealClearPolitics rates 221 seats as leaning, likely or securely Republican, to 176 for the Democrats. The other 38 seats are toss-ups.
If there are no upsets on either side and the toss-ups are evenly split, that brings Republicans to a 240-195 majority—a gain of 28 seats. A Republican sweep of the toss-up races would expand the majority to 259-176. That’s vanishingly unlikely, but so is a Democratic sweep of the toss-ups—which would still leave the GOP with a seven-seat majority.
Historical trends favor Republicans too. In midterm elections since 1982, generic polling averages in the weeks leading up to the election have overestimated the president’s party’s vote margin by an average of 3.5 points, according to FiveThirtyEight. When the president was a Democrat (in 1994, 1998, 2010 and 2014), the overestimate averaged 8.6 points.
The Senate has become less prone to major shifts as voting patterns have tended to line up with those in presidential races. Since 2014, the Republicans have never held fewer than 50 seats or more than 54. But with the chamber divided 50-50, a net gain of a single seat would give the GOP control. RealClearPolitics projects the Republicans will gain two seats, in Georgia and Nevada, and hold their current seats, for a 52-seat majority.
Republican gains in House and Senate polling have coincided with a shift in the national issues agenda that has been favorable to the GOP. Voters are focusing again on inflation, a major vulnerability for Democrats. Republicans hold substantial double-digit leads over Democrats on the ability to handle inflation specifically (19 points) and the economy generally (16), the ABCNews/Washington Post poll found.
The overturning of Roe v. Wade briefly shifted voters’ attention in a way that was advantageous to Democrats. But the media overstated its effect, as the Washington Post’s David Byler notes in a recent column. Citing the analysis of pollster John Couvillon, Mr. Byler notes that relative turnout in primaries has tended to predict midterm election outcomes, with Democrats having the edge in 2006 and 2018 and Republicans in 2010 and 2014.
The majority of 2022 primary voters were in Republican races (52%), rather than Democratic races (48%). The Republican edge held up in states that voted after the Supreme Court decided Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, although it narrowed from 8 points to 2.
A more familiar predictor of midterm performance is the president’s approval rating. President Biden’s current approval rating of 42% last month is on par with Bill Clinton’s in September 1994 (42%) and Barack Obama’s in September 2010 (45%), as per Gallup polling. In those years Democrats lost 53 and 63 House seats, respectively. Republican gains this year are almost certain to be more modest than that—but only because the GOP already picked up 14 seats in 2020.
Former President Donald Trump is scheduled to sit for a deposition Wednesday in a federal defamation lawsuit brought by E. Jean Carroll, an author who says he raped her in the dressing room of a New York department store in the 1990s.
What are the latest developments?
Last week a federal judge in Manhattan rejected a request by Trump’s lawyers to delay the deposition while a federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., weighs whether the case should be thrown out in its entirety.
U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan ruled that Trump must answer questions under oath from Carroll’s attorneys. Carroll herself was scheduled to be deposed by Trump’s team on Friday.
In his ruling, Kaplan noted that Trump, 76, and Carroll, 78, and other witnesses “already are of advanced age” and that Trump “should not be permitted to run the clock out” on the suit.
Kaplan also denied Trump’s request to substitute the United States government into the case as a defendant on the grounds that the alleged defamation occurred when he was president.
What are Carroll’s allegations?
In a book excerpt published by New York magazine in 2019, Carroll wrote that Trump raped her in a dressing room at the Bergdorf Goodman department store in Manhattan in the mid-1990s.
Carroll, a longtime advice columnist, said she ran into Trump at the store and he asked for advice on buying a gift for “a girl.”
They eventually ended up in the lingerie department, Carroll said, where Trump coerced her into a dressing room.
“The moment the dressing-room door is closed, he lunges at me, pushes me against the wall,” she wrote. “He seizes both my arms and pushes me up against the wall a second time, and, as I become aware of how large he is, he holds me against the wall with his shoulder and jams his hand under my coatdress and pulls down my tights.”
Trump has been accused by more than 20 women of sexual misconduct ranging from inappropriate touching to rape.
He denies the various allegations. In Carroll’s case, Trump also told a reporter that he did not know Carroll, that “she’s not my type” and that she concocted the rape claim to sell her book.
Carroll then filed her defamation suit.
What other challenges is Trump facing?
The former president is currently facing legal battles in numerous criminal and civil proceedings — including the Justice Department’s investigation into his handling of classified documents found at Mar-a-Lago, as well as a state prosecutor’s probe of efforts by Trump and his allies to overturn the 2020 presidential election results in Georgia — in addition to the House select committee’s investigation into the violence of the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot.
But according to Maggie Haberman, author of the recent book “Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America,” Trump is fixated on this case.
“For whatever reason, he is very focused on this lawsuit,” Haberman said on CNN on Thursday.
What is Trump saying ahead of the deposition?
Following the judge’s recent ruling, Trump issued a lengthy statement calling the case a “complete con job” and the U.S. legal system a “broken disgrace.”
Trump also repeated his claims that he does not know Carroll and that she is not his “type.”
“She completely made up a story that I met her at the doors of this crowded New York City Department Store and, within minutes, ‘swooned’ her,” he said in his statement. “It is a Hoax and a lie, just like all the other Hoaxes that have been played on me for the past seven years. And, while I am not supposed to say it, I will. This woman is not my type!
“E. Jean Carroll is not telling the truth, is a woman who I had nothing to do with, didn’t know, and would have no interest in knowing her if I ever had the chance,” Trump said, adding: “Now all I have to do is go through years more of legal nonsense in order to clear my name of her and her lawyer’s phony attacks on me. This can only happen to ‘Trump’!”
Roberta Kaplan, Carroll’s attorney, said the statement “obviously does not merit a response.”
"Former President Donald Trump is scheduled to sit for a deposition Wednesday in a federal defamation lawsuit brought by E. Jean Carroll, an author who says he raped her in the dressing room of a New York department store in the 1990s."
this is a pretty adventurous legal maneuver
if you deny an allegation, you can be sued
such a thing would inhibit your right to defend yourself
"What are Carroll’s allegations?"
the answer is: completely unprovable
"the Justice Department’s investigation into his handling of classified documents found at Mar-a-Lago,"
he'll never be convicted of this stupid Nixon-era "crime"
"as well as a state prosecutor’s probe of efforts by Trump and his allies to overturn the 2020 presidential election results in Georgia"
the case is unconstitutional
"in addition to the House select committee’s investigation into the violence of the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot"
partisan probe that has found nothing after all this time
"But according to Maggie Haberman, author of the recent book “Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America,” Trump is fixated on this case."
this is rich
Media propaganda used to say this during the infamous Mueller probe too
if he defends himself, he's "fixated"
Moments after she flipped a longtime Republican congressional seat in 2018, Iowa Democrat Cindy Axne declared that “Washington doesn’t have our back and we deserve a heck of a lot better.”
Now seeking a third term in one of the most competitive House races, Axne is sounding a similar tone, telling voters she’s delivered for Iowans “while Washington politicians bicker.”
But Axne and other Democrats from the class of 2018 are campaigning in a much different political environment this year. The anxiety over Donald Trump’s presidency that their party harnessed to flip more than 40 seats and regain the House majority has eased. In its place is frustration about the economy under President Joe Biden.
And many districts that were once competitive have been redrawn by Republican-dominated state legislatures to become more friendly to the GOP.
“It was a very different world,” pollster John Zogby said of 2018. “Inflation’s now where we haven’t seen in 40 years and it affects everybody. And this is the party in power. With campaigns, you don’t get to say, ‘But it could have been’ or ’But look at what the other guy did.’”
Many swing-district Democrats elected four years ago were buoyed by college-educated, suburban voters, women and young people shunning Trump. That means many defeats for second-term House Democrats could be read as opposition to Trump no longer motivating voters in the same way.
Journalists and other left-wing activists are freaking out over a New York Times poll that shows Republicans leading Democrats by 4 percentage points among likely voters ahead of next month's midterm elections. They were particularly aggrieved by the poll's finding that Republicans were tied with Democrats at 47 percent among female voters and were supported by 34 percent of Hispanic voters and 18 percent of black voters. Those are terrible numbers for Democrats.
We don't know how much the Democrats will lose by, but at least one thing is guaranteed: When Democrats lose, they are going to blame everyone but themselves for the outcome. Here are the top 10 scapegoats Democrats are likely to blame for the party's poor performance at the ballot box in November.
10) Vladimir Putin
The Russian dictator's ill-advised invasion of Ukraine caused a surge in oil prices, which forced voters to support Republicans. (Never mind that President Joe Biden responded by depleting the U.S. strategic petroleum reserve while blocking efforts to expand domestic oil production.) If Democrats lose, there's a good chance that some politicians and media pundits will suggest (without evidence) that Russian hacking played a role in their defeat.
9) The Saudis
Pundits are already accusing the Saudis of conspiring to damage Democrats in the midterms after OPEC+ member states announced a steep cut in oil production earlier this month. It's just not fair, especially since Biden debased himself by bumping fists with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman after promising to make the Saudi leader a "pariah."
8) The Federal Reserve
Ryan Cooper, managing editor of the left-wing American Prospect, responded to the Times poll by lashing out at the Federal Reserve for raising interest rates and "failing to contain inflation." Fed chairman Jerome Powell, he wrote on Twitter, was "going to hand Congress to the GOP" and lay the ground for Republicans to "abolish democracy" and "do a bunch of heinous gestapo shit" because "normie swing voters" were concerned about inflation.
7) The Lincoln Project
This would be giving the Lincoln Project too much credit, but a poor showing in the midterms might finally make Democrats angry enough to denounce these shameless grifters for raking in millions from liberal donors that might otherwise have gone to organizations that care about winning elections.
6) President Joe Biden
If Democrats get wiped out in November, expect more calls for Biden to leave office after one term. The president will turn 80 on Nov. 20, and a poor showing in the midterms will increase the likelihood that some ambitious young Democrats will start gunning for the party's nomination in 2024. That doesn't mean nominating someone like Pete Buttigieg, Gavin Newsom, or Kamala Harris would give them a better chance of winning, but Biden is too old and forcing him to run again would be a cruel form of elder abuse.
5) White women
Democrats losing control of Congress will inspire at least a dozen think pieces about how white women are complicit in the "dismantling of democracy" because they don't agree with Elizabeth Warren, a white woman who advanced her career by pretending to be Native American. The vast majority of these vacuous screeds will be written by white women pretending to be journalists.
4) The media
Democrats hate it when journalists report the facts without adding additional "context" about why Democrats are good and Republicans are bad. Last week, for example, they denounced an NBC News journalist for reporting that John Fetterman, a stroke victim and Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania, had trouble understanding her while conversing without the aid of a captioning device. Some critics accused NBC News of promoting "violence towards disabled people." Democrats will inevitably complain that mainstream outlets should have spent less time covering inflation, crime, and immigration—issues voters actually care about—as opposed to the January 6 hearings.
3) "Hispanic white supremacists"
If the Republican Party's share of the Hispanic vote continues to grow in 2022, journalists and other partisan Democrats will lose their minds. Expect to see an explosion of hot takes about how Hispanics who don't vote for Democrats are betraying their own community and imperiling democracy by embracing white supremacy.
2) "Jim Crow 2.0"
Stacey Abrams repeatedly questioned the legitimacy of her defeat in the Georgia gubernatorial election in 2018 and faced zero consequences from our media gatekeepers. She is almost certain to lose again this year, and hers probably won't be the only race in which pundits suggest Republicans won due to so-called voter suppression, or "Jim Eagle," in the words of our eloquent commander in chief.
1) The voters
The most predictable scapegoat. Some will suggest American voters were "duped" by so-called misinformation, which is just a polite way of saying their fellow Americans who don't have a fancy college degree are too stupid to think for themselves, or as one lib Twitter user responded to the Times poll showing a Republicans lead, "We are honestly just a dumb fucking species." Look out for hot takes about how Americans just voted to reinstitute slavery and create a real-life version of The Handmaid's Tale because they wanted cheaper gas and groceries.
"Stacey Abrams repeatedly questioned the legitimacy of her defeat in the Georgia gubernatorial election in 2018 and faced zero consequences from our media gatekeepers."
Stacey Abrams didn't inspire a bunch of thugs to storm the capital building in her state when she lost to the guy who decided who got to vote in her state, and purged the voting roles shortly before the election.
It looks like the conservative trolls are getting pretty desperate these days considering how much our own is spamming the blog.
It reminds me of all the times he tried to convince us Huckabee's and McCain's "inevitable" wins.
"several are saying the only way to save our Republic is for Trump to call for Marshall law"
you can find "several" that says just about anything in our vast land
we have constitutionally protected free speech so there are a variety of fringe opinions
some people even think TTF believes in teaching the facts
LOL - what a hoot!!!!!!!!!!!!!
anyway, I've never heard of "Marshall" law but Trump is not an elected leader so it really doesn't matter what he calls for
not that he has called for anything
btw, Putin has called for martial law in annexed portions off Ukraine
but that's just apt to get his soldiers' heads blown off
"Stacey Abrams didn't inspire a bunch of thugs to storm the capital building in her state when she lost to the guy who decided who got to vote in her state."
actually, her lies, that her defeat was due to racist manipulations of the vote, were part of the systematic racism myth that resulted in mass violence, destruction of public and private property, and loss of life a couple off summers ago
true, her followers didn't storm the Capitol but that's because Congress was controlled by those who advance her lies
google for a picture of Nancy Pelosi in her Kente cloth
"It looks like the conservative trolls are getting pretty desperate these days considering how much our own is spamming the blog."
LOL, why would conservatives be desperate?
"It reminds me of all the times he tried to convince us Huckabee's and McCain's "inevitable" wins."
yeah, you've got a point
Dems have nothing to worry about
they should kick back with a glass of chablis
just like Hillary in October 2016
ROFLLOLOLOLOLOLOLHAHAHAHAHAHEEHEEHEEHEESNORTHOHOHOLOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Dems have nothing to worry about
just keep thinking:
Huckabee and McCain
then, you won't have to worry that Biden will never get another SCOTUS confirmed
or the coming Hunter and the Big Guy congressional investigations
Right-wing superhero movie ends 'in disaster' after $1 million in funders' cash goes missing
An attempt to make a Confederacy-promoting right-wing super hero movie has reportedly "ended in disaster" after $1 million in funders' money has gone completely missing.
The Daily Beast's Will Sommer reports that the planned movie, called "Rebel's Run," was based on a comic book character created by far-right blogger Vox Day that features a hero named Rebel who is "sometimes depicted in a Confederate flag bustier" and who fights against "a global police force hunting down freethinking conservatives."
The film's troubles started when Day, whose given name is Theodore Beale, decided to use a Utah-based firm called Ohana Capital Financial to hold the $1 million he'd raised in donations for the movie in escrow.
Beale went with Ohana because it was a rare financial institution who would do business with him given his long history of unabashed racism and sexism.
The trouble, as Sommer writes, is that Ohana appears to have been a sham institution set up by a con artist.
"Ohana was the creation of James Wolfgramm, a self-described cryptocurrency billionaire who posted pictures of sports cars that supposedly belonged to him on social media," he writes. "But in fact, according to a federal indictment filed last month, Wolfgramm’s wealth was a sham. The sports car pictures, for example, were pulled from other websites. Wolfgramm’s business also sold what were billed as high-tech cryptocurrency mining rigs — but those too were a hoax, according to prosecutors, with their screens just running on a loop to create the illusion of mine."
Day told disappointed supporters recently that their money had, in fact, gone missing while under Wolfgramm's care.
"I wouldn’t count on us getting the money back," said Day, who also baselessly claimed that the theft was part of a grander plot "intended to break our community."
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.
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