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I appeared on Silvo Canto Jr's talk show from Dallas last night.  It's here.

OCTOBER 15,  2018

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – AT 11:54 P.M. ET:

SHAME – FROM PROJECT VERITAS:  (St. Louis) Project Verities Action Fund has released a third undercover video from campaigns during this 2018 election season. This report exposes how incumbent Senator Claire Moccasin and individuals working on her campaign conceal their liberal views on issues in order to court moderate voters.  Said James O’Keene, founder and president of Project Verities Action:  “This undercover report shows just how broken our political system has become. Senator Moccasin hides her true views from voters because she knows they won’t like them.”  Read the story.  I hope she gets defeated.  She's been playing the double game for years.

DISGRACEFUL – FROM THE HILL:   A county Democratic official in Pennsylvania says he was forced to step down over a Face book post saying he “[stands] for the flag.”  Mark Salvias, the former executive director of the Allegheny County Democratic Party, told Pittsburgh’s KDKA News that the county party chair asked him to resign after just weeks on the job.  Salvias, a former Marine and Gulf War veteran, told KDKA that his forced departure was prompted by two social media posts, including one photo of him and his wife with the words: “I stand for the flag, I kneel at the cross.”  “I’am not ashamed of my patriotism, not one bit. I fought for this country. I think I have a right to have a voice and be patriotic,” Salvias told KDKA. “It’s never easy when people you have never met accuse you of things and call you names."  The Democratic Party owes this man an apology and a reinstatement.  I hear only silence.

OH DEAR, OH DEAR – FROM FOX:   The Cherokee Nation responded to the results of Massachusetts Seen. Elizabeth Warren's DNA test on Monday, arguing that “a DNA test is useless to determine tribal citizenship.” The response came after the Democratic senator revealed that, based on tests, she has Native-American ancestry “in the range of 6-10 generations ago.”  "Current DNA tests do not even distinguish whether a person’s ancestors were indigenous to North or South America," Cherokee Nation Secretary of State Chuck Ho skin Jr. said in a press release.  "Sovereign tribal nations set their own legal requirements for citizenship, and while DNA tests can be used to determine lineage, such as paternity to an individual, it is not evidence for tribal affiliation," Ho skin continued. "Using a DNA test to lay claim to any connection to the Cherokee Nation or any tribal nation, even vaguely, is inappropriate and wrong.

October 15, 2018       Permalink

WELL, THERE ARE DIFFERENT WAYS OF COUNTING – AT 5:45 P.M. ET:   There seems to be a bit of bother about the number of adults in the United States versus the number of voters.  I'm sure it's all okay, aren't you?  From IBD:

American democracy has a problem — a voting problem. According to a new study of U.S. Census data, America has more registered voters than actual live voters. It's a troubling fact that puts our nation's future in peril.

The data come from Judicial Watch's Election Integrity Project. The group looked at data from 2011 to 2015 produced by the U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Survey, along with data from the federal Election Assistance Commission.

As reported by the National Review's Deroy Murdock, who did some numbers-crunching of his own, "some 3.5 million more people are registered to vote in the U.S. than are alive among America's adult citizens. Such staggering inaccuracy is an engraved invitation to voter fraud."

Murdock counted Judicial Watch's state-by-state tally and found that 462 U.S. counties had a registration rate exceeding 100% of all eligible voters. That's 3.552 million people, who Murdock calls "ghost voters." And how many people is that? There are 21 states that don't have that many people.

Nor are these tiny, rural counties or places that don't have the wherewithal to police their voter rolls.

California, for instance, has 11 counties with more registered voters than actual voters. Perhaps not surprisingly — it is deep-Blue State California, after all — 10 of those counties voted heavily for Hillary Clinton.

Los Angeles County, whose more than 10 million people make it the nation's most populous county, had 12% more registered voters than live ones, some 707,475 votes. That's a huge number of possible votes in an election.

COMMENT:  As the wise ones say, many ancestors vote in our elections.  I'm surprised we don't see write-ins for Truman. 

The voting rolls need to be cleaned up.  But whenever that is suggested, the cry of racism is heard, and that shuts down the discussion.  A sad commentary.

October 15, 2018       Permalink 

THE MANUFACTURING BOOM – AT 1:31 P.M. ET:  President Trump's most powerful argument for his administration, and his re-election is, no doubt, the economy. And at the heart of that economy has been a dramatic expansion in American manufacturing.  They said it couldn't be done, but he's doing it.  From IBD: 

On October 5, 2018, the Department of Labor released its national jobs report for September, showing unemployment had hit a 49-year-low at 3.7% with 134,000 jobs added last month of which 18,000 were in manufacturing.

Of note, in the 21 months since his inauguration, President Trump's deregulatory policies and historic tax cuts have led to a manufacturing resurgence, with 396,000 jobs added. In fact, the pace of manufacturing job growth over the past 21 months of President Trump's leadership is more than 10 times that of President Obama's last 21 months in office.

A significant part of America's manufacturing boom may also be attributable to a key change in the tax code signed into law in December 2017. The new law encouraged U.S. companies with corporate earnings sitting overseas avoiding high U.S. corporate taxes to bring that cash back to American shores. Some $300 billion out of what the Federal Reserve estimated is $1 trillion in multinational enterprises' profit was sent home in the first quarter of 2018.

COMMENT:  The economic boom also has a major psychological effect on the country.  Presumably, this should translate into support for the current government and congressional leadership.  However, history shows us that voters can be frustrating.  Churchill was thrown out of office at the height of his success as Britain's war leader.  With victory in the war came defeat at the polls. 

If the economy does not guarantee victory at the polls for Republicans in three weeks, it can at least limit the losses.  Americans, I hope, will realize that a switch to the neo-socialist Democratic Party could destroy all that has been built up under President Trump. 

October 15, 2018       Permalink

PRESIDENT RISES – AT 10:41 A.M. ET:   The president has shot up to 51% in the Rasmussen poll, after a slight decline toward the end of last week.  From Rasmussen:

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Monday shows that 51% of Likely U.S. Voters approve of President Trump’s job performance. Forty-nine percent (49%) disapprove.

The latest figures include 37% who Strongly Approve of the president is performing and 39% who Strongly Disapprove. This gives him a Presidential Approval Index rating of -2.

COMMENT:  We always point out that other polls have the president much lower, usually in the low forties, but Rasmussen is the last remaining daily tracker, polls likely voters rather than any adults with a pulse, and has a record of accuracy in the age of Trump.  We'll be reviewing pollster accuracy after the midterms.

October 15,  2018     Permalink 

OCTOBER 14,  2018

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – AT 11:55 P.M. ET: 

START OF A MOVEMENT? – FROM COLLEGE FIX:  BOSTON — Hundreds of demonstrators converged in Boston’s Copley Square on Sunday to show support for Students for Fair Admissions just as the organization begins its battle in federal court against the Ivy League institution.  Students for Fair Admissions has sued Harvard, alleging discrimination in admissions practices, specifically against Asian Americans. The rally, hosted by the Asian American Coalition for Education, along with other organizations, was titled “Rally for the American Dream — Equal Education Rights for All.”  As the demonstration unfolded, dozens of American flags waved in the air. Appeals to famous Martin Luther King Jr. expressions peppered speeches. A giant banner thanking President Trump for advocating for meritocracy was unfurled nearby, although no speakers mentioned the president directly in speeches.  “Harvard is an American gem,” said Edward Blum, founder of Students for Fair Admissions. “We are not here to bash Harvard. We are here specifically because their admissions practices are discriminatory. Your race shouldn’t help you or hurt you.”  Do not underestimate the importance of this case.  Asian Americans are rightly fed up with admissions practices that discriminate against them because they are so damned good.  Diversity, you know, trumps all.  This case is bringing Asian Americans alive politically.  It may reach the Supreme Court, with dramatic consequences.

SOME PEOPLE STAY TOO LONG – FROM FOX:  Hillary Clinton vehemently denied in a recent interview that her husband’s extramarital affair with then-White House intern Monica Lewinsky was an abuse of power and added that former President Bill Clinton was right not to resign amid a scandal that led to his impeachment on perjury and obstruction charges.  “Absolutely not,” the former first lady said during a CBS "Sunday Morning" interview when asked if Bill Clinton should have stepped down.  “It wasn't an abuse of power?” CBS News correspondent Tony Dokoupil asked.  Clinton responded: “No. No.”  Hillary Clinton, who went on to be elected to the Senate and served as President Obama’s secretary of state, said the relationship was not an abuse of power because Lewinsky “was an adult.” At the time of the affair, Lewinsky was 22.  And the outrage is that the political left will buy that argument.

SO SAD – FROM CNBC:   Sears Holdings plans to file for bankruptcy protection after midnight in the East Coast, culminating the collapse of what was once America's largest retailer, people familiar with the situation tell CNBC.  As part of the bankruptcy plan, Sears will immediately close roughly 150 of its stores, people familiar with the matter have said. It has approximately 700 stores.  It is unclear how the closures would impact Sears's workers, who totaled roughly 90,000 in February 2018.  Sears will aim to stay in operations through the holidays, during which it will seek a buyer. That buyer could include its CEO, Eddie Lampert, or others who wish to make a higher bid.  An American institution.  At one time you could find a Sears catalogue in almost every American home.  And guys love buying Craftsman tools.  I can see a Sears sign from my window.  I guess it will soon go dark.

October 14, 2018       Permalink

A MODERATE DEMOCRAT SPEAKS – AT 1:37 P.M. ET:  There are moderate Democrats.  I think I saw one at the local mall yesterday.  I asked for his autograph, but was turned down.

Now a prominent moderate, Doug Schoen, speaks out against what is happening at the extremes of his party.  From Fox: 

As Democrats campaign for the Nov. 6 midterm elections, they have plenty of legitimate criticisms to level at President Trump and Republicans who control the House and Senate. But Democrats were hurt in recent days by amazing and disgusting comments made by Hillary Clinton and former Attorney General Eric Holder.

As a Democrat, I want my party to win as many seats as possible in the House and Senate and to capture as many governorships and other state offices as it can. But the Clinton and Holder remarks do not advance that effort – they hurt it.

Former Secretary of State and 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Clinton said Tuesday that “you cannot be civil with” the Republican Party because it “wants to destroy what you stand for, what you care about.” She added that “if we are fortunate enough to win back the House and or the Senate, that’s when civility can start again.”

But even worse than Clinton’s comments were those of Eric Holder, who said at a recent campaign event in Georgia that Democrats should abandon the advice of former first lady Michelle Obama, who said at the 2016 Democratic National Convention that her party and mine should respond positively to negative attacks from the GOP.

Mrs. Obama said that “when someone is cruel or acts like a bully, you don’t stoop to their level. No, our motto is, when they go low, we go high.”

Holder argued just the opposite, saying: “When they go low, we kick them. That’s what this new Democratic Party is about.” He later said he wasn’t advocating violence – not literal kicking.

I beg to differ with both Clinton and Holder.

The only way the Democrats can regain the majority in either or both houses of Congress is by being civil, and pointing out the differences between Democrats and Republicans on the issues.

And...

We should have learned from the Senate confirmation hearing for now-Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh that resisting for the sake of resisting doesn’t work. In fact, Democratic attacks on Kavanaugh may well have backfired, recent polls show.

The Democratic Party itself is lost now, without a message, a direction, a strategy, or agenda to confront a Republican Party that is seen as in many ways as having let the American people down.

We need change – but it must be constructive change. This Democrat believes that the comments that Eric Holder and Hillary Clinton made are wrong, counterproductive, and deserve to be rejected by the leadership of the Democratic Party.

American voters generally don’t support extremists. In 1964, Republican presidential candidate and Arizona Sen. Barry Goldwater famously said “extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice.” He won 52 electoral votes, compared to 486 for Democratic President Lyndon Johnson. While Goldwater was a conservative, Democratic extremists on the left have not and likely will not overcome the reluctance of voters to support one extreme or the other.

COMMENT:   Read the whole thing.  I don't agree that the Republicans have let the American people down.  Quite the contrary, the party has delivered.  But that error does not detract from Schoen's accurate point that Democratic anger and fist-banging is getting the party nowhere.

October 14, 2018       Permalink

ANOTHER GENIUS HEARD FROM – AT 12:46 P.M. ET:  There's a very tight governorship race in Georgia.  The Dem candidate, African-American woman Stacey Abrams, is tied with the GOP candidate, Brian Kemp.  Now Abrams announces how she'll win.  You gotta read it.  From Dailywire: 

Georgia Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams said this week that illegal aliens will be part of the Democratic Party’s "blue wave" in the upcoming midterm elections.

Abrams made the remark while campaigning with Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) on Tuesday at the Clayton County campaign office, the Free Beacon reported.

"The thing of it is, the blue wave is African-American. It is white. It is Latino. It is Asian-Pacific Islander," Abrams said. "It is made up of those who've been told that they are not worthy of being here. It is comprised of those who are documented and undocumented."

The Free Beacon contacted Abrams' campaign "to ask what role undocumented immigrants will play in the midterms if they are not legal voters."

Her campaign did not respond.

COMMENT:  You can't make it up.  You just can't make it up.  Abrams might well win, with vast minority support and help from the liberal transplants from the north, working in Atlanta.

October 14,  2018     Permalink