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SEPTEMBER 30, 2022

THE WORLD RUMBLES:   We are five and a half weeks away from the election, and it's understandable that we're focused on that, and the hurricane that is still assaulting us.

But it's distressing that we're running an election campaign with hardly a mention of foreign policy.  At one time, within our lifetime, that would have been impossible.  Americans had established a maturity forced on them by Depression and war.  Today, too many Americans have lost sight of the fact that what happens in Asia may result in the drafting of a boy in Des Moines. 

So I hope you will consider that parts of Iran are in revolt, with more than 80 dead.  The administration seems little interested.  They act almost as if the Iranian nation's wish for liberation is an annoyance, a distraction from the more important work of finishing the nuclear agreement with Iran so billions of dollars can be given to the Iranian regime, an enemy of the United States.  Who is behind this twisted notion?  Where will it take this nation?

And note that Russia, a mortal enemy, has just annexed a chunk of Ukraine.  While Washington and its allies have declared the annexation invalid, the war there, the largest ground war in Europe since World War II, grinds on, with Ukraine far from a top priority in polls of Americans.  Are we seeing a repeat of the indifference that left us so unprepared to fight Hitler?  NATO members in Eastern Europe fear they will be next if Russia decides to go to all-out warfare. 

Silence in our campaigns.  Silence from the national leadership.  We're presumably not supposed to care any longer. 

China, the ultimate enemy, must be amused.  The Chinese leaders crave Taiwan, and they are probably calculating whether this is the time to try to take it.  We certainly don't look very fierce, with Field Marshal Biden and Private Harris in charge of the United States.  When you flash weakness, the chances of a major war increase.

Oh, and North Korea is testing a new generation of advanced missiles.  Remember North Korea?

September 30, 2022       Permalink

CORRECTING A HUGE MISTAKE.  The mistake, made by conservatives, was ignoring local elections, especially school board elections.  As a nation, we paid the price, watching leftist school boards, even in conservative communities, impose their will on our children.  But conservatives, led by irate mothers, are correcting the mistake.  From the Washington Examiner: 

Conservative candidates campaigning to flip dozens of school board seats across the country are hoping a trend that began last year continues through the November elections.

In the midst of an off-year election cycle last year that saw Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R-VA) defeat his Democratic opponent, Terry McAuliffe, on a campaign platform that heavily emphasized parental rights, Ryan Girdusky's 1776 Project PAC helped several dozen conservative school board candidates defeat liberal incumbents in multiple states.

Now, as the calendar nears the 2022 midterm elections, candidates backed by Girdusky's unique political action committee have continued to rack up victories all over the country, and the political activist sees more on the horizon.

"A lot of Republican voters are parents and grandparents, and they are concerned with the state of public education and where it's going," Girdusky told the Washington Examiner, noting that the politicization of education is serving as a motivator to voters.

"These people have to get up, and they have to go vote," he said. "In a lot of these areas, we struck record-breaking turnout for conservative candidates for school board because they wanted to make sure their children are not being force-fed liberal indoctrination."

The group announced a new slate of endorsements on Tuesday, with the PAC supporting candidates in races in Michigan, Virginia, Maryland, Texas, Arkansas, and elsewhere.

The group's efforts garnered significant attention in August after a number of candidates in Florida supported by the PAC won school board elections all across the state. Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) took the unusual step of endorsing a cohort of candidates himself, many of whom were also supported by the committee. In the aftermath of those victories, Girdusky said his PAC was inundated with requests from over 300 school board candidates seeking an endorsement.

The wave of endorsement applications was far more than the PAC could handle, Girdusky said, noting there's "a lot of time and attention and energy that goes into these races, and we just don't have the bandwidth."

With the successes in Florida, Girdusky and others want to see more high-profile politicians follow DeSantis's lead and weigh in on school board races.

"I'd like to see them get involved. I'd like to see them have a long-term vision on public education," Girdusky said, noting that Youngkin has reportedly mused endorsing school board candidates.

Laura Zorc, a former member of the Florida-based Indian River County School Board and the director of education reform at Building Education for Students Together, which trains school board candidates, said high-profile endorsements give candidates an added layer of legitimacy in races that are often overlooked by voters.

COMMENT:  Please read the rest.  This is the way to do it.  Our side must win as many school board seats as possible to reverse the tragic decline of our schools.  But be on guard.  It won't be long before the left, and that includes the teachers' unions, realize what's happening.  Then, look for attempts to pass legislation restricting the power of the boards.  To the left, everything is about power.  The good of the children is of no significance.

September 30, 2022       Permalink

SEPTEMBER 28-29, 2022

PUMPS?  WHAT PUMPS?  ARE THOSE CONSERVATIVES STILL USING PUMPS?  Yes, liberal friends.  We are.  And we don't like what we're suddenly seeing in those little windows on the pumps.  Just don't tell Joe.  From CBS News: 

SAN FRANCISCO -- After weeks of slow decline, prices at the gas pumps across  the San Francisco Bay Area have surged once again Wednesday to over $6 for a gallon of regular unleaded.

According to AAA, there has been nearly a 20-cent jump between the price of unleaded in the last 24 hours. 

San Francisco rose from $6.098 to $6.289. San Jose's jump was from $5.967 to $6.142 and motorists filling up in Oakland experienced an increase from $5.083 to $6.155.

San Rafael residents were among the highest in the state jumping from $6.107 to $6.304.
The wild swing in prices has taken even veteran industry watchdog Patrick De Haan, head of petroleum analysis at GasBuddy, by surprise.

"One of the longest gas price declines on record has finally come to an end after 14 weeks, with gas prices shooting up in several regions amidst myriad refinery issues from the West Coast to the Great Lakes and in between," De Haan said in his weekly blog. "I don't know that I've ever seen a wider gamut of price behaviors coast to coast in my career."

"A slew of unexpected refinery disruptions, including fires and routine maintenance, have seemingly all happened in a short span of time, causing wholesale gas prices to spike in areas of the West Coast, Great Lakes and Plains states," he added. "Some of those areas could see prices spike another 25-75 cents per gallon or more until issues are worked out."

Officials have cited "unplanned" refinery maintenance as the stimulus for the steep rise.

Somehow that just doesn't ring true.

"Oil Price Information Service reports that several local refineries are undergoing unplanned maintenance as fuel inventories are at their lowest levels in a decade, which caused Los Angeles wholesale gas prices to rise sharply this week," said Auto Club spokesperson Doug Shupe from Southern California.   

According to Gasbuddy, California, Hawaii and Nevada have the highest prices at the pump.  The steep rise in prices has also caught the attention of lawmakers in Sacramento. 
"California gas prices have jumped 24 cents in the last two days," Assemblyman Kevin Kiley said in a press release. "Californians are now paying over $6 per gallon, nearly $3 more than the national average. This is the result of longstanding policy failures, compounded by the Governor and Legislature's refusal to suspend the gas tax as other states have."

COMMENT:  California has one of the most left-wing regimes in the country.  Green energy is a religion out there, not a dream.  Automobiles are the equivalent of Satan.  The state will do nothing for the gasoline driver. 

If prices keep rising before the election, Democrats might be seeking employment in other governments, like Venezuela.

September 28-29, 2022       Permalink 

ABOUT THOSE POLLS.  Are you guilty?  I am.  We only whisper it, but we know we're currently suffering from Pollitis, a serious disease of the brain that erupts every election season.  It is not curable.  We look at those polls every day, as if they can actually predict the future. 

Oh yes, we're familiar with the usual cautions.  In 1936 the Literary Digest predicted, on the basis of a poll, that Alf Landon would be elected president of the United States, defeating the incumbent, Franklin D. Roosevelt.  Uh, it didn't quite turn out that way.  But that polling catastrophe launched the age of the "scientific" poll, presumably more accurate than the Digest's failed effort.  New techniques were developed.  New personalities appeared, with names like Gallup, Roper, and Samuel Lubell, who was one of my professors.  And yes, polling did become more accurate.

But how accurate?  It is widely accepted that 2020, just two years ago, was a disastrous year for polling.  Many pollsters were so far off that some journalists suggested that the worst of them simply withdraw from the field and never bother us again.  And it was noticed that the pre-election polls that were so inaccurate were almost all inaccurate in the same direction – they overcounted the Democratic vote.  Was there some scheme involved?  Were some pollsters trying to tip the scale?

In the last four or five days we have seen, once again, polling that suggests that a number of races are in the bag for the Dems.  A Republican wave?  What Republican wave?

And so a further word of caution is required.  Distinguished political reporter Rowan Scarborough, of the Washington Times, clarifies the picture for us.   

The polls for Republicans in 2020 were awful. Awfully wrong.

So awful that the normally sedate Pew Research Center unleashed a post-election scolding to the polling triumvirate of media/colleges/consultants who consistently undercounted GOP chances. 

“It’s clear that national and many state estimates were not just off, but off in the same direction: They favored the Democratic candidate,” Pew said in a post-Nov. 3 analysis. 
The error gap is important, Republicans say because bloated Democratic poll numbers can tamp down fundraising and influence some voters to give up — before even voting. It is what Democrats would call “voter suppression.”

Seven weeks away from the Nov. 8 midterms, conservative backbiting has surfaced as they see the “generic congressional” poll in which voters are asked which party they will back tilt away from Republicans.

YouGov just posted numbers that show the Democrats are up 6 points. But Republicans would point out that in 2020, the same firm had the Democrats up a whopping 10 points near Election Day. Democrats actually lost 14 House seats and its post-election spread was three, not 10, or just about a tie, according to data posted by RealClearPolitics.com.

YouGov’s final 2020 presidential poll had Joseph R. Biden winning the popular vote by 10, a giant landslide. He beat then-President Donald Trump by 4.5%. 

Afterward, noted GOP pollster Frank Luntz called on colleagues to quit, referring to mistakes in 2016 too. 

“I think what is happening is accountability in action,” Mr. Luntz said on Fox News’s “Media Buzz.” “And if you got it wrong this time, you got it wrong twice in a row, you shouldn’t be working in the business. There are other things you can do. You can sell real estate. You can sell stocks.”

Pollsters gave Mr. Trump virtually no chance of gaining the magic 270 electoral votes in 2016. He garnered 306, winning in the “blue wall” states of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin.

I’ve spoken to conservative-aligned polling companies with generally better records than the big guys. They say the major mistake is not to “weight” the curated sample of, say, 900 voters. Weighting means to increase or decrease the share of certain demographics, such as white or Black if the final sample is out of whack with recent election history.

Here is some history: In 2020, Quinnipiac University’s final polls had Mr. Trump losing Florida, 47-42. He won by 3.3%. Quinnipiac foresaw Mr. Trump beaten in Ohio 47-43. He won Ohio by 8.2 points. Nationally, it said Mr. Biden would win by 11 points.

CNBC polls had Mr. Biden winning Florida and North Carolina, where he lost, and saw an 8-point win for him in Wisconsin, where he squeaked a win by 0.7. One major poll said Mr. Biden would win Wisconsin by 17 points.

None of 14 polls found Maine Sen. Susan Collins in the lead. Some predicted a substantial defeat. She had a substantial win — by 9 points.

“After this election, I think the polling industry needs to take a hard look at what it does,” Ms. Collins told Fox News.

COMMENT:  Please read the whole thing.  This is one of the best examples of political reporting that I've seen recently.  We'll know in just over six weeks whether history has repeated itself this year, or whether polling has improved.  My hope is that we'll be smiling.  Smiling is good.

September 28, 2022       Permalink