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NOVEMBER 10,  2018

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – AT 11:56 P.M. ET:

BLUNDER – The president is in France in part to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I.  He was scheduled to go to Aisne-Marne American Cemetery and Memorial near Paris, but canceled due to bad weather and logistical difficulties.  The cancellation has created an appropriate uproar, including a denunciation from Winston Churchill's grandson.  They point out that the cemetery is only an hour's drive from Paris.  If the presidential helicopter was considered unsafe in poor weather conditions, the limo could have been used.  Aides to former presidents note that there is always a rain alternative on official trips.  The story has gone viral.  The White House owes the American people a full explanation, and the president owes an apology.  Of course, there could be another explanation – illness – and that must be addressed as well.  A bad show by the White House.  We call 'em as we see 'em here.

ARIZONA – As the vote recount in Arizona continues, our Martha McSally continues to lose ground.  She is now down by 29,000 votes, and it appears that most of the votes still to be counted are in Democratic areas.  I think we can cautiously assume that Arizona is lost.  It is dismaying.  Martha's opponent,  Kyrsten Sinema is, as you all know, the snowiest of the snowflakes, the whackiest of the whackjobs.  But she is a skilled actress, and she has protrayed herself as a moderate, and a fine example of Arizona values.  The Arizona voters bought it.   It proves once again that there's no business like show business.  The loss in Arizona would be the second GOP Senate loss for this election, the other being Nevada.  Republicans picked up seats in North Dakota, Indiana, Missouri and, if the recount goes our way, Florida.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MARINES – FROM DAILY CALLER:  The U.S. Marine Corps turns 243 years old on Saturday, marking nearly two and and half centuries of protecting America at home and abroad.
Marines have fought in every major war in U.S. history — in fact, the Marine Corps is older than the country itself and traces its roots to the Continental Marines of the Revolutionary War period.  On November 10, 1775, the Second Continental Congress adopted a resolution to form “two battalions of Marines” to be led by Captain Samuel Nicholas, who is considered the first Commandant of the Marine Corps. Today, that date is regarded and celebrated by Marines around the world as the birth of America’s most iconic — and fearsome — fighting force.  But Marines don’t just protect America by deploying around the world in expeditionary forces. Sometimes they respond to emergencies at home, as they did in September, when Marines came to the aid of elderly citizens trapped in a burning apartment building in Washington, D.C.   Well done.

November 10, 2018       Permalink

FLORIDA UPDATE – AT 2:21 P.M. ET:  Major development.  Both the gubernatorial and Senate votes in Florida will be recounted, the Florida secretary of state has just announced.  From the Miami Herald: 

Florida Secretary of State Ken Detzner ordered recounts in three statewide elections Saturday, triggering a scramble by the state’s 67 elections departments as they pore over more than 8.2 million combined ballots in the next five days.

Detzner called for automatic machine recounts in the state’s races for U.S. Senate, governor and agricultural commissioner after receiving unofficial vote counts at noon from the elections departments overseeing Tuesday’s midterm elections. It was not a choice: Statewide contests decided by a half a percentage point or less must be reanalyzed under Florida law, and the races between Gov. Rick Scott and U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, Ron DeSantis and Andrew Gillum, and Matt Caldwell and Nikki Fried were all within razon-thin margins.

Already expected by the campaigns and elections departments, the recount order triggered a flurry of activity around the state as elections departments pushed to meet a Nov. 15 deadline to submit their newly tallied returns. With all counties having submitted unofficial vote tallies, Florida’s Division of Elections showed that 8,302,983 ballots must be recounted over the next five days.

The total vote count reported by the state after receiving the unofficial final tallies from the counties showed DeSantis leading Gillum by 33,684 votes, a difference of .41 percent; Scott leading Nelson by 12,562 votes, a difference of .15 percent, and Fried leadng Caldwell by 5,326 votes, a difference of .06 percent.

The order applies to the entire state, but most eyes will be on South Florida, where late-developing returns in the past four days shrunk margins for Republican frontrunners and, in Caldwell’s case, took him from the lead to the rear. Scott’s campaign has filed lawsuits against Broward Supervisor Brenda Snipes and her Palm Beach counterpart, Susan Bucher, alleging noncompliance with state public-records and elections laws. Caldwell has also sued Snipes.

And...

Once elections supervisors send their recount totals back to the state, Detzner may order a manual recount for any race within a quarter of a percentage point. Currently, based on unofficial totals, the U.S. Senate race between Scott and Nelson and the race for commissioner of agriculture could need manual recounts.

Detzner could decline to order manual recounts if the losing candidates ask that the election be ended, or if the number of votes to be recounted is less than the number of votes needed to change the outcome of the race.

COMMENT:  Now the question is whether the recount will be honest.  If Gillum wins the governorship, you may be sure that the press will declare the recount a great victory for social justice.  If DeSantis wins, the same press will probably say that a "cloud" hangs over the election, that DeSantis may be "illegitimate."  That's what they did to George W. Bush in 2000.  And to Donald Trump in 2016.

November 10, 2018       Permalink

THE OUTRAGE – AT 12:48 P.M. ET:  The Florida vote count continues, but one thing largely unnoticed is the disgraceful role of much of the press in openly rooting for the Democrats, Andrew Gillum for governor and Bill Nelson for the Senate, to pull from behind and win.   From Mollie Hemingway at the Federalist: 

Florida voters elected Republican Ron DeSantis as governor and Republican Rick Scott as senator on election night. Both were announced as winners and their opponents conceded defeat. But then Democratic lawyer Marc Elias announced that Democrats would be going for a recount and would win the Senate seat.

A few days after the 2018 election was held, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) sounded the alarm about serious irregularities in the counting of ballots in two Democratic stronghold counties in Florida:

To make sure that votes aren’t being invented or destroyed to effect an outcome, one of the first priorities of any election supervisor is to announce how many ballots are in possession and how many remain to be counted. To fail to do this, as the Broward County and Palm Beach County Supervisors had, is to open themselves up to the accusation of massive vote fraud.

Citizens can not have confidence that ballots are not being destroyed, or created, when supervisors fail to immediately announce how many ballots are on hand.

And...

Despite these stunning violations of law, and Rubio’s cry to stop the madness in these counties that have a history of election problems, media seemed largely uninterested in what was happening in Florida.

Rubio reminded Americans that Broward County’s supervisor had a history of election problems, including illegally destroying ballots, secretly opening mail-in ballots, sending voters too many ballot pages, and leaving a constitutional question off the ballot.

Mollie then goes on to quote news outlet after outlet declaring that there was "no evidence" of voter fraud.  In fact, the evidence, of course, was in the history and the refusal of voting authorities to follow state law.  But when you're rooting for one side, you don't notice,.

To be clear, these are not the stories and social media accounts of official Democratic partisans, but the accounts and stories of a media that is desperate to not be thought of as “fake news.” A media that is desperate to make the case that they are something other than partisan hacks who care about elevating Democrats and harming Republicans above all other journalistic concerns. If you see even an ounce of daylight between these narrative constructions and those of Democrats, please share. Because to the naked eye, this is nothing but pure gaslighting about the obvious efforts of two of the most historically scandal-ridden counties in the country when it comes to elections and voting.

COMMENT:  Read the whole thing.  It's the best article I've seen about the vote count in Florida and the reaction of the bought press.

Journalism is destroying itself, and it doesn't seem to care.  Journalists have gone from the standard of reporting the news without fear or favor to "making a difference."  And it's the difference they want to make that's especially frightening.

November 10,  2018     Permalink

NOVEMBER 9,  2018

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

ARIZONA UPDATE – The vote count in the Arizona Senate race goes on, and may not be completed for another two or three days, or more.   Kyrsten Sinema, the whackjob Democrat, has taken the lead against Republican Martha McSally.  That lead increased from 9,000 this morning to more than 20,000 by evening.  Most observers believe, based on where outstanding ballots are from, that Sinema's lead will continue or grow.  This is a Republican seat, held by the retiring Jeff Flake.  If it flips, it will be the second GOP seat lost, the first being Dean Heller's in Nevada.  It really doesn't look good for Martha, an outstanding woman, a patriot, and a choice vastly superior to the apparent winner.

FLORIDA UPDATE – As always in Florida, strange things are happening.  We thought, at the end of election night, that Republican Governor Rick Scott had been elected to the US Senate, replacing incumbent Democrat Bill Nelson.  We thought that Republican Congressman Ron DeSantis had been elected governor, defeating Democratic demagogue and showboat Andrew Gillum.  That's what we thought.  But a strange thing has happened.  Votes started coming in from Broward County, a place not known for purity in vote counting, and vote officials refused to play by the states's rules.  Now both our victories are suddenly in jeopardy.  As each new batch of votes mysteriously appears, the margins of victory in the Senate and governorship races get thinner and thinner.  If the margins are within half a point, a machine recount will be called.  If a margin goes within a quarter of a point, a hand recount is ordered.   Rick Scott won two court victories today, as judges came down hard on those in charge of Broward's machinery.   This may be the start of a major scandal, and it's possible that we're seeing an election stolen before our eyes.

YOU CAN'T MAKE THIS UP – FROM THE ALGEMEINER:  The New York Times, under pressure, has suspended its moneymaking “Times Journeys” journalist-guided vacation tours of the Islamic Republic of Iran.  The 106-page printed catalog of 2019 departures hit mailboxes of Times subscribers this week. It includes trips to Antarctica, China, Japan, and the Galapagos Islands. But terror-sponsoring, Israel-hating Tehran, which has been a destination for the Times since the “Times Journeys” launched in 2014, has been unceremoniously dropped from the list.  A Times spokeswoman didn’t immediately respond to a question about why the trips had been stopped. The US Treasury also didn’t immediately respond on the record to a question about whether the Trump administration’s newly-tightened sanctions on Iran had required the Times to stop offering the journeys.  A booking representative for the Times Journeys explained that the Times Iran tour had been put “on the shelf for the next year or two,” the result of “just a change in the kind of direction that we wanted to go with the travel program.”  Next, a nostalgic Times tour of Nazi sites in Germany...and for small extra fee, a tour of Pearl Harbor from the Japanese perspective.

November 9,  2018     Permalink                             

NOT QUITE READY FOR PRIME TIME – AT 10:30 A.M. ET:  Ah, Evita.  When will you learn?  The newest Democratic star doesn't quite yet understand that her little personal problems are of no interest to the public.  What is she doing for her constituents?  That's the question.  And it might begin with her studying some issues and acting like a grown-up.  From Daily Caller: 

Democratic socialist and Rep.-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York announced Thursday that issues like finding an apartment in Washington, D.C., before receiving her congressional salary are “very real.”

“I have three months without a salary before I’m a member of Congress, so how do I get an apartment?” Ocasio-Cortez said to The New York Times. “Those little things are very real.”

However, she noted that she and her partner have been saving money since before leaving her job as a bartender in New York. (RELATED: Ocasio-Cortez On Paying For Expensive ‘Medicare For All’ Plan: ‘You Just Pay For It’)

“We’re kind of just dealing with the logistics of it day by day,” said Ocasio-Cortez. “I’ve really been just kind of squirreling away and then hoping that gets me to January.”

While Ocasio-Cortez told The NYT that she “can’t really take a salary,” filings by the Federal Election Commission (FEC) show that she has at least taken one “payroll” check during her time as a candidate.

Following publication of her interview with The NYT, the Democratic socialist tweeted about the issue.

“There are many little ways in which our electoral system isn’t even designed (nor prepared) for working-class people to lead,” Ocasio-Cortez tweeted. “This is one of them (don’t worry btw – we’re working it out!)"

COMMENT:  Okay, she's young.  We feel for her.  But, you know, she's a sudden star.  There are people who will stake her to a small loan.  We'd much rather hear about how she intends to pay for Medicare for all, or to solve international issues.

Congress is no place for kids or amateurs.

November 9, 2018       Permalink

ALL-OUT ASSAULT ON "WHITE WOMEN" – AT 9:50 A.M. ET:  That is one, ugly result of Tuesday's election.  "How can you white women do this to us?" seems to be the main question on the political left.  White women just didn't do what they were ordered to do.  And those white women who supported Judge Kavanaugh?  Treason!  But women who happen to be white are striking back.  From Townhall.com: 

Republicans foiled Democrats’ dreams of a Senator O’Rourke, a Governor Gillum and a Governor Abrams, and, apparently, white women are to blame for it.

One Twitter warrior deemed white women “footstools of the patriarchy” for voting Republican, claiming that their decision is based on a desire to submit to their husbands. Jemele Hill, staff writer for The Atlantic, argued that white women are not “the face of feminism,” because they voted for Ted Cruz and, in 2016, for Donald Trump. A viral tweet listed Republicans for which white women voted in the midterms and concluded, “white women gonna white.”

Don’t worry, though. The Women’s March is here to help us out: “There’s a lot of work to do, white women. A lot of learning. A lot of growing. We want to do it with you.”

Phew! For a second there I thought we were going to have to continue navigating these scary political waters on our own. I’m so relieved to know that, instead of thinking for ourselves, we’ll have obscure liberal Twitter activists and Linda Sarsour guiding us. I’m hoping my tyrannical husband won’t be too upset with me for going against his commands. Last week he gave me an extra fifty cents in my allowance and told me to “buy something pretty,” so maybe he’ll be just as gracious when I tell him I’ve started forming my own opinions.

The irony is, of course, rich. Leftist feminists, long-asserting the strength and independence of women, now argue that some women are so weak that they need to depend on liberals to tell them how to vote. They cannot fathom that we Republican “white women” may actually have different values than they do. It must be because we are “foot soldiers of the patriarchy.” (That’s newspeak for “self-hating idiots.”)

COMMENT:  Wonderful.  Read the whole thing.  It is sad that what's left of American journalism keeps covering for the fringe elements of the women's movement, but I see some evidence that mainstream women, many of whom happen to be white, are no longer silent, and will vote and think the way they please. 

November 9,  2018    Permalink