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OCTOBER 16,  2018

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

TED IN BATTLE – Senator Ted Cruz and Congressman Robert Francis (Beto) O'Rourke held their final debate tonight in the critical Senate race in Texas.  Apparently it was bloody, but my friend, Silvio Canto Jr, assesses it as a Cruz win.  Cruz is a talented debater.  O'Rourke is a talented fraud.  The latest CNN poll has Cruz up by seven points.  However, that poll leans Dem, so the truth may lie several points higher.  O'Rourke has vast funds, imported from the usual coastal enclaves, and he will now unleash a storm of ads.  Ted has got to stay on the offensive, which he will.  The key will be turnout.  O'Rourke has movie-star style; Ted has Senate style.  I'm hoping Texans will see the difference.

SILENCE IS TWITTER GOLD – The president scored a great victory in the Kavanaugh confirmation, and one reason for that victory was his own silence during the proceedings.  He handled himself well, except for a few foolish remarks about Professor Ford.  He should have learned that silence is indeed golden, when properly applied.  He's been splendid on the campaign trail, rallying a party that always needs a waking up.  But today he blundered twice, once by labeling exotic dancer (stripper to normal people) Stormy Daniels as "Horseface," and again by seeming to compare the leader of Saudi Arabia to Judge Kavanaugh, suggesting that both men have been assumed guilty until proved innocent.  The leader of Saudi Arabia is a brutal dictator; Judge Kavanaugh is a civilized scholar.  The president is on a roll, and he can ruin it if he steps all over himself, as he did today.  Shush!

THE PRESIDENT IS RIGHT – FROM THE NEW YORK POST:  President Trump said Tuesday he doubts he’ll face Michael Bloomberg in 2020 because Democrats “will eat him up” in the primaries if he becomes a presidential candidate.  “I think the Democrats will eat him up,” Trump told the Fox Business Network.  “You know you have a lot of people running. I’m hearing names that are shockingly bad but they’re nasty.”  Bloomberg, who was formerly a Republican and an Independent, announced last week that he changed his voter registration to Democrat, setting the stage for possible presidential run.  The billionaire has said he’ll “take a look” at a 2020 bid after the midterm elections.   I'll make an exception to my last "short take," urging some silence on the president.  This was an astute remark.  Bloomberg is living in a dreamworld if he thinks there's a wanting of Mike in the Democratic Party.  It's a new, radical party, and Bloomberg doesn't fit.  He should save his fortune and do good works, even though I'd oppose some of those works. 

October 16, 2018       Permalink   

IS THE TRUTH CATCHING UP TO KEITH ELLISON? – AT 11:07 A.M. ET:  Keith Ellison, late of the Nation of Islam, cop-hater, Democratic national vice chair, and Democratic candidate for attorney-general of Minnesota, has credible domestic violence charges against him.  And voters are starting to notice.  From Fox:   

Embattled Democrat Rep. Keith Ellison’s lead in the Minnesota Attorney General election appears to be vanishing amid allegations of domestic violence against his ex-girlfriend.

The congressman’s bid to become the top law enforcement official in the blue state was supposed to be an easy task for a popular Democrat who holds one of the top positions within the Democratic National Committee (DNC).

But Ellison’s lead has taken a dramatic cut since Karen Monahan came forward with her story in August detailing the physical and emotional abuse she suffered allegedly at the hands of Ellison.
In one particular incident, Ellison allegedly dragged her from a bed and shouted “!!!!“ and “I hate you.” She also released a 2017 medical document in which she identified the congressman as the cause of her “emotional and physical abuse.”

Recent polls indicate that Ellison in a dead heat race with Doug Wardlow, the Republican opponent, according to the New York Times. The poll also found that 40 percent surveyed voters said the domestic abuse allegations “are a factor” in whether to vote for the Democrat. Another poll shows the congressman leading by five points.

Ellison has denied all the allegations and allowed the party to review Monahan’s allegations. The state Democratic Party hired Democratic Party-affiliated lawyer Susan Ellingstad whose draft report cleared him of wrongdoing.

COMMENT:  Yes, the Dems investigated one of their own and found him wonderful.  Of course, Ellison is entitled to the presumption of innocence, and a case must be proved against him.  But the charges come with evidence, and he's ducked the evidence.

He may still win, but we hope he doesn't.

Note the difference in the Democratic and media attitudes toward Ellison and toward Justice Kavanaugh, who was automatically considered guilty.

October 16, 2018       Permalink

PRESIDENT HOLDS – AT 10:32 A.M. ET:  For the second day, the president is at 51% in the Rasmussen poll.  He seems to be edging up in other polls as well.  From Rasmussen: 

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Tuesday shows that 51% of Likely U.S. Voters approve of President Trump’s job performance. Forty-eight percent (48%) disapprove.

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

COMMENT:  This probably doesn't include input based on the president's interview with "Sixty Minutes" Sunday.  The general feeling is that he aced it, coming off very well against hostile questions.

We are now three weeks from the midterm elections.  That's about four lifetimes in politics.  Watch for the October surprise.

October 16,  2018     Permalink

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 Facebook 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 Hoskin 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," Hoskin 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