November 29, 2022

Damn, China.

 China has issues.

Standing up for your beliefs

 Standing up  for your beliefs is always the right course of action.

November 28, 2022

FBI role in January 6th? Jimmy Dore discusses.

Not-a-conservative Jimmy Dore discusses the FBI role in the January 6th 'insurrection'.  The left has lost Jimmy Dore, proving how insane they have become.  Meanwhile, the conspiracy theorists have been proven right (again).

November 27, 2022

The notion that inflation precedes societal collapse

While not universally true, this is an important consideration.  Watch this great video from Academy of Ideas, keeping in mind that recent inflation has not been tamed around the world, including in America despite metrics pointing to a possible ebb in progress (thanks predominantly to on-going interest rate hikes that entail their own special problems).


Europe is bound to see further inflation coupled with energy and food concerns, China is facing a myriad of societal problems, while in America the problem will be slower to fully materialize but as purchasing power continues to diminish, expect to see growing unrest without real solutions being enacted.  And don't expect those with Democrats wanting more of the same, and Republicans, with only Congress in their column, will be roadblocked in any ideas they put forward.  Gridlock will only ensure that not much gets done.  In 2024 after a couple of what will probably be bad years, the Democrats will blame obstructionist Republicans and the GOP will blame "more of the same" Democrats.  The only shorter term hope for America, is a Republican sweep in 2024.  That's probably true for the longer term as well.

Sunday verse

 


November 26, 2022

Wait, you mean Trump was right about GINA?

Bans on Chinese Huawei in the U.S.?  Who would have thought China was a problem?  Oh, yeah, president Trump.

November 25, 2022

Unintended Consequences illustrated better than I ever could

I just discovered this series on unintended consequences (although not Reason or ReasonTV). It's worth showing to your leftist friends and acquaintances.

November 24, 2022

Some comedic relief

 Via Awaken with JP:

Happy Thanksgiving America

 Happy Thanksgiving everyone.



November 23, 2022

Mitch McConnell is not the guy

Mitch McConnell is not the guy to lead conservatives and Republicans to a strong or lengthy majority.  He's fresh off a self-serving Republican loss in what was supposed to be a red wave election. McConnell is not the guy.  He's a status quo guy and status quo is not what conservativism and not what America needs at this point in history.  Yet there he remains. This goes beyond left and right, he exemplifies the status quo nature of American politics and culture, as it remains mired in a slow drift leftward towards socialism and Orwellian social credit  (despite the laudable growing effort to thwart it).


Mitch McConnell has done some good things for conservatism in regards to judicial appointments, but he's not the guy to lead conservatism and a belief in American fundamental values back into preeminence. He's just not.  He's not a visionary.  In fact that is something he seems to fear as a threat to his position.  Not the guy.


November 22, 2022

They admit it, only when it no longer matters.

Hide, defer, obfuscate, deflect, misdirect or whatever they need to do, for as long as they can. In this case the Hunter Biden laptop story is finally coming to light, only because the GOP has congress and now they HAVE to talk about it. Of course they are still trying to divert attention:

November 21, 2022

5 million more votes

I discussed this earlier, when the total votes advantage for Republicans in the midterms was just over 4 million.  Now it's 5 million.  Tim Pool and Dave Rubin share their takes.

November 20, 2022

Happy Quote of the day

This perspective on the on-going political realignment comes to us via Marc Lotter at the Washington Times:

The Associated Press’ VoteCast, which compares 2020 and 2022 voter demographics, shows Republicans gained 22% more support from Hispanic and Latino voters, 14% more from Black voters, and 5% more from White voters with college degrees. Republicans also expanded our advantage with white voters without a college degree by 6%. This shows Republicans winning more support from critical Democrat voting blocks, as well as expanding its support from traditional conservative voting groups.
So, if you view 2022 strictly in terms of wins and losses of elections, yes, it wasn’t the best result. But getting people to break up with the party they’ve supported blindly for decades is hard and requires patience. Close elections today could point to victories in the years ahead as more and more disillusioned Democrats realize they broke up with Democrats for a reason. The issues remain the same and that inevitable breakup will finally stick in the not-too-distant future.

This is part of the reason why I have said that 2024 holds a lot of promise for conservatives, despite the potential pitfalls

Sunday verse

 


November 19, 2022

Existential 2024 Dangers

With the White House going after president Trump (yet again) as a response to the Republican congress pursuing the Hunter Biden laptop investigation as a backdrop, Republicans not only a presented a great opportunity for 2024, they also face existential dangers in trying to retake the senate and the White House as well as expanding their lead in congress.

Backlash

The backdrop of the White House going after president Trump is only the beginning.  Come January Let's Go Brandon and the rest of the Democrats, along with a gleefully willing media, big tech, entertainment industry and establishment Republicans are going to push back, harder than ever.

It won't just be directed at president Trump.  There will be a hue and cry that as the recession gets worse, it's only the Republican congress that is standing in front of the Let's Go Brandon led effort to fix the situation.  They are obstructing help will be the one-note chorus.  They want the suffering to continue.  They have no ideas and are standing in the way of great Democrat ideas. Blah. Blah. Blah.

It's stupid because the Democrats will not compromise and they will not face the culpability of having created the mess (remember the Russian gas hike phoniness?).  But despite the stupidity and despite the universal and correct cry from the right that more of the same policies will not solve but merely worsen the situation, that message will not get through the miasma of leftist shills and Republicans could be stuck with  100% of the blame for the worsening economy and global issues.

Worse still, they could actually contribute to that message unintentionally.  While proposing many ideas in congress that will inevitably be stalled in the senate, before ever reaching a potential Let's Go Brandon veto, they will investigate the Hunter Biden laptop.  That presents an obvious narrative to the left: "the Republicans have no ideas and so are focusing on a non-scandal to distract voters."

Which brings us to their other issue.

Failure

The Republicans are going to be hard pressed to show much success with a bare majority in Congress and a minority in the senate.  They will have no major legislative successes to proclaim come 2024. That will be a boon to Democrats but it will also potentially create apathy among conservative voters.  You can see that narrative already trying to take hold with the left's accusation that Trump has lost his energy.  They want us to feel hopeless.  Failure will only reinforce itself in a circular feedback loop.

Where this becomes exceptionally problematic for Republicans is in the election fraud area.  Democrats with their early voting schemes, ballot harvesting schemes, etc. have opened up significant doubt on the right about electoral fairness.  In losing governorships, in losing much of the ability to do something on a state by state basis about voter IDs, poll watching etc.,  the Republicans have painted themselves further into a corner. Despite voter shifts to the right in the 2022 midterms, the red wave did not materialize thanks to a concerted effort on the left to ensure days and weeks of vote counting uniformly benefitted their chosen candidates.

While some Republicans seem content to  allow the left to win as long as their own fiefdoms survive (ahem, Mitch McConnell), conservatives cannot let that happen. The Republicans in the senate have already ceded some of that fight by allowing current leadership to continue.  That means the fight to overcome the rolling failure must be conducted outside of Washington D.C. It must be conducted in state houses, it must be conducted in courts, it must be conducted in communities.  Citizens must take action at local and state levels. Failing that, 2024 will be a true failure for Republicans and more importantly, for liberty and justice for all. 

November 18, 2022

Chuck Schumer says the quiet part out loud.

Chuck Schumer's stance is that abortion is a right but hey, we need more people so let's boost immigration.

Via Breitbart:

The United States needs more immigration to compensate for declining fertility, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said at a press conference Wednesday...
“Now, more than ever, we’re short of workers,” Schumer said on the Hill at a press conference, which was intended to tout several draft amnesties for illegal migrants... He continued:
We have a population that is not reproducing on its own with the same level that it used to. The only way we’re going to have a great future in America is if we welcome and embrace immigrants, the dreamers and all of them — because our ultimate goal is to help the Dreamers [illegals who were brought in by their parents] get a path to citizenship for all 11 million — or however many undocumented there are here [emphasis added].

Breitbart went on to discuss the problem real problem with fertility rates is desired fertility vs. actual fertility.  That's a real and important distinction.  It's worth clicking the link above for the entire read. There are other ways to help American demographics and the available labor force that Democrats don't want to discuss because they don't help Democrats or their donor class.

Schumer's now openly spoken desire is to legalize millions of voters for Democrats and cheap labor for big business.  They are colluding to dilute American jobs, openly.

November 17, 2022

Well, finally.

 It took long enough for Republicans to win congress.  Now what?

November 16, 2022

American tech crunch

 Peter Zeihan discusses the onshoring of tech jobs, which seems to be coming.

Russian missile strike on Poland

NATO member Poland was hit by Russian missiles.  Nobody wants this to escalate but Poland is obviously upset about it.  I expect some condemnation from NATO but not much more at this point.

Trump announces 2024 run

 This speaks for itself. Or rather, president Trump speaks for himself.


Here's the full speech:

November 15, 2022

Take heart conservatives, and stop playing "fair"

I mentioned a while back that a poor midterm performance for Republicans had a silver lining for conservatives. Then more recently, I questioned whether it was time to devolve into chaos (before arguing not to do so).   But conservatives, there is reason to take heart.  Take a look at this latest House performance snapshot from RCP. What do you see?


I'll tell you what I see; Republicans won the generic congressional ballot vote. At least as of now. They won, not by a "slim majority" but by 4.1%.  In other words by 4.3 million votes.  

Now we can unfairly use the Democrats' own words against them: the majority of voters have been disenfranchised because the popular majority of voters is not reflected in congressional seats.  True, at that ratio the GOP would net out at about only 222 seats.  True, we do not  stand for majority rule but the constitutional concepts of a representative republic and avoidance of majority tyranny.  But so what?  Why play fair when we do not clearly get that from the other side?

We can also take hear that the RCP polling (or at least my interpretation of it), was pretty darn close to accurate.  What that means is more important than just interpreting poll results.  It means the country, at least for now, is drifting towards the right.  It's not surprising given how bad this administration, senate and congress have been.  In fact it should have been far better a performance, but the electoral wind is still at our back, we are less afraid to mix it up, we are less inclined to roll over and take it.  Given all that, given that the Democrats are bound to make things still worse over the next two years, 2024 is shaping up to give us the red tidal wave we wanted in 2022.

Frustration

Is it time to devolve into chaos yet? Or do we just accept that this is going to continue? Frustration from things like this:


Can lead to a lot of frustration. I don't think Kari Lake should just knuckle under and accept a dubious defeat. The best way to deal with dubious results however, is logically, as espoused by Jordan Person in this discussion about president Trump:


Logic does not mean giving up, it means fighting within legal parameters.  I know that's hard to do when you feel you're being cheated, but it is ultimately necessary.

November 14, 2022

Climate Change Peer Reviews

Dr. John Robson and CDN do a great job debunking climate change nonsense and activism. 

November 13, 2022

Enjoy your stupid life

 An adjunct to my previous post, this gentleman has the right idea: enjoy it.


You can try to "fight city hall" and still enjoy your life.  They are not only not mutually exclusive, it is imperative to do both at the same time.

The election steal is an on-going business

They shall reap what they sow. If they steal this the looming recession, more Let's Go Brandon, more government, more disaffection for typical Democratic voter disaffection and ultimately more momentum for conservatives for 2024.


Honestly I am feeling fatigued personally. I've been blogging for 14 years and things have moved mostly in the wrong direction. Mostly.

 I remember the American resurgence of the 1980's under Ronald Reagan.  He was a populist with polish.  He was America first. He stood against communism and socialism and big government.  He believed in the individual. He revived what made America great.  He breathed it into America so well the country was able to elect a Republican congress shortly after his presidency. There were ripples.  Even under subsequent Republican presidents (Bush and Bush), that sentiment did not exist.  Not until president Trump did I feel like another American resurgence was possible.  The Establishment stole it.  They stole it from the American people and are trying to kill it.  They did not want Reagan, they did not want Trump. So they stole not a presidency or a congress but they stole liberty, and opportunity.

Even now they continue to do it. It is unnerving and demoralizing. It is what they want, they want you to succumb to defeat. Sometimes I have felt that way - give up blogging, it's pointless. No one listens except those who already understand.

This is no time for that. This is the time we must redouble our efforts or the greatest country in the history of the world will perish with not so much as a whimper. 

Sunday verse

 


November 12, 2022

Trump-DeSantis ticket?

 Is this what to expect for 2024? Dinesh D'Souza discusses the possibility.

Twitter fun

 Mark Dice explains why Elon Musk's changes at Twitter are great to watch:

November 11, 2022

Tim Pool vs Milo Yiannopoulos

Tim Pool and Milo Yiannopoulos recently discussed the outcome of the midterms. The conversation is quite long but interesting. Milo has some great insights but Tim does challenge him on certain points, and fairly so.

Let's Go Brandon tone deaf

Rep. Steve Scalise on Fox explains why Let's Go Brandon is tone deaf. C'mon man! Let's Go Brandon is as divisive as was president Obama, if not worse.  Why would he change in the face of an obvious need? 

GOP establishment, Fox is going after Trump

 I'm not sure it's going to work.

Credit where it's due?

Inflation cooled in the latest report.  No thanks to Let's Go Brandon, it's all due to the aggressive rate hikes from The Fed. They have slammed the brakes on the economy and it's slowly working.  The thing is, the delayed effect, when they finally pause or pivot from that approach, the economy will likely be in a deep recession. Several experts weigh in on CNBC.


Fox Business' Charles Payne has a different take, one I am more apt to agree with:

Thank A Vet

 It's Veterans Day (or here in Canada, Remembrance Day).  Thank a vet.




November 10, 2022

Red ripple silver linings?

The country is shifting red, slower than we would like but the shift is on. If Let's Go Brandon wants to ignore that, it's very good news for Republicans for 2024.  Especially since he won't be pushed out of running by fellow Democrats after a massive red wave.  He'll run and he'll lose, big. 

November 9, 2022

Red Ripple

Cue the fail music.  The Republican red wave didn't happen. It seems like they're likely to win congress, but the senate is up for grabs.  Governorships so far the GOP is down 2 from yesterday.  This is not to say that there's a mandate for Let's Go Brandon. This was not a red wave, it was a red ripple.

That's not to call it a horrible night for conservatives.  Bad?  Almost.  Sub-par?  Definitely.  Nevertheless there are positives to be taken away from this already.  I'm not talking here about individual races, though to be sure there are bright spots.  I'm not talking about the possibility that Republicans can still take the senate or do well in the remaining uncalled governor races, though both of those are still achievable. 

No I'm talking about 2024.  Two more years of misery may be just what the country needs to finish shaking off the swamp stew it has been ingesting for more than a decade.  Democratic control of key levers means the next two years will not get better as far as inflation, unemployment, wage stagnation, labor force participation, woke culture, crime, illegal immigration etc. That means the rot will fester, and that's bad for America.  But so too will the grassroots energy to do something about it.  By 2024 that ripple may turn into a tsunami.

If the GOP play their cards right. Mitch McConnell has to go, he left senate wins on the table for the Democrats, just to protect his own fiefdom.   The grassroots of the party needs to continue to support MAGA populists.  It does not have to be via Trump, though it can be.

The real potential here though are learnings.  What did Florida Republicans do right and how does that get translated to other states? Is Trump still the guy or has his window passed? Did Kari Lake's fail to appear to move to the center harm her in the Arizona governor general election and if so how can that be avoided?  Many Latinos have moved to the Republican column, how does the GOP grow that further?

Beyond the top line takeaways, the obvious tactical takeaways that I have been arguing since 2008; the core things the GOP must do are (1) engage (2) listen and (3) persuade.

Engagement means reaching out to disaffected communities go to various constituencies (e.g. college educated women, Latinos, African Americans, people with addiction issues).  This is a long term, big tent approach to broadening the reach of the party.  These groups cannot listen if you don't even talk to them. 

Next, listen to their concerns.  Understand what it is they want and need from government.  This does not mean abandoning conservative values, it means finding out what matters to voters.  If you are offering solutions to voting irregularities when gas prices are the issue of the day, you are not understanding the battlefield that is taking shape in front of you.

Lastly once you have engaged and understood (both have to be ongoing processes by the way),  you must tailor your solutions to the problems of the day.  You do not give up your principles, you determine how to solve the problems, within a conservative, common sense framework.  Then, and only then, do you try to persuade the audience that your solution is better than the alternative.  And you do so in a positive vision sort of way. If you do not have your own realistic and workable solution you cannot argue that the other guys are wrong because the response will (and should) be "so what, you don't offer an alternative".  

All three of these require a well-oiled and robust infrastructure which is something the GOP seems to be lacking at times and in places.  So this too must be addressed.  Fund raising, intra-party messaging and communication.

The final takeaways are more tactical.  We laughed when Let's Go Brandon was in New York stumping for governor Hochul.  But they understood their firewall, and shored up a defensive path to victory in key places. This was our mistake.  We should have read the room and adjusted our own strategies accordingly.  It seems conservatives were just too busy gleefully anticipating a red wave; our mistake.  

We believed the polls.  Why?  Because it looked heavily tilted in our favor. Relying on polling is a mistake we too often make (myself included in trying to account for bad polling).  Some of the best pollsters from 2020 did the worst with respect to 2022.  Oops. The great Rush Limbaugh often opined that the only poll that matters is the ballot box.  Run like you are in a dead heat.  Run like you need more votes. Otherwise you turn a red wave into a red ripple.

November 8, 2022

Nope, nope, NOPE!

Elections around the world do not take days or weeks to count, this is an invitation for Democrats to cheat. NO.   DO NOT BUY THIS CRAP!

Get this right America

Every election is "the most important election of our lifetime" nowadays. There's an inherent sound of hyperbole when you hear some pundit say that. The Democrats this midterm cycle are going on about how this is about democracy versus a facist far right takedown of America or some such nonsense.  The thing is, every election back to and including 2008 have been the some of most important elections in our lifetimes.

Back in 1980, with Jimmy Carter singlehandedly bringing America from a weakened superpower to near also-ran, 1980 was a supremely important election that allowed Ronald Reagan to become president and not only avert a catastrophic Carter re-election, Regan also reinvigorated America. With his relection and the echo of the Republicans' Contract with America, the country enjoyed a remarkable period of growth and strength. From WWII onward, 1980 had become the most important election of the post World War era. Indeed that stood until 2008.

2008 and 2012 were massively important elections that sadly America got wrong.  Obama did a great deal of damage to the country all while being praised for his supposed dizzying intellect and having his lack of experience ignored. Meanwhile 2010 and 2014 were important to counteract Obama's woeful policy positions, and America got those right. It got so bad that during the Obama era that all 4 of those election cycles were critically important, along with the 2016 election of Donald Trump, which of the 5 was the most important and stands as a rival to the 1980 win of Ronald Reagan, but came as much more of a surprise to many people.  I thought Trump stood a decent chance win but I thought it would be close electorally. His success there surprised me, in a good way. That period marked 5 critical elections in a row, where the country became more and more left leaning and more and more partisan in both directions as it became clear the Republicans could no longer work with Democrats who had drifted far too far to the socialist, dystopian and Orwellian left.

Where America failed between 2016 and 2018 was limited to Congressional Republicans not aligning with the president during their two year bicameral majority and doing as much meaningful work as they could. America got 2018 wrong thanks in large part to a biased media and an energized left.  And in 2020, an election where America needed president Trump to win, despite a miassive increase in support he somehow, mysteriously 'lost ' to a man with the intellectual horsepower of a turnip.

Somebody got that one wrong massively, because Let's Go Brandon is Jimmy Carter 2.0 incarnate. That brings us to now. The country desperately needs a brake pedal applied to this guy.  Like Emergency Brakes, brake pedal, thrust reversers and anything else you can throw at him. It's important to not just America, but to the entire world that this be halted until 2024 when an actual leader can step back into the void and take the helm.  2024 will then become the most important election of our lifetimes.  But until then, you have to get this right America.


 

November 7, 2022

Rebuke required

C'mon Man! How could anyone have voted for this guy?  And how could he not need a shellacking in the midterms?

Wait, who now?


Wait, by when???


And who's lying in this situation?


The biggest "Let's Go Brandon" rebuke so far, is coming tomorrow. 

Push Polling the polls the day before?

I haven't talked about persuasion polls much (if at all).  Unlike typical push polls, a lot of political polls are not intended to sway those being polled but rather those viewing the results of the polls. That could be what's happening right now.  The RealClearPolitics average of generic congressional ballots has seen the Republican advantage slip back to +2.5% since pesking well above that mark last week.  Why?


It is coming from the Economist/YouGov poll (which has historically had a Democrat tilt in it's results) showing only R+1%, the outlier NBC poll showing D+1% and the ABC News/WaPo poll showing R+2%.  These all have dragged down the Republican advantage and all come out in the final days before the midterm election.  All of these outfits are pro-Democrat.

In my filter above I've left them in and am still seeing R+3.2%.  What if we take them out as dubious inclusions?


Even leaving the ABC/WaPo poll in, it still rises to R+4.2%.  But then what about Rasmussen which has a slight Republican tilt? If we remove that, Republicans still lead by 3.5%:


There's no bad way to slice this but it makes predictions difficult.  Here's my take on final numbers:

Senate: Republicans 53 or 54.
House: Republicans gain 28-48
Governors: Republicans 30-32

It's optimistic compared to some, but the polls, even the likes of YouGov are still shifting towards Republicans, and hopefully, that's not done yet.


November 6, 2022

November 4, 2022

RCP is getting closer

As of this morning, RealClearPolitics is edging closer to my weighted percentage interpretation of their results.  They currently are averaging the results at R+3%.  I currently have it as R +4.4% with my filters and weighted averages factored in.



Unemployment is ticking up

 On the surface, the jobs report doesn't look bad, but honestly this is not good news.

November 2, 2022

Governor Series: KS - Derek Schmidt

How does Kansas even consider a Democrat for governor?  There hasn't been a lot of polling I've seen for this state but where there has been, the incumbent Democrat has a 2 to 3 point lead. Derek Schmidt would be a solid governor for Kansas.

Governor Series: NY - Lee Zeldin

New York is a tough tough road for any Republican, but Lee Zeldin does have a shot at the governorship and he'd be a good governor.  Even a fire hydrant would do a better job than you-know-who.

My latest take on RCP polling

Previously, my take on Real Clear Politics (my rationale explained briefly here) showed Republicans up by a whopping 5.5% on the average of their polls I felt were worth inclusion.  That's slipped a little bit but still showing a healthy GOP lead in the generic congressional ballot.

Here's my latest take on the available polls, 3 new ones have been added by RCP - NPR/PBS/Marist (R +3%), CBS News Battleground Tracker (R +2%) and CNN (R+4), with the largest sample being the CBS News poll and also having the smallest Republican advantage.  All three have brought the average Republican lead down.  

Keep this grain of salt in mind: all three newly added polls are from Democrat-favoring institutions.  This could be damage control.  I actually don't mind that as long as conservatives and like-minded independents do indeed get out and vote.  Why?  Because the alternative false narrative they could provide would be worse and the Left is missing that opportunity (unless the idea is already in play on a broader scale than we realize).

Here's what they would do if they were not so blindly and bitterly partisan;  start inflating the Republican advantage in these polls to ridiculous levels (R+12%, R +9%, R+11%) and then when it inevitably comes in short of that range, say at R+5%, the narrative could become that voters wanted change but at the last minute realized that they really didn't want a Republican majority and many voters pulled back and as 'reason took over' decided to revert to their true inclination to vote Democrat.  That narrative would keep the Democrats are the true majority notion alive, whereas sayin it's R +2% and then it turns out it ends up as R +5%, they will have to admit they took a deserved drubbing.

Or of course, they could just start to blame Biden. 

Governor Series: MI - Tudor Dixon

Tudor Dixon would make a great governor for Michigan, unlike the train wreck in the role right now.  Dixon is a bit of a longshot but some polls have her tied.  This is a state where every vote will matter.

Governor Series: OR - Christine Drazan

Oregon could have a Republican governor for the first time in seemingly forever.  Despite having some vitriolic replies to her tweets on Twitter, Christine Drazan leading in the polls in a three way race.

Governor Series: NV - Joe Lombardo

 This is a tight race, but Joe Lombardo is the right guy for Nevada.

Governor Series: AZ - Kari Lake

Kari Lake talks about her agenda, her opponent hides from debates and reporters. Forhtright vs. Suspicious?  Yep.


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