Open Thread

Mark Noonan12 Comments

We do have a problem with young voters and have to find a way to appeal to them. The first step I think we should take is annulling all student loans in default and then change the law to allow student loans to be discharged in bankruptcy after five years – with a proviso that 25% of the discharged amount is charged back to the institutions they attended. As I’ve said for years, the student loan system is a mere scam – a subsidy for the far left. And, no, I’m not interested in making kids suffer the burden of it. They were conned. So, let’s unburden them and start to gain their trust and support…and with the charge back, start to punish our enemies in the academic left.

We lost in Arizona – and while I’m sure the Democrats did commit voter fraud in Arizona (as they do everywhere they can) the bottom line is that McSally lost. The Republican governor of Arizona got hundreds of thousands more votes than McSally did…so, she was misfiring somewhere.

That said, voter fraud is a huge problem. It looks like we stepped up in time in FL and GA to prevent the most brazen theft in history. Usually, voter fraud works around the small margins. You know – Democrat behind 400 votes on election day, and then finds just enough to win. The reason for this is that manufacturing tens of thousands of votes is a risky business. But, the Democrats seem to have tried just that in FL and GA. It just shows how completely lawless they have become – how absolutely certain they are that the laws simply don’t apply to them. One of the reasons why is neatly shown by Jeb Bush’s statement about it – he wants the Broward official in charge removed, but only after the vote is certified. In other words, old line Republican that he is, he’s ok with the theft and then merely wants the crook to quit. So it has always been – and Democrats have expected it will always be. But the new GOP has a bit of backbone…and all the Democrats may really have done here is put the issue of voter fraud on the front burner.

Latest from the incoming House Democrats is that they’re going to drop the program of impeaching Kavanaugh (maybe Schumer pointed out that this would be an insanely stupid thing to do?), but they are still saying they’ll take on Trump, even if Mueller doesn’t show any criminal behavior (and, he won’t). No one can read the future – I guess we’ll find out if the American people in 2020 will reward or punish such behavior. My view is that Trump holds the advantage here because most casual observers simply don’t care about such inside baseball stuff. And if the Democrats shut down the government over it (and they are de-facto threatening that), then it could end badly for them. But, in the event, we’ll have to see. Maybe Democrat insanity is what the American people crave? Time will tell.

If, as I expect, we do prevail in FL, it means we will have taken down four sitting Democrat Senators in 2018. Not a bad bit of work – in fact, I don’t think the out party has lost that many Senators in a midterm since the 1930’s. Democrats are, rightly, pleased at their House victory…but getting back to 51 in the Senate is going to be a difficult prospect for them. Now, if the GOP gets crushed under a landslide in 2020, lots of GOP Senators will go down with it. But if its a GOP victory or even a narrow loss, then the only GOPer really at risk is in CO. Meanwhile, the GOP has an excellent chance of recapturing Alabama that year and can at least take a shot at New Hampshire and Michigan. Moving on to 2022, the GOP will have a shot at NV, CO and NH while the Democrats really only have hope in Wisconsin. On balance, absent a meltdown by either party, the 53 Seats we’ll hold in January should be pretty tough to take from us over the next two cycles, meaning that if Trump is re-elected, he’s going to have a GOP Senate (at least) through his whole term of office. That will simply be devastating to the Democrats in the judiciary.

And now you know why the Democrats are suddenly talking up abolishing the Senate.

November 11th, 1918

Mark Noonan7 Comments

A bit of family research by a cousin indicates my grandfather, George Childs Noonan, Sr, was being held as a POW by the Germans when World War One ended. He was involved in the Battle of the St Quentin Canal at the end of September, 1918, and he and his unit were captured after an epic stand against odds when they got cut off from their main body. My family was well represented in the War, with one grand uncle flying with the RAF and the rest in various American military units.

The War, when not simply forgotten, has a reputation of being nothing but a waste. But, it wasn’t. It was a war that had to be fought – the world couldn’t allow Imperial Germany to carry out its program of using unlimited military force to secure national ends. It is true enough that the Kaiser wasn’t nearly as evil as what came after him, but he was setting in train evil, and it had to be stopped.

And stopped it was. Though at a cost so high, as Churchill pointed out, that victory was indistinguishable from defeat. That is the real tragedy of the war – that the sides were so evenly balanced in power and military skill that no one could ever gain a decisive advantage until technological advances in 1918 made it possible for the superior mass of the Allies to just overwhelm the Germans with brute force.

No great Captains emerged from the war – no Rommel or Patton or MacArthur (though all three fought in the war). There was no spectacular victory on the field to fire the imagination. Just an intense, six weeks shock at the start of the war and then four very long years of grinding away at each other until one side quit.

It is worthwhile remembering them. They were very brave soldiers, on each side. They stuck it out in horrible conditions, year after year, and hardly a murmur of complaint arose. They were men, and they did their duty. And, now, 100 years later, that is all that really matters.

After the Blue Puddle

Mark Noonan27 Comments

It was lousy to lose the House – but I’ve read a story where the Democrats are seriously considering impeaching Justice Kavanaugh…so, the Democrat majority will likely be short lived. But, we still need to think about the future.

Looking ahead at the Senate maps in 2020 and 2022, there isn’t too much of a risk to the GOP majority – absent a meltdown of epic proportions, the GOP might have a very enduring Senate majority. Like in the 10+ year range. More than long enough to replace both Breyer and RBG, assuming Trump is re-elected in 2020 (a likely event given how simply difficult it is to eject a sitting President). There are some 135 (or more, not sure) open Federal seats in the judiciary and you know that Trump and Cocaine Mitch are going to go into overdrive filling them – fundamentally, the Judiciary is going to be under our control for a generation. Over time, this will become more and more noticeable as more and more cases are decided in favor of the Constitution. A great deal of what Democrats have accomplished these past 40 years has been via the Courts…now that will stop, and a good deal of it might even be reversed.

But we clearly failed in the House…and there are simply too many big population States where we are just doing miserably. California and New York most notably, but also Illinois, Massachusetts and New Jersey. We can’t count on holding the red States all the time and forever. We’re going to lose some in the red States…better to shore up our position with some major blue State wins in both the House and Senate. To do this, we’re going to have to ask what the blue Staters want, and then figure out how to give as much of it to them as we can consistent with the Populist-Conservative stamp of the modern GOP.

It is a tall order, but not impossible. We lost the California governorship by 18 points..but if we just get 1 in 10 CA voters to switch from Democrat to GOP, we win the governorship…and perhaps a Senate seat, as well. And likely a few House seats, into the bargain. And have a shot at winning California’s electoral votes. It is certainly worth the effort. Heck, just forcing the Democrats to defend their California position is worth the effort. Every dollar and minute spent in California is a dollar and minute they aren’t spending invading our territory. We ran less than 400 House candidates this year – and that is just criminal negligence, in my view. No Democrat, anywhere, should ever be without an opponent. I don’t care if it is the most forlorn hope in history, every Democrat should get a challenger – and a challenger who is provided at least enough money to show up. You never know when someone might catch fire and by a combination of pluck and luck, do the impossible. It is also crucial to run in the deep blue areas because it at least gets people everywhere used to the idea of voting GOP – that there is always an alternative. And it can’t be emphasized enough that it is in the battles on enemy territory that you breed the sort of warriors who will eventually bring you victory.

As for what to do to convince them to vote for us – that will be a case by case basis. What works in suburban Los Angeles might not work as well in suburban Chicago. But I’ll suggest a few, broad strokes we could try.

1. Annul defaulted student loan debt and allow the rest of it to be discharged in bankruptcy 5 years after the student leaves school. The stuff in default is mostly money gone for good, anyways, and I don’t see any reason to fatten lawyer pocketbooks by forcing the kids to go through bankruptcy on it. It is also, to me, absurd that student loans are pretty much the only sort of debt that can’t be discharged. Either a person is making enough money to pay, or they aren’t – and if they aren’t, then that should be the end of it. Lots of youngsters get suckered by the schools into thinking that any degree will make them rich. The truth is that only certain degrees are big money makers. Part of this, I think, should be putting part of the liability on the schools…if a kid goes bankrupt on his student loan, some percentage of it should be charged to the school where the loan was used. That’ll force the schools to be more careful, and stop selling degrees as a path to easy money.

2. Always side with the private sector unions in their battles with large corporations. Never, ever, never, no how, no way take the side of the large corporation. If we can’t pick a side, at least shut our traps about it. If we want to have a shot at breaking the Democrat hold on the blue cities, we’re going to have to get working class people to at least consider us. They won’t if they think we are siding with the bosses.

3. Work is what makes a person dignified. We Conservatives know this, but we aren’t doing enough to make sure that work is rewarded. Income tax cuts don’t resonate with working poor people who don’t functionally pay income taxes. Nor do fights over property rights mean much to renters. While keeping taxes low and protecting property, we’ve got to find a way to do something for poor working people who rent. Something has to be done to show working poor people that we give a darn about them…and we’re trying to help. Perhaps some sort of income support for low-income working people? Perhaps allowing them to write off sales taxes on major purchases (autos, home appliances, that sort of thing) on their taxes? Perhaps a low-income per child subsidy? Not sure here, guys: just thinking and spitballing.

4. Make firm and public enemies of the super rich. Most of them are liberals, and the few that aren’t are open borders hucksters who want to move their factories to China. They don’t care about us, and they don’t care about America.

5. Make firm enemies of all large corporations. No one likes them. At all. Pick fights with them. Break them up. Rake them over the coals for their idiocy. Show regular folks that the corporations which they dislike are also disliked by us.

Just a few ideas to show where I’m going here. We’ve got to expand the map, and we won’t expand it by the old Chamber of Commerce, GOPe tactics. Something new is needed. Maybe others will come up with better ideas than mine and that’s great. But we can’t assume we’ll keep winning with what we’ve got. Trump has shown us that if we start talking about issues people care about (in his case, immigration and trade), people respond. Lets find out what else they’ll respond to.

UPDATE: Mueller writing his final report.

2018 Mid-Terms

Mark Noonan18 Comments

Just a reminder – if we do get blown out tonight, after the President’s party suffered stinging rebukes in the ’82, ’94 and ’10 mid-terms, the President went on to be comfortably re-elected two years later. Also, if we lose tonight, we still have the White House, the Senate (almost certainly, unless there is an unexpected Blue Tsunami) with an increased majority and a solid, 5-4 majority on the Court. We’re still ahead of the game. Though, don’t kid yourself: losing will be bad in the sense that it will embolden the Democrats…though that, long term, could work to our advantage. They are crazy, after all, and two years of them being nuts as a House majority might work to our advantage in 2020.

Rumors have been flying all day, as is natural during Election Day. I can’t make out any pattern…some rumors are good for the GOP, others for the Democrats. I guess we’ll have to wait. But not much longer.

UPDATE: 8pm Eastern…not looking good for the GOP tonight.

UPDATE II: 8:41 Eastern…looking a lot better.

UPDATE III: GOP wins IN Senate race (thanks, Spook)

Pre-Midterm-ageddon Open Thread

Mark Noonan6 Comments

No one actually knows what will happen tomorrow – thing about the future is you can never tell exactly what it will be like.

That said: it does appear that the Blue Wave isn’t coming. There’s still a chance that Democrats surge to the polls and are joined by gigantic numbers of Trump-hating Republicans, but it is in the realm of a 1% chance, now. Even the most liberal pundits have pretty much conceded this – though, of course, anything but a Red Wave will be touted as “the people rejected Trump”.

The worst case scenario that I can see is a net gain of 3 for the GOP in the Senate and a narrow loss of the House (with the Democrats, at most, getting to 223 members). This would be irritating in a lot of ways – first off, no more legislation. The House simply wouldn’t pass anything that the Senate or Trump would agree to. So, reform-wise, we’d only have Trump’s ability to change regulations. The budget would just become a series of continuing resolutions carrying the FY 2019 budget through to the end of FY 2021. If the GOP holds the Senate – as just about everyone says they will – then at least Trump has no trouble staffing his Administration and appointing judges…easier, as if there winds up being 54 GOPers, makes it harder for a squish or two to wreck the program.

Best case scenario is the GOP gains 10 Senate seats and either gains or loses just two or three House seats. This is probably not going to happen…but I rate it as a 5% chance against the 1% chance of a Blue Wave.

If you haven’t voted, don’t forget to vote tomorrow!

Open Thread

Mark Noonan60 Comments

Our liberals are going nuts over Trump sending troops to the border…apparently working under the weird assumption that our army isn’t supposed to protect our borders. I guess that concept has gotten lost after 70 years of sending our troops into foreign shooting galleries under strict orders not to win.

President Trump is asking for $341,559.50 in legal fees from Team Stormy. No, I don’t know why they didn’t just round it up.

Its a small and very, very weird world:

In a really strange turn of events, it has been discovered that bombing suspect Cesar Sayoc worked at Ultra Gentleman’s Club in West Palm Beach, FL, the same strip club that Stormy Daniels performed at back in April, WPTV reported.

Jair Bolsonaro won the Presidency of Brazil with 56% of the vote and this is being described as a major blow against Democracy…because the people voted the wrong way, you see? The global elite is deathly afraid of that. Now, plenty of people on the right in the USA did laud the victory…but I’d hold off. Let’s see if he’s really the Tropical Trump he’s called, or if he’s a nut before we embrace him.

Victor Davis Hanson has an excellent article on the paradoxes of the immigrants – specifically, the caravan. Mostly centering around the oddity that they want to come here, but they don’t seem to particularly want to be American. I liken it to the barbarians outside Rome in the 5th century…they very much wanted to enjoy the good things of Rome, but they weren’t at all interested in preserving the social structures which produced the good things of Rome. The collapse of Western civilization (which was quite epic) from the 5th to the 10th centuries was simply because of this – and had the barbarians come in and humbly asked to be taught, it would have been a lot different. I’ve come around to the view that all immigration to the United States must cease for a period of at least 20 years. We need to kick out those who won’t assimilate and assimilate those who are willing. And only after that is accomplished can we afford to open the door again.

I didn’t know this – Don Surber notes that in order to get a poll response pool of 737 people, a total of 38,000 calls had to be made. That is a 1.94% response rate. Now, the pollsters tell you this doesn’t matter because those who hang up likely have the same overall opinions as those who don’t. Really? Seriously? I just can’t hold that to be credible – you might be missing some major trends out there. You know, like PA, MI and WI all breaking for Trump…

UPDATE: Trump secures Amazona’s vote for 2020:

President Donald Trump said in an interview that he plans to sign an executive order ending “birthright citizenship” for the children of non-American citizens who are born on U.S. soil, a move that would likely be challenged immediately in the courts over its constitutionality.

The first thing you think is that Democrats will challenge this in court…but, if they do, they have no assurance that the Supreme Court will back them. All they may end up doing is cementing Trump Administration policy. Also: my bet is that most Americans didn’t realize until just now that you can get citizenship merely by being born in the United States, even if of illegal immigrant parents. Democrats should be wary of fighting on this hill.

They won’t be, of course. Because they’re stupid.

Never Trust the MSM. Ever. Nope, Not Even That Guy You Like

Mark Noonan3 Comments

A lot of people are going on and on about the revelation that NBC News hid exculpatory evidence on Kavanaugh. I’m along the lines of: uh, why would you be surprised?

It is 2018, guys: there is no reason to be surprised by this. The Media has never been a vehicle of the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. It has always had a partisan bias. It is just that, a long while back, all political sides purchased reporters and editors to ensure their views got out there. It really can’t be emphasized enough how much opinion is actually paid for. As Samuel Johnson put it ages ago, none but a blockhead ever wrote except for money. Rely on it, even little blogger me has, at the back of his mind, that one day this might all pay off in a big way (though I’m more hopeful for the novel on this front). I hope and pray that I’ll never be tempted to defend what I don’t believe in return for money, but that temptation is massive in any field where you are putting out information for public consumption…and very large numbers of people simply do what their paymasters demand.

The MSM is, as we know, full to the brim with liberals to begin with. But just being liberal isn’t enough. To really endure in the MSM, you have to parrot on demand whatever comes down the pike – and if your liberalism isn’t enough to keep you going, then there’s always your paycheck to keep you in line. As well the worry that if you don’t toe the line, your future prospects could be ruined. But it isn’t just liberals. On the right, if you wonder why, say, some rather big names in Conservatism continue to boost the horrid “free trade” agreements and say that border control isn’t important, look no further than who is funding their work. If it is corporate money, you can rely on it that they’ll either talk the way their told, or they’ll be out of a job. And even in the independent media now rising, you’ve got to keep in mind that these people are trying to make a name for themselves and start getting paid. This often does result in them breaking important stories…but it can also lead them into doing all sorts of weird or stupid things just to get clicks and views.

Trust none of it. Ever.

I can’t emphasize enough how important it is to be skeptical. To check and re-check. To learn history on your own so you’ll have a good idea about how such things worked in the past. To always think, “does this really make sense?” when reading an assertion. Always, always, always look at what people do as opposed to what they say. I’ve seen the political prognosticators this past week speak loudly about how good it still looks for Democrats…and then I’ve seen them quietly adjust their actual predictions in favor of the GOP. I’ve seen Democrats still talking up their Blue Wave, while pouring money into New Jersey. On and on and on it goes like that. Look. Think. Check. Doubt. And have no favorites – raise no pundit or reporter up on a pedestal. They might go years doing good work, but then suddenly betray your trust. They are human, too.

In an Age of Lies, your defense is Doubt. It is far better if you approach each story with the attitude it isn’t true than to make yourself look a fool by believing lies…and the worst part of that is that once you’ve defended the lie, you’ll be tempted to keep defending it even when facts prove you wrong. If you went into it doubting it, then you’ll feel to no need to defend it when it is proved false…and, after a while, you’ll get so good at spotting nonsense that you’ll see right through it. You’ll be able to see, that is, the truth the liar is trying to hide from you.

But also be of good cheer – I think that ever more people are seeing the scam, and many have actually penetrated it and discovered the truth. We may be on the cusp of some real, radical change in our nation and we might even, just a few years from now, be in a place where more often than not, the truth gets out before the lies do.

Things Are Moving Fast

Mark Noonan29 Comments

Just a lot going on, huh? But let’s start with something a bit smaller in the grand scheme of things – mostly because I expected it.

Megyn Kelly is learning a harsh lesson. Remember, her audience at Fox was right of center but then she got into a fight with Trump and became a critic of the President. Presto!, she’s hired by NBC…who were hoping she’d be a right of center voice attacking the President on a popular show. Well, turns out that there isn’t much of a market for rightwing critics of the President and her show didn’t so much tank in the ratings as never had ratings to begin with. But, she did have the $69 million contract. What to do?

The staff at Megyn Kelly Today got a chance to speak with human resources on Wednesday, and voice their concerns about the host of their show.

An NBC insider tells DailyMail.com that employees on the show made it very clear to that they were ‘disgusted’ by Kelly’s blackface comments and ‘didn’t like her personally.’

Staffers were also informed by NBC that they were members of the Today team at a time when (their) jobs appeared to be on the line.

Meanwhile, a member of the NBC team tells DailyMail.com that there will be another meeting on Thursday at 10am after NBC made the decision to keep Kelly off the air for the remainder of the week.

‘Given the circumstances, Megyn Kelly Today will be on tape the rest of the week,’ said an NBC spokesperson.

When this first blew up, I didn’t even bother looking into what she said – knowing in advance that whatever she said wasn’t remotely racist. The Mrs finally looked it up and played it for me: yep, not racist. But, that is beside the point. The point is that she’s a barnacle for NBC and as she’s not a leftist, she has to go. And go without getting all of her $69 million (they’ll have to pay her a hefty sum, I’m sure…but it won’t be near the full amount, I’ll bet – but, even if they have to shell out the full amount, it still benefits as they can possibly get a money-maker in that time slot). Now, had Kelly been a lifetime leftist, this wouldn’t have happened: the left keeps all manner of failed shows on TV because they meet a particular leftwing demand. But Kelly wasn’t one of them – she’s now learning that if you are non-left, you have no friends on the left. Ever. The left will use you, but it won’t love you – and it’ll knife you as soon as you no longer serve as an anti-right tool. Never Trump should take note – but they won’t: like all appeasers, they are only hoping the alligator eats them last.

Nothing really new about the whole bomb thing – just more yadda, yadda, yadda about how it means we’re supposed to surrender to the left. To which all of us are saying: “Yeah, no”. Legal Insurrection has a good run-down on it. My guess: leftwing hoax designed to hammer the GOP. I know a lot of people push back against that – but, remember, we’re dealing with people who really have made stuff up in the past for political reasons. From “racist” notes on receipts to “hands up, don’t shoot” inspired riots. Fake bombs are simply not outside the realm of possibility for the left.

Still seeing more good news for the GOP in early voting, but I’m getting suspicious that everyone, right and left, is just confirming their biases. Because of various actions I still expect the GOP to do pretty well on the 6th – it is clearly not going the way the Democrats were expecting even a month ago – but I think, in the end, we’re all just going to have to wait for the votes to be counted before we can be sure. It is notoriously difficult to predict how mid-terms go because you never know what the electorate will look like. I discount the polls because I simply don’t expect the electorate to be 42% independents voting 60/40 for the Democrats. I could be like that, and if it is, the GOP will get slaughtered. But, I don’t expect it. I expect the breakdown to be more 35% GOP, 32% Dem, 37% Independent…but with the independents breaking slightly GOP and more Dems voting GOP than GOPers voting Dem. But, we’ll see.

UPDATE: Watch this clip of an MSMer complaining about having “Fake News” shouted at him by a random person. Important bit: it happened in Queens. Not exactly a MAGA stronghold. If people in Queens are following the President on this, I can only suspect a very large shift in national attitudes which may well show up surprisingly on the 6th.

Stocks took another dump yesterday but are rebounding a bit, so far, today. To me, this looks like a mere market correction. If so, there could be another 10% downside for the Dow (ie, a total drop of about 2,500 more points). Nothing to get worked up about – also, the market doesn’t like uncertainty and until the mid-terms are sorted out, no one really knows what the next two years will be like.

I haven’t said much about the Khashoggi murder mostly because I don’t care about it. Meaning: I do care that a fellow human being was killed and I do hope those who did it are punished…but I don’t care in the sense that I don’t see this as something Americans or America needs to get bent out of shape about. It seems to me that the real intent behind blowing this murder up to epic proportions is to drive a wedge between the United States and Saudi Arabia. The parties who would benefit from this would be Turkey and Iran – and especially Iran. I’ve written in the past about Saudi Arabia – I don’t really like it. It is, to me, a sort of Mafia family which got control of a nation (one of the funniest jokes made on this was along the lines of “Khashoggi was going to be made, but there was a problem and there’s nothing we could do about it” – taken from that famous scene in Goodfellas). But, Iran is a much larger problem than Saudi Arabia and Turkey is rapidly turning into a full-blown enemy of the United States. I’m not prepared to allow Iran and Turkey to take over the Middle East because the less-dangerous Mafia family did something wrong.

And as long as we’re on the subject – ISIS has issued new threats to carry out knife and gun attacks in “Crusader nations”. Which means they’ll pick soft targets and murder as many unarmed people as they can. Safest place: any American gun show or shooting range. They won’t show up there.

The Trump/Russia thing continues to grind on. Sharyl Attkisson has some interesting things about it:

…there’s now an impressive body of public evidence to address another facet of this international controversy: collusion against Trump.

Evidence on this matter has trickled out slowly over the course of about two years. It has come in the form of sworn testimony from witnesses interviewed by Congress, information revealed by the Justice Department’s inspector general, government documents and text messages, and court files.

Taken together in context, the evidence points to two important findings. First, U.S. government insiders, colluding with numerous foreign citizens and governments, conspired to interfere in the 2016 election. Second, after the election, these figures conspired to undermine, oust, and perhaps even frame Trump and some of his associates.

I figure Mueller will shut it down after the mid-terms. If the Democrats win the House, with some sort of recommendation for impeachment of Trump. If GOP wins the House, then with a scathing statement of how bad Trump is, but no recommendation either way. If the GOP does win the House, then that is probably the best outcome for the GOP and for Trump…and toothless shriek. If it comes out that way, then I was wrong to urge Trump to fire Mueller.

Bomb Threat Open Thread

Mark Noonan21 Comments

Don’t know much about bomb scares – neither does anyone else, though that hasn’t stopped the left from getting #MAGAbomber trending on Twitter.

What strikes me as most odd is that the number of targets who all got their bombs at the same time indicates a massively detailed plan…which, so far, hasn’t resulted in a bomb going off. You’d think someone who could work out the logistics of hitting multiple, dispersed targets in a short time frame would have been able to, you know, Google how to make a bomb correctly. The punishment for sending an unsuccessful bomb isn’t all too different from sending a successful bomb…so, whomever is responsible is already looking at spending a very, very long time in a federal penitentiary. Why do that and not try to have a success in your scheme? All very weird.

Of course, some are calling it a false flag, but that is also par for the course. We have no evidence of such. If it is, though, it would be the most astonishing political scandal in American history.

The Laxalt family is prominent in Nevada and right now Adam Laxalt is running for Governor as a GOPer: but, the family isn’t united:

After 12 Laxalt family members wrote an op-ed opposing @AdamLaxalt’s #nvgov bid, now another 22 Laxalt family members have written an op-ed in the paper supporting him & his candidacy

Thanksgiving is going to be rough for the Laxalt family. It does look, though, like Laxalt will win. So, too, does it look like Heller will win. Early voting in Nevada still has a slight Democrat edge, but it doesn’t appear to be near enough to carry the Democrats to either a Senate or Governor win…and now Democrats are worrying about losing two House seats which they felt sure they’d win earlier in the year. But, as with all things Election, you have to wait until all the votes are cast and counted to really know.

But more and more evidence is piling up that, at the least, things aren’t going as well as the Democrats hoped. Ed Morrisey notes there is a real chance the GOP can flip Franken’s old Senate seat in MN. John James is surging so strong in MI against Stabenow that she’s called in Obama to rally the troops. Rep. Comstock (R-VA) whom everyone wrote off at the beginning of the cycle as a sure loser is tied with her Democrat challenger (and I understand Dem money is now flowing back into the race to try and save their bacon). And even the MSM is preparing the Democrats for the bad news.

As I’ve said before: my theory all along has been that the Democrats have gotten smaller, and the GOP larger, over the past two years. I was never sold on a Blue Wave happening, though I accepted it as a possibility. It still is a possibility, though a rapidly shrinking one. The chances of a Red Wave were, at the start, far more remote than the chances of a Blue Wave…but, now, I’ll say that the chances of a Red Wave are higher than the chance of a Blue Wave. In the end, though, anything short of Democrat control of the House is a stinging defeat of the Democrats. And if there is a Red Wave, it was created by Kavanaugh and Caravan.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan18 Comments

Solution to the Caravan: close the border. Just tell Mexico that nothing crosses the border if that Caravan gets within 100 miles of it. Until the Mexicans turn it around and send it home, nothing gets across in either direction. It’ll cause an economic disruption, but far more in Mexico than here…and even the drug cartels would exert pressure to get the Caravan turned around.

That Trump rally in Texas was astonishing. Just a gigantic, happy crowd. Once again – all the Experts tell us the GOP is doomed on the 6th, but where’s the evidence? Where are the throngs showing up for Democrat events? Heck, where are the early votes? So far, only Nevada has given the Dems a slight edge in early voting, and my bet is that is only because the rural areas of Nevada haven’t checked in as of this moment. As for all the money the Democrats suddenly got – I’m figuring it is laundered money-bags money. Someone pushed the panic button and some big money people shoved money around and made it appear that Act Blue is getting huge small donor money. Of course, we’ll all find out for sure in two weeks.

President Trump remains the ultimate troll:

Trump says that he might nominate Hillary Clinton to the Supreme Court, just so the media will investigate her deleted emails

PETA says that milk is a symbol of White Supremacy. It is really getting hard to parody the Left these days.

The actual hero of Telemark has died at the age of 99. A genuine tough guy.

There’s an oddity about the Black Sea – apparently, when sea levels changed ages ago, the “original” Black Sea (much smaller than the current one) was submerged…and became a nearly oxygen-free layer of water. The upshot is that deep down in the Black Sea, anything that winds up there gets amazingly preserved, including this 2,400 year old shipwreck. The ship is remarkably intact. And it, while the oldest so far, is merely one of what may be scores or hundreds of such ships. The science guys are pretty committed, from what I can tell, to leaving everything in place…but, I’m not sure. What good does it do down there? My view: find some way to raise as much as possible and preserve it.