2018 election

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 Noonan7 Comments

Still lots of predictions out there about how the mid-terms will go – I was fiddling around with an interactive prediction site and as I ran thru it, I realized what was wrong: the Experts are rating a huge number of very Red districts as toss-ups. I realized it was the only way they could make out that the House is in play…by pretending there’s this massive Blue wave coming which will convince Red (not purple – bright Red) district voters (who almost certainly voted overwhelmingly for Trump) to place Pelosi back in control of the House. I’m sorry, but that’s stupid. There’s no indication that the GOP is abandoning Trump as it essentially did with Bush in 2006 (and continued to abandon the GOP in 2008 when McCain ran). To be sure, anything is possible – but I think the most unlikely thing in politics right now is Trump 2016 voters turning to the Democrats. Once I figured that out, I can through the prospects with my perception and I get the GOP to 220 House seats, at least…that is, if the Democrats have a good night. If the GOP has a good night, 236 GOPers come January. A one seat gain (getting gains above the current 235 is difficult because the districts are all so carefully drawn for maximum partisan advantage).

On the Senate side, I can’t see us coming away with less than 53 GOP Senators if the Democrats have a good night – that’s if they win FL, AZ and NV (with AZ and NV being two seats flipped from GOP to Dem). Now, if the GOP has a good night…well, let’s just say it can be good, great or gosh darned phenomenal, depending on the breaks. 59 is Great. Gosh darned phenomenal isn’t to be spoken out loud…it would be too good to be true. But there is a non-zero chance of gosh darned phenomenal happening.

Do remember to vote next month. Its pretty important.

In case you were wondering, Democrats are assessing their loss in the Kavanaugh fight and they seem determined on a change in tactics. They are promising to start getting aggressive and mean. No, seriously: they are whining on social media about how they were too nice during the Kavanaugh battle. Get ready for one heck of a poop storm – and if the Democrats have a bad night in November, board up your windows.

There were rumors Trump was getting ready to fire Rosenstein but Trump scotched those and now says he and Rosenstein are best buddies. Which leads me to believe that Rosenstein was told by Trump that Trump was the boss (a completely correct statement) and Rosenstein agreed with that assertion. Rosenstein is swamp through and through…but the thing about draining a swamp is that you need the cooperation of at least some swamp dwellers (they know where the drains are, after all). We’ll see how this pans out. I’ve learned enough this past couple years to trust Trump’s judgement.

Allahpundit has fallen very far in the Trump era – now he’s rehashing biased polls to make what he thinks is a point. He’s slobbering in the link over a CNN poll of 1,009 adults (not registered voters, not likely voters, but adults…nearly half of whom won’t even vote in November). It naturally over-samples Democrats and under-samples Republicans. But, that is the old line of Conservatism all over…looking for reasons to surrender. A poll like this is designed to give a squish a reason for surrendering. “Look! There’s a poll saying we’re unpopular! Abandon ship! Ahoy!”. Yadda, yadda, yadda. As if any of that means anything. I’m so glad we’re giving these people the boot. It was long overdue.

A memo apparently went out saying that it is just wrong for the GOP to gloat over the Kavanaugh victory. It was all over the MSM and Social Media…naturally with the Never Trump weenies joining. We’re not supposed to win and when we do win, we’re not supposed to feel joy. Think about this – the left tried to win by claiming a boring, married judge was some sort of serial monster and they lost. And we’re supposed to bow our heads and be ashamed. Seriously: why did we put up with this garbage for so long?

Don Surber notes that Trump did the right thing – he apologized on behalf of the United States to Kavanaugh and his family.