Tag: 2022 elections

November Eighth, 2022 – Day of Reckoning

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I almost feel like adding between the date and the descriptor in the title above the sound effect, “dunt, dunt, DUUUHHHH!”  Reading it, it sounds overblown and comically self-serious.  But personally, it’s gratifying to think that I’ve managed to survive two years since the horrific 2020 election debacle and that Joe Biden has generated such animosity by his dumpster fire presidency that left, right and middle are almost unanimous in their appraisal of him as a failed president.

But more importantly, I am looking forward to knowing whether the electoral system in this country is salvageable or hopeless.  And that is something I’m waiting for with bated breath.  Because I’m just tired of thinking about it.  Thinking about it distracts me from too many other things that need to be attended to.  And the uncertainty prevents me from making decisions and makes me delay things that I could go forward with if I knew which way the world will be going.

I don’t know if I’m unique in this way of looking at things.  I guess I’ve always kind of obsessed about the political elections going on around me.  But since 2016 I’ve become extremely cynical about our country’s future.  Waking up to the reality of how the FBI operates and how partisan the whole administrative state is has lowered my opinion of our government to the point where I see no meaningful difference between it and East Germany or even Venezuela.  It’s power politics and corruption.  And respect for constitutional rights and freedoms is non-existent and not even a façade has been maintained.  The Left in government, corporations and academia wear their contempt for these things like a badge of honor.

At this point all I’m looking for is an answer.  I want to know if this is still the same country I used to belong to.  If it is they will reject Biden & Co. unmistakably.  He will lose both Houses of Congress convincingly.  If not then we are in a new place, post-America.  And at that point agonizing over elections is pointless, stupid and most importantly a waste of time.  So, the outcome of this election will be a clarifying moment, an epiphany.

In a real sense I’m actually hoping that the answer is that there is no hope.  I’m that tired of being disappointed.  If I don’t have to hope anymore, I can forget about the majority of people living in this country who aren’t on my side and concentrate on making my plans for me and mine.  I can take the measures that will hide and protect me from that majority and their representatives who have turned this country into a banana republic.  I can use this new found clarity to concentrate on making alliances with those who are on my side, or at least aren’t my sworn enemies.

And I can finally break away from obsessing about Tuesday nights in early November and start using my time for things that I enjoy and that provide some kind of return on investment.

So come on November Eighth, hurry up and get here.  Put an end to this whole stupid passion play that we reenact every two years or so.  Answer the question, thumbs up or thumbs down.  I no longer fear either answer.

14OCT2022 – Coming Up for Air

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Today the younger cohort of the grandson army invaded the Compound with ruthless abandon and bottomless appetites.  So basically, all writing efforts were abandoned and we settled into a format of games (chess, billiards and scrabble), junk food (chocolate chip pancakes, mac and cheese and ice cream sandwiches) and Dinotasia.  And it was a lot of fun.  The little guys are getting alarmingly good at pool and chess.  I find myself feeling more and more like a trapped beast.  Their mockery of my performance in these games of skill is becoming crueler.  But I soldiered on pretending that I was just toying with them.

Camera Girl spent her time in the kitchen whipping up breakfast, lunch and endless snacks to keep these ravenous locusts from attacking the woodwork and linens.  When their mom showed up to cart them off, I collapsed into a pile of shattered nerves and vowed that when they show up tomorrow morning that I will shackle them to the wall of the deepest ancestral catacomb and promptly wall them up.  Well, we’ll see.  Maybe we’ll skip the Dinotasia.  Tomorrow there’s a local soccer game we’re attending with the littlest guy and then they’re back with their siblings for whatever weekend events their parents are presiding over.  But I like when we get them in age groups.  The older and younger cohorts no longer overlap in tastes and activities.  In fact, I suspect I’m no longer grown up enough for the older kids.  They’ve outgrown Dinotopia and I’ve started to balk at some of the Marvel Comic Universe that is their staple diet.  I’m going to have to pick and choose to find stuff for us to watch together.  But we can start thinking about ways to treat them as adults soon.  College age grandchildren is something new for me.  But we’ll figure it out.  Maybe I can get advice on computer coding problems I’m having.  It’s sort of a return on investment for the forty-five years I’ve invested in this social experiment.  Am I asking too much?

So, I’m way behind my reading for the day and I’ll see what’s worth writing about.  What is interesting is a sense of panic seems to be slowly oozing from behind the façade of the fake news industrial complex.  It’s as if they’re slowly signaling to the true believers to prepare themselves for the fact that maybe the abortion crusade isn’t going to save them from the Mid-Term wave that seem to be regenerating.  For all of the happy talk about Joe Biden’s renewed popularity, inflation is ravaging the household budgets of the working and middle classes and urban crime is frightening the pants off of even the suburbanites who live within fifty miles of the dumpster fires that used to be our cities.

Well, hang in there, folks.  I’ll be up to snuff soon and full of annoying opinions and outrageous pronouncements.  I’ve got a new movie review and some other stuff coming up and I’ll astound you with my sagacity and perspicacity.  And if not those then some other -city words that I haven’t looked up in the thesaurus yet.  To be continued.

Someone Is Going to Handicap the Pollsters

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Real Clear Politics (RCP) provides an average of the various polls for all the elections going on.  The idea is that the average of a bunch of polls will be more accurate than any particular poll.  But if most of them are biased then that will hardly produce an accurate estimate.

But they’ve just announced that they are going to use this present election (and past ones) to assign correction factors for the various pollsters going forward.  In other words if the YouGov poll is always 3 points too high for the Democrat candidate then going forward RCP will apply a -3 point correction on their polls.

It’s actually a really good idea.  With a really large database of historical data I could see how a statistician could develop a model that provides a much better estimate for how people will vote.  I’m looking forward to this.  I suspect once these pollsters start getting rated on accuracy the worst offenders will start squealing like stuck pigs.  But over time it will boost the honest pollsters and who knows it might convince some of the worst offenders to mediate their lies.

Crime is a Problem.  Who Knew!?

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I was reading an article that Salena Zito wrote on the out-of-control crime in Philadelphia.  And I came across this information,

“A new Morning Consult-Politico poll released late last week shows over three-quarters of voters said violent crime is a major problem in the United States, with only 17% of respondents calling crime a minor problem and only 2% saying it was not a problem at all.”

Well, who’da thunk it?  I can remember just a few weeks ago the polls showed that crime was a much lower priority than inflation but magically now it’s grown.  And yet the people living in the cities where crime has become a daily ordeal will still vote overwhelmingly for Democrats and especially progressives who release criminals almost as soon as they’re caught.  In fact Philadelphia recently re-elected the Soros-backed district attorney that has turned their criminal justice system into a revolving door.

Maybe the pollsters are starting to let the cat out of the bag.  Or maybe things just keep getting worse and even the progressives living in these cities are starting to panic.  Well, I’m beyond caring whether the urban dwellers will come to their senses.  But I am interested to see if reality will have any effect on the Mid-Terms.  Nevada, Georgia, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania all have tight senate and state house races.  They also have big cities that are filled with rampant crime.  It stands to reason that if these races go to Democrats, even in conditions like we have today then there is no point at which the Republicans will be able to win them back.

And that’s an important thing to know.  Cause and effect are the names we give to what we use to analyze the world around us.  When someone pulls the trigger on a gun and someone falls bleeding to the ground with a hole in his chest, we see a cause-and-effect relationship.

If we see the country falling apart, we expect to see Americans vote against the people responsible for this failure.  If we don’t see that response then we have to assume that either the people like what’s happening or voting is, for whatever reason, no longer a measure of the people’s will.

And whereas there is a difference between these two distinct reasons, the result is still the same.  And it is that result that interests me.  As I’ve stated incessantly, I’m looking for clarity.  I’m looking for the answer to the question, “Can we vote our way out of this?”

And everything I see about this election seems to confirm that this is the perfect test case.  There are just so many things going wrong at once that there’s no conceivable way to paint this situation as a coin toss.  There can’t be a starker contrast between what the two sides stand for and what results each side produce.

From the same article I read,

“As one mother in Center City pointed out, President Joe Biden was in Philadelphia one month ago and never once mentioned the violence ripping her city apart. “Which is funny,” she said, “because he said he was giving a speech on the battle for the soul of the nation. Has he looked around at the soul of this city?”

Not once in Biden’s 3,000-word speech did he say the word “crime” or “homicide” or “gangs.” He did, however, identify what he said “was happening in our country today that is not normal” — MAGA Republicans, who he said “represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic” and are “a threat to this country.”  Biden added that Republicans “do not believe in the rule of law.””

Joe Biden accusing Republicans of disbelief in the rule of law is so Orwellian that it almost makes me laugh.  That is until I remember that even if Joe Biden didn’t legitimately win the 2020 election, he still must have gotten close to 50% of the electorate voting for him anyway.  That means that almost half of Americans are either too stupid or too corrupt to reject a malevolent, cretinous liar like Joe Biden.  That is no laughing matter.

So, another data point.  Americans know that crime is out of control.  Will this influence the elections?  Stay tuned in less than four weeks for the answer.

What Effect Is the US Mid-Term Elections Having on the Ukraine War?

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I have a feeling that the upcoming US elections are having an effect on both sides of the Ukraine war.  It seems that the Americans are trying to provoke the Russians into a very violent reaction before the Mid-Terms in order to change the focus of the American electorate away from the economy and other domestic problems and onto the Russians.  And unless I’m mistaken, I think the Russians are doing everything they can to resist this provocation for the same reason.

I think the Russians are savvy enough about previous “wag the dog” incidents to recognize what’s going on.  And whereas they cannot completely ignore things like the Nord Stream sabotage or the attack on the Crimean bridge it strikes me that they are being surprisingly subdued in their responses to these provocations.  And I think that’s smart.  Once the election is over Biden is stuck with the result and I don’t think he’ll be as sanguine about the Ukraine war.  A month from now it’s going to start getting much colder in Europe and the lack of affordable fuel is going to become a big deal.

If my theory is correct as soon as the elections are over the Russians are going to take the gloves off and pummel the Ukrainian infrastructure and cause havoc.  Attacks on electrical generation and transmission equipment and other utilities will begin showing the Ukrainians that war against a powerful neighbor is an unpleasant reality.  Spending a winter without heat, lights and running water is a pretty miserable existence.  In addition, the Russians have not staged a major artillery strike on Kiev since June.  If the capitol city becomes a major target for attacks, it will have a major impact on Ukrainian public opinion about continuing the war.  It might even turn the people against Zelensky.

And then there is the United States.  With OPEC decreasing output by two million barrels a day of oil the cost of fuel will be more than just an annoyance.  It will be a drain on household budgets that will leave families struggling to get by.  This will worsen the economy that is already in terrible shape.  And when the recession starts adding millions of Americans to the unemployment lines, they’re not going to care about helping the Ukraine war.  They’re going to be angry and scared.  And that should be about the time that Washington will tell Zelensky to start talking to the Russians about peace.

I could be all wrong about the Russian restraint being about our Mid-Terms but I seriously doubt it.  I think this whole war is a manufactured product of the CIA and the State Department.  And there is an atmosphere that pervades the whole operation that smells like a catastrophe about to blow up in their faces.  They’ve upped the ante every time things have gone wrong and it seems like we’re nearing a breaking point.  Assuming they don’t intend to lob a nuke on their own I think they may have overestimated their ability to stampede the Russians into some horrendous over reaction.  The pipeline and bridge sabotage are the latest provocations but the Russians seem to be maintaining a proportional response to each of these attacks.

There’s only a month to go but that’s plenty of time for me to be shown I’m wrong or for the Biden team to go over the top on their activities.  For everyone’s sake I hope they don’t get the reaction they’re looking for.

Is There a Tipping Point?  What Do You Think?

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What do you think?  Will the pendulum swing back or has the string just snapped and we’re in freefall?  I was in the comments section the last few days being reminded that a lot of people have caught onto the game on the Left.  And I don’t deny that.  Tens of millions of Americans have opened their eyes to what is happening to this nation, to this world.  But can that make a difference?  Supposedly we have representative government.  We’ve even changed parties in all three branches of government when they’ve annoyed us enough.  But it still seems that the policies don’t change.

We voted Donald Trump into the White House in 2016 but Republican leaders in the House and Senate did everything they could do to block his policies on immigration and the border fence.  Why was that?  The executive branch of the government did everything humanly possible to blunt Trump’s agenda.  The agencies that he had direct control over triumphed over the duly elected President of the United States.  The news media and the social media platforms cover for the Democrats and suppress the truth at will.  Can these things be overcome?  What do you think?

Maybe I’ve gotten cynical or maybe it’s just sad experience but I sense that we’re not even close to how far the Left is willing and able to go.  I mean look at the “wag the dog” Biden is working on.  He’s talking about trading nukes with Putin.  Even the most hawkish Republican would have cooled down the rhetoric about pushing the Russians or the Chinese to nuclear war.  Biden almost seems to think it’s gaining him points.  If they’re willing to go to these lengths to keep people from thinking about the shambles they’ve made of this country, what aren’t they willing to say or do?

As I’ve said repeatedly, I think this mid-term election is a very good surrogate for how possible it will be to change the course we’re on.  We reached maximum crazy two years ago and have just been watching the fallout from it hollow out the world around us ever since.  If what’s going on now doesn’t arouse the fury of the populace against the people responsible when will it?  And even if the people do line up at the ballot boxes to vote them out what’s to stop the crooks from simply manufacturing whatever number of millions of votes needed to swing it?  Am I wrong to be thinking this way?

So that’s why I’m curious to see whether my pessimism is unusual or do most of you feel the same way.  Sure, I haven’t given up.  I’m hoping that November bounces these losers out of control of the Congress.  But I’m far from sure that it will happen.  The House looks like a lock to fall to the Republicans and the Senate looks like it will teeter over the edge back to them too.  But in any normal universe it should be a landslide.  Now it’s just a teeter-totter that could go either way.

Any of you who would like to help me take the pulse of the people who read this site choose an option in the poll or leave a comment or both.  I’m curious to hear which way it goes.

Update:

So the sense at this point in the poll is that the majority thinks the country will reject the Left.  But the lion’s share of those people think voting won’t be sufficient.  Well that’s both encouraging and daunting at the same time.  Please keep adding your opnions to the poll and the comments.  I’ll have to say I’m very glad I posted this one.  And I’m glad Whatfinger picked it up.  And thanks to everyone who got involved.

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Is There A Point At Which the American People Will Reject the Left?

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03OCT2022 – OCF Update – This’N’That

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I find the increasingly surreal reality around me both dizzying and slightly depressing.  So, I’m trying to distract myself from it with more pleasant subjects.  Last week I started listening to some of Wagner’s “Der Ring des Nibelungen.”  Unfortunately, the library I’m borrowing it from didn’t have the entire four opera set (Sir George Solti’s version) available.  In fact, all they’ve sent me so far is the third opera, Siegfried.

As promised, there are a lot of people singing at each other in German with extremely powerful voices and what seem like lots of emotional problems.  I confess that my lack of German is hampering my appreciation of the dialog but I found many of the melodic parts of the soundtrack very stirring.  I was disappointed that the library didn’t send me Die Walker (“The Valkyrie”).  I’ve always admired the Bugs Bunny version where Elmer Fudd sings along to the “Flight of the Valkyrie” with the magnificent refrain “kill the wabbit, kill the wabbit, kill the wabbit.”  It seemed the height of musical sophistication at the time.  So far, the experiment has been amusing.  We shall see how it develops.

After watching “The Northman” I’ve decided to review some of the other versions of the play, Hamlet.  I’ve been a fan of Olivier’s version but I think I want to watch Gibson’s and Branagh’s versions again.  One of the only advantages that Branagh’s version had is that it’s comprehensive.  Olivier left out the characters of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern and although I see why he did it (time constraints) I do miss those sections.  Next summer I’ll try to attend a live performance of Hamlet somewhere.  There used to be a Shakespeare company in the Berkshires of Massachusetts that I sometimes attended.  They were pretty good.  I’ll have to see if they still exist and find out if they’re covering Hamlet next year.  If not I’m sure some place in New England there is a production.  After all it’s supposed to be the best play by the best playwright in the English language.  Surely someone is still doing it.  My only fear is that it will be exuberantly woke and all the characters will be wheelchair-bound transgender vegans.  That’s bound to take away from the dueling scene.

My scorecard for the November elections is kind of encouraging at the moment.  It seems like the Democrats are trying to psych themselves up.  There’s lots of talk about all these women who registered to vote and all the passion about abortion.  But there is a definite sense that even people like Chuck Todd sense a shellacking in the making.  Losing the House is already a foregone conclusion.  And it’s starting to look like the Senate will also go to the Republicans although whether it will be one seat or a handful is hard to say.  What with Mitch McConnell actively working against some of the Republican candidates it’s hard to figure exactly how the numbers will pan out.  Mitch really is an awful man to have as an ally.  But even he may not be enough to throw the Senate to the Dems while Creepy Uncle Joe is undermining what’s left of Western civilization.

As for the Ukraine war, well that rolling disaster is just another example of the dysfunctional Deep State tampering with the world as if it were their personal Frankenstein’s laboratory.  There seems to be no end to their appetite for destruction.  But this one may be the payoff.  I get the feeling even the Germans have had enough winning.  They’re going to go on a low temperature, low power diet this winter and maybe even these true believers may finally say enough.  Who knows, even their died in the wool Greens may beg for some nuclear power this winter when their toes freeze off.

Well anyway, that’s what’s going on today.  I hope your week has begun well.

Economist Jeffrey Sachs Dares to Speak the Truth About the Pipeline

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Sachs is not a conservative.  But apparently he’s not afraid to say what he thinks to the Left.  Here he tells some libs that the whole world thinks we blew up the Nord Stream pipelines and also think that the United States is equally responsible for the dangerous confrontation that may happen between the nuclear superpowers over the Ukraine war.  And I think I detect the western media starting to echo this concern.  Sachs mentions that it is sixty years to the month since the Cuban Missile Crisis but the US State Department is talking trash about their response to nuclear weapons being used.

Well, wag the dog seems to be the tactic that the Democrats are using for this Mid-Term election.  Somehow I don’t think it’s a good idea.  But who knows maybe Joe Biden is a genius.  What do you think?

 

ABC – Wash Post Slanted Poll Still Very Bad News for Dems in November

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I don’t like to spread good news prematurely but when the Left starts saying discouraging things about the November Elections it does tempt me to weigh in.

Here are some of the highlights of this ABC / Washington Post Poll:

The headline on the poll results is: “Biden Struggles, As Does His Party; Most Dems Look Elsewhere for 2024.”

But what makes this poll notable is that it found some remarkably weak findings for Democrats, even with the Democrat-leaning sample and the alleged shopping for youth respondents.

Among Registered Voters in competitive (close) Congressional districts

55% favor Republicans (mirroring the 24 lead for Republicans in solid GOP districts)

34% favor Democrats

 

Suburban women

47% favor Republicans

44% favor Democrats

 

So let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves here.  Election fraud is a very powerful friend of the Democrats.  When you just open up a firehose of manufactured votes it’s pretty easy to overcome a twenty one point lead in the actual vote.  But it does say something about the possibility of a whole bunch of chickens coming home to roost on Joe Biden’s head.  And roosting chickens (and the attendant debris) couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.

Well, if at least we know Nancy Pelosi will be losing her gavel in a few months that is something to be looking forward to.  If Schumer is also demoted that would be fun.  And maybe I’m about to be pleasantly surprised by the incompetence of the Democrat fraud machine.  We’ll have to see.

 

 

 

 

 

Here’s Another Poll That Says, “It’s the Economy Stupid.”

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The Democrats are working as hard as they can to replace the lousy economy on the minds of voters with anything else; abortion, the Ukraine, gun violence, January 6th, anything.  But it hasn’t worked:

“In the latest Investor’s Business Daily/TIPP Poll conducted in early September, we asked Americans to pick top-3 issues facing the country. The economy came as the top issue for most. It does not matter what party you are from; the sentiment is shared across the political spectrum.

The economy is the #1 issue for nearly half (48%) of the Americans who took part in the poll. It is important to 38% of Democrats, 63% of Republicans, and 46% of Independents.

The #2 issue is Gun violence/Gun control at a distant 27%. Democrats (37%) think it is important and it is ‘somewhat important’ to Independents (21%), but it has limited appeal to Republicans (15%).

Immigration and border security (24%) is the #3 issue. While immigration and border security is a critical issue for one-half (49%) of Republicans, only 21% of Independents think it is important.

Many Democratic politicians want to leverage abortion as a wedge issue, but it has only limited appeal. One in five (21%) think it is important, with 26% of Democrats and a similar share of Independents (25%). Only 13% of Republicans rated it as a top issue.”

So apparently Americans aren’t as clueless as the Democrats hoped.  Sounds hopeful.  Let’s just see if the voter fraud machine is ready to crank out more fake Democrat victories.